A week into sword artistry training with Gabriel, and the progress was visible in the way progress is visible when you're looking for it — not dramatic, not sudden, but present in the small things. The way Levi's telestride entries were beginning to carry blade geometry that hadn't been there before. The way Sylvia's fire infusion was starting to anticipate the swing rather than follow it. The way Priscilla's spear, guided by her telekinesis, was developing patterns that were becoming recognisable as patterns rather than chaos.
Charlotte supervised their session while Gabriel was occupied with morning duties, correcting with the specificity of someone who had spent three years developing her own technique and understood exactly what they were trying to do.
Melissa appeared at the edge of the training area.
She stood there for a moment, watching, with the expression she wore when she was filing something. Then she walked toward them.
"Hate to interrupt," she said. "But King Gabriel, Colonel Theo, and I need to speak with you three. Come inside."
✦ ✦ ✦
The King's hall had the quality of a room designed for decisions — high ceilings, long table, the particular weight of a space where things got decided that mattered. Gabriel sat at the head. Colonel Theo was beside him, already standing, the posture of someone who had been waiting and was ready.
"Sit down," Gabriel said. "You're getting your first stealth mission."
The trio sat.
Theo didn't waste time. "A few days ago, the Kingdom of Levatia contacted us requesting an alliance. King Gabriel had reservations about Emperor Lyon — there's history there, and persistent reports that he rules through fear rather than service. But for the sake of Levatia's people, Gabriel sent an ambassador to open talks rather than refusing outright."
"Today," he continued, "we received a ransom message. Emperor Lyon is holding the ambassador. He's demanding one hundred billion Olympian pounds. He's given us three days."
The room was quiet.
"Your mission," Theo said, "is to infiltrate Levatia, locate the ambassador, and extract them before the deadline."
Levi looked at him. Then at Melissa. Then back at Theo. "You're giving this mission to us," he said.
"Yes."
"We're rookies. We've been MKs for less than a month. We've never run a stealth mission." He said it evenly, not as objection, as inventory. "Why?"
"Because you're rookies," Gabriel said. "Emperor Lyon knows Olympia's experienced agents by reputation. He doesn't know you. Three teenagers crossing into Levatia raise no flags — they're not a threat pattern anyone is watching for." He looked at Levi. "Your inexperience is the disguise."
Levi sat with this for a moment.
It was, he had to admit, clever.
"Sylvia's enhancement ability for physical operations," Theo continued. "Levi's speed and teleportation for extraction. Priscilla's spatial awareness and telekinesis for navigation and reconnaissance." He looked at each of them. "Your abilities are suited for this even if your experience isn't. And you'll have support."
"Mom." Sylvia looked at Melissa directly. "You're the one who suggested us."
"Yes," said Melissa.
"Why?"
Melissa looked at her daughter with the expression she wore when she was about to say something she meant completely. "Because my instinct tells me this mission will push you in a direction you need to go. Not just as fighters — as people who operate in a world that's more complicated than a myth attack." She paused. "And because I believe you can do it. That's not me being your mother. That's me being someone who has watched you train for two months and knows what I'm looking at."
Sylvia was quiet for a moment. Then she nodded once.
"We'll do it," said Levi.
Gabriel leaned back slightly, with the expression of someone who had expected this answer and was glad to receive it anyway. "Good. Let's talk about the rest."
✦ ✦ ✦
Colonel Theo was waiting in the HQ lobby with someone Levi didn't recognise.
The stranger was about their age — maybe a year older, hard to tell — with the particular quality of someone who occupied space without announcing themselves. He was standing slightly apart from Theo, arms at his sides, and when the trio came through the door he looked at them with an expression that gave nothing away and seemed perfectly comfortable giving nothing away indefinitely.
"This is Zarraz," Theo said. "He's accompanying you. He has a separate task in Levatia — classified, not your concern. He completes his task while you complete yours and you leave together."
"What's the task?" Levi asked.
Zarraz looked at him. Said nothing.
"Classified," Theo confirmed.
The trio looked at Zarraz. Zarraz looked at the trio. Levi tried the approach he'd used with Charlotte — direct eye contact, open expression, the posture of someone who was happy to wait.
Zarraz looked at the window.
"He's always like this before missions," Theo said. "Give him time."
After a moment, Levi grinned — not at Zarraz, just at the situation — and looked away. Sylvia did the same. Priscilla smiled at the ceiling.
Zarraz, in the window's reflection, very slightly smiled.
It lasted about half a second. Then his expression returned to its neutral setting. But it had happened.
"Melissa and I will be supervising," Theo said, moving on. "We'll handle the border security on the Olympian side once you're ready to extract. You cross from Gravitonia — our borders with Levatia are locked, but Gravitonia's aren't." He looked at them. "Armoury. Ten minutes. Then the Gate Portal."
✦ ✦ ✦
Graviton was the kind of city that made you recalibrate your sense of scale.
It rose from a high plateau — the buildings following the elevation changes of the rock rather than fighting them, the result being a city that climbed rather than spread, its towers at different heights and the streets between them running at angles that made compass directions approximate. From the window of the Graviton Military HQ, the view was mostly sky, with the city arranged below it like a deliberate composition.
"First time in another kingdom," Priscilla said, looking at it.
"Second for me," said Sylvia.
Levi looked at Zarraz. "You?"
Zarraz held up three fingers.
"Three missions in three different kingdoms and you're our age," Levi said.
