VIII

The moment Reed and Moss had disappeared, and her office door snapped shut, Himika was all business. She wasted no time in pulling out a desk drawer, fishing inside it for a few moments.

"Body armor and handgun in a corporate location," she was muttering to herself, shaking her head. "If that doesn't sum up American intelligence, I don't know what will … "

Masumi recalled seeing how stocky Moss had looked in his suit—how strangely tight it seemed to fit around him.

" … and if the Secretary of Defense thinks he can make me or Reiji budge on turning over our intellectual property," Himika continued to hiss under her breath, "he's got another thing coming … "

At length, she produced a sheet of paper, and handed it to Masumi. "Crowley's job application listed this address as his current residence," she explained. "Nakajima already called ahead before you arrived. I want you over there five minutes ago."

Masumi glanced at the paper, an eyebrow raised. "What's the rush?"

The few remaining lines in Himika's face that weren't concealed by makeup were etched with dislike. "One day, you'll learn how to read people," she growled. "These Americans don't care that they're on Japanese soil. They want to be the ones to get to the bottom of this mystery, and damn anyone who gets in their way—friend or foe."

Yaiba seemed to get it first. "You're pitting five kids against the U.S. government?" he said incredulously. "And you're expecting us to come out on top?"

"I don't expect you to Duel them, Yaiba," Himika replied, "just to outsmart them."

The Synchro user snorted. "Oh, is that all?" Every word he spoke dripped with sarcasm.

Himika ignored him. "Whether they know it or not, those gentlemen overplayed their parts." Her voice was low. "There is something about this that I do not like—not one bit. Get over there and see what you can find—but do not let them know you were ever there."

Hotene and Fuyu made for the door. Yaiba and Shen followed close behind them until they noticed Masumi had yet to follow. The Fusion Duelist glanced at them, and briefly nodded; both Synchro users seemed to understand, closing the door behind them a few moments later.

The snap of the door seemed to alert Himika that there was still someone in her office. "Do not tarry too long, Masumi," she said calmly, tapping at her tablet. "We are all very busy people."

The invitation, and its implication, was clear—and Masumi did not intend to tarry at all. There was a lot on her mind she wanted to say, and she felt the words pour forth with an unusual amount of boldness in her voice.

"I want to know," she growled, "why you thought it was a good idea to inject that serum of yours into my body—without my or my parents' say-so."

Himika stopped fidgeting with her tablet, setting it aside to give Masumi her full attention.

"What if I decided to enter a tournament, and the organizers find that … whatever it is … still swimming around inside me?" the Fusion user spluttered. "The nurse at the hospital gave me the bare bones of what this serum is supposed to do, but it was all I needed to know."

She leveled the most accusing stare she could muster at the woman in front of her. "Fields as automatic subroutines, I can live with. Memories being altered, or erased outright? Depends on what I would or wouldn't remember. But doping us, Headmistress? That's a line I didn't think even you were capable of crossing."

Her voice was cold. "You are playing games with our bodies, our minds, and our futures—and it's long past time I learned why."

There was a silence. Slowly, Himika spun in her chair, eventually turning to overlook the skyline of Maiami City that her office overlooked.

"When you became a part of the LID," she explained, "you signed on for more than just tournaments. You're not doing this for the sake of our reputation, Masumi. You're doing this because deep down, you know that LDS is the only thing standing between this city and Academia. Just last night, you and your friends were the only thing standing between a monster and even more casualties than were suffered from these attacks. You were witnesses; I had to do whatever it took to make sure you survived so that we can prevent any more tragedy."

That answered one question—but raised several more for Masumi in its place. Himika, however, seemed to anticipate them, and continued in her discourse.

"Now, when you're devoted enough to a cause, eventually you're going to have to make some sacrifices. A good chess player doesn't need his best pieces to win. Nor does a good Duelist need his best cards to win. All they need are the right ones." She rotated her chair again, coming to face Masumi once more. "How devoted to the safety and security of Maiami City are you, Masumi? What would you sacrifice to—?"

Masumi had stood up from her seat before she knew it. There was an odd sort of pounding in her ears.

"Don't you dare flip this around on me," she hissed. "I've got a lot less to sacrifice than you do, Headmistress. And if you're not careful, I'll have even less." She took a calming breath, to soothe her rising anger.

"Before I was attacked, I was talking with my parents over dinner. They'd heard about Crowley on the news. And they weren't happy with you—how you were treating this whole entire affair. They don't know why you've been so quiet about this so-called 'war' against Academia. They don't know why you sent a bunch of kids off to fight that war. Because you're not telling them why, they're beginning to doubt you. And they were also beginning to doubt why I was still one of your students."

She leaned on the edge of Himika's desk, staring her headmistress in the eye. "They wanted to pull me out of LDS. And I'm not sure I convinced them to reconsider."

The silence that followed was deafening. Louder still was the rustle of Himika's dress against her chair as she slowly brought herself to her full height.

"You told them." She was composed enough to hide it, but very briefly, her face looked as if she'd licked a freshly cut lemon. "After I specifically told you not to."

Masumi kept her voice even. "I had no choice," she retorted. "Now, I didn't tell them everything; I just told them what I thought they needed to know. I told them about last month, with the Shaddoll incident and all that—and that you were keeping an eye on my future because of the role I played in it."

"Do you realize what you've done?!" Himika whispered. "Now that your parents know of this, you've dragged them into our business." She sucked air through her teeth. "That puts me in a very difficult position."

The Fusion Duelist crossed her arms. "What's so difficult about it? Any parent should have a right to know what their child is doing—that what they're doing is safe. No parent should have to bury their child," she added, thinking of the talk she'd had with her own family earlier today.

"Now, I can give you a free pass for Reiji," she admitted. "He's old enough to know better. But what about Reira?"

"Masumi—" Something had shifted at that moment in the headmistress' stance—but Masumi, too absorbed in the words on her tongue, did not notice.

"Reira's not much older than Hotene," she went on, "and you're letting a kid that young run around in war zones without so much as a by-your-leave?"

"Masumi, that is enough—!"

THUD.

"Why don't you worry about Reira the same way my parents worry about ME?!"

The Fusion user had punctuated her question by pounding her fist on Himika's desk. It was this, perhaps, that made Masumi acutely aware of what she'd just said—and more importantly, at whom she'd just shouted it.

Um.

Every impulse in her body was trying to tell her to head for the door as fast as she could—to flee and never look back. No one yelled at Himika and got away with it scot-free. Even the highest-ranking employees of LeoCorp could not be so lucky. But Masumi had gone one step further, and brought her two children into the argument as well—as far as she was concerned, a line had been crossed.

Bar a miracle, she'd just ended her Dueling career.

Yet even as a cold sweat trickled down Masumi's neck, a part of her knew that she couldn't turn back from this now—that she had to own up to her words, and not back down from them, no matter what happened to her from here on out.

Himika, meanwhile, was giving Masumi one of the iciest looks she'd ever seen a human being employ. She stalked out from behind her desk, never breaking gaze or stride, until the headmistress was practically right beside her.

" … Because I know Reira much better than you do, Masumi." Every syllable was laced with cold, resolute fury. "There is a difference between keeping your child safe, and keeping them coddled. I do not coddle Reira; I will freely admit that much. But it changes nothing, Masumi. My child means more to me than you will ever know."

Masumi had been hoping for a more visceral reaction—some bold declaration of precisely what Reira meant to Himika. What she'd heard just now would not suffice. She knew she was right about one thing—Reira wasn't much older than Hotene. And yet the two of them were polar opposites of each other; Hotene, whose first idea of fun was an Action Field that could bend the laws of physics and perception—and Reira, who seemed to have no concept of "fun" at all! Why would Himika deny this to her child at the age he needed it most?

She began to see the rough outline of a fresh stone appear in her mind—her thoughts began to cut away at the rock, exposing the gem within—

Grind out the preform.

Masumi already knew Hotene and Reira had Dueled once before, in the round-of-eight at last month's Maiami Championship, but aside from the ordeal she'd endured in the Shaddoll incident—and more recently, her Duel with Seika—it was the one thing Hotene seemed ill at ease to talk about. Reira had beaten her quite soundly en route to winning the Junior division with equally little trouble—yet hadn't looked even the slightest bit elated at such an honor. Even when Reira had been selected as a Lancer, the news seemed to barely faze him.

Sand away the edges.

