The day following Garren's incident, the rest of us in the ninth division were called to meet at the A.X.A. Investigation Services building to receive a summary on reports concerning Russo's apartment and the receptionist.
When I'd arrived, I was surprised to see I wasn't the earliest one waiting in the lobby.
"Hey, Klyson," Kyra said to me as I entered.
I walked over and sat a seat down from her without responding. For some reason, I had a garnered sentiment of anger towards her. After all the shocking revelations from yesterday, it felt like there was no one left I could trust.
Not even Kyra.
As much as I felt drawn towards her, there was something that didn't sit right with me after what I discovered in the morgue and from Enzo yesterday. I decided to speak up about it, considering it bothered me so much I couldn't sleep at all the night before.
"You knew about Sixth, Ninth, and Tenth's deaths, right…?"
She looked over at me, with surprise and confusion written on her face. It was an oblivious expression similar to Enzo's when I'd first called him out.
"You knew about what the General did to them…"
"Klyson… Did you hear that from somewhere…?"
"No. I uncovered everything myself." I finally turned to look at her. "The answers, the truth, it was all in the morgue. I looked for you at first, because I knew you were there with the General while watching the war with Invidan, so I knew you witnessed what actually happened to my comrades. But I couldn't find you."
"I'm sorry, Klyson. I was here because they called me to set-up today's appointment to go over what they found in Russo's apartment."
"I know. I had an idea that you were busy. So instead, I went to Enzo to confirm the truth. He told me everything."
Kyra realized where this was going. She began lowering her face with shame.
"All this time, you knew about how they actually died, and you never decided to tell me?" I stood up now. "I cried in your arms about them, believing they'd died with honor. During all of that, you never once thought it would have been right for me to know the truth?"
"You were in pain, Klyson. I cared about how you felt. You were clearly already distraught, so I didn't want to add onto that with even more shocking news. I withheld the truth from you for your own sake…"
I clicked my tongue. "My own sake? Who are you to know about what's good or not for my sake? Do you know how long I've beaten myself up over the war with Invidan? Do you know how much I've mentally destroyed myself for not doing well enough in that battle, even going as far as to blame myself for Sixth, Ninth and apparently now Tenth's deaths?"
"I didn't know all of that…"
"Knowing the truth would have saved me a lot of self deprecation, you know. I'd been blaming my lack of effort to be the cause behind their deaths all this time, when in reality, they wouldn't have even died if it weren't for the General."
"I wasn't in any position to tell you the truth at the time. I'm sorry for that. If I had known it would cause you this much mental suffering, I would have told you the very first moment I met you."
"It's too late now." I slumped back down in my chair. "I can't trust anyone here anymore. Not even you."
The last statement clearly hurt Kyra. "I'm sorry, Klyson. I'm so sorry. I thought I was doing you a favor by keeping those details hidden. I didn't know it'd hurt you this much in the long run."
I could tell she was being genuine. "I know. And honestly, I forgive you for that. I understand from your perspective why you wouldn't tell me. But it doesn't change the fact that I've lost hope in trusting anyone here at A.X.A. Did you know that the General was supposed to kill me too? I was supposed to die the same day as the others. When you uncover a truth like that by yourself, that your own general was ready to dispose of you at some point, you lose the assurance you thought you had in the people who looked after you."
Kyra nodded along. "You're right. Even if not for the same reason, I've also lost trust in A.X.A. and in the General. Finding out about what he was doing to Garren made me doubt everything now."
"But at least you know you'll always have the power to be on his side, even if he pulls strings like that. I mean, you're Second. You're indisposable. I can't say the same. If the General was willing to cause harm to someone like Garren, who's to say he wouldn't do the same to me? There's a difference between you and I, Kyra. You can still retain some form of assurance and safety with A.X.A. because the people here respect you, and they recognize that they need you. I am just another expendable to them. I don't feel safe here."
Kyra's face was scrunching with sadness at the things I said. It was clear she disliked the way I worded it all.
"You aren't an expendable. You aren't disposable. Please don't think that way."
"It's impossible. Even the General was willing to let me go."
"But that's the General! He probably thinks of everyone as disposable!"
"Definitely not you."
"Then I'll use my position and power to make sure nothing happens to you!" Kyra suddenly pulled me in for a hug. It surprised me. "You aren't disposable to me at all, Klyson."
I didn't know how to react. She was doing something I hadn't expected.
"I'll protect you if that's how you feel being here in A.X.A. I promise, I'll protect you."
"Kyra…"
"I mean it!" Her hug became tighter. "I know you can't trust anyone or anything right now, but please, trust me when I say that I'm going to protect you. I promise, I'll keep you safe."
"But why…?" I retracted from the hug, feeling unusual with myself. "Why would someone like you go that far for someone like me?"
