Silas finally loosened his grip, allowing Evelyn to stand up.
’You better...’
Evelyn smoothed down her coat, took a deep steadying breath, and walked calmly over to where Ryan was kneeling on the carpet then she raised her black-gloved right hand.
HUMMMM!
A controlled pulse of pure refined mana flared at the tips of her fingers as she pressed her palm firmly against the glowing crimson tattoo on the back of Ryan’s neck.
"GHK—!" Ryan gasped, his back arching violently in pain.
HISSSSSSS!
The crimson tattoo flared with blinding white light as Evelyn’s mana forcefully overwrote the rune to fit her signature.
The magical binding burned into the deeper layers of Ryan’s nervous system, finalizing the ownership transfer with a dull echoing chime.
Evelyn stepped back, lowering her hand.
"The asset is secured," Evelyn confirmed, looking over at Silas. The Boss looked at the three of them for a long silent moment.
He didn’t offer a farewell handshake nor did he offer any parting words.
"Tch."
He simply raised his right hand and gave a lazy, dismissive wave across the obsidian desk.
VRAAAAAM!
A massive blinding flash of spatial teleportation magic erupted beneath their feet.
POP!
In a fraction of a second, Silas, Evelyn, and Ryan as well as his own daughter were instantly displaced, reappearing in the cold, rain-slicked alleyway outside the Black-Ash headquarters with the neon lights of Shogitown buzzing overhead.
Back in the expansive, dead-silent executive penthouse.
The Boss sat completely motionless behind his obsidian desk.
He reached into his tailored breast pocket, pulled out a thick pitch-black cigar wrapped in dried lotus leaves, and lit it with a small gold lighter.
Flick!
"Haah..."
He exhaled a thick cloud of pungent gray smoke into the empty room, watching the wisps drift toward the reinforced glass window overlooking the neon city.
"Ya hear...?"
He slowly leaned back in his leather chair, tilting his silver-haired head upward.
Hovering silently in the dark, empty space directly behind his back was a translucent ethereal spirit.
Nobody in the room had been able to see it and nobody in the city possessed the spiritual sight to perceive its terrifying existence.
To call it a ’spirit’ or a ’ghost’ was a grotesque understatement.
It was a Shinigami... a horrifying death deity that had taken the twisted, rotting physical form of his late deceased wife.
Her skin was an ashen, decayed gray, her jaw unhinged with razor-sharp rows of needle-like teeth, and hollow empty black voids occupied her eye sockets.
The Boss took another slow steady drag of his black cigar with his slate-gray eyes reflecting the neon lights below.
"I did exactly what you wanted," the Boss spoke into the empty room, his voice dropping all pretense of authority, sounding like an exhausted man.
He paused, letting the silence hang in the air.
"Are you happy now?" the Boss asked softly.
The grotesque Shinigami hovering behind him did not move at first.
For nearly thirty years, the entity had remained entirely mute... a silent parasitic specter bound to his life force that had never once spoken a single word in his presence.
The Boss slowly tilted his face forward, preparing to stand up from his desk.
A soft and melodic feminine whisper brushed directly against the back of his ear, it was as cold as the grave.
"...Yes."
...
Silas blinked.
One single fraction of a second prior, his heavy boots were firmly planted on the polished marble floor of the Syndicate Boss’s opulent penthouse office.
In the very next heartbeat, a sharp disorienting pull yanked at the base of his skull, and the atmospheric pressure violently shifted.
The sterile scent of expensive synth-tobacco and leather was instantly replaced by the biting humid chill of the undercity.
Silas found himself standing squarely on the wet, cracked asphalt of an empty alleyway, surrounded by flickering holographic billboards, rusted exhaust pipes, and the looming silhouette of the Black-Ash colosseum spire towering overhead.
Pop!
Silas shook his head, clearing the lingering static from his perception.
