The drug’s efficacy crested six hours after administration.

Santali perceived it in a peculiar state of lucidity—the pain had receded into a numb distance, yet his mind was sharp, crystalline, like glass wiped clean of steam. Every neural pathway felt distinct, each thought deliberate. A hallmark of high-grade neural sedatives: they block pain transmission without clouding cognition.

He attempted to move his fingers. Muscle strength had recovered by roughly thirty percent—sufficient for fine motor tasks, but not for combat. A tightness pulled at his abdominal wound—tissue healing, sutures holding but fragile.

The most critical was his vision.

He opened his eyes. No longer utter blackness now, but a field of grey-white haze, as if the world were viewed through frosted glass. Light and shadow had shape, direction, intensity—but no edges, no color.

Visual acuity recovery: ~15%. Estimated full recovery: fifty-six hours.

Faster than projected. The compounds X had used must have included neural regenerative agents—those drugs were precious, likely not standard issue.

She is investing in me. A speculative investment in a stranger who might prove useful, or who might turn and bite.

Risk coefficient: High.

Anticipated return: Unknown.

Santali pushed himself up slowly, movements deliberate. The tightness in his abdomen sharpened into a thin, bearable sting. He groped his way to his feet. His legs felt unsteady, but held.

His aerokinesis was slowly returning—not combat-ready control, but something more fundamental: an environmental awareness. Currents of air extended like intangible tentacles, mapping the space around him. Room approximately six by four-point-five meters, ceiling three meters. Window dead ahead, blinds shut. Sparse furniture, each piece positioned with deliberate calculation, leaving optimal paths for movement and fields of fire.

A classic safe house layout. Executed with a top-tier professional's touch.

He "looked" toward the kitchen. X was there, handling something—the sound of running water, the metallic click of a stove igniting, and… the subtle sizzle of reheating food.

“You need protein and electrolytes,” her voice came, though she hadn’t turned. She knew he was awake. “Sit at the table. Wait. No wandering.”

Santali felt his way to the table. A five-step distance took him seven, with one deliberate correction in direction—a quiet test to see if she would offer assistance.

She didn’t. Only when setting the plate before him did she speak again: “The chair is thirty centimeters to your right.”

Precise spatial awareness. Either she possessed exceptional recall, or… she too was perceiving her environment in some way beyond sight.

Santali took his seat. Before him, a plate of soft-cooked oatmeal sat mottled with bits of chopped chicken and wilted spinach. Beside it, a glass of pale liquid gave off the faint, chemical tang of an electrolyte drink.

"Eat all of it," X said, sitting opposite him with only a black coffee. "Your basal metabolic rate is currently thirty-seven percent above baseline. You need the extra energy for recovery."

Santali took a spoonful. The temperature was perfect. The taste… surprisingly good.

"Do you often tend to the wounded?" he asked.

“I often handle corpses,” X replied, sipping her coffee. “The wounded are pre-corpse states. The principles are similar—sustain vital signs, prevent secondary injury, promote recovery.”

A cold attempt at humor. Or perhaps, simply a statement of fact.

Santali smiled faintly and continued eating. His manners were impeccable; even blind, each spoonful was measured—no spillage, no sound. A result of training, and a habitual performance—of 'normalcy', of 'control', of 'I am not a threat'.

X watched his movements, her dark eyes devoid of emotion. She finished her coffee quickly but didn't refill it, sitting statue-still across from him.

"Regarding the details of our cooperation," she began abruptly, "I require three things from you."

Santali set down his spoon, resting his hands folded on the wooden tabletop, a posture of attentive listening.

"First. The complete sequence of L's betrayal. Every detail—his expression, actions, every word spoken, even shifts in his breathing rhythm."

"Second. Everything you witnessed and sensed during your infiltration of the Arctic facility's periphery. Not just what you saw, but everything you felt—anomalous temperature fluctuations, stray, unnatural energy signatures in the air, fixed patrol routes and their irregularities, shift-change signals, any illogical structures or terrain."

“Third…” A pause. “The final message the Whites left you. Not the files. What they told you personally.”

Three demands, escalating, each striking closer to the core.

Santali fell silent. His violet eyes lowered, his 'gaze' fixed on the wood grain of the table he could not truly see, his mind turning swiftly.

First demand: Logical. Basis for trust. Reveals if L was a lone traitor or part of a wider plot.

Second demand: High value. Intel sharing significantly boosts operational safety and success odds. Risk—exposing his capability limits and infiltration route—is manageable.

Third demand… The deepest probe. The core bargaining chip.

How much can he give? To what extent?

“I can provide full accounts of the first two,” he finally said, voice steady. “The third item… I can only share in part. Some information…I need to confirm your stance before deciding.”

A reasonable refusal. X nodded, not pressing further.

“Then in exchange,” she said, “I will provide the following: One. The basic architecture of the Nightwatchers’ core systems, as I understand it, along with three verified protocol-layer vulnerabilities. Two. The precise locations of three unrecorded safe houses belonging to Crimson Tide, which may contain original data he hadn't yet destroyed or transferred. Three. Full perimeter alert and security coverage from me for the next seventy-two hours.”

