Chapter 104: The Net Tightens

"If you drop that voice recorder, I am going to throw both you and your precious evidence straight off this gantry into the harbor," Rangga muttered, his voice dropping into a harsh, grinding timbre that sounded like sliding tectonic plates. He planted his right boot firmly against the rusted grating of the elevated catwalk, his massive, calcified left arm held at a rigid, unnatural forty-five-degree angle to keep the stiffening joints from locking completely.

The auditor, a gaunt, hollow-eyed man named Vane whose suit jacket hung off his shoulders like a shroud, clutched a battered titanium briefcase to his chest as if it were a shield. His fingers trembled violently over the latch, the dim emergency amber lights of the terminal casting long, skeletal shadows across his sweat-beaked forehead.

"You don't understand what these drives represent!" Vane hissed back, his voice cracking with rising hysteria as he darted a terrified glance down toward the sprawling concrete expanse of Terminal B. "This isn't just corporate embezzlement, Rangga. This is the complete seismic telemetry proving Director Thorne intentionally induced the caldera collapse to flush out the regional debt ledger. If the syndicate's regional security directorate catches me with these logs, they won't just execute me—they'll scrub my entire identity from the planetary database before my body even hits the morgue!"

"We are well aware of what they do to loose ends, Vane, seeing as half their black-ops recovery division just burned Kranji to the ground trying to do the exact same thing to us," Arung snapped, stepping out from the shadow of a towering stack of shipping containers. He coughed sharply into his sleeve, pulling it away to reveal a faint smear of dark blood before glaring at the auditor. "Now stop shaking like a frightened dog and hand over the physical drives. Every second we stand up here arguing on this exposed gantry is another chance for the harbor patrol’s automated thermal sweeps to paint our coordinates across every tactical screen in the sector."

"I can't just hand them over without a guarantee of safe passage off this rock!" Vane protested, stumbling backward a half-step until the back of his knees hit the rusted iron handrail overlooking the dark, oily swells of the harbor below. "The port gates are completely locked down. Did you both hit your heads on the mountain? No ships are leaving. The entire maritime grid has been locked down under martial security protocols since midnight."

Rangga closed the distance between them with terrifying speed, his heavy footfalls vibrating through the steel walkway. He reached out with his normal, flesh-and-blood right hand, grabbing Vane by the lapels of his ruined suit and lifting the lighter man effortlessly off his feet until Vane’s heels kicked frantically against empty air.

"Listen to me very carefully, auditor," Rangga whispered, his face inches from the terrified man's eyes, the ambient orange glow of the harbor floodlights catching the strange, mineral-sheen beginning to creep along the edge of his jawline. "You do not have the luxury of negotiating terms. You either give us the drives right now, or I let go of your jacket and let gravity handle your audit. Am I making myself entirely clear?"

"Y-yes! Yes, take them!" Vane choked out, his fingers fumbling desperately with the dual combination locks of the titanium briefcase until the heavy lid snapped open with a sharp, echoing metallic crack.

Before Rangga could pull the data cartridges from their foam housing, a sudden, piercing shriek tore through the humid night air. High above the sprawling terminal, a cluster of heavy-duty security floodlights snapped from dull amber to a blinding, hostile white, bathing the entire shipping yard in clinical illumination.

“Attention all terminal personnel and unauthorized personnel operating within Sector Four,” a flat, synthesized automated voice echoed from the massive public address speakers mounted along the crane booms. “Per Directive Nine-Alpha, biometric and thermal scanning grids are now active across all egress points. Perimeter containment is absolute. Surrender immediately or face kinetic suppression.”

Arung cursed viciously, lunging forward to slam the lid of Vane’s briefcase shut and shoving the trembling auditor down onto the metal grating. "They didn't just lock the gates—they’ve tied the whole port's automated camera network into the regional facial recognition matrix. Our faces are flagged on every terminal exit from here to the outer breakwater."

"Then we don't use the gates," Rangga said calmly, setting Vane down with a rough shove before turning his stone-bound gaze toward the southern edge of the gantry where a massive gantry crane dropped its thick steel cables straight down toward the unlit cargo bays below. "We go down."

"Down where? Into the active loading zones?" Vane shrieked, clutching his head in panic. "The entire lower concourse is swarming with corporate shipping police and automated drone patrols! We'll be shredded before we take three steps across the tarmac!"

"Not if we move through the drainage and ballast management tunnels running beneath the piers," Arung countered, catching his breath as another wave of white-hot pain tore through his ribs. He locked eyes with Rangga, reading the silent, unyielding determination etched into his partner's altering features. "The old outflow pipes empty directly into the bilge level of the rusting cargo freighters docked at Pier Six. It's choked with industrial sludge and oil runoff, but the thermal sensors won't penetrate the standing water."

"A sewage crawl through heavy petroleum waste," Vane groaned, his face turning an even more sickly shade of green. "I'll contract chemical pneumonia within ten minutes."

"Then feel free to stay up here and wait for Thorne's cleanup crew to introduce you to their heavy riot suppression gear," Rangga retorted, already turning toward the maintenance ladder descending into the dark, echoing industrial labyrinth below. "Arung, can you make the drop?"

"Stop asking stupid questions and lead the way," Arung spat back, gritting his teeth as he unslapped a heavy iron wrench from his belt.

As they scrambled over the edge of the catwalk and dropped into the shadowed maintenance gantry, the heavy thud of armored boots echoed from the upper platform they had just vacated. Shouts rang out through the damp night air, followed immediately by the sharp, metallic clack of assault rifles being unslung and switched to active fire. The net had tightened, but the trap had not yet sprung shut.