Victor felt the man go limp under his arm almost instantly. He decelerated hard, instinctively trying to compensate, but it was already too late. The guy's eyes rolled back, his body slackening like a cut marionette.

Cursing inwardly, Victor angled downward and descended toward the city. The thin, frigid air at high altitude, combined with the brutal G-forces of supersonic flight, had been far more than an unprotected human body could handle. Hypoxia, circulatory shock, and neurological trauma were all stacking up at once. The man was teetering on the edge of death.

Victor landed in a narrow, deserted alley and grimaced beneath his helmet. He had not thought this through. Without wasting time, he detached the staff-like weapon secured along his back. His Combat Mech, custom-built by Ethan, was designed to mirror Victor's Ethereal class as a Priest. Somehow, through methods even Ethan claimed not to fully understand, Shatterstar had integrated a prototype healing system into the frame. Victor himself had never needed to use it before.

The internal display flashed warnings as the man's vital signs began to nosedive. Victor activated the system and quickly selected the protocols labeled Rejuvenation and Healing Touch, modeled directly after the in-game skills.

The Mech's power core hummed, converting energy into a steady stream of restorative force. Golden light flowed from the tip of the staff and poured into the motionless figure on the ground.

Hmmmm…

A warm amber glow spread across the man's body, sinking into his skin like sunlight through water. On Victor's display, the vitals began to stabilize. Heart rate normalized. Breathing evened out.

But another scan told a far uglier story.

Sections of the brain lit up in flashing red, large swaths of the cerebral cortex showing damage.

"Damn it," Victor muttered.

The violent pressure changes and sustained G-forces had caused micro-hemorrhages. Brain damage. Not subtle, not minor.

'Perfect. The Boss's first real solo task for me, and I turn the target into a vegetable.'

Beep-beep-beep.

Victor's comm unit chimed. Ethan. Victor had made the trip in just over a minute, and the convoy was still close. Seeing Victor's tracker go stationary had clearly set off alarms.

"Victor, you stopped. Everything okay?" Ethan asked.

Victor looked down at the man on the ground. Drool leaked from the corner of his mouth, his eyes unfocused and empty. Victor exhaled slowly. "You might want to take a remote look yourself. I think I… broke him."

There was a brief pause. In the lead Humvee, Amber leaned closer, curiosity piqued.

Ethan tapped commands on his wrist unit. A holographic projection flickered to life, displaying Victor's first-person feed. The slack-jawed, twitching man filled the image.

"Holy hell," Ethan said. "What happened to him?"

"He's breathing fine," Amber added, frowning. "But… is that Rot-Tooth? He kind of looks like him, but…"

"Right guy," Victor said. "Wrong tolerance. I forgot he was baseline human. Took him supersonic without protection. I had a buddy who flew jets, said untrained passengers can get their brains scrambled just from the forces. Facial paralysis, cognitive damage, the works. Sometimes kids come out looking like old men."

"And his condition now?" Ethan asked, voice flat.

"Vitals stable. Brain function's about seventy percent degraded."

"Fuck," Ethan hissed. The irritation on his face had nothing to do with operational failure. "I had a whole list of creative ways to make him regret opening his mouth. Waste of effort. Just bring him back."

The sleazebag had threatened Amber. That alone should have earned something far more personal. A mindless husk could not appreciate proper torment.

"Copy that."

Victor cut the comm, slung the limp body over his shoulder, and lifted off again. This time, he kept his speed comfortably subsonic.

When Victor returned, the convoy had already pulled over. Ethan and the others were standing outside their vehicles. Victor descended and unceremoniously dumped the man at Ethan's feet.

Seeing the pitiful state of him, alive but vacant, did take some of the edge off Ethan's anger.

Without ceremony, Ethan knelt, placed a hand on the man's forehead, and closed his eyes.

"Soul Reading."

He needed the memories. That had always been the point of retrieving the body.

"Urk… gl-gl…" The man gurgled as Ethan's Soul Power punched through his already shattered mental defenses. There was no finesse this time, no restraint. Ethan tore through what remained of the man's consciousness like a crowbar through rotten wood. The body convulsed violently as thin streams of blood and cerebral fluid leaked from his nose, ears, and eyes.

Voss watched, eyes blown wide. A shiver of excitement ran through him.

The Big Boss… is a Soul-Wielder too?

Earlier, Ethan had used a subtle Soul Sense probe on Agent Scott, but that moment had been buried in chaos and smoke. Voss, careful to conceal his own abilities, had not been actively scanning. Now, witnessing a high-level technique like Soul Reading, something he had only encountered in whispered legends, left him shaken.

Soul-Wielders were vanishingly rare. Survivors even more so. And here stood one powerful enough to rip memories apart with brute force, casually commanding Division agents, and that man was his boss.

If the Druid God could dominate a Ninth Division operative like Scott, then his influence clearly reached deep into the supernatural authorities. Did that mean Voss no longer needed to live in hiding? Could he finally seek guidance for the whispers, the compulsions, the so-called omen that haunted his power?

While Voss's thoughts spiraled, Ethan finished. He withdrew his hand, stood up, and wiped his palm on his pants with visible distaste.

Then he drew back his leg and kicked.

The body flew nearly thirty meters before slamming into a roadside boulder with a wet, sickening crunch.

"Too damn easy for you," Ethan muttered.

He turned, ready to tell Blackfin and Voss to get the convoy moving again. The memories, fragmented as they were, had yielded results. Rot-Tooth was just a middleman. Above him sat a true broker, someone with direct access to high-value buyers.

Just as Ethan opened his mouth, Voss moved.

He dropped to his knees with a heavy thud.

"Big Boss… no… Master!"

Thump.

Ethan froze mid-sentence and nearly bit his tongue. "What the hell? Who's your master?!"

He stepped aside, staring down at the kneeling man. Voss was forty-eight, nearly three decades older than him. Old enough to be his father. While Voss technically served under him now, Ethan had never seen him as some disposable subordinate. He had no interest in playing an aloof master figure. Watching a hardened veteran with decades of scars and history kneel and bow before him was profoundly awkward, deeply uncomfortable, and completely unexpected.

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