Mozen remained still behind the desk, the report held in one hand while his other supported his chin. His eyes moved across the page with measured patience, rereading the same lines as if scrutiny alone could change the outcome. The room around him felt too quiet for what the document confirmed, and the weight of it settled in the pauses between his breaths.
"All personnel assigned to the outer response unit have been confirmed lost," he said at last, his his voice even and controlled. "No survivors. No recoverable communications. No actionable distress window."
He lowered the report slightly and adjusted his glasses, the movement precise, almost habitual, before his gaze tightened again.
"That team was not inexperienced," Mozen continued, more firmly now. "They were one of our most reliable field units, led by Captain Arata Shigemori. Their protocol compliance was consistent, their threat response ratings were high, and their cohesion under pressure was verified repeatedly."
A brief pause followed, not for emotion, but for calculation.
"For them to be taken out before meeting academy standards," he said, "means the attack was planned and carried out by someone who knew how Vanguard moves and when they engage."
He glanced back down at the report, eyes narrowing. "This was not an unfortunate encounter," Mozen concluded. "It was a clean removal."
Mozen rubbed his jawline while continuing to speak, keeping his eyes on the report as if it might finally reveal something if he stared hard enough. His tone stayed level, but the edge underneath it was unmistakable.
"There are no recoverable identifiers," he said. "There is no residue signature we can isolate. No trace markers on the bodies that point to a weapon class or a binder profile. Whoever carried this out understood our forensic thresholds and made sure we had nothing to catalogue."
He turned a page, then added without looking up, "The intrusion into our servers follows the same pattern. No entry record. No triggered seals. No visible breach pathway. They accessed restricted systems as if they belonged there, and they left without even the courtesy of a footprint."
Mozen finally lifted his gaze to Theo.
"I want you on this personally," he said. "Treat it as a hostile operation, not an incident report. The city police are holding the scene and awaiting institute coordination in Kurotsuki Ward. Meet them there, take command of the Vanguard-side investigation, and do not return with assumptions."
He let a beat pass, then continued in the same controlled voice.
"If you identify the perpetrators or uncover a viable chain of responsibility, I will submit your name for advancement. Consider it a performance-based promotion."
Theo didn't argue. He simply gave a short nod and shifted his stance, the insignia on his uniform catching the light as he moved.
On the front of his jacket, just beneath the Vanguard crest, his rank badge sat clearly in place: the seventh-grade emblem, a gold-and-blue mark with the large 7 at its center, denoting Vanguard Grade.
"I understand, Mozen," Theo said, keeping his voice respectful, but he didn't hide the concern behind it. "If we don't have a profile on the perpetrators or even a confirmed weapon class, what exactly are we expecting to pull from the scene? I'll take the lead, of course, but a direction would help. Even a hypothesis."
He paused just long enough to make it clear he wasn't refusing, only thinking ahead, then waited for Mozen's answer.
Mozen didn't flinch at the question. He held Theo's gaze with the same measured composure he used for briefings and funerals.
"There will be something," he replied, calm and professional. "There is always something. A pattern in timing, a gap in procedure, a decision that was made too cleanly. Your job is to find the one detail they couldn't erase."
Theo's jaw tightened slightly, but he stayed silent.
Mozen continued, tone steady but carrying weight. "You've always had that instinct. Even when we were both students, you consistently found the angle everyone else missed. I'm assigning you because I trust your ability to extract meaning from silence."
He shifted the report in his hand, eyes narrowing just a fraction.
"This isn't only about the unit," Mozen added. "If we follow the trail properly, it may connect to the same actors who breached our systems... and to whoever executed the principal. Treat this as one operation with multiple faces."
Theo exhaled once, controlled, then nodded. The pressure didn't leave him, but it settled into focus instead of doubt.
"Understood," he said. "I'll bring back something concrete."
Mozen slid the report into Theo's hands and dismissed him with a brief nod. Once the door shut, the office fell quiet again, the kind of quiet that only made the alarms outside feel louder.
He remained standing for a moment, staring at the papers left on his desk as if they might rearrange themselves into answers. Malformations appearing too often. A principal murdered inside the academy. Classified data extracted without leaving a footprint. None of it fit the usual chaos of distortion events.
His thoughts returned, inevitably, to the same name.
Takumi Kisaragi.
Mozen's gaze hardened slightly. "You may need closer supervision than any other student," he murmured, more conclusion than suspicion. "Your resonance is outside expected parameters, and the timing is no longer ignorable."
He rose fully and moved to the window, hands clasped behind his back as he looked out over the campus and the distant rail line beyond it.
"The Institute has shifted since your arrival," he said quietly. "Whether that is coincidence or convergence, I intend to determine the truth."
Theo didn't waste time getting there. The motorcycle tore through the coastal roads until the flashing barricade lights came into view, and he rolled in hard before cutting the engine. The sudden quiet felt unsettling given the presence of so many uniforms on the ground.
Police were already set up around the site, tape drawn wide, floodlights washing the asphalt in cold white. The officers on perimeter duty straightened when they recognized him, but none of them looked comfortable. They'd seen violence before. This time was different.
