John’s contacts all pointed the same direction: most of the serious black-market kit flowing into Toronto moves through a single hub—an independent broker everyone calls the Great Lakes Kingpin. The name isn’t a person so much as a brand: fast boats and bonded warehouses from Duluth to Kingston, shell companies on both sides of the border, manifests that change mid-lake. If you’ve got cash, the “Great Lakes Operators” will sell—gangs, syndicates, supervillains, no questions, no receipts.

Vulpes knew the rumor mill by heart and had the Kingpin circled on her very large to-do list. But tonight actually mattered. John’s source said a load was coming ashore—armor, crowd-control canisters, specialty blades, the kind of inventory that fit Bloodletter’s silhouette. If he’d upgraded through anyone, it would be these people.

She filed the intel into three likely touchpoints: a lakefront “marine supply” that closed early but never went dark, a pair of low-roof warehouses with private docks, and a rail spur that saw more midnight forklifts than daylight inspectors. Tonight wasn’t about kicking doors; it was about eyes, patterns, and a clean thread she could pull without snapping the whole web.

She forced the throttle back a hair and reminded herself—out loud, so it stuck—that tonight was about Bloodletter, not about cleaning the lake. The Great Lakes Operators were a cancer, sure. Every crate they moved put more guns into basements like the one that ended her grandfather—an old man who’d traded blows with Nazis and crooked millionaires, dropped in a drive-by between Italian and Irish crews because gunrunners always seemed to be where justice wasn’t. The memory rose bitter and hot; for a beat she could almost see the Vixen’s headlamp washing blue over bruised knuckles and sinking pallets.

Focus.

She swallowed the bile, made it a checklist. Observe, tag, exfil. No hero runs. If she burned a network to ash tonight and missed the man who carved people like gallery pieces, that wasn’t justice—that was ego. Bloodletter first. Operators later, with a wider net and names on warrants.

“Wolf, ROE locked,” she murmured into the mic. “No engagements unless I have to. I’m planting eyes and pulling threads.”

“Copy,” John said in her ear. “You’ll get your Operators. Just don’t lose the one with the knives.”

She exhaled on a four-count and let the anger settle into something colder and more useful. Plant micro-trackers on pallets and forklifts, log plate numbers, snag filler samples off any smoke canisters in play, photograph dockhands and foremen—faces, gait, tattoos. Tag containers; let the RCMP chase them in daylight while she followed the buyer list in the dark. The Operators would keep. The city’s monster wouldn’t.

She ghosted the Vixen down the last, broken stretch of asphalt and let the headlight die. HUD-only now—grainy green world, bright where it mattered. The “marine supply” sat where rumor said it would: low cinderblock warehouse, rusted roll-up doors, a stubby finger pier jutting into black water. The sign out front pushed bilge pumps and bait freezers; the yard pushed crates with stenciled lies—“PLUMBING FITTINGS,” “FIREWORKS,” “AUTO PARTS.”

“Stay frosty, fox,” John crackled in her ear. “Plans, enemy, you know the quote.”

“Already downgraded to guidelines,” she murmured.

She parked the Vixen in a seam of shadow, threw the bar, and slipped over chain-link like it had asked politely. The new gorget sat light at her throat; the suit moved the way it was supposed to—quiet, close, honest. She palmed the Kitsune no tsume housing and felt the claws hum in their rails, then left them sleeping. Tonight was eyes and ears.

Perimeter first. Two cameras on the corners—cheap domes, coax stapled sloppy; one blind spot where a floodlight had died and never been missed. Two warm bodies by the office: one smoking, one nursing a coffee and scrolling. On the pier, a forklift idled, its driver talking to a man in a watch cap who kept glancing at the water. A box truck backed to Bay 3; lift gate down, pallet jack clacking. The lake breathed against pilings. Farther out, a small cabin cruiser rode dark—registration numbers taped over like a bad haircut.

“Traffic?” John asked.

“One box, one boat,” she said. “Warehouse has heartbeat. Four, maybe five inside.”

“Copy. AIS shows that cruiser ‘offline.’ No transponder. Surprise.”

She smiled behind the mask and went vertical: gutter pipe to corrugate seam, the gauntlet channels giving her purchase where paint had long since chalked off. At the eave she flattened, then flowed belly-down along the catwalk that ringed the interior wall—a lightless service ledge for a building that didn’t expect company. Through the skylight’s grime, she counted heads. Five. Two working a manifest clipboard, three breaking down cartons into less suspicious cartons. A pallet staged near the door wore fresh tape: PELICAN–CASE X2, “MARINE FLARES,” “FIRE EXTINGUISHER REFILLS.”

