They approached Twelve‑North from below.
Not through the front gates with their polite security checkpoints and glossy Department logos, but through a maintenance artery that smelled like rust, old coolant, and the kind of secrecy that never saw daylight.
"This tunnel feeds into their waste filtration," Taro whispered, crawling ahead on hands and knees. "Because even righteous institutions have to flush something."
Kael's palm slid along the rough concrete as he followed.
The dead collar shell sat loose around his throat, light as a lie.
Every nerve under his skin vibrated, waiting for the phantom squeeze that never came.
Aiden brought up the rear, the faint shimmer of an illusion clinging to his shoulders just enough to bend light around them, not enough to trigger grid alarms.
Above their heads, the city's shield hum deepened.
They were under more than concrete now.
They were under policy.
"Status?" Lysa murmured from just behind Taro.
"Outer perimeter sensors ping every twelve seconds," Taro said. "We slip through between pulses, we're ghosts. We miss it, we're lab rats."
"Comforting," Kael muttered.
They reached a grated hatch.
Faint white light leaked around its edges.
Taro pressed a small device to the control panel a flat puck covered in runes and scavenged chips.
"Hold your breath," he said. "The smell up there is atrocious."
The lock clicked.
The hatch rolled open just enough for a person to squeeze through.
A wave of sterile air washed over them cold, antiseptic, thick with the faint metallic tang of recycled magic.
Kael almost gagged.
Memories hit like a flash: corridors too bright, voices too calm, the cold weight of a real collar sealing around his neck for the first time.
Aiden's hand brushed his wrist.
"You with me?" Aiden whispered.
Kael's throat worked.
"Unfortunately," he said.
Lysa went first, sliding into the narrow crawlspace beyond the hatch.
Taro followed, then Kael, then Aiden.
The space opened into a low service duct running parallel to a main corridor. Through a thin slit in the metal, Kael could see a slice of the world he'd left behind: white floors, polished walls, lights that never flickered.
Two guards walked past, boots silent on the smooth surface.
Their uniforms were crisp, shields humming at their belts.
"Outer ring," Aiden murmured. "Standard patrol."
The scanner strapped to Taro's forearm blinked.
"Collar mask holding," Taro said. "Kael reads as 'domestic threat, compliant.' If you start throwing lightning, all bets are off."
Kael flexed his fingers.
"Noted," he said.
Lysa checked the route on her wrist display.
"Three ducts forward, then left," she said. "We hit a junction above diagnostics. From there, we split. Taro to the subgrid, us toward intake."
"Subgrid first," Aiden said. "If we don't get your loop in place, any footage we trigger goes straight to Central."
Taro patted the pack on his back.
"Relax," he said. "I brought enough illegal hardware to make a Board member cry."
"That's the dream," Kael said.
They moved.
In the cramped duct, sound changed shape.
Breaths felt louder.
Heartbeats felt like footsteps.
At the first junction, Lysa eased up another hatch and peered through.
"Clear," she said.
She dropped down into a narrow access shaft lined with cable bundles.
They followed, boots finding rungs by touch.
A soft vibration passed through the metal under their hands.
Kael glanced up.
"What was that?" he whispered.
"Shield frequency shift," Aiden said. "They recalibrate in cycles. Taro, can you ride the timing?"
"Already on it," Taro said, eyes on his scanner. "We hit the subgrid room between sweeps, the system will think its own hiccup knocked a camera or two offline. Plausible deniability for the techs."
"And if we miss?" Kael asked.
"Then the alarms sing," Taro said. "And we improvise, like always."
Lysa dropped lightly onto a ledge halfway down.
"This is your stop," she said to Taro. "Room B‑17, two meters behind that panel. You have eight minutes to punch a hole in their eyes before the next grid check."
Taro grinned.
"Plenty," he said.
He slipped through a maintenance hatch and vanished.
Lysa looked at Aiden and Kael.
"Last chance to decide this is a bad idea," she said.
"It's been a bad idea since the convoy," Kael said. "We're just being consistent."
Aiden's lips twitched.
"Forward," he said.
***
The intake level was quieter than Kael remembered.
Last time he'd been here, it had buzzed with activity techs scanning new arrivals, guards shuffling paperwork, the constant hiss of doors opening and closing as collars synchronized with the system.
Now, as they peered through the grate above the main corridor, it felt… still.
Too still.
