Victoria heard the door close behind her again. She understood that this meant she had been temporarily imprisoned here.
She rolled up her sleeve and examined her left hand. Sure enough, the chip had been pried out and destroyed. Whoever had done it had been quite impatient.
It seemed impossible to expect Hesta and the others to find this place through the chip.
Victoria lowered her gaze. What should I do now? Pretending to cooperate was out of the question. The other side knew her background perfectly well and understood how much she could accomplish with the authority currently in her hands. To cooperate, she would have to offer them a sufficiently weighty token of allegiance. In an instant, several extremely dangerous conditions came to mind—destroying the Mother City, for example, or luring Zoe and Ende here as well... Every one of them was a line she would never cross.
And refusing Deep Anchor... the price might be that she would only live until tomorrow morning.
Victoria let out a soft sigh and vigorously scratched her hair a few times. I shouldn't have eaten so much tonight!
Right now, she had to find a third path, a choice somewhere between complete submission and total rupture. Only then could she possibly break through this deadlock.
Victoria lightly tapped her fingers against the table.
This was truly... easier said than done.
A simple operating table had been set up in the temporary workshop. Several cages holding prisoners had been dragged down to the first floor, and every Quicksilver Needles member who had come to help passed through their Constraint Time steadily under Hesta's watch.
"Where's Victoria?" Zoe stood up. "Why don't I see her?"
"She was taken by Deep Anchor."
Zoe frowned. "What?"
Hesta explained what had happened, but before Zoe