//Secondary Report: Blackwell, Darius 
//Saint Corp Plaza.
//Unknown floor.
//Begin log.

They’d left me alone in a room that wasn’t meant for people.

All rooms were supposedly meant for people, at some point or another, but after hours in the same space I was having a hard time believing anyone had ever tried occupying this one for very long.

The space was completely empty, devoid of any recognizable conveniences, save for a pair of plastic folding chairs. It was, at best, a white brick box, lit and lined with mirrored glass, and at worst a solitary confinement cell of blinding white.

The chairs were white, the floor was white, even the noise was white, the overhead lights emitting a din that fell somewhere between a headache and a whisper. The walls were too smooth, the air too cold, and the only sign that any care at all was afforded to my safety was the small set of emergency LEDs mounted high on the wall near the door.

In front of me stood a one-way mirror, or maybe it was just a normal mirror—it was hard to tell anymore. I could see myself in it if I wanted to look—the reflection of a man pretending he still had control.

“What the hell did you do, you idiot?” I muttered. I leaned back in my chair, trying to smooth out my hair. “You had a good thing going, then you grew a conscience.”

My reflection stared back at me impassively.

Idiot.

The same dark red shirt I’d worn in Rome clung to my ribs, torn at the collar, spattered with someone’s blood. My own, maybe, or perhaps Knight's. I hadn’t checked. The track pants were still there too, though the guards had torn the cap off my head when they'd dragged me in. 

Every few minutes, I caught a flicker of movement in the glass. A camera adjusting focus, or maybe my imagination. I tried not to give them the satisfaction of looking.

Was there more blood on my shirt than moments ago? 

They hadn’t said a word since they'd shoved me in here. No threats, no questions, no accusations—just left me to stew under the hum of the lights and think about the choices I’d made.

“Quinn,” I seethed. “You’ll see, there will be consequences for—”

“I'm sorry, I didn't understand that. Would you like to try again?”

The interjecting voice was pleasant, unassuming and almost female, a palatable near-replica of human speech only given away by its slightly flat tone. A vocal protocol, projected from hidden speakers, and a poor one at that.

“No, you daft machine,” I spat, “I said you'll, not Uriel or any—”

“I'm sorry, I didn't understand that. Would you like to—”

“Command: stop!” I exclaimed. 

I pinched the bridge of my nose and leaned back. I'd already tried everything I could to reason with the non-being that these people had named Uriel. Vocal protocols were never particularly intelligent, at best built to follow a handful of commands to imitate intellect, but part of me wondered if they'd intentionally made this one as obtuse as possible.

This was worse than torture, honestly. Silence made its own kind of noise after a while, started to fill in the blanks. Every movement I made was magnified in my mind, misconstrued into an other—a breath from behind the mirror, the hiss of a hidden camera.

How long had I been here?

“Uriel, how long have I been here?” I attempted.

“I can start a timer for one minute,” it retorted.

“Command: mute,” I sighed.

The silence returned, thick enough to choke on. I wasn’t sure if the machine had actually stopped listening or just wanted me to think that.

I stared at my reflection again. The man in the glass stared back.

“Are you enjoying the show?” I asked the glass. “Or do I need to start shouting obscenities to make it worth your while?”

I'd tried. 

The thought hit me like a truck, a churning, grinding frustration in my gut. I'd tried to do the right thing, and this humiliation was how I was rewarded?

I leaned forward in the chair, elbows on my knees. “Jackson Quinn,” I spat, tasting the name like it might turn to acid. “Of course it’d be him they want. The prodigal son, the golden boy, the moral centre of the damn universe.”

My reflection sneered back. Bastard.

I laughed once, hollow. “I should’ve known better. Always the soldier who believes his side of the war is the right one. Always the honourable hero. Never the sound investment.”

The words fell flat in the sterile air. I missed my office.

I stood from my seat, pacing a slow line across the narrow room, the soles of my shoes squeaking faintly against the tile. “You know, I just wanted to keep the machine running. Someone has to. Someone always does.”

My reflection followed me in lockstep, watching intently.

“Do you have any idea what it’s like?” I asked it. “To have a legacy thrust upon you, to see it grow, and then realize the only thing keeping it upright is blood? You tell yourself it’s necessary. That it’s temporary. That you’ll fix it later, once everything stabilizes. But it never stabilizes, does it? Society needs war like ancient man needed fire.”

