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Kage, too, had mostly disappeared.
She’d seen him just once, at Skylab, standing in a far-off corridor speaking to a team member. Their eye had met and clashed. He’d jerked his chin to her, and she’d nodded and kept walking, her heart racing.
That had been all the contact they’d had all week, apart from the regular drops of delicious meals that mysteriously kept appearing in her suite. She ate them with some misgivings, missing him more and more each day.
Instinctively she knew he’d engineered his time away from her. He was giving them space to figure out their next steps. She appreciated it to some extent. However, having some context still didn’t take away her deep longing for him.
She also wanted to apologise for her words to him a few nights ago.
But still, he kept away, and she kept her confidence. Waiting for the right moment to reconnect.
Kage
He kept tabs on her from afar. He didn’t stalk her; he only occasionally checked in via Mirage.
She mainly seemed fine.
Interestingly, she’d bonded with Jarok.
He smiled, watching security footage from the club as she learnt how to create cocktails. She was having a ball and keeping herself occupied in her downtime, which was healthy in his books.
She seemed to be working through something. And Kage knew he had to let her.
On the other hand, he hounded Mirage daily on whether she’d tracked down Harlow’s necklace. The pendant was priceless and irreplaceable, and its theft had devastated his woman, from what Mirage had divulged.
Kage felt frustrated; he was determined to find the necklace but knew it would take work to track it down. So he pressed Mirage to use every resource and contact at The Sable Group’s disposal.
The AI reported that she’d extended her surveillance network significantly to locate the stolen jewellery. First, she’d started with the identity of the thief. All footage from the night revealed that the woman who’d stolen the necklace had disappeared into the Pika tunnels. From there, the lead went cold. Her identity, too, was hard to nail. Her face kept coming up as non-registered. This either meant someone had paid a shitload of schills to keep her off the official books or she was undocumented. Kage asked Mirage to do further analysis.
The jewellery search led Mirage into the dark web, a shadowy and secretive network of websites and forums hidden from the public eye. She scoured them for any mention of the necklace but found nothing. At one point, a group of anonymous hackers aligned to a dark web jewellery exchange threatened Mirage for asking too many questions. She’d counter-hacked them, forcing them to change identities and locations to hide from her. It was useless; now that Mirage knew who they were, she’d keep tabs on them indefinitely.
Kage contacted a network of smugglers known to trade in high-worth goods. He offered them a generous reward for any information about the necklace, but they’d been wary and uncooperative.
Still, Kage and Mirage were unrelenting. They knew the necklace was out there and were determined to find it.
However, that was just one item on Kage’s lengthy to-do list. There was so much more to tackle.
The Rinnax clones, for one. Their motes had started transmitting tons of beautiful data almost instantly.
Mirage, Riv and himself had waded through the floods of data and were today presenting their findings to Xion and Zane. Kainan had sent his apologies. He was needed at a Defence meeting on Dunia.
Kage patched into a holo call with his fellow Riders.
Riv led with the intel he’d discovered so far. ‘It seems our raid on their HQ thoroughly confounded Rinnax & Co. Of course; they’re blaming each other, mainly Ruben, whom they’ve comm’d with wild accusations of not keeping them abreast of our movements - though how thekinaicould have ever sourced that info is a moot point. They’re also clearly upset at losing their precious corporate data and two soldier clones.’
‘They want blood for their fallen,’ Xion murmured.
‘I’d be the same,’ Kage agreed. ‘I’d mercilessly go after anyone who harmed any of you.’
After the minor altercation at The Osirian, Ruben had disappeared from Skylab. Kage had stripped him of all access to any Sable Group building or office. He’d set a drone dragnet of a few klicks around their complex to prevent any Rinnax clone or associate from getting close. It’d take a powerful hack to beat the high-tech airborne army.
The calls Mirage tracked between the Rinnax clones showed Ruben was somewhere in the tunnels under Eden II - waiting to do exactly what - the Riders still had to discover.
His clone brothers, however, had been meeting with Rhesian officials at the Royal Palace on Enia. The data didn’t give more details as to whom. It just confirmed someone high up in the royal house was invested heavily in a working relationship with Rinnax Holdings.
‘The next step is to tap Rhesia’s palace comm lines,’ Riv said.
‘Controversial brother,’ Zane said. ‘For that, we need Kainan’s approval. And I’m not sure he’ll give it to us. It’s a massive intrusion into the privacy of one of The Sable Group’s closest allies. Kainan would need to come clean to the King before we even attempted such a move.’
