Spy Classroom - Volume 3 - Chapter 4.1

Interlude

Missing  

When three PM rolled around, and the sun began its descent downward, Klaus found a lead on the missing girls.

The city was home to a multi-tenant building, which was three stories tall and had a single semibasement. The first floor was a bookie’s office where you could bet on horse races by proxy, the second floor had a moneylender, and the top floor had a sign for the sketchiest print shop imaginable. Nothing about the building was especially wholesome. Klaus didn’t see a sign posted for the semibasement, so he surmised that whoever worked out of it probably wanted to avoid attention.

At present, the building was sealed off and surrounded by soldiers. He could see Welter standing inside with a puzzled expression.

Klaus pushed his way through the police tape and joined him. “Looks like there was a murder here.”

Welter looked up, then scowled. “You. Didn’t you say you were leaving?”

“You seriously believed a lie that obvious?”

Klaus glanced around at the bloodstains. A lot of blood had been shed in that room.

“There were five people dead,” Welter said. “The police report said it was probably a fight between two gangs, but if you took the time to come here yourself, then I take it there’s an intelligence angle?”

“Dammit, I told the police to hush the whole incident up.”

“Quit trying to get rid of me.” Welter clicked his tongue. “The killer set a booby trap with piano wire. It was a nasty piece of work—one that required a lot of skill to set up. All five of the victims got sliced to ribbons, and the corpses were pretty ugly. From what I hear, they had trouble even telling which pieces went with which bodies.”

“That much is clear from the crime scene. Our culprit did a pretty brutal job here.”

The room was practically drenched in blood. The bodies had already been cleared away, but the fact that there were bloodstains reaching all the way up to the ceiling told a clear enough story of how gory it had been.

“It’s the same MO as the spy we’re hunting,” Welter noted.

The spy in question was the one who’d killed a Lylat Kingdom agent and was currently on the run.

As Klaus turned his thoughts to the woman’s true identity, a sharp aroma hit his nose.

“That’s odd,” he murmured. “There’s a lingering scent of tear gas in the air, but it wasn’t sprayed on the day of the crime.”

“Hmm? What do you mean?”

“The day before the murders, someone filled the room with tear gas.”

That would mean that office had been attacked not once, but twice. Three days ago, it had been full of tear gas, and it wasn’t until late the night after that the enemy spy went on her piano wire rampage.

Welter furrowed his brow in confusion. “The police say that the five dead people were a group of criminals. They started with petty theft, then branched out to every crime under the sun. People like them tend to make a lot of enemies.”

“……………Ah, so that’s what happened.”

Klaus nodded.

He headed for the exit. He’d learned everything he was going to learn there.

“Hold on, Bonfire.” However, Welter stopped him in his tracks. “What is it you just figured out?”

“That I’m no use here. This case is beyond me.”

“That’s another lie, isn’t it?”

Welter leveled a fierce glare at him. Then he told his men to clear the room. The soldiers weren’t about to disobey an order from their captain, so they did as they were told and exited the semibasement.

Welter and Klaus were the only ones left in the office.

“I haven’t seen Torchlight around lately,” Welter remarked. “How’s he doing?”

That code name belonged to Klaus’s mentor—Guido.

“Oh, he’s fine. Too fine, if anything.”

“His close combat skills are alive and well, then. I got him to agree to spar with me once, you know. He destroyed me, of course, but he said I had good fundamentals. That’s something I’ll always be proud of.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“That I’m not some rookie. I pick up on things, too.” Welter’s voice grew sterner. “I can feel a great evil in the air.”

“A what?”

“The truly evil masquerade as saints. They wear righteous smiles, manipulating those ignorant to their nature while they destroy anyone their hearts tell them to. There’s a great evil at work here, Bonfire—someone so wicked their soul is twisted to its core.”

“………”

“It’s the military’s job to put people like that down. Now, tell me everything you know.”

A sense of justice as firm as steel burned in his eyes as he looked straight at Klaus. It was that firm will—that pride he took in crushing evil wherever it stood—that had allowed someone as young as him to rise to the rank of captain.

It was that evil he’d sensed that had driven him to gather as many troops as he had.

Klaus shook his head. “You don’t see it, do you?”

“Wh—?”

“Your sense of duty is admirable; I’ll give you that. But understand that I have my position to consider as well. Make sure you stay out of my way.”

Welter’s face went bright red. His fists trembled. “You damn spies think you’re all that… The army’s just one big joke to you people, isn’t it?”

“Oh, and one more piece of advice,” Klaus said dispassionately. “Don’t chase the spy into the sea. Wouldn’t want them to slip away, you know?”

That was the most important piece of counsel Klaus had given him yet.

Welter, however, took it as an insult. If looks could kill, Klaus would have died on the spot.

“There you go picking fights again…”

When Klaus left the semibasement, Lily greeted him with a look of utter exasperation. She’d been stealthily watching the whole exchange.

“Give me some credit,” Klaus replied. “When I pick a fight, it’s always for a reason.”

“It is? What did you do it for, then?”

“To piss him off.”

“That makes it worse!”

“As things stand, they’re in a pretty unfavorable position. I needed to throw the CO off his game a bit.”

Even so, they were in for a rough battle. However, Klaus was just going to have to believe in them.

Lily tilted her head to the side. She clearly didn’t understand what he meant.

Klaus decided to put off explaining himself. There was something more important he needed to tell her.

“We’re putting our search for the missing four on hold for a bit.”

“What?”

It sounded like they were still alive. Klaus wanted to go help them out, but there was something else that needed doing.

“Our job now is to go deal with the eventuality that our missing comrades overlooked.”

Lily stared at him blankly. “You mean you’ve figured out what’s going on?”

“Somehow or other, yes.”

Klaus had some choice words to say about the outrageous decisions the girls were making. Why did his subordinates all have to be such handfuls?

He had figured out about 80 percent of the situation, and with a little more intel, he’d be able to put together the full picture.

Still, he already knew why the girls had chosen to go missing.

And he knew what the great evil Welter had referenced was, too.