“?” Hastur’s hand on G8273’s back clenched hard, fingers digging deep into the resilient muscle. He drove his knee upward into G8273’s abdomen with force, and a relieved sigh came immediately through the earpiece.
“God,” Dustin said weakly, “he dumped a ton of plans on us all at once—force-fed straight into our brain cores through a violent intrusion. Please, what the hell did you two fight about? Can you not drag us into it?”
“That’s not the point,” Finnian cut in. He clearly hadn’t grasped the truth happening just on the other side of the wall and was hastily skimming the plans. “The point is to seize the moment and extract some confessions—using this divide-and-conquer approach. Dustin, you and I handle the action. Dean, you just…”
With all their prior misunderstandings, Finnian didn’t suspect a thing about the innocence—or lack thereof—in Hastur and G8273’s “interaction.” Frantic now, he issued his instructions.
“Just… argue a little less with G8273. Hopefully, by the time we’ve gotten our confessions, you two will be back to getting along. Okay? Great.”
Finnian used his brain core to close out the plans and hauled Dustin to his feet.
The room’s vanity table held a collection of electronic gadgets for quick disguises—items originally meant to spice up bedroom antics, but now perfect tools for their scheme.
The two men swiftly completed their disguises. Finnian followed G8273’s provided blueprint of the building’s layout and raised his arm toward one corner of the ceiling.
“Boom—”
Chunks of shattered brick and debris rained down amid clouds of dust. The entire bar erupted into screams. “Attack!! It’s an attack!!”
Finnian and Dustin plunged into the billowing powder, using the cover to vault up to the second floor.
Finnian fired off several more blasts according to the map. Dustin seized the chaos to kick the terrified, half-naked dancers tumbling back down to the first floor.
With their cybernetic body implants, the performers wouldn’t shatter that easily.
Only when tongues of flame had the second floor completely hemmed in, neatly partitioned into isolated zones, did Finnian retract his cybernetic weaponry. He strode boldly toward one section, fearless as he crossed the fire.
But the moment he emerged on the far side of the blaze—the newly disguised Finnian, now in Dustin’s clothes and wearing Dustin’s face—doubled over in feigned distress. “Chief Com… cough cough! Chief Commissioner! What are you doing here?”
“Dustin?? What are you doing here?” The Chief Commissioner coughed as he clambered to his feet amid the roiling smoke. He frowned at “Dustin,” his eyes alight with obvious displeasure. “I thought you’d be too busy with the case for any downtime, but what have you been up to? Banquet yesterday, strip club today…”
The Chief Commissioner’s gaze lingered on “Dustin,” his words halting for an instant. But soon his frown deepened further with even greater disapproval.
“Look at the state of your clothes! What was that attack about? What were you doing right before it hit?!”
When G8273 had plotted the fire zones, he’d placed the Chief Commissioner’s in the spot closest to the stairwell. Finnian seized the opportunity, grabbing the Chief Commissioner’s arm and hurriedly dragging him toward the stairs and out of the inferno.
“I was following a lead. An informant set up a meet here.”
Per the plan, Finnian’s job was to use Dustin’s identity to lure the Chief Commissioner away from the bar as quickly as possible, clearing the way for the real Dustin to impersonate the Chief Commissioner and pump Old Vincent for info.
So far, everything was going smoothly. If there was a difficulty, it was only that Finnian had to swallow his seething hatred, dragging the Chief Commissioner through the fire instead of shoving him into it and holding him down.
He took the stairs two at a time, half-dragging, half-leaping with the man in tow down to the first floor. As they passed a mirror at the landing, Finnian caught an inadvertent glimpse of his reflection.
The man behind him was watching with a gaze full of complicated emotion—a look that had no business being directed at Dustin. It was more like the conflicted stare of someone facing a figure from the past, familiar yet just out of recognition.
“—”
Finnian’s steps halted. In the blink of an eye, he spun, gun drawn, the barrel jammed straight under the Chief Commissioner’s jaw. “You know who I am.”
Back in the first-floor room.
