Chapter 438: The Response

Xavier looked at the untouched breakfast spread again, irritation creeping in, not because of the news, but because everyone was standing around like the room itself might explode. “I’m hungry,” he said plainly. “We should eat before this turns into another useless argument.”

Rin lost it at that.

He turned toward Xavier, voice sharp and unfiltered, words coming out faster than he probably intended. “Are you serious right now? Did you not just see what was on that screen? There’s a bounty out on them. On Reva. On Lyra. On everyone. And you’re acting like this is just another morning.”

Xavier didn’t snap back. He didn’t raise his voice or posture himself like he was about to fight. He just looked at Rin properly this time. “I saw it. Every second of it.”

“Then why the hell aren’t you worried?” Rin shot back. “Do they not matter to you or something?”

Xavier exhaled, slow and controlled, then spoke without rushing his words. “I’m not worried because I care. I’m not worried because I know exactly who they are and what they can handle. Panic is what you do when you think someone is helpless. They aren’t.”

Klatos shifted where he stood, feathers tightening slightly along his shoulders, clearly uneasy. “You’re underestimating Kylus,” he said. “That man doesn’t just send hunters. He applies pressure until things break. Cities. Governments. Entire trade routes. He can wipe places off the map without firing a single shot.”

Xavier turned toward him. “And that still doesn’t change what I just said.”

Klatos frowned. “It should.”

“It doesn’t,” Xavier replied. “Reva isn’t some sheltered noble who only knows politics and bloodlines. She’s survived worse than hired killers. She’s taken on things that would tear most squads apart.”

He continued without giving Rin room to interrupt. “Lyra lived under Bull. Not for a day, not for a mission, but long enough to grow up around him. Anyone who survived that environment learned how to stay alive fast, or they didn’t survive at all.”

Rin’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t argue this time.

“And Requiem didn’t forget how to be a mercenary just because he stopped taking contracts,” Xavier went on. “People like that don’t lose their instincts. Viola didn’t climb her way through gangs and space politics by being careless either.”

The room stayed quiet, tension thick but no longer chaotic.

Xavier finally gestured toward the food again. “So yeah. I’m hungry. And once we eat, we figure out how to deal with Kylus. But I’m not going to pretend the people I trust are already dead just because someone put numbers next to their faces.”

No one said anything after that. The argument didn’t disappear, but it stopped being loud.

They didn’t talk much while finishing breakfast. Whatever needed to be said had already been said, and whatever tension remained didn’t need words to stay present. Plates were cleared, payments settled, and within minutes they were moving again.

Outside the hotel, the city felt sharper in daylight. Too clean in places, too controlled in others, the kind of order that existed because someone paid for it to exist. They split without ceremony.

Rin went with Klatos. Klatos already had the coordinates pulled up, old mining references layered with prison-era data, routes that didn’t show up on public transit maps. Rin didn’t ask what they were walking into. He just checked his gear and followed, trusting Klatos’s knowledge of Jupiter over his own instincts.

Xavier stayed back with Arlen, though “with” was generous.

She got into the van, marked and registered, clean enough to blend into Helior Prime traffic without turning heads. Xavier waited until she pulled out, counted to ten, then slipped into another car parked across the street, unregistered and deliberately dull. He followed at a distance, never close enough to look coordinated, never far enough to lose her.

Arlen noticed almost immediately.

She didn’t react or slow down, didn’t check her mirrors more than necessary. She just adjusted her route slightly, testing. Xavier matched it without effort. That was enough confirmation for her.

The ping that had brought them here sat quietly on her display, a narrow-band signal bouncing through private relays, old corporate infrastructure mixed with newer city systems. Someone had wanted her attention specifically, and they had wanted it without drawing noise.

Xavier kept his eyes forward as traffic increased, city towers rising higher around them. Whatever Rin and Klatos were walking into would tell them something about Bull’s past. Whatever Arlen was being pulled toward would tell them something about the present.

Either way, Helior Prime was already starting to close its fingers around all of them.

The signal led them out of the polished districts and into a part of Helior Prime that didn’t bother pretending to be impressive. Towers gave way to stacked infrastructure, layered roads crossing over service canals and power lines that hummed too loud to be decorative. Arlen slowed the vehicle as the navigation marked the destination as reached, even though nothing about the place looked like a meeting point.

“It’s wrong,” she muttered, eyes scanning the surroundings. “No business registry, no residential permits, no traffic patterns. This zone is deliberately blank.”

Xavier parked two streets back and got out. He didn’t approach her vehicle immediately. Instead, he watched. People passed through the area, but none of them lingered. Everyone walked with purpose, heads down, like they knew better than to stop here.

Arlen stepped out of her car, hand near her weapon but not on it. “If this is a trap, it’s a lazy one.”

“That’s what makes it dangerous,” Xavier replied as he joined her. “Lazy traps are usually bait for something worse.”

The building itself was an old transit relay hub, the kind Helior Prime built before privatization rewrote the city. Half the lights were dead. The rest flickered just enough to keep cameras functional. A door slid open before either of them touched it.

Arlen stiffened. “I didn’t trigger that.”

“I know,” Xavier said.

The door sealed behind them with a soft mechanical thud that echoed longer than it should have. The interior was larger than the exterior suggested, with corridors branching in ways that didn’t align with city schematics.

A voice came over the intercom, distorted but controlled. “Supervisor Arlen. You responded faster than expected.”

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