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Chapter 29: An Unwelcome Alliance

Nana ran. She fled Tsuruoka’s opulent, soundproofed office, the chilling echo of his mocking laughter a spur in her side, the image of his dying adjutant a fresh, searing brand on her already overburdened conscience. She had no plan, no destination, only the desperate, primal, animal instinct to escape, to put as much distance as possible between herself and that monster. The sprawling, indifferent city became a bewildering labyrinth of glaring lights, hostile shadows, and a million unseeing faces. Hours later, utterly exhausted, drenched in a cold sweat of terror and exertion, her body aching, her mind a chaotic whirl of guilt and fear, she found herself drawn by some subconscious, desperate current, some fragile, unacknowledged homing instinct, towards a quiet, unassuming suburban street, the kind of place where ordinary people lived ordinary, peaceful lives she could now only dream of. She stumbled, almost collapsing, into the first open establishment she saw that offered a dim promise of warmth and temporary, anonymous sanctuary – a small, unpretentious neighborhood restaurant called “The Corner Nook,” its windows steamy, its air smelling faintly of grilled meat and soy sauce.

Arthur Ainsworth was just finishing his shift. It had been a surprisingly busy Saturday evening for mid-May, the small restaurant bustling with local families and chattering groups of friends. He was tired but content in a way that still occasionally surprised him, looking forward to the quiet sanctuary of his modest nearby apartment and a soothing cup of strong English breakfast tea – a small, hoarded luxury. As he untied his waiter’s apron and hung it neatly on a hook in the tiny staff area, the bell above the restaurant’s front door chimed with a discordant jingle, and a dishevelled, wild-eyed, rain-soaked figure stumbled in, leaning heavily against the doorframe for support. Arthur looked up, a polite, professional enquiry forming on his lips, and his blood ran cold, freezing him in place. Nana Hiiragi. Her face was pale as death and streaked with grime, her once-vibrant pink hair was lank and darkened by rain, her clothes were torn and filthy, and her eyes – those unforgettable violet eyes – were wide with a hunted, desperate terror he recognized all too well from the darkest days on the island.

“Hiiragi?” he breathed, the name a shocked, involuntary exhalation, his carefully constructed wall of mundane peace crumbling in an instant. This was a ghost from a past he had tried so desperately, so diligently, to bury.

Before either of them could utter another coherent word, another figure materialized, as if stepping out of the deepening evening shadows themselves, silently in the restaurant doorway. It was Jin Tachibana, his white hair a stark contrast to his dark, unobtrusive clothing, his expression as calm, as unnervingly serene, as ever. He gave a small, almost imperceptible, acknowledging nod to a stunned Arthur. From the rain-swept street outside, a scrawny, spectral white cat watched them for a long, silent moment from beneath a parked car, its eyes gleaming with an unnatural intelligence, then, with a flick of its tail, it vanished into the gloom.

“It seems,” Jin said, his voice a low, melodious murmur that somehow cut through Arthur’s shock and Nana’s ragged breathing, “our disparate paths converge once more. And at a most… opportune, if somewhat dramatic, moment.” He gestured with a subtle inclination of his head towards a small television flickering almost unnoticed in the corner of the nearly empty restaurant, currently tuned to a late-night news channel. The lurid banner headline screamed: “TALENTED TERRORISTS: Public Menace Escalates Dangerously – Government Pledges Swift, Decisive Action.” The news anchor, his face grim, was speaking in grave, measured tones about a recent series of violent incidents supposedly involving rogue Talents, painting them as a dangerous, unstable, and increasingly hostile element within society, a threat to public order and national security.

“The societal situation, as you can see, is deteriorating with alarming rapidity,” Jin stated, his cool gaze sweeping between a visibly trembling Nana and a still-reeling Arthur. “My sources within the Committee – and yes, Ainsworth-san, I still maintain certain… useful connections – confirm what these inflammatory news reports are merely foreshadowing. Mass roundups are imminent. Internment camps, cynically styled as ‘Protective Talent Re-education and Assessment Facilities,’ are being prepared, staffed, and expanded across the country. They will start taking everyone with a known or even merely suspected Talent. Very soon. Within days, perhaps hours.”

Arthur felt a familiar, icy chill crawl up his spine. Internment camps. It was the logical, horrifying, and entirely predictable next step in Tsuruoka’s monstrous, systematic plan.

Nana looked frantically from Jin’s calm, assessing face to Arthur’s shocked, wary expression, her desperation palpable, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps. “I… I didn’t know where else to go,” she stammered, her voice barely a whisper, raw with exhaustion and fear. “Tsuruoka… I… I tried to… and then his adjutant…” Her words dissolved into a choked sob.

