———————————————————
"…It's not just a name on a manifest. There's a GPS metadata tag buried in the EXIF data."
Leo's fingers flew across the holographic keyboard, blue light reflecting off his glasses as the code blurred and shimmered on the screen.
His voice was tense, half-focused, half-wired on the adrenaline of digging into the data. "Timestamps. Lat-longs. One of the files piggybacked a location ping, probably by accident. That's why it didn't get scrubbed."
Marcus leaned in, arms crossed over his chest, jaw tight. His badge and holster weighed heavy at his side, but it was the knowledge in his chest that felt like a stone—dense, dark, immovable.
Sam stood nearby, arms hanging loosely at his sides, sunflower seeds forgotten in his pocket for once.
The kid's usual easy energy was gone, replaced by something heavier.
He shifted on his feet, eyes bouncing between Leo's terminal and Marcus like he was watching a slow boil that might spill over at any moment.
"It's from one of the shipping manifests linked to the shell company," Leo continued, zooming in. "Shipment origin says Palermo. Italy. Routed through Tunis, then came in on a slow boat through the Port of Newark."
"But this ping? It's local. Bronx. Warehouse district. This specific block."
The screen flashed—a three-dimensional city map rotated and zoomed to a stretch of decaying warehouses nestled between freight lines and overgrown lots.
The tag blinked faintly red in the middle of the screen like a heartbeat waiting to stop.
"Unit D-43," Leo said, pointing. "Shipping container. Registered to a logistics company that doesn't exist. I pulled the registry—it was filed two months ago with a phony tax ID. No camera coverage. No traffic feeds. It's a dead zone. Someone went out of their way to keep it that way."
Marcus's eyes didn't blink. The glow from the screen caught the hard planes of his face, the scar beneath his chin, the furrow in his brow.
He didn't speak immediately, letting the silence stretch just long enough for Sam to speak up.
"So we file for a warrant, right?" Sam said, cautious. "We kick it up through Organized Crime—loop in Reyes. If it's hot, we go in heavy, but legal. If it's a dead end, we don't burn the case. I mean—this could be the smoking gun or a setup. We can't botch it."
Leo exhaled, clearly expecting resistance. "For once, I agree with the rookie. It's one ping. Could be bait, could be old data. Hell, could be a bad spoof. If we jump the gun without a warrant, the DA won't just throw it out—they'll use it to bury the rest of the drive."
Marcus finally looked away from the screen and faced them both.
"You think I didn't try it that way?" His voice was low, quiet, but packed with a restrained intensity that made the room still. "A while ago, I asked throughout the precinct. But for them, not rejected—vanished. Like it never existed."
Sam blinked. "What? You never told us that."
"Because I wanted to believe it was a mistake." Marcus looked back to the screen, the red ping still glowing, pulsing like the wound it represented. "But that's the thing. Mistakes don't delete digital records. People do."
Leo rubbed his temples. "Jesus. You think someone inside buried it?"
"I don't think." Marcus's tone turned sharp. "I know."
The cyber lab buzzed faintly with electricity. Rows of humming servers lined the far wall, the overhead lights flickering with that cold sterile fluorescence that never really illuminated—just revealed the fatigue under your skin.
The air was dry, recycled, filled with the faint ozone scent of too many electronics. It was a place built for analysis, not emotion.
But emotion was here anyway. Rage. Frustration.
The weight of loss filtered through years of departmental politics, red tape, and quiet betrayals.
Marcus walked slowly toward the screen, reached out, and touched the blinking red icon. His fingertip hovered a millimeter from the glass.
"You know what I kept thinking about?" His voice was quieter now. "That night in '98 When I thought it was a home invasion gone wrong. 'Tragic. Random.' They used every word in the book to make it sound like fate. Like bad luck."
His hand curled into a fist.
"But it wasn't fate. It was precision. Logistics. Imported and executed like a goddamn transaction. That flash drive didn't just give us names. It gave us supply chains. Coordinates. Money trails. This isn't a vendetta—it's a war ledger. And this?" He pointed again to the red dot. "This is the first battle."
Leo hesitated. "Mac, if we blow this entry, it's gone. We don't get another shot at it. You sure this is the place?"
"I'm sure it's a place." Marcus stepped back and met Leo's eyes. "And I'm not waiting for another body to show up before we act."
Sam looked like he wanted to protest. His lips parted, closed, then parted again.
"You said we'd do this smart," Sam finally said. "You said we'd fight it from the inside out. You told me the law still mattered."
"I did. It still does," Marcus replied. "But only if there's a system left worth fighting for. And every second we wait, that system proves it's already been sold."
Leo sighed, muttered something under his breath, and grabbed his coat off the back of a chair. "Fine. Screw it. But if this gets messy, I'm telling the Feds I was just tagging along for the playlists."
Marcus raised an eyebrow. "What playlists?"
"The ones I made for stakeouts," Leo grunted, plugging a thumb drive into his coat pocket. "One's called 'Criminal Regret: Volume One.' It slaps."
Sam gave a weak chuckle, still clearly uncertain. "So what now? We just roll up on a shipping container? No backup, no plan?"
"We always have a plan," Marcus said, brushing past him. "We adapt."
But inside, that wasn't true.
Not entirely.
His mind was a swarm of storm clouds—shadows of what this could become.
