Everything felt… familiar and yet not familiar.
Not familiar in the sense of memory but in the way of old stories, half-forgotten whispers. Things Carter had only ever heard about.
He walked casually, blending in, moving like an ordinary visitor.
"My grandfather once mentioned a mysterious organization," Jake said. "Never knew the details. Locki studied them deeply. According to him, their origin is unknown—but their influence stretches back hundreds of years."
Carter slowed his steps.
"Yes…" Carter murmured. "Locki took this personally after his wife died. He once told me she was killed by that organization—because she was the biggest obstacle in their path."
Jake exhaled softly. "You'll find this interesting. The day Locki's wife died—she was a high-ranking officer in an organization called CPU—that organization vanished. Completely. No records. Nothing on the internet. Nothing in other databases."
Carter listened intently.
"The only trace I found," Jake continued, "was a rival organization called CRU. I got that information from NACHIO. Locki's wife investigated further and concluded that CRU was just a front—belonging to the same secret organization."
Jake paused.
"And now," he added, "I think that same organization built this place… and revived the name Scars."
Carter nodded silently.
He continued walking—but just like Ron before him, he felt nothing unusual. No pressure. No hostile presence.
"That's what bothers me," Carter said. "This place is… too normal. Too clean."
A chill ran through him.
"It feels like an illusion," he thought. And like someone is watching me.
"We should dig deeper," Jake said. "My advice—take the job. Investigate from the inside."
"I was thinking the same," Carter replied. "But something doesn't feel right."
"Then pull back for now," Jake said. "Come to my base."
"Yeah…" Carter murmured. "If Locki were here, he'd know whether something was off."
Carter turned toward the exit.
"Jake," he added, "we should visit NACHIO. If they knew about Locki's wife, there's a chance they know more."
"Agreed," Jake replied.
The doors slid open, and Carter stepped outside.
At the waiting area stood a man.
He held a book, his gaze lowered. Slowly, he looked up.
His green eyes glowed faintly as they locked onto Carter.
The man smiled.
Carter walked toward his car.
Halfway there, he stopped.
He turned back.
The Scars building stood behind him—new, clean, massive. Untouched. Not a single sign of age or decay. It looked less like something that had been built and more like something that had simply… appeared.
Tell me, Grandpa, Carter thought.
Who were them, the organization hunting your organization—Scars?
Carter turned away and got into his car. The engine started, and he drove off, speeding toward Jake's base in Hero Town.
But his mind stayed behind.
Fragments of the interior replayed again and again—the silence, the emptiness, the way nothing felt wrong yet everything was.
His phone lit up.
A message from Lia.
"Was everything okay?"
Carter's lips curved into a small smile.
"You're the only one who can make me forget that I ever had that kind of past," he murmured.
He typed back
"I'm okay. Perfect. You should rest—it's late. I'll be back once I'm done."
He sent a good-night sticker.
A moment later, Lia sent one back.
Carter turned off his phone.
The smile faded.
The feeling returned instantly.
That same sensation from inside the Scars building—
as if something unseen was watching him,
measuring him,
planning far beyond Carter, Jake, and everyone else combined.
Jake Jacobs sat alone in his base, facing a massive screen filled with surveillance feeds.
He tried accessing NACHIO's database again.
The information he had once found… was gone.
Jake's eyes widened.
So something definitely happened inside NACHIO, he thought.
He dug deeper.
What he found made his stomach sink.
Where there had once been a single head of the organization, there were now three. Entire new divisions. Positions that hadn't existed before—inserted as if they had always been there.
Jake checked another database.
Then another.
He froze.
There was no record of Locki's wife.
Not in intelligence archives.
Not in private networks.
Not even in the government servers.
According to official records—
Locki had never been married.
Jake leaned back slowly.
"She was such an obstacle…" he thought.
He searched again. Harder. Deeper.
Nothing.
No name.
No image.
No trace.
Jake clenched his fists.
"What did she do to them," he thought,
"that they feared her so much… they erased her existence itself?"
The screens flickered faintly.
For just a moment, Jake felt the same thing Carter had felt earlier—
The unmistakable certainty
that someone was already watching
how far they had come.
And how far they were allowed to go.