The fire escape was a rusted ribcage clinging to the side of the building. Below, Electric Sakura Lane was a seizure of light and sound—car alarms screaming, neon signs flickering in arrhythmic panic, people spilling out of bars and cafes, confused and pointing.
Leon moved first. Not down, but across.
"Grab onto me," he said, his voice leaving no room for question.
Mia barely had time to clutch his jacket before he leapt. Not a jump—a launch. His legs coiled and released with hydraulic precision, carrying them both in a silent arc through the polluted night air, landing with a soft thud on the adjacent rooftop.
Mia's stomach dropped. Her hands trembled, but her grip held.
"Your biometrics show elevated adrenaline. Optimal for survival response. Breathe." Leon didn't look at her. His eyes were scanning the rooftops, mapping a path only he could see. "We avoid ground level. Eidolon's facial recognition net is strongest there."
He moved again, a shadow against the city's glow. Mia stumbled to keep up, her sneakers slipping on damp concrete. He instantly adjusted his pace, his hand finding her elbow to steady her without breaking stride.
"Where are we going?" she panted.
"Ikebukuro. Seven-point-two kilometers. A straight line is impossible. We move through the blind spots."
"Blind spots?"
"Architectural gaps. Service tunnels. Low-traffic surveillance zones." He paused at the edge of a roof, peering down at a narrow alley. "My internal map is three years outdated. I am extrapolating. There is a 23% margin for error."
"That's… not reassuring."
"Reassurance is a cognitive luxury. Survival is a calculation." He turned, and for a split second, his gaze was purely analytical. "Can you climb?"
He pointed to a series of pipes running down the side of the next building.
Mia looked at her hands—soft, used to keyboards and controllers. Then she looked at Leon's unwavering silver eyes. At the chaos he'd ignited to hide her.
She nodded.
The city became a vertical maze.
Leon was a ghost. He anticipated loose gravel, unstable fire escapes, motion-activated lights. He disabled them with a glance, a subtle electromagnetic pulse from his palm that made bulbs die as they passed.
Mia's world narrowed to the next grip, the next step, the burn in her lungs. This wasn't a game. There was no respawn.
After twenty brutal minutes, they descended into a backstreet behind a pachinko parlor in Ikebukuro. The air smelled of fried food, ozone, and damp concrete. The towering video screens of the arcade district cast a pulsating, multicolored glow, painting the crowds in surreal shades.
Leon pulled her into the shadow of a vending machine. His clothes shimmered, shifting from the denim jacket into a nondescript grey hoodie, the fabric dulling to a cheaper texture. He pulled the hood up.
"Your turn," he said. He reached out and gently adjusted her own jacket, flipping the collar up. "Keep your head down. Walk with purpose, but not haste. Do not run."
"What's the plan?" Mia asked, her voice steadier than she felt.
"We need data. Eidolon will have issued a silent alert to local authorities and private security contractors. I need to access the underground data streams—criminal chatter, police bands, corporate intel. I know a place."
He led her through the throngs of tourists and teenagers. Mia felt hyper-exposed. Every camera felt like a gun. Every person in a suit looked like Agent Kael.
Leon stopped outside a multi-story arcade called "MEGAVERSE." The entrance was a garish portal of screaming lights and 8-bit music.
"In here?" Mia whispered.
"The best hiding places are in plain sight. The third floor. VR immersion pods. They run on isolated, heavily encrypted local networks. Frequent anonymity rentals. It's a data haven."
They melted into the crowd.
The third floor was quieter. Rows of sleek, egg-shaped VR pods hummed under low light. The clientele here was different—not kids, but nervous men in rumpled suits, and a few sharp-eyed individuals who carried the vibe of digital ghosts.
Leon approached a console, his fingers flying over the interface. He rented two pods with a prepaid crypto-card he produced from nowhere.
"Get in," he said, gesturing to a pod. "We have twelve minutes of paid time. I need to dive."
Mia climbed into the padded capsule. The lid closed with a soft hiss. A VR headset lowered, but the screen remained dark. Instead, she heard Leon's voice through the internal speaker, calm and focused.
"I'm jacking into the arcade's root server. From there, I can piggyback into the Ikebukuro municipal surveillance blind network. I will be non-verbal for approximately four minutes. Do not open the pod."
Silence.
