Spy Classroom - Volume 7 - Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Scarlet Leviathan 4

Monika stood atop the opposite building and looked at them coldly for a while, but eventually, she turned and left. Her reason for being there was gone.

“Monika…,” Klaus murmured.

Panicked voices were rising up from outside on account of the explosion. There had been a lot of similar blasts and gunshots in Hurough over the last few days. Scared cries echoed up from the street wondering if there had been yet another murder.

Given the situation, they didn’t have the luxury of carefully thinking things over.

“Erna, get all the intel you can out of him. I’m going after Monika.”

Klaus cast a brief glance at Erna, who gave him a dependable nod, and Raymond, who was cowering against the wall, before leaping through the blown-out window. Behind him, he heard a pair of disoriented voices say “I— I’m no good with strangers, but I guess I’ll just have to do my best” and “Wait, you’re going to leave me with this little girl…?” but he had no time to deal with them. Monika couldn’t have gotten far yet.

Klaus assumed she was traveling via the rooftops. She was on a de facto wanted list if not a literal one, so she couldn’t exactly afford to be seen on public streets. As such, he took to the rooftops as well, bounding from one building to the next.

It didn’t take him long to spot Monika. She was a few hundred feet away from him, but that was still close enough for him to tail her. Her destination was away from the heart of the city, over in an area with fewer buildings and people.

She made no efforts to shake him.

She’s luring me after her. That much is obvious.

That was the only reason she would have showed herself so blatantly. In all likelihood, she was leading him into a trap.

That said, falling back isn’t an option… She probably factored that into her calculations.

The two of them had completed countless missions together. She knew his personality like the back of her hand.

Eventually, Monika picked a building and headed inside it.

The building in question was a large church with a pair of steeples and a gleaming gold cross at each end. There must not have been anyone maintaining it anymore, as its walls and roof were noticeably dirty and stained. Klaus followed after Monika and headed right in the front door.

Inside, the building was an impressive piece of architecture. The nave running right through its center was flanked on each side by a long aisle, and the transept running through the middle cut the church into the shape of a cross. Its ceiling was high, held up by decorated arches, and there were six oratories lined up alongside the wall.

However, the church was no longer in active use, and it had fallen into disrepair. The sanctuary was notably home not just to pews, but to desks, as well. Also notable was the out-of-place aroma—the smell of gunpowder. Someone had brought some serious weaponry in there.

Klaus marched straight down the nave. “What’s the deal with the church?”

“It used to be a school.”

Monika smiled proudly as she gave her reply from beneath a glittering piece of stained glass. She’d made the arrogant choice to stand atop the dais.

“Hurough’s one of the most overcrowded places in the world,” she explained without hesitation from atop the cracked wooden dais. “Agricultural tech got a big jump start about a century back, and it put a bunch of farmers out of work. All those people who lost their jobs ended up moving to the city and toiling away in factories. And kids were no exception. Up until they passed the Factory Act and banned child labor, peasant kids didn’t have time to do any book learning,” she said quietly. “The priest started a school right here in the church for ’em. Kids from the underclass used to come here to learn how to read and write.”

So a Sunday school. Now that Klaus looked, he could see traces from pen marks on the long desks in the sanctuary. That said, the building was no more a functioning school than it was a functioning church anymore.

Monika flung a taunt his way. “Come on and school me, Klaus.”

Klaus continued advancing until, eventually, he was directly in front of the podium. There was less than thirty feet between them. Klaus could close that in an instant. Just this once, though, the distance felt impossibly far.

“Let me ask you this straight,” he said. “Why did you betray Lamplight? I assume you didn’t have a choice.”

His voice carried well through the church. There was even a faint echo.

Monika squinted at him. “Well, if I had to describe it…” Her lips curled into a self-mocking grin.

“…then I guess it’s ’cause you didn’t really see me.”

It sounded like there was a faint sadness in her voice, but perhaps he was just hearing what he wanted to. He had hoped for more of an explanation, but Monika didn’t seem keen on giving one. The hostility she was emanating swelled. It felt as though the room was slowly being drained of air.

Monika drew the pistol from the holster hidden on her hip. “That’s all I can say. But hey, you’re a spy, aren’t you?”

“True enough.” Klaus drew his knife. “Information exists to be taken, not given.”

Klaus knew that they were past the point of peacefully talking things out. Hoping for that would have been a waste of time. Monika had clearly steeled her resolve before waiting for him there, and all he could do now was answer her with all the power he had at his disposal and crush her.

