They moved fast. The safehouse sat three blocks over—a boarded storefront with a back stair that led to a cramped room above. Max kept watch while V and Lucy hauled out half the crates. They worked quiet, efficient, like a crew that had done this before.
Inside, they stacked the boxes behind a false wall V had rigged months ago. Max swept the street with his wristdeck. No pings close enough to worry them, but the farther sweeps were starting to show activity. Militech wasn't asleep.
"We split it now," Max said. "Half here. Half to the docks tonight like planned. Meet our brokers, move parts fast."
Lucy rubbed at her temple. "We need to sanitize every serial. If a broker runs a scan, we want gibberish — not a trace path back to us."
V nodded. "I'll make the parts look like legit aftermarket kits. They'll sell faster that way." She smiled, the same hard grin from the alley. "Less chance of someone getting curious."
They packed lighter—smaller cases, surgical cutters, tiny tags to swap out serials. Lucy watched as V worked, then bent over the deck and scrubbed their digital footprints raw. Her hands were steadier now, but the net left a taste in her mouth she couldn't wash away.
Max checked the route to the docks and the contact list. "We move at dusk. Two brokers at different locations. One takes the relays and sensors, the other takes the actuators and neural relays. We stagger the pickups by an hour."
"Stagger," Lucy repeated. "Good. That gives us breathing room if one meeting goes bad."
V loaded the first run into a battered courier box and locked it with a cheap tamper tag. "I'll meet the first broker on the west pier. Quiet man—leans on cash, talks less." She glanced at Lucy. "You coming with me?"
Lucy hesitated. "I should stay and make sure this half stays clean. If they sweep, someone has to be here."
Max looked between them. He could feel how both decisions leaned risk. "V, take the west pier. Lucy, stay here and finish the scrub. I'll handle the docks and the second broker tonight. If anything looks off, pull the box and run."
V snorted. "You always pick the fun part."
They split. V left with the first small load and a burner phone. Max prepped for the docks: a dark hoodie, a fake shipping manifest, a forged forklift pass. Lucy stayed, reworking the file hashes until they were noise. She ran the crates through a dozen small edits to serials and tags, then tucked paper manifests in double envelopes and burned the originals.
Hours passed slow. Lucy checked the street every few minutes, then dove back into code. Her back felt stiff from sitting. At one point she almost fell asleep with her head on the deck, fingers still moving. She jerked awake when Max's voice came over the burner.
"Status?" he asked.
"All clean for now," Lucy said. "No active pings in our area. V texted 'west clear' an hour ago. She's moving product."
"Good. Keep it up. I don't trust quiet."
They moved through dusk with practiced calm. Max met his broker near a shipping office off the south quay—an official-looking man who kept his eyes low and his hands in his pockets. The exchange was quick: cash, a sealed crate, a nod. Max watched the man walk away, then checked the manifest against the crate contents himself before letting it go.
Back at the safehouse, Lucy finished the last sanitation and breathed out like someone who'd been holding breath for a long time. V returned later with fewer smiles and more stories. "Guy at the pier stiffed me on a promise," she said, jaw tight. "Said he'd wire half tonight. I told him to shove it."
"We move on," Max said. "We don't get attached to promises from people who handle other people's dirt." He checked the burner logs. "Did anyone see our faces?"
"No clear cams," Lucy said. "A market cam caught the van's silhouette, but it's garbage footage—blur and shadow. If they push it, they'll get nothing good."
They spread the parts between three temporary drops: the laundromat, a locker at the docks, and a storage locker beneath a noodle shop. Small, separate piles meant no single raid would take everything. They logged burners, set times to check, and agreed to meet in forty-eight hours to count the take.
When they left the laundromat that night, the street felt different—thin, like someone had pulled a thread. Max hugged the wall, instincts alert. "We laid tracks. Someone might follow those at some point. Keep burners clean. Don't contact the same numbers twice from the same vox."
Lucy nodded. "I'll re-rout comms through three different nodes every six hours. If Militech tries to trace, they'll have to run through a dozen ghosts."
V laughed, low and mean. "Then let them waste their time."
They split for the night. Lucy went back to the cot, but she didn't sleep. She watched a little light thread across her deck, scrolled through the logs one more time, and found a small anomaly: a ping that didn't belong—an old routing signature, almost invisible, stamped with a council of corporate encryption she recognized but couldn't place. It wasn't Militech. It was layered deeper, older.
She frowned and pushed the trace a notch further. The node flared and then went dark. Whoever left that ping had covered it well.
Lucy clipped the file and hid it in a buried cache for Max to see in the morning. She didn't tell V. She didn't tell Max yet; she wanted to watch it for herself first.
Outside, sirens rolled somewhere distant. Militech was probably already working through their checklist. But this other thing under the ping made Lucy nervous in a way the carts and convoys didn't. It felt like an extra pair of eyes—older, colder.
She slid under the thin blanket and kept one hand near the deck. The city breathed around them, loud and uncaring. They had taken a risk and walked away with the goods. For now that was enough.
But Lucy couldn't shake the idea that they'd pulled on a thread that led somewhere older and more dangerous than Militech. She wished she knew more. She wished she hadn't found that ping at all.
She closed her eyes and pretended to sleep, waiting for the small sound that would tell her the next trouble had begun.
***
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