The sound drew closer, no longer a jog but an unhurried stride, deliberate, as if meant to be heard. James shifted his stance, angling himself to block the narrow path ahead while keeping one shoulder toward me.
The tunnel's overhead light hummed and flickered, shadows jerking along the concrete walls. Between those beats of light, the drag of a hand scraped across brick, slow and purposeful.
A tall man emerged from the dim, a dark overcoat hanging damp around his legs, hair cropped close, jaw rough with stubble. In his right hand, a steel pipe caught the weak light.
James didn't move. "You're a long way from your block, Oren."
The man's smile stayed tight. "Word is you've been holding something… valuable." His gaze settled on me, heavy enough to make my skin tense. "And I like valuable things."
"Turn around," James said, voice calm, weight forward.
Oren tapped the pipe against the wall, sharp in the still air. "Can't go back empty-handed."
James' coat shifted, something heavier inside. "Decide what you'd rather lose, your pride, or your teeth."
Silence stretched. Oren's eyes flicked to the case in my hand, then back to James. He stepped forward; James matched him, space tightening like a drawn wire.
Oren stopped under the next pool of light. "You'll run out of safe places eventually."
"Not tonight," James said.
Oren gave a slow, unreadable nod and stepped back, lowering the pipe. Without another word, he walked past us toward the gate, footsteps fading.
James waited until the sound was gone. "We move," he said. "That was a probe. Next time, it won't be a test."
The tunnel swallowed Oren's footsteps until there was only the hum of the light and the damp in the walls. James waited another five breaths, counting them without sound, then touched my elbow.
"Move," he said.
We took the bend to the left, then another to the right, the passage narrowing until the concrete brushed my sleeve. A sliver of daylight showed ahead, thin and chalky through a grated outlet. James tested the grate with two fingers, lifted it clean, and slid out first. I followed with the case, the cold air pinching my lungs after the tunnel's stale warmth.
We came up in a service alcove behind the warehouse row, brick to one side, corrugated metal to the other, a run of dumpsters standing like squat guards along the lane. The city was awake but not loud, trucks snorting at the far end, a forklift beep puncturing the morning at even intervals. Every sound felt like it belonged to someone else.
"Letters," I said, keeping my voice low.
James nodded once, already moving. We cut along the back wall until a painted H loomed above a steel door. He didn't reach for it. He watched the hinge pins, the jamb, the sweep of dust at the threshold.
"First door tells the story," he murmured. "Second door is the one we believe."
A keypad sat to the right, scarred from hard weather. James covered it with his palm, pressed four keys in sequence, and the lock clicked without complaint. Inside smelled like paper and cold ink. A defunct print shop, presses hulking under gray tarps, floor paint worn to the concrete by years of carts.
He didn't take the main aisle. He threaded through the machines, head turned just enough to catch the shine of a camera dome above the office cubicles. A red LED blinked, steady, patient.
"New install," he said. "Someone cares."
"Us," I said, and the word landed like grit.
We reached a narrow hallway that cut behind the presses. At the end, a fire door waited, paint bubbled by old heat, a brass bar worn smooth. The second door. James put his ear to it, listening not for voices but for the breath of the building beyond. He pressed the bar, let the door open a finger's width, and looked through the gap with a handheld mirror he drew from his inside pocket.
"Stairs," he said. "Half flight down, full flight up. Two ways out."
We slipped through. The stairwell smelled of damp concrete and a bleach cleaner that did not quite erase the mildew. Footprints tracked the dust on the steps, fresh, not many, heel tread sharp. James crouched, touched a mark with two fingers, then looked at the underside of the next step. A tiny bead of epoxy glinted where wood met metal.
"Trip line?" I whispered.
"Counting, not detonating," he said. "They want logs, not bodies."
He snapped the filament with the edge of a key and kept moving. Half a flight down, a steel door was chained from the other side. Upward, the echo of voices ghosted through the handrail, just enough consonants to know men, not enough words to make sense. He pointed up. I tightened my grip on the case and followed.
We paused at the landing below the next door. James flattened his palm to it, feeling vibrations. Nothing. He cracked it an inch. Through the slit I saw a corridor of storage cages, chain link doors padlocked, canvas covers hiding shapes that could have been anything. Fluorescent light washed everything in a flat, honest glare that made the shadows seem more stubborn.
He slid through first, then waved me in. We took a right, feet soft on painted concrete, the smell of metal shelving and old dust in my nose. Somewhere back near the stairwell, a door opened with the sound of a tired hinge. Voices lifted, just a touch. James increased pace, still controlled, never rushing.
