JukeBox Raid: Season 1

I said, how many days in a row?!

[Ash Breaker. On the Way Back]

Seven silhouettes, walking with the sunset at their backs.

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Drax, what are we eating?

Chicken?

Oh, come on!! How many days in a row?!!!!

Laughter spills out into the sunset.

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Nobody ever asked.

Why chicken, of all things.

Why it was always "timing."

If they had, Drax would have grinned and answered.

'Cause it's good.

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It isn't a lie.

But it isn't an answer either.

Those words were never his to begin with.

Eight years ago.

Back then, he didn't have a name.

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0.00 seconds

[Midground, outer residential district]

End of the hallway, a single door.

A man stands at the door. Black coat. Black bag.No expression on his face at all.

He presses the doorbell.

Ding-dong...

Beyond the door, the sound of something being hurriedly hidden.The sound of held breath.

The man opens his mouth. A memorized line. No inflection.

The door does not open.The man takes something out of his bag.

Beep, clack.

The door opens.A door NAVII made opens for NAVII.

The man steps inside.

The hallway. Two shadows stretching out from the room.

The large shadow bends over the small one.

Whirrrr, A mechanical whine. A short scream.

And then silence.

Zzzip, The sound of a bag being zipped shut.

The man comes out of the room.

The same stride as when he entered. The same Speed. The same face.

A measurement log surfaces at the edge of the man's vision.

[Recovery Unit 13 / Execution complete]

Decision lag: 0.00 seconds

Emotional response: not detected

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The Special Recovery Division has one creed.

"Recovered goods have no names."

Only the debt number goes on the paperwork.Learning the target's name is a violation of protocol.

Know the name, and it becomes a person.Once it's a person, you're 0.1 seconds late.

Recovery Unit 13 was the finest agent in the division's history.Eight years, and not once late.

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Debt number 4471

[Underground Badlands - Worn Tenement]

Another door.

Beyond the door, this time, there is no sound of anyone running.

The door is open.The man steps inside.

A small room.An old woman sits on a worn bed.

From her chest, a faint mechanical sound repeats at steady intervals.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

A worn heart-type Jagear.The old woman's heart, never paid off since 412 days ago.

The old woman looks at the corner of the room.

In the corner, on a bed. A small shadow lies curled up.Pretending to sleep. Its shoulders are far too stiff.

Recovery Unit 13 did not answer.

Only...

But that day's measurement log recorded a number never seen before.

Decision delay: 0.02 seconds

Whirrrr...

Tick. Tick. Tick...

...Tick.

And then, the sound of a clock stopping.

Silence.

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The man walks out of the room.

Regulation Article 19. No contact with the bereaved.The man does not look back.

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Because he didn't look back, he didn't see it.

The blanket being pulled aside.

A small shadow at the crack of the door,watching his back until the very last moment.

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The Tail

[Underground - Rooftop]

Recovery Unit 13 was lying in wait.

He reads the daily pattern of the next recovery target.Time they come home. Time the lights go out. How often the neighbors patrol.

The optimal moment to execute is the single second where all those curves overlap.

At calculating that one second, he was the best in the division.

That was when...

A rustle.

A small shadow stepped out from behind the rooftop water tank.

It was the kid.The shadow under the blanket, debt number 4471.

Eight years old, maybe nine. A T-shirt with sleeves swallowing both hands.And eyes far too clear for any of this.

He took out his terminal.

Protocol for the discovery of an unregistered child.

[Report as Welfare Protection Subject]Dispatch collection squad/Hand over at Gate B-7

He knows Gate B-7.

The door the defaulters who don't even have a Jagear walk throughto 'pay with their bodies.'

A door people go into,but no one has ever seen anyone come out of.

Escorting them to that door was part of Recovery's job too.

Whatever sounds come from inside once the door shuts,he learned how not to hear them a long time ago.

His finger stops above the send button.

One second.

Two seconds.

[Transmission Canceled]

The measurement log for that day.

Decision delay: 0.1 seconds

The system classified it as a margin of error.

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Chicken is all about timing.

The kid didn't leave.

