In the dead of night, a shadow hides within an alley unseen. Peeking around a corner, he has a clear view of a four-way intersection. In the distance, a large imposing building is at one of the corners of the intersection. Ardai Industries reads the side of the building. After roughly two months of coming into existence, the company has been making its mark in the city. A remarkable corporation whose owner’s ideas solidified itself to be dead set on innovation.
Efielge’s Stonegate District has seen a rise in industrialization. Ironworks that only produced limited amounts of iron began construction of various newer blast furnaces and coke ovens, slowly displacing the need for magic crystals. Older Venesian built blast furnaces are being replaced with Ardai blast furnaces, bloomeries are quickly becoming entirely obsolete, and existing finery forges are being put into question. These new construction projects resulted in a noticeable increase in domestic iron production that began spreading to other cities. With Knox Brookse’s local ironworks operating a few Bessemer Converters, steel production is becoming a feasible business possibility.
At the core of this sudden change in the industry is Ardai Industries. All ironworks owners who operate the new blast furnaces, Bessemer Converters, and coke ovens have one thing in common: they all have a contract with Ardai Industries. In addition, the latest news in the metallurgy sector of the city is that Ardai Industries is once again in the works to introduce more techniques and technologies. Though the average citizen may not be entirely aware, Ardai Industries has caused a shift within Scorcia’s economy to become slightly more self-sustaining. A spotlight has been put on Ardai Industries by the STC as a potential threat to imperial dominance over Scorcia’s economy and politics.
Only recently has anything been done. That night, the Casiem is a target. Ringleader Team can’t allow their progress to be set back. They will capture or kill any would-be intruders to send a message that Ardai won’t submit to any threats.
Reed lays motionless in the alley as his cloak covers him entirely. One can mistake him for a sack of potatoes from afar. He is vigilant as he peeks around the corner into the street. Any movement seen at the intersection can be their intended target. Everyone is a suspect.
After what seems like forever, he spots three people in the distance. Each one of them wears cloaks of their own. He looks closer and examines their movement. They are walking towards the Casiem. This must be them.
“Heads up, three unknowns approaching the Casiem,” Reed speaks into his small microphone.
“Roger,” comes a reply.
The three strangers stand in the middle of the intersection and look around. They look to be waiting for something or someone. Pretty soon, another three strangers approach from afar.
“Three more unknowns approaching. A total of six now.”
The strangers get closer to the intersection and meet up with the other three. One of them points towards the Casiem as they converse with each other. They nod their heads and approach. At the same time, one of them takes out an axe, ready to start smashing his way through if needed. Standing right in front of the door, they seem to debate how they would enter. This is them.
“Unknowns confirmed to be intruders. They’re about to enter.”
“Roger. We’ll take it from here. Keep an eye out for anything else.”
Meanwhile, within reception, Ken can hear muffled voices from outside the building. Pretty soon, they fiddle with the door before opening it.
“Won’t ya look at that?” one of the intruders says with a raspy voice. “Seems those fools forgot to lock the door,” he laughs.
“Makes our job easier, ain’t it? More time to ransack the place.”
The intruders enter as their footsteps echo within. Ken’s heart begins beating faster as he continues to hide.
“Look at that.” One of them points to the boarded-up window. “Looks like someone else tried before us and failed. Let’s show them how it’s done.”
“Yeah, we’ll show ‘em.”
The six men laugh together after looking at the boarded-up window. They think they are hotshots who are better than the rest. One of them walks towards one of the doors and grabs the doorknob, and twists it.
He laughs mockingly and says, “These fools left this door open too. They are making our job too easy.”
The six men smile and enter through the door. “Remember, fellas. Take any document that looks important. Everything else we can keep for ourselves.”
The intruders leave the reception and go to explore the rest of the building. Ken continues to stay hidden until he can only faintly hear their voices. Once a moment passes, he stands up and walks towards the entrance. He slowly closes the door and locks it. Then he follows the intruders’ footsteps and goes through the same door they went through. Again, he closes the door and locks it. There is no way out now.
“Matt, the doors are locked. They are trapped in the building. The hunt is on,” he speaks into the radio.
“Roger, good hunting.”
With gun and knife in hand, Ken quietly begins moving through the building to hunt down the intruders.
The intruders continue through without any idea of what they walked into. They continue to think that no one knows they are there.
“Always wanted to rob a rich bastard before,” one of them jokes. “I wish I can see their faces when they realize we robbed them clean.”
“Not one of them deserves any of this. They cheat and lie while us folk get the scraps.”
Eventually, the intruders reach the stairs.
“We should split here. You two continue to search this floor. The rest of us will go upstairs.”
