Copyright Notice: This story is an original work by VANTA_kun. All rights reserved. Do not copy or redistribute without permission.
Dust filled the entire area, kicked up by the sudden arrival of the vehicles and now mixed with the smoke pouring from the damaged cars. The heat of the noon pressed down mercilessly, making the air feel thick and suffocating, while the smell of gunpowder spread through the road and mixed with the smell of burning rubber and hot metal. A barrage of gunshots continued without pause, the bang sound continued.
Every few seconds, another bullet struck one of the police vehicles with a sharp metallic impact, sometimes punching through the doors and sometimes shattering what remained of the windows. Broken glass covered the asphalt, reflecting the sunlight through the dusty air, while spent shells dropped onto the ground one after another. The road had become a miniature hell on earth.
None of the police officers could properly leave their vehicles. The moment anyone tried to raise his head or move outside, another burst of gunfire forced him back down. The commanding inspector crouched behind the interior of his car, desperately trying to understand how a simple operation against a drug-smuggling gang had turned into something resembling a military ambush. Around him, officers shouted to one another, but their voices overlapped by the sound of gunfire.
Haruto remained crouched inside one of the police cars, his back pressed against the seat as he tried to keep himself away from the shattered window. His heart was beating faster than usual, but it wasn't only because of the bullets.
The men outside had triggered something inside his mind. Every time he looked at their black suits, the same strange sensation returned, as though his brain was desperately trying to pull out an engraved memory. A corridor flashed through his mind. Then a man in a black suit walking past him. Then someone's hand was resting on his shoulder. The image disappeared almost immediately, replaced by another fragment he couldn't understand due to improper memory recall.
The organization had collected many gifted children for their experiment. Each of them possessed unique traits from birth. In terms of memory, Shuhi was special. She could recall any part of her life. It was light work for her. But Haruto…he couldn't.
Haruto clenched his teeth and shook his head. He didn't know when any of those things had happened, nor could he remember where he had seen those people. The memories were incomplete pieces scattered somewhere inside his mind, appearing without warning and disappearing before he could grasp them. He forced himself to stop thinking about them and focus on the current situation.
His eyes moved across the battlefield outside. The black vehicles were still positioned around the police cars, and the men in suits were moving with an organization that immediately felt different from the criminals they had been chasing. Haruto's mind began putting the pieces together again. The boss had been thinking about backup. That was how Haruto had identified the correct car and why he had convinced the inspector to send the majority of the police units after it. He had heard the boss thinking about receiving help. What Haruto hadn't known was what that help would actually look like. He certainly hadn't expected hidden tunnels beneath the road or several black cars appearing from underground. He hadn't expected this many people or weapons powerful enough to completely immobilize an entire police unit.
"Backup... secret tunnels... this much manpower...what exactly is the organization doing here?"
Haruto narrowed his eyes.
The thought came naturally, but another thought immediately followed it.
"They're helping this drug-smuggling gang?"
Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the shooting stopped.
A long silence followed. Smoke continued drifting through the road, and dust floated slowly through the sunlight, but there were no more gunshots. For several seconds, nobody inside the police cars moved. The officers remained crouched where they were, waiting for another barrage. Nothing came. Instead, footsteps began approaching through the dust. Haruto looked toward the road and saw several men in black suits walking toward the police vehicles. The police had already been trapped. Several tires had been punctured by bullets, making escape impossible, and the vehicles had been damaged badly enough that even if the officers managed to drive away, they wouldn't get far. The commanding inspector grabbed his wireless radio and tried to contact headquarters.
"Headquarters, this is Unit Seven. We are under attack. Repeat, we are under attack. Request immediate backup."
Only static answered him.
He tried again.
"Headquarters, respond!"
Nothing.
Another officer beside him desperately checked his own communication device.
"Mine isn't working either."
The inspector's expression changed. He looked toward the black cars and immediately understood.
"They're using a network jammer!"
Haruto's eyes narrowed. That explained why there had been no response from headquarters. The police weren't simply surrounded. They had been deliberately isolated from the outside world. The men approaching them knew exactly what they were doing, and their weapons and equipment were clearly far beyond what a normal criminal gang should possess. The police officers were outnumbered and overpowered. Haruto looked through the broken window again and saw one of the men reaching toward the door of the nearest police car. He grabbed the handle and pulled, but it was locked. Another man stepped forward and began forcing the door open. The officers inside shouted and tried to hold it shut, but the metal frame groaned under the pressure. Then Haruto heard a gunshot somewhere farther down the line, followed by a scream. Another shot came afterward. Haruto's expression became serious.
"Just as expected. They are killing witnesses. They have to keep the existence of the organization hidden from the world." Hauto thought.
The police officers had seen the tunnel. They had seen the vehicles. They had seen the men. If these people really belonged to the organization, then allowing an entire police unit to leave with that knowledge would expose something that had remained hidden from the world for years. The organization was supposed to be a secret. No government, no ordinary criminal organization and certainly no police department should have been able to discover its existence through a simple drug investigation. Haruto watched the men approaching one police car after another as the screams and gunshots continued through the dusty afternoon. One by one, the vehicles were being opened. One by one, the witnesses were being removed.