He sucked in a small breath. “Monika, if you’re going to surrender, do it fast. It pains me to have to attack my own student.”

“Someone sure took his condescending pills today. You really don’t think there’s any chance you’ll lose, do you?”

“Not in a million years.”

“Arrogant much? I gotta say, Klaus, you get a lot meaner when you’re staring down an opponent.”

“If anything, this is more who I really am.”

“Damn, and you’re normally such a softy.”

“When I’m dealing with my students, sure.”

“Oh yeah? Y’know, Klaus, this could be the chance we’ve been waiting for. How about we share how we really feel about each other, all that stuff we’ve never been able to say? That way, we’ll be able to go into this with our heads clear.”

“That’s not a bad idea. Thinking back, you and I haven’t spent much time being frank with each other.”

It was a very Monika thing to suggest.

The two of them spoke in unison.

“Hey there, you dog shit excuse for a teacher, where does Inferno’s errand boy get off calling himself the World’s Strongest? Avian’s instructions were two thousand times easier to follow than yours, you know. Have you ever considered that maybe you’re just incompetent?”

“All that venom, and for what? You can play cocky and arrogant all you want, but it’ll never cover up just how lonely you are. You’re an immature little contrarian, and I’m going to come beat that personality of yours into shape.”

With that, the fight kicked off.

Monika fired a shot at Klaus and leaped backward at practically the same time. There were wires hung from the arch above the sanctuary, allowing her to put quite a bit of distance between herself and Klaus.

Klaus dodged the bullet and clutched his knife as he waited for Monika to make her next move.

Looks like she’s not planning on coming at me head-on.

Klaus’s close-quarters capabilities were unparalleled. Monika knew that, so it made perfect sense that she would want to fight from afar. If Klaus wanted to close the gap, he doubted she would make it easy for him. This was going to devolve into a firefight.

However, that posed a major issue.

For Klaus, using his gun wasn’t an option.

It was the same reason he never used his gun in their training exercises, either. Unlike knives, guns didn’t allow their wielder to hold back. Try as you might to indirectly attack someone by shooting the objects around them, there was always the risk of the bullets striking them instead, and Klaus was unwilling to use any method that put Monika’s life in danger.

Naturally, that was going to make things a whole lot harder for him. He had no way to attack from range, leaving his opponent free to fire at him unopposed. Against someone as overwhelmingly talented as Monika, that handicap was downright debilitating.

However, Klaus couldn’t use his gun—not if he wanted to reclaim his pride as her teacher!

There wasn’t a teacher alive who pointed guns at their students. That wasn’t something Klaus needed to be taught. For him, it was simply common sense.

The problem is, Monika won’t hesitate to take full advantage of my mercy.

He didn’t think it was underhanded of her. Klaus himself was the one who’d taught her how to exploit a target’s kindness, and he would’ve been disappointed if she didn’t heed his lessons. Chivalry and sportsmanship were of no use to spies.

After ascending too high for Klaus to reach her, she stepped over onto one of the sanctuary’s pillars. By standing with her foot perched on its sculpted protrusion, she was free to point both her hands at Klaus. She made right angles with her thumbs and index fingers, then put them together to form a quadrilateral like a child pretending to play with a camera.

“Angle… Distance… Focal point… Rebounds… Speed… Timing…”

After muttering to herself, she spoke softly.

“I’m code name Scarlet Leviathan—now, let’s harbor love for as long as we can.”

Klaus heard a click from above him to the right.

He ducked, largely on reflex, and a moment later, a gunshot roared out as a bullet flew over his head and shattered the desktop beside him into pieces.

The bullet hadn’t come from Monika.

Klaus looked over and spotted something fastened to the top of one of the church’s thick pillars.

Is that what I think it is?

Sure enough, there was a gun there with a metal fixing keeping it bound to the pillar.

Ah. So she did set up some guns.

To Klaus, the revelation didn’t come as much of a surprise. He’d been expecting firearms to come into play since the moment he walked into the church and smelled gunpowder.

He looked closer at the rifle and spotted a little cogwheel built into it. That was the component that had made the clicking sound.

It’s on a time delay. Looks like it’s set to fire once every few minutes.

Once he finished his analysis, he turned his gaze back over to Monika. “So that’s your plan. I have to say: I’m surprised. You really think that’s going to be enough to beat me?”

“Yeah, I do.”

As Monika calmly gave her reply, another nasty click rang out. This time, it was from the dais straight ahead. Klaus could see a gun barrel wedged between its cracked boards.

