Chapter Text
His side of the crossing...
The metal of the space cocoon still vibrated under his feet, as if the very structure felt the echoes of the void. Gintoki was awake. He always was. It didn't matter if the ship's light cycles said it was day or night. Time, there, was a cruel invention, and he, a wandering body inside a mission with no promise of return.
Day 1
The heat of the city hit him as soon as he stepped off the collective transport ship. It wasn't the kind of heat from Yoshiwara or Edo, with their dense perfumes and suffocating humidity. It was a dry heat, half-industrial, heavy with metal dust and the smell of burnt fuel.
The main street looked like a corridor of low buildings, of simple and functional architecture. Nothing of shining domes or glass structures like in the Federation's noble areas. Here, everything was made to last. Practical. Gray.
The SIA building was just ahead. An austere construction, with thick reinforced concrete walls, narrow windows, and bars on the side doors. It looked more like an old registry office than the headquarters of an interstellar security department.
There was a simple plaque above the main entrance, with slightly worn metallic letters: "Archive Section – Central Division of Intelligence and Control."
No rank privilege worked there.
Gintoki tried to enter through the back door, as he did in other sectors, but was stopped before even stepping into the internal corridor.
— "Identification and prior scheduling, Lieutenant." — said the clerk in a neutral voice, without looking directly at him.
Not even the Second Division badge helped.
Resigned, he walked up to the reception desk, filled out the form like any ordinary civilian, and received a slip with the date and time for his first consultation in the archives. It wasn't for that day. It wasn't for that week. Bureaucracy seemed part of the game.
He needed a place to stay. And fast.
He walked around the building's surrounding streets, looking for some simple lodging. The larger hotels were out of the question. Besides being expensive, they were filled with officers and people connected to the SIA.
He wanted anonymity.
At the end of an alley, he found a small inn. Neon signs with failing letters, the smell of old cigarettes in the lobby, and an elderly man behind the counter who barely raised his eyes when he asked for a room.
The price was low. The room smaller than he expected. But it had a bed, a shower that worked stubbornly, and a window facing the back of a warehouse.
It would do.
He threw his backpack in a corner, took the communicator off his belt, and placed it on the nightstand, next to the sword.
He sat on the edge of the bed and breathed deeply.
The smell of the place was a mixture of mold and the memories of people who had already passed through there.
He took off his coat, loosened his shirt collar, and stared at the ceiling.
And it was there, that first night, that he tried to write to her.
He sat down again, picked up the communicator, opened a text file, and stared at the blinking cursor.
The words stumbled out.
"The cigarette smell here actually manages to be worse than your kiseru. And I thought nothing could beat that. The food tastes like wet paper, the coffee is watered down and... I miss a decent glass of wine, one of those we never open but keep saying one day we will. I tried to make tea. It turned out terrible. As always. I don't even know why I'm writing this... maybe just to fill the silence. Anyway."
He stopped. Read. Deleted everything.
Turned off the communicator with a sharp snap. Leaned back against the wall and exhaled slowly.
What the hell could he say?
That the silence was corroding him inside?
That even in that city full of people he felt as lonely as on the nights aboard a lost ship drifting in space?
That the memories of her were the only thing keeping his eyes open and his fists steady?
No.
He couldn't. Not now.
Before lying down, he picked up the communicator once more, ran his fingers across the cold metal, and left it there, on the table, like a mute companion.
And then, finally, he shut down.
Slept little. Badly.
But dreamed of her.
Day 2
The sound of footsteps in the hallway woke him before the improvised alarm even went off.
Gintoki opened his eyes slowly, staring at the stained ceiling as if it were part of some map he needed to decipher. He felt the weight of a poorly slept night in his body. A dry throat. Wrinkled clothes. The smell of the room... now with an extra pinch of frying oil coming from somewhere in the boarding house.
He swung his legs out of bed, lazily pulled on his boots, and went to the window. Outside, the air was still dense, loaded with fine dust and humidity that wasn't from rain, but from exhaust vents, machines, people.
