23. Spy

On the third of the seven days of awkward, Haruka sneaked inside the NUMO's office late at night. There was someone who did not leave her mind besides Kazuki: Renegade. She was thinking about her look when they were rescued and about her brother. "Did Nouveau's head really torture him? I don't believe this, but I prefer to be sure of it. I wouldn't like Renegade to be tortured too." - she thought to herself. She got one of the laptops and took it to a meeting room, where she would be safer.

There, she accessed the internal systems using a fake user. She had stolen a password from one of the workers who would have access to internal projects and criminal files. Haruka navigated through a plethora of menus, without a clear direction, the system was not easy to use. However, between the many options and pages she saw one which caught her eye "Reconquest II". There, she faced a dilemma. She knew it was not for her eyes and probably an excess of information. She might learn things of which there would be no turning back. However, the name overwhelmed her curiosity and she clicked. The page opened:

RECONQUEST II
Strategy
Political Prisoners
Project Deviant
Project Zodiac

Haruka's eyes widened and she took a deep breath. it was all extremely enticing. She clicked on "Strategy", but the button was disabled. Then she clicked on "Political Prisoners". The system opened a search bar. Haruka did not hesitate and typed "Renegade". Only one result appeared: "Kita Kanbaru". She clicked on it.

KITA KANBARU
Gender: Feminine
Known Aliases: Renegade
Association: Rebels in Tokyo
Crimes: Robbery, aggression, forgery.
Methodology: standard pain inducing procedures. No information was obtained.
Status: Disposed.
Notes: has a rebel brother, Kita Ayano.

Haruka felt an awful gut reaction to the information. Despite that, the technical language made Haruka doubt her findings and look for Kita Ayano.

KITA AYANO
Gender: Masculine
Known Aliases: None
Association: Rebels in Tokyo
Crimes: Robbery, aggression, protesting, murder.
Methodology: extreme pain inducing procedures. No information was obtained. Subject escaped.
Status: Missing
Notes: has a rebel sister, Kita Kanbaru.

Haruka now felt nauseated, but she wasn't letting the feelings sink in, she continued her search, now typing "hammer".

HAMMER
Gender: Masculine
True Name: Unknown
Known Aliases: Hammer
Association: Rebels in Tokyo
Crimes: Robbery, aggression, kidnapping, murder, arson, torture.
Methodology: standard pain inducing procedures. Information obtained: location of a rebel military facility in Todoroki.
Status: Disposed.

Haruka spent a few more minutes looking for other prisoners and reading repeatedly terms like "pain inducing procedures", "disposed" and "no longer useful". When she read "excessive use of pain inducing procedures led to mental breakdown and disposal.", she had to get up and take a deep breath. Despite the terrible feeling and realization, she wanted to know more. As much as she could. She returned to the initial screen and clicked on "Project Deviant". It was similarly structured to the Political Prisoners page. She searched for BirdHook.

BIRDHOOK
Purpose: Aerial assault on infantry and ground based soldiers. Attacks on highly urban environments.
Testing Results: the subject's maneuverability around buildings is superb, but its fire power has been so far underwhelming against heavily armed soldiers.
Status: In captivity.

Haruka put her hands on her head and typed Cheetle.

CHEETLE
Purpose: Ground support for disabling defensive positions and dispersing crowds.
Testing Results: the subjects ability to control space and disable positions is as good as expected. It has also shown great ability on evading attacks.
Status: In captivity.

She also typed Hachimorph.

HACHIMORPH
Purpose: Amphibian attack on structures and individual forces.
Testing Results: so far, the subject has surpassed expectations regarding effectiveness and longevity. Recovery is crucial.
Status: captured by the rebels.

Haruka leaned on the chair, feeling the sudden realization. There was no need to look for project directives or anything else. The merciless torture of the prisoners and the creation of the deviants as weapons, it was all clearly the government's doing. Haruka did not know what to think, but she knew what she wanted to do: look at the last project.

She returned to the initial screen and clicked on "Project Zodiac". The following message appeared: "User is not not allowed to access this resource. This incident will be reported." Seeing this, Haruka quickly got up, turned the laptop off, put it back where it belonged and left for her apartment as soon as she could.

From that night on, with the mixture of all the information she discovered, Haruka formed a secret doubt, lurking on the back of her mind, coming and going in the midst of her thoughts and activities: "what if we are on the wrong side?".