"Fabiana—are you insane?!"
His hand trembled as it moved to his side.The moment his fingertips brushed cold, hard metal,his face turned ghostly pale.That chill seeped through his skin and lodged itself deep into his spine.
His pupils contracted—and fear surged upward,collecting in beads of sweat along his brow.
"I'm not insane,"she said calmly, her voice clear and sharp—no longer carrying even a trace of shyness or hesitation.
"You just didn't act well enough…The Man of a Thousand Faces from the Military Intelligence Bureau."
Her tone was razor-edged with composure.
The pistol at his waist pressed forward again,its metal chill slicing through his nerves
like a surgeon's scalpel.
"The Man of a Thousand Faces? What… what the hell are you talking about?"
"Even if you hate me,this isn't the kind of joke you should be playing…"
He swallowed hard,his throat dry, his voice cracked and shaking.
Cold sweat streamed down from his temples,soaking through the collar of his shirt.
He turned slowly, inch by inch,as if negotiating with death itself,desperate to ease the weapon away from his side.
"Silver Covenant."
She whispered the name with a smirk curling at the edge of her lips—a smirk full of scorn.Her finger tensed,and the muzzle pressed in deeper.
"This sidearm," she said slowly,
"was issued to exactly four people at the Academy—Yuina, Zarik, Tarin… and me."
There was a faint trace of pride in her voice—but beneath it, a weight.A shadow of something heavier, something wounded.
"The grip is engraved with the twin-headed eagle of the Federation.From day one, we were told the same thing—that we would become the pride beneath the wings of that great eagle."
She didn't look at his contorted, panicked face.Her gaze was steady as ever—sharp enough to pierce bone.
"Fabiana…"His voice cracked with a kind of pleading sorrow.
"Yuina's been gone for years.You need to let this go."
"I was the one who lost everything in that tragedy.Why come after me, even now, seven years later?"
"If we're talking about vengeance…I should be the one who wants you dead."
She didn't answer his emotion with her own.Instead, she lowered her head slightly,
her eyes locked on his frozen, unmoving body.
"The Silver Covenant's custom cyanide rounds—"
"They can send a man to the other side the moment they touch his skin."
Her voice was low—but every word landed with the weight of a verdict.Like the final warning before an execution.
"So before that happens…are you really not going to tell me—"
"where you took the real Dorin?"
Her eyes were cold and clear,her stare cutting and merciless,backed by a face as calm and composed as ever.
"…How did you know?"
His voice was barely audible.
"I spent three years studying his every move.I thought—I really thought I'd made it flawless…"
His face turned pale—sickly pale.And with the collapse of his mask,his features sagged into something bitter and exhausted—a hollow smile curling on his lips.Not hatred.Just a final, crumbling surrender.
"What else are you hiding?"
The Man of a Thousand Faces spat the words through clenched teeth,his voice low,
laced with a humiliation too bitter to name.
"For three years, we sent in our best agents—the most elite operatives the Bureau has to offer—and you slipped past every one of them."
"Fabiana Rin—What the hell are you really hiding behind that name,that , a top-tier intelligence operative,was sent after you,and you saw through me so fast?"
He glared into her eyes,and in the glow of the flickering lamp,the shame on his face spread like layers of filth—crawling into every line,every pore,like rot beneath the skin.
At the same time,his hands began to drift slowly,just out of her direct sight,edging quietly toward his waist.
But Fabiana didn't flinch.Her stare was sharp as steel and her voice struck like a hammer falling on cold iron:
"I should be the one asking you—what the hell are you trying to do?"Fabiana hissed, her voice laced with fury.
"I still don't know why your Military Intelligence Bureau has tried more than once in the past three years to eliminate me."
"In the Myuretan uprising,my own second-in-command nearly blew my brains out."
Her teeth clenched.Her voice dropped lower, sharper:
"Is it just because I have Synai blood in my veins?"
She took a step forward then another.
"You really believe every Synai is some deranged nationalist maniac,hell-bent on tearing the Federation apart?"
"You think slapping the word 'nationalism' on someone justifies every purge,every quiet disappearance,every damn cleansing you people carry out?"
Her words grew heavier with each sentence,like stones falling through the air—closer, closer,until they struck bone.
"Azure Emerald has been gone for three years."
Her voice grew colder, sharper—like steel drawn across marble.
"What the hell have you people been doing since then?"
"If the Defense Council is busy poking holes in the walls of this broken, bleeding Federation—"
"Then you—You're tearing out its foundation, brick by brick."
Following The Man of a Thousand Faces' question,Fabiana's face twisted with a rising fury of her own.
Three years.Three years of living under the constant shadow of death—that time didn't just sharpen her instincts as an officer.
It had burned away her patience,eroded her loyalty,and crushed whatever faith she still hadin the ideals they once saluted.
That faith,that fire was gone.Was ash.She took one last step forward and stopped.Now she stood directly in front of him.
Her fury didn't cool.If anything, speaking out only stoked it further.Everything she'd endured—the injustice, the silence, the betrayals—now exploded like shrapnel,hurling themselves at the intelligence officer in front of her with the full weight of three years of buried rage.
