The drive back into Manhattan was quiet. The adrenaline from the sparring session had faded, leaving behind exhaustion and a weird hyper-awareness. My body knew how to fight now, but my brain was still catching up.
"Where do you need me to drop you?" Ava asked as we merged onto the expressway.
I gave her a cross street about two blocks from the warehouse.
"Seven-thirty tomorrow morning," she said as we approached my intersection. "Same spot. Don't be late."
"I won't be."
The Camaro pulled over, engine rumbling at idle. I grabbed my jacket and stepped out onto the sidewalk. The door shut with a solid thunk, and the car disappeared into traffic.
The two-block walk back felt longer than it should have. My legs were sore, and my body still ached. The cargo elevator's familiar bone-shaking descent was almost comforting after the day's weirdness.
The bunker's lighting greeted me as the doors opened. I should sleep. Tomorrow was going to be important. But I found myself walking to the R&D room instead.
I needed to test something.
I stripped off my jacket and holster, setting the needle pistol on a workbench, then moved to the center of the open floor space.
Without thinking about it, I dropped into a fighting stance. Weight distributed properly, hands up and loose. It felt right in a way that was both familiar and completely alien.
I worked through combinations for maybe twenty minutes. Jab-cross. Hook to the body. Everything executed with mechanical precision, but something was missing. I knew how to throw a jab and how to sequence it into a jab,lead,uppercut and a cross, but not when it would actually work in a real fight.
Still,this was astronomically better then where I was at the start of today.
After a lukewarm shower, I made it back to the bunk room and set my needle pistol on the chair next to the mattress. The emergency lighting cast everything in that familiar green glow.
Tomorrow I'd be breaking into a British intelligence safe house with a woman I barely knew,hoping to access a database that might not even work anymore.
Despite everything, sleep came quickly.
I was up bright and early the next morning. Checking my watch, I'd gotten up around 6 AM.
I decided to run through the forms again, forty minutes of combinations until sweat dripped down my face and my muscles burned. The implanted skills still felt alien, but slightly less so. My conditioning however, was still that of someone who spent more time touching a keyboard then touching grass.
After a lukewarm shower, I bolted down some hastily-made toast and scrambled eggs. I threw on some jeans and a tee, chucked my jacket over that along with the holster, and started making my way to the cross street. The elevator was clunky as always, and I slipped out of the side entrance into the still-dusky early morning.
The streets were quiet at this hour. There were a few early commuters heading to work, a delivery truck rumbling past, vendors just starting to set up their carts. I walked the two blocks to the meeting point with my hands in my jacket pockets, trying to look like just another guy starting his day instead of someone about to break into a defunct intelligence agency's safe house.
When I reached the intersection at 7:22 AM, I leaned against a storefront wall and waited. The red Camaro pulled up to the curb at exactly 7:30 AM.
Ava threw open the door, and I hopped in.
"Good morning." I yawned.
Ava nodded.
After that scintillating exchange of pleasantries, we were underway.
Ava drove carefully, and traffic was light as we made our way across the Pulaski Skyway into New Jersey. We pulled off into Newark's south side, a mix of light industrial and working-class residential. Auto repair shops next to row houses, small manufacturing outfits with chain-link fences.
Looking out the window, I couldn't help but notice how rough Newark looked compared to my own time. Boarded-up storefronts outnumbered open businesses. Abandoned cars sat on blocks. Graffiti covered every flat surface-tags and territorial markings, not art. In my timeline, Newark had been revitalizing. This Newark looked like it was still in free fall from decades of white flight and de-industrialization.
After a few turns through quiet morning streets, she parked in front of a small plumbing company's yard. It was a chain-link fenced lot with half a dozen white panel vans parked in neat rows. A modest office building sat at the front, dark and closed at this early hour.
"Wait here," Ava said, killing the engine.
She walked up to the gate with the confidence of someone who belonged there, produced a key from her jacket, and let herself in. I watched as she approached one of the vans in the middle row, unlocked it, and spent a moment checking the interior. After a few minutes, she walked back to the Camaro and slid behind the wheel.
"We're taking the van," she said, handing me a set of keys. "Gear's in the back. Computer equipment, tools, and two boiler suits. Get changed."
I followed her to the van. The back doors opened to reveal exactly what she'd described: a cardboard box containing a portable computer that appeared to be a Kaypro 2, some sort of adapter, a chip puller, an envelope and some leads. There was also a notepad and a pen. Interestingly enough, on the floor of the van were also two navy blue boiler suits still in their plastic packaging. Everything was neatly organized, clearly prepared ahead of time.
