154 Breach [Continuity]

The clock on my office wall ticked in perfect rhythm. It was slow, deliberate, and synchronized to the pulse of the world outside. I always admired that consistency. Time never lied, even when people did.

The door opened with a soft hiss. Entering the room was a man in a crisp black suit, his hair slicked neatly back. He carried a black cane, its tip tapping lightly against the floor, and over his eyes sat a black silk blindfold. It was Guesswork.

“Hello, boss,” he greeted in that smug tone of his, finding a seat without hesitation. “First time off-world for me. I’d say it’s been a dizzy ride.”

I didn’t smile. “Report.”

“I already wrote it,” he replied smoothly, crossing one leg over the other. “Sent it an hour ago.”

“I want to hear it from you,” I said, finally letting a thin smile creep across my lips. “Or would you like me to remind you of your place? I’ve read the report already, of course…”

He smirked, as if daring me.

A thin line of red appeared across his throat, and then blood began to spill down the front of his immaculate shirt. His lips parted slightly, yet he didn’t move or flinch. He simply kept smiling through the gurgle of blood as it dripped onto his cane.

I sipped my tea. “You sure are fearless, you know that?”

“Yes,” he said hoarsely, his voice rasping through the torn flesh, “I often get that impression.”

With a thought, I twisted the thread of reality. The cause—his throat being cut—was reversed. The effect—his death—undone. His wound sealed itself with a faint shimmer of light, and the blood that had pooled on the carpet flowed backward into his veins. Still, not all the blood returned to his body.

Guesswork dabbed his chin with a napkin, unbothered. “Now, about the report…”

“Yes,” I murmured, leaning back. “Make it as detailed as possible.”

He straightened, his blindfold-covered eyes facing the direction of my voice. “In my time infiltrating the National Supremacy Directorate, what they call the NSR, I followed Eclipse’s trail. Every place he claimed to have been, every name he mentioned, and every trace he left behind. It all matched his account perfectly, with one… exception.”

“Be careful what you say, Guesswork,” I warned. My tone was calm, but the air itself seemed to tighten. “I don’t appreciate baseless speculation.”

“Of course not.” His smile never faded. “But speculation is my business, isn’t it? The gift of foresight comes at the price of doubt.”

I studied him. Guesswork’s power, probabilistic intuition, let him glimpse outcomes like strands of possibility. That made him valuable. Dangerous, too. He could be working with Eclipse, or perhaps trying to convince me of his loyalty by undermining him. Either way, I needed to hear it.

“Continue.”

“Eclipse lied,” Guesswork said simply. “He wasn’t moving across worlds for revenge. He wasn’t chasing power, or old ghosts.”

I set my cup down. “Go on.”

“He’s infected,” Guesswork said, his tone flattening. “Not metaphorically. The Entity, whatever you want to call it, marked him. His mind, his power, and even his body are deteriorating under its influence. That’s why he left. He wasn’t running from enemies; he was searching for a cure.”

A pause filled the room, long and heavy.

“Your hypothesis,” I said softly, “is that his interdimensional movement is not an act of impulse…”

That was an interesting thought.

Eclipse had always been a creature of excess. He was vengeful, dramatic, and emotionally unstable, but intelligent enough to ensure his vengeance would go through. Every file, every observation, every field report described him as someone who needed to make others suffer to feel alive. But this time, he went too far.

An entire civilization thrown into turmoil just to make a point.

Still… I couldn’t imagine someone going that far purely out of revenge. Revenge, after all, requires intimacy and connection. The target must matter to you.

But the people he destroyed? They were strangers.

He already killed Light, the one who tried to manipulate him. What satisfaction could there be beyond that? Killing the Witch, the woman who created Light, was like murdering the parent of the villain who ruined your day. Pointless. Yet somehow, that was exactly what he did.

“Hmm… What is Spoiler to Eclipse?”

Guesswork tilted his head slightly. “Spoiler?”

“Yes, I believe you know her,” I said. “Formerly known as Missive. She was part of the Nth Contract. The Ten. A mercenary cabal without ethics or restraint. The kind who would burn entire cities for payment. I don’t believe she was irrelevant to all this.”

He gave a small, knowing smile.

I remembered the reports well enough. Eclipse had killed Light for manipulation and betrayal. Speculation suggested Missive had a hand in that betrayal, or at least the circumstances that led to it. But the SRC had cut off all further digging.

