Night still covered the old district.
The cold wind passed through the abandoned streets, echoing continuously between the buildings.
The roads where transport vehicles could still occasionally be seen during the day had now returned to their usual desolation.
Snow covered the ground along the roadside.
Dim streetlights cast a faint yellow glow across the snow.
Occasionally, the sound of a car passing along the main road could be heard in the distance.
Other than that,
the entire area was so quiet that one could almost hear the faint friction of the wind against the corners of the buildings.
Lucian was still standing inside the emptied server room on the second floor.
He did not continue searching.
Nor did he inspect the room again.
The information he had obtained was already enough.
Staying any longer
would not reveal anything new.
What truly deserved consideration
was the building itself.
This had once been a genuine data-processing center.
Servers.
Wiring.
Power supply.
Network infrastructure.
Every trace corresponded with the others.
And yet,
all the truly important equipment had been removed.
Everything that remained
had been deliberately preserved.
The furniture had not been taken away.
The office areas had not been dismantled.
Even the network ports on the walls had not been completely removed.
If this had been a hurried evacuation,
it would not have been left so neatly.
If it had simply been abandoned,
no one would have continued maintaining its power and alarm systems.
With that thought,
Lucian slowly looked toward the window.
The street remained completely empty.
This place did not feel like the end of the trail.
It felt more like a deliberately left-behind wrong path.
As long as someone followed the communication records and investigated far enough,
they would eventually arrive here.
And then believe
that they had found the real target.
His gaze swept across the room again.
The empty desks.
The cable trays left on the walls.
The uneven impressions on the floor.
Everything looked like part of a carefully staged performance.
The only thing missing
was the actual data.
Lucian slowly withdrew his gaze.
He prepared to leave.
At that exact moment,
a low engine sound
slowly approached from the other side of the street.
The vehicle was not moving quickly.
Nor did it brake suddenly.
It sounded more like a patrol vehicle following a fixed route.
Lucian immediately stopped moving.
He did not approach the window.
Instead, he took one step backward
and returned to the shadow in the corner.
His breathing slowed.
His entire body once again merged with the darkness.
A few seconds later,
the vehicle stopped in front of the office building.
The doors opened.
Two people got out one after another.
Their footsteps pressed against the snow,
producing a continuous, faint scraping sound.
They showed no signs of caution.
Nor did they look around.
They simply walked naturally toward the office building.
Then,
a key was inserted into the lock.
The metal cylinder slowly turned.
The lights in the lobby came back on.
Soon,
the voices of the two men drifted up from below.
"Strange."
One of them lowered his head and looked at his terminal.
His brows furrowed slightly.
The other casually asked,
"What is it?"
"The system just triggered an alarm."
"Unauthorized entry on the second floor."
The other man stopped.
"False alarm?"
"Not sure."
The first man continued checking the records.
"9:47 p.m."
"Duration: 1.3 seconds."
"Then it returned to normal."
The other man laughed softly.
"With weather like this lately,"
"the lines have been acting up all the time."
"Last week, we got a false alarm over at the warehouse too."
The first man did not laugh.
"Client's requirement."
"We have to verify every alarm."
"Can't just shut it off."
After saying that,
the two began their inspection according to a fixed procedure.
One remained in the lobby.
He opened the alarm control terminal
and checked the status of every system.
The other took a flashlight
and began inspecting the first floor.
The side door.
The electrical room.
The warehouse entrance.
The emergency exit.
At every location,
he stopped for several seconds.
Checking the lock.
Checking the alarm indicator.
Checking whether the seals were intact.
His movements were extremely practiced.
Clearly,
he had performed the same procedure many times before.
Lucian stood silently upstairs,
quietly listening to every sound below.
Judging from the rhythm of their footsteps,
neither man showed any signs of being an ability user.
Nor did either appear to have received professional counter-surveillance training.
They seemed more like ordinary security guards.
They did not know what this building had once been.
Nor did they know why the client was willing to continue paying for it.
They were simply following their work instructions.
Confirm the cause of the alarm.
Confirm that the building was secure.
Then leave.
Several minutes later,
voices once again came from downstairs.
"Doors and windows are normal."
"Lines are normal."
"No signs of intrusion."
The first man checked the terminal again.
The alarm status had already returned to green.
He let out a quiet breath.
"System restored."
"Probably another false alarm."
The other man nodded.
"Good."
"The client is renewing the service at the end of the month."
"If something really breaks,"
"we'll have to submit another repair request."
The first man shut down the terminal.
The lobby lights went dark again.
The two men locked the main entrance.
They checked the lock.
Then confirmed that the alarm system had been rearmed.
Not a single step had been omitted.
A few seconds later,
the engine started again.
The patrol vehicle slowly drove away from the office building.
Its sound gradually faded into the distance.
Lucian still did not move.
He maintained his original position
and continued waiting.
Time passed little by little.
The entire office building once again fell silent.
After confirming that there were no more sounds nearby,
Lucian slowly approached the window.
Through the gap in the blinds, less than two centimeters wide,
he saw that the patrol vehicle had already reached the end of the street.
Under the streetlights,
the marking on the side of the vehicle was clearly visible.
The name of a local security company.
A standardized patrol vehicle number.
And the license plate printed at the rear.
Lucian simply watched.
He silently memorized all the information.
He did not take out his terminal.
Nor did he take a photograph.
Because the truly important thing
was not the vehicle.
It was why
someone was still willing to continuously pay for the maintenance
of an office building that had already lost its purpose.
The patrol vehicle slowly left the old district.
Its taillights gradually disappeared at the end of the street.
