My Scumbag System Chapter 639: To Dangerous Alliances

"Then you walk out of this building with your documentation and your leverage and your collection of powerful women, and you attempt to survive on your own against an enemy that has been manipulating human civilization for a quarter century." She tilted her head slightly. "You are talented, Mr. Nakano. Possibly the most naturally talented individual I have ever encountered. But you are not invincible. And neither are the people you love."

The threat was delivered with the same gentle, maternal tone she used for everything else. It somehow made it worse.

Natalia’s voice was steady now, the initial panic replaced by cold resolve.

I knew she was right. I hated that she was right. But I’d spent enough time as Kaelen Leone to recognize when I was outgunned and outmaneuvered. Pride was a luxury for people who could afford to lose.

"What exactly would cooperation look like?"

Seraphina’s smile widened. Just a fraction. Just enough to show that she knew she’d won.

"You continue your current trajectory. Attend the Academy. Build your power base. Cultivate your relationships with the women who have chosen to follow you." She began walking slowly around me, circling like a shark scenting blood. "In exchange, you keep me informed of anything unusual. Anything that might indicate the third party is making moves. Anything connected to your father’s research."

"You want me to be your spy."

"I want you to be my partner." She stopped directly behind me. I could feel her breath on the back of my neck. "The VHC has resources you need. Protection. Information. Legal cover for the inevitable irregularities that will arise as your true nature becomes more difficult to conceal. In return, you provide me with something I cannot obtain through any other channel."

"Which is?"

She leaned in close. Her lips nearly touched my ear.

"Access to whatever your father discovered. Access to the truth about the Rupture. And ultimately, access to the source acquisition file that may be the only thing standing between humanity and an enemy we cannot begin to comprehend."

The pendant pulsed against my chest. Warm. Steady. Natalia was there. Natalia was always there.

I thought about my mother. About the woman who had raised me, who had loved me, protected me for eighteen years while carrying the enormous, invisible burden of being a Zero in a world that treated Zeroes like second-class citizens. The woman who didn’t know that her husband—the man she’d loved, trusted, built a life with—had turned their unborn son into a vessel for interdimensional consciousness transfer.

Who had no idea that the quiet, brilliant scientist she’d married had performed unthinkable experiments on their child before he’d even drawn his first breath. The woman who would be in mortal danger the moment whatever entity had caused the Rupture decided that I was worth eliminating. That I had become a problem requiring a permanent solution.

I thought about Natalia. About Emi. About Skylar, Cel, Akari, and Reyna. The women who had willingly, knowingly tied their fates to mine, who had made the conscious choice to stand beside me despite knowing exactly what I was.

Despite knowing that I was a manipulative bastard with a trail of broken rules, shattered expectations, and bloody hands stretching out behind him like a crimson carpet.

Women who would die screaming if I made the wrong choice here. Women whose lives I held in my hands like fragile glass figurines, beautiful and irreplaceable and so easily shattered.

I thought about my father. A man I had never met. A man who existed only as a photograph on a mantle, a name in research papers, and a gaping hole in my mother’s heart.

A man who had sacrificed his own son on the cold, clinical altar of scientific curiosity and revolutionary idealism without a second thought.

A man who might still be alive somewhere in the shadows, hiding from something so vast and terrible that even Seraphina Vance—a woman who commanded nations and spoke to S-Rank Hunters like they were children—spoke of it in hushed, careful tones.

And I thought about the thing behind the curtain. The architect of the Rupture. The intelligence that had transformed human civilization into an elaborate game and was apparently displeased that one of the players had started reading the rulebook.

"One condition," I said.

"Name it."

"My family stays out of this. My mother. My stepfather. Natalia’s parents. Anyone not directly involved in fighting or intelligence work. You don’t surveil them. You don’t involve them. You don’t use them as leverage against me."

Seraphina considered this for a long moment. Then she nodded.

"Acceptable."

"And you tell me everything you know about my father. Not the sanitized version. Not the politically convenient version. Everything."

"That will take considerably longer than one evening."

"Then we’ll have multiple evenings." I turned to face her. "I’m not agreeing to be your pawn, President Vance. I’m agreeing to be your ally. There’s a difference. And the moment I feel like you’re treating me as the former rather than the latter, our arrangement ends."

Something flickered in her pale blue eyes. Respect, maybe. Or amusement. It was hard to tell with a woman who had spent decades learning to hide every genuine emotion behind layers of political performance.

"You have steel in you, Mr. Nakano. I wondered if you did."

"I have a lot of things in me." I picked up my glass from where I’d set it on the bar and finally took a drink. The whiskey burned going down, expensive and smooth. "Including, apparently, the consciousness of someone who died in another dimension. Which is a sentence I never expected to say out loud."

Seraphina laughed. A genuine laugh, soft and unexpected, that transformed her face for just a moment into something almost human.

"You are going to be either my greatest triumph or my most spectacular failure, Mr. Nakano." She raised her own glass. "To dangerous alliances."

I clinked my glass against hers.

"To dangerous alliances."