’Space magic, huh?’ Silas noted dryly to himself, adjusting his posture. ’The old man just waved his hand and tossed three grown adults through half a mile of solid rock bedrock. That’s at least a Tier 3 or 4 spatial artifact pinned to his lapel...’
HZZZZT!
A sudden sharp sizzle crackled against his skin.
Silas looked down at his torso.
The sleek, form-fitting smart uniform... the standard-issue synthetic tournament combat gear the Black-Ash Syndicate had forced almost every qualifier to register and wear before stepping into the arena cage began to aggressively break down.
The smart-fabric dissolved into an unstable, bubbling puddle of pitch-black liquid nanites.
Drip! Slosh!
The black sludge peeled completely off his frame, pooling around the soles of his boots before rapidly slithering across the damp asphalt like a colony of metallic ants, vanishing directly through a drainage grate set into the base of the arena fortress to be reclaimed by the house.
Silas rolled his broad shoulders, completely unbothered.
’Good thing I didn’t trust their garbage gear...’ Silas thought with a quiet smirk beneath his silver Oni mask. ’Or I might have been half naked by now.’
Underneath the dissolving tournament suit, Silas had already layered his actual heavy-duty trench coat and reinforced combat trousers as well as his shirt before the sudden-death final royale commenced.
He was completely cleared to move.
Beside him, Evelyn adjusted the collar of her dark coat, letting out a sharp exhale into the cold air.
"Haah... Finally..."
The pale trembling that had seized her frame in the Boss’s office was entirely gone, replaced once more by her regular presence.
She turned her porcelain Kitsune mask toward Silas and the disheveled hacker standing beside them.
"We’re done here," Evelyn said, her voice dropping into a crisp no-nonsense executive tone. "Let’s move before the betting mobs swarm the perimeter."
"Agreed," Silas rumbled through his voice modulator.
Ryan, still rubbing the sore crimson skin on the back of his neck where the Slave Rune had just been forcefully overwritten by Evelyn’s mana nodded eagerly.
"Lead the way, boss-lady. The sooner I get out of sniffing distance of my old man’s headquarters, the better my lungs are going to feel."
The three of them turned on their heels, preparing to pull back toward the road.
"Hold on a second, Onii-chan."
Click! Clack! Click!
The sharp echoing sound of high heels striking the wet pavement cut through the ambient hum of the alleyway.
Silas paused with his boots halting on the cracked asphalt.
Evelyn stopped as well, turning her masked head back over her shoulder with an irritated narrow tilt.
Emerging from the shadowed access door of the private VIP exit was Talia.
The Boss’s black-haired daughter walked with fluid confidence, her tailored charcoal blazer accentuating her sharp silhouette against the flickering neon lights.
She stopped barely two paces in front of Silas, looking up at his towering frame through long dark eyelashes as a wicked amused smirk curled across her plum-painted lips.
"You put on quite a show in the pit today, Onii-chan," Talia purred smoothly, tilting her head as she looked straight into the narrow eye-slits of his silver Oni mask. "Splitting cyborgs, decapitating blood cultists... it’s been years since someone made my father laugh like that during a match."
"I did what I came to do," Silas replied flatly, keeping his hands buried deep inside his coat pockets. "We have our asset so we’re leaving."
"Not so fast," Talia chuckled, taking half a step closer. "The Syndicate always settles its debts in full. You did exceptionally well, and for that... I think you deserve a proper personal reward."
Silas didn’t move an inch.
"I don’t need a reward... The credits are already cleared."
Talia ignored him as she slipped two manicured fingers into the inner lapel of her tailored suit jacket and pulled out a sleek matte-black card trimmed with polished platinum foil.
She extended it forward, pressing the edge directly against Silas’s chest.
Silas looked down.
Etched into the metallic surface in clean glowing silver font was her official executive title and a direct number too.
[TALIA V. ASH]
[EXECUTIVE ASSET DIRECTOR]
Silas raised a black-gloved hand, taking the card between two fingers to get it off his chest.