He went down the stairs with his usual expression, that face of someone who had slept three hours less than needed. In the lobby, the innkeeper dozed behind the counter with a crackling battery radio playing some old song in the background.
He grabbed an instant coffee from a rusty machine in the corner of the room and stepped out into the street. The heat was the same, but it seemed dirtier that morning. More stagnant.
The plan was simple: try again to find some breach in SIA's bureaucracy.
When he arrived, the building was still as welcoming as a prison cell.
A line at the reception. People with tired looks, folders in their hands, some carrying cases with security locks. Agents from other divisions walking around as if they were all far too busy with secrets too important to share.
He approached the counter, appointment slip in hand, hoping maybe some charitable soul would squeeze him in ahead of schedule.
— "Awaiting protocol date, sir." — replied the same clerk from the day before, without even lifting her eyes.
Gintoki only sighed.
He turned back and walked away.
He walked through entire blocks, just observing. Noticed the type of businesses around: spare parts shops, warehouses of canned food, corner bars that seemed to never close. He saw some uniformed officers going in and out of nearby buildings, but no one he directly recognized.
He stopped at a newsstand, picked up one of the most wrinkled local newspapers, skimmed through the headlines without much attention, and bought a pack of mint candies. He didn't smoke, but needed something to keep his mouth busy.
Near midday, he decided to find someplace to eat.
He ended up entering a small, half-falling-apart restaurant, with a dead signboard and chipped wooden tables. The smell of old grease and yesterday's fry-up was soaked into the walls. But compared to the watery coffee at the inn... it would do.
He ordered a simple plate. Rice, vegetables, and some kind of processed meat he preferred not to identify.
While eating, he kept his eyes on the door. An old habit. Not paranoia... or maybe a little.
At the end of the meal, he pulled the communicator from his belt, that metallic radio with an old look that seemed rescued from a military junkyard. He opened the device with a mechanical snap and checked messages. Nothing. No sign of her. No update from SIA.
He closed the device with a bit more force than necessary.
On the way back to the inn, he stopped at the corner market and bought a pack of cheap tea. One of those with leaves chopped too fine, more like sawdust than anything else. But in the absence of something better, it would serve.
When he got back to the room, he set water to boil in a portable kettle he had carried since the last mission. The result was a pale liquid, tasting of iron and dust. But he drank it anyway.
The afternoon dragged on.
He spent hours reviewing old reports on his communicator's portable terminal. Tried to pull data on recent Second Division movements. Tried to probe for hidden codes in SIA's official messages. But everything looked too clean. Too smooth. As if someone had already wiped their hand over it, erasing all traces before he could even sniff anything out.
By the end of the day, with orange sunset light cutting through the poorly sealed window, Gintoki found himself once again in front of the terminal.
He opened the empty text file. The cursor blinking, insistent.
He thought of writing again. Something. Anything.
But the most he typed were three words:
"The heat continues."
He read it. Deleted it. Closed the terminal.
He grabbed the bokuto leaning against the side of the bed, ran his fingers across the blade, and left it there, within reach.
Before lying down, he opened the communicator once more. Checked for transmission signals. Parallel frequencies. Encoded noises.
Nothing.
No sign of her.
The sound of the street, muffled by the thin walls, hummed constantly.
When he finally closed his eyes, the smell of frying oil and old cigarettes followed him into sleep.
And on that second day, the emptiness felt a little heavier.
Day 3
He woke with his neck stuck to the crooked pillow, the taste of rust in his mouth, and the sensation that the room itself had shrunk a few more inches overnight.
The instant coffee went down scratching his throat. This time, without even trying the tea.
He threw on the crumpled jacket, clipped the communicator to his belt, and left, without looking at the bokuto resting in the corner of the room.
The SIA building stared back at him as always: gray, silent, full of secrets and concrete.
The day's plan... was simpler and more direct: get inside.
Not by appointment. Not by favor. Not by the counter.
By any other way.
He spent the morning circling the building's sides, pretending to look at electrical maintenance catalogs while mapping the entry and exit routes of general service staff. Cleaning shifts started before the official work hours, still in the dark of dawn, and ended around ten.