Of Reira's Dueling abilities, Masumi knew very little—only that the boy showed proficiency in all three methods of Extra Deck Summoning. He was, in fact, the only person Masumi knew besides his brother Reiji to have performed such a feat—although Sakaki Yūya's performance against Kachidoki Isao suggested that he wanted to try himself. Perhaps Reira looked up to Reiji such that he viewed his mastery of Extra Deck Summoning as worthy of emulation.

Lap at the surface.

Yet Himika seemed the kind of mother who would force their child to learn such things, as if she wanted to live vicariously through him—and yet she showed no pride in his success. Besides, she could have done so through Reiji just as easily—and Reira seemed to show no outward enthusiasm at emulating his brother, either—

Polish for good measure.

And suddenly, it crystallized in front of her—there it was—

Et voilà.

" … Reira's not your real son, is he?"

So absorbed had she been in her own thought process that Masumi had spoken her mind before the rest of it caught up to her. But this time, her words had gotten the visceral reaction she was looking for.

"You go too far!"

Himika's whisper made her ears ring more loudly than any scream could. Her face had contorted into something ugly, obscene; something in Masumi's query had exposed a part of her that could not be covered up again.

And still Masumi remained where she stood. "I don't hear you denying it!" she hissed back.

"Then hear this, Masumi!" growled Himika through her teeth—before immediately reverting to her usual calm, controlled tone. "Stay out of it. That is an order."

No amount of calm or control could disguise the sheer fury that the headmistress had crammed into those last four words. Such was their intensity that Masumi, even long moments after the fact, was still swaying where she stood as if a sudden gale had blown her about. Yet it was nothing compared to the storm in her head that stemmed from the conclusion to which she'd just arrived.

Reira wasn't Himika's son—not by blood, anyway. No mother could surely be that aloof or uncaring about her own offspring duplicating a feat that few Duelists in the world ever could. Nor would any mother be so flippant about sending her youngest child into a potential battlefield with other children that weren't much older. Yet the more Masumi entertained the thought, the more it made sense—whether Himika refused to acknowledge it or not.

The headmistress, for her part, had evidently taken Masumi's expression as stunned surprise at her outburst—which wasn't so far from the truth.

"Are you starting to get it now, Masumi?" she demanded. "That you and your friends have not, in fact, joined just another after-school club?! You have entered a world of pieces and players; you're either one or the other—and right now, none of you even know the shape or size of the board on which you stand. You may hate taking orders from me—but you'll still do it because you know that you're not ready to hold the lives of civilians in your hands."

Her nostrils flared. "So you do not have the luxury of deciding whether my personal matters are your concern as well. Nor," she added, "do you have any right to tell me what sort of parent I should be for my children."

It took a very long time for Masumi's heart rate to slow down sufficiently enough for her to reply to this.

"I'm young enough to be your child," the Fusion user said shakily, still looking her principal in the eye despite every desire to look elsewhere. "And I'm old enough to know that right now … I'm not sure I'd ever want to be."

They stood there for a long time, staring each other down, neither wishing to back down from the other. Then—without breaking eye contact—Himika slowly returned to her desk, steepling her fingers upon the glass surface.

"That is your prerogative," she conceded. "But the fact is, you are not my child. Do not talk to me as if you are."

There was a soft chiming noise. "Himika-san?" It was the receptionist that Masumi had briefly spoken to on the way up. "I have system security holding on line one—they'd like you to stop by their office as soon as possible."

Himika spoke only one word. "Understood." Then, she blinked—and as swiftly as it had come, whatever anger had been made manifest in this conversation had been buried beneath the chairwoman's usual impassive stare.

"Well, then." Her voice was halting. "Given that we are both pressed for time, I am willing to pardon your outburst this once, Masumi." She leaned forward in her chair. "I will not do so again."

Masumi met the gaze without even flinching. "I understand. It won't happen again."

"I'll be holding you to that." And with that, the headmistress pulled back; instinctively, the Fusion Duelist knew this confrontation had drawn to a close. She turned away, and made her way to the door—feeling suddenly anxious to put as much distance between her and the Leo Duel School as humanly possible.


As she'd expected, Yaiba's face was the first thing Masumi saw on her way out, with the rest of the LID behind him. One glance at them told her everything.

"Masumi?" Yaiba looked as though he was seeing her for the first time. "Are you all right?"

No I'm not okay how can you expect me to be okay after hearing that our principal wants to treat her own students like pawns in a game how the hell is that okay how can she do that to us and still expect us to keep it all in the dark

" … I wish I knew," Masumi could only tell him back, as they made for the elevator. "This is not what I signed up for, Yaiba … not at all."

"Do you want to talk about it?" Fuyu's usual rasp had become whisper-quiet. The eye not covered by his bangs was darting left and right, almost as if expecting Himika to step out from every corner they passed.

" … I don't know what more I can say that you haven't already heard," muttered Masumi. "I thought this whole thing was about protecting our city—our home. We're LDS Investigation and Defense, after all—shouldn't that mean we do the investigating and the defending?"

"Is that not what our Headmistress asked us to do a few minutes ago?" Shen asked, frowning.

"That's not the point, Shen!" Masumi groaned. "If we're supposed to do those things, then why are those two Americans in our city at all? What business do they have trying to do our job for us?"

"J.D. Crowley was American," shrugged Shen. "Perhaps Captain Reed and Agent Moss believe they have an obligation to investigate the disappearance of one of their own countrymen."

"But Crowley disappeared here, though," Hotene muttered. "He didn't disappear in America—he disappeared in Japan. So shouldn't they let the police in Japan do things first?"

No one answered her. Perhaps no one could; Masumi certainly could not—nor was it the first time she needed a friendly reminder that Hotene was only nine years old. Kids that age, and even younger, did not share the same worldview as smarter, more aware adults—but that did not mean they lacked insight as to how that world worked, either. There were times when looking at things in a different light meant asking different questions, or giving different answers—which led many teens and adults, so rooted in their own beliefs, to get blindsided when confronted with the often-fortuitous wisdom of the next generation.

This was exactly what Hotene's question had done to Masumi—and it had sparked an ugly train of thought in her head. Because the tiny Duelist had a point—the Japanese police had every right to conduct an investigation as to why thirty-two innocent people had been murdered without warning. That Masumi had heard nothing of that on the news had was now leading her to two conclusions, neither of which was particularly welcome:

Either LDS was keeping the authorities at bay … or the Americans were.

Both sides had their reasons—Seika had been created with the use of technology so cutting-edge that the Leo Corporation was doing its utmost to suppress all knowledge of it outside the company. J.D. Crowley, meanwhile, had been a DARPA asset of the U.S. government before his employment with LeoCorp. It came down to each side simply wanting to protect their secrets; however, with Himika forming the LID, she had entrusted five children with not only the secrets of both a powerful corporation and an even more powerful government, but also the secret of their very existence, even from the people each of them held most dear in their hearts.

Masumi, for the life of her, could not figure out how to do that—and so she had disobeyed Himika, clued in her parents on what she'd become a part of in the hope of them being as understanding as they'd been in the past. Yet it had done nothing to allay their suspicions of her—and worse still, had now saddled her with knowledge that felt less a matter of corporate intrigue as it did of national security.

Mother is right, she thought hopelessly, remembering their talk at the hospital. What have I gotten myself into?

The lift doors opened, dispelling Masumi's train of thought at last. "Do you think we bit off more than we can chew here?" Masumi muttered to nobody in particular as they filed inside. "About Q, the LID, Seika—all of this?"

Shen stared down at her. "You mean to ask if there are other people out there who are more capable of fighting Seika than we are?"

" … Sort of," Masumi sighed, pushing the button for the ground floor. "I just thought we'd be fighting enemies by Dueling them—not by watching them blow up innocent bystanders!"

"Himika did say that Seika was unlike any Duelist we'd ever faced before," murmured Fuyu, his quiet voice melding with the hum of the descending elevator. "It's a virus, not a human being—so it doesn't think like we do. So it probably doesn't think much about the people it killed, either—or about killing more. If it even does at all," he added sadly, with a look at Shen.

Masumi found her gaze traveling up to meet the unflappable Synchro user's eyes as well. The knowledge of Shen losing the closest thing he had to a father in this country—along with the only life and everyone he'd even known away from LDS—had roused a great deal of pity for him. Yet Shen himself did not seem overly troubled. Deep inside, she was certain he was—surely no one could be that stonehearted! Masumi thought—yet to see the stoic look on the Chinese Duelist's face prompted her to ask,

"Are you all right?"

