Earlier, Straus had singled out the man facing an annoyed Erina as the Alpha male.

But to me there was another reason why he stood out amongst his peers.

It wasn’t his long, sandy hair, his tall build, and fine facial features that set him apart from the other security personnel. Nor was it his clothes that included a long, dark, mahogany trench coat over a matching business suit – entirely unbecoming in the summer heat that was steadily warming up the morning air. And it had nothing to do with him chatting to Erina as though she was an old acquaintance who was unhappy to see him.

No, that wasn’t it at all.

What made him stand out to me was the unnerving sensation I felt deep in Mirai’s gut, in her bones, in the muscles wrapped around them, and in the faint hairs along the nape of her neck as I walked closer to him.

Mirai’s intuition was telling me that this man was dangerous in a way that many men were not…and that some men hoped to be.

I chose to listen to her instincts and stopped several feet away from him.

Straus followed suit, coming to a halt a couple of feet off to my right.

As for Erina, she stood within arm’s length of the man in the mahogany trench coat, staring at me in disbelief darkened by anger. But before she could chastise or berate me for disobeying her instruction, the young man reached up and removed his dark sunglasses to reveal a pair of remarkable green eyes.

As those eyes met mine, I felt for myself the danger Mirai had perceived, and my breath caught in my chest for a heartbeat.

There’s a saying about smelling blood on a person.

Maybe this was what I was sensing now – the lingering scent of carnage surrounding him – and I steeled myself against it.

Normally, I would have folded my arms under Mirai’s impressive bust, but instead I allowed her instincts to take over. She stood with her arms by her sides, and her legs almost shoulder width apart. She wasn’t balancing on the balls of her feet – not yet – but her weight was evenly distributed, and her muscles were neither tense nor relaxed. Rather, she seemed ready to spring into action at the drop of a hat.

And yet one thing surprised me.

The sea breeze tousled Mirai’s hair, blowing it past my face, and in the corner of my eye, I glimpsed her long blonde locks.

Mirai hadn’t powered up.

I could sense that this man wasn’t to be trifled with, and Mirai was indeed standing at the ready, yet she was also holding herself back.

Why? What was she waiting for?

Wary and confused, I watched him smile faintly at me as we regarded each other in silence.

When he finally addressed me, he sounded almost carefree.

“Lady Isabel. Nice to see you up and about.”

His breezy manner briefly inflamed me.

I had to give myself a few moments before asking, “Who are you? You know me, but I don’t know you.”

Pocketing his sunglasses into a vest pocket, his smile grew wider.

Almost immediately, Mirai tensed up.

His apparently relaxed demeanor was at odds with mine, however he was standing with his body at a slight angle toward me. Even as he offered me a slight bow, his guarded stance convinced me not to override Mirai’s instincts in the slightest.

If she needed to move – if she wanted to move – she would do so without my restraint.

“Apologies, Lady Isabel. My name is Geharis Arnval. I’m head of Spartan Division.”

“What’s that?”

“Private security for the Sanreal Family…and the Telos Corporation.”

I swallowed quietly. “And why are you here?”

“We’re here to take you home.”

“Home?”

“To the Sanreal Family. To your family.”

I glanced at Erina who watching all this with a stiff expression, then faced Arnval again. “Are you planning on cutting me into three, and putting one piece into each car?”

Arnval’s lips twitched before he chortled. “Apologies, but we take your security quite seriously.”

I spared the building with the garden balcony a meaningful look. “Yeah, I guess you do.”

That earned me a grin from him. “Better safe than sorry.”

I swallowed down a snide retort and chose to wet my lips slowly as I studied him intently. However, there was only so much I could glean from just looking at him.

Unexpectedly, Arnval’s grin had grown uncertain under my quiet scrutiny.

I saw that as an opening I could exploit.

“You said it was good to see me up and about.”

“I did.”

“So we’ve met before.”

His grin wavered. “You could say that.”

“Then why don’t I remember you?”

There was a sudden mischievous glint in his eyes that made his grin appear cruel.

“Has anyone told you,” he asked, “that you look better as a brunette?”

It was extraordinary how swiftly he drew his gun.

Even as the words left his lips, his right-hand dove in and out of his trench coat with no visible acceleration.

Normally when someone moves – no matter how quickly – their limbs will noticeably accelerate. But with him, it was as though his arm had immediately achieved terminal velocity.

It wasn’t a ‘blink’ and miss it moment.

Rather, the moment didn’t exist.

Caught by surprise, I was slow to react…but not Mirai.

