Far above the Operations Center, inside a room that appeared on no public blueprint—
a man in dark glasses leaned back in his chair, eyes closed, and had been that way for a long time.
"Ah."
A faint smile touched his mouth.
"Chief got there first."
He tilted his head slightly. Settled back.
As if a hundred and twelve infiltrators loose inside Headquarters had never been worth getting out of his chair for.
No monitors surrounded him. No surveillance feeds played across the walls.
And somehow, he'd seen every second of it anyway.
Somewhere else in the building, something that answered only to him blinked awake.
For the briefest instant, something deep beneath the Headquarters opened its eye.
The man smiled.
Then it closed again.
—
Back in the ruined, smoke-choked interrogation room.
Aldric had already hauled him back into what remained of Chamber Twelve, dropping him among the wreckage before straightening to take stock of what the fight had cost.
The masked attacker stared down at the dead communicator in his palm.
The last transmission still echoed inside his skull.
...there are too many of them...
Then silence.
"...Hello?" Static answered him. "Squad Nine?" Nothing. "Squad Twenty-One?"
His grip tightened around the device.
"Answer me."
Nothing. Just the hiss of dead air.
His breath came shallow, uneven. "...No. This can't be happening."
He raised his head, stiff, slow.
"..."
Aldric Marune was already standing directly in front of him.
He recoiled on pure terror, heart lurching. He'd been staring straight ahead the whole time, and he'd never once seen Aldric move. The distance had just — stopped existing.
"W-When did you—"
A gloved hand closed around his throat before he finished the sentence.
CRACK.
His body left the ground like it weighed nothing.
"AAAGH!"
His feet kicked helplessly through the empty air, hunting for a floor that wasn't there anymore. His white porcelain mask began splitting under the pressure radiating off Aldric's grip. His eyes bulged, blood vessels bursting behind them.
Both hands clawed at the wrist crushing his throat. It didn't move a fraction of an inch. Like trying to bend a mountain with his fingernails.
Aldric's eyes stayed dead and flat, boring straight through him.
"One hundred and twelve people." Aldric's grip tightened slightly.
"You brought all of them into this building knowing most wouldn't walk back out."
"All to reach one interrogation room."
For the first time since the fighting started, the fanatic light behind the boy's eyes went out completely. No pride left. No grand declarations. Just raw, unfiltered fear.
Then, somewhere underneath the fear, something else surfaced — the calm of someone who'd already priced in his own death the moment he walked through the front door.
"Now tell me."
"Why was Zekai Krystan worth all of that?"
From the corner of the room, consciousness returned to Sebastian in fragments—the cold floor first, then the taste of blood, then the sound of the attacker's voice. Sebastian cracked one swollen eye open. He let out a long, ragged breath, the weight finally leaving his shoulders for the first time since Chamber Twelve had gone dark.
"...Chief." A ghost of relief crossed his bloody face. "Took you long enough."
Aldric's gaze swept the wreckage once more — Zekai, still unconscious but breathing steady; Iris, pale, chest rising in shallow, even pulls. Not evacuated yet. Whatever medical had already cleared belonged to some other corridor, some other fight.
His jaw tightened, but he said nothing. There'd be time for that after.
The boy hung in Aldric's grip, feet suspended over the shattered floorboards, blood seeping steadily from beneath the cracks in his mask. His breath came in short, ragged pulls.
Aldric's voice stayed colder than the room itself.
"Take off the mask."
A weak, wet laugh answered him. "...No."
CRACK.
His fingers closed another millimeter. The mask splintered fully apart, and Aldric tore the ruined pieces free from the boy's face, throwing the shards aside without ceremony.
They hit the floor with a hollow clatter.
Silence.
Sebastian's eyes narrowed. "...He's just a kid."
Couldn't have been older than nineteen. Soft features. Blood at the corner of his mouth. A face that belonged in a lecture hall, not at the head of a terror cell.
Then a manic, unsettling smile slowly spread across his exposed face.
Aldric studied him for a long, calculating second. Then he shoved his wrist up flush against the boy's face — a thin, cold ray sweeping out from the watch's face, scanning every inch of it in one pass.
A pause. Then a low chime.
"No match." Aldric's eyes didn't leave him. "Not in the criminal registry. Not in the Graver database either." A pause. "Which means you're entirely disposable."
He eased his grip just enough for a breath.
"I'm keeping you alive."
"Section Fifty-Three will handle the rest."
The boy laughed — quiet, not hysterical. The hollow sound of someone who'd already made peace with dying before he ever walked through the front door.
"...Too late," he whispered. "You still think I'm the end of this."
His free hand lifted through the air. Not toward Aldric. Past him.
He pointed at the dark behind Aldric's shoulder.
Slow, deliberate, his thumb turned downward.
Aldric didn't flinch. Didn't so much as blink. His eyes followed the gesture for exactly one fraction of a second.
"..."
Not a gesture aimed at his captor. Aldric's face barely shifted, but underneath it his mind was already tearing the angle apart, recalculating.
Wrong. The angle was wrong. The timing too deliberate to be theater.
The boy wasn't mocking him.
He was signaling someone else.
Or... something else.
But there was no one there.
A cold certainty dropped into Aldric's chest. "...What did you just do?"
The boy's smile widened, teeth stained red with his own blood. He didn't answer. He just held the gesture in place, thumb still pointed at the floor behind Aldric.
Aldric's eyes turned to knives. For the first time since he'd stepped into the wreckage of Chamber Twelve, he looked away from his prisoner.
He turned. Nothing moved behind him.
That was exactly the problem.
The ruined room suddenly felt far too quiet.
✦ End of Chapter 37 — Take Off Your Mask ✦