Raizen tore a strip from the bottom of his shirt - the hem was already damaged from wrapping the lotuses earlier - and tied it around the lower half of his face. It wasn't elegant. It just covered his nose and mouth, leaving only his eyes exposed.
Saffi watched him tie the knot without comment. Her expression said everything her mouth didn't - the raised eyebrow, the slight tilt of her head, the look of someone who had expected a more sophisticated approach and was choosing to be supportive about the reality.
"It's fine," Raizen said, muffled by the fabric.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were thinking it."
"I'm always thinking things. That's not new information."
From the branch, the view of the compound was comprehensive. The hall's glassy curved roof spread below them, its surface reflecting the cloud glow. The aircraft platform extended from the northern side. And there-
Four guards.
Two at the back entrance, right across the aircraft standing at ease, their posture relaxed but their positioning fixed - one on each side of the doors, angled outward, covering both approaches along the main walkway. They wore the standard uniform and carried no visible weapons, which meant their weapons were either Eon-based, or just hidden. Their heads moved at regular intervals - a slow, practiced sweep of their respective sightlines, synchronized without being identical.
Two more near the aircraft. These guards were significantly less formal.
One leaned against the platform's railing, arms folded, watching the doors with the half-attention of someone who'd been standing in the same spot long enough that his spine had formed a personal relationship with the wood behind it. The other sat on a cargo crate with his legs dangling, eating something out of a paper bag that he held close to his chest like it contained state secrets.
"You want some?" The crate guard extended the bag toward the railing guard without looking up.
"What is it?"
"Pickled radish chips."
"Those taste like feet."
"They taste like pickled radish."
"I know what I said."
The crate guard pulled the bag back, offended, and ate another chip with deliberate, aggressive eye contact that the railing guard refused to acknowledge. The crunch echoed across the platform.
Saffi had already started counting. Raizen could see it - her eyes moving between the guards, the cargo doors, the aircraft, tracking distances and timing intervals. Her lips moved faintly, numbers passing through them without sound. She was building a map of the compound's security architecture in real time, completely unbothered by the radish chip debate happening below.
"Front guards sweep every forty seconds approximately," she whispered. "Staggered. Three-second window where neither is looking east."
"- already moved the last set in," the crate guard said through a mouthful of chips. "Papers, mostly. Some sealed containers. The usual."
"And misster Eiden check everything?"
"Came by about an hour ago. Made his rounds, counted the seals, inspected the big box, the whole routine." The crate guard folded the top of his bag carefully, as if preserving the remaining chips was a matter of professional dignity. "Thorough as always. Then he left, saying he had somewhere to be tonight. And he warned us to be extra careful tonight. "Just in case" he said"
"He always has somewhere to be. You ever notice that? Man never just... stays."
"That's because he's a professor. Professors don't stay. They just arrive late, they make you feel stupid, and they leave."
"That's... surprisingly accurate."
An hour ago. Eiden had been here - had already visited, verified the cargo, and departed. The files were inside the airship. The box was secured. And Eiden was somewhere else in the city, doing something they couldn't track, having left the guest house without alerting a sleeping Phalanx and visited his buisness and vanished again, all while Raizen and Saffi were lying in bed counting breaths.
The railing guard straightened up and stretched, rolling his neck from side to side with a series of pops that sounded like someone stepping on dry twigs. "Transport's on schedule, then?"
"Should be. They wanted the vehicle loaded and lifted before midnight." The crate guard checked his wrist - a timepiece, brass, Ukaian make, its face catching the warm light from the cargo doors. He tilted it, squinted, tilted it further. "Wish they'd put actual numbers on these things instead of those little flower symbols. Is that a daisy or a seven?"
"It's a chrysanthemum."
"How does a chrysanthemum tell me what time it is?"
"It's the seventh flower in the seasonal cycle. So it means seven."
The crate guard stared at his watch. Then at the railing guard. Then back at his watch. "Who designed this?"
"An Ukaian."
"Obviously an Ukaian. Everything here is designed by an Ukaian, and none of it makes sense to anyone who isn't-" He stopped himself, and took a breath. Looked at the watch one more time with the expression of a man accepting a reality he didn't agree with. "Anyway. That gives us about ten minutes until we can go sleep."
Ten minutes.
Raizen's hand tightened on the branch. Beside him, Saffi had gone still - the particular stillness of a mind that had just received a critical variable and was recalculating every scenario it had built around the assumption that they had more time.
Ten minutes before the aircraft lifted. Ten minutes before the mobile vault - the files, the sealed containers - rose into the air and became unreachable. Ten minutes before the window closed, possibly for good, and every piece of intelligence Alteea had sent them to collect flew away into the glowing sky.
Below, the crate guard opened his bag of pickled radish chips again and extended it one more time toward the railing guard.
"Last chance."
"I'd rather eat the railing."
"More for me."
The crunch echoed across the platform. Somewhere inside the hall, a crate was being moved - the scrape of wood on stone, a muffled voice giving directions. The cargo doors spilled their warm yellow light onto the platform like a welcome mat for an event Raizen hadn't been invited to.
Raizen looked at Saffi. Saffi looked at Raizen.
Ten minutes.
And the time was already ticking.
