It had taken Section Four two days to get the necessary approvals and paperwork in place for Neela's release. The task was made even more challenging by the need to keep things quiet. Misaki had to be able to pay the contractor enough of a stipend so that she could live modestly on her own; it wasn't a lot of money, but creative accounting wouldn't be enough to disguise it in the budget. And Misaki didn't want to lie about what she was doing. Everything had to be above-board from now on.

Ootsuka was the one who had come up with the solution; and after some shuffling of the small surplus in Section Three's budget, it was official.

Misaki just hadn't told her yet.

Someone in the Syndicate was watching. HG-139 had been present in the interrogation room, so he had known that Hourai had agreed to a deal, and thus killed him before he could talk; but why had the contractor been there in the first place? Misaki hadn't formally scheduled her visit; she'd called ahead to Memoto earlier that day, and she had discussed it with Section Four - and Kan, and Kaede - a few days prior. Either someone had talked, or the Syndicate had other ways of listening in.

Things had been so much simpler when Hei and Saitou had been the only ones who she'd confided her investigations to. Simpler; but not easier. Misaki couldn't operate like that anymore - she didn't want to - but still not knowing who she could trust was beyond frustrating.

So releasing Neela from prison was no simple task. No one at the prison had been informed ahead of time, and her team had had eyes on the facility ever since she'd made the decision. If anyone tried to enter without prior approval, they'd know. If HG-139 turned himself invisible within a ten-square-kilometer radius of the prison, they would know, and be able to take action to prevent his sneaking in unseen.

Not for the first time, and probably not for the last, Misaki found herself wishing that they had the ability to track contractors within that close range without them using their power; but while stars did remain in the same general geographical location as their contractors, it was only while they were active that Astronomics' triangulation system could narrow down a contractor's location, and it took an actual specter (or innocent bystander) to spot them. In terms of preventing crimes, it wasn't very useful; a chip or tagging system would be far more effective.

Then again, such a system would make Hei that much easier to track as well. Maybe she shouldn't wish for it so hard.

Traffic on the freeway was only moderately heavy for this early in the afternoon, and Misaki threaded her Porsche between slower-moving vehicles easily. Out of long habit, she kept an eye on the individual cars around her - and with a jolt spotted a black sedan about two cars back, keeping pace with her.

Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. It could be nothing; it could be just another driver in a rush, following the same path that she was picking out for herself because it was the most efficient way around traffic.

As she continued towards her exit, the black car continued to follow. She dropped her speed; the other car almost overtook her before dropping back himself. Misaki stared into the rearview mirror, but she couldn't make out the driver. Whoever he was, he seemed more interested in following her than catching her.

When had she picked him up? She hadn't noticed anything suspicious at the park, and she'd left straight from there.

Making a snap decision, she whipped her car across two lanes of traffic towards an approaching exit ramp. Horns blared and tires screeched, but she dodged the other cars expertly and made it onto the ramp. In her mirror, she saw the black sedan attempt to follow, only to be pushed back into his lane by a passing car.

Another chorus of angry horns sounded. She was too far down the ramp now to see the freeway, but no black sedan appeared in the lane behind her.

Misaki exhaled slowly and released her white-knuckled grip on the wheel, trying to force her heart rate back down. Hei had warned her before about always taking the same routes; she'd thought that he was just being overly paranoid, but adding a little variety was starting to look like a good idea now.

This exit was only a couple of kilometers from the one she had been planning on taking; so she drove the long way around, keeping an eye out for any other suspicious-looking vehicles while her mind turned over what had just happened. It had been a clumsy tailing job; so, either an amateur, or a professional who had wanted to send a message. Who, though?

Saitou and Kouno were parked across the street from the prison when Misaki arrived, her heart still pounding with adrenaline. She pulled up behind Kouno's silver Nissan and got out; the biting wind slipped through her open rain coat, and she shivered as she leaned down to the Nissan's passenger-side window. "Anything?"

Saitou shook his head. "No traffic in or out. Nothing suspicious at all."

