Up until now, it was just Tristan and the newly-appointed lieutenant in the room. The cubicles around them were empty, with sprawled papers and disassembled rifles laid along pearl-white plastic desks, still waiting for their negligent owners.

A long silence had passed between the boss and his subordinate.

“Tristan Clay!”

The door on the far side of the faculty room burst open, and a man’s voice shouted. The man and a squad behind him trooped down the aisle of cubicles before finally coming upon the long table that had previously served as the faculty’s conference table.

Behind a small desk just beyond the conference table, Tristan was shocked. All he could do was watch the squad fan out into a line to confront him. The man who had led them here was no other than one of Tristan’s disappeared lieutenants.

“Charlie? What’s going on?” Tristan asked.

“We, second platoon of the Guard Group, are hereby placing Tristan Clay under arrest.”

“What?!” Tristan sprung on his feet in indignation.

As several of the militia approached Tristan to restrain him, Charlie said,

“Good job keeping him here, Max.”

“I just sort of stood there, though…”

The newly-appointed lieutenant scratched his head and joined his comrades.

What could Tristan do? Nothing.

The guards pulled him off his seat and pushed him against the wall. They bound his hands behind him with cheap plastic twine before escorting him out of the faculty room.

The first thing that greeted Tristan when the door to the outside opened was a member of the Scout Group. She unflinchingly eyed Tristan.

“No trouble?” she asked.

“No incident, ma’am,” Charlie replied.

Wait—when did this guy become her subordinate?

Tristan couldn’t fathom how this could have happened. His men had been kidnapped, and then turned against him, all within 24 hours. Not only that, but even the grunts didn’t seem to mind.

“There’s no way all of them turned against me…” he thought. He had spent far too long drumming up support just so that this exact situation wouldn’t happen. Was he being too conceited?

His mind scrambled to look for some hope of resistance. He was sure that at least some of his men were fiercely loyal towards him—that’s right, it was only Charlie who had some reservations about me! The others secretly expressed their support towards Tristan’s takeover, and that was how he had managed to do so in the first place.

By gaining the respect of 3 of the 4 lieutenants that led Diliman’s Guard Group, and in the end convincing them that James and Karlson were unjust murderers, he was able to expel them, though at the cost of the rest of the Scout Group.

It was regrettable to expel such skilled people, but he had strong suspicions that they were accomplices to Aurelia’s murder—or so he convinced himself over and over.

All that, and yet, how did it get to this point? It didn’t matter to him whoever was leading Diliman. As long as James and Karlson were taken out of the picture, justice would be served, and Diliman would be safer for it.

He knew the scout who was shadowing them as they marched him out of the College of Arts and Sciences. That one’s name was Dianne. She might have been wearing a mask now, but her prosthetic arm was unmistakeable, and one-of-a-kind.

For now, he decided to wait and see what sort of circus they had prepared for him.

***

There was a small crowd that watched him march up the Library’s steps.

“No way, it’s really him!”

“Really came back to bite him that fast, huh?”

The crowd’s careless words struck his pride. He couldn’t keep his chin up as they marched up the steps and then down the walkway to the double door entrance of the Library.

On either side of those double doors, a handful of sentries were keeping another crowd cordoned off.

“Look, it’s him!”

“No matter how you look at it, four days is just way too fast of a turnover, isn’t it?”

“Maybe he was that bad at it?”

The onlookers watched Tristan disappear into the Library.

The moment he entered, the previously noisy room became quiet. His and his escorts’ footsteps echoed in the Library’s lobby. On the left and right, members of the Guard Group had been mixed in with those from Farming, Medical, and Crafting.

When he reached the end of the aisle, he was greeted by the members of the Scout Group, all dressed in their mission attire—waterproof boots, synthetic outdoor pants, same for the long-sleeve shirt, and a mesh vest full of pockets.

Strange. He could’ve sworn that he’d sent the scouts away in their housewear.

That they were also all fully-armed with spears and handguns was another weird thing.

“Oh, Dianne! Nice of you to bring him in,” said an older man. His hairs were a mix of white, silver, and blond, but his physique had not deteriorated in the slightest.

“It was a boring job, Michael,” Dianne replied, waving her prosthetic. “Refreshing to have a walk around the place again, I guess.”

The guards handed Tristan to Michael, then Michael marched him up to the foot of the very same stage from which he had one-sidedly convicted and expelled the scouts.

There, he was made to sit on a chair, facing the crowd of people before him, all visibly impatient and anxious for what was to come.

It was at this point that Tristan spotted them: the other three lieutenants. They were seated in the front row, somewhat obscured by the line of scouts. Their faces were grim, and their hands had been bound together.

“Good morning, Tristan.”

