"Well, that was a waste of a day," Detective Tsukimoto sighed, tossing aside his coast as he sunk down into his seat and checked his watch. A formality; he already knew it was way past quitting time, but he wouldn't be clocking out for a while yet, if his senior partner's preoccupation was any clue.
"Hmm, you think so?" His partner flipped back through his notebook—paper, no palm pilot; Ishiyama distrusted any technology smaller than a full desktop computer, and wouldn't own so much as a mobile phone if the department hadn't made it mandatory—and scribbled a few words in the margin.
"We should've stuck to questioning Kaiba. That was a barrel of laughs. And it's not like we got anything better for visiting the hospital or anywhere else." Tsukimoto watched his partner across their desk. "You still so sure the guy's innocent?"
"Mm-hmm," Ishiyama confirmed, still rereading the day's notes.
"You don't think it's suspicious that the doctor who signed his little brother's death certificate just went on a month-long cruise to Hawaii?"
Ishiyama glanced up. "And I don't doubt that if we investigated that special deluxe grand prize cruise, we'd find that Kaiba Corp sponsored it. Not to mention, we still haven't located the car involved in the hit-and-run. We have the registration, signed to Kaiba Seto personally, and the anonymous eyewitness who gave us the license number. But no vehicle."
"You can't blame them for wanting to stay anonymous, testifying against a powerhouse like Kaiba Corp." Tsukimoto stretched and eyed the bullpen's coffeemaker, wishing it was percolating on their desk rather than so many long steps across the room. "So you don't find any of that the least bit suspicious?"
"Oh, it's extremely suspicious," Ishiyama agreed, entirely too cheerfully for the late hour. "It's just not clear what that suspicion is. Kaiba's hiding something from us, obviously—probably plenty, given his line of work—but as far as Kaiba Mokuba's death goes—"
He was interrupted by the trill of a celphone. Tsukimoto pulled out his mobile, answered, "Yes, hello?"
"Detective Tsukimoto?" said a bright female voice that he recognized as Toshie's from the night shift. "I'm trying to reach Detective Ishiyama, but he seems to have turned off his phone."
"He's with me," Tsukimoto said. "What's going on?"
"I have a message that Ishiyama-san wanted to be told right away if something came up in regards to a particular location..."
Tsukimoto listened to the message, thanked Toshie and hung up, then turned to his partner. "Okay, how the heck did you know?"
"Was that Toshie?" Ishiyama inquired.
"Yes! How'd you know? She said you left a message this morning—how'd you know what'd be happening at MainBrain Inc.'s headquarters tonight?"
Ishiyama stood up. "So something did happen there?"
"Just happened—is happening, sounds like—"
"Then we should get over there," Ishiyama said, hurrying towards the bullpen exit. Tsukimoto sighed, shrugged back into his coat and followed.
o o o
Luck favors idiots, fortunately. Between him and Jounouchi, Mokuba didn't know who should be more favored, but either way he breathed a sigh of relief when he heard the single pair of footsteps pounding toward him, not boots, but the unmistakable squeak of rubber-soled sneakers on tile floor.
Then caught that same breath back sharply, as a stranger's voice commanded, "Stop there!" Jounouchi's footsteps stumbled to a halt. In the cramped maintenance tunnel, Mokuba sidled forward on hands and knees, careful not to rattle the ceiling tiles as he crossed over them. Peering down through the narrow gap between the florescent lights, he saw Jounouchi, standing in the corridor with a sheepish look on his face, and two of MainBrain's security guards facing him. Mokuba was at the wrong angle to see what was in their hands, but the way Jounouchi's arms were held up in the air gave him a good idea.
"What are you doing here?" one of the guards demanded. "Show your ID pass."
Mokuba crawled a little farther down the shaft. "My pass?" he heard Jounouchi say. "Oh, yeah, just a sec, I, uh, I must've misplaced it..."
Mokuba hooked his fingers under the foam-fronted ceiling tile, lifted it a couple centimeters and peeked out. The two guards were directly beneath him, so that all he could see was the tops of their heads, cropped black hair shiny under the hard light, and the pistol in the hand of the man on the right. "What's your name?" that guard was demanding. "What division are you with?"
