Rain poured down and Jiro looked outside of the bay windows of the Piano room. The curtains flowed through the wind softly behind him and his hair joined them. He loved the rain, the very sound of it. Jiro couldn't smell, but he had heard rain smelled very nice. It was time for his piano practice. He left the windows open as he began to play his new favorite song, Moonlight Sonata. He had come to really enjoy the song, the suspense of it. After all, Clair de Lune had been his favorite song to play for over an entire year, it was fun having something new to obsess over. Lucas and Sonia were parked just around the corner from the manor. The rain was coming to a light spit. "Listen, he made a report on that Bastian guy to the police station, right?" Sonia shook her head no. "They didn't actually file a report, they figured he had just taken off and told the kid the same." Lucas nodded and looked out the window. "I see. Well, it's either him or the missing doctor." Sonia nodded but reminded Lucas that this could be anyone's game, and they probably aren't the only two suspects. He looked at her, startled. "You don't think the kid has anything to do with it, do you?" Sonia lit up a smoke and took a few quick drags, Lucas quickly rolled down his window. "Sorry," she said. He nodded again to her and said, "Well, let's hope he's home." Sonia slowly drove her car up the long dirt driveway, and Lucas noted that a window was open on the third floor. She came to a stop outside the gate and got out to open it. She could hear Jiro playing piano from the open window as she lifted the latch. The window faced away from them, they could only see the open shutters. She paused to listen to the song and Lucas poked his head out of the window. "What's up?" She walked back over and got into the car. "Kid plays the piano," she said simply as they drove up the driveway past the fence. Soon they both stood at the front door of the manor. They used the old vintage knocker 3 times and waited, but no one came to the door. They both stared at the odd-looking doorknocker. It was a depiction of a man's face, but with teeth and a mane like a lion, but with ears of a donkey. "Maybe he didn't hear us?" Lucas suggested. They waited another short moment and Sonia used the door knocker again. One, two- The door swung open and behind it was Jiro, staring somberly outside at them. He was wearing all white house clothes, and he stood in a very dark hallway, as all the curtains had been closed. Sonia bowed her head slightly and said, "Hello Lord Kubo, I hope this is an alright time. We don't mean to bother you." She stood upright and smiled at him and his expression became softer and he returned a slight smile. "How can I help you?" He asked softly back, but almost expressionless. Lucas spoke up before Sonia had the chance to. He asked Jiro if they could come in, and Sonia was actually impressed he had the guts to do that so abruptly. Inside the home, it was incredibly dark. Jiro had used a certain key, on a large keyring with a few others, to lock the house from the inside. "That's odd," Sonia thought to herself. Jiro whipped open large curtains in the living room on their right while Lucas and Sonia stood by the front door. Jiro looked at them and said, "Please, come sit down." They awkwardly took off their shoes and made their way over to the small living room, where there was basically just a chesterfield and an old wooden rocking chair separated by a very well-made living room table. Jiro sat at the rocking chair, which also happened to be placed right in front of the open window that had gray light coming in. Lucas and Sonia sat on the chesterfield, looking at basically Jiro's silhouette. You couldn't help but notice the dust on everything. There were some paintings on the walls, mostly of fruits or flowers. They had visible thick dust lining the edges of them, and the paintings themselves actually seemed faded because of how heavy the layer of dust was, even on the surface. "Thank you for allowing us into your home," began Lucas, trying to lighten the mood. It was freezing, and there didn't seem to be any electricity. No lights were on and the heat was surely off. Jiro asked again. "How can I help you?" Sonia began to run through similar questions as the last time they were here, easing Jiro into the conversation with some familiar ground. After a while, though, he became persistent in wanting to know exactly why they were here and what this 'New information' they had was. She confesses outright to Jiro that his father's death may be linked to a serial killer. Lucas was astounded at her doing this. He couldn't believe it. She noticed his silent amazement and raised and quickly raised an eyebrow at him while they listened to Jiro's response. "What? Why weren't we told sooner? How long did the police know about this?" The voice spoke inside his head, yelling at him. Don't let these people leave! He ignored it and listened to Lucas speak. "Have you heard anything back from 12 Division about Bastian, your former butler?" Jiro shook his head no and Lucas asked him about his doctor, stating that they were in need of his father's medical records. Again, Jiro shook his head. "I wouldn't know the slightest thing about that. I've looked everywhere for those things myself, but I can't find anything." Sonia spoke up, "Mind if we take a look?" 2 They opened the door to Bastian's room and walked in. "I'll be in the den if you need anything," said Jiro in a monotone voice before he walked away. The voice spoke again in his mind. We don't need them to find Bastian. Jiro stopped walking and became angry with the voice, saying to it in his mind, "I do. I miss Bastian." Sonia and Lucas took out small flashlights and beamed them around the room as they searched. They don't find anything of great significance but took note that he had left his wallet. "What the hell did those two cops think when they saw his