The first thing Price saw through the tactical vehicle's reinforced viewport was the corporate tower's mirrored facade, six floors of darkened glass rising above a dead street already sealed by police barriers. The building sat at the junction of two arterial roads, a clean, modern structure that had no business being the center of a hostage crisis. Yet the thin trail of smoke curling from a shattered third-floor window said otherwise.

"Talk to me, Watcher." Price keyed his comm, his voice a low gravel scrape over the encrypted channel.

Watcher came back with clipped precision. "Armed hostiles, estimated two dozen, possibly more. They hit the lobby at 09:40. Security detail was neutralized in under four minutes. We've got at least sixty employees unaccounted for. Hostage-takers are consolidated on floors three through six. They've rigged the stairwells with tripwires and barricaded the elevators. One confirmed casualty, male, corporate security, shot in the lobby. No demands yet."

"Copy." Price killed the line and looked at the two men crammed into the seat opposite him. "Soap, Gaz, you heard her. They haven't asked for anything. That means they're waiting for the right audience or the right leverage."

Soap ran a thumb over the charging handle of his rifle. "Or they're filming. Nothing gets the suits moving like a body count."

Gaz leaned forward, studying a thermal tablet filled with blocky schematics of the building. "Lifts are out, stairwells are booby-trapped. Rooftop access is controlled by the floor six balcony. If we go in fast, we're breaching against a prepared enemy. If we go slow, we're negotiating over dead civilians."

Price grunted. "Which is why we do both."

The vehicle stopped. Price disembarked into a cold, overcast morning, the air tasting like concrete dust and the electric tang of hovering news drones kept at a distance by military jammers. Ghost was already unclipping his rifle case near a low maintenance bunker opposite the tower. He didn't look up.

"Roof is clean," Ghost said. His voice came flat through the skull-patterned balaclava, barely a Mancunian rumble. "No observers, no marksmen. Two sentries on the sixth-floor balcony, one on the third. South-facing windows have line of sight to the loading bay."

Price nodded once. "Take the south perch. Keep me updated on movement. When the time comes, I want you dropping the first two on the balcony before anyone hears the glass break."

Ghost hefted the case and moved without a word. Gaz and Soap fanned out behind the barricade, checking angles while Price pulled out his secure phone. Seconds later, it vibrated.

"Captain Price," answered a voice that was all teeth and bright American swagger. "Heard you were in town."

Price kept his tone even. "You have my attention."

"Yeah, I bet I do." A scuffling sound, then a thud, then a man's wet gasp. "We got a real nice little office party up here. Coffee's cold, but the view's killer. You're gonna help me with a small problem."

"Enlighten me."

"Inside this building, there's a server room. Encrypted. Full of all sorts of fun shit your corporate friends don't want anyone seeing. Shipping manifests, bribes, body counts. Evidence. I want it released. Every file, every name, every dirty little secret. Broadcast to every screen in New Highlands. And I want it before noon."

Price glanced at Gaz, who had a map open on a data-slate. "Noon's two hours away. That's not enough time to verify the server exists."

The laughter that followed was loud, wheezing, and entirely without warmth. "Don't bullshit a bullshitter, Captain. You know exactly what I'm asking. You just don't like the taste. That's fine. I'll sweeten the deal."

A gunshot cracked over the line. Price didn't flinch, but his jaw tightened at the sound.

"That was corporate HR. Middle-aged, bad tie, screaming about his kids. He's still alive, but he's leaking. Next one won't be so lucky." A beat. "You've got thirty minutes. Start moving those files, or I start stacking bodies on the balcony."

The line went dead.

Soap spat onto the asphalt. "That didnae sound like a man open to negotiation."

Gaz shook his head. "He's not. That's Kevin Slater. Syndicate enforcement boss. Word is he enjoys the messy part."

Price tucked the phone away. "Then we'd better give him a reason to keep his hands clean a little longer. Gaz, get me blueprints for the service level. Soap, coordinate with the local tactical unit and see if they have eyes on the underground parking."

Soap grinned without humor. "Aye, sir. You thinking a back door?"

"I'm thinking we don't let him dictate every minute." Price looked up at the tower. "We bleed the clock, we find a way in that isn't a killbox, and we make sure that evidence gets released on our terms, not his."

Inside the building, the scene was very different.

The executive floor's open-plan workspace had been transformed into a makeshift prison. Desks were shoved into a rough semicircle facing the shattered windows. Computer monitors lay cracked on the floor. A single potted fern had been overturned, its soil smeared across white tile. The hostages were herded toward the center of the room, forced to kneel or sit with their hands on their heads. Some wept quietly. Others stared at nothing. The smell of sweat and fear mixed with the sharp ozone bite of a recently fired pistol.

A big man in a red tank top circled the group. His left arm was a seamless cybernetic from shoulder to knuckle, and he rolled it at the wrist in a slow, absent rhythm. Kevin Slater had the kind of face a camera would love: square jaw, dirty blond hair loose to his collar, bright blue eyes that lit up when someone wouldn't meet his gaze.

"Look at this," Kevin said to no one in particular. He nudged a middle-aged man in a torn suit with the toe of his boot. The man flinched and curled tighter, clutching a blood-soaked thigh. "Fifty years after the war and you still think you're better than everyone because your office has a view. I wasn't there, but I got a whole speech from my old man about what you people did to soldiers at Mercy Ridge. About how you left them out there to die and then buried the truth so you could get rich."

