Date: 23rd July 2026
Location: North Campus Café / Corridors of London Met
Time: 09:00 AM BST
The thud of Dexter's boots faded into the ambient morning hum of the student lounge.
The atmosphere at the corner table didn't relax. It curdled.
Professor Vincy didn't pick up his coffee. His hand stayed exactly where it was, his manicured fingers hovering mere millimetres above the sticky plastic surface. He looked as if touching the table would transmit a fatal vibration back to the "intern" who had just walked away.
His breathing usually a perfectly controlled mechanism was shallow and uneven.
"Vincy," Blanche whispered.
His voice was hollow. It sounded like a cold draught blowing through an empty cathedral. "You look like a corpse. It's quite unseemly for a man of your standing."
Vincy slowly withdrew his trembling hand. He tucked it deep into the pocket of his tailored blazer to hide the tremor.
"That wasn't an intern, Blanche." Vincy swallowed, his throat tight. " Pryce is a genius. A rogue architect playing at being a Creator. But that... that void standing behind him?"
Vincy shook his head. "I have spent decades training the global elite. I have trained the kind of monsters who can talk casually to a being like you. But that boy? My instincts didn't even bother telling me to fight. They just told me I was already dead."
Vincy's eyes darted nervously to the empty space near the water fountain.
The localized Wi-Fi router in the café booth above them was still struggling to reboot. The digital signal had been shredded by a physical presence that simply shouldn't exist in a Level 1.0 world.
"If I had moved... if I had so much as twitched toward Pryce, I would have died in front of my own student," Vincy hissed, his voice raspy. "I would have been erased before I could draw a breath. How is a monster like that operating under the Council's nose?"
Blanche offered a thin, unsettling smile. He leaned back against the vinyl booth, staring up at the ceiling tiles as if reading the hidden ley lines of the building.
"Dexter is simply Dexter," Blanche murmured. "He genuinely doesn't know what he is yet. That is exactly why he is so dangerous."
Blanche tilted his head. "I remember training him when he was a child in the facility. To him, the conditioning was just a regular training camp. He never felt the weight of the Chaos I was carving into his soul. He is entirely unique. He isn't like the others."
Blanche's dark eyes gleamed. "He is the absolute silence right after the scream."
Vincy exhaled a long, shaky breath.
The cold terror was still in his veins, but it was slowly being pushed down by an overwhelming need for a very strong drink. He looked at Blanche, trying to rebuild his professional academic mask. It felt like holding up a wet paper shield against a storm.
"Do you actually miss him?" Vincy asked, his voice brittle. "Your prize student? Or are you just satisfied seeing him haunt these university halls like a ghost?"
Blanche didn't answer. He just watched a single dust mote dance in a shaft of morning light.
"I miss the pub," Vincy muttered, checking his watch with a jerky movement. "Are we still going tonight? I need something stronger than this lukewarm dross to erase the lingering feeling of standing next to that thing."
Vincy shivered. "It felt like standing next to Death itself."
"The pub sounds nostalgic," Blanche replied vaguely, his eyes narrowing as he looked past Vincy's shoulder. "But we appear to have company."
The tense atmosphere of the booth was punctured by the sound of shuffling leather shoes and a cheerful voice.
"Oh! Mr. Pryce and that very tall young man left so quickly, I didn't even get to offer them the rest!"
Professor Nolan appeared at the edge of their table, beaming brightly.
He was holding a slightly greasy paper bag. The sweet scent of artificial citrus wafted from it.
"Professor Vincy! And... young man!" Nolan chirped, entirely blind to the murderous tension in the air. "I have some lovely lemon drizzle cake left over from the staff room. It's remarkably moist today. Would you gentlemen like a piece? It seems a waste to let it go to the pigeons."
The silence that followed was absolute.
Vincy looked down at the lemon cake as if it were a radioactive biohazard. Blanche didn't even turn his head.
"Nolan," Vincy said. His voice was flat. "Not right now. Get out of my sight."
"Oh, but it's a small celebration! For the students' academic progress "
Vincy and Blanche stood up from the booth in perfect unison.
They didn't say another word. They simply stepped around him, leaving the boring professor standing completely alone in the middle of the crowded lounge, holding his greasy paper bag of cake.
Time: 09:30 AM BST
Vincy didn't look back.
The lemon cake was a grotesque triviality in a world that had just tilted on its hidden axis.
As he and Blanche strode through the arched corridors of London Met, the cold stone walls seemed to press in on them. Vincy's phone chimed in his pocket. It was a dissonant tone reserved for top-tier encrypted transmissions.
He pulled the sleek device from his blazer. The screen displayed the gold-embossed sigil of the New Order Council.
