Shackled Exalted

Emil

Emil stared blankly at the textbook. His eyes glazed over the words, unfocused as he mulled over his discoveries from last night's patrol into the Second Sector.

The Sixth Hidden Laboratory was located in the plain sight. It was a large compound situated at the outer edges of the slums. The premise was fenced in with fortified walls and guarded by a legion of Sentinels patrolling the perimeter. Likely, the compound was masquerading as some sort of important facility to justify the presence of all the security.

Getting inside is going to be problematic.

He frowned as he considered his options. It wasn't difficult to guess that what sort of research was being conducted within the Sixth Hidden Laboratory. The fact that orphans were being transported into the lab on a regular basis was a telltale sign that it probably involved human experimentation. Still, his guesses were just that—guesses. Without tangible proof of these heinous experiment's existence and evidence connecting them to the Council of Mana, Emil's guesses couldn't be treated as nothing more than speculation.

The ideal scenario would be to get his hands on the physical records detailing the experiments.

The alternative is to capture a researcher and interrogate them for information.

That posed its own set of risks. One, it was a highly visible endeavor that would instantly put the Council on high alert. Two, they ran into the same issue of needing to verify and prove the researcher's accounts. Without hard evidence, the Council could easily suggest that the researcher's claims were made under duress or deny their involvement in the affairs.

Hortensia might have been able to leverage this accusation to strip away some of the Council's autonomy within Azure City, but Emil doubted that was her end goal. The witch's true aim was likely to dismantle the Council completely and return Azure City under the control of the crown. To do that, they needed to get the backings of the elites.

As home to the most prestigious Academy for Exalted, Azure City held a lot of implicit influence within the kingdom. Letting it fall under the royal family's hands would shift a huge amount of authority back into the crown and resolve much of the growing instability within the kingdom. Unsurprisingly, the powerful elites of Ardair wouldn't take kindly to that change—at least, not without solid justification.

Proving the Council of Mana's depraved and amoral nature would go a long way towards declaring them ill-fit to manage Azure City.

Emil sighed, trying to ignore the onset of a throbbing headache. Sometimes he wished he was a little more simple-minded. A bit more naïve. A lot more ignorant, so that he wouldn't have to be burdened thinking about the rippling implications of his missions.

Nothing else should have mattered besides Mia and Raz's wellbeing.

He leaned back into his chair just as a finger suddenly entered his field of view.

"Ow!" he groaned at the pain radiating from his forehead.

The unexpected strike snapped him out of his thoughts.

"Hello, Emil. Welcome back to reality," Anna whispered.

She was seated across from him. A pile of books was stacked on their shared table. The two of them were holed up inside the library for their daily study sessions. Despite mid-terms being right around the corner, their usual study group was missing. Charlotte and Kai were busy preparing for a bunch of socials that they had been invited to. Aoife was occupied with her duties as a representative of the royal family.

In the aftermath of Vigil's raid, every noble family was trying to strengthen themselves against the terrorist's next possible attack. The Academy and the Council's lacklustre response had shaken the trust in the kingdom's institutions. It was everyone for themselves. As a result, many students from noble backgrounds were suddenly burdened with additional obligations to their families.

For the first time in awhile, Emil found himself alone with Anna.

"I was studying," he complained while rubbing the red spot on his forehead.

"Uh huh, of course. That's why you've been stuck on page seven of the textbook for the past twenty minutes, right?"

"It's…very complicated," Emil blurted out without thinking. Anna's knowing smile made him glance down at the page. Page seven of the textbook was a simple diagram illustrating the circulation of mana within an Exalted's body. Not something that should have demanded twenty minutes of attention.

"Right, very complicated. I'm sure there's some concept hidden in the direction of those lines and arrows. How about you just admit that you were distracted?"

"Clearly you weren't studying either since you've been so busy staring at me for the past twenty minutes."

"I was not!"

Anna was about to rise from her seat to complain when they caught a glimpse of the librarian walking by. The middle-aged lady gave both of them a stern gaze while pointing at the signs to be quiet.

Emil smirked. "Serves you right."

"I swear I'm going to get you back for that."

"You already blasted me on the forehead once. We're even."

Anna stuck her tongue out at him. Emil shook his head, flabbergasted by her childish reaction. Something about this girl always dragged out the immature side of him. The parts of him that he thought he had long discarded after he was inaugurated into Steiger.

