DJ headed down the narrow stairwell to his hidden base, the air getting cooler with every step. He pulled on his plain black t-shirt, grabbed the new bulletproof armor Rony made. And strapped it across his chest. The fit was perfect, no blemish whatsoever, something that you would expect from Rony. He grabbed his backpack, shoved a few tools inside, and reached for the new pocket-sized drone sitting on the bench. It blinked once like it was waking up.
His hand drifted to the new helmet next—sleek, polished, and fitted with a tiny camera watching him from the corner. He stared at it. Nope. Not happening. He slid his old helmet over his arm instead—the one with chipped paint and cracks that told actual stories, not recorded ones.
He geared up fast after that, double-checked nothing was loose, and jogged to his bike. The old one, the engine started with a rough growl. A moment later, he shot out from the underground exit and headed straight for the Disaster Zone.
He rode through the ruined streets in silence until the barricade tape came into view. He parked the bike between two collapsed walls, where it was safe enough, then walked toward the old factory. The perimeter looked the same as before—same fences, same guard posts—but the number of security personnel had doubled. Maybe tripled.
"Huh," he muttered under his breath. "That's cute."
Still, he didn't push it. He moved along the outer wall, checking corners, marking blind spots. He planted three monitoring devices around the area, each one giving a faint beep as they synced to his wrist screen. Finally, he crouched behind a stack of concrete blocks and released the new drone—the small devil-faced one. It unfolded its little claws and lifted off with barely a whisper as a sound.
DJ tracked it on his wrist, guiding it toward the building. It slipped through shadows, climbed up the wall, and latched onto a metal panel. A thin red line blinked, then the new laser cutter activated, slicing a clean circle through the sheet metal. Sparks died in the air before they even touched the ground. The drone pushed the piece inward and wriggled through.
Inside, its body sealed the opening, turning itself into a viewport. For the first time, DJ could see what was in there.
He expected a vault. Maybe a safe room. Maybe something with a keypad and lasers and at least one dramatic red light.
But all he saw were containers. Three. Ordinary shipment containers sitting like oversized bricks in the middle of the floor.
"…What the hell?" he whispered.
His gaze shifted from one container to the next. His chest tightened. The details he got didn't mansen a container though.
Before he could go deeper with the thought, one of his outer alarms chirped. DJ jerked his wrist up. On the monitor, a line of cars approached the factory. Expensive ones. Too clean for the ruins they drove through.
He raised an eyebrow. "Great. A whole parade."
People stepped out—men in suits, some carrying cases. And then he spotted someone familiar. The guy who sold pull-water to terrorists. DJ rubbed his face. "That's…..interesting…"
He deployed his old drone, sending it to tail the suited man. The drone followed him up to the factory door, through a side entrance, and into the building.
DJ switched to the inside drone's feed.
He watched the man approach one of the containers, type something on a small keypad, and open it.
The sight froze DJ so hard he stopped breathing for a second.
The entire container—floor to ceiling—was stocked with bundles of cash. Not scattered, not messy. Organized. Packed tight. Ready for shipment.
He slowly shifted the drone's view to the second container. If the pattern held—
His throat tightened as he exhaled. "No way… no way that's real."
He tapped the wrist screen, adjusting the drone to pick up audio.
Voices crackled in.
.
"…you still don't get why Roy lost it do you? ," the first guy said, pushing up his glasses. "Selling the Elixir, fine, whatever, but to terrorists? Of all people? He's pissed. Really pissed."
Dj looked at them. clean suits, clean shoes, the kind of guys who looked like they handed out salaries, not collected them. They were definitely from Horseman upper branch, and why did they have the pull water. He thought to himself, and tried to identify the person talking. The one with the glasses, Middle-management posture mixed with "my accountant hates me" faces. They walked past the containers like they were checking inventory at a grocery store.
DJ turned up the drone audio up a beat.
The second guy who looks like a playboy, who looked like he often visits gym shrugged, totally unfazed.
"He always seems pissed to me."
"I'm serious," Glasses said. "Roy wants your head for this."
"He can want whatever he wants," the other replied in a lazy tone.