Theo swung a leg off the bike and planted his boot firmly, eyes sweeping the scene in one pass. Abandoned vanguard vehicles sat at odd angles, their doors ajar, their equipment strewn as if dropped in mid-action. Bodies lay where they'd fallen, still, too.
A senior officer moved in to meet him before he could step deeper into the cordon.
"Mr. Carvalho Theo," the man said, his voice tight but professional. "We've been awaiting your arrival."
Theo pulled a cigarette from the pack, lit it, and exhaled once as the wind tugged his brown leather jacket back off his shoulders. His gaze never left the dead.
"What's the status?" he asked, calm on the surface, edged underneath.
The officer nodded and began, speaking clearly as if he'd rehearsed it to keep his nerves in check.
"Confirmed total loss of the external response unit," he reported. "No survivors were located, no wounded, and no personnel were missing from the roster we were given." Time of death is estimated within the same operational window as yesterday's Malform alert, but we can't narrow it further without Vanguard medical confirmation."
He gestured toward the nearest vehicle. "No signs of a prolonged engagement. No scatter pattern consistent with a retreat. Most of the bodies were found within ten meters of their assigned positions, which suggests they were taken down quickly and didn't have time to reposition."
Theo's eyes tracked the ground, the spacing, the angles. He didn't interrupt.
"And here's the part we can't explain," the officer continued, choosing his words carefully. "There are no visible wounds. No lacerations, no punctures, no blunt-force trauma we can identify. Uniforms are intact. No blood. No obvious external cause."
He let that sit for half a beat, then added, "We checked for environmental hazards too. No burns, no chemical signs, no vehicle impact patterns that would explain it. It's as if they just… stopped."
Theo's cigarette paused at his lips. "Comms?"
The officer gave a short nod. "Their comm units are present, but the last transmissions we can pull are mostly static. Our technicians say the interference pattern isn't typical signal loss. The channels were disrupted hard during the same window, and it doesn't read like an accident."
He lowered his voice slightly. "One more thing. There's almost no environmental damage. No craters, no heavy impact scarring. That's what makes it unsettling."
Theo exhaled smoke slowly through his nose, eyes narrowing as he stared past the tape at the bodies.
"So they were erased," he said quietly, almost to himself. "Fast. Clean. Whoever did it didn't need to touch them."
The officer held his gaze. "That's the impression, sir. We've secured the perimeter and preserved the scene as best we can, but we're out of our depth with anything resonance-related. We need Vanguard assessment."
Theo's jaw tightened, grief kept behind discipline as he stepped forward toward the cordon.
"Alright," he said, voice steady. "Walk me through who was first contact, and don't leave out anything that felt off—sounds, pressure, lights, all of it."
Theo ducked under the taped perimeter and walked in with measured steps, the gravel crunching softly under his boots as he closed the distance to the nearest body. He didn't rush, but his attention was sharp, moving from posture to hands to the surrounding ground, as if the scene itself might confess if he stared long enough.
"No blood," he muttered, crouching near the Vanguard's shoulder without touching him. His eyes tracked the uniform, the exposed skin, the face. "No visible trauma. No defensive damage. No signs of a struggle, either." He straightened slightly, scanning the roadway and the open vehicle doors. "Stabbing, shooting, blunt-force… none of it fits. Poisoning doesn't fit either. Not for an entire unit this fast, and not like this."
Behind him, the policeman cleared his throat, careful not to step too close. "That's exactly why we called you in, Mr. Carvalho," he said, voice lowered out of respect for the dead. "Our med team checked for punctures, burns, fractures, even internal bleeding indicators. Nothing. No bruising patterns. No rupture. No residue we can identify on skin or in the immediate area."
Theo's gaze shifted to the second and third bodies near the barricade, their weapons still locked in their hands. "They didn't even drop their guard," he said quietly. "They just… stopped."
The policeman nodded, then gestured toward the vehicles. "We secured the comm units and pulled the last recorded transmissions. There's a gap right before contact should've resumed. No distress call. No shouted warning. The audio doesn't cut like a normal malfunction, either. It's like the line was swallowed."
Theo exhaled through his nose, slow and controlled, then looked back at the officer. "Any civilians nearby? Witnesses, traffic cams, roadside sensors, anything that caught a silhouette?"
"Nothing reliable," the policeman replied. "The nearest traffic cam caught heavy interference during the window we're working with, and the coastal sensor array logged a resonance spike in the same stretch of road." He glanced toward the taped-off vehicles. "It doesn't match any standard weather anomaly or mechanical disruption we've seen before, so we sealed the raw readings and preserved the files for Institute review."
Theo's eyes stayed on the nearest body a moment longer before he looked back at the officer, cigarette still pinched between two fingers.
"Did anyone check their resonance?" he asked, voice low and controlled. "Not comms. Not vehicles. Their resonance signatures."
The policeman's expression tightened like he'd been expecting it.