As Arnval’s right arm swung in my direction with gun in hand, she bolted toward him.

From a standing start, she – and thereby I – moved like lightning, halving the distance to him in an instant.

Before I knew it, my right foot had touched ground a millisecond before I kicked upwards with my left foot, connecting with his gun hand, and thereby throwing off his aim.

The impact caused him to squeeze the trigger.

The hammer clicked…but the gun didn’t fire.

Huh?

Confusion and disbelief rocked me.

Even as my leg completed its swing, knocking aside Arnval’s arm, I struggled to comprehend what had happened until I laid eyes on his grin.

Bastard!

I’d been played.

The gun hadn’t fired because it wasn’t loaded.

I look better as a brunette?

His motive abruptly made sense.

Arnval wanted to draw out Mirai – Dark Mirai – and he’d succeeded.

The moment Arnval reached for his gun and Mirai sprang into action, she had transformed from blonde to brunette. Powered up, my senses had sharpened to a razor’s edge, allowing me to perceive Arnval and my surroundings with extraordinary clarity, and that’s why I had time to consider the infuriating grin on his face.

However, something felt different.

My consciousness had overclocked, thus giving me the illusion that time had slowed down around me. But on this occasion, it appeared to have slowed down a little too much. For example, in my peripheral vision, I saw Erina surrounded by her golden lifeforce, standing motionless and not even breathing.

So too Straus, and the black suited bodyguards.

And there was more to it.

For a mere distended second, Mirai’s body had moved in harmony with my overclocked mind. I’d experienced this once before back on the roof of the maglev station when she’d unexpectedly kept pace with my accelerated consciousness, and that boost in speed had saved me from being struck by an electro-shock dart. Now, her phenomenal speed allowed me to kick away Arnval’s gun hand before he could aim it at me.

Of course, with the gun being unloaded there was no danger.

Arnval had toyed with me, and that made my innards burn from a mixture of humiliation and anger. But the prospect of a near miss chilled some of that rage. Had the gun fired, the bullet would have brushed by my left ear and taken some of Mirai’s raven hair with it.

However, another surprise awaited me.

Mirai had put a lot of her strength into her kick, but the heavy blow had merely nudged aside Arnval’s arm about a foot, and the bastard had held onto his sidearm.

Instead of seeing his wrist break on impact, it was my left foot that burned in agony as though I’d kicked a steel I-beam, and with time stretched out, the pain lasted for what felt like an eternity.

By now I didn’t care if the gun was loaded or not.

Disarming him wasn’t a priority anymore.

Instead, wiping the grin off his face had become paramount.

I was going to hurt this man for making a fool of me…and Mirai.

I was going to hurt him for hurting my foot.

But behind my determination to rip Arnval ‘a new one’, I was acutely aware that Mirai’s body was performing actions ingrained upon it and adhering to techniques that would have required countless hours of physical training to hone my legs into lethal weapons. It was akin to Mirai’s skillful use of firearms, wielding them as though she’d been using them for years. However, operating weapons wasn’t the same as executing precise martial actions, so why was I able to fight like a pro?

Ghost had said Mirai’s body had been imprinted with someone’s muscle memory.

It was the reason she could walk, run, and fight with such ease.

I didn’t know who they were – their identity was guarded behind a block of ICE that even Ghost couldn’t breach – but I was grateful to them because I was going to use their skills to knock Geharis Arnval into the middle of next week!

With my left foot back on the ground, I pivoted on it while swinging my right foot up at Arnval’s head.

I had to kick high because he was taller than me.

Fortunately, I was wearing a skirt that allowed my legs to move freely.

Unfortunately, said skirt was short and held nothing back as it fluttered around my thighs.

Knowing that I was flashing Arnval, my cheeks burned in shame.

Damn that Tabitha!

However, there was an upside to the situation.

Arnval’s attention had snapped to the racy black panties I wore.

Entranced by the vista between my legs, he left himself wide open and failed to block my kick.

My right foot slammed into the side of his head, spinning him around.

Then again, maybe his body was simply rolling with the kick – turning reflexively upon impact to dispel the energy behind the blow.

Regardless, for one precious second, Arnval had his back toward me, and Mirai capitalized on the moment.

Helped along by momentum, I continued turning my body, whirling on my right foot the instant it touched ground, then lashing out with my left leg.

Had he been facing me, I would have given him another view to remember and write home about as my skirt billowed upwards.

That does it—no more skirts for me!

But with his back toward me, the kick I landed booted him into the side of the black suburban parked behind him.

