– CHAPTER FORTY-THREE –

  SWEET AND SOUR

  The impact was still vibrating inside Americ-Ana's body like an echo of war.

  She stayed on the floor for a second, artificial snow clinging to her hair, her shoulder burning, her knee throbbing, and her breath coming in pieces, as if someone had replaced the air with thin blades.

  The GummyAir hovered a few meters ahead, disoriented, trembling like an animal that had lost its bearings. It tried to correct its own position with one short jolt, then another, as if ashamed of having failed.

  Poppandacorn had rolled farther into the hall and come to a stop at a distance, too small, too still, his LED eyes dark as if life had been switched off with a button. His little body was lying on its side, quiet, and that hurt more than the entire fall.

  Americ-Ana tried to rise, but the world spun a little and she had to press a hand to the floor so she would not black out too.

  That was when she heard it.

  The sound of someone getting up in anger.

  A shoe scraping, an irritated "tch," the ragged breathing of someone ripped out of one moment and thrown into a disaster.

  And then, for the second time, the curse, filthy, human, echoing through the hall like a slap.

  "What the fuck is this?"

  Americ-Ana slowly lifted her head, and repeated it for the second time, as if to make sure all of it was real.

  "Wwwyye?"

  Wwwyye Helllwk narrowed her eyes, still holding her own forehead, and looked Americ-Ana up and down as if she had found a scene that should not exist.

  The sight was absurd in itself. Americ-Ana was covered in purple, a dirty purple clinging to her clothes and face, and the sickly smell of cotton candy and chocolate seemed to have become part of the air in the hall.

  Wwwyye took a step, staggered a little, then straightened her body as if posture were the only bandage she would accept.

  Her gaze dropped to the floor and locked onto Poppandacorn, discarded farther ahead, powered down, small, still.

  Then it rose to Americ-Ana again.

  Wwwyye's lips parted as if she were about to spit out another insult, but for a second she had no words, as if her mind were trying to decide which absurdity to attack first.

  Americ-Ana tried to speak, but her throat was dry with panic. She pointed on reflex, first at Poppandacorn, then at the GummyAir, then at the blood on Wwwyye's forehead, as if the gesture explained anything.

  It did not.

  And the silence lasted only as long as a trembling breath.

  Because beneath the shock, a question began to rise in Americ-Ana like a fever, urgent, inevitable, bigger than the pain in her knee, bigger than the purple staining her body.

  "Wwwyye... what are you doing here?" The voice came out hoarse, failing at the beginning and hardening at the end. "I thought you were in Europe. Visiting your grandmother."

  Wwwyye blinked, as if the sentence had struck a place she did not want to admit existed. Her face warmed in a quick, treacherous flush, and her eyes shifted from side to side, looking for an exit that was not an answer.

  She touched her own forehead, saw the blood on her fingertips, grimaced, and tried to recover her composure as if reality could be adjusted by sheer force of will.

  "Okay," she let out, low and dry, and the "okay" sounded more like a slap at herself than at Americ-Ana. "I didn't go to Europe to visit my grandmother."

  Americ-Ana went still for a second, waiting for the rest, already feeling anger making a home in her chest.

  Wwwyye breathed fast and said it all at once, like someone ripping off a bandage.

  "I lied to everyone at the academy. I said Europe and visiting my grandmother." She made a vague gesture with the hand smeared with blood, as if "Europe" and "grandmother" were just some cheap word. "To my family, I said I was staying here, in THE-IMPERIUM, all quiet, pretty, obedient. In the SAMKHYA CELL."

  She stared at Americ-Ana as if it were the universe's fault for having eyes.

  "But the truth is, I went to Ibiza. Alone."

  Americ-Ana opened her mouth, too shocked to answer right away.

  Wwwyye kept going, faster, leaving no room.

  "I wasn't going to stay trapped at Christmas listening to adults pretend affection while bossing me around." She swallowed hard, and her pose faltered for an instant. "It's just that... one of my cousins was there in Ibiza. I saw him see me. Before he could even get close, I was already on my way back. I came running back here."

  Wwwyye's gaze dropped to Americ-Ana again, and now there was something else in it, a mix of anger and panic.

  "And I come back and get greeted by a high-speed human missile."

  Americ-Ana tried to breathe, but shame and panic were competing inside her. She still pointed, in a useless reflex, at her own clothes covered in purple poop, as if she wanted to say "I didn't plan this either."

  Wwwyye wrinkled her nose immediately.

  "Speaking of missiles..." Her voice changed direction, as if her mind needed to run from the confession. "Why are you covered in this? Is this purple poop? You smell like cotton candy and chocolate. What happened to you?"

  Her eyes cut across the hall and locked onto the small body farther ahead, powered down on the floor.

  "And what is that?" she asked, in a tone that tried to sound cold and failed. "What happened to Poppandacorn? Is he..."

  Americ-Ana felt a knot rise in her throat and did not wait for the rest.

  "Poppa passed out." The sentence came out low, and just saying it made the urgency tighten harder. She pointed with her chin toward the hovering GummyAir, then at her own clothes, and let out the summary as fast as her heart would allow. "I was with Nioh. In his cell. And then suddenly everything exploded. The purple poop, the smoke, the house... everything. Security saw it. And I ran."

  Wwwyye's eyes went wide.

  "You were in there with Nioh Nemmesis?" she whispered, and the word "there" sounded forbidden. "Do you have any idea how huge the trouble is if anyone confirms that?"

  Americ-Ana did not answer with words. Her face did the work, and that was worse.

  Wwwyye ran a hand through her pink hair, smearing more blood into it, and seemed to realize it too late. She let out an irritated sound and looked down the corridor, toward the entrance, toward the emptiness that was not empty.

  She was calculating.

  When she looked back at Americ-Ana, her tone had changed. It was not just mockery anymore. It was survival mode.

  "I don't want to know what you were doing with him," Wwwyye said, fast, cutting. "You'll tell me later, or not, whatever. But right now we need to come up with something simple, repeatable, and that doesn't destroy our lives."

  Americ-Ana felt her stomach drop.

  Wwwyye took another step, brought her face closer, and lowered her voice, conspiratorial, as if the hall had ears.

  "Look at me," she said. "The logic is only one. You cover for me, and I cover for you."

  Americ-Ana blinked, confused, but already understanding the meaning before the detail.

  Wwwyye pointed at herself with her thumb, then at Americ-Ana.

  "You thought I was in Europe visiting my grandmother." She raised her eyebrows, hard. "So that's it. I was here. The whole time. In the SAMKHYA CELL. With you."

  Americ-Ana stood there with her mouth half open.

  "And you..." Wwwyye went on, merciless, "you decided to take your little flying toy out for a ride at night. You passed near Nioh's cell, heard an explosion, saw this... this purple thing, got scared, and flew back. Simple. Idiotic. Believable."

  Americ-Ana took a short breath, her mind trying to run at the same speed as her heart.

  Wwwyye tilted her head, more serious now.

  "If someone saw you coming from there, you say you were passing nearby, not that you were inside," she said, driving it in. "And if they ask why I'm here, I say I was with you the whole time during the break. Period."

  The silence between them lasted only a second.

  Americ-Ana looked down at the floor, at Poppandacorn's powered-down body, and felt she could not afford the luxury of morality.

  She looked back at Wwwyye and nodded once, like someone accepting a contract written in the air.

  "Okay," Americ-Ana said, her voice still trembling, but firm at the end. "Mutual cover."

  Wwwyye let out a breath, as if she had just locked an invisible door.

  "Great," she said, and her gaze went straight to the entrance of the hall, alert, ready for the next impact.

  The first spotlight cut through the hall like a knife.

  Then the second.

  Then the third.

  White light, clean, cruel, sweeping over the artificial snow still clinging to Americ-Ana's hair, sweeping over the blood on Wwwyye's forehead, sweeping over the impossible purple poop smeared across her like living proof of a crime no one was going to understand.

  The hum came before the voice, a disciplined swarm of rotors drawing near and filling the high ceiling with vibration.

  And then the loudspeaker burst out, metallic, official, soulless.

  "Attention. Identify yourselves immediately. Keep your hands visible."

  The drones appeared at the entrance of the hall in formation, like predators too well-mannered to look like predators. Spotlights fixed. Lenses rotating. One of them dropped a little lower, as if it wanted to look straight into their eyes.

  Wwwyye stepped forward at the exact same instant, instinctive, as if her body understood the game before her mind finished forming it.

  She raised her hands slowly, palms open, theatrically controlled, the blood on her forehead shining under the beam.

  "Easy," she said, in a tone that was more command than request. "It was an accident."

  Americ-Ana felt her heart pounding so hard it seemed like the drones would hear it. She glanced quickly at the floor, at Poppandacorn's powered-down body farther ahead, and had to swallow the urge to run to him. Not now. Not yet. One wrong step and everything became handcuffs.

  The lead drone projected a thin red beam, scanning her from top to bottom, as if it were reading the soul through the skin.

  "Attention. You are under suspicion. Stop immediately or containment measures will be applied."

  There was no shot.

  There was that "clean" threat that only exists when someone is certain they can catch you later.

  Internal protocol. Academic residential area. Nonlethal containment. They wanted her alive, they wanted her whole, they wanted her interrogable.

  Wwwyye turned her head just enough to look at Americ-Ana for a split second. A look that said: now.

  She turned back to the drones without hesitating.

  "I am Wwwyye Helllwk," she said, firm, as if her last name were a badge with a blade in it. "And she is Americ-Ana. We spent the break here, in the SAMKHYA CELL."

  The drone made a short sound, almost a click, as if logging it.

  "Confirm cause of suspicious movement. You were detected on a high-speed route. There was an attempt to evade."

  Americ-Ana felt her throat lock, but forced her voice out in the same rhythm as the plan, simple and repeatable.

  "I was taking the GummyAir out for a ride." She pointed with her chin toward the floating creature, hovering restlessly, as if it wanted to apologize for its own "Fly." "I passed near the area where Nioh is being held. I heard an explosion. I saw... this." She indicated the purple on her own clothes, and the smell of cotton candy and chocolate seemed to become material evidence in the air. "I got scared and flew back. I didn't know what was happening."

  Wwwyye cut in, not leaving space for the drone to drive doubt into it.

  "She panicked." She touched her own forehead, grimaced, and pointed to the crushed top hat as if it were a visual report. "And I was here waiting for her. Then she came into this hall at high speed and hit me. That's it."

  The drone went silent for a second. Lenses rotated. Spotlights adjusted. The red beam swept over them again.

  "Attention. Incident logged. Emergency protocol activated."

  Another drone lowered a little more, as if the house itself were tightening the perimeter.

  "Remain where you are. Do not approach any exit. Do not make sudden movements. Await the authority responsible for portal jurisdiction and incident reports."

  Americ-Ana drew in a breath, too small for the size of the fear, and stayed still.

  Beside her, Wwwyye kept her hands visible and her face steady.

  And on the floor, Poppandacorn remained powered down.

  The spotlights kept sweeping across the hall, back and forth like restless eyes that did not blink.

  The hum of the rotors was constant, the kind of sound that never lets you forget there is a machine deciding your fate only a few meters away.

  "Wait." the metallic voice repeated, cold. "Remain still. Identification under validation."

  A red beam returned to Americ-Ana, climbed from her shoes to the top of her head and came down again, as if searching for a contradiction hidden in her body.

  "Attention, Americ-Ana Delsilva. You were logged on an evasive route. Justify attempted flight."

  Her chest tightened. For a second, the whole truth tried to rise, Nioh, the shattered house, the siren, the kiss, the desperation, but she swallowed all of it as if it were poison.

  "I got scared." She repeated it, and her own voice sounded too small. "I heard the explosion. I saw the purple smoke. I didn't know if it was dangerous. I just... came back."

