Alice's voice echoed through the dilapidated apartment, carrying the cold detachment of an outsider.
This reminded Wesley and Cross that there was still a beautiful ticking time bomb here.
Fox.
She had only been disarmed by Alice; she hadn't lost her freedom.
At this moment, she was leaning quietly against the dust-covered window.
Outside the window was a gray sky; the vibration of a train roaring past on the tracks caused dust to fall from the window frame, dancing in the dim light.
The light outlined the beautiful contours of her profile, making her look as calm as a bottomless ancient pool, or like a famous blade hidden in its scabbard.
Her gaze was unfocused, as if it had pierced through these dilapidated walls to look into some unreachable void.
"Truly a brilliant speech, worthy of an Oscar."
Fox finally spoke.
Her voice was hoarse and magnetic, laced with sarcasm.
"Cross, you've used this martyr-like posture to mold yourself into a tragic, loving father, attempting to sway a son you abandoned for twenty years. This act is truly touching; I almost wanted to applaud you."
Fox straightened her body.
"But I must remind you, no matter how beautifully told the story is, it cannot change a bloody fact. You are a traitor to fate. You have betrayed the loom."
She turned around, her gaze like a torch; her eyes didn't even linger on Wesley for a second.
In her value system, Wesley was merely a variable disrupting probability, an innocent person implicated by his father's sins, while Cross was the heretic who had committed the grave crime.
"The cornerstone of The Fraternity has never been Sloan, that calculating manager, nor a lone wolf like you who claims justice but is actually fleeing out of fear; it is the loom."
Fox took a step forward, staring intensely at Cross.
"It is the language God left on Earth, the only logic in a chaotic World. Have you not seen the disasters caused by our absence? Every misaligned thread represents a tumor that should have vanished. If it is not excised, it will spread and devour the entire organism. Kill one, save a thousand. This is mathematics, balance, and the only truth that keeps the World from falling into the abyss."
Fox's eyes held the pure power that comes from completely sacrificing oneself to a belief, exuding a chilling pressure.
"To save your son's life, you interfered with the flow of the threads. For your own selfish desires, you severed fate. Cross, in the eyes of the gods, your love is the most profound blasphemy. Your so-called protection is actually sentencing more innocent people to death."
The room fell into a deathly silence.
Wesley looked at Fox; he had never seen such a firm gaze, the kind of gaze that would sacrifice everything without hesitation for some grand narrative, which made him feel sorrowful.
"And what if the loom itself has been corrupted?" Alice leaned against the doorframe, toying with a coin in her hand, her eyes full of pity for this blind fanaticism.
"What if the so-called language of God is merely a lie fabricated by some mortal to satisfy their own selfish desires?"
Fox looked sharply at Alice, a flash of murderous intent in her eyes: "Shut up, outsider; you don't understand the weight of this thousand-year heritage."
The silent Cross did not rush to refute her.
He knew Fox too well; she was a woman who regarded The Fraternity as family and the creed as life.
Any words were pale in the face of her faith.
He silently picked up a thick ledger from the wooden table.
It was ironclad evidence he had spent three years collecting through countless infiltrations, eavesdropping, and interrogations.
He opened the ledger and handed it to Fox.
"Take a look, Fox; this is the destiny Sloan recites to you every morning."
Fox frowned, a flash of resistance in her eyes.
Her instinct told her not to look, that looking would lead to eternal damnation.
But as an assassin who pursued extreme precision, her intuition drove her to seek the truth.
She involuntarily looked down.
What met her eyes was not the mysterious, sacred binary code, nor any prophecy of fate.
But rows upon rows of shocking bank transfer records.
On the paper, every massive Cross-border remittance was coldly marked with a date, accurate to the second.
And next to each line of numbers, a name was scribbled in pen.
That was Cross's handwriting, pressing hard into the paper, filled with anger.