Thorne's face loomed in the back of his thoughts, not as a memory, but as a living threat—calculated, patient, already several steps ahead.
"This isn't about arresting thugs anymore," Marcus thought as they exited the lab. "This is about taking down an empire that learned how to wear a badge. And you don't do that by playing by its rules."
They passed by the bullpen—half-filled desks, detectives murmuring over paperwork, officers coming in and out from patrol.
The precinct looked normal. It smelled like old coffee and printer toner, and the sound of distant ringing phones and boots on tile echoed faintly through the air.
A place of supposed order. But Marcus saw it now for what it truly was: a mask. Paper over rot.
They hit the stairwell.
Leo walked behind, already texting someone—likely planting some cover trail.
Sam jogged to keep up, adjusting his bulletproof vest under his hoodie.
"You sure you're good with this?" Marcus asked without turning.
"No," Sam said. "But I didn't sign up to just watch the bad guys get promoted either."
Marcus didn't smile, but the corners of his eyes softened.
At the squad car, the wind was sharp, cutting through the alley where the precinct's parking garage opened to the street.
The Bronx skyline in the distance was gray, choked in haze, the warehouse district out there waiting like a forgotten bone-yard.
Marcus slipped into the driver's seat. The engine growled to life.
He stared out through the windshield, the wipers ticking once even though the sky was clear.
"I started this for answers. I found bodies. Now I'm staring down a freight line that leads straight to the grave my parents were dumped into."
He gripped the wheel, knuckles pale.
"No more permission slips. No more paperwork. This time… we knock first. And if no one answers…"
"…we break the door down."
———————————————————
"You sure you don't want me to drive?" Sam asked, side-eyeing Marcus as they pulled out from the 26th precinct lot.
Marcus didn't answer immediately. His hands stayed firm on the wheel, knuckles pale against the black leather.
His eyes were focused ahead, scanning traffic with surgical precision.
A steady rhythm of raindrops began to tap against the windshield—sporadic, like a warning rather than weather.
New York wasn't quite ready to weep, but it sure as hell was frowning.
"I drive when it matters," Marcus muttered finally.
In the back seat, Leo was bent forward, elbows on knees, tablet screen glowing a dull blue against the low interior light.
He swiped through building schematics, surveillance maps, archived zoning permits—each file tagged with dates, some blurred, others redacted.
Government hands had touched this place long before any criminals leased it. That much was clear.
"Warehouse 43C is on the northeast end of the district," Leo said, dragging a digital map wider with two fingers. "Zoning maps say it was condemned three years ago after a fire inspection flagged corroded gas lines and unstable load-bearing beams. But get this—two months ago, it got a quiet permit reinstatement through a shell company registered in Panama."
"That's not just a red flag," Sam muttered, brow furrowed. "That's a damn siren."
Marcus grunted. The windshield wipers hissed, brushing aside grime and drizzle as the Charger slipped through the meat of the Bronx.
Past broken lampposts, graffiti-tagged walls, shuttered storefronts.
Here, the city didn't pretend to care. Most days, even cops didn't patrol these stretches unless they had to.
He glanced at Sam from the corner of his eye. The kid was tapping his fingers anxiously on the dash.
Not obnoxious. Just restless. Eager. Too green to know better, too stubborn to stay home.
And yet, it was time.
Marcus exhaled slowly, a breath that seemed to weigh more than it should've.
"I never told you why I became a cop," he said suddenly, his voice cutting through the rain-muted silence.
Sam blinked, turning slightly. "No, sir. Figured it was a personal thing."
"It was."
There was a pause. Even Leo glanced up from the tablet.
Marcus's jaw worked once, like he was chewing glass. Then he spoke, eyes never leaving the road.
"My parents—Harold and Evelyn Allen. They were military investigators. Department of Defense contractors. Specialized in counter-weapons trafficking. They were tracking a black ops arms pipeline running through Eastern Europe. Everything pointed to someone high up the food chain. Not some cartel thug. Real brass. Real flags."
His grip on the steering wheel tightened.
"They said they were close. Real close. Then one night, the house was torn apart. Both of them… shot. Staged like a robbery gone wrong. Only thing missing was a safe deposit box. Cops said it was random. Bad luck."
Sam shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Even Leo leaned forward, silent.
"But my dad—he always kept a backup. Paranoid bastard had duplicates of everything." Marcus smirked, faintly.
"Yesterday, I found a footlocker in a storage facility he'd prepaid before they died. Inside was a flash drive and a journal."
He tapped the steering wheel lightly, the motion rhythmic, almost hypnotic.
"The flash drive cracked open everything. Names. Routes. Transactions. Evidence. But more than that—it named the man who signed off on their execution. General Augustus Thorne."
Leo swore under his breath.
Marcus nodded. "He was their superior. He ran the entire operation. When my parents uncovered the truth, he made sure they were silenced. Used Domenico and Rocco Grimaldi as the executioners. Professional hit, buried beneath fake police reports and a conveniently 'misfiled' FBI follow-up."
Sam looked out the window, lips pressed thin. "Jesus."
"It's why I joined the force," Marcus continued, voice like gravel sliding down concrete. "Not to change the world. Not to wear a badge with pride. I joined to find out who murdered them. Took me years to get close. Years to realize the entire system—parts of it, anyway—were rotten. And now, here we are."