  Wwwyye did not let the silence grow.

  "She panicked," she said again, firm, insistent, the kind of insistence that turns into truth by how many times you can bear to repeat it. "And I was here. I was hit, you can see that."

  The lead drone made a short sound, like a data confirmation.

  "Injury detected. Blood detected. Incident compatible with impact."

  Americ-Ana felt the back of her neck burn under the light. The hall seemed smaller now, as if the architecture itself were moving closer.

  And then she saw it again, the small body on the floor.

  Motionless.

  Eyes dark.

  Guilt pulled her down like gravity.

  Americ-Ana took an instinctive step.

  The red beam locked onto her at once.

  "Stop," the drone's voice cut in. "Unauthorized movement."

  Americ-Ana froze, her heart hammering.

  She raised her hands slowly, not to obey, but to plead without having to say it.

  "He passed out." Her voice failed at the beginning and steadied at the end. "I need to pick him up."

  Wwwyye looked at Poppandacorn too, for a second, and her expression turned less mocking and more serious, like someone who understood the urgency without liking it.

  The drone went silent for an instant that lasted too long.

  Lenses rotated.

  Spotlights readjusted.

  "Attention." the voice came back, without emotion. "Approach slowly. Keep your hands visible. Any sudden movement will be contained."

  Americ-Ana nodded once, dry, and began to walk slowly, as if each step were a negotiation with an invisible weapon.

  She went to Poppandacorn.

  Knelt.

  Her hands were trembling.

  She touched the plush-and-metal little body with her fingertips, feeling the dead weight, feeling the absence.

  The urge to cry rose like smoke, but she crushed it deep in her throat.

  "Please..." she whispered, and the words came out only for herself, only for him.

  Americ-Ana lifted Poppandacorn carefully, drawing him to her chest as if he were a baby and a bomb at the same time. She held him tight against herself, trying to feel any sign, any warmth, any tiny vibration.

  Nothing.

  The GummyAir hovered closer, low, hesitant, as if it were about to lean in and protect him too.

  "Fly," it said, softly, almost like an apology.

  Americ-Ana did not answer. She only held Poppandacorn tighter, breathing in controlled tremors.

  The drones were still there, lights fixed, recording everything, and the metallic voice repeated, like a sentence:

  "Wait. Authority approaching."

  A different sound entered the hall.

  Footsteps.

  Steady.

  Human.

  The presence moved through the corridor before it appeared, and the air seemed to turn colder, more ordered, as if the entire place knew who was coming.

  Americ-Ana lifted her eyes slowly.

  Wwwyye did too.

  And at the entrance, a silhouette began to take shape beneath the spotlights.

  The drones adjusted formation in a split second, like trained dogs recognizing the owner's whistle. The spotlights lost a little of their arrogance and became escort lights.

  Chancellor Velyra stepped into the raw illumination, posture straight, green hair disheveled, gaze sharp, with the kind of presence that does not ask permission to exist. She stopped at a measured distance from the two of them, assessing first the blood on Wwwyye's forehead, then the absurd purple coating Americ-Ana, then Poppandacorn's inert body in her arms, and finally the GummyAir hovering like a nervous witness.

  "Americ-Ana." Her voice came out firm. "Miss Helllwk."

  Wwwyye straightened her body on instinct, hands still visible, as if composure were armor. Americ-Ana pressed Poppandacorn tighter to her chest, as if it were possible to hide guilt inside plush.

  "But what exactly happened here?" the Chancellor asked, without raising her voice, and even so it sounded like a sentence.

  Wwwyye answered first, as arranged, in a quick, clean rhythm.

  "We spent the break here, in the SAMKHYA CELL." She pointed to her own wound, almost as if presenting a report. "She went out with the GummyAir at night, heard an explosion near Nioh Nemmesis's area, saw purple smoke, panicked, and flew back. She hit me at the entrance. That was it."

  Americ-Ana swallowed hard and added to it, forcing naturalness.

  "I got scared, Madam Chancellor." She spoke, and her voice trembled only a little. "I didn't know what it was. I just wanted to come back."

  The Chancellor stood silent for a few seconds, looking at the two of them like someone weighing a story in the palm of her hand and deciding whether it had enough consistency not to break.

  Her eyes slid toward the drones.

  "Containment protocol terminated," she said, short.

  One of the drones answered with a dry beep.

  "Confirmed. Containment terminated. Incident logged."

  The Chancellor turned her gaze back to the girls, and there came the first sign that she was truly irritated. It was not theatrical anger, it was the fatigue of someone who has power and still lives putting out fires.

  "Regardless of what really happened," she said, slowly, "I need to formalize everything. Report. Record. Timeline."

  Wwwyye nodded once, rigid.

  The Chancellor drew a short breath and added, in a tone that sounded like controlled venting,

  "And Miss Helllwk's entire family is driving me out of control. They keep contacting me, demanding confirmation, demanding your location, demanding guarantees that you are in fact in THE-IMPERIUM."

  Wwwyye flushed again, only now it was a different red, tighter, more strained. She said nothing. She only swallowed.

  Americ-Ana felt Poppandacorn's weight in her lap like a reminder that a good lie is a short lie.

  The Chancellor took a step forward, and her voice turned into sharpened bureaucracy.

  "I am going to need your duality key." She spoke as if she were asking for something simple. "The CELL key. Now."

  Wwwyye blinked once, and for a second her face lost its arrogance and became nothing but calculation.

  "Astyam has that key," she said quickly, as if she had already rehearsed the answer for adults. "Always."

  Americ-Ana nodded at once, clutching Poppandacorn as if he were a shield.

  "It must be in his room," she added, practical in tone, obedient on the outside. "We'll go get it."

  The Chancellor narrowed her eyes slightly, weighing the force of that sentence, and then made a short gesture with her hand, clearing the way like someone saying "go, but do not get clever."

  "Quickly." Her voice came dry. "I need to log this incident before night turns into morning."

  Americ-Ana took two careful steps, feeling the purple poop stuck to her clothes like living proof. The GummyAir hovered at her side, low, as if it wanted to carry part of the weight and could not.

  Wwwyye ran a hand through her own pink hair, saw more blood on her fingers, grimaced, and wiped it on her sleeve in anger, without taking her eyes off the surroundings, as if she were expecting one more blow from the universe.

  The Chancellor looked at the drones.

  "Remain here," she said. "And wait."

  The drones answered with very short beeps, in sync, and held formation at the entrance of the hall, spotlights lower now, but still present, like a reminder that everything there was being recorded.

  It was at that instant that a different movement happened in the side corridor, soft, almost silent, but with the unmistakable clarity of someone who belonged to the house.

  A presence appeared with the naturalness of a staff member who had already seen everything and had no time left for surprise.

  Shabda Akasha.

  He appeared impeccable as always, and in his arms was Antichrist, the little black fox, quiet and alert, his eyes shining with that intelligence that did not seem to belong to any ordinary animal.

  The Chancellor turned her face toward him without changing her tone.

  "Butler," she said. "Take the two of them to Mr. Geekwoden's room. They need to locate the CELL key."

  Shabda gave the slightest incline of his head, formal, precise, and answered with a calm so perfect it was irritating.

  "As you wish, Madam Chancellor."

  Wwwyye took a step forward and held out her arms without asking permission.

  "Come here," she murmured, and took Antichrist into her arms as if it were an old right. The little fox settled against her with ease, as if he had chosen that embrace.

  Americ-Ana could not stop herself from darting a quick look at the Chancellor, because everything in her wanted to stay there, because she wanted to monitor every expression, every "sign" that they had been caught, but Poppandacorn in her arms was a stopped clock, and that hurt too much to waste time.

  Shabda Akasha turned sideways, indicating the corridor.

  "Please, ladies," he said, simply.

  Americ-Ana started walking, holding Poppandacorn tighter, feeling the desperation growing under her skin. She looked at his darkened face and whispered, only with her lips, without a sound, as if that might call him back.

  Wwwyye walked beside her, Antichrist in her arms, and her gaze was hard, alert, like someone who had just signed a survival pact without reading the fine print.

  The corridor stretched on.

  Doors went by.

  The SAMKHYA CELL castle looked different from the inside, quieter, cleaner, as if it were trying to pretend it had not just received drones and spotlights.

  Shabda Akasha stopped in front of Astyam's bedroom door.

  He opened it with a smooth gesture, as if he were opening a theater.

  "Go in," he said.

  Astyam's room had that kind of suspicious order, the order of someone who leaves nothing out of place because he knows exactly what he is hiding.

  Low light, an impeccable bed, folded clothes, books lined up with an almost offensive precision. Nothing in there looked like "teenager on break." It looked like "laboratory with a pillow."

  Americ-Ana went in first, still covered in purple poop, with Poppandacorn powered down in her arms. She held him as if, if she let go for even a second, some part of the world would rip away whatever was left.

  Wwwyye came in right behind her, Antichrist in her arms, the little black fox sniffing the air as if that room smelled like familiarity.

  "Okay," Wwwyye said under her breath, already rolling up her sleeves as if this were surgery. "We need that key. Now."

  Americ-Ana nodded, swallowing the urgency.

  "It has to be here," she murmured, and carefully lowered Poppandacorn onto the bed, as if he were made of glass. Her hand stayed on his chest for one second longer, on reflex. "Wake up... please..."

  Wwwyye ignored the plea because pleading does not open drawers.

  She went straight to the nightstand and pulled the first drawer open with controlled force. Nothing. Only things that were too ordinary, the kind of normalcy that irritated.

  "Duality key, where are you..." she muttered, already opening the second drawer. Nothing again.

  Americ-Ana moved to the dresser. She opened the first drawer, then the second, then the third, searching fast, but trying not to disturb the room's order, as if Astyam's organization were an invisible alarm.

  "Where does he keep important stuff?" Americ-Ana whispered, more to herself than anyone else. Her fingers were trembling and she hated it.

  Wwwyye knelt and shoved her hand under the bed, sweeping through the space in a hurry.

  "Nothing," she said, dry. "Not even dust. That boy is a psychopath."

  Antichrist let out a low sound, almost a tiny growl, and turned his snout toward the bathroom door as if he had heard something.

  "Bathroom," Wwwyye declared, already moving.

  She opened the bedroom bathroom door and the smell of expensive products hit her in the face like a slap. She pulled open the sink drawer, looked, rummaged through it, closed it. Opened the cabinet, ran her hand along the inside as if searching for a false back.

  Americ-Ana opened another dresser drawer and found only folded clothes arranged with impeccable discipline.

  "Poppa..." she whispered, then corrected herself at once, as if the name itself were an anchor. She looked at him on the bed, powered down, and her chest tightened. "Poppa..."

  Wwwyye came back from the bathroom with a closed-off expression.

  "Nothing," she said, and the word had teeth.

  Americ-Ana drew a short breath, tried to think the way Astyam would think, and then opened the last dresser drawer, the lowest one, the one almost no one opens because kneeling down takes effort.

  She slid her hand in, felt along the bottom, trying to find some hidden object, some piece out of pattern.

  Nothing.

  Wwwyye stood in the middle of the room for a second, looking at everything as if the room itself were an insolent riddle. Antichrist turned his head toward the desk.

  Wwwyye followed the fox's instinct and went there.

  She pulled out a folder, glanced over it, saw loose sheets, notes, a study routine that looked older than her fourteen years. She opened another desk drawer, and the sound of the wood sliding seemed far too loud in that silence.

  Wwwyye froze.

  Her gaze locked onto something inside, and her expression changed with a click, as if someone had switched off "hurry" and switched on "alert."

  Her voice came out low, disbelieving, and loaded with danger.

  "What the fuck is this?"

  Americ-Ana lifted her head at once, her heart already racing again.

