Dawn came with the sound of voices and engines.
Tadano woke to the clatter of loading crews arriving, the beep of machinery, the shouted orders of supervisors coordinating the convoy preparation. Through the gaps in his hiding spot, he could see workers loading crates into the truck—heavy boxes of equipment, supplies, materials. The cargo formed walls around his concealment, exactly as planned.
Dan's voice whispered through the comm. "Everyone awake?"
"Unfortunately," Vivi muttered from her hiding spot.
"Ready?"
"As we'll ever be," Tadano replied quietly.
The loading took an hour. Workers moved with efficient routine, stacking cargo, securing it with straps, checking manifests. Nobody looked closely at the structural supports where three teenagers hid in the shadows. Why would they? This was a routine supply run.
Finally, the truck's rear door slammed shut. Darkness enveloped them, broken only by thin slivers of light through ventilation gaps.
The engine rumbled to life.
"Here we go," Dan whispered.
The convoy departed at exactly 07:00 hours. Six trucks rolling through the morning in a coordinated line, heading east toward Station Sigma-7. Tadano felt every bump in the road, every turn, counting minutes and mentally tracking their route against the map he'd memorized.
Thirty-two minutes later, the truck slowed.
"Outer perimeter," Dan's voice came through. "Stay quiet. Stay hidden."
Tadano heard voices outside—guards checking the convoy, verifying documents, running scanners over the trucks. His hand instinctively reached toward where his sword would be, then remembered he'd deliberately left it behind to summon later. No point carrying a weapon through security checkpoints when he could simply call it to his hand when needed.
The inspection lasted five minutes. Then the truck lurched forward again, passing through the outer perimeter into Station Sigma-7.
"We're in," Dan confirmed. "Next stop is the loading docks. Get ready to move."
The truck drove through the facility, finally stopping at what must be the loading area. Engines cut off. Doors opened. Tadano heard workers outside, beginning the unloading process.
"Wait for it," Dan whispered.
Crates shifted as workers removed cargo from the front of the truck, gradually working their way back. The three of them stayed perfectly still, barely breathing, as boxes were removed from around their hiding spots.
Then—chaos.
"Hey!" a worker shouted. "This manifest doesn't match! We're missing three crates of—"
"Check truck four!" someone else yelled. "Might've been loaded wrong!"
Workers ran off, supervisors cursing, everyone focused on the inventory discrepancy. In the confusion, three shadows slipped out of the truck and into the facility.
No alarms. No shouts. No indication anyone had noticed.
They moved quickly through the loading docks into a maintenance corridor, exactly as planned. Dan's Tech Magic guided them through camera blind spots while feeding loop footage to security monitors.
"Middle zone reached," Dan reported. "Guards are minimal here. Mostly researchers. Keep moving."
They navigated the facility using the mental map they'd memorized. Past laboratories where scientists worked on incomprehensible projects. Past offices where Dark bureaucrats managed paperwork. Past storage rooms filled with equipment.
Everything was going perfectly.
Too perfectly.
They reached a junction point—two corridors leading toward the inner sanctum. According to their planning, both routes were equally viable. Dan checked his tablet.
"Left corridor," he said. "Fewer patrol patterns recorded."
They went left.
The corridor was empty, quiet, exactly as the surveillance data had suggested. They moved quickly, footsteps silent, breathing controlled. Just three more turns and they'd reach the inner sanctum. Three more turns and—
Tadano froze.
Something was wrong. His Cursed Arts sensed it—that supernatural awareness that came from perfected combat instincts. The corridor ahead felt wrong. Empty in a way that suggested trap rather than luck.
"Wait," he whispered.
"What?" Dan asked.
"Something's off. The air. The—"
An alarm blared.
Not the general facility alarm. Something worse. A high-pitched shriek that made Tadano's teeth ache, coupled with a pulse of magical energy that washed over them like a wave of cold water.
"Intrusion ward!" Dan shouted over the noise. "They have secondary wards I didn't detect! The left corridor is trapped!"
Red lights flashed. Doors began slamming shut throughout the facility—lockdown protocols engaging. And in the distance, Tadano heard the thunder of boots as soldiers mobilized.
"Run!" Vivi shouted.
They ran back the way they'd come, but doors were already sealing. Dan's hands glowed green as he desperately worked to override electronic locks, forcing doors to stay open long enough for them to pass through.
"How did you miss the ward?" Vivi demanded as they sprinted.
