The truck was stolen. Breece had procured it himself, changed the color and plates, and lobotomized it. It would never record anything about their travels. They took it to Baltimore, to the warehouse space Breece had secured two weeks ago, careful to minimize the biological evidence they left inside.

When the Nigerian saw what Breece had in the warehouse, he whistled.

They moved in the small hours of the night, while the Capitol slept. The cameras and other sensors, anything that could be hacked, were not the problem, or so their hacker ally had claimed to Breece.

Humans, on the other hand, were. Humans couldn’t be hacked.

Unless, of course, they could.

The chameleonware suits he’d retrieved from Barnes’s storage were the highest end he’d ever seen, higher end than he’d known existed. They bent light and T-rays, muffled sound, alerted him to sensors scanning for him, and more. The largest stretched to fit the Nigerian.

They moved towards the garage ramp of the Rayburn House Office Building. There were two Capitol Police officers at the garage entrance at this hour, plus others on patrol elsewhere.

[Ready?] Breece subvocalized to his hacker friend.

[The cameras are mine] came the reply, printed in text across Breece’s tactical display. [They will see nothing.]

Breece looked over, saw the Nigerian outlined in a man-shaped grid of green lines, and gave him the signal. They moved forward, silently, lethally.

Seconds later, there was Nexus coursing through the arteries of these Capitol Police officers. Long minutes after that, the officers were back on duty, but with new orders, new priorities.

Breece went back for the truck, while the Nigerian stayed to keep watch.

[All clear] came the signals, once from the Nigerian, once from the hacker.

He rounded a corner and eased down the ramp. The armored gate to the garage rose up, and Breece pulled the truck forward, into the enclosed space. His pulse shot up. This would be a fine time to pull the noose shut.

Nothing.

He parked it in a dark corner, and they got on with business.

The carts were things of beauty, if you liked your beauty barely visible. Loaded down with the tanks, they each weighed hundreds of pounds, but were all but impossible to see. Their chameleonware warped light as well as the suits that Breece and the Nigerian wore. Only at their wheels, where true chameleonware had been sacrificed for lower end active camo, was there a decent chance of detection. And even that subsided dramatically if they stopped moving.

They lowered the three carts down the ramp of the truck, linked them together into a chain, then closed the truck up. It was a professional delivery vehicle, that hopefully wouldn’t look too out of place here, if it were even seen at this ungodly hour. Even so, it was one of their greatest risks of detection.

The faster they moved, the better.