Shen exhaled, closing his dark eyes. When next he opened them, Masumi noticed how hard they looked beneath his brow. She recalled her thoughts on the way to LDS, of how Shen—perhaps too noble to seek vengeance for the massacre he'd been forced to witness—wished for justice instead, to personally hold Seika responsible for the lives it had taken. But that had been before they knew Seika was not a living being, and she did not feel nearly qualified enough to ask if an artificial entity be held to the same standard as a man, if they were to commit a crime.

"Bù jiàn guāncái bù luò lèi," he murmured, almost to himself. "An old saying in China," he added, upon seeing Masumi's puzzled look. "The best I could translate it would be 'not shedding tears until seeing the coffin'—to not give up hope in a losing battle, until the last possible minute."

He breathed in, then out again. "No … I am not 'all right'," he said under his breath. "I have lost many people who were very dear to me. Their loss shall not be easily replaced; I do not know if it even can. However," he added, "there are still others in my life, who have shared the same fortune as I have … who walk the same path as I do, and who breathe the same air as I do, even now."

The Synchro user glanced around at them all; there was a steely tone to his words now. "It is for their sake—for yours—that I do not shed my tears and give up hope, because I have not yet seen that coffin—the same coffin Seika means for us all. I do not intend to give up this fight yet—not while we are all still here, and still breathing." He punctuated the last two words by clenching his fist so tightly Masumi thought she heard the knuckles pop.

Deep inside, she felt a swell of admiration for Shen's words. The Fusion Duelist remembered all too well how the Shaddoll incident might have turned out, were it not for her actions—and perhaps some divine intervention as well. She remembered the insurmountable odds they had all faced in those darkest moments; she remembered how hopeless she had felt, when every hand had turned against her.

But most of all, Masumi remembered his hand reaching out to her, his voice to bring her out of the despair into which she'd sunk. It was mostly for this reason, therefore, that she voiced her next question.

"Will there be a memorial?"

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Yaiba turn towards her, surprised, while Hotene and Fuyu were looking towards Shen expectantly as well. Though Masumi had only met Shen's sifu once, and then only for a brief moment, she knew how highly Shen valued any relationship where elders or teachers were concerned. In her mind, asking to come with him, to help pay respects to his teacher, felt like the most polite thing she could say to him.

Shen, however, shook his head—though he raised a hand before Masumi could say anything more. "Thank you for your offer," he said evenly. "But I am not ready to talk of such things right now. Jié-āi-shùn-biàn; there is a time and a place for grief. We must first, however, make sure we live long enough to see it."

"Okay." Masumi smiled; she hadn't been expecting Shen to accept her request—it had been a personal one, after all—but she took comfort in knowing that he would at least entertain it for a time. He was right, after all—they had other things to worry about first.

For Masumi, Himika was only the least of them—and the Fusion user doubted that her principal knew enough of Shen's ancient Chinese wisdom to admit that she was in the wrong any time soon.


3:00 P.M.

And, indeed, ancient Chinese wisdom was the very last thing on Akaba Himika's mind at this moment as she stalked the halls of the Leo Corporation, seeking out her next target.

That target had just presented itself in a small door off to her left, unmarked and unassuming but for the simple placard it bore: SYSTEM SECURITY. It clicked open only a few moments after her single, imperious knock—revealing a portly, hunched man of about fifty, wearing a sweat-soaked shirt and glasses thick enough to burn ants. The hum of massive computers could be heard from the other side—and the heat they were presumably generating was already negating the air-conditioning of the hallway outside.

Himika, knowing full well that her makeup would not last long in this office, did not waste time with pleasantries. "Let's make this quick, Sagisaka," she said brusquely, stepping past the director of system security and into the office beyond. "Tell me what I'm doing here," she said, speaking above the noise of Sagisaka's computers for the first time, "so that I can get back to more important work."

Sagisaka blinked. "As you wish." He hopped into his chair with a quickness that belied his poor posture; within seconds his fingers were a blur over two different keyboards as multiple monitors, bare inches from his face, came to life with endless lines of code that scrolled past so quickly that Himika had no time to read them.

"As you are aware," Sagisaka explained, "much of the instrumentation within testing bay three, where the incident that caused J.D. Crowley to vanish took place, was destroyed in the course of events. However, I have been able to reconstruct the keystroke records of the terminal inside the bay."

"Keystroke records." Himika digested the term, thinking. "You mean to tell me you can do a terminal echo on the workstation inside the testing bay? The same one that Seika was seen to use on the security footage that was just brought to my attention?"

"Precisely." Sagisaka grinned. "I'm displaying everything from one minute prior to yesterday's incident, starting at four-twenty-one P.M., local time."

He played a brief ditty on one of his keyboards, then tapped a single button on another, before pointing to the screen in the middle of his setup. The display, cluttered with multiple lines of code, now slowed and flared white before displaying a handful of lines:


qsystem

shiratoshi

goto command

shiratoshi

1nk/p{uy/qxtz

myjobytes

keycheck –0

\u00e6_lohim•exe


Himika leaned in for a closer look. "That's it?"

"That's it—and there's a reason for it." As Sagisaka explained, Seika had first used the terminal in testing bay three to access the code within Q itself—qsystem. From there, it had needed confirmation that the access was being performed by a known employee; in this case, a username—shiratoshi. Somehow, that had granted Seika access to the command level, which required even more security precautions given the level of technology Q contained, both in its hardware and its software. This security, Sagisaka said, required the aforementioned username, an access number, and finally a personal password—the last of which made Himika want to strangle whoever had thought of that horrible pun.

But Seika had given the computer everything it needed to know, and it was here that Sagisaka stabbed his finger at the screen—keycheck –0. "There's your answer, Himika-san," he said. "Seika turned off the keychecks. Whatever it did to Q, it wanted to keep us from seeing how it did what it did."

"And this … lohim•exe?" Himika recognized the last line from before, recalling how it had been added by seika•exe—the same command used by that damned virus to cause all that death and destruction.

"It has to be assumed that's what Seika did," shrugged Sagisaka. "Of course, without the keychecks, we don't yet know how." He indicated his other two monitors, still inundated with lines beyond lines of code. "I've been checking Q's code listings for anything that matches those last two lines, but I've not seen anything yet."

"How long will it take?" Himika inquired.

Sagisaka looked at her as if she'd just asked him to compete in Olympic gymnastics. "I'm not sure you understand just how much code is inside Q's software, Himika-san," he said incredulously. "There are millions—hundreds of millions of lines to examine here—I've barely even cracked a hundred thousand!"

"Pull as many men as you can spare," Himika told him. "I'm making this your top priority, Sagisaka."

Sagisaka swallowed at the notion of the Herculean task, but he knew better than to say no to his superior at this point. "Very well," he said thickly. "Though there is one part of this that's bothering me."

"What's that?"

"A virus as powerful and intelligent as Seika has shown itself to be could—in theory—simply brute-force its way into Q's command-line interface," Sagisaka replied. "So why, then, would it go to the trouble of creating a username to do that instead?"

"Maybe Seika didn't want to risk destroying Q—we've seen how deadly a weapon it can be in the wrong hands." But even as she spoke the words, another option had occurred to Himika—one that she did not like at all.

"Actually, Sagisaka—tell me about this." She pointed to the second line on his middle screen: shiratoshi, Seika's so-called "username".

"Well, usernames are often created from combinations of the names to which they're assigned," Sagisaka told her. "If memory serves, it's made from no more than four Japanese syllables, or kana—two for the family name, another two for the given name. In this case, Shira- would be part of the family name, while -toshi … you get the idea."

Himika did indeed get the idea. Sagisaka's explanation had inadvertently helped her solve a major part of this mystery—perhaps even helped her find out who had committed these crimes.

Because she knew Seika hadn't created that username—it hadn't even stolen it. The access number and password that she was looking at were proof of this. They were under such security that they could not be easily stolen as well; for anyone else to possess it, it had to be given out willingly.

Unless—She whirled on Sagisaka. "Where are the Americans?!"

"You're asking the wrong person." The plump man had turned around in his seat at the exclamation. "I can get them for you, if you like."

Himika shook her head. "Put the word out. If either of them so much as takes one step out of this building," she hissed, "I want to be the first to know."