She eased a fiber-snake from her belt, threaded it through a loose skylight screw, and dropped its eye into the warehouse air. The tiny lens kissed the world with pixels. She took quick stills—faces, tattoos, a forearm scar that curved like a question mark. Zoomed the clipboard: dates, shorthand, a buyer code in red grease pencil—73R—and items that were legal until they weren’t.

“Wolf, I’ve got a shopping list: ceramic side inserts labeled ‘ballistic pads,’ visor blanks, and twelve canisters marked ‘CS-8 CS’—they’ve crossed out the ‘S’ and written ‘C8 Smoke.’ Color smoke, not tear gas.”

“Sounds like we found his supplier,” John said. “Can you snag a shave of filler?”

“Working it.”

She pushed on to Bay 2. A crate half-opened for repack showed tidy bricks of “FIREWORKS—COLORED.” A cut corner breathed pale powder. She touched a micro-swab to the seam and tucked it into a vial. Two coin trackers rode magnets onto the forklift’s frame and under the box truck’s rear bumper, snapping home with tiny promises. A third found the belly of a Pelican case before the lid closed.

Voices drifted from below.

“…guy last week—bought plates like he was fitting a hockey team,” one said, amused. “Knew his sizes. Shoulder sets too. Weird, right?”

“Guy was weird,” the other answered. “All about balance. Wanted throwers with no brand marks. Paid cash, didn’t haggle. Lefty?”

“Nah. Swapped hands like a drummer. Creepy.”

Her jaw tightened. Ambi. Shoulder sets. Cash. Not proof, but it tugged the right threads.

She slid to the pier door and watched the crews in night vision. The cabin cruiser’s deckhand cracked a crate—again with the “FIREWORKS”—and palmed two of the canisters into a duffel. He checked his watch, then said, “Bloor run’s tomorrow. Same window.”

Bloor. She tagged the word, stamped it hard in memory.

Footsteps approached the door under her. A guard stepped out to piss in the dark, zipper rasp loud in the quiet. His radio hissed: “Boss says lock the north gate. We’ve got a tourist.”

She went still, breath thin, muscles asking for motion and getting none.

“Where?”

“Old Lincoln lot. Might be raccoons. Might not.”

She waited for the beam to swing. When it didn’t, she flowed the other way—back along the ledge, then down, claws whispering as she took a slow, controlled drop into the shadow of a dead forklift tire stack. She listened. Nothing hunted her specifically yet; the search was still general.

Time to plant and go.

She ghosted across the yard and palmed two more trackers—one beneath a canvas-wrapped pallet on the pier, one inside the lip of a plastic tote labeled “BILGE HOSES.” Plate shots—box truck, a white van—went into the camera with a silent blink. She chalked a UV fox-head under the loading bay number—breadcrumb for RCMP in the daylight—then melted back toward fence line.

She froze, breath shallow, as two boots scuffed closer. A quick drop and she rolled into the shadow under the white van she’d just tagged, spine flat to the oil-pan heat, cape gathered tight.

“You get a look at these new guns?”

“Nah—what’s so special about a crate of Glocks?”

“They ain’t Glocks. Doc cooked ’em on that printer—calls ’em ghost guns. No serials, no trace. And get this: some kinda plastic. Metal detectors can’t do jack.”

“That’s some real super-spy stuff. Bet they sell like hotcakes.”

So much for tag-and-go. A crate of unmarked pistols that slipped past wands? Those would show up at courthouses and clubs by the weekend. She let their voices fade, counted three beats, then thumbed her mic.

“Wolf, change of plan,” she whispered. “They’ve got printers’ specials inbound. I want the big box at the pier sleeping with the fish. Give me the quick-kill on 3D guns.”

John’s sigh crackled in her ear. “Frames are polymer, sure—but slides, barrels, pins, springs are still metal. Water alone won’t kill the plastic, just the steel if you give it time. Fastest field-stop with what you carry? Flood the actions. Your sealant cartridge—blow it into mag wells, trigger groups, rails. Cures hard; they’re paperweights. If you can roll a pallet off the pier without getting a spotlight on your tail, do it. Salt or lake water is a bonus.”

“Copy,” she murmured.

“And Fox? Cameras. Don’t get cute. In and gone.”

