Prologue
"ANJING! ANAK HARAM! PERGILAH DARI SINI!"
Zeta Vestia's voice erupted like a volcano from her bed, reverberating in the dead of night. Kobo Kanaeru, the unveiled eavesdropper, gasped and ran out of the private room in a hurry.
"Hold on! Hold on!" Kobo tried to speak, but Zeta wasn't having any of it.
When Kobo tried to poke her head through the threshold, Zeta's shoes, pillows and blankets came flying out the door towards her. Even the visiting Kaela's Maintenance Group jacket wasn't spared from Zeta's wrath.
"Ah, crap!" Kobo gulped, dodging the hail of flying things.
Negotiations, clearly, had failed.
Indonesian expletives, interspaced with frustrated cat-like hissing echoed from the private room. The commotion stirred the sleepy auditorium-turned-clinic into a frenzy and lights flickered on in the hallways.
The voice of Dr. Watson echoed in the halls.
"Oy! Is someone there?"
Her words, however, were accompanied by the ominous metallic click of a revolver. The boots of Yokosuka Naval Base military police followed soon after too.
"Ack! I have to get out of here!" Kobo thought out loud. Her blue eyes shot around the hall and she found a window facing the auditorium garden.
Is that how Miss Kaela got in here?
Kobo shook her head, darted for the window and hopped out.
Gotta hide…! But where!?
Kobo searched for cover - any cover, but couldn't find any and the shuffle of boots grew louder. Left without a choice, she crouched down on the garden grass, pressed her back against the ledge and steadied her breath.
Moments later, the military police burst through the halls with Dr. Watson.
"Which bugger left this window open?" Dr. Watson mused.
Kobo caught a glimpse of Dr. Watson's drawn revolver shimmering in the moonlight, but the doctor didn't peer out the window.
At least she's not a detective or anything, thought Kobo.
Dr. Watson and her guards eventually passed through. When she heard them growing further away, Kobo crept through the garden and snuck back to the main auditorium. She counted the windows, found the one connected to her room.
"Here it is!" Kobo cheered.
She shored up her strength and opened the window as quietly as she could. The window slid open and Kobo scrambled into the breach in a hurry.
The shuffle of boots started to echo in the clinic too.
They're here already!?
Kobo gulped and leapt onto her barebones bed. She stayed perfectly still but the springs of her bed kept wobbling with stubborn inertia.
Stop moving, damn it!
No matter what Kobo did, though, the bed springs kept creaking weakly - beyond her control.
In a few heartbeats, Dr. Watson came by and peered into Kobo's curtain-divided room. Kobo swiftly pulled her sheets over herself and pretended to sleep.
Please leave. Please leave. Please leave. Please leave!
The middle-aged woman shone a flashlight into the room and swept through with her revolver in hand. She checked on the supposedly sleeping Kobo and heaved a sigh. She eventually turned around to leave but not before she closed the window.
Dr. Watson closed the curtain door behind her too, leaving Kobo sweating bullets in her bed. Kobo felt her heart pounding hard against her chest. She wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand and looked out her now closed window out to the moon.
Slowly but surely, the adrenaline filtered out of Kobo and the soft moonlight lulled her to sleep. As Kobo's eyes grew heavy, she muttered weakly.
"I'm… not looking forward… to tomorrow."
Then, she drifted off to sleep - her mind preparing for its nearly nightly show.
…
Once again, like clockwork, when the slumbering Kobo slipped into the eye of her mind, she saw her memories play out for her like the old-type projector of a movie theater. She, as one of the hundred thousand Worldless who were harbored in KW1, were unable to dream, but they had the tendency to relive the past - at least the parts that they remembered after the Nights of a Hundred Thousand Miracles.
Kobo's memory reels used to play out haphazardly like an out of body experience, but Kobo harnessed it over the years and refined her technique. She managed to manifest an actual movie theater where she could sit down and watch that reel - and try to get as much rest as she could from a forcibly vivid dream.
This was her 'memory theater'.
Her coping mechanism.
So, when Kobo sat down in her large, upholstered cushioned seat at the heart of her mental theater, she anticipated seeing the same memory reel playing. That's how it had been for the past three years, after all.
But that evening, she heard her mental theater's projector whirring and clicking. Then, a different memory reel played: something much more recent.
