Conan: I'm really not the mastermind behind the scenes

Considering the brutality and special status of the criminal, the SAT special police were mentally prepared to start a gunfight when they came up.

But they didn't expect the arrest to go so smoothly.

They pinned Kevin Yoshino to the ground, searched him, and made sure there was nothing dangerous on him. Then they pulled him up and handcuffed him. The two strongest members held his arms on the left and right, and the rest of the members surrounded him in an outer circle.

Someone went to pick up the sniper rifle that had been shot down, and was somewhat surprised to see the sniper scope pierced by the bullet, then carefully put it away as evidence.

The group walked downstairs in a mighty procession. As they entered the elevator, one of the young members couldn't help but mutter, "This case has become such a big deal, but I didn't expect it to be over so soon."

Kevin Yoshino had been keeping his head down and saying nothing, but when he heard this, he glanced over there.

The elevator door blocked out most of the outside noise, but as a former soldier, he had excellent hearing, and he could hear the sound of a large number of vehicles heading towards here in the distance.

The sound fell into his ears, deafening like thunder, making his heart pound.

Almost successful.

What Hunter wanted to do was about to succeed.

……

How easy is it to make a person fall to the bottom?
How easy is it to make a person lose all his honor?
How difficult is it to get a person back on his feet after he has fallen to the bottom and lost all his honor?

In other words, is there any possibility for him to get back on his feet?
Kevin Yoshino wandered in front of a private hospital.

After getting off the car, he paced under the shade of the tree in front of the hospital, glancing at the door from time to time. Only when the security guards at the door were about to come over to question him did he go in.

"Hello."

Yoshino was tall, strong, and muscular, standing on the ground like a small mountain. However, facing the gaze of the seated nurse, his momentum was weakened, and the words he asked were a little hesitant.

"Excuse me, Mr. Timothy Hunter...which ward is he staying in?"

The United States is the country with the highest military expenditure in the world. It has nearly 140 million soldiers, with many new recruits joining and some veterans retiring every year.

Yoshino retired after the Middle East War. After the war, many people left the army due to injuries or psychological reasons.

Although retired soldiers are apparently provided with favorable policies, not everyone can enjoy the benefits, and most people have to start looking for jobs.

Yoshino is one of those people who did not enjoy the treatment and had to find a job on his own. Moreover, he was not very lucky. He chose to be a bodyguard, which seemed to be a legitimate job, but it turned out that his boss was involved in organized crime, and he had one foot in the gray area.

Because of this, he has been afraid to meet Hunter.

However, the current situation does not allow him to avoid it any longer.

Yoshino stood in front of the ward, and before he could raise his hand to knock, the door opened. Hunter stood there, wearing a hospital gown, with sallow skin, heavy bags under his eyes, and a protruding jaw.

He looks more than ten years older than his actual age.

He no longer looked like the hero he was on the battlefield. Yoshino was stunned when he saw him, but Hunter showed a surprised expression when he saw him: "Yoshino?"

Yoshino's eyes passed over that face and looked into the ward as if escaping. "I heard from Green that you were sick, so I came to see you. How are you now?"

Hunter stepped aside and said, "Come in and talk."

The door closed quickly. It was a single room. Yoshino was stunned for a moment as he looked at the empty space with only a bed and medical equipment.

He remembered that Hunter was married and had a younger sister. Their family had a good relationship and he had heard Hunter mention them many times in the past. But there was no trace of their existence in the room before him.

Hunter threw the checklist that he had casually dropped on the chair back onto the low table, cleared a chair, and sat back on the bed. "It's been a few years since we last met. The last time the instructor came, he said you were a bodyguard. How have you been lately?"

"That's how I live." Yoshino frowned and couldn't help asking, "Hunter, where are your family? You were sick, why didn't they come to accompany you?"

"They're gone," Hunter said. "It's just me, my wife, my sister, they all died a few years ago."

Yoshino was stunned for a moment: "How could it be...?"

Hunter shook his head, not wanting to elaborate.

"How is your illness?"

Yoshino changed the subject abruptly. He looked Hunter up and down. Facing that skinny and withered face, he couldn't really say "You should recover soon." He had a bad feeling since he entered the hospital.

Hunter shook his head again.

"Not very good. Even with treatment, he can only live for another year at most."

Just like when a bullet flew past his eyebrow on the battlefield, Kevin Yoshino widened his eyes in shock, unable to move; Hunter was very calm, and the tone of this person did not fluctuate much throughout.

In just a few seconds, the ward was as quiet as a grave.

"you……"

Yoshino found that his voice was trembling a little. He stood up, looked at Hunter, and spoke again.

"Hunter, can I do anything for you?"

This time it was Hunter who was stunned.

"You saved me." Yoshino said seriously, "If you hadn't helped me on the battlefield, the bullet would have hit my brain stem instead of just grazing my eyebrow. I owe you my life, and I want to help you."

"This is also my compensation to you." He finished speaking in one breath, "At that time, you were framed by Waltz. He slandered you for killing civilians, and I happened to be assigned to fight in another place. I didn't stand up to speak for you in time, causing you to be distracted on the battlefield later..."