Sagisaka didn't even have time for a "Yes, Himika-san"—the LDS Chairwoman had already departed his office by that time, speeding as fast as her heels could carry her for Research and Development.

And, she hoped, the man behind Seika …


At that moment, Captain Timothy Reed was elsewhere in the building, having changed out of his dress uniform and into a navy suit not unlike his partner's. Agent Moss was beside him, finishing up a call on his phone; the hushed mutter in which he spoke left little doubt as to whom he might be speaking.

"Yes … yes, of course they're in place," he said. " … They kept Crowley from blowing his cover, didn't they? … I agree, sir." And he hung up.

Reed, still concentrating on loading the Sig Sauer P228 in his hand, barely eyed him as he walked over. "The connection's in place?"

The CIA agent nodded, glancing at his phone as if to check something. "Two MCPD units on standby if anything goes wrong; six more for backup."

"Eight units for six targets?" Reed raised his pointed eyebrows. "These are kids."

"Five kids—that took out one of Academia's top brass," Moss reminded him. "They make or break us, Tim—if they catch on, they will interfere."

"And target six?" The DCIS officer looked skeptical as he finished with his gun. "Units won't do much good against that."

"Leave Seika to me," said Moss. "We just need those kids out of the way."

"And if Seika beats us to them?"

Moss paused—but only for a moment. "Then hopefully Himika learns something today."

They spoke no more after that; the pair made for the front door of LDS in silence. Neither of them noticed the eyes of the woman at the front desk linger on them for a long moment, before picking up her phone and placing a call …


3:05 P.M.

J.D. Crowley lived in a block of apartments that Masumi was certain hadn't existed five years ago, when she'd first been accepted to LDS. It bore the bland tan-and-orange color scheme that was characteristic of much of Japan's public housing, and its cube-shaped design looked about as inspired.

"What a dump," Hotene thought out loud from beside her. Masumi had to agree—even with the shelf life expected from most government-provided apartments, this didn't strike her as choice number one for her first place to live. No doubt Crowley, being a low-level programmer and a foreigner to boot, hadn't had a choice in the matter.

At least the inside of it looked well kept, -lit and in order—though Masumi still found the inside a bit sterile for her tastes. The chairs and tables were mostly shades of brown, with the odd splash of silver or black here and there. The Fusion Duelist doubted this place had been decorated by anyone who called themselves an interior designer.

She went up to the front desk, with the rest of the LID behind her. The man behind it stared at them quizzically for a moment, before his eyes moved to the pins they wore on their shirt collars. At once, his face softened.

"Our mutual friend called ahead," he said, rising up from his seat and taking out a ring of keys from a nearby drawer. "They said to expect you."

"Thanks for letting us in," Masumi told him. "I … hope this isn't too unexpected."

"I've heard stranger requests in my day," the doorman answered her. "Not all of them have come from your headmistress, either. If you'll follow me?"

They did so. "By the way," said the doorman, as if just now remembering it, "I've also been asked by management to tell you that we're conducting some maintenance in the residence areas today."

Masumi couldn't think of why he'd tell them something like that—it wasn't as if they deserved to know it, after all.

"When will they be done?" Fuyu piped up.

The doorman smiled. "Our crews should be finished within the hour."

This time, Masumi got the underlying message—the LID had one hour to poke around in Crowley's apartment. Maybe even less than that: it all depended on if—or when—the Americans, Reed and Moss, would cross paths with them.

It was a chance they could not take, Masumi decided. "Thanks for letting us know," said the Fusion user. "We'll do our best to stay out of their way."


By the time they'd emerged from the elevator, Masumi had figured out a rough schedule to which the LID could adhere while they were here. She double-checked her math to make sure it was sound: of the sixty minutes they'd been allotted, two had been used already.

That was all well and good, but in order for Reed and Moss to have no idea they were here, the LID would not only have to be out of Crowley's apartment by the time that hour was up—but out of the building, period, and a safe enough distance away that they wouldn't arouse their suspicion. That shaved off a considerable portion of that hour, leaving them with something closer to forty-five minutes.

Then, as the doorman took them down a hallway, Masumi's Duel Disk chimed. A message from an unknown number was splashed on the screen:


Moss outside LeoCorp; Reed likely with him.

Do not reply; you are being tracked.


Damn. Those fourteen words had wiped out most of their time limit, Masumi thought. They'd be lucky to have ten minutes now; she could only imagine how angry Himika was at this setback.

Meanwhile: "Third floor … end of the hall … on the left … Here we are," the doorman finally said, stopping at an off-white door that looked freshly painted—though, thankfully, did not smell it.

He unlocked the door, and stepped aside. "I'll wait out here for you."

Masumi thanked him, before motioning to her friends to follow. "Let's not linger," she told them in an undertone, before showing them Himika's message to her. "We'd better get this over with. We're not too far from LDS, and that maintenance excuse he used on us won't stall the Americans forever."

Yaiba and the others were only too happy to agree. They stepped through the door, and into Crowley's apartment.


The first thing Masumi noticed about the place was how spotless it looked. Her mother was the neat freak in the family, a fact which she had never let her husband—or Masumi—forget, even as she constantly traveled out of town for her job. As precisely planned as she liked her days and schedules to be, even the Fusion Duelist saw the necessity for a little chaos in her life—even if that chaos was better preferred as clothes on the floor instead of a freak hospital visit for a coma that medical science couldn't readily explain.

Yet the space before her—a two-bedroom space with both doors off to their left, with a balcony directly opposite them some fifteen feet away—gleamed so brightly from every surface that it might have been cleaned mere seconds before they'd opened the door. If Masumi was messy compared to her mother, then her mother was even more messy compared to Crowley—as she now said to Yaiba, her mother would find this place too clean.

"Yours too, huh?" the Synchro user said dryly.

"So much the better," remarked Masumi. "Makes it easier for us to find what we're looking for."

"An' what are we looking for, Masu-chan?" Hotene asked from beside her, taking in the pristine—if pint-sized—kitchen with wide eyes.

It was another question that Masumi had no real response to, only a half-hearted shrug that plainly said I wish I knew. "You and Yaiba search the kitchen, Hotene," she eventually said.

"Got it!"

"Fuyu, you and I can take one bedroom apiece. Shen"—she pointed at the heretofore silent Synchro user—"you've got the living room. Keep an eye on the front door at all times."

Shen nodded once, as did Fuyu. "Understood."

"Okay."

Masumi looked round at them all, her voice as serious as it could be. "No one touch anything," she ordered. "If something catches your eye, you send a picture to either one of us, or to Himika. Remember: we can't leave any sign we were here, or Reed and Moss will have our necks. Like they said earlier—these are the kinds of people who don't Duel with you—they deal with you." She thought of the handgun she was one hundred percent positive had been under the CIA agent's suit.

No one spoke. Masumi knew they'd been thinking the same thing. "Let's go," she said quietly, and as if by a spell, everyone spread out to search their chosen rooms.

She took the bedroom further from the front door; Fuyu had already elected to examine the nearer one to him. It was much the same story in here as it was in the living room: completely spotless, with a full-sized mattress taking up much of the floor space. The leaf-green quilt had nary a wrinkle to its name; Masumi could not have made her own bed so meticulously if she'd had the whole morning to do it.

Next to the bed was a small desk, large enough for the small desktop perched on it. The computer was switched off; Masumi decided it wasn't worth it to turn it back on—though the temptation had crossed her mind. But what puzzled her was the strange humming noise from somewhere close by—inside the room itself, even?—that still persisted even though the one thing inside that could have caused it was currently powered down.

Frowning, Masumi chanced a peek inside the closet—and felt her confusion redouble upon seeing the narrow space behind the door, and nothing else: there weren't even hangars, let alone shirts.

" … What the hell?" Masumi's voice, as quiet as it was, felt explosive in the silence.

She moved on to the adjoining bathroom, but her luck was little better; the shower had only a bottle of shampoo and body wash apiece; the roll of toilet paper wasn't missing more than a few sheets, and the only towel in the room was neatly folded on a nearby rack.

By now, Masumi was starting to feel mystified. She could not understand why someone like Crowley would bring so little to his own apartment, even with the job he held. The thought occurred to her that perhaps only a small part of his personal effects were in his apartment proper; it was possible that LDS had some personal spaces where Crowley could store his other effects, perhaps even—

"Masumi?"

