Just a touch screen by the door.
No card reader, even. They couldn't know if it was PIN entry, voice recognition, fingerprint recognition, or even an iris scan.
It couldn't be opened, in other words.
“You thinking of escaping?”
“You're not?”
“Hmm.”
Hazuki Makino. Ayumi Kono. Mio Tsuzuki. Hinako Sakura. Ritsuko Kisugi. And Rey Maoâ¦
At this rate everyone would end up dead. Why? What for? What were they doing right now?
There was no other outcome; those girls were going to die. It was out of their control now.
But it wasn't out of their control. That was just silly. Damned if Shizue would let herself be killed.
“I am not going to die here!” Shizue screamed. The echoless room swallowed her voice.
AYUMI CAME RUNNING
.
Her efficient muscles moved in sync.
She was graceful like an animal.
Several men came running toward her from left and right.
They were wearing uniforms.
They were patrolmen.
They were saying something she couldn't hear.
At that moment, Hazuki was in the middle of a wide road slightly higher up looking down at the scene. What was Hazuki going to be scared of now?
Would her legs collapse and stop moving? Maybe she was scared and nervous and resisting internally a little, but she was going to swallow all those fears, swallow them and be okay and think nothing of this. That was how useless she was.
Ayumi came running at her.
She hit Hazuki on the head.
“What are you doing?!”
“I wasâ”
“Come here!”
She grabbed her arm. The touch of a human.
“Run!”
Hazuki screamed.
The area patrol approached.
From the front and from behind.
Hazuki was yanked by Ayumi, her body falling from the sky, and she ran.
She ran around to behind the building annex.
They came from all sides. Hazuki was thrown against the wall.
“Ayumi!”
A large group of area patrol officers gathered around Ayumi.
This is my fault.
Because Hazuki had come here without thinking.
“Stop it!” she yelped. Like a child.
Several area patrols ran toward Hazuki.
Please, no!
Something moved above Hazuki's head.
She looked up.
Cat.
On the ledge above them was Rey Mao.
Rey Mao flew off the wall to avoid hitting Hazuki and kicked the closest patrolman on her way down. She quickly spun around.
She brought her arms immediately back up and drove her fists into the patrolman's face.
“What are you doing here, Hazuki?!”
Ayumi slipped past her.
“Rey Mao!”
“Ayumi!”
Ayumi rushed to Hazuki's right to lure in her pursuers, and Rey Mao stood to Hazuki's left, fighting off several officers at once.
They stood nearly back to back, Hazuki in the middle, to protect her.
“Why did you come all the way here?”
“You got the message on the dove, right?”
The patrolmen regrouped, and the girls were now trapped against the wall.
“Now we're surrounded,” Rey Mao said. “I was so well hidden in the corner too.”
“You were exposed,” Ayumi said. “They only thinned out the personnel here to lure you out. Their plan was to go after you when you slipped through the crack to escape. The area patrol is probably not allowed into the building. That's why I thought it would be easy to make contact.”
Hazuki had gotten in their way.
“And do what then?”
“Trade places. There was something I needed to talk to you about.”
“Trade places?”
With their backs still to each other, Rey Mao looked to Ayumi.
The lights on the officers' belts clicked on.
Those were their monitors.
Finally, one of the officers broke through the ranks and approached.
“Hey, you kids,” he said with no nervousness. “What are you doing all huddled up? These are just a bunch of girls. Who's responsible for this?”
“I am,” said one of the patrol officers. He showed his badge to the other one.
He read the badge with his own monitor and said, “This is no good.
Obviously, protocol is to call the police. And I have to come out here to check out the scene? You've gone totally overboard. All these patrols for a few kids who've gotten lost on the grounds. Were you planning to intimidate them with your batons?” he said, slapping the baton one of the patrols was holding. “You've gone too far. Too far. I need to file a claim with D&S from prefectural headquarters. Are the employees under review? This is child abuse. Report it to the administration.”
