Kieran did not answer immediately.

  His throat was dry and painful, and his body felt as if it were nailed to the ground, with only his eyes able to move. He shifted his gaze away from Thalia's face, instinctively "scanning" her—not with sight, but with the kind of perception he had learned after being trained as a weapon since childhood: the aura.

  Thalia's aura was unreasonably clean.

  It lacked the luminous clarity of the Order of Solace, and did not have the sharp edges honed by fear that characterized the members of Dreadspire. She resembled a truly ordinary nine-year-old girl: thin, smooth, almost without layers, even her emotional fluctuations seemed diluted.

  Kieran's back was drenched in cold sweat.

  This kind of "ordinary" could only be explained in two ways—she was truly ordinary; or her disguise was perfect enough to erase her "presence." The answer was obvious.

  Chameleon.

  She can even retract her "traces" to nearly zero, making his ability lose its grip and turning Dreadspire's surveillance blind. She is not hiding; she is rewriting the rules of his perception of the world: what you see is not necessarily true; what you think you can control has always been under her control.

  Fear is not because one might die.

  Fear is because he realizes for the first time that he is not at the top of the food chain.

  Thalia waited, terrifyingly patient, as if she knew he would eventually speak. Her father—the man in his thirties—stood beside her, not moving an inch, but Kieran could feel that man's attention like a knife's edge against his throat: with just a glance from Thalia, the other would dispose of him.

  Kieran shifted his focus to that man, forcing himself to calmly analyze: gait, muscle tone, breathing rate, pupil reaction. This man was not an ordinary father, not a bodyguard you might find on the street, nor did he possess the clean, decisive killing intent of a Dreadspire enforcer.

  Like Thalia, he was skilled at hiding himself in "normalcy." He was Thalia's accomplice, a member of the Order of Solace.

  Thalia spoke again, her voice still light but carrying a rhythm that demanded an answer: "Live or die?"

  Kieran's fingertips twitched slightly, but he still couldn't move. He could only squeeze out the words in the faintest voice: "I choose to live."

  Thalia nodded as if she had known all along, a smile curling at the corners of her mouth: "Then answer the second question."

  She extended her index finger, pointing in front of him, like a teacher calling the roll.

  “Are you alive because you fear death, or because you want to atone?”

  Kieran's breath caught.

  This question shouldn't have been asked by her. How could she know about the direction of “atonement”? Unless she had been watching him—watching him with Ivy, watching him fail, watching the changes after he was calibrated, even understanding what Dreadspire had done to him.

  Kieran remained silent for too long, and Thalia did not urge him; she merely tilted her head slightly, as if “listening” to the answer in his heartbeat.

  That feeling of being seen through sent a chill through his chest. He finally whispered, “I have no sin.”

  Thalia let out a laugh, not mocking, but more like a child's weariness of an adult's lies: “Do you really believe what you’re saying?”

  Kieran stared at her, swallowing hard: “What do you want?”

  Thalia stood up, taking half a step back, allowing the faulty light from the streetlamp to dance across her face. In that moment, she looked both nine years old and like something of an indeterminate age.

  “The third question,” Thalia did not directly answer his question, “we need to temporarily turn off that thing in your head, do you agree or disagree?”

  After Thalia's “third question” fell, the alley was left with only the ticking sound of the streetlamp's flickering light, as if counting down for him.

  Kieran knew that what she meant by "turning off" was not literally unplugging the power, but rather—cutting the line between him and Dreadspire. Communication, location, emotional monitoring, loyalty scoring... all would instantly reset to zero.

  And that simultaneously meant one more thing: Dreadspire would immediately detect the anomaly.

  He tried to trigger the lowest-level feedback command of the device in his mind, but nothing happened. It wasn't a delay; it was complete silence. The other side had long since wrapped him in a signal dead zone, and now it was just one step away: making the dead zone "permanent."

  The man beside him finally spoke, his tone impatient yet still kept low: "Thalia, this isn't realistic. He can't do it."

  Thalia didn't look at him, just stared at Kieran: "You can do it. You just haven't dared to try."

  Kieran quickly calculated in his mind: If the device lost connection, how long would it take for Dreadspire to notice? How would Sabrina react? The worst-case scenario would be a direct "electrocution/seizure suppression" or a location cleanup team. But he was already in their hands; even if Dreadspire locked onto him immediately, they couldn't save him.

  "The device has a last resort..." Kieran felt trapped, "If forcibly shut down, it might trigger." This was true; as long as he committed an act of betrayal against the organization, such as leaking information or contacting the enemy, once the system determined it, the device in his brain would detonate.

  As Kieran's voice fell, the dim light in the alley seemed to grow even colder.

  Thalia showed no surprise; she simply gave a soft "mm," as if he were talking about a mechanical structure she had dismantled countless times before.

  "I know," she said.

  The phrase "I know" sent a chill down Kieran's spine more than any threat could. She wasn't testing whether the device had a safety mechanism; she was confirming just how far Dreadspire had gone with people.

