The van smells like industrial cleaner and old coffee.
I am wedged between Ghostwriter and Lavender Girl in the back, my knees pressed against a crate of equipment that rattles every time we hit a pothole. The Colonel is driving, her eyes fixed on the road, her hands steady on the wheel. Red Scare is in the passenger seat, watching the mirrors, tracking the cars behind us with that preternatural awareness he cannot turn off.
"Three minutes out," The Colonel says. Not a question, not a request for confirmation. Just information.
I flex my fingers. The nails are all there, fully regenerated, ready to spend. I have been running the math in my head for the last twenty minutes - front entrance, service door, file room. Two nails, three nails, maybe four. I have extra. I always have extra now.
Ghostwriter is murmuring to his books. I cannot hear the words, but I can see his lips moving, his gloved fingers brushing the spines in his bag. Giving them their orders, maybe. Or just saying hello.
"You good?" Lavender Girl asks, her voice low.
"I'm good."
"You're bouncing your leg."
I look down. She is right. I stop.
"Nerves are normal," she says. "First real op. It'd be weird if you weren't nervous."
"I'm not nervous," I say, which is a lie. "I'm just... ready."
She smiles, and there is something warm in it, something that makes me feel less like a bomb and more like a person. "Good. Hold onto that."
The van slows. I feel the turn in my stomach before the vehicle actually makes it - left onto a side street, then right into an alley. The Colonel kills the headlights and we roll the last fifty meters in darkness, coming to a stop behind a dumpster that smells like rotting Thai food.
"We're here," The Colonel says. "Red, you're up."
Red Scare is out of the van before she finishes the sentence, moving with that liquid grace, disappearing into the shadows like he was never there. I watch him go - or try to. By the time I blink, he is already scaling the fire escape of the parking garage across the street, silent as a ghost.
"Sixty seconds," his voice crackles through the earpiece. "Then I'm in position."
We wait. The van ticks as the engine cools. Somewhere in the distance, a car alarm goes off, then stops. The city sounds wrong at this hour - too quiet, too empty, like everyone knows something is about to happen and has cleared out in advance.
"In position," Red Scare says. "Two guards visible through the lobby windows. Both at the front desk. No movement on upper floors."
"Copy," The Colonel says. She turns to look at us - me, Ghostwriter, Lavender Girl. Her face is calm, unreadable. "You know the plan. Stick to it. If something goes wrong, we abort. No heroes."
I almost laugh at that. No heroes. Right.
"Go," she says.
The service door is in the alley, tucked behind a stack of pallets and a dumpster that has seen better decades. It is heavy steel, industrial, the kind of door that says employees only and nothing to see here and please do not blow me up.
I am going to blow it up.
Lavender Girl is beside me, her kit open, plugging in some sort of microcomputer into the door's panel after jimmying it open with a screwdriver. I don't pretend to know how that stuff works. My brother might, I don't. "Give me ten seconds," she murmurs.
I wait. Count the seconds in my head. Feel the weight of my fingernails, the potential energy stored in each one. Three hundred joules for this door, maybe three-fifty. Three nails should do it. Four to be safe.
"Done," Lavender Girl says. "You're clear."
I step up to the door. Press my palm flat against the steel, feeling the cold bite through my gloves. The lock is a standard deadbolt, plus a secondary latch - I can feel the mechanism through the metal, the way the door wants to stay closed.
Not for long.
I detach three nails from my right hand. The sensation is familiar now - that soft click of release, the immediate callusing, the slight itch of regeneration beginning. I roll the nails between my fingers, and slowly work them inside, one after another, trying to crinkle and crease them into the space between the... you know, the parts of the deadbolt. And one in the key hole just to be safe.
"Breaching," I say. Then, I step back, reach my hand back until it grabs a hammer offered by Lavender Girl, and--
THWACK!
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The impact jars them enough that they detonate. A sharp crack that echoes down the alley, a pressure wave I feel in my chest, a cloud of dust and metal fragments. When the air clears, there is a hole where the lock used to be. The door swings open, hinges groaning.
"Clean," Lavender Girl says, sounding impressed. "Nice work."
I do not have time to feel proud. We are already moving.
The stairwell is dark and smells like cleaning products. Lavender Girl takes point, her kit in one hand, a small flashlight in the other. I follow, my fingers flexing, nails already half-regrown. Ghostwriter brings up the rear, his bag of books slung across his chest, his eyes scanning the shadows.
Third floor. That is where Alcott Properties keeps their records. That is where the documents are - the ones that prove collusion, that show the handshake deals with city officials, that expose the whole rotten network of displacement and corruption, or so Ghostwriter says.
We climb in silence. My heartbeat is loud in my ears, but my hands are steady. This is what I trained for. This is what I am good at.
Good at danger, I think. Bad at helping.
No. Focus.
The third-floor door is locked until I stuff a couple of my hairs into the keyhole and then elbow it hard enough to jar the mechanism open. We slip through into a hallway that looks like every corporate hallway I have ever seen: beige carpet, beige walls, motivational posters about teamwork and synergy. The kind of place where people destroy lives from nine to five and then go home to their families.
"Silent alarm is probably going to go off no matter what we do. Move fast," the Colonel orders.
"File room is at the end," Ghostwriter whispers. "On the left."
