"Thank you all for coming on such short notice. I take it you've all been informed on the broad strokes of the situation already?"

Flanked by the two nonhuman men in black that ran their operation, Agent Jansman eyed each one of the three students in that detached, overly professional fashion they'd come to expect from the acting chairman of the Cloudpiercer project. Behind the closed doors of the meeting room, there wasnt any real need for him to keep up appearances like this, but Lucy imagined he did it mostly for its own sake at this point. His interest from the start had been mainly in ensuring that this remained a tight operation without any mishaps.

For a man like him, the outright disappearance of one of the few Law Domain mages in the world probably felt closer to a highly insulting slap to the face, than just a particularly nasty stain on an otherwise spotless record. He was doing a good job of hiding it – he always did – but nonetheless she got the impression that it was in her best interest to either speak candidly, or stay out of the way.

Ffion, Konstantin and herself all nodded mutely, which satisfied the agent's query to his liking.

"Good," he concluded. "Now, the bad news. Loath as I am to admit it, so far there haven't been any more major developments unearthed by the ongoing investigation. All we know for certain as of… twenty minutes ago is that Professor Smith's office shows signs of a struggle, and that there are some traces of Domain mana that indicate a potential violent altercation."

There was a solid five seconds of silence where they all expected him to continue. He didn't.

"...That's it?" Ffion asked, a look of pure confusion on her face. "There isn't anything else we have to go off of? Like, security camera footage or-"

"There is not," he responded with a simmering undercurrent of frustration. "Unfortunately, our fellow associate made it abundantly clear to us early on that no such intrusive measures would be taking place in his direct presence. Believe me, Eleftorov tried. Multiple times. And now because the idiot wanted to die on that hill, it's entirely possible he's managed to accomplish exactly that in the literal sense, too."

The professor… dead?

"I wouldn't really count on that being the case, though," Jansman hastily rectified. "Truthfully, I'd find it more likely that he decided to abandon ship for some contrived reason or another. He's got a bit of a chip on his shoulder when it comes to authority, as I'm sure you've all found out by now. But… policy is policy for a reason."

He leaned closer over the edge of the boardroom table, propping himself up with one arm to give emphasis to his next words.

"Until we can track the man down, or at least wrestle loose an explanation, we are operating under the assumption that there is some sort of threat actor out there targeting our vital personnel. You three are all pretty much at the top of that list, so for the forseeable future you will have to be confined to quarters and placed under heavy guard for your own safety."

Lucy's thoughts swirled into overdrive at the implication.

"Threat?" she blurted aloud. "You mean someone out there might be coming after us?"

"Calm down. Like I said, nothing is confirmed as of yet. This is being done out of an abundance of caution, just in case. Not like the project is going anywhere anytime soon, so truthfully this won't even slow us down. I can't really say it'll be a pleasant experience for anyone, but we literally have no reason not to play it safe here. For now, everyone will just have to wait and see what can be found. If anything. Dismissed."

With little fanfare other than the scraping of chairs against the floor, the six of them got up and made for the exits.

Truth be told, Lucy was still in a bit of disbelief at the whole turn of events. Not that she didn't believe Professor Smith could have possibly disappeared to begin with, mind you. That had been made abundantly clear was always in the realm of possibility. He'd even joked about it on a few odd occasions, threatening it over the mildest of inconveniences.

No, what she found hard to believe was that someone out there supposedly managed to beat him, given the current narrative that the hazy details painted. As they were escorted under heavy security detail to their new temporary quarters deeper within the base, she could only draw two equally worrying conclusions.

Either there was someone out there powerful enough to outclass a Founding Mage… or someone here was keeping the full story from seeing the light of day.

And she had a sneaking suspicion as to who that might be.

< -|- -|- >

London Exclusion Zone Observatory

~2 weeks remaining until next transmission

Mental note… the concrete ceilings don't appear any more interesting after the 500th time looking at them.

