September 18th, 1996
September 18th, 1996
The Cambodian jungle swallowed all in its path, drowning the land in a haze of peridot, pear, and plum greens—an endless, suffocating tapestry. Beneath the oppressive canopy, a perpetual twilight writhed, creeping through the foliage like a secret, half-forgotten dream. Glimpses of Siamese rosewood danced in the shadows, fleeting as ghosts, while the incessant symphony of crickets and katydids rose in frantic, maddening syncopated cacophony—each note a reminder of the jungle’s relentless pulse. The air, thick as a funeral shroud, drowned someone’s senses, dampening them to the bone.
And should one wander far enough north, toward the jagged borders of Thailand, they would find themselves not alone—but surrounded by the fugitive silhouettes of soldiers. Silhouettes that bore the grim dignity of violence, their AK-47s, SKS rifles, and Makarov PMs swaying like cruel pendulums at their sides—silent sentinels of a world hidden away.
Cigarettes glowed faintly beneath rain-slicked rocks and sagging tarps, their embers like dying stars in a universe so very far away. The camps—those crumbling refuges—were mere whispers lost to the storm, ghostly echoes of guerrillas whose lives had become indistinguishable from the relentless downpour. The rain, endless and vengeful, fell in torrents as if the very heavens, weeping in sorrow or wrath, sought to drown this world beneath its weight. The underbrush, once a sanctuary from enemy fire, now lay treacherous underfoot—a sucking mire that threatened to swallow boots with every step. Vines, slick with mud and rain, twisted like serpents eager to hold them fast, rooting them in place as the storm’s fury tore through the jungle. For those few unfortunate enough to be on patrol, each movement was a battle—gripping fern fronds for leverage as sweat mingled with the rain. How far the Khmer Rogue had fallen in not but 20 years.
The Paris Peace Accords of 1991 had ended the nation’s civil war, but the communists, once masters of the land, now watched their territories erode, piece by piece, until little more than a hundred square kilometers remained to their name. A pitiful, whimpering end to a dream—a revolution consumed by its own fire and fervor, its promises soaked in blood, bones, and bodies. In its place, the Cambodian People’s Party rose from the Killing Fields, under Hun Sen, appearing like a new, cruel visage of the old regime, its enemies also silenced by the hand of political violence.
Pol Pot had once said, “If you want to kill the grass, you must also kill the roots.” And so, the CPP eradicated the remnants of his insurrection, drowning his terror in the blood of his own followers. The wheel of violence, endlessly turning, left little room for remorse toward the Khmer Rogue.
Yet, well into the 1990s, Pol Pot himself remained elusive, rumored to perhaps be lurking beyond the Thai border and surrounded only by a few loyalists. The Khmer Rogue’s disbanded factions, fragmented and disorganized, could scarcely communicate, much less mount an effective coordinated resistance. Some whispered that the man had already succumbed to the ravages of time, his health failing a decade since, his body already as decayed as his revolution.
But there was one who refused to believe it. One soldier, a woman—who could not conceive of Pol Pot lying still, dead or dying, in those far reaches. For her, his absence spoke louder than any rumor, there had to be a spark, a flicker of movement in the darkness. No, she believed he was close. Too close. To venture into the woods beyond the border would be too great a risk for one so sickly, so fragile. He was here—hidden, perhaps—but nearby, ever so close.
The faint embers of a cigarette flickered weakly beneath the tarp, casting a full red glow that caught the contours of her face as she sat upon a mostly dry rock. Her gaze lingered for a moment on the five men and one woman huddled together in the makeshift shelter. They looked like ghouls—exhausted, hollow-eyed, their faces gaunt and drained of vitality. They stared into nothing, as if their minds had fled the brutal world they inhabited. She didn’t know their names, and in truth, she didn’t care. The Khmer Rogue could rot in Hell for all eternity, each and every one of them. Her allegiance had never been to the cause, nor to any idealistic notion of a revolution. Her reasons had been something else entirely—something darker, more personal, more vengeful.
Flashes of her childhood, from the early 1970s, played in her mind—images half-remembered. The footage of smiling, zealous women and men, their faces alight with fervor, their assault riffles slung over their shoulders, marching through the jungle villages in the name of revolution. A utopia, they called it. If there had ever been propaganda before the Year Zero policy, that would have been it—the image of hope, now twisted beyond recognition. Work and death. The promise of a society born in blood, where families, books, schools, even the expressions of joy or sorrow were obliterated—no faces of anger or love allowed. A place where only the cold, impersonal logic of terror remained—an atmosphere of nihilistic horror so profound it sought to erase the very essence of humanity from the human being.
