"We caught the mole."
Crunch.
Chewie stood by the operations elevator, short bob swinging slightly as she bit into a glazed tanghulu skewer like she was crushing through mortal souls. Behind her, the reinforced door to the inner sanctum of HQ was firmly shut, hertically sealed without even a seam of light leaking through.
The words hit Eathan like a backhand to the brain. His mind, mostly reduced to static from the day's combat, lagged behind.
"…Wait. What mole?"
Chewie didn't even glance at him. Her dark eyes scanned the gathered personnel like a predator calculating variables.
"Don't worry," she said, tone flat as ever. "It's handled."
She said it as if she were talking about misplacing a stapler. Eathan squinted at her, and Chewie's lips twitched. Another crunch.
That was the mont Eathan's brain politely checked out. The door behind Chewie wasn't opening, the air around it was giving off 'boss is doing sothing terrifying' energy, and the eleven-year-old war cri in a school uniform clearly wasn't elaborating.
He sighed. "Sure. Mister White probably has a plan anyway."
Eathan stood there for five seconds.
Then turned and zombied back toward his living quarters before his legs filed a workplace harassnt complaint.
***
His cheek hit the pillow, and the rest of him followed.
And by the ti Eathan next opened his eyes, the room was bathed in late-afternoon gold. The light filtered through the rune-latticed windows in soft, dancing patterns—almost enough to make him feel like he wasn't slowly being lted into the sheets.
Brain: still offline.
Dignity: debatable.
Mission: food.
Eathan groaned and rolled over just as his phone buzzed. Multiple ssages, courtesy of Luke.
[LUKE TAM]: Old Man Richard's back! Guess no more dazzling long-hair Professor Long for the girlies.
[LUKE TAM]: Also, you disappeared for four days. You didn't die, right?
Eathan, barely coherent, typed a single reply: "Family trip."
He should've known better.
[LUKE TAM]: Bro. What family???
Before he could fabricate a better lie, his phone began to ring. The screen displayed two words: Unknown Caller.
Eathan squinted at it for a full second, then let it die.
Then it rang again.
With the kind of sigh reserved for cursed vending machines and failing R functions, he picked it up.
"Hello?"
A familiar voice cut across the line, oozing nothing but elegance, annoyance, and divine pettiness:
"Vessel. I require espresso guidance. The manual's in Sanskrit, the machine's humming like a cursed beast, and your so-called instructions are not fit for divine consumption."
Eathan froze. "…Quine Long?" he croaked. "Where are you?!"
Quine Long, sohow smug through the speaker: "COZMART, naturally. I suppose you may not know, but your charming guardian left the corner shop unsupervised, so I, being a generous soul, assud temporary stewardship."
A pause.
"For cosmic balance."
Eathan sat up violently, his soul actively shrivelling in the process. "You hijacked COZMART!"
"Semantics."
"Why are you even—"
"Don't be ungrateful." He could practically hear the Azure Dragon do that one eye-roll over the line. "I was courteously invited. The hopelessly irresponsible White Tiger had asked to ensure spatial stability in his absence. Naturally, I charge overti for divine retail."
"Lies."
"Semantics."
Eathan's eye twitched. The image of the long-haired professor in designer streetwear punching receipts behind the counter fried at least six neurons.
The next ten minutes nearly cost Eathan his soul. He walked Quine Long through the espresso interface while the man offered dramatic philosophical comntary on every dial and steam setting like he was giving a TED Talk titled "Bean and Being."
Eathan hung up with a final, broken "Goodbye," and stared blankly at the wall.
This is my life now. I teach immortals how to froth oat milk.
For a serious mont, he considered calling child protective services on himself.
In an act of heroic resilience, he pulled up the Howork 8 PDF for Algorithms on his battered holopad and attempted exactly one question before his spirit withered and died again.
Eathan's eyes crossed. He calmly closed the holopad and, with a prolonged sigh, dragged his barely stitched soul downstairs to the cafeteria.
Save the problems for another day, he decided.
It was ti for so caloric intake.
***
The mont he stepped into the fancy, high-tech buffet zone, heavenly warmth bathed his face.
The food stations glead like a royal ballroom banquet.
Smooth lacquered counters. Steaming trays of pan-Asian dishes and cosmic-grade comfort food that slled divine, possibly literally. So kind of bone broth was simring in a golden cauldron. There was even a dessert bar with sparkly fruits that glowed.
Eathan inhaled like a man reborn.
"I'm alive," he whispered.
He grabbed a bowl of steaming beef tendon noodle soup with extra beef, a roasted chashu bun, and a pear-avocado smoothie before trudging to the seating area.
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Across the room, he spotted the familiar chaos that was Team B.
Willow had one leg propped up on a chair, as if she owned the place, downing what looked like her third tray of protein dumplings. Xenis was typing furiously on a portable glyph holopad while spooning pudding into his mouth without looking.
