1 The Morning sun gleamed through the windows of the Okinawa Airport. Lucas Sato sat in the middle of an almost empty airport gate. A man had fallen asleep in the back with a newspaper over his head and his arms crossed. Another person had taken up a few seats to lie down. The sun was just peeking over the horizon, and Lucas drank the last bit of his coffee. He sighed and shook the cup to hear the last bit of dribble inside and put the cup onto the ground. He sat with his elbows on his knees and looked at the planes outside, passing along the runway and taking off into the purple clouds. His cellphone rang, and he answered, "Hello? Ms. Sakura? Yes, this is Lucas Sato. I'll be there later this afternoon at around 1 o'clock. Alright, see you then." He hung up the phone and stood, leaving the cup behind on the floor as he finally went to board his plane. Lucas sat by the window. He gazed out into the ocean below, heading toward mainland Japan. Crossing his arms and leaning back into his chair, he closed his eyes and prepared for a long nap. 2 A tall red-haired woman in full-length leather boots and pants with a tight white corset, covered by a short leather jacket, walks down the busy streets of the big city. She is pushing through an oncoming crowd while taking deep drags from a cigarette and blowing the smoke straight up into the air. Most of the people around her are dressed for business, and rightly so in this part of downtown. But she wasn't cooped up in some office every day. Well, sometimes she was, and she hated it, but it wasn't all that bad. It was outside the office that was the hard part, but she was the perfect one for those kinds of jobs. She approached the entrance of a tall black office building, and there were 4 wide spinning doors to enter through. Many business people were pouring into the lobby. Inside, there were 4 long lines that went through a security checkpoint. The woman gladly walked up to one in particular with a big smile on her face. She watched as a man in a long brown trench coat walked up to the check, putting his suitcase onto the conveyor belt and walking through the metal detector. It was eventually her turn. She walked up to the metal detector with her hands up, saying, "I surrender." A man popped his head over from behind the checkpoint and walked up, saying, "Oh, hey Sonia!" She smiled and pointed two fingers at him, holding both in front of her, saying, "What up, Dazz?" She kept her hands in the air as he ran a handheld metal detector over her. The alarm had gone off after she walked through the check. He laughed, holding the detector up to her jacket pocket saying, "Hey Sonia, got a light?" she shook her head and took the lighter out of her pocket, and replied, "Damn, I forgot about this one. I just got it, too." He held out a grey bucket, and she dropped it in saying, "I better get that one back this time, Dazz. It's a torch lighter, I need that!" Dazz shook his head and stood with his hand on a hip, yelling over, "It'll be here whenever I find it again!" he waved at her. "Damn him," she said to herself as she headed for the elevators. As she approached one, she took out a card with a black strip and an I.D. number on it. She swiped it through a metal box with a red light next to the elevators, and it flashed green. She waited there and the door opened. Inside the elevator, she quickly struck a match and lit up her cigarette just before the door closed. She pressed the button for the 27th floor. Taking a deep drag, she sat down on the small couch seat as she shook the match, putting out the flame. The elevator itself seemed quite upscale. She waved the smoke away from her face and blew it up into the air, towards the vent. She gets to the end of the cigarette quickly enough and squishes it down into the carpeted bottom corner next to the door with some other butts left by previous riders. Standing up, she starts to frantically wave her hands through the air above, pushing the smoke up into the vent. She had lost track of how long she had been doing this when the elevator door opened up. A man with a brown suit and mustache stood on the other side of the door watching her as she was still waving her hand. She muttered to herself, "Stupid vent must be clogged," when the man spoke. "Good to see you in your natural habitat, Miss Kiyama." She froze and her face went red. She slowly turned around, smiling. "Oh! Good morning Mr. Oba." 3 "I'm glad you could make it early today," said Mr. Oba as they walked along together down a heavily lit hallway. The sun shone through a large window at the end of the hall and cascaded all the way down. "How about you try that every day?" he said sarcastically. "Haha, good one 'Cap," she looked at her watch. It said 12:55 pm. Sonia put her arms up behind her head and stopped at an office door on the left side of the hall. Mr. Oba got his key out to open it. She asked, "So what's the new guy like?" "I don't know. Some guy who was looking to transfer. He's coming all the way from Okinawa." She frowned after he said this as they entered the room and sat down at a loveseat along the wall of the office next to the door just as they walked in. In front of the loveseat was a glass table and a writing desk was adjacent to that, in front of the window on the right side. Across from the door was a large fine wooden desk that belonged to Mr. Oba, as this was his office. On the left, was a large white projector wall. The projector machine sat on a tall wheeled dolly right in front of it. "Lucas Sato," said Mr. Oba, sitting down at his desk and going into a drawer to retrieve a file and a remote. A knock