"Your support staff really came through," I said, pulling out one of the boiler suits.
"They're very thorough." Ava was already stripping off her jacket. "Get changed. We need to look the part."
I pulled on the boiler suit over my clothes. The heavy cotton fabric was stiff and smelled faintly of new dye. Ava did the same, transforming from well-dressed businesswoman to blue-collar worker in under a minute. She even had work boots that she swapped for her flats.
"The equipment box stays in the back until we're inside," she said, climbing into the driver's seat. "We're utility workers doing a routine call. Clipboard, confident walk, nobody questions you."
The van started, and we pulled out of the lot. Ava locked the gate behind us before getting back in.
"How far is the safe house?" I asked.
"Thirty minutes if traffic cooperates. We'll go over the approach when we're closer."
After a half-hour drive north on the Garden State Parkway, we took an exit and turned into a Newark suburb.
"This is the neighborhood?" I asked, looking at the tidy lawns and two-car garages. It was an utterly unremarkable slice of mid-80's tri-state area suburbia.
"STRIKE liked their safe houses in places where nobody paid attention to their neighbors," Ava said, navigating through the quiet residential streets. "Middle-class suburbs are perfect. Everyone's too busy with their own lives to question why a house sits empty."
We came to a stop in front of an incredibly generic two-story house. It had beige wooden siding, black shutters, and two juniper bushes flanking the door. A narrow driveway led to a detached single-car garage. The lawn was overgrown but not wildly so, like someone had been paying for occasional maintenance to keep up appearances but nothing more. No car in the driveway, no lights visible through the windows, no signs of life.
Ava pulled on a cap with the logo of the plumbing company before gesturing for me to do the same. "Let's go."
We hopped out of the van and walked up the drive with the casual confidence of tradesmen on a service call. We both held clipboards, eyes scanning the neighboring houses for any twitching curtains or curious faces. The street was quiet, most people already on their way to work, kids at school, the kind of early-morning suburban stillness that made a plumbing van completely invisible.
Ava stepped onto the small porch and tried the door handle. Locked, as expected. She knelt to examine the lock cylinder more closely, running her finger along the keyhole before producing a slim leather case from inside her boiler suit. She selected two picks without comment and got to work.
"Stand behind me with the clipboard," she said quietly. "Look bored. Check the street periodically but don't stare."
I positioned myself as instructed, grateful for the overgrown juniper bushes flanking the doorway that partially concealed Ava from the street. Even in a plumber's outfit, someone clearly picking a lock would be impossible to explain if a neighbor got curious.
Ava inserted her tension wrench and began working methodically, her movements precise and economical. A car rolled past, a burgundy Volvo 240 with a woman behind the wheel who didn't even glance our way.
The minutes crawled by. I made a show of scrutinizing the clipboard.
What felt like an eternity later, a black Mercedes 190E rolled past at walking speed. The driver seemed to look directly at us. I forced myself to glance up casually, then back at my clipboard as if I hadn't noticed him. The car continued down the street.
Ava's shoulders tensed slightly, but her hands never stopped moving.
The lock finally clicked open. Ava stood smoothly, pocketing her picks in one fluid motion. "Inside. Quickly."
I followed her through the door, checking my watch as we entered.
Only eight minutes? Longest eight minutes of my life...
Ava closed and locked the door behind us. "Tricky lock" she said, her tone matter-of-fact. "Sidebar was sticky. Took longer than I'd have liked."
The house was exactly what you'd expect from a suburban New Jersey rental--and that was clearly the point. We stepped into a small foyer that opened onto a living room with beige carpet and cream-colored walls. Generic furniture that could have come from any department store catalog sat arranged in careful, uninhabited precision: a brown corduroy couch, a coffee table with nothing on it, two matching armchairs positioned at awkward angles like they'd never actually been used for conversation, and 2 entirely empty bookshelves.
The only thing that jumped out at me was how empty it felt. Not just unoccupied, empty in a way that suggested no one had ever really lived here. No personal photos on the walls, no mail stacked on the side table, no coffee rings on the furniture. A thin layer of dust covered every horizontal surface, undisturbed except for our footprints in the foyer. Even the kitchen visible through an archway looked staged. Clean counters, an empty island, a dish rack with nothing in it,and a calendar on the wall still turned to March 1983.
Ava moved toward the kitchen, and I followed. She opened a few cabinets, checked the pantry, then tried another door. "Basement's through here."