Zarraz looked at the window. "They were classified."
"Of course they were."
The stealth department occupied two floors of the HQ's east wing — a practical space, more like a tailoring studio than anything military, staffed by people who looked at the four of them with the assessing eyes of professionals deciding what needed to change. Fake IDs were produced. Clothing was provided. Hair was adjusted with the efficiency of a team that had done this many times.
Levi looked at his ID.
"Steve Bell," he said.
"Problem?" the technician asked.
"No. Steve Bell. That's fine. That's — yes."
Sylvia held up hers. "Margret Halls."
"Classic," said Levi.
Priscilla held up hers last, with the expression of someone delivering news they had processed and accepted. "Karen Buskins."
There was a beat of silence.
Then Levi and Sylvia lost it — completely, simultaneously, the suppressed laugh of two people who had been holding it for exactly the right amount of time and could no longer.
"Karen," Sylvia managed.
"Buskins," said Levi.
"Bring me your manager," Priscilla said, in a voice of serene resignation. "This coffee is too hot."
Which made it significantly worse.
Colonel Theo watched this from across the room with the expression of a man updating his assessment of the situation. He turned to Melissa. "Are you certain these three are the right choice for a covert infiltration mission."
"Completely," said Melissa.
"They're laughing at their own aliases."
"The mission hasn't started yet. When it does, they'll be different." She looked at the three of them, still in the middle of the Karen joke, and her expression was one of the warmer ones. "Let them have this. They won't have many more chances to laugh for a while."
✦ ✦ ✦
Theo gathered them once the Levatian clothes were on and the IDs were memorised.
"Informant in the capital. I'm sending you coordinates — he'll have current intelligence on the ambassador's location and the emperor's security setup. Once you have what you need, find the ambassador, extract them, and move to the Olympia border crossing. Melissa and I will have cleared the security by the time you arrive." He looked at each of them. "Zarraz has his task. You complete yours independently. You leave together." A pause. "Questions?"
"What's the emperor like?" Levi asked.
Theo was quiet for a moment. "Intelligent. Paranoid. Has run Levatia through a combination of genuine administrative competence and systematic fear for fifteen years. He doesn't take hostages because he needs money — he takes them to establish what he can do." He looked at Levi. "Don't underestimate the situation based on the three-day window. He's already decided what happens if we don't comply. The timeline is theatre."
The room was quieter than it had been.
"Got it," said Levi.
They said goodbye to Theo and Zarraz — Zarraz gave them a look that was somewhere between acknowledgment and assessment, the look of someone revising an estimate — and then it was just the trio and Melissa in the corridor.
She looked at all three of them for a moment. Then she pulled them into a hug — the full version, the one with grip.
"I love you three," she said. "Come back." She let them go. "Call me if anything goes wrong. I mean that as an instruction, not a suggestion."
"We know," said Sylvia.
"Good." She looked at Levi last, with the open-door quality, the particular regard she reserved for the moments when she was saying more than she was saying. "Trust yourselves. You know more than you think you know."
He held her gaze for a moment. "We'll see you at the border."
She nodded. Walked away. Didn't look back, because that was also Melissa.
✦ ✦ ✦
The flight to Levatia took four hours.
Levatia's capital from the air looked organised in the way of places whose organisation had been imposed rather than grown — a grid of streets, buildings at uniform heights, the particular neatness of a city that had been told how to look. The airport was efficient and impersonal, their documents checked by officials who barely looked at them, three teenagers with unremarkable aliases and Levatian clothes returning nobody's attention.
The hotel was four stars, which Sylvia noted as questionable tradecraft and Levi noted as comfortable.
Their rooms were adjoining — Priscilla and Sylvia in one, Levi in the other, a door between them. They put their bags down and stood in the space for a moment, the specific feeling of being somewhere foreign without cover, the mission now real in a way the briefing had only approximated.
"Zarraz isn't here yet," Priscilla said.
"We don't wait," said Sylvia. "The informant is already at the coordinates. We go now, we tell Zarraz what we learn when we're back."
Levi checked the coordinates on his device. "Two kilometres. There's a diner."
"Good," said Sylvia. "I'm hungry."
"Same," said Levi.
Priscilla looked at both of them. "We are on a covert infiltration mission in a foreign kingdom with a three-day deadline and your primary response is that you're hungry."
"We can be hungry and professional at the same time," said Levi.
"Also the informant probably chose a diner so there's cover," said Sylvia. "It's tactical."
"It's not tactical."
"Karen," said Levi.
Priscilla pointed at him. "Don't."
They took an auto to the diner. The capital moved past the windows — the grid streets, the uniform buildings, the specific quality of a city that ran on compliance rather than energy. Levi watched it and thought about what Theo had said: *he takes hostages to establish what he can do.* Not money. Demonstration.
The diner was mid-range, busy at the lunch hour, the smell of it carrying through the door. They went in.
Levi scanned the room automatically — the MK habit, threat assessment as default — and found their informant before they'd been seated. A man in his forties at a corner booth, facing the door, nursing a coffee he'd been nursing for a while. He was looking at his device. He wasn't looking at it.
He'd clocked them when they walked in.
"Corner booth," Levi said quietly. "He's already seen us."
Sylvia didn't look. "Smile. We're tourists."
They sat down at the nearest table and picked up menus and looked like three teenagers who had come for lunch. The informant continued not-looking at his device. A waitress came.
The mission, in the most ordinary possible way, had begun.