Newton said, for every reaction there’s an equal and opposite reaction, thus I rebounded away from Arnval.

I had to spin Mirai’s body to regain my balance, but once both feet were back on the ground, I leapt at him while he was still recovering from the combo kick.

That’s when I saw something unexpected and disturbing.

The lifeforce aura radiating from his body wasn’t complete.

Distracted, I almost crashed into him.

By then, Arnval had turned around and face me.

I had to scramble to grab his arms and pin him against the suburban’s door.

His gun wasn’t a concern anymore.

Rather, I wanted to bury him into the car’s door, but it wasn’t long before I started to worry, then panic, as I struggled against him.

Gods damn it—why is he so strong?

Tabitha had said I was six or seven times stronger than a girl my size. But it was taking every ounce of that strength to pin Arnval to the dented door, with my feet constantly slipping as they scrabbled for purchase on the grass underfoot.

Wait a minute—the car is dented?

Staring at Arnval, my eyes widened in dismay.

He’s not a machine avatar, so what the Hell is he?

Because of the lifeforce radiating from his eyes, I knew they were real, but what about the rest of him?

“What are you?” I hissed through clenched teeth, my breathing labored as I struggled to keep Arnval pressed into the suburban’s flank.

He was no different – his breathing short and shallow as we both huffed and puffed against each other.

“My, my,” he wheezed out through a twisted smile. “You really are a tiger.”

My body fully exerted, I sucked in air and then cried out, “Answer me!”

The strain was starting to get to him. “Is that…what you…really…want to know?”

I bent my legs slightly as my feet continued to slip and slide on the grass beneath them. “You didn’t need to pull a gun on me!”

“Ma chérie…I wanted…to see…the real…you.”

I scowled fiercely up at him. “Asshole! You could have just asked—oof!”

Preoccupied, I failed to notice his leg coming up until his knee buried itself into my gut.

Doubled over and winded, I tightened my stomach muscles, and refused to release his arms. But when I sensed his knee come up a second time, I evaded it by darting back.

Unfortunately, I had to relinquish my hold on him but not before delivering a parting gift.

As I retreated, I grabbed his gun and twisted it harshly with all the grip strength my left hand could muster.

Since he wasn’t going to let it go, then the least I could do was render it useless.

It didn’t break, but it did crack.

Releasing it, I then escaped beyond his reach.

With some distance between us, I slipped into a defensive stance.

If felt like the first round was over, but before round two got underway, I quickly glanced around to take stock of my surroundings. The security personnel had drawn their sidearms and were aiming them at me. In response, Straus had snatched Erina out of harm’s way, and retreated out of the line of fire where he was now shielding her with his body.

I could understand him wanting to protect her from stray gunfire, but it needled my ego.

Hey—shouldn’t you be protecting me? I’m your hope, aren’t I?

Movement caught my eye, yanking my attention back onto Arnval.

With some effort, he pushed himself away from the side of the large black suburban, then rolled his shoulders as though working the strain out of his muscles.

“Damn, you kick hard,” he muttered sourly.

Watching him intently, I studied his incomplete aura.

Maybe he was human, but not all of him.

A cyborg?

It certainly explained why his lifeforce only radiated from his head and torso, implying that his limbs were artificial.

It certainly explained why he was so strong.

Arnval gave the mangled firearm in his hand a disappointed look. “Damn, I really liked that gun.”

Holstering it with a grimace, he then waved at the surrounding security personnel.

“Stand down,” he instructed them while sounding inappropriately amused. “I said, stand down. No harm done. Everybody relax. That’s an order.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

He may have included me in that order, but I had no intention of dropping my guard.

Most of my attention remained focused on him, though I could see the security agents in my peripheral vision continue to aim their sidearms at me in defiance of his order. I also noticed the pale orange hue of their aura, identifying them as Simulacra.

Disposable labor, I thought with contempt until I remembered that Mirai too was a Simulacrum, although purportedly unique and far superior, and hardly disposable if one considered how much of a fuss people were making over her.

Arnval regarded his subordinates with growing impatience, and no longer sounded amused. “I said, stand down. That’s an order. If I have to repeat myself one more time, I’m going to start breaking arms.”

It didn’t seem like an idle threat, and it worked its magic.

In short order, the dark suited men and women holstered their weapons, albeit reluctantly.

“That’s better,” Arnval remarked with a thin smile of approval that quickly turned cruel. “But I’m going to have you running fifty laps around the compound when we get back. Disobey me again and I’ll make it a hundred.”

