The plane had already come to a steady stop, and the engines had been shut down.
More than three-quarters of the people in the cabin were students, and they were the most nervous.
Their age alone made that understandable. Compared with the adults, they had less life experience, and their thinking was naturally less mature.
But precisely because of that immaturity, some of them actually felt less danger than the adults did. Instead, they even felt a strange sense of excitement.
After all, getting caught up in a terrorist hijacking almost felt like some kind of badge of honor, something they could brag about afterward.
Gulp.
Looking out the window at the armored vehicles, the Arm Slaves, and the soldiers in combat gear approaching, Kaname could not help swallowing hard.
These were the real thing, fully armed and carrying live weapons, not model toys but actual instruments of killing.
Still, they did not come too close. They kept circling around, clearly trying to confirm that the passenger plane posed no threat.
There was also the sound of rotor blades overhead, which obviously meant helicopters were circling above as well.
At some point, she heard something land on top of the plane, but by then she was no longer in the mood to be startled by every little sound.
This went on for half an hour.
Only after they seemed to have scanned the aircraft and confirmed there were no dangerous devices aboard did they finally roll the boarding stairs over.
At that moment, the captain appeared.
He walked toward the cabin door, clearly intending to open it.
From the look on his face, it was obvious he was not doing so willingly. The cockpit had probably received some outside communication threatening him into opening it.
If he refused, it would not be hard for the soldiers outside to force their way in anyway. That would only frighten the students even more and might even lead to someone getting hurt by mistake.
In any case, now that they had already come this far, it was better to cooperate. Resisting the people outside would only mean making themselves suffer.
As the cabin door opened, several men in black suits carrying guns entered, along with a woman in a white lab coat.
The woman leading them swept her gaze across the cabin.
The moment she saw Kaname, her gaze stopped moving. Then, with the faintest curve at the corner of her lips, she walked over.
"This student here. Could I trouble you to cooperate?"
"W-What?"
"It's very simple. We need to record a video to send to the media, to prove the current situation aboard the plane..."
In simple terms, they wanted to show the outside world that everyone was still alive and that the hijacking incident had nothing to do with this country.
Of course, they were not about to let everyone go just like that. If they released the passengers too easily after a civilian plane had intruded this deeply into their country, that would only make it look more suspicious, as if there really were terrorists aboard.
And so Kaname would act as the representative of all the passengers and deliver a little speech.
"So, we'll be troubling this student."
It looked like they thought she was simply the most suitable candidate.
That was a lie, of course. They really intended to take her somewhere secret and test whether she was a Whispered.
"No, you can't do something like that..."
The voice that cut in belonged to their teacher, Eri Kagurazaka.
But before she could even finish, one of the men in black beside her had already drawn a gun and pressed it against her forehead.
"Wait, I'll go. Don't hurt my teacher."
"Now that's more like it."
The woman in the white coat nodded in satisfaction.
Kaname then followed them out, passing by her teacher, who looked as if she had been completely scared senseless.
And as she stepped out through the cabin door, the corner of her eye also swept toward where Tessa was sitting.
Tessa was in a seat farther back now.
That way, it would be easier to avoid these people noticing her and possibly recognizing who she was.
As for that, Kaname had figured it out herself.
The Interpol story was fake, but Tessa was definitely no ordinary person either. She was clearly part of some force opposed to the people behind this terrorist incident, and if any of the enemy recognized her, there was no way they would not seize her too.
So after Kaname asked, Tessa had straightforwardly told her her real identity: she was the captain of a submarine belonging to an organization called Mithril.
And she had said it with a completely serious face.
Also, her name was not really Tessa, but a shortened form of Teletha Testarossa.
Kaname had not dug any deeper into whether the girl was joking with her, but after realizing Tessa truly was worried about being recognized, she of course took the initiative to keep her distance.
Right, and Tessa was also a Whispered, the same kind as her. She had said that submarine had been built from the black-tech knowledge in her head.
Well... in that case, maybe the whole captain thing was actually possible.
"Colonel, it isn't Gauron."
As the cabin door shut again, Sousuke spoke quietly to his superior.
Among the black-clad men who had entered with that woman, there was no one he recognized as Gauron.
"If he really is involved in this operation, then with his personality, there's no way he wouldn't show himself."
Sousuke continued in the same low voice.
But he did not mean to say that Mr. Kain's information had been wrong, or that Gauron had not come, or that he was no longer alive.
There was another possibility for why he had not appeared—
"They still can't confirm whether there might be another suit like Staff Sergeant Kain's hidden somewhere, right? So he's observing from the shadows."
The colonel gave that answer, which was almost exactly what Sousuke had been thinking.
"He probably saw what Staff Sergeant Kain could do. So now he's waiting, trying to confirm whether this prey really exists."
That was right.
Prey.
Given how well Sousuke understood Gauron, he knew the man was not just hiding because he was afraid.
He was more like a hunter, quietly concealing himself, waiting in silence to hunt an exceptionally valuable target.
"Prey? The prey has already appeared. The real question is: who exactly is the prey?"
That thing was not prey at all.
It was a savage beast that had clawed its way out of hell.
That was how Tessa silently amended the description in her own heart, and she smiled.
The heart that had been hanging in suspense this whole time finally relaxed.
More precisely, it relaxed because the bomb that had been planted beneath the passenger plane, in the area below the cargo hold, had already been dealt with.
Those madmen had just opened the cargo hold and placed a bomb inside.
Clearly, they had never intended to preserve the lives of the more than four hundred hostages.
Now, however, the bomb had been handled.
All that remained was to wait for the submarine's support force to arrive and coordinate with them to resolve this entire incident perfectly.
As for Kaname's situation, Tessa had already informed him.
If possible, he would help trick the enemy into confirming that Kaname was not a Whispered, allowing her to return to a normal high school life.
...
Kaname followed the woman in the white coat into what looked like a TV station satellite broadcasting truck.
But once inside, she immediately saw that it was not broadcasting equipment at all.
Instead, there were three devices inside that looked very similar to the one in the school infirmary.
The biggest difference was that these had glass covers.
If someone lay inside one, it would be much harder for them to roll out.
"U-Um, this is..."
Naturally, she had to put on some kind of act.
"What are you babbling about? Strip, then put this on and lie down."
As she said that, the woman tossed over something like a hospital gown, then turned to close the door.
Hm?
Kaname suddenly noticed something strange.
Her hearing picked up a faint sound, as though some invisible figure were moving around inside the space as well.
And it felt... heavy.
The disturbance she had just noticed sounded almost like the woman heading over to shut the door had nearly bumped into that unseen presence head-on, forcing her to shift aside and making that noise.
Bang!
The heavy sound of the door slamming shut interrupted Kaname's thoughts, and she did not dwell on it any further, assuming she was just getting paranoid because of the situation.
"Ah? Why? Th-that..."
Her voice cut off abruptly.
There it was again.
A gun pointed at her.
She had no choice but to raise her hands in surrender and cooperate reluctantly.
In the blink of an eye, she was lying inside one of the cylindrical devices with a half-transparent cover.
A strange goggle-like apparatus had been fitted over her eyes, and within it all kinds of symbols and diagrams were flashing nonstop.
At the same time, corresponding pieces of information seemed to begin surfacing inside her mind...
(End of Chapter)
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