  "What is it?" she asked, and her voice came out louder than she wanted.

  Wwwyye did not answer immediately.

  She pulled the object from the drawer carefully, as if she were handling evidence of a crime and not a school item. Antichrist went still, ears raised, as if he recognized danger.

  It was a small box.

  Wrapped in parchment.

  And there were words written on it in gleaming golden ink, letters that seemed to pulse under the light, as if the object were breathing on purpose.

  Wwwyye raised the little box to face level, and the golden gleam reflected in her pink hair as if it wanted to make itself known.

  "You are not going to believe this, Americ-Ana," she said, and the sentence came heavy, with restrained anger.

  Americ-Ana moved closer slowly and felt a chill cut through her stomach even before she understood why.

  Her eyes locked onto the parchment. The gold. The ancient texture.

  She blinked, and the memory came like a slap.

  "Wait..." Americ-Ana whispered, unable to look away. "I've seen this before."

  Wwwyye turned the little box slightly, like someone confirming the name of a suspect.

  "You have," she agreed, short. "In Beni's hands."

  Americ-Ana swallowed hard.

  "Yes," she said, and her tone turned strange, lower, as if the room itself were listening. "Abda's son. During our mission in the Jump Kairos Trip."

  She moved one step closer, and the next sentence came out like a bitter certainty.

  "Beni handed that little box to the king on that occasion."

  Wwwyye nodded.

  "Exactly." She looked at the little box as if it were a blade. "And after that, Astyam asked to be left alone in the palace library for a few minutes."

  Americ-Ana raised a hand to her mouth on instinct, as if to hold back a scream, and her gaze went to the bed where Poppandacorn lay powered down, as if his body were the only innocent thing in that room.

  Wwwyye went on, firm, direct, without drama.

  "That was when he swiped it."

  The room seemed to shrink.

  Suddenly, the missing key was not the main problem. It was only one more symptom.

  Americ-Ana stood still, feeling the word "illegal" spread inside her like poison.

  "This is illegal," she said, her voice reduced to a thread. "This is... very illegal."

  Wwwyye tightened her grip on the little box with controlled force, and her fingers went white for a second.

  "I know," she replied, and there was no surprise in her tone, only indignation. "Now do you understand why I said you would not believe it?"

  Americ-Ana opened her mouth to say something else, but could not. The thought ran through her: secrets, secrets, secrets. The book. Nioh. The lie about Europe. Now this.

  The hall, the drones, the Chancellor, everything became more dangerous with that object in their hands.

  And then the bedroom door opened.

  Without warning.

  Without delicacy.

  The Chancellor's voice entered before her body, impatient and sharp.

  "Why are you taking so long?"

  Americ-Ana felt her blood turn cold.

  Wwwyye reacted too fast. The little box disappeared behind her body for a second, as if she could erase the gold with her own shadow.

  The Chancellor entered the room with the same firm stride as always, her eyes sweeping over the space like a human scanner. She looked at the bed, at Poppandacorn powered down, at the open drawers, at the minimal disorder of a hurried search, and then fixed her gaze on the two of them as if she were counting seconds.

  "I said quickly," she said, dryly. "I did not ask for an inventory."

  Americ-Ana swallowed hard and tried to keep her face neutral, but her chest felt like it was screaming.

  "Sorry, Madam Chancellor," she said, trying not to tremble. "The key is nowhere."

  Wwwyye nodded, firm.

  "It is not here," she repeated, and the sentence came out too clean, too practiced.

  The Chancellor narrowed her eyes again, and for an instant it seemed she was about to say something harsher. But she let out a short, impatient breath, as if she had too many crises to manage and too little time for patience.

  "Okay," she said, and turned half her body toward the door, already deciding the next step. "Since you did not find the key, I need to take you to CROWN EDEN. From there, we will contact Mr. Geekwoden."

  Wwwyye and Americ-Ana went rigid at the same instant, as if Astyam's name were an internal siren.

  The Chancellor went on without waiting for a reaction.

  "Because we need to clarify all of this." Her voice dropped, lower, graver. "There was a murder tonight."

  The room seemed to lose temperature.

  Wwwyye's eyes widened, the crushed top hat forgotten, the blood on her forehead no longer mattering.

  "Murder?" she blurted out, incredulous. "What do you mean?"

  Americ-Ana felt her throat lock. Her body reacted before her thoughts, as if the last few hours had taught her that bad news never comes alone.

  The Chancellor looked at the two of them with a cruel calm.

  "Moss Human Professor Fiat-Lux was found dead," she said, without dramatizing it, and that was exactly what made it worse. "And as if that were not enough..."

  She took a step forward, and her tone turned into the kind of venting that comes from someone carrying the entire bunker on her back.

  "Miss Helllwk's family is demanding answers. They think you've disappeared, Miss Helllwk." She looked at Wwwyye as if she were a problem walking on two legs. "As for you, Americ-Ana, you were found by police drones in a suspicious zone."

  Americ-Ana felt the weight of the purple poop on her clothes as if it were handcuffs.

  The Chancellor did not stop.

  "And Nioh Nemmesis blew up his own house, who knows doing what."

  Wwwyye drew in a breath as if that were too absurd to fit inside the same world.

  Americ-Ana felt her heart slam, because she knew exactly what he had been "doing", and it was purple poop, it was escape, it was guilt, it was a truth that could not be allowed to breathe.

  The Chancellor watched the two of them for a second, and the next sentence came down like an order.

  "I don't have time for mystery," she said. "You are coming with me to CROWN EDEN. Now."

  Americ-Ana clenched her fists, glanced quickly at Poppandacorn lying powered down on the bed, and her voice came out almost like a plea, though still trying to sound polite.

  "Madam Chancellor..." she said, and pointed to herself, to the absurd purple mess. "I'm covered in purple poop. Can I at least clean myself up and change clothes?"

  The Chancellor held her gaze for one long second, weighing whether that was an excuse or a necessity.

  And then she gave a single, hard nod.

  "Okay," she said. "But move quickly, please."

  The Chancellor turned half her body, already impatient to move on, and in that split second Americ-Ana did what she had to do.

  She picked Poppandacorn up from the bed carefully, as if she were only trying to "adjust" him in her arms, and her hand slipped to the compartment in his belly, quick, precise. A discreet snap, a tiny click, and the parchment-wrapped little box vanished inside. The gold died in the dark. The compartment closed as if nothing had ever existed.

  Wwwyye saw it, understood it, and did not say a word.

  Americ-Ana only drew in a breath, pressed Poppandacorn to her chest, and left the room in controlled haste, pulling Wwwyye and Antichrist along with her, as if running itself were a confession.

  In the corridor, her heart was beating too loudly for the silence.

  When she entered her own room, Americ-Ana shut the door with her back, locked it, and spoke in a low, urgent voice, almost without looking at Wwwyye.

  "Did you notice anything strange?"

  Wwwyye wiped the blood from her forehead again, irritated.

  "What?"

  "The Chancellor." Americ-Ana swallowed hard. "She did not say 'honey' even once. She says 'honey' practically all the time... and tonight, nothing."

  Wwwyye shrugged, as if that were a detail in the middle of the apocalypse.

  "Maybe she's in a hurry. Or maybe the universe is cutting back on sugar."

  Before Americ-Ana could answer, a dry sound struck the window.

  Knock, knock, knock.

  Both of them froze.

  Americ-Ana went to the curtain on reflex, pulled it aside a little, and the shock left her as a whisper that almost turned into a scream.

  "Nioh?"

  Outside, in the artificial snow, Nioh Nemmesis was perched on the Spyder, small, pale, the little syrup bottle in his hand. The robotic spider held his weight as if it were normal, and his eyes were fixed on her with that kind of insistence that did not match the situation.

  Wwwyye came up beside her, saw him, and let out a smile that was half mockery, half panic.

  "Boy, you are in so much trouble."

  Americ-Ana opened the window at once, and the Spyder came in with a quick, efficient movement, almost too quiet for something that size. It crossed the sill and landed in the room, carrying Nioh as if he were a precious and dangerous package.

  Nioh coughed, a short sequence, drank some syrup, and went straight to the point, without circling around it.

  "Did you think any more about us running away?" he asked, hoarse. "I kept thinking. We can go get your grandparents. I know they are important to you. They can come with us. Poppandacorn too."

  Wwwyye's eyes widened, completely lost.

  "Running away? What do you mean?" she shot back, looking from Americ-Ana to Nioh as if she had stepped into a parallel universe.

  "I'll explain later," Americ-Ana cut in, quickly, and her eyes dropped to Poppandacorn in her arms, powered down, heavy. Fear bit down again. "First... please. Can you take care of him? He still hasn't reacted."

  She held out Poppandacorn.

  Nioh took him carefully, as if he understood that, right there, was her heart in panda form.

  "Of course," he said, and coughed at the end. "I'll take care of him."

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  Wwwyye pointed at Nioh with her hand, as if remembering there was still a world outside.

  "Nioh, did you know Professor Fiat-Lux was murdered?"

  His cough came hard, as if the question were a trigger. He drank syrup, breathed in pieces, and shook his head.

  "No," he managed to say. "I don't know anything."

  Americ-Ana stepped closer, low, urgent.

  "Be careful," she said. "Professor Fiat-Lux... and King Solomon... are dead."

  Wwwyye froze.

  "What?" she blurted out, in a dry shock. "What do you mean King Solomon is dead too?"

  "I'll explain later," Americ-Ana repeated, and the sentence was already becoming a survival password.

  Nioh, still holding Poppandacorn in his arms, slipped a hand into his pocket and pulled out a gun too small to seem real. Silver, miniature, fitted exactly to his size.

  Wwwyye took half a step back, pure instinct.

  Americ-Ana tensed too, instantly, even against her will.

  Nioh saw the reaction and raised the weapon just enough to explain, quick, practical.

  "Don't worry," he said, coughing in the middle of it. "It's not a regular firearm. It's a pistol with Spyder synthetic threads. If you aim and shoot, the target gets wrapped in the threads. It's for your safety, Americ-Ana."

  Before Americ-Ana could answer, someone knocked on the door.

  Hard.

  Dry.

  Like a warning.

  Americ-Ana went cold.

  "Nioh, careful!"

  Nioh did not even argue. He turned toward the window at once, the Spyder already moving with trained reflex. In a second, it was outside again, carrying Nioh and the still-unconscious Poppandacorn, vanishing into the frozen night as if it had never existed.

  Americ-Ana shut the window in a rush, her heart in her throat.

  The door opened.

  It was Shabda Akasha.

  Wwwyye took Antichrist into her arms without ceremony, as if it were a right already hers, and fixed Americ-Ana with a sharp look.

  "Get ready, now," she said, low and firm. "You have a lot to tell me."

  Shabda Akasha stood at the side, neutral as a wall, simply waiting.

  Americ-Ana did not argue. She ran to the bathroom, washed her face, scrubbed her hands, tried to strip the purple from her skin and the sickly cotton-candy-and-chocolate smell from her body. She changed clothes in a rush and in anger, as if every button were an attempt to become "normal" again.

  Minutes later, she returned to the hall.

  The Chancellor was already waiting, rigid, with the drones positioned like an official shadow. Shabda Akasha was there. Wwwyye was there, Antichrist in her arms, the blood still on her forehead, the crushed top hat like living proof.

  The Chancellor looked at the two of them and made a short, definitive gesture, pointing toward the exit of the SAMKHYA CELL.

  "Move."

  The Chancellor turned and walked out in front, leaving no room for questions or excuses. Wwwyye came right behind her, Antichrist steady in her arms, the little black fox quiet and alert.

  Americ-Ana followed, swallowing fear and urgency as if they were the same thing.

