Author's note: Sorry for the long silence, everyone! Life has been really hectic lately because we just welcomed a new baby into the family. Thank you so much for your patience and support. To make up for it, here are 5 chapters at once, and regular updates start again from today.
Four pairs of eyes in the Chevrolet watched the same thing: A-Train stepping out of the noodle shop with nothing in his hands.
The bag was gone. Thirty seconds ago, he had been carrying it. Now, it had vanished.
"Who did he hand it off to?" M.M. asked.
"Did we miss something?"
"He passed it off between the door and the counter," Jude said. "Look at the side door. Forget A-Train. The department store across the street gives you the right angle."
They shifted their focus.
A man was coming out of the noodle shop's service entrance. He carried the familiar package in his right hand and a few bags of takeout noodles in his left—the noodles were clearly his cover for standing at a back door with a package that had nothing to do with food. He walked fast, turning into the alley at the end of the block without glancing back.
"That's the runner," Jude said. "He's taking it to the stash."
"Let's go," Butcher said.
"Wait."
A-Train was still visible through the restaurant window, standing at the counter, paying, and picking up a new paper bag of food. It was his cover
"We move when he moves. Not before."
Butcher, M.M., and Frenchie stayed put. The runner was already disappearing into the alley. Frenchie's hand hovered near the door handle.
"He's going to be out of sight. We'll lose him."
"We won't." Jude kept his eyes on the restaurant window. "The chemical signature of the Compound V is strong. I can track it through a crowded street. If I had to, I would have gone ahead and come back for you. Just wait."
Two minutes passed. For Butcher, it felt like hours.
Then A-Train walked out the front door, hit the sidewalk, and was gone.
"Do those containers actually seal well at that speed?" M.M. asked.
"Or does he just eat the packaging?" Frenchie added.
"Why are you both thinking about this?" Butcher was already opening the car door. "Let's move."
They got out one by one. M.M. put on his sunglasses. Butcher and Frenchie blended into the pedestrian traffic. The four of them followed the runner's path into the alley.
The alley was empty. The main street was crowded, but this side street was quiet.
"Where—"
"Ask Jude."
"Where is Jude?"
They looked at each other. He had been behind them half a minute ago.
A hand landed on M.M.'s shoulder from the right. M.M. went for his holster before he even turned, then stopped.
No one was there.
"Don't look for me," Jude's voice said from the empty space. "Look at the cat. She'll take you where you need to go."
Yomogi dropped into M.M.'s line of sight from a fire escape above. She landed on the pavement and sat down, staring at them. She looked like a cat who had been assigned a job and expected to be treated like a professional.
They had seen her before. They followed her.
Yomogi led them out of the alley and two blocks east, weaving through the foot traffic with the calm confidence of someone who had already cased the route. The sight of three men trailing a cat through a New York street in the afternoon drew the kind of attention that happened in New York—which was to say, almost none at all.
The cat stopped outside a supermarket and looked back at them.
"In here?"
She walked inside. They followed.
The store was long and narrow, packed floor-to-ceiling with goods. People crowded the narrow gaps between the shelves. Butcher scanned the room.
"Two more minutes in here and we're going to stand out," he whispered. "Keep moving."
Yomogi pushed ahead, weaving through the shoppers. She stopped at the far end of the frozen food aisle, near an unmarked white door that saw no foot traffic.
A man stood by the door.
He wasn't guarding it, exactly; he was standing there with the lazy, casual posture of someone who had a reason to be there but didn't want to make it obvious.
Then Yomogi launched herself.
She hit the man's head with the force of something much heavier, then bounced to the shelves. Cans flew, pot lids clattered, and a display of dry goods—stacked with the fragile balance of a house of cards—came crashing down. The noise was enough to make everyone in the store turn to look.
The man chased the cat. Yomogi stayed just ahead of him, her movements looking like a coordinated performance rather than a frantic escape.
Frenchie had his lockpicks out.
He put them away.
The door wasn't locked. It swung open at a touch.
Butcher looked at the door. "Jude's already inside."
On the other side, a staircase led down.
The basement was longer than the shop above it. The light was dated—the kind of orange-yellow bulbs that made everything look like an old photograph. Old brick walls, gray with damp. Pipes running along the ceiling. Clutter stacked in the corners—crates, equipment, junk left behind and forgotten.
Frenchie stopped at the bottom of the stairs and held up a hand.
Voices.
Fifty meters away, three men were eating. Sesame noodles, still in the takeout containers—fresh from the delivery upstairs. Three pistols sat at the edges of the table, within reach. M.M. looked past them and saw a rifle on a nearby crate. These weren't casual guards. They were trained, and they were armed while they ate.
Frenchie glanced at the other two. His eyes and hands went through a silent, rapid exchange—a language that didn't need words. M.M. responded. Butcher responded.
The three of them split up, moving along opposite walls, staying deep in the shadows of the crate stacks, keeping out of the guards' sightlines. The guards kept eating. No one looked up.
It had been years since they had worked together like this. The timing was still there.
The inner room was at the back of the basement, past the piles of crates. The door was wide open. Someone was inside, moving through the shelves with the efficiency of a man who knew exactly what he wanted and knew he didn't have much time to find it.
Butcher raised his gun and moved toward the door.
He got close enough to strike, then lowered the weapon.
"Could you stay with your team when you're running an operation?"
"Time is short and the list is long." Jude didn't look up from the shelves. "The newly delivered Compound V has to be here somewhere. Once we find it, we take whoever is inside and leave."
"Inside what?"
Jude nodded toward the back of the room.
An iron gate, heavy and dark. Behind the bars, visible in the dim light: the outline of a person.