"Captain Snake, do you think everything is going smoothly?" Kaelen asked in a muffled voice, his eyes glancing anxiously around the darkness.
Snake grunted softly, accompanied by his signature hiss. "Shh... shh... shh... it takes a predator to catch prey. Unfortunately, I am no prey; I am the hunter. How long must we wait here?"
"He'll be here soon. Be patient, Captain."
"Listen, Kaelen. Even though I've wiped all digital tracks, our scent is still lingering there. And if they summon him, then we are still within his line of sight."
Kaelen swallowed hard. "Who is he, Captain?"
"He is the one with the sharpest eyes, capable of seeing even the germs living inside our bodies. Shh... shh..."
Suddenly, the air above them vibrated. A low-frequency hum broke the frozen silence of the night. A dark silhouette slowly descended without a sound, landing smoothly before them. The vehicle was a stealth jet with sharp aerodynamic designs colored transparent—the Chameleon MK-IV, a vertical reconnaissance drone with a flat body resembling a flying dagger, lacking conventional wings, and coated in radar-absorbing material that made its presence like a ghost in the dark night.
The jet's hatch hissed open, welcoming them amidst the newly unfolding chaos of PETERUMMAN.
Inside Room 09B, Zilla stepped inside. The fourteen-year-old girl began carefully arranging the ether—the energy source for their uniforms.
"Reyna, how is Nugia?"
The shy girl was acting strangely. Her hand holding the body temperature checker trembled violently. "He... He..."
Zilla hurried over to her and grasped Reyna's hand. "Alright, calm down first," she said, then took the device and placed it beside the bed.
Zilla looked at the numbers on the gauge; her expression shifted for a moment. Then she touched Nugia's head. "He's just having a fever!" Zilla tried to smile to regain control of the situation. Yet behind her composed face, her mind roared, recalling Sergeant Jean's words earlier. What on earth did Sergeant Jean mean?
While that lingering question still buzzed in Zilla's head, tension on a far greater scale poured out into the corridors of power.
Elsewhere, Colonel Leon walked briskly away from the intimidating trial room, striding past the large pillars in the Sector 01 area.
Click.
"Lina, where are you? I heard you're already back. Why didn't you report? What happened, did you manage to bring Tiger home? Lina, answer me!"
At the same time, inside an apartment room furnished with a plush sofa and vanilla-colored walls filled with various photo frames, a girl sat in silence. On the table lay a photograph whose face matched the people on those walls precisely.
"Lina, Lina, come meet me immediately..."
Lina simply let Colonel Leon's voice on the earpiece hang in the air. The colonel's personal assistant stared blankly at the photo before her.
Who am I really? Am I just a kidnapping victim too? Like that old woman said? If so, who are my parents? Who kidnapped me? Who destroyed my family? she muttered inwardly.
"Colonel, am I..."
Click. Leon's call cut off.
However, the screams of questions in Lina's head would never alter the gears of the conspiracy spinning fiercely out there.
Inside Supreme Commander Pantas's room, someone stepped in with flawless precision without a trace of doubt in their eyes. Sideburns and a beard neatly framed a firm jaw with a pair of eyes gazing so sharply—even sharper than a razor blade, as if capable of piercing through skin and dissecting someone's smallest secrets.
"Elang, you've arrived. You know what needs to be done, right?" Supreme Commander Pantas greeted coldly.
In the room that constantly exuded the thick aroma of selected coffee beans, the glimmer of lights highlighted the metallic reflection on his military uniform. Elang did not merely see; with his sensory expertise and god-tier scanning technology embedded within him, he was capable of observing microscopic details around him. Legend had it that in Elang's eyes, not only were enemy movements clearly visible, even microscopic germs clinging to the human body seemed vividly apparent in his vision.
"Leave it to me, Old Man. Just sit back and enjoy your coffee," he replied casually before turning and walking out of the room without a shred of guilt.
Arriving at Sector 03, the scent of ozone mixed thickly with black smoke from the main machine processing every milliliter of the Azure core grew worse. Elang stood there, examining every inch of the floor to trace the main culprit behind this chaos.
He's smart, even his footprints were faked. Truly a troublesome person, he muttered internally.
"Reporting, General Elang, the autopsy is complete. Witnesses said they didn't see the killer—"
"That's enough explanation. Take me there."
Inside a sterile room in Sector 03, Jep's corpse lay stiffly on an iron bed. Elang observed every detail of the victim's body without blinking.
From behind, a heavy voice greeted him. "General Elang, long time no see! Ever since you received the award as the youngest general..."
"Spare me the small talk, General Don. I'm not here to listen to your belated praise," Elang cut in coldly.
"Hahaha... you really are just like what people say," General Don replied with a smirk.
"The more we make small talk, the more lives slip away." Elang turned to glare sharply at the sector head.
"What do you think, General Elang?"
"I tried looking into his eyes, but his memories were completely wiped. And on his neck, there are injection marks. I'm certain it's Lethe fluid."
General Don jolted upon hearing that explanation. His pupils trembled violently, while cold sweat began to stream down his temples. Inside his mind, a fierce inner battle raged. What did you see? How could you read the memories of a dead man? And you found injection marks that even the best autopsy team missed?
He froze in place, stunned into a blank stare as he sank into the vortex of his own thoughts.
"General Don...?" called a security officer from the open doorway, waiting for instructions.
Don blinked rapidly, forcing himself to suppress the panic on his face before nodding stiffly. "Right... let's go there."
Inside a stuffy iron-walled room, the lights flickered weakly, leaving the shadow of a young man looking exhausted in the corner of the room. Wawa stared at the cold floor before him, both hands hugging his knees to bear the weight of a head full of fear and questions.
The sound of heavy footsteps echoed down the corridor, then stopped right in front of the door. The handsome man squeezed his own elbow. As the lock clicked loudly, Wawa looked up. His gaze was empty, filled with pooling tears on his eyelids.
Slowly, the iron door hissed open. "Subject 033 (Wawa), please step out!" said an officer wearing a gas mask hood in a flat tone. A heavy weapon slung across his chest served as a deadly reminder that resisting meant death.
"I'm not the culprit! I beg you, spare me! I already stopped him..." Wawa cried hoarsely.
"Quiet, just follow! Don't rebel, or do you want us to gift you a piece of lead in that mouth of yours?"
Wawa was escorted toward the interrogation room. Along the way, the screams of other prisoners from behind the cells made his steps tremble even more violently.
In front of the interrogation room door, the officer shoved him until he nearly stumbled inside. Inside, Elang was already sitting calmly in a chair with a small black table.
"Please sit down."
Wawa slumped down onto the iron chair with his knees still weak. The fishy scent of Jep's blood still seemed to cling to his uniform, cluing with the cold odor of this sterile room. Across from him, General Elang stared at him not as a human, but as an investigation object. Wawa's heart screamed, longing for Jep, while simultaneously terrified that his own days were numbered.