[MESSAGE ENCRYPTED: EYES ONLY] [SENDER: CEO – NEW ORDER EXOTERICA] [SUBJECT: THE SHARD GALA – PROJECT ASCENSION]
Vincy's thumb hovered over the biometric scanner. A flicker of data, and the decrypted text manifested.
"Vincy. The board is set. We are hosting a private gala at The Shard on the 28th to celebrate the beta-integration of the Aether-Link servers." "We've detected a statistical irregularity in South London. The numbers are impolite. A startup calling themselves TimeLink is harvesting data ahead of our schedule." "The CEO requires the Architect, Mason Pryce. He profiles perfectly as a biological buffer for the new system launch. His mind is tuned to the frequency. We simply need to reformat him into a permanent node." "Draft a procurement strategy using your mentor access. Play on his academic vanity. If he declines the invitation, extraction teams are on standby. Full metropolitan integration is projected by 00:00."
Vincy felt a cold, oily sensation curdle in his gut.
The CEO literally wanted to turn Pryce into a cushion. A living battery to absorb the initial shock of the global system launch. It was a death sentence disguised as an RSVP.
"The vultures are circling," Vincy hissed, handing the phone to Blanche. "They think Pryce is just a lucky amateur. They want to use him as padding for the system's expansion."
Vincy scoffed softly. "They have no idea they are trying to put a leash on a supernova."
Blanche scanned the text. A needle-like smile touched his pale lips.
"The CEO is many things, Vincy. But he is not a man of subtle nuance."
Blanche handed the phone back. "He sees a high-INT asset on a spreadsheet and instantly thinks 'disposable infrastructure'. He doesn't realize that by the time he tries to plug Pryce into the Shard's mainframe, Pryce might already own the building."
"The Council is demanding a tactical plan," Vincy muttered, his mind racing through the variables. "If I don't give them a way to capture Pryce, they will suspect my loyalty. But if I do it... I'm leading my most dangerous student into a digital slaughterhouse."
Vincy paused, his dark eyes narrowing in the dim corridor light.
"Or, perhaps... this is exactly the diversion Pryce needs. If the New Order is focused on recruiting him, they won't be looking at the backdoor he is currently kicking wide open in Brixton."
Vincy stopped in front of his heavy oak office door. His erratic breathing stabilized back into a cold, clinical rhythm.
"I will give them exactly what they want. A flawless plan to utilize the student."
Vincy smirked, the fear replaced by calculation. "I will tell them Pryce is deeply vain. That he craves validation from the establishment. I will suggest they offer him a 'Special Research Fellowship' at the Gala. It's perfect bait for a boy who looks like a starving scholar."
"And the extraction teams?" Blanche asked, his voice airy. "The Council's private militia doesn't play with lemon cake, Vincy. If they scent his blood, they will tear Brixton apart brick by brick."
"Let them try," Vincy replied coldly. A flicker of his old arrogance returned to his eyes. "By the time the Hounds manage to breach that basement, Pryce will have already moved the goalposts."
Vincy pushed his office door open. "I will draft the tactical report now. I will gladly play the part of the dutiful Professor, hand-delivering my protégé to the wolves. But I will make sure the cushion they are expecting is made entirely of barbed wire and static."
Vincy sat at his mahogany desk and began typing. His fingers flew across the holographic interface with predatory efficiency.
[REPLY TO: CEO – NEW ORDER]
"Assessment: Pryce is intellectually superior but physically fragile. Highly susceptible to academic validation. Recommend formal invitation to the Shard Gala under the guise of presenting a 'Technological Merit Award'." "I will facilitate the meeting. Keep extraction units strictly out of sight; the asset is skittish. I will ensure he is positioned exactly where the system needs him. Consider the Architect's resources liquidated into our portfolio."
Vincy hit 'Send' and watched the encrypted data dissolve into the ether.
He looked up at Blanche. The reflection of the sent screen was still glowing faintly in the boy's void-like pupils.
"Tonight, we go to the pub, Blanche," Vincy said, his voice as sharp as a scalpel. "We will drink to the New Order. We will drink to the Shard Gala. And we will drink to the catastrophe they are about to invite into their own living room."
Vincy smiled a vicious smile. "If Pryce wants to play the Cheat Genius, I might as well give him the biggest stage in London to perform his final act."
Blanche chuckled. The wet, unsettling sound echoed through the empty office.
"You really are a terrible mentor, Vincy. It's quite admirable."
Blanche turned toward the door. "I suppose I should start sharpening my own tools for the party. A VIP gala at the Shard... how terribly posh. I genuinely wonder if Death prefers vintage champagne or a heavy red wine?"
Vincy didn't answer.
He calmly adjusted his blazer. The tremor in his hand was finally gone. It was replaced entirely by the cold, exhilarating thrill of a desperate man who had just knowingly lit a short fuse on a mountain of gunpowder.