Ryan Silas unlocked the door to his office by dialling the six-digit pass code. Out of habit, he wiped his sleeve over the number pad to clean it of his prints and any smudges that might indicate the used digits.

The in-box tray mounted next to the door sprang open along with the door’s lock, allowing Ryan to grab the stack of papers that had amassed during the day. He nudged the door closed behind him and sifted through the stack while walking to his desk. It was mostly the regular paperwork he did every day, and then there was the report from last night’s shift. He started up his computer and sat down to read that one first.

A group of people had started a fight in front of the station, with bystanders quickly getting involved in a larger brawl. Most were teenagers or young adults, and most had run when the night shift officers approached them. A few had stayed and provoked a confrontation. One of those had been arrested later on, the rest had disappeared. The single caught perpetrator had protested his arrest loudly and they hadn’t gotten much out of him yet, except that the brawl had started out from some kind of discriminative slurs.

A few minutes after the chaos outside had gotten back under control, an intruder had been spotted fiddling with Ryan’s office door. They had also run as soon as noticed, straight out the front door, and also disappeared without a trace. One officer had taken up the chase, but returned shortly after when the intruder had seemingly vanished in a dead end alley.

Ryan regarded the description. Medium height, possibly male, dark clothes, hoodie, cap, scarf covering everything below the eyes. Wonderful.

The office had been checked, with nothing found in disarray. No prints that shouldn’t have been there. Too many strands of hair to distinguish any one person as the culprit, the cleaning crew wasn’t thorough enough to clear all of them away every time someone walked into Ryan’s office.

The security footage from about an hour up to until about an hour after the incident had been erased. A few bits of software traces were found in the system that really didn’t belong there, from a program meant to delete video files for a set time period and then delete itself. To cover the escape, and deny them anything but eyewitness accounts.

Finally, the office had been deemed clean and Ryan had been allowed to proceed with his usual workday. The multiple-hour search had yielded them nothing.

The virtual keyboard sprang forth onto the desk in front of Ryan and with a sigh, he logged onto his computer. His usual desktop greeted him, and then the screen flickered, and the plain blue wallpaper disappeared. It was replaced by the image of a crooked, stylized letter H with a URL written across it.

Ryan sat for a few seconds, contemplating the mocking picture in front of him. It was a symbolic slap in the face. “You deemed everything clear, but here I am”.

He took a deep breath and reached for his phone.

Half an hour later, the tech team concluded that there was “no harmful software compromising the system”. That was what they had said about his office a few hours before, Ryan thought cynically. He wondered whether there would be any more surprises popping up over the next few hours. Maybe a jack-in-the-box jumping from his desk drawer. Wouldn’t that be something.

According to the tech team, the URL displayed on Ryan’s new wallpaper led to a simple website. Its sole purpose seemed to be playing a two-minute audio track in a continuous loop. Ryan knew what he would hear even before someone tried the link. His suspicions were confirmed, and he rubbed his eyes, scowling at the familiar melody.

Someone next to him groaned. ‘That’s Hounds, isn’t it?’, Daniel asked.

Ryan nodded in resignation. Hounds, the group of thieves Ryan had been after since he’d been put in charge of their case a few years ago. Two weeks after starting work on that particular assignment, he had gotten a phone call. The ringtone wasn’t his usual, and the call had been untraceable. The young man on the other side of the line had introduced himself as Orion, leader of Hounds, calling for a chat. Ryan hadn’t found a trace of the ringtone on his phone afterwards, but it had always sounded when Orion was calling, and now it was happily blaring from his computer.

Ever since that first phone call, Orion hadn’t stopped pulling pranks on the station, some minor, some major. This, though, this was the first time he’d come here in person. And they were still left empty-handed.

‘There’s no footage. Nothing. Not even the leftover software we found can help us.’

Daniel shifted uncomfortably next to him, eyes shifting around the room full of people. He was still wary of the majority of officers inside the station, and they had given him ample reason. In the two years since Ryan had brought him in to work on Hounds’ case, Daniel hadn’t exactly made friends. Some of the officers knew about his past, or at least had an idea, and some had even questioned Ryan to his face about “bringing a risk factor into the station”. Luckily, Daniel hadn’t gotten more than a few sneers up until now, but the constant reminder that he was not welcome didn’t quite do wonders for work atmosphere.

