I didn’t linger. My legs moved on autopilot, leading me down the dimly lit hall to the farthest room — the one with the reinforced steel door that stuck just enough to make you second guess entering.

  A short-lived paranoia thing. Got it on discount.

  The keypad beeped under my fingertips, the lock releasing with a satisfying clunk. I pushed it open and stepped inside.

  Rows of monitors bathed the cramped space in a soft glow, illuminating the cracked walls and the tangle of cables snaking across the floor. My “command center,” if you could call it that. Half the setup was scavenged, parts pulled from junkyards and abandoned tech hubs. The rest? Questionable purchases from places where no one asked too many questions.

  The main screen flickered to life as I slid into the chair, its ancient leather cracked and groaning beneath me. A half-empty energy drink waited on the edge of the desk — the good stuff, only slightly stale. I took a swig, the bitter fizz jolting me awake.

  “Alright,” I muttered, fingers cracking as they hovered over the keyboard. “Let’s see what the hell you were talking about, Stormbound.”

  His words played back in my mind, laced with that smug, twisted satisfaction. “Rico’s shadow touches everything here. You think the Ashen Covenant keeps its secrets in plain sight? Maybe. Maybe not. But shadows love to cling to the old and forgotten.”

  Old and forgotten. Vague enough to mean just about anything. But in this line of work, that was par for the course.

  I started with the basics — the local news feeds. Multiple windows popped open, headlines scrolling past in bursts of color and text. Nothing stood out at first. The usual crap. Petty thefts, smuggling busts, missing person reports. But that was surface-level. If Rico had operations buried in this town, it wouldn’t be in the headlines.

  Time to dig deeper.

  My fingers moved with practiced ease as I slipped past firewalls and security checkpoints, accessing databases I definitely wasn’t supposed to. Police reports, incident logs, corporate filings — anything with even a whiff of Ashen Covenant activity. I cross-referenced names, timestamps, even the faintest mentions of unexplained disappearances or sudden corporate acquisitions.

  A familiar rhythm settled in, the hum of servers and the clack of keys filling the room. On the third screen, I set up a search scraping through archived articles from years back. Rumors, conspiracy theories, and whispers — things too insignificant to catch mainstream attention but far too suspicious to ignore.

  That’s the thing about guys like Rico. They don’t just leave footprints. They leave shadows.

  And shadows? They linger.

  “Shadows cling to the old and forgotten.”

  I frowned, narrowing the search. Old buildings. Abandoned sites. Defunct facilities. If Maw was telling the truth, whatever Rico had stashed away wasn’t sitting in plain sight. It’d be somewhere buried under decades of dust and bureaucracy. Somewhere no one would think to check.

  The thought lingered as I opened a separate tab, skimming through the historical zoning archives. Factories. Warehouses. Places that once saw life and industry before the city turned its back on them. The Ashen Covenant didn’t just deal in drugs — they used fronts. Old infrastructure. Legit businesses hollowed out into something far more lucrative.

  A few keywords later, the screen flashed with a hit.

  “Branlow Industrial — Site Decommissioned, 2008.”

  The name didn’t ring any bells. But the report that followed? That’s what caught my eye.

  A fire. Massive damage. Officials ruled it an accident — something about faulty electrical wiring. No casualties, no thorough investigation. Just a few paragraphs of corporate condolences and a shrug from the insurance companies. The usual story.

  But the kicker?

  The building was never demolished. Just… left there. A husk. No buyers, no redevelopment. The perfect kind of place to sink something into the ground and forget it existed.

  I leaned back in my chair, chewing on the thought. It was a lead. A shaky one, sure. But shaky leads had a way of cracking open doors.

  A low, steady hum from the monitors kept me grounded as I pulled up the building’s layout. Blueprints. Tunnel access points. Even old maintenance logs. Branlow Industrial had everything it needed for a full-scale operation — multiple storage levels, underground piping, and freight elevators designed to move massive loads without drawing too much attention.

  I felt that spark of adrenaline light up again. This was something. Maybe not the whole picture, but something.