The footsteps eventually reached Haruto's car. The door was pulled open. A man in a black suit immediately raised his gun. Haruto immediately raised both of his hands.
"The organization!" he shouted.
The man's finger remained close to the trigger.
Haruto raised his voice.
"I'm from the Blue Organization!"
The effect was immediate. The man's expression changed, and his weapon slowly lowered. He stared at Haruto for several seconds as though trying to confirm what he had just heard. The other men nearby also stopped and looked in their direction. Haruto remained perfectly still, his hands still raised, while his mind raced. He had gambled on the possibility that the name would mean something to them. Judging from their reaction, it had.
The man lowered his gun completely.
"I am Gamma."
Haruto's eyes widened slightly.
"Gamma of the previous batch," he continued. "I was sent on the mission to bring Delta back."
The man looked at him with suspicion.
"What are you doing here?"
Haruto lowered his hands slightly but didn't completely relax. Behind the man, the other members of the organization continued dealing with the remaining police officers. Haruto could hear more gunshots in the distance. Haruto looked toward the road where the black cars had appeared from the hidden tunnel.
His eyes slowly returned to the man standing in front of him.
"...I'm here because this drug gang had some info about Delta."
The man continued staring at him.
Haruto's expression changed into someone who had given up. He had to lie his way out of this.
On the other hand, Shuhi's bedroom was considerably less serious than the situation unfolding several kilometers away. Shuhi was sitting on his bed, hugging a white pillow, staring at the floor as though she were trying to calculate how much trouble she was going to be in once someone inevitably discovered what they had done. Rina, meanwhile, sat beside the closet to the man tied up inside it.
His wrists and ankles had been secured with rope, and a piece of cloth had been placed over his mouth. He was unconscious, breathing steadily, but Rina didn't seem to be even looking at him.
The whole arrangement looked so absurdly out of place inside a teenage girl's bedroom that Shuhi almost wished she could wake up and discover that the entire noon had been a bad dream.
"I am definitely going to get in trouble for this," Shuhi muttered.
"Why did we even bring him here? Why couldn't we have found somewhere normal to hide him?"
Rina looked toward her with an almost reassuring smile.
"Don't worry about it."
"How can I not worry about it? There's an unconscious police officer tied up inside my closet!"
"He won't be unconscious forever."
Shuhi slowly turned toward her.
"...That's supposed to make me feel better?"
"If he wakes up, I'll hit the vital points of his body that would make him unconscious again while causing the least possible harm."
Shuhi stared at her for a few seconds.
"Yeah... very good mastery of anatomy."
The sarcasm in her voice was impossible to miss.
Rina simply smiled.
"I'll take that as a compliment."
""You are not even keeping an eye on him properly!" Shuhi cried.
"I don't need to. I still have my focus on him. I would be able to sense when he wakes up."
Shuhi didn't respond as she remembered they were the students of the organization with unmatched cognitive abilities.
Shuhi turned away and began pacing around the room. She stopped thinking for a moment and looked toward Akari.
"What if he gets caught among the police?"
Akari didn't even look away from the computer.
"Shuhi-san..."
His fingers continued moving across the keyboard.
"That's literally the least of your worries. His fake persona is top-notch."
Akari finally looked toward her.
"He wouldn't even need to behave like someone unusually skilled. He can simply act like an average police officer. Nobody is going to look at him and think, 'Something seems suspicious about this guy.' His mannerisms, his speech patterns, his reactions, expressions…everything is convincing enough."
Shuhi opened her mouth to respond but couldn't think of a response.
Rina glanced at her and quietly smiled.
Akari turned back toward the screen.
"But..."
His fingers stopped.
The faint clicking of the keyboard disappeared from the room.
Akari's eyebrows tightened.
"...There's a problem."
Shuhi immediately became serious.
"What?"
Akari stared at the screen for several seconds before moving his hand across the mouse.
"I can't track Haruto anymore."
Shuhi stepped closer to him.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean exactly what I said."
He clicked through several windows and checked the tracking system again. Nothing.
"No signal. No location data. Nothing."
Rina's expression changed.
"Could his device have been damaged?"
"Possible."
Akari leaned closer to the monitor.
"But that's not what bothers me."
Shuhi looked over his shoulder.
"What does?"
Akari's eyes remained fixed on the screen.
"If the device was destroyed, I should at least have the last known location."
He clicked again.
"I don't even have that."
The room became quiet.
Shuhi's earlier anxiety returned.
Outside the window, the ordinary sounds of the city continued as though nothing unusual was happening. Cars moved along the streets, students walked home, and somewhere nearby a child was laughing. Yet inside the room, the atmosphere had suddenly become much heavier.
Shuhi looked at the empty tracking screen.
"Then where is Haruto?"
Akari didn't answer.
For perhaps the first time that day, even he didn't seem to know.
Dead Logic © 2025 by Muntasib_Ihshan789 is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International