The discovery of the Ouroboros pellet had changed the mission's temperature from a low simmer to a rolling boil. Kenji felt the shift in his own posture, in the way he observed the world. He was no longer just a janitor going through the motions; he was a hunter, actively searching for the serpent's trail in the mud and sawdust of the circus camp. Every conversation, every seemingly mundane interaction, was now a potential source of intelligence.
His morning was spent on a task that was, for once, not directly related to animal waste. A section of the main power cable that fed the performers' trailers had frayed, and while the union electricians handled the dangerous work, Kenji was tasked with digging a new trench for the replacement line. It was hard, honest, and blessedly solitary work.
He was taking a brief water break when a grizzled, wiry man in his fifties approached. It was Pops, the camp's head electrician, powered by a mixture of nicotine and pure, unadulterated cynicism.
"Don't strain yourself, Kenta," Pops grunted, lighting a hand-rolled cigarette. "This whole place is one good rainstorm away from becoming a giant, canvas puddle anyway."
"Just admiring the view," Kenji said, gesturing with his head towards the main top where the Spiders were practicing. "They make it look easy."
"Easy?" Pops let out a dry, rattling laugh. "Kid, nothing in this life is easy. Especially not for them." He took a long drag, his sharp eyes fixed on the aerialists. "You think it's all applause and sequins. It's not. It's ice baths and torn muscles and a fear of gravity so deep it gives you nightmares. And for what? So a bunch of families can eat overpriced popcorn and forget about their miserable lives for two hours ."
Their conversation was interrupted by a new, and profoundly annoying, presence. A young man, no older than nineteen, strode into the area with the unearned confidence of a minor internet celebrity. He was dressed not in practice gear, but in a loud, designer hoodie and ridiculously expensive sneakers, holding his phone in front of his face, live-streaming his every move. This was Yuu, the camp's resident illusionist .
"What's up, Illusion-Nation!" Yuu said to his phone, his voice a high-energy shout that grated on Kenji's nerves. "It's your boy, Yuu, coming at you live from the gritty, authentic heart of the Cirque Fantôme! We are just hours away from my biggest stunt ever! The Aqueous Incarceration!"
Pops let out a weary groan. "Oh, here we go. The little Houdini wannabe is trying to fake his own death again."
Yuu swept his phone's camera across the muddy field. "As you can see, the tension is electric! Even the humble groundskeepers can feel the weight of this historic moment!" Kenji turned his back, keeping his face out of the shot.
"Tonight, I will be chained, handcuffed, and locked inside a solid steel box," Yuu proclaimed dramatically. "That box will be submerged in a tank of water for three full minutes! Will I escape? Smash that like button and subscribe to find out! " With a final, practiced wink, he swaggered off.
"Kid's a menace," Pops grumbled.
Kenji filed the information away. Yuu was not a suspect. He was a nuisance. But a loud, attention-grabbing nuisance could, in the right circumstances, be a very useful diversion.
While he was dealing with a self-proclaimed god of illusion, Sato was hunting for real ghosts.
High in the shadows of the main top's rigging, Sato was a still, silent observer. She had found a perch on a narrow catwalk, a place of dust and quiet that offered a perfect, unobstructed view of the Spiders' practice session below. She was Sorina, the artist, ostensibly studying her rivals' techniques. In reality, she was Agent Sato, and she was growing weary. Another day, another lie. She watched the flawless, synchronized movements of Alek and the Volkov twins on the trapeze, a beautiful, repetitive display of inhuman perfection. She wondered if she even remembered what it felt like to do something just for the joy of it, not for a mission, not for a cover. The thought was a dangerous indulgence, a flaw in her own perfect system, and she ruthlessly suppressed it.
Her focus sharpened. She saw it. A move that was not part of their routine. In the middle of a complex, three-person aerial exchange, Alek, at the apex of a swing, passed within inches of Anya, who was waiting on a separate platform. In that split second, a tiny object, no bigger than a thumbnail, passed from his hand to hers. It was a micro-SD card, a dead drop executed forty feet in the air. It was a piece of intelligence so subtle, so perfectly integrated into their performance, that no one who wasn't looking for it would ever have seen it. She had a new thread. They weren't just smuggling hardware. They were moving data.
The "Aqueous Incarceration" was set up in the muddy patch of open ground between the main top and the mess tent, ensuring a maximum audience of bored and hungry circus staff. The apparatus was a masterpiece of cheap theatricality. A large, plexiglass water tank, visibly scratched and scuffed from a hundred previous towns, was filled with murky water. A heavy-looking steel cage, painted black to hide the rust, was suspended over it from a rickety-looking winch. The winch, Kenji noted with a professional's eye for shoddy workmanship, was plugged into a series of daisy-chained extension cords that snaked through the mud to a single, overloaded power strip. It was an electrocution hazard with a captive audience.
Kenji had been roped into the proceedings by Silas, tasked with holding one of the thick, dramatic-looking chains that would supposedly secure the cage. His real job, he knew, was to be a human set-dressing in Yuu's narcissistic psychodrama.
"I give him two minutes before he 'accidentally' finds the hidden key," Haruto muttered to Pops, who stood nearby.
"I'm betting on a convenient power failure," Pops grumbled back. "Kid loves his drama."
Yuu was in his element. He stood on a wooden crate, stripped to the waist, his skinny chest puffed out, addressing the camera on his tripod. "This is it, Illusion-Nation!" he declared, his voice ringing with faux emotion. "For three minutes, I will be a prisoner of the deep! A willing sacrifice to the art of escape! If I do not emerge... remember me not as a boy, but as a legend!"