The Charger swerved past a delivery truck, tires humming low on the wet asphalt. Sam took a long breath and rubbed the back of his neck.
"You ever think about… backing off?" he asked, not timidly, but genuinely. "Just… walking away?"
Marcus actually laughed, but it was sharp, joyless.
"Every day. But every time I close my eyes, I see my mother bleeding out on the living room carpet, her hand still holding her ID badge. That badge—those ideals—they didn't save her. So now I use them the only way I know how."
Leo chimed in quietly, "You didn't bring us out here for a stakeout, did you?"
"No," Marcus said, turning off the main road. "I brought us out here for war."
———————————————————
The Charger slowed as they neared the warehouse compound.
The decaying stretch of the Bronx opened up to rust-stained fences, overgrown lots, and rows of squat industrial buildings that hadn't seen legitimate use in years.
A semi-collapsed billboard hovered over the entryway like a decaying guardian, half its letters stripped away, reading: "SHI—NG SOLUTI—S INC."
Warehouse 43C sat at the very edge of the complex, pinned against the black waters of the Harlem River.
The metal siding was faded and worn, but the gravel lot surrounding it was unusually clear—no trash, no vagrant tagging, not even oil stains. Maintained. Watched.
Sam leaned forward and squinted through the windshield.
"Unit's facing the river," he noted, pointing. "That's not standard loading dock orientation. Everything else here faces the street."
Leo tapped his tablet. "That's because this isn't for regular shipments. That corner of the warehouse is tucked behind two other structures, with a straight view to the river and no visibility from the main road. It's completely off-grid."
"A ghost dock," Marcus murmured.
Sam nodded. "Perfect for night drop-offs. Nobody sees anything. You slip a container in by tugboat or barge, unload inside, and no one in the block notices."
"Someone built that deliberately," Leo added. "That shell company—it didn't just pick this spot. They needed it."
Marcus said nothing as he brought the car to a slow crawl a few hundred yards out, parking behind the husk of a burnt-out delivery van.
His movements were smooth, methodical. Like clockwork gears falling into place.
He reached into the glovebox and popped it open. Inside were two tactical earpieces, a burner phone, and a box of hollow-point rounds.
He loaded a fresh magazine into his service pistol, the cold click of metal-on-metal echoing in the confined silence of the car.
Then, wordlessly, he handed Sam and Leo each an earpiece.
Sam stared at his for a second before finally inserting it. "You planned this ahead."
"I plan for the worst. Because every time I don't, people die."
Marcus picked up the burner phone and powered it on. The screen flickered to life, already linked to an encrypted radio band.
"This isn't just a lead," he said, voice low and measured, like a man who'd long since traded hope for precision. "It's bait."
Leo looked up. "You think they know?"
Marcus's eyes didn't blink. "I think they want us to show up."
And just like that, silence reclaimed the car.
The rain ticked against the roof. A distant siren wailed back toward Manhattan. The river lay still in the distance, a flat stretch of slate-gray that smelled faintly of salt and metal and death.
Somewhere inside that building, secrets waited. And maybe, if the cards fell right, justice.
Or a bullet.
Maybe both.
The tires crunched softly as Marcus eased the unmarked car to a stop a block from the warehouse. No sirens. No flashing lights. No backup.
Just the low purr of the engine dying as he turned the key, and the dull hiss of the city far off behind them.
When the doors opened, they did so quietly—each man stepping out like the street might bite back if they made too much noise.
"Kill the cams," Marcus said, voice low and steady as he tapped the button on his vest.
Sam clicked his off with a nod, his face drawn tight with anticipation. "Copy. Dark mode."
Leo reached up, flicked his own off, and adjusted the straps on his tech pack. "This just went full gray ops," he muttered, already pulling his tablet from the side compartment of his sling bag.
Marcus shut the door gently, eyes scanning the narrow lane ahead—rows of warehouses like rusted tombstones, their walls flaked with age, graffiti bleeding into brickwork.
A mild breeze carried the stink of river silt and oil. Overhead, clouds loomed heavy, the sky smeared like smoke.
They moved.
Boots hitting broken pavement, glass crunching faintly beneath soles, they walked single-file through an alley partially hidden between rust-stained chain-link fencing and crumbling concrete loading docks.
Marcus kept his weapon holstered but one hand hovered near the grip.
They approached the eastern side of Warehouse 43C. A small service door lay slightly ajar—weather-beaten and discolored, like it hadn't been touched in years, but the scuff marks near the latch were fresh.
Leo caught them too and gave Marcus a pointed look.
Marcus nodded. "Someone's been through."
The air was colder inside, thick with the musk of dust and damp wood. Marcus pushed the door open fully and entered first, sweeping left with instinctual precision.
Sam followed, eyes sharp, while Leo pulled out a compact signal scanner already humming faintly in his hand.
The place was a graveyard of forgotten cargo. Stacked crates loomed in the darkness, their surfaces coated in layers of dust.
Yellowed labels hung half-peeled, useless and unreadable. Rust climbed the metal scaffolding like creeping vines, and spiderwebs sagged from ceiling beams like threadbare curtains.
But something was wrong.
This wasn't just old storage.
The scent of sweat, faint gun oil, and recently disturbed wood hung in the air like ghosts in the rafters.
Marcus caught it immediately. He halted mid-stride, sniffed, and dropped into a crouch behind a row of crates.