As he took a long stride away from the side of the suburban, I looked at where its door was dented as though rammed by a steel girder. Apparently, when I kicked Arnval in the back, he’d used his hands to brace himself against the door, and the impact had buckled the metal skin inward all the way to the crash bars.

Convinced he was a cyborg, I nonetheless asked him again, “What are you?”

Arnval frowned curiously at me but didn’t answer, so I pressed on.

“I know you’re not a Simulacrum. And you’re not a mechanical either. But you’re not human. So what the Hell are you?”

He cocked his head at me. “What makes you ask?”

“You’re strong like me, kicking you is like kicking a wall, and look at what you did to the car’s door.”

“You do have a point or two….” He broke into a thin smile. “You’re quite remarkable.”

I exhaled derisively through my nose. “Flattery will you get you nowhere.”

“And your speed surprised me. For a second, you vanished before my eyes.”

I mused that tidbit for a second.

Was he referring to when Mirai’s body had moved in time with my accelerated awareness?

But why was he telling me that? Wasn’t it better to keep it a secret?

Arnval gazed at me as though seeing me in a new light. “You certainly exceeded my expectations.”

His expectations?

“Should I say thanks?” I snarked at him.

“However, is it enough for you to survive?”

A frown flickered across my brow.

I couldn’t remember a specific occasion, but I had the feeling that someone had asked me that before. Or was it just a figment of my imagination? Was it something that I’d asked myself instead? Nonetheless, I understood what he was alluding to.

“You’re talking about the Gun Princess Royale.”

He replied with a nod.

I tried hiding how anxious the question made me feel behind a casual shrug. “I guess I’ll find out soon enough.”

“True. Then we’ll know if the work they put into you paid off.”

That brought a chill to my chest. “What work…?”

“I wonder if she’ll be proud of you.”

My stance faltered as a wave of uncertainty and confusion washed over me.

Is he referring to Erina?

I threw my former sister a fleeting glance and saw that she was still hiding behind Straus’s mechanical avatar, her expression one of abject frustration.

Honestly, it was the closest I’d seen her come to biting through her nails.

Turning back to Arnval, I cleared my throat before declaring, “You’re a real asshole—not answering my questions.”

He dismissed my insult with a shrug. “That’s also true. But I’ll answer your questions if they’re the right—”

Without warning, he abruptly looked northward.

Surprised, I almost turned to look myself, but held back because I was wary of being tricked by him, until a moment later when I noticed the Spartan security people reach for their guns.

Only then did I risk following his gaze.

What I saw made my blood run cold.

In the distance, a few hundred feet away to the north, a lone teenage girl wearing a Telos Academy high school summer uniform was walking toward us across the parkland. Her long dark hair and attractive oval face brought back memories of when we first met a few days ago.

Little did I know then how much trouble she would turn out to be.

Striding toward us, the troublesome teenage girl threw us a wave. However, true to her eccentric nature, she was waving both her arms in the air. She was like Robinson Crusoe desperately flagging down a passing ship. Quite clearly she was looking for attention, and her off-kilter approach worked because everyone around me was staring at her, and no one was happy to see her.

Arnval regarded her with veiled hostility.

The security personnel were itching to unleash Hell upon her.

Erina was glaring at her with such intensity the air almost crackled around her.

Straus’s fingers twitched as though he was missing his favorite gun.

And me?

Nope, I wasn’t happy to see her either.

I had grudge against her, and I wasn’t going to forgive her for the traumatic experience she’d subjected me to back in the stairwell. As for her bribe, she could keep it because I would find another way to meet my Goddess.

Yes, the girl walking toward us was none other than Tabitha Hexen, otherwise known as Taura Hexaria Erz Cardinal.

Arnval slashed the air with his right arm, stopping the Spartan personnel from shooting a storm of bullets at her.

“Stand down,” he snapped while staring at Tabitha with merciless eyes.

The black suited men and women were reluctant to follow his order, but no one risked his wrath by continuing to point their gun at Tabitha.

Arnval spoke again, but I quickly realized he was having a conversation with someone out of sight. I couldn’t see him wearing an earpiece or earbud, so perhaps the transceiver was implanted into his skull. Whatever means he was using to communicate with the unseen party, Arnval sounded grimly unhappy at what he was hearing.

“Did she translocate?” he asked. “She did? Damn it! She must have had a beacon nearby. No, it’s fine. We can search for it later. We all knew she was going to be hard to track—no hold off on that for the moment.” He shook his head stiffly. “Tell them we’ll be coming soon…no, I’d rather avoid trouble with her if I can. Just cover us as best you can…yes, if she makes a move, shoot her. That’s a machine avatar, so aim for her head.” I caught the glance he gave me. “I’m almost tempted to hear her out, but I’m not that foolish. If she gets too close, take her down.” He paused. “How close? Take her down at a hundred feet.”

