Chapter 7: A Ghost in the Machine
Max ditched the Lincoln. It was a beacon. He wiped it down, left it in a parking lot at the airport to confuse any trackers, and stole a nondescript grey sedan from long-term parking.
For three days, Max lived out of the car. He ate cheap burgers and barely slept. He listened to the police scanners.
"Massacre at local gym... gang related... twenty dead."
The news didn't mention survivors. Kaelen was dead. Vara was dead. Jinx was dead. Silas... probably dead.
Max was free. The debt was cancelled by death. He could leave. He still had his jar of money stashed at the old foster home.
But something gnawed at him. Before the raid, he had seen Kaelen talking to someone on a burner phone. Kaelen had said, "The shipment is safe. The orphan doesn't know."
Max was the orphan. What didn't he know?
He drove back to the ruins of the gym. Police tape fluttered in the wind. The place was a blackened husk.
He sneaked in through the hole in the back wall. The bodies were gone, but the smell of death lingered. He went to Kaelen's office. It had been torching, but the floor safe was hidden under the floorboards—a secret spot Max had seen Kaelen use once.
Max pried the scorched boards up. The safe was still there. He didn't know the combination, but the blast had warped the hinges. He used a crowbar he found in the rubble to pry it open.
Inside was a ledger and a hard drive.
Max took them and ran. He went to an internet café three towns over, pulling his hood up. He plugged in the hard drive.
It wasn't drug records. It was maps. Blueprints.
Blueprints to the Vittorio Citadel—the headquarters of the Syndicate. And a list of names.
Max scanned the list. His eyes widened.
Vittorio Payroll:
...
Captain Miller (PD)
Judge Halloway
...
Kaelen 'Brick' Thorne.
Max froze. Kaelen wasn't a rival. Kaelen was on the payroll. The Iron Dogs weren't a resistance; they were a controlled opposition. A way for the Syndicate to corral the violent elements of the city into one place and manage them.
Kaelen had sold them all out. The raid wasn't a war; it was a liquidation.