Elder Kenjiro's offer was a poisoned lifeline, but it was the only one they had.
He gave them a one-hour window.
One hour to vanish from the Azure Dragon stronghold before he 'officially' learned of their location and sent his guard to hunt them down in earnest.
The escape was a rushed, desperate affair, a reversal of their infiltration. Jin, their ghost in the machine, met them at the entrance to the maintenance tunnels.
His face was pale, his hands trembling.
The witch hunt for Valerius's 'accomplices' had begun, and it was only a matter of time before the internal security traces he had left were discovered.
"This is it for me," Jin said, handing Kiera a final data-chip.
"This contains access to a series of dormant accounts, untraceable communication relays, and a few backdoors into the municipal networks that I... may have forgotten to patch over the years. It's not much, but it's a start for your new life as ghosts." He looked at Kiera, his eyes filled with a deep, sorrowful loyalty.
"For Ronan," he whispered.
Kiera clasped his arm, a silent acknowledgment of his sacrifice. They knew they would likely never see him again.
He was a hero who would be remembered as a traitor, if he was remembered at all. Their descent back into the grimy underbelly of the city was a jarring return to reality.
They were no longer guests of a powerful General or fugitives in a pristine fortress. They were back where they started: alone, hunted, and clinging to a desperate plan.
They transported their frozen prisoner, Charon, on a makeshift gurney, his cryo-suspended form hidden under a pile of scavenged rags.
Joric led them to a new, even more remote safehouse, a place so deep in the city's forgotten foundations that it didn't appear on any municipal map.
It was a single, large chamber carved out of the bedrock, damp and cold, but utterly invisible. Here, in the dark, they began their new war.
The first order of business was their prisoner.
Joric, using a combination of his medical knowledge and the Quartermaster's insights into Vanguard technology, managed to keep Charon in a state of controlled cryogenic suspension.
He was their most valuable asset, a living encyclopedia of the Vanguard's inner workings, but he was also a time bomb.
They could not keep him frozen forever. Kiera, stripped of her clan, her title, and her purpose, had to forge a new one.
She looked at the small, disparate group assembled in the damp cavern. Joric, the cynical medic, now a committed rebel.
The Quartermaster, the amoral spymaster, now their unwilling teacher. Ryu, the anomaly, the boy who was becoming a god.
And the dozen silent, traumatized prisoners they had rescued from the Correction Center, souls who would need to be deprogrammed and healed.
This was not a military unit. It was a collection of broken pieces.
But it was hers.
"The clans will not save us," she said, her voice echoing in the cavern.
"Tarik will use us. Vex will hunt us. Charon's faction will test us. We are on our own." She looked at Ryu, a new understanding passing between them.
The link they shared was no longer a burden. It was their greatest strength.
"The Vanguard built an army of puppets," she said.
"We will build a network of ghosts. We will use their own methods against them. We will be the rumor, the whisper, the doubt in their ranks. And we will tear them apart from the inside out." Their war had begun.