CHAPTER 133: THE FIRST TRACE

The workshop was completely different from the military room.

Her lab was full of life and energy. Blueprints and half-finished projects were stacked on every surface. Copper wires lay across the floor. The air hummed with the sound of many runic devices clicking and whirring.

The team gathered around her central workbench. It was a massive piece of black stone, marked with glowing lines.

"Okay, a frontal assault is out," Seraph said, her voice cutting through the buzz of the lab. "The Bureau has too many potential hideouts. We’d be chasing shadows for years."

Draven leaned against a metal pillar, his arms crossed. He looked completely out of place, like a war machine dropped into a mad scientist’s lab. "So we’re just supposed to wait for them to make a mistake? I don’t like it. They’ve had weeks to hide."

"We’re not waiting. We’re hunting," Vanessa said, not looking up from a swirling holographic schematic she was manipulating with her fingertips. "But you can’t hunt what you can’t see. We need a breadcrumb. A starting point."

Seraph nodded in agreement, her gaze landing on Jonah. "The arena attack. The medics who got to you first. They weren’t Academy personnel. They were Bureau."

Jonah closed his eyes, his mind replaying the chaos of that day. The roar of the crowd, the explosion, Draven’s armor shattering... and then the sharp, sterile feeling of a device pressed against his arm.

"I remember," he said, his voice quiet. "They had a high-tech diagnostic tool. I didn’t get a good look at it, but..." He trailed off, trying to recall the hazy memory.

Vanessa stopped her work, turning her full attention to him. Her eyes were bright with focus. "Jonah, think. Anything you remember could be the key. What did it look like? What did it feel like?"

He focused, pushing past the pain and confusion of the memory. "It was... sleek. Not heavy. It felt cold, and it made a low, humming sound. When they used it, there was a flash of blue light."

That was all he had. It felt like nothing.

But to Vanessa, it was everything.

A slow smile spread across her face. "A low hum and a flash of blue light," she repeated, her mind clearly racing. "Perfect."

Draven grunted. "Perfect? That describes half the magical gadgets in this city."

"No, it doesn’t," Vanessa shot back, a spark of excitement in her voice. She began pacing, her hands gesturing wildly as she talked. "Think about it. Jonah’s blood is unique. His energy signature is an anomaly. Any device capable of extracting and stabilizing a sample of it wouldn’t just be a standard medical scanner. It would have to emit a highly specialized, incredibly powerful runic frequency just to keep the sample from degrading."

She spun around, pointing a finger at Jonah. "Your power is like a contained supernova. To handle it, their device would have to be very strong. And strong things, no matter how small, makes a lot of noise."

Jonah’s eyes widened in understanding. "Magical noise."

"Exactly!" Vanessa exclaimed, practically vibrating with energy. She dashed over to her main console, her fingers flying across the holographic keyboard. Tap-tap-clack-swoosh. "Everything magical leaves an energy fingerprint. The Academy logs every single magical energy surge on campus, down to a first-year lighting a candle. All I have to do is look through the logs from the day of the attack and find a fingerprint that doesn’t belong."

A massive screen came alive on the wall, filled with scrolling code and energy charts. Thousands upon thousands of signatures, each one a magical event that had happened that day.

"This is going to take a while," Seraph noted, her tone calm and steady.

"Not as long as you think," Vanessa said, her eyes glued to the screen. "I know what to look for."

For an hour, only two sounds filled the lab: machine hums and Vanessa’s rapid clicks. Draven stood like a statue. He was impatient, but also respectful. Jonah watched, fascinated. Vanessa filtered through an ocean of data. Her focus was absolute. She was in her element.

She cross-referenced energy types, filtered out known Academy frequencies, and discarded thousands of low-power signatures. The huge flow of data got smaller and smaller.

Then, to a single line.

Click.

The screen froze. In the center of it all was one anomalous frequency. It was a complex, rough spike of energy, very different from the Academy’s smooth, clean signals.

"There," Vanessa whispered in triumph. She pointed a trembling finger at the screen. "That’s it. That’s our ghost."

Jonah stepped closer, staring at the line of code. It felt strange, seeing the energy of the machine that had stolen a part of him laid bare on a screen.

"Can you trace it?" Seraph asked, her voice tight with anticipation.

"Already on it," Vanessa replied, then began a trace protocol. A map of the nation quickly expanded on the screen. From the Academy, a glowing red line extended, tracking its target.

The team watched in tense silence as the line bypassed military bases and known government buildings. It wasn’t heading for an obvious Bureau stronghold.

Instead, it snaked its way back toward the lower levels of the capital. Back toward the sprawling, industrial districts. Back toward Jonah’s old life.

It was heading for Cinderfall City.

The line finally stopped, blinking over a massive skyscraper that stood out among the factories and warehouses.

A name and a corporate logo faded into view on the screen.

Aethelred Bio-Mechanics

"Engineering a Better Future"

The team stared at the name. A biotech firm. A legitimate, known government contractor specializing in medical technology. It was the perfect cover.

"Hiding in plain sight," Jonah murmured, a cold feeling creeping into his stomach.

Draven pushed himself off the pillar, his expression hardening into a grim mask of determination. "So they have a name. What’s the plan?"

Seraph’s eyes were fixed on the screen, a predator that had finally locked onto its prey.

"The plan," she said, her voice dangerously calm. "Is that we now know where to look."