05:13 | Adrian's Safehouse, Metro City
The nightmare spat Adrian out with a sound like a dog coughing up a knife. He lay there, tangled in damp sheets, his heart doing a tap-dance routine on his ribs. Vivienne's ghost was a real nag, even in death.
Mistake. Always a mistake.
He pressed his palms into his eyes. "Noted," he rasped at the ceiling. "Any other feedback before I start my day?"
His body, ever the overachiever, decided the best rebuttal was unconsciousness, and pulled him under before he could file a complaint.
08:59 | Adrian's Safehouse, Metro City
Bleep!—bleep!—bleep!
The alarm was committing a hate crime against silence. Adrian murdered it with one slap. Every muscle in his body filed a collective grievance. Moving from the bed to the floor felt like a hostage extraction messy, painful, and probably unnecessary but happening anyway.
The shower was a lukewarm insult. The mirror showed him a man held together by caffeine and poor decisions. "Radiant," he told his reflection. It didn't disagree, but it also didn't look convinced.
The drive to HQ was a symphony of grey. The city hummed along, blissfully unaware that one of its grumpier defenders was running on fumes, grief, and a deeply personal grudge against the concept of morning.
09:34 | NPU Headquarters, Floor 2, Metro City
Elias was a statue of a man who'd rather be anywhere else. Adrian fell into the chair opposite him. It groaned like it shared his sentiment.
"So," Adrian croaked. "What's the vibe today? Upbeat? Catastrophic? Morally ambiguous?"
"Marcus is dead," Elias said, skipping the small talk like it was a burning hurdle. "Four hours after capture. You saw the picture."
Adrian studied a fascinating scratch on the desk. He nodded once. Words felt unnecessary. Expensive, even.
"The files you grabbed are compromised," Elias continued, his voice flat as old soda. "Fake. Useless."
A dry, crackling sound escaped Adrian — not quite a laugh, more like grief trying to wear a comedy mask. "Wow. 'Compromised.' What a sweet, gentle word for 'He died for a paperweight.'" He leaned forward. "I want to see it. I want to see the nothing he bought with his life."
Elias looked at him. He saw the grief, sure, but underneath, the bright, jagged edge of a man who needed to see the proof of his own failure. Needed to touch it, make it real.
Denying him would be like arguing with a landmine technically possible, but inadvisable.
He sighed, a sound of profound administrative suffering, and hit his intercom. "Kaela. Lab Three. Show him the party favors."
09:52 | NPU Forensics Lab 3
The lab smelled like burnt coffee and dashed hopes. Kaela, the tech, looked like she'd been in a fistfight with a server rack and lost. The stolen files sat under a light, stacked in a neat, mocking tower.
"You wanted the tour," Elias said, arms crossed. "Here's the tour."
Kaela didn't look up from her station. She slid the first folder open with a gloved hand. "It's a real page-turner. For about seven pages." She pulled out the top document and angled it under the lamp. The Kovacs file. All there: biography, psych eval, the whole rise-and-fall-of-an-empire tragedy. "See? Legit. Terrifying. A+ villain material."
Adrian leaned closer. "So it's not fake."
"Oh, the first few folders are pristine," Kaela said, her voice dripping with the enthusiasm of a tax auditor explaining audit penalties. She flipped through them one by one. Vale. D'Aramond. Rhein. The Marcus Varias evidence file, with its 100% casualty rates and mafia clean-up crews. All of it. Complete. Damning.
"Kovacs, Vale, D'Aramond, Rhein, the test subject protocols, the enhancement serums, the viral strains, it's all here. Every horrifying detail Marcus already sent us before they caught him. They included it to make it look believable."
She paused, her expression somewhere between impressed and disgusted. "It's actually brilliant bait. You see real documents, you think the whole stack is gold. Except..."
She pulled a page from the second half of the stack and held it up to the light. "Paper's wrong. Too smooth. No chain-of-custody watermark. Typeface is off by half a point— you wouldn't notice unless you'd been staring at Nexo documents for three years like I have." She dropped it on the table. "These weren't pulled from a vault. They were printed last night."
Adrian's jaw tightened. "So they gave us exactly what we already had."
