“Die rather than yield”—the phrase nailed one word perfectly: “die.”
What Ode was going through clearly didn’t qualify as “death.” Time had dragged on to the absolute limits of human endurance, and his body and mind had collapsed multiple times as a result.
Yet the word “stubborn” might as well have been invented for Ode himself. Even after he’d bitten clean through the shirt stuffed in his mouth, he never once cried out in pain or begged for mercy—though he hadn’t exactly held back on the taunts.
When he woke from his third blackout, his mind was foggy for a good while. He even hallucinated that the bed was still rocking beneath him. In the end, though, it turned out he’d just been lying on his own artery. “Ca…”
The hoarse, whistling rasp of his voice startled even Ode himself. He clamped his mouth shut on instinct, dead set on saving face.
He pricked up his ears, listening intently. Once he was sure Cavendish wasn’t around, he slid off the bed as quietly as he could manage. Then he snatched up his clothes and pants, threw them on in a hurry, braced himself against the window frame, and vaulted down onto the lawn.
“Thank God for my decent self-healing,” Ode muttered, brushing the wrinkles from the hem of his suit jacket. He strode toward the manor’s outer wall, ready to use it for leverage and scale it in a few quick bounds. But something felt off.
Inside the wall, wild grass swayed gently in the breeze, brushing against his ankles.
Outside, a lush ancient oak tree stood frozen, not even its fallen leaves stirring in the slightest. Someone had tampered with time itself, turning the entire manor into a cage cut off from the rest of the world.
“…” Ode’s foot, planted against the wall, froze. A few seconds later, he silently lowered it.
He turned around—and there was a figure on the sill of the master bedroom window behind him. Cavendish had his hands braced on the frame, watching Ode with an easy smile. “Come back up.”
“…” Ode shook his head.
Cavendish had gone too far this time. Now, even just looking at the man’s face made Ode’s stomach twitch with the lingering, inescapable memories.
“What happened to ‘pure mind, few desires’?” Ode demanded righteously, jabbing an accusing finger. “You’re wasting your authority over time on this? That’s not what it’s for.”
“I want to use it this way.” Cavendish brushed off the accusation like a passing breeze. “Isn’t that exactly what you do? You have the right to control your own life, but you choose to spend it however you please… What gives you the standing to accuse me of misusing my power?”
No one brought up believers or the gods they worshipped anymore. With a blink, Cavendish teleported down to the lawn.
Ode’s legs buckled the instant Cavendish closed the distance. He grabbed the wall just in time to steady himself and edged backward warily. “Fine, fine. Listen, we can’t keep doing this. I was wrong, okay? ‘Ow!’ ‘I can’t take it anymore!’ What else do you want me to say?”
“…” Cavendish halted. After a long pause, he said coolly, “You’re not going to change, are you? If you were, you would’ve said all that back on the bed. I can tell the difference between lip service and a real promise, Ode. Though from what I’ve seen of the future, your promises aren’t exactly reliable anyway.”
At this point, Ode figured he might as well be honest. “What do you expect from me? That I drag you off to Las Vegas for a quick marriage license? You know this thing between us isn’t going to end well, Cavendish.”
“You’re the one who stopped me that night at the gala. You chose your path. So if it’s not turning out the way you pictured? Deal with it. Or you can just walk away right now.”
Ode stopped backing up and marched right up to Cavendish instead. “Get real, Cavendish. You know you can’t keep me locked up here forever. It’s not worth blowing everything up over this.”
“…I seem to recall you saying you came to Cavendish Manor precisely to blow everything up,” Cavendish couldn’t help pointing out.
“Er… but we didn’t, did we?” Ode clapped Cavendish hard on the shoulder. The force of it gave Cavendish the strange illusion that with every crack in Ode’s facade of normalcy, a bit more of that roguish, world-weary edge—forged deep in his soul by war and loss—seeped to the surface.
This man looked nothing like the Ode from two months ago.
If he stepped out into the world without his mask back on, you’d hardly recognize him as the mild-mannered, silver-tongued civil service hopeful he’d once been. He seemed more like some grizzled veteran who’d sleep with a rifle in his arms by the campfire, snapping awake at the slightest rustle—danger and exhaustion woven into a charisma all its own. It drew the eye, made you overlook his sharp edges, and focus instead on that apparent vulnerability just within reach.
Cavendish fell silent for a moment. Then the barrier cloaking the manor shattered.
The glassy fragments refracted the newly flowing time. Two sparrows chirped away on a branch, preening each other’s feathers.
