A door opened on the left side of the hallway.
The woman inside poked her head out.
She thought her child, who had been out all night, had finally decided to come home.
But when she stepped through the doorway, she found four armed men and women instead.
Her face went deathly pale with fright.
V waved at her.
She motioned for her to get back inside quickly.
Only then did the woman snap out of her daze.
She nodded frantically.
Then she shut the door.
The four continued farther down the hallway.
Before long, they reached the door marked 1237.
"Hold on. Let me take a look first."
Standing outside the door, Su Xiao activated the scanning mode on his Tactical Goggles.
A ring of light invisible to everyone else spread outward.
More than a dozen human silhouettes outlined in red immediately appeared in his field of vision.
Most were standing.
Three others were lying down.
There was no question about it.
The ones standing were the Scavengers who had kidnapped their client.
And one of the three lying down was the target they were looking for.
Fortunately, the target was still alive. They weren't too late.
Normally, a few hours was enough for the Scavengers to turn a living person into a pile of cyberware and organs to sell to unscrupulous clinics.
But perhaps because these Scavengers had kidnapped two other hostages as well,
they had spent those hours working on the other two.
That had spared their rescue target, keeping her alive until now.
A red light lit up in Lucy's eyes.
It took her only two seconds to get the tightly shut door to open.
The scan had already confirmed that the first room beyond the door contained no enemies.
The four filed inside.
It was