He waited until the flow lessened.
Behind the waste depot, near the ventilation outlet, he saw one of the janitors step out for a smoke. Thin, distracted, with a pocket radio playing some local sports match at low volume.
Gintoki moved before his brain could think.
Arm around the neck, sharp pull, body twist.
A quick chokehold, precise, leaving no time for reactions or cries.
The body collapsed limp in his arms. He dragged the unconscious man behind a stack of crates, covered him with a dirty tarp, and checked his pockets.
He grabbed the badge, maintenance radio, and backdoor access key. Put on the service uniform: a dark blue jumpsuit with the SIA logo on the sleeve. A bit tight in the shoulders, but usable.
He pinned the fake ID on the collar and adjusted the cap.
Took a deep breath.
After so many years of infiltration ops, his body performed these movements almost by instinct. The problem was his head. It kept racing too fast.
He headed in through the back.
The side door's security lock yielded to the janitor's card with a discreet beep. He entered.
Narrow corridors, worn metal floor, the smell of cleaning product and burnt cables.
Gintoki walked with lowered eyes, relaxed posture, pretending to carry a bucket with a few tools inside.
Then, turning the corner of the climate maintenance wing, he saw what he didn't expect.
Three amanto staff were standing by a security console. Faces covered with breathing masks, black uniforms, whispers in a language he didn't understand. One of them held a different badge: not maintenance, but one with a golden stripe on the side.
An unrestricted access badge for advanced security areas.
Technical coordination privilege.
Exactly the kind of thing he needed.
Gintoki couldn't just snatch the badge from the man's hand. Not then. Not with three of them standing alert.
So he observed. Waited.
The amanto finished adjusting something on the panel, clipped the badge back to his waist with a pressure clip and... dropped the data key without noticing.
It rolled under a cabinet, stopping half a meter from the opposite wall.
Gintoki kept walking with the bucket, moving slowly, as if he were just heading to the next room for maintenance. He took a few more steps, discreetly stopped, glanced back.
The three were still distracted with the panel.
He stepped back quickly, crouched, slid his arm under the cabinet, and grabbed the data key with a swift, contained movement.
He slipped it into the inner pocket of the jumpsuit.
Kept walking.
Turned at the next corridor and only then exhaled deeply, once the security doors closed behind him.
The key he'd taken was for internal use, but with priority access to environmental control files, cameras, and—most importantly—storage zones.
Perfect.
He knew exactly where to go.
Sublevel 5.
The Physical Archives.
Where the dust was real and fingerprints still mattered more than codes.
He crossed the technical wings using the key at the intermediate locks. On each floor, the system made a quick scan. The key's data barely scraped past the safety margin.
At the final lock, the terminal blinked yellow a second longer than expected.
Gintoki froze.
For an instant, he thought the alarm would sound.
But... the light turned green again.
The door opened.
Upon entering Sublevel 5, the temperature dropped abruptly. The walls were cold. The steel floor vibrated slightly, as if the whole building were breathing.
Metal shelves rose from floor to ceiling, crammed with folders, sealed boxes, and rolls of magnetic tape. No sound of people around. Only the echo of his own footsteps.
Gintoki walked to the row of external missions. Pulled reports, leafed through documents, analyzed stamps, seals.
And then he saw the pattern.
It all began with the erased names.
The SIA's convoy movement reports from the last four months showed an unusual pattern: the records were complete, but the identities of officers responsible for high-risk missions were either crossed out or replaced with incoherent alphanumeric codes.
The official excuse was "agent field protection protocol."
A lie.
SIA agents had always signed with real codes and hierarchy. Secrecy was not synonymous with total anonymity, and Gintoki knew that. After all, he himself had written countless of those reports.
That's how he began to track the missing.
Using times cross-referenced with food logs, lodging monitoring, and... showers. Few knew it, but the hydraulic system of sectors 3 and 5 of the central base logged individual water usage per badge, a conservation protocol adopted during last winter's blackouts.
There, Gintoki found the ghosts.
