May 2, 2008

"Yes, but do you have to be the one who goes - that's all I'm asking," Kanami said, her worry evident even over the noisy chatter inside the plane cabin and the poor connection of the call.

Misaki shifted her grip on her cell phone so that she could heft her overnight bag onto her shoulder. "Saitou can hold down the fort in Tokyo for a few days," she said. "And I promised the superintendent that I would keep a close eye on Aisha - I can't do that if she's in Sapporo with no one but Kouno to babysit her." Kouno and Aisha were somewhere closer to the front of the cabin; she hadn't been able to get them all seats together on such short notice.

"It's not Section Four that I'm worried about."

Misaki sighed and dropped her voice, though none of the other passengers were paying her any attention as they gathered their belongings and pressed towards the cabin door to deplane. "It was only a little spotting; the doctor said everything's fine."

"But will it be fine next time? You keep pushing yourself -"

"Because this is important," Misaki interrupted, pushing aside the memory of the small red stain on her underwear after her morning swim the other day. She'd called Kanami in a panic, but it had turned out to be nothing. There'd been no reason to make her friend worry, and she was still feeling guilty over it. "After what the Berlin team found in that German Syndicate cell's records this week, we can't afford to let any of them slip through our fingers - they're a threat to public security, not just to contractors. The hierarchy was based here in Japan; if we can take them down, the smaller cells won't survive."

"Not the point, Misaki," her friend said, all too accurately. "Look, I know I can't talk you out of this - and judging from those announcements in the background, you're already on your way to Sapporo - but just be careful. Please. You don't always have to be the person who charges in and takes all the risk on herself."

"I'm not trying to be like that! It's just - this is the only way I know how to be," Misaki said quietly, guilt swirling through her stomach. She followed the crowd of other passengers towards the baggage claim, though her brisk pace soon had her passing most of them.

"I know, and I love you for it." Someone on the other end of the line said something unintelligible; Kanami replied, "Just a sec, hon," then continued to Misaki, "Just take care of yourself, okay?"

"I will. Give me a heads up if anything changes in HG-139's status."

"Hana and I are taking the weekend off for a romantic staycation, remember?" her friend said. "Mizuta's on duty; but I left him clear instructions. Don't worry."

Shit, she had forgotten. Misaki disliked the idea of depending on anyone except for Kanami when it came to star alerts; but Mizuta was perfectly capable, and she wasn't about to ask her friend to interrupt her personal life in order to monitor a computer screen all weekend - though she knew that if this trip to Sapporo hadn't been so spontaneous, Kanami would never have taken the time off.

Kouno and Aisha had found Kaede near the street exit; Misaki waved at them and headed over. "I won't worry - don't worry."

It was a terrible joke, but Kanami laughed anyway. "Alright. Well, good luck on your case; see you when you get back."

"Sure - have fun on your date," Misaki said as she reached her team, then ended the call.

Aisha was gazing around the terminal interestedly, while Kouno wore an uncharacteristic exasperated expression. Kaede stood off to the side, staring at his phone and pointedly ignoring them.

I'm not even going to ask, Misaki sighed to herself, then addressed Kaede. "Did you get everything set up with Intelligence?"

He nodded, looking relieved at her arrival. "I left my car at the curb; we'll head over to your hotel so you can all get freshened up. Then I'll call the station chief at Hokkaido Police Headquarters and get things moving from there."

Misaki hadn't wanted to ask for help from Kaede, but her barging in to Hokkaido's Criminal Investigations branch to interview one of their officers would send up too many warning signs that someone from the Syndicate might pick up on; coordinating with Section Four's local branch would have been ideal but even more of a red flag to anyone keeping tabs on her. One of Kaede's old contacts had been able to set up a discreet meeting. She just hoped that it was quiet enough.

She shifted her bag as Kouno and Aisha picked up theirs and they followed Kaede out to the busy pick-up area where an airport security officer was eying a blue Toyota with obvious displeasure. The Toyota was double-parked - but with government plates, there wasn't much the man could do about it.

"There's no need to go to the hotel first," Misaki said, throwing her bag in the Toyota's trunk with the others. "I want to get started right away." Behind her, she heard a disappointed sigh, which she ignored.

Sapporo was chillier than it had been in Tokyo; Misaki was glad she'd remembered her jacket. She shrugged it on and climbed into the passenger seat as Kouno and Aisha piled into the back.

