"Did they silence you? Ordered you to keep your mouth shut, didn't they? Just to keep you from talking to me..."

  Serevia let out a raspy exhale, releasing the trapped air from her chest as she spoke. Even the filtered, sterile oxygen filling her lungs couldn't alleviate the crushing pressure in the room. She pressed her dry lips together and studied the fragile figure preparing to flee toward the door. It wasn't hard to figure out why this brunette silhouette in a floral dress had turned into a mute ghost.

  "Or maybe they just threatened your life," she murmured. As she let her voice echo off the bare walls of the cell, she reviewed the escape plans emerging like foggy maps in her mind. If she could forge a connection with this timid girl, she might just uncover the weak points of this seemingly impenetrable labyrinth.

  The guards' shift changes, a blueprint of the base, the blind spots of Sarcos's colossal military compound... Information was more vital to Serevia right now than food or water. She knew all too well that the hot meals and soft bed provided to her were nothing but an illusion. She wasn't a guest here; she was a sacrifice waiting on her executioner's whim, merely biding her time until that iron claw crashed down on her neck.

  Serevia's venomous assumptions hung in the air as the brunette girl froze in her tracks. Though she had angled herself toward the door, she slowly turned around, as if an invisible thread was reeling her back. When she met Serevia's gaze again, she didn't show the dull terror Serevia expected, nor the typical arrogance of Sarcos's loyalists. Instead, she stared back with a pure, childlike spark of curiosity—one no evil had yet managed to taint—flickering in her hazel eyes, even more prominent than before. She offered no demand for answers, no hidden hostility. She only harbored an unbridled awe for the unknown, for this feral stranger who had crawled out of the streets.

  Serevia straightened up on the bunk, struggling to hide her bewilderment. She couldn't fathom how someone so skittish, so fragile she might break in a strong breeze, managed to draw breath among the grinding gears of Sarcos—a machine that deemed mercy a weakness and cruelty the only law.

  While the architects had built every corner of this headquarters from blood, gunpowder, and cold steel, the girl standing before her looked like a frail ray of sunlight fighting to seep through a crack in the concrete. How such a timid soul survived right in the dead center of these killing machines remained the greatest riddle, shattering every wall of logic in Serevia's mind.

  The servant girl slumped her shoulders a fraction more under Serevia's scrutinizing gaze, but she never let the light of curiosity in her hazel eyes dim for a second. She parted her trembling lips, looking as if she wanted to leak a secret buried for millennia, yet the invisible seal knotted in her throat refused to let her speak.

  The brunette girl's trembling but stubborn whisper became the first sound to slice through the heavy air of the cell like a blade.

  "No one... threatened me."

  She tilted her chin up slightly as she spilled the words. Rather than fear, she projected the frantic urge of someone who had been wronged and slandered, desperate to prove herself.

  Sitting on the bunk with her knees pulled to her chest, Serevia didn't move an inch. Without breaking the predatory, watchful calm of an alley cat stalking its prey, she looked the fragile figure up and down. She locked her gaze onto the girl, her eyes holding a toxic, mocking gleam—a silent 'yeah, right, I bet' molded by the ruthless streets of Caduta.

  "Clearly..." she muttered, deliberately dragging out the end of the word with an infuriating slowness. "That's why you've been playing mute for days." She wielded the timbre of her voice like a cold razor, shredding the naive innocence of the girl standing before her.

  Her mind raced, applying the immutable human psychology she had learned on sketchy street corners and in the ruins. People, especially when they believed in their own truth to the death, would lose their minds when contradicted, doing everything in their power to prove themselves. Denial brought defense; and defense brought forth those fiercely guarded words. It wasn't that Serevia actually believed her, of course; she had enough experience to know that no one buried themselves in silence 'of their own free will' within these walls.

  But that was exactly why she was going to keep pressing that stubborn nerve. As this innocent servant floundered to prove her honesty, she would hand over the very openings Serevia needed on a silver platter. She knew the method was ruthless, but on the streets, only the methods that worked kept you alive.

  The stranger quickened her breathing. She nervously crumpled the white floral fabric of her dress between her fingers.

  "I was just ordered to keep my mouth shut!"

  Her voice wasn't a fragile whisper this time; it was a desperate objection teetering on the edge of rebellion, yet unable to fully ignite into anger. She swallowed hard, trying to shatter the tight knot swelling in her throat.

  "No one held a knife to my throat! No one threatened me with death... I was just told not to speak."

  Her mind had remained too pure to grasp that blindly obeying an order 'just because it was given' in this colossal military headquarters reeking of gunpowder and blood was actually the tightest noose slipping around her neck. The system had told her to shut up, and so she did; she was too blind to see the lethal implication lurking beneath.

  Serevia didn't flinch at this desperate defense. In response to a display of loyalty that was miles away from convincing, she pursed her lower lip and slowly tilted her head. The cold, predatory look in her eyes had given way to a dark, ironic amusement as she watched her prey thrash about.

