A headache blood behind Ethan’s eyes the mont he heard Markham’s voice over the comms.
How could Maria be so hopeless with directions?
Anxiety knotted in his gut. He hadn’t known about this particular weakness of hers, and if he had, he never would have let her join. What good was a guide who couldn’t find her way?
"Don’t worry. I’ve learned how to read maps!" ca Dragon Child’s voice.
Ethan’s shoulders eased, though a sliver of doubt stayed lodged in his chest. "You’re sure you can read it?"
A confident "Hmph" echoed in his ear.
"Sister Dragon can read it," Maria said in a mortified rush. Her voice crackled with static and sha. "This... this was... she... she’s the one who found this place!"
Ethan dragged a hand down his face and gave up on words.
He and Williams had already arrived at their target: an abandoned factory on the outskirts of Ashwick. From the mories he had ripped from Director Vaughn, Ethan knew the building was more than crumbling walls and rusted machinery. Beneath the factory floor stretched a hidden sanctuary, a headquarters for the Dissenters’ Ashwick faction. Vaughn had commanded it exclusively, though he rarely stepped foot here, preferring the Ninth Division’s official base.
Ashwick fell under Ethan’s jurisdiction, and his plan was straightforward: rescue the captives first, then storm the Ninth Division’s headquarters and tear down all nine mbers of its council.
"Prepare to engage," he ordered once every team confird position.
The comms erupted with a thunderous BOOM almost instantly. A chorus of voices followed, steady and unified: "Ninth Division, M Squad, comncing cleanup by order..."
That, too, was his design—carry out the operation under M Squad’s banner.
A cruel smile touched his lips. He switched off his comms; the overlapping noise was a cacophony he didn’t need.
"Let’s go. Our turn," Ethan said to Williams as he stepped out of his VR capsule.
Unlike the other squads, he chose not to kick down doors or storm the main entrance. Guided by Vaughn’s stolen mories, he uncovered a concealed passage at the edge of the factory, and the two of them slipped inside. He walked the corridors with practiced familiarity, every corner and turn as familiar as his own ho.
"Who are you?"
The challenge ca from a group of guards—Dissenters stationed to defend the base. They had spotted him sooner than expected.
Ethan had no patience for gas. His eyes hardened. "Vanish."
The single word cracked the air like a spark. A faint sizzling followed, and the n froze where they stood. Their eyes bulged, bodies jerking once before collapsing in a heap, their brains turned to pulp.
For a long breath, Ethan stared at them. A tide of conflicted feeling rose and ebbed in him. Not long ago, these had been monsters in his eyes, n whose strength could have erased him without effort. Yet now, only six months later, he decided whether they lived or died.
He recognized each face, the mories Vaughn had carried now etched into his own. He knew their cris. He knew the innocent lives buried beneath their hands. And for that, their fate had been sealed.
Behind him, Williams said nothing. His eyes lingered on the corpses before shifting to Ethan, bewildernt clear in his gaze. He rembered their first mission in Ravenwood, when Ethan had been a raw rookie barely worth the risk of dragging along. Now...
Williams let out a short, almost bitter laugh. Only monts ago, he had sworn silently to guard Ethan with his life, to shoulder the weight of trust between them. It seed fate would not allow him the chance.
"What are you spacing out for? Let’s move," Ethan called out, noticing Williams had stopped.
"Oh... right!" Williams blinked and hurried to catch up.
Ethan brazenly extended his Soul Sense, mapping the entire underground facility in his mind in an instant. He knew exactly how many people were present and where they were.
He moved with deadly efficiency, cutting through the compound one target at a ti. Ten minutes later, the only people left alive in the entire facility were Ethan, Williams, and two others hidden away in a secret vault. Thirty-nine core mbers of the Dissenters had been wiped out.
There had been no resistance worth the na. The so-called masters—Mutants, Sovereigns, whatever titles they had—were nothing more than small fry to him.
Williams, trailing behind, had gone numb to the slaughter. He’d been on countless missions as an elite operative, but none had ever unfolded like this. There was no real fighting, no drawn-out struggle—just one-sided annihilation. Watching Ethan work was like watching a guillotine blade fall again and again, rciless and absolute.
Williams almost pitied the n they faced. Almost.
Eventually, Ethan stopped before a massive reinforced door, the kind you’d expect on a bank vault. "Think you can get this open?" he asked, stepping aside.
"Huh?" Williams blinked. This wasn’t the first heavy door they’d run into. Ethan had simply kicked the others off their hinges. Why the sudden need for finesse now?
"What do you an, ’huh’?" Ethan shrugged. "Aren’t you elite operatives supposed to know how to pick locks? Your wife’s in there. If I kick the thing in and it flattens her, that’s on you."
Williams froze, then his eyes lit up. "Right. I’ll give it a shot." He pulled a compact device from his pack and knelt in front of the door.
Ethan watched him fiddle with the tool, though he already knew what was inside. Two terrified won huddled in the far corner of the vault, far enough from the door that even a violent entry wouldn’t hurt them.
But he had also noticed sothing else: enormous stacks of cash piled neatly just behind the door. If he kicked it open, the sheer impact would create a shockwave strong enough to shred the bills into dust. That much money, wasted? He couldn’t bear the thought.
Williams worked the lock for half an hour.
"Any progress?" Ethan asked at last, his patience thinning.
The won inside had long since heard the scraping and clicking at the door. Thirty minutes of dread had left them trembling, clutching each other in the dark. Any longer and they might break completely.
"This system’s too advanced," Williams admitted, sweat beading on his forehead. "My gear isn’t enough. And... it’s wired to a detonation circuit. Good thing you didn’t kick it, boss. If you had, the whole place would’ve gone up."
"Oh?" Ethan’s expression hardened, a chill creeping into his bones.
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