Ares looks at me, then puts 404 on speaker, like I asked.
“— been going through records,” 404’s voice crackles through the encrypted line, sounding hyped, overdosed on caffeine since he’s probably been working through the night."Cross-referencing participants against hospital admissions, morgue reports, missing persons... There's something weird, boss."
"Define weird," Ares says, his eyes fixed on some invisible point in the darkness.
"The no-shows for Kharon. Players who are selected but never make it to the motel." 404 pauses, the sound of rapid typing echoing in the background. "It's been increasing. Four years ago, it was around ten percent. Now we're looking at twenty-three."
I sit up straighter, pulling the sheet to cover me. The numbers mean nothing to me, but Ares' eyes narrow, and this tells me they should.
"Expected variance," Ares dismisses, but there's an anger in his voice that wasn't there before.
"That's what I thought too," 404 continues, unfazed. "Until I dug deeper. Every year, six of our potential players show up in police records as missing persons. And I’m not talking about those who actually enter Kharon. Families file reports... searches are conducted. Dead ends, all of them."
A cold chill runs down my spine like a premonition; we hit gold.
"And?" Ares asks, growing impatient.
"There are two anomalous years where the numbers don't match. Including the year Elias was killed."
At the mention of his name, my body goes rigid. Elias. The reason I'm here. The reason I've done everything. His ghost follows me around, lurking in the corner of every room, watching me now as I was sleeping instead of being out there, searching for justice.
"Both years, only five were reported missing," 404 continues, oblivious to the guilt storming inside me. "But Elias doesn’t show up in any police record."
"I couldn’t go to the police with this. They wouldn’t have done anything about it anyway. But what you're saying is that someone else besides Elias might have gone unreported," I conclude.
"Exactly." 404 sounds pleased, like a teacher whose slow student has finally understood the lesson. "And if you think about it, there is a high chance of that happening since our players don’t usually have ties with friends and families."
"So that means, every year, six of our potential players go missing," Ares finishes, his eyes now burning with an intensity that makes my skin prickle.
"These aren't random disappearances, boss. Someone's been picking off specific players. For years," 404 says, and I can swear the temperature in the room just got colder.
We both know what this means. Someone’s been targeting Kharon players.
“Keep digging,” Ares orders. “No one else sees this information. Understood?”
“Crystal clear, boss,” 404 confirms and the line goes dead, leaving us in total silence.
My mind races to a thousand places, my teeth clenching so tightly that my temples throb.
“Who else could know about Kharon? And what’s the point of killing the other players?” I ask, more to myself than Ares.
“Too many people over centuries know about Kharon. Their ancestors maybe, my team. So fucking many trails to follow,” he groans, and I can tell his mind is racing everywhere, just like mine.
“I don’t understand. He was wearing a Kharon uniform. And he had gashes from a sword covering his chest. How was he in the game if he wasn’t in the game?”
Ares doesn’t answer, but I know he’s thinking about all possible variations.
My head spins with everything this could mean, with the leads we should chase. Elias’ death has just become even more complicated, the trail not leading only to Kharon now, but straight into the shadows. The breakthrough I hoped we were making earlier has now just turned into plain confusion.
I suddenly get out of bed, pulling the sheets along with me as I race toward Ares’ dressing room and pull one of his shirts on.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing at 4 AM?” he asks, showing up right behind me.
“I need to train,” I say, knowing how ridiculous this might sound. Yet it’s the only thing I can do right now to deal with this.“I need to be ready.” I don’t know what I’m up against, or what exactly I need to be ready for. But there’s something inside me that tells me a hunt is coming, and I refuse to be unprepared in becoming the hunter.
“What you need is to get back in bed and get some fucking rest so you can have a clear mind in the morning when we’ll deal with this,” Ares snaps, but judging by the look on his face, he won’t be able to sleep either.
“You know as well as I do that’s not an option,” I say, pacing the length of the room like a caged animal. At this point, I don’t even feel the wound in my leg, and I’d run for miles chasing whatever I should be after. “I need to train,” I repeat, feeling like my body is too weak and my mind too blurred after those weeks spent in bed.I need to get in shape.
