The silence that followed the withdrawal of my knife from Lieutenant "Gray’s" skull was not ordinary silence; it was a rupture in the fabric of ti—a mont where the air in the underground pumping station froze, becoming heavier than lead.
I was kneeling in a pool of water mixed with blood and rancid oil, gasping violently like a drowning man who had just been pulled from the depths of an icy ocean.
Hot tears, born from the neural shock of mory transfer, carved clean trails across my face sared with mud and black blood.
I slowly raised my head. My hands were trembling hysterically—not an act this ti, but from the sheer horror of the nightmare I had just swallowed from the cortex of that dead man’s brain.
"Twenty-four hours..." I whispered, my voice hoarse, shredded like glass being crushed underfoot.
Eva, who was still aiming her sniper rifle at with suspicion, lowered her weapon by an inch.
"What did you say?"
I swallowed a lump of bloodied saliva and braced myself against the concrete floor to support my collapsing body.
I raised my crimson eyes—burning with flas of despair and madness—to look at the shattered "Alpha" squad, and at Valisera, who was watching with cold, cosmic detachnt from above.
"I saw... I saw what was in his head," I said in a trembling voice, embodying the role of a recruit whose innocence had just been destroyed—while inside, the "Black Joker" scread with strategic terror.
"The assassination attempt against us, and declaring us as terrorists... it wasn’t just revenge or settling scores. It was a distraction. It was ant to force us into hiding."
"A distraction from what?!" Damian roared, stepping forward despite the pain in his arm.
"From the Harvest..." I coughed violently, spitting blood onto the ground.
"The hospital... Saint Ilarios Hospital isn’t preparing for a normal experintal operation. They’re preparing for a ’Mass Harvest.’ I saw the orders in his mind. Alexander Vance gave the green light to secure the outer periter. In just twenty-four hours, starting at midnight tonight... all lower levels will be evacuated."
I paused to catch my breath, then continued—each word falling like a death sentence:
"They will rge thousands of civilian patients... thousands of people who believe they are receiving free treatnt... in a single night. They will be turned into abominations—and into living Eitra batteries to feed the six Voliders. After the twenty-four hours, the biological containers will be transported, the evidence erased, and thousands of humans will vanish as if they were never created."
The words fell into the abandoned hall like a vacuum bomb, devouring every remaining fragnt of hope.
Twenty-four hours.
We no longer had a week.
There was no ti left for reconnaissance, complex planning, or trying to persuade outside allies.
"Twenty-four hours..." Aiden whispered, his pistol slipping from his hand and hitting the ground.
"This is impossible... this is suicide. We’re only six people! We’re outcasts! Our IDs are frozen, our weapons nearly empty, and we’re being hunted by the entire FBI and the underworld syndicates! How can six people stop a slaughterhouse the size of a city, guarded by an S rank monster?!"
Sia closed her eyes, tightening her grip on her acid-coated daggers.
"Aiden is right. We barely survived a tracking squad. Going in there tomorrow ans walking into a at grinder."
She looked toward Valisera.
Valisera stood in silence.
Her pale, blood-covered face showed no emotion—but her aura spoke.
There was a quiet boiling. A divine fury simring beneath the surface.
Suddenly, Damian moved.
The blond man—once the embodint of military discipline and intelligence idealism—reached into his inner pocket.
He pulled out his gleaming silver badge—Alpha Squad’s insignia, the symbol of his pride, and the authority he once worshipped.
He stared at it for a single second, his eyes filled with a fracture of grief and pure anger.
KRAACK!
He threw the badge onto the concrete floor and raised his heavy tactical boot, crushing it with all his strength until it shattered into twisted tal fragnts sinking into the filth.
"It’s over," Damian said in a low, rough voice I had never heard from him before.
"We are no longer FBI agents. We are no longer protectors of a law that shields pigs and human traffickers. If Alexander Vance wants us to be terrorists... then we’ll beco the worst terrorist nightmare he’s ever seen."
Eva cast Damian a silent look, then reached to her neck, tearing off her military ID pendant and throwing it over the remains of his badge.
"Wolves don’t need collars."
Sia did the sa, and Aiden—despite his tears—removed his intelligence-marked jacket and threw it into the filthy water.
In that raw mont, in the depths of the rotting sewers, Alpha Squad of the Arcane Intelligence died.
And in its place... a group of desperate killers was born—outlaws, drenched in blood, ready to fling open the gates of hell.
Six people against a governnt.
Against a slaughterhouse.
Against the rulers of darkness.
"Zack," Valisera’s sharp, terrifying voice cut through the ritual silence.
Zack jolted, having been watching like soone witnessing a horror film.
"Y-yes, my demon— I an, commander!"
"Do you still have those filthy connections in the black market?" Valisera asked, her crimson eyes piercing through him.
"I need schematics. Not the useless official architectural plans. I want the old infrastructure maps—ventilation networks and biological waste drainage routes of Saint Ilarios Hospital. And I need equipnt. Equipnt without governnt serial numbers."
Zack swallowed hard—but a glint of obsessive genius lit up his unblinking left eye.
"I... I’m Zack. I live in the black market, my lady. If the hospital has a secret basent, I’ll find blueprints even the engineers themselves forgot. As for equipnt... I have a backup stash I never told anyone about. A stash for ’doomsday.’"
"Good," Valisera said. "We have less than ten hours to prepare. Move."
---
[Three hours later — Abandoned subway depot — Sector E]
The place Zack brought us to was an old underground train station, abandoned decades ago after an Eitra leakage incident.
The walls were curved and covered in crumbling ceramic tiles, and rusted train cars stood like the corpses of massive tallic whales in the darkness.
But the central train car... was not rusted on the inside.
As soon as Zack entered a sequence of codes into a hidden panel, the doors slid open—revealing a compact, illegal military arsenal, enough to fund an ard coup.
"Welco to my ’Paranoia Vault,’" Zack said proudly, adjusting his glasses as bright white lights flickered on, revealing rows of weapons.
"The governnt weapons you used to carry are designed to minimize collateral damage and be traceable. These weapons?" he grinned.
"They’re designed for one thing only... absolute annihilation."
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