“_______!”

He parried the bullet and sent it flying behind him with his knife.

“Nice catch.” Monika grinned. “But there’s more where that came from.”

There were a pair of clicks one after another, each from a different direction.

Klaus gave up on tracking the bullets with his eyes. He leaped to the right on instinct alone, and a bullet practically grazed his shoulder before slamming into one of the sanctuary’s pillars.

“…Again?”

Based on where the bullet hole was in the pillar, Klaus could deduce where the gun was. It was hard to see, but he could just barely make it out stuck to the sanctuary wall. Its barrel was pointed directly at the spot Klaus had just been standing in.

That’s odd. Monika never had a chance to move it.

After all, she hadn’t moved from her spot on the pillar.

How could a gun she set up in advance have shot at me so accurately?

Upon carefully surveying the church, Klaus discovered the answer to his own question. He hadn’t noticed back when he first entered the building. Monika must have cleverly calculated it so they would be out of his line of sight, masking them in shadow by adjusting the building’s lighting. Now that his perspective had shifted over, though, they were plain to see.

There were more than just three or four guns stationed around the sanctuary.

“Angle… Distance… Focal point… Rebounds… Speed… Timing…”

Klaus looked at Monika as she continued muttering her incantation. “Don’t tell me you did what I think you did.”

Monika gave him a quiet nod.

“I’ve got two hundred and eighty-four guns all set up on timers in here.”

The gun hadn’t been aimed at Klaus at all. It was just happenstance. Each of the 284 guns was aimed in a random direction, and Klaus had simply wandered into one or two of their lines of fire. And if Monika was telling the truth, then those 284 guns were all—

“There isn’t a spot in the sanctuary where human life is safe.”

As Monika made her declaration, the leaden storm began.

Click, click, click, they went, too many clicks to possibly keep track of, and the bullets started flying. The church’s desks and chairs exploded into splinters one after another, stripping the sanctuary of places to take cover. The destruction was downright tempestuous. Bullets went soaring in every direction conceivable, transforming the space into a killing field and filling the church with the incessant echoes of gunshots.

Klaus immediately devoted every ounce of his attention toward staying alive.

The vast majority of the bullets flew off in completely the wrong direction, but every few seconds, one or two shots would invariably come soaring straight toward him. The only recourse available to him was to detect them all so he could avoid them by the skin of his teeth. He twisted his body to allow a bullet to fly right past the tip of his nose. A moment later, he twisted his hips to dodge a shot that would have sunk right into his foot.

Sometimes, he had no choice but to deflect the bullets with his knife. One shot nearly slammed directly into his left shoulder, and he swatted it with his knife to change its trajectory. Parrying bullets was a talent exclusive to first-rate spies, but the fact of the matter was that it was a defensive skill of last resort. Klaus tried to avoid using it whenever he could, as each bullet he blocked caused more and more damage to his wrists, and the most he could do in rapid succession was four times per hand. Eight total parries was his hard limit.

The tempest of shots continued for some time, and the bullets kept on flying. Monika hadn’t been kidding—there wasn’t a single safe spot anywhere in the sanctuary.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Klaus asked during a brief lull in the gunfire, to which Monika replied, “’Course not.”

“Don’t you worry about me,” she said. “I can see every single bullet.”

What Klaus witnessed next made him doubt his very eyes.

Without warning, Monika hopped off the pillar and landed down on the ground. Klaus had assumed that the pillar’s peak she was perched on was the one spot in the room the guns weren’t aimed at, but a bullet went flying straight at it and obliterated the pillar’s decoration.

Below, in the gunshot-riddled hellscape that was the sanctuary, Monika began walking with an air of complete nonchalance, and not so much as a single bullet went flying her way.

She really could see them all. She knew the guns’ positions, their angles, their shot cadences—everything.

I did know about her special “creepshot” talent, but this…

Back when he first scouted her, her academy instructor had told him how Monika could use reflective surfaces like mirrors to steal glances at anything within a given space. However, that was just one technique in her arsenal, not the full scope of her talents. This was her true power—the raw calculation ability to be able to anticipate everything that would happen within that same space.

“You gonna come at me, Klaus?”

Despite her taunting smirk, Klaus was hardly in any position to charge her. A bullet flew at him from his blind spot, and he reacted to it on pure intuition, swatting it away with his knife just before it hit him.

That marked his fourth right-handed parry, and he felt the numbness in his wrist. He wouldn’t be able to use it for the time being. He swapped his knife over to his left hand.

