An S-Rank Secret Realm

Julian Vale didn't linger after the strike landed.

He caught Ashley's slumping weight before it hit the floor, slung her over one shoulder without a sound, and was through the window and gone into the dark before her monitor had even finished dimming.

The whole extraction ran clean no wasted movement, no noise, nothing left behind to suggest anyone had been there at all.

She surfaced sometime later to a sharp sting across her cheek, vision swimming as the room resolved around her windowless, sparse, and cold.

Her wrists were bound. A man in an expensive suit sat across from her, patting his palm idly like he'd just finished slapping her awake himself.

Panic arrived a half-second behind the confusion.

"Where where am I? Who are you?" Her voice cracked, thin with fear. "Why would you take me?!"