“Seriously? They'd reel in that much cash?” Devin asks, still flabbergasted. “They'd pass decades of Sanada-gumi's work in just a couple years? How the fuck does Zephir even have the means of making a weapon to begin with? They're just pharma, aren't they? This shit sounds like a nutjob conspiracy theory!”

“I wondered that too, so before I woke you guys up, I decided to do a bit of quick research on Zephir's history,” Tetsuya interjects with additional details. “Turns out they have an established habit of purchasing somewhat older engineering technology from other companies. And I'm not talking about just medical or pharmaceutical engineering. A big purchase of theirs some years ago that raised a lot of eyebrows but remained relatively uncovered was stuff from Briggs & Westshire – a former private military company that turned into a weapons research and development agency.”

“Weapons engineering tech is... an odd purchase for a pharma company to make, to say the least,” Atreus comments with obvious skepticism regarding the purpose of such a thing.

“No fuckin' kidding. This prompted me to look into Zephir's biggest investors, and one name caught my eye: 'John Tanaka'. I feel like that name sounded way too plain, so I tried looking him up. And guess what? I got jack fuckin' shit. Other than his name, I couldn't find anything else on this guy, no pictures, no date of birth, nothing. He's doesn't even have a publicly viewable portfolio of any kind, either, so it's hard to look up what other companies he's invested in, because 'John' and 'Tanaka' are both really common names.”

“Sounds like an alias the Kobashi-kai might use for when they snake their way into legitimate companies.”

“Would Briggs & Westshire also be held accountable for this?” Devin asks out of curiosity.

Tetsuya shakes his head. “Nah. As far as I know, the link between them and Zephir begins and ends at that sale. I looked into them, and there's no 'John Tanaka' among their investors; just a bunch of rich white dudes from the south. So I don't think you need to worry about them.”

“Man, I can't believe they bought old tech from a fucking weapons engineering corporation, and no one batted an eye? How the fuck does that shit not raise any flags?”

“It happened during the peak of the 2032 presidential elections, where there was an investigation of some candidate's supposed campaign funding fraud or something; I can't remember who. But that would've been the perfect time to do some shady shit like this – still legal or not – and come out of the deal unscathed by the media. I found a few articles, but they were conspiracy theory websites, so of course no one paid attention.”

“Well, there's no point in standing around and talking,” Atreus speaks up, growing more irritated at their discovery the more he thinks about it. “The Kobashi-kai and Zephir plan on doing some really heinous shit, and we have proof, so we should head to Okada and give it to him like I said I would.”

“Can't we just, like, e-mail the documents to him?” Devin asks.

“Well, I wouldn't recommend that for digital footprint purposes, but also because that's not possible at the moment,” Tetsuya interjects. “The documents are basically locked to the USB drive that they're on with a sort of tool that's kinda like DRM. Basically, the documents aren't allowed to be seen unless it's from this specific USB drive. It's possible for me to crack it, but it's gonna take way longer than it took to just crack the password to decrypt the thing. Even if I try to screenshot them, the window will be blacked out. I imagine either Mr. Noah or Mr. Camlin did this to ensure the contents weren't easily spreadable in case the drive got into the hands of someone who doesn't know what they're dealing with.”

“God damn, this cyber security shit is complex.”

“Funny thing is, I'm still allowed to print it out, but, uh, as you can see, I'm not a guy who works with good old ink and paper. But, for the sake keeping my own 'copy' as a 'just in case', I can do the next best thing.” The hacker grabs his personal smartphone and opens up the camera. “Sometimes the simplest solution is the best one. Give me a couple minutes.” He merely points his phone at his monitor and quickly begins to take pictures of every page of the manuscript, one by one. It's an almost primitive method of making a 'copy', but given the circumstances, it's still the most time-efficient one.

As Tetsuya continues his snapshots, Devin turns to Atreus. “You alright?” he asks, noticing that his friend is pensively leering ahead at nothing in particular.

“...No, I'm not,” Atreus utters with a small shake of his head. “I feel like this is such a dumb reason for people to get killed over – money meant to fund the suffering of others. But then again, what would be a good reason?” he asks, specifically thinking of Edward, who, all things considered, was only a couple hours away from finally seeing the contents of the USB drive himself, and a couple hours away from finally seeing the end of the paranoia and headhunting that kept him in hiding for a week.

“Yeah. I know,” Devin sympathizes, also recognizing the senselessness of it all.

