The black queen piece sat on Ken's desk, a silent monarch presiding over a map only he could see.
Jax's absence was now a hole in the world's fabric, and Ken's mind worked to stitch it closed—not with sentiment, but with flawless logic.
The jailbreak was no longer a contingency.
It was **Mission Prime**.
His room became a war room.
Using his research pass, he accessed the academy's public infrastructure schematics. The Custodial Theological Seminary wasn't listed, but the **Eye of Truth**, cross-referencing energy expenditure logs, waste management routes, and personnel assignment records, allowed him to infer its location:
A shielded sub-complex beneath the Spire of Contemplation.
Accessible only via Lift Shaft Gamma-7.
*Problem: Biometric locks. Inquisitor-grade. Requires authorized handprint and vocal passphrase.*
Seraphine's reconnaissance provided the next data points:
Guards changed at 20:00, 02:00, and 08:00. The 02:00 shift was the smallest, manned by junior Inquisitors hungry for promotion and more prone to routine.
The weekly nutrient paste delivery—thanks to Selene's "misplaced" manifest—was now delayed, causing a resupply scramble scheduled for 01:30 tomorrow.
*Opportunity: Chaos window at 01:30-02:15.*
*Objective: Infiltrate, extract Asset Jax, exfiltrate.*
*Exfiltration route...*
Here, the equation jammed.
Getting in was a puzzle he could solve. Getting a potentially injured, non-combatant genius out through layers of academy security was a different variable set.
He needed a vehicle.
A distraction.
A place to hide.
The solution, when it came, was so audacious he almost dismissed it as a glitch.
It required using the enemy's strength against them. It required revealing a fraction of his hand to an ally.
It was inefficient, risky, and... the only path with a projected success rate above 12%.
He needed to meet Seraphine.
---
**They met in the one place no one went: the Academy's Old Observatory.**
A dust-choked dome filled with defunct star-trackers from a pre-orbital age. Moonlight filtered through the cracked dome, painting silver stripes on the dusty floor.
Seraphine arrived first, a shadow among shadows.
"Well?"
Ken didn't turn from where he appeared to study a broken telescope.
"The delivery delay creates our window. Tomorrow night, 01:40. The Seminary is here."
He projected a small, holographic map from his data-pad, pointing to the inferred sub-level.
"Primary obstacle: the lift requires an Inquisitor's biometrics."
"Then we can't get in," she stated, her pragmatism a sharp blade.
"We don't need an Inquisitor," Ken said, his voice flat. "We need their hand. And their voice."
He explained.
The plan had two phases.
**Phase 1: Acquisition.**
At 01:30, during the delivery chaos, a targeted junior Inquisitor would be isolated. Seraphine's role was to subdue him—non-lethally, completely silently—using a nerve-strike pattern Ken displayed on the hologram.
"Strike here, here, and here. He will lose motor function and consciousness for twenty-three minutes. Do you have the precision?"
Seraphine studied the floating points of light on the holographic body.
She nodded once, sharp.
"Yes."
"Then you will take his handprint tablet and vocal code-key. You will bring them to the secondary location."
He zoomed the map to a disused maintenance closet near Lift Shaft Gamma-7.
"And you?" she asked, her eyes narrowing. "What will you be doing?"
**Phase 2: Insertion.**
"I will be preparing the path," Ken said.
It was a half-truth. His role involved **Quantumization** to bypass internal scanners and **Spatial Rewrite** to temporarily mute a surveillance glyph. These, he could not explain.
"You will then use the key at 01:55. Take the lift down. The guard at the bottom will be distracted. You will find Jax in cell 3-B. Extract him and return to the lift."
"Distracted how?"
The soldier in her needed all variables accounted for.
"There will be a contained electrical fire in a secondary conduit. It will draw attention for four minutes."
"You can do that?"
The question wasn't just about capability. It was about who he was.
"I have studied the systems," Ken deflected.
"The escape route is the problem. We cannot go back up. They will lock the academy down. We must go out through the old geothermal maintenance tunnels beneath the Spire. They exit near the perimeter wall."
Seraphine crossed her arms.
"That's half a kilometer of unmapped tunnels. With a prisoner who can't fight."
"Which is why we will not be running."
Ken changed the hologram. It now showed the academy's motor pool schedule.
"At 02:10, the Inquisition's own prisoner transport skimmer—Vehicle ID Theta-9—is scheduled for routine subsystem diagnostics in Bay 4. Its guards will be called to the 'fire.' You will bring Jax there. I will have the vehicle ready."
"You'll *steal an Inquisitorial transport*?"
For the first time, something like disbelief colored her voice.
"How?"
"The diagnostic terminal will suffer a critical error, purging its security locks for ninety seconds. You will get in, power it up, and follow the pre-plotted course I will load into its navigator."
He looked at her, his gray eyes utterly serious in the moonlight.