The cigarette light flickered in her grip, casting shifting shadows along the grooves of her fingers, the ash clinging precariously to the end as it trembled in the wind, before falling in slow, inevitable fragments to the dirt. Her mother had once been an ardent supporter of that supposed communist utopia, had once believed in the promise of a perfect society. The utopia—that empty, hollow promise—had taken everything from them.
It must have been sometime in ’75. Her mother had smuggled her a meager handful of rice, clutching it desperately, but her actions had been too slow, too cautious. Bang. The pistol shot, the sound of life torn away in an instant. Straight through the teeth, her mother had fallen, her eyes wide. If not for a brief distraction—from a dozen of the famished farmers making their last stand—she too would have eaten lead.
Snickering under her breath, she pinched the bridge of her nose. Five years—five years of wandering, chasing shadows through the suffocating jungle, where every step taken felt like an act of futility. Following happenstance, hoping that the deeper she pushed into the heart of the unrelenting wilderness, the closer she would get to him. It was maddening, the endless game of attrition, a suicidal war that no one else even knew existed, save for herself. She had become lost to the jungle, consumed by its tangled green tendrils, a war with no victor, a battle with no end.
This would be the final rainy season she would tolerate though. No more of the Sisyphean turmoil of patrolling the jungle, of being struck and humiliated for crimes she hadn’t committed, of rationing scraps like an animal, waiting for death to come with the next bullet or next wave of hunger. By now, they were so far back into the jungle that it would take the government a year, maybe more, to reach their location. She just hoped the mines she set so far away would not go to waste.
She could feel the futility of it all now, to continue the facade, the charade of loyalty and purpose. Then there were the rumors, whispering through the leaves, stories of a new power rising—a figure more elusive than a shadow, a former Khmer Rogue operative, purportedly still a loyalist at heart, holding onto the rotting dream of exploitation. Drugs, politics, war—the same terrible dance. They controlled the flow of narcotics, moving them from the Golden Triangle into Cambodia, and from there, into the waiting arms of Vietnam. But it got better, the animosity from the Sino-Vietnamese War had become a thing of the past by the turn of the decade, and this mystery figure sought to utilize that good diplomatic will to extend the route from Vietnam into China and Hong Kong. Was it Samphan or Chea? One from their inner circles? She knew where Chea was at least, so it seemed unlikely.
But then again, what had she come to know of probability? After all this time, after years of betrayal and deception, she had learned that certainty was nothing more than illusion—the jungle was haunted with apparitions, and fate itself had become an unpredictable phantom.
The rhythmic crunch of footsteps in the dense wet earth pulled her from her reverie, dragging her back into the suffocating present. Her fingers absently traced the line of sweat that ran down her exposed chest, the damp fabric of her fatigues clinging loosely, the three undone buttons barely holding the pretense of modesty. She took another slow drag from her cigarette, the ember flaring brightly in the murk of jungle night, its smoke curling upward like some whispered confession—just a moment of solace in the midst of the chaos.
But then came the unmistakable sound—the sharp click of a pistol’s hammer, followed by the warm, unyielding press of steel against the back of her head. Her heart stilled, though her pulse raced in seeming contradiction, as if some forgotten part of her had always known this moment would come.
“Shirai Kuroko,” a rasped voice from behind, rough as the jungle floor itself, soaked with something darker than rain—familiar and foreign all at once.
For an instant, her mind wandered—flashes of memories she had long buried. Was it inevitable, this moment? Had she been a fool to believe in any kind of future, to think she could escape this endless spiral?
Her fingers tightened around the cigarette as she inhaled deeply, the smoke searing her lungs. There was no escape. Not now, at least.
“Present,” she murmured, her voice flat, her gaze sinking to the dirt beneath her jet black knee-high boots. The cigarette, a final ironic defiance against the suffocating air, was crushed out with a swift, absent motion—its glow extinguished as easily as her hope.
“The party tribunal,” he intoned, his words sharp and cloying, like the culets of diamonds on a chalkboard—cold and gleaming, yet somehow grotesque in their clarity. They seemed to hang in the air, fragile yet shattering, piercing deeper than any wound she had ever known.
