Chapter 9 - Eye in the Sky
“Cover!” Commander Vance roared, grabbing Julian and shoving him behind the heavy stone pillar of the portico as a searing beam of red laser light swept across the gravel driveway.
Clara didn't duck. She stood her ground in the open moonlight, her eyes locked onto the black quadcopter hovering silently fifty feet above the courtyard, its high-definition lens whirring as it recorded every detail of her face. Without a second thought, she reached down, grabbed a heavy brass candleholder left behind on the patio table, and hurled it upward with incredible speed and precision.
The heavy brass object struck the drone squarely in its carbon-fiber rotors, sending it spinning wildly out of control before it crashed into the manicured rosebushes with a muffled explosion.
“That wasn't just a scout drone,” Clara said, her breathing steady and controlled despite the adrenaline pumping through her veins. “It was transmitting a live feed directly to the syndicate's command post. They know we're onto them, and they know I'm alive.”
Vance reloaded his rifle with a sharp metallic click. “Then we are out of time for stealth. We march straight into the hedge maze and flush them out.”
“No,” Clara said, shaking her head as she picked up a heavy tactical flashlight dropped by one of the missing guards. “The maze is engineered with a hundred dead ends and pressure-plate traps. If we go in blind, we walk straight into a slaughterhouse.”
Julian stepped forward, his eyes reflecting the flickering flames of the burning drone in the bushes. “Then how do we catch them? They have the ledger, and they have the advantage of terrain.”
“Because they don't know about the gardener’s tunnel,” Clara replied, a faint, grim smile touching the corner of her lips. “Uncle Richard neglected this estate for a decade. He forgot that the old drainage system runs directly beneath the center of the maze.”
She led them around the side of the grand conservatory, pushing aside a thick wall of ivy to reveal a rusted iron grate leading into the dark earth. Without hesitation, Clara dropped to her knees and crawled into the narrow, damp pipe, her grey dress absorbing the wet mud without a single complaint of self-pity.
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As Julian and Vance followed her into the dark, the grate above them suddenly slammed shut with a deafening clang.
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