Just a moment ago.
Su Yu had bent low, hugging the wall, slinking out through the doorframe with its kicked-off hinges in a posture utterly unbefitting the owner of a gaming company.
The sound of his leather shoes on the corridor floor grew faster and more distant, until it became the rhythm of a hundred-meter sprint and vanished at the far end of the hall.
Inside the restroom, that suffocating deathly silence settled in once more.
Kevin turned slowly, facing these two elders who were still very much stuck in a crashed state.
Siegfried's unfocused blue eyes finally, with great difficulty, snapped back into focus.
He stared hard at this son who stood half a head taller than himself, as if he had ten thousand questions to hurl, only to discover in despair that he had no idea where to even begin.
Theresa, too, had at last recovered a shred of her senses from the nuclear-grade blow of "my best friend actually had a daughter behind my back."
She drew a deep breath, her chest heaving violently, just about to open her mouth and roar.
But Kevin spoke first.
"If you think what I just said was a lie."
His cadence was exactly the same as when he ran the weekly meeting at the company, flat and even, as though reciting a dull server-maintenance memo without a trace of feeling.
"Then you can go buy tickets for the next international flight right now and have Mother fly straight to Arc City. In front of every one of you, she can run one more maximum-precision genetic comparison against Kiana."
"The truth will come to light on its own."
The sound of those words landing wasn't loud at all.
But the damage they dealt in this sealed restroom was ten times more devastating than that "blood sister" nuke from moments before.
Because it welded shut every retreat these two elders might have used to hypnotize themselves.
Theresa's hand fell limply to her side.
She stared blankly at Kevin's face, so certain it showed not a single flaw, her chest feeling as if it were plugged tight by a wad of water-soaked sponge.
As the Auntie who had watched Kevin grow up, she knew this nephew who seemed to be missing some kind of emotional nerve all too well.
From childhood on, Kevin had absolutely never been a boy who lied.
It wasn't that his moral floor was especially lofty, but purely because—he found lying too much of a bother.
Telling one lie required a hundred stories to patch it up, and fabricating stories burned an enormous number of brain cells. Kevin had always believed that wasting such precious energy on making up nonsense was less worthwhile than downing another couple cups of piping-hot sixty-five-degree wolfberry tea.
If even this "lie-proof insulator" of a nephew dared to state those two words, "blood sister," with such certainty—dared even to play the ultimate trump card of "bring Cecilia herself to Arc City for a face-to-face genetic test"…
Theresa's despairing gaze fell once more on the test report lying on the floor, seeming to mock her intelligence.
99.99%.
Could it be… that Cecilia really…
Theresa shook her head hard. She felt her entire worldview teetering wildly on the brink of collapse, and she didn't dare push the thought even one second further.
On the other side, Siegfried's reaction had veered onto a completely opposite, parallel track from Theresa's.
In the instant Kevin's words fell, this veteran agent of a hundred battles—his brain, marinated for years in conspiracy theories—had already completed another round of absurd high-speed logical computation.
Cecilia.
They actually dared to drag out Cecilia's name as a shield.
Siegfried's back molars ground together with an audible grinding sound.
An agent's instinct let him instantly "see through" all of it.
This was absolutely a chain-linked self-sacrifice scheme cooked up between that bastard kid Su Yu and Theresa, the Anti-Entropy mole!
They had deliberately made the brainwashed Kevin bring up Cecilia's name, even fabricating the illusion of a "willing face-to-face confrontation," all to cast a long line and hook a big fish!
With this vicious layered trap, they meant to lure Cecilia—so far away overseas—all the way into the biochemical demon-den that was Arc City!
The moment Cecilia touched down, this married pair, Schicksal's two most elite S-rank combatants, would both fall into Anti-Entropy's grasp at once.
And by then, Schicksal's entire intelligence network across the Shenzhou region would suffer a catastrophic, total paralysis!
It was too damn brilliant!
