The service conduit was tight, dark, and smelled of decay, but it was a path to freedom. They made their way through the narrow tunnel, dragging the still-unconscious Quartermaster with them.
After what felt like an eternity, they emerged through a maintenance grate into a deserted alleyway, miles from the site of the ambush.
The city they emerged into was not the one they had left.
The EMP blast had been blamed on a 'rogue solar flare,' the official story peddled by a panicked municipal government.
But in the underworld, the truth was clearer. A Vanguard spymaster had vanished, a dozen elite operatives were either missing or dead, and a whole sector of the city had been plunged into darkness.
The power balance had been violently shaken.
The Outer Sector was now crawling with sector security patrols, their presence far heavier than usual.
They were ostensibly investigating the 'solar flare,' but their random checkpoints and aggressive interrogations suggested they were looking for something—or someone—specific.
But the sec-officers were not the real threat.
The real threat was the ghosts.
The Vanguard's presence was no longer a subtle web.
It was a palpable, suffocating paranoia.
Vex's network had been wounded, and it had reacted like a cornered animal.
Informants were everywhere. Anonymous figures watched from shadowy doorways, their eyes following everyone.
The entire Outer Sector had become a massive, open-air prison, and they were the city's most wanted fugitives.
They found refuge in one of Joric's old, forgotten medical caches, a tiny, one-room apartment hidden behind a false wall in a derelict tenement building.
It was cramped, but it was safe for now. They tied the still-unconscious Quartermaster to a chair.
He was their only bargaining chip, their only source of further information, and their biggest liability.
"We're trapped," Kiera said, staring out of a grimy window at a passing sec-patrol.
"We can't move without being seen. Every informant in this sector is probably being paid a bounty to look for 'a weakened Dragon warrior, a dying boy, and an old man.'"
"Worse," Joric added, "The Quartermaster's capture will have sent shockwaves up the Vanguard hierarchy. Vex will be pulling out all the stops. He won't just be hunting us; he'll be trying to erase any evidence that could link him to the assassination of Councilor Tarek. He'll be in damage control mode."
Ryu, who had been quiet, looked at the unconscious spymaster.
"Cassian told us The Quartermaster was the logistics man. He supplied the local cell. That means he has records. Supply lists. Payment receipts. Something that can prove a link between the low-level thugs and the high-level operators."
Kiera and Joric looked at him.
He was right. Their prisoner was not just a source of names; he was a walking ledger.
The proof they needed to expose the Vanguard might not be something he could tell them, but something he carried.
Joric approached The Quartermaster and began a careful, methodical search.
He found the usual things: a concealed blade, a lock-picking kit, a high-frequency sonic disabler. But then, hidden in the heel of his boot, he found it.
A small, encrypted data-slate, no bigger than his thumb.
It was almost certainly protected by layers of biometric and quantum-encryption.
"This is it," Joric breathed, holding the slate as if it were a holy relic.
"This is the Quartermaster's ledger. Everything we need could be on this device." He looked at Kiera and Ryu, his expression grim.
"But cracking this will require resources we do not have. It will require a master cryptographer and technology that only exists in the Core Sectors. To get our proof, we have to go back to the one place that wants you dead as much as the Vanguard does: the Azure Dragon clan."