‘Do you know what they wanted?’

Ryan shrugged. ‘Might have copied some data, no way to tell, really. We haven’t figured out a pattern in their activities yet. It almost seems as if Orion selects his operations by whatever sounds fun at the time, or by whatever is the biggest challenge, or by whatever will piss off the most people.’ He took a deep breath to keep the irritation from his words. ‘At least we can estimate his time in here as somewhere below ten minutes. He couldn’t have done too much damage in that short of a time span.’

Daniel nodded slowly, and Ryan could almost see him thinking it over. Tall, built like a soldier, and not the talkative kind, most people dismissed Daniel seconds after meeting him. Ryan himself had learned the hard way not to underestimate the man. He might not be too comfortable communicating, and Ryan had to put in a lot of effort to read his expressions, mannerisms, and gestures, but as of yet, it had been well worth it.

‘Anything missing?’

Ryan shrugged again. He’d been doing that a lot in the last hour, far more than he liked. ‘I haven’t had time to check in earnest.’ He turned to the people cluttering his office. ‘Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, that will be all.’

When everyone had been ushered out of the room and only Daniel and himself remained, Ryan closed and locked his door. Daniel could stay. Daniel could be trusted. He couldn’t afford not to be, and in this case, he might very well have to know all the details. While his past made him a valuable consultant, it also made him vulnerable, and Ryan preferred to protect his assets.

Walking around the office, Ryan pulled small wooden boxes from various crannies and gathered them on his desk. Altogether, there were five identical containers, with Ryan holding a key for each one. Upon opening, three of the boxes contained similarly identical flash drives, and two were empty. Ryan cursed.

‘One box is a diversion, the others hold critical information. One of the drives is gone.’

He plugged the devices into the computer one after another, checking their contents. Daniel waited politely, on the other side of the desk.

Ryan currently kept four drives in his office. Or he had, before Orion had taken one of them. One drive held information on Max Rivers and his growing operations within the city, from drugs to girls to contract killers. Another drive held everything they had found on Michael Runner since his escape from a secure facility two weeks ago. One drive was about Hounds, both the individual members and the total group operations. And the last drive, the missing one, Ryan used to keep an eye on risk factors within the station.

‘I keep tabs on a few select people around here,’ he muttered. ‘Three, to be precise.’

Daniel simply nodded, waiting for him to elaborate.

‘One person I’m watching is Sarah Pike, since she’s assisting us as liaison to the Agency, and I don’t trust anything they ever send our way, especially if it’s supposed to help us. The second one is that kid that got recruited by secret services. He refused because he thought the police were “more fun”, and that I don’t trust either. Along with his knack for hacking, but that goes without saying. As for the last person...’ Ryan sighed.

Daniel shifted his weight uncomfortably. He seemed to know where this was going. For just a moment, as the consequences of what had happened sunk in, the skin around his eyes paled.

‘I’m sorry,’ Ryan said.

‘Hey guys?’, Lilly called out from his chair, ‘I dug around some more and found a thing.’

He turned the laptop around to face them. ‘Say hello to our very own personal file of one Daniel Brooks.’

‘I don’t get it, what is this about?’, the kid asked again, and Ryan ignored him, again.

Nicholas Wright, eighteen years old. Something of a prodigy when it came to computers. He’d participated in a lot of competitions, some less legal than others, and made enough of a name for himself in that scene to be quite useful. He’d also managed to stay out of the way of law enforcement, if not off every government radar.

Secret services had pounced on him the minute he reached maturity, two months after he’d finished high school. Ryan wondered whether they had knocked on his door a minute after midnight on his birthday, or if they’d had the courtesy to wait until morning. In either case, they had offered the kid lots of fancy toys and opportunities at mischief, but somehow, Nicholas had deemed them boring and decided to work for the police force instead. Due to his reputation and contacts in certain communities, the force had happily accepted him, albeit with a keen eye on his activity on official servers.

Ryan had started gathering information on the kid the second he was given command over him.

Nicholas was standing with both hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth, from his heels to his toes and back. He didn’t seem bothered by the black hair reaching into his eyes. The intelligent but bored gaze flitted all over the room, looking for something more fun to do. Ryan wondered if Orion looked like that when he had nothing to play with.

The woman standing next to the kid had equally black, albeit longer, wavy hair that she wore pulled back into a ponytail. She was older and more relaxed, used to briefings, with her hands hanging loosely at her sides and her eyes trained patiently on Ryan.

