Elias is summoned to meet Commissar Vael face-to-face — not for judgment, but recruitment. Elias is offered a place in "The Black File," a deniable-operations team used for unofficial threats. No records. No medals. No truth. The offer isn't a reward. It's a reminder: survival is leverage — and leverage comes with cost.
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The door to the Commissar's office wasn't guarded.
That was the first warning.
Elias had been through enough now to understand that truly dangerous people didn't surround themselves with protection.
They invited you in.
The hallway was long, lined with relics: bolter casings sealed in glass, prayer beads hardened into crystal, a faded purity seal the length of a man's arm. At the end — an arched door flanked by nothing but silence.
He knocked once.
A voice from inside:
"Enter."
He stepped through.
The office was bare.
One wall-length window overlooking the hive trench. One heavy desk of blacksteel. One man.
Commissar Vael.
Vael didn't rise.
He didn't look up.
He just finished stamping a dataslate, then slid it aside.
"Elias Mercer."
Elias nodded once. "Sir."
Vael finally looked at him.
His eyes were not the cold, glassy eyes of a bureaucrat.
They were sharp. Focused.
The kind of eyes that weighed not your value — but your risk.
"You killed a priest of the Ecclesiarchy," Vael said, not as accusation — just fact.
"I did."
"You destroyed a relic site."
"It was already corrupted."
"You exited the engagement alive, bearing unclassified anomalous energy signatures. No Inquisitorial warrant. No genetic trace. No psychic echo."
"Yes."
A pause.
Vael leaned back slightly in his chair.
"And that's why you're not dead."
Elias didn't respond.
Not out of fear.
Because he understood now: Vael wasn't trying to scare him.
He was making an offer.
Vael reached into his desk and placed a small dataslate in front of him. Unmarked. No seal. No rank tag.
"Recon Group IX. Callsign: Black File."
He waited.
Elias didn't touch it.
"What is it?"
"Deniable ops. Conflict zones with too many questions and too few survivors. You'll see things that don't exist. Fight threats that don't make it into public record. And when you die, your name won't appear on a wall. Just vanish."
"Why me?"
"Because you already did."
Vael folded his hands.
"I've had my eye on you since your first resurrection. I've read your file. What little of it exists. You're not a soldier. You're a fuse. And fuses are only useful if they burn at the right time."
Elias stared at him.
"And if I say no?"
Vael didn't blink.
"You won't."
Another pause.
Then Vael leaned forward.
"Because you've been asking the wrong question."
Elias raised a brow.
"You keep asking what the Flame is."
Vael's voice dropped to a razor-thin whisper.
"Ask what it's watching for."
That landed.
The room went silent.
Only the low hum of the wall-vox and the distant throb of hive engines.
Elias picked up the slate.
There was no signature line.
Just a single option:
"ACCEPT."
He pressed it.
The screen blinked. Then went dark.
Vael stood.
That was the first time Elias realized how tall he was. Not bulky. Just unmoving. Like a statue that had learned to speak.
"You report to Terminal K-17 at 0500. No goodbyes. No broadcast. You'll be gone before anyone realizes you've left."
He stepped around the desk.
"Your survival in the Black File will be based on three things: silence, instinct, and pain. You have all three."
He offered a gloved hand.
Elias took it.
Vael's grip was iron.
Then he said something that stuck longer than anything else that day.
"You're not special, Mercer. You're just the one still standing."
Elias left the office.
And the System, for the first time that day, responded.
> Operative Path Chosen
> Class Path: Divergent (Black File Operative)
> Status: Observe and Accelerate
> Threat Profile: Growing
[END OF PART 2]