I share a glance with Felix, a silent conversation passing between us, before I flick my gaze to Fae. She nibbles on her bottom lip, probably coming to the same conclusion. Atlas leans forward, his elbows resting on his knees.
“Give me two minutes,” he says. “I will map the blind spots and then you can go in.”
I pull out my gun, which sets off a chain reaction and we all systematically check our magazines. After a pregnant pause, Atlas tells us it’s time. Riggs, Victor, Fae and I exit the van, leaving Felix to cover Atlas and coordinate with us on the ground.
“Testing,” I hear Atlas say in my ear.
“Clear,” I respond.
I hear everyone else around me mirror it, which means our comms are up and running.
“Switching you all over to one channel, that way you can communicate on the ground.”
I grunt, leading the group through the dark, wet road towards the warehouse entry points. Riggs and Victor take the back entrance while Fae and I head for the front. When we get there, the guys hand us each a spud and move out without saying anything more.
Fae goes to step past me, but I grab the back of her neck and pull her into me and she lets out a small grunt. Twisting her around, I use her hair to lift her face towards me. I rub my knuckles against her cheek, taking a moment to look at her properly. There is strength behind her eyes, but I also see the worry. Tracing her bottom lip with my index finger, I lean down and give her a quick peck, wanting to deepen it but knowing I can’t right now.
“Be a good girl for me, Tinkerbell. I’d hate to have to punish you,” I smirk.
“Maybe I will be doing the punishing tonight,” she sasses back and I chuckle, spinning her in the right direction and tapping her arse.
“Let’s go. Focus, Tink, and remember to rule with logic, not emotion, whatever we find in there.”
We move in slow, measured steps, our boots barely whispering against the concrete as we slip through a front entrance that looks like it has been forgotten. The air inside feels wrong immediately. It is stale, damp, and heavy with something sour that sits at the back of my throat. The warehouse is vast and hollow, rows of steel pillars disappearing into shadow. The ceiling is lost somewhere above us. There are no lights, no hum of electricity, just darkness and the distant drip of water echoing like a countdown.
Every instinct in me is screaming.
We edge deeper, passing abandoned pallets and torn plastic sheeting that flutters slightly as we move. Doors line one wall, they are old, repurposed and reinforced. Fae slows at the first,her shoulders tightening as she glances back at me. I nod once. Reaching for the handle, the door creaks open. She freezes, then steps inside.
Old beds are scattered across the room, thin mattresses thrown straight onto the floor. Dark stains soak into the fabric. The smell hits me hard, rot and waste mixed with something metallic that turns my stomach. Faeces and bodily fluids are everywhere, smeared into corners and dried along the walls like someone stopped caring a long time ago. On the far wall, words are drawn, uneven and flaky in what looks like blood. Two words that send a chill down my spine as I take it all in.
Help me
Fae takes a small step forward, shaking before spotting something on the floor. Bending down, she picks it up with two gloved fingers. A small pair of knickers hang from her hand. Maybe once they were pink, but now they are stiff and filthy. Her hands move over the garment, but I don’t realise what she’s doing until it’s too late. Her breath catches as she checks the label and her face drains of colour.
“Eleven,” she says quietly, then turns to me. “Eleven years old.”
She holds them up, as her hand shakes, and I freeze, unsure what to say or do. Fae drops them like they burn and storms out as fury rolls off her in waves that I can feel in my chest. I follow, checking the blind spots that she’s too angry to notice and covering her back as my jaw locks so tight it aches. She opens the next room, as my hands curl into fists.
The scene is familiar and just like the last room. Old clothes, water bottles, and wrappers are thrown across the floor like people were in a hurry to leave. We move onto the next, and thenthe next, and then the next. Each one a variation of the same nightmare. Beds. Stains. Smells. Evidence of suffering is layered so thick it feels baked into the walls. By the time we step into the main corridor, Fae is shaking with rage as I try to calm and control my breathing.
Riggs and Victor emerge from the opposite end, their faces are grey and their eyes are hollow. No one speaks. It’s then I notice that Felix and Atlas are quiet in the comms. They are probably trying to grapple with what we have just found. Victor’s look alone tells me that they have seen enough to know exactly what kind of men we are dealing with.
This place might be abandoned, but the rooms still remember the weight of the bodies on the bare mattresses, the silence that followed the screaming, the way suffering was shut behind locked doors and left to rot. The walls hold it all. Every plea, every act, every moment no one came. Whatever monsters used this place are gone now, but the horror did not leave with them. And as I stand there processing it, one thing is painfully clear, the story is not over either.
CHAPTER 22
ROMAN
Iswipe my hand across my face and groan. Another week has passed and still we have learned nothing. Four warehouses, all replicas of the same rot. It’s like whoever owned them just copied and pasted it into another building. The same layout, the same stains ground into the concrete, the same silence that clings long after we leave. Whoever built them wanted repetition. Efficiency. A system designed to erase people until all that remains is evidence too old to scream.
Every time we go, we catalogue, take pictures, and collect evidence. Victor has been instrumental in making sure we do not cross-contaminate and Atlas has been running DNA samples. Still, it is not enough. The victims are ghosts. The warehouses are tombs. If I took this to my dad or the council, I fear nothing would be done.
It’s not that I don’t believe they’ll do something, it’s just that the evidence does not show that it’s connected to The Company at all. Right now, we can’t prove what Jack told us was true. They’ll say he was a dying man and put all the blame on him.
It’s destroying everyone around me. Atlas is still buried in code, chasing ghosts through servers that lead nowhere. Victor’s tracking has gone cold, the connections for Robyn reduced todead ends that refuse to bleed no matter how hard he pushes. Felix cannot even look at Fae without crumbling with guilt. Then there’s Riggs, who feels like a spare part, constantly arguing with us, desperate to go undercover with Dr. Fisher to earn his trust.
It’s not that I don’t believe in Riggs, it’s that I don’t know what Dr. Fisher is capable of. I think we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to his depravity. I’m not willing to sacrifice anyone, let alone a friend, to that man.