Chapter 4: Itineraries

"You found a what hidden in the zoo?" Aito Iwasaki, the UN Attorney General, glared through his monitor onto our HUD's. A 38-year-old veteran of the UN justice system, and a native of Japan, he was the legal architect of the power shift to Tokyo and had capitalized on it immensely. While the IUA was by charter an extension of the Attorney General's office, I had only ever talked to him once before, at a charity banquet held for the benefit of IUA officers.

"A stasis facility, sir." The Attorney General wore a combination of relief and frustration on his tired face. Al had done some digging and had found no other such facilities in government records. As far as we could tell, this one was the first one to be discovered.

But not the last.

"Any indication of those inside being government officials?" Unfortunately, without any leads on the facility's purpose besides going directly to its operators (who had a strained relationship with the IUA, who they called an "illegal paramilitary organization run by hooligans"), we had to return to square one, our own logic, to figure it out.

"No sir." I replied.

"Did any of them rank above the 80th percentile on the CSE?"

"None, sir." Malaya answered.

"Are any of them convicted felons?"

"No sir."

"Then who the hell were they?" Before either of us could say anything, Al responded for us.

"As far as I can tell sir, casualties."

"I beg your pardon?" Mr. Iwasaki asked.

"They all had been listed as dead in official government records due to disease, and had been supposedly cremated."

"Which obviously didn't happen." I added.

"Indeed." A long silence ensued, broken only by the sound of Malaya and I's footsteps as we traversed the barren streets approaching our headquarters. "You all have put me in a very delicate situation here. Commander Stone and Lieutenant Commander Nakano have been bombarding my office with requests to meet with you above ground, Sergeant." I cringed. Jennifer Nakano, a Japanese American from San Francisco. From what I had heard during shore leave, she was an extremely efficient, albeit passive-aggressive leader. I had no qualms about her personality. It was the department she worked for that made me quiver.

"Didn't she run the Deep Storage Preservation Facility in Sub-Tokyo?" Alastair asked.

"Yes Al. She did." I replied dryly. The DSPF was a last-ditch effort to save the best a brightest of the earth's population from the radiation that was seeping into our Sub-Mets. 120 citizens of Sub-Tokyo were taken from their homes, put into stasis tubes, and placed into suspended animation. After a year, they were supposed to have been revived, but a radiation leak caused the computers to malfunction, which killed half of the subjects and made the other half insane. Pandemonium ensued shortly thereafter when the president made an announcement promoting the evacuation fleet be fitted with the same type of stasis tubes.

"I thought she was court-martialed for her role in that facility."

"She was. But high command pardoned her and put her to work as a liaison to Argus Industries, which manufactured the stasis tubes for the Evac Fleet. I personally prosecuted her before the high courts so, meeting with her isn't one of my top priorities." I smiled.

"And that's why she wants to see us directly."

"Exactly." The door to our HQ slid open with ease, and I gestured Malaya to head inside in front of me. I entered after her and began to take off my armor, one piece at a time, while leaving my helmet, and HUD, on.

"What time are we meeting the commanders?" I asked.

"0900 hours sharp, but be very wary of Commander Stone."

"Why sir?" Malaya asked.

"Because I didn't tell him what you found down there, Captain. For all he knows, your team discovered an unexploded bombshell. I'm going to have my research department and Captain Thornton here work on putting what we know about Stone's connections to stasis tubes together, in order to figure out if there's a possibility that he or someone in his department authorized that facility's construction."

"I assume we're being pulled from duty for the next day or so?"

"Correct. I know it's a bit odd, but discoveries like this don't happen every day. And the ramifications of this unearthing are yet to be determined."

"Right sir. Thanks for looking into this."

"Don't thank me sergeant, your team's the one that illegally gained access into an unauthorized facility, disabled security systems, and systematically checked the identities of 200 young men and women without consent. Hell, if I didn't hate the EDF so much, I'd probably have you court martialed on the spot." We all laughed. For as stressful as our job was, a good laugh was like a gale force wind thrust into the sails of a ship caught in the doldrums. After a minute, the tone became serious again as Mr. Iwasaki turned back to his monitor.

"And the briefcase?"

"No sign of it sir. No movement in the Sub-Met either. It's like it just disappeared." Malaya responded.

"Hmm. That's very troubling. I'll do some digging and see if I can get you anything. Al?"

"Yo." Al said over the feral growls of his coffee machine.

"Can you upload security camera footage from the past 24 hours to my server? I'd like to look it over."

"Shall do." The clicking of his keys was deafening in the silence. "Done."

"Thank you. Good job today guys. Oh, Sergeant?"

"Yes sir?" I asked

"Meet me in my office after you finish your meeting with the Commanders."

"I'll make sure to do that. Thank you sir."

"No problem. See you tomorrow." The communication ended. I finally took off my helmet and breathed in the beautiful fresh air of the Sub-Met. Of course, nothing was truly "fresh" down here, just well-recycled, but still, it felt quite nice.

I walked over to my normal place by the and looked back over at Malaya and Al. The latter, of course, was busy typing away at his computer, unfazed, at least on the outside, by what we had found. But Malaya was concerned. Almost frightened. She, her suit off, was busy reviewing the security camera footage we had of the now-deceased criminals, probably hoping to find any clues as to what had occurred in that back room.

"We still don't know what caused the radiation that killed those men." I nodded slowly.

"And the briefcase has gone missing, seemingly vanishing into thin air." I replied. And without any men to interrogate, the chances of our team finding the briefcase were second to none.

"So I guess all we can do at this point is wait to see what the commanders have to say." I sighed. Something about this meeting just didn't sit well with me.

And I had a feeling that Malaya felt the same way.