Dark and secluded—that was how Emz thought of the empty industrial unit, an ideal spot to conclude his shady business. So, he wasn’t entirely surprised that others had reached the same conclusion. What did shock him, however, was walking into the damp, cavernous interior and discovering several freshly dead bodies, the aftermath of a brutal close-quarters gunfight.


    Instinctively, Emz reached for his own gun, unlocking the trigger with a light touch on the biometric sensor, which activated a small dim red display showing the number 15 just above his thumb. His brown eyes darted around as adrenaline surged and primed him.


    There were two entrances: the main door he''d come through and a fire escape at the far end, but there was no movement at either. There was no higher level, just a few large stacks of old crates, any of which could conceal someone. Quietly, he stepped towards the nearest stack and cautiously peered behind it, gun at the ready, only to find another blood-soaked body. The man was slumped against the crates, a gun in his limp left hand, his right clutching a gut wound which he looked to have bled out from.


    Emz crouched beside him, his eyes flickering between the body and the other stacks of crates. He touched the man''s neck, probing for a pulse, but found none. Moving on carefully, he rounded the next stack, finding this one empty.


    The final stack revealed two more bodies locked in a grizzly embrace, each man marked by savage cuts from a violent knife fight that had clearly ended in a bloody draw.


    Fairly confident that he was the only one still breathing in the warehouse, Emz replaced his firearm in the holster tucked into his waistband at the small of his back, under his jacket. He stepped over the bodies and picked up a heavy-duty-looking mobile phone that had fallen away from the knife fighters. The grey device, with its black screen, appeared old-fashioned and bulky, with a chunky dongle loosely hanging from a port at the bottom.


    Emz was about to secure the dongle back in when he heard the squeak of the entrance door. He immediately pulled his gun again and aimed at a figure emerging from the gloom of the reception area. He relaxed slightly—though not completely—when he realised that the large man entering, also armed, was as astonished as Emz by the bloody scene and was, in fact, the buyer he had arranged to meet for his momentarily forgotten transaction.


    “Merde,” the big man muttered. “What has happened here?” he added more loudly, casting a brief glance at Emz.


    “I found it like this when I arrived, just a couple of minutes ago.”


    Both men silently acknowledged each other''s drawn weapons and, without comment, lowered their guns slightly.


    “This has nothing to do with us?”


    Emz gently shook his head. “Nah, I don’t think so.” He pointed his gun at the central mess of bodies. “Looks like two gangs were attacking each other for some other fucking reason.”


    The big man''s very dark eyes drifted down to the device in Emz’s left hand. “Is that the reason?” His voice was gentle, with a delicate accent, though his tone was less so.


    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    Suddenly feeling vulnerable again, Emz tightened his grip around the grey object. He didn’t know the large, muscular Senegalese man very well, only that his name was Bamba, which meant crocodile in a local dialect. This was reinforced by a white tattoo of the creature on his thick, dark brown neck, and he was a mercenary, a thug for hire. “I don’t know, mate; I just picked it up. It looks like an old slab phone.”


    “Well, let us look together, non?”


    Considering Emz had only just discovered the device and had no idea what it was, his lizard brain had already claimed ownership, preparing him for a fight or flight. However, his rational mind was calculating the odds and planning an escape from ending up bleeding out like these other bodies on the cold concrete floor. “We should probably get out of here.” He gestured with his head towards the entrance. “And we need to sort out our business, right? You still want that clean ID, yeah?”


    “Oui,” Bamba replied quietly, though he did not move a millimetre. “These men are dead, and therefore we can do both things here, non?”


    Confidence was king, Emz mentally reminded himself. With a carefree expression he didn’t truly feel, he holstered his gun, pocketed the grey slab, and swaggered over to Bamba. When he was just out of reach of the mountain of a man, Emz raised his left arm and jostled his wrist, allowing his sleeve to slide down and reveal a wearable screen snug against the inside of his forearm. He tapped at the screen with his free hand until a dull ping echoed from Bamba’s wearable, a square display attached to the back of the mercenary’s left hand.


    Bamba secured his own gun in a side holster behind the flap of his knee-length coat and then accepted the digital transfer. Within a couple of seconds, a cloned set of personally identifiable information was copied over. “Alive or dead?” he asked, scanning the information.


    “Alive,” Emz replied. “He’s a close physical match, so you’ll pass a casual check, and he’s classified as disabled, living at home on additional welfare, so you won''t bump into him.”


    Bamba nodded in acknowledgment.


    “And if you care, he’s not really disabled, so screw that guy, right?”


    “I do not care; only that it works.”


    Emz shrugged at the cold response. “It’ll work. He was recently audited, so you’ll have about a year of public travel and access, and modest coin transactions without raising any flags. But if you’re planning on leveraging his finances big time or going somewhere restricted, then I’d burn the ID straight after, okay?”


    Bamba nodded again in acknowledgment and transferred the previously agreed sum of five thousand to Emz using the new ID, matching the five already paid in advance. “Now let us take a look at that object,” he said, firmly changing the subject.


    With a hint of reservation, Emz lowered his arm, allowing his sleeve to fall back down over his wearable screen, and pulled out the bulky grey rectangle from his pocket, angling it to face them both. “Well, just before you arrived, I was going to secure this back in,” he said as he pushed the dongle firmly into the port. “I don’t know if it’ll do any—” Emz cut himself off as the black screen momentarily displayed a closed padlock icon that animated to an open position, revealing a custom interface of a crypto wallet account.


    The wallet’s simple dashboard featured buttons at the bottom for send and receive functions, data connections, and notifications; a central steep graph of value over time that covered most of the dashboard; and at the very top was the balance: 998,907,606.08 €urocoin.


    After a stunned pause, Bamba quietly read the number to himself. “Neuf cent quatre-vingt-dix-huit millions neuf cent sept mille six cent six euros et huit centimes.”


    “Mate,” Emz said, equally awestruck, “you can just say a billion—in fucking coin!”