“Fine by us.”
Two of the intruders continue by themselves to explore the first floor while the other four continue to the next floor. As they split and disappear, a lone shadow walks through without making any noise.
“Matt,” he whispers, “they split. Two on the first floor, four on the second. You get the bottom two. I’ll follow the four up the stairs.”
“Roger.”
Ken makes his way up the stairs aiming his gun and knife forwards. He doesn’t know how he would take out four by himself. He wants to avoid using his firearm because ammunition is limited and would only use it if he needs to.
As Ken follows the voices of laughing and joking, the intruders split once again to search different areas of the floor.
Meanwhile, on the first floor, Matt continues to hide in the storage room. He can’t leave until he knows no one is left on the first floor. Otherwise, he risks important files being found. Suddenly he begins hearing muffled voices through the walls. Two of the intruders are close to finding the storage room.
Not too long after, they find the door.
“Hey, now look at this…” Matt hears them say.
“A large room with rows of shelves, eh? There must be something important in here.”
“This will take time to search. You start on that side. I’ll start on this side. You find any money; we split it. Otherwise, I’ll rip yer goddamn skull open.”
“Yeah, whatever, let’s just get this over with.”
The two men begin looking through on opposite sides of the room. This is perfect for Matt. Easier to fight one by one than both at the same time.
He crouches and stealthily makes his way towards one of the intruders. He seems to be too occupied to notice anything and is too focused on looking for treasure.
Matt decides he would kill them instead of capturing them since there are four more people, so he watches and plans how he would kill him without making a bloody mess.
He stands up behind the intruder and immediately wraps his arm around his neck to put him into a chokehold to cut off airflow. The intruder can’t breathe or speak. He starts to panic at suddenly being attacked. He grabs hold of Matt’s arms to try and break free but can’t figure out what to do. Matt is simply too strong, and the intruder feels blood flow being restricted too. He starts to lose consciousness. Try as he might, he can’t even open his mouth to alert his friend and starts regretting ever coming here. His vision becomes increasingly fuzzy until he can no longer control his body. His limbs fall limp, and his legs give out under him. The intruder falls unconscious and no longer resists.
To finish him off, Matt grabs a firm hold of his head and twists it. The neck snaps and kills him instantly; Matt lowers the body to the floor gently to avoid alerting the other guy.
“Ya find anything over there?” the other guy asks. “I’m only finding profiles on the workers.”
Matt moves behind the shelves carefully and quietly towards the other side while no response came.
“Hey, ya hear me? I asked a question.”
Still, no response is heard, and the intruder lifts up his head. His eyes dart from side to side to try to find his comrade in the dark.
“Are ya still here? Where’d ya run off to?”
Matt can see he became alerted at his comrade not responding. Stopping what he is doing, the intruder takes out his dagger and slowly walks through the shelves.
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“This best be a joke…”
Still crouched, Matt sneaks up behind the intruder, who holds out his knife in front of him. He isn’t risking getting stabbed, so he quickly reaches out to grab the intruder’s wrist and smashes his face with his elbow. The sudden attack causes him to drop the knife and stumble back. Now the two men face each other.
“Curses! Who are you to—”
Matt cuts him off and decides to attack immediately. He throws a right hook that smashes the side of the intruder’s face, causing him to collapse onto the floor. Matt moves forward and takes the opportunity to wrap his arm around and lock him into a chokehold. This time, Matt doesn’t need to be stealthy. He squeezes as hard as he can while the intruder struggles for his life. Eventually, an audible pop emanates from his neck, and he stops struggling. His body falls to the floor while Matt breathes out in relief.
“Kai, the two down here are done. What about you?” Matt asks through his microphone.
“Sounds like you guys are having a blast over there,” Jax interrupts. “Nothing happened so far at the factory. Cayde’s even decided to have a midnight snack.”
“I took out just one on the second floor who split off from the rest,” Ken replies. “How’s the view outside?”
“No traffic. Streets are empty and clear,” Reed says, still monitoring the intersection.
“Good. Matt, come upstairs. We’ll sandwich them,” Ken says.
“Moving.”
Using the same tactic as Matt, Ken was able to kill off one of the intruders who decided to split from the group. He hid the body in a nearby office and continues to stalk the remaining three intruders until an opportunity arises.
So far, each individual intruder isn’t much of a threat. They are untrained and sloppy. Ken and Matt deduce that they are likely just average everyday street thugs from Egwater. But then again, Ringleader are part of the Special Operations community within the American and Entesian military. The difference in capability is too significant to call fair. Realistically, Ken and Matt can rush the remaining three and come out unscathed, but they would rather not make a mess.
