Spy Classroom - Volume 7 - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Scarlet Leviathan 1

The world was awash in pain.

Ten years had passed since the end of the Great War, the largest war in human history. Seeing its horrors had driven the world’s politicians to turn to spy work rather than military might as their preferred way of influencing other countries.

Lamplight was a spy team that fought on behalf of the Din Republic. It comprised eight former academy washouts, as well as “Bonfire” Klaus, the single strongest spy in the Republic.

After hearing that their close friends in Avian had been taken out, Lamplight rushed to the Fend Commonwealth to get to the bottom of things. After conducting their investigation, they discovered that the culprit was Belias, a counterintelligence team working for the Fend Commonwealth’s CIM intelligence agency. After capturing Belias alive, Lamplight pumped them for information.

That was when they learned that the Galgad Empire’s Serpent team was lying in wait in the Fend Commonwealth. The only reason Belias had attacked Avian was because Serpent had fed the CIM some bad intel. Upon learning that, the girls swore vengeance against Serpent. Before they even had a chance to plan their next move, though, they found themselves in a horrible situation.

One of Lamplight’s core members, “Glint” Monika, had turned traitor.

Klaus hadn’t been present to see Monika defecting, so the first thing he had to do was get the facts straight.

Out in front of the Kashard Doll Workshop, the firefighters were stopping Lily and Sybilla as the duo tried to charge back into the building. Beside them, a paramedic was wrapping a bandage around Erna’s head. Farther back, another group of grim-faced medics was carrying Thea and Annette off to the hospital.

Klaus wasted no time in stealing a firefighter’s uniform so he could go investigate the scene inside. Then he got in touch with the medical team and checked in on the wounded girls’ statuses.

• Erna had a cut on the side of her head.

• Thea’s right arm was injured.

• Annette had damage to her ribs and organs. From what Klaus was able to learn, she needed immediate surgery.

The good news was that none of their injuries were life-threatening. The latter two were going to undergo surgery at the hospital, but the girls had all infiltrated Fend with proper cover identities like restaurant workers and tourists, so they would be treated like any other patients.

Klaus then took his remaining subordinates and relocated to a nearby apartment they’d rented for the mission to use as Lamplight’s base of operations. Worry was etched deep on the girls’ faces, so he told them, “I want everyone to take a deep breath,” then set to work brewing enough tea for the group.

Lily, Sybilla, and Erna sat down on the sofa, and Klaus set a teacup in front of each of them and added a splash of brandy for aroma. After giving them a chance to gulp down a mouthful, he asked for the details.

Monika had betrayed them.

The news shocked Klaus as much as anyone, but he didn’t let it shake him. As the team’s boss, he held a sense of duty to keep his head clear.

“Take all your emotions and shut them off for a bit. Think of it like you’re flipping a circuit breaker,” he said after getting the gist of the situation. “Now, I’ll go through each part one at a time to make sure I have it all right. First, we’re certain that Monika attacked her own teammates?”

Lily and Sybilla nodded. Erna had fallen unconscious for a bit after getting attacked herself, and she gave a pained reply in the affirmative. “…We’re certain.”

Klaus dispassionately continued asking his questions. “Now, you all saw Grete face down in a pool of blood, yes?”

Lily, Sybilla, and Erna nodded.

“When you did, none of you checked if she was still alive?”

The girls nodded again. “There was no way someone could have survived losing that much blood,” Lily replied in a voice stripped of emotion. “I decided that treating her was less important than looking for people we could still save.”

It sounded heartless, but it was the rational call to make. In emergencies like these, Lily’s mental fortitude really shined.

“But then,” Lily said softly, “the fire spread, and there was nothing we could do. We couldn’t even retrieve her corpse—”

“There was no corpse.”

“Huh?”

“I searched the building, but I didn’t see any corpses that could have been hers. If what you saw was true, then there would have been no point in moving her. We can assume that Monika and her partner had some reason for taking her. There’s a chance she’s still alive.”

It was possible that they needed Grete’s corpse for something, of course, but it was difficult to imagine what that might be. It was much more likely that they needed her disguise skills, her intellect, or something in that vein.

Color returned to his three subordinates’ faces, and they exhaled in delighted relief. “Thank fuckin’ God…” and “Yeep…,” Sybilla and Erna choked out with tears in their eyes.

Grete’s fate had been weighing heavily on them. That was why they’d been trying so frantically to get back in the building.

