Caleb looked at Youri sitting on the floor, his mind still turning over the words he'd just heard. It was true — Caleb had seen through Youri's mind, had witnessed firsthand exactly how his experiences had shaped both the man and the wreckage left behind in him. He had also, over the long months of that work, watched other researchers try the same crawl and fail to handle even a glimpse of what lived inside Youri's memories, let alone endure living through them the way Youri himself had. Somewhere in all those months of watching, without quite meaning to, Caleb had come to feel something uncomfortably close to sorrow for the man on the other side of the glass. He pulled a chair closer, sat, and leaned in toward the microphone. There was a question he had wanted to ask for a very long time, and this, finally, felt like the moment for it.
"Youri," he said, "I have a question I'd like to ask you."
Youri turned toward the glass. "Sure."
Caleb took a breath before he let it out. "Have you ever wondered who Victor Olsen was? The man who created you?"
The question caught Youri visibly off guard. It had been a long time since he'd heard that name spoken aloud. He looked down at his own hand, went still for a moment, then slowly lifted his eyes back to the glass. "To be honest, it's been a long time since I've let myself think about that name. To me, it's little more than a myth — a story told to me once by a madman chasing something he never understood. I may not have an origin worth telling. But if there's one thing I've learned clearly over the course of my life, it's that pain and darkness don't care whether something started out human or not. Even through every mechanical state I've been pushed into, pain and darkness never once let go of me. No matter what everyone else assumed."
Caleb sat back slightly, caught off guard by the answer, and a faint, unguarded smile crossed his face as he adjusted his glasses. He opened his mouth, ready to say something more — but before the words could come, the mechanical doors hissed open and more than twenty armed guards filed into the room. Caleb's assistant walked in just behind them, crossed straight to Caleb, and relayed the order Director Benjamin had given.
Caleb turned back to Youri one last time, holding his gaze for a moment longer than the situation strictly required, before rising to follow the other researchers filing out of the room. He was nearly at the door when a voice called him back. Director Benjamin stood waiting. Caleb turned and saluted crisply. "Sir."
Benjamin returned the gesture. "Doctor Caleb — are all the recordings saved?"
Caleb met the director's cold, unreadable face. "Yes, sir. Everything's on the server."
"Good work, Doctor," Benjamin said. "And thank you for your service." With that, he turned from Caleb and walked into the lab, leaving the researcher standing in the corridor with a faint, unplaceable unease he couldn't quite name. The door hissed shut behind him, and Caleb followed his assistant the rest of the way to the waiting room.
Inside the lab, Youri watched through the glass as armed guards filled the space beyond it, and understood immediately that the one who had truly put him here was finally about to show himself. And there he was. Benjamin walked past the assembled guards and up to the massive pane of glass, a faint smile settling over his face as his eyes found Youri's. He tipped the brim of his cap in a slow, deliberate gesture. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Duke Kaelthorn."
Youri's gaze darkened as he studied the man in front of him — not a stranger, though this was the first time they had stood face to face. He'd heard of Benjamin Dalvaren back in Terria, long before the man had taken command of Khalil Fortress. In those days Dalvaren had served as a commander under Leonora's fleet, known across that command by a name earned in blood: the Hunting Howl. His reputation had been built on a particular kind of ruthlessness — hunting stragglers through open space again and again, dragging down any enemy soldier cut off from the safety of their main fleet, and turning each capture into a warning for anyone who might survive to see it. He would mount the soldier and their battered orbiton together on the hull of his own ship, limbs displaced with such deliberate, theatrical cruelty that enemy forces were known to break formation and retreat at the mere sight of his approach. Dalvaren had called it art. Everyone else — allies and enemies alike — had simply called it what it was: an act of villainy so severe it eventually forced Leonora to strip him of his command, which was how he had come to be handed Khalil Fortress instead. The two of them had never officially met before this moment. But their paths, Youri now recalled, had crossed once — briefly, at Central Command, years ago.
"Oh," Youri said, looking him over. "It's you."
Benjamin's brow creased slightly. "Were you expecting someone else?"
"Yes," Youri said, his voice flat and cold. "I assumed I was about to meet whoever actually put me here. Seeing you instead tells me that person still hasn't arrived."
Benjamin laughed at that, a short, genuine bark of a sound, before collecting himself and fixing Youri with a colder look. "And what makes you so sure it wasn't me?"
Youri's answering chuckle held no real humor in it. "Simple. If it had been up to you, I'd already be dead. Looking at myself now, there are only a handful of people who'd have a reason to keep me breathing — the Duchess herself, for one. Or, more likely, the Minister has other plans for me entirely."
Something in Benjamin's expression shut like a door. "I see," he said quietly. "So the Reaper really is everything they claim — not just a blade that cuts through anything in its path, but a mind calculating three moves ahead of everyone in the room."
The two men held each other's gaze across the glass, neither willing to look away first, until the sharp ping of Benjamin's DTI broke the silence. He pressed it to his ear, irritation already sharpening his voice. "What?" Whatever he heard on the other end made his eye begin to twitch, the composure slipping from his face by degrees as the message settled in: the Duchess of Kaelthorn herself was already on her way to Khalil Fortress. Under the Emperor's own orders.