Sarah Pike. She had been transferred over by the Agency to “enable and promote inter-institutional cooperation”. To snoop around, in simpler terms. She had gotten herself assigned to Michael Runner’s case with pressure from her people to grant her the spot. Either the Agency was much more interested in Runner than anticipated, or there was an ulterior motive. Ryan was not about to let either option come to pass without his oversight. The Agency would not snatch Michael Runner from him. He had questions for that man.

Daniel was the fourth person present, having stayed in the office after discovering that he was compromised. He was leaning against a wall with his arms folded over his chest, staring at nothing. Whether he was imagining worst-case scenarios or making plans was anyone’s guess.

Ryan had called them here, into the privacy of his office, to talk about the flash drive. He felt that since their information had been leaked, they should know, to take the necessary precautions. And he had a few other things to add, to make sure none of them did something stupid.

In his mind, scenarios of chaos and mischief shifted and twisted, and at the centre was Orion’s mocking laughter.

The folder lying on the desk in front of him seemed to mock him, too, and Ryan decided to get on with it quickly.

‘You’ve heard about the break-in last night,’ Ryan began. ‘There was an intruder, they got away. What you don’t know is that a flash drive was stolen from my office, one that held sensitive information on the three of you.’

‘You kept tabs on us?’, Nicholas asked. He didn’t seem particularly surprised. ‘I get me, and I get her.’ He jabbed a thumb in Pike’s direction. ‘But why would you keep watch on him?’

He gestured at Daniel, who was still not meeting any of their gazes. Ryan felt a jab of sympathy and forced it away and out of his voice as he answered. ‘That’s his business, and his story to tell should he choose so. It has no immediate impact on our problem, namely, the people who acquired the flash drive.’

He paused for a moment, less for dramatic effect but to brace himself for the reactions. ‘What have you heard about a group called Hounds?’

Nicholas retained his blank, bored expression, but Pike whistled softly. ‘Last night’s duty officers will feel stupid when they find out.’ She smirked.

Ryan glared at her. ‘Let’s make the feeling mutual, then.’

He opened the folder on his desk, almost surprised that it didn’t give off any doom-filled sound or flashed of light, and that it didn’t explode in his face. Everything else connected to Orion tended to do one of those things.

The four pictures in the file were face-down, and Ryan spread them on the desk. It would be better to keep them all focused on each picture individually, and this time, he admitted the dramatic reveal wouldn’t hurt, either.

Ryan turned over the first picture.

‘Orion. Mugshot from eight years ago, when he first showed up on our screens. We know almost nothing about him. No pictures or prints in the databases, no ID on him at the time of his registration. Arrested at two in the morning, processed, disappeared out of his cell the night after that. Nobody saw a thing. Medium height, green eyes, group leader.’

He turned over the second picture. It showed the grainy silhouette of a figure that could have been almost anyone.

‘Also Orion, believe it or not. This is the only picture we have form last night, and the only other one aside from the mugshot. It’s from an ATM camera across the street from the station, taken when he made his getaway last night.’

The shot was enhanced, and if you knew what you were looking at, the figure fit a young man running across the street, with a hood and cap, and a flash of skin visible around the eyes. With a bit of imagination, the two pictures could show the same person eight years apart. Not enough for a steadfast identification, not enough for evidence, but enough for investigative purposes. It was better than the next one.

The third picture was a crude sketch, the only colour in a bright green shock of hair.

‘Poison. We don’t know much more about her than we do about Orion. She joined Hounds a few years back but was active on her own before that. Martial artist with a great deal of practice, and some degree of medical training. She probably changed her hair by now, it is rather conspicuous, but we’re keeping a look out for bright green.

‘She’s most likely in her early twenties, same as Orion. More details and encounters from before her time with Hounds in her file. After her joining, she left far less traces, so most of it can be considered out of date.’

Ryan paused, glancing quickly at Pike before turning over the last picture. Her face fell.

‘Lilly,’ he started deliberately. ‘Real name-’

‘Alex,’ Pike whispered, still recovering from her shock. ‘Alexander Rivers. Alleged son of Max Rivers. Twenty-five years old, middle-eastern decent with no further details of heritage on public record. Several previous run-ins with the police and the Agency because he hacked official channels on multiple occasions.’

