Ch53: Crisis Room
Crisis Room
White Moon Cafeteria, Sumida City, Tokyo
February 19th
8:00
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Adelis POV
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Mrs. Nakamura left with a smile again, today was her 10-year-old son's birthday and she had ordered a cake for his birthday, she was a regular customer and one of the leaders of the neighborhood association, she was great It helps to be able to build my business here, so I thank her very much for the appreciation.
Today is a very pleasant and quiet day. I had managed to work enough the last few days, so I took the opportunity to take the day off and bake a cake in the morning to give to my granddaughters in the afternoon. I haven't had much time to talk to them, but since everyone is making an effort to treat them as persons and family, I plan to do my part. Although I never thought that Cesar would try to drive me almost crazy and get two daughters out of nowhere in one night. The situation is so sudden again that we still don't have anything for Momo's room and now we have to prepare another room for the two dolls. Later I might even go shopping with them to get the things for their room, although I'd like to go outside with them, but they are clearly robots, although maybe it wouldn't be a problem if I chose good clothes for them.
But as if the thought of them had called them, the sound of the bell when the door was opened, I turned to greet the new customers and was surprised to see the two twins coming towards me in the most casual way possible. Well, although they look a lot like a normal human, there are some details like their dead eyes that a human could never have or how they were not wearing clothes to hide their doll joints. The lucky thing was that there was no one else except for Saeko who was in the kitchen.
"What are you two doing here?"
"If you come, at least wear the clothes Tamamo wears to try to cover your doll joints!"
"Do you have any idea what people would be afraid of if they saw two strange girls doing everything in synchrony?"
"Grandma, we have a big problem."
"It's Dad, he's in trouble."
"....."
"Again," the two said in sync but without any emotion.
"Grandma?"
"Please don't call me that, you can call me Mama, Adelis, Doña, or even a stranger if you want, but please don't ever use Grandma!"
"I'd rather be dead than old and senile."
"How big is the problem?"
"Were sure to be on the noon news"
"Ok, that's really bad news"
"We can't talk about it here, we have to go back to the house"
"Saeko!"
"I have an emergency again, you are in charge!"
We went to the house as fast as we could and as soon as we entered the living room, the TV turned on all by itself and showed a satellite picture of the place where the school trip was supposed to take place, the Ueno Dam.
"Five minutes ago, an armed group hijacked the bus that Dad and the others were using to visit the place, then they moved southeast and entered a tunnel," Kazumi began to speak.
"Dad seems to have managed to stay behind and avoid being kidnapped," Charlotte followed.
"Right now his mobile signal indicates that he is still near the Ueno dam."
"If he has the phone, call him now."
"All right."
"Hello, Happy House Pizzeria, if you buy four pizzas we will charge you only five."
"Cesar, this is no time for bad jokes!"
"Situation?"
"The school bus was hijacked by several armed individuals, they spoke very bad Japanese, they spoke Spanish between them, I think their accent was Mexican."
"They came out of a minivan and took as many as they could and then headed east, I have no idea where they went."
"Right now I'm next to Maria, we were both saved because we were coming out of the bathroom when everything happened.
"Tamamo, Haru and Xian were out of luck because they were in the bus.
"I'm currently in the forest watching the dam to gather more information, but nothing else has happened at the moment."
"All right."
"Can you see if the car Xian used is nearby?"
"Inside are the submachine guns and bulletproof vests you asked for."
"Take them and wait in the car for new orders."
"Do not hang up the phone"
"Roger."
Unfortunately, what we have is very limited information, even though it is a very recent event, we need to know what to confront as soon as possible. Normally, this would take a long time if I had my team with me, like when I was on the aircraft carrier. No, wait, how did these two get the live satellite image of the dam? You are right, they specialize in this kind of thing, I think I can use their unique skill to help rescue the hostages!
"Can you two get more information?"
"Whatever you have to do, just search everywhere and leave no trace" I ask them.
"Right now we have access to the facility's security cameras.
"According to what we were able to identify, we believe that there are at least 15 armed people, as a second group appeared later."
"We are not sure if these are all the enemies."
"The biggest problem is that the hostages have been taken to the inside of the complex where the electrical generators are located, which are under the mountain."
