We reached Building Three—the command center Cyclone had marked. The main door had two guards within sight of the reinforced window. River tossed a folded flashbang over the nearest dumpster, timing it so the thud was drowned out by a diesel rumble. Oliver and Gage moved in opposite arcs. Both men hit the ground before they could cry out; River’s muzzle flash erased shadows that had tried to wake them. No light, no scream, no wasted motion.
Inside, it smelled of heat, solder, and the wrong kind of human things. Rows of monitors, the dull bass of a generator, and a bank of lockers with uniforms hanging like trophies. Cyclone jogged in, breathing as if he’d been running, alreadyworking on the server rack we’d come for. “Give me two,” he said. “I’ll strip their comms and pull manifest data.”
I moved down the corridor—stiff-legged, senses loose and scanning. Doors were locked, chained, bolted. Behind one, I picked up muffled sounds—shuffling, the high pitch of someone too young to be brave. Beckett heard it at the same time; his hand closed over my wrist, and we both moved.
Two captives crouched in a cold storage room: a woman with hollow eyes and a boy no older than ten, clutching a stained teddy. The boy’s breath caught when he saw us, as if the world had taught him pain was always about to strike again. I knelt slowly, palms open.
“It’s okay,” I told them. “We’re not Hydra.” The words felt small and ridiculous next to everything they’d been through, but the woman’s shoulders loosened a bit, and the boy’s fingers unclenched on the bear.
Beckett covered the door, eyes like a blade. “We get them out,” he said, voice low. “Cyclone—status?”
Cyclone’s head bobbed smoothly, keeping his rhythm. “Comms are fried. Manifest lists are coming through now. They’ve got three containers outbound tonight—medical aid, food parcels, and ‘relief supplies.’ The relief manifest flags show two dozen names—nonexistent in any registry. They’re moving people in sealed containers.”
My stomach turned cold. “How many here?”
“Three rooms like this on this dock—dozens of people in transit,” Cyclone said. “Some are being moved to hold at the eastern warehouse. There’s a med bay with makeshift triage—Hydra’s keeping the ones they need alive for sale.”
River’s jaw clenched. “We split. Beckett with me, Elara, you take the woman and kid—get them to the extraction at the south quay. Oliver and Gage, cover the eastern warehouse. Cyclone,you monitor the feeds and blind the cameras. I’ll smoke the outer lane on signal.”
We moved with the precision of practiced violence. Beckett scooped the boy into his arms as if he were softer than he looked, and my heart twisted so hard I could barely breathe. The kid went rigid at first, then slowly—tentatively—wrapped his arms around Beckett’s neck. I thought every soldier in my life knew what it meant to be guarded; I’d never seen a man cradle someone like that and not feel the world tilt.
The extraction route was a narrow service quay Cyclone had hacked open for us. We moved quickly, close to the water where the night swallowed our sounds. Behind us, the eastern warehouse erupted into controlled chaos—Oliver and Gage striking the compound hard, drawing men away and collapsing a fence to create confusion. Cyclone’s voice was like a ribbon in my ear, calm and clipped. “You’re clear for twenty, then they’ll start sweep patterns. Get them out.”
We could hear shouts in the distance, along with the sound of disciplined men moving to form a net. Hydra’s militia were professionals in their own way—not soldiers of the state, but soldiers of a darker market. They adapted quickly.
Beckett shoved us both into a rusted landing when a spotlight swept close, the beam cutting across our vision like a blade. The boy froze, eyes wide, and something in me wanted to tear the light down like it was a screen, to rip the world open and drag the bad out by the collar. Instead, I leaned in, whispering nonsense into the kid’s ear until he giggled—a small, brittle sound, but it lasted—and Beckett’s jaw eased.
We were two blocks from the rendezvous when Cyclone’s voice shifted—more intense, sharp. “Heads up—manifest update. Secondary shipment rerouted. Viktor’s moving a priority crate. It’s flagged with Grand’s sigil. And—” static. “—movement—two armored vans—heading your way.”
My breath hitched. River’s tone clipped. “Cut through the canal route. Now.”
We angled for a maintenance hatch. The water smelled of oil and old harbor and a hundred things I didn’t want to name. We slid down into the shallow channel, boots splashing, metal slushing under us. The cold swallowed my calves and then my thighs. The boy whimpered and Beckett tightened his hold.
We emerged on the opposite quay—slick and cold and smelling like salt and rust—and there, twenty meters away under sodium lights, two armored vans rolled like black beetles toward the dock.
Cyclone swore in a language that tasted like iron. “They moved up the timetable. Viktor’s here. They’ve got a QRF—quick reaction force. We’ve got maybe one angle before they lock down the whole port.”
Beckett’s eyes found mine. No need for words. We ran.
The night blew up behind us.
77
Beckett
We found cover inside an abandoned cargo office—half the windows blown out, the rest smeared with grime and salt. The hum of the harbor bled through the walls: waves lapping at steel hulls, distant shouts echoing off metal. Somewhere out there, Hydra’s men were regrouping.
Cyclone spread his gear across a cracked desk, fingers moving fast. “They’re triangulating the blackout points,” he muttered. “If they get power back, we’re boxed.”
“Then we stay ahead of them,” River said, loading a fresh magazine. “Oliver and Gage are still at the eastern warehouse, pulling the last of the civilians. Once they’re clear, we blow the docks.”
Beckett nodded, examining the map Cyclone displayed on the wall—three blinking red markers pulsing like heartbeats. “That’ll bury Viktor’s shipment,” he said. “But we need him alive. He’s our link to Grand.”
Elara stood by the door, her back straight, rifle resting on her shoulder. The rescued boy sat next to her on an overturned crate, wrapped in Beckett’s jacket, clutching his teddy beartightly. Occasionally, he looked up at her as if she were the first person he had trusted in years.
“He’s scared,” she whispered.
Beckett stepped beside her, lowering his voice. “So am I.”
