Spy Classroom - Volume 8 - Chapter 3.1

Chapter 3

Resurrection

In an apartment off in a remote corner of the city, a pair of agents were frowning at something.

The many massive factories that had sprouted up during the industrial revolution two centuries prior had been both a boon and a bane for the city of Hurough. The military might they afforded the nation allowed them to place much of the world under colonial rule, but at the same time, the factories’ filthy soot choked the city, inflicting pneumonia on the local workers and driving them to poverty.

The spies were investigating a strip where those so afflicted tended to gather. Crime and prostitution were rampant in the area, and it had once given birth to a homicidal Ripper. The apartment complexes there were a haven for people with shady pasts, and the spies barged into one building after another.

“Looks like this one’s empty, too.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t just bullshit? Those Din spies could’ve just been making it all up.”

The two men made no efforts to hide their displeasure.

“Those Avian guys are dead. There’s no way they’re still alive.”

The two spies worked for the CIM as members of Vanajin squad four, the one led by “Swordsmith” Miné. Last night, their boss had given them a sudden order: Track down the spy team known as Avian.

However, their hearts weren’t really in it.

“Yeah, I’m with you there. I get that this was an order straight from the boss, but why send us on this goose chase when our plates are full enough as it is?”

“’Cause they might have intel on Serpent, that’s why.”

“You really believe that?”

“Belias attacked them but couldn’t finish them off. Word is, Avian and Serpent got into a fight just afterward. That means they might have information we could use.”

After checking to make sure they were alone, the two men began discussing the matter openly.

“And plus, something weird just happened. Someone snuck into a Vanajin base yesterday.”

“Wait, seriously?”

“We don’t have any proof it was Avian that did it, but the secret message we found in the office implies it was a Din spy. It’s like they wanted us to know they were there.”

“…Couldn’t it just have been someone from Lamplight?”

“Nah, the CIM’s got them all under heavy surveillance. And that includes the Avian survivor Cloud Drift, too.” After pointing out that there was obviously a chance it was some other Din spy, the man went on. “The way I see it, there’s a nonzero chance that Avian’s members are still alive and kicking.”

An ominous chill came over them, and they grimaced and left the apartment.

What they didn’t know was, someone had been watching them that whole time.

That someone was Lamplight’s newest spy—code name Insight.

Insight had been hiding on the roof and keeping tabs on the men. Neither of them even noticed Insight was there. When it came to masking their presence, Insight was profoundly confident in their own skills.

From what Insight could tell, the girls were making their move.

After observing the two men, Insight started working out a plan as well. They were going to have to be smart about this. They owed Lamplight a great debt, and they were determined to repay it.

The CIM had lent Sara, Sybilla, and Lily a room in their main office, and the girls had access to three meals a day and beds they could sleep in, and if they asked, they could even take showers. They were being watched twenty-four seven, but aside from that, their living conditions were more than fair.

That said, they were under a number of restrictions.

For one, they weren’t allowed to see Klaus. He was under especially tight surveillance. The girls had deduced that he was in a building nearby, but the CIM wouldn’t even let them get close to it.

For another, Miné never let them out of her sight.

“Ah-ha-ha, would you please stop spreading those obnoxious rumors? I mean, come on. Avian being alive?! You’re really getting on my nerves!” she cackled from inside their assigned room.

“It’s no rumor. It’s true,” Sybilla said as she cleaned her pistol. She shot Miné a glare. “Avian survived. Belias couldn’t kill ’em, and neither could Serpent. Hurry up and track ’em down already, wouldja? We need to touch base.”

That was the rumor the girls had been working so hard to spread. They’d been telling every CIM agent they came across, not just Miné, that the corpses had been fakes. After making themselves look like they were dead, Avian had gone underground. Lamplight had only seen photos of the bodies, so they hadn’t realized they were fakes at the time, but a few days ago, Lamplight had found a coded message from them that only Lamplight was able to decode.

Amelie came by at one point, and when they told her, a brief look of surprise had crossed her face. “…If that’s true, then those are glad tidings indeed,” she murmured, then began arranging for her colleagues to begin searching for them.

Now Miné frowned in annoyance. “Actually, the search is ending today.”

