Signal to the Fortified Residential Zone

Two

A mysterious crackling sound roused Rhyth the next morning, and it took forever for her to place where it was being made. She wandered around her small bedroom before coming to rest in front of the odd head band her mother had packed for her years prior. She picked it up and turned it over in her fingers, wondering what the sound could possibly mean.

Not even a minute later, Beat was banging on her door to tell her that his had been doing the same.

"What do you think it is?" They simultaneously asked each other, unsure of how to react.

They stared curiously at the pieces for several moments before speaking again.

"It's never done that before,"Beat insisted.

"Mine hasn't either," Rhyth added.

They continued to chatter about it until something caught Beat's attention.

"Wait!" He exclaimed. "Quiet. I think I heard something."

He slipped the band onto his head and heard a faint voice speaking between the crackles. He motioned to Rhyth to put hers on, and she followed along.

For a while, they only caught snippets of words, random consonants and vowels. It wasn't until they moved the pieces around that they truly heard any statements.

"This is DJ Professor K, coming at you live from the heart of Tokyo."

Rhyth and beat stared speechlessly at each other.

"Yeah that's right, I'm talking to you. I'm talking to all you kids over in the Fortified Residential Zone. You all probably don't even know what's out here, so I'm gonna fill you all in. For a while now, the national police have been trying to bust you guys out, but the rhinos always delay their advances. Either through corruption, firepower, or menacing threats. Those suckers are crazy!"

The two couldn't comprehend the words they were hearing.

"As we speak, agents are dropping packages in compromised locations all around your borders, hoping you'll be curious enough to find one and open it up. I hope you guys all know that you're special. You've been a biology project of the Rokkaku group for almost a decade, and we know you can use what's inside to get yourselves out. We just need you to find them. What we don't need is that psychopath having his hands on biological weapons."

"What the hell does all of that mean?" Beat murmured during a break in the words.

"I don't know," Rhyth admitted. "But should we really be listening to it?"

Beat put a finger up to her lips as the DJ started talking again.

"If I were you, I'd be heading down below and checking out house number 35. That's where my contacts are telling me the goods are. After you've been there and collected your package, you're going to have to wait. I'll let you know what they're used for, same time tomorrow, and same time the day after that."

Rhyth and Beat spent a while being speechless. This voice hadn't belonged to any of their overseers, and she was extremely unsure of whether they should follow its lead.

"I think we should go check it out," Beat encouraged, always the more curious and daring. "What's the worst that could happen? We get a package from it?"

Rhyth thought of a billion unpleasant answers to that question. They could be executed for listening to someone who wasn't Goji or his men. They could be beaten for not following rules. Really anything terrible could happen. But swayed by her friend's intensity as well as her own wonder, she followed him in the dim morning light to house number 35.