A deadly silence fell. A heavy silence to the point that I felt it pressing against my eardrums.
I blinked several times. My mind stopped processing data for a full second.
And that was my role—both as a recruit pretending to be clueless, and as a planner who felt the ground being pulled from beneath his feet—to say those three words:
"Huh?"
I took a step back, my pale crimson eyes widening.
"They refused? What does that mean?"
Valisera stood in the middle of the room, her chest rising and falling violently, and she looked at me with a gaze that made me wish the ground would swallow me before I asked my question.
"It means they refused," she replied with icy coldness that clashed with the blazing fury in her eyes. A coldness that precedes a storm.
Damian let his machine gun hang against his chest, clearly shocked, his expression tightening in pure disbelief.
"How… how did they refuse? Who refused?!"
