Chapter 13:
Chapter 13_ Belonging
Lycoris Recoil: Code Black Cheetah
The chill of the Arashiyama Tower’s lobby was artificial, a stark contrast to the humid summer air outside. The polished marble floor echoed with the purposeful clicks of dress shoes and the low murmur of professionals. The air smelled of lemon-scented cleaner and expensive coffee from a kiosk in the corner.
Raze kept his head slightly down, his hands resting on the handles of the equipment trolley, his posture the perfect picture of disengaged compliance. Through his lowered eyelashes, his golden eyes—now partially obscured by the fake, non-prescription glasses Kurumi had provided—mapped the lobby with a clarity that felt like cheating.
Two security desks. Four guards, professional but relaxed. RFID turnstiles. Cameras in the upper corners, their tiny red lights winking. His chip quietly cataloged it all, but he forced himself to ignore its tactical suggestions. Be bored, he reminded himself.
Chisato led the way, her stride confident, a clipboard in hand. She walked straight to the main security desk, offering a brilliant, apologetic smile to the stern-looking woman behind it.
“Good afternoon! Kansai Integrated Systems. We’re here for the freezer unit upgrade in Lab 18B,” she announced, her voice bright and efficient. She slid their forged work orders and IDs across the counter.
The security guard took the documents, her eyes scanning them before flicking up to assess the group. Her gaze lingered on Takina, whose cool, impatient demeanor perfectly sold the “harried project manager,” and then on Raze, the grunt labor.
“This says a two-person team,” the guard noted, her voice flat.
“Oh, the unit is heavier than anticipated!” Chisato chirped, rolling her eyes in a ‘can-you-believe-it’ way. “Head office insisted we bring extra muscle for the delivery. Don’t worry, he’s just in and out with the cart.” She jerked a thumb at Raze. “Won’t touch a thing, promise!”
The guard looked skeptical for a moment longer, then shrugged, tapping on her computer. The bureaucracy of a large building was on their side; a discrepancy in personnel count was far less alarming than a missing work order. She printed out three temporary visitor badges.
“Wear these at all times. The service elevator is around the corner to the left. It’s keyed for floors ten through twenty. Don’t wander.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it!” Chisato beamed, collecting the badges and handing them out.
They moved toward the elevators, the trolley’s wheels humming on the marble. The service elevator was larger, its stainless-steel interior scuffed from countless deliveries. The moment the doors closed, the casual masks slipped just a fraction.
“Stage one, clear,” Takina murmured, her voice barely audible.
“She was looking at my fake ID for a full second longer than protocol,” Raze whispered back, the chip providing the exact timing. “But she dismissed it.”
“That’s because you look like a kid who’d have a bad ID photo,” Chisato whispered with a grin, already pulling a small, wireless device from her clipboard. It was a relay for Kurumi. “Alright, Kuri-chan, we’re in the box. Going up.”
“Copy,” Kurumi’s voice came through their discreet earpieces. “The building network is… robust. I’ve got you on the elevator’s internal camera loop. You’re currently showing an empty car on all feeds. Ready on your mark for the floor override.”
The elevator began its smooth ascent. Floor 10… 12… 14… The display ticked upward. The plan was to let it rise naturally to 18, then, in the final few seconds, have Kurumi hack the control to send it to 21 instead, masking the change as a system glitch.
Raze’s heart was a steady, controlled drumbeat in his chest. This was the vulnerable point: a metal box suspended in a shaft.
“Get ready,” Takina said, watching the numbers. “Seventeen… now.”
“Override engaged,” Kurumi said.
They felt a tiny, almost imperceptible hitch in the elevator’s motion. The digital display flickered—18… 19… 20—and then settled on 21. The doors didn’t open immediately. The elevator had stopped, but it was waiting for a command from the floor, or for Kurumi to unlock it.
“The floor is asking for a keycard auth,” Kurumi reported, her typing audible over the comms. “Standard security for a restricted area. Feeding it a cloned admin pass… now.”
A soft beep echoed in the car, and the doors slid open.