“But this girl, she was resisting us.”
“Of course she was. I'm sure she's scared. Look at all of you. How many of you are there? At least thirty. Three kids versus thirty adults. What about your posts? What if terrorists attacked the main entrance?”
The man turned to the group and looked at the patrol officers with disdain. “There's been no burglary or violence. You say things like, âWe come in peace,' but what kind of patrol officer attacks a lost child? I'll take care of these kids,” he said. He approached Hazuki and the others.
“Hi. I'mâ¦oh, wait.” He pulled up his card on the monitor and turned his display toward the girls.
Investigative Unit R Section Chief, Police Division, Shoji Takasugi.
He was the real thing.
“Now, what are you doing here? Where did you get in? The premises are vacant today for maintenance. I apologize, but could you explain your situation in brief for me? Our intruder alert system picked you up on the sensors. We saw you on our security cameras, and whenever that happens we have to get statements from whomever we apprehend.” Takasugi spoke very politely.
He seemed normal. Unusually normal.
Yes, police information could very well have leaked. The two men who attacked Hazuki were also dressed like area patrols, and he was certainly no different. Even soâ¦
It couldn't mean they were all bad.
That was impossible.
This couldn't be a police-wide, area patrol-wide conspiracy. In which caseâ¦
Hazuki looked at Ayumi. Ayumi was looking straight at Takasugi.
Rey Mao was looking for an out.
The police had an arrest warrant out for her.
Of course it was best for her to try to escape.
Ayumi grabbed Mao's arm as she made the slightest movement with her body. Rey Mao looked at Ayumi in her peripheral vision. Ayumi didn't take her eyes off Takasugi and pulled in Rey Mao even closer.
Ayumi wasâ¦What was she going to do?
Takasugi looked perplexed and turned his head slightly.
“Well, I'm sure you were scared. Let's just go inside for now, shall we. If you just tell me what happened I can release you quickly. Let's have something to drink. Is that okay?”
“Sure,” Ayumi said.
Rey Mao widened her eyes and glanced at Ayumi's face, then turned her gaze toward Hazuki.
Hazuki felt the gravelly texture of the wall against her back and looked down.
“Let's go then,” Takasugi said. He then turned to the thirty-odd patrol officers and barked at them to go back to their posts.
The patrol officers all lowered their heads and went away without a word. One rubbed his neck and walked with a limp, probably thanks to Rey Mao.
“Like I said before, we're doing maintenance today. Everyone in this area knows that, but you see, tomorrow is the anniversary of our founder's birth. There will be celebrations and everything, so we're fixing up the place today and tomorrow. You girls are from another area, aren't you?”
“Area 119.”
“Ah, well, that's too bad,” Takasugi said.
The patrols lined up at strategic points.
Takasugi and the girls climbed low neo-ceramic stairs with a midcentury tile pattern and passed a large terrace. They traversed a wellgroomed garden on a walkway to an open courtyard. There, the path continued on a slight slope with stone steps.
“Normally the escalator is running. It's stopped today. You should be okay though. You're young,” said the officer as he descended the stairs.
Rey Mao stopped for a moment.
Ayumi, sensing Mao's sensitivity, turned her head.
There were area patrols lined up along the steps. Hazuki and the others were still surrounded.
“The main entrance is over there. Now how did I make a wrong turn?” Takasugi said in a loud voice, then beckoned the girls forward.
“It's all right. You aren't in danger anymore. I just want to hear your story. Depending on the mitigating circumstances we might even let you go without having to contact the community center or your guardians. I mean, really, depending on the situation.”
At the bottom of the stairs was a sign pointing toward a hall on the other end of which stood the main entrance. It was a ridiculously extravagant entrance made of neo-ceramic and reinforced glass.
They looked up.
A bright white structure appeared to burst upward through the air.
It looked very different from up close. It was grotesque.
