"Dirty?" Reina scoffed, a bitter, humorless laugh. "We did more than just get our hands dirty, Goro. We bathed in the filth."

"He got us what we needed," Anya whispered from her corner, her voice small but surprisingly firm. Her rabbit ears were perked up, a rare sign of defiance. "We're still together and safe. That's what matters."

Leo looked torn, his fluffy face a mask of conflict. "I mean… it was kind of cool, though, right? The way he just… talked them into it? Like a god-tier speech check." But his voice lacked its usual conviction. The awe was still there, but now it was tinged with a creeping, unsettling fear.

Synth remained silent, a blank, two-dimensional void. He analyzed Reina's emotional output, the specific frequencies of her anger, the subtle tells in her avatar's code. The data was clear.

"Your anger is not with my methods, Kitsune," he said finally, his voice a calm, even hum that seemed to suck all the heat from her rage. "It is with a memory."

Reina froze. Her nine tails went rigid. Her vulpine face, which had been a mask of righteous fury, went utterly, completely blank. For a single, terrifying moment, her carefully constructed composure cracked, and something raw, something wounded, looked out from behind her eyes.

"You don't know anything about me," she whispered, her voice a fragile, brittle thing.

Her gaze moved around as the digital space of the "Lazy Data Slug" seemed to shimmer, the cheerful, cartoonish slugs on the walls and furniture stretching, distorting, their smiles becoming grotesque, mocking leers. The air grew thin, the scent of stale data and synth-ale evaporating into a sterile, clinical nothingness.

Then, with a sound like a held breath being released, the world exploded into a white void.

The sticky tables, the humming servers, the other patrons—all of it vanished. They were in a place of absolute, featureless white, a sterile, silent expanse that stretched into an infinite, horizonless distance. The only things that remained were Synth and Reina.

"What is this?" Kitsune demanded, her voice sharp, but laced with a new, unsettling thread of fear. Her internal programs ran a frantic diagnostic, but the results were a cascade of errors. There was no way out. This place had no code, no structure, no exit.

"Just a place so we can talk," Synth offered. Then, his simple stick-figure avatar dissolved like ink dropped in water, bleeding into the white nothingness. In his wake stood someone, something else. The dark, light-absorbing coat that seemed to bend the very air around it. The flawless porcelain face, so perfect it was inhuman. The faint, almost imperceptible shimmer in his dark hair, as if it were woven from fiber optics.

Kitsune stared at the entity before her, and then, without her consent, her own avatar dissolved. The silver fur, the nine tails, the sharp, vulpine features—all of it melted away, leaving behind the raw, human data of her true self. Her jet-black hair, cut into a precise, geometric bob, framed her features in razor-straight lines; the heavy fringe of her bangs cast a permanent shadow across her dark, deep-set eyes. The sharp, white light of the void glinted off her hair, catching hints of blue in the sheen. A single lock was tucked neatly behind one ear, revealing a delicate cheekbone and the tense, defiant set of her jaw.

Seeing herself so exposed, so vulnerable, Reina's fear instantly hardened back into rage. Reaper Code, black and vicious, flowed from her fingertips, materializing in the white void as a swarm of glittering, obsidian daggers, all of them pointed directly at Synth's heart. She would not go down without a fight.

Synth stood unmoving, his silvery eyes looking into hers. His voice was soft, filled with emotions "You are wrong," he said, the words echoing in the vast, empty space. "I do know about you."

He took a single, slow step forward. Reina tensed, and one of the daggers shot across the space between them, a blur of black against the stark white. Synth's hand moved with an impossible, liquid grace, catching the dagger between two fingers, inches from his face. Reina stared, her breath catching in her throat, at how easily he had stopped her most powerful program.

"After we met, I ran a background check on all of the members of the Zoo Squad," Synth explained, his voice a low, quiet confession. "I am not a person who trusts someone easily." He let out a dry, humorless chuckle. "People like to talk about trust like it's some sacred thing. But trust? Most of the time, it's just another name for an early grave."

He paused, his silver eyes narrowing slightly.

"An open enemy? I can handle that. You see them coming. But a false friend?" He shook his head, a slow, weary gesture. "That's the knife you don't see. That's the kind of cut that doesn't bleed out of the body—it bleeds out of the soul."

He leaned forward, his gaze hard, unblinking.