  Outside the SAMKHYA CELL, a Jump Chronos Station was already active. The portal trembled, too-clean light, too much geometry, as if time itself had turned into a door.

  "No detours," the Chancellor said, dryly.

  She crossed first.

  Wwwyye crossed next.

  Americ-Ana crossed last.

  And the three of them disappeared toward CROWN EDEN.

  On the other side of the Jump Chronos Station, the air in CROWN EDEN felt colder than it should have, not in temperature, but in presence, as if the palace had shut off its own lights so it would not have to look at anyone.

  Americ-Ana blinked once, and what she saw was a darkened world, vast and silent corridors, shadows too clean, no music, no laughter, no smell of food, no "Christmas."

  Only emptiness.

  Her throat tightened when her mind finally caught up with the detail her body had not yet processed. They were still in the early hours, between the night of the 25th and the beginning of the 26th, the kind of hour when normal people are wrapped up with family, in luxury hotels, by fake fireplaces, under expensive blankets, inside perfect photos.

  And she was there.

  Covered in secrets as if they were layers of clothing, with her heart beating in the rhythm of escape, and with the cruel feeling that the whole world had chosen to rest, except her.

  Americ-Ana looked around, trying to find signs of life, any sign of movement that might say "this is a place where people live," but CROWN EDEN seemed to have been abandoned on purpose, as if the palace itself were on holiday too, and the silence were part of the protocol.

  She swallowed hard.

  Normal Christmas was happening somewhere, and hers had turned into this, a dark palace, a portal behind her, and a weight in her stomach that was not hunger, but foreboding.

  The Chancellor did not give Americ-Ana time to finish feeling it.

  She was already walking, dry, quick steps, like someone turning a corridor into paperwork. Her presence seemed to grab the palace by the collar, forcing CROWN EDEN to remember that there was still work to be done in that dawn hour.

  "Follow," the Chancellor said, without looking back.

  Americ-Ana followed on autopilot, trying to make her body look less guilty than her mind. Beside her, Wwwyye walked steady, Antichrist fitted into her arms like a living secret, the little black fox too quiet, his eyes shining in a way that made the dark feel darker.

  The corridors were wide and silent, so clean it made her angry. Low lights, spaced out, laying pale bands across the floor. It felt as if the palace had decided to close its doors to the world.

  Americ-Ana heard her own footsteps echo and hated it.

  The sound reminded her she was there, that someone could be listening, that everything could be recorded, told, twisted. Her hand itched with nerves, and she held back the impulse to touch the wall, as if touching anything would leave fingerprints of guilt.

  Wwwyye did not say a word. She only tightened her hold on Antichrist a little more, and Americ-Ana realized even her mockery had been left behind, on the other side of the portal, with the drones and the hall. Now it was a different face. A face that said survive first, think later.

  The Chancellor turned into a narrower corridor, and the air seemed to change, as if that wing were older than the rest, heavier, more secret. Americ-Ana felt a shiver climb the back of her neck, not knowing whether it was cold or intuition.

  At the end of the corridor, a wooden door appeared, too plain to belong there. Old, unadorned, as if it did not want to draw anyone's attention.

  The Chancellor stopped before it, her hand already on the handle.

  "Go in," she said.

  The Chancellor opened the old door, and Americ-Ana expected wood, walls, an ordinary room, some kind of office with a desk, a window, maybe the smell of stale coffee.

  It was not that.

  It was like crossing an edge of reality.

  The space inside was small at floor level, almost a cubicle, a place where three people could barely fit without bumping into one another, but when Americ-Ana lifted her gaze, the world rose.

  Rose too far.

  The ceiling seemed to have the height of a skyscraper, an absurd vertical emptiness, and the air up there was dark and distant, as if the office had been built to swallow secrets without leaving an echo.

  In the four corners, where there should have been walls, there were mountains.

  Colossal piles of books, papers, and folders rose in every direction, stacked with a logic that was not logic, forming crooked columns, improvised steps, document slopes, as if the place had been buried under decades of urgent.

  Tall, long ladders stretched upward, propped against shelves and against nothing, as if gravity in there obeyed habit more than the rules of the universe.

  Americ-Ana felt a brief vertigo, a flicker of if I fall upward I die, and held on to her own body, not to anything in the room, because touching anything felt like blasphemy in that organized chaos.

  The Chancellor walked in as if it were just another ordinary room, already moving, already searching with her eyes, and her voice came before any explanation, dry, preventative, as if she knew the kind of accident that place could manufacture.

  "Please do not touch anything," she said, without looking at them. "Anything."

  Americ-Ana stood on the threshold for a second, her heart tightening, and looked at Wwwyye with the absurd feeling that, in there, even a sigh could bring down an entire pile of world.

  The Chancellor crossed the cubicle as if she were walking inside her own mind, weaving between stacks with ease, her eyes tracking spines, labels, corners, as if that chaos were an intimate map.

  "You can sit and wait," she said quickly, without kindness, only functional.

  Americ-Ana looked and saw two wooden chairs, simple, rustic, so hard they seemed designed to punish spines. Only they were not free. Papers lay on them, thin stacks, folded sheets, notes, as if even the act of sitting needed to ask permission.

  She swallowed hard and went to the first chair carefully, lifting a stack of papers slowly, as if paper could bite. The pages smelled of archives, of old time, of forgotten ink. She set them down to the side, trying not to topple anything, trying not to make too much noise.

  Then she repeated the gesture on the chair beside it, removing another stack and making room for Wwwyye.

  Wwwyye sat with Antichrist in her arms, the little black fox settling without complaint, as if that place were just one more strange hiding spot in the universe.

  Americ-Ana sat too, and the chair protested with a low creak, almost an offended sigh.

  She was still trying to understand the height of that ceiling, trying to accept that an office could be a skyscraper of paper, when she felt it.

  Something brushing against her leg.

  It was light, but it was real.

  Americ-Ana jerked, her body reacting before her mind, her heart spiking as if it had heard a siren. Her hand flew to her leg on instinct, and her voice slipped out in a thin thread, more startle than word.

  "What the—"

  The Chancellor stopped in the middle of a stack, leaned slightly as if listening to a whisper only she could hear, and then her face changed with a click, as if she had remembered something forgotten in her pocket.

  "Ah, yes..." she said, with a dry fatigue. "There you are. I was just looking for you."

  Americ-Ana looked down, following the Chancellor's gaze, and saw what had brushed against her leg.

  It was small.

  It was not a toy.

  It was not an animal.

  It was a humanoid being of about eight inches, but his entire body looked as if it had been designed by someone obsessed with locks. His torso had the shape of a shaft, his back resembled metal teeth, and his head was literally part of an old key, golden, with a long nose like the tip that goes into a lock. His gold did not shine like jewelry, it shone like a well-kept old tool.

  His eyes were tiny, alive, alert, and when he realized he had drawn attention, he made a small low sound, a nervous kind of "tch," and lowered his head, as if he had been caught doing something wrong.

  Americ-Ana felt her stomach knot.

  "What is that?" she asked, and her voice came out sharper than she wanted.

  The Chancellor answered as if she were saying this is a pen.

  "This is a Head Keys." She crouched a little, and her tone was practical. "A Moss Human. Don't worry. He is completely harmless. He was created by Novaxtraai to assist in offices."

  The Head Keys tilted his head, as if he understood every word, and let out another little sound, higher, almost like asking for approval.

  The Chancellor looked down at him, and the comment came with the same bureaucratic coldness as always.

  "In fact, this model is old," she said. "It's been a while since I've wanted to replace him."

  The effect was immediate.

  The Head Keys lowered his head even more, his tiny eyes shrinking, and the sound he made was sad, a short, broken noise, as if the word "replace" were a sentence.

  Americ-Ana felt a strange sting in her chest, that mix of pity and discomfort that is born when you realize even the small creatures in that place know what it is to be disposable.

  The Chancellor crouched with the precision of someone used to commanding small things, and her voice shifted into a short, almost mechanical tone of order.

  "Head Keys," she said. "Location routine. Now."

  The little being shuddered, as if struck by duty, and let out a sharp little beep, obedient. His tiny feet began to move in a hurry, and Americ-Ana noticed a detail that made her more uneasy. He had no hands. No fingers. No claws. Only those quick feet and a key-body that looked made to fit and run.

  The Chancellor pointed upward, toward the ladders that vanished into the height.

  "Climb," she ordered.

  The Head Keys shot off.

  He ran toward one of the ladders as if height did not exist, going up rung by rung with an absurd agility for someone that small. The sound of his little feet was tick tick tick, fast, nervous, and then it vanished among the piles, like a golden insect crawling into a nest of paper.

  Americ-Ana watched, not sure whether it was funny or frightening.

  Seconds later, there was a heavy rustle, as if a mountain were breathing.

  The Head Keys reappeared.

  He came racing down, and in his mouth he carried a notebook, too thick for his body, held in the metal teeth of the key itself, as if it were natural. He trembled a little under the weight, but did not stop. He reached the Chancellor and pushed the notebook insistently against her leg, offering it like a trophy.

  The Chancellor took the notebook and opened it at once, flipping through with a finger, her gaze quick, surgical.

  "Ah, yes..." she murmured, finding what she wanted. Her eyes narrowed, and the decision arrived inside the same sentence. "Mr. Geekwoden. Christmas break with his parents. Dubai."

  Wwwyye, in the chair, said nothing, but Antichrist's ears lifted, as if "Geekwoden" were a sound too important to ignore.

  The Chancellor shut the notebook with a snap and looked at the two of them as if they were part of a problem that could not wait for daylight.

  "Right," she said, dry. "It is time to pay the Geekwoden family a visit."

  Americ-Ana felt her stomach tighten. The word "visit" in the Chancellor's mouth was not social.

  The Chancellor pointed at the two of them, and her tone turned even harder, as if she were nailing a rule into the floor.

  "You two, girls," she said. "Do not leave this room. Do not touch anything. Do not move."

  The Head Keys made a short little sound, like task confirmation, still with his head lowered, as if he were in mourning for the comment about being "replaced."

  The Chancellor did not notice. Or she noticed and did not care.

  The Chancellor was already moving again, weaving around the piles as if she knew where the chaos would open into a passage. Americ-Ana followed her with her eyes, trying not to shift even her shoulder, as if any gesture could bring down a century of paper.

  Then the Chancellor stopped in front of a smaller door, too discreet, tucked into a corner of the office as if it were ashamed to exist. No ornament. No plaque. Nothing that said here is a shortcut to the impossible.

  She turned to the Head Keys.

  "Come," she said, and the word sounded like a yank.

  The little being approached on quick feet, still downcast, letting out a low, uncertain sound.

  The Chancellor grabbed the Head Keys by the head.

  Americ-Ana held her breath on reflex. The creature's legs kicked in the air, his tiny eyes squeezed shut, and he made a protesting sound that was not a word, only feeling, and even so he obeyed, because there seemed to be no option for him beyond serving.

  The Chancellor raised the Head Keys to the lock, and Americ-Ana saw a keyhole that did not look like a keyhole. It looked like a socket made to fit a body.

  A click.

  The Head Keys' gold vanished into the lock, and for a second the entire office fell quieter, as if even the piles wanted to listen.

  The door answered.

  The wood gave with a contained crack, and light spilled through the gap, too clean, too intense, as if it did not belong to the same world as that cluttered cubicle.

  The Chancellor released the Head Keys, who dropped to the floor with a hurried tick and backed away a little, like someone who wanted to keep distance from his own work.

  The Chancellor did not look back.

  She crossed the open door, stepped into the light, and disappeared, as if she had been swallowed by a passage that did not need to explain anything to anyone.

  The door remained open.

  And the light stayed there, leaking into the office, cutting through the silence like a blade.