“This is normally where you arrive when you come here from town. There's even a solar transport shuttle that runs directly from the residential district. But as I said, today's a day off. So⦔ Takasugi kept talking to no one in particular and showed his ID to a patrol officer.
“Good work. The intruder alert has been taken care of. We just need to process their surveillance per the usual. Oh, why don't I just process these girls?”
“Officer Takasugi, I still need them to show ID to enter the premises.”
“Ah, that's all right. If we just let them in unregistered I can contact the security office myself. It'll be a bigger hassle to start up the system when everything's shut down. And just to process tracking devices.”
A tracking device
.
As if he'd heard her thinking that, Takasugi looked at Hazuki and smiled.
“The ceiling is not very high here, but the space is wide open. There are usually a lot of visitors on working days. Therefore simply swiping an ID doesn't suffice. We have to set a tracker on everyone's monitors so we know who is where throughout the compound. There's also a hospital. If an elderly visitor collapsed somewhere unattended, for example, or if a child gets lost. Just that when we're closed like this, the system isn't operational, and if you don't have your monitors, it becomes a real hassle to set the tracker. We have to get you special rental units. And on an off-day it's not just people like you but even the patrols who go around the grounds without these tracking units. Shall we go in then?”
Takasugi had the patrol move to the side, passed his ID card against a hidden card reader adjacent to the large door in the middle of an even bigger gate, and finished by very deliberately pronouncing his name:
ta, ka, su, gi
.
The gate opened soundlessly.
“This is a voice-operated gate. Now go in, quickly. You can't get in or out without me.”
Ayumi entered.
Hazuki also entered, prodded forward by Rey Mao.
Rey Mao then went in and Takasugi closed the gate behind them.
He turned around and said, “Keep it up,” to the guard.
The entrance hall was at least four times as wide as the community center's racetrack.
The space was ventilated from very high up.
It was a wide-open space.
Still, the floor and the beams were all polished bright. In the middle of the hall was a marble statue of an elderly man in old clothing.
How tacky
, Hazuki thought.
There were six wide glass pipes running up the face of the wall. They must have been capsule elevator shafts, but shafts weren't usually as long as these pipes were. Takasugi took them directly to the elevators and pointed up.
“Look, you can see. Up there. On the fifth floor is the interrogation room. Let's go there. We have beverages andâ¦oh, I hope the dispenser is working today.”
Takasugi pointed his hand above his head and the gate to the third pipe elevator opened.
Ayumi went in. Rey Mao went in. Then Hazuki.
The elevator let out a short melody and closed the doors. A faint G appeared and the girls glided up as if slipping. The floor of the entrance hall quickly disappeared.
After all that climbing and descending the hills. To think of how much energy Hazuki used to raise her own altitude. Now she was ascending in a matter of breaths.
“What time is it right now?” Ayumi asked Takasugi.
Takasugi nodded smartly and pulled up his terminal.
“It's 5:05 pm and twenty seconds.”
“Thank you,” Ayumi said.
They came out to what looked like a lounge.
There were tables, chairs, and drink dispensers lined up around the space.
Takasugi said, “This way,” and proceeded to the rear of the room, swiped his ID card and uttered his name again, which opened a golden door.
“Please, come in.”
It was a glossy hallway.
There were several doors.
Upon entering the hall, the golden door shut behind them.
“Let's see. Where shall we go⦔ Takasugi said as he playfully looked at each of the doors and finally chose one.
“Let's go in here.”
The doors inside the hall were apparently not voice-operated.
“Please, enter. What would you all like to drink?”
It was a simple but classy-looking greeting room.
Takasugi stood by the door and gestured toward the room.
But Ayumi wouldn't move.
As if suspicious of her movements, Rey Mao, who had until then been initiating all the moves, gave Ayumi a curious look and then looked over at Takasugi. He was smiling. Rey Mao turned her face away and walked into the room. Hazuki too. It was just as she entered the room that Ayumi spoke.