The room was quiet. But not silent.

König knew the difference.

Silence was absolute—dead, oppressive. The kind that crept into your lungs and settled like rot. But this? This had breath. The low hum of power running through walls. The barely-there drip of water somewhere just out of sight. The kind of quiet that felt designed.

He sat still. Big as ever, but folded in. As much as he could be.

His wrists were bound in front—tight, professional knots. His fingers flexed, testing, calculating. He didn’t pull. Not yet. Not until it mattered.

The room was small. Not a cell, exactly, but no less a prison. Too clean. Too smooth. Sterile white walls, no furniture. No window. No clock. Nothing to break the rhythm of a mind slowly unraveling.

It wasn’t an oversight. It was deliberate.

Of course it was.

And he knew they were watching.

He didn’t need cameras to know it. It was a feeling. Cold on the back of the neck. Like a rifle scope in the dark. A breath held just behind his skin. He didn’t look around. Wouldn’t give them that. Let them stare. Let them study.

He was used to that.

Even back home—before the uniform, before the mask—they’d stared. He was always too tall, too silent, too strange. People didn’t know what to do with something his size that didn’t bark or bluster. They filled in the blanks for themselves.

Let them.

He preferred it that way.

The hood stayed on—drenched now, sweat-slick and clinging to his face. The cloth had weight. Familiar. Protective. Like armor that breathed with him. His mask beneath was tight, suffocating in the best way. A barrier between him and them.

No one saw his face.

No one should.

He’d long stopped wondering what they expected him to be under it. Some thought it was for theatrics. For fear. Maybe they were right. But they never understood the real reason. The hood didn’t just hide him.

It protected them.

Because what the mask concealed wasn’t just skin. It was focus. It was the part of him that stopped listening, stopped feeling, and simply executed. Cold. Controlled. Efficient.

And right now, that part of him was pacing just behind his ribs, teeth bared.

He didn’t remember the grab. Not fully. A flash. A hiss of air. The sting in his neck. He’d been too slow. That fact curled in his chest like acid.

“Scheiße…” he muttered, barely audible.

It wasn’t fear that gnawed at him. It was shame. He didn’t get caught. Not König.

And yet—here he sat.

But they hadn’t touched him. Not really. No bruises, no broken skin.

He shifted slightly, stretching out one leg with a grunt, the metal of his boots rasping against the smooth floor. Every movement calculated. Controlled. He could wait.

Still breathing. Still thinking. Still listening.

He didn’t scream. He didn’t beg. That’s what they expected. Some monster flailing and roaring.

But the real monsters?

They counted seconds. They learned your patterns.

And then they killed you when it mattered most.