FOURTH MONTH OF SURVIVAL IDOL | DECEMBER 2324
Time crawled in Rich City, but for Ren, every second felt like a lead weight pressing into his marrow. Two months had passed since the brutal elimination at the Merge District Gymnasium—eight weeks that had fundamentally remapped the power dynamics of the CLOVER Survival Idol stage.
The 'Idol of Hope' narrative Rena had accidentally birthed that day had become a formidable weapon. Massive public support had propelled her rank upward in a radical surge. Now, without a single backer from the Loyalist Faction, Rena had miraculously secured 6th place among the nine remaining candidates. She had become an anomaly loved by the masses, and a burgeoning threat being calculated within Zero's glass tower.
But the achievement brought Ren no peace. Instead, the image of Rena standing frozen in the center of that hall, her eyes hollowed of their innocence, haunted his sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw that face—a girl forced to preserve her soul while caught in the gears of a merciless machine.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Rapid gunfire echoed through the soundproofed underground chamber, each discharge punching through the air with agonizing precision. Ren stood with a textbook-perfect stance, his amber eyes locked on the target at the end of the range. In his hand, a custom silver-chrome pistol—a special commission for Moses—felt balanced and lethal.
The steel door behind him groaned open. Santino entered, his stride unnervingly quiet for a man his age, though the tension was etched into the deep lines of his face.
"No wonder you looked down on my form back then," Santino rasped, trying for a casual tone that didn't quite land. "You're as surgical with a trigger as you are with a blade."
He stepped into the booth beside Ren, unholstering his personal sidearm and letting off a ragged volley toward his own target.
Santino's rhythm was chaotic, the shots sounding desperate. After burning through half a magazine, the old man lowered his weapon and glanced at Ren. He cleared his throat, attempting to reclaim the authority of a business owner.
"I don't know what your endgame is, Young Master, but Moses is a priority client. He accounted for nearly thirty percent of our gross revenue last year, and you cut off his custom distribution last month without so much as a 'why.'"
Santino set his pistol on the bench, his eyes narrowing as he studied Ren's cold profile. "I'd like this business to still exist next month. Otherwise, we're all going to end up as target practice for the Duke," he added, his worry wrapped in a thin layer of sarcasm.
Ren didn't flinch. He squeezed the trigger one last time, sending the final round through the exact center of the paper target, leaving a perfect, scorched hole. He glanced at Santino through the corner of his eye—a look that made the old man realize his display of marksmanship was nothing more than cheap entertainment.
Ren lowered the custom pistol, the safety engaging with a sharp, final click. "You're louder than this .45 caliber, Santino."
In the sudden, suffocating silence, Ren pulled a folded slip of paper from his vest. He laid it on the bench between their weapons.
"Before we discuss Moses' temper tantrums, there is something far more urgent you need to explain," Ren said. His voice was a low whisper, vibrating with a threat that made Santino stiffen instantly. "Tell me why, in the last three months, you've bled fifty million Marble in 'operational expenses.' That's a figure that makes no sense for your pathetic lifestyle or the maintenance of this armory."
Santino went pale. He stared at the numbers as if they were his own death warrant. The bravado he'd managed to conjure evaporated, replaced by raw, unadulterated nerves.
"I... it's..." Santino swallowed hard, glancing at the door as if praying for an exit. "Three months ago... while you were on that ship to Scientia... I attended a high-level black-market auction. I got the invite from General Rose."
Ren's brow twitched. He remembered the police station—how he'd asked Rose for a private word, and the General had 'dismissed' Santino with a black card. That card was the key to the city's most exclusive underworld.
"I went there to win AEGIS," Santino continued, his voice trembling now.
Ren's world stilled. His eyes widened, and the aura in the room became crushingly heavy. "You did what?!"
"In the bar... I only remembered fragments because I was wasted. The VIP tables were whispering about AEGIS data being auctioned off the books. Everyone wanted it. I thought... if I won it, it would be the ultimate asset for the business."
Ren crossed his arms, leaning back against the bench. "Given that you didn't report a thing and you're standing there looking like a beaten dog, let me guess—you were outbid."
Santino wiped a bead of cold sweat from his temple. "Someone took it for a hundred million. I couldn't chase that kind of ghost." He exhaled, looking broken by his own failure. "I didn't see his face. He wore a porcelain mask, something expensive. But there was one detail—a shock of ash-blonde hair peeking from his hood when he stood up to leave."
