Chapter Seven

Night in Lincoln city, the dark hours, perfect heist time. Lydia, Cassie, and Catherine sped through Lincoln City, their bikes rolling silent as shadows—fast, stealthy, unstoppable. The trio moved with intense speed. Lydia cut the engine first, gliding the last few meters in perfect silence. Cassie and Catherine followed suit, their bikes rolling to a stop in the darkness.

No words were needed. In one fluid motion, they dismounted and split up—Cassie tapped a button on the bike, activating auto-drive. In a single, dramatic second, her suit opened up from behind, making way for a pair of falcon wings to burst out of her skin. With a powerful flap of her wings, she launched into the sky, cutting through the night like a blade.

At a junction, Catherine swerved hard, cutting right with drastic speed. She had her back bent and eyes locked on the road. Lydia remained her course, speeding along a straight line like a phantom faster than her own shadow. With a sudden screech, she made her stop right across a tall, towering and luxurious building. One that spoke power, wealth and worst of all, secrecy.

Lights out.

The entire building plunged into darkness. Lydia pulled off her helmet, slipping on her mask as she strode forward.

"What's your status, Catherine?" Lydia asked through their comms.

"Well… As you may have noticed, the main power's out. Back-up too," Catherine replied, surveying the destruction she'd left at the nearby power station—torn wires, shredded cables, and dead officials. "I'll be joining you in a jiffy. I really hope Vandrell isn't around. Otherwise.." She smirked before speeding off on heels.

Cassie's comms remained silent. She was still in the air, knocking out drones, neutralizing patrolling guards, and keeping LCPD busy with carefully placed distractions.

"Let's get this show on the road." Lydia muttered before stepping into the building.

Inside, chaos reigned. Guards roamed with LED-sighted rifles, their movements erratic, tense—disorderly. Something was off. Then again, in Lincoln city, blackouts only meant one thing— a heist in action.

Lydia made her way through the cacophony, weaving past guards, staff, and confused customers until she reached a nearby elevator. With swift motion, she took out a laser pen from her belt, its beam slicing a precise hole through the metal doors. She slipped soundlessly through the hole without causing a scene. From her belt, she pulled out a flat, hand-sized panel and pressed it against the elevator's inner wall.

With a click, the panel chimed live. Lydia's fingers began dancing on an encrypted lock, working fast.

Lights on.

The building came back to life. The lights illuminated brightly, exposing the polished wooden floor and shelves lined with deep reds, crisp whites, and golden ambers stretch along the walls, their bottles glistening under warm, ambient lighting.

"How?" Lydia questioned, refusing to be distracted.

"It seems like Vandrell had another back-up hidden in the building," Cassie answered through their comms, scanning the building with her x-ray vision. "Hostiles approaching your location, T minus..." She paused, tracking three guards moving toward the elevator.

"I repeat, hostiles approaching."

Slash. Crack. Rip.

Horrendous cries of pain and deep cuts of death. Open chests—hearts torn free.

Cassie praised from above, her voice laced with sarcasm.

"Chivalrous knight in shining armor."

Catherine smirked, rolling the still-beating heart in her palm before letting it drop onto the bloodstained tiles with a sickening thud. "You're too kind, Miss Muscles. You know—"

"Keep your hands where I can see them."

A voice cut through the moment. An armed guard. Gun raised. Right behind her.

"You really shouldn't have done that." Catherine's voice was calm, almost amused as she raised her hands in mock surrender. A dry smile played on her lips. "I could have said something disheartening to my dear Cassie but you… You stole my moment,"

The guard stood firm, his gun held high, hands on the trigger— eager to shoot.

"Now I'm gonna take something away from you. How about…." Her green eyes gleamed. "Your vocal cord."

Dash.

Catherine was gone. Nowhere yet everywhere. The guard couldn't see her before him anymore. He turned round wildly, aiming at every turn, at every shadow. Fear crept slowly into his rigid mind as he saw three of his colleagues dead—hearts ripped from their chests, staring lifelessly at him. His hands were shaking, his heart beat rising, his pulse firing.

