12.26.16 Chapter 3 has been updated with some small details, based on a lovely comment by a reader at AO3.

"So what intel do we have on RS-334?" Misaki asked Navid as she turned off the freeway and onto the busy street that would take them to the prison. She was getting tired of this trip, but Navid was having trouble keeping his slightly-panicked gaze off the road. She'd seen that look plenty of times before: a European car designed for right-hand driving being driven in a left-hand road system tended to freak people out. She herself was used to it, and tried to ignore the thought that perhaps it was karmic payback for his suspicion during their meeting.

"Don't they drive on the left side in Thailand too?" she asked. "This should be normal for you."

"I spent most of my Interpol career stationed in France," Navid said. His grip on the door was white-knuckled. "The car is familiar, the road is not. It's a little…disorienting."

"Ah," said Misaki, as she shifted up a gear to take the car around a slow-moving lorry. Beside her, Navid clutched the door handle even more tightly. "Anyway; RS-334. What do we know - who has she worked for, why was she arrested?"

"Right. Well, we don't know much. According to the arrest papers her code name is Neela. It means blue in Urdu."

"A color-based code name; that's the Syndicate's system."

"Yes, it does sound like it. It doesn't say what she was imprisoned for beyond 'attempting to hack into a secure network'."

That sounds promising, Misaki thought. If this Neela didn't have any information for them about Hourai's death, could she potentially be useful in getting into the Syndicate's server? "What else?"

"She was arrested in Sapporo last July, and transferred to the prison in Tokyo that same month."

"I don't remember that arrest," Misaki said. "The team up in Sapporo is small; they don't have any place to hold the contractors that they arrest - which aren't very many. We always travel up there to handle it."

Navid shook his head. "None of the others on your team remembered it either. But Hourai signed off on her transfer himself."

"Hm," Misaki pondered aloud as she wove her car through the traffic. A light up ahead was about to turn yellow; she gunned the engine, and made it through just in time. Beside her, Navid pressed himself further into his seat. "Tsukuda Jiro was still in Sapporo around that time; he could have alerted Hourai. It sounds like the Syndicate wanted her tucked safely - and quietly - out of the way. We don't know her history? What about her price or her power?"

"Nothing," Navid said.

Misaki didn't reply. This was the first promising lead that they'd had; but even so, she was careful not to let her optimism rise.

"Director," Navid said as they pulled into the parking lot. "Might I make a suggestion?"

He'd better not be about to make a comment on her driving. "What is it?" she said, more coldly than she'd meant to.

"This contractor - if her power is indeed what we think it is, then she'll know that we're here to see her before they bring her into the interrogation room."

Misaki nodded. "True. I was planning on calling ahead to Memoto to ask that she be taken there before we enter; that way she can't observe us."

"Yes, that would be good. But with Hourai's death and our many visits, she's sure to guess who we are regardless. What if, instead, we don't hide our purpose?"

She grasped his meaning at once. "We can't throw her off balance by showing up unannounced; so let's make it clear that we know that she knows what we want. I like it," she smiled grimly as they exited her car and headed into the prison.

Misaki had hoped that she would never have to set foot in this facility again. She knew it was a false hope; but still, to be back so soon...a nasty feeling something like dread settled in her stomach.

The journey to the surveillance station at the second checkpoint was as arduous and depressing as ever. Along the way, Misaki couldn't help but glance up at every security camera that they passed; but there was no way of knowing whether the contractor was watching until they could actually see her on the screen. When they reached the checkpoint, she saw that Officer Suda was on duty again.

"No," Misaki said when he asked if she wanted to see Hourai's cell on the feed again. "I want to see prisoner nineteen."

Suda clicked through a series of feeds until the central monitor showed Neela's cell. The dark-haired woman was lying on her back on her thin mattress, one ankle crossed over her knee as she held a magazine above her head to read. It was a housekeeping magazine, Misaki noticed with interest. The television was on, but Neela never once looked toward it. Or the camera.

"Does she speak Japanese or English?" Misaki asked.

"English for sure," Suda said. "One of the guards in block four talks to her sometimes. If she understands Japanese, she doesn't show it."

"This isn't going to work if she never looks into the camera," Navid muttered beside her.

Suda looked blank. "What was that?" he asked Misaki.

"We want her to look into the camera, like she was doing the last time we were here," Misaki explained, folding her arms and staring at the screen.

Suda checked his watch. "It's almost two. She'll get up in a minute. It's like she has some kind of internal clock; always knows when the next hour is striking."

