The Last Dainv-Chapter 118

The Last Dainv-Chapter 118

The sign for "Nine Lives Burritos" was just at the other side of the street. Its faded blue and pink colours stood out from the other run down stores of this place they call 'Kensington Market'.
The night was dark, but today he was not the dark hunter as Gerard stood beside him while they both looked out the street. Despite this being an undercover midnight heist, the butler beside him still wore his ordinary butler suit.
"What did I do in a past life to deserve this?" Gale blurted out, covering his mouth. First Ollie's airport heist operation, now the Ann family's heist for their magical heirloom. He should really go to a print shop and ask them to print a business card, profession: cat burglar.
"The Silver Lion headquarters isn't the restaurant itself, but beneath it," Gerard said with his usual deadpan voice as if he didn't hear Gale. "Behind the burrito building, you'll find a maintenance door. It leads to a stairwell and elevator that goes down to the main complex."
"Of course it does." Gale shook his head. "Because criminal organizations always hide under burrito places. Let me guess. There's a secret knock?"
"No secret knock." Gerard pulled out a phone, bringing up a 3D blueprint. "Just a security system that would take most teams weeks to bypass."
Gale studied the holographic display. The schematics showed a multi-level underground complex stretching beneath several buildings.
"You're telling me all this sits under Kensington Market? How has nobody noticed?"
"Silver Lions buy silence. Construction crews, inspectors, neighbours. Remember, money opens many doors." Gerard zoomed in on the lower levels. "The vault is on sub-level 3. It requires keycard, retinal scan, and handprint."
Gale squinted at the blueprint. "That elevator goes straight down?"
"Yes. All the way to sub-level 3." Gerard pointed to air ducts running throughout the structure. "The ventilation system connects every floor but narrows significantly below level 2. You'll need to find another route for the final descent."
"And security?"
"Four guard rotations, fifteen minutes apart. Cameras in all corridors with facial recognition tracking." Gerard swiped through various angles. "Motion sensors in the main labs and vault antechamber. The vault itself has a separate air system, with filters too small for conventional infiltration."
"Good thing I'm not conventional." Gale forced a smile. "What about any awakened guards?"
"Two on rotation. One patrols the upper levels, another stays near the vault."
Gale nodded. "Manageable."
"Master Hathie, I cannot stress this enough: retrieve only the knuckle guards. Nothing else."
"What, you think I'd go shopping while I'm there?"
"Your curiosity got you library access." Gerard turned off the phone's display. "It may tempt you again."
Gale sighed. "Fine. In and out. Just the knuckle guards."
"The Ann Family have placed significant trust in you."
"Trust backed up by mutual interest," Gale said. "What do these knuckle guards look like exactly?"
Gerard showed him a photo of a simple metal knuckle guard with red orbs embedded in them. "Elizabeth wore these in combat. They're family heirlooms and have... significant value."
"Sentimental or practical?"
"Both." Gerard pocketed his phone. "The young lady will be waiting for your successful return."
"No pressure." Gale rolled his shoulders. "Alright. I'm going in."
"I'll wait three blocks east in the car. Contact me only when you've secured the target."
Gerard walked away, leaving him alone. Time to do this, Gale. No running from this cat burglar business now. Tomorrow, he'll be able to find a nice print shop and ask them to print a business card for him. That's probably how adults got their business cards, right? Thinking about talking to the guy behind the counter in the print shop already made him have goosebumps. The idea of having to socialize. Goddamn, that's scary.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. That was probably Gerard staring at him, thinking about nothing. Right, time to work.
Gale circled behind the burrito taco shop. The maintenance door looked ordinary, mundane, rusted metal with a standard electronic keypad. It wasn't like the ones the Anns or Ollie used, where they just put their palm and flashed it with ether. On the corners of the roofs, two security cameras watched opposite corners going to the maintenance door.
Distort activated. Light bent away from him, giving him near invisibility. Just in case, he approached the door by the blind spots anyways.
Coming nearer to the door, he activated Phase Touch on his whole body. Keypad defeated as he phased through the door. The feeling of literally going through something always felt weird, like passing through a really cold fog.
A metal staircase went down into darkness. His head turned left. Vent spotted, exactly where the blueprint said it would be. Perfect for cat burglars to go through.
While Phase Touch was still active, he aimed and jumped to reach the grates, landing perfectly inside the vent. Tendrils spread out from Breath of the Void throughout the vents, filling the vent through every corner and dead end.
Straight, second right, first left and then there'll be a vent that connects all floors all the way down. Should be easy enough. Better than going through caves to steal mountain lion food.
