The Golden Nugget had always carried a certain kind of tension, the low, humming kind that came with too many armed people living on top of each other in a world that had stopped making sense. But this was different. This was the kind of tension that had a shape to it, that sat in the corners of every room and behind every pair of eyes.
Someone had gotten in.
In the middle of the night, with dozens of armed men under the same roof, an intruder had walked through the Golden Nugget like it was nothing. He'd taken the Nexon Battery, their Nexon Battery and he'd taken Lucy. Their commander. He'd slipped back out into the dark before anyone had fully understood what was happening, and by the time the alarm went up and the search parties fanned out through the building and the surrounding streets, there was nothing to find. Just empty hallways and the memory of footsteps.
It had happened so fast. So impossibly, humiliatingly fast.
