Little White suited up in a Glimmer Guard uniform, stashed her signature twin blades in a hidden nook nearby, and slid into the passenger seat to play the role of an escort.
Bit climbed into a metal crate stamped CLASSIFIED. The crate had been modified so it could be opened from the inside. Once the truck entered Glimmer Caverns and reached the right spot, Bit could pop the latch, slip out, and vanish without anyone noticing.
Liam checked everything one last time, shut the doors, merged onto the road, and joined the convoy heading toward Edean.
It was a long drive—about two hours. Patrol teams moved along the roadside in steady intervals, and drones or patrol craft flashed across the sky like pale comets. The watchtowers, gun turrets, and pillboxes were already dense enough to make a sane person turn back, yet more were still being built.
Little White’s gaze drifted—then caught on Liam’s shoulder patch.
“Oh?” she said. “I didn’t even notice. You’re a staff sergeant now. Not bad. Two promotions in one week.”
Liam’s ears went pink. “Lord Teresa said it would make it easier to assist you.”
Little White nodded. “Fair. Thank you. You people are reasonable.” She tilted her head. “Still—how did you even get to Teresa? With his position, you probably couldn’t get within a hundred meters of his office.”
“I didn’t convince him,” Liam admitted. “He caught me stealing from his office.”
Little White blinked. “You what?”
“It was during the big sweep,” Liam said. “I finally found a gap, slipped into Military Intelligence, picked a random senior officer’s office… and it happened to be his. I hadn’t even plugged into his computer when I heard footsteps outside. I dove into a closet, but he found me anyway.”
He let out a long breath, like he could still feel it.
“I didn’t know he was a Level-8 Augmented then. His eyesight and hearing were… not normal. I thought I was dead.”
“And then?” Little White asked, interest sparking.
“I lied. He saw through it instantly. So I told the truth.” Liam swallowed. “He locked me up. I was sure I was finished. Then—less than half a day later—he pulled me back into his office and said he wanted to meet you.”
Little White’s face went stern for half a second. “So you sold us out that easily. Wow.”
Then she waved it off. “But fine. It worked out. I’ll forgive you.”
“Th-thank you, Miss Little White.”
She leaned back. “How long has Teresa been augmented?”
“Four days. Five, counting today.”
“Did his thinking change?”
“Not that I can tell,” Liam said. “If anything, he seems even more determined to rebel than before. And it’s not just him—I’ve noticed a lot of Augmented aren’t brainwashed.”
“Yeah?” Little White asked. “What makes you think that?”
“In Edean, I went out of my way to check on Augmented comrades around me,” Liam said. “The ones with extreme views didn’t flip overnight. They changed gradually, in ways they couldn’t even notice. But another group hasn’t changed at all. Teresa’s in that group.”
“How many?”
“A lot. At least a third of the Augmented, maybe more. And the two groups hate each other. There’ve already been multiple brawls.”
Little White’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Interesting.”
They kept talking as they drove. Without noticing, the checkpoints grew closer together, and the patrol density doubled, then tripled.
Liam glanced over. “We’re near Edean’s outer perimeter. First checkpoint ahead. You should put your helmet on.”
“Got it.” Little White lifted her helmet and locked it in place.
“And pull your visor down,” Liam added, voice low. “Pretty girls are rare in the Glimmer Guard.”
“As you command, Sergeant.”
The cargo truck rolled through the first checkpoint, then the second, then the third. At last they reached the freight transfer station near Edean’s entrance—where everything from the outside world was unloaded, disinfected, inspected, and moved onto smaller carriers for delivery into the caverns.
When their turn came, Liam flashed his credentials and rank and tilted the crate so the CLASSIFIED stamp was impossible to miss. The inspectors waved them through without opening it. The crate was transferred cleanly onto a small shuttle cart and driven into the tunnel mouth.
Only when the cart disappeared did Liam exhale.
“Done,” he murmured. “Lord Teresa is inside to receive him.”
