The silence in the penthouse was no longer a void; it was a physical weight. It was the sound of a judge's gavel hanging in the air, poised to fall.
Rossie was hollow. The terror of the last hour—the dissection, the analysis, the cold, corporate sentencing—had burned through her. There was nothing left but ash. She was no longer pleading. She was no longer even afraid. She had simply… stopped.
She was a flaw. A mess. A bug in the system.
And she was, she finally admitted, so very, very tired.
She stared at the floor, at the small, black burn mark. Ayumi was right. It was a logical, clean, simple cost-benefit analysis.
Maher Xander stood like a statue of granite, his silver eyes fixed on the false skyline. He was, as Rossie had realized, evaluating.
Ayumi Hamasaki, the perfect, crystalline predator, watched him, a faint, confident smile on her lips. She had presented a flawless, logical argument. She had identified the liabilities. She had presented a superior, cleaner, more efficient product. She had won. It was simply a matter of him finalizing the calculation.
The silence stretched for one second. Ten. A full minute.
In this agonizing, compressed void, Rossie's voice, when it finally came, was a shock.
It was not a scream. It was not a plea.
It was a whisper. So quiet, it was barely more than breathing.
"She's right."
Ayumi's head tilted, intrigued by the sound.
Rossie did not look up. She was staring at her own hands, twisted in her lap.
"She's right," Rossie whispered again. The admission was a surrender. The final, broken piece. "I am a flaw. I am a mess. I… I leak. I get sick. I'm… I'm just… human."
Her voice broke, not with a sob, but with a dry, hollow crack.
"So, just… please," she begged, not for her life, but for a clean end. "Whatever you do… just… liquidate me. Make it… clean. Like she said. Don't… don't let me be messy anymore."
She had accepted her own worthlessness. She had internalized Ayumi's analysis. She was endorsing her own deletion.
This—this—was the absolute, logical, finality of human despair.
And that was the data point Ayumi had missed.
CRACK.
It was not a sound, but a feeling. A fissure in the cold, sterile air of the room.
Maher Xander moved.
His head snapped.
He turned, not to Ayumi, but to Rossie.
His silver eyes—not cold, not calculating, but suddenly, terrifyingly electric—fixed on her.
He was looking at her. Truly, truly looking at her, for the first time.
He was not seeing a girl. He was not seeing a "flaw."
He was seeing it. The very thing he had overlooked.
Ayumi's smile faltered. She sensed the shift. "Xander? The calculation is simple."
"It is," Maher said. His voice was a low, dangerous rumble. He had found his answer.
He turned his gaze, slow and lethal, from Rossie to Ayumi.
"And your proposal," he stated, "is fatally flawed."
Ayumi's perfect porcelain mask cracked. Shock. "What? My… my logic is flawless!"
"Your logic," Maher said, taking a step toward her, "is incomplete. You analyzed the liabilities of the human component. You completely, and arrogantly, missed its primary function."
He gestured, a sharp, dismissive wave, at the Kitsune proposal. "You offer me a clean key. A synthetic bride. A stable vessel that is immune to frailties. You offer me something that is 'silent' and 'obedient' and 'perfect'."
"Yes!" Ayumi hissed. "A superior product!"
"You offer me a lie," Maher countered, his voice dropping to the temperature of a tomb. "You offer me a dead key. A useless thing."
He pointed one long, pale finger at Rossie. Rossie flinched, but his finger was not an accusation. It was an indicator.
"Look at it," he commanded Ayumi. "The mess. The fear. The fact that it is damp."
He stalked closer to Rossie. He loomed over her. She cowered, expecting a blow.
Instead, he crouched down in front of her.
It was the most shocking, terrifying, and intimate thing he had ever done.
He was on her level. His silver eyes were inches from hers. She could see the impossible, ancient galaxies swirling within them.
"You," he said to her, his voice a quiet, intense vibration, "are in despair. You have surrendered. You have accepted your worthlessness. You have, in your own words, asked for liquidation."
Rossie couldn't breathe.
"This," Maher said, his gaze locked on hers, "is what Ayumi's 'perfect' vessel can never do. A synthetic Kitsune cannot despair. A nine-tailed fox cannot break. It feels no angst. It has no concept of what it is to be a flaw. It cannot truly... suffer."
He looked up at Ayumi, his eyes burning with a cold, triumphant fire. "And that, Ayumi, is the entire point."
Ayumi recoiled, as if struck. "What… what are you saying?"
"The Batavia Contract," Maher explained, standing to his full, imposing height, "was not for a bride. It was not for a vessel. It was for an anchor."
"And what," he asked, his voice a predator's purr, "anchors a god to the earth? What binds an immortal, transcendent power to the… messy, human core of a city like Jakarta?"
He answered his own question.
"Pain."
"The contract is not for a life," he said. "It is for a sacrifice. The angst is the anchor. The fear is the chain. The despair... the human despair of having everything and then losing it all... that is the power source."
He turned back to Rossie. "Her suffering is not a liability. It is the entire asset. It is the fuel."
Ayumi was, for the first time, speechless. Her face was a mask of pale, furious disbelief. She had misread the entire brief.
"You," Maher said to Rossie, his voice devoid of all kindness, but filled with a new, terrifying purpose, "are not a flaw. You are the engine. Your weakness... is your function."
He had not saved her. He had not chosen her.
He had analyzed her.
He had re-classified her.
She was not garbage to be liquidated.
She was a resource to be mined.
This was not a rescue. It was the most profound, systematic, and terrible violation of all.
"So, no," Maher said, turning back to Ayumi. "I will not be 'upgrading'. The legacy system... the 'leaking faucet'..." He almost smiled. "It is working perfectly."
Ayumi's amethyst eyes blazed with a cold, pure fury. This was not a sentimental loss; this was a corporate failure. She had been out-maneuvered. Her logic had been defeated by a superior, colder logic.
"You are a fool, Xander," she hissed. "You are binding your fate to a bug. This... human sentiment... this fixation on 'pain'..."
"It is not sentiment," Maher corrected her. "It is pragmatism. You should try it."
Ayumi's form began to shimmer, the air around her crackling with the ozone and cherry-blossom scent. "You will regret this. You are choosing a flawed, weak, human system over a perfected one. When this... engine... of yours inevitably breaks... when her messy little human mind shatters from the strain... and your entire domain collapses with it... my father and I will be waiting."
"I will note your concern," Maher said, dismissing her.
With a final, murderous glare at Rossie—a look of pure, venomous contempt—Ayumi Hamasaki dissolved. The air did not tear; she simply retracted, like a camera's iris closing, until she was gone.
The electric, perfumed air vanished.
The room was cold, sterile, and silent once more.
Rossie was left on the chaise lounge, shaking, hollowed out, and utterly broken.
She was alone with Maher Xander.
He had saved her life.
And in doing so, he had just given her a new, and far, far worse reason to suffer.