SSS-Class Profession: The Path to Mastery-Chapter 172: Ashes of Subject 3834

I walked away from him.

The conversation with Reynard made me happy, since I got to team up with him.

The last conversation regarding a subject like that still echoed in my mind. The moonlight had caught the side of his face just right, illuminating as if he was a higher being. I had stood beside him, fists clenched in my coat pockets, my voice full of passion.

"It means we're the only two that matter"

He hadn't given me a complete answer back then. Instead, he would simply say that he didn't trust me, but I was feeling like that was slowly changing. Though, I still regret the things that had happened after I promised to rule with him.

I walked away, knowing full well that he was the only person who ever made me feel more than just a ghost in someone else's machine.

Back then, as I stepped off the plane into the bleak industrial district of Szeged's southern border, I felt the weight of that night dig deeper into my spine. Hungary's sky was a low bruise above the buildings, thick with smog and the screech of distant mechanical whines.

They told me to come alone.

The message had come encrypted, of course and coded with a signature I'd never forget: D.C. The bastard never liked signing his name. Apparently, he had too many enemies.

I moved through the checkpoint with forged credentials and a forged smile. Even my gait had changed by now, slow and inconspicuous. Another blank figure in the churn of anonymous bodies passing through steel detectors and reinforced doors.

But once I passed the last turnstile, a different rhythm kicked in.

Two guards. Black coats. Same boots I remembered.

They didn't speak.

Just gestured.

I followed.

The room they took me to was underground and sterile. No camera in the upper right corner, though I could see the ring on the wall where one used to be.

Connor never liked recording his own mistakes.

I sat down and waited.

My reflection stared back at me from the polished surface of the interrogation table, clean and shaven, nothing like the face full of scars and injuries that it was going to transform into soon.

The door hissed open.

Connor stepped in like he owned the silence. His gloves were off today. Just bare hands and a file in his grip.

He didn't sit.

"Subject 3834," he said, voice dry as dust. "You've aged."

I smiled. "So have your jokes."

He dropped the file on the table. It slid halfway toward me and came to rest with a slap of gravity. Unlabeled. Of course.

"You're late," he said.

"And you're wearing aftershave. Neither of us are what we used to be."

That earned a look. Cold, analytical. The kind they used to give me when I was still strapped to hospital gurneys and drugged into silence. A look that said you're a tool, not a person.

"What do you know about the Masked Syndicate?"

I leaned back cracking my neck.

"Rumors. Whispers. They're not exactly posting vlogs."

He watched me too closely. Every blink. Every twitch.

"You're lying."

I smiled again. "You're paranoid."

A hiss. Metal slid behind me. Another figure entered. A technician. Slender, unassuming. Held a small metallic case. Set it on the table and opened it with two clicks.

Needles. Damp cloths. Surgical thread. A thin black headset with glimmering nodes.

I stiffened.

Didn't show it. Not yet.

Connor gestured. "We'll be measuring truth the old-fashioned way."

My voice dropped. "I thought we evolved past this."

He pulled on gloves slowly. The technician slipped the headset over my temple, and I felt the cold kiss of the nodes bite into my skin.

"It's not like it's anything new," Connor said. "You are 3834 after all. You've always been that, and you always will be."

The room shifted.

I heard the sound of leather restraints being buckled, even though I wasn't wearing any.

I could smell antiseptic and burning plastic. Memories came flooding in my injuries that they had stitched away in the past.

But time wasn't enough.

He sat across from me and pressed a switch.

The headset buzzed.

They started small.

Electrical stimulation across my motor cortex.

False memory visuals flashed in the corner of my vision—old images designed to weaken resistance. That damn hallway. The red tile. The black boots standing in a line while I screamed myself hoarse.

Still, I said nothing.

Then came the sharp jabs to the limbic system. Emotions lit like fuses. Rage. Terror. Sorrow.

The technician watched my vitals and said nothing.

Connor leaned forward.

"Where is the Syndicate based?"

I breathed. "Somewhere with worse weather than here if I had to assume."

Buzz. The world tilted.

My fingers spasmed. I tasted blood, even though I hadn't bit my tongue.

He asked again.

Buzz.

"What is the Syndicate's leader's name?"

I didn't flinch. I didn't blink. The room stank of sterilized metal and ozone. The restraint bands at my wrists were tight, though I'd stopped struggling hours ago. That was the trick: you let them think they've won.

Connor sat across from me, arms folded neatly behind his back like he was conducting a tea ceremony, not an interrogation. The small projector embedded in the ceiling clicked again, feeding new lines of code into the machinery hooked to my nervous system.

A pulse ran through me—first a static tickle, then a searing shock along my arms, legs, chest. I arched up involuntarily. The pain didn't make me scream, though. Just locked my jaw and dragged a hiss from my lungs.

The burns were worse. A patch on my side, now raw and blistering, had been seared three times—once for defiance, once for silence, once for calling Connor a failure.

He didn't like that.

Now he stood a few feet behind the control panel, observing, detached, like I was some antique music box he was winding up too far just to see what note would crack the tune.

"Still nothing?" he asked calmly, and I hated that. The calm ones were the worst. The screamers, the barkers, they were amateurs. But Connor? He was polished, practiced. He enjoyed the art of unraveling people.

"I asked you a question, Subject 3834."

That....'name' rang through my head.

