As soon as the squad entered inside of the main building, they were greeted with a confusion of people yelling and running around. Several men and women were being guided to the walls and body searched for any type of weapons or dangerous materials. Others were already grouped in a corner of the main hall, their hands handcuffed behind their backs. More and more people were arriving through the service stairs, be it from upper floors, be it from lower floors.

The squad skirted around the people coming up from the lower floors and quickly headed to the first target, located on the -4 floor. They paid close attention to their surroundings as they motioned down the lace of stairs and, as soon as they reached the floor in question, all five of them fully entered into soldier mode, honing their senses to the max to prevent anything from going unnecessarily wrong.

“Do we have some sort of map or something?” asked Ikusaki, gripping tightly his rifle as he scanned the insides of the dark corridor with his eyes. The only source of illumination was the emergency lights.

“We don’t. Do you think that our informants are gods or something?” grumbled Miue in a sour way. He knew they didn’t have any other choice than to cut the electric power of the entire building, but they would be at a disadvantage with all this darkness around them. They were prepared with flashlights and goggles with night vision but the technology wasn’t always all that accurate, even with years and years of constant war going around in the whole planet.

“The floors probably have all the same format,” started explaining Mizusaki, paying close attention to all the details around him. “If we clear this floor, we will have a pretty good image in our heads about the ones below. Or, if they were smart enough, they will be built in a reverse way. So we just have to also reverse the mental map that we make of this floor. Easy peasy~”

“It’s easy peasy for you,” contested Ikusaki, snorting softly at those easygoing words.

“Ah, yes. I forgot that you’re an idiot~” added Mizusaki, snickering softly at his squadmate.

“Shut it, Mizusaki!” roared Ikusaki, his voice echoing through the entire empty corridor.

“You two shut it!” admonished Miue, turning around to glare at the younger males. “You’re basically signalizing our position with all the yelling and yapping. And you’re making me lose my focus!”

“I’m sorry,” apologized both Ikusaki and Mizusaki. Eki chuckled softly as he saw their apologetic expressions and Murayama simply shook his head a little bit while rolling his eyes.

From that point on, all the members of the squad proceeded through the corridor as silently as it was humanly possible. They carefully opened and closed doors, searching around for any worker that had stayed hidden in those countless rooms. After 20 minutes of walking around, they reached a big metal door.

“Taking the size and thickness into account… I would risk saying that we have reached our first target,” announced Murayama, carefully eyeing the door from top to bottom. He motioned to one of the walls, where a small electronic panel was located and opened its metallic hatch. “Oh-oh~ Aren’t we lucky that this works through codes and that it’s still operational, even with the electricity being cut down? Emergency generators truly are a blessing. Eki, do you have that thing?”

“Yes, I have,” answered Eki, motioning the rifle on his hands down so he could reach one of the pockets of his vest. From there, he took a small round box and threw it to Murayama.

“Sweet~” acknowledged Murayama as he caught the box with one hand and opened the lid. There was a white, fine dusty substance inside. He took a little bit on his hand and put it in front of the keyboard of the electronic panel, blowing on the dust and spreading it through all of the buttons. When fingerprints appeared as if by magic, Murayama smirked. “Now we just have to guess the sequence. Good thing it only has three digits. Which means… 27 possible combinations. Or more, if any of the numbers are being repeated once or twice.”

“Shit, we’ll never get out of here. At least, not tonight,” grumbled Ikusaki under his breath. “Isn’t there a quicker way to do this?”

“If I told you the combination… would that help?” asked a sudden male voice. All five soldiers immediately changed their stances into attacking positions, each one of them pointing their rifles to different locations as they searched for the source of the voice. “Ah… But it would be too troublesome… Never mind…”

The soldiers looked over to the metal door, still on their guard. The voice had come from behind it.

“You know the password to your own cell?” suspiciously asked Murayama, an eyebrow slightly arched as he continued to keep the door under his gaze.

“I do. I also know the codes for the other four doors,” acknowledged the male inside of the closed cell. “But it would be troublesome for me later on so I don’t think I’ll tell you that. I don’t really have anything to gain with it, either way.”

“You’ll gain freedom, if that holds any value to you,” pointed out Eki, lowering his rifle.

“Freedom? What’s that…? Can I eat it…?” asked the cloistered male with a sluggish voice. “Even if you took me out of here, I would only be put inside another cell. Or killed. Or tortured and then killed. That would be too troublesome… The food here is disgusting but it’s still better than being tortured.”

“You’re going to be taken away from inside of that room, whether it takes us a few minutes or a good couple of days,” pointed out Murayama, looking to the electronic panel as he started to think up combinations in his head to open that door. “And when that happens, you obviously will have to come with us.”

“I wouldn’t be that sure…” added the male with an even sluggish voice. “If you input the wrong code three times, the door will be on total lockdown. Not only this one but the other five doors.”

