The agents held firm.
Yuma pushed, pulled, twisted his wrists in every direction the holds didn't give. Trained for it. Probably trained for considerably more complicated cases than two teenagers in pajamas in a train cabin.
Nathan Smith stood in front of them, hands in his pockets, cigarette at the corner of his lips burning down with the slowness of someone who isn't in a hurry about anything. He was looking at them. Not with curiosity. Not with hostility. With that particular tiredness of someone who has done this kind of thing too many times for it to genuinely interest him anymore.
The smoke rose quietly into the cabin air.
Yuma watched it rise.
Looked at Nathan.
"Let us go," he said. "And go smoke somewhere else."
Nathan didn't answer immediately.
He took a long drag.
Then he stepped toward Yuma, slow and deliberate, leaned in until their faces were about twelve inches apart, and exhaled the smoke directly into Yuma's face with all the calm in the world.
Yuma froze.
The kind of anger that bypasses words and goes straight for the fists.
"You piece of "
"Enji."
Enji's voice. Calm, precise, with that tone of someone cutting things short before they get worse.
Nathan straightened up and turned to Enji.
"Could you explain to us why we've been arrested," said Enji. "And who you are."
Nathan looked at him.
A long moment.
Then he let out something that vaguely resembled a satisfied sigh.
"You can tell right away who's the smart one and who's the idiot in your little friendship."
He reached into his inside jacket pocket. A badge. Plain, official, with a symbol engraved on it that he held up in front of them for a few seconds before putting it away.
Enji saw it.
And his face changed.
Not gradually. All at once. Something leaving his features — the color, the certainty, that way he had of occupying space with assurance. He went almost white.
Yuma noticed immediately.
"Hey," he said to Nathan, still not knowing his name. "What did we do to you for you to show up in our cabin at dawn like animals?"
Nathan looked at him with the expression of someone who had been asked a question so predictable he had prepared the answer before the mouth even opened.
"Tell me, kid. Do you recognize the symbol on this badge?"
"No."
Nathan laughed.
Not a big laugh. A short, dry one, with something inside it that resembled disbelief mixed with amusement.
"I really landed a rare specimen this morning."
Enji turned his head toward Yuma.
"That's the symbol of the World Authority," he said. His voice was measured but something underneath it wasn't. "It's an international independent organization. They have authority over everyone. Hunters, guilds, governments. Over everything."
He looked at Yuma.
"If they're here for us we're finished."
Nathan pulled his cigarette down to the end. The last drag, long, deliberate. Then he blew a thick column of vapor toward the cabin ceiling with the satisfaction of a man who has just finished something.
"I'm not here for you," he said.
He reached into his pocket, tapped a new one against his palm, lit it with a worn lighter.
"But I've got questions."
Yuma started to understand the situation.
His shoulders relaxed slightly not completely, just enough for a different thought to circulate. He felt the agent's hold at his back. The distance between him and Nathan. The distance between him and the agent holding Enji.
He charged his left fist with mana discreetly, gradually, no visible gesture.
Nathan looked up at him.
Too late to pretend.
Yuma feinted toward Nathan.
Nathan didn't move a single centimeter.
But Yuma's fist wasn't going toward Nathan.
He pivoted at the last second, electric propulsion from his right heel, and struck the agent holding Enji precise impact to the solar plexus, not hard enough to seriously injure, hard enough for the hold to release completely.
The agent dropped to one knee.
Enji was free.
One second of silence.
Nathan looked at the scene. Looked at the agent on his knee. Looked at Yuma standing there, hand still open, looking back at him with the expression of someone who had just done exactly what he wanted to do.
He took a drag of his new cigarette.
"I underestimated you two a little," he said. Not with admiration. With the way of a man noting a fact in his head and moving on. "Makes you even more suspicious. Congratulations."
"We're not suspicious," said Enji immediately. "And we're ready to cooperate."
Nathan looked at them both in turn.
"Last night," he said. "One of my agents saw you in the dining car. Talking to two wanted criminals." He paused. "And you gave them food."
"That's ridiculous," said Yuma.
"We didn't talk to them," said Enji at the same time.
Nathan looked at them.
"One of you says it's ridiculous and the other says you didn't talk to them. That's not the same thing, kids."
Enji took a second.
"Yuma. Let me explain."
He turned to Nathan.
"Last night in the dining car two people came in. The first was very tall, the other more discreet. The tall one asked the cashier for burgers — there were none left. They released their mana in an uncontrolled way. The second one called them Number 8 and told them to stop. Yuma stood up because they approached our table. There was a mana confrontation. Nobody hit anyone. Then the two of them left. Yuma threw them two burgers on the way out and told them to ask more nicely next time."
Nathan smoked in silence through the entire explanation.
When Enji finished he didn't respond immediately. He was looking at a vague point between the two boys with the expression of someone turning something over from several different angles.
"Search it," he said finally to the agents.
The agents spread through the cabin. Methodical, precise the bags, the clothes, the equipment, the gaps between the mattress and the partition, the luggage compartment, the jacket pockets. Everything.
Yuma and Enji watched the cabin get turned upside down without saying anything.
Five minutes.
Then the agents straightened up and exchanged a look.
Nothing.
Nathan ground his cigarette against the window frame.
