“If you want to get out of here faster find me the most valuable things on that list and mark them, understood?” Haley said after a few moments and pointed towards the datapad which laid next to the corpse of the warehouse manager still.

“Mhm..” The kid gave a small reply in agreement before cautiously edging towards the body, a few moments later he had picked up the datapad before quickly shuffling back away from the corpses as quickly as he could.

Haley chuckled at his reaction before walking over to the crates that contained his drones, they were in two medium-sized crates on a shelf around the middle of the room. Stacked a-top each other were small cube-shaped silver drones, they were created using advanced adaptive tech which created the tool it needed depending on what it needed to complete a task.

There were 25 drones in each box but the crates were small enough that a single drone had enough weight-lift capacity to take them along, with that thought Haley sent out a command for the rest of the drones to assemble on top of the rooftop and wait for his orders to collect the goods.

‘Hopefully I can complete a few trips before they realise somethings wrong.’ Now with all ten of his drones’ present, despite their lack of combat ability, he felt much safer and much more confident in his plan.

Haley glanced over at the kid who was busy rushing around the warehouse marking crates with a knife he’d found in one of the backpacks on the floor so he waited while the kid finished his job; luckily, no one seemed concerned about checking on the warehouse for the time being so they weren’t disturbed but he knew it was just a matter of time and so did the kid.

After about ten minutes every crate that needed to be marked had been marked, Haley wasn’t sure if it was simply because the kid didn’t know what was valuable and what wasn’t or if the things that had been stolen were all valuable but most of the crates in the warehouse now had a small but obvious “X” on the sides.

Haley took a moment to upload a few images of the “X” to the drone network to ensure that they didn’t make any mistakes.

“Go stand in a corner and wait kid, I need to go check out up top.” He said before walking to the platform elevator which had remained stationary since the last load of crates had come down, Haley mentally prepared himself as he was going up blind – he didn’t know what he would face up there if in fact there was anyone still up there to begin with.

With that in mind he moved a few empty crates onto the platform quickly to use as potential cover, so he wasn’t completely exposed, he created a square along the borders of the platform which boxed him in but gave him ample room to move around in.

Without a moment of hesitation any longer he pushed the button on the platform which started its ascent towards wherever that was.

The roof above gradually opened up as the platform raised, Haley could tell that he rose through the first couple underground floors before arriving at the ground level of the main above ground building, when the platform breached through the floor of what he could tell was the loading bay of the building.

He sighed upon realising this, he was right next to the loading-bay doors which he had seen the crates be unloaded into in the first place; with a quick drone scan he made sure that the outside area was clear of the members of whatever gang or syndicate were residing below.

Luckily it seemed he was fortunate; the entire backend of the building was deserted, and the surrounding streets only had the occasional foot traffic. ‘Perfect, time to get started.’

Haley quickly linked with the elevator platform and sent the elevator back down while sending signals to ensure that the floor-gateways stayed open, he then opened the loading bay doors and ordered 4 of the drones to begin collecting boxes from below and bringing them up to the loading bay and another 4 to deliver the crates back to his hideout using high-rise buildings as cover and avoiding main streets.

“Hey Kid! Jump on one of the drones, they’re with me.” Haley suddenly remembered that he had ordered the kid to stand down there, he probably would’ve tried to shoot one of the drones if he still had a gun, as much as Haley would’ve loved to witness that he didn’t currently have the parts to repair any destroyed drones currently.

He silently sent a message to the drone he used for flying, aptly named #01 as it was the first drone he had ‘appropriated’ for himself, the drone quickly made its way ahead of the rest and returned a couple of minutes later with the kid who was trying not to tremble with his eyes closed.

“You plan on standing there all day?” He asked impatiently, it was only then that the kid opened his eyes and with an embarrassed expression he quickly jumped off the drone and stood next to Haley silently.

They both watched as the drones appeared to drop off crates and as the drones that were delivering the drones back to his hideout showed up and took those crates away, this cycle continued for half an hour before the final crates were unloaded from the warehouse and Haley closed the floor-gates.

He ordered the 2 drones he had left outside to scout to return back to his hideout before looking at the kid hesitantly, there wasn’t anything much he could do other than bring him with him – he could drop him off at a government building but he’d read up that kids like this usually ended up homeless without anyone to fund them which he could reasonably do but he wasn’t willing to risk having himself exposed for a kid.

With no other choice, besides abandoning the kid to the streets himself, he sighed and got onto drone #01 while pulling the kid with him, “You’d better be useful.” He muttered before they both disappeared from the loading bay.

An hour later, an alarm ruined the silence of the loading bay as several armed men hurried in and secured the room, but they found nothing but a few trace remains of the crates when they had been dropped onto the ground by the drones.