"Are You Ready, Doctor?"

The silver-gray Pulse Pistol gleamed coldly on the table, the energy cell along its body flickering with a faint blue light.

Lanes stared at the weapon as though it were a key leading into an unknown abyss.

Her fingertips trembled slightly, only ten centimeters from the grip, yet the distance felt like an unbridgeable chasm.

"You have thirty seconds." Leon's voice came from behind a cloud of cigar smoke, calm to the point of cruelty. "Twenty-nine, twenty-eight..."

Lanes lifted her gaze from the pistol and looked at her palm—

Several small scars lay there, marks left by acidic laboratory reagents.

She recalled the first time she had entered the United Earth Directorate Advanced Research Institute.

In the resplendent lobby, elegantly dressed senators chatted over champagne, while she, a scientist from a common background, had needed to pass through three security checkpoints just to reach a shabby laboratory.

"...Twenty-one, twenty."

The countdown continued.

Countless images flashed through Lanes's mind.

The slums in the UED capital, carved into a checkerboard by maglev routes; the unspoken rule that the children of Military Committee members could enter elite academies directly; and the old man last week who had died in a hospital corridor because he could not afford treatment.

"...Fifteen, fourteen."

Without meaning to, she recalled what she had just seen: the holographic image of Homelander lifting a battleship.

A horrifying contrast took shape in her heart—

The UED generals would rather scour the land with nuclear weapons and inflict massive civilian casualties than lose more elite troops, while the Imperium of Man's Bio-Organic Weapons were saving civilians from an enemy nation.

"...Nine, eight."

Lanes suddenly noticed a line of tiny words engraved on the pistol's grip: Chinese characters reading, "Fight for Humanity."

The engraving was fresh, glimmering with a faint gold beneath the