The screams had stopped. Not out of defiance, or because the information had been given. They had stopped because the thing that had been screaming no longer had the capacity. The helicopter pilot—a lower-tier Superior in charge of logistics, not combat—hung suspended in the air by bands of Umbralite that bit into the walls of the abandoned service tunnel Wolfen had dragged him into. Below him, on the filthy concrete, lay his severed legs, still clad in their grey flight suit material. The cauterized wounds smoked faintly.
Wolfen wasn't smiling. He wasn't angry. He stood before the man, his golden eyes reflecting the pilot's pain-glazed terror with the flat disinterest of a man observing a stain.
"You're not listening," Wolfen said, his voice a conversational monotone. "I'm not asking for launch codes or secret bases. I'm asking about a story. A piece of history. Two twin sisters. Omegas. They helped the Architects bring down an Absolute. Absolute-Five."
The pilot trembled, sweat and tears mixing on his face. "I... I fly helicopters! I move supplies! I don't know about Absolutes! That's... that's mythology!"
Wolfen tilted his head. "Mythology. Interesting." He took a slow step closer. "See, I have a problem with memory. Big chunks are just... fire and noise. But I remember a face. My maker's face. Right before they took him apart. And I remember whispers. Whispers about the ones who held him down. Two shadows, moving as one. Sisters."
He reached out, not with a weapon, but with his bare hand. He placed his index finger gently on the pilot's knee-stump. The man flinched, a fresh sob hitching in his throat.
"Pain is a language," Wolfen murmured, almost to himself. "It's crude. But it gets attention." His finger began to glow, not with the white heat of plasma, but with a deep, inner crimson. It was a slow, focused burn, the heat transferring directly into the raw nerve endings.
The pilot's body arched against his bonds, a silent, breathless scream tearing from his lips. His eyes bulged. The smell of cooking meat filled the tunnel.
Wolfen watched, his expression unchanged. "I don't enjoy this," he stated, as if discussing the weather. "It's tedious. It's messy. But you see, I need the story. Because if the story is true, then I have new names. And if I have names, I have targets. And targets are the only thing that makes the noise in my head quiet down for a while."
He removed his finger. The pilot sagged, whimpering, gulping air.
"Please..." the man rasped. "I transport personnel... files... sometimes... to high-clearance sites..."
Wolfen's eyes sharpened. "Files. Good. What did the files call them? The twins."
The pilot's mind, shattered by pain, scrambled through a haze of logistics codes and manifests. "C-Code names... operational logs... 'Scylla and Charybdis'... That's all I ever saw! Just the names on secure cargo manifests! Deep-storage transfers! I don't know anything else!"
Scylla and Charybdis. The names hung in the foul air. Twin monsters from an ancient sea myth. A perfect, arrogant Architect codename.
Wolfen stared at him for a long moment. The pilot saw something shift in those gold eyes. The blankness was replaced by a chilling, absolute clarity. The tourist was gone. The interrogator was gone. All that remained was the verdict.
"You gave me names," Wolfen said, his voice now soft, almost gentle. "That was the information. Thank you."
Relief, pathetic and desperate, flooded the pilot's face. "You'll... you'll let me go?"
"No," Wolfen said.
He raised his hand again. This time, Umbralite didn't form a blade. It formed a thick, viscous, tar-like substance that flowed from his palm. It wrapped around the pilot's torso, then began to seep, slowly, inexorably, into the cauterized wounds of his stumps.
It wasn't a coating. It was an infiltration.
The pilot screamed again, but this was a different kind of scream. This was the scream of feeling something alien and cold worming its way up into his body, through his veins, filling the spaces where his legs used to be. It was a violation more profound than any cut.
"This is for wasting my time," Wolfen explained calmly, as the black tendrils crept past the man's hips, into his abdomen. "And for flying the boars to my party. And for working for the people who made the sisters who helped kill my maker."
The Umbralite wasn't just invading; it was crystallizing internally, forming microscopic, razor-sharp shards that expanded as they traveled. It was a death of a thousand internal cuts, slow, spreading, and agonizingly precise. The pilot's screams became wet, choked gurgles as the substance reached his lungs, his heart.
Wolfen watched until the last tremor faded from the suspended body and the gurgles ceased. The man's eyes were frozen wide, his mouth open in a final, silent plea.
He let the Umbralite bonds dissolve. The corpse, now grotesquely heavy and misshapen from the internal crystallization, slumped to the floor with a damp, solid thud.
Wolfen turned and walked out of the tunnel, leaving the dark and the smell behind. The names echoed in the silent, burning chamber of his mind.
Scylla. Charybdis.
He had targets. The noise in his head wasn't quieter. But now it had a direction. It had a song, and the song was a dirge for twin sisters who had helped murder a god. And he was going to sing it for them, very, very soon.