Names like Masuda, Lieutenant No. 43. Hidaka, communications officer from the Western Division. Hoshino, orbital tracking specialist.
All with active records until mid-last month. After that, nothing. No energy use, no discharges, no meals.
But also... no discharge record. No funeral. No leave notice.
Gone. Vanished from the structure without leaving blood. Only silence.
And then he began finding the duplications.
Folders with identical dates, but divergent information. A convoy registered as lost in report X... and as successfully delivered in report Y, signed at the same time by a different officer—an officer who, when checked, didn't even exist in SIA's original files.
Created. Forged.
This went beyond corruption.
It was systemic cover-up.
But the definitive proof only came when Gintoki decided to physically search the storage wing.
On the external missions shelf, section B-4, he found the original reports.
The alterations were there, visible.
Documents with reprint marks, stamps erased with chemicals, pages glued together, patched seals.
It was meticulous, desperate work.
As if someone were rewriting history in pieces, in a rush, like someone trying to cover a crack with tape.
One file in particular made him stop:
Mission: External reconnaissance
Date: April 3
Destination: Edo orbital border
Status: Incident in field
Handwritten notes: "Visual contact with unidentified ship. Order to return denied by command. Audio record of conversation: archived."
But... no audio attached.
Only a nonexistent protocol number.
And the signature?
Tsukuyo.
His heart stalled mid-beat.
She was in the center of it. In the eye of the storm.
And, most likely... the only one trying to resist from the inside.
Gintoki folded the document, hid it in the inner lining of his jacket—the one he himself had stitched, scanner-proof.
When he returned to the surface, he noticed the cameras.
Three.
Two of them off the standard axis. New. Without the typical wear of the sector.
Installed recently.
Aimed directly at the technical wing corridor.
A place that, until a few weeks ago... had been a dead zone of surveillance.
They were closing the net.
And now... he was inside.
Gintoki walked through the corridor as if he knew nothing, as if he were just another invisible worker among many, in his dirty jumpsuit with an empty bucket in hand.
But inside... his whole body throbbed.
The weight of the file hidden in his jacket lining seemed greater than it should. As if it carried with it every crossed-out name, every silenced voice, every erased trace.
He turned the ventilation wing corner, crossed the maintenance yard, and walked to the back exit.
The same janitor's card still worked. For not much longer, he knew.
He swiped the badge, the light went green.
Door open.
Fresh air.
He almost tripped on purpose just to disguise the tension in his legs.
Once far enough from the building, he turned into a side street, cutting behind a row of electronic scrap containers. He tossed the cap and stolen badge into a box of old parts and walked two blocks on foot without looking back.
He caught a collective taxi at the corner of the sorting center, blending in with a group of night-shift workers.
He sat in the back seat, near the emergency door.
Stayed there, head low, while the city dragged by through the window.
Outside, neon lights reflected in foul puddles, distorting the colors as if everything were an underwater nightmare.
Inside, his chest waged war.
Tsukuyo.
She had been on that mission. She had seen something.
And someone... someone was doing everything so no one would ever know.
The file with her name burned against his body, as if every fold of the paper carried a veiled threat.
Gintoki closed his eyes for a moment.
Tried to organize his thoughts.
The next step... needed to be clean, fast, outside official channels.
Trusting someone from SIA... was out of the question.
Maybe... a discreet visit to the audio records sector.
Or, if he got lucky, a physical copy of that audio might still exist in some backup station, in the old servers of the east tower.
But one thing was certain.
They were hunting ghosts.
And now... he was one too.
The vehicle stopped at a light.
Gintoki jumped out before it changed, disappearing into the crowd returning from the night shift.
The silent war had begun.
And he was already too deep to turn back.
Day 4
The rumor had started even before the sun came up.
Gintoki heard the first whisper right at the subway entrance, while buying a watery vending machine coffee:
— "They said there was an invasion at SIA last night."
— "Seriously? But... who would be crazy enough to try that?"
— "They say it was just a technical problem, but... I saw the security trucks arriving. And late."
Gintoki kept his eyes on the plastic cup in his hands, as if the conversation wasn't meant for him.