The world outside the elevator was different. The polished finishes of the lower floors were gone, replaced by bare concrete walls, exposed conduits, and industrial lighting. The air was cooler, drier, and carried a faint, sterile hum of powerful machinery. It was unmistakably a secured, technical space.
“We’re in,” Chisato breathed, her playful tone completely gone, replaced by focused intensity.
They pushed the trolley out. The corridor stretched in both directions, doors marked with numbers and technical labels. According to the blueprint, the main server room and likely primary lab space was to the right.
“K-1, passive scan only,” Raze whispered. “No active pings.”
“Scanning,” the drone’s voice was a bare whisper in his ear. “I detect consistent power flow ahead. Low-level electromagnetic noise consistent with data processing. No human bio-signatures in the immediate vicinity.”
They moved silently, the trolley now an awkward liability but a necessary part of their cover if they were spotted. The hum grew louder. They reached a double door labeled ‘Server Room A-21.’ Next to it was a large, reinforced window looking into a control room.
Takina peered inside, then immediately pulled back, pressing herself against the wall. Her eyes were wide.
“They’re here,” she mouthed.
Raze and Chisato took careful looks. Inside the dimly lit room were rows of server racks, far more advanced than any medical research would require. And there were people. Two technicians in lab coats, but also three individuals in the familiar, light-absorbent tactical gear of Syndicate soldiers, standing guard.
On a large central monitor, displayed for all to see, was a detailed, rotating 3D model. It was a human neural system, glowing with intricate pathways. Annotations pointed to the hippocampus, the brainstem. At the top of the screen was a project name: AEGIS – PHOENIX PROTOCOL. Next to it, a file labeled: SUBJECT ZERO – NEURAL INTERFACE ANALYSIS.
It was him. They were actively studying him, modeling his chip.
Raze felt a cold jolt, a violation that went deeper than any physical threat. They were dissecting his mind on a screen.
Chisato’s hand found his arm, squeezing tightly—a silent anchor. She pulled a tiny, high-resolution camera from her sleeve and held it up to the window’s edge, capturing several seconds of footage. Proof.
“We have it,” Takina whispered. “Now we leave.”
As they turned to go, a door at the far end of the corridor they hadn’t yet explored hissed open. A man in a white coat stepped out, holding a tablet. He froze, seeing them.
“Hey! Who are you? This floor is restricted!” he called out, his voice echoing in the concrete hall.
Chisato was instantly in motion, her smile back but now edged with panic. “Oh! So sorry! We’re with Kansai Integrated! We must have gotten off on the wrong floor! The service elevator just… opened here! So strange!”
The man’s eyes narrowed, looking from her to the trolley to Raze and Takina. He wasn’t buying it. He began to raise his hand, likely to hit a comms device or a wall alarm.
Before Raze could even process a move, Takina acted. In a blur of motion almost as fast as Chisato’s, she closed the distance. It wasn’t a violent strike. It was a precise, clinical pressure point application to the man’s neck. His eyes rolled back, and he crumpled. She caught him and his tablet before either hit the ground.
“Alarm,” she said simply, laying him gently against the wall to look like he’d fainted. “He was going to raise an alarm.”
“Time’s up,” Kurumi’s voice was urgent in their ears. “I’ve got movement on the internal security log. A routine check-in for that floor is overdue. They’re going to get curious.”
“Back to the elevator!” Chisato said.
They abandoned the trolley, sprinting the short distance back to the service elevator. Kurumi summoned it, and the doors opened. They piled in.
“Going down!” Kurumi said. “Brace for attention!”
The elevator began its descent. Moments later, a loud, pulsing alarm blared through the building. The soft chime was replaced by a harsh, red emergency light flashing inside the car.
“They’ve found the tech or triggered a manual alarm,” K-1 reported. “Security is locking down the building. The ground floor lobby will be hostile.”
The plan was in tatters. Their quiet infiltration was now a desperate escape.
“New plan,” Chisato said, her face set in a determined grin. “We don’t belong anymore. So we stop pretending.” She pulled her custom pistol from its hidden holster beneath her maintenance vest. Takina did the same.
Raze felt the nanites in his system surge in response to the adrenaline, the chip automatically shifting to combat optimization. The bored junior technician was gone. In the flashing red light, his golden eyes glinted.
