Spy Classroom - Volume 8 - Chapter 3.2

As soon as Sara and Lily escaped the building, an explosion sealed off the exit behind them.

Lily didn’t even turn around. She just charged toward the building Klaus was in as fast as her legs would carry her.

“Miss Lily?!” Sara cried as the girl in question pulled her along. “Are you sure about this?! Is it really a good idea to leave Miss Sybilla alone with so many—”

With how many enemies there had been back there, Sara doubted that even Sybilla could emerge unscathed. Her prospects were grim.

“Of course it isn’t!” Lily moaned in anguish. “Our plan was to just threaten Miné, then fool the rest of the CIM. As soon as we screwed that up, we lost. Seriously, how did that blond musclehead even do it? It’s not fair!”

“Then—”

“But I’m still running!!”

Lily gave Sara’s arm another tug.

They were a fair distance away from the abandoned building now. When Sara gave up on going back and focused on running, too, Lily let go of her arm.

“I know it’s not the time, but as your leader, I need to give you a piece of my mind.” Lily’s voice was far harsher than normal. “The truth is, I think that goal of yours to become Lamplight’s guardian is a pipe dream.”

“………!”

“I mean, you’re not exactly the first person I’d turn to in a pinch. Remember when we found out that Monika had betrayed us, and you weren’t able to do a thing? You’re not being realistic with yourself.”

Sara had no rebuttal to that. Considering her skills, it was a fair assessment.

The night was silent save for the sound of their footsteps echoing on the pavement. At no point did Lily ever slow down.

“I get that that’s the whole reason it’s your goal. But if you really want to make that dream of yours come true, if you really have the guts to overturn the impossible…”

Her voice rang out crisp.

“…then the one thing you can never do is stop moving—not even if you know you’re going to lose.”

Sybilla lasted all of four seconds.

She lay on the floor, collapsed on her hands and knees.

“Huh…?” she gasped in bewilderment.

She could taste the bitter flavor of dust filling her mouth. However, that was an afterthought compared to the terrible pain racking her body. The worst of it was in her spine, and it felt like her back and shoulders were broken. She doubted they actually were, but the blow she’d just taken was brutal enough that it sure could have fooled her. She could barely even breathe.

Wait, what the hell am I doin’ on the floor?

She had yet to fully process the situation.

As she staggered to her feet, Meredith glared at her from up close.

What’d he do to me? What just happened?

She remembered taking her knife and charging at him with it. It was the one weapon she had. She’d stolen Miné’s gun alongside it, but she’d already handed the gun off to Lily. She knew she needed to get in close before her opponent could open fire.

“What a pushover,” Meredith had said.

The next moment, she’d hit the floor, landing back-first and then rolling from the sheer force of the blow. That was how she’d ended up on all fours. The pain in her body painted her a delayed picture of what had happened, but she still had no idea what exactly Meredith had done to her.

As Sybilla stared in confusion, Meredith stood before her with his saber at the ready.

“Did you think that if ‘Flash Fire’ Monika could do it, you could do it, too?”

The man had read her like a book.

“Your hubris knows no end.” He sounded unimpressed. “The CIM runs intelligence for a nation with the greatest history of any in the world ruled by the mightiest of monarchs. You fail to comprehend the weight the title of officer in such an organization carries.”

He swung his saber, and the air cracked in reply.

“All who face me fall, even Flash Fire. Make light of Armorer, guardian of the Crown, at your peril.”

By the time Sybilla was back on her feet and readied her knife, Meredith was already on her.

“_____!”

Blocking his saber blow sent her reeling.

“Even if you knew the trick, it wouldn’t do you any good.”

The saber’s tip traced an arc through the air.

“I don’t use my saber to stab or slice my foes. I use techniques that take advantage of its point.”

Sure enough, Sybilla lost control of her center of gravity and collapsed back onto the ground.

Meredith was a force to be reckoned with.

The people of Hurough had mocked Vanajin as “violent” and “rowdy,” but within the CIM itself, they were highly respected. And the efforts of “Armorer” Meredith formed the team’s bedrock. The sight of him using his inhuman stamina to fight valiantly day and night was enough to move anyone. He was always the first into the fray when his nation was in danger, and anyone who hurt his subordinates would face his wrath. The esteem of his ninety-six agents drove them to compete with each other and achieve as much as they could. Puppeteer commanded her forces from the rearguard with exacting precision, but the charisma he possessed was of the exact opposite sort.