"We have no access to mobile phones because they have no signal inside, and the satellite cannot see the inside because of the depth".
"Also some cameras are damaged, so we can not get better information".
"We are very sorry" the two androids said
"You do not need to apologize, you have already done more than what I could expect even from my team in the Alliance".
This will undoubtedly be a problem at the national level at least. I need to act first now that I have the information before anyone else. I need to know what the police are going to do so I can coordinate the rescue with them. But even they could make a mistake and our little VIP could get hurt or they could try to not kill my son because of a confusion. I need to know what the police would plan in that case.
"Call Inspector Yamamoto with the mobile phone I gave him."
"Make sure you take security measures, avoid traceability and encrypt the call," I would instruct the twins on my next step.
"We'll reroute the call through several public phones, as far as encryption goes, we can only use a low-level one because the cell phone is not designed for that."
Damn, these girls are good at their job I thik for myself.
"Inspector Yamamoto speaking"
"Good morning, Inspector"
"I am afraid to be the bearer of bad news to a person like you today."
"Please act naturally and do not be surprised by what I am about to tell you."
"It is about Haru."
"Ten minutes ago, the school group she was in was kidnapped by unknown persons."
"We are currently gathering information and working out a plan to find a way to rescue her."
"I recommend that you prepare to respond quickly to the kidnapping, but please do not do anything conspicuous until the police are properly informed."
"Oh my God"
"Today I need to know what the police would do in this situation to prevent their people from seeing someone like Elise as an enemy and to avoid a bigger tragedy."
"Well ... if ... if this is the case"
"Then we would have to mobilize the Special Assault Team."
"It would take about 45 minutes after the warning to reach the region by helicopter."
"They will probably start scouting immediately"
"As for my side, I will try to contact them by phone and listen to their demands and try to reach a peaceful agreement."
"Hey Mom! I have a problem here, I found the guns and the vest, but I don't see the high shoes I asked for".
"If I have to drive in this car, I won't even be able to reach the pedals," Cesar says to the other line.
"Take a stone and put it in the pedal, right now I'm having a serious conversation with real people like the inspector".
"So fuck off"
"Grandma, we have more troubling information"
"I already told you not to call me like that!"
"If you keep doing that, I will disassemble you two using only a hospital MRI machine."
"What you have now"
"The criminals seem to be trying to plant explosives at key points on a second tunnel."
"They are currently placing them in the generator room and one of the access tunnels."
"Ok, it looks like we won't even have the 45 minutes it will take the police to get to the scene," I said to the inspector on the phone.
"What are we going to do?"
"We have to get Haru out of there right now!" Said the worried old man.
"Please do not be afraid, Inspector, I already have four people in charge of rescuing your granddaughter alive."
"Two of them are preparing their equipment and the other two are with Haru right now."
"We will surely act immediately to rescue her"
"Okay, at the moment, the alarm has just sounded at the station, it seems to be the kidnapping report"
"I will be very busy from now on"
"But I still look forward to your call with good news."
"Please save her, that's all I have left," said a really scared Yamamoto, more than some crazy mission in the continental war he took part in.
"We'll do our best, sir," I said, hanging up the phone.
"........"
"What information do we have about the place?" I asked Kazumi, who was closest to me.
"The Ueno Dam is owned by TPECO and supplies energy to the nearby town and Tokyo."
"The most relevant point at the moment is that much of the electricity fresh from the generators goes to a nearby company called Matsumoto Chemicals, one of the main distributors of equipment for the I.S.C. medical section."
"If the attack is successful, it will cause losses to the I.S.C."
"The generator complex is located 4 kilometers southeast of Dad's current location."
"But it is underground and has an approximate extension of about 4 kilometers more of tunnels and halls."
"Due to the depth, there is no way to contact the interior, so once inside, we cannot get much information.
"Our main information is the security cameras, which we are already showing on TV.
As they say, I look at the television, where I could see some of the security cameras, but as they mentioned, some of them were damaged, probably deliberately damaged by these people. The only thing we could get from them was the audio, but not the video.
"We have managed to steal the plans and have devised the most effective plan to rescue Haru, but since the hostages have been divided into smaller groups, we do not believe that we will be able to prevent them from hurting the other hostages once they realize the escape.
