Hal was meet with an overgrown field in a large valley when he came out the other end. He spotted the old mansion behind a rusted gate. The front door was busted, and the frame was broken. He was told there would be no more problems here, and the fact that now he has this to deal with did not make him happy. He grabbed his kukri, even if it wasn't enough fire power, he was not in the mood to negotiate.

Behind the door was a wall, with rooms opening up on both sides. Hal had grown accustomed to the darkness, this made him feel even more confident. A moving light peeked out on the left, it's source behind the corner. Hal hid on the wall farther from the door, wondering if he should really be doing this. A solder came out of the darkness, carelessly patrolling the area, unaware of the intruder to his left. Hal swept his leg and drove his face to the ground, tearing off the helmet.

He spotted a pistol on his hip, choosing that over the rifle. Even the sidearm would be enough to alert attention. This truly was the stupidest thing he could be doing, but really, who cares. The living room had only a couch and an old datascreen. He went upstairs, where he assumed the bedrooms would be. If Katsuo's mother was still home, maybe she could make use of a weapon.

He slid up the stairs, spotting another light protruding from the right corner. He waited on the top step, and slash at the other end. He felt his wrist get grabbed. Hal spun over, in a last ditch effort to shoot his way out. He was meet with liqued sprayed on his face. His vision was impaired, and he found himself fighting with himself to stay awake. The light now covered the entirety of his vision, followed with a force on his chest. Hal was pushed down the stairs, and lay unconscious on the bottom.

The next morning.

Katsuo awoke, still in her car. That was all a dream, right? This wasn't the first time she decided to sleep on the side of the road. She grow more awake, starting to remember how vivid her dream was. It had to be a dream. She needed to get home, soon. How many days had it been? She better call her mother to check up.

Call her mother...it was real, wasn't it. She checked her call history.

[[Incoming; Mom's Cell; 12:14 AM; Approx. 4 min.]]
[[Incoming; Unknown; 11:52 PM; Denied]]

She really was dead...it was real.

Hal was real...and at her home. He walked right into a trap!

She couldn't leave him to rot. Didn't Hideki call him her accomplice? They're going to question him and he won't have anything to say. What could she do? Should she turn herself in and try to break out with him? That would never work, would it. She had to find them.

Kat had one lead; the unknown number. It was on the cover of every phonebook at every phonebooth in the area, right after the words “Police (for non-emergencies)”. Where else would they take him, it's scarcely a secret operation. Maybe she could do it, she would need more planning, but she could do it. They weren't after her for loitering, after all. She could do it.

...she had to.

Police HQ

Hal could only find that out from the talking out side. He still wasn't sure if he actually came to yet. His wrists dug into metal cuffs. A bald man with unkempt gray facial hair walked in accompanied by two police officers. The man held a laptop on one hand, reviewing the information inside.

“How much did she pay you?” he asked, still reading through the words on the screen. He received no response. “Hey kid, I asked you a question, know you're supposed to answer. How much did she pay you?” The man checked his windows one last time and closed the laptop. He finally took a look at Hal. “Tell me. How. Much.”

Hal just stared, without any idea of what to do. He'd been holding in his anger ever sense that drunk took him over the edge to begin with. He didn't know or care what the man was going on about. All he knew was how much he'd like to hear his skull ring.

“Maybe you're a little too dense to have figured out why you're here.” The man took time to start wrapping his right wrist. “I'm an agent working for Interpol. You can call me Hideki. This is an interrogation. Now you should understand. Tell me what I want to know or there will be consequences.”

Hal gave up on taking a breath and counting to ten. He was assessing different ways to vent his anger. He knew this old man was deserving of a beat down when the first word he said came out of his mouth.

“Wasn't much, was it. Maybe my son was right. Maybe it was just sex.”

Hal roared with all his might before he even decided if he should. This is who Daisuke, the worthless being, leaches off of. Of course the father would the kind to accuse him of being a criminal and excepting that as payment. Hal jumped up and planted his heel on the Hideki's temple. The other officer's struck him with a taser. Needles started poking out his blood veins from the inside, it seemed. The officers started to restrain Hal's legs. He didn't care, he gave his answer.

Hideki started to recover from the strike, not appreciating what had happened. “You want to play that game? You want to start a fist fight?” Hideki stressed himself into an uneasy smile. “I can play by your rules. I just want to clarify, it will end the same way. You will talk.” He swung his fist in a hay maker and drove Hal's head on the brick wall behind him. Hal could swear something was breaking out of his head from both sides. All of the punches, stab wounds, and even the taser didn't hold up to what he just felt. What was left of his thought process managed to gather only thing; his didn't wrap his hand in just any tape.

A Hidden Dwelling Somewhere in Nikko

Katsuo walked in on a boy not any older then her. He always wore a hoodie and only used the alias “Hacker”. His room was filled with holograms from several different devices scattered wherever they fit. Katsuo's introduction was brief.

