Bang—
With the distinctive crack of a kinetic round fired from the Kongou, a suited Tyger Claw slumped back into the cushioned chair behind his desk, dead before he could react.
"Woo—clean and precise."
Oliver let out a whistle as the man collapsed. He gave a nod of approval to Arasaka Seisen, who lowered the pistol with calm precision.
"Didn't feel like much when I saw you shoot in the sim, but seeing it live—damn. Not a single miss. You'd sweep the leaderboard at any gun range in the city."
"Still got a long way to go," Seisen replied with a slight grin, the youthful face on his disguise chip curling at the edges.
"Compared to you all—your speed, your accuracy—I'm still trailing behind."
"Modest words from a guy who's already smiling," Oliver teased.
He then noticed Karl stepping up to the dead Tyger Claw, drawing his monowire and jacking it into the laptop on the desk.
Beep beep beep—
A stream of scrambled data flashed across the screen as Karl dug through every corner of the system. With his current processing power, the device barely put up a fight. Even hidden, encrypted folders were cracked within seconds.
He flagged and transmitted several files detailing illicit drug trafficking to Andy, ignored the flood of porn videos bursting from random directories, and finally found what he was looking for.
"Everyone, come take a look."
He spun the laptop around so the rest of the crew could see the display.
They were inside an apartment complex in Japantown, specifically a safehouse used by a group of corporate-dressed Tyger Claws. Including the one Karl just killed, there had been twelve gang members present.
None of them had managed to resist, much less scrub sensitive data. Everything lay bare before them.
"They didn't wipe the data immediately after reading it?" Seisen raised a brow. "That's… sloppy. His people are slipping."
"I figured we'd need my team later to restore deleted files," he added.
"No need. Even if they had, I could've restored it on the spot," Karl said. "But I don't think it's about slipping up…"
He glanced back at the corpse, data already cross-referenced in his mind.
"That guy was freshly transferred from Japan a few months ago. Got recommended by internal connections and climbed ranks at breakneck speed. That tells me one thing—he's Saburo Arasaka's man. And more importantly: Saburo's running low on personnel in the Americas."
Made sense. Ever since Karl started running ops, he'd been butting heads with Saburo's agents. First working with Hanako Arasaka, then taking jobs from Kenichiro Arasaka, and now wiping out sixty-five Tyger Claws on behalf of Seisen. After all that, if Saburo still had goons to throw around, that'd be the real shocker.
In North America, Arasaka loyalty had long shifted to Michiko Arasaka. The original operatives from Central and South America had been systematically purged—by factional struggle or Karl himself.
If Saburo wanted boots on the ground now, he'd have to fly them in from Japan.
Saburo may have had the most loyalists within the Arasaka structure, but his global reach wasn't infinite.
Years back, he'd turned over the Americas to his heir, Arasaka Keito, and was practically semi-retired. But when Keito died in the collapse of Arasaka Tower during the end of the Fourth Corporate War, and Japan's megacorp alliance turned against Saburo, he was left struggling to hold his homeland, let alone stretch back into the West.
By the time he regained a grip on Japan, Michiko had already allied with Militech and seized the reins. The Americas had a new boss.
If Saburo wanted to interfere in the North American frontlines—now bordering Militech's influence—it wasn't going to be easy.
It was just like the Tyger Claws.
The gang boss hands a territory to his heir. Heir dies. Someone from the crew takes over. Now, would that new leader still obey the old boss? That's up for debate.
There's no such thing as gentle compromise in the Tyger Claws.
And it sure as hell didn't exist in Arasaka.
"Saburo Arasaka…" V muttered the name.
He didn't care much for the man at the top of the corporate pyramid, but the endless stream of operatives the guy sent their way? That was another story.
If he's our enemy...
Even if he were a president, a megacorp god-king—V wouldn't flinch.
He joined the others and leaned in to check the laptop screen—only to be greeted by a wall of jumbled symbols and horizontal strokes.
The command from Japan hadn't been deleted, but it was encrypted.
From what V could see, it was pure nonsense.
"Corrupted file?" he asked.
"No. That is the file," Karl said.
"Needs a decoder?" Jack guessed.
"Obvious answer," Oliver muttered. "Maybe it requires a special app to open it properly. Karl, did you spot anything like that?"
"Nope. But I think I can crack it."
Karl glanced at Seisen, who had studied the screen with a frown that quickly faded into recognition.
"It's ciphered text," Seisen confirmed, scanning the symbols. "The encryption method—'Purple Cipher.'"
"Purple what?" Oliver asked, confused.
"Purple Cipher and Black Cipher," Karl explained. "They were encryption systems used by Japan's Foreign Ministry during World War II. Purple was far more secure than Black."
"That old fossil... still clinging to the past," Seisen muttered as he finished reading the message. "Nowadays, once you recognize it, it's child's play to decode."
"So what does it say?" Oliver asked, genuinely curious.
Seisen answered calmly:
"Control Seisen. Wait for my arrival."
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