Siegfried shot a vicious, complicated glare at Theresa, still standing there dazed beside him.
This cursed little wintermelon—her Oscar-caliber acting was even more unfathomable than I imagined!
That shrewish act just now, flying into a rage over Cecilia, even bare-handedly tearing off a bathroom door to fight me to the death…
It had actually fooled me, an S-rank agent, through a full ten minutes of micro-expression profiling!
No more waiting.
Drag it out any longer, and once Anti-Entropy's reinforcements surrounded this esports center, neither he nor his son would walk out of here alive today.
"I don't care what deranged tricks you lunatics are pulling."
Siegfried lunged forward a great stride and clamped a death-grip around Kevin's left forearm.
"Today! Even if it costs this old life of mine! I am taking you out of this demon-den!"
Kevin's brow furrowed.
He was about to pull his arm back when Bronie's voice came through his earpiece.
"Kevin! Don't be reckless! Whatever you do, don't go head-to-head with that psycho old man of yours!"
"Just play along for now and let him take you out! He's in an extreme high-strung state of persecution paranoia. If he really snaps, and he pulls a gun and opens fire right here in the backstage of a press event crawling with media and tens of thousands of spectators—"
"—then the open-beta grand ceremony that BOSS poured his heart and soul into for months turns into a global bloody terror incident!"
"The base chip inside that comms terminal on you carries a top-grade military GPS positioning system."
"I'll be locked onto your coordinates twenty-four hours a day through the Sky Eye network. Your job right now is to smooth his fur, play nice, and lead him out of the Skyward eSports Center! Understood?!"
Kevin closed his eyes briefly and let out a long, murky breath.
Then he opened them again and calmly looked at Siegfried, who stood braced as if facing a mortal enemy.
"Fine."
"I'll go with you."
The moment those five simple words came out, Siegfried froze completely.
The hand gripping Kevin's arm in a death-lock loosened half an inch on its own, out of sheer astonishment.
He had already rehearsed one hundred and eight of the worst-case breakout plans in his head.
If Kevin, deeply brainwashed, put up fierce resistance, he had even steeled himself to harden his heart and use Schicksal's highest-standard tactical chokehold technique to knock his own son out cold, then sling him over his shoulder and cut his way out.
He knew such a brutal method would absolutely pour salt on a father-son relationship already frozen to zero, and might even leave irreversible physical trauma.
But in this biochemical meat-grinder where death lurked at every turn, so long as he could get his son out alive, he didn't care about anything else.
What he never expected was that Kevin didn't resist at all.
Not even the slightest hint of a struggle.
He'd even nodded in cooperation.
Siegfried stared into Kevin's eyes for two seconds.
Those eyes were the same as always, expressionless, like two pools of dead water without a ripple.
No fear of a lie being exposed.
No fury at being hauled away by force.
And none of that vacant, unfocused daze of dilated pupils that came with deep control by biochemical drugs.
This was just the ordinary, perfectly normal, even boringly normal Kevin.
Siegfried's throat bobbed.
He didn't dwell on it, just dragged Kevin toward the door.
"Stop right there! Siegfried, you bastard, where are you taking Kevin?!"
Theresa finally jolted awake from her shock, let out a furious roar, and started forward on her short little legs to block him.
A hand reached in from the side and clasped her wrist.
It was Himeko.
This one lone sober spectator in the whole room had finally finished her bag of shredded squid.
She balled the empty wrapper up and stuffed it into her pocket, using her other hand to hold Theresa back.
"Give up the chase, Headmistress."
"Let go of me! Himeko, have you lost your mind?! You'd just watch him carry Kevin off?!"
"What else? If you catch up, what are you going to do? Have another brawl in the backstage of a press event bristling with cameras, in front of thousands of rabid fans and reporters? Or do you want the whole world to know the Kaslana family staged a trashy secret-daughter reunion drama in the men's room?"
Theresa yanked furiously against the grip twice—and didn't budge an inch.