Chase the kid off, and they'd already be waiting at the next stakeout spot.Ignore them, and they'd just sit down beside him and talk anyway.

Which gang had taken which alley.Which vending machines paid out without any coins.

Retrieval Unit 13 said nothing.The kid didn't mind.

[Underground - Abandoned Factory Rooftop]

One night.

The kid pulled something out from inside their coat.A single piece of chicken, wrapped in grease-soaked paper.

The kind of thing where it's only polite not to ask where it came from.

He didn't take it.

He took it. It was faster that way.

The chicken was cold.Hard, soggy, the grease gone solid.

He thought about it for a moment.

The kid grinned.And declared it like a truth of the universe.

He started to object.He put nothing off.

Execution, always on schedule, with 0.00 seconds of delay.

He couldn't object.

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A week later.

In front of the kid, already waiting on the stakeout rooftop,he set down a paper bag.

Fresh-fried chicken.Still hot.

The first thing he had ever boughtfor anyone other than himself.

The kid looks from the bag to him and back.

The kid smiled.

And beside them.

The corner of Retrieval Unit 13's mouth moved,just a fraction, at an angle too small to measure.

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Name

[Underground - Back Alley]

The kid thumped their own chest.

Recovery Unit 13 raised a hand and cut them off.

Recovered goods have no names.

Once you know its name, it becomes a person.

The kid glared at him for a moment.

And then they said it with the look you'd give the pettiest grown-up in the world.

The kid pulled something tattered out of their pocket.A comic book with the cover torn off..

A hero in a cape is drawn on the cover.

Half the title had been torn away. Four letters left.

[Drax]

The kid shoved the comic book into his coat pocket.

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One night, he asked.It was the first question he had ever raised himself.

You must know what I recovered from that room.

The kid kept chewing on the chicken and answered like it was nothing.

And then.

The kid didn't explain further.She wasn't old enough to explain it.

But he understood.

That was the problem.

Once you understand, there's no going back.

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0.5 seconds

[Midground - Recovery Site]

That day's recovery target was debt number 5108.A leg-type Jagear. 233 days overdue.

When the door opened,a small shadow was standing behind the target.

It was the target's child.

It doesn't interfere with the enforcement.By regulation, there is no problem.

Vrrrrm...

A mechanical whine.

That day, Recovery Unit 13's hand moved exactly as the regulations prescribed.

Except,

Decision delay: 0.5 seconds

The system does not classify 0.5 seconds as a margin of error.

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[NAVII Branch - Audit Room]

Beyond a glass wall that looks like a mirror, an auditor.The face is not visible. Only the voice can be heard.

Silence.

A document slides out from under the glass.

Recommendation: identify and remove the cause of the performance decline

He lied.

It was the first lie of his life,and so it was a terrible one.

The auditor asked nothing further.

There was no need to ask.

The Recovery Division already had every route he had takenover the past 90 days.

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Next time

[Underground - Alley]

The kid kicked at the ground with her toe.

The kid looked up at him.

He rested a hand on the kid's head.The gesture came on its own, though no one had ever taught it to him.

It became the most wrong thing he ever said in his life.

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Six days later

The alley was empty.

Behind the water tank too.

Beside the vending machine too.

On the roof of the abandoned factory too.

Half a comic book lay on the ground.

On an Underground floor where rain could never reach,the paper was wet, all on its own.

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No. 13 opened the collection records on Recovery Division authority.

[Welfare Protection SubjectCollection Report]

Collection Team: Team 3Reason: Unregistered child,no guardian

Handover point: Gate B-7

B-7.

The door people go in through,but no one's ever seen anyone come out of.

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[NAVII Facility - Inside Sector B-7]

His access clearance was still live.

Recovery Division agents can enter as far as the B-7 perimeterfor handover duties.

A corridor. Doors lining both sides.A small observation window in every one.

You can't see inside.

You can only hear.

Behind some doors, the sound of machinery running.Behind others, no sound at all.

The doors with no sound at all were the most common.

End of the corridor. A terminal.

He enters the serial number from the collection record.

Searching...

