The calm was a lie.
For three days after the scapegoat was announced, the Stellar Nucleus Academy returned to a state of high-alert normalcy. The hunt, Jack Wilson knew, had simply gone subterranean. He was a mouse in a glass cage, and Thorne was a patient cat, watching from the shadows, waiting for the slightest twitch.
The twitch came on the third night. The silent alarm on his hidden network, the "Canary," was tripped. They had found his digital lair. They were picking the lock. It was time to burn the world down.
He slammed his palm on the hidden panel beneath his desk. "Activate Protocol Zero."
Instantly, his lab was plunged into the stark, red glow of emergency lighting. On his main screen, a dozen deletion worms, digital piranhas of his own design, activated and began to swarm through the Academy's servers, devouring every trace of his research, every scrap of his genius. He would leave them nothing but ashes.
Simultaneously, the ghost in the machine began to play its games. ALERT: FIRE SUPPRESSION SYSTEM MALFUNCTION - HYDROPONICS BAY 3. ALERT: PARTICLE ACCELERATOR CONTAINMENT FIELD FLUCTUATING - SECTOR ZETA. ALERT: CRITICAL COOLANT LEAK DETECTED - CRYOGENICS LAB 7.
A cascade of phantom emergencies, a symphony of chaos orchestrated to pull the Academy's security forces in a dozen different directions at once. The cat was now chasing a thousand phantom mice.
Jack grabbed the hardened data drive containing the truth of the Titan project and kicked open the ventilation grate at his feet. He slipped into the darkness, the cold, smooth metal a shocking contrast to the frantic heat of his escape. The alarms were his soundtrack, the distant thud of running boots his metronome. He was no longer a scientist; he was an animal, navigating the guts of a steel beast.
He crawled for what felt like an eternity, following a route he had memorized on his second day. He emerged into a dark, silent maintenance corridor directly beneath Hangar Bay 4, the one housing the experimental crafts.
He could hear Thorne's voice, cold and precise, echoing from the hangar's internal comms system. "Ignore the cryo-leak! It's a diversion! He's going for the long-range transports in Hangar Bay 7! All units, converge on Hangar 7 now!"
A grim smile touched Jack's lips. Thorne was smart. He had seen through the diversions. But he had only seen the first layer of the lie. Hangar 7 was the final, biggest phantom.
Jack slipped up through a floor panel and into Hangar 4. The main hangar was in chaos, security teams scrambling to follow Thorne's orders, rushing away from him. And there, in a secluded, darkened alcove, sat his prize.
The "Ghost" class shuttle. It was less a machine and more a patch of stolen night. Its matte-black hull was a collection of impossible, non-Euclidean angles, designed not to deflect radar, but to convince it that there was nothing there at all. It was the most advanced stealth craft on the planet.
He sprinted across the empty floor, his footsteps echoing in the cavernous space. He reached the cockpit, the canopy hissing open to his palm print—an access code he had granted himself weeks ago. As he settled into the pilot's chair, the canopy sealed, and the chaotic sounds of the hangar were replaced by the calm, female voice of the onboard AI. Welcome, Dr. Wilson. All systems online.
He didn't bother with a pre-flight check. He engaged the silent, magnetic launch system. The shuttle lifted from the floor without a sound, a ghost rising. He looked out through the cockpit's display at the Academy, his prison, his playground, his monument to a dream that had become a nightmare.
Then he was gone, a phantom slipping through the gaping hangar doors, a whisper in the night sky.
The AI plotted a standard flight path. "Destination?"
Jack looked out at the star-dusted horizon. He was now the most wanted man in the Western Hemisphere. A traitor to his nation, a fugitive from the most powerful military alliance on Earth. He had no allies, no friends, no one he could trust.
Except, perhaps, a man he had only ever seen through the sensors of a battle mech. A man who was not a politician, or a scientist, but a warrior. A man who had stood at the heart of the fire and seen the truth of the Titan for himself.
"Set a course," Jack said, his voice raw but steady. "For Shanghai, China."