Akiko waited until Kara's breathing evened out, slow and steady. Then she slipped from the bed without a sound.

Her jacket waited draped over the chair; she pulled it on in one practiced motion, the hood falling low across her face.

A flick of her fingers silenced her suit's systems. No hum, no diagnostic flickers. Nothing to give her away.

At the door, she hesitated. It was supposed to be a simple job. That's what she told herself anyway. Quick in, quick out. But that wasn't the whole truth.

The weight of Serynth still pressed down around her. The eyes in the streets. The bounty on her name. All the power she didn't have. She needed to be more. Stronger. Smarter. This place had tools. Secrets. Things worth the risk.

Kaede's voice stirred in the back of her mind, that quiet disapproval she'd never stopped hearing. Reckless. Impulsive.

Akiko glanced over her shoulder. Kara was still asleep, one arm thrown across her eyes, breath deep.

The rogue in her smiled.

She stepped into the hallway. The door hissed closed behind her.

Blackreach at night breathed differently. The crowds had thinned, voices hushed to murmurs, but the city didn't sleep. It shifted, slow and simmering, like a fuse still burning.

Akiko kept to the edges of the street, her movements wrapped in purpose. Shadows pooled beneath scaffolded walkways and cargo lifts. Neon signs buzzed above shuttered stalls. No one looked twice.

She crouched behind a rust-streaked maintenance panel, its composite casing warped from heat damage and years of neglect.

Ahead, the auction hall curved like a fossilized shell, metallic bone wrapped in mirrored plating, latticework lights pulsing gently along its seams. Mana buzzed faintly beneath the surface, like old wiring still half-alive with current. Even at this hour, the front entrance thrummed with activity. A vehicle glided to the curb, engine quiet as a whisper, offloading two patrons in layered composite fabrics, obscuring their identities. Their laughter was brittle, practiced.

A guard scanned them without fanfare, then waved them through. Just inside the archway: two guards in exosuit partials. Reinforced joints, lines of energy trailing down integrated conduits into their gloves, purpose unknown. Real weapons slung low.

Definitely not an option.

She slipped into a side alley, boots skimming quietly over buckled concrete. A ventilation shaft exhaled warmth from some interior source. Above, lamps flickered behind smog-stained glass, casting everything in a jaundiced hue.

There, the side entrance. Two guards again. Less polished, more relaxed.

One smoked something slow-burning and pungent, the tip glowing faintly in the dark. The other leaned with his elbows on his stun baton, letting it dangle loose between his hands.

Sloppy posture. Sharp eyes.

Akiko edged closer, one hand brushing the wall. A trickle of mana reached out, feeling, mapping the currents in the area.

Her mana sense recoiled. Static crackled across her senses, sharp as frostbite. A resonance field. Tattered, maybe, but functional. Like a sonar net tuned for magical interference.

Her Obfuscation spellform twitched just thinking about activating. She traced the edge of the field and watched the mana distort, sliding around her like oil down a slope. Visible. Obvious. A cloak snagged on a wire.

"Localized mana-scan lattice," Takuto murmured. "Signature matches Haven naval configurations. Crude assembly, but still dangerous. It'll light up on any spellform that misaligns with local flow."

She hissed a breath through her teeth. "So… using stealth magic would announce me to everyone on shift."

"Like throwing a flare into a dark room. Yes."

She slumped against the wall for a moment, tail lashing once behind her.

Of course they didn't know what they had. Some scrap tech yanked from a Haven wreck, cobbled together without a clue. The kind of thing you plug in and hope doesn't melt your skull.

Didn't matter. Black-box or not, it worked. And ignorance didn't make it any less lethal.

That entrance was closed. Fine.

She flexed her hands. Let the mana bleed off her skin, sparks fading like breath in cold air. Her breath steadied. No spellforms. No illusions. Just her.

She let out a slow breath, then pushed off the wall. A few strides took her to a service scaffold that skirted the edge of the roofline. The structure groaned under her weight as she climbed, boots finding quiet purchase in its crossbeams.

From there, it was an easy crouch along the ledge above the side entrance. One guard leaned beneath her, unaware.

She traced the angles in her head. Distances, sightlines, timing. No clean way through. But clean wasn't her style.

A soft flicker lit in the corner of her HUD as Takuto pinged a diagram, highlighted threads snaking from each helmet to their chest rigs.

"Communication lines," his voice murmured in her neural link. "Target here first. Cut them off."

She waited. Counted the rhythm of their shifts. Measured the gap between each glance. Then she dropped from the ledge without a sound. Low gravity softened the impact as her boots kissed down behind the first guard.

