part0111

He didn't respond aloud. Instead, he simply turned his head to the side and tapped his right ear, where she would be able to see the tip of a skin-colored earpiece hidden inside. It was meant to be mostly invisible to the naked eye but still simple to pull out when he wanted to. All in all, it was one of Anja's best inventions, considering that it was connected to her without the need of any cell phones or outside connecting devices.

"Oh," she said. "Who are you talking to, though?"

"My man—or woman, in this case—in the van," he replied. "Tech support. Eyes and ears in the sky. Is now really the time?"

She shrugged and leaned against the car that they hunkered behind. Again, she seemed too calm for a girl in this kind of situation, although he wasn't sure if she was maybe in some kind of shock or if it was merely an effect of the stuff they had pumped into her. Either way, her calm helped him remain calm, and that was always a good thing.

"Can you access any of these cars?" he asked and directed his question to Anja this time.

"I told you, I'm out of the system," she said.

"Yeah, but can you access any of these cars?" he insisted. "So you can perhaps unlock any of the cars that would allow us to get out of the garage without having to fight our way through the damn place?"

"Oh...right, but why don't you use the car you came in?"

"Because they're parked between me and it." Savage growled his frustration.

"Fuck...what are the odds?" the hacker muttered.

"Murphy's fucking law. Now, can you access the cars or not?" He struggled to keep his voice down.

"What do you think I'm doing while I’m talking to you?" she asked and still managed to keep her cool as she worked and bantered with him.

He would have appreciated it more if he weren't looking at dealing with the six men who disembarked from the armored car. They still didn't know where the intruders were, but it was only a matter of time until they realized that Palmer was full of shit. They needed another plan. Another way out, preferably, and he wracked his brain for a possible solution while he waited with growing impatience.

"There's an Audi three cars down from you," Anja said. "I've already turned it on and unlocked the doors. It's waiting for you, so get over there now."

Savage nodded and gestured for Jenna to move with him as he moved in a rapid crouch toward the Audi in question. Moving between the cars would let them get to their escape vehicle but moving it out would certainly not go unnoticed.

"What are you doing down here?" the guard who had seen him asked. He’d clearly only seen the uniform and not the gun. "You're supposed to be inside, keeping an eye out for the people breaking in!"

He looked around hastily and wondered if he could somehow twist this in his favor. Unfortunately, the group of men was far more professional than the men upstairs looking for him.

And definitely more observant as well. All the man needed was a moment to see the gun in his hand and the white-clad young woman with him.

Thankfully, he was fairly experienced at being observant as well and he had already raised his weapon in response to the man's sudden realization of the truth.

"They're here!" the guard shouted as a loud whine filled the garage and two of the needles fired from the weapon.

The target fell immediately when the needles punched easily through his body armor and into the soft flesh beneath it. He really didn't want to hurt them, but if they stood between him and Jenna getting clear of this lab, he had to act.

Well, he could only hope he didn't kill any of them, but he definitely wouldn’t pull his punches.

"Get to the Audi," he commanded Jenna. "I'll cover you!"

She moved quickly and decisively, stayed low, and scrambled into the Audi that had been unlocked for them. He maintained a steady stream of needles, thankfully without needing to reload. The other guards had seen what happened to their comrade and decided they wouldn’t put themselves or their body armor to the test against this weapon.

"We need to go!" the girl called.

"Do you think I don't know that?" he retorted and took a last couple of shots before he slid into the driver's seat.

Anja noted that they were in, took control remotely, and pulled it out of the parking spot. She had also already lowered the window on his side to enable him to continue to fire at the guards and pin them behind cover. A couple of them stepped out to stop the car but quickly fell back and clutched their legs when several needles drilled into them.

"I'd love to see how they'll manage to pin this shit on gang violence," Anja quipped.

"Who the fuck is driving this thing?" Jenna yelled and looked terrified for the first time that night as the car was guided toward the exit. The barrier was still down.

"Well, our tech support is," Savage said.

He wasn't exactly relaxed but he trusted the hacker to know her way around this situation. On more than one occasion, he had trusted her with his life and he was still around. There would be time to panic later if she didn't prove herself worthy of his trust, although even the possibility seemed comfortingly remote.

