The Supreme Life System

Chapter 7

Police officers stepped from the vehicles the moment the cars stopped and moved straight toward Michael. Elizabeth raised her voice at once, pointing directly at him. “Arrest him. He’s the one who did this to all of them.”

The officer in charge was a young woman whose uniform did little to conceal a figure both precise and striking, her dark hair drawn into a tight, practical bun. She approached without hesitation and reached for Michael’s wrists. “You’re under arrest for assault.”

Michael offered a faint, wry smile as the cuffs closed. “This was self-defense. They came at me first with clear intent to cripple.”

She gave no sign of having heard him. With a short order to her team to gather the injured men and see them to a hospital, she guided Michael firmly toward one of the waiting cars and climbed in after him. His further attempts to explain were met with the same silence; she simply refused to engage.

At the station she led him, still cuffed, into an interrogation room and secured him to the chair. Only then did she take a seat across the table, her colleagues positioned near the walls. Her expression remained cool and assessing.

“Explain how you managed to put ten armed men on the ground and break their bones in the process.”

Michael exhaled slowly. “I defended myself. They attacked first.”

She shook her head once. “That is not the question I asked. How does an ordinary civilian—someone with no recorded training of any kind—defeat a group of armed professionals alone?”

Before the questioning had begun she had already pulled his records. Everything on file marked him as unremarkable. That single fact only sharpened her curiosity and her determination to understand what she had just witnessed.

A familiar chime sounded inside Michael’s mind.

[Ding: New Mission activated]

[Court death by flirting with the beautiful officer]

Remark: The host should note that the officer has quite a bad temper. The closer the death experience the host courts, the richer the rewards.

Michael’s mouth twitched. The system had never been particularly subtle, yet this particular directive bordered on the absurd. It claimed to value his survival while simultaneously ordering him to provoke someone whose temper was already on display. He drew a quiet breath, then looked directly at the woman across the table and spoke as though the previous questions had never been asked.

“You’re beautiful, you know.”

A collective stillness fell over the room. The two male officers exchanged glances, unsure whether they had heard correctly, while the woman across the table felt her expression tighten. For a moment she simply stared at Michael, the muscle in her jaw flexing once before she forced the reaction down and returned to the matter at hand.

“I asked you a question. How were you able to handle ten armed men by yourself?”

Michael regarded her with the same unhurried calm. “You should smile more often. Holding that expression permanently will age you faster than any calendar. Early wrinkles have a way of settling in when someone refuses to soften even a little.”

Her eyes flashed. “Who exactly are you calling old?”

[Ding: Five hundred points acquired]

The notification landed quietly in Michael’s mind. He allowed himself a brief, almost resigned inward smile. The system’s metric for progress was clear enough: the sharper her temper, the higher the return.

He continued as though the previous exchange had been nothing more than polite conversation. “Raising your voice that way is also unwise. Strain it too often and it begins to sound harsh. People stop listening when a voice turns sharp and tired.”

Color rose along her neck. She drew a slow breath through her nose, clearly fighting the urge to abandon procedure altogether.

Michael tilted his head slightly, still studying her. “If you keep locking everything down like that, the softness people notice first will disappear. A face that hard starts to look more severe than it needs to. And those—” his gaze dropped briefly, deliberately, toward the front of her uniform—“are being treated rather unfairly. Forcing them into that rigid posture does them no favors. A little less tension would serve them better.”

The last thread of her restraint snapped.

“Bastard!”

She surged to her feet, pointed at the door, and spoke in a voice that left no room for discussion. “Both of you, out. I will finish this interrogation alone.”

The two male officers exchanged a brief, almost pitying look before stepping out and closing the door. Both knew the reputation of the woman they were leaving behind. Inside the precinct she was referred to, never to her face, as the female gorilla—violent enough that no one in the branch risked testing her temper directly if they valued their health.

Michael remained seated, still cuffed to the chair, and continued as though the door had never closed. “You really should ease that expression. Keep it locked so tightly and the lines will settle in early. Once they do, the number of people willing to approach you drops rather quickly.”

Her eyes narrowed further.

“In fact,” he went on, voice mild, “I doubt many would risk proposing in the first place. That rigid look of yours tends to suggest the conversation might end with a boot somewhere sensitive. Fortunately for you, I am not easily discouraged. All I ask is that you try being a little more cooperative.”

The last remark carried a deliberate, ambiguous weight.

“Bastard!”

She closed the distance in a single stride and drove a fist toward his face. Michael twisted hard against the restraints, the punch missing by a narrow margin. The force of it still brushed past his cheek with enough power to make him draw a sharp breath.

“Are you trying to kill me?” he muttered.

“I might not have if you kept that mouth shut,” she snapped, and followed with a kick aimed at his midsection.

He shifted again, the cuff chain rattling as the blow glanced off the side of the chair. “If you succeed, you will eliminate any remaining chance of a future partner. That would leave you single for a very long time.”

She answered with a rapid series of punches. Michael continued to lean and duck within the limited range the restraints allowed, speaking between movements.

“You might also want to consider the long-term consequences. Hitting too hard in the wrong place could create problems neither of us would recover from easily. Children, for example, become rather difficult if certain parts stop functioning.”

Color flooded her face—first embarrassment, then pure fury. Her attacks grew sharper, faster, less controlled.

Michael sighed as though genuinely concerned. “All this tension cannot be good for those either,” he said, glancing briefly downward. “They look like they have been under considerable pressure for a while. A pity, really. I happen to be a man who appreciates what is already there, so I would not have asked for anything softer. Still, it seems a waste to treat them so harshly.”

“Bastard!” she shouted again, and came at him with renewed force.