"Haru is currently with mother Tamamo, the teacher Xian is in the third group in a maintenance room 30 meters to the north.
"The plan is only to rescue Haru, there is no way to rescue the other hostages due to lack of information." The Android twins speak in perfect sync again.
"I think I have an idea."
"Tamamo is a goddess, and although we do not know what she can do or the extent of her power, she may be able to amplify the telecommunication waves."
"Or, as she said in the past, she can watch people from the sky, so she could take a look and tell us the situation quickly."
"In any case, be prepared for whatever absurd thing she can come up with and use it to our advantage."
"Meanwhile...."
" We have no more time"
"Cesar, you already heard everything, right?"
"Take Xian's car and enter the generator complex"
"Your main goal is to get Haru out of there and contact Tamamo to find a way to get more information."
"If we can get more information, we will try to make a plan on the fly and rescue Xian and the other students"
"Otherwise, just get out of there with the two of them."
"Do not focus on the explosives unless it is an immediate danger to the mission, as we do not know if they really plan to activate them or it is just a distraction."
"Kazumi try to download the map of the place to Cesar's smartphone and the instructions on how to navigate the complex."
"Charlotte, you check the communications and movements of both the armed people and the police," I try to make a makeshift plan with so little information and trust in my son's skills.
"We are having a bit of a problem with the data transfer capacity we can currently handle if we follow these instructions."
"We are currently using the laptop that Dad has in the bedroom as a waypoint and encryption to access the Internet, so we have a bottleneck in terms of the Internet bandwidth that the computer can handle."
"The home Internet is superior, but we cannot use it to its maximum capacity."
"We can only do one of these jobs," Charlotte said.
"I can take care of that!" Momo, the crystal angel, came down the stairs with a slightly sleepy face.
"I'm sorry you got up so early because of the noise, but we have a big emergency right now," I apologized to her.
"Don't worry, I understand everything.
"I was listening more or less."
"You both need to have better access to the Internet"
"I think I can do that, but I need to know what they prefer and if the budget fits," said a confident Momo.
"Don't worry about the price, I will try to get everything in record time to make this work".
"What would you two prefer to be able to handle the data better?" I indicated to the twins
"In that case, we would like to have direct connections with the Internet access of the house".
"If it can get physical connection will be better, we can connect our own cables that we have in the waist will be the best".
"Well, I have never seen an input cable type like this, but I think I can improvise a cable, and maybe use an Internet switch to pass it to the fiber optic modem".
"Since Internet bandwidth is as important as speed, I will look for one with easy access in stores.
"We can upgrade it later.
"But as you can see, I can't go out and buy it.
"I mean, I can, it will just cause panic and some nuns coming to pray later."
"Don't worry, just give me the list of things now and I will ask someone to bring it in the next few minutes.
"Try to make the improvised cable while we finish your shopping list.
"Kazumi sent the information to Cesar, we will collect more information later"
"Cesar, you can start the rescue operation now!" I said to everyone close to me.
"You know, the truth is that I do not like dark places, and even less tunnels, I have a little bad history with them".
"So it's not like I'm happy to have to go into one right now."
"I think I have to apologize in advance if I get a little emotional and lose my composure in there".
"I'm only doing this to get Tamamo out of there" Said Cesar over the phone.
"Yeah, yeah, we all know about your fear of the dark and tunnels PTSD, I don't care right now"
"Get over it and go there now and find a way to save these people.
"Cool"
"One day your family is happy to have you back with them after two wars, and the next they ask you to face your fears, enter a tunnel, and rescue the hostages of a terrorist group at national threat level."
"Or well, the things I do for my love"
"I'm sorry for you, Maria, but you stay here, take the train or walk back home." Said Cesar to her sister.
"Hey, there was no need to push me out of the car!" I think I heard Maria in the background of the call.
Cesar may act like that, but I'm sure he's super nervous inside right now, he certainly doesn't like the idea of having to fight in there. But what else can we do? We do not know exactly what this group wants or plans to do, the police will take a long time to get there and they will try to gather information, and the worst part is that we do not know if they really have planted bombs. Today will undoubtedly be a terrible day for the people involved.