The loading dock is maybe eighty yards from our position. Close enough to see shapes, not close enough to see faces. I'm not naturally very good at estimating distances, but a lot of training will make up at that. Although if someone asked me to tell them how long an inch is, I would not be able to say. Anyway.

  The box truck's rear door rolls up. Two guys climb out of the cab, start pulling down a ramp. They move like they've done this a hundred times - no wasted motion, no conversation. Professional.

  "How many boxes," Marathon murmurs. Not a question. He's counting.

  I count too. The first guy starts wheeling a hand truck down the ramp. Stacked cardboard boxes, maybe eighteen inches on a side. Six boxes per load. He disappears into the building, comes back empty, loads up again.

  Six. Twelve. Eighteen. Twenty-four.

  "That's a lot of Jump," I whisper.

  Marathon doesn't respond. His jaw is tight, his eyes fixed on the dock.

  Thirty. Thirty-six.

  The second guy takes over while the first one catches his breath. The rhythm continues. Load, wheel, unload, return. Like a machine.

  Forty-two. Forty-eight.

  A third person emerges from the building. Bigger than the other two - wide shoulders, thick neck, moving with that particular swagger of someone who knows they're the most dangerous thing in the room. He says something to the guys unloading. One of them laughs, nervous and short. "I didn't even know they made that much. Where the hell do you even get all that Jump from in the first place?"

  Marathon goes very still beside me.

  "Someone you know?" I breathe.

  "Shut up."

  The big guy watches the unloading for a minute, then turns and walks along the side of the building, disappearing around the corner. Patrol, maybe. Or just restless.

  Fifty-four boxes. The truck is finally empty. The two workers close up the rear, and one of them climbs back in the cab. The truck pulls away from the dock, loops around, and heads back toward the access road.

  "Fifty-four," I say. "If each box is--"

  "I can do math." Marathon's voice is flat, clipped. "That's enough to supply half of South Philly for a week. Maybe more."

  "This isn't..." I start running the numbers in my head, too, assuming worst-case scenario levels of packing. Trying to figure out how many pills to a box. "That's not enough Jump for South Philly. That's enough Jump for the entire eastern seaboard."

  "You underestimate how many normal people take this shit and just move on with their lives," Marathon corrects me, without even seeming to think about it. He almost seems weirdly proud about it. "Nobody ever hears about the guy wearing a good toupee."

  The patrol comes back around. We press deeper into the shadow of the shipping container, barely breathing. Flashlight beams sweep past, not quite reaching us. The two guards are talking about the Eagles game, something about a bad call in the third quarter. Their footsteps crunch on frozen gravel, then fade.

  "I'm going to circle," Marathon says. "Stay here."

  "That's--"

  He's already moving, slipping between containers with more grace than I'd have given him credit for. Not silent, but quiet enough. He's learned something from my heel-toe advice, or maybe he was holding back before.

  I stay. I watch.

  The lit building has three visible windows on this side. Through the grime, I can make out shapes moving around tables. The industrial setup of a cutting operation - scales, mixing equipment, packaging stations. At least four people working inside, maybe more in the parts I can't see. Nobody has a single cut, nick, or scrape on them, which is annoying. At least then I could see someone proprioceptively.

  Another figure emerges from the loading dock entrance. This one's leaner, moving with a kind of nervous energy, checking his phone every few seconds. He lights a cigarette, the orange ember flaring in the dark. Stands there smoking, looking at nothing in particular.

  I don't recognize him. But that doesn't mean much - I only saw Marathon's guys for a few minutes at Sunoco, and I was a little busy trying not to get my head caved in. They're just shapes in my memory now. Big guy, lean guy, third guy. Interchangeable.

  The smoker finishes his cigarette, crushes it under his heel, and goes back inside.

  Minutes pass. The cold is starting to seep through the Remora suit now, finding the gaps at my wrists and neck. I flex my fingers inside the grippy gloves, trying to keep blood flowing.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Where the hell is Marathon?

  Movement to my left. I tense, already ready to throw a fast one-inch punch, but it's just him, materializing out of the shadows between containers. His expression is worse than before - not just angry now, but something darker. Calculating.

  "Four buildings," he says, barely above a breath. "Main one's the cutting operation. Second one's storage - I could see crates through a window, looked like raw materials. Third one's empty, or at least dark. Fourth one..." He pauses, jaw working. "Fourth one's got cots. Sleeping bags. Someone's living on site."

  "Guards?"

  "Or workers who don't get to leave." He shrugs, a sharp, irritated motion. "Either way, there's more people here than I thought. And the main building's got a basement. Saw a stairwell through one of the back windows."

  A basement. In a former refinery site with contaminated soil. That's either stupid or very deliberate - somewhere you don't want inspectors looking too closely.

  "So what's the plan?" I ask. "You still thinking boom?"

  "Is that supposed to be encouragement?" he whispers, looking at me like I spontaneously turned purple.

