A few miles to the north of the Apropos, there was a hotel called "Aqua Aguida" which was being surrounded by the local law enforcement officials. Somehow, Bruce managed to convince the upper brass of the alliance law enforcement to support them.
Alongside the law enforcement officials, there were members of the Blyth family and they were joined by two of Yassin's most trusted agents. Haseem and Humayun Kasra were brother's whose father was one of the bodyguards who lost his life saving him. Since, then they were raised by Yassin and had been his trusted enforcers for a long time.
Both of them were joined by Harry Blyth and his team who were guarding Bolena before Albert and his team came.
"They are still in there?" Harry asked one of the law enforcement personnel as soon as he reached the lobby of the hotel. He was already contacted by the head constable Rajesh and was asked to come to the hotel as quickly as possible.
"Yes, Mr. Harry. We have Mr. Haseem at the security video room and is monitoring the video over the past two days. Sub-inspector Gregory is working with him. Let me take you there," said Rajesh.
Harry followed Rajesh beyond the concierge station through a small lane and reached a room filled with screens. Haseem and Gregory were concentrating on a screen where air vent was being observed.
"What's happening?" asked Harry looking at the screens.
"He is trying to get in a nano camera tube through the air vents of the room," said Haseem.
"They entered the room yesterday afternoon since then there haven't been anyone entering or exiting the room. We also checked the street cameras and haven't found any notice of them outside. So, we are expecting them to be still inside," said Gregory.
"The windows have been closed shut by them since yesterday. We got no way to check other than the air vents," explained Haseem.
A few minutes later, Humayun suddenly informed that the air vents were blocked by a closer or something else and they couldn't find a way to look into the room.
"So, what now?" asked Harry.
"We have a master key card from the concierge. We will need to sneak in blind," said Gregory.
"I got no other ideas. I will inform by brother to get ready. Be ready to handle resistance. These two are orphans and have no family other than each other. It looks like their recruitment was voluntarily unlike the case of Roger," said Haseem.
"I think that we should wear up combat suits. We do have information that they have strong explosives with them. Them blocking the air vents is quite unconventional. It looks like they have already known about us and are prepared. Big chance for it to be a trap," said Harry.
"Yes, I would like my men to don explosion resistant gear before they follow you and would suggest the same for you," said Gregory.
"I would also suggest you evacuate the customers of the hotel at least the surrounding rooms, just in case," suggested Harry.
"Already having it done and also ordered my personnel to gather a few force field generators to reduce the explosion radius," said Gregory.
"No, that wouldn't be much effective in a building like it would be in open spaces. Those aren't made for that purpose. It is best if we could manipulate the air in the room. We best talk to the hotel authorities, find out all the rooms that are connected by the same air ventilation system as the room and reduce the oxygen content in the room. That would decrease the explosion by a lot and also allow us an easy capture of the Burns brothers," suggested Harry.
"Yes, that is definitely a better and acceptable solution to our problem," agreed Gregory.
Soon, a good number of the rooms of the hotel were evacuated silently by the combined personnel of the hotel and law enforcement and they managed to quarantine the zone. They removed oxygen from the room and the corridor it connected to. Humayun and Harry were leading the personnel who were in charge of the capturing the Burns brothers. They quickly put on suits for safety against projectiles and fire.
Humayun quickly swiped the master key card against the door lock and they quickly entered the room. The room had a large bed and a bathroom. The bathroom door was closed. As soon as they entered, they quickly moved over the bed and check the room. There was no one in the room.
Only the bathroom door was locked. Harry took charge to open the door, but the sight inside the bathroom completely surprised them. One of the brothers was down in the bathtub and his head was bust open. He was floating dead in a mixture of what looked like a mixture of water and his own blood.
The other was tied up on the toilet seat. He looked extremely frightened, sad and his mouth was sewed shut. He was beaten up and hardly had any energy. He was continuously pointing at the dead body of his brother with his eyes.
Harry immediately set the goggles on his suit to scan the toilet seat and noticed that it was rigged to explode if William moved or was untied. He immediately called for the demolitions expert Kevin in his team.
Kevin was a relatively young person in his late thirties and had never before seen such a pitiful sight. William was still constantly pointing his eyes towards his brother's body like a robot. Having worked around explosives for about a decade he had developed some keen senses.
He was the first to think that William's behaviour might be something other than grief to be repeating that in a low oxygen situation. He also noticed a slight sweet smell almost completely covered by the smell of the blood.
"Something's not right here. There is some inflammable substance here. He is not looking at the tub because of the body."
"Move away from the tub", Harry said to Humayun who was right beside it. They could see William stop his eyes and they almost looked grateful. As Humayun moved away from tub his firearm accidentally struck the towel on holder by the tub and something fell down from the top of it into the tub.
It was like a small white crystalline cube. Humayun quickly noticed and tried to catch it but it crumbled into smaller pieces and the fell into the tub. As soon as the pieces touched the liquid in the tub, it started to boil and sputter.
"Shields up and get out," shouted Kevin as he jumped out of the bathroom. Harry also enabled the force field on his suit as he pulled out a red high frequency blade* and a portable shield from his back. He slashed at the toilet with the blade in an attempt to pull William from the toilet.
The liquid exploded and it fell all-round the bathroom burning whatever it touched. Though the oxygen content in the room was very low and the explosion of the toilet didn't hurt William much, the burning liquid from the tub fell all over William, Harry and Humayun.
