YF flipped his hands a few times, tracing the cuts that ran across his knuckles with his gaze.

“Haven’t been a blue lantern in a while eh?”

YF looked up and across the table at the woman with the recently dyed white hair and large rimmed glasses. She looked just like any of the other university students roaming around Nishida, her appearance radically different from the time he and Erika met her at her apartment in the countryside. No one would have guessed that the young woman sitting before him could be the infamous sectarian fixer.

“She didn’t seem too happy when mentioning your name, bro” said Toa.

“Business and personal matters should be separate. Erika obviously thought the same, arranging this meeting. Also, I’m not sectarian; you can stop calling me bro.”

“Two mistakes.” She held up one finger. “One, business and personal matters are never separate.” She brought out her second finger. “And second, you are definitely sectarian, bro.”

YF raised an eyebrow. “How old are you again? Like twenty?”

“This twenty year old provided the mods for your big operation,” said Toa between mouthfuls of udon. “And this twenty year old charges two hundred an hour for consultation. I heard you need tech advice and the clock started the moment we sat down.”

YF could feel the pressure rising to his chest, both from her cocky attitude and the financial stress of such a fee. Right before he met her he had just bought a new neckband with a sunvisor and helmet since Reina still had his original one, paying a much higher fee than he had wanted. YF closed his eyes, massaging his temples to ease the pressure. As he did, he could feel the dull pain in his knuckles. “Erika showed you the data?” he asked.

“No, she’s not stupid,” Toa scoffed before raising the bowl and drinking the soup.

YF opened his eyes and continued. “The models are detecting an anomaly but the images don’t show any difference. What’s going on?”

“That happens all the time,” said Toa. “Which model are you using?”

“New Sentinel Motion Detection 5.1,” said YF.

Toa looked genuinely shocked. “Are you my grandpa?”

“Don’t professional consultants know not to waste their clients’ time? Can NSMD 5.1 detect a real anomaly or not?”

Toa nodded pensively. “You’re right, bro. I’ll wind the clock back fifteen minutes as compensation. Explain what you mean by real anomaly.”

“It’s for failsafe clocks on security systems. Those clocks are not remotely accessible and there should be no issues with them unless they were physically tampered with. They weren’t touched except for the upgrade four years ago, yet they aren’t operating as intended. So what’s going on? Any idea” asked YF.

“Well you just answered your question, bro. Whatever happened to your clocks happened four years ago.”

YF could feel in his gut that’s what she would say, though hearing it vocalized brought on a painfully helpless feeling. “Can you...explain it a bit more?”

Toa pushed her glasses up her nose. “You ever hear of a timing attack?”

“No,” said YF.

“Your clocks were made by the same manufacturer right?”

YF leaned forward in his seat. “Definitely not, and I can say that with certainty. We’ve been documenting the manufacturer tags.”

“Two problems,” said Toa, holding up two fingers again. “One. The tags might be fake but I actually doubt that. Second, you need to check the firmware people, make sure the third party software vendor isn’t the same company.”

“How would I do that?” asked YF.

Toa held her forehead with the hand not holding her chopsticks. “Now you’re just scaring me,” she said. “Aren’t you supposed to be the police? You don’t know how to do your job?”

“Client time,” said YF. “And we’re not really the police anyway.”

“Roll back fifteen more minutes then. And that’s a bad excuse.” Toa pointed her chopsticks at YF’s tempura, still sitting on the plate untouched. “You going to eat that?”

YF pushed the plate toward her. “I will see if there’s any record of the firmware updates. Now I have a second request.” He thought about what Kigali had said about Viper Sect’s mods and pictured Uwada’s face in his mind. Erika’s former lover talked a good talk about protecting the weak and helpless. But he could somehow manage to outfit his men and women with the world’s cutting edge vehicle modifications. Sounded a bit hypocritical to YF.

“You going to tell me what that second request is?” asked Toa, annoyed.

YF placed his hands on the table. “Right. I need to get financial records from a place. Any advice on how to do that?”

“It’ll cost you a thousand for a mem disk with a key logger and a shellshock program. If you don’t know anything about shell scripting, the script will cost another five hundred to set up a way to get the information back to yourself. Does this place have good network security?”

YF was rather taken aback by how little Toa seemed to care about what he needed the items for. As tough as it was to hear fee after fee for what needed to be done, Toa’s brutally efficient communication style was a refreshing change from what he was used to. After collecting his thoughts, he tried as best he could to recall the setup of Gochome Viper Sect’s computers. “No, they don’t have good net security.”

Toa nodded. “Good, makes it easier. The script will email it to a private server then. But you’ll need to visit the server location in person with a chip to get it afterward. I don’t suggest emailing it to your receiver. Once the device sends one email it will self destruct. Make sure you have everything you need in the initial message”

YF breathed out deeply to try to calm his nerves. He then had an idea. “If I can get you back your scramble reflector can you give me a discount?”

Toa grinned. “And how do you plan on recovering the reflector? You don’t think the police have swarmed the area where you ditched it and impounded every Tanaka R1 they found within a three li radius?”

YF could feel his stomach churn.