For a moment, time seemed to still, and she could feel it—the weight of something ancient stirring inside her chest, pressing her breath back into her lungs, making her feel as though she were being crushed under the weight of fate itself. There were no words for this, no defense, no denial.
This was it. The moment she had been waiting for, or perhaps dreading, though it hardly mattered now. They had to have figured it out—her intentions, her quiet rebellion, the moments of hesitation when her eyes lingered too long on a future she had abandoned. Maybe it was in the way she had frowned under the punishing jungle heat, or the hollow, desperate hunger that gnawed at her insides when she had not eaten for days. Or Perhaps it had been the leaf-strewn makeshift menstruation pads, the embarrassing reminder of a body still trying to survive in a world that sought to strip away its dignity. That was a face to remember, she was sure of it.
A bitter smile ghosted across her lips as she marched through the downpour, her brown pigtails clinging to her wet skin, sopping with rainwater. Twelve soldiers shuffled alongside her, their steps heavy and sluggish like their crestfallen faces. The accused were four—women, just like her—their movements mirroring the elderly in the rain, escorted by eight men. Four in the front, four in the back, a pathetic and futile arrangement for such a journey. A two-kilometer stretch, in low visibility, save only for the memories of those involved. She, however, was not one of them.
The air was thick with the mist of petrichor and dread.
One of the women stumbled—her feet lost beneath the slippery vines, her knees hitting the mud with a sickening thud. The soldiers in charge of her prodded and shoved as she fell, struggling to regain her footing. The disarray was palpable—uncertainty, trepidation, the smell of failure hanging in the humidity. She continued to walk ahead nonetheless. That left three women and the two male escorts in front.
She felt her fingertips dancing along the warm steel of her pistol’s slide before twitching around the familiar, comforting shape of her grip, the resin warm against her palm. Every step felt deliberate, slowed down by the tension coiling in her chest.
She glanced over her shoulder—rain slashed through her vision like a thousand jagged needles. Nothing. The men behind her were out of sight in the staccato force of marble sized raindrops. Her pulse quickened—she could sprint and take out the two in the front. It would take but a second to drop them, one shot, two, the echo of a life snuffed out barely a whimper in the rain.
Or, she could lag behind, flee into the twilight downpour, abandon the others to whatever fate awaited them. But then, would the other men catch her?
Dash or draw. A shiver ran through her wrist as she gripped the pistol tighter, the rain washing away the last threads of indecision.
Draw.
The world slowed to a crawl—too slow, like the hands of the clock dragged through a thick tar. A second stretched into infinity, but even Einstein wasn’t enough to prepare her for the snap of the first shot. The man on the left dropped instantly, the bullet finding its mark in the back of his neck. Another shot, and the second man crumpled, lifeless, a spray of blood that seemed to suspend in the air for just a moment, as if time itself stopped stretching and had frozen in reverence to the marksmanship.
With a blink she snapped back to reality, bolting to the right, leaving the two women behind in the chaos she had unleashed. Rain blinded her as it crashed into her face, the cold sting of its blurring vision. She didn’t care. Her knee slammed into a tree, the shock of the impact sending jolts of pain up her thigh. But it didn’t matter. She kicked off the stump, her body lurching forward with the momentum, her trajectory veering north by northwest, a quick correction—too small a deviation to matter.
In that moment, nothing mattered but the pounding of her boots in the mud, the rush of adrenaline that drowned out everything except the chase, the flight, the unrelenting need to keeping moving.
Was it five minutes that passed? Ten? Longer? It all seemed to blur together as her chest heaved. If it weren’t raining, the humidity would have had her soaked all the same. Just a little farther and she could rest for a minute, and then keep going. There was an encampment about 10-12 kilometers northeast that she planned on hitting during the night. It wasn’t well protected; the unit was thinned to spread bodies across the territories. She could raid the supplies and— As she pondered what she would do she rolled her ankle and slipped in the mud, tumbling down a rocky cliff side. The breath left her lungs, and her stomach seemingly rose through her chest. It was a several meter drop into what looked like a swamp or— She felt the hard hit of water, little different than the hard absolute feeling of concrete before everything faded to black.
~~~
The streets of Hong Kong never slept, but they did slink through the night like a weary cat on the prowl, always alert, always hungry. The neon lights cast a sickly, artificial glow over the wet concrete, painting everything in shades of yellow and red, like the colors of sin. The warm summer air was heavy with the smoke of street-side vendors drying up fish and soy-sauce-drenched dumplings, the scent mixing with the unmistakable tang of oil, and the faint undertones of burning rubber.