“You tried to confront him,” Jin finished for her smoothly, his tone devoid of any surprise, as if he had foreseen this very eventuality. “And it went badly. Predictably so, given Tsuruoka’s nature.” He then turned his unnervingly perceptive gaze fully on Arthur. “Ainsworth-san, or do you still prefer your island moniker, Tanaka-kun?” Arthur flinched almost imperceptibly at the casual, confident use of his true surname; Jin’s intelligence network, his sources of information, were clearly as formidable and far-reaching as ever. “You and Hiiragi-san here, despite your… shall we say, rather complicated and unfortunate history, are now two rather tarnished sides of the same devalued coin. You both know more about Commander Tsuruoka and his insidious machinations than almost anyone else still breathing and at liberty. She possesses firsthand, intimate experience of his brutal methods and his psychological manipulations; you, Ainsworth-san, have your… unique, and often unsettlingly accurate, insights into his patterns and potential future actions.”

Jin’s implication, Arthur knew, was clear. His ‘Talent,’ his cursed knowledge from another world, however much he wished it gone, was still perceived as a valuable, if dangerous, commodity.

“The world, as you are no doubt beginning to appreciate,” Jin continued, his voice still a low, calm murmur that nonetheless commanded their absolute attention, “is about to become a very, very dangerous place for anyone possessing abilities beyond the accepted norm. Alliances, however improbable, however distasteful, will be absolutely essential for even short-term survival. You two,” he looked from Nana’s desperate, pleading face to Arthur’s grim, conflicted one, “need each other now, whether you like it or not. Whether you can even bear to be in the same room as each other.” He looked directly at Nana. “He, Ainsworth-san, knows the true depth of Tsuruoka’s evil. He understands, perhaps better than anyone alive, what you’ve been through, what has been done to you.” Then, his gaze shifted back to Arthur. “And she, Hiiragi-san, for all her past, deplorable actions, is now one of the Committee’s most significant, most dangerous loose ends. Tsuruoka will not rest, cannot rest, until she is silenced. Permanently. Her intimate knowledge of his operations, however incomplete or manipulated, makes her an intolerable threat to him.”

Arthur looked at Nana, truly looked at her. He saw not the cold, efficient teenage assassin from the island, not the monster of his nightmares, but a broken, terrified, and perhaps, just perhaps, redeemable young woman, a fellow victim of a system far larger, far more monstrous, than either of them had ever initially imagined. He still felt the visceral anger, the deep, aching bitterness over Michiru’s sacrifice, over all the other innocent lives lost. But Jin, damn him, was right. The true enemy, the ultimate architect of all their suffering, was Tsuruoka, was the Committee. And in this new, desperate, unfolding war, old, bitter enmities might have to be, however reluctantly, however painfully, set aside for the simple, brutal sake of survival.

“I don’t like this, Jin,” Arthur said, his voice low and gravelly, the English words escaping him out of ingrained habit when stressed and emotionally overwhelmed. He caught himself, then forced out a few halting Japanese phrases, his accent thick, his grammar clumsy. “She is… abunai. Dangerous. Unpredictable.”

“And you are not, Ainsworth-san?” Jin countered, a fleeting, almost invisible hint of a smile playing on his lips. “We are all dangerous in our own ways now, are we not? The only pertinent question is, can we learn to direct that danger towards a common, and far more deserving, enemy?”

Nana looked pleadingly at Arthur, her violet eyes, shadowed with exhaustion and terror, brimming with unshed tears. “I… I’ll do anything,” she whispered, her voice raw with desperation. “Anything you ask. Just… I don’t want to go back to him. I don’t want to be his monster anymore. Please.”

Arthur sighed, a deep, weary, soul-shaking sound that seemed to carry the weight of all his years, all his regrets, all his impossible knowledge. His quiet, carefully reconstructed life was over, shattered once more by the long, inescapable shadow of that cursed island and its monstrous puppeteers. “Alright, Hiiragi,” he said at last, the name still tasting like ash and bile in his mouth, the Japanese words stiff and reluctant. “Alright. We… we try to figure out what to do next. Issho ni. Together. For now.” He looked at her, his gaze hard, unwavering. “But if you even think about reverting to your old, murderous ways… if you betray what little trust this desperate situation forces me to place in you…” His unspoken threat, his grim promise of retribution, hung heavy, palpable, in the suddenly silent, steamy air of the nearly deserted restaurant.

Nana nodded quickly, almost violently, a flicker of desperate, unbelievable relief in her haunted eyes.

Jin observed them both, his expression one of cool, enigmatic satisfaction. “Excellent,” he murmured. “A most… pragmatic, if somewhat unenthusiastic, decision. We should leave this place immediately. It will not be safe for any of us for much longer.” He glanced meaningfully at the television screen in the corner, where the news anchor, his face grim, was now detailing new, sweeping emergency powers being granted by the government to special security units for the “humane and efficient management of potentially disruptive Talented individuals.” The trap, as Jin had so accurately predicted, was closing around them all with terrifying speed.

The unlikeliest, most uncomfortable of alliances had just been forged, born not of trust or affection, but of raw desperation, shared trauma, and a common, monstrous enemy. It had been brokered in the fading, artificial warmth of a humble suburban eatery, as the world outside, whipped into a frenzy of fear and prejudice, prepared to hunt them all down like diseased animals.

