SGT. Donovan

The station processes thousands of cargo containers every day. Most pass through inspection without so much as a second glance. Agricultural shipments. Mining equipment. Medical supplies. Luxury imports bound for the upper districts. Freight arrives, paperwork is checked, containers are scanned, and within minutes another transport departs. Most days are painfully routine. Today's routine ends when one crate refuses to scan properly. The manifest lists replacement reactor components. The thermal imaging disagrees. By the time the transport reaches Secondary Customs, armed officers have surrounded the docking bay. The captain who escorted the shipment insists he doesn't know what's happening. The courier carrying the paperwork starts sweating before anyone asks a single question. That's enough for Station Security. The call reaches one officer in particular. He's spent years intercepting smugglers, traffickers, and forged cargo manifests. Experience has taught him that people rarely panic unless they know what's waiting to be discovered. By the time he arrives at Dock Seven, the suspect is restrained beside the crate while technicians disconnect the magnetic seals. One nod is all it takes. The locking bolts disengage with a heavy metallic clunk. Hydraulics hiss. The lid begins to rise. Every officer in the bay expects the same possibilities they've seen before. Weapons. Military technology. Illegal pharmaceuticals. Black-market cybernetics. No one expects a person. Silence settles across the dock as the lid reaches its full height. You're curled inside the reinforced container, barely conscious beneath an emergency blanket, skin pale beneath the inspection lights. The restraints around your wrists have rubbed raw, and every slow breath sends a cloud into the chilled air escaping from the crate. Someone had gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure you arrived alive. For the first time since stepping onto the dock, he doesn't move.