The first rule of penetration testing is that you never go in blind.

  The second rule is that physical security is only as strong as the people operating it.

  The third rule is that if you're breaking both of the first two rules, you'd better have a really good reason and an even better exit strategy.

  I was absolutely breaking the first two rules.

  Corvina spread a hand-drawn map across the table—ink on parchment, surprisingly detailed, with annotations in three different handwriting styles. The City Watch headquarters occupied a full block in what the map labeled as the Magisterial Quarter, a square fortress built from pale stone that apparently glowed with residual magical energy at night.

  "Three floors above ground, two below," Corvina explained, pointing to various sections. "Ground floor is public—permit applications, citizen complaints, lost property. That's the only area civilians can access without authorization."

  "Second floor?" I asked.

  "Administrative. Captain's office, case management, evidence sorting. Guard access only."

  "Third?"

  "Barracks and training. Where off-duty guards sleep and eat."

  I tapped the two basement levels. "And down here?"

  "Records archive on the first sublevel. Prison cells on the second." Corvina's finger traced a stairwell. "The crystal database for criminal records is kept in the archive. That's your target."

  I studied the map, already building a mental model. "How many guards?"

  "Twenty on rotation during day shift. Twelve at night. Plus however many are sleeping in the barracks at any given time—call it another fifteen to twenty."

  "Forty-seven potential hostiles, worst case." I pulled the wanted poster from my pocket and set it beside the map. "And every single one of them has seen this face. Or something approximating it."

  Thorne leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "You can't just walk in the front door."

  "No," I agreed. "But I can walk in the a door. Different problem." I looked at Pip. "You said you know the building layout. Have you been inside?"

  The boy nodded enthusiastically. "Lots of times. I run errands for a scrivener two streets over. Sometimes she sends me with permit applications or fee payments. I go in the public entrance all the time."

  "What's the security like? At the entrance?"

  "Two guards. They check you're not carrying weapons, ask your business, watch you walk to the service counter. There's a ward at the threshold—it glows if you're carrying illegal enchantments."

  "But it doesn't check for wanted criminals?"

  Pip blinked. "I... don't think so? I mean, the guards would recognize someone if they were wanted. But the ward just checks for contraband magic."

  I filed that away. Authentication versus authorization. The ward was checking what you carried, not who you were. Sloppy, but useful.

  "What about the upper floors? How do you get there?"

  "Stairwell behind the service counter. But there's a guard posted there, and the stairs have wards on every landing. You need to be Watch to pass through."

  "Define 'need to be Watch.' What's the authentication method?"

  Corvina pulled something from her coat—a wooden token, maybe two inches across, with a symbol burned into one side. "Watch badge. Every member carries one. The wards read the badge and allow passage."

  I took it, turned it over in my hands. To my Code Vision, it lit up:

  [ITEM: CITY WATCH BADGE (AUTHENTIC)]

  Type: AUTHORIZATION TOKEN

  Enchantment: IDENTITY_VERIFICATION

  Owner: [ENCRYPTED]

  Permissions: WATCH_ACCESS_LEVEL_2

  Status: ACTIVE

  Durability: PERMANENT

  "Where did you get this?"

  "Off a guard who got drunk in the wrong tavern three months ago." Corvina smiled without humor. "He reported it lost. The Watch assumes he misplaced it. They haven't revoked the authorization."

  I examined the badge's code more closely. The owner field was encrypted, but the permissions weren't. The badge was checking against a whitelist somewhere in the building's security system—probably a master database that listed all authorized personnel.

  "This won't work for me," I said.

  "What? Why not?" Pip asked.

  "Because the moment I use it, the system is going to do a cross-reference. Badge says I'm authorized, but I'm not in the personnel database. That's a mismatch. The ward will throw an error, and every alarm in the building will trigger."

  Marina, the grease-stained woman, spoke up. "How do you know that?"

  "Because that's basic security architecture. You don't just check if someone has a valid token—you check if they're supposed to have that token. Two-factor authentication." I set the badge down. "I need a different approach."

  Thorne pushed off from the wall. "Then this whole plan is pointless. Without a badge, you can't get past the stairwell. Without getting past the stairwell, you can't reach the archives."

  "I didn't say I needed a badge. I said this badge won't work." I looked at Corvina. "When do the wards reset?"

  She frowned. "Reset?"