Kaede looked irritated at her pronouncement, but he didn't argue as he slid behind the wheel. "It's your show," he said. "I'm just here to facilitate."

"Kouno, do you have the file on Officer Tou?" Misaki asked. The city of Sapporo sped past her window, but she'd been here before and didn't pay it any attention. Instead, she was picturing the pages of the file in her mind; she'd read over it several times already, but now that they were here, it was important that they didn't miss any details.

The sound of a case being unzipped came from the back seat, followed by the rustle of paper. "Tou Kimiko," Kouno read after a moment. "Age forty-two; twenty-year veteran of the NPA. She spent most of her career in Traffic Enforcement, basically as a meter maid, before transferring to Sapporo's Criminal Investigation Division unit four years ago"

The same division that my father oversees, Misaki couldn't help thinking. She was sure that the others had made the connection as well, but they would never -

"Hey, isn't your dad the boss of that?" Aisha said.

Misaki crossed and uncrossed her ankles. "Yes." He hadn't admitted to organizing or recruiting other members into the Syndicate, and as a superintendent, hundreds of officers fell under his purview. It was just a coincidence. "Kouno, what else?"

"Uh, her phone. Yeah, the phone that Aisha traced from Hourai's encrypted call log is registered to Tou. It received five calls from Hourai in the past year, the last of which was the day before the Tokyo explosion. Each call coincided with a moderate deposit in her bank account from an international holdings company that Tou has no connection to that we can find. Similar sporadic payments have occurred over the previous four years."

"When did you get a warrant to look into her bank account?" Kaede interrupted.

Misaki crossed her ankles again. "I didn't have time to get an official warrant," she said. "This was just some preliminary digging."

"I hacked into her account," Aisha said.

"You -"

"Keep your eyes on the road!" Misaki snapped when Kaede started to turn towards the back seat. He caught himself and stared out the windshield, frowning. "We'll go the official route once we have something solid to go by," she continued. "Right now there's no precedent for admitting contractor-obtained evidence in court. I'll talk to this officer, see what she gives me that I can take to a judge for a warrant."

She still wasn't entirely comfortable with that plan - despite the fact that it was her own, and Superintendent Kan had signed off on it - but they'd hit a complete dead end in the investigation. If contractors were going to integrate into society, these considerations would have to come into play eventually; but in the meantime, she didn't have time to wait on the glacial pace of the justice system.

"What about this holdings company?" Kaede asked. "Is your contractor breaking international laws as well?"

"Navid is looking into it. Through official channels." Misaki sighed. "Back to Officer Tou - a sudden promotion into a unit that isn't known for recruiting women; not long after that, unexplained deposits begin appearing in her bank account."

"And Hourai contacted her the day before the Tokyo Explosion," Kouno said darkly.

Misaki nodded. "She was definitely doing something for the Syndicate - hopefully she knows something about the servers, but there's no guarantee."

"So how are we going to play this, Chief?"

"You can't let her know that you illegally hacked into her accounts," Kaede put in as he steered the car off the freeway and onto the avenue that would take them to Hokkaido Police Headquarters.

"I know," she said. "I don't want to antagonize her, in any case."

Misaki had spent the whole flight formulating her approach; without being able to use her only piece of leverage, the situation had at first seemed impossible. Until she'd asked herself: How would Hei handle this? And then the answer had come to her. "We're going to be her friends," she said.

~~~~o~~~~

Kaede parked the car on the street across from the Hokkaido Headquarters and called the chief of Criminal Investigations from there. He didn't know the man personally, but an old contact at the Public Prosecutor's Office had been able to call in a favor and secured the chief's blanket cooperation with any of Misaki's requests. Or at least, the requests of an anonymous official working on behalf of Tokyo's Intelligence division.

"Don't forget, it has to be an ethernet connection," Aisha said, passing one of her laptops over to Kouno. "Wi-Fi's no good."

"Yeah, yeah, I got it."

"What's so special about that laptop?" Kaede asked, drumming his fingers on the wheel.

Aisha blinked. "Nothing. It's just a laptop."

"What, no fancy hacker gear?"

"Why would I need that?"

Kouno snorted. "Aisha is the hacker gear."

Misaki saw Kaede's hands tighten around the wheel. "Ah," he said. "Right."

"Are you going to be okay waiting in the car?" Misaki asked, doing her best to not sound annoyed. "I thought you had some old colleagues in town that you wanted to catch up with."

He waved a hand negligently. "I'm meeting them for dinner, and my appointment with the prosecutor isn't until three. I don't mind hanging around in case you need anything; and I can keep an eye on the contractor."

Misaki glanced at the back seat, but Aisha was already preoccupied with setting up her other computer. "Alright," she said. "It's up to you. Kouno, let's go."

