# Chapter 23: The Heist Plan
The red light on Konto's retinal display pulsed like a malevolent eye, a silent confirmation of their pact. Outside, the city groaned under the weight of its new chains, the sound of Wardens a constant, oppressive thrum. The silence in the office was thick with unspoken fears and the acrid smell of ozone from a nearby ley line fluctuating under the strain of the lockdown. "She'll contact us soon," Liraya said, her voice low and steady as she began clearing a space on the dusty floor, unspooling a flexible data-slate from a compartment in her jacket. "We need to be ready to dissect whatever she sends us. Every detail, every timestamp, every guard rotation. We assume it's all a lie until we verify it." Konto nodded, his gaze fixed on the floor, his mind already reaching out, feeling the psychic pressure of the city's fear like a physical weight. He was a ghost preparing to haunt a fortress, and the devil who hired him was just waiting for a chance to exorcise him for good.
The wait was short, a testament to Isolde's efficiency. A soft chime emanated from Liraya's slate, a sound utterly alien in the grimy confines of the abandoned office. The device projected a three-dimensional schematic into the air between them, a shimmering blue wireframe of the Aegis Spire. It was a monolith of glass and steel, a needle piercing the perpetually storm-wracked sky of the Upper Spires. The model rotated slowly, revealing layers of internal structure, glowing red dots marking patrol routes, and pulsing lines indicating power conduits and ley line feeds. A second window opened beside it, a dense torrent of text: guard rosters, security protocols, biometric scanner frequencies. It was a treasure trove of treason.
"She's thorough," Liraya murmured, her fingers dancing across the slate, zooming in on specific floors. Her Aspect tattoos, intricate silver filigree on her forearms, glowed with a soft, analytical light as she channeled her focus into the data. "Floor 87 to 92 is the Magisterium's private archive. The vault is on 92, sub-level gamma. Three layers of security: physical, magical, and psychic."
Konto leaned forward, his eyes tracing the paths of the red dots. "The psychic layer is my problem." He pointed to a cluster of guards patrolling the vault's antechamber. Their designations were different: 'Dream-Warden Kaelen,' 'Dream-Warden Unit 7.' "These aren't standard Wardens. They're Moros's personal psychic enforcers. I've run into them before. They don't just patrol; they project a field of hostile intent. A normal person gets a migraine. A sensitive like me… it's like walking into a furnace."
"Then you don't walk into it," Liraya said, her tone all business. She swiped the schematic away, replacing it with a cross-section of the vault's immediate vicinity. "The magical wards are my problem. They're keyed to the Arch-Mage's personal Aspect signature. A complex lattice of temporal and spatial distortion spells. Trigger one, and the entire corridor is flooded with slowed time, while intruders are accelerated into a pile of dust. But every lattice has a keystone." She tapped a single point on the schematic, a nexus where three power conduits converged. "If I can overload this junction with a precisely calibrated pulse of raw Aspect energy, it should create a momentary blind spot in the ward network. A window of about twelve seconds."
"Twelve seconds," Konto repeated, the number tasting like ash in his mouth. "That's not a lot of time to neutralize three Dream-Wardens and get through a vault door."
"You won't be alone," a new voice said, smooth and laced with an undercurrent of steel. Isolde's avatar shimmered into existence on the slate, a perfect, lifelike rendering of the woman herself. She was seated in a plush, high-tech environment that was a stark contrast to their squalid hideout, the Hephaestian fire-symbol glowing faintly on the wall behind her. "The schematics I provided are accurate, but they are only half the solution. The other half requires tools of a more… unconventional nature."
Liraya's expression hardened. "You're not coming in person, I assume."