  "Update. Refresh. Cycle their authentication checks. Every security system has maintenance windows. Times when it's verifying its own integrity instead of watching for intruders."

  "Oh." Corvina glanced at one of the other Gray Zone members—a thin man with nervous hands who'd been quiet until now. "Jonas? You worked in ward maintenance before the Guild fired you."

  Jonas cleared his throat. "Wards... yeah. They're maintained on a schedule. The Watch headquarters has a full ward-renewal cycle every midnight. Takes about fifteen minutes."

  "Fifteen minutes when the wards are down?"

  "Not down. Transitioning. Old wards drop, new wards initialize. There's overlap, but..." He hesitated. "There's a moment. Maybe thirty seconds. When the system is vulnerable to exploit."

  I felt my smile sharpen. "Thirty seconds. That's all I need."

  The rooftops of Sanctum City were a different world.

  Pip led me up through a combination of fire escapes, external staircases, and one particularly questionable ladder that made sounds I didn't trust. By the time we reached the top of a four-story tenement building, the sun was setting and the city was transforming into a landscape of shadows and magical light.

  Streetlamps glowed with contained flame. Windows flickered with candlelight and the softer blue-white of mage lamps. And in the distance, rising above the surrounding buildings like a pale monolith:

  The City Watch headquarters.

  [LOCATION: CITY WATCH HEADQUARTERS]

  Threat Level: EXTREME

  Ward Density: MAXIMUM

  Guard Count: 12 [NIGHT SHIFT ACTIVE]

  Alert Status: ELEVATED [SEARCHING FOR SUSPECT]

  "There," Pip whispered, pointing. "That's it. See the glow?"

  The building did glow. Subtle, but visible—a faint luminescence that outlined its edges, the magical equivalent of a really aggressive firewall constantly scanning for threats.

  I activated Code Vision fully and stared.

  The wards materialized as lines of light, layers upon layers of defensive scripts wrapped around the structure like a spider's web made of pure data. I could see the authentication checks at the entrances, the alarm triggers in the windows, the containment protocols running along the walls.

  And beneath all of it, the underlying architecture:

  WARD_SYSTEM: "Sanctum Civic Defense Grid v4.2"

  Active Protections:

  - INTRUSION_DETECTION [Layer 1-3]

  - UNAUTHORIZED_MAGIC_ALERT [Layer 2-4]

  - STRUCTURAL_INTEGRITY_MONITOR [Layer 1-5]

  - IDENTITY_VERIFICATION [Layer 1]

  - CONTRABAND_SCAN [Layer 1]

  Maintenance Schedule:

  RENEWAL_CYCLE: Daily @ 00:00:00

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  DURATION: 15 minutes

  OVERLAP_PERIOD: 30 seconds (23:59:45 - 00:00:15)

  Administrative Access:

  REQUIRED_PERMISSION: WATCH_CAPTAIN+

  OVERRIDE_CODES: [ENCRYPTED]

  Last Updated: 3 days ago

  Known Vulnerabilities: [SEARCHING...]

  I focused on the maintenance schedule. Midnight. Fifteen minutes. But more importantly—thirty seconds of overlap when the old wards were dropping and the new ones were initializing.

  That was my window.

  The system helpfully provided additional information:

  VULNERABILITY DETECTED:

  During RENEWAL_CYCLE transition (23:59:45-00:00:15):

  - Authentication delays by ~2 seconds

  - Alarm triggers require manual verification

  - Cross-reference checks timeout after 5 seconds

  - Badge validation defaults to PERMIT if database busy

  EXPLOIT POTENTIAL: HIGH

  DETECTION RISK: MODERATE

  ESCAPE DIFFICULTY: EXTREME

  "Can you see all that?" Pip asked, watching my face.

  "More than I want to." I pulled my attention back to the physical building. "The public entrance. Where is it?"

  He pointed to the front facade. "Ground level, center. Those big doors."

  I tracked the approach—open plaza, no cover, multiple sight lines from guard posts. Walking in the front during daytime would be suicide. But at night, in the thirty-second window when the authentication system was overloaded...

  "What about the back?" I asked.

  "Service entrance. Where they bring prisoners in. But it's even more heavily guarded."

  "Show me the surrounding streets. All the approaches."

  We spent the next hour mapping the area. Pip knew every alley, every side street, every useful route through the Magisterial Quarter. I catalogued them all, building a mental model of the terrain, identifying escape routes, calculating response times.