"Worse," Kaela said. "They gave you what you already had, then filled the rest with poison pills. Forgeries. Look." She angled a page under UV light. Nothing. No security seal. No date stamp. "If you'd tried to use any of this 'new' intel in court or operational planning, it would've fallen apart under scrutiny. You'd look incompetent. The case would collapse. They'd walk."
"Then what's the problem?" Adrian's voice was tight, wound like a spring about to snap. "We still have the original evidence Marcus sent. That's real."
"The problem," Kaela said, flipping to the final page of the last folder, "is the autograph." She turned it toward him.
In the margin, written in crisp, mocking handwriting:
;)
A semicolon. A parenthesis. A winking smiley face.
"Found it tucked in the binding," Kaela said. "Couldn't resist leaving a signature, I guess."
The room was quiet. The hum of the machines sounded like snickering.
Adrian stared at it. The mountain of evidence the real evidence Marcus had died to send them was still intact, still damning. But this? This stack of paper he'd risked everything to steal? It was a monument to their hubris, a calling card wrapped in Marcus's blood.
He started to laugh. It was a thin, ragged sound, like paper tearing. "Ha… ha." He pointed at the page. "A winky face. They killed him and signed the receipt with a winky face. That's not a threat. That's a love letter from a sociopath, whoever it was must've been real obsessed with Marcus."
Elias's face was carved from granite that had given up on joy years ago. "The real documents were already ours Marcus sent them before they caught him. They knew we had them. So they let you walk out with a briefcase full of bait. They knew exactly which files he copied. They salted the rest with forgeries. Then they watched you steal it." He paused. "This wasn't a leak, Adrian. It was a controlled demolition."
"So he didn't die for nothing," Adrian said, the laugh dying, leaving his voice cold and sharp as a scalpel. "He already gave us everything before they killed him. This?" He gestured at the stack. "This is just them pissing on his grave. 'Congratulations, you solved the puzzle. Your prize is realizing you already had the answer, and we killed him anyway.' That's…" His voice cracked slightly. "That's just rude."
Kaela pulled the page back, sliding the folder closed. "The resources to build forgeries this sophisticated, just to make a point? It's not security. It's performance art. Psychological warfare with a budget and a sick sense of humor. The auction tonight isn't them panicking. It's the next act. They've already written off what Marcus leaked. Now they're selling the next generation."
Adrian turned from the table. The winking emoticon was burned into his brain, right next to Marcus's hopeful, dead smile. The receipt for a life, paid in full with a smirk and a practical joke.
He walked out. The hallway felt cheap and fake, like a movie set.
Elias followed. "The board is set."
"Oh, I see the board," Adrian said, not looking back. "They're not playing chess. They're playing tic-tac-toe on the wall of a gas station bathroom. And they still think they're geniuses."
10:15 | Elias's Office
Back in the clinical chill of the office, Elias didn't offer a seat. "The intel Marcus sent is solid. The threat is confirmed. And they're celebrating by selling the next batch. Your mourning period is officially cut short. New mission."
He slid a thick, fancy folder across the desk — the kind of folder that means someone's night is about to get significantly worse.
FILE: VEIL SOCIETY GALA - IRONCLIFF CITY // CLASSIFIED ACCESS
⚠ WARNING: Highly confidential. Exposure to unauthorized personnel will be met with lethal countermeasures.
EVENT: Veil Society Gala, Night of [CURRENT DATE], Ironcliff City.
PURPOSE: Auctioning Enhancement Programs, Viral Prototypes, and Classified Antidote Fragments. Attendees: High net-worth individuals, corrupt corporates, and international dignitaries with ties to clandestine operations.
SECURITY PROTOCOLS: Private security personnel, biometric verification, restricted airspace. Electronic surveillance: Total.
TARGETS OF INTEREST: Enhancement Serum (Prototype), Viral Sample Vx-1.089, Classified Auction Ledger.
ADVISORY: Attendees are armed. Expect psychological manipulation, bribery, and lethal contingencies.
Elias delivered the summary like he was reading a pest control manual. "Black-tie auction. They're selling the apocalypse by the vial. You go, you spot the merchandise, you tag the buyers, you try not to die in a monkey suit."
Adrian let out a sound like a shovel scraping concrete. "A party. Perfect. My emotional state is 'haunted crater,' but sure, let's do canapés." He flicked the file. "Who's my wingman? Please tell me it's Garrick. I need someone to critique the shrimp tower with me while we contemplate the end of civilization."