  “That's why you need to choose first.” Thalia squatted down to meet his gaze, her tone calm as if she were teaching a lesson, “It's not me who is closing it; it's you who is letting me close it. If you nod, it means you agree willingly. The device from Dreadspire cares about 'intention'; it's not just a simple machine; it will judge whether you are betraying.”

  Kieran's Adam's apple moved slightly as he tried to keep his voice steady: “Do you think if I nod, it won't trigger?”

  Thalia tilted her head, as if listening to a very boring joke: “You all love to make everything 'absolute.' It's either loyalty or betrayal, either completion or failure.” She raised a finger, pointing to the back of his neck, her fingertip hovering above the skin without touching it, “But you forget, your device also relies on data to make judgments. It’s not a god.”

  The man beside her—her “father”—stepped forward, his voice lower: “Thalia, time. Dreadspire's monitoring doesn't use 'gods'; it uses 'statistics.' His emotional fluctuations today, mission reports, route deviations, are already abnormal. Now he's gone silent— they won't wait too long.”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Kieran understood: it wasn't a matter of “if,” but “how long.” Dreadspire would come sooner or later.

  Yet Thalia seemed completely unafraid. She glanced at the man for a moment, her gaze as cold as a command: “Adrian, step back.”

  —Adrian.

  The name of Thalia's accomplice. Kieran glanced at him and committed it to memory.

  Adrian did not argue; he simply retreated into the shadows, like a sheathed knife.

  Thalia turned her attention back to Kieran, her tone as if reading terms: “You're right; forcing a shutdown might trigger it. Dreadspire will leave three things in the device: tracking, intervention, execution. What you fear most now is the third one.”

  Kieran wanted to grit his teeth, but he couldn't even muster strength in his jaw, only able to respond with his eyes.

  Thalia looked into his eyes and suddenly smiled, her smile as brief as a flash of a knife: “But you’ve forgotten one thing. Dreadspire’s ‘last resort’ is to ensure you don’t fall into someone else’s hands or spill anything during interrogation. It won’t blow you up immediately while you still have a chance to go back. That would be too wasteful.”

  She reached out her hand, this time truly touching the back of his neck, her fingertips cold, like touching skin on an autopsy table.

  Kieran felt goosebumps all over his body. His first thought wasn’t “she wants to kill me,” but rather—she can feel where the device is located. She knows the depth and angle at which it was implanted, as if she had seen his X-ray.

  “I only do one thing.” Thalia’s voice was close to his ear, almost a whisper, “I won’t remove it. I’ll just make it ‘sleep.’ Sleep until you can move, sleep until you can walk, sleep until you can choose where to go.”

  Kieran struggled to articulate, “You want me to… betray Dreadspire?”

  Thalia didn’t answer yes or no; she only asked, “Do you still want to turn the next person’s father, mother, child… into someone like Ivy?”

  As soon as that name was mentioned, Kieran felt as if something hard was pressing against his chest. Dreadspire’s conditioning had dulled his emotions, but memories wouldn’t fade. The image of Ivy breaking down on the podium was still clear, only the “pain” was locked away deeper, like a sealed poison.

  Thalia stepped back a little, allowing him to see her face clearly— that nine-year-old face was clean, harmless, even cute. But those eyes did not belong to a nine-year-old. Those eyes seemed to have witnessed too much death, no longer needing to prove anything with emotions.

  “Answer me.” She said, “Agree or disagree?”

  Kieran's brain implant buzzed in the distance, as if some kind of alert had not yet been triggered but was already searching for a reason. As long as he said the wrong thing, as long as his "intent" was deemed to have shifted—he could die right there in this alley, unable to even struggle.

  “What if I don’t agree?” He struggled to force the words out, as if scraping each one from his throat.

  Thalia shrugged, adopting a nonchalant posture. “Then you’ll stay like this until the people from Dreadspire find you. What do you think they’ll ask you first when they do?”

  Kieran didn’t answer. He knew all too well—it wouldn’t be “Are you okay?” or “Who did you meet?” but rather: How much did you leak? What were you implanted with? Are you still worth keeping?

  Adrian stood beside him and finally spoke, his voice low and restrained: “She’s not threatening you; she’s offering you a way to survive. You might not like that path, but it’s the only one.”

  Thalia crouched down to meet his gaze. Her aura was still “ordinary” enough to be unsettling, as if she had hidden all colors in another dimension.

  “Agree or disagree?” she asked again, her tone like a child asking for candy, but her eyes held no sweetness.

  Kieran’s mind began to automatically calculate the risks.

  Agree: the device would shut down, he would lose Dreadspire’s “protection” and control, but he would gain temporary freedom; most importantly—he would have a chance to survive.

  Disagree: he would be left here, waiting for Dreadspire to retrieve him; he had already failed a second time, and the outcome was predictable.

  Suddenly, he understood what Thalia was truly forcing him to confront—not “Do you want to be shut down?” but rather: Do you still want to return to the cage?