wallet here? That he had just left for the day?" whispered Lucas over to Sonia, who was at the far end of the room looking inside the closet. Lucas noticed there was a cane at the side of the bed. He got down onto his hands and knees, looking underneath the bed, where he then found a pair of shoes. "Stange," thought Lucas. Sonia had a plan. She needed to get a better look at something she had seen in the house earlier, and she asked Lucas to be the distraction. "What are you going to look at?" he asked her, curiously. She shook her head no and whispered, "Just help me do this." He nods in agreement. He called Jiro into Bastian's bedroom and he immediately started to ask him questions in greater detail, such as how often did Bastian visit his family throughout the year and if he had any, asking him to help him look through a box Sonia had found in the closet, containing some of Bastian's photos. In the meantime, Sonia had slipped out. She crept down the hallway, towards the front door. She looked back and heard Lucas in the room with Jiro, still going over Bastian's photos. The lights flickered as Lucas waved his flashlight around, showing Jiro the photos. She reached down to the drawer of the side table by the front door. It made a sound as she moved it, the sound of wood tightly rubbing together. The table itself looked quite old. She looked cautiously back over at the door of the nearby bedroom. The dark brown door was still wide open, with Lucas talking to Jiro near the back. Jiro heard the voice again. Go check on that girl. He ignored the voice and continued speaking with Lucas about the old photographs. He was going over how he thought that perhaps it was possible that Bastian had family in the area and that something had come up. The voice spoke again. You foolish boy, where is the girl? Outside, in the hallway, Sonia had managed to get the drawer halfway open. She could see the keyring and recognized which one she was after. She took one quick look back at the door as she reached deep into the inside of her jacket, pulling out a small cube. She opened it, and inside it had a sort of clay. She promptly pressed the key into the mold and put the square back into her pocket. Then she heard Jiro argue to Lucas, "That's enough. I've had enough of this. None of this is helping us find Bastian, it's just a waste of time." His footsteps were heard coming towards the open door and she slid the wooden drawer closed as quietly as she could but stopped as soon as she saw him. He turned the corner to see her standing by the front door, and he was frowning at her. She smiled at him, saying, "I think we've about finished up here, anyhow. Again, thanks for letting us have a look around and we'll let you know if anything comes up on Bastian, or your father's case." Sonia looked at him seriously. "We can offer you free protection if you're looking for any." Jiro hadn't quite considered this. The voice in his head hissed at him. No! We can't have them snooping around here any longer. Get them to leave, now! He put his hand to his forehead and made a painful face, so Lucas asked him if he was okay, to which Jiro responded, "Of course I am! I'll be just fine on my own." He winced his eyes as the pain returned to his head. "I'm sorry, I didn't intend to be rude." Sonia chimed in, "It's alright, we understand." On the way home, Sonia was driving intensely, and over the speed limit. Lucas held on to the armrest and asked her to slow it down a bit. She took a deep sigh and said, "Man, this job is starting to get to me." Lucas leaned onto the closed window's ledge as rain droplets started to fall outside. Sonia put on the windshield wipers, they were squeaky and loud. They streaked lines across the glass and Sonia cursed, lighting up a smoke. She told Lucas nothing about the keys. Back at headquarters, when she walked in, Sakura came up to her and shook her hand, saying, "I'm heading out early today to run an errand. Mr. Oba is waiting for you both in his office." She bowed politely to them and walked on, not paying too much attention to Lucas. 3 It was nightfall a few days later and Sonia was putting on her knee-high leather boots as she got ready to leave. Her red hair was covered with a black shawl, and she had it tied back. Her hoop earrings were now off. They sat on her make-up table, her golden jewelry, too. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled a key, Identical to the one that she had seen Jiro lock his door with from the inside. She had noticed that the lock was identical on both sides, and she was going off a hunch that the same key would work for the opposite side of the door as well. She had to at least try if she even got the chance to. She knows Jiro is extremely suspicious, there's no doubt about that. She figured she could try to park her car just outside the gate of the manor, in the dead of night, to avoid being seen. Then she could listen and watch for herself to see if anything strange was going on there. It was the only thing she could think of to do, and she couldn't involve Lucas. If anything happened to her, he would have to become the backup plan. She hid a folded knife in her bosom, and she wore all black leather. "Heck," she said aloud, "Maybe that Bastian guy will even show up." She went over to a small brown dresser at the far corner of the room. It was along the same wall as the window was. She opened it and pulled out a black pistol, and holding it sideways in her hand, she cocked it, looking down the sight. She then loaded it, and brought some extra ammo on her person. She lit up a smoke and leaned onto the windowsill, poking her head outside and looking down at the street below. She took a drag and ashed her cigarette with a flick, and popped her head back inside. "I hate doing shit like this," she thought, "But it is my specialty." She had called in sick that morning and slept just for this. Mr. Oba was mad, but the truth