The Traitor's Flight
"This is Schluss Heinkel. My attendant should be at the director's residence. Please pass along a message."
"Yes. What would you like me to say?"
I stopped by the Imperial Academy's main gate and asked the guard to deliver a message to Emilia. The round trip from the gate to the director's residence would take an hour, so this was the only way to save time.
"Tell her I might not make it back tonight."
"I'll relay it exactly as you said."
I might have to pull an all-nighter. The last thing I wanted was to stay up all night when I had to visit the imperial palace tomorrow, but there was no helping it. Not if I wanted to prevent the intelligence agency from being annihilated and the kingdom from falling apart.
"Damn it... How did things end up like this?"
I started running toward the old town again. In the original story, this episode had been light—almost comedic. A traitor who had been swayed by the empire's sweet offer tried to flee with the agency's documents, only to be caught by Hurtlocker and beaten to a pulp. It had been a contrived scene meant solely to showcase Hurtlocker's overwhelming physical prowess.
But the bastard had actually succeeded in escaping with the documents. Honestly, even I had no way of knowing how far he had gotten. He might have already slipped past the agency's encirclement and made contact with the imperial police. If that were the case, the intelligence agency was as good as finished.
All I could do was hope he was still inside the old town and that the agency's agents had him boxed in. Fortunately, I knew exactly where the traitor would run. I had written from his point of view before. If he managed to escape the hideout with the documents intact, he planned to flee through the sewers. The agency's agents would never even consider it—there wasn't a single entrance to the sewers in the old town. Who would think of using a path they couldn't even access as an escape route? He intended to exploit that blind spot by digging into the ground near the sewer and forcing his way in.
And what I had to do was...
"Ugh. This damn smell."
Wait on the other side of the sewer. Standing at the sewer entrance in the new town, I had to pinch my nose shut. This was far worse than it had any right to be. Still, it wasn't as nauseating as the forbidden elixir. I could bear it well enough.
With a sigh, I stepped inside. Even a short distance in, it was pitch black. I could see without light thanks to my mana sensitivity, but the instinctive revulsion toward complete darkness was hard to ignore.
"Hoo. This is fucking awful."
There was nothing left for me to do now. All I could do was wait quietly, endlessly. I couldn't risk moving and missing him. I had no idea whether it would take him an hour to finish digging, whether it would be the middle of the night, or whether it would be dawn. For all I knew, he might get caught by an agency agent while digging, rendering my wait pointless.
The more I thought about it, the more infuriating it was. Why the hell did I have to do this shit work?
"Situation report."
- Team 1 on standby. Nothing to report.
- Team 2 on standby. All clear.
- Team 3 on standby...
Hurtlocker squeezed his eyes shut at the constant stream of voices coming through the communication artifact. Agents had been stationed at every entrance and exit leading out of the old town. Yet after eight hours of encirclement, there was still no sign of that damned traitor. He couldn't have escaped the perimeter already. He had to still be holed up somewhere inside the old town.
'Where the hell are you...'
Hurtlocker had been tasked with searching the interior of the old town. No one else could subdue the traitor single-handedly without causing a commotion. But after eight hours, he had nothing to show for it either. Was the man hiding in some civilian's house? Night had already fallen deep.
Hurtlocker was growing restless.
'We can't let him last the night.'
The fact that the traitor had fled with the documents meant he had a client willing to buy them. That client was probably expecting to receive the documents tomorrow. If the traitor didn't show up by then, the client would start moving. The imperial police might storm the old town and extract both the traitor and the documents. That would be game over. The intelligence agency would be annihilated and completely neutralized. They would lose their only means of preventing the empire from resuming the war—their intelligence resources. That outcome had to be prevented at all costs.
'Think. Use your head.'
Hurtlocker took a moment to calm himself and stood upright. He had already cast detection magic across the entire old town, but it had yielded nothing. He needed to consider methods beyond simply running around.
'The traitor must have a plan of his own.'
He couldn't have anticipated this situation. Hiding was a last resort, never the best option. So he must have prepared another way to break through the encirclement. The question was what that method was...
'Think. If it were me...'
Hurtlocker's mind began working furiously. Overpowering the surrounding agents directly. Or leaping across rooftops... Several ideas came to mind, but all of them seemed nearly impossible given the traitor's physical capabilities. As he continued to ponder—
"The sewers...?"
The thought struck him suddenly. The sewers were indeed wide enough for a person to move through and connected all the way to the new town. It would be an ideal escape route, but the problem was that there were no passages leading into the sewers from the old town. There were drainage grates for rainwater, but nothing a person could use to enter or exit.
"Wait. There aren't any? Then all he has to do is make one."