I stopped dead in front of the mirror, staring at the tired man staring back. “I made a deal. A million of them, actually. For resources, for weapons, for control. I told myself it was to keep people safe. That if I played the devil long enough, maybe I could hold the line.”

The mirror offered no sympathy.

I exhaled and stepped back, rubbing my hands together as if to shake the chill. “Maybe that’s what you wanted, wasn’t it, Quinn? To expose me, to make an example out of Darius Blackwell. The man who thought he could fight fire with fire. You thought you knew better, and you hounded me until I lost everything.”

I stepped closer to the reflection, staring into my eyes.

“I told you I didn't want forgiveness, but at least I wanted proper revenge!” I snapped. “Instead, here I am… wasting away. Where's the honour in that?”

“I'm sorry, I didn't understand that. Would you like to try again?”

“Shut up!” I barked. I whirled around the room, trying desperately to spot a speaker I could rip off the wall. “What the hell did I even say to trigger you?! I thought you were muted!’’

“I'm sorry, I didn't understand.”

“Command: mute!’’ I snapped. 

“I'm sorry.”

The sentence caught me off guard. It was shorter than the others, a mere fraction of the vocal protocol's incessant statement, and the cut in the sentence sounded jarring, almost laughably bad, like an old record had skipped halfway through playback. For one, hysterical moment, I forgot my anger.

“You damn well should be,” I smirked. “Man, if all of Saint Corp's stuff is this poorly made, then—”

“Oh, when the saints…”

I paused, almost unsure if I'd heard the vocal protocol correctly. The sentence had been far from the usual, pleasant falsetto, an almost mocking singsong that cracked with static.

“Come again?” I called. I felt a strange pinch at the back of my neck and a headache blossomed across my temples.

“...go marching in…”

The lights overhead flickered once—then again, longer this time—each pulse of darkness stretching just a little further than the last. The hum of the fluorescents deepened, warping into something lower, an almost reverent hum that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

On the far wall, the emergency lights flickered, the small box glowing red as the lights overhead pulsed again, briefly washing the room in a crimson palate.

“Uriel?” I ventured. My voice sounded small in the sterile space. My head was pounding. “Command—”

“Oh, when the saints go marching in…”

The voice was closer now.

Not through the speaker.

Coming from behind the glass.

I turned toward the mirror. My reflection blinked back at me, but the timing was off—a fraction of a second too late. I took an involuntary step backward as the air itself shifted. The white walls suddenly felt narrower, closer.

“Are you… out of your damn mind?!” I hissed. The pain seemed to radiate from my IRON implant, the kind of agony that drove a needle into my brain and twisted. “I'm Darius Blackwell, not some… third-rate lackey! This… little show is pointless, Sanviento!”

“Oh Lord, I want… to be… in that number…”

This time it came from everywhere—above, below, inside the very walls of the room. The fluorescents flared to white-hot brilliance before one of them popped, raining glass across the floor, and I covered my eyes against the sudden flare and burst of powder.

When I opened my eyes, the room was bathed in the red glow of the emergency lights.

There was someone in the room with me.

Tall and slender, the figure slipped through the dim light with an almost spectral grace—each step controlled, every motion quiet enough to make the air feel complicit. Their suit was a deep gunmetal weave, the fabric dulled to storm-grey by burns and soot. Thin veins of silver traced between the armour panels, catching the red glow in razor-fine flashes as the flexible underlayer shifted with the rhythm of their breath.

A cloak hung from their shoulders like a living shadow, its surface built from overlapping hexagonal tiles that shimmered faintly whenever they moved. The mantle swayed with a slow, scalelike ripple.

But the strangest detail was the collar: a smooth ring of mirrored metal locked around their throat, seamless and cold, throwing back warped fragments of the room in its reflection. Above it, their face was hidden entirely behind a mask—its upper half hewn of flawless silver, polished to a glassy shine, while the lower section was a brutal mosaic of scorched plates and embedded respirator vents. Industrial. Functional. Utterly discordant with the immaculate visor above.

“When the saints… go… marching… in.”

The pain in my head vanished, like someone had switched it off, but in its place was pure, primal fear.

