When Edris returned to the main office floor, he saw the interns hunched at their respective stations. Rows of sheep-headed employees typed away in quiet unison, ignoring any sign of new arrivals.
Celio, perched on a swiveling stool near a row of filing cabinets, spotted Edris and gave him a pleading look.
What now?—was the unspoken message.
Edris replied with a silent wave and weaved among the cubicles to his station, a cramped space that held a finicky printer, various half-completed forms, and a battered screen.
According to his probation handbook, he’d been assigned to print out meeting materials for company meetings. Edris clicked through a series of nonsensical documents, fed some paper into the machine, and pressed the scan button.
“EAAAAAAAAAAAH!”
At once, the printer let out a shrill, high-pitched wail, imitating a scream, which jarred the quiet. The sound stuck out like a sore thumb, shooting reverberations through the office space like an arrow.
Celio jolted in the background. A few interns lifted their heads—Tesler, eyes wide, and Yesteria, eyebrows raised—but none spoke.
Edris listened to the recurring scream with a slight frown. With the printer throwing a tantrum like this, there was no way for it to process the papers for scanning.
Amidst the stares, Edris stepped forward, raised his arm, and slammed his fist onto the top of the printer.
“EAAAAAA—”
The wail cut off instantly. A short beep followed, and the machine resumed its job like nothing had happened.
“There we go,” he said, brushing his hands.
“…”
Edris waited, arms folded, as the device sorted through stacks of pages. With the moment to spare, he could finally open up his [PROFILE] to check out information on the current Labyrinth:
PLAYER ID
Edris
LABYRINTH
#24
PLAYER STATUS
Normal
ROLE
Unpaid Intern at [ARCHIVE X]
AFFINITY LEVEL
100%
CARD SLOT
1. Blazing Torrent
2. OmniKey
3. Ten-Ten
4. Vocal Slider
NOTE: Future card slots may be unlocked as a reward
Aside from the [BLAZING CURRENT], which he’d kept from the outside world, the rest of the cards were ones he’d won from Jagon in the Golden Room. Edris’s gaze focused on each one from top to bottom, activating their card descriptions.
SLOT 2: OmniKey
USAGE: This key allows you to open any door, lock, safe—anything with an empty space that allows insertion.
"Can’t hide anything from me now!"
# OF USAGE REMAINING: 3/3
SLOT 3: Bull’s Eye
USAGE: When activated, this card becomes a spear with a 100% hit rate. The target must be within the user’s sight at the time of activation.
"Can’t run from me now!"
# OF USAGE REMAINING: 1/1
SLOT 4: Vocal Slider
USAGE: This card can mimic any voice the user has heard in the past twenty-four hours. It is effective for three hours from the moment of activation.
"Hey! Did you eat my vocal cords for breakfast?"
# OF USAGE REMAINING: 1/1
The three cards were more useful than he’d expected. [BULL’S EYE] would be helpful in dire cases of comb, while [VOCAL SLIDER] would come in handy when trying to misguide (scam) others.
As for [OMNIKEY]...
Edris glanced at the Boss’s Office, which was locked shut and covered with drop-down curtains blocking all interior views.
Amidst his thoughts, he caught a sheep worker from the corner of his eye being escorted toward a distant door across the Boss’s Office.
The worker shuffled forward, two staff pushing him from behind. He bumbled out fragmented pleas in a trembling bleat, but none of the other sheep seemed to acknowledge the sound.
They were heading towards the Wellness Center.
The two sheep shoved the first worker into the room. As the sheep took his final step inside, his entire body was submerged in darkness, and the door handle clicked shut. The next second, the rectangular plaque above the doorframe flickered red.
“Never trust any of the labels here.”
At some point, a figure moved beside him. Morris—gaunt, posture weary—was sorting through some books as he paused to speak. His voice was barely above a whisper.
“Wellness, happiness, hard work—all bullshit. This place is designed to lull us in with its cheery nonsense, but behind it is a pitfall.” He jerked his chin at the now-shut door, muttering more to himself than Edris. “The real threat has yet to arrive. We haven’t seen anything yet.”
Edris wasn't sure whether the older man was talking to him. He nodded half-heartedly, redirecting his focus to the scanning papers rotating through the printing machine, which was now diligently working through the packet.
He could still see the man from his peripheral vision, who seemed to bear the most prominent dark circles that enhanced the pallor of his skin. A man who repeated near-misses had ground down, each Labyrinth chiseling away at his will.
The printing machine spat out the final page with a mechanical buzz. Morris huffed, as though to speak again, but then thought better of it. He quietly moved on, carrying a thick stack of books toward another part of the office.
Gathering the printed sheets, Edris flipped through them. The words looked to be in a script he didn’t recognize—curved lines and blocky symbols that made no coherent sense.
