Chapter 566: 566. Bringing Gelion Back And Exposed Him With Everything
Mordecai remained silent for the rest of the walk down the corridor, and his silence reflected the quality he exhibited when he was carrying information he did not yet know how to manage properly. Rex let the silence continue because it was doing useful work, and they arrived at the secondary council chamber with Mordecai in exactly the state Rex wanted him in when the conversation began.
Ready to hear the shape of the problem.
Ready to accept the scope of what needed to happen next.
Pavellia opened the chamber door, checked the interior with the brief, practiced efficiency of someone who had been in security work long enough that the check was as automatic as breathing, and stepped aside.
"Clean," she said.
Rex walked in first.
...
The secondary council chamber was a practical space, lower-ceilinged than the throne room and designed for actual work rather than display. There was a table, chairs, and the kind of ambient illumination that came from bioluminescent mineral deposits in the chamber walls rather than manufactured light.
Mordecai sat at the table’s head, which was his default position in every room that had a defined head. Pavellia stood behind and to his left, which was her default position relative to him. Lilith positioned herself to Rex’s right, which told Mordecai’s people something about the relationship without making it explicit.
"To the main point of the discussion..."
"The Key to the Underlayer," Rex said, without preamble.
Mordecai went still.
"It’s been destroyed," Rex said.
The silence that followed was the silence of someone receiving information that fundamentally restructures a problem they have been managing.
"W-what...?" Mordecai was shocked hearing that. "D-destroyed...?"
"H-how? That’s... impossible," Mordecai said.
"The Legion of Anti-Reincarnators had it in their possession," Rex said. "During the surface network’s effort to recover it, the Key’s structural integrity was compromised beyond the threshold of functional restoration."
He put the statement in the passive construction because he was the Lustful Villain in this room, not Rex Rexilion, and the Lustful Villain was a shadow observer rather than an expedition participant. And of course, he’s not going to reveal his true identity in the Underlayer because it’ll stay hidden by the mask.
"What I observed during the surface operation confirms that the Legion had developed operational plans for the Key," Rex said. "Any party cannot recover the Key, as those plans have been disrupted."
Mordecai looked at him with the expression of someone integrating bad news and good news simultaneously and trying to work out the net balance.
"The Legion can’t use it," he said. "Then... that means... it’s somehow good news for us all."
"No," Rex said. "Nor can anyone else, and yes, it can be considered good news."
"The Underlayer’s primary vulnerability from surface interference via the dimensional pathway is resolved," Rex said. "The pathway can no longer be forced by external parties."
Mordecai was quiet for a moment, and Rex could see the specific quality of his thinking, the way he moved through immediate implications and then broader ones with the slightly scattered but ultimately functional intelligence that characterized him.
"But still... you’re here for a reason," Mordecai said. "So there’s a problem."
"Indeed, there are several," Rex said. "The Legion’s destruction of the Key means they have turned their attention to direct Underlayer infiltration rather than pathway manipulation."
"They were already attempting that," Mordecai said. "We had several incidents—"
"You had incidents that were identified and managed at the surface level," Rex said. "What you did not identify is the infiltration that was already established before those surface incidents."
He let the issue sit for a moment.
"How long before?" Mordecai said.
"The external organization has been receiving intelligence from it for fourteen months while it sat inside your monitoring infrastructure, attended your council meetings, and ate your food," Rex said. "And it’s also long enough that the people running it on the other end have a more complete picture of this city’s vulnerabilities than most of your own senior staff."
Mordecai’s expression moved through several things in quick succession and arrived at something that was neither quite anger nor quite humiliation but contained elements of both.
"That’s not possible," he said. "The vetting process for council positions—"
"Your vetting process," Rex said, "is designed to catch people who are obviously dangerous."
"It is not designed to catch people who are patient and competent and willing to spend fourteen months being useful before they become a problem." He looked at Mordecai with the flat attention of someone explaining something that shouldn’t need explaining. "Those are two different threat categories, Mordecai, and you have been treating them as the same one."
Mordecai stared at him, unsure how to respond. Pavellia also regarded him, her expression neutral. Meanwhile, the two guards stationed at the chamber entrance focused intently on the wall, adhering to their training to remain oblivious to the conversation.
"Cassandra will want to hear this," Mordecai said.