  “Guess we’ll see how deep Rico’s shadow runs,” I muttered, saving the data to my drive.

  The mouse hovered over the screen for a moment longer, the images of the decaying factory lingering in my mind. My gut twisted. I couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever waited for us there wasn’t just going to roll over and let us poke around.

  But hey — when had that ever stopped me?

  The glow of the monitors flickered across my face as I scrolled through the building schematics. Every old corridor and sealed-off section burned into my memory like a map waiting to be followed. Branlow Industrial. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

  “Shadows cling to the old and forgotten.”

  Yeah, well, it wasn’t going to stay forgotten for long.

  I was mid-thought, fingers still hovering over the keyboard, when a voice snapped me out of it.

  “You always work this hard, or is this a special occasion?”

  I jerked around, nearly knocking over the empty energy drink can beside me. Haley leaned against the doorframe, her wet hair tumbling in loose waves over her shoulders. A long white dress shirt — definitely one of mine — draped over her, brushing mid-thigh. The sleeves swallowed her arms, leaving only her fingertips peeking out as she lazily dried her hair with a towel.

  “Damn,” she added with a teasing smirk, “didn’t mean to scare you. Big bad Kain, flinching at little ol’ me.”

  I shook my head, ignoring the heat creeping up my neck. “How the hell did you get in here?”

  “The door was open,” she said with a shrug. “Thought I’d say hi.”

  My eyes flicked past her to the entrance — and yeah, “open” wasn’t exactly the word I’d use. The steel door, the one that was supposed to withstand a battering ram, now hung in a half-melted wreck. Jagged metal curled outward like scorched petals. Blackened scorch marks licked the edges of the wall, faint wisps of smoke still trailing upward.

  “Well,” I muttered, dragging a hand down my face, “guess it was time for an upgrade anyway.”

  Haley snorted, walking further in like she owned the place. “Pretty sure that was an upgrade. You know, if you’re into the whole ‘post-apocalyptic ruin’ aesthetic.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Just stay out of the wires.” I gestured vaguely to the tangle of cords snaking across the floor. “Unless you want a new hairdo.”

  “Tempting.” She flopped into the battered chair beside me, the oversized shirt shifting enough to flash a glimpse of her toned leg. Didn’t exactly make focusing any easier. “So,” she propped her elbows on the desk, “what’s got you so deep in the digital rabbit hole?”

  I spun the monitor toward her. “Branlow Industrial. Abandoned factory, caught fire back in ‘08. No real investigation, no rebuilding. Just left to rot. Sound like anyone’s favorite kind of hideout to you?”

  Her eyes narrowed as she scanned the screen. “If they’re running a major operation, a place like that makes sense. Old tunnels, no civilian presence. Could be a front.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. And if we’re lucky, it’s not just a front — it’s a production site. Whatever Rico’s cooking up, it could be coming straight from there.”

  Haley’s jaw tightened. “You sure this is all a bit of a stretch?”

  “I wouldn’t call it a smoking gun,” I said with a half-shrug, “but it’s more than we had before.”

  That word — smoking — made her freeze. It was subtle, but I caught the way her brows furrowed, her lips parting like something had just clicked.

  “Smoke,” she muttered, almost like she was tasting the word. “She said something about it before.”

  I straightened. “What?”

  “When we were talking. Before the Itunal showed up.” Haley’s fingers tapped restlessly against the desk. “She said something like, ‘No one ever questions the smoke when the fire’s already blamed.’”

  My gut twisted. That wasn’t just a throwaway line. Not from Maw.

  “She wasn’t just being cryptic,” I said slowly. “She was pointing at something.”

  Haley nodded. “We were so focused on her threats about Rico, I didn’t even think about it. But if it’s connected…”

  “Then that fire at Branlow might not’ve been an accident,” I finished, a grim edge creeping into my voice. “It was a cover. A way to bury whatever they didn’t want anyone finding.”

  I didn’t like where this was going.

  And something told me neither would Haley.