“The hell?”

“I put a stop to it. We can’t afford to waste any more man-hours on your nonsense. They’re dead. End of story.” After letting out another of her trademark laughs, she narrowed her eyes at them. “Unless, what, was this all part of some secret plan of yours?”

Sybilla clicked her tongue and glared right back. “Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. Figure it out yourself.”

Realizing how tense the mood was, Lily came rushing over from the other side of the room. “Now, now, you two. Remember, we’re all friends here.” She brought with her a tray laden with teacups. “How about we all have some tea? I bought up loads and loads of high-end leaves.”

There were four cups in all.

“This’ll help you keep your mind off things,” Lily said as she set the tray in front of Miné. “And plus, it’s so tasty I got carried away and brewed way too much, so you’d basically be doing me a favor. Besides, if I run out, I can always ask our good buddies in the CIM to go out and buy us more.”

“If anyone’s picking a fight here, it’s you!” Miné howled.

There were two large teapots sitting behind Lily’s back.

Miné squeezed the bridge of her nose. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she grumbled. “What kind of detainee has the audacity to send her own wardens out to buy tea cakes and cosmetics for her?”

“What? But Miné, it seemed like you didn’t want us going outside, so—”

“That doesn’t mean you can just use my people as your errand boys!”

As the two of them butted heads, Sara let out a weak laugh from beside them. “Ha-ha…”

The four of them were sitting around the table in the middle of the room. It was time for a strategy meeting. They would’ve liked to kick Miné out, but sadly that wasn’t an option.

“Here’s the situation as it stands,” Lily said to get the ball rolling. “Right now, we have exactly one mission—capturing that jerk-face White Spider.”

Sybilla and Sara nodded in agreement. At that point, it hardly bore repeating. They needed to apprehend White Spider so they could press him for information on Monika’s whereabouts.

“We’re betting that White Spider wants to come assassinate Teach. The odds he’ll try are pretty good, and when he does, we know that he’s probably going to do it—”

“—by getting someone in the CIM to turn traitor.”

After finishing Lily’s sentence, Sara gulped. That was something Grete had pointed out to them—the possibility of a new traitor.

“Ah-ha-ha, that could never happen! The CIM’s unity will never waver!” Miné laughed from across the table as she sipped her tea, but the girls ignored her. She was free to believe what she wanted.

Sybilla crossed her arms on the table. “As long as they’re keepin’ the boss locked up, it’d be pretty hard to whack him without havin’ someone on the inside. Even with the CIM’s forces spread thin, there’s no way he could just punch his way through.”

“Yeah,” Lily replied. “In other words, we need to root out the mole.”

“What’s Grete got to say about that?”

“Grete’s smart, but not even she can pin down the traitor while she’s cooped up in the hospital. Still, she did give us a guess. The traitor needs to be someone who can meddle with the CIM’s guard assignments.”

No matter how many bottom-level agents White Spider flipped, all it would do was cause a little bit of chaos. No, what they needed to be worried about were people with meaningful amounts of authority.

“In other words…one of the CIM’s officers.”

Once they’d finished summing up the situation, the girls let out long exhales. Lily twirled her hair around her finger with a strained expression, Sybilla covered her face with her hand, and Sara gave the puppy on her lap a big hug.

The three of them were stressed, and they had good reason to be. Prince Darryn’s funeral was tomorrow. The day of reckoning had arrived all too fast, and tonight was the night that Klaus’s guard assignment was going to be reduced. Foreign VIPs were streaming into the nation, and the CIM spies needed to shadow them to protect them from terrorism and assassination attempts.

If White Spider was going to come after Klaus, then his window was from tonight to the morning after next. If he missed it, it would give Klaus’s leg a chance to heal, cost White Spider his once-in-a-lifetime opening, and leave Lamplight with no way of finding Monika. There was a huge amount riding on this for all parties involved.

“All right, let’s make this count.” Sybilla drummed on her knees, then rose to her feet. “It’s time for that final officer meeting. Let’s sniff out the traitor and tie ’em up!”

The CIM desperately wanted to capture the Serpent member responsible for Prince Darryn’s death. They were holding a meeting to that effect, and they’d invited the girls.