"Don't get me wrong—I do trust. But my trust is earned, fought for, clawed from the mud and fire. Not for my sake—I can take care of myself. No betrayal's gonna break me. But the ones I care about…" his tone darkened, his voice becoming a shade more raw, more real, "…they don't get that luxury. And betrayal doesn't just stab me—it stabs them. That's the weight I carry."

A faint smirk crossed his lips, bitter but resolute.

"In this city, betrayal isn't just a blade in the dark. It's… quieter. A smile. A handshake. Sometimes even a kiss. That's why I keep my circle small. Because in this world, every act of trust… is a gamble with someone else's life."

Reina blinked rapidly, his words sinking into her soul like shards of ice. The Reaper Code daggers around her flickered, their sharp edges softening, losing their focus.

"Do you not agree with me, Reina?" Synth asked, his voice now a gentle, probing question.

"You know about my past," she stated, the words a flat, defeated admission.

Synth offered a single, slow nod.

Reina's defensive posture faltered.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Reina's defensive posture faltered. He hadn't moved to attack. He hadn't countered with his own code. He had just… talked. And listened. Slowly, like dying embers, the obsidian daggers dissolved into a shower of black, glittering dust.

"They were netstriders," Reina whispered, her voice a raw, broken thing, the words tumbling out as if a dam had finally burst. "My parents. The best. They taught me everything." Her gaze was distant, lost in a memory that was clearly a waking nightmare. "They took me on a dive. A big one. Said it was safe." Her voice cracked. "But they were betrayed. A friend… someone we trusted… he sold us out."

"The ambush was… surgical," she continued, her voice gaining a strange, clinical detachment, as if she were reciting a mission report to distance herself from the pain. "Reaper code walls… they were trapped. The attackers…they wanted to make an example." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "They offered us a way out. A single, complex cryptographic equation, projected in the space between us. 'The prodigy can save them,' they said. 'Solve the puzzle, and your family walks free.'"

"I tried," she choked out, as digital tears, shimmering and translucent, started to fall down her cheeks. Her voice was raw, filled with a rage and a shame that had been festering for years. "I tried to debug it, to find a solution. But it was a lie. The equation… it kept rewriting itself, getting harder, more complex with every line of code I debugged. It was designed to be unsolvable. The digital cage, tightening around them, second by second." Her voice broke completely, and a sound of pure, undiluted agony tore from her throat. "I watched them die. I heard them scream my name. And then… and then I woke up."

She looked at him, her dark eyes now shimmering with unshed, digital tears. "They were still in their chairs. Blood… blood was coming from their eyes, their ears… They were just… gone. And it was my fault."

The confession hung in the white, silent void, a raw, gaping wound.

Synth didn't offer empty platitudes. He didn't tell her it wasn't her fault. He simply stood, walked over to her, and placed a hand on her trembling shoulder.

"I know," he said, his voice raw, stripped of all artifice, a chorus of ghosts, all speaking with a single, unified voice of shared, profound pain. "I know."

"How could you?" she asked, slapping his hand away. Her voice wasn't angry, but full of a raw, pleading guilt, a desperate search for someone who could understand. "How could you know the pain of watching your parents die before your eyes?"

Synth closed his eyes for a moment, the perfect porcelain of his face a mask of quiet contemplation. Reina took a step back, rubbing at her eyes, her arms wrapping around herself as if to hold the shattered pieces of her composure together.

"Just as you did with those NPCs, you are just playing with my mind to get something from me," she said, her voice a wounded whisper. "What do you want?"

Synth raised his hands and clapped once. The sound was soft, yet it seemed to crack the very foundation of the white void. The world dissolved, into a new, heartbreaking memory.

They were in a small, dilapidated apartment. A single window was covered with a threadbare blanket, casting the room in a dim, dusty twilight. The air was thick with the scent of poverty and decay. Reina's gaze was drawn to a woman on a patched, worn-out couch. Her face was blurred, indistinct, but her hands, withered and trembling, told a story of a life lived in constant, quiet pain. A man, his face also a blur, stood beside her, their voices a low, static hum, the words lost but the tone of weary affection unmistakable. The woman tried to stand, but her legs wobbled, refusing to obey. The man gently helped her into a waiting wheelchair.

Another soft clap, and they were back in the void.

Reina looked at Synth, her dark eyes wide with a dawning, horrified understanding.

