Beneath the Veins of the City

The city was a stripped nerve in the noon glare. Lena let herself merge with the faceless ordinary—plain jeans, old windbreaker, a city-issue cap ducked low. Her badge lay cold in her pocket next to the flash drive, and she felt the weight of both pressing a bruise against her hip. She ditched her car three blocks from the Endline Internet Café. Angular blue in the window, endless dead-eyed cubicles inside. Anyplace with a lockable door and strong coffee was good enough for hiding.

She paid for an hour with bills, tracing her gaze behind her in the greasy plexi of the counter—no tails that she could see. She took a booth farthest from the windows, hooked the borrowed laptop’s power cable with shaking hands, and plugged in Pete’s flash drive marked "PETE 3A."

No viruses, no booby traps. A single folder: “CARGO.” She opened it. Inside: hundreds of image files, spreadsheets, PDFs. Names, dates, payout ledgers sorted by code. Her heart shuttered. Police badge numbers matched to wire transfer logs. Detailed case numbers. Video clips—blurry, shot by some vanished phone, showing city uniforms, including a familiar broad-shouldered silhouette she recognized instantly: Ray Hanlon.

She clicked next. Body cam footage, time-stamps hacked out, maybe months old. Deals in alleys under sodium vapor. Wads of bills thrown across trunk lids. Lena scrolled, bile rising. Some images were labeled only with initials—AV, MT, RH. Each new slip of data sharpened the lines: Malik Torres’s syndicate wasn’t just bribing the police, they built cases on rivals by feeding false evidence straight into precinct records. The entire city’s underground was mapped in messy, merciless detail—every cop, every payoff, every double cross. A whole decade of rot. And Ray, caught again and again, meeting Malik, passing off stacks, sometimes alone, sometimes in uniform.

A ding from the café’s front jolted her. She yanked headphones free. "All good, detective?" The kid behind the register shot her a quick grin. "Got ten more if you want."

"You got a printer?"

He nodded. "Stack in the corner. Name's Tony."

Lena moved. Printed just ten pages—overview of the money trail, not enough to trigger any flags if someone got curious but damning on its own. She shuffled them carefully into an old manila envelope, keeping copies on a backup drive slipped beneath her laces. It felt like walking with a bomb next to her skin. She left the booth’s door cracked, peering inside and out, watching herself for caution and paranoia both.

---

She hit the street running, blending into lunch crowds. Without meaning to, she headed toward the river, a rat’s maze of alleys running behind shuttered warehouses. Her phone buzzed. Ray. She cut the call, but a minute later, he appeared—breathless, wild-eyed, jacket open, hands empty in a way that looked practiced.

“Lena, wait.”

She didn’t. Not even as his sneakers hammered after her. He cut her off at a dead end, the shade of corrugated steel making his face look older, harsher. “You think I’m stupid, Ray?” she asked, not quiet. “You think I didn’t see you with Renny Mendez? Or that you’re not on every one of these?”

She held out one sheet: a picture of Ray, head bowed, hand exchanging cash with Torres. The crosshairs of time and place burned on the image. Ray’s hand trembled as he looked.

"That’s not what it looks like."

Lena barked half a laugh. "Don’t insult me. You’re going to tell me you’re running undercover? On me, or on the rest?"

"The Task Force sent me in. Official orders. Deep cover—running for IA, all clean, Lena—"

She took a step closer, voice low and raw. "You never once whispered a warning. Not to me. Not to anyone. You let Pete die."

Just a flicker: regret, or calculation, she couldn’t tell. "I couldn’t. They got to Pete first. I thought I could save him if he kept his mouth shut. I tried to protect you, least of anyone. I swear."

She studied him, every muscle tense, measuring truth against the hundred lies she’d learned to read on his face. The skyline burned silver behind him. If Ray lied here, she’d never know or care again.

"Convince me."

He met her eyes, desperate: "I’m already dead if you turn me in. But if you bail now, we both are. Lena, you have to trust me."

"I don’t have to trust anybody," she said, and vanished past him, burning the memory of his face—wounded animal, trapped and guilty—into her mind’s reel.

---

Even when you run, the city finds you. Lena booked herself into a pay-by-the-hour motel off Ninth, texting Mouse from a burner. No reply. She ate stale chips, boots up on the dresser, eyes locked to the news cycle as a fire report filtered in: Vehicle explosion, two blocks off the river. One dead, name withheld.

Her burner vibrated with a withheld call—she recognized Mouse’s voice beneath the static, panicked and thin. "Voss—they found me. They know about the files. Gonna—"

A whump carried down the line, then static. Her blood iced. She killed the connection, mind racing. She paced, restless, cleaning her sidearm and snapping the slide back into place, thinking already like she’d lost.

A minute passed. The city sirens keened, and she pulled on her jacket. Down on Ninth, a scorched sedan steamed against the curb, yellow tape flapping, paramedics already pulling out a black bag. On the sidewalk, the familiar glint of Mouse’s beaten up canvas sneakers, soles half-hanging. The car was flattened on one side, twisted metal already cooling. Someone in the crowd saw her badge and made a sign against evil in the air.

No statement for her. No leads—just the guarantee that every loose end would be cut before dawn. Lena clenched her fists until her nails bit blood. The game was closing in.

---

Darkness fell early. The facts on Pete’s drive gnawed her nerves raw. She memorized the chain: Malik Torres funneled money from untraceable accounts to cops—threats, payoffs, fake cases. Clean officers were framed for crimes, marked as informants; corrupt ones were protected. The names high on the list almost made her retch. There were calls logged to a number that, checking against her own phone, matched Chief Mercer’s old private line.

The enemy now had faces—hers, Ray’s, and too many she’d once trusted. There was no safety in the precinct. She needed someone with reach and nothing left to lose.

Lena slipped out and crossed town into the dead heart of Oldside, where only the desperate or hungry went after midnight. She found the fire-escape ladder behind the Press-Standard. Climbed. She fished out her last clean burner and dialed a number she hadn’t used in years—Marisol Cheung, city editor, her last real friend not wearing a badge.

When Marisol answered, gravel-low and wary, Lena said, “Need to meet. Tonight. Has to stay off-book.”

A pause. “You caught them, huh?”

“I caught everyone. All the way up. But I can’t bring this in. Someone’s running a play to wipe us out. You, me, Ray—if he's not lying—it won’t matter. We have to flash it wide, before the boss goes to ground.”

Marisol hissed softly. “There’s a safe house over the bakery off 19th. Code’s your old precinct number. Thirty. Don’t trust anyone you see tonight.”

Lena hung up, shoulders hunched in the dark. She wrote a single text to Ray: "Come clean, or I’m gone. One chance."

Pocketing the drive and the copies in plastic, Lena melted into the city’s veins—an agent with evidence, guilt, and nothing left but one final move. Sirens sounded everywhere, closing in like wolves. This was it—the last bet, the last trust, the last time anyone would ever pin a badge onto her chest. Night wrapped the city. The boss would soon be gone, but tonight, Lena would decide who got out—and who burned with her.