“Ode.” Cavendish called out just before Ode could take a step away—the only way he could hold onto him now. Without Ode to guide him, he couldn’t even grasp the wind that was about to carry him off. “Don’t let yourself go too far, alright? I don’t want to one day face a version of you that I can’t afford to fight.”
Ode stopped. He whipped around, seized Cavendish by the collar, and yanked him close. Their foreheads cracked together with the momentum, pain blooming in their wake. “Then come with me.”
“If the pilot can’t bear to let the Little Prince go, he should go with him. If the snake can’t bear to let the Little Prince go, it should go with him. Dare you do it, Cavendish?”
Ode closed the last sliver of distance between them, his lips nearly brushing Cavendish’s. His voice dropped to a whisper. “If you dare, then I’ll ‘tame’ you.”
.
That improvised line from Ode at the end worked wonders. For the next week, Cavendish left him alone.
Ode didn’t bother wondering what was churning in Cavendish’s head. As far as he was concerned, the only endings for this relationship were dying alone or dying together. At best, he pondered how to turn a solo death into a double one. So after leaving Cavendish Manor, he headed straight back to base to fulfill the promise he’d made before departing: submit to a contamination check.
“All your readings are normal. I’ll admit, that outcome comes as a relief.” Eva maneuvered the exam bed out of the equipment. “Maybe I was overthinking it. Eating those things doesn’t seem to have affected your body at all—”
“Or maybe this gear isn’t sensitive enough.” Ode wasn’t relaxing this time.
Cavendish’s attitude was proof enough that something was wrong with him. Yet every test had come back clean. “Upgrade it. Didn’t you say before that the current machines can’t even measure my charm value ceiling? What if my anomalies are like charm values—too subtle for this equipment?”
He hopped down and shrugged into his suit. Behind him, Eva frowned. “You okay, Ode? You seem on edge, but you’ve nailed every task assigned to you perfectly—”
“What about the Pharaoh’s mission?” Ode spun on his heel. “Little Qianning said he’s watching team members come and go every day. Why not send me over there?”
“? Because as of this morning, the situation in Egypt wrapped up.” Eva explained. “Nyarlathotep’s avatar just vanished without a trace. Pharaoh couldn’t figure out why, but she’s sure he’s off chasing some new amusement. By the timing, Pharaoh should be back with the team by now, shacking up with Old Qianning.”
Ode: “…So what was the point of Nyarlathotep stirring up all that trouble in Egypt?”
No one knew.
Eva shrugged and walked him out of the lab. Ode didn’t dwell on it. He went straight to Faust for a new assignment. Luckily, there hadn’t been any major incidents lately like the ones in Dreamcatcher Town or on the cruise ship. Mostly just small stuff: “The ghouls are raiding the graveyard again for a snack,” or “Help! I think my neighbor’s a dark wizard!”
A week of running around later, on the evening of July 15th, they finally tracked down a case with real significance.
Along the Thames River Bank, beneath one of London Bridge’s piers.
Ode flashed his MI5 credentials to shoo away the Scotland Yard officers on scene. By the time he crunched back over the gravel to the body, he heard Faust—squatting beside it, heedless of his trench coat hem dragging in the dirt—say:
“Brown Black. From the Black Family, first in line to inherit the marquessate… Does that ring any bells?”
“You think he was part of London’s underground Secret Society?” Ode examined the corpse and winced. “How long has this body been rotting down here under the bridge? With all the foot traffic, how did no one spot it and call it in sooner?”
“I’m certain it’s not indifference. No one could see it.” Faust pulled his hand from his trench coat pocket and began patting down the body. “Think about it—the marquess’s firstborn heir. If the Black Family could find Brown’s corpse, wouldn’t they swoop in immediately to claim it? Whether for love or noble pride.”
He tilted the corpse’s neck. “Ah! There it is. Look at this—the incision on the back of the skull. Familiar, right?”
“?” Ode leaned in. Under the flashlight beam, the interface-like scars at the base of the neck stood out starkly. “Wait—this is the procedure those Mi-Go things do to their proxies, isn’t it? The one where they cut out the brain and stick it in a jar for immortality?”
Ode remembered the Mi-Go vividly, even though he’d never crossed paths with a live one. Back at Qian Ning Bank, their first run-in with GORCC, hadn’t the team been wearing those mental pollution filter masks made from Mi-Go brains?
“Spot on.” Faust slapped the top of the corpse’s head like it was a melon. “His brains are still snug inside the skull, so it couldn’t have been a Mi-Go that killed him. They would’ve taken the brain.”