He took a sip. Too bitter.
The taste seemed to stick to his tongue, as if the coffee carried the weight of everything he tried to ignore.
The city went on the same. Chaotic, noisy, with that smell of burnt oil and cheap cigarettes that clung even to clean clothes.
But... at the SIA building, things were different.
He noticed it as soon as he got closer to the central area.
There was an informal blockade on the sidewalks around it. Agents in civilian clothes, but their posture far too military to hide.
Security guards checking IDs with more scrutiny than usual. Sniffer dogs, something he hadn't seen in months.
And new cameras. Dozens. Installed on corners, garage entrances, even in the windows of nearby buildings.
The entire building seemed to have woken up with a fever of paranoia.
Gintoki knew the reason. And the problem was... he was part of that fever now too.
If he stayed there much longer, someone would start connecting the dots.
Go back to the inn? Out of the question.
Even if the landlord was the type who barely looked up from his newspaper, sooner or later some SIA patrol would pass by, cross-checking lodging records.
It was time to vanish from that address.
He caught a low-route transport to the industrial zone, near the old cargo warehouses. The lodging options there were worse, but the anonymity... greater.
He found a hotel tucked in the back of an alley. No name on the front. Just a sign with the word "Vacancy" flickering in worn-out blue neon.
He paid in advance, no surname, using a temporary payment code he had set up before leaving Earth.
The room was a little bigger than the previous one, but only a little. The walls, stained with dampness. The ceiling fan rattled with an irritating noise, like it might fall apart at any moment.
Better than nothing.
He dropped his backpack, locked the door and only then exhaled deeply.
He needed focus.
He needed to organize everything.
He grabbed the communicator, switched it to offline mode, and began cross-checking the data collected over the past three days.
The folder with the makeshift label: "Erased Names / Water Trace / Fake Codes."
Each entry was a piece of a puzzle without a reference image.
The power usage logs in SIA's internal wings matched the periods of "name erasures." Always between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m.
Cross-referencing with the hydraulic plant supply reports...
Nothing.
Zero consumption at the stations where those supposed agents were meant to be. No showers, no toilets, no equipment cleaning.
Ghosts.
Once again, he drew a timeline.
First, the reports with random codes.
Then, the sequence of duplicated missions.
Now, the physical records altered on the shelves of the security wing.
It all pointed to one thing: internal manipulation. And big.
And now... with security on high alert, the next step would be even riskier.
Gintoki leaned against the wall, rubbed his face with his hands.
He needed a way to access the audio records room.
The problem was that after the invasion, the access protocol would change.
He would need a new badge... from someone with legitimate access.
Or maybe... from someone who would be called in to reinforce security in the coming days.
An idea began to take shape. Incomplete, but with potential.
He picked up the portable radio from the table, turned the dial until he found SIA's local monitoring frequency.
Kept the volume low, almost mute, but just enough to catch the start of any important transmission.
The metallic voice of the central operator began repeating coded orders:
— "Alpha-32, east sector. Bravo-17, night reinforcement on perimeter two. Charlie-05, prepare rotation scheme for internal security..."
Gintoki closed his eyes for a moment.
Breathed deeply.
The game was about to change again.
But so was he.
He was already too tired to back down now.
That night, before collapsing onto the hard mattress, he wrote down three names of agents with predictable routes in the next 48 hours.
And one of them... with direct access to the audio files.
Day 5
The morning arrived with a metallic taste in his mouth.
Gintoki woke before his makeshift alarm, a program on his pocket communicator that vibrated more than it rang. You couldn't rely on noises in that neighborhood. Any loud sound drew too much attention.
He rubbed his face, eyes still heavy, and stared at the cracked ceiling for a few seconds.
The communicator, still tuned to SIA's security frequency, sputtered with intermittent static and coded transmissions.
Surveillance at the main building had doubled overnight.
More patrols. More cameras.
And more paranoia.
Perfect.
It was when security screamed outward that the internal cracks showed.
The morning's focus would be a specific name: Subofficer Enomoto – Technical Sector of Audio Records.