"Good," Misaki said. "Astronomics has three dolls assigned to this block, but they haven't reported anything either. We -"

"Hey," Kouno said suddenly, "Who's this?"

A car had just turned up the street in front of them. A black sedan.

Misaki's hand darted beneath her jacket. All three of them watched as the sedan rolled to a stop several yards ahead of the Nissan; and Misaki suddenly recognized it.

"God damn it," she muttered. "Stay here." She let go of her gun and stalked up to the black Honda. The door opened as she approached, and Toda Toru emerged.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, following me?" Misaki demanded.

The reporter grinned at her. "That was a hell of a move back there - do all police know how to drive like that?"

Misaki folded her arms. "Answer the question."

"Is it illegal to drive on the freeway, or to park on a public street?"

"I've warned, you, Toda -"

He held up a hand. "Look, I just wanted to have a chat with you; since you won't return my calls or my emails, I thought maybe I could catch you outside of the office." Adjusting his glasses, he glanced over at the prison. "It was a lucky guess that you were headed here - interviewing Director Hourai again?"

"This investigation is classified," Misaki said. "And if you haven't noticed, I'm sort in the middle of something right now. When I have anything to say to the press, you can read it in the press announcement like everyone else."

"It's hardly investigative reporting to wait for a press release. The people of Tokyo have a right to know what's happening in their city."

"If you want to talk, call my office, and -"

"Come on, Director!" Toda exclaimed, exasperated. "We both know you won't make an appointment. I just wanted to ask you about your father, get your side of the story."

Misaki froze. "What are you talking about?"

"Did you know he was going to turn himself in - did you have prior knowledge of his involvement with the Syndicate?"

"Where did you get this information?" Misaki demanded, sweat beading on her brow despite the wind. Hourai's voice echoed in her mind: You'd sell out your own father for another gold star on your record.

"Arrests are public record -"

"Not Section Four's! Not until they've been declassified - where did you get this information?" Two car doors slammed shut behind her, but she didn't turn away from Toda.

"You know I can't reveal my source -" the reporter began, but Misaki interrupted.

"Your source is going to land you five years in prison if you print a single word of this." Misaki was furious. He was right; her father's arrest had been kept quiet, but it hadn't been classified. Leaking the news to the press wasn't technically a crime, but if that leak interfered in her investigation, she could probably get a judge to invoke the State Secrecy Law.

Of course if it reached that point, then the damage - whatever that may be - would already be done.

Running footsteps announced the arrival of her subordinates. "Director, is everything alright?" Saitou asked, with a glare at Toda.

"You're here to keep an eye on that building, not me," Misaki said evenly. "Both of you get back to your post."

The two men exchanged glances; but they did as she told them, walking at an unnecessarily slow rate.

Toda watched them go warily. "I'm not going to print anything," he said. "But reporting on police investigations is my job. Surely you of all people know how important it is to keep tabs on what's going on inside the NPA."

She hated his insinuations; and hated that he was right. "If that's the case, then tell me who has been giving you information on my investigation."

"Sorry, Director; I can't do that."

Misaki glared. "Fine. Then we're done here. Like I said earlier, my team is in the middle of an operation; you should probably leave."

"What sort of operation?" he asked, not even bothering to try and hide his interest.

"It's classified," she told him. "But there's a high likelihood of a contractor attack on this prison within the next hour. I suppose that anything you see from a public street is fair game; but it could be dangerous for bystanders. Stay at your own risk."

She turned on her heel and strode back to Kouno's car. What she had told Toda wasn't strictly true; but there was a chance of an attack on Neela, and - as much as she despised him - he was an innocent bystander. She didn't want the reporter's blood on her hands. Hopefully he would leave; but if he didn't, he wouldn't be able to see anything of Neela's release from the street. Misaki didn't want to hide what she was doing - but she didn't want to advertise it either. Especially not to a reporter.

