“What?!” Ryuji exclaims. “You want to store the weapon used to almost successfully frame Takiyama with Takiyama? Are you serious?”
“Do you want to keep a hot gun in your desk?” the would-be detective argues back, pointing at the bottom drawer of Ryuji's desk, where the gun currently is. “I know it sounds stupid, but the entire purpose of this investigation was to make sure the crime wasn't committed by someone in the Sanada-gumi, and keeping the murder weapon inside of a family patriarch's desk doesn't help accomplish that very much. If anything, it makes you ripe for framing, too. It's more of a ticking time bomb the longer it stays here.”
Ryuji heaves a sigh and nervously rubs the back of his neck. He doesn't disagree with Atreus; keeping the gun inside of a clan family's office is unequivocally stupid considering the purpose of the investigation, but placing it under the care of another Sanada-gumi member isn't much better. However, their options are limited to just those two at the moment.
“Look, if we leave the gun with him, it'll at least be outside of Kyoba, and inside of a building that the clan has no ties to. I know neither choice is ideal, but there's an obviously better one here.”
“Alright, alright,” the family heads apprehensively concedes. “You said you were meeting him at midnight, right? So you'll swing by to pick it up at around 11:30 or so? I'll be here then to unlock the drawer for you.”
“Thanks,” Atreus nods, appreciative of his superior's cooperativeness. “Devin, do you want to come with me when I meet up with him?”
“Hell yeah. I said I'd help you with this shit on day one, and that hasn't changed,” Devin responds with the utmost resolve.
“Good. I'll leave Crown at 11, then swing by here to grab you and pick up the gun, then we head over to Edward's current hideout, which is apparently a place in Reese-Cole Apartments, which is a spot a ways east of Kyoba.”
“Sounds like a plan. I'll let Tetsu know that we'll probably be visiting him again with another favor, and hopefully he won't tell me to go eat shit. He might ask for payment this time around, though.”
“In which case, we're splitting it.”
“Aw, come on, I was the one who introduced you to him in the first place,” Devin pouts.
“Is there anything else of note that you discussed with Takiyama?” Ryuji asks, placing the conversation back on track.
“No, that's pretty much everything. However, I had another interesting discussion with someone else later, back at my apartment,” Atreus finally touches on Terrence's visit, already agitated before he evens delves into the specifics of it. “I was paid an unannounced visit by our detective friend, Mr. Colter, late into the night. He wanted to talk about why Devin and I were at Takiyama's apartment.”
“Can't say I'm surprised. If he catches a sniff of something strange, he chases after it. Admittedly, it's what makes him a reliable cop, but also an annoyance. I assume he didn't have his partner with him?”
“No, he didn't. It was just him. He didn't suspect that I had any part in the murder or anything. Instead, he accurately guessed that I was conducting my own investigation, and he warned me that if I know something crucial and I'm purposely hiding from the police, I could be arrested for it.” Atreus shrugs, clearly not taking the detective's threat very seriously.
“Did you tell him anything to get him off your back?” Devin inquires.
“I figured it would take something big to get him to go away, so I mentioned meeting with Edward, but I didn't say where or when. I told him everything I just told you guys right now.”
“You sure that was a good idea? Wouldn't he be hovering over us more now?”
Atreus shakes his head. “I don't think so. I stressed that Edward trusted me and wouldn't want to talk to anyone else, and that if he wants to know more, he'd have to wait until after I get the USB drive. I didn't mention when that would be, either. I told him to just focus on finding the murderer and let me handle my own shit.”
“As long as you didn't tell him about the gun, it's fine,” Ryuji remarks. “Knowing him, he wouldn't think we actually orchestrated the murder, but his colleagues wouldn't be so charitable; especially that skidmark, Howard.”
“It might be good for us in the long run to have someone in the force aware of our progress. If something goes south, we might be able to approach him for cooperation without seeming suspicious. Colter only works by the book if it gets him results; he's willing to stray from the path a bit if catches the bad guy. I'll say, though, he was still pretty sure that I was hiding something from him despite giving him all the information I got from Edward.”