“Always,” she said, eyes narrowing as she slid out from under the van and bled into the warehouse shadows.

She clocked the crate stenciled FIREWORKS at the far end of the pier and felt the stupid-or-inspired itch. Fine. She slid from under the van, sprinted low, and ghosted between stacks until the generator housing filled her periphery. One underhand toss sent a dark sphere arcing into the gravel. It popped with a wet hiss, coughing a heavy gray plume that reeked faintly of hot plastic and dust-baked wiring—close enough to “overheating genny” to yank heads.

Shouts. Footfalls. Every flashlight swung toward the fake problem.

She was already past them—two pallets, a skip, and into the lee of the inbound crate. The banding gleamed under her lamp; the manifest label lied with a straight face. She thumbed her mic. “Got a faster play. I’m not babysitting these guns till sunrise. I’m going to make the big box take a swim. Also going to throw a ‘boom’ on a timer to keep their eyes in the wrong place.”

John’s groan crackled in her ear. “Okay, Fox, then do it smart. Your micro-charges—use the vented cutters, not the concussives. Aim at the steel banding, not the boards. Standoff three centimeters; that’s what that little spacer cage is for. You want the pallet to puke itself off the forklift tines, not splinter and advertise you.”

“Copy.” She popped her claws—Kitsune no tsume—and levered two slats just enough to snake a charge onto the inner strap. Spacer kissed metal. She armed a forty-second timer and slid a second cutter onto the opposite band. For insurance, she yanked a sealant cartridge, jammed the nozzle into a top-row magwell, and gave the trigger group a generous shot. Hard cure in under a minute; those pistols were now art pieces.

“Wind check,” John added. “Don’t smoke yourself. And if it actually is fireworks, don’t make me tell your ghost I told you so.”

“It’s not,” she said, already moving. “Guns. The smell’s oil, not powder.” She tapped the second timer and rolled away.

Vulpes tapped her comms. “I’ll get back to you, John, soon as I wrap this. Got a sudden urge to play rope-a-dope with the guy who said he sold armor to our knife-fetish friend.”

“Rope a do—”

She cut him off. She didn’t need a tutorial—and she’d already taken his bomb talk and done the opposite. The old yard crane had given her a better idea: dust off a vigilante classic. Bonus points if the guy feared heights.

She was already moving—up and over the crates, onto the roof of a nearby shed—ducking low as a flashbang slid into her palm. Sure, the plan had been in-and-out quiet, but those ghost guns belonged in the lake, not on her streets. And smugglers peddling tools of death didn’t deserve to clock out without a few fresh lumps.

She counted to forty in her head and—

BOOM.

Splash.

The charges thumped, the pallet skated, and the crate took a clean, heavy dive off the pier. Six guards turned hornets at once—four angling toward her quadrant, two fanning wide.

She palmed a weighted sphere into her left hand and snapped a throw. It kissed the floodlight housing and cracked it open with a pop; glass and filament rained, plunging her corner of the yard into a velvet pocket of dark. She rolled her helmet to low-light; the world greened and sharpened. Audio gain up—boots, radios, one smoker’s cough, all crystal.

Flashbang in the other hand. Steal the light, lure them in, ring the bell.

She skipped the micro-grenade off the concrete at their feet and turned her visor thirty degrees. The white blossom and hard concussion hit the men full on—shouts went to raw noise.

She dropped from the shed roof.

First contact came blind and swinging. She slipped inside his arc, slotted his knife hand into the gauntlet’s blade channel, twisted—trap—and hammered a palm-heel into the hinge of his jaw. He folded; she dragged him by the collar into the shadow, zip-tied wrists, popped his radio battery, and slid the pistol he shouldn’t have had off his belt into the drink.

Number two blinked tears, half-crouched. She feinted high, chopped the peroneal with her shin, and fed him gently to the ground with an arm-bar that ended in plastic cuffs. “Naptime,” she breathed, even though he couldn’t hear through the ring in his ears.

Three recovered a fraction faster and got a pistol up. She flicked her piton line; the hook snagged his boot, yanked him flat, and his shot went wide into the lake. She stomped the weapon clear and kicked it on a skidding path off the pier boards. Gone.

Four took one look at the heap of his friends and did the smart thing—ran, shouting for the foreman.

Good. Lead me to him.

She ghosted after, keeping to the blind side of containers until the runner converged on Beanie-and-Radio, the one barking orders at the generator crew. The foreman jabbed a finger toward the water; men scattered, lights swept, and nobody looked up.

