“Oh, really? But I haven’t even told you a third of what I wanted to!”
“It’s been a great help, ma’am. I might have some more questions for you later, but I think we’re good for today.”
Tadashima seized the moment to salute while he could and left the room.
“What’s up, Inspector?” asked Yoshikawa, waiting by the door, the moment he emerged.
“Don’t get me started,” a fed-up Tadashima said, waving a hand in front of his face. “I know the perp saved her life and everything, but she couldn’t heap more praise on his feet if she tried. She’s not a witness so much as she is a groupie. Must be that Stockholm whatever in action.”
Yoshikawa chuckled. “I’m heading back to the station for now. Are you coming with me?”
“Nah, Hitsuma’s called me in. Looks like it’ll be me and him in a two-man cell. I’ll be the investigator, and he’ll just yell at me all day.”
“Must be hard keeping your career on track, huh, Inspector?”
Tadashima gave Yoshikawa a bop on the head. “Ahh, quit your bitching. If you wanna say something, say it to him, not me. Oof… The guy’s a genius, but something about him just bothers me.”
Leaving Yoshikawa behind as he rubbed his head, Tadashima left the hospital and caught a taxi to the point Hitsuma had directed him to. It was an enormous skyscraper, easily dwarfing everything adjacent to it. It was matte black, making the inspector wonder if it was made of Varanium, and a guard armed with a pistol was standing in front.
A stone tablet with CENTRAL CONTROL DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATION carved into it stood in front of the structure. People on the street just called it “the black building.” Nobody really knew what went on inside.
Tadashima rechecked the map Hitsuma texted him. This was definitely the place. Reporting to the guard, he showed his badge and was quickly ushered inside without further question. The elevator he boarded seemed to break the sound barrier as it rose, almost making him lose his footing on the way to the sixty-fifth floor.
From that point, a female employee in a lab coat guided him as he went through multiple security doors, each protected by a different kind of card-key lock or biometric scanner. Tadashima grew more and more nervous. He was dressed in the same wrinkled suit he slept in last night over at the investigation team HQ, and the stubble on his face was starting to cross that inscrutable boundary to full-on beardhood. He didn’t know where he was being led to, but he would hope for no dress code, at least.
The bulletproof-glass door labeled CONTROL ROOM opened with a hydraulic-sounding pshhuu. Behind it, Tadashima could hear footsteps running back and forth and a cacophony of noise.
The sight that unfolded startled him. The gigantic, fan-shaped room was dimly lit, mostly by the seemingly infinite number of holodisplays deployed in every inch of available space. Indicator bars and numbers danced across each screen. It resembled the air-traffic control tower of a particularly busy airport, but the main difference was the huge holodisplay in the center of the room depicting a map of Tokyo Area, monitoring electricity usage region-wide in intense detail.
Tadashima had to fight back the impression that he had somehow slipped into the future.
“What is this…?”
“Have you ever heard of the SmartCity concept?”
Startled, Tadashima turned to find Hitsuma in a freshly pressed suit, arms open wide as he walked toward him. Tadashima attempted to jump-start his mind back into action. It had been a while since it worked right.
“Um…wasn’t it an old urbanization plan? I think the first Seitenshi proposed it in an effort to optimize electrical demand.”
“Precisely, Inspector. Electricity is transported along power lines using high voltages, but a lot of that power winds up getting lost before it reaches homes. Storing it is not only difficult, but produces a lot of waste of its own as well.
“For example, places like large data centers usually keep some of their power supply in an idle state, just in case there’s any unexpected server load or heavy access, but they only use around six percent of the electricity sent to them. Twelve tops. All the rest of it is wasted. The SmartCity concept has the city monitor energy usage to distribute power efficiently while avoiding things like blackouts. You remember how strained the grid was around Tokyo after the Gastrea War.”
