19 [Merchandise]

Ding!

Haley cursed as he heard the soft ding of the elevator as it reached its floor, he'd completely forgotten to disable it on his way down.

"That the elevator? Bro you back?" He heard a shout from somewhere in the warehouse and then hurried approaching footsteps, the cameras were like having a second set of eyes as he could see a man hurrying over.

He was dressed like a common labourer with a hard hat and all but from his physique Haley could judge he was anything but simple, his body was trained in the way that you would only see on a trained soldier.

Haley had no doubt that should he be caught by this man although he was confident in defeating him if he had a weapon hidden on his person or called out for help he would be exposed instantly so while thinking, and moving, as fast as he could he pushed the ground floor button on the elevator to send it back up and jumped through the closing doors.

While keeping one eye on the man approaching through the cameras, a man who was merely steps away from turning the corner and discovering him, he climbed up the side of some stacked crates and hit behind them, he tried to blend himself into the darkness as best he could as he waited.

Only mere seconds passed before the man appeared in view of his actual eyes and he saw his judgement was correct, he couldn't see it from the angle the camera was placed at but the man had a sidearm on his waist that was covered by his physique when turned on the camera.

The man walked towards the elevator and looked around with confusion, "Must've been a wrong floor." He muttered while scratching his head before walking away while whistling a small tune back in the direction he came from.

Haley wanted to breath a sigh of relief but it was too soon to say that he was out of trouble just yet, he was deep in 'enemy' territory or to be more exact he was in the base of a neutral power who had no idea they had stolen from him and that he was currently planning to take whatever he found useful from their storage and use it to build up his forces.

After making sure that the cameras were turned away from the section of the warehouse close to him to ensure he didn't alert anyone and complicate his escape later he climbed to a higher vantage point which was atop a shelf that had several large crates stacked together.

Lurking in the shadows behind the crates gave him a great vantage point and tactical view of the warehouse and allowed him to scout it out in person instead of relying on cameras that he could only rotate in certain directions.

After a few minutes of sneaking around in the shadows Haley had explored as much as he could from the small section he was trapped behind, in front of him was a group of men unloading items from a elevator platform and loading them into crates before pressing a button, waiting a few minutes and then repeating the process when more items descended.

Through this process he saw his fifty work drones be loaded into two separate crates and be stacked next to each other, he made a mental note of their location so even if he wasn't able to escape with as much as he would like later he could still try and take them before leaving.

There were a group of five that were responsible for loading the crates and one who he assumed to be their boss who catalogued the items onto a datapad before telling them to haul the goods. They were all well-built men and it was obvious from the weapons at their waists that they had experience in combat if not some training to ensure they could shoot.

The existence of their weapons was of course a great deterrence for Haley as he couldn't just run in and incapacitate them and take his time looking through the catalogue before making his escape. He would first have to wait until they stopped receiving new goods to move so whoever was sending them didn't get suspicious, 'Letting them do the work for me is the smart move.' He thought as he watched them.

The next would be to acquire the datapad that had a catalogue of all the items they had put into crates, he noticed the crates were marked with a number on the side making it easy to find what was what, his own drones were in crates #32 and #33 which he made a mental note of for the future.

"Oi! Who the fuck are you?" Haley suddenly heard one of the men shout, for a second, he thought he'd been exposed but the man had his back to him and was looking at another corner of the warehouse entirely.

Haley focused his eyes and could make out movement in the back, the figure was malnourished, and he could make out something restraining their feet although not enough to stop them moving but surely enough to cause some sound when trying to shuffle away quietly.

'A slave?' Haley questioned, the figure was too far back for him to make out but he thought it was the most likely answer considering the trafficking he had seen on the other floors but he didn't know how one would be able to make it this far up without being detected.

Out of interest he watched on to see what would happen, three of the men loading crates ignored the person and continued to load the crates while two rushed over while the manager watched – it seemed that this was common enough that they weren't worried about the person escaping so they acted like they were hunting prey.

They flanked the figure and approached slowly, cruelly laughing as they watched them try to escape only to fall over their own leg shackles and hit the floor.

They tried to stand up, but it was already too late, the man who had originally discovered them had grabbed them by the wrist; their malnourished frame was easily lifted from the ground and held in front of the men.

After being pulled into the light Haley could make out a young boy, he could see the fear on the boys face but he could see the boy trying to hide it at the same time, there was nothing he could do to fight back but he was still fighting hard not to show weakness.

"Another one got away, what the fuck are those guys doing down there? Fourth one this week, take this back down will ya' Lou?" The man holding the child passed him to the other man named Lou and walked back to start loading the crates.

The man, Lou, held the boy and nodded before dragging the boy towards the elevator. Haley saw it as an opportunity to take out one of the men and acquire a weapon, 'That boy should be useful to understand the lower levels as well.'

Thinking along those lines Haley retreated to where he had come from and listened as the man slowly approached while dragging the boy, he waited over the elevator entrance. With his link to the network still established he slightly increased the volume of the elevator arrival sound to mask the sound of him attacking the man.

'I have to take him down in one move for this to work.'

A few moments later, he struck.