Chapter 2

"The target... is Omi."

There were several seconds of stunned silence in the room, as we each digested that in our own ways. All three of us were staring at the picture in total disbelief; certain that we'd heard her wrong.

The man in the picture was undeniably Omi, though it was fuzzy as if it had been taken through a telescoping lens from a far distance. Which, I realized belatedly, it probably had been. He'd changed - most of the baby fat had melted away, and while his face was still heart-shaped, it was lean and his fine bone structure was showing through. The smile lines around his mouth and eyes had faded and been replaced by lines of tension and worry. The sweet smile that had almost always graced his lips was missing, turned to a tight frown. It made him look much older than the nineteen years I knew him to be, where before he'd often been teased because he looked so young.

The picture showed his head and the top of his chest, and I could just make out what looked like the butt of a high-powered rifle resting against his right shoulder. His head was bent as though he were looking through a scope, one tooth showing as he bit his lip in a familiar gesture of concentration.

"Masaka!" Youji blurted out, swinging upright on the couch and leaning forward to get a better look at the picture. "Manx, you can't be serious! OMI? What on earth could OMI have done in the last two years to put him on Kritiker's hit list? You guys all but raised the kid! He worships the ground you walk on!"

Manx's face was set, her expression giving nothing of her feelings away, but I had the feeling the Youji's words had cut her deeply. "A little over a year ago, a new assassin going by the codename 'Black Cat' appeared on the underworld scene. His fees were ridiculously high, though the fact that he reportedly had never missed a hit argued for him being worth the price. Contacting him was no guarantee of retaining his services, however - he frequently turned down large amounts of money for no apparent reason.

"However, Kritiker tracked both his kills and his contracts, and there were far more of the former than the latter - indicating that he was either killing for pleasure in some cases, or that he was ultimately working for a higher power we couldn't trace, and taking jobs on the side." She paused, glanced around to make sure we were all paying attention. She needn't have bothered - we were all hanging rapt on her every word.

"Kritiker decided to investigate further when two of our own top agents were targeted by Black Cat. It's taken us nearly six month to catch him, but this," she gestured at the photo, "was finally taken by one of our operatives at the scene of an assassination last week. The rifle you can see him holding matches the ballistics analyses of the bullets retrieved from previous assassinations by him."

"Are we talking about the same Omi here?" I asked, my eyes wide with disbelief. "The kid who wouldn't voluntarily hurt a fly if it hadn't hurt someone else first? The same Omi who used to have monthly crises of conscience over all the people we'd killed?"

"Have you checked the backgrounds of his targets?" Ran wanted to know. "Is it possible that the people - even the Kritiker agents - that he's killing are corrupt?"

Manx shook her head slowly. "That's the worst part. Most of the targets have been underworld bosses and the like, yes. But about one in five is an innocent as far as Kritiker has been able to determine. The Kritiker agents he's killed - now numbering eight - have been some of our top agents. No suspicions on any of them. The latest three were YOUR replacements, and that's one of the reasons you've been called in. We have no one currently trained to handle someone of his expertise." She drew a deep breath.

"The kills of innocents, as far as we have been able to determine, are the ones that he does NOT have a known contract for. It is the expert opinion of Kritiker's psychologists that at some point after leaving Weiss, Omi reacted to the trauma of his experiences in an unpredicted fashion, and began this bizarre killing spree."

"You mean he snapped from the pressure," Youji summed up bitterly. "But why AFTER it was all over? Last I'd heard from him, he was in his last year of high school and doing well."

"Sometimes people don't react to stresses until they are long past," Ran murmured, his eyes shadowed. "Omi had a great many things that he hadn't truly faced - being Takatori's son was only one of them. His memories were still returning as well - possibly something in them caused this erratic change."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "You guys aren't serious, are you? Omi? Sweet, innocent little Omi? The one of us that nothing ever touched, no matter how bad? Come ON! Guys, there has GOT to be another explanation for this!"

