The lights dimmed.
Abel, perched with perfect posture, gave a single flick of his hand.
A video shimmered into the air above the desk — a clean surveillance feed, timestamped, labeled: Theta-9 Containment Cell 3B.
And then… it played.
The thing on screen was impossible.
Slender. Gaunt.
Taller than human, but with limbs stretched too long to be natural.
Its skin looked wet — black chrome and bone, stretched taut over a wiry frame that shouldn't have held together.
Its ribs jutted out like carved obsidian, its face smooth and white like a porcelain mask — featureless except for two cavernous black eyes.
It was already fighting.
The forcefield around it sparked violently as the creature lunged, clawing at nothing, thrashing with a strength that looked erratic but calculated.
Every motion was wrong — too fast, too fluid, like a puppet without strings.
And its mouth… wasn't there.
But the scream came anyway.
A sound not made for human ears. Layers of static and shriek, like metal tearing through glass underwater.
The room tensed.
Even Akari lowered his drink.
Celia's breath caught in her throat.
"What the hell is that…?" Miyu whispered.
From Haru's desk, something stirred — unseen.
Azrael's voice was a whisper, low and tight.
"…An abomination."
Haru didn't argue. He just nodded faintly, eyes narrowed.
Then Abel's voice cut through.
"Five days ago," he said, calm as ever, "Luis Aurelius — one of your fellow members of The C-Team — was ambushed by one of these during a solo recon mission."
That made Haru blink.
Abel continued. "He managed to neutralize the target. But he was critically injured in the process. Currently in stasis. Recovery estimated at roughly three weeks."
Silence.
Haru stared at the screen.
One of us got hit…?
Gareth shot up straighter in his seat. "No way," he said, louder than he meant to. "Luis? Seriously?"
Abel didn't flinch. "Yes."
Celia glanced toward Gareth, then back to the screen — her thoughts already racing.
If someone as strong as Luis got that badly hurt…
Then how tough were these things ?
Abel tapped the screen again.
The footage cut to a series of test logs — slowed-down clips of the creature in containment.
In one, its form twisted and shrank, compressing itself into something barely over a meter tall.
In the next, it surged upward, elongating its limbs until its hands dragged against the floor.
But Abel didn't speak right away.
He glanced across the room — just for a second — then said calmly:
"The reason we studied it so extensively… is because the attack didn't make sense."
He paused.
"Luis was on a solo assignment. Incognito. The only ones who knew about that mission were Watchers at the top level."
He let the implication hang.
"That thing didn't just find him. It waited for him. Attacked like it knew he'd be there. Like it was sent."
A beat.
"Which means someone — or something — planned it."
The tension shifted. Hardened.
Then, with a flick of his fingers, he continued like nothing had changed.
"The subject can change its shape at will," Abel said calmly. "Size, proportion, posture — all flexible. It doesn't seem to have a 'default' form. Just preferences."
Another clip played — the creature struck by a blast of kinetic force. It reeled… and then shuddered, its body vibrating — before a pulse of energy fired outward from its chest, returning the force in full.
"It can absorb impact," Abel continued, "and redirect it. Not mimicry — redirection. Like a pressure valve."
Akari let out a low whistle. "Okay… now it's just showing off."
Abel ignored him.
"The subject also demonstrates advanced combat adaptability. Mid-fight, it began altering its attack rhythm and reaction speed in response to its opponents' techniques."
He let that sit.
Haru's brows furrowed slightly. He didn't like where this was going.
"But," Abel added, "there are limits."
Everyone looked back to the screen. Abel brought up a list.
"Intelligence is basic. Functional — but not advanced. It seems to only adapt to one variable at a time. It cannot gain new abilities. It cannot absorb damage while shifting form. And there's a ceiling to how much it can store before it destabilizes."
The tension in the room eased slightly.
"So it's not invincible," Celia said softly.
"No," Abel replied. "But it learns fast. And that alone makes it dangerous."
Another window opened — a graph now, marked with energy readings across time.
"During testing, we noticed another pattern," Abel said. "The creature was sluggish during simulated daylight… but became hyper-reactive when the environment was shifted to night cycle."
Gareth frowned. "What? But there ain't no real night here. No sun. No moon."
"Exactly," Abel said. "Which means it's not responding to light."
He adjusted the graph.
"It's spiritual."
The room fell quiet again.
Azrael, still invisible beside Haru, tensed — his tail twitching slightly.
Celia's lips parted. "So… it's alive. Not mechanical. Not synthetic."
"Correct," Abel said. "Organic. With DNA."
Everyone froze.
That changed things.
"That's not all," Abel continued. "We ran origin tracing. Very recent analysis. And we found something."
The screen zoomed into a molecular map. Then a set of coordinates.
"Universe 5667."
Haru's head snapped up.
"…What?" he said, barely audible.
"That's where it came from," Abel confirmed. "But it attacked Luis in Universe 3223."
He turned from the screen.
