The trick to shadowing someone isn't about matching their pace — it's about matching their purpose.
Vadel knew that.
The tail who'd spent the last two nights observing him was precise, disciplined, and above all, patient. That meant their movements had a rhythm — a cadence that could be felt if you were paying close enough attention.
Tonight, he intended to find it.
---
He began with the basics: routine disruption.
Instead of taking the familiar route through the east corridors toward the dorm wing, he cut through the maintenance shafts that ran between the research labs. The air there was warmer, humming faintly with the vibration of conduit lines.
"Movement scan clear," EON reported in his head, "but I'm reading electromagnetic interference. Someone's using active dampening within a fifty-meter radius."
"That's them."
The interference meant they were close enough for their stealth gear to affect ambient readings. Close enough to track him in real time.
He slowed.
The shaft opened into a dimly lit junction — a place where four corridors met in a cross, each leading deeper into the academy's hidden infrastructure. Above, catwalks of steel mesh crisscrossed the space, casting shadows like spiderwebs.
He took the far left passage, then — at the last possible step — pivoted and slipped silently into the right-hand path instead.
Five seconds later, a shadow crossed the far left corridor where he would have been.
Got you.
---
The pursuit continued for the next forty minutes, through service access ways, storage decks, and deserted seminar rooms.
The figure's style was methodical: never closer than fifteen meters, never lagging far enough to lose sight. Whenever he stopped, they stopped. Whenever he turned suddenly, they took the long way around to rejoin the trail.
It was the kind of training that didn't come from street-level mercenary work. This was intelligence work. Military or corporate black ops.
Finally, he decided to flip the field.
They entered the old fabrication wing — a part of the academy mothballed years ago, its machines covered in dust-cloths, its lighting erratic. Vadel moved deeper, letting his boots scuff just enough to echo.
When he reached the far end, he stopped in front of a heavy, locked service door. He made a show of trying the panel.
The moment he heard the faintest shift of weight behind him —
He was already moving.
Pivot. Step. Draw.
The blade hummed softly in his hand as he crossed the space between them in three steps.
The figure didn't flinch, but they did retreat two paces, hands raised slightly — not in surrender, but in warning.
Up close, he could see more now. The mask wasn't a single solid surface — it was a segmented composite with embedded sensor nodes, each flickering faintly. The suit had no visible seams, no identifiers, nothing reflective.
And their eyes — if those were eyes behind the thin visor — were a muted, inhuman amber.
"Who sent you?" Vadel asked.
No reply.
Instead, the figure tilted their head, almost as if they were studying him now that they'd been caught in the open.
EON's voice was a whisper in his skull. "Their breathing pattern isn't human-standard. Too controlled. And… Vadel, that suit's from a Nyx-forge line. It's illegal in six systems."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning they're either very expensive muscle… or very expensive bait."
The figure's stance shifted — a telltale prelude to movement.
Vadel tightened his grip. "Try it."
For a heartbeat, neither of them moved. Then, with liquid precision, the figure dropped a small cylindrical object to the floor.
Smoke hissed out, thick and fast.
Vadel lunged forward — but by the time the haze cleared, they were gone.
---
He didn't return to his dorm.
Instead, he went upward — to the dome's interior maintenance girders. From here, he could see almost the entire campus at night, the security drones moving on fixed patrol arcs, the faint green markers of automated defense turrets embedded in the grounds.
"Why up here?" EON asked.
"Perspective. They've been studying me from vantage points. Time to use theirs against them."
He waited.
Thirty minutes later, the watcher appeared — not in the dome this time, but crossing one of the upper roof struts toward the main administrative tower. They moved quickly, almost carelessly now that they thought he was back in his quarters.
Vadel shadowed them from above, using the maintenance rails as a silent path. The distance was too great for EON to get a full ID, but he didn't need one yet.
The figure stopped at a sealed access hatch near the tower's base. A palm press. A faint shimmer as the hatch recognized their credentials — credentials they should not have.
They slipped inside.
---
The tower's interior was off-limits to almost everyone outside the highest-ranking faculty. It held the academy's central intelligence core, archive systems, and private communication arrays.
Vadel moved quickly, bypassing the hatch lock before it could reset. Inside, the air was cooler, sterile, and the lighting dim enough to make every shadow deep.
Ahead, the figure moved with clear familiarity, avoiding visible cams and stepping only on specific sections of flooring — likely to bypass silent pressure alarms.
They reached a tall, narrow chamber lined with crystalline data spires. At the far end, a single console pulsed faintly with pale blue light.
Vadel stayed behind a pillar, watching as they slid a wafer-thin device into the console's port. Lines of alien code spilled across the holographic display.
"EON," he murmured, "you're recording?"
"Every frame."
The code stream was fast — too fast for most human eyes to track — but EON's processing caught patterns.
"This isn't data theft," she said. "It's data insertion."
"Meaning they're planting something."
"Yes. A silent circuit — a ghost program designed to stay dormant until triggered. And Vadel… this one's not local. It's Nyx-coded."
---
The figure finished their work in less than a minute.
When they turned to leave, Vadel stepped out from cover.
Their head snapped toward him instantly, but instead of drawing a weapon, they tapped something on their wrist.
The console's light flared. The entire chamber's lighting shifted to crimson emergency mode.
And then Vadel understood —
The silent circuit wasn't just a sleeper program. It was also a diversion.
By the time the academy's automated security locked down the floor, the figure was already gone.
---
Later, back in his quarters, Vadel sat on the edge of his bed, blade resting across his knees.
EON's tone was sharper than usual. "That program's still running in the core. I couldn't override it without tripping the alarm system. And whatever it's designed to do… it's waiting."
"They wanted it there," Vadel said quietly.
"Yes. And they let you see them plant it. That's not a mistake."
He looked toward the window, where the city lights flickered faintly through the dome.
No — it wasn't a mistake.
It was an invitation.