No answer.
Only Mercer's breathing shallow, tight, and wet.Kind of breathing a man makes when his body is failing, but he refuses to admit it.The kind of breathing that comes from rage being outpaced by fear.
Jessy lay on top of him, the thorn still buried in muscle, his chest heaving like a faulty pump. Blood slicked his left cheek, running into his ear. His ribs burned with every intake, fractured beneath cracked skin and bruised nerves.
He could taste iron.
His fingers trembled where they gripped the vine-wrapped haft of the weapon.
Not from adrenaline.
From control.
If he let go now, he'd fall. And if he fell...he might not get back up.
Seconds passed.
Long ones actually.
Mercer didn't move.
Not to fight. Not to breathe deeper.He just stared one eye blown wide open, the other swollen, dazed like he wasn't looking at Jessy anymore, but at something further back. Something darker.
Jessy rolled off him.
Every inch of motion was pain.His side screamed.His vision blurred.The air felt too thin, like it didn't want to sit in his lungs.
But he made it to one knee.Swallowed blood.Lifted the comm.
"Target neutralized. Situation stable. Request extraction."
His voice was flat.
No tremor.
No celebration.
He shut his eyes.
And smiled.
Not out of joy.
Not pride.
Because Rank 36 just lost.
And he still didn't know how.
***
They pulled Mercer out before the sun rose.
The exfil van rumbled like a dying generator, wheels thumping through every pothole like a heartbeat failing in reverse. Inside, medics hovered over the sealed containment unit, patching blood vessels, regulating fluid loss, administering neurostims.
Mercer didn't speak.
Couldn't.
His leg was braced at the thigh, bones held together with synthetic foam.His torso was wrapped in compression bandages.His jaw hung slack.
His pulse was irregular.His mouth still tasted like dirt and iron.
Across from him, Jessy sat silent.
No cuffs.No escort.No weapons left on him.
Just the boy who won, and the man who didn't understand why.
At the compound, when Jess got back, no one clapped.
No one greeted him.
Not even a glance from the guards on rotation. Just tightened grips on rifles and eyes that slid away the moment he looked up.
Jessy limped across the compound yard, each step echoing with the soft squelch of blood-soaked soles. His coat hung off one shoulder. His left hand pressed to the tape binding his ribs.
The blood on his collar had gone black.
The sweat had dried into salt lines.
Only one person waited for him inside.
Goro.
He leaned against the wall, chewing gum, blade hilts poking from his belt like teeth.
He didn't smile.Didn't clap.
Just nodded once.
"Guess the rumors were true, then!"
Jessy didn't answer.
"I heard Mercer scream."
He looked at Jessy. looked very intensely.
"Didn't even know the bastard could scream."
Still, Jessy said nothing.
Not yet.
"You good?"
Jessy's head turned.
His voice came out quietly. Not empty just… scraped clean.
"No."
"But I'm awake now."
Behind mirrored glass in his office, Akula stood still as a monument in ash.
One gloved hand tapped a soft rhythm on his forearm.The other hovered near the playback controls.
His eyes never left the screen.
Jessy.Dragging himself off Mercer's body.Half-dead.Half-awake.Alive.
Too alive.
Tessa stood beside him, arms crossed, chin tilted forward.
She wasn't blinking.
Akula spoke.
"That's the boy from the pit."
Tessa didn't respond.
"You told me he was unstable. Low threat. Immature."
Her jaw shifted. Tightened.
"He is."
Akula rewound the footage.
Paused it right as Jessy drove the thorn-spear into Mercer's leg, twisted, and whispered something that never got picked up on audio.
"Mercer's leg isn't supposed to bend like that," Akula said softly.
Silence.
Then Tessa murmured:
"That wasn't power."
Akula's lips barely moved.
"Worse."
"That was instinct refined by suffering."
It didn't take long.
Whispers spread like blood in water.
In the barracks.
In the yard.
In the conditioning halls where steel screamed against stone and bruises were traded like currency.
No one said it out loud.
But they all knew.
"He used poison from the walls."
"He didn't land a single clean hit, Mercer just… fell."
"He bled Rank 36 and vanished into the fog."
They didn't call him Jessy anymore.
They started calling him Julian.
The numberless operative.
The kill with no count.
The rookie who broke a machine built to win.
Later That Night...
The dorm room was ice.
Just a cot. A cracked mirror. A sink that leaked even when turned off.
Jessy sat on the edge of the bed, shirtless, wrapping gauze around his ribs with one hand, blood still dried along his spine like old ink. His body looked more like shrapnel than skin.
Welts. Bruises.Veins popped like wires through paper-thin flesh.One knuckle was still split from slamming into glass.
His hands trembled.
Not from pain.
From the memory of how easy it had been.
He remembered Mercer's face.
Not angry. Not furious.
Afraid.
That's what stuck with him.
Not the strike. Not the blood.
The moment a god looked up at a nobody and realized too late:
He wasn't a god.
And Jessy wasn't prey.
He hadn't survived.
He'd chosen not to die.
The door creaked open.
Goro.
"Knock-knock," he said sarcastically.
He tossed something onto the bed.
A small metal tag.
Cold. Smooth. Weighted just enough to mean something.
"I brought you a present."
Jessy picked it up.
Turned it over.
No number.
Just a word.
JULIAN.
He stared at it for a long time.
Felt its edges.
Then whispered:
"...Thanks."
Goro grinned.
"Careful. Wear that and you might start believing it."
Jessy's grip closed around the tag.
'I don't need to believe anything. I just need them to keep underestimating me.'