When you work for the Oleander Syndicate, nothing is undisclosed. You can always find anything and anyone unless you have the right connections. Unless you have the right skills to uncover what has been covered. The United Nations and the English Parliament tried their best to hide Tsubaki Camellia of their abilities. Realizing this, they decided their best throwing off the media and other off their own Police Department on where Tsubaki Camellia is being held now.

In reality, she was being held in the auditorium, seven blocks from the museum where ‘Nani Monai’ is holding her presentation. Tsubaki had her long dark plum hair free, wearing her orange jumpsuit that hid her womanly figure all too well.

She was being held up in an 8 x 8 16-foot-high steel cage, with all the accommodations a prisoner need. Sitting in her bed drawing sketches, she wasn’t expecting any visitors. However, she was expecting an assassination attempt. Adrian wouldn’t spoil this opportunity to make sure Tsubaki is silenced for good.

Being human with nephalem heritage, Tsubaki is a vampyr, a type of nephalem who subsists by feeding on various life essences of the living. Having the same strength and resilience as her ancestors, breaking Tsubaki was and still is a harrowing challenge.

Even sending the previous lead psychiatrist who held her in that godforsaken sanatorium. She quickly discovered the mole and dispatched him outright, sending whoever sent the two timers a gruesome message. Now we see that opportunity, Adrian did send an assassin to kill off Tsubaki once and for all.

Tsubaki looked over her shoulder with her smoldering royal ruby eyes to see someone walking out of the shadows. Her red eyes glowed in the dark as she walked towards the prison cell. It was Natalia Silvestri with her trademark brooding look. Anyone who is anyone would be either aroused or afraid of her. Unfortunately for Natalia, Tsubaki can see right through her. She was feeling unwell.

Natalia’s skin was pale, her eyes had dark circles around them, and she looked like she was about to collapse. And it was true, she couldn’t eat anything. Her nightmares usually kept her up at night. She couldn’t function the way that she did. She begged Adrian to take her back home, so she can rest. But Adrian dragged her back to England to do a straightforward thing: kill Tsubaki Camellia.

Finally, making it to the prison cell, Tsubaki looks at her supposed assassin. She turned her whole body to get a good look at the disheveled Natalia as she gives her honest opinion of how she looks.

Licking her lips with anticipation, Tsubaki were watching him as she smiled devilishly showing off her pearly white fangs, “And here she comes… Are you here to kiss me goodbye? Of course, you are. It seems to me; I have lived out my usefulness. The moment they find her will be the moment I will be dead.”

“Tsubaki…” Natalia grumbled.

“Never mind the fact that you already know who NDI is… your fear, your hatred, and your own cowardice are making you doubt everything you have discovered for yourself,” Tsubaki tossing her notebook aside and climbed out of bed.

“We still can’t find Nani Monai, Tsubaki. And you know where she is. To be honest, you know exactly who she is,” Natalia accused.

“Alastair already found her, Natalia. Don’t worry,” Tsubaki patronized. “And when she comes home, your work will be finished.”

“I know what she looks like,” Natalia said. “Her real name is P. Aeron Morana. She used to be a part of the Nether Elite before me. Adrian trained her. I took her place when she disappeared. She is a wolf girl, Japanese with natural blonde hair and green eyes--”

Tsubaki cuts her off by laughing at her, “and she has been using the same code words to send the entire Oleander Syndicate into a frenzy. So basic. I can’t believe you all fell for it. She did that on purpose. If it weren't for me giving Alastair the same code, we wouldn’t be here. Whoever they are looking for out there, is not the one?”

“Morana used her expertise to assassinate Cyrus Valentina’s--”

“No, this was an organized hit, Natalia. She is not a psychopath with direction. She is a professional,” Tsubaki debunked.

Natalia started to pace back and forth trying to recollect her thoughts, “someone had broken into Nero Valentina’s apartment and brutalized him, stealing most of the family’s--”

“Don’t you dare try to change the subject. That is not important right now,” Tsubaki heckled.

“In seven days, Morana is going to kill the Grandmaster--!”

“Good. Let it happen. Your family gave these people everything, and they still deemed you irrelevant. Let them fail. Let them all feel their own failure!” Tsubaki argued.