  "Is that so..." she said, shrugging. A twisted, ruthless smirk settled on her face, mocking the savage urban legends Sarcos patrols spun about the 'filthy mutants' outside. She leaned a little further forward toward the edge of the bunk; her voice was now as low as a whisper, yet mockingly caustic. "Why's that, then? What did your commander tell you about me behind my back? Did they whisper in your ear that I eat talkative people alive if you get too close?"

  That savage question, dripping with dark humor, spilled from Serevia's lips, bounced off the sterile cell walls, and struck the servant across the face like a slap. The silhouette inside the floral dress froze in place, as if crushed under the weight of the words she had just heard. The spark of pure curiosity in her hazel eyes clouded with a split-second jolt; the dangerous captive's casually mocking tone had shattered every preconception in her mind.

  They were in the dead center of this colossal, death-reeking base—a place even Sarcos soldiers lowered their voices to mention. This was a steel graveyard where thieves and rebels only ever drew their last breaths choking on their own blood, a place mercy never visited. The fact that Serevia hadn't yet been strapped to the torture racks didn't change the scale of the impending bloody catastrophe.

  As the brunette girl weighed this horrifying reality in her mind, she swallowed hard, as if trying to quench the drought in her throat. A profound bewilderment, mixed with pity, settled into her eyes.

  "How..." The word leaked through her trembling lips as a forced whisper. "How can you stay so calm?" By the end of the sentence, her voice completely broke. Her gaze wandered helplessly over the figure huddled in the corner of the bunk, radiating a predatory stillness. "I mean... right in the middle of this hell you've fallen into, with a noose around your neck."

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  This feeble, pity-filled question struck a fleeting, invisible crack in the thick, cynical armor Serevia had forged around herself. It was an unexpected move. The pure terror lying in ambush within the dark corridors of her mind attempted to surface in a split-second reflex. She wasn't actually calm at all; pure adrenaline pumped through her veins instead of blood, and the acid in her stomach churned with anxiety. Her jaw clenched in that brief, vulnerable bewilderment of finding no words to say. She parted her lips, but not a single syllable spilled into the silence of the room.

  But the ruthless law of the streets kicked in within seconds, brutally burying this moment of weakness. Quick-wittedness was the sharpest sword, the thickest shield she had equipped to survive in the back alleys of Caduta. The momentary blankness on Serevia's features swiftly vanished, replaced by a dangerous, mocking, and utterly reckless expression. The corner of her lip curled upward in an involuntary yet infuriatingly crooked smile.

  "What did you expect me to do?" Her voice was no longer a whisper; it was a rusty hook digging its claws into the other girl's mind. "What would you do between these four walls?"

  She didn't let the question hang in the air, nor did she allow the trembling figure before her to scrape together a logical answer. Narrowing her eyes, she began to scan the delicate, spotless fabric draped over the servant from top to bottom. Her gaze lingered on the colorful floral patterns of the white dress with utter disgust, as if she were staring at vomit stains or some nauseating filth. After this judgmental and degrading sweep from the girl's neck down to the hem of her skirt, Serevia fired her final, venomous arrow.

  "Would you hide inside those ruffles you threw on... cower in a corner, and bawl your eyes out?"

  The question hung in the room's ice-cold air, and the girl's frail body visibly shrank, as if the sheer weight of the words was crushing her. She quickly averted her eyes from Serevia's face, seeking refuge in the hem of that heavily despised floral fabric. She drew rapid, ragged breaths, her chest heaving as she swallowed hard to force down the thorny lump in her parched throat.

  "I-I don't know..."

  She forced the word through her trembling lips; it spilled out like shards of broken glass. She offered a slow, helpless nod, resigning herself to the label of weakness and cowardice Serevia had slapped onto her. She lacked even an ounce of strength to deny the brutal observation.

  "Probably... yes, I'd cower in a corner and cry," she whispered. Her voice sounded as frail and faint as the scratching of a rat scurrying along the baseboards. She dug her thin, pale fingers into the floral fabric of her dress, crumpling it like a vise. "Or... maybe I'd do something else. M-maybe... I'd try to run."

  But an invisible hook caught in her throat, abruptly slicing the end of her sentence clean off. She tore her hazel eyes away from the fierce captive huddled on the bed and locked them onto the colossal, impenetrable steel door blocking the cell's exit. The freezing, crushing sheer mass of the metal, the heavy locks, the fully geared Sarcos patrols outside, and the insurmountable walls forged from flesh and bone crashed down on her mind like a sledgehammer. Realizing just how absurd, how childishly naive it was to dream of leaving this fortress alive instantly shattered and devoured the fleeting crumb of courage in her voice.

  "Even you don't believe what's coming out of your own mouth."

  Serevia dropped the thorny, mocking venom from her voice. The predatory, amused look on her face melted into a bleak, rigid mask. As Serevia watched the trembling girl stare at the steel door, she saw that pure, freezing despair reflect into the dark mirror she had stubbornly buried within herself. No matter how vicious she had been on the streets, no matter how fiercely she clawed, nothing could change the absolute end waiting behind that colossal slab of metal. She involuntarily slumped her shoulders; the knot of acid in her stomach hollowed out into an ice-cold, bottomless void.