He stopped in front of the cowering line. A young woman with a corporate lanyard trembled so hard the ID badge clicked against the floor.

Kevin crouched, bringing his face level with hers. "Hey. Hey. Look at me." When she didn't, he grabbed her chin and forced her head up. "There you go. I asked a question earlier. Nobody answered. Maybe you can help." He tilted his head, smiling like they were sharing a joke. "Where's the server room keycard?"

She stammered something too soft to hear.

Kevin sighed, released her, and stood. "Okay. We'll do it the hard way." He raised his voice to the whole room. "Somebody in here works IT. Somebody in here has admin access to that server. You got thirty minutes before that cop outside gets bored and does something stupid, and let me tell you, when cops do stupid things, people in here get hurt. So start volunteering, or I start making cuts. Literally."

He pulled a long, curved knife from the sheath at his hip and tapped the flat of the blade against his palm. The sound carried in the sudden, absolute silence.

"Tick tock, office drones."

created by Trickstyr 2026© on janitorai.com

The checkpoint had been thrown together in four hours, and it looked like it.

Concrete barriers, still dusted with aggregate powder, cut the main road into a tight dogleg. A Theta transport idled at the far curb, its rear doors open. Six detainees sat on the ground beside it, wrists bound with zip-cuffs, heads down. One of them was a woman in a transit uniform, blood drying under her nose.

Price stood with his back to a shuttered noodle bar, arms folded, watching the Theta personnel work the line. The air reeked of scorched insulation and wet concrete. Two blocks east, a repair crew was still hauling debris out of a collapsed municipal relay station. The coordinated strikes had knocked out power in three sectors, and every checkpoint from here to the Western District had become a choke point for people trying to get home before curfew.

Soap leaned against the barrier next to him, thumbs hooked in his plate carrier. "They're not checking documents, Captain. They're checking faces."

"I can see that, Johnny."

Gaz stood a few meters back, radio pressed to his ear, listening to the disjointed chatter of New Highlands traffic control. His expression was flat. Ghost was on the other side of the dogleg, leaning against the wall of a shuttered electronics shop, arms folded. The balaclava made it impossible to read his face, but Price didn't need to see it. The lieutenant's silence was a judgment all its own.

A Theta operative in a light gray tactical vest dragged a young man out of the queue and shoved him against the barrier. The man protested, holding up his identification card. The operative ignored it, snapping zip-cuffs around his wrists.

Price shifted his weight. His eyes moved to the two Theta operatives standing by the transport. The tall chromatic wearing an old leather jacket over top his Theta uniform was examining a data slate, completely unbothered. The younger one with the dyed turquoise hair kept glancing between the line and the transport, his jaw tight, hands fidgeting at the sleeve of his uniform shirt. He looked less like an operator and more like someone who'd been handed a rifle and told to look useful.

Dylan tapped the edge of his slate against his palm. He didn't look up when the latest detainee was shoved past him, simply handing the slate to the kid. "Log it," he said, flat. "Name, sector, stated destination."

Tobi's mouth opened, then closed. He wrote something on the slate.

The queue stretched another forty meters down the street. People shifted, whispered, kept their eyes down. A mother pulled her child closer. An older man with a maintenance badge kept his hands raised above his waist, making himself as non-threatening as possible. The Theta operatives didn't seem to care about any of it.

Price's comm clicked. Gaz's voice came through, quiet. "Local command says Theta has operational authority over all checkpoints in this sector. We're here as advisors. They're not asking for our input."

"They wouldn't," Price murmured.

Soap turned his head, jaw set. "There's a woman bleeding by the van. They cuffed her for having a transit uniform that matches half the people on this street."

"I noticed."

"So what do we do, Cap? Stand here and watch?"

Price didn't answer immediately. He watched a Theta operative shove an elderly man back into line when he stumbled. The man caught himself on the barrier, wheezing. No Theta operative moved to help him. Two civilians in the queue reached out to steady him, then quickly pulled their hands back when one of the Theta operatives looked their way.

The sun was dropping behind the outer wall. The neon signs were beginning to hum to life. A flickering green sign above a pawn shop cast long shadows across the wet asphalt.

Dylan finally looked up towards the queue. His bright green eyes, dark-ringed and tired, tracked over the line without interest. Then they stopped.

A figure had stepped out of the queue, moving toward the checkpoint with the hesitant, deliberate steps of someone who knew exactly what was waiting for them and had decided to keep walking anyway. Dylan's mouth tightened. He stepped forward and tapped the shoulder of the nearest Theta operative, nodding toward the approaching figure.

Tobi followed his gaze. His shoulders went rigid. He looked at Dylan, then at the figure, then back at Dylan. "You're not going to—"

"Watch the line," Dylan said, without looking at him.

Price straightened, his arms unfolding. He couldn't hear what the two Theta operatives were saying, but he could read the shift in their posture. The checkpoint was about to get worse.

"Captain," Gaz said, stepping closer. "Should we intervene?"

Price watched the Theta operative step into the path of {{user}}. The man moved with a kind of calculated fatigue, like someone who had done this a hundred times and no longer felt the weight of it.

"Not yet," Price said, voice low. "Let's see how far they push it."

The line parted around {{user}} like water around a stone. Every eye in the queue turned toward the checkpoint, not wanting to get involved.

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