Chapter 29: THE FIRST JOB — PART 1
The van smelled like gun oil and anxiety.
"So this guy really gets stronger from—that's real? That's a thing?"
Hughie's voice crackled through the earpiece, nervous and sharp, exactly like I remembered from the show. He was remote tonight—running comms and data extraction from somewhere safe—but his presence filled the van anyway.
"Hughie," Frenchie said gently. "Focus."
"I am focused. I'm just also curious about the guy who apparently runs on—what did Butcher call it? Belief bollocks?"
"That's approximately correct," I said.
Silence in the earpiece. Then: "That's so weird, man. Like, no offense, but that's really weird."
"None taken."
MM hadn't said anything since I'd gotten in the van. He drove with the steady competence of someone who'd done this before—former Marine, I knew from the show, though here he was just a large man with serious eyes who'd sized me up with a single look and said nothing.
From a former Marine, silence was louder than approval.
The target was a Newark warehouse—industrial park, minimal foot traffic, the kind of place that looked abandoned until you knew what to look for. Frenchie had briefed me on the drive: Vought used this facility to dispose of evidence from V-user incidents. Bodies, property damage records, witness intimidation files. The paper trail of every covered-up disaster they'd ever created.
My job was simple: enter with a body camera, document everything, get out.
The Boys would handle extraction. I just had to be the face.
"Perimeter clear," MM said, the first words he'd spoken in forty minutes. "Frenchie's got the west approach. I'll hold the vehicle."
"East loading dock for extraction," Frenchie added. "Ninety seconds from breach to exit if things go smooth."
"And if they don't go smooth?"
MM's eyes met mine in the rearview mirror.
"Then we improvise."
The warehouse interior was worse than the briefing suggested.
Filing cabinets lined the walls—row after row, labeled with dates and incident codes, the bureaucratic architecture of institutional evil. I activated the body camera and started streaming to Hughie's server, keeping my face visible in frame.
"I'm in a Vought evidence storage facility," I said quietly, narrating for the footage. "Location undisclosed. What you're seeing is documentation of incidents the public was never told about."
I pulled open a cabinet drawer. Manila folders, dozens of them, each one a suppressed nightmare.
"Incident 2019-0847: V-user manifestation in Bakersfield, California. Three civilian casualties. Vought response: media blackout, witness relocation, family compensation contingent on non-disclosure agreements."
The system flickered at the edge of my vision.
[BODY CAMERA STREAMING TO SECURE SERVER]
[NOTE: NO PUBLIC WITNESSES — BELIEF GENERATION INACTIVE]
"This isn't for belief," I reminded myself. "This is for evidence."
I moved deeper into the warehouse.
The cold storage unit was in the back—industrial refrigeration, the kind used for biological samples. I didn't open it. Some evidence was better documented than accessed.
But the wall of photos...
Faces. Ordinary people, caught in surveillance stills or grabbed from social media. Each photo had a notation: "Witness—neutralized," "Family—compensated," "Reporter—reassigned." The language of corporate efficiency applied to human lives.
I filmed everything. Kept my hands steady. Kept my voice neutral.
"These are witnesses," I said to the camera. "People who saw something Vought didn't want seen. This wall documents what happened to them."
In my earpiece, Hughie made a sound like he was going to be sick.
Then Frenchie's voice, calm but urgent: "Company incoming. Four operatives, thirty minutes ahead of schedule."
My stomach dropped.
"Patrol wasn't supposed to change for another hour," MM said.
"The schedule was wrong." Frenchie's tone said this happened sometimes. Intel got stale. Plans got compromised. "East loading dock still viable. Ninety seconds."
I grabbed the most damning files—three folders, thick with documentation—and killed the body camera stream.
"Heading for exit," I said.
"Make it fast," MM replied. "They're converging."
The warehouse shelving created a maze of narrow aisles—good for hiding, bad for running. I could hear boots echoing somewhere behind me, the systematic sweep of professionals who knew this building better than I did.
"East loading dock, sixty meters," Frenchie said in my ear. "I'm deploying smoke in thirty seconds."
"Copy."
Twenty meters. The footsteps were getting closer—two sets now, converging from different angles.
Ten meters. A flashlight beam swept across the aisle behind me.
"Contact!"
The shout was followed by the crack of a weapon—not lethal, the sound was wrong—and something hit the shelving unit beside my head. Rubber bullet. Non-lethal suppression.
I ran.
Frenchie's smoke charge blew through the ventilation system as I reached the loading dock—white fog flooding the warehouse, blinding everyone including the security team. I slammed through the door into the loading area and saw the van, engine running, MM behind the wheel.
Something hit my right shoulder.
The impact was like getting punched by a professional boxer—concentrated force, no give, the kind of hit that should have dislocated the joint. I felt it through the durability, felt the pain without the damage, and kept moving.
I threw myself into the van.
"Go!"
MM drove.
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