While Ryu was being delivered to Silas, Kiera was already part of the Rust-maze. She had arrived an hour earlier, a ghost in the machine, and had scaled the outer wall of the main assembly hall.
She now lay flat on a narrow gantry crane, a hundred meters above the hall floor, shrouded in a darkness so complete she was functionally invisible.
Her combat suit was a weave of chameleon-like smart fabrics, and a rebreather masked her heat signature.
To the Vanguard below, she did not exist.
From her perch, she watched the van arrive. She counted the four soldiers of the extraction team.
She noted their formations, the way they moved, the advanced weaponry they carried. They were good.
Far better than the Azure Dragon clan's own elite guards.
This was military-grade. Her heart grew heavy.
Her brother hadn't stumbled upon a criminal enterprise; he had stumbled upon a clandestine army.
She watched as they brought Ryu before Silas.
She saw the triumphant look on Silas's face, the fear on Ryu's.
Her plan was working, but the stakes were higher than she had anticipated.
She had expected a handful of Vex's thugs.
She had not expected a disciplined, well-equipped fireteam.
But the Rust-maze was her ally. Before the van had even arrived, she had spent the hour mapping the area, not with a datapad, but with her own senses.
She had traced power conduits, identified structural weaknesses, and located a dozen different points of entry and exit to the main hall.
The Vanguard had a fireteam. She had the entire complex as her weapon.
Her hunt began.
She didn't go for the primary targets in the hall.
That would be too obvious. Instead, she targeted their support.
The Vanguard was professional, which meant they would have followed protocol. They would have perimeter sentries, a communication relay, and an overwatch position.
Moving with the silence of a shadow, she slipped away from the assembly hall and began to circle the perimeter.
She found the first sentry on the roof of an adjacent building, a sniper scanning the approaches. Kiera approached from behind, her footsteps making no sound on the gravelly roof.
The sniper never even knew she was there. A single, precise strike to the base of the neck, and he was unconscious.
She disarmed him and took his communication device.
Next, the communication relay. She followed a barely-visible micro-cable to a small, armored van parked in a nearby loading bay.
Two more soldiers were inside, their eyes glued to a bank of monitors.
One was tracking Ryu's energy signature, now a pulsing red dot on a local map.
The other was monitoring communications. Kiera dropped from a ventilation shaft onto the roof of the van.
She planted a small, specialized device over the vehicle's air intake.
A moment later, a colorless, odorless knockout gas flooded the van's interior.
The two soldiers slumped over in their chairs, asleep.
She had dismantled their eyes and ears on the perimeter.
She was a virus in their system, corrupting it from the outside in. Now, only the primary team in the assembly hall remained: Silas and the four soldiers who had captured Ryu.
They thought they were the hunters, gloating over their prize. They had no idea that they were the ones who were trapped.
Kiera returned to her perch above the assembly hall, her blade in her hand, her face a mask of cold, patient fury.
The time for stealth was almost over. The time for retribution was about to begin.