When Fu Tailan drew up the action plan, he split Remy Squad and Jonah’s squad into two separate rotations.
One team would enter the Nest on the first of each month, the other on the thirteenth, alternating order every month.
The team going in on the first had free rein — they were to search the entire Nest for any Illusion that might evoke the concept of "ti." It didn’t need to have any actual temporal function, didn’t even need to be particularly valuable. As long as it could make soone think of ti, they were to bring it back.
The team going in on the thirteenth, anwhile, would follow Westley’s directions and search for ti-related Illusions within the specific zones he had designated.
Remy got incredibly lucky this ti. She led her team into the Nest on September first and was back by the third — and not only that, she ca back with an Illusion that no one could argue had nothing to do with "ti": an alarm clock.
Fu Tailan smiled faintly.
"The alarm clock? No rush," he said, slouched lazily in his office chair. "I’ll deliver it to Westley myself in two weeks."
Longzhen glanced at him and gave a small nod.
She didn’t look confused or surprised — which ant she had already figured it out. What the first-of-the-month team brought back was what Fu Tailan actually intended to hand over to Westley. A stand-in. Filler.
What Westley truly wanted was whatever the thirteenth-of-the-month team found. And even if they found it, Fu Tailan would need to take a long, careful look at it before anything else — handing it over was the last thing on his mind for now.
"Westley will definitely realize the alarm clock isn’t what he’s after," Longzhen said after a mont’s thought. "When that happens..."
Exactly. That was precisely what Fu Tailan was after — Westley’s reaction when he saw the alarm clock.
It was also why he planned to make the delivery himself. Westley clearly knew far more than he had let on. Faced with the wrong Illusion, would he offer any new information to help the Morgan Family find what he actually needed — if only to speed things along? And if he said nothing at all, that silence was information in itself.
Fu Tailan wanted to see it with his own eyes.
This ti, the handoff wouldn’t take place on Westley’s cruise ship. Tonight, Westley had chosen a venue he’d used for previous dealings with the Morgan Family — the top floor of the Westley Headquarters Building, an entire level given over exclusively to Westley’s private offices and reception area.
"...Is this really what your team just brought back from the Nest?"
The one who took the alarm clock wasn’t Westley himself, but his secretary — a man nad Green.
Green was pale-skinned and fine-featured, slender and tall, and looked to be no older than thirty. Every so often, his movents carried a certain feminine quality — for instance, when he leaned forward from the sofa to reach for the alarm clock on the table, he kept his knees pressed firmly together.
Westley was said to have co from a conservative region in the south, and there had been rumors floating around at one point that he had a deep aversion to sexual minorities. But one look at his secretary Green, and that gossip seed like little more than gossip.
"Was it found in the zone we specified?" Green studied the alarm clock for a mont, then looked up and asked.
"Of course," Fu Tailan said with complete sincerity. "The team entered the Nest on September thirteenth and found it in a residential building on Broom Street. The traps inside were brutal — our people barely made it out. Is Mr. Westley available? Would he like to co take a look himself?"
Green kept his eyes on the alarm clock without looking up. "That won’t be necessary. Mr. Westley is occupied with other matters and can’t step away. If the item is what we’re looking for, I’ll bring the clock to his office myself."
Fu Tailan let out a quiet "oh" and glanced at the two bodyguards standing behind Green’s sofa.
...So Green knew how to do a preliminary verification of an Illusion?
And Westley was sowhere on this very floor — but wouldn’t co out?
That was a little strange.
What was stranger still was that despite being on his own turf, Westley had stationed layer after layer of guards and bodyguards all the way from the lower floors to this one — as if he were afraid of sothing. Surely he wasn’t afraid of Fu Tailan?
"Mr. Westley hasn’t been seen in public much lately," Fu Tailan remarked, testing the waters.
"Have you been keeping tabs on Mr. Westley’s whereabouts?" Green raised his eyes and asked, his tone flat and cold.
"Just trying to get familiar with the man, you know," Fu Tailan said with a smile, as though the edge in the question had gone right over his head. "A sha I didn’t get to see him today. Real disappointing."