“Alright. That's everything,” Tetsuya soon announces the completion of his 'copying' procedure. He ejects the USB drive and hands it out to Atreus. “So in case something happens to the drive, I'll have a 'copy' you can get. So to speak.”

“You sure it's okay for you to have such delicate information on you?” Devin asks.

“Man, all my shit is wrapped in more protection than government data vaults. And between you and me, I might have other confidential corporate documents lying around here. You worry about yourselves, alright?”

“Suit yourself.”

“Thanks for the help. Again,” Atreus humbly offers his gratitude as he pockets the USB drive.

“No problem. You can pay me back by taking me to a hostess club sometime.”

“We'll do that.”

“I'll call you when all this shit is over,” Devin gives a final comment before the two Sanada-gumi members finally exit Tetsuya's apartment.

Atreus is the first to step back out into the hallway. He turns his head right, towards the elevator, to see if anyone else is around. However, he turns to the left to see a man in a blue and black flannel a couple doors down, seemingly in the middle of unlocking his front door. Seeming benign, Atreus ignores him. Devin closes Tetsuya's apartment door behind himself as he steps out too.

“So, we head back to headquarters and we're done, yeah?” Devin asks as they begin to walk back to the elevator.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Yeah. Hopefully Colter does his part and we won't have to deal with bigger problems later.”

After several strides away from Tetsuya's door, Atreus looks ahead at the glossy blackened glass of the door to the elevator shaft. He can see his own approaching reflection, and that of his friend, but a third human-shaped figure is seen, about eight or nine paces behind them – the man in the flannel shirt. What's more, his reflection shows his right arm lifted up, pointing a gun at the backs of the Sanada-gumi men.

Immediately struck with alarming fear and urgency, Atreus whips around to confirm what he saw in the glass door, and for a split second he sees the end of yet another suppressed barrel pointed at him from about twenty feet away. Acting quickly, he instinctively tackles Devin with the intent of pushing him out of harm's way.

“What– ” Devin reacts verbally as they approach a nearby recess in the wall, where another apartment's door is. In the few steps they take to seek cover, the new assailant fires off a quick series of three rounds, with two hitting the walls.

“Agh, fuck!” Devin exclaims behind gritted teeth as his back hits the alcove wall.

Atreus momentarily ignores his friend's cry to watch the attacker, another Asian man of slim, athletic build, similar to the earlier assassin, retreats behind another recess in the wall on the opposite side of the hall, a stone's throw away.

“You okay?” Atreus finally asks.

“No, I'm not fucking okay!” Devin reacts poorly, clutching his leg. “I just got fucking shot in the leg!” he says behind a pained scowl. Atreus looks down to see his friend's wound: a gunshot to the side of his upper right thigh, immediately below his hip. “Who the fuck was that?! Another Kobashi-kai asshole?!” the wounded man asks with anger.

“Looks like it,” Atreus confirms, keeping an eye on the assailant's position.

“So what the fuck do we do? Neither of us have guns on us.”

The augmented man thinks. The elevator is behind them, but they're in a hallway and Devin is injured, making it too risky to try and run for the exit because it'll make them vulnerable. They lack weapons to fight back with from a distance, and the assassin himself won't be able to escape without passing them. Position-wise, they can't really move anywhere or do anything without putting themselves in danger. At least, Devin can't.

“Just come out, I can end this quickly!” an unfamiliar voice rings out from down the hall with a moderate Japanese accent. “No need to drag this out for longer than necessary,” the assailant urges.

“How fuckin' considerate,” Devin spits as he continues to wince.

“Are you with the Kobashi-kai too?!” Atreus yells back. “Your friend's dead, you know! Both the Sanada-gumi and the cops are aware of your presence in Kyoba now. If there's more of you, you'll all be hunted down. This is pretty pointless now.”

“You still have the USB drive on you, don't you?” the killer asks. “After I kill you, I just need to kill your friend in the apartment over there, and I can still complete my job just fine.”

“Motherfucker's gonna kill Tetsu!” Devin says in a panic. “There's no point in negotiating with this fuck, he has no intention of stopping, man.”

“...I have an idea,” Atreus states after a quick glance down the hall. “But you're gonna have to stay here.”

“What? What the fuck do you plan on doing?”

“Well, only one of us has bulletproof arms,” Atreus says as tungsten slats emerge from his forearms, extending outward in two directions like a hand fan from a pivot below his elbow, creating a half-circle shape from each limb.

