Chapter 610: Private Jet [Bonus - ]

Chapter 610: Private Jet [Bonus Chapter]

He swiped his thumb across the screen.

’Fucking hell...’

Upon crossing the boundary into Khemet’s airspace, the location on Harper’s phone had completely vanished...

The red tracking dot was gone.

All he knew with certainty was that she had landed somewhere within the perimeter of Iunu, and then her digital footprint had been severed.

Silas grimaced with his thumb scrolling to the secondary global news wire as a massive crimson-bordered breaking alert dominated the feed.

[BREAKING: CATASTROPHIC ARCANE EXPLOSION AT REPUBLIC OF COLUMBIA RESEARCH FACILITY NO. 95!]

Silas paused.

[A high-powered mana chain reaction has completely destroyed the underground testing chambers of the Department of Arcane Metallurgy... Forty-two senior research alchemists and technical staff confirmed vaporized!]

[Grand Master Varun, the Earth’s foremost authority of runes, assigned to the project by the World King himself, is confirmed deceased in the blast.]

[The experimental gloves at the center of the research were not recovered as investigators found only a thin layer of scorched cowhide and, in the words of one exhausted technician, ’a distinctly smug atmosphere.’!]

Silas stood completely motionless in the center of the suite for five long seconds then, his chest hitched as a sudden sharp sputtering laugh broke from his lips.

"Pfft-hah! Hahaha!" Silas threw his head back, laughing aloud in the quiet room, shaking his head in amusement. "I warned him! I literally looked that arrogant bastard in the face across the negotiation table and made him sign a waiver against this exact outcome... Rowenna must have woven three different layers of spite into those sub-threads!"

His thumb flicked downward to read the casualty manifest.

[Update: President Julian Vanderbilt Senior miraculously survived the detonation... He is currently hospitalized with third-degree burns, a fractured pelvis, and, per hospital staff, ’a severely wounded ego.’]

[Legal analysts note that the President personally signed a binding liability waiver before the entire World Council as Columbia’s own lawyers have reportedly advised him not to read it aloud.]

The laugh died instantly with Silas’s mouth flattened into a sour disgusted scowl.

"Fuck," he muttered under his breath, tossing the comm-pad onto the cushions. "Of course the old leech survived. Cockroaches really do flock together..."

CREAK!

The inner bedroom door opened quietly as Penelope stepped into the room.

She had changed out of her crumpled clothes, now wearing an oversized grey knit sweater that belonged to Lia, its long sleeves completely swallowing her small hands.

Her vibrant purple hair, identical in hue to Harper’s, was tied back into a loose messy ponytail and her face was pale, but the hysterical weeping terror from the morning had settled into a grim fragile composure.

Silas turned his head, immediately grounding his expression into a smile.

"Hey, Penelope," he said gently. "How are you holding up?"

"I’m fine," Penelope answered as she stepped forward, her eyes darting toward the open balcony. "Silas... when are you going to find my sister?"

Silas walked over to the floor-to-ceiling glass doors, reaching out with both hands and sliding the heavy panels apart.

WHOOSH!

The dry scorching breath of the Khemet desert flooded the room, carrying different kind of scents.

From the thirty-story elevation of the Grand Oasis Palace, the city of Iunu lay spread out beneath them like a colossal sprawling place of pale limestone and gleaming titanium.

The city was starkly divided into two worlds... the sprawling Outer Commercial District, choked with bustling bazaars, mid-tier residential towers, and luxury tourist hotels and then there was the elevated white expanse of the Inner District, separated by a four-hundred-foot defensive rampart and a massive shimmering gold mana barrier that domed over the palaces of House Al-Mansur.

Silas had deliberately rented the entire penthouse floor of this specific hotel since it was the tallest structure in the Outer District, possessed an independent defensive barrier, and was garrisoned by private security forces licensed by the King of Khemet.

’Better to be safe than sorry...’

He turned his head, looking back over his shoulder at the eleven-year-old girl.

The afternoon sun caught the sharp line of his jaw, casting a warm amber glow across his features.

His blue eyes, ringed with gold, were completely calm, radiating the unshakable stability of an immovable mountain as he offered her a soft confident smile.

"I’m going now," Silas said. "And I’m not going to rest until I bring Harper back."

Penelope stared at him.

The casual certainty in his voice, the complete absence of doubt, fear, or hesitation, hit her like a physical shockwave.

For the first time all day, the crushing weight sitting on her chest shifted.

Her breath hitched with her small fists loosened from the oversized cuffs of Lia’s sweater, and she looked up at him the way she might have looked at a tower that refused to fall.