When faced with his stellar physique, even Monika had chosen to avoid fighting him head-on and focused instead on fleeing.

All that to say, Sybilla was completely and utterly outmatched.

If someone had walked in without knowing what was happening, it would have been hard to even look at the sight they found. What you had was a brawny, full-grown man delivering a brutal beatdown to an underage girl. Sybilla was doing a decent job using her knife to defend against his saber, but Meredith started using his saber for feints and throwing in kicks and punches. Even when she blocked his hits, they still ruined her balance and sent her careening backward. Every time she fell to the floor, Meredith kicked her the moment she got up.

Calling the fight one-sided would have been an understatement. This was little more than an act of assault.

I thought I could put up a fight…

Blood trickled down Sybilla’s forehead. Her arms were swollen from internal hemorrhaging, and her left pinkie and ring finger were broken and twisted the wrong way.

I had no idea he was so much stronger!

She cursed her miscalculation, but Meredith didn’t give her time to stew in her regret. Using his saber as a distraction, he gave her a swift punch, getting a clean hit in on her cheek and sending her hurtling away. One of her molars broke, and blood flooded her mouth.

She couldn’t even flee. The other Vanajin members had circled around to cut off her escape route.

Miné had been watching from the side, and she laughed uproariously at Sybilla’s predicament. She was already back on her feet. The antidote had worked like a charm. “Ah-ha-ha. C’mon, boss, can’t we just shoot her already?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Meredith scolded her. “If one of the Crown’s subjects somehow heard the shot, it would cause them undue fear.”

So that was why he hadn’t been using his gun. He didn’t think he needed it.

“Squad F, go catch Flower Garden and Meadow. I’ll capture this one and use her as a hostage.”

On his order, nine of the agents dashed toward the building’s entrance.

Sybilla rose to her feet and gave chase. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere!!” She took the knife she’d nearly dropped more times than she could count and clutched it tight.

Meredith stepped into her path to cut her off. “Not happening.”

He thrust out his saber, and this time, she wasn’t able to block.

The moment it touched her body, she felt her feet lift off the ground. She’d been sent off-balance like a wave of energy had just slammed her from the side.

Meredith’s technique wasn’t designed to slash or to stab. The tip of his saber shifted her charge’s vector, and Sybilla rose into the air like she was doing a somersault before crashing spine-first into the ground. Another agonizing shock shot through her back. She rolled gracelessly to the side, then struggled back to her feet.

“Ah-ha-ha, I’d surrender now if I were you,” Miné said with a round of applause and a mocking sneer. “We’ve already gotten your measure. Isn’t it about time you wised up?” No matter how many times Sybilla had to listen to her, she never got less grating. “You’re leagues weaker than ‘Flash Fire’ Monika. You’re practically an amateur. In what world did you think you could ever match her?!”

“________”

Sybilla had tried to turn her eyes from the truth, but it was getting thrown right in her face.

There was a history to Monika and Sybilla’s power dynamic.

Nobody ever said it out loud, but it was obvious to anyone with eyes that Sybilla simply wasn’t as strong in a fight as Monika. The two of them fulfilled similar roles on the team—they were there for when things got violent. However, there was a gap between them that no amount of effort could fill.

That wasn’t to say that Sybilla was a slouch. In a fair fight on level ground with weapons banned, she could probably take Monika in a fight. She had a deep well of stamina, and she always pulled her weight on the team.

However, Monika’s skills were downright unreal.

There wasn’t a person on Lamplight who denied that Monika’s instincts were on a whole different level. Her marksmanship was unparalleled, and her ability to take advantage of light and ricochets allowed her to bamboozle her foes. Plus, she’d improved dramatically during their time in the Fend Commonwealth. She’d even driven off the mighty Klaus.

There was a time once when Klaus had taken Monika on a mission and left Sybilla behind. She was a member of the Unchosen Squad, and Klaus had made the right decision putting her there.

Sybilla was reminded of that painful truth all over again as she continued battling Meredith. She’d finished buying the time she needed, but she still couldn’t afford to stop fighting back.

However, she couldn’t see any path to victory.

Before she knew it, she’d redirected all her efforts from attacking to simply defending herself. If she wasn’t retreating, she was taking a tumble, and whenever their blades crossed, she was always the one who came off the exchange with fresh wounds.

