Pippin moved upside down near the ceiling, watching everything with bright curiosity.
"You know," the spirit whispered, "this place is very… illegal."
Sylus didn't look up from his screen.
"You've mentioned."
"No, but seriously," Pippin continued, drifting closer. "It's worse than you think."
Sylus' fingers paused briefly on the keyboard.
"How?"
Pippin pointed a tiny glowing finger toward the glass office at the far end of the floor.
"See that room?"
Sylus glanced up casually.
Inside the glass office sat three men in suits. One of them was the floor manager. The other two were strangers, older, more political, the kind of men who didn't usually show up for night shifts.
Emotion tags hovered above them.
[Control — 63%]
[Calculation — 70%]
[Secrecy — 84%]
Sylus' eyes narrowed slightly.
"What are they doing here?" he murmured.
Lyra answered without looking away from her screen.
"Probably laundering something. Maybe human parts."
Sylus blinked. "You say that very casually."
She shrugged. "It's not exactly subtle."
Pippin giggled. "Oh, I like her."
Sylus leaned slightly toward Lyra. "You've worked here before?"
"A few weeks."
"How come I have never seen you? And you're fine with this?"
Lyra typed another line of code before answering.
"I'm fine with money."
Sylus couldn't argue with that. He had taken the job for the same reason. He needed to clear his father's debt.
Across the office, the supervisor from earlier stood near the printer, pretending to check documents while glancing occasionally toward their desks.
Sylus noticed immediately.
Emotion tag:
[Suspicion — ??]
Huh?
Lyra noticed too. "Don't look at him," she muttered.
Sylus returned his attention to the screen.
The data he was analyzing tonight looked different from usual. Instead of market prediction algorithms, the files contained transaction patterns, thousands of financial transfers moving through dozens of shell companies.
Money jumping from account to account, small amounts, then suddenly large ones. Then disappearing completely.
Sylus frowned. "This isn't stock data."
Lyra nodded. "No. Money cleaning."
Sylus leaned back in his chair. "So they're laundering money through analytics scripts."
"Basically."
Pippin clapped excitedly. "Crime!"
"Quiet," Sylus muttered under his breath.
Lyra glanced at him briefly. "Talking to yourself?"
"Thinking."
She shrugged and continued working. For a while, the office remained calm, until Sylus' phone vibrated once. A cold chill ran down his spine. He knew exactly what it was before he even looked.
The system.
Slowly, he pulled the phone from his pocket and turned the screen on under the desk where no one could see. The black interface appeared instantly. White text formed across the display.
SYSTEM NOTICE
MISSION AVAILABLE
RANK: Junior Debtor
MISSION TYPE: Observation
Sylus' pulse slowed. He hated the word mission, it implied obligation and debt. Exactly the thing he had spent his entire life avoiding.
Pippin floated closer, reading over his shoulder.
"Ooooh," the spirit whispered.
"Your first official assignment!"
Sylus tapped the screen. More text appeared.
MISSION OBJECTIVE
Observe the transaction network within the company database.
Identify the source account initiating the laundering chain.
Time Limit: 2 hours
Failure Consequence: Rank penalty.
Sylus frowned. "That's it?"
Pippin tilted its head. "You sound disappointed."
"I expected something worse."
"Oh," Pippin said thoughtfully. "Don't worry. That'll come later."
Sylus slipped the phone back into his pocket. Across the desk, Lyra noticed his change in expression.
"Something wrong?"
He hesitated. Then said, "No."
She studied him for a moment. The emotion tag above her head appeared.
[Curiosity — 26%]
The numbers trembled, then the display changed.
[Secrecy — 78%]
For a split second, another line appeared beneath it.
[Emotion Mask Detected]
The words disappeared almost instantly. Sylus went still, his fingers hovering above the keyboard.
A mask?
He blinked once, looking again. But this time, the tag remained stable.
[Secrecy — 78%]
Pinpin drifted beside him. The small spirit tilted its round body toward Lyra.
"Hmm."
Sylus didn't react outwardly, but his gaze shifted slightly.
"What?" he murmured quietly.
Pinpin floated closer, squinting at Lyra as if examining something invisible.
"Strange."
Sylus leaned back a little in his chair, not enough to attract attention, just enough to observe.
Lyra was reading something on her screen, scrolling through data with one hand while resting her chin on the other. Her posture was relaxed. Someone dominated by secrecy usually behaved cautiously, guarded speech, careful movements, hesitation when observed.