A substantial offer. Almost excessively so.

“Why such interest in the affairs of the Whites?” he asked—not a probe, but genuine curiosity.

X stood. Her motion was fluid, silent, like a cat moving through stillness. She did not answer immediately, crossing instead to the window where old venetian blinds hung. She parted a narrow slit. Morning light seeped through, cutting a slender band across the floor.

Her voice drifted from the window, softer now, as if speaking more to memory than to him. “Crimson Tide’s last words…” A pause, thin and fragile. “ ‘The Whites were no traitors. They were the first to see the truth.’ ”

She turned slightly, the pale light catching her profile. “I need to know… what truth he meant.”

Santali’s grip tightened around his spoon. The metal edge bit into his palm—a sharp, clean pain.

“He wasn’t a traitor,” Santali said slowly, each word like a stone dredged from the deep, cold and heavy. “He just wanted to get his family out with the truth. The Nightwatchers don't let anyone walk away with it.”

The band of light shifted slowly on the floor. Dust motes danced soundlessly in the air.

“And the truth concerns… what?”

“The true purpose of the ‘Project ME’. The origin of ‘Arcanists.’ About…” Santali paused, drawing a slow breath. “About why, from the very beginning, the number of known, active ‘Arcanists’ worldwide seems to be permanently locked at… the number ‘ten’.”

An extended silence lingered in the room.

Outside, a flock of pigeons swept past, the dry rustle of their wings briefly fracturing the stillness.

Further away, the regular, monotonous grind and hum of tram tracks seeped through the air—a distant, mechanical pulse.

X turned and leaned back against the window.The morning light from behind wrapped her silhouette in a soft, diffuse gold, but her face remained steeped in shadow, her expression elusive and unreadable.

“Ten,” she repeated the number. “The old die, new ones appear, but the total never changes. It’s like… some kind of conservation law.”

“Or a man-made ceiling,” Santali added. “The Whites believed it wasn’t a natural law, but part of… a control mechanism.”

He stood up, moving somewhat unsteadily but with increasing certainty towards the center of the living room.

“I need paper and a pen,” he said. “I’ll write down what happened with L and what I witnessed in the Arctic Circle. Oral accounts have omissions. Writing is more precise, and easier for you to verify later.”

X retrieved a notepad and pen from the desk drawer, placing them on the coffee table before him. Then she retreated several steps, sitting back down at the dining table, granting him a measure of privacy.

It was a subtle gesture of respect, and another form of gauge—observing how he would manage the act of writing while blind.

Santali didn’t hesitate. He groped for the paper and pen, using his left hand to anchor the edge of the paper, his right gripping the pen. The initial strokes were clumsy, but quickly grew fluid—he relied not on sight, but on muscle memory and tactile feedback. The pen moved across the paper with a stable, precise trajectory, much like his earlier Morse code tapping.

X watched his profile as he wrote. Pale morning light pooled on his face, where his eyelashes lay like featherlight shadows. He wore a look of utter concentration, serene and absorbed, as though reciting a technical manual rather than the tale of his partner's betrayal and his own brush with death.

But X could see more—the knuckles of his pen-holding hand were whitened slightly, indicating controlled tension; his writing speed varied, pausing for 0.5 to 1 second when describing certain key details; his breathing rhythm exhibited three minor disruptions, one brief held breath and two slightly rapid, shallow breaths when he reached the paragraph about L's death, before being forcibly restored to its original pattern.

—He wasn't emotionless; he was suppressing it. Using immense willpower to press everything down into the depths, leaving only a calculated, placid surface.

Interesting.

X picked up her coffee cup—now cold—and swirled it gently. The dregs at the bottom spun into a slow, dark vortex.

She understood suppression. Like now, watching this man who might be a ghost from her hazy past or a clever trap laid in her present, she felt the contradiction twist inside her: an impulse to lean in, to confirm, warring against the older, colder instinct to withdraw and survive.

Survival won.

She set the cup down, stood up, and crossed to the lab bench on the other side of the room. It was strewn with the instruments from last night’s work: hemostats, scalpel blades, disinfectant trays, spent syringes. Her tidying began, methodical and precise: used blades and needles into the sharps container; instruments into the ultrasonic cleaner bathed in measured solution; the countertop wiped down once, twice, three times with alcohol swabs until it reflected the sterile light. Every motion was standard, efficient—a perfect diagram of composure.

Order instilled a sense of security, enabling her to temporarily set aside the chaotic questions.

Was he Santali—the child who once sneak warm milk into her hands?

If so, why had he appeared only now?

If not, how could he possess things known exclusively to Santali?

Questions coiled around her like a spider's web.

She required further evidence and a more definitive judgment. Until then, she needed to maintain distance, emotional and professional, treating everything before her—the instruments, the workbench, even the man recording his memories—as 'objects' to be classified, sterilized, and systematically processed.

Vigilance was essential.

It was the law of survival, the unwavering principle of her profession.