Two days had passed since that night. Kaelan sat at the workbench in his room, turning the resonance device over in his palm. Lira's voice still lingered in the back of his ears. Lost Core—the primordial source of magical power that maintained the balance between both worlds—its clues lay in records left behind by a specialized profession that existed before the Pre-Convergence era: Membrane Cartographers. The question was where those records were kept. The Obelisk Spire in Eloria's Central District—the 320-meter tower where the headquarters of the Pellucid Mandate was located—in the underground, Archive Fourth Layer. "In other words, the enemy's stronghold," Saying it out loud made him realize just how insane this plan was. Lira's presence seeped thinly into the air of the room. His nervous system had finally grown accustomed to the sensation across the Membrane, and it had become clearer than before. 'The Archive is physically isolated from the quantum lattice network. Staff only enter once a week through maintenance corridors. There is a blind spot to reach it,' "A blind spot?" 'Along the foundation wall on the north side of the Spire. That's a point where the Membrane is thin, and your resonance can cause localized sensor interference. Approximately ninety seconds. There are two checkpoints. If you're fast enough, you can get through,' Ninety seconds. Two checkpoints. Kaelan calculated seriously for a few seconds, then nodded. "I'll do it," The problem was equipment. The next night, deep into the early morning hours, Kaelan was laying out a stolen maintenance worker's uniform in his room. He'd bought it from Tessek, the fixer at Hollow Arcade—the black market in Broken Quarter—for twenty Qbits, but the previous owner must have been considerably larger, as the sleeves extended a full ten centimeters past his fingertips. Kaelan rolled up the sleeves. Once he did, the cuffs bunched up around his elbows and kept slipping down. Lira observed the situation from across the Membrane. 'The size is... less than optimal,' She explained the terrible situation with remarkable politeness. "It's fine, no problem," Kaelan pinned the sleeves in two places with safety pins. The appearance was poor, but it wouldn't hinder his movement. The other problem—the lock-picking tool—he'd made last night until 2 AM by modifying relay elements from a discarded heating unit. The soldering was a bit sloppy, but it could emit a low-power electromagnetic pulse. Just once. Lira said nothing about the tool either. She probably didn't say anything because there was no point in trying to stop him anyway. "I'm going," The night in Eloria's Central District was a different creature from Broken Quarter. Blue light veins of the quantum lattice stitched across the walls of super-high-rise buildings, and Neural Tag signals flew through the air. In districts where the average citizen's Civic Index exceeded 500, the pressure of surveillance was heavy just from walking the streets. Kaelan wore the maintenance worker's uniform and walked as slowly as possible, yet like someone who knew his destination. The north side of the Spire. Just as Lira had said, there was a subtle blind spot in the quantum lattice's surveillance network here. The entrance to the maintenance underground passage was just a single metal door, and Kaelan's modified relay tool pried it open in three seconds. The soldering must have been done correctly. He entered the passage. It was dark. The air was slightly humid. As he descended underground, the temperature dropped. Kaelan squeezed out just a tiny bit of resonance. His senses expanded. The thin part of the Membrane felt like an extension of his skin. He could vaguely sense that the sensor response was duller only in that spot. Ninety seconds. He ran. The first checkpoint was a lattice door. Passed with the relay tool, forty seconds. The second checkpoint was an electromagnetic lock. With the same tool—there was a moment when the tool's contact point slipped and he panicked, but the fabric from his rolled-up sleeves got in the way—passed, eighty-seven seconds. It was cutting it close. Archive Fourth Layer was much narrower than he'd imagined. Sealed canisters reaching to the ceiling were packed densely along the walls. The labels were completely absent. There was no way to tell from the outside what was inside. This facility was for storing document media from the Pre-Convergence era, and it was crammed with things that the Pellucid Mandate had sealed away under the name of the "Cognitive Contamination Prevention Ordinance." Kaelan pulled out a handheld imaging device from his pocket. "Which one," Lira's presence concentrated at a single point in the room's air. 