The cold that had settled into my body intensified. She was right.
She didn’t need to interrogate legally.
She was keeping as her personal test subject!
I swallowed my dry saliva with difficulty.
"So..." I said, trying to appear composed.
"What do you want from ? Why didn’t you hand over to the scum outside? Why am I alive in this damned dinsion?"
Valisera sat upright and clasped her fingers together in front of her.
"Because you are an irritating puzzle, and I hate puzzles I cannot solve," she replied coldly.
"You turned the middle sector upside down. You humiliated Alpha Squad, robbed laboratories, and killed investigators. But that’s not what piqued my curiosity."
She pointed a finger at .
"You killed Investigator Arthur Sterling, and his assistant Marcus."
She paused for a mont, her eyes piercing through like X-rays.
"My first question: why? Why did you choose Arthur specifically to kill so brutally in that alley?"
Then she tilted her head, the real curiosity surfacing in her tone.
"And my second question, the more important one: how did you manage to defeat him? Arthur was a seasoned Rank A investigator. He wore aetherial armor and possessed a strong magical core. And you... I can see your aura—or rather, the lack of it. You are barely clinging to Rank G. How does trash of Rank G kill a Rank A without even touching him? I examined Eva’s injury as well... her insides were torn apart from within. How do you do that?"
She fell silent and waited.
She held all the cards.
I was injured, trapped in her dinsion, and had no aether energy.
My mind began working at insane speed.
If I told her I was just a hired killer, she would kill .
If I refused to answer, she would torture and then kill . The only advantage I had now... was "information."
I had information about corruption within intelligence.
If Valisera realized I had threads leading to a bigger ga, she might keep alive to use !
I had to bargain. I would throw her so bait.
I looked at her from behind my shattered mask and drew a faint, tired smile—one that carried false confidence.
"Why did I kill Arthur?" I repeated her question, coughing lightly.
"That’s a question you should have asked Arthur himself before I sent him to hell. That bastard... deserved more than a bullet in the head. I should have skinned him slowly."
Valisera frowned.
"Stop stalling. Answer ."
"Arthur..." I began slowly, choosing my words carefully.
"He wasn’t just an investigator hunting criminals. He was funding them. That bastard in his elegant suit had direct ties to the horrific human experints happening in the lower sector. The labs... the monstrosities... the children who disappear from orphanages. Arthur was part of the supply chain. He was a middleman delivering human flesh to his unknown masters."
Valisera’s eyes widened slightly.
The shock was real, but it vanished in a fraction of a second, the icy composure returning to her features.
"Arthur? An intelligence investigator involved in child abduction and biological experints?" she asked skeptically.
"Do you expect to believe the hallucinations of a criminal to justify his cris?"
"Believe it or not, I don’t care," I added with biting sarcasm.
"He confessed to while his tears mixed with the mud, as I slowly plucked out his eye. He cried like a terrified child."
I noticed a slight shift in the air of the room.
Valisera was thinking rapidly. The last eting she attended with Kaiser Dravion—which I of course knew nothing about—had revolved around the Six Folders and their funding of the labs. My words had suddenly intersected with the most sensitive secrets of high intelligence.
"And how did you kill him?" Valisera pressed her second question, temporarily ignoring the information bomb I had dropped.
"How did you bypass his defenses?"
I smiled beneath the mask. This skill... [Shadow Rend], was my trump card—my greatest secret. If she learned how I fought, I would lose my only tactical advantage.
"How did I kill him?" I echoed, lacing my voice with false arrogance—the tone of the old Black Joker.
"I have my ways. Ghosts don’t explain how they pass through walls, Commander. Let’s just say I found... a blind spot in your ridiculous aetherial laws. A point no armor can defend against. That’s why you couldn’t catch ."
Valisera stared at for several seconds.
She could have forced —crushed , broken my fingers one by one until I spoke.
But she chose another path.
"How is he connected to the experints?" she asked, refocusing on the more critical point, her tone carrying frightening seriousness.
"Is he a spy working for external parties? Is he working for a rival syndicate?"
I realized the bait had sunk deep.
It was ti to drop the real bomb.
I laughed a mad, broken laugh, interrupted by a cough of blood.
"A spy?" I said with contempt.
"The entire magical intelligence is nothing but a perforated sieve! Yes, he’s a spy—or rather, an obedient servant to masters in the shadows. But here’s the surprise, Commander... he’s not the only one."
Valisera slowly rose from her seat.
The aura around her began to intensify involuntarily, making the air in the void dinsion suddenly grow heavy.
"What do you an?" she asked, her voice sharp like a blade.
"I an..." I leaned against the glass wall and lifted my head to et her gaze defiantly.
"I an Arthur isn’t the only traitor in the FBI. There are many of them. An entire network embedded within your ranks. Officers, investigators—perhaps even leaders sitting at the sa table as you—passing information and children as commodities to those unknown organizations."
Valisera fell silent. Her crimson eyes examined , trying to detect any sign of deception.
I continued, striking the sensitive chord:
"Oh... did I forget to ntion? Arthur scread so interesting things before I blew his head off. I know so of their secret locations. I know where they hide shipnts, and where they et their interdiaries. I have a map of the betrayal eating your organization from the inside."
A lie.
At least half a lie. Arthur hadn’t told the locations; he didn’t have ti to say everything before the helicopters stord in.
He only told there were interdiaries—and that the network was bigger than him. But I was gambling with my life, and a desperate gambler has to bluff with fake cards to win the ga.
Still, I was careful.
"Just to clarify," I added quickly, rembering Alpha Squad chasing , led by Eva and that idiot Damian.
"Those idiots from Alpha Squad you lead? No, they’re not traitors. They’re too weak and too stupid to be useful spies."
The mont I finished my sentence, the place turned deathly cold.
Valisera didn’t speak for a long ti.
She turned and walked a few steps toward the edge of the black platform overlooking the surreal, glowing void.
She stood there, hands behind her back, looking like a queen contemplating the ruin of her empire.
"A network of spies within the FBI..." Valisera muttered to herself.
"Interdiaries... human experints... the Six Folders. If this little piece of trash is telling the truth—even partially—then that explains how information keeps vanishing, and how the labs disappear before we reach them."
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