Sure enough, as the time changed to fourteen hundred, Neela stood up from her bunk and began pacing up and down the room as if bored, the magazine still in her hand. At last she paused in front of the television and gave it a couple of affectionate pats, as if it was a particularly well-behaved dog. Then she left her hand resting on it and looked straight into the camera. Misaki stared straight back at the woman's image on the screen and waved.

"I'd like to speak with you," she said in English, pointing at Neela's figure on the screen. The contractor's eyes widened in response, before she schooled her expression into a blank, untelling face. Then she gave a little shrug as if she couldn't care less what Misaki wanted, draped the magazine over the top of her head, and went back to her bunk.

"Radio the superintendent, please," Misaki told Suda, trying to contain her excitement that they seemed to be right about her power, "and tell him that I'd like to see prisoner nineteen in the interrogation room."

Neela was waiting for them when Moriyama escorted Misaki and Navid in. The room was exactly the same as it had been before: cold, stark, and bare, except for the concrete table and the two security cameras mounted in the corners. Neela was seated on the far side of the table. Like Hourai had been, her hands and feet were cuffed and chained to the metal bar running down the center of the table. She looked at them with open curiosity as they entered and took seats on the stools across from her. Moriyama bowed slightly, then exited and shut the door behind him.

Taking a mental deep breath, Misaki set her voice recorder out on the table between them and switched it on. "Good afternoon," she said. "I'm Acting -"

"Director Kirihara Misaki," Neela finished for her. "Public Security Bureau, Foreign Affairs. And you're Navid Iyer, Interpol. From the liaison office in Bangkok." Her voice was a bit raspy as if out of use; she had a heavy accent that Misaki couldn't quite place, but her English was perfectly easy to understand.

"Do you know why we're here?" Misaki asked, masking her surprise that Neela knew her by name as well as by sight.

Neela shrugged, chains rattling. "Something to do with prisoner thirty-two's death, I'm guessing. Everyone is very interested in that."

"That's right," Misaki said. "Were you watching when he died?"

Neela tilted her head slightly. Her brown eyes were wide, as if she could take in more of the world the wider they were. It was a little unsettling. "Don't you want to negotiate first? Why should I tell you everything I know, and get nothing in return?"

"What do you want?" Misaki asked.

"Information."

"About what?"

"Everything. I've been here for a year, and the only things I ever learn is gossip from the guards. Which isn't very much. They only bring me magazines to read, but they're all in Japanese. It's been months since said I've had any visitor, and it's boring."

"You're hardly in a position to -" Navid began, but Misaki interrupted him.

"Alright," she said, folding her arms. "Let's start with this. One month ago, the Syndicate attempted to wipe all dolls and contractors from the face of the earth during the peak of the sun spot cycle. They failed when a contractor activist organization known as Evening Primrose, working together with BK-201, destroyed their weapon and exposed the existence of contractors to the rest of the world. The head of Pandora and one of the main architects of the plan, Eric Nishijima, was murdered in cold blood by my former superior, Foreign Affairs director Hourai Yoshimitsu. That's the man who was killed here a few days ago."

Navid looked at her in open astonishment; apparently he'd expected her to play their cards much closer to the chest. But after thinking about it, Misaki had decided that he was completely right about the best way to deal with this contractor. And that meant holding nothing back.

"Huh," Neela said. They waited, but she said nothing more.

"So, how much is that information worth?" Misaki asked at last.

She drummer her fingers on the table. "Quite a bit, I should think. So the Syndicate..."

"Is no longer in power," Misaki finished.

"Huh," Neela said again. "Okay. What do you want to know?"

"Everything. But let's start with prisoner thirty-two. Were you watching when he died?"

Neela blew a stray lock of curling hair out of her eyes. "Yes," she said. "But I didn't see much. I saw nothing, actually."

Beside her, Navid huffed with impatience, but Misaki frowned. "What do you mean, nothing? I saw the footage from your cell's camera - you were clearly watching something during the time that he was dying." She'd stood there for a solid twenty minutes, magazine resting on her head and her hand on the television, staring straight into the camera while Hourai breathed his last in a cell yards away.

"Oh, I was watching," Neela said. "But there was nothing to see. It was sort of like a hole."

"What was?" Navid asked, still clearly impatient.

"I don't know if I can explain it." She tilted her head to gaze into the camera on the wall behind Misaki and Navid. "When I look through the camera, I don't see like my eye is seeing now. I see what the camera sees. Yesterday, when you came to visit the first time, there was something following you."