In the confines of her mental theater, Kobo found herself back in the cockpit of the MLW mech on the quay - right at the very moment when the rogue mechs walloped Zeta's mech.
WHAM!
"RICH GIRL!" Kobo screamed, both in the theater and in the memory.
The sights flashed brightly on the screen and the impact shook the walls of the mental theater too. The lines between Kobo's consciousness and her memory theater were thoroughly blurred. Those blurring lines happened to Kobo so often that she had gotten used to it, but this was the first time she relived memories that fresh. It caught her off guard.
In the drop of a hat, Kobo was on the edge of her seat.
Both seats.
And so, the battle of the quay replayed in Kobo's mental reel beat by tense beat.
She relived every moment with excruciating detail - but what stuck out for Kobo the most were the fierce, combative face of the bloodied Zeta in the cockpit of her own MLW and the glimpse she got of the broken cockpit of one of the rogue mechs.
In that cockpit, Kobo saw a popular cadet girl who always had an air of superiority about her awash with horror, fear and confusion.
The cadet's eyes were streaking with tears, but her rabid mecha was trying to tear Kobo's own mech apart. Kobo did not like this person and her posse, but seeing her suffer that way made her heart ache. The stark disconnect between her face and her machine made Kobo shudder.
Kobo's heart raced.
She held the arm rests of her memory theater seat in a death grip.
And then, the playback started to unravel.
The mental reel projector started to flicker and the silver screen started to fade. All around Kobo, the memory theater of her nightly show collapsed into the void.
Kobo sank back into the darkness, drifting upwards like a corpse in the ocean - towards the morning sunlight.
She crossed through the surface - then she awakened from her slumber.
Blue Horizon
Technical Calibrations
Twenty-Seventh Scene - Rumor Has It
Kobo, still groggy from her restless night and forcefully vivid dreams, stirred on her bed just as the sun was rising. A myriad of aches and pain assaulted her, so she took her morning dose of painkillers. After that, though, she didn't get up just yet.
Instead, she laid down and looked up at the high auditorium ceiling, thinking about what she had seen in her mental theater. Those thoughts paralyzed her more than the pain of her overexerted body.
She laid down on her bed and listened to the lapping waves of Tokyo Bay until Dr. Watson came by again and called her patients for breakfast.
"I don't wanna get up…" Kobo croaked.
She said that, but her grumbling stomach challenged her lethargy. That hunger eventually won and Kobo got out of bed.
Kobo followed Dr. Watson and the other cadets to a small dining hall prepared for them. Inevitably, Kobo found herself face to face with Zeta once more. The two of them stood before each other in awkward silence, but neither of them could really find the words to say.
This is the last thing I wanted today, Kobo thought.
She considered peacing out and just sitting somewhere else, but the other tables were already filled. Military police posted outside the doors told Kobo that she couldn't leave the dining hall either.
What troubled Kobo the most, however, were the sorrowful sniffles, the disheartened sighs and the sullen faces of the rest of the Majestic 12 cadets. Whispers about how they didn't want to go back to the IDSC popped up around Kobo and Zeta.
Even the proud cadet that Kobo wrestled with on the quay, and in her memory theater, was deathly silent.
That cadet's silence stuck out like a sore thumb.
Kobo saw that the other cadets were likewise jumpy. Their slouched shoulders, deep frowns, untouched food and evasive eyes told Kobo that they wanted to be left well alone. Not knowing what else to do, Kobo scratched her face and turned to Zeta with a question.
However, Zeta also turned to her and the two of them spoke at the same time.
"Hey. Wanna sit together?"
The both of them were startled by their tight-knit wavelength, but they kept their comments to themselves. They sat across from each other at a table and were served their pre-packaged meals by Dr. Watson's staff.
I didn't think they could find worse food than what they served in the cafeteria, Kobo thought.
However, the bad food was the least of her concerns that morning.
Zeta's lips twisted and she broke the silence first.
"Listen here, Fountain Girl. Let me clear the air here. I didn't get the chance to thank you for what you did for me at the quay, so I want to say thank you. But - what happened last night - I want you to forget what you saw and what you heard, okay?"
"Sure thing, Rich Girl." Kobo answered eagerly. She then lowered her head and muttered weakly, "It's not like I wanted to remember something frisky like that anyways."
"What was that…!?" Zeta raised her brow.
