Chapter 36: Ten Minutes of Blank Space
Aside from that small disturbance, life settled into something almost laughably ordinary.
Every day followed the same pattern. Patrols. Observation. Reports. Waiting. Then more waiting.
It was so repetitive that Hodell occasionally felt as though he had been thrown into some old farming sim from his previous life, the kind where you watered the same patch of land every day and called it progress.
Then, one evening, the still water finally rippled.
Loyi obtained a sensitive lead.
Someone was trying to sell internal technical data from the Blingshee Society.
The news hit the room like a stone through glass. Everyone straightened at once, and the lazy atmosphere that had clung to the Third Team for days vanished without a trace.
The source of the lead was an informant from the black market in the Old Urban Area.
"Old Smoker says a man named Mark from Echo Courtyard has been running around like a cat thrown onto a hot stove these past few days," Loyi reported. "He is buried in debt and is desperate to find a middleman willing to take some hard goods off his hands. His asking price is this much."
He raised one hand and made a figure in the air.
Baron gave a low whistle.
Kyle frowned. "Can Old Smoker confirm what the goods are?"
Loyi shook his head. "No. His level is too low. He only caught the outline of the deal. But Mark's situation is real. The Rust Brotherhood has been squeezing him hard over high interest loans. He is cornered."
Kyle only needed a few seconds to decide.
"Loyi, Sasha, you two continue watching Peter and Echo Courtyard. No matter what happens, I do not want that place out of sight." He turned to the others. "Ryan, Baron, with me. We are going to meet this Mark."
...
The black market of the Old Urban Area was hidden deep beneath an abandoned mine shaft in the cliffs of Sunken Star Canyon.
The elevator platform groaned the whole way down, as though protesting every meter. Rusted gears hung overhead like broken fangs, and thick chains swayed in the darkness like dead serpents. The only light came from a few failing mining lamps that still ran on residual leyline energy, their glow weak and unstable.
Hodell and Baron had disguised themselves as private guards and blended into the moving crowd without much difficulty. Most of the people down there had no interest in strangers as long as those strangers did not get in the way of business.
The air smelled of damp stone, metal dust, sweat, and the stale rot of hidden transactions.
Hodell kept his eyes on the target.
Mark looked exactly like the kind of man who had lost control of his life in small, ugly increments. His clothes were not poor, but badly maintained. His hands kept rubbing against each other. His eyes darted too often. Every time someone passed behind him, his shoulders twitched.
Soon enough, Mark slipped away from the main flow of people and entered a maze like side tunnel.
Not long after, a buyer in a dust cloak appeared from the other direction.
The man did not waste a word.
"The goods," he said.
Mark hurriedly nodded, his voice low and rushed. "I brought them. Did you bring enough money?"
"Let me inspect them first."
Mark hesitated, then thrust a crystal data record forward. "It is good stuff. Real good stuff. Technical material related to soul stones. I nearly got killed getting hold of this."
The buyer took the crystal, gave it only a brief glance, then let out a dismissive snort.
"A summary?" he said. "An apprentice's exercise booklet in the Workshop District is thicker than this. I want something that can be applied, not something that sounds impressive."
"It is not the same," Mark said quickly, his desperation beginning to leak into his voice. "This is internal Society material. Look at the circuit design. Look at the stability of the energy route. That sort of thing is not sold anywhere."
The buyer's gaze sharpened. "You? Getting access to material of this level?"
Mark swallowed, then straightened a little, as though trying to borrow confidence from the name he was about to use.
"The Blingshee Society stands behind me," he said. "There are real experts there. Real capability."
The buyer fell silent for a moment.
Then he said, "Blingshee Society... Fine. What price?"
A flash of greed passed through Mark's eyes.
"The price can be discussed," he said, forcing a smile. "But you pay a deposit first. I guarantee the rest will make it worth your while."
"Hand it over."
The deal was about to close.
Mark's face practically glowed.
Then Baron kicked over a stack of empty wooden crates.
The crash echoed through the tunnel.
"Rapid Response Department!" Baron roared. "No one move!"
Mark jumped so hard that the crystal slipped straight from his fingers.
He reacted on instinct, trying to snatch it back with psychic force, but Hodell had already moved.
At close range, speed was everything.
He shot forward, locked Mark's arm with a clean grappling hold, and slammed him flat onto the cold stone floor before the man could even gather himself. Mark let out a painful cry as his shoulder twisted under the pressure.
But the real surprise came from the buyer.
The man's reaction was outrageously fast.
At almost the exact moment Baron revealed himself, the buyer snapped his cloak toward Hodell's face like a whip, turned, and leaped off the edge of the platform without the slightest hesitation, dropping straight into the deeper network of abandoned mine shafts below.
Hodell brushed the cloak aside and rushed to the edge.
By then, there was nothing to see except darkness, scattered rock, and the faint rolling sound of loose stones.
