Chapter : 266

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Finlay gestured to the scattered pages. "Copies of the original police report. Witness statements from Carrion's colleagues. A partial inventory of his laboratory contents. And this."

He pulled a small, sealed envelope from the back of the dossier and placed it on the table. It was marked with a single word in red ink: URGENT.

"This was delivered to the Council by an anonymous source within the police force three days ago," Finlay said. "It contains the name of a person of interest. Someone who was seen entering Carrion's laboratory building on the night of the murder but was never interviewed by the police."

Iris reached for the envelope, but before she could open it, a loud, obnoxious crunching sound echoed from the far end of the table.

Ken was still eating his toast.

He had been sitting there the entire time, tilted back in his chair, his dark eyes half-closed, his expression one of supreme, unshakable boredom. He had not asked a single question. He had not looked at a single photograph. He had not shown the slightest interest in the murder, the cover-up, or the fifteen-point reward.

What he had done was eat his toast. Very loudly. Very slowly. Very deliberately. With each crunchy bite timed to land during the most dramatic pause in Finlay's briefing, as if his jaw had a built-in sense of comedic timing.

Naomi shot him a glare that could have melted steel. Ken ignored her and took another bite.

"Ken," Sayma said, pushing her glasses up with an exasperated sigh. "Could you at least pretend to pay attention?"

"I am paying attention," Ken said through a mouthful of toast. He swallowed, licked his lips, and leaned back even further in his chair. The wooden legs creaked dangerously. "I just do not see what the big deal is."

"The big deal," Naomi said, her voice tight with barely contained frustration, "is that a man was murdered and the police covered it up. That is a very big deal, Ken."

"Yeah, I got that part," Ken said, waving his toast dismissively. "What I mean is, why is everyone acting so surprised?"

The room looked at him. Even Finlay's thick gray eyebrows drew together in a slight, questioning frown.

Ken scratched the back of his messy black hair and let out a long, lazy breath. His dark eyes, which had been half-closed and bored throughout the briefing, opened just a little wider. Not much. Just enough to show that underneath the slacker exterior, a mind was working.

A mind that had been cataloging information, connecting dots, and forming opinions while everyone else was busy being shocked.

"Think about it," Ken said, his voice taking on that particular lazy-but-knowing tone that he used when he was about to say something that annoyed everyone in the room. "Every single researcher we have run into in this Empire has been completely shady."

He held up his fingers and started counting. "Dr. Augusto. Insane. Built a giant skeleton monster to destroy a village. Tried to kill us all. Currently dead, which honestly was the best career move he could have made."

Another finger. "Francis. Arrogant. Obsessed with illegal magic. Tried to steal the Core of Luminus for his own research. Also tried to kill us. Also currently not doing great."

A third finger. "That weird alchemist in the Outer District who tried to sell us potions made from monster organs. I am pretty sure his lab was not up to code. Or any code. Ever."

He lowered his hand and shrugged, his lazy, cynical smirk spreading across his face. "My point is, in this Empire, being a scientist and getting murdered is basically a workplace hazard. Like a builder falling off a scaffold. Except the scaffold is made of illegal magic, and the fall is into a pit of corruption and backstabbing."

The room was silent. Not the respectful silence of people absorbing important information. The uncomfortable silence of people who wanted to argue but could not find a good counterpoint.

Because Ken was not wrong.

Every scientist they had encountered during their missions had been involved in something illegal, dangerous, or morally bankrupt. The Belmontia Empire's research community was not a clean, well-regulated institution. It was a cutthroat, fiercely competitive arena where brilliant minds pursued power and profit with the same ruthless intensity that nobles pursued political dominance.

Sayma opened her mouth to respond, then closed it. She pushed her glasses up again, a sure sign that she was thinking hard and had not yet reached a conclusion she was satisfied with.

Laxmi snorted. "Okay, the lazy one has a point. That is annoying."

Iris, however, was not dismissive. She looked at Ken with those sharp, thoughtful violet eyes, the way she always looked at him when he said something that sounded ridiculous on the surface but carried an unexpected kernel of truth underneath.

"You are suggesting that Carrion was involved in something illegal," Iris said. "And that his death was connected to his research, not a random act of violence."

"I am suggesting that scientists in this Empire do not get murdered for no reason," Ken said, finishing his toast and brushing the crumbs off his shirt. They landed on the classified documents. Finlay's eye twitched.

"They get murdered because they know too much, they steal the wrong person's formula, or they accidentally invent something that makes someone else very angry and very desperate."

"

He picked up one of the photographs of Carrion's laboratory and squinted at it. The cluttered workbench. The bubbling apparatus. The stacks of notebooks filled with cramped handwriting.

"This guy was working on something big," Ken said, tapping the photograph. "You can tell by the mess. Happy scientists have clean labs. Stressed scientists have messy labs. Secretive scientists have messy labs with hidden compartments."

He tossed the photograph back onto the pile. "My bet? He found something he was not supposed to find. And someone made sure he could not tell anyone about it."

The silence that followed was different from the previous ones. It was the silence of people rearranging their understanding of a situation. The lazy, toast-eating boy at the end of the table had just reframed the entire investigation with a few casual observations and a mouthful of breadcrumbs.

Iris nodded slowly. "Then we approach this not just as a murder investigation," she said, her voice gaining strength and clarity. "We approach it as an inquiry into what Carrion was researching. Whatever he discovered is likely the key to understanding why he was killed and who wanted him silenced."

She looked around the table, meeting each of her unit members' eyes in turn. "We will begin tomorrow. First light. We visit Carrion's laboratory and see what the police missed. Or chose to ignore."

Finlay straightened up and gave a curt nod. "The Council expects results. Do not disappoint them." He turned and marched out of the room, his silver armor clanking with every step until the sound faded down the hallway.

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