Their new sanctuary was a ghost. Haruto, using his local knowledge, had guided them to a derelict textile warehouse in the industrial outskirts of Kobe, a place that had been silent for twenty years. The air inside was thick with the smell of dust, decay, and the faint, heartbreaking scent of a million forgotten bolts of fabric. It was here, under the weak, dusty light filtering through grimy clerestory windows, that the reality of their victory began to set in.
They were fugitives. All of them. Haruto, Ricco, Miyuki, and Pops were no longer just civilian helpers; they were accessories, their faces almost certainly captured by some traffic camera during the chaotic escape. They were all in the serpent's coil now.
The adrenaline of the fight had long since faded, leaving behind the cold, metallic tang of reality. Sato, ignoring the throbbing pain in her ankle which she had brutally strapped with a roll of duct tape, had already set to work. She laid out a small, anti-static cloth on an overturned crate and was performing a delicate, desperate surgery on the remains of the flight controller. She used a set of jeweler's tools, her movements as precise and as steady as a bomb disposal expert's.
"It's a write-off," she whispered, her voice a low, grim assessment. "The main board is fractured in three places. The power unit is completely fried. Alek's kick was... precise. He knew exactly what to destroy."
Kenji watched her, his own mind a whirlwind of strategic dead ends. His gaze kept drifting to the stolen support rods and the ceramic pellet, which now lay on the cloth like holy relics. "So we have nothing," he stated, the words flat and devoid of hope. "A priceless piece of a conspiracy that's completely, utterly useless to us."
"Not necessarily," Sato countered, not looking up from her work. "Alek was smart, but he was also angry. He went for a catastrophic kill on the main systems. But the most important component in a device like this isn't the biggest. It's the smallest."
With a final, delicate probe, she used a pair of fine-tipped tweezers to lift a tiny, black square from the wreckage. It was no bigger than a grain of rice. The main memory chip. "The flash memory," she breathed, a flicker of triumph in her tired eyes. "This is where the decryption keys for the pellet's data would be stored."
She held it up to the faint light, examining it with a small magnifying lens. Her triumph quickly faded. "But it's damaged. There's a hairline fracture across the casing. The primary connectors are sheared off. I can't access it with my field kit. The data is in there, Kenji, but it's trapped. To get it out, I need a clean room, a micro-soldering station, and about a week of uninterrupted work. I need a real lab."
A real lab. It might as well have been on the moon. While Sato had diagnosed their technical problem, Kenji was facing the tactical one.
"We can't get out," he said, the words a simple statement of an impossible fact. "Finch will have every port, every station, every major road out of the Kansai region monitored. They know we're here. They just don't know where. The moment we try to leave the city, we'll be caught. We're in a cage."
The dual reality of their situation settled over the small group like a shroud. They had the serpent's egg, but it was locked in a box they couldn't open. And they were trapped in a city-sized prison with the serpent itself, which was now very, very angry. Their mission was stalled, their lives on a timer.
Kenji felt a wave of profound, soul-deep conflict. His duty as an agent was clear: protect the mission, protect the intelligence, and treat all civilians as potential liabilities to be managed and, if necessary, sacrificed. That was the cold, brutal calculus of the job. But he wasn't just Agent Takahashi anymore. He was Kenta. He was the man who had listened to Haruto's pathetic, heartbreaking story. He was the man who had found a kindred spirit in Miyuki's quiet war against chaos. They weren't just assets. They weren't just cover. They were… his people.
"It's not a violation of protocol if they're already targets," Kenji said, his voice quiet but firm, the decision made. The others looked up, startled by the sudden certainty in his tone. "Alek's conversation was clear. 'Clean the floor of all the unnecessary trash.' That means us. But it also means anyone who got too close. Anyone who saw something they shouldn't have. They're already on the list, Sato. We're not dragging them into our war. We're just giving them a fighting chance to survive theirs."
Sato was silent for a long moment, her analytical mind processing the terrible, undeniable logic of his words. "It's a long shot, Kenji," she said finally. "They're civilians. They're not trained for this."
"No," Kenji agreed, a slow, grim smile touching his lips. "They're not trained. They're just a bunch of broken, stubborn, and deeply underestimated people who are tired of being swept aside." He looked at the Grounders, his new, unwitting recruits. "This is no longer my mission. It's ours. But I can't order you to do this. You all have a choice. You can walk out that door right now, disappear, and try to outrun them. Or you can stay, and you can fight."
Haruto, the cynical feed hauler, was the first to speak. He looked at Kenji, then at the others, and let out a short, bitter laugh. "So we're either hunted alone or we're hunted together. At least together we've got a chance. I'm in."
Ricco looked up, his dark eyes burning with a new, hard fire. "They're just like him," he said, his voice low. "They use people. They break them and throw them away. I'm done letting people like that win. I'm in."
Pops the electrician, who had been silently observing, grunted. "Fine. But if I'm going to be a fugitive from a global mind-control circus cult, I'm going to need better coffee."
All eyes turned to Miyuki. She looked at the faces of her strange, new, broken family. She gave a small, serene smile. "The mess has gotten bigger," she said softly. "So we will need a bigger broom."
The B-Team was officially born. They were no longer just a collection of individuals; they were a unit, bound by a shared threat and a shared, defiant purpose.
"Alright," Kenji said, the weight on his shoulders now a little lighter, shared among them. "Our first problem is this." He pointed to the fractured memory chip on Sato's workbench. "We have the enemy's secrets, but we can't read them. Sato needs a lab to do that. A lab we can't get to."
He looked at his new team. "So, we're going to build one."