A figure passed the end of the aisle ahead, not seeing us, a clipboard in his hand and a pistol at his hip, the kind that comes with a holster someone wears like a habit. James stopped where the aisle intersected, angled the mirror again, and pointed down, two fingers pressed flat. We ducked, listening as the man's shoes ticked on concrete, countable, steady.
When his steps faded, we took the cross aisle and found what we needed. Another fire door, unmarked, paint newer than the walls around it. James tried the handle. Stuck. He slid the thin shim from his wallet, teased the latch, and the door sighed open onto a loading platform half a story above a delivery court.
Fresh air hit my face, diesel and wet cardboard. Out in the court, a box truck idled with its ramp down. No driver in the cab. No loaders in sight. Too neat.
"Trap?" I asked.
"Stage," James said. "They want us to step into the light."
"Then we do not."
He scanned the upper brickwork, found a run of rusty ladder pegs set into the wall, and pointed. We crossed the platform, he tested the first peg with his weight, then climbed, quiet as the building's breath. The case made the climb awkward, but he steadied my wrist when the metal flexed. On the roof, the city unfolded in flat planes, gravel crunching underfoot, vents sending up little streams of warm air that smelled like soap and machine oil.
James kept low and moved toward the far parapet. He peeked over. "Two at the court mouth," he said. "Tall and careful. Nichole's mirror."
The radio in his coat, the cheap one, hissed once, then settled. No voice. Just a burr of static, like someone touching a wire with a fingertip.
He cut the volume and looked at me. "We cross roof to roof, two buildings, drop to a stair on the north side. Quiet. If anything moves behind us, we do not stop to ask names."
"Understood," I said, and meant it.
We ran the line of the parapet, staying low, hands brushing tar and gravel. The gap to the next roof was a stride and a half. He jumped first, light, then turned and reached. I passed the case and took the jump, shoes slipping half an inch before the grit caught. On the second building, vents made a little maze. He used them like cover, checking angles, never giving the street a sightline longer than a breath.
At the far corner, a metal hatch sat cracked under a cement block. James lifted it, checked the ladder shaft, then climbed down. The stairwell below smelled cool and unused. We took two flights, turned a corner, and reached a maintenance door with a wired glass window. Through it I saw an alley narrow as a memory, the kind that eats sound.
Before he opened it, a text blinked onto the face-down phone he had made me carry. One word from an unknown number, all caps.
UP.
He looked at me, then the door, then the fire escape that zigzagged the wall above the alley. "She is either helping," he said, "or she wants us where we are easier to see."
"What do you think," I asked.
"I think we keep the choice ours." He pocketed the phone, set his hand on the bar, and waited, listening not to the alley but to the building itself.
"On three," he said. "Two, one."
James pushed the bar, the door easing open without a sound. The alley beyond was dim, light filtering only where it could squeeze between the buildings. The smell of rain-soaked asphalt hung in the air, mingled with the faint reek of old trash and the sharper tang of diesel.
He stepped out first, scanning both ends before motioning me forward. The fire escape above creaked, a sound too deliberate to be wind. James froze, hand slipping inside his coat.
A shadow shifted high on the rusted metal. Not large, not rushing, watching. James' eyes tracked it without looking away from the alley ahead.
"Stay close," he murmured, moving us toward the darker end where a chain-link fence loomed. He didn't slow, vaulting the fence with a quiet efficiency, landing light on the far side. I followed, the case dragging at my arm.
We slipped into another service lane, this one narrower, the walls damp and close enough to scrape our shoulders. Somewhere above, footsteps moved, matching our pace.
"They're pushing us," James said under his breath.
"To where?"
"That's what we find out, before they do."
The service lane opened into a small, littered yard hemmed in by high brick. No exits. James didn't break stride, he headed straight for the shadow of a metal dumpster, pressing his back to the wall beside it. I followed, pulse hammering, the case slick in my grip.
The footsteps above slowed. A shape leaned over the parapet, silhouetted against the dim skyline. I couldn't make out the features, but the tilt of the head said they were looking for something, us.
James waited, every line of him coiled but still, until the shape shifted away. Then he moved, skimming the wall to a half-rotted door set into the brick. One shoulder into it and we were inside, dust, stale air, and the faint hum of a building's sleeping power systems closing around us.
"Where are we?" I whispered.
"Old substation," he said, voice low. "No one's supposed to have the keys. Which means anyone else here is not supposed to be here."
We moved down a narrow corridor lined with breaker panels, the only light bleeding in from a cracked window high above. Somewhere deep in the building, metal clanged, once, then again, like someone working a latch.
James' hand hovered near his coat. "Stay close to my left. If they force the pace, you follow my feet, not my eyes."
I swallowed hard, nodding. He started forward again, and I knew whatever we stepped into next would not give us time to think.