After Elara left, I leaned against the closed door and exhaled.
The apartment was quiet again.
Not the dangerous kind of quiet.
Not the lonely, suffocating quiet of earlier.
Just… night quiet.
Soft. Dim. Bearable.
I grabbed a change of clothes, took a slow, lukewarm shower that made my ribs ache in manageable waves, then pulled on soft shorts and an oversized shirt that didn't press against anything important.
Sleep didn't come.
So I drifted into the living room, turned on the TV, and curled up on the sofa. A random movie flickered to life—some old sci-fi thing.
Mephisto was still perched on the couch armrest.
Still. Watching.
Red eyes glowing faintly like he was on low-power surveillance mode.
"I'm not running anywhere," I muttered.
He clicked his beak once, unimpressed.
I sank deeper into the cushions, letting the movie's background noise fill the spaces in my head.
Half an hour in, my phone buzzed against my thigh.
One message. From Devil.
Devil: So you think I'm harmless?
My stomach flipped.
Slowly—very slowly—I shifted my eyes toward Mephisto.
He looked at me. Then at the phone. Then back at me.
A perfect little mechanical narc.
"I trusted you," I whispered at him. "Unbelievable."
Mephisto tilted his head—the universal sign for I serve only one master, and it's not you.
Fine.
I tapped the message bubble.
Diana: do you intend to hurt elara? or let harm come to her?
A shaky breath escaped me.
Diana: if she were in my place—would you use viktor's threat on her too? i know you saw the panic attack. that's how far he got under my skin today. you're welcome for the leverage boost.
I stared at the screen.
A minute passed.
Nothing.
He wasn't ignoring me. He was waiting.
I clicked my tongue and typed again, fingers steady despite the small knot forming in my chest.
Diana: exactly. to her, you are harmless.
Silence thickened, heavy and deliberate.
My throat tightened. I typed again.
Diana: but don't worry—i know how dangerous you are to me. that's why you're the boss.
Diana: just don't twist my words like that again. please.
I set the phone face-down on the blanket—like I could smother the conversation by smothering the screen—and leaned back, heart hammering far too fast for someone who wasn't moving.
Mephisto blinked once.
Somewhere across the city, Sylus was reading my words.
And deciding what to do with them.
Eventually exhaustion pulled me under—not gracefully, just a slow gravitational drag that shut my eyes mid-scene.
Mephisto stayed perched on the couch armrest, ruby eyes dimmed to a low, watchful pulse.
—
A sharp stab under my ribs woke me.
Same pain. Same limits. Same reality.
I swallowed two painkillers dry, waited for the fog to ease a bit, then stared at the ceiling.
Normally, I'd go to the gym.
Lift heavy until my arms shook.
Force my brain quiet with repetition and burn.
But with cracked ribs?
Yeah. No.
So I dragged myself to the desk and opened the laptop.
Clean. Updated. High-security operating system.
Good.
I cracked my knuckles—slow, careful—and did the only thing that made sense: I dug.
N109 Zone factions and crime lords. Aliases. Underground networks. Blacklisted IDs.
I dove into police records, archived offline files, black-market trading logs, dark-net rumor threads, encrypted channels that weren't meant to exist.
Nothing.
Not nothing useful.
Nothing at all.
No digital trace.
No paper trail.
No aliases, no sightings, no connections.
Like he'd never lived inside this world.
Which was impossible.
Everyone left something behind.
Even Sylus had patterns, shadows, digital fingerprints.
Viktor?
He left a void.
And the void stared back.
By late afternoon, frustration simmered under my skin—sharp, restless, pointless. My ribs ached from sitting too long, my fingers were cramped, and my brain felt scraped raw.
I needed air.
I threw on a jacket, locked the apartment behind me, and stepped into Linkon City.
The air hit me first—cool, crisp, humming faintly with the ever-present hum of Protocore power grids.
The streets were a strange blend of yesterday and tomorrow:
Zero-gravity trains gliding silently overhead.
Vintage buses rumbling along tourist routes.
Holographic signs flickering beside brick storefronts.
Families sitting outside old noodle shops beneath neon billboards.
Teenagers riding hoverboards past antique bookstores.
Linkon looked polished, rebuilt, confident.
But under the shine, I could still see it:
The history.