"That makes it a Breach."
Everyone reacted at once.
Akari dropped his bottle mid-swig.
Miyu's eyes widened. "Wait — what?!"
Gareth straightened with a scowl. "You mean—?!"
Even Haru's pulse quickened.
Celia blinked, caught in the flood. "I… don't fully get what that means. A Breach?"
It was Akari who answered, still leaning back, but his voice was more serious than usual.
"It means there was a Multiversal incursion." He flicked a finger upward. "Something slipped from one universe into another. And nobody caught it."
He looked toward Abel.
"Not even the Watchers."
Celia stared. "But… isn't that impossible?"
"Apparently not," Abel said. "Which means it may not be the first time."
A chill swept the room.
Akari whistled again, but this one was low. Grim. "Well. That's... not terrifying at all."
Abel didn't flinch.
"We've kept this incident classified. Only a handful of Watchers have access to the data."
He folded his arms.
"It raises more questions than we're ready to answer."
Then he turned back to the screen.
"And as we traced its origin further… we locked it."
The hologram spun, centered, then landed on a planet.
Earth.
"Planet Earth of Universe 5667," Abel said coldly. "The breach came from there."
He paused.
The image hovered.
And no one spoke.
Not yet.
Abel didn't even shift his tone.
"The Watchers moved fast," he said.
"Top-level clearance teams began analyzing Earth 5667 immediately — scanning for any signs of origin, cause, or cover."
The hologram zoomed in on Earth — then overlaid data points and red-flagged anomalies in several sectors.
"And that's when we found him."
The image shifted.
Now on screen was a man — tall, sharply dressed in a matte-black three-piece suit, hands in his pockets, bald head gleaming under sterile light, dark shades hiding his eyes. The definition of composed power.
Clean. Professional. Dangerous.
"Greg Stone," Abel said.
"Age: Thirty-eight.
Nationality: English.
Public identity: self-made trillionaire.
Known globally as the man who made 'England great again.'"
He let the irony drip off his tongue like oil.
"A genius in robotics, cybernetics, and mass-scale media infrastructure. Founder and CEO of Stone Dynamics — the largest corporation in Universe 5667. They handle weapons, private military tech, consumer AI, global communications, transportation, energy, and even entertainment."
Haru let out a low groan. "So… basically Jeff Bezos with a god complex?"
"Worse," Abel said flatly.
The display shifted again — showcasing a digital map.
England glowed bright with advanced infrastructure nodes.
"Over the course of ten years, Stone transformed the UK from a declining power into the world's most dominant technological empire. Overnight, they overtook the U.S., China, and Russia as the global leader in cyberwarfare and automation."
Celia blinked.
"That sounds super impressive."
"Indeed," Abel said, but didn't elaborate.
Instead, he brought up surveillance stills — crowds, news broadcasts, factory schematics.
"On the surface, he's clean. Charismatic. Patriotic. Beloved by millions."
Then Abel paused.
A flick of his fingers brought up redacted Watcher reports — headlines half-buried under data.
"But beneath that," he said, "there are whispers."
He turned to the group — just slightly. Enough to make it personal.
"Rumors of private funding to extremist groups. Quiet support for targeted foreign destabilizations. And — for reasons I still can't believe I'm saying — alleged experimentation in weaponizing penguins."
There was a pause.
And then—
Miyu burst out laughing.
Everyone looked.
"Oh my gosh—! Penguins?! Are you kidding me?"
Abel didn't even blink. "That part is unconfirmed."
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Miyu said, fanning herself with one hand, still giggling. "That just— caught me off guard. Please continue."
Abel waited until the laughter died. Then went on, unaffected.
"If Greg Stone had any involvement with these creatures… he's the only human on that planet with the intelligence, resources, and influence to pull it off."
A final slide came up.
Black background. One word blinking in white:
LINK?
"At first," Abel said slowly, "we had nothing."
Then his eyes narrowed.
"Until something surfaced."
And the room fell still again.
The hologram shifted again — zooming down through the digital globe into a glowing, pulsating city of neon and smoke.
New London City.
It was nothing like Haru's London.
Towering skyscrapers of black glass and chrome shimmered with holographic billboards and ever-scrolling propaganda. Massive ports lined the coast like teeth. Red double-decker buses moved like blood cells through electric veins, weaving past glowing signs that pulsed in the rain — HOTEL. PUB. CITY. DRUGS. POWER.
The clock tower still stood.
But it wasn't the old London.
It was something… stranger. Flashier. Harsher.
Cyberpunk.
That was the word Haru's mind offered.
A mutation of a city. The bones of a kingdom wrapped in neon flesh.
Abel's voice cut through.
"New London City," he said, "Capital of the British Cyber-Union. Greg Stone's stronghold."
The map zoomed in further — focusing on alleyways, ports, and underground districts.
"In the past two months, there've been a string of disappearances here. Civilian. Human. All quietly suppressed by the local government. No press. No records. No answers."