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Existence of group chat including Hegseth, his wife and others prompt calls for defense secretary to step down

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‘Full-blown meltdown’ at Pentagon after Hegseth’s second Signal chat revealed

Existence of group chat including Hegseth, his wife and others prompt calls for defense secretary to step downUS politics live – latest upda

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Chapter 28: Justice, Parole, and a Ghost from the Past

Nana Hiiragi’s fragile, newfound resolve to confront Commander Tsuruoka, precariously bolstered by Jin Tachibana’s enigmatic counsel and Arthur Ainsworth’s devastating revelations, was tragically, almost laughably, short-lived. She had woefully underestimated the speed, the reach, and the utter ruthlessness of her former handler. Just a few desperate days after her clandestine, rain-swept meeting with Jin, as she was cautiously, almost timidly, trying to gather meager resources and formulate even the most rudimentary plan of action from the squalid sanctuary of her tiny, anonymous apartment, Tsuruoka made his decisive, inevitable move. He contacted Detective Maeda, the outwardly respectable police officer to whom the earnest, unsuspecting Akari Hozumi had so trustingly entrusted her meticulously compiled dossier of damning evidence against Nana.

“Maeda,” Tsuruoka’s voice was cold, devoid of inflection, and utterly decisive over the secure, encrypted line, “it is time to officially activate the Hiiragi case file. I want a full-scale, highly publicized manhunt. And I want her found. Quickly. Public interest in this matter is… considerable.”

The well-oiled machinery of the law, its gears greased and subtly guided by Tsuruoka’s pervasive, unseen influence, ground into motion with terrifying, unstoppable efficiency. Within hours, Nana Hiiragi’s face – a younger, more innocent-looking photograph taken from her old school records – was plastered across national news broadcasts, online forums, and police bulletins. She was branded “The Island Schoolgirl Killer,” a teenage monster who had preyed on her unsuspecting classmates. Her carefully constructed anonymity evaporated like morning mist under a harsh sun. The city, once a sprawling, indifferent refuge, transformed overnight into a vast, tightening net. Within days, her desperate attempts to change her appearance, to melt into the urban sprawl, proved futile. She was cornered in a crowded, brightly lit suburban shopping mall by an alert off-duty police officer who recognized her from a wanted poster. Her frantic, desperate attempt to flee, to lose herself in the throng of shoppers, was short-lived and brutally curtailed. Nana Hiiragi, the Committee’s former star assassin, the girl Tsuruoka had molded into a perfect weapon, was apprehended, her brief, flickering hope of confronting her tormentor on her own terms extinguished.

Her trial was a media sensation, a lurid, captivating spectacle that fed the public’s morbid fascination with youthful depravity. The damning evidence Akari Hozumi had so meticulously gathered was laid bare for all to see: chilling witness testimonies from former island students (their own traumas carefully managed and selectively presented by the prosecution), Akari’s own unnervingly precise forensic reconstructions of multiple murder scenes, and Nana’s own fragmented, tearful, partial confession made by the lake on the island. The prosecution, led by a sharp, ambitious young lawyer, painted Nana as a cold, calculating, remorseless serial killer, a monstrous aberration who had systematically preyed on her innocent, unsuspecting fellow students. The public outcry was immense, a wave of revulsion and fear. The death penalty seemed not just a possibility, but an almost foregone conclusion.

But Nana’s court-appointed lawyer, a tenacious, fiercely idealistic, and surprisingly skilled older woman named Haruka Ito, fought tirelessly, passionately, against the overwhelming tide. Ito, with a quiet dignity that often wrong-footed the more aggressive prosecution, argued for diminished responsibility. She meticulously detailed Nana’s brutal, isolated upbringing, her systematic indoctrination from a young, impressionable age, and the extreme, undeniable psychological manipulation she had endured at the hands of a shadowy, unaccountable government organization. She portrayed Nana not as an inherent monster, but as a tragic, deeply damaged victim, a child soldier psychologically tortured and molded into a weapon in a covert war she hadn’t understood, couldn’t possibly have comprehended. Nana herself, during the long, agonizing trial, remained mostly silent, a pale, hollow-eyed ghost in the defendant’s box, her demeanor one of profound numbness, punctuated by occasional, barely perceptible flickers of remorse and a deep, soul-crushing weariness. Haruka Ito’s defense was compelling, deeply unsettling to the public narrative. While it could not exonerate Nana of the terrible acts she had committed, it cast enough doubt on her sole, unmitigated culpability. The death sentence was, to the shock and outrage of many, commuted. Nana Hiiragi was instead sentenced to a lengthy, indeterminate prison term for multiple counts of culpable homicide. She disappeared into the unforgiving, anonymous depths of the penal system, her name forever synonymous with betrayal, youthful monstrosity, and the dark, hidden secrets of the nation’s clandestine operations.