May 12, 2023 - Recipient: Pan-Atlantic Energy Group - Amount: 2,500,000 USD
Target: James Kaufman. Progressive congressman opposing the anti-monopoly bill. Cause of death: Accidental fall from a building three years ago. Executor: The Butcher.
August 20, 2024 - Recipient: Beckett Pharmaceuticals - Amount: 4,000,000 USD
Target: Sarah Connier. Independent journalist about to expose the dark secret of the new drug's mortality rate. Cause of death: Home invasion robbery two years ago. Executor: The Repairman.
January 15, 2025 - Recipient: Red Shield Security - Amount: 1,800,000 USD
Target: Eric Sen. Owner of a small biotech company who refused acquisition by a multinational giant. Cause of death: Heart attack last year (toxin-induced). Executor: Fox.
Fox's pupils contracted sharply.
She remembered Eric Sen.
That middle-aged man who wore thick glasses and was timid.
That day when Sloan handed her the list from the loom, he told her with a solemn expression that this man would develop a biochemical virus in the future, causing tens of thousands of deaths.
So she poisoned his coffee, watching him clutch his chest in pain on the park bench, finally dying in silence.
She had no guilt at the time because she believed she had saved tens of thousands of people.
But now, these cold accounts told her that she killed him simply because he blocked the financial path of a big company.
Fox's fingers trembled slightly, her fingertips brushing over those familiar dates.
"So there was no 'greater good,' no 'art of sacrifice.'"
Alice's voice cut through Fox's defenses with the precision of a scalpel.
"Sloan is just a mercenary boss who takes money to do jobs, or even worse. Real mercenaries at least have clear prices and admit they do it for money. But Sloan, he wears a cloak of sanctity and uses your faith to turn you into free and efficient killing machines. He discovered long ago that the power to interpret the loom is the most powerful money-printing machine in the World. As long as he says it's God's will, you top-tier assassins are willing to eliminate his business competitors or take out those meddlesome righteous people for big corporations."
"He has turned himself into God," Alice sneered, observing Fox's expression from the corner of her eye. "Whoever he wants dead, he interprets their name. And in Sloan's offshore accounts, the day after these victims die, a large sum from an anonymous account appears on time. If you don't believe it, you can check the tail numbers of these accounts to see if they are identical to the source of funds The Fraternity uses to purchase weapons and ammunition."
Fox said nothing.
She tried to find flaws in these records, to find evidence that this was forged by Cross.
But the bank paths of these transfers, the familiar names of the victims, and the traces of Sloan's secret seal that never left his person were silently mocking her loyalty.
She even remembered that the week after Sarah Connier died, Sloan replaced everyone's equipment with the latest gear and added expensive artwork to the headquarters.
At the time, everyone thought it was a benefit from the organization; now it seems it was blood money from the dead.
"And this."
Cross looked at Fox's trembling shoulders, a flash of reluctance in his eyes, but he knew he had to completely shatter her to make her reborn.
He turned to the last page of the ledger.
There was no table there, but a piece of original fabric torn directly from the loom was tucked inside.
The edges of the fabric were ragged, yellowed with age.
The warp and weft on it wove a string of primitive binary jumps; that was the oldest language of The Fraternity, an oracle that no one could forge.
Cross threw a heavily worn code translation manual in front of Fox.
That was the bible that every core member of The Fraternity had knelt before the loom and recited on their first day of joining.
"This is the last real list I saw before leaving The Fraternity, and it is the reason why I had to run away."
Fox picked up the codebook, frowning.
Her hand was steady, but this was just muscle memory maintaining a facade.
Her gaze moved quickly across the intersections of the warp and weft on the fabric.
In fact, she didn't need to check the manual.
Those binary codes had long been carved into the depths of her soul, as natural as breathing.
First line: 01000111... G - U - N - S - M - I - T - H (Gunsmith).
Her heart twitched violently.
The old man who was always covered in grease and would secretly give her custom bullets on her birthday.
Second line: 01010010... R - E - P - A - I - R - M - A - N (The Repairman).
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