The Imperial Heavy Industries headquarters building rose over two hundred meters above Staten Island, and Madam Gao's office had been on the thirty-eighth floor: a private executive suite, separated from the open-plan areas, the kind of space a company reserved for people whose work required discretion.
The elevator doors opened with a soft chime. Nolan stepped out first, the vibranium power armor's weight making itself known in the slight give of the carpeted corridor floor. David followed, then Natasha, then Silver Sable guiding them forward. Bright overhead lighting ran the length of a wide corridor that was, at this hour, entirely empty.
From the stairwell at the far end came heavy footsteps, rhythmic and descending: the Terminator team and the Stormtroopers, too heavy for the elevator's rated capacity, working their way up thirty-eight floors the direct way.
The group had not walked more than twenty meters down the corridor when movement caught Nolan's eye.
Ahead, where the corridor bent toward the executive section, a cluster of men in civilian clothes were pressing against a line of black-uniformed security personnel. Not a brawl yet, but close. Bodies leaning into each other, voices low and tight, the kind of standoff where the next wrong word or shove would tip it over.
Silver Sable's expression shifted the moment she saw it. Something behind her professional composure went flat and cold.
She drew a compact silver pistol from her hip, pointed it at the ceiling, and pulled the trigger.
The shot cracked down the length of the corridor like a door slamming in an empty house. Every person in that cluster stopped. Heads turned.
A security captain in black stepped forward from the line, his posture slightly rigid with the effort of maintaining composure.
"Director. These men are attempting to force entry into Madam Gao's crime scene. We were close to a violent incident."
Nolan had already looked past the security line to the men pushing against it.
He recognized the build. The posture. The particular way gang-trained men stood when they thought they were owed something.
"Your security personnel are no longer needed here," he said, his voice carrying without being raised. "Leave this floor. Now."
The security team looked to Silver Sable. She gave a short nod, and they moved, filing back down the corridor with the practiced efficiency of people who had learned to read a room. Nolan walked forward.
The Terminator team emerged from the stairwell behind him, bolters held low, taking positions without being told. The Stormtroopers fanned out to either side.
Nolan stopped in front of the man at the center of the cluster. The Gang Dog who was clearly the ranking member of the group held his ground for a moment, then looked up to meet Nolan's eyes. His face had gone several shades paler.
Nolan studied him for a moment without speaking.
"Is this where you are supposed to be right now?" His voice was quiet. Almost conversational. "Has the discipline of the unit I established broken to this extent?"
"Sir." The man's jaw was tight but his voice was steady, which took some effort. "Please allow us to explain. Gang Dogs do not trust the security personnel who came on later. Madam Gao died under their watch. We believed it was necessary to be present at the scene, and we thought..."
David had moved to Nolan's shoulder. It leaned close and spoke in a low voice.
"The Gang Dogs here are Madam Gao's personal people. When the incident occurred, they were undergoing special training at the Gang Dog facility on base. They were not present at headquarters."
Nolan processed this. He shook his head slowly once, the short gray hair catching the corridor lighting.
Then he breathed in through his nose.
Just breathed in. The way a man does when he is checking something that only he can check.
His hand moved.
The vibranium gauntlet closed around the Gang Dog captain's head in a single motion, gripping without ceremony.
At the same moment, the Lamenters raised their bolters.
The corridor filled with the sound of weapons cycling. The Gang Dogs scrambled. The security personnel who had not quite left brought up their sidearms by reflex.
The Lamenters fired.
The bolter rounds hit with the specific violence of weapons designed to kill armored targets, applied here to unarmored men in a carpeted office corridor. It was over in seconds. The sound of it rolled away into the building's ventilation, and then there was silence.
The Stormtroopers had pivoted in the same moment, moving fast enough to get hands on Silver Sable and several of the remaining security personnel before any return fire could develop. They held them pinned, muzzles pointed low, as the Terminator team checked the corridor in both directions and then shook their heads toward Nolan.
No one left standing.
"What did you just do?" Silver Sable's voice came from the floor, pressed flat by a Stormtrooper's grip, her silver hair across her face. Her tone had moved past shock into something colder. "Why did you start killing? What is wrong with you?"
Natasha, standing to the side with her hand resting near her sidearm and not touching it, said nothing. But her eyes were on Nolan.
The Lamenters had not questioned. The Lamenters never questioned. They had fired when Nolan moved and they would do so again if Nolan moved again, and that was the complete extent of their involvement in the moral accounting.
Nolan still held the Gang Dog captain's head in his gauntlet. He looked at it for a moment, then released it, and it dropped.
"Almost every one of those Gang Dogs carried the residual smell of cigarettes and alcohol," he said, addressing the corridor without turning around. "That is not a capital offense by itself. They are reserve personnel, they are away from base, occasional lapses are not worth dying over."
A pause.
"But I also smelled something else. Quite a few of them. Leaves. A specific kind."
He turned enough for his voice to carry clearly to Silver Sable.
"Do you understand what that means? In this context, in this building, on this day?"
Silver Sable said nothing.
"It means they have been compromised. It means whatever loyalty they owed has been purchased away from them. And loyalty that is not absolute is not loyalty at all. It is a countdown." He looked back down the corridor toward the executive suite. "As for your security personnel: I accept that my methods sit outside what you are accustomed to. The Astartes operate by older rules, and those rules do not make allowances for context. David will arrange double the standard pension for your losses."
A beat.
"Three times," Silver Sable said from the floor. Her voice had steadied. "And my security department receives a shipment of lasguns as additional compensation."
Nolan was quiet for a moment. Then: "Agreed."
The Stormtrooper released Silver Sable. The muzzles came down. The security personnel still on their feet stood very still and said nothing.
David stepped forward and kept its voice low.
"My lord. Madam Gao's crime scene is in the room at the end of the corridor. Do you wish to proceed?"
Nolan drew a slow breath, tasting the air of the corridor: blood, spent propellant, and underneath it all, still, that faint vegetal wrongness he had caught on the Gang Dogs.
"Contact Doom immediately," he said, quietly enough that only David would hear it clearly. "Tell him to bring the entire Lamenters company here. Full strength. All of it." A pause. "Imperial Heavy Industries' personnel are no longer trustworthy, any of them. Madam Gao's death almost certainly came from inside. I am certain of it now."