The base exhaled a tired, uneven breath after the midnight attack. Lantern light made ragged halos on corrugated walls; the smell of gun oil and boiled water tried—almost—to cover the coppery tang of dried blood. Post after post, people settled into their small jobs: counting, stitching, listening. The kind of work that keeps a place alive.
On the catwalk above the loading bay, Azizah walked a slow perimeter with Carlos. Her combat drone purred an oval path overhead, re-drawing the same silent figure-eight.
"Your toy's got good eyes," Carlos murmured, chin lifting toward the drone.
"It's not a toy," Azizah said, a wry hitch at the corner of her mouth. "It files better reports than most people."
He chuckled, then let the sound fall away. "You did good tonight. Kept people steady." A beat. "Kept me steady."
Azizah's gaze tracked the alley's mouth. "I do better with a target."
"Then pick one." He tapped the railing. "Because HUNK's squad? They weren't sightseeing."
"Yeah," she said quietly. "They were shopping."
Below, Jill crossed the floor with Marvin, a pencil stuck behind her ear, a creased map in her hand. She listened more than she spoke, the way a good leader gathers truth: in small, unguarded pieces.
"Perimeter's holding," Marvin reported. "Outer barricades need re-bracing at dawn."
Jill nodded. "Nobody goes out in pairs. Fours only. If you hear anything that sounds like 'plan B' and it came from a guy with a thick accent and a smirk? That's not a plan—just trouble with better PR."
"Copy that," Marvin said, fighting a smile.
Across the room, the medical corner had been folded into something almost gentle. Cindy laid blankets with the kind of care you give porcelain; George moved with a surgeon's economy; Annette stood exactly where the light was brightest, blue vial in one hand, calculator in the other.
The officer who'd volunteered—Ruiz, late twenties, a thin half-moon scratch along his forearm—watched her, jaw set but steady.
"State your name for consent," George said softly.
"Officer Mateo Ruiz, RPD." His throat bobbed. "I understand the risk."
Annette lifted her gaze. "There are two, to be precise. One: it may not confer immunity. Two: if you're beyond a threshold exposure we can't measure yet, it won't reverse anything." She drew a measured breath. "But I believe it will help."
Ruiz met her eyes. "That's enough for me."
Cindy threaded an IV with careful hands. "We'll monitor vitals every five minutes for the first hour."
George looked to Annette. "Dose?"
"Weight-adjusted," Annette replied, already measuring. The edge in her voice had dulled since morning; what remained now sounded almost like… responsibility. "No heroics," she added to Ruiz. "If you feel strange, you talk. Immediately."
The needle slid in. Ruiz didn't flinch.
For a moment, nobody breathed.
"Good," George murmured, watching the line. "We wait."
Alyssa drifted at the fringes, prowler-soft and curious. She had a battered frequency sniffer in hand—half journalism, half scavenged police tech—and eyes that never stopped filing. She stopped at Tyrell's makeshift UBCS bench and knocked the table with her knuckles.
"Mind if I ask a neighborly question?"
Tyrell arched a brow. "You can ask."
She set the sniffer down between them. Its tiny screen blinked back a short list of numbers, one repeating like a metronome. "Found this on the south wall support. Buried under two inches of duct tape and guilt." She angled the display. "Same burst pattern I saw at the hospital before Nemesis—let me check my notes—grew extra limbs and an attitude. Any of your men stashing beacons on our fence?"
Tyrell didn't flinch. "None of my men would be that stupid. Or that neat." A pause. "Which means whoever planted it wants us to think they're sloppier than they are."
"Nicholai," Alyssa said, taste of the name like a chip of ice.
"Or a friend," Tyrell said flatly. "But I'm not defending him."
Carlos approached at the last word, looked to the screen, then to Tyrell. The easy heat in him cooled. "Get me two clean sweep teams. We'll check every brace, every drain."
"I'm on it," Tyrell said, already standing.
Azizah arrived as Alyssa pocketed the sniffer. "Good catch."