Hurtlocker's bloodshot eyes widened. Why had he never considered the sewers as an escape route until now? If there was no passage, he could simply dig one.
"Standby teams! The sewers, immediately—"
"What? What did you say?"
"Tch. Never mind. Stay on standby!"
Hurtlocker cut the communication and started running. He had wanted to order someone to block the other end of the sewer, but that would create a hole in the encirclement. Perhaps that was exactly what the traitor was counting on. That was why he couldn't move any other agents—he had to go himself.
Where should he go? Should he head to the other side of the sewer right now to block the exit? Just as the thought crossed his mind, Hurtlocker felt something off and came to an abrupt stop.
'What is this?'
The wind around him felt strange. This wasn't a place where a breeze should be blowing. Given the surrounding buildings, the wind shouldn't be able to pass through at all. Yet if there was wind, it meant there was some structural change nearby.
Having reached that conclusion, Hurtlocker spun around. Behind him stood a public restroom partially hidden by a wooden fence.
'There!'
Having determined the direction the wind was coming from, Hurtlocker immediately began flinging open the restroom doors. They rattled and creaked...
"Huh?"
One door wouldn't open. No one would be using a public restroom at this hour. Hurtlocker stepped back slightly, then—
"Hup!"
Crash! He kicked the door with all his strength, smashing it apart. Behind the violently forced-open door was—
"Ha. That crazy bastard."
Next to the toilet, a large hole had been dug into the floor—big enough for a person to pass through. The man had used the soft material of the restroom floor to dig his way down through the night. Though the stench was foul, there was no time to hesitate. Hurtlocker immediately forced his body into the hole.
*
"Haa... Haa..."
The man wearing glasses panted as he ran along the dark path. Thanks to his meager mana, the light from his illumination magic barely reached a few feet ahead.
"Whoa?!"
The man stumbled, flailing his arms before barely regaining his balance. Before him stretched a waterway with filth floating on its surface. One more step and he would have fallen in. Swallowing hard, the man clutched his bag tightly to his chest. He couldn't afford to drop the documents inside. If he sold just this to the empire, he could live as a noble. At the thought, the man chuckled and started running again, this time carefully watching his step so he wouldn't trip.
"It feels like we've come pretty far... When does this end?"
"It's almost over."
"...!"
At the low voice coming from ahead, the man skidded to a halt and raised his guard. The sound of footsteps—click, click—grew steadily closer. Soon, a man with a measured gait emerged from the pitch-black darkness. When the man saw his face, he couldn't help but cry out in surprise.
"Schluss... Heinkel...?"
"No need for introductions, I suppose."
Schluss Heinkel. The commoner who had stopped the intelligence agency's terror attack and killed the legendary Crow assassin Henderson. The man, who had been tense, lowered his raised fists and broke into a bright smile. This was the man who had fought against the intelligence agency and nearly killed Hurtlocker. In other words, he was practically an ally.
"So you were the one who wanted to buy the information? I never would have guessed!"
"Is that so."
"You must have come yourself because you were worried. I'm sorry for making you come all the way to this filthy place."
"It's fine. You brought the information, I assume."
"Ah! Of course!"
The man hurriedly rummaged through his bag and pulled out a bundle of papers. It was the detailed personal information on the intelligence agency's agents, including their photographs. He had spent so long meticulously planning his escape with just this one item. Thinking back on the past few days, the man felt tears welling up in his eyes.
"Is this the original?"
"Yes! It is!"
"I hope there aren't any copies left behind."
"No! I didn't make any copies! This is the only original!"
Even as he bowed obsequiously, the man felt no sense of unease. All he could see in Schluss Heinkel's eyes was an endless void. There was no way to tell what the man was thinking.
"Hand it over."
"Excuse me?"
"I said hand it over now. I'll pay you once we get out of this stinking place."
"Ah, yes! Understood!"
The man rushed forward and presented the file with both hands. He couldn't risk the client changing his mind because of any hesitation.
"...?"
He caught a glimpse of Schluss Heinkel snatching the file away. Though he hadn't been able to see the man's full face because he was still bowed, he was certain Schluss had been smiling. Was he that happy at the thought of destroying the intelligence agency? No, it wasn't that kind of smile. It was the smile of a devil whose mischievous side had been awakened...
Feeling that something was wrong, the man straightened up. Then he saw Schluss Heinkel standing there with a bundle of papers in one hand, grinning.
"Thanks."
"Wait, what are you—"
Whoosh—
In that instant, the papers caught fire. As the irreplaceable documents turned to black ash before his eyes, the man froze in place. Soon, the remains—burned beyond recognition—were tossed into the filthy water.