The masked figure took a single step forward, the soft sound of boot on tile violently loud in the silence. Then another. Each motion was careful, almost reverent, and when they stopped just a few feet away, I realized the lights were no longer flickering—they had died completely, leaving only the faint reflection of that silver mask to illuminate the space.

“What the hell are you?” I called, trying not to let the tremor in my voice show through.

“A demon like nothing you've ever seen before,” the figure replied. Up close, I was certain their voice was filtered through a vocoder, distorted into a kind of reverberant radio static that crawled across the edges of my hearing.

“You may call me Eulogy,” they announced. The eyeholes of their mask were little more than voids, but I felt transfixed, held hostage in their depths.

I wrestled my numb tongue into submission, forcing myself to speak with a confidence that we both knew I didn't possess.

“Wh-why?” I stammered, forcing a weak chuckle. “You’re good at writing funeral speeches?”

“Something like that,” Eulogy replied. Was that a chuckle, or a glitch in their vocoder? “It's a… pleasure… to speak with you, Director Blackwell.”

The sound echoed, mechanical yet human—layered with something like pity, or mockery, or both.

“I’m afraid that title is former, actually,” I retorted. My trembling legs betrayed me, and I tried to disguise their collapse as a choice to sit down in the folding chair once more, leaning back against the far wall. “I gave it up.”

“Did you, now?”

Eulogy's head tilted, slow and precise. For a long moment they simply regarded me, their mask a bloody glimmer in the crimson light. Then, without ceremony, they moved. One long, fluid step carried them across the room, and before I could so much as flinch, they plopped into the empty chair across from me. The motion was jarringly casual, like a teacher sitting down with an underperforming student.

“You gave it up,” Eulogy echoed, emphasizing the latter three words. “Willingly. How… noble.” Their gloved fingers laced together and folded neatly in their lap, an oddly human gesture that only made it worse. “Tell me, Darius—may I call you Darius? When, exactly, did you decide that your title stopped defining you? Was it before or after the death toll of the Iron War reached eight figures?”

“Go to hell,” I muttered, but it came out thin, weak.

“Oh, I don’t need to,” Eulogy replied cheerfully. “You already built it, right here on Earth. With board meetings and balance sheets, one cheque at a time. You presided over it like a priest before the altar.” They raised one gloved hand into the air, painting their words like the title on an office door. “Darius H. Blackwell, Chief Extinction Officer. You must be proud.”

I gritted my teeth. “I was trying to keep order. To keep the American people employed and fed. Someone had to—”

“Had to what?” Eulogy leaned forward, their gold mask catching the faint light again, the lenses glinting like eyes that were far too wide. “Work themselves to death in your factories making mechs for pilots who never came home? Stand guard outside buildings the common person will never enter, and protect the rich from the starving?”

“I don't regret a thing!” I barked. “If it hadn't been me, someone else would've done the same. War is like fire, it's—”

“Do us both a favour and give up on trying to make that fire metaphor work,” Eulogy replied. They leaned back in the chair with a sigh. “It was trite the first time, now it's just getting boring.” 

“I did what I thought was necessary,” I hissed.

“No,” they replied, voice sharp and oddly melodic through the distortion. “You did what was comfortable. What made you feel powerful. Necessary is the word that cowards cling to when they want to justify their cruelty.”

Eulogy spread their arms wide in mock benediction, their cloak swirling. “You never gave up being Director, Darius. You just lost your boardroom. Same man, smaller kingdom.” Their tone softened, a cruel parody of sympathy. “And now here you sit, alone in your white box, pretending you're somehow trying to turn over a new leaf to save your own skin. And worst of all, you've almost convinced yourself it's working.”

“Now that's just about enough!” I surged to my feet before I even knew what I was doing, my chair toppling over as anger burned through my veins in a silent battlecry. Director or not, I was Darius Blackwell, and I wasn't about to back down. “You want to judge me? Judge all you damn well please! I'm not about to give two shits about the opinions of a masked freak like you!”

To my astonishment, I saw the Eulogy jerk back in their seat, momentarily taken aback, and felt a surge of confidence rush through me. Pressing the advantage, I slid my left foot back, taking up a guarded stance, and raised my fists.

“At the end of the day, your boss is no better than I am!” I declared. “Michael Sanviento only sent a thug in cosplay because he's too scared to confront me himself!”

