I'm sorry I can't write suspense for the life of me ;;


Mission Twenty-Nine


"Ready?" Kido asks. Shintaro looks up at the Hexagon looming in front of them, with its wall still cordoned off and stained by spray paint. In his peripheral vision, he sees Kano put on his handmade mask, white with black petal markings on both cheeks, and Shintaro follows suit.

"Ready," he exhales. As they planned earlier, he enters the building first, through one of the emergency side doors that are always left unlocked. When he turns around, only Kido is outside, waving a whistle at him.

Shintaro understands his responsibility – if he backs out now, Kano is 90% more likely to get caught. There's no guarantee the threat of fire will even lure the scientists out of the basement, but they're betting on the sliver of a chance.

Kano had shown him a map of the first floor and its fire alarm system earlier – he claimed Ene had made it for him before she disappeared – and having committed it to memory allows Shintaro to navigate through the darkness without incriminating light, without bumping into a wall.

He lights a match and uses it to find the smoke detector. He has to backtrack a few steps, but eventually, he moves the flame close enough to elicit shrill alarms from the detector. Shintaro moves to the next detector, only a few rooms away, and does the same thing. He hears muffled commotion in between the blaring alarm, and Shintaro moves faster, hoping the commotion is because of the fire alarm and not because Kano and Kido had been found.

From behind the door of a lecture room – the one Kido had told him would be unlocked with a wad of paper wedged in the door – Shintaro watches people hurry past, presumably trying to find the source of the first. When he counts at least five hurry up the stairs to the second floor, Shintaro escapes out of the lecture room's window, landing with a small jump, and runs towards the nearby cluster of trees like there's no tomorrow.

If they catch us, he thinks, there really won't be a tomorrow.

He starts the countdown timer on Kano's stopwatch, set at 28 minutes, and it's a long cycle of looking around, looking down at the timer, looking at the door Kano said they would exit from, and looking around once again. Halfway through the countdown, the shrill alarm stops. While Shintaro is surprised that no one from nearby buildings came out of curiosity, he's more worried about Kano and Kido, now that the distraction is gone.

And then, he hears it faintly: a long, tinny whistle. Kido's signal.

Shintaro watches as the side door opens quietly, and through it exits Kido, who holds the door for Kano supporting a girl with long black hair. No one else comes after them, and Kido helps Kano as they hastily limp towards Shintaro in their meeting point.

"What happened?" he asks when they're safe in the shadows, and the girl – Shintaro finally recognizes her as Takane, his senior, Ene – is propped up against a tree trunk. "I thought you were going to get five out of there."

"We misjudged," Kano says in between gasps for breath. "There's only three subjects, all of them were in these crazy locked tubs or something – Kido did the unlocking, but-"

"We have to go," Kido breathes, just as Takane groggily blinks her eyes open. "They'll be looking for her soon."

Takane manages to get up and take slow baby steps with Kano's support, but Shintaro knows even Yen Hall is too far for their slow pace. His gaze meets Takane's, and even when she's been nothing but a cyber being for two years, even when she's only covered up by a towel, her eyes are as sharp as Shintaro remembers.

"I'll have to carry you," he bravely says. "I'm sorry, but your slow walking won't get us anywhere."

"Ru-" Takane's voice is rough, like grating chalk on a board, and she clears it thrice while Kano hands her over and supports her onto Shintaro's back. She's much lighter than he expected, almost too light, and her arms constantly shiver around Shintaro's neck. Only when the Hexagon is out of sight does Takane manage to finish her sentence.

"Rude… as always, Master."

And Shintaro can't stop the corner of his lips turning up into a smile.