The hum of the armored van was the only sound between them.
Ryunosuke sat in the rear compartment, strapped into a steel bench across from Aiko and Mayu. His eyes drifted between the bolted floor and the masked agents flanking the door, unmoving like statues. Not PSIA uniforms. No insignias. No words.
Just silence and Kevlar.
Outside, dim sodium lights flickered across the van's reinforced windows, flashing glimpses of forgotten infrastructure—cracked roads, sewer junctions, moss-choked gates. They'd been driving for nearly thirty minutes, and Ryunosuke had long since lost track of where they were.
"I thought we were going to another blacksite," he murmured.
Aiko gave a small shake of her head. "Too obvious. We're headed somewhere colder. Older."
Mayu glanced at the agents. "They haven't said a word since we got in."
"They won't," Aiko said. "They're a fragment unit. Only activated for internal transfers when the chain of command is compromised."
Ryunosuke blinked. "You're saying the PSIA doesn't trust itself anymore?"
"I'm saying," she replied, adjusting the strap on her shoulder bag, "it's not about trust anymore. It's about containment."
The van slowed. The brakes hissed softly. Then, the vehicle descended.
Down a slope. Deeper. The air changed—cooler now, heavier with moisture. The walls outside grew tighter, like they were passing through a tunnel too narrow for the world they carried.
With a low groan, the van stopped.
A sharp knock echoed from the driver's side. One of the silent agents tapped a code into a panel near the door. With a hydraulic hiss, the rear hatch opened.
Ryunosuke stepped out into stillness.
They stood inside an enormous drainage tunnel—circular, concrete, and wide enough to fit a subway train. Rusted utility pipes ran along the walls, dripping slowly into stagnant water pooled at the edges. Old scaffolding creaked above. Somewhere distant, a train horn moaned like a ghost.
At the far end of the tunnel stood a massive iron floodgate. Painted in flaking black letters above it was a designation:
SAFEZONE GAMMA – JSDF / C-3 AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED
The gate began to part, splitting down the center with a guttural rumble. As it opened, a faint yellow glow spilled out, illuminating a corridor beyond—lined with sandbags, riot barriers, and motion detectors.
A second team waited inside, weapons lowered but fingers still close to the triggers.
"This place looks like it hasn't been touched in decades," Mayu said, eyes scanning the grime-coated walls.
"It hasn't," Aiko replied, stepping forward. "This facility was a Cold War fallout bunker. Back when Japan thought the next war would be nuclear, not… metaphysical."
Ryunosuke followed slowly, his boots echoing off the metal floor. As they passed into the bunker, the air shifted again—dryer now, sterilized by old air purifiers that buzzed somewhere overhead.
They passed checkpoints. Scanners. A retinal station.
Each room they entered was dimmer than the last. Fewer people. Fewer words. More glances exchanged without eye contact.
It didn't feel like safety. It felt like a vault—sealed to keep something in.
At last, a handler in a PSIA coat met them in the main operations corridor. "You'll be processed, assigned quarters. Please remain within your wing until further instruction."
He turned to leave.
"Wait," Ryunosuke said. "Who exactly is in charge here?"
The man looked back at him with eyes dulled by fatigue and fear.
"No one wants to be," he said. Then disappeared down the hallway.
The war room felt like it had been carved from the spine of a dead animal.
Low ceilings. Concrete walls stained from old water leaks. An analog projector hummed from above, casting a slow-loading presentation onto a cracked wall display. The air was too dry, recycled too many times. There were no windows—only vents that whispered like they were trying not to be heard.
Ryunosuke sat at one end of the long metal table, fingers tapping a nervous rhythm. Across from him, Aiko watched the loading bar tick forward, her chin resting on steepled hands. Mayu leaned against the wall, arms crossed, her eyes on the single door in or out.
A full minute passed before it opened.
In walked a man with steel-gray hair and a face carved from sleepless nights. His suit was crisp but the collar was open, and he moved like someone who had once been feared and was now simply tolerated. A silver pin shaped like a chrysanthemum glinted on his chest.
"Director Fujimoto," Aiko said, rising only halfway before sitting back down. "Didn't think they'd send a real ghost."
Fujimoto gave her a thin smile. "No one else wanted to touch this mess. So, here I am."
He sat without ceremony, opening a slim leather folder. Within were three printed photos: one of Kanda at a gala, one of Ryunosuke taken at the facility breach, and one of a burned object that looked vaguely like a crown, its edges charred black.
"I've reviewed your leak. Thorough. Sloppy around the edges. Braver than I expected."
Ryunosuke said nothing.
Aiko asked, "Have the agency heads responded?"
Fujimoto's eyes didn't move from the folder. "PSIA is fractured. Some want you arrested. Others think you're whistleblowers. Most just want you gone."
Mayu scoffed. "Typical."
"I'm not here to debate the ethics of your decisions," he continued. "I'm here to offer you a third path."
Ryunosuke leaned forward slightly. "Which is?"
"Stay here. Permanently. No press. No comms. No reach." He looked at Ryunosuke. "You'll be ghosts in a vault until the media storm dies and the country forgets."
Aiko stared at him, expression unreadable. "And if we say no?"
Fujimoto finally looked up. "Then I can't protect you."
A long silence followed.
Mayu broke it. "So that's it. You lock us in or turn us out to die."
Fujimoto stood. "This is not about morality. It's about damage control. You've exposed threads that connect too many institutions—military, commerce, foreign affairs. You made enemies with the truth. That makes you radioactive."