By now, the remaining three are talking amongst themselves in the weapons drafting room while Ken peeks around the door.
“Look at all this crap. These bastards think they can design weapons.”
“Yeah. Some of these look ridiculous. How is anyone supposed to fight with these?”
One of them walks up to the wall where feasible blueprints are pinned. He scans them all until his eyes fall upon the compound bow.
“Come take a look at this. They think they can reinvent the bow,” he laughs.
“That’s an awful lot of bowstrings. I wonder what those wheels are supposed to be for.”
“They are probably useless. All these weapons look as if a child drew them.”
“We should leave and look elsewhere. Nothing but useless drawings in this room.”
Once they are done criticizing the blueprints, they make their way towards the door. Ken quickly pulls back his head and enters a different room to hide in. They still don’t suspect anything wrong and go about searching without fear.
“There are some rooms in this hallway. Search each on your own. We should hurry up.”
The three of them enter a long hallway with offices on both sides, and Ken follows not too far behind. Coincidentally, it is the same hallway that the office Ken hid the body in is located.
Shit shit shit. Ken thinks to himself. If they searched every room, they would eventually find their dead comrade and be alerted to their presence.
“Matt, where are you? We’re gonna get made in a few moments,” Ken whispers into his microphone.
“I’m on the north side climbing the stairs. Where are you and them?”
“We’re on the south side. Stay near the stairs. They might try to leave.”
“Roger.”
Ken continues to peek around the corner and watches the three intruders go from room to room. As of yet, they have found nothing of what they are looking for. All the essential documents, plans, or blueprints are stored in the storage room, which of course, is on the first floor. Ardai’s money is also stored in a safe in the storage room. All in all, the intruders are so far empty-handed.
As they search through the offices in the hallway, one of them enters the last office and looks around. He almost misses it, but there is a slumped body in the corner of the room. Finding it strange, he approaches slowly and realizes that it is his fellow thief who split from the group a while ago. He doesn’t see any blood anywhere and briefly thinks that he might have fallen asleep. Just to make sure, he kicks his leg to wake him up. But he never does. He kicks again with more force, but the body doesn’t flinch. To his horror, it can mean only one thing.
“Hey, guys! Harley’s dead!” he yells out as he runs out of the office to warn the rest of them.
“What? Say again?” one of the intruders asks, confused.
“Harley’s dead in that room over there! He’s slumped in the corner.”
The other two stare at him, hoping that it is a joke, but it doesn’t look to be the case. They enter the room to confirm his claim and unfortunately found him telling the truth. One of them is dead in the corner.
“Bastards! They’re in the building! They knew we were here all along!”
“By the gods, I’ll strangle them to death!”
They run back into the hallway and look around towards both sides. The tables have turned right before their very eyes.
“We have to get out of here. Kill anyone who gets in our way!”
They are furious that they’d been played and lured deep into the building. All this time, they thought that they were safe and alone in the night only to find that a ghost is actually hunting them.
Their hearts beat faster as fear begins to consume them. They run out of the hallway and frantically look for the way out. While they run all around the building looking for the stairs, one of them lags behind, trips, and falls while turning a corner. The other two, however, don’t bother helping him. They fully expect him to stand back up and save himself, but he never does. When he tries to stand back up, he feels something grab his leg and pulls it under him, which causes him to fall again.
“Help me! Come back!” he hollers.
In complete panic, the intruder screams out in fear as he is dragged back by the mysterious foe and disappears around the corner. As a last resort, he holds his dagger in his hand and flips himself over, frantically swinging around the blade in hopes of hitting something. Instead, his attacker kicks the dagger out of his hand and plunges his own into his chest, piercing his heart. In total shock and disbelief, he stares at Ken as he twists the knife. Very quickly, the intruder falls into the void and ceases to be.
“Two remaining. They’re heading to you. Keep at least one alive.”
“Roger, I see them.”
The two remaining intruders reach the small recreation area. They feel a slight relief after seeing the stairs across the room, but it is quickly cut short.
“Hold it! Don’t move!”
Matt now stands in the way, having ditched his cloak, blocking the line of sight to the stairs. The intruders are stunned and examine their foe before them. It’s a strange man with a short beard and near shoulder-length black hair. He points a peculiar weapon at them.
It is a brief stand-off in which the intruders weigh their options. Was this the one who killed them off one by one? Unexpectedly, one of the intruders begins giggling to himself.
“How foolish we’ve been… Interesting, ain’t it? We thought we could get away with it. And ya hunted us down… I guess the two downstairs are also dead?”
Matt doesn’t move or speak for a few seconds and only stares menacingly.
