I leaned back, eyes on the warehouse, fingers drumming on the steering wheel. Thought about lighting a cigarette but the case in my coat was already empty. I haven't cooled off from the alley yet.
I was a dead man walking, just not polite enough to stay down. I haven't cooled off from the alley yet. Silvio sent me here because his last team didn't come back. The cargo went cold. He needed someone who wouldn't ask questions, someone too numb to care.
Warehouse 72 sat under a flat sky. Rectangular, three levels: main floor, sublevel, and a partial second story. Front entrance fed into a reception area, security booth to the right. Three hallways split from there warehouse wing, admin side, and freight corridor. A recessed loading dock sat on the west, three intake bays, one busted. Adjacent garage had maintenance space, storage lockers. Still and stripped. Quiet in a way that felt staged.
I triggered a passive scan through my optics checking signals, heat traces, motion cues. Standard pulse sweep. Got nothing.
No security in an active facility meant either something block the signal or it's empty.
Even now I hardly trust the tech, maybe I'm too old.
My overlay gave me nothing. So I zoomed in optically, scanning the surface of the building for any open maintenance panel, microport or aerial relay.
I needed something I could tap, any sign of an uplink or data port. My optics flagged a faint heat trace behind a rusted panel near the northeast wall. It's not a vent, too flat. Probably a hardline access point.
Exhaled through my nose and checked the rearview. Then I stepped out. While walking, I caught blue flickers between buildings, police cars. I stopped, ducked behind a rusted service pod, waited it out. They didn't slow. Just passed by like ghosts on patrol. I kept walking.
Boots hit soaked concrete. Three steps, then pause. Let the weight settle in my knees, scan corners, track every window and vent. The rhythm kicked in.
Clear. Move. Cover.
War taught me that.
I circled clockwise. South wall, worse up close. Rusted through, paint bleached and gone. Cameras and sensors are offline. Just blank metal and old stains. If this place was still in use, someone wanted it to look abandoned.
The loading dock told a different story. Fresh scratches on the lock plate, new hinge welds, oil puddles not more than a few hours old. Something big shifted in or out.
Wind pulled at the bottom of my coat. I thumbed the safety, kept the sidearm low and close.
Everything felt posed. No buzz from wiring. No loose bolts ticking in the dark.
What if it's bait?
If yes, then the front door will be a setup. Motion lights, wide lanes, overlapping security fields pinging back like sonar.
Wide exposure, predictable angle and no natural cover. The lighting made the approach easy to track, and the overlapping security grids would force any intruder into a fixed position. No one trained would walk into that setup. If you do, they'd already have your face, gait and heat signature recorded and someone ready on the trigger.
Instead, I found what I'd hoped for: a half-buried service hatch behind a dumpster. The hatch had been painted over, but the paint was peeling. The lock was half-clicked open. Wires exposed with prongs bent.
Someone had already been here recently. I scanned the ground around the hatch—wet concrete, faint depressions in the grime. No full shoe print, but part of a heel scuffed near the edge. Recent enough to still hold shape. Crouched beside it. Checked the overlay again...
Silvio... Why'd you come to me in person? Martinez could've handled this. You don't make house calls unless the ceiling's already caving in. We knew each other back when there was still an army to serve. He was the guy who got you ammo, meds, rations… even a heater in the dead zones if you slipped him a favor.
Meeting with him felt more like a farewell than a briefing.
Before the army, I was a teenage outlaw. No boundaries. Just rusted roads, stolen fuel, and stupid dreams. We ran like the world would never catch up. Silvio always said he liked that about me.
Still, that was during the war. Back when we still wore patches with flags. When nations pretended they still mattered.
Reached for the panel. Paused, just long enough to shift weight and double-check the corners. I didn't take this job for kicks. I took it because I didn't have the luxury of saying no.
"Alright. Whatever this is,... Let's find out why I'm the one holding the receipt."
After the collapse, the corps didn't beat anyone. They waited, let the world fall apart, then showed up with checkbooks and bought the pieces. That's how it went. No need for armies when decay does the work for you.
Normally I'd sweep the shaft with a microdrone or toss a low-res sonar pulse. But the risk was too high. I jammed the hatch open halfway, clipped a static trip on the frame, and slipped inside.
The narrow shaft angled downward, barely enough space to crouch. My boots hit grated steel flooring, one level below the surface. It smelled of coolant, dust, and stale oil. Maintenance access. Conduit lines ran along the walls, half-covered in rust proof casing. The space was too clean for a tunnel this old, wiped down, stripped of grime.
I slowed up. Let my breathing settle. I paused and listened, long enough to confirm the silence before moving on.
Down the hall, a secondary corridor branched off. Narrow. Dark. My HUD pinged faint heat traces.
Near the far end, something caught: a smear underfoot, dried,
It must be recent. Boot tread in dust, maybe blood. More scuffs led to the left wall, where chipped plating and a burnt polymer stain marked a fight. A casing glinted half-lodged in the floor 9mm, jacketed. Someone emptied a mag here.
I moved in deeper, slower now. The further I went, the more it looked like a war had broken out. Scorch marks lined the corners, bullet gauges stitched the walls, and one locker door had a boot lodged halfway through it. Someone fought hard in here and close. A blood trail curved around a support pillar, leading to a slumped body in tactical gear, face down. One arm twisted beneath him, pistol still gripped, muzzle kissed with carbon. I checked, cold. Whoever he was, he didn't die clean.
A patch panel forced open. Wiring half-bridged with burned couplers. The person who did it tried to tap power without setting off the grid. Next to it, a strip of black tactical tape, folded lengthwise. Standard for field kits.
Could've been anyone,
A few meters in, the corridor opened up, some kind of storage bay. Lockers lined the wall, most of them rusted shut. Beneath a buckled shelf, lockboxes had been shoved into stacks. One sat kicked open, its lid twisted and bent.
Looks like someone was searching or packing up fast.
I paused on the threshold. The space widened, colder than the hall behind me. My optics adjusted, no motion but faint thermal residue painted across the floor.
Twenty years on the force makes enemies. Killing doesn't shake me. Not anymore. I'm too old. It's just work.
Someone had passed through recently. I checked corners, then swept the room again. Then I saw the cargo. Four cryo-boxes, lined up tight along the far wall. Frost dulled the stenciling, and the surface plating was dented, scored with impact marks. Spent rounds were scattered across the floor, brass catching what little light the room gave back. Three pods were closed, bio tags blinked faint green only error codes.
Whoever was inside either didn't make it… or wasn't supposed to.
The fourth pod was open, lid fully recessed. Empty, except for a torn restraint and a dark smear running across the inside panel.
The pod's interior was still fogged, mist clinging to the edges like someone had just opened it and walked away. So that's the cargo. Silvio sent me after the bodies. Living ones.
... A click behind me.
I dropped low before I thought, shoulder down, weapon up. A shot cracked off the far wall.