Her eyes shyed away from mine. "Because I care…"
My face flushed red for a moment, which was something I tried to hide. "Why? Why me…?"
She smiled. "Because you're Klyson, the Fractless guy who's been growing on me in the last week."
I was hot. My face felt hot. It was like all of my anger at everything had been flushed away in that moment. My eyes were interlocked with Kyra's hazel gaze.
Suddenly, the door to the lobby opened and our moment of awe vanished. Cynthia walked in, being the last one to join us before we'd go and have our summary about the investigation.
"Oh, hey you two. You guys are always early."
"H-Hey…" I replied, awkwardly. My mind was still stuck in the previous moment.
"I checked on Garren before getting here. His vitals are stable, but he's still in that comatose state."
Kyra frowned. "Sad he won't be here to continue the investigation. But he's done enough work for us. He deserves to rest."
"He does." I thought about the time he saved us all from Russo. Even while under the burden of the Controllant in that moment, he'd still managed to pull through and be the savior of that battle. I decided I'd continue to honor Garren moving forward in every mission I did, and once he was awake from the coma, the first thing I'd do was visit him and thank him for everything he's done.
Since the three of us from the ninth division were now there together, we went to the second floor of the building to meet with the chief advisor of the clean-up specialists. He was there to provide us a summary on their findings in Russo's apartment.
"Second, Cynthia, Klyson," he nodded to us as we walked into his office. "Thank you for coming to meet with me at this time."
"Of course. I'd heard there was a lot to go over," Kyra said.
"More than that." He looked at us with cautious eyes as we sat in front of him. "The clean-up this time around had many unexpected discoveries."
"Take us through it."
The chief put some papers on his desk and began skimming over them. "So to start, there was that receptionist you'd confronted who set a mirage on your division. Her name was Iyonna Kovlenko, and her Fractal was 'Spectrum,' the ability to create illusive discrepancies in a range of one's vision. It worked just like its name, a spectrum. But think of this spectrum like a hallway with a door at each end. At each end of her Fractal's spectrum are symbols of the same kind, such as the circle on her forehead and the circle in Russo's room. Upon visual contact with a symbol, you are essentially locking the door to that end of the spectrum, and once you've seen both, you've locked both doors on either side of the hallway, trapping yourself within the range of that spectrum. The spectrum itself contains an illusion that merges seamlessly with reality. As you reported, Second, your spectrum, or as you called it, your 'mirage,' was the illusion of being stuck in the hallway space between rooms 415 and 430. Upfront, the illusion wasn't even noticeable until you guys began trying to test its limits. The illusion itself also skews with the constructs of our reality, therefore time is not relative when under the influence of her Fractal. That's what caused your collective sensation that two days had passed, when in reality, it had only been two hours under that illusion."
"Yeah, that was shocking to me. It felt so real I even felt the dehydration of two days without liquid," Cynthia said.
"Yes. That's what made her Fractal dangerous. It was not only a manipulation of vision, but even a manipulation on the body's processes. It was an ability with high potential to impose the placebo effect. The thing is, according to her history, Iyonna hadn't always used her Fractal in such a sinister way. She'd actually graduated with a degree in psychology and worked as a freelancer in the mental rehabilitation industry. She went around Melysia doing work that involved imposing placebos on individuals who couldn't cope properly with some of their own mental problems. And although the results were controversial, Iyonna's list of accolades and recommendations suggested that she had a pure desire to help ease the mental pain of her patients."
"Wow…" I was almost moved by what seemed like her life journey. But then I remembered what she'd done to an innocent group like our division, and how much catastrophe it caused on a victim like Garren. Her past of good deeds wouldn't be enough to make up for something like that in my eyes. Still, I wondered how it got to that point. "How did she go from being a good samaritan like that, to a receptionist in a discreet apartment that used her Fractal to trap people in illusions?"
"Unknown. That wasn't something we could uncover without her telling us directly. None of her past records showed any progressive transition from her psychological career to that of a receptionist. It was just an abrupt end and restart, as if she'd dropped everything out of nowhere and decided to start anew."
"Having a Fractal like hers, while being in a position like a receptionist who greets every single person that enters the building, made me worry about the scale of other people she may have affected too." Kyra brought it up. "That's why I asked your crew to also check on some of the tenants of that building and ask around about the receptionist. What were your findings?"
The chief sighed, pulling out a separate stack of papers. "As if the information on Iyonna wasn't strange enough, it gets even more strange from here. So my crew was able to find a drawer of duplicate room keycards for rooms on each floor, nearly all of them. I sent pairs of them to each floor to knock on some of the doors to ask around, but if unresponsive, I gave them permission to use the keycards and check inside. They weren't expecting at all what they came to see."
"What was it?"