was that they had nowhere to go just yet with the investigation and she took advantage of that fact. Later that night, Sonia was parked in front of the manor, on the outside of the gated fence just in front of the pitch-black dirt driveway, facing towards it in case she needed an exit. She tried to camouflage the car slightly by parking it next to some trees on a grassy area just past where the driveway ended. The lights were all off, so she was using her cellphone to rummage through her bag, looking through the snacks she had brought. "There it is!" she exclaimed, grabbing a pack of strawberry cream-coated pocket cookies. She took a bite of one and her face lit up under the darkness. She chugged down the rest of her Ramune soda and cracked a window, lighting up a smoke. The moonlight helped a bit, but it was still incredibly dark outside. Sonia was getting the creeps. Usually, she did this type of thing in a nice lit-up, populated city. Of course, she had expected it to be this dark. But the feeling it gave her, being there, was eerie. Probably just all in her head, though, she thought. She rolled down the window a bit more to throw the cigarette butt outside when she heard something up the dirt road ahead. A scuffle. It made her jump in a silly way as it had been so quiet, but she didn't have time to take humor from this. She winced out into the darkness ahead, staying as she could to listen for whatever it was. Then she heard something else, something more familiar, off in the distance. A piano. It sounded almost as if the calm winds were carrying it along through the night. "At this time?" she thought. She rolled down the window a bit more to listen. "Clair de Lune," she whispered. She opened the passenger side window and tried to relax a bit, figuring whatever she heard to probably be some animal. She lit up another smoke and closed her eyes, leaning back as she took a heavy drag. Her gun sat on the dashboard. She finished her smoke and leaned over to grab her pack from the passenger side chair for another when suddenly she caught motion ahead out of the corner of her eye. She couldn't hear anything, but she saw something move. Something big, like the size of a person. She darted her eyes around, but whatever it had been was hidden now. She wasn't alone. She glanced over at the house and saw someone walking up the side of the white manor towards the front door, she could just see their silhouette in the moonlight, a little far off. But no one had opened the gate. They couldn't have, as she was right next to it. She grabbed the gun off the dash. Maybe it was just her nerves, maybe it was just the fact she was in the dark. But she had a bad feeling since she got there. Perhaps she really was onto something. Suddenly, a commotion was heard in the bushes just next to her window. It startled her, and she turned her head to see what it was by instinct. As she did, something flew past her face in the dark car. She heard it whip through the air and looked over to the passenger side door to see some kind of rope that had gone through her driver's side window, through the car, and outside of the passenger side window that she had cracked earlier. Suddenly, the car was yanked backward by an unseen force into the bushed area behind. Sonia immediately thought of the cliff that overlooked the city that lay just beyond there. "It's trying to kill me!" she thought as she tried to open the car door. No use. The rope had been wrapped around the car and the doors were held shut. She ignited the engine and put the car into drive, then slammed on the gas, which ended up spinning the tires and actually made it easier for her car to be pulled back even more. Her eyes widened, she hit the brake and turned the wheels to the side. The car was still being pulled into the bushes, but she ended up getting some traction from the rocks below the tires. The car slowly got some resistance, and she wiggled her way forward with it, revving the engine and making inches forward at a time. She grabbed folded the knife she had put in her bra earlier and went to cut the rope, but the car was jerked randomly sideways and she dropped the knife right in between the seats. Then she heard something like a shriek or a roar. It could have been human, but it sounded more like an awful beast from some whacked-out nightmare. It sent shivers up her spine and the hair raised on her arms as they still struggled with the wheel. Her feet raised and lowered between the gas and brake, she started to yell back at whatever it was out there. "You piece of shit! You think you have me!?" She clicked the turbo button behind the steering wheel and the rope was torn in half, she sped irregularly down the dirt driveway and back out onto the public roads. When she was on pavement again, she drifted around the country road corners until she finds a place to stop and get out. She swings the car door open and throws her hands to her head, pacing back and forth, saying. "What the hell, what the hell?" Then she hears something, something tapping on the side of her car. She turns around and looks, but she sees nothing. Then she walks over to the passenger side. Hanging down, tangled around the mirror, was a piece of the rope. But something was on the end of it... Something that was moving. She looked down to see what seemed to be a human finger wriggling aggressively back and forth, dangling under the streetlight while attached to some type of thick black wire. It bounced high off the side of the car, making a little tapping noise as it did. She looked a bit closer and realized that the finger seemed to actually be pushing itself off from the car. In her direction. 