Despite Harry's best attempt to cover William with his shield, the liquid still fell over William's torso and started to burn through him. The room was filled wails from William as his guts fell down.
Harry couldn't do anything as his target was dying. He couldn't douse the flames with the fire extinguisher even though it was a low oxygen environment with hardly any gas. He would have been in a similar situation if he didn't activate the force field around his suit in time.
Humayun was in a similar situation. His suit was melting, and the liquid was burning at a very high temperature. He was bent over the tub and trying to catch the crystalline cube as it fell into the tub. So, he had the liquid fall all over his suit. He tried to pull it off but couldn't do so as the part that covered his hands and face were melting down. He could hardly see because of it.
Harry who managed to avoid the same situation because of the force field on his suit helped Humayun to quickly pull his own burning suit off.
Kevin was the one who was in the best state. He successfully managed to jump out of the bathroom door before the liquid splattered all over. He immediately passed on a message that a fire was setup in the building and empty the air through the vents, evacuate the hotel and called in the fire fighters.
About 15 minutes later, the fire was subsided by the efforts of the fire fighters. The fire burnt the entire bathroom and more than half of the room. It also spread to the adjacent room through the hole that was made when the toilet exploded.
The mission was a total failure. Humayun had serious burns on his hands and his torso and was rendered unconscious because of the pain. He was transported to the nearest hospital. Wilhiem had almost instantaneously completely evaporated within the liquid and William had been burnt to death with most of his body turned to ashes.
A large part of the room was also burnt, and they couldn't find anything useful. The communication devices of both the Burns brothers were missing. So, they couldn't even get find out their location history of the previous day as it still hadn't been uploaded to cloud.
Harry understood that both William and Wilhiem were entirely used as a diversion and immediately contacted Arthur. Arthur quickly pulled in Albert, Bruce, Yassin and Balthazar into the call.
"So, both of them are dead?" asked Bruce.
"Yes. Both the Burns brothers' bodies have been burnt unrecognizable. Even Humayun was put out of commission by the fire. It was meant to take care of most of us. If not for Kevin recognizing the scent of something sweet mixed in the blood, the result would have been way worse," said Harry.
Bolena who was listening into the call along with Balthazar was very shocked and horrified on finding out how the attack was made on the Burns brothers and the way they chose to set up the trap. But then she suddenly realized that the chemical that can be burnt in an almost oxygen free environment would be something that could be monitored closely by the alliance.
"Some that is inflammable in an environment with very low oxygen would be a very closely monitored chemical by alliance authorities and wouldn't be easy to procure in secret with ease," she said to the people in the call.
"She has a point. Can we get any details on the fire accelerant used?" asked Bruce.
"Kevin is working on it. But by his expressions, it doesn't look like we are going to get any results quickly. All he could tell us that the liquid was some kind of benzene derivative," replied Harry.
"I can help speed up a bit. You told us that the liquid was in the bathtub, right? Could you ask him to run two tests which I send? There are only few such chemical used in the industries and labs here and I can help reduce the possible number of it sources and the exact chemical from database we maintain," said Bolena.
"You have a database of what the other labs and organizations use?" asked Harry confused. Only high officials in the alliance chemical regulatory would have that.
"No, but we keep a track of the competition and we have contacts among the various suppliers. It is just good trend to keep a database of it based on them."
"I will provide you the contact details of Kevin. He is our expert on all things related to fire and demolitions," said Harry sending the details to Balthazar via the call app.
Within an hour Bolena managed to narrow down the chemical. But it made her more nervous as the only labs which procure the chemical within the cit and the neighboring ones is Apropos labs.
She immediately informed them about her finding, and this cause another turmoil among the group.
"Where would the chemicals be stored in the complex?" Albert asked Bolena.
"It would be in the lane 7 cold warehouse C near section 13 of the lab complex. I can lead you there if required or have someone lead you there," answered Bolena.
"Have you informed someone about the incident or the chemicals in the lab?" asked Albert.
"No."
"OK. That's good. Do not inform anyone of it and stay here. Let us deal with it."
He immediately broke up from the call and contacted Lily and Lila regarding the issue. They quickly started moving through the record of the lab video. In a few minutes, they called back.
"The video in the lane in the warehouse has been disabled for half-an-hour yesterday. We didn't find anyone unlogged access of the during the rest of the video. We observed the video of the entire warehouse and the areas near it around the time when the video was disabled and narrowed down to two people who might have accessed the chemical during that time," said Lila.
"Never needed explanation of how you did. Just give me the names," asked Albert.
"Dr. Seinberg and Dr. Winkle. We have their location from their badges. Dr. Winkle is currently in the lab and we have signaled Jordan to go to her location. Dr. Seinberg isn't in the location shown by his badge. We are looking into his location right now. Sean found his badge quite close to where you are. Sending his image. Look out for him," said Lily.
"DOCTOR BOLENA! WHERE ARE YOU?"
They heard a short brown-haired man wearing a lab coat and goggles running into the cafeteria. He looked hysteric and was sweating.
"You can stop looking for him, I think I see him approaching us in the cafeteria," said Balthazar.
Note:
* High frequency blade - A high-frequency blade was a sword reinforced by a powerful alternating current and resonating at extremely high vibration frequencies. This oscillation weakened the molecular bonds of anything it cuts, thereby increasing its cutting ability.