"I remember when we woke up, there was an issue with the time," Naoko said. "Our memories blanked around noon, but when we woke up, it was closer to 3."
"And we weren't, like, active for most of that time, right?" Ishi responded.
Naoko took a moment to think. "That seems about right. According to the file, Takeshi died around 12:30. If enough stuff happened for one of us to be killed within the first half hour…who's to say we were active for the full three hours?"
"So, we were unconscious for a good deal of time after Takeshi's death," Yori summarized. "That seems possible. The problem is, we don't yet know enough about the circumstances behind his death to determine whether or not us being awake would have prevented his death, or led to more deaths."
"So, the truth serum also makes you fall unconscious?" Kimi asked. "Is that where we're going with this?"
Naoko supposed that was a bit of a convenient explanation for the obvious time discrepancy. Certainly, they'd all fallen asleep at some point, since before things went dark for them, they were sitting or standing around the common room, and the next thing they remembered, they were on the floor. However, if they had fallen asleep around the same time that Takeshi had died…what would that mean for their case, exactly? Would they have been able to prevent his death otherwise? Yori was right, they didn't really know enough to answer that question. However, Naoko figured there must've at least been some evidence to show that those affected by the truth serum fell unconscious some time afterwards. Again, straight-up asking Bankei seemed like a poor idea, but…
"Hang on," he said. "I think we might be onto something here."
"Why do you think that?" Yori asked.
"Do you remember when you were searching the medical room, and I went to go check on what Bankei was doing?" Naoko began to explain. "Well, I saw her in front of the stairs, on the same floor, and she specifically asked me to escort her to her room."
"Really?" Eryu replied, sounding somewhat skeptical. "She wasn't snooping around the fourth floor at the time? She was just…in front of the stairs, wanting to go to her room? I guess that is a bit strange, but…I don't really know if that proves anything."
"Did Bankei say she wanted to go to her room because she was sleepy?" Ishi asked.
"I don't remember her saying anything like that, no," Naoko replied.
"Well, as we've established," Bankei weighed in, "I don't have memories of that interaction. Care to give me a short 'recap', as they say?"
"I guess if it's for everyone's benefit," Naoko shrugged. "You apparently fell when trying to go up the stairs unassisted. I helped you up, you openly criticized the tea in the coffee room, you claimed to somehow know us better than we know ourselves, then I took you upstairs. That's the basic gist."
"Hm." Bankei nodded to herself slowly. "I see. Well, if that's what happened, I can't exactly disprove it."
"Wait, you had the instant tea before, and you didn't like it?" Ishi asked, surprised.
"Of course," Bankei shrugged. "Well, obviously, I don't remember the first time I had any of it. A rather embarrassing mistake to make twice, if I say so myself. I remember pouring out a near-full cup of the dreadful garbage before you and your now-dead friend Takeshi walked into the room."
"Seriously?" Ishi replied, seeming irritated. "No wonder you seemed like you were in a bad mood."
"So, Bankei fell, huh?" Kimi asked. "Damn. Wish I could've been there."
"I'd make a remark about that being funny, but I don't want to risk a lie by being sarcastic," Bankei replied annoyedly. "Presumably, I stumbled a tad and lost my footing. That doesn't necessarily mean I was acting like some sort of drunken wretch, such as yourself."
"That was one time!" Kimi shouted.
"Once is enough," Bankei stood fast.
"Funny you call Kimi a drunk," Mareo interrupted. "What I'm hearing thus far makes the truth serum seem much like alcohol in terms of effects. We have disinhibition, lack of long term memory storage, and eventual unconsciousness."
"Oh yeah," Naoko replied, seeing the connection. "That's a good point. It's like that one phrase. What was it? 'In vino veritas'?"
"A classic Latin phrase," Bankei replied. "I suppose since you're starting to connect the dots, I might as well admit that, when IMONO and Ishi made me fall under the effects of the truth serum, I awoke in my own bed both times."
"Really?" Naoko asked, surprised at her openness. "Well, okay, perfect. So, now what?"
They'd gone through quite a lot of deductive work already, and, unfortunately, the amount of progress they actually made seemed unclear at the moment. They now knew with a good deal of certainty that they were drugged with the truth serum. But that was just a small part of the mystery in front of them. They had barely even brought up Takeshi's death at all. Perhaps the argument they were heading into would allow them to make good progress? Naoko could only hope.
"We can be fairly sure now that the truth serum was what we were drugged with," Yori supposed. "Now we need to figure out how it got into our systems. Us having ingested it makes the most sense, logically speaking."