Not someone of high rank, but he had what Gintoki needed: a functional badge and direct access to the recording and storage rooms.
Gintoki knew Enomoto took the subway to the east station around 8:40 a.m. Confirmed from the schedule cross-checks he had built the night before.
The plan was simple.
Simple and stupid, like almost everything he'd been doing in this mission.
He left the hotel before eight, jacket zipped up to his neck, cap pulled low over his brows.
He positioned himself near the station exit. Crowds coming and going. Lines of workers with hurried steps, carrying briefcases, backpacks, and accumulated sleeplessness.
The target appeared right on time.
Subofficer Enomoto was an Amanto with grayish skin, his body slightly disproportionate: arms too long for his torso, shoulders hunched as if he carried the world's weight.
The civilian SIA uniform looked ill-fitted on him, sleeves too short, pants rolled up carelessly at the cuffs. He walked with a dragging gait, legs bending awkwardly, like someone not made for this planet's gravity.
On his head, three small bony protrusions jutted from the base of his skull, almost hidden under a worn beanie to avoid curious stares.
On his back, a grimy backpack, zipper half-open, papers sticking out.
He was the typical invisible employee no one greeted. No one looked at twice.
Exactly the kind Gintoki needed.
He followed him for half a block.
When the guy turned into a side alley, eyes glued to the wrist terminal's message screen... that was it.
A quick move, a chokehold, a precise twist at the neck to cut airflow for just enough seconds.
No fuss. No screams.
Gintoki dragged the unconscious body behind a stack of crates, covered it with a dirty tarp, and checked the pockets.
Badge, portable terminal, technical sector key.
Perfect.
Changing clothes was the most disgusting part. Enomoto's shirt was damp with sweat and his coat smelled of reheated food and cheap disinfectant.
But it worked.
He tossed his cap aside, fixed the badge on the outer pocket, and followed Enomoto's usual route.
The side entrance of SIA was busier than normal, but no one paid attention to low-level employees at that hour.
He passed the ID scanner without being stopped.
No lingering looks. No immediate suspicion.
The destination: Basement Level 3, audio records archiving sector.
The room itself was protected by dual authentication: badge and biometrics.
But Gintoki knew a flaw: on Monday mornings, the fingerprint system usually froze during shift change, forcing staff to use badge-only access until IT rebooted the server.
And guess what day it was?
He followed the employee flow. Said good morning to two strangers in the hallway, not even sure who he was waving at. No one replied. Better that way.
At the security door, he swiped the badge.
The green light blinked. The lock clicked.
Inside, the environment was cold and muffled. Walls lined with acoustic panels. Metal shelves stacked with physical data cases, and at the back, a quick-access terminal for the last 90 days of records.
Gintoki didn't have much time.
He went straight to the search panel, typed the protocols linked to the period of missing missions and the name that unsettled him most:
Tsukuyo.
The screen processed.
Two files appeared listed:
Communication Record – Date: April 3 – Status: Restricted / Level 5
Internal Transmission – Date: April 10 – Status: Corrupted File / Restoration Request Pending
Shit.
The first, inaccessible to any tech badge. The second, a blank hole.
Gintoki exhaled sharply. Looked around.
In a corner, near an old console, a storage box with the seal: "Requests – Physical Audit – Do not open without authorization."
He knew that type well. It was where they kept backup copies for audits... because no one trusted digital backups 100%.
He opened it carefully, rummaged inside, and there it was: a physical recording chip, the model used for field voice logs.
No external labeling. No identification. Just a serial code that... matched the date of her written report.
Gintoki didn't think twice.
He slid the chip inside the lining of his shirt sleeve, secured it with a strip of electrical tape he'd carried in his pocket since this madness began.
No time to look for more.
Before leaving, he made sure to disconnect the quick-access terminal. A thirty-minute system delay would be enough to buy him time.
Crossing the hallway again, he noticed the first security agents beginning internal inspection mode.
He exited through the side door, walking with Enomoto's dragging step, crossed the street like just another employee eager to get home.
At the corner, he tore the badge off his chest, turned the next block, and disappeared into the service stairs of a commercial building.