~~~~o~~~~

Officer Tou Kimiko was waiting for them in the headquarters' conference room, a shabby space filled with photos of suspects in active investigations, messy notes on dry erase boards, and stacks of files on unused chairs. It felt like every police station that Misaki had ever visited. It felt like home.

"Thanks for taking the time to meet with us," Misaki said, taking a sip of tea from the mug that the chief's assistant had kindly made for her, after getting over his surprise that their anonymous guest was the Acting Director of Foreign Affairs. Beside her, Kouno opened the laptop and unwound a long ethernet cable.

"Of course." Tou sat ramrod straight, her hands folded on the table in front of her. She was only in her early forties, but the wrinkles around her eyes and the obvious black dye in her hair suggested that she was aging prematurely. Her cheap suit was immaculately tidy, her makeup neat and careful. "I hope I can be helpful," she continued, "but I don't know how - I've never even seen a contractor before."

"Is there a place I can plug this in?" Kouno interrupted. "Chief Shimura said there was a port in here somewhere…"

"Um, yes. I think it's over here." Tou rose from the table and shifted a box of files near the wall behind Kouno's chair, revealing an internet jack. "Didn't the chief give you the Wi-Fi password?"

"Wi-Fi's busted on this one; department's too cheap to buy me a new -" Kouno broke off with a glance at Misaki. "Uh, I mean…"

Misaki waved a hand. "Budgets are tight in every department right now. We'll make do with cables and cords until we can't any longer." She turned to Tou, a friendly smile on her face. "I'm sure things are the same in Sapporo."

The older woman laughed awkwardly, clearly still uncomfortable with the surprise interview. "Yes, I suppose so."

Out of the corner of her eye, Misaki could see pages of code flashing across the laptop screen; Aisha was using her own laptop to access Kouno's and the ethernet connection to read every system that the police were plugged into. Time to get focused, she decided. "Have you been following our investigation into the Syndicate at all?"

Tou nodded. "Of course; we all have. It's appalling, the idea that some of our own superiors might have been involved in a betrayal like that." She froze suddenly, her mouth open in embarrassment. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean -"

"It is appalling," Misaki said, overriding the apology. "That's why my team and I are working hard to uncover any and all Syndicate members both in the police and outside, no matter who they are." She paused, mentally reminding herself to soften her tone. This wasn't an interrogation - not yet, anyway. "We're looking into an angle that Detective Kouno here dug up a few days ago. It's connected to a case you worked on previously. I was hoping you could help answer some questions about that."

Tou nodded again, her professional demeanor snapping back into place. "Which case?"

Misaki made a show of flipping through her notes. "It was in '05; your unit busted a drug smuggling ring that was based out of a local warehouse owned by Tamade Shipping Company." Was that a twitch in the woman's expression, or had she imagined it? She had to be careful here - she wanted Tou worried, not panicked.

"I remember that case," Tou said. "A wannabe mobster. He broke off from the Tamaguchi family and tried to go it on his own. He didn't last very long before we shut him down," she added with a touch of pride.

"That was one of your first cases with Criminal Investigations, wasn't it?" Misaki leaned back in her seat a little, trying to appear relaxed. She'd watched Hei work in his Li guise a couple of times; it was amazing how just a friendly smile could get people to do exactly what he wanted them to, and cheerfully at that.

"Yes, that's right - I'd just been transferred out of Traffic Enforcement."

"That must have been a satisfying promotion," Misaki said, smiling kindly.

A slight crack in Tou's serious demeanor appeared. "It was. I spent years applying for a transfer, but was denied each time on the basis of 'lack of fit', even though my skill set fit their requirements." She sniffed. "It was obvious why they didn't want me - there were no women on the squad until I joined."

"I understand," Misaki sighed. "But perseverance usually pays off in this kind of situation."

"It was Superintendent Kirihara who made the difference, I think," Tou said, and Misaki's grip on her tea mug was suddenly white-knuckled. "He was leaning hard on all of the department heads to start hiring more women. Probably because you set such a good example."

