Chapter 54

“You’re an agent, right? For the Second Prince.”

Erabelle merely shrugged at him. Just then, the door burst open.

“Lieutenant! What are you—wait, who are you?”

Shit.

“She’s not—!”

Erabelle tried to shove Majia aside, but a sharp, blinding pain shot through her skull. Her vision went pitch black just as she caught a fleeting glimpse of Majia being tackled to the ground.

That was the last thing she remembered.

Cold... Erabelle shuddered, her eyes fluttering open. So cold... freezing...

A persistent ringing echoed in her ears.

Her vision spun out of control. The metallic stench of dried blood stung her nostrils, while through a murky haze of crimson, the blurred contours of her surroundings wavered like heat distortion.

“Yes, it’s definitely linked to the 41st Division.”

Her head turned instinctively toward the voice.

“We’ll transfer them as soon as the interrogation wraps up. No hard evidence yet, but... yes, we’ll force a confession and secure the proof—”

Then came the sound of quiet weeping.

“C-Corporal Jagon, sir... why? Why are you doing this...?”

Majia... Erabelle turned toward the sound, wincing as agony split her head wide open. It felt as though her skull had been cracked with a hammer. Through the haze, she remembered Majia lunging forward to protect her.

“...You...”

“L-Lieutenant? Lieutenant—!!”

Clatter. The sharp noise silenced them both.

Arranged neatly on a stainless steel cart was an array of pharmaceuticals, syringes, and grotesquely sharp instruments. Their intended purpose needed no explanation.

“Oh, you’re awake?” Jagon asked abruptly, slamming his comm-pad down on the tray with a shout.

She wasn’t entirely sure why he was losing his composure, but he looked like the type easily provoked into spilling information. And if a call had just gone through, there had to be a terminal nearby routed directly to the Second Prince’s central server.

Perfect.

Erabelle spat out a mouthful of pooled blood. She must have bitten her tongue when she was knocked unconscious.

“Why did you come, Lieutenant? Why?” Jagon rubbed his throbbing temples in sheer frustration. “I explicitly called for someone else.”

“Then why call for someone else? I’m the one in charge here.”

“Are you insane?” Jagon scoffed loudly. “Why would you be in charge? Why is the Division Commander’s match running point in an active conflict zone?”

“...What?”

How the hell does he know that?

“What’s with that look? You thought nobody would notice? You two were holed up in the same room all night. How could we not know? A lunatic commander shacking up with an unregistered Level 2?”

“...”

“What, were you holding some grand strategic summit all night? Just the two of you? No aides? Come on, does that make a lick of sense?”

At that rate, he might as well have broadcasted it across the sector. Jagon let out a bitter laugh.

“Honestly, it’d be less believable if you were actually compatible.”

“I looked it up. You’re registered.”

When the hell did that happen?

“You seriously bought into that crap?”

I thought no one would ever take that perverted planet god seriously.

“So that’s why you dumped me? I almost took a bullet over nothing.”

“Yeah, well... too late now.”

A sharp needle bit deeply into her neck. Erabelle ground her teeth against the searing pain.

“Truth serum.” Jagon tossed the empty syringe casually onto the tray. “I really didn’t want to mess with a genuine match. Shit, I’d be the one getting torched. Even if they threw you into a warzone, someone up top would raise hell if anything happened to you. You don’t get it, do you? Your commander kills people easier than he breathes.”

Wow... no, I really didn’t know that.

“It’s nobodies like me that get caught in the damn crossfire.” Jagon ran a hand through his hair and kicked the metal table hard. “So why the hell did you show up, huh? Shit!”

Seemingly stuck in a loop of panic, he repeated himself. Then the interrogation officially began.

“Erabelle Vermilion.”

Erabelle spat out the blood surging up her throat from the serum’s reaction and met his gaze head-on.

“Illegal refugee from a displaced colony. Used to work at a dive bar. Got lucky ten years ago and was adopted into House Vermilion.” Jagon began rattling off her life history, detail by precise detail. “A year later, you relinquished your inheritance claims, left the Count’s estate, bounced between fringe academies, and survived through illegal contract work. Then, four years ago, you leveraged your nominal status as an adopted daughter to enter the New Year’s Gala, approached the senior leadership of the 41st Division, charmed them, and enlisted as a junior officer. Is that correct?”

“Yes...”

Damn, I answer way too easily. So much for avoiding provocation; they had executed a meticulous background check. Judging by the depth of it, she really had been the primary target all along.

When Dezeb dragged himself into the picture halfway through, it only complicated things. She had assumed she wouldn't receive even baseline protection, but ironic as it was, public visibility had become her shield.