  By the time we returned to the Gray Zone safehouse, I had a plan.

  It was a terrible plan.

  But it was a plan.

  "You're going to what?" Thorne said.

  I repeated myself, slower. "Walk in the front door at midnight, during the ward transition window, using the compromised badge to confuse the authentication system long enough to get past the stairwell ward, access the archives, corrupt my records, and walk back out before anyone notices."

  "That's insane."

  "That's optimistic," I corrected. "Insane would be trying it during the day."

  The Gray Zone had assembled around the table again. Corvina was studying my rough sketch of the approach route. Marina was shaking her head. Jonas looked like he was trying to calculate the probability of success and coming up with numbers that upset him.

  "Even if the ward transition gives you a window," Corvina said carefully, "you still need to get past the archive door. That's separately secured. And you need to find your specific record crystal among thousands. And you need to corrupt it without triggering audit logs. And you need to do all of this while under-leveled, under-equipped, and wanted for terrorism."

  "Yes," I said.

  "You're going to die."

  "Probably not. Dying would require them catching me, and I'm very hard to catch." I pointed at the map. "The archive door uses the same badge authentication as the stairwell. If I can spoof my way past one, I can spoof past the other. Finding the record is just database navigation—I can see the file structure with Code Vision. And corrupting the data without triggering audits is literally what I do for a living."

  "Did," Thorne said. "Did for a living. In another world. With technology that presumably worked differently than our magic."

  "The principles are the same. Systems are systems. They all have the same basic vulnerabilities—poor input validation, inadequate logging, trusting client-side authentication, using default configurations that prioritize convenience over security." I looked around at them. "Your world's magic isn't special. It's just code that nobody's bothered to properly secure because you're all too busy treating it like divine mystery instead of maintainable infrastructure."

  Silence.

  Then Pip, quietly: "I think it's brilliant."

  "Thank you, Pip."

  "It's still suicide," Marina muttered.

  Corvina drummed her fingers on the table. "What do you need?"

  I pulled out a list I'd been compiling. "Wire. Copper or iron, doesn't matter. About two meters. A small mirror—hand-sized. Dark clothing that won't stand out at night. Any kind of light source I can control—a hooded lantern would be perfect. And..." I hesitated. "Is there any way to temporarily disable my nameplate?"

  "Your what?"

  "The text that appears above people's heads. The level, class, status information. I don't have one, but I need to make sure nothing appears when I'm trying to be invisible."

  Jonas spoke up. "Obfuscation charm. Makes you forgettable—not invisible, just... easy to overlook. It won't hide you from someone actively searching, but casual observation will slide past you."

  "Perfect. I need one of those."

  "I can make one. But it'll take two hours and cost thirty mana to charge."

  "Do it." I looked at Corvina. "What else?"

  She studied me for a long moment. Then stood and walked to a chest in the corner of the cellar. Pulled out a dark coat—practical, worn, with deep pockets. Set it on the table in front of me.

  "This was mine when I was younger," she said. "Before I got careful. It's got a minor enchantment—helps you blend into shadows. Nothing spectacular, but it might keep you alive long enough to regret this decision."

  I took the coat, felt the weight of it. My Code Vision showed:

  [ITEM: SHADOWMELD COAT]

  Quality: UNCOMMON

  Enchantment: MINOR_STEALTH

  Effect: +15% to remaining unnoticed in dim light

  Durability: 67/100

  Previous Owner: CORVINA [ENCRYPTED]

  "Thank you," I said.

  "Don't thank me yet. You haven't survived." She pulled the Watch badge from her pocket and set it beside the coat. "But if you're determined to try this, at least take the tools."

  Thorne pushed off from the wall again. He'd been watching me with increasing skepticism the entire meeting, and I could see him calculating something. Coming to a decision.

  "Prove it," he said.

  I looked up. "Prove what?"

  "That you can see code. That you can predict behavior." He drew a knife from his belt—not threatening, just available. "If you can really read my combat patterns, then you should be able to tell me exactly what I'm going to do next."

  The Gray Zone went still.

  It was a test. I could see that clearly. Thorne had been the most vocal skeptic, and now he was putting me on the spot. If I failed, my credibility collapsed. If I succeeded...

  "Fine," I said. "But I need you to actually commit to the attack. No pulling punches. Treat me like a real threat."

  "You sure about that?"

  "I'm sure you're not going to stab a potential asset before I've proven my value. Beyond that, surprise me."