Only then did she realize with shock that this landlady, who usually seemed to do nothing but drink and sleep, had unbelievable strength in her hand.
"Things have already blown up to this point."
Himeko let go and leaned against the wall, wiping the crumbs of shredded squid from the corner of her mouth with her sleeve.
"You can stop him for a moment, but not forever. Fire can't be wrapped in paper. Call Cecilia here for a face-to-face confrontation, and everything will sort itself out, won't it?"
Theresa stood before the kicked-in doorframe, staring at the far end of the corridor where Siegfried and Kevin had vanished.
Her hands were trembling.
Out of fear.
What if Cecilia said "yes"?
What if Cecilia had really known about Kiana all along, and had never told her?
That loneliness of being utterly abandoned by the entire world sent a suffocating wave of vertigo through Theresa.
Theresa pulled her phone from her pocket.
When the screen lit up, her finger hovered above the contact list, hanging there for a long, long time.
Himeko leaned against the wall and watched her quietly, neither rushing her nor mocking her.
She only sighed, faint and imperceptible, thinking to herself, Little Brother Su Yu, now you owe me one. Talking down Theresa, who charges full speed ahead and is as stubborn as a mule—now that's a truly thankless job.
In the restroom there remained only the hum of the ventilation duct, and the cheering from the distant front lobby, mostly muffled by the soundproof panels.
Theresa finally steeled her heart and pressed the dial button.
Ring—
Ring—
That long, drawn-out ringtone flayed mercilessly at Theresa's nerves with every passing second.
"Hello? Theresa? It's so late, what made you think to call me?"
The voice on the other end was gentle as a March breeze.
Theresa swallowed.
"Cecilia… hear me out first."
"What I'm about to tell you next might be… very shocking."
"You absolutely, absolutely have to take a big deep breath first. If you can, find a chair and sit down. I'm afraid that after you hear it, you'll faint dead away from fright…"
On the other end, Cecilia paused, then laughed. "What's happened? Don't tell me Siegfried has gone and made trouble for you again?"
Theresa drew another deep breath, and finally, with immense difficulty, forced the question out.
"Do you happen to have a sixteen-year-old daughter, named Kiana Kaslana?"
Dead silence.
Theresa felt as though she could hear Cecilia's breathing quicken through the receiver. She closed her eyes.
About five seconds passed.
From the receiver came a single interjection from her foolish best friend—full of confusion, and utterly from the heart.
"Huh?"
Down in the parking garage.
Siegfried dragged Kevin the whole way, dodging three patrol teams of security personnel and twelve surveillance cameras.
To an S-rank agent, these things were little more than decoration.
He fished a car key from the inner pocket of his work coveralls and pressed it.
Deep in the garage, the headlights of a black Maybach lit up.
The car's exterior was sprayed in the most understated matte black paint. Parked out on the street, it looked no different from those ordinary nouveau-riche business sedans.
But Siegfried knew the terrifying truth of this mobile fortress all too well.
The chassis armor and bulletproof glass of this car had all undergone the highest-grade special modification at Schicksal's military lab.
And in the hidden false compartment of the trunk, there was even a complete set of tactical gear stashed year-round—enough to sustain him alone in polar conditions for half a month—along with a mobile arsenal.
Siegfried wasted no words. He yanked open the astonishingly heavy bulletproof passenger door, shoved Kevin inside, then swiftly slid into the driver's seat.
He jammed the custom key roughly into the ignition and cranked it all the way.
VROOM—!!!
That twin-turbocharged monster of an engine erupted in an instant, a low roar like a beast's snarl, shaking dust loose across the entire underground garage.
Without hesitation, Siegfried threw it into drive and stomped his right foot down on the Throttle.
The heavy Maybach's tires shrieked against the basement's epoxy floor, and like a tiger loosed from its cage, it tore up the ramp toward the surface exit.
The savage rain outside seemed to have found an outlet, hurling itself with icy, howling wind against the Maybach's sturdy windshield.
