The scout blinked against the afternoon glare, pupils slow to adjust. Bloodshot veins spiderwebbed across his eyes, his jaw locked tight, and his chest rose with the asured rhythm of soone trained to control panic. The cords binding his wrists dug into the bark of the tree behind him—Sienna’s knots, Evelyn’s reinforcent, and my final pass to make sure nothing slipped.
No tension in his shoulders. No pleading. Just a soldier’s stillness. Waiting. Calculating.
He hadn’t spoken since waking.
I didn’t offer him the comfort of silence.
"How many scouts were deployed to this island?"
His answer ca with a snort—more muscle mory than amusent. "Just the three of us."
[Lie Detection Activated]
The pulse ca instantly—like pressure shifting behind my ears. A subtle distortion. A twist in the air where the truth should’ve been.
"That’s a lie," I said, voice flat.
He didn’t blink. Didn’t ask how I knew.
"I’m impressed," he said after a beat. "You’re not even going to dress this up like a negotiation."
I didn’t respond. Just leaned in with the next strike.
"Were you expecting us to be on this island?"
He hesitated. A fraction too long. "Yes."
[Lie Detection Activated]
Wrong again.
I didn’t move, just tilted my head—slow and deliberate. "Another lie."
There—his jaw twitched. The first crack in a carefully rehearsed performance.
Behind , soone shifted. Camille, maybe. I didn’t look.
"Let’s make this easier," I said. "You lie, I’ll know. You stall, I’ll notice. You run out of answers—"
I stepped a little closer, voice dropping into sothing colder.
"—I’ll make sure you rember what losing feels like."
His throat bobbed as he swallowed. "And if I tell the truth?"
"Then maybe," I said, "you walk away with both arms intact."
I wasn’t bluffing. I wasn’t angry. Just... ready. His pulse ticked along his neck like a clock running out of ti.
I watched him shift again—testing the bindings. Testing .
"Were you tracking Subject 3830 specifically?"
His answer ca smoother this ti, like he’d been waiting for it.
"We were told to monitor anything unusual. Nothing specific."
[Lie Detection: No response]
My System stayed quiet.
But sothing else didn’t.
A ripple at the edge of thought—tight, uneasy. Like standing on floorboards that didn’t creak until you questioned them.
I glanced at 3830. Still as stone, arms crossed. Her expression unreadable, but I could feel the focus behind it.
"What kind of unusual things?" I asked.
He shrugged, like the question bored him. "Just things that seem out of the ordinary. This island’s registered under a country’s na—it’s logical to check up on it."
Still no trigger.
No spike of skill. No cue from the System.
But I felt it all the sa.
The lie wasn’t in what he said.
It was in what he didn’t.
I didn’t move right away. Just kept staring, posture locked, like I was waiting for a code to finish running.
Instinct was flaring up.
It wasn’t visual. It wasn’t audible.
It was... spatial. Temporal.
Wrong.
Too much hesitation before a vague answer. Too little fear for soone tied up in front of six people who’d all survived assassination attempts.
The skill didn’t flash, but the air felt tight. Like the System was waiting for sothing it couldn’t quite classify.
And then—
[Skill Level Up: Lie Detection → Level 2]
The change wasn’t flashy. Just... more precise. More refined.
His last answer—"Nothing specific"—wavered at the edges now. Context ford around it like frost crystallizing on glass. The lack of detail, the neutral phrasing—it was ant to blur, not clarify.
"You were sent here to hunt 3830, weren’t you?"
He stared up at , blank. "...No."
[Lie Detection Activated]
There it was.
"That’s three lies," I said. "You’re out of grace."
His mouth opened, then closed. A faint tremble in his fingers. He hadn’t expected that. Not the detection. Not the precision.
I crouched again, voice level. "You don’t get to improvise anymore. If you say it, I will test it. If you lie again, you lose sothing valuable. So if you’re going to waste ti, make sure it’s not ours."
He nodded, almost too quickly. "Alright. Alright."
I didn’t look away.
"Who gave the order to target 3830?"
A pause.
His eyes scanned each of us in turn. "Classified. I don’t have that clearance."
[Lie Detection: Silent]
He wasn’t lying. Or at least... not directly.
But sothing still burned at the edge of my mind.
[Instinct Triggered]
It wasn’t the words.
It was the angle of his answer. Too clean. Too easy.
I let the quiet stretch again, watched him try not to fidget.
Then I shifted the focus.
"Who gave the order to target ?" I asked, finally.
That caught him off-guard.
He looked up.
"I don’t know. I really don’t."
[Lie Detection: Silent]
Still no spike.
But my gut scread.
Sothing wasn’t lining up.
I straightened slowly, letting the silence settle into tension again. The others were quiet, but I could feel them behind —still, listening. Waiting.
Sothing had changed.
Camille had started pacing again, each footfall snapping twigs in jagged rhythm. Her energy was too tight to sit still, too raw to contain. Alexis leaned against the curve of a tree trunk nearby, arms crossed over her ribs, eyes fixed on the scout with a gaze that hovered between curiosity and caution. She wasn’t relaxed—but she wasn’t ready to move either.
Sienna stood near Evelyn, her stance casual but guarded, like a professional watching a fire that hadn’t decided whether to spread. Evelyn said nothing. Just stood there, still blindfolded, her expression unreadable, but her presence grounding. She didn’t have to look to know sothing had shifted.
And 3830?
She hadn’t moved once.
No pacing. No fidgeting. Just her arms folded and her stare locked on the scout—not like she was trying to understand him.
Like she already had.
The scout shifted slightly in his bindings. Nothing dramatic. No struggle.
But sothing had changed.
His breathing had evened out. His shoulders had loosened. The tension in his jaw had drained—not in defeat, but in control. He wasn’t breaking down.
He was settling in.
Like the clock he’d been waiting on had just started ticking.
And then—
"He’s not answering," 3830 said.
Her voice was low. Flat. Certain.
"He’s buying ti."
Everything stopped.
Camille froze mid-step, her heel hovering above the forest floor.
Alexis straightened, spine rigid.
Sienna’s head tilted slightly, her eyes narrowing.
Even the wind seed to pause.
That’s when I felt it.
Not heard—felt. A strange texture brushing against the edge of my hearing, like soone was dragging static through the trees with a featherlight hand.
Faint. Ambient. Wrong.
I turned, slowly, toward the sound.
A thin hum. Like pressure trying to form words. Hidden in the underbrush, behind bark and silence, was sothing active—not alive, but listening.
A relay.
A comm line.
A ssage.
I didn’t need him to move.
He already had.
"He wasn’t answering us," I said quietly.
"He was signaling soone else."
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