This time, I did not awake gently.

  Two guards in combat armor, faces hidden behind helmets, dragged me from my cell without a word. I lay limp in their grasp, seeing no point in resisting.

  Plus, I felt kind of all right, against all expectations. They didn’t need to know that, though.

  They frog-marched me with military precision through a warren of white-tiled corridors, up a set of spiral stairs, and onto a different, cleaner elevator.

  This one gleamed like the inside of a surgical theater, and even played music, some Japanese instrumental music. The two guards held me tight, as if I had somewhere to run.

  When we reached the top, the doors parted on a lobby that was all glass and steel and air. The view outside, of Tokyo, sprawling, technicolor, alive, and totally unaware that it is was about a month and a half away from being reduced to a smoking ruin.

  The guards shepherded me through a set of black doors and into a boardroom that was at once traditional and terrifying. The table was hand-cut from some ancient tree, lacquered to a mirror finish. They had the chairs perfectly arranged into a wide U shape, all facing a single desk at the head of the room, where a man stood with his back to me, looking over the city, arms folded.

  He wore a suit and coat decorated with ancient Japanese symbology, which I didn’t understand at all. He emanated a strange aura though. In a way, more suffocating than Isabella’s, but also calmer, more measured.

  I let the guards seat me, which they did, standing by my sides.

  He turned, and for a second, I saw the future version overlaid on the present, as if the room had a double exposure. The same bone structure, same cold eyes, but here they were entirely human, or close enough.

  He was the six-horned demon, just without the horns and the demonic marks.

  The expression on his face went through a quick slew of emotions. I couldn’t pit any of them down, just the last one carried a hint of pity. The man slightly tilted his head to the side, resetting his expression. “Peter O’Connor, I presume.”

  “I am,” I squeaked, suddenly overwhelmed by his presence.

  “You know why you’re here,” he said. “You murdered two of my men. But you were also behind the portal. From what was relayed to me, you were there more times than Takezo. What have you seen that he hasn’t?”

  Ah, so that was the angle. “I have seen the demons having built a dome, through which they are trying to repair their ship. They keep survivors in that dome, and torture them for some twisted reason.”

  ”That’s what demons do. Anything else?”

  I shrugged. “Not much. You are there as a six-horned demon, but I suppose Takezo already told you that.”

  He nodded, expression slightly hardening. “We all meet our end someday. Mine comes when my city falls. What powers did you see Kallisto use?”

  “Practically none,” I admitted. “She overwhelmed us through raw physicality alone. She drew a spear to her hand once, probably by her connection to the weapon or something like that.”

  He nodded slightly. He most likely knew much more about Kallisto and was just testing me. “How did you heal Isabella? The camera footage has her cut to pieces in one frame, and fully recovered in the next, with you standing in a different position at a different time. That means you did that.”

  “I used System intervention,” I admitted. “The administrator came, and I asked her to heal Isabella. She did.”

  “What did the administrator look like?”

  “She…” the words trailed out of my mind. I couldn’t remember. “Or was it a he?” I wasn’t sure. Suddenly, I didn’t remember the administrator at all. “I’m sorry… I don’t remember at all.”

  He turned towards the window again. “Very well. You still stand trial for murder tomorrow.” He waved his hand over his back. “Take him to his cell.”

  The guards grabbed me and pulled me out of the chair. They dragged me from the office.

  Right, the trial… I was obviously guilty, and I very much doubted the punishment would be anything less than a lifetime in prison.

  They probably weren’t going to execute me, as my blood had value. They were likely going to sedate me into a coma and just drain my blood to use it to access the portal. What Isabella would have done were she to have been pragmatic about me.

  The guards returned me to my cell and locked me in the cuffs on the table again.

  Damn it.

  I didn’t have any way to free myself either. At my level, there was no way for me to fight my way out of this.

  Neither could Takezo, even if he wanted to.

  So, either Isabella was going to save me, or I was doomed.

  I relaxed on the table, trying not to think. Isabella was going to come for me I had absolutely faith in that. But now, I needed to keep a clear head and rest.

  The imagery of Francesca’s throat getting cut flashed before my eyes, and I broke down into tears.

  I didn’t get much time to rest though. One second, I lay on the steel bed, all out of tears to cry.

  The next second, the wall next to me twisted into shreds, and a heel clicked on the prison floor.

  “Typical,” Isabella snapped. “I’m working hard to save your ass, and you’re napping.”

  A broad smile spread over my face. She wouldn’t believe how happy I was to hear from her. I struggled a bit in the cuffs. “I was planning to make you some tea, but the kettle broke.”

  “Well, you sure haven’t developed a sense of humor.” Hair burst around me. They sneaked into the cuffs, and tore the steel apart as if it were made of paper. “Can you get up?”