“I'm breaking into the police station.” she said.

Hacker stopped immediately, almost startled. “What are you getting?”

“I, uh, I accidentally lead some guy into a trap.”

“Of course it was a guy.” Hacker said, dismissing her entirely.

Kat was thrown of guard by his attitude. “Yeah... you know that thing you just did? That's why know one will work with you.”

Hacker stopped again. He'd always been skeptical of Kat's character, but she brought up a point. Having to leave everything behind and assume total secrecy made business... complicated. He left what he was doing before and walked over to Katsuo. “If I'm going to waste my time, creating a net-trail to myself, for one guy I never meet, there's going to be a fee.”

Kat pulled a plastic object from her pocket and handed it to hacker. “This was on the inside in the back of my car. They probably broke in the back, near the engine. It disabled my magnet locks and probably the whole thing, judging from the error history from my on board computer. It got damaged fairly easily, I'm guessing it's a rushed prototype.”

Hacker had been inspecting the object, managing to pry it open with his hands and observe the chip inside. “And you think this hasn't been done before?” He asked, slightly unimpressed.

“You haven't seen the errors. Some of them were parts of the car that weren't even connected to the computer, I found several new files, one of them recorded the type of ground my tires were on. Another collected audio while the car was off.”

“So you brought a tracking device right to my door.”

“It doesn't work right now. Otherwise I wouldn't be carrying it.”

Hacker put the device on the nearest table and went to one of the holographic displays. He opened a file containing several blueprints of various buildings of note from around the area. “I'm assuming you're looking for the one Hideki usually goes to, the one funded by Nikko city government. That one is a bit under-budgeted from being distanced from most other policing agencies. A lot of the security systems are out-dated, flexing is the main thing keeping the building locked up.”

A Few Hours Later

Hacker had looking looking through a list of various specs regarding the buildings computerized procedures. Kat had sat on the floor losing her patience. She had been fiddling with the device in a vain effort to pass the time.

“I can cause a black-out in the building that will last about a minute.” Hacker said, after a long silence.

Kat jump up in excitement. “And what can I do with that time?”

“That's not my department.” He looked around a 3d recreation of the building. “There seems to be a hill going up the west wall. If you did a bit of demolition work, you could make it on top of the ceiling tiles, where the ventilation and piping is. That's an easy way into the ground floor.”

“And the basement? That's where the cells are, how do I get there.”

“Don't know yet...”

Kat reverted back to her quiet state of mind.

“...Wait a minute... is that...” Hacker looked a bit surprised.

“What is it?” Kat asked, jumping back up.

“It turns out that during business hours the system is connected to the national security network.”

Kat tried to hide the worry in her voice. “Can't you just disconnect it?”

“The connection is established by the national computers. Not even full access to Hideki's systems could disconnect it. The only time it's online without the network is when the building opens for the day, when the network has to find it again after losing the signal when the computers shut down.”

“So, in the morning, then.”

“At about 6:00 AM for ten seconds, that's my window to do anything without having the whole of the Japanese government to deal with.”

“...could you give me a minute?” Kat walked out to the windowless alley out side. She sat in her car, with her breathing escalating.

“It's okay...” she said to herself. “It's okay to make a mistake. It's okay, I'm fixing this. I'm getting him out of this, it will be okay, I just have to wait. Besides, it's not like he can say anything, right. He doesn't even know why they're after me.” Her mind thought up a million things at once. “They maybe, said some things that he didn't need to know, but I trust him... for some reason. I...if...it weren't for him, it'd be me in there, but it's him. It's okay, Hideki can't do much to someone with information, unless he finds out that Hal doesn't have any, and then... but that'd be after more then a day right. It's okay, it's okay. IT'S OKAY! JUST CALM DOWN IT'S OKAY!"

She banged her hands on the steering wheel in her fit while some telemarketer called her. She let it ring out while she recovered herself. The call history came up, reminding her of the past phone-calls.

[[Incoming; Stupid Telemarketer; 1:44 PM; Missed]]
[[Incoming; Mom's Cell; 12:14 AM; Approx. 4 min.]]
[[Incoming; Unknown; Yesterday; Denied]]

The number next to the information had an exclamation mark inside of a triangle. Had that always been there? She touched, revealing another error.

[[Does not recognize K.O. mix.]]

She must have glanced past that one. There were other notifications that popped along with the error. At some point, some of the fluid that runs the AG functions had evaporated. It actually went into great detail about which ones evaporated and how much of it had. It was all in a hidden file called “K.O. mix”. It was to be activated if pressure was put on the driver's seat, and probably would have traveled through the air vents if the device was never damaged.

The fluid it used didn't really cost that much...



Yeah, Queens of the Stone Age isn't really WipEout music, but no other song seemed to fit as good, so screw it.