Page 37 of Tiny's Testament
“Feed’s glitching,” Red says. “You’ve got dead zones on my end. Be quick.”
“Roger that,” I answer.
Torch crackles through the comm. “We picking up anything else, Red?”
“Negative,” Red answers. “Drone feed’s fuzzy. Might be interference.”
“Interference or somebody jamming us?” Trigger cuts in.
“Both,” Red says, tone grim.
Dagger laughs under his breath. “Good to know optimism’s dead.”
“Wasn’t aware it ever lived,” I mutter.
The laughter fades as the road narrows into a valley of scrub and gravel. A low warehouse crouches at the edge of an empty field, sunburnt and half-collapsed. Windows are boarded up, the roof is sagging, and a chain stretches across the doors.
"Tiny." Trigger's voice cuts through. "You good?"
"Yeah," I lie. "Eyes up. Warehouse at two o'clock."
It shouldn’t feel familiar, but it does. The shape of the walls, the way the wind moves through the gaps. It hits me like a heartbeat I buried years ago. Deja vu with a pulse.
We kill the engines fifty yards out, and gravel crunches under tires. The air here smells like old rain and fresh blood. We roll in with guns visible but lowered. Dagger kills his engine beside me. Torch and Bones fan out wide. Trigger has the prospect stop the van for overwatch, Red’s voice crackling faintly through the speaker.
"Split up," I order quietly. "Dagger, east perimeter. Trigger, north. Bones, south fence line. Torch, you're with me on the west entry. Anything moves, call it."
"Copy," they murmur, fanning out like smoke.
Torch and I approach the main bay door of rusted metal hanging crooked on broken hinges. Paint peels off in strips, revealing older colors beneath. Blue. Then red. Then primer gray. Layers of history, each one trying to bury what came before.
I know this door. I've walked through it before. The realization hits like a fist to the gut. My feet stop moving before my brain catches up.
"Tiny?" Torch glances back. "What is it?"
"Nothing." I force my legs to work. "Just checking the hinges." Another lie. They're stacking up like bodies.
I ease the door open six inches. Enough to slip through, not enough to scream. The metal groans a low, pained sound that echoes in the emptiness beyond.
Inside, the warehouse is gutted. Empty pallets stacked against the far wall. Scattered tools, wrenches, bolt cutters, a tire iron, arranged in a pattern that might be random or might be deliberate. Oil stains on concrete that could be motor fluid or blood. Hard to tell in the half-light filtering through broken skylights.
The smell hits next. Motor oil, yes. But underneath it, something sharper. Chemical. Paint thinner. Spray paint.
My stomach drops.
Torch moves toward a back wall,his light sweeping over rusted metal. “Looks abandoned,” he says.
“Abandoned doesn’t mean empty,” I counter.
Torch moves left, scanning for threats. I move right, following the scent like a bloodhound on a trail I don't want to find.
That's when I see it.
My feet stop. Just... stop. Like someone cut the strings holding me upright. For a second, I'm not breathing. Not thinking. Just frozen, staring at the far wall like it's a door to hell and someone just kicked it open. It's spray-painted maybe eight feet high. Black outline. Red fill. Perfect symmetry.
A wolf's skull. Split down the center line. Jaw hinged open in a snarl. The left eye socket is slightly larger than the right. Deliberate imperfection that makes it look alive.
The Hellhounds insignia.
