SSS-Class Profession: The Path to Mastery

The door clanged shut with the finality of a guillotine.

I stayed slumped over the table longer than necessary, listening to the faint buzz of the light and the low murmur of boots outside the steel door. My cheek rested against cool metal, one eye watching the red pulse under my collar—Anthony's signal, faint as a whisper, but there.

Good. He was here.

Now came the waiting. But I wasn't going to waste it.

Connor wanted me as a tool. To destroy and burn the Masked Syndicate to ash from within. On the surface, it made sense. If you couldn't kill your enemy, convert them. Especially if that enemy had the same resources, same intelligence and the potential of being three moves ahead.

If I were him, I'd do the same.

But that wasn't the part bothering me.

What truly gnawed at me—like rust at the edge of steel—was how they knew. Not just that I existed, but who I was. The identities. The history. The mythos I'd crafted so carefully.

The interview couldn't have been the leak. That was too recent. Too controlled. And Anthony had eyes everywhere—he would've caught a breach that early.

So that left two possibilities.

Mark?