Night at the Docks
A cold wind rolled in from the bay, carrying the scent of rust, oil, and salt. Cargo containers loomed like silent sentinels, their shadows stretching long under the flickering yellow floodlights. A distant foghorn groaned—a warning, if one knew how to listen.
GadgetTirri, the gadget girl, was in.
Perched atop a warehouse roof, she flicked through the security feeds on her smart glasses. Below, thugs in dark coats were ushering terrified, shackled children onto a rusted cargo ship. The human trafficking deal was in full swing. A crime syndicate’s most lucrative trade.
She adjusted her cybernetic gloves. One more firewall to breach. With a flick of her fingers, the digital lock on the shipping manifest crumbled. Download initiated.
And then—
BOOM.
A fiery explosion rocked the dockyard as a warehouse door blasted inward. A gang of armed men stormed through the wreckage, led by a towering figure in a ski mask and tattered black trench coat. No stealth. No hacking. Just brute force.
Preventyrr, the crime lord had made his fearsome presence felt.
Chaos Unleashed
GadgetTirri flinched as the explosion made her lose her balance for a second causing her EMP grenade to slip from her belt and tumble into the darkness below. She didn’t have time to retrieve it. She saw that the crime lord was causing havoc. She didn’t know his name but could see that the effect he was having. His goons were already engaging the traffickers.
Gunfire cracked through the night. Bullets. Knives. Fists. It was a battlefield.
Preventyrr moved like a wrecking ball, breaking ribs and dislocating jaws with his MMA strikes. Some of his men used guns; he didn’t need one. A right hook sent a trafficker through a stack of crates. Another crumpled from a knee to the chest. He wasn’t fighting for sport. He was fighting to demolish.
From her vantage point, GadgetTirri exhaled. “Subtle as a grenade in a teacup.” She had to move.
She leapt from the roof, rolling into a sprint. Her optical camouflage shimmered as she vanished into the fray. Invisibility, her greatest weapon.
The EMP Bombshell
Preventyrr’s eyes flicked to the side wondering where the sounds of footsteps was coming from.
GadgetTirri was already slipping through the wreckage, heading for the syndicate’s command center. She had no time for brute-force theatrics. If she got the rest of their encrypted files, she could shut this whole operation down remotely.
Except—
The EMP grenade detonated.
For a split second, the entire dockyard bathed in eerie blue light. Then—
Darkness.
Floodlights burst. Security systems fried. Engines died.
And GadgetTirri’s suit malfunctioned.
Tactical vs. Brutal
Preventyrr’s head snapped toward her. Her camouflage was gone.
“Well, well.” His voice was a gravelly smirk. “Looks like I’m not the only one crashing this party.“
GadgetTirri barely had time to react. He moved—fast. A blur of muscle and vengeance. She sidestepped, but her tech-assisted agility was compromised. She was running on instinct now.
He caught her arm, twisting it into a submission hold.
She grimaced. “Charming style you have. What do you bench these days? Cargo ships?“
He tightened his grip. “Who the hell are you? What are you doing here?“
She smirked. Her sleeve concealed a shock emitter. Click.
A jolt of electricity surged through his wrist. “Cheap trick” Preventyrr snarled, shaking it off, but it was enough. She twisted free, flipping backward onto a crate. She had anticipated that someone could harm her system with an EMP bomb and had built some countermeasures. For now, this was enough.
The Escape Gambit
A second dynamite blast rocked the dockyard. Preventyrr’s men had breached the syndicate’s stockpiles. Chaos escalated.
GadgetTirri seized the moment. She grabbed a fallen chain, swung onto a cargo container, and then turned on speaking device to convey a fake message.
“Feds incoming! Full evacuation!”
Panic spread like wildfire. Traffickers ran. Some abandoned their cargo.
Preventyrr’s jaw tightened. He hadn’t issued that command nor had his enemies.
She had.
From her perch, GadgetTirri gave him a two-fingered salute. “See you at the next crime scene, Antivirus.”
And then—
She was gone.
Aftermath at the Docks
The fires burned low, casting flickering shadows across the wreckage. The air was thick with the scent of gunpowder and salt, mingling with the distant wail of sirens.
Preventyrr stood in the center of it all, hands clenched into bloodied fists. Returning the rescued children was the first priority and he had contacted a bunch corrupt police officials to reach here late and ensure that they would do their jobs even if it was for a price. Around him, his crew secured what remained of the trafficking operation—some thugs still groaned on the ground, others had disappeared into the night. But the worst of the criminals had gotten away.
His jaw tightened. It wasn’t supposed to go like this. Who was the intruder? Was she a criminal too?
He turned sharply toward a nearby cargo container, its steel frame dented by the explosion. “Find out who the hell that was,” he growled to his second-in-command. “I want everything—face scans, traffic cams, anything that can tell me who just screwed with my mission.”
His man hesitated. “Sir… whatever tech she was running, it fried everything in the blast radius. No cameras, no trackers. It’s like she was never here.”
Preventyrr exhaled slowly, staring into the darkened horizon where she had disappeared.
She was here. And she’d be back.
Across the City
GadgetTirri perched on the edge of a skyscraper, her optical camouflage still flickering from residual damage. The wind cut through her suit as she pulled up the stolen data on her wrist display. Lines of code and encrypted messages scrolled rapidly—financial transactions, shipment schedules, corrupt officials. A network much bigger than just one syndicate.
“Risk management, Tirri,” she murmured to herself, lips quirking in a half-smile. “Never eliminate, only minimize.“
The intruder had nearly crushed her tonight. Her own EMP had nearly exposed her.
And yet…
She swiped the files to an off-site server. The game was only getting started.