Henry braked the car abruptly as the silhouette of the old slaughterhouse emerged from between the trees. The building was a concrete scar in the middle of the greenery, its walls covered in tar and the roof partially collapsed. He didn’t need to consult any map this time; he just looked at the structure with an expression of grim recognition.
“I know this place, Luke. It’s the decommissioned slaughterhouse from the north zone,” Henry whispered, his voice tense. “It’s the perfect spot. No one has come near here for decades because of rumors of contaminated soil.”
We watched from a distance. Jonathan’s black sedan and the escort cars were parked in front of the main warehouse. Men with long guns patrolled the perimeter, but Jonathan and Artem were no longer in sight. They had already entered the bowels of the building.
Henry adjusted the receiver on the dashboard. The audio came through with static, but Jonathan’s voice was unmistakable.
“No one remembers this place, Artem. The world forgot what happened here, which gave us the perfect cover. We took the underground section, where the waste runoff used to occur, and expanded. We created a state-of-the-art cocaine refining and research center. This is where we improve the product, where we reach the purity the market demands. This is our jewel, but it’s only one. I have other factories scattered around, but this one… this one is the heart.”
Suddenly, Jonathan’s voice began to break up, swallowed by aggressive static. Henry cursed, tapping on the tablet.
“The concrete is too dense. The signal is dying, Luke. If we stay out here, we’re going to lose the recording and our visual contact. We need to change the plan.”
He turned to me with a look that chilled my blood.
“Only one of us can infiltrate. Someone has to stay here to operate the system and try to stabilize the connection. And that someone is me. If I go in there and something goes wrong, no one saves Vanessa’s father. You’re the only one who can go in.”
He handed me a device that looked like a telescopic antenna with a long cable. Additionally, he set something up so I could hear his voice and Artem’s at the same time—a sort of interconnected channel.
“This is a signal extension. A bridge. You need to get as close as possible to the audio source inside and fix this to a high or metallic point. It will connect to Artem’s recorder and send a clean signal to my receiver out here.”
I swallowed hard. I was alone. Henry pointed to the back of the property, an area overgrown with tall grass where security seemed non-existent, as Jonathan relied on the natural barrier of the forest.
“There must be a cleaning passage,” Henry explained as we ran hunched over. “Every slaughterhouse has a robust sewage network to wash away blood and viscera. Look for a pipe that empties into the river.”
We found the entrance at the back, hidden by giant ferns. A massive iron pipe spat murky, lukewarm water into the riverbed. The smell was a mixture of ammonia and ancient rot. Without a moment’s hesitation, I entered the darkness.
The water reached my shins, the cold rising up my legs as I advanced through the circular tunnel. The sound of my footsteps echoed, making me paranoid, but I didn’t stop. I felt the damp wall and turned on the signal extension Henry had given me.
As I moved toward the center of the building beneath the ground, the static in my earpiece began to fade. Artem’s voice returned, first as a distant whisper, then gaining substance as I approached the underground refining sector.
“…it’s meticulous work, Jonathan,” Artem’s voice began to appear, but still flickering. “…But the risk (Static) … one place is high. How do you guarantee that the … (Humming) other factories fall?”
I was in the right place. Above me, beyond meters of concrete and steel, the conversation that would decide our lives continued. I was just a man in the sewer, holding an antenna and a pistol I prayed I wouldn’t use, listening to destiny being traced.
The tunnel seemed to close in on me. The water hitting my shins was warm and viscous, and the sound of my own steps, no matter how cautious, sounded like thunder in the silence of that gallery. I stretched out the extension antenna Henry had given me, trying to catch Artem’s frequency, but the result was frustrating.
His voice came in waves, swallowed by aggressive static:
“…meticulous… (static)… risk of… (static)… compromise?”
Through the earpiece, Henry’s voice sounded like an urgent whisper from another world:
“Luke, the concrete is thicker than I calculated. The signal is bouncing off the laboratory’s steel structure and coming back. You won’t get anything from down there. The extension doesn’t work miracles through three meters of reinforced cement. You’re going to have to go up. You need to be on the same level as them for the signal bridge to work.”
My throat went dry.
“Henry, if I go up, I’ll be in the line of sight of Jonathan’s guys,” I whispered, feeling the weight of the backpack pull at my shoulders.
“It’s the only way, Luke. Look for the balance chamber. There should be a service hatch that leads to the maintenance sector, right behind the refining tanks. If you stay there, the wall will be thin enough for the signal to pass through clean. Go, now!”
I continued moving through the tunnel until the light from my flashlight revealed an iron ladder bolted to the wall. It rose vertically into a narrow shaft. I began to climb, each rung groaning under my weight, the cold metal hurting my hands. At the top, I found a circular steel cover.
With an effort that made my muscles burn, I forced the lid upward. It gave way a few centimeters, revealing a glow of cold, white artificial light. I waited, heart in my mouth, listening to the sound of machinery and the distant murmur of conversation. There was no one there.
I emerged from the shaft and found myself in a narrow maintenance corridor, filled with copper pipes and electrical panels. The smell of chemicals here was unbearable, stinging my nostrils. I was now on the same floor as the central laboratory.