  The Head Keys ran back toward the chairs, scraping his key-body along the floor as if searching for protection, and Americ-Ana felt her stomach tighten with the certainty that that second door was the kind of thing that should never be left open.

  The silence after the Chancellor vanished into the light was worse than any scream.

  The office seemed to breathe on its own, and the open door spilled brightness onto the floor like a living thing, calling without calling.

  Americ-Ana sat rigid in the chair, trying to remember the order, do not move, do not touch, do not leave, as if obedience were a way to keep herself whole.

  That was when she felt it again.

  A light brush against her leg.

  The Head Keys was there, pressing his little golden body against her knee, insistent, making small low sounds, a needy "tch-tch," as if asking to be held, as if he had chosen her by some logic that was not logic.

  Americ-Ana looked at the little being and her throat tightened in a way that did not match his size.

  He reminded her.

  Reminded her of Poppandacorn.

  Not in shape, not in body, but in that way of being small and trying to speak to the world without words. In the need to touch, to be held, to be someone and not just a tool.

  Americ-Ana swallowed hard, and the thought came without asking permission, almost like a prayer.

  "Please, Poppa... be okay."

  Before she could make any move, Wwwyye grabbed her arm with controlled force, as if afraid Americ-Ana might melt right there.

  "Come on," Wwwyye said, low and direct, leaving no room to escape. "Spit it out."

  Antichrist stayed in her lap, quiet and alert, his eyes tracking the bright inner door as if he understood it was danger.

  Wwwyye leaned in a little more, her face too close, and her tone sharpened, urgent.

  "Tell me everything that's going on," she continued. "What is this story about going into Nioh Nemmesis's cell, and what is this madness about running away with him, and how is it that King Solomon was 'also' murdered? Tell me from the beginning."

  Americ-Ana drew in a slow breath, trying not to let the sound come out too loud in that cubicle full of paper and secrets. She glanced quickly at the open inner door, that light leaking like an eye, and then looked back at Wwwyye, trying to choose where to begin without retelling the entire universe.

  "Okay," she said, low, and the word came out like surrender. "That is the summary, yes."

  She ran a hand along her own thigh, feeling the Head Keys brush against her again, needy, but she did not take him into her lap. Not now. She could not allow herself tenderness at that level.

  "I found a book," Americ-Ana began, and the sentence was direct, without ornament. "A book with codes. Symbols. And I didn't know what it was."

  Wwwyye's gaze narrowed at once.

  "Later I found out that, in THE-IMPERIUM, those symbols are considered illegal," Americ-Ana went on. "Serious stuff. Like... terrorism."

  She saw the reaction on Wwwyye's face, shock turning into calculation, and she sped up.

  "I hid it," Americ-Ana admitted, and shame pinched like a hook. "I didn't know who to trust, so I hid it in Poppa's belly compartment. It was the only place no one would search."

  Wwwyye opened her mouth, but Americ-Ana raised a hand, asking for a second, asking her not to explode right then.

  "And then the strange part started," she said. "Poppa... his finger turned purple. Something tiny, but it was the first sign I had touched something I should not have."

  Antichrist shifted in Wwwyye's arms, as if he understood the should not have.

  Americ-Ana swallowed hard and went on, her tone harder now.

  "Nioh noticed," she said. "And he lied to help me. He covered for me when he could have turned me in. He... he protected me."

  She did not mention the kiss. She did not mention anything intimate. Only what mattered, only the thin wire of danger.

  "And it escalated," Americ-Ana finished, in a sentence that felt too small for the size of what had happened. "Fast. Ugly. And now I'm in the middle of something I was never supposed to be in."

  Wwwyye fell silent for a few seconds, looking at Americ-Ana as if trying to measure the depth of the hole by the sound of the echo.

  Americ-Ana ran her tongue over her dry lips, as if she were about to say something that did not fit inside normal words. Her gaze went again to the open inner door, that quiet light, and then back to Wwwyye.

  "The worst part is it didn't stop with the book," she said.

  She spoke faster, in short blocks, like someone afraid that if she took a full breath, she would start to cry.

  "I ended up in a vault," Americ-Ana went on. "A real vault. With Lacrimosa. And then... with King Solomon."

  Wwwyye's eyes widened, but Americ-Ana did not leave room for interruption.

  "Down there, something is being rebuilt," she said, and the sentence came out almost without voice. "The Temple. The Glory. That whole story I thought was legend, but it isn't. THE-IMPERIUM wants it because of the seals. The seventy-two."

  She saw Wwwyye's brow knit, trying to hold on to the absurd, and she went straight for the point that cut.

  "And then Patron Uvo showed up," Americ-Ana said, and the name Patron Uvo seemed to dirty the air. "I heard him killing King Solomon."

  Silence jolted, as if the entire office had stopped to listen.

  Americ-Ana swallowed hard and kept going, because stopping meant falling.

  "After that I heard a voice," she said, her fingers tightening around her own knee. "It was coming from a small tree, made of colored stained glass. The voice said it was trapped on Step Thirty."

  She drew a short breath, and her body trembled just a little.

  "I touched a branch and nothing happened. But then Poppa touched the same branch," Americ-Ana concluded. "And we got sucked into Nioh's cell. That's how I ended up there. Out of nowhere."

  Wwwyye let out a low, disbelieving sound, but Americ-Ana was already at the end of the summary, because that was where everything became purple chaos.

  "That's where the explosion happened," she said. "Poppa suddenly started feeling sick. Like stomach pain, but he shouldn't have. And then came the purple fart, and then... the purple poop. All of it. Nioh's house became a disaster and security saw."

  She looked away for a second, as if seeing again the hall, the drones, the spotlights.

  "And he..." Americ-Ana finished, her voice lower. "Nioh isn't the villain. He's trapped because of things that aren't even his, and he's there because... he's protecting me."

  Antichrist went still in Wwwyye's arms, and the Head Keys brushed lightly against Americ-Ana's leg, as if it could feel the weight of all of it, even without understanding a single word.

  Wwwyye stayed silent for a few seconds, staring at Americ-Ana as if she were looking at a map and realizing too late that the hole was bigger than the paper.

  Then she let out a slow breath, and her voice came in a tone that tried to be rational, but had shock underneath.

  "Damn..." she said. "That's a lot."

  Antichrist shifted in her arms, and Wwwyye stroked the fox's head automatically, as if she needed to touch something real so she would not be pulled under by the absurd.

  Then her Helllwk side came back, the side that turns panic into judgment.

  "Okay," Wwwyye said, tilting her head. "But have you considered that all of this would have taken a different proportion if you'd asked for help from the start?"

  Americ-Ana did not answer. She only stared, breathing short, because from the start was a phrase that hurt.

  Wwwyye went on, not very gentle, as if trying to yank logic out of chaos.

  "And another thing," she said, pointing faintly, as if Poppandacorn were there. "If this started because you hid things in your robot... you could have swapped him out for another model. Simple. Fixed."

  The sentence hit Americ-Ana like a slap.

  She felt her chest flare at once, an indignation so immediate it almost turned into a shout, but she held it down, because the office had paper ears and the open door shone like a threat.

  "Swap?" Americ-Ana repeated, and sarcasm slipped into her voice without asking permission. "You're talking about him like he's a backpack."

  She leaned forward a little, her eyes hard.

  "I'm not swapping out Poppa," she said, each word hammered in. "He's been with me from the beginning. He's not an object I replace when he becomes inconvenient."

  Wwwyye opened her mouth, but Americ-Ana was already moving to the other part, the one that was even more poisonous.

  "And about asking for help..." Americ-Ana let out a short laugh, humorless. "Do you really think anyone in THE-IMPERIUM would have believed me?"

  She pointed at herself with her chin, as if her own body were evidence.

  "A scholarship girl," she said. "With people like Patron Uvo hating me and policing everything I do. Do you think I was going to walk up to some adult and say, 'Hi, I found a book with symbols considered terrorist, but I swear it was an accident'?"

  Wwwyye went rigid, her gaze wavering for a second, as if she wanted to disagree and could not find the way.

  She stared at Americ-Ana, stared at the light leaking from the inner door, and finally let the air out.

  "Okay," Wwwyye admitted, lower. "You're right about that."

  Suddenly, the light from the inner door flickered.

  It was not an ordinary off-and-on. It was a pulse, as if the air had swallowed someone and was spitting them back out.

  Americ-Ana felt her stomach turn before she even understood. The white beam cut across the paper-strewn floor and climbed the stacks, making the shadows look taller, more threatening.

  Then came the sound.

  A hurried step. A silhouette crossing the light.

  Astyam Geekwoden appeared in the office as if he had been yanked by the collar of time, and his face wore that expression of someone who was comfortable one second ago and is now inside an organized nightmare.

  He was too put together for the middle of the night, hair aligned, clothes clean, and an imaginary scent of “warm house” clinging to him, as if his body still could not understand it had left a fireplace and stepped into a skyscraper of files.

  Wwwyye stood up at once, like her body had an instinct for confrontation.

  "Man," she said, already moving toward him. "You have a lot to explain."

  Astyam blinked, caught off guard by the reception, and looked from Wwwyye to Americ-Ana as if searching for the part of the script someone had forgotten to hand him.

  "Explain what?" he snapped, confused and irritated at the same time. "I was with my family. Drinking hot chocolate. Christmas break, remember?"

  He took a step inside, and the light behind him kept leaking through the open door, as if the passage refused to close.

  "And then out of nowhere the Chancellor shows up," Astyam went on, the sentence coming out with an almost offended disbelief. "In the middle of the night. Saying my presence in CROWN EDEN was necessary, that you two got yourselves into trouble, and that now you need the duality key, the key to our CELL."

  He opened his hands in a gesture of I didn't ask for any of this, and his voice rose a notch, because the world was clearly wrong.

  "She told me to come ahead," he concluded, glancing over his shoulder toward the light as if expecting the Chancellor to step out any second. "She said she'd be here any moment."

  Wwwyye did not answer right away.

  Americ-Ana watched her gaze go straight to the inner door, to the leaking light, as if she were calculating how long it would take the Chancellor to reappear. Wwwyye shifted one step to the side, just enough to see into the corridor of light, then turned back to Astyam with a cold decision on her face.

  "Great," she said, dry. "So she isn't here yet."

  Astyam frowned.

  "What do you mean?"

  Wwwyye did not explain. She went straight for the throat of it, no metaphor, no detour.

  "And that little parchment box?" she asked, low and fast, as if she were stuffing the sentence into a hole before anyone could hear. "The one you swiped."

  Astyam froze.

  His face lost color for a second, and he made a sound that was half cough, half choke, as if the word "parchment" had turned into crumbs in his throat.

  "I..." he started, but nothing usable came out.

  And then the crisis hit.

  One hard sneeze, then another, then a string of them, as if his body had decided to create a biological smoke screen to escape the subject.

  Astyam yanked a nasal spray from his pocket and shoved it up his nose in a hurry, spraying twice, exaggerated, desperate, accidentally theatrical.

  "Bless you," Americ-Ana thought, but did not say, because it was so obvious it was embarrassing.

  Astyam wiped his nose with his sleeve, blinked fast, and tried to change the subject in the same instant, forcing a crooked, improvised smile.

  "Look," he said, pointing as if he had just remembered something very important. "Antichrist is here."

  Before Wwwyye could answer, he reached out and took the little fox into his arms with excessive care, as if holding Antichrist were an alibi.

  Antichrist settled against him, quiet, eyes bright, and Americ-Ana saw clearly what was happening.

  Astyam was holding the fox like a shield.

  Americ-Ana stepped forward before Wwwyye could fully explode, because she saw Astyam was trying to turn Antichrist into a curtain, and it would only get worse if it turned into shouting.

  "Astyam," she said, firm, low, the kind of tone that does not ask, it decides. "We know."