"Where is everyone?" Kael whispered.
"Shift change?" Lysa guessed.
Aiden frowned.
"Or they've moved most of the processing deeper in," he said. "Less visible. Less accessible."
"Less leakable," Kael said bitterly.
Two med‑techs passed below, pushing a floating gurney with an empty restraint frame.
Their conversation drifted up in fragments.
"…new protocol… transfer straight to ring three if output above baseline…"
"…since that E‑seventy‑three incident, they don't want them awake near the windows…"
Kael's fingers dug into the metal.
He knew they meant him.
"Focus," Aiden murmured. "We get what we came for, then we burn their new protocols down."
Kael forced his fingers to unclench.
"What's our first target?" he asked.
"Diagnostics hub," Aiden said. "If we get into their system from here, we can copy internal logs collar calibration data, intake records, incident reports. Enough to prove what they're doing to anyone who can read a chart."
"And if Taro's loop fails?" Lysa asked.
"We'll know," Aiden said. "Very quickly."
They moved along the duct until they reached a vent overlooking a side room filled with consoles and holographic displays.
Three techs sat at the stations, bored, sipping something hot from sealed cups.
One guard leaned near the door, more decoration than deterrent.
"Population low," Lysa murmured. "That's almost rude. I brought my good boots."
Aiden's mind ran through options.
"We can't brute‑force this," he said. "Too many cameras, even with Taro's loop. We need them out without raising security's pulse."
Kael tilted his head.
"Fire drill?" he suggested.
"Fire suppression would lock the room and broadcast an alert," Aiden said. "We want distraction, not panic."
Lysa smiled thinly.
"Then we give them a problem they think they can handle," she said.
She pointed toward the corridor.
"Small leak in the coolant line outside," she said. "Annoying, potentially dangerous if untreated, but not alarm‑level. You can fake that?"
Aiden considered the layout.
"I can bend the light enough to make it look like condensation where there isn't any," he said. "Add a flicker to the panel lights. But someone will have to sell it."
Kael's eyes gleamed.
"Oh no," he said. "Whatever will we do."
Lysa arched a brow.
"You volunteering to be our concerned maintenance worker?" she asked.
"Please," Kael said. "Even collared, I spent enough time watching these people to mimic their worried faces."
Aiden hesitated.
"You'll be exposed," he said. "Mask or not, it's a risk."
Kael shrugged.
"Everything in here is a risk," he said. "At least this one comes with improv."
They backtracked to a hatch opening into the corridor.
Aiden layered the illusion over the nearby wall shimmering moisture, a subtle flicker in the status lights, the faint suggestion of a hairline crack in the coolant pipe.
To anyone glancing over, it would look like the beginning of a problem technicians hated.
Kael adjusted the collar band at his throat, shoulders squaring.
"How do I look?" he asked.
"Like trouble," Aiden said.
"Perfect," Kael replied.
Lysa touched his arm once.
"In and out," she said. "We're right here. You twitch wrong, we pull you."
Kael nodded.
He stepped into the corridor.
The air changed the moment he left the cover of the duct.
The lighting felt harsher.
The floor felt too smooth under his boots.
He walked toward the diagnostics room with the practiced hurry of someone who'd just discovered an annoying issue and wanted it fixed before it became paperwork.
The guard at the door noticed him halfway.
"Authorized personnel only," the guard said.
Kael pointed at the flickering panel.
"Yeah, I know," he said, injecting just enough irritation. "Which is why I need your diagnostics people before that leak cooks half your system. Unless you want to explain to your supervisor why the intake corridor turned into a sauna."
The guard glanced at the wall.
Aiden's illusion shimmered just enough to sell it.
One of the techs inside looked up, following the guard's gaze.
"You see that?" they asked.
The others squinted.
"That line wasn't there a minute ago," one said.
"Great," the guard muttered. "Another shield‑coolant glitch."
Kael folded his arms, posture impatient but contained.
"I can throw a temporary patch on it," he said. "But if the conduit behind that wall is compromised, it's your readings that'll catch it. Or not."
The tech hesitated.
"Protocol says we log and schedule," one said.
"And protocol also says we prevent system‑wide failures," Kael shot back. "Look, just come take a look. If it's nothing, I go back to babysitting ducts. If it's something, you get to be the hero who caught it before everything went sideways."
Flattery and fear.
Two universal currencies.
