We smell like hospital wipes when we hit the gate at four a.m.
We don't sleep. We shower in the van with wipes that sting, then drive straight to City Works—Yard Twelve. Chain-link, floodlights, stacks of pipe under tarps. A guard in a plexi booth listens to a murder podcast loud enough to rattle the glass.
Mia flashes her tablet. "Maintenance check."
"At four a.m.?" he asks.
"Crack in the seawall schedule," she says, clean tech voice. People believe it.
Juno shows her badge—one Star on the plate. Guards love Stars. Mine reads AUX with a big 0★. Probation.
The gate clicks. We roll in.
"Pier Four crate matches Yard Twelve inventory," Mia murmurs. "Missing two spools of braid, three rebar stacks, and one brace gun. Our crate was one of three."
"Inside help," Juno says.
"Help with keys and logins," Mia adds. "Ghost account moved last night—username skinned off a janitor from another yard."
We park by a warehouse painted CITY INFRASTRUCTURE in a friendly font. The paint flakes like a lie. Lark perches on the roofline, camera watching.
"Thermals show three inside," Mia says. "Two near the racks. One in the office. No city vans in the lot. That's wrong."
"Office first," Juno says.
I tweak my visor and pull a quick Kein Screen across the side door—just enough to misdirect a glance. Juno wraps finger and thumb around the lock, and Ken tensions the cylinder. The latch sighs. Door opens.
Oil, cold metal, humming fluorescents. Racks of hardware. Rebar bundles with their barcodes scraped to ghosts.
"Same scratches as the pier," Mia notes.
"Left," Juno says.
A man sits in an office chair, hood up, radio whispering. Juno crosses the room and spins the chair before his brain boots. Her knee finds his shin; her palm pins his wrist.
"Hands," she says.
Late twenties. City badge on a lanyard. Pupils pinpoint—wired. He swallows. "We're shut down. You can't be here."
"We can," Juno says. "You can talk."
"Where are your trucks?" Mia asks. "This yard doesn't move without two."
"Broken axles."
"Work orders?"
"Filed in black ink," he says, smiling like it's a joke.
Juno leans his wrist until his bones think about shouting. He hisses. "I clocked in, I stack boxes, I go home. I don't want whatever this is."
"Then who does?" Juno asks.
His eyes flick toward the warehouse. The wrong kind of calm settles on his face.
"Two by the racks," Mia reminds.
We leave him zip-cuffed to the chair and move down an aisle. Pallets. Strap ties. Banded steel. I lay a low Kein Beacon at knee height every ten feet so Lark can breadcrumb us.
Around the corner, two men in city coveralls load a dolly, a brace gun, and four boxed coils. They see us and split: one freezes, one runs.
Juno solves runners. Three fast steps, plant, body cuts the path. He skids. Her palm drops on his shoulder. Ken Disrupt melts his lift. He sinks.
I take the freezer. He's faking—eyes measuring. Dangerous one. Box cutter in one hand; off-hand fingers twitch tiny shapes. Caster.
He flicks the blade at my face and snaps a quick pattern in the air. Lights hum, then strobe.
Kein Flash—dirty pressure to the eyes. I close mine a breath early. The pop goes harmless on lids. I step left and low.
He expects the right. The cutter whispers past my ear.
Phantom Steel screams on my right, baiting him. He bites. Lunges. My real blade flicks his outer thigh, mean and shallow—spring removed. He yelps, staggers, and reaches to draw again.
I go for Gaze Trap. He looks at my shoulder. Trained. Smart.
Fine. I drag steel on concrete. The screech flexes his jaw. He glances—reflex, half a second. The trap sinks.
I move the rack upright an inch in his head. He thinks there's air. There's steel. Hip meets metal. He stuns himself. I catch his casting wrist and rotate down until tendons complain. The cutter clatters.
"Props," someone says lightly above us.
We look up.
A man in a gray rain jacket sits on a crossbeam twenty feet up like it's a park bench. Boots are hooked on a brace. No harness. Thirties, short dark hair, local accent softened by something. A tiny scar where his eyebrow should break.
"Bad posture on that wrist lock," he tells me, smiling.
"Get down," Juno says.
He laughs—friendly, not manic—hops, catches a hanging chain, slides, lands like he choreographed the floor.