“Don't.” Eulogy stated.

I launched myself at them, pulling back into a tight jab for their centre of mass. Eulogy rose from their chair in a flash, kicking it backward, and pivoted on their heel, causing my fist to glance off the fabric of their padded vest.

I hadn't lost my touch.

The strike, avoidable as it was, had forced my enemy off balance, and with their defensive pivot I saw my opening. Sweeping my foot to one side, I brought my right arm down, catching Eulogy's right arm in a lock that was sure to snap his outstretched elbow like kindling.

Instead, the impact of my strike sent a dagger of pain along the length of my arm, a blow to my forearm so severe that I felt as though I'd just struck a steel girder. The scream tore itself from my throat before I could muster any self-control, and I recoiled, taking a step back to—

Pain.

Excruciating, overwhelming pain. It came at me all at once, liquid fire in my nerves that tore me up from the inside. For one hellish eternity of a second I thought I'd been spontaneously set ablaze, a matchstick in some forgotten Saint Corp basement.

When my head struck the floor, it was actually a relief—a dull, expected pain that signalled the torment had passed. I could feel my thoughts racing, pounding through my head, but I couldn't move.

And there they were—that monster was kneeling above me, their mask inches from my face.

“You—” I attempted, fighting my own lungs for the strength to speak. To my utter embarrassment, I felt the sting of tears build at the edge of my vision, falling against my will to mix with the blood from where my skull struck concrete. “How did you—Michael Sanviento would never authorize—”

“Michael Sanviento,” Eulogy hissed, “doesn't know I’m here.” They stood back up with a grunt of effort, those pools of darkness locked on me the entire time. “And if you've learned anything from this experience today, you'll keep it that way.”

I pressed my hand to the side of my head, feeling for the cut. To my relief, it seemed superficial at best—most of the pain I’d felt had been simply that—agony, not injury.

But how?

“Contrary to what I’d like to believe, I can see my first impression of you was wrong,” Eulogy declared. They leaned forward expectantly, hands on their hips. “You aren’t just a stuffed suit—you have some intellect behind that manufactured ignorance. That’s how I know you’ll listen to what I have to say.”

I drew myself up to a sitting position, trying and failing to hide the tremble in my arms as I did so. The blood from my head made a rosebud on the sterile floor, adding a relieving splash of colour to the once-white room that matched the crimson lighting. It was almost funny.

“Just… spit it out,” I hissed. “You certainly know… how to get my attention.”

“One word,” Eulogy replied, simply. “Comply. Your attitude with Michael Sanviento and even Jackson will make a world of difference for your life expectancy.” 

They’d left me alone in a room that wasn’t meant for people, with a person who hardly felt like one at all. What choice did I have?

“Very well,” I spat. “I’ll play nice.”

“Wise decision.” Eulogy turned to the side, glancing back at the mirrored glass behind us. “I really don’t like using threats of physical force, but I know you’ll listen to them. After all,” they tilted their head, “you’ve spent your whole career playing with fire. Sooner or later, you were going to get burned.”

As I stared past that silver mask, into those pools of shadow, I knew I was boxed in. There was no deal to be made, no council of peers to appeal to, no bargain to be settled with a handshake and a smile. It was the end of the road I’d started down long ago.

“Who are you?” I attempted again. “If you aren’t with Michael, then what do you serve to gain from tormenting me?”

“Almost nothing,” Eulogy replied. “Contrary to your personal beliefs, you’re just one small piece in a much larger puzzle. A stepping stone toward victory.”

“Then why?” I pressed. I surged to my knees, fighting my own aching body. “Why do you need my compliance to win the Iron War? I’m useless!”

“I’m not trying to win the Iron War,” Eulogy retorted. They moved, suddenly, almost hurriedly, and I watched them seize my toppled chair and right it with careful precision. “The war I fight is bigger. It’s not for an ethnicity or nationality, corporate entity or governing body. It doesn’t concern religious beliefs or personal identity. It isn’t about money or power or fame or even pride.”

I felt myself chuckle before I even had time to process the speech, an almost reflexive expression of my disbelief. “What’s left to fight over, then?” I spat. “What kind of war is that?”

To my surprise, Eulogy knelt, extending one gloved hand—the same that had, moments ago, almost broken my arm. Without any other choice but to obey or risk more agony, I took it, allowing them to pull me upright.