"This place… it's not dead," he whispered.
Sam looked around. "You feel that too? Feels like the air's been stirred."
Leo stepped carefully between them, lowering his device. "Got something."
They rounded a corner into a clearing at the center of the warehouse floor—and there it was.
A single steel container, rectangular and newly painted navy blue, sat like an alien implant in the decayed structure.
Its surface was clean, unnaturally clean, the edges still sharp from recent offload.
A thick industrial padlock sealed the front latch, and drag marks in the dust showed it had been moved—recently.
Marcus narrowed his eyes. "That doesn't belong here."
Leo dropped to one knee, setting up a small dish antenna and signal booster on a collapsible tripod.
His tablet flickered to life, blue light casting shadows across his face.
"Setting up wideband sweep. If they're talking, I'll hear them."
Marcus turned to Sam and pointed at a row of crates near the far side. "Circle wide. Watch the back entrance and the loading bay. Stay low."
Sam gave a sharp nod and slipped away into the dark, moving with quiet athleticism.
Leo watched him go, then glanced at Marcus. "This all feels wrong. Like it's staged."
Marcus crouched near a wooden palette, peeking around its edge toward the container. "It is. That's what makes it right."
Leo raised a brow. "You're enjoying this?"
"Not the danger," Marcus said, voice low but calm, "the clarity. You don't get moments like this often—where instinct and training are the only things that matter. Where you know the enemy's watching, and you're still walking in because they expect fear and get calculation instead."
Leo smirked faintly. "Poetic."
Marcus checked his Glock's slide, slow and precise. "War is always poetry. Just written in blood and smoke."
The signal booster crackled.
Leo leaned in, tapped a few lines of code, then frowned as a live waveform appeared.
"Encrypted shortwave," he said. "Repeating bursts every thirty seconds. Same frequency used in tactical field relays."
Marcus's expression hardened. "Military-grade."
"Absolutely," Leo replied. "That's not just rifles in that container."
He rotated the tablet, letting Marcus see the frequency analysis. "This encryption? You don't get it on street-level hardware. Someone wants this cargo protected—either by force or obscurity."
Marcus felt the weight of the moment settle across his shoulders.
The kind of quiet that comes before a breach—the tight coil in the chest, the shallow breath, the hum of adrenaline warming the blood. His jaw, clenched.
Then—
Rattle.
A mechanical groan echoed through the vast space as the warehouse's front gate began to rise.
Metal on metal, slow and deliberate, like the exhale of a sleeping giant.
Dust danced in the slanted shafts of gray light slicing through the opening.
Marcus ducked lower, motioned Leo behind the crates.
A delivery truck backed in, headlights slicing through the gloom.
Its engine growled low, and the moment it stopped, three masked men hopped out from the cabin and rear—formation tight, rifles at the low-ready, their footfalls synchronized and purposeful.
Leo's eyes widened. "They're trained."
"Not street," Marcus muttered. "These are operators."
The men moved quickly—one posted near the driver's side, the other two toward the container.
They worked with mechanical efficiency, checking surroundings, signaling silently.
Sam's voice crackled softly in Marcus's earpiece. "Eyes on two more at the rear alley. Black vests, no insignias. They're unloading black duffels—heavy ones. Could be ammo."
Marcus processed the info in a blink. Six men. Minimum. Tight spacing. Coordinated entry. He tapped twice on the mic.
Leo adjusted the signal booster. "Still broadcasting. Looks like it's tied to a proximity trigger. Could be data uplink or an alert beacon. If we open that container…"
"They'll know," Marcus finished.
He peeked again.
One of the men now knelt beside the lock, pulling out a keycard and placing it near a concealed reader.
The padlock beeped—not mechanical, but digital—and released with a soft click.
"Jesus," Leo whispered. "That container's not just guarded. It's access-controlled."
Marcus watched the others take positions around the perimeter. They weren't here to guard. They were here to transfer.
"This wasn't just bait," he said under his breath. "This is a damn dead drop. We're walking into a relay point."
He raised his hand, signaling Sam for a silent breach position.
From the far end of the warehouse, Sam moved into place—shadows licking at the edges of his figure, rifle low, finger ready. He nodded once. Ready.
Marcus leaned close to Leo. "On my go—cut the signal, spike interference. Buy us a few seconds."
"Got it."
Marcus turned back toward the warehouse floor, muscles coiled. He raised two fingers, held them steady.
One…
Two…
CRACK.
The lights died.
The warehouse plunged into total blackness.
An instant later, yelling erupted—sharp, disoriented commands from masked men.
The whir of the signal booster shorted out as Leo cut power, and Marcus launched into motion, sprinting into the dark as the shadows exploded into chaos.
The first explosion ripped through the silence like a war drum, a concussive thunderclap that shook dust from the rafters and kicked Marcus's instincts into overdrive.
"Flashbang! MOVE!" he bellowed, voice gravel and command, the tone of a man who'd survived far too many ambushes to freeze now.
The second blast went off milliseconds later from the opposite flank—brighter, hotter, the sonic wave ringing through his skull like a gong.
The warehouse plunged deeper into chaos, a storm of disorienting white light and smoke.
Marcus dropped behind a stack of metal shelving, dragging Leo with him by the collar just as rounds tore through the air they'd just occupied.
