Elsewhere, a room.
Small. No windows. Two men seated before a receiver, the Den Den Mushi on the table between them transmitting in steady silence.
One of them was large, broad-shouldered, the kind of physically imposing that came from deliberate construction rather than accident. He had not moved during the transmission. He had watched with the focused stillness of someone taking measurements.
The other was smaller, older, a pen moving steadily across a notepad without him looking down at it.
The smaller man had been scribbling before the transmission fully closed, pen moving in fast tight lines across the notepad while he spoke.
"All the work we put into Daniel. Every modification, every serum, every stage from a half-starved kid pulled out of the slums to a serving Major. Dismantled by a sixteen year old." He shook his head without looking up. "Significant disappointment."
"It is." The large man hadn't moved yet, eyes still on the closed Den Den Mushi. "Sixteen. And untreated, from the look of him. No modifications, no enhancements. Just whatever he's built himself into." He was quiet for a moment. "That's the part worth noting."
The smaller man's pen paused briefly, then continued. "We're in the final stages. Months away, not years. The genetic sequencing is at a point where outside variables could matter."
"Which is why I want that facility swept. Any blood the boy left in there, any biological trace, I want it collected and brought here before anyone else gets to it." The large man finally turned from the Den Den Mushi. "What he is now isn't the point. What his baseline tells us might be."
The smaller man nodded, writing.
"And Daniel?" he asked, without any particular weight behind it. "We still have the more aggressive trial compounds. There's an argument for using the failure as a test subject rather than disposing of the resource entirely."
The large man walked to the door. He stopped there for a moment, hand not yet on the frame.
"We gave him the best technology this kingdom produces. The latest weapons. The serums. We built him from nothing and he still ended up on the floor of a warehouse." He said it without heat, without contempt. Just arithmetic. "Germa doesn't carry failure products. Dispose of him."
The smaller man hummed once, pen still moving, and didn't look up.
The door closed.
The room settled back into silence. The Den Den Mushi sat on the table, eyes closed now, the line dead.
The smaller man finished his notes, set the pen down, and looked at what he had written.
Sixteen. White hair. No visible modifications. Observation type ability confirmed during engagement. Sword trained. Tactically adaptive under live conditions.
He underlined the last line.
Then he turned to a fresh page and began writing again.
Lucien found a quiet stretch of wall away from the dock lamps and sat against it.
He unwrapped the cut on his forearm and looked at it in the dark. Shallow enough. It would close on its own if he kept it clean. He wrapped it with a strip from the inside lining of his coat and sat there for a moment, listening to the water move against the hulls of the ships along the dock.
His shoulder would be stiff by morning. The thigh was already tightening. He inventoried it without sentiment and decided none of it required immediate attention.
He was still looking at the water when he heard the footsteps.
Unhurried. Coming from the direction of the facility. Accompanied by muttering that the man apparently hadn't thought to keep quiet.
"Always me. Every time. Clean up the body, clean up the mess, have it done before morning." A pause, the sound of something being shifted. "I should be charging double. Triple. Hot-blooded teenager who doesn't know any better walks in, I spend the next three hours making the evidence disappear. Should have asked for more money upfront."
Lucien didn't move.
He knew the voice before he placed the face. The uneven posture. The eyes that were sharper than the rest of him suggested. The man from the alley, the one who had been watching the board, who had told him the name on the paper didn't belong there and then let him walk away with it anyway.
He had suspected it then. Seeing the man now, walking toward a warehouse that wasn't supposed to exist to collect a body that wasn't supposed to be there, removed the last of the uncertainty.
The man hadn't noticed him yet. He was still muttering, a bag over one shoulder, moving with the comfortable ease of someone running a familiar errand.
Lucien waited until he was close enough.
"Busy night," he said.
The man stopped.
The silence that followed was the particular kind that happened when someone's entire understanding of a situation rearranged itself in the space of a second. He turned slowly, and when he saw Lucien sitting against the wall, alive, arms resting on his knees, the colour left his face in a way that was almost interesting to watch.
His eyes went to the wrapped forearm. Then back to Lucien's face.
"You're," he started.
"Alive," Lucien said. "Yes."
The man stared at him for one more second, then turned and ran toward the warehouse.
Lucien didn't go after him. He was tired, his forearm was still seeping through the wrapping, and the thigh was tightening faster than he would have liked. He leaned back against the wall and looked at the water instead.
He heard the warehouse door. A pause. Then the particular quality of silence that happened when someone found something they hadn't expected to find, or didn't find something they had expected to.
Then footsteps again, coming back faster than they had gone.
The man reappeared at the dock entrance. Bag gone. Both hands visible. He stopped a few feet away and stood there, breathing harder than the distance warranted, staring at Lucien with the expression of someone whose entire working assumption about the evening had just been removed from under him.
Lucien looked at him from the wall.
"So," he said. "Do you want to tell me everything willingly? Because I'm guessing that poster didn't have a real number behind it." He tilted his head slightly. "I'd rather not break anything right now. But that decision's yours."
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Remember 1 Chapter For Every 50 Power Stones.