- Eva Blackwood's POV -
The coldness of porcelain contradicted the heat of the blood still boiling in my veins.
I was sitting in one of the safe rooms inside the secret headquarters of the magical intelligence agency in the central sector of Elysium.
The room had been designed to be comfortable: soundproof walls, a dim yellow light that eased the nerves, and an old Italian coffee machine that used low-rank fire cores to brew the best Brazilian beans.
But I didn't feel comfortable. I felt angry.
A cold, viscous anger — the sort that crawls under your skin like an insect.
I lifted the cup of black coffee to my lips.
I sipped; it tasted bitter, unbearably bitter, exactly like the mood I'd been wrestling with for three hours.
I set the cup on the glass table in front of me very slowly, and raised my eyes to my reflection in the dark window streaked with heavy rain.
There was a small flesh-colored magical bandage stuck to my left cheek.
"An insect…" I muttered to myself, my dark eyes narrowing with venom.
"An insect of rank G, not enough itra to light a match — and he managed to scratch me. Me, Eva Blackod."
"Still stinging? I mean… your pride, not the wound — we all know Sia healed the cut in three seconds."
My thoughts were cut off by Damian's voice.
He was lounging on the leather sofa opposite me, long legs stretched out in relaxed comfort.
Damian — the academy's former golden boy, a face like marble carved by a perfection-obsessed Greek sculptor and silver hair falling with exaggerated allure over his brow — was still wearing the expensive suit from our dumb little play in the "Diamond Tears" shop.
I sighed sharply and didn't answer; he simply flashed an irritating smile and added, "Seriously, Eva, how did he get away? You were so sure. Before we went into the shop you literally said: 'I'll break his leg in two seconds, then we'll go back for dinner.' So we had to act out that disgusting scene — pretending to be some stupid lovers buying diamonds! Do you know how gross it felt to whisper cheap lines of flirtation to you while you looked at me like I was a cockroach?"
From the corner of the room, Sia laughed. The blonde, angel-faced girl who was busy painting her nails a blood-red shade we practically spilled every day.
Sia — our team's medic and emotional support — despite her delicate looks, carried a sadistic mind that liked to see enemy blood spray.
"You two looked so ridiculous," Sia said, blowing on her nails coolly. "Damian looked like a starving dog, and you, Eva, looked like an ice statue trying not to throw up dinner. But really… how did he slip away?"
I let my back sink into the chair and answered in a tone completely devoid of affect, despite the boiling inside me: "He survived this time because I let my guard down. Plain and simple. He was a dying, desperate thing and I expected him to surrender. But he… he was kind of smart. He didn't charge me with the gun; he used it as a diversion, then exploited the stupid helicopter and the even stupider sniper from air support to make a mess. Sewer-rat intelligence… they know when to bite and when to run."
"Rat intelligence, huh?"
Aiden entered the room holding his tablet, his face flushed with anger.
Aiden no longer looked like the fat trembling man who had been in the shop. He'd stopped the "physical illusion" skill and returned to his real form: a slim young man with curly black hair, round prescription glasses, and dark circles around his eyes from too many sleepless hours staring at screens.
He tossed the tablet onto the table in front of me; a few drops of coffee splattered.
"Rat intelligence? Well, that rat made us the joke of both the underworld and high society!" Aiden shouted, rubbing his forehead nervously. "Have you seen what's happening on X? Hell literally opened on us! News of the escape of the 'Black Joker' from the tight Alpha Squad FBI trap spread like wildfire. We're the number-one trend worldwide — and not in a good way!"
I raised an eyebrow and pulled the tablet closer.
The screen showed hashtags: #fall_of_the_fbi and #black_joker_laughs_at_last.
I started reading the shallow comments that made a vein in my neck throb:
[@HunterGossip_007]: "The elite intelligence unit, Alpha Squad, fully equipped, aerial support helicopter — and they couldn't catch a single thief? Were they fighting the Black Joker or teaching him how to rob them? [laughing-cry emoji] [fire emoji]"
[@Elysium_Truth]: "I heard Eva Blackod, nicknamed 'the Shadow Princess,' got slapped by the Joker! Legend says he left her a black rose before escaping! [rose emoji] [black heart emoji] #villain_romance"
"A black rose?!" I screamed, the coffee cup in my hand cracking from the pressure of my grip centered through my itra.
"I'll rip out the heart of whoever wrote that tweet and shove it down his throat!"
Damian laughed loudly, clutching his stomach. "A black rose! My god, Eva, maybe you should give him a chance! He sounds romantic!"
"Shut up, Damian, before I cut out your tongue," I shot back, a look that wiped the smile off his face and turned it into a coughing fit.
Aiden continued pacing the room, grumbling.
"The problem isn't the dumb teenagers, it's leadership. Commander Arthur Sterling is furious. He chewed me out on the internal line for twenty minutes. Said we're a bunch of arrogant amateurs and that we let a rank-G target soil our dignity."
At the mention of Arthur Sterling's name, an awkward silence fell over the room. Arthur… that arrogant blond A-ranker who thinks he's a god walking the earth.
Sia sighed and snapped shut her nail polish bottle.
"Arthur was just waiting for us to slip. But honestly, I can't blame him entirely. The mission failed. The thief escaped, the shop was wrecked, and a million-credit helicopter became scrap."
I said coldly as I stood and dusted off my coat, "I'll catch him. It's only a matter of time. The wound I put in his belly… my shadow itra seeped into his bloodstream. He'll die slowly unless he finds an A-rank healer, and no one on the black market will risk treating him now."
Suddenly the big screen mounted on the safe-room wall flashed red and a short muffled alarm sounded.
[Emergency Mission Order: Alpha Squad] [Classification: Extremely Dangerous (Red)] [Objective: Purge & Extract]
We all stopped talking. The joking ended. We were close friends who bickered and traded heavy jabs, but when the red light flashed we reverted to what we were made to be: professional killing machines of the system.
Aiden read the details from his tablet; the anger drained from his face and was replaced by grim seriousness.
"Guys… listen to this. Itra sensors picked up abnormal activity in sector G — specifically in the old, waterlogged, abandoned subway 'Omega Line station.' Reports say twenty-five homeless people and low-rank hunters vanished from that area in the last 48 hours."
I asked Sia as she summoned her short magical staff from a spatial-storage ring, "Vanished? Did a new unregistered gate open?"
"Worse," Aiden said, projecting a holographic image on the big screen.
The image was grainy, captured by a partially damaged surveillance camera in the drainage tunnels.
It showed a creature I could only describe as "cursed by an angry demiurge."
Its torso was human — a fat man's trunk — but its limbs were not human: they were massive insect claws like a mantis, and its head was split horizontally, from which glowed green sickly intestines.
Damian looked disgusted and turned his face away. "What the hell is that? A mutant ghoul?"
I stared at the image with half-lidded eyes. "No. Look at the tattered shirt on its shoulder. That's the sanitation workers' union patch. That… was human."
A deadly silence filled the room.
Aiden continued in a low voice: "Command believes someone is using that abandoned station as a lab for biological conversion experiments. 'Turning humans into monsters.' Orders are clear: descend into the Omega Line, exterminate any mutated beasts, eliminate whoever is behind the experiments, and retrieve any data we find."
I smiled a cold smile and touched the bandage on my cheek.
I needed something to pour this gathered rage into.
"Finally — a real mission instead of chasing jewelry thieves. Gear up. We're going into hell tonight."