"There's a problem with the item," Huang said without preamble. He was the last one to arrive in the playground.
"What sort of problem?" Mao asked. The cat had made no mention of Hei's overnight visitor at all while they were waiting, but Hei could tell that he hadn't lost interest. Strangely, he thought that Yin's attention was on him more than usual as well.
"Apparently there's a file missing. A key - some kind of code or cipher that makes the rest of the flash drive's content readable. Seems our guy was trying to hold out for a bigger pay day."
"Do we know where the key is?" Hei asked.
Huang shook his head, and lit a cigarette. "Pay a visit to our contact. Avoid killing him if you can - just be your normal cheery self, and I'm sure he'll cooperate. Yin, do you have a location?"
"A motel near Ookayama Station."
"Right. Get to it."
Looks like Jiao-tu's memory will have to wait until tomorrow, Hei thought, and followed Mao out of the playground to pick up his gear.
Night had fallen by the time Hei arrived at the motel, garbed as the Black Reaper. It was located near an industrial complex behind the train tracks; the sort of place that took cash and not names. According to Yin, the man had been here, alone, since last night. Did he think the Syndicate wouldn't be able to locate him? Idiot.
Hei shorted out the motel's breaker box, plunging the building into darkness. He slipped into the main hallway and counted the doors on his right, deftly dodging a few of the motel's occupants as they ventured out of their rooms to see what the problem with the power was.
"Contact is still in the room," Mao reported from outside. "He's trying to get out the window, but isn't having much luck." The cat sounded amused.
…Nine…ten. He made quick work of the electronic lock and entered the room. In the halogen glow from the parking lot outside, he could see an overweight man in an undershirt and boxers struggling to fit himself through a window that he'd only managed to open about a foot. The man hadn't heard him come in.
"Where's the key?" Hei asked in a low voice.
The man gave a startled cry and turned back to the room awkwardly. He didn't look relieved to recognize the Black Reaper. "W-What do you want? Are you here to give me the rest of my money?"
Hei moved towards him slowly. "Where's the key?" he repeated. The man tried to back away, but the window was behind him.
"Key? What?"
Hei darted forward and with one hand pinned the man against the window, his other hand squeezing the man's throat.
"There was a file missing," Hei said with deadly patience. "The key."
The man's breath was coming in wheezing gasps; his fingers pried uselessly at Hei's hand. Hei increased the pressure on his throat.
"It was there, I swear it was! With the other files! I transferred it over just an hour before I gave it to you! Unless…that bastard…"
"Unless what?" He squeezed a little harder. The man tried to speak, but no intelligible words emerged. Hei lessened his grip slightly - but only slightly.
Sweat was pouring down the man's face. "I left the flash drive on my desk, he must have removed the key while the girl was distracting me. He didn't want me to sell it! I know he called those contractors and tried to have me killed!"
Hei didn't care who these other people were. "So where is the key?"
"In my office! I have a back-up copy!"
Hei released the man, who fell to the floor like a sack of rice, coughing and sputtering. "I'll meet you there. And don't think you can run; we can always find you." He left the man to recover and get dressed, and slipped back into the dark hallway.
"Yin, where is his office?"
"On the other side of Ookayama Station. Tokyo Institute of Technology. Physics Building, room 102."
Tokodai?
"Colleges are still pretty crowded this time of night," Mao said over the radio. "You can't go walking around there wearing your mask."
"I know. You stay on the contact, I'll head over ahead of him." Once outside the motel, Hei stripped off his bulletproof coat - it was too conspicuous, even at a university - and rolled his mask and weapons inside it, making a tidy black bundle. He was still wearing all black; less noticeable than if he'd left his coat on, but he would look a little strange nonetheless.
Ookayama Station was packed full of commuters, a typical Thursday evening. Hei lifted some change from a businessman's pocket and stowed his gear inside a coin locker. He didn't like leaving his knives behind, but he wasn't exactly helpless without them. Next, he made his way casually through the crowd until he spotted a man waiting on the platform with a gray windbreaker over his arm. Moving with the surge of the crowd, Hei jostled the man hard enough to cause him to loosen his grip on the jacket; by the time the man noticed it was gone, Hei was on the far end of the platform heading toward the street.
"Contact is leaving the motel now," Mao reported. "Looks like he's heading towards the school. Good for him."
Hei followed Yin's directions to the physics building. With the windbreaker on over his black clothes, no one gave him a second glance. He was just another student, on his way to an evening class or off to meet some friends. Room 102. The ground floor was numbered in the two hundreds. Hei found a stairwell and headed down.
The stairs ended in a brightly lit hallway lined with doors to offices and laboratories. Two other hallways branched off of the main one. There weren't many people down here, he was relieved to see. A sign posted above a water fountain indicated that rooms 101-110 were down the first branch.
He was about to turn the corner when he spotted Yin's specter in the fountain, and simultaneously heard her say, "Don't turn. Cross the hall." Confused, he followed her instructions, glancing surreptitiously down the hallway in which room 102 was situated. About halfway down, three people stood talking: a young man, a young woman in red glasses, and - Jiao-tu?