Ran glanced over at me, and I could see that he wasn't any happier with the idea than I was. "You just said it yourself, Ken. Nothing ever touched him, ever got to him. How much do you think that cost him? To remain constantly cheerful and supportive of us?"

I flushed shamefully, aware of the truth of his words. Omi had shoved everything deep down inside and ignored it, so that he could be there when we needed him to be. I could remember the one time I'd found him collapsed on his bed, sobbing his heart out, just after Ouka had died. He'd choked down his tears and assured me that he was okay, and not to worry about him. Then he'd distracted me with something from the mission we'd been working on, and I'd forgotten all about it. Thinking about it now, I wondered how often he'd cried himself to sleep, when he'd been alone. "Shit," was all I could manage to say.

"If possible," Manx's voice broke, and she had to clear her throat before she could go on. "If possible, we'd like him brought in alive. Kritiker is very much responsible for him, and we do take care of our own. There is some hope that he can be rehabilitated."

I winced to hear that word applied to Omi - rehabilitation was something Kritiker did for the junkies and street rats that we had rescued. Not for a sweet kid like Omi.

"I'm in," Youji said, standing abruptly. "No one knows Omi like we do. We'll find him, talk him down, and bring him back in one piece. Right, guys?" He glanced at Ran and I for confirmation of our support. I nodded hastily, and was relieved to see Ran echoing the gesture.

I could see some of the tension drain from Manx's figure, and she unbent enough to smile at us gratefully. "Thank you, boys. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that Omi means every bit as much to me as he does to you. I'm counting on you in this. You have full access to any resources of Kritiker's that you might need."

She turned to leave, and paused on the first step, looking back at us over her shoulder. "White hunters in the darkness, hunt the..." she began the familiar ending spiel, but her voice broke and she shook her head. "Bring him back," she finished instead. "He doesn't deserve to go out like this. Not after everything he's done for us." Having said her piece, she continued up the stairs, leaving the three of us staring at one another in silence, wondering how exactly we were going to go about hunting one of our own.

The information Kritiker had supplied hadn't turned out to be particularly useful. Omi was too much of a professional, crazy or not, to leave an obvious trail. He never met his clients personally, and used a slightly different method of assassination every time. Oddly enough, there was no sign of him using his normal weapons of crossbow, longbow, or darts. Nothing predictable, no pattern that could be extrapolated and used against him. No indication of what he did or where he spent his time between hits.

We worked frantically, a sort of unspoken deadline hanging over us. We had to get to him as quickly as possible, before he killed anybody else. The more people he killed, the less likely that we'd be able to call him back to his old self - or worse yet, the more hateful of himself he would be if we DID manage to bring him back to normal. Of course at this point it another kill was really only one more drop in the bucket, but it hung over our heads anyway.

Finally, we decided to set up a sting. None of us could pose as the client, for obvious reasons, but we could and did get another agent from Kritiker to set it up. 'Black Cat' was notoriously hard to get a hold of, and it took us the better part of two weeks to contact him and indicate that we had an offer for him. The standard method, Manx had informed us, was to run a particular ad in a local newspaper. We placed the ad, and sat back and waited.

Wanted: one black cat, male. Needed to deal with rodent problem. Reward offered. A phone number followed, so he could get in touch with us.

To our surprise, it wasn't a phone call that we received, but rather a small parcel, sent by courier, which contained a cellular phone. The three of us and the agent - Nishikawa, his name was - sat staring at it in bewilderment for several long moments. The return address on the package had been simply 'Kuroi Neko' - Black Cat.

"He must have traced the number through the phone company," Youji finally offered. "Pulled the address out of their records. I suppose it's a good way of determining if the offer is legit, or if it's coming from a cop."

"Is there any way he could have connected you to Kritiker?" Ran demanded of Nishikawa. I felt sweat break out on my brow - if he'd clued in that it was a setup, we'd have to start all over again, and he would be doubly cautious of offers in the immediate future.

