The large hall was completely silent, save for the low hum of the massive server towers.

Maddox sat at the center of the large, circular meeting table. Four people sat around him, including Claire.

The usual relaxed, slouched posture of the young looking Commander was completely gone and he sat perfectly straight, radiating a cold, oppressive authority.

All five of them were staring at the massive holographic screens covering the main wall of the room. The screens displayed real-time footage of the swirling, deep blue portal of Grid 12.

Claire’s red eyes were shaking as she looked at the energy readouts.

SLAM!

Maddox brought his heavy hand down on the table. The sound echoed like a gunshot in the silent room.

"Why did you send three people out of a six-man squad into the gate?" Maddox’s voice was almost a growl. "It is a fundamental federal regulation that a whole team has to work together to clear a gate, unless there are severe, mitigating conditions like a spot dungeon! What were you thinking?"

Claire flinched slightly, but she held her ground. "But... but those three—"

"Stop reasoning your foolishness, Claire," Maddox cut her off sharply, his eyes narrowing. "Hide is just an F-Rank. And the other two are Majors, yes, but they are an Analyst and a Mage. They are not suited for extensive, unsupported battles. And now look at that."

He pointed a thick finger at the screen.

"It has become a Four-Star gate."

Claire clenched her fists in her lap. "How was I supposed to know that something like this could happen? Loop gates are stable! They don’t just mutate!"

"Oh? You were not?" Maddox raised an eyebrow, his tone dripping with cold disappointment. "I don’t think I raised you to be so ignorant, Claire."

He gestured to the young technical operator sitting at a console in the corner of the room.

The boy immediately turned around, his fingers flying across his laptop keyboard. He quickly brought up a specific video file and cast it to the main holographic screen.

"Watch," Maddox ordered.

It was a video of the Grid 12 gate, recorded at the exact moment the earthquake happened and the portal transformed.

At first, when the video was played normally, it didn’t show any kind of anomaly. The purple portal simply flashed, expanded, and turned blue.

"Play it in 10X slow mode," Maddox instructed the operator.

The video rewound and began to play at a fraction of its original speed.

Claire’s breath hitched in her throat.

In the fraction of a second before the gate mutated, the swirling purple mist parted. A person stepped out of the gate. He was wearing a dark suit and he had no face.

And the very next second, he was gone.

He simply vanished, leaving absolutely no trace behind. Like he had never existed to begin with.

Claire was taken aback, shocked beyond words. She stood up from her chair, leaning over the table.

"That... that’s impossible," Claire whispered, her mind racing. "How can someone walk out of a gate? It hasn’t been cleared yet! The dimensional lock shouldn’t allow anyone to leave!"

"Look at the next second," Maddox prompted, his voice grim.

Claire shifted her focus back to the screen. What she saw next was even more blasphemous.

Just after the man disappeared, the spatial fabric beside the original portal violently distorted. A second, entirely different gate materialized right next to the first one.

For a terrifying microsecond, the two gates existed side-by-side.

And then, they violently collapsed into each other, merging their spatial coordinates and mana densities to form a single, massive, deep blue Four-Star gate.

Claire fell back into her chair.

This was something she had never even heard of in all her life. Even after years of serving as a Special Investigator, high up in the government hierarchy, the concept of two gates forcefully merging was just a far away theory and not reality.

"You see, my foolish child," Maddox said, his tone softening just a fraction, the anger replaced by a heavy, world-weary exhaustion. "There is nothing impossible in the world we live in. It is shrouded in mysteries to the core, and we... we are still far from finding out all about them."

Maddox looked away from the screen, turning his attention to the other three Exterminators in the room—Captains of the nearby Emergency Response teams.

"Contact the Silver Vanguard," Maddox ordered them. "Tell them we are requesting immediate federal assistance. We need them to send over one of their A-Rank Exterminators to help clear this gate."

"Wait."

Claire gulped, finding her voice. She stepped forward, stopping the Captains before they could leave the room.

"I will do it."

Maddox frowned. "Claire—"

"It was my mistake," Claire interrupted, her red eyes burning with absolute, unwavering resolve. She looked directly at Maddox. "I should have known that Hide was being targeted. Whoever that man is, he didn’t just stumble into Grid 12 by accident. Hide is a member of my team now. Evelyn and Elara too, So it is my duty to save the three of them."

She placed her hand over her heart.

"I will do it. I swear it."

Maddox stared at her for a long, heavy moment. He saw the stubborn fire in her eyes—the exact same fire she had when she was just a traumatized child swearing revenge on the world. He knew he couldn’t stop her.

Maddox sighed, rubbing his temples.

"Fine," Maddox relented. "But you do not go in alone. Dismissed."

The three Captains and the technical operator quickly filed out of the room, leaving Maddox alone with Claire.

The heavy doors hissed shut. A moment later, a side door opened, and Maddox’s personal secretary, also his wife—stepped into the room. She was an old lady in her late 60’s, but still looked youthful and beautiful. She carried a datapad, her expression grave.

"Sir," she said quietly, looking at the frozen image of the merged gate on the screen. "If an individual can forcefully open and merge gates... it is very dangerous for him to be roaming free. Is he some kind of Calamity Lord? Be it any case, we need to suppress him."

Maddox nodded slowly, his eyes dark.

"It’s happening again," Maddox muttered, his voice barely above a whisper. "Just like twenty-five years ago. The rules of the world are being rewritten by things we don’t understand."

"What happened, honey?" she asked quietly, so the technicians couldn’t hear. "I haven’t seen you this tense in years."

Maddox stared at the swirling blue portal on the screen, his eyes haunted by ghosts from a different era.

He looked at his wife, the weight of his past failures heavy on his shoulders. The memory the millions of lives lost, the sheer terror of a gate asserting dominance over the real world.

"The seal is weakening, I can feel it. If that seal breaks completely..." Maddox looked down at his own hands, he was almost 100 years old and still his hands looked so young. What a curse. "...I am not as good as I used to be in my youth."

His wife smiled softly, squeezing his arm reassuringly and laughed. "You are still in your youth."

"Furthermore, you don’t need to carry the world alone anymore," she replied gently. "There are other S-Rankers now. Almost double the number we had twenty-five years ago. The new generation is strong. You don’t need to worry."

Standing just outside the command center doors, leaning against the cold metal wall, Claire listened to their conversation in complete silence.

Her face was deathly pale.

Even just hearing Maddox talk about the seal and the events of twenty-five years ago sent a violent, uncontrollable shiver down her spine. A sudden, overwhelming wave of dark, suppressed anger and pure hatred washed over her heart.

The memory flared in her mind—the real reason she had become an Exterminator in the first place.

Claire closed her eyes, forcing the dark thoughts back down into the abyss where they belonged. Now was not the time. Her team was in danger.

She pushed off the wall and walked briskly down the sterile corridor, pulling her communicator from her.

"Rol. Garret," Claire spoke into the comms, her voice sharp and commanding. "Gear up. We are going in the gate."