He pressed the stack to his side, considering the possibility these documents were made-up illusions.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Perhaps Ace might’ve known if they matched anything from his brain, which was practically the entire Nolmes Grand Library and more. Sadly, the man was nowhere near.
Edris paused.
Speaking of Ace—where did the man end up?
***
LABYRINTH 22.
“Sir, are you listening?”
In the dimly lit office, two figures faced each other. The one on the right stood, posture tense and teeth clattering from nervousness. Across from him sat a white-haired man, leaning against the backrest of his armchair.
The air in the room was thick with dust. Old wooden panels creaked under the weight of time, their faded paint peeling in places like the skin of something long forgotten. The light was dim—seldom brighter than a dull amber glow from gas lamps—and it hung heavy in the air, casting long shadows that seemed to reach into every corner.
Tammy blinked slowly, his focus shifting from the dark, fading edges of the room to the central figure before him. Compared to his thin and limber frame, which barely supported the company’s frayed uniform, the man with white hair sitting across from him was tall and well-postured.
Under his anxious gaze, the man’s eyes moved from his face to the staff name tag on his chest.
“Tammy.”
“Yes, sir.”
Every surface was cluttered with papers, yellowed with age but still covered with the same scribbles and signatures penned decades ago.
“You’re name is Tammy?”
“Yes, that’s me, but…” Tammy pulled his already-unkempt hair in exasperation. “Detective Ace! Are you sure you’re listening?”
Ace showed no reaction to his question, which only threw the man into deeper despair. After all, Tammy had been long going through it since the morning, when the head of his company was discovered dead in his office.
Fortunately, the company acted fast. To prevent news from spreading, they had locked all sources of information flow the moment it happened, using the pretense of an unexpected schedule conflict to fend off the news outlet from making a scene.
Unfortunately, this meant they only had a limited pool of resources they could pull to find out the truth behind Tinope Res’s death. Not to mention, with the leader down, the company was low on both staff and time.
The detective was one of them.
As one of the invitees to the company launch, this white-haired detective was supposed to be a close acquaintance of the founder, hence the company’s decision to seek him out for help.
Although he was the current head of RESOLVE’s Crisis Team, he'd only joined the company a month ago. Tammy wasn’t exactly excited to hear about the possibility of losing this job already, especially considering the current state of the job market.
“Detective Ace…Please tell me you have something in mind.”
Ace's expression didn’t change as he confronted Tammy’s question head-on.
“About?”
“This case, Detective!” Tammy’s voice trembled. He sounded like he was about to cry. “The rising genius of RESOLVE has died, and we need to find the culprit! We are running out of time!”
Ace lifted his head at the subordinate, who subconsciously flinched at his gaze.
“Please, Detective. We need answers—now.” Tammy forced each word out through clenched jaws. “This is the company’s last chance to recover from this crisis. If you don’t solve this, everything could fall apart. You have to help us.”
“Tinope Res?”
The subordinate’s face darkened, and he blinked rapidly as though trying to stay composed. “Yes, your friend Tinope Res… Mister Detective! He was supposed to announce our new line of immunity-boosting treatments at today’s event, but now—now he’s dead!”
“I have no such friend.”
Ace's pale gaze remained fixed, his expression unfazed by the panic radiating from him. The urgency in the air didn’t seem to affect him; if anything, it only intensified the atmosphere of indifference that surrounded the white-haired detective.
Tammy bit his tongue. He felt sick.
This was supposed to be a crisis, a catastrophe for the company, yet the man who was supposed to help them was so detached, almost as if it had nothing to do with him. His voice cracked slightly as he continued, his desperation reaching new heights.
"Is this supposed to be your focus right now?!" He cried. "This is a disaster, Detective! Tinope Res was the leader of RESOLVE—the hope for the company’s future! If the truth doesn’t come to light, everything will collapse! The investors, the team—everyone depends on this!"
Ace gave him a long, lingering look, as if he hadn’t even heard the man. Then, under his abhorrence, the detective let out a slow exhale.
“Sounds like your problem, not mine.”
Tammy blinked, momentarily stunned by the detective’s words, before his desperation flared anew. “But you were the one who agreed to help! You—”
“Can you recap how the crime was discovered?”
Just then, a voice cut through the tension in the room. Tammy, halfway through his exclamation, instinctively spun toward the source.
A young girl stood at the door, her violet hair catching the dim light. She seemed to stare right past him, towards the white-haired man. There was a calm intensity to her gaze, despite her youthful appearance.
For the first time, something seemed to change in the white-haired man as he steered his attention to the door.
“Ives.”
“Unfortunately, it is your problem. Our problem. Have you still not looked at the [MAIN QUEST]?” The petite girl sighed. “Mister Edris is nowhere to be found, nor are Celio and the others. Looks like it’s just the two of us for this one.”