The basement stairs creaked as we descended, and what we walked into was a stark contrast to the sterile house above.
Someone had turned this into a proper game room. Nothing elaborate, but definitely lived-in. The walls were painted a warm red that made the space feel smaller and cozier. A pool table occupied the center of the room, its green felt worn smooth in the usual spots. A dartboard hung on the far wall next to a collection of framed pub signs-"The King's Arms," "The Rose & Crown." Finally, someone had installed track lighting that gave the whole space a warm, amber glow.
I looked around at the incongruous room. "This is supposed to be an intelligence safe house?"
Ava shrugged. "Don't know the story here. British intelligence officers on long-term overseas postings get homesick, I suppose."
She began methodically examining the walls. "The hidden room should be behind one of these walls."
I started searching on the opposite side of the room, running my hands along the walls and checking behind the pub signs for hidden switches or keypads. The psychic skill transfer apparently hadn't included any advanced techniques for finding concealed doors.
Ava examined the walls, tapping sections and listening. Two minutes later, she crouched and studied the baseboard with focused attention.
"The dust pattern's different here," she muttered, more to herself than to me. "Less accumulation along this section."
She pressed along the baseboard, testing each section. On the fourth try, something clicked deep within the wall. A portion of the wall opened outward with a pneumatic hiss, revealing a recessed alcove. Inside sat a card reader and keypad combo,next to a reinforced inner door.
"Got it." Ava stood, examining the security system. "Go to the van and grab the equipment."
I headed back upstairs, checking through the front window before opening the door. Thankfully the street still remained quiet. I walked to the van trying to project the same bored confidence we'd arrived with, grabbed the cardboard box of computer equipment from the back, and returned to the house.
Back in the basement, Ava was examining the keypad. The panel door stood fully open now, and I could see that the alcove extended back about three feet. Just enough space for the security system and what looked like a reinforced door beyond it.
"What have we got?" I asked, setting the box down on the pool table.
"Card reader and eight-digit keypad," Ava said without looking away from the lock. "The card slot's the first authentication layer, I think." She straightened up. "This is where you come in."
I cracked my knuckles, and pulled out a screwdriver. Before I dug in, I paused.
"Is this thing going to have some insane tamper protection?" Ava looked at me. I continued "I mean, I don't want to trigger some holdout device,or lethal gas or something"
Ava rolled her eyes. "This isn't exactly Dr.Doom's castle. Any trap would be impractical and silly." She paused for a moment. "That said, exercise an appropriate degree of caution."
With those inspiring words of confidence, I unscrewed the front panel for the access terminal. Four screws held it in place, and they came out easily. I grabbed a flashlight out of the box.
Behind the panel, the lock's circuit board was surprisingly accessible. The main chip sat in a socket. I recognized it immediately: an Intel microcontroller with an EPROM module containing the access logic.
"I need to pull this chip and dump the firmware," I said, grabbing the chip puller out of the box.
The EPROM came free with gentle pressure. I took out the Kaypro II and plugged it into a wall outlet. The portable computer's drive whirred as it booted.
Looking back in the box of electronic goodies, I found a DataTech field programmer. I slotted the serial connector from the DataTech into the Kaypro II.Grabbing the EPROM again I inserted it into the field programmer and proceeded to run the dump.
While that was happening, I grabbed the flashlight,and looked into the access control box again to check the microcontroller's brand. It was an Intel 8051. I was pretty sure the Kaypro didn't have a disassembler for this.
After a quick shuffle through the care package, I found a smaller cardboard sleeve tucked against the side that contained three floppy disks labeled in neat handwriting: "8048 Disasm," "Z8 Disasm," and "8051 Disasm." Ava's acquaintances were very thorough.
A few minutes later, I had the complete firmware image and started the disassembler. I stared at the raw assembly language scrolling past, already missing tools that wouldn't exist for another forty years. God, what I wouldn't give for Ghidra right now.
2 hours and a notepad filled with control flow analysis later, I cracked my back and yawned.
"Got it?" Ava asked.
"I think so," I said, scribbling on the notepad. "Address 0x0245 has four sequential bytes. There's a comparison loop that reads from there and does CJNE operations against incoming data."
"The facility code?"
"Probably. The code reads bytes from an I/O port - has to be the card reader - then compares each byte against this sequence. If all four match, it sets a bit on port 2 and continues. If any fail, it jumps to what looks like a lockout routine." I flipped to another page of notes. "PIN was tricker to puzzle out,but easier to execute. There's an 8-byte sequence at 0x0267, but before each comparison there's an XRL instruction - exclusive OR with constant 0x5A. Classic obfuscation."