Tadashima nodded silently as he gave another astonished look at the SmartCity nerve center before him. “So you actually finished it, huh?” he said. “It hasn’t been in the news for ages. I thought it was canceled or something.”
“Well, we didn’t want it to become a terrorist target, for one. That’s why it’s in this nondescript building with a nondescript name.”
“Right,” Tadashima replied with a shrug. “So what did you want from me? I barely even touch a computer unless I’m doing things like police paperwork. I’m sure you didn’t call me here just to show off all your fancy machinery.”
“Of course not. There’s actually one function of this control room I wanted to show you.”
Hitsuma tapped at the central control panel. The system promptly showed a variety of video images, showing a shopping district, a café, a theater, and so forth, most looking down from a very high viewpoint. It was a familiar enough sight to Tadashima.
“Are these surveillance cameras…?”
“Yes. We had these installed in places like rail stations and airports at first, but now they cover all of Tokyo Area in order to quickly spot Gastrea.”
“How many cameras do you have for that?” an astounded Tadashima replied. “You’d need thousands. Tens of thousands.”
“Too many for human beings to monitor, certainly. That’s why we feed the video through the face-recognition system we have here in this control room. If you search based on that, you can do things like this.”
One of the images on the giant holodisplay expanded out to take over the whole screen region. “Whoa,” Tadashima marveled. There, shot from slightly above a restaurant building, he saw a young police detective in a gray business suit, speedily slurping up ramen from the front-facing bar. He recognized the face right off—despite his three years on the force, he still looked like a raw recruit. In fact, they were just talking a few moments ago.
“Yoshikawa…”
“Exactly,” Hitsuma replied as he triumphantly nodded behind him. “And we’ve got Rentaro Satomi’s facial pattern in the database, too. The trap’s already been set. Now all we have to do is wait for our prey to show up.”
“I see. That’s some pretty amazing tech. But I’m impressed you could call on the services of this place without a warrant or anything. Does the investigation team know about this?”
“Actually, no. Outside of myself and my father the commissioner, you’re the only one.”
Tadashima couldn’t believe his ears. He was acting by himself without even the HQ knowing about it? A police department was supposed to be stricter, more bureaucratic than that. Even if this was the commissioner’s son, was it really all right to let him run wild like this?
The detective felt something brooding in the pit of his stomach. It told him that the Hitsuma clan was after Rentaro for more reasons than just the crimes he allegedly committed.
“By the way,” a voice said from behind, cutting off his thought process, “how’s your investigation been going, Inspector Tadashima?” It belonged to a boy in a school uniform, coming out of nowhere in the dimly lit room.
“Oh, you’re, um…”
“Yuga Mitsugi. The civsec who ran into Satomi by accident at the Plaza Hotel. Sorry for all the trouble I caused.”
Why was this boy in the room, too?
“Um, hey…” A clearly agitated Hitsuma greeted Yuga with a cold stare.
“What’s the big deal, Superintendent Hitsuma?”
Hitsuma’s breezy composure was now a thing of the past. It looked like he was afraid the boy would say something he wasn’t supposed to. Did they know each other?
“So, uh, Insp
ector, how’s the investigation coming along?”
The boy’s overly familiar speech rankled Tadashima.
“I’m afraid I can’t discuss that with the general public.”
“Inspector, would you mind telling him for me? It sounds like he’ll be offering help to the investigation as a civsec officer.”
Tadashima took out his notebook, offended and wondering why anyone asked for a civsec’s help with a non-Gastrea case. “I went to the hospital and spoke with one of the SAT officers the suspect tangled with,” he stated, “along with a woman hit by friendly fire during the incident. Surprisingly, the woman said that Rentaro Satomi saved her life. She even thanked him for it, saying, ‘He can’t be the killer. I’m sure there’s something else compelling him to do all this.’ The SAT officer was just as cheerful with me. He smiled at me and said, ‘I’d love to have another match with him.’”
“Ha-ha! Pretty funny civsec, huh? Even as he’s fleeing us, he’s building a fan base for himself.”