Little White gave a subtle thumbs-up. “What now?”
“We wait.” Liam nodded toward a cluster of buildings at the far side of the station. “This place is also the Glimmer Guard’s temporary camp outside Edean. Teresa’s orders already reached them. See those people? They were called in on purpose. In two hours we move out from here and go straight to Five-Color Fortress.”
“Then we wait in the truck,” Little White said. “Less contact is better.”
Liam smiled. “Exactly.”
They didn’t wait as long as expected. An hour later, a mustering order hit every Guard’s handheld terminal. People poured into the square in front of the barracks until a force of more than three hundred stood assembled. Liam and Little White blended in naturally.
At the same time, several small mag-lev cars emerged from Glimmer Caverns and stopped beside the formation. Teresa stepped forward with guards around him, his gaze sweeping across the faces. When his eyes reached Little White, he gave the slightest nod—nothing more than a twitch of acknowledgment.
He delivered a short briefing. Then the Glimmer Guard boarded two dozen troop carriers and rolled out toward Five-Color Fortress.
***
I’d been near Winterbound Lake for a while, and my habits had kept me cautious. I didn’t rush into the fog-filled basin. Instead, I chose a mountaintop ridge right beside the “lake” and watched from cover.
The valley below was drowned in mist—flat and calm as a water surface, deep as a lie. Patrol craft circled the basin without pause, one every two minutes, relentless as breathing.
After a long scan, I decided to go in.
I switched to stealth mode and began climbing down the icy slope, moving in short segments—crawl, stop, listen; crawl, stop, listen.
The fog did strange things to light. Or maybe something moved inside it. I kept catching the sensation of motion just out of focus. The slope was steep, mostly ice. One slip and I’d slide all the way down.
Then my foot punched through brittle ice.
Crack—
I stabilized immediately, but loose shards clattered and rolled downhill.
Instinct took over. I flattened against the ice, scanned in a tight radius, and let my mimic plating project the surrounding texture across my shell. It was an Infiltrator’s native trick: stay still and the world forgets you’re there. A standard unit could vanish perfectly within thirty meters.
Julian had built my chassis personally. At five meters, I was still difficult to spot.
Ten seconds later I heard it—an insectile hum.
A probe sphere drifted up the slope, riding close to the surface. It hovered at the point where the ice had cracked, pivoted as if “looking,” then emitted thin red-and-blue fiber beams that swept the area in fast patterns.
It was seven or eight meters from me.
I’d already pulled myself into a tight knot against the ice. To the probe, I was just a harmless bump. The beams crossed my body three times.
They didn’t pause.
After half a minute, the sphere continued upward. Every ten meters it stopped to scan again.
Only when it vanished completely into the fog above did I move.
That close call made me more confident, not less. The basin was guarded. That meant something mattered down there.
Two hours later, I reached the valley floor.
The mist churned in thick rolls, visibility under ten meters. The ground was dark rock carved into wave-like ridges, split by massive gullies. In the low points, countless cracks breathed fog upward in constant pulses—the source of the “lake.”
Off the ice, movement became easier. The basin wasn’t huge: an oval, roughly four by five kilometers. According to Wyatt’s coordinates, the Azure Thunder was less than a kilometer away. Without the fog, I would have seen it already.
I confirmed my heading and started toward the center—then stopped.
Footsteps.
Faint at first. Then clearer.
I dropped to the ground and reshaped my silhouette into a jagged lump of “rock.”
A line of humanoid shadows passed in the mist not far away. Too far for detail. But the fog here was a cocktail of water vapor, hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen chloride, and carbon monoxide. Humans didn’t usually take strolls through that.
I moved in short bursts, covering a few hundred meters, encountering more patrols and probe spheres. The fog made it easier to hide, and the patrol routes were predictable enough that I could thread between them.
Then, through the mist, a colossal outline surfaced.
A warship.
Even as a blur, even as a silhouette, I knew it instantly.
The Azure Thunder.