Chapter 20: The warehouse

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A few weeks had past. At this point Fury had practically given us free rein. As long as we let him in on every move, he let us handle the case by ourselves. If it wasn't for Barnes and his constant reminders, I probably would have wandered off into the tunnels whenever a new lead had come up. I allowed myself to be completely absorbed by the case. It almost seemed like there was nothing else in my head.

Research, training, mission.

With the mission completely occupying my mind, I was able the push even the darkest thoughts away. I knew that this was the worst way to cope with everything. But it was the only thing I had. If Barnes didn't remind me every once in a while that Fury had to disable the electric shock punishment system of my arrest device before heading out, I might have been able to force myself to even forget that I was still imprisoned.

Thanks to a few more exploration tours, we were able to find out that most of the staff tunnels were largely unused. With the help of a few devices that Tony and Bruce had built for us, we unlocked most doors and swapped the locks so that we could enter the tunnel system completely unnoticed – just as we had planned. This also allowed us to find a few more hidden entries and exits.

Within a couple of weeks we had built our own tunnel system which ran mostly hidden parallel to the arms dealers route. These paths had already taken us beyond the borders of New York by far.

We still hadn't figured out who we were dealing with. We had spent most of the time studying the tunnel system but were barely able to gather any clues along the way. However, that was about to change with our next mission.


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We entered the tunnels at the huge hall of a rail bifurcation. The staff had once entered the hall from above so we walked across a bridge that was overlooking the railroads from the ceiling. Beneath us there were four tunnels. Two of them led back to New York but they were bricked up. The actual current metro tunnel system was behind those walls. The bridge led to a platform above the other two tunnels. As per usual Barnes walked out first. In the right corner of that platform, some junk, that had been left there years ago, was working as a disguise of some surveillance gear we had left in the tunnels. I walked over to the equipment and checked its status.

No one had entered the hall. One of the two other tunnels had also been cleared. It was another dead end that ended abruptly in the rubble of the collapsed tunnel walls. We had hidden a security camera within the ruins which hadn't caught any activities. Today it was time to check the last of the four tunnels, which would eventually lead to the biggest subway junction on our map. We both had a feeling this was one of the most promising points on our map. Which was exactly why we had to be extra careful.


Once we had the surveillance footage checked out, it was time to start the drone again. From the platform we let it slowly submerge and make its way down the tunnel.

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