Session Two — The Depot

Inside the fence, a little after three in the morning, with the trucks rolling at four. The crew had a work order nobody had checked and a network junction nobody had thought about since the fabs closed.

Taking it apart

Mercy went in through the junction first, established a link she was confident would not lead back to her, and looped a minute of camera footage — sound as well as picture — so the yard team could work unwatched. Killing the alarms around the vehicles was harder. Somebody started hunting for her trace almost immediately.

Out in the yard, Shine and Dread stood next to the trucks and argued with each other like supervisors, loudly and at length, which is the oldest way there is to be ignored. Behind them ATP worked.

The trucks turned out to be electric, which killed the obvious approach, so she went at the valve stems and the fuses instead — cut the stems so the tires cannot be reinflated without pulling them off, and reseated fuses in the wrong slots. She had the blueprints for all of it. She had lifted them during a managerial meeting, some years ago, for no particular reason at the time. The plows took longer: hydraulic lines opened, air let into them.

When the security node needed to die and nobody could find anything heavy enough to break it, Mercy went back into the building's climate system and drove the room to ninety degrees until the hardware gave up.

The air fleet they did not break at all. Mercy took the drones' control frequency off Argus and pointed it at Dread's pirate band. When PMG calls them in the morning, nothing will come.

Only the command-and-control vehicle held out. That one went wrong, and ATP's EMP grenade — rigged to fire when a helicopter raised its landing gear — went off hours early instead.

What it cost them

Nothing in that yard is moving at four. No trucks, no plows, no drones, no air. Whatever Carrion meant to do to the picket at dawn is not happening at dawn.

The building noticed. The yard locked, the work lights came on across all of it, and the vehicle gate shut — and a work order explains why you are on site, not why you are on site now that the place has come apart. The contractor story was finished. So was the quiet part of the night.

Getting out

Aven had called the weather hours earlier, in front of everyone, with a coin turning over in his hand: thick fog rolling in off the water, whatever the clear sky said. It arrived exactly as advertised. Nobody has asked him about it yet.

Dread found the route — conduit runs wide enough to walk, on ATP's blueprints, cleaner than the sewers somebody had suggested first. Between the crew and the conduit was everyone the EMP had stranded in the dark.

Shine walked straight at the first of them wearing a face he keeps for the purpose — a senior communications executive from Argus, furious, demanding to know who was in charge and why nobody had been sent to the roof yet. It worked perfectly. ATP collapsed convincingly onto Dread on the way past. Mercy simply stopped being visible.

The response went up the stairs. The crew went down.

Where it stopped

In the fog, moving, with no safe route left between them and the way out — and a charge set, wired, and not yet fired.

Where they ended

They are carrying nothing out. No documents, no hardware, nothing with a serial number on it.

Nobody knows it was them.