Harem Apocalypse: Every Moan Levels Us Up!

My eyes tracked the movement. His hands were a blur of precise, lethal efficiency—blades opening throats in clean, economical arcs. His footwork carried the same familiar, almost casual rhythm I remembered from the Fallen City mission, long unkempt hair falling across most of his face. He dropped the copies one after another, still whistling, and then the whistle blossomed into a full song.

What the hell.

I watched Bagins’ mouth form the words, his face draining of color as clones collapsed faster than the source could spit them out.

The smile stayed on my face. I knew exactly who had just entered the room.

Sophia Vale had introduced him as a level-four blade manifestor. The first time I saw him on the Fallen City mission I knew that was a lie. He moved through the infected like they were paper, singing the entire time as if the dead were an audience. The entire mission had been proof that nobody truly understood what he was.

Across the room the clone boy kept splitting, fresh naked bodies peeling away from him in frantic bursts—but the numbers had already flipped. He was producing slower than Code was cutting. The gap grew wider with every second.

Bagins dropped hard to his knees beside me, eyes wide and fixed on the approaching figure.

"Please. I don’t want to die." He was pleading now, hands under my arm, hauling me upright, correctly identifying me as the only possible route out of this slaughter. "I know he’s your man." He propped me against the wall. "Help me, Abram."

Melissa still lay on the blood-slick boards, chest rising and falling in short, sharp gasps. We had walked in thinking this was a simple errand. It had put both of us on the ground.

Who is he? Melissa’s voice reached me from where she lay.

Code.

He reached the clone source last. One clean, almost gentle motion—blade sliding under the chin and out the other side. The boy dropped. Every remaining copy in the room folded to the floor at the same instant, like the invisible thread holding them upright had been severed.

Blood painted Code’s face and black clothes. That was the one detail Sophia had gotten completely right when she handed him over. She had told Bala the boy loved blood.

He walked toward us, boots stepping over naked corpses without a glance. Beside me Bagins’ heart hammered so hard I could feel it through the floorboards.

"Please don’t kill me," Bagins begged as Code stopped in front of us.

Code drew his blades back into his palms and offered me his hand instead. He pulled me up and hugged me—quick, firm, the embrace of someone who had already decided we were on the same side. Bagins stayed on the floor. Melissa was still fighting for air.

"Sinn told me you asked him to bring me in," Code said.

"Yeah. We needed you on the team."

"Genuinely a pleasure to work with you again." Which surprised me. We had exchanged fewer than a handful of words across the entire Fallen City mission. Maybe the night we shared a room after crossing back inside the walls had been the real beginning of whatever this was.

"My pleasure," I said as we broke apart.

He turned toward Bagins. I became a spectator. A blade settled into Code’s palm with a soft metallic whisper.

"Please." Bagins was crying openly now, tears cutting clean lines through the blood and dust on his face. He watched death close the last few steps. "Please. I have a family."

"Please."

The word left my mouth before I could stop it.

Code turned toward me, genuine surprise flickering across his blood-streaked face.

"Spare him."

"Listen to your friend, son." Bagins latched onto the plea immediately, voice cracking with raw hope.

"He’s just a miserable loser," I said. "He’s—"

"I’m not a loser." Bagins cut in from behind Code.

Code’s head snapped toward the interruption, then slowly returned to me.

"Don’t mind him," I continued, holding his eyes. "Death is the short cut for a man like him. His real punishment is having to keep living."

Bagins exhaled hard, relief flooding his features as he heard me building his case.

"You don’t want him dead?" Code asked, quiet.

"Don’t kill him." I held his gaze. "Please."

Code swept the long hair from his face with the back of his hand. A small, almost gentle smile appeared.

"Okay."

He turned back to Bagins and offered his hand.

Bagins grabbed it like a lifeline. Relief broke wide across his face as Code pulled him upright.

"Thank you, Abra—"

He never finished the word.

The blade was already through his neck.

It slid in clean and deep, the tip emerging from the other side in a wet flash of steel and blood. Bagins’ eyes went wide. His mouth stayed open around the unfinished thank-you as thick, pulsing streams of blood poured out around the blade. He dropped straight down. The rest of the word died in his throat with him.

And I’d seen this exact thing before.

The Forsaken City. Code appearing out of nowhere. The same easy smile. The same hand extended. Then Major on the floor and Code stepping over the body toward the next thing, leaving the rest of us in a building full of starving people who had just lost their leader.

If Owen is the anus, Code is the balls.

Mercury’s words from the elevator this morning finally clicked into place with brutal clarity.

"What the hell."

I stared at Bagins’ body on the floor, at the blade still gleaming in Code’s hand.

"The order was to leave two people alive," Code said, already turning away. "You. And Mercury."

You and Mercury.

Two people. He’d said two people.

My eyes snapped to Melissa where she lay against the wall, still fighting for every breath, blood streaking her face and bare chest, too spent to stand.

She wasn’t on the list.

Code was already walking toward her, wiping the blade clean against his sleeve, the low whistle starting up again in his throat.

"Code." I forced my legs to move. "Wait—"

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