Season 3 chapter 41
The Impossible Target
Malesh held the document lower so the rest of the executive team could see it. Kniya leaned over his shoulder, scanning the list of targets. His eyes suddenly locked onto a specific name halfway down the page.
"Wait a minute. Wait a minute," Kniya said, his arrogant demeanor instantly evaporating into cold, hard realization. "Look at this guy."
Kniya pointed a finger at the paper. "Clist. C-L-I-S-T. Do you know who this is? This is the primary financial analyst of the royal family."
"C-L-I-S-T?" Salesh squinted at the paper, leaning against the heavy tires of their off-road steam-truck. He let out a dismissive scoff. "What kind of weird phonetic spelling is that? Whatever. So what? We just have to kill him, nothing else. I know a guy who can do it for the price of a sandwich. It's basically administrative cleanup."
Filoska turned her head and glared at the fourth-richest man on the planet with pure, aristocratic exhaustion.
"Salesh, you don't know anything about him," Filoska reprimanded sharply. "And as you are not a member of a highly sophisticated family, I think you need to know exactly what kind of security we are talking about. This guy is the absolute right-hand man for Leon Debestez."
Filoska pointed at the name on the dossier, her voice trembling slightly. "He is always with Leon. Always. He operates out of the most heavily fortified royal estates in the Republic. Killing Clist is as impossible as trying to move the largest mountain on Earth from one continent across the ocean to another. It is a logistical suicide mission."
The operative casually crossed his arms, leaning back against the rusted leg of the water tower.
"Well, that is your problem, not mine," the guy stated with absolute, infuriating indifference. "My job was just to provide you with the information. How you execute the target is entirely up to your corporate budget."
The Price of Exploitation
Kniya's eyes flared with pure, unfiltered rage. He marched directly up to the agent, invading his personal space.
"You are literally talking like you don't have to do anything with this war!" Kniya yelled, jabbing a finger into the guy's chest. "You are not actually serious about this thing! Everything is just like a fucking game to you! You are handing us an impossible hit-list and washing your hands of it! Do you even give a fuck if our country just loses its entire government?!"
The smirk finally vanished from the agent's face. The goofy, sarcastic retail persona melted away, leaving behind the exhausted, hollow, and deeply bitter reality of a man who had dedicated his life to a broken system.
The guy looked Kniya dead in the eyes, his voice dropping into a quiet, sad, and intensely heavy register.
"You want to know if I care?" the operative asked, his voice rough with suppressed emotion. "Our country is run by absolute maniacs and ruthless industrialists like you. You exploit this entire nation for your own good. You bleed the working class dry, pollute the skies, and crush the competition just for the sake of making your own astronomical profit."
The guy stepped forward, his eyes burning into the two trillionaires.
"And yet," he whispered bitterly, "when the very foundations of the Republic are about to collapse into a civil war, people like me—federal agents who swore to protect this land—have to rely on you. I have to beg the very parasites I despise just to save this country from an absolute monarchy. So, Mr. Anderson, what the hell else could I possibly expect? I make jokes because if I actually stop to think about the reality of my situation, I would lose my mind."
The heavy desert wind howled around them, carrying the weight of the agent's devastating reality check. For a moment, even Kniya was silenced, struck by the profound, tragic irony of their alliance.
The Blackmail Directive
Malesh adjusted his suit jacket. His face remained perfectly, flawlessly deadpan.
"Ah. Okay. Well, whatever it is," Malesh stated, entirely unmoved by the emotional depth of the conversation. "Guilt is tactically inefficient. We will kill him. But eliminating one financial analyst won't stop the civil war from burning the capital to the ground."
The agent took a slow breath, composing himself as he stepped back into his professional role.
"I also know that it won't stop the civil war," the guy admitted, his tone hardening. "But eliminating Clist will massively slow down their initial phase. Without his financial infrastructure, the royal family's ability to fund the fake protests and arm the insurgents will be severely crippled."
