From what I find, it smells like a shell corporation. The people running it don’t have any digital trail, nothing.
I can hack into the camera system from a building across the street to see part of the warehouse, but nothing appears out of the ordinary.
I’ll take a look in person. Afterwards, I’ll go after the four people with the same movement map.
It takes me an hour to get there, and I walk past the building, checking the entrances and exits. There are several, many of them have no cameras. I can’t see anyone in the warehouse and hear no movement, nor do I get any signal from an open Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection, so I choose an unsurveilled door and pick the lock.
Inside, I draw my gun and have a second magazine, a second gun, a tear gas grenade, and a knife ready.
I walk silently through the building, corner by corner, and find absolutely nothing. I even check for trapdoors, secret rooms, or any kind of bodily traces, like blood or hair. But there is nothing. It is almost too clean.
They might’ve had cleaners wiping down the building. I need to check whether there are any camera recordings of the building across the street. Maybe it got an image of someone entering.
I walk back to the exit I came through and put my gun back.
I open the door, and three guns are pointed at me.
“Hands up!” shouts a man with shaved hair and piercing dark eyes. The first thing I notice about him is an SS Siegrunen tattoo on his neck, which confirms this building has something to do with the Lords.
I move my hands up as I assess the situation. I could jump away and close the door in their faces, but the chance of success is too slim. I also want information, so I’ll let them take me. Coming this close to the Lords is as dangerous as it is intriguing.
Another one of the guys steps up to me, grabs my arms, handcuffs me, and pushes me inside.
“Who are you?” asks the man with the neck tattoo while I am dragged inside. He seems to be the leader of the three, because the others do what he says.
I keep my mouth shut.
Both my guns are taken.
“Talk,” shouts the man, and pushes his gun into my chest. Men like him are all the same. Power-hungry idiots with an ego issue who try to get up the food chain by violence. They are the ones who absolutely hate it when women don’t do what they want, lose their shit, and make themselves vulnerable by it.
I am ready to provoke him by ignoring him.
I get hit full in the face with the gun, so hard I almost trip over.
Once.
Twice.
Thrice.
I spit some blood on his shoes when I get up. Pain throbs through my cheek into my eye, but it isn’t the first time I've been beaten up, and won’t be the last.
I let him hit me, so he doesn’t see I am fumbling with the handcuffs, and I also analyze his way of moving. He reveals his way of attack and interaction, and the next time, I’ll use it to my advantage. I’ll kick him and strangle him with my legs alone.
“Talk now, or you’ll wish to be dead soon,” he threatens me. I continue to ignore him. I have already fumbled the standard handcuff key out of the hidden pocket in my sleeve.
At that moment, he shoots my left arm. The key almost slips from my fingers as my hands clench into fists, and I gasp away the pain.
I am so going to murder him now. My body switches into attack mode.
I quickly assess the situation and plan my move. One of the other guys is watching the door, and the other positioned himself in the back, thirty degrees to my left. It’ll be a close call and needs absolute perfection to hit them all in a matter of three seconds.
The handcuff on my right arm slips open. I chose to free my leading hand, although I have trained my left hand very well.
“Your choice,” says the leader, his arm outstretched, gun pointing at me. I duck, grab his arm with the gun in his hand, and pull, so he stumbles. He is unprepared, and I use it to my advantage.
I shoot the two other men with the gun in his hand before I kick the back of his knee, bring him down, pull his arm back, and push my full weight, knee first, into his back.