Digging through her mind was considered inefficient.

Instead, they had her rebranded. Turned into a hero. Spoiler: the radiant figure of redemption.

Disgusting.

I had no fondness for heroes from their symbols, idealism, and hypocrisy. Tools of optics, all of them. A pantomime for the masses, and a way for the SRC to pretend it still had a soul.

“What else did you find out about the Directorate?” I asked, breaking the silence.

Guesswork leaned forward, fingers lightly drumming his cane. “The entity known as the Führer is estimated to be a rated-twenty nullifier. His nullification field covers an entire planetary sphere. The stories paint him as a hedonistic monster, indulgent, detached, and uninterested in governance unless provoked. But after Eclipse’s little performance, he was provoked indeed.”

He smiled faintly, his blindfold giving the impression of an empty gaze.

“After the infiltration and ensuing chaos, the Führer began personally overseeing suppression operations. He turned his world into a fortress. Entire cities reduced to glass under his command. He nullified every rebel cape on the planet and set off nuclear warheads in defiant zones. The uprisings Eclipse caused gave him the perfect excuse to tighten his grip.”

“Hmm.” I swirled the tea slowly. “And the rebels?”

“Crushed,” Guesswork said. “Some of their leaders were capes rated at seventeen and higher. Even they failed. There are rumors the Fuhrer doesn’t just nullify powers, but also kinetics and basically motion. Which would make sense, considering no one was yet to succeed killing him.”

I allowed myself a faint smile. “Sounds like a piece of work. Kinetic nullification means he is pretty much immune to physical damage…”

Guesswork sat back, his tone growing more serious. “That brings me to my final recommendation.”

“Go on.”

“I suggest we postpone any infiltration or intelligence operations involving the Directorate. Since Eclipse’s attack, they’ve become hypervigilant toward extra-dimensional incursions. Their defensive countermeasures are evolving faster than we can study them. For now, I propose waiting… observe, adapt, and let their paranoia burn through resources while we construct proper countermeasures.”

“Is that all?” I asked, setting my teacup back onto the saucer with deliberate calm.

“That’s all,” answered Guesswork, his tone light.

“You may leave,” I said, smiling faintly. “Take rest. Continue with your duties as Eclipse’s handler. I’m expecting good work from you.”

“Thank you, boss!” He bowed slightly, his grin almost boyish beneath the blindfold, before he turned and walked out of the room. His cane clicked rhythmically on the marble floor, echoing through the hall as the door hissed shut behind him.

For a long moment, I simply listened to the silence that followed. I called softly, beside me.

“Glitch.”

A shimmer of golden sparks flickered beside my desk with holographic light forming into the outline of a young man wearing a white hoodie plastered with lewd anime girls. The faint hum of digital static followed his presence.

He gave a lazy wave. “Yo.”

“He’s lying,” Glitch said immediately, his digital avatar flickering as data flowed behind his eyes.

I raised a brow. “What parts?”

“Everything.”

I chuckled quietly. “Now, I’m just hurt.”

Glitch’s hologram folded his arms, his face faintly distorted by flickering pixels. “Guesswork’s got a nice poker face. It’s our luck he doesn’t know I’ve got telepathic ratings.”

“Yes,” I agreed, leaning back in my chair. “I’m glad I listened to the new kid’s advice.”

Glitch’s brow twitched. “New kid? Windbreaker, is it?”

“Indeed.”

Division Five. My pride and my curse.

Fifteen members in total with one director cape, two government officials, three researcher-rated capes, four intelligence operatives, and five heavy hitters.

Guesswork was one of the intelligence operatives. Glitch, one of the heavy hitters, along with Patch, Gloryhole, and Windbreaker.

As for Eclipse… I wanted to add him to the heavy-hitter roster, but I wasn’t confident in handling him. His power was too close to the Source. Close enough to resist my kill switch. Close enough to unmake me, if I misstepped.

“Should I kill that Guesswork?” Glitch asked flatly, his tone indifferent, as if he were asking whether to delete a corrupted file.

I smiled. “No, no, no… it’s fine. He’s useful. He can stay.”

Glitch tilted his head. “Even though he’s feeding Eclipse information and giving you false information?”