“He'll stay cool as long as we give him some periodic updates, I'm sure. For now, just focus on your impending meeting with Takiyama. By the sound of things, that USB might be the key we need to figure out who the hell is actually orchestrating this nonsense.”
“You know, there's still a killer out there somewhere,” Devin reminds his colleagues. “I know the scope of the investigation is bigger now because of this shit with Zephir and stuff, but it's still a dangerous job.”
“I'm still in some disbelief about Zephir's involvement, but the Sanada-gumi has uncovered plenty of unsavory things in its corporate espionage attempts,” Ryuji comments while rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
The clan has taken part in many such missions since they had begun infiltration of legitimate businesses decades ago, often sending Sanada-gumi members to work for competitors in various industries and markets to secure their most hidden secrets, either by beginning at an entry level position and working their way up for years, or going straight for upper management using manufactured credentials – degrees and past experience. Sometimes even third parties would hire the clan to do these tasks on their behalf. However, such espionage work is more common across the ocean in Japan than it is here, in America.
“I feel like this is different,” Atreus responds. “In those jobs, the clan just plants a guy somewhere and he steals information that's already legal, but just kept secret. I feel like whatever's on that USB drive is probably something that'll put a lot of people in prison for a very long time if it's linked to them. Worse case, it may cause Zephir to shut their doors. I mean, it's information worth killing civilians over, right?”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“True. Even if we're close to getting our hands on those documents, don't let it cloud your judgment. Stay as cautious as you have been up until now, okay?”
“Yeah. I know.”
The three men continue their afternoon ruminating on the direction of the investigation, mostly over their gyudon and kyushu lunches. While they all agree they can still likely handle everything despite the heightening complications, they worry that possessing the documents and catching the killer might still not be enough to trace the murders back to their true source, which may be the elusive third party Zephir is linked to.
At 4:45 PM on the dot, Atreus departs the Asano family office to begin one of his final shifts at Crown – third-to-last, to be exact. He summons an Automa to take him to the establishment, and arrives at 5:10 PM, following an unfortunate run-in with a gridlocked intersection. As usual, he makes a straight line for the break room, expecting to see Max sitting in her usual table, with two mugs of tea in front of her. Lo and behold, his expectations stay true to life.
“Hey, handsome,” Max greets him with a smile on her face, preemptively sliding on of the mugs towards the seat opposite her. “Been a while.”
“An eternity,” Atreus facetiously answers with a smirk of his own as he accepts the mug. The tea is still hot enough for steam to bustle upward into the air. “Did you go back to sleep after I left earlier?” he asks while he takes his first sip.
“I did, for about an hour and a half. Then I decided to help myself to breakfast,” she slyly admits as if she had proudly committed a petty crime.
“What a freeloader,” he shakes his head in feigned disapproval.
“So you say, but you don't really have much in the way of real food in your apartment. Should I be worried about your diet?”
“No, I've just been so damn busy, that most of my meals have been delivery, which I eat while outside of the apartment.”
“Well, I was able to improvise and build myself a nice, tall sandwich. Then I went home, took a bath, got all pretty, and came to work. Speaking of which, are you going to stick around for your entire shift this time?”
“Nope,” Atreus answers nonchalantly. “Gotta leave at 11 for another important 'meeting.'”
“Playing hooky and stuff now that you've finally got the go ahead to leave, huh? I don't blame you.”
The two continue to share a casual pre-shift break together before Atreus leaves to get dressed into his security uniform. At 6 PM, the club's doors open, and within minutes, early patrons fill the first floor booths, and servers go back and forth between the club floor and kitchen to bring food and drink to customer and hostess alike.
Just as yesterday, Atreus's post for the night is next to the stage, away from the second floor VIP section, and even a distance from most first floor seats. Practically in his own little world where he can stand idle and enjoy the music, the hours seem to fly by as he simply watches customers and hostesses dance, talk, and laugh. With no troublemakers in sight, the clock strikes 11 PM in almost a blink of an eye, prompting him to skulk away, back into the security locker room, and change into his normal clothes.