Kobo just shook her head and said nothing more. Zeta heaved a sigh and glanced at the other cadets eating - barely eating - with them. Any time that the cadets' eyes met with Kobo's or Zeta's, they would turn away in shame.
"The other Maj12 girls went through some pretty nasty stuff yesterday." Zeta mused. She started to eat her food but couldn't go through much of it before she paused again to talk, "But what the hell happened yesterday on the quay, Fountain Girl? Do you have any ideas?"
Zeta leaned forward and whispered.
"Has Miss Olivia told you anything?"
"My guess is as good as yours. I haven't heard anything." Kobo sighed, poking at her food listlessly with a fork. She then pointed her fork at Zeta and asked back, "Did Miss Kaela say anything to you?"
Zeta quickly clammed up and turned away from Kobo, "N-not really."
Yeah, because they were busy discussing other things, Kobo thought, smirking knowingly the whole time. Seeing how Zeta squirmed under her gaze, Kobo figured that she may have had the right idea.
"Anyways…!" Zeta piped up, getting back to her topic, "I wanted to talk with you because the gloom in this room is so thick, you could cut it with a knife."
"No kidding…" Kobo concurred sadly.
Zeta clicked her tongue and sighed.
"If things are this tense and awkward down here, then what do you think is going to happen when we go back up to that mountain? All of the other students outside Maj12 are going to be wondering what the hell is going on…"
Kobo frowned.
All of their other classmates witnessed the MLW mechs going haywire because of the mass-produced HALO module. Their imaginations would have been working over time. All sorts of rumors would have probably spread by then - even with Cover Corp's active social media scrubbing campaign.
It wouldn't be an environment that would be conducive to learning - or to molding I.D.O.L. Frame pilots.
"After what happened yesterday, I'm not surprised." Kobo answered, huffing softly, "But we have one more day in this clinic then we're going back up to the Academy. Things will be fine, right?"
"Do you really think so, fountain girl?" Zeta asked with a raised brow, "There's gonna be friction no matter what, but things could get bad."
"Bad in what sense?" Kobo tilted her head.
"Bad, as in - if this doesn't blow over, then the IDSC could declare Strike Force ID3 a failure and expel our batch."
"They can do that…!?" Kobo gasped.
"It's in the handbook. In the rare case that the program can't produce the next three I.D.O.L. Frame Pilots, then the IDSC can declare a Strike Force batch a failure. Either that or our batch will tear itself apart on its own." Zeta insisted. She leaned closer to Kobo and whispered, "You know, I even heard on the grapevine that ID2 was very nearly declared a failure last year. Some say it took a direct Executive Order from YAGOO himself to get ID2 approved despite deficiencies."
"That's… I…" Kobo stammered, "I didn't know that."
"Well, now you do. They're rumors - but you know what they say. When there's smoke, there's fire."
Kobo tensed up in her seat.
She thought back to the many times Olivia seemed anxious in Kobo's midst - especially whenever she mentions her I.D.O.L. Frame… or lack thereof. Now that Kobo thought about it, Olivia did lament about her not having a Frame quite often.
Even though these were just rumors, Kobo couldn't help but feel like there was at least a kernel of truth in those threads.
Kobo slumped down on the table and groaned.
"I didn't come down here just to get expelled." Kobo grumbled, "Is there anything we can do?"
Zeta folded her arms and grumbled. She, too, was stumped.
"I don't want to go back up to the Platforms either…" Zeta bit her thumb, "But I don't know what we can do."
While Kobo and Zeta racked their brains fruitlessly, and as their food was getting cold, the doors of the dining hall swung open. Dr. Watson returned to the room and raised her voice.
"CADETS! ATTENTION!"
At Dr. Watson's call, the cadets shot up from their seats. Everyone but Zeta and Kobo, however, were slow to stand up properly in attention. The other cadets followed the order sluggishly, but Dr. Watson couldn't chastise them.
Instead, the military doctor made her announcement, "Maj12 cadets. You have guests."
Guests?
Kobo glanced at the doorway from where she stood. Then, she saw two familiar figures entering the dining hall: Olivia Kureiji, still bearing some of her own bandages wrapped around her head, and Kaela Kovalskia.
Twenty-Eighth Scene - After Action Report (Declassified)
Olivia marched ahead of Kaela and looked at the somber cadets gathered before her. Only Kobo and Zeta held their heads high enough to even look at her. The cadets did steal glances of Olivia, but they shied away from Kaela.