The elevator slowed. Floor 10… 5… Lobby.
The doors opened to chaos. The once-placid lobby was now a scene of controlled panic. Security guards were shouting, directing civilians, their weapons drawn. Four guards were positioned directly in front of the bank of elevators, including the service one.
They saw the three of them in maintenance uniforms, saw the weapons.
“Freeze! Drop your weapons!” the lead guard yelled.
Chisato sighed, a sound of pure exasperation. “Sorry! We’re in a real hurry!”
What happened next was not a fight. It was a demonstration. Chisato moved, and the world slowed for Raze. He saw her calculations, her flow, not as a mystery but as a partner to his own logic. As she dove forward, drawing the guards’ fire and dodging with impossible grace, Raze moved with her. He didn’t attack the guards; he disarmed them. A nanite-enhanced snatch of a wrist here, a precise kick to a hand there, sending pistols clattering across the marble floor. Takina provided perfect, suppressing fire toward the ceiling, shattering lights and sprinkler heads, creating noise and rain, adding to the confusion.
They moved as a single unit—a whirlwind of disarming precision, evasive chaos, and controlled suppression. In ten seconds, the path to the main entrance was clear, four guards were disarmed and dazed, and the sprinklers were raining down on the chaos.
“Mizuki, now!” Chisato yelled into her comms.
They burst through the rotating doors into the bright sunlight. The black van was already screeching to a halt at the curb, the side door sliding open. They dove in.
“Go, go, go!” Takina shouted.
Mizuki slammed the accelerator, and the van tore away from the curb, merging into traffic with a furious roar. The blaring alarms of the Arashiyama Tower faded behind them.
In the back of the van, soaked from sprinklers and breathing hard, they looked at each other. The fear was there, the adrenaline crash imminent. But so was something else.
Chisato held up the tiny camera, a wild, triumphant smile on her face. “We got it. We walked into his house, took a picture of his secrets, and walked right back out.”
They had the proof. But as Raze looked back at the shrinking tower, he knew the cost. Stalker knew they had been there. He had seen their faces on his security feeds. The quiet war was over.
The human variable had just kicked down his door. It was all-out war now.
End of Chapter 13
Raze kept his head slightly down, his hands resting on the handles of the equipment trolley, his posture the perfect picture of disengaged compliance. Through his lowered eyelashes, his golden eyes—now partially obscured by the fake, non-prescription glasses Kurumi had provided—mapped the lobby with a clarity that felt like cheating.
Two security desks. Four guards, professional but relaxed. RFID turnstiles. Cameras in the upper corners, their tiny red lights winking. His chip quietly cataloged it all, but he forced himself to ignore its tactical suggestions. Be bored, he reminded himself.
Chisato led the way, her stride confident, a clipboard in hand. She walked straight to the main security desk, offering a brilliant, apologetic smile to the stern-looking woman behind it.
“Good afternoon! Kansai Integrated Systems. We’re here for the freezer unit upgrade in Lab 18B,” she announced, her voice bright and efficient. She slid their forged work orders and IDs across the counter.
The security guard took the documents, her eyes scanning them before flicking up to assess the group. Her gaze lingered on Takina, whose cool, impatient demeanor perfectly sold the “harried project manager,” and then on Raze, the grunt labor.
“This says a two-person team,” the guard noted, her voice flat.
“Oh, the unit is heavier than anticipated!” Chisato chirped, rolling her eyes in a ‘can-you-believe-it’ way. “Head office insisted we bring extra muscle for the delivery. Don’t worry, he’s just in and out with the cart.” She jerked a thumb at Raze. “Won’t touch a thing, promise!”
The guard looked skeptical for a moment longer, then shrugged, tapping on her computer. The bureaucracy of a large building was on their side; a discrepancy in personnel count was far less alarming than a missing work order. She printed out three temporary visitor badges.
“Wear these at all times. The service elevator is around the corner to the left. It’s keyed for floors ten through twenty. Don’t wander.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it!” Chisato beamed, collecting the badges and handing them out.