Sybilla couldn’t beat Monika, and Monika had failed to beat Meredith. She could feel the relationship between those two inequalities bouncing around in her head.

“You think I don’t know that shit?!”

If there was one thing Sybilla had over Monika, however, it was that she refused to accept when she was beat.

She grabbed onto Meredith’s right arm, the one holding his saber. They’d exchanged enough blows by then that she was starting to get a read on his moves. She could pick up on the patterns of how he breathed before each attack.

Meredith tried to wrestle himself free, but Sybilla caught his left hook with her right arm.

“She blocked that?!” Miné gasped.

Meredith let out a sharp breath.

Sybilla held his arm and refused to let go, pinning him down with the three working fingers on her left hand. “Look, I get that Monika’s hot shit an’ all…”

She built up strength in her right hand, the one with the knife.

She was summoning every ounce of combat prowess she’d built up in her training with Klaus.

“…but I came here to turn those power rankings on their GODDAMN HEADS!”

“And what of it?”

There was a shift in Meredith’s movements.

In a blink, he escaped Sybilla’s grip and dipped backward. Where earlier he’d been tracing circular arcs in the air with his saber, now he shifted gears completely and came straight at her.

When he did, the tip of his blade pierced Sybilla’s right shoulder.

“Wh_____________?”

Everything froze.

The knife tumbled from her hand and clattered to the floor with a dull clang.

“But I thought…you weren’t about stabbing…?”

“Did you seriously believe that?”

Meredith gave her a pitying look and wrenched his saber free from her shoulder. Pain radiated from the wound.

She clutched her shoulder and screamed.

She’d never felt anything like this before in her life, and she writhed on the ground in agony. She bit down on her lip, but no matter how hard she tried to fight through it, she couldn’t move her body. Instead, she just lay there enduring the pain as her head drooped on the ground in a pathetic semblance of a bow.

“We’re done here.” She could Meredith’s icy voice come from above her. “Stop resisting, and I’ll spare your life. I have questions for you.”

“________”

It was almost funny how badly she’d been thrashed. That hadn’t even been a proper fight. At no point had Meredith been taking her seriously. Not once had he used his gun, gone for her vitals with his saber, or called on his agents to back him up. Yet in spite of all that, she hadn’t even lasted five minutes.

What the hell, man? And here I was, thinkin’ I’d gotten stronger…

Her lips quivered in chagrin.

But I haven’t gotten shit! I look like an absolute fuckin’ chump!

Her body was riddled with wounds, and she could feel sweat and grit seeping into the broken skin. That pain made the facts crystal clear. Klaus could’ve won. Monika could’ve put up a better fight. But her? She’d gotten annihilated. She’d failed to put so much as a scratch on Meredith, she was hunched over like a caterpillar, and Meredith held her life in his hands. It was pathetic; there was no other word for it. Her teammates had overcome powerful foes, yet here she was, just as weak as ever.

“Hmph. The battlefield is no place for crying children.” Meredith sighed and stowed his saber back in its scabbard. “Let me tell you why it is you’ll never beat me.”

“………”

“Your infantile feelings of rivalry toward Flash Fire dull your movements. You think you can do anything she can, and it makes you overplay your hand like a fool.” When Meredith went on, he did so in a bellow loud enough it nearly shook the building. “Everything we do, we do for the Crown. If you thought that self-interested blade of yours could reach us, then think again!”

“………………………”

Sybilla had yet to lift her head from the ground, but when Meredith’s angry roar washed over her, her eyes went wide.

Now that he mentioned it, it should have been obvious that this was how things would play out.

The CIM had taken some embarrassing defeats courtesy of their Serpent mole, but their individual agents still boasted considerable potential. Even if Sybilla and Lily had been fighting together, there was no way they’d be able to match up to a CIM officer.

Sybilla’s fighting skills had a whole other level to them. However, she herself was unaware of that, and it was a level she’d yet to attain. She wouldn’t be able to until she properly confronted her past.

The CIM had Lamplight surrounded, and they weren’t going to be able to break through.

As a result, they wouldn’t be able to get to Klaus, and another tragedy was going to rear its ugly head.

There was just one person who could prevent that from happening. One person who could turn it all around…

“I just remembered somethin’,” she murmured.