A pause.
"But patterns don't lie. And based on the movement, locations, and timelines… this may be the source."
Haru's fingers twitched in his lap.
The idea that there could be more of those things…?
That this wasn't a one-off, but possibly the beginning?
He glanced toward Celia — her face was stern.
Azrael, still perched unseen on his shoulder, let out a low growl.
"And if that's the case," Abel continued, "we couldn't afford the risk."
"So three days ago," he said, "we deployed The Iron Sentinel to get things over with quickly."
Haru leaned slightly forward in his seat, eyes locked on the hologram.
He wasn't the only one. Gareth tilted his head, arms crossed, tail flicking slowly.
Akari had stopped sipping, and Miyu's fingers had stilled against her thigh.
They were all thinking the same thing.
If Lucy had been sent in first…
And they weren't here now…
Something went wrong.
Abel, as ever, didn't dwell on suspense.
"Lucy landed in New London City. Within hours, she began piecing things together. The missing people? Not just random civilians."
The screen shifted — a stream of blurred documents, clipped footage, metadata.
"They were undocumented immigrants. Illegals. People without protection. Off the system."
He swiped again — showing timelines, heat maps, transportation records.
"The official line from the government was deportation. Clean. Bureaucratic."
He glanced up — a razor's edge in his voice.
"There was no deportation."
A beat.
"They were being taken."
A different kind of silence swept the room.
Abel continued.
"They traced the pattern back to a criminal figure operating beneath the surface. Known only as The Ant."
A symbol pulsed on-screen — the same one as before. Stark red. Ant silhouette. Minimalist. Ominous.
"Real name unknown. Face unknown. But his crew — The Ants — are infamous. Not in that world. Globally. They've caused chaos across Europe, Latin America, Asia. Smuggling. Cyber-trafficking. Black-market organ routing. Weapons research."
A sharp swipe — more blurred intel, layered with redacted lines and timestamped articles.
"And there have been rumors. Whispers. That The Ant and Greg Stone are connected. Business partners. Friends. Something more."
Abel looked directly at the team now.
"But anyone who's ever tried to expose it…"
The screen shifted again — photographs.
People. All with headlines underneath.
Died Suddenly.
Suicide Note Found.
Investigator Found Dead in Apartment.
"…never lasted long."
Akari raised an eyebrow. "Right. 'Suicide.' Sure."
No one laughed.
They got it.
Abel returned to the mission log.
"Once they made the connection, The Iron Sentinel prepared a strike. She located what she believed to be The Ant's base — one of the port facilities on the eastern side of New London. Cargo route 7B."
A red dot pulsed on the holographic cityscape.
"They didn't even get into position."
He didn't raise his voice.
"Three minutes later… The connection gone."
Haru blinked.
Just like that?
"They didn't report in. No signal was lost from this side. No trace of jamming. One moment: fully synched. Next moment: offline."
Abel didn't flinch.
"We don't know what happened. They could be in hiding. Captured. Dead. Or…"
He paused.
"…gone rogue."
Nobody said it out loud.
But the word sat there. Heavy.
Still, Abel kept going.
"This team has one mission."
He tapped once. The objectives appeared behind him in crisp blue lettering:
Take down The Ant.
2. Confirm a connection between The Ant and Greg Stone.
3. Eliminate Greg Stone.
4. Stop the spread of these creatures.
5. Discover how the Breach occurred without Watcher detection.
He let the list hover.
"Locating Lucy is secondary. Not optional. But not the priority."
Abel turned away from the board, voice low, eyes sharp.
"This situation is not isolated. If what's happening in Universe 5667 spreads — if there's more to this than we know — it could destabilize not just that world…"
He looked directly at Haru.
"…but us."
A breath of silence.
Abel gave the list one final glance before dismissing the projection with a sharp flick of his fingers. The light in the room dimmed back to neutral.
"You have until nightfall," he said simply. "Once night falls over The Mivtzar of Einaim… you'll deploy."
He turned away from them, hands behind his back.
"No mistakes. No hesitations. You will be sent to Universe 5667 under full stealth protocol. I will try to guide you but after what happened to The Iron Sentinels, I may not be there for long. So from landing — consider from that moment on… you're effectively on your own."
A stillness passed through the team.
Then—
"Affirmative," Celia said, sitting tall.
"Got it," Akari muttered, popping his neck with a grin.
Miyu spun a kunai between her fingers. "Showtime."
"Let's crush these bugs," Gareth growled, slamming one fist into his palm. "I'm takin' all of 'em down!"
Haru just smiled quietly, eyes on the now-darkened screen.
He leaned back in his seat, murmuring under his breath.
"Well this is one hell of a mission to walk into after such a long break."
Azrael, still perched invisibly beside him, gave a low purr.
"Could be worse," he replied. "At least you won't be bored."
Haru smirked nervously.
Abel nodded once.
"C-Team Dismissed."
And with that, the briefing room emptied. The real countdown had begun.