Fuyu's voice was coming from the other side of the wall—presumably the other bathroom.

She was there bare moments later, long enough to take in the dark red bedspread in one corner of the bedroom, before crossing into the adjacent bath.

The Xyz Duelist was already there, and it was immediately apparent to Masumi why he'd called him here.

She stared, more confused than surprised. "Makeup?"

There was a lot of it, she had to admit—more than Masumi thought any one woman needed to put on her face every day. Blush, concealer, foundation—bottle after bottle and tube after tube was laid around the sink so densely that the lacquer surface beneath was invisible in places. Some bottles were open; some looked as though they'd yet to be used—but all of it could prove to be a valuable clue.

"You didn't touch of it, did you?" she asked.

Fuyu shook his head.

"Good." Masumi took in the scene. "I guess Crowley must've been assigned a roommate. Maybe he even had a mistress." Hardly something to write home about, she thought—certainly salacious, she added to herself, feeling her cheeks color faintly—but certainly not illegal, either.

"Whoever it was," Fuyu said quietly, looking around the bedroom, " it doesn't look like either of them spent a lot of time here." He thumbed towards the bed. "This doesn't even look like it's been slept in."

"Nor does the other bed." Masumi traced a finger over the covers. Her fingers glided over the fabric, meeting no resistance as they—

"Fuyu." Her voice was soft. "Something is wrong here."

"What's that?"

The Fusion user put her hand on the bed again, running her fingers over the dark red quilt once more, just to be sure—but there was nothing, just like before … and a suspicious lack of it, too.

Just like before.

"There has to have been at least some sign of habitation in this place," she was thinking out loud. "Even recently. Crowley, I can understand; remember that hidey-hole inside testing bay three—all that food in the little fridge that got spilled? Himika mentioned a lot of people work late hours in LeoCorp R&D to get their work done—maybe Crowley was living in there for a time. But what about his roommate—whoever lived in here?" She threw out her arms. "Look around this room. Doesn't anything seem off to you?"

Fuyu's visible eye peered this way and that. "Nothing. It looks clean."

"That's just it—it's too clean," Masumi told him. "If I was the residence manager of this place, and every room looked like this, I'd pin an extra zero on every paycheck the maintenance staff could get. No one is this meticulous. No scuffs on the door marks. No crumbs of food on the carpet. Not even a speck of dust on the bed. Nothing."

The Xyz Duelist frowned. " … Maybe they cleaned up in here before we came?" he shrugged. "The man downstairs did say they were doing maintenance today."

Masumi didn't buy it. "Fuyu, can you imagine how much disinfectant it would take to clean a room this size, this thoroughly? Enough that we'd be able to smell it the moment we walked in. I didn't see cleaning supplies in Crowley's bathroom, either."

She put a hand on the wall, leaning on it for support as she cast one more look around the room. There was only one explanation for the puzzle it contained, and as strange as it sounded …

"I'm beginning to think Crowley only lived in this place for the one day. The first day he rented the place. And his roommate—OUCH!"

It came without warning: it felt as though a zap of static electricity had decided it wasn't satisfied with one finger, and had shocked Masumi's entire hand instead—fingers, palm, and all—making her yank it away from the wall with a yelp. Even a few seconds after the fact, the bones still tingled with the surprise shock.

Fuyu had tensed at the sudden outburst. "What is it?!"

"Shh!"

For Masumi's eyes had spotted something near the bedspread—a small black cube about the size of her fist, so innocent-looking it might have been part of the room. But a sudden thought between this, the humming noise she had heard in Crowley's bedroom, and the stinging sensation that was beginning to make her hand numb, had suddenly sprung into Masumi's mind.

Slowly, experimentally, she lowered a finger onto the wall again, and touched the surface as gently as possible, just brushing a finger along the dried paint, then the whole hand, keeping herself from applying too much pressure on the wall—and again, she felt the same sensation as she had a few seconds ago, pulsing under her hand, but this time it was not nearly as severe; this time, it felt like a warm summer's day—

Masumi froze as it hit her—she knew what this was. What it was doing here, however, was a whole other question.

"I don't know, Fuyu." She used her non-numbed hand to snap a picture with the camera app in her Duel Disk. "But I think I know someone who might."

Emphasis on 'think', she thought, because I'm not sure I even know her anymore.


3:15 P.M.

LeoCorp Sublevel Three

Research & Development

Himika almost felt let down—almost. She'd thought cutting to the quick would have produced the response of fear—or, barring that, misplaced aggression—that she'd been hoping for.

Of course, she was well aware that corporate cultures of fear were doomed to fail, and any aggression taken against her was a fool's errand; her employees were well aware of that. Nevertheless, reminding her employees of who was in charge was necessary, if regrettable—and the kind of catharsis she liked to feel in times of stress such as this.

But Shirai Toshio, the lead programmer of the Leo Corporation, had dashed that hope of catharsis by greeting her accusation with a tilt of his head, and two words that reflected the complete puzzlement on his face.

" … Excuse me?"

The chairwoman furrowed her brow. "You're in no position to make me repeat myself, 'shiratoshi'," she muttered, just out of earshot of the small crowd of researchers about twenty feet away. They were all pretending to work while attempting to eavesdrop on the conversation at hand—but Himika knew better, and if circumstances were different, she'd line them up with Shirai. However, his situation took precedence, and so she continued on.

"The virus, Seika, hijacked one of the terminals inside testing bay three that was still functional after the incident that compromised J.D. Crowley," she told him. "That much you already know. However, system security was able to access the keycheck function of the terminal in question, and they discovered that your account information had been used by Seika to log onto that terminal and execute the commands we believe to have compromised Project #1610217—thereby resulting in last night's attacks.

"If you're still having trouble processing this," she continued in a low hiss, nearly breathing down Shirai's neck at this point, "let me boil it down for you. You have five seconds to tell me that I am, in fact, mistaken—and that you did not, in fact, use company resources to murder more than thirty men, women, and children in cold blood."

Shirai's mustache seemed to droop lower and lower with each passing word. Sweat was beginning to stain his shirt collar. That's more like it.

"I … I do not understand how this could be possible," he managed to say, though even now his voice was beginning to grow more confident. "Himika-san … setting aside the notion of these ludicrous allegations, I am well aware of the stance our—your company takes regarding the protection of confidential material. I am, further, aware that that confidential material includes the personal information of you, of me, and of every person who holds a position within your company—present, past, or future. And per employee rules, I have never once given it out to anyone in all the time I have worked here!"

"Then explain to me," Himika said, as levelly as she could, "how Seika managed to get a hold of your account information."

"Well, that should be obvious," blustered Shirai. "Seika's a virus. Most of them are designed to compromise personal assets."

"Let me rephrase." Himika dialed the icy chill in her eyes to its maximum. "Explain to me how Seika managed to get a hold of your account information—and no one else's."

Shirai frowned. "I don't follow."

"Seika could have compromised the accounts of any and all employees of the Leo Corporation. Many of them would have been more qualified than you are to access this location, and left system security none the wiser." Himika stabbed a finger outward at the door of testing bay three, which people were giving a wide berth more than ever now. "So why did Seika use yours—and only yours?"

The lead programmer could only shrug. "If I could answer that question, Himika-san, I would. Unfortunately, even those two Americans don't know who programmed Seika—and even if they do, I doubt they're likely to tell us, given who they work for."

"The Americans aren't your problem," Himika said shortly. "Right now, I'm your problem. And to solve that very angry problem, you're going to open up that door." She pointed again at testing bay three.

Shirai frowned. "Am I to presume you do not suspect me of any crime, Himika-san? You'll forgive me," he added, smiling bleakly, "if I think it's farfetched to allow a purported criminal near his own crime scene."

Himika ignored him. "Where do you keep your personal information, Shirai?"

"The same as every employee, I presume," he answered quickly, patting his pants pocket. "Key card in my wallet."

"Then you see no issue with using it to open the door?" Himika inquired, not a little impatiently. She was beginning to regret not bringing Nakajima with her; the burly aide would have had a straight answer out of Shirai before he could say "Lancer."

"None whatsoever," the lead programmer replied back. "In fact, I'd be more than happy to do that right now." Then, as quickly as he'd given his answer: "I … assume everything's been fixed over there?"

"The doors are fixed." Himika did not deign to confirm or deny Shirai's implication as to whether everything inside had been fixed as well, but merely told him all that was necessary for him to know.

