The building was in District 1.
Glass and steel. Forty floors of corporate architecture that looked like it had been designed to make people feel small. No Helix markings. No guards on the outside. A lobby with a front desk and a security system and a receptionist who looked completely normal.
It was the normalcy that made it wrong.
"This is where they're keeping him?" Kazuki asked.
Rina didn't answer. She was already walking toward the entrance.
The receptionist looked up when they pushed through the doors.
"Floor thirty-two," she said. Without them asking. Without checking anything.
She had been expecting them.
Rina's pace didn't break. She walked to the elevator. Kazuki followed, his hand drifting toward the baton on his belt.
"Don't," Rina said quietly.
"I wasn't—"
"You were considering it. Don't."
The elevator doors closed.
Thirty-two floors of silence.
The room was not a cell.
It was a conference room. Long table. Eight chairs. A window that looked out across the entire city — every district visible, the bay glittering in the evening light, the scar in the water where the fortress had crashed still dark against the rest of the bay.
Kenji was sitting in a chair at the far end of the table.
Unharmed. Mask off — which Kazuki had never seen before. His face underneath was younger than expected. Sharp features. Dark eyes. A small scar above his left eyebrow that the mask usually hid.
A cup of tea in his hand.
He looked up when they entered.
He didn't look like someone who had been rescued.
He looked like someone who had been caught.
Rina stopped six feet from the table.
The silence between them was the kind that had history in it. Years of it.
"How long," Rina said.
Not how long were you here. Not how long were you missing.
How long had this been happening.
Kenji set the tea down. He folded his hands.
"Six weeks," he said.
Rina closed her eyes. One second. Then opened them again.
"You came willingly," Kazuki said.
Kenji looked at him. Something in his expression shifted — not guilt exactly. More like a man who had made a decision he understood the cost of and had paid it anyway.
"They had information," Kenji said. "About you. About the suit. About what it does over a long enough timeline." He looked at his own hands. "The Void Walkers have spent three centuries watching speedsters. We have records going back to the first one. Every single one of them—"
"Kenji," Rina said. A warning.
"Every single one of them ended the same way," Kenji finished. "And the records describe the signs. The healing. The veins. The eye."
The room went very still.
Kazuki didn't move.
"He knows, Rina," Kenji said softly. "He's already seen it in the mirror."
A sound from the side of the room.
A door opened.
An empty chair at the head of the table was no longer empty.
Victor Vane sat down, straightened his tie, and folded his hands on the table.
"I apologize for the theatrics," Victor said. "But I needed you here, Kazuki. Not because I wanted to trap you." He looked at him calmly. "Because what I have to tell you cannot be transmitted through a proxy."
He gestured to the chair across from him.
"Please sit down."
Kazuki didn't sit.
But he didn't leave either.
[To Be Continued...]