They moved toward the elevators, the trolley’s wheels humming on the marble. The service elevator was larger, its stainless-steel interior scuffed from countless deliveries. The moment the doors closed, the casual masks slipped just a fraction.
“Stage one, clear,” Takina murmured, her voice barely audible.
“She was looking at my fake ID for a full second longer than protocol,” Raze whispered back, the chip providing the exact timing. “But she dismissed it.”
“That’s because you look like a kid who’d have a bad ID photo,” Chisato whispered with a grin, already pulling a small, wireless device from her clipboard. It was a relay for Kurumi. “Alright, Kuri-chan, we’re in the box. Going up.”
“Copy,” Kurumi’s voice came through their discreet earpieces. “The building network is… robust. I’ve got you on the elevator’s internal camera loop. You’re currently showing an empty car on all feeds. Ready on your mark for the floor override.”
The elevator began its smooth ascent. Floor 10… 12… 14… The display ticked upward. The plan was to let it rise naturally to 18, then, in the final few seconds, have Kurumi hack the control to send it to 21 instead, masking the change as a system glitch.
Raze’s heart was a steady, controlled drumbeat in his chest. This was the vulnerable point: a metal box suspended in a shaft.
“Get ready,” Takina said, watching the numbers. “Seventeen… now.”
“Override engaged,” Kurumi said.
They felt a tiny, almost imperceptible hitch in the elevator’s motion. The digital display flickered—18… 19… 20—and then settled on 21. The doors didn’t open immediately. The elevator had stopped, but it was waiting for a command from the floor, or for Kurumi to unlock it.
“The floor is asking for a keycard auth,” Kurumi reported, her typing audible over the comms. “Standard security for a restricted area. Feeding it a cloned admin pass… now.”
A soft beep echoed in the car, and the doors slid open.
The world outside the elevator was different. The polished finishes of the lower floors were gone, replaced by bare concrete walls, exposed conduits, and industrial lighting. The air was cooler, drier, and carried a faint, sterile hum of powerful machinery. It was unmistakably a secured, technical space.
“We’re in,” Chisato breathed, her playful tone completely gone, replaced by focused intensity.
They pushed the trolley out. The corridor stretched in both directions, doors marked with numbers and technical labels. According to the blueprint, the main server room and likely primary lab space was to the right.
“K-1, passive scan only,” Raze whispered. “No active pings.”
“Scanning,” the drone’s voice was a bare whisper in his ear. “I detect consistent power flow ahead. Low-level electromagnetic noise consistent with data processing. No human bio-signatures in the immediate vicinity.”
They moved silently, the trolley now an awkward liability but a necessary part of their cover if they were spotted. The hum grew louder. They reached a double door labeled ‘Server Room A-21.’ Next to it was a large, reinforced window looking into a control room.
Takina peered inside, then immediately pulled back, pressing herself against the wall. Her eyes were wide.
“They’re here,” she mouthed.
Raze and Chisato took careful looks. Inside the dimly lit room were rows of server racks, far more advanced than any medical research would require. And there were people. Two technicians in lab coats, but also three individuals in the familiar, light-absorbent tactical gear of Syndicate soldiers, standing guard.
On a large central monitor, displayed for all to see, was a detailed, rotating 3D model. It was a human neural system, glowing with intricate pathways. Annotations pointed to the hippocampus, the brainstem. At the top of the screen was a project name: AEGIS – PHOENIX PROTOCOL. Next to it, a file labeled: SUBJECT ZERO – NEURAL INTERFACE ANALYSIS.
It was him. They were actively studying him, modeling his chip.
Raze felt a cold jolt, a violation that went deeper than any physical threat. They were dissecting his mind on a screen.
Chisato’s hand found his arm, squeezing tightly—a silent anchor. She pulled a tiny, high-resolution camera from her sleeve and held it up to the window’s edge, capturing several seconds of footage. Proof.
“We have it,” Takina whispered. “Now we leave.”
As they turned to go, a door at the far end of the corridor they hadn’t yet explored hissed open. A man in a white coat stepped out, holding a tablet. He froze, seeing them.