“However, that does nothing to change how volatile the situation is,” Klaus said to center their focus again. Then he began organizing his information. If nothing else, he now knew the details of what had happened. Monika had turned against them, Grete was missing, Annette was badly wounded, and Thea was injured. Lamplight was down a full half of its members.

Once he had that all sorted, he turned his thoughts to the future.

“I have no idea what Serpent was trying to accomplish,” he said. “If all they wanted was to get Monika on their side, there was no need for them to make so much noise about it. When you get an enemy spy to turn traitor, the standard play is to have them leak information over a long period of time rather than doing anything too conspicuous.”

There was something decidedly half-baked about the attack. If Monika’s goal was merely to kidnap Grete, then surely there was a more covert way she could have done it. A spy with her talents could have carried out the abduction, then met back up with the others looking as innocent as could be.

“I can explain that,” said Lily.

“Hmm?”

“There’s no way she could have fooled you over a protracted time frame, Teach. She would have known better than to even try.”

Sybilla and Erna nodded emphatically. “There’s only one way for us to fool you. It’s to avoid havin’ any direct conversations.”

“That’s right. If she talked with you even a little, you would have seen right through her. It’s impossible for us to keep secrets from you for long.”

Now that—that made sense. Against the likes of the girls, Klaus could root out just about anything they tried to keep from him. As a matter of fact, he’d noticed that something seemed off about Monika during their strategy meeting just before they attacked Belias.

…? That’s right, I did sense that Monika didn’t seem like herself back then. A feeling of unease overtook him… Why didn’t I think to follow up on that?

He’d been devoting his full attention to Avian at the time, but had he really not spared a second thought for how out of sorts his subordinate seemed?

He was filled with regret, but more than that, he was deeply baffled. How could he have let that happen? It made him uncomfortable in a way he couldn’t quite explain, but there would be time to worry about that later.

“You’re right. You girls can’t deceive me for any meaningful length of time. In that case, we can safely deduce that Monika’s betrayal was engineered over a short time period.”

Lily clapped her hands together. “Ah, you’re right.”

“Sometime after we arrived in the Commonwealth, Serpent reached out to Monika. That’s going to be our assumption going forward.”

According to the girls’ eyewitness accounts, Monika had been accompanied by a girl called Green Butterfly. Green Butterfly had been waiting for them in Fend, and there was a chance she was the one who’d instigated Monika’s treachery.

“It all started right here in Fend,” Klaus concluded. Ever since they got to the Fend Commonwealth, everything had smelled a bit fishy.

Prince Darryn’s assassination probably ties into all this…as does the Avian takedown… Serpent isn’t just doing these things at random. They have an objective, that much is clear.

One night prior, the man next in line to the Fend Commonwealth throne had been assassinated. By morning, the news had spread across the nation and plunged the country into a state of unrest.

What is Serpent plotting here?

Klaus knew of two major operations Serpent had carried out previously. There was the Blue Fly op, where Klaus’s old mentor Guido had led Inferno to ruin, and there was the Purple Ant op where, over in Mitario, Serpent had dealt a serious blow to the intelligence agencies of the world by slaughtering their operatives in droves. Klaus and the girls had taken down the two perpetrators, but in both cases, they’d only been able to do so after the Serpent members had already completed their objectives.

By killing off notable spies, Serpent had created an environment where it was easier for them to make covert moves across the world, and on top of that, they’d also assassinated Prince Darryn. Klaus still needed loads of information, but fortunately for him, he knew just how to get it.

“Amelie,” he said to the woman who’d been there in the room that whole time, “tell me the inside story about the situation in Fend. That’s an order.”

Aside from the Lamplight members, there was one other person in the apartment as well: “Puppeteer” Amelie, a woman whose Gothic outfit and dark bags under her eyes made her seem almost like a witch. She stood beside the couch looking decidedly uncomfortable.

“Talk fast, or I start killing your agents one by one.”

Klaus delivered his threat calmly. Lamplight had successfully captured twenty-five of Amelie’s subordinates, and aside from the aide-de-camp they were holding in a separate location, they had the rest of her agents locked up in a construction site’s admin cabin just outside the city. All Klaus had to do was give the order on his radio, and their lives would be forfeited.

Amelie gave her head a feeble shake. “You want me to talk, but I have no idea what you want me to tell you. Monika, was it? Her betrayal makes no more sense to me than it does to you.”

“Give me an overview on all the intelligence the CIM has. I’ll tell you when I hear something I want more details on.”

“I’m not going to reveal state secrets to you. No amount of threats will change that.”