He only truly breathed again three blocks away.
There, finally, he sat on a park bench, pulled the chip from its hiding place, and stared at that piece of plastic and metal as if it were radioactive.
In his head only one question echoed:
What had she said in that audio... and why was someone at SIA willing to hide it at any cost?
He didn't have the answer yet.
But now... at least he had a lead.
Day 6
The city seemed louder that morning. Patrol sirens cutting the air in short intervals, surveillance drones flying over the civil sectors, and a visibly larger number of SIA agents roaming the streets near the Archives Division building.
Gintoki noticed it even before leaving the new inn. Something was different.
He turned up the collar of his coat, shoved his hands into his pockets, and walked unhurriedly toward the nearest subway station. For safety, he had left the communicator turned off; he couldn't afford to draw attention. The old bokuto, worn and silent, swayed discreetly at his belt, half-hidden by the edge of the overcoat.
But it was useless.
Before reaching the platform entrance, he noticed two uniformed agents standing near the turnstile, exchanging information through a portable terminal. Both stared at the screen with too much focus.
Curious, Gintoki moved closer, discreetly. A single glimpse of the display was enough to understand.
A list of physical characteristics.
"Suspect. Male. Approximately 1.80m. Light hair. Pale complexion. Slouching gait. Last known location: North Sector, near the SIA service exit."
Gintoki took a deep breath, disguising his tension.
It was him.
Or at least... someone very much like him.
The description was generic enough not to incriminate him immediately, but detailed enough to make every step a risk.
He tried to retreat quietly to leave the agents' line of sight, but at that exact moment, a third man appeared from the station's side—an internal security officer of the SIA, holding a larger tablet, with a 3D rendering of a suspect created from surveillance cameras.
It wasn't a perfect likeness. The face was blurred. But the posture... the walk... the frame of the body.
— "Hey... wait a second..." — one of the agents muttered, frowning as he looked at him.
Gintoki didn't wait for the second to call reinforcements.
He spun on his heels, shoved his shoulder through the crowd, and vanished into the station's emergency stairwell.
The security radios exploded with simultaneous transmissions.
The chase had begun.
Gintoki plunged into the narrow alleys of the industrial sector, cutting through backstreets, jumping low walls, and crawling under maintenance fences.
Twice, he was almost cornered by tactical teams of local security, but the geographic knowledge he had gathered over the past days, and that old survival instinct, led him to routes most of his pursuers wouldn't dare to follow.
Abandoned buildings, dimly lit service corridors, even the underground drainage tunnels.
By afternoon, he managed to shake them off for a while, but the reconnaissance drones still hovered above.
That's when he found shelter in an old decommissioned parts warehouse, near the cargo zone of the orbital supply station.
The place smelled of burnt oil and rust, but at least it had shade and crates big enough to hide.
There, with his heart still racing and breath short, he managed to discreetly access a public terminal through his communicator. He needed to know how far the net had spread.
Civil communication channels were buzzing with rumors.
Some claimed the SIA building intruder was a deserter. Others said a rogue agent. More exaggerated rumors spoke of a terrorist infiltrated under orders from hostile Amanto factions.
Local authorities tried to downplay the alarm, but the growing number of roadblocks and heat-sensor sweeps betrayed how much the situation had escalated.
And then... an alert update flashed on the terminal screen:
"Search expansion: starting at 00:00, the entire East Sector will enter containment protocol for suspects."
Gintoki muttered a low curse.
If he stayed, he'd be hunted like a rat in a cellar.
He had to leave before nightfall.
But the main accesses were already blocked, trains suspended, and civilian vehicles under plate monitoring.
The only way out was through the orbital docks' maintenance sector, a poorly supervised area always infested with Amanto workers and cargo haulers who barely had time to lift their heads.
Decision made, Gintoki pulled up his hood, shoved the communicator back into the inner pocket, and ran along the side of the deactivated tracks.
Night began to fall. The sirens never stopped.
He knew: the next day wouldn't start with rest.
It would be restless.
Perhaps... the hardest yet.
