Raven dragged the final two bodies into the elevator, their gear stripped and their blood already drying. They hit the metal floor with two dull thuds. She pressed the down button and rode in silence back to the subterranean bunker. When the doors opened, she grabbed each corpse by the collar and dragged them out, leaving behind a smeared trail as she moved across the concrete towards the others.
The others were already stacked in the corner like trash—ten dead men thrown together in a mound of limbs and leaking gunshot wounds. Raven dumped the final two on top of the pile without ceremony.
"None of you are worthy of entering my system space." she muttered.
The air stank of cordite, blood, and smoke.
Raven took a seat on a metal crate nearby, unbuckled her tactical helmet, and tucked it back into her system space. Her head itched from the sweat caught beneath the gear. She pulled out a protein bar and a bottle of water, tore the wrapper off with her teeth, and started chewing slowly.
Killing took energy. Moving fast took more. She didn't carry much body fat to burn through to begin with.
This snack would keep her moving until her next meal.
She washed it down, capped the bottle, and stood up. Her eyes moved to the scattered metal crates she hadn't touched yet. It was time to see what they were guarding.
She pulled a crowbar from her system space and jammed it under the lid of the nearest crate. With a grunt, the metal popped open.
Inside: stacked bricks of C4. Old, slightly corroded, but still potent despite C4 no longer being standard use for the US military.
The next crate contained black plastic containers filled with steel ball bearings. Suicide vest filler.
Raven let out a flat sigh.
"Suicide bombers," she muttered. "Low-tier terrorist trash."
Another crate. This one held used AK-47s. Well maintained, but not new. Along with spare magazines inside rust-flecked ammo boxes.
She popped a fourth crate and froze.
It was another smaller metal box outlined with lead on the outside.
Condensation beads began forming on her head in nervousness.
She didn't touch it.
Instead, she stepped back, focused on it, and tried to store it in her system space.
A mental chime echoed.
[System Notification:]
"Item identified: 32 rods of Weapons-Grade Plutonium-239."
"Warning: Lethal radiation signature detected. Uncontained exposure would result in immediate death."
Raven exhaled slowly, feeling sweat bead along her temple.
"Thank God I didn't crack it open," she said aloud.
She backed away from where the crate had been.
It was gone now—absorbed into deep within her system space. Safe. Isolated. Unreachable.
She turned and looked over the rest of the room. No more crates lined in lead. Just weapons, explosives, and the smell of dust.
How had they smuggled it into New York?
She thought it through. Airport scanners. Dockyard sensors. Radiation sniffers on every bridge and tunnel. New York is covered in every way so that the government ensures that no one is able to smuggle this kind of shit into the city.
But the mole people—the forgotten homeless who lived beneath the streets—they have the tunnels. Secret paths from the port to the heart of the city and beyond.
These terrorists had likely crawled in from the coast through some half-buried sewer route, leaving a trail of silenced witnesses in their wake. No one reports what they see in the undercity. Not if they want to live.
Raven pictured it. Moving creats under cover of night, paying off the right lunatics to carry pieces in through catacombs and old subway tunnels.
It made sense. Horrible, logical sense.
A nuclear blast hundreds of feet underground wouldn't just cause carnage. It would collapse infrastructure. Toppling dozens of city blocks of Manhattan.
She looked back at the body pile.
"Too bad you never got your shot," she said. "One of the few times I'm glad I changed things."
The bunker was secure. She did one last loop, checking each blind spot again, but it was clear.
Twelve bodies that no one would miss it was time to move on and leave.
She turned, walked toward the elevator, and hit the call button.
A few moments later, she was on her way back up, leaving the now rotting bodies behind.
The elevator doors opened on the quiet remains of Grand Theft Autonomous. As Raven admired her robbery skills dam she is good at this.
She crossed the floor, boots echoing faintly in the silence.
Then Raven stepped into the Ironhowl X4, started the engine, and planned her next move.
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