“Tell me the parts you can talk about, then.”

When Klaus curtly delivered Amelie her orders, she went ahead and joined the girls on the couch. Sybilla sent him a pointed glance, so Klaus begrudgingly poured Amelie a cup of tea as well. As far as he was concerned, enemy spies were under no obligation to show each other such hospitality.

Amelie didn’t so much as glance at it.

“Go ahead and start with things you think of as common knowledge,” Klaus said. “I can’t go into any details, but there are some gaps in what the girls know.”

The girls had all been academy washouts, and Sybilla, in particular, had received terrible grades.

Amelie blinked, and a brief flash of puzzlement crossed her face. “……?” When she saw how earnestly the Lamplight girls were looking at her, though, she pulled herself together and gave them a small nod. “Very well,” she replied simply. She raised her voice an octave like a professor standing at a lectern. “Then allow me to illuminate you, dear guests, and explain everything from the structure of the world to the state of my fair nation.”

“Meadow” Sara shivered and pulled her newsboy cap tighter over her head.

While Amelie was describing the way things were in the Fend Commonwealth, Sara was off away from her team, desperately trying to keep her fingers warm as the heat drained from them.

“Oh, it’s so cold…”

It was early morning, and the chill in the air was worse than ever.

An abandoned construction site sat on a small mountain near Hurough where people had once drawn up plans to build a resort. A large swath of the mountain had been cleared, and rows of heavy equipment rested in a corner waiting for the day when construction would resume. That was the site where Lamplight had carried out their daring plan to capture all of Belias alive. Under Klaus’s leadership, Sybilla and Grete had fought hard to make the plan a success.

That construction site was home to a two-story admin cabin, and that was where a certain brown-haired girl was watching over the captives. She had the eyes of a small woodland creature and could rarely be found without her trademark newsboy cap—“Meadow” Sara. She let out foggy breaths as she walked down the hallway looking for some sort of jacket to wear.

“Thou’rt shivering up a storm. Art thou all right?” someone called over to her.

That someone was a girl who wore her dark-red hair tied back in a ponytail—“Cloud Drift” Lan. Lan was Avian’s sole surviving member, and she was still recovering from the injuries she’d suffered all over her body. She’d popped back to the apartment for a bit to get some shut-eye, but after her short nap, she came right on back.

“Oh, no, I’m okay. I’m just not used to it,” Sara replied, frowning in discomfort. “I’ve never had to confine people for long periods of time before, and it’s kind of hard on me…”

That was Lamplight’s first time ever taking such harsh measures. They had over twenty people sleeping in a single locked room with their wrists and ankles bound. Lamplight had given them first aid for the wounds Klaus and the girls dealt them, but the treatment was far from sufficient. The Belias agents were hardened spies, but even so, Sara could hear moans of pain coming from the room every so often. For someone as kindhearted as her, it was hard to listen to.

“How long are we going to have to keep Belias locked up for, I wonder…?”

“Indefinitely, of course,” Lan replied without a moment’s hesitation. “Our task is to keep them confined until we have need of them. If we run into problems, we need but end their lives, then use the construction equipment to bury them. Being discovered is no option at all.”

“Oh dear… I—I guess you’re right.”

“I have not forgiven Belias for their deed. Fooled or not, the fact doth remain that they slew my brethren.” Lan bristled and shot a look over at the locked room. “Were it up to me…I would have slain five or so of their number already.”

That was when Sara noticed the gun in Lan’s hand. She knew Lan was holding it so she’d be able to react immediately if an emergency broke out, but that didn’t make it any less ominous.

Belias had been involved in Avian’s deaths. It was hard to imagine a group that Lan would despise more.

Right as Sara began legitimately panicking at Lan’s ruthless energy, the ponytailed girl’s expression completely changed. “…Rather, that is what I would say, were I a different person altogether.”

“Huh?”

Lan crossed her arms with a cheerful laugh. “In truth, I have no love for wet work. ’Twould be more in character for me to let down my guard and go play cards with the prisoners.”

“Is that something you’ve actually done?!”

“Oh, the scoldings Brother Vindo gave me.”

“I—I think that’s a pretty reasonable reaction…”

“But now I have no comrades left to rebuke me.” Lan let out a sad sigh, then squinted as she looked out the window. Off in the distance, she could see the morning sun rising over Hurough’s streets.

Sara gasped a little when she remembered what had just happened down there.