Three years later, in the mild, cherry-blossom-scented spring of late 2028, Arthur Ainsworth was expertly wiping down a small, Formica-topped table in “The Corner Nook,” the bustling, unpretentious restaurant in a quiet, residential Tokyo suburb where he now worked as a waiter. He was surprisingly, almost guiltily, content. The mundane, predictable rhythm of the work – taking orders, delivering food, clearing tables, the easy, unforced banter with the regular patrons – was a soothing balm to his once-tormented soul. His Japanese, honed by years of daily immersion and supplemented by diligent attendance at informal language exchange meetups, was now reasonably fluent, his English accent a minor, charming novelty that amused the customers and his co-workers alike. He had even, cautiously, begun to make a few tentative friendships.

The island, Tsuruoka, Nana Hiiragi – they were ghosts that still haunted the periphery of his thoughts, their sharp edges softened by the healing balm of time and distance, but their presence, their impact, was undeniable. Annually, on the grim anniversary of his inexplicable, violent arrival on that cursed shore, he would make a quiet pilgrimage to a large, peaceful, and entirely anonymous public cemetery on the outskirts of the city. He didn’t know where Nana’s victims were truly buried, or if their families had even been allowed the dignity of a grave. So, he would choose a weathered, unnamed, forgotten headstone at random, lay a single, pure white chrysanthemum at its base, and talk to them, to Michiru, to Nanao, to Hoshino, to Tachibana, to Habu, even to the foolish, cruel bullies, Etsuko and Marika. He would speak to them in quiet English, recounting their small, stolen lives as he remembered them, acknowledging their needless deaths. It was his private penance, his way of remembering, of shouldering the small share of responsibility he felt for their fates.

The world outside the comforting, predictable routine of his quiet restaurant, however, was growing increasingly, palpably uneasy. News reports, both mainstream and from more fringe online sources, spoke with alarming frequency of rising anti-Talent sentiment across Japan, often fueled by isolated, sensationalized incidents of Talents losing control of their abilities or, more disturbingly, using their unique powers for overtly criminal, even terroristic, acts. Whispers, then more overt discussions, of government-run “Protective Custody and Assessment Centers” – internment camps, Arthur knew them to be, his blood running cold at the familiar, chilling euphemism – for individuals with “problematic” or “unstable” Talents were becoming more frequent, more insistent, presented as a necessary measure for public safety. The seeds of fear and division Tsuruoka and the Committee had so carefully, so cynically, sown over the years were now bearing bitter, poisonous fruit.

It was on a cool, clear spring evening, as Arthur was meticulously cashing up for the night, the familiar scent of soy sauce and grilled fish still lingering in the air, that Nana Hiiragi walked, not back into his life, but back into the turbulent, unforgiving life of the world at large. She had been paroled, her release from prison quiet, unpublicized, almost surreptitious – likely another of Tsuruoka’s intricate, inscrutable machinations, Arthur suspected. Her first act as a conditionally free woman, her gaunt face hardened by three years in the brutal, dehumanizing environment of prison, her eyes still burning with a desperate, unquenched need for truth and retribution, was not to seek anonymity or a fragile peace, but to confront her primary tormentor, the architect of her ruined life.

She found Commander Tsuruoka, as she somehow knew she would, in his heavily fortified, opulently appointed private office deep within the Committee’s impenetrable headquarters. He received her with a chillingly calm, almost paternally amused demeanor, as if her unexpected appearance was an entirely predictable, mildly entertaining diversion from his important work. Nana, older now, her youthful softness almost entirely erased, her voice raspy from disuse but her resolve like tempered steel, demanded answers – about her parents, about the Committee’s lies, about the true nature of the “Enemies of Humanity,” about everything.

Tsuruoka deflected her every accusation, her every anguished question, with infuriating, condescending ease, his words a masterclass in psychological manipulation, twisting reality, subtly shifting blame, painting Nana herself as the architect of her own misfortunes, a flawed, inherently unstable instrument who had inevitably, disappointingly, broken under pressure. He smirked, a slight, dismissive, utterly contemptuous expression that finally, irrevocably, shattered Nana’s fragile, prison-honed composure.

Consumed by years of suppressed, impotent rage, by the fresh, agonizing grief of her remembered, manipulated past, Nana lunged, not for Tsuruoka himself, but for the heavy, ornate, antique silver letter opener lying innocuously on his vast, polished mahogany desk – a poor, desperate substitute for a real weapon, but the only thing immediately at hand. She tried to stab him, to silence his maddening, condescending voice, to inflict even a fraction of the pain he had caused her. At the last possible second, Tsuruoka’s ever-present, stoic, and utterly loyal adjutant, a career military man who had served him faithfully for over two decades, threw himself in front of his boss with a shout of warning. The sharp, pointed steel of the letter opener plunged deep into the adjutant’s chest. He collapsed with a surprised, gurgling grunt, a dark, rapidly spreading stain blooming on the crisp white front of his uniform.

