Page 169 of The ARC Unit: Breach

Wolf continued. “We take him alive if the opportunity is clean. Nobody leaves a victim unsecured to chase him. If he creates a lethal threat, you treat him like anyone else holding a weapon.”

The words were aimed at everyone but they still felt personal.

I looked at Wolf. “And if he runs before the building is clear?”

“Then he runs. The women come first.”

“I know.”

“Good.”

There was no room to argue with the priority. He was right.

Kade had spent months turning up beside routes, cars and people who disappeared before ARC could get there. If he was inside that building now, taking him alive could open more of Cerberus than every phone we had seized combined. But if the six K4 codes belonged to women from Haus Eberhardt, they had already been moved once while we were too late.

They were not becoming secondary again.

Keller arrived at the compound shortly after noon with an evidence packet under one arm and the tired expression of a man who had already spent half his day in a car. He shook Wolf’s hand, nodded to the rest of the team and handed me two printed photographs. The women from Haus Eberhardt had given names for both.

One was twenty-two. The other was twenty-six. Both had disappeared months apart from different countries. Neither photograph matched any woman we had recovered.

“If you see them, medical first,” Keller said. “Questions later.”

“Agreed.”

He studied the operations screen. “My prosecutor signed emergency authority. We have reason to believe people are being unlawfully held, and the armed security plus the Eberhardt vehicle gives us enough to move if your surveillance confirms the interior.”

Wolf nodded toward Raven. “We’re working the cameras.”

The cold-storage facility had its own network, older and uglier than the systems Raven preferred but connected to the outside world through a business line that had never been fully decommissioned. He could not simply open every camera without risking an alert, so he worked from traffic, external network behavior and one compromised maintenance credential Keller’s cyber unit had obtained from the original alarm contractor.

An hour later, Raven got a single interior feed.

The image came from a loading corridor near the front offices. The quality was terrible. The camera had a wide angle, washed-out color, graininess and a timestamp nearly four minutes wrong.

It still showed a woman.

She crossed the corridor carrying a plastic bottle of water with both hands. A man walked behind her close enough that his arm stayed within reach of her shoulder. She wore gray sweatpants several sizes too large and slippers despite the industrial floor.

Raven froze the frame.

Nobody spoke.

Another woman appeared twenty seconds later.

Then a third.

Wolf leaned closer. “Any exits from that corridor?”

Raven brought up the old plan. “North storage rooms and the rear loading floor. If the renovations match the archive, this door takes you into the insulated section.”

Bear studied the plan beside him. “Main personnel entrance is bad. Narrow approach and camera coverage. Loading bay two gives me a better frame, but it’s exposed from the rear lot.”

Hawk’s voice came through the secure radio from outside Offenburg. “North embankment gives me the rear lot and both loading bays. East roof line blocks the side door.”

Viper added, “West service lane is clean enough for approach. Fence is low, no anti-climb.”

Wolf absorbed the information without repeating any of it.