Ghost stepped into my view. “I should have known better, Princess.”

Distracted, I whispered back, “Known what?”

“That Hexaria would embed tracking filaments into your uniform. That is undoubtedly how she kept tabs on your location.”

I trembled as though electrocuted.

My gods! She tracked me the same way Erina did!

When I recovered, I started pulling at the uniform I was wearing.

“I—I gotta take this off….”

Abruptly, Arnval crossed the short distance between us and firmly grabbed onto my left arm. “What are you doing?”

“I’m taking this off!”

He frowned, stared at my uniform, then shook his head. “Not out here. Get in the car. We’re leaving.”

For a half-second, I gaped at him in confusion but then angrily yanked my arm back.

Unfortunately, he held onto me with an iron grip, and though he staggered, he refused to release me.

“Let me go or lose the arm!” I warned him.

Regaining his footing, Arnval hauled me toward him.

I didn’t know if he was stronger than me, but he was certainly far heavier, and that gave him an advantage in our tug-of-war. He pulled me so close that I stared up at him cross-eyed, then coldly whispered, “I presume you know who she is?”

The danger and menace I’d felt surrounding him earlier was now palpable in the air. It wrapped around me, stifling my struggles against him.

Arnval persisted. “You know who she is…don’t you?”

Despite my anger, the scent of blood and violence in his breath chilled me to the bone.

I swallowed with some difficulty and haltingly nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, she told me—”

“And you know what she is.”

I nodded again. “A…a machine avatar.”

“Good. Then I’ll make this short.” He drew back a little so that I no longer looked at him cross-eyed. “Hexaria has been playing with us all morning. Jumping around the city, making it difficult for us to track her until she showed up at your door. But after the two of you left the apartment, we lost her in the building. And now she’s here. We don’t know her game, so our priority is to get you out of the city until House Novis can deal with House Cardinal in the Imperial Court.” He cocked his head at me. “Is this getting through to you?”

Some of the fight I’d lost was making a comeback.

Clearing my throat, I did my best to match his icy tone. “Yeah, I get it. Now let me go, or else!”

Arnval jerked me so harshly it blurred my vision, then he yanked me close to him again.

“Not happening! Hexaria is here for you. Why? I’ve got a few guesses. But I’m not going to waste time asking you if they’re right or wrong.”

I clamped my jaw shut then pushed against Arnval’s chest with enough force to get some distance between us that he could do nothing about.

Tabitha was right—I am bloody strong.

But my uniform wasn’t, so I stopped pushing against him when it began to rip.

Arnval shook his head slowly. “I’m not letting you go, ma chérie.”

I exhaled loudly in frustration.

Pressing my lips tightly together, I shot a glance at Ghost standing beside Arnval unbeknownst to him.

In reply, he shrugged as if to say, It is your call, Princess.

My attention then fell on Tabitha walking steadily toward us, probably a hundred meters away now.

Damn her! This is all her fault!

I met Arnval’s frosty gaze, then took a ragged breath that made my chest shudder. “Whatever we talked about…is between her and I.”

He accepted that with a nod. “She offered you a place in House Cardinal, didn’t she?”

Arnval had hit the nail on the head, but Straus had figured it out as well, so perhaps it shouldn’t have come as a shock to me.

Yet it did, and my heart jumped forcefully in my chest.

Of course, Arnval noticed my reaction.

“Hexaria made you an offer.” He snorted loudly. “Did you give her an answer?”

With the cat out of the bag, I felt I had no choice but to be honest with him. “No…I didn’t.”

“Thanks, that’s all I needed to know.”

He suddenly released me.

I stumbled but caught my balance before I could fall onto my backside. “Do that again, and I swear I will—wah!”

Without warning, he scooped me up and tossed me over his right shoulder like a bag of cement.

“What the Hell?” I yelled at him.

If I hadn’t been so distracted – and if Mirai had been her usual razor-sharp self – he wouldn’t have caught me by surprise. But now I watched the parkland spin crazily around me as Arnval whirled on the spot and then ran the short distance to the idling suburbans. Hearing the gentle thrum of their engines, I immediately knew they were hybrids running hydro-fusion drives, and that meant these vehicles were some serious road machines. However, that was something that I noticed in passing because most of my attention was on Arnval’s back and on the ground above my head – or rather below me.

