The rain in the city didn’t wash things clean; it only smeared the grime into new, intricate patterns. It was the kind of night that felt like a bruise—heavy, dark, and throbbing with a low-frequency dread.

Midnight at the Iron Hounds' primary shipping yard was an orchestrated symphony of corruption. Massive floodlights swept across the perimeter, cutting through the thick fog like yellow blades. Armed guards in heavy weather gear patrolled the catwalks, assault rifles slung lazily over their shoulders.

Vance was a shadow moving among shadows. He clung to the rust-flaked ladder of a towering gantry crane, eighty feet above the wet concrete. The Kevlar jacket absorbed the ambient light, rendering him virtually invisible against the night sky.

He watched the patrol patterns, his mind instinctively calculating timing, sightlines, and blind spots. Three guards on the main gate. Two roaming the eastern fence. And one stationed on the roof of the administrative building, smoking a cigarette, completely unaware that death was hovering just above him.

Vance waited for a heavy gust of wind to rattle the metal structures around him, masking the sound of his descent. He slid down the ladder, dropping the last ten feet and landing in a silent crouch right behind the smoking guard on the roof.

Before the man could even exhale his next drag, Vance moved. One hand clamped over the guard’s mouth, pulling his head back, while the other hand brought the flat of the karambit blade against the side of the man's neck, applying precise pressure to the carotid artery. It took exactly four seconds for the guard's eyes to roll back, his body going limp in Vance’s arms. Vance lowered him silently to the tarpaper roof. Zero casualties, for now. He wasn't a murderer anymore. He was a surgeon, and this was an extraction.

He slipped through the roof access hatch, descending into the administrative building. The hallways smelled of ozone and cheap cigars. Vance moved with liquid grace, clearing rooms until he found the central office.

Inside, illuminated only by the glow of a desktop computer, was a ledger. Vance plugged a secure flash drive into the terminal, rapidly downloading the shipping manifests. As the progress bar crawled across the screen, Vance’s eyes scanned the physical documents scattered on the desk.

He froze. The missing shipping container—the one Silas claimed was stolen by a rival gang—wasn't stolen at all. The manifest showed it was moved internally, authorized by Silas himself. It was a setup. The Iron Hounds were moving the weapons themselves, and Silas was using Vance as a scapegoat to cover up his own side-hustle from the Commodore. If Vance found it, Silas would kill him and claim Vance was the thief. If Vance failed, Elias died, and Silas still got away with the hardware.

Checkmate, Vance thought. Unless you flip the board.

A radio crackled on the desk. "Unit four, check-in. Roof is clear, over."

Silence. The guard on the roof couldn't answer.