The helicopter descended through the gray morning sky like a steel bird of prey, its rotors churning the mist into spiraling vortices. Riku watched from the narrow window of the maintenance stairwell as it settled onto the landing pad behind the mansion, its engines whining down from a roar to a low, rhythmic thrum. The silver fox insignia on its fuselage glinted in the pale light, a mark he had come to associate with everything monstrous about this island.
Four figures emerged from the helicopter. They were not the black-uniformed guards Riku had grown accustomed to. These were guests—hunters—dressed in expensive outdoor gear, their faces obscured by sunglasses and wide-brimmed hats. They moved with the easy confidence of people who had done this before, who had flown to this island many times and knew exactly what awaited them. One of them, a tall man in a dark green jacket, carried a polished wooden case that Riku recognized from the cargo hold of the Umibozu—a weapons case, custom-made, the kind that held rifles or crossbows worth more than most people earned in a year.
"The third night's hunters," Haru said, his voice hollow. "They always arrive early. Kuroda likes to brief them personally, explain the rules, assign their targets. It's a ritual for him. A ceremony."
"How many hunters total?" Akari asked. She had her satellite phone out, still trying to find a signal, her fingers working the controls with practiced efficiency.
"Usually six for the final night. The four new arrivals plus two who are already on the island—the ones who've been hunting us since the first night. They're the most experienced. The ones who've earned Kuroda's respect." Haru paused, and his voice dropped to a whisper. "One of them is the man who took my hand. I recognized his voice in the forest. He's been coming here for years."
Riku looked at the hard drives bulging in his pockets. Six drives, each one holding two years of recordings. If Haru was right, those recordings would show every hunter who had ever set foot on this island, every kill they had made, every trophy they had taken. The evidence was not just against Takashima and Kuroda—it was against an entire network of wealthy, powerful people who had made murder their sport.
"We need to get these drives to the monitoring station," Riku said. "If we can transmit the files before the third night begins, the police can intercept the hunters before anyone else dies."
"The monitoring station is on the eastern slope," Akari said. "It's a two-hour hike from the mansion, through the forest. The survey team is supposed to visit it this morning. If I can rejoin them before they depart, I can use the equipment there to boost my satellite signal and send the files to Detective Sato."
"And if you can't rejoin them?" Yuki asked.
"Then I go alone. I have the coordinates. I have my forensic kit. I have enough training to navigate the terrain." Akari's voice was steady, but Riku could see the tension in her jaw, the way her fingers kept returning to the satellite phone as if it were a talisman. "The hard drives are the priority. If I can transmit even one of them, it'll be enough to trigger an investigation. The rest can wait."
Haru shook his head. "You won't make it alone. The forest is crawling with guards and drones. Even with the security system compromised, they'll be patrolling the perimeter. You need someone who knows the terrain, someone who can guide you through the blind spots."
"I'll go with her," Riku said.
Yuki started to protest, but Riku cut her off. "You can't walk. Haru needs to stay with you—if the guards find this stairwell, you'll need someone who knows the tunnels. I'm the only one who can move fast enough to keep up with Dr. Hoshino. And I've been through the eastern forest. I know the terrain. I know where the patrols are thickest."
Akari studied him for a moment, her sharp eyes taking in his torn clothes, his hollow cheeks, the knife still clutched in his hand. "You're seventeen years old," she said. "You've been hunted for two days. You haven't slept. You haven't eaten properly. Are you telling me you can hike for two hours through hostile terrain and still have the strength to fight if we're discovered?"
"I'm telling you I've survived worse," Riku said, and it was not a lie. The streets of Meiji City had been a hunting ground of their own, and he had learned to navigate them with nothing but his wits and his will. "I didn't come this far to die in a basement. If the only way off this island is through that forest, then I'm going through it. With or without you."
Akari's lips twitched in what might have been a smile. "You remind me of someone I used to know. A younger version of myself, maybe. Before the morgue taught me to be cautious." She tucked the satellite phone into her jacket and picked up her forensic kit. "Fine. We leave now. The survey team departs in thirty minutes. If we can intercept them at the monitoring station, I can send the files and return with them to the mansion before anyone realizes I was gone. If we miss them, we transmit the files ourselves and wait for Sato's response."
Haru pulled a folded section of his charcoal map from his blanket and handed it to Riku. "This shows the eastern sector. The monitoring station is marked with a red circle. The blue lines are streams—use them to mask your heat signature if the drones come back online. The green areas are dense cedar groves. Stay under the canopy as much as possible. And avoid the ravine here—" he pointed to a jagged line on the map, "—it's unstable. The seismic activity has made it worse. If you fall in, you won't climb out."
Riku folded the map and tucked it into his pocket alongside the hard drives. "What about you? What will you do?"
