Page 51 of Undercover Shadow
12
TAG
Vanguard had the lock picked and open in under two minutes.
The heavy steel door swung inward with a hydraulic hiss that echoed through the cavern, revealing the darkness beyond. I raised my torch to illuminate what lay inside.
“Christ,” he muttered beside me.
The space was modern, climate-controlled, and maintained—everything the ancient cavern surrounding it was not. Metal shelving units lined the walls in industrial rows, all of them empty. The air inside held that particular sterile quality of a space kept at a specific temperature and humidity, the kind of environment required for sensitive equipment or electronics.
I stepped inside, my boots echoing on the concrete floor. Nightingale followed, her torch sweeping methodically across every surface while Vanguard remained at the entrance, keeping watch.
The shelves bore signs of occupation. Not decades or even years ago. This had been in use far more recently than that.
“Tag,” Nightingale said, her voice tight with controlled urgency. “Look at this.”
She stood near the center of the space, her light focused on the floor. When I reached her, the chalk marks were impossible to miss.
Someone had created a grid across the concrete, outlining where the crates had been positioned. The marks were faint but visible, laid out with exacting care—whoever had measured and marked these positions knew exactly what they were doing and where every piece of cargo should sit for maximum space efficiency.
“They were storing equipment here,” I muttered.
Nightingale was already moving, photographing everything with her mobile. She worked methodically, capturing every angle and every detail.
The walls drew my attention next. The scratches on them weren’t random, and the lack of dust on the shelves’ otherwise dirty surfaces confirmed the deliberate placement of crates of similar sizes.
“This indicates recent activity,” Vanguard commented from the doorway.
“You’re right.” Nightingale crouched near one of the chalk marks, angling her mobile to capture it. “These marks are fresh. No foot traffic has disturbed them, no air movement has worn them down.”
What we’d discovered settled over me like a weight. This wasn’t some abandoned Cold War bunker or forgotten storage facility. This was a present-day operation being conducted beneath my own estate, using infrastructure I didn’t know existed. That I’d been walking above it for months, completely unaware, jarred me.
The far wall held the kind of industrial-grade equipment used for sensitive cargo. Power cables ran along the ceiling to outlets that were clearly modern installations, not part of the original construction. Whoever had outfitted this space hadgone to considerable expense, and more importantly, they’d done it without anyone noticing.
“They’ll come back,” Nightingale said quietly, appearing at my shoulder. “Whatever was stored here, they moved it elsewhere. But they left the infrastructure intact. Which means?—”
“They plan to use it again.”
Our eyes met in the torchlight. For a moment, the barriers between us dropped and I saw the same fear I felt—that we were always one step behind, that whoever was orchestrating this had been planning for years while we scrambled to catch up, that people would die because we couldn’t move fast enough.
Then she turned away, returning to her documentation, and the walls went back up.
The climate-control units still ran, pumping cold air into an empty room. The electricity required to run this setup wasn’t insignificant. Whoever had installed it must have tapped into the castle’s power supply before it reached the meters, making the drain invisible to anyone reviewing the estate’s utility usage. Smart. Deliberate. The work of people who knew how to stay hidden.
We spent another twenty minutes examining every corner of the space. Vanguard checked the perimeter, looking for any other exits or hidden compartments, but the chamber appeared to be exactly what it seemed—a storage facility, emptied out, waiting to be filled again.
When Nightingale finally pronounced the documentation complete, we stood in the center of the empty chamber—three operatives surrounded by the ghost of whatever had been stored here.
“Ready?” I asked.
Nightingale nodded, shouldering her pack while Vanguard moved to the door, preparing to lead us aboveground.
One last glance around the space made me wonder how many other estates had similar facilities hidden in their foundations? How long had this network been operating? And most importantly—who was running it all?
“Tag?” Nightingale’s voice pulled me from my thoughts. She stood at the door, waiting, her expression unreadable in the torchlight.
“Coming,” I said, forcing myself to move.
