Place of Safety

Kyoko felt ill. The thought of her stalker posting a rose to her school had not frightened her, but the idea that he had someone entered LME and been in her locker chilled the marrow in her bones. She had lost another place of safety and the hunter had drawn the net a little tighter.

Her stomach flip-flopped and she hugged her arms around her as she glanced at the door to Lory's side office. Satoshi was currently inside performing an impromptu interview. The president had called for an immediate review of the security camera footage from the corridor outside the Love Me room, and a single person other than Kanae had been seen entering.

There were no cameras or views inside the room as it also served as a changing area and locker room, but one did have a good view of the full corridor it was set in. Only the LME janitor had gone in last night. Old Gen as he was generally known had arrived to start his shift shortly after he had been identified on the security footage and the president had called him up to await the arrival of the inspector.

Kyoko sighed. She still couldn't believe that Old Gen could be the stalker, it seemed surreal. She remembered the instinctive fear she had felt in his presence the other night and shivered. She had not felt it since, not even when he had limped past her a few minutes ago.

The president was grim-faced as he waited with her and Kanae for the inspector to emerge. Sai and Ryuma had offered to stay, but Kyoko had waved them off not wanting to trouble any more people than she had to. They needed rest after their recent erratic sleep patterns and had reluctantly agreed to leave her with the president and Kanae, and Ren as soon as he finished his last appointment for the day.

The door to the side office slammed open and Gen limped out angrily, moving in Kyoko's direction as fast as he could. Kanae stiffened beside her, but Kyoko couldn't feel much of anything as he came to a halt in front of her.

"Ya don't really think I'd do those things, do ya?" he said, craggy face creasing further in a grimace.

Kyoko thought about it, chewing on her lower lip. "No." she said honestly. Right now she really wasn't afraid of the old man.

"Good. You and that young fella from the hospital are about the only one's who're kind to me. Wouldn't want you believing I wish you harm." he said gruffly and sagged a little in relief. "Go careful now."

Kanae scowled, apparently less than convinced, but Gen was already shuffling away and an unhappy looking inspector stepped up to take his place in front of them.

"He's eighty-three years old, arthritic, asthmatic, has a legitimate gammy leg and bad heart and to top it all he has chronic hay fever. He nearly sneezed himself into a seizure when I took the rose within five feet of him. He claims he took Widow Bujima from the senior centre out dancing the night of the Darumaya break in. He did fight in a war, but he has no criminal record or artistic tendencies so unless he has an accomplice he's cleared."

"Artistic tendencies? Is that important?"

"Oh yes, I meant to say. We got more detailed results on the traces found in the box from the Darumaya – the white spirit had a complete absence of residual sulphur and was specifically Odourless Mineral Spirit, and the variant of weasel turned out to be sable. Hog and sable hair are the brushes of choice for oil painters, as is that particular type of white spirit for cleaning them. Do you know any oil painters?"

Satoshi ran a hand over his face and sighed as Kyoko shook her head. "Something here doesn't add up. The security in this place is exactly what you'd expect for somewhere that regularly contains the biggest celebrities in the country – it's a fortress. There's no way for anyone to get in to the locked down areas without a pass even if they manage to get by the monitors and guards."

Lory had gone through the security setup while Gen was being interviewed, half for their benefit and half to try and work out what had gone wrong, and it sounded pretty comprehensive to Kyoko. Each member of staff had their own pass card that allowed a certain amount of access to the building – the door sensors had a range of three feet and unlocked automatically, so Kyoko had never really thought about it.

Every time a door sensor was triggered it recorded the pass that had activated it and any other passes within range – even if ten people went through the door after one had unlocked it they were all logged. If a person without any pass was detected an alarm was raised – this part was a little unreliable and could sometimes be fooled if several people went through a door at once, but someone without a card would be discovered eventually. Guest passes could be issued, though they were encoded with the recipient's name and expired after a day.

Other than the doors, LME also had a full security system and a team of guards. She was vaguely interested to learn that on her first day at LME after failing the audition she had only made it as far as she did during her infiltration plan because the security team had been told about her. She flushed a little to hear she'd given them a good laugh at her dubious ninja skills.

There was no way for someone without a pass card to get beyond the public reception and there was no way a suspicious person would not be noticed by the guards or caught on tape. There was no way it could not have been Gen on the footage entering the Love Me room, and now Satoshi said there was no way it could have been Gen.

