YF reviewed the plan as he led Ryoji and Uraga through the back alleys toward the Aritomo building. The first course of action would be to shut down the reactors in the basement so they could manually lock the entrance doors and stall reinforcements. The second step for him was to gather enough proof to incriminate Hiroyuki.

The Aritomo building sat at the top of multiple tiers of stone steps, with large walls topped with bushes separating each level. The closer they approached the southern wall steps, the more ridiculous YF thought his plan to get Hiroyuki arrested was. Even if they survived the initial attack, there would hardly be a moment to search for hidden data among the terminals. YF wished there was a better plan, but with Fujii in danger, there was no time to come up with one.

YF noticed that with each step they came closer to the Aritomo building Ryoji looked closer to having a nervous breakdown. Valiantly as the latter tried to mask his fear, it eventually got to the point where both YF and Uraga stopped walking and turned to him.

“Lack of sleep,” said Ryoji. “I’ll be fine to move.”

YF placed a hand on his shoulder. “Brother, I have an idea.”

“Don’t to—” Ryoji made as if to push YF’s hand off instinctively but stopped himself part of the way. “What idea?”

“I need you to buy a nice suit and put it over your body armor. Enter and scan your ID. As the head of House Higashi, they will let you through. Make it to the top floor and confirm that Hiroyuki is there and stall him with a proposal about business deals. Fish out what information you can about Fujii’s whereabouts. When we’ve taken out the reactors, make your move. Also, give me your rifle.”

“I won’t abandon my comrades,” said Ryoji.

YF shook his head. “You’re helping keep your comrades alive if you do this. It’s hardly abandoning anything. Get the suit and go up. Send a message when you’ve met Hiroyuki. Draft it first so you can just press a button. We will then wait until you find something about Fujii’s whereabouts. You enter first, we will wait out here.”

“No!” Ryoji shouted rather loudly.

YF could see Ryoji’s face contort into a hateful expression, the likes of which he had seldom seen. Whatever it was Hiroyuki did to him seemed to have left a deep scar. YF knew then and there that the chances of him just arresting Hiroyuki were slim; if Uraga didn’t put a bolt in his brother’s head, the Former Pillar of the Higashi Clan would. Whatever hesitation Ryoji seemed to have before completely disappeared, and his hands had grown completely steady.

Ryoji did one last rifle check and activated his neckband helmet. “Lead on,” he muttered to YF.

YF stared at the pitch black tinted helmet for a second, then turned to Uraga. Uraga did his own rifle check and activated his neckband helmet as well. YF could feel his stomach turning in a million knots. Just as his knees started to shake he activated his helmet and crouched slightly to stabilize himself.

“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you two the first thing to do is take cover in the best position you can find. Survive and make it to the basement.” YF could hear his voice shaking.

He turned and sprinted down the south face of the building, pivoting and dashing up the stairs when he reached the stone steps leading to the south entrance. Two men in thick black armor and tinted helmets were standing in front of the door. Before the mercenary on the far right could raise his rifle, a loud bang resounded through the air followed by an explosion on the man’s helmet visor. YF turned to see Uraga with a cold stare through his rifle’s scope, already aiming at the second guard. Uraga pulled the trigger. YF looked up just as the second guard fell to the ground. Uraga then dashed ahead of YF up the steps. YF increased his pace and reached the top just as Uraga shoved himself through the closing front entrance. YF could see Uraga recoil as he took a shot to the body before forcing open the door.

YF and Ryoji followed closely behind, diving for cover as the bolts started flying from above. Ryoji went for the restroom door, directly in the line of fire of the mercenaries. A steady stream of bolts rained toward the bathroom entrance, forcing Ryoji to stay behind cover. YF dove behind the large receptionist booth to the side and stayed put as multiple bolts came his way. The sound of bolts striking the metal in front of him was deafening, all of them landing much closer to him than he had anticipated. Every time he thought of returning fire he instead pulled deeper into the desk, realizing he had severely underestimated the abilities of Hata family’s soldiers. As the sound of exploding bolts filled his ears, YF knew he had to rise eventually but could not bring his body to move. It was then that he could see the image of Uraga smirking in his mind, laughing at his cowardice. YF grimaced.

When there was a lull in the bolts, YF dove out to the side and shot in bursts toward the second level, causing two of the men standing there to take cover. Just as he did so, he could see Uraga sprinting over to the lobby stairs, ducking behind a set of pillars. When the first man from the second floor rose to shoot, a well aimed bolt from Uraga’s rifle slammed into his chestplate, sending him flying backwards. Uraga made a signal toward the second floor and YF obliged, shooting cover fire out over the fall barriers. Ryoji then made his break for it, dashing out from the restroom, across the lobby and planting himself next to Uraga. Uraga made an urgent motion for YF to approach them. YF crawled up from his position behind the reception booth and ran crouched toward them.