“Since you’re asking about it in the first place, it’s obvious sis did it without telling you,” said Toa, pointing her chopsticks at him. She tsked. “You’re not very good at this. She needs to teach you a bit more.”

YF could feel the relief wash over him. “So you have the reflector already? Erika got it?”

Toa scoffed. “You think I would have them deliver a wanted vehicle to my front door?”

“Then where?”

“You’re going to have to call sis for that. And as punishment, you’re also going to have to figure out how to remove my shit from it. I can deliver your original ID module once you give me a location. If you want the bike back at your place without the scanners detecting your presence in a sectarian garage, you’ll need to disassemble most of it and tow it out so the X-ray machines think it’s scrap metal.”

“Let’s say I do all that and get the reflector back. Then can you give me a discount?”

“The reflector was worth four thousand. A returned one I can refund two thousand if it’s in good condition. Since you need new devices, I can give you three hundred DTKs with the new devices.”

“Three hundred?” asked YF.

“After consultation fees.”

“But you didn’t talk to me an hour,” YF protested.

“It’s rounded up,” said Toa. She held her hands up and bowed. “Gochisousama deshita.” She then stood up. “I’d best get going.”

YF raised his hand toward her as she made her way to the door. “Hold on.”

“What, bro?” she asked, turning just her head.

“You also gave Erika some way to circumvent the ID scanners so she could go to work right? Even with her new identity?”

Toa’s expression grew very serious. “I can neither confirm nor deny that. Do not ask me about other clients, bro. That’s my final warning.”

***

YF spent a good fifteen minutes staring at Erika’s contact information on his receiver. It was odd that calling her now felt like it did the night he mustered the courage to call when she first gave him her number. This time though, he was sure the response would be very different from then. YF pressed the call button and waited with the phone still held near his torso and the speakerphone off. When a click indicated the call was rejected, he dialed again. The call was once more rejected.

YF switched to the texting module and swiped his thumb along the biometric reader to go into encrypted mode. He then started typing. “Need to know where the bike is. It’s important.”

“Ask Toa,” came the swift reply.

“She told me to ask you,” YF typed back.

There was a long pause before Erika typed him back two numbers which YF assumed were the coordinates of the place. He typed it in his navigation and then almost dropped the receiver when the result came back as “Nishida West Scrapyard.”

***

YF had passed the scrapyard multiple times as it was hard to miss – the place was huge. While most multi level buildings all throughout Kazen were apartments, malls, or offices, Nishida West Scrapyard itself took three levels and had high walls topped with inward tilting electrified bars for security. He slowed down as he approached the parking lot and parked his car in the massive lot. Afterward, he made his way to the east side entrance. There, the line to get in snaked six layers deep and then went out to the south side of the walled compound.

When his turn came in line to pass the gate, he realized why the place was so popular. Armed guards were blocking both the entrance and exits but there were no ID scanners. That was both a relief and terrifying, imagining what sorts of people were inside. YF had a hunch that telling the junkyard guards why he was there would not go over well, and so he simply waved to the guard. The guard nodded back. YF then headed for the west wall on the far side, where the amount of people grew less and less the further he went.

When he reached the section with the cycles, he started going down the rows to look for black Tanaka R1s. The first row was filled with lower powered vehicles, with higher reactor rating ones further along. Just to make sure someone didn't shove an R1 in the wrong spot, YF scanned each black cycle — even the weak ones — carefully. But when he reached the section where the R1s and any bikes with similar power should have been, there was not a single R1 in sight, not even ones in other colors. The rest of the scrap yard was for cars; the bikes would not be elsewhere. That meant the answer was obvious: someone had taken all the R1s and placed them somewhere else.

Luckily an open space like a scrapyard did not make that “somewhere else” difficult to find. YF only had to follow the west wall until it connected to the north wall, where at the center of the wall stood a warehouse with two heavily armored men positioned at the entrance. YF flipped on the new sunvisor and activated the camera’s zoom feature, trying to get a look at who the guards were. The Blue Rose insignia on their shoulders confirmed what he had suspected. He pretended like he was searching through more bikes as he tried to think how to get past them. Finally, he took out his receiver and logged in to the Sentinel Database, scrolling through it until he found Reina’s contact information.

YF swiped his thumb on his receiver and began typing. “Need a picture of you with verified ID auth tag, it’s for the investigation.”

It didn’t take long for him to get a response. “Nice try, but if you wanted a picture of me you should’ve just asked directly. Better luck next time,” she replied.

YF could feel himself getting angry, instantly snapping a picture of the guards and posting it back in the message against his better judgement. “The iron horse is behind your babysitters. I need to get it back.”

There was a long pause. YF grabbed a panel on a scrapped bike and ripped it off not only because it was loose and that bothered him, but also to vent his frustration. The minutes waiting for her reply passed like hours as he fiddled with the parts to the bike.