"Right," Ava said, clearly more interested in results than methodology. "Can you do it?"
"Yeah, XOR is its own inverse. I have the digits,I just need to activate the keypad and enter them."
Ava nodded."Give it a go then."
Using leads from the equipment box, I connected the programmer's auxiliary output pins to the card reader's input lines on the access control board.
The tricky part would be timing. I was guessing at the baud rate and if I got it wrong... I configured the Kaypro to output the facility code bytes and pressed enter. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the keypad's LED flickered from red to green with a faint beep.
"Keypad's active," Ava said.
Yes! Getting past the card swipe had been the part I was the least confident about. I had a bad track record with bit banging and guessing baud rates.
The keypad itself was child's play. With that in mind, I entered the 8 digit password on the keypad.
The pool table shuddered, then began sliding smoothly to the left on hidden tracks. The green felt surface glided across the concrete floor, revealing a square hatch underneath with a recessed handle.
"Well engineered," Ava observed, kneeling by the hatch. "S.T.R.I.K.E. didn't skimp on-"
The sound of splintering wood from upstairs rudely cut into our conversation. The front door, by the sound of it. Heavy boots hit the floor above us, multiple sets, moving slowly.
Ava's head snapped up. She held up her hand in a fist. Her eyes tracked the movement above, counting footfalls.
She pointed two fingers at her eyes, then jabbed upward. Someone's up there. Her left hand opened, fingers spread. At least five.
I had no idea what her next series of hand signals meant, so I just gave her my blankest stare.
She moved close and whispered, "Stay in the stairwell and wait. If I start a fight, back me up."
Before I could respond, she was already moving toward the stairs with controlled, purposeful steps. I positioned myself in the stairwell, my hand moving to the needle pistol under my jacket.
The basement door opened above, then closed. I heard Ava's voice, pitched to carry just enough. "Gentlemen. You couldn't have picked the lock like civilized people? That door's going to draw attention."
A male voice responded, British accent, working class. "Would've been easier if you'd been here to let us in, love."
"I wasn't expecting you until next week," Ava said, an edge of irritation in her voice. "What happened to the schedule?"
"Vixen happened. Got your intel Friday, she moved up the whole bloody timeline Saturday night. Been pushing us nonstop, worried the government will beat us to it." He paused. "Figured if we ran into you, grand. If not, improvise."
"Brilliant planning," Ava said dryly. "Someone has to maintain operational security while you lot are smashing doors."
"Right." Another pause. "Look, I know it's a load of bollocks—not many birds your height in this line of work—but protocol's protocol. Let's run through the questions quickly."
The man cleared his throat."Your sister's married name."
"Davies. Married that tosser from Birmingham in '79."
"Your father's service record."
"Royal Marines, discharged '68, worked dockside in Felixstowe until the heart attack."
"The rooster crows at dawn."
"The nighthawk sings at dusk." Ava responded without hesitation.
"Brilliant." The man's tone shifted, almost conversational now. "Been meaning to ask, how'd you square things with Coleman after that favor you pulled in '81?"
"What favor?" Ava queried.
The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
"The fuck d'you mean 'what favor'?" The man's voice went from conversational to dangerous in a heartbeat. "Ava would bloody well remember that! Who the fuck-"
His words cut off in a wet choking sound.
Then everything happened at once. Other voices erupted."She's a fucking rat-" "Get her-" "Can't get an angle-"
A pistol cracked. Two heavy crashes followed, then something lighter hit the floor.
I was already sprinting up the stairs when a voice shouted, "There's a second-"
I slammed through the basement door, my needle pistol clearing leather, and cut the warning short.
The scene registered in one compressed instant: Ava grappling the team leader on the floor. Four men in street clothes remained standing - jeans, leather jackets, nothing that would stand out. The redhead nearest me (presumably the main shouting) already pivoting, his pistol rising toward the kitchen doorway. Dark-haired man moving towards the overturned coffee table in the living room. Blonde moving left past the overturned coffee table. Younger brunette frozen by the front window.
FATAL FUNNEL GET OUT MOVE-
My body was already moving before the thought finished,and the noise of the scrum fell away, the implanted muscle memory launching me forward and right out of the doorframe towards the kitchen island. I fired two shots from the needle pistol mid sprint, and the flechettes hit center mass on the redhead. He fell over like a puppet whose strings were cut.
