Chapter 2
"Bodyguards? Is that a joke?" The young scientist looked up from her clipboard to address the pair of trench coats. "I know the syndicate has a variety of divisions, but you're not really trying to get me to buy you two work security. Though I suppose it fits that protector role in more classic romance that you're so keen on replicating, Gin."
Gin was uncomfortable with the fact that she knew his code name and he did not know hers. He let it slip unwittingly into his expression.
"I suppose I'll be handing this off then," she said capping the pen and handing it to one of the men in white lab coats that had arrived when Gin and Brandy had been in the observing room. "If the syndicate thinks Dr. Kurage's research will help the development of Silver Bullet I'd be the right person to go to, as head of the project."
Gin looked to his superior in surprise, half skeptically; she looked so young, too young to be at the head of anything. Reading his unspoken question Brandy said:
"She was a child prodigy, and was working within the ranks as a scientist by thirteen."
"Huh," Gin regarded the young scientist in a new light for a moment. "We're wasting time." He interjected starting toward the warehouse door.
...
The mountains stood as a steady backdrop to the blur of fields closer to the tracks. Gin's own vague reflection on the window came to focus before the young scientist's behind him. He turned to face Brandy across from him in the booth, her face much more lined with age than the girl to her right. The skin of her hands was also thinner and clung to the veins strung on the back of her palm almost like an instrument. She was pulling out a couple of folders from her case.
"Here we are." She handed Gin one of them, and he scanned the contents for the young scientist's name, or code name, or anything to give him back an edge. Nothing, not one document on her or her project Silver Bullet.
Those weren't the only papers the folder seemed to lack. He had extensive records of this Dr. Kurage's movements, but nothing on what his research was actually on.
Each page within the folder looked like it had been photocopied. There were logs of hours spent at the university lab, bank statements, phone records, several other records the public wasn't supposed to have access to, each highlighted and annotated linking connections and holes. More money than usual had been withdrawn in the past few days, hours at the lab were irregular, and he was in constant contact with a couple of numbers that he hadn't ever called before a week ago.
There were also extensive records on the local underground regarding any recent large purchases. Hitmen, bodyguard services, escorts, drug purchases, large quantities of chemicals, acids, explosives, exotic animal markets, thieves for hire, hackers for hire, grifters for hire. The list went on.
He glanced over at the girl, who was thumbing through her own set of documents. "He's the only scientist in Japan who's been able to keep them stable and alive?" She asked Brandy.
"The only scientist in the world who has been able to keep them this long," Brandy said.
"Impressive," the girl mused. "And they really are able to-"
"-Yes," Brandy cut her off and looked up at Gin who was staring at the two converse. The young scientist looked up at Brandy and then at Gin whom she was staring at.
"Ah, what level of clearance is Gin at within the "security division" exactly?" the girl asked.
"A rung too low I'm afraid," Brandy said.
"And what of our young scientist friend?" Gin jabbed. "Codename-?"
"I assure you Gin you will not need to know, and we'll leave it at that." Brandy straightened out her papers and closed her folder preparing to stand. "Please excuse us for a moment, Miss." Brandy started toward the dining car, and Gin followed suit.
Once they were between cars she stopped to address him. "There are only two things you need concern yourself with on this mission Gin: determining whether Dr. Kurage has or intends to betray the organization, and ensuring that the young scientist back there remains unhindered in her mission to retrieve Kurage's research in tact. Everything else is above your pay grade. Understood?"
"Understood."
The train had been slowing down and had now come to a complete halt at one of the stops along their route. A small group of passengers walked between Brandy and Gin. A woman in her early twenties in a pair of tight short-shorts and a baggy jacket that nearly covered up the fact that she was indeed wearing shorts, and two businessmen in work suits made their way to the other car. They waited awkwardly on either side of the small room between cars for the group to pass. Gin started to walk back to the car they'd come from when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
"As for our young scientist friend, as you call her, she needn't know anything about the potential of Dr. Kurage's demise."
"Is that all?"
"Yes for now, and don't make there a later Gin." Brandy squeezed the bridge of her nose between her ring finger and thumb.