The corner of her mouth twitched. ‘He hacked into our systems and hijacked the servers to play video games. I was the agent in charge of his case, and the one who arrested him that time.’

‘You arrested friggin’ Lilly?!’ Nicholas had stopped fidgeting and was staring at Pike. His interest had finally spiked. ‘That guy is a legend! And the server thing was pure genius, I wish I’d thought of that!’

He received a collective glare and promptly shut up with a small murmur that of course, he’d never do anything of the sort himself. He was probably already planning how to repeat the prank without getting caught.

Ryan shifted the pictures into alignment. ‘I think you can see why your personal files falling to Hounds is problematic, mostly because of Lilly. You’ll have to be careful where this group is concerned. We don’t know whether last night’s escapades were engineered specifically to gain information on you or not. Orion might make a prank out of giving us a scare, or Lilly might have plans to do some actual damage. Their prior objectives are scattered too widely for us to decide on that yet, but I’d rather not take any chances.

‘Pike, you have your assignment. If that assignment in any way deviates or coincides with Hounds or you find yourself in the vicinity of my investigation, I'll pull you off. Agency liaison or not.

‘Nicholas, if Lilly contacts you in any way, don’t respond, and report to me immediately. Do not get involved in a contest.’

He glanced over to the window.

‘Daniel, tell me when- if you receive any messages.’

Daniel simply nodded, still staring into empty space. He knew what Ryan meant, and there was no need to make it any more obvious to curious ears. This was need-to-know, only.

Nicholas opened his mouth as if to ask another question, then thought better of it and resumed his fidgeting, while Pike seemed to contemplate the situation. Ryan dismissed them both, then turned to his consultant.

‘Daniel.’

The man turned his head slightly to indicate he was listening, but he didn’t move his eyes from the invisible spot they were focused on. Maybe his mind was caught in the past, or maybe in anticipation of the future. Either way, Daniel’s thoughts weren’t occupied with pleasant things.

‘I meant it,’ Ryan said softly. ‘Tell me when you hear anything, any threats, no matter what they entail.’ Between just the two of them, it was “when” once more, not “if”. They both knew that it wasn’t just a possibility. With the kind of information Hounds now had access to, it was a matter of time.

‘I’ll get you into witness protection or ship you off to Alaska if I have to. You’re an asset, and you’re not on your own in this. I promised you that fifteen years ago, and that promise still holds. Understand?’

Daniel opened his mouth, paused, closed it. Turned to meet Ryan’s gaze. There was long-buried pain and fear in his features. Ryan had wondered whether he was thinking of the past or the future. The past it was then. Daniel nodded once.

‘Do you want to talk about this whole mess?’

A smile, and a shake of the head. ‘I’ve talked enough. More than a decade of words is enough. I’ll notify you as soon as they contact me.’

He excused himself and Ryan was left alone, sitting down at his desk with a sigh. More than a decade of words didn’t mean that all was said. It didn’t mean anything was said at all. Daniel had never been one to talk much, especially not about his problems. When Ryan had first met him, that had been a struggle, and later, when he joined the police force as a consultant, even more so. It had taken years to gain his trust and learn a tiny little morsel of personal information. Ryan wouldn’t press the issue and risk what loyalty Daniel might feel towards him. Nothing to do but wait on that.

The computer screen still showed the skewed H and URL instead of the usual wallpaper. Ryan huffed and changed it back to plain blue, then set to work.

Orion lay on the couch, one ankle resting on a propped up knee, a cup of coffee balanced on his stomach. Eyes closed. Thinking.

It ran most fluently this way, just lying there. Comfortable, too, with the cushion lumps rearranged so that they didn’t press into his spine any more. He could do this for hours, and mostly, something good came of it. Thinking was the biggest part of his job, after all, so Orion considered the couch his workspace, and he claimed it when he “did his thing”, as Poison called it. He couldn’t relax like this in his room, so Poison and Lilly would just have to concede this part of the living room and suck it up.

He had rolled out of bed half an hour ago, made coffee, taken a bite out of a sandwich, and lain down. His mind toggled between awareness and drifting into half-sleep. Somehow, “groggy and only partly aware” seemed to be the state his mind preferred for working. He sometimes needed hours to formulate a thought, but those thoughts were the best he ever got, so it was worth it. They had that much time.