I approached a partially open metal door that led to the main hall. I positioned Henry’s signal extension against the door frame, and instantly, the static in my earpiece vanished. It was as if I had just stepped into the room with them.
“So this is where the secret lives, Jonathan?” Artem’s voice was now crystal clear. “All of this under a falling-apart slaughterhouse. It’s a brilliant operation, I must admit.”
Through the crack in the door, I could see part of the laboratory. It was a dystopian science fiction setting: massive stainless steel tanks, blue LED lights, and technicians moving with robotic precision. Jonathan had his back to me, gesturing toward a huge glass board where routes and numbers were written.
“The slaughterhouse is just the shell, Artem. What you see here is the future,” Jonathan was saying, with an arrogance that overflowed. “We expanded the old runoff galleries to create this infrastructure. Here, we don’t just produce; we refine the formula so it’s undetectable in common tests. And like I said, this is only the central unit. There are four other smaller factories, but this is the only one with the research lab.”
Artem walked toward the refining table, getting as close as possible to the products. He was playing his part, drawing Jonathan closer to the button-camera.
“And the chemical waste runoff? How do you handle that without alerting environmental surveillance?” Artem asked, his voice sounding calm, but I knew he was looking for the final confession regarding the environmental crime Henry wanted to document.
I was there, less than ten meters from them, protected only by a metal door and the darkness of the maintenance corridor. I could hear Jonathan laughing, a sound that made me grip the butt of the gun in my backpack.
“Henry, are you getting this?” I whispered into the radio.
“Perfectly, Luke. The audio is gold. He’s about to give up the whole scheme. Stay exactly where you are. Don’t breathe loudly.”
The air in the maintenance corridor was impregnated with a smell of ether so strong my head began to throb. Through the earpiece, I listened to Artem’s performance. He was a master at it. With cold naturalness, he pulled out his cell phone.
“I’m going to call my associate in Moscow now, Jonathan. He needs to validate the purity of this new method before we release the first investment batch,” Artem said in impeccable English, before switching to a fast, guttural Russian as soon as the call “connected.”
While Artem kept Jonathan busy with the Russian performance, Henry’s voice crackled in my ear, low and authoritative.
“Luke, take advantage of the distraction. Artem has everyone’s eyes on him. Step out of that crack and scout the perimeter. I need wide-angle photos of the structure, the tanks, and any faces you can capture. Use your phone.”
My hand trembled.
“Have you lost your mind? If I take one wrong step, I’ll be turned into a sieve in here,” I whispered back, panic rising in my throat.
“It’s now or never, Luke. Their backs are to the shadows. Go!”
I took a deep breath, feeling the weight of the pistol in my backpack like an anchor. I cautiously stepped out of the maintenance corridor. The laboratory was a brutalist structure beneath the ground: raw concrete columns supported the low ceiling, while the center of the room was an explosion of clean technology.
I moved like a ghost along the edges, where the light from the LED fixtures didn’t quite reach. Crouching, I pulled out my phone. The first thing I did was check, three times, that the flash was off. If that light went off, it would be my execution signal.
I started taking pictures. I framed the chemists in their yellow suits, hunched over beakers and transparent hoses through which an amber liquid ran. I photographed the control panels and the structure of the tanks Jonathan was so proud of. I saw the logistics up close: the “heart” of the empire was right there, exposed on my screen.
I moved forward a few more meters, hiding behind a row of plywood crates that seemed out of place in such a sterile environment. One of them was slightly ajar. Curious, and with adrenaline masking my fear, I forced the lid with my fingertips.
*Click.*
The metallic snap of the latch opening sounded like thunder in my ear, but the noise of the machines and Artem’s loud Russian voice muffled the sound. I pushed the lid just enough to see the contents. My stomach churned.
It wasn’t drugs. They were brand-new assault rifles, gleaming under preservation oil, and boxes of armor-piercing ammunition. Jonathan wasn’t just refining cocaine; he was arming a militia. I focused the camera and snapped the photo. Henry’s dossier now held the weight of a civil war.
I was about to retreat to the safety of the maintenance corridor when I felt a quick movement above my head in the ventilation ducts. Before I could react, something heavy and furry fell from one of the beams, hitting my shoulder and landing on the metal floor with a dry thud.
A squirrel. A damned forest squirrel that probably entered through the same runoff ducts I used.
The animal, in a panic, let out a sharp squeak and began to run frantically across the smooth lab floor, knocking over a tray of metallic instruments in its desperate flight toward the center of the room.
*Clang!*
The sound of metal hitting the floor echoed like a gong. The silence that followed was absolute. Artem stopped speaking Russian mid-sentence. The chemists froze. The four guards, who had been relaxed with their backs to me, spun their bodies in unison, drawing their weapons with mechanical precision.
“What was that?” Jonathan’s voice rang out, no longer polished, but loaded with murderous fury.
The flashlights attached to the guards’ weapons began to sweep the shadows at the laboratory’s edges. One of the lights passed just inches from the box where I was huddled.
“Luke… get out of there now,” Henry’s voice in the earpiece was a mere sliver of sound, desperate.
