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Chapter : 297
Someone was actively watching them. It was a highly trained spy. The spy was using a listening device to hear their conversation inside the strategy room. They were trying to figure out exactly how much the 13th Unit knew about the missing money and the secret conspiracy.
Ken swallowed his bite of apple. He slouched even further into his chair. He let out a long, exaggerated groan.
"Oh man," Ken whined, grabbing his stomach with his free hand. "I think that apple was bad. Or maybe it was the cheese I ate yesterday. My stomach is doing backflips right now."
Naomi looked at him with mild concern. "Are you okay, Ken? You look a little pale."
"I need the bathroom," Ken announced dramatically. He stood up and hunched his shoulders over. "Do not wait for me. This might take a while. I am in serious pain."
He grabbed his apple and shuffled quickly out of the strategy room. He walked down the hallway and slipped into the bathroom. He locked the door behind him with a soft click.
Ken stood in the middle of the bathroom. He took a deep breath. His goofy, pained expression vanished instantly. He did not need to use the toilet. He needed to go outside and handle a very annoying problem.
He raised his right hand. A soft, soundless wave of energy pulsed from his fingers. The air in front of him shimmered like a mirage. In a fraction of a second, an exact replica of Ken Eliot stood in the room. The magical clone wore the same wrinkled suit. It had the same messy black hair. It even held a perfect replica of the half-eaten apple.
"Go sit back in the strategy room," Ken whispered to the clone in a calm voice. "Act bored. Eat the apple. Complain about the reading."
The clone gave a lazy salute. "You got it, boss."
Ken snapped his fingers. The fabric of the world around him bent and folded. He bypassed the bathroom wall entirely without opening a single door. In the absolute blink of an eye, he stood outside in the dark alleyway behind the estate.
---
The dark alleyway behind the 13th Unit estate was completely silent. The morning sun did not reach back here. Shadows stretched long and dark against the brick walls. Piles of discarded cardboard boxes and empty wooden crates cluttered the narrow path.
A man crouched silently on top of a flat roof overlooking the mansion. His name was Ricardo. He wore sleek black tactical gear that blended perfectly into the shadows. He was an elite operative, trained in stealth, assassination, and intelligence gathering. He held a small, highly advanced magical listening device in his hand. He aimed it directly toward the open window of the strategy room below.
Ricardo listened to the girls talk. He smiled a cruel, satisfied smile. They were stuck. They had absolutely no idea where the money went. The financial scrubbing had worked perfectly. His master would be very pleased to hear this news. The 13th Unit was not a real threat. They were just a bunch of confused girls and a lazy idiot wasting their time.
Ricardo tapped a button on his wrist communicator. "Target is secure," he whispered softly into the device. "They have no leads on the funding. I will return to the extraction point."
"You are not going anywhere."
Ricardo froze. The voice came from directly behind him. It was cold, flat, and completely devoid of emotion.
Ricardo spun around. He pulled a sharp, serrated combat knife from his belt in a flash of brilliant movement. He dropped into a flawless fighting stance. He prepared to strike.
He stopped.
Ken Eliot stood on the roof right in front of him. He still wore his wrinkled navy blue suit. His hands were shoved deep into his pockets. But he did not look like the goofy slacker from the strategy room. The lazy smile was completely gone. His dark eyes stared at Ricardo with an absolute, terrifying emptiness.
Ricardo felt a sudden, intense chill run down his spine. He was an elite assassin. He had killed dozens of people. But looking at this boy made his blood run cold. There was no magical aura surrounding Ken, yet the space around him felt incredibly dense.
"How did you get up here?" Ricardo demanded. He took a defensive step backward, keeping his knife raised. "I checked the perimeter. There was no one on this roof."
Ken did not answer the question. He just tilted his head slightly to the side. "You are very noisy. You are standing on my roof, and you are listening to my friends. That is incredibly rude."
Ricardo sneered and gripped his knife tighter, trying to shake off his fear. "You are just a pathetic servant. I will slice your throat and leave you in the gutter. Nobody will even know you are gone."
Ricardo lunged forward. He moved with blistering, highly trained speed. He aimed the tip of the knife directly at Ken's neck.
Ken did not dodge. He did not blink. He simply pulled his right hand out of his pocket.
He caught the blade of the knife between his bare thumb and index finger. The sharp steel stopped instantly. It did not cut his skin. It did not even leave a scratch. The forward momentum of the elite assassin crashed into a sudden, immovable wall.
Ricardo gasped. He tried to pull the knife back. It would not budge. It felt like the blade was clamped inside a solid steel vice.
"You are wasting my time," Ken said quietly.
Ken stepped forward. He moved so fast that Ricardo's eyes could not even process the motion. Ken grabbed the front of Ricardo's tactical vest and slammed him brutally onto the flat roof. The impact knocked the wind entirely out of the spy.
Ricardo groaned, struggling to breathe. He looked up at the boy standing over him. Terror finally took hold of his heart. This was no ordinary servant. This was a monster wearing a messy suit.
"Who sent you?" Ken asked, looking down at him.
Ricardo gritted his teeth. "I will never tell you anything. You can kill me. I am trained to resist torture. I will not break."
"I do not need to torture your body," Ken stated flatly. "I just need your answers."
Ken reached down and placed his open palm directly onto Ricardo's forehead.
He did not use physical force. He bypassed all normal interrogation methods entirely. Ken tapped into a terrifying, invasive magic. It was a spell known as "Soul Search."
A pulse of dark, invisible energy shot from Ken's palm straight into Ricardo's mind. It shattered the assassin's mental barriers in a fraction of a millisecond. Ricardo's eyes went completely wide. He opened his mouth to scream, but Ken cast a quick silencing spell to mute the sound. No noise could escape the roof. The neighborhood remained perfectly peaceful.
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