Tanke was… slumped. A hollow shell of a man. Eathan internally cheered.
"Look who survived the rift," Willow drawled as Eathan dropped onto the bench beside them.
"You make it sound like I was expected to die."
"You weren't?" Tanke mumbled, lifting his head with the effort of a man moving through molasses. "I was."
"Barely," Eathan said, rubbing his face. "Do I get paid for rift survival?"
Xenis snorted. "Your reward is character growth."
Wenrui raised a hand but said nothing. He looked like he wanted to apologize on behalf of the cosmos. To his left, Lindon—master of calm and current milk tea drinker—raised his cup in greeting from the opposite end.
Willow laughed, clapping Eathan on the back hard enough to dislocate smaller spines. "I'm kidding. You did well, really. Next ti, just scream less."
"I wasn't screaming," Eathan said, offended.
"You scread during the launch," Wenrui comnted calmly. "I was the one who launched you."
Xenis snickered. "At least he didn't barf. Statistically impressive."
Sitting across, Lindon shook his head as he made eye contact with Eathan. "Hey. You've officially survived your first anomaly surge. Congrats. I celebrated my first by throwing up in a data closet."
Eathan looked at him. The man looked as chill as always—hoodie on, aura serene, like he'd just walked out of a spa instead of a battlefield.
"…Glad to see we all process trauma differently."
"I recomnd sugar," Lindon said, raising his cup again. "Or denial. Both work."
***
After dinner, with his stomach vaguely satisfied and his brain now running on three semi-functional neurons, Eathan finally mustered the courage to find his crazy commander-slash-guardian-slash-boss.
He had planned this in his head earlier: a casual "hey Mister White, thanks for not letting die," followed by a smooth update about his new [Node Imprint] skill, maybe sneak in a subtle complaint about worker exploitation, and end with sothing heartfelt—like how he wanted to contribute more to the team.
That was the plan.
But Mister White was not in his office.
Nor the cafeteria, nor the node observation deck.
When Eathan finally worked up the nerve to ask ng Yao, she didn't say much—just gave him one long look and nodded toward the lift that led to the highest secured floor.
"You got five minutes."
Eathan nodded with a gulp. He followed the silent gesture, pulse rising with every step along with the altitude.
When the elevator doors slid open, he was confronted with the sa hallway that led to a single door. Eathan made his way to the end of the hallway, heart hamring in his throat. As he approached the end, without him asking, the door hissed open with a soft pneumatic release, revealing—
Darkness.
Not empty darkness. But heavy, watching darkness.
The only illumination ca from floating holo-screens and iridescent projection grids scattered throughout the room, like a field of digital stars. Each screen flickered silently, casting ghost-light across the polished floor. Strings of node fluctuations, diagnostic code, leyline maps, and rift energy graphs twisted through the air like spectral thread. A dozen half-empty coffee cups ford a precarious shrine to caffeine dependency in one corner. And at the center of it all, seated in a sunken console chair surrounded by suspended displays—
Taeril White.
He sat unmoving, back to the door, silver curls unbound and cascading across one shoulder. A thin beam of light caught the edge of his cheekbone, painting sharp shadows across a face that was far too calm.
Too still.
His eyes never blinked.—only followed the shifting code.
There was no ambient sound, no keyboard clicks. Just the occasional flicker of digits or the pulse of a stabilization node rendered in spectral green.
Eathan's voice barely made it out of his throat.
"…He's cracked."
A whisper. Almost reverent. Almost afraid.
"Incorrect," said a voice beside him.
He jumped. Chewie appeared beside him like a ghost, arms crossed, another half-eaten tanghulu stick in hand. Her eyes reflected the light of the floating panels, unreadable.
"I an—he's gone full dungeon final boss. Look at him. Has he been doing this since the rift? Then it's been over twenty hours! Who stares at floating numbers for twenty hours straight without moving?"
Eathan exhaled slowly.
"He's so cracked."
"He's filtering system trace logs. Just working."
"He works?" Eathan stared at her, gawking. "Like, coding works? Is this… I dunno, a custom OS? Is he using Python? C ?"
Chewie gave him a blank look. "Does it matter?"
"…Kind of."
From the shadows behind, ng Yao approached. Her arms were folded behind her back, posture military-straight as always. She didn't look at Eathan as she spoke. "Leave him. This phase requires full concentration."
Eathan blinked. "Wait, what's he even doing?"
She didn't answer imdiately; when she did, her voice, usually composed and flat, softened by a single margin.
"Watching."
"…Watching what? All this incoherent data?"
Her eyes flicked toward the screens. "Not data. Behaviour."