Tadashima ignored the equally cheerful Yuga, turning toward Hitsuma instead. “About that, actually. None of it makes any sense to me. He’s a murderer. If he wanted to get out of this as safely as possible, wouldn’t it have been faster for him to take the woman hostage and barricade himself in a room?”
“I imagine he figured her wound wouldn’t make her much use as a hostage,” Hitsuma replied bluntly.
“Yeah, but he could’ve taken one of the SAT officers hostage, too. He also went through the trouble of simply incapacitating the SAT team. For him, that has to be a thousand times harder than just killing them. Don’t you think that’s strange at all? He’s on the run from the law, but he’s still taking time out to save people’s lives on the way. If he really murdered one person already, would he be this hesitant about killing another?”
“He probably can’t shake off the image of himself as the hero of Tokyo Area. And who’s to say he didn’t mean to kill any of the SAT guys? Maybe he meant to and just failed at it.”
“You sure seem intent on his guilt, Superintendent.”
“And you must think he’s not guilty, don’t you, Inspector? You’re the one who interrogated him, aren’t you?”
Tadashima rubbed the back of his head. “Yeah, you got me there, sir. But I don’t play favorites in the interrogation room. I’m tough with everybody I talk to in there. I can’t get a confession out of a criminal if I think he’s innocent.”
Yuga, to the side, gave out a sudden laugh. “Either way, though, as long as Satomi isn’t defanged, he’s going to do something for us. It’s pretty clear searching the river isn’t gonna do anything for us at this point. He’s alive—I’m sure of it. Heh-heh… This game’s only getting started, Satomi.”
Tadashima rubbed the top of his arm, feeling something cold and heartless behind the boy’s inscrutable chuckling to himself.
3
With a flashing green light and a melody that sounded like a tweeting baby chick, a mass of humanity scrambled across the busy intersection. The asphalt radiated heat like an oven burner, and everyone in the crowd looked fatigued.
Amid this swell of humanity dodging and weaving around itself in intricate geometrical patterns, Rentaro Satomi’s eyes darted to and fro. There was a man with a hurried, restless walk repeatedly looking down at his watch. A couple walking hand in hand together. A mother on the way home from shopping, her son staring into his mobile phone as he walked. Whenever someone happened to size him up, he would unconsciously shudder.
“Keep looking forward, Rentaro,” a dry voice next to him said. “Try not to do anything too suspicious.” It sounded like the chestnut-haired girl had nothing fun, nothing exciting left in her world.
“Yeah, but it’s kind of hard to act normal when you’re consciously thinking about it.”
“At least you’re aware of that. But I don’t think you need to worry. People don’t care about you as much as you think.”
“Why are you finding ways to berate me with everything you say?”
“I’m just trying to help you relax, all right?” the girl replied, not a trace of emotion to her voice. Rentaro fell silent. She was making sense. Even now, the world was in a state of constant flux. It had been three days since Rentaro’s alleged death. He recalled how Sumire once told him, “You know, people care a hundred times more about how they just banged their little finger against the corner of the dresser than about some politician or famous singer dying.”
Everyone walking around in public had their own lives to live. Not a single one of them had any mental capacity to consider Rentaro’s role in their existences. He understood that on an intellectual basis, and he kept consciously telling that to himself.
But what if somebody recognized his face? What if someone screamed and ran up to him, grabbing his arms? The nightmarish image kept flitting in and out of his mind, filling him with a dreadful sense of uneasiness.
Soon, they were past the intersection and on their way down a long, wide shopping arcade. Rentaro gave his head a light shake. Something he keenly noticed, now that he was all alone in the world, was how much he appreciated all the people that once supported him in life, tangibly or intangibly. If it wasn’t for the warmth of the girl walking next to him, he might have been too scared to so much as walk out the door.