Hastur had just tried to lend a hand when his extending mental tentacles were seized by a warm, broad palm. G8273’s other hand gripped his waist, flipping him forcefully from back-up to belly-down in a position convenient for leveraging his rise.
He slammed his knee toward G8273’s abdomen, but G8273’s right hand intercepted in time. The man countered by pinning Hastur’s knee and splaying his attacking left leg out to the side.
“…”
Hastur didn’t much care for being looked down on.
With a sudden surge of strength, his powerful legs coiled around G8273’s lean waist, flipping the man beneath him.
The cheap iron bed frame groaned massively under them with ear-splitting creaks. The chains at its four corners clanked and went taut amid their tussle.
Hastur reached up to yank off the chain looped around his neck. His fingers had just closed around the not-too-thick links when an unfamiliar-yet-familiar sensation bloomed in his lower abdomen.
It wasn’t entirely strange—that spot was where G8273 had pressed a hand during their past theatrics.
But the strangeness lay in more than just the pressure; there was something else… a tactile feedback? A conditioned response? He couldn’t say what, exactly, but it made his grip and his hips slacken all at once.
He caught himself with one hand on the bed just before toppling forward, the other still clutching the chain at the back of his neck while he braced his arched waist against G8273’s shoulder.
A ragged burst of breaths escaped his lips—breaths that shouldn’t have been triggered at all. They left him squinting in faint confusion at the unfamiliar sensation, astonishment flooding him.
At some point, the glitchy light spots on G8273’s body had vanished. The interwoven web of lights was gone, replaced by a fully solidified, perfectly stable real flesh-and-blood body.
This physique embodied G8273’s cherished “golden ratio,” its features and frame so flawlessly proportioned that the first glance evoked marble statues or divine masterpieces—artifacts far removed from mere reality.
It was precisely this unreal perfection that made the body—complete with all five facial features and indistinguishable from a human’s—still radiate an overwhelming sense of inhumanity.
When you locked eyes with those emerald irises, when you saw the thick, liquid-silver hair cascading behind G8273 in perfectly defined strands like meticulously rendered CG, you would realize with absolute clarity:
You were staring at something inhuman.
Hastur didn’t want to meet G8273’s gaze. He wanted to know how Finnian and Dustin’s interrogation was going. But reason was one thing, and the sensations of his body quite another.
He leaned in closer, their noses almost touching, pressing with such force that it bordered on pain. Yet G8273 never averted his line of sight.
It wasn’t just now, either. Even further back, the other had grown accustomed to using his optical lenses to pick Hastur out from vast crowds, always prioritizing him whenever they shared the same space.
Hastur braced his arms on either side of G8273’s shoulders. As his breathing grew more ragged, he caught a clear glimpse of his own reflection in the other’s optical irises.
The anthropomorphic appearance the System had prepared for him seemed to have changed—or perhaps this wasn’t even the same appearance the System had originally designed.
His once pale, distinctly Caucasian skin had darkened, shifting toward the deep wheat tone it took on when Hastur’s mental tentacles fully manifested.
Platinum hair fell over his shoulders, with stray strands half-obscuring his muddy yellow eyes—eyes that still lacked pupils, showing only twisted pupil patterns—as he gazed at Hastur. It was as if G8273 were staring at a massive, eerily beautiful insectoid mimic.
The insectoid’s elytra gleamed with vibrant, iridescent beauty. But G8273 knew full well that what he was really seeing were merely the eye-like patterns mimicking life on those elytra. The true essence lay elsewhere—
In the scythe-like blades capable of ripping a person open from gut to sternum. In the jagged teeth that could shred leg bones along with their flesh.
Danger and order fused together in perfect, paradoxical harmony in the man before him. G8273 narrowed his eyes slightly, entranced as he admired the way Hastur’s body trembled under his touch, his breaths coming in disordered, frantic gasps…
The room felt far too small.
So cramped that every breath, every rustle of clothing echoed off the bare stone walls.
So confined that it seemed to hold room only for the two of them, shutting out all other people and matters from this tiny, isolated world.
