Max fluidly pulled the phone back off the table and slipped it into his jacket pocket, but he didn’t immediately stand up to leave. Instead, he lingered, thoroughly enjoying the rare privilege of seeing Detective Marvin Morgan just sit there in absolute bewilderment.
In his past life, Max had occasionally been on the receiving end of this man’s sharp intellect, forced to watch from the shadows as Marvin meticulously pieced together an amazing reveal and brought a complex investigation to its definitive conclusion. Max had even witnessed the detective handle himself in a physical brawl; Marvin had spent a significant portion of his early career working grueling undercover assignments, making him an incredibly competent fighter. Of course, looking at the graying hair and the deep lines around the detective’s eyes, those peak athletic years were firmly behind him now, but the lethal instinct remained intact.
"I guess I have no choice but to believe the digital trail," Marvin said, breaking the heavy silence as he rubbed his face with his hand. "But you realize that in a lot of ways, this revelation actually makes you a prime suspect. Everything that has been done across these crime scenes has been perfectly, surgically covered up. Now that I know you possess the bottomless resources of a Stern, there is every reason to believe you have the exact financial leverage required to pull off a clean erasure of evidence.
"Furthermore, it makes absolutely zero logical sense for someone of your high-society stature to attend a run-down public school under a fake name... unless you had a highly specific, calculated reason to seek revenge in disguise. When an investigator runs face-first into someone with this level of power and massive wealth, you can no longer follow the traditional chains of normalcy I have spent my life discovering."
"Yes, you are certainly right about that," Max said, his voice dropping into a low, chilling frequency that seemed to vibrate through the quiet cafeteria.
Although Marvin laid out the case against him, the detective still didn’t truly believe Max was the cold-blooded architect behind the murders. The primary reason for his hesitation was the genuine, heavy tone in the young man’s voice when he had brought up Jay—the deceased student Marvin’s initial brief had missed entirely.
What was truly fascinating to the veteran investigator, however, was the realization that it didn’t feel like he was talking to a teenager. Max never once stammered, flinched, or went on a desperate defensive tirade to deny the implicit allegations. He never displayed a single shred of nervous energy. If anything, he was calmly, methodically combating every single conversational trap Marvin threw at him, parrying the queries as if he had navigated this exact interrogation scenario a hundred times before.
"You know, the vast majority of people in this city are completely terrified of the police and the precinct," Marvin noted, leaning back in his chair and narrowing his eyes at Max. "These days, suspects are too frightened to even utter a syllable without a high-priced defense attorney present, and historically, there’s an incredibly good reason for that fear.
"There are plenty of detectives in the force who just wish to close a high-profile case as quickly as humanly possible to boost their promotion metrics. Whether they lock up the right man or an innocent scapegoat doesn’t matter to them; it’s entirely about winning the case itself. But for me, the game is different.
"I’ve earned my stripes over decades of blood and concrete. I possess the institutional luxury to work strictly on what I want and follow whatever anomalies catch my personal interest. In a lot of ways, I am semi-retired out here, and I am heavily, deeply interested in this specific case.
"Because if there is one thing I absolutely hate in this world, it’s when the corrupt, violent world of adults forcefully bleeds into the world of children. Those kids at your school should have been allowed to finish their high school education and actually experience what life had to offer before the darkness cut them down."
Marvin slammed his notebook shut, his gaze locking onto Max with raw intensity. "All of this is connected somehow, Max. And I genuinely hope you possess the clarity to help me out a little bit. So, let’s start with the immediate variable: what exactly are you planning to do with Dipter now that he’s breached the perimeter? Why are you chasing after him?"
"There’s a remarkably easy answer to that, Detective," Max said, matching the investigator’s stare without an ounce of hesitation. "Because my objective is identical to yours. I don’t want a single other innocent person to get hurt in this city. With a volatile piece like Dipter floating around the sectors, there is a statistical guarantee that more people will end up bleeding. And what’s the ultimate point of possessing all this wealth and legacy if the people in my immediate orbit are still getting broken around me?"
It was an answer Marvin absolutely wasn’t expecting to hear. His decades of experience tracking high-society suspects had trained him to expect elitism, corporate deflection, or cold indifference from those raised around limitless capital. Max was entirely different. Yet, Marvin was also self-aware enough to know that highly intelligent people knew exactly how to feed an investigator the perfect, noble answers to mask their true operations.
"And is there anything else you would like to tell me right now?" Marvin pressed, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Anything related to your ultimate plans, or the entities responsible for the students who died at your school?"
Max let out a quiet, knowing smile. He stood up from the circular wooden table and gestured for Wolf—who was standing perfectly rigid, his lean, sharp frame coiled like a spring—to do the same.
"What? So I can hand them over to you on a silver platter, just so your precinct can lock them up and allow them to execute another flawless escape a month later?" Max countered, his tone dripping with an icy pragmatism. "These people managed to systematically break out of a maximum-security prison, Detective. Which means the structural system is entirely compromised from the outside. They got out once, and they will get out again. This isn’t the kind of war the police force can deal with using standard bureaucratic procedures. So, I think it’s strategically best if I don’t tell you anything else."
The two turned their backs, walking toward the exit of the staff dining hall, ready to leave the correctional facility behind. But just as their hands reached for the heavy metal doors, Marvin’s voice barked through the hollow space.
"Max!"
With a swift, practiced flick of his wrist, Marvin threw a small object across the room. It was a crisp business card, sailing through the air with considerable velocity. Without even turning his entire body, Max’s hand shot out with predatory speed, snapping the card out of the air before it could even touch the floor.
"That’s my direct line," Marvin claimed, his voice dead serious as he watched the boy’s impossible reflexes. "Maybe you don’t see the utility of it right now, but a storm is coming, and there will absolutely be a timeline where you need an uncorrupted asset within the law. I am not like the rest of the precinct, Max, and you are clearly operating on a completely different blueprint than the rest of your family. If you manage to hunt down the monsters responsible, and you find a way to deliver them to me securely... I will personally guarantee they stay locked up in a black-site facility where not even your family’s generational wealth could ever buy them out."
Max looked down at the ink on the card, a silent thought crossing his mind: I’ll believe it when I see it. He slipped the card into his pocket and pushed through the doors, stepping back into the suburban wind.
Little did the detective or the young syndicate leader know that monumental, devastating forces were already beginning to shift across the territory.
Far from the concrete grids of Notting Hill, up in the isolated, windswept hilltops overlooking the province, a massive, heavily muscular man stepped out from the threshold of a secluded mountain cabin. He stood bare-chested against the freezing alpine air, his vast frame casting a long shadow over the rock face as he stared out toward the city below.
"My muscles... they are aching with an unnatural tension," Hercules muttered to the empty sky, his fingers curling into heavy, boulder-shattering fists. "I can feel it in the wind. Something utterly devastating is soon to descend upon this city."