#### **Chapter 2: The Signal**
Thousands of miles away, in the sterile, over-lit belly of a university library in the United States, Tarayashi Kuro was committing a federal crime. He sat hunched over a laptop, one hand shoveling cheap noodles into his mouth while his eyes scanned cascading lines of code. To anyone who glanced over, he was just another student cramming for finals, a black-and-white hoodie pulled over his head. The stylized black mask with its white "V" logo was tucked away in his pocket, a formality for the field, not the campus he used as his digital command center.
He was seventeen, a multi-millionaire with student loans, and his brain was currently rerouting a CIA satellite to piggyback its signal for a few milliseconds, just long enough to punch a hole through a W.A.O. firewall. Primary school had been boring. This was slightly less so.
"Hey, Kuro!"
The voice, pitched at approximately 112 Hz, came from his left. Kuro's noodle-lift froze. *Subject: female, classmate, name… irrelevant. Pupil dilation: 3.2mm. Posture indicates non-aggressive social inquiry. Probability of follow-up question regarding upcoming exam: 87.4%. Optimal response latency: 0.6 seconds.*
His own internal clock told him 1.1 seconds had already passed. An eternity. He was lagging.
*ERROR 408: RESPONSE TIME EXCEPTION.*
He turned his head slowly, his expression a blank canvas. "Hey," he managed, the single word feeling like a monumental social transaction.
The girl smiled, undeterred. "Are you coming to the study group tonight? We're going over quantum mechanics."
*Subject matter… trivial. Social bonding ritual… inefficient.* His fingers danced across his keyboard, decrypting the final data packet. He'd found it. A faint signal from a W.A.O. courier, scheduled to move through the Zurich Hauptbahnhof in less than twelve hours.
"I have… other material to review," Kuro said, his eyes already back on the screen. The girl shrugged and walked away. He didn't notice. The data was spooling out now: train schedules, security patrols, facial recognition profiles. He isolated the target's dossier, compressed it, and encrypted it with a key only one other person could open.
He sent the signal. The single, vibrating pulse to the burner phone in Bern.
His brother would handle the rest. Kuro leaned back, popping a cold piece of noodle into his mouth. Planetary crusts follow predictable stress fractures. Human social cues do not. This was easier.