I take my jacket and close the door. The corridor is quiet. On weekend mornings there is usually no one around. This time the elevator is working, but I still prefer to take the stairs. Habit.
When I get into the car, the weather is gray. Chicago mornings are always like this. As if the city has not fully woken up yet. I start the engine. There is less traffic on the road than I expected. Most people are still at home.
As I get closer to the harbor, trucks begin to appear. Long trailers carrying containers, rusty semis, workers trying to make it to the morning shift. I park the car on a street a little away from the harbor. I do not want to go directly inside. Sometimes the best way to understand a place is to watch it from outside first.
I get out of the car. The cold wind hits my face. I buy coffee in a paper cup from a nearby coffee cart. The man does not know me, but I can tell that he thinks I am someone who works in the harbor area. I take a sip of the coffee and start walking.
I enter the harbor. I walk along the general line of the harbor toward the explosion area. I can hear birds too, but the noise here is louder. This is a strange place. Noisy. The metallic sound of the cranes, the brakes of the trucks, that heavy sound the containers make when they are set down on the ground. My coffee finishes and I throw the paper cup into a trash can. I have no intention of being one of those bastards who throw it into the sea.
I get closer to the area where the explosion happened. This used to be an ordinary corner of the harbor. Now everyone is looking at the same point. I see curious eyes and people talking from one ear to another while looking at this place.
Police tape has been pulled around it. The yellow tape moves lightly in the wind. From outside, the area looks small, but as I get closer I understand that the damage spread to the surroundings. There are burn marks on the concrete ground. Some places have turned black. The center of the explosion is obvious; right in the middle there is a circular darkening and metal fragments scattered around it.
I still see police officers on duty inside. I take one step and show my ID. Officially I am not on duty today, but I do not need to make up an excuse to be here. People who see the ID usually do not ask questions. If they do, they ask them inside their own heads.
"Do not touch anything," the officer on duty says. "And do not take photos."
I am not going to take photos anyway. My photo is inside my head. The bikers. The black bag. Laura Hensley and Travis. We know they brought the bomb here. The real question is this: why exactly here?
What we call the center of the explosion is actually between two rows of containers. Like a narrow corridor where people walk through and forklifts turn. There are a few injured people, but no one dead. If a "target" was going to be chosen, a more visible point would be chosen. A point that would make more noise.
But this place... as if it was chosen to hide something from the crowd. I bend down and examine the pieces on the ground. Most of them are ordinary. Screws, bolts, metal pieces. A piece broken off from a container lock. It could be part of a forklift. It could have fallen from some carrying apparatus. But some of the pieces are not ordinary. There is a smooth-surfaced metal carrying burn marks. It does not look like the others. As if it was cut more cleanly. More "manufactured."
I touch it with my fingertips. The metal is not hot. I look around. No one is paying special attention to me. Everyone is busy with their own work. I carefully pick up the metal. Heavy. Not thin like a container sheet. Denser. There are scratches on it. One side is burned. The other side is relatively clean. I turn it over. And at that moment, I see the writing.
A-01
For a moment my brain stops. This looks like a serial number. But container pieces are not marked like this. Harbor equipment is generally not marked like this either. I do not say the word that comes to the tip of my tongue. Because thinking out loud here is dangerous.
I turn the metal again and look at the burned side. There is a small connection point on the edge. As if it fits into something. It could be a cable slot.
Before putting the metal back on the ground, I look around. I read the writing one more time.
A-01
I carefully leave the metal where it was before anyone sees that I touched it. Just as I am standing up, I see a symbol on the side of the container next to it. A black spiral. At first I think it is part of a burn mark. Then I understand that it is not. This is not a mark. It is a symbol made on purpose. Helix's symbol.
I get closer to the symbol. I do not touch it with my fingertips, I only look at it closely. Without meaning to, I lift my head and look around. At people's faces. I cannot focus on anyone. I start wondering even more why it exploded here.
I get closer to the explosion area and bend down to the ground. I look at the dents formed by the explosion on the containers on both sides. But some of these dents are larger than the size that could be caused by bomb fragments hitting them. I take three steps back. First I look around. There are many dents, but they may have existed before too. Then I look at the ground. On the blackened concrete I see some scratches. Deep scratches. They look like drag marks of something heavy.
I call out to one of the police officers.
"Was something big taken from the scene?"
The officer looks at the file in his hand.
"Only the pieces that might have fingerprints on them and the parts of the bomb that could be collected were taken for examination."
"Thank you," I say.