  Kieran closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, his voice was hoarse yet clear: "Agreed."

  Thalia nodded as if she had anticipated this. "Alright."

  She raised her hand, her fingertips tracing a very short arc in the air. The movement was light, almost as if she were not casting a spell, but Kieran felt a sudden tingling at the back of his neck— not the kind of numbness that blocks, but like some "echo" that had been stuck to his nerves for a long time was suddenly pulled away.

  In the next moment, he heard a sound that he had never truly paid attention to, yet had always been there, vanish.

  It was not a sound heard by the ears, but the background noise brought by the brain's device— that constant monitoring pulse that was always online.

  The world suddenly became "too quiet."

  Kieran's heart raced, and the fear was not an explosion, but a colder, heavier descent. His first thought was: If I die now, how long will it take for Dreadspire to find out?

  "Alright," Thalia said.

  Adrian immediately crouched down, pressing two fingers on another point at Kieran's neck, as if unlocking a clasp. The numbness began to fade, with the first sensation returning being pain— a needle-like soreness crawling back through his limbs, followed by the control of his muscles.

  Kieran gritted his teeth, propping himself up from the ground, a wave of nausea rising in his throat. This was not the effect of the drug; it was his body protesting: you were treated like an object on the ground for too long.

  He looked up, and Thalia had already stepped back two paces, as if afraid that getting too close would result in him grabbing her. But her expression was not one of wariness; it was only a kind of almost indifferent interest.

  “You now have two paths,” she said, “one is to go back to Dreadspire, as their dog; the other is—”

  “As your dog?” Kieran's voice was low, laced with sarcasm.

  Thalia tilted her head. “Do you think we need you?”

  This statement cut deeper than any insult. She was not denying him; she was stating a fact: he was a weapon at Dreadspire, but in front of her, he was just a boy who had yet to decide whether to be human.

  Adrian glanced at the alleyway, his speech quickening: “They will be here soon. Your phone, your home, your school—all of it is in their hands. If you go home now, you’re just sending the collar back yourself.”

  Kieran stood up, his legs still a bit shaky. But his first thought was not of himself, but of—Ivy. Jasper. As long as Dreadspire deemed him “unstable,” they would become collateral on the cleanup list.

  He looked at Thalia, his voice grinding out from deep in his throat: “What do you want?”

  Thalia paused for a moment, as if finally willing to lay the answer on the table.

  “I want you to help me find the data on that crystal column in Dreadspire's ‘Retrieval Room,’” she said, “and all the ‘tuning’ records your superior—Sabrina—has made.”

  Kieran's pupils constricted. That was no small matter; it was the core asset and control mechanism of Dreadspire. What she wanted was the spine of Dreadspire.

  “You think I would believe you?” he asked.

  Thalia looked at him, her gaze as calm as the moment before the sea freezes. “You don’t have to believe me. You just need to think clearly about who you should believe now.”

  She stepped forward and raised her hand to point at his chest: “Do you believe in Dreadspire? Then why did you just agree to let me shut it down?”

  Kieran did not respond.

  Adrian handed Thalia a small object—a thin metal piece. After Thalia took it, she flicked it casually to the ground.

  The metal piece fell silently, but it sent a faint chill through the air. Kieran instinctively felt that it was a disruption field, briefly smoothing out the nearby energy signatures, as if erasing everything they had just done with an eraser.

  He grabbed Thalia's hand, ready to take her away. Suddenly, a very faint sound came from deeper in the alley—like metal tapping from a distance.

  Kieran's spine tingled. That was not the voice of an ordinary person.

  Adrian's expression changed slightly: “It's here.”

  Thalia remained calm; she just looked at Kieran, as if giving a final deadline.

  “Decision.” she said.

  Kieran's mind flashed with a series of images: Ivy's tears in the library, Jasper with red-rimmed eyes at the school gate, Sabrina's words, "cut the connection." Then there were closer memories—the deep well of Dreadspire, the dim red light of the crystal columns, and the scene of that girl disappearing in the retrospection room.

  He couldn't go back. At least not now.

  "Okay." He spat the words out, as if swallowing a blade, "I'll go with you—but not because of you. I'm doing it for myself."

  Thalia nodded, as if this statement was enough for her. "Alright."

  The man grabbed Kieran's wrist with a firm grip, steady and controlled from training. "Stay close."

  They didn't head to the main street but instead slipped into a darker area behind the alley. There was an inconspicuous iron door with a sign that read "Private Warehouse." The man raised his hand and pressed on a spot on the doorframe, causing the iron door to silently swing open, revealing not a warehouse, but a staircase leading down, with cold air seeming to exhale from the depths.

  The moment Kieran stepped inside, the streetlight behind him flickered, as if finally extinguished.

  He glanced back—his city, the world he pretended was normal—it was all still there, but he knew he had crossed the line.

  And worse yet, for the first time, he wasn't being pushed by Dreadspire.

  He was walking into the darkness on his own.