It wasn’t the embarrassment of being scolded by her opponent in the middle of a fight that had led her to her revelation. And it wasn’t the hints of sympathy that had crept into Meredith’s voice as the seasoned spy had shouted at his novice counterpart, either. No, there was something that had stirred her heart more than her feelings of humiliation and powerlessness.

“There’s another guy who told me the same things you just did.”

Meredith regarded her with suspicion. “What are you talking about?”

His agents frowned as well. They could sense that there was something different about the way she was babbling.

Sybilla ignored them all. “He said it in the most annoying way, too. He was all like, ‘Don’t go obsessing over your academy grades. ♪’” She looked up and smiled. “But the funny thing is, he let himself get pinned down by those same narrow rankings he was talkin’ about. There was this dude on his team he couldn’t beat, and it drove him nuts. His teammate was a prodigy, and this guy just couldn’t keep up.”

She exhaled.

“He’s the one who taught me that one of my key weapons was bein’ able to coordinate with others.”

How did it feel when he passed that wisdom onto her? she wondered.

The man had trained like his life depended on it. He’d honed his social skills, his combat skills, anything he could find to add to his arsenal. Yet even after all that, he still couldn’t beat Avian’s boss, Vindo.

Just as Sybilla was no match for Monika, he was no match for Vindo.

Oh, damn, Sybilla thought, I never realized we had that in common.

Meredith frowned at her, annoyed by the fact that he had no idea what she was referring to. “Who are you even talking about—”

“THE GUY YOU FUCKERS KILLED!!”

Meredith let out a growl, and all the agents in the room, Miné included, gasped.

Then there was a sound from overhead—from the second floor of the building they were in. It sounded like something was shaking.

“What was that?” someone cried, and Meredith looked up at the ceiling.

Sybilla smiled and thought about “Lander” Vics—Avian’s combat specialist with a sharp tongue and bad habit of poking fun at people. Vics had once boasted the second-best marks out of the entire academy population. He was so handsome he could have passed as a movie star, and he thought little of most of the people around him.

He was also freakishly strong, a fact that Sybilla had learned when she battled him back in Longchon. He’d spent the entirety of their exchange period harassing Sybilla and dragging her to group dates, but he’d also taught her plenty about how to fight as a spy.

She thought back to the time she spent with him and spoke with conviction. “I’m no match for this guy. I need your help, Vics.”

Her legs felt like they were about to give out under her, but she stood back up all the same.

“We’re Lander and Pandemonium—and it’s time to get smashing and clean ’em out.”

Up on the second floor, a pair of spies smiled as they listened to the conversation taking place on the floor below.

“Look, Vics, she’s cooounting on you,” drawled “Feather” Pharma. She had long, wavy hair and a well-rounded figure. She looked like the very embodiment of sloth. She sat down on the window frame and gazed outside to savor the special night. “But who can blame her? They’re not strong enough yet, not enough to overcome the CIM. I mean, they even needed my help seeing through Miiiné’s lie.”

“Lander” Vics gave her a shrug. “You’re telling me. I swear, we can’t leave them on their own for a second. ♪”

Vics walked across the floor, scanning it as though searching for something before finally coming to a stop when he found it.

He took out his concealed brass knuckles and held them up high.

“You and me, Sybilla—let’s do this. Just this once, I’ll lend you a hand. ♪”

Then, with strength unbefitting his gentle features, he began smashing his target to bits.

When Sybilla stood back up, Meredith glared at her, flabbergasted. “What the hell are you talking about, girl?”

It was hard to blame him for his confusion. Sybilla was in no state to fight anymore. Her dominant hand was too weak to even hold a knife, and if she didn’t stanch her impaled shoulder soon, she was liable to bleed out.

The fight had long since been decided.

By all rights, what she should have been doing was throwing herself on the CIM’s mercy and giving them every last bit of intel she had—either that or trying to kill herself to carry out her duty as a spy and protect her nation’s secrets.

“You really thought that bluff would work? Everyone on Avian except Cloud Drift is supposed to be dead.” He blinked in bewilderment. “Coordinating with others? Don’t make me laugh. You don’t have any allies left.”

“Sure I do,” Sybilla shot back. “Us and Avian, we’re in this together.”

She didn’t move. She just stood tall with her feet planted on the ground and gave Meredith an intense stare.