“Especially because he’s feeding Eclipse information,” I replied. “It keeps him predictable. Moreover, he’s one of the best infiltration assets we have, and intelligence operatives are such fragile things. They die easily. Besides…” I lifted my cup again, the faint ripples of tea reflecting my grin. “He doesn’t know that I already modified the chain of cause and effect on him three times today. If he tries anything funny, I will promptly deal with it and make it hurt.”

Glitch gave a small, distorted laugh. “Sadistic.”

“Efficient,” I corrected. “It’s just scare tactics…”

He shifted, the static hum of his projection deepening. “Are we really not going to talk about how I got jumped?”

I blinked once. “What?”

Glitch scowled. “The time I suddenly got attacked and lost connection to my observer drones? You promised you’d look into it. I still don’t know who the hell did it, but whoever it was, they were fighting on the bit-level. I got kicked out of my own network. Someone used SRC-grade encryption keys and fried one of my thought-chains. You know how long it takes to rebuild a mental scaffold like that?”

I exhaled through my nose, amused. “I’m aware.”

“You don’t sound aware.”

I tapped my finger on the desk, thinking. The attack on Glitch was… inconvenient. He’d been monitoring Eclipse in the background when someone had intercepted him. A battle fought not in cities or skies, but in code, thought, and light.

“I’ll have an intelligence operative look at it,” I said finally.

Glitch scoffed. “Yeah, sure. Who?”

“Your pick,” I said, my tone light.

“I’ll work on it,” he answered. “I’d rather do it myself…”

As his hologram faded, the office fell silent again. However, the silence was soon broken by the shrill wail of the alarm. Red light flooded the corridor outside my glass wall, sharp enough to sting the eyes.

I set my cup down. “That’s new.”

In a storm of light fragments, Glitch materialized before me, his holographic form glitching in and out of visual coherence, static cutting through his voice. His usual lazy smirk was gone.

“Boss, someone stole important data!”

I stood slowly, my reflection swimming in the glass desk. “Who?” I asked, my tone cold, clipped. “And what data?”

Glitch’s fingers moved fast, pulling up holographic windows that hovered between us, lines of shifting code, security feeds, and camera angles spiraling into a composite image.

“I’m tracing the data breach through three auxiliary servers,” he said, his voice clipped and urgent. “The bastard’s using light-based interference to scramble sensors. I can’t get a clean facial read.”

A final image flickered and stabilized, a man in black armor, sleek and angular, his mask designed in the shape of a wolf’s snarl.

My brows furrowed. “A wolf…?”

Glitch nodded grimly. “No registration, no record. He bypassed my firewall like it was tissue paper.”

My mind immediately jumped to the obvious name. “Eclipse.”

“That was my thought,” Glitch said, “but…”

He swiped another screen into existence. A new hologram formed beside the first: Eclipse, sitting casually in his home. Drinking coffee. Reading a tablet. Completely oblivious.

“He’s clean. Timestamp verified by the Surveillance Bureau. Eclipse hasn’t moved from his residence for the last six hours.”

I stared between the two images, the wolf-masked intruder flickering through the SRC’s secured datacenter, and Eclipse lounging comfortably miles away.

“Then what am I looking at?” I murmured.

“The intruder’s using intangibility,” Glitch said, sweat forming along his brow despite his holographic projection. “He’s phasing through walls, security fields, and bypassing my kinetic locks. I can’t even… ugh… shit… what now? Someone’s attacking my servers…”

My jaw tightened. “What was stolen? Tell me!”

Glitch hesitated. His avatar flickered nervously.

“Glitch,” I said evenly. “What data?”

He swallowed. “Multiverse hopping technology.”

The words landed like lead.

“You’re certain?”

He nodded. “The mainframe was isolated, but whoever this was, he knew where to look. He took the framework design, dimensional coordinates, and the gate stabilizer codes. If he can replicate them—”

“I know,” I interrupted, my voice like glass. “Shit, this is bad… Call them…”

Glitch blinked. “Sir?”

“Call all our capes,” I ordered, turning back to face him. “Patch, Gloryhole, Windbreaker, Guesswork, every single one of them. I want that data retrieved now.”

Glitch’s form flickered again, the alarm’s light washing through his transparent figure. “And if we can’t find it?”

“Then find who took it,” I said. “And make sure they never exist again!”