"Cassandra can come to this room to discuss this," Rex said. "But she only can enter when I’ve finished explaining what I’m explaining, not before."
Mordecai’s expression reflected his internal struggle as he decided whether to assert an authority that he was unsure he could support. Rex watched the calculation run and the conclusion arrive at the same place it usually did.
"Alright... Continue," Mordecai said.
"The Legion had at least one established contact inside the Underlayer’s monitoring infrastructure," Rex said. "This contact had been operational for approximately fourteen months."
"During that period, it provided the Legion with detailed intelligence about the Underlayer’s reincarnator population, its monitoring network, and its strategic vulnerabilities."
"The contact was also facilitating a secondary arrangement with a civilization in the second stratum," Rex said. "An arrangement designed to force dimensional resonance shifts that would have destabilized the Underlayer’s foundational layer."
Mordecai had gone very still.
In contrast, Pavellia remained active. She was engaged in her usual process of cross-referencing existing information with the new data she was receiving, and this analysis was leading to a moment of recognition.
"The second-stratum signals," she said. "I’ve been monitoring unusual frequency patterns in the northern shaft for three years."
"Three years of pattern, fourteen months of active contact," Rex said. "The pattern preceded the contact."
"What is the contact’s identity?" Mordecai said.
Rex looked at him.
He had planned this moment with the specific care he gave to moments that needed to land with maximum effect. The information had to be delivered in a way that was completely unambiguous and did not allow for the kind of rationalization that Mordecai was capable of when a convenient fiction was available.
He moved and teleported instantly.
The teleportation was two meters, placing him directly behind the chair at the far end of the table. His hand closed around Gelion Amorphis’s collar from behind, causing Gelion’s chair to topple over along with him.
By the time Mordecai processed what had just occurred, Rex stood in the center of the chamber, Gelion’s collar in one hand and Gelion’s feet roughly thirty centimeters off the ground.
"It’s this slimy bitch right here that almost made me want to destroy the whole Underlayer," Rex said to Gelion. "Thank the lust I still have some patience because I had another plan I’ll use later."
Gelion, for his part, emerged from Lilith’s grip as if breaking the surface of deep water, gasping and furious, grappling with multiple shocks at once. The emotional reactions that Lilith had been suppressing in the background since Rex’s arrival were now released, causing everything that had been held back to surface all at once.
"You—" Gelion turned his head toward Rex with an expression that was the concentrated residue of weeks of maintained composure finally breaking. "You brought me here like this?!"
"You had her hold my mind like a puppet while you—"
"Introduce yourself again," Rex said, and his voice was entirely level. "We’ll make this a professional thing for all of us."
"Let go of your dirty fucking hands off me, you ape!" Gelion said.
Rex let the telekinesis take over, a slow, controlled expansion of force around Gelion’s collar that communicated very clearly that letting go was not the direction the situation was moving.
"Gelion Amorphis," Rex said to Mordecai. "He was reincarnated as a slime."
"Fourteen months in the Underlayer and already built an independent intelligence network inside your monitoring infrastructure without your knowledge."
He paused.
"Also maintained an operational relationship with the Legion of Anti-Reincarnators while in your employ," Rex said. "During the same period that he was collecting your trust, he provided them with detailed intelligence about this city’s vulnerabilities."
Mordecai looked at Gelion with the expression of someone who has had something confirmed that they did not want confirmed.
"That’s—" Gelion said. "I was not a Legion member!"
"I was a contact! There’s a distinction—"
"There really isn’t," Rex said. "But go ahead."
"Explain the distinction, and I want to hear what it sounds like when someone tries to explain it."
Gelion’s jaw tightened. "The Legion eliminates reincarnators indiscriminately!"
"I don’t believe in that... I never believed in that!"
"I was managing the relationship, not endorsing the mission!"
"There is a meaningful difference between—"
"Between feeding information to an organization that uses that information to kill people," Rex said, "and actually killing the people yourself."
He tilted his head slightly. "You’re right that there’s a difference."
"The difference is that you get to sleep better at night while the outcome is identical."
"You don’t understand what I was doing," Gelion said.
"You were building a bridge," Rex said. "You said so yourself, to the second-stratum contacts."
"A bridge between the Underlayer and the surface that would force acknowledgment."
