The Night Sky Swordsman (Sword Art Online X OC)

Chapter 87 Code 871

No one's POV

Yanai:......D-don't move!!

It was Yanai's voice. What was he talking about? Higa looked up, annoyed, and saw the muzzle of the pistol, gleaming and dark, just ten feet above him. Behind it, Yanai's little eyes were bloodshot and desperate.

Yanai: Get your hands off the keyboard! Or I'll shoot!

Higa:......Huh?

Higa's mind was blank for less than half a second. Then it all instantly snapped into place, and he had his conjecture.

Higa(mind): It was him!

Yanai. He was the spy who'd leaked information about Project Alicization to the Americans. Sadly, he couldn't think of a counterplan. He asked a meaningless question with a parched tongue.

Higa: Why, Yanai...?

The engineer's lips quivered, his pale forehead greasy with beaded sweat, and he wailed.

Yanai: J-just so you know...you're wrong to treat me like a traitor.

Higa(mind):"Treat" you like one? You are one!!

As if hearing that internal scream from Higa, Yanai added.

Yanai: I've always been dedicated to my goal. I'm carrying on the boss's last will...That's why I worked my way in with Rath.

Higa: The boss's...will? Who...are you talking about...?

Higa asked in a daze. Yanai swept his hanging bangs out of the way with his free hand and gave him a smile with a hint of madness.

Yanai: Someone you know very, very well...I mean Mr. Sugou.

Higa: Wh......?

Higa(mind): Whaaaat?!

It was a bigger shock to Higa than seeing the gun pointed at him. Nobuyuki Sugou. The man who'd been in Touto Technical University's Shigemura Research Lab at the same time as Higa, Rinko Koujiro, and Akihiko Kayaba. He'd always burned with rival ambition over Kayaba's extreme genius but never surpassed the man's feats in the end. So for some reason, possibly related, he'd abducted a few hundred SAO players for inhumane experiments while they were still trapped.

With Sora Kirigaya's help, his misdeeds came to light, and he was arrested. His first trial ended in a jail sentence, but he appealed, and the case was still in dispute at the Tokyo High Court.

Higa:...It's not like he's dead.

Higa muttered, eliciting a high-pitched giggle from Yanai.

Yanai: He might as well be. He'll get a minimum of ten years. That's death for any researcher. It was a close call for me, too, but I blamed everything on one of his other followers and managed to escape scot-free.

Higa: You mean...you were involved in Sugou's human experimentation, too...?

Yanai: Involved? Oh, I was the one collecting the data. Ahhh, that was a fun bit of research...all that virtual tentacle groping...

Higa(mind): How did Lieutenant Kikuoka fail to vet this scumbag's background?!

Higa wondered, incensed, but he realized just as quickly that it would have been impossible. Rath was a group camouflaged as a tech start-up, an attempt to create a purely domestic military industry that did not rest upon the bedrock of the American defense-system monopoly. In other words, their existence would pose a threat to the market share and profit of the existing conglomerate manufacturers and defense companies.

That made it very difficult to put together their engineering department. They were getting almost no engagement from the major companies, so the chance to recruit Yanai, who was part of RCT's full-dive R&D department, was a huge opportunity they couldn't pass up.