“…” Murayama dropped the hand that he was about to move towards the keyboard and mentally cursed. Then he noticed something quite curious that the target had just mentioned. “You said ‘other five doors’. Then there’s six of you and not five?”

“Ah… Shit… He’s totally going to punish me because of this one…” groaned the target. “Can you forget I said that?”

“Yes, we’ll forget about it,” acknowledged Eki, gaining from the other four males lost and surprised looks. “We’ll forget about it if you tell us the codes to all of the doors.”

Oh, nice one, Yasuhisa!, cheered Ikusaki in the back of his mind, nodding his head in acknowledged at Eki when he looked over at them and winked.

“Hm… I don’t know…” answered the cloistered male. “How’s the food in the outside world?”

“Well, Japan has considerable supplies at the moment,” began explaining Eki, going along with the conversation. It seemed that food served as some sort of trigger to this target in particular, for whatever reason it may be. “So every day we get to eat fish and meat, vegetables and some fruits. In the military base we even get some snacks, sweets and candies from ti—“

“0509,” suddenly said the target. “That’s the code for my door. The other ones are 0807, 0706, 0605, and 0404. The code of the sixth door that I mentioned earlier… I don’t know the code. The others don’t know it either. Though if there’s a chance of someone knowing about it would be I— Ah, the one on the floor beneath mine. But he would never tell you that.”

“Thank you for your cooperation,” acknowledged Eki, observing from the corner of his eyes as Mizusaki told the other team the codes of the doors, seeing as they probably were experiencing the same situation as them. “Um… What’s your name?”

There was only silence as an answer.

“Ah… Hello?” called Eki once again, getting closer to the door while he saw Murayama motioning his hand to the electronic panel. The commander nodded his head at him in acknowledgement to proceed forward. Ikusaki, Miue and Mizusaki all pointed their weapons to the door that would open at any moment, as a precaution to whatever it was that they would find inside. “Are you hearing me? We are going to open the door now. We would appreciate it if you behaved. If you do, you’ll get to eat food much earlier than if you fight against us.”

“I probably had a name. I don’t use it anymore or even remember it,” explained the target with a sluggish voice. “I have two new names now. But I won’t tell you one of them. That name is only for those equal to me to use. And you aren’t equal to me. So you can call me M2.”

“M2?” repeated Eki, an eyebrow slightly arched. They heard the sound of the locks moving, clank after clank echoing through the silent corridors. When the door started to slide open, a cloud of thick white smoke escaped from inside of the cell. All of the squad members shuddered at the coldness of the smoke. Gulping down softly, Eki started approaching the entrance of the cell, the white smoke still preventing him from seeing deeper inside of the spacious room. “What does M2 mean?”

“Mass Murder Machine no. 2,” simply explained the male, only a dark silhouette coming into view from the soldiers’ current position. And what a silhouette! The target was easily 2 meters in height, with long and thick limbs.

As the smoke disappeared and the target’s appearance was finally fully shown to the soldiers, they found a gigantic black haired male standing on the centre of the room, munching on an empty plastic wrap of what it seemed to be a chocolate bar. Forming a circle around him and then expanding to cover the entire floor, walls and ceiling of the room, were razor-sharp needle-like tubes, interlinked by thin threads that emitted a soft buzzing sound.

M2 looked over to the five soldiers, who looked with shocked expressions to the scenario in front of them. He opened his mouth and released the plastic wrap, a string of saliva breaking when he fully lowered his hand. “What? Did you think that we wouldn’t have escaped already when I know the codes to open the doors? All of us would have already done so since we all know the codes… except to the bottom one, of course. We could have achieved the freedom you spoke of any time we wanted, without needing your help or intervention.”

“Why didn’t you, then?” asked Eki, dropping his weapon near the door as he approached the metal tubes and the wires connecting them and closely analyzed them.

“If one leaves, the others have to follow along. One of us can’t leave, so we won’t leave either,” answered M2, once again chewing on the plastic wrap. “Now hurry up and take down those things. I haven’t been able to sit down for… ah… 5 days, 7 hours, 13 minutes and 34 seconds… 35… 36… 37…”

For a complete wacko, he sure seems to have a quite loyal side to him and doesn’t seem all that dangerous, inwardly pointed out Ikusaki as he also lowered his gun and got closer to Eki and the needle-like tubes.

“51… 52… 53… Oh, that’s right… You have 5 minutes since the door is unlocked to deactivate those things or the bombs placed on this room will go off,” suddenly added M2, interrupting his continuous count of the seconds. “This room is in need of some colour. Maybe blood would make the walls more interesting to stare at. Ah… but the smell is horrible. Hurry up and take them down.”

Yes, a complete wacko, confirmed Ikusaki in the back of his mind as he hurriedly searched around with the other members of his squad for the button that would take down the needle-like tubes surrounding the target. They were so close to M2 that he couldn’t take any position other than a standing stance while inside of the big cell.