The apartment building known as Mariner's View was crumbling and worn down. It stood like a monument to faded hopes and a place the city had neglected. Long, sad curls of paint peeled from the walls. The air on the street smelled of stale cabbage, damp concrete, and the distant, salty smell from the docks. Ace, Evelyn, and Silva stood across the street from it, hidden in the shadow of a boarded-up storefront, and watched the entrance. This was the complete opposite of a high-tech villain's lair; it was a place of quiet, everyday struggle.

"This is it?" Silva whispered, his voice full of doubt. He had been expecting a sleek, modern building covered in hidden antennas, not this old, decaying relic. "The legendary hacker, the guy who vanished from the entire internet, lives here? I was expecting something a lot cooler. Maybe with lasers."

"The actual hideout is next door, remember?" Evelyn reminded him. Her eyes never left the building's scarred front door. "This is just the front door. It's his grandmother's apartment 3B. He's using her home as a shield to hide behind."

Their plan was simple and born from pure necessity: they would just watch. They needed to confirm Evelyn's theory about the connection between this apartment and the old cannery next door. They also needed to understand Chen's daily routine before they tried to talk to him. One wrong move, a knock on the wrong door or a single suspicious question could spook him. A ghost who didn't want to be found would vanish forever.

For what felt like an eternity, nothing happened. The street was quiet. Every once in a while, a resident would come or go, an old man carrying a single grocery bag, a young mother patiently trying to manage a toddler. It was all painfully, boringly ordinary. The tension they had been feeling began to drain away, replaced by a creeping uncertainty. Had they gotten it all wrong?

Then, the heavy main door of the apartment building swung open with a loud groan, and a figure emerged. But it wasn't Kaito Chen.

An elderly woman, small and frail like a little sparrow, stepped out onto the cracked concrete steps. She moved very slowly and with immense care, leaning heavily on a simple wooden cane. Her face was a roadmap of wrinkles etched by a very long life, but her eyes, when she lifted them, were sharp and clear. She looked up and down the street with a wary, practiced awareness. She wore a simple, clean dress and a worn cardigan despite the mild weather, as if she felt perpetually cold.

"That's her," Silva murmured, all traces of his earlier joking tone now gone. "That's the grandmother. Mrs. Hazel said she hardly ever comes out. It's a big deal when she does."

As they watched, the woman began the slow, difficult process of descending the three steps down to the sidewalk. Each movement was a careful risk, a negotiation between her strong will and her weakening body. Ace felt his breath catch in his throat. This wasn't just a prop in a hacker's clever disguise. This was a real person, and she was heartbreakingly vulnerable.

Just as she reached the bottom step, her foot caught on a piece of uneven concrete. She stumbled, and her cane skittered away from her grasp, sliding across the pavement. She let out a small, startled cry—a sound of pure surprise and fear—as her balance vanished completely and she began to fall.

Ace didn't stop to think. He moved on pure instinct, darting across the street in a heartbeat. All of his carefully made plans and his own fears were forgotten, replaced by a simple need to help. He caught the elderly woman gently but firmly under her arms, taking her full weight just before she could hit the hard ground.

"Whoa there, easy does it," he said. His voice was soft and calm, which completely hid the adrenaline that was now rushing through his body. He carefully helped her stand upright, making absolutely sure she was steady on her feet before he loosened his grip. Silva was right behind him. He picked up the fallen cane and handed it back to her, his face etched with genuine concern.

The woman looked up at them, her eyes wide with surprise and a flicker of fear at the sudden appearance of three strangers. She clutched the returned cane like it was a lifeline. "Th-thank you, young man," she said, her voice thin and reedy but very polite. "These old legs aren't what they used to be. The city doesn't fix the sidewalks much around here."

"It's no trouble at all, ma'am," Ace said, offering a warm and reassuring smile that he hoped looked genuine. "Are you okay? You're not hurt? Do you need help getting to where you're going?" He made sure to keep his distance, not wanting to crowd or scare her.

"No, no, I'm quite alright, thanks to you," she said, shaking her head slowly. She looked from Ace's genuinely concerned face to Silva's, and then to Evelyn, who had cautiously approached. The fear in her eyes softened into a look of profound gratitude. "I was just going to sit on the bench over there to get some sun. My grandson, he worries if I go too far. He's a good boy. Always looking after me. He works so very hard."

The words hit Ace with the force of a physical blow. He's a good boy. Always looking after me.

For just a fleeting, painful second, he didn't see this woman. Instead, he saw the face of his own mother—a memory he clung to, a memory of a loving parent he had never truly had. He remembered the relentless, desperate drive that had fueled him ever since he was thrown out of his home—a drive to never be that vulnerable again, and to protect the few people he had left in this world from ever feeling that same helplessness.

In that moment, he understood. This wasn't just the hideout of a criminal mastermind. It was the home of a grandson who was protecting his grandmother, in the exact same way Ace was trying to protect Evelyn and Silva.

Evelyn, sensing the powerful shift in the moment, stepped forward. Her voice was gentle and non-threatening. "It's a nice day for it. The sun feels good. Can we help you over to the bench? Just to be safe."

The old woman—Mrs. Chen—nodded. She allowed Ace to take her arm and guide her the short distance to a rusty bench that was bathed in a square of sunlight. She sat down with a grateful sigh, arranging her dress neatly around her.