Again, he went over the details, checking, making sure, running it by his mental eye. Yep, that was definitely not going to work. Different approach, then.

With a sigh, Orion sat up, careful not to spill his coffee. He was too awake for this.

‘Done scheming?’

He jumped at the voice, eyes flitting into sharp focus.

Poison was sitting on a stool opposite him, legs tugged under her, happily demolishing her breakfast.

‘When did you get there?’

Poison shrugged. ‘Ten minutes ago? Five? I don’t know.’ She took a large bite and spoke around the food. ‘Not like I keep track.’

‘How…?’ He threw his free hand into the air and made an indignant, frustrated sound. She moved far too quietly. ‘Whatever.’ He rubbed at his eyes. ‘Can I run something by you?’

‘Sure! I love dismantling your plans.’ She wriggled into a more comfortable position. ‘Warehouse?’

‘Yeah.’ It was their next target, and security was heavy. Orion hadn’t been able to figure out the schematics. And Poison had her own areas of expertise complementing his. He liked passing ideas back and forth between them, for a new perspective. ‘What would you suggest for entrances?’

She pondered for a moment, even stopped chewing for a bit. Her plate with sandwiches sat loosely in her lap, fingers resting around the edge. ‘Windows?’

‘Too high up.’

‘Roof?’

‘Security and access.’

‘Air ducts?’

He scowled. Every single time. ‘No air ducts, Poison.’

‘Why not?! I’ve gone in that way a thousand times! It’s a good route.’

Orion sighed and counted off the familiar arguments on his fingers. ‘It’s too loud, too tight, won’t sustain my weight including gear, and in contrast to you, I can’t jump back up to the ceiling when it’s time to leave again.’

It was her turn to scowl, but Orion held to his point. They couldn’t all have natural acrobatic talent, after all. Poison loved climbing and swinging and challenging her body to new feats, and though Orion approved of the risk and the rush, he preferred to work within realistic limits. For him, that excluded air ducts, and Poison wasn’t going in alone on this job. If she wanted to crawl through one of those on her own time, Orion wasn’t going to stop her.

A door opened and Lilly shuffled past them towards the kitchen. He returned a moment later with a bowl of cereal and fruit and flopped down into his armchair with a sigh.

‘Disguise,’ he said and started eating. They’d probably woken him up with their conversation.

Orion considered briefly, then shook his head. He’d thought of most of this before. ‘I’m not that good of an actor, and there could be people in there who’ll recognize me. I’d also not put it past those guys to all know each other or have metric scans. Besides, I really don’t want to risk the consequences of being discovered.’

Lilly accepted the dismissal without comment. The topic of Orion’s past connections wasn’t one they talked about.

‘Ship yourself in a box!’, Poison exclaimed with a grin, almost dropping a sandwich.

She got an exasperated sigh for an answer, though the effect was somewhat diminished by a poorly suppressed chuckle.

‘You could hold onto the downside of an incoming truck,’ Lilly suggested.

‘Like in a bad action movie,’ Poison supplied happily. ‘That way we can finally get you a catch-phrase. If you roll out from under a truck and do an action movie sequence, you gotta have a catch-phrase!’

Orion ignored her. It was that point in the discussion where she refused to take anything serious for at least another two minutes. ‘They’ll check under the trucks, probably. And there’s a heat scanner somewhere, so hiding inside wouldn’t work, either.’

Lilly was already nodding. ‘What about transporting something warm enough to mask your body heat? It can’t be anything too strange, though.’

Interesting idea. Even Poison refrained from making a comment about lava.

For a few minutes, they all stared at the coffee table, each running through a list of possibilities in their heads and discarding them one after another. The main problem was that they didn’t know what was done inside the warehouse, and they couldn’t ship anything too obvious. Supplying a crate of cocaine to a weapons distribution point would raise suspicion.

‘Yeah, I got nothing,’ Orion said finally.

‘Me neither,’ Poison agreed, ‘Buuuut...’ Her eyes glinted. This was going to go very bad for Orion.

‘There’s a sewer system. You could bypass the sensors to get inside the perimeter and then catch a truck to get into the building itself. You’d have to time it perfectly, but I think I can get you there. Or you can just send me in and I open a back door or something.’

Orion sighed and forced himself to think about it seriously, then gave in and nodded. ‘All right. Let’s scope the location and see what we can do.’