Super Hero Company, 22nd Floor, Criminal Interrogation Room.
Blue Pigeon, Invisible Giant, and Shadow Girl stood outside the interrogation room.
Through a one-way mirror, they observed the scene inside—Dark Crocodile was tied to a chair. His helmet had been removed, revealing the sharply contoured face of a teenager, a trace of blood staining the corner of his mouth.
Directly across from him, Rain Crow stood in silence, like a towering, upright raven.
Invisible Giant stared at the scene, deeply shaken. It took the boy a long moment to collect himself before asking, "Hey, hey, no way. You're telling me this dumb, autistic-looking rookie Jiahao is the mole Clock Maker sent?"
Blue Pigeon and Shadow Girl remained silent.
Neither of them spoke. Their expressions had never been so grim. In stark contrast, Invisible Giant looked like a kid fresh out of kindergarten asking his mom and dad what one plus one equaled.
Meanwhile, inside the interrogation room, Dark Crocodile said nothing.
A moment later, Rain Crow retrieved a voice recorder—previously hidden inside Dark Crocodile's combat suit—from a crow's beak.
Soon, a deep, mocking voice played from the recorder: "Long time no see, Rain Crow..."
Rain Crow narrowed his eyes. The voice playing from the recorder was unmistakably Clock Maker's.
The recording continued, and Clock Maker slowly said:
"Congratulations on finding the pawn I placed by your side... Look closely, doesn't this kid look a lot like Grey Owl?"
"Their personalities are just as stubborn, just as aloof, and even their facial expressions are exactly the same... Dark Crocodile is a child I raised with my own hands. But he is also the child I value the least, because his abilities are far too mediocre and dull."
Clock Maker fell silent for a moment, making a faint, eerie noise as if he were chewing on something. Only after a while did he continue:
"So, I delivered him right to your doorstep... For you, this should be the perfect opportunity. Haven't you always wanted revenge on me? Take it, exactly like I did to you."
He paused. "I killed Grey Owl, and you kill Dark Crocodile. Fair, isn't it?"
Rain Crow narrowed his eyes slightly, a profound light swirling in his pupils.
Dark Crocodile, however, raised his head in stunned silence, listening motionless to the words coming from the voice recorder.
After a moment, when the recorder finally fell silent, a trace of ashen despair flickered across his iron-hard face.
Dark Crocodile lowered his hollow eyes, silently gazing at the floor.
He muttered hoarsely to himself, the words unintelligible. A moment later, he spoke up, addressing Rain Crow.
"Just kill me..."
Rain Crow silently watched Dark Crocodile, and the voice recorder remained quiet for the moment.
"I'm useless to him now anyway... Kill me..."
Dark Crocodile spoke again, murmuring in a low tone.
"Your life belongs to you," Rain Crow's voice carried through his helmet, still dark and deep. "He gets to decide nothing for you."
Dark Crocodile remained silent.
The lightbulb on the ceiling swayed, casting cold white light onto his face. The hazy light danced in his eyes.
A moment later, Clock Maker's cold voice rang out from the recorder once more:
"Oh, of course I know you don't have the guts to kill him."
"Rain Crow, you're like this every time... clinging to useless moral bottom lines... Decades have passed, and you still haven't learned. Try to imagine—if Grey Owl were standing beside you, how disappointed would he be?"
"Yes, you could have avenged him, yet you threw the opportunity away with your own hands. You let your enemy's child go... and you actually think it's a noble act."
Clock Maker paused here, his tone hardening.
"No, you're just a coward. That's why I can crush you under my heel and humiliate you."
Rain Crow slightly lowered his head, closed his eyes, and remained silent for a long time.
Dark Crocodile was rendered entirely speechless.
He was like a marionette with its strings cut; his lips parted slightly as he sat blankly in the chair, dazed.
"Kill me," he said heavily after a while.
Rain Crow's attitude, however, remained cold and hard. "No, you shouldn't die here..."
But right at that moment, a sudden tick-tock, tick-tock sound echoed from inside the interrogation room.
That sound was so incredibly familiar to everyone present.
"Holy shit, what is that sound? Is there a pocket watch in the interrogation room?!" Invisible Giant's eyes widened, and he practically shouted the words.
"How is that possible?" Shadow Girl murmured subconsciously.
Blue Pigeon also froze.
Inside the interrogation room, Rain Crow violently raised his head and looked around as if searching for the pocket watch, but his gaze finally landed on Dark Crocodile.
Dark Crocodile hung his head, listening to the noise coming from inside his own body. It was as if a pocket watch had been hidden in his abdomen, ticking endlessly.
Tick-tock, tick-tock... tick.
Dark Crocodile, however, curled his lips into a relieved smile. "So this is what you had in mind all along..."
As his voice faded, the teenager's body was illuminated by fire erupting from within. It tore him apart, bursting him into a mist of blood. Immediately after, a silver, mercury-like blazing fire spread in all directions.