Misaki felt a sudden chill, but there was no draft in the room. There had been a draft, yesterday. "What was following me?"

"A shape. It was hard to make out, because it was sort of...bendy. The light was different there, a hole where something should be, and the camera could tell."

"I didn't see anything like that on any of the videos," Navid said. Misaki nodded; she hadn't either.

"That's because you were watching with your eye, not the camera's." Neela explained, though it still didn't make any sense to Misaki. "The shape followed the Acting Director into this room, right behind her like a shadow. It wandered around while you were talking; for a while it was crouched down by the table."

Reaching into my pocket for the lanyard, maybe? Misaki wondered, her skin crawling. "Did it follow me out?"

"No. It followed him out - prisoner thirty two. It followed him into his cell. Then it followed him into the shower."

"Is it still here, in the prison?" The scanner would have picked up any synchrotron radiation in Hourai's cell if a contractor had been hiding there, but he could have taken refuge elsewhere in the building.

Neela shook her head. "It left the cell when Moriyama opened the door to look at the body; I tracked it all the way back to the front entrance, where it waited around until someone went through the front door and then it followed right behind them."

"What about the exterior cameras?" Navid asked. "Did he make himself visible again once he was outside?"

Neela shrugged. "I didn't look; I was watching them panicking inside."

"Why?" Navid demanded angrily.

"It was more interesting."

"HG-139 was still active well after they found Hourai's body," Misaki reminded Navid, who was muttering under his breath about contractors. "He obviously wanted to make sure that he wasn't seen in the vicinity." She sighed to herself, disappointed. The confirmation that a contractor had indeed been responsible for Hourai's death was satisfying, but they were still no closer to actually catching him or her; they didn't even have a physical description to give to the doll network.

"So what is your power, exactly?" Navid asked. Misaki didn't know what he intended with this line of conversation, but she listened with interest.

"It's hard to explain," Neela said. "I sort of…talk to machines, I guess."

"Talk to machines?" he repeated, nonplussed.

"Yes. I can access any data on any network that an electronic machine is connected to."

"So you can see through any camera on the prison's closed circuit system?"

"Yes."

"Why did the Syndicate put you in here," Navid continued. "Was it to keep an eye on their other prisoners?"

"No," Neela shrugged, her shoulders hunched. Misaki suspected that if the concrete stools had had backs to them, she would be lounging back and relaxed. "They did come and ask me questions about them sometimes, but I think they just didn't want me poking around in their servers anymore."

"What makes you say that?" Misaki asked, struggling to keep the excitement out of her voice at the word server.

The contractor was scratching idly at the surface of her handcuffs now, not looking up at the two of them. "I was following an interesting information string for one of the assignments that they'd given me, and went a little off course."

"Off course how?" Navid prompted, when she didn't continue.

Neela traced little patterns on the metal. "The Syndicate threw me in here to get me out of the way. Now you tell me they're gone; but I'm still in here. Wherever here is; I'm guessing somewhere in Japan, since that's where I was arrested and that's what the guards speak."

Misaki and Navid exchanged glances; Navid made a small hand motion that clearly meant your city, your call. There clearly hadn't been a legal rationale for Neela's imprisonment; but at the same time, Misaki knew nothing about this contractor. If she could indeed access secure databases and electronic records, what kind of trouble could she cause with that information? Then again, she could potentially be a huge help to the investigation.

"What would you do if I got you released?" Misaki asked. "Most of the Syndicate's hierarchy is under investigation, under arrest, or dead. You can't go back to them, and anyway, they've left you locked up here for the past year."

"I don't know," Neela said frankly. "Find something. Anything." She looked up at Misaki, brown eyes wide. "It's so boring in here."

"Do you know what my department does?"

The contractor shrugged. "I'd never heard of you until the first time you showed up a month ago, escorting prisoner thirty-two. Something to do with foreign affairs, I'm guessing. Since you say that at every checkpoint."

Misaki nodded. "In the past, our role was to investigate contractor-related crimes and to interface with the various government intelligence agencies that utilize contractors, and keep them secret. Now that the whole world knows that contractors exist, one of my jobs is to find a way for contractors to come out of the shadows and integrate into society. I've been thinking about hiring a contractor for my team."

