"You didn't just 'travel' through there!" Zane roared, the sudden volume making Apollo flinch. "You slaughtered a Legion senior operative and brought back his designation token like it was a goddamn souvenir from a fucking field trip!"
Rex's eyes narrowed, just a fraction. The politeness didn't vanish, but a layer of steel slid beneath it.
"I brought it back because it was evidence..."
"I handed it over to the relevant Academy authorities. What those bureaucratic bastards chose to do with it after that was not my fucking responsibility."
Zane took a step forward, his hand twitching toward the hilt of his weapon, his entire aura screaming of a man ready to draw blood.
"You are describing this," he said, each word a slow, deliberate strike, "as though it were an administrative decision."
"As if you were just filing paperwork instead of tearing a man's throat out!"
