CHAPTER 156: Insurrection-25

CHAPTER 156: Insurrection-25

Enid Corp's office smelled of leather and cleanliness; the walls were paneled in a deep gray that absorbed the light, leaving only the focused brightness of the glass desk. Phoenix was sitting in one of the expensive leather armchairs, his posture relaxed but with a contained tension in his fingers. The scar on his face gave him an air that needed no further adornment to intimidate. Enid, standing by the window, looked at him with her usual cold distance, though her eyes betrayed a dangerous curiosity.

"Tell me," Enid began, turning to sit opposite him. "You have enough evidence to sink Helena in anyone's eyes. But what's your plan, besides dumping that information to the public? How do you destroy her without the system devouring us too?"

Phoenix watched her for a moment, like someone deciding whether to share a secret or a war strategy. Finally, he let out a half-smile, not kind but not cold either.

"Yes," he answered. "There's more. I don't plan to limit myself to showing the world who she is. I have a two-part plan."

Enid arched an eyebrow. Curiosity transformed into complete attention.

"Speak," she requested.

Phoenix rested his forearms on the armrests of the chair and leaned forward slightly, like someone taking the floor at a negotiation table.

"First," he said in a low voice, "there's a piece that owes me outstanding debts. Someone who's thought themselves untouchable for a long time. The first step is to make them pay. Not for gratuitous revenge: to balance the books. If we remove that person from the board, we destabilize the protection network covering Helena."

Enid closed her eyes for a second, evaluating the logic behind the idea.

"And the second part?" she asked, not losing the thread.

"Afterwards," Phoenix continued, "we go for Helena. With fewer allies, with the structure rusted by the fall of the first, we'll expose her. Not just with data: with operational proof, witnesses, financial movements. We'll do it in a way they can't reverse or manipulate the narrative. But for that second phase, I need something more."

Enid tilted her head, waiting for the condition.

"What do you need?" she inquired.

Phoenix looked ahead with that firmness he had when speaking of actions, not promises.

"A bit more of the Über Lycan serum. Nothing else. With one responsible dose, I find the first necessary piece, and with further planning, we can deliver the final blow against Helena."

A heavy silence fell in the office, broken only by the distant murmur of the city. Enid placed her hands on the armrests of her chair and looked at him with a mix of calculation and something that could be called contained tenderness.

"Alright," she said finally, her cold voice reclaiming its place.

*Private Cemetery - Outskirts of Munich.* The rain had stopped not long ago; the air smelled of damp earth and cut grass. Among aligned cypress trees and gravel paths, Bruno walked with measured steps. His coat still clung to his body from the recent heat of the fight, but his movements were slow, as if each step cost him more than physical energy.

Arriving at the plot where two new tombstones lay—one with the name Matthias, the other with Mara's—he stopped. He leaned on the shovel stuck in the ground beside him, looked at the stone with indifference at first, then let his hand fall with more force than necessary. He closed his eyes, inhaled, and with no company but the sound of the wind, began to speak quietly, to himself and to those who might still hear.

"When I joined the Strauss Squad," he said, "Helena promised me three things. Three words that, at that time, sounded like a mission, a reward, a destiny. She said I'd have a family; that I'd fight against the strongest; and that, by the purity of my blood, I'd become the strongest of all."

His voice wasn't loud; it held a contained gravity, as if each word were another brick in a wall he didn't want to collapse.

"Family," he repeated, with a bitter gesture. "She spoke of dinners, of names that would protect me, of looks that wouldn't judge. I believed in that family. I believed I was part of something that wasn't just order and discipline. I thought that when the night was long, there would be people willing to lend a hand. Look where those hands ended up."

He approached Matthias's headstone and touched the stone with his fingertips, as if testing a cold he didn't dare fully accept.

"Fight against the strong," he continued. "That was the promise I liked. I come from a place where you either fight or you're swallowed. They sold me war as an art; discipline as the cradle of honor. They told me there would be opponents here worth fighting, that every blow would have meaning because it would break someone who truly deserved it."

Bruno clenched his jaw. A sound came from his throat that could have been a laugh, but there was no humor in it.

"And the purity of blood," he murmured with disdain. "They sold it to me as a guarantee. 'You are special,' they said; 'you are superior.' They fed me that word like it was a safe-conduct pass. And I accepted it because I needed to believe I belonged to something that justified me. Now I know that 'purity' was a label; a sticker used to select soldiers to use up to the last cartridge."

He fell silent for a moment, looking at the letters engraved in the stone. The rain began again in the form of small drops that spattered the headstone and the earth.

"It was all a fucking joke," he said finally, without dramatics. "A joke from the boss. Empty promises that made me believe I had a place. She promised family and gave me orders. She promised a fight and gave me traps. She promised greatness and left me with hands full of other people's dead."

The rage wasn't explosive; it was more like a cold current running through his veins. He wasn't seeking revenge at that moment; he was trying to understand how he had come to accept what now disgusted him.