She didn't give him time to turn. Her foreclaws flicked out in a snap, catching the collar seam of his jacket and dragging hard to the right, tearing through the comm line Takuto had marked.

Sparks spat, and the man staggered with a curse, reaching for his weapon.

Akiko was already moving. She planted a foot on his thigh, kicked off, and twisted mid-air. Her tail snapped for balance as she hurtled toward the second guard like a thrown blade.

He barely got his baton halfway up before she landed, one hand grabbing his shoulder, the other driving her hind-claws down the back of his rig. The comm unit sputtered beneath her grip, wires torn free with a hiss. She shoved off before he could grab her, using his own bulk to spin herself clear.

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A barked shout followed her retreat, boots scraping against the pavement. One of them came in fast. Faster than she expected. Thick arms clamped around her from behind, lifting her off the ground in a crushing grip. Her arms were pinned at the elbows. No room to slash. No room to breathe.

He was taller. Stronger.

Her breath caught. She bucked once, twice, couldn't break free. A shock baton jabbed into her side. Pain jolted through her ribs, but her armor ate the worst of it. Still, the pressure was growing, her arms pinned, her leverage gone.

Akiko drove her heels backward, kicking into the guard's thighs. As he adjusted to tighten the hold, she bent her knees and arched her spine, curling upward like a dancer mid-spin.

Her hips slid above his shoulders, momentum and gravity unspooling into a twist as she locked her thighs around his helmet.

Then she wrenched sideways.

The guard staggered with a grunt, off balance. She used the pivot, torquing her core, dragging them both into the concrete in a spiraling crash.

She hit the ground in a roll, claws extended, and came up snarling.

The other guard charged.

She ducked low, letting his swing go wide, then slid between his legs. One clawed hand snapped out as she passed, hooking behind his ankle and yanking hard.

He toppled with a startled shout, and she pounced, raking a claw across the soft connection between helmet and shoulder plate. His limbs spasmed once, then went still.

The first one was rising.

Akiko didn't let him finish. She darted forward, then spun low, her sweep-kick catching the guard's legs and sending him sprawling back to the ground. Before he could recover, she was on him, straddling his chest in a crouch. His hand came up, too slow.

Her claws raked forward in a flash of silver-blue light, piercing the faceplate with a shriek of shattering glass and cracking seals.

He slumped.

Akiko straightened slowly, panting, shoulders heaving beneath the plated mesh of her suit. Her tail flicked once, then settled.

Messy entrance. But the door was unguarded now.

The alley fell silent.

Blood darkened the stone beneath one of the guards, already beginning to crust in the cold, but the street beyond remained untouched, alive with neon blur and low, thrumming bass from somewhere deeper in Blackreach.

She waited. Counted.

No alarm. No booted rush of reinforcements. Just the city's usual chaos.

A shape moved at the far end of the alley, a hunched man in a patched coat, his eyes catching the faint light as he peered into the gloom. He froze. Then vanished with a quiet shuffle, his back already turned before his mind could finish registering the bodies.

Akiko exhaled slowly and moved.

The guards were heavy, weighed down by gear and inertia, but low gravity gave her enough leverage. She dragged them one by one into the shelter of a broken refuse unit tucked against the wall. Not perfect. But enough. Blackreach wouldn't look twice.

She turned to the door. A dull gray panel nestled beside it, scuffed with age, half-concealed by grime and a fading stencil in a language she didn't recognize. Her tail flicked once as Takuto murmured in her ear.

"Junction located. Security grid is civilian-grade. Breach advisable."

A slender fiber-optic cable snaked from the wrist port of her suit, guided by Takuto's targeting overlay. It plugged into the panel with a faint chirp, and lines of code flooded her HUD. One by one, the security locks disengaged.

Subskill Progress (Digital Systems Intrusion): No milestone advancement. Routine task detected.

Akiko frowned slightly. No surprise there. She'd done this sort of thing a dozen times now. Too clean, too predictable. No growth in the mundane.

"Access granted."

The lock hissed. The door slid open with a soft grind, dust spilling from its upper track.

Akiko slipped through into the corridor beyond.

Inside, the auction hall was quiet. Not silent, never silent. But muffled, insulated. Industrial walls painted in sleek metallic tones tried to present a sense of sophistication, but the smell of repurposed plating and aging coolant still lingered beneath it.

A low hum threaded through the space, pulsing with each breath of the facility's lungs.

She stood still for a moment. Listening. Watching.

The hallway sealed behind her with a sharp click.

Akiko turned. The panel blinked green for a heartbeat, then red again. A ripple of light shimmered across the seam as internal locks snapped into place.