Please don't bring my father into this, Misaki silently prayed. She didn't want to consider the possibility that he might be implicated in more than he'd already confessed to. "I wasn't trying to set an example," she said. "I just want to do the best that I can."

Tou nodded in understanding. "Police work has always been my passion; I know it's a dangerous job, but I want my son to be proud of me for doing it well."

"You have a son?" Misaki asked, feigning interest. "How old is he?"

"Thirteen," Tou said fondly. "He looks more like his father every day."

Something twisted in Misaki's gut, but she ignored it. "What does your husband think of you having such a risky job? I've had so many dates end on the first night as soon they find out what I do for a living." Beside her, Kouno tried unsuccessfully to cover up a choking cough.

Tou's laugh didn't reach her eyes, however. "He knew it made me happy, so it didn't bother him. But he passed away a few years ago; I've raised our son on our own since then."

Misaki knew this perfectly well; the file that her team had put together on Tou was thorough. However, she was caught completely off guard when Tou asked, "Do you have children, Director?"

"What? No," Misaki stammered.

"Well, when you do, you probably will keep working, no matter how dangerous things get, won't you? We have to do dangerous things, sometimes, to keep them safe."

"I suppose so," Misaki said quietly. She cleared her throat, suddenly uncomfortable. The personal discussion had done its work of helping Tou soften up, but Misaki had no interest in carrying that topic any further. "Back to Tamade Shipping - we're beginning to think that that company might have a tenuous connection to the Syndicate. A few months ago my team was investigating a case in which an employee - a truck driver - was targeted by a contractor."

Kouno had been the one to make that connection, after digging up the information that Tou's late husband's IT company had done work for Tamade. Misaki had never asked Hei about the KV-464 case, and now she was kicking herself over it - how could she have neglected such a potentially important detail?

But the case had seemed straightforward at the time: the Syndicate wanted KV-464 in order to study and manufacture the toxin that was part of his power; Huang had basically said as much that night she'd been captured and held in their safe house basement. Once he was out of play, she'd been too preoccupied with the questions surrounding Hei to spend much energy on the other contractor. Why had he been targeting the people that he had?

A possible answer had come from Park Tae-hee, the truck driver. KV-464 had targeted him, but BK-201 had killed him. Misaki remembered the question that Matsumoto had posed that night: if both contractors had been after Park, why hadn't Hei simply let KV-464 kill him, rather than get into a fight? But the fact was that Park had been killed after he'd been placed in police custody, out of KV-464's reach. The Syndicate wanted KV-464 alive - and Park dead, rather than let him talk to the police.

And what could Park possibly have told the police that the Syndicate wanted kept secret - unless it was information about the Syndicate themselves. That was why Hei had been after KV-464 in the first place, she was sure of it: the contractor had been targeting Syndicate members. The list of his victims was now a list of new leads; Matsumoto and Saitou were pursuing them back in Tokyo. When Kouno had made the connection between Tou, Tamade Shipping, and Park, Misaki knew that they must be on the right track.

"We have reason to believe that the driver was a low-level employee for the Syndicate," she continued. "He started working for Tamade shortly before your bust. Ultimately he was cleared of any implication in the drug ring; but I can't help thinking that where there's one connection, there might be more." She folded her arms and gazed at the ceiling, as if merely speculating out loud. "We know that Tamade has three warehouses here in Sapporo; I was wondering if, during the course of your investigation, you had noticed anything that didn't line up with the official books, that couldn't be explained by the mafia's presence."

Tou was fidgeting with a pen now. "Like what?"

"Like, for example, payments that don't make sense. Tamade is a national company; they don't have any international contracts, but money coming in from outside Japan would be a red flag."

"I don't recall anything like that," Tou said, her jawline tight. "I'd have to look up my old notes to be sure."

"Would you mind doing that?" Misaki asked with a sympathetic smile. "I hate to add any extra work to your load, but this may turn out to be vital to our investigation." What she really wanted to do was raid all three of Tamade's Sapporo warehouses; but so far she had no legal justification to do so - and thus no resources. A coordinated raid would take far more than her small team.

"Of course," Tou said after a moment's hesitation. "But - well, what kind of connection would the Syndicate have to a shipping company? I admit I don't know anything about the Syndicate beyond what I've read in the news reports and the interdepartmental memos, but they weren't involved in any sort of trafficking or smuggling, were they?"

