Chapter XXVI: Presents, accounted for.

1310hrs, 11 November 2013, "Top Secret" Medical Facility, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan

"While wrapped gifts are not prohibited, if a bag alarms our security officers may have to unwrap a gift to take a close look inside. We recommend passengers wrap gifts after their flight or ship them ahead of time, to avoid the possibility of having to open them during the screening process." Transportation Security Administration Website "Traveling with Food or Gifts."

"What the hell is in this box-thingy?" Artemis asked, poking at it with his pen.

"Hey, I'm just glad that I got it past security," Amy said. They were back in that conference room, waiting for Luna and Mina to show up. Lita, Raye and Serena were still on assignment, and Iwasaki had seen it fit to bring Amy and Mina back for a bit more rest and relaxation.

"How's the rest of the team doing?" Amy asked Artemis.

"Luna is having trouble getting Raye and Serena to stop arguing," he replied, still examining the box. He picked it up; it only seemed to weigh less than a 100 grams, despite the material it was made out of. "But that's about it. They're stalking some target up in North China or something like that."

"Hmm." Amy picked up the box and shook it. Nothing.

"I don't know what to make of this thing," she told him.

"Can you take it down to the lab?" Artemis asked her.

"I don't know what they're doing down there, but the basement is closed off for now." Mina entered the room with Luna.

"Did you scan it with your HUD eyepiece?" Luna asked Amy.

"I already did so, and it just came back with some junk data," she replied, poking at the tablet computer that had all of her information from the scan on it. "It's emanating a signal, but I can't pin down what it is."

"Why are you using this tablet?" Luna asked confusedly. She picked it up (it was an Acer A500), and examined it briefly before giving it back to Amy. "This is last year's model."

"That's all they had," Amy said. "And I didn't want an iPad."

"Nobody wants an iPad," Artemis chipped in. He was wrong, of course.

"I beg to differ, but I wanted to put Linux on mine," Amy stated. "This was the one that I cracked."

"That's why this is different," Luna said, noting that she had customized the kernel of an Ubuntu OS to run for a tablet computer.

"It makes things a lot easier."

"Hey, you could have been using Windows," Artemis pointed out.

"And this team would have fallen apart extremely fast," replied Amy. "Not that we needed that operating system to make this team go bonkers."

"That's true," Luna said, looking at her own computer at the live data feed that was coming in from the SAILOR team in the field. "I've been trying to get Lita, Raye and Serena to get on this target, but they aren't listening very well."

"What's wrong with them?"

"I don't know. Just like everything else in this program," she replied. "Anyway, so you don't know what this box is?"

"Nope," Mina said. "It weighs a little bit under 100grams, is completely rectangular…"

"And it doesn't have anything in it?"

"X-Rays show nothing, my scans show nothing," Amy replied. "And I've dropped it several times, hit it with a hammer, held it to an open flame, everything."

"Where did you do that if the lab's closed?" Artemis asked, confused.

Amy blushed in embarrassment. "Oh…in my room."

"That's why the fire alarm went off earlier today," Mina said. "Nice one."

"You're welcome."

"Huh…" Luna looked at the box, holding it up to the light. "Where did you get this again?"

"Ah…yeah…that's a good question," Amy replied, trying to think of something to say. "We…we got it from a source!"

Mina looked at Amy. Nice one, the expression on her face said in annoyance.

"What source would that be?" Luna asked suspiciously. "Artemis, do you know of any sources in India?"

"Not that I know of." He was still trying to play dumb as well, but he was curious about everything that had gone down in India.

"Look, we got it from some guy okay?"

"Did you talk to that Sudhir Reddy person?" Luna interrogated, putting down the box and staring at Amy. She felt the room drop a couple of degrees.

"Ah…"

"You did, didn't you?" Luna's eyes narrowed. She did not like where this was heading. Luna cast a look at Artemis; he knew more than she did, but she wasn't going to tear into him…yet.

"Well…" Mina said.

Luna sighed. "I'm going to have to report this to Colonel Iwasaki," she said in an exasperated tone. "I can't have you and the other SAILOR team deviating from mission objectives. I have enough trouble as it is with those three." She started to walk toward the door.

"No wait, look, we have a reason," Mina protested, jumping in front of the door of the conference room.

"What is it?" Luna said in a dull voice.

"We thought…uh…we thought…" The normally suave Mina was out of things to say. "Look, some things weren't adding up, okay?"

"Like…?"

"That Sudhir person didn't have anything to do with terrorism," Amy butted in, giving some breathing room for Mina.

"We asked him for…"

"Oh great," Luna interrupted. "You just threw out all your training and approached a target, asking him for information."

"As I was saying," Amy continued, glaring at her comm officer. "We approached him for information because his file was not adding up to what we were seeing in the field."

"And what did you find?" Luna asked.

"We found that his boss, Dilap Desai or D.D…"

"So that's why you asked me to do a background check on that Dilep Desai person," Artemis said, finally putting the puzzle pieces together.

"Yeah, that's why," Amy said, wondering how the hell Artemis made it through officer candidate school. "He was in contact with some militant groups as a youth, and a Chinese spy, Hao Zhong…"

"Who?" Luna asked.

"Hao."
"What?" Luna was egging them on now.

"Okay, enough with that!" Amy snapped. "You might know him, he's the man Kim Yejun was in contact with here when he blew us all up."

"I've heard of him, yes." Luna walked around the room now, arms crossed against her military uniform. "He went missing some time ago, if I recall correctly."

Amy shook her head at that statement. "Hao Zhong…despite what's been said, is alive and in Hong Kong, waiting for D.D to deliver this box to him."

