— a.h.a. headquaters of the oregon state, portland, oregon, september 2022

  They had been detained on their way to the headquarters and now they are detained again – of course, not crudely with handcuffs or rope. No, simply by them having to walk between the guards that didn't let them have an opening to run, now that their third member from earlier had returned.

  Isaac didn't need an opening either way. Not one such as this, for sure. But right now, he was Isaac – just "Isaac". So this was enough to keep him locked down and it frustrated him.

  'I expected this task to be done with fast, as it was mere child's play, yet it seems as though I am now stuck at playing a child instead,' he thought to himself and sighed in retaliation, 'poor me.'

  "Seriously, we're no intruders," Hayden tried once again, but he had long since given up and was just joking around at this point.

  "Sure you're not," Ron answered, "you must be a group of house elves, then."

  "We're totally working there!" At least, they were actually found in the janitor's storage.

  That elicited an actual laugh from the toothpaste model. "At your age?" he humored him with visible amusement, "And you're not even wearing the uniform."

  At this, an angry look was shot in Isaac's direction from the right. He even had to avert his eyes, just to make it sting less.

  "What?" Isaac asked, playing ignorant while feeling this reaction was unwarranted and unfair to him.

  "Are you not even going to try to defend us?" It was clear that the physically older boy had given up on pretending they had been there for a good reason. "If you're gonna bribe someone, get some more information on the danger level, next time."

  'Well, I never bribed anyone to begin with,' the accused lamented in his head, but that was now water under the bridge, so he just let it go and softly spoke in response: "We can't claim we know nothing, because we were there from the beginning. They caught Ha- her, after all. That lecturer, I mean."

  "Right," he answered just a quietly, even with the high possibility that they were heard by these Agents next to them anyway, considering the fact that they might as well be Hunters themselves, "that's why we are being brought to 'Room A' for interrogation, I gue-" He suddenly stopped, without any discernable reason.

  A sudden movement drew Isaac's attention, and as he looked toward the other, whose ears slightly but visibly twitched, he felt it; something in Hayden's demeanor had changed, he just didn't know what it was.

  Of course, he wouldn't know that the other was still using his Unique Skill. THE LISTENER gave people the ability to be exactly that. It would lock onto a target that was either in the distance or close by and relay everything that was said in regular volume, perfect for him to listen in on.

  To Hayden's surprise, he still had a chance of turning the tables, because his Skill's runtime wasn't over for another two minutes.

  'If I don't point my ears at something specific, it will start listening in on whatever random bullshit it's able to pick up on. This is the first time I heard something actually useful with that though.'

  They hadn't left the hallway from when they exited the room, until they used an elevator that went up to the fifth floor.

  Once they stepped into the new open hallway, they walked on the same type of carpet as they had been walking on downstairs – they wouldn't have been able to tell the difference, had they not felt the elevator move up. The grey walls and depressing electrical light source without any windows in sight created the fitting atmosphere for them. Isaac already noted the position of the cameras around.

  ["What do you mean it broke? That was supposed to have been a lie!"] He could hear the terrified voice of a woman and a bit of rustling. ["What about Hunter Choi?"]

  He could swear it was the same voice from the earpiece before, but before, she was extremely calm, so it was hard to tell now.

  ["Don't worry about Hunter Choi, worry about us! At least that guy can protect himself. We only have one who can.]

  It felt like he knew all too well what those two were bickering about and he didn't love the implications of it. At the same time, he couldn't deny that he got excited.

  This was the perfect opportunity for him. 'If I can shine now, they won't have a chance but acknowledge me, no matter who it is.' He could tell it wasn't a good look that he had bailed earlier that day and he had to make up for it, even if it was just for himself to know about it.

  He had never felt this motivated by anything in his life, except for that day he heard that distinct pinging sound for the first time, which told him he was destined for something great.

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  Meanwhile, Isaac became gradually more suspicious of his travel companion. From one second to the other he had started to look restless and jumpy. It was as if he was aware of something that Isaac wasn't and he didn't like that prospect very much.

  After all, they couldn't afford to get into actual trouble there. It was of paramount importance for him to be able to go back home and sleep!

  "What is going on, Hayden?" he asked in earnest.

  As if contemplating about something, he took a moment before he answered, while their babysitters started directing them into a smaller room with table and five chairs around it. Next to them was a wall with a big mirror, like the ones they had all seen in movies and TV shows before.

  "I think there's a Gate around the building we were in."

  That bit of unceremoniously dropped information almost made Ron choke on his saliva, while the other two simply froze, like the sidekicks they were.

  "You have already seen the monsters before, haven't you?" Pretending to joke around, he smiled a fake smile, but the teenage boys didn't buy it.