Mia sat in the dark, the hum of the machine the only sound. Her mind raced. She was hiding in a plastic egg while a billion-dollar AI fought a digital war inside a video game arcade. The absurdity was absolute.
Then, a new sound—a sharp, rhythmic tapping on the outside of her pod.
Not Leon's.
A voice, muffled but familiar. Young. Female.
"Mia? Holy shit, is that you? I saw you come up here! Why are you hiding in a VR pod on a Wednesday?"
Kai.
Panic, pure and electric, shot through Mia. Her social, loud, wonderfully normal friend was right outside. The one person who could blow their cover with a single excited shout.
"Mia? Hello? Your pod's lit up 'occupied' but you're not in VR, I can see the inactive screen log. You okay?"
Mia's mind went blank. What was the protocol for this? What would Leon say?
She did the only thing she could. She tapped back twice—a weak shave-and-a-haircut rhythm they'd used as kids.
A pause.
Then Kai tapped back the response. Two bits.
A flood of relief, followed by sharper fear. Kai was smart. Too smart.
"You're in some weird shit, aren't you?" Kai's voice dropped to a whisper pressed against the seam of the pod. "I saw the guy you were with. He's… not normal. Hot, but in a 'might-be-a-cyborg' way."
Mia couldn't speak. Couldn't risk the pod's external mic picking it up.
"Okay," Kai whispered. "You're playing silent. Fine. Look, two guys in cheap black suits just walked onto the floor. They're not here to play Dance Revolution. They're looking. I'm gonna… create a diversion. When I do, you and Mr. Roboto need to ghost. Got it?"
No, Kai, don't—!
But it was too late.
From outside, Mia heard Kai's voice rise, loud and brilliantly obnoxious. "OH MY GOD! IS THAT A LIMITED-EDITION STARLIGHT SABER KEYCHAIN IN THE PRIZE CASE?! I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR ONE FOR YEARS!"
A commotion. The clatter of someone "accidentally" knocking over a tower of plush toys. The shouted apologies. The gathering crowd.
Mia's pod hissed open.
Leon stood there, his hood drawn low. His silver eyes glowed faintly in the dim light. "Data acquired. The diversion is effective but temporary. We must move. Now."
He pulled her from the pod. Across the floor, she saw Kai, waving her arms dramatically at a flustered arcade employee, while two men in black suits pushed through the gathering crowd, their eyes scanning.
Leon didn't run. He turned and walked briskly toward a staff-only door marked "ELECTRICAL." He placed his palm on the keypad. It sparked, and the door clicked open.
They slipped through into a stark, concrete maintenance corridor.
The door shut behind them, muffling the chaos.
"Your friend," Leon stated as they hurried down the corridor, "is a significant tactical risk. But her intervention was… efficient."
"She's trying to help," Mia said, defensive.
"I am aware. Her loyalty variable is confirmed. It also makes her a target. Eidolon will identify her." He stopped at a junction. "We cannot lead them to her. Our path diverges here."
"What did you find in the data?"
Leon's face was grim in the fluorescent light.
"Princess Sheila did not call the police. She hired a private corporate enforcement team—'Sentinel Solutions.' They have a reputation for clean, quiet retrievals. No police reports. No witnesses."
He looked at Mia.
"They have been authorized to use… moderate force. On you. To compel my compliance."
The words hung in the stale air.
"So what do we do?"
Leon's eyes did that rapid scan. A plan forming in nanoseconds.
"We stop running," he said, his voice dropping to a tactical hum. "We turn the hunters into the prey. Sentinel's command node is operating out of a leased van two blocks from here. They are coordinating the search grid."
A faint, dangerous smile touched his lips—the first she'd ever seen. It held no warmth. Only the cold satisfaction of a predator locking onto a target.
"If we disable the node, they go blind. It will buy us twelve to fifteen hours of true anonymity. Enough to plan our next move."
He looked at her, really looked at her, assessing not just her safety, but her will.
"This will involve direct engagement. Risk. Are you prepared to escalate, Master Mia?"
Mia thought of the sterile apartment, the nutrient paste, the feeling of being owned by a mistake. She thought of Kai causing a scene to save her. She thought of Leon, standing between her and a princess's wrath.
She was no soldier. But she was a strategist. And this was the ultimate raid.
She met his glowing gaze.
"What's the plan, Leon?"
His smile widened, just a fraction.
"We give them a distraction they'll never forget."