"The higher-ups have confirmed that our man is KV-464," Huang said into his newspaper, cigarette smoke wreathing his head. He was sitting on the bench next to Hei, but far enough that from a distance they didn't appear to have anything to do with each other. To anyone passing by, they would look like strangers who had just happened to stop off in the same park this morning.
"Based on the dead cop?" Mao was perched on top of the slide, grooming his tail and taking advantage of the sunny day to convince the chance observer that he was a perfectly normally cat – provided they didn't get close enough to overhear him talking.
It should have been strange talking about such things on a bright day like this, in a children's playground, but Hei had long gotten used to it. He flexed his wrist. No pain or loss of movement. He must not have sprained it as badly as he thought. Then again, he seemed to heal more rapidly since he'd become a contractor.
Huang grunted. "We know KV-464 causes some kind of disease that kills his victims – that's what did for the Syndicate's civvies. But the deaths can be slow, or fast like the cop."
"Any idea how the victims contract the disease? Is it airborne? Does it require eye contact, like hijackers? And more importantly, does it affect cats?"
"Physical touch," Hei said before Huang could rebuke Mao. His voice startled both his team members; it was the first time he'd spoken up all morning.
"What makes you say that?" Mao asked, looking up from his grooming.
Hei considered before answering, staring off at a pair of women pushing their strollers quickly down the street. Parents always seemed to avoid this park when Huang was here, for some reason.
"Well?" Huang growled, impatient.
"The cop he killed last night – KV-464 pushed him down as he ran by."
"That doesn't necessarily – "
Hei continued as if the cat had never spoken. "He doesn't carry a gun, and I haven't seen him use a knife or other weapon. That suggests that he relies on his ability, like most contractors. But he's fast, prefers to run rather than stand his ground, and is well-versed in hand-to-hand fighting; he managed to dodge my blades the one time I got close enough to use them. To be that skilled means that his ability doesn't work long-range. He has to be close to use it, so he has to be good enough to get that close to an opponent – but he didn't use it on me, because he never managed to touch me. He had to stay out of reach of my knives."
"Hm, makes sense." Mao pondered, settling his head on his paws. "Guess that means we'll have to shoot him."
"We?" Huang snorted. "Last I checked, Hei's the only contractor on this team that can hold a gun – and no way in hell am I getting anywhere near that freak."
"You know what I mean. And you wouldn't have to get near him, that's my point. We track him down and take him out from a distance. Even you could manage that."
"Has Yin found him yet?" Hei interrupted the bickering before it could get any worse. The familiarity of it rankled. Their team had been together several months now, and it was starting to feel comfortable. That worried him.
"Not yet," Mao said. Yin wasn't at the meeting; she'd been left in the tobacco shop to scan the city for their target.
"If those damn police hadn't interfered, we'd have had him last night," Huang grumbled.
"We?" Mao mocked. "Seems to me Hei and I were the only ones doing any work out there, I almost got my tail broken –"
"Listen, cat…"
Hei didn't hear the rest of Huang's threat; he was halfway across the park, heading home and to bed. It had been a tiring night, and no doubt he'd be hunting down KV-464 again soon.
-\/-
"It looks almost like a handprint." Kirihara stared down at Officer Yagami's chest. Five black splotches that could have been fingerprints lay right below his collarbone, as if someone had shoved the officer while running past. The medical examiner, Dr. Kurosaki, had confirmed minor bruises on his hands and back, as if from a fall. Kurosaki nodded. Only his eyes were visible among the protective gear he wore head to foot, and that only because his safety glasses were clear and untinted. Kirihara knew she must look as ridiculous, but those were the regulations.
"The size and spacing do suggest the fingerprints of an average-sized man," the medical examiner was saying, "or a slightly larger-than-average woman. However, they aren't actual prints, like from ink. They're places where the flesh has mortified. And do you see this?" He used a scalpel to point out twisted tracks of black that spidered out across the dead man's chest. "I think these veins were the conduit for the poison, which originated in the fingerprints, or whatever they are. Like a snakebite, having the source of the toxin so close to the heart means that the poison would have spread rapidly, thus contributing to the officer's sudden death."
The smell of formaldehyde was starting make Kirihara feel a little woozy, but she forced herself to concentrate. "So Officer Yagami was in KV-464's path…KV-464 activated his ability and pushed the officer down, and where he touched him, he infected him with the toxin, which then spread to the rest of his body. It makes sense. But there weren't any marks on Yagami's uniform. How did the toxin get through to his skin?"