"No need to be scared, yours would be less painful." Catherine's voice echoed through the hall.

Snap.

The guard started shooting sporadically, releasing shots at every turn as if he was surrounded by threat.

As the last bullet was shot and the gun was empty, Catherine appeared behind him. Her claws kissed his throat, a single, precise slice.

The guard dropped his gun and held his next as if to cover the deep cut. With time he fell to the ground, gasping for breath.

"And that's the end of your courageous story." Catherine's voice was almost sweet, laced with cruel amusement as she watched the guard collapse.

Catherine's murderous attention was drifted by a chime coming from Lydia through their comms.

The lock had been decrypted. Time to go underground. Lydia pressed a button, activating the elevator. Catherine dashed in before it closed. They were going down to the hidden and last floor —. .

The elevator halted with a soft chime, signaling their arrival. Peering through the lasered hole, Lydia and Catherine caught a glimpse of the hidden floor below. Stepping out into the floor, heels tapping softly on the polished metal ground, the place was just as they had thought —a data bank.

The room was filled with rows of metal shelves with blinking computer drives on it. Light shone dimly along the aisles.The hum of servers filled the air, a steady pulse of digital life. Cool, artificial air circulated from overhead vents, carrying the sterile scent of metal and machine oil. The dim glow of LED indicators flickered in synchronized rhythm, casting ghostly reflections on the polished metal floor.

Lydia's sharp eyes swept the room. Every row of data servers stood like towering sentinels, each packed with classified information waiting to be extracted. A security terminal sat at the far end, its screen pulsing with encrypted warnings—layers of firewalls and defenses designed to keep intruders out.

Catherine, already eager, cracked her knuckles.

"This is it," Lydia murmured, striding forward. " The device is locked behind a room along the 17th left aisle." Lydia muttered, examining the blueprint on the wall.

"Cassie, What's your status?" Catherine asked.

Cassie was still standing watch from a nearby tower, "My visions can't reach the hidden floor and the top area is okay. The police are stuck busy and the patrol guards are down."

"So all we gotta do is take down a few bad guys from the inside. How sweet!" Catherine added with a sly tone.

Lydia approached the main console, a sudden beep broke the silence. A red warning flashed across the screen.

UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS DETECTED. SECURITY RESPONSE INITIATED.

A low mechanical whir echoed through the room. Hidden panels in the walls slid open.

"Ladies," Catherine smirked, flexing her fingers, "looks like we have company."

"Once I have the device, meet me in the back-up room," Lydia ordered as a team of armed men busted in. "Make this snappy!" Lydia said with a commanding tone before vanishing into the aisle.

"You heard her. We need to make this quick," Catherine muttered boastfully, her claws filling out to its peak. "So who's first?"

The tense silence shattered with the synchronized clicks of rifles. The guard moved in tight formation, the dim light casting their shadows on the polished floor.

Cassie exhaled sharply. Her eyes rolled over her shoulders. "You're wasting time, spare them the torture and end them quickly. Lydia might need your help."

"What's the fun in a quick death, Miss Muscles? And besides Lydia couldn't possibly need my help. If anyone should, I think you'd make the first tier list."

The nearest guard tried to shoot Catherine but before his finger could pull the trigger—She had made her mark on his body. Her claws had torn through armour and flesh. Catherine spared him no time to feel pain as he crumpled against the floor.

Catherine bent a bit, legs slightly apart like a sprinter. She crouched her knees. Her head was arrowed forward as her arm stroked backwards—her sprint stance of death, so she called it.

Gunfire erupted.

Catherine dashed into the ballroom, dancing through the chaos. She clawed through the flesh of the guards, dodging through the bullets like they were in slow motion. "Gotta say," Catherine quipped, flexing her claws as she stood over the corpse of the guards on her left side. "Vandrell does have a taste for guards… a poor one." She rushed at the remaining by her left.

Meanwhile, Lydia was decrypting the lock on the storage room. Her fingers danced on the console.

Click!

The door opened with a mechanical hum. The room was different. No shelves, bright light and numerous doors by the side. Lydia took careful steps as she walked in, scanning the whole place.