I stand up and step outside the yellow tape. I think I will not be able to find any more evidence here. As I walk toward the harbor exit, many question marks spin inside my head.
I get closer to the exit. There is a large warehouse ahead. The wide door of the warehouse opens and a forklift comes out from inside. Two men come out behind it. The door is facing me, but inside is too dark for me to see anything. One of the men lights a cigarette while the other talks to the man driving the forklift and gives him cash. As the forklift moves away, I think, "Was the thickness of the money he gave too much?" But maybe it is a bulk payment. I do not know forklift fees.
There are twenty steps left between us and I keep walking. The man who gave the money closes the door of the warehouse and takes out his phone. He calls someone. The person he calls answers the phone late.
"Helix's container is ready to be sent."
He hangs up.
My eyebrows frown. Helix appears in front of me again. I stop next to a container and watch them. For a moment the man who gave the money lifts his head and looks around. His eyes come toward where I am, but he does not notice me. People usually do not really see what they look at. The man smoking throws the cigarette butt to the ground and crushes it with his foot. The door opens again and they go inside.
No one is looking at me. I start walking. Not fast. People who hurry draw attention. I try to walk like someone who works here. I come to the door. I take one step inside. The sound that comes out when my foot touches the concrete floor makes a short echo in the warehouse. I stop for one second and listen. It seems like no one noticed.
The area inside is big. There is an office in the back left corner. The fluorescent lamps hanging from the ceiling are lit irregularly throughout the warehouse. Some of them are flickering. A forklift moves slowly inside the warehouse. I move behind a container without being seen by it.
There are hundreds of containers stacked on top of each other in the warehouse. I start walking between them. As I go further back, the light coming from outside decreases. There are old oil stains on the concrete floor. The smell of metal and diesel is settled into the air. I stop next to a container. The spiral symbol is here too.
I place my hand on the metal surface. Cold. I see a serial number, but the number does not fit the standard container format. I take a picture of it, but nothing can be seen. I think that I cannot take a photo with flash and make a note on my phone. Just then, voices come from ahead. By reflex I pull back between the containers. The same two men from before are approaching while talking.
"…it needed to leave before noon."
"The plan changed."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
I guess it is related to Helix, but I cannot understand it. The men pass by me, but they do not see me. I watch them from between the containers. One of them stops in front of a small panel. He takes a card from his pocket and scans it. A short "beep" sound comes from the panel. The lock of the container loosens with a mechanical sound, the cover opens a little. One of the men holds the door and opens it completely and they go inside.
Because the cover stays on the opposite side, I cannot see inside. Some sounds come from inside. Then the men come back out. The cover closes again. The man with the card locks the panel. The two of them walk out of the warehouse without talking. The metal sound of the door is heard again. The warehouse becomes quiet again.
I do not leave my place for a while. Then I slowly go next to the container. The panel is still there. Card reader. I put my hand on the edge of the cover. I do not know what is inside. I also know that I should not be here right now. But still I need to look inside.
I immediately take out my phone. I call Adam Murphy, who gave me his number the other day.
"Hello?" he answers the phone.
"Adam, it's me, Ethan," I whisper.
"Oh Ethan, what are you doing?" he asks. "Also why are you whispering?"
"I urgently need something from you. You said you work with the technical team. I am standing in front of a container right now and I need to get inside, but it only opens with a card. Can you open it?" I ask, whispering, but sometimes my voice comes out too loud while speaking.
"Which container? What is inside?" he asks question after question.
"I have absolutely no time right now. I will explain everything to you later, but right now you have to tell me whether you can open it or not," I say.
"There should be a cable input behind the card reader. I think it will most likely be type-c. Can you find it?"
I feel around a little, look over it, right and left. I bend below it.
"Yes, I found it."
"You need to connect your phone there with a cable," he says.
"Fuck. I don't have a cable with me. Can't we do it another way?" I say.
"The only way I can do it without coming there is this," he says.
The office comes to my mind.
"I'll call you back in a little while. Don't put your phone away," I say and hang up.
I immediately try to move secretly toward the office from between the containers. I see the office in front of me, but I will need to pass through an open area. I go next to the wall and approach the office door with quiet but fast steps. I open the door, go inside, and slowly close the door back.
The lighting in this fucking office is too good and everywhere is glass. If someone looks inside from outside, they will notice me immediately. I start moving by crawling on the floor. The office consists of two rooms. I go behind the desk in the first office and start searching the drawers. Flash drives, old-style CDs, documents, receipts, I even find a condom, but there is no fucking cable.