"What if we inhaled it?" Eryu suggested. "That's how the LITA-22 entered our systems."
"That depends," Mareo replied. "Do we know whether or not it maintains its effects in a gaseous state?"
"It could," Eryu surmised. "It'd definitely be the easiest way to drug us if IMONO did it."
"Yeah, I guess IMONO doing it kinda makes sense?" Ishi supposed. "I mean, there can't be that many people who'd even know how to make the stuff."
"I agree with that," Naoko weighed in. "One important thing about the chemical compounds is that only a few of us have been able to take any sort of action to experiment with them."
"Right," Yori agreed. "Since IMONO hasn't been explicit as to which compound is the truth serum, we had to figure it out ourselves. Prior to this incident, as far as we know, Naoko, Eryu, Mareo and myself all knew what the truth serum was, and thus, were the only ones that could determine what components we could and couldn't use."
"So, even if it somehow wasn't IMONO," Kimi began to summate, "it could've only been one of you four?"
"That's what it seems like," Yori replied. "But, again, there's still the issue of what we're allowed to do."
"Well, we've been saying so far that the stuff used to create the truth serum is off-limits," Eryu pointed out. "Thus, making the truth serum seems impossible for us to do ourselves."
"Are we really sure about that?" Mariko asked, unconvinced. "I've been thinking about that, and…I think maybe we might be missing something."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Kimi responded, clearly puzzled.
"Well," Mariko replied uneasily, "we've been saying that the stuff for the truth serum is off-limits, but what if there's a loophole?"
"What kind of loophole?" Naoko asked.
"Well, IMONO said that we're not allowed to dispose of or destroy any of the stuff in the lab, right?" Mariko replied.
"That's right," Mareo confirmed. "It's even been added to the rules section on all our devices."
"But we can still use them, mostly," Mariko pointed out. "You've been talking about using them to make stuff, after all. So there's some ambiguity there."
"I remember Ishi making a direct inquiry to IMONO about the specifics of that rule," Yori chimed in. "She claimed that what was important were the components of the truth serum."
"YES, THAT IS CORRECT."
"Can you elaborate on that for us?" Yori asked.
"I SUPPOSE I CAN. THE COMPONENTS USED FOR THE TRUTH SERUM ARE ONLY MEANT TO BE USED TO CREATE MORE TRUTH SERUM. WHILE MUCH OF IT CAN THEORETICALLY BE USED TO CREATE OTHER COMPOUNDS, I WOULD COUNT DOING SO AS DISPOSING OF THOSE COMPONENTS, AS THAT WOULD LIMIT, OR EVEN PREVENT, THE CREATION OF MORE TRUTH SERUM."
"Really?" Naoko responded. "Well, that wording kinda makes it sound like, technically, we could create some of the serum ourselves if we wanted to."
"AN INTERESTING OBSERVATION, NAOKO. I'M AFRAID, HOWEVER, THAT I HAVE SAID MORE THAN ENOUGH ALREADY. YOU SHOULD WORK THIS OUT AMONG YOURSELVES."
"Fuck," Kimi swore. "D'you hear that, guys? IMONO isn't telling us whether or not this loophole might've fucked us over."
"Well, if we can use the other components to create the other compounds," Eryu reasoned, "then that probably doesn't count as disposing of or destroying anything. Granted, we've also thrown out a couple of compounds after making them, so maybe that's another loophole?"
"I think what IMONO's trying to say is fairly clear," Yori said. "The rules as they're written may allow us to create, and potentially even use, the truth serum. If this is the case, we need to determine whether or not any of us actually did so."
"That all makes sense to me," Bankei replied. "I'm glad we've managed to get to this point, honestly. The stuff before was interesting and all, but this. This ought to be where it all comes together."
"You're excited for this?" Ishi asked, seeming more troubled than surprised.
"Oh, absolutely," Bankei smiled. "This is the part where we have to start pointing fingers, is it not? The possibility that one of us is behind our memories being inhibited has been raised, and with that comes the question of who it was."
"Yeah, and apparently, it could've been anyone," Kimi replied semi-sarcastically. "And that means that you're also a suspect, dumbass."
"Is that so?" Bankei replied devilishly. "Well, I should point out that pointing the finger at me is not going to be enough."
"Well, why the hell not?" Kimi responded angrily.
"Do you really not remember what was stated just a little while ago?" Bankei asked. "It was stated, by Yori herself, that as far as they knew, only she and three others knew what the truth serum actually was. That leaves a rather limited number of suspects, does it not?"
