Whooooosh!
An airplane sliced through the night sky, its blinking signal lights flickering like distant fireflies in the darkness. Tokyo’s skyline stretched like a canvas of neon lights, each building a brushstroke of modernity against a black backdrop.
The scene transitions to a shot of fluorescent lights buzzing softly, casting a harsh, white glare over a stark room. Ethan’s eyes darted around, every corner of the interrogation room reminding him of the bleak reality he was facing.
“How did it come to this?” he thought, his gaze flicking to the closed door as if expecting it to burst open any second.
Just months ago, his life had been filled with the excitement of book signings, fan emails, and late-night celebrations with his agent. “NarcNet” was supposed to be his ticket to success, a breakthrough novel that cemented his place as an author.
He remembered the applause, the bookshop in Shibuya filled to the brim with enthusiastic readers. But the questions had started soon after: How did you make it feel so real?
Ethan jolted at the sudden creak of the door swinging open. He couldn’t afford to think about that now. Because sitting across from him was a man who looked every bit the detective, and the look in his eyes was anything but admiring.
“Ethan Russ,” the detective began, his voice firm and unyielding, “I’m Detective Sato, Special Crimes Unit.” He placed a folder on the table and slid it toward Ethan. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in?”
Ethan swallowed hard, his mouth dry. “I — I’m the victim here! Those Yakuza thugs tried to kill me —”
“Because of this.” Ethan flinched as Sato snapped the folder open, its contents spilling open just enough for him to see the familiar pages of his own book. “Your novel. NarcNet.”
Ethan feigned innocence. “My novel? What does that have to do with —?”
“Everything,” Sato interrupted, his voice firm. “The details you’ve written in there — names, locations, operations — aren’t just fiction. They’re real, Russ. Down to the last comma.” He leaned forward, his gaze boring into Ethan’s. “It’s like you had a front-row seat to their activities.”
Sato’s gaze, unblinking and sharp, never left Ethan’s face. His fingers — long and precise — drummed softly against the table, a rhythmic tapping that seemed to echo in the silent room. There was a deliberate control to his movements, like a predator biding its time.
The fear twisted into confusion, knotting Ethan’s gut tighter. He replayed the detective’s words in his head, but they only tangled further, each phrase echoing with a sinister undertone. “Real names… real locations… as if you had a front-row seat…” He blinked rapidly, trying to clear the haze clouding his vision. The urge to shout, to deny everything, bubbled up within him, but his voice wouldn’t come. He felt numb, paralyzed.
“What am I supposed to say?”
He thought back to the late nights huddled over his laptop, the AI’s outputs glowing in the darkness. He’d been thrilled, giddy even, at the precision and realism of the data it churned out. It was like having his own personal informant, feeding him secrets from a world he could only dream of accessing. But now…
Detective Sato’s gaze bored into him, unrelenting. “How did you get this information, Russ?”
Fear surged again, raw and consuming. He swallowed hard, throat dry as sandpaper.
“What can I even say? If I tell them about the AI, will they believe me? Or will they think I’m crazy —”
The thought cut off abruptly, replaced by a sinking feeling of inevitability. They’re not going to believe you. No one’s going to believe you. Panic flared, but this time it was muted, overshadowed by a weary sense of resignation. Ethan let out a shuddering breath, feeling something inside him crumble. The resistance drained out of him, replaced by a hollow emptiness that settled in his bones.
“Look,” Ethan began, his voice strained and distant. The words felt heavy on his tongue, like he was dragging each one out of a deep pit. “I… I swear, I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.” He glanced up at Sato, searching the detective’s face for some sign of understanding, but found none. “It’s just a book… I didn’t know…”
But even as the words left his mouth, he realized how flimsy they were. He might as well be whispering to a storm — nothing he said could change the path he’d set himself on.
“A book?” Sato’s eyebrows rose. “You wrote a book where a particular lieutenant in the Shibuya branch of the Yakuza was going to turn against his boss? Or that there’s a hidden warehouse full of illegal drugs stashed in a fish market off Tsukiji?” Leaning forward, Sato folded his hands neatly on top of the folder. “You really expect me to believe that?” His voice was low, almost gentle, but the challenge in his eyes was unmistakable. He tilted his head slightly, waiting for Ethan to respond.
Ethan stared at Sato, trying to process his words, but his mind was already drifting — snatching at memories that were suddenly too vivid, too damning.
“I want the details,” he’d whispered while typing a prompt to his AI assistant one sleepless night. “Give me the story.”
A list of names had flashed across the screen, accompanied by a map of Tokyo’s districts, the red pins blinking like beacons in the dark. Back then, he’d thought it was just another dataset —random, shuffled names for a fictitious narrative.
“The boss meets in Shibuya. A lieutenant’s planning a coup,” the AI continued. “Location: undisclosed warehouse, Tsukiji Market.”
“Warning,” the AI had chimed once, as he’d fed it another set of queries about Yakuza operations. “Data overlap detected with recent criminal reports.”