He still grasped the steering wheel as she accelerated into the barrier, though. His eyes closed as the vehicle pounded into. The wooden bar splintered and they emerged cleanly.

"Huh." Jenna grunted and suddenly relaxed against her seat once more. "Seriously, you have good tech support."

"Right?" he agreed as Anja released control of the car into his hands.

"You have to love living in an age where everything's electronic, right?" the hacker commented and laughed.

"You're goddamn right," he said with a chuckle. "I never doubted you for a second, Anja."

"Anja?" the girl beside him asked. "That's the name of the technical support?"

"What's wrong with Anja?" the Russian asked.

"She's asking if you have a problem with it," he told Jenna.

"Nothing," she replied. "It's a nice name, is all."

"Damn right it is," Anja said smugly.

"She's happy you think so," Savage said and wished he could carry a spare earbud wherever he went.

Jessica had really forgotten exactly how stressful this whole business could be. Of course, she had been involved in a peripheral way, and she had heard from Courtney and the people still at the Pegasus HQ that Savage still worked and thrived in the world he had been thrust into. There were more than enough people who seemed determined to make it a difficult life to live.

And from what she had learned, he was the only one who had walked away from a number of violent interactions he'd been involved in.

Not that she was really surprised.

She had seen him in action. While she wanted to think there was something inhuman about the way he was able to successfully kill people and get shit done, that wasn't quite accurate. The better description was that what he did was utterly human. Saying otherwise almost detracted from how truly amazing it was.

There was something utterly unbeatable about him. Like he knew how to flip the little switch that made him go berserk, attack his enemies with everything he had, and reach fearlessly into the dark side within him. She was honest enough to acknowledge that all humans carried their own version of darkness in one way or another, and yet they liked to think that they were somehow different and had nothing like it.

He skipped that part. It was exhausting for him and he simply accepted the dark side and let it emerge when it was needed.

That gave him an advantage over the people who thought they could outmaneuver or outmatch or outgun him. They forgot that if they let him come within striking distance, he would strike. She couldn’t really understand why they would think he might act like a regular human being when he wasn't. He was beyond that and he would continue to teach them that lesson until they learned it for good.

Either that or until Pegasus ran out of people for him to shoot, beat up, or intimidate. For the moment, that looked like it was a long way away. And she never really doubted that Savage would be able to get Jenna out of the lab. He had said he would do it in that way that sent chills down her spine and in her mind, that essentially sealed it. There was nothing more to be done other than watch, help as much as she could, and stay out of his way.

Honestly, there wasn't much Jessica could do from this side of things. It was still a real privilege to watch Savage and Anja work together on this in the way that only they could. The two were the best in their businesses and it brought them together with the kind of chemistry that had made some of the greatest teams in sports history.

They would inevitably have a difficult time dealing with it all, of course, but they were able to work through the problems while still keeping the banter up. It often seemed like they both tried to keep the other focused and calm at the same time. They knew how to work together. Jessica hadn't been there from the beginning so she couldn't tell if there had been a learning period between them when they first started, but they were a well-oiled machine now.

And it was a real pleasure to watch them work, especially from the side of the operation that wasn’t under fire. That was the best part of this mission. While it would be sheer stupidity to assume there weren’t still people who would target her—when did they not?—she was comparatively safe in this hotel room. Besides, the people running that lab would have bigger problems than her from this point forward.

"It looks like they're in the clear for now," Anja said. "I'm working on scrubbing all evidence that Savage was in the building. There's not much as he was good at keeping his face off the cameras, but there's the car I need to deal with."

Jessica relaxed into her chair and only then realized that she had been on the edge of it and had grasped the armrests tightly enough that she could see the white in her knuckles showing. It was a tense escape, especially since she couldn’t see all the things Anja and Savage did. But they were out now—he and Jenna, the new addition to their little team.

That was assuming she would stick with them. They still didn't know who the hell she was and what she wanted out of life.