Her subordinates cast her worried looks when reached the car. "Keep an eye on things out here. He" - she nodded at Toda - "is not to get any closer than the street. Astronomics will alert us if there's even the slightest hint of activity in the area, so be ready. When I have Neela, follow me back to headquarters."

"Right Chief," Kouno said, and Saitou elbowed him. "Director, I mean."

~~~~o~~~~

"Everything looks to be in order," Superintendent Memoto said. He cleared a space on his overflowing desk, set down the release authorization form, and added his signature next to Misaki's. Then he handed it back.

Misaki tucked the folder with the signed papers under her arm and glanced up at the camera in the corner of the room; but there was no way of knowing whether the contractor was watching or not.

"We took the television out of her cell," the superintendent commented, seeing her gaze. "Now that we know she's been using her power to spy on the rest of the prison. In any case, Moriyama has her waiting downstairs; I'll walk you down."

That was a bit cruel, Misaki thought to herself as she and Memoto headed down to the next level. But then again, that was really the whole point of this prison, wasn't it.

As they passed under an air vent in one of the corridors, Misaki couldn't repress a shudder at the draft brushing against the back of her neck. The feeling sharply recalled her trip to the bowels of the prison after Hourai's murder, enough that the bile rose reflexively in her throat. She tried to tell herself that it was just her usual evening nausea, showing up a bit earlier than normal. Nothing to do with nerves.

She hadn't been allowed to take her phone past the first security station, as per protocol, but her team had instructions to call Memoto immediately if there was any sign of trouble. They would have plenty of warning before anything happened. But she still had her gun. It would be fine.

Neela was waiting in the interrogation room as before, picking absently at her cuffs. She looked up with interest as Moriyama escorted Misaki and Memoto inside.

"Uncuff her," Misaki told the guard. Moriyama glanced at his superior, who nodded; he moved forward and unlocked first Neela's ankle cuffs, then her wrists.

Neela eyed the guard as if he was playing some kind of practical joke on her. "You're not really getting me out, are you?" she asked Misaki.

"That depends on you," Misaki said, taking a seat across from the contractor as the two men left the room. She opened her folder and took out a sheet of paper, setting it down so that it was facing Neela. The Japanese text on the page was duplicated in English; Neela looked at it with interest. "This is an offer of temporary employment as a consultant to the Public Security Bureau, Foreign Affairs Section Four. You'll be paid on a per-hour basis, under my direct supervision. There's a cap on how much we can spend on consultants, so this won't be quite enough to live on. But here," she laid out another sheet, "is a confidential informant agreement. Because you are possibly wanted by the Syndicate, your anonymity will be important, as will your information. With the payments for that information, you should have enough for an apartment and all the necessities."

"The Syndicate paid me a lot more than that," Neela commented mildly, running a finger along the English text.

"And they arrested you and threw you into prison to rot," Misaki reminded her. She set out a third paper. "There will of course be stipulations to your employment on top of what is already required for PSB employees. We haven't had a contractor on the payroll before, so we might have to make some adjustments as we go. The background check may be difficult, for example; I expect full disclosure of your activities since becoming a contractor. If you agree to work with us, I expect you to treat all conversations and information as confidential and classified. Leaking such information is a prosecutable offense. Of course you'd be free to leave our employment at any time, but the nondisclosure clause would still stand."

"What if I decide to go work for a foreign agency, or another crime syndicate?"

Misaki had to admire the boldness of the question; most contractors wouldn't have wanted to plant any potential seeds of doubt like that. "We would find and arrest you, just like any other contractor who is involved in espionage or criminal activities on Japanese soil. I know we don't have a lot to offer," she said, softening her tone, "especially compared to the big players like the Syndicate. But in the police we think of ourselves as an extended family: we're loyal to each other, and we support each other. People, more than just their skills, have value. At the very least, it's an honest living while you think about other options and moving on with the rest of your life."

Neela drummed her fingers on the table. "I can leave at any time, and you won't hunt me down?"