Lan laid a gentle hand on her back. “Is it the situation with Monika that makes you shiver so?”

“Yeah…” Sara nodded. “It must be some sort of misunderstanding. Miss Monika would never…”

She trailed off. Over the radio, they’d heard about what Monika did. Sara didn’t want to believe it. It was clear from Lily’s and Sybilla’s voices just how serious they were, but the whole situation was so unthinkable that it made her head spin.

“If I recall correctly, you and she were teacher and pupil?”

“That’s right…”

“Well, our task now is to wait here and trust in Sir Klaus.”

Sara gave Lan’s attempt at consolation an unenthusiastic nod. There had been so many tragedies as of late, and she was helpless to do anything about them.

“Do you know what it was that caused the world to go so wrong?”

Amelie’s elocution was excellent; she began her speech with a hook before delving into the explanation proper.

“The Industrial Revolution and the imperialism it fueled granted us Western-Central nations too much power. We started by racing to colonize Tolfa as quickly as we could, and before long, we turned our sights to the Far East. Then, once we held the majority of the world in our hands, we finally turned our sights homeward and waged a war with one another.”

Sybilla finished that thought. “You mean the Great War.”

“That I do, young lady,” Amelie said with a nod. “When the Fend Commonwealth– and Lylat Kingdom–led Allies came to blows with the Galgad Empire–led Axis powers, it was the largest war in human history.”

The war in question had started fourteen years ago. It began as a series of sporadic skirmishes, but the war front grew over time in both scope and intensity. As science marched on, it gave birth to one new weapon after another. At around the two-year mark, the Galgad Empire was intent on invading the Lylat Kingdom, and with Din sitting in its way, it wasted no time in occupying the Republic. It had been ten years since the war’s conclusion, and the eleventh anniversary was right around the corner.

Klaus had experienced the war firsthand. He didn’t remember many specifics, but he had vague memories rattling around in his head of standing aghast as a boy in a town that had been leveled by bombs.

“The Allies may have won the war, but we suffered tremendous losses in the process. There were new weapons such as tanks, airplanes, submarines, and poison gas that were far too effective at killing, there were advances in transportation technology that allowed nations to engage in unprecedented levels of warfare… It was hell, and not a single person who witnessed it would dispute that description.”

Sybilla, Lily, and Erna didn’t say a word. All of them were recalling the things they’d gone through in their childhoods. The vast majority of Lamplight’s members had suffered, either directly from the war or from the period of unrest that had followed it.

“…It was Inferno that helped end the war, right?” Lily asked.

“That it was.” A smile spread across Amelie’s face. “Inferno was a group of the best spies there were, Hearth chief among them, and together they stole military secrets from the Galgad Empire and delivered them to the Allies. If not for their efforts, it likely would have taken another three years for the war to come to its close.”

“Th-that’s kind of incredible…”

“There’s a good reason why people in our line of work referred to Hearth as the Finest Spy in the World.” Amelie shot a glance over at Klaus. “Though, note that in his case, the title of Greatest Spy in the World is entirely self-proclaimed.”

“It’s a fact is what it is,” Klaus replied.

He wasn’t sure why Amelie had decided to throw in that remark, but while he wanted to protest that it was his mentor “Torchlight” Guido who’d given him the moniker, he also realized that Guido had already been planning on betraying Inferno at the time, so his feelings about the situation were a bit mixed. However, he wasn’t about to tell her all that.

It was time to end the sidebar and get the discussion back on track.

“That all lines up with my understandings,” he said. “Tell me about the situation in Fend after the war.”

“There were three major ways the world changed in the war’s wake,” Amelie said, resuming her speech. “The first was the rise of the United States of Mouzaia. Selling supplies during the war allowed them to flourish, and with the heavy wounds the other Western-Central nations suffered, it wasn’t long before the United States overtook us all. As of right now, they’ve overtaken the Commonwealth and become the strongest nation in the world.”

The girls had visited Mouzaia, and they all remembered how Mitario had been absolutely packed with skyscrapers. The fact that Mouzaia had been hosting a long-term economic conference was just one more testament to how the world had come to revolve around it.

“The second was the collaborative policies enacted by the world’s nations. They all agreed to work together to bring about peace and ensure that war never broke out again. And they signed peace treaties to that same effect.”

That one was indisputable, too. Just about every nation in the world had engaged in an armament reduction, and as small as the change was, they had started chipping away at their defense budgets, too.

“And the final change…”

Amelie’s voice was calm and sure.

“…was how the world went opaque.”