Gale crawled straight, stopping at a grate. Below the grate, the two guards moved through, carrying two assault rifles. After they left, he moved again, stopping at the first right. He continued the crawl to the first left, passing through grates that revealed open crates filled with guns and rocks etched with glyphs.
Upon reaching the end of the straight, he wedged himself down, sliding slowly down to sub level 2. The air suddenly got cooler, enough to make him shiver and fog up his breath. When he stopped to look through the grates, something was different. According to the blueprint, this section was supposed to be a storage room. Instead, tendrils fed him a place that looked like a large space, bright lights, and people in lab suits.
Concentrating on the tendrils, it showed a modern laboratory below. A couple of midnight workers in white coats moved between workstations. He peeked through the grates and saw glass cases lining the walls, each holding weapons: guns, knives, even what looked like medieval maces, halberds, and swords, all of which were modified with glowing blue parts connected to an orb that held a purple liquid with gray grains.
This lab wasn't on the schematics. What the hell was even all this? The orb holding the purple liquid was clearly dust.
Gale went through the ceiling grate, staying in phase form as he dropped into the lab. He stayed near the ceiling, out of sight.
The lab was split into sections. Going to the side labeled 'weapons testing,' he peeked through the glass of the door. Inside, a mundane fired a gun at targets while a person in a lab suit monitored. The gun didn't look like the normal guns that mundanes used. It looked more futuristic, smoother, with an orb attached to the base with the same purple liquid and gray grains.
Moving on, he moved to the part of the lab labeled 'medical testing.' Peeking through the door's glass, he saw nothing but empty beds and the usual medical monitoring devices.
In the centre, display cases held dust samples of different shades of gray. One of them was the familiar shade of purple in the orbs they carried. The rest were either brighter or darker or a different colour altogether, like blue and pink.
Gale scurried toward a computer doing his best impression as a cat burglar. The screen showed test results and subject profiles. Regular humans using modified weapons. Success rates, power outputs, side effects.
One file caught his eye: "S59-F37 – Successful integration of ether-tech weaponry at 43% baseline. Dust consumption rate optimized through orb matrix consumption system."
Images showed a human using a modified pistol that fired a blue ray of energy. The weapon had an orb, awfully similar to the ones on the knuckle guards. Then those orbs he saw on the guns and weapons were related.
Before Gale could read more, something tripped his tendril senses. Voices coming closer from the hallway just outside the door. He quickly phased and jumped to the ceiling, back into the vent, and watched through the grate as two researchers entered.
"The modifications to the orb container are working," the first said, a younger man with thinning hair. "S60-M42 maintained stable output for seventeen minutes."
"Still not enough," replied an older woman, scrolling through her tablet. "Project Armament requires at least thirty minutes of sustained use."
"The Ann design is still superior. If we could reverse-engineer, then we'd literally make the breakthrough of the century."
"That's why we have the knuckle guards." The woman tapped the tablet. "Once we understand how they channel dust so efficiently, we can mass-produce."
"And then?"
She smiled. "Then the balance shifts. Mundanes with ether capabilities. The major factions won't know what hit them."
If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. it.
"Revolution," the man laughed. "No more hiding in the shadows while they rule the world from the shadows!"
Gale held back a laugh. Sure, he went way out there about arming mundanes with ether to Rachel. Now it turned out the Silver Lions were actually doing it. It wouldn't have made sense otherwise that they were purposefully targeting mundanes because mundanes were actually being tested on.
The researchers moved away as Gale no longer paid attention to their discussion. He continued through the vents, back to the vent that went straight down. Sliding down through to sub level 3, he stopped before he hit the bottom. He crawled through the straight, eventually finding a grate that revealed something that looked like a super secret vault door, in other words, it looked like a bank vault.
Two guards stood watch. Both had mundane weapons, plus the modified pistols at their hips. One of them was playing something on his phone while the other looked half asleep with his eyes half closed.
Phasing through the grate and down onto the wall, he squeezed and pressed himself against the wall, hoping Distort wouldn't give him away. When he reached beside the vault's door, the half asleep man twitched.
The man shook his head before heading back into the half sleep state he had been in. Even Gale couldn't sleep standing up like this, let alone have his eyes half closed while sleeping. Note to self, learn whatever this guy was doing. It looks goddamn cool to sleep standing up with half closed eyes.
Gale pressed his hands onto the wall and phased through the thick slab of concrete. Inside, glass cases displayed various items. Guns glyphed from front to back, labelled with "Glory Industries," artifacts like metal black boxes with circuitry and glyphs etched in very tiny miniscule patterns, and pieces of technology he couldn't even describe, like a spiral thingy that looked like it didn't do anything but a useless umbrella.