Sparks bloomed off the scaffolding above. The clatter of suppressed gunfire echoed in short, deadly bursts.
The temperature shifted. Smoke filled the cavernous space—acrid, chemical-thick. It stung the eyes and choked the lungs.
Marcus could feel the coppery tang of adrenaline on his tongue as he pressed his back against the crates.
"These aren't gangbangers. These are trained. Clean. Efficient. Who the hell are they working for?"
His mind was a machine now, fed by muscle memory and bloodied experience.
His Glock was up and out in a heartbeat, and his breathing slowed.
The chaos narrowed into a corridor of action and reaction.
"Leo, status?" he shouted over the din.
Leo's voice cracked, half-coughing from the smoke. "They're jamming external signals. My scanner's fried—I got five signatures, tight formation, two frequencies on loop—military-grade encryption!"
"Which means they're not here to rob the place," Marcus muttered, scanning for movement through the haze.
He spotted three figures fanning out, NVGs glowing green like the eyes of wolves in the dark. "Too spread out. Trying to pin us. Classic room-clearing pattern."
Then his comm crackled—Sam's voice, low and taut. "One's running for the crate! I'm on him."
Through a broken pane near the rear of the warehouse, Marcus caught a glimpse.
Sam darting out from cover, his silhouette outlined by the sunlight seeping through the grime-smeared windows. He was fast, reckless, and too loud.
"Sam, don't—!"
A sharp crack rang out—Sam's sidearm. One of the runners screamed and hit the ground, leg shattered at the knee.
The rifle he'd been dragging clattered away, spinning across the floor.
"I got him!" Sam barked. "Trying to take the package!"
Marcus didn't have time to reply. Movement to his left—a flicker in the smoke. He spun, dropped to a crouch, and fired twice.
The man crumpled mid-stride, NVG lenses shattering with a hiss of sparks. The figure convulsed once, then stilled.
Marcus reloaded his gun. "They're not securing the warehouse. They're destroying evidence. Which means they know someone's watching. Someone tipped them off. Goddammit, this is bigger than we thought."
Another burst of gunfire raked across the pallets near Leo, sending wooden splinters flying.
Marcus sprinted low across the gap and tackled him into better cover—a steel column thick enough to stop anything short of a .50 caliber.
"Keep your head down! Can you break into their comms again?"
"I'm trying! Their mesh network's rerouting—wait…" Leo's fingers danced across his tablet, sweat beading down his temples. "Got a partial breach. Just a second—"
A voice came through—garbled, staticky, but clear enough to chill them both.
"…contain and withdraw… leave nothing behind… no bodies…"
Leo stared at Marcus, eyes wide. "Did you hear that?"
Marcus's face hardened. "Yeah. We're not in a firefight. We're in a clean-up."
From the far side, he heard Sam again—closer now, panting through the mic. "Another one down—left him breathing. Two more headed for the exit, I'm trying to cut them off—wait—SHIT!"
Gunshots, loud and close.
Marcus shoved off the column and moved. He flowed through the maze of crates like a shadow, boots silent, gun steady.
He rounded a corner just in time to see one of the masked operatives raise a compact SMG toward Sam's back.
No time.
He fired twice. One in the chest, one in the neck. The man dropped like a sack of bricks.
Sam spun around, wide-eyed. "Jesus, Mac! Close one—"
"Eyes up," Marcus growled. "You good?"
Sam nodded, adrenaline making his words shaky. "Better than him."
But Marcus's gaze had already shifted—toward the flickering light now blooming from the center of the warehouse.
Flames. Small at first—then roaring as they consumed the crates.
Orange tongues licked up the sides, illuminating stenciled serial numbers and NATO tags.
"Thermite," Marcus muttered. "They're torching the stash."
Leo's voice burst through the comm again. "Mac! They rigged half the warehouse! They've planted multiple charges—thermal incinerators, some on timers!"
"Fall back!" Marcus ordered. "Pull to the south exit. Sam, cover Leo—go!"
"What about you?" Sam asked, chest heaving.
"I'm going after the one giving orders."
Sam hesitated—then nodded, yanked Leo by the shoulder, and peeled back toward the rear entrance.
Marcus turned toward the densest smoke, where the flames hadn't yet reached—and plunged in.
Every step was a gamble. The heat licked at his skin, sweat now pouring beneath his ballistic vest.
Shadows moved like predators across the warehouse, distorted by smoke and the flickering red-orange light.
He spotted another hostile—reloading behind a crate.
Marcus didn't wait. He moved in fast, grabbing the barrel of the attacker's carbine and wrenching it sideways.
The man fought back—strong, trained. But Marcus was faster. He drove his elbow into the man's throat, then his knee into the gut, snapping the attacker's balance. The fight went to the floor in a hard crash.
They grappled, fists slamming against armor and bone. The masked man clawed for a blade at his hip—but Marcus slammed his palm into the man's wrist, then flipped him into a steel pole with a sickening crack.
He ripped off the man's comm headset and hissed into the open channel. "You want to leave no bodies? Come try."
Silence. Then a sudden clicking in his earpiece. Channel terminated.
"Cowards," Marcus spat.
Smoke rolled like waves through the ruined skeleton of the warehouse. The fire spread faster now, dancing across accelerant trails. But Marcus wasn't done.
He saw another shape running toward the loading dock—a silhouette dragging a satchel, moving too smooth, too commanding.