I crawl into the second office. Designed the same way. Two different offices that are copies of each other. Strange. Again I go behind the desk and search the drawers and it is not here either.
I stand up in the doorway between the two offices. There is no one by the windows in front of me. They cannot see me from the windows on my right and left. The window behind me looks outside the warehouse.
I look around thinking about what I am going to do. There it is. Under one of the windows in the first office there is a charger plugged into the outlet. I crawl to get it. Just as I pull it from the outlet, the door opens. A big, bald, bearded man enters the office.
In a loud voice he says, "What are you doing there?" and starts coming toward me.
From the man's accent it is obvious that he is Russian. He grabs me by the collar with both hands and lifts me up. He pulls his right hand away from my collar and draws it back and throws a punch. The skin above my cheekbone splits and blood starts to flow. He draws back his right hand again. He is going to throw another punch.
Before he can throw it, I grab the thumb of his left hand and break it by twisting it in the opposite direction with all my strength. At the same time I kick his testicles with my right foot and get behind him and cover his mouth so he cannot shout. I take the hole punch from the desk and hit him on the head. I do not hit very hard. I do not intend to kill him, I only want to knock him out. Nothing happens to the man. I raise it, hit him again. Still he does not pass out. Son of a bitch built like a stallion. He throws an elbow toward my nose, I bend my head a little forward and it hits my forehead. I stagger one step back. At that moment, while the man turns toward me and gets to his feet, I drive the hole punch very hard into the area between his forehead and ear. The man falls to the ground. I check his pulse. He is alive.
I sit on one knee on the side where the door does not open. If someone comes after hearing the sound, I will have to take him down too. I wait thirty or forty seconds. No one comes. I open the door and again go next to the wall and pass to the other side.
I connect one end of the cable to my phone and the other end to the card reader. I call Adam.
"Did you find it?" he asks.
"I found it," I say. "What do I do now?"
"Great. I'm sending you a file," he says.
The file arrives.
"Open the file," he says.
I open it and a percentage bar starts filling on the screen.
"What's happening?" I ask.
"Shhh, just wait for the magic to happen," he says.
I wait without saying anything. The bar fills, numbers start appearing, and after about one minute the lock of the container loosens with a mechanical sound and the cover opens a little.
"Abracadabra," Adam says.
"Thank you. I owe you one. I have to go," I say and hang up without waiting for him to answer.
I hold the door and open it enough for me to pass and go inside. I do not close the door completely, but leave it near closing. It is dark inside. The fluorescent light from the warehouse leaks weakly inside, but still I cannot see anything. I take out my phone and turn on the light.
For a moment I flinch at what I see. At first it looks like a metal skeleton. Then I understand that it is a machine. But machine is not the right word. More like... a human made of metal. About human height. Its body is slim but looks strong. The joints of the arms and legs are not connected with hydraulics, but with a more compact system. There is a closed panel on its chest. The head part is not round. More angular. On the front there is a black glass surface.
For a moment I stand motionless. This is not cargo. This is a robot. It is fixed to a metal platform inside the container. Cables are connected to its body. Prepared for transport. I take one more step closer. I see a small symbol on the panel on the chest. Again the black spiral. I bring my hand close to the robot's arm. The metal surface is smooth. There is a little dust on it, but it is obvious that it was newly made.
I raise the phone a little higher. The light hits the black glass surface on the head part. The glass reflects the light back. I cannot see inside. They could be its "eyes." I take one step back. I bring the phone light toward its chest. At that moment, something very small happens. So small that at first I am not even sure. The robot's head turns at a small angle toward where I am standing. I freeze. My breath stops halfway. Maybe it only looked like that because I moved. I hold the phone steady. I wait a little. Nothing happens. The robot is again completely motionless. A slow breath comes out of my throat. I shake my head at myself.
"Don't be ridiculous," I whisper.
A metal machine does not move on its own. Especially not with the electricity connection like this.
I step back a little and look at the head part again. And at that moment I notice it. Different from the point it looked at a moment ago. The angle of the head has changed. Very little, but changed. I slowly bring the phone light toward the glass part on its head. I see my own reflection on the black glass surface. And inside the glass, a very small red dot. It is not blinking, it is just there. As if looking at me. A chill runs through me. I want to get out of here as soon as possible. That is when I notice the writing.
I lower the phone light back to the robot's chest. I wipe the dust on its chest with my hand. And I see the serial number:
A-02