CHAPTER 286: CHAPTER - 286

Chapter - 286

The Portstown Shipyard was a graveyard of giants. It was a cold, desolate maze of towering steel containers, stacked six high and stretching for what seemed like miles in every direction.

The only light came from the cold, white glare of security lamps that cast long, distorted shadows, and the only sounds were the distant, mournful lap of water against the docks, the low creak of metal in the salty wind, and the rhythmic, scraping sound of Rick dragging Crimson Sparrow’s unconscious body through the gravel.

Rick was in a foul mood. The man was dead weight, an infuriating sack of useless information and bad hygiene. Sparrow’s head kept lolling and bumping against Rick’s leg with every step.

"For God’s sake," Rick muttered, letting go of his collar. Sparrow’s head dropped and hit the gravel path with a soft, unsatisfying thud.

Sharon, walking beside him with her phone’s flashlight beam cutting through the oppressive darkness, winced at the sound. "Rick, he’s a person, not a sack of potatoes! You can’t just drag him by his neck!"

Rick didn’t stop walking. He grabbed Sparrow’s ankle and started dragging him that way, his head now bouncing along the ground.

"He’s a sack of shit, Sharon. And he’s slowing us down. You want to trade? Be my guest. You can carry him." He gave Sparrow’s leg a vicious kick to get it over a railway tie. "Get up, you worthless piece of..."

The kick, or perhaps just the sheer, unrelenting verbal abuse, was enough to rouse Sparrow from his punch-drunk slumber. He groaned, his eyes fluttering open to the alien, terrifying landscape of looming metal walls. He was still high, crashing hard from the terror, and now utterly, hopelessly disoriented.

"Oh God... where am I?" he whimpered, his voice a pathetic, nasally whine that grated on Rick’s last nerve. "Is this hell? It smells like rust and fish."

"Get up and walk," Rick commanded, hauling him to his feet by his shirtfront. Sparrow was a wet noodle, his legs unstable as he stumbled over his own feet.

The reality of his situation seemed to hit him all at once. The alley, the puddle, the threats. His face crumpled. "Are you gonna pull my guts out?" he sobbed, fresh tears starting to stream down his face.

"Please, I don’t wanna be an ’A-minor’! I swear, I don’t even know what that means, but it sounds really bad! Please, I’ll be good! I’ll be so good!"

Rick shoved him forward, forcing him to stumble. "Shut up and walk. One more word about your intestines and I’ll start the procedure right here with this rusty piece of rebar."

Sparrow just sobbed quietly, a broken, shuffling mess, stumbling ahead of them as they navigated the dark, numbered rows.

They moved deeper into the labyrinth, the container numbers slowly climbing. Rick’s eyes were constantly scanning the deep, dark shadows between the towering steel walls. A cold prickle, a feeling of static on his skin, crawled up the back of his neck.

His new ’Terrifying Presence’ skill was acting like a low-grade radar, making him hyper-aware of the feeling of being watched. He couldn’t pinpoint it, couldn’t see anything but endless shadows, but he knew, with a primal certainty, that they were not alone.

"7A... 7B," Sharon said, her flashlight beam landing on a standard, heavily rusted blue shipping container. "This is it."

The padlock, however, was not standard. It was a massive, disc-shaped, high-security lock, its stainless-steel body gleaming in their lights, completely immune to the rust that consumed everything else. Rick examined it, then held up the small, simple silver key from his pocket. "All this for this little thing."

He slid the key into the lock. For a second, nothing happened. He jiggled it, applied pressure, and with a heavy, satisfying THUNK that echoed in the silence, the lock popped open. He yanked it off and handed the heavy piece of metal to Sharon. "Here, hold this."

The container doors were sealed tight, rust and disuse forming a hard crust along the edges. Rick and Sharon planted their feet, grabbed the heavy steel bars, and put their full body weight into it.

With a deafening, metallic SCREEECH that set their teeth on edge and ripped through the quiet shipyard, the right door groaned open, scraping a long scar into the concrete.

A wave of stale, dry, dusty air washed over them. It was pitch-black inside.

"Lights," Rick ordered.

He shoved Sparrow forward into the darkness. "Get in."

Rick and Sharon switched on their phone flashlights, the powerful LED beams cutting through the black. They stepped inside, and their lights revealed... organization.

This wasn’t a junk pile. This wasn’t some drug-addict musician’s messy stash. This was a professional, high-end, criminal storage unit.

