The train corridor was silent at this hour.
Most travelers were still asleep or watching the landscape from their cabins. Morning light slid across the floor in regular patches through each window they passed.
Yuma and Enji moved quickly without running, with that way of people who don't want to draw attention and who know that running is exactly what you shouldn't do.
"Has your father ever talked to you about the Phantom Twelve?" said Enji quietly.
Yuma thought as he walked.
"Vaguely. Once. I was maybe ten."
"And?"
"He told me they were powerful people. Really powerful. Mercenaries who have a goal and do everything to achieve it. No exceptions."
Enji glanced at him sideways.
"Your father was talking to you about world-class criminals when you were ten."
"My father talked to me about everything. That was his way of raising me."
"And he knew what he was talking about?"
Yuma hesitated for a fraction of a second.
"Enji," he said. "I've never really talked to you about my father."
"No."
"My father is a hunter. And he's..." He searched for the right word. "He's at least as powerful as Reishin. Maybe more. By a lot."
Enji stopped.
Yuma stopped too.
They looked at each other in the narrow train corridor with the sound of the rails underneath and the morning light coming in from the side.
"Above Reishin," said Enji slowly. "By a lot."
"Yes."
"What's his name?"
"Yami Sekyhiro."
Enji repeated the name in his head. Turned it from every angle. Searched for something that matched in everything he knew about hunters, guilds, rankings.
Nothing.
"I don't know that name."
"I know. But he exists."
A moment.
"I believe you," said Enji simply.
Yuma nodded. That wasn't nothing.
"So what my father told me about the Phantom," continued Yuma, picking up the walk again, "is that they always have a precise objective. And they do everything to reach it. No improvisation. No unnecessary detours."
"And you think their goal isn't Vantarcity."
"I think their goal is the train itself."
Enji thought about that as he walked.
"That's possible," he said after a moment. "But how do we know what to look for?"
Yuma shrugged slightly with the air of someone for whom the answer was obvious.
"We look for rich or important people. Compartments with guards. Places where there's something worth protecting."
Enji looked at him.
Then looked straight ahead.
"That's... logical," he said.
"You sound surprised."
"A little."
"I have my moments."
"Clearly."
They kept going.
"We have to watch out for Smith," said Yuma. "And the Phantom. Both at the same time."
"I know."
"That's a lot."
"I know that too."
They started searching.
The train was long. Sixteen cars from the restaurant to the rear. They started with the first-class cars — the wider corridors, the larger cabins, the more discreet travelers. Nothing unusual. Sleeping people, families, businessmen with their laptops.
Car seven. Car eight. Car nine.
Car ten had something different about it.
Not immediately visible — a feeling first, that way the air changes texture in a place where people are on alert without showing it. Then getting closer to the far end of the car, two men standing on either side of the connecting door to the next car.
Not train employees. The posture, the clothes, the way their hands stayed free and their eyes continuously covered the corridor.
Guards.
Yuma and Enji stopped mid-corridor.
Looked at each other.
"We found it," said Yuma very quietly.
"Looks like it," said Enji.
And at that exact moment a hand grabbed Yuma's shoulder from behind.
Yuma had felt it coming.
Not much in advance — a fraction of a second, the air displacement in the corridor, something that wasn't moving in the normal direction of people walking. He pivoted, blocked the incoming wrist with his left forearm and raised his right in guard.
Enji reacted simultaneously.
Whistling Blade.
The thin horizontal sheet of ice spread in an arc in front of them, not to injure, to block, to create distance.
The guards at the far end of the corridor turned around.
Started walking toward them.
And the man behind them raised both hands in a gesture of surrender with the expression of someone who found the situation slightly excessive.
Nathan Smith.
Cigarette at the corner of his lips. Hands raised. The look that said clearly he had seen considerably more dangerous things before breakfast.
"...Cooperate," he said.
The guards were now three meters away.
"...What's going on?" said one of them, looking alternately at Nathan, the slowly melting ice on the corridor floor, and the two teenagers in fighting stance in the first-class corridor.
Nathan lowered his hands slowly.
"...They were playing," he said.
The guard looked at him.
"...Friends' kids," Nathan added, with the tone of someone improvising a lie with absolute conviction and total indifference to its credibility.
The guard looked at Enji. Looked at the ice that was still melting on the floor.
"...Yes," said Enji quickly. "We were playing."
Yuma hesitated one second too many.
Nathan shot him a look.
"...Yes," said Yuma. "We were playing."
The guard looked at them both for another moment with the expression of someone who isn't convinced but has other priorities. Then he went back to his position with his colleague.
"...Get out of here," he said over his shoulder.
They got out.
Nathan nudged them gently into the adjacent corridor with the elaborate patience of a man who conserves his words for the moments when they actually serve a purpose.
When they were out of the guards' range he stopped and looked at them both.
"...How did you get out of the cabin?"
"...It wasn't very complicated," said Yuma.
Enji was looking at an interesting point on the corridor wall.
Nathan looked at them alternately. Took a drag.
"...Not very complicated," he repeated.
"...No."
Nathan exhaled the smoke slowly. Something passed through his expression — not admiration, something between irritation and a respect he didn't want to show.
"...I told you not to play detective."
"...Shouldn't have bothered us in the first place," said Yuma.
Nathan looked at him.
Looked at Enji.
Looked at the corridor behind them in the direction of car ten.
He took a long drag.
Let it out slowly.
"...Come with me," he said.
The World Authority agents' cabin was different from ordinary travel cabins — smaller, converted into a workspace, with a portable screen fixed against the partition, files, communication equipment, and that particular smell of cold coffee and paperwork of places where people have been working too long without sleeping enough.