  This naive servant's terror shattered her morale, forcing Serevia to witness the very utter ruin she had been avoiding facing herself. She slowly dragged her gaze away from the girl and dropped it to the smooth, spotless floor of the cell. The surface looked so still and sterile, slapping her with the reality of just how flawlessly, how lethally this hell she was trapped in functioned.

  She drew a deep, exhausted breath that tore at her lungs before lifting her head again. She had completely snuffed out the rebellious fire in her eyes, replacing it with a desolate, dark numbness.

  "Maybe..." she murmured. She let the words fall from her lips like cold ashes; her voice now carried the crushing, naked weight of a confession. "Maybe that's exactly why I look so... calm from the outside."

  She swallowed hard, trying to moisten her parched throat that tasted heavily of rust.

  "Because..."

  Her voice trembled. She slowly bowed her head, searching for the breath to finish her sentence.

  "...I'm just an ordinary rat trapped in a pitch-black snare, surrounded by toxic steel."

  She abruptly killed the desperate tremor in her voice, settling into a rigid, hollow acceptance.

  "No matter how much I claw at the walls, a rat that will never escape the colossal labyrinth beyond that door..."

  She broke off her sentence. The sheer horror of the truth spilling from her own mouth seized her throat like an ice-cold hand, choking off her breath. In the deafening silence that stretched for seconds, she simply listened to the echoing footsteps of her own approaching death.

  "...and probably," she whispered hoarsely, pronouncing her own death warrant syllable by syllable. "...a rat destined to die with a snapped neck very soon, right when her executioner feels like it."

  Even the hum of the room's artificial ventilation died out, crushed beneath the weight of this surrendered confession. The brunette servant remained standing there, never breaking the rigid, nailed bond her feet had forged with the hardwood floor. Yet the timid curiosity in her hazel eyes had melted into a dark, agonizing sorrow. She could clearly see Serevia had shattered the thick, thorny armor she wore, bleeding out nothing but a profoundly lonely, exhausted soul waiting for death. Pity stood as a forbidden, long-forgotten weakness within the walls of Sarcos; yet the delicate ribcage beneath that floral dress tightened with a silent, profound ache in the face of Serevia's freezing despair.

  Serevia's metaphor of the "rat waiting for death," spilling from her lips as a raspy confession, seeped into the soulless, sterile whiteness of the room like a toxic fog.

  The brunette girl visibly shuddered at the sheer resignation in Serevia's words; within seconds, she shed her heavy, mute timidity, replacing it with a strange, unnatural calm. The colorful floral patterns adorning her white jumpsuit looked like a garden starving for soil right in the dead center of this military discipline and cold steel. Every tiny leaf painted on the white fabric glared against Serevia's retinas, while a silence akin to the calm before a storm settled into the servant's hazel eyes.

  She forced down the dry, stinging knot in her throat with a massive effort. As she locked her gaze onto the thief's utterly defeated, surrendered posture, a sorrowful yet unshakeable resolve hardened on her lips.

  "The moment you accept defeat, you do your executioner's job for him," she whispered. Her voice sliced right through the ventilation's hum like a rusty knife.

  Her lips trembled, but the faint spark in her eyes refused to die out. As she stared into Serevia's watering eyes—at that fierce yet utterly shattered vulnerability—she offered her words not as a comforting plea, but as a concealed weapon slipped at the base of a wall. "That hairline fracture in the hardest slab of concrete is exactly where a massive palace begins to fall. You just have to know where to look."

  The moment the words left her mouth, as if the cogs of terror in her mind had violently reengaged, she bolted toward the heavy exit door without wasting a single second. The rustle of her floral jumpsuit remained the only living, human sound echoing through the dead silence of the cell. As she grabbed the cold metal handle and slipped over the threshold into the blinding glare of the corridor, those words kept beating like a frantic pulse in Serevia's mind. The heavy door slammed shut into its frame with a deafening thud. Click. Clack... The soulless, mechanical grinding of the gears inside the lock trapped the feral thief back inside her dark reality, sealing her within that intimately familiar isolation.

  Left alone with the absolute silence of the room, her predatory street-thief instincts instantly shifted into high gear. She drew a deep breath and stared down at her trembling palms. In truth, had she wanted to, she could have leveled that fragile girl before she even took a single step over the threshold. She was fast. She was ruthless. In one fluid strike, she could have crushed her windpipe, snatched the keycard, and bled into the corridor like a shadow. Even if a hulking brute of a guard had walked through that door instead of the girl in the floral jumpsuit, it would have only taken her seconds to seize the right moment and sever his jugular.

  Slipping past these four walls was the easiest part of the game. The truly devastating reality lurked in the hell beyond that threshold. A lethal labyrinth stretched out there, where thermal cameras swept every single millimeter and heavily armed Sarcos patrols locked down every corner. Even if she managed to break out of the room, the guards would riddle her body with bullet holes before she ever reached the main gates, painting those pristine corridors with her own blood. The Leader hadn't posted guards at her door, and he had specifically chosen that girl to deliver her meals for one reason only: his degrading, absolute trust in Serevia's intellect. That blue-eyed executioner knew perfectly well that his thief wasn't stupid enough to commit suicide.