The new year had come and gone by with barely any fanfare. Normally right now, Lucy and Ffion would've been out and about with friends and family, looking forward to the future and speculating on what life had in store for them. Where they'd go from here, what new boundary they'd manage to break, who they'd bring into their life and maybe some not so subtle hints about grandkids for the couples…

Here, though, none of that was even remotely possible. That same sense of wonder was something they'd found exceptionally hard to come by, given the circumstances of their confinement.

More than a week had come and gone, and nobody seemed any closer to figuring out what had happened. Both of them were still stuck between the same four walls, interacting with the same three orc guards that took shifts standing at attention in front of their door all day. Nothing to do, nowhere to go, and increasingly less and less for them to talk about.

In an ironic twist of events, she'd ended up going from having no time for herself in the days leading up to the project's launch, to now having all the time in the world at her disposal.

And she was practically begging to go back to the first option.

More worryingly, she'd noticed a few bad habits beginning to creep in to her daily routine. With no other stimulation, it was all too easy to find herself obsessively practicing Law Domain spells, leveraging her newfound abundance of spare time to its maximum potential. Progress that had once felt like a bare trickle of water now felt more like a halfway opened faucet, a significant leap in progress…

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

… But one that forced her onto an utterly exhausting pace.

All too often, this would only end in her overdrawing and passing out, only for her to regain consciousness and immediately dive into even more manic note-taking, as she scrambled to document everything she found, no matter how small.

No matter how small. There were so many scribbles in the margins of the one blank journal she'd managed to acquire, that looking back barely any of them seemed to hold true significance.

Like… tables on the mass and weight of various household objects in the room, or how to account for the change from static to kinetic friction when moving stuff around. Sure, she could probably find some use for them, considering she'd wrote them down in the first place, but those were just some of the more tame examples. Plenty more went even further into the weeds.

...Why on earth did I paraphrase Zeno's paradoxes on this page? I don't even remember writing this part down…

Reading her own work was like unraveling a mystery of her own making. As she wrote down even more minor discoveries that she would, in turn, have to reread later, her bleary-eyed, stream-of-consciousness notetaking might have continued on for hours more. She was fully committed to it, right up until the point that Ffion pulled the journal away from her midsentence.

"Luce, you need to calm down." Ffion looked her dead in the eyes, a stern expression on her face mixed with an undercurrent of concern. "It's been nearly a full day, and you haven't eaten anything at all yet. All because you're worried over something you can't control."

Her words felt secondary. Pulling the book out from underneath her pen had left a stray streak of pen ink scratched across the length of the page. So much space… wasted by an errant line.

"I've already tried calming down…" she insisted, already on the cusp of hyperventilating. "But as much as everyone wants me to, I can't just do nothing! There's got to be some way we can-"

"Luce." The elf's voice was deathly serious now, something so far removed from her usually bubbly demeanor that it managed to stop her ramblings dead in their tracks.

"I get it. Really, I do. But if you don't take care of yourself – and assuming there really is some sort of infiltrator that managed to get to him like you seem to think – then working yourself to the bone day after day until you pass out is just doing the work for them. You need food. You need sleep. You need to take a moment away from all this, even if it's just for five minutes. If you keep going the way you're going, it's more or less guaranteed that one of these days you just won't wake up."

"But-!"

"No buts. Take a break, or I'll have the guards take away that training focus you've been making use of."

Lucy opened her mouth to protest further, but ultimately decided against it. Her point was very clearly made, and frankly she didn't have any argument that would get her to budge on her stance. She was right about most of what she said, but that threat wasn't nearly as hampering as Ffion might have been led to believe.

In truth, she'd managed to claw her own reserves to a high enough level that the whole process for her was just barely self-sustaining. How, what or why it proved to be possible for her, she had absolutely no idea. Normally even the best prodigies on record needed at least a month to make such progress. Lucy, in her very clearly not okay state of mind, had managed it in just over a week.

Other people might have gotten a big head over such an accomplishment. She ended up with the exact opposite, and swore not to let anyone else know. That sort of progress was beyond unnatural, and she had no idea what was the true cause of it.

So many questions. So few answers. At the very least, the unexpected progress would go towards a good cause. Tonight was the big night.