He began to walk away, but paused in the doorway.
"Rest, while you still can. Gamma is quiet, for now."
Ryunosuke stood slowly. "We're not running. We can't hide either."
Fujimoto gave him a look that almost passed for pity. "I know. But the people who are coming for you don't need you to run. They just need you to stay still."
He left without another word.
The door shut with a final-sounding click.
Aiko turned to the others. "We're not safe here."
Mayu nodded once. "We never were."
Ryunosuke couldn't sleep.
He lay on a thin cot in a concrete room the size of a janitor's closet, staring up at the faint outline of a vent cover overhead. The recycled air stank of bleach and old metal. The cot squeaked every time he shifted, but the real reason he couldn't rest was the silence—too perfect, too artificial.
There was no wind. No birds. No hum of city life bleeding in from above.
Just stillness.
And the persistent feeling of being watched.
He sat up, pulling on his jacket and stepping into the hallway. The dim red lights lining the corridor cast the space in an eerie glow. Every door looked the same—brushed steel with a black keypad. No names. No signage. The bunker didn't want you to feel like a person here. Just another piece of inventory.
Down the hall, he saw Mayu pacing. She wore a black PSIA hoodie, her eyes sharp, hand tucked casually into her waistband—where Ryunosuke had no doubt she was hiding a pistol.
"You can't sleep either?" he asked quietly.
"No," she muttered. "Not with the guards moving like that."
Ryunosuke frowned. "What do you mean?"
Mayu nodded toward the next corridor. "They've rotated twice in three hours. That's not standard. And half of them aren't PSIA. Look closer—some are wearing generic black with no insignia. The way they walk… it's different. They're not here to protect us."
A door creaked open across the hall. Aiko stepped out, hair tied up, a small datapad clutched in her hand.
"You're both up," she said. "Good. I found something."
She motioned for them to follow her into a darkened storage room two doors down. Inside, amid stacked crates and a disused projector, she set the datapad on a crate and pulled up a flickering feed—recorded surveillance footage, blurred in places, but decipherable.
"Two hours ago, a body was found near our tunnel route—one of the operatives that helped us escape. The footage was supposed to be locked down internally, but someone flagged it for deletion. I grabbed it first."
The grainy image showed a slumped figure under an overpass. The man's throat was slit. His hand still clutched a phone, the screen cracked but still glowing. The audio was barely audible.
"...they're inside...too late..."
Aiko tapped again. "Here's the real kicker—Gamma's intake logs. Someone modified the timestamps to show we arrived twenty minutes later than we actually did."
Ryunosuke felt the chill rise in his spine. "Why would they—?"
"To cover for someone who was already here. Someone who warned Kanda."
Mayu's hand went to her pistol. "There's a mole."
"And they're feeding him everything," Aiko said. "Layout. Watch rotations. Probably even this conversation, unless we keep moving."
A long silence hung in the room.
"We need to get out," Mayu finally said.
Ryunosuke looked between them. "We don't even know where to go next."
"We will," Aiko said, already packing the datapad away. "But first we need to live through the next twenty-four hours."
They slipped out of the room one at a time, blending back into the corridor shadows.
As they disappeared, the camera hidden inside the vent turned, quietly tracking their exit.
…
The koi pond shimmered under the moonlight like a pane of living glass.
Senator Kanda knelt on the stone platform, a steaming cup of matcha in his hands. The ripples in the pond mirrored the faint lines in his expression—deepening slowly, year after year, but never without reason. Behind him, the estate's traditional paper doors were open just enough to let in the breath of night. Bamboo rustled in the garden beyond. The world, as he saw it, remained elegant—so long as it was managed.
Footsteps approached.
He didn't turn.
The aide bowed deeply, standing just far enough not to cast a shadow on the stones. "Sir. They've arrived at Safezone Gamma. The records show intact transfer. No leaks."
Kanda set the cup down on the stone slab beside him, the sound sharp and deliberate.
"And the broadcasts?"
"Still spreading. Western media's running segments. Domestic coverage is… fractured. Our analysts believe the outrage will peak in seventy-two hours."
Kanda stood slowly, brushing off the front of his crisp gray haori.
"Outrage is noise," he said. "And noise doesn't last. The public does not want truth. They want reassurance that someone is still steering the ship."
The aide hesitated. "Do you want them silenced now?"
Kanda took a deep breath. The garden smelled of stone, moss, and jasmine.
"No. Not yet."
He walked to the edge of the pond, watching the koi move beneath the surface—slow, gliding, indifferent to the chaos above. One fish brushed against another. Ripples spread outward, smooth and perfect.
"We let them feel safe. Let them believe the storm has passed. That's when they'll begin to speak freely again. That's when they slip."
The aide nodded. "Understood."
Kanda turned and walked along the stepping stones toward the house. His movements were slow but purposeful, a man used to the long game. As he passed the inner veranda, he paused beside a table where an open dossier lay in shadow. Ryunosuke's face stared up from the page, paper-clipped beside satellite photos of his movements over the past week.
"You see," Kanda said, barely above a whisper, "they've mistaken their exposure for victory. But they are visible now. That is all."
He closed the folder gently.
"Prepare the Scorch Protocol. No survivors. No traces. I want the Gamma site collapsed before the weekend."
The aide straightened. "And if PSIA objects?"
"They won't." He reached for the sliding door. "They're still debating what side they're on. By the time they decide, the bodies will already be ash."
The door slid shut behind him.
Outside, the koi scattered as something heavy stirred in the water below—something deeper, colder than the fish above.