"Yes," Adriana said.

The word landed clean. Unapologetic.

"I’m using your sister as leverage to ensure a rogue hunter with unstable abilities does not jeopardize thousands of lives while we are holding back an ocean of monsters above these grounds."

Her eyes never wavered.

His hardened. "And here I thought you were all about saving people."

"We are," Adriana said.

Her voice dropped slightly. Lost its sterile edge. Took on the faint burn of steel.

"That is exactly why I cannot afford a single misstep. Not from you. Not from anyone."

The way she said it made the room feel smaller. Even the soft hum of the table seemed to fade, leaving only her voice and the pressure behind it.

Jagger sat there for a long second, saying nothing, the holographic document washing pale light across his face. His fingers flexed once against the armrest. Then again.

Inside, he could feel them listening.

Ophilia, cold and watchful.

Zumthor, restless and hungry.

Neither spoke.

For once, even they seemed to understand that this room was its own kind of battlefield.

Jagger exhaled slowly and dragged his eyes down the agreement again.

"Let me guess," he said. "You expect full disclosure while telling me only what you decide I’m allowed to know."

Director Ng replied without hesitation. "That is correct."

"That’s a bad deal."

"It is ’The’ deal."

His gaze lifted to Adriana again.

"And if I sign this, you answer me immediately. No more delays. No more games."

Adriana held his stare.

"If you sign," she said, "I answer what I decide you are ready to hear."

Jagger’s expression darkened.

"That wasn’t the question."

"It’s the answer you’re getting."

The room fell silent again.

He hated her.

Not in the hot, simple way people hated a loud enemy. In the far more dangerous way, one hated someone calm enough to use truth like a blade and never once pretend it was kindness.

She had him cornered, and both of them knew it.

He could refuse. He could stand up, knock the chair back, tell her to go to hell, and try to force his way out of the inner Bunker.

And then what?

No weapons.

No maps.

No knowledge of the bunker’s layout.

No information on Hannah.

No way of knowing whether she was close, far, trapped, running, broken, or already beyond him.

Adriana was watching all of that pass behind his eyes.

Not reading his mind.

Just reading him. Patient enough to let him trap himself with every correct conclusion.

That irritated him more than anything.

"You know," Jagger said quietly, "for a government that barely still exists, you people are really confident."

"We’re still here," Adriana said. "That’s usually enough."

He looked at the contract one last time.

Then he reached out.

The holographic pane shifted in response, shrinking slightly as a signature field expanded at the bottom. A simple line. A pulsing marker waiting for biometric confirmation.

Director Ng slid a slim black stylus across the table.

Jagger looked at it.

Then at her. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

"You really have a stylus for this."

"We like records."

He took it.

The pen was heavier than it looked, cool and metallic in his fingers. For a moment, he only held it there, eyes fixed on the glowing line, the white light reflecting in the glass beneath it. Like the room expected the act to mean more than a signature.

When he spoke again, his voice was quieter.

"You’d better not be wasting my time."

Adriana’s answer came without pause.

"I don’t waste anything."

That did it.

Jagger lowered the stylus to the line and signed.

The moment the final stroke was completed, the contract pulsed once in white-blue light. His name sealed itself into the document. A thin stream of authorization code poured downward beside it. Then the entire pane folded inward on itself and vanished into a single point of light above the table. It hung there for a breath before disappearing. The coded stream felt less like approval and more like another lock closing.

Director Ng tapped her tablet once more.

"Agreement acknowledged. Strategic cooperation status pending. Restricted intelligence access conditionally approved."

Jagger set the stylus down harder than necessary.

"There. Happy?"

"No," Adriana said.

That made him look at her again.

For the first time since sitting down, she unfolded her hands and leaned back slightly in her chair.

"Happy would imply comfort," she said. "What I am is satisfied."

Jagger stared at her.

Then, very slowly, he said, "Talk."

Director Ng turned her tablet.

This time, the holographic projection that rose from it was not text.

It was an image.

A still frame, grainy and dark, clearly taken from long-range surveillance. A ruined urban block. Smoke rolling through broken streets. Armed figures moving through wreckage. Director Ng adjusted the projection, and for an instant, the center sharpened. Collapsed concrete, overturned vehicles, and drifting ash framed the figure in the middle.

And at the center of them, small against the destruction but impossible to miss, was a girl with long black hair and a faint violet glow rising around her like smoke. The whole frame seemed bent around her presence. For a second, the surveillance still looked unreal, too distant and too grainy to carry the weight of a person he knew. Then memory closed the distance for him. The slope of her shoulders. The way her hair fell. Even through smoke and ruined streets, his mind recognized her before his heart could catch up. That was what made the sight hurt.

Jagger forgot to breathe.

His chair scraped softly against the floor as he leaned forward without realizing it.

"Hannah."

His throat tightened so suddenly it hurt. The name came out stripped raw. Relief hit first. Then everything else. She was alive. She was there. And whatever she had become, it was far beyond anything he had imagined.

Adriana watched him absorb it.

Then she spoke, each word clean and deliberate.

"Hannah Ashton, also known as ’The Violet Wraith’. Level thirty Herald Slayer."