Episode 17 — Tracing the Flame

When Agira left the sanctuary, he didn’t waste time explaining himself.

He moved quickly.

Quietly.

Determined to keep Kaito and Maya away from whatever came next.

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His focus remained fixed on one thing:

Terraka.

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If the machine continued unchecked, Delpolis would burn.

And Agira refused to let that happen.

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For Maya, his disappearance wasn’t surprising.

Abrupt, yes.

But predictable.

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She had already begun understanding him.

The way he isolated himself.

The way he carried responsibility alone like it was instinct.

The way he always moved toward danger instead of away from it.

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And she hated that part of him already.

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Maya sat surrounded by floating holographic screens deep inside her temporary setup, fingers moving rapidly across projected interfaces.

Traffic systems.

Emergency frequencies.

Encrypted security feeds.

She tore through them all methodically.

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Maya didn’t rely on luck.

She relied on obsession.

Pattern recognition.

Digital instinct.

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If she had tracked Agira once before—

to the sanctuary before even the police could locate him—

then she could do it again.

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But this time, something else surfaced beneath Delpolis’ systems.

Something darker.

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Encrypted activity pulsed repeatedly through abandoned industrial sectors.

Security protocols far beyond anything ordinary corporations used.

Artificial command loops.

Machine communication signals.

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Dr. Thompson.

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Maya’s expression hardened slightly.

“This wasn’t random…”

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Terraka hadn’t appeared by coincidence.

The attacks.

The destruction.

The burned symbols left behind.

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It was bait.

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And Agira had walked directly into it.

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Maya pushed deeper into the network.

Firewalls collapsed one after another beneath her intrusion scripts as she traced Terraka’s operational pathways.

Then—

she found it.

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A weakness.

Small.

Buried deep inside the robot’s command architecture.

But real.

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Maya grabbed her gear immediately and stood.

“Don’t die before I get there,” she muttered under her breath.

Then disappeared into the neon-lit streets of Delpolis.