Beside her, Navid turned his head and stared. She hadn't mentioned this to any of the Interpol team yet; or her own, for that matter. But making a contractor a trusted member of her own team was a perfect way of showing the public that she believed every word that she was telling them. She had been hoping that Hei would come back to the city permanently; she was almost sure that if she offered him a job, he would take it, regardless of their previous arguments. But she couldn't hold out for that, however much she wished for it; he was getting further and further from Japan with every week that passed.

Neela was looking at her oddly. Misaki continued, "I'll have to go to my superior with this, but I may be able to release you. If I do, you will work with us on a case we're investigating concerning the Syndicate. At the end of that case, if things go well, I may be able to offer you a long-term position. I can't guarantee that my superior will be on board with this, but it's better than your options here."

"Come back when you have a real answer," Neela said. "And maybe I'll agree to help." But Misaki saw the brightness in her eyes, the way she was sitting up a little straighter. An entire year, with no access to the outside world and no form of entertainment beyond spying on your fellow inmates - she was clearly desperate to get out.

"He's a very busy man," Misaki said. "I can't bother him with something that might not even pan out."

Neela drummed her fingers on the table; at last she sighed. "Alright, I'll bite - what can I tell you so that you'll talk to him?"

Priorities, Misaki reminded herself. You have her on the hook; don't get too greedy. "You used to work for the Syndicate, and you obviously had access to at least some of their files. Is there any contractor you can think of who could have been responsible for prisoner thirty-two's murder?"

"Hm," Neela said, tilting her head to stare up at the ceiling. "Definitely a light-bending contractor. I've never met one with that ability, but I think I saw a Syndicate file once…yes. Messier code HG-139. Male; code name Abo, hometown Manila, Philippines. Date of birth: nineteen eighty-one. Contractor since two thousand. Ability to bend light to make himself invisible as well as camouflage anything that he's in contact with. Payment - ooh, weird."

"What?" Navid leaned in.

"Payment - he must keep his body completely hairless."

Navid's brow furrowed, and he ran a hand over his own clean-shaven head. "Anything else?"

"That's all I saw of the file."

"That was a very specific recollection," Misaki said, raising one eyebrow.

"I have an eidetic memory."

"No physical description?"

"There was a photo." She closed one eye, still staring at the ceiling. "He's a bald Filipino man with no eyebrows. Kinda beefy."

"Beefy," Misaki repeated flatly. The contractor shrugged.

"Can you draw a sketch?" Navid asked.

She gave a throaty laugh. "No, I can't draw for shit. Well? Was that enough?"

"I'll see what I can do," Misaki promised. She stood, Navid following suit. "Thank you for your time."

Neela closed one eye again. "Time, I have plenty of."