Meredith let out an exasperated sigh. “I pity you. You’re so far gone you can’t even think straight.” He unhurriedly drew his saber back out of its scabbard. Then he took aim at Sybilla’s left shoulder and got ready to unleash another piercing thrust. “Finishing you will be a mercy. You and your ghosts will submit.”

That was when the ceiling broke.

“_____?!”

Meredith froze mid-windup.

The awful sound of rock cracking sounded out, and a moment later, the ceiling came thundering down on them. Plaster, concrete, and bundles of electrical wire descended from above.

Sybilla was already on the move. She dodged the rubble and charged across the room.

“B-but why?!”

Meredith acted fast, too. Rather than attacking, he devoted his full attention toward protecting his people. Some of his agents were slow to react, and he tackled them over toward the safety of the room’s pillars.

When the ceiling finished collapsing, right when he tried to go check his remaining agents’ safety, the onrushing figure seized her opportunity. Sybilla had circled into his blind spot during the disaster, and she threw an object at her distracted foe.

Acting fast, Meredith blocked it with a deft bit of swordsmanship.

The object turned out to be a perfume bottle. Meredith’s saber smashed through the glass with ease.

The liquid inside splashed all over his face.

“Rgh, poison?!”

Right before Lily bailed, she’d slipped Sybilla a bottle.

Meredith fell back and wiped his face. A few drops had gotten in his mouth. He grimaced.

“You forget, I’ve the antidote right—”

By the time he’d opened his eyes, Sybilla was already bearing down on him. She was too close for him to use his saber. She stretched her mangled left hand toward him.

“All I gotta do is steal it—”

“NOT ON MY WATCH!”

Meredith launched a hook at her.

His fist slammed into her side. He’d put all his strength into it, and the blow was a heavy one. It lifted her off the ground, then sent her rolling across the floor like a ball before smashing into a nearby pillar.

“One last act of defiance, huh? Perhaps there’s more to you than meets the eye.” He let out an impressed sigh. “I don’t know how you did it, but you brought down the ceiling somehow and used that opening to get poison into my system. I can see you planned to seal the deal by stealing my antidote…but that was where you failed.”

The perfume bottle in Meredith’s pocket was still safe and sound. He gulped down the tea inside it. It was the smart call, taking the antidote before the poison even had a chance to kick in.

After finishing off the bottle in a single swig, he gave his mouth a triumphant wipe with his hand. “Are we finally finished now? I really do need to get this interrogation started.”

Sybilla didn’t have the strength left to flee. She was sitting with her back to the pillar, her head slumped, and her legs outstretched.

“I really am good for nothin’.”

Her voice had no life in it.

There was blood streaming down her right arm, and two of the fingers on her left hand were broken. Her shredded clothes did little to hide her battered skin.

“And I really am no match for Monika. Shit sucks, but there’s no sense denyin’ it.”

She slowly raised her head.

Her face was sullied with blood and tears, but her smile was plain as day.

“I can’t even fool someone without coordinatin’ with my team to make it happen.”

Meredith froze.

He immediately knew what had happened. His eyes went wide.

“________!!”

The thing was, that wasn’t the antidote he just drank.

In the middle of their fight, Sybilla had stolen his antidote and swapped it out for a bottle full of poison.

Stealing things was what Pandemonium did best. Her new technique took her ability to divert her opponent’s attention and steal their things and reversed it so she could plant things on their person as well.

However, it wasn’t a move she could pull off solo. Sybilla didn’t have the brains to deceive her foes. If Lily hadn’t prepped the poison back there, Sybilla’s plan would have been dead on arrival.

She borrowed, she lent, and she shared. Her liecraft was born from coordinating with her teammates.

Theft × Replacement = Two Truths and a Lie.

That was poison Meredith just drank, not antidote. And it wasn’t the watered-down stuff Miné had gotten hit with. He might have gotten a few drops of antidote in his mouth earlier, but that was nothing compared to the amount of raw poison he’d just imbibed.

He doubled over.

“Don’t tell me that this was your plan all along—”

“We’re Flower Garden and Pandemonium—and it’s time to bloom out of control and clean ’em out.”

As Sybilla said the name of her absent teammate, she broke into a grin.

“I just swapped it.”

With that, the mighty foe that had forced even Monika to retreat lay prone before her.

As soon as Meredith’s large frame toppled over, the other Vanajin members came charging in. Sybilla’s body was broken, and the other agents were intent on finishing her off.