Isolde's smile was a thin, predatory slash. "My talents are best utilized from a distance. But I am not without resources. I have arranged for a dead drop at the Night Market. A package containing two items. One for you, Mage Liraya. A 'Resonance Cascade' device. It will deliver the precise energy pulse you need to create your twelve-second window. It's a single-use prototype. Do not waste it." Her gaze shifted to Konto, her avatar's eyes seeming to look directly into his. "And for you, Dreamwalker. A Somnolent Dampener. A neuro-inhibitor that will temporarily sever your connection to the dreamscape, rendering you psychically invisible. It will also protect you from the Wardens' hostile projections. The effect lasts for precisely fifteen minutes. Activate it too early, and you'll be a sitting duck when it wears off. Too late, and your mind will be shredded before you reach the vault."
The price of her help was clear: absolute dependency. They were puppets, and she was holding the strings. "And the Chronos Anomaly?" Konto asked, his voice flat. "Where is it in this maze?"
Isolde's avatar zoomed in on the vault itself. The interior was a simple, circular room. In the center, on a pedestal of black obsidian, was a small, intricate object that looked like a clockwork sphere made of solidified light. "It is held in a stasis field. The field is keyed to the same system as the vault door. Once the door is open, the field deactivates. It's a simple grab-and-go from there."
"The exit?" Liraya pressed.
"Your problem," Isolde said, her smile widening. "I am providing the key to the front door. How you get out is a testament to your ingenuity. Or lack thereof. The dead drop is at Silas's stall. He knows nothing. Ask for 'fire and brimstone.' You have six hours before the next guard rotation change. After that, this window closes. Do not disappoint me." The avatar vanished, leaving only the silent, rotating schematic and the heavy weight of her instructions.
The air in the room felt colder, charged with the static of Isolde's ambition. Liraya let out a slow breath, her shoulders slumping for a fraction of a second before she straightened them again. "A twelve-second window. A fifteen-minute invisibility cloak. She's not just giving us tools; she's scripting our every move. One misstep, and we're dead."
"She wants the Anomaly," Konto said, his mind racing, dissecting the plan. "She needs us to succeed, but she also needs a scapegoat. If we're caught or killed, she can deny any involvement. The perfect crime." He stood up, pacing the small space, the worn floorboards groaning under his weight. "The plan is sound, but it's tight. Too tight. It relies on everything going perfectly."
"Magic never works perfectly," Liraya agreed, her eyes still glued to the slate. "And neither do people. We need contingencies." She began pulling up more data, cross-referencing Isolde's schematics with public infrastructure records she'd memorized during her time with the Council. "The power grid for the Spire is redundant. Overloading the junction might trigger an automatic reroute from a secondary source. If that happens, the wards could come back online in under five seconds."
"Then I'd be facing three very angry Wardens with a door that won't open," Konto finished. "Not ideal."
"Let me work on it," Liraya said, her focus absolute. "There has to be a way to isolate the junction. A manual override or a physical breaker I can trip to ensure the reroute is disabled." She fell silent, her fingers a blur as she navigated layers of arcane engineering diagrams, her brow furrowed in concentration. The only sounds were the distant wail of sirens and the faint hum of the slate's projector.
Konto watched her, a grudging respect warring with his deep-seated cynicism. She was in her element, a strategist untangling a lethal puzzle. He, on the other hand, felt like a blunt instrument. His part of the plan was brutal and direct: walk into a hornet's nest, become invisible, and neutralize the hornets before they knew he was there. The Somnolent Dampener was a double-edged sword. It would shield him, but it would also cut him off from his primary sense, his connection to the psychic ether. He would be blind, deaf, and dumb in the one realm he commanded. It was like asking a master painter to work while wearing a blindfold.
He closed his eyes, trying to center himself, to push back the encroaching fog of his corruption. The pain was a dull throb behind his eyes, a constant reminder of his fragility. He focused on the image of Elara, not as a source of pain, but as a focal point. This was for her. For the chance to look her attacker in the eye. For the chance to pull her back from the brink. The thought gave him a sliver of steel to reinforce his crumbling resolve.