He’d laughed it off then, brushing aside the alert like an annoying pop-up ad. “That’s good — means it’s realistic,” he’d muttered, typing even faster. The descriptions were unnervingly precise: down to the exact graffiti on the walls and the make and model of the cars parked outside.
“Where did that come from?” he muttered, leaning closer. His fingers hovered over the keyboard as he hesitated, then pulled up a new browser tab.
Just a quick check, he told himself.
Typing the address into a search engine, he scrolled through a few pages of results. To his surprise, an article popped up — an old news piece about a police raid at the very same location, complete with photographs that mirrored the AI’s details almost exactly.
Ethan’s pulse quickened. This has to be a coincidence, he thought, but the knot of unease tightened in his chest.
He scrolled back to the AI’s output. “List of known associates,” it read, followed by a series of names — some common, others oddly specific. One name caught his attention: Takashi Hirano. He copied the name and pasted it into the search bar, holding his breath as he hit enter.
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The first link was a police report, marked ARCHIVED. It mentioned a Takashi Hirano who’d been arrested five years ago for suspected involvement in organized crime. Ethan’s eyes widened.
“No way…” His voice was barely a whisper. “It’s not the same person, is it?”
But even as his instincts screamed at him to shut the program down, another part of him — the writer, the seeker of stories — itched to know more. Maybe it was just the AI’s algorithms, he reasoned, piecing together publicly available data in ways that seemed uncanny but were ultimately explainable.
“There’s no other information about it, but the name’s coincidentally the same. Should I change it? This one feels authentic, though. The AI generated it, so it should be fine… right? If it’s a real person…”
He shook his head, trying to dismiss the thought, but the seed of doubt had already been planted. Was it possible? Could the AI be pulling data from… somewhere else?
“Just keep going,” he murmured, pushing his unease aside. “It’s all just research. That’s what I wanted, right?”
With a deep breath, he returned to the blinking cursor on his screen and typed another prompt:
“Details on upcoming meetings.”
A list of dates and addresses flashed before him. Ethan’s throat tightened. This was beyond what he’d programmed it to do — far beyond.
His finger hovered over the power button, the urge to shut it all down clashing with the thrill of discovery. But then he exhaled slowly, steeling himself.
“Keep going,” he whispered. “For the story.”
Ethan had typed furiously, fingers trembling with excitement. He could almost feel the adrenaline rush again, the thrill of weaving secrets into fiction, blissfully ignorant of what he was unearthing.
Ethan’s breath quickened, his gaze darting around the sterile interrogation room. Sato’s voice cut through the haze, bringing him back to the present with brutal clarity.
His stomach churned. The characters he’d crafted were real. The betrayals, the coups, the locations — they weren’t born from his AI imagination. He hadn’t been creating; he’d been documenting.
“Every page of your publication reeks of classified information — stuff we’ve been working on for years,” he said, his voice low and cutting. “So either you’re the best damn detective in Tokyo, or you’ve got eyes and ears inside the Yakuza that even we don’t know about.”
Ethan swallowed, his throat dry. “I swear! It’s just… fiction —”
“Fiction?” Sato interrupted, shaking his head slowly. “You described a lieutenant’s betrayal before it happened. You laid out the exact floor plan of a drug manufacturing site we raided two months ago. And now we’ve got half a dozen syndicate members pointing fingers at you like you’re some kind of oracle.” He leaned back, folding his arms. “So tell me, Russ — how does “fiction” write into what we’re still scrambling to piece together?”
Ethan blinked, the words sinking in like lead weights. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. Oracle? The accusation felt surreal, almost laughable — if not for the way Sato’s gaze bored into him, waiting for a confession he didn’t have. The AI couldn’t have known. He wanted to scream it, but the flashbacks kept flooding in — the late nights spent with nothing but a dim monitor and his own ambition pushing him further.
“I… I don’t know,” Ethan stammered, his voice cracking. He shifted uneasily, his shoulders slumping as if the weight of the detective’s stare was pushing him deeper into the chair. “It was just a story. I didn’t realize how —”
“Didn’t realize?” Sato cut in sharply. The detective’s voice sliced through the air, and he leaned even closer, his elbows resting on the table’s edge. The sudden movement made Ethan instinctively pull back, his chair creaking in protest.
Sato’s lips curled into a thin smile — more of a sneer, really — as he tapped a single finger against the folder. “So you’re telling me you just happened to write down real names and locations? Pure coincidence, is that it?” His tone was laced with mockery, but his eyes remained cold and calculating, studying every nuance of Ethan’s reaction.
