"Simply inform them that the command came from me," Felzein said, his voice calm, yet underscored with a quiet force that defied dismissal.
Jonas hesitated, then let slip a crooked smirk, "And who, pray tell, are you?" he murmured, his words laced with derision.
He spoke again, this time louder, the veneer of civility still intact, though now threaded with a hint of scorn.
"Forgive me! But not even Agent Lyn would be granted clearance for a request of this nature without considerable difficulty. Why, then, should I permit a stranger to override protocol on a whim?"
Felzein gave no immediate reply. Instead, his hand moved with deliberate slowness towards the back pocket of his trousers, drawing forth a wallet with measured grace.
The motion did not go unnoticed. Jonas stiffened at once, misreading the intent. His hand shot up in protest, his voice ringing with sudden indignation.
"I must stop you there! I don’t take bribes!"
Felzein and Cherlyn exchanged a look, their brows furrowing in unison. Jonas’s reaction was overly dramatic, verging on farcical.
"As if I'd waste money on the likes of you... I'd rather hand it to the destitute," Felzein thought with a flicker of sardonic amusement.
Without breaking stride, he retrieved a lustrous golden card from his wallet.
Its surface gleamed under the dim light, embossed with a solitary, commanding letter, Vaf.
It was the same card that had earlier defied identification by the branch’s security systems, unreadable, unrecognised, but clearly not without significance.
He said nothing further. With a flick of the wrist, he sent the card sailing through the air. It landed with quiet finality in Jonas’s lap.
"Tell Central that their directive has come from the bearer of that card," Felzein said evenly, his tone firm, unyielding, and subtly resonant with power.
"Vaf?!" Jonas echoed, his voice cracking under the weight of recognition.
His eyes widened as his expression twisted from surprise into something far more volatile.
He glared at Felzein with the intensity of a man teetering on the edge of control, his eyes aflame with fury barely contained.
"You impudent cur! Where did you steal this card from?!" he thundered, voice raised with a passion that bordered on rage.
Felzein’s response was a mere narrowing of the eyes, his face composed and unreadable.
Not a muscle twitched. Cherlyn, meanwhile, jolted upright, her instincts flaring.
"Jonas! Mind your manners!" she snapped, her voice cutting through the tension like the crack of a whip.
But Jonas did not back down. His gaze remained fixed upon her, hard as granite, "I'm sorry, Agent Lyn. But in this matter, I cannot obey you."
His chest rose and fell with visible strain, each breath drawn like a blade unsheathed.
"Do you even realise what you’re holding?! This is the very card the organisation has been seeking for years."
"It belonged to Professor Vaf, yes, that Vaf, the visionary scientist who perished in the Vuska Laboratory explosion in Switzerland!"
His voice rang across the chamber with a reverence so fierce it bordered on fanaticism, laced with pain and awe in equal measure.
"I revered Professor Vaf. And I will not stand by while his legacy is sullied by the likes of a thief. In fact..." he added with chilling resolve, "I should thank you both for bringing it directly to me."
With a sharp twist of his body, he turned towards the guards, "Guards! Seize him!"
"Yes, sir!" came the chorus from the two sentries at his flank.
Yet their advance faltered as their eyes met. They knew precisely who sat before them. And he was no common trespasser.
They exchanged a silent understanding, then unlatched the door, summoning two additional guards from the corridor beyond.
Now four men stood at the ready, armed and alert, yet visibly unsure.
"What are you waiting for? Arrest him!" Jonas snapped, his voice tight with impatience.
With that, the quartet surged forward, albeit without conviction.
Their grips tightened around stun batons, forming a cautious perimeter around Felzein, who had not stirred from his chair.
It was then that Cherlyn moved.
"You will regret this, Jonas!" she cried, stepping forward with such force it stopped the guards mid-stride.
She placed herself directly in front of Felzein, like a sentinel prepared to take the storm upon herself.
Her stance left no room for compromise, should they strike, she would be the first to fall.
The guards hesitated. They were seasoned, well-trained. But they were not fools.
Their instincts screamed restraint, and so their batons froze in place, mere inches from her body.
"Agent Lyn!" one of them gasped, disbelief in his voice.
"Please, stand aside. For the safety of the facility, we must detain the suspect," he urged, trying to reason with her.
"No," she replied, her tone as sharp as steel. "I will not allow it."
The lead guard stiffened, his expression now hardening with reluctant resolve.
"Then forgive us," he said grimly, "for what we are forced to do next."
The quartet of guards moved as one, the last vestiges of uncertainty falling away like dust from their shoulders.
