"You let him walk away." Harlan slamd the table again. "After finding soone capable of a full transformation, you looked him in the eyes, shook his hand, and let him walk away."
Nathan did not flinch. He expected this reaction when he decided to make that offer.
"Yes,"
"That’s it? Yes?" Harlan pushed back from the table and stood. "Do you understand what that ability ans? And you just—"
"I heard you, Harlan." Nathan’s tone stayed composed. "Now hear ."
The room went quiet.
Nathan leaned forward on the table, not aggressively.
"I watched him fight the Defense Force containnt team. An entire coordinated unit with heavy support. Tanks. Helicopters. Snipers. Anti-personnel munitions." He paused. "He handled all of it while holding back."
Harlan opened his mouth.
"He was holding back," Nathan repeated before the other person could speak. "I’ve seen enough full transformations to know when soone is performing at their ceiling."
A longer silence followed.
"So you left him free because you were afraid of him," Leah said. Her tone was not mocking. She was asking a real question.
"I left him free because forcing that conversation would have been the stupidest thing I could have done." Nathan sat back.
"Think about it clearly. We don’t know his limits. We don’t know what he wants or what he owes loyalty to, if anything. Walking up to soone like that and telling him he has no choice is not recruitnt. That’s a provocation."
He let the words sit for a mont.
"And if he decided, in that alley, that we were more trouble than we were worth?
If he made that calculation while three of us were standing a few ters away from him with nowhere to go? Then we would not be having this conversation right now. Because we would not be here to have it."
No one argued that point.
Harlan sat back down slowly, the tension in his shoulders dropping by a fraction.
"So we wait," he said. It was not a question anymore. It was resignation dressed as acceptance.
"Sorry. We don’t just wait," Nathan corrected. "We give him a reason to choose us."
He unfolded his hands and gestured toward the map on the table.
"Think about what cos after we take the capital. The Federation won’t accept it—they’ll regroup and co back with more forces. Capturing the city isn’t the hard part. Holding it is."
He glanced around the table, making sure everyone was listening to him.
"If he sees us take the capitol—not as fanatics, but as a force that succeeded where no one else could—then we’ll have more leeway. We won’t look like begging for his help anymore."
The room held its silence for several seconds.
Harlan rubbed his jaw and looked at the map.
"It’s a dangerous gamble," he finally spoke.
"Everything we have done since the beginning has been a gamble," Nathan replied. "This one at least has good logic behind it."
"..."
It was Leah who broke the silence that followed.
"He has a point. If he’s as capable as you described, trying to recruit him before we build trust would only push him against us."
Harlan exhaled. He did not agree out loud, and he stopped pushing.
The matter was close to settled when a sound cut through the room. It wasn’t loud. Just the soft scrape of a boot against the concrete floor.
Everyone turned to the source.
Aris had not moved from her position against the support pillar. She had not spoken once during the entire exchange.
But now she stepped forward, her scythe steady at her back, her eyes moving from Nathan to the rest of the room.
"He made the right call. We do need more capable allies."
That was all. But from her, it carried the weight of a verdict.
Nathan looked at her with a faint trace of relief, though he kept his expression respectful.
"I also have soone I wanted to recruit into our organization,"
Her words caught everyone’s attention. For one of the founders to personally vouch for an individual was more than enough to surprise them.
"Is he really strong?" Nathan asked out of pure curiosity.
"He has potential worth developing," she continued. "I found a candidate recently, a man I crossed paths with during an operation in the outer district." She paused. "He also showed beast transformation. His face split dozens of eyes when he stopped pretending to be human."
The room grew quiet in a different way than before.
Leah tilted her head slightly.
"Dozens of eyes," she repeated.
"Yes," Aris confird. "It was not a standard transformation. It was sothing else. Sothing I had not seen before."
"What did this man look like before transforming?" Nathan asked.
Aris described him in a few words.
Nathan exhaled slowly through his nose.
"So there are two of them. Two individuals capable of beast transformation, operating independently."