The performance began. Yuu was dramatically handcuffed and shackled by his assistant. He was then theatrically locked inside the steel cage. The winch groaned to life, and the cage was slowly, jerkily lowered into the murky water. The moment it was fully submerged, a large, red, digital timer began to count down from three minutes.
Underwater, Yuu began his act. He thrashed against the bars, bubbles streaming from his mouth in a practiced, dramatic display of desperation. Kenji's attention, however, was not on the cage. It was on the power strip. Pops the electrician had been right. The connection where the winch's plug met the extension cord was sparking, a tiny, fizzing, blue-white light that was growing more insistent . A small curl of acrid-smelling smoke began to snake upwards.
His training presented him with a clear risk assessment: faulty wiring + water + a crowd = a recipe for mass electrocution. His mission protocol was equally clear: maintain cover, do not interfere. But his instincts, the deeper programming of a man who spent his life neutralizing threats, screamed at him. The sparking grew more intense. The smell of burning plastic was now sharp. A small, hungry-looking orange flame flickered to life on the power strip .
The decision was made. He didn't shout. He moved. With the calm, detached efficiency of a bomb disposal expert, he walked over to the overloaded, flaming power strip. The timer read 1:47. He simply tapped the red 'reset' button on the power strip with the toe of his boot.
There was a soft click. The power to the entire apparatus was cut. The sparks died. The flame vanished. The dramatic red timer went blank. And in the water tank, the powerful electromagnet that was holding the cage door shut disengaged with a quiet, underwater thunk. The cage door swung gently open .
Yuu, who had been pretending to writhe in agony against the locked bars, was suddenly confronted with an open exit. He froze mid-writhe, his face a perfect mask of confusion. His dramatic, life-or-death struggle had just been rendered utterly, completely pointless.
His humiliation was absolute. He surfaced, sputtering, not to the sound of gasps and applause, but to the sound of open, unrestrained laughter. Haruto was laughing so hard he was crying. Pops the electrician was slapping his knee. Even a few of the Spiders, watching from a distance, were smirking.
Yuu's head swiveled, his eyes, burning with a pure, murderous rage, scanning the scene until they landed on Kenji, who was standing innocently by the now-safe power strip, his face a perfect mask of mild, janitorial concern. Yuu knew. He didn't know how, but he knew this quiet, middle-aged janitor was responsible for his public execution.
Kenji had not only failed to avoid attention; he had just made a new, deeply narcissistic, and dangerously unpredictable enemy.
Later, from the relative safety of a shadowy spot behind the mess tent, Kenji watched the aftermath. Yuu, wrapped in a towel and shivering with a mixture of cold and pure rage, was having a full-blown tantrum at his long-suffering assistant.
"A power failure? A POWER FAILURE?" Yuu shrieked, his voice a high-pitched nail on the chalkboard of the universe. "Do you know how much that stunt cost me in viewer engagement? My brand is RUINED! I looked like a fool! A wet, pathetic fool!"
"But Yuu-sama," the assistant stammered, "the wiring…"
"I don't care about the wiring!" Yuu snapped. "It was him. That creepy old janitor. He did this. I saw him. He was standing right there. He has a bad aura. A chaotic, joy-sucking aura. He is a saboteur of art." He pointed a trembling finger in the direction Kenji had been standing. "Find out who he is. I want his name. I want his history. I want to know where he buys his miserable, tasteless shoes. I am going to expose him. The Illusion-Nation deserves the truth."
Kenji sighed. The last thing he needed was an amateur, ego-driven investigation running parallel to his own.
He met Sato at her trailer an hour later. The professional calm had returned to her face, but her eyes held a new, sharp intensity.
"I heard you made a splash," she said, her voice dry.
"You could say that," Kenji replied. "I also made a new enemy. The kid thinks I'm a saboteur of art."
"He's not entirely wrong," Sato noted. She gestured for him to enter, and the moment the door was sealed, the playful tone vanished. "While you were dismantling a teenager's ego, I was watching the Spiders. They're not just smuggling hardware, Kenji. They're moving data."
She recounted the scene she had witnessed: the mid-air dead drop, the tiny, almost invisible data chip passed from Alek to Anya.
Kenji processed the new intelligence, the implications branching out in his mind. "So the pellet isn't the only package. It might not even be the main one. If they're moving data, the 'prototype' they mentioned could be software. A program. An algorithm."
"Exactly," Sato confirmed. "Alek's custom drone, Finch's interest in monetizing consciousness… it's starting to look less like they're selling a chemical and more like they're selling the recipe and the operating system. It's a turnkey mind-control franchise."
The scope of the mission had just expanded exponentially. They were no longer just chasing a physical object. They were hunting a ghost in the machine.
"We need that chip," Kenji said, the conclusion unavoidable.
"Getting it will be next to impossible," Sato countered. "It will be on Anya's person or in a secure location in her trailer. A direct assault is too risky."
Kenji looked out the small trailer window at the chaotic, vibrant, and deeply compromised world of the circus. He had an angry illusionist trying to uncover his identity, a silent lion keeper who seemed to see his soul, and a pride of lions that treated him like a messiah. And now, he had to steal a piece of data from a team of elite, professional killers who were already suspicious of him.
"Good," Kenji said, a weary, reluctant smile touching his lips. "I was getting bored of just shoveling crap."