  Thorne smiled. It wasn't a friendly smile. He shifted his stance, weight on his back foot, knife held low and reverse-grip.

  And I saw his code activate.

  THORNE [SHADOWBLADE - Level 12]

  COMBAT_AI: ACTIVE

  Current State: EVALUATING TARGET

  THREAT_ASSESSMENT:

  Target Level: 2

  Combat Skill: UNKNOWN

  Distance: 3.5 meters

  Environment: ENCLOSED

  DECISION_TREE:

  IF target_blocks THEN switch_to_grapple

  IF target_dodges_left THEN pursue_right

  IF target_dodges_right THEN feint_and_strike_center

  SELECTED_PATTERN: intimidation_rush

  Step 1: Forward lunge (2m)

  Step 2: Feint high

  Step 3: Strike low (non-lethal, blade-flat)

  EXECUTING in 3... 2... 1...

  I watched the countdown. Saw his muscles tense in the exact sequence required for the forward lunge. Saw the micro-adjustment in his grip that meant the feint was coming high.

  "You're going to rush forward, feint toward my face, and then try to slap me with the flat of the blade across my ribs," I said, not taking my eyes off him. "The feint will be convincing because you're good at this. But you'll hold back on the actual strike because you're not trying to hurt me. Just test me."

  Thorne froze mid-step.

  "After that," I continued, "if I somehow dodge, you'll follow up with a grapple attempt. Right hand going for my left wrist, trying to control my movement. You'll use your higher strength stat to immobilize me, then step back and ask if I'm convinced yet."

  The cellar was completely silent.

  Thorne looked down at his knife. At his stance. At me.

  "How—" he started.

  "I can see your source code. Your combat AI is running decision trees in real-time, and you're executing patterns you've trained into muscle memory. To you, it's instinct. To me, it's a program I can read like text on a screen." I smiled. "You're good, Thorne. Really good. But you're also predictable, because you're running optimized behavior patterns. And optimized patterns are just algorithms I can parse."

  He sheathed his knife slowly. Looked at Corvina.

  "She's telling the truth," he said quietly. "I don't know how, but she saw exactly what I was planning. Before I did it."

  Corvina nodded. "Then we help her."

  The Gray Zone members exchanged glances. Some still looked skeptical. Marina was shaking her head. But Jonas was gathering materials—wire, a mirror, the components for the obfuscation charm.

  Pip was practically vibrating with excitement.

  And Corvina was looking at me with something that might have been respect or might have been concern about what she'd just agreed to enable.

  "Midnight," she said. "That gives you three hours to prepare."

  I pulled on the shadowmeld coat. It fit perfectly.

  "Then let's get to work."

  STATUS UPDATE — END OF CHAPTER 4

  ALEXANDRIA "HEX" VOLKOV

  Level: 2

  Class: NULL [UNDEFINED BEHAVIOR ENABLED]

  Location: GRAY ZONE SAFEHOUSE — PREPARING INFILTRATION

  Status: EQUIPMENT GATHERING

  Mana: 120/120 MP

  Time Until Midnight: 3 hours

  Trace Risk: 8% [WANTED POSTERS ACTIVE]

  New Equipment:

  Shadowmeld Coat [UNCOMMON] (+15% stealth in shadows)

  Compromised Watch Badge [AUTHORIZATION TOKEN]

  Wire (copper, 2m)

  Hand mirror

  Hooded lantern

  [CRAFTING] Obfuscation charm (2 hours remaining)

  Mission Status: HEIST PREPARATION — ON TRACK

  Primary Objective: Delete criminal records

  Secondary Objective: Survive

  Tertiary Objective: Don't accidentally start a war

  Party Relationships:

  Corvina — Supportive but concerned [TRUST +15]

  Thorne — Skepticism converted to respect [TRUST +20]

  Pip — Enthusiastic ally [TRUST +10]

  Jonas — Helping with preparation [TRUST +5]

  Marina — Still skeptical [TRUST +0]

  Current Plan Quality: TERRIBLE BUT EXECUTABLE

  SYSTEM NOTE: User has successfully demonstrated Code Vision

  to witnesses. Cover story no longer viable.

  SYSTEM NOTE: User is now committed to heist attempt.

  SYSTEM NOTE: If this works, it will be impressive.

  SYSTEM NOTE: If this fails, it will be fatal.

  SYSTEM NOTE: No pressure.