The television flickered, and the truth tried to claw its way onto the screen.
A red banner tore across the bottom of the display.
[ BREAKING NEWS ]
"We're receiving multiple reports out of central Linoria—"
The anchor's words came fast, but something under his voice pulled tight, straining against the pace he was forcing himself to keep.
"—eyewitnesses claim a man appeared without warning in the middle of a major intersection—"
"—holding what looks like a body—"
The feed cut. Shaky footage. Screaming, dozens of phones raised overhead like a forest of small lights.
A blurred, static-choked figure stood dead still in the middle of the road.
The image froze. Cut again. A different clip, just as chaotic, replaced it.
"Moments after his appearance—"
"—bodies began falling from the sky."
The anchor's hand drifted to his earpiece mid-sentence. His eyes flicked somewhere off-camera, toward a floor director nobody at home could see.
He held there. One second. Far too long for live television.
"...We cannot independently verify this footage."
Another clip. A hand shaking so hard the frame blurred. Something hit pavement with a sound no microphone should have caught so clearly. A scream, then dead air.
Back to the studio.
"Authorities haven't released an official statement—"
"—though sources inside the department suggest containment measures are already underway—"
The screen split into panels. One showed a crowd sprinting down an avenue. Another sat completely black.
"There are also unconfirmed reports that footage is disappearing shortly after it's posted—"
His throat worked visibly before the next line came out.
"...We ask viewers to stay calm."
The broadcast glitched, a heavy pop of dead audio, and the screen went black for a long moment before it stubbornly came back.
"We'll continue updating as more comes in."
The red banner stayed fixed at the bottom, unmoving.
[ INCIDENT ONGOING ]
—
Deep beneath the concrete foundation of Greyhaven.
Bureau of Supernatural Affairs. Interrogation Chamber 12.
Zekai watched the report play out on the wall-mounted screen without a word. Steel cuffs bound his wrists together, the metal clinking faintly whenever he shifted them.
The anchor's voice kept going somewhere in the background, but it had stopped reaching him. It thinned into noise, folding into the low ringing that had been living inside his skull since he'd come back through.
Since the second they'd dragged him into this room, his attention kept sliding away from everything in front of him.
His eyes dropped to his arms. Again. Without him deciding to look.
Every few minutes he checked, confirming the weight still rested against his chest.
Aron.
The feeling hadn't left. Even cuffed to a chair in this sterile box, he could still feel the pressure against his forearms. Still feel the trust of a body leaning into his shoulder. He didn't have to imagine any of it.
It felt real. Too real to be anything else.
The room around him was seamless silver — walls, ceiling, floor, all one unbroken alloy that made distance impossible to judge. Hollow. Controlled.
Familiar, in a way that unsettled him more than the cuffs did.
It reminded him of the white space. The void where he'd first met Zero. That same clinical stillness hung in the air here, heavy enough to taste.
Across the cold metal table sat a man in a sharp black suit — calm, composed, thin wire-frame glasses catching the low light, watching him without a flicker of fear anywhere on his face.
Sebastian. Captain of the Moonlight Unit.
Grey smoke curled up between them. Sebastian held a cigarette loose between two fingers, its ember glowing faint in the low light. He tapped ash off the end against the table's edge — slow, deliberate, like he was rationing even that small motion.
Nothing about him moved without purpose. His breathing came even. His exhales landed exactly where he wanted them. The smoke thinned out fast in the air, like the room itself didn't want to hold onto it any longer than it had to.
Outside, the world was tearing itself apart on live television. In here, Sebastian looked like a man who'd already decided exactly what kind of thing he was sitting across from.
Two glasses of water sat untouched on the table between them.
This was the Bureau's hidden core — scrubbed off every map, a place built to contain, study, and if necessary, erase anomalies exactly like the one currently cuffed to this chair.
Sebastian had been watching Zekai's behavior for several minutes now. At first he'd let it go. Then he'd started timing it.
Every few seconds, Zekai's eyes dropped to his own chest. His arms shifted a fraction of an inch, the careful motion of someone terrified of dropping something they couldn't afford to lose.
Sebastian finally broke the silence. "Why do you keep looking at your arms?"
No immediate answer. Zekai's gaze dropped again, and the question landed strange in his ears — obvious, almost stupid, because the answer was sitting right there in his own arms.
"...What?" he muttered.
Sebastian leaned back, the leather of his chair creaking under the shift.
"You've been doing it since the recovery team brought you in."
Zekai's brow pulled tight. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm asking," Sebastian said, even and flat, "why you keep staring down at your arms."
Silence swallowed the silver room whole. For the first time since they'd taken him, real confusion crossed Zekai's face.
He looked down. Back up at Sebastian. Down again.
"...Because I'm holding him." Dead serious.
Sebastian's expression didn't shift by a hair.
"Holding who?"
Something sharp flickered behind Zekai's eyes. "Aron."
The room went quieter still. Sebastian's gaze dropped, slow, to the empty space curved inside Zekai's arms, then climbed back up to his face.
There was nothing there. No body. No clothes. No weight. Nothing at all.
"...Aron?" Sebastian repeated.
"Yeah."
"The boy from the distortion incident?"
Zekai nodded, his arms tightening protectively around the shape only he could feel.
Something grim passed behind Sebastian's eyes.
"Zekai." A pause, letting the name sit there. "There's no one there."
The words didn't land right away. For several long seconds Zekai just stared at him, waiting for the rest of the joke. Then a short laugh broke out of him — confused, disbelieving, small.
"What kind of joke is that?"
"I'm not joking."
The irritation drained out of Zekai's face, replaced by something colder. He looked down again. Aron was right here. Of course he was.
He could feel him. He'd carried this weight the entire way back from the fractured layer, through every second of it.
The shattered intersection. The screaming. The camera flashes. The Bureau agents closing in with their guns raised.
The whole trip back into reality, Aron had stayed exactly where he was now — resting in his arms.
"...You're blind," Zekai whispered.
✦ End of Chapter 29 — Interrogation ✦