Far above the Operations Center, somewhere inside a room absent from every public blueprint—
a man wearing dark glasses leaned back in his chair. His eyes had been closed for a very long time.
"Ah."
A faint smile touched his lips.
"Chief got there first."
He tilted his head slightly. Then relaxed again.
As if one hundred and twelve infiltrators inside the Headquarters had never been worth standing up for.
No monitors surrounded him. No surveillance feeds played across the walls.
Yet somehow—
he had seen everything.
Somewhere else in the Headquarters, something enormous blinked for him.
Back inside the ruined, smoke-choked interrogation room...
The masked attacker stared blankly at the completely silent communicator resting in his palm.
"...Hello?" Static. "Squad Nine?" Nothing.
"Squad Twenty-One?" His grip tightened around the communicator.
"Answer me."
Nothing. Only the dead hiss of static.
His breathing became shallow and uneven. "...No... this can't be..."
He slowly, stiffly raised his head.
"..."
Aldric Marune was already standing directly in front of him.
The attacker jerked backward in pure terror, his heart skipping a beat. He had been staring right at the space, yet he never saw Aldric take a single step. Somehow, the distance was simply gone.
"W-When did you—"
Before the question could leave his mouth, a gloved hand seized his throat like an iron vise.
CRACK.
The attacker's body was lifted completely off the ground with terrifying ease.
"AAAGH!!"
His feet kicked helplessly through the empty air, trying to find purchase on a floor that wasn't there. The white porcelain mask around his face began cracking violently beneath the sheer atmospheric pressure radiating from Aldric's grip. His eyes bulged, blood vessels bursting.
Both of his hands desperately clawed at Aldric's wrist, but the arm didn't move even a fraction of a millimeter. It was like trying to pry apart a mountain.
Aldric's cold, dead eyes stared directly into his soul. His voice remained completely emotionless, cutting through the boy's panic.
"One hundred and twelve people."
"You sacrificed all of them just to reach one interrogation room."
For the very first time since the brutal battle had begun... the fanatical, religious light inside the attacker's eyes completely vanished. No pride remained. No grand declarations of victory. Only pure, unadulterated fear.
"Now tell me."
"Why was Zekai Krystan worth all of this?"
From the far corner of the room, Sebastian slowly opened one swollen eye. He let out a long, ragged exhale, the immense, suffocating tension leaving his shoulders for the first time since Chamber Twelve had fallen.
"...Chief..." Sebastian whispered, a faint ghost of relief crossing his bloody face.
"Took you long enough."
The attacker hung helplessly in Aldric's iron grip, his feet suspended high above the shattered floorboards. Crimson blood began to seep steadily from beneath the cracked edges of the white mask. His breathing came in short, ragged gasps.
Aldric's voice remained icier than the grave.
"Take off the mask."
The attacker laughed weakly, a wet, choking sound. "...No."
CRACK.
Aldric's fingers tightened by a mere millimeter. The white mask splintered into pieces. Another sharp, violent crack echoed through the ruined room as Aldric ruthlessly tore the broken mask free from the boy's face, casting the shards aside.
The fragments fell to the floor with a hollow clatter.
Silence.
Sebastian's eyes narrowed instantly. "...He's just a kid."
The attacker couldn't have been older than nineteen.
Soft features.
Blood on his mouth.
A face that belonged in a university corridor—not at the head of a terrorist assault, yet a manic, unsettling smile slowly began to spread across his exposed face.
Aldric studied the boy's features for a long, calculating second.
"...I've never seen your face in any Bureau database. You aren't listed in the syndicate registries. So... you're entirely disposable."
He loosened his iron grip just enough to let the young man draw a ragged breath.
"I'll keep you alive."
"Section Fifty-Three will do the rest."
The young man suddenly laughed. Not loudly. Not hysterically.
Quietly.
It was the hollow, terrifying laugh of someone who had already accepted his death long before he ever entered the building.
"...Too late," the boy whispered.
His right hand, currently free, slowly lifted through the air. He didn't point it toward Aldric to strike. Instead, he reached past him.
He pointed past Aldric's shoulder. Toward the darkness behind him.
Slowly, deliberately, his thumb turned downward.
Aldric didn't flinch. He didn't jump. His icy eyes followed the boy's physical gesture for only a fraction of a second.
"..."
It wasn't a gesture directed at his captor. Aldric's expression changed almost imperceptibly, his analytical mind instantly deconstructing the vector.
Wrong. The angle was entirely wrong. The timing was too deliberate.
The boy wasn't mocking his captor. He was signaling someone else.
Or... something else.
A sudden, freezing instinct settled deep into Aldric's chest.
"...What did you just do?"
The young man's smile widened, his teeth stained red with his own blood. He didn't answer. He only held the rigid gesture, his thumb still pointed firmly toward the floor.
Aldric's eyes hardened into daggers. For the very first time since entering the ruined devastation of Chamber Twelve—he completely looked away from his prisoner.
Aldric turned. Nothing moved behind him. That was the problem.
And the ruined room suddenly felt far, far too quiet.
✦ End of Chapter 36 — No One Leaves Headquarters - II ✦