But now, what if it had been the espers who had sent someone in to mess with their investigation so as to evade their search...... would this theory be reading too much into the situation? There was no proof, but it never hurt to be safe. Thus, Agent Nicolas spent the next two months bolstering his department’s anti-esper counterintelligence measures.
Based on analysis of footage of the Super Water Sphere fight in Tokyo Bay, it was known that TL’s time-stopping ability had a maximum duration of no longer than 55 seconds. Although the detailed mechanism of how her power worked was still shrouded in mystery, keeping things simple by employing security that could not be broken through within 56 seconds seemed like an effective way to counter her.
In order to counter the esper who was suspected to possess clairvoyance, they had to make it so that it would be impossible to tell what was going on or what they were doing just by looking. Naturally that meant encoding everything, but the effectiveness of doing so was rather debatable. It wasn’t exactly feasible to converse in code 24/7, and if the clairvoyant was watching when they passed around the new codes, then that would render the entire exercise futile. However, it was still better than nothing, so they did it as best as they could anyway.
By the time they had finished setting up all their counterintelligence measures, almost a year had passed since the Super Water Sphere Incident.
The notification from his home country that reached Agent Nicolas together with the spring wind that accompanied the turning of the season was... not good, to put it lightly. His higher-ups had started to get impatient with the investigation’s lack of progress, and some in the organization were calling for Agent Nicolas’ demotion and for putting someone else in charge.
With the frequency of requests for progress reports shooting up and being subjected to more and more sarcasm from his superiors, Agent Nicolas’ stress levels built up higher and higher until he couldn’t help but to visit his go-to bar Ama-no-Iwato and drink himself into oblivion. The only memory he retained of the night was himself endlessly and incoherently venting to the pretty lady who was another regular customer there. When he asked about it on a later day, she told him that “you were talking about your estranged wife and daughter the entire time” with a wry smile. He breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t leaked classified investigative details.
In spite of his bad drinking habit, for some reason Ama-no-Iwato was the only bar where Agent Nicolas had never messed up when drunk. It was the only oasis in his life where he could drink without a worry in the world.
After having refreshed himself, Agent Nicolas decided to personally re-investigate the organization that he had thought the most suspicious from among the list mentioned in the missive from half a year ago. Re-investigations usually were a mere waste of time, but he had no other options or leads to turn to.
The activities of the espers were always conducted in secrecy. Apparently they were fighting against black-colored monsters of indefinite form called “World Shadows” with irregular frequency. The reason why they were fighting was unknown, and there had never been eyewitness reports from someone who witnessed one such fight in action. That conspicuous confrontation with the Super Water Spheres had clearly been an exception.
The place that Agent Nicolas chose to re-investigate out of sheer desperation was none other than Kaneyama Tech Co., Ltd.
Kaneyama Tech was a metalworking company focused around the extraction and processing of rare metals. Recently, it was also making significant expansions into the precision manufacturing market.
Previously, Agent Nicolas had tried to infiltrate the company through getting employed as a security guard, but things just didn’t work out and his attempt ended in failure. He then sent a subordinate to take that job instead, but by then the position had already been filled, so the subordinate became a janitor instead.
According to that subordinate’s reports, Kaneyama Tech had recently set up a top-secret research team. This was nothing out of the ordinary for large enterprises. In order to thwart industrial spies, companies would conduct R&D while keeping it secret from all its other employees. Therefore, suspecting Kaneyama Tech of having ties with espers just because of a secret research team would only invite ridicule. However, in the absence of any other clues or leads, Agent Nicolas had no choice but to make a mountain out of a molehill of suspicion to justify this excessive investigation. However, he knew probably better than anyone the odds against anything meaningful coming out of this attempt.
Agent Nicolas sighed while gloomily imagining his demotion and dishonorable return home. He had failed to live up to his daughter’s expectations of a cool agent. Despite having been entrusted with a staggering amount of funding and personnel and left in charge of a case that even had the president’s attention, he had not managed to produce any tangible results whatsoever.
