Chapter 69: Close the Door

Kagami

The damp mist clung to his collar.

Kagami walked.

Soundless.

The corridor lights buzzed at intervals too regular to be malfunction. Tanks lined both sides, sealed behind reinforced glass. Most of the specimens were still. The ones that weren’t followed his silhouette through the fluid, slow and certain, pupils fixed on him long after he’d passed.

The giant with white eyes turned its head.

Kagami didn’t slow down.

Eleven visits. Twice on orders. Nine without them. Each shorter than the last because each proved the same thing and he kept coming back to see if the answer had changed.

It hadn’t.

The cell was at the end. Steel door, unlocked. The Bureau didn’t need locks for someone who chose to stay.

He pushed it open.

Nami sat against the far wall with her knees drawn up. Brown hair over one eye. The prisoner uniform hung loose on her frame—she’d lost weight since last time, or hadn’t bothered eating. The collar around her neck caught the overhead strip light. Hairline cracks webbed through the metal like veins.

She looked up.

“You again.”

“Me again.”

He stepped inside. Four meters. He stopped at four meters. The door swung shut behind him and the moisture in the air thickened—condensation beading on the walls, the ceiling, the cracked collar she could snap whenever she decided to.

She didn’t stand.

He didn’t sit.

“Segawa told me to stop coming.”

“And yet.” She tilted her head. The hair fell from her face. Green eyes—both of them—catching what light there was. “You’re closer today. Three and a half.”

He didn’t look down. Didn’t check. His feet had decided before he had.

His forearm ached. The lines under the sleeve shifted—the knight pressing closer, the way it always did near her. Near anything Ezra had touched.

“Ezra came to visit you, didn’t he?”

Her expression didn’t change. “He has.” A droplet rolled down the wall behind her, tracing a path through the condensation. “Why do you care?”

Because Ezra fused the Knight core inside his spine. That was reason enough.

He’d been a D-grade before. He couldn’t remember what that felt like. Couldn’t remember Nami’s touch either—whether her hands had been warm, or if it was always this cold.

He didn’t answer.

“You used to be better at lying.”

She watched him not answer. The way she’d watched him not answer for eleven visits.

“You keep coming here.” She drew a circle in the moisture on the floor with one finger. “Segawa told you to stop. You came anyway. You stand at four meters. You ask questions you already know the answers to.” The circle became a spiral. “And then you leave.”

The moisture pressed against his skin. Every surface in the room was wet. The inside of his collar. That was the thing people forgot about Pontos—water was everywhere, in everything, and she’d been sitting in it for six months.

“What do you want me to say, Nami?”

“I wanted you to sit down.” Her finger stopped. “The third time. You stood in the doorway for six minutes. I thought you might. You didn’t.”

His jaw tightened.

“I tried,” she said. “You know that.”

He knew. Visit four. She’d stood up. Walked to the edge of the chain’s reach—two meters from the wall. He’d been at four. The gap between them was the length of a coffin.

She’d held out her hand.

He hadn’t taken it.

He couldn’t take it now. He had obligations.

“How long has Ezra been coming here?”

Nami met his eyes.

“Since before the flood.”

Before.

The word landed wrong. Stuck halfway down.

She’d been planning before she drowned 345,000 people. Before the cage. Before the collar. All of it was infrastructure.

And he’d been visiting a construction site, thinking it was a prison.

“Nana was here.”

Nami’s finger paused on the floor. “We had a little reunion. Long overdue, in fact.”

“And what about the older sister?”

She almost laughed. “The one you threatened? For saying my name? Our reunion is still to come.”

“The assassins.” His voice flattened. “They were yours.”

“Mine.”

“You could have killed her. The whole block came down.”

“I knew you’d be there.” She resumed the spiral. “Besides. She’s a Tamei.”

The lines under his sleeve were climbing—past the wrist, past the elbow, threading toward the shoulder. He couldn’t feel where his skin ended and the lines began.

“I’m going to find Ezra and pull his spine out while he screams.”

Nami looked at him. The same way she looked at the collar.

“No,” she said. “You’re not.”

She stood. The chains pooled at her feet, slack enough to move freely, tight enough to look convincing from a camera angle. Taller than he remembered. Or he was shorter.

“The knight is louder every time you come.” Her voice dropped. “I can hear it in how you talk. The cadence changes. You used to pause because you were thinking. Now you pause because you’re fighting it.”

“Nami—”

“Go.”

The moisture on the walls stopped moving. Every droplet froze where it was.

“I don’t want to watch it win.”

Kagami stood in the doorway for nine seconds. Counted them.

Then he turned, back to the woman with green eyes.

“I’ll return with his head.”

He didn’t wait to hear what she’d say next.

The corridor stretched. The tanks watched. The giant with white eyes was pressed against the glass, breath fogging in slow clouds. He walked past it the way he walked past everything—soundless, measured, eyes forward.

The elevator swallowed him.

Going up.

The knight was there. It was always there. But this time the three-second trick—Time’s up—didn’t hold. The pressure climbed with the floors. First. Second. Third. Building behind his eyes until there wasn’t room for both of them.

Kagami gripped the railing.

“What do you want?”

The pressure settled.

Made itself comfortable.

She told you to leave and you left. Like a dog.

“You’re one yourself.”

It chuckled.

Let me help.

“With?”

Fourth.

Fifth.

Sixth floor now.

I know the champion’s little dove. The blonde one. Nice ass too.

“OG.”

Kagami’s grip tightened. He’d always known. Easier to blame the knight.

Seventh.

Eighth.

Follow her. Find him. Pull his spine from his throat, like you said.

“Hai.”

Let’s go kill a fucking champion.

Ninth floor.

The elevator climbed.

He did not close the door.

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