Tokyo Detective Chronicles

Just as the elevator doors were closing in front of him, Miyazawa Rin heard a dull thud coming from the floor below.

The elevator vibrated slightly, and the lights flickered twice.

She gripped the handrail tightly and looked up as the floor numbers jumped upwards.

"What is the cleaning department up to now..." she muttered to herself.

The elevator doors opened, revealing a brightly lit and noisy lobby.

Miyazawa Rin shook her head and strode towards the closed work area of ​​the data retrieval team.

The people there are jokingly referred to internally as "turtles" because they always huddle in their workstations filled with monitors, craning their necks and staring intently at the screens.

The people in the group didn't seem to have any objections to the title.

Rumor has it that everyone in the data retrieval team signed a contract different from that of other staff members, and was injected with a special drug that would cause them to die if they tried to leak secrets, in exchange for certain special privileges.

"Access key, Delta-7-echo".

He handed the chip to the man on duty.

"Such high-level privileges..."

Previously, Miyazawa Rin had used Kuroda's special first-level commissioner status to inquire through normal channels, but to no avail.

That's why I went to Yasuo Ito and got a higher-level access key.

This kind of temporary authority, which grants full access at the supervisor level, is not common within the Special Affairs Section.

The person on duty was a young man who looked to be in his early twenties, with greasy hair and glasses as thick as the bottom of a wine bottle. He took the chip, inserted it into the reader, and his fingers left a trail of afterimages on the keyboard.

"The area within a three-kilometer radius of the tram incident... the time frame is from 6 PM to 9 PM tonight..."

He muttered to himself as hundreds of monitoring windows popped up on the huge screen: "What specific target are you looking for?"

"A male of high school age, wearing a suit, and about 1.8 meters tall."

Rin Miyazawa recalled the silhouette of the white-haired boy in the recreated world.

The man adjusted his glasses, and the algorithm on the screen began to run.

A few seconds later, dozens of monitoring windows were enlarged, and all the images that met the requirements appeared.

After a few more seconds, after the second round of elimination, about a dozen surveillance images with varying resolutions remained.

In one of the largest scenes, at a tram station in Katsushika Ward, there is a tall, thin boy wearing a gray coat with long bangs that obscure his face.

It was Fushimi Iori.

But Miyazawa Rin recognized the silhouette at a glance.

"It's him," she said softly, pointing to the screen.

By typing on the keyboard, the boy's face in the image is cropped, enhanced, and compared.

A few seconds later, the system beeped.

The matching result popped up as a red warning message.

"Warning: Insufficient permissions. Please stop the current action immediately."

Access permissions: Ministerial level and above / Special authorization

……

Special Affairs Building, B6 floor, Cleaning Department, First Experimental Zone.

Covered in blood, Kuroda Sousuke dragged a relatively intact chair and threw it with a thud in the center of the blood-soaked testing ground, then plopped down on it.

He silently took out a cigarette case from his pocket.

The metal box was soaked in blood, but fortunately the cigarettes inside were still smokeable. He flicked one out, put it in his mouth, lit it, and took a deep drag.

The nicotine entered my lungs, temporarily suppressing my urge to kill.

When the sea of ​​blood descended earlier, Kuroda lunged at the nearest emergency elevator platform at the last moment.

The alloy floor rose beneath his feet, barely escaping the first wave of blood, but he was still soaked to the bone... the stench of blood was everywhere.

Twenty meters in front of him was the white giant who had once again returned to his sleeping state.

"Prometheus"...that's what those crazy guys in the sanitation department call it.

Now, its head is bowed, its eyes are closed, and the vertical crack in its chest has been temporarily repaired.

It uses a kind of psionic sealing tape that looks like silver tape, but is actually priced per centimeter and costs as much as gold.

Dark red new fleshy buds began to grow on the giant's skin.

Even though the heart and internal organs were completely destroyed, they miraculously recovered to their previous state after receiving a new energy supply.

Kuroda exhaled a smoke ring and squinted at the enormous object.

What exactly is this thing?

Where did it come from?

Why would the cleaning department have the authority to contain beings of this level?

He couldn't answer any of these questions, and he didn't want to ask them at all.