The entire area returned to silence.
Wind slowly passed between the buildings,
lifting fine snow from the ground
before gently letting it fall again.
Lucian remained standing by the window.
He did not act immediately.
He quietly waited for several minutes.
After confirming that no new vehicle approached
and there was no second patrol,
he checked the surroundings once more.
The window frame.
No new marks.
The blinds remained in exactly the same position as before.
Inside the room,
none of the furniture had moved.
There were no obvious footprints on the floor.
After confirming that everything had returned to its original state,
Lucian quietly climbed out of the window.
Both hands gripped the drainage pipe.
His body slowly descended.
The entire movement remained steady.
His shoes once again touched the snow.
He did not return along the route he had taken earlier.
Instead, he went around to the other side of the building
and left through a narrow alley between the warehouses.
Along the way,
he repeatedly used shop windows and the reflections of parked vehicles to observe behind him.
No one was following.
Nor did any new surveillance appear.
Only after leaving the old district
did he walk onto the main road like an ordinary passerby.
An evening bus soon arrived.
Lucian boarded with several workers returning home.
He took a seat by the window.
The bus slowly started moving.
Outside the window,
the old office building grew farther and farther away.
Eventually,
it disappeared back into the darkness.
If he had not personally entered the building,
no one would have imagined
that the seemingly ordinary abandoned office building
had once concealed a data center.
Even fewer people would have imagined
that despite being completely emptied,
someone was still continuously maintaining it.
...
The next morning.
The familiar coffee shop.
The heating drove away the cold from outside.
Soft music played throughout the shop.
At the seat by the window,
the technical specialist was already waiting.
The computer screen was still lit.
Several empty coffee cups sat beside it.
Clearly,
he had arrived earlier than usual today.
After Lucian sat down,
there were no pleasantries.
He immediately described everything that had happened the previous night in full.
From discovering that the entire building had become an empty shell,
to triggering the alarm while preparing to leave,
to the security company sending people to investigate,
and finally, the vehicle number and license plate he had seen.
The entire process
contained not a single omitted detail.
The technical specialist listened
while continuously taking notes.
As soon as Lucian finished,
he immediately began searching.
The sound of the keyboard continued.
Several minutes later,
the first set of information appeared on the screen.
"Security company."
"No abnormalities."
"Local business."
"Responsible for alarm maintenance and night patrols for warehouses, office buildings, and commercial facilities."
"Established fifteen years ago."
"Normal reputation record."
Lucian nodded lightly.
The result
was consistent with his judgment.
The real target of the investigation
was not the people carrying out the assignment.
It was the people who had hired them.
The technical specialist entered the address of the office building.
The system quickly retrieved the corresponding contract.
"Found it."
He said,
"This office building has maintained a twenty-four-hour alarm status."
"Night patrols."
"Weekly equipment inspections."
"The contract remains active."
Lucian looked toward the screen.
"The payer."
The technical specialist opened another file.
A company name slowly appeared.
It was an extremely ordinary name.
The kind of small trading company that would attract no attention whatsoever.
The technical specialist opened the company's records.
The next second,
his hands stopped.
"Interesting."
Lucian raised his head.
"What?"
The technical specialist turned the screen toward him.
"This company."
"Was dissolved two years ago."
"The office was emptied."
"The legal representative disappeared."
"All publicly recorded business activities ceased."
"In theory,"
"it no longer exists."
The room fell silent again.
A company that had been dissolved two years ago
was still maintaining a security contract for an office building.
No matter how he looked at it,
it made no sense.
The technical specialist continued checking the payment records.
More information quickly appeared.
"The contract was never renewed through a new agreement."
"It simply renews automatically."
"Every month."
"The patrol fee is paid on time."
"Never interrupted."
Lucian slowly asked,
"The company account?"
"No."
The technical specialist shook his head.
"The payment account is different every month."
"One payment."
"One account."
"After the payment is completed,"
"the account quickly stops being used."
"There is no repetition."
As he spoke,
he continued tracing the source of the funds.
The financial trail on the screen continued extending.
One split.
Two splits.
Three transfers.
Eventually,
all the funds disappeared into an anonymous settlement network.
The trail
ended there.
The technical specialist slowly exhaled.
"They're professionals."
"Even the patrol fees for maintaining an empty building"
"were designed with an isolation system in advance."
"Even if someone investigates,"
"they can only trace it this far."
Lucian said nothing.
He simply stared at the screen.
The conversation between the two security guards from the previous night resurfaced in his mind.
The client renewed the contract every month.
But the security guards did not know
that the person actually renewing the contract
was no longer the original client.
The technical specialist quietly closed the laptop.
After a moment of silence,
he slowly said,
"We can confirm it now."
"That office building"
"is no longer worth investigating."
"The real data center"
"isn't there."
"The purpose of that place"
"is simply to continue attracting investigators."
Lucian nodded lightly.
That was exactly what he had concluded.
What truly mattered now
was no longer the endpoint.
It was the entire observation network.
The technical specialist reopened the city map.
Several familiar observation points around the Pollution Processing Department once again appeared at the center of the screen.
"We've gone in a circle,"
he said.
"And in the end, we came back here."
Lucian looked at the map.
Then slowly spoke.
"The only thing that's still alive"
"is the observation network."
The technical specialist nodded lightly.
"Next step."
"We track it again."
Outside the window,
Northveil had returned to its usual order after the snowfall.
Pedestrians and vehicles continued moving along the streets.
No one knew
that the observation network hidden among the crowd
was still operating quietly according to its established pattern.
And the real confrontation
would begin there once again.