Chapter 553: Interrogation

Silence fell over the living room.

"That’s right," Nina Jacobs said. At first, she hadn’t made the connection either.

"No wonder you asked Paisley Paige to look into that..." Wendy Marshall said.

Paisley worked at the base hospital, making it easy for her to access the hospital’s mortality records. Sure enough, Nina had started suspecting the whole story a few days ago.

"At first, I was just wondering why it had to be Caleb Carter," Nina explained.

Soul Slayer hadn’t offended anyone, nor did they have any enemies at the base. Cassia Quinnie didn’t even know Caleb prior to this.

"Later, I realized that the target of the penalty cards didn’t necessarily have to be Caleb. If someone else had saved Cassia that day, they would have met the same fate."

Cassia clearly had a younger brother at the base named Daniel Quinnie, but during her two days in the hospital, she didn’t tell him about the supplies. Instead, she told Caleb, someone she had practically zero interaction with before.

It was because she knew from the very beginning that this was a setup. She was using her own death to buy her family a chance to survive. But in doing so, she condemned Soul Slayer.

Nina already felt that Caleb and his team didn’t deserve this.

"How could this happen? But Cassia is already dead. Who exactly does the Yellow Card she represents belong to?" Yvonne Willow asked.

Chase Gallagher pointed at two names. "It can only be them."

"The two who left Ignis at the very beginning?!" Holden Shaw clenched his fists. Did those two screw everyone over and then slip away completely unnoticed?

"I’ll send someone to find them right now." Ian Chandler stood up but was stopped by Chase.

"I’ve already looked. Their place is empty, and no one knows where they went."

"Did they flee the base? How despicable," Yvonne said.

Nina shook her head. "In this kind of weather, the two of them wouldn’t survive outside. Besides, they know how formidable the Gray Cards are. If they ran, they’d be found sooner or later."

"Then where would they go?" Holden had a feeling Nina already knew the answer.

"Nina, do you need me to request a base-wide search? I can take full responsibility for whatever happens," Ian said.

"No need." Nina stood up and said, "There’s one place in the base that is most easily overlooked, and it can also evade a Gray Card search."

There was such a place? "Where?" Not even Chase knew where Nina was talking about, considering he had already checked every possible location the two could have gone.

Just then, a knock sounded at the door.

"It seems the results are in." Nina walked out. The person knocking was wearing a uniform. Chase and the others recognized it immediately—it was the uniform of the base’s Enforcement Bureau.

"Miss Jacobs, Sherry sent me to inform you that the people you’re looking for are indeed being held at our bureau." Vivian Carter was Sherry Renner’s colleague, and she recognized Nina.

"Understood. We’ll head over right away," Nina said to Vivian.

It seemed the truth of whether her deductions over the past few days were correct was about to be revealed.

Inside the Enforcement Bureau.

Many people were whispering among themselves. This was entirely because the entire Stellarys Team had shown up.

"I heard the Stellarys Team captain requested an interrogation of two guys involved in a brawl."

"A brawl? We have hundreds of people locked up for that here, don’t we?"

"Tsk, it’s those two from a few days ago—the ones who suddenly beat a random pedestrian until their bones were fractured and their internal organs were bleeding."

"I remember, I remember. Those two even dared us to lock them up for a few more months if we had the guts."

"..."

Inside the interrogation room.

Sherry was still somewhat baffled as to why Nina had made such a huge scene by bringing her entire team along.

"Nina, they’re outside. Do you want to question them one by one?" Sherry blinked.

"No need. Bring them both in." Nina sat at the interrogation table until the two men were brought in and seated across from her.

The two men exchanged a glance. The round-faced one wearing black-framed glasses asked cautiously, "Is there a problem? Haven’t we already pleaded guilty?"

Sherry stood to the side and said, "Evander Sullivan, Lucas Holden, this is Nina Jacobs, the captain of the Stellarys Team. She will be interrogating the two of you today. You must answer all her questions truthfully. If you try to hide anything, we have plenty of methods to deal with you."

The existence of the Truth-telling Talisman was known only to a few staff members within the Enforcement Bureau; the base’s survivors had no idea the bureau possessed such an item.

"Stellarys? The two of us aren’t joining any teams right now. You aren’t trying to recruit us, are you? Hahaha!" The other man spoke up. He was skinny and gaunt, with drooping triangular eyes. He looked at everyone with a half-squinting smile, but a hint of gloom lurked in his gaze.

Nina ignored him and cut straight to the chase. "Evander Sullivan, Speed Element Superpower User. Three days ago, the two of you assaulted a pedestrian without cause, severely injuring him, and then immediately turned yourselves in. Lucas Holden, Space Element, former captain of Ignis. Several days ago, you insisted on bringing a survivor named Cassia Quinnie onto your team, which caused dissatisfaction among your members, so the two of you simply quit. Is that right?"

Lucas pushed up his glasses, his flat, honest-looking face turning a bit wary. "Why are you asking about this?"

"Is it true or not?" Sherry demanded loudly from the side.

"Yes, yes, yes, it’s true. We just took a liking to Miss Quinnie and wanted her to join for some logistics work. So what? The others didn’t agree, so we just left," Evander explained nonchalantly.

"Did you quit because you acquired a massive batch of supplies? Did you just stumble upon them, or did you kill someone to take them? If I had to guess, it was murder and robbery, wasn’t it?" Nina’s words left the two men frozen on the spot. But their shock only lasted for a split second.

Cold sweat had already begun to bead on the bespectacled Lucas’s forehead. "I don’t know what you’re talking about. Do you have the wrong guys?"

"What murder and robbery? Don’t go around falsely accusing people without evidence," Evander retorted.

"The reason you randomly attacked a pedestrian was to hide from a certain group of people. You didn’t expect the members of Soul Slayer to make it back alive. Whether it was them or the other party tracking you down, the two of you would be easily discovered. So, you simply hid in here. After all, while the base logs everyone entering and exiting, it can’t track every individual’s movements inside."

Nina actually wanted to use the Truth-telling Talisman right away, but she wanted to personally verify her deductions. She was also curious about what exactly that batch of supplies in Lucas’s space could be. A Truth-telling Talisman couldn’t compel a Space Superpower User to voluntarily hand over supplies.

"Who is the true owner of those supplies? If you don’t tell us, the base can easily announce that the two of you deceived Soul Slayer, then release you as bait. By then, we’ll still find out who it is," Nina said.

"Just confess. Daniel Quinnie has already admitted that you gave him a sum of Crystal Cores. Oh, right, we also have a letter here that Cassia Quinnie wrote to David Quinnie." Chase tossed a stack of documents onto the table.

Nina knew that the letter didn’t even exist. But faced with the supposed evidence right in front of them, the two men didn’t even think to flip through the pages one by one.

Lucas slumped onto the floor, a look of utter disbelief on his face as he asked, "How could you possibly know all this?"