The scars.
The places that had burned when the Wanderers first descended.
The spots rebuilt too quickly.
The corners that still felt haunted.
I walked without a destination, letting the city unfold in front of me.
Noise. Crowds. Light.
Normal life happening all around me.
It felt unreal.
I found a supermarket—one of those old-fashioned brick ones tucked between a tech café and a smart-home appliance store. I grabbed a basket, picked up some groceries without thinking too hard about it.
Bread. Tea. Fruit.
Something frozen and microwavable.
Something sweet—not because I needed it, just because normal people bought dessert.
Trying to be normal felt like wearing someone else's skin.
But it was something.
Night fell quickly—Linkon's sky painting itself with neon pinks and electric blues. Drones zipped overhead like fireflies. Traffic hummed. Music played faintly from a bar on the corner.
By the time I reached my building, the air had turned colder, sharp enough to sting.
I paused at the entrance, groceries in hand, staring up at the illuminated windows.
Apartment 1011.
My home, apparently.
My arms ached from carrying grocery bags. My ribs ached from existing. My brain ached from trying—and failing—to peel back the curtain around Viktor.
I dropped the bags onto the counter and exhaled slowly.
Groceries.
Normal human tasks.
Normal human movement.
It didn't help.
I'd hacked through every civilian access point in Linkon City, poked at sectors I had no business being inside, and used tools that didn't technically exist in this version of reality—
And Viktor remained a ghost.
A clean, perfect void.
You don't erase yourself that completely without help.
Systemic help.
Powerful help.
And the more I thought about it, the more the answer coiled uncomfortably in my stomach.
I needed Sylus.
I hated that.
Hated how obvious it was.
Hated that the alternative was staying blind.
I stared at my cracked phone on the counter, thumb hovering above the screen.
I didn't want to be the kind of person who needed him.
But I also didn't want to die.
For a long moment, the apartment was silent except for Mephisto's faint mechanical hum as he perched on the back of the couch, watching me with ruby eyes that tracked every microexpression.
He knew.
Of course he knew.
"…Don't look at me like that," I muttered.
He tilted his head.
I pressed the heel of my palm to my forehead, feeling the first ghost of a headache rising.
"Fine," I whispered. "Fine."
I unlocked the phone.
The message window with Devil was still open—like the phone had been waiting for me to give in.
I hated that.
But I hated blind spots even more.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard. Stopped. Started. Then finally moved.
Diana: i need intel on viktor. your intel. the city systems are too clean. someone erased him. if you want me alive long enough to be useful, you fix that.
I stared at it.
Not emotional. Not apologetic. Not begging.
Transactional.
I hit send.
The message delivered instantly.
For a long moment—nothing. No dots. No follow-up. Just silence. Heavy. Intentional. Like he was letting me feel it.
Then—
Devil: Noted.
One word. Sharp as a blade.
Another message appeared almost immediately:
Devil: The twins will deliver means for you to defend yourself shortly. Be ready.
My throat tightened.
I set the phone down beside me and exhaled through my nose—slow, shaky, controlled.
Mephisto hopped along the armrest, ruby eyes brightening like a silent alarm.
"…What now?" I muttered.
A knock hit the door.
Not a real knock.
A rhythm.
Three taps.
Pause.
Two taps.
Playful.
Unmistakable.
I dragged myself up, ribs complaining sharply, and opened the door—
Two masked faces stared back.
The twin on the left bounced on his heels the moment he saw me, wiggling his fingers in a chaotic wave like we were old friends who'd shared a crime once.
Luke. Definitely Luke.
The one on the right inclined his head politely, posture composed, movements neat and efficient.
Kieran.
"Delivery!" Luke sang, thrusting a reinforced case toward me. "Special order! Don't drop it unless you want to meet your maker!"
Kieran elbowed him. "She will not be dropping it."
"I was just setting expectations!" Luke hissed back.
They stepped inside without being invited—Luke humming some upbeat tune entirely wrong for the mood, Kieran moving like he had memorized every inch of my apartment already.
They placed their cargo on the coffee table:
- a long armored case
- a matte-black equipment box
- a sealed envelope
- a slim rectangular package
- a slim black key fob
Luke tapped the long case with reverence. "Careful. This one bites."
