They landed the Granite Hawk on a pad at Geneva International Airport at half past eight in the evening. Erik and Sabine t them on the tarmac with two black SUVs, credentials for the Science Symposium starting the day after, and a hotel reservation that Luca was fairly sure the IFC had paid for. The ride into the city took twenty minutes. Izumi and her girls ca along because apparently that was what was happening now. Luca had agreed to let them tag along, and the Radiant Blades had interpreted "tag along" as "move in."
They'd taken the rooms across the hall, set up a security rotation nobody asked for, and by the ti Luca got to his door, Kazuha was already in the corridor, twirling her energy katana between her fingers like a baton while she humd sothing that sounded suspiciously like a pop song. At the far end of the hall, Luca may or may not have seen Chris and Yuna sneaking away.
The next morning was chaos. Breakfast in the hotel restaurant was loud and ssy. Danny's excitent about CERN had been contagious, and everyone was excited to tour the Large Hadron Collider. Erik briefed them on the schedule while Sabine coordinated with the UER liaison over the phone on the following day's events.
Chris and Yuna were sitting suspiciously close together at breakfast. Luca filed that away for later.
The drive to CERN yrin, the main campus, took fifteen minutes. Everyone piled in, plus the four girls who had no official reason to be there, except "security" and absolute confidence that they belonged.
CERN's security team had spent ten minutes arguing about Kazuha's katana at the entrance while the bright pink backpack on Luca's shoulder strolled through like it had diplomatic immunity.
In their defense, the katana was hard to ignore. It was a real blade, carried by a woman whose resting expression suggested she'd used it plenty of tis. The head of the security detail and the UER tour liaison had argued about whether the weapon qualified as a cultural artifact or a security risk. Kazuha made her case with a stare so flat it made the guard's own eyes twitch. Everyone else made theirs with visible sweat. They'd eventually allowed it, and Luca was still trying to figure out why.
The backpack held both sets of TL9 scout armor. Xinran had handed Luca her backpack when they were getting off the shuttle with a wink and zero explanation. It was bright pink, it had a cartoon cat on the front. Luca had shaken his head and transferred his tactical gear.
Two hours later, the tour was wrapping up.
The group stood near the CERN cafeteria, a rather imposing glass-and-concrete building. Dr. Lefebvre, the UER tour liaison, was making polite noises about the symposium schedule tomorrow while trying to shoo them away. Security escorts hemd them in on both sides, and Luca could read the relief on their faces from ten ters away. The VIP visit was almost over, and nobody had been stabbed. The katana had stayed in its scabbard.
The morning had been a lot. Danny had gotten himself invited to co-author a paper within the first hour, and Joey had to physically steer him away before he set up a permanent desk. Ryan had examined every chanical trinket they'd passed with the focus of a man who'd found his temple. Kazuha had made the security detail age ten years, and their head, a stocky man whose na badge read MULLER, had developed a deep frown.
His friends were having the ti of their lives. Luca had spent the sa two hours scoping security and trying not to think about what the UER did to people who committed espionage inside their research facilities. Karen's intel package hadn't said a word about what happened to people caught doing this. She'd probably left it out on purpose.
He had skimd Karen's intel package on the flight over, flipped through it, and shrugged thrown it to Emily to study. The route from the cafeteria through Building 377's sublevel to EHN1 was straightforward. Getting away from eleven people and a security escort without anyone noticing was the hard part.
Izumi fell into step beside him.
"You've had a stick up your ass since we left New Hampshire." She kept her eyes on the group ahead, her voice pitched low. "You look just like your brother when he's planning sothing."
Luca glanced at her. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Sa jaw. Sa scan-the-room thing." Izumi's mouth twitched. "Matteo does it too. Right before he does sothing stupid."
"You're spending a lot of ti watching my brother's jaw."
"I'm observant."
"Stalker," Luca hissed.
Izumi ignored that with the dignity of soone who'd been called worse. "I don't need to know what's in the pink backpack. But whatever you need to do, you're running out of ti to do it in."
She walked away before he could respond, rejoining the Radiant Blades with her posture sassy and her smile back in place for the guards. Luca watched her go. So much for acting casual.
Zoe stood beside him near the cafeteria entrance, smiling at Dr. Lefebvre with tourist enthusiasm that looked completely convincing. She'd spent the last five minutes asking about the cafeteria's structural design, all bright questions and polite nodding. The Silencer and the Plasma Dagger were sowhere on her, because Zoe always found a way. She looked like a college student on a field trip.
She caught Luca's eye.
When?
He was still waiting. The security detail stood too close, the group clustered too tight. He just needed one crack in the formation.
Then Xinran pivoted toward a restricted-access door near the cafeteria and raised her phone.
"Oh, this is perfect." She started with the effortless volu of soone who didn't give a shit about the people around her. The phone was already recording. "Can I see inside for thirty seconds?" She turned to the nearest guard, a young man who'd been having a reasonably calm morning until this exact mont. "My followers would absolutely lose it. Restricted areas are massive right now."
