The hospital was a fortress of polished floors and hushed voices, a place where secrets were kept behind doors labeled with numbers, not names. Tatsuya moved through its corridors with the effortless grace of a man who belonged. The face he wore—a perfect, synthetic mask of concerned humanity—did not flicker as he passed nurses' stations and grieving families. The forged note in his hand, inquiring after a patient named Renjo, was a key that had gotten him this far.
His target was Room 214. The second floor.
A cheerful nurse at the directory pointed him toward the elevators. "You're in luck," she said. "Visiting hours just started."
The elevator doors sighed shut. Alone, Tatsuya's expressionless mask finally matched his internal state: cold, focused. The doors opened onto a quieter hallway, the air thick with the scent of antiseptic and quiet suffering. And there it was. Room 214.
Guarded.
Two armed men in tactical gear stood flanking the door, their posture rigid, their eyes scanning the empty hall. So, they were expecting someone. Or something.
Tatsuya's hand drifted toward the emergency fire alarm panel on the wall beside him. A direct approach was out of the question. But chaos… chaos was a tool he knew how to wield.
He didn't hesitate. His palm slammed against the red plastic.
The effect was instantaneous. A deafening, electronic wail shattered the calm. Lights flashed. Down the hall, doors flew open as staff and visitors spilled out, a confused and anxious river of people. The guards snapped to attention, their hands going to their earpieces, their weapons, their eyes wide with sudden, unplanned-for crisis.
In that moment of perfect distraction, Tatsuya became a ghost. He slipped past the distracted guards, into Room 214, and closed the door behind him.
The room was empty.
The bed was a chaotic mess of twisted, bloodstained sheets and discarded bandages. The heart monitor beside it was dark and silent. The only movement was the faint flutter of the window curtain, sucked inward by a breeze from the open pane.
*He's gone.*
A cold fury, sharp and precise, tightened in Tatsuya's chest. He hadn't been too late. He'd been played.
He crossed to the window. Three stories down, in the hospital's service lane, a scene of contained chaos was unfolding. A figure—moving with a familiar, albeit pained, gait—was hunched over the engine of a parked motorcycle. Even from this distance, Tatsuya recognized the stubborn set of those shoulders. Renjiro.
As the engine roared to life, two black sedans screeched around the corner, boxing him in. Tatsuya watched, a silent spectator to the gambit. Renjiro gunned the throttle, the bike lurching forward to slip between the sedans with inches to spare. The chase was on, the two cars peeling out after him, their sirens now adding to the cacophony of the fire alarm.
The game had just become infinitely more complex.
A vibration buzzed against his leg. Not his comms. *Akari's* private line. He accepted the audio-only feed, his voice a low, calm contrast to the bedlam around him.
"Akari."
Her voice was a whip-crack of fear and fury. "Tatsuya! It's Renjiro—he's alive! He's on the line, he's hurt, he's saying you—"
"Put him on speaker," Tatsuya interrupted, his eyes still tracking the disappearing chase down the street below.
A click, then a burst of static and the raw scream of a motorcycle engine at high RPM. Renjiro's voice was strained, gritted with pain, but unmistakably his.
"—knew you'd come… to see the body yourself." A sharp gasp, the sound of a painful gear shift. "Had to… make it look good. For them. Had to wait for you to show your face."
Tatsuya said nothing, his silence a weapon.
"You set the trap," Renjiro snarled, the words tearing out of him. "I'm just… springing it back on you."
The line crackled with the sound of squealing tires and the closer, more threatening roar of the pursuing sedans. Then, a burst of static, and the call died.
In the sudden quiet of the abandoned hospital room, the blaring alarm felt distant to Tatsuya. The mask on his face itched. Renjiro was not just alive; he was proactive. He had turned himself into bait to confirm his suspicions, and in doing so, he had irrevocably shifted the board.
Tatsuya turned from the window. The guards would be back soon to secure the room. He had his own confirmation now. The documents, the challenge, the trap at Arena 7—it was all a move in a larger game he had not yet fully perceived.
And Renjiro, it seemed, had just forced his hand. The first move in the next play was his. He needed to find Akari before Renjiro's version of the truth did.