“Yeah!” “Let’s do this!” Lily and Sara cheered as they stood up as well.

“Ah-ha-ha!”

When they did, they were greeted by a grating peal of laughter.

Miné clutched at her chest and kicked her legs back and forth in a bemused display of mockery.

“The hell’s your problem?” Sybilla asked. “We’re free to suspect whoever we damn well please.”

“No, no. I was supposed to keep it a secret until the very end, but I just can’t hold it in anymore.”

Miné’s voice turned chilly.

“You people are the stupidest optimists I’ve ever seen.”

The girls looked at her in confusion.

Rather than explain herself, Miné simply said, “The meeting’s this way,” and strode out of the room with the girls behind her.

There were six people sitting around the round table in the middle of the conference room.

The room had been built with a good distance between the walls and the table, no doubt to protect against listening devices. From what the girls had heard, the head of the Din Republic’s Foreign Intelligence Office used a similar setup. That said, they doubted that room had a massive portrait of Her Majesty the Queen hanging on the wall the way the Fend Commonwealth’s did.

When Miné led the girls into the room, the six CIM officers gave them a series of unfriendly looks.

Klaus and Amelie had already briefed them on who would be present.

There was “Puppeteer” Amelie, head of the special forces that answered directly to Hide.

There was “Armorer” Meredith, head of the agency’s largest counterintelligence unit.

There was “Silhouette” Luke, head of the special assassination unit.

There was “Tracker” Sylvette, who also served as a lieutenant general in the Fend army.

There was “Jester” Heine, head of the engineering division.

And there was “Tunekeeper” Khaki, head of the unit in charge of manipulating the public.

These were elite spies, the kind of people that the girls usually wouldn’t get to be in the same room as. They were the ones taking point on the current mission, and by the looks of it, they’d already gotten a head start.

Amelie was the one presiding over the meeting, and she quietly turned her gaze the girls’ way. “Our guests from the Din Republic have experience combating Serpent. I called them here because I presumed you might have some questions they could help answer.”

The officers’ stares intensified.

The air in the conference room was so still you could hear a pin drop. The girls nearly forgot how to breathe.

However, they couldn’t afford to be overpowered.

Someone in that room could very well be a traitor. This was their chance to figure out who that might be, and the people there were also their allies in the hunt for White Spider. This was no time to be losing their nerve.

Amelie had set the stage for them, and Lily stepped forward as the group’s representative. “Um, hello. I’m Flower Garden from the Foreign Intelligence Office. If there’s anything we can do to help capture White Spider, we’re more than happy to—”

She trailed off midsentence.

The expressions of the six people around the table were stony. From the way they were looking at her, it wasn’t even that they didn’t trust her, but rather that they never had any interest in what she had to say in the first place.

“Huh?”

When Lily tilted her head in confusion, one of the six spoke up. “Enough of this already, Amelie.”

The speaker was a man with dark skin and a mass of blond hair resembling a lion’s mane. Lily recognized him—that was “Armorer” Meredith, the man who’d apprehended them and Miné’s superior officer.

“Bonfire would have been one thing, but these people have nothing to offer us. I have no interest in playing along with this farce.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Miné, do it.”

Rather than answer Lily’s question, Miné let out a big laugh. “Ah-ha-ha, I’m on it,” she said as she strode on over to them.

She held out her hands and gave them a small, smug head tilt.

“Hand over every weapon you’ve got.”

They hoped they’d misheard her. However, the mood in the room didn’t lighten in the slightest. Miné repeated herself, more forcefully this time. “Your weapons, now. Until the funeral’s over, you’re not allowed to have any arms whatsoever.”

“Hold on! Wh-what’re you talkin’ about?!” Sybilla cried out in surprise. She slipped past Miné and addressed the officers. “What the hell?! We wanna capture White Spider just as bad as—”

“Just two days ago, one of my little agents was killed. He was found in a local clinic.” The speaker was Tunekeeper, a monocled man wearing a white gown. “There are eyewitness accounts suggesting that he met with a Din Republic spy just before his death. You can hardly blame us for distrusting you.”