The scene beneath the white giant's feet was a terrifying sight, resembling the mudflats of the River Styx, with fragments of internal organs, bone fragments, and a semi-solidified, milky-white substance that looked like a mixture of fat and brain tissue piled up everywhere.

The smell was so strong it was almost suffocating.

After a while.

Kuroda Sousuke stubbed out his cigarette in the bloody mud at his feet and stood up.

Looking into the distance, several scholars and researchers from the sanitation department were piecing together the fragments of the body they had brought back from the tram on a relatively clean metal platform in an open space.

The body was blown to pieces, but the sanitation department staff were indeed highly professional.

Its basic appearance was quickly restored.

Further away, a man with purplish eyes and a swollen left cheek, sporting a messy hairstyle, was covering his cheek with one hand while directing the post-disaster cleanup work in the experimental zone with the other.

"Drainage system! Activate emergency drainage!"

The other ordinary staff members in the cleaning department, like headless flies, ran around aimlessly under his haphazard commands.

"It's no good, supervisor! The drain is blocked by congealed blood!"

"Then use a suction pump! Go and bring over the large suction pump from the septic tank on floor B4!"

"A septic tank pump?"

"What else? It's that powerful!"

After saying that, he limped toward Kuroda, a fawning smile plastered on his face.

But because his left cheek was swollen, he looked particularly comical.

"Hehe, Kuroda-kun...look, you've vented your anger now."

His movements resembled a fly rubbing its hands: "I'm also sacrificing myself for science. You see... it's such a small matter, and it's the middle of the night, so let's not bother the decision-making department..."

Kuroda stared at his face, which was swollen from the punch he had delivered, without saying a word.

The supervisor was feeling uncertain. He thought that losing pay was a minor issue compared to what might happen if he were arrested for a mental health evaluation, or if next year's budget were cut...

It was at this moment that he truly felt a sense of responsibility as a manager.

Kuroda was exhausted and didn't want to waste any more words with this lunatic. He pointed to the monster's corpse on the metal platform next to him, which was his main purpose for this trip.

The supervisor understood perfectly, winked smugly, and gave an "OK" sign.

"Coming right now! Coming right now!"

He rushed into the group of scholars, pushed the others aside with his hands, and rolled up his sleeves, ready to get down to business.

"Get out of the way, get out of the way. You're a bunch of greenhorns. I have to do it myself."

The young scholars tactfully made way for them.

The supervisor put on new gloves and goggles and picked up a scalpel.

But when his gaze truly focused on the monster's corpse, the nonchalant, playful expression on his face gradually disappeared.

Instead, there was doubt.

He first walked around the worktable three times, observing every detail of the corpse from various angles.

He scratched his head, then reached out and gently touched the grayish-white skin with his fingertips, feeling the cool, slippery texture. Suddenly, he leaned in and took a deep sniff...

"Hiss... That's weird..." he muttered to himself.

As he spoke, he seemed about to take a bite, but was swiftly stopped by the other researchers who were already on guard.

"No, no, supervisor, this really won't do!"

"Get out! Get out!" Only then did he give up.

"The skin is smooth, without hair or scales...resembling the skin tissue of some deep-sea creatures..."

He muttered to himself, his right eye pressed against a honeycomb-like hole on the surface of the corpse.

"But their respiratory system is entirely designed for terrestrial activity. Does that mean they live in some kind of humid environment?"

Without further hesitation, with the help of other staff members, he climbed onto the dissection table using both his hands and feet, and the scalpel fell.

The blade sliced ​​along the midline of the corpse's only relatively intact chest and abdomen...

This puzzled him even more.

The structure of all the limbs and organs on this monster is very illogical, unlike anything that could have evolved from nature under the influence of psychic energy...

A rudimentary, almost nonexistent digestive system, an enormous heart placing a tremendous burden on it, and a lifespan... that would probably be very short.

In return, they gained extremely high muscle density and appendages and teeth comparable to those of alloy weapons.

A complex locomotor system that normal organisms don't need at all...

This cannot be a naturally occurring organism!

It's like a deformed product that was deliberately created for a certain purpose.

That is... killing and fighting.