“B-but I didn’t!” Ethan protested, his mind reeling. He shook his head, his hands lifting in a feeble attempt at a placating gesture. “No, no, it’s not like that,” he blurted out, words tumbling over themselves. He ran a trembling hand through his hair, eyes wide with desperation. "I... to be honest," he faltered, his voice barely a whisper, shame etched across his face. "I used an AI to help me write it. It was supposed to just… predict and embellish crime data. It was just supposed to help with the plot. I never thought it’d —”
Sato raised a hand, silencing him instantly. “An AI?” He said the word slowly, almost as if tasting it. He leaned back in his chair, the leather groaning softly beneath him. “So, you’re blaming a machine for knowing things even we didn’t know?”
There was a long pause as Ethan struggled to find his voice. His gaze dropped to his lap, where his fingers were now clenched tightly together, the knuckles white. “I swear… I don’t know how it happened,” he whispered, the words barely audible. His shoulders hunched inward, and he looked small, almost diminished under Sato’s scrutiny.
“Look at me when you’re speaking.” Sato’s voice was a quiet command. He didn’t raise his tone, but it cut through Ethan’s haze like a blade. Slowly, reluctantly, Ethan lifted his head. His eyes met Sato’s again, and this time, there was no escape.
Sato held his gaze for what felt like an eternity, the silence thick and oppressive. Then, with deliberate calm, he unfolded his hands and pointed to a specific line in the report. “This,” he said softly, his fingertip resting on a highlighted name, “wasn’t in any of our databases. Until after your book was published.” He let the words hang, watching as the implication sank in.
Ethan felt a chill crawl down his spine. His gaze flickered to where Sato’s finger rested, but he didn’t dare look too long. His pulse thundered in his ears, and he could hear the blood rushing as panic swelled in his chest.
“What am I supposed to say?”
The detective’s eyes narrowed. “You want to convince me this is all the computer’s doing? You’re going to have to do a lot better than that, Russ.” He paused, then leaned back once more, crossing his arms over his chest. The sudden shift in posture — a relaxed, almost dismissive gesture — sent a clear message:
I’m waiting.
Ethan’s mouth went dry. The urge to keep talking, to fill the silence, was overwhelming, but every word he tried to form seemed to catch in his throat. All he could do was sit there, trapped under Sato’s unrelenting stare, his own body betraying him with every twitch and shiver.
Panic clawed at Ethan’s chest. The detective wasn’t looking at him like a clueless author. He was looking at him like a suspect.
Sato sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose as if dealing with a particularly dense student. “Your book didn’t just catch the Yakuza’s attention, Russ. It caught ours. They think you know more than you’re letting on. So do I. We’ve been investigating these syndicates for years, and suddenly, out of nowhere, an author with no known ties or sources writes a novel that outlines their operations better than our own files do.”
“I… I don’t know what to say,” Ethan whispered, feeling the room close in around him. He wanted to scream that it wasn’t his fault, that he’d only been writing, chasing a story. But he knew how it would sound — like the hollow excuses of a man digging himself deeper into a pit.
Sato slid the folder back to himself and opened it, revealing a series of photographs — surveillance shots of Yakuza members, maps with red lines drawn through them, lists of names and dates. “We were already monitoring the Shibuya branch when your novel came out. It read like an insider’s report. We had to double-check if you’d been spying on them yourself.”
“And?” Ethan asked weakly.
“And we realized you’d exposed more than you knew.” Sato’s expression softened, if only slightly. “You’ve inadvertently become our best source of intelligence. That’s why we intervened tonight.”
The memory of the police raid flooded back to Ethan — the blaring loudspeakers, the shouts, the gunfire. The lieutenant’s furious face as the authorities stormed the building.
“Tell me, Russ,” Sato continued, his tone dripping with suspicion. “Was it really just a story?”
Ethan noticed the detective’s voice looping like a scratched record. It was a classic interrogation tactic — repeating the same question again and again, waiting for the suspect to crack and let something slip.
Ethan’s eyes flickered to Sato, but all he saw was the damning evidence strewn across the detective’s desk — photographs, surveillance shots, transcripts — all mirroring the plotlines he thought were purely fictional.
“We’ve got a list of suspects in your novel that match our own targets,” Sato continued. “Thanks to you, we were able to catch several key players in the retrieval operation. But the big fish — the head of the Shibuya branch — is still out there. And now he knows your book is more than just fiction.”
Ethan’s throat tightened. “So… what happens now?”
“Now?” Sato closed the folder with a decisive snap. “Now, you help us finish what you started. We want the rest of your intel — anything and everything that wasn’t published.”
“But there isn’t anything else,” Ethan pleaded. “It’s just a book. I made it all up!”
Sato’s eyes hardened. “We’re not asking. Either you help us, or you’ll be left alone to deal with the Yakuza’s retribution. Your choice, Russ.”
“I swear, it’s just a book,” he repeated, the phrase sounding weaker every time he said it. “I didn’t know…”
The room fell silent, the weight of the ultimatum hanging between them. Ethan’s pulse pounded in his ears as the reality of his situation set in.
Caught between the law and the Yakuza, he’d written himself into the center of a deadly game. And there was no way to hit "undo" on this one.