Chapter 307: Sanctions Division? I Thought You Said Sanctions & Divisions
"Satori."
I t his gaze.
"Man to man." His voice was rough. "Is this real? Or are you just—"
He couldn’t finish the sentence. Using her. Playing with her. Running so kind of con on my daughter.
I thought about lying. Spinning so story about being overwheld by emotions and circumstances. Letting him believe this was just teenage hormones gone wild.
But Luka deserved better than that. The man had welcod
into his ho, called
son, stood up for
when the world saw nothing but a worthless Zero.
"It’s real, Luka. I love her."
I was playing a ga. The System’s ga. The entertainnt of gods who watched our suffering like a soap opera. But within that ga, within those twisted rules, what I felt for Natalia was absolutely real.
Complicated. Possessive. Probably unhealthy by any normal standard.
But real.
Luka stared at
for a long mont. Searching for sothing in my eyes.
Finally, he exhaled. Long and slow.
"We’re going to talk about this," he said. "Later. When you’re healed. When I’ve had ti to process—" He gestured vaguely at everything. "All of this."
"That’s fair."
"And there will be rules."
"Also fair."
"And if you hurt her—"
"You’ll kill . I know." I attempted a weak grin. "Get in line. I think Skylar already has dibs."
Natalia’s hand found mine again. Squeezed.
The tension in the room eased slightly. Not gone, but manageable. The kind of awkward family drama that could be dealt with over ti instead of exploding into imdiate violence.
I was just starting to think we might actually survive this when three sharp knocks rattled the door.
Not a nurse’s knock. Not a doctor’s knock.
These were authority knocks. The kind that said I don’t actually need your permission to enter.
The door swung open before anyone could respond.
Three figures stepped inside.
Two n and a woman. Charcoal suits that cost more than my dical bills. Earpieces with barely visible wires. Small pins on their lapels, silver and blue.
VHC pins.
The lead agent was a man in his forties with salt-and-pepper hair cropped military-short. His eyes were pale gray, the color of winter ice, and they scanned the room with the flat assessnt of soone cataloging threats.
When those eyes landed on , they didn’t see a patient. They saw a target.
The romantic tension evaporated instantly. The coffee puddle, the awkward confession, Natalia’s dramatic declaration—all of it beca utterly irrelevant as my blood turned to ice in my veins. Those pins weren’t just any VHC insignia. They were the distinctive silver-and-blue of the Sanctions Division, the shadow hunters, the bogeyn that even other Hunters whispered about with dread.
These weren’t bureaucrats coming to file paperwork. The Sanctions Division was the VHC’s ruthless scalpel—President Vance’s personal cleanup crew who made problems disappear without trials or public records. They handled the threats deed "too sensitive for public response," the dark secrets that needed to remain buried, the aberrations that threatened the carefully cultivated garden of Valorian supremacy.
And now they were looking at
like I was a particularly troubleso weed.
Well, shit.
Natalia was already moving. She slid off the chair and positioned herself between
and the agents, her body angled like a human shield. Her hands weren’t glowing yet, but I could feel her telekinesis gathering, coiling like a spring ready to snap.
The lead agent ignored her completely. His attention remained fixed on .
"Mr. Nakano." His voice was pleasant in a way that felt manufactured. "We understand you’re recovering. Our apologies for the interruption." He didn’t sound sorry at all. "But we have so questions regarding the irregularities inside the Sunken Necropolis."
Luka stepped forward.
All the confusion and hurt from the last few minutes transford into sothing far more dangerous. His shoulders squared. His chin lifted. The B-Rank Hunter, the protector, the man who had faced monsters for twenty years, erged from the shell of the bewildered father.
He put his massive bulk between the agents and his children. Both of us.
included.
"He’s a minor." Luka’s voice dropped into the register he used on Gate runs. The one that made lesser n flinch. "And he’s injured. Get out."
The agent’s smile didn’t waver. If anything, it grew thinner.
"This isn’t a request, Mr. Kuzmina. It’s a debriefing." He produced a badge from his jacket. "National security. Authorization code Alpha-Seven."
I didn’t know what Alpha-Seven ant, but from the way Luka’s jaw tightened, it wasn’t good.
"We need to know exactly how a C-Rank student killed an A-Rank Anomaly." The agent’s pale eyes found mine again. Held them. "Especially one that shouldn’t have been in that Gate in the first place."
The implication hung in the air. Soone put it there. Soone knew. And we think you might know too.
I leaned back against my pillows, letting the movent mask the pain in my ribs.
The dostic crisis was postponed. The talk with Luka, the consequences of Natalia’s confession, the inevitable awkward family dinners, all of it could wait.
Because now I had bigger problems.
I smiled at the agent. It probably looked slightly unhinged with my bruised face and bloodshot eyes, but I’d worked with worse.
"An A-Rank Anomaly, huh?" I tilted my head. "Funny. Nobody ntioned that in the briefing. We were told it was a standard C-Rank dungeon clear. Simple training exercise."
The agent’s expression didn’t change.
"So if sothing went wrong," I continued, "if sothing that wasn’t supposed to be there showed up and killed two Sentinels, I’d say that’s a question for whoever cleared the Gate for student use. Not for the student who survived cleaning up soone else’s ss."
Silence.
Natalia’s hand found my shoulder. A warning. Don’t push too hard.
But I’d been playing political gas since before I could walk in my old life. This was just another battlefield. Another predator to outmaneuver.
The agent studied
for a long mont. Then, impossibly, his smile widened.
"You’re going to be fun, Mr. Nakano." He pulled a chair from the corner of the room and sat down without invitation. "Let’s start from the beginning, shall we? Tell
everything that happened from the mont you entered that Gate."
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