The box was in motion.
And I was supposed to know how to stop it.
TheHelepoliswas alongside the dock with its side-shell door yawning open; Sirena’s container was moving straight for it.
I redlined myself—fans surged, queues jammed, safeguards ignored. Sirena’s icon on my board felt like a throat under a boot; every camera I owned was the wrong one.
“Take out the driver,” Royce commanded—and when we didn’t see results, he demanded, “Lung?”
“I don’t have the angle from my current position,” Lung growled. His mic gave me wind, then claws on metal. Above camera three, a shadow unstitched from the crane and fell.
Royce turned on me. “Options.”
“Several. None ideal.” I’d already lit up the dock’s routing relays and traffic priority systems; unfortunately, their container ID was already assigned to the yacht manifest and marked for immediate transfer. If I rerouted it electronically, I’d risk tipping our hand. If I blocked it physically, I might tip the box.
Which Sirena was in.
I ran five hundred projections in half a second, and all of them ended with either an altercation, a fire, or a body count.
So I recalibrated.
Safeguards weren’t ethics; they were paint over a bomb.
I stripped them.
“Then stop the dolly,” Royce snapped.
I was already inside the yard truck’s UI. The screen showed a cartoon gear with a smile. I peeled it off and made it scream. “Driver just lost power assist and brakes. He’s coasting.”
Royce had a fraction of a moment to relax—then a second truck nosed in, too smooth.
Too ready.
Someone had already unhitched the first; the second aligned like an F1 pit swap—clean, practiced, fast.
This wasn’t reaction.
It wasprocedure.
I reached for the second truck’s systems, and nothing answered.
No handshake.
No network chatter.
Either air-gapped or designed to shut me out.
Voss paid for redundancy.
He paid for insulation, too.
“I’m locked out!” I shouted on our comms, just as Allen shouted on his, “What the fuck—what the actual fuck—who cleared this? STOP THAT FUCKING TRUCK—” but no one was listening.
The pit crew moved in like they’d practiced it—pacing alongside the dolly, falling into position.
Not dockworkers.
Wrong vests. No radios. No confusion.