The disappearance of Crowley, and the power outage that had followed, had required manual resets on the electronic keyholes that kept most doors within LeoCorp R&D locked down tight. Building security had told her earlier that this had been taking place while Masumi had had her Duel with Q, and had further been completed not long before Seika had struck. Which meant the door was sealed now, to all but the people who had the proper key to get inside.

So when Shirai nodded his assent, Himika stepped aside, allowing the lead programmer a clear path to the doorway of testing bay three. From his pocket, he produced a white chip of plastic, slightly smaller than a Duel Monsters card, and inlaid with circuitry. This Shirai raised up to the black box of the keyhole, where a sensor would spend the next fraction of a second analyzing the information encoded on that chip, and determine whether it was safe to open.

One fraction of a second later, then, the sensor beeped—and Himika heard Shirai splutter where he stood. Instantly, she'd appeared by his side faster than she'd thought the hem of her dress would have allowed.

The source of the consternation wasn't hard to find. Above the sensor, a small screen had blipped on, with a message large enough for Himika to read over Shirai's shoulder:


CROWLEY, JONATHAN DAMON

EMPLOYEE ID #: 001215-15-419-420

NOTICE: EMPLOYEE STATUS TBD

ACCESS DENIED PENDING INQUIRY


Slowly, Himika felt her head swivel until a sweating Shirai had her full attention. The lead programmer seemed unable to process what the screen was telling him.

" … I say again, Himika-san," he stammered. "If I could explain this, I would do so without hesitation."

The chairwoman, however, was not in the mood for explanations. The gears inside her head had begun to turn at breakneck speed—searching for a way, any way, to figure out what was going on here.

Meanwhile: "Are you certain," she said dangerously, "that you want to explain to me just what you're doing with someone else's personal information, Shirai? After you just finished telling me that you'd never given yours out to anyone, in all your time with the Leo Corporation?"

Her lead programmer made as if to respond, but Himika cut him off. "I don't want to hear excuses. You've already told me that you're fully aware of the position my company takes on disseminating things like this—accidental or otherwise. And believe me, Shirai … this is beginning to look less and less like any kind of accident."

She drew herself to her full height. "You're suspended pending investigation, effective immediately."

Shirai's jaw fell open. "Y-you can't be serious!"

"I am deadly serious," Himika hissed, ignoring the inquisitive stares Shirai's outburst was causing from passersby. "The only reason I'm not having you fired—or even arrested—is because I don't believe you're the person I'm seeking. Nor," she added, "do I believe you have the stones in you to commit mass murder. However, you are still guilty of compromising not only your personal information, but of another person's as well. There are laws in our company against that, Shirai—and with or without your knowledge, you've still broken them."

"But—but," stammered Shirai, "t-this is my card! I've had this on my person since last week—the very day it was given to me! This should not be possible! I-I would know if it had been stolen or altered in any way!"

Himika pounced. "Who gave it to you, then?" she growled. "The sooner you tell me, Shirai, the more likely you get to keep your job! Tell me who gave you your card!"

A long moment passed before the programmer could answer her question; Himika had the impression Shirai was doing some very quick thinking.

" … It wasn't given to me directly," he eventually replied. "I was busy enough at the time that I had to delegate it to someone else. She was the one who went to them for my card; she was the one who gave it to me."

Himika narrowed her gaze. "Give me a name," she snarled through clenched teeth.

Shirai shook his head helplessly. "I don't know—it never occurred to me to find out! She told me in passing that she was only a temp—that's probably why I didn't ask—so she might not even be with the company anymore!"

Which would mean questioning her is … well, out of the question, Himika thought sourly. But even temp workers, however transient they were—here one moment, elsewhere the next—left traces of themselves behind, trails that could be tracked to piece together where they'd been and gone, and everything they'd done in between.

It was for that reason she pulled out her phone to contact Nakajima. "Go to human resources," she ordered, "and tell them that I need every last shred of information on every temporary assignment that we took on for the past three months. I want this yesterday, Nakajima. The sooner it's on my desk, the sooner I can make heads from tails of this damned mess."

"Understood, Himika-san."

"I'm having Shirai meet you as well." Himika fixed the man in question with a glare that petrified him. "You're to take him straight home after you're finished in HR—and you're not to let him out of your sight until then."

"Ma'am?"

"I'll explain later. Suffice it to say I'm seriously considering turning him over to our American friends for a time."

She did not notice—or perhaps did not even care to notice—that Shirai had gone white as a sheet behind her. The lead programmer was swaying where he stood.

"I look forward to hearing more, Himika-san," Nakajima said. "By the way, the LID was trying to call you. They say they've found something you may want to see."

Himika frowned. "Can they be more specific?"

"They've taken at least one picture. Apparently they believe you can tell them about whatever it is they found."

"Send it through. I'm heading back upstairs." Himika terminated the call without further ado, and stormed out with renewed purpose in every step—a purpose hardly dulled by the soft flump of Shirai Toshio's body as he finally slid to the surgically-clean floor of LeoCorp R&D in a dead faint.


3:18 P.M.

"Anti-contamination cubes."

"Sorry?" Yaiba merely looked his confusion.

"Solid Vision emitters—modified to project a micro-thin layer of hard-light across a flat plane." The speaker of Masumi's Duel Disk, from which the voice of her headmistress issued so crystal-clear she might have been in the room with them, made her sound like some omnipresent goddess.

It was a notion that made the Fusion user visibly uncomfortable, and was, perhaps, the reason why she was currently looking out of the window that overlooked the street below, instead of her Duel Disk, placed around the LID on the dustless coffee table like the speaker in a conference call. One of the cubes Masumi had found in the bedroom sat next to the device, and demanded almost as much attention given the circumstances.

"Strategically placed, enough of these devices can encompass an entire room," Himika continued. "No doubt why Crowley's apartment is as spotless as it is, as well; LeoCorp R&D uses a larger-scale setup in their facilities for a maximum ultra-clean environment. Anything small enough—an errant fleck of dust, a stray chip of paint—that hard-light field will vaporize it in the time it takes to blink. Larger contaminates require a bit more power—which may explain how it reacted to your hand, Masumi."

"It felt like when I shook Q's hand, when I touched that field," Masumi said, touching her own palm, remembering the strange sensation of the hard-light construct making contact with her skin. "But … that doesn't sound standard-issue for living quarters—not even in this day and age."

"Indeed not," replied Himika. "It's more likely Crowley brought them with him from America, then set them up himself."

"Why, though?" Masumi wanted to know. "We found them everywhere. The bedrooms, bathrooms, the halls—Hotene even found a few in the kitchen."

"I'd say he was a messy eater," muttered the tiny Duelist from beside her, "if there was any food in here at all."

"Doubtful," said Himika dryly, "but the lack of his effects within the apartment he himself lived at is still concerning."

Masumi recalled the makeup she'd found in one of the bathrooms. "What about Crowley's roommate—that woman he might have been living with?"

"I'll check with the residence manager if time permits me," said Himika, "see if I can get a name. But if her room is almost as bare as his, as you say, then I don't imagine it being any more than a dead end."

"I hope you don't mean that literally." Fuyu looked a little more pale than usual. "If Seika could get to Crowley, then it could have gotten to this woman, too."

He swallowed. "Maybe Seika already has."

There was a moment of silence on both sides of the line; Masumi could practically hear everyone trying to scrub their minds of such a morbid conclusion. Hotene's hair looked half-wilted already; Yaiba was biting his lip.

" … At any rate," Himika finally said, "I don't think there's any more you can do. Come to my office and make your report. Some new evidence has come to light on my end, and—"

For the second time in as many hours, Masumi did the unthinkable—and interrupted Akaba Himika.

"Hold on—what is it, Yaiba?"

The Synchro Duelist had suddenly gone rigid. The color was draining so rapidly from his face that in another minute, his skin would be as dangerously pasty as Fuyu's.

"I think we may have a problem," he said darkly in an undertone, before turning his attention to Masumi's Duel Disk. "Headmistress—you mentioned these sensor cubes generate Solid Vision, right?"

"Yes … "

"Could they be used," Yaiba asked, biting his lip again, "to generate Action Fields?"

"No." Himika's denial cancelled out Masumi's look of shock before it could even properly manifest. "They don't have the hard drive space to store the necessary commands, or the processing power to carry them out. Only the larger-scale emitters within R&D would have the capacity to do either of those … unless."

