The Level 4 archive was not a room; it was a vault. A heavy steel door, a retinal scanner, and the imposing presence of Chief Stokely were all that stood between Leo and The Foundry's darkest secrets. Stokely, looking grim, pressed his face to the scanner. The door hissed open.
"Rostova isn't going to like this," Stokely grunted, ushering Leo inside. "She said, and I quote, 'If the Janitor's theory is correct, then our entire internal security protocol is compromised. Give him what he needs. And God help him if he's wrong.'"
The room was small, cold, and contained a single, isolated server rack humming softly. This was the black box, the place where the reports too sensitive for the general network were kept. Stokely keyed in a long password and brought up a file on the terminal. INCIDENT REPORT: VULTURE TEAM 3 (STRIKE-THROUGH).CLASSIFIED.
"This is the raw, unredacted log," Stokely said, his voice low. "The one only Rostova, myself, and now you, have seen."
Leo scanned the report. It detailed the team's loadout, their route, their initial optimistic reports. Then came the final, garbled transmission:
V-3 LEAD: ...ground is... it's not right. We're getting strange readings. There's... a structure beneath us. Not on the schematics.
COMMS OP: V-3, repeat? What kind of structure?
V-3 LEAD: Metal. Clean. Tastes like... ozone and a laboratory. We're in the right place but... it feels like we walked into someone else's operating theater. Hold on, we're seeing movement. It's not a monster. It's...
The rest of the transmission was a burst of static, followed by silence.
"That's it," Stokely said. "They weren't killed by the Street-Maw. They stumbled onto something else first. Rostova classified the report to avoid a panic. Whatever's under that part of the city, she doesn't want people to know about it."
Leo's mind reeled. A clean, subterranean structure. A lab. And right where Chiron was supposedly active. He pulled the Ouroboros pin from his pocket and placed it on the console. "Their agent... he's been inside The Foundry for weeks, maybe longer. He's been moving through the service corridors, the same places I use. He knows this place inside and out."
"A mole," Stokely breathed, his face paling. "Been here all along. But why steal medical supplies? What's the endgame?"
"The supplies are a distraction. A misdirection," Leo theorized, his thoughts connecting with lightning speed. "It's to make Rostova think it's an internal political problem, a rival faction within The Foundry. It makes her look inward, sic her guards on her own people. While she's busy putting out fires inside, he's busy with his real objective."
"Which is?"
"Data. Or sabotage. Or..." Leo's gaze drifted to the other files in the directory. He saw one that made his blood run cold. SPECIMEN 734 - FULL BIO-PROFILE & ACQUISITION ANALYSIS (RESTRICTED - LVL 5 CLEARANCE).
"Lily," Leo whispered. "His real target has to be Lily. He's stealing supplies to create chaos and testing the security responses. He's preparing the ground for an extraction." The logic was inescapable. The Chiron Group wanted their 'specimen' back. The Adjuster was Plan A. This infiltrator was Plan B.
Stokely slammed his fist on the console. "And while Grunt is busy shaking down terrified Cogs and Rostova is looking for ghosts in the network, this son of a bitch is getting ready to walk out the front door with our most valuable asset!"
Just then, an alarm began to blare throughout the Administration building—not the loud klaxon of a perimeter breach, but a high-pitched, insistent electronic siren. Red lights flashed on the server rack.
A new notification appeared on the terminal screen.
NETWORK ALERT: UNAUTHORIZED DATA-SPIKE DETECTED.
LOCATION: MED-SCI LAB 3 - SPECIMEN 734's WARD.
PROTOCOL: INITIATING FULL WING LOCKDOWN.
Leo and Stokely stared at each other for a horrifying second.
"He's making his move," Leo said, already sprinting for the vault door. "Right now. While everyone is distracted."
He bolted out of the archives, his mind a whirlwind. The spy hadn't waited. He had used the internal investigation that he himself had triggered as the perfect cover. With the Phoenix Guard busy elsewhere and command focused on the warehouse thefts, the path to Lily was clearer than it had ever been.
The party chat exploded with frantic replies.
Leo didn't have time to answer. He was sprinting down the hallways of the Administration building toward Med-Sci, shoving panicked researchers and confused guards out of his way. The Med-Sci wing was across a central courtyard. Heavy blast doors were already sliding down, sealing it off from the rest of The Foundry.
He wasn't going to make it.
He rounded a corner and saw it—a small, unassuming door labeled 'UTILITY CLOSET J-12'. A janitor's closet. He knew from the schematics he had memorized that this closet backed onto a maintenance conduit that ran directly underneath the courtyard to the Med-Sci building's foundation. It was a filthy, cramped, forgotten route.
It was his route.
He kicked the door open, ignoring the stares of a passing Phoenix Guard. He was no longer just Leo Miller. He was no longer just the Janitor. He was the leader of the Custodians. And a corporate monster was trying to steal one of his people.
"Get ready," he growled into his comms, plunging into the darkness of the utility shaft. "I'm coming in the back door."