“Shoda and Higashi will delay the response from the Ward Office as long as they can but eventually either they will come or the Nats themselves will,” said Uraga, panting. He jabbed two fingers in YF’s chest. “We should have enough time to cut the power and for you to manually lock all the entrances once we do. Think you can cover the lobby?”

YF flinched as a bolt came toward them from upstairs. “I got it,” said YF.

Uraga tsked. “Nevermind, both of you are horrible shots. I will take care of the fools upstairs. You go cut the power. Now!”

“Yes sir,” said YF.

YF grabbed Ryoji and hauled him up. As soon as Uraga started providing cover fire, YF ran with Ryoji to the emergency exit on the far side, pressing the button to open the door.

“Authentication required,” the computer spoke back.

“Fuck!” YF turned to Ryoji. “Stay here!” he barked.

YF then strapped his rifle to his back, running across the lobby behind Uraga to the south entrance. When he arrived outside, he shoved his gloved hands through the closest dead man’s chest plate, dragging him across the floor with all his strength. YF ripped the dead mercenary’s glove off upon reaching the place where Ryoji was.

“Please be warm enough, please be warm enough,” YF muttered under his breath. He then grabbed the dead man’s hand and slapped his palm against the scanner.

“Scan complete. Nagatani Junichi Detected.”

The door to the emergency stairs swung open.

“Let’s go!” YF yelled to Ryoji, who needed no further urging.

Ryoji was already descending the stairs to the basement when YF dropped the mercenary’s body and went through the door. He debated for a moment about whether or not to close the door but decided against it, going forward and descending the steps as fast he could. About twenty steps down, he turned back up and ascended to the lobby, grabbing the mercenary by the chest plate once more and hauling him to the steps. YF then kicked the body in the side so that it rolled down the stairs, a loud pang resounding as the man’s armor smacked the wall at the first turn. He then descended and pulled the body a short distance to the next set of stairs, where he could see Ryoji at the bottom. YF laid the man across the first step and kicked him once more, letting the body roll all the way to Ryoji.

“Scan him in!” he yelled to Ryoji.

Ryoji was shaking and could not seem to bring himself to take hold of the man. YF cursed and leapt down the steps two at a time, eventually reaching the bottom and grabbing the dead man’s palm. He slapped the palm on the reactor room entrance scanner.

“Scan complete. Nagatani Junichi Detected.”

YF entered the reactor room and spotted an old man in a maintenance uniform asleep at the control panel. Without hesitation, he raised his rifle and squeezed the trigger, firing three bolts toward the operator. The operator’s body jerked when YF’s bolt struck him in the torso before slumping over. Another one of YF’s bolts struck the large monitoring screen on the far end, blowing a hole in the display. YF turned to Ryoji, who was shaking by the room’s entrance.

“Your house has something like this right? Can you shut it down?” asked YF.

Ryoji would not respond, still staring at the body of the old man.

“Ryoji! Get your shit together! Do you know how to turn off the power?”

“I...Sakamoto…” Ryoji muttered.

“Reoa damn me.”

YF jogged to the panel and looked at the controls, trying to make sense of which screen he should be using. He then grabbed the dead operator’s hand and scanned as many of the screens as he could, figuring that was a good start. Above, he could hear the sounds of bolts impacting against metal walls.

“Stay alive you fuck,” YF muttered.

When the screens unlocked, he navigated the options as best he could to arrive at the full system shutdown screen. YF pressed the button.

“Multiple or elevated authorization required for full system shutdown,” said a robotic female voice.

“Fuck!!!” YF yelled.

He thought first about using Mr. Nagatani’s body again but realized a guard would not have authorization over the building’s power. YF then turned once to Ryoji before activating the blood sample authentication on a second screen. When the sanitation process finished and the needle came out, YF pressed his finger against it.

The needle retracted. “Scan complete. Sakai Hiroyuki detected.”

YF could hear the PA speakers across multiple floors echoing from the building. “Full system power shutdown engaged. Please evacuate the building through the emergency exits by following the disaster evacuation procedures…”

A siren blared before a countdown projected onto the broken reactor monitoring screen, indicating ten minutes to power shutdown. When YF turned, Ryoji was pointing his gun straight at him.