As she expected, Lydia was greeted by a high tech arrow shot directly at her. Lydia caught it right before her face. In a split second, she examined the arrow and realized who she was dealing with. Right ahead, numerous arrows came at her. Lydia unsheathed her katana and sliced the incident arrows.

"As a 4th tier mutant, I must say your skills are rather dull," Lydia said with a curt tone, staring at a full grown man a few metres away from her with a bow on his right arm and arrows slanted behind his back. "I expected better, Parley"

"Within all due respect, Mistress of stealth. You are obstructing my duty." Parley sighed from his distance as he reached back and plucked an arrow from his quiver, and knocked it against the string. The tension in the bowstring built as he drew it back, the string pressing against his cheek. His sharp eyes locked on Lydia.

"You mean guarding the device I've come for." Lydia queried, advancing towards him with an agile conquest, her sword aimed pointing towards the floor as her feet stormed ahead. She retrieved a dart from her belt and fired at him. The dart met Parley's fingers before he could release the arrows, injecting a strong dose of toxin that interferes with his nerve function, paralyzing his hand. The toxin spread fast, numbing his motor sensors as he crumpled hard on the floor. Lydia crouched above him with an unfazed look.

"How sad, playing knight for Mr. Vandrell," she muttered. "So where is it?"

"You mean the device you're here for?," Parley replied with subtle mockery. He could hardly laugh. The toxin only permitted a dry scoff. "I'll be damned to…"

Ring. Ring.

Parley's curt remarks were interrupted by Lydia's ringing phone. A familiar ringing tone. That could only be…

(No name yet), her lover.

"Hi there,( ), you said you wouldn't call till you were back."

"I did, didn't I?" , replied with a sweet, cozy tone. "Well we are done with our research and should catch the next flight back to Lincoln."

"How lovely." She paused, allowing rhythms of love and concern to dance in the air. "See you later then!"

"Yeah!... Cool!... I'll always have you in my heart," chuckled as he said those words bit by bit. "At the right though, ever shining like a star." He hung up.

"At the right, ever shining like a star." She repeated, slotting the phone into her pocket.

"Spare us the repetition, Miss Perfect." Catherine muttered through their comms, rolling her eyes away from her final victim.

"Says the drama queen who couldn't save herself from Vandrell's charm." Cassie cut in sharply.

"Whatever." Lydia muttered with a subtle smile stuck on her face. The smile vanished as her eyes locked on a shelf by the right. "Girls! I just found our cargo."

"Where?" They chorused.

"At the right side of the room, ever shining like a star." Her smile came back up.

After a few minutes, Lydia was out with a large suitcase with special markings on it. Catherine waited as asked. They got out through one of the doors in the back-up room, leading into an elevator. They entered the elevator without the need of unlocking it. The elevator took them to the ceiling where Cassie stood waiting.

"What took you so long?" Cassie queried lightly.

"Well Miss Beauty thought it necessary to flaunt her beauty as we got here." Lydia's gaze fell on Catherine as her eyes rolled over her shoulders.

"What? I'm not called Miss Beauty for nothing." Catherine responded with equal tone.

Lydia gave the case to Cassie who with a single flap, launched into the dark.

Catherine stood at the edge of the building ready to leave. "I'd love to stay and chat, but I've got a date. Rich guy. Queece. You know how it is."She said before falling off the edge.

Without another word, Lydia followed, sprinted toward the edge and leaped. Catherine landed smoothly on the rooftop of an adjacent building, while Lydia flipped mid-air, twisting into a controlled descent before rolling to her feet.

Cassie, already soaring above them, whispered through the comms, "Extraction point's clear. Let's go home."

Lydia glanced back at the tower they'd just ransacked. No sirens yet, no alarms blaring into the night—just the lingering tension of a job executed with near perfection.

Catherine grinned. "Easy as stealing candy from a billionaire."

Lydia smirked. "Let's not jinx it."

Catherine activated the auto drive on her bike before speeding off. Lydia put on her helmet and zoomed off with a roar—mission complete.