Hastur’s fingers dug into G8273’s shoulders, clenching suddenly along with G8273’s movements. Then someone flicked off one side of his earpiece and tossed it aside casually. The small metal device clattered to the floor with a crisp tink.
“…What the hell are you doing?”
He suspected that this brand-new body of his had been forged by Order—or at least contained fifty percent of it.
Otherwise, how could he be obsessing over the case progress even in the throes of desire? It was a futile effort; his thoughts soon blanked out amid G8273’s actions, leaving only the other’s dissatisfied cold snort in his ears:
“You always pay attention to too many people. You always yield to everyone but me.”
Hastur’s body went rigid before suddenly going slack, collapsing heavily onto G8273.
He turned his head and ground his teeth. “Take another look at what you’re doing, then try saying I always yield to everyone but you.”
Through the earpiece came Dustin’s voice: “…”
Ugh—calm down! Non-humans were just like that, spouting sweet nothings in the middle of a brawl. Ha!
Dustin took a deep breath, confirming that his Chief Commissioner disguise was still flawless. Then, per the plan, he strode through the inferno and shoved aside a steel-reinforced concrete pillar that was seconds from crushing Old Hank Vincent.
Half of Old Hank Vincent’s hair had been scorched off, yet he still clutched the safe box like it was worth more than his life.
His first reaction upon seeing someone enter the blaze wasn’t gratitude for the rescue but yanking out his handgun and aiming it at the intruder. “…You? Heh, you actually came to save me?”
Dustin had no intention of saving him—a mindset that perfectly matched the Chief Commissioner’s persona. “Nobody said I came to save you. I’m just curious. After you spouted that threat in front of everyone, how do you figure I’m here to pull you out instead of finish you off?”
Even as he said it, Dustin roughly hauled Old Vincent up with feigned impatience, slinging the man’s arm over his shoulder and dragging him toward the exit.
This mix of sharp words and compliant actions clearly delighted Old Vincent. “Why would you kill me over something this trivial, old friend?”
“Among our bunch, if we were to lay blame once and for all, you’d carry the lightest load.”
“I handled framing Hadie. Diego took care of the burials. And you? You just streamlined the workflow a bit—turning a morning missing persons report into an afternoon death declaration.”
Finnian heard every word crystal clear through the earpiece.
His grip on his weapon tightened for an instant. Then he smoothly forced the Chief Commissioner’s chin up, exposing the vulnerable throat.
“Don’t try reminiscing with me. I’m not interested. Tell me what happened nine years ago. What did you do? No bullshit!”
The Chief Commissioner didn’t resist—likely because, in his current state, resistance wouldn’t achieve much anyway. He answered Finnian’s demand with equally curt words:
“Hank came to me, saying he planned to seize power from your parents.”
“The plan was nearly complete. He’d already had the bodies dealt with. The only snag was he wanted my help fast-tracking your parents’ status to ‘deceased’ so he could take control swiftly.”
Finnian’s jaw clenched tight.
He didn’t lose control like an idiot or roar madly about betrayal. He just turned his face slightly. “Dustin, ask if my parents were still alive when they were carted off. Dean—”
Finnian’s voice cut through just as the metal-framed bed finally gave way under their rolling tussle, collapsing in a heap.
A snapped rebar nearly speared G8273’s left side. Hastur shattered the chains around his neck and left ankle.
The room looked like a tornado had torn through it, a total wreck—even G8273 struggled to maintain his usual neat composure.
They lay sprawled on the floor, one atop the other.
Hastur’s ear pressed halfway against G8273’s heaving chest. Half-lidded, he listened to the heartbeat’s rhythm while teasingly varying the pace of his hands. Hearing Finnian’s voice, he drawled lazily:
“Almost done here. Once Dustin finishes with Old Vincent, we can move in.”
G8273 seized the hand reaching for the earpiece, his tone edged with danger. “‘Almost done’ fighting? How come I didn’t know?”
The poor humans remained oblivious to the truth. Dustin was still sparring verbally with Old Vincent, and Finnian had no bandwidth for mediation. He could only mutter halfheartedly, “Whatever spat this is, don’t screw up the main objective.”
