My Scumbag System

Chapter 614: The Man in the Concrete Box

"I believe you."

"I’m not joking, Satori."

"I know you’re not."

"Promise me you’ll call the moment you’re inside. Keep the line open. If I hear anything wrong, I’m chartering a helicopter."

"At three in the morning?"

"Luka knows a guy."

I almost laughed. "I promise."

"And Satori?"

"Yeah?"

"When you get back to this island, you and I are going to have a conversation about tonight. A very long, very detailed conversation. And you are going to sit still and listen to every single word."

The pendant burned so cold it left a mark on my skin.

"I love you, Nat."

"I love you too. Now go be stupid. Carefully."

She hung up.

I stared at the phone for a long moment. Then I stepped back inside, crossed to the bed, and leaned down to press my lips against Reyna’s forehead. She made a soft sound but didn’t wake. The scent of her hair filled my lungs. Crimson strands tangled across the pillow like blood on snow.

"I’ll be back," I whispered.

Her hand twitched toward me in sleep, fingers grasping at empty air.

I left.

The hallway outside Reyna’s suite was empty at this hour. Security cameras tracked my movement through the corridor, but Maki had mapped the blind spots on our first day. I took the service stairs down seventeen floors to a maintenance exit that opened onto an alley behind the Olympus Rising compound.

Maki materialized from a shadow at my feet. Not as a cat this time. Full human form, wearing one of my stolen hoodies that hung to mid-thigh and nothing else, her twin tails swaying behind her in the cool night air. Those hazel-gold eyes caught the streetlight and threw it back with vertical-slit pupils.

"Master smells like the lightning girl."

"Not now, Maki."

"Maki is just saying. Very strong scent. Purple girl will notice."

"Purple girl already noticed. From three hundred miles away. Can we focus?"

"Where are we going?"

"To do something stupid."

Her entire face lit up. That particular grin that made her look less like a woman and more like something that ate people in fairy tales. "Maki loves stupid."

We moved through the city at a pace that would have given Olympic sprinters an existential crisis. My hidden stats sat at 6,250 across the board, and with the Level 3 multiplier bringing my ceiling to 7,750, I covered ground faster than any legitimate C-Rank had business moving. Maki kept pace without effort, her supernatural agility making my enhanced speed look pedestrian. She ran along rooftops when the streets got crowded, leaping between buildings with the casual disregard of someone who had nine lives and wasn’t particularly worried about burning through the first one.

The industrial district at midnight looked exactly like you’d expect. Abandoned warehouses. Rusted machinery. The kind of place where horror movies happened to people too dumb to stay home. The Nakano Research Annex sat at the end of a cul-de-sac between a defunct processing plant and a parking structure that had partially collapsed three years ago. The building itself was unremarkable. Three stories. Concrete and steel construction. The kind of architecture that said "nothing interesting happens here" so loudly it was almost suspicious.

I stopped across the street.

Tori-Sense pinged at the base of my skull. Not a direct threat. More like background radiation. Something in that building wanted my attention.

Thermal Vision activated with a thought. The world shifted into heat signatures. The building’s exterior registered cold. Empty. Dead concrete with no organic warmth bleeding through the walls.

Except for a single point on the second floor. One body. Human-sized. Sitting in what appeared to be a chair. Stationary. Not moving. Not hiding.

Waiting.

"One person inside," I told Maki. "Second floor."

"Trap?"

"Almost certainly."

"Fun." She cracked her knuckles. Tiny sparks of blue lightning danced between her fingers. "Maki goes first?"

"Maki stays outside and watches the exits. If anyone comes in or out who isn’t me, you do what you do best."

"Kill them?"

"Observe them. Then kill them if they try to kill me."

"So boring." But she dissolved into shadow and vanished, presumably taking up position somewhere above. Three hundred years of existence had given Maki an excellent grasp of surveillance tactics, even if she found them tedious compared to her preferred approach of electrocuting everything that moved.

I crossed the street.

The front entrance was locked with a standard magnetic seal that had been dead since the building lost power six years ago. The door opened with a push. Inside, dust and decay. The lobby was empty except for a reception desk covered in years of accumulated grime. A fire escape map on the wall showed the layout. Stairs to the right. Elevator shaft, nonfunctional.

I took the stairs.

Each step echoed in the concrete stairwell. My bat rested on my shoulder. The Dragon Witch’s Ring pulsed warm on my finger, ready to amplify Ember at a moment’s notice. Steel Body sat coiled in my muscles, ten seconds of invulnerability I could deploy the instant something went sideways.

The second floor landing had a single door. It stood open. Beyond it, a long corridor with offices on either side. Most doors closed. One open, near the end. Warm light spilled from it. Not electric. Something softer. Candles, maybe.

I walked toward it.

The office was small. A desk. Two chairs. Filing cabinets lining one wall. And candles, yes. Four of them, placed at the corners of the desk, casting the room in flickering amber. The effect was deliberately theatrical. Whoever arranged this wanted atmosphere.

The person in the chair sat with their back to me.

White hair. Cut short. A lab coat that had seen better decades. The figure was small. Elderly. The kind of body that time had compressed rather than expanded, reducing everything to hard angles and essential structure.

They didn’t turn around.

"You came faster than I expected." The voice was old but steady. Male. A trace of an accent I couldn’t place. "I thought the Cabana girl would keep you occupied longer."