“Hey! Who are you? This floor is restricted!” he called out, his voice echoing in the concrete hall.
Chisato was instantly in motion, her smile back but now edged with panic. “Oh! So sorry! We’re with Kansai Integrated! We must have gotten off on the wrong floor! The service elevator just… opened here! So strange!”
The man’s eyes narrowed, looking from her to the trolley to Raze and Takina. He wasn’t buying it. He began to raise his hand, likely to hit a comms device or a wall alarm.
Before Raze could even process a move, Takina acted. In a blur of motion almost as fast as Chisato’s, she closed the distance. It wasn’t a violent strike. It was a precise, clinical pressure point application to the man’s neck. His eyes rolled back, and he crumpled. She caught him and his tablet before either hit the ground.
“Alarm,” she said simply, laying him gently against the wall to look like he’d fainted. “He was going to raise an alarm.”
“Time’s up,” Kurumi’s voice was urgent in their ears. “I’ve got movement on the internal security log. A routine check-in for that floor is overdue. They’re going to get curious.”
“Back to the elevator!” Chisato said.
They abandoned the trolley, sprinting the short distance back to the service elevator. Kurumi summoned it, and the doors opened. They piled in.
“Going down!” Kurumi said. “Brace for attention!”
The elevator began its descent. Moments later, a loud, pulsing alarm blared through the building. The soft chime was replaced by a harsh, red emergency light flashing inside the car.
“They’ve found the tech or triggered a manual alarm,” K-1 reported. “Security is locking down the building. The ground floor lobby will be hostile.”
The plan was in tatters. Their quiet infiltration was now a desperate escape.
“New plan,” Chisato said, her face set in a determined grin. “We don’t belong anymore. So we stop pretending.” She pulled her custom pistol from its hidden holster beneath her maintenance vest. Takina did the same.
Raze felt the nanites in his system surge in response to the adrenaline, the chip automatically shifting to combat optimization. The bored junior technician was gone. In the flashing red light, his golden eyes glinted.
The elevator slowed. Floor 10… 5… Lobby.
The doors opened to chaos. The once-placid lobby was now a scene of controlled panic. Security guards were shouting, directing civilians, their weapons drawn. Four guards were positioned directly in front of the bank of elevators, including the service one.
They saw the three of them in maintenance uniforms, saw the weapons.
“Freeze! Drop your weapons!” the lead guard yelled.
Chisato sighed, a sound of pure exasperation. “Sorry! We’re in a real hurry!”
What happened next was not a fight. It was a demonstration. Chisato moved, and the world slowed for Raze. He saw her calculations, her flow, not as a mystery but as a partner to his own logic. As she dove forward, drawing the guards’ fire and dodging with impossible grace, Raze moved with her. He didn’t attack the guards; he disarmed them. A nanite-enhanced snatch of a wrist here, a precise kick to a hand there, sending pistols clattering across the marble floor. Takina provided perfect, suppressing fire toward the ceiling, shattering lights and sprinkler heads, creating noise and rain, adding to the confusion.
They moved as a single unit—a whirlwind of disarming precision, evasive chaos, and controlled suppression. In ten seconds, the path to the main entrance was clear, four guards were disarmed and dazed, and the sprinklers were raining down on the chaos.
“Mizuki, now!” Chisato yelled into her comms.
They burst through the rotating doors into the bright sunlight. The black van was already screeching to a halt at the curb, the side door sliding open. They dove in.
“Go, go, go!” Takina shouted.
Mizuki slammed the accelerator, and the van tore away from the curb, merging into traffic with a furious roar. The blaring alarms of the Arashiyama Tower faded behind them.
In the back of the van, soaked from sprinklers and breathing hard, they looked at each other. The fear was there, the adrenaline crash imminent. But so was something else.
Chisato held up the tiny camera, a wild, triumphant smile on her face. “We got it. We walked into his house, took a picture of his secrets, and walked right back out.”
They had the proof. But as Raze looked back at the shrinking tower, he knew the cost. Stalker knew they had been there. He had seen their faces on his security feeds. The quiet war was over.
The human variable had just kicked down his door. It was all-out war now.
End of Chapter 13
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