Natalia stopped pacing back and forth and looked Tsubaki right in the eye with seething anger, “PLEASE, TSUBAKI! N.D.I. IS OUT THERE--!”

“No, stop lying to yourself! Nani Monai is not real! All of these horrific events were either fabricated or rehearsed! Chaos was another form of control!” Tsubaki called out.

Natalia wanted to cry, but she also wanted to put her fist through a wall. She was so confused; she didn’t know what to do. Apart of her wanted to kill her by a part of her didn’t. She just felt lost, “I... I just…”

“Just what? Bring yourself to do it? You know the answer to the riddle. You have known this for some time. Now I want you to tell me. Say it. You need to say this out loud. You finally need to get this off your chest,” Tsubaki urged.

“We are running out of time…” Natalia exhaustively pleaded.

“YOU are running out of time! I have all the time in the world now, Natty. Either finish the puzzle or leave,” Tsubaki demanded.

Natalia always knew ever since she became a part of the Oleander Syndicate at age 16, it was a tough road for her to travel. She was brutally beaten, she was embarrassed, and she was repeatedly raped in the past five years of her service as a part of the Nether Elite. Her recklessness and her ignorance usually left uncontested and unchecked. It appears her own rash behavior was welcomed and encouraged. Just like many others. Typically, it all led to being a part of a toxic environment that your friends become your worst enemies in an instant.

Where relationships turn into shattered remains beyond repair. She never really trusted anyone after her 18th birthday. She always looked over her shoulder. But apart from that. She never really delved into her own past. Yet, Adrian usually told her the day when she was a baby and was taken in by her. But something was wrong with that story. It all started when she went to Brazil on a mission, only to be sexually assaulted.

Of course, she went to a nearby hospital. They checked her blood records and looked up her birth certificate through Interpol. They found her files, but for some odd reason, they didn’t see the name, Natalia Silvestri. It bothered her ever since that day she left Brazil. Like everything else in her life, she kept it a secret. She buried it, never telling anyone. But, just like everything else in life, it’s going to come out sooner rather than later.

And now, there is no time like the present for Natalia to ultimately come face-to-face with the undeniable truth, “Birthing records that Adrian gave about me, don’t really match…”

“Go on,” Tsubaki urged.

“It made no sense of me being born in February. I should control water, not lightning. My whole spiritual alignment is wrong. As I can channel lightning, my chronological map should set me back five more months. Hers was fake, those are my first thoughts. Only to find out, my birth certificate was fake,” Natalia admitted.

“And who is she, Natalia? What did the birth certificate say?” Tsubaki asked.

Instead, she avoided the question altogether and talked about the person’s life she ruined, “When Alastair was a teacher’s assistant, I was one of the students. He worked with computers and taught kids who were in love with computers… Me, not so much.”

“Any particular reason you are telling me this, Natalia?”

“I’ve had dreams about this girl and him,” Natalia said as this intrigued Tsubaki, even more, when she continued. “I didn’t care much about him. Nor anyone. I keep on having dreams about this little girl who looked like me. She was so rebellious is because she didn’t speak to anyone like me. Only to realize she spoke two languages: Spanish and Latin. She would even curse people out in her languages.”

“Obviously, she had a lot on her mind,” Tsubaki concurred.

“Usually, people had given up on her. Until one day, Alastair… In my dream, he responded back to her in Spanish. You should’ve seen her ears perk up when somebody acknowledged her for the first time. Her eyes were welling up, her tail was wagging so happily, she even smiled. After class, she would come to him alone with her boisterous attitude like a Princess and converse with him in Spanish. She was only 10 years of age.”

“I’m listening,” Tsubaki smiled.

Natalia starts to cry, knowing this will lead up to, “as a teenager, she filled out quite nicely. Alastair helped her with her English over the years. They started to talk more about other things outside of the syndicate. Not once, she started to act up when he was around. I guess you can say it was love.”

“When did it become more intimate?”

“On her 18th birthday,” Natalia scowls. “She used to wrap around his arm when we were walking together in public. They went shopping, and he would be her inspiration for what outfits to wear. We were good to see movies in Spanish. Even went to soccer games.”

It was apparent to Tsubaki; Aurora Rose’s real memories were Natalia’s “nightmares.” She didn’t know what to do with this imposter at this point, “When did your nightmares about Alastair stop?”