YF raised his hands high. “I can’t explain why either and we don’t have time. We need to lock the front doors.”

Ryoji did not seem convinced.

“Look at me!” YF yelled to Ryoji.

Ryoji locked eyes with YF.

“Do I look like him?” asked YF.

Ryoji lowered his gun slowly.

“Now come on before the Nats get here,” said YF.

Ryoji stared at YF without turning toward the stairs. YF ran past him and up the steps back to the lobby. When he arrived, he could see smoke rising from somewhere on Uraga’s breastplate; Uraga was holding his rifle in his left arm. In the distance, two bodies were laying motionless in the lobby.

YF approached him and crouched beside him. “Power will be out in seven or eight minutes. I’ll stay behind to lock the doors.”

“No…” said Uraga weakly. “If they have one more security team they’ll be waiting at the end of the elevator on the upper floors and we won’t have much of a chance against them. If there are no more in the building, it won’t make a difference if we take a bit more time to go up anyway.” He breathed out heavily, adjusting the rifle on his arm. “Best you lock the doors and we go up the stairs together.”

“First and second floor clear?” asked YF.

“The guy I shot first is still up there I think. I just knocked him out, not sure when he’ll wake. When he does, he'll phone backup, so either you or Ryoji need to take care of him.”

YF glanced once at Ryoji. “Cover The Magistrate.”

Before checking to see how Ryoji would respond, YF rounded the pillars and went up the stairs, pointing his gun upward. When he reached the second floor there was no one there. One body lay motionless close by but the smoke rising from multiple points in the man’s armor indicated to YF that he was gone. YF approached the opposite corner as slowly as he could, crouching so that he could take cover at any moment. When he rounded the barrier on the west end, he could see the man Uraga had first shot on the ground. YF could see the mercenary’s chest rising and falling, causing him to feel a feeling of dread.

When he reached about five shaku from where the man lay, he knew that the latter was keeping still to make it out alive. In the basement YF had been running on too much adrenaline to process what he was doing when he shot the old maintenance man. But now that he had calmed down a little, the guilt of killing first an old man and now a downed one weighed on his conscience. Before that feeling could get any stronger, YF pointed his gun slightly below the laying man and squeezed the trigger in burst fire, at least two energy bolts burning into the man’s armor. When he heard the man scream, YF lowered his gun once more and fired at him, repeating the process two more times until the man grew silent.

He then jogged over and dug through the dead mercenary’s armor compartments for any remaining cartridges. Since he had been shot by Uraga quite early, the man had three full cartridges, which YF pocketed immediately. YF then went back down the stairs.

By the time he returned to Uraga and Ryoji, the sound of police sirens could be heard in the distance. Uraga was now wincing while holding his rifle against his right shoulder as steady as he could. Ryoji held his rifle aimed toward the south entrance as well. The three of them passed the time in harrowing silence, waiting for the lights to turn off or some other signal to indicate that their operation in the basement had been successful.

The moment the lights shut off came with less noise than anticipated. YF instinctively came out from behind the pillar and moved quickly for the south entrance. When he reached the door, an armored mercenary suddenly emerged from the stone steps, rifle pointed toward YF. The man paused, his arms visibly shaking.

A loud explosion suddenly rang out and a large chunk of armor blew off the torso of the mercenary, striking YF in the chest. The man staggered backwards before a second explosion struck near the first one, a burst of blood spewing from the impact point. The mercenary fell backward down the steps, completely motionless at the bottom.

YF’s ears were still ringing when he turned to work on the door, pulling it shut and winding the lock with his hands to put the bar in place. He went to the other doors and repeated the action, locking all of the entrances tight.

“Come on!” he could hear Uraga yell.

YF turned to see Uraga moving slowly up the first few steps to the second floor with Ryoji’s help, Uraga’s rifle nozzle still smoking from the ejected bolts. Before YF could move toward the stairs, the first police vehicle from Nishida Ward arrived at the bottom of the stone steps outside. A man donning body armor stepped out of the vehicle while clutching a rifle, standing square with YF and staring straight at him. For a moment time seemed to stop as the two of them faced each other, YF through his helmet and the man helmetless. YF was sure the man knew that Aritomo’s windows were bulletproof which was why he would not fire. But he was perplexed as to why the man would not report sighting YF or take a picture for evidence. The man continued to stand motionless, the occasional shuffling of feet the only sign that he was not a statue. Headlights from a passing vehicle briefly illuminated the area below the steps before plunging the area back into darkness.

YF could feel a sense of dread rising from his core. “Eiji…”