"And how do you know that this D.D person was supposed to deliver this package?" Luna pressed.

"Ah. We went and talked to him."

"Goddammit!" Luna snapped at Amy. "For crying out loud, you're supposed to be the smart one!"

"Yeah, about that…" Amy blushed a little bit, but tried to maintain her composure at the deteriorating conversation.

"Luna, it's not her fault, but she did…" Artemis spoke up, but trailed off when Luna turned her attention to him.

"What did you do?" she snapped.

"I helped to find D.D's location, and get Amy and Mina out a sticky situation…"

"Would this 'sticky situation' happen to involve fireworks?" Luna asked, sarcastically. Even that news report had reached Japan, on the "wacky news" segment.

"More like, a very heavily armed paramilitary unit," Artemis replied, scratching the back of his head in embarrassment.

"What the hell is wrong with all of you?!" Luna exclaimed, edging closer to general insanity.

"We had to pursue this lead," Mina protested. "Otherwise, we wouldn't have been able to get to the bottom of all this."

"And what is 'the bottom of all this'?" Luna said.

"There's something wrong here, with this team, with the missions we go on, with the people we target, with the equipment we use, everything," Amy replied. "I believe the Nakanishi Group is manipulating us, and we're being played as fools."

Luna stared at the two them for a while, pondering the (inane) information that she had received.

"Look, I'm still kind of skeptical of this entire thing," Luna said, even after all the evidence that Amy and Mina had given them.

"Let's get this straight," Artemis added. "A large multinational company is pulling the strings from behind the scenes and we're all being used in a big international puppet show." Despite Luna's misgivings though, he felt that there had been something going on in the shadows as well. "It sounds implausible, but I guess it could work."

"I wouldn't put it like that, but…" Amy started to say more, but Luna cut her off.

"I still have my doubts about this entire situation," she replied.

"Think about it, Luna," Artemis said. "We get all these assignments, targeting supposedly corrupt CEOs, corporations and stuff, and we go in, disrupt operations and shift the blame to third party actors. Nobody likes bankers, CEOs, stockbrokers and all those finance people nowadays but when we do our operations, a power vacuum opens up."

"And guess which actor comes in and fills the vacuum?" Amy asked rhetorically.

"The Nakanishi Group," Luna sighed, throwing up her hands in resignation. "I get it. But do you have any proof that the Nakanishi Group is up to all of this?"

"Um…"

"Besides this box?" Amy said. "I have some emails..."

"That you got from Dr. Kawasaki," Luna interrupted. "I know about that."

"Sorry." Amy made a note to cover her tracks more carefully next time.

"Look," Luna said. "We still have several missions to do. This has my interest, but I am not going to come to any conclusions over this situation unless you have some serious proof."

"What about the meeting in Hong Kong that D.D was supposed to have?" Mina asked of her.

"I don't want to know any more of this," Luna said. "If you want to investigate further, you do so. But I'm going to stay out of it." She looked at Artemis. "You do so, as well."

With that, she left, taking Artemis out of the room. He gave an "I'm sorry" look and disappeared behind the doors.

"That went well," Mina griped to Amy. "Now what?"

"I hope that they don't tell the other people in the program," Amy said, accessing some more data on her tablet computer. "All we can do now is wait for an excuse to get out of this place and meet Zhong…Chung…that guy in Hong Kong."

Amy went back into her room after a couple of hours, extremely frustrated at today's events. This stupid, goddamned box was giving her headaches. She looked at it, on her desk. It taunted her, screaming to reveal its secrets. Open me! If you can, it seemed to say.

Amy tried one last desperate attempt to open the thing before going to bed. She slammed it on her desk. Nothing. Again. Nothing. She hit it harder and harder, venting whatever anger and frustration she had accumulated over the last couple of months.

One of the sections suddenly came off. Amy looked at it in surprise, not actually thinking that brute-forcing this thing was actually going to work. Looking at the box more carefully, she saw that she could pop a flat section of it off, and reveal what was inside it.

Amy did so, and a keycard was taped to the inside. It was one of those cards with the microchip in it that you scanned or put in a reader to allow access.

"Well…" Amy said out loud. "That was certainly a new development." She had to call Luna about this.

Five minutes later, a very sleepy eyed Luna was standing outside her door after repeated phone calls to her room.

"Luna, look, look at this." Amy gestured inside.

Luna was not very happy about being woken up, especially after spending hours arguing with Colonel Iwasaki, the other SAILOR team members, and now the supposed smart one of the team was going nuts as well.

"What is it?" she replied, groggily.

"It's the box! I got it to open."

That got her attention. Luna quickly wiped away the sleep from her eyes and walked over to Amy's desk. She picked up the metal box and examined it.

"Looks like you hit a weak spot on the corner there," Luna noted. "I guess that's what did it in."

She put the box down and picked up the keycard. "It looks like the ones we carry around all the time at the base." She had hers' on a lanyard, with military training stressing that they needed to carry those ID cards around at all times.

"Dunno how that's going to help you now though. Perhaps that Zhong…Chung…guy will elaborate further."

"I hope so."

Luna stared some more at the keycards before excusing herself. "Well, I've got a long day tomorrow, and I need to get some sleep. Thanks for letting me know though. It's certainly a good development." She still wasn't convinced of the situation that Amy was proposing. An international conspiracy? Right. For all she knew, those keycards meant nothing, and Amy was on a government sponsored ego trip.

"You're welcome." Luna left the room, leaving Amy to go bed, finally satisfied that they were going somewhere. She got back into bed, and was fast asleep in minutes, happy that something was making sense (for her) all of a sudden.