“They didn’t stop!” Natalia snapped. “It all became worse when Alastair had to go with Olivia and his rat-faced sister. She was devastated that he was going to leave her alone like everyone else. She took it harder than everyone else! But, Alastair promised he was going to come back and pick up where we left off…”

“And when he came back?” Tsubaki questioned as Natalia shrugged.

“Nothing. The dream stopped. I kept on dreaming about this woman with red wings on her back, screaming at me in Latin. It was horrifying the things I saw. So bad, I had to take pills and alcohol to numb the pain.”

“The light in her eyes was gone. So, did her smile. Everything I liked about her was gone…” Tsubaki reflected. “On your 18th birthday, what happened?”

“I was drunk. The party was insane. During my super 18th birthday party, I want to Alastair’s room. He was always a lightweight when it came to alcohol. He claimed that I started speaking Spanish again, demanding that I wanted my birthday present from him…” Natalia admitted, crying as she hung her head in shame.

“You guys had sex… It was consensual…” Tsubaki confirmed. “Did you use protection?”

“Yes, he knew what he was doing. I knew what I was doing. But we were too hammered to see Cordelia with a camcorder, taping everything. And yes, I helped him put it on…” Natalia tries to take a deep breath to calm down, but her body quaked in fear. “On that night, he told me he’d never loved anyone so much in all his life. It was such a beautiful and amazing marvel. And he missed me…”

“They had little nicknames for each other?”

“Perro Grande. That’s ‘Big Dog’ in Spanish, because of his height and size,” Natalia felt disgusting.

“And what did he call her, Natalia?” Tsubaki pressured.

Natalia tries to choke out the words, “He called her… Rosa for short… Yet she… The woman called herself Aurora Rose.”

Hearing this admission brought great comfort and vindication to Tsubaki. Knowing after five years, she was wrongfully accused of being a psychopath only for the person she accused of being fake, but having that same person admitting she was fake.

Thank you, Alastair, thank you very much…

Natalia’s eyes and cheeks are red and puffy from crying. Natalia knew her life was probably a lie, but she had other problems she had to deal with, “Nani Monai is out there right now, and we need to stop her before she kills again. Who are the next targets?”

Tsubaki could have quickly told Natalia that her so-called mentor, had already thrown her own team under the bus. More like lambs being led to the slaughter. This was all a well-orchestrated plan by Adrian.

However, Tsubaki had seen this mile away and planned a well-orchestrated plan of her own. A strategy that would generally secure her freedom. Not only she had the best of the Oleander syndicate confess to the disappearance of Sudbina Novak’s daughter, Aurora Rose Novak. But she artistically put together the person who was responsible for the murders spanning two days ago. It was that, and she had her prison cell rigged with hidden camcorders and microphones at her request, knowing that Natalia would try her best to find Tsubaki first.

The counterattack was brilliant.

Realizing that she had won her freedom, somebody was coming into the room with armored guards. The two people who were heading this march were Xerxes Valentina’s lawyer Eric von Kato and a tall Eurasian lynx Kemonomimi wearing blue dress pants and a matching sweater named Lucy Crawford.

Tsubaki looked over Natalia’s shoulder and watched the group, marching towards them both, “Mrs. Crawford and Eric… I think we're done here…”

“As a matter of fact, you are Tsubaki. And yes, you have earned your freedom,” Lucy arriving at the prison cell with her armored guards and Eric. “Okay, we got everything. Take your leave, Silvestri.”

“Who are the targets, Tsubaki?” Natalia pleaded.

“Get out!” Lucy ordered the armored guards to escort Natalia forcefully from the prison cell.

“Please, Miss Silvestri. You have to go,” Eric kindly urged.

“You watch your back out there, Natty. Not hustle, but not run free,” Tsubaki heckled.

“Who are the targets, Tsubaki?!” Natalia hollered.

“Hey, Natalia, your belated birthday present,” Tsubaki beckoned as she was holding an envelope. Natalia broke free and ran back to the prison cell, grabbing the envelope. “It was nice knowing you, Natalia.”

Retrieving the envelope, the armored guards restrained Natalia and forcibly moved her from the premises as Tsubaki looked on.