"Not Garrick." A second, plainer file followed the first.
FILE: AVELINE - C.R.I.M.E.S DIVISION AGENT // HIGH-PRIORITY PROFILE
Profile ID: FMC-032
Name: Aveline
Age: 32
Lineage: Half-Canadian, half-Russian, part Italian
Languages: English, Hindi, Marathi, Italian, Russian
Background:
At age 13, killed her abusive mother; demonstrated complete emotional detachment during questioning and trial.
· Incarcerated in juvenile system.
· No documented remorse. Lacks empathy; behaves pragmatically. Highly manipulative, exceptionally calculative.
· Recruited into C.R.I.M.E Division for proficiency in covert operations, psychological resilience, and operational detachment.
Status: Active field agent, C.R.I.M.E Division.
He turned the page.
FILE: C.R.I.M.E DIVISION — NPU OPERATIONAL BRANCH
⚠ TOP SECRET // ACCESS LEVEL: NPU AGENT-3
CLASSIFIED STATUS:
Fully operational. Eyes everywhere. No public acknowledgment.
Specializes in containment, infiltration, intelligence, and extraction of high-risk assets.
Recruitment: Psychopathy, detachment, and operational adaptability considered assets. Emotional empathy is optional; tactical ruthlessness required.
MISSION PROTOCOL:
1. Assessment: Candidates evaluated on psychological durability, combat efficiency, field improvisation.
2. Recruitment: Only operatives capable of operating beyond moral and ethical boundaries selected.
3. Enhancement Trials: Agents may undergo experimental procedures to enhance reflexes, endurance, and cognitive processing.
4. Deployment: Covert operations globally, often under falsified identities or proxies.
RECRUITMENT HISTORY:
Agents include former criminals, black-badge specialists, ex-prison operatives.
The division relies on extreme adaptability; conventional morality is a hindrance.
SECURITY & ENCRYPTION:
Files are encrypted via triple-layer NPU protocols.
Unauthorized access = immediate termination of clearance; black-ops response initiated.
NOTES:
Agents are trained to survive alone, think three steps ahead of any threat, and manipulate scenarios for maximum gain.
Operational oversight minimal micromanagement seen as interference.
Contingency protocols in place for all breaches.
ALERT:
C.R.I.M.E Division agents are not allies in traditional sense. Trust is earned only by results. One mistake = mission failure = expendable.
Adrian scanned it. Thirteen years old. Killed her mother. No remorse. C.R.I.M.E. Division.
He looked up. "My new partner's résumé reads like a true crime podcast. The kind with ominous music and ad breaks for therapy apps."
"She's efficient," Elias said, as if discussing a particularly reliable dishwasher.
"Fantastic. 'Efficient.' I'll put that on the wedding invitations." Adrian tossed the file back. "So the job interview is just 'How's your trauma? Can you hold a knife? Great, you're hired.' Inspiring recruitment strategy."
"Trust her to get the job done. Or don't. Just stay out of her way. The mission comes first. Your feelings are not on the agenda."
"Wonderful. A partnership built on mutual disregard and possible homicide. My favorite kind." Adrian slumped back. "Let me guess the catch. I don't have a ticket."
A microscopic twitch near Elias's mouth might have been a smile, if smiles were cold and deadly and made of spite. "Aveline does. You're her plus-one. You're playing her date, Adrian. Boyfriend duties."
For one glorious second, Adrian considered leaping out the window.
He stood up, his bones protesting like union workers on strike. He turned at the door, fixing Elias with a look that could spoil milk and possibly cause permanent psychological damage.
"Let me get this straight. You want me — a man currently powered by spite and bad memories — to pretend to be romantically involved with a human weapon who thinks 'date night' means 'night we orchestrate who dies first'?"
Elias's expression didn't change. "Try not to step on her feet while dancing."
16:17 | Adrian's Safehouse, Metro City
Adrian had practically melted into his sad couch, the TV muttering to itself about weather patterns no one cared about. The pre-mission routine felt like rehearsing for a play where everyone dies in the third act and the reviews are terrible.
Jacket. Gun. Tie. He attempted a suave, charming grin in his dark window reflection.
It looked like a grimace. A constipated grimace. The kind of expression that cleared elevators.
"Swoon-worthy," he told the empty room.