The guard said no.
"What about twenty seconds? Fifteen? I could do a lot with fifteen seconds." Xinran's smile widened. "My engagent numbers are unreal when I post classified-adjacent content. Six figures, easy."
The guard said no again, with less patience. Luca watched other guards drift toward the conversation, the security formation shifting as attention pulled toward the woman with pink hair.
Then Kazuha adjusted her katana.
She settled the scabbard on her hip, the sa small adjustnt Luca had watched her make a hundred tis that morning. Except this ti it wasn't casual. Her eyes stayed forward, away from the restricted door and the guards, but that shift was deliberate, six feet from a restricted entrance while every guard in earshot was already on edge. She knew exactly what she was doing.
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Two security escorts stepped forward, and every guard in Luca's sightline reached for a radio. Muller looked at Kazuha, looked at the restricted door, and Luca watched the decision happen on his face in real ti.
"I think we should conclude the tour here."
Izumi stepped in before the words finished leaving his mouth. She bowed, just slightly, her whole body shifting into apology mode. "Of course. I'm so sorry about my team. They get enthusiastic." She was already herding the Radiant Blades toward the main exit, positioning herself between her girls and the guards, and every guard Luca could see stepped aside for her without hesitation.
Luca watched his crew scatter into the flow. Danny protested as a physicist was guided away from their conversation. Ryan craned his neck for one last look at a junction box. Joey pocketed his chocolate wrapper with the unhurried calm of a man who'd been told to hustle many tis and had never once complied. Emily moved with the group, asking Dr. Lefebvre if everything was alright.
So of them were covering for him. Most of them were doing it by instinct.
At the rear, Chris blocked the sightline like a wall, tallest in the group, always at Luca's back. He'd done it on his own.
The group shuffled toward the main exit.
Luca and Zoe slipped toward Building 377.
Luca stepped sideways behind a service vehicle parked near the cafeteria loading dock. Zoe matched him stride for stride, her face unbothered, like they'd decided to check out a different part of the campus. Fifty ters of service yard stretched ahead of them.
The sounds behind them shifted. The group's footsteps and Dr. Lefebvre's apologies faded, replaced by shouting from the direction of the main gate. Multiple voices overlapped, people yelling questions over each other.
It was dia. Either Karen had tipped them off or the crew of the Triumph of Darron touring CERN had been impossible to keep quiet. Either way, a press mob at the main gate ant cara barriers and security guards who weren't counting heads.
"Nice of her," Zoe said quietly as they crossed into Building 377.
"Which one?"
"All of them."
Building 377 was empty. Luca checked corners, listened for footsteps, checked again. Nobody ho.
The service access was right where Karen's intel said it would be, behind a cable rack. A steel door with a digital keypad lock sat recessed into the wall. Luca pulled his hacking pad and pressed it flat against the keypad. He triggered it and the pad's interface lit up, cycling through the lock's encryption in about half a second. The door clicked open.
The service ladder went straight down, ergency strips fading to nothing about ten rungs in. Luca swung the backpack off his shoulder and went down first, sneakers ringing on tal rungs until he hit concrete. The inter-site tunnel stretched in both directions, lit by ergency strips that gave everything a dull yellow cast.
He unzipped the backpack at the base of the ladder and pulled out the first Centauri Phantom Mk-64 scout suit. He handed the second set up to Zoe as she dropped down beside him.
"We're not killing anyone," Luca said, keeping his eyes on the tunnel wall while Zoe pulled her suit on. The Plasma Tomahawk sat on his belt anyway. Just in case.
"I know." He heard her pat sothing on her hip. Probably her Plasma Dagger.
"Ready?" she asked. Her pupils wide, that manic focus she got right before doing sothing dangerous locked onto her face like a visor of its own.
"Yeah," Luca said. "Let's go."
---
The Centauri Phantom sealed around him in pieces. Each component clicked and hissed into the next until the nano-weave tightened against his skin. By the ti the Recon Helm locked into place, his visor had already painted a clean HUD with thermal masking and Silent-Stride reading green across the board.
Luca activated [Ghost Protocol].
The ability engaged at Level 4 and the suit's camouflage field snapped to full power. The tir in his interface read eleven minutes of enhanced invisibility. He looked down at his hands. The concrete floor showed through his fingers, and then his hands just weren't there. Sothing in his chest unclenched for the first ti all day. He'd take it.
"This is the best day of my life," Zoe said from the shimr.
"You say that every ti."
"I always an it."
Luca stashed the backpack with their clothes behind the cable rack. Their exit ran a different route, Building 880, three kiloters northeast. He rolled his shoulders, the nano-weave shifting with him, and he caught himself grinning inside the helm. God, he'd missed this.
The TL9 communications module of the combat suit linked last, and three kiloters of rock and concrete between him and the surface couldn't kill the signal.