"The commander."
Marcus gave chase.
The two men sprinted through the inferno, vaulting over debris and burning crates.
Heat bit into their skin like razors. Sparks floated in the air like dying fireflies.
The commander turned, fired blindly—Marcus ducked, rolled, came up firing. The shots went wide, but it forced the man into a bad position—too exposed.
They collided in the open near the exit ramp, fists flying. The commander swung with precision, trying to disarm him, but Marcus had years of street-hardened grit behind his strikes.
He caught the man's arm mid-swing, twisted, and drove his shoulder into the man's ribs.
There was a crack—ribs, maybe. The commander grunted and tried to pull a flashbang, but Marcus kicked it from his hand and drove his fist into the man's face—once, twice, a third time.
The man dropped, his face bloodied.
"Not this time," Marcus whispered.
He tore the satchel open—no intel, just explosives. Thermite sticks, enough to raze the entire structure.
Marcus cursed and threw the satchel into a burning pile—better it detonates there than in his hands.
Then—
A WHUMP.
The floor trembled.
Leo's voice screamed in his comm: "Thermite triggered on the east end—roof's collapsing! MAC, GET OUT!"
Marcus ran. Heat on his back, lungs screaming. Flames now kissed the beams above.
He barreled through the smoke toward the rear exit where Leo and Sam waited behind the truck, eyes wide.
He dove out just as the roof gave way, sending a plume of fire and debris skyward.
They lay there, coughing, choking on soot, watching the warehouse burn like a pyre.
Sam finally said, voice raw: "That was a fucking warzone."
Marcus coughed, sat up, and looked at the black smoke curling into the night.
"No," he said, jaw clenched. "That was a message."
Smoke and ash danced in the wind. The heat lingered like a scar.
And in the silence that followed, Marcus made a promise—"You want to leave no bodies? I'll make sure your ghosts scream louder."
Marcus stood with his hands on his knees, lungs dragging air thick with smoke and scorched chemicals.
His vest was coated in grime and powder residue, and his gloves were slick with sweat and soot.
His jaw clenched as his eyes followed the last dying flickers of thermite chewing through what remained of the crates—their evidence, gone in flames.
Around him, the warehouse groaned like a dying animal. Steel beams warped under the heat.
A high-pressure sprinkler hissed uselessly above, long since sabotaged.
Somewhere to the west, fire engines screamed, sirens slicing through the haze like razors.
Then came the low growl of a car engine—distinct, aggressive, like a panther pulling up to the kill.
A black Crown Vic tore onto the lot, tires skidding across broken asphalt, headlights cutting through the black smoke belching from the warehouse's east side.
The door cracked open before the car even fully stopped.
Captain Julia Reyes stepped out.
She was built like a fortress—mid-40s, combat-hardened, ex-Army officer turned NYPD captain.
Shoulder-length jet-black hair tied tight into a no-nonsense bun. Her tailored jacket flared as she moved, revealing the sharp steel of her badge and the glint of her sidearm.
Her eyes scanned the scene like an airstrike coordinator—measuring, precise, and cold as winter steel.
Every firefighter, beat cop, and crime scene tech instinctively stepped out of her path. No orders needed.
She didn't ask for an update. She didn't need one. The scene was already speaking for itself.
Her boots crunched over spent shell casings and smoldering debris as she made a direct line toward Marcus, who now straightened slowly—still catching his breath, still tasting ash in his throat.
His ears rang faintly from the earlier flashbangs, but the sound of her heels striking concrete cut through the noise like gunfire.
"Sergeant Allen," she said, voice sharp as a cracked whip. "What the hell did you do?"
Marcus blinked once, then wiped the soot from his brow with the back of his glove. "That's a long answer," he replied, low but calm.
She cut him off with a raised hand—not a yell, not even a bark, just total command compressed into a single, lethal gesture.
"No warrant. No jurisdiction. No backup. And you brought a rookie. Three of my officers, off-grid, in the middle of a known trafficking zone—" She gestured around them, the red glow of flame reflected in her eyes. "—and you leave me this goddamn war zone to explain. I should have Internal Affairs at your desk by sundown."
For a beat, silence hung between them. Smoke curled in the spaces where their gazes locked—her fury versus his defiance.
Marcus didn't flinch. His heart was hammering, sure, but not from fear. From purpose. "Captain… they knew we were coming."
Her eyes narrowed. Just slightly. Enough.
"This wasn't a warehouse," Marcus continued. "It was a trap. There were shooters inside, coordinated, armed like spec-ops. They had NVGs, thermite, military-grade comms. They didn't come to protect the product—they came to burn it."
Captain Reyes folded her arms across her chest. Her face didn't soften, but something in her posture shifted.
Just enough to let you know she wasn't dismissing him outright. Just enough to tell Marcus she was processing the angles.
Years in military intelligence and precinct leadership had taught her how to read between the bullets.
She didn't reply right away. Instead, her eyes moved across the scene. Over the flickering blaze. The twisted steel.
The injured suspect Sam had dropped—now cuffed, howling as EMTs worked on the hole where his kneecap used to be.
The smell of scorched plastic and burning oil filled the air, mixed with copper from the blood. Radios crackled in the distance, distorted by static and tension.