Kurosaki shrugged. "I sent samples to the laboratory. Hopefully we'll know more in a few days."
"A few days?" Kirihara suppressed a sigh. She knew they were working as fast as they could.
"The problem is with the samples. Whatever this pathogen is, it decays living tissue so fast that there's not much left to analyze."
Kirihara frowned, hoping Kurosaki couldn't see her expression behind her mask. "I can understand that the dead contractors and Yagami weren't…fresh…enough, but what about the patients from the hospital?"
"Most of the samples taken from the two live patients were used up by the hospital lab. By the time Pandora's scientists were brought in, there wasn't enough left for the tests they needed to run. And of course, the patients themselves had passed on by then."
"Alright. Please let me know if you find anything new."
She exited the morgue, depositing the paper smock, hair net, mask, booties, and gloves in the trash can where Saitou stood sentinel. She took a deep breath of air that only smelled like antiseptic instead of antiseptic plus formalin. "You're going to have to go into the morgue one of these days," she said as they turned down the hall to exit the building. "You see dead bodies on the street all the time, they don't bother you then."
Saitou turned a funny shade of green. "It's different in there."
Kirihara let the sigh escape this time. "Any updates?"
Her lieutenant shook his head. "Matsumoto and Kouno are still working on the connection between the civilians who were killed by KV-464. Because their deaths were so much slower than the other contractors or Yagami, KV-464 must have wanted to hide them, or at least prevent us from making any immediate connection."
"Right. Though I'm not sure I'd call a day much slower than an hour."
The dead contractors – and Yagami – had been found within minutes of their deaths, thanks to Astronomics' doll network. The civilians were another story. A banker had gone to be early, complaining of the flu; the next morning his wife found him dead in their bed, face blue. EMTs guessed he'd died of asphyxiation, though the coroner was unable to determine the cause. Another man, a security loans officer for a different bank, had taken two days to die. He'd checked himself into the hospital the second day, when the convulsions started – but it was too late. He died shortly after arrival, choking and purple-faced.
The third victim, a young IT specialist, had already been in the hospital for three days when the loans officer was admitted. The doctors on staff were baffled by her symptoms. It seemed to be the flu: she had a fever, aches, and couldn't keep down any food. However, she didn't respond to any intervention, and only got worse, until she passed away almost at the same time as the loans officer after a series of nasty convulsions and a constriction of the throat that even intubation hadn't eased. The same doctor had been assigned both cases; he recognized the same symptoms, and immediately called for a quarantine on the hospital, fearing some new epidemic. But so far, no one on staff and no one from the patients' families presented with the symptoms, and there was no common linkage between the patients. No one could even tell when the disease had been contracted. Did it incubate for days, or months, before burning through the patients like a wildfire?
The doctor in charge of the mysterious cases phoned every other hospital in the country, trying to track down similar cases. He found one, right here in Tokyo – the banker who'd been found dead in bed, taken to another hospital for autopsy. He also called his old friend Kurosaki, who was now working for the police as medical examiner. Kurosaki recognized the description of the dead patients right away – two contractors had been found that same week, in that same condition. Section 4 lifted the quarantine on the hospital lest panic spread, and insisted that Pandora pathologists be brought in to try and identify the disease – and the contractor who was spreading it.
Kirihara supposed she should be glad that they could confirm Messier code KV-464 as the one responsible, but they still didn't know who he was, who he was working for, or what his purpose was. The dead contractors were probably just obstacles, killed because they were in his way. No, the truth would be found with the three civilians. They weren't random victims, they'd been killed differently – slowly, to mask the fact that it was murder and not some new strain of flu. If two of the patients hadn't ended up under the charge of the same doctor, they may never have suspected the involvement of a contractor. She'd get to the bottom of it; first, they needed the results of the lab tests from Pandora, and Kouno and Matsumoto had to unearth the link between the victims.
She and Saitou stepped out into the harsh sunlight. Kirihara was still feeling slightly woozy, though whether it was from the lingering scent of the morgue on her suit or the frustration of this case she couldn't say. She hadn't gotten much sleep last night. Oh she'd gotten home in time to get several hours, but it didn't matter. The details of the case had turned over in her mind, over and over again until she could hardly think straight. She'd woken more tired than before she went to bed.
"You head back to the office," she told Saitou. "I need to clear my head for a bit." She started to get into her car, but turned back when she saw the dent on the roof. "And if you see BK-201, tell him I'm sending him the bill from the body shop!" Kirihara slammed her door shut. Saitou was still standing in the parking lot, trying to work out if she'd been joking or not. She wasn't sure herself.
