Demonic Pornstar System novel Chapter 865

Chapter 865: Beneath the Earth

In a chamber no blueprint had ever recorded, beneath foundations far older than the building they supported, a pair of eyes opened in the dark.

...

Viktor Thorne, leader of the underground organization known as Blood Pact, hadn’t moved in forty minutes.

He sat where he always sat, one leg thrown over the armrest of his leather chair, his eyes fixed on a point in the air that Olga couldn’t see.

His awakened interface hung in front of him, playing a silent loop of the same stream for the dozenth time. The boy’s gauntlet buried past the elbow in a wound the size of a house, the counter beside his level climbing faster than the eye could follow.

Viktor replayed it. Then again.

"Olga. The teams I dispatched."

His assistant stood at the edge of the room with a leather-bound dossier the width of a brick tucked under one arm, her posture carrying the permanent air of quiet sufferance that defined her existence. "Still unable to establish proximity to the target, sir."

"Still." The word came out flat.

"Vespera Ashborn has made proximity inadvisable." Olga adjusted her glasses. "Since the awakened competition in the hills began, she is no longer protecting him from the shadows. Our operatives cannot approach without being identified, and being identified within reach of that woman is a death sentence."

Viktor said nothing for a moment. On his interface, the Kaiju rolled onto its back and paddled the air, and a chat window beside the feed scrolled so fast the text became a smear of dog emojis.

"My, my. He named it Pebble."

"Sir."

"What?"

"You asked me for a status report. I gave it. You are watching the dog again."

Viktor grinned at her. "Can you blame me? The boy tamed a walking apocalypse on live television and gave it a six-gram name. You have to admire the showmanship."

"What I have to do is inform you that showmanship is now a strategic problem." Olga’s voice didn’t waver. "Before today, Kaiden Grey was the most-watched streamer among the awakened. After today, he is the most recognized human being on the planet. His viewership during the duel surpassed a hundred million concurrent, and the clips are circulating through every platform on Earth, civilian and awakened alike. He has surpassed every national powerhouse in public visibility, and every celebrity from the old world pales next to the numbers he’s pulling in now. Approaching him now carries the risk of drawing the attention of every major organization on the planet, not merely the Association."

The grin stayed. It didn’t reach his eyes.

"Good." Viktor dismissed his interface and stood. "Boring targets aren’t worth the trouble."

He made for the door, and Olga opened her mouth to continue the briefing when the temperature in the room dropped three degrees in a single breath.

Both of them felt it. The operatives on the casino floor below wouldn’t have noticed a thing, but up here, in Viktor’s private study, the cold that crawled up through the floorboards carried a message only two people in the building were cleared to receive.

Olga’s face went white. "Sir. She’s awake."

Viktor’s grin vanished. For one breath, the room held only the distant laughter of operatives below and Viktor’s absolute stillness.

Then he straightened his coat. "Let’s go."

They passed the gutted casino floor where broken roulette wheels gathered dust under chandeliers that hadn’t held light in years, skirted a cluster of operatives playing cards by lamplight who went silent as Viktor walked past, and descended a stairwell Olga had walked exactly twice in the four years she’d served him.

The first landing smelled like the rest of the building. The second did not.

The air turned cold between one step and the next, then colder, then a deep, still chill that settled against the skin and refused to leave. The walls narrowed from plaster to stone to polished dark rock that drank the sound of their footsteps, and the last light fixture died above the third landing without ceremony.

What remained was a luminescence that came from nowhere in particular and illuminated nothing it didn’t want to.

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