It was a decidedly abstract turn of phrase, and the girls weren’t sure what she meant. Klaus sensed what Amelie was getting at, but he stayed quiet and let her finish.

“Nations began devoting their resources to their intelligence agencies rather than their militaries. They had been no strangers to the use of espionage, but now they were pouring far more resources into their spy programs than ever before. It’s made it far more difficult to tell who’s fighting whom and what’s even going on in the world these days.”

In short, the era of spies was upon them. The Din Republic had responded to that fact by taking Inferno as well as the best of the best from their Military and Naval Intelligence Departments and creating the Foreign Intelligence Office. As the Great War had shown them, the coming era was going to be dominated by information.

Now the nations of the world were sending spies beyond each other’s borders and fighting shadow wars. Conflict took place quietly, out of sight, behind closed doors, and in complicated ways—making war opaque. When it came to the battle for intelligence, there wasn’t a single person in the entire world who could state with any confidence which nation held the advantage. For any operative who thought their homeland was an unassailable monolith, it was only a matter of time before they found the ground crumbling beneath their feet.

“Of course, figuring that out is what we intelligence agencies are for,” Amelie added. “The way I see it, the situation is thus—at the moment, the Fend Commonwealth is in a state of considerable turmoil.”

The girls’ faces hardened. At last, they were getting to the heart of the matter.

“There are a large number of spies within our borders interacting as they please. And while it pains me to admit it, there may very well be a traitor lurking within Hide, the highest body in the CIM,” Amelie said with a look of revulsion.

“That’s likely the case, yes,” Klaus replied. There could be little doubt of it. Back when Prince Darryn’s life was under attack, the CIM had erroneously identified Avian as the culprits and ordered Belias to take them down. Afterward, they’d wasted all their effort in a meaningless manhunt for Lan and ultimately failed to stop the crown prince from getting assassinated.

The CIM was rotting from within.

“How could that have happened?” Lily asked sympathetically.

“In all likelihood, the traitor is a Neo-Imperialist. Here in Fend, the belief that we ought to work together with the Galgad Empire has picked up a considerable amount of support.”

The girls found that hard to believe. “Sorry, what?” Sybilla cried. “Hold the fuckin’ phone. How does that make any sense? In the war, you guys were enemies—”

“Indeed we were, and we have every reason to hold them in contempt. But with how strong the United States has become, that belief has started to shift. People have begun asking if it’s really safe to let the United States remain unchecked,” Amelie said, reining her in. “My nation is divided between two ideologies. There are those who hold the conventional view that we should work together with the United States to keep an eye on Galgad. People call them right-wing conservatives and moderates, but by and large, they’re simply referred to as Anti-Imperialists. Then there’s the newer idea that we should join forces with Galgad to keep an eye on the United States. Reformists, liberals… The simplest term for them is Neo-Imperialists. These two pro- and anti-Imperial sentiments have divided both Parliament and the populace at large. I never imagined the same thing might be happening within the CIM itself, but now…”

The Din Republic had gotten directly invaded by Galgad, but Fend saw things a little differently than they did. The Commonwealth had been the strongest nation in the world for a long time leading up to the war, and many of its people weren’t pleased about the way they’d been shunted down to second place. The question was, was their next big enemy going to be Galgad or Mouzaia? That was the issue that had split the nation in two.

“By all rights, the CIM should fall on the Anti-Imperialist side of things. We haven’t forgotten the wounds they dealt us. However, there must be those who feel threatened by the way the United States continues to grow in strength.”

“B-but that just gives Galgad a million openings to exploit…”

Lily had hit the nail right on the head. No matter how impregnable an intelligence organization was normally, it would be trivial for a foe to make headway on them in conditions such as those.

“That it does,” Amelie agreed sadly. “And now we have a traitor among our ranks.”

“The CIM I knew was an exceptionally well-run organization.” During Klaus’s time on Inferno, he’d both fought against and worked beside the CIM a number of different times. Their extreme competence had allowed them to make a fool of him on more than one occasion. “And they had a number of excellent teams. What’s Retias doing?”

“They got wiped out in Mitario.” Amelie bit down on her lip in frustration. “As did their replacements.”

So they, too, had fallen to the far-reaching spy killings that made up Purple Ant’s massacre. Many of the world’s nations had suffered heavy losses to that man, and by the sound of it, the Fend Commonwealth was no exception.

“I—I have a question.” After listening in earnest silence to the discussion, Erna spoke up. “Was Prince Darryn an Anti-Imperialist?”

