My Scumbag System Chapter 715: The Prometheus Strain

Isabelle descended the stairs at exactly the pace she had chosen, carrying a leather-bound book and a cup of tea that smelled expensive enough to have opinions about politics. Her wine-red hair fell in a severe ponytail that emphasized the aristocratic angles of her face. She settled into the other wingback chair, crossed her legs, and opened her book to a marked page without looking at anyone.

She was listening. She was always listening.

Skylar leaned against the kitchen doorframe. Hood up. Arms crossed. Violet eyes tracking every entrance and exit out of habit rather than necessity. She had positioned herself between the window and the hallway, covering two approaches. I noticed because I’d spent four months learning to read her body language, which was ninety percent "I don’t care" and ten percent "I will stab you for even suggesting I care."

Our eyes met. She gave me the smallest nod. Not the kind Raphael had given. This one contained layers. It said: I was there. I saw what you did. I will stab you later for the unnecessary risks. But right now, I acknowledge you.

Skylar’s nods were full conversations compressed into facial twitches.

Akari lounged on the loveseat with her phone out, her tan skin glowing in the morning light and her emerald eyes dancing with the particular mischief of someone who had already monetized the morning’s events through six different betting platforms. Her NVA uniform skirt stopped well above regulation length. She caught me looking and winked.

Natalia’s pendant went subzero.

I looked away.

Monica sat on the floor with Ferdinand the fern on one side and Copernicus the copper-leafed plant on the other, whispering to them both in a three-way conversation that nobody in the room found unusual anymore. Jacob perched on the arm of the couch, datapads arrayed around him like a nest, his glasses catching screen-glow as he compiled and scrubbed and organized with the fervor of a man who had just committed his first felony and discovered he was excellent at it.

Noah stood by the window. Hands clasped behind her back. Blonde hair pulled into a severe knot. She wore her Onyx uniform like body armor, which, given her Kinetic Weave Aspect, it literally was. Her amber eyes tracked the room with the professional paranoia of someone whose primary purpose was ensuring another person’s survival.

Celeste was not present. The absence registered like a missing tooth. She would be in the library, or with her sister’s representatives, maintaining the cover that kept Seraphina’s attention pointed elsewhere while I did things that would earn me a permanent cell or a permanent grave.

Maki sat on my shoulder in cat form, washing her paw with the supreme indifference of a creature who had driven both sets of claws into an A-Rank’s eye socket three hours ago and considered this unremarkable.

I stood.

The room quieted. Not because I commanded silence. Because over four months, seventeen people had learned what it meant when I stood with that particular set to my shoulders and that specific vacancy in my expression.

It meant information was coming that nobody would enjoy hearing.

"Three hours ago," I said, "a seam opened in Meridian Heights. Not a Gate. A seam. Artificial. Constructed. Somebody built a dimensional door beneath a community center with a daycare on its ground floor and filled it with approximately eighty hostile entities including two B-Ranks and one high A-Rank."

Silence. The particular kind that precedes either violence or vomiting.

"Jacob’s gas leak cleared the block before the seam stabilized. Nobody died. Nobody got hurt who doesn’t live in this house." I touched my ribs. "We closed the seam using the Skeleton Key. The creatures are decomposing. The evidence is sanitized. The VHC doesn’t know."

"Yet," Isabelle said from behind her book.

"Yet," I agreed.

"How." Raphael’s voice was gravel in a blender. "How does somebody build a Gate."

"They don’t build Gates. Gates are natural dimensional ruptures. What opened in Sector Twelve was an artificial seam. Same energy signature, different mechanism. Like the difference between lightning and an electrical outlet."

"Who."

"We don’t know."

"Bullshit." Raphael leaned forward. The veins in his forearms bulged with gold light. "You know something."

I pulled the bone fragment from my pocket and held it up. The carved surface caught the morning light through the common room windows. The symbols had stopped glowing, but their presence remained, etched into the material with a precision that suggested machinery rather than hands.

"The A-Rank had this embedded in its skull. A control node. Someone built the creature, installed an off switch, and let it loose in a neighborhood. The symbols on this fragment match patterns from classified VHC research dating back twenty years."

"Your father’s research," Isabelle said. Not a question.

The room contracted around that sentence. Most of them knew pieces of the story. None of them had heard me confirm it out loud, in daylight, in front of everyone.

"My father developed the theoretical framework for artificial dimensional breaches eighteen years ago as part of a classified project called Prometheus. The VHC shut the project down after twelve test subjects died. My father went into hiding. Someone else has his research now and they’re testing it on residential blocks."

Emi’s hand found my wrist. Her fingers wrapped around the bone and tendon with the gentle strength of someone who fixed broken things for a living.

"There’s more," I said. "The fragment contains a return address. Coordinates embedded in the control sigil."

"Where?" Natalia’s voice. She stood at the base of the stairs, arms crossed, her hair still damp from a shower she had somehow completed in under ten minutes. The bruise on her jaw had darkened to purple. She looked like a war goddess who had been forced to attend a staff meeting.

I met her eyes.

"Sublevel Eleven. Beneath the Apex Tower."

The room processed this in waves. Some faces went blank. Others went pale. Jacob made a sound like a tea kettle being stepped on. Raphael’s kinetic aura flared gold for two heartbeats before he reined it in.

Isabelle closed her book.

That was what scared me.

"The Apex Tower has ten sublevels," she said. "I verified the architectural registry myself during the internship placement."

"Someone added a floor."

"Someone added a floor beneath the VHC’s headquarters." Isabelle placed her book on the armrest. "Beneath Seraphina Vance’s office. Beneath the Insight Division’s intelligence center. Beneath the most surveilled building in Valoria."

"Yes."

"And you intend to go there."

"In six days. When the Key recharges."