"You are kind children," she said, smiling up at them. All her fear was now completely gone. "Not many people stop to help an old woman these days. Everyone is always in such a hurry." Her eyes lingered on Ace. "You have a good heart. I can see it."

Ace felt a pang of guilt so sharp it almost made him sick. He had come here to confront and recruit a hacker, to drag him into their dangerous war with Ramos and Silica. He hadn't come here to meet someone's beloved grandmother. He hadn't come here to be called a "good boy" while he was secretly planning to disrupt the fragile safety her grandson had worked so hard to build.

They made small talk with her for a few minutes. They asked about the neighborhood and the weather, anything to keep her talking so they could learn more without raising her suspicion. She spoke fondly of her grandson, Kaito. She talked about how smart he was, how he worked from home on his "computers," and how he took such good care of her.

"He pays for my medicine," she said proudly, completely unaware of the dark implications of her words. "He always pays the rent on time, without complaining. He's a good boy."

All the pieces of the puzzle fell into place with a devastating and heartbreaking clarity. Kaito Chen wasn't hiding from OmniCorp just to save his own skin. He was hiding to protect her. He was using his incredible computer skills to generate untraceable cash to pay for her rent, her medicine, and to keep a roof over their heads. He was trying to keep her out of a system that had already failed them. He was just like Ace, doing whatever it took even venturing into the shadows to protect the one person in the world who mattered to him.

After a few more minutes of conversation, Mrs. Chen insisted she was perfectly fine and gently shooed them away, thanking them over and over for their help. They retreated back to the shadows across the street. The brief, human encounter hung heavily over them, and it completely changed the nature of their entire mission.

"Well," Silva said, finally breaking the long silence. His usual confidence and bravado were completely absent. He scrubbed a hand over his face, trying to process what had just happened. "That's… that's not what I was expecting."

"He's not a criminal," Evelyn said softly, her voice full of a newfound and somber respect. "He's a survivor. He's doing exactly what he has to do to get by. He's just like…"

She didn't need to finish the sentence. She looked directly at Ace, and her meaning was perfectly clear.

Ace stared up at the window of Apartment 3B, his mind reeling. The task from his System—which had simply been to LOCATE SUBJECT—now felt cold, clinical, and deeply cruel. Ramos's so-called "reward" of giving them Chen's name now felt like a vile manipulation, a way of pitting one desperate person against another. This wasn't an exciting game of spies. These were real, fragile lives balanced on a knife's edge, and they were about to disrupt them.

He thought of the brutal and humiliating tasks his own System forced on him. He thought of the dirty money from Ramos that was currently funding their own survival back in Unit B17. He realized that he and Kaito Chen were mirrors of each other, two sides of the same damned coin. They were both cursed with unusual abilities, and they were both using those abilities in the shadows for the exact same reason to keep their small, found families safe and afloat.

"We can't threaten him," Ace said, his voice low and firm, leaving no room for argument. It was a decision, not a suggestion. "We can't blackmail him or force him to help us. If we drag him into this against his will, if we bring this danger right to his doorstep… then we're no better than OmniCorp. We're no better than Ramos."

"Then what do we do?" Silva asked, spreading his hands in a gesture of pure helplessness. "We're not just doing this for fun, Ace. We need his help. Silica could tear us apart at any second. Ramos will feed us to Vincenzo if we stop being useful to him."

Ace turned to face his friends, a new plan forming in his mind. This plan wasn't born from desperation, but from a strange and painful sense of empathy.

"We will show him our cards," Ace said, the idea becoming clearer as he spoke. "All of them but we won't go to his apartment. Instead We will find the entrance to the old cannery next door and go to his real hideout. But we will not go to confront him. We are going to talk. We will tell him everything. About Silica's attack. About Ramos's threats. And we tell him about us, who we really are. And then we offer him a deal. A real one. Not a threat."

"A deal?" Evelyn asked. She sounded skeptical, but she was listening carefully. "What could we possibly offer him that he doesn't already have? He's managed to stay completely hidden this long on his own."

Ace looked back at the old woman on the bench, who was soaking up the sun, utterly dependent on the grandson who loved her enough to become a ghost for her sake.

"We have capital," Ace said, the words feeling right. "Ramos's money. We can pay his grandmother's medical debts. All of them. We can help them secure a safe place to live, legally, through Aegis Solutions. We can set up a proper lease, pay it electronically, make it all look clean and above board. We can give him a way out of hiding. We offer him a chance to protect her with clean money, in the light of day, instead of from the shadows."

He looked at his friends, his voice gaining strength and conviction. "In return, we just need his expertise for one job: to help us build a digital fortress. We need him to firewall our operation so completely that even a hacker like Silica can't find us. After that, he walks away. No strings attached. He gets his life back."

The silence that followed was thoughtful, not skeptical. This was a moral step forward, a line drawn in the sand of their own dirty war. They would use the devil's money not for more destruction, but to build a legitimate defense and to help someone else escape their own personal hell. It was a way to align their dirty actions with their original, clean goal.

They would approach kaito not with a net to capture him, but with an outstretched hand, hoping he would see his own reflection in it and decide to take it.

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