T-09-85

"I'll be frank."

"Hi, Frank! I'll be your junior, Fabb!"

Oho? So we had a jokester in our team. Binah would probably enjoy watching them lose their sanity. I coughed to regain my focus.

"This team is probably the worst place to be destined in the entirety of the corporation. You will witness many things that will test your sanity and make you lose your grasp on reality. The Well and The Bucket. These are the two secrets that you will have to endure as part of the new Extraction Team."

The same funny employee raised their hand.

"Yes?"

"If it's the worst place, how come you're not crazy?"

"Haha, do I really look normal to you?"

"You look like the protagonist of a comic I read a while ago!"

"Neat! To answer your question…" Luck? "I'd say-

"This person has cleansed their own mind."

Binah had been silent ever since her meltdown concluded. I wasn't expecting her to step in like that. Her synthetic voice continued.

"They personify the ultimate goal of this Wing. The Extraction Team pulls out the light inside people to create abnormalities." Her digital yellow eye stared at me. "[DATA EXPUNGED] has gone through the process of distorting and back. As your senior, you should look up to them and try following in their footsteps."

"Ah, miss Binah, that's actually not a good advice. The manager may give up the cycle if more employees were to go rogue like me."

The Arbiter's ghost above her chassis smirked sadistically.

"He suppressed me. He can handle some pressure."

She was right. In fact, it was almost time the pressure focused on A.

"Hey, hey, is it true? Is miss Binah an Arbiter of the Head?" The noisy recruit fluttered around like a chick out of the nest.

Our Sephirah adjusted her cloak before answering.

"What I am no longer matters. Garion is a distant memory now. What remains is the husk of the person I used to be, the end product of being defeated by Kali and tortured by Ayin."

The rookies were unsure on how to react… unlike Fabb.

"Uh… Great! Since you are my boss now, can you share the Head's head's secrets with me? I've always wanted to know what happened before the Wing Wars! Or the formation about the Eye and the Claw… Ah! I need to know!"

I removed Fabb from her face before the Arbiter in her awakened and murderer my junior. I sighed. With a spirit as daring as theirs, they may survive witnessing a Well or two. The talent to face the fear, huh? They might make for a good captain… but I don't really have any plan to die anytime soon. ... Neal frowned whenever I mentioned something to that effect.

I clapped my hands and begged the team to lend me their attention again. We had a long day ahead of us and the manager liked sending employees to work to high danger abnormalities at least once every Qliphoth round. Since we housed three WAWs in Extraction, we would need to beat the team up to shape in a hurry.

Especially… considering what happens tomorrow… at Records...

Once they were able to defend themselves more or less, I visited Multiple. The manager pulled some strings to remove O-05-65 from the facility. The Price of Silence was too much of a hurdle for them to add on top of everything else, so that thing was packed up and sent to one of L Corp's many branches.

To replace it, an abnormality tool was sent back. T-09-85.

Eerily enough, it was a container of the size of an employee, with a humanoid metallic form. Since it wasn't being used, the iron maiden-like capsule revealed the many spikes inside.

The cursor selected me, then the tool. I heaved a sigh.

Whatever. I've dealt with [CENSORED] before. What could go wrong?

After employee [Confidential ID] entered We Can Change Anything, the second product from X Inc. after All-Round Helper, the contraption closed and the spikes started to grow longer. However, it produced energy proportional to the amount of suffering endured by the user, who unavoidably perished in the end.

Sending in employees of level 5 would yield great results, but the cost might be too great in the end.

Once the process finished and T-09-85 opened again, there was nothing left of [DATA EXPUNGED] but their blood. Nobody could have guessed this was how the legendary Inspector would meet their end after everything they've been through. They survived many ALEPHs… just to die by a mere ZAYIN. If we can learn anything from this, it's that we should never, no matter the danger level, underestimate an abnormality.

Expresionless, Angela finished reading the report Multiple submitted after the day's end. The armory was usually a silent place while the Qliphoth Deterrence worked its magic and put the abnormalities to sleep, so she frequented it at those hours.

She opened the drawer with the label 'Ghost 45' and checked its contents once more.

The white pistol with the silencer continued to rest inside the container.