Tsuruoka looked down dispassionately at his dying, devoted aide, then back at Nana, who stood frozen, horrified, the bloody letter opener dropping with a clatter from her trembling, suddenly nerveless hand. A slow, cold, almost predatory smile spread across Tsuruoka’s face. “Is that all you’ve got, Hiiragi?” he taunted, his voice soft, laced with a chilling amusement. “Still so… predictably emotional. So very… disappointing.” Panic, raw and absolute, seized Nana. She had just killed again, this time an innocent man, a man who had tried to protect his monstrous boss, right in front of her nemesis, the man who held all the power. She turned and fled, stumbling from the opulent office, Tsuruoka’s derisive, mocking laughter echoing in her ears, a soundtrack to her renewed, now doubly damned, fugitive status.

Chapter 30: The Roundup

A tense, nerve-wracking month crawled by, bleeding from the anxious heart of May into the oppressive, humid heat of mid-June in what would have been, in Arthur’s old life, the summer of 2028. Arthur Ainsworth, Nana Hiiragi, and the ever-enigmatic Jin Tachibana had found a precarious, fleeting anonymity in the sprawling, indifferent depths of Tokyo, moving frequently between a series of increasingly dilapidated, anonymous safe houses procured by Jin’s surprising and unnervingly effective network of unseen contacts. Their life on the run was a grim tapestry woven from constant fear, whispered conversations, shared, meagre rations, and the ever-present shadow of Tsuruoka’s inevitable pursuit.

The atmosphere in the country, meanwhile, had grown uglier, more poisonous by the day. Anti-Talent hysteria, deliberately fanned by sensationalist media outlets controlled by or sympathetic to the Committee, and further inflamed by a series of carefully orchestrated, highly publicized incidents attributed to rogue, "dangerous" Talents, had reached a terrifying, fever pitch. The government, citing an escalating threat to national security and public order, had passed sweeping new emergency legislation, granting sweeping, almost unchecked powers to newly formed special security units. The internment camps Jin had warned of were no longer a whispered rumour, a shadowy future threat, but a stark, brutal, and rapidly expanding reality. Posters appeared overnight on city walls: stern, ominous warnings about the "Talent Menace," urging citizens to report any suspicious individuals or unusual abilities to the authorities. Radio talk shows and television news programs were filled with inflammatory rhetoric, expert panels discussing the "inherent instability" of Talented individuals, and thinly veiled calls for their segregation and control "for the good of society."

Arthur and Nana had settled into an uneasy, almost claustrophobic cohabitation in their current hideout – the back rooms of a small, long-shuttered and forgotten noodle bar in a decaying industrial district, its windows boarded up, its air thick with the smell of dust, disuse, and their own shared anxiety. Their conversations were often strained, punctuated by long, uncomfortable silences filled with the ghosts of their past and the looming dread of their future. They were trying, hesitantly, awkwardly, to forge some kind of functional working relationship, sharing fragmented, painful memories from the island, attempting to understand the true extent of Tsuruoka’s monstrous manipulations. Arthur still found it incredibly, almost impossibly difficult to reconcile the subdued, haunted, and seemingly genuinely remorseful Nana Hiiragi before him – the young woman who now flinched at loud noises and wept silently in her sleep – with the cold, efficient, ruthless teenage assassin he had first encountered on that cursed island. Nana, in turn, visibly struggled with the sheer weight of Arthur’s quiet, unspoken knowledge of her past, his occasional, inadvertent English pronouncements a constant, unwelcome reminder of the depth of his insight, his very presence a mirror reflecting her own suffocating self-loathing.

They were in the middle of one such tense, circular discussion, Nana hesitantly recounting a half-remembered detail about Tsuruoka’s early indoctrination methods, Arthur listening with a grim, weary patience, when the boarded-up back door of the noodle bar suddenly splintered inwards with a deafening crash.

Before either of them could fully react, before Arthur could even scramble to his feet, the small, dark room was swarming with black-clad, heavily armed Committee agents, their faces hidden behind impersonal, menacing gas masks, their movements swift, brutal, and terrifyingly efficient. Arthur and Nana barely had time to register the assault before they were viciously subdued, their desperate, futile struggles silenced by harsh, barked commands, the painful pressure of stun batons, and the brutal, practiced efficiency of highly trained government operatives. There was no escape. The roundup, Jin’s dire prophecy, had begun in deadly earnest.

Arthur next found himself blinking dazedly against the harsh, unforgiving glare of fluorescent lights in a vast, echoing, and terrifyingly crowded processing centre, the air thick with the metallic tang of fear, unwashed bodies, and institutional disinfectant. He was fingerprinted with rough, indifferent hands, photographed like a common criminal, forcibly stripped of his ragged civilian clothes, and issued a drab, numbered, ill-fitting prison uniform. He caught a fleeting, horrifying glimpse of Nana, her face pale as death but her expression one of grim, almost stony resignation, being herded into a separate line by two armed guards. Then she was gone, swallowed by the chaotic, terrified throng.

