Ship In A Bottle (A Monkie Kid Reader Insert)

Chapter 39: Demon In Girl's Clothing

So you knew the basics already.

You got the Stag heading Cervidae, and the Jade Vixen heading Vulpes.

You knew that before Vulpes became a separate entity, it was one of many coverup companies for Cervidae. You knew that Jade herself was once a council member of Cervidea before the disagreement between her and Stag. That's what Spindrax told you. But that brings you back to how she said it. Calling Jade formerly as 'one of' the council members...

So you knew there were more.

And yet, with the prisoners you sent already giving Stain so many ports of access, with them collecting all that intel about each little plan, operation, and schedule...

The other council members remain a mystery.

Many of the stolen files themselves were impossible for you to decipher on your own. It was what brought you to the decision to send them to Vulpes instead, those more fitting and better equipped for that. Gibby herself has already informed Jade to expect this, but has disclosed nothing about your identity.

All Jade knows is that you are affiliated with the current host.

And with normal files like this already hard for you to decode, imagine the difficulty that came with trying to figure out who the other council members are.

There were so many inconsistencies. Such as any immortal would have to preserve privacy. But the amount of inconsistencies here were...mind-boggling.

Some records say there's ten of them. Some say twenty. Some say a hundred. Some say each member is in charge of a hivemind of people, including seemingly normal citizens. Maybe even in the same way as sleeper agents. Some say they are just different identities used by the head honcho himself.

Some say they don't exist at all.

Some of them even sound like the more 'out there' theories in UCF. Sounding straight out of a movie. Some even say that once you expose yourself to too much information about these members, real or fake, well...There's a list of people who were driven to madness.

One famous UCF post was even of one of these people, who kept hearing and seeing things after researching too much...He tried to contact Cervidae, who promised to rid of these hallucinations in exchange of taking all that information away.

A day later, and the local hospital received a patient sharing this user's physical traits...

...displaying signs of a botched lobotomy.

Yep, you were not touching any of that. More reasons to just leave it to Stain to transfer the info to Vulpes. You hoped the prisoners you sent were smart enough to not let curiosity lead them to madness too. But at the same time, while they weren't responsible for the crimes they were accused with, they don't exactly have a clean record either.

Elsewhere, the masked man's yellow robe flew behind him as he waltz through the cold and dark facility, only illuminated by the screens tended by subordinates. His face, unreadable. Covered by an opalized wolf's skull. An enchanted veil shrouding himself in contradictions.

Being the head of the ethics committee, he did not understand why he was sent to gather intel from this man of all people. He finds the sort of methods used to be...tasteless. He still harbored regret for the last one who was driven to madness, his twisted version of mercy resulting in a ritual akin to lobotomy. Maybe that was what made the others think he would be more desensitized by now.

But still, that didn't change his idea of the committee needing to exist. Morale has power, he always said. Belief has power. The others knew that. It was times like these where he began missing the Vixen, the organization becoming more ruthless since her absence.