Dust motes danced in the dim neon glow, the only witnesses to the suffocating silence inside the CUBE bunker. A month had passed since Ren had taken a bullet at the restaurant, yet the wound still left a jagged, pulsing ache every time he drew a breath too deep. His dim orange eyes were fixed on the primary projector, which displayed a live feed from the opulent grand hall of CLOVER Tower.
Ren sat back, his right palm splayed open on the table. Beside him, Lulubel moved with the lethal grace of a predator draped in a lab coat.
"You're still in my debt. The name Shiroi Hitsuji is still locked tight behind my teeth," Lulubel whispered. Her voice was a ghost of a sound, far below the reach of Vera or Isaac, who were occupied on the far side of the room. Her latex-gloved hands finished winding a fresh bandage around Ren's palm.
Ren didn't flicker. He loathed the fact that he—once again—had to rely on this 'mad scientist.' More than that, he loathed the debt: Lulubel hadn't told the rest of CUBE exactly who he was.
"I have to wonder," Lulubel continued, her tone playful yet sharp. "Is Girl Number 07 really worth the risk of Shiroi Hitsuji's hand being reduced to scrap?"
Ren remained a statue, his jaw locked tight as the dramatic swell of orchestral music from the CLOVER Tower broadcast filled the bunker.
Vera took a sip of her cold black coffee, her eyes darting restlessly across the row of candidates on the screen. Isaac, as usual, was an extension of the hardware; his fingers blurred over a virtual keyboard, allowing thousands of lines of binary to cascade like a waterfall of light across his secondary monitors.
So far, they hadn't sent a single digital strike toward the CLOVER servers. "You're really going to let her walk through this without a safety net?" Vera broke the silence, her skepticism bleeding through. "One command, Ren. We could scramble the voting system in a heartbeat and lock her in. Why are we watching this soap opera like civilians?"
Ren didn't answer immediately. He shifted slightly in his seat. "I want to see, Vera," he said, his voice a low, authoritative rasp. "Without the Loyalists' backing, without our interference... I want to see how far her own spark can carry her. If she can't survive the first month on her own strength, she'll never survive the storm waiting at the summit."
On the screen, the ranking ceremony began. The atmosphere in the Tower was a violent contrast to the bunker's tomb-like chill. Dramatic stings and strobe lights created a rhythmic, choking tension.
"Rank Two... Candidate 04," the host's voice echoed through the bunker's tinny, cracked speakers.
Vera let out a cynical snort. "Candidate 04. Ella. Count Erwin's girl. That slot was bought and paid for before the show even aired." Her fingers swiped across a tablet containing a dossier of elite-backed candidates she'd scraped from the city's high society.
Lulubel let out a soft, melodic laugh, leaning close to Ren's ear. "She's sweet. But in Rich City, 'sweet' is just another word for 'prey.' You saved her from a bullet, but you're letting her stand on a stage made of knives? You're a cruel man, Ren... or maybe, you're just too far gone for her?"
Ren cut a look at Lulubel that promised death. "Shut your mouth and do your job."
Lulubel simply shrugged, her movements casual as she packed away her surgical kit. She knew Ren was a caged tiger while his body was still knitting itself back together.
Number after number was called. Rank seven, eight, nine... the chairs on stage filled one by one with girls whose faces were masks of relief, though the exhaustion beneath was plain as day. The camera swept the remaining line, lingering for a heartbeat on Rena's face. She looked ghost-white under the harsh xenon spotlights.
"They haven't called her," Vera muttered, setting her coffee down and leaning in. "Ren, we're at Rank Ten. She's in the red."
Isaac's typing faltered for a second. He glanced at Ren, waiting for the order to intervene, for the emergency breach. But Ren didn't budge. His jaw remained set, his eyes unblinking as he watched Rena on the screen. He could see her shoulders trembling—the way she gripped the hem of her dress. It was the body language of pure, unadulterated terror.