The world outside had turned utterly upside down.
Ink-black, heavy storm clouds, like collapsing city walls, pressed Arc City's once-dazzling neon night sky down to an impossibly low level.
This rain wasn't "falling" at all.
It was "pounding."
Dense raindrops the size of soybeans hammered wildly against the Maybach's body.
Siegfried pushed the high-power wipers straight to their maximum setting.
The two wiper blades swept left and right across the windshield like things gone mad.
In the instant of each pass, the driver could just barely make out the asphalt ahead, a dozen meters off, completely drowned under standing water.
And in the sliver of less than a tenth of a second before the wipers came back, the entire field of vision was again smeared into a lethal curtain of water by freshly hammering rain.
The Maybach roared out of the basement and, without slowing, merged onto the storm-lashed main artery of the city.
Inside the sealed cabin, no one said a word.
Siegfried gripped the wheel with both hands, eyes fixed on the rain-blurred road ahead.
He still hadn't changed out of his work coveralls, the collar hanging open to reveal the white undershirt beneath.
The gun at his waist had been shoved into the gap between the driver's seat and the door.
In the passenger seat.
Kevin held the thermos he'd carried out the whole way. The lid still wasn't screwed tight, and wolfberry water seeped through the gap, leaving a pale brown streak across the back of his hand. He didn't wipe it.
Ahead, a red light glowed through the curtain of rain.
The Maybach braked to a steady halt at the intersection.
The Maybach stopped firmly.
The wipers still swung mechanically left and right, giving off a rhythmic squeak.
Siegfried's fingers tapped the wheel twice.
Then he turned his head and looked toward the passenger seat.
Kevin was looking straight ahead.
There was nothing ahead—only the traffic light, washed blurry by the rain, and on the opposite lane, the crimson afterimages of taillights left behind by the occasional car speeding past.
"Kevin."
Kevin didn't move.
"Just how long are you going to keep hiding it from me?"
As those words left Siegfried's mouth, even he felt his throat tighten a little.
There was too much he wanted to ask.
He wanted to ask when Kevin had learned of Kiana's existence.
He wanted to ask why Kevin hadn't told him.
He wanted to ask whether Kevin had truly been swept up in that insane plan.
He wanted to ask whether Kevin had been living well all these years—whether he'd eaten enough, dressed warmly enough, whether anyone had bullied him.
But all these words clogged his throat, and in the end only one pale, powerless line squeezed out: "Just how long are you going to keep hiding it from me?"
Kevin held the thermos.
His fingers paused against the cup wall.
The wipers dragged across the windshield with a sharp scrape.
Slowly, he set the thermos into the cup holder on the passenger side.
The motion was very slow.
The base of the cup sank into the rubber pad of the holder with a faint click.
Still he did not turn to look at the father beside him, whose whole face was twisted in pain.
His gaze, from first to last, rested on the signal light ahead, scoured by the merciless rain into nothing but a mournful smear of red glow.
"And what about you?"
Three words.
Siegfried's fingers stopped on the wheel.
"Just how long do you intend to keep hiding it from me?"
In the instant those words left his mouth.
The temperature inside the cabin seemed to plunge ten degrees.
"Schicksal organization, S-rank agent."
As Kevin recited those words, Siegfried's hands snapped tight on the wheel.
"Internal top-secret operation designation, K-0017."
The wipers swept furiously across the windshield once more, wiping away the last faint trace of light before Siegfried's eyes.
"Am I right, Mr. Siegfried Kaslana?"
The red light shone through the rain-covered windshield, shattering into countless tiny red specks that fell across Siegfried's face.
Those specks cast themselves mercilessly over Siegfried's cold face, which had drained of all color in an instant.
His pupils had contracted to pinpoints.
In the cabin there remained only the sound of rain hammering the roof.
Dense. Muffled.
Just like… the solid world Siegfried had painstakingly built over twenty years of lies.
In this rainy night, bit by bit…
crashing down with a roar.
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