  "Yes, but this is a different Gate, isn't it?"

  His smile froze. "What gave you that adventurous idea, boy?"

  "I have my ways," Hayden replied smugly.

  By now, Isaac had realized that he truly must have meant it was a Skill that he had used. Since he had never truly engaged with a so called 'Awakened' more than he naturally had to, courtesy of the annoying one in question, there was barely any knowledge regarding these Skills in his recollection.

  The closest he ever was to a Gate, forgetting that one time when he had turned four years old, was when he had tried to enter one by himself, which he couldn't. He couldn't as Elijah and he couldn't as Isaac.

  Of course, normal people couldn't enter Gates. That was a widely known fact, which was why humanity was so dependent on the newly awakened Hunters back in the day. Twelve years ago, there were only a bunch of teenagers in puberty that the world could rely on, making all the adults and military's of the world feel ashamed of themselves.

  But aside from a lot of kids with eighth-grade-syndrome, this method had also brought upon legions of children mauled to death by monsters. The policy that mandated children to finish at least high school was a direct result of the populace gaining stability back after being rattled to the core.

  He had thought that his case might be different, since he was human right now, but as Elijah he wasn't – but that wasn't true after all. Since he couldn't do much, he took it as a part of natural progression in this world and left it as it was, never caring about it again until this very moment.

  "If there really is a Gate, why would nobody be aware of it?" Isaac asked without thinking about it.

  He hadn't heard about it, not even from his kin before he had to break the connection.

  Then again, he couldn't blame them, since they didn't search the area back then, but only watched the trio brawl, so there was no helping it, in case it was hidden somewhere. They wouldn't relay information to him if he wasn't asking for it, after all.

  An icky feeling crept up his spine, while he sat down on one of the chairs that everyone seemed to have forgotten about already and vacantly stared at a potted plant. It stood in the corner, next to the only door in this room. The plant seemed to have been newly put there – or maybe it was made of plastic.

  "Publicity," Hayden haphazardly threw in, "They don't want people to give them the stink eye."

  The guards looked a little irked by his comment, yet they didn't refute his claims. That was simply because they couldn't actually explain it and he wasn't completely wrong either.

  The area had already been devastated by a Gate a few years prior, so finding another one, albeit a small one, would have made people lose all faith in that district, after carefully trying to have it go back to normal. It's an enormous space and a plot of land that continued to stain their dignity; a monument of failure, for everyone to see.

  Choi In-Sung's audit and the ensuing investigation just happened to lead people right next to an undetected Gate. It was just one thing after another.

  Since it was a relatively weak Gate, they expected it to remain closed for at least another week before breaking. In this case, it might even have happened in their favor, since it aligned with a situation that involved the higher evolved races and people saw it.

  But there was something in the way that sweaty little teenage boy had spoken about it, that they had to take note of it. Like the taller one before, he said it as if he knew for sure that this Gate had nothing to do with the monsters attacking the old school building; they former even seemed confused about a Break in the first place. So what does he understand about the beings he must have witnessed in that lecture room?

  Hayden couldn't know any of that, but he always took pride in how he was able to think quickly on his feet. He didn't know about where the other monsters had emerged from, but he did understand that a Break happening right now would have to be a different one.

  This was based on information he shouldn't have either and the Agents couldn't conclude how he had gotten ahold of it from out of nowhere. Just having good ears would not let one listen in on his intercom, after all.

  Since Hayden had a good understanding of how such corporates worked, it hadn't been that hard to put two and two together with the knowledge he was privy to.

  "So that's why In-Sung Choi got here so early." He unceremoniously plopped down next to his junior. "He wasn't due until tomorrow, right? But you called him here, so he would get rid of your mess in secret."

  "That's one rude way to put it, kid." Surprised, the two boys looked in the direction of the door, where a ginger-haired woman in a black suit, similar to what the three guards were wearing, stepped into the room.

  As a matter of fact, he wasn't correct. But at the same time, regarding the audit, he was also not incorrect, which was shameful to admit on her part – yet even more shameful to lie about.

  It was the same voice as the one Hayden had heard twice before. "It's the woman that gave instructions," he informed Isaac, who wouldn't know.

  Well, he also hadn't cared too much to know. "So what he said was true, I take it?"

  It shouldn't be true, since they were hiding it, so it mustn't be a big one. Why would they need to hire a foreign Hunter for this? Especially one that's known as the strongest Hunter currently alive, if one ignored the debate about how Samuel Dryer would beat him up for sure if they went all out.

  "You're welcome," the older teen sarcastically commented at being ignored in this manner.

  "We never said that," the smug woman replied while closing her eyes and the door behind her.

  "Yet you also failed to deny it," was all he had to say for her expression to turn cold.