The underworld feared them. The nobles hid in their presence. When he donned the mask of the Steiger Cleaner, he became a ruthless and efficient murderer.

Someone who belonged to a group with this fearsome reputation really shouldn't be getting heated over childish arguments.

"What were you thinking about?" Anna asked. The mischievous glint in her eyes was gone.

"Nothing."

"Liar," Anna said quietly, "It's related to that incident, isn't it?"

She was referring to the Hidden Laboratory that they had destroyed to avenge Ellen's death. Their former home room teacher, Professor Callum, had been the ringleader of that operation. He was dead now along with his two assistants. Since then, the Academy nor the Council had mentioned a single word of their disappearances. It was as if they had never existed in the first place.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"Sometimes I wonder if what happened then was all just a nightmare."

"Anna, stop—"

"I know," she cut him off, "I know not to talk about it. It's just…" she trailed off as she glanced off to the side, "You have a wild look on your face. You're planning to do something again, aren't you?"

Emil was silent. He didn't want to give her anymore room to continue.

"Just be careful, alright? I don't want to wake up one day and find out that another friend is gone."

***

Night fell.

Emil immediately made his way over to Petra's place for their scheduled meeting.

Mia was there this time to greet him by the doors. Emil smiled noting that she was already back home. It seemed like Petra had followed through with her promise to not allow Mia to wander around Azure City alone at night.

After a quick dinner, Emil and Petra evacuated to her office to share intel.

"Did you manage to scout out the Hidden Laboratory?" Emil asked.

"Yes," Petra replied coldly, rolling her eyes as if offended by the question, "It was a pain in the ass to move while in the body of a bat, but I got it done."

"A bat? Wouldn't a rat be easier to sneak through?"

Petra stared at him like he had just asked the dumbest question she's ever heard. "Did you forget about countermeasures against Karni's Gift? After what that Gharian did to the Academy staff, the entire city has been on a rodent extermination crusade."

Oh, right.

Emil only caught a glimpse of the Gharian woman once at the end of the mission to rescue Aoife. He did, however, have plenty of experience dealing with the rodents under her command. The sight of the monstrous rats bearing down on him in swarms was a memory that he never wanted to relive again.

"I have a lot to go through so why don't you tell me what you discovered on your end first?"

Emil paused to collect his thoughts. He then prefaced with how he tracked the origins of the caravan entering the Sixth Hidden Laboratory using Seismic Sense.

"That's a convenient ability."

"It has limitations, but it's good enough to use in the field. Anyways, I traced the caravan back to the southern district of the Second Sector where the Gharian diaspora used to be. It turns out that entire area is now occupied by orphans."

Creases emerged on Petra's head. She was scowling at the implications.

Emil continued, "I confirmed it after interrogating one of the miscreants that attacked me. That caravan has been making rounds in the area every two days or so to collect orphans. They make the promise that if they go with them, they'll be able to find a better life."

"And the orphans believe them?" Petra asked.

"No, I think the general sentiment is distrust. The orphans might be uneducated, but they're not so naïve to think that such a lofty promise doesn't come with strings attached. Even so, some don't have choice. It seems that most of the orphans who go along with the caravan are injured, dismembered, or suffering from illness. The most desperate ones."

"This feels stupid to ask, but were there any orphans who went with them that ended up returning?"

Emil shook his head.

"Well, that pretty much confirms it—the Sixth Hidden Laboratory is harvesting orphans to use as research material for their experiments. We no longer have an excuse not to investigate. We now have our swore obligation and moral responsibility to uncover this," Petra sighed.

Her consternation was troubling. The woman was unusually dispirited.

"Sounds like you really don't want to infiltrate this lab."

"I think you can understand after I go over what I found," she said as she draped a large blank sheet of paper onto a nearby table. With a quill in hand, she drew a large rectangle on the sheet followed by a smaller square inside of it.

"The outer shape is the walls. The inner square is the building that make up the Sixth Hidden Laboratory. There's about a distance of fifty meters of open space from the walls to the building."

She drew a line above the northeastern side of the building that extended from the northern wall to the middle of the east.

"There's a river that runs through this section of the compound."

"Um, why?"

"I'll explain that in a bit, but first—" Petra suddenly began dotting her diagram, "These dots represent the rough locations of the Sentinels. There's a line of them covering the entire outer premise of the walls and a second line patrolling the open field between the wall and building. There's, of course, a separate detachment as well that's monitoring the river."