Misaki and Navid were silent on their way out of the prison. It was in part a precaution against Neela listening in on their conversation, even though Misaki had instructed Moriyama to leave the contractor in the interrogation room until they had left the premises. Mostly, however, Misaki's mind was focused on processing what they had learned. A contractor, one who could make himself invisible, had followed her into the prison yesterday. He must have been close behind her, in order to get through some of the doors and gates without getting trapped. She suppressed a shudder, remembering that stray draft. Like a hole, she thought. A shadow following her everywhere; but when she turned, there was nothing there.

~~~~o~~~~

"…and she kept asking questions like I have no idea how our own system works," Ootsuka said. Section Four was gathered around the conference table, eating a quick dinner of donburri bowls before getting back to work; the Interpol team had chosen to go out. The timid woman had obviously had a bad afternoon, enough that she was willing to gripe about her co-workers in front of Misaki. "Just because she's a qualified Interpol star analyst and I'm only a liaison. I'd like to see her try and talk to Chief Ishizaki like that."

"But you did explain it to her?" Misaki asked.

Ootsuka looked almost offended. "Of course, Chief."

"I'll be glad when these guys finish their investigation and finally get out of our hair," Kouno put in. "Chief, how was your trip with Navid? A couple times during our meeting this afternoon I wanted to reach over the table and punch him in his smart mouth."

Misaki had already updated them on what she and Navid had learned from Neela. "It was fine," she told them, a little crossly. "We worked very well together. We can all learn a lot from the Interpol team, so this is the last time I'm going to say it: stop looking at them as interlopers and work together." She emphasized her last words with a jab from her chopsticks.

Her team all looked suitably abashed at the reprimand. They should feel bad, Misaki thought to herself. She was getting sick and tired of playing the peacemaker between two sets of squabbling children who didn't know how to share.

"A contractor on the team, huh?" Matsumoto said after a long pause in which they all ate in silence. "I have to admit, it's not something I ever expected to see happen."

"It's only temporary, for now," Misaki said. "Anyway, we've worked with contractors before."

"Yeah, but not contractors who belonged to us," Kouno said, stirring his noodles thoughtfully. "This is going to be pretty weird."

"It'll be nice to have another woman on the team," Ootsuka said. "Even if she is a contractor."

Saitou snorted. "It doesn't matter if she's female or not, as long as we can trust her."

"RS-334…" Kouno said. "You know, she looked pretty cute on those surveillance videos. Do you think -"

"Don't even think about it, Kouno, she's a contractor," Saitou said. "That's -" he broke off, catching Misaki's eye and turning red before hurriedly looking away.

"Inappropriate," she finished coldly, not caring to think about what he had been going to say. "If Neela does agree to help, she will be your colleague, and I expect you all treat her as such."

"Do you think the superintendent will give you permission to release RS-334?" Matsumoto asked in the awkward silence.

"It's hard to say," Misaki said, scooping up a bite of beef. "But I have a meeting set with him first thing tomorrow morning; I'll find out then."

She hadn't spoken to Superintendent Kan in person since Hourai's death. Her call to his office yesterday on her way to the morgue had yielded a curt Thank you for informing me and nothing else. She'd understood it to mean that he didn't want her updating him until she had something concrete, though she had submitted an informal report following the joint team meeting that afternoon. Kan Dai was much more hands-off than even Hourai had been, and she was taking advantage of that by not supplying him with more information than was strictly necessary for decision-making; but this case was too important to let any detail slip by.

Kan had passed her initial Syndicate member purge directly following the Tokyo Explosion - had in fact been one of her staunchest supporters - but he had been superintendent of the Public Security Bureau for over a dozen years; plenty of time to be corrupted, and she still wasn't one hundred percent sure that he was trustworthy. Unlike Hourai, who she'd reported to nearly every day, Kan had always been a distant figure to her in the police hierarchy. How could she possibly be certain about his loyalties?

She didn't even know the people closest to her. She'd be wrong about her father's principles all her life, and she'd been wrong when she'd thought that he still had enough of a sense of justice to turn himself in. Kan couldn't make that permanent director appointment too soon - she just wasn't cut out for this type of responsibility, she thought as she poked at her rice bowl.

Responsibility…she could hardly handle her responsibilities at work; what made her think that she was at all competent to handle being a parent? On her own? She hadn't even realized that her birth control had expired - both Kanami and Dr. Eida had given her an earful for that. But…she could see that little turtle-shaped blotch clear in her mind, and found herself wishing that she could show it to Hei. But he was somewhere in southern China, about to walk into a trap that she could do nothing about.

Just then, the phone in the center of the table rang, making her jump. Ootsuka leaned forward to pick it up. "Section Four," she answered, then sat up a little straighter. "Yes, sir. Yes, she's here now. One moment, I'll see if she's free." Ootsuka put the call on hold and turned to Misaki. "Chief - sorry, I mean Director - it's the superintendent, here to see you."

Misaki frowned, swallowing a mouthful of rice. "Of course - but his secretary told me he had a dinner engagement tonight; that's why I have to wait until tomorrow to meet with him. And why is he calling from the door, he has his own access card."

"Sorry, not Superintendent Kan; Superintendent Kirihara."

Misaki dropped her chopsticks in surprise. "My dad is here? Buzz him in."

As Ootsuka punched the code for the door, Misaki rose from the table and headed out into the main office to meet him. Her father was just entering from the elevator lobby. His suit was as immaculate as ever, but there was drained, weary look on his face that she hadn't seen for a very long time.

"Dad, why didn't you call my cell? I would have answered," she added, somewhat sheepishly. "Let's head up to my office - I'm on the twelfth floor now. We can talk privately there."

But her father shook his head, looking grave. "I'd rather there were witnesses to our conversation," he said. "Is the rest of your team here?"

The blood drained from Misaki's face. "They're in the conference room," she said, gesturing towards the open door where the other members of Section Four were busily eating their dinner and pretending not to listen in.

She led her father over, schooling her expression into one of professional indifference. Naoyasu straightened his tie somewhat unnecessarily, then said to the room at large, "I'm here to confess to my involvement with the Syndicate."

Everyone froze, staring openly at the Criminal Investigation Superintendent. Misaki's throat constricted, and she put a hand on the door frame to steady herself. "Detective Saitou," she said, her voice shaking despite her best efforts, "would you please take Kirihara Naoyasu into custody?"