The house was quiet again. Leon moved silently through the corridors of their London townhouse, the dim lighting casting long shadows as he entered the study. He locked the door behind him and sat down in the leather chair, letting out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
The conversation with his parents had gone as expected. They hadn't pressed him too hard. They trusted him—perhaps too much. The paperwork was already in motion.
But it wasn't time to relax.
He pulled up the system overlay, filtering through the notifications.
SYSTEM: Timeline Progression — U.S. Relocation Initiated
Estimated Completion: 3.2 Weeks
OPSEC Risk: Minimal
Three weeks. Three weeks until he would be breathing Californian air, a world away from the quiet anonymity of his room.
It was both freeing and terrifying.
He opened the blueprint for the Modular Data Vault again. It was simple, by the system's standards—just a secure, encrypted digital core with physical locks and layered internal partitions. But it meant that everything he had—source code, SP records, digital assets—could be disconnected from the cloud entirely.
SP COST: 10,000
Remaining SP: 42,814
He confirmed the purchase, and the system immediately supplied detailed instructions. It would take him the better part of two weeks to build.
He placed the order for components using one of UmbraDawn's burner shell companies—clean, untraceable. The delivery would route through two intermediaries before reaching a logistics locker in the outskirts of London.
While he waited, Leon began to phase out his online footprints. No social posts. No logins from known devices. He switched to encrypted comms, burned through temp browsers, wiped and rebuilt his workstations from scratch. The final days in the UK would be about shedding skin.
Across the room, a calendar notification pinged on his tablet. A reminder about his farewell dinner with friends from school. He ignored it.
That life was done.
Instead, he drafted an anonymous press kit for Tactica: Iron Resolution, framing UmbraDawn as a collective of ex-defense contractors and rogue engineers. Just enough conspiracy to be believable. Enough to divert the real attention.
SYSTEM: Social Engineering Layering — Approved. False Narrative Integrity: 94%
He nodded to himself.
The world was still guessing. And he was moving faster than they were.
He spent the evening tightening code security, uploading redundant backups to encrypted flash storage, and practicing emergency wipe protocols—every step redundant but essential.
His mind flicked to what lay ahead. California. Bureaucracy. Visas. Public exposure. Even in a school as large and elite as Caltech, someone could grow curious. He'd have to remain just interesting enough to pass, and just boring enough not to linger in anyone's memory.
Leon scrolled through university orientation files, campus forums, and local news to build a behavioral map of how to blend in without raising flags. The system silently logged his interactions.
SYSTEM: Environmental Conditioning — Effective. Cultural Assimilation Accuracy: 91%
He closed the laptop and leaned back.
This wasn't just a move.
It was a migration of identity.
From London, a city of fog and caution...
...to a battlefield bathed in sun.