Wisdom and War

Chapter Eight

Joaquin was always one to keep his word. With the simple tasks, he'd either have it done on the dot or a few seconds before the time ended. There was this one time back in 2001 when Elias bet him that in five years, he wouldn't be able to speak all of the dialects in the country . During this, Joaquin only knew of thirty, twenty of which were taught by me. Within those five years, Joaquin spent three nights a week with me teaching him how to speak and write the rest of the dialects. It'd take two hours since that was the only time we could both spare, but we'd sometimes do four nights if things in the omada weren't hectic. By then, Elias had forgotten the bet and was only reminded when Joaquin passed him a piece of paper that had a hundred and seventy lines of the same sentence but in different Filipino languages.

Don't underestimate me, idiot.

Elias wasn't able to read the first few lines because he wasn't fluent, but when he reached the line that was written in Kapampangan, his mouth dropped open. Eyes fleeting from Joaquin to the paper, he closed his mouth and then opened it once again to speak but nothing came out. It was when his eyes landed on me standing on the other side of the room that he glared at Joaquin and gave back the paper. "Anita's fluent in all of them."

"And now, so am I." Joaquin smirked before crumpling the paper and throwing it into one of the trash cans, mischievous eyes on Elias. "I only had to learn them. You never said how."

I heard the door open behind me and I immediately knew it was Joaquin because of the silence. Maiko would speak as soon as she crossed the door frame while Elias would crack his knuckles whenever he entered the meeting room. He was never one to stay still and staying in an enclosed space filled only with five leather chairs circling a table left little room for entertainment on his part. As for Felix, he'd either apologize for being late or clear his throat to signal his presence.

The noise coming from outside the room vanished when the door clicked back into place and Joaquin took his designated seat next to mine. In front of me was a tablet holding the security footage from the time Nadine entered the building to the time I caught the Fura.

After taking the Fura to the Anzani floor for investigation, I had asked Diana to look at all the footage we had for the past hour. I left her there, carefully watching her screen, and went inside the interrogation room before the assigned Fura could even open the doorknob. The Fura was sitting behind the desk, head hung low and body shaking. The sight was similar to that of the first one Morana marked, deranged eyes meeting mine when I pulled the chair out and sat down. The Erevna and Soma had already checked on him and didn't find anything physically wrong aside from the injury he got from the elevator, so whatever he was feeling was a manifestation of Morana's mark.

He began fighting against the restraints placed on him thirty seconds after I sat down, mouth formed into a snarl and beads of sweat falling down his forehead. Twenty seconds later, he began pounding his head onto the metal table, the sound echoing throughout the room. From my peripheral vision, I could see some of the people outside scramble to their feet and a few of them attempted to enter the room but stopped when I held up a hand. The wound that was just patched up opened up as he kept pounding his head and there were already specks of blood on the table.

I stood up, both hands gripping the end of the table and pushed it off to the side. The Fura didn't stop and pulled back his head again, aiming for the floor this time, but I caught it with my left hand and hit the side of his neck with my right, palm facing up and fingers stuck together. The effect was instant, an expected action whenever the vagus nerve was hit. The weight of his head on my left hand became heavier and I gently leaned him back on the chair. The mark was still there, but it was fading and would soon be gone by the time he woke up. I advised the Soma to observe him for the next few days, grabbed the footage Diana was handing me, and left the floor.