Metal shelves lined both walls, stacked neatly with dozens of high-end, 80-inch flatscreen TVs, all still in their original boxes.

A long rack on one side held a small, curated collection of designer men’s suits and expensive fur coats. On another shelf sat a row of brand-new gaming consoles and high-end cameras.

And in the center, like a shrine, was a glass display case. Inside, resting on velvet pillows, were at least thirty or forty high-end watches, all gleaming in the flashlight beams.

Rick let out a low whistle of genuine admiration. "Well, well... Nadia wasn’t just a con artist. She was a goddamn curator."

He gave Sparrow, who had stumbled and fallen over a box of brand-new laptops, another kick. "This is one hell of a haul," Rick said, walking down the narrow aisle, his light playing over the boxes. "How long did this take you two?"

Sparrow, sniffling, picked himself up. "A-a year... I guess," he stammered. "Nadia... she planned everything. She said it was all about ’brand recognition.’ She had taste."

Rick stopped at the watch case. He clicked his tongue, impressed. "A Patek Philippe. A Rolex Daytona. Jesus." He unclipped his own functional but boring watch from his wrist, opened the unlocked case, and took out a heavy, platinum Rolex.

He strapped it on, admiring the way it felt, the heavy, expensive weight of it. "I’m keeping this," he announced. "As another inconvenience fee."

Sharon, who had been inspecting a stack of small, unmarked wooden crates, whipped her flashlight beam onto him. "Rick! That’s evidence! It’s stolen property! Put it back!"

Rick just wiggled his wrist, the platinum faceplate catching the light. "Evidence of what? Her impeccable taste? Relax, Sharon. It’s not like she’s going to file a police report. Besides, it looks better on me."

He turned his cold gaze back on Sparrow, his good mood vanishing. "With all this... why were you still playing guitar in that rat-infested shithole for pocket change? Why not sell all this and disappear?"

Sparrow’s pathetic whine returned in full force. "I couldn’t! Nadia handled all the fencing! She had the contacts in the city, the buyers... I don’t know who they were! She said this was our ’retirement fund,’ and only she knew how to move it. I was just... I was just the muscle and the decoy!"

Rick had heard enough. He was now wearing a thirty-thousand-dollar watch, and his patience was gone. "Enough crying. Where is it? The laptop. The Croft score."

Sparrow, still sniffling, pointed a trembling finger to the very back of the 40-foot container. "It’s... it’s in there."

Rick and Sharon aimed their flashlight beams at the back wall. It wasn’t in a box. It wasn’t on a shelf.

Bolted directly to the steel floor of the shipping container was a three-foot-tall, heavy-duty, digital safe. It was matte black, imposing, and looked like it could survive a direct missile hit.

A new, cold wave of frustration washed over Rick. He walked up to it and ran his hand over the cold, thick steel. He rapped it with his knuckles. It was solid. "This is thick. Military-grade, maybe." He looked at the 10-digit biometric keypad. "There’s no way we’re getting into this. Not without a plasma torch and a week we don’t have."

He turned, his movements slow and deliberate. He walked back to Crimson Sparrow, who had tried to make himself small in the corner, cowering behind a stack of TVs. Rick grabbed him by the front of his shirt, lifting him effortlessly to his feet, his face inches from the terrified musician’s.

His voice was dangerously quiet.

"The code, Sparrow. What’s the code?"

Sparrow’s face was a mask of pure, unadulterated, genuine terror. He could smell the violence coming off Rick in waves.

"I don’t know! I swear to God, man! Not the pliers, please, not the intestine thing, I swear!" he shrieked, his voice cracking. "She never told me! She called it her ’personal insurance policy’! She said it was for her eyes only! I DON’T KNOW! I SWEAR!"

Rick’s face went black. His patience, his control, every last shred of it, had been used up. He stared into the man’s terrified, lying eyes, and he was done asking.

He snarled, his voice a low, terrifying growl.

"WRONG ANSWER."

THUD!!!

Crimson Sparrow’s body was lifted completely off the ground. He flew backward, propelled by a force that seemed impossible, and crashed, hard, against the solid steel wall of the container.

The BOOM of the impact reverberated through the metal box like a deep, resonant drum, so loud it hurt their ears.

Sparrow hit the wall and crumpled, boneless, sliding down into a heap on the floor. He didn’t move.