Jayden lounged comfortably across the couch inside Jion’s office, one leg stretched over the armrest while a tablet rested lazily against his lap.
The faint glow from the screen reflected across his glasses as he tested the upgraded interface of the Phase Scanner, fingers occasionally tapping across the display.
Lines and signals shifted across the monitor in real time.
Then suddenly, one section distorted violently.
Jayden’s brows lifted slightly.
“Oh,” he muttered, amused.
“She is here.”
Jion barely looked up from the documents spread across his desk.
“That was fast.”
The office door slammed open so hard against the wall that both of them felt the impact vibrate through the room.
Linn stood at the entrance breathing unevenly, eyes sharp with restrained fury.
Dust still clung to parts of her clothes from the warehouse, and there was a faint scrape across her cheek from the debris earlier.
She looked seconds away from committing actual violence.
“Manipulative bastards—I WILL KILL YOU ALL!”
“‘Manipulative bastards’,” Jayden repeated flatly, glancing at Jion.
“Are we rebranding now?” he asked.
Linn pointed aggressively at him.
“Shut up, you sadistic lie detector freak!”
Jayden blinked at her, actually offended, then slowly looked around the room as if expecting backup from the furniture itself.
Jion casually tossed a black card toward her without even standing up.
She caught it automatically out of reflex, then frowned down at it.
“What the hell is this for?”
“Congratulations,” Jion said calmly, a small smile playing on his lips.
“You passed your evaluation.”
For a second, Linn simply stared at him blankly.
Then her expression somehow became even more offended.
“Are you being serious right now?!” she exclaimed.
“You just staged a whole assassination attempt, treating it as a job interview, and your response is congratulations?!”
“It was more of a field assessment,” Jion corrected.
“That is NEVER better!”
“Technically, nobody died,” Jayden cut in, eyes on the scanner.
“You should have volunteered,” she shot back with a murderous glare, looking genuinely ready to throw the black card at his face.
Jion ignored the chaos entirely.
“Buy everything in your list.”
She brought her gaze back to Jion.
“What?”
“Skincare. Haircare. Vitamins. Cosmetics. Phone. Everything you listed.” Jion flipped through another document.
“You said they were necessities.”
“You traumatized me and then compensated me with money?!” She huffed in disbelief.
“You cannot seriously think this fixes anything!”
“It was not intended to,” Jion replied calmly.
“That somehow makes me angrier!”
“You are reacting within expected parameters,” Jayden chimed in again, eyes still on the scanner.
“STOP REVIEWING ME LIKE A LAB RAT!”
Before Linn could continue her verbal homicide, Jion calmly reached beside his desk and placed a small carrier cage on top of it.
A soft meow immediately cut through the room, causing Linn to freeze mid-rant.
Inside the cage sat a small gray cat blinking sleepily beneath the office lights.
Silence.
Complete silence.
Linn stared at the cat for several long seconds before looking back at Jion with visible suspicion.
“…Why is there a cat?”
“Bonus reward,” Jion replied casually.
“From Paradox.”
Her brows furrowed instantly.
“Who?”
“The psychopath who drugged you,” Jayden clarified helpfully.
Ah, that Helix guy Sean was talking about earlier.
Linn looked back at the cat again.
The tiny thing let out another soft meow and pressed itself quietly against the front of the cage.
Her expression cracked almost immediately.
Jayden snorted loudly.
“You are folding.”
“I am NOT folding.”
“You literally stopped yelling.”
“I am multitasking!”
“Your voice dropped two octaves.”
“Shut up!”
What was originally supposed to be a quick trip to buy skincare products somehow turned into an armed chase inside an abandoned warehouse, a staged psychological evaluation, temporary emotional collapse, and a violent confrontation with a man who apparently found near-death experiences entertaining.
And after all of that, Enphire had simply gone on with their day as if nothing had happened.
One moment she had been running through an abandoned warehouse while bullets flew past her head, and the next, Sean was calmly asking whether she preferred serum or toner while pushing a shopping cart down the aisle of the department store.
Linn still could not process it.
At some point during the shopping trip, she had genuinely stopped walking in the middle of the cosmetics section just to stare at Sean in disbelief while he casually explained the difference between two moisturizers as if he had not participated in an orchestrated fake assassination attempt less than an hour ago.
The worst part was that everyone else acted like this was normal.
Linn considered homicide at least four separate times throughout the evening.
And somehow, despite all of that, she still ended up buying everything she had originally listed.
Even unnecessary things she added out of spite halfway through shopping because if Crossline insisted on ruining her life repeatedly, then she was at least going to become expensive about it.
She lay flat on her bed, staring up at the ceiling.
The room was dim, lit only by the soft spill of hallway light under the doorframe and the occasional flicker of passing footsteps outside.
Her body felt heavy in a way that had nothing to do with sleep.
The adrenaline from earlier had long worn off, leaving behind a strange, lingering tension—like her nerves had not fully accepted that the danger was over.
Even in stillness, her mind replayed fragments of the warehouse: gunfire echoing down metal corridors, Sean’s voice cutting through smoke, the feeling of being cornered with nowhere left to run.
She exhaled slowly, tilting her gaze to the side.
There, at the corner of her bed, was the small gray cat curled comfortably into itself like it had always belonged there.
It blinked at her slowly in the dim light, then let out a soft, sleepy meow as if acknowledging her presence without concern.
She stared at it in silence for a few seconds.
Then sighed.
“You are suspiciously cute.”
Honestly, she still had no idea what was wrong with the people in this organization.
They manipulated civilians, staged dangerous evaluations, lied professionally, wore fake faces, and treated life-threatening situations like scheduled office work.