Sure enough, victory was beyond her. Her defeat was written in stone.

Now, though, she could at least open a dialogue.

“No one move!” She held up her left hand. “One more step, and I smash the antidote.”

In it, she was holding the vial with the antidote.

As far as threats went, that one held weight. The Vanajin agents froze. Even if they tried to shoot her, the impact from her dropping the vial would be enough to break it, too.

“I need you all to listen. There really is a mole in the CIM. We had nothin’ to do with Tunekeeper’s agent gettin’ murdered!” she cried. “Who’d the report come from? Your team, or someone else?!”

She still didn’t have any evidence she could show them to back her story up. However, the balance of power had shifted. Right now, she held their superior officer’s life in her hands. Protecting confidential information was their job, sure, but there was no way they would just cut their boss loose at a moment’s notice.

“ANSWER ME!” The blood loss was making her head go fuzzy, but she gritted her teeth and raised her voice. “What are you people plotting?!”

In the end, it was Meredith who spoke. “Weren’t Lamplight the ones who tried to fool us first?” he grunted through the pain. “We have intel suggesting that Bonfire has ties to Serpent. I saw the evidence myself.”

“…What?”

“That’s why Miné was secretly getting ready to take you out.”

Sybilla was struck speechless at how outrageous the accusation was. Was that what the CIM believed?

“There’s no way. That doesn’t even make sense…”

“Show me some proof that the claims are unfounded, then. You could just be lying to save your own skin—”

“If I cared about savin’ my skin, I wouldn’t have fought you and gotten stabbed through the fuckin’ arm!”

When Sybilla shouted, Meredith nodded like it had all just clicked into place for him. “Right.” He bit down on his lip in frustration. “It would seem we’ve all been played for fools. That’s odd. Mr. Nathan should have been able to spot the lie…”

He still had reservations, but it would appear that he’d figured out who the traitor was.

“Who was it? Who’s the one spreadin’ that bullshit?”

As soon as Meredith told her the name, a mechanical sound buzzed from his pocket. He was getting a message on his radio. The buzzing was soon followed by someone’s voice.

Once it was over, Meredith gave Sybilla a grave look.

“One of my agents just reported in. Bonfire disappeared from his holding cell.”

“_____?!”

Gathering the last of her strength in her legs, Sybilla leaped at him.

“What you do you think you’re doing?” the Vanajin agents cried. They rushed in to try to capture her, but she tossed them the antidote and ripped the radio out of Meredith’s pocket. “I gave Miné’s radio to Lily and Sara! How do I contact ’em?”

Meredith immediately picked up on what she was getting at. “Show her,” he ordered the others.

As soon as Miné showed Sybilla how to operate the special CIM radio, she immediately shouted into it. “Lily, Sara!! Do you read me?!”

Lily’s voice promptly crackled back. “Sybilla?! Are you okay?!”

“I’m fine, but that’s not important,” she replied. “What’s the situation on your end?”

“Right, yeah, it’s bad! Teach isn’t here in the building anymore! The Belias agents who were guarding him have no idea what’s going on!”

The good news was, the others had successfully reached their destination. Right before they went in to save Klaus, though, they’d noticed that something was off about his guards.

“W-we just spotted a shady-looking car drive off, so we’re circling back to your position. It’s so dark and foggy that—”

“Follow that car!!” Sybilla bellowed at the top of her lungs.

The way things stood, there was a very real chance that the two of them might be the only ones capable of catching up to Klaus. If nothing else, Sybilla wasn’t going to be able to help in the mission anymore.

“Huh?”

“The bad guys beat us to the punch! Whatever you do, don’t lose that car!! White Spider’s mole is—”

She told them the name, but that was her breaking point. It had been a long time coming, but her consciousness finally slipped away. Mortified and frustrated, she left the rest in her teammates’ hands.

An automobile raced through the foggy night.

Its engine was so quiet, it was nearly silent. That was due to special tech, no doubt of the CIM’s design.

Klaus turned to the woman sitting beside him in the back seat. “So what’s the big deal? Why am I getting transferred?”

He’d been ordered out of his holding cell just ten minutes prior. After being told to put his arms behind his back so they could handcuff him with a full five new sets of shackles, they’d ushered him into a car.

No one had told Klaus anything about the transfer ahead of time. He was the bait designed to lure out White Spider, so it made little sense to move him.