"You used to be promising. One of the better ones. Not stable, no—but smart. And useful. We had such high hopes."

Another jolt surged through the base of my skull. I bit down. The iron tang of blood spilled between my teeth. My molars had cracked years ago under pressure. These were replacements. Cheaper. Stronger.

"You're wasting our time," he said, as if disappointed in a child.

I didn't respond. My hands twitched slightly against the restraints, fingertips curling. I imagined them wrapped around his throat. I imagined the look in his eyes—not fear, no, he was too far gone for that—but confusion. As if he couldn't quite believe someone like me could reach him.

The lights dimmed briefly.

Then the nodes lit up again.

Connor pressed another button.

This one wasn't a shock.

It was a crawl.

I knew the tech. Neuropathic microinjections, pumped directly into the spine—liquid programming designed to unlace your nervous system and rethread it in the shape of a confession.

Cold. A specific kind of cold. Like needles dragging down your ribs.

My breathing hitched.

My hands clenched.

I could see the room tilting slightly, not because it was, but because my brain thought pain should come with gravity loss. Clever design. They made suffering feel disorienting on a metaphysical level.

But they forgot.

They forgot I'd lived through this before.

I grew up in this kind of hell.

They trained me in it.

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They made me a mirror of their cruelty.

So no, I wouldn't scream.

I wouldn't give them that.

Not yet.

Connor's voice slid in again, soft and mocking. "You know, the only reason you're alive is because Sir World President thought you were salvageable. You followed him like a stray dog hoping for a name. A cause. You were always more loyal than lethal."

My vision blurred slightly.

I turned my head, slow.

"You talk too much," I rasped, voice scraping through my throat like gravel.

Connor stepped closer. "Who leads the Syndicate?"

The machine hissed again. This time it wasn't pain. Not at first. It was a warmth in my spine—a promise. Then it flipped—warmth to burn. Fire beneath the skin, licking the nerves, curling under my ribs and lighting everything it touched.

My body bucked against the straps, involuntarily.

I ground my heels into the floor.

The scream rose in my chest.

I didn't let it go.

Not yet.

"Name," he repeated.

I stared past him now, through the crack in the wall, toward the flickering light above the observation deck. Someone was watching. They always watched. Probably recording this session. Probably already preparing the next one.

Connor sighed.

"You know," he said casually, "we still have the raw footage from your early trials. The way you cried when they opened your mind up. The way you screamed for someone to come save you."

That hit deeper than the fire. Deeper than the spine-needles or the voltage.

He knew what he was doing.

I swallowed hard.

My mind went back—not on purpose, but because trauma doesn't ask for permission.

White rooms.

Silver beds.

A child.

My hands curled again.

I'd begged back then. Screamed. Tore my throat raw.

No more.

Never again.

"Last chance," Connor said.

He pressed the final key.

The current surged with a sharp buzz, followed by the chemical spike.

My body convulsed.

My skin lit up like live wire. My vision went white. A scream tore out of me—but not of surrender.

Not of pain.

It was a scream of rage.

The words erupted like thunder, ragged and full of fury.

"REYNARD VALE!"

It slipped out before I could hold it.

A silence followed.

Even the technician froze.

Connor leaned back slowly.

"You said that name like you've seen God."

I didn't answer.

Didn't need to.

Because in a way... he was.

The room shifted again—reality splintering as the drug halo around my vision cracked under the weight of memory.

It hadn't even been a couple of days....

Since the night I'd asked him. The night I'd proposed to rule the world with me like making a deal with the devil. And here I was revealing his identity.

"With our abilities, we don't have to kneel to anyone," I'd said. "We could shape the world however we see fit. No more rules. No more restrictions."

Connor's laugh pulled me back from my train of thought.

"So it is one man," he said, standing. "And you just gave it away."

I looked up.

The blood from my nose had stained the collar of my coat. My wrists trembled slightly—still affected by the neuro-burn.

Looking at my reflection, my face was burned and badly damaged with red lines going across my body showing the electrocution.

But my voice?

Clear.

"I truly do hate you with every fiber of my being, Connor."

Connor turned to the technician. "Prepare the files. I want to know everything about this Reynard Vale fellow."

Then back to me. "Thank you, Subject 3834. Your loyalty, as always, is deeply unintentional."

He turned toward the door.

That's when it broke.

Something inside me cracked. Not the body. The part beneath it.

The one they'd carved up years ago. The one Reynard once looked at.

And I started laughing with an odd amount of passion in my voice.

It echoed. Not as a confession—but as a warning.

To every bastard who thought they still owned me.

Connor paused.

He turned back, half-amused, half-surprised. "You sound almost proud."

I was shaking.

But I smiled. This one wasn't forged. It wasn't a mask. It was pure.

"I am."

He studied me for a moment more. Then said nothing as the technician sedated me and the room swam sideways.

My memory ended there.

I was back in the present, seated in a small café far from that building. Far from the drugs, the scans, the memories. The fog rolled past the cracked window beside me.

I stirred the bitter coffee in my hands. Watched it ripple like the last vestige of control.

I had said Reynard's name.

And with it, I'd lit a fuse.

Connor would laugh now. He'd think me broken again. That I would need reeducation.

I pressed my fingers against the side of my coat.

I stared at the reflection in the café window. I saw my own eyes cold and open.

Then I whispered to myself:

"I am far more than pleased to be hunting you, Director Connor."