After a moment, one tech sighed and stood.
"I'll check it," they said. "Kerrin, keep an eye on the boards. If anything spikes while I'm out, call it."
They stepped into the corridor, standing beside Kael to peer at the illusion.
Aiden adjusted the shimmer, making the fake leak look a little worse.
"Yeah, that's not great," the tech murmured. "Might be a fracture deeper in. I'll need to run a localized scan."
They turned back toward the room.
"Hey, can you cycle the panel feed for corridor C‑four?" they called. "I want to check if this shows up on the last sweep."
Kerrin rolled their chair over to another console.
The guard moved closer to see better, attention split.
In the duct above, Lysa gave Aiden a tiny nod.
Now.
He slipped through the hatch behind the diagnostics room, illusion wrapping around him like a shadow.
Inside, the consoles hummed quietly.
Kerrin's attention was on the panel feed, not the doorway.
The third tech had headphones in, focused on a calibration line.
Aiden moved to the closest station and slid a data‑sliver into the port, fingers flying over the interface.
The system recognized the input as a routine maintenance check—Taro's code wrapping his signature in familiar patterns.
Lines of access permissions cascaded across the screen.
He suppressed a grin.
"Entry granted," he whispered.
He pulled everything he could reach—collar logs, incident reports, intake schedules, internal complaints that had never left the building.
Files flowed into the sliver like water.
Thirty seconds.
Forty.
Outside, Kael kept up the performance.
"So," he said to the tech, "on a scale of one to 'we all get yelled at,' how bad is it?"
"Too early to say," they replied, running a handheld scanner over the wall. "If it's a minor anomaly, we can patch. If it's structural, we'll have to call upper ring."
"Always fun," Kael said.
Aiden watched the progress bar.
Eighty percent.
Ninety.
He heard footsteps in the corridor.
Too many.
From the far end, two more guards approached, talking.
"…new directive from Orion," one was saying. "Random compliance checks."
"Again?" the other groaned. "We just did those last week."
Kael's pulse jumped.
Random checks meant scanners.
Scanners meant signatures.
"We're almost done here," the tech muttered.
Aiden yanked the sliver free and ghosted back toward the duct hatch.
He slipped through just as Kerrin glanced over their shoulder.
"Hey, did you just—" Kerrin began.
The console flickered as Taro's loop cycled, momentarily fuzzing the feed.
"Probably just the grid hiccup again," the third tech said, not looking up.
In the corridor, the approaching guards noticed the small cluster.
"What's going on?" one asked.
"Possible coolant issue," the first guard said. "Diagnostics is checking."
The new guard's gaze landed on Kael.
"ID," they said automatically.
Kael's mouth went dry.
He didn't have a badge.
He had a band.
He shifted, angling his body so the collar shell caught the light.
The guard's eyes flicked to it, then away.
"Maintenance," the tech said. "They flagged it."
The guard's scanner chirped as it passed briefly over Kael's chest.
The band hummed faintly, Taro's masking signal flaring.
The scanner pinged green.
"Compliant Deviant," the guard's display read. "Access limited."
Relief hit so hard Kael nearly staggered.
He kept his face bored.
"Can I go now?" he asked.
"Get a proper work order next time," the guard said. "We're on heightened alert."
"So I've noticed," Kael muttered.
He stepped back, giving the tech room.
Lysa's voice brushed his ear through the tiny comm bead.
"Exit," she whispered. "Now."
Kael didn't need telling twice.
He walked away at a pace that was almost casual.
The moment he rounded the corner and out of sight, he ducked into the nearest hatch and hauled himself back into the duct.
Aiden caught his arm, helping him in.
"Nice work," Aiden said.
"I hate everyone who invented scanners," Kael replied, breathing hard.
Lysa sealed the hatch.
"Save your hatred," she said. "We're not done."
She nodded at the sliver in Aiden's hand.
"Do we have it?" she asked.
"We have something," Aiden said. "I won't know how much until Taro cracks the encryption, but the file weight is heavy."
Kael leaned his head back against the duct wall.
"Great," he said. "Now we just have to break into the place where they keep the worst secrets, free whoever we can, and get out before Mara throws the entire alphabet at us."
Aiden listened to the distant hum of the facility the throb of shields, the faint rhythm of elevators, the underlying buzz of contained power.
"This was the easy part," he said.
"For once," Lysa replied, "we agree."