My Scumbag System

Chapter 615: Your Father’s Last Mistake

Every muscle in my body went rigid. Not from fear. From recognition.

I didn’t recognize the voice. Didn’t recognize the posture or the hair or the lab coat. But something deeper than memory fired in my brain. Something encoded in the cells of the body I inhabited, in the genetic material I’d inherited from a man I’d never met.

"Sit down, Satori."

"I’d rather stand."

"Your father said the same thing. Always pacing. Always moving. Couldn’t sit still in a meeting to save his life." The figure finally turned.

Old. Seventy at least. Face like crumpled paper, all lines and shadows. Eyes that burned with an intelligence that made my skin crawl. Not hostile. Worse. Curious. The eyes of a man who looked at people and saw equations.

He wore thick glasses that magnified his pupils. His hands rested on the desk, spotted with age. A silver ring on his left hand bore a symbol I’d seen before. On the First Tree. In the Glass Hallway. Carved into the walls of the chamber where I’d killed a god.

The symbol of Project Prometheus.

"My name is Dr. Alistair Finch," he said. "I was your father’s research partner. And I’m the reason you exist."

The candles flickered.

The pendant pulsed cold against my chest.

And somewhere in the back of my mind, Nel whispered: Oh. Oh no.

I sat down.

Not because he told me to. Because my legs had decided, independent of my brain, that standing required too much energy when the entire foundation of my reality was about to get a sledgehammer taken to it.

Dr. Finch studied me across the desk. Those magnified eyes tracked from my face to my hands to the ring on my finger to the bat resting against the wall beside me. Taking inventory with the detached fascination of a scientist examining a successful experiment.

"You look like him," Finch said. "Around the jaw. The eyes are your mother’s."

"How do you know my mother?"

"Kimiko Nakano, née Uzumaki. Born in Osaka. Emigrated to Valoria at nineteen. Met Kenji at the university’s Gate Research symposium in year three of the Rupture Response Initiative. They married six months later. She was pregnant with you within the year."

He recited my family history like a grocery list. No emotion. No warmth. Just data points arranged in chronological order.

"The VHC erased every trace of that timeline," he continued. "Official records show Kenji Nakano as a mid-level researcher who died in a Gate accident. No wife. No child. No controversial theories about trans-dimensional consciousness or artificial Aspect induction." He paused. "Do you know what trans-dimensional consciousness transfer is?"

My mouth was dry. "I have some personal experience with the concept."

Finch’s eyebrows rose above his glasses. Something changed in his expression. The curiosity deepened. Became hungrier.

"Yes," he said softly. "I rather thought you might."

He opened a drawer and produced a manila folder. Old. The edges frayed. Coffee stains on the cover from a cup placed down in haste by someone who cared more about the contents than the presentation. He slid it across the desk.

"This is the only surviving copy of your father’s final research paper. The paper that got him erased."

I looked at the folder. Then at Finch. Then at the folder again.

"What’s in it?"

"Everything." Finch leaned back in his chair. The wood creaked beneath him. "How the Gates really work. What Aspects actually are. Why some people manifest and others don’t. Why you, specifically, manifested eighteen years after birth when the biological window closes at puberty. And why the VHC will do anything, including killing you, to prevent this information from reaching public knowledge."

The candles guttered. Wind from somewhere. Or maybe just the building breathing.

"You have two days before your meeting with Seraphina Vance," Finch said. "She already knows more than she’s telling. Chen knows pieces. The Insight Division has been building a profile on you since Washington flagged your registration six months ago." He tapped the folder with one gnarled finger. "This is the only advantage you’ll have in that room."

I reached for the folder.

Then stopped.

"Why?"

"Excuse me?"

"Why give this to me? Why now? You’ve had this information for eighteen years. My father vanished and you, what, sat on his research until his kid happened to become famous on television? What changed?"

Finch’s expression didn’t shift. But his hands tightened on the desk’s edge. Just a fraction. The kind of tell that Kaelen’s training had burned into my observation patterns.

"Because two months ago," Finch said, "someone broke into this building and copied everything in my personal safe. Research notes. Correspondence with your father. The original Prometheus project proposal. Everything except this folder, which I keep on my person at all times."

He removed his glasses and cleaned them on his lab coat. Without the magnification, his eyes looked smaller. Older. More afraid.

"Whoever took those files didn’t come from the VHC. The VHC already has copies of everything except the final paper. This was someone else. Someone with resources, access, and a specific interest in your father’s work."

"The same someone who planted an A-Rank monster in a C-Rank training Gate while Celeste Vance was inside?"

Finch went very still.

"You’re better informed than I expected."

"I’m full of surprises." I leaned forward. "Tell me about Prometheus. All of it. From the beginning."

Dr. Finch put his glasses back on. The magnified eyes found mine. For a long moment, neither of us moved. The candles burned low around us, wax pooling on the desk’s surface in soft yellow puddles. The building groaned in the wind outside. Somewhere below, a pipe dripped with the patience of geological time.

"Very well," he said. "But understand this first. Once you know, you cannot unknow. And the people who want this buried will come for you with everything they have."

"They’re already coming."

"Yes." A thin, papery smile. "I suppose they are."

He opened the folder.