Mokuba raised the tile higher, enough that he could see Jounouchi's face as he answered, "My name is, uh, Katsuya. Honda Katsuya. I'm a student here..." His gaze flicked nervously from guard to guard to gun, and then up, and his eyes widened fractionally as they met Mokuba's.
Mokuba nodded to him, meaningfully, just as the guard began to say, "You're going to have to come with us—"
Jounouchi rocked back, setting his stance, then winked at Mokuba and said, "Sorry, already got plans tonight," as he launched himself forward.
"Sto—!" The guard didn't get any further, because Mokuba landed on his head then, feet-first, sending him sprawling on the waxed floor and knocking the pistol out of his hand. It went off with a deafening bang (definitely not a tranquilizer gun), but Jounouchi easily ducked the wide shot, and came up fighting, slamming the other man back into the wall with a roundhouse kick, followed up with a punch to the solar plexus.
"Nice moves," Mokuba panted. He had been right; Jounouchi could definitely take care of himself. He picked himself up off the floor, rubbing his wrist, which he had twisted in the fall. "Come on!"
"Just a sec," Jounouchi said, crouching over Mokuba's landing pad and ripping the holster and key ring from the guard's belt, having assured he wouldn't object with a swift blow to the head. He retrieved the pistol where it had slid across the floor, shoved it into the holster as he stood. "Now where to?"
"Over here." His original exit route was cut off; he could hear more guards down the corridor blocking the way. An awful lot of guards; either the security was more complete than MainBrain's public records stated, or they had hired extra for tonight. And that gunshot would be bringing them all running.
Mokuba lead them in the least-predictable direction, back the way Jounouchi had come, towards the lab. They barely dodged another pair of guards, dove through a door and plunged down a small staircase to the subbasement. Climbing back up another flight and through another door brought them to a narrow, short corridor. There was a fire exit at the other end, which would lead to a side alley, but no doors in between.
Mokuba ran forward, pulling out the teacher's ID as he did and swiping the stolen card through the door's electronic lock panel.
The diodes on the panel stayed red. He tried the handle, but it wouldn't budge. Takeuchi must have reported her card missing already. "Dammit!" Mokuba slammed his fist against the door, which failed to help his sore wrist any, nor their situation.
There must be a way to crack the lock somehow, maybe short-circuit it, but he didn't have the tools, or any time. Footsteps in the adjacent halls were converging on them. The whole building was wired with cameras; doubtless they had been easy to track. And with the exit locked, they were stuck in a dead end, with the staircase their only way out.
His big brother wouldn't have gotten himself trapped like this. But then his brother would have escaped at the first opportunity—and it didn't do any good to think like that, not now. He wasn't Seto, but there wasn't anything he could do about that. All he could do was his best and that had to be enough. He wasn't going to fail, not when his brother was counting on him, and now Jounouchi, too.
"Try this one," Jounouchi said, tossing him the ID card he had relieved from the guard.
Mokuba slid the card through, twice for good measure, but the light didn't change. "They're not letting anyone out of the building, until they catch us."
He and Jounouchi looked behind them. Boots stamping up the metal stairs were echoing through the corridor. The flimsy bolt on the door to the stairwell wouldn't hold against a good kick, much less a bullet.
Mokuba's eyes darted to the ventilation grill set in the wall, but it was barely big enough for him to squeeze through. Jounouchi wouldn't have a chance of making it. Other than that vent, there was nothing in the hall, no benches or even a trashcan to block the coming guards. Nothing here but the two closed doors and the two of them. He might as well have locked them in a prison cell.
"All right," Jounouchi said, drawing the gun from the borrowed holster and starting for the door. "I'll keep 'em busy; Mokuba, you go through the vent, find another way out."
"Jounouchi—"
"Your brother needs you," Jounouchi said, like Mokuba ever would have forgotten. "Go on, get out of here, I'll hold 'em off," and he gestured with the pistol. Punk he might be, but Jounouchi didn't know how to hold a gun, aiming it sideways like an actor in a cheap cop show. "You can bail me out later. Hey, maybe they'll give me a cell next to Kaiba's."