Klaus began getting ever so slightly concerned.

It’s a pain, not being able to sense her hostility.

If there had been humans firing those bullets, this whole thing would have been miles easier. Then he could have used the gunners’ tics to predict the trajectories and timings of their shots. With skills like Klaus’s, it would have been child’s play to casually lead their aim astray while closing the gap so he could trounce them. Against mechanical foes, though, all of his vast experience was for naught.

It was a method designed specifically to combat him.

Now, given enough time, he could simply memorize the position of every last gun in the sanctuary. However…

…Monika can move around freely, and that means she can shift their angles.

Monika was still a good distance from Klaus, and one after another, she went over to the guns and used a tool to adjust their metal fittings and alter their trajectories. She only moved each barrel a fraction of an inch, but that was enough to make a big difference in where their bullets flew.

There were 284 guns, each with a constantly shifting aim and firing cadence. Getting a bead on every last one of them while surviving the storm of bullets was a feat that was beyond even Klaus.

On the fifteenth time he tried to close in on Monika only to have a bullet fly in and cut him off, he found himself forced to use the knife in his left hand to parry an eighth shot. He swapped the knife back to his right. He had no idea how much longer his wrists were going to hold up.

Monika ran across the sanctuary, grabbed hold of the wires attached to the frontal arch, and used them to hoist herself into the air.

“All right, time out.”

Suddenly, the bullets stopped. The silence in the church was deafening.

Klaus wondered what she needed the time for, but when he looked up and saw her by the ceiling, it all made sense. Up on the arch, she was panting with oceans of sweat pouring down her forehead. After catching her breath, she gave him a self-deprecating grin.

Monika was exhausted, and for good reason. Even knowing where all the bullets were going, running through them must have been unimaginably stressful.

That said, Klaus was in no hurry to take advantage of the opening she’d presented. He, too, had lost a great deal of energy and stamina, not to mention the fact that he had no idea when the bullet storm would start up again.

“Classic Monika,” he said. “I’m impressed you were able to gather so many guns so quickly. I take it you had help from the Fires of War?”

“Oh wow, you’ve already dug that far?”

“You’re really giving me a run for my money here. Of all the people I’ve fought lately, you’re giving me the hardest time of them all.”

Klaus meant every word of it. Corpse, Purple Ant, and Belias didn’t hold a candle to her. Anyone who tried coming at him with raw force didn’t even qualify as a threat, but Monika had hit him with one devastatingly effective ploy after another. It had been a long time since he’d met an opponent who’d pushed him so far.

“You’ve got it backward,” Monika said with an exasperated laugh. “You’re just making things harder for yourself all on your own. Why not just run?”

“Oh, and you’d just let me go?”

“Not a chance. But if you really put your mind to it, I’m sure you could come up with a way to escape the church.”

“…Probably, yes.”

Monika’s Bullet Zone technique had a number of flaws, one of which was that as soon as you left the area the guns were set up in, the technique was neutralized. Here, Klaus could simply have left the church. Doing so would have been far easier than continuing to fight amid the leaden storm.

“And I bet you’ve already figured out how to beat me,” Monika went on. “You can just change the angles of the guns yourself. Sooner or later, one of those bullets I didn’t account for will hit me.”

That there was another flaw. If Monika could redirect the guns’ aim, then surely Klaus could do the exact same thing.

“Why aren’t you?” she asked.

“I don’t feel like it.”

“…How very like you.”

“That’s the way I feel, so that’s the way it is. I don’t want to run away from you, not now. And doing something as dangerous as messing with the guns is out of the question.” If he was up against a Galgad spy, he would have taken either option without hesitation. Here, though, his value system refused to give him the green light. “Gun to my head, I guess it’s because I’m your teacher.”

Over the course of Klaus’s life, he’d had six people he would describe as teachers. There was his very first mentor who taught him how to fight, “Torchlight” Guido, as well as “Hearth” Veronika, who taught him the proper mindset for a spy to have. Then there was “Firewalker” Gerde, who taught him how to snipe; “Soot” Lukas, who taught him how to work with his hands, “Scapulimancer” Wille, who taught him how to negotiate; and “Flamefanner” Heide, who taught him technical skills like art and cooking.

Klaus was sure that any of them would have made the same choice.

