Originally, despite her disdain for Quinton, Felicity had feared him. He was the tactical brain of the operation, and crossing him was a death wish.
But now that she was convinced she was going to die anyway, her fear vanished.
Quinton barely spared her a glance as he barked his order. "Change your appearance. Now."
She needed to swap clothes with Claire and force Claire's compliance.
Claire had been knocked unconscious earlier.
While she had kept her guard up, passing out had clearly been the safer tactical choice to lower their defenses.
So, Claire had happily embraced 'unconsciousness.'
She thought playing dead would make them sloppy, but these Syndicate operatives, despite their arrogance, were far from incompetent.
After knocking her out, Tycho had immediately bound her wrists and ankles with heavy zip-ties.
Now, cutting her loose to strip off her jacket, shoes, and jewelry was a tense process.
To perfectly mimic Claire, Felicity had even brought a custom wig.
Claire had no idea if this had been Felicity's twisted fantasy all along.
But the girl was terrifyingly prepared.
Ever since she had pulled Claire's dossier, Felicity had purchased an identical wig just in case she needed a body double.
Within minutes, a girl bearing a fifty-percent resemblance to Claire stood in the room.
Once she pulled on the surgical mask, the illusion jumped to a solid seventy percent.
Felicity wasn't entirely useless-she was an undisputed master of disguise!
Not only did she alter her own appearance, but she aggressively altered Claire's face to look like her own.
Fortunately, she had worn a different wig when seducing Howard. She simply shoved it onto Claire's head, hastily applied her own makeup style, and swapped their clothes.
Right as they finished, Quinton's encrypted phone vibrated.
He locked eyes with Tycho and Felicity. "Move out. The SSD has breached the perimeter."
If they didn't get to the roof immediately, the entire floor would be locked down.
Meanwhile, Quinton had already changed into a senior surgeon's scrubs. Claire was now his incapacitated patient.
If they truly couldn't break the perimeter, they had one final, horrifying protocol: forced plastic surgery.
By entirely reconstructing her facial structure, they could bypass Solenian biometric checkpoints entirely.
It was the nuclear option.
Some of the buyers on the dark web had bid entirely because of her stunning face, after all.
Claire had absolutely no idea how close she was to losing her own face.
Down below, Silas Carl and Hillary had breached the lobby with the SSD strike team. Dane had also arrived.
Along with the elite security detail Dane had originally assigned to protect Claire.
Failing to protect her at the university weighed on them like crushing shame. Everyone had assumed a heavily monitored university campus was a safe zone. Who could have predicted a brazen, daylight abduction?
Dane had an earpiece pressed tight, coordinating with his own intelligence network.
His operatives were feeding him real-time schematics of Serenity Grand, cross referencing the patient registry, and confirming the status of the helicopter on the roof.
"The hospital claims the chopper is on standby for an emergency medevac to Aurelia due to a botched cosmetic surgery," the voice in his ear reported.
Dane knew it was a lie.
But utilizing a loud, slow-moving helicopter for an extraction was a massive tactical error. It was too visible.
There was no way they were taking the chopper!
"Pull the exact number of operating rooms in this building and run background
checks on every single surgeon currently on shift!"
Dane barked the order while simultaneously reviewing the floor plans on his tablet.
He needed to get inside immediately, which meant coordinating with Silas.
Dane bypassed the chain of command and dialed Silas directly.
Silas's immediate response was a hard refusal. "You can't come in here. You're the CEO of Vertex
International. You are too bigh profile to risk in
an active
firefight!
"Trust me, we will get Claire out of there."