The plan was insane. It was suicidal. It depended entirely on a series of cascading absurdities, improbable coincidences, and tropes Kenji had only ever seen in spy movies he'd actively mocked. It was, in other words, a perfect fit for this mission.
"Absolutely not," Kenji whispered, his voice tight with controlled panic.
They were in their designated emergency headquarters: Supply Closet C, a cramped space tucked behind the industrial dishwashers that smelled powerfully of bleach and desperation.
"We cannot involve a civilian. Especially not a civilian who is the star pupil of the conspiracy we're trying to take down and is currently suffering from a complete psychological breakdown. That is against approximately seven hundred different regulations in the agency handbook."
"He's our only way in," Sato insisted calmly.
She was sitting on an overturned bucket, her laptop balanced on her knees, lines of code scrolling rapidly across the screen. She looked as comfortable as if she were in a corner office.
"Ayame is on high alert. You saw her. She's watching you. She won't leave her office and its precious computer unguarded unless there is a crisis she, and only she, can manage personally. A fire alarm is too simple. A plumbing emergency," she said with a tiny smirk, "is a trick she won't fall for twice. But a public meltdown of her star pupil? Her prize-winning prototype regressing to a chaotic, emotional mess in front of the entire faculty? That's a crisis of ideology. That's a fire she has to put out herself."
Kenji knew she was right. The logic was as flawless as it was reckless. He hated it. He hated it because it meant putting Ren, a kid who was already a victim, directly in the line of fire. But Sato was right. Their window of opportunity to use the keycard was closing fast. It was now or never.
He found Ren in a secluded courtyard, staring at a wall of ivy as if it held the secrets of the universe. The boy had composed himself slightly, but the frantic, hunted energy was still there, crackling just beneath the surface.
"Ren," Kenji began, feeling like the world's biggest heel.
"I need your help." He decided against lying. A partial, carefully curated truth was the only way. "I believe Chef Ayame's methods are dangerous. I believe the 'supplements' she uses in her seminar are not just suppressing creativity; they are damaging her students. Her 'perfection' is a lie, a chemical cage, and I want to prove it."
Ren turned from the wall, his eyes searching Kenji's face.
"You want to expose her."
The words were flat, but they held a universe of meaning.
"I want to find the truth," Kenji said.
"And I want to give her students a choice. A real one. But I can't do it alone. Her office contains the proof, but it's impossible to get to while she's there. I need a diversion. A big one. Something that will draw her and her personal security out of her office and keep them occupied for at least twenty minutes."
A flicker of the old, fiery Ren, the boy who would try to make smoked venison gelato, returned to his eyes. A spark of defiant, righteous anger.
"A re-match," he said, his voice gaining a strength Kenji hadn't heard before.
"Not against you. Against her philosophy. I will challenge her number two student, a boy named Iwata who cooks like a damn calculator, to a public grudge match. Right now. In the main auditorium. I will claim your victory was a fluke, a trick of postmodern nonsense, and that I wish to prove the absolute superiority of Chef Ayame's classical, perfect method. I will make it a public loyalty test."
It was a better, more dramatic, and far more dangerous idea than Kenji could have hoped for.
"She will have to attend," Ren continued, his voice hardening.
"She will see it as a chance to publicly re-assert her dominance, to crush the rebellion, to fix the 'error' that is me. She won't be able to resist the opportunity to watch me fail and come crawling back to her control. Her ego won't allow it."
"Can you do it?" Kenji asked, the question hanging heavy between them.
"Can you handle that kind of pressure?"
Ren looked down at his trembling hands, and then slowly, deliberately, clenched them into fists.
"I have to," he said, a new, steely resolve in his voice.
"I need to know which chef is stronger. The machine she built… or me."
An hour later, the academy was buzzing with the energy of a thousand beehives. Ren had thrown down the gauntlet, issuing a blistering, public challenge over the school's social media network that was full of fake praise for Ayame's methods and thinly veiled contempt for Kenji's "circus tricks." It was a masterpiece of passive-aggressive propaganda. The hastily arranged "Ultimate Grudge Match: Perfection vs. Passion" was scheduled to begin in thirty minutes. The entire academy was going to be there.
As the auditorium filled up, Sato, now dressed in a dark maintenance uniform that allowed her to blend into the shadows backstage, spoke into Kenji's earpiece.
"Okay, Kenji, the stage is set. Ayame and two of her suited goons just left her office and are heading to their VIP seats in the front row. The corridor will be clear in five minutes. Are you ready?"
"Ready as I'll ever be," Kenji murmured into his wrist communicator, watching Ren take his place on the stage.
The boy looked terrified, but he was standing tall, a defiant flame burning in his eyes.
The second the coast was clear, Kenji slipped away from the throng of his followers, claiming he needed to "meditate on the pre-narrative of the event." He moved through the back corridors, a ghost in a chef's coat, guided by Sato's calm, precise directions.
The story then splits, cutting between two scenes of intense, mounting pressure.
On the stage, under the brilliant, unforgiving spotlights, Ren faces off against Iwata. Iwata, true to form, begins cooking with the cold, silent precision of a droid, his station immaculate. But Ren… Ren is a whirlwind of motion. He is not cooking clean. He knocks over a container of flour, sending a cloud into the air. He sloshes sauce onto the pristine steel counter. He's not making a fancy, deconstructed dish. He's making his mother's katsu kare, a dish that is gloriously, unapologetically messy. The smells wafting from his station—curry, ginger, frying pork—are a stark, soulful contrast to the sterile nothingness coming from Iwata's. Chef Ayame watches from the front row, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her serene smile looking like it was chiseled from ice.
Meanwhile, in the silent, sterile office, Kenji and Sato work against the clock. Sato, a blur of efficiency, bypasses the new, complex security measures on the door with a series of clicks and whirs. They get to the computer. The biometric scanner glows an intimidating red.
"The keycard," Sato whispered, her eyes darting nervously toward the door.
Kenji, his hand surprisingly steady, slid the heavy, metallic card into a nearly invisible slot on the side of the terminal. The red light of the hand scanner flickered and died. A moment later, the screen went black, then lit up with a simple, beautiful, blessedly unprotected command prompt.
Sato let out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding and plugged in a flash drive.
"It's working. I'm in. Copying everything. All of Ouroboros's secrets, all of her research, every last byte."
A progress bar appeared on the screen. 5%. 10%. It was agonizingly, excruciatingly slow. Each percentage point felt like an hour.
"Come on, come on, you beautiful little miracle…" Kenji muttered, staring at the bar as if he could make it move faster with his sheer willpower.
Suddenly, they both froze, their blood turning to ice.
From the hallway, they heard the distinct sound of footsteps. Not rushing, not panicked. They were the steady, unhurried, confident footsteps of someone in charge. Someone heading directly for the office door.
Sato glanced at the screen. 48%. Not enough data. Not nearly enough.
The footsteps stopped right outside the door. The doorknob, gleaming and silver, began to turn.