[BL] Transmigrated as the Villain CEO's Mermaid Secretary

Chapter 437: Calls

At the Seaside Estate.

Iris and Bryan had claimed the left sofa as a small world of two.

She was tucked under his arm, half a glass of something pink and sparkling balanced on the curve of her knee. While Bryan kept a sly smile as his thumb traced absent circles against her shoulder.

The two of them weren’t talking, exactly. They just sometimes tilt their head to meet each other’s gaze. Let out a soft snort at some private joke. Then Iris let her head sink against his collarbone, snuggling as much as she wanted.

The holographic display floated above the oval table between the sofas. Right now, the projection was idling on the mecha simulation’s arena’s pre-match screen.

Two mechas were standing in idle, empty cockpits, and empty pilot bios. The players were still adjusting their settings to meet their needs.

Across the table, on the other sofa, Ciel had drawn his knees up onto the cushion. He was talking to Sarah next to him and Thiago on the other end of the sofa.

"—and I’m just saying, if Lilianna picks the heavy frame again, she’s done. She never worked with heavies before. But against Neville...haaa, I don’t know anymore."

Sarah said that while leaning forward with her chin propped on her hands. Her hair falling loose around her shoulders, eyes shining languidly.

It seemed that she really had too many drinks tonight, but still dared to grab another glassful of drink—really a heavy drinker.

Meanwhile, Thiago laughed lightly and was totally unbothered by it.

"Heavy frames are a perfectly fine," he said. "It’s not the frame that loses fights, it’s the pilot. If Lilianna really dared to underestimate Neville’s unknown capabilities, that’s when she’s done for."

"Spoken like a man who’s never piloted anything but a drone before," Ciel muttered.

"I’ve piloted plenty of mechas in the Academy, thank you."

"You mean the simulations, THE Academy’s standard Mecha Combat Simulations? My point still stands."

Pete sat on another sofa, angled into their group while sipping at a glass of something amber. But given that it hadn’t been refilled for a long time, it seemed that he was particularly interested in drinking tonight.

He would offer a few words here and there. Sometimes he would react at all the right moments. Keeping himself involved but not so involved that the spotlight would move his way.

To everyone, Pete looked like he was minding his own business at his own pace. But Thiago could tell something else immediately.

Pete’s eyes never quite stopped moving around. He would time it whenever people’s gaze wasn’t on him. His hands would also clenched and unclenched his practically untouched drink.

Sometimes he would straighten himself up as if he was about to stand, but limped his shoulders again, like he gave up, restraining himself from going anywhere else.

Thiago lifted his glass to his lips and pretended to drink. He didn’t know exactly what was happening.

But he hoped that things would go well.

However, the situation clearly wasn’t going as he hoped it would be.

It started when he noticed some people were missing in the group. They didn’t even pretend to come over to excuse themselves.

First, Thiago realized he hadn’t seen Grayson in a while.

Then, Chronos was gone too. All evening, he had been stuck on the wall or with Pete, so it was unusual for him to be gone like this.

Pete clearly didn’t know where Chronos was either, but he wasn’t actively searching for him.

Julius was the next to bow out. He rose from the bar earlier, saying that he would fly a drone.

Ciel asked if he wanted to go for a race. Julius was quick to decline, saying that he wanted to play by himself.

That was an odd statement, but Ciel shrugged it off as nothing because he felt that there were just times when you wanted to play by yourself. So everyone was quick to let him go.

But Thiago watched him discreetly leave and noted to himself that Julius had not gone to get the drones.

The drones were on the second floor, so how come he went to the gardens with nothing at hand? Was he really planning to fly a drone? Or was he doing something else?

Now that he was seeing Colonel Vane at the corner of his eyes, it seemed that Julius really didn’t go to the gardens to fly a drone. It seemed that he went there to position himself.

Colonel Vane excused himself a few minutes after Julius came out. He said that he preferred watching the moonlight and smoking a little.

But Thiago knew that Colonel Vane was on duty today. Why would a strict soldier like Colonel Vane do that in the middle of work?