"Well, that's not good…" Olivia mumbled, studying her crowd. She then cleared her throat and gave her first order, "At ease cadets. Sit down too. We'll be here a while."
The cadets did as they were told. Olivia and Kaela, meanwhile, stayed standing. Dr. Watson, meanwhile, excused herself and left the room.
Olivia paced around a little before she finally spoke.
"Alright, girls. A lot of stuff happened yesterday - some of which was my fault for greenlighting this… but I figured that you deserve an explanation. Well - as much of an explanation that we can give with our level of clearance, at least."
"So, it's gonna be redacted." Zeta mumbled.
Kobo, likewise, leaned back into her seat and folded her arms.
"I brought Miss Kaela Kovalskia of the IDSC Maintenance Group. She was the one who coordinated with us to stop the haywire MLW's, as you recall." Olivia re-introduced Kaela to the cadets, but her voice trailed off weakly, "She's also the one who stopped us from making a hell of a fatal mistake with the EMP. Half of you aren't vegetables today because of her intervention."
Chills ran up Kobo's spine. She was the one who nearly gave that order for electronics warfare. Her blue eyes wandered towards Kaela. The chief technician nodded towards her, and Kobo nodded back graciously.
Then Olivia continued.
"Miss Kovalskia will be giving you a summary of what she told the Top Brass. Take it away."
Olivia stepped back and let Kaela take the floor.
"Thank you, Miss Kureiji." Kaela spoke graciously. Then, she came forward and addressed the mostly lethargic cadets, "As you've heard, I'm with the IDSC Maintenance Group - specifically, the Pemaloe Workshop that was absorbed into the IDSC Experimental Weapons System project pipeline. The EDX Strato-Hornets that you got to try out in the sims are practical examples of our group's work… while the HALO modules that you tried out were more on the theoretical side."
Kobo pouted.
Theoretical seemed like an understatement to her - what with the HALO module looking like a fluorescent light ring with a spaghetti monster of wires sticking out all over the place.
Kaela put her hand on her hip and continued her spiel.
"The HALO modules - particularly the ones fitted on the actual I.D.O.L. Frames - have three missions: read, parse and transmit the will of the pilot seamlessly onto the weapons system. This has made the I.D.O.L. Frames flexible, peerless and formidable war machines that shore up the capabilities of our Galactic Fleet. But the thing is, we don't have many I.D.O.L. Frames: three in active duty service and three… or rather two and a half that…"
Kaela paused for a while and turned to Olivia beside her.
Olivia's lips twisted with dissatisfaction, but she just waved her hand and urged Kaela to keep going. Kaela cleared her throat again and moved on.
"Ahem. Ideally, the IDSC hoped to use the mass-produced HALO modules to turn something as simple as a Mechanical Labor Walker mech or something as complex as, say, a Strato-Hornet Earth Defense fighter into a weapon. They would only have a fraction of the power of a true I.D.O.L. Frame, but it would be a weapon we could use."
"It's basically humanity throwing everything - and the kitchen sink - at the AO's." Zeta whispered to Kobo, "Desperation weapons for an existential crisis."
"And we don't even know if it's going to be enough." Kobo whispered back, shaking her head.
To her, the battle of the Jakarta platforms still seemed like yesterday.
Kaela sighed and shook her head, "But as you all saw, the technology isn't ready yet. Because of that, we had that unfortunate incident at the quay."
Nervous murmurs started to break out amongst the cadets.
Kaela brought out her WristComm device and started bringing out a myriad of formless screens projected from it. Most of them were charts and graphs but others were drone camera footage of the battle of the Yokosuka Naval Base quay.
Kaela walked through the formless screens and pointed out her gathered data while she gave her lecture.
"Theoretically speaking - the HALO modules worked. It did two out of the three jobs that it was supposed to do at an acceptable level: that is, reading the pilot's will and turning that into a command for the weapons system to follow. But it didn't parse that data properly. Two out of three isn't enough."
Kaela pointed to her head and emphasized grimly.
"The HALO modules we used weren't able to properly differentiate between our measured conscious thoughts and the unfiltered subconscious thoughts. It just picked up the strongest thoughts - whichever one it was - and applied it."
"Subconscious thoughts…" Zeta furrowed her brow. Beads of sweat streaked down her face, "That's why those haywire mechs got on all fours and attacked us. They were going primal."
