The abandoned rail yard loomed like a steel graveyard under the early morning sky. Rusted tracks wove through piles of decaying carriages, and crumbling station platforms stood like forgotten monuments to a city that had once moved with purpose. The message had been cryptic, but Mercer trusted the pattern—it was always about the past. The rail yard, once Mumbai's buzzing nerve center of transport, had long been shut down after a mysterious fire… a fire no one seemed to remember in detail.
"This place gives me the creeps," Raja muttered, adjusting his denim jacket as he stepped over a crooked railway tie. "It smells like tetanus."
Meera rolled her eyes. "It's rust and history, Raja. Try not to trip over either."
"Or both," Vicky added, barely looking up from his tablet. He was already scanning frequencies. "Someone tried to jam signals near this yard last week. Very subtle. Government frequency bounce-back. We're not the first ones interested in this place."
Mercer stayed focused. His eyes were scanning, not just the physical layout, but the flow—where danger could come from, how sound would carry, the echo of a footstep across gravel. His hand rested on the inside pocket of his jacket, where the keychain lay—a quiet reminder of the unsolved pattern connecting these scattered fragments.
They approached an old control tower, the tallest point in the yard. It was boarded up from the outside, but someone had recently broken through—the boards had been peeled aside with care, not force. There was intention behind it.
Mercer gestured silently. Raja and Meera flanked him as they entered. The interior smelled of oil, ash, and old paper. A dusty filing cabinet stood in the corner, its drawers half open, as though someone had left in a hurry. But what caught their attention was a small crate in the center of the room, locked with a mechanical combination dial.
On top of it, a folded paper note, slightly yellowed with age:
"You're not the only ones digging.Don't trust the next person who offers help.
S."
"S?" Meera read aloud. "S for...?"
"Sharma?" Vicky offered.
"Could be Swaroop," Mercer muttered, referencing an old police officer whose disappearance was never investigated properly. "Or... it could be someone from the inside."
"Like someone watching us the whole time?" Meera frowned.
Suddenly, the silence outside broke with the sharp click-clack of footsteps on gravel.
They all froze.
Raja peeked through the broken shutter. "Uh... guys? We've got company."
Three figures in charcoal suits stepped into view, one holding a silver briefcase, the other with a small drone buzzing above his shoulder. They didn't look like cops. They didn't look like thieves either. They looked like... middlemen. The kind of people who never had names but always had clearance.
"Should we run?" Vicky whispered.
"No," Mercer said coolly. "Let's play dumb."
The suited men didn't pull guns, which was both a relief and a concern. Instead, their leader—an unnaturally clean-shaven man with sharp eyes and a baritone voice—spoke directly:
"You're interfering with classified infrastructure property. I'm going to ask you to leave immediately."
Mercer stepped forward. "We're freelance historians. Documentarians, actually. Researching urban decay and forgotten transport lines. Very boring."
The man stared at him. "You're Mercer."
Well, so much for that.
"Depends who's asking," Mercer replied, keeping his tone light but stepping subtly in front of Meera.
"You've found the crate," the man said, ignoring the charade. "It belongs to the Ministry of Transport, and you have exactly thirty seconds to hand it over, or this gets complicated."
Vicky leaned toward Meera and whispered, "Why does the Ministry of Transport need a crate locked in an abandoned tower surrounded by no-fly drones?"
Meera responded under her breath, "Because it's not really the Ministry. It's whoever's paying them."
Mercer didn't move. "Tell you what. I'll open it with you. Share what's inside. Then we'll all know whether this is worth dying over."
The suited man's eyebrow twitched, but before he could reply—BANG!
A metal beam slammed to the ground behind them, followed by the screech of another drone—this one black, unauthorized, and firing off a burst of smoke near the briefcase holder.
Chaos erupted.
Mercer shouted, "MOVE!"
Raja flipped the table, Vicky grabbed the crate, and Meera lobbed a flash charge from her satchel—one of Mercer's earlier gifts "just in case." It exploded with a blinding phoom, giving them precious seconds.
They slipped through the maintenance exit and ran along the narrow platform edges, disappearing into the skeletal maze of rail cars. Behind them, the suited agents fumbled, coughing in the haze, as Mercer's team vanished with the crate.
They didn't stop running until they reached a storm drain tunnel just outside the yard.
Inside, panting, sweaty, and laughing with the kind of adrenaline high only true chaos brings, Raja wheezed, "Can we please go back to solving food truck mysteries?"
Mercer looked at the crate in Vicky's arms. "What's the lock like?"
"Old school. Mechanical. I'll need fifteen minutes."
"You have five," Mercer replied.
Meera wiped sweat from her brow, laughing softly. "Whoever 'S' is, they just saved our lives. But why leave the warning?"
"Because whatever's in that crate," Mercer said, eyes narrowing, "changes everything."