"So, what's our next play?" Jerrick asked, noticing she was deep in thought.
Serena lifted her gaze.
A wildly defiant, icy glint flashed in her luminous eyes. "If they're this terrified of me ruining their plans, then I'm going to ruin absolutely everything."
Her tone was pure, lazy arrogance, dripping with lethal confidence.
Jerrick's brow furrowed almost imperceptibly. He offered a grim reminder. "The Aft Docking Bay only has one exit. If we wait for them to initiate the transfer, getting in will be easy, but getting out... will be a nightmare."
"Getting out... will be a nightmare."
Serena looked right at him and suddenly smiled.
Her stunning, brooding face broke into a smile of absolute, unfiltered audacity. "Which is exactly why we aren't waiting for them to start."
"We're going to force them to move her right now."
Jerrick's gaze sharpened, locked onto Serena as her strategy instantly clicked into place.
She didn't want to wait for Black Sun to initiate the transfer and then stage a desperate ambush.
She was going on the offensive, creating a scenario that would force Specimen Fourteen right out into the open!
She was going to make Black Sun panic and push Specimen Fourteen out of the inner vault early.
Dragging her straight out of the shadows and into the glaring spotlight.
The look Jerrick gave the woman standing in front of him deepened significantly. This Panacea had some incredibly serious nerve.
But the truly terrifying part was that her skill set perfectly backed up every ounce of her reckless arrogance.
From completely dominating Specimen Seven, to leveraging The Sterling Sovereign to grip the ship's administration, and now weaponizing the auction to blow Black Sun's extraction op wide open.
She wasn't just throwing the dice.
She was totally controlling the board.
Her ability to stare down a fatal bottleneck, double down on the aggression, and still mentally outmaneuver everyone in the room...
It felt so aggressively similar... to his sweet but deceptively lethal little sister.
His sister was exactly the same way. She never just took a hit.
If you reached for her, she'd chop your whole arm off.
Thinking of his sister, the harsh lines of Jerrick's face softened just a fraction.
Then again, The Panacea was his sister's subordinate.
Anyone capable of standing beside his sister and running her ops was obviously going to be an absolute monster.
His sister was brilliant.
So naturally, her inner circle would be stacked with world-class apex predators.
Honestly, if The Panacea wasn't already on his sister's payroll.
He would have heavily aggressively recruited her straight into his Drake Hunter elite forces.
Too bad his sister's people were fiercely loyal and impossible to poach.
And there was no way he was going to steal talent from his own family anyway.
While Jerrick was lost in his
thoughts, Serena raised her slender
fingers handing the tactical map
back to him. "Keep your eyes on the stem Lock down the choke paints on their only extraction route."
She paused, shooting him a loaded glance, her tone dropping into a deadly calm. "But don't spook them."
"Unless you get my signal, you do absolutely nothing."
Jerrick took the map back, his grey-blue eyes darkening with anticipation. "What exactly are you going to do?"
A wickedly seductive smirk spread across Serena's bright lips. "I'm going to take this lovely opportunity... to forcibly evict Specimen Fourteen."
She arched an eyebrow, her stunning features radiating an untamed, icy lethality in the shifting
shadows. "Of course, if I end up
throwing too wild of a party over
here..."
FindNovel.net
"I might need Mr. Fenris to do me a little favor when the time comes."
Jerrick's frown deepened.
She was going to solo-crash Black Sun's deepest, most heavily guarded secret?
That level of aggression was bordering on purely suicidal!
"Ms. Panacea, do not go in blind," Jerrick ordered, his voice dropping into a harsh protective register he stared at her slender frame. "It's far too reckless."
Serena tilted her head slightly, locking her striking dark eyes onto his, a teasing smile playing on her lips. "Mr. Fenris... are you worried about me?"