Emil groaned as the page was suddenly filled with ink dots. There were no blind spots to take advantage of. Every possible inch of the premise appeared to be accounted for.

"…You managed to enter as a bat, didn't you? Is it accurate to say that they don't have many patrols monitoring the airspace?"

"Well, I think a bat is one of the last things they're worried about, but—" Petra drew three more structures around the walls. "—there are three watchtowers watching."

"How about the north side? Why is there none there?" Emil asked, noting the discrepancy.

"The north wall completely faces the wilderness of the Third Sector. It's all open field in the immediate area for several hundred meters. There are no dense forests that can provide cover, so presumably the Sentinels on ground would be able to see everything without . The river also runs through this portion of the compound the most, so it's also possible that the ground simply isn't stable enough to build a watchtower," Petra explained, "It is potentially a blind spot, but unless you can fly, I don't see how you can exploit it."

This is a ridiculous amount of security. Emil mulled over the diagram in disbelief. Now it kind of makes sense why Vigil was able to infiltrate the Academy and the Consortium. If the other Hidden Laboratories are also like this, then the Sentinels must have been stretched thin.

Evidently, Vigil's intrusion hadn't caused the Council of Mana to rethink the assignment of the Sentinels if the security around the Sixth Hidden Laboratory remained this draconian.

"I'm surprised the elites haven't made a fuss that all this security is concentrated here."

Petra wore a wry smile. "They have the perfect excuse for that. The ground floor of this building is masquerading as an Azurite refinement facility." She drew in more details to outline the layout of the building's interior. "I saw a bunch of machinery used for purification and crafting tables for molding Azurite into accessories and other gadgets. They got a bunch of other advanced tech in there used for testing other applications of Azurite. That's what the river is for, by the way. It supplies water that they heat. The steam then powers the machines."

"Where do you think the orphans are being held?"

"If I had to guess, probably on the second floor. Or third. There's three main floors and three additional levels atop. Unfortunately, my Gift expired before I can scout it the entire building. I can only remain in Animal Sibyl for thirty minutes at a time, but I was able to find where the research documents might be stored."

Petra circled the rear corner of the building.

"There's a room here on the second floor. I spotted people, likely researchers, going in and out with bundles of documents in their arms. This is the first room we should hit if we somehow manage to find a way to infiltrate the lab," she said, tapping the circle that she drew with the quill.

Emil sighed. Now came the difficult part.

"This probably doesn't need to be said, but I'm going to say it just in case." Petra stood up and stared icily at him. Her face was naturally intimidating, but with her eyes narrowed and exhausted, the effect was significantly nastier. "You're not allowed to destroy the lab or attempt to rescue the orphans. Ideally, we go in, get the documents, and get out without being detected."

Nice, even more restriction on top of everything.

"I know you have a soft spot for these victims given your background, but we cannot deviate from the mission. The Council might have been quiet, but there are still investigations ongoing about the culprits behind the Hidden Laboratory that you destroyed.

"And how do you know that?" Emil asked.

"A representative from the Council questioned Sir Rohan shortly after Princess Aoife's rescue. They asked about an Exalted in his retinue that possessed a flame Gift."

Emil's eyes went wide.

The Hidden Laboratory operated by Professor Callum was burned down using flames generated from naphtha. However, Emil had been forced to use Blaze in the ensuing fights. Still, the exact source of the conflagrations should have been obvious once the Council investigated. Naphtha flames were notoriously difficult to put out. Just dousing it with water was ineffective, and it often required sand or intervention from an Exalted to extinguish.

If I had to guess, they haven't actually found any meaningful leads in their investigations. Them questioning Rohan is probably just doing their due diligence.

His rationale was sound, but Emil couldn't help but be rattled by the news.

"Your cover is likely still safe, but the point is, we can't afford to take another risk like that you want to stay in this city. Our involvement needs to be less visible."

"Then how about we just have you transform into another flying animal and steal the documents that way?" Emil suggested.

"Funny, why does it sound like you're dumping all of this work on me all of a sudden?" Petra smirked. "But no. If the animal is too big, it won't be able to infiltrate without suspicion. But if the animal is too small, it won't be able to carry any documents."

Then there is really only one way to get inside without causing a fuss.

Emil frowned at the outrageous idea forming inside his head.