Jordan exhales sharply, rolling their shoulders back before cracking their knuckles. "Alright, kids. Time for some good old-fashioned digital archaeology."

Their screen-share flickers onto my laptop, a mess of open tabs, databases, and text files. A municipal website from the Pennsylvania Department of State sits in one window, its bland blue-and-white UI a far cry from anything that should look important. But it is. Somewhere in this absolute sludge of corporate filings is what we need.

"So, quick recap," Jordan says, already typing something into a search field. "We know that the Kingdom uses shell companies. We've tracked a bunch of them before--Tacony Metal Works, Harbinger Holdings, Eclipse Enterprises. But all the ones we've got on record? Filed for bankruptcy already. Meaning they've rolled over their assets somewhere else."

"And we're assuming that 'somewhere else' is through Tremont & Fairfax," Maggie says, sprawled on her bed in what I assume is a pile of homework she's ignoring. "Because what, they're handling all their legal shit?"

"That's the theory," Jordan says. "If T&F is compromised, and they've been structuring businesses for Kingdom-adjacent projects, we just need to find one--one--new business entity that links back to them. Then we start pulling. Find a thread, unravel the whole sweater."

Lily hums, sipping from what is probably the same tea she's been nursing for the last hour. "Wouldn't they be careful about that? Like, wouldn't they use different addresses?"

Jordan grins, leaning closer to their mic. "Oh, they definitely are. But that's the thing. You can't register a company in Pennsylvania without a business address. And some of these registration firms handle thousands of businesses, meaning they clump together. A lot of shell companies use the same handful of services, because setting up a bespoke LLC under a unique address for every operation? That's too much work."

I rub my temple, thinking it through. "So what we're looking for isn't just a new company--it's a company that shares a registration service with an old Kingdom shell?"

Jordan snaps their fingers. "Bingo. If we can pin an address overlap between a new business and an old Kingdom front, we can narrow it down. From there, we check when they were formed, who filed them, and whether any of the agents tie back to Tremont & Fairfax."

"How many businesses are we sifting through?" Maggie asks, stretching like a cat.

Jordan opens another window, dropping a search filter into a list. A number populates at the top. "For Pennsylvania? 14,982 new LLCs formed in the last year."

A long silence.

"Okay, so we narrow it down," I say, adjusting my seating. "T&F is a big-shot New York firm. Are they gonna bother with, like, a Pittsburgh car dealership?"

"Probably not," Jordan agrees. "We prioritize businesses registered in Philadelphia County first. That drops us down to 2,317. Already much better."

Maggie whistles. "Still a lot."

"We're not done filtering yet," Jordan says, tapping at their keyboard. "We know Kingdom operations tend to deal with things that need high liquidity. Think real estate, logistics, pharmaceuticals. The businesses they hide behind tend to be money-moving entities, not, like, a barbershop. If they were funneling money through something small, we'd already know about it."

I tap my fingers against my laptop. "So we ignore anything that looks like a normal small business?"

"Yep," Jordan confirms. "That takes out another 800, because a ton of these are restaurants, boutiques, and bodegas. Now we're at 1,517."

"Still too many to just randomly pull records for," Lily points out. "How much does that cost again?"

"Fifteen bucks per request," Jordan mutters, sounding personally offended. "Which means we gotta narrow this down a lot before I start emptying my savings account."

"And we do that by finding overlap," I say, chewing the thought over. "Okay. What addresses did Tacony Metal Works and the other fronts use?"

Jordan flips through a tab, then pins a separate note to the side of their screen. "Tacony used an address in Kensington that turned out to be a mail forwarding service. Harbinger Holdings used a virtual office service in Center City. Eclipse Enterprises was tied to a storage unit address that was also linked to four other sketchy LLCs."

"So we filter for companies using those same addresses," Maggie says, catching on. "If they recycled a registration site, we've got a match."

Jordan hums, typing something out. The search runs, filtering down again. Numbers blink and shift. It's not really much of a search so much as Jordan doing some crazy tech shit I don't understand - it looks like a CTRL-F but then all the other boxes, with the non-matching addresses, just sort of vanish from the page. No refresh.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Okay. That just axed us down to 74. Much better," Jordan says, exhaling. "Now, next step: check for agents. Businesses need a registered agent to handle official correspondence. These agents can be individuals or companies, and if we find one tied to known Kingdom work..."

"Then we're golden," I finish.

"Exactly," Jordan says, grinning. "Give me a second."

The screen flickers, a series of data points scrolling by too fast for me to follow. Jordan mutters to themselves, occasionally adjusting a query. The chat is quiet, the kind of silence that feels like a held breath.

Then Jordan makes a noise. "Well, well, well. Look at this."

"What?" Lily asks, perking up.

Jordan leans back, arms crossed, looking entirely too pleased. "You remember that warehouse? 4547 Trenton? The one we know for sure was a Kingdom front, because we saw someone get shot there? They had that whole stupid meeting. Mr. Polygraph. Halloween?"

"Yeah?" I say, pulse picking up.

Jordan clicks something. "Well, turns out someone else just registered a company right down the block. About three months ago. It's brand new. That's not abnormal, it's a warehouse block, people use warehouses, most people use them for extremely legitimate reasons. Want to know the weird thing?"