James’ voice broke the silence. He had emerged from the side of the stage. Karlson lurked right behind him, almost as if being his killer shadow.

James steadily approached him, and Tristan looked up at him.

“Let’s start your social execution.”

They marched Tristan’s lieutenants up the stage.

“I… only followed Tristan because I thought he was going to win,” the lieutenant said. His chin was too heavy for him to lift.

“Same here.” “Same.”

The other lieutenants followed. With the people in front of them as witnesses, they confessed.

“Hey Tristan, you hear that? You got bought in by a bunch of opportunists,” James quietly said. It wasn’t something that needed to be announced. Wrecking Tristan’s confidence was, after all, one of James’s primary aims here.

To that, Tristan said nothing.

James turned back to the lieutenants. “And you guys fired off more bullets than poor Tristan himself could count, didn’t you?” he said. The lieutenants grimaced at the notion.

As all this occurred, Tristan figured—Ah, well, guess I won’t even have a chance to say my word…

“So, Tristan, I’m giving you a chance to explain yourself,” James said, standing beside him, in a voice loud enough to be heard by the audience.

Tristan looked at him wide-eyed.

“What—why would you?” he replied without thinking. James was surprised and stopped in his tracks.

“What… ‘Why would I’?”

The two eyed each other.

“Wait—don’t lump me in with you, man,” James replied.

“Why does it sound like you’re making me out to be the asshole here…”

“Because you are?”

“I—okay.”

While this exchange occurred, those in the audience—in particular, a group of older ladies—were confused by another thing.

“Hey, don’t the two of them actually seem sort of close?”

“Wait, you didn’t know?”

“What?”

“Tristan served with the scouts early on, you know?”

"“Really?!”" replied everyone within earshot. Tried as they did to hush themselves, they drew the attention of half of the spectating audience.

“Yeah! Though I don’t know if they were actually close, though…”

“Love-hate?” another remarked.

“Probably.”

At this, everyone nodded in satisfied agreement with their theory.

However, as a collateral result, that theory sparked more theories in the surrounding groups, and the lobby soon livened up into an orchestra of hushed discussions.

Meanwhile, Tristan struggled to think of a way to convincingly accuse James of murder.

…which he soon gave up on.

It was then that James leaned in. “Between you and me,” he whispered, “Why? I don’t get it.”

If it was just going to be between them, then…

“You killed her,” Tristan whispered back.

James was taken aback by this. A closer look at Tristan, and the man had shed a single tear.

—It’s really about that, huh?

He stepped away from Tristan, and, with the lightest footsteps so that the stage didn’t creak and draw everyone’s attention, he approached Karlson.

“He knows,” he whispered.

At this, Karlson just barely managed to kill his emotions. “What do you wanna do with him?” he asked.

For Tristan, the obvious ending was that he would be killed.

James came back to him. His steps were loud enough that it drew people’s attention. The play had finally resumed.

His objective was to socially execute Tristan—to strip him of his credibilities and his respect, and prevent him from ever taking power ever again. Maybe for the sake of the fact that they were once close, or for the simple fact of preserving available manpower, he had no interest in actually killing him. Regardless, he needed to publicly address Tristan’s cause for rebellion.

Though, that Tristan still resented James for putting a bullet in Aurelia’s head was not something he had originally expected. Nevertheless, he had a plan for that, too.

“It was for that kind of reason, huh?” James said.

His voice was only loud enough to be heard by those closest to the stage.

“I’m gonna be executed, aren’t I?” Tristan replied.

The audience heard that one clearly. They started murmuring.

“Like that… I guess you’ll have to die.”

As if on cue, the stage’s floor at Tristan’s feet burst into a shower of splinters. A figure landed from the dust cloud, the cloth from its attire elegantly breaking its outline as if becoming that of a flower. It grabbed hold of Tristan, while those with fast hands in the room went for their weapons.

Tristan felt an arm squeeze around his waist, then he felt his feet leave the earth.

“Wait! Hold fire!” Karlson shouted.

Too late, however, and several people started firing at the assailant with handguns. If it was a person, it should have at least felt those rounds hit, but it had sprinted down the aisle like it was nothing. Several men chased after it, leaving behind a scene of stunned wonder for those in the Library’s lobby.

“Fan out and look for other infiltrators!” Karlson shouted. Charlie started ordering the guards, while the scouts paired up by themselves and split up to comb the Library.

In the chaos of the escape, Tristan managed to look up at the figure and its long, golden hair. Even if all he saw was the hair, his first thought escaped his mouth.

“… Aurelia?”

***

Later reports suggested that the figure jumped down from the Library’s walkway, falling nearly two stories before landing and, without pause, sprinting off in the direction of the Lagoon, all with Tristan under one arm.