The file room door creaked, a sound Michael knew as well as his own breathing. Michell walked in, his face lined with grooves of exhaustion that the fluorescent ceiling light only made more pronounced. The detective was carrying two paper cups from a cheap franchise; steam rose from them, carrying the smell of burnt coffee.
"You never sleep, Michael?" Michell asked, setting one of the cups on the metal table next to a stack of evidence forms.
Michael didn't look up right away. He finished typing the code for a 2022 case, hit enter, and only then adjusted his glasses, allowing a pale, half-smile to appear on his face.
"Sleep is a luxury archiving doesn't allow, detective. If I stop, the bureaucracy buries us."
Michell snorted, sitting on the edge of the table. He seemed restless. His fingers drummed on the paper cup.
"Something's off at the Port. I got a call from patrol ten minutes ago. Atlas canceled three outbound shipments. No explanation. The truck drivers are stuck at the main gate, and their private security is searching even their own employees. It's like they're looking for a flea in a haystack of dynamite."
Michael took a small sip of the coffee. It was too hot, but the pain on his tongue helped keep him focused.
"Maybe an internal audit?" Michael suggested, his voice devoid of any real interest. "Organizations that size usually have little spasms of paranoia when the profits don't add up."
"No. This is more than an audit. Salvatore doesn't cancel profits over accounting." Michell leaned forward, lowering his voice. "I can feel it, Michael. There's blood in the water. Something broke in there."
As Michell spoke, Michael's wristwatch vibrated subtly against his skin. Three short pulses. The hidden software had detected a critical change in Atlas's servers: Aris Thorne's access had been revoked. The "purge" Michael had engineered was fully underway. Salvatore had taken the bait.
"If something broke," Michael said, turning his attention back to the computer screen, "the pieces will start falling here in the Archive. If there are arrests or seizures, I'll be ready to catalog them."
Michell stood up, energized by his own adrenaline.
"Unit 4, we have an incident at Warehouse 12 at the Port. Gunshots fired. Code 3. Ambulance en route."
Michael stopped typing. Warehouse 12 was Aris Thorne's logistics sector.
He opened a hidden command window on his workstation, masked behind an obsolete database program. He no longer needed to plant evidence; now he needed to erase his entry tracks. With quick, precise movements, he executed a log-wiping protocol on the Atlas server. In a few seconds, any digital anomaly that could lead back to an external IP would disappear, leaving only the forged "conversations" between Thorne and the rival cartel as the only logical explanation for Salvatore's fury.
A loud bang echoed in the hallway. It wasn't gunshots, but the sound of doors slamming and raised voices. The Investigation Unit was mobilizing. Michell and his team were rushing to the Port, believing that luck had finally smiled on them.
Michael leaned back in the uncomfortable plastic chair. He felt the weight of the two hours of sleep, but his mind was clear. At the Port of Norfolk, Salvatore would be tearing his own structure apart, eliminating his most loyal men under the pretext of a nonexistent betrayal. Atlas's logistics would collapse for 48 hours — enough time for Michael to access the organization's financial core through the security breach he himself had created during the chaos of the purge.
He picked up the rubber stamp and slammed it down on a case-closure document. The dry sound echoed in the empty archive.
The trap was closed. The wolves were devouring each other, and the shepherd was a man in beige, sitting in a basement, surrounded by papers nobody else wanted to read.