"Rank Eleven..." the host paused for a duration that felt like an eternity. "Candidate 09."
A girl in a blue dress beside Rena stepped forward, gasping for air, nearly collapsing from the sheer weight of the moment. It wasn't Rena.
Now, only two girls remained at the bottom. Rena and a contestant whose face was already slick with tears. One of them would keep their life under the lights; the other would be swallowed by the dark.
The feed focused entirely on Rena. Inside the hall, it looked as if the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. Rena felt the weight of the world watching her fail. She thought of Ren, of the promise in the hospital garden... she thought of how hollow her heart felt now that she was on the edge of the abyss. Her mind screamed a name she wasn't allowed to speak.
"And the final position to survive to the second month..." The host took a long, theatrical breath. "Rank Twelve... Candidate 07!"
Candidate 07. Rena's number.
In the bunker, Vera let out a breath she'd been holding with a sharp hiss. "Dammit. She actually pulled it off at the buzzer."
On the screen, Rena looked shattered. She didn't cheer. Instead, tears carved tracks through her makeup as she bowed her head. These weren't the tears of a victor; they were the tears of someone who had looked into the eyes of death and managed to blink. Beside her, Candidate 13 let out a soft wail before sinking to the floor, realizing her life under the CLOVER brand was over.
Ren watched. Though the mask of indifference remained clamped on his face, a flicker of relief sparked in his orange eyes. The tension in his shoulders finally uncoiled. He watched Rena being pulled into the winner's circle—small, fragile, surrounded by the elite faction girls who looked at her with pure disgust.
Vera turned to Ren, her face darkening. "She survived. But look at her, Ren. She's at the bottom of the pile. To the system, she's a low-value asset. Without a faction, she's a target. In the second month, they'll break her twice as hard."
Isaac returned to his binary sea, his rare voice cutting through the hum. "They'll look for any excuse to discard her in the next technical evaluation."
Ren rose from his chair. He walked toward Isaac's workstation, moving out of Lulubel's reach, and stared at the torrent of data.
Vera was right. Rena had proven she had the heart to survive, but Rich City wasn't built on heart. It was built on manipulation, brute force, and digital walls that luck couldn't climb.
"You're right," Ren said, his voice rising above the whir of the server fans and the rhythmic clicking of Isaac's keys. "Giving her room to fight alone in the first month was a test. Letting her become prey in the second... that's negligence."
Vera looked up, startled by the sudden, sharp edge in Ren's tone. Isaac remained locked on his monitors, but his fingers began a new, faster rhythm—as if he'd just been fed high-octane fuel.
"Isaac, start mapping the exploits in the manual security protocols," Ren commanded, pointing at the secondary monitor. "We can't hit the heart of CLOVER without tripping the alarms, so we'll start severing the nerves. One by one."
Ren looked back at the projector, where Rena was being led off-stage. He knew that from this moment on, his hands would never be clean again. He had to be the devil in the basement so the angel on the stage could keep breathing.
"If Zero wants to use filth to build his palace," Ren paused, his eyes flashing with a predatory light. "Then I'll tear it down from the foundation with something far filthier."
In the shadows of the room, Lulubel leaned against the wall, arms crossed. She watched Ren with a crooked smile half-hidden in the dark. The roar of the audience from the bunker's speakers became a perfect wall of noise.
Vera glanced at Lulubel, suspicious of the doctor's eerie calm, but her attention was quickly snatched back by Isaac's data. To Vera, Lulubel was just a hired hand—not the keeper of their leader's greatest secret.
Lulubel laughed silently to herself. She knew that in this cramped, cold room, she was the only one who could hear the true beat of Ren's heart. Straightening her lab coat, she stepped toward the medical bay, leaving Ren to his war room.
High above, in the CLOVER Tower, Rena might have felt alone. But beneath the very ground she stood on, a war machine was warming up, ready to burn anyone who dared to touch her.