“I’ll admit that I’m not the best teacher ever. I would be lying if I said I always kept a proper eye on you, and my lessons never went quite the way I wanted them to. But as your instructor, I still have my pride.” He set his gaze straight on her. “Not once have I ever fled from you girls. I’ve always come and faced you head-on.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you have,” Monika murmured, then leaped backward as though fleeing from Klaus’s gaze. “Are you gonna die for me, then?”

The storm of bullets resumed.

The array of guns planted in the church all began firing again in unison. There were countless bullets flying in every direction, and dodging them all in such close quarters would have been a nigh-on Herculean feat.

Klaus stretched his nerves as tight as they would go and wrenched his body right before the shots landed. It felt like there were far more bullets in the air than there had been earlier. Monika must have set them up that way. By the time the guns ran out of ammo, one of their bodies would be lying on the floor.

Monika had put everything she had into her scheme—into her timed bullet zone. If Klaus wanted to break through it, he was going to need an equal level of resolve.

“Sorry, Monika. I can’t afford to die here.”

He locked his gaze on her and spoke loud and true.

“And by the way—how much longer should I keep playing along with this game?”

As Monika moved through the air on her wires, she gasped.

The option Klaus had taken was the simplest one imaginable—a direct, full-speed charge. There had been seventy feet between them, and Klaus dashed straight at her without giving her a chance to respond.

Monika had been completely blindsided. Her reaction was delayed.

This isn’t the kind of thing you could see coming.

He could tell what she was thinking.

You know where all the bullets are, and because of that, you never anticipated someone being stupid enough to plunge straight into their path.

Monika tried to reverse course in midair, but she was too slow. Klaus grabbed her by the throat and, still running at full speed, smashed her back into the sanctuary’s stained-glass window and sent the both of them soaring out of the church.

He’d successfully escaped the guns’ range.

The stained glass lay in four colors: red, blue, yellow, and green, all gleaming in the sun’s light.

“How…?” Monika groaned in disbelief as shards toppled down around her like raindrops.

Once Klaus landed on the ground, he let go of Monika’s neck. She crumpled to the ground and let out an agonized cough. Klaus had put some serious pressure on her throat.

She shot him a harsh glare. “How’d you come straight at me without getting hit?”

“What do you mean?” Klaus patted his left thigh. “I got hit just fine.”

“What?”

Monika stared at him in shock. Fresh blood was gushing from Klaus’s left leg. A silver bullet had struck him in the femur. It hadn’t passed through, either. It was still lodged there in his flesh.

“I figured I would take a few shots. I made sure to protect my vitals, but still.”

“_______!!”

Klaus had determined that as long as he kept his head and important organs safe, he was at no risk of suffering a fatal wound. In the end, he’d gotten hit three times—grazed on the right shoulder and right hand, and a direct hit to the left thigh.

He fished the bullet out of his leg with his fingernails, then used his knife to cut a strip off his shirt to bandage the wound with. Luckily, there was nothing wrong with his bone—Guido’s technique for catching bullets in one’s muscles had paid off. That said, he still wouldn’t be running any marathons anytime soon.

It had been a good long while since he’d suffered an injury that meaningful.

“Are you outta your mind?” Monika’s lips quivered as she lay there on the ground. “You could’ve just ran. Either that, or if you’d been ready to kill me, you could’ve—”

“I believe I’ve already addressed those points.”

“………”

Monika’s eyes went wide.

There was a storehouse out behind the church, a brick structure where they kept the tools they used for special events. Klaus and Monika were in the clearing between the storehouse and the church proper. There was nobody else around.

At long last, they were finally in a spot to have a real conversation.

Klaus knelt before Monika as she crouched on the ground in pain. “I’ve more or less figured out why you betrayed us, you know.”

Monika bit her lip and looked up at him. “Go ahead, then. Guess.”

“It was for Lily, right? Someone on Serpent came to you and threatened to pin the blame for Prince Darryn’s assassination on her. Go on, tell me I’m wrong.”

It would take more than your average motive to get Monika to turn traitor, and if it was simply Lily’s life that was in danger, then Monika would have gone and consulted him on the spot. It had to be a problem that demanded delicate political decision-making. As soon as Klaus considered what had happened to Avian, it hadn’t been hard to come up with a theory.

Monika let out a long breath, confirming his suspicions. “And if they did, what would you do?”

“Crush the CIM,” Klaus replied instantly. “It wouldn’t matter if they were manipulated by Serpent or not. Anyone who comes after my people gets put down.”