"Blank, empty rooms. Exactly like Russo's room who you had us investigate first. No more than a single person was situated in each one, but the strangest part, every single one my crew came across was unresponsive. They stood there, quiet and docile, all staring at a large circle painted on one of the walls. The same circle found in Russo's room."
I was speechless. "Every single room? Every single one of them?"
"We didn't check every single one. But we looked through a number of rooms on each floor, and they all came out with the same results: individual tenants who were unresponsive to our calls, and even when trying to physically move them out of the room, their bodies fought hard to stay still in one spot. Throughout every single one of them, they all stared at the circle on their wall, constantly. We automatically assumed they were still under the influence of Iyonna's Fractal, but it couldn't have been. You killed her, Second, which not only should have unlocked one end of the illusive spectrum, but should have disabled her Fractal completely. Yet, all the tenants we came across acted as if they were still inside their deceptions. It didn't make any sense."
Kyra was dumbfounded. She felt an an unsettling sensation rise in her stomach hearing about these findings. "Can we assume that every room in the building consists of that…?"
"We can, considering that within our day of clean-up and investigation, we never witnessed a single tenant leave the building, or return to the building from the outside. It can't have been a coincidence that every tenant just so happened to already be in the building."
"So you're saying every single room is probably designed exactly like Russo's? And every room has a single, stationary person unresponsive to interference?" Cynthia asked.
"That's our assumption."
"Oh my god…"
"Does Overseer Azrael know about these findings yet?" Kyra asked.
"No, why?"
"Tell him. He needs to be informed, because we may have just found what we were looking for."
The chief tried to understand her. "What's that?"
"Heathen."
My eyes widened. I was making the connections in my head too. A building filled with hundreds of rooms, all with a circle on their walls—the same circle we associated to the Moon, which we related as a symbol between both Heathen and Menesism. A suspicious receptionist with the same symbol on her forehead, situated at the lobby to the building, and in seeming result, hundreds of tenants stuck in self-dillusions inside these rooms. To top it off, Russo, who we deemed connected to Heathen because of the words he mentioned back at Henry's house, "Heathen. Order in chaos," was our direct connection to this building.
This couldn't just be a coincidence anymore.
As many unknowns were being lifted from the shadows, every single one of them seemed reliant on one another. The pages in this book we were trying to fill in was beginning to write itself, even with a lack of cohesion.
"Something strange is happening in that building. Something bigger than we can currently anticipate is going on over there. This now needs to be Operation Zenith's focal point," I told the chief. "Overseer Azrael needs to know."
He nodded, unsettled himself. "Got it. I'll let him know about these findings."
"Good. Because we need to return to that building and investigate further. If it's true that the circular symbols in each of those rooms represent the Moon in Heathen, and if we can assume that the receptionist is a part of Heathen, then Heathen as a group has what seems to be an entire hypnosis ring going on in that building. The tenants in those rooms are victims." Kyra had brought necessity to the objective.
"We have to save them," I said.
The others nodded along. But there was Cynthia who seemed uneasy. "If Heathen consists of people with Fractals like Russo and Iyonna, then we're going to need more help. Our division alone won't be able to do much, especially now without Garren."
The chief agreed. "You're right. I'll let Overseer Azrael know about these findings and hopefully he'll see it through. If he does, all of Operation Zenith's divisions may syncrhonize with the rest of you. That would be the best case scenario."
The thought of a grand scheme like that excited me. But simultaneously, it scared me. If there was a possibility that the whole of Operation Zenith could be getting on board with us, it would confirm that our findings were the most substantial yet uncanny.
It would form the possibility that we were closing in on the Sin of Discrmination.
Even after everything that's happened, with all the events revealed that betrayed my trust for the General, somehow, I still felt the need to see forth my responsibility in this operation. Although I couldn't tell what happened behind the scenes anymore, the most I could do was ground my spirit near the forefront and look out for myself.
If I could attain success in Operation Zenith, I'd be speaking on behalf of my comrades. This was my opportunity to prove to the General that people on my standing, like me, Garren, Sixth, Ninth, and Tenth, had what it took to be considered pieces of importance. We may not have all had Golden Fractals in our arsenal, and we may not have been in the Upper Four, but still, we were there.
I wanted to avenge my comrades, victim and fallen, for what the General did to them. I sought the need to prove that Garren and those murdered in the Tenfold's efforts were not in vain. I desired, more than anything, to show the General that people like us weren't disposable the way he saw us.
I was going to make General Michael regret ever considering my death.
"I'll keep you guys updated on it," the chief told us. "Fingers crossed Overseer Azrael sees it through."
After that, the meeting was over. We'd received intel on what we'd found, and now, it was just a matter of exploring it to its deepest core.
I felt anxiety spreading throughout my entire body, knowing that Heathen might have been right around the corner we were about to round.
Something was coming soon. I could feel it.