Baron swore and leaned over beside him. "Damn it! He got away!"
"Do not chase," Kyle said immediately.
His voice cut through the impulse cleanly.
The buyer had reacted too quickly, too cleanly. In a place like this, pursuing into unfamiliar tunnels with only three people was asking to get buried.
"Secure the scene first."
Mark had already gone limp.
His face was ash gray. Whatever courage greed had lent him was gone now. Baron hauled him up like a wet sack, while Kyle picked up the data crystal and began a preliminary inspection on the spot.
"This should be it," Kyle said after a moment. "Technical section can verify it later."
Caught in the act, evidence in hand, and the suspect in custody.
It should have felt neat.
Instead, as they escorted Mark out, a thread of unease quietly wrapped around Hodell's thoughts.
That buyer had been too skilled.
Too decisive.
Too ready.
It did not feel like an accidental black market contact stumbling into a trap. It felt like someone who had already mapped every escape route before the meeting even began.
...
The technical report came back only a few hours later.
The psionic coating on the recording crystal matched the residue found earlier on the special storage safes in the Snake Fang Gang warehouse.
Once that result was combined with the anonymous tip, Mark's recorded conversation, and the existing suspicion around the Blingshee Society, the chain of logic became almost impossible to argue with.
During the next briefing, the official in charge laid it out in a tone of finality.
"The case is essentially clear," he declared. "The Snake Fang Gang acted as the frontline collection force, responsible for violently obtaining soul stones and related resources. The Blingshee Society stood behind them as buyer and technical supplier. The psionic craftsmanship involved is direct evidence of contact."
Outside the interrogation room, Hodell leaned against a cold metal wall and listened to Mark's voice break itself apart from the inside.
"I really do not know anything! That crystal, I found it in the trash alley behind Echo Courtyard! I saw it shining and thought it might be worth something, that is all!"
His voice cracked into a sob.
"I owe too much money! I just wanted to sell it for enough to stop the Rust Brotherhood from breaking my legs! I cannot even read the things written inside!"
Then came the frantic denial.
"What Snake Fang Gang? What soul stones? I do not know any of that! I swear it!"
According to the Intelligence Division's final interpretation, the Snake Fang Gang had originally been a criminal force that the Blingshee Society intended to cooperate with. But after gaining access to better equipment, they had become reckless, swollen with greed, and ultimately self destructed through their own stupidity.
Since no evidence had been found proving the Blingshee Society directly ordered the gang's violence, the authorities decided not to escalate. A warning. Preliminary sanctions. Heightened observation.
That was the official conclusion.
The consequences spread quickly.
Several small workshops and suppliers that had business ties with the Blingshee Society suspended deliveries the very same afternoon. Some used polite excuses about inventory restructuring. Others simply severed contact.
Whispers began circulating in taverns, alleys, and public corners.
"So the Blingshee Society was dirty all along."
"Those Psions always were strange."
"They play with thoughts. Who knows what else they play with."
Even the Rust Brotherhood moved fast, sending out word through intermediaries that they had nothing to do with any illegal activity and had merely maintained an ordinary creditor relationship with Mark.
They were cutting rope before the ship could sink.
Soon, even ordinary pedestrians started giving Echo Courtyard a wider berth. Voices dropped when people passed it. Looks grew colder. Curiosity gave way to quiet avoidance.
Everything was moving exactly the way a clean case was supposed to move.
Too cleanly.
...
Back in the briefing room, Baron sprawled into his chair with the expression of a man who had survived several lifetimes of boredom and deserved compensation.
"Finally," he muttered, stretching. "I can breathe again. These last few days smelled like damp paperwork."
Loyi sat beneath the best lamp in the room, reading through a stack of data sheets. Without looking up, he said, "Statistically speaking, abnormal incident reports in Oluson have risen sharply compared to last month. The General Administration is overloaded across the board. What we handled is only one link in a much larger chain."
Eileen nodded while handing out hot drinks. "Not just us. The Ministry of Magic and the Administrative Bureau are buried too. Yesterday I went to Logistics for supplies, and every person there looked like they were being kept upright by pure resentment."
Hodell stood by the window, listening.
He still did not believe the matter was over.
Professor Freeman had been a D Class Mage.
That alone was enough reason not to accept such an easy ending.
He turned from the window and said, "Do any of you not find this too perfect?"
The room quieted.
Loyi looked up first. "What exactly do you mean?"
Hodell organized the thought as he spoke.
"I mean the buyer who escaped during Mark's transaction. Whoever he was, he was too good. His reaction speed, his route choice, the timing of his withdrawal, all of it. And if someone like that was involved, then the odds are high that the Blingshee Society was not the real target at all."
Baron frowned. "You think someone used them?"
"Yes." Hodell nodded. "More specifically, I think someone wanted us looking at them. The city has been in chaos lately. If you wanted to hide a real operation, the best method would be to feed us a smaller case that fits together just neatly enough to satisfy everyone."
