The digital clock on Elyra's bedside table glowed 2:17 AM. The apartment was steeped in the deep silence of the sleeping city, broken only by the soft, rhythmic sound of Azar's breathing from the living room. He had no need for sleep, but he had learned to mimic its patterns, finding a strange peace in the quiet hours of human dormancy.
Elyra, however, was awake. The confrontation with Yamamoto and the Ministry official had planted a seed of cold fear in her gut, but it was the conversation with Azar about the echo in the Virgo Cluster that truly consumed her. His simple, devastating correction to her life's work echoed in her mind. She sat cross-legged on the floor of her small home office, surrounded by a fortress of open notebooks, printed data, and her laptop. The raw data she was supposed to delete was spread out before her, a constellation of forbidden knowledge.
She was so close. Azar's cryptic drawing was a key, and she was fumbling with the lock. If she could just correlate his symbols with the gravitational wave data from the LIGO observatory, she could prove it. Prove him.
Across the room, Azar's eyes were open. He perceived the world in layers. On the surface, he saw the quiet apartment. Deeper, he felt the electromagnetic hum of the city's power grid, the faint gravitational pull of the moon. Deeper still, he sensed the intricate, swirling energy signature that was Elyra, a bright, focused point of intense cognitive activity, laced with anxiety. She was working. The negative stimulus from the men at JAXA had not stopped her. It had intensified her focus.
He also perceived another signature. Fainter, colder. A human moving with deliberate, trained stealth, bypassing the building's simple security system with ease. A biological rhythm slowed, muscles coiled with purpose. A threat.
He rose from his futon, a shadow detaching itself from deeper shadows. He did not wake Elyra. He stood at the threshold of her office, watching her. She was muttering to herself, tracing lines on a star chart with her finger, completely absorbed. The intruder was on the fire escape now, a silent, shifting pressure against the metal.
Varos worked with the efficiency of his training. The lock on the window yielded to a specialized tool with a soft click. He slid it open, a gap just wide enough for his frame, and slipped into the dark living room. He froze, letting his eyes adjust. The apartment was as described: small, cluttered with books. He could see the light from the office spilling into the hallway. His target was in there.
His mission was clear: locate the primary hard drive, any physical notebooks related to the anomaly, and get out. Leave no trace. He moved forward, a ghost in the night.
And then he stopped.
A man was standing in the hallway, blocking his path to the office. Azar. He was just there. How had he not heard him? The man made no sound, offered no challenge. He simply stood, his dark eyes observing Varos with the detached curiosity of a scientist studying an insect. The streetlight from the window glinted off the starlike patterns on his bare arms.
Varos's training screamed at him. Neutralize the witness. But every primal instinct screamed louder. Danger. Predator. This was no simple mute laborer. This was the anomaly itself.
For a long moment, they stood frozen in a silent standoff. Varos calculated the angles, the distance, the potential for noise. A quick, quiet takedown was impossible. This man was a variable he had not accounted for.
Azar took a single step forward. He did not raise his hands. He did not adopt a fighting stance. He simply approached. He stopped an arm's length away, his gaze dropping to the small, specialized tool bag in Varos's hand, then back to his face.
"You are the soldier," Azar stated. His voice was low, a vibration in the stillness, devoid of accusation or fear. It was a simple declaration of fact.
Varos felt a chill that had nothing to do with the night air. The man knew what he was. How?
From the office, Elyra's voice called out, distracted. "Azar? Is everything okay?"
Azar's eyes remained locked on Varos. He did not reply to her.
In that suspended second, Varos made a decision. The original mission was compromised. But the objective, to silence the research, could still be achieved. He could create chaos, a different kind of distraction. He let his gaze flicker past Azar, towards the office, then back. He gave a barely perceptible shake of his head. A warning. A message: Not you. Her.
Then, with a speed that defied his size, Varos turned and melted back through the window, disappearing into the night as silently as he had come.
Azar stood for a moment longer, then walked to the office doorway. Elyra looked up from her laptop, her eyes bleary. "What was that? I thought I heard something."
Azar looked at the scattered research, the open laptop, the proof of her defiance. He looked at her, this fragile, brilliant, stubborn human who was shining a light into a darkness that powerful men wanted to keep hidden.
"Nothing," Azar said, the lie smooth and newly learned. "A cat. On the fire escape."
Elyra sighed, rubbing her eyes. "Oh. Okay." She turned back to her work, oblivious.
Azar did not return to his futon. He remained standing in the hallway, a silent sentinel. The soldier was a symptom, not the cause. The cause was the knowledge. And he understood now that Elyra's pursuit of it was a flame drawing ever closer to a powder keg. The thief had come not to take a life, but to steal a truth. And in his failure, he had delivered a different truth to Azar: the time of quiet observation was over. The storm was coming, and he was standing at its center.