Eulogy’s grip was like iron.

“The ultimate war,” Eulogy replied. Now on my feet, I could see they weren’t much taller than I was—there was indeed a person behind that mask, but one I couldn’t understand. “The final war, for the soul of humankind.”

Eulogy’s hold on my hand loosened, and I tugged it free from their vice grip, shaking out my aching fingers. 

“I thought you said it wasn’t to do with religion,” I prodded.

“It isn’t,” Eulogy retorted. They took a step back, giving me space. “It’s us versus them. The people of Earth versus the corporations—and the inhuman beings that control them.”

“What are you, a conspiracy freak?” I jabbed, a bit of my shattered pride fighting back to the surface. “If you think the lizard men are—”

“I’m referring to billionaires,” Eulogy interrupted. “Trillionaires. Men and women with more money than empathy. People who have forsaken their humanity in pursuit of more wealth than can possibly be spent, at the ruin of all else.”

I felt my heart catch in my throat, but forced back the fear for my own life. If Eulogy had wanted to kill me for my time as Director, I would’ve been long dead. 

“I’m not fighting the Iron War,” Eulogy continued. “You were right about one thing—the day it finally ends will be the day humanity starts looking for another reason to fight.”

I’d spoken those words to Jackson Quinn weeks ago, on Mount Yamantau. How had Eulogy…?

“I’m fighting the war to end all wars,” Eulogy concluded. One gloved hand tightened into a fist. “A war to upend the system by its roots and start fresh.” They took one slow, insistent step toward me. “And my first target… is what remains of Axion Industries.”

I felt a small smile spread across my face as the realization struck home. Some bitter, jaded part of me took a modicum of pride in my role as a puzzle piece—perhaps my revenge against my employers was to be realized after all, by this phantom stranger.

“Well damn,” I sighed. “Why didn’t you start with that?” I extended my arm, palm open, for a handshake. “I’ll help however I can, if it means catching Hesiod and those bastards on the Oversight Committee who approved of my assassination.”

Eulogy didn’t move. I let my hand fall.

“Just play your part,” they stated. “Don’t think your role in creating the problem will be forgotten simply because you were a small part of the solution.”

The faint smile on my face didn’t last.

“You misunderstand,” Eulogy said, voice low, patient. “This isn’t your redemption arc.”

The words landed harder than any physical blow.

“You don’t get to wipe your hands clean by pointing them at someone richer or crueller and hoping no one notices the blood on yours,” Eulogy continued. “You helped build Axion Industries into the titan it is today. Yes, someone else could, and would, have done the same, but… it was you.”

“I—” The excuse died in my throat.

“You want to believe you’re a victim of circumstance,” they pressed, tone maddeningly calm. “That you were trapped. Cornered. Pressured. Forced. But you weren’t.”

My jaw clenched. I felt heat building behind my eyes again.

“You climbed,” Eulogy stated. “Every rung bought with someone else’s dead body. Every promotion purchased with someone else’s suffering. The world didn’t hand you your legacy, Darius Blackwell.” They leaned in, and for one suffocating moment their mask eclipsed my entire world. “You built it yourself.”

The emergency lights flickered violently—once, twice—casting Eulogy in jagged red shards. Their shadow stretched unnaturally long across the white floor, like something with too many limbs.

“You will cooperate,” Eulogy continued, straightening. “Not for your dignity. Not for your future. Not even for revenge.” They turned their back to me with the dismissive ease of someone utterly unafraid. “You will cooperate,” they pressed, “because you are out of options.”

The humming of the crimson lights deepened again, trembling on the edge of failure.

“And when this is over,” Eulogy added, glancing at me over their shoulder, “remember the truth—you didn’t choose to do the right thing. You simply lost the chance to do the wrong thing.”

Before I could respond, the crimson emergency lights died with a soft pop, and darkness swallowed the room For a heartbeat, I swore I could feel breath on the back of my neck—cold, mechanical, and utterly inhuman.

Then the main lights snapped back on, white and sterile as before.

Eulogy was gone.

No door had opened. No mirror had moved. No footprint marred the floor. The only evidence anything had happened was the smear of blood I’d left on the tiles and the faint tremble in my hands.

I was alone.

Again.

In a room not meant for people.