Kyle's eyes narrowed.
"Meaning," he said slowly, "while we were busy cutting down what looked like the obvious branch, the actual trunk kept growing elsewhere."
"Exactly."
Loyi tapped one finger against the table. "A reverse screening model. Instead of asking what the Blingshee Society did, ask what recent anomalies could have been concealed behind our focus on them."
No one laughed it off.
Because once the thought settled in the room, it refused to leave.
Then the door slammed open.
Kyle strode in, carrying a sealed dossier with an encrypted stamp across the front. His face was grim enough that no one needed to ask whether something had happened.
"Break is over," he said.
He dropped the dossier onto the table with a dull thud.
"New mission. Top priority. Directly assigned."
Hodell stepped closer with the others and glanced at the front page.
Mission objective: Investigate recent activity and mineral transport anomalies involving the Obsidian Group.
His gaze sharpened.
"The research institution that took over the vein after the Black Bone incident?"
Kyle nodded. "That is the one. And the suspicious lead is this."
He opened the dossier and pointed to a highlighted section.
"During a cross audit of recent large scale mineral transport records, a clerk noticed something abnormal. A shipment of rare ore, batch K7 73, has a ten minute blank segment in its transit tracking. It vanished from the record while being transported from the vein to the central warehouse."
Baron blinked. "Ten minutes. That is it?"
"That is enough," Kyle said.
He tapped the next page.
"The clerk did not stop there. He pulled public energy logs from around the Seventh Transit Station during that same window. The transport vehicle carrying K7 73 appears to have deviated briefly from the official route and entered an abandoned testing passage that is not part of standard logistics."
Hodell immediately understood.
"In other words, in those ten minutes, the vehicle could have performed a concealed transfer in a surveillance blind spot. Swap the real goods out, load replacement material, and continue on to the official warehouse with the record appearing intact."
Kyle gave him a hard look of approval. "That is exactly the concern."
The room's mood shifted again.
The Blingshee Society case had been smoke.
Now, maybe, the real fire was showing through.
...
That night, the six of them lay concealed atop a jagged rock ridge several miles from the main extraction zone.
From that height, the mineral field looked like a monstrous scar carved into the body of Sunken Star Canyon. The open pit was vast and ugly, its depth hidden in darkness. Mine entrances crawled across the rock face like clustered wounds. Far below, huge magic driven drills and ore trucks rumbled without pause, the sound deep and relentless, like some vast steel beast chewing on the earth itself.
The last time they had come anywhere near this place, they had nearly died.
Sasha lowered her observation goggles and spoke in a calm voice.
"Heavy security. Open sentries, concealed sentries, mobile patrols. The coverage of the energy detection grid is also broad."
Kyle studied the bright clusters of activity below.
"Too broad," he said. "This is supposed to be a research institution studying the long term value of a hazardous vein. Why would its external patrol standards look like a frontier military depot?"
Loyi adjusted the settings on the environmental analyzer in his hands.
"The background noise is unusually high," he said. "There are abnormal fusion signatures deeper within the site that do not match declared routine extraction activity."
Kyle did not hesitate.
"Long term observation will not be enough. We move to Plan B. We infiltrate the transit station, pull the core logistics data, and confirm whether the shipment records were manipulated."
The night was their ally.
And for Mages, darkness was often the most honest battlefield.
Using the constant industrial roar of the site as cover, the team moved in.
They slipped past the scanning network, bypassed fixed sentries, and reached the transit station by a route that had been chosen before they ever left the ridge. The station itself clung to the cliff edge like a metal parasite, its structure anchored around converging conveyor lines and thick energy pipes that hummed without rest.
Hodell climbed first into the shadowed side of the main structure and surveyed the interior.
Then he made a signal.
The rest followed.
Inside, the giant transmission machinery shuddered constantly, sending a low vibration through the floor and walls. A night operator sat in the control room, half asleep in front of a crystal display.
With practiced efficiency, the team helped him achieve a much deeper and more peaceful rest.
Hodell moved to the main console and connected a special reader.
"Interface established," he whispered. "Downloading all logistics logs and lower level sensor data for the target time period."
Loyi stood nearby, running the decryption process. "Encryption is tighter than expected. Give me a moment."
While he waited, Hodell's gaze lifted toward the large monitoring displays set above the control board.
Then his eyes narrowed.
"Look at that," he said quietly. "The surveillance angle covering the abandoned test passage avoids the inner section entirely. It watches the mouth, but leaves the interior blind."
Sasha glanced at it and gave a silent nod.
Then Loyi's tone changed.
"Got it."
His fingers flew over the interface.
"Raw residue confirmed. When batch K7 73 passed the calibration zone at the Seventh Transit Station, the weight sensing module registered a brief drop. At the same time, the unique energy signature of Shadow Crystals fluctuated for an instant."
.....
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