Grabbing onto his back for support, I readied myself to ram a knee into his chest.

“PUT. ME. DOWN—!”

“Raine, take the shot.”

I froze and missed my chance to knee Arnval in the solar plexus.

Despite Mirai’s abnormally sharp hearing, I heard no boom and no explosion as I frantically swung my head in Tabitha’s direction.

A split second late and I would have missed it.

Whatever kind of bullet struck her head did so with enough force to slam Tabitha bodily into the grass.

I knew it was a machine – a Gun Princess avatar – but nonetheless it was chilling to watch her fall and then lie still.

Abruptly, my body was flipped over and dropped to the ground.

I landed on my feet as my back struck something hard and cold, probably one of the black suburbans. In the corner of my eyes, I was aware of Arnval in front of me, and some of the security people moving quickly to secure Erina and Straus by urging them into one of the waiting vehicles, but most of my attention was on Tabitha lying motionless and prone on the grass.

Moments later, she vanished.

For a second before she disappeared, the air around Tabitha shimmered then spun in a vortex that consumed her body, as if sucking her away through an invisible hole in the air.

I gaped in disbelief until Arnval slapped my cheeks none-to-gently.

“Hey, focus,” he snapped at me.

That served to jar my mind back into gear, and I faced him with a little fire in my eyes. “That hurt.”

“Good.”

“And she’s gone.”

“Of course, she’s gone,” Arnval grumbled while pulling open the door to the vehicle behind me. “Do you really think she’d leave her machine body around for people to find?”

He pushed me into the suburban’s passenger cabin.

I landed heavily on the backseat, but quickly sat up. “You shot her!”

“Oh, you noticed?” he snarked.

“Why the frek did you do that for?”

Arnval leaned into the cabin. “When dealing with Hexaria, that’s standard operating procedure.”

“What? Why?”

“Because she’s unpredictable, and she followed you here.”

I shook my head in dismay. “But you’ve got it wrong. She’s not here to kidnap me. She could have done that back at the dormitory.”

He hesitated. “She said that?”

“Yes, she did!” I insisted loudly before lowering my voice. “She said that stealing me away would lead to a war, and that she’s not stupid enough to start one!”

Arnval snorted then smiled thinly at me. “If kidnapping you may start a war, then why is she here?”

I frowned at him in confusion.

What is he saying? No—what is he trying to tell me?

“You think about that,” he suggested before slamming the door shut.

Alone in the back seat, I blinked slowly, then absently gazed at the plush interior while my mind struggled to sort through the tangled situation. Because of this, I was late to notice that I wasn’t alone in the suburban.

A young Simulacrum woman sat in the driver’s seat. Dressed in a black business suit, she watched me over her shoulder with a cool smile.

“Hi there. I’m Marinette.”

Distracted as I was, I nonetheless acknowledged her with a nod.

I also admitted she was quite pretty.

Possibly in her late teens, she had shoulder length brown hair, a classic oval face, a small mouth below a pert nose, thin eyebrows and violet, almond eyes that gave her an exotic appearance. Of course, she didn’t compare to my goddess, but this teenage girl was indeed a head turner.

It made me wonder if she’d been deliberately designed that way.

There’s a saying that good looks can carry you far, but why gift a Simulacrum with such beauty?

I didn’t get to mull that over because the passenger door on the other side of the car was suddenly flung open, and Erina was practically tossed into the cabin. She landed beside me on the backseat, her rich shoulder length hair in disarray, her expression steeped in panic and confusion as she stared at me with wide eyes.

“Isabel—eep!”

She almost jumped out of her skin when her door was slammed shut behind her.

It was somewhat pleasing to see Erina stripped of her usual arrogance.

Not being in control was certainly doing a number on her.

Oddly, I didn’t feel like gloating, probably because by then I’d realized what Arnval had hinted at.

Tabitha hadn’t come for me.

She’d come for Erina, and if they nabbed her, then Tabitha and House Cardinal could use Erina as leverage against me. I needed Erina because she knew what made Mirai tick, so where Erina went, I was bound to follow. That was probably Tabitha’s reasoning, but Arnval had been expecting her to show up, and Renew had sniped her from across the street.

She wasn’t there just for me. She was waiting for Tabitha.

That grim realization led to another.

Arnval had used me as bait.

He’d used me to draw out Tabitha.

That sonavabitch!

And yet though I cursed him, I couldn’t deny that his reasoning made a dark kind of sense. It also made me briefly wonder at the pressures he was under to go that far. But then again, wasn’t it also a risk to expose me out in the open this way.