The internment camp itself, when he finally arrived after a long, jolting journey in an overcrowded, windowless transport vehicle, was a monument to despair. It was a desolate, sprawling, hastily constructed complex of prefabricated barracks and grim concrete bunkers, surrounded by multiple layers of high, electrified fences, stark, skeletal watchtowers manned by heavily armed guards, and an almost palpable aura of hopelessness. It was a place built to crush spirits, to extinguish hope, to reduce human beings to mere numbers.

Within days of his arrival, amidst the hushed, fearful whispers and the constant, grinding misery of camp life, Arthur heard the news he had both dreaded and somehow expected. Kyouya Onodera was here, captured in a separate, equally brutal raid in another city. More astonishingly, and a small, sharp, painful joy for Arthur, he learned that Michiru Inukai had also been swept up in the Committee’s merciless nationwide purge, her quiet, unassuming life on the mainland, where she had been living with distant relatives, violently, inexplicably interrupted. They were all here, it seemed, the key surviving pieces of the island’s cursed, tragic legacy, brought together once more by Tsuruoka’s machinations, confined in this new, even more horrifying circle of hell.

The camp was under the iron-fisted command of a man named Ide – Commandant Ide, as he insisted on being addressed. Ide was a tall, imposing figure with cold, fanatical eyes, a neatly trimmed grey moustache, and an unshakeable, almost religious belief in the inherent danger and genetic inferiority of Talented individuals. He would often address the new arrivals during their initial processing, his voice amplified by loudspeakers, spewing forth a venomous stream of anti-Talent rhetoric, justifying their imprisonment as a necessary measure to protect the "purity and safety of normal society."

Commandant Ide, Arthur soon learned through the camp’s terrified grapevine, took a particular, sadistic, and almost scientific interest in Kyouya Onodera. Reports of Kyouya’s extraordinary immortality had, it seemed, reached him, and Ide appeared determined to personally test its limits, to find a way to break the unbreakable boy, perhaps even to discover the secret of his regenerative abilities for the Committee’s nefarious purposes. Kyouya was dragged from the already harsh conditions of the general prison population and subjected to weeks of relentless, systematic, and increasingly brutal torture in a special, isolated detention block known only as “Ward Seven.” The methods employed there were whispered to be horrific, designed to inflict maximum, unendurable pain and complete psychological disintegration. Yet, Kyouya endured, his body, though repeatedly broken, always regenerating, his spirit, though undoubtedly battered and traumatized, somehow remaining defiantly, stubbornly, unyieldingly intact.

News of Kyouya’s unimaginable ordeal, though heavily suppressed by the camp authorities, inevitably filtered through the camp’s hushed, fearful rumour mill, adding another deep layer of visceral terror and utter despair to the prisoners’ already wretched existence. Arthur felt a particular, agonizing helplessness; Kyouya, for all his aloofness, his cold detachment, had become a stoic, if distant, and surprisingly reliable ally.

Then, one dark, moonless night, during a period of unusually intense camp-wide lockdown, a small, heavily guarded unit within the infamous Ward Seven was unexpectedly, almost silently, breached. Not by an external force, not by a prisoner uprising, but seemingly from within the camp’s own impenetrable administrative structure. Jin Tachibana, who had, with his usual uncanny, almost supernatural skill, somehow managed to either evade capture during the initial roundups or had deliberately allowed himself to be interned, quickly infiltrating the camp’s complex bureaucracy using his high-level, if now presumably compromised, Committee contacts, orchestrated a daring, almost suicidal rescue. He, with the help of a few carefully chosen, strategically placed individuals within the camp staff whom he had either bribed, blackmailed, or perhaps even genuinely persuaded to his cause, neutralized the guards around Kyouya’s solitary confinement cell, his movements precise, silent, and lethally efficient. He managed to extract Kyouya from the bloodstained, nightmarish torture block.

Kyouya Onodera, emaciated, his body a canvas of fresh, horrific wounds that were already, almost visibly, beginning to heal, his white hair matted with sweat and dried blood, but his eyes still burning with an unquenchable, defiant light, was brought under the cover of darkness to the crowded, squalid barracks section of the camp where Arthur, Nana, and Michiru were housed. His sudden, almost miraculous arrival was a profound shock, but also a tiny, desperately needed spark of something akin to hope in the suffocating darkness. Jin Tachibana had proven his extraordinary capabilities, his enigmatic reach, once more, his influence extending even into the black, beating heart of the Committee’s most brutal prison system.

“Commandant Ide is a fool,” Jin commented quietly to Arthur later, after ensuring Kyouya was safely hidden amongst a small, fiercely loyal group of prisoners who had sworn to protect him. “He believes that pain is the ultimate master, the only true language of control. He doesn’t understand resilience. He doesn’t understand that some spirits, like some bodies, simply refuse to break.”