  I slid from the table, found the floor with my feet, and everything held. “Yeah. I’m good.” I smiled at her.

  She wore her usual suit, heels, shirt, and cross. No chain belt though, that one got left in beyond the portal, together with over a half of her body. She looked good as new though. Her hair dug the steel gauntlets out of her suit’s pockets, together with my helmet, its visor completely broken.

  I took them from the hair, stuffed the helmet into my pocket, and slipped on the gloves.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  She motioned with her head behind her. “This way.”

  She led the way down the hall. Something about her step felt light, easy, as if nothing weighed her down. She also hummed a soft tune as we passed through the hallways. When we hit the next corner, two guards rounded on us, reaching for their weapons.

  Isabella didn’t slow down. Her hair burst out, grabbed the men, and tore them apart to shreds, blood spraying everywhere. They didn’t even manage to scream.

  We walked through their remains.

  Damn it.

  What happened to me?

  I was supposed to be horrified, shocked, and to scream as I watched it happen. But I felt nothing. I didn’t even know if these were demons or humans. It just… didn’t matter to me at all. “I take it our relationship with the Yamato Syndicate has deteriorated.”

  She led me into a maintenance closet, through a false panel in the back, and into an ancient elevator shaft stripped of its car. “Jump,” she said, “No, wait.”

  I turned, raising an eyebrow.

  Her hair lashed my back like a steel whip. I yelped with pain and fell into the elevator shaft.

  Isabella burst into a giggle while she jumped into the shaft herself.

  She had to do that, didn’t she?

  A pincushion wasn’t fun if one didn’t stick any pins into it, after all. I rotated mid-air and landed on my feet. Pain burst through me, but nothing dramatic happened, to my surprise. As if I jumped from like two meters of height, not from four floors.

  She gracefully descended next to me, gently lowering herself with her hair.

  I glared at her. “How did you know this wouldn’t hurt me?”

  “You got kicked by Kallisto and survived. No way falling down the elevator could hurt you.” She tore apart the sealed door in front of us, revealing a garage that lay beyond.

  “She never kicked me in the body, only in the helmet. My head would had exploded without it.”

  Isabella froze for a split second. But then she walked into the garage as if nothing had happened, resuming the humming. “Well, you’re fine, anyways.”

  Because I spent all my stat points and also got a ton more stats on top of that from the skill-alternatives. If I hadn’t done that, I would have been lying in a pool of my own blood with bones sticking out from my legs.

  With a shudder, I followed her.

  The place was deserted, save for a half-dozen parked sedans and the lingering scent of motor oil and burnt plastic.

  She pointed at Saito’s black Mazda. “He doesn’t need it anymore.”

  I stared at her. “How do you sleep at night?”

  “On a pile of comfortable pillows.” She walked to it, her hair slid into the car’s door lock, and it clicked open. She gracefully sat inside, her hair slipping into the car’s board.

  Lost for words, I walked around the car. Before I opened the door, Takezo stepped out from behind a column. “Wait,” he said, raising his hands. “I need to come with you.”

  Isabella glanced at me. “Your boyfriend rides in the back.” She slammed her door shut and started the car.

  I shrugged, not even blushing anymore. Instead, I shook my head towards Takezo. “You coming?”

  “Yeah.”

  I got in the car.

  Takezo slid into the back seat.

  Isabella floored the gas, the Mazda leaping forward with a snarl. The garage blurred around us, and she drifted up the spiral ascent.

  Takezo leaned into the gap between the front seats. “If I drive, we might avoid detection.”

  “Why would I care about that?” She drifted up to the top floor. “I just need phone signal.”

  People moved through this floor, exiting and entering their cars. The moment they spotted us, many reached for their phones, some for guns.

  Isabella grinned. She slightly opened the window, her hair slipping out.

  Gunfire echoed through the garages, bullets hitting our trunk.

  Isabella drove onto the exit ramp, drifting up. The barrier at the end was down, locked in place. She drove into it, the car breaking through, bursting onto the street.

  With another drift, she stabilized on the road, further speeding up. Her hair caught the wheel, and she reached into her pocket.

  Isabella drew her phone, swiping on the touch screen.

  “Shouldn’t you let someone else drive?” Takezo asked.

  Big mistake. I softly shook my head at him. Too late.

  Some of Isabella’s hair grabbed his neck, squeezing so strongly he couldn’t speak.

  She finished swiping on the phone. Takezo’s face started slowly turning red. Isabella raised the phone to her ear.

  Meanwhile, black sedans filled the street behind us, closing in.

  “Hey, Sora,” Isabella said into the phone. “Have your tech boys aim your best radar up from the tower. Straight upward.”

  Who was Sora? I glanced at Takezo, but he couldn’t answer, his face starting to turn purple, eyes widening.