And then there was Helena. She had been drinking nonstop like she couldn’t quench her thirst over alcoholic drinks and never seemed to get drunk.

By the time Thiago sat down to chat in the living room, he discreetly looked around for her, but she was... not there.

Sarah even noticed she was gone, but she just laughed. "Oh, Sis Helena is not here anymore? Guess she’s out. Bet she made it three steps up the stairs before passing out face-down on a bed."

"She’ll probably wake up around nighttime tomorrow just based on how many drinks she intakes," Bryan agreed, "and demand breakfast."

Thiago laughed along with them, talking about who would wake her up when they all decided to go home. But he was almost certain that Helena wasn’t asleep.

The game notified them on the holographic screen that the game was about to start. Both mechas roared to life on the holographic display, dropping two pilots into a rendered endless ocean.

[Neville] vs. [Lilianna], the projection announced in a dramatic flourish.

Match One.

Best of three.

"Oh, here we go," Sarah crowed, clapping her hands. "Neville, you’d better not embarrass us, our department’s reputation is on the line—"

That was when the first gunshots rang out.

Crack. Crack-crack.

Distant, muffled by the barrier, by the walls, but unmistakable.

Iris stiffened against Bryan in the half-second before her conscious mind registered whether what she heard came from the holographic screen or in the real world.

She might’ve never served the military, but she had grown up in a household where her older cousins had. You didn’t survive military family dinners without learning the language of weapons.

Bryan’s hand slid down from her shoulder to the small of her back. His thumb stopped its slow circle. His smile vanished.

On the other sofa, Ciel froze.

A few seconds later, the deeper whump of a plasma discharge somewhere below them rumbled the floor.

Then a crash, a glass, maybe, or something heavier was heard. A section of decorations on the wall had snapped under the vibrations and fallen to the ground.

The holographic projection above the oval table kept playing cheerfully.

On screen, Neville’s mecha had just dodged Lilianna’s opening volley with a sidestep so clean it earned a delighted little ping of approval from the simulation’s AI announcer.

But no one was watching the screen anymore.

"Did you—" Sarah started, and her voice had thinned, the cocktail cheer evaporating off her like steam. "Did you guys hear—"

"Probably just the game," Pete said smoothly, not missing a beat. "They run night events on this side of the planet. You should hear the engines from the game in the surround sound speakers, it’s wild."

Sarah blinked at him and glanced at the holographic screen on the table, and said, "That... didn’t sound like the game."

"The acoustics here are weird," Pete said, and offered her his most disarming smile. "Trust me."

But no sooner than he said that, louder sounds were heard.

Crack-crack-crack-crack.

It was getting closer. They were less a distant pop and more a percussive rhythm, a back-and-forth made of gun firing.

Sarah laughed awkwardly; it was the kind of laugh that was filled with nervousness but still trying to brush it off lightly.

"Pete, that is really not the game."

Iris had gone pale, staring at the windows even though there was nothing to see.

"Okay," she said, very quiet and tight. "Okay, I think we should— Bryan, I think we should—"

"I’ve got you," Bryan murmured, and pulled her in tighter.

Then came the series of calls.

Sarah was the first to fumble turning her light brain on. Her fingers were trembling at the holographic screen as she swiped through to her emergency contacts.

Tap. Tap.

The little blue ring of a connection request spun.

And spun.

And kept spinning.

"It’s not connecting," she said, voice trembling.

Iris had hers out now, too, her movements jerky.

"Mine isn’t either. Mine—the call won’t go through. Why isn’t it going through?"

"Try the local emergency line," Thiago said calmly.

They both tried, but it was the same blue ring.

Nothing was still coming through.

Ciel’s thumb flicked across the screen and scowled.

"Signal’s being eaten," he said. "Either by the barrier or by something else. It’s not just dropped, it’s actively jammed."

"Jammed by what?" Sarah whispered.

Crack-crack.

BOOM!

Another crash, closer this time.