  "I'd prefer you not create a news item. 'Construction site explosion rocks Southwest Philly'," I explain, trying a new tack - something I'd been chewing on for the past however long we've been out. "You remember how we caught you with Sundial? The psychometry? She works with the cops. They use her pretty regularly for crime scene analysis, and I don't think you want to get seen in a vision loading this place up with explosives, even if it's for an air quotes good reason."

  Marathon is quiet for a long moment. His eyes are on the lit building, tracking the shadows moving behind the windows.

  "The problem," he says finally, and the words sound like they're being dragged out of him, "is that I don't have enough."

  "Enough what?"

  "Enough boom." He gestures at the cluster of buildings, a sharp sweep of his hand. "Four structures. Basement. Supply storage. Whatever they've got down there. I could take out the main building, maybe, but they'd just move to one of the others. Set up again in a week. I'd need to hit all four simultaneously, and I'd need--" He stops, runs the numbers silently. I watch him tick up on his fingers - hold on, what's he doing with his fingers? Is he counting in binary? "More than I've got."

  There's something almost painful in his voice. Not regret, exactly. Frustration. He came here ready to burn it all down, and reality is refusing to cooperate. Or maybe I got to him and he's trying to pretend I didn't. I don't care. Whatever puts the minimal amount of lives at risk, good lives or bad lives.

  "So we're back to intelligence gathering," I say. "Document what we can, figure out the full picture--"

  "Don't." He turns to look at me, and there's nothing friendly in his expression. "Don't act like this is some kind of victory for your way of doing things. I'm not here because you convinced me. I'm here because I need to go home and build more bombs. And maybe call in the heavy ordinance."

  "That's... not actually better."

  "I don't care what you think is better." He starts moving, heading back toward the bent section of fence. "We're done here. You got your little recon mission. I got confirmation that I need heavier ordinance. Everybody wins."

  I follow, because what else am I going to do? The patrol is on the far side of their circuit - we've got maybe eight minutes before they come back around. Plenty of time to slip out the way we came.

  We're halfway to the fence when Marathon stops so suddenly I almost walk into his back.

  "What--"

  He holds up a hand. Listening.

  I listen too. For a moment, there's nothing - just the distant hum of the city, a car horn somewhere far away, the wind cutting through the gaps between containers.

  Then I hear it. Footsteps. Not the patrol - wrong rhythm, wrong direction. Someone moving parallel to us, maybe fifty feet to our right, hidden by the maze of shipping containers.

  Marathon's hand moves toward his backpack.

  I grab his wrist. Shake my head.

  We wait. The footsteps continue, unhurried, not searching. Just someone walking from point A to point B. They fade, heading toward the cluster of buildings.

  Another thirty seconds. Nothing.

  Marathon pulls his wrist free, gives me a look that promises violence if I ever touch him again, and keeps moving.

  We slip through the bent fence without incident. Cross the empty lot beyond. Hit the street and turn in opposite directions without discussion.

  I make it three blocks before I let myself breathe normally.

  The bus ride back to civilization takes forty minutes. I spend it staring out the window, watching the industrial wasteland give way to rowhouses and corner stores and the normal messiness of a city that's actually alive.

  Fifty-four boxes. Four buildings. A basement. Workers or prisoners sleeping on site. Marathon's former guys running muscle for an operation that's poisoning half of South Philly. Are other cities getting this, too? Or is this just an artillery shelling directed right towards Ms. Brotherly Love?

  I pull out my phone, start typing notes while it's all still fresh. Locations, timing, headcounts. The way the patrol moved, the gap in their coverage on the north side. The box truck's logo - something with a blue stripe, I think, though I didn't get a good look at the name. It was definitely a something-something SHIPPING AND PACKING. I start sketching blueprints and what I think I remember of the logo.

  The pieces are there. I just need to figure out how to put them together into something actionable.

  By the time the bus drops me in Tacony, it's past 2 AM. The streets are empty, the cold keeping everyone inside. I walk the last six blocks to my house with my hands in my pockets and my hood up, running through the list of people I need to talk to.

  Sundial, for the Titans. They've got South Philly connections, might know something about the distribution network on that end.

  Miasma, to launder anything I want to get to the DVD or Argus Corps without it coming back to me.

  Maybe Ford, if I can figure out how to give her actionable intel without explaining how I got it.

  And Marathon--

  No. Marathon made it clear he's not an ally. He's a parallel operator with temporarily aligned interests, and those interests end the moment he's got enough explosives to level four buildings simultaneously. I shouldn't expect help from that direction. I shouldn't expect anything except to get out of his way when the time comes.

  My house is dark when I reach it. Mom and Dad asleep, the tracking bracelet I haven't needed to wear in two weeks, three weeks, still sitting in its USB charging cradle on the kitchen countertop. You know. Just in case I need someone to know where I am.

  I slip in through the back door, ease it shut behind me, and stand in the dark kitchen for a moment, just breathing.

  Fifty-four boxes.

  Someone's going to die this week because of what's in those boxes. Probably multiple someones. And I've got notes on my phone and a bus ticket stub and nothing that would hold up in court.

  But it's a start.

  I head upstairs to get what sleep I can before the sun comes up.