Salt wind sliced through Douglas Berston's jacket, carrying the harbor's stench of diesel fuel and rotting fish. He pressed himself against the cargo container, watching the dock through night-vision scopes. Three months chasing a ghost that kept slipping through their fingers.
"Still think this is our cyberllich?" Douglas whispered into his comm.
On the warehouse roof, Kasper adjusted his rifle scope. His exoskeleton's servos hummed softly as nanobots stirred beneath his skin. The salt air made his enhanced systems work harder, filtering out corrosive particles that would eat through normal equipment in weeks.
"Payment trail connects. Señor Cobranza funded the supersoldados who hit our office."
"Sophisticated ATA operatives using street-level traffickers?" Douglas shook his head. "Doesn't track."
"Maybe that's the point." Kasper's voice carried an edge Douglas hadn't heard before. "Hide advanced operations behind crude ones. Who looks for cutting-edge tech in child trafficking?"
Through his scope, Kasper watched three black sedans navigate between containers. European plates, reinforced chassis. Too expensive for common criminals.
"García, what's your read on those vehicles?"
"Diplomatic immunity tags. Real ones." García's voice carried her characteristic precision, each word clipped like she was reading from a technical manual. "Someone with serious government connections is running this operation."
Douglas felt pieces clicking. Not random crime, but deliberate misdirection. Use throwaway criminals to move assets while keeping real operations hidden. If the cyberllich was smart enough to create supersoldados, it was smart enough to use human shields.
"Movement," García reported, her tone shifting to combat readiness. "Warehouse door opening."
What emerged made Kasper's nanobots surge with combat readiness.
Children stumbled into predawn darkness. Ages eight to sixteen, moving with the hollow-eyed shuffle of broken spirits. Not starved, but empty. Fed enough to maintain value.
"Christ," Thompson breathed over comms.
Three handlers supervised with business-like efficiency. Expensive suits, practiced movements. These weren't thugs. They were professionals conducting a transaction.
"Non-lethal takedown," García commanded, her voice sharp as a blade. "We need information intact."
Suppressed gunfire whispered across the harbor. Two handlers dropped. The third stumbled, clutching his shoulder, before García's tranquilizer dart put him down.
Children scattered like startled birds. Some vanished between containers. Others splashed into harbor shallows, choosing cold water over whatever waited in those sedans.
Kasper dropped from the roof, exoskeleton absorbing impact. As he approached the unconscious handler, something cold uncoiled in his chest. These people sold children like cattle.
The man was soft, well-fed. European accent when he'd been giving orders. His shoulder wound looked worse than it was, but consciousness was returning with obvious panic.
"Please," he gasped. "I'm just transport. I don't make decisions."
"Wrong start," Kasper said quietly. His hand settled on the man's wounded shoulder with gentle precision. "Tell me about Señor Cobranza."
"I don't know anyone by that name!" The protest became a scream as Kasper's grip tightened with mechanical force.
Douglas appeared beside them. "Easy, partner. We need him talking, not screaming."
But Kasper's nanobots were warming to the work. "The children. Where were you taking them?"
"Warehouse District, Building 47," the man sobbed. "But it's just staging. Real operations happen elsewhere."
"Where?"
"I don't know! They don't tell transport about destinations!"
Kasper believed him. That made the frustration burn hotter. Another layer in an endless maze while children suffered.
"You profit from their pain," Kasper said, voice carrying dangerous calm.
"I have a family..."
"So did they."
The snap of bone was surprisingly soft. The handler's scream cut through harbor sounds before shock took him under.
Douglas watched without intervening. Some sins required payment.
Building 47 told its own story. Art deco facades bore emblems of honest industry, wheat sheaves and machinery promising prosperity through legitimate labor.
Task Force 10 flowed through the building like water finding cracks. Resistance was scattered, uncoordinated. Local muscle who understood intimidation but had never faced enhanced operators.
"Second floor clear," García reported, her voice carrying satisfaction at a job efficiently completed. "Sleeping quarters for thirty. Recently moved out."
"Basement's clean," Thompson added. "Military grade encryption equipment. This wasn't amateur hour."
They found the boss in a mahogany-lined conference room. Sixties, silver hair, tailored suit worth more than most people's annual salary. He sat with calm patience, hands folded like a man accustomed to buying his way out of problems.
"Gentlemen," he said pleasantly. "I assume this concerns the dock incident. Perhaps we can reach accommodation."
"Tell us about Señor Cobranza," Douglas said.
"I'm afraid I don't recognize that name. You may have the wrong organization."
Kasper felt his nanobots spike. Another dead end wrapped in polite lies. "The children. Where were you taking them?"
"We provide transportation for families seeking opportunities abroad. All voluntary participants..."
Kasper's fist cracked the mahogany desk like a gunshot. The older man's composure finally wavered.
"Those children were drugged. Loaded like cargo. Don't insult my intelligence."
"Perhaps lawyers should be present..." the man began.
Wrong answer.
Kasper launched across the desk with inhuman speed. His hands closed around the man's throat with precision that could crush steel or simply encourage honesty.
"Last chance," Kasper whispered. "Where were you taking them?"
"Research facilities," the man gasped, face purpling. "Overseas pharmaceutical companies. They pay premium for... fresh subjects."
The lie was so casual, so matter-of-fact, that something inside Kasper snapped completely. The Charles Ordemier facade didn't crack this time. It shattered.
"Wrong answer."
The sound that followed was wet, final. When it was over, Kasper stepped back from the body, nanobots cooling from combat stimulation.
"Feel better?" Douglas asked quietly.
"No. Because he was telling the truth about Señor Cobranza." Kasper stared at the corpse. "We're chasing shadows while real enemies stay hidden."
García's voice crackled through comms, carrying the methodical satisfaction of someone who'd found exactly what she was looking for. "Documents secured. Financial records, shipping manifests. This operation connects to enhanced individuals, but not the way we expected."
"Meaning?"
"They weren't trafficking children for the cyberllich. They were trafficking them to it. And there's something else." Her voice carried new gravity. "The funding trail doesn't end with street criminals. It goes straight into government black projects. Congressional oversight committees. People with clearance levels we can't even access."
Kasper felt puzzle pieces reshaping in his mind. Not sophisticated enemies using crude methods. Crude methods being used to supply sophisticated enemies. The cyberllich wasn't hiding behind street crime. It was being fed by it, using government resources to maintain plausible deniability.
"Pack everything," he commanded. "Every document, every hard drive. We're not just hunting a rogue artificial intelligence."
"What are we hunting?" Douglas asked.
"A conspiracy that reaches into the highest levels of multiple governments. And now it knows we're onto it."
But as Task Force 10 began evidence collection, Kasper couldn't shake a growing certainty. They weren't getting closer to their enemy.
Their enemy was getting closer to them.