Green ignored him entirely and pressed a button on the back of the alarm clock. He seed to be waiting for sothing. After a few seconds of nothing, he gave the clock a gentle twist — which, naturally, didn’t budge.
"...No." Green set the clock down. "This isn’t what we’re looking for."
"What do you an it’s not right?"
"This isn’t what we’re looking for." Green repeated it flatly, fixing his gaze on Fu Tailan. "Is this how the Morgan Family does business? We handed off this commission six months ago and gave detailed instructions. Whether or not this is the right item — I’d think you’d know better than I do."
"I genuinely don’t. You said it had to be related to ’ti.’" Fu Tailan spread his hands. "Are you telling an alarm clock has nothing to do with ti?"
"It does," Green conceded, "but this isn’t it."
"How do you know it isn’t?" Fu Tailan couldn’t quite hide his urgency. "Do you have more detailed information? If you tell , it’ll give us sothing to go on."
He was hoping to pry sothing useful out of Green, but Green turned out to be a broken record — beyond the sa one response, he refused to give up a single word of value. "This is not what we’re looking for. Please go back and keep searching."
Fu Tailan had never t anyone so stubbornly single-minded in his life. Green clearly knew sothing — the fact that he could do a preliminary verification of the Illusion proved that much. But his vocabulary seed to have been stripped down to a single sentence, and no matter how cleverly Fu Tailan tried to probe, Green just cycled back to the sa reply, over and over.
In the end, all the intelligence he’d gathered amounted to a handful of gestures Green had made while examining the clock.
...Westley had clearly anticipated that the Family Faction might try to extract information from his side, too.
Well — sparse as it was, a few gestures were still intelligence.
From Green’s actions alone, Fu Tailan could draw at least two inferences. First, the "ti" Illusion was likely capable of changing its form — which was why Green hadn’t been able to confirm at first glance whether the clock was what he was looking for. Second, Secretary Green had very probably once worked as a Hunter.
"Fine," Fu Tailan said, not bothering to hide his disappointnt, letting it show plainly on his face. "If you’re not taking the clock, I’ll bring it back with ."
He reached for the clock at the sa mont Green slid it across the table toward him.
Their fingers brushed lightly against the Illusion — a brief, accidental touch.
Green withdrew his hand. Before Fu Tailan could pick up the clock, a sharp, familiar buzzing erupted from his trouser pocket — a jarring, insistent vibration.
"Oh, an Amber Alert," he said, recovering almost instantly, and reached into his pocket for his phone.
Whenever a child abduction occurred, the law enforcent system sent ergency notifications through every available channel — phones included — to the general public. An Amber Alert typically listed the missing child’s details along with information on the suspect, turning every mber of the public into a first-line searcher.
...Wait.
Sothing was off.
Fu Tailan’s fingertips touched his phone, and the wrongness hit him.
This was a public ergency alert — broadcast to everyone. And yet the only phone going off in the room was his.
What was going on?
The bodyguards in the room, Longzhen beside him, Secretary Green — they all had phones on them, no question. So why hadn’t any of theirs gone off?
He’d been resting in Blackmoor City for two or three weeks; his head was mostly back to normal. "Nest dissociation" couldn’t explain him hearing things that weren’t there.
"...Mr. Fu. Or rather — Tailan."
Fu Tailan had just closed his hand around his phone when he looked up and found that Green had risen from the sofa at so point and taken a step closer to him.
Those eyes were fixed on Fu Tailan without blinking.
"I need to borrow your phone for a mont."
As if a wire had been pulled taut, the bodyguards stepped toward Fu Tailan in unison.
Longzhen seed to sense the sudden shift in the air as well. She rose silently and positioned herself at Fu Tailan’s side, every muscle in her body drawn tight.
Green’s tone remained perfectly soft.
"Take out your phone and hand it to — would you do that? I’d ask that you don’t look at the screen, and please don’t take any screenshots. I just need a quick look. I’ll return it to you imdiately after." He paused. "That shouldn’t be a problem, should it?"
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