“Oh, fuck off. You’ve been watchin’ us this whole—”

“You’re the ones who’ve been suggesting that Avian is still alive, aren’t you? We don’t know if it’s true or not, but it’s certainly cause for suspicion.”

The other officers agreed with him. Silhouette, an odd-looking man with an animal mask over his face, gave him a silent nod, and Jester, a slightly plump woman wearing a vividly purple dress, shot the girls a look of contempt.

Sybilla tried to get up in their faces, but Miné grabbed her by the back of her head and slammed her into the round table. “Ah-ha-ha, quit resisting!”

Lily and Sara rushed over to pull her off, but Meredith stopped them with a glare.

“You have only yourselves to blame. This is what you get for spreading those rumors,” Miné said, still keeping her grip on Sybilla’s head. “Screw you for making us play along with your dumb lies. Avian is dead and buried! You’re never going to see them again!”

Sybilla bit down on her lip. “……!”

“And anyway, we were never planning on turning to you people for help.” Miné yanked on Sybilla’s hair to forcefully lift her head. “If you’ve got any problems with that, then we can throw down right here. You lot against us.”

“………!!”

The officers’ stares made it clear that this wasn’t a request.

The girls had no choice. There was no way they could take on all those Fend Commonwealth elites.

Miné delivered the finisher with a pleased laugh. “Then in that case, you backwater handmaids can go back to your room and twiddle your thumbs.”

After getting cast from the room like so much garbage, the girls got carted back to their assigned room.

“Bye now. I actually have work to do,” Miné cackled, then left again. There was a hint of sweat beading on her face, but the girls had no idea why that might be.

The CIM had confiscated all of their weapons. They’d taken the girls’ knives, pistols, steel wire, and even the needles they kept hidden in their sleeves and collars. Between those and the poison gas emitter they’d taken from its hiding spot beneath Lily’s ample bosom, the girls had been completely cleaned out.

The entire procedure had taken place in the conference room—that was to say, right in front of all the head officers. It was humiliating, like the CIM wanted to remind them who held the power here. If anything, that stung more than the disarming itself.

“Damn, they beat us to the punch.”

“Yeah…”

Sara glumly sat down in her chair and petted her puppy. At least they’d had the decency not to take her dog. Either that, or they just didn’t want to have to look after him.

Odds are, White Spider was the one behind that murder. We don’t know shit about that. Sybilla gave her tongue a loud click. I can’t believe they’re keepin’ us from puttin’ up a decent fight…

They and the CIM may have been allies, but by no means did that mean they were friends. Everything that had just happened made that obvious, if it wasn’t already. At no point had the CIM actually been planning on accepting their help. If anything, the fact that they were even moving around freely was a pain in the CIM’s neck. The only thing the CIM wanted from them was to sit still in their room and shut up.

The girls were in no position to root out the traitor.

The sun began setting, and the light streaming in through the window grew weaker. Chances were, it wouldn’t be long before White Spider started trying to murder Klaus. As a matter of fact, he might be making a move at that very moment.

“Okay, what’s the play?” Lily’s voice was uncharacteristically calm. She spun her pot of black tea around in her hands, not looking dejected in the slightest. “For the record, leaving this up to the CIM might be a better idea than it sounds.”

“Sorry, run that by me again?”

“The CIM is full of talented spies, right? They might just go and capture White Spider without us having to lift a finger. Heck, we could just take a nap. It doesn’t get any easier than that.” She smirked. “And most importantly, Teach isn’t just gonna take this lying down. I’m sure he has some sort of plan. Instead of butting in and making a mess of things, the smart thing for us to do might just be nothing.”

“………”

There was certainly a logic to what Lily was saying. The CIM had no desire to let White Spider escape. They viewed Monika as the killer and White Spider as one of her co-conspirators. Even stretched thin as they were, that was one thing they weren’t going to cut corners on.

However, Sybilla’s fists were trembling.

“Annette’s tryin’ to change.”

“Huh?”

“You saw her back at the hospital. Even that little menace is tryin’ to face forward.”

The image in Sybilla’s mind was of that ash-pink-haired girl, and of the happy smile she’d given them.

It happened two days prior—that was, the day after they returned Annette to the hospital from her escape attempt.

