I made it to the warehouse in twenty minutes, running every red light between the Outer Sunset and Bayview.The loading bay door had been forced open, the metal bent inward like someone had rammed it with a vehicle. Inside, Jerome's makeshift medical area was destroyed—the crates we'd used to elevate his legs scattered across the floor, the IV stand knocked over, antibiotics and gauze trampled into the concrete.And blood. So much blood."How long ago?" I asked Yuki, who had followed me in her car."I came to check on him two hours ago. Found it like this."I knelt down, touching the edge of a blood smear. Still tacky. Not fully dried. "This happened recently. Maybe three, four hours."The blood trail led toward the back exit, red smears on the concrete that told a story I didn't want to read. But halfway across the warehouse floor, the smears stopped abruptly. No more blood, no drag marks, nothing."They carried him," I said. "He was bleeding, then they picked him up.""Or he stopped

The shipping container yard looked exactly like the kind of place where bodies get found months later. If they're found at all.I parked the borrowed car two blocks away and walked the rest of the distance, fog rolling in from the bay and turning the industrial wasteland into something out of a nightmare. Rusted containers stacked three high, abandoned cranes silhouetted against the orange glow of the city, and silence so thick I could hear my own heartbeat.The USB drive in my pocket was a fake—Yuki had created it that afternoon, identical to the original but filled with encrypted garbage that would take hours to verify. The real drive was in a safe deposit box under a false name, insurance in case everything went to shit.Which it probably would.I was armed with a knife from the warehouse and desperation. The Combat Precognition offer still pulsed at the edge of my vision, tempting me with three seconds of foresight that could save my life. But $10,000 in debt felt like selling too

I called Elena the next morning using the number from her business card.She answered on the first ring, like she'd been waiting. "I wondered when you'd reach out.""I need to talk. In person.""Ocean Beach. Dawn tomorrow. Walk along the shore—it's deserted that early except for surfers and insomniacs." A pause. "And Marcus? Don't use any powers between now and then. You can't afford it."She hung up before I could respond.I spent the rest of that day and night helping Yuki coordinate Jerome's medical situation, but my mind kept drifting to the inherited debts tab, to the numbers that represented sins I hadn't committed but was apparently paying for anyway.Dawn came gray and cold, fog rolling off the Pacific like the ocean was trying to swallow the city. I parked near the ruins of the old Sutro Baths and walked down to the beach, sand crunching under my boots, the sound of waves drowning out everything else.Elena was already there, a dark figure against the lighter gray of the sky.

The first of my father's documented properties was a three-story Victorian in the Haight-Ashbury, painted in faded blues and yellows that probably looked charming in the 1970s. Now it just looked tired.I surveilled the building from a coffee shop across the street, my Enhanced Multitasking ability running on all cylinders. One track watched the house. Another researched the owner. A third analyzed the building's structure from public records. A fourth monitored the movements of a gray sedan parked down the block—Volkov's people, rotating shifts every four hours.They had cameras too. Security feeds from adjacent buildings, angled to cover the Victorian's entrances. Patient. Professional. They'd been watching this place for years, waiting for an opportunity.The owner was an elderly Chinese-American woman named Margaret Chen. Seventy-eight years old, widowed, lived alone. She'd owned the property since 1987 and had refused every buyout offer for decades. Property tax records showed sh

Yuki was waiting when I got back to the Daly City safe house.She had a laptop open, a bottle of scotch on the table, and an expression that said we needed to talk. The kind of expression that usually preceded bad news."I've been monitoring police scanners," she said before I could speak. "Recognized the Haight address from your research. I know what happened."I dropped the backpack on the table and sank into a chair. Every muscle in my body ached. The split lip had stopped bleeding but my hands were still shaking."Margaret?""Alive. Minor shock, no injuries. Police are treating it as a home invasion." She nodded at the backpack. "What did you find?"I opened the bag and spread the contents across the table. Four folders of documents. A dozen USB drives. My father's handwritten letter. Twenty-five years of evidence that people had killed to suppress.Yuki picked up the first folder and started reading. Her expression shifted as she processed what she was seeing—account numbers, wir