It was 2 AM local time when Aaron Majesky, his disguise as Mikolaj the enforcer mostly removed, arrived outside the production facility. The place was supposed to produce custom parts for computer tablets. Production must have been down lately, Aaron reflected. They had some spare room to make Nex. Having used an exterior storm gutter, Aaron made his way to the roof. Dressed all in black, he had a ninja sword strapped to his back. It wasn't HIS sword, not anywhere near the quality. But as these were normal people and not Sampson's holo-images or extra-dimensional entities, it should do the trick. When he got to the roof, he put on a traditional ninja mask and hood. Never thought I'd be wearing one of these again, Aaron thought.
Walking to the entrance, he used an electronic device, courtessy of Infinite Seven HQ, to scan for and disable any electronic safeguards. Then, he used good old fashioned metal picks to disengage the door lock. Aaron knew he had one shot at this. He needed to get to Benito Asante in the office, render him helpless, get him to safety where he could be arrested, and finally plant explosives in the external loading docks to destroy the current supply of Nex. Once Benito was in custody, the international law enforcement community could take it from there.
Using the GPS he'd rigged to mimic the locator on Agostino Asante's phone, which he had cloned a few days ago, Aaron had no trouble locating Benito Asante two floors down. There was no way he was in there with less than 2 bodybuards, and everyone he was meeting with was likely to have one themselves, and be heavily armed. Aaron pushed the thought out of his head. He couldn't plan this out until he saw the layout.
Having gotten to the outside of the room, he found it to be a conference room about thiry feet long, with one entrance. The room had external windows. That would help. Benitor, a 50-something balding man with gray-black hair, sat at the head of the table, in a position of authority. There were the two bodyguards. No, three. His brother was with him. All along the table, he saw people he recognized from his investigation. Mafia people, mostly, illicit gun-runners, drug suppliers, that sort of crowd. Aaron didn't like this set-up. These were not the kind of people one made enemies of. But then, that was the reason for the mask. Benito may know his identity, but the others wouldn't. He had to get Benito unconscious and out of the room before that information could get out.
Aaron's first play was to throw a smoke bomb into the room. The guns were less useful now; anyone firing one risked hitting someone else important, and that would mean death. Kicking in the door, Aaron ran to where he had seen Benito last, a chemical sleeping agent poured into the fabric of his glove. Instead, he ran straight into a bodyguard, who had obviously "castled" his king to protect him.
Aaron hit the tough with a solid kung-fu punch, one that would shake the roughest street thug he'd ever fought. He felt a slight give as the man's rib cracked. But the attack didn't seem to phase him. Man, Aaron thought. This guy eats his veggies.
The man punched back, but Aaron had no time to deal with him. Sorry, he thought. Drawing his sword, Aaron punctured the man's exposed side and ripped upwards. The attack was largely a flesh-wound; it wouldn't be fatal. But for him, the fight was now over. Aaron listened for a second, then heard a click. Someone had decided to chance a gun. Several bullets fired directly at his location, and the man that he had just stabbed took one through the eye.
Aaron threw a small explosive, as hard as he could, at the external window, and ran for all he was worth. The explosion spider-webbed the window glass but didn't break it. Aaron reached one arm out to grab where he hoped Benito Asante still was, then threw the other arm upward and behind, once again hoping. This time, his hope was that the grapple would catch the window, and that he could keep his hold on Asante. Man, Aaron thought, a set of wings would be an asset right now.
Everything that happened in the next few instants was a blur. The glass crashed. Aaron looked down in the Milan night sky to see that he was, in fact, holding the head of Il Sindicato. Falling. The sound from above that said his grapple had stuck. The fear of impending pain. Aaron felt as if he'd been shot in the shoulder. He felt ligaments rip as he swing the weight of two people into the plate glass wall three floors below. The glass shattered against the momentum, and Aaron felt a shard barely miss his jugular vein.
Things seemed to switch back to real time as they slammed into the table in another conference room, this one unoccupied. The table buckled, and the two, the hero and the criminal mastermind, rolled across the floor. Aaron was the first to awake. His left arm was useless; the shoulder had been sprained and dislocated. His right leg ached, and he realized a stray bullet from before had hit him. Benito, too, had been hit, in the upper right chest. He was in danger of bleeding out. However, because he'd taken less trauma, he was able to draw his own gun before Aaron was able to finish standing.
"Who the HELL are you! Pull off that mask!" Benito demanded. Aaron wasn't about to give him the satisfaction. A shuriken appeared in his palm as if by magic. In a split second, the razor-sharp tip had cut into Benito's wrist, causing him to scream in pain and drop is pistol. In that instant, Aaron grabbed him by the arm and, holding his sword to the man's throat, ushered him out the door and down the hall. Aaron had enough evidence to put Benito away for a long time, but first he had to get him out of here, and complete the rest of his mission.
As the elevator took them to the lower floors where the loading docs were located, Benito Asante's demands and questions turned to panting, as the blood drained rapidly from his chest. When they reached the ground floor, Aaron had to drag him away from the elevator. He realized there was no way this man could make the journey outside of this building. Ironically, it was a bullet fired from the gun of one of his allies that had ended Benito Asante. Even if he wanted to, Aaron knew enough about first aid to know there was no saving him now.
"Benito. I know the plan. You've failed," Aaron said.
"Well," Benito said matter-of-fact-ly, "you win some, you lose some. But my spearhead has been launched. And the Eastern front is mine..."
Aaron knew what that meant. The Eastern front coul only be a reference to Tibet. For ingredients, Nex relied upon a rare flower, long used in Tibet to produce an opiate drug. If his people reached Tibet, and completed a deal for more of the raw materials, the spread of Nex could go on for decades. As far as the "spearhead", Aaron assumed it must be somewhere in the US. It might even be Stevenson. He had to assume that his I7 teammates could handle the situation.
Aaron completed setting the explosives as police arrived on the scene. No one heard the whine of a motorcycle engine as the bombs went off, destroying the plant and the current inventory of Nex. Something about the situation made Aaron unease as he sped away. Arms dealers at the meeting. What was Il Sindicato up to? As he moved into the northern suburbs of Milan, a sudden, fearful thought struck Aaron. Nex wasn't a drug; it was an augmentation. The purpose of Nex was to make an army of super-soldiers!
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