Of course, as partners went, the girl couldn’t have acted more disinterested in him. She only saw him as a way to lure over the New World Creation Project soldier in her sights, and it admittedly irritated him a little.
“We’re here.”
Rentaro turned his head, only to find the bare framework of the new city hall building looming before him. Construction had ground to a halt on the site, the catwalks that lined the outside walls barren of people. Tractors, power shovels, and other bits of construction equipment lay abandoned around the building, like some kind of avant-garde art installation.
The sun was at its highest point in the sky. Rentaro and Hotaru fled under the building’s shadow, sweat pouring unbearably out of their bodies. They were in the middle of the city, but it was still oddly quiet. Or perhaps it was their sixth sense creating the tension, warning them of another human being’s death in a way difficult to put in physical terms.
“Are you okay?”
“Don’t worry about me,” Hotaru replied as she walked on ahead. Rentaro grimaced. Did she really care about Suibara so much that she was willing to kill in his name? He sighed and followed after her.
The police were finished with the crime scene. There was no clotted blood on the floor, no white pieces of tape marking out evidence locations—but simply standing at the scene made Rentaro’s brain vividly re-create the entire incident. He closed his eyes and made a silent prayer for the deceased.
What did you want to tell me, Suibara?
Looking to his side, he saw an expressionless Hotaru standing bolt upright.
“You’re not going to pray for him?” Rentaro asked.
“I did all my mourning when he died. I don’t have any tears left.”
“Oh…”
“So?” Hotaru’s chestnut hair swayed in the wind as she looked up at him. “What’re we going to do here?”
Rentaro scratched distractedly at the back of his head. “Well,” he said, “it’s not like I had some grand scheme in mind. But you never know what you’ll find at the crime scene, you know? Plus, just being here is reminding me of all kinds of things.” The fateful night replayed itself in his mind. “The body was still warm when I got here. He couldn’t have been dead for long. It was too much of a coincidence that the police just happened to show up at that time. Someone waited until the moment I appeared to call the cops.”
Which meant the culprit was someone close to the scene—close enough to visually monitor Rentaro’s movements.
Then something flashed into his mind. “Hotaru,” he said to the inscrutable girl next to him, “you said you noticed Suibara acting ‘strange’ around you, right? How was he acting, exactly?”
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“He started working solo a lot more. He’d go out more and more often, and he’d never tell me where. He’d try to make up silly little excuses about it. I didn’t pry at all. I figured a guy like him just had a bunch of stuff going on in his life.”
“I told you about how he wanted to meet with Lady Seitenshi, right? I think he wanted to talk about a pair of conspiracies—the New World Creation Project, and the Black Swan Project.”
“Right. And the New World is just an updated version of the New Humanity Creation Project, isn’t it? What about Black Swan?”
Rentaro shook his head. “I have no idea. But something tells me that if I can find out, that’ll blow the whole door open on this thing.”
Suddenly, Hotaru’s remarks made a new image of Suibara rise up in his mind.
“Are you trying to blow the whistle about something? ’Cause if you have any evidence you can give me, I can make sure it gets to her.”
“…I’m sorry. My evidence got stolen.”
“Oh, right. When he came to my office, he said that he had some evidence that got stolen from him. That’s why he wanted to meet directly with either Lady Seitenshi or her assistant…”
…Then, another voice rose up from the depths of his memory:
“I’ve been told to ask you this, so I will. Where is the memory card Suibara gave you?”
“Ah…”
Rentaro and Hotaru exchanged glances. They must have come to the same conclusion simultaneously.
“Didn’t the assassin at the hotel ask you for a memory card, Rentaro?”
Rentaro thought for a moment, eyes on the ground.
“Yeah… It’s weird. Logically speaking, that card must’ve been what was stolen from Suibara, huh?”
“Wait…so, what, then? Kihachi got his memory card stolen by some evil group, but then that group thinks you have it? So who has it now?”
Rentaro Satomi, Fugitive Page 16