And apparently, according to Jion, the most unstable member among them had decided to give her a cat.
A cat.
Linn sat up and watched the tiny creature blink up at her.
“But how did this Helix guy know I love cats?”
The cat did not react much—only adjusted slightly, curling in closer.
Suddenly, a knock cut through the quiet.
She did not move—just listened.
The sound did not repeat immediately, but it lingered in the air like it was waiting for permission to exist.
Another knock.
This time, firmer.
She stood and approached the door, her hand hesitating briefly on the handle before she finally pulled it open.
For a second, she froze in the doorway the moment her eyes landed on him—standing there with a box under his arm.
“You—”
Soren lifted the box slightly, cutting through whatever implication her words carried.
“Star projector,” he said simply.
Linn blinked.
“What?”
“You requested it,” he replied, tone even.
“I am here to assemble it.”
There was a beat of silence as her mind caught up, the tension in her shoulders loosening just slightly.
“Right. I did,” she muttered, stepping aside.
“Come in.”
Soren entered without hesitation.
The room seemed to quiet further the moment he stepped inside, like even the air adjusted itself around his presence.
He placed the box near the wall and opened it immediately, his movements precise and economical—nothing wasted, nothing uncertain.
Each piece came out in order, arranged as if already mentally mapped.
Linn stayed near her desk, watching him work.
At first it was simple curiosity.
Then it shifted into something harder to name.
Not familiarity exactly, but a strange pull at the edge of thought—like recognizing a melody she had never learned.
After a while, she straightened slightly.
“I know everyone here calls me Parallax,” she began, her voice quiet, “but I would like to introduce myself properly.”
A pause.
“…And humanly.”
The words left her mouth softer this time, quieter than she intended.
At least to you.
Not because she trusted him.
That would have been ridiculous after everything that had happened since day one.
But among everyone she had met inside Crossline so far, Soren strangely felt easier to stand near.
No clear reason.
No proof.
Nothing she could logically explain.
Just instinct.
A feeling she could not place.
“I am Linn,” she said, watching him carefully.
“What should I call you?”
“Soren,” he answered, not looking up from the device. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Silence settled immediately after, stretching longer than expected.
Linn exhaled softly through her nose, eyes narrowing just a little.
Is that all?
She hesitated, then spoke again, slower this time, “About that evening—that thing you were chasing.” Her tone was more careful than before.
“I know it is probably not something you can just explain, but what was it?”
Soren’s hands paused for the first time.
Then resumed.
“We are asking the same question,” he responded.
Linn’s brows met.
“The same question?”
No answer followed, only silence, and the continued quiet assembly of the projector.
Eventually, the device clicked into its final form.
The lights activated, and stars spilled across the ceiling in slow, drifting patterns—soft constellations blooming over them like a night sky that did not belong to any one place.
The room shifted with it, the weight of reality briefly loosening.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Linn tilted her head back slightly, watching the stars move.
Then, almost unconsciously, her eyes drifted to him.
Soren stood near the device, gaze lifted toward the projection.
The light traced faint lines across his face, softening his expression just enough to make him seem even more distant.
Something about him felt misplaced in a way she could not explain.
Not dangerous.
Just something deeper—like standing in a place she had never visited yet somehow knowing exactly where the shadows would fall.
It made no sense.
And yet every quiet movement he made—the steady rhythm of his hands, the silence he carried so naturally, even the way he stood beneath the drifting projection of artificial stars—felt like encountering a face in a dream and forgetting where you had seen it the moment you woke up.
He turned his head slightly, and their eyes met for a brief moment.
Linn’s reaction came too fast—she looked away immediately, fixing her attention on the ceiling as if it suddenly required intense focus.
Silence returned.
Not heavy.
Just suspended.
After a few seconds, Soren turned away.
“It’s done,” he said, moving toward the door.
“Hey—wait,” Linn called before she could overthink it.
He stopped, looking back at her without changing expression.
She hesitated, then glanced toward the bed where the cat was curled up, watching both of them lazily.
“Can you help me name it?” she asked, almost unsure why she was asking him specifically.
Soren followed her gaze and studied the cat for a moment.
No reaction.
No change in expression.
Then—
“Tetero.”
“What—”
But he had already turned back toward the door, as if the answer had always been final, and the question had only been waiting for him to say it out loud.
The next day arrived with no softness at all.
Linn barely had time to adjust to the uneasy quiet of her room before another message came through the internal channel—short, clipped, and absolute.
Meeting.
Immediate.
No explanations followed.
She changed quickly, the remnants of the previous day still sitting heavy in her body as she followed the corridor toward the designated room.
When she arrived, the others were already there.
Jion stood at the head of the table, checking the contents of the envelope in his hands.
Niel sat nearby, fingers moving quickly across the keyboard.
Jayden lounged comfortably in his seat, adjusting the exposed circuits of the portable Phase Scanner resting on his lap.
Sean leaned against the wall, quietly wiping down his gun with practiced ease.
Across the table, Jace checked tracking beacons and comm units one by one without looking up.
At the far end, Soren sat silently with his gaze fixed on the shifting data projections hovering above the surface.
Linn paused at the doorway.
No one greeted her.
Not because they were ignoring her, but because the atmosphere had already shifted into something that did not allow casualness.
Jion looked up first, his gaze landing on her briefly, then moved away again.
“Everyone is here,” he announced.
A beat of silence followed, then he placed a single file on the center of the table.
“Our next mission.”
The room did not react outwardly, but something in the air tightened immediately.
Linn felt it then—not fear exactly, but the same tightening sense she had learned to recognize.
The feeling that something was already in motion long before she was told.
Jion’s gaze swept across the table, tapping the file once.
“Zeropoint has resurfaced.”