It was impossible whichever way she looked at it and it was starting to make her head spin. If Lory's expression was anything to go by then he was in a similar state, and that disconcerted her more than anything. She was allowed to be confused, but if the president was unnerved then her entire sense of stability was undermined.

"I'm going to help review the security tapes personally." the president abruptly announced after pacing back and forth for a while.

"We didn't find anything useful in the, uh, 'Love Me' room – no fingerprints but a lot of DNA. My gut feeling is that all samples will be from the people we'd expect to have been there, but I'll get them back to the lab and have them analysed just in case. We already have elimination samples from previous incidents – please let me know if there's anyone else I should pluck a few hairs from, and of course if anything turns up from the cameras."

Lory nodded and Satoshi took his leave. "Mogami-kun, please join me, I don't want you out of my sight until we get to the bottom of this. Kotonami-kun, of course you're welcome to come too."

Kyoko grimaced and followed the suddenly purposeful man down to the main security room. The corridors seemed somehow darker now and their footsteps echoed louder than she remembered. Every unfamiliar face she saw made her heart beat faster and she unconsciously stole closer to the president.

After two hours of sitting in the security room, Kyoko decided that reviewing any sort of security footage was a lot more interesting when people did it on television. Even in the fascinatingly high-tech centre with its massive grid of six-by-six monitors she couldn't help but feel bored.

After a second review of last night had still yielded nothing of note, they had gone back further in search of something suspicious.

Bored was dangerous, and she desperately tried to focus on something to avoid thinking too deeply about the fact the stalker had been in her locker.

She had nothing of any real value there, but the thought that he'd touched her things, her clothes, was an invasion of privacy that made her throat constrict. She stared at the top right monitor, willing herself to concentrate wholly on the deserted hallway it showed her in black and white. When that failed she focussed on the technician instead, a wiry thin young man with glasses and an obvious crush on Kanae.

Even that grew tiresome after a few minutes when Kanae did nothing but ignore him and stare at the screens and she almost slumped in relief when Ren and Yashiro arrived. The latter paused to greet the president but Ren went straight to her and crouched down next to where she sat on the floor.

"I heard what happened." he said, not bothering to ask something silly like if she was okay, and reached out his hand to squeeze her shoulder just by her neck. She smiled a little and put her hand over his briefly before shooting to her feet so quick he nearly fell over backwards in surprise. "Mogami..."

"I'm sorry for the incident at the studio." she said, dropping in to a deep bow. "I never meant to cause a scene, least of all with that idiot."

He blinked as he rose back to his full height then his eyes widened in comprehension. "Oh that. The president already told me about that, he said it wasn't your fault."

"Yes, but he said you sounded put out when he told you, so I thought I'd better apologise as soon as possible."

He gently pulled her upright with a wry smile and the faintest of blushes. "I was... annoyed at the idea of you being romantically linked with Fuwa but as long as the rumours are unfounded then it's okay."

"They are." she said with no indecision at all then frowned as she tried to make sense of his logic. Surely it didn't matter if they were true, just that they had come to exist. She was about to voice her thoughts when Yashiro joined them.

"I'm sorry for what happened, it must have been awful finding something like that inside LME." he said with a sympathetic look.

"It was Moko-san that found it – she said she looked in my locker when she saw it was ajar. She said it wasn't like me to be that careless. It might have been a few days before it was found if she hadn't."

Yashiro shuddered. "It's not nice to think he got in to this building, the president seems very upset. He said he's going to have the whole security setup looked into and won't leave this room until they figure out what happened."

Kanae suddenly captured the attention of everyone in the room by pouncing forward over the console with an expression of intense concentration.

"Kotonami-kun?"

Kanae ignored the president and spoke to the technician instead, though her eyes didn't move from the wall of monitors. "Are these all in synch? Everything on each one is happening at the same time, right?"

"Give or take a second." the technician said with a nod.

"That's Old Gen, isn't it?" she asked pointing to an upper-left screen. It displayed a man on the roof listing to one side as he sucked on a sly cigarette. A plume of smoke billowed on the black and white monitor then the man looked almost directly at the camera such that his distinctive features were clearly visible.

"It is." Lory said in a disapproving tone. "But he's been cleared."

"Yes, but if that's Gen," Kanae said and moved her finger to point at a screen to the lower-right, "then who's that?"

