Hidden Assassin 250

Damn it!

The lights in the elevator went out, and the first thing that popped into everyone’s minds was that they had fallen into the Salieri family’s ambush. However, those who could participate in such an operation were naturally not novices. Without waiting for Jane to speak, someone opened the maintenance hatch on top of the elevator, climbed to the top of the elevator, turned on the flashlight, and shone it down the elevator shaft. It was pitch black, and the elevator next to it had already stopped before reaching the second floor. At this time, several companions also climbed out of it, prying open the elevator door on the second floor.

“**What the hell happened?**”

“We were ambushed…”

“Careful…”

In the panic, whispers filled the elevator shaft. In a short while, everyone had climbed out, reaching the top of the elevator. The elevator door on the second floor was pried open slightly, and the people below looked into the hallway. All they saw was darkness. Apart from the car lights from the street outside the window, there was no one in sight in the corridor.

“It’s not an ambush. The whole building, no… the whole street seems to be out of power…”

These words reached Jane’s ears, and she waved her hand, asking the people next to her to pry open the elevator door on the third floor. However, as soon as they opened a gap wide enough for one person, a beam of emergency light shone in: “Is anyone trapped in the elevator? You… Charlie!”

The person holding the emergency light was a member of the Salieri family, and he happened to know the people with Jane. With a cry of surprise, the people here immediately fired several shots. In the darkness, the gunshots reverberated through several floors, up and down. At this point, everyone no longer hesitated. One group rushed up the hallway to the third floor, while another rushed into the second floor, starting to block Robert’s escape route.

A moment later, a deafening barrage of gunfire echoed through the streets, sounding from afar like a war had broken out in New York City. Turning around the corner from the elevator door, looking through the large floor-to-ceiling glass window by the corridor at the end, Jane saw the orange-red tail flames of a rocket launcher shooting diagonally down from the building opposite onto the street. In the swirling snow, the flames illuminated the view with their flamboyant presence. Then came the muffled sound of an explosion.

She instinctively reached for the walkie-talkie in her pocket.

“Hello, can anyone tell me what the hell is going on? Thank you.”

****************************************************

The building covered a large area, and the internal structure was complex, including small corridors between each independent room. The main corridors were basically laid out in a grid shape, dividing the interior into four large areas. Unlike Jane and her group, who had just emerged from the elevator, Ya Han and her group were closer to the outer corridor, and they could clearly see the scene on the road below. The car explosion on the side of the road could still be considered a simple traffic accident, but when over ten armored vehicles sped towards them from both ends of the road, with all kinds of firepower crisscrossing the streets from both sides, followed by being suppressed by dozens of people, looking at the chaos of people fleeing below, Robert opened his mouth wide in disbelief. He understood, no matter what this was, it was something that the Mafia couldn’t possibly do openly, not even the Gambino family.

At this moment, his men were already engaged in firefights with the invaders, and while his reason told him that the Salieri family wouldn’t have the firepower to deal with him, the moment he recognized Jane with her red hair, he felt a sense of despair. Especially when almost half the people who had jumped off the vehicles stormed into the building, the feeling in his heart was almost entirely despair. At the same time, Ya Han and her group were searching for an escape route under the leadership of Mantou.

“Those people from the **Pei Luo Jia** have gone crazy. I swear, they’re all crazy… They sent out dozens of assassins to catch one person. They don’t even use this many to assassinate a national president. What are they kidding? They should all go into mercenary work…” He muttered as he walked, carrying a black briefcase in his hand. Ya Han had already told him roughly about his background, and although the people around him had questions, they knew this wasn’t the time to ask. Seeing him take out a pistol from his body, Mr. Chen said, “We can’t go down now.”

“You can see that just by looking at them,” Mantou shrugged. “We could just jump from any of the windows on the third floor and not die, but now they’ve got the whole outside under control. We’re already dead meat. Forget about the parking lot. We can only rely on the environment here and hold out until the police come. It’ll be at least half an hour… Anyway, this is a research institute, with lots of labs and research rooms. Anyone who’s good at holding their breath can jump into the water and pretend to be a specimen. Haha… Careful!”

His sudden joke was a bit too cold in this high-pressure environment. The cold joke hadn’t even finished when a figure suddenly appeared in front of them, pulling out a gun and pointing it at them. At the same time as Mantou shouted, several bodyguards pushed Ya Han and her mother into the room next to them. Then, gunfire erupted.

Still holding the black briefcase, Mantou stood motionless. Mr. Chen peeked out first. He saw the figure at the entrance of the road, already lying on the ground. The young man, who looked pleasing to the eye, was holding a gun in one hand and calmly pulling the trigger, shooting at the entrance of the road. Each flash of the spark made those who wanted to rush out retreat in panic.

“Go.”

With a simple sentence, Ya Han and her group turned towards the other path under the protection of the bodyguards. Before long, Mantou retreated, skillfully reloading his gun: “I don’t know where they came from, these people aren’t professional, but judging by the timing, the professionals will be on the third floor soon. Find a room to hide in.”

The distance of three floors could basically be ignored. Hearing that the gunfire in the building was getting louder, it seemed that the Pei Luo Jia assassins had already rushed up. They pushed open the door of a laboratory next to them and retreated inside. A building as well-equipped as this would surely have an emergency backup power system, but the Pei Luo Jia assassins had already tampered with it, rendering the backup power useless. The lab was pitch black. The flashlight beam swept across, and the lab was quite large, with all kinds of equipment and instruments scattered around the room. Even the giant cultivation tanks that Mantou had joked about were standing in the middle.