Annette was back in her hospital room, and she’d regained her composure. She’d gotten away with only a minor aggravation of her wounds, and she was certainly well enough to stuff her cheeks full of the sweets the others brought her.

Now that they’d glimpsed Annette’s dark side, Lily and Sybilla came in a little nervous. However, they couldn’t help but loosen up when they saw Sara doting on Annette just like always. “Say ‘aah,’ Miss Annette,” Sara said as she fed Annette some milk pudding, to which Annette replied, “I love ya, Sis!”

At the end of the day, Annette was still Annette. This was just another of their adorable problem child’s many eccentricities. That was all there was to it.

That said, there had been one big change. Annette no longer made any efforts to hide her bloodlust.

“By the way, I’m still planning on murdering Monika!”

““You’re incorrigible!!”” Lily and Sybilla roared at the hospital room confession.

Annette let out a cackle. “She hurt my toy Erna and called me a runt. She’s dead to me, yo.”

“Your, uh, your toy?”

“But the thing is, I’m not strong enough to beat her right now…” She stuck out her tongue a little. “…so I guess I have to find a new way to kill people.”

She beamed as though she’d just had a huge burden lifted off her.

Annette was starting to come off less as a rascal and more as an out-and-out villain, but the others decided to view it in a positive light. This was the first time they’d seen Annette try to improve herself, and they wanted to support her on her journey.

As she thought back to Annette’s transformation, Sybilla sucked in another breath. “Seein’ her smile like that made me realize somethin’. I gotta change, too.”

“Huh? Why’s that?” Lily asked, scrunching up her lips in confusion.

“I couldn’t save Monika.” Sybilla poured her strength into every word. “She put everything on her own back, and I wasn’t able to do shit for her. I know she rejected the boss’s help and decided to fight the CIM solo, but still.”

Sybilla realized now just how stupid the things she said back then were.

“What the fuck have you even been doing?!”

Of all the people, she’d chosen to direct her anger at Klaus. When she learned that they’d failed to stop Monika from leaving Lamplight, her frustration had gotten the better of her.

“There was this part of me that believed… I figured that in spite of everything, that you’d find some way to fix it…”

She’d pretended not to notice her own shortcomings and lashed out like a child. If anyone needed to grow up, it was her.

“I’m doin’ this! Like hell I’m gonna sit here and pass all my work off to others.” She slammed the table and rose to her feet. “I’m not gonna let people take jack from me anymore! Not the boss, not Monika, not nothin’!”

“I’m loving this enthusiasm, but do you have any evidence that we need to make a move? Enough evidence it’s worth turning the CIM against us?”

“Our situation’s all the proof I need. White Spider told his mole to steal our weapons. He’s scared we’re gonna ruin his plan just like Monika did his last one!”

Sybilla might have been reading too much into things, but that didn’t seem likely. She was right—it didn’t make any sense for the CIM to confiscate their weapons when they did.

“The traitor’s already gettin’ to work—so we gotta save the boss, stat!”

If the traitor was already trying to kill Klaus, then the whole thing could be over before they knew it.

“You’re right! I feel bad for the CIM, but we can’t afford to trust them!” Sara said, rising to her feet as well. “We need to figure this out. I promised myself I would become a spy who could protect everyone!”

“Looks like your girl Wunderkind Lily’s the one who’s got her head on straightest right now, so lemme remind you of something.” Lily continued twirling her teapot. Her eyes were cold and rational. “Worst case scenario, this could end in us having to fight the CIM again. We were able to make an alliance with them thanks to Monika, and this would send us right back to square one.”

““We’re still doing it.””

“I guess there’s no talking you out of this, huh?” Lily followed their lead and stood up. She gave them a bemused shrug, then grinned like that was what she’d been expecting all along. “Well, I’ve already finished all my prep. I brewed up plenty of tea.”

She went over to the table and picked up the other teapot. Each pot was full to the brim, and she held one up in each hand and swished them around.

“Oh, hey, thanks,” Sybilla said cheerfully. “Then once we’ve had some to psych ourselves up—”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. It’s poisoned.”

“What?”

“I figured this might happen, so I moved all my poison and antidote over before they could steal it.”