Takuto's voice flickered in her ear. "Access privilege revoked. A new security layer has taken control of the system. Signature is nonstandard, likely localized magitech. Complexity exceeds current bypass capacity."

Localized magitech. Not just some scavenged firewall or stock Haven lockout. Someone had stitched this together with intent. Adapted it. Built it.

This wasn't tech-junkie guesswork. This was someone who knew exactly what they were doing.

Her brow furrowed. "So we're sealed in."

"For the moment."

No alarms. No stomping boots or shouted orders. Just a sterile hush, the silence somehow worse than a siren. Whatever had noticed them hadn't made a fuss. That unsettled her more than if it had.

She moved forward, a quiet prowl further into the building.

The interior design clung to opulence, a stark difference to the public-facing auctions. These halls were likely restricted to wealthy patrons who didn't traffic with the public crowd.

Marble-patterned panels. Subtle lighting recessed in geometric flourishes. Artificial plants that gave the illusion of a curated jungle, each leaf glossy and dustless. A monument to curated wealth, cold and immaculate.

Her HUD mapped the space with quick sweeps, charting doorways and signage. One glyph caught her attention: a stylized vault symbol flanked by sigils denoting restricted access. Downstairs.

She followed the sign until the hallway curved toward a stairwell only to stop short.

A translucent barrier bloomed into being, shimmering across the passage. Thin strands of mana laced together in midair, golden filaments knitting like a spiderweb under command. They snapped into alignment with a low pulse, resolving into a translucent barrier that hadn't been there moments ago.

Pale gold. Magical. Mana etched in tight, recursive runes that twisted just wrong enough to make her eyes ache.

Akiko reached toward it, not touching. Just close enough to feel the static tingle crawl across her knuckles. The pulse was steady. Strong.

This wasn't a part of the building's security system. Someone had just woven this into the hallway like a stitch in fresh fabric.

Takuto's scan came back a breath later. "Barrier is keyed to internal lockdown protocols. Likely powered from the central node above. Any attempt to brute-force a passage will spike your signature and trigger hostile response."

Of course it would.

She bit back a curse. She could break it, but not without bleeding herself half dry and lighting up every alarm in the building. Not without making this quiet job loud. Well, more loud.

So she looked up.

"The node's upstairs," she muttered. She could feel it above her. A quiet pulse of mana in the air.

"Confirmed. Elevation access routes mapped. Multiple options available. Minimal foot traffic. Surveillance is…" Takuto hesitated, just enough to make her pulse quicken. "Inconclusive."

Her ears twitched.

"Define inconclusive."

"No active mechanical monitoring. But there is...a field. Resonant. Something is aware."

Akiko didn't respond.

The silence thickened. She rolled her shoulders once. Then made for the stairs.

The stairwell curved upward in a slow arc, walls paneled in dark ceramic composite that diffused sound too well. Her footfalls felt muffled, unreal. Every breath echoed like it didn't belong.

Twice she had to duck aside. Once behind a potted tree that had no business growing on a moon. Once into a recessed alcove meant for decorative sculpture. Each time, she watched workers pass, unaware of how close they'd come. But the route wasn't random.

Doors hissed shut the moment she neared them. Hallways sealed with sterile finality, one after another. Detours rerouted her again and again, always forward.

"Takuto," she whispered. "They're guiding me."

"Confirmed. The system is responding with real-time environmental overrides. Pathing aligns with intentional funneling behavior."

"Toward what?"

"Unknown. But based on current trajectory…" He paused. "Server infrastructure wing. Level five. Restricted."

Of course.

The last door unsealed with a hiss and a rush of cold air. The lighting changed. Bluer, harsher. Server columns stood in regimented rows beyond the threshold, each one humming with power. A cathedral of data, pulsing quietly.

Akiko stopped just past the doorway.

This was bad. She could purge protocols, erase logs, rewrite clearances. She could tell the system that she belonged here. But it worked both ways.

"Takuto," she said softly. "You said the system was watching."

"It is."

She glanced at the nearest column, where thick bundles of fiber-optic threads pulsed with internal light. Her claws could shred the cables in seconds. Clean. Brutal. Loud. But she couldn't afford something that would have the whole building on alert in moments.

So she inhaled once. The connector wire unspooled from beneath her suit's wrist port once more, trembling slightly as it extended.

She hesitated. She didn't fear pain, she'd had enough of that in her life. No, what worried her was connecting to something in there and being connected to in turn. But it was necessary. There was no going back.

Then she slotted the cable into the server port. The connection flared.

And the world blinked.

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