Heart beating faster, he continued down the main hall until he reached the second branch. Turning that corner, he loitered near an office door. Jiao-tu had the entire campus to wander around, why was she in this building? "Mao, where's the contact?"
"Approaching the building. I'll wait out by the door and keep watch for any unexpected company."
"The students are leaving out the back exit," Yin said. "Contact is approaching the same way you came in. You're clear."
Hei breathed a sigh of relief. He retraced his steps and turned down the hall his cousin had been standing in just in time to see the group exiting the other end. Room 102 was the first door on the left. A placard under the frosted glass window read 'Professor Iwakara'. The name sounded familiar, but Hei couldn't place it. He focused his attention on the door. It was locked; he picked the lock quickly, and slipped into a messy office.
He had just enough time to re-lock the door and settle himself in a corner, leaning against the wall as if he'd been waiting for hours when his contact - who must be named Iwakara - unlocked the office and walked in.
The man flicked on the lights and jumped in fright when he saw Hei inside. Iwakara's lip was cut and swollen, and his nose looked bruised, possibly broken; he was wearing a coat that just barely concealed a stain of dried blood on the shirt beneath it. Hei hadn't done that, and he didn't remember that the man had been injured in the park last night.
Whether Iwakara recognized Hei as the man in the mask who'd nearly strangled him, Hei didn't know. But whatever Iwakara saw in Hei's face told him that Hei was no college student.
"Close the door," Hei said in his Black Reaper voice.
Iwakara hesitated. "Are you going to kill me as soon as I give you the key?"
"I'm going to kill you if you don't do as I ask." Hei let the threat linger for a moment before adding, "If you give me the key, you'll get the money that was promised to you - and you'll get to live."
Iwakara cautiously closed the door, never taking his eyes off of Hei. "It's in the room next door."
When Hei made no move to go ahead of him, the professor opened the door to the adjoining room and walked in. Only then did Hei follow. The next room was some sort of laboratory. Hei automatically checked his exits. They were in the basement; the only door was the one through which they had entered. No windows. Iwakara sat down at a computer near the door; Hei positioned himself in the doorway, splitting his attention between the main office door and the laboratory.
"This computer is secured," the professor said, half to Hei and half to himself. "He won't have been able to remove the key."
Hei gazed around the laboratory while Iwakara typed away at the computer. He had no idea what any of the instruments or equipment were for, and he didn't study them closely. That had been a near thing, almost walking into Jiao-tu like that; he wouldn't have been able to explain what he was doing on campus, unless he was there to see her - which he couldn't do, not in the middle of a mission.
He owed Yin for warning him. The doll was supposed to be watching for rival teams and keeping tabs on Iwakara; there was no need to warn him about students. Iwakara…Hei remembered why that name was familiar - Jiao-tu had mentioned him last night. She must be taking his class. Coincidence after inconvenient coincidence.
"I have a spare flash drive somewhere around here," Iwakara muttered nervously. "What's that smell? Smells like rotten satsumas."
Then Hei noticed it as well - a familiar smell, sweet and volatile. It triggered a vivid memory.
He, Bai, and Amber had gone into a town that had been levled by one of Carmine's attacks in search of medical supplies for their squad. The town's residents, save for the few who had managed to flee, were buried under concrete and rubble, along with the enemy mercenary squad that had been quartering there. As the three made their cautious way to the local drug store, which was only half collapsed, they passed dozens of townsfolk trapped under fallen walls or lying in the street, injured so badly that they didn't even have the breath to beg for help. Neither Amber nor Bai so much as glanced at the dead or dying; Hei paused and cut the throat of each one he found. Neither woman commented.
They were just a few yards from the drug store when Amber shouted, "Run!" Hei and Bai knew better than to question her; they made it to cover in the building just as a man armed with a semi-automatic weapon opened fire from behind a pile of bricks. He was joined by several more men, pinning them down inside the store.
Bai couldn't get close enough to use her power, and Hei didn't have enough knives to throw. He demanded that Amber use her ability and stop time long enough for him to get out of the store and hunt down the enemy. Amber just smiled suggestively and replied, "I'd rather save that time for something else." Then she began pulling bottles of nail polish remover from the shelf behind Bai. "This is the real stuff; it should do the trick."
Hei and Amber piled cartons of cigarettes near the store entrance, doused in the sweet-smelling liquid, then took shelter behind a row of metal shelves. When the enemy charged through the door, a single spark from Bai ignited the conflagration.
The memory flitted through his mind in an instant, leaving behind one key word. Acetone.
Hei tensed and scanned the lab again. On the bench closest to Iwakara's computer was a two-liter brown glass bottle bearing a flammable warning sticker. The cap was off. The bottle stood next to some piece of equipment that Hei didn't recognize; but he did recognize the exposed copper wires, and the digital stopwatch that was plugged into it. There were eight seconds left on the timer.
"Get out!" was all Hei had time to shout, though he knew it was pointless. He dashed into the office and wrenched open the main door just as the explosion rocked the building.