Eathan glanced back into the room. Perhaps it was the subconscious influence behind ng Yao's words, but floating numbers no longer looked like system code. More like... traces. A web of chronologically reconstructed activity logs. Pings from node access points. Nas. Ti stamps. Triggers. Layered patterns that only soone with abnormal pattern recognition—or a supernatural death wish—could decipher in real ti.
The White Tiger sat in the middle of it like a hunter in a web of his own making. Not moving, not speaking.
Waiting.
And that's when it hit Eathan—not all at once, but in the slow, creeping way truths tend to arrive when you're too tired to fully understand them:
Taeril wasn't searching for sothing. He was waiting for it to show up.
Whatever this trap was… it had already been set.
ng Yao's voice pulled him gently from the threshold. "Let him finish."
The door hissed shut behind him before Eathan could ask anything more. It would only be later, looking back, that he realized that the room wasn't for investigation.
It was the execution chamber of soone who already knew what he was going to find.
***
The world hadn't quite woken up yet when the alert ca.
Eathan was yanked out of sleep by a piercing chi and a blinding red light blinking above his bunk.
[SYSTEM ALERT]:
High Priority Staff eting
All operatives report to HQ Floor 99 imdiately.
STATUS: Level 2 alert
He groaned, face smashed into the pillow, fingers fumbling for his wristpad.
Four hours of sleep. Barely. His legs still hurt from being used as a human missile launcher. His soul hurt from finishing only two problems on Howork 8 of Algorithms.
This place was turning into a labour camp with decorative talismans.
Still half-dreaming, Eathan staggered into his hoodie and followed the slow shuffle of operatives into the lifts. As he stood, Chewie floated up beside him, silently munching another tanghulu.
"You know, Mister White's going to get mad at you for that sugar addiction," Eathan muttered.
Chewie looked at him like he had just confessed to eating gravel. "You think Mister White is in a state to lecture about cavities?"
Eathan opened his mouth.
Paused.
Shut it.
Fair.
As Eathan stepped out of the elevator, he imdiately felt a tension, rippling through the room like a tangible wall of qi.
From what he'd gathered from the murmurs on his way up, the high-clearance hall of Floor 99 had not been opened in fifteen years.
The room was quiet—not the kind of silence that settled, but the kind that pressed down on the lungs like weight. Tiered benches lined the oval chamber, rising like an amphitheater of watching eyes. Runes carved into stone pulsed softly, calibrated to record every word, every breath, and every shift in equilibrium.
At the very center of it all, a circular stone platform stood raised beneath a halo of cold light.
This was no eting room—this was HQ's official disciplinary tribunal site.
And today, it was active.
Strike Team A and Team B were both already here, gathered along with other teams he didn't recognize. Every officer was in full uniform. Every field agent was in half-buttoned jackets. Even the node researchers were here, looking like they hadn't slept for days. Each person stood with stiff backs and tight jaws, clustered in uneasy groups beneath the hovering command sigils.
Eathan trickled to near the front, slouched halfway into his seat with the other mbers of Team B. His vest was still half-untucked, and the ache from the Cryolorn battle still hadn't left his shoulder. He hadn't even had ti to digest the coding scene from last night.
Lindon was quiet beside him, hands on his lap. Xenis tapped one foot impatiently behind him. Chewie sat on his other side, blade hidden under her school jacket, eyes half-lidded like this was just another morning assembly.
Then, a hush rippled through the chamber.
Everyone turned as the central elevator doors opened, and down strode the commander of Area 001.
For a split second, no one breathed.
Taeril White was wearing command regalia now—a black and blue uniform with slender cuts and a high collar. The coat was layered with embroidery like tiger-stripes down the sleeves, so fancy-looking insignia pressing faintly over his left chest, and gloves so white they made your soul feel judged.
At his side, ng Yao matched his pace with effortless synchronicity. The entire room instinctively shifted straighter. Not because they were told to. But because gravity itself seed to have changed.
Taeril's voice was as calm as ever—too calm, against the taut silence. "Effective imdiately," he said, gaze sweeping the room, "two individuals are to be detained for high-level breach of internal registry protocols."
A beat.
He turned his head slightly. "ng Yao."
The Deputy Director stepped forward like a guillotine dropping.
"Zhao Feyan," she said.
Then, without a flicker of emotion—
"…And Xu Lindon."
The sound that followed wasn't shock. It was worse.
It was the absence of it. Like everyone had inhaled and forgotten how to exhale.
Eathan's brain skipped a beat.
Lindon?
He glanced to his right, expecting so mistake, but the man who had stood beside him—smiling dryly over milk tea and joking about spirit tape just twelve hours ago—was frozen.
Eerily still.
"...What?" Eathan whispered, mouth dry.
Lindon looked at him. His face wasn't panicked, nor did it look angry.
Just... very, very still. Like a light had flicked off behind his eyes.
The mont passed.
Chewie stood beside him, silent. Her tanghulu stick, once whole, was now snapped clean in half.
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