Tucker sat hunched in his cluttered apartment, bathed in the bluish haze of vape smoke and the cold glow of his laptop. The air was thick with the smell of synthetic burnt mango. He hadn’t left his chair in hours. His bloodshot eyes were fixed on a looping reel of surveillance footage—grainy, monochrome, pulled from a pinhole camera nestled in the rusted ceiling of the old warehouse.

  He scrubbed through frame after frame: the robots returning to their dock stations, Seb palming trinkets when he thought no one was watching, Mikal walking deeper into the dim maze of crates and rusted machinery. The moment the bots stirred again—on their own, without a command—he paused. Tucker leaned in, rewinding, playing it again. And again.

  There was no footage of the killing itself. The living quarters had always been out of the camera’s reach. But one of the robots’ internal recordings—though badly corrupted—might contain the missing moments. Kyle—the only bent NYPD hacker Tucker trusted—said there was a chance it could be salvaged.

  He watched as one robot emerged from the gloom post-murder, methodically sweeping the upper floor, as if completing some final task. Then it lifted Mikal’s limp, broken body—arms dangling like wet rags—and carried him out into the night like a child’s forgotten toy.

  After that: nothing. Just empty silence and the slow rotation of night into morning. Shadows crawled across the dusty floor of the warehouse in fast-forward as Tucker tapped the control wheel, skipping ahead. Stillness. Nothing. Until—there.

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  Viktor and his thugs.

  He hit pause.

  With a sigh, Tucker pushed back from the terminal, stepping over dirty laundry and cracked take-out boxes toward the kitchenette. He muttered curses under his breath as he stirred a mug of dandelion coffee—cheap, bitter, and totally devoid of caffeine. The morning light filtering through the grimy kitchen window matched the timestamp on the video. Another New York day was beginning. And he still hadn’t slept.

  Back at his workstation, he pinched the bridge of his nose, squinting at the screen. The play button blinked like an unblinking eye. He tapped it.

  The footage rolled forward. Then—movement. Del “The Jackal” slipped his hand into a sack and palmed a handful of its contents—stolen rings, wallets, necklaces: the proceeds of mostly violent muggings. He slid them into the pocket of his long black Crombie coat, glancing around like a cornered rat.

  So Del and Seb had both been stealing from Viktor.

  Tucker leaned back, letting out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. You couldn’t blame them. If he had a boss like Viktor Romanov, he’d probably do the same. Still, it wouldn’t stop him from reporting it. Tucker liked Seb—had known him for years. But this wasn’t a world for sentiment.

  It was a dog-eat-dog universe.

  And despite the NYPD badge tucked in his coat, despite the shift he had to report to in less than an hour, Tucker had no illusions about what he had slowly but surely become.

  A criminal. Something he had never set out to do.