At this stage, whether people discovered she was his match or not was entirely irrelevant. It was all...

“Roughly two years ago, you faked a reassignment and infiltrated the Timid Company. Since then, under explicit orders from the 41st Division, you’ve been funneling military ordinance to the Federation...”

“May I ask just one thing?”

“Don’t try to play games with me. The serum remains active for eight hours.”

That’s absurdly long. Eight hours is longer than the timer on an ID tag.

“I’m just curious—why are you doing this? Couldn’t you just keep selling your body like you used to? What kind of grandeur were you chasing? Oh, is it because business has been slow lately?”

“......”

“Then discount your rates a little. Speaking of which, do you have any idea how many people complained about you being overpriced and unpleasant...?”

With a wet sound like tearing meat, Erabelle’s head snapped violently to the side. Still, she kept her broken smile, her voice rattling on uncontrollably.

“If you offer a fifty-percent discount, I might actually buy a round just to get my money’s worth.”

“Lieutenant, stop pushing it. I’m losing my patience here.”

“That’s the trouble with small fry.”

After a relentless barrage of personal insults, crude slurs, and filthy taunts, several of her teeth were shattered, her facial structure was fractured, and she finally succumbed to darkness.

Since Jagon was already flying blind with rage, manipulating him had been straightforward.

When she opened her eyes again, Erabelle found herself locked inside a pitch-black warehouse.

Her fingertips brushed against the cold corrugated steel of a heavy shipping crate. Based on the structural design, it appeared to be an emergency staging facility in Molin City.

Of all places... She grimaced, attempting to push herself upright.

Virtually anywhere else would have been preferable. This temporary depot sat directly on planet Molin, established to supply the Second Prince’s forces in the event of an outright civil war.

They built this place to supply their own faction, yet they toss me inside it anyway—how remarkably ungenerous... damn it. Operating out of Molin City was going to make an extraction nightmare.

“...Ugh.”

Erabelle grabbed her ankle, stifling a sharp groan. They had shattered the bones in her foot.

Rather than wasting restraint gear, they had simply broken her limbs to save resources. Such a frugal bastard. I knew he was cheap when he kept complaining about his pay grade. I shouldn't have bothered trying to spare him.

“...Y-you’re awake?”

As she struggled to stabilize her breathing, Majia’s trembling voice broke the silence.

“Yeah.”

Erabelle spat blood onto the cold floor. Her left ear buzzed with a loud, watery ring—her eardrum was almost certainly ruptured—and the vision in her left eye was stained deep red.

They had focused their physical heavy-handedness entirely on her left side. Considering her skull hadn't been caved in completely, Jagon had exerted a surprising amount of self-control.

“Why... why did you have to say all those awful things?”

“...Because I needed him to beat me senseless.”

The truth serum was terrifyingly potent; left unchecked, she would have babbled every military secret in her head.

“What do you mean...?”

“Never mind. Why are you here?”

“B-because I was ordered to go...”

“Who ordered you?”

“Corporal Chase.”

Why would the deputy squad leader dispatch her...? As Erabelle tried to piece the motive together, Majia spoke up again, her voice shaking violently.

“Lieutenant... did you really... did you actually sell weapons to the Federation?”

With immense effort, Erabelle dragged her focus to Majia’s face, which was twisted in bitter betrayal. Majia had lost seven fingers serving in resource-starved combat zones; counting her toes, the tally was likely double.

“Yeah.”

This is a complete disaster. If they hadn't knocked her out cold, she would have surrendered every code in her possession by now.

“Why? Why would you do that...? No, forget it. We need to find a way out of here first, if we even can.”

“......”

“The comms and signum channels are completely dead... There must be a signal disruption field active around the perimeter. I-I applied basic splints to your leg, but...”

Majia was rambling frantically, refusing to meet her gaze. The metallic taste in Erabelle’s mouth turned foul. She let out a soft groan.

“A-are you in that much pain...? Wait, what are you doing?!”

“...Checking the internal timer.”

She manually activated her neural optical array. The microscopic fiber cables running beneath her skin stood out clearly like blackened veins. The visual feed in one eye kept flickering violently from the head trauma.

The initial impact had occurred roughly an hour ago; external telemetry had been cut off for approximately an hour and forty minutes.

Four hours remaining...

Damn it, she thought, digging her dull fingernails directly into the tender flesh behind her neck.

“Lieutenant!!”

Extracting her hardwired ID tag interface, Erabelle re-verified the countdown: precisely four hours remained before the failsafe charge detonated.