A demotion was almost certain. And though CIA probably wouldn’t go so far as to fire him, a future where he got shuttled off to an actual sinecure position didn’t require too far a stretch of the imagination. The dazzling dream of successfully rounding up all the espers and returning home in a triumphant parade of acclaim and commendation that had occupied his mind when he was first appointed head of the Super Water Sphere Incident investigation had already lost all color and faded to nothingness.
He had believed in himself and done the best he could, and yet still ended up in failure. That was just how life was. That was just how reality was.
According to the notice that Agent Nicolas got from his home country, apparently his official evaluation would take place one month later. This was, in actuality, a warning to him that he had one last month to produce results if he wanted to keep his position. In a very real way, this last investigation into Kaneyama Tech was going to be an all-or-nothing gamble for Agent Nicolas.
At first, Agent Nicolas applied himself to the investigation rather half-heartedly. However, the more he dug, the more invested he became. The reason was simple: Kaneyama Tech’s security was suspiciously sophisticated.
Normally, there would be nothing out of the ordinary for such a large enterprise to have tight security. However, Kaneyama Tech had cyber protection that could withstand hacking from the CIA; employee loyalty so high that made it nigh impossible to recruit spies; intentionally complicated information handling regulations that made it extremely difficult for any one person to know the big picture; state-of-the-art infrared security cameras; and remarkably skilled security staff. All in all, the place gave off the image of a high security castle.
It was enough to fuel expectations of the place being the stronghold of espers that he sought, but Agent Nicolas’ logical side reminded him that things rarely worked out that nicely. But that said, he was doing this out of desperation anyway, which meant giving up was not an option. With the unexpected resistance boosting his motivation a little, Agent Nicolas started to draw up plans for infiltrating the storeroom where Kaneyama Tech’s top secret research team kept their top secret research material.
Due to the one month time limit, the usual strategies of establishing an inside man or negotiating or making roundabout inquiries were all out of the question. The only viable option was to go straight in and steal the research materials in person. Agent Nicolas was fully aware of the danger of getting spotted and captured. However, his motivation for taking such a high risk and resorting to such a perilous approach was not so much for the sake of the investigation as it was for his own ego. If his career was going to be over anyway, then he wanted to have at least one heroic story involving all the high stakes and flashy action as seen in the movies to bring back to his daughter as a souvenir. How pathetic would “Uh, yeah, I just did my dull and boring work everyday, then I got demoted before I managed to leave behind any achievements” sound? Leaving aside the matter of whether Sarah would let him talk to Emma anymore, that was.
Now, there was a saying that “the outcome of a battle is decided before it even begins,” which was basically an adage on the importance of making preparations ahead of time. This was something that applied also to infiltration. In fact, it was something that was possibly even more relevant to infiltration than battles.
Regardless of how stiff the security measures in place, Agent Nicolas’ target was a corporate building. Breaking through a small part of the security for a short amount of time was not entirely impossible.
The idea of infiltrating during the night when all employees were gone and there were only security staff on site was ruled out almost immediately. The person in charge of the night shift guard duties at Kaneyama Tech, a woman named Nanami Okishima, possessed both Aikido dan belts and also a very eager work ethic. She would frequently change up the patrol times and patrol routes, which would make it a headache to both evade or overpower her. In a way, she herself was much more effective than any run-of-the-mill security measure.
With nighttime ruled out, then that could only mean doing it during daytime. So Agent Nicolas decided to take the strategy of blending in within the crowd to waltz straight in. In order to do that, he needed a disguise. As the saying “if you want to hide a tree, hide it in a forest” went, the more people there were, the harder it would be to detect his infiltration.
Asking the subordinate who was still posing as a janitor in the company for assistance was out of the question. If he got exposed, then he would get kicked out and that would be months of prep work down the drain. It was important that he remained on the inside to continue feeding the CIA information even if Agent Nicolas failed and got caught. And for Agent Nicolas, well, it didn’t matter much whether he succeeded or failed, as it would make for a pretty good story either way. Whether his NDA would allow him to tell that story was another matter altogether, though.
Through Hollywood-level make-up, Agent Nicolas transformed into the appearance of one of the Kaneyama Tech employees who was on break and just confidently strolled in from the front door. He had memorized the map of the company’s internal layout, so there was no hesitation in his step. He cheerfully greeted everyone that he passed, and nobody suspected a thing.