Careful, Misaki warned herself. She needs to feel like it's the Syndicate who's in trouble, not herself. "No, they aren't. What the Syndicate traded in was information - data. And they needed somewhere to store it long-term. I suspect that they might be using one of Tamade's warehouses to store their servers. It's only a hunch at this point - I don't have enough evidence to raid any of their locations, or even to lean on the CEO. And if they are using the site, then surely the CEO would know about it, and I don't want to tip him off before I'm ready to make a move." She shrugged. "If they're even involved, that is."

"Right now it isn't looking like it," Kouno put it.

"But I have to follow every lead," Misaki added. "That's why anything that you can recall from your previous investigation will be of help."

"I'll go back through my notes," Tou said. "And ask around, see if anyone else from the team can add anything."

"Thank you," Misaki said. "Here's my card, in case you do think of something. I'll be in town for two more days. Can I get your number as well, in case I think of another question?"

Tou nodded, and Kouno wrote down the number. It was the same as the one that Aisha had tracked from Hourai's phone, Misaki noted.

"Well, I think that's - oh, excuse me," she said, as her phone rang right on cue. "I have to take this. Kouno, can you finish up here? I'll meet you outside."

Excusing herself from the table, she strode through the station and out into the main lobby, walking quickly lest she run into someone from Foreign Affairs. "Did you get what we needed?" she asked into the phone as she exited the building.

"It was a pain in the ass, but I think so," Aisha answered. "I couldn't read half of it."

Misaki glanced up and down the street before crossing to Kaede's car. A cold breeze was kicking up; she shivered despite her jacket. "Kouno and I will help you go over whatever you were able to download."

She climbed into the passenger seat, ending the call as she did, and turned to Aisha. "But from what you could read, what did it look like?"

The contractor shrugged. "The energy usage of all three warehouses has been more or less stable for the past six months. I did notice something weird though."

"What?"

"The one near the airport. It draws the most power usually, because it handles refrigerated stock. But the trucks that are routed in and out of there aren't classed for refrigeration. I think that's what it says, anyway. Not all their records are online, and I still can't read all of the Japanese," she said, an edge of frustration appearing in her voice. Aisha had been making a lot of progress with spoken Japanese, and could recognize characters, but was having quite a bit of trouble linking the two.

"Why are you talking about warehouses?" Kaede asked. "I though you were hacking into police records."

"We're trying to narrow down which of Tamade's warehouses to check into," Misaki said. "I thought that data from the electrical company might help, but Aisha can't access it directly, not without being connected to the system itself."

"I can," the contractor put in, almost defensively. "But it would take about ten times as long." She'd explained the technical details, but Misaki hadn't been able to follow at all.

"The headquarters building uses the same company; I thought Aisha might be able to use the billing system to get into their databases. And it worked," Misaki said, nodding at the contractor.

Kaede frowned at that, but he didn't say anything. A moment later, Kouno opened the back door and dropped into the car.

"Damn, Chief, you're pretty scary when you're nice," he said without preamble.

She shot him a glare, but he only grinned.

"That's more like it."

Misaki snorted. "Did she give you anything more?"

He shook his head. "Nah, not really. She just asked me what it was like working under you, and investigating contractors."

"Just out of curiosity?"

"It did seem as if she was trying to feel out how much trouble she might be in, if you caught her doing something she shouldn't be. Asking how hard you were on Hourai and, um, Superintendent Kirihara. That sort of thing. But I don't know, I could be reading too much into it." He hesitated. "You know, with Hourai dead, could be that no one's giving her orders anymore. We can lean on her all we want, but if she has nothing to give…"

Misaki sighed. She found herself almost wishing that that was true, even if meant another dead end to the investigation. If Tou didn't have a handler to report to any longer, she had no one to contact that they could track. That would mean working on her to turn herself in…which meant leaning on her family. And that was the last thing that Misaki wanted to do. She actually liked Tou, completely against her natural inclination - which was to label her traitor rather than officer.

This is what happens when you care, she thought to herself sourly. How did Hei manage to live like this for so long? He always claimed that he didn't actually care, that he was just putting on an act; but she knew it was a lie. At least they had a potential lead in the warehouse now; she was anxious to get to the hotel and start going over the data. "I know. We'll see what -"

"She's texting," Aisha said suddenly.

Misaki spun in her seat. "Who to?"

