SSS-Class Profession: The Path to Mastery
Chapter 240: Failsafe

Chapter 240: Failsafe

He didn’t blink.

He didn’t flinch.

He just stared—unmoving, unreadable—like nothing about this moment surprised him. Like he had anticipated every second of our arrival with mechanical precision. The tilt of our rifles. The way the mud stuck to our boots. The uneven hitch in my breath. The precise number of meters between his stance and the edge of my reach. He wasn’t waiting. He was watching.

Subject 3829.

The designation echoed in my mind like a curse. I didn’t need to glance at 3830 to feel the change in her. Her movements slowed as she stepped forward—not out of caution, but from the weight pressing down on her. She was composed, yes. Measured. But for the first time since I’d known her, she looked... shaken.

Not afraid of dying.

Afraid of him.

"I didn’t think you were still alive," she said, voice soft, nearly lost to the wind.

He offered no answer. Not even a flicker of recognition. Just silence. A wall. A living failsafe draped in human skin.

She tried again, louder this time, desperation coiling just beneath the words. "You don’t have to do this. Whatever orders you’ve been given, whatever leash you think you’re still on—it’s a lie. We were the same. Test subjects. Failures to them. Names stripped and replaced with numbers. You don’t owe them anything."

Still nothing. His cybernetic eye—half-faded under scar tissue—gave a faint flicker, a calibration pulse, as it slid from her to the rest of us. I wasn’t even sure he was seeing us as people.

"They hurt you," she continued, her tone sharpening. "They turned your instincts against you. Conditioned your muscles to flinch when they said flinch. I know what they did. They wiped you again and again until you didn’t even know your own name—until the idea of freedom felt foreign. You know how many termination protocols they had lined up in case you malfunctioned? You scared them. You scared them."

Still no response. His face remained motionless. But her voice wouldn’t stop.

"You survived," she said, a half-breath away from shouting now. "You survived every reset. Every purge. And now you’re standing here—taking orders like a machine? Is that what they left you with? Obey. Obey. Obey."

Her hands clenched at her sides. "You think they see you as a soldier? No. You’re just a kill switch. A cleanup mechanism. A final trigger for everything they couldn’t control."

And for a fraction of a second, something shifted. A flicker in the jawline. A subtle narrowing of his eyes. Like a fragment of something deeply buried cracked open.

Was it recognition?

Doubt?

But it vanished.

His hand moved—smooth and slow—and from the folds of his coat, he produced a radio.

His voice was low. Rough. Like rust on steel. "Mission Control... I have Subject 3830 in my sights."

3830 stopped cold.

"I will initiate capture protocol," he continued. "Lethal force shall be utilized if resistance is detected."

Her face twisted—not with fear, not anymore—but rage. Pure, old, scorched-nerve rage.

"So that’s it?" she snapped. "You’re just their hound now? Clean up what they couldn’t contain? Wipe out the ones who made it further than you ever did? You’re not even human anymore. Just a lever they pull when they’re scared."

His jaw tightened, but he didn’t look at her.

"I’m not your enemy," she said again, quieter this time. "None of us are. We’re what they made us. But we’re trying to be more than that. You could too."

"Enough," he said.

The word hit harder than a shout. Like someone slamming a fist on a console. Everything inside me froze.

He raised his hand. Just slightly. Barely even above waist height.

And I felt it.

A pressure like cold steel driving through my spine. My muscles locked. My lungs spasmed. The interface in my mind—my tether to every skill, every enhancement, every shred of the system—flickered once, then vanished.

Not jammed.

Not scrambled.

Gone.

I tried to activate Observation . Command Presence. Instinct.Anything.

But the space they once filled was hollow now. Like calling out in a vacuum.

Nothing answered.

"Reynard!" Camille shouted somewhere to my left.

I turned, sluggish, just in time to see her lurch forward—only to crumple mid-step. Her leg folded underneath her like the tendons had forgotten how to support her weight.

Evelyn moved next. She raised her gun, her body coiled—but her hands trembled. She faltered mid-aim. I couldn’t see her eyes beneath the blindfold, but I knew the widening shock was there.

Their skills were gone too.

"Anthony—" I choked, my throat dry and useless.

He was already kneeling, one hand clutching his ribs. Sweat poured down the side of his face like rain. "They’re all gone," he murmured. "All of them. Interface says I’m fine... But, I can feel everything shutting off."

Panic spread like wildfire.