At the centre of it all, as a light pointed downwards at it like a spotlight, sat the knuckle guards that the Ann family wanted. Simple metal bands embedded with a single red orb just before the knuckle. They looked ordinary, except for the faint glow from the orb and the slight heat it gave off in the cold room.
Sure, Silver Lions. Make it as obvious as possible to tell cat burglars this is the highest priced item in this whole lot.
Now came the tricky part. Usually, there'd be an alarm system that'd tell people something was out of place. He walked over to a table with a similar looking knuckle guard, except the orb on this one was cracked, and went back to the pedestal.
Slowly, he placed the lesser knuckle guard in place of Ann's knuckle guard. Suddenly, a sneeze from behind the vault caught him off guard, too loud as the tendrils fed him the man's masculine sneeze full volume, causing him to fumble on the replacement. Now, both knuckle guards were in his hand; however, there was no alarm.
What the fuck, no alarm? Gale sighed. These guys are way too comfortable to be doing this kind of shit.
Tendrils fed him voices from outside the vault again, this time, footsteps coming directly at the vault.
Gale put the fake knuckle guard on the pedestal and phased into the thick concrete walls that completely enveloped him. From inside the walls, he saw the vault door open. When the two security guards entered with whoever that important looking person was, he moved back outside of the vault and made a quick silent sprint to the vents.
He navigated back the way he came, moving quickly through the metal ducts. Past the lab, up through sub-level 1, finally reaching the entrance stairwell.
Outside, the night air felt cool on his face as he came out of the building, still invisible. Only when he'd put three blocks between himself and the burrito taco shop did he become visible again.
He looked at the knuckle guards on his hands. Simple metal, now finding the complex circuitry that oddly reminded him of the ship under the stone tower. The red orb pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat.
Analyze.
[Aurumn Blessed Knuckle Guard]
[Type: Origin Relic]
[Rarity: Unique]
[Description: An heirloom of the Ann Family made by the first Matriarch. It amplifies Aurumn's cleansing fire to rid the world of the corruption.]
[Effect: ???]
[Error. User is not of the Aurumn blood. Unauthorized.]
Suddenly, the pulse of the orb stopped, as if responding to his origin's signature. Whatever these were, they weren't just fancy brass knuckles. It was that word or name again, Aurumn. It had also popped up when he slain the dark knight. Was it a person? Who knows, the world will tell him eventually. Probably.
Gale pulled out his phone and called Gerard.
"I've got them," he said when the butler answered. "No complications."
"Excellent. I'm parked on Augusta Avenue."
"On my way." Gale slipped the knuckle guards into his jacket pocket.
Augusta Avenue, my butt. He didn't even know where that was. Had to look it up on GMAPS quickly.
Gale stood in front of Esther, who was behind her desk. In his pockets, the knuckle guards tilted his jacket to that side. From their simple look, one wouldn't have expected them to be that heavy. He took them out and put them on her desk.
Esther smiled, not like the smile she usually did. This one had her eyes smiling as well. Rachel stood by the window, watching the night outside.
"Well done, Mr. Hathie," Esther said. "Gerard tells me you completed the task without incident. Quite impressive for a mission with such short notice."
"The Silver Lions weren't exactly expecting visitors," Gale said.
Esther picked up the knuckle guards, turning them over in her hands. She put them on her hands and did a simple punching motion, then laid them back down on the desk. "My daughter always did take good care of her things."
"You didn't mention they were studying them to make weapons."
Rachel turned from the window. "What?"
"The Silver Lions," Gale said. "They have a whole lab on sub-level 2 that wasn't on Gerard's blueprints. Scientists working on something called Project Armament."
Esther placed the knuckle guards in a small wooden box on her desk, closing the lid with a soft click. "Is that so?"
"They're trying to reverse-engineer the orbs to give mundanes ether abilities. The researchers said something about the 'Ann design' being superior."
Rachel stepped away from the window. "That's impossible. Mundanes can't channel ether."
"These weren't channeling ether." Gale sat in one of the leather chairs facing Esther's desk. "They were using dust stored in weapons with red orbs, like the ones in those knuckle guards."
"Wait," Rachel said. "Remember when we talked about your 'mad scientist theory' about arming mundanes with ether-tech? You were joking."
"Turns out I wasn't," Gale said. "Life imitates art."
"That sounds... concerning." Rachel looked at her grandmother. "We should tell the Path, right?"
"The Silver Lions have many projects. Most fail before they begin," Esther said.
"This didn't look like it was failing," Gale said. "They had working prototypes. Mundane test subjects using ether-tech weapons. They called it a revolution."
"Bold claims from laboratory assistants," Esther said, monotone. "How exactly did you manage to overhear all this? Gerard mentioned the facility had quite thorough security measures."
"I have my ways."
