Unit-07 Mirai's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The creature collapsed across the shattered storefront, its six legs twitching. Mirai stood over it, plasma rifle cooling in her hands. The trapped civilians had escaped. No casualties. Her sensors swept the ruined jewelry store, cataloging the damage—broken display cases, scattered gemstones, twisted metal frames. Movement flickered in the back of the store. Mirai descended the basement stairs, weapons ready. The space below was intact, untouched by the monster's attack. Steel shelves lined the walls, holding equipment she recognized instantly—spectrometers, calibration tools, measurement devices. Each one bore the same logo stamped into its casing: Arata Research Institute. She approached a spectrometer with a shattered screen, dust thick across its surface. Her fingers traced the logo. Dr. Arata had been here. He'd worked here, or supplied equipment here, and she'd run past this building forty-three times without knowing. The discovery didn't narrow her search—it expanded it. If his equipment was here, it could be anywhere in the city. She'd been looking for the wrong things, scanning faces instead of searching for the traces he'd left behind. Mirai activated her scanner and began documenting every piece of equipment, every serial number, building a new search pattern. The question wasn't where Dr. Arata had gone. It was where else he had been.