The flight back to the HPF Headquarters was a blur of painkillers and exhaustion. Upon landing, Squad 5 was immediately rushed to the Medical Section—a sterile, white wing of the facility that smelled of ozone and antiseptic.
Malina, Eren, and Edy were placed in regenerative stasis tanks to heal their broken bones and internal bleeding. Max, whose injuries were mostly exhaustion and bruises, was given a standard bed.
For two days, the room was silent except for the rhythmic beeping of heart monitors and the hum of the stasis machinery.
On the morning of the third day, Max's eyes snapped open. The headache from the Void feedback loop was gone, replaced by a dull ache in his muscles. He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
He looked around the room. To his left, Malina was floating in a tank of blue liquid, her arm encased in a brace. Eren looked peaceful for once, heavily sedated to keep his metabolism from burning through the nutrients. Edy was in a dark corner, wearing a neural-dampening headset to let his brain recover from the psychic trauma.
They were safe. But Max's mind wasn't on his friends. It was on the vest he had been wearing when Jod pulled him onto the gunship.
The book.
Max grabbed a fresh uniform from the locker, dressed quickly, and slipped out of the medical bay. He needed answers.
He checked the armory, but his gear wasn't there. He checked the intake room. Nothing. Finally, he decided to go straight to the top.
Max took the elevator to the Command Deck. The corridors were busy with agents running drills, but no one stopped him. He reached the heavy double doors of the Supreme Commander's office. He didn't knock. He pushed them open.
Inside, the room was dimly lit. Commander Zog sat behind his massive obsidian desk, staring at a holographic map of the Eastern Coast. Instructor Jod was leaning against the wall, his arms crossed, looking tired.
On the desk, sitting right in front of Zog, was the tattered leather book.
"You're awake early," Zog said, not looking up from the map. "Most rookies sleep for a week after their first M-Class encounter."
"I want to know what that is," Max said, walking up to the desk and pointing at the book. "And I want to know why half the pages are missing."
Zog leaned back, his blue mechanical eye whirring softly as it focused on Max. "Direct. I like that. But to answer your question: I don't know who wrote it. We found it decades ago in an abandoned archive. It's mostly the ramblings of a madman who cracked under pressure."
"It's not just ramblings," Max countered. "It talks about the Fluids. It says there are five levels of power. It says we can level up if we hit our limit."
Max slammed his hand on the desk. "Why didn't you tell us? We almost died out there! If we knew we could get stronger, we could have—"
"You could have died faster," Zog interrupted, his voice dropping to a dangerous rumble.
Zog picked up the book and flipped it open. "Do you know why this information isn't in the recruit handbook, Maxwell? Because ten years ago, we tried telling people. And do you know what happened?"
Max stayed silent.
"Recruits started hurting themselves," Jod spoke up from the wall, his voice grim. "They started throwing themselves into fires, jumping off cliffs, and overdosing on adrenaline just to try and force a 'level up.' We lost more soldiers to their own stupidity than we did to the Guuts."
Zog nodded. "Ambition is a disease, Max. If I told Eren he could reach Level 2 by running until his heart stopped... he would do it. That's why the system is classified. Evolution happens naturally, or not at all. Forced evolution leads to a grave."
Max looked at Zog, then at Jod. The logic made sense. He thought about how reckless Eren was, how desperate Malina was for perfection. If they knew, they might destroy themselves trying to get stronger.
"Okay," Max said, exhaling slowly. "I get it."
"Good," Zog said. "This stays between us. Do not tell your squad. Let them grow at their own pace. Do not try any weird methods to force the Void. You are valuable, Max. Don't break yourself."
"I won't," Max agreed.
He hesitated for a second, then spoke again. "There's something else. The Monarch... the giant Guut. It had us dead to rights. It could have dropped that gravity bomb and wiped us out."
Zog raised an eyebrow. "But it didn't?"
"No," Max said. "It stopped. It landed in front of me. It wasn't trying to kill me, Commander. It pointed at my chest. It pointed at this book."
Jod pushed himself off the wall, looking concerned. "It wanted the diary?"
"It called it 'The Record,'" Max said. "Is there something special about it? Is it a weapon? A key?"
Zog and Jod exchanged a quick, unreadable glance.
"As I said," Zog replied smoothly, his face a mask of calm. "We don't know the full history of this artifact. But if the M-Class are interested in it, that makes it dangerous. We will have the Science Division analyze every page. We'll find out why they want it."
"Go rest, Max," Jod added. "You did well. We'll handle the intel."
Max nodded, feeling a strange mix of relief and lingering suspicion. He turned to leave the room.
Just as he reached the door, it burst open.
A breathless HPF intelligence officer rushed in, clutching a datapad. He looked pale, sweat beading on his forehead. He didn't even notice Max standing there.
"Commander!" the agent gasped. "The sweep team just reported in from Oakhaven."
Zog stood up. "Report. Did they find the civilians? Where were they hiding?"
The agent shook his head, his hands trembling.
"That's the problem, sir. We searched every building. Every basement. Every sewer tunnel within the Dome's radius."
The room went dead silent.
"There's no one," the agent whispered. "The population of Oakhaven was fifty thousand people. But we didn't find a single survivor."
He looked up at Zog, his eyes wide with horror.
"And sir... we didn't find a single dead body either. They're just gone."
Zog started thinking.