Mantou put the bag down on the table in the middle, opened the zipper, and footsteps sounded from outside.

It was Robert, accompanied by several of his men. These people had their guns pointed at Ya Han and her group in the center, but Ya Han’s group had their guns pointed at them. As the light flashed, Robert saw the situation clearly and was stunned for a moment before turning around and shutting the door.

“I don’t know who you are, but in this situation… you don’t have many people, and we don’t have enough either. I think we need to help each other. What do you say?”

“***Turn off the lights.***”

Without much hesitation, Mantou lowered his gun. Seeing the alliance being formed, Robert waved his hand and joined his men in moving towards the center. Mantou took a computer screen-sized device out of the bag, and in a moment, red light filled the lab.

“Thermal imaging?” Robert looked at it and murmured. Mantou nodded and placed the screen under the experimental table to prevent the red light from being seen from outside. The group hid among the experimental tables and instruments nearby.

“It’s a good thing it’s snowy and the power is out…”

Mantou lowered his voice in response. Under the dumbfounded gazes of Robert and everyone else, he took out parts one by one from his briefcase and assembled a gun that was over a meter long, but heavier and more complex than a sniper rifle. Then, he loaded it with 8 to 9 cm long armor-piercing rounds and muttered to himself, his initially pleasing face now appearing almost terrifying.

“***Come on, kill me… come on***…”

The gunshots outside gradually went from intense to silent. The lab fell silent. In a short while, a soft hand reached out and patted Mantou on the shoulder, Ya Han had slowly moved closer.

“Mantou, can I have a gun?”

She whispered in the faint red light.

**********************************************

Jane had never imagined that she would encounter such a bizarre situation.

The choice of this retaliatory action was indeed partly influenced by her personal factors, but it had been approved by Smith and even John Damico. They should have had the absolute advantage, but they were hit by a power outage as soon as they entered. When they pried open the elevator door and entered the third floor, their misfortune began.

The resistance they encountered wasn’t strong, but when the gunshots outside intensified, the first thing they heard on the walkie-talkie was a cry for help from the people in the lobby. The cry for help lasted less than three seconds before it stopped, followed by panic spreading to the second floor. Originally, these people were tasked with preventing Robert and his group from escaping from the third floor, but with the panicked calls coming from the walkie-talkie, this line of defense was completely shattered within half a minute. Four people were killed outright, and the rest fled for their lives. Then, the other side rushed up to the third floor.

In the darkness, amidst the chaos, they almost forgot their purpose for coming here. Of course, chasing Robert was now meaningless, because the first thing that came to Jane’s mind was the same as Robert’s: they had been caught in a trap, falling into the other side’s ambush. Recalling the twenty people who had died strangely at noon, Jane had no doubt that the Salieri family had the power to do this. They must have found incredibly powerful help and therefore dared to fire rockets indiscriminately on the streets of New York.

Faced with a situation where they were attacked from both sides, they looked for a chance to escape. The intense gunfire, mostly from their own people firing randomly in fear, resulted in the deaths of several more of their companions. They had come together as a group of twenty, but within a few minutes, only six remained alive. They hid in a room, and then sneaked out again, only to find that something was wrong.

If these people were all helping the Salieri family, then they should only be targeting them. But at this moment, the gunshots were still coming. As they walked back, they found many researchers, doctors, and patients lying dead. In other words, these people didn’t stand on any side, they were simply killing everyone in this building.

Still in shock, they reached the entrance of another room. As sudden gunfire erupted, a companion beside Jane was thrown back. The remaining five people dived into the rooms on both sides. Jane hadn’t even gotten up with her gun when a gunshot rang out in her ear. Right in front of her, the wall was suddenly pierced by a bullet, and stones flew out, striking her face and drawing blood. She turned her head and saw that the bullet had seemed to cut diagonally, breaking through the other wall on the side, and she didn’t know where it had flown to. The air was silent for a moment, and the companion in the room opposite rushed out with his gun, but the gun didn’t fire. They came out of the rooms one after another and looked at the body lying at the end of the corridor.

They had just come from that direction. It was clear that the person who had shot and killed their companion was the one lying on the ground. Now, the person’s head had completely exploded. Following the shocking bullet hole on the wall, it was easy to see that the bullet had actually passed through several walls before exploding the person’s head with a single shot.

“It must be a specially modified gun, using special armor-piercing rounds to achieve this effect.” A companion, who was obsessed with guns, stood next to Jane and swallowed hard, his voice dry. “But to correct the trajectory of the bullet after it passes through several walls, this person is really amazing…”

Jane took a deep breath: “I just want to know who he is, whether he’s on our side…”

The next moment, the stark reality answered her question. With a bang, stones flew, and the bullet penetrated several walls before hitting a companion beside Jane. In an instant, blood and flesh splattered out, covering her head and face…

In the lab, Mantou, carrying his oversized gun, was shooting wildly in all directions, his slightly distorted face illuminated by the red light. Everyone stayed as far away from him as possible. In the darkness, they could faintly hear the sound of police sirens, but more clearly, there was the sound of fierce resistance on the street. While pursuing the 炎黄觉醒 members, the Pei Luo Jia assassins also blocked the recently arrived New York police by jamming the traffic and using precise firepower. The figure of the **Flower-Picking Great Thief Yujinxia**, who was being sought after by all sides, had yet to appear.

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