Looked at the two boys.
"You're free," he said. With the same tone he would have used to order a coffee. "But you don't leave this cabin. Confined until arrival."
"Out of the question," said Yuma.
"Wonderful. I've got agents outside your door anyway." He picked up his jacket from the edge of the bed where he had placed it without anyone noticing. "So it doesn't change much about your situation."
He headed for the door.
"Wait."
Enji.
Nathan stopped. Turned halfway. With the expression of someone who had been expecting this question from the start and had decided to answer it purely because he felt like it.
"Those wanted individuals," said Enji. "Who are they?"
Nathan looked at him.
"Members of the Phantom Twelve."
The silence that followed was different from the others.
Enji sat down slowly on the edge of the bed. Not because he decided to sit because his legs decided they were no longer fully carrying him. He placed his hands on his knees and looked at the cabin floor with something in his eyes that resembled someone recalculating everything from the beginning.
Yuma put his hand to his head.
That name. He had heard it somewhere. Not clearly, not recently something older, like a word spoken in a low voice in a conversation he wasn't supposed to have heard.
Nathan looked at them both with the eye of someone who reads reactions for a living.
"Leave your manas uncharged," he said from the doorway. "And don't try to play detective." He paused. "You're not equipped for that."
He walked out.
The agents walked out behind him.
The door closed.
The cabin returned to its ordinary silence the sound of the train on the rails, the morning light coming through the window, Vantarcity somewhere ahead.
Yuma and Enji stayed there for a moment without saying anything.
Then Yuma stood up, went to the door and opened it.
Two agents. Standing on either side of the corridor. Eyes straight ahead, arms crossed, with the stillness of people who had no intention of moving for social reasons.
"Move."
The agents didn't move.
Yuma looked at them.
The agents looked straight ahead.
"Enji," said Yuma. "Tell them to move."
"It's pointless," said Enji from inside.
Yuma closed the door.
He paced the cabin three steps one way, three steps the other, hands in his hair, thoughts moving too fast to be ordered.
Then he stopped in front of Enji.
"You don't have a plan?"
Enji looked at him with the expression of a man weighing several things simultaneously.
"No."
"Enji."
"I don't want us to get caught."
"Neither do I. But we can't just sit here doing nothing while Phantom Twelve members do whatever they came to do in Vantarcity."
Enji looked at the floor. Then the window. Then Yuma.
"Give me an hour."
Yuma sat down.
"Fine."
The hour passed. Enji thought in that particular silence he had when something important was being built in his head goggles on his forehead, arms crossed, gaze going from the door to the window to the door again without really looking at either.
Yuma waited. Which for him was a considerable effort but which he made anyway.
Then Enji straightened up.
"Here's what we're going to do," he said.
He spoke quietly. Yuma listened.
The agents outside had rotations Enji had been watching since Nathan left. Every twenty minutes or so, the one on the left went to the end of the corridor and came back. During those thirty seconds there was only one agent in front of the door.
"And with one agent what does that change," said Yuma.
"We don't attack the door."
He explained.
The cabin window looked out onto the side of the train. Not onto empty air onto the exterior service platform, a narrow walkway but usable between the cars. If Enji created a distraction inside convincing enough an ice construction that blocked the door from the inside and gave the impression something urgent was happening in the cabin both agents would want to get in at the same time. And in that precise moment when their attention was entirely on the door, Yuma went out the window, walked along the service platform to the next car's corridor, came back around the other end and took both agents from behind.
Yuma looked at Enji.
"That's good."
"I know."
"You could have come up with that in twenty minutes."
"I needed an hour to make sure you weren't going to improvise halfway through."
Yuma didn't answer that because it was probably fair.
They got into position.
Enji activated his goggles. Read the mana flows of both agents through the door — present, regular, no alert. He waited for the rotation.
The agent on the left moved toward the end of the corridor.
Enji raised his hand.
Frost Coffin.
Three columns of ice rose from the cabin floor and pressed against the door with a dull thud and visible pressure the door pushing against its frame, the metal creaking slightly.
The agents' voices in the corridor.
Both coming back toward the door at the same time.
Yuma had already opened the window.
He went out hands on the ledge, feet on the narrow platform, the wind from the train hitting hard at that speed. He walked along the service platform holding the railing, passed between the cars, entered the next corridor through the service door.
And came back around the other end.
Both agents had their backs to him, focused on the cabin door, one trying the access badge, the other looking through the side porthole.
Thunder Dance.
Electric propulsion, distance covered in a fraction of a second.
Double Detonation.
Both fists simultaneously one per agent, charged just enough to neutralize without seriously injuring. Both agents went down at the same time with that soft sound of someone losing consciousness cleanly.
Yuma looked at them for a moment.
Then opened the cabin door from the outside.
Enji's ice dissipated.
Enji stepped into the corridor. Looked at the two agents on the floor. Looked at Yuma.
"Clean," he said.
"Thanks."
They dragged the agents inside the cabin and set them on the beds with the approximate delicacy of two people doing their best under complicated circumstances.
Yuma closed the door behind them.
Looked at the corridor ahead empty, lit by the morning light, Vantarcity approaching through the windows.
"Let's go find some clues."
End of Chapter 24