Day 7
The day broke with the metallic sound of drones crossing the sky and alarms echoing on every civil frequency.
Gintoki no longer knew how many hours he had slept. Maybe none.
He was dirty, unshaven, reeking of industrial dust and exhaust smoke. His clothes, already worn from the past days, clung to his skin like a second layer of grime. His wrist throbbed from the sprain he'd suffered falling over a wall the previous night.
But that was the least of his problems.
The news on public panels boiled down to one thing: "Intruder still at large. Search perimeter expanded."
Plainclothes agents roamed the streets. Mobile barricades were set up at strategic points. Even markets had identity checks. Civilians were frisked without explanation. Any unfamiliar face became the target of suspicious stares.
Gintoki knew the net was closing.
He had only a few hours before becoming officially a "termination target."
~🌹~
Now, he was hidden in an abandoned maintenance room inside the logistics sector, using an old terminal, completely cut off from the SIA's main network. An ancient machine, with a burnt-orange interface, a keyboard too stiff, and a fan buzzing with an irritating whine.
There he organized the few data fragments he had managed to save in recent days: copies of redacted reports, lists of missing agents, and incomplete cargo logs.
His head was starting to feel heavy when his belt vibrated.
A discreet notification.
The portable radio, programmed only for emergency-level alerts, flashed with a single text message.
No greeting.
No codes.
Just one line:
"Second Division Lieutenant, Sakata Gintoki. Commander Tsukuyo urgently requests a direct report. Hand-delivered."
He froze.
The name... the tone... the format...
Shinpachi.
But at the same time, not Shinpachi.
Gintoki knew the boy's style. He knew every nuance of the messages he usually sent.
This wasn't a real request. It was an alert. A subtle, desperate warning disguised as formality.
Shinpachi would never call him that, especially knowing his location outside the base, without authorization for direct communication. Much less use Tsukuyo's name like that.
It was a signal.
He didn't waste time.
He grabbed the communicator, the data chip hidden in the lining of his bag, and strapped the old bokuto to his belt before slipping out through the side of the room, sneaking down maintenance corridors.
The plan was simple. Or at least... the most viable at the time.
The orbital station cargo area.
A chaotic enough place, with constant traffic of workers, mechanics, and Amanto haulers. Almost no direct supervision from the SIA. The place was considered a logistical nightmare, with security handled by civilian contractors and interplanetary transport companies.
Disguised, wearing a battered cap and protective goggles from one of the maintenance lockers, Gintoki made his way to the loading zone.
The problem was... the haste.
Halfway through, while crossing an inspection corridor, he ran right into a tactical reconnaissance team.
Three human agents and two Amanto from internal security.
One of them looked at him for only a second... but it was enough.
— "Hey... wait a second...!" — one of the Amanto lunged, his reptilian face already baring serrated teeth.
Gintoki didn't think.
He dropped the first with a swift kick to the knee, slipped under the arm of the second, and bolted down the corridor, ignoring the shouted alerts erupting from their radios.
The confusion spread through the cargo sectors like wildfire.
Workers shouting, crates toppling, internal invasion sirens blaring as he dashed between metal compartments.
He was nearly caught trying to cross Hangar 3, where a group of Amanto workers was sorting containers.
That's where the opportunity appeared.
One of the haulers, a blue-skinned Amanto with long arms, had left a functional ID badge hanging from a hook while stacking goods on a transport platform.
Seizing the general distraction, Gintoki moved like a ghost.
He snatched the badge, threw on a loader's vest, pulled the cap down over his eyes, and slipped directly onto one of the loading ramps for refrigerated organic cargo.
The transport ship's cargo bay was still being sealed.
Without hesitation, he slid under one of the storage racks, curling himself between two containers.
The steel door shut behind him.
And then, everything became darkness and the muffled hum of engines preparing for ignition.
Outside, the chaos raged on.
Agents dashed back and forth, trying to track heat signatures inside the hangar.
But it was already too late.
Gintoki... was on his way out of that station.
For now.
And he knew... the next destination would bring him closer to the answer.
Or to death.