"After you," Gin opened the door to the car with their seats. Their booth had been toward the middle of the passenger car and he could see the reddish brown back of the young scientist's head unmoved from where they had left her. Across from her though was the women who had passed by them earlier in a coat twice her size and form fitting shorts.
His sight was drawn to the back of the car with a flash of metal. At the other end of the passenger car, the two businessmen hadn't taken their seats despite the fact that the train had started back up again. They were mostly turned away from him, but one of them looked back over his shoulder and then jerked his head forward suddenly.
"Something's going on," Brandy whispered back to Gin. "You check on our young scientist friend and her new admirer. I'll take care of the two suits." With that, Brandy launched into pursuit like a bird of prey taking flight, and the two suits started to make a run for it.
Gin drew and cocked his gun holding it just inside his coat while running up to the booth. He slowed at the last few paces seeing the barrel of a gun poking out the twenty something's massive coat. He made it past the back of the seat and saw that the scientist girl had her own weapon trained on the girl across from her, hiding behind her folder. That explained why the girl in her early twenties hadn't moved her aim up at Gin when she noticed him coming.
"Don't move," the girl said under her breath sporadically moving her aim from Gin to the girl in the lab coat now that they were both an equal threat.
"Relax," Gin said revealing empty hands. "Just calm down," he took a seat beside her casually wrapping an arm around her back. Before she could protest Gin had slid a blade from his sleeve which had quickly been turned on her throat.
"Now, lower the gun," Gin continued. "I don't think I have to tell you you're outgunned in this matter. I'm sure you can feel the steel on your neck, and of course, there is that lovely woman across from you which can't have escaped your attention. But what might have escaped your attention, and what also might be overkill is the second gun pointed at your side from within my jacket. Now I don't really need any of this as I could snap your neck quite easily from this position. So darling, what can I do for you?"
"You're the crows, right? The organization all in black?"
"Perhaps, perhaps not." Gin continued easily. "Regardless I myself am very interested in what you want with these crows."
"He said they were coming for him, said they would think he'd outlived his usefulness." The girl stumbled over her words. "Look I know when a job gets to be more than I was paid for, and I don't owe this guy any loyalty so his cash isn't worth this much to me-"
"Get to the point." Gin tapped the end of his gun on her shoulder.
"I don't know, he sounded like some paranoid delusional, and I felt bad for taking his money, but my partners were all for it so I-"
"The point, darling. Understand?" Gin moved the knife along the skin of her neck, not cutting into it but gliding at an angle as if he were shaving.
"Right, he was going on about how they're all dead, and he's dead cause they're dead and- none of what he was saying made any sense. He just wanted us to intimidate the organization in black into leaving him alone see, that's all I was hired for and-"
"Any of this mean anything to you?" Gin asked the lady scientist who looked deep in thought.
"Yes, actually." She said looking up from her position where she had taken up grabbing her chin and staring off. "It's all very surprising. I'm interested to see the circumstances of course. Did he say anything else?"
"Just that they were all dead." She said as if she were a shell of herself. The imagery of her small frame in the large coat only perpetuated the idea, almost as if she were a turtle head retreating into its hard shell. "Creepy right?"
"Hand over the gun." Gin said unmoved emotionally by the entire ensemble.
She slipped it out of her jacket and to Gin who slid it into his own trench coat as if it already had a designated place within. He patted her discretely down and found no other weapons.
"Go lock yourself in the bathroom where you will remain until the next stop, where you will leave the train and never look back understood." Gin explained.
She nodded and Gin released his hold of weapons trained on her. The scientist girl, however, kept her gun on the women until she saw her close the bathroom door.
"Do you even know how to use that?" Gin asked skeptically.
"Wanna find out? I'll shoot you in the coat collar. We can have a matching set."
"So what is 'they're all dead' about?" Gin asked.
"I don't know, Gin. Did your clearance level randomly rank up in the past few minutes without me noticing?" She said, blatantly lauding the fact that she knew his code name and he was not allowed to know hers.
"Well if whatever they are, are indeed all dead hasn't this trip been a waste?"
"Perhaps, perhaps not." She continued easily. "Regardless I myself am very interested in what Dr. Kurage's research has to tell us."