"Y-yes," Penelope said, straightening her spine like a soldier receiving orders. "Okay."

"Don’t worry," Silas smiled, giving her a reassuring nod. "Stay inside. Keep close to Martha and Lia as well as Kaede."

STEP!

Silas simply leaned forward, stepping off the edge of the thirty-story balcony into the empty air.

"SILAS!" Penelope shrieked, her composure shattering as she bolted across the room, throwing her hands onto the burning brass railing of the balcony and leaning over the drop.

She looked down.

There was no body falling and there was no concussive impact on the pavement three hundred and fifty feet below.

The air between the penthouse and the bustling avenue was completely empty as he had vanished into thin air, leaving not so much as a ripple in the desert heat haze.

Penelope blinked, clutching her chest, before slowly raising her eyes toward the southern sky.

High above the gleaming white spires of the Inner District, the clear blue heavens were beginning to churn.

Thick unnatural clouds were rolling across the sun, casting long dark shadows over the white stone of the city.

’It’s getting dark...’ Penelope thought, a sudden cold prickle of dread brushing against the back of her neck. ’Is it... going to rain in the desert?’

...

Three miles across the skyline, a dark silhouette moved across the rooftops with terrifying soundless grace.

FWOOSH!

A figure landed upon the weathered copper dome of a high-tier alchemical trading tower with the impact making no more sound than a dry leaf settling on water.

The figure was broad-shouldered, and draped in a long high-collared traveler’s mantle of deep midnight-blue wool.

The left sleeve of the coat was pinned neatly across the chest, entirely empty, fluttering lazily in the gathering wind and beneath the deep shadow of the cowl, the sharp striking features of a woman with high cheekbones, half-lidded violet eyes, and a wild mane of jet-black hair observed the city below.

It was Kara White.

Down in the crowded street below, pedestrian traffic ground to a sudden stuttering halt as heads snapped upward and hands pointed toward the copper dome.

"Look! Up there!"

"Is that... by the sun, is that her?!"

"Lord White! Sovereign of Blessed Land!"

"The Hero of Humanity! The Gold Core!"

In a city as strictly militarized as Iunu, traversing the rooftops without a registered reason was a severe offense that usually resulted in automated harpoons being fired from the street-level pylons.

Yet, looking up at the single-armed woman standing silhouetted against the dark sky, the local enforcers holding shock-halberds simply lowered their weapons with their mouths hanging open in awe.

A chorus of spontaneous echoing cheers began to rise from the merchant stalls... street vendors clapped their hands, and young Awakened slammed their fists over their breastplates in the traditional southern salute of reverence.

Kara looked down through the fringe of her dark hair, offering the crowd a brief lazy wave of her single right hand.

’Hah,’ Silas thought dryly from behind the disguise. ’I’m really famous, aren’t I... now I can’t even skip across a chimney without people cheering like I’m a parade.’

VUM!

She channeled a subtle concentrated burst of wind mana through her boot-soles, launching her body eighty feet into the air and crossing the wide boulevard with a weightless arc-like glide that carried her directly to the stone ledge of the central clock tower.

Kara landed beneath the massive brass clock face, looking out across the vast expanse of the capital.

’Iunu really is a beautiful place...’

Even under the looming gloom of the unnatural clouds, the grand architecture of the Sun-Crown commanded respect.

Vast avenues of white limestone cut through the desert like blades, lined with turquoise canals and solar-reflecting pylons that channeled heat into clean energy.

Yet, as Kara pushed her Gold Core sensory perception outward, spreading an invisible microscopic web of mana through the atmosphere... her brow furrowed.

’Nothing.’

There wasn’t a single flicker of Harper’s distinct violet lightning signature anywhere in the outer sector.

Worse... a foul oily pressure was beginning to seep into the edges of her consciousness.

It wasn’t a physical smell at all, but a rotten feeling... it was a heavy suffocating dread that felt like coarse black dust grinding against the lining of her throat.

BZZZZ-BZZZZ!

The private comm-link embedded in Kara’s ear-cuff chimed with a tune.

’I’m glad that I bought this heh...’

She tapped the receiver with a manicured finger.

"Talk to me."

"Kara?"

Evelyn’s voice came through the speaker, accompanied by the distinctive high-pitched whine of jet turbines.

"Ev," Kara said. "Did the logistics clear? Did you get the extraction platform ready?"

"Yes," Evelyn replied, though her voice sounded thoroughly bewildered. "Though I honestly have no idea why you insisted on it on two hours’ notice! Do you have any idea what it takes to buy a private transport outright and clear an unscheduled departure through the City Air Corridor... I had to personally bribe three flight marshals and threaten a fourth with an audit but yes... I bought the jet. And I’m flying to Iunu right now."

