The Charon Gambit culminated in their most daring move yet. Jin, through his deep access to the Azure Dragon archives, uncovered the location of a secret summit—a clandestine meeting between Vex and several of his key field commanders.
It was a strategy session, a meeting of Vex's inner circle, to be held in the penthouse of a luxury hotel under the guise of a corporate merger.
Leaking this to General Tarik or another clan would result in a bloodbath, a conventional battle.
That was not Charon's way.
Instead, Kiera and Joric used their underworld network to anonymously tip off the city's largest and most ruthless criminal syndicate, the Iron Cartel, whose smuggling operations Vex's expansion had been severely disrupting.
The information was simple: a rival was meeting to plan a hostile takeover of their territory, and the meeting was being held in a place that symbolized the corporate wealth they so despised.
The result was not a battle; it was a gang war. The Iron Cartel, believing they were defending their turf, hit the hotel with overwhelming, brutal force.
Vex and his lieutenants were caught completely off-guard, forced to fight their way out of a chaotic, multi-front ambush against common criminals.
In his desperation to escape, Vex was forced to reveal several of his elite, enhanced soldiers, a public display of his hidden power that was both strategically costly and, from a Vanguard perspective, embarrassingly crude.
He had been outmaneuvered not by a clan, but by thugs.
This public humiliation was the final piece of the puzzle.
A day later, the response they had been hoping for arrived. It was not a digital communication, which could be traced, nor a message through an informant, who could be compromised.
It was a single, elegantly folded piece of paper, made from expensive Core Sector fiber, left on the table of a small, out-of-the-way cafe where Joric was having his morning nutrient paste.
The paper contained a single sentence, its words formed by a high-end, untraceable typesetter: "Vex's theatricality has become a liability; his methods are loud and lack finesse, but I am… intrigued by the skill of his new opposition."
Kiera, Joric, and Ryu studied the note in the sterile silence of their bunker.
The language was cold, precise, and arrogant. It was an unmistakable signal from Charon.
But it was not an offer of alliance.
"He's not contacting a potential ally," Kiera deduced, her eyes narrowed in thought.
"He's evaluating a potential tool. Or a potential threat." A second note arrived the following day, delivered with the same impossible subtlety.
"Let the boy prove his worth," it read.
"Vex's most valued project is the Correction Center. It is where he forges his loyal, mindless soldiers. If your 'anomaly' can liberate the assets within, he will have my full attention."
Joric's face went pale.
"It's a trap. A suicide mission. He's pointing us at Vex's most heavily fortified facility. He wants us to be eliminated, saving him the trouble of dealing with us himself."
"No," Kiera corrected, a grim smile touching her lips.
"It's worse than that. It's an audition. He wants to see what we are capable of. He wants to gauge our strength, our methods, our resources. He's using us as a probe to test Vex's defenses, and he's using Vex's fortress to test our capabilities. He doesn't care if we live or die. He only cares about the data he will gather from our success... or our failure. He wants to see if we're a piece worth playing, or one to be swept from the board."