"Then next time," Reyes said, her voice lower now, like thunder held behind teeth, "use the goddamn chain of command. You want to burn your badge, do it on your own time. Don't drag the rest of this unit down with you."
Marcus exhaled slowly through his nose. His jaw ticked.
This isn't just anger, he thought. This is calculation. She's seeing the same things I am. She's just pretending she's not.
"I didn't drag anyone," Marcus said. "Leo flagged the shipments, Sam volunteered. We followed a lead. A good one. And now it's dust."
Reyes gave him a glare that could've cracked a wall. "A good lead doesn't turn a city block into a war zone."
Marcus stepped toward her. "A bad captain lets one slip away without asking why. You want to court-martial me, fine. But don't pretend this isn't bigger than me."
Another pause. The heat buzzed around them. The distant groan of collapsing metal echoed through the husk of the warehouse.
She stepped past him then—slow, deliberate—and scanned the scene herself.
A forensic unit was photographing a blackened piece of hardware—half-melted, but still faintly resembling an RFID scanner.
The side wall of the warehouse had been chewed open by fire, revealing charred concrete and the black skeletons of pallets.
She crouched beside a scorched piece of rebar and picked up a bullet casing with a gloved hand. It wasn't NYPD issue. It was match-grade. Military.
Reyes stared at it for a long moment. Her face didn't change, but Marcus could see the mental gears turning.
"You know", he thought. "You just can't say it."
Behind them, Sam limped toward the pair, his vest half unstrapped, one hand bandaged from a graze wound. "Captain," he said, straightening reflexively.
She turned slowly, looking him over. "You the one who put a hole in our runner?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"You get anything out of him?"
Sam shook his head. "He bit off a tracker tooth. He's not talking."
She muttered under her breath in Spanish—sharp, venom-laced syllables—then turned to one of the crime scene officers. "Lock this place down. Every shell, every print, every inch gets tagged. I want inventory logs from the docks, satellite routes, thermal sweeps if you can swing them."
"Yes, Captain."
She returned to Marcus then. He could still feel the heat radiating off her—anger, authority, that sheer presence she carried like body armor.
"Nothing survives thermite," she said, gesturing to the blackened crate ruins. "Which means whoever sent this hit team didn't care about stopping you. They cared about erasing whatever was in there."
Marcus nodded. "And they almost took us with it."
Her mouth pressed into a flat line. "This is the last time you run blind on my watch, Allen. You don't get to play cowboy just because you've got ghosts whispering in your ear."
His voice dropped slightly. "I didn't come here to be a cowboy, Captain. I came here because someone has their hand in the department. And I can't root them out from behind a desk."
Reyes stared at him, long and hard. Then—almost imperceptibly—she nodded once.
But her tone didn't soften. "I should still write you up."
"I know."
She took a breath, then turned and began issuing more orders, her voice sharp and surgical.
As she moved away, Marcus looked down at the warehouse floor. His boots stood amid a battlefield—blood trails, scorched powder, the black grease smear where a crate had once been.
Everything about this stank.
It wasn't just the warehouse. It was the precision. The professionalism. This wasn't some cartel goon squad with homemade bombs and AKs. This was trained. Funded. Clean.
And the fact they were gone in under three minutes?
That was the part that bothered him most.
"No bodies," he remembered hearing through Leo's intercepted feed. "Leave nothing behind."
Marcus rubbed his temple. This wasn't random. This was surgical.
And that meant whoever was behind this?
They were far from done.
Far from sloppy.
And they were watching.
"You see that?" Leo's voice cut through the static hum of fire trucks and murmuring radios, his silhouette framed by the flames still licking at the skeletal remains of the warehouse roof.
He stood with arms folded, a pair of cracked glasses tucked into his vest pocket, sweat streaking down his temple. "They used thermite. That's military-grade. This isn't street-level shit."
Marcus Allen didn't answer right away. His eyes were locked on the ground—on the blackened floor where the crates had been.
The shape of them still burned into the concrete like ghosts of what should have been evidence.
There was nothing left but melted rivets, twisted rebar, and scorched earth. Fire had devoured everything the way a man might burn his fingerprints from a crime scene.
And in that silence, Marcus felt the weight press against his chest again—not fear, but the choking weight of inevitability.
"No street crew gets their hands on thermite. That's not something you pick up off some back-alley arms dealer or off the grid. You need access, clearance, contacts. This wasn't some punk operation trying to move pills or AKs. This was professional. Trained. Authorized."
Behind them, the fire crews worked methodically—hoses hissing, foam splattering against the remnants of the steel girders like acid.
The air reeked of chemicals and burnt rubber, thick and bitter on the tongue. It clung to their clothes, their skin, their lungs.
Black smoke rolled upward, bleeding into the overcast sky like ink into water.
The sun was still up, casting an orange hue across the smoke clouds, but the light felt cold. Muted. Like the world had shifted into another gear.
"This was a fucking surgical fire," Leo continued, gesturing with a lazy flick of the wrist at the main blast zone.
"Straight down through the center mass. Thermite was dropped right on top of the crates. Not splashed. Not thrown. Dropped. You understand what that means?"
Marcus finally looked at him, eyes sharp but distant. "It means someone wanted to make sure nothing could be recovered. No fingerprints, no serial numbers, no residue. Just ash."
"And?"
Marcus took a breath. His jaw clenched. "It means this wasn't just about covering tracks. This was a message. A loud one."
