Chapter 487: It’s All Your Fault!
Mika let out a deep breath of relief.
"You should have said this from the very beginning."
He tapped the daughter’s neck gently, making her faint instantly, then handed her over to Nadia.
Nadia immediately embraced the child as if she were her own, relief washing over her. She had truly feared she was about to watch Mika slaughter an innocent girl right in front of her eyes.
Meanwhile, Mika approached the broken man, who felt his entire world had collapsed.
"This is all your fault, you know. If you had said this from the very beginning, none of this would have happened."
He pointed at the grandmother’s corpse.
"Your mother, she would still be alive. You’d be eating her pancakes tomorrow morning, just like you have every Sunday since you were a child. You wouldn’t even notice the difference."
The man shook his head, crying harder as his body trembled.
Mika then pointed at the brother’s torn remains.
"Your brother, you’d be drinking with him tonight. Talking about old times. Laughing about the fights you used to have." Mika shook his head. "But instead, he’s in two pieces on the floor."
The man’s body shook even more violently.
Finally, Mika picked up the wife’s severed head.
"And your wife." He held it above the man’s face, letting him see those dead eyes one last time. "You betrayed her. You let her die. She loved you, she trusted you and you gave her up like she was nothing."
The man choked on a sob.
"I’m sure she never imagined, not in her worst nightmares, that her own husband would sacrifice her for a mission." Mika’s voice was soft. Almost pitying. "Even now, I’m sure she hates you. She despises you. She wishes she had never met you."
"In fact..."
He said, his voice shifting into something almost eerie.
"...I think I can hear her saying it right now."
To everyone’s utter shock, Mika pushed his hand into head’s throat and slid it all the way into her mouth to control it, treating the severed head like a grotesque puppet.
He made it ’speak’ right over the man’s face in a distorted, rage-filled voice:
"I hate you!...I hate you!...I hate you so much! It’s because of you that everything happened like this!"
"It’s because of you I died such a miserable death! If I didn’t marry you, if I didn’t give birth to your child, none of this would have happened! I would never have been living like this right now!"
"I trusted you! I gave myself up to you and what did you do?! You killed me! You killed me, you bastard!"
Mika pressed the head closer, almost smooshing the wife’s face into the husband’s.
"I HATE YOU FOR THAT! I HATE YOU SO MUCH!"
"I HOPE YOU DIE A HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE DEATH! I HOPE YOU’RE ROTTING IN HELL ALONG WITH ME!"
The head cackled—a horrible, high-pitched sound that echoed off the walls.
And...the man screamed.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH—!"
He screamed and screamed, his voice raw, his mind breaking, until he had nothing left. Then he sobbed, his body wracked with convulsions, his hands clawing at the floor.
"GAAAH—! GRGKKK—! NAAAAHNN—!"
Nadia couldn’t watch anymore.
"MIKA!"
Her voice cut through the chaos.
"ENOUGH!"
He stopped. The head went still. He looked at her and for a moment, something flickered in his eyes. Something almost like shame.
He set the head down gently and stood up.
"You heard him." He said to the military officials huddled in the corner. "He’s ready to talk. Get everything—locations, trigger mechanisms, contingency plans. Everything."
The official didn’t dare argue. Terrified of Mika, he and several others quickly moved to the broken bomber and began questioning him.
The man spoke in a hoarse, empty voice, like he had completely lost everything.
Meanwhile, Mika walked over to a nearby table, poured himself some water, and sat down with a calm look on his face, as if nothing horrific had just happened.
Nadia approached him, her steps hesitant. Mika glanced up.
"What is it, Nadia? Are you gonna scold me right now?" He showed a expectant smile. "Or are you gonna berate me and tell me that what I did is wrong? That I shouldn’t have done such an act?"
But to his surprise, Nadia shook her head.
"No, Mika. What you did...it was necessary." Her voice was quiet. "Hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake. Compared to that, the lives of four guilty conspirators...it’s not even a comparison."