"Yeah." Olivia chimed in with displeasure, "Subconsciousness is like a muscle - and Worldless like us are often forced to use that muscle every night. Take that trained muscle and filter it through an unready technology and you got what happened yesterday on the quay. A thrashing."
Kaela nodded and brought up blueprints of the mass-produced HALO modules.
"The I.D.O.L. Frame HALO modules, the ones I'm trying to emulate, allow the pilots to use that trained subconsciousness and wield it as a weapon. It's how Miss Hoshinova's Strike Force ID1 can stand toe to toe with a galactic orca of AO's." Kaela continued. She then laid her hand over her heart and admitted, "The HALOs I made missed many variables and flipped the equation. The pilots were wielded by their subconsciousness. It was a shameful display - and I apologize."
Kaela's apology, however, did little to ease the tension in the room. The other cadets were fidgeting and shifting in their seats. All of the whispers of quitting that Kobo and Zeta had heard resurfaced too, and with greater intensity.
"What the hell is this? Are we just guinea pigs for the IDSC!?" One protested.
"We're being sent out there on unprepared tech? This isn't what I signed up for! We nearly died because of this!" Another growled.
A third slumped down in her seat and lowered her head, "I don't know what's scarier anymore - the AO's or the IDSC…"
The other cadets echoed each other. The embers of a revolt were starting to flicker.
…
Beads of sweat started to form on Olivia's and Kaela's brows. So, Kobo raised her hand and called Kaela's attention.
"Y-yes, Miss Kanaeru." Kaela acknowledged her.
Kobo took a deep breath and asked the question in the minds of all the cadets gathered there in that hall.
"We already have the I.D.O.L. Frames and the HALO's and all of the fancy-schmancy stuff already, don't we?" Kobo asked impatiently, "Why can't you just make tech like what we already have? Why are you making us test stuff that ain't ready like this!?"
Kobo's question silenced the other cadets. All of them turned their attention towards Kaela.
Kaela gulped. Then, she turned towards Olivia.
This time, Olivia shook her head.
"I'm sorry, Miss Kanaeru." Kaela apologized, "I'm not at liberty to share the finer details of the I.D.O.L. Frames. Neither Miss Kureiji nor I have clearance for that information. Honestly, I don't think I'm qualified to give you a proper answer to your question. I don't think I can give you a satisfactory answer even if I tried."
"... huh!?" Kobo furrowed her brow, "What the heck's that supposed to mean?" She turned to Olivia too and faced her, "What is this, Olivia-neesan?"
"Orders from the Top Brass." Olivia said plainly, "I can't defy orders from A-chan and YAGOO."
"But…" Kobo's face soured.
"Listen." Kaela cut Kobo off and silenced the room, "I can't speak for Miss Kureiji, but I can't give you an answer yet because I don't have one. My Workshop and I are doing everything we can to get KW1 ready for the next AO attack, but we have a lot to learn! Oh, so much to learn."
She looked into the eyes of every cadet in the room and spoke to them from the bottom of her heart.
"All of us are Worldless. The Ancient Ones destroyed our homeworlds, Known and Unknown, and we fled from them through space and reality. Now, they're coming here - to KW1 - to finish the job. I want you to know that I will not stop - I will not rest until I can craft weapons that can protect our new home from this threat! But I… we will need your help."
"Our help…?" Kobo asked.
Suddenly, Kaela got down on her knees and laid prostrate on the ground before the cadets. All of the formless screens of her WristComm fizzled and faded away too, leaving just the tall blonde Chief Technician groveling on the floor.
"Our current methodology is flawed and we need a radical change - a paradigm shift. Please let me and my Workshop observe your batch in the IDSC Academy!"
Kobo, Zeta and the cadets fell silent. They turned to each other but didn't know what to say.
So, Olivia came forward and explained the arrangement to the cadets.
"I brought Kaela here because her Workshop has requested the IDSC to let them directly observe sessions of your batch at the IDSC Academy. All of you were directly involved in this incident, after all, so I wanted to make sure that this is cool with all of you first. If you don't like this, now's your chance to make your voices heard - and I'll do my best to beg the Top Brass for another way."
Olivia then lowered her head, "It's the least I can do for greenlighting that disaster of an exercise."
Again, confusion reigned in the dining hall. Nobody seemed to want to speak up and cast the first stone. All eyes in the room gradually turned towards Kobo and Zeta.