Aisha held her phone cupped in her hands; both phone and contractor were surrounded by a pale blue glow. "I don't recognize the number. It says, Just had a visit from Kirihara. Asking about servers."

"Damn, Chief, looks like you were right!" Kouno said.

"We all pulled this one together," Misaki said distractedly. "Aisha, can you track back -"

"No," the contractor said testily. "I can monitor one phone's activity, or I can trace the number of the other phone. I can't do both at the same time. Not unless I have a break first; I'm tired."

"Tired?" Kouno frowned. "You're making your payment, aren't you? Can't you keep using your power as long as you're wearing your hat?"

"Technically. But it's like, even if you're running a marathon, and you keep eating…you have to stop running sometime, right? You can't run forever. I can't use my power forever, it's…I can do more if I have a break." She rubbed her temple as if she had a headache.

"Just focus on Tou's phone for now," Misaki said. They'd been relying quite a lot on Aisha's ability in the past few days; it hadn't occurred to her at all that she might be under a strain because of it. "Let's see what sort of reply she gets first, before worrying about who sent it."

They sat in silence, the long minutes stretching out before them. Aisha remained focused on the phone, but she passed Kouno her laptop so that he could try and decipher the data that she'd pulled from the electric company records. Kaede fiddled with his own phone; from time to time he would glance over at Misaki, as if he wanted to say something - but he never did.

Misaki, for her own part, was finding it hard to focus. Her mind kept drifting back to her interview with Tou, wondering what it must have been like to try and raise her son on her own, after losing her husband. It couldn't have been easy. She sighed to herself. An unexpected but long sought-after promotion from someone high up in the police hierarchy, the promise of extra income to help support her child; whoever had recruited Tou had probably had an easy job of it. Misaki wanted to blame her for succumbing to the temptation, for being weak enough to abuse the trust the public was putting in her as an officer of the law - but she found that she couldn't.

It was frustrating as hell.

"Here's a reply," Aisha said, her quiet voice breaking into the silence at last. "Don't talk. Meet at usual place 22:00. We'll take care of it."

"That's not ominous at all," Kouno muttered. "I wonder where the usual place is?"

"I suppose we'll find out," Misaki said. "Let's all go to the hotel and have a rest. Aisha, when you're up to it start tracing that other number. We've got until eleven tonight to figure out our next move."

The hotel wasn't far from the police station; they made the short trip in silence. Kaede pulled up under the portico to let them out before he headed off to do errands of his own.

"We'll need the car tonight," Misaki told him as Aisha and Kouno started unloaded the trunk. "If I drop you off at your dinner, can you catch a ride back with one of your friends?"

"Sure," he said, staring straight ahead through the windshield.

Misaki nodded her thanks; she started to open the car door, but he said, "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

"What is it?" She was anxious to get up to her room and start going over the details of what they knew so far; anything to get a jump start on their next strategy.

Kaede drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, seeming to consider his words. "I just wanted to warn you to be careful."

Misaki resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "This isn't exactly my first operation -"

"That's not what I mean. I mean, be careful with your methods."

"What are you talking about?"

He sighed. "Look, when I knew you in school, you stood by the letter of the law, no matter what. Your goal was to help people by upholding justice, and truth, and all those other platitudes. Coming from anyone else, it would have sounded ridiculously naive, but you believed it, and you've stuck by that your whole career. It's why you've gotten so many people on your side against the Syndicate - you're incorruptible, and everyone knows it. The Syndicate were fools if they honestly thought that they could ever recruit you. But lately…I think you've been spending too much time around contractors."

"Kaede, I know you don't like contractors, but -"

"But you're starting to think like them. Bending the law here and there, justifying the means as long as it benefits your investigation."

"That's not what I'm doing," Misaki said quietly, but the twist in her heart told her that he might have a point. And he didn't even know the half of it.

"Be careful. Because if you're not, this case is going to swallow you whole, and you aren't going to like the person who emerges on the other side. That's all I'm saying."

Misaki didn't know what to say to that; but she was saved from answering by the buzzing of her phone. She pulled it from her pocket - and her heart skipped a beat at the message on the screen. "Shit."

"What is it?" Kaede asked worriedly.

An involuntary shiver ran down her spine. "An alert from Astronomics - HG-139's star has shifted out of Tokyo's local sphere, and into Sapporo's. He's either on his way here, or he's here already. God damn it; so much for doing things quietly."