"Just because we figured it out by ourselves doesn't mean that someone else couldn't figure it out independently," Naoko argued.
"How did you figure out what the truth serum was, exactly?" Mariko asked.
"Simple," Eryu began. "Naoko took measurements of all the chemical components, we had Ishi and Takeshi trick Bankei into lying about something, and then we took new measurements of the components, to see which were used to create more truth serum to replace the amount injected into Bankei."
"Don't know how 'simple' that is, but okay," Kimi said.
"So, there was a reason for you two's inquiries," Bankei responded, looking over at Ishi. "You were tricking me. I had thought there was something odd about the exchange…I suppose now I have confirmation of having been manipulated by Ishi twice. That's…awfully embarrassing, if I do say so myself."
"Yeah, yeah," Kimi replied dismissively. "You're embarrassed because she's dumb, and still managed to trick you. Real important. But anyway, so what? Since you guys were the only ones to keep track of the measurements, nobody else could figure it out?"
"Well," Yori supposed, "it is possible that one of us - besides Naoko, Eryu, Mareo, and myself - could have noticed the same discrepancy that we did."
"Hang on a second," Eryu interjected. "The day we made the second list of measurements, we did so fairly early, just after the morning was over. And we got to work in the lab not long after that. If someone else tried to come along afterwards and try the same thing, they'd probably get tripped up by the work that we did in the lab already."
"What about the first time Bankei was injected with truth serum?" Mareo asked. "Her device would need to have been refilled then too, wouldn't it?"
Eryu considered what Mareo said, and seemed to eventually agree with him. "Well, alright, that does sound like it'd be a more lenient time-frame," he replied.
"Anyone could have used a method not dissimilar to yours," Bankei pointed out. "They could have kept the knowledge they gained from its usage secret."
"Now that's a big load, and you know it!" Ishi argued.
"Eh-heh," Bankei chuckled. "Is it now? Do you think, then, that there could have been some other way they could have known the true name of the truth serum?"
"I don't know!" Ishi responded angrily. "There could be another way to figure it out, I guess, but we're not gonna argue about it for your sake!"
"Of course you're not," Bankei replied. "You're going to argue about it for your own sakes. You all know just as well as I do how these trials go. You have to argue amongst yourselves so that you can arrive at the truth, and uncover the true culprit. So go on, everyone! Make your argument!"
Obviously, a lot of them were frustrated, Naoko included. Bankei was really starting to enjoy this, and was letting them all know it very well. She was sticking them with the unenviable task of making harsh, accusatory arguments as to who it was that could have drugged them. Hell, in order to figure that out, they'd need to have some idea of who could've known how to make the drug in the first place. It could've been any one of them, right? That didn't exactly trim down the list of potential suspects.
"Four of us definitely knew how to make the truth serum," Yori said. "All of them, myself included, were also at least partly involved in arranging the get-together."
"So you're all prime suspects," Mariko replied sadly. "I can't say I ever paid attention to the truth serum stuff, myself, so…"
"There must've still been, like, a way for other people to know what it was," Ishi argued. "Or, at least, like, a way to use it."
"A way to use it?" Bankei repeated back to her curiously.
"How would anyone have been able to use it if they didn't know how to make it?" Mareo inquired.
"Well, like," Ishi began, "IMONO. IMONO knows how to make the stuff. What if IMONO, like, gave it to them?"
"Why would IMONO do that, though?" Kimi asked confusedly. "That just sounds like a really fucking stupid thing to do, even for IMONO."
"Because IMONO wanted them to do it," Ishi replied simply. "Because IMONO…needed me to do it."
"Huh?" Naoko responded. He was planning on coming up with some sort of interjection when it became appropriate, but…what Ishi had just said really caught him off guard.
"Excuse me?" Bankei said, trying and failing to hide her anger. "Did I mishear you, or are you just being an utter moron?"
"Neither, probably," Ishi replied, a troubled look plastered on her face. "I'm just saying, IMONO…made me do it."
"Ishi?" Eryu replied, baffled. "You drugged us?!"
Ishi looked down in shame. "Yes. I didn't want to, but, y'know. IMONO said that the stuff doesn't, like, work properly when it's a gas, or something like that."
"But why did IMONO have you do that?" Mariko asked, looking increasingly worried.
"Because…" Ishi began to say, looking like she didn't want to say it.
"Because what?" Mareo asked, his curiosity obviously piqued.