She was so sweet that Silas almost let out a laugh at the absurdity of it all.

’A private supersonic jet on two hours’ notice...’

It was ridiculous but it was necessary.

"Don’t worry about it, I’ll pay you back," Kara said smoothly. "If this situation goes south, Evelyn, you’re my contingency... I need you to land on the Outer side, coordinate with Martha at the Grand Oasis Palace, and extract the girls, Martha, and Kaede’s security detail immediately. How much time do you need to touch down?"

Through the frequency, Kara heard the rustle of flight maps and the calm clipped voice of Claire, Evelyn’s head maid, reciting approach vectors.

"Claire says we’re roughly two to three hours out," Evelyn reported, her tone growing serious. "The desert winds are heavy over this side, but we’re pushing the plane as hard as the hull allows... We’re coming as fast as we can."

’I’d prefer twenty minutes,’ Kara thought grimly, her violet eyes tracking the churning storm-dark clouds gathering over the center of the city. ’But two hours is the limit.’

"Make it as fast as you can," Kara instructed. "And Ev, one more thing before you go quiet on me... The thing you fought in Valoria City, the one wearing Harper’s face, could you... walk me through it again?"

The turbines whined for a beat.

"Why now?" Evelyn asked. "Fine. Exactly what I told the police... It was a sand clone. It had her face, it even borrowed her voice for a few minutes, but it was sand all the way down. The city cleared her name for a reason, Kara as the footage doesn’t lie... It was never her."

"Then somebody built that clone," Kara said quietly, "and whoever built it is the reason she’s missing."

The line went silent except for the roar of the engines.

"...A decoy," Evelyn said slowly. "Or a rehearsal. Kara, if that thing was only a test run..."

"Then the real one is worse," Kara finished. "Keep flying."

"Kara..." Evelyn’s voice hesitated with a sharp note of genuine concern bleeding through the line. "Will you be alright? What is going on down there?"

"I’ll be fine," Kara replied, her single hand resting against the cold stone of the clock tower. "I just have a very bad feeling about all of thi—"

WUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!

An ear-splitting howl tore through the air, violently cutting her off as across every sector of Iunu, hundreds of high-priority sirens began shrieking in unison.

The sound was deafening like a relentless wail that shook the glass in the windows below.

Through the comm-link, Evelyn let out a sharp panicked gasp.

"What was that?! Is that a red siren?!"

"Yes," Kara said, her body instantly dropping into a combat-ready crouch.

"That’s impossible!" Evelyn shouted over the turbine roar. "Iunu hasn’t triggered a red signal in several decades... Not since the Second Incursion! What could possibly be the cause—"

Before Kara could speak, the automated public address arrays mounted atop every pylon and tower clicked on with a trembling military voice booming across the capital in three different languages.

[ATTENTION ALL CITIZENS. EMERGENCY MANDATE FROM THE HIGH DEFENSE MINISTRY.]

[SATELLITE RECONNAISSANCE CONFIRMS... THE ROYAL TRANSPORT FLEET OF PHARAOH-PRESIDENT MENES AL-MANSUR HAS BEEN COMPLETELY DESTROYED IN THE HIGH DESERT.]

[NO SURVIVORS DETECTED... THE IMPERIAL CARRIER AND EIGHT ESCORT VESSELS WERE REDUCED TO RUBBLE AS THEY RETURNED FROM THE WORLD COUNCIL SUMMIT, OBLITERATED BY A MASSIVE ANOMALY OF BLACK MINERAL COMPOSITION.]

[SIMULTANEOUSLY, A DISTRESS SIGNAL HAS BEEN BROADCAST FROM THE WHITE CITADEL... THE CITADEL GATES ARE CLOSED... REPEAT: THE IMPERIAL FLEET HAS FALLEN—]

CLICK!

Kara severed the connection as she didn’t need to hear another word.

’The royal family was turned to dust... by black sand?’

The blood in Silas’s veins ran freezing cold.

Menes Al-Mansur had been sitting at the World Council table barely a day ago and Tariq had survived the tournament... How did their entire dynasty get wiped out ?!

...Then Harper’s location had gone dark right at the border.

’The person who took control of Harper is behind all of this,’ the realization struck him with the force of an iron hammer.

BOOM!

Kara didn’t bother preserving the rooftop.

With a deafening explosion of wind mana that shattered the clock tower’s slate shingles into powder, she launched herself forward as she became a streak of dark blue lightning, cutting straight toward the four-hundred-foot wall that separated the outer city from the Inner District.

"Get here as fast as you can, Ev," she muttered into the dead comms.