Just like that—as if she'd suddenly splashed with freezing water—the horrified look was back on Masumi's face.

Then, damnably, Hotene asked the question they were all hoping wouldn't be asked. "Unless … what?"

" … unless they were connected to the Solid Vision network that spans this city." Himika no longer sounded like the imperious force Masumi had come to know; now, with this latest revelation, it was becoming increasingly clear that even the most powerful woman in all of Japan had not anticipated this.

But Yaiba wasn't done. "And where's the nearest RSV generator to this apartment?"

The silence that followed was so prolonged that Masumi wondered if even Himika wanted to find out. Then: "It appears to be a street corner about … ten meters from your … position …"

There was a very long silence. " … Oh." Even through the speaker grid of her Duel Disk, Masumi could practically hear her principal's stomach drop.

When she looked back on it later, Masumi thought that the scariest moment of her life, up until that point, had been hearing that last simple "oh," for the simple reason of it coming from the last person she'd expected to hear it from in the first place.

Because now, if what Himika was saying was true, all five of them were once again in mortal danger.

Yaiba muttered a quick "We'd better go", ending the call. Then, slowly—almost mechanically—he returned Masumi's Duel Disk to her, holding it in his hand as if it was a grenade that had yet to go off. He now looked as if he'd just heard a close friend had died—and Masumi instantly knew he'd just come to the same conclusion she had.

"Q mentioned—before your Duel—that he could interface with any RSV generator in a fifteen-meter radius," he said, his voice halting.

"And parts of his programming were patched into our Duel Disks," added Shen, his dark eyes scanning the surroundings warily—scanning each place, Masumi knew, where one of those cubes had been located in this room. "The same parts Seika has probably infected … "

Fuyu swallowed, trembling head to foot. "If that program has been running since we got here … if these cubes are tapped into the RSV network right now … "

Hotene did not speak—she could not, so fearful was the look in her wide blue eyes. But she didn't need to—those eyes spoke all that they needed to hear, and much more they didn't want to hear. Even a nine-year-old had made sense of how much trouble they were in.

They'd walked into a trap.

" … We should never have come here." Masumi was already sprinting for the door. "Everybody out. Now."

She swung it open—and instantly froze in her tracks. The sounds of four pairs of feet skidding to a halt behind her barely registered in Masumi's mind.

"Um."

Special Agent Moss and Captain Timothy Reed filled the doorway so completely that for Masumi, all else seemed little more than background noise. She could feel her heart pounding, her jaw slackening, the cold sweat beginning to form around her neck, and her eyes growing almost as wide as Hotene's as she realized oh God we are about to get in so much trouble

"So." Moss' single word carried all the satisfaction of a hawk that had just caught an especially annoying rodent, and was now contemplating whether or not eating it would be worth the effort. "Going somewhere?"

Behind him, at the end of the hallway, the doorman who'd let Masumi and her friends into the building shuffled his feet, two policemen flanking him, and another two off to Reed's and Moss' left. Masumi caught the doorman's eye, and even before he spoke, she suspected this wasn't how he'd wanted his day to pan out, either.

"I did the best I could," he said. "They"—he glanced at Reed and Moss—"threatened me with obstructing their investigation if I didn't let them onto the premises." He hung his head. "I'm sorry."

Captain Reed glowered down at the five children. "You were warned to not impede our efforts in any way," he growled. "Your headmistress was advised of the consequences. You still refused to listen—and because of that, you've crossed a line."

He craned his neck to regard the doorman. "Mr. Takenaka—America thanks you for your cooperation," he said stiffly. "You may escort them off the premises at your convenience."

He stepped forward—he was going to go inside.

Immediately, Masumi threw up her arms. Himika's personal feelings about these Americans could wait—she could not let these men through.

"No, don't!" she shouted. "You can't go inside!"

"As of now, Masumi Kōtsu, that's no longer your decision to make." And before Masumi could react, Moss' hand had seized her wrist, yanking her out of the threshold and into the hall beside Takenaka, sending her sprawling.

"Now if you'll excuse us," said Moss, raising his voice slightly so as to be heard above the protests of Yaiba and the rest of the LID, "we have a job to complete." He nodded to his companion. "Captain, if you'd be so kind."

He and Reed prepared to muscle through Yaiba and the others—but Masumi was not done. With some difficulty, and an offered hand from Takenaka, she hauled herself to her feet; Moss had tossed her aside none too gently, and she could feel the bruise blossoming across her already aching back.

"Agent Moss, for once in your life, listen to what I'm trying to say." Her voice had never sounded so desperate. "That apartment is hooked up to the Solid Vision network that links this entire city. Every room behind that door is part of a giant booby trap—and you're about to walk right into it!"

Moss paused—but only for a moment. "You seem to forget," he said with a smirk, "that I'm a field agent of one of the most capable intelligence networks in the world, miss. I've been part of a hundred raids like this one in my career, and I've seen things on some of them that would make a priest curse his god with every other breath he took. So get out of our way, or we will make you. I won't ask again."

It felt as if Masumi's brain, and all her senses with it, were working at light speed, while the world around her was doing its damnedest to keep in step. Here, in this moment—caught between a rock and a hard place—the Fusion user seemed to have become more aware of her surroundings than she ever had before. Her keen eyes were almost vibrating in their sockets as they flicked from one person to the next.

In the corner of her eye, she saw Takenaka, awash in his fear and confusion at the scene unfolding before him—

To her left, she saw Captain Reed tense where he stood, bringing one of his shoulders to the forefront of his body, as if preparing to charge—

In front of her, she saw Shen's corded muscles tense as well, as he and Yaiba continued to stare down Reed; she saw them draw closer to Fuyu and Hotene behind them, both children staring wide-eyed, looking scared for their lives—

To her right, she saw Moss' head tilt precisely one millimeter towards the policemen next to Takenaka, then dip his head another millimeter, as if he was nodding—

Then she saw the policemen begin to reach for their belts—for what, she could not yet determine; perhaps the handcuffs to restrain them, a canister of mace to pacify them, or (she heard herself gulp) perhaps even the guns

Would they go that far if the Americans have taken over this investigation then would they go that far would they really want to use lethal force against a group of children for the sake of one of their own people would they do it

And finally, she saw that she had no other choice.

"The hell with this," she muttered.

Her left arm moved almost without thinking. Before she knew it, her elbow had driven itself into something soft—and the whoosh of air that followed told her that something had been Takenaka's stomach. Instinctively, she'd clenched her fist, hearing the hiss of hard-light from her Duel Disk as the burnt-orange blade shimmered along her arm—she heard Takenaka cry out in pain as the edge of the blade dug further into his chest, knocking him back into the two cops behind him—

Then Masumi's brain caught up with the rest of her body, and she was sprinting down the hallway as if aided by wings. "RUN!"

Immediately, everyone had exploded into action, though the spontaneity of it all made it seem as though it was all happening in slow motion. Reed was reaching inside his suit—both policemen behind him were unhooking something from their belts—then Yaiba and Shen, almost as if anticipating it all, were lunging out from the door—

"Shen, get Fuyu—I'll get Hotene—go, go, GO!" Yaiba, his bamboo shinai in hand, was bellowing out orders as if his life depended on it—perhaps it did—but Masumi did not wish to leave things to chance, to turn around and find out for herself—

But even as the walls flowed past her at speeds she'd never thought she'd achieve with her own two feet, she heard the distinctive cries of a tiny Fusion user and a gaunt Xyz user, then pounding footfalls behind her, too small and light to come from any full-sized man—

Shen's body was a blur as he raced past Masumi, Fuyu clinging to his back like a lifeline, his scarred, pale face open-mouthed but too terrified to even cry out in shock. The Synchro user's superhuman physique propelled him around the corner without so much as pausing; Masumi took the turn too quickly, thumping herself against the wall, bruising herself even further—

But the pain seemed almost an afterthought now—for the first time in her life, Masumi was fleeing for her life, and the only thing that kept her from collapsing on the spot was the notion that Seika would not find them here.

Or so she hoped.


The speed at which the five kids had moved surprised Agent Moss.

He'd read the file on them, of course; he'd been briefed on their histories, knew what they'd been through to get to this point. But the ordeal they'd gone through had happened in their minds, while they had been rendered comatose, defenseless. It was quite another thing to face a threat that was happening in real-time—real life—and to react the way they were reacting right now, in the face of that threat.