In the chaos of the streets, the only thing constant was the hum. It was the ambient sound of people, packed, in some places, too tightly into the city—lives spent dodging, ducking, surviving. Secrets were traded in hushed tones amidst barrooms and shadowed alleys. And somewhere in the mix of that grand madness was her, the ace detective who had seen what some might have considered “too much”, and maybe even done too much, and yet wasn’t dead.
The police bureau, a stone behemoth nestled between the gaudy hustle of Kowloon’s marketplaces and the endless steel skeletons of skyscrapers, stood like a fortress guarding the adjacent buildings. Inside, the walls were always too close, the air tinged by tobacco, the noise of typewriters and ringing phones droning like insects in a jar. It had its own rhythm, a rhythm that sometimes didn’t care for justice inasmuch as it did survival. The detective chief’s office was a den of silence—a stark contrast to the incessant storm of voices that filled the corridors, despite it being half past seven. Her desk was always cluttered with half-filled cups of cold coffee and reports that never saw the light of day. The walls, peeling and stained, seemed to sag under the weight of too many broken promises and bodies left unburied. But through it all, the soft glow of the desk lamp illuminated her face in a way that made it hard to tell if she was staring into a future of redemption or damnation.
Kiyama Harumi, aged thirty-something, leaned back in her chair and peered out the window with jaded eyes. The city’s skyline outside the window was a jagged line of steel, glass, and secrets, the flickering lights on the distant hills barely visible through the haze. A storm was coming—a storm not of rain, but of blood. It always did. And like the city itself, the Criminal Investigation Department was waiting. Waiting for the next mess to clean up. Waiting for the next victim to walk through the door, soaked in their own sins, their own lies. When did she begin to distrust the victim? She wondered.
There was something of a dark elegance to her, the kind of elegance that only came with a price. She wore it like a silk dress, sharp, lethal, and beautiful in a way that would cut you before you even knew you were bleeding. Many of the men in the office feared her—not because she wore her power openly, but because she was an unreachable woman. There something uniquely offensive to a man about a woman who remained indifferent to him. It was a silent challenge, a refusal to play by the rules of desire and dominance that governed their world. And police officers, bred on authority and control, were no exception. But Kiyama, despite her unyielding exterior, was more than just cold efficiency and sharp edges. There was an undercurrent of something softer, something almost imperceptible—empathy, perhaps—but it only revealed itself in flashes, like a fleeting shadow across a stained-glass window. And those moments of grace were reserved for her female subordinates, glimpsed in between the harshness of long hours of an overworked detective.
Among those subordinates was the girl who had just earned her detective sergeant chevrons—the one who’d already seen it all, or so it seemed. The grim parade of homicide, rape, arson, drugs. Each case was a bullet point on a list of horrors, none of them shocking, none of them new. In five years, she’d become as hardened and ruthless in her pursuit of justice as Kiyama herself, trading in emotions for efficiency and weary patience. But as she sat behind her desk, the sterile hum of the bureau surrounding her, she wondered—she couldn’t shake the nagging thought: could the CID's ace handle this next case? The smuggling ring out of the Golden Triangle was anything but ordinary. It was an international web, thick with ties to dictatorships and volatile religious and ethnic terror organizations. This wasn’t just about taking down a few street-level dealers—it was a dragon’s head. And the stakes were higher than anything put on her desk before.
At first, she’d planned to file the case away, let the superintendent’s memo collect dust in the back of her mind. She didn’t have time for grandiose assignments; she had her own battles to fight in her backyard. And then there was that letter from Interpol, promises from a top secret agency that had its eye on her sergeant. They wanted her for something bigger, something that pulled at her ambition like a siren’s call from across the continent. How could she compete with that? How could she stay loyal to a department that didn’t even acknowledge her worth beyond a footnote on a form?
Kiyama’s frown deepened as she dialed the internal extension for her desk. The phone felt heavy in her hand, like it belonged to someone else. She waited, the clicking of the buttons sharp in the quiet of her office. She’d learned long ago that in this job, there was no room for hesitation. You either seized the moment or you let it slip through your fingers.
“See me,” Kiyama said, her voice cool as the dial tone clicked in the background. She hung up the phone with the finality of a door closing on a dead-end conversation.