The unexpected reunion of their core group – Arthur, Nana, Michiru, and now Kyouya – was deeply, profoundly bittersweet, overshadowed by the grim, unyielding reality of their indefinite imprisonment. Nana, her face a mask of complex, conflicting emotions, tended to Kyouya’s initial, horrific wounds with a quiet, almost reverent efficiency, her movements surprisingly gentle. Michiru, her eyes wide with sympathy and a quiet, horrified understanding, offered what little comfort she could, her gentle presence a small solace in the overwhelming brutality of their situation. Arthur watched them, these familiar, battered faces a stark, painful reminder of all they had lost, all they had endured, and all they still stood to lose. The internment camp was Tsuruoka’s new, even more unforgiving crucible, designed to break them, to categorize them, to ultimately, inevitably, eliminate them. But with Kyouya’s miraculous rescue, a fragile, almost invisible seed of defiance, of resistance, had been unexpectedly, improbably, planted. The only question that remained was whether it could possibly survive, let alone hope to flourish, in such barren, toxic, and relentlessly hostile soil.

Chapter 6: The Camera Fiend

With her meticulous initial plans for Nanao Nakajima temporarily, infuriatingly, thwarted by Arthur’s unsettlingly accurate (or so it seemed to Nanao, at least) premonitions, Nana Hiiragi was a coiled spring of suppressed frustration. Arthur knew her handler, the enigmatic and ruthless Tsuruoka, wouldn’t tolerate delays or failures indefinitely. The invisible pressure on her to perform, to meet her quotas, would be immense. This, Arthur suspected, made her even more dangerous, more volatile, more likely to lash out with cold precision if another complication, another unforeseen variable, arose.

That complication promptly presented itself in the unctuous form of Ryouta Habu. Habu was a lanky, sallow-skinned boy with greasy hair and a perpetually smug expression, rarely seen without a bulky, professional-looking camera slung around his neck. Arthur had already clocked him as a minor creep from his hazy anime memories – the sort of boy who used his proclaimed Talent, the ability to photograph events moments before they happened, for leering, voyeuristic purposes rather than anything noble. His photographs often focused on unflattering angles of female students, or "accidental" upskirt shots, all passed off with a knowing smirk as the unpredictable nature of his future-capturing lens.

The evening after Arthur’s third successful, if nerve-wracking, intervention to keep Nanao safe from Nana’s clutches, the students were gathered in the noisy, brightly lit canteen for their evening meal. Arthur, as had become his habit, was seated alone, trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible while keeping a wary eye on Nana. He saw Habu, a predatory glint in his eyes, saunter over to Nana’s table, where she was picking at her food with a distinct lack of her usual cheerful appetite. He was clearly agitated about something.

Habu leaned in conspiratorially, a greasy lock of hair falling into his eyes, and with a theatrical flourish, showed Nana a photograph on his camera’s small digital display. Even from across the crowded, echoing room, Arthur could see Nana’s posture stiffen, her perpetually bright smile dimming for a dangerous fraction of a second before being quickly reasserted, albeit with a noticeable strain. He couldn’t hear the hushed, intense exchange over the din of the canteen, but he could guess its ugly nature. Later, through snippets of terrified, whispered gossip from students who had been seated closer, and by piecing together the grim fragments of his own foreknowledge, he confirmed the sordid details.

“Interesting shot, isn’t it, Hiiragi-san?” Habu had apparently leered, his voice a low, suggestive drawl. The photograph on his camera clearly showed Nana looking intently over the cliff edge where Nanao had nearly been lured just days before. It was a damning image, especially in light of Arthur’s public “prediction.” “I was up there myself, you see, testing out a new telephoto lens. A bit suspicious, you standing there all alone, Hiiragi-san, looking down like that, especially after our peculiar Tanaka-kun had that little ‘vision’ about Nakajima-kun taking a tumble. I think you were going to kill him. I think you were planning to push him.”

Nana, ever the consummate actress, had feigned wide-eyed, innocent confusion, her hand flying to her mouth in a gesture of shock. “Kill him? Nakajima-kun? Why on earth would I ever contemplate doing something so utterly horrible, Habu-kun?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Hiiragi,” Habu had sneered, his confidence bolstered by her apparent dismay. “I know what I saw. Or rather, what I think you were about to do. It’s a very compelling photograph, don’t you think? The kind of thing that might make people ask… awkward questions.” He paused, letting his threat hang in the air. “Now, if you don’t want this rather incriminating picture, and my… very strong suspicions… shared with, say, Mr. Saito, or perhaps that nosy Onodera Kyouya, or even the entire class, then perhaps you could pay me a little visit tonight? My room. Number 207. We can discuss how to make this… misunderstanding… go away. Maybe you could start by giving a hardworking, stressed photographer a nice, long, relaxing back massage?” His leer intensified.

The sheer, idiotic audacity of it was breathtaking. Blackmailing a highly trained, deeply ruthless government assassin. Habu was either incredibly stupid, dangerously overconfident in the protection his Talent supposedly afforded him, or, most likely, a lethal combination of both. Arthur felt a familiar wave of helpless dread wash over him. He knew, with a sickening certainty, where this was heading. He couldn’t warn Habu; the boy was far too arrogant and would either dismiss him as the “weird Tanaka kid” or, worse, report his ‘meddling’ to Nana herself, further complicating Arthur’s already precarious position and possibly accelerating Habu’s demise. All he could do was watch, a silent, horrified spectator, as the grim pantomime unfolded.