Lily stuck her index finger in one of the pots and pulled it out. Sinister-looking droplets glistened on her fingertip. Lily had mixed her poison in with the black tea. Meanwhile, the antidote capable of neutralizing it was over in the other teapot.

She licked up the poison on her fingertip and took a moment to savor it. “Now, let’s do this. We’re gonna lay a trap for those CIM numbnuts so good they won’t know what hit them.”

The girls wasted no time in getting ready. They transferred the poisoned tea and the antidote tea into perfume bottles. Then they smashed the porcelain teapots and sharpened the shards into knives. Each one was only about the size of a thumb, but that was more than enough to slice through someone’s carotid artery.

By the time they were finished, it was about ten at night.

They were entering the time frame where Grete had predicted that White Spider was likely to launch his attack.

The girls escaped the CIM office via the window. Using the window frame as a handhold, they climbed onto the roof, then ran across it and leaped over the fence surrounding the building.

“Where’s the boss at?!” Sybilla shouted.

“He’s in that building over there,” Sara replied. “Once we get closer, I can track his exact position by smell.”

The place she was pointing at was a multistory building a few hundred feet from the main CIM office. It was under CIM ownership, and it was the one place that the girls had been kept thoroughly away from.

Johnny the puppy let out a small bark and raced toward their destination. Once they got there, the plan was to have him follow Klaus’s scent.

Naturally, though, that was going to be easier said than done.

There was someone running across the CIM roof just like the girls had, and they were closing in quick. They were faster than Lily and Sara, and before the girls knew what happened, their pursuer managed to cut in front of them.

“Stop right there!”

It was Miné. She was already holding her sonic weapon at the ready.

“Ah-ha-ha, what gives? The hell you think you’re doing, strolling around without supervision—”

Sybilla stopped in her tracks and waved Miné off like a bug. “We’re free to go wherever we goddamn please.”

Miné was clearly anxious. She bit down on her lip. “………”

Upon seeing her expression, Sybilla broke into a triumphant grin. “If you people were gonna lock us up, you woulda just done it from the start. Awfully kind of you, lettin’ us walk around freely as long as we took a babysitter along.” She stuck out her tongue. “I bet our boss didn’t give you a choice, did he?”

Lily was the one who’d figured it out. Their restrictions had been oddly lenient, and that meant that the CIM probably wasn’t allowed to fully detain them.

“Stay out of our way. If you really gotta, you can follow along to keep an eye on us.”

Big droplets of sweat began beading on Miné’s forehead.

As Sybilla strode past her, she shot a meaningful look over to Lily. Before they went to see Klaus, there was one last piece of business they needed to attend to.

“What am I going to do with you lot?” Miné slumped her shoulders in exasperation. “Look, can you at least wait a minute? I can’t just go running off at a moment’s notice, I need to report in to my—”

The girls were having none of that.

Ignoring Miné’s request, they took off at a dash through the city. The route they took wasn’t the most direct path to the building Klaus was in. Instead, they headed in the direction with the least foot traffic.

Eventually, they made their way into a large abandoned building.

The building was completely empty. It was four stories tall and slated for demolition soon.

“Why here?” Miné asked with a confused tilt of the head, but she followed them inside nonetheless.

There was a large hall on the first floor. The floor still had traces of the restaurant it had once housed.

When the girls got to the center of the hall, they came to a stop.

“By the way,” Lily said, “about Avian.”

“What about them?” Miné asked in confusion.

“There were a whole bunch of reasons why we wanted you guys looking for them. One of those reasons is ’cause we figured that if someone was real dumb, we might flush them out.” Lily spun around and gave Miné a big smile. “Tell me, how is it you were so sure they were dead?”

“What are you talking about? It was my own colleagues that put them—”

“You couldn’t have been, not with the intel the CIM has.”

Her eyes had a steely look in them, and they were focused squarely on Miné.

Sybilla and Sara slowly repositioned themselves until they were surrounding the CIM agent.

Lily continued her explanation. “Not even Amelie was there when Flock, Glide, Lander, and Feather were killed. She just assumed what happened from context.”

She was right—the only one the CIM could be absolutely certain was dead was “South Wind” Queneau, who’d died protecting his teammates. Beyond that point, Amelie had no idea what exactly had gone down.