"Yuki and I will stay in the tunnels. There's a supply cache near the old mining entrance—food, water, medical supplies. I've been stockpiling it for months. We'll wait there until you return, or until the police arrive, whichever comes first." Haru paused, and his eyes met Riku's with an intensity that made the younger man's breath catch. "If you don't make it—if something happens—I'll make sure the world knows what you did. The boy who stole evidence from the devil's own server room. The boy who refused to be a trophy. I'll make sure they remember your name."
Riku did not know how to respond to that. He had spent his entire life being invisible, a ghost in a system that had no room for him. The idea that someone might remember his name—that his existence might matter—was almost too strange to process. He nodded once, a short, sharp gesture, and turned to follow Akari up the maintenance stairs.
They emerged from the basement through a service exit near the kitchen loading dock. The evacuation had ended, and the guests were milling in the gardens, their confusion giving way to irritation as the guards explained that the fire alarm had been a false trigger. No one noticed two figures slipping out of the loading dock and into the tree line at the edge of the eastern slope.
The forest welcomed Riku back like an old enemy. The rain had stopped, but the canopy still dripped with moisture, and the ground was slick with mud and fallen leaves. He moved quickly, his feet finding the quiet paths between the cedar trunks, his ears tuned to the sounds of the forest—the distant murmur of the guards' radios, the rustle of small animals in the underbrush, the periodic thump of the helicopter's rotors as it lifted off from the landing pad and flew toward the eastern side of the island.
"The hunters are being deployed," Riku said, pausing behind a large cedar. "The helicopter is dropping them at different points around the perimeter. They're getting into position for tonight."
"Then we need to move faster," Akari said. She was breathing hard, her forensic kit banging against her hip, but she did not slow down. "How far to the monitoring station?"
"An hour, if we don't stop. The survey team should already be on their way. We'll meet them there."
They pressed on, climbing steadily through the forest as the slope grew steeper. The cedars gave way to rocky outcroppings and patches of wild grass, the tree cover thinning as they gained elevation. Riku kept them close to the tree line, using the shadows to mask their movement. Above them, the clouds were beginning to break, patches of pale blue sky appearing through the gray. The storm had passed, and with it, the cover that had hidden them from the drones.
Halfway up the slope, they heard voices. Riku pulled Akari behind a cluster of boulders, and they crouched in the shadows as two guards passed on a patrol path below them. The guards were armed, but their rifles were slung over their shoulders, their attention focused on their conversation rather than the forest around them.
"...don't like it," one of them was saying. "The malfunction, the fire alarm, the server room going offline—none of this is normal. Something's wrong."
"Let the higher-ups worry about it," the other guard replied. "We're paid to patrol, not to think. The Collector says the hunt proceeds as planned. That's all I need to know."
Their voices faded as they moved down the slope. Riku waited a full minute before emerging from behind the boulders, his heart hammering. The guards were nervous. That was good—nervous guards made mistakes. But it was also dangerous. Nervous people were unpredictable, and unpredictable people were more likely to shoot first and ask questions later.
They reached the monitoring station just before noon. It was a small, prefabricated structure perched on a rocky ridge overlooking the eastern sea, its walls covered with solar panels and its roof bristling with antennae. The survey team's equipment was already there—portable seismographs, soil sampling kits, a laptop set up on a folding table—but the team itself was not. The station was empty.
"They haven't arrived yet," Akari said, checking her watch. "The evacuation must have delayed them. We have time." She set up her satellite phone on the folding table and connected it to the portable hard drive Riku had taken from the server room. The signal booster hummed to life, its lights flickering from red to amber to green.
"Signal acquired," Akari said. "I'm uploading the files to Detective Sato's secure server. It'll take about twenty minutes for the transfer to complete. Once it's done, even if Takashima destroys every piece of evidence on this island, there will be a copy in the police database."
Riku stood at the edge of the ridge, watching the forest below. The island spread out before him like a map come to life—the mansion on its hill, the dark sweep of the cedar groves, the silver ribbon of the stream where he had hidden on the first night. He could see the perimeter fence, still dark and unlit, and the dock where the survey vessel bobbed gently on the now-calming sea. And in the distance, barely visible against the gray horizon, he could see a second ship approaching—a larger vessel, moving fast, its bow cutting through the waves with military precision.
"Akari," he called. "There's a ship coming. It's not the survey vessel. It's bigger."
Akari looked up from the satellite phone, her eyes widening. She pulled out a pair of binoculars from her forensic kit and scanned the horizon. After a moment, she let out a breath that was half laugh and half sob. "It's a police cutter. Sato got my message. He's coming."
Relief flooded through Riku, so intense it made his knees weak. The police were coming. The nightmare was almost over.
But then he heard it—the crunch of boots on the rocky path behind them, the click of a weapon being readied, and a voice he recognized all too well.
"Dr. Hoshino," said Setsuna Mori, stepping out of the tree line with four armed guards at her back. "I believe you have something that belongs to Mr. Takashima."
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