Emily's voice filled his ear. "We're clear of CERN. Erik has the van heading toward the hotel. Ryan and Chris are set up. You're on comms."
"Got it."
Then a male voice. Professional, with a slight accent Luca couldn't place. "Ghost One, this is Control. Confirm comms check."
Luca rolled his eyes. "Who's Control?"
"Erik," Emily said. "He's running comms."
"Ghost One, confirm."
Luca exhaled through his nose. "Confird. Comms are good."
"Copy, Ghost One. Control standing by."
He was definitely going to end up calling himself Ghost One.
"Ryan, what's CERN's security net look like?"
Ryan's voice ca through clean and comfortable, which ant he was already inside sothing he shouldn't be. "I piggybacked off their internal monitoring during the tour. That junction box near the security corridor. I've got eyes on every cara across the yrin campus and the North Area."
"The junction box you were caressing?"
"I was examining it." Ryan paused. "Reverently, even. As far as their system knows, I'm a firmware update."
Chris's voice cut in, low and steady. "You're about three kiloters to the Prévessin junction."
"Copy." That sounds far.
He started walking. The tunnel closed around him, concrete walls and cryo lines on the right, power cables thick as his forearm on the left.
Then the Hum hit him.
It started in his chest before his ears caught up. His helm's readout said a 100 hertz, the whole accelerator ring humming beneath two countries. The vibration sat in his teeth and buzzed through the tal grate under his boots. Like standing inside a tuning fork the size of a city.
"You feel that?" Zoe's shimr moved ahead of him.
"Hard to miss."
"I love it."
Thirty seconds into the walk, his visor threw a warning he'd never seen before. VISUAL DISTORTION DETECTED. HARMONIC RESONANCE AT 102HZ. [Ghost Protocol]'s light-bending field had synced with the Hum, and his camo was pulsing in ti with the magnets. Which was bad.
"You're flickering," Zoe said from ahead. Her shimr looked clean. She'd already adjusted.
Luca shortened his stride and broke the rhythm, stepping at a cadence that fought the Hum's pull instead of matching it. The warning cleared and the shimr smoothed. He'd found the problem and fixed it. But now he had to think about every step, fighting the pull to sync back up with a frequency that wanted to drag him in. Which was fine. He liked problems with solutions. He liked problems period, as long as they ca with a suit and a mission instead of a conference table.
"Control, Ghost One. We're in the tunnel. Moving northeast."
Erik's voice, steady. "Copy, Ghost One. CERN security net is quiet. No alerts. Ghost Two, status?"
"Ghost Two is loving this," Zoe said.
Luca almost laughed. Two invisible people walking through a particle physics lab's intestines while their crew ran overwatch from a van, and Zoe was loving it. So was he. He'd keep that to himself while Erik was on the channel.
The tunnel curved gently to the northeast. Zoe's shimr held fifteen ters ahead, smooth as glass.
Ryan's voice. "Cara feeds at the Prévessin end are clean. Nobody scheduled for tunnel access today. You've got a clear run." He paused. "One thing. I've got a dead zone between markers two-point-one and two-point-eight. Seven hundred ters with no cara coverage. Once you're in that stretch, I can't see what's coming from the other end."
Luca filed that and kept walking.
Then the muon tomography on his visor flagged sothing.
The contact registered behind forty ters of curved concrete and soil, coming from the Prévessin end. A mass shadow, heavy and tallic with a human-density signature sitting on top of it. It was moving toward them at roughly fifteen kiloters per hour.
Luca triggered [Heightened Awareness]. The ability snapped his perception wide open, every rivet and cable junction in the tunnel jumping into hard detail for fifteen seconds.
"Contact," Luca said. "Vehicle approaching from the far end. One occupant. Forty-five seconds out."
Zoe's shimr stopped. "The tunnel is three ters wide."
She was right. The vehicle would need at least half the tunnel's width, and whatever space remained would be asured in centiters.
"Right side," Zoe said. "Against the cryo lines."
They pressed flat against the silver-insulated pipes. Luca triggered [Silent Step] and felt the suit killing every last vibration his body produced. Frost from degraded insulation crackled against his chest plate, and for a bad second it sounded louder than anything either of them had produced in twenty minutes.
Luca went perfectly still, and [Ghost Protocol] locked to full invisibility with zero motion and zero shimr. The grin from five minutes ago was gone. Every nerve in his body went quiet.
The vehicle's muon shadow grew larger on his display, rounding the curve.
"Ryan." Luca dropped his voice to a whisper, which was unnecessary inside an airtight helm and purely instinctive. "Tell we're past the dead zone."
The pause told him everything. Ryan's voice ca back tight. "Negative. You're in the middle of it. I've got nothing."
The vehicle was inside the dead zone with them, and Ryan was blind.
The Hum filled the silence between Luca's heartbeats. Invisible didn't an incorporeal. If the vehicle clipped either of them, no amount of camouflage would explain the impact.
The shadow on his interface was two hundred ters out and closing fast.
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