Miné’s voice started growing increasingly frantic. “But she must have been able to identify them from the corpses—”

“Nah, no way. Belias had no idea why they were attacking Avian. They were just doing what Green Butterfly—that’s a CIM traitor, by the way—told them to.”

It was hard to imagine Amelie having had any detailed intelligence on Avian. She had just been following orders. That was why she’d misjudged their skill so badly, and that was how she’d gotten so many of her agents injured.

As further proof, Amelie didn’t refute it when the girls told her that Avian was still alive. And the Tunekeeper man had been the same. He said that they didn’t know if the reports of Avian’s death were true or not.

“So the idea that Avian survived really wasn’t all that absurd. It could’ve been true.”

Lily raised her voice.

“Except to Serpent. The only people who would’ve had their minds made up about Avian were the ones who actually killed them.”

Miné had messed up.

When she called off the search, she should have just said the part about not having enough man-hours. She shouldn’t have given Avian being dead as a reason.

After all, there wasn’t a single person in the CIM that could say that with any certainty.

“Now, I’ll be the first to admit,” Lily said, “those are some big leaps of logic. There’s a chance you’re just confused, or that you put too much faith in Belias’s report.”

As Miné stood there frozen with her eyes wide open, Lily pointed a glass knife at her. Sara and Sybilla did the same with their porcelain counterparts.

“So I’m gonna need you to answer a simple question—are you planning on harming our teacher?”

A drop of sweat rolled down Miné’s cheek and fell to the floor.

They heard a car drive by outside, but the sound soon died down. There weren’t any residential buildings nearby, so the whole area cleared out quickly once night fell. The girls weren’t interested in letting Miné call for help.

Miné sucked in a long, shallow breath. “Ah-ha-ha, why would I want to hurt Bonfire? Don’t be silly.”

Lily exchanged a look with Sybilla and Sara, then cracked her neck. “That’s a lie.”

“Huh?”

“Pharma from Avian just told me. She said you’re lying.”

“What?! What are you even talking about?!”

“Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. Avian came back from the dead.”

“That doesn’t make any sense! Now you’re just making stuff up!” Miné roared. She couldn’t help herself. The fake smile vanished from her face, and she pointed the sonic weapon in her hand straight at Lily. “If you keep pushing your luck, you’ll leave me no choice but to fight back!” Her cries were downright shrill. “Know your place, handmaids! You’re so quick to forget how helpless you were against my Absolute Reverb—”

“So sorry, but you’re in checkmate,” Lily spat. “You really gotta give us more credit.”

“You were doomed from the moment you first drank my tea.”

The sonic weapon tumbled from Miné’s hand. Her fingers were twitching, and she couldn’t muster any strength in them. “What did you do?”

“It’s a slow-acting poison. It’s probably getting pretty painful now, huh?”

Lily casually strolled over to her. When she gave Miné’s shoulder a light push, Miné crumpled to her knees. Her expression was dumbfounded, and her face was drenched with sweat.

Now that Sybilla thought about it, Miné had been acting a little weird after the officers’ meeting. She stole a look over at the smug expression on Lily’s face.

Damn, she does not fuck around.

Lily slipped that poison into Miné’s tea the moment Miné said that Avian was dead. At that point, their evidence against Miné was barely even circumstantial. What had Lily been planning on doing if her suspicions had been off the mark?

“Now, you’d best get talking.” Lily pulled a vial of antidote out of her pocket and waved it in front of Miné’s face. “Why were you planning on harming Teach? Whose orders are you acting on? If you don’t talk fast, I can’t promise you’ll survive.”

That part was a lie. The poison Lily was using only paralyzed the body for a couple of hours.

However, Miné had no way of knowing that. What she did know was that the poison was sapping her ability to move her own body, and the terror within her had to be mounting.

“And just for the record,” Sybilla said for good measure, “I already nicked your radio. No one’s comin’ to save you.”

She tossed the radio into the air and caught it to really drive the point home.

“Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!” Miné’s face went so red it was like it had just caught fire, and eventually, she shouted at the top of her lungs. “BOOOOOOOOOOSS! HEEEEEEEEEEELP!”