“He was a member of the royal family; he never commented publicly on their political views. He was a great man, and he spoke of seeking peace with all nations.”

Klaus glared at Amelie. There was a slight note of falsehood in her voice, and he wasn’t about to let her get away with dodging the question. He intended to make her divulge everything she could, even state secrets.

Amelie let out a small sigh. “…However, rumor had it that he held no love for the Galgad Empire.”

She didn’t know any specifics, but word was that Prince Darryn had been close with the army’s staunchly Anti-Imperialist leadership. It all more or less lined up. Darryn had been an Anti-Imperialist symbol, and by the look of it, it was the efforts of a Neo-Imperialist that had allowed an Imperial spy to carry out this tragic assassination.

The question was, who was an ally, and who was an enemy? Figuring that out in the Fend Commonwealth was about as tricky a task as they came. Galgad spies had wormed their way deep into the nation’s core.

“To be perfectly frank, I’m at a bit of a loss. Up until I saw you all and ‘Cloud Drift’ Lan with my own eyes, I simply assumed that Hide and the CIM were Anti-Imperialist bastions. I trusted them implicitly…” Amelie’s final words fell from her mouth like a sigh. “…But now the world is impossible to see. Everything before me lies in darkness.”

Once they were finished listening to Amelie’s explanation, Klaus ordered the girls to get some rest. It was clear that they wanted to start searching for Monika immediately, but he was having none of that. They’d been working nonstop since the night prior, and Klaus wasn’t about to let them run themselves ragged.

That left Klaus and Amelie in the living room. Once they were alone, Amelie crossed her legs in displeasure. “Might I ask you to release my subordinates now?”

“I still need them. Depending on how things play out, I might ask you to leverage your authority.”

“If you let them go, there’s a chance the CIM will be willing to lend you its full support.”

“………”

It was an attractive proposition. Lamplight needed to start out by tracking down Monika’s position. For jobs like that, it was hard to imagine a more useful ally than a local intelligence agency highly familiar with the lay of the land. With Belias operating at full capacity, not even a single alley cat would be able to escape their watchful eyes. That would go a long way toward rooting out Serpent.

However, Klaus refused to bite. “That’s not an option. As things stand, I can’t trust your people.”

There was almost certainly a Neo-Imperialist among the CIM’s upper ranks. Teaming up with them would leave him open to information leaks.

That fact wasn’t lost on Amelie. “Very well,” she said with a nod. “Just know that if you keep us locked up for too long, my superiors will start to get suspicious. If that happens, you can be certain that they’ll discover what you’ve done.”

“Consider it your job to keep them in the dark. If you fail, your people die.”

“…Even then, that will keep them at bay for two weeks at the very most.”

“Understood. I’ll make sure to have the situation resolved before then.”

After they finished their exchange, Amelie slumped her shoulders ever so slightly. Her face hung heavy with fatigue, and even her makeup was starting to flake off. At that point, she finally reached for the teacup sitting before her. It had long since gone cold, but she drank down the brandy-flavored tea all the same.

“…I’m tired.”

“………”

“Our actions are founded in absolute righteousness. We are always just, and we do not err.” The corner of her mouth curled upward self-mockingly. “That was what drove me, and I trusted Hide. The thought that one of them might have assisted in the assassination… It came as quite a shock.”

It was hard to say if she was acting or being genuine. Her expression had been like an iron mask at first, but between the doubts she harbored about her superiors and the losses she’d suffered to Lamplight, it was possible she was actually shaken.

She quietly set down her teacup. “Bonfire.”

“What?”

“Those are some good agents you have under your command.”

“…Where’s this coming from? Trying to be snide about how one of them just betrayed me?”

“I mean it. Those three—Sybilla, Lily, and Erna. Being able to get right to work in the midst of all this is a strength if ever there was one. It makes me want to know what kind of training you’ve been putting them through.”

“You’re right.” Klaus was thrown a little off-guard by the unexpected praise. Sure enough, the girls were incredible at switching gears. In no time at all, they’d turned their focus forward and begun evaluating their next options. “You’re absolutely right, Amelie. Those magnificent girls do me proud,” he said confidently. “That’s why I need to get her back. She may have left, but she’s still my student.”

Once he took a short breather, Klaus planned on heading straight out into the city to search for his top pupil, the tortured one who hid her true thoughts like her life depended on it.

He needed answers.

Why had “Glint” Monika turned her talents against Lamplight?