I quickly put on a radiant smile.

“Isn't it all thanks to you, sir? Thank you for guiding this inadequate new recruit down the right path.”

“You certainly know how to talk.”

Riccardo smirked as he swaggered along. At the sight of that sharp-edged smile, I widened my own.

Maybe it was his outfit, but he felt more threatening than usual. Now that I understood I was one of Ray and Kyle's people, keeping the fact that I wasn't human from Riccardo made me uncomfortable, too.

He had even reassured me that I was probably human.

Still, I kept smiling despite the bitter feeling.

“Besides, it was a compliment, sir.”

“Well, would you look at that... Now you're even lying to your revered senior.”

“I mean it. Half of it, anyway. That first name was quite a shock.”

“Jason?” Bobby blinked up at me. “What's wrong with Jason?”

What was wrong with him...?

I briefly considered how to explain. I disliked Jason Tvein, but not enough to launch into a tirade behind his back.

Up ahead, Riccardo chuckled, apparently amused by my inability to answer.

Achille answered for me.

“He's only nice to women.”

Oh.

“So it's hardly strange to dislike him.”

He was that type...

Not that that was why I disliked him.

I walked along the desolate road, unsurprised. Come to think of it, the man hated Yehyeon so much that he hated Yun—and me, Yun's trainee—by association, yet he treated Ami reasonably well. It was just like him, I supposed. This was the first I'd heard of it, but it felt like something I'd known all along.

Still, if he learned what I was, he'd come after my head, grinding his teeth.

Well, there was no guarantee Riccardo or Ro would react any differently.

I headed toward the arena, thinking about how drastically the arrival of the creatures and my people had changed Earth, and remembering the question Yun had asked when he took FROM E from me.

* * *

The arena occupied the seventeenth floor of a disused twenty-story tower.

People swarmed around the tower. It was like seeing a stadium built out in the middle of nowhere, drawing crowds only on match days. Some looked enormously wealthy; others looked as though they could barely afford their next meal. Some could have been perfectly ordinary office workers, while others were unmistakably gang members. The crowd was an utterly unpredictable mix.

Coming upon this sight so suddenly after walking through ruined streets left me gaping for a while. The seniors regularly assigned to this mission weren't surprised, though.

They passed through the crowd without a second glance and approached a food truck under glaring portable lights. The man and woman we were looking for were drinking beer at a standing table. When we stopped beside their noisy table, they turned to look at us.

The man reacted first.

“Ah! Our dear traitor.”

What?

Me?

“Fisker. How have you been?”

“Craig.” Achille nodded, his expression a little stiff. “It's been a while. You too, Regina.”

Oh, not me.

He was talking about Achille.

Feeling a little sheepish at having nearly answered without thinking, I watched the pair smile at him.

Why was he a traitor?

Achille ignored the strange greeting and went straight to the point.

“The tickets?”

“Don't be so cold. How long has it been since we last saw each other?”

I narrowed my eyes as I watched my silver-haired senior talk to the presumed police officers. There was a barb in the words of the male officer, Craig. Judging by his expression and tone, “traitor” was hardly an affectionate nickname.

He set his beer glass roughly on the table.

“You haven't changed a bit in all these years. It's like you've been taking preservatives. Oh, you actually have, haven't you?”

“Why didn't you betray us a few years earlier?” The woman laughed, pointing at Achille's eyes with the hand holding her beer. “Your skin would've been so much tighter.”

“Exactly. I feel bad for you every time I look at your eyes. I guess even you lot can't get rid of crow's feet?”

“These fuckers just keep getting worse...”

While Achille responded impassively, Riccardo spoke up beside him, wearing a murderous smile. His mouth was smiling, but his green eyes weren't smiling at all. With both hands thrust into his pockets and one eyebrow raised, that smile looked vicious.

Bobby added, flicking her unlit cigarette,

“Worry about your thinning hair, old man.”

“Both sides, knock it off. Craig. Just give us the tickets...”

“I know this one.”

The female officer abruptly pointed at me.

Was she drunk?

I saw Achille's brows draw sharply together as his sullen reply was interrupted. But Regina was looking at me and missed his reaction.

“You're the new recruit, aren't you?”

God, that damned article really had reached everyone.

I gave a curt nod.

“Yes.”

“How do you know him?”

“Come on, he's the one who went to assist Jonathan Kudo and got lucky saving Forden.”

“Lucky?” Riccardo's voice took on a chilling edge. “In those heads of yours, getting buried under a building counts as lucky?”

I'd been warned he might be on edge.

The fury pouring from his voice startled everyone. Even Achille and Bobby turned to look at him.

Was standing outside an arena run by a criminal organization putting him in a foul mood? Normally, I would have expected sarcasm, but not this much anger.

Whatever the reason, I hurriedly joined in before things could deteriorate any further.

“I was lucky to get out alive, and Chairman Forden was unharmed, too. I'm sure that's what she means. I'd agree I was lucky in those respects.”

“Oh. Now I remember. So you're a new recruit?”

The male officer suddenly frowned and glared at me.