She bared a small, sly grin under the cowl and watched the scatter: floodlights hunting empty air, men peeling off in ones and twos. “We’ve got a cape!” someone yelled. “Where the hell is this guy?” Another beat of satisfaction—undisciplined, untrained, loud. The precise opposite of what she was.

Still, she needed the board clear before she played with the foreman.

She slipped off the ladder into shadow, low and fast along the crane base. First straggler: alone by a stack of totes, head on a swivel but eyes too high. She slid in behind, clamped his wrist into a blade channel, pinched, and kissed the carotid with a sap-augmented palm. He sagged. Battery out of his radio, zip-tie on the wrists, sidearm and knife skittered into the lake.

Number two came hunting the noise. She let him pass, hooked his ankle with a piton line, and took his feet north while his head went south. A breath, a cuff, and he joined his friend in the dark behind the totes.

Three and four stuck together—smarter. She let them walk into her pocket of night, then popped a thumb-sized strobe at their knees. They flinched; she slipped between them, heel to knee on one, elbow to liver on the other, then used a gauntlet channel to trap a panicked knife and return it to its owner’s belt with a zip-tie bow. Radios muted, weapons cleared, both fed gently to the deck.

Silence settled. Out on the pier tip, Beanie-and-Radio kept barking at the water, alone now and irritated enough not to count heads.

Vulpes went back up the ladder, clipped her line to the trolley beam, and paid it out in a neat loop. One tug to test. Solid.

She ghosted down the back of the crane cab, dropped the loop, and in one smooth pull cinched it high under his arms. The foreman jerked up onto his toes, hands flying to the rope, radio clattering across the boards.

She thumbed the e-stop with a knuckle. The world went very still.

“Hi,” she said from the dark above, keeping the line just tight enough to make him light on his feet. “We’re going to have a conversation. You’ll find me an excellent listener.”

Beanie screamed and windmilled; she answered by snapping the piton line and letting him drop a clean meter before arresting the fall. The jolt wrung the breath out of him.

“Wrong answer, twinkle-toes.”

“Who the hell are you?” he howled.

She tilted her head; the yellow lenses caught the floodglare, eyes gone animal. “New on this side of the border, huh? I’m head of Toronto’s neighbourhood watch. You sold mil-grade armor and smoke to a creep you’ve been thinking about for two weeks. So you’re going to tell me more before I see what kind of mood gravity’s in.”

“I’m no raaaa—!” His words became a scream as she dropped him again, then snapped him short. He groaned, neck stiff. “Think you gave me whiplash, you crazy bitch!”

“Rude,” she said, flat. She gave the line a savage spin; his face went green, cheeks bulging. When he stopped wobbling, she tried again. “Tell me about the creepy guy who switched hands like a drummer. Or I cut my losses—” she produced a pair of compact cable cutters with a dry click, “—and the cable.”

He stared at the dark water, swallowed. “Six-one, maybe six-two. White guy. Solid build. Eyes like a wolf. Had a damn shopping list—knew exactly what he wanted.”

She tightened the line a hair. “And?”

“Paid in cash,” he blurted. “Drove an old white pickup. Plates covered. Gloves on the whole time. Didn’t chat.”

“That all you’ve got for me, twinkle-toes?”

He nodded hard, strangled. “That’s the lot, I swear.”

“Good boy.” She bled the winch until his boots barely kissed the planks, then dropped to the pier herself. In one smooth motion she yanked the radio off his belt and pitched it into the lake. “Remember: Toronto is my city. If I catch you moving guns or gear for killers again, I won’t play this nice.”

Beanie gagged, half from the spin, half from fear. She was already gone—melting into the shadow seam between crates—by the time he dared to look up.

At the fence, Vulpes vaulted, hit gravel silent, and loped for the waiting Vixen. A tap to the cowl brought comms live. “All targets neutralized. Ghost guns in the drink. Perp confirmation: white male, older-model white pickup, plates obscured.”

“Sometimes I think you enjoy kicking the hell out of bad guys,” John said, dry as dust.

Vulpes swung a leg over the Vixen and keyed ignition; the bike purred awake. “Nah. I put on a mask and punch gangsters for my health.”

“Trackers are pinging,” he added. “Your UV fox-head’s right where RCMP will find it at dawn. Come home.”

“On my way.” She rolled out, lights dark, the lake wind cutting clean through the night as the city slid by in neon and shadow