We move. Lavender Girl checks each door we pass - empty offices, a break room, a conference room with a whiteboard still covered in last week's meeting notes. Nothing. No guards, no alarms, no surprises.
The file room door is locked. A real lock this time, not electronic - heavy, reinforced, the kind that says important things are in here.
"Claymore," Ghostwriter says. "You're up."
I step forward. Ultimately, it is the same thing as the outside. No more interesting. There's gaps where I can slip more fingernails into. Places where I can tie them with my hair like detonation cord. I don't even need to pull very hard - I just reach under my hood and it comes out in bunches, complete with those tiny little white blobs of hairstuff at the end where they come out of the root. Already, my scalp itches at fresh hair coming in to replace it.
The same trick works again and again. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like an easily-smashed-open padlock.
THWACK!
The door swings open.
Inside, the file room is exactly what I expected - rows of cabinets, boxes stacked on shelves, the accumulated paperwork of a company that has been displacing families for years. Ghostwriter pushes past me, already pulling off his gloves, his fingers reaching for the nearest cabinet.
"Cover the door," he says. "This might take a few minutes."
I position myself in the doorway, back to the frame, eyes on the hallway. Lavender Girl takes the other side, her kit open, something in her hand that looks like a taser but probably is not.
Ghostwriter works fast. I can hear him behind me - the rustle of paper, the soft thump of files being pulled, the occasional murmur as he talks to himself. Or to the documents. I am not sure which.
"Got it," he says finally. "Eviction records. City correspondence. Financial transfers. This is everything."
"Originals or copies?" The Colonel's voice crackles through the earpiece. She is still in the van, monitoring, ready to move if we need extraction.
"Copies first," Ghostwriter says. "Then I'll grab what I can carry."
He pulls out a small scanner from his backpack and plugs it into the wall. Documents go in on one side, come out the other. The sound is almost soothing, a rhythmic whirr-click that fills the silence.
I watch the hallway. Count the seconds. Feel my nails regrowing, that familiar itch.
"Movement," Red Scare's voice cuts through. "Guard coming up the east stairwell. You've got maybe ninety seconds."
"Copy," I say. "Ghost, how much longer?"
"Sixty seconds. Maybe less."
"Make it less."
The scanner whirrs faster. Or maybe that is my imagination.
Fifty seconds. Forty. I can hear footsteps now, distant but approaching. The guard is taking his time, not rushing, not suspicious. Just doing his rounds. A person doing his job, with no idea what is waiting for him at the end of the hall.
I do not want to hurt him. I do not want to hurt anyone. But if he comes through that door--
"Done," Ghostwriter says, yanking the scanner out of the wall and shoving it back in his backpack. The documents, back in the filing cabinet, although with very little care. I notice a small cloud of ash surrounding a gloveless hand - he's been eating something, but which documents, I can't say I'm sure about. Probably just enough to know where everything is. "Let's go."
We move. Back down the hallway, past the conference room, past the motivational posters. The footsteps are getting closer. I can hear the guard humming something - a pop song, maybe, something cheerful and completely at odds with the situation.
Lavender Girl reaches the stairwell door first. She eases it open, checks the landing, waves us through. We slip inside just as the guard rounds the corner behind us. I do not look back. I do not need to.
Down the stairs. Two at a time. My heart is pounding now, adrenaline flooding my system, but my hands are still steady. My nails are still ready.
We hit the ground floor. The service door is still open, still showing the hole where I blew out the lock. We slip through into the alley, into the cold January air, into the waiting van.
The Colonel has the engine running. We pile in - me, Ghostwriter, Lavender Girl - and she pulls out before the door is even closed, smooth and unhurried, just another carpet cleaning van driving through the Seaport at midnight.
"Red," she says into her earpiece. "We're clear. Exfil at the secondary point."
"Copy," Red Scare's voice comes back. "On my way."
I slump against the side of the van, breathing hard. My hands are shaking - not from fear, but from the comedown, the adrenaline draining out of my system. I look at my fingers. Four nails missing, already regrowing. A small price for what we got.
Ghostwriter is grinning, his scanner clutched to his chest like a trophy. "That," he says, "was beautiful."
Lavender Girl laughs, a bright sound in the darkness. "You say that every time."
"Because it's true every time."
The Colonel catches my eye in the rearview mirror. She does not smile, but there is something in her expression - approval, maybe. Or recognition.
"Good work, Claymore," she says. "You did good."
I nod. I do not trust myself to speak.
Outside, the city rolls past - streetlights and storefronts and sleeping buildings, all the ordinary infrastructure of a world that does not know what just happened. Tomorrow, someone will find the blown locks. Someone will discover the missing files. Someone will start asking questions.
And in a few days, when the documents hit the press, someone will have to answer them.
END OF ARC 15.5: THIS SIDE UP
The future stands and waits
As millions live in pain
On moderation's gravе
I carve my name in hate
I carvе my name in hate
Change the station, I need a better song
It's not my nation until it's everyone's
As millions die in vain
The future stands and waits
On moderation's grave
I carve my name in hate
Born on the outside, I accept my fate
I carve my name in hate
Born on the outside, I accept my fate
I carve my name in hate, hate, hate
I carve my name in hate, hate, hate
I carve my name in hate
