Simon let out a cold laugh amid his struggles, then clenched his teeth with crushing force.
His body went rigid for half a second before suddenly slumping like a marionette with its strings severed, his head and limbs dangling limply.
“—?” Hastur triggered time stop on reflex. “How did we encounter nitroglycerin even in a game?”
Oh, right—he’d almost forgotten. This wasn’t a game; it was probably a real universe.
Haha, now everything made sense.
G8273 straightened up with keen interest. “Nitroglycerin?”
Hastur explained with exasperation, “We call targets who off themselves before we even start interrogating ‘nitroglycerin.’ You know, because nitroglycerin is so volatile—one little jolt and boom.”
He glanced at the corpse on the bar counter. “Sometimes we call them ‘stunt-pullers’ or ‘paperwork nightmares.’ Most of our orders are to ‘capture the target alive,’ so if they die on their own, it means a mountain of reports to file.”
G8273 arched an eyebrow. “‘We’? ‘Work’? ‘Orders’?”
“…” The boomerang from Hastur’s own words—”Why didn’t you tell me?”—from just minutes ago had come flying right back at him. “You never asked. Can we get back to the matter at hand?”
G8273 shrugged, shooting him a look that said, “Whatever you say,” laced with mockery. “Just rewind one minute, and I’d have crushed the capsule in his mouth right away.”
Time flowed backward once more, halting at the second before Clark’s muttered curse.
Before Clark could spit out that word—”freak”—G8273’s left hand clamped onto Simon Rio’s jaw, instantly turning the capsule hidden under his tongue into a lychee candy.
The saccharin dissolved rapidly, flooding his mouth with sweetness.
Simon Rio’s face twisted in shock. Still refusing to believe it, he worked the candy onto his tongue and crunched it viciously. “…Pah!”
Hastur dodged to the side. Finally free of distractions, he repeated the question. “Where’s Cornelius? Give me his location.”
Simon lifted his head, eyes burning with venom.
“What the hell does Cornelius have to do with me? You think your little sleight-of-hand trick can fool me? Make me cooperate with your interro—Guh!!”
G8273 slammed the Cleaner’s head onto the bar counter, grinding it down. “Dulled pain receptors might soften the blow of an interrogation, but is your mind as numb as your flesh?”
Hastur caught G8273’s glance that said, “Your turn,” and shot back an awkward look of his own: “You sure? No one’s ever walked out of my interrogation room alive.”
G8273 replied with a steady gaze and a nod: “I’ll have your back.” “Just say the word anytime you want to confess.”
“…” Hastur found himself shoved into the hot seat. Cautiously, he extended a mental tentacle, its tip probing into Simon’s temple.
“Urgh—aaaahhhhh!!”
Clark shuddered violently under Hastur’s grip. Simon Rio’s scream—shrill enough to shred vocal cords—drained the color from his face on instinct.
Simon hadn’t made a peep even when his limbs were snapped earlier. These two attackers hadn’t done much of anything. Why was he howling like this now?
G8273 glanced at Hastur, who was hyper-focused on “don’t kill the human” and couldn’t spare a word. He pressed on instead. “Cornelius’s location. Spill it, and I guarantee things get a lot easier for you.”
“I won’t…” Simon Rio’s eyes began rolling back. “Kill me—kill me—”
The man who hadn’t feared any pain moments ago now wailed and thrashed like a fish frying in hot oil.
Under the excruciating mental agony, his features contorted. The corners of his eyes and mouth split from being stretched too wide, blood trickling out. Snot, tears, and blood smeared his once-clean, handsome face into a grotesque mess.
“…” Clark’s body went stiff. His instincts screamed to get away from Simon, but even with his cybernetic body, he couldn’t overpower Hastur.
G8273 coaxed further. “Why stay loyal to your partner? From your little chat earlier, he refused to help you when you needed him most.”
To keep Simon from passing out, Hastur withdrew the mental tentacle for the moment. Simon collapsed onto the bar like a deflated sack. “…You…”
He gasped raggedly, devoid of any composure. Hastur had to listen closely to make out his words.
“Then come destroy me, West Wind.”
Simon closed his eyes, bowing his head like a devotee praying single-mindedly before a demon. He exposed his nape and chanted rhythmic verses under his breath.
“…Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is… I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! The wingèd seeds… are driven by the same impulse that drives thee: proud, light, and swift and free…”
“Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind.'” G8273 cross-referenced the poem’s core theme. “…You could call it a declaration of defiance.”
Hastur suspected Simon had undergone the same government agent training as Dismer Gang operatives—at least, he’d read about it in some obscure books. Repeating the same lines over and over to avoid spilling secrets.
“But my experience tells me that if someone’s clamming up, they just haven’t found the right crowbar yet.”
G8273 caught the hint. “I’ll call for a ride back to Silencer Town.”