No, because I’m not Tabitha’s target.

Then again, did he know that?

Nonetheless, the thought made me stare at Erina with complicated feelings, until I wondered that if she was here, then where was Straus?

Up front, Arnval hastily climbed into the passenger seat beside Marinette.

“Go,” he commanded even as he was closing his door.

Wordlessly, Marinette dropped the big vehicle into gear and floored the accelerator.

“Hey, wait a minute,” I cried out. “What about—?”

The hydro-fusion turbine revved, cutting me off, and the heavy suburban shivered as though gathering itself like a large predatory beast eager to make a kill. Yet when it launched itself, there was no shrieking from the tires. Instead, the vehicle pulled away with a minimum of fuss, though the swift acceleration pressed me hard into the backseat.

Over a shoulder, Arnval snapped at Erina and I. “Both of you buckle up now!”

I bit back a retort as I busied myself with my seatbelt.

I suspected the suburban was equipped with a myriad array of safety devices – undoubtedly more than was standard – but there was something oddly reassuring to wearing a seatbelt.

I had it secured around me long before Erina who fumbled with hers for several seconds. By all appearances, the current situation had dramatically rattled her, yet my suspicious nature mused if it was nothing more than an act. Unwilling to discount that possibility, I shelved it for the time being, then leaned toward the middle of the cabin for a better view out the front windscreen as the large vehicle deftly changed lanes.

Marinette had slipped on a pair of sunglasses, and from the backseat, I glimpsed something on the inside of their lenses.

Is she following some sort of map? I wondered.

It was possible that an Assisting Intelligence was providing her with directions and recommending lane changes. This would explain how she was able to make short work of the morning traffic.

My next question was where were we going?

I could see the harbor to my left, and Mirai’s magnetic sense was telling me we were heading south along Ring Zero, but our destination was a mystery.

I thought about asking Ghost if he knew where we were headed, but then decided instead to thump the back of Arnval’s seat to get his attention. “Where are you taking us?”

“To a secure location,” he bluntly replied.

“Where?” I insisted.

It was Erina who answered me. “The Telos Corporation building.”

“No.” Arnval shook his head swiftly. “We have somewhere else in mind.”

Erina stared questioningly at the back of his head. “She won’t go there.”

“I won’t risk leading her anywhere near HQ.”

I shrugged in confusion. “I don’t understand. You believe she’ll follow us? But you shot her. You took out her avatar—”

“Hexaria has more than one,” he bitterly replied.

I sat back in the seat, feeling stupid for having asked the question.

Yes, of course she would.

However, my next question wasn’t so inane. “What about my uniform? Won’t she track us?”

Arnval glanced at Marinette. “Take us deep.”

She replied without taking her eyes off the road. “You want us under the city?”

“Take the Under-16 all the way to Ring Five.”

The young woman winced slightly. “Damn.”

“What?”

“We just missed the entrance.”

Arnval exhaled in disappointment. “Then take the—”

The hydro-fusion drive roared, silencing Arnval as Marinette suddenly downshifted and threw the suburban into a sharp U-turn across multiple lanes.

Inside the vehicle, we were tossed to one side of the cabin.

Erina screamed and I clung onto an armrest while Arnval braced himself against his door.

“Jeezes, Marinette—!” he cried out.

“Please don’t talk,” the young woman advised, “or you’ll bite your tongue.”

There was a hard bump – more like a lurch – and the suburban bounced over the median strip.

It dove into the fast traffic heading north, merging with it in a heartbeat.

Shaken but not stirred, we were now zooming northward along the multilane street.

By some miracle we had avoided colliding with anyone, but Erina was looking green, and I had cracked the armrest, while Arnval had to extricate himself from his door.

He scowled at Marinette. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Nope.”

“Do you have any idea how much data we’ll have to erase to hide that crazy stunt you just pulled?”

She calmly replied, “We have a Tempest Class Awareness working for us. Editing the recorded footage from the traffic cameras won’t be a problem for her.”

Arnval straightened in his seat. “One of these days you’ll be the death of me.”

“Oh, contraire. I promised Renew I’d take good care of you.”

He scowled at her again. “You are aware of the importance of our cargo?”

Sitting beside me, Erina laughed nervously as she clutched her door’s armrest and stared vacantly out her window. “Now I’m cargo….”

Ignoring my former sister who was wallowing in a reality check, I frowned at the Simulacrum woman behind the steering wheel.

I thought Clarisol was crazy, but this girl takes the cake!

