"Get in! Or the two of you are going to end up as hood ornaments on this car in ten seconds flat!" Renata’s voice cut sharply through the roar of the rain, leaving zero room for argument.

Gilang, still slumped in the muddy puddle with a bleeding left arm, growled softly. The stinging pain from the cybrid's slash flared fiercely across his muscle tissue, but his survival instincts screamed even louder. Wasting no time, he scrambled up unsteadily, grabbed Nara—who was frozen near the wall—and dragged Rania with him to quickly leap inside the cabin of the futuristic luxury sedan.

Thud!

The car doors sealed shut automatically the moment the three of them collapsed onto the plush, warm black leather seats. The vehicle's interior smelled of expensive lavender, starkly contrasting with the metallic stench of blood and open sewers outside.

Before Gilang could even catch his ragged breath, the driver—a rugged, broad-shouldered man in a sharp black suit—stomped hard on the accelerator. The car surged forward like a bullet tearing through the curtain of rain, leaving the rampaging Executor-Class Cybrid behind in the middle of the street, wildly thrashing its iron fists at empty air with a deafening metallic clatter.

"Fasten your seatbelts. We are being hunted by top-tier corporate surveillance satellites, so our driver here might be executing a few illegal maneuvers," Renata said calmly. She sat in the front passenger seat, crossing her legs gracefully as she stared straight ahead through the rain-streaked windshield.

Nara gasped for air, hugging her knees in the corner of the back seat as she stared in horror out the window. "G-good Lord... what kind of car is this? We almost just got our heads lopped off by a walking rust-bucket back there!"

"That's just standard-issue welcome hospitality from Ant Corp's security department," Gilang sneered. He winced with a grimace as he ripped off a piece of his ruined bomber jacket to bind the gash on his left arm. Fresh blood still seeped through, staining the luxury leather seats. "Oops, sorry, Madam Ex-Director. A broke freelancer's cheap blood is staining your expensive upholstery."

Renata glanced slightly backward, sparing a brief look at Gilang’s bleeding arm without showing a shred of disgust. The corner of her lips lifted into a cold, faint smile.

"Your blood is far more useful here than rotting away in a Sector 4 gutter, Gilang," Renata replied evenly. "Besides, this entire city will be swimming in blood soon enough if we don't move fast."

Gilang narrowed his eyes, instinctively resting a hand near the salt-lined sword on his back just in case. He wasn't about to blindly trust some sharply dressed woman who randomly showed up to save them. In this modern world, there were no good people in the upper echelons of a corporation—especially someone claiming to be a former director.

"Great speech, Madame Director," Gilang cut in, his voice dripping with suspicion as he leaned forward into the gap between the front seats. "Now, care to explain why a respected high-ranking Ant Corp executive suddenly went out in the rain to rescue a discount exorcist like me? Planning to murder us in a more elegant way inside the car?"

Rania, sitting beside Nara, snapped her head up. Her tear-streaked eyes blazed with fear and fury as she glared at Renata. "Where is my brother?! If this woman is part of them, give Wira back!"

The tension inside the cabin spiked instantly. Nara swallowed hard, clutching her jacket pocket tightly where the stolen data flash drive was stashed.

Renata didn't answer right away. She sighed softly, reached into her suit pocket, and tossed a small, shiny silver object onto the center console table right in front of Gilang. It was a titanium-coated military flash drive stamped with an Ant Corp secret logo crossed out by a bold red marker.

"Former," Renata corrected coldly. "I haven't worked for that damn company since two hours ago. They dishonorably fired me, froze all my assets, and revoked my clearance because I discovered something that scared the absolute hell out of them."

Gilang glanced down at the flash drive, then raised his gaze back to Renata’s eyes. "Discovered what? Financial embezzlement? Or the secret coffee recipe in the executive pantry?"

"This isn't a joke, Gilang," Renata’s voice turned dead serious, the calm on her face giving way to a suppressed flash of anger. "Inside that flash drive is the complete blueprint for the SoulSync project. It's not just some meditation app to help employees de-stress like they advertise on every street corner. It's a mass soul-harvesting machine."

Nara gasped softly in the corner of the seat. "H-how do you know that?! We only just hacked the data back at the overpass!"

"Because I was the chief architect who designed that curse encryption system's algorithm from day one," Renata dropped the bomb, leaving Nara and Gilang instantly stunned.

Renata looked back at Rania, who sat frozen beside Nara. "Your brother, Wira, wasn't just some unlucky kid who happened to get lost. He was one of the ten thousand phase-one test subjects whose spiritual energy was deliberately drained dry by the system."

Hearing that, Rania covered her mouth with both hands, her sobs breaking out once more into a pitiful wail. "Monsters... you're all demons! Why did you use my brother as a lab rat?!"

"Because the immortality of shareholders is worth far more than the lives of millions of lower-class citizens in this city, kid," Renata said bitterly, her voice heavy with deep remorse. "Ant Corp's founders are old; their biological bodies are rotting away. They need fresh human soul reserves, purified through the app's frequency waves, to upload into their eternal servers on the top floor of the central tower."

Gilang fell silent for a moment. He leaned his back against the seat again, digesting every word the woman in front of him had just spoken. His brain, usually preoccupied with daily payouts, was forced to comprehend a conspiracy scale far beyond anything he had imagined.

"So... your appearance wasn't a coincidence," Gilang muttered sharply. "You knew damn well we were investigating this case, and you purposely waited for us to get cornered in Sector 4."

"Spot on, Gilang," Renata answered without hesitation. She twisted fully around in her seat, locking eyes dead-center with him, her gaze demanding commitment. "I need your reckless, morality-free combat skills. Nara needs her hacking chops to breach the main server gateway. And both of you... need my clearance to pierce Ant Corp's tower defenses."

Gilang sneered cynically, crossing his arms over his chest while shaking his head slightly. "Wow, what a sweet partnership offer. Team up with a corporate ex-director to tear down her own company from the inside. The risk? Getting our heads lopped off and displayed in the lobby?"

"The risk is a slow and painful death if we fail," Renata replied without missing a beat. She straightened her suit collar, leaning forward closer to the partition.

The cabin grew deafeningly quiet, broken only by the hum of tires cutting through the wet asphalt and the patter of rain against the windows. Renata stared unblinkingly into Gilang's eyes, pumping enough tension into the air to make it feel thin.

"You think you were just investigating a missing persons case?" Renata whispered sharply, her voice trembling with lethal urgency. "Tomorrow morning, when the sun rises and the global SoulSync feature activates automatically, that app will harvest the first one million souls from users across this city. We are completely out of time."