Apocalypse Queen: My Space, My Rules Chapter 202: Sweet Loot

Mariella wasn't about to leave any of it behind for someone else. She collected every last piece.

Chandler heard the pounding on the door from outside and knew Goldilocks's men had noticed something was wrong.

He pulled Mariella out of the hidden room, and the moment the outer door burst open, both of them vanished into the storage space.

...

The raiders' world had collapsed on them again.

After the mysterious killer had split Black Bear's skull open, they'd torn through the entire estate and found nothing. Now Goldilocks had been cleaved apart too.

The manner of his death was identical to Black Bear's, a single devastating cut running from brow to chin, precise as a blade through ripe fruit.

The killer's technique was immaculate, the wrist strength behind it staggering, and the accuracy so exact it might as well have been measured to the millimeter.

Both the door and the window had been sealed from the inside and bolted.

The raiders swept every inch of the suite, even forcing open the hidden room's lock, and found nothing inside. There wasn't a single trace of the killer.

Did the killer dissolve into the floor?

Black Bear and Goldilocks were both dead, and all five brothers had been wiped out completely.

The remaining few dozen condemned raiders looked at one another, and what they each found in the others' eyes was naked hunger and ambition.

Who was going to be the next leader? That was the question.

Finding the killer suddenly seemed far less important than settling that question.

Before they'd even nominated anyone, fresh trouble arrived.

"The Hancocks' eldest is coming! He's rallying the Celestine Ridge residents and all their security and heading straight for us!"

...

Celestine Ridge mobilizing in full was no small matter.

Over a dozen households had already fallen, but close to a hundred remained.

Nearly every household kept private security, and between the guards and the husbands of each family, each unit could field five or six able-bodied men on average.

Leaving a few behind to hold their own homes, each household sent out three fighters carrying their best-kept firearms to join Kieran in laying siege to No. 101.

They'd all watched the footage Mariella had shared to the group chat.

Mariella had already killed Black Bear, the condemned raider crew's top man, and what remained of the raiders was nothing but a disorganized mob.

They were done suffering under occupation. It was time to push back.

The Hancocks kept the largest private security force in the estate, and they'd stockpiled more firearms than anyone else.

Kieran led the charge with a Gatling gun in hand, ten elite guards including a professional sniper moving out ahead of everyone else.

The sniper dropped the sentries at the entrance with clean efficiency, and then Kieran unloaded a burst straight through the lock.

The other residents yanked out grenades and launched them over the perimeter wall and into the courtyard below.

Explosions rolled through the grounds one after another.

No. 101 hadn't been fitted with blast-resistant enclosures on its upper floors, which made tossing explosives over the wall almost embarrassingly convenient.

The lock disintegrated under the Gatling's sustained fire, and more than a dozen men threw their full weight into the gate and kicked it in.

Kieran opened the Gatling up at full capacity and swept it across everything in front of him.

The raiders in his path hadn't even started to return fire before they were riddled through and falling in rivers of their own blood.

The raiders couldn't hold against that kind of firepower. They broke and pulled back.

"There's nowhere to run! Stay and face it!" Kieran had blood in his eyes.

Every person behind him had blood in his eyes too. Not one of these miserable bottom-feeders was walking away from this.

...

The chaos was their cover, and Mariella and Chandler used every second of it.

While the raiders were consumed with surviving the assault, the two of them slipped over the perimeter wall and moved through No. 101's supply rooms, taking everything of value.

Tigre had run a sizable crew, and what he'd looted went far beyond the small cache buried in his hidden room.

After Black Bear seized No. 101, he'd loaded the storerooms with additional goods on top of what was already there. All of it belonged to Mariella now.

She passed through the storeroom walls without triggering a single alarm and without anyone catching so much as a glimpse of her.

Her teleportation range had grown from about a foot to nearly sixteen inches, most likely because the storage space had absorbed the gold and valuables from Tigre's hidden room and upgraded itself again.

She entered each storeroom, stripped it bare, then jumped straight through the wall to the next one.

By the time she was finished, she'd pulled nearly everything in No. 101 into the storage space.

The raider crew had been driven back into the estate by then, taking the fight indoors.

When Mariella judged the timing was right, she pulled Chandler along with her, teleported out of No. 101, and passed directly through the rear wall of the property.

No one was stationed behind the building, exactly as she'd expected. She drew a two-wheeled electric scooter out of the storage space.

Chandler took the handlebars, Mariella settled onto the back, and the two of them slipped away toward No. 98 without making a sound.

...

Mariella pressed her thumb to the reader, and the heavy steel gate ground slowly open.

They stepped through, and the gate sealed shut behind them.

Lucky came shooting out first, throwing himself around Mariella in an exuberant, spinning frenzy.

Serena came at a quick trot right behind him, her voice bright with relief. "Mariella's back!"

The teammates in the middle of drills stopped what they were doing and gathered around.

Matthew let out a slow, steadying breath and smiled. "You two finally made it back."

Number One looked Mariella over with careful attention, confirming she hadn't taken any damage, and then he relaxed too. "Dr. Lester forwarded me the footage of you taking down Black Bear."