Super Hero Rhapsody: 1975

Rain needles the alley behind Pike Place Market. Sally and Devlan crouch by a warehouse door with no sign, no light, and no life inside.

A thin red blink flashes behind a cracked loading dock window, then vanishes. Something inside is still powered.

A steel side door creaks open a handspan. Warm air spills out with the smell of antiseptic and wet concrete. Beyond it, a voice hisses from the dark.

Devlan raises his pistol as footsteps answer from the warehouse interior. Another shape moves deeper in, and the red blink shifts, like a monitor waking up.

Sally now has the lead and the threat in the same place, this warehouse is the first direct link to Polpovich, and to whoever is moving to intercept her before she reaches him.

Sally steps through the open door into the warehouse threshold. The warm antiseptic air closes around her, and the alley rain drops away behind her shoulder.

She pulls back her hood just enough to show a tense face and a split lip. Devlan stays at the doorway, pistol raised, while the red monitor glow pulses somewhere deeper in the warehouse.

The woman gestures once, sharp and controlled, toward the dark interior. A sealed cabinet stands open beside a worktable, and inside it, clear evidence packets gleam under a weak strip light.

Her glance flicks to Sally’s badge, then to the camera in Sally’s hand. The warehouse hums softly, half-dead, half-watched.