chapter four - single black

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Atsushi hit his head on the top of the vent and groaned. Akutagawa and Kyouka both spun around and shushed him. Sheepishly, he shrugged. Atsushi was relatively small, but this was the first time he was sent on an infiltration mission. Besides, it wasn't his fault that the division made their vents so small.

Atsushi peeked through the grate underneath him. All he could see was an empty interrogation room with a one-way mirror, lit up by dim fluorescent lights. There wasn't much about the room that scared could rationally make Atsushi scared other than maybe the eerie silence and emptiness. However, the fact that he would have ended up in a similar room if it wasn't for Chuuya chilled him a bit. He might have spent the last moments of his life within these walls.

His attention was still focused on that notion as he continued crawling, so he didn't notice that Akutagawa and Kyouka had stopped in their tracks. Atsushi would rather leave out the specifics, but you can imagine exactly what part of Akutagawa's body he bumped into.

"I'm so sorry...," Atsushi whispered.

Akutagawa didn't seem to mind as he pressed his ear up against the metal plates underneath him. He gestured for Kyouka and Atsushi to do the same.

"...'s such an emergency, then you can find Ango-san in his office, Tsujimura," came the faint voice of someone underneath them.

"Thank you, sir!" exclaimed a female voice.

They all listened for a few more seconds to determine what direction this Tsujimura woman was headed in.  Akutagawa made a motion ordering everyone to begin moving the other way. Now it was Atsushi's turn to lead.

Every now and then, the three stopped to listen to the footsteps underneath them to decide on which turn to make. Sometimes they even questioned if they were even following the right person. Luckily for them, whenever they passed by a grate, the same teal-haired woman in a suit could be seen. Her greeting coworkers when she passed them affirmed that she was the one they heard a while ago.

Unfortunately, they eventually came to a dead end. All they could do now was watch Tsujimura enter a pin and complete an eye scan just to enter a room. Above the pin pad was a plate with the name "Sakaguchi Ango" written.

"What now?" Atsushi whispered to his accomplices behind him.

"If it was just the pin to enter Sakaguchi's office, there would be no trouble," Akutagawa said in a low voice. "That foolish woman didn't even bother to cover the pin pad as she entered the passcode. 67192764."

"You memorized all of that?" Atsushi asked, amazed. "And you saw it from all the way up here?"

"Of course he did. You didn't?" added on Kyouka.

Atsushi shook his head. He could clearly see the numbers on the pin pad, but he didn't bother paying attention to what Tsujimura typed in, let alone try to commit the digits to memory. He really had a long time to go until he got anywhere close to Akutagawa and Kyouka's level.

"We'll need to apprehend someone who can get us into that office," Akutagawa noted. "But this Sakaguchi man isn't our only target; we still need to find the chief. However, I have a feeling that the same thing will need to be done if that man is holed up in his office like a coward as well."

"We should split up," Kyouka suggested.

Split up? If the three of them split up, they were bound to find someone who could get into both offices. Taking everyone's skill level into account, Akutagawa and Kyouka were most likely to do that and kill their enemies in a single second. If they succeeded, the first domino will have toppled, and Atsushi would have been unable to stop it. He doubted that he could keep all three of them together and prevent them from carrying out the mission. But if he could just stay close to at least one of them...

𝐔𝐍𝐑𝐀𝐕𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐀𝐅𝐈𝐀 | completedWhere stories live. Discover now