A reply finally came with no attached message. YF opened the picture and stared at it. It was one of Reina and his brother. She had taken a selfie while wearing a jet black one piece swimsuit; Hiroyuki was in the background, shirtless and wearing matching black trunks while donning trendy sunglasses. Hiroyuki looked tense and alert as if he was her bodyguard, though he was also smiling one of the most genuine smiles YF had ever seen from him. So was she. YF recalled the face of his sister-in-law and could not work out whether he felt sorry for her or glad that Hiroyuki could find some happiness in a world that chewed him up and spat him out for most of his life. Seeing Reina’s smile also convinced YF that she had feelings much deeper than her playful demeanor might suggest; she really loved Hiroyuki.

YF sighed. “Poor sis.” He power walked as fast as he could up to the guards. “I need access to the premises. I’m investigating the disappearance of Hayashi Reina,” he said.

“If you were Blue Rose I would recognize you…” the first mercenary started.

“I was on her security detail, you can scan the picture for authenticity.”

YF held up the picture Reina had sent him. The guard coughed and looked away in embarrassment. The second guard seemed not to care. “Hold it still while I scan,” he ordered. The mercenary held up a small device and ran it over the picture. YF could hear “Scan Complete, Hayashi Reina detected.” From the guard’s helmet.

“And you’re the man in this picture,” the guard stated interrogatively.

YF held the receiver up to the guards again and assumed a confident attitude, one that would’ve made Hiroyuki proud. “You want me to put my face next to it or something?” He brought his face next to his receiver in an exaggerated fashion.

“That’s quite all right,” said the second man holding up a hand. He lowered the hand. “Why is your picture not tagged with an auth code?”

“Why do you think?” YF retorted.

The guard waved for YF to pass through. Before the sound of their voices disappeared, YF could hear them conversing. “Didn’t think the old boss would recruit sectarians...” one of them murmured.

YF focused on the bikes laid out before him, noting in the corner of his eye a third mercenary patrolling the interior. There were no windshields on any of the bikes in the warehouse. Whoever Erika had hired to do the job obviously knew what he was doing. YF went through the rows of bikes until he found one he thought was his, but when he squatted down to look underneath, the area where the Nishida Ward policeman shot at him was clean of bullet holes. YF rose and continued down the rows, checking underneath any bike he thought might be his. Eventually he started to check under every bike, but found that all of them had splash guards completely intact.

YF returned to the first bike and reached a hand to where he thought the bullet hole should have been. When his fingers touched the surface, he noticed some uneven parts where a putty-like substance had been spread along the surface. YF bent over to look at it and then realized it was painted over. With the toolkit he had bought after the meeting with Toa, he then began to quickly dismantle the panel.

“What are you doing?”

YF looked up to see the guard that had been on patrol next to him. “Need to extract MCU information,” YF replied.

“Isn’t the MCU on a bike located on the other side?”

YF stood up and squared his shoulders slowly, drawing out the process to buy himself time.

He held up a finger to imitate Toa. “First, Tanaka changed their base design ten years ago. We’re not sure which one this uses.” His second finger shot out. “Second, even if we did, sectarians can move parts lower to change the weight distribution.” Third finger. “Third, I’ve been cleared by your buddies up front.” YF pointed a thumb to the first two mercenaries, both of whom were facing him, the second one now activating some sort of communication device on his visor. YF tried not to seem nervous. “I’m trying to find Ms. Hayashi. I need any information I can.”

The third guard nodded. “Carry on then.”

As he walked off, YF worked quicker on pulling the panel out. He was sure the first two guards would approach him at any minute. Right when he pulled the scramble reflector out of the bike, he could hear the boots just a few shaku from him.

“Stun only!” he could hear the second guard bark.

YF started to run off but then was hit in the back by what felt like a large sledgehammer, sending him soaring shoulder-first into the front fork of a bike down the row. He roared in pain but forced himself upright, clutching the scramble reflector and dashing around the end of the row toward the entrance which was now unguarded. He could hear the guards shouting as he increased the distance between them. “What’s going on!” “The stun round’s a dud!”

Emerging outside the warehouse, he took one look at the high walls topped with their charged metal bars and then took off for the main gate of the scrapyard. When he reached the entrance he was fourth in line for the exit. YF felt a hard grip on his wounded shoulder and yelled out as he dropped the reflector on the ground. Feeling the rage from having possibly broken the part, YF rammed his wounded shoulder into the Blue Rose mercenary’s chest plate, knocking him down. The guard’s companion flinched as YF bore his fangs at him, taking a few steps back. At that, the other three people in the exit line created a path for him to leave first, their body language suggesting they just didn’t want to get hurt.

YF yelled out and grabbed the reflector from the ground, jogging to the checkout window and dumping the part on the scale. He started preparing some amount of DTKs on his receiver, holding it up to the lady when he finished.

“Will this be enough?” he demanded before she could register the weight. “I need to go somewhere quick. Now, please ma’am.”

She nodded slowly in response. YF swiped the value toward the terminal and grabbed the scramble reflector, dashing into the street. By that point he could see the two Blue Rose mercenaries had already exited the main gate and were quickly approaching him. Behind YF, rows of taxi cabs were waiting on the long platform. YF approached the nearest one and pulled open the passenger’s seat, diving into it just as a stun bolt flew overhead. “Just drive!”

Completely unfazed, the cab driver stomped on the accelerator and merged upward into the midnight traffic.