She wasn't there.
Saffi wasn't peeking from the ledge, she wasn't even there.
Despite every instinct clawing at him to go look for her, Raizen knew he was way too short on time. The absence hit him like a cold hand around the spine, but he forced himself to breathe, to think. He scanned the ledge above, then the aircraft right ahead of him, its hull humming with the low thrum of thick, silent thrusters.
Ten minutes was far from enough. He could look for her after - if "after" was still available by then. He pushed the thought down before it could take shape.
Another thought rose in Raizen's mind.
If something went wrong, at least she wouldn't be with him. He nodded at himself, and decided to go in alone.
The aircraft's interior was nothing like the outside suggested.
From the platform, the vehicle had looked like a dark, featureless shell - smooth hull, no markings, designed to carry things without being noticed. But inside, past the loading ramp and through the cargo hold's main corridor, the space opened into something that looked less like a transport vehicle and more like a mobile laboratory that had been built by people who didn't trust the ground to stay still long enough for permanent architecture.
The walls were lined with equipment Raizen had never seen. Racks of weapons - or things shaped like weapons, their edges weird, their proportions off, handles too long or too short or curved in directions that no hand he could imagine would find comfortable. Strange markings ran along the ceiling in thin, precise lines - not paint, not engraving, something pressed into the metal itself, patterns that repeated and varied and repeated again in sequences that must have been something that helped with the calculations. Panels of dark glass were set into the walls at intervals, their surfaces dead and lightless but fitted with connections and wiring that must mean that they could light up.
Technology he didn't recognize. Materials he couldn't name. The Echelon's world, compressed into a flying box.
The lizard was already screaming.
"Faster! What are you doing, sightseeing? This isn't a museum, you insufferable gawking empty skull - move your legs, open things, do LITERALLY ANYTHING other than standing there with your mouth open!"
Its voice was muffled by the pocket but carried with the desperate urgency of a creature that understood time constraints and was watching its companion waste them on curiosity. Raizen could feel it struggling inside the fabric, tiny feet pressing against his chest in agitated circles.
The corridor branched into two sections - right toward the cockpit, where dim instrument panels glowed behind a sealed door, and left toward what looked like a storage area. He went left. The storage section was narrow and low-ceilinged, the air inside it carrying a faint chemical smell - preservatives, maybe, or whatever compound the Echelon used to keep documents from degrading in a vehicle that spent its life at altitude. Both walls were lined with drawers built into the metal, each one fitted with a small lock mechanism - a thumbturn sealed with a strip of thin metal that required a key or a code to open.
Raizen drew his left blade.
The first lock shattered under the pommel's impact - a sharp crack, the metal strip snapping, the drawer sliding open on smooth rails. He looked inside. Maps. Topographical surveys of terrain he didn't recognize, marked with symbols in a notation system that meant nothing to him. He shoved the drawer shut.
Next drawer. The blade came down. The lock broke. Inside: blueprints. Technical drawings of something large and mechanical, annotated in handwriting so small and dense that reading it would have required an hour and two magnifying glassses. He moved on.
"Seven minutes!" the lizard shrieked from the pocket. "Seven minutes and this thing lifts off with us inside it, and I am NOT spending eternity flying in circles inside a glorified filing cabinet!"
Next drawer. Sealed containers - small metal boxes, cold to the touch, way too heavy for their size, each one marked with a numbered tag. He left them. Next drawer. Documents in a language he couldn't read, every page stamped with Echelon insignia and bound with woven cord. Next drawer. Empty, the interior cleaned and bare, smelling of the same chemical preservative. Next drawer. More maps, these ones older, the paper yellowed and brittle at the edges.
"Six and a half minutes! Are you TRYING to get caught, or does incompetence just come to you naturally?"
Raizen's jaw clenched. He wasn't going to argue with his pocket in the middle of a heist. He moved faster - pommel down, lock broken, drawer open, search, close, next. The rhythm established itself and accelerated, his hands operating on their own clock while the lizard operated on its, the two timelines running in parallel toward the same deadline.
"Six minutes! Five and a half! Five - oh for the love of everything sacred, you've been through nine drawers and found NOTHING? What kind of spy are you?"
"The kind who's going to sew your pocket shut if you don't -"
"FOUR AND A HALF!"
Bottom row. Last section. Three drawers he hadn't opened yet, set lower in the wall, their locks slightly different from the others - heavier, the metal strips thicker, the mechanisms more complex. Important things got better locks. Raizen brought the blade down harder.
The first one held. He hit it again, and the strip bent but didn't break. A third strike, angled, driving the pommel's edge into the lock's weak point, and the mechanism snapped and the drawer slid open.
A folder.
Thin, dark-covered, with a name printed on the front in careful, institutional lettering.
EIDEN, V.
Medical insignia in the corner. A red stripe along the spine that indicated classified content. And a date - recent, within the last year.
Raizen pulled it out. His hands weren't steady, his breath was coming fast, and the lizard had gone momentarily silent in the way it went silent when something important was happening and even its ego knew to wait.
He opened the folder.