Without waiting for a response, she then turned to Tammy. “Can you tell us what happened again? Any relevant information would do.”
Tammy stared at her, then frowned. “...And you are?”
Ives stood straight, her violet hair catching the dim light, the stillness of her demeanor far beyond her apparent youth. “Detective Ace’s assistant. You may direct any information to me instead.”
The subordinate looked back and forth between the two, his eyes narrowing, his confusion mounting. “You’re his assistant?”
Ives nodded once, unfazed by his skepticism. Ace gave a brief glance at her, a silent acknowledgment, but made no move to speak himself.
Tammy blinked again, staring at Ives with even more concern. “How old are you?”
“Eight months into seven.”
Ives responded with a calm voice that had no trace of insecurity.
“A-ah... is that so?” Tammy’s face paled a little as he processed her answer.
It was at this point that Tammy truly began to question his choices. The detective’s cold demeanor, paired with his odd assistant, wasn’t exactly the reassuring team he had imagined.
A detective who looked more like a mannequin and a child as his assistant?
It was enough to make him wonder if they could even handle a case of this magnitude.
But with no one else to turn to, Tammy sighed, shaking his head, and started talking.
“This morning,” he began, his voice shaky but growing steadier with each word, “Tinope Res, the leader and founder of RESOLVE, was found dead in his office—this office—by his secretary. He was all twisted, his spine broken and his back arched behind his desk. A quill pen had been stabbed through the palm of his right hand, and a syringe lay beside it.”
Tammy paused, taking a deep breath. “Company documents and files were all over the desk. Torn. Some of them were missing. We assumed the killer took the important pieces—whoever did this didn’t leave much behind.”
The white-haired man didn’t immediately react to his account. His eyes flickered downward as he processed the details in silence.
Regardless, Tammy continued. “Mister Res was supposed to announce a major breakthrough at the company event today, where he’d already invited several high-profiled guests like you all. Yet when the time came for us to pick him up, we’d instead found his corpse in his office, and now… Now we have this.”
It was then Ace looked up. Simultaneously, Ives, who’d been watching the conversation from the side, spoke up.
“What announcement?”
“He didn’t tell anyone.” Tammy shook his head regretfully. “But whatever the news was, the head had been excited about it for a while now. Enough for him to open up a whole event just for it and invite so many people.”
“Anyone noticed anything that may be out of place before the event?” The seven-year-old asked.
Tammy hesitated, then spoke. “Only that the secretary had noticed some tension in the air when Res was heading to his office earlier in the day. But there’s no telling who, if anyone, would have wanted him dead.”
Ives nodded, then went silent. Ace traced his hand on the dusty table, his face betraying no emotion as he absorbed the information.
“You said he invited many high-profiled guests,” he said. “Who else?”
“A-about that.” Tammy scratched his head. “Most of them weren’t actually very close with Mister Res and were only invited for their on-paper status with the company. As a result, we sent them back their way once the event was announced to be cancelled.
“The only ones left were those who actually knew the truth—those Mister Res had actually considered to be his close friends and family members.”
Tammy glanced uneasily at the two. Instinctively, he knew that it was probably not a very good idea to release most of the guestlist without confirming their alibis. After all, the killer could have been any one of them. However, the situation was dire, and it was the company’s priority to hide the founder’s death from news outlets, as the damage would be irreversible once they found out.
In the silent room, Tammy stood uncomfortably, holding his breath as he braced himself for the scolding.
“Where are they?”
Rather than anger, he was given a question. Tammy’s head flew up, and he was confronted with Ace’s dark eyes. He didn’t know starting from when, but the man had gotten up from the seat and was making his way across the room.
“I’m sorry?” Tammy blinked.
“Don’t be. Where are the remaining gathered?” Ace said, wasting no time as he put on his windcoat. “The culprit is among them.”
“H-huh?” Tammy drew his neck back instinctively, gaping. “How are you so sure? I can also run an additional check on the other guests at the event—”
“No need for the trouble.” Ives cut him off with a child-like smile. “Just do as the detective asked. Gather the remaining guests.”
“The tea room. They’re all in there. There’s Mister Masen—the founder’s writer friend. Mister Jaymes—his son. And Miss Carrie, a guest from another company who was in talks with RESOLVE for a collaboration.” Tammy glanced uneasily at her before gesturing to the adjacent room. “How is the detective so sure the killer’s among them?”
“Well…” At his question, the seven-year-old gazed toward Ace, who was already making a swerve to the adjacent room. “Intuition?”
Tammy blinked twice. He thought he’d misheard.
“Pardon me?”
He couldn’t tell whether the girl was serious or not, as she bore a flat expression on her face.
“The detective is a genius,” Ives said, then tilted her head. “What? Doesn’t he look like one?”