Alyssa shrugged. "Being paranoid's finally fashionable."
"Stay that way," Azizah said. "I need outfits like this to last past sunrise."
"Speaking of outfits," Alyssa said, mouth quirking as she eyed the Widow's Bite gauntlets, "if that suit comes in journalist, order me a small."
"Try not to get shot, and we'll talk," Azizah said. The grin was brief, but real.
On a pallet step near the generator, Claire taught Sherry a dumb little card game, the kind with rules made up as you go so the kid always wins. Ada ghosted along the shadows above them, perched on a steel beam like a cat who dressed better than anyone in the room. She didn't announce herself. She never did.
"Your friend in the gas mask," Ada said without looking down, "doesn't make idle threats."
Azizah tipped her head. "HUNK's not my friend."
"Good. Then you won't take it personally when he comes to collect." Ada's voice was velvet around a knife. "He's not the type to leave primary objectives in the wild."
"Which are?" Azizah asked, though she suspected.
Ada finally looked at her. "Birkin data. Birkin blood. Sometimes the difference is a cooler and two minutes."
Azizah glanced toward the med corner. "We move Annette?"
"You move Sherry," Ada said. "Annette is the vault. Sherry's the key someone will try to cut."
Azizah's jaw tightened. "You know a lot for a woman who calls herself an observer."
"I observe very well." Ada's eyes shifted past her, toward the door, where Jill was marking routes on a map with Leon. "And I prefer my games with pieces, not casualties. If HUNK steps inside that door, he'll leave with something we don't want him to have."
"Then he doesn't step inside," Azizah said.
Ada's smile was small and private. "Do keep saying things like that. It's charming."
A low murmur rippled from the med corner. Azizah and Ada both turned.
Ruiz blinked, rubbing his forearm with his free hand. "Feels… warm."
"Temperature's up one degree," Cindy reported. "Pulse steady. Respiration steady."
Annette leaned in, professional focus narrowing her world to the patient. "Tingling? Nausea? Metallic taste?"
"Just warm," Ruiz said. "Like after a run."
George noted the numbers. "So far, so good."
Annette didn't smile, but some tension walked off her shoulders. Her eyes flicked to Azizah, and something unspoken passed between the women: not trust—not yet—but a willingness to share the same fragile bridge.
On the far side of the floor, Kevin and David were arguing about nails.
"I'm just saying," Kevin insisted, "a man can have standards. These things bend if you look at them wrong."
"Good," David said dryly. "Then don't look at them. Hammer."
Leon arrived with a box of better stock, and Kevin's grin reappeared like a porch light. "There he is. Rookie with the good stuff."
"You keep calling me that and I'm charging a delivery fee," Leon said, passing the box. "In compliments."
"Best hair in two counties," Kevin said, perfectly solemn.
"Sold," Leon replied.
Jill drifted over, having circled the room twice with her map and her instincts. "Everyone get five hours," she announced. "We rotate on the fours. Azizah, you and Carlos keep first watch with Tyrell on the south wall. Alyssa, I want you with Marvin checking every inch of wiring from the generator to the lamps. If someone wants to turn our light into a flare, I want to know before they strike the match."
A chorus of "copy"s moved through the space. It sounded almost like a plan.
Azizah's system chimed softly in the back of her mind—a thread of text across an inner HUD:
System Tip: In uncertain alliances, clarity is a resource. Ask for receipts before you spend trust.
She huffed a breath. "Neat."
"What?" Jill asked.
"Nothing. Brain being a brain," Azizah said. "We'll keep the wall clean."
They didn't get five hours.
At hour two, the drone's pattern stuttered mid-figure-eight and pinged an alert—soft, then insistently louder: perimeter anomaly, south by southeast, ground-level, intermittent. Azizah froze, pulse already moving faster than her boots.
"Talk to me," Carlos said, rifle up but low.
"Something's in the drainage slot beneath the pallet racking," Azizah said, already moving. "Not infected. Too precise."
