CHAPTER 67: MEETING (1)

Lucen almost smiled. "You gave me the shove."

"I expected another month."

"You should stop expecting things."

For a moment, neither said anything. Just silence, steady and level, like both of them understood too well what this meant. Then Varik said, "You still holding your cover?"

Lucen looked toward the far window. The curtain was still slightly open, but the glass reflected nothing but a tired version of himself.

"Barely."

"Anyone asking questions?"

"Not out loud."

"Keep it that way. We’ll be in touch."

"That’s it? No instructions?"

"You already know what to do."

Lucen’s eyes narrowed faintly. "So I just sit and wait."

Varik’s voice dipped, amused but not mocking. "You think I’d give a job like this to someone who waits?"

Then the line cut out.

The laminate flashed once, then dimmed. Dead again. Or at least dormant.

Lucen stared at it for another second before sliding it back into the drawer. He locked it. Turned the key. Let his hand rest on the handle for just a second longer than necessary.

His system chimed in the corner of his vision.

[New Contact Logged: Aensyr Protocol]

[Status: Standby – Monitor Enabled]

He didn’t react. Just looked at the screen until it faded on its own, then leaned back against the desk and exhaled.

No more pretending.

No more shrinking into a class badge that was never his.

Whatever Varik had planned next, it wouldn’t be small.

Lucen didn’t mind.

He was done playing small.

—

Lucen straightened, stretched one shoulder back until it popped, then stepped toward the edge of the room. No pacing. Just movement. Quiet, steady. His hand ran along the windowsill, and for a second he almost considered sitting down.

The system didn’t ping. No spell updates. No drift alerts. Just silence.

Then his phone vibrated.

Not a full buzz. Just a short, clipped tap of haptic feedback, barely enough to notice if you weren’t expecting it.

Lucen pulled the device from his coat.

Unregistered sender. No name. No ID trace. But the message was short. Clean. Familiar enough that he didn’t need confirmation.

[You wanted real work. Bring your gear. South tier. 19th junction access. 22 minutes.]

No signature.

No follow-up.

Just the city district, a location, and a countdown.

Lucen stared at it for a second, thumb hovering over the screen. He didn’t reply. Didn’t ask what kind of job. He knew how this worked. If Varik was the kind of man to send calendar invites, they wouldn’t be having this conversation.

He pocketed the phone. Crossed the room in three strides and knelt by the gear case beneath the desk.

Most of his stuff was already sorted. Gloves. Dampener rings. Tool strap. Chalk box. Two focus prisms he never used, but liked having anyway.

He clipped the strap, slid the lock, and stood.

This wasn’t a casual drift run. He could feel it in the way the message was phrased. No drift tag, no emergency code. Just a number and a time. The kind of thing you only send when the real briefing starts face to face.

Lucen swung his coat off the rack and tugged it on without slowing.

He grabbed a mana bar on the way out. One bite, dry and dense. Taste like powdered iron and old ginger. Better than it smelled.

He locked the door behind him and took the stairs.

Elevators were too slow when your pulse had already started planning three spells ahead.

—

The stairs echoed under his boots.

Each step hit with a dull thud, metal-framed concrete ringing low. Lucen didn’t bother bracing himself on the rail, just moved. Fluid, clipped, like his body already knew the route even if he didn’t know the job.

Outside, the air smelled like static again.

Not the sharp bite of a drift rupture. Just the lingering charge of something unsettled. Something heavy in the wind. The kind of pressure that made people duck their heads without realizing why.

Lucen didn’t duck.

He crossed the main street at a diagonal and slipped between two kiosks where the shutters were still only half-secured. Someone cursed behind him about a lost crate. He didn’t look back.

The access route wasn’t far. Not if you moved like you meant it.

Two streets over, a pack of vendors was still cleaning up from the earlier chaos. Glass being swept into bags. Someone rewiring a light post. A clerk arguing with a field mage over compensation. The mage looked ready to hex someone, which meant things were back to normal.

Lucen passed them without a word.

He pulled the hood on his coat low—not to hide, just to think. The junction Varik had listed wasn’t a known deployment gate.

Not a training run zone. South tier meant outside city patrol perimeter. Fringe-adjacent. Off-record.

’Underground job. No guild oversight. No medals.’

The way he liked it.

He hopped the rail at the next tramline and cut through a service corridor half-blocked by crates.

Two joggers turned as he passed. One of them muttered something about "idiot casters thinking they own the streets."

Lucen smiled to himself. Didn’t slow down.

He hit the perimeter stair with eleven minutes left and started down.

The smell changed.

Dust and copper. Cool air from below. Not a full drift scent, but the ghost of one, like someone had bottled the tail end of a rift signature and spilled it across old steel.

Lights flickered overhead. No sirens. No noise.

He liked it better that way.

Lucen reached the bottom of the stair and stepped through the cracked access door. Someone had scratched out the city maintenance glyph and replaced it with a new sigil, tri-line, inverted.

He touched it once with two fingers.

The wall clicked open.

[South Tier – 19th Junction Access Confirmed]

Lucen stepped through.

Ahead, the corridor was dark. Bare-bulb light. Hum of distant mana converters. No voices yet.

But someone was waiting.

He could feel it.

He kept walking.

—

The hallway curved once, then dropped into a wide, square tunnel.

Lucen slowed.

A figure stood ahead. One boot on a low pipe. Arms crossed. Back against the wall like he’d been there ten minutes longer than necessary.

Varik.

No coat this time. Tactical black undersuit. Sleeves rolled to the elbow. The scar on his neck more visible here under the pale light. One of the bulbs above him flickered like it knew better.

He didn’t move as Lucen approached.

Lucen stopped two paces short.

"New outfit," he said.