In that split second of dead silence, Clock Maker's voice rang out from the recorder:
"Since you don't dare, I'll do it for you... Things between us aren't over yet. They are far from over."
The next moment, a murder of crows erupted from behind Rain Crow, cawing violently. Their ear-piercing shrieks pierced right through the glass, flooding Blue Pigeon's ears.
"Boom—!!!"
The world became a deafening roar as the tide of crows smothered the flames of the explosion.
When the last crow feather scattered, the interrogation room was completely empty. Looking toward the chair, neither the chair nor Dark Crocodile's figure could be seen; there was only a pitch-black, smoking crater.
Rain Crow was gone.
The three members of Team Blue Pigeon looked stunned. It took them a long time to realize that if Rain Crow hadn't stopped the explosion from expanding outward, they likely would have been caught in the blast too.
"What about Dark Crocodile?" Invisible Giant murmured.
Blue Pigeon remained silent for a long time before frowning, raising his head, and saying in a low voice, "He's dead."
Shadow Girl took a deep breath and covered her face.
For some reason, Lin Yin had not been seen throughout the entire interrogation process. No one knew where he had gone.
But after leaving the Super Hero Company, Blue Pigeon suddenly thought of a possibility.
As he walked away from the company, he lowered his head in thought: 'If the mole were Shadow Girl or Invisible Giant, wouldn't the super-human species interface have pointed it out directly?'
'If it didn't point it out directly, that would mean these two don't have a deep relationship with Clock Maker—they might have only come into contact with him recently.'
'But the problem is, the super-human species interface description would never leave out interactions with important super-human species, so this possibility is equally low.'
'Invisible Giant and Shadow Girl most likely truly don't know Clock Maker.'
'So, putting those possibilities aside, what if the mole is a normal human? Ordinary humans don't have a super-human species interface, so they could hide it from my eyes.'
As his thoughts reached this point, Blue Pigeon froze slightly.
A name suddenly surfaced in his mind.
—Lin Yin.
'Wait, the Commander is the mole? But how is that possible?'
'Wasn't Commander Lin Yin's son brutally tortured and killed by Clock Maker's own hands, right in front of the whole nation? Is it possible for him to forget that and switch to Clock Maker's side?'
Blue Pigeon pondered for a moment, searching the dark web for relevant videos, but still couldn't find any clues.
At that moment, his pocket vibrated. He took out his phone and glanced at it; it was a message from Lin Yin.
[Lin Yin: The mole has been found. Come back quickly.]
"A thief crying thief?"
Blue Pigeon paused for a second and muttered silently.
He didn't reply to Lin Yin's message. Instead, he hurried back to the Super Hero Company as fast as he could, got into the glass elevator, and pressed the button for the 15th floor.
The elevator rumbled upward, the cabin enveloped in a dull humming sound. For some reason, Blue Pigeon felt a bit agitated.
A bad premonition gnawed at him, and he began to tap his foot lightly.
A moment later, the elevator car stopped on the 15th floor.
Blue Pigeon stepped off the elevator and strode into the Commander's office, where... he saw a spine-chilling scene.
Lin Yin was currently sitting on the floor, his body hunched over. He was leaning against the wall, clutching his bloodstained right arm with his left hand, and holding a black pistol in his right hand.
And directly across from him lay a boy.
It was a boy who looked slightly childish, with stars tattooed at the corners of his eyes. At this moment, he lay quietly in a pool of blood, his right hand clutching his chest, staring at the ceiling in shock.
Blue Pigeon froze for a moment before finally tearing his gaze away from the boy's face.
He saw that Invisible Giant's heart, abdomen, and even his left calf had been pierced by bullets, revealing hideous bloody wounds. Blood gushed out, pooling on the floor.
Invisible Giant was different from other espers. However powerful the giant he summoned with his esper abilities was, his physical body was just as weak—he could shatter at a single touch.
A few bullets were more than enough to take his life.
But after recovering his wits, Blue Pigeon still quickly bent down, took off the metal glove on his right hand, and placed his index finger near the boy's nose.
There was no breath.
Invisible Giant's phone had fallen to the side. The screen was smeared with blood, yet it still displayed a chat app interface, frozen on a half-typed line of text in the input box:
[Don't run off so fast, you guys. Captain, would it kill you to go to the arcade with me after work?]
The office was dead silent; the only sound was Lin Yin gasping heavily for breath.
"Commander, what... exactly happened just now?" After a moment, Blue Pigeon shifted his gaze away from Invisible Giant's corpse and turned to look at Lin Yin.
But Lin Yin slowly closed his eyelids, as if he had fallen asleep.
His glasses slipped off the bridge of his nose and fell to the floor. Shortly after, medics and security guards poured in, the clamor of voices washing over Blue Pigeon's ears like a tidal wave.