Outside, he calls for a ride back to the Asano family building, where he must pick up Devin for the meeting, and the murder weapon tucked away in Ryuji's desk for safer keeping. He arrives at his destination and wastes no precious seconds making a bee line to the top floor, and entering Ryuji's office, where Devin eagerly awaits his moment.
“Hey, you ready?” Atreus asks as he walks in and first notices his friend sitting on the sofa.
“Yup,” Devin answers while pushing himself up and onto his feet. “By the way, I talked to Tetsu about decrypting that USB drive. I told him I don't know exactly what kind of encryption it's using, but he seems pretty confident that can bust through it; apparently he's pretty used to this kind of stuff.”
“So we hopefully won't be waiting three days again?”
“Hopefully.”
“Good enough for me,” Atreus accepts the terms with a shrug.
“Here,” Ryuji speaks up to catch his subordinates' attention. “Come get the piece.” He leans down to unlock and open the drawer at the bottom of his desk, but makes sure to not accidentally touch the gun with his own bare fingers – not even graze it.
Atreus walks over and picks up the gun, placing snugly against the small of his back, behind the waistband of his pants and under the concealment of his shirt and vest. He pauses as he looks down at the suppressor and half-full magazine that houses six unfired VF+ rounds.
“I guess it wouldn't do us any good to leave the bullets here, huh? And having a suppressor sitting in here would look shifty, too,” he thinks aloud as he picks up both mentioned items and stuffs them into his only vacant pant leg pocket.
“Head straight to the meeting spot. Don't make any unnecessary stops,” Ryuji reminds his lieutenants as he shuts the drawer again. “The longer you're roaming around the city with that gun on you, the higher the chance you might get discovered with it. As an extension to that, try not to sit around in the meeting place for too long, either. Meet up with Takiyama, leave the gun, take the USB drive, and leave. Keep small talk to a minimum if you can. And take off your pins before you get there.” He points to the faintly glinting emblems on their lapels.
“We will, aniki,” Devin reassures with eagerness. “Once we drop it off with my boy, Tetsu, we'll call it a night and get back to you in the morning.”
“Good. I'll see you boys later.”
Atreus and Devin give quick bows and farewells to their patriarch before finally leaving the office. On their way out, they approach the same silver, logo-emblazoned Automa taxi that brought Atreus there, as he ordered it to hold for a second trip. The gun, just as it did before, practically burns a hole against his augmented man's back. Though it's not loaded and he doesn't consider himself a superstitious individual, he can almost feel a sinister presence, manifested from the paranoia he's developed as it remains in his possession. Until he places it in the care of Edward, outside of Kyoba, he feels extremely unsafe with it.
For over twenty long minutes, the driverless vehicle makes it ways through the dense LA traffic, cutting through most of Kyoba before leaving the district to the east, then heading north a ways. It eventually hits their meeting spot: Reese-Cole Apartments, at almost midnight, on the dot. The tall, beige colored building stretches seven floors high, and the close placements of the windows are telling of the cramped layout of the apartments themselves. Before the men exit their vehicle, they remove their Sanada-gumi pins and pocket them.
Without trying to seem too conspicuous, they quickly gauge the foot and vehicle traffic outside of the building, and they're indeed somewhat low – especially the former. They quickly enter the lobby, and are greeted with an interior that's as new and maintained as the exterior – which is to say, barely at all. The vinyl tiles, which seem to have been white at one point, are permanently stained into a light brown, and chipped in some corners. The paint on the dry wall is faded in spots, and half the mailboxes in the lobby wall are busted open and in disrepair.
“I can see why he chose this shit heap to hide out in,” Devin utters, showing about as much respect as the establishment deserves. “It's low key, to be sure – almost to a fault. So what room did he say he was in?”
“705,” Atreus answers while turning his head to the aforementioned mailboxes. The one for 705 isn't broken, but it's listed as 'vacant'.
The two men approach one of the elevators, and calls for it to carry them up. As the lift slowly makes it way down to the lobby floor, it's accompanied by loud, mechanical, and frankly unsafe rattling sounds before stopping with a telltale ding and sliding open its steel doors with eccentric stutters.
“This whole fucking place is one big OSHA violation,” Devin utters, showing clear reluctance to step inside.