4 Later, Sonia was at the office. She looked ahead, out of the window at the end of the long hall as she went. That's all this office was. One long hallway with a bunch of doors. Some you could enter, others you could not. It was still nighttime. She was holding a white box in her hands as she turned to face a black door. It had a white sign that read, "No non-essential personnel beyond this point." Sonia knocked, and the door opened with Sakura taking the box from her without saying anything. The door closed and locked itself as it did behind them as they made their way down a long yellow hallway. "How did you get it in the box?" Asked Sakura, still looking ahead as she walked. Sonia put her hands in the pockets of her short leather jacket and sighed, saying, "I didn't have to do anything. The thing just went from going berserk hanging off the side of my car, to completely lifeless. I figure it ran out of battery." They come up to a black armored door. There is a green LED screen with the outline of a hand on it. Sonia pauses behind Sakura as she holds her hand up to the scanner, and the black door opens itself like an elevator door. They both step in and Sakura repeated the same thing from the inside, with another scanner, to close the door. While she was doing that, Sonia wasn't paying attention to her at all. She was captivated by the supercomputer she saw before her. It had one large screen that must have been at least 40 inches wide. Above it was an obnoxiously small one, only perhaps 7 inches wide. But around those two on each side were three separate 24-inch screens coming vertically down from the ceiling. The contraption, as a whole, looked like a spaceship. The screens were held up by a highly technologically advanced mount behind everything that held all the wires. It leads into an adjacent server room. The room was freezing and dark. And the walls were painted black. In front of the screens, was the most interesting part. A black, fairly tall, skinny office chair with small armrests and the back curved for the lumbar support. The chair looked sleek and low profile. If you could even call it that. The top of it was shaped like a sharp oval that curved back as if to make room for the device that hung above it. It device reminded Sonia of a bonnet hair dryer, those things at the hairdresser you see older ladies sitting under with their heads inside as they read magazines. But this one looked like an alien made it. The device was all black and made of thick metal, and the tinted glass went right over the front of Sakura's eyes as she sat down and pulled it over to her and she put it on like a helmet. The box was sitting on a nearby table. "You can put that box inside of the examiner on the wall. The machine that looks like an oven over there." Sonia walked over to the machine, and Sakura was right. It did indeed look like an oven, a large one. It was face level, and she had to back up as she opened it. "Shouldn't we let corporate take this over?" Asked Sonia as she placed the white box inside the machine. Sakura turned on the computer. "Not yet. I have a feeling that they'd never tell us the full story here, only what they would want us to know. I need to see for myself what this thing is before we can go any further." Sonia shrugged and closed the machine's door and then came back over to her in the chair. Sonia noticed that Sakura has no keyboard or mouse on this thing, and she looked at her to ask about it when she heard the humming sound coming from the hanging device. It slowly itself down a bit further down, and Sakura said, "Stand back." A hole opened in the ceiling, and a small tool came down, being controlled by a bending wire. The tool itself looked like a long headphone jack. The wire went through the top of the helmet and then we see it spring forward and the sound of flesh breaking is heard. As the sound was made, Sonia visibly saw Sakura's eyes wince in pain, then they widened out and rolled to the back of her head. Her body suddenly jerked back and forth as if she was having a seizure, and then she seemed to 'click' into place and it abruptly stopped, with her body laying stiff. The screens flashed, and a light turned on inside the machine that she had put the white box inside. Sonia watched the machine, as multiple black wires came out from little holes she has seen inside it earlier. The wires had small tools on them, such as pliers, screwdrivers, and the like. Sonia watched as the tools opened the box itself and pulled out the finger she had found bouncing on the side of her car to examine it. A wire was connected to the finger with the help of a few other tools. She saw code flashing across all of the screens and Sakura took a quick gasp that caught Sonia's attention. She turned to see Sakura gritting her teeth and squeezing her hands together as she was confined to the chair, and she wondered what exactly she was doing inside this computer. Sonia's eyes were hurting from the constant flashing and she held up a hand in front of her, looking back to the machine in the wall. What she saw bothered her much more. The finger itself had come back to life, and it was repeatedly running itself into the glass, again, pointed directly at Sonia, so she believed. There was nowhere to sit, so Sonia stood and watched the finger until the screens stopped flashing. She was certain it couldn't get out of there, and it was insane to see something so strange yet completely lucid. Like a nightmare that had come to life. Suddenly Sonia heard a voice come from the speaker system of the room. "Attack-" said a low, bassy robotic voice. "Attack- Attack on our servers," Sonia turned in multiple directions as red lights started to flash and a sort of alarm sounded off from the computer. She heard a thumping noise behind her and she looked to see Sakura seizing again in the chair. It sounded like the server room was stuck in a twister when suddenly the computer turned off and the screen read "OFFLINE," and it all shut off. Sakura stopped seizing. A voice was heard again through the speakers. This time, it was recognizable as Sakura's, although it sounded slightly metallic. She said, "It knows who we are."