The agent looked between Kniya and Malesh, delivering his final, impossible mandate.
"And actually, while you handle the royal analyst," the guy added, "you need to find a way to blackmail the President of the Republic to actually stop all this military drama in the religious cities. Cut the head off the snake, and blackmail the puppet."
The Civilian Trauma
The scorching wind whipped across the Antovian desert, rattling the rusted supports of the abandoned water tower. The reality of the assassination list sat heavily in Kniya's hands, but Filoska was looking at the bigger picture. She wrapped her coat tighter around herself, stepping forward.
"By the way," Filoska interjected, her voice tight with genuine concern, "even if we eliminate Clist and blackmail the President to halt the military... how can we really stop the angry civilians? The protests in the capital are swelling every hour. These people literally witnessed their loved ones dying in this war. You can't just throw a corporate contract at a grieving population and expect them to go home."
Malesh crossed his arms, his dark eyes analyzing the sociological variables. He didn't use any hyper-nerd vocabulary; he just stated the cold, brutal facts.
"She is entirely correct," Malesh agreed, his voice a flat, serious deadpan. "Taking out the royal financial infrastructure won't stop the people from suffering the trauma they got. The military did horrific things to those religious towns. Psychological devastation on a mass scale cannot be erased with a simple regime change."
The intelligence agent let out a tired sigh, kicking a clump of sand with his boot. He looked directly at the two billionaires, his expression turning incredibly serious.
"I know about that," the operative said quietly. "And I have a plan to make the people get their revenge upon the exact cowards who did this horrible crime. But first, you need to know that you need to do one thing."
Kniya narrowed his eyes. "What thing?"
"You need to buy the land from the government," the agent stated. "You need to purchase the scorched earth of every single religious city in the Republic, and you need to secure the religious statues too, before they get melted down by the government and the anti-Yatsuan forces. It is really, really required if you want this to work."
The Stolen Blueprint
Kniya froze. His arrogant, confident posture completely shattered. He slowly turned his head, staring at the operative with pure, unfiltered suspicion.
"Wait a minute," Kniya demanded, aggressively pointing his gold pen at the agent. "How do you know about this thing? We literally just talked about buying the destroyed religious towns back in our executive office at the Seistain Main Hub! That is our private corporate plan! How the fuck did you get to know about that?!"
The agent didn't flinch. He just gave a slow, cynical smirk.
"I am not going to tell you my exact methods," the agent replied smoothly. "But my spies are everywhere in this world, Mr. Anderson. I can gather any information I want, even from a highly secure boardroom in the middle of your corporate headquarters. So yeah, my network just gave me the data. And honestly? I thought your plan was really, really great. But it does not have any concrete logic behind it yet."
"Excuse me?!" Kniya yelled, highly offended. "My logic is flawless! I buy the dirt, I own the dirt! End of equation!"
"It's a half-measure," the agent corrected, stepping closer to Kniya and Malesh. "If you just buy the land and let it sit empty, the public still hates the government, and the Royal Family still steps in as the saviors. You need to leverage it. Here is the actual logic: The President is clearing those towns to hoard the rare-earth metals in the statues. The royals are using the chaos to seize the empty real estate."
The agent looked between the two corporate warlords.
"If you use the blackmail material I provide to force the President's hand, he legally has to sell that destroyed land to Kavilson Steel and Malesh Energy. By federal law, it becomes private, sovereign corporate territory. The government can never step foot on it again."
Malesh's dark eyes widened slightly as the sheer tactical brilliance of the strategy clicked into place.
"You rebuild the cities," the agent continued, his voice echoing with intensity. "You relocate the surviving refugees back to their rightful homes on your dime. If the original statues are already destroyed, your steel foundries forge exact replicas. You don't just give them their land back; you give them their culture back. You become the undisputed protectors of the working class, and the Royal Family's entire narrative completely collapses."