This mechanism was added to his prosthetics in the off chance he found himself in danger similar to the incident that cost him his arms to begin with. Each tungsten slat is merely 2.5 millimeters thick, but so incredibly dense that it's allegedly capable of stopping up to a 5.56mm bullet fired at point blank range, and possibly even 12 gauge slugs at a similar distance. These shields make up most of the weight of his man-made arms and are a major contributor to why they were expensive, yet until now, he's never had a chance to use them.

“You're just gonna fucking rush him?! Are you nuts?! What's with you and throwing your body onto grenades and into bullets and shit?”

“I guess I'm just instinctive under pressure. Stay behind the wall!”

Atreus pushes himself out of the alcove and stands firmly in the middle of the hallway using both of his shields to protect himself, his left one in front of his head and upper half of his chest, and his right one in front of his stomach and part of his hips. He approaches the assailant with a mad dash; his legs are still vulnerable, but he accepts the risk and tries to adopt a slight zig-zag in his advancement.

The augmented gangster deftly closes the distance, which causes the nameless attacker to panic, having not expected such a direct offensive maneuver from his target. He retaliates by simply trying to empty his handgun's magazine into the quickly approaching Atreus, who doesn't slow down at the sound of nearly a dozen 9mm bullets hitting the dense steel of his shields.

When Atreus nearly enters arms' reach, the assailant begins to step back while firing the last rounds in his gun before dropping the weapon entirely and reaching around to small of his back to unsheathe a knife. He tries to slash at the small bit of Atreus's face peeking out from behind his upper shield, but the gangster steps back to avoid it. He retracts his tungsten shield fans before the assailant follows up with a second, backhand slash at Atreus's midsection.

However, the Sanada-gumi member catches the attacker's wrist, mid-arc, with his right hand, cocks his left arm back, and punches the unnamed killer's forearm with incredible force. A repulsive snap is heard and echoes through the hallway, and the ivory white of the assassin's arm bone becomes visible through his skin.

“Aaaaagh!!” the assassin unleashes a nigh deafening scream of unbearable pain. The grotesque injury also causes him to drop the knife.

With the would-be killer now completely vulnerable, Atreus seizes him by throat – though not forcefully enough to completely choke him – and pins him against the wall at the end of the hallway, pressing almost the full weight of his body against the assailant's to prevent him from slithering out of the hold or sneaking in a hit, a lesson learned from the last fight.

“You're with the Kobashi-kai, aren't you?” Atreus asks aggressively, almost in a growl, his face only a few inches from his attacker. “Did you follow us from Reese-Cole Apartments? Are there more assholes like you hidden around the city? Huh? Where are they? Feel free to pick whichever question you want to answer. I got all the time in the world.”

The assassin doesn't respond. He simply maintains a threatening leer, despite his heavy breathing and sweat-drenched brow. Every other second he punctuates the silence with a slight scowl and groan of pain, his open wound causing a puddle of blood beneath him, slowly being soaked up by the carpet.

“...No, you don't,” the attacker suddenly utters under his strained breaths, his eyes burning with malice and contempt. He opens his mouth slightly and maneuvers his tongue towards his molars, where he pries out a false tooth and bites into it with an audible crunch – a hidden suicide pill.

“No... No!” Atreus, realizing what it is, grabs the nameless man by the jaw and tries to pry his mouth open without badly hurting him further, but it's too late; he had already swallowed it. After a moment's struggle, the effects of the fast-acting pill begin.

The assassin starts to convulse with small twitches, which prompts Atreus to step back. Then the man limply falls over and begins to groan, his breaths turning shallow and fast. Then he finally unleashes a final, loud gasp before becoming limp. His eyes remain open, staring upward at the angry, frustrated Sanada-gumi member who has yet again failed to get information from an assailant.

Atreus quietly stands over the body and shakes his head, disappointed not only in himself, but at the lengths the unnamed attacker would go to just to avoid being caught and questioned. The augmented man heaves a sigh, and before he can turn around, the sound of a door opening is heard behind him.

“What the fuck is...” the familiar voice of Tetsuya begins speaking. Before he finishes his sentence, he notices Atreus and the body, and the color drains from his face. He turns and looks back down the opposite side of the hall and sees Devin leaning against the wall, clutching his bloody leg. “What on fucking Earth happened out here?!” the hacker exclaims, understandably shocked at the scene.