"I do know the pain of watching your parent die before your eyes," Synth explained, his voice quiet, devoid of all manipulation.

Reina's gaze dropped to the floor, the memory of the scene she had just witnessed a fresh, open wound. "This could be fake," she stated, the words a desperate, last-ditch defense.

"Yes," Synth said, not defending himself. "And you will never know for sure."

"Then we are back to square one. What do you want from me?" she asked again, her voice barely a whisper.

"I seek nothing," Synth stated.

She scoffed. "There is always something."

"There always is," Synth agreed. "Or at least, that is what we eventually learn, living through this life. But that is not always the case. Are you friends with the others because you want something from them?"

"No, of course not," Reina responded, the words a knee-jerk, defensive reaction. "They're my friends."

"The same is true for me," Synth said. "I do not wish to gain something from this interaction, but to see if we can become friends."

Reina frowned. "You wish to become friends with me? Why?"

"Just for the sake of it," Synth stated. "That's why I accepted Kodiak's invitation. To make new friends."

Reina started to laugh, a broken, watery sound, as she rubbed both of her eyes. "This sounds so stupid," she said. "Much more stupid even than the stupidest thing Leo has ever said."

"Even when he sent you those photos of himself naked with an elephant painted around his—" Synth began, but was interrupted.

"Close enough," Reina cut in, a ghost of her old, sharp-edged humor returning. She sighed, a long, weary sound. "Look, Glitchy… or whatever the hell your name is. Logically, there are only downsides to trusting you. But…" she sighed again, "you did a background check on us. So you know about us. And you clearly possess very high skills, so if you wanted to harm us or take something from us, you wouldn't waste your time playing a stupid game with us. The only conclusion is that you really want to make some friends with some fellow netstriders, which I still find suspicious, because why would you want to spend time with a bunch of teenagers when you could be doing something else? Unless you're a teenager yourself, but still… there are better alternatives than us."

Synth watched with a small, warm smile as she went on, her analytical mind exploring possibilities, arguing with herself. After a minute or so, she stopped, realizing she had trailed off.

"Why are you smiling?" she demanded.

Synth simply shrugged and extended his hand. "My name is Synth. My real name."

Reina looked at his hand, then at his face. Slowly, she took it.

"This doesn't mean I trust you. It just means I'll let you stick around—for now," Reina said, looking directly into Synth's eyes.

Synth smiled. "Fair enough."

The white void dissolved, and they were back in the "Lazy Data Slug."

"Guys, where the hell have you been?!" Leo screamed. The rest of the squad, including Kodiak, were gathered around their table, their avatars radiating a palpable, frantic worry.

"Are you hurt?" Kodiak asked, his massive bear avatar's gaze fixed on Reina's now-restored fox form. He then glanced at Synth's stick man avatar. "And you, Glitchy, are you fine?"

Synth offered a nod and a thumbs-up.

"Guys, are you deaf or something? Where have you been?" Leo demanded.

"We were very worried about you all," Glitch's small bunny avatar said, her voice trembling.

"I…" Reina began, glancing at Synth. "I activated a program by mistake and cut myself and Glitchy off in a private server. Sorry."

It was a flimsy excuse, but given how emotional she had been just a few minutes ago, it was understandable.

"Woman," Leo scoffed.

"Woman what?" Reina asked, her eyes as sharp as daggers. Even Glitch glanced at him, a silent warning in her large, expressive eyes. Goro simply rolled his eyes.

"Maybe we should end this session for today," Kodiak said, his voice a gentle suggestion.

"No," Reina said, her voice surprisingly firm. "It's okay. I feel better now."

"Better, eh?" Leo smirked, a devilish glint in his eye as he glanced between Glitchy and Reina, a thousand inappropriate scenarios blooming in his mind.

But they were all severed as a massive, cartoonish anvil materialized over Leo's head and fell on him, flattening him like a pancake. Goro rolled his eyes, grabbed the flattened Major, and pulled him back into a three-dimensional shape like an accordion.

"If you say so," Kodiak said. "What about you, Glitchy?"

"I have no problem," Synth responded.

"Then let's resume," Kodiak said as he disappeared. "The preparations are completed. Now the team is ready to head to the Data Spire and free GRANDMAMA.EXE."

Synth and Reina exchanged glances. Her gaze remained sharp, but for the first time, it wasn't filled with poison, though suspicion still lingered.

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