Dominic’s Pov

The engineer insists on meeting at midnight and that alone tells me what he’s sitting on something.

The warehouse he chose sits at the edge of the city, one of Smith Engineering’s defunct research annexes before Z-Core swallowed them whole.

The building’s bones are still metal and glass, but it feels hollow now, like a memory someone abandoned halfway through. The smell of oil and rust clings to the air, sharp and stale.

I cut the headlights and step out of the car. ...