The interrogation continued for a few more hours.
Angelo tried every kind of twisted question to make Rudy slip up on the truth, but none of his antics worked.
About three hours later, the interrogation ended, and Rudy was standing at the door of one of the dorm rooms.
As far as he knew, normally two people would share a dorm instead of a single person, and seeing how the syndicate had decided to give him a room instead of killing him outright meant two things:
'Either they still don't trust my words and want to keep me under their eyes, or they believe I fulfill their criteria of a potential member and want me to build a connection to other members, thus actively joining the syndicate...'
Shadow syndicate wasn't hungry for members; many of the irregulars from the sanctuaries joined them to turn their lives for the better... In a world rampant with dreadborns, even if Shadow Syndicate's method were unorthodox, the populace still saw them in a positive light.
Yet, even then, they tried their best to recruit promising talent.
'Shadow Syndicate has about fifty-seven sanctuaries under its control while Moon Weavers only have forty-two...' Rudy remarked inwardly as he stepped further inside his new room with a grim expression.
He slowed his steps, looked around, and found that, like everything else in the headquarters, the room had the same black-and-red accent, with soft, neon LED strip lighting along its walls.
At the center were two beds; on the left side of the room, next to the metallic front door, were two storage cabinets; on the right was a desk with a computer; and at the far right corner was another door that led to the bathroom unit.
He lay in his bed, placed his right arm over his eyes, and began to cry.
"Hoh... What do I do...?"
"How did such a thing happen?!"
Angelo, who was watching him via the hidden cameras, stared at him in silence and mumbled, "If he acts suspiciously, inform me right away."
The guard nodded, and Angelo left the surveillance ward.
Rudy continued to cry for an hour before he reluctantly forced himself to stand up, walked over to the cabinets, opened one of them, and just as he had expected, it had another set of Shadow Syndicate's uniform.
He took out the uniform and stepped into the bathroom unit.
The unit wasn't too big, just enough for Rudy to stand without any problem.
It had a shower in the ceiling, a spotless mirror in front, and a small holder in the wall with soap, shampoo, conditioner, and many other things Rudy didn't know anything about.
The water rained down as Rudy pressed the shower's button.
He pushed his wet hair to the back, brushed his chiselled porcelain-like body, and mumbled under his breath, "There's nothing else I can do but accept my situation..."
A deep, defeated sigh escaped him. "A man's got to do what a man's got to do."
His hands continued to scrub his well-defined features, and after about ten minutes, he stepped out of the bath, dried his hair with a hairdryer, and tied it into a ponytail.
Then he stared at the white wristband with blue lines and a round screen at its center — a haloband — placed inside the cabinet before he picked it up, strapped it around his wrist, and walked towards the power board in the wall.
Once he reached the power board, he pulled out the tiny cylindrical lightning cable and joined it to the haloband.
Just as he did so, the essence energy – An artificial energy generated using essence shards – coursed into the haloband, and Final Will spoke to him.
[You have obtained an artifact!]
[Haloband #17394738]
Similar to almost everything that humanity had developed after the revolutionary discovery of essence energy, haloband also required it and a bit of the wearer's essence to bind itself to them.
Just as it bound with him, a hologram of the headquarters's map appeared out of it.
The map only had a few facilities, such as the mess hall, training grounds, dorms, simulation ward, and the hall, and everything else was too blurry for him to understand.
He looked up at the ceiling, clenched his fists, and muttered, "I can do this."
He took a deep breath, walked over to the door, opened it by touching it with his palm, and left the room.
As he walked towards the mess hall, the other older members stopped in their tracks to look at the tall freak who had an utterly chilling expression on his face.
"What the?!"
"Who is that?"
"I've heard that enforcer Ruviera Rose found him during the mission."
"How the hell did you just happen to have heard that?!"
"Hehehe, A lady has her ways."
A few minutes later, he reached the mess hall, took a seat at the table in the left corner of the room, and used his haloband to select the meals from the menu.
Others glanced at him now and then, and he didn't even look at them.
"Vald Belmont, right? Your meals are here," a young waitress called out to him and began to put down the meals from the cart.
"It's Vlad," Rudy muttered as he shifted his gaze towards the waitress and blinked in surprise.
Unlike everything in this damned place, the waitresses neither wore black nor red — she wore a retro waitress outfit in a soft turquoise color, paired with a similar skirt and a small white apron. Her long blonde hair was slightly curly, and she looked rather cute, with her oval face and soft, ivy-blue eyes.
Feeling his gaze, she looked at him and questioned with a beautiful smile, "Is something wrong?"
Rudy shook his head and muttered, "No... nothing."
"Have a great meal." The waitress smiled and left.
'Alice, huh...' Rudy mumbled in his head and looked at the staggering amount of meals all over his table.
Naturally, a freakish body demanded an even freakish intake, and Rudy was more than happy to make use of the syndicate's goodwill to feed its members at no cost.
Others had already stopped eating and were watching him devour everything within seconds like a starving wolf.
Some even started betting on it...