Nana, trapped and seething internally but maintaining an outward composure of reluctant agreement, had acquiesced with a tight, saccharine smile. “Of course, Habu-kun. I’d be happy to come to your room and clear up this… unfortunate little misunderstanding. A massage sounds… lovely.”

Later that night, the inevitable occurred. Nana, her face a mask of calm but her eyes glinting with cold fury, visited Habu’s cluttered, untidy room. Arthur, lying awake in his own dorm, his ears straining for any unusual sounds, could only imagine the scene. He knew from the source material that Nana, while giving Habu a perfunctory, unwanted back massage, would be seriously contemplating snapping his neck then and there. She would refrain, however, her cold logic overriding her immediate anger. She needed more information about his Talent’s specifics – its range, its limitations, how far into the future it could truly see. Knowledge was power, and Nana always sought to maximize her power before striking.

Instead, as her fingers worked his tense shoulders, she would deliberately, with surgical precision, press a sensitive pressure point, just hard enough to cause a searing, unexpected jolt of pain. Habu, arrogant and foolish, would yelp, then snap, “You stupid girl! Watch what you’re doing! Be careful!” Nana, Arthur pictured, would then offer a profuse, deeply insincere apology, her eyes wide with feigned innocence, claiming it was a complete accident, that her hands had simply slipped. This calculated incident would not only test his reaction but also fuel her resolve to eliminate him swiftly and efficiently once she had the information she needed.

The next day, Nana approached Kyouya Onodera in the library, her face a carefully constructed mask of terror and distress. She clutched a photograph in her trembling hand – one Arthur knew she had expertly faked in the intervening hours. It depicted Nana herself, seemingly unconscious, tied up with rough-looking ropes, in a grimy, unfamiliar room, a faint bruise artfully applied to her cheek. “Onodera-kun!” she’d cried, her voice breaking with convincing panic. “I… I found this! Slipped under my door! I think… I think it’s my future! Someone is trying to kill me! Could it have been Habu-kun? He was acting so strangely towards me last night!”

It was a brilliant, if diabolical, move, Arthur acknowledged grimly. She was establishing a preemptive alibi with the school’s most persistent, logical investigator, painting herself as a potential victim, and simultaneously casting suspicion on Habu. Kyouya, though perpetually suspicious and likely sensing the theatricality of her performance, would have little choice but to take her claim seriously and investigate.

The actual murder happened later that same evening, or perhaps in the early, silent hours of the morning. Nana, having deduced the limitations of Habu’s precognitive camera – likely that it couldn’t photograph events too far into the future, or in areas he hadn’t physically scouted and focused on, or perhaps that it only showed potential futures he was actively trying to capture – would have cornered him in his room. Arthur didn’t know the exact method beyond strangulation, but he imagined it was quick, brutal, and terrifyingly efficient, Nana’s smaller stature no impediment to her lethal training.

The discovery of Ryouta Habu’s lifeless body the following morning, his camera lying broken beside him, sent a fresh wave of genuine panic and fear rippling through the already unsettled student population. Mr. Saito was visibly distraught, his attempts to calm the students increasingly futile. The other teachers were tight-lipped, their expressions grim. Nana, of course, played the part of the shocked and grieving classmate to absolute perfection, even “confiding” in a few tearful girls that Habu had been acting strangely and aggressively towards her, subtly planting the idea that he might have been a dangerous individual who had brought his grim fate upon himself.

Kyouya Onodera was, as expected, intensely, almost ferociously, investigating, his impassive face a mask for a keen, analytical intellect piecing together timelines and inconsistencies. He questioned Nana again, who recounted her faked photo and her “fear” of Habu, her performance flawless.

Arthur watched it all from the periphery, a knot of cold fury, frustration, and a growing, weary despair tightening in his chest. Another death. Another victim he couldn’t save without revealing his impossible knowledge and immediately making himself Nana’s next, and undoubtedly final, target. He hadn’t even liked Habu; the boy had been an unpleasant, sleazy individual. But did he deserve to be murdered, his life snuffed out so callously? The question was a bitter, unanswerable torment.

The weight of his foreknowledge, his terrible prescience, was becoming a crushing, unbearable burden. Each death he failed to prevent, each life Nana extinguished, chipped away at his already fragile psyche. He was an unwilling observer of a horror show he’d already seen the grisly highlights of, powerless to stop the actors from hitting their gruesome, predetermined marks. His phone translator, his only means of coherent expression, felt less like a lifeline and more like a cursed tool for documenting a tragedy in a language he was only beginning to comprehend on a visceral, soul-deep level. Nanao was safe, for now, but at what cost? And who, Arthur wondered with a chilling certainty, would be next on Nana Hiiragi’s ever-growing list?