Zero. The thought hit Ren with absolute certainty. It was the final piece of the puzzle. Zero hadn't just stolen data from Baron Frey's ruins; he had legitimized his ownership by buying it on the black market.
"And?" Ren pressed, stepping closer, pinning Santino against the wall of the booth. "That doesn't explain the fifty million. You lost the auction. Where did the money go?"
"I didn't want to leave empty-handed after failing the AEGIS bid. I... I won a land deed on the outskirts of the Merge District. I was going to give it to you—a new warehouse, a hub for the weapons trade. But when I went to the address..." Santino trailed off, his face a complex mask of regret and terror.
Eventually, the truth spilled out. What he had actually found on that land.
THE CUBE BUNKER | NIGHT
SLAM!
Ren's fist hit the wooden table with enough force to splinter the surface. A can of soda toppled over, its contents soaking into cables that were, fortunately, shielded. Vera and Isaac jumped, staring at Ren. His chest heaved, his face contorted with a rare, explosive fury.
"An orphanage?" Vera repeated, her voice skeptical. "Isn't that... a good thing? At least Santino is trying to do something meaningful with the wreckage of his life."
"A good thing? Are you kidding me?!" Ren snarled, his voice vibrating with bile. He turned away toward the monitors, trying to force his heart rate down. "He used to sell—" He stopped. The words choked him. The rank smell of the slave barracks, the freezing bite of chains on his ankles, Santino's laughter as he weighed a bag of Marble in exchange for Ren's life... it all came rushing back in a foul tide.
"He failed at being human a long time ago. Atonement? To hell with that. A man like him has no right to be in charge of living souls," Ren hissed.
Vera and Isaac fell silent. They were smart enough to see the jagged, open wound behind his words. They didn't need the details to know that Santino had sold Ren into hell; they only knew that an orphanage was an irony too painful for an assassin to stomach.
"He claims he didn't know the building was there when he bought the land, right?" Vera said softly, her voice taking on a maternal edge. "Maybe the universe has a sick sense of humor. Let him be useful in his old age, Ren. At least those kids won't end up in even filthier hands... you know that happens."
"Fifty million for an old house in three months is still bad math. Santino is a disaster with finances. But consider it a tax-deductible act of God," Isaac added in his usual deadpan, though his fingers never stopped flying across the keyboard to stabilize the systems Ren had nearly crashed.
Ren didn't answer. His mind was a storm. He had stripped Santino of everything as compensation for a shattered childhood. He wanted the man to pay for every drop of blood and sweat he'd spilled since the day he was sold. And now, Santino had 'gifted' him a moral anchor in the form of an orphanage. It wasn't a gift; it was a burden, a reminder of a rotting trauma.
To pay... Ren repeated the thought.
Suddenly, a memory flickered—his first days after escaping the Marble Kingdom's reach. He had been a wounded animal, covered in mud, death clinging to his clothes. Two strangers on the fringe of the Merge District had helped him. No questions. Just a place to sleep and a hot meal for weeks.
Ren looked at the screen displaying the AEGIS graphs now controlled by Zero, then at the photo of the orphanage Santino had bought.
"I'm not running it," Ren said suddenly. His voice was calm now, but it carried an absolute authority. "I'm using it to settle my debt to those two."
Vera frowned, watching Ren's rigid back. "Those two? Who are you talking about?"
Ren ignored her, his focus shifting to Isaac. "Isaac, that asset cannot be linked to me, to CUBE, or to Santino. If Zero or AEGIS tracks that building, they'll find me. Scrub the ownership from the central database. Now."
Isaac looked over. "Standard procedure. I can wipe Santino's digital footprint in minutes. But I need a name for the deed. A clean name. Someone real, but invisible."
Ren closed his eyes. The name was carved into his memory. He could never forget the person who treated him like a human being when he looked like a monster.
"Sid. That's the name. Use Sid's full identity. He is now the sole owner of that orphanage."
Isaac nodded, asking no further questions. His fingers danced across the keys, bypassing the security layers of the Rich City property records. With a few lines of encrypted code, he transferred the land and the building from Santino's blood-stained hands to Sid's.
Ren watched the process until it was complete. He felt a small weight lift, even as he knew the real war against Zero was just beginning. He had given his past a 'home,' so he could focus on burning his enemy's future to the ground.