"I've got it," Liraya said suddenly, her voice sharp with triumph. She pointed to a maintenance tunnel running parallel to the vault's main corridor. "There's a physical breaker for the secondary conduit. It's an old system, a legacy from the Spire's original construction. It's not on any modern schematics. Isolde wouldn't know about it." She looked up at him, a fierce light in her eyes. "I can get to it. It will add three minutes to my infiltration time, but I can guarantee the wards stay down. Your twelve seconds will hold."
The plan was taking shape, a fragile thing built on trust and technical skill. Konto would be the spearhead. Liraya would be the fulcrum, ensuring the path remained clear. It was a high-wire act without a net. "Alright," he said, his voice firm. "Let's go get our 'fire and brimstone.'"
The journey to the Night Market was a harrowing exercise in paranoia. The city-wide lockdown had transformed Aethelburg into a ghost state patrolled by phantoms in black armor. They moved through the Undercity's service tunnels and forgotten byways, their progress measured in the scuttling of rats and the drip of foul water. The air grew thick with the smells of illicit incense, sizzling synth-meat, and damp earth as they neared the market's shifting location. Silas's stall was a beacon of relative order in the chaos, a small, tidy space overflowing with esoteric artifacts and glowing dream-essences in glass vials. The proprietor, a man whose age was as indeterminate as his merchandise, looked up from polishing a silver skull, his eyes like chips of obsidian.
"Fire and brimstone," Liraya said, her voice barely a whisper.
Silas didn't smile. He simply gestured to a lead-lined box under the counter. "Paid for. In full." He slid it toward them, his gaze lingering on Konto's face. "The city is not kind to those who walk against the current. Be careful whose boat you choose to rock." His warning was as transactional as his business, a piece of free advice added to the price of their wares.
Back in the relative safety of their office, they opened the box. Inside, nestled in shock-absorbent foam, were two devices. The Resonance Cascade was a sleek, silver cylinder, cool to the touch and humming with a latent power that made the hairs on Konto's arms stand up. The Somnolent Dampener was far more sinister: a chrome injector with a single, vicious-looking needle filled with a viscous, iridescent fluid. It promised safety, but at the cost of his very essence.
As Liraya ran a final diagnostic on the Cascade, her fingers flying across her slate, she frowned. A line of code scrolled across the screen, a diagnostic report of the device's internal programming. "That's… odd," she murmured.
"What is it?" Konto asked, checking the injector's dosage indicator. Fifteen minutes. No more, no less.
"The Cascade's programming," she said, her voice tight. "It's designed to create the energy pulse, just as Isolde said. But there's a sub-routine I didn't see before. A hidden command." She enlarged the code, the glowing characters illuminating her troubled face. "It's a data packet. A very small, very dense one. The device isn't just going to overload the junction. When it does, it will also use the resulting energy surge as a carrier wave to transmit this packet to an external receiver."
Konto froze, the injector feeling suddenly cold and heavy in his hand. "An external receiver? She's using our heist to send a message."
"It's worse than that," Liraya said, her eyes wide with dawning horror. She cross-referenced the packet's destination signature with the Spire's schematics. "The receiver isn't external. It's inside the Spire. It's tied into the main data-log for the vault's security system." She looked up at him, her face pale. "This packet is a falsified entry. A ghost in the machine. It's designed to overwrite the security logs for the exact twelve-second window the vault is open. It will create a record showing a different team of infiltrators, using Hephaestian tech and attack signatures."
The silence that followed was absolute, broken only by the hum of the city's oppression. Isolde wasn't just setting them up to be scapegoats. She was scripting their downfall with meticulous, horrifying precision. When the Magisterium investigated the theft, they would find a trail of digital breadcrumbs leading not to Isolde, but to a phantom Hephaestian strike team. And Konto and Liraya, the actual thieves, would be left in the ruins, their existence erased, their sacrifice meaningless to everyone but their true betrayer.
"She's not just planning to double-cross us," Konto said, his voice dangerously quiet. "She's planning to frame us for her own murder."