Stun batons raised, they advanced with measured determination, their intent clear, to restrain, not to maim.
A necessary duty, perhaps, but not one devoid of risk.
Cherlyn did not flinch. She stood tall, the cut of her gaze as precise as a blade, watching their every motion with the quiet tension of a seasoned warrior.
The first made his move. A swift lunge, too predictable.
Cherlyn’s body responded with instinctive elegance.
She slipped past the arc of the baton with the grace of wind dodging stone, her figure coiling and uncoiling in one seamless pirouette.
In the same breath, her hand locked around the guard’s wrist, and with a deft twist, she turned his momentum against him, hurling him sideways in a graceless sprawl.
No sooner had he hit the ground than the second came at her.
His strike was faster, more calculated, a slash meant to cleave the air beside her ribs.
But Cherlyn was already beneath it, crouching low in a dancer’s crouch, the current of the weapon slicing the space where she had just stood.
She rose, striking upwards.
Her knuckles met the tender joint of his wrist with surgical precision, and the baton flew from his grip, skittering across the marble like a disarmed threat.
By now, the two remaining guards had cast aside restraint.
Their steps grew sharper, their eyes darker with the resolve to end the confrontation swiftly.
One darted in from the flank, boot swinging.
Yet Cherlyn light as moonlight was already airborne, leaping back, the attack falling short as he staggered, overextended.
She seized her chance.
Before he could recover, she stepped into his vulnerable centre, hand driving into his chest with force tempered by control, and sent him crashing to the floor.
Only one now remained.
He hesitated, just long enough to betray his fear.
Then, with a breath and a grunt, he lunged. But Cherlyn met him with the poise of water meeting stone.
Her hand deflected the baton, her fingers finding his wrist, twisting, always twisting, until his balance faltered.
She pivoted, anchoring his weight to hers, and in one fluid motion, drove him down hard.
Silence fell.
The four guards lay sprawled and defeated, scattered like dolls after a storm.
Cherlyn stood alone in the centre, her breath steady despite the perspiration upon her brow.
Her stance was poised, her chin lifted, not in arrogance, but in the calm certainty of someone who had done only what was necessary.
She looked upon them, not with cruelty, nor triumph, but with a cool and formidable finality.
“I did warn you,” she said quietly, the words falling like stone into still water. “Do not interfere with us again.”
And with that, she turned, her steps silent, and made her way back to Felzein’s side.
“Agent Lyn!” thundered Jonas, his voice quaking with a fury that threatened to unravel his composure.
“You could face the severest reprimand for shielding a common thief!” he spat, the pitch of his words rising, betraying a desperation he could no longer conceal.
But it was not Agent Lyn who answered him.
“Common thief?” Felzein’s voice emerged, low and resonant, yet it struck the room like a bell tolling in a crypt. “Tell me, Jonas! Who among us is the true thief?”
He rose with a grace that belied the gravity of the moment, each movement measured, as though the very floor weighed his steps in judgement.
His boots echoed against the polished concrete, a sound that grew heavier with every stride.
What once were ordinary footsteps now felt like heralds of reckoning.
His eyes, unassuming until now, lifted to meet Jonas’s gaze.
But there was something in them, something ancient, something that watched not from the surface but from the depths of some vast, unknowable place.
A gaze that did not simply look, but it sifted.
Jonas, a man schooled in the art of confrontation, accustomed to the sterile politics of power, felt a stir of something he did not welcome.
Not anger. Not even hatred. But fear.
There was a weight in the air now, imperceptible yet undeniable, as if the very molecules had become denser under the pressure of an unseen presence.
It wrapped itself around Jonas’s chest and spine like a slow, tightening vice.
Felzein drew closer, not with menace but inevitability.
And Jonas, despite all his training, all his pride, recoiled a fraction, an instinctive motion he would later deny.
Their eyes met fully and it was then Jonas faltered.
Felzein’s irises, once a warm hazel, now shimmered with a preternatural green, luminous and unyielding.
It was not the green of spring leaves or calm oceans, but the green of fire caught in glass, alive, watching, ancient.
It was beauty married to terror.
And in that gaze, Jonas saw more than defiance. He saw judgement. Exposure. Himself, stripped of all pretence.
The room no longer belonged to him. Nor did the conversation. Nor, perhaps, did his own certainties.
There stood before him not merely a young man, but a cipher, one into whom the world had poured its pain, its purpose, and its unspeakable power.
Jonas felt a tremor, small yet profound, somewhere deep within the sanctum of his confidence.
For the first time in his life, he understood what it meant to stand in the presence of something beyond comprehension.
And he was afraid.