He shot a glare at the woman who’d dragged him there. “And with only a pair of guards on my detail, no less. You’re really keeping a tight lid on this operation.”

“There’s been an emergency,” Amelie replied bluntly. “I’ll fill you in on the details later.”

She said little, and she was holding her gun at the ready. If Klaus tried to resist, she would shoot him on the spot.

At the moment, he had little choice but to go along with her orders.

For the last several days, Klaus hadn’t received a single bit of information from the outside world. The CIM hadn’t left so much as a newspaper in his holding cell. He had no grasp of what the situation at large looked like, and he had no basis with which to argue against her orders.

It was nearly ten at night, and the city of Hurough was shrouded in fog. Eventually, the car turned onto a factory lot. There were train tracks leading out from the building. It was a garage where they repaired locomotives.

The car pulled up alongside a steam locomotive.

The locomotive was massive. It looked like a huge black pillar that had been knocked onto its side. That was how they made them in the Fend Commonwealth.

“The steam locomotive was born right here in this nation, you know,” Amelie said, suddenly feeling talkative. “Some forty years ago, we exported them to your very own Din Republic. What do you think? This one boasts the traditional elegance of my nation’s 4-6-0 wheel arrangement, and its boiler can reach over seventeen kilos of pressure. I don’t imagine the Republic has anything that compares.”

“You sound oddly proud about that. I never took you for such a rail buff.”

“I’m allowed to have a hobby or two,” she replied, sounding a little embarrassed. She nodded toward the train. “We’re getting on.”

Doing so would allow them to transport him in utmost secrecy.

Behind the train itself, there were a pair of passenger cars hooked to its back. Bright lights were visible through the cracks in their windows.

There was no platform, so they had to use a ladder to board the train. That said, climbing a ladder without being able to use his hands proved rather challenging. “Please, I’m sure this is nothing to you,” Amelie prodded him, and he eventually managed to keep his balance long enough to get on board.

The driver who brought them there didn’t join them, and once Klaus and Amelie got in the passenger car, the locomotive began moving. Klaus couldn’t see them, but he assumed the train was operating on a skeleton crew. As he understood it, a train needed a minimum of two people in order to run—an engineer to drive, and a stoker to manage its power. They must have been up in the engine room.

After the train got moving, it quickly picked up speed. In what seemed like no time at all, it cleared the factory and linked up with the standard rail network.

At this speed, jumping off won’t be an option.

Once the train hit sixty miles an hour, jumping off with his arms bound would be suicide, even for him.

Klaus looked at the scenery outside the window and got to work analyzing the situation. Escaping the train wouldn’t be possible, not unless it stopped. And he couldn’t expect any help from the outside, either.

He sat down in one of the passenger seats and let out a sigh. “You really wanted some alone time with me, didn’t you?”

“That’s right. I did.” Amelie didn’t deny it. She sat down in a separate row from Klaus and looked straight ahead. “I wanted to share my answer with you.” Her lips parted. “As I recall, you were the one who advised me to question everything I knew.”

That does sound familiar, Klaus mused. It was back when the two of them were searching for Monika. The double whammy of losing Belias to Lamplight and discovering that there was a traitor in the CIM had left her reeling, and Klaus had told her that as an inconsequential piece of advice to a colleague.

“I’ve been thinking about that a lot these past few days. And I’ve been watching the way you all fight.” She continued staring straight ahead. “The only desire I ever had was to protect this beautiful country that Her Majesty the Queen rules over and where family and loved ones live in peace. I asked myself, what was the best way to achieve that? Should I really just keep my head down and follow my orders? Is that the right thing to do? The thought was never far from my mind.”

“Did you find an answer?”

“I did.” Amelie’s expression softened. “And I made the same decision as your mentor.”

Before Klaus had a chance to ask her what she meant by that, the passenger car’s door slid open, and a man came in from the engine room. He was holding a gun in his hand and walking with a spring in his step.

“Been a while since I saw you in the flesh, ya monster.”

His was a face Klaus would never forget. That was the Serpent member who made a traitor of his mentor, who wrecked Inferno, and who eventually shot Klaus’s mentor dead. And to top it all off, he’d led Klaus’s pupil Monika to ruin.

Klaus gave the man a murderous look. “White Spider.”

“This’ll be one for the history books.” White Spider stuck out his tongue. “It’s the day that Inferno finally dies.”