Destination: Death Qube

The woman looked conflicted as she stared at Grey. She wasn't the least bit surprised that everyone got hurt but him, but she still didn't know how she felt about these details.

She would have pushed him for details to prove how destructive and amoral he was in the past. Now, she didn't think his morality mattered. Probably.

Now what? From a professional perspective, these three Brawlers, alongside the entire White Noise incident, had nothing to do with why she was in the room with Grey.

There was no objective need for her to hear about this fight. But... she wanted to.

Not for the sake of justice, or because the people were evil, or because she found the fighting thrilling.

She wanted to hear about it because she wanted to believe that the man before her was invincible.

"Considering you're in front of me right now, it honestly shouldn't surprise me that things happened like that." She began.

"But taking down Marion, who was bare-handed, was already a clever struggle between life and death. Did the three men not have body modifications?" She asked, seeking clarification.

"No, they were all illegally enhanced with exoskeletons." He replied. "Nearly everyone in Dark Paradise did for practical reasons."

The woman's heart thumped.

"Were they bare-handed?" She asked excitedly.

Grey shook his head left to right. "No, they all had felony grade swords." He replied casually, treating it as if it were only a matter of trivialities.

Her heart thumped again.

"Where they all incredibly stupid like the Gruffbilly?" She asked, continuing her onslaught of questions.

"No…well, one of them was." He explained.

Grey found the excitement in her voice a bit concerning.

After strategizing on her next line of questioning, she started asking questions again.

"Would you describe it as purely self-defense?" She began.

"Yes, I'd prefer not to fight if possible." He replied calmly.

"Why didn't they see Sebastain's tattoo on the outset?" She asked curiously.

"Because I had a clone walking right behind him so they couldn't." He explained without the slightest bit of shame.

The woman's excitement nose-dived off the face of a cliff hearing this.

"Pardon? I must not have heard that correctly. Could you please repeat what you just said?" She petitioned.

"I had a clone walking right behind Sebastian so they couldn't see his tattoo." He stated, doubling down on the absurd powder keg that was about to explode.

The woman's expression darkened, and her eyes flashed with murder.

"Hah. Ha ha. Hahahaha. Alyx, I must be losing it, because I feel like I keep hearing that you covered up the merchandise that you risked your life and crucified someone over." She mused, losing touch by the second.

"I… think that your ears are working fine because that's exact—"

The powder keg exploded.

"You're going to have to explain this to me, you silly little man. Because it kind of sounds like you didn't value your life back then." She asserted haistily.

Grey sighed as if he was being blamed for someone else's actions.

"That's not true. Sebastian's purpose was primarily to get me into the Death Qube tournament, so—"

Grey was cut off with an icy wave that chilled the atmosphere in the room.

"Hah. Ha ha. You. Were. Going. To. Fight. In. The. Deathmatch. You. Got. Out. Of?" Her eyes had clouded over, and her mind was developing fissures.

"Yes? I was invited to Dark Paradise to perform in the tournament so—"

"Is that so? You said you didn't know why you were invited. You then heard it was to fight in deathmatches. So you participated, and everyone just disappeared by happenstance?"

Her faith in him and humanity seemed to plummet beyond the hope of redemption.

Grey sighed again, inwardly this time.

"Do you really think you can walk in, kill an endangered species, use their technology to harm their emissary, then freely walk around in Dark Paradise without performing in the event you were there to perform in?" He asked.

The woman's eyes flickered with a small flame of hope. "No, probably not. But I don't see how that changes the fact that you hid Sebastian's you'll be killed if you touch me tattoo."

"From the outside, your line of reasoning is the only line of reasoning that makes sense." He began. "It's just more complicated than that."

"Sebastian's tattoo designated him as untouchable property that was backed by the most powerful syndicate in the Nerve Network.

It gives individuals immunity from danger in the most dangerous place in either world. That's valuable, don't you think?" He asked.

"..." The woman was shocked out of her internal darkness. Grey's statement was undeniable, but it led to a huge contradiction.

"It is, but your conclusion is a contradiction." She asserted in a blurry haze of emotions.

"It is, but we're talking about a server filled with nothing but overpowered criminals. The first rule of crime is that you can do whatever you want as long as you don't get caught." He brazenly declared.

"Oh Alyx, you silly man. Are you saying that everything you've done for the last decade was fine until tonight?" She asked with a trembling state of sanity.

"Fine isn't the right word. Logically permissible." He maintained.

The woman's eyebrow twitched after hearing this.

"Visually speaking, Sebastian and I were two teenagers without body enhancements.

His tattoo was valuable; since no one powerful was around to witness their actions, they'd knock us out, cover him up, and sell him on the black market." He explained with a deadpan expression.

On the inside, he was annoyed, however.

"Oh… so that's why you were doing it." She calmed down the moment he had a chance to explain.

In reality, while true, that was only a secondary consideration. There was something much more important he was hoping to achieve, and it was something far more difficult to explain.

And then it dawned on the woman, "Wait! how far away from the Death Qube were you?" She asked frantically.

"I left the entry point at about 9 am, we got to the Death Qube at 5 pm, one hour before the first fight." He explained.

This statement sent an icy chill down her spine.

"If this was only the first 6 minutes of you walking out that door…"

"In case you're wondering, yes. The rest of those 9 hours were destined to be the same." Grey's poker face crushed the reality of his situation into the woman's soul.

"...Was there any way to change that?" She asked in a disheartened tone.

"Yes, but the tattoo was out of the question. Showing the tattoo in heavily trafficked areas would stop the attacks, but then we'd have to worry about Occam's Razor scanning Sebastian's swap chip since they were after us.

Using his tattoo for protection was your conclusion; you never asked if it was mine."

The woman felt as though she had just received blunt force trauma.

"...Then…what did you do?" She asked with a quivering voice.

"The only thing I could do; I had to demonstrate that I was able to handle people that tried to mess with me." He explained with dull, razor-sharp eyes.

"By making an example of them?" She asked with a sudden sense of clarity.

"Yes, by making an example out of them."