"Don't think I didn't see what you were doing!"
The words had barely left her lips when Fabiana snapped her leg upward,a brutal, unflinching front kick that slammed directly into the man's gut.
The thud of bone smashing into muscle nearly drowned out the crackling of the fireplace.
He dropped like a stone—his body folding inward,his knees crashing to the floor.
It was like every organ in his body twisted and tore at once.His face twisted with pain,
drained of color—chalk-white, contorted, grotesque.
His left hand clutched his abdomen on instinct,while his right hand still fought,fumbling desperately toward his waist,trying to draw something—anything—from beneath his coat.
"Give it up," Fabiana sneered,her voice laced with mockery.
"Is it standard protocol now for every agent in the Intelligence Bureau
to stash a gun right there?"
The shot rang out before the words had fully faded.
In the confined space of the room,it was deafening—like a whip-crack made of thunder and fire.
The Man of a Thousand Faces screamed.
His right arm burst open in a violent spray of blood and flesh.Bone shattered, muscle torn—the limb spun away in a sickening arc,landed on the wooden floor with a wet, meaty slap.
Blood exploded from his shoulder in a pulsing, arterial fountain.Only a few strips of shredded tendon still clung to what was left of the limb.
He writhed and collapsed,screaming,his blood seeping between the floorboards
in thick, webbed rivulets of red.
"Damn it… Tell me…"
The operative ground the words out through gritted teeth,each syllable soaked in pain.
"How the hell did you see through me?"
His right shoulder throbbed like fire,every heartbeat sending fresh agony ripping through his nerves.The world around him blurred—shapes smeared into shadows,
colors dissolving into haze.But the question burned louder than the pain.
Then—The door creaked open.A gust of freezing wind swept in with the sound—
and with it, a voice.Calm. Familiar.And sharp as a scalpel.
"Fabiana didn't see through you."
Tarin Vekar stepped into the room,his coat trailing the snow-dust behind him.Gone was the warmth,the usual calmness he wore like a mask.In its place was something else:
A smirk.A trace of mockery and pity,braided into quiet triumph.
"I did."
"You people at the Intelligence Bureau—"
"You're used to playing your little games with career officers."
"But you forgot one thing."
"In this room—"
"There's a member of the Federal Defense Council."
"I don't know what the hell you people dug up from those ruins…"Tarin's voice was low, but every word rang with revulsion.
"But to use that kind of technology—on your own people?"He shook his head, slowly.
"It's disgusting."He paused.
"And by the way—"
"That little pat on her waist before I left?"
He glanced down at the man writhing on the floor,his smirk returning.
"That was a signal we made up back in the academy.Just the two of us."
"Too bad Dorin never knew about it."
With that, Tarin stepped over The Man of a Thousand Faces,his boots crunching against blood-slick floorboards.He moved toward the inner room.
As he opened the door—a child's scream tore through the house.
Sharp. Piercing.Then—three gunshots.Short. Muffled.Too quick to count.Outside, the storm still howled.But inside,the air had gone perfectly still.Like glass, seconds before it shatters.
Then—from deep within the back room—came a sound.A low, sickening moan.Not quite human.Something else.Something that shouldn't exist.Like a creature struggling against its own body.Something born in pain.
Fabiana didn't move.She just stood there.
Then, without a word,she reached into her coat.From the inner pocket,she pulled out a single silver bullet.It shimmered under the flickering light.
She stared at it for a long time,as if seeing something far away—something she'd buried long ago.
Then,She popped out the magazine,and slowly pushed the bullet into the top chamber.With finality.
"If it were Dorin… he would never forgive me."Fabiana's whisper was barely audible,
a breath lost in the frostbitten silence of the room.
She slid the magazine back into her pistol,the click echoing like a final prayer—a quiet funeral for something long buried.
"I'll end this with a cyanide round,"she murmured.Her voice was like wind over a frozen wasteland—bitter, and deadly still.
Then, after a pause,her gaze locked onto the blood-soaked man at her feet.The calm in her eyes was terrifying,the weight of her words inescapable.
"Where is Dorin?"
"Where is the child?"
"Tell me now, and I'll make this quick."
The man coughed,blood running down his jaw in long, trembling lines.
"Central Prison," he rasped.
"But I don't know if he's alive or dead."
"And the kid?"He let out a broken laugh—raw, mocking.
"We never saw any damn kid to begin with."
"…Don't know if he's alive?"
Fabiana's eyes narrowed—a flicker of shock flashing beneath the ice.
Her expression twisted into something colder, sharper.Those eyes—they could peel a man open and lay bare every lie inside him.The chill seeped deep into the agent's bones,coiling around the pain already shredding his body.
"You think there's a future after the memory extractor?"he laughed, choked, bitter.
"Once that thing touches you—you're already dead."
Blood foamed at the corners of his mouth,but his voice was clear—clearer than it had ever been.
"And even with that—"
"you still lost."
Another coughing fit wracked him.When he looked up again,his gaze passed over Fabiana's shoulder,fixated on the approaching light outside the doorway.As if in that light,he could already see the end.