"Hands," Juno says, because she says it to everyone.
He shows them. No gloves. Silver ring from thumb to index knuckle—thin, nothing-looking.
"Three more heat sigs outside the back roll-up," Mia says, calm. "One carries a launcher."
"Foam or smoke," I guess.
"Hi," the man says to Juno. "I'm Rao."
Names matter. He drops his like a coin and waits for the spin.
"Hands higher," Juno says.
He lifts them and looks at me. "Kein primary," he says. "You smell like it."
"You watch a lot of Board training vids?"
"More than you'd think." He nods at the dolly. "Good night to come shopping."
"City property," Mia says. "Return policy is strict."
"The Board confiscated the Pier Four crate," he says. "This is a replacement. Civic service."
"Who's 'we'?" Juno asks.
"You'll label us anyway." He flicks his eyes to the tied men. "Some tried to do this clean. Some didn't."
Juno steps half-left, cutting his exits.
"Back door," Mia says. "Three outside. One with a tube."
Rao tips his head at the ceiling. "I like you, Board types. You write everything down. You trust your chain. Very… organized."
"Turn," Juno says.
He turns. Not tense. Stands like he's in a line he drew last night.
I step with a zip tie. His thumb and finger pinch. The silver ring clicks.
A pellet pops between us. Kein Smoke blossoms into a waist-high wall with a chemical tang. Not real. Your body flinches anyway. Mine flinches just enough.
Juno lunges into the haze. Her hand finds a collar—his jacket, not him. He twists, uses the chain as a pivot, slips free.
He tosses a can under the dolly. Mia kicks, too late. Foam blooms, spreads, hardens. The brace gun, the dolly, and Juno's boot glue to concrete.
"Cut," Juno says, calm.
I crouch and slice her laces. Foam gums my edge. City loves foam that kills tools. The blade fights through.
Rao is already past the next rack, moving low and fast.
I throw a Phantom Steel shriek ahead of him. He doesn't bite. He's trained against sound baits. That thought is cold.
"Back roll-up," Mia repeats. "They're coming in."
The roll-up clatters. A can bounces in, spewing white vapor. Smoke. Our visors go to static and recover while filters shift.
"Lark to flood," Mia says. LEDs blaze. Light eats smoke. Shadows jump.
Rao glances at the glare—just enough. Eyes meet mine for half a breath.
Gaze Trap. I push the aisle edge two inches right.
He short-steps, stumbles a blip, palms a crossbar, goes vertical. I slash at his ankle. He folds his leg; I take the cloth, not the tendon. He grunts—first sound that isn't a word.
"Nice," he says, and flows over the rack.
Juno rips free of foam, loses the boot, and sprints the long way. She doesn't jump. She runs through.
Two figures in masks pop the roll-up. One sprays smoke, one paints the aisle with marking dye. Our chest cams bloom red.
"Board footage," Rao calls, closer to daylight. "Always the best angle."
I cut right down a parallel aisle and dive. My hand finds his jacket. He sheds it like snakeskin. Concrete kisses my shoulder.
He stops. Actually stops. Looks down at me. Could run. Doesn't. Leaves a line on purpose.
"Look where the anchors hum," he says, friendly. "Not where your bosses point."
Same rhythm as last night. Different noun.
"Zann?" I blurt, stupid. The name falls out of my mouth before training tackles it.
Rao reads my badge. DILHEVIA sits there like a scar.
He smiles, not unkind. "You'll catch him if you stop chasing his shadow."
Then he's under the roll-up into bright yard light, smoke cover, paint rounds bursting on his back like flowers. He doesn't care. The tube man tags our cams for show and runs.
Juno hits the door and would follow into open ground, but Mia's hand is on her shoulder. "No zone," she says.
Right. Combat tags end at the warehouse. Outside, Ken-touch becomes a felony unless we flag the area, and flagging pings the Board. Kade loves pings.
Juno breathes twice, hard. She doesn't break laws. She memorizes them and fights inside them. It's her hard thing.
She punches the roll-up—just enough to make metal complain—and looks at me. "You good?"
"Fine," I lie. Shoulder hums. "Got his jacket."
The jacket's light, the lining stitched wrong—and a warning ping hits Mia's feed: three more signatures circling the yard.