The viewfinder followed a girl with black hair as she opened a door, went inside, and shut it behind her. The highly directional microphone picked up the sound of a lock clacking into place.
“1845 hours. Angel arrives home. No sign of pursuit.” Melissa Mao, who was stationed to watch Chidori Kaname’s home, reported into a nearby microphone.
A portable display tracked the location of Kurz’s AS on a map. The M9—invisible thanks to its ECS—was heading south along the city roads. He’d probably be in the neighborhood within two or three minutes.
Melissa was in an apartment thrown together by Mithril’s intelligence department: a safehouse for staging and surveillance. It was positioned across the street from the apartment complex where Kaname lived, at an angle where they could look down on it. It was a large apartment, with no real furniture except for four chairs and a cheap table she’d brought in that morning. Its only other occupants were a few firearms and a small mountain of surveillance equipment.
“Why is everything in Tokyo so expensive, though?” she mused to herself. Having finished her 320 yen hamburger, she pulled out a 240 yen pack of menthols and lit up.
Sousuke returned shortly, and Mao was dumbstruck by the state he was in. He was handcuffed to a folding chair, which he was dragging along behind him.
✦ ✦ ✦
“What the hell is that?” she demanded.
“It’s a folding chair, obviously,” he said as he managed, with great effort, to remove his shoes.
“Well, sure... But why are you dragging it along with you?”
“Because I can’t remove the handcuffs,” he admitted. “They’re hinged, and the keyhole is facing away from my hands, so...”
“Sousuke, come on...” Mao groaned, and used her own master key to remove his restraints.
“Thank you,” he said. He then proceeded to explain the day’s events. “...And that’s that,” he finished. “The hardest part was buying the train ticket at Sengawa Station...” He paused as he noticed her reaction. “Is something wrong, Mao?”
Mao was clutching her head in her hands. “Nothing, just a headache...”
“I see. Maybe you should get some rest.”
There was a soft electronic beeping sound—a call from Kurz. “Uruz-6 here. I just made it back. Would one of you please swap with me?” He sounded like he was restraining a scream. Kurz had just parked his M9 in a large trailer in the parking lot—a camouflaged hangar.
“Kurz, did anyone notice you?” Mao asked.
“I almost kicked an old man,” Kurz admitted. “His dog barked its damned head off at me... A kei-truck nearly plowed into me, I came this close to smashing into a pachinko parlor, and I rested a hand on the wall of a cram school and it cracked the freaking glass! Scared the shit out of the kids inside...”
After all, the people around him couldn’t see the M9. To make matters worse, he’d had to navigate an urban area full of narrow streets—a lesser pilot than Kurz might have caused a serious accident.
“Maybe we need to rethink our plan,” Mao said thoughtfully.
“Round-the-clock surveillance might not be possible,” Sousuke suggested. “We could leave the AS here during the day, instead?”
“Hmm. I’d hate to lose the firepower and the sensors, though...” Mao folded her arms and thought.
The M9 was a cutting-edge AS, mounted with billion-yen vetronics. These were so sensitive, they could even pick red flag phrases like “grab her” and “use of force approved” from nearby conversations and radio transmissions. On top of that, the machine had two heavy machine guns mounted on its head that could sweep through twenty or thirty unarmored enemies at once. It was a bit excessive for a mission of this scale—but then, Mao came from the US Armed Forces, who were world leaders in “excessive.”
“I think I’d like to keep the M9 close to Kaname as much as possible,” she decided. “If we avoid rush hours and move along the river... yeah, I think we can work it out.”
“If that’s your decision, I’ll respect it,” Sousuke said, honoring his team leader’s opinion.
“Whatever, just swap with me already. I’m exhausted,” Kurz whined over the radio.
“Hold your horses...” Mao said, then changed focus. “Oh, Kaname’s getting a call...” She fooled with the switches on the monitoring equipment, then offered Sousuke a headset. “Want to hear, Sousuke?”
“I suppose I should,” he said, taking the headset.
The call seemed to be from her little sister, who was living on the east coast of the USA. They joked around a little, and Kaname filled her in on how things were going in Japan. Eventually she brought up the “transfer student,” whom she referred to wryly as “hilarious.” Then at last, with obvious reluctance, she hung up.
“What a sad story,” Mao said wistfully as she flicked off the listening device. “A beautiful girl, living all by herself, gets a pick-me-up once a day from her family thousands of miles away...”
With a thoughtful expression on his face, Sousuke offered the most cloddish interpretation possible: “I’m not sure that I follow, but I agree that routine contact is a wise practice.” Then he thought again and said, “She seemed different, just then, from when I met her this afternoon. She was much less harsh and combative.”
“Of course she was,” Mao told him. “She was talking to her sister.”
“Is that how it works?”
“Yep, that’s how it works.”
“Hmm...” Sousuke said thoughtfully. “Also, I’m surprised that she doesn’t seem to hate me.”
“I guess she doesn’t.” Mao peered at him closer. “You seem pleased about that.”
Sousuke turned to a window and examined his reflection. “Do I?”