was heard at the door, and a younger blond long-haired woman entered the room carrying a tray of tea. She wore a modest knee-length black dress and black leather boots. Her dress was a turtleneck and had lace at the neck and sleeves. "I heard you both come in and I prepared the tea," she said. She nodded her head towards Mr. Oba saying, "Good morning, father." He nodded back, she turned to Sonia and greeted her. Sonia smiled and replied rather formally, "Good morning, Sakura," and she went to pour herself some tea from the tray that Sakura placed on the glass table. "Thank you." Sakura went to the small writing desk at the back and prepared herself a quill and ink, bringing out a leather notebook. "He should be here by now," said Mr. Oba, checking his watch. Sakura stood up and said, "Perhaps he has gotten himself lost in the building. I'll go and-" Then a small knock was heard at the door. Sakura opened it and in walked Lucas Sato. She looked at him and at first said nothing, but quickly came to her senses and put a hand out to him. "Hello, I'm Miss Sakura, I believe we spoke on the phone?" He shook her hand softly. "Yes," said Lucas, "I'm sorry to be late, my hotel is a bit far from here." "That's alright," said Mr. Oba, who was now standing behind Sakura. She moved out of the way and he walked forward to shake Lucas's hand as well. "I'm glad to have another detective on board. Hideki Oba," he said. Mr. Oba held a hand out in Sonia's direction. "And this is Miss Kiyama," he introduced her. "Call me Sonia," she said, smiling at him as she leaned an elbow up onto the back of the couch. Mr. Oba took the projector remote off his desk and asked Lucas to sit down next to Sonia. He turned on the projector and logged in. "As I said before, I'm glad to have another on the team. We needed it, especially now." A window came up showing medical records of a man named Lord Goro Kubo. "Lord Kubo," said Sonia cooly. Mr. Oba clicks through a few pages of the autopsy report, now being displayed on the projector wall. "Here," he says, using a laser to point out a certain part of the page. He clicks on a folder and pictures come up of the victim's neck. It has lined bruises as if something was wrapped around it. But they had a strange pattern about them as if it was done with multiple pieces of thin rope or string. "Perhaps some type of wire?" asked Sakura. Mr. Oba nods. "That's right, Sakura, but that isn't the strange part." "The insides of his throat and nose were torn, and his brain itself was what the pathologist could only describe as, "Scrambled." "Grody," said Sonia. Lucas leaned forward onto an elbow that he put on his knee, saying, "Tell us more about the victim." Mr. Oba sat down in his chair and opened the file on his desk and read from it. "Goro Kubo, born into a wealthy family in 1968, who have roots in France." Sonia leaned onto the couch arm and yawned into her hand, "Fancy." "His wife and son were in a horrific accident a few years ago," he flipped to the next page, "The wife died." "That's terrible," said Sakura. She was writing down everything happening in the meeting, as an old school secretary would have been. But Sakura was a very talented person, and she could write extremely fast. Lucas had never seen anything like it before and had been distracted by it a few times already. Sakura then asked, "Does it say what happened?" Mr. Oba flipped between the current and last page a few times and finally said, "We don't have that information." He closed the file and said, "It seems he has a private doctor who we haven't been in touch with yet." "No known enemies. But a man like that always has a few skeletons in his closet." Mr. Oba looked over to Sonia, whose eyes were about to close. "I'm going to need you to go to the address we have for the doc' and see if he's around." She stretched out, with one of her hands coming into Lucas's comfort zone as he moved back slightly. "Yep, that's fine, as long as I can go now." "Take Lucas with you." Sakura was in protest of this. "I've been filling in as Sonia's partner for the last four months. Why can't I go?" Mr. Oba stood up and simply said, "You know why Sakura. I can't risk anything happening to you." He then added, "I've never seen anything like this, not even from top cases at headquarters. I advise you all to be very careful going into this one." Sonia taps Lucas on the shoulder. "Come on, let's get going." In the parking garage across the street, Lucas and Sonia get into her black car. Her car is on the 8th floor, so she makes her way spiraling down to the exit of the car park. They turn into the street and run right into traffic. "Nice," she said, lighting up a quick smoke. She rolled down her window and looked over at Lucas saying, "Do you mind?" He shook his head no and she smiled. "Hey, can you roll your window down? I don't have anything automatic in this car." Lucas rolled down his window and asked, "Don't they pay you enough to get a nice new car?" She laughed and ashed her cigarette out the window. "I like this year's make. I had one of these after high school and I got used to it, so I got another after I wore out the old one." She took another long drag. "What about you? Thinking of getting yourself a nice fancy car with the salary we have out here?" Lucas shook his head. "No, I'm afraid not. I don't really drive." Sonia nodded, "Like, you never drove?" Lucas leaned his arm on the window and said, "No, I drove. I used to drive, for many years. But I had an accident and I haven't driven since." Sonia flicked her smoke out the window. "Yeah, I had a friend that happened to. She called it PTSD or something."