Chapter 74: The Queen Takes the Bait
Silence.
The air in Sector 28 was thick with it.
It was a cold, metallic silence, tasting of rust and ozone and the patient, predatory stillness of a trap waiting for its prey.
For thirty agonizing hours, we waited.
My true elite force, my ’Dagger’ team, was hidden amongst the labyrinthine tangle of rusting, behemoth-sized pipes and shadowy metal catwalks of the industrial cavern.
Chloe was a phantom, perched on a high, dark beam, her form melting into the gloom until she was nothing more than a whisper of deeper blackness.
Fenris, my loyal Werewolf, lay coiled in the darkness, a low, barely audible growl the only sign he was even there.
Grunt, the Kobold Warlord, stood as still as a stone gargoyle in the mouth of a dark service tunnel, his new war maul, Earthshaker, resting on his shoulder.
And I sat on a makeshift throne of stacked, rusted metal crates, my long coat draped artfully around me, watching the live feed from Isabelle’s decoy operation on my phone.
The performance was magnificent.
Isabelle was a genius of military theater.