Fourteen days after the Boiling Point crisis peaked, three blocks along the east side of Fletcher Avenue were still on fire. Not actively burning — the original structures had consumed themselves in the first seventy-two hours — but smoldering, the rubble hot enough to set off thermal alerts when a SWAT unit passed downwind. The city had stopped sending fire crews on day two when it became clear there was nothing left to save.

D Platoon drew the east-side rotation. Four nights a week, they ran clearances through the ruins of the Cypress Hill and San Cristobal blocks, documenting stragglers and securing what the fire department had tagged as structurally unstable. They moved through collapsed ceilings and rooms that still smelled of accelerant. The bodies they found were not always recent.

The Chenoa warehouse was supposed to be empty. City records had it condemned since 2021, last used as a staging area for a catering company that went bankrupt during the supply-chain disruptions. When Officer Lessing flagged it on the third night of the rotation, she noted two things in the radio log: the lights were on, and there was a generator hum that did not match anything on the municipal power grid.

Rivera submitted the Chenoa flag through standard channels. It was acknowledged and deprioritised — the city had seventeen hundred active incident reports that week, and a humming warehouse ranked low. Forty-eight hours later, a civilian contractor team appeared at the Chenoa site with city-issued credentials and a work order dated before the Boiling Point crisis began. The work order carried Rivera's captain signature. Rivera had not signed any work order for Chenoa.