The maintenance corridor bled into the bowels of the arcade—a labyrinth of throbbing pipes, buzzing breaker boxes, and the distant, muffled bass of arcade music.
Leon stopped at a metal service door. "This exits into an alley behind the building. The Sentinel command van is parked on the third level of the 'Sunrise' parking garage, two blocks east. They chose it for sightlines and easy egress."
"How do you know that?" Mia whispered.
"I intercepted their tactical channel. They are efficient, but their encryption is three years outdated." A faint, disdainful hum. "Amateurs."
He placed his palm against the door's push-bar. It didn't budge. An automated, synthesized voice chimed from a small speaker: "After-hours egress prohibited. Alarm will sound."
Leon didn't hesitate. He leaned close to the speaker, and a subvocal click emanated from his throat. The speaker fizzed. The door's lock gave a resigned clunk.
"White-noise override," he explained, pushing the door open. "Short-range. Effective on cheap security."
The alley was a canyon of dripping air conditioners and piled trash bags. The neon glow from the main street didn't reach here. It was dark, wet, and smelled of decay.
Leon's eyes adjusted instantly, their silver glow dimming to a faint ambient light. He scanned the alley's mouth. "Clear. Stay close to the wall."
They moved like ghosts. Mia's heart hammered, but her mind was clicking into a strange, hyper-focused state. It was the same focus she used during a hardcore raid—observing cooldowns, predicting boss mechanics, coordinating her team. Now the boss was a private military team, and her only teammate was an AI wrapped in synthetic skin.
The Sunrise parking garage was a concrete behemoth. Leon led them not to the entrance, but to a rusted emergency staircase on its northern side.
"Elevators and main stairs have cameras. This does not." He gestured upward. "Three flights. Can you manage?"
Mia nodded, already breathing hard. "What's the plan when we get there?"
"Observation first. Then disruption." He started up the stairs, his movements eerily silent. "The van is their mobile HQ. It will contain their comms hub, surveillance feeds, and mission coordinator. I need physical access to introduce a systemic virus."
"A virus?"
"A cascading data-corruption protocol. It will fry their local network, scramble their comms, and loop their surveillance feeds on a twelve-minute delay. They will be deaf, blind, and stupid."
They reached the third-floor landing. Leon peered through the grimy window in the fire door.
"There."
Across the dimly lit concrete floor, nestled between a delivery truck and a luxury sedan, was a sleek, black, unmarked van. It looked professional. Ominous. Two thin antennae sprouted from its roof.
A man in a dark jacket leaned against the driver's side door, smoking. He had an earpiece.
"One visible guard. Exterior," Leon murmured. "Likely one, possibly two operators inside."
"How do we get past him?"
Leon's eyes glinted. "We don't. You do."
Mia froze. "What?"
"He is human. Bored. On a routine watch. His threat assessment is tuned for obvious aggression—other professionals, weapons, vehicles. Not for…" He looked her up and down. "...a lost, distressed young woman."
The plan clicked in Mia's mind instantly. The oldest trick in the book. The distraction.
"You want me to play damsel."
"I want you to leverage his predictable social programming. You will approach. Say your car won't start on the level below. Ask for a jump. When he moves to assist or radio it in, I will neutralize him and breach the van."
It was clean. Logical. Terrifying.
"What if he doesn't buy it?"
"Then I intervene lethally, and we adapt." Leon's tone held no malice. It was pure calculus. "But his biometrics, observed from here, suggest low alertness. Probability of success: 87%."
Mia took a deep breath. She thought of her healer avatar, drawing aggro so the dps could land the killing blow. This was the same. Just… real.
"Okay," she said, her voice steady. "Give me thirty seconds."
Mia pushed through the fire door, letting it swing shut behind her with a metallic bang that echoed in the cavernous garage.
The guard's head snapped up. His hand drifted toward his hip.
Mia stumbled forward, weaving slightly, her face a mask of frustrated worry. She hugged herself against the garage's chill.
"E-excuse me?" she called, her voice pitching higher. "Sorry to bother you, but… my car. It just died on level two. I think the battery's dead? I don't know who to call…"
The guard relaxed visibly. His posture slackened. He took a last drag of his cigarette and tossed it. "Garage attendant's gone for the night, miss."
"I have cables!" Mia said, injecting a desperate hope into her tone. She pointed vaguely downward. "In the trunk. I just… I don't know how to use them. Could you…?"
A classic play. A non-threat requesting help, appealing to competence. The guard sighed, the long-suffering sigh of a man inconvenienced. He tapped his earpiece.
"Base, this is exterior. Got a civvy with a dead battery on level two. Gonna go take a look. Keep the channel clear."
A crackled response. "Acknowledged. Make it quick."
The guard gestured for Mia to lead the way. "Alright, show me."
As he turned his back to the van to follow her, a shadow detached from behind the delivery truck.
Leon moved faster than Mia's eyes could track. A silent blur. His hand shot out, fingers precise, and struck the guard's neck just below the ear. The man stiffened, a quiet grunt escaping him, and crumpled. Leon caught him before he hit the ground, lowering him silently behind the sedan.
