Rina moved first.
She crossed the room in four steps, grabbed Kenji by the collar of his jacket and pulled him out of the chair to his feet. It wasn't violent. It was the controlled force of someone who had been carrying fear for two days and needed somewhere to put it.
Kenji let her. He didn't resist.
"You disappeared," she said. Her voice was flat and precise and devastatingly quiet. "Two days. Nothing."
"I know."
"I checked my phone every four minutes."
Something moved across Kenji's face. Genuine pain. The first real emotion Kazuki had seen from him outside of a fight.
"I know," Kenji said again. "I'm sorry."
Rina held him for another second. Then she let go. Stepped back. Straightened her own jacket.
She didn't look at Victor Vane.
"The Obsidian Circle," Kazuki said. He was still standing by the door. "That's what you are."
"We prefer to think of ourselves as realists," Victor said. "We are human. We have no powers. No suits. No technology from another timeline." He adjusted his cufflinks. "What we have is information. And the patience to understand what it means."
"You broadcast to the entire city."
"Yes."
"You made me the enemy."
"I made you the question," Victor corrected. "There is a difference. An enemy can be fought. A question has to be answered." He looked at Kazuki steadily. "The city was going to ask that question eventually. I simply chose the timing."
Kazuki said nothing. Waiting.
Victor opened a folder on the table.
"The Velocity Core has been bonded to four hosts before you," Victor said. "Not in this timeline. In others. Our researchers spent eleven years tracking the outcomes across six separate realities."
He slid the first page across the table.
Kazuki didn't move toward it. But he could see the image from where he stood.
A suit. Black. No light. No veins.
The same suit from Maya's vision. From his own mirror. From the thing sitting in the stopped world looking comfortable.
"Every host," Victor said. "Same result. Same timeline. Give or take a few years." He tapped the page. "The suit does not fuse with a person. It consumes one. Slowly. Respectfully. But completely."
"You're trying to scare me into giving it up," Kazuki said.
"I'm trying to show you what we know before the suit decides you don't need to know it anymore." Victor leaned forward slightly. "Have you noticed that it chooses what you remember from your dreams?"
Kazuki's hands were still at his sides.
He didn't answer.
Which was an answer.
Kenji spoke from across the room, his voice low.
"The Void Walkers' records describe a figure. The End of Time Speedster. We always believed it was a warning. A thing to be prevented." He looked at Kazuki. "Victor showed me evidence that it isn't a warning."
"Then what is it?" Aeva's voice came through Kazuki's earpiece. She had been listening. Silent until now.
Kenji looked at the table.
"A destination," he said.
Victor closed the folder.
"I'm not your enemy, Kazuki. I never was." He stood. "I'll give you the rest of the files. Everything we know. Every timeline. Every host. Every outcome." He straightened his jacket. "Read them. Then decide."
He walked toward the side door.
Stopped.
"One more thing," Victor said, without turning. "The signal from forty years in the future. The one that was sent to the Core the night you bonded with it."
Kazuki went completely still.
"We traced the origin point," Victor said. "It wasn't sent from forty years in the future."
He turned. His eyes were calm. Careful.
"It was sent from the end of time."
He left.
The door closed behind him.
Nobody in the room spoke for a long time.
Outside the window, Neo-Tokyo glittered across every district, completely unaware that the most important conversation happening inside its borders had just ended with a sentence that made the ground feel less solid than it had been an hour ago.
[To Be Continued...]