Turken Bacon's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Turken left the crane rig behind and walked four blocks without looking back. The chain sat heavy in his coat. He had a name now, and a name meant a next move. He needed eyes on the crew before they noticed he was still standing. He found Seraph-9 waiting in an alley three streets over, her blue eyes lit soft under her hood. He passed her the chain. She read the symbol in one blink and pulled up a map across her palm. The crew's base was close — a warehouse with reinforced doors and graffiti stacked years deep. They moved to a roofline across from it. From there Turken watched. A crooked pallet tower stood lookout in the lot. A clean white booth sat at the foot of a second crane, its yellow stairs bright against the rust. Operators came and went. The crew wasn't just camping his perch. They were dug in across the whole block. Turken's plan needed proof, not a fight. He sent Seraph-9 around the back while he kept count. She slipped a small drive into the booth's data port and was gone in under a minute. By the time the operator looked up, she was already beside Turken again, her hand open. "Shipping logs," she said. "Payments. The official's signature is on three of them." Turken almost smiled. The same hand that signed off on the AI had signed off on his eviction. The pattern held. He pulled a scratched metal box from a hidden gap in the wall behind him, faded numbers crawling across its lid. He fed the new file inside and locked it shut. The perch was gone for good. But the campaign had grown teeth, and his enemy had just handed him the bite.