A deadly silence fell. A heavy silence to the point that I felt it pressing against my eardrums.
I blinked several tis. My mind stopped processing data for a full second.
And that was my role—both as a recruit pretending to be clueless, and as a planner who felt the ground being pulled from beneath his feet—to say those three words:
"Huh?"
I took a step back, my pale crimson eyes widening.
"They refused? What does that an?"
Valisera stood in the middle of the room, her chest rising and falling violently, and she looked at with a gaze that made wish the ground would swallow before I asked my question.
"It ans they refused," she replied with icy coldness that clashed with the blazing fury in her eyes. A coldness that precedes a storm.
Damian let his machine gun hang against his chest, clearly shocked, his expression tightening in pure disbelief.
"How... how did they refuse? Who refused?!"
Valisera gritted her teeth and leaned both hands against the tal planning table until the tal bent under her fingers.
"I went to command. I told Kyrion Drathis and Alexander Vance. I put the assault plan on their damn desks!"
Valisera began recounting what happened, anger tearing through her voice.
I imdiately imagined the scene. Valisera storming into the FBI Director’s office, throwing the Saint Hilarious Hospital file in front of Kyrion and Alexander.
She told them the hospital was a front for the Voliders. That it was a slaughterhouse of experints.
"How did they react?" Eva asked, her voice trembling.
Valisera let out a rough, hysterical laugh.
"Shock? Fear? No. They looked at as if I’d lost my mind! Alexander Vance nearly swallowed his cigar! He said Saint Hilarious Hospital is a sovereign institution! He said Saint Hilarious himself is one of the pillars of the city, a person with diplomatic and dical immunity of Rank S ! We can’t just accuse him without triggering a civil war between the dical guilds and the governnt!"
Valisera slamd her fist on the table. Boom!
"They were so terrified they didn’t just refuse . They imdiately made a call... on the red line."
"The red line?" Aiden whispered, his face turning pale as paper. "You an..."
"Yes," Valisera said with disgust.
"They called the Kaiser’s deputy personally. Daron Falzark. That masked bastard."
Valisera paused to catch her breath, her eyes scanning our stunned faces.
"I put Kyrion and Alexander on speaker. And Daron... confird the rejection outright. His damn tallic voice said, word for word:
’This is utter madness. How can you attack Saint Hilarious Hospital, the safe haven of hundreds of thousands of civilians, based on baseless accusations with not a single piece of material evidence? If Alpha Squad moves toward the hospital with the intent to breach it, I will consider it an act of terrorism and personally erase you.’"
The blood froze in the veins of the entire squad. Daron himself threatening to annihilate us!
"And it didn’t stop there," Valisera added, her eyes focusing on in particular.
"After Daron ended the call... Kyrion Drathis turned to —that old pig—and smirked. He said:
’I knew what little sanity you had left was gone the day you recruited a Rank G man to be your tactical advisor. You’ve turned Alpha Squad into a circus, and now you want to start a war with Saint Hilarious because of this boy’s delusions? Go to hell, Valisera.’"
I swallowed hard. The Alpha Squad’s gazes shifted toward .
Kyrion’s anger, the High Command’s rejection... all of it was now pinned on . —the Rank G who brought them disgrace and trouble!
Damian, who always tried to find a logical solution in the middle of chaos, stepped forward and raised his hands in a calming gesture.
"Commander... please, calm down a bit. If Alexander and Daron refused... why not speak to Kaiser Dravion?" Damian asked with tactical innocence.
"I an... in the eting hall two weeks ago, you spoke to him as an equal! He agreed with you! He accepted your insult with ease! It seems you hold a special position with him. Why not contact him directly and tell him the truth?"
The mont Damian asked that question... sothing snapped in Valisera’s head.
Her entire body stiffened.
Her crimson eyes widened in a terrifying way, and the icy composure she had tried to regain shattered completely, replaced by raw, hysterical human anger—and a vulnerability I had never seen in her before.
She lunged at Damian with a speed my eyes could barely follow.
She grabbed his heavy armor by the chest collar and literally lifted him off the ground—despite his healthy arm trying to resist and his muscular build. She lifted him with one hand!
"Why don’t I talk to him?!" Valisera scread in Damian’s face, whose eyes bulged in terror, his face just centiters from her furious one. Drops of her saliva flew with her scream.
"And who do you think I am, you idiot?! Huh?! Who the hell do you think I am?!"
Damian looked at her in sheer terror, unable to speak as his throat tightened.
"I’ve only seen him once in my life—in that eting!" Valisera shouted, the shock in her words shattering every theory we had built in our heads.
"Once! I am not his secret daughter! Not a relative! Not so hidden project of his! I have no authority over him!"
She released Damian violently, sending the blond young man crashing onto his back against the marble floor, gasping and coughing, while Aiden, Sia, and Eva stepped back in fear.
And ... I stood there, my mind collapsing in both codic and tragic fashion at the sa ti.
"Huh?!" I scread internally, nearly slapping my face with both hands.
(You’ve only seen him once?! You’re not close to him?! You have no authority?!
Then... in that terrifying security eting... in front of FBI and CIA leaders and generals... when you called him simply "Kaiser" and spoke to him with such audacity... that was all just bluffing?! A lie?! A performance?! A suicidal gamble to trick everyone into thinking you were backed by him?!
My God... this girl isn’t just sadistic... she’s officially insane!
She played poker with the rulers of the world with completely empty cards!
And even worse... Kaiser himself, for so reason, went along with it in that mont and agreed with her!)
At that mont, my twisted admiration for her grew as much as my fear of her did. She was the embodint of absolute chaos.
Valisera breathed heavily, closing her eyes and rubbing her forehead with both hands, trying to regain her mask of cosmic coldness.
The squad was in total shock.
Their illusion—the illusion that their commander was untouchable—had shattered. She was just an incredibly powerful girl, but now politically isolated.
"M-Ma’am," Eva dared to speak in a low, trembling voice, glancing between Damian on the ground and Valisera on the verge of collapse.
"If they refused, and forbade us from approaching the hospital... and we have no support from Kaiser... what do we do now?"
The question hung in the air like a noose.
What would we do? Abandon revenge? Let Saint Hilarious’s slaughterhouse continue producing Volider abominations?
Valisera opened her eyes. The hysterical rage had vanished, replaced by a deadly calm. The calm of a void slaughterhouse.
She turned to us, looking each of us in the eye.
When her gaze t my crimson eyes, I saw my own madness reflected in them.
"What will we do?" Valisera repeated in a low voice dripping with black venom.
"We won’t storm through the front gate. And we won’t use intelligence badges. If Elysium wants to protect its damned saint, let it. We will no longer be an intelligence squad."
She walked to the planning table and slamd her hand onto the hospital’s holographic map.
"Find any evidence," she ordered, her voice cutting like a blade.
"Anything. Waste records, corrupted Aetra invoices, missing staff, bribed janitors. Any filth connected to this hospital or the Voliders—bring it to . Search the sewers, the dumpsters, and the morgues."
She raised her head, a terrifying smile splitting her angelic face.
"If they won’t give us permission to storm the slaughterhouse... then we’ll drag the slaughterhouse into the light ourselves—and force the whole world to drink its blood."
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