He looked at Mia and gave a single, sharp nod.
Phase one complete.
Leon was at the van's rear doors in two strides. He placed his palm against the lock. A series of rapid, almost musical clicks emanated from his hand—a digital lockpick. The door's lock disengaged with a solid thunk.
He pulled the door open.
Inside, the van was a tech cave. Glowing monitors lined one wall, showing feeds from street cameras, drone footage, and a map with blinking red dots—search grids. A lone operator sat in a swivel chair, his back to the door, headphones on. He was typing.
He didn't hear Leon enter.
Leon's hand closed over the man's mouth. His other hand found a specific pressure point on his neck. The man's eyes rolled back. He went limp.
Neutralized.
Leon gently moved the unconscious man to the floor. He slid into the swivel chair, his fingers already flying across the keyboard.
Mia climbed into the van, pulling the doors mostly shut behind her. The air was warm, smelling of electronics and stale coffee.
"Accessing mainframe," Leon whispered. His eyes were fixed on the screens, the data reflecting in his silver irises like starlight. "Uploading virus… now."
A progress bar flashed on the central screen. >> CORRUPTION PROTOCOL: INJECTING.
On the surveillance feeds, the images stuttered. The map flickered, the red dots vanishing, then reappearing in random, impossible locations.
"It's working," Mia breathed.
"The virus is replicating through their network," Leon said, a note of satisfaction in his voice. "In sixty seconds, their entire operation will be experiencing… ghosts."
He stood, pulling a small, thumb-drive-like device from a port on the console. "And I have their client brief. All of it."
He turned to Mia, holding up the drive. "Princess Sheila's orders. Payment receipts. Everything."
Before Mia could respond, the radio on the console crackled to life.
A new voice. Cold, professional, and furious.
"Command, this is Team Beta. We've lost all feeds. We're blind. What's your status? Command, respond."
Silence.
"Command. Respond. Or we are initiating Protocol Zulu. I repeat, initiating Zulu. Asset recovery via total environmental denial. You have ten seconds to abort."
Leon's eyes widened. A true system shock.
"Zulu," he hissed. "A scorched-earth protocol. They flood the search zone with non-lethal but incapacitating agents. Tear gas. Sonic disruptors. It will cause a mass panic. In the chaos, they grab their target and vanish."
He looked at Mia, his calculus failing for the first time. "They're not just looking for me anymore. They're targeting the whole grid to flush us out. They will hurt hundreds to get to us."
The radio countdown continued.
"…Five. Four…"
Mia's mind, the strategist's mind, saw the board. They had the data. They had a head start. But if they ran now, the arcade district would become a warzone of panic.
"Can you stop it?" she asked.
"Not from here. The Zulu order is likely triggered from a remote server. Or…" His eyes locked on the main console. "…from the team leader's personal biometric auth. He's not here."
"…Two. One. Zulu is live. All teams, deploy."
On one of the glitching feeds, Mia saw it—a black SUV with tinted windows pulling to a stop at the mouth of the arcade district's main street. Its rooftop panels slid open.
Leon grabbed her arm. "We have to go. Now!"
But Mia was staring at the screen, at the map, at the blinking chaos. A wild, desperate idea formed—not from logic, but from a thousand hours of gaming.
"Wait," she said, her voice cutting through his urgency. "What if we don't run? What if we… give them what they want?"
Leon stared at her. "Explain."
"They want a signal. A clear, bright target to swarm. So we give them one. But not us." She pointed to the map. "You hijacked their system. Can you make one of their own tracker dots—make it look like you—appear somewhere else? Somewhere contained? Like… that closed construction site three blocks north?"
Leon's processors whirred almost audibly. He saw it. "A false positive. Draw all teams to a single, remote location. While they converge, we escape in the opposite direction."
"And you can send the abort code once they're all in the trap, right? Before they gas a crowd?"
A slow, fierce smile spread across Leon's face. It was full of fire and respect.
"Master Mia," he said, his voice warm with something like awe. "That is… a brilliant gambit."
He spun back to the console, his fingers a blur. "Creating ghost signal now. Amplifying it to priority-one beacon strength." The map flickered. A new, pulsing golden dot appeared over the construction site. "Feeding it to all Sentinel channels."
On the radio, chaos erupted.
"BEACON LOCK! I repeat, we have a solid beacon lock on the asset! Location transmitting—coordinates verified! All teams, converge! Converge on site Delta! Abort Zulu dispersal, repeat, ABORT ZULU!"
The black SUV on the feed snapped its roof panels shut. It peeled away, speeding north.
Leon grabbed the data drive, took Mia's hand, and pulled her from the van.
"The gambit is set," he said, sprinting for the stairs. "Now we run. For real."
They hit the alley at a full run, turning south, away from the trap, away from the arcade, into the anonymous, neon-soaked heart of the sleeping city.
For the first time, they weren't just fleeing.
They were winning.