Zeta shrugged and spoke outright, "I'm going to be biased in this matter. I want to have Pemaloe Workshop join us in the IDSC Academy. But what about you, water fountain?"
Kobo rubbed her chin. She took a deep breath and faced Kaela.
"Miss Kovalskia."
"Yes, Miss Kanaeru?"
"If your Workshop goes up the mountain with us, can you promise us that something like this will never happen again?"
Kaela rose up from the ground, laid her hand on her heart and declared, "I swear on my honor and the honor of the Pemaloe Workshop. Let us gather our primary data and there will be no more mishaps."
She then looked into Kobo's eyes and added, "The both of us will be able to protect the ones we love."
Kobo closed her eyes and pondered for a moment. Everyone's gazes, especially Zeta's, became intensely focused on her. She then faced Kaela again and gave her answer.
"Alright. But I will hold you to your promise."
Kaela bowed her head graciously, "I won't let you down."
One by one, the other cadets started to chime in and give their two cents on the matter. Not all of them gave their endorsements - and some of them furiously lashed out at Kaela and Olivia for the quay incident, but most of the Majestic 12 were at least willing to give Kaela a chance to right wrongs.
Olivia noted down the votes and declared, "The 'yeas' have it."
Both Kaela and Zeta heaved sighs of relief. Kobo, on the other hand, folded her arms and asked Olivia, "So what happens now?"
"What happens now is - I have to go to the Shibuya Office and make my report to the CEO. Reine and Anya will tell the rest of the class in the Academy." Olivia answered, tapping on the face of her own WristComm with a sigh. She turned to Kobo again and continued, "You and the cadets of Majestic 12 should finish their breakfast, rest up some more and prepare to be discharged tomorrow morning. Miss Kovalskia and the technicians of her Workshop will be joining us, so treat them like you would treat your fellow cadets."
Kaela gave the cadets a deep, respectful bow.
"Thank you." Kaela muttered graciously, "Thank you…"
…
…
…
Epilogue
Later that afternoon, after one last check-up with Dr. Watson in the clinic, Olivia Kureiji finally took off her bandages and changed into her civilian clothes. She took a good look at herself in the washroom mirror and found a small, stubborn bruise on the top of her head of red hair.
"At least it didn't end up needing stitches…" Olivia remarked, poking on the bruise listlessly.
She let her red hair flow down behind her and marched out of the washroom - then out of the auditorium-turned-clinic altogether. Military police saluted her as she passed them by and she returned the salute vigorously.
From there, she made her way to an IDSC humvee waiting for her at the driveway of the quay. Sergeant Cecile Sparrowhawk stood in attention and waited patiently outside the humvee. She, too, saluted Olivia and then opened the door for her.
Olivia saluted Sparrowhawk and teased, "Thanks Spawk."
The sergeant winced but kept her composure somewhat.
"Ma'am, must you keep calling me that strange nickname?" Sparrowhawk asked.
"Strange? I think it suits you, Sergeant." Olivia chuckled. She patted Sparrowhawk's shoulder and reassured her, "You gotta relax and live a little, you know. You'll rise up the ranks of the Garrison much faster if you do. Maybe you'll make Colonel, or something!"
Sparrowhawk laughed, "I don't have that kind of ambition anymore, ma'am. Maybe another me from another world, but I'm happy where I am - and with the way things are now."
"That's a luxury in KW1 nowadays, Spawk. Satisfaction, that is." Olivia muttered, "Things were easier when we were in the Academy, huh?"
"Truly." Sparrowhawk nodded, speaking more casually, "We didn't have the end of the Known World hanging over our heads. We were just worried about whether or not we'd graduate."
"Yeah. Now, Reine, Anya and I have to guide them through these tough times." Olivia heaved a sigh, "I never thought I'd be a teacher or a simpai… but I have to do my best now more than ever."
"Knowing you three, you'll do fine." Sparrowhawk endorsed them with a small smile, "I'll do my part too. I won't go easy on them - tough love and all."
"Thanks. They'll thank you for it later, believe me." Olivia nodded graciously. She turned to Sparrowhawk once more and got back down to business, "We'll reminisce more later, chief. I need to go to the Shibuya Office."
"Understood." Sparrowhawk got back to her professional tone.
Olivia got into the humvee and Sparrowhawk closed the door.
…
To Be Continued