Ishi, after some deliberation, took a deep breath and finished the sentence for them. "Because I've been working for IMONO."
"What?!" Naoko exclaimed, many others doing the same along with him. The only one that didn't look particularly shocked or surprised was Bankei. Probably because she was more outraged than anything else.
"You li-!" Bankei attempted to say, tripping on her own words in her anger. "You contemptible slut! What do you think you're doing right now?!"
"I'm putting a stop to this," Ishi replied, steadfast despite her obvious sense of guilt. "You think it's fun when we have to go around for lord knows how long, throwing around ideas until something sticks. Well, guess what? We're not doing that this time. I'm owning up to what I did!"
"Wait," Naoko interjected. "You're not trying to say that you killed Takeshi, are you?"
"No!" Ishi insisted. "Or, well, I don't actually know. My memory is, like, still messed up, but I know what I did before this. I drugged your drinks, and the tea. You had some stuff picked out, and I put in the truth serum that IMONO made for me when you all were asleep. Well, that, and I put it in the tea after it was made."
"Is that why you suggested we have the get-together in the first place?" Yori asked. It was hard to tell how she was feeling just by looking, but based on her tone, it kind of sounded like she was unhappy.
"Well…yeah," Ishi replied guiltily. "I'm sorry. It's just, I was supposed to make sure you were all in the same room, and stuff, because that's what IMONO wanted."
"Okay, hold on," Eryu interjected. "This is a lot, so, first of all, what the hell do you mean you've been 'working for IMONO'? How long have you been working for it?"
"For the last…five-ish days?" Ishi supposed. "It was the same day that the fourth floor was opened up to us."
"For five days?!" Eryu responded, clearly surprised. "Well, why would you even agree to help IMONO in the first place?!"
"Well…" Ishi took a moment to mentally prepare herself. "After we searched the medical room and split off, I started thinking about what we talked about. Can we really be safe with Bankei around? Why would IMONO think that truth serum would be enough? I'm pretty sure we agreed that that, like, wasn't enough. So I went to IMONO and complained about it, and IMONO made the suggestion that…y'know, I'd do some stuff for it, here and there, and it'd do some stuff for me."
"What do you mean by that?" Naoko asked.
"Well, IMONO wanted you guys to, like, be more honest, for one thing," Ishi explained. "After you made it clear that you've been thinking things that you've been trying to keep secret, IMONO wanted to, like, have a way of knowing just what you've been planning, and stuff."
"You agreed to rat out the group?" Mariko responded, surprised.
"I did," Ishi said. "I'm…I'm sorry."
"What were you getting out of the deal?" Naoko asked.
"IMONO basically promised to put little messages into my phone's inbox whenever it noticed Bankei was, like, doing anything weird or suspicious," Ishi explained. "Usually, it wasn't much, but sometimes I'd be told that she was, like, looking at stuff on the fourth floor. Papers and stuff, y'know."
"Is that how you knew about Bankei snooping around the fourth floor?" Kimi questioned.
"Yeah, it was," Ishi admitted, ashamed.
"So, IMONO wanted you to gather us all in one place, and then drug us, right?" Naoko asked. "What was that supposed to achieve?"
"Well, like," Ishi said with a huff, "I guess some of the stuff I'd already told IMONO about wasn't good enough. After I got my hands on Hoshi's notebook, IMONO wanted to know what all the fuss was about, and I guess we took a look at it together."
"You told IMONO about that, too?" Mariko responded, seemingly genuinely hurt.
"IMONO didn't really give me a choice," Ishi said regretfully. "I know it was important to you guys, but I couldn't really lie about it at that point. If I did, then IMONO would probably find out, and then the deal would be off. Hell, I think IMONO even said something about telling everyone else about our deal."
"I SAID THAT THAT WAS A POSSIBLE PUNISHMENT IF YOU ATTEMPTED TO MISLEAD ME."
"See?" Ishi said, motioning to the screen. "So, IMONO got really mad, or something, and was like 'I need to learn what else they're keeping secret from me'. To do that, IMONO told me some stuff about the truth serum, and said I could use some on you, so you'd tell IMONO everything."
"But the truth serum was specifically for Bankei, wasn't it?" Yori asked.
"I guess this was an exception," Ishi shrugged. "So, I guess I kinda hoped that things would work out, and you'd all suspect IMONO did something, and that I wasn't involved. That's what IMONO said would probably happen. But now…Seems like I probably just got Takeshi killed."
INTERMISSION