There was no way her SOS was going to reach anyone. The whole reason they’d lured her to the abandoned building was so that no one would hear her if she screamed. Still, they figured it would be best to shut her up, so they took a step toward her.

That was when a terrible rumble crashed over them like a flood.

By the time they realized that it was the rumble of footsteps, a massive figure came charging out of the shadows. The figure’s charge was intense, and without any guns, the girls had no way of stopping them.

The attack their large foe had chosen was a shoulder tackle. Sybilla managed to step forward and intercept them at the very last moment, but not even she was able to fully counter the blow. She got sent tumbling, crashing into Lily and Sara behind her and taking them with her. Two of the perfume bottles Lily had been holding went rolling away.

“This is the antidote, is it? That was a brazen move.” The massive figure was a man, and his voice was one the girls knew all too well. “I knew it would come to this. We should’ve just broken your legs back at the start.”

There was a man who commanded the CIM’s largest counterintelligence unit. A man with overwhelming strength, inexhaustible stamina, and ninety-six agents at his disposal. One of the CIM’s head officers.

“All enemies of the Crown must hang.”

Now, that very man—“Armorer” Meredith, Vanajin’s boss—stood before them.

He popped open one of the antidote vials he’d taken from Lily and poured it down Miné’s throat. “I’ll be keeping the spare,” he said as he tucked the other into his pocket.

The saber scabbard hanging at his waist glinted in the darkness. The girls could see fifteen more agents behind him, all of whom were glaring at them.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Lily groaned. “There’s no way you should have been able to hear that scream…”

“What kind of boss fails to come running when one of his agents is in peril?” Meredith gave Miné an appreciative clap on the shoulder, then looked back at the girls. “More importantly, that was a rude thing you did back there. Why’d you poison my agent?”

“’Cause there’s a chance she’s in bed with Serpent,” Sybilla replied bluntly. “As soon as we got our weapons confiscated, we knew you people had a mole. We can’t trust you to protect the boss.”

“So all you have is cheap slander.” Meredith sighed and shook his head. In his eyes, they were nothing more than children throwing a tantrum. “Look, I’m not here to argue with you. We’ve got our own problems we’re dealing with.”

“And what’re those?”

“I see no reason to tell you. If anyone’s getting questioned here, it’s the three people who just attacked my subordinate.”

He reached for his saber’s handle and strode toward them.

It would appear that talking things out wasn’t an option. Meredith had every intention of attacking them. Was he the Serpent mole? Were he and his agent Miné plotting something together?

Either way, this was one fight they needed to avoid.

“Lily, Sara, run!”

As soon as Sybilla shouted, Lily grabbed Sara by the arm and took off at a dash. Dragging her bewildered teammate behind her, she made for the back exit.

The instant they did, Meredith let out a roar. “After them!! Don’t let them escape!!”

“I just nicked this.”

Sybilla took the hand grenade she’d stolen from Miné and tossed it toward Lily and Sara. The girls leaped out the exit, and the grenade brought the wall behind them crashing down.

The CIM agents running toward the back exit flinched, and Sybilla used that opening to circle over to the building’s entrance. As far as she could tell, there were only two ways out of the building—the back entrance, and the front door. As long as she controlled the front door, Lily and Sara would be able to reach Klaus unopposed.

“I’m gonna need you all to stay put for a bit.” She brandished the knife she’d taken off Miné. “You didn’t want them gettin’ away, but the feelin’s mutual. Care to tell me about that problem you mentioned?”

The odds were stacked against her, but she didn’t care.

Not only was she up against sixteen people, one of them was a CIM officer. Miné had once described Meredith as being a hundred times stronger than her, and Sybilla got the same vibes from him as she did other powerhouses like Klaus and Amelie. It didn’t take a genius to see that she was outmatched.

In her head, though, she was thinking of the girl who’d squared off against several times more foes.

How much of a fight did Monika put up, I wonder?

Monika had risked her life to protect her team. If Sybilla wanted to call herself Lamplight’s older sister, then backing down wasn’t an option.

Looks like it’s my turn to throw down the gauntlet!!

The time had come for her to put her life on the line, too.

Meredith scowled at her in annoyance. “You have no idea who you’re messing with.”