The portly Kritiker agent shook his head. "No. The house and phone are listed under my wife's maiden name, for that very reason. She's an elementary school teacher, no connections to the agency."

I think I jumped the highest when the phone suddenly rang, though I know I wasn't the only one. Sheepishly, Nishikawa and I glanced at one another, before Ran gestured for him to answer it.

"Hai?" He spoke hesitantly into the mouthpiece. The rest of us waited with our breath held, lest we give away our presence and frighten the quarry.

"I understand you have a rodent problem," the voice came back, distorted not only by the tiny speaker in the cell phone, but by electronic means as well. I would never have known it was Omi. Of course, he had been the one of us most inclined to electronic espionage and counter measures. "I may be able to help you with that. However, my fees are very expensive." He quoted a price that nearly made me whistle, until I remembered that I was supposed to be keeping quiet. Manx hadn't been kidding about the exorbitant fees!

"I can afford it," Nishikawa replied, his voice steady. He hadn't even blinked at the price - apparently he'd already been briefed on what to expect. "How do I send you the details?"

"In the battery compartment of the phone is a small key," the distorted voice replied. "It opens a lockbox in the Tokyo Central Bank. Leave the details there. Keep this phone with you at all times. If I decide to take the job, I'll contact you. If I don't get an answer on this line, the deal is off. Do you understand?"

"Hai. I understand. I'll have the details in the box by tomorrow." Nishikawa replied. There was an audible click, then silence as the line was disconnected. The Kritiker agent set the phone down on the table slowly, and stared at it as though afraid it would jump up and bite him.

Youji gave the low whistle I'd held back earlier. "Boy, oh boy. He's not playing around, is he? I'll give you ten to one he's tapped into the bank's security cameras, and he'll be watching for the drop. If he sees anything suspicious, he'll bail on it, guaranteed."

"Then we'll just have to make certain he does not see anything suspicious," Ran answered. He already had the back off the phone and was fishing about the insides. "Here it is." He withdrew the little key, dangling it from a short chain. The numbers '307' were incised on the metal, indicating WHICH lockbox it would open. Nishikawa took it.

"Aren't cell phones really easy to trace?" I asked, puzzled. Most professionals avoided dealing over cellular phones for that very reason, in my experience. Nishikawa shrugged.

"There wasn't a single thing in that conversation that could implicate either him or me," he answered. "Same as the add in the paper. That's why the details get put in the lockbox. If we did trace the cell phone back, I doubt we'd discover much from it - and HE would know that we'd traced it."

Youji had grabbed the phone from Ran, and was peering inside it. "Hey, look at this! He's got the battery rewired so that it uses a smaller size, to leave room for the key. But what the hell is this?" He indicated a small amount of gooey substance that was stuck around the wires at the top of the battery. "Bubblegum isn't usually his style."

I took a closer look at the dull grey material, and felt the blood drain from my face. "That's plastique, Youji!" I exclaimed, taking the phone from his probing fingers and cradling it gently in my own hands. I was well aware that plastique would NOT be detonated by shock, but I still felt uneasy with him poking at what was essentially a small bomb. "He's got it wired to explode - at a signal from his end, I'll bet. So there won't be any physical evidence if things go sour." I examined the charge a little closer. "It doesn't look like enough to do damage to anything but the phone, and maybe burn the hand of whoever was holding it. But I'm no explosives expert."

"Christ, he's not leaving anything to chance, is he?" Youji wondered aloud.

I grimaced, and looked him in the eye. "In his place, would any of us do differently? We were good at what we did, Youji. Not the best, but good. And he's only gotten better." I sighed, heavily. "Catching him may be the hardest job we've ever had."

Ran nodded silently, and Youji shrugged in defeat. We all knew the stakes on this - and there was no margin for error. Our friend's life, and possibly his sanity, was on the line. It was up to Weiss to save him from himself.

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