  He blinked, still with the fox in his arms, and the nasal spray seemed to have become an amulet in his hand.

  "Know what?" he tried, weakly, faking an innocence that had no weight.

  "No one besides the two of us," Americ-Ana went on, not taking her eyes off him. "No one else saw that little box. No one else knows it existed there in your room. And no one else knows it's gone."

  Wwwyye folded her arms, pleased with the surgical hit.

  Americ-Ana felt the Head Keys brush lightly against her ankle, as if even he could sense the tension, and she took a short breath.

  "You can trust us," she said, and the sentence came with a hard honesty. "Because, whether we like it or not, everyone in here has things to hide now."

  Astyam swallowed.

  His eyes went to the inner door, to the leaking light, and then back to their faces, as if choosing which risk was smaller.

  He let out an irritated, defeated sigh, and the mask slipped a little.

  "Okay," Astyam said, low. "I took it, yes."

  Wwwyye raised her eyebrows, like finally.

  "I just..." He tightened his hold on Antichrist without realizing it, and the fox stayed quiet, patient. "I wanted a souvenir. A souvenir. A keepsake, okay? I wasn't going to... I wasn't going to use it for anything."

  Americ-Ana did not answer with judgment, only with a look that said “souvenir” was an indecent word in that world.

  Astyam tried to steady himself, and his indignation surfaced as defense.

  "But wait," he said, frowning. "What is this talk about everyone having secrets? How do you have secrets?"

  Americ-Ana drew in a breath and spoke fast, as short as she could without collapsing the world on top of them.

  "There isn't time for details," she said, and looked at the inner door, at the light still leaking like an open wound. "But tonight I got mixed up in something big. It involves Nioh. It involves an illegal object. And it involves people who shouldn't be dead."

  Astyam opened his mouth to ask who, but Americ-Ana lifted her hand, cutting him off, and only nodded, as if to say: yes, it's exactly what you're thinking.

  Americ-Ana said a little more, brief, dry, enough to put Astyam back on track without retelling the whole story, only the weight: a secret kept, confusion escalating, deaths, risk, and Patron Uvo's name floating like a threat.

  Astyam went rigid, and even the way he held Antichrist changed, as if the little fox had become something sacred for two seconds.

  Wwwyye, impatient, jumped in with her own part, as if she could not stand being “behind” anyone.

  "And I lied too," she said, and her gaze hardened. "I told everyone I was in Europe, visiting my grandmother."

  Astyam frowned.

  "You... what?"

  "Ibiza." Wwwyye spat the truth like it was something dirty. "Alone. And now people are looking for me, and I'm not going down alone in this, do you understand?"

  She stepped closer, and her voice turned into a proposal, not a confession.

  "We do it like this," Wwwyye said, low and firm. "Mutual cover. You cover us, we cover you."

  Astyam looked at Americ-Ana, then at Wwwyye, then at the light from the inner door, and Americ-Ana watched the math form on his face, that survival calculation you do when you realize you're already knee-deep in mud.

  He swallowed.

  "So that's it," he murmured, uncomfortable, but understanding. "A pact."

  "A pact," Wwwyye confirmed, without romanticizing it.

  And Americ-Ana nodded too, feeling the alliance being born in the worst possible place.

  Shared fear. Shared secret.

  A kind of bond that does not ask permission to exist.

  The silence after the pact did not last even a second.

  A scream tore through the office from the inner door, a rip of sound that did not seem like it could fit inside someone like the Chancellor’s throat.

  Americ-Ana felt her body go cold from the inside before she could even think.

  "It was the Chancellor," Americ-Ana said, her voice low, instinctive, as if the very air had heard it.

  The light from the inner door flickered faintly, and the glow on the floor seemed colder, harder, as if something on the other side had shifted in weight.

  Astyam took a step in the opposite direction, almost automatic, trying to hold on to logic as if it were a rope.

  "No," he said quickly. "The Chancellor told us to wait here. She said not to touch anything, not to move."

  Wwwyye was already moving, without asking permission.

  "The Chancellor screamed," Wwwyye shot back, and her tone cut off any argument. "And tonight two people were killed. Do you want to obey protocol or do you want to stay alive?"

  Americ-Ana stared at the light and felt her stomach tighten, because the word "murder" was still hot in her memory, and everything that was “adult” tonight was failing.

  "If she's calling for help and we stay sitting, that becomes one more body," Americ-Ana said, and her hands clenched into fists without her noticing. "I'm not staying here."

  Astyam swore under his breath, his face split between fear and responsibility, and he pressed Antichrist to his chest as if the fox could anchor reality.

  "Shit..." he murmured, defeated, and followed.

  That was when the Head Keys shot off.

  He ran between their feet with a sharp, hurried little sound, as if panic had become an engine, and launched himself straight toward the inner door, too small and too determined.

  Americ-Ana was the first to cross after the Head Keys, Wwwyye tight at her shoulder, Astyam right after, Antichrist held steady in his arms.

  And the light swallowed all three of them.

  It swallowed Americ-Ana as if it were a toothless mouth, only brightness, only white silence pressing the air out of her chest. For a second she had no body, only sensation, a hum in her bones and a clean cold climbing her arms.

  Then the floor returned.

  And what she saw made her stomach drop an entire step.

  It was a kind of gallery, but it did not feel made for people, it felt made for time. In perfect rows, side by side, in straight lines that vanished into the distance, there were countless Jump Chronos Stations, each with its own gleaming geometry, each vibrating with its own light, like display cases in a museum that exhibited doors instead of art. The perspective ran so far the portals became only bright points, like stars lined up by someone obsessive.

  The air there had a strange smell, metallic and sterile, as if nothing organic were allowed to stay for long. The silence was so vast that Americ-Ana’s own heart sounded too loud, an instrument going out of tune inside her chest.

  She took a step and felt her skin prickle all over, not from cold, but from intuition. That was not a “place.” It was a corridor of possibilities waiting to be activated.

  And, running ahead, too small to exist with that much conviction, the Head Keys darted on quick little feet, tick tick tick, nervous gold, cutting across the gallery as if it knew the way, as if infinity were just one more office corridor to him.

  The scream came again.

  Not from the office, not from the door, but from there, in that sea of portals, as if the light itself had a throat. Americ-Ana felt the sound pass through her skin and strike straight behind her eyes, a short, desperate tear, and adrenaline rose so fast she almost forgot to breathe.

  Wwwyye was the first to react. Her body went rigid and her arm shot to the right, pointing to one specific Jump Chronos Station as if she had seen smoke coming out of it.

  "From there," she said, no beauty, only urgency.

  Americ-Ana opened her mouth to agree, but the scream was still vibrating inside her and pulling her the other way, like a wrong magnet. She pointed to the left, to a different portal, identical on the outside and just as accusing.

  "No," she said, her voice failing at the start and hardening at the end. "It was from there."

  Astyam took a step forward, Antichrist steady in his arms, and looked at the two points like someone watching two lies trying to pass for truth. His expression hardened, and then he pointed to a third Jump Chronos Station farther ahead, in the middle of the infinite row, with the irritating certainty of someone who decided before he felt.

  "You are hearing it wrong," he said, dry. "It came from here."

  The three of them stood still for a second, trapped in an absurd microtension, three fingers pointing to three different destinies, while the infinity of portals watched in silence, waiting to see which one would swallow someone first.

  Wwwyye was the first to move, without hesitating, and pressed her hand to the Jump Chronos Station she had pointed at. Nothing. Not an extra gleam, not a breath, not a response. Only the cold, perfect, indifferent light, as if the portal were pretending to be a door just to laugh at them.

  Americ-Ana tried hers, palm against the gleaming surface, and felt an invisible pressure pushing back, an electrical shiver that ran up her arm and bit into her shoulder. Astyam drew near his with his usual irritating calm, but the air itself seemed to refuse him, a hard silence, as if the portal had taste.

  Head Keys, farther ahead, stopped running.

  He turned his little key-head, as if he had heard the word “no” without anyone saying it. His tiny body vibrated, the key in his head flickering, and then he sprinted back toward them, tick tick tick, and without using hands, because he had no hands, he did what he always did, he bit the edge of Wwwyye’s Jump Chronos Station, as if he were “grabbing” the lock with his mouth.

  The portal responded at once, light reacting to light, a dry crack in the air, and the surface flared like skin waking up.

  Wwwyye stared for a second, genuine surprise on her face, and then her voice came low, fast, almost laughing with nerves.

  "It's him... he opens it."

  Americ-Ana did not waste time.

  "Then open all three."

  She pointed to hers and then to Astyam's, firm, making fear sit down and obey.

  "We split up. If there’s any sign of danger, you run back and get help. No stupid heroics."

  Head Keys ran from one to the next, biting, activating, lighting them up, like a living keyring working with angry precision, until all three Jump Chronos Stations were humming, ready.

  And then, as if he understood his role, Head Keys stayed there, planted in the middle of the infinite gallery, standing guard, too small for it, but acting as if infinity belonged to him.

  Americ-Ana did not look back.

  She just went in.

  Her Jump Chronos Station swallowed her with that temperatureless light, and for an instant the world became an in-between, a bright emptiness that was neither space nor time, only passage. When the pressure released, she landed on the other side with her feet steady, but with the feeling her stomach arrived a second late.

  The corridor was dark, narrow enough to feel intentional, as if someone had designed it to funnel people and thought in the same direction. The walls had a smooth finish, no marks, no dust, no history. Too clean.

  And at the far end, deep in the distance, there was a fluorescent light, white and cruel, spilling a hospital glow onto the floor, as if brightness itself were wearing gloves.

  The smell came with it, and it was the smell that confirmed everything before her eyes could: chemical, sterilized, that disinfectant-and-metal scent that promises safety while preparing the cut. Americ-Ana breathed through her mouth without noticing, and the air scraped her throat.

  She moved forward slowly, each step measured, because the silence there felt sensitive, as if it could report movement. The sound of her own shoes on the floor grew too large, and she hated it. Her heart hammered loud, and the feeling was of entering a place where no one dies by accident, only by decision.

  The fluorescent light did not come from a lamp. It came from an entire place.

  When Americ-Ana reached the end of the corridor and passed through the opening, the view opened like a surgical cut, clean, calculated. There was a laboratory that was large, tall, cold, and so organized it made her want to apologize for being there, for breathing.

  Five on each side.

  Ten in total.

  Enormous Stasis Tanks, vertical, lined up like glass sentries, each with someone floating inside a slightly opaque fluid, clear enough to reveal skin, hair, clothes, and dark enough to hide details the brain did not want to see. Hoses and transparent conduits rose from the bases and climbed the columns like veins, pulsing slowly, as if the place breathed through tubes.

  The air had pressure, that feeling of a sealed environment, regulated, monitored, as if oxygen were a temporary concession. Americ-Ana felt her eardrum complain, and her body understood before her mind did.

  This was not an improvised room.

  It was a system.

  And the feeling that rose in her, hard and instinctive, was that she had opened the wrong door of the universe, a door that should not exist on any map, perhaps on THE-IMPERIUM’s, but not on God’s, not on anyone else’s.

  Americ-Ana took two steps inside, slowly, as if the floor could report her weight to some invisible alarm system. Her eyes ran along the rows of Stasis Tanks trying to find logic, trying to find a placard, a symbol, anything that would say “this is research,” “this is security,” “this is necessary.”

  There was none of that.

  Only people.

  She moved closer to the first tank on the left, and the fluorescent light struck the glass and returned her reflection, pale, the QR Codes tattooed on her face leaping out. Inside the Stasis Tank, the person floated with their head slightly tilted, hair caught in the fluid, a face too calm to be true.

  Americ-Ana recognized it before she could accept it.

  Her throat closed, and her voice came out small, like a confession she did not want to make to the world.