  “Yeah,” Isabella continued. “That unmarked satellite is Lucielle’s Ion Cannon, to which I have full authorization. Call your men off, or I’m sublimating your shitty old tower, together with the whole center of Tokyo. If you think Nagasaki was bad, then you’re in for a treat.”

  She could not have been serious. Wait, no, she was. That light, carefree tone to her voice was something she never deployed when lying.

  “Oh, and what are they going to do? Send me a strongly worded letter? Do you think Lucielle gives a slightest fuck about what happens to Tokyo, to Japan? The last time I talked to her, she had an half an hour rant about how inconvenient it was that slavery wasn’t allowed anymore.” She motioned for me to watch our backs.

  I turned, and indeed, the cars pursuing us started slowing down, vanishing into turnings. I nodded at Isabella.

  “Good boy,” Isabella said into the phone. “I’ll have my agents collect my stuff, and my plane will fly off by itself. Have fun.” She hung up, pocketed the phone, and grabbed the wheel with her hands, smirking from ear to ear. Her hair let go of Takezo, who fell back into the seat, gasping for breath.

  “Who’s Sora?” I asked.

  “The leader of the Yamato Syndicate, the ruler of this world’s region, a member of the Hand of God. But he’s new to the position, relatively speaking, so he doesn’t have the resources or military capabilities to risk conflict with Lucielle or really any other major secret society.”

  That was the man who questioned me, wasn’t it? He didn’t strike me as a bad man, but then again, the world of secret societies wasn’t made for good people. It was made by people like Isabella for people like Isabella.

  “So,” Isabella said, “How are you so all right?” She glanced at me with an inquisitive eye. “I expected you to be a crying mess after what happened, but you’re functioning better than usual. Has my survival lifted your spirits that much?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Truth be told, I’m also a bit surprised. It doesn’t feel real in a way. I see the flash of what happened sometimes, but so many things are happening that I don’t have the time to think about anything.”

  “Bullshit.” Isabella smirked. “You think you can get the girl back somehow, that you can save her.”

  I jumped a bit in my skin. Was I that easy to read? Obviously, at least for her. “Maybe.”

  “Good. Can’t get your dreams crushed if you don’t have any.”

  I sighed. Typical. “How is Kallisto so absurdly strong?”

  “Nice pivot,” Isabella acknowledged. “Takezo, be useful and explain to him the demon hierarchy.”

  He glared daggers at her, but spoke in a calm manner. “Demons were originally a natural occurrence, spiritual monsters born out of deteriorated souls that failed to reach an afterlife. And then Lucifer fell from Heaven, together with a host of his friendly angels. Those angels found ways to create their own demons to serve and to worship them. From among those, the most prominent ones are the four demon princesses, one of whom is Kallisto. She’s not a human who became a demon. She’s an angel that was born in Heaven, who served for millennia in Heaven’s armies, who was exiled from it, who has obtained immortality through Lucifer giving her a shard of his divinity, and who built an entire religion of herself through the creation of demons.”

  Well, that explained the ridiculously pretty face. “How does one fight someone like that?”

  “You don’t,” Isabella snapped. “Demon princesses are completely outside of what us mortals can fight. But they have a really hard time getting to physical planes, like Earth, which is why the goal is to find out how she got on Earth and stop it from happening.”

  “Well, didn’t she just fly in through the portal?”

  “What portal?” Isabella’s hair twitched. She wanted to lash me, but being in the car didn’t allowed her that option. “There’s no portal to present in Tokyo. And even if there was, she would need someone to summon her. Demons have to be summoned to become physical, so someone has had to bring her here. Someone with enough power to pull it off. I thought it was Sora, but he doesn’t seem to be the culprit.”

  Hmm. Yeah, he didn’t strike me as the type of guy to do that. If anything, he appeared to be hell bent on his people’s wellbeing.

  Isabella drove out from the city, taking the same exit Takezo took last night. I exchanged a glance with Takezo before we looked at Isabella.

  “How do you know where I live?” he asked.

  “I’ve got junior tracked. And your house is just about enough of a remote shithole for me to be able to get my plane to land there without causing a commotion or provoking the syndicate too much.”

  Of course. That actually made me smile. While it was kind of twisted in a way, it was also the most care I’ve received since I reached my teens. I really liked that. “Is that how you know where I was behind the portal as well?”

  “Yep. We came in with Saito to investigate ourselves, figuring we could find out how Kallisto got into the world, and use you two as a bait to catch a high demon or two. Except that we found nothing and well, you know how the rest went. But I got a level up out of it, so it was totally worth it.”

  Ah, so that was where the humming and light mood came from. She levelled up, which probably hasn’t happened in a long time, so nothing else mattered.