"Not unless you do something illegal."

"No M.E., if I find out something that you don't want me to know?"

That wasn't something that Misaki had considered beforehand. She answered as honestly as she could. "Current policy is to modify the memories of civilians who witnessed contractor-related activity, whose testimony could be damaging to public security. That's likely to change after the U.N. recommendations for contractor regulation are announced; but it never applied to police. Before contractors were made public, officers who ran across them were debriefed, asked to sign additional nondisclosure agreements, and were informed that they would be severely prosecuted under the State Secrecy Law if they violated those agreements. As an employee of the PSB, I would say that you would fall into that category. So no; no M.E." They would just have to take the risk of Neela stealing or leaking confidential police data. The same risk that they took with human officers.

The contractor's gaze drifted up towards one of the security cameras in the corner near the ceiling; with her hands now free of the cuffs, she reached up and absently twisted a lock of her dark hair. "I never signed anything for the Syndicate."

"No," Misaki said. "I don't imagine they had much in the way of an HR department." She didn't expect a signature to mean anything at all to a contractor; even someone like Jack Simon, who had admitted to having pride in his employment, probably wouldn't consider a signed pledge to be worth the paper it was printed on. It was important to Misaki, though - it meant that she was following procedure, and procedure was real. It was a sign that the world was functioning the way that it ought to.

Neela considered for a long moment, still fiddling with her hair. At last she sighed. "Alright. I'll sign."

Careful not to let her relief show, Misaki unclipped a ballpoint pen from the folder and passed it over. Neela picked it up a bit awkwardly, held it over the first signature line - then paused.

"What name should I sign it with?"

Misaki blinked. "What do you mean?"

"Well, usually contractors get assigned new code names when they change organizations. Neela was my Syndicate codename - will I keep that with the police? If you change it, then I can't really sign with it, can I?"

"I hadn't thought of that; we don't use code names in the PSB. Confidential informants are assigned numbers -"

"Like prisoner nineteen?" the contractor asked, a bit too slyly for comfort.

"Yes, like that," Misaki said. "But I don't think that would be appropriate in this case. I suppose if you wanted, you could keep going by Neela."

Neela chewed on her lip, a startlingly human gesture. "I guess I could. But Neela was the Syndicate's pet hacker, who spent the last nine months and four days of her life in prison. I don't think I want to stay her."

"What about the one you were born with?" But even as she suggested it, Misaki knew that the contractor would reject the idea. Hei had never liked even hearing his original name.

Misaki had a sudden, shocking thought: Would Hei change his name, now that he'd left the Syndicate? They had been the ones to name him, after all - and then they had betrayed him. That name had represented everything that he'd hated about himself. He would need to use aliases, surely, but beneath the false identities who else would he be except Hei? She found herself hoping desperately, and probably selfishly, that he would keep it. It was the name that he'd given her when he'd finally taken off his mask. Even if he did return to using Li Tian, he would always be Hei to her.

"I don't…no," Neela said, snapping Misaki back to the present. "Not that name. I'm not really that person anymore; not since I became a contractor. It would be…I don't know. Weird."

"Well," Misaki said, still trying to shake the idea of Hei becoming someone different, a stranger. "Why don't you choose one for yourself?"

"Choose one?" Neela gripped a lock of hair tightly and frowned down at the papers in front of her. She mouthed a few words that Misaki couldn't make out, as if testing out the feel of them. At last, she took the pen and printed a word in English letters, then signed next to it in a script that Misaki thought might be Arabic. She signed all three documents that way, then stacked them together and handed them back to Misaki.

"Aisha," Misaki read, wondering if she was pronouncing it correctly.

Neela - Aisha - nodded; but she didn't offer an explanation.

Misaki decided not to ask if there was any kind of special meaning to the new name, though she was curious. Instead, she replaced the papers in her folder and held out her hand. "Welcome to the team."

The contractor looked at the her proffered hand for a moment, then cautiously reached out and shook.

"I'll have Memoto start the discharge process," Misaki said as she stood. "Then we can head to the office and get started." The sooner they got out of this horrible place, the better.