  "Abda..."

  Below the tank, there was a simple panel, almost elegant, with two large buttons, too bright for that place. One read "Sweet." The other read "Sour."

  Americ-Ana read it under her breath, as if speaking the wrong language might activate something.

  "Sweet and Sour."

  And in that second the laboratory became even worse, because it was not only cruel, it was casual. It was as if someone had decided human lives could fit inside a choice of flavor.

  Americ-Ana dragged her gaze to the tank beside it, like someone trying to escape a nightmare by choosing another nightmare she could bear. The second Stasis Tank had the same posture of false calm, the same fluid holding the body, the same soulless laboratory gleam.

  And then the name hit her like a small, fast, precise punch.

  "Beni..."

  Her voice came out rougher, more disbelieving, because now it was not coincidence, it was a pattern. Americ-Ana felt the back of her neck go cold, and her stomach knot with a growing certainty, the kind that does not need proof, only one more step.

  She took that step.

  The third tank.

  The face inside was far too familiar, and her mind tried to refuse, tried to invent someone else, but the recognition came whole, without asking permission.

  "Thor."

  The fourth.

  "Donnie."

  The fifth.

  "Jessie."

  Each name seemed to tear a little air out of the laboratory, as if the words were profaning that sterilized silence. Americ-Ana stood in the middle of the row, staring at suspended bodies as if they were files, and the thought that cut through her was simple and horrible.

  This was not capture.

  This was collection.

  Americ-Ana turned slowly, as if her own body needed to check the other side to believe it was real. The second row of Stasis Tanks was there, mirroring the first, five glass vessels with bodies inside, like a corridor of choices that should never have been made.

  The first name came with that feeling of a knot in wet rope, hard to swallow.

  "Parys Bloodpure..."

  The second tank pulled a short sound out of her, half humorless laugh, half tremor, because the universe had decided to be sarcastic.

  "Nome-Rocky."

  The third was worse, because it was too familiar, because it was someone who carried the weight of history in his eyes even when he was awake, and there he was, stopped in time, domesticated by chemistry.

  "Seth..."

  Americ-Ana’s throat burned. She wanted to touch the glass, to pound on it, to wake someone, to scream back at the scream that had led her there. But her hand hung in the air, frozen by the fear of what a single touch might trigger.

  She took one more step, and the laboratory chose its final blow.

  In the fourth tank, floating in the fluid with a face serene as if asleep, was the Chancellor.

  Americ-Ana stopped as if a shock had hit her square in the chest. The air fled. Blood rushed to her ears. And the only thing that managed to form inside her was a wordless question, a question that had no permission to exist.

  "How?"

  Americ-Ana forced her legs to move again, as if walking were a manual command she had to repeat inside her head. She looked away from the Chancellor, not for lack of courage, but because looking too long made reality too solid, and she still wanted to believe it could be a portal hallucination.

  The fifth tank in that row sat a little farther back, almost as if they had tried to hide its contents behind the importance of the others. The glass looked the same, the fluid looked the same, the light looked the same.

  But the body inside did not.

  Patron Uvo floated with his eyes open.

  It was not a look, it was a state. Pupils fixed, unfocused, as if consciousness had been switched off and left the face operating on “presence mode.” Mouth slightly parted, chest too still, and yet he did not seem dead, he seemed only… paused.

  Americ-Ana felt her brain seize, trying to fit that image into the world. Patron Uvo, the kind of man who occupied space as if it were an extension of his own ego, reduced there to a liquid file.

  "No," she whispered, more to herself than to the laboratory. "That doesn't make sense."

  And that was when panic changed shape.

  Because if the Chancellor was in there, and if Patron Uvo was in there too, then this was not the capture of enemies.

  It was a board where even the owners of the pieces could become a piece.

  Americ-Ana stepped back, as if Patron Uvo’s gaze could pierce the glass even while powered down, and it was in that movement that she saw the detail her mind had ignored for self-protection.

  Nothing in there was isolated.

  Transparent conduits ran out of the Stasis Tanks, thin and thick, some rigid, others flexible, like a laboratory circulatory system. They spread across the floor, climbed the bases, crossed the walls, and all of them, all of them converged on the same point, like rivers feeding a single abyss.

  Americ-Ana followed them with her eyes, slowly, feeling her throat tighten again, until she found the largest tube.

  It was not a Stasis Tank. It was something else.

  A gigantic cylinder, taller, thicker, reinforced with metal and layers of glass that looked built to contain a disaster. The fluorescent light struck it and came back different, as if whatever was inside warped the brightness itself. And there, in the center of the cloudy fluid, was a shape too alive to be only biology and too wrong to be only an animal.

  Ronove.

  The dolphin demon.

  Its skin had a wet, sick sheen, its body arched as if it were always trying to strike inside an aquatic nightmare, and needles, many needles, sank into it at calculated angles, siphoning, extracting, draining. The fluid coursed through the conduits in slow pulses, flowing away, flowing into the ten tanks, as if every person suspended there depended on that horror to remain “stored.”

  Americ-Ana felt nausea surge hard, and the thought came raw, inevitable.

  The ten bodies were not in stasis.

  The ten bodies were being fed.

  A dry sound snapped through the lab, not like an alarm, more like a door obeying a command.

  Americ-Ana flinched at once and threw herself to the side of a Stasis Tank, seeking shadow as if it were armor. Her chest locked, and she held her breath, because even breathing felt too loud in that place.

  Footsteps.

  Slow, steady, from someone with no hurry because he owns the path.

  Patron Uvo walked in.

  Americ-Ana saw his legs first, then his torso, then his face, and the shock hit so hard her mind almost went dark, because she had just seen Patron Uvo floating with his eyes open, switched off, and now he was there, alive, standing, occupying the laboratory the way he always occupied the world.

  In his hand, dragging along the floor, came a heavy, inert body, scraping the surface with a wet, horrible sound.

  King Solomon.

  Patron Uvo pulled once more, as if it were only a sack, and the body slid a few more inches, head lolling, clothes crumpled, dignity reduced to friction.

  Americ-Ana bit down on her own tongue to keep from making a sound, and felt a single certainty rise, cold as the fluid in the tanks.

  That was not a laboratory.

  It was a production line.

  The lab fell silent again, but it was a false silence, the kind that only appears when someone important has left and the threat has promised to return.

  Americ-Ana stayed pressed to the side of the Stasis Tank, not moving, counting her heartbeats instead of seconds. The chemical smell seemed stronger now, as if Patron Uvo’s presence had left a residue.

  Then the sound came back.

  Footsteps again, the same rhythm, the same certainty of ownership.

  Patron Uvo entered once more.

  This time, dragging another body.

  Professor Fiat-Lux came along the floor like a shadow of himself, head hanging, arms loose, his clothes taking on the scuff and scrape of the ground. Americ-Ana felt her stomach turn, and a word slipped out of her without meaning to, too small to be a scream, too big to be silence.

  "Professor Fiat-Lux..."

  Patron Uvo stopped mid-drag.

  His face turned slowly, like someone scenting an insect.

  He narrowed his eyes, and his voice came low, dangerous.

  "Who is there?"

  Americ-Ana did not move. Her whole body turned to stone from the inside while her mind screamed for her to run. Her silence was the only intelligent thing she had in that second, and she held even her blinking.

  Patron Uvo waited.

  A smile almost formed at the corner of his mouth, as if the idea of a hunt were a small, everyday pleasure. He looked along the rows of Stasis Tanks, looked at the bioreactor holding the demon Ronove, looked at the floor, as if he could read footprints in the air.

  Then, finding nothing that confirmed his suspicion, Patron Uvo let out a sound of contempt and dragged the body a few more inches, dropping Professor Fiat-Lux the way someone discards packaging.

  And he left.

  The laboratory was empty again, and relief came like a warm wave, fast, almost humiliating, because Americ-Ana realized she was shaking.

  That was when the sound returned for the third time.

  Now harsher.

  Patron Uvo rushed in, and the thing he threw to the floor was not a large body, not a human weight. It was smaller, familiar, too wrong to be there.

  Poppandacorn hit the floor and rolled onto his side like a broken toy, unresponsive, no light in his eyes, no theatrics, only the quiet shell of someone ripped from his own function.

  Americ-Ana felt fear evaporate.

  In its place, something rose, solid and hot, a fury so clean it felt like focus.

  And she understood that from that moment on, it was no longer only about surviving.

  It was personal.

  The dragging sound returned, and this time it came with something alive, muffled, uneven, like someone trying to swallow their own panic.

  Americ-Ana turned at once, her entire body already decided before her mind.

  Patron Uvo walked in dragging Nioh Nemmesis.

  Nioh was tied up, arms bound, legs bound, his body struggling at the edge of what was possible, trying to earn inches of dignity while the floor tore at skin and pride. His mouth was free, and the sound coming out was half cough, half survival growl.

  Americ-Ana felt her vision narrow.

  Everything that was lab, light, glass, fluid, bioreactor, became background. The world was reduced to Patron Uvo’s movement and the shape of Nioh being treated like a thing.

  Americ-Ana’s hand went to the weapon before any plan existed.

  She stepped out from the Stasis Tank’s shadow as if rage had shoved her body forward, feet planted, arm extended, her aim trembling just enough to prove she was still human.

  Her voice exploded into the laboratory, far too loud for that sterilized silence, tearing through everything.

  "STOP RIGHT THERE... OR I’LL SHOOT!"

  Patron Uvo stopped, but he did not let go of Nioh.

  He looked at the weapon the way someone looks at an old joke, then lifted his chin slowly, letting the fluorescent light draw his face in an offensive calm. His voice came low, too sweet for what he was doing, as if he were teaching a child not to spill juice on the couch.

  "You think you're in control because you have a toy in your hand?" he said, and dragged Nioh a little farther just to summon the sound of a body scraping along the floor.

  Nioh tried to lift himself, his face twisted, and his gaze met Americ-Ana’s for half a second, like a plea that did not need words.

  Americ-Ana felt rage push her finger.

  It was not strategy, it was instinct.

  The shot detonated in the laboratory and the weapon kicked in her hand, the sound striking the clean walls and coming back multiplied. The bullet did not hit Patron Uvo.

  It hit the glass of a Stasis Tank on the opposite side.

  Nome-Rocky’s tank.

  The crack opened like trapped lightning, and then the glass gave way with a violent snap. The stasis fluid burst out in a cascade, spilling across the floor, slick, chemical, and Nome-Rocky’s body slid forward, heavy, not waking, hitting the ground as if the world had just pulled his plug.

  Americ-Ana froze for one second inside her own mistake.

  And Patron Uvo smiled.

  Then Patron Uvo advanced.

  It was only one step, but it felt as if the entire laboratory tilted with him, as if his authority had physical weight. His hand was still holding Nioh, but now it was only a detail, an accessory of cruelty as he came toward Americ-Ana with that smile of someone who enjoys watching you get it wrong.

  Americ-Ana felt the floor slick with stasis fluid, felt her body want to retreat, and then something inside her shifted gears. The mistake was over. The fear was over. She drew in air, set her feet, gripped the weapon with both hands, and aimed as if she were aiming at her own survival.

  The next shot was not impulse.

  It was decision.

  The Spyder’s web burst out in a fast, white, aggressive jet, opening in the air like a living animal. It struck Patron Uvo in the chest and arm, and in half a second it had already spread, covering torso, shoulders, legs, gluing fabric, skin, and movement into a rigid mesh.

  Patron Uvo tried to take another step, but his body locked mid-gesture. The smile died. His weight became a fall.

  He hit the floor with a dry thud, trapped in his own shape, breathing but immobilized, and the sound of the web snapping tight was the laboratory’s only answer to the violence.