Klaus was no fool, and he knew full well the consequences of making that choice. There was a real danger that doing so would put his homeland in danger. That said, there were plenty of ways to skin a cat. Klaus had no intention of avoiding a fight if the price of doing so was having to hand over Lily. Furthermore, he was confident that the rest of Lamplight would stand by that decision.

“………”

Monika hung her head and went silent.

Klaus softly laid his hand atop her head. “Come on home, Monika. Come back to Lamplight.”

They could work out the details later. First things first, he needed to bring her back. If things kept on the way they were going, Serpent was going to swallow her whole.

“Sorry, Klaus.” Monika lifted her head and gently brushed away his hand. “That’s not happening.”

It was such a rare sight that Klaus’s thoughts ground to a halt.

There was a calm smile on Monika’s face. She looked happy, yet at the same time, like she was on the verge of tears. The stained-glass shards lit up her face with their warped reflections.

Klaus knew that smile. It was the smile of someone who’d given up.

Unsettling thoughts began rising to the forefront of his mind. Thoughts of an extreme plan that only she was capable of pulling off, a plan she seemed all too liable to put into motion.

“Please tell me you aren’t—”

“Would you look at that. Our eyes finally met. Problem is, it’s too late now.”

He needed to stop. He needed to capture her, even if he had to break both her legs to do it.

However, Monika made her move first.

“You might know how I think, but that there’s a two-way street,” she said mockingly as she pointed above the church. Up on the roof, there was a person tied to the cross with their eyes blindfolded and a gag shoved in their mouth. Klaus hadn’t seen them when he went in. They’d been carefully angled and hidden from view.

There on the cross, Grete had been crucified.

What’s more, the cross was slowly tilting. Its base was broken, and it was about to send Grete toppling seventy-odd feet to the ground.

“You’d better save her. You saw where I was keeping her, right? She’s not in good shape.” Monika’s voice was ice cold. “She won’t survive the fall.”

Klaus had no time to muse on the fact that he finally knew what she’d needed the hostage for. He turned his back on Monika and ran as fast as his legs would carry him. There had been a deep truthfulness in Monika’s tone. Grete’s life was in very real danger.

Monika’s sad voice reached him from behind. “Bye, Klaus. I hope you two take care.”

Klaus dashed up the church’s wall, wincing in pain as his wound deepened, then leaped out into the air and severed the rope tying Grete in place. As he did, he caught her and held her tight.

As soon as they landed, and Klaus removed the gag and blindfold, Grete let out a feeble “Boss…,” limply clutched at his arm, and buried her face in his chest.

The good news was that her life wasn’t in any imminent danger now. As relief flooded through Klaus at that realization, he turned and looked over his shoulder.

Monika had already disappeared from sight.

Grete had lost a lot of weight, and her body was weakened and limp. Her life had been in constant danger, so she hadn’t had a moment of proper rest that whole time. She clung desperately to Klaus’s arm, unwilling to let go. It made her seem heartbreakingly childish.

The fact that Monika had been willing to put her through all that showed Klaus just how firm her resolve was. He had no idea what to say.

“Teach!” “Boss!” “Teach.”

Eventually, the other girls began pouring into the church. Erna must have gotten in touch with them. She, Lily, and Sybilla rushed in, and after gawking in shock at Klaus’s wounds, they spotted Grete and let out big sighs of relief.

“Where’s Thea?” Klaus asked.

“She said she was in the middle of an infiltration,” Lily answered.

Yep, sure enough, he thought. It looked like his deduction was right on the money.

“What happened to Big Sis Monika…?” Erna asked anxiously.

“She got away,” Klaus said. The girls’ expressions froze, like they couldn’t believe their ears. “I’m sorry.”

“No, no.” Lily waved her hands. “If you couldn’t do it, then that’s not your fault.”

“No, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I overlooked it as a possibility.” The moment Monika gave him that resigned smile, the full situation had become clear to him. “Perhaps I should be happy she’s grown so much. You girls never fail to surprise me.”

Lily gave him a quizzical look. “Huh? What is it you figured out, Teach?”

“Monika isn’t the only traitor in our ranks.”

The girls knew that if they wanted to fool their teacher, the best thing to do was to avoid direct contact with him. They’d told him once that that was their SOP. Knowing that, Klaus should have immediately grown suspicious when one of them started actively trying to avoid him. After all, there was someone who’d done exactly that—someone who’d been working just fine, yet who’d delegated all her reports to Klaus to the others while she continued pulling strings in the city’s underworld.

The girls stared at him in disbelief as Klaus dropped the bombshell.

“Thea’s betrayed Lamplight as well.”