"You will drive it straight out the main gate during the shift change. The guards will see an Inquisitorial vehicle on scheduled movement. They will not stop you."
The plan was a house of cards, each step dependent on the last, timed to the second.
It was insane.
It was also, she realized, possibly the only way.
"And you?" she asked again, the question softer now. "After you cause your 'fire' and 'system error'?"
"I will be elsewhere, establishing an alibi," Ken said.
It was the truth. Prince Ken would be seen in his dormitory wing by a night-proctor at 02:05, complaining of insomnia.
"We will rendezvous at the safe location marked here."
A final point flashed on the map—an abandoned weather station on a rocky outcrop beyond the academy grounds.
Seraphine was silent for a long time, staring at the intricate web of light between them.
"If any one of these timings is off by a minute..."
"The mission fails," Ken finished. "Jax remains lost. You and I are implicated. The Phantom's hunt intensifies."
"Why are you doing this?" The question hung in the dusty air. "You barely know him. The risk to you is... astronomical."
Ken considered his answer.
The logical reason: *Jax is a high-utility asset. His loss degrades my operational capacity.*
The deeper reason, the one that felt like a system error: *His imprisonment is an unacceptable output of my calculation. The debt must be cleared.*
He gave her the only part of the truth that was safe.
"Because it is the correct strategic move. The Inquisition growing bold enough to fabricate heresy is a greater long-term threat than the risk of this operation. And," he added, meeting her eyes, "you were right. It is wrong."
It was the closest thing to a moral statement Prince Ken had ever made.
Seraphine searched his face, looking for the lie.
She found only cold, absolute resolution.
She extended her hand. Not for a shake, but for him to transfer the mission data to her pad.
"Phase 1: Acquisition. I'm ready."
As their pads synced, a voice, smooth as silk and cold as the void, spoke from the observatory entrance.
"My, my. Assigning missions now, Ken? And here I thought you were the shy one."
Princess Selene leaned against the doorframe, backlit by the corridor light, a smile playing on her lips.
She held up a small, decorative earring.
"You dropped this near the hydro-lifts, Cadet Rae. I thought you might want it back."
It was a lie.
They both knew it.
Seraphine went rigid, hand drifting toward a non-existent weapon.
Ken's mind raced.
*How much had she heard?*
*All of it. She heard all of it.*
Selene stepped fully into the moonlight, her gaze dancing between them.
"A fire. A stolen skimmer. A daring escape. It's almost romantic."
She walked slowly around the hologram, examining it like a piece of art.
"Flawed, though. The geothermal tunnels have motion sensors installed six months ago. Not on the main schematics. And Inquisitorial transports have a secondary, physical ignition lock behind the dashboard. You'd need a code-phrase even if you bypass the digital one."
She was dismantling his plan with casual, terrifying knowledge.
"Why?" Ken asked, his voice dangerously quiet.
"Because, dear brother, while your sacrifice of that knight was clumsy, watching you build something is infinitely more interesting."
She stopped before him.
"I'm not your enemy tonight. Consider me a... quality assurance consultant."
She leaned closer.
"The motion sensors can be disabled if you induce a localized power surge at junction G-12 at 01:35. The physical lock's code for Vehicle Theta-9 is *'Puritas per Ignis.'* Purity through Fire. Ironic, given your planned pyrotechnics."
She was helping.
For her own inscrutable reasons, she was *helping*.
"What do you want in return?" Seraphine asked, her voice tight with suspicion.
Selene's smile widened.
"A favor. To be named later. Nothing that will harm your precious moral code, Cadet. Just a small piece of information, or a tiny omission, at a time of my choosing."
She looked at Ken.
"Do we have an accord, Architect?"
He was trading future uncertainty for present mission integrity.
It was a bad deal.
It was also the only one on the table.
He gave a single, curt nod.
"Excellent."
Selene turned to leave, then paused.
"One more thing. The Inquisitor you target for Phase 1... make it Carrow's nephew, the zealous one with the bad complexion. He's been trying to impress his uncle by tailing Cadet Rae. It would be... satisfying to see him humbled."
Her eyes glinted with genuine malice.
"Happy hunting."
She was gone, leaving behind the scent of jasmine and the chilling realization that they were now in debt to the most dangerous person in the academy.
Seraphine let out a slow breath.
"We can't trust her."
"We don't have to," Ken said, updating the plan with Selene's corrections.
The success probability jumped to 41%.
"We only have to use her information. For now, it aligns."
He looked at the finalized blueprint glowing between them—a symphony of stolen handprints, controlled fires, and borrowed authority.
Tomorrow night, the Silent Phantom would not erase a target.
He would perform his most complex operation yet: a creation. A rescue.
And he would do it with a soldier as his hand and a princess as his unseen patron.
The solo wolf was learning to run with a pack.
The thought should have been a warning.
Instead, it felt like the first step of a new, more powerful equation.
---
**[End of Chapter 7]**