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“Any clue who posted it?”

“No. They masked their IP address and deleted the account after dropping the comment. The Purple Witches released a statement saying they’d track it down, but I doubt even they can pull it off this time.”

The Purple Witches was an all-female social media collective formed against the strict regime of the White Soldiers. A group the government despised yet could never suppress. They earned their moniker because they could dismantle even the most impenetrable firewalls as if casting a spell, and almost every member attached purple emojis whenever they posted.

“How could someone that important stay under the radar until this year?” I muttered suspiciously. “It’s not like research on the Umbra element just started yesterday.”

“It’s been over ten years,” Prisne said, correcting me. “The person who leaked that link must have an issue with today. Maybe they didn’t like Raymond’s video being shown to the public.”

“Who could it be?”

“Jealous?”

“No way. Raymond probably has tons of fans.”

“Or a girlfriend.”

The thought of him sharing intimate moments with someone else over the past four years sent a vein throbbing at my temple.

“And this so-called girlfriend fell so head over heels for him that she became Mars’ finest hacker to protect his reputation? Well, that didn’t work out—now everyone thinks he’s a fucking criminal.”

A loud voice called out “Prisne!” from her end, followed by the rustle of the phone.

“Girl, I’m so sorry—” I cut in immediately.

“It’s fine. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

When the phone disconnected, I let out a sigh, but it instantly triggered a cough. Only then did I notice what I’d been inhaling. Thick orange fumes spilled into the air, swirling around me like smoke from a witch’s cauldron. I narrowed my eyes, and kept running. This time, toward Prisne’s house. I should’ve gone back to the agency and make a statement, but at that moment, I didn’t care at all.

I needed to find him before anyone else. To talk to him. I wasn’t going to leave him alone on this path. Not again.

I had always managed to deal with everything on my own, winning every battle inside me. But I could never win against him.

It was pathetic, I knew. Yet if I did nothing, I wouldn’t be able to breathe easily. I was going to appease the little girl inside me, the one burning with guilt, desperate to make up for every moment I had failed to be kind to him. I was going to pull him out of the darkness that I, too, had helped create.

With the key to the labyrinth only in my possession, who else could save him?

CHAPTER 8

Mina

“Sleeping pills addicts didn’t influence by the acid rain?”

Prisne asked in shock, and I merely nodded. We had been investigating this for days. Ever since Krivan’s speech and the wild news broke—claiming that Raymond Loxton, formerly known as Raymond Kern, was maintaining his transhuman life by leeching off the citizens’ taxes—the planet had been in turmoil. Everyone had an opinion; some were already trying to take sides, while others were turning the situation to their advantage… Okay, maybe there had been a bit too much hype, but even I didn’t want to chase the stories this time.

Helping Silvia and Raymond was my priority.

Silvia’s mutated body had been in intensive care for days. Yet there was no progress because no sleeping pills had been detected in her system. At least, not a known one. Even though the drugs had mutated, there was no trace of the drug’s basic composition in her body.

And now, this rain issue had come up, too. At the 12-Hour Agency, we had been discussing how the 4th-degree mutated people wandering around the Buzz were surprisingly unaffected by the acid rain two days ago. However, this remained one of those rare cases that couldn’t be solved within twelve hours.

As for the Umbra element, a deluge of cases had come in. Some were resolved, meaning we proved those who claimed to have found it wrong. Beyond that, though, there was nothing else we could do.

“Hmm… So your father wrote this article? That’s strange, why didn’t he continue?”

Prisne continued. Now, we were on Kafe Street in the Buzz right now. This neighborhood was more peaceful than the others. Teachers who had been forced into retirement because of their political views, or writers whose books had been banned and blacklisted, lived here. We could also find newspapers here that were out of print and no longer in circulation.

Our main mission here, however, was to investigate the Umbra element. Prisne had devised this plan when she learned that the person who made the sleeping pills was connected to the Umbra element. Yet no matter how much research we did on Umbra, we couldn’t find anything of value.