Tyrell materialized at the corner like he'd grown from the wall. "Flashlights low. No silhouettes," he ordered, voice a rasp. "If it's a beacon or a charge, I don't want to give it a frame."
They crouched together by the warped metal grate. The drone's cone of light flattened to a thin wash. In the gap, a coin-sized disk blinked a patient green.
"Tracker," Tyrell said.
"Broadcast?" Carlos asked.
Alyssa slid in on her knees, sniffer in hand. The little screen lit up with the same calm digits as before. "Same rhythm. Whoever planted the last one wants us thinking we only found the last one."
Azizah's jaw set. "How many more?"
"Between one and 'we're moving,'" Alyssa said.
"Get me tape, magnets, and a baking tray," Azizah snapped.
Carlos blinked. "We making cookies?"
"We're making a Faraday lunchbox." Azizah popped the tray under the grate as Tyrell levered it up. The disk thunked into the tin; magnets locked the lid. The little green light kept blinking, but the sniffer's bars fell to zero.
Alyssa looked, impressed despite herself. "Okay, Girl.. I'll admit it—I like your kitchen."
Tyrell keyed his radio. "All squads: sweep pattern nine. All trackers in metal by before dawn."
"Copy," crackled back.
They moved fast, a line of quiet, deliberate hands ghosting along the skeleton of the wall. Three more trackers later, the sniffer was silent and Alyssa's pockets clinked.
"Somebody wants to know exactly where we sleep," Carlos muttered.
"Or when we move," Jill said, joining them with Leon in tow.
"Both," Azizah answered. "And they get neither."
Back inside, George peeled the cuff from Ruiz's arm. "Fever's peaked and drifting down," he said, relief threaded with caution. "No spiking pulse. No respiratory distress."
Ruiz flexed his fingers, surprised. "Feels… normal."
Cindy exhaled, almost a laugh, almost a prayer. "We'll keep monitoring."
Annette stepped back, hands at her sides. The air around her didn't soften, exactly—but something in her posture did, like a door left on the latch.
Claire's laugh—a small, honest thing—rose from where Sherry had just "won" three cards in a row. For a few seconds, the sound braided through the room with the lantern hum and made something like warmth.
It lasted until the radio crackled.
"Outer alley—movement," came a UBCS voice, clipped and tight. "Not shamblers. Two figures. Fast. Thermal—cold as brick."
Jill's hand was on her pistol before the sentence ended. "Positions. No shots unless they force it."
Tyrell's eyes went flat and professional. "Masks?"
"Positive," the voice returned. "But gear's clean. Pattern's… ghost."
A familiar wrongness slid down Azizah's spine.
Ada, from her beam, whispered without needing volume. "He said he'd be back."
"Lights down," Jill ordered, voice barely a breath. "If Alpha Team wants in, they can read our sign."
Azizah looked at Annette. Annette looked at Sherry.
"Go," Claire told the girl, voice light and firm, gathering cards with a clack. "Hide-and-seek. The good kind. Closet three, just like we practiced."
Sherry nodded, small and brave. Cindy took her hand. They vanished into the weave of crates and curtains.
A shadow cut across the far door, then stilled. Another stepped alongside it, perfectly placed to cover.
HUNK's voice did not raise. It didn't need to.
"Open up," he said through the steel. "You have something that belongs to us."
No one moved.
The drone, still on its disciplined figure-eight, panned across the door and, for a heartbeat, painted the red lenses of HUNK's mask into points of steady, patient fire.
Azizah spoke first, calm as a locked bolt. "Not tonight."
There was a pause—thin, surgical.
Then the reply, almost courteous:
"Then we'll take it from your hands."
The handle turned—slow, expectant.
Every finger in the room found its trigger, its switch, its reason.
Azizah's system chimed once, very soft.
System Alert: Event Flag Raised: "Extraction Attempt." Defensive choices will influence future ally trust.
"Positions," Jill whispered. "Hold."
The latch clicked.
And the door began to open.
To Be Continued…