“Have you ever even been on a mission inside the core?”

BOOM BOOM BOOM.

Sound blared from the enormous speaker beside the food truck, mingling with the chatter of the ever-growing crowd. Perhaps the matches were about to start. As the noise swelled around me, I answered no: this was my first official mission inside the core.

Craig didn't like my answer.

“With this many people here, you're bringing in a fucking greenhorn?” He raised his voice, brows furrowed. “Don't you know how cramped it is in there? One slip from this rookie, one moment of forgetting to hold back, and we'll have a catastrophe! Sure, none of the fuckers going in there are right in the head, but isn't this a little fucking thoughtless?”

“Just hand over the tickets.”

Now Achille's voice held anger, too. He held out his hand, looking as though he was barely resisting the urge to grab his former colleague by the collar.

“Before we file a formal complaint with your superiors.”

“Huh? What's that? Raising a hand? Going to touch me? You're going to lay a hand on me?”

“The moment you lay a finger on Craig, the press gets a tip.” Regina snickered, pointing at Achille's fingers.

I stared incredulously as she propped up her chin and smiled.

“‘Badger Assaults Civilian!’ How about it, Fisker? Great headline, don't you think? It's been so long since you were in the news. You must miss the reporters by now.”

CRASH!

One side of the table the officers were leaning against collapsed. My jaw dropped as I looked at the source of the noise.

Everyone else stood frozen, too: Achille, Craig, and Regina with their eyes wide; Riccardo blinking before breaking into a broad smile.

Bobby straightened and brushed bits of the table off her elbow. She looked at the officers with perfect composure.

“Oh dear, sorry. These heels are so high, I lost my footing.”

I laughed a little.

That was how we got the tickets from the police. I wasn't sure why it had required so much trouble, but we did get them in the end: three tickets, handed over with grumbles. With those in hand, we could finally leave the pair behind. I still couldn't tell whether they were drunk or simply astonishingly rude.

* * *

Achille apologized to us all the way to the building entrance. From what he said, the pair held a grudge against him for some reason. It wasn't simply that he'd left the police to become a Badger.

It seemed to have something to do with why he had quit, but he didn't explain that part.

Riccardo waved away his apologies with the hand encircled by a silver snake, rolling his green eyes.

“Since when is it news that the pigs hate us?”

Right. The police and Black Badger hardly seemed likely to get along.

“Let's just finish the job and clock out... Assuming those morons can get things started properly...”

“This arena's shittier than the last one,” Bobby grumbled, swallowed up in the crowd pouring into the elevator. “Who thought putting an arena this high up in a building was a good idea?”

Our tickets were checked before we boarded. Then we were crammed into the elevator. It took on passengers until just short of sounding the overload alarm, then carried us swiftly up to the arena. Only one floor button worked: the seventeenth, marked with a sticker reading “Arena.”

Light came flooding in.

The moment the elevator doors opened, dazzling light assaulted my eyes. Swept into the arena amid the crowd, I found a lavish venue filling my field of vision.

Wow.

They really had built an arena this high up.

To my surprise, it looked exactly like what I usually pictured when I thought of an arena. They seemed to have opened up two floors, perhaps three, with the fighting area down below and tightly packed rows of seats on the surrounding slopes. People were filling every seat.

I studied the iron bars surrounding the sunken arena.

“The creatures and illegal transplant recipients come out through there,” Achille explained, following my gaze. “As soon as the police give the signal, we jump into the arena and take down the creatures.”

“Can we trust them to give us the signal?”

I had my doubts.

Achille gave a little laugh at my expression.

“They'll be in trouble without our help, too. I'll contact you from outside, so stand by.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“... Don't let what those bastards said get to you.”

The former detective hesitated, then turned his head and forced the words out. I watched as he uncomfortably avoided my gaze.

“They were angry at me and took it out on you. I'm sorry.”

“No, I wasn't offended at all. Please don't worry about it.”

“Achille, you're heading out soon, right?”

Bobby sat beside me holding caramel popcorn she'd bought from who knew where, and craned her neck.

“Let us know as soon as the pigs contact you.”

Achille nodded, while Riccardo came to stand beside Bobby and casually helped himself to her popcorn. I watched her giggle at him, then looked at the people steadily filling the space around us.

The EDM pounding through the arena, the noise of countless people, the painfully bright lights, and the lasers sweeping the stands all tormented my senses. Nor was there anything pleasant about the people stationed throughout the venue, who were clearly running the matches.

I wanted to finish this and leave, I thought, already a little tired.

I wished the matches would start so I could confirm the death of the person who had dared turn a blade on Colton, then face the creatures.

Creatures the Mafia had captured by outlandish means.

Creatures humans had never managed to tame, yet which obeyed the will of the Titans...

“A schoolgirl?”

Achille's voice suddenly pulled me from my thoughts.

“What's a high school girl doing here?”

The person who had stopped him in his tracks as he was leaving—and made even the other seniors look up in surprise from their leisurely enjoyment of caramel popcorn—sat four seats away from me.

She wore a neat school uniform.

And held a pair of elegant opera glasses.