"My private number," Talia said, her voice dropping to a low murmur that barely carried over the wind. "There are no middlemen and no filters... If you ever find yourself back in Shogitown looking for high-tier work... or looking for something significantly more entertaining to pass the night... you call that number."
Before Silas could step back, Talia smoothly reached up and placed her bare warm hand flat against his left shoulder.
Silas stiffened slightly beneath his coat with his eyes sharpening behind the metal mask as he looked down at her.
Talia leaned in a fraction of an inch closer, her dark eyes flashing with a dangerous teasing light.
"Make sure you actually use it, okay?" Talia whispered, her breath brushing the silver edge of his demon jaw. "Don’t make me have to track you down across the whole city."
In that exact split second, Silas felt something bizarre ripple across the surface of his skin.
It wasn’t a physical strike, and it wasn’t a hostile spell either.
It was an alien foreign pulse... a strange microscopic vibration that bypassed his outer clothes or and briefly danced across the layer hovering just beneath his Oni mask, tingling against his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose like static electricity.
Silas didn’t know what kind of covert technique it was, but he wasn’t about to stand around and let an underworld mafia princess experiment on him.
’I just want to get out of here...’
Silas violently rolled his shoulder backward, effortlessly shrugging her hand completely off his coat with a sharp dismissive motion.
He stepped back two full paces, casually sliding the black platinum card into the deep pocket of his trousers.
"I’ll keep it in mind," Silas stated dryly, unaffected by the display.
He turned his back on her, walking alongside Evelyn.
Beside them, Ryan couldn’t contain himself.
The hacker turned around as he walked backward, throwing his head back and extending two aggressive middle fingers directly toward his sister with a wide manic grin plastered across his bearded face.
"Fuck you, Talia, you psychotic bitch!" Ryan howled gleefully into the alleyway. "I’m never stepping foot back in this rat-hole! Tell Dad I’m spending all his money on bad takeout!"
Talia didn’t even flinch at the crude insult.
She completely ignored her brother’s existence, crossing her arms beneath her chest as she stood under the flickering amber streetlamp, watching Silas’s broad receding back disappear into the streets.
As the shadows swallowed the man in the trench coat, a slow radiant smile spread across Talia’s sharp wicked face.
A distinct rosy pink blush bloomed across her pale cheeks as well.
Flick!
A tiny microscopic spark of mana flared at the very tips of her manicured fingernails before dissolving into the air.
’Got him,’ Talia thought to herself, her pulse skipping with genuine excitement.
It was a sensory imprint technique... a rare illegal trick she had purchased from a foreign illusionist specifically designed to map facial bone density and facial structure straight through metallic and runic disguises with a single point of physical contact.
In her mind’s eye, the silver demon mask peeled away, revealing the crisp flawless mental image of Silas’s actual face.
’Well, well, well...’ Talia mused internally with a predatory glint igniting in her dark eyes as her tongue traced her lower lip. ’He isn’t just a brutal monster in the dirt. He is actually stunningly handsome. Sharp jaw, striking eyes... and that ridiculous magnificent ass to go with it. What a prize.’
She turned smoothly on her high heels, walking back toward the private executive entrance where four armed guards stood waiting at attention.
"Ma’am?" the lead guard inquired.
"Contact the primary information broker on Sector Two," Talia commanded sharply, her voice instantly snapping back into its cold tone that was fit for an executive. "Tell him to drop whatever petty corporate espionage he’s working on... He is going to run a full facial biometric sweep through every database in the city."
"Understood, Mistress Talia," the guard barked, tapping his comms unit and jogging off into the corridor.
Talia stepped through the doorway, glancing back one final time into the dark foggy alleyway with a wicked chuckle.
’Whoever you really are under that coat, Onii-chan...’ Talia thought, adjusting her blazer. ’You are not getting rid of me this easily... Not by a long shot.’
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