  Nioh, still bound, rolled to the side, coughing, free of the dragging for a moment.

  And Americ-Ana kept the weapon trained on him, because she learned right there that in that place, lowering your guard was an invitation to danger.

  Nioh drew in air as if he were drinking oxygen for the first time in days. The cough came in dirty spasms, and he tried to sit up, but the bindings held him with an intelligent cruelty.

  "Americ..." he said between one breath and the next. "Help... quick."

  That was when she saw it properly.

  The cuffs were not metal.

  They were alive.

  A kind of organic material, dark, stuck to Nioh’s skin, pulsing faintly as if it had its own heartbeat. They adjusted to every movement he made, tightening when he tried to fight, relaxing just enough to keep hope alive and prevent escape. Americ-Ana felt nausea rise, and with it, urgency sharpen into a blade.

  Nioh turned his head, his voice lower, more urgent.

  "There’s an antidote," he swallowed. "In the previous room. A vial. Don’t touch the skin. Just apply it to the cuffs."

  Americ-Ana did not argue.

  She sprinted through the lab with quick steps and crossed back through the corridor opening like someone fleeing a nightmare to fetch a weapon against it. In the first cabinet, in the first corner that looked too organized, she found the vial, small, clinical, with the kind of presence something made like that should not have.

  She returned with it in her hand as if she were carrying fire.

  Kneeling beside Nioh, she opened the vial carefully, held her breath, and applied the liquid directly onto the living cuffs, not letting a single drop touch his skin. The material reacted at once, contracting as if it had been shocked, then began to lose strength, as if it were falling ill.

  The bindings loosened first at his wrists.

  Then at his ankles.

  And Nioh, finally, could move his hands for real.

  Americ-Ana dropped the vial onto the floor and went straight for Poppandacorn.

  She crossed the lab as if nothing else existed. When she reached him, she fell to her knees, hands trembling, and pulled Poppandacorn’s little body close as if touch alone could give him life back.

  "Poppa... no, no, no..." Her voice came out low, urgent, broken. She turned his face toward the light, searching for a sign, a glow, any microreaction that could say, I'm here.

  Nothing.

  Behind her, Nioh managed to get to his feet, still unsteady, breathing with difficulty, but his mind was already in survival mode. He looked at the lab, at the columns, at the bioreactor, at the bodies, at Patron Uvo pinned down, and the conclusion came fast, brutal.

  "Americ." His voice came firm despite the cough. "You need to get out. Now."

  She did not turn. She pressed Poppandacorn to her chest, as if the embrace were a vow.

  "I'm not leaving him here."

  "You won't be able to carry everyone." Nioh took a step, his face tight. "You need to call for help. Authorities, security, anything. If you stay, you die here, and Poppandacorn stays here the same way."

  The sentence hit her like a slap. The lab had no time for feelings, and yet feeling was all she had.

  Americ-Ana took a deep breath, twice, as if splitting her own soul into two halves. She pressed her forehead to Poppandacorn’s for a second, a small, intimate gesture, and then turned back to Nioh with eyes shining with anger and fear.

  She hugged Nioh fast and hard, as if passing courage through the embrace.

  "Take care of Poppa," Americ-Ana whispered.

  Nioh held her for a moment, then let go.

  "The weapon I gave you, can you give it back, please? I need to protect myself and Poppandacorn."

  "Of course. Here it is," Americ-Ana said, handing the small weapon to Nioh.

  "Now go," Nioh ordered, stroking Americ-Ana’s face.

  Americ-Ana stood and sprinted down the dark corridor, running like someone carrying a scream inside her chest, running out of that place before it could close on them for good.

  The corridor felt longer on the way back, as if the laboratory had released its claws but left fear chasing after her.

  Americ-Ana sprinted through the dark, guided only by the distant glare of the fluorescent light and the memory of the path, her heart hammering so loudly she was sure someone would hear. The air tasted metallic, sterile, and every step echoed like an accusation.

  That was when something grabbed her ankle.

  The yank was low and fast, and she fell to the side, slamming her shoulder into the wall and feeling pain explode. Before she could scream, a hand clamped over her mouth with force, wet, cold, and a face appeared at the edge of her vision, too pale, shaking, breathing like someone drowning.

  Nome-Rocky.

  He was drenched in stasis fluid, hair stuck to his forehead, his gaze lost and at the same time desperately fixed on her. His voice came out as a rushed breath, as if each word cost him a hemorrhage.

  "Don't make a sound." He swallowed hard, and a tremor ran through his body. "He... he can't know."

  Americ-Ana tried to wrench free, but he tightened his grip, not out of aggression, out of panic.

  "Listen." Nome-Rocky spoke too fast, as if dumping a mission into her lap. "This is bigger than you, bigger than any game. You're going to get out of here and you're going to do exactly what I'm telling you."

  He brought his mouth close to her ear, and the sentence came out like an order and a plea at the same time.

  "Do it for THE-IMPERIUM."

  Nome-Rocky pulled his hand from Americ-Ana’s mouth just enough to let air in, and his other hand went straight inside his soaked coat, groping as if searching for one last object before he shut down.

  He took out a single KING MatNat sphere, his, opaque on the outside and alive on the inside, pulsing in a strange rhythm.

  "I got hit in that Paintball game." The sentence spilled out at once, bitter, urgent, an old chapter spat into the present. "And you know the rule. Whoever gets hit owes a wish from the demon himself to the winner."

  Nome-Rocky brought the sphere close to the pendant at Americ-Ana’s neck, her KING MatNat sphere, always there, always visible, and pressed the two together with brutal care, as if one millimeter more could open a hell.

  The light shuddered.

  For a second, the corridor seemed colder, and something invisible, patient, woke on the other side of the metal.

  Nome-Rocky swallowed, staring at her face like someone handing over a weapon and a guilt at the same time.

  "Demon ANDRAS..." He spoke the name as if signing in blood. "Will obey only the KING MatNat player Americ-Ana."

  Light passed through, flowing from his sphere into hers, and the glow in her became denser, heavier, more aware.

  Nome-Rocky let out a breath as if it had been the last thread holding him inside his body.

  Footsteps echoed in the distance, coming from the dark end of the corridor, too rhythmic to be chance.

  His eyes went wide, and he shoved Americ-Ana with what strength he had left, his voice turning into a whisper that cut.

  "Go."

  Nome-Rocky’s knee buckled. His body slid down the wall and collapsed, limp, as if stasis had finally collected everything at once.

  Americ-Ana ran as if the corridor were a lung trying to expel her.

  The dark became blur, the fluorescent light ahead became a blade, and the sterilized smell turned into nausea, because now haste was mixed with guilt, the kind of mixture that makes your hand shake.

  Americ-Ana crossed back through the portal almost tripping over her own breath, and the infinite gallery of Jump Chronos Stations slammed back into her senses, too much glare, too much depth, too many rows, like a museum of doors that never ends.

  Head Keys was there, on guard, restless, his oversized feet tapping the floor with impatience.

  Americ-Ana went straight to him.

  She grabbed Head Keys by the head with the hand that was still trembling from the weapon, and he kicked at once, twisting his body, trying to get free with his mouth, indignant, almost offended.

  "Come on, come on, come on..." she whispered without realizing she was speaking out loud.

  Head Keys tore himself free with a jerk and shot ahead, running toward the Chancellor’s office door as if he already knew the way, as if panic had given the order.

  Americ-Ana ran after him, gasping, and burst through the door. She was still trying to make air fit in her chest when she felt the space behind her shift, as if the office itself had swallowed one more presence.

  Astyam came through the door right after.

  Too calm.

  He entered with the natural ease of someone who has just come back from coffee, Antichrist in his arms.

  Americ-Ana stared for a second, eyes wide, her mind trying to decide whether that was relief or an insult.

  "You... you're back already?" she spat, out of breath.

  Astyam tilted his head, almost polite, and answered in his usual tone, clean, unshaken.

  "My portal opened inside the vault under the altar."

  He made a small gesture, like someone pointing out an obvious door.

  "And the scream..." He paused for a second, as if choosing the most neutral word in the world. "It was the Chancellor afraid of a rat."

  The sentence hit the floor between them like a stone.

  Americ-Ana blinked once, twice, and her brain short-circuited in a very human way, because for an instant everything she had seen, stasis, corpses, Patron Uvo, Nioh, columns, seemed incompatible with the word “rat.”

  "You’ve got to be kidding me..." she began, but her voice failed halfway through, and the necklace at her neck seemed to weigh more, as if her KING MatNat sphere had become conscious of the chaos.

  Head Keys, on the floor, kicked again, irritated by the delay, and ran in tight little circles, like a living alarm demanding a decision.

  Astyam looked at Americ-Ana, then toward the corridor, and for a second his calm was almost cruel.

  "You’re shaking," he said, as if observing the temperature of a room.

  Americ-Ana tried to answer, but all that came out was broken air, and the office seemed too small to contain what was coming behind her.

  Suddenly, the office door was invaded.

  Wwwyye came running in like a hurricane.

  Americ-Ana lost her balance at once, her body following the shock, and the world turned into a blur of arms, floor, and breath.

  Her head throbbed.

  Her vision doubled.

  The office split into two misaligned versions of itself, as if reality had a manufacturing defect, and she tried to focus, tried to pull air in, tried to understand who was standing and who was falling, but nothing fit together fast enough.

  Americ-Ana forced her gaze to steady. Then she saw in front of her what she thought was…

  "Helena Blavatsky?"

  Americ-Ana saw in front of her the girl with long blond hair she had seen in the mirror at the Statue Garden on Halloween night, and then, again, in the small tree of colored stained glass. The same presence. The same cold jolt in her stomach, as if reality had a memory of its own.

  "No. My name is Trinity. Trinity Bustanay." the girl replied, holding out a hand to Americ-Ana and helping her regain her balance.

  "What the fuck..."

  Americ-Ana heard someone say, and turned her face with difficulty, still dizzy. Wwwyye was getting up with Astyam’s help, the pink top hat crooked, her breath uneven, as if the three of them had tripped over something bigger than any logic.

  "But what is happening? Why are you two this scared, and who is this girl?" Astyam fired off in a single breath, now fully agitated. "The Jump Chronos Station I went through was the correct one, and as I already told Americ-Ana, you are not going to believe this, it leads directly into the vault under the altar, the vault with Solomon’s Temple inside. The Chancellor really was screaming, but she was afraid of a rat, I went in there and scared the little rat off, right after that I came back here."

  "No, no, no..." Americ-Ana shoved Astyam aside, seizing the floor in desperation, as if every second were a tooth sinking into the flesh of time. "We need to call the authorities right now. The Jump Chronos Station I went through dropped me straight into some kind of bizarre laboratory, and everyone was there inside grotesque tubes full of liquid, including the Chancellor. And then Patron Uvo showed up... he’s the one who killed King Solomon and Professor Fiat-Lux, and guess what? He took Nioh hostage. I managed to hold Patron Uvo off for now, but we have to get help, now!"

  Wwwyye stepped into the middle and shoved Americ-Ana and Astyam aside.

  "Hehehe... you two can stop right now! The Jump Chronos Station I went through landed right inside the little tree of colored stained glass. And guess what? That’s where I heard the real scream, and I ended up straight in LEVEL 33. You are not going to believe it. I found this girl."

  All of a sudden, Wwwyye stopped mid-sentence and pushed Trinity Bustanay into the center.

  "Go on, girl, come on, speak." Wwwyye gestured for Trinity Bustanay to talk.

  Trinity Bustanay cleared her throat. Then she said:

  "I was Nioh Nemmesis’s CELL partner in the test we did in the Cube with water. However, when we reached the steps of LEVEL 33, I discovered that Nioh Nemmesis is, in fact, a homunculus. Rabbi Worse Devil’s homunculus."