"It's not on any electronic system! It's pure magic, no technological component!" Dan gasped. "I can't interface with pure magic!"
They burst into a larger corridor—and found themselves facing five Dark soldiers, weapons raised.
"Down!" Tadano commanded.
He raised his hand and called.
His sword flashed into existence, materializing from eighty kilometers away in an instant. The blade was in his grip before the soldiers could process what they'd seen. Tadano moved, his Cursed Arts flowing through him, turning the narrow corridor into a killing field.
The first soldier didn't have time to fire. Tadano's blade took his throat in a precise strike, arterial blood spraying. The second soldier managed to pull the trigger, but Tadano's sword deflected the energy blast, sending it into the ceiling. His follow-up strike severed the man's weapon hand, then his life.
The third soldier—
Vivi's fireball took him in the chest. Not a massive explosion, but a concentrated lance of white-hot fire that punched through his armor like paper. Sure Shot. Perfect accuracy. Lethal force. The soldier collapsed, a smoking hole where his heart had been.
Dan's laser sword engaged the fourth soldier, green light clashing with dark energy. The soldier was skilled, but Dan's Tech Magic gave him precognitive advantages—he knew where attacks would come from before they happened, reading the electronic signatures of the enemy's equipment. His blade found gaps in armor, exploited weaknesses, until the soldier fell in two pieces.
The fifth soldier ran.
"Let him go!" Dan shouted. "We need to move!"
They ran deeper into the facility, alarm still blaring, every door they passed slamming shut behind them. The plan was in ruins. Stealth was impossible. But maybe—maybe—they could still reach the vault, grab the Core, and fight their way out.
"This way!" Dan led them through a service passage, his Tech Magic forcing locked doors open. "Inner sanctum is just ahead! If we can get the Core, we still have a chance!"
They burst through a final door into the inner sanctum—and stopped.
Vault Seven stood before them, exactly where the blueprints indicated. Massive reinforced doors, biometric scanners, magical wards glowing with visible power. And standing in front of it—
Twenty Dark soldiers. Elite ones, judging by their advanced armor and weapons. They'd been waiting, positioned to defend the vault from exactly this kind of intrusion.
"Ambush," Tadano said quietly.
"They knew we were coming," Vivi breathed.
"Impossible," Dan protested. "My surveillance was perfect. There was no way they—"
"The secondary ward," Tadano interrupted, understanding dawning. "The one you didn't detect. It wasn't an accident. It was bait. They wanted us to trigger it. Wanted to know exactly where we were."
"Which means—" Vivi's face paled. "—they've been tracking us since we entered the facility. Every step. They let us get this far."
"Surrender," the lead soldier called out, his voice amplified by his helmet's speakers. "You're surrounded. Outgunned. You've failed. Throw down your weapons and you'll be taken alive."
Tadano looked at the soldiers. At the vault beyond them. At the Quantum Core they'd risked everything to steal.
So close. They'd gotten so close.
"We can still fight," Vivi whispered, flames already sparking.
"Twenty elite soldiers," Dan said. "In a confined space. With no escape route. That's not a fight. That's suicide."
"Then what do we do?" Vivi demanded.
Tadano's mind raced, Cursed Arts processing possibilities at superhuman speed. Twenty soldiers. One exit. Vault behind them meant they couldn't retreat that direction. Fighting would mean death. Surrender would mean capture, interrogation, execution.
There was no good option.
"We fight," Tadano decided. "But not to win. To escape. Dan—can you blow a hole in the wall?"
Dan's eyes widened. "Maybe. If I overload the facility's power grid, I could cause an explosion in the electrical systems. But it would take thirty seconds, and I'd be defenseless while I—"
"Do it. Vivi and I will buy you time."
"You'll die."
"We'll survive. We're good at that." Tadano raised his sword. "Thirty seconds, Dan. Make them count."
The lead soldier raised his weapon. "Final warning. Surrender or—"
Vivi threw a fireball into their midst.
The fight exploded into chaos.
Vivi's Sure Shot ability let her hit targets with impossible precision even as she moved, dodged, rolled behind cover. Her fireballs weren't the massive explosions of her early training—they were surgical strikes, hitting weak points in armor, forcing soldiers to break formation.
Tadano moved like death itself. His Cursed Arts turned the battlefield into his domain. Bullets and energy blasts that should have hit him missed by millimeters. His sword was everywhere—parrying, striking, deflecting. He couldn't kill twenty soldiers. But he could occupy them. Distract them. Make them focus on him instead of Dan.
