Page 369 of Mercy Written in Blood

The words landed between them. Sota turned towards the contractor.

"Walk."

The man resisted. Renji closed the vessels supplying his legs just enough to control movement without collapsing him. Sota dragged him towards the eastern service ramp. Mori signalled the specialist to follow. Sota stopped.

"No."

"He may be able to disarm it."

"Then he stays at the tunnel entrance."

"You will need help."

"No."

Haruki moved forward. Pain folded the world. Ken caught him before he fell.

"Sota."

Sota turned one final time. Rain softened his face. Haruki saw the man from the garden. Quiet. Patient. Asking questions more dangerous than threats. The man whose reports Haruki funded. Whose discipline he admired. Whose movement he had been forced to oppose. A child from the same orphanage walking towards a death neither of them remembered learning to expect.

"What did you believe?" Haruki asked.

The question came without planning. Sota looked towards the crowd. People clutching photographs while running for safety.

"I believed humanity deserved the truth."

"You still do."

"Yes."

"Even now?"

"Especially now."

Haruki's chest tightened. Sota continued.

"I was wrong about what truth would make us." The admission trembled once in his voice. "I was not wrong that it belonged to them."

He looked at Haruki.

"Do not let them bury this too."

Then he walked into the rain.

The service tunnel ran beneath the eastern road. Haruki watched through the Casino security feed. One camera survived near the entrance. The image flickered with water. Sota and the contractor moved deeper into the concrete passage. Renji remained at the upper ramp, one hand lifted, holding the contractor's muscles under control from the edge of his range.

Mori's specialist crouched beside the drainage gate.

"Forty metres," he said into the radio. "Minimum."

Sota heard. He kept walking.

The contractor began speaking. The camera carried no sound from that distance. Haruki watched his mouth move. Perhaps threats. Perhaps ideology. Perhaps the final explanation of a man who believed massacre would preserve a system already dying.

Sota answered once. Then stopped.

The contractor tried to pull away. Renji's hand shook. Blood ran from his nose.