I dove behind the kitchen island.
Several shots droned over the island. The rounds punched through drywall where I'd been a heartbeat before.
FUCKFUCKFUCK
I popped back up from behind the island and fired at the dark-haired man. The flechette caught him in the shoulder. He went down hard, grabbing at the entry point with a howl.
The younger guy near the front window fired at me. It was a wild shot, high and right, punching into the ceiling. His hands were shaking too badly for anything close to accuracy. I dropped back behind the island as the blonde man turned toward me and opened up.
He unloaded his revolver at the island. Six shots in rapid succession, wood and laminate exploding as high caliber rounds tore through the drywall. I pressed myself as flat as I possibly could against the kitchen's tiled floor.
The shooting stopped.
I heard fumbling from the blonde trying to reload. There was a sharp crack that sounded distinctly meaty, and the team leader grunted in pain. Then came the sound of rapid footsteps, a brief scuffle, and something heavy hit the floor.
I popped up from behind the destroyed island. The younger guy near the window was trying to line up another shot, but his hands were still shaking. Ava was striding over the unconscious form of the blonde man as the team leader struggled to get up.
"Don't-" the younger man started to yelp.
Ava twisted his wrist in a sharp lock that made the pistol drop straight into her off hand. In the same motion, she swept his legs and dropped him hard. "Stay down," she snapped.
The man Ava had been grappling earlier was struggling to rise, shaking his head groggily. Ava stepped towards him and kicked him in the temple. The crack was sickening. He collapsed and didn't move.
Ava turned to the dark-haired man, who was still holding pressure on his shoulder where the flechette had punched through. His weapon lay on the floor a few feet away where he'd dropped it. She walked over, picked it up, and ejected the magazine with practiced efficiency before pocketing it.
"You aren't going to give us any trouble, right?"
He nodded mutely, his face pale and slick with sweat.
I stared, shocked at the corpse of the redhead. It lay utterly still on the floor. I had been operating on pure muscle memory and reflex, but as my adrenaline crashed, I realized I had just killed someone. The pistol felt heavier than ever in my hands.
I didn't even hesitate-
"Quince." Ava's voice cut through the fog. "Look at me."
I looked up. Her expression had shifted - softer, almost concerned. Too calculated to be genuine. She crouched down next to me, close enough that I could see the blood spatter on her boiler suit.
"You did what needed doing. They were going to kill us." She paused, studying my face. "First time killing someone?"
I nodded mutely.
"It gets easier," she said, the warmth already draining from her voice as she stood.
She was moving before I could respond, kneeling by one of the unconscious men to check his pockets. "Right now, we need to move. We need that database. Some suburban busybody-"
"Who are you really?" My voice cracked slightly, adrenaline and shock making the question come out a bit more sharply then I'd intended.
Ava stopped and turned to face me.
"Catherine Mills. MI6." She held my gaze, her voice taking on a deliberate directness. "You deserve to know who you're working for at least."
"These gentlemen are Vixen's actual recovery team," she said, gesturing around the room. "MI6 inserted me to replace the real Ava Smith. When Vixen decided to follow up on intelligence about this location, they sent Ava. Which meant they sent me."
"Wait-" I interrupted, my brain finally catching up through the shock. "You're British government. Shouldn't you have the passwords already? Why did I just spend two hours reverse-engineering that lock?"
Catherine's jaw tightened. "Compartmentalization is a double-edged sword. The detailed operational intelligence for STRIKE was only stored at S.T.R.I.K.E. headquarters in London." She paused. "The operational files were destroyed in the chaos surrounding Vixen's takeover attempt."
"So British intelligence doesn't actually know what's in here?"
"We know the site exists. We know the information is stored in a database. We know it contains a list of tri-state area assets, and we have an idea of what some of the assets may be,unlike Vixen's lot." Her expression darkened. "What we don't know are the specifics. Like access codes."
She moved toward the basement stairs. "Report back to Vixen and swipe the database before their retrieval team arrived—that was the plan. I was meant to have a week." Her expression darkened further. "But someone tipped Vixen off that British intelligence was making moves to recover former S.T.R.I.K.E. assets overseas. They panicked and scrambled the team without warning me."
She paused at the top of the stairs. "We're on the clock now. Multiple gunshots in a suburban neighborhood—someone's already calling the police." She met my eyes again. "I need that database."
The real reason for the honesty. Necessity, not trust
"The database. Let's go." I said,heading towards the stairs.