The Baker Street district did not possess the bustling vitality of a metropolis; it possessed the cold, sterile quiet of a forgotten mausoleum.
Here, the architecture rose in towering, imposing blocks of pale stone and blackened steel, built in an oppressive, archaic European style that seemed designed to make the individual feel small, insignificant, and watched.
Dominating the center of the avenue stood the two-story Sub-Headquarters of the Suiban Organization.
The building was squat, low-slung, and dense, looking less like an administrative office and more like a bunker carved into the concrete street.
It felt entirely out of place amidst the soaring, vaulted facades surrounding it—a dark, functional growth anchored in a city of fading elegance.
Above, the sky was a heavy, suffocating quilt of slate grey.
Clouds hung low over the rooftops, thick and swollen with an unfallen rain, mirroring the city’s profound, unspoken melancholy.
It was a sky that offered no peace, no absolution, only a quiet, impending dread that seemed to seep into the very marrow of those who walked beneath it.
Even the sun—which the locals referred to with a strange, historic reverence as *Luxius*—appeared dim, pale, and distant.
It hovered behind the perpetual overcast haze like a dying candle behind frosted glass, struggling and failing to pierce the gloom.
“Let’s go inside,” Sunny suggested softly, his voice cutting through the thick, stagnant air of the street.
“Yes,” Yuxuan agreed.
His voice was barely audible, swallowed almost immediately by the cold wind rustling through the avenue.
They stepped through the heavy wooden doors, the thick timber giving way with a low, weighted groan, and crossed the threshold into the foyer.
As Sunny pushed past the entry frame, his foot halted mid-stride.
A subtle jerk in his shoulders betrayed a momentary startle.
Sitting in a high-backed, dark velvet armchair just inside the shadow of the foyer archway was a quiet, intensely motionless man.
The man held a half-burnt cigarette between two pale fingers.
A thin, grey ribbon of smoke curled lazily from its tip, rising up into the stagnant, unventilated air of the room before dissolving into nothingness.
His posture was unnaturally rigid, his other hand folded neatly behind his back.
As the two recruits stepped further into the room, the man did not offer a word.
He did not even shift his gaze toward Yuxuan.
With a slow, deliberate economy of movement, he pressed the glowing ember of the cigarette into a small brass dish beside him, extinguishing it instantly, and simply stared blankly at them—his eyes dark, unblinking, and entirely hollow.
Before the silence could curdle into something unbearable, heavy, rhythmic footsteps sounded from the dark hallway ahead.
An administrative officer approached, his crisp dark uniform immaculate, his face a mask of bureaucratic indifference.
Sunny eagerly stepped forward, brushing off the chilling encounter at the door with a quick, practiced brightness.
“I’m Sunny, and this is my partner, ‘Lie Longterm’,” he announced, gesturing toward Yuxuan.
The officer stopped three paces away, his eyes scanning them with a cold, unyielding detachment. Find the original chapter at g.com.
“Are you the new recruits?”
“Yes, sir,” Sunny replied smoothly, turning slightly to motion toward Yuxuan once more.
“Show me your identification,” the officer demanded.
His tone carried no curiosity, only the dry, mechanical weight of a procedure executed ten thousand times.
Sunny reached into his interior coat pocket with rapid precision, pulling out a sleek, metallic identification card.
“Here is my ID.
And this is Lie’s ID card—he is a Grade 8 Tuner.”
The officer took the cards between his gloved fingers, holding them up to the dim light filtering through the high clerestory windows.
He inspected the raised credentials, the holographic crest of the Suiban Organization, and the stamped serial numbers.
After a long, deliberate pause, he lowered his hand, his eyes shifting upward to lock onto Sunny.
“And what is your rank and grade, Sunny?”
“I am a Grade 6 for now, sir,” Sunny replied, a faint, confident smile touching the corner of his lips.
The officer made no comment on the disparity between their grades.
He slipped their identification cards back across the desk and reached into a heavy leather ledger resting beside him.
From it, he pulled a thick, manila folder bound with dark cotton twine.
He extended it toward Sunny.
“This is the file regarding an open incident in the Hullsperk correctional facility,” the officer instructed, his voice flat, dropping the details into the air like iron weights.
“A man named Neil was involved in a dispute concerning the ‘Null Tangent’ organization.”
He paused, letting the name hang in the cold air of the room.
He offered no further context, no operational background, no tactical assessment.
The file was shrouded in a dense, deliberate bureaucratic ambiguity—a mandate to investigate without being given the full picture of what they were truly walking into.
“Investigate,” the officer added simply, turning his back to signal that the interaction was at an end.
Yuxuan took the file from Sunny’s hands as they turned to leave.
As he retraced his steps toward the heavy wooden exit doors, his mind felt uncharacteristically heavy, weighed down by the quiet surrealism of the meeting.
As he passed the alcove near the doorway, Yuxuan felt it—the cold, lingering gaze of the man who had been smoking.
He sat rigidly in the shadow, his unblinking eyes fixed upon Yuxuan’s back.
It was a look that seemed to transcend the mundane walls of a regional office, carrying a profound, ancient sorrow—a weight so vast and unspoken that it felt detached from the simple mechanics of police work entirely.
Yuxuan did not look back, but the feeling of those hollow eyes followed him all the way out into the cold street air.
Outside, the gray sky seemed to have darkened further, the clouds hanging like a leaden ceiling over the district.
Parked near the curb, beneath the sprawling, skeletal branches of a pale Birch tree whose leaves had long since fallen, sat a sleek, obsidian-black vehicle.
Its dark glass windows reflected the dismal gray of the sky, giving it the appearance of a polished casket resting on the asphalt.
Yuxuan stopped at the edge of the pavement, looking down at the vehicle, then up at Sunny.
“Is this yours?” Yuxuan asked, his voice steady as he eyed the silent machine.
“Ah, yes,” Sunny replied, letting out a short, breezy laugh as he dug through his pockets for the ignition key.
He shrugged his shoulders with an air of careless, youthful indifference.
“I made a mistake and left it here yesterday after a late shift.
I’ve been buying new cars recently, so I get a bit careless with where I leave them.”
Yuxuan said nothing.
He watched in silence as Sunny unlocked the doors with a sharp, electronic chirp, opened the driver’s side, and slid into the leather seat.
Yuxuan walked around to the passenger side, opened the heavy door, and stepped inside.
The interior smelled of fine leather, expensive polish, and cold air.
The engine turned over with a low, guttural purr that vibrated softly through the floorboards as Sunny shifted into gear and pulled away from the curb.
The car glided smoothly down the sterile avenues of the Baker Street district, navigating away from the two-story Sub-Headquarters and heading toward the outer ring of the city—toward the distant, bleak silhouette of the Hullsperk correctional facility.
Outside the tinted windows, the European-style buildings, the gray stone archways, and the muted figures of pedestrians blurred into a dark, continuous tapestry of shadows.
Inside the cabin, the silence returned, thick and unbroken save for the low hum of the engine.
Yuxuan leaned his head back against the leather headrest, gazing out at the passing gloom.
The city stretched endlessly into the haze ahead, infinite and finite all at once, shrouded under the pale, dying light of Luxius.
A quiet, creeping certainty settled in his chest.
As the vehicle carried them further into the dark corridors of this strange world, Yuxuan could not shake the feeling that with every mile traveled, every name taken, and every mystery accepted, he was being drawn deeper into a vast, inescapable labyrinth—a place forged of lies, time, and paradox, from which there might never be a return.