The global panic created by the approaching extraterrestrial objects provided the perfect cover for Dimitri Orlov's operation. While the Japanese government was consumed with managing the international crisis and its own public relations disaster, security protocols at the hospital where Naira was held became stretched and porous. Orlov's team, clad in the anonymous uniforms of a fictional medical transfer unit, moved with the chilling precision of a special forces operation. They extracted the sedated girl from her bed, wheeling her past overwhelmed staff and through service corridors into a waiting, unmarked vehicle. She was taken to the same secure, windowless facility that housed Elyra, but was placed in a separate, soundproofed room. Orlov believed in keeping his leverage isolated and manageable.
Naira drifted back to consciousness, her mind fuzzy from the drugs. The first thing she noticed was the stark, metallic chill of the air. The second was a gurney in the corner of the small room, bearing a still, human-shaped form under a stark white sheet. A primal, terrifying intuition seized her. Before she could even form a thought, the door opened and Orlov entered, his presence filling the room with a predatory calm.
"Ah, you are awake," he said, his voice a low rumble. "I thought you might want to see your father. A proper farewell." He walked to the gurney and, with a slow, deliberate motion, pulled back the sheet.
Naira's world stopped. It was Varos. His face was pale and peaceful in a way that was utterly foreign to the living man, his strong features stilled forever. A small, strangled gasp was the only sound she could make.
"Your father was a man of many talents," Orlov continued, his tone almost conversational, as if discussing a minor business detail. "And many sins. The things he did for Mother Russia in Siberia... the villages he pacified, the dissidents he made disappear. He had so much blood on his hands. He thought he could wash them clean by playing the hero for you." Orlov leaned down, his face close to hers, his voice dropping to a venomous whisper. "There is no clean. There is only useful. And he ceased to be useful."
He left the sheet pulled back, a calculated act of cruelty, and exited the room. The lock clicked shut, leaving Naira alone in the deafening silence with the corpse of her father, the image of his lifeless face and Orlov's poisonous words searing into her soul, transforming her grief into something hard, dark, and vengeful.
Across the globe, Azar was a flicker of motion and intention. He stood on a windswept glacier in the Arctic, then moments later, in the profound darkness of a deep ocean trench, then on the silent peak of a mountain. He was no longer hiding. He was a sensor array, his consciousness scanning the planet's boundaries, tracking the precise approach vector of the void children. Their signature was cold, vast, and drew nearer with every passing hour.
Yet, his processing was plagued by an anomaly. A shrill, persistent frequency of pure anguish was cutting through his cosmic calculations. It was Naira. Her pain, now amplified by a catastrophic, personal loss, was a discordant scream in the data stream. His logical mind classified it as an irrelevant, localized emotional spike, a distraction from the planetary-scale threat. But he found he could not quarantine the signal. Her singular suffering exerted a strange, illogical gravity, pulling his focus from the systemic to the specific. For the first time, the fate of one small, broken life felt disconcertingly significant, a variable that threatened to unbalance his entire equation.
In the sterile corridor outside Naira's cell, Professor Sato stood frozen. He had not seen the horror inside, but he had heard Orlov's words, followed by the crushing silence that was more terrible than any scream. He pictured the child in there, confronted with the ultimate trauma, and his stomach turned. His own complicity felt like a physical stain. He had justified his actions to Tanaka with talk of human progress and the greater good, and to himself with the threat to his own family. But this, this was the unvarnished truth. He had helped create a machine that tortured orphans. The weight of his cowardice pressed down on him, threatening to crush his spirit.
In a soundproofed conference room far from the grim reality of the holding cells, Sarah Mitchell played a more sophisticated game. She faced a visibly deteriorating Tanaka. The pressure of his daughter's illness, the global condemnation, and the volatility of his Russian allies were etching deep lines of strain on his face.
"Your partnership with Orlov is unraveling, Ryo," Mitchell stated, her voice calm and measured. "He is torturing a child and using a corpse as a prop. Is this the legacy you want? The United States can offer a more civilized path."
She slid a tablet across the polished table. On the screen was a live feed of Yuko, Tanaka's daughter, sleeping in a clean, modern hospital room. American doctors in white coats were reviewing a chart at her bedside.
"She is safe with us," Mitchell said softly. "This is the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. Our genomic and regenerative medicine division is the most advanced in the world. We can save Yuko with science, not cosmic desperation. We have a cure, not a theory." She paused, letting the image of his daughter sink in. "All we require is a real partnership. Help us secure Azar and the girl for a joint, controlled research initiative. Save your daughter's life, and in doing so, help us save the world from the chaos you have helped unleash."
She placed a single document and a pen before him. It was a draft agreement that would grant the United States primary access and authority over the entire situation. Tanaka stared at it, then back at the screen, his daughter's fragile life held in the balance, a pawn in a game that had grown far beyond his control.