Simon’s chanting cut off abruptly.
~~~
On the way back, the two captured perps were quiet as mice.
Simon because Hastur and G8273 had indeed found the “right crowbar.” Clark because of the pair’s ruthless methods so far.
Truth be told, for a few minutes there, Clark even felt the roles had reversed—as if he and Simon were the innocent lambs, while those two hulking brutes were the real monsters.
Hastur had messaged Finnian midway, so by the time the hovercar pulled up to Silencer Town’s gates, Old Raymond was already waiting by the wishing fountain with Finnian and Jenny.
Simon was utterly silent as he was shoved from the car, eyes downcast as if all his fight had drained away—as if he weren’t the man who’d busted out of jail half an hour ago, or the one who’d headshot Old Raymond in the last save file.
Once the Dismer Gang took custody, Hastur slowed his pace, lingering at the rear with G8273.
“I don’t get it. I see why Old Raymond’s the crowbar, but why was Simon so compliant when he knew we’d bring him back to pry him open? I figured he’d at least put up a deathbed fight. Useful or not.”
Why bust out of jail with so much effort just to play the escaped Cleaner for an episode?
G8273’s thinking was far more straightforward. “Whatever he’s scheming, it won’t derail our mission. So why bother decoding his head? Even humans call his type ‘psycho.'”
G8273 was the epitome of pragmatism. “Don’t psychoanalyze weirdos any more than I’d dissect why a buggy program still runs.”
Hastur found the analogy spot-on. He let go of his needless doubts and followed the group into Old Raymond’s residence.
As the unwanted Company rep, Clark had been dumped straight at the branch police station by the gang.
Only Finnian, Jenny, and their escorts—Hastur and G8273 with Simon Rio—were allowed into the study.
Simon sprawled on the floor, limbs twisted in a pitiful pose. Yet he strained to lift his head, glaring fixedly at Old Raymond. His whole vibe was… well, Hastur had to call it off.
G8273 murmured a reminder. “Don’t forget, you just interrogated him once, and he’s still coherent. That’s some iron will.”
Before Simon, Old Raymond hobbled to the sofa on his cane and sank down slowly.
His expression was a tangle of emotions as he gazed at his battered foster son. After a long pause, he said, “I never imagined seeing you like this again after our first meeting. Simon, you’re truly—”
“No. Don’t.” Simon, who hadn’t yielded an inch even in eye-watering pain, began to tremble. Fat teardrops welled up and splattered on the floor inches away. “Don’t say you’re disappointed in me.”
Old Raymond opened his mouth, perhaps to say something cutting like, “Then how should I judge you?” But in the end, he pivoted. “Tell me—why betray me? No, when did the betrayal start?”
Simon craned his neck stiffly toward Old Raymond. “…Eleven years ago.”
Eleven years prior, Simon Rio had been just twenty-three, all hot blood over brains, ambitions burning brightest.
His schemes back then weren’t full-on coups—just secretly striking out on his own behind Old Raymond’s back, or pulling off one big score.
His motives were pure enough: to prove his chops, show he could thrive without Old Raymond’s protection, and earn the old man’s approval.
~~~ As Leo had aptly put it, daddy issues.
Simon said, “An intermediary reached out to me, saying a client wanted to do a ‘transportation deal.’ I agreed. After a few round trips, I realized the cargo included a large number of live people…”
His sense of morality was as thin as his pain tolerance; he didn’t see much difference between transporting “lambs” and any other goods. But Old Raymond cared.
The ban on human trafficking was etched into the gang’s rules, and Simon himself had personally executed many members who broke them.
“Oh, so in other words, you were set up? And out of necessity, you had no choice but to keep doing business with that client?”
Jenny let out a bored snort. “Don’t lie to yourself, Simon.”
“Why won’t you admit your own ambition? Why not say it outright—that you love Mr. Raymond, just as you crave power and wealth?”
Simon didn’t spare Jenny so much as a glance. He kept his eyes fixed on Old Raymond. “I struggled for a week. In the end, I saw it as an opportunity.”
To describe Simon’s feelings toward Old Raymond in detail would be to catalog a mass of contradictions.
He treated Old Raymond’s words as sacred laws, yet he yearned all the more to shatter and defy them.
He wished for Old Raymond to live on forever, yet he longed to strike him down with his own hands to prove his strength.
That was why he called it an “opportunity.” An opportunity to break the rules and demonstrate his worth.
At twenty-three, after much back-and-forth, he seized that chance—and with it, took his first step away from Raymond.
“After that, the client and I established steady cooperation. In the first half of AF58, he only had me transport some medical equipment, drugs, and live people.”
“In the second half, he told me that the delivery routes I chose were riddled with electronic surveillance cameras. Each time, he had to clean up my mess for me…”
