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Somewhere, distantly, Rei registers the sound of shattering ceramic. His hands shake, his heart feeling as though it's stopped. His chest is tight; he can't breathe. None of what he's seeing makes sense.
A black Chevrolet truck with a familiar license plate, doused in accelerant and set aflame. He knows that truck. He's been inside it too many times.
A body inside, the right hand, coincidentally in his pocket, the only thing left of him to be used as an identifier – his identity apparently confirmed by fingerprints found on a cellphone.
A bullet hole in the corpse's skull.
The video on his own phone from Gin; Kir shooting Akai Shuuichi twice. Gin gloating about his victory.
He hadn't believed the video at first – there was no way it could be real; Akai Shuuichi wouldn't have been tricked so easily – but now the evidence seems to line up.
Akai Shuuichi is dead.
Somebody speaks beside him – to him? Hiro? – but he finds he can't focus. There's a buzzing, static noise in his brain and it overpowers everything else.
Something warm and wet seeps into his sock through his slipper. He looks down to see a broken, white mug on the hardwood floor, its contents spilled. Who dropped that?
"Don't move, Zero. Hiro, can you–" Date. That's Date's voice. That's Date beside him with a broom and a towel.
A hand closes around his bicep. Hiro? He can't find in himself the muscle control to turn his head and look, but his instinct tells him it's Hiro. It's always Hiro.
Somewhere behind him, someone else – Matsuda. – says, "Shit, I think he's in shock."
The hand on his arm tugs him gently, closer, away from Date, away from the ceramic shards on the floor.
Akai Shuuichi is dead.
Hiro has teased him for years about his crush, but Rei is a professional. And professionals don't fall in love with criminals.
Even if said criminal's eyes sparkle with joy as he pushes and pushes and pushes Rei's buttons to the point of anger.
Even if said criminal seems to understand him in a way that most can't.
Even if said criminal turns out to be an undercover FBI agent.
Their lives are too dangerous for such frivolities.
"Zero," Hiro murmurs next to him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. Rei barely notices.
"This can't be right," he says, numb, unblinking. He feels detached from himself, almost like he's watching from a distance. For a moment, he feels nothing – not confusion, or sorrow, or anything tangible.
He was going to reach out to Akai. As soon as it was safe enough for both of them, he was going to try to talk to him, convince him that they're on the same side. But Akai just had to go and get himself shot, didn't he?
That idiot! He should've known better!
Anger bubbles up inside him. A lump forms in his throat. He wishes he had something to throw. That mug somebody dropped before would shatter nicely against the wall.
He wishes he could scream at Akai, tell him how stupid he is.
He wishes he could – drag Akai back out of the grave he's crawled into and kill him himself, for making him feel this way.
He wishes Akai Shuuichi wasn't dead.
He wishes it was Kir, or Gin, or anyone else in that truck.
"Sorry, Zero." Matsuda again; closer this time. "I was there when the scene was processed."
Who would've thought that it'd come to this…
Akai's last words are seared into his brain. What did he mean?
Kir is an active, codenamed Organization agent. Of course she would shoot a spy, given the opportunity. Akai would have known that.
Rei's right hand closes into a fist, his fingernails digging into his palm. It stings; it keeps him grounded.
"No." Something isn't right, and he's going to find it.
Right? …Right hand?
That feels like a thread, an inconsistency, so he pulls on it and watches it unravel before him.
Akai's right hand had been left unburnt, protected by the pocket of his trousers. The fingerprints from Akai's right hand had been found on a borrowed phone.
Akai Shuuichi is left handed.
Akai Shuuichi is too smart to blindly walk into an obvious trap without some kind of backup plan.
"There has to be a trick somewhere." His own voice sounds foreign to his ears, cracked and quiet and laced with an undeniable ache.
"Zero…" Hiro tries again. He sounds like he doesn't believe Rei – but Rei knows he's right about this. He can see it now.
Something akin to hope flares in his heart. For the first time in – seconds, minutes, hours? – he notices it beating again.
As the pieces fall into place, two things become clear in Rei's mind.
The first is that he needs to investigate. Akai Shuuichi is far too clever, too skilled to have been tricked by a nobody like Kir.
"He's not dead," Rei insists, suddenly determined. "He can't be."
This time, Hiro pleads with him. "Rei, I know you want that to be true, but–"
"No. It is true." He pulls away, despite Hiro's protests.
Hiro reaches for him again; he ignores it and heads for the door.
He could get in touch with the FBI, but he doesn't know if they're aware of him. They certainly don't know that he's a spy. They'd likely lie to cover Akai's tracks, even if they did know.
No, he needs to test them in such a way that they can't fake their reactions. He'll need to be thorough. Perhaps he can enlist Vermouth's help.
"Furuya!" Date calls to him. Rei ignores him, too.
Matsuda tries to get in his way, block his path, hold him in place, but Rei won't be stopped. He pushes past Matsuda and puts his shoes on. His sock is still wet.
The second thing he needs to do is confront Kir.
Akai Shuuichi is not dead – and Rei is going to prove it.