General Tarik's reply was a victory, but a terrifying one.
They had his attention, but they were now in a dialogue with a man known for his ruthlessness.
"He won't trust us," Kiera stated, her mind already working through the strategic implications.
"He'll see this as a trap within a trap. He'll agree to a meeting, but it will be an ambush. He'll want the data, and he'll want us dead to tie up the loose ends."
"So we make the terms of the meeting the test," Ryu replied, his voice gaining confidence.
He was beginning to think like Joric and Kiera, in layers of deception and intent.
"We choose a place where his strength—a large military force—is a liability, not an asset."
Their chosen location was a masterpiece of psychological baiting: the abandoned Municipal Data Archive.
The same place Ryu had found his first glimmer of hope. It was a crumbling, unstable structure, a deathtrap for a large, heavily-armed squad.
But for a small, agile team, it was a defensible fortress.
They sent the location back to Tarik with a simple message: "Come alone. The data is your price of admission. Your army is your coffin."
Tarik was enraged.
To be dictated to by a ghost, to be told to walk into a potential ambush alone—it was an insult to his power.
But his desire for the full ledger, for the names of the traitors within his own clan and the full scope of the Vanguard's conspiracy, overrode his pride.
He agreed. He would come, with only two of his elite honor guards.
He would not, however, come in peace.
"He'll bring a kill team," Joric warned, monitoring the Jaguars' troop movements through back-channel sources.
"He'll keep them on the perimeter, ready to storm the building the moment he has the data-chip."
"We know," Kiera said, a grim smile on her face. "And that's our advantage."
The night of the meeting, the archive was a tomb of silent, dead machinery.
Kiera, Ryu, and Joric waited in the central server room, the same place Ryu had first awakened his power.
Kiera was a coiled spring of tension, her blade ready.
Joric had set up a series of small, remote EMP charges at key structural points in the surrounding tunnels—not enough to collapse them, but enough to disable any tech-heavy soldiers who tried to rush in.
Ryu's role was the most crucial.
He sat in the center of the room, his eyes closed, his senses extended. He was their early-warning system.
He felt Tarik and his two guards enter the archive, their energy signatures disciplined and powerful, like banked fires.
But he also felt the others. A dozen more signatures, trying to be cold and silent, but their disciplined energy was a beacon in the quiet of the archive.
They were taking up positions around the building. The kill team.
General Tarik entered the server room alone, his guards waiting outside.
He was a mountain of a man, his face a mask of controlled fury.
He looked at Kiera, a disgraced Dragon warrior, at Joric, a cynical old man, and at Ryu, a boy who looked like he didn't belong.
"You have played a dangerous game," Tarik growled. "Give me the data."
"The game is just beginning, General," Kiera replied, her voice steady.
She held up the data-chip.
"But first, a gesture of good faith. Call off your assassins."
Tarik's eyes widened almost imperceptibly.
He had been so sure of his surprise.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Ryu opened his eyes. "There are twelve of them," he said calmly.
"Two snipers on the roof of the adjacent factory. Four at the main entrance. Two in the west service tunnel... and four more approaching from the east tunnel right now."
Tarik stared at the boy.
How could he possibly know that? No sensor, no drone could have detected his men.
It was in that moment that he finally understood.
The 'anomaly' wasn't just a rumor.
The power was real.
Kiera hadn't just brought him proof; she had brought him a living, breathing strategic asset of unimaginable value.
His calculus shifted. This was no longer about simple revenge.
This was about acquiring a new kind of weapon.