A soldier's rifle—bisected by Tadano's blade. Another's armor—pierced at the joint, the man screaming as he fell. Blood sprayed. Bodies dropped. But there were too many. Too many weapons. Too many angles of attack.
Tadano felt a bullet graze his shoulder. Another hit his leg, penetrating his combat suit. Pain exploded, but his Cursed Arts kept him moving, kept him fighting.
Vivi screamed as an energy blast caught her side, burning through armor and flesh. She stumbled, and Tadano was there, blade deflecting the follow-up shot that would have killed her.
"Dan!" Tadano shouted. "How long?"
"Ten seconds!" Dan's hands blazed with green light, his Tech Magic diving deep into the facility's infrastructure. "Almost—"
An explosion rocked the inner sanctum.
But not from Dan's sabotage. From above.
The ceiling collapsed in a section near the vault, bringing down tons of reinforced concrete and steel. Soldiers scattered, shouting in confusion. Tadano grabbed Vivi and rolled aside as debris crashed down where they'd been standing.
Through the dust and chaos, Tadano saw—
Someone had blown the ceiling deliberately. Created an escape route. But who? Why?
"Go!" Dan shouted, abandoning his sabotage attempt. "Someone just gave us an exit! Move!"
They ran for the collapsed ceiling, scrambling over rubble and debris. Soldiers fired after them, but the dust and chaos made targeting impossible. Tadano felt bullets whip past his head, heard Vivi's pained gasps as she ran on her injured side.
They climbed through the collapsed section into the floor above—a research laboratory, now in ruins from the explosion. Equipment burned. Alarms shrieked. Sprinklers engaged, raining water down on everything.
"There!" Dan pointed to an emergency exit. "Outside access!"
They crashed through the door into bright daylight, into the facility's exterior grounds. Soldiers were converging from all directions, but they had a head start. Just enough to—
Dan's Tech Magic seized a parked transport vehicle. The engine roared to life without a driver. Doors flew open.
"In!" he commanded.
They piled into the vehicle as it lurched into motion, Dan controlling it entirely through his abilities. Soldiers fired, bullets pinging off armor plating. One threw something—an explosive that detonated near the vehicle's rear, sending them skidding.
But they were moving. Away from the facility. Toward the perimeter fence that Dan's Tech Magic was already opening, gates swinging wide despite panicked guards trying to override the system.
The vehicle crashed through the now-open gate, onto the road beyond, accelerating toward the forest.
"Did we—" Vivi gasped. "Did we make it?"
"Not yet!" Dan was pale, sweating from the strain of controlling the vehicle while maintaining electronic warfare against the facility's systems. "They'll send pursuit! We need to—"
The vehicle's engine died.
Not from damage. From something else. Dan's hands sparked desperately, trying to restart it, but the technology was completely unresponsive.
"What's happening?" Tadano demanded.
"Something's overriding my Tech Magic. Something stronger than me. Something—"
A new voice cut through their comms. Not Alfred. Not any voice they recognized. It was cold, mechanical, augmented beyond human.
"Stop running. You've already lost."
Ahead of them, standing in the middle of the road, was a figure.
Tall. Armored in technology that seemed to blend with organic flesh. One arm was entirely mechanical, weapons built into its structure. One eye glowed with unnatural red light. The air around him seemed to distort, reality itself bending in his presence.
"I am Commander Hexar," the figure said, his voice carrying effortlessly despite the distance. "And the Dark Regional Command has sent me to end you."
He raised his mechanical arm, and every piece of technology in the vehicle—Dan's equipment, their comms, even the emergency beacons—sparked and died.
"You've caused enough trouble, revolutionaries. No more running. No more hiding." Kael began walking toward them, each step deliberate, unhurried. "Today, you learn what happens when children play at war."
Tadano drew his sword, feeling his injuries screaming in protest. Beside him, Vivi created flames with shaking hands. Dan's Tech Magic sparked uselessly, unable to affect anything in Kael's presence.
They'd failed. The mission was a disaster. They had no backup. No escape plan. No reinforcements coming.
Just three wounded teenagers facing a Dark Commander who'd been sent specifically to kill them.
"Together," Tadano said quietly.
"Together," Vivi agreed.
"Until the end," Dan finished.
Commander Hexar smiled—a terrible expression on his half-mechanical face.
"How noble. How pointless."
He raised his weapons.
And the fight that would define everything began.