"If they think you're the hacker, they're not going to risk having you arrested..." Mokuba said, thinking as hard as he could, desperately. There was no such thing as a no-win situation, not for a Kaiba; there had to be a way out here, for both of them. But the guards were almost at the top of the stairs, and the exit's deadbolt's electronics were sealed. The fire door itself was reinforced steel, impossible to batter down—
The fire door. There must be something else in the hall after all; the building was modern enough that safety regulations would require it. Mokuba surveyed the walls, spotted his target. "Jounouchi, you grabbed the guy's keys, right?"
"Yeah, but that door doesn't have a keyhole, does it?" But Jounouchi took the jangling ring out of his pocket.
Mokuba snatched it from his hands and shot over to the red box mounted on the wall. Safety first, even during a security lockdown. The second key slid into the slot, and he grinned in manic victory, turned it to open the panel and hit all the buttons inside.
The lights overhead flickered and dimmed to amber as a piercing, whooping fire alarm began to sound, accompanied by flashing strobes. The fire door's bolt automatically popped open with a click. "Come on!" Mokuba shouted over the fire alarm, and Jounouchi let go of the stairwell door handle he had been holding shut and sprinted after him, as sprinklers lowered from the ceiling and began spraying the corridor.
He heard a gunshot behind him, and shouted curses as the charging guards slipped on the wet tile floor. Then they were through the fire door and outside in the night, running down the dark alley. Safer—the guards wouldn't fire outside, not with illegal weapons—but not home-free—
A motorcycle, tires squealing, pulled in front of them, cutting them off from the street. The rider was all in black, face obscured by his helmet's visor. Jounouchi shoved Mokuba out of the way, shakily raised the gun.
"Wait!" Mokuba grabbed his elbow.
"Get on!" Honda shouted to them through the helmet.
"Whoops—sorry, man!" Jounouchi tossed the pistol aside, bodily picked Mokuba up by the collar and swung him onto the bike, then vaulted onto the seat behind him, grabbing Honda's shoulders. "Go!"
Honda released the brake and they peeled out of the driveway, clearing the speed bump with a hop. Already the sirens of the approaching fire truck were sounding over the hubbub of traffic. Honda wove a dangerous path through the cars jammed in the streets, ran a red and took them down a quiet side street, finally stopping in a convenient store's parking lot.
"All right!" Jounouchi crowed triumphantly, and slapped Honda five, then raised his hand to Mokuba's. "'How's that for some moves!"
Mokuba stared at him, not returning the gesture. "How did you get in there? In fact, what are you even doing here? You didn't come with us!"
"Took the bus," Jounouchi said. "I figured Honda would be staying outside with the getaway vehicle," and he patted the motorcycle, "so if you needed a distraction, I'd be it. And with all the guards they had gathering in front there, it looked like you might need one. Honda told me where the school part of the building was, and this janitor outside for his smoke break was nice enough to let a drunk kid in to use the bathroom. I figured he'd report me if I took off, but since I wanted to be noticed anyway, no sweat."
At Mokuba's look he grinned. "Hey, you and Kaiba ain't got the monopoly on being sneaks!"
"I..." Mokuba couldn't look him in the eyes any longer. It had been far too close. "I didn't know they'd have guns," he said quietly. He had faced such threats before, but they shouldn't have to. Not for him.
"Guns?" Honda said. "Real guns? So that thing you pointed at me..."
"No sweat," Jounouchi said again. "None of us got shot, it's all good."
"You got what you went in for, right?" Honda asked.
Mokuba patted his jacket pocket. The key drive was still safely zipped inside. He nodded. "I got it."
"Then it's all good," Honda echoed Jounouchi. "So, back to KaibaCorp HQ now?"
"Yeah," Mokuba said, checking his watch. It had felt like forever inside, but it wasn't even 9 PM. Not that he was planning on getting to bed tonight anyway. He was too keyed up for sleep, even if he hadn't had so much to do.
Jounouchi got off the motorcycle. "I'll take a bus back to Yugi's. Anzu should be back by now, hopefully she got what you needed out of Kaiba."
"Here," Mokuba said, taking out his wallet and handing Jounouchi a couple bills. "Catch a cab back, it'll be faster. I'll send a car over to the game shop to pick you up. And..." He looked between the two of them. "Thank you," he said. There wasn't anything else he could say.
Just words, not any real repayment. But the way they grinned at him, that simple gratitude might be plated in 24-karat gold. "No problem," Jounouchi said, and waved a cheerful see-you-later as he headed down the street.
to be continued...