Within a minute, a shadow loomed at the edge of her office door, the soft rustle of fabric preceding the light swing of the door. A figure stepped inside—a woman, just about 165 centimeters tall, with acorn-brown hair cascading past her shoulders in waves that caught the dim office light. Her steps were purposeful, confident. She wore a crisp white dress shirt, its top two buttons undone with deliberate casualness, paired with high-waisted black slacks that hugged her frame just enough to make her presence undeniable. Her matching low-heeled loafers clicked softly on the linoleum floor as she approached.
Her lips, a pale pink, caught the light in a way that was almost too perfect against her fair skin. Long, dark lashes framed chocolate-brown eyes that shimmered with the kind of curiosity Kiyama had long since left behind. Young, pretty, effortlessly fashionable—none of these things Kiyama would ever say described herself. She had long ago given up the need for vanity in this line of work. But there was something in the way this woman held herself that made Kiyama’s thoughts slow, just for a moment.
Kiyama looked up, her eyes locking with the woman’s, noting the subtle familiarity between them. A dark pink blouse with black tie and burgundy pencil skirt was hardly any different, and her long light brown hair—well business casual was still business casual. If anything, it was like looking at a younger version of herself.
The woman, Detective Sergeant Misaka Mikoto, gave her a smile, one that was equal parts confident and curious. Her hand rested on her hip as she leaned slightly forward, eyes glinting with expectation.
“Watcha got for me?” she asked, her voice light, almost playful—but Kiyama could hear the weight beneath it.
Kiyama’s gaze hardened as she shifted in her chair, pushing a stack of files aside. She glanced at the clock, hands moving against her.
“Sergeant,” she began, her voice flat but firm. “You might be so inclined as to take a seat.”
She let out a soft, almost amused laugh as she slid the heavy wooden chair forward and settled into it, the scrape of the legs against the floor cutting through the silence like an alarm.
“We’ve got trouble,” Kiyama said, offering a half-smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes as she handed the file across the desk. “Page one should give you the gist. A drug syndicate, running everything from heroin and meth to Mandrax.”
Misaka acknowledged the file, her fingers already flipping it open. She thumbed the first page, her eyes narrowing as she stared at the black-and-white photo of a dense jungle complex, barely visible through the haze of humidity and foliage.
“Hm,” Misaka muttered, studying the image with the kind of detached focus that came from seeing the worst of humanity. “What’s this place?”
“That,” Kiyama said, leaning back in her chair and casting her gaze toward the window at nothing in particular, “is the former base of operations for the Rohingya Solidarity Organization in Myanmar. One of them at least. It would seem there was an internal struggle for power in the region—lots of bloodshed, and the end result was a splinter faction that took over the compound.”
She paused for a moment, the words hanging in the air as she sifted through the complexities of the case in her mind, weighing the implications. Her voice dropped, lower now, as if the walls themselves were listening.
“Courtesy of our friends at Interpol,” she added with a trace of bitterness, her lips pulling into a thin line.
Misaka’s brow furrowed slightly as she traced the photo with her fingers, her gaze flicking back up. “Former operatives of the Jemaah Islamiyah?” she asked, a question and a statement wrapped into one.
“It gets worse,” Kiyama said with a sigh as Misaka turned the page without hesitation.
“The Tatmadaw?” Misaka raised an eyebrow, looking up from the file to meet Kiyama’s gaze, the flicker of concern lighting in her eyes.
Kiyama leaned forward, her fingers drumming softly on the desk, the noise a steady rhythm in the room. “Among others,” she mused, her voice low and controlled, the words barely a whisper. “The 969 Movement you know. You’ll want to note the Ma Ba Tha.”
Misaka rubbed her forehead, brushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear as she exhaled, her eyes narrowing. “And the Khmer Rogue while we’re at it?” she said, her voice dripping with irony, though there was no humor behind it.
Kiyama raised an eyebrow, her lips curling into a small, knowing smirk. “Think you can handle it?”
Misaka gave a dry chuckle as she sank into the chair, crossing her arms over her chest. “A religious and ethnic war, with illicit drug trafficking, somehow tied to the nearly extinct Cambodian dictatorship that built the Killing Fields…” She stifled a laugh, her lips twitching before she lobbed the file onto Kiyama’s desk with a soft thud. “What the hell do they want us to do about it?”
Kiyama’s gaze didn’t waver. She tilted her head slightly, her posture relaxed yet attentive. “You didn’t read the last two pages.”
