Night pressed cold against the SRD compound.
Floodlights swept the fences in slow, hungry arcs—but every time the beam neared the south drainage line…
…it stuttered.
Glitched.
Skipped an inch to the left, as if refusing to look directly at something.
Alex crouched beneath the grate, chest heaving, palms scraped raw from the crawlspace they'd just forced open.Phineas slid in next to him, dirt streaked across his cheek, breathless and grinning like an idiot.
"This is insane," Alex whispered.
"This is Tuesday," Phineas whispered back.
It wasn't Tuesday.And it wasn't normal.
Above them, the patrol drone paused.Its sensors whirred—focused—then suddenly pivoted away from their hiding spot.
Alex's eyes widened.
"…that's not how drones work."
"Maybe it's blind?"
"No drone is blind, Phin."
A long silence.
Then Phineas:
"…oh."
Alex peered up through the grate.The floodlights shifted again—a sweeping motion that never quite touched their patch of ground.
A blindspot.
A moving one.
Someone was carving a hole in SRD's surveillance—but not like a hacker.
Like a ghost rearranging shadows.
Alex swallowed hard.
"Phin… are you doing this?"
Phineas tapped the cobbled-together wrist mod he'd built two days ago from scraps, stolen chips, and hope.
"It can barely open my garage door," he whispered."Let alone shut down a government compound."
So not Phineas.
Then who—
A soft vibration trembled through the grate.Alex froze.
It wasn't mechanical.It wasn't airflow.It was something Kayden had described once—
A hum.
A cold, precise resonance.The same kind the Citadel left behind like fingerprints on reality.
Alex's stomach dropped.
"…oh God."
"What?" Phineas whispered.
Alex's lips barely moved.
"Someone's clearing a path for us."
Phineas blinked.Then frowned.
"And that's… bad?"
"Phin."
"Yeah?"
"Citadel."
Phineas went still.
Completely still.
"…that's bad."
The patrol drone came back—hovering inches from their grate.
Alex stopped breathing.
The drone's eye pulsed red—
then glitched—flickered—and spun away like it had forgotten its job entirely.
Phineas exhaled shakily.
"Okay, that's creepy."
"That's not creepy," Alex whispered."That's intentional."
Another hum vibrated through the grate.This one longer.More aware.
Alex's pulse hammered.
"She's here."
"Who?"
Alex's voice was a ghost of breath:
"The Citadel Agent."
Phineas immediately wanted to leave.Nothing he'd ever done prepared him for dealing with an entity that treated reality like a suggestion.
But leaving wasn't an option.
Kayden was inside.
So Phineas steadied himself.
"Okay," he whispered."We follow the path… or we die?"
"Probably both," Alex muttered.
"Cool. Let's go."
They moved.
Sliding the grate aside with the slowest possible scrape, hands trembling, they crawled out into the open yard.The floodlights—that should have burned them alive—blinked upward and stared at the sky.
Every camera facing their direction short-circuited in synchronous glitches, tiny sparks snapping like frightened insects.
The Ghost Passage formed itself ahead of them—a shifting corridor of blindspots,dead angles,and sensor misreads.
Not random.
Designed.
Guided.
Phineas whispered as they ran, hugging the blind arcs:
"…it's like someone's playing a game with the security system."
"No," Alex said."Games have rules."
This didn't.
A guard stepped out of a door thirty meters ahead—and immediately turned away from them,heading in the opposite direction.
A surveillance turret rotated left—paused—jerked—and pointed harmlessly into a wall.
Phineas' voice cracked.
"This is too much. No human could manage all this."
Alex nodded.
"I know."
Then—
The hallway ahead shifted.The lights dimmed for half a second.The air rippled.
Just enough to make the hairs on their arms rise.
Alex grabbed Phineas' wrist.
"Don't move."
"What? Why—"
"Something's crossing."
The ripple slid along the corridor like a breath.
A presence.
Watching them.Not interfering.Just observing the way one observes a chemical reaction—impersonal, interested, detached.
Phineas's voice thinned.
"Is that her?"
Alex swallowed.
"…yes."
The ripple passed.
The lights steadied.
The path reformed.
Phineas wiped sweat from his brow.
"I hate this."
"Good," Alex muttered."Means you're sane."
They reached the inner fence.Locked.Voltage humming.
And then—
the voltage died.
Just—went quiet.
Like someone unplugged the fence from reality.
Alex stared.
"She's not helping us escape," he whispered."She's watching what we do when she removes obstacles."
Phineas exhaled.
"A test."
"Yeah."
"A test of what?"
Alex shook his head.
"…of who we are."
Phineas looked at him for a long moment.
Then nodded.
"Okay," he whispered."Then let's pass."
They slipped through the deactivated fence.
And the moment their feet touched SRD ground—
Kayden's vitals, deep inside the Orientation chamber, spiked.APEX flickered hard.The Citadel vector pulsed in the monitoring feed.
Three threads aligned—Kayden's struggle,Alex and Phineas' infiltration,and the Agent's silent calculation.
The Ghost Passage closed behind them like a door gently swinging shut.
They didn't notice.
They ran deeper into the compound.
Toward Kayden.Toward danger.Toward whatever the Citadel wanted them to become.