Marinette hummed to herself. “Under-16…Under-16—there you are!”

She spun the steering wheel and the suburban swerved smoothly across five lines of flowing traffic. Again, I feared we would sideswipe the cars around us, but somehow the big boxy vehicle avoided a collision, and moments later it was hurtling down a wide ramp at near breakneck speed. Before long, we’d entered a subterranean realm beneath the city, crisscrossed by a warren of tunnels.

“…we’re going to die…going to die....”

That came from Erina who was still clutching at her door’s armrest with a white knuckled grip.

Twisting around in his seat, Arnval studied her for a second before facing Marinette.

“She’s right. With your driving, we’re going to die before Hexaria gets to us.”

“You’re assuming she can catch us,” Marinette countered. “Even if she translocates throughout the city, she’ll be on foot whereas we’re on wheels. And she’ll have trouble tracking us with so much noise around us”—she pointed upwards—“because we’re under the city.”

At the mention of being tracked, I grimaced at my uniform before asking, “So Tabitha can’t follow us?”

Arnval twisted around a little more in his seat for a better look at me. “Down here, it’s unlikely your uniform will give away our location.”

Marinette jumped in. “However, House Cardinal is using a Conquistador Class Awareness to spy on the city—”

“—and it’s going toe-to-toe with our Tempest Class,” Arnval cut her off, sounding annoyed.

But Marinette wasn’t done. “Yep, yep. So there’s a battle going on between their super Awareness and our super Awareness.”

“Why?” I asked.

Marinette started to answer, “That’s because—”

“Marinette.”

“Yes?”

“Focus on driving.”

“Yep, yep….”

Arnval eyed her with distrust while he gave me a proper answer. “House Cardinal is making use of Libra to spy on you.”

The name rang a bell with me. “Tabitha mentioned them. What are they?”

“They’re a division within the Gun Princess Royale’s Battle Commission. They keep tabs on people of interest to the Battle Commission, and you are a person of interest. Unfortunately, Libra is a puppet of House Cardinal. But Spartan has sufficient resources in Ar Telica to match them, which is why Marinette here can pull off stunt driving in the middle of the city and not get us arrested. We can hide ourselves from the traffic and surveillance grid.”

“And the cars around us,” Marinette chimed in.

Arnval scowled at her yet again. “Yes, and the cars around us….”

I cut in to ask, “Then we’re invisible to the city’s eyes?”

“More or less,” she answered, earning herself another dark look from her boss.

I shrugged in confusion. “Why are you so afraid of Tabitha?”

My question appeared to strike a nerve.

Marinette hesitated in her driving, and Arnval regarded me with a hard stare.

“I’m not afraid of Tabitha,” he declared, “but she is a complication.”

“Why?”

His face grew grim. “Because Hexaria has been playing a frustrating game of tit-for-tat with us for most of the morning.”

“Meaning what?”

His grim expression darkened. “Spartan and Libra have a network of trans-location beacons throughout the city. It allows operatives using machine avatars or portable beacons to hop all over the place. That was until this morning.”

“What happened this morning?”

“Hexaria decided to knock out our trans-location beacons. In return, Spartan has been locating her beacons and putting them out of commission. For now, we’re ahead. Seventeen beacons to thirteen. But finding them is proving difficult.” He pursed his lips unhappily before admitting, “And Renew missed the beacon Hexaria had planted in the dorm building…though it wasn’t for lack of trying.”

I gave him another confused shrug. “Why is she doing this? Is Tabitha picking a fight with you—with the Sanreals?”

“I don’t know,” he confessed. “She hasn’t engaged any of our people. She’s avoided them. But there’s no doubt she’s been playing with us. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she’s doing all this to distract us.”

“From what?”

“That’s a good question. What we do know is that House Cardinal has expressed an interest in you.”

“But I told you already—Tabitha said the Empress had labelled me off-limits.”

“That’s precisely why Hexaria’s antics are troubling. If you’re off limits, why go this far?”

Arnval was watching me, yet it seemed as though he was watching Erina as well.

That alone silenced me.

Taking that silence for an answer, he humphed to himself, then turned around and sat properly in his seat.

I sat back as well and considered what I’d learnt thus far.

However, in the corner of my eye, I noticed Erina contemplating Arnval with a silent, thoughtful mien.

Had she figured out what he’d left unsaid?

Knowing her, she was probably considering numerous possibilities far ahead of Arnval’s various trains of thought.

Nonetheless, it seemed safe to say that we’d all arrived at the same conclusion.

Tabitha wanted me, but to get me she first needed Erina.