Leo nodded, chewing at his lip. "Then I guess someone heard us knocking."
A stretcher rolled past them, flanked by two officers and an EMT. The captured runner—barely conscious, blood drying across his leg where Sam had clipped him—was strapped down, IV dripping from his arm, a tube in his nose.
His eyes fluttered open for half a second, landing on Marcus. There was recognition there. Not just fear—awareness. Like he knew exactly who Marcus was.
Like someone had warned him about the man in the leather jacket and quiet rage behind his eyes.
"Hey," Marcus said, stepping alongside the stretcher. "That burn still sting? That's gonna feel a hell of a lot worse if you stay quiet."
The runner tried to speak, mouth dry, but the EMT was already loading him into the ambulance.
He muttered something—barely audible over the hydraulic whine of the lift. Marcus leaned in.
"'They're watching.'" Marcus repeated it aloud, not to Leo, not to anyone, but to the void hanging in the air.
His voice was low, just above a whisper, but loaded with something darker than just curiosity.
"They're watching."
Watching what? The building? The shipment? Or him?
Marcus backed away from the ambulance as the doors slammed shut. The vehicle pulled away with a rumble, taillights flickering red against the soot-slicked pavement. He turned to Leo.
"We need that guy conscious," Marcus muttered. "And fast. Before someone makes sure he never wakes up."
"Already messaged Carson," Leo replied, pulling out his phone. "They'll have him isolated at Mercy's secure wing. I'll get Mila to wipe the transport log from the hospital's network—make it look like he died en route. Should buy us some time."
Marcus ran a hand down his face, trying to clear the sweat and grime. He wasn't sure if it was working. His palms felt like they were dipped in ash.
Footsteps crunched behind them.
Captain Reyes emerged from the darkened frame of the warehouse's broken archway.
Her uniform jacket was speckled with ash and grime, her eyes unreadable beneath the brim of her NYPD cap.
She didn't speak. She didn't need to. Her mere presence radiated pressure—the kind of authority that didn't need to shout to command silence.
"We'll need a two-block perimeter," she said flatly to the officers trailing behind her. "Nothing leaves this scene without my signature. I want fire reports, street cams, drone footage—everything. If a pigeon shit near this building, I want it cataloged."
She turned toward Marcus and Leo, her eyes narrowing. "You two. Debrief. Now."
Leo held up a hand. "I'm just the IT guy."
"Then you'll love the data dump we just inherited," Reyes snapped.
Leo sighed. "I should've stayed in the Bureau."
She jabbed a finger toward the police tape. "Out. Let the grown-ups work."
Leo gave Marcus a look that said, "You're on your own," then walked off, already typing furiously into his phone.
Reyes stepped closer, voice low. "Talk to me, Sergeant."
Marcus exhaled slowly. "It was never just a drop site. This was something bigger. A funnel point."
"For what?"
"Distribution. Probably part of a larger ring. The crates were sealed with anti-tamper codes. Took us two layers of cutting to get into one before the place lit up."
She arched an eyebrow. "And you didn't think to wait for backup?"
"Captain, we didn't have time. Once we got inside, the floor was already wired. They wanted us boxed in."
Reyes looked back at the warehouse, her jaw working side to side. "And what makes you think this wasn't just a lucky hit by some pissed-off gang?"
"Thermite," Marcus said. "Precision. And the guy we took down said someone's watching. Not listening. Watching. They're plugged in."
She went quiet. Her hands slid into her coat pockets.
"You know," she said slowly, "in the military, we had a name for this kind of op. Controlled burn."
Marcus tilted his head. "You think this was internal?"
"I think someone's making a habit of killing evidence before it has time to speak. And if thermite's in play, it's not some street thug. This is sanctioned tech. Which means someone's leaking supplies through federal channels."
Marcus stepped forward. "So it's bigger than the precinct. Bigger than the city."
"You're not wrong."
"And you're still not calling IA?"
Her gaze met his. "If I call them now, we lose control of this. This isn't a case anymore, Sergeant. This is an operation. And I don't know who the hell I can trust outside this perimeter."
She turned away, looking once more at the flames as they started to die under the fire hoses. Her voice was lower when she spoke next.
"Clean your team up. Get your reports straight. Because next time you go off-grid like this, I won't just be angry. I'll be writing your obituary."
Marcus nodded once. "Understood."
But in the back of his mind, the pieces were already moving. This wasn't about one shipment, or one bust.
This was a frontline. A battlefield disguised as a back-alley sting. And they'd just walked into enemy territory without knowing it.
"Cold case? No. That ship sailed the moment thermite hit the crates."
This was a war zone now.
And Marcus Allen was done playing by their rules.
He turned back toward the still-smoldering skeleton of the warehouse.
The sun was dipping lower now, bleeding orange against the horizon, smoke curling like fingers toward the clouds.
From here on out, it wasn't about gathering evidence. It was about surviving the fire long enough to expose the hand lighting the match.
"They're watching." That runner wasn't just spooked. He was scared for his life.
Which meant whoever was pulling strings—whoever had access to military tech, surveillance, and black-market muscle—wasn't done yet.
They had eyes. They had ears. And worse...
They had plans.
Marcus adjusted the collar of his jacket and began walking, boots echoing off the concrete, past the chalk outlines and cooling fire foam.
The war had started.