No one could sleep after that. Not that they bothered to try.
Switch sat hunched against the wall, knife balanced on his knee, eyes bloodshot and darting to every corner. Maya hadn't moved from the window in hours, staring out at nothing like she could will Amara back through sheer force of concentration. Henrik paced like a caged animal, his usual composure cracked and bleeding frustration.
Mateo felt like his skull was stuffed with cotton. Every blink lasted too long, every sound seemed muffled and distant. The exhaustion sat heavy in his bones, but his mind wouldn't stop racing. I was right there. Right fucking there. The image of Amara's terrified face dissolving into shadow played on repeat behind his eyelids.
They used the remaining hours before daylight to search meticulously around the base, but no clues were found.
Even worse, more mysteries were revealed.
Because after Amara was taken, when Reeves checked the HR Office—the interrogation room where they'd kept Eschart—she had vanished too.
There was no sign of the restraints they'd used to bind her. So it was obvious she hadn't escaped on her own. Neither was there any sign of struggle. Which made it obvious that the shadow man had taken her as well.
After five hours of searching through every inch of the recovered City Hall and the hundred-meter radius around it, only one conclusion could be reached. Amara and the prisoner were gone. Presumably far away from the base.
And now, they sat in the conference room, the weight of failure pressing down on them like a physical thing.
Reeves sat at the head of the oval table while the remaining nine soldiers arranged themselves on either side. The empty chairs where Amara and Ben should have been seemed to mock them. They'd been here for the past ten minutes, and the silence felt suffocating.
"Mateo," Reeves said finally, forcing her voice to remain steady. But Mateo caught the slight tremor underneath. "What did you observe about the man's quirk?"
Mateo closed his eyes, trying to piece together fragments of memory through the haze of exhaustion and adrenaline. Even now, after witnessing it firsthand, he still didn't have a solid grasp of what they were dealing with. The whole thing had happened so fast, in near-total darkness.
"It was like... he was part of the shadows," Mateo said slowly. "I saw them moving when nothing else was. Then he just appeared, pulling himself out of them. When he disappeared, he sank into the shadows and took Amara with him."
"Shadow transportation, most likely," Anon said, adjusting his glasses nervously. His voice had that uncertain edge it got when he was theorizing. "He can probably emerge from and return to shadows, covering hundreds, maybe thousands of kilometers in the process. But I could be wrong—"
"You think?" Switch cut in, his voice sharp with exhaustion and anger. "Because your theories don't help much when our friends are getting kidnapped."
Anon flinched. "I'm just trying to—"
"Enough," Reeves said, but her usual authority felt strained.
Mateo's mind churned with darker possibilities. Maybe it wasn't just transportation. Maybe the shadow man could become shadow itself. Maybe he had access to all shadows, could manipulate them at will. Maybe he could see through them, watching their discussion right now from every dark corner of the room.
The thought made his skin crawl.
"But there's something that doesn't make sense," Maya said, not turning from where she'd positioned herself by the window. Her chin rested on her palm, and her voice carried an edge to it. "The way this guy came... everywhere was dark. And yet he knew exactly where to find Amara. He knew exactly where to find the prisoner, even though he'd definitely never been in our base before."
"So what are you implying?" Henrik asked, stopping his pacing. His eyes narrowed, and something cold crept into his voice.
Maya turned to face the room, and Mateo saw something hard in her expression. "I'm implying that we have a mole."
Switch's knife stilled. Alex's fist clenched on the table.
"A mole?" Switch's laugh was bitter, humorless. "That's rich coming from the girl who's been questioning everything we do since day one."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Maya's voice dropped to a dangerous whisper.
"It means," Switch stood up, knife still in hand, "maybe the mole is exactly who you'd expect—someone always stirring up doubt, always questioning orders."
"You piece of—"
"Both of you, sit down!" Reeves slammed her hand on the table, but the damage was done. The paranoia was loose now, spreading like poison through the group.
