"She is what?"

"My father’s illegitimate daughter." Kenji repeated the line for the third time.

The officer’s mouth fell open and stayed open. Kenji carried another identity outside the Crusade rolls: son of Damien Hayashi, the original mayor of Old York.

The romance between Damien and his wife had filled tabloid columns for the better part of a decade.

A commoner who had climbed through the ranks of city administration to win the hand of the only daughter of Earth’s wealthiest industrialist. The story sold magazines on slow news days even now.

The officer found nothing useful to say. He was, however, certain of one thing. A scandal of this size was about to eat the city alive.

The hospital room door slammed open. A woman strode through. Her coat was charcoal cashmere, cut to the line of her shoulders with the precision of a tailor who had measured her in person.

A single string of pearls rested at her throat, each one the size of a small grape. Her heels were the kind of red that did not need a brand name.

Her face was beautiful. Her face was furious. Kenji and the officer turned toward her at the same moment.

"Son. Repeat what you just said."

Her voice arrived calm. The calm was the kind that filled a room with a slow, creeping cold. The officer felt the cold travel down his spine and lodge somewhere in the base of his back.

He cursed, silently and with feeling, the supervisor who had assigned him to this room.

Kenji answered the way he had answered the officer. "Mother. She is my sister."

The hospital room went silent for several seconds. Then a scream tore through the building.

"DAMIEN. YOU ARE DEAD."

Birds startled out of the trees on the hospital lawn. A nurse three corridors away dropped a tray. Somewhere on the sixth floor, an alarm tripped and was hastily silenced.

The officer pressed himself against the wall and tried to occupy as little space as a uniformed man could occupy.

Kenji’s expression did not move. He had grown up under that voice.

"Mother."

"Where is your father? Tell me where he is. I will go to him myself. Oh, wait. How can you know that?"

"He will be at the office at this time. Please do not destroy the office."

"I will destroy whatever I want."

She rounded on the bed at the far end of the room. Ayla sat propped against the pillows, hospital sheet drawn neatly across her lap; the IV in her arm was the only concession the medical staff had managed to extract from her.

Her hair lay loose around her shoulders. Her gold eyes were half-lidded with the kind of polite curiosity she reserved for situations she had not yet decided whether to find amusing.

The mother stopped at the foot of the bed and looked at Ayla. Ayla looked back.

The fury on the mature woman’s face shifted. The shift was so dramatic that the officer who followed her to stop the maddened woman from hurting a teenager doubted his eyes were working.

"So cute..." she murmured. Sarah Damien palmed her face together as she watched the innocent face of the girl in bed.

"Hi." Ayla smiled, dimples appearing on her cheeks. A streak of a tear flowed out of her eyes because of the drawback from an unused skill. This made Sarah panic as she bent and hugged Ayla.

"Oh, you poor child."

Ayla blinked, resting her head on the shoulders of Kenji’s mom.

"Look at you. Look at this hair. Look at these eyes. Of course you are his. There is no doubt at all."

"Eh?"

"Ehhh?"

The officer froze, and so did Kenji, who broke the control of the skill of Ayla. The memories of what happened after the completion of the tunnel ran through his mind as he recalled how her new trait had managed to control his memories.

Sarah turned to Kenji without taking her eyes off Ayla. Upon noticing the anger in his eye, she was taken aback.

’Did the child get jealous because I hugged his sister? I have to teach him a good lesson,’ she thought, making Kenji’s senses tingle with danger.

"Who is her mother? Where did she live until now?" Sarah barraged Kenji with questions. Kenji did not answer as his eyes focused on Ayla and he gritted his teeth.

But he was also confused about the reaction of his mother. Would she not be angry with Ayla? After all, her husband cheated with some other woman to birth her.

Suddenly Kenji’s expression changed. ’Did she use her skill on mother?’

"I don’t..." Ayla said. Kenji and Sarah stared at her, both with different expressions.

"You don’t have a mother?" Sarah asked, trying her best to hide the happiness in her heart, but it leaked through the grin appearing on her face.

Kenji’s question only appeared in his mind: ’Can you read my mind?’

"Yes..." Ayla answered both of them.

The mother’s eyes filled with tears at once. The transformation from murderous to tender had taken less than ten minutes and showed no sign of reversing.

The officer was growing confused with each passing moment. He wanted to scream, ’Lady Sarah, where are you seeing similarities between this little girl and your husband?’

The image of the Mayor flashed in his mind: a seven foot giant with a thick, muscular body. Where the hell was any similarity?

While fighting with his emotions, the officer felt a gaze landing on him. The girl was watching him innocently, her eyes seemingly screaming, ’You wronged me.’

For a moment, the officer felt guilty for doubting her.

"My poor child." Sarah hugged deeper. "When did that happen?"

’What did you do to the others? Only six of us came out. Did you kill the rest of them?’ Kenji asked.

Her ability to read minds did not make him curious since he believed she received that from devouring the brain of the apocalypse monster.

But he was curious about the other runners who did not manage to exit. Considering they conquered the tunnel, every participant was supposed to get out alive.

"I don’t know." Ayla genuinely did not know.

Unknown to both Ayla and Kenji, while they were fighting against the Eight-Winged bat, a flood of blood overturned the tunnels, killing everyone else.

"So she might have died in your young age," Sarah continued weeping. "My poor child. Damn it, Damien. You are dead."

She broke the hug and looked Ayla in the eyes. "What is your name, dear?"

"Ayla."

"Ayla. Ayla Hayashi, then. Yes. Ayla Hayashi. We will have your name on the registry by tonight."

Kenji did not say anything. He knew his mother, and it confused him greatly why she accepted Ayla as his father’s illegitimate child this quickly.

Considering the obsessive nature of his mother on his father.....

The officer at the wall opened his mouth, weighed his career against the woman’s expression, and closed his mouth again. The mother pressed her free hand to her cheek.

"Look at her, Kenji. She is a perfect little thing. Bones like a sparrow. Have they fed her? Has anyone fed her?"

"Mother."

"Do not Mother me. I am telling you what I see. She has been starved. Look at her cheekbones. Look at her wrists. We will feed her. We will feed her properly, every day, for as long as she will let us."