Lyra didn't seem guarded at all. She spoke first, asked questions. Even now she was the one who initiated conversation earlier.
Sylus glanced back at the tag, still the same.
Pinpin floated closer to her, then abruptly drifted back. "I said she's strange."
Sylus frowned faintly. "What kind of strange?" he whispered.
Pinpin rubbed its chin. "Like soup."
Sylus stared at the screen. "…Soup."
Pinpin nodded confidently. "Normal humans feel like noodles."
Sylus exhaled slowly, that explanation clarified absolutely nothing. Still—
Pinpin rarely noticed humans, the spirit usually ignored them entirely. But with Lyra, it kept staring, almost suspicious.
Sylus looked at her again. Lyra tapped something on her keyboard, then stretched slightly in her chair.
Her expression was calm, unbothered even. If she was hiding something, she was very comfortable doing it.
Sylus considered the possibilities. Either the system was malfunctioning or she knew how to hide from it. Both options were… interesting.
Lyra suddenly glanced at him. "You're quiet."
Sylus returned his eyes to the screen immediately.
"Working."
"Right."
She leaned back again. "You've been staring at the same section for five minutes."
Sylus didn't respond, but internally, he made a small adjustment.
Observe later, his mission comes first. Sylus turned back to the computer. If the system wanted him to find the source account, it meant one thing. The answer was already in the database. He just had to dig deeper.
He opened the transaction logs again. Thousands of entries filled the screen. Money flowing through a web of accounts. At first glance it looked random, but Sylus had always been good with patterns.
Numbers didn't lie, people did. His fingers moved quickly now. Flitering transactions, tracing repeated routing paths, looking for the origin.
Minutes passed, then thirty. Sylus began noticing something strange. Every major transaction passed through one specific account before branching out again.
Account name:
ORION HOLDINGS
But when he opened the file…the account details were blank. No owner or registration.
Lyra leaned slightly closer and whispered. "What are you doing?"
Sylus jumped, then turned the screen slightly so she could see.
She frowned. "That account again."
"Huh. You've seen it before?"
"Every big transaction routes through it."
"Who owns it?"
Lyra shook her head. "No one knows."
Pippin floated between them, staring at the screen.
"Interesting."
Sylus glanced at the spirit. "You know something?"
"Maybe."
"Tell me."
Pippin grinned mischievously. "Nope."
Sylus resisted the urge to swat it out of the air. Instead, he opened the account's routing history.
If Orion Holdings was the hub, then the original source had to appear somewhere in the earliest transactions. He scrolled further back to months of data.
Then suddenly a new notification flashed on his phone.He glanced down quickly.
MISSION UPDATE
Progress Detected.
Source proximity: 63%
Sylus frowned.
So the system was tracking his investigation in real time, that meant it already knew the answer. He was just being tested.
Across the office, the glass meeting room door opened. The three men in suits stepped out, and spoke quietly with the supervisor.
Sylus watched their emotion tags.
[Calculation — 74%]
[Control — 68%]
[Urgency — 37%]
Something was changing. The men began walking across the office floor. Straight toward the employee desks. Sylus returned his attention to the screen, he couldn't afford to draw attention.
Another five minutes passed. Then…there it was. The first transaction linked to Orion Holdings. Sylus clicked it open.
Origin account:
VIREN CAPITAL
Amount transferred:
$3,400,000
His eyes narrowed. Three point four million dollars. His phone vibrated again, the system message appeared instantly.
MISSION COMPLETE
Source Account Identified.
VIREN CAPITAL
Reward: Rank stability maintained.
Additional Observation: Continue monitoring subject.
Sylus blinked. "Subject?" he murmured.
Pippin leaned over the phone screen, then slowly turned toward Lyra.
"Oh."
Sylus noticed the spirit's expression. "What?"
Pippin pointed quietly at Lyra.
Sylus frowned. "Why are you looking at her?"
Pippin's cheerful expression had disappeared again. "That mission…"
Sylus waited. Pippin lowered its voice.
"…wasn't about the money."
Sylus' stomach tightened. "What do you mean?"
The spirit floated closer to Lyra, studying her carefully, then whispered something that made Sylus' blood run cold.
"The system wasn't tracking the transactions."
Sylus felt his pulse rise. "Then what was it tracking?"
Pippin looked back at him slowly. "You have to figure that out."
Sylus froze.