'Left wall, third row from the top, seventh from the right,' "...That's incredible precision," 'The records of Membrane Cartographers have a specific resonance frequency. I can sense it,' Kaelan used the lower shelf as a foothold and climbed up, pulling out the target canister. He removed the seal ring and opened the lid to find a dozen or so thin, plate-like media stacked inside. Pre-Convergence era recording media with a different read-out method than modern quantum processors, but photography would work fine. It was a map. Fragmented and partially degraded—but it showed the structure of the Membrane, terrain, and three coordinate symbols recorded in encrypted form. Kaelan raised the imaging device and photographed them one by one. Three pages. Seven pages. Eleven pages. Then. His nervous system burst, independent of his will. A resonance spike. The kind of thing Lira had once called the "scream" of Kaelan's nervous system, something that happened uncontrollably when tension exceeded its critical point. The released energy struck an adjacent security node directly. There was no explosion. No loud sound. The node's lighting simply went out. And all the lighting in the underground passage turned red. A mechanical voice began speaking quietly. Sixty seconds. Lockdown. "—Wait, I still need three more pages—" Lira's voice reached him. 'Prioritize escape over remaining pages,' "I know!" Kaelan photographed the last few pages in a panic, returned the canister to the shelf, and bolted. His footsteps echoed in the corridor. Running toward the exit in the red lighting. In his head, Lira transmitted the passage structure to him—as sensation, as language, all jumbled together. Vitreous Guards arrived. Six in total from two directions. Clad in protective armor, something equipped on their wrists. Kaelan slid into the shadow of a document rack and held his breath. One of the guards activated a device—a magnetic tether launcher. A direct hit to the joints would freeze an arm. Kaelan knew what had happened to the shoulder of a man caught by guards in Broken Quarter before. There was no time to think. Lira's voice came as a sensation. A single point on the wall. A thin place in the Membrane—a repair shaft for electrical cable conduits running through it. Kaelan took off his jacket. He couldn't move in it anyway, and the oversized fit would be in the way in tight spaces. The shaft entrance wasn't designed for humans to pass through, but Kaelan's build could just barely squeeze through. He slid into the shaft without his sleeves. Dark. Narrow. Cables brushed his face. Forty seconds later, he emerged from a ventilation grate in the opposite wall into an alley. Three blocks from the Spire. Kaelan collapsed into the shadow of a waste disposal unit. Wearing only the thermal underlayer, clutching the imaging device to his chest. Eloria's night wind touched his skin. Cold. For a while, he couldn't move. His hands were shaking. Beyond his control. After about ten minutes, they finally stopped. Lira's presence was there quietly. '[whispers]Are you injured,' "[serious]No," Lira didn't ask further. Kaelan didn't explain. That silence felt strange—not heavy, but rather a kind of quietness that was somehow calming. ——. Back in his room in Broken Quarter, he expanded the images from the imaging device. Looking at the initial results, Kaelan stared at the screen for a long time. Of the three coordinate symbols, the first had photographed clearly. Perfect. The second was—blurred from running while shooting. Even magnified, it wasn't in a readable state. The third had been hit directly by the electromagnetic interference from the resonance spike. The grid reference remained, but the terrain key section that explained what the coordinates indicated was burned out. He knew the location, but not what it was. Three locations. One usable. Kaelan opened his notebook and wrote a single line. "Target three points, recovered one point. Loss rate sixty-seven percent. Within acceptable range for someone bad at math," He didn't know why he'd said it out loud after writing it. Lira's presence concentrated on a single point across the Membrane. She was deciphering the data of the surviving coordinate. After a while, she spoke. '[serious]This coordinate—it's outside Eloria's boundaries. Beyond the outer edge of Broken Quarter, in the territory where the quantum lattice's surveillance ceases to function. Near a place where the Veil's influence is beginning to physically distort space,' Kaelan reviewed the map image. Beyond Broken Quarter's outer edge—that direction led toward Ashenmoor Expanse, where the Veil was advancing at a rate of twelve kilometers per year, warping the space it touched. "Can you go alone?" '[cold]No. In that territory, resonance becomes unstable. My guidance may not reach you. You alone won't be able to maintain direction,' Hearing that, Kaelan looked at the wall of his room. Going with someone. Other than Lira, he didn't have anyone like that right now. Kaelan printed the image of the surviving coordinate and pinned it to the wall above his workbench. Right next to it, he placed the imaging device as well—the spoils of tonight's half-success, half-failure. The next morning, Kaelan's network bypass tool discovered another problem. During tonight's escape, the guards had flagged the "ghost signature" of Kaelan's unregistered Neural Tag—the thermal trace left by an unregistered tag—and recorded it. Not a complete personal identification. But every time he approached the surveillance areas around EloriaCentral Nexus in the future, that ghost signature would likely be caught. The barrier to heading in that direction next time had increased tenfold. In the corner of the room, the resonance device pulsed slowly. Just once. It glowed quietly in the darkness, then went out. Kaelan rested his cheek on his hand at the workbench, continuing to stare at the coordinate on the wall. Lira's presence was still there.