Looking at the surroundings I notice that the police presence isn’t as strong on the surrounding warehouses, thinking of making my own way into the building through one of these others I move around the larger congregation in front of the warehouse. Moving far enough out to not be noticed I move down a lane way behind a warehouse 3 maybe 4 away from the one on fire.

Spotting an open window higher up I move some crates next to the wall and jump up reaching out, managing to snag the window edge pulling myself into the building. Landing on a catwalk part way up the wall I look around to see if I’ve been spotted, but noticing there aren’t any lights on and the warehouse being empty of anything apart from a few crates and boxes scattered around the place.

Waiting for a moment to listen if there is any movement throughout the interior, I give it a few minutes and upon not hearing anything move down the stairs to the opposite wall of the warehouse. Looking to see if there is any window or door on this side I come up short, it seems like a shared wall between the two buildings so it wont be easy to access. Moving to the rear of the building I see that the wall continues past the end of the building to the edge of the wharf.

Thinking about my option I call out Cinder, “Hey buddy we need to get through to the next building but there’s no windows or doors to go through, I’m thinking we put our practice of ‘scratch’ to the test and make our own doorway, you think you can do that?”

“Char” getting a nod in response. Seeing Cinder move up to the wall and pause for a moment, his claws quickly gain a white glow as he puts more normal energy into then and when they start to stabilise he moves them towards the wall. I watch gob smacked as his claws slide straight into the brick like a knife into butter and with a slow movement moves them around creating a door nearly a metre and a half high and half that wide.

Pulling his claws out and then grabbing the section with them he pulls the wall, and it slides right out of place and he plops it onto the ground. Making a bit of noise as the section of wall settles, I carefully poke my head into the adjoining building, seeing that there was a bit more activity in this building I stepped carefully making my way behind a stack of crates nearby. Luckily the crates had been obscuring the wall we dismantled and again I paused while I tried to make out if there was anyone inside.

Not hearing anything I looked out and could make out wide open doors at the front of the building, the occupants must have run outside when the explosion went off, luckily for me it meant that there wasn’t anyone inside. Being more used I have a look around to see if there was any security cameras but it didn’t look like it. The building wasn’t in great shape and I couldn’t imagine that the owner would be willing to spend the money on a security system.

This being out lucky day we moved over to the other wall and again hid behind some crates, this side didn’t have a shared wall so we were able to get outside through a door that was ajar. The smell of smoke and the heat the flames were giving off could be felt from here and we had maybe one more building between us and the one on fire. Oddly the next building didn’t have any exterior windows or doors into this lane way and moving to the rear of the building I could make out some large metal double doors backing onto the river front.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Noticing signs that some people had been moving around and there was a medium sized boat in the water tied up at the edge. Waiting a few moments to see if anyone was moving around near the door or the boat I didn’t see or hear anything, I could hear some murmuring coming from the door entrance, though with the sirens being so loud right out the front of the building was surprising.

Sneaking up to the doors edge I tried my best to be inconspicuous and squatted down next to the entrance to hear what was going on.

“WHO WAS THE IDIOT THAT THOUGHT SMOKING NEXT TO THE FUEL WAS A GOOD IDEA!!! WE’RE GOING TO BE F^&(KED IF THE PIGS GET WIND OF THIS. YOUR JUST LUCKY WE DIDN’T HAVE ANYTHING IMPORTANT IN THAT WAREHOUSE!!”

“Sorry boss, I told Mark to go outside, but you know how lazy he is, he told me he couldn’t be stuffed and said nothing will happen.”

“AND YOU BEING THE ‘SMART’ ONE DIDN’T THINK TO TELL HIM TO TAKE IT OUTSIDE.”

“Yes…um…ah… we’ll make it up to you I swear boss.”

“You better!! If this deal doesn’t go down due to the god damned fire, I’m going to be getting my money back and you better hope you got enough saved up or I’ll carve it out of your skin!!”

“Y….ye… yes I swear nothing will go wrong, I’ll work everything out.”

Hearing someone else walk away stomping on the floor hitting things as he passes, I took the time to poke my head around the corner and could make out a slight balding man bent over holding his stomach while a larger thick set man was walking to the office at the front of the building.

It seemed that we had stumbled onto something major and the chance that one of the thugs was stupid enough to smoke next to a fuel storage gave us the chance to shut this down while everyone else was distracted. Looking around I notice some barrels just to the side of the doorway and while no one was looking this way we snuck into the building hiding out of sight.

Giving it a few minutes to see if we were spotted, I hear nothing apart from the skinny man moving around checking on things, I could also hear faint noises from the front of the building which I assumed was the larger man and his goons.

Looking down at Cinder, “hey buddy we are going to try and draw that man we saw to us and try to take him down quietly, if for some reason we don’t and draw more attention I need you to unleash your biggest ‘growl’ yet and try to disorient them so we can try to take them down.” Looking around I spotted some cast off metal laying on the ground and picking it up I asked, “you ready Cinder?” Getting a nod I proceeded to hit is against the barrel making a ‘CLANG!’ echo through the building.

“WHOS THAT!?” hearing a yell come from the man's direction, “That better not be you gus, I’m NOT in the mood for your shit right now!”, hearing him come closer and closer muttering to himself. Feeling him come nearer to our hiding place he rounded the edge of the barrels and looked me dead in the eye, “who’re yo…” not giving him a chance to recover from the surprise I lunged forward connecting a right hook with his jaw, seeing him go glassy eyes and slumping to the floor I quickly dragged him behind cover.

Pausing for a moment and listening to see if our commotion drew any attention; it seemed we were lucky as the sirens outside drowned out the majority of the sound. Sighing in relief I turned to Cinder, “alright buddy it seems stage 1 is done, no one is the wiser that this guy’s disappeared. I’ll tie him up and then we can move on, we got to try to take out as many of them as we can before they notice their guys are going missing.

I don’t know how many of them there are, but we need to be ready to be outnumbered, we might not, but we need to prepare in case, remember incapacitate, don’t go for lethal. They aren’t as strong as you or I.”