"Fine," she relented at last. "I'll freshen up first, then grab something to eat. While I'm doing that, can you ask Eleftorov if he can organize another perimeter sweep? It's been about six hours since the last one, by my understanding."

Ffion sighed in exasperation. "You can't keep just demanding that he-"

"Please?" she interrupted. "It would help me relax a lot more if you did."

She knew she was saddling her roommate with a hard decision. If there were any other way she could pull this off, she'd take that option in a heartbeat, but unfortunately any options she had were severely limited by her circumstances.

It was why she'd decided on doing what she was about to do next alone. Dragging anyone else into what she was planning would only endanger them, if her suspicions were correct. Or, more likely, if they weren't.

"...Okay," Ffion finally agreed. "I'll let him know for you."

Lucy smiled back as she opened the door to the adjoining bathroom. "Thanks," she replied simply. "It means a lot to me that you'd do that."

Unsure of how to respond to that, Ffion only nodded in response, letting her go about her business.

The door to the washroom shut tight behind her and the shower tap went on with a hiss of steam and the sound of falling water. She didn't get in. The noise was just cover for what she was about to do.

Sorry I had to lie to you, Ffion…

First, she concentrated. Not easy coming off the mental bender that she had put herself through, but she had her ways of persevering. While holding her pointer finger up to her forehead to center herself might look a bit silly, if it worked and nobody else was watching she could live with the slight embarrassment.

The vent above is just barely wide enough to give me a route out without immediately alerting Eleftorov. The paneling is hidden behind a false tile and held in place by screws. Therefore, first step: Cast Rotational Motion.

With some effort on her part, she channeled Domain mana the way she had inadvertently discovered two days prior. The tips of her outstretched fingers glowed faintly as she worked through the spell form piece by piece, doing her level best not to make any strained noises of exertion. It was plain as day that her methods were horribly inefficient; it was slow, heavy on light pollution and the whole time she was doing it, she felt like every muscle in her body was being stretched like taffy. But, to her, none of that mattered right now.

What mattered was that it worked.

The facade swung freely away, and the fasteners underneath began twisting their way out of the casing behind it. Only exact amounts of force were applied, as she wasn't willing to waste any more of the modest capacity she had than strictly necessary. She was going to need all of it, and then some, if she was to pull this off.

Levitate screws and assorted panels quietly to the ground. Out of the way, so I don't trip on them. Homemade Law Domain crystals are… yep, still up there ready to come with. Good that nobody's come around to check… but now here comes the part I'm worried about.

She took a deep breath went over the theory in her mind's eye. It often helped with her casting to work her way through the intent of her magic before actually performing it. Every advantage helped when she would be casting her most complicated spell to date.

Sound is generated by vibrations in molecules compressing and expanding, typically air. Freezing all air molecules perfectly still is way out of the realm of what I can reasonably accomplish, but I can dampen any noise made in my immediate vicinity by extracting the small bits of kinetic energy with a similar principle. Cast Gravity Counter and Mute on myself, then just… carefully crawl my way inside.

Names were useful in keeping track of her spells, too. They sounded a bit tacky, she thought, but she hadn't been the one to think up most of them. Except for Mute, but that one was her own design tailored specifically to her needs. She didn't need anything more than a utilitarian signifier anyways, so she found the name she pioneered for it much more to her liking.

Slowly, carefully, she clambered up to grab the lip of the ventilation shaft, using the sink as a footstool to carry her upward thanks to her dramatically lightened weight from Gravity Counter. As she pulled herself up from a dead hang, she was pleased to hear only a low burble of noise coming from where the metal flexed, instead of the loud clanging of she might have expected from a regular air duct wherever her grip found purchase. It worked… for now.

Two minutes, thirty two seconds and counting, she mentally catalogued as she lifted herself inside with purpose. Just barely enough to make it back into the hallways, if those schematics are to be trusted. Better not get caught, I don't think Elefterov would be too happy that I… borrowed his password to get my hands on them…

The clock was now ticking. And at the end of it for her, there was either an untimely confinement somewhere as an official criminal…

Or a very important meeting with Agent Blackthorne.

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