The hunt for the ghost began where Leo was most comfortable: in the unseen corners of The Foundry. He didn't join the Phoenix Guard's loud, intimidating shakedowns of the barracks or the aggressive interrogations of the Vulture teams. He started by cleaning.
He requested a full maintenance detail of the warehouse district's ventilation system. Armed with his mop, bucket, and a full set of schematics, he spent the next day in the cramped, dusty shafts that ran above the storage areas. While the guards were looking for clues at ground level, Leo was looking for the infrastructure that could support a thief.
To anyone watching, he was just Leo the Janitor, meticulously doing his job. But he was actually performing a deep, systemic-level search. His [Sense Contamination] was useless here—the thief was clean—but his eyes, enhanced by a WIS stat now well over 30, missed nothing. He saw where dust patterns were disturbed. He saw recently replaced filter grates that weren't on any maintenance schedule. He saw a faint scrape mark on the inside of a shaft, the kind a silent anti-grav cart would make if it bumped the wall.
He was mapping the thief's unseen highway.
While he worked, his party was his eyes and ears on the ground floor.
Leo correlated the information. A physical infiltration route through the vents. A direct, hard-line access point to the inventory servers. A deep understanding of guard patrol routes. This wasn't just a thief; it was someone with an intimate knowledge of The Foundry's skeleton. This was an inside job of the highest order.
His search led him to a nexus point in the ventilation system directly above the Administration building—Rostova's seat of power. In a dark, forgotten corner of the main shaft, he found it. A section of the shaft wall that looked solid but wasn't. It was a perfectly crafted false panel, held in place by magnets, blending seamlessly with the surrounding metal.
He pried it open. Behind it was a small, hidden alcove. It was a thief's staging area. Inside was a discarded high-energy food wrapper—a brand only issued to Phoenix Guard deep-range scouts—and a single, dark fiber-optic cable that had been spliced directly into a mainframe conduit running through the wall. This was the hard-line access Ben had detected.
And on the floor was a small, metallic object that glinted in his flashlight beam. He picked it up. It was a lapel pin. Shaped like an ouroboros eating its own tail.
Leo froze. His blood ran cold. He had seen this pin before.
He pulled up his [Waste Disposal] inventory, sifting through the useless junk he'd accumulated. And there it was. The identical pin he had picked up from the smoldering remains of the Adjuster's suit.
The pieces clicked into place with sickening certainty. The impossible skill, the knowledge of their systems, the untraceable access... He had been working under a fundamentally wrong assumption.
The thief wasn't from the Phoenix Initiative.
He pulled out his comms, not the party chat, but the direct, secure line to Chief Stokely. "Stokely, it's me. I found the nest. But the problem is much, much worse than we thought. I need to see the full, unredacted mission log for Vulture Team 3. The ones who went dark in the Southern Sprawl. Right now."
"That's Level 4 clearance, kid," Stokely's voice crackled back. "Rostova would have my other arm if she found out."
"Tell Rostova that if she doesn't give me access, she's going to lose a lot more than a pallet of alcohol," Leo said, his voice dangerously low. "Our thief isn't one of ours. He's one of theirs."
There was a long pause. "Whose?"
"The people who sent the Adjuster," Leo said. "The Chiron Group. They don't just have agents on the outside. They have one on the inside."
The line was silent for a full ten seconds. "Meet me at the archives in five minutes," Stokely finally said, his voice grim. "God help us all."
Leo now understood. The stolen supplies weren't the objective. They were a smokescreen. The thief's real mission was data extraction, system sabotage, or something far worse. And Leo's little maintenance problem had just become a full-blown counter-espionage operation. He had to find a corporate spy who could move like a ghost and was likely just as powerful and ruthless as the Adjuster had been. And this one was already inside the house.