He shook his head slowly, and then a short laugh escaped him.
"What is it with this place?" He pressed two fingers against his temple. "Why does it have so many capable individuals."
Nobody had an answer for that. It was not really a question either.
"It’s good news for us. We have two potential assets now." Harlan gave a satisfied smile.
"Neither of them are assets yet," Leah interjected "They are unknown variables. Dangerous."
Nathan corrected. "Variables we would rather have on our side than against us,"
"Agreed," Harlan nodded. "But right now, they are not our priority. The Capitol is."
Aris said nothing further on the matter. She simply looked at the spread of docunts and maps on the table.
"The bomb threat," Harlan began, "served its purpose. Military forces are now spread across several districts. Defense Force units are tied down guarding civilian infrastructure, while their elite assets remain concentrated in the center waiting for a detonation that will never happen."
"How long before they realize there are no bombs?" Nathan asked.
"Long enough. By the ti they confirm the threat was fabricated, we will already be inside."
Nathan let out a long laugh. "If that’s the case, then letting that person run wild is the right choice. I’m sure the Defense Force and the Federation are scratching their heads right now."
Harlan and the others nodded in agreent. They already heard reports of the attacks through their intelligence network, and Nathan’s words connected the dots.
"Let’s focus on the mission." Leah stood and picked up a tablet, then held it up for the group to see.
"We have two thousand ard soldiers moving through four entry points. A hundred Special Category operatives will handle the low to high level Defense Force Agent."
She looked up from the screen.
"And Lady Aris leads the front."
She required no further elaboration. Everyone in the room understood exactly what it ant to have her at the head.
"Their elite unit will respond once we reach the capitol," Nathan pointed at the map. "We should expect heavy resistance within the first twenty minutes."
"We’re counting on it," Harlan replied. "We Hybrids will deal with them, along with Lady Aris."
Aris looked around the room and saw the sa thing in every face.
Confidence. Not in their own ability, but in her.
The entire operation depended on whether she could hold the line against the enemy’s strongest fighters.
"You don’t need to worry. If I go all out, no number of elite units can stop . They’ll be finished before they can do anything."
Her words imdiately raised their morale.
Soon, the eting continued.
Assignnts were confird across the table. Positions marked. Timing reviewed one final ti without ceremony.
Aris stood at the edge of all of it, watching, saying nothing further.
Her eyes drifted briefly to the ceiling as she wondered when she would see that person again.
Morning arrived without announcent.
The sky changed from dark to colorless grey before the first real light ca through, and by the ti the sun was fully up, the city had already made its mood clear.
It was not a peaceful day.
Francis walked at a normal pace along the pavent, hands in the pockets of the jacket he took from the apartnt.
The street told him everything he needed to know before he walked a full block.
Last night’s damage was visible.
Repair crews had not arrived yet. It was still too early, or perhaps they were waiting for clearance.
What arrived was additional military presence.
More of it than yesterday. Significantly more.
He counted three checkpoints within the first four hundred ters alone. Each one was staffed with no fewer than twenty soldiers.
Six armored vehicles sat at the intersection ahead, their turrets at rest but their crews visible in the hatches.
A helicopter passed overhead, low enough that he could see the cara mounted beneath its nose sweeping across the street below.
Francis kept walking. Sa pace. Sa posture.
He lowered his head a little.
A soldier at the nearest checkpoint made eye contact with him from about thirty ters away.
Francis held it just long enough to be natural, then let his gaze drift ahead to the road, the way a man does when he has sowhere to be and nothing on his conscience.
The soldier looked away too.
He passed the checkpoint without slowing.
Just as he was about to change direction, he noticed a TV in an appliance store playing the news.
—BEAST ATTACK !!! SECOND INCIDENT IN 24 HOURS. DEFENSE FORCE CONFIRMS A LOT OF CASUALTIES. —
Below it, a second line in slightly smaller text.
—COVENANT ULTIMATUM ENTERS FINAL 48 HOURS. GOVERNNT SILENT ON RESPONSE.—
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