"I co-own the whole damn company, like you don't forget we all started it. It's not his own. And nothing's happening. If Krish didn't catch anything, nobody would."
DJ perked up, he also wanted to know what happened to the terrorists, he heard them on the news but nothing was worth his time.
He wasn't sure what happened after that, so he listened carefully, he heard terms such as—Elixir, terrorists, Roy, Krish—fit together in a way he didn't seem to understand. And Roy…Who the hell is Roy?
Before he could chase that thought, Glasses glanced at his watch. "We're already late, by the way. He told us to be on time for once, and we're almost an hour behind." and the playboy guy didn't look fazed, he put the bag he carried in the container like it's his old clothes, and not even bother to close it.
"Where's he even waiting?" the other asked.
"At the mine."
DJ straightened.
Mine?
That word perked his attention hard enough to make him forget the burning in his legs from crouching so long. He shifted the drone angle as the two men walked out of the building, still talking casually like they weren't standing next to three containers full of illegal money.
He kept watching until their cars pulled away, a drone following them.
Then he looked back at the stacked bundles on-screen—rows and rows of crisp cash. Enough to haunt his dreams for weeks. Maybe months. The greed crawled up his spine, warm and uncomfortable. He swallowed it down.
"…A mine," he muttered. "What kinda mine are we talking about?"
He killed the feed on the small devil drone, and slipped out of the rubble toward his bike, forgetting the drone behind.
He just wanted to see where this was going.
He kicked the bike alive and pulled out of the Disaster Zone, eyes narrowed, all thoughts circling back to that single word.
Mine.
The little devil drone, different from the earlier, older version. zipped after the convoy, its signal feeding straight into the display built into DJ's bike. He kept a distance on the road, just far enough that the cars were specks in the dark. The drone's angle dipped lower, tracing the route exactly.
They were heading toward the Crater.
DJ adjusted his throttle, kept the rumble low, eyes flicking between the ruined road and the shaky feed. Everything felt too quiet. Too smooth. He didn't trust smooth.
A second later, the screen on his bike flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Then the drone feed cut to static.
"…No, no, no—" DJ tapped the screen, like that ever helped. The red indicator blinked, then the drone icon went gray.
Connection lost.
Function lost.
He swore under his breath. A deep, irritated sound.
Up ahead, he could still see the faint edges of their taillights turning deeper into the Crater area. And just like that—an old memory clicked in: the deal between that playboy idiot and the terrorists. How his equipment fried like cheap knockoff tech the moment that weird cylinder came out.
Rony's words echoed in his head:
"Pull-water. If it's built with that stuff, it won't shut off. Anything else gets off"
He tried pinging the little devil drone from earlier, then groaned when reality hit him—he'd left it stuck in the factory wall as a makeshift patch.
"Brilliant. Genius. Absolute idiot," he muttered, kicking at the ground once.
He followed the last known coordinates the busted drone sent before it fell. As he rolled closer, the bike's headlight blinked. His helmet visor glitched, pixels scattering like confetti.
He braked instantly.
"…Yeah. This is exactly like last time." He stepped back, boots crunching gravel. That same dead-tech zone feeling crawled up his skin.
He reached into the side case, pulled out a spare micro-drone, and tossed it high—far enough that the interference couldn't touch it. The little thing stabilized above the dead zone and streamed the view back to a small wrist-display.
From above, the darkness shifted, shapes taking form.
DJ squinted.
Below the drone's viewpoint, hidden under the crater's natural shadows, he saw a outline—clean angles, sharp edges, something built, not carved by the explosion, catching faint pale glow.
"Okay… that's not rubble," he whispered.
"That's a functional building."
He tilted the wrist screen, trying to get a cleaner angle.
"…so there is that supposed mine."
His voice was low, uneasy, but a little excited too—the kind of excitement he hated recognizing in himself. The kind that got people killed.
He pocketed the display and stared toward the hidden structure, heart thudding.
Whatever this place was, it wasn't supposed to exist.
And he was definitely going in, not today of course, he needs a better mask, which he has, but did not bring, he kicked the rubble there.
" What a missed opportunity." He said to himself.