She paused, memories surfacing—dark memories, from the war, from the years of fighting.
"I’ve made similar choices. More than I’d like to admit." Her voice cracked. "I don’t have the right to judge you."
Mika turned to look at her.
"Then why do you look so sad?"
She met his eyes.
"Because I’m disappointed in myself." Tears welled in her eyes. "I fought this war, I dedicated my life to this cause so that my family wouldn’t have to go through things like this."
"So that children like that little girl could grow up in a world where they didn’t have to witness such horrors."
She looked at the unconscious child in the arms of a nearby aide.
"But I failed. I failed you. I failed her. I failed everyone."
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"No matter what I do, no matter how hard I work, I feel like I’ll never achieve my goal. The world will never be truly peaceful."
"There will always be suffering. Always be death. Always be children who lose their parents to violence."
Mika stared at her for a moment.
Then he laughed.
It wasn’t a cruel laugh. It wasn’t mocking. It was almost...fond.
"Of course you’ll never achieve that, Nadia." He set down his glass. "A world without suffering? A paradise where nothing bad ever happens? That doesn’t exist. It never has, and it never will."
Her face fell.
"As long as good exists, evil will exist too. Trying to create a utopia is a fool’s errand. It will never happen."
She looked away, her heart heavy.
"But that doesn’t mean what you’re doing is meaningless."
She looked back at him in surprise.
"Because of you, lives that would have been lost are being saved. People who should have died are alive because of the work you’ve done."
He took her hand. "You haven’t saved everyone. You never will. But you’ve saved a lot of people. And they’re grateful for it."
He squeezed her fingers.
"So don’t give up, Nadia. What you’re doing is important. People are counting on you."
A small smile tugged at his lips as he added,
"Besides, you’re probably the most honest politician in the world. I’d hate to see you replaced by some corrupt fool who only cares about lining his own pockets."
This made Nadia smile a little despite herself.
She had felt like her entire life—all the blood she had spilled, all the lives she had taken, all the suffering she had endured was for the sake of an unreachable peace.
But hearing Mika’s words lifted a heavy weight from her heart. She felt grateful, deeply so, for having him by her side.
No matter the situation, no matter how dark things became, as long as she was with Mika, she felt she could persevere through anything.
She wanted to hug him. To hold him and thank him and never let him go.
But before she could, an official rushed over.
"Lady Nadia! Sir!" He bowed hastily to Mika, his face pale.
"The prisoner has given us three locations. We’ve already dispatched teams to investigate and begun evacuation protocols throughout the capital."
Mika’s eyes narrowed. "Three? There are six bombs. What about the other three?"
The official swallowed hard.
"H-He says he only knows about those three. He wasn’t supposed to know even that much—he overheard something he shouldn’t have. The other three...he has no information about them."
Mika’s expression went cold.
The official hurried on, in case Mika lashed out on him.
"B-But he did give us the location of their secret headquarters! If we’re going to find answers anywhere, it’ll be there."
He handed a paper to Nadia.
She glanced at the address, then at Mika.
He was already standing, pulling back his hair, loosening his collar.
"I was just saying earlier that I prefer my scooter..."
He said, a hint of amusement in his voice.
"...but I suppose this is urgent. We’ll fly."
Nadia understood. She stepped behind him, wrapped her arms around his waist, and launched into the air.
Whoosh!
The moment they were gone, the hall let out a collective sigh of relief.
Officials collapsed into chairs, trembling. Some wept. Others simply sat in stunned silence, staring at the bodies being discreetly removed by security personnel.
They had been terrified of the bomber. Of what he could do, of the destruction he threatened.
But that boy—that demon in human skin was far, far worse.
And as they sat in the blood-spattered hall, waiting for news, waiting for the bombs to be found, waiting for the nightmare to end—
They all wondered the same thing.
Who was he? Where had he come from? And what has Nadia fed to him to raise such a monster?