"It took me by surprise, you know? I have backdoors to most security cameras in Factory Town, but when I checked I couldn’t find you anywhere. I was starting to think you were a ghost!"
"Ah, well, I almost died a few a few days ago." The red-haired youngster chuckled. "My doctor still thinks it’s weird that I’m alive."
"You got to teach me how you do it." Epsilon chuckled as well. "Being untraceable is kinda our thing, but even I can’t walk in broad daylight and not get detected. Want to know how we found you?"
"You hired some ghost busters?"
"Binoculars!" Holding his hands hands up, Epsilon shook his head at the absurdity of his statement. "And simple ones at that, with not a single chip on them. I got the idea from those drones. My guess is, you can’t hide from anything directly monitored by people. Well, not without turning it off, anyway. "
"Heeeeh, guess that makes sense."
To Epsilon, the last revelation was supposed to be a sure win card, one that was guaranteed to put crack in the arrogant youngster’s mask, but there he was looking entirely unphased as if his biggest trick wasn’t just seen through.
"... I guess there is no point in this."
Switching his mask back to (-_-), Epsilon heaved a long sigh and jumped down from his chair.
The disappointment he felt couldn’t be described with words. He had hoped to learn a thing or two from someone whose skills appeared to surpass his own, but turns out the civilized way of doing things wouldn’t work. In the end, he would have to wait until the experts were done taking him apart.
Once the youngster’s NIM was in their hands, it would be only a matter of time before the secrets it holds are in Caligo’s hands.
Just as he turned out to leave, Epsilon got a feeling that he was forgetting something. It didn’t take him long to remember what it was, and although he was reluctant to say another word to the red-haired youngster, he knew it would keep bothering him if he didn’t ask when he still had the chance.
"Say," he spoke without bothering to turn around. "I set it so Noctua would delete itself if the NIM it’s installed on is breached. You even cloned it somehow. How did you do it?"
Once again, the youngster feigned ignorance, bringing Epsilon one step closer to snapping.
"The messenger app." He turned to face him, struggling to keep his voice under control. "The one you ripped off of Rechy." Saying the name reminded him of another question. "Where did you take him, anyway? That guy isn’t even in the outer ring. Good look getting anything out of him."
"Rechy?" The youth raised one of his eyebrows, once again feigning ignorance, "Rechy... you asked me about him just now, didn’t you?" Looking up, he made a show of thinking about something, but the next second his eyes went wide. "Did you mean this guy?"
Epsilon didn’t get the chance to be confused by what he heard when something heavy dropped right in front of him. At first, it didn’t register in his mind. His thoughts seemed to lag, leaving him incapable of understanding what it was that he was looking at. Little by little, however, the image became clear.
A man tied to a chair with several rounds of duct tape. His mouth was sealed, a look of extreme agony forever frozen in his wide-open eyes. Judging by his wet clothes and hair, one could tell he had been subjected to a rather gruesome form of torture.
Epsilon recognized the man’s face almost instantly. He had seen it only a few hours ago, on the file of the lookout that suddenly went missing. Rechy was his name. A twenty nine year old with no fixed occupation, surviving on the allowance given to him by the gang. He went missing a few hours ago after his apartment was broken into.
The obvious conclusion was that he had been taken away by someone wishing to extract information from him, but it was also suspected that he had fled somewhere after revealing something to his captors.
Either way, the man was considered dead at this point. It was only a matter of time before his corpse got discovered, but what no one could have predicted was that it would show up in that chamber of all places.
Something moved in the periphery of Epsilon’s vision prompting him to look up. He saw the red-haired young man walking toward the wall opposite to the door. The chair he was tied to was nowhere to be seen, and though his hands were still tied behind his back, that only lasted until a peculiar light enveloped them then spread to the rest of his body.
The light faded away a second later, revealing the lustrous form of a polished black armor, its sleek design an embodiment of technological prowess.
[Well, I still got things to do so...] As he raised his foot to take another step, the youngster looked over his shoulder, his face hidden behind the visor. [Adios!]
The next instant, the entire suit of armor sank into the ground, or so it appeared at first glance. Looking down, Epsilon saw a wide hole on the floor. His two guards rushed over and he followed right after, but by they reached it, the hole swiftly shrank and was gone before they could look inside it.
Epsilon continued to stare at the floor, his mind once again slowing down to a halt. The only thing in front of him was a layer of dust marked by some new footprint.
There were a few cracks here and there, but none that were big enough for an entire human to pass through. But even if there was a hole in that place, jumping into it would have been a ridiculously dumb idea. After all—
"This room... it’s on the bottom-most basement floor, right?"
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