The next twelve hours were the longest, most boring, and most terrifying class Michael had ever taken.
The subject was Paranoia 101.
The professor was Jinx.
She was a harsh teacher.
"Stop looking at the building," she hissed for the tenth time, her voice a low rasp from the other side of the dusty room.
Michael flinched, pulling his gaze away from the Secure Self-Storage facility across the street.
"I wasn't," he lied.
"Yeah, you were," she shot back, not even looking up from the screen of her modified tablet. "You were staring at it like it owes you money."
"You look like a tourist, kid."
"Worse, you look like a Hunter about to do something stupid."
"A target."
Michael sighed, slumping against the grimy wall.
Great. Another tutorial level. This one's a stealth mission.
And my companion NPC is a rage-filled pixie with a tragic backstory.
"So what am I supposed to do?" he asked, trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice and mostly failing. "Count the cracks in the floor?"
Jinx finally looked up, her electric-blue eyes pinning him in place.
"You're supposed to be learning the rhythm," she said, her voice dropping into its serious, survivalist tone.
"Every city has one. A pulse. A pattern. You need to feel it."
She gestured with her chin towards the window.
"Watch the cars. They flow. They stop. They turn. It's a system."
"Watch the people. They walk with a purpose. To work. To the store. To get away from whatever mess they're in."
"The DGC… Gideon's little goons… they move against that rhythm."
"They're too still. Too perfect. They're a glitch in the code, and if you know how to look, they stick out like a sore thumb."
She was right.
He forced himself to stop looking at the storage facility and just… watch.
He watched the city breathe.
After an hour, he started to see it.
He saw the "sanitation worker" who hadn't picked up a single piece of trash, his eyes constantly scanning the rooftops.
He saw the "window washer" whose cradle hadn't moved an inch in three hours, giving him a perfect bird's-eye view of the entire block.
He saw the blue sedan parked halfway down the street, its windows tinted.
It didn't belong. It was too clean, too anonymous. It screamed 'government vehicle'.
"They're not even trying to be subtle," Michael muttered.
"They don't have to be," Jinx grunted. "To a normal person, they're invisible. Just part of the background noise."
"To us," she said, her lips twisting into a grim, humorless smile, "they're a welcome mat. A big, ugly sign that says, 'The party's in here'."
They spent the day in silence, mapping the enemy's movements.
Jinx created a detailed timeline on her tablet, marking patrol routes, shift changes, and communication blackouts.
Michael watched, his gamer brain automatically translating her work.
She's mapping the NPC patrol paths. Learning their aggro range. Looking for a gap in their loop.
She's a born raid leader.
The paranoia was a heavy blanket, but under it, a strange sense of calm began to grow.
The enemy wasn't an unknowable, omnipotent force.
They were just people.
People with patterns.
And patterns could be broken.
-------------------------------------
Two blocks away, in the cramped, sterile interior of a mobile command van, Captain Valerius did not feel calm.
She felt like a cog in a machine she no longer understood.
The air smelled of hot electronics, stale coffee, and her own frustration.
On the main screen in front of her, a dozen video feeds showed the silent, patient lockdown of the storage facility.
It was a textbook cordon.
Clean.
Efficient.
Perfect.
And it was completely wrong.
"Status report, Commander Rourke," she said into her comms unit, her voice a clipped, professional monotone.
"Situation nominal, Captain," Commander Rourke replied. "The web is spun. Now we just wait for the fly to show up."
Rourke was Gideon's man, a ghost from the shadowy Special Operations division. He was technically her subordinate on this mission, but they both knew who held the real power.
"Your men are too exposed," Valerius stated, her eyes flicking to a feed showing a sniper team on a nearby roof. "A visible presence will only make the target more cautious. My recommendation is to pull them back, maintain a covert posture."
Rourke chuckled, a low, condescending sound.
"With all due respect, Captain, your 'covert posture' is what let Echo-01 slip through our fingers in the first place."
"My orders are to contain this situation, not to start a firefight in the middle of Brooklyn."
"My orders," Rourke countered, "are from General Gideon himself. The objective is to secure the asset. Alive, if possible. But secured, above all else. If that requires a public demonstration of the Bureau's reach, then so be it."
Valerius's jaw tightened.
Asset.
He wasn't a person to them. Not a boy. Not Marcus Arcana's son.
He was a thing to be collected.
She thought of Marcus, his face a mask of quiet dread in that warehouse. The fierce, protective fire in his eyes.
The sins of the Bureau were coming home to roost.
And she was standing on the front porch, forced to welcome them in.
"This is a mistake, Rourke," she said, her voice low and firm. "You're underestimating the Arcana bloodline. You're cornering something you don't understand."
"Oh, I understand it perfectly," Rourke's voice purred with a chilling confidence. "We have three of our best Ghosts on-site. They're weaving a cage so tight, a whisper couldn't escape it."
"The asset will come. And when he does, we will be ready."
The line went dead.
Valerius stared at the screens, a cold knot of dread tightening in her gut.
Her duty was to the DGC. To the law. To the order she had dedicated her life to upholding.
But her conscience… her conscience was screaming at her that she was on the wrong side of this fight.
She was not just hunting an anomaly.
She was hunting the son of a man she once respected.
And she was about to lead him into a slaughter.
--------------------------------------------
Back in the sniper's nest, the sun began to set, painting the sky in brilliant strokes of orange and purple.
The city lights blinked on, one by one.
The rhythm of Red Hook changed.
The daytime workers went home, replaced by the creatures of the night.
Michael watched as Jinx finalized her plan, her face illuminated by the green glow of her tablet.
"Here," she said, pointing to a specific time on her digital chronograph. "Midnight. That's our window."
"The DGC shifts change every eight hours. It's the moment of maximum confusion. Comms are switching over. The new guards are getting their briefings. The old guards are tired and sloppy."
"It's a ninety-second window," she stated, her voice grim. "Ninety seconds of calculated chaos. That's all we get."
She looked up from her screen, her eyes locking onto his.
"It's time, kid."
Michael nodded, his heart a slow, heavy drum in his chest.
He stood up and walked to the window, looking out at the fortress across the street.
It was no longer an impossible, terrifying monster.
It was just a puzzle.
And he finally knew how to solve it.
Jinx moved to stand beside him, her small frame radiating a tense, focused energy.
"So," she said, her voice a low murmur. "This is it."
"You sure you want to be the bait? Once you ring that dinner bell, there's no going back."
Michael thought of his father, sitting in a cold DGC cell.
He thought of his mother, a lonely ghost trapped in a dying Gate.
He thought of the 1.2% corruption tainting his soul, a creeping darkness he had to fight.
"They built a cage for a monster," he said, his voice quiet, but filled with a certainty that surprised even himself.
"It's time to give them one."