"We don't have the capability," he admitted. "Our forensics team can log temperatures, pulse if there's anything left to read, chemical exposure, that sort of thing. But resonance isn't something we can test with standard equipment."
He gestured toward the cordoned roadway.
"We can document what we see," he continued, careful with his wording, "the timing, the lack of trauma, the fact they dropped where they stood. But we can't confirm what happened to their resonance, or whether it was disrupted, drained, or suppressed. Nobody on our side can decipher that."
Theo's jaw set.
"And your technicians?" he pressed. "Any specialist contractors? Anyone with clearance for abnormal cases?"
The officer shook his head once. "Not unless your Institute sends someone. We're police, Mr. Carvalho. We handle human evidence. This is beyond our tools."
Theo exhaled slowly through his nose, gaze sweeping across the bodies again, frustration contained behind professionalism.
Theo's gaze didn't leave the bodies as he answered, tone flat with the kind of honesty that didn't comfort anyone.
"There isn't anyone," he said. "Not in the way you mean."
He stepped closer to the nearest Vanguard, eyes tracing the still hands and the calm, wrong posture. "Resonance isn't a fingerprint. It doesn't leave a neat readout you can pull from a scanner, and we don't have some specialist who can 'look' at a corpse and tell you where it went." His jaw tightened slightly. "Even at the Institute, we measure what we can: fluctuations, density, abnormal output during combat. After the fact, especially like this… it's mostly inference."
Theo glanced back at the policeman, voice steady. "So no, Officer. Nobody has a tool that says, 'their resonance was removed' and prints a receipt."
He turned his attention back to the scene, more focused now than frustrated. "That's why this is bad. Whoever did this picked a method that leaves almost nothing for either of us to grab."
"Still…" Theo said, eyes narrowing as he studied the stillness again, "it's worth digging deeper."
He let the sentence sit for a beat, then continued in the same controlled tone. "If there's truly no external trauma, no chemical trigger, no mechanical cause, then we have to consider the possibility that whatever killed them didn't come from the outside at all. Something internal. Something that shut them down without needing a blade."
He glanced toward the bodies near the barricade, then back to the officer. "It's only a theory, but it fits one problem: resonance doesn't just vanish because someone dies. It lingers. It dissipates slowly. It doesn't get 'cleaned out' in an instant."
Theo's jaw tightened slightly. "That's exactly why Ghouls don't just kill and walk away. They tear into people and feed until there's nothing left to take. They're after the resonance, and they have to extract it the ugly way."
His gaze returned to the scene, colder now. "So if this unit dropped with no struggle and nothing left for us to read… then whatever did it found a cleaner method."
The policeman swallowed, then gave a stiff nod toward the dark stretch of road beyond the tape. "For what it's worth… our patrols didn't spot any Ghouls in the area last night. No distortions on camera feeds either, at least not the kind we usually associate with them. No reports from civilians. Nothing."
Theo's eyes didn't leave the bodies. "That doesn't make me feel better," he said flatly.
The officer frowned. "I'm just saying, if this was a Ghoul attack, we'd expect signs. Noise. Panic. Missing people. Something."
"Exactly," Theo replied, finally turning his head, expression tight with focus. "If there are no Ghouls, no distortion trail, and no obvious external injuries, then we're looking at something else entirely. Something that knew how to work quietly."
He stepped forward a half pace, gaze sweeping the scene like he was mentally drawing lines between every detail. "Ghouls are messy. Even when they're careful, they leave evidence in the environment. They don't have the discipline for a clean wipe."
Theo exhaled once, controlled. "So either something killed them that wasn't a Ghoul… or someone made sure it looked like nothing happened at all." He glanced back to the officer. "That's why we investigate. Not because we're missing clues."
His eyes narrowed. "Because the absence of clues is the clue."
The policeman hesitated, then glanced toward the distant Vanguard vehicles again before looking back at Theo. "Did Acting Principal Mozen give you anything besides the report? Any intel on suspects, movement in the area, unusual sightings, anything at all?"
Theo let the cigarette hang at the corner of his mouth for a beat, then pulled it away and exhaled slowly. "No," he said. "He gave me the summary and the directive. Total loss, no survivors, no useful trail, investigate and bring back something concrete."
He gestured lightly toward the scene, not dramatic, just matter-of-fact. "No additional context. No prior warnings. No names. Nothing that narrows the field."
The officer's brow furrowed. "So you're starting blind."
Theo's eyes hardened a fraction. "I'm starting honest," he corrected. "Which means I don't get to pretend this was a random hit or a freak incident. Whoever did this knew what they were doing, and they knew exactly when and where to do it."
He looked down at the nearest body again, voice lower. "If Mozen had anything actionable, I'd already be working it. Since he doesn't, I'm treating this as the first real evidence we've got."
"What if their resonance wasn't just removed," a woman's voice added from behind him, steady and unsettlingly practical, "but pulled out, swapped, or replaced with something else entirely?"
Theo turned at once, cigarette paused between his fingers, and found her standing just beyond the tape line, posture composed as if she'd walked into a normal briefing instead of a graveyard.
To be continued...