As Adam left the hospital, he was met with a car suddenly careening over the sidewalk, which he managed to dodge, closely, as time slowed to a crawl. He sighed. Similar incidents to this had kept happening over the last week and a half that he had taken in the hospital to heal his burns, ranging from the least lethal flipping his bed toward a window to a particularly dangerous attempt breaking several windows, and a large part of a wall by a tree falling. But now, he was out in the open, which would give him an easier time of avoiding any attempts on his life(of course it could also increase the variety and directions at which danger could come from, but that was a trade-off he was willing to take). A car pulled up, and Adam tensed himself, certain that some guy would just jump out of the car, and rush him, or something of equally lethality to his life, but the window opened, and the car was empty, though the emptiness of the car was almost more terrifying than a certain danger. A heartbeat passed, then two, before a shadow rose, so quickly that Adam tried to turn, but in the sudden moments his legs refused to listen to him, and he fell on his face. As he braced for an incredibly painful death, a familiar voice spoke irately to him.
“Get up, the chief called us to her office because of new intel.”
He looked up at the forced scowl of Caleb, who seemed seconds away from bursting, and ruining the image of a stern senior colleague. Adam thought he looked too much like a child trying to act like a child, and had to wrest the urge to pat his head as he would…
Adam broke out of the daze he had been in for some reason, and pulled himself into the car. Caleb pulled away from the sidewalk in front of the hospital, and began the drive back to the headquarters of the Isekai Initiative.
As the two of them arrived in the office Sinja Bae, Adam knocked. As his fist touched the door, there was a huge crash on the other side, as if something had been hanging on the door and he had knocked it off.
“Come in, come in!” a half-asleep, crazed voice called out from the other side of the door.
The two of them entered a room that looked like a tornado had hit a conspiracy theorist.. There were papers plastered to the walls, and tons of red string tangled up with everything. Sinja was nowhere to be seen.
“Does the chief’s room normally look like this?” Adam whispered, looking around for the chief in question.
Caleb shook his head, exasperatedly.
“Not unless she finds some that new and exciting information about the Isekai Initiative-”
“Like you!” Sinja burst out from behind a pile of books, knocking them onto the floor, grabbing his hand, without so much as a warning, pulling a hair off of his head and putting it in a bag.
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Adam flinched back at the pain, clutching his head, as Caleb, pityingly, laid his hand on his shoulder as if to ease his pain.
“Why?” Adam grimaced in pain.
“If we use the hair off of your head-” Sinja belted out excitedly, “we can analyze to try and find more data on what draws the isekai initiative, and try and use it to grow our understanding!”
Adam glanced over at Caleb.
“Would that really be possible?”
Caleb shrugged, “as much potential ideas like that have, the DNA of people like you have been analyzed over and over again, in the history of this initiative, that at this point, there’s little use. The chief likely just wants your hair for her own projects.”
“Hey!” Sinja pointed at Caleb, “my projects are beneficial to the initiative, and people who-”
Caleb interrupted, “before you get started on your rant, can you tell us why we were called here? So we can leave you to your crazy hobbies in peace.”
Mid-scowl, Sinja’s eyes lit up again, and she once again wore a crazed grin, before pulling down a whiteboard.
“With all the knowledge of the phenomenon we’ve gained,” she began, “we’ve managed to gain a general knowledge of what causes the phenomenon to strike,” she gestured at the whiteboard, displaying the phrases: “Population density”, “amount of personal relationships'', “skill at hobbies'', and more, clearly reasons that drew in the phenomenon, “And through this we have gained the ability to roughly guess who will be a target, or who currently is a target. We have an intensive database tracking many people as they go through their lives.”
She then held up her phone, showing a picture of a girl in her teens, followed by an incredibly long list of words and numbers below it
“This girl,” Sinja exclaimed, with equal notes of excitement and confusion in her voice, “has all the makings of the ideal victim of the phenomenon. But despite this, she hasn’t so much as gotten sick in the entirety of her life. We need you to go talk to this girl, find out about her daily life, and what measures, if any, she takes to live her life in complete safety.”
Adam hesitated, “isn’t this tantamount to stalking?”
“We have all the governments on our side, there isn’t a thing anyone can do in court. Besides-” Sinja continued after that slightly ominous note, “the subject lives alone. What’s she gonna do?”
Somewhat terrified, Adam glanced for affirmation from Caleb, who just shrugged, and spun his fingers around in the universal crazy motion, before grabbing Adam, and pulling him out the door.
“We’ll head out now Chief,” Caleb called as he and Adam exited. In the background, Adam saw the chief waving at them, before the doors slammed shut.
…
In the lobby of the building, Adam turned to Caleb.
“Are we really going to harass this random girl,” Adam began, “Over something that could easily be a coincidence?”
“I mean whatever the boss says goes,” Caleb replied scanning the phone screen, “so you better pack your bags. We’re heading off.”
“To where?” Adam replies, still unsatisfied by Caleb’s answer.
“To one of the hotspots of this phenomenon, and the country that made something of it. Japan.”