We're all staring at Jordan's screen, watching the answer, but nobody says anything because it's more fun to hear Jordan narrate. The stunned delay lasts a little too long, so Maggie breaks it. "What's the weird thing?"

"I'm so glad you asked. Why is a biomed company - Stheno Pharmaceuticals, hosted in a random warehouse?" Jordan asks us.

That gets a longer silence. The kind where you can hear everyone thinking at once. Lily shifts on the other end of the line, and I can hear the faint clink of a spoon in a mug. Maggie says, "That is weird, right? I don't know how - what, medicine? companies normally work, but that sounds weird."

"It's weird," Jordan confirms, clicking through. "Most biomedical companies don't operate out of North Philly warehouse blocks. And they sure as hell don't incorporate in places like Trenton Avenue unless they're running a skeleton crew, setting up a research skunkworks, or using it for storage."

I press my fingers into my temple, already feeling that familiar knot of tension forming. "Okay, okay. So we've got a name. Can we do anything with that?"

Jordan hums, already typing. "We can get business records. Costs money, though. Fifteen bucks per record."

"Ugh," Maggie groans. "That's, like, my entire month's allowance."

Jordan snorts. "Yeah, well, some of us don't have allowances. But I do have an internet debit card, and since I'm about to vanish to MIT in a month, I might as well blow what's left of my vigilante slush fund."

There's a pause, and then Lily asks hesitantly, "Wait, why do you have a vigilante slush fund?"

"Good financial planning," Jordan says, as if that explains everything. Then they pause, turning off their screen share. "Okay, nobody watch me type in my card numbers."

I roll my eyes, stretching back against my pillows while we wait. I listen to Jordan mutter something about stupid government bureaucracy and thank god it's all digitized now and if I have to fill out a robotest one more time I swear to Christ, and then--there's a brief silence. Then, Jordan laughs.

"Oh, come the fuck on," they say.

"What? What?" I bolt upright, my laptop almost sliding off my stomach. "What's so funny?"

Jordan flips the screen share back on, and there it is.

Filing information. Incorporation documents. Registered on January 7th, 2025. Standard stuff. All looks above board at first glance.

Except for the name in the incorporator field: Martin Calloway. I exhale hard through my nose.

Maggie's voice gets a little louder as they get closer to the mic, and I can hear her squinting at the screen. "Okay, who's Martin Calloway again? Do I know this guy?"

I rub a hand over my face. "Junior partner at T&F. Couple weeks ago, we found his name attached to a shell company in Kensington. A shell company that burned down under suspiciously arson-like circumstances."

Jordan grins. "And guess who was seen hanging around the ruins of that warehouse afterward? Kingdom goons. No arrests, no charges, but enough circumstantial evidence that it stinks."

I let out another held breath. "So now he's registering a biomedical company, in a warehouse right next to the old Kingdom front, using the same law firm that's handling Aaron's defense and Argus Corps."

Jordan nods. "Bingo."

"Okay, but," Maggie starts, and I can hear the gears turning in her head, "if this Calloway guy is, like, a big-shot lawyer in New York, why would he even care? Like, wouldn't this be beneath him?"

Jordan snaps their fingers. "That's the thing--this is small-time for him. He doesn't have to care. All he did was handle the incorporation. That's it. And it makes it easier for people like him to claim plausible deniability when someone comes knocking."

"He doesn't even have to know what he's facilitating," I mutter. "He could just be a useful idiot, running paperwork without looking twice. There's dozens, hundreds of extremely normal businesses along Trenton Avenue. It's a major road in North Philadelphia - if you Mappo it I'm sure you wouldn't get anything suspicious."

"Or," Jordan says, "he does know, but it doesn't matter to him. One of hundreds of filings he handles in a year. One more shell company doesn't mean shit to him."

I glance at the screen, tapping my laptop with restless fingers. "Still begs the question--why hire a junior partner at a prestigious NYC law firm to file your paperwork if you're just some startup biomed company? That's expensive as hell, isn't it? I'm not sure what a junior partner is exactly, but it sounds expensive."

Jordan nods, eyes glinting. "They are expensive - and it's not a real biomed company. Here, check out their website." Jordan clicks around. "Legit-looking. Paperwork all filed. Research into novel medical agents derived from--hold on, hold on, this is good--'lab-grown bioreactors designed for scalable compound synthesis.'" They pause, then add, "Which is a very fancy way of saying we make weird drugs with weird methods."

Maggie sits forward. "What kind of drugs?"

Jordan keeps scrolling. "Nothing specific. But they're very interested in--hold on, gotta love corporate jargon--'proprietary methodologies for novel analgesics.'"

I put my head in my hands. "Oh, come on."

"They make new kinds of painkillers," Jordan translates for everyone else. "Kinds that aren't already in the market. I'll let you translate on your own time."

Silence again. Heavy. Hanging.

"So what's the call?" Maggie asks.

I swallow. This is it. This is the thing. The moment.

One last mission.

I exhale, slow and measured. "We need to find out what's inside that warehouse."