Something was shaking in Hunter's eyes, and he whispered, "...Do you believe me?"

"I believe you!" Yoshino said quickly. He took a step forward and carefully grabbed Hunter's shoulders, trying to convey his thoughts to him as much as possible: "Of course I believe you! You will never do that kind of thing!" Hunter looked at him intently, and after several seconds, he looked away.

"I want to ask you to help me investigate something secretly." He said dryly, "The sooner the better."

Yoshino asked, "What's going on?"

Thanks to the current boss, he is now semi-involved in gangs. The company appears to be an ordinary company on the surface, but actually has business dealings with the underworld.

One time, he accompanied his boss to a bar for a deal and met the other party, a young Asian man who was said to be a well-known information dealer on the street. Yoshino didn't know what they talked about, and they didn't let others get too close.

Hunter took out a newspaper from under his pillow. Yoshino saw the date and found that it was from the beginning of this year and it was a local tabloid. He was a little confused, but when he saw the photo attached to a report, he understood the reason.

"Murphy is dead," Hunter said.

Bill Murphy was the man who accidentally shot Hunter on the battlefield. After the incident, he quickly retired and lived in a small city.

Yoshino was reading the report, and Hunter's voice rang faintly in his ears: "I don't think Murphy's death was an accident. He shot me that year... I suspect he was instructed by someone."

"Instigated by someone?" Yoshino asked, "Could it be Waltz?!"

However, Hunter overruled him: "No."

Hunter said firmly: "I know Waltz. He is just an ordinary captain. He doesn't have the ability to command other soldiers to kill their comrades. This will be a bad case and will be brought to the military court. I think it is..."

He didn't pronounce the following words clearly, but Yoshino's scalp suddenly went numb.

"Hunter, that day..." he asked hesitantly, "What did you go through?"

This topic was very touching, and Yoshino asked it very hesitantly. Hunter's face turned pale when he heard it, but he understood that he had asked the other party to investigate, so it would be better to explain the cause and effect clearly.

"That day……"

Hunter glanced at the door and spoke in a voice so quiet that only the two of them could hear.

"I saw a strange body."

At that time, he had just been stripped of the Silver Star Medal and returned to the battlefield from the United States. He was criticized and controversial by others, but his superiors still assigned him tasks and sent him to the front line.

His comrades ostracized him, leaving him isolated and helpless. During a mission one day, he accidentally got separated from his friends.

Hunter whispered, "That man is dead, but I can't tell how he died. I've been on the battlefield for so long, and I've never seen such a strange death..."

To say that he was surprised would be an understatement; his first reaction was actually disgust.

He had never seen such a disgusting dead person!

The corpse's skin was festering, but it was not caused by the explosion. The clothes on the body were intact, and there was not even much dust from the ruins. A closer look revealed a thin layer of dark yellow pus coagulated on the bloody face.

The skin on the corpse's hands was completely rotten, and the five fingers that barely had a shape were stained dark brown, with flesh that had been pulled off between the nails.

That's not even the point.

"The body had a tag tied to its wrist," Hunter said.

Yoshino frowned. "Tag? Could it be a soldier's dog tag?"

In the past, when they served in the army, each of them wore a dog tag so that the superiors could tell where they were affiliated with at a glance.

Hunter shook his head. "The plate is made of plastic, and the characters don't look like the soldier's number. It has a string of English and numbers on it..."

"Pasr-032."

Yoshino was horrified when he heard this.

If dog tags are a soldier's identity symbol, then what kind of people do such tags symbolize?

What does it represent?
……

"This is 032..."

Aoyagi Akimitsu is looking through the photos in the album.

It recorded the entire process of a person's physical changes within a few minutes, from coughing with his hands covering his mouth, his skin turning red and festering, scratching his cheeks hard and wailing, falling to the ground and dying, with a layer of dark yellow pus oozing out of the rotten flesh...

He had no discomfort with the detailed death presented before him, and quickly turned the page, only to see a photo that was out of place in the entire album.

The deceased was wearing a relatively clean white robe, lying in the dirty and dusty ruins, with half of his face rotten and the remaining eyes staring upwards, his fingers strangely shaped like claws, as if he had grabbed something forcefully before he died.

Compared to the various high-definition detailed photos on the previous page, this photo looks more like a still of a corpse in a horror movie released by professionals.

This is indeed the work of a professional.

Aoyagi Akimichi looked at the photo, which was taken by war correspondent Ryu Kamikawa as if it was an ordinary corpse and then purchased - if the Osaka Public Security Bureau had paid more attention when collecting the body last time, he might have taken a few glances at it - and then looked at the assessment written by the researcher inside.

[Pasr-010, the experiment failed again. Need to be dealt with. - Mam]

"Pasr... Passover?"

Aoyagi Binguang recognized the abbreviation of the word at the beginning and laughed softly.

"The sacrificial lamb... you guys are so smart to use this as a synonym for human experiment." (End of this chapter)