"Fabiana… Tarin…"
"So the Federal Defense Council was with you all along."
He paused.Then let out a low laugh—bitter, broken.Not quite a sneer,not quite a plea.Something in between.
"You and your Synai kin…"
"You'll find out soon enough."
"Just what kind of monsters—your partners truly are."
With those words,he closed his eyes.Slowly.Deliberately.Waiting for the silver round to slice through the final thread of fate.
What answered him was not mercy.It was a series of deafening gunshots.The first—the cyanide-tipped silver round—punched clean through his brow.
But Fabiana didn't stop there.Before the toxin could do its work,she emptied the rest of the magazine.Shot after shot—each one a cold, surgical incision through the chest.Each one echoed within her like a drumbeat of grief.
The pain didn't last.The toxin spread too quickly.Neural collapse.Total shutdown.It was almost as if even death hadn't had the time to finish the job.
Then—His skin began to blacken,peeling away in patches like layers of synthetic paint.His flesh—collapsed.Rotting, folding, dissolving.Bones twisted and broke inward.Within minutes,he was no longer human.
Just a pool of steaming, fetid sludge,reeking of rot and chemical decay.Black blood oozed between the floorboards,crawling like something still alive.
Fabiana stood there,frozen.Face pale.Fingers trembling.But her eyes didn't turn away.She stared at the mess.
And when Tarin stepped out from the back room,she finally spoke.
"What the hell was that thing?"
Her voice was hoarse,scraped raw by the stink still lodged in her throat.
"And how,"she asked, eyes narrowing,"did you know?"
As she spoke,Fabiana strode to the window,her boots crunching against the warped wooden floorboards.One by one,she threw open the sealed panes.Icy wind tore through the room,howling like a wounded beast,carrying the stench of blood and rot out into the dark
.For a moment,they could breathe again.
Tarin stepped forward slowly.His face was unreadable,but his eyes—they were burning.
He raised his left hand and rolled back his sleeve.A silver-gray band on his wrist glowed faintly,a halo of cold blue dots pulsing like a heartbeat.
"The Bureau's been digging," he said quietly.
"Digging through Ancient ruins."
His voice was calm.
"They're not people."
"We don't know exactly what tech they found down there—but we know this much:"
"They're not agents anymore."
"They're bio-constructs."
Fabiana didn't speak.She only stared at the warped remains on the floor—the pulped, steaming sludge that used to wear a human face.
"We've started seeing them more and more,"Tarin continued.
"Officials, aides, even senators."
"Replaced."
He lifted the wristband again.
"This," he said,
"is how we scan for them."
He paused,his eyes hardening.
"We think President Kael's meteoric rise in approval ratings is because of them."
"The Bureau's dogs," he spat,"cleaning house in the same way they tried to do here."
For a long moment,Fabiana said nothing.She didn't ask questions.She only turned to the doorway.Outside,the snow was falling again.
The street beyond was hushed,draped in white silence.
Behind her,the warmth of the fire began to ebb,replaced by the creeping bite of cold.
The flames in the hearth wilted—as if uncertain whether to flicker or die.
"So now you're… asking for help from the Synai Eight Conglomerates?"
"You've stopped believing in the Federal military?"
Tarin didn't respond right away.He walked to the coat stand,retrieved her heavy overcoat,and held it out to her.
"After the fall of Azure Emerald…"his voice turned hoarse,fragile,worn thin by the weight of too many memories.
"Do you still believe in the Federal military?"
Fabiana took the coat without a word.She draped it over her shoulders,but her eyes lingered one last time on the mangled remains that had once impersonated a friend.
"The CEO of Shinto Heavy Industries, Hiroki Katase,"she said quietly,
"will be arriving at Morya VI orbital station in three days."
"He'll be waiting for you there."
Before she finished the sentence,Tarin was already crouching beside the hearth,
raking through the ashes to retrieve a few charred but still-glowing embers.
He shook off the soot and placed them gently into a metal canister.Then, from a concealed pocket inside his coat,he pulled out a palm-sized alloy case.
With a click, the lid flipped open,revealing a fine, jet-black powder—dark as volcanic ash,and just as dangerous.
"Stay back," he said quietly to Fabiana.
Then he moved,slow and deliberate,walking the perimeter of the room.
His steps were soft,but each one left behind a faint trail—a whisper of black powder laid meticulously where floor met wall,where shadow met timber.
When the circuit was complete,he tossed the still-burning ember back into the hearth.
A soft hiss followed—then a flash.Flames erupted with a sudden roar,a beast stirred from slumber.Fire raced along the black powder in a heartbeat,igniting the perimeter,devouring the silence.
Wooden beams cracked like gunshots.The wallpaper peeled back in curls.The ceiling groaned,and decades of grease caught fire in an instant.The inferno danced across their faces—red, violent, alive.
"I'll take you to the airfield,"
"From the moment you left Central Prison,you and I…never met."
Fabiana nodded.She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a small, elegant insignia.Without a word,she pressed it into his hand.
Then she pulled her cap low over her eyes,turned,and walked toward the door.