Whether it would help them, of course, was another thing entirely.

Why do they always run? Moss wondered to himself.

Captain Timothy Reed had been slightly slower to react. By the time his Sig Sauer was in his hand, the bald kid—Shen—had already disappeared into another hallway; there was no point in asking if the police detail Moss had brought with them had been equally prepared.

"No, Captain!" he yelled, as he saw Masumi and the spiky-haired kid follow Shen—out of range, and out of view. "The last thing we need is more paperwork."

Reed lowered his weapon, but the look on his angular face did not conceal his frustration at not being able to wrap this up when they'd had the chance.

He rounded on the policemen. "Detain them," he said tersely. "We'll catch up later."

Both men were already reaching for their radios as they took off down the hall. Reed, meanwhile, took up a position behind Moss as they finally stepped inside Crowley's apartment …


Masumi, Shen, and Yaiba did not stop running until after they'd crossed the street—traffic be damned—careening into a throng of people who were waiting at a nearby bus stop. None of them were in any shape to apologize for the collision; Yaiba in particular was panting as though he'd just sprinted through a whole marathon.

Only when they'd reached an adjoining alley, and he'd shrugged Hotene off his back, did the tiny Duelist finally speak up. "What just happened up there?"

"I'm with her." Fuyu's rasp could barely be heard over the crowd they'd plowed through. "One moment I see Masumi elbowing that guy with her Duel Disk … the next thing I know, Shen's got me on his back and I'm moving faster than I ever thought I could."

"You saw how confident Moss was behaving," Masumi said. "He hardly even flinched when I told him what we'd found in there." Her eyes narrowed. "I think he already knew about the sensor cubes in Crowley's apartment. I'm even willing to bet that they put them inside the place to begin with."

"W-why?"

Yaiba's question only made Masumi shake her head. "I don't know—to monitor him? Keep him in line, make sure he didn't reveal he was a DARPA asset in the past? None of this makes any sense … but it does to Reed and Moss. They knew Crowley was living here, and somehow they knew Himika would send us here, too—they wouldn't have had time to find out where we were going unless they knew we were going here."

She set her jaw. "I think they were using Crowley's apartment to set us up—to discredit Himika and LDS so their government could take over the investigation from not only our country, but from LDS as well."

Hotene looked completely lost. " … How?"

"It is simple, when you lend some thought to it." Shen's face looked like it had been carved from sandstone, something Masumi hadn't seen in a long time. "Think about it. Five children inside an apartment they did not reside in? Operating outside the law—and without a search warrant, even? Trapped apartment or no, they would have had every right to arrest us for trespassing."

Yaiba had finally recovered enough breath to speak in complete sentences—and even then, his voice was breathless with shock. "But—but this is Japan, not America!" he spluttered. "They can't just take over authority from our authorities!"

"I think we have to assume they just did," Masumi growled. "These aren't just cops we're dealing with, Yaiba. I know what you mean, though—this stinks," she spat. "Everything about this stinks."

"I'm calling Himika." Yaiba was already pulling out his Duel Disk. "She needs to know we got double-crossed."

Masumi was on him in the blink of an eye. "No—don't! Deactivate your Duel Disks right now. All of you!"

Four pairs of eyes stared back her as if she'd gone utterly mad.

"If Seika really has infected our programming," Masumi reasoned, "that virus could triangulate our position by analyzing our proximity to the nearest Solid Vision network, just like he did last night. We need to shut them down completely, or we'll get cornered all over again … and God only knows how many people Seika will kill to get to us next time," she added darkly.

It was an unwelcome thought for all involved; Hotene and Fuyu looked particularly aghast, and scarcely had Masumi shut down her own Duel Disk that both of them had switched off their own as well. The Xyz user looked at his device forlornly as it powered down; Masumi couldn't blame him—for someone so physically weak, losing what might be his only means of defense must have felt akin to losing an arm.

"On that note," Masumi went on, as Shen and Yaiba followed suit, "we need to travel together from now on. Seika got to us the first time because we split up. If we stick together, and that virus pops up again, we can Duel it as a team—and give ourselves a better chance of winning."

Several minutes passed before she decided everyone had had a chance to catch her breath, including herself, and it was then that they finally stepped out of the alley. "We can't stay in confined spaces for too long," she muttered to them. "That's another reason why Seika was able to corner us so completely. If we keep ourselves to wide-open spaces—places without too much people—then it'll be safer for everyone."

Yaiba still looked skeptical. "Well, how do we contact the Headmistress?" he asked. "We've got to let her know we're all right somehow!"

Masumi had been thinking that herself. As much as she didn't want to think about Himika right now—considering all the underhanded things her principal had done in her own pursuit of Seika—the encounter in Crowley's apartment, what they'd found inside it, and the conclusion to which it had led them had left them with virtually no other alternative.

They were Duelists—but they were still kids. Masumi knew full well that they were not CIA field agents, like Moss—or hardened military men, like Reed, for that matter. No doubt they had sent those policemen out after them to track them down, or keep them from going too far.

And how far could five Duelists stray from the full might of the government—American or otherwise?

The Fusion Duelist shook her head in hopeless frustration—and then saw something near the bus stop they'd cut through earlier to get to that alley. The sight of the tiny structure caused something inside her chest to swell up, as if she knew she was looking at what might be the LID's very last hope—but she knew they had to act quickly—

"Yaiba," she spoke—slowly, as if not believing it herself, "when was the last time you used a phone booth?"


3:21 P.M.

"Damn them!"

Himika pounded her fist on the desk. It was a miracle—given her anger at this latest development—that the tempered glass surface didn't crack from the force of the impact.

Only a minute ago, the receptionist had contacted her, claiming that Masumi was calling from a landline and demanding a private backline as if it was the easiest thing in the world to procure. The headmistress' earlier confrontation with her prized Fusion Duelist was still in sharp focus, enough so to note the abrupt shift in attitude and—on any other day—wonder if Masumi was beginning to think a little too much like her.

A few minutes before that, human resources had delivered—per Nakajima's instructions—as much information about the Leo Corporation's temporary hires, past and present, as could be sent in an email. That information was now spilling over Himika's computer screen, displaying lines of text and pictures of men and women in a jumbled blur that she doubted had been sorted in any conceivable way until she'd ordered it on her desk.

But this had suddenly taken second fiddle to what Masumi had had to say on her recent encounter with Reed and Moss—and the unexpected turn it had taken.

"I should have known the Americans wouldn't wait to make their move," she fumed. "Their Secretary of Defense will be hearing from me about this, I can promise you that."

"I don't think that'll be enough—if they've got the city police working for them now, it's going to make it a lot harder for us to do what you're asking."

Masumi's voice sounded scratchy and oddly squashed from the phone receiver she was speaking into; it sounded like the rest of the LID had been crammed in there with her. It still surprised Himika that there would be any use for a phone booth these days—but then, privacy was a serious enough issue for some people that perhaps they would always be necessary. She thought of Shirai and his recent foibles, and wondered if Nakajima had been able to bring the man around yet after he'd fainted in R&D earlier.

She waved it aside after a few moments, though; it wasn't her problem right now. "Leave the police to me. I need you back here on the double," she said. "I've made a breakthrough in our investigation. I'm now able to narrow our list of suspects down to two groups of people, and I can also—"

But exactly what those groups were—or how she'd be able to narrow them down further still—Himika never had time to say; the next thing she heard was Masumi uttering a static-laced curse under her breath.

Then, through the earpiece: "This is the MCPD! Step out with your hands over your heads!"

Himika's own curse drowned out the click of the line abruptly disconnecting. The police had found them already—she had to call Mayor Sawatari yesterday, if she was to keep things from getting any worse than they already were—

And then—at the exact moment she'd picked her phone back up again—a loud BOOM rumbled the windows from outside.

"What the devil was that?!"

But even as Himika demanded the question to her empty office, the sinking feeling in her stomach told her more than enough: Seika had struck again—and this time, there was nothing the LID could do about it.


A/N: I struggled for a while as to where I should end this one. The next chapter's going to involve a fair-sized Duel, and those do tend to chew up my word count something fierce.

Talking of fierce: my part-time job is looking to turn into a full-time one very soon. When, exactly, I don't know, but it's travel-intensive enough that I wanted to say something now before I end up disappearing from the internet yet again, only to resurface with little warning just like I did here. Check my profile for any subsequent developments on that end.

Thanks for reading! - K