Kyoko blinked. This screen showed Gen in the corridor outside the Love Me room mopping the floor. She felt the back of her neck tingle. The gaze of everyone flicked back and forth like spectators at a slightly askew tennis match.

"When was this taken?" Lory asked with a dark expression.

"Three days ago."

Kyoko flinched as Kanae suddenly shot on screen, running for the Love Me room with the sort of gait that suggested she was covered in spiders. Her own image followed, laughing, and Kyoko felt her heart miss a beat. It was the end of the day they had started on the old storage room, she realised, and the only time she had felt a trill of fear from the old janitor.

She sneezed on the monitor and turned as the second Gen said something and she replied before turning away. She remembered he had said 'bless you' and she had wished his cold better soon – he had been wearing a mask, though right now she doubted very much if it had been because of illness. Watching it from this perspective she swallowed hard at the way the janitor lightly caressed his mop handle before resuming his cleaning. With a methodical slowness he moved closer and closer to the door and Kyoko's breath quickened with every inch until he suddenly turned away and moved to the other side of the corridor.

Ren came into view and entered the room after knocking. Kanae burst out and lingered in the doorway a moment gesticulating awkwardly before disappearing off-screen then herself and Ren walked out soon after and also disappeared.

The second Gen had glanced up from his work and watched her the whole way. Kyoko felt a nasty prickle down her spine as she then returned alone – to retrieve Princess Rosa, she remembered – and flew back into the Love Me room out of view.

The janitor watched her. He looked up and down the corridor then set his mop aside and slowly crept forward, his limp suddenly gone. He moved like a predator, stopping in the doorway. His fingers slide up and down the frame as though slowly petting a cat then his other hand reached for the door as he took a step forward into the room.

Kyoko wanted to look away but her eyes were stuck and she had no choice but to watch. She felt light-headed, dizzy, and for some reason anxious. She knew it was irrational, she watching past events whose outcomes were known, but still a profound relief flooded her as he jerked back towards his discarded mop moments before most of Ren materialised at the bottom of the screen. Kyoko watched herself jog to join him, then turn and wave to the janitor. She only saw now the exact way in which he waved back: slowly and with flexing fingers.

Silence filled the room until Kyoko was sure she could hear white noise from the monitors creeping over her senses.

"Find out how this happened." Lory said, outrage and shock detectable in his voice.

"Y-yes sir." the technician stammered and lunged for a computer terminal. He typed furiously and then paused to stare at the screen before renewing his attack on the keyboard. He did this a couple of times before he finally looked up. "I think I may know what happened and why the logs don't show anything suspicious at first glance. Two months ago Watanabe Gen reported his pass destroyed so he was issued with a clone. He said he'd thrown it into an incinerator by accident with a load of trash, but if it wasn't actually destroyed and someone got hold of it then it would still work."

"Why wasn't the original deactivated?"

The technician blushed. "It's quicker to make a clone with the same pass ID than a whole new pass when it's a replacement and the employee details are already on record. It's effectively the same card – cancelling one will cancel the clone too. He said it was incinerated, so it looks like someone just made him a copy quickly rather than go through the proper process. It's not anywhere in the company policy, but the machine that makes the cards has a clone option."

Lory bent down so he was eye to eye with the technician. "From now on, one card for each employee. No exceptions. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes sir."

"Cancel Watanabe's pass and issue him a new one. An entirely new one. Following company policy exactly."

"I-I've already taken the liberty. I just need your signature on the form once I print it out."

Lory nodded and glared at the printer until it gave in and beeped. "Who is responsible for this?"

"It didn't go through the system so I can't be sure, but it was most likely Kobayashi." the technician said, licking his lips.

"Kobayashi-san who retired last month?"

"Yes sir."

"How convenient."

"Y-yes sir."

"Get back to reviewing the logs and footage – I want to know exactly how long this imposter has been popping in and out of my building as he pleases and the extent of his infiltration. I'll expect your report soon. Oh, and make sure someone takes his new card to Watanabe-san as soon as it's ready, he's probably stuck somewhere right now in a very bad mood."

The technician bobbed his head and Lory stormed out. Kyoko and her entourage scrambled to follow, and she felt a little better with the knowledge of how someone had got in to LME and that the hole was now plugged. Still the corridors seemed gloomier as they trooped back to the president's office and she couldn't help but shiver even though it wasn't cold.