Kieran gestured to the rest. "Primary tools. Communication unit, data terminal, credentials."
A tiny electric thrill went up my spine. Tools.
Luke leaned in conspiratorially. "There's also a toy."
"Luke," Kieran warned.
"What? It's a very dangerous toy."
Kieran looked at me, voice steady. "If you require assistance, contact us. Preferably me."
"Contact me too," Luke added brightly. "If you want chaos."
"Don't encourage that," Kieran sighed.
Luke ignored him completely. "Oh! And welcome aboard." He finger-gunned me directly in the ribs. I flinched. "Oops—sorry! Forget you're breakable. For now."
"Luke," Kieran snapped.
They turned to go in perfectly synchronized movement.
At the threshold, Luke spun back again. "Don't die, okay?"
Kieran dragged him out by the elbow.
The door shut.
The silence afterward was loud.
Mephisto hopped down onto the table, perched like an auditor inspecting the delivery.
"…Right," I said breathlessly. "Sure. Fine."
I sat, pulled the armored case toward me, and unlatched the locks.
The lid lifted.
My pulse actually skipped.
Inside lay a handgun—sleek matte-black metal, heavy-bodied, compact, unmistakably custom. The kind of illegal masterpiece collectors whispered about.
"Oh," I breathed. "Hello there."
I lifted it carefully—almost reverently—and the moment my palm closed around the grip—
A soft click.
A thrum.
A crimson line streaked across the weapon's seams, scanning me.
The metal warmed beneath my skin as a biometric lock snapped into place, syncing itself to me with a single seamless pulse.
A breathless, involuntary laugh escaped me.
Because it felt incredible.
The balance.
The weight.
The subtle hum of restrained power.
It was everything I loved in a weapon—
danger, beauty, efficiency—
wrapped into one sinfully perfect piece of engineering.
"You manipulative bastard," I whispered.
The thrill in my voice betrayed me.
Mephisto let out a mechanical trill that sounded suspiciously amused.
"Don't judge me," I told him, still staring at the gun. "It's beautiful."
Reluctantly—painfully—I set it down.
It clicked like it didn't appreciate being put away.
Next, I opened the matte-black equipment box.
Inside:
A brand-new phone—portless, buttonless, carved from a single piece of obsidian metal.
When I touched it, it lit instantly.
A note beneath it read: Replace the broken one. Do not attempt transfer. This device knows you.
A matching laptop—thin, unmarked, no brand.
It booted in under a second. Preloaded with dev tools I shouldn't have recognized but absolutely did.
High-density memory cores.
A stylus that wasn't a stylus—an elegant USB-killer designed to fry hostile systems.
I let out a low whistle. "Overkill. I like it."
Mephisto tilted his head—somewhere between judgment and approval.
I set them aside and opened the sealed envelope.
Paper.
Actual paper.
A dossier.
Sparse text. Dense content.
The first page:
VIKTOR
(no surname)
My stomach twisted.
I flipped through page after page—
redactions, missing files, contradictory sightings, sketches of energy signatures that did not belong in this world.
The last page held a single handwritten line:
You were not wrong. Someone erased him.
Sylus's handwriting. Sharp enough to cut.
I swallowed.
The slim rectangular package was next.
Inside sat a pendant—obsidian-black with a red crystalline core pulsing faintly. Diamond-shaped.
A symbol.
A claim.
Onychinus.
My new affiliation.
My new leash.
I stared at it, breath shallow.
Mephisto let out a low trill.
"Yeah," I whispered. "I know."
The final item: a slim black key fob, no markings.
I pressed the center.
A soft chirp sounded from the street below—
a vehicle's acknowledgment.
"...No way."
I hurried to the window and looked down.
There—under the streetlamp—rested a motorcycle.
Black. Angular. Modified.
A predator disguised as a vehicle.
My mouth went dry.
"Goddammit," I whispered. "I shouldn't feel this excited."
Mephisto chirped smugly.
I sank onto the couch, surrounded by weapons, tech, credentials, transportation—
Prepared.
Equipped.
Owned.
My ribs ached.
My head throbbed.
My pulse raced with something I refused to name.
I pulled the blanket over my legs, stared at the dossier one last time, and exhaled slowly.
Whatever came next—
Sylus was done waiting.
And now?
So was I.