Mateo felt it too, much as he hated himself for it. His eyes moved around the table, cataloging everyone. Inferno's dad was a hero, probably dead on the frontlines by now. Alex was too straightforward, too obvious in her hatred of villains. Anon never left the base, and he looked ready to throw up at the mere suggestion of betrayal.
But that left Switch, Marina, Seraphine, Henrik, and Akira. Any of them could be feeding information to the enemy. The thought made him sick, but once it took root, it wouldn't leave.
"There is no gain from antagonizing each other," Reeves said, raising her hand for silence. But her voice lacked its usual steel. "In fact, that's exactly what the enemy wants us to do."
Her eyes moved over each of them, lingering just long enough to make everyone uncomfortable. "I have good faith that my soldiers wouldn't betray their team. Their nation. Their humanity." The words sounded rehearsed, desperate. "Which means there has to be another explanation. A quirk that allows them to spy on us. Some variant of surveillance we haven't considered."
They all looked at the shadows stretching across the floor as the morning sun climbed higher. Who knew if the mysterious man in the trench coat was rising from the darkness right now, preparing to take another one of them before they could react?
"You can't get rid of shadows," Henrik muttered, voicing what they were all thinking. "As long as there's light, there's shadow."
"That would explain why the heroes have been losing for so long," Inferno said, his voice heavy with bitter realization. "If there's a quirk that lets you spy on your opponents, every plan, every strategy can be countered before it starts."
The weight of that suggestion pressed down on them. Not only had they lost two members, not only could they be attacked from the shadows at any moment, but they might be watched constantly, their every move and word reported to the enemy.
"There's something else," Alex said, her voice cutting through the oppressive silence. "Why Amara? Her quirk—light and lasers from solar energy—is that something they specifically need?"
The question had been eating at Mateo since the attack. The shadow man could have taken Henrik, but he'd jumped over him to get to Amara. There had to be a reason.
His mind drifted to the man in the white coat, the one who'd mentioned "quirk extraction" when Mateo was paralyzed. Was that what they wanted? To steal quirks somehow? But if that were true, why not go for something more powerful, like Alex's Push and Pull, or Inferno's flames?
Unless... unless Amara had some connection to the enemy. But no, the shock on her face, the way her quirk had activated on pure instinct—that couldn't have been fake.
"The thought process of villains has never made much sense," Reeves said, and for the first time, she sounded her age. Tired. Defeated. "When they first appeared, it was all random chaos. Hooligans making trouble. After two and a half years, they've grown in momentum, and now it seems they have some kind of plan. Some kind of leader organizing the carnage."
The room fell silent again. Mateo could hear his own heartbeat, could feel the paranoia crawling under his skin like insects. He looked around at faces he'd trusted, wondered which one might be reporting their every word to the enemy. The doubt felt like acid in his stomach.
"But we keep fighting anyway," Reeves said finally, and something in her voice suggested she'd been wrestling with the same questions. She clenched her fist and brought it down on the table with a sharp crack that made everyone jump. "If the enemy is watching us right now, we split up. Keep them guessing. Make ourselves harder targets."
The plan felt desperate, reactive. Not like the careful strategies they'd trained with at the Academy. This was survival, pure and simple.
"Marina, join the B-1 team," Reeves continued, her voice gaining strength as she fell back into familiar patterns of command. "You four take North of the Hall. B-2 team, take East. We reconvene at 1300 hours, scout the other directions, report findings."
She looked around the table one more time, her gaze lingering on each face as if memorizing them. "Watch each other's backs out there. And remember—shadows are everywhere, but so is light."
As they began to disperse, Mateo caught Switch's eye across the table. For just a moment, he saw his own fear reflected there, and realized that maybe the paranoia was eating at all of them. Maybe that was the real weapon—not just the shadow man's ability to strike from darkness, but his power to make them doubt everything they'd built together.
And as they left the room, a final statement left Reeves' mouth, like she was talking to him directly.
"And whatever you do. Do not split up."