The new boratory was a circur, gss-walled chamber that hovered over the clouds. To the High Council, it was a showcase of their generosity; to Kaito, it was a 360-degree security vulnerability.

  Xenia dropped the 500-kilogram Restoration Chair into the center of the reinforced granite floor with a bone-jarring thud. The sound echoed off the sterile white walls, making the two Guild-assigned porters flinch as if they had just heard a cannon fire.

  "The stone is reinforced granite," Kaito noted, kneeling to inspect the impact site. He didn't look at the spectacur view of Oakhaven. He looked at the microscopic fractures in the stone's mana-insution. "Good for structural stability, bad for grounding. Era, I'll need a lead-lined floor-grid to handle the discharge from a four-node circuit. If I don't vent the static into the Spire's primary lightning rod, the first Tier 4 resonance will turn this entire level into a lightning storm."

  Era stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, her silver hair shimmering in the artificial sunlight. She looked perfectly at home in the clinical white light, but her expression remained guarded.

  "The floor-grid is already on the requisition list, Kaito," Era said. "But don't mistake this for the Rust District. You aren't scrounging for copper anymore. You're scrounging for approval. The High Council has allocated a budget of five hundred gold crowns for your 'initial operational setup'."

  [New Location Unlocked: The Spire Laboratory]

  [Resources: Restricted Council Requisitions (Tier 1 Access)]

  [Current Budget: 500 Gold Crowns (Locked to Operational Maintenance)]

  [Constraint: High Council Oversight - 100% Audit Probability]

  "Five hundred crowns. In the slums, that's a fortune. In the Spire, that won't even buy the silver wire I need for a Tier 4 grounding array," Kaito said. "You're giving me a leash, Era. Not a boratory."

  "It's a start," Era countered. "But every gram of material you request must be justified to the Oversight Committee. They don't care about engineering efficiency. They care about keeping the city's most dangerous artificer on a short, expensive chain."

  The Guild-assigned porters retreated with visible relief, leaving the three of them alone in the circur chamber for the first time. The silence that followed was different from the Rust District's silence. Down there, silence meant the gangs were regrouping. Up here, it meant the surveilnce was working.

  Kaito walked to his console. Vesper materialized from a shadow near the ceiling, her form solid and stable in the high-density mana environment. Era moved toward the secondary workbench, already drafting the first requisition order.

  That left Xenia.

  She was standing at the window. Not looking at the view — looking down. Through the thick atmospheric haze, the Rust District was a grey smudge at the base of the world. The tannery. Garrow's block. The alley where she had first smmed her bde into Kaito's floor.

  "Xenia," Kaito said, not looking up from his console. "Your core temperature has dropped two degrees. That's stress-response suppression. You're uncomfortable."

  "I'm fine," Xenia said, her voice ft.

  "You're standing at the window instead of sharpening your bde," Kaito countered. "For you, that's the equivalent of a full psychological breakdown." He paused, his fingers still moving across the holographic interface. "The Rust District is still there. I can see the thermal signature of Garrow's forge from the Interface."

  Xenia didn't turn around. "It's not the District I'm looking at, human. It's the distance. Up here, everything we fought for looks like dirt. Like it didn't matter."

  Kaito was quiet for a moment — not the silence of discomfort, but the silence of a man running calcutions.

  "Belonging is a social variable I don't account for in my models," he said finally. "But your thermal output is identical at any altitude. Your bde-arm is the same. Your dermal-armor is the same. The only thing the Spire has changed is the view." He adjusted his spectacles. "The work is the same, Xenia. The enemies are just better dressed."

  Xenia was quiet for a long moment. Then she let out a short, low sound that wasn't quite a ugh. She turned from the window and picked up her whetstone.

  "Better dressed," she repeated. "Then I'll make sure the mess is proportional."

  Kaito nodded, already turning back to his work. "I need fifty kilograms of refined silver and a vendor in the Middle-Wards who doesn't report to the Guild. The Council is watching the ledger, the Iron-Circle is somewhere in the wires, and I have a real boratory to build."

  He picked up his soldering iron. The blue light of the HUD reflected in his cracked spectacles.

  "System," Kaito whispered. "Analyze the Spire's internal grid. If I can't buy the power, I'll have to borrow it."