Misaka leaned back, a smirk creeping onto her face. “I’d rather hear it from your lips.”
Kiyama’s expression shifted, becoming more focused as she leaned forward, her elbows resting on the desk, her fingers interlaced in front of her. One more, her voice dropped a touch, a quieter now, but no less intense. “They’re routing the drugs here from Vietnam. We want to know when, how, and why.” She gave a slight, almost imperceptible pause. “Everything about this is tangled—politically, militarily, religiously. And we’re going to follow the thread until it unravels.”
“What to do we got on it so far?”
“We were collaborating with MI6,” Kiyama said, her voice steady but carrying the weight of frustration. “But we lost contact with the agent about four days ago. From what we gathered, the RSO was collaborating with the communists in Cambodia.”
Misaka’s eyes flittered over the file again, her fingers tapping on the desk absently. “Mm. What city were they in?”
“Nha Trang,” Kiyama replied, leaning back in her chair. “Our contact was doing recognizance on suspicious ships at the port.”
Misaka shifted uncomfortably in her seat, scratching her head as if the answer might be tucked into the strands of her hair. “Why would any of these groups make a deal with the communists? They’re dead in the water. How would they even get through the country?”
Kiyama let the question hang in the air for a moment, her gaze distant. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
Misaka bit her bottom lip, her mind working through the maze of possibilities. She uncrossed her leg and tapped her foot impatiently, the restlessness of someone who was already thinking five steps ahead. “What time do we start?”
Kiyama straightened, her posture becoming more commanding as she folded her arms. The weight of the operation seemed to settle onto her shoulders, and there was no hesitation in her voice. “Tomorrow, 9 o’clock sharp, you’ll be meeting your new partner at the airport.”
“Part...ner?” Misaka’s voice was thick with disbelief, her eyes narrowing as she leaned forward.
Kiyama met her gaze with a steady, unyielding look. “The two of you will meet here no later than 11 with further instructions.”
Misaka opened her mouth to protest, her hands gesturing in frustration. “But hey, chief, listen, I—” Misaka began, pleading with her hands.
“Can it, Misaka,” Kiyama snapped, cutting her off with a sharpness that cut through the room like a brand new kitchen knife. She stood up, her movements deliberate and commanding. “We’re all in over our heads here. This isn’t a time for complaints, it’s a time to focus.”
For a moment, the only sound in the room was the soft rustle of paper as Kiyama straightened the file on her desk. Misaka’s jaw tightened, but she said nothing more, the tension between them palpable.
She couldn’t argue with that, but Misaka Mikoto was used to working alone. It wasn’t just a preference—it was the way she operated; she just wasn’t a team player when it came down to it. The chief was the closest person she had bothered to let in, abut even then, it was strictly professional. She reported to her. That was it. The idea of fieldwork with anyone else was anathema—no one could keep up, and no one had the focus she did. The mere thought of sharing space with the insipid fools at the station made her head throb. But this? This was different. It was bigger, messier, more dangerous than anything she’d faced before. Jesus Christ, talk about geopolitical consequences.
Then it hit her—the partner. Someone from outside the city. Maybe, just maybe, the hapless bureaucratic incompetence she had to put up with every day wouldn’t be an issue here. Maybe.
This was the kind of case she’d been waiting for, wasn’t it? The one that would define her career. Bigger cases meant more moving parts, more people. More… teamwork. And hell, this wasn’t some random fucking bar stabbing or low-tier drug mule coming through customs from Moscow. Fuck, could she even handle it with a partner? Seriously, what the fuck? She’d wanted this, right? Her chest tightened, and her heart raced. Her face flushed.
Even with two people, what the hell could they accomplish? She hadn’t thought about it before, but wasn’t the CID supposed to pull together the best unit, collaborate across departments? More people, more expertise. The pressure was building, and it felt like the walls were closing in.
Mikoto shook her head as she slipped her hands into the pockets of her beige ankle-length trench coat she’d grabbed from her chair on the way out. The night air wrapped around her like a heavy blanket, fat with the smells of the city—the sting of the smog amidst the dancing steam from beneath the streets. She hadn’t eaten since yesterday. Some dumplings to take home, then maybe—maybe—she could get some sleep. But as she stepped onto the street, the hairs on the back of her neck prickled. She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching her.
Across the street, hidden in the shadows, binoculars focused in on her every movement.