“Who sent you?” Matt finally asks.
They grin. “Us? Do you truly want to know?”
Again, Matt only stares without speaking.
“How would I know that we walk out unharmed if we told ya?”
“How would I know you won’t lie?” Matt replies.
Their grin disappears. They wouldn’t be able to lie their way out of this situation, and they desperately think of what to do. The only solution that comes to mind is simply forcing their way out. It is two on one. If they both fought, they theorize that they should be able to overpower Matt.
“You can not kill us like a shadow anymore. You already exposed yourself.” One of them reveals their axe within their cloak and the other a dagger.
“We are going to walk out of here, even if it means killing you.”
The two intruders lunge at Matt at full speed. With a quick reaction, he fires off one round at the one with the dagger, which strikes him in the chest, and he falls. However, the other is too fast, and he can’t fire another round. The other guy swings down his axe with all his effort, and Matt barely dodges it by stepping to the left. While the axe is stuck on the wood floor, Matt strikes him with his knee and causes him to let go of the axe. As he stumbles, Matt grabs his arm and throws him over his shoulder. When he smashes into the ground, Matt immediately jumps on top of him, holds his arm in an armbar, and pulls back as the intruder yells in pain. At the same time, the other guy is able to get up and tries to approach them. Matt notices and points his gun at him with one hand before firing another round that strikes him on his shoulder.
Everyone is on the floor. Both intruders are groaning and howling with pain. One was shot twice while the other is held in an armbar. Matt holds the arm with one hand and his gun with the other. Having clearly showcased what his firearm can do, he points it at the intruder he has pinned.
“You have a few options here,” Matt speaks in a low voice. “Tell me who sent you, why, and where I can find them. If you don’t, or you lie to me, I can break your arm, shoot you, or a combination of both.”
“Rah! Fine, fine! Let go, and I’ll talk! It bloody hurts!”
“Tell me first; then I let go.”
“Bourkee! Greysen Bourkee sent us! From the Bourkee Gang!”
“Why?”
“I don’t know! We were hired to raid this place, but we don’t know why!”
“Where?”
“You can ask for him at ‘The Siren’! A tavern in Egwater that he owns!” He begins to speak very quickly as he starts feeling his arm bending the way it shouldn't.
“What are you looking for here?”
“They told us to look for anything important! Any plans, letters, documents, personal information! Anything to undermine business, sabotage, or blackmail!”
Satisfied with the answers he got, Matt lets go of his arm and stands up, never losing sight of him. The other man who was shot twice is still breathing and conscious but just barely. Both rounds must have missed any vital organ. He is trying to sit up but can’t as his arm is shot and useless.
At this time, Ken enters the room, but he walks right past them and heads for the stairs.
“We’ll let you leave. Pick up your friend. I’ll show you to the door.”
Gritting his teeth, the man picks up his wounded companion and follows behind Ken. Matt trails behind them with the gun in hand, ready to shoot them again if they try anything. The entire time the man feels rage. He has never been so humiliated, but he acknowledges that he can’t do anything anymore. He has been beaten and outmatched, and he would just have to flee and return empty-handed. All he can do is mentally curse Ken and Matt for interfering.
Right before exiting the building, Ken stops them.
“Once you leave, never come back. Tell them we’ll kill whoever comes to bother us.”
They don’t even try to make eye contact with Ken. Heads still hanging low, they slowly walk through the door and into the street without saying a word. The door closes behind them.
From afar, Reed observes the defeated thugs as they trudge down one street of the intersection. One of them looks angry but exhausted as he holds up his companion, who would otherwise collapse from his injuries. Reed entertains various scenarios in his mind as to what could have transpired. Six men went in; only two came out.
“How’d it go?” he asks through the radio.
“We didn’t get everything but we got something. Greysen Bourkee of the Bourkee Gang. Probably the gang leader or some shit. They got hired to raid us for economic sabotage and blackmail,” Matt replies.
“So the STC hired a gang to harass us?” Jax asks.
“Probably. Pretty low effort, in my opinion. A megacorporation hires a street gang to intimidate us. I almost feel insulted.”
“By the way,” Reed interrupts, “what happened in there? The two guys who came out look real fucked up.”
“They got a load of John Wick over here,” Ken replies. “Matt took them both down and made them talk.”
“What about the rest?”
“Dead. But now we gotta clean up. Reed, get over here and help us with the bodies.”
“Got it,” Reed replies as he stands up to walk out of the alley. “What do we do with them?”
“We got hours before sunrise. We can dump them into the ocean at the docks. No one will suspect a thing. Cayde, Jax, bring a wagon over here.”