Sienna pulled her baton free—but the moment she swung it, it stalled mid-air, motion stuttering like the kinetic sync had flatlined. Alexis stumbled as she tapped her temple, blinking like her thoughts had scattered mid-sequence.

We were falling apart.

Unraveling thread by thread.

"You—" I turned back toward 3829, rage boiling in the absence of everything else. "You think this makes you strong? You think this makes you right?"

He didn’t even dignify me with a glance.

He brought the radio back to his lips.

"Target group confirmed," he said. "Subject 3830. Reynard Vale. Anthony Smith. Evelyn Mercer. Camille Voss. Plus two unidentified. All captured. Ready for relocation."

The words landed like shackles.

He spoke them like he’d spoken them before.

Like this wasn’t the first time.

And I knew then, with a clarity sharper than any System boost, that we had lost.

But I wasn’t ready to lie down.

So I lunged.

No enhancements. No pre-programmed counters. Just bare instinct. Just flesh and fury and whatever was left of me without all the artificial scaffolding.

He didn’t move.

But I never reached him.

My right leg buckled mid-stride, as if someone had unplugged the signal between thought and muscle. A jolt of cold electricity burst behind my knee. I collapsed onto the ground, breath stolen, vision warping like heat waves on asphalt.

He still hadn’t raised a hand.

The others moved in—his squad. Black-clad ghosts that surged in from the treeline with terrifying silence. They didn’t fire. They didn’t shout.

They surrounded.

An injection was inserted into us as a sting pricked the side of my neck. My vision blurred. My heartbeat slowed. My limbs sagged.

Across from me, 3830 still stood.

She hadn’t fought.

She hadn’t fled.

She just stared at him.

And for the first time since I’d known her, she looked like she could cry—but wouldn’t.

Her jaw was clenched, her teeth grinding, her body trembling in that still, contained way that only truly damaged people could master.

Her eyes never left 3829’s face.

Then everything went black.

I woke to the rasp of metal against skin—wrists bound tight in cold cuffs.

Manual.

Crude.

But undeniably effective.

We were airborne. The dull tremor of rotors vibrated through the floor beneath my boots, syncing with the shallow thrum of the engine. There were no windows. Just riveted steel walls that boxed us in, walls that hummed faintly under a strip of red emergency lighting that made everything and everyone look bruised.

Across from me, Anthony sat hunched, head low, blood drying along the edge of his collar. His breathing was shallow—pained, but alive. Camille was next to him, sitting so upright she looked carved out of stone. Her hands twitched in tight intervals, like she was practicing violence in her mind over and over again, trying to make it real.

To my right, Sienna and Alexis sat back-to-back, the curve of their shoulders matching. Neither of them spoke. Alexis’s mouth was tight, like she was grinding something down with sheer will. Sienna’s gaze stayed fixed on the floor, unreadable.

Evelyn sat further forward, spine straight, facing the cockpit wall. Her jaw was set in stone. There was no anger there—just a cold resolve, like her entire world had snapped into a single, focused point.

And 3830?

She hadn’t said a word since they hauled us in.

She sat just across from me, hands cuffed, eyes locked on the exit hatch like it might blink if she looked away. Her body was still, but tension radiated off her like heat. Something inside her was ticking.

I tilted my head back, straining slightly, just enough to glimpse past the shoulder of one of the guards stationed near the rear.

Through a narrow seam in the hatch, I caught a flicker of light outside—distant, but growing.

A second helicopter.

Lower in the sky.

Fast.

Ours.

It was cutting through the fog with practiced grace, its spotlights slicing through the canopy below. The shape of it—sleek, compact, designed for extraction not pursuit—was unmistakable.

They’d come.

They had actually come.

Relief twisted in my chest—sharp, acidic. Hope felt poisonous this close to failure.

We’d made it to the crate. We’d followed the plan. We had survived long enough, fought hard enough, bled far enough.

And still...

Still it hadn’t been enough.

I leaned my head back until it hit the steel behind me with a dull, hollow thud. The vibration rattled through my skull like an accusation.

"So close," I muttered under my breath.

My voice sounded thinner than I expected. Tired. Bitter. Defeated.

No one responded. No one had to.

The rotor sound shifted pitch as the helicopter veered—banking away from the lights behind us. The island’s jungle vanished beneath us once more, swallowing the silhouette of our would-be escape like it had never been there.

Like hope had just been another mirage painted on leaves.

North.

They were taking us north.

The direction of containment. Of silence. Of erasure.

My stomach twisted as the engines climbed higher, away from everything we’d nearly reached. I closed my eyes.

So close.

And still—

We’d lost.