"Peace built on secrets is a city waiting to burn."
The grand chamber of the Tokyo Area's central government tower shimmered with crystalline silence.
Seitenshi sat on the raised dais, half-shadowed beneath the morning sun streaming through tall windows. Her white uniform was pressed immaculate, but dark crescents under her eyes betrayed a sleepless night. She leaned forward, gloved fingers steepled as the last of Rentarō's debriefing echoed off marble walls.
"A synthetic Initiator." Her voice was calm, but not cold. "And it engaged Enju and Hotaru as enemies?"
Rentarō stood below her, the hem of his coat still scorched and frayed from the explosion. "It called them 'defective models.' It knew our names. It scanned me."
"Identified you by subject number," Karasuma added from his side. "Not just facial recognition."
Seitenshi's violet eyes narrowed. "This isn't a rogue Council weapon. This was sanctioned. Prototyped. Deployed. Which means... someone inside my own circle allowed this to happen."
Silence fell between them.
Enju, seated on a bench near the wall with one leg swinging, muttered, "She was strong. Like scary strong. No limiter, no pain reaction. Not even fear."
Hotaru, arms wrapped in white gauze, nodded. "She was like a weapon pretending to be a girl."
Seitenshi rose slowly, the movement measured and regal. "And if she hadn't chosen to leave…"
Rentarō's gaze was steady. "We'd be dead."
She didn't dispute it.
Instead, she turned toward the window, looking down at the distant sprawl of the city below. Buildings still half-reclaimed from Gastrea territory, dotted with the flickering lights of human survival.
"You once asked me," she said softly, "what I wanted for this city."
Rentarō said nothing.
Seitenshi didn't turn.
"I said peace. Dignity. A world where cursed children could laugh without fear."
She exhaled.
"But now I see the truth. The people above me—within the Council, within my own Ministry—they never wanted peace. They wanted control."
Enju frowned. "So what now? Are we going after the ones who built her?"
Seitenshi finally turned to face them again. Her eyes were resolute.
"We can't strike directly. Not yet. If I confront the Council now, they'll simply tighten their grip—and Chrysalis won't be the last of her kind. But if we expose them... we need evidence. Real, irrefutable, public."
Karasuma nodded grimly. "And someone willing to die bringing it."
"I'll go," Rentarō said, almost reflexively.
"Of course you will," Seitenshi said, the faintest smile touching her lips. "You always do."
Two days later, the trail led them south—toward the ruins of Sector 12.
Officially abandoned after a Level IV outbreak, the zone had become a scarred wasteland of skeletal towers and crumbled Monolith bases. But Council records showed anomalous supply shipments routed through its shell—cold-storage units, synthetic tissue deliveries, AI computational cores.
"Illegal cloning labs?" Karasuma speculated as they traveled by night in a stolen transport. "Wouldn't be the first time the old ministry played Dr. Frankenstein."
"They're not cloning cursed children," Rentarō said quietly. "They're building replacements."
Enju looked up from her seat. "Why would they want to replace us?"
No one answered.
They arrived at dawn.
Sector 12 was dead. No birds. No wind. Just the whisper of ash drifting through collapsed avenues. A faded school sign jutted from rubble like a tombstone.
Rentarō stepped out, boots crunching on broken glass.
"Scanner's picking up a residual power source," Hotaru reported, holding a jury-rigged detector. "Sublevel three of that bunker."
The building ahead was a council shelter—reinforced, sealed. The outer doors were welded with rust.
Rentarō flexed his mechanical arm and tore them open.
Inside, darkness.
The facility had no windows, just narrow tunnels lit by dying emergency LEDs. They passed rooms filled with shattered containment pods, twisted restraint chairs, tanks half-full of chemical sludge.
"What was this place?" Enju whispered.
Rentarō paused at a door marked: BIO-SIGNAL STAGING - CLASS ALPHA.
Beyond it, they found a terminal. One still active.
Karasuma tapped the console. Lines of encrypted logs flashed across the screen—test entries, failure reports, data points.
And then—
A fragment of video.
Rentarō leaned in as it played.
A girl—too thin, shaking, her voice hollow—was strapped to a vertical operating rig. A man in a lab coat offscreen said:
"Begin override sequence. Terminate remaining instinctual compassion parameters."
The girl screamed.
Rentarō clenched his fist.
The date in the corner was from six months ago.
Enju turned away.
Karasuma's jaw was tight. "They've been at this for years. Long before you blew the whistle on the old Gastrea weapon stockpiles."
Hotaru tapped a blinking file in the corner of the screen. "Look."
A data manifest. CHR-01, CHR-02... up to CHR-07.
"Multiple prototypes," Rentarō muttered.
Karasuma whistled. "So that girl we saw?"
"Just one of many."
And then, a low whine echoed through the corridor.
Rentarō turned.
The lights shifted red.
INTRUDER DETECTED.
PURGE PROTOCOL INITIATED.
Karasuma raised his weapon. "Contact."
From the hall behind them, movement.
But not Chrysalis.
This one was smaller.
Faster.
And already charging.