"Yes, I'm sure you do." Esther leaned forward. "No alarms triggered. No guards alerted. You entered and exited a facility with Awakened security without detection. Rather remarkable."
"Grandma," Rachel said.
"I'm simply curious, dear," Esther said, eyes still on Gale. "One might wonder how Mr. Hathie navigated a building he'd never seen before so effectively. The ventilation system narrows considerably between levels. The vault has separate air circulation. Yet you found your way."
The air in the room got warmer, emanating from Rachel's direction.
"I was given the blueprints," Gale said.
"Ah, but blueprints don't show guard positions in real-time. Or when researchers might enter a room," Esther smiled. "Unless you possess some... special awareness."
"I got lucky." Shit. Shit. Does she actually know about his passive?
"Very lucky."
Rachel stepped to the desk, slamming it, charring where her hand landed. "Grandma, you got what you wanted. The knuckle guards are back. Can we focus on what Gale found out? If the Silver Lions are arming mundanes, then we need to do something about it."
"They are not the first to try," Esther replied, sitting back. "Nor will they be the last. Every few decades, someone discovers dust can be weaponized. They create prototypes, dream of revolutions, then fade into obscurity when the limitations become apparent."
"What limitations?" Gale asked.
"Dust burns too quickly in conventional weapons. The human body rejects it. The side effects are... unpleasant," Esther said. "The Silver Lions lack the understanding to overcome these obstacles."
"They seemed pretty confident with the Ann design."
A flicker of amusement crossed Esther's face. "They may study Elizabeth's knuckle guards for centuries and never understand what makes them work."
"And what does make them work?" Gale asked.
"Family secret," Esther said. "One of many you'll find in our library."
"I got your knuckle guards back."
"So you did." Esther opened a drawer and took out a small card. "This will grant you access to the east wing library. Rachel will escort you to the sections we discussed. I
trust
that she will guide you to the sections I've allowed."
Gale took the card. "Just like that?"
"I am a woman of my word, Mr. Hathie." Esther stood up. "You delivered Elizabeth's property. You get your reward."
"What about the Silver Lions? Shouldn't we do something?"
Esther laughed, "Do what, exactly? them to the authorities? We are the authorities, Mr. Hathie, at least in matters of Aur. The Silver Lions play their games, and we play ours."
"This 'game' involves arming mundanes and they could die from exposure," Gale nearly yelled.
"Prototypes that will fail, test subjects who will die, and research that will lead nowhere," Esther said. "The Ann family has defended this city for generations. We know which threats deserve our attention."
"And if you're wrong? If they succeed?" Rachel said.
"Then we'll deal with it." Esther smiled at her. "Rachel, trust that I've handled situations like this before."
Gale stood up. "With all due respect, Rachel's grandma, I saw what they're doing down there. They're making progress. They had subjects using the weapons for seventeen minutes straight."
"Seventeen minutes," Esther said. "And how long have you been using your powers, Mr. Hathie? How long has Rachel? You months. Rachel, years without pause. Decades of practice. Seventeen minutes is but a parlor trick."
Gale looked at Rachel, who avoided his eyes.
"I should go," he said. "It's late."
"Indeed it is." Esther pointed to the door. "Gerard will show you out. 9AM tomorrow, don't be late."
Rachel followed Gale into the hallway, closing the office door behind them. Once they were alone, she grabbed his arm.
"Hey," she whispered. "Thanks for getting the knuckle guards back."
"No problem. All part of the service."
"I'm sorry about my grandmother. She can be..."
Dismissive? Condescending? Cryptic? He wanted to say, but that was Rachel's grandma. Mom always said… respect your elders.
"Grandma has... perspective. She's seen things that make the Silver Lions look like kids playing with toys," Rachel continued. "That doesn't mean I agree with her. If what you saw is real, then we could look into it."
"It's real," Gale said. "I didn't imagine a secret lab with mundanes shooting blue energy from guns."
Rachel looked down, twiddling her fingers. She didn't say anything. Cat got her tongue, I guess. Yesterday, she also couldn't share what she knew about the library with him. Of course, family would be over himself. No need to feel sad about it, or even think about it. It's just life.
Gerard cleared his throat behind Gale.
"Your car is ready, Master Hathie," the butler said.
Gale looked at Rachel. "See you tomorrow?"
"Bright and early." She smiled. "And Gale? The library... it might not be what you expect."
"What should I expect?"
"Let's just say it's more than books."
Gerard cleared his throat. "Young miss, perhaps Master Hathie should discover the library's contents himself tomorrow as planned."
"Of course. Goodnight, Gale. Text me when you get home."
Gale nodded, then turned back. Goodnights were for family…

Chapter 118