It was interesting, though. Jessica had wanted to learn about the Zoo stuff for as long as she had been around but absolutely couldn’t stomach the thought that human testing was going on—especially when it came to teenagers who couldn't consent to anything done to them. The benefits did not overcome the blatant violations of human rights.

With that said, there would be side effects to that treatment, and she was already reading up on the details Anja had stolen from their files. It wouldn’t be as good as having Jenna in the room with her, but that probably wouldn’t happen in the foreseeable future. They would need to make those kinds of decisions later.

Something buzzed…vibrated…no, rang, which meant a phone. Her phone, to be precise, and since Anja and Savage could contact her through the earpiece she still had from their first adventure together, it could only mean it was someone who wanted an update.

"Oh, I’m not looking forward to this," she said softly and rubbed her eyes for a moment before she answered and let the screen pop up to display both Anderson and Monroe.

"Hey, Jessica," Courtney said, and her tone of voice clearly indicated that this wouldn’t be a pleasant, catching-up type of conversation. "I received a news alert on my phone that tells me that the lab Savage was supposed to break into was broken into."

"I really hope that's not news to you at this point," Jessica said in an effort to lighten the tone.

"Well, the idea was for him to be in and out like a ghost, unseen and unheard," the woman continued. "So imagine my surprise when I see alarms have gone off all over the place and police are scrambled to the location to deal with it."

"Well, the situation unexpectedly became a little more complicated on the ground," she explained. "Savage discovered they were holding a young girl there—Jenna Castle—and running human experiments on her with stuff from the Zoo as well as attempts to replicate it. The whole situation was extremely shady, and Savage decided to break her out."

"What?" Courtney asked and a vein pulsed on her forehead. "I thought we hired him to be the guy who makes the correct tactical decisions while in the field, not to charge in, act like a white knight, and save people."

"In fairness, that sounds very much on par with what we know about Savage," Anderson interjected. He leaned back in his seat and looking a good deal calmer about the situation than his companion. "He charged in head-first to save members of my family and his own. I think that's something we should have expected from him in that situation. Honestly, I think I would have probably made the same call. Which is not to say it's necessarily the right call from a tactical perspective, but it is the right call from a moral point of view."

The woman took a moment to calm before she finally sighed and rubbed her temples. "Fine, he made the right call. From...some points of view, anyway. And given that there's no news about them catching the intruder yet, I suppose I can save him a tongue-lashing until he gets himself caught. In the meantime, what's the damage? What kind of blowback are we looking at?"

"For the moment, not much," Anja said and joined the call. "I've managed to erase most traces of his existence from where it could be easily accessed, and I've worked on getting him clear of the location. There are already police on-site who responded to the shots fired calls from the area. While they don't have any images on the security footage of him—you're welcome for that, by the way—the cops were able to talk to the security guards that he met and they gave a description and even have a sketch circulating."

The image came up on Jessica's phone, and from the looks on the others’ faces, she had to assume it was on everyone else's as well.

"That...doesn't quite look like him," Courtney said and narrowed her eyes as she studied it.

"They have the jawline all wrong," Anderson agreed.

"His hair isn't like that," Jessica added.

"Actually, it was while he was working there," the hacker explained. "He gave some spy-craft mumbo-jumbo about it but apparently, that's really all the sketch focused on."

"Well, that's good news for us," the former colonel said. "How can we help him?"

"We can't," Jessica replied. "Not in any official capacity anyway. There's considerable paperwork and fancy legal tricks involved, but what they were doing to the girl was perfectly legal since her parents signed off on it." Both Monroe and Anderson listened intently while she gave them a brief explanation of the situation, and they looked as disgusted as she felt when she described the human testing. “So no, officially, we can’t help him, despite that I feel he made the right moral choice.”

"Agreed," Courtney said. "While having human testing on their resume would be a PR nightmare for the company running the lab, Pegasus would still be on the hook for breaking and entering if it ever came back to us."

"So, what do we do?" she asked, knowing that she wouldn't like the answer.

"Under no circumstances are you to extend any official help Savage's way, at least not until he's clear of the situation," her boss instructed. "We can help him in subtle ways—like Anja's doing—but for the most part, they're on their own out there."