Nathan sat down. Lit a cigarette. Looked at one of his agents standing near the screen who was pretending not to notice the smoke.
"...Go find the two agents these kids put down," he said.
The agent straightened.
"...Yes, Captain."
He went out.
Nathan smoked in silence for a few seconds. Looked at Yuma. Looked at Enji. Looked at the ceiling. Came back to the two boys.
"...Alright," he said finally. "Tell me what you found. Then we'll figure out what to do with you."
"...No," said Yuma.
Nathan looked up.
"...That's our request, not yours."
"...Yuma."
Enji's voice. Not sharp — measured, with that undertone of urgency he never expressed directly but that came through in the way the words came out.
"...Lives might be at stake. Telling them what we found right now is smarter than trying to negotiate."
Yuma looked at him. Something in his posture relaxed slightly — not completely, not without resistance, but enough.
"...Fine," he said. "Halfway."
Nathan waited.
Yuma explained. The idea of looking for protected compartments, car ten, the guards, the logic behind it. How they had eliminated the cars one by one, what they had observed, what it implied about the nature of the Phantom's mission on the train.
Nathan listened without interrupting.
When Yuma finished, Nathan smoked in silence for a moment.
"...You came up with all of this?" he said to Enji.
Enji nodded toward Yuma.
"...No. That was him."
Nathan looked at Yuma.
"...You're not as dumb as you look."
"...Obviously, grandpa."
Nathan let something go that resembled the beginning of a laugh — short, controlled, but real.
"...You're not wrong," he said. He set his cigarette on the edge of the table with the precision of a gesture repeated too many times. "But if we move now we raise suspicions. The Phantom know we're on the train. If we move too early they pull back and we lose the trail."
"...And if we wait too long they succeed," said Yuma.
"...Exactly," said Enji.
Nathan looked at them.
One of the agents knocked on the half-open door.
"...Captain. I finally have access to what's inside the protected car."
"...Put it on screen."
The agent connected something to the portable screen and brought up a file — car schematics, passenger list, transport manifest.
And began to explain.
Car eleven was registered as a private transit car. It contained a single passenger — a man by the name of Édouard Mireille, advisor to the mana resources ministry for seven years, in transit to Vantarcity for a classified international meeting. In his luggage, according to intercepted intelligence, several files relating to global mana reserves, unmapped dungeons, and illegally circulating artifacts. Files whose value on the black market exceeded several hundred thousand euros by current estimates.
The cabin was silent for a few seconds.
"...Mireille," said Nathan quietly.
Something in his expression changed — not surprise, something tighter than that.
"...You know this person?" said Enji.
"...Well enough to know that if the Phantom get their hands on those files the consequences are going to go way beyond a simple theft."
Enji looked at the screen. Looked at Nathan. Looked at Yuma.
"...Can I propose something?"
Nathan turned his eyes toward him with that serious and slightly impatient look of someone who is listening because he hasn't yet decided not to.
"...Talk."
One of the agents straightened up.
"...Captain, with all due respect — these two aren't cleared for an operation at this level. This is completely outside of —"
"...Sometimes an outside perspective is useful," said Nathan without looking at him.
The agent sat back down.
Enji spoke.
His plan used something the World Authority agents didn't have — the mobility of two teenagers with no uniform, no badge, nothing that identified them as a threat in the context of the train. The Phantom were watching the agents. They weren't watching ordinary passengers.
Yuma would enter car eleven from the roof — the exterior service platforms allowed passage between cars without going through the interior doors. He would set Archer to passive surveillance mode, the goggles reading mana flows, and transmit the Phantom's positions in real time via an agreed signal with the agents posted at both ends of the car.
Meanwhile Enji would stay in the corridor of car ten on the rear side, apparently just another passenger, with the goggles mapping the mana signatures of everyone in the zone. His role was to anticipate the Phantom's movements before they happened and alert Nathan.
The World Authority agents, for their part, would not move until the signal. Invisible. Waiting. But ready.
The signal: two brief drops in ambient temperature — three degrees below normal for two seconds, produced by Enji's ice mana, discreet, detectable only by instruments that knew what to look for.
When the Phantom moved, everyone moved at the same time.
The silence in the cabin when Enji finished.
The agents were looking at each other. One of them had stopped taking notes halfway through the explanation and was looking at Enji with something that wasn't quite disbelief but was close to it.
"...That's incredible," said Yuma.
Nathan said nothing for a moment.
He picked up his cigarette. Smoked it down to the end. Ground it out.
"...The plan is good," he said.
He looked at Enji.
"...But the temperature signal in the roof partitions will interfere with my agents' mana sensors in car ten. Use a mana pressure variation instead — a localized compression lasting two seconds, below the threshold of a combat technique. My instruments will read it without interference."
Enji looked at Nathan.
And something assembled in his head — the calm with which Nathan had listened, the precision of the correction, the way he had modified exactly the right detail in exactly the right place.
He had already thought of everything.
Not everything identical — but the broad strokes. He had just been waiting to see if anyone in the room would arrive at the same conclusions he had.
"...Yes," said Enji simply. "That's better."
Nathan stood up.
"...We execute the plan," he said to the agents.
The agents began to deploy.
Nathan stopped in front of Yuma and Enji.
Looked at them.
"...You do exactly what I tell you. Nothing more. Nothing improvised."
"...Understood," said Enji.
"...Understood," said Yuma.
Nathan looked at them one more second with the expression of someone who isn't entirely convinced but has made his decision.
Then he turned toward the door.
"...And if you die," he said from the doorway, "that's not my problem."
He walked out.
End of Chapter 25