The screen comes up.

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[Subject Intake Record]

Project: R Series- Suitability Assessment

Result: Unsuitable

Disposition: Disposal

Time of processing: 6 hours ago

Six hours.

A six-day Dispatch, and he was exactly six hours late.

At the very bottom of the screen.One last line, taken down by the collection team as a formality.

Real name: Danbi

That was the day he learned the name.

Because asking a name was a violation of regulation.

Because a name makes them a person.

Because once they're a person, you're too late.

The name he never listened to the end of, he read off a disposal record.

...Danbi.

The first name he had ever read out loud in his life.

Rain that falls right on time, at the end of a drought.That's what it means, the kid tried to tell him that once.

It never rains in the Underground.

The kid had never once seen rain, not in their whole life.

Even the name was about timing.

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Unrecoverable

[NAVII Branch]

That night, a fire broke out in Maintenance Block B-7 of the NAVII Branch.

With the flames at his back, the silhouette of a man walks out.

The warning broadcast ordering him to stop sounded three times.The man didn't stop.

The last data the measurement log ever transmitted.

[Recovery Unit 13]

Decision Latency: Unmeasurable

Emotional Response: Unmeasurable

Status: Unrecoverable

Special Recovery Division Operating Regulations, Article 7.

Equipment ruled unrecoverable is to be incinerated.

The company never managed to incinerate him.

The greatest agent in the Division's historywas just as good at shaking off pursuit.

The Recovery Division's very existence was classified,so there was no manhunt, no news, no record.

And so Unit 13 was erased from the world.

But... Article 7 did not disappear.

Eight years later, in a collapsing hideout,

he would carry out that clause with his own hands.

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The Night of Revenge

Revenge follows the same procedure as retrieval.

Identify the target. Read their movements.Wait for the perfect second.

For the greatest Retrieval Agent in the Section's history,it was familiar work.

Chief of Collection Squad 3.Walks home through the same alley every night.

Eligibility examiner.Every Thursday, the same seat at the same bar.

And the B-7 disposal officer.

Over the next few weeks, he had every movement on that list in hand.

Now all that's left is to erase them.

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[Midground - Back Alley]

An alley with a dead streetlight.

Two shadows on the wall.

One is large, and perfectly still.One is small, and shaking.

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The officer dug through his memory.To stay alive. Honestly. With everything he had.

It wasn't a lie.

A Retrieval Agent can hear a lie.In the heartbeat. In the spacing of the breaths.

This man truly doesn't remember.

Drax calculated.Like a man who'd never been taught anything else, he calculated.

If we erase this man,the company log shows [1 vacancy].

Three days to fill the seat.Until then, B-7's caseload gets split with the man at the next desk.

Decision delay: 0.00 seconds.

Erase every name on the list, and the result is the same.

A company has no throat.

Cut it, and nothing flows out.

He was a man who could calculate that more precisely than anyone in the world.

So the calculation finished before the trigger did.

In the coat pocket. Half a comic book.A caped hero with no expression.

Drax lowered his hand.

That night the officer was let go by the shadow,clocked in on time the next morning,

and soon forgot the whole thing.

Forgetting.

The company always wins that way.

Walking out of the alley, he redefined revenge.

There's only one way to fight a company that wins by forgetting.

Remember.

And then,

Pick things up.

Pick up what NAVII throws away.

Pick up the abandoned kids, pick up the things they call broken,pick up the names erased by a single line of log,

And bring them back.

It was the surest theft he could pull offwith the skills the company taught him.

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Drax

[Midground - Registry]

Subject 13 was erased from the world.

At the Midground registry,the man made himself a new identity.

He didn't linger long over the name field.

The torn comic book was still in his coat pocket.

A caped hero with a blank face.Four letters left of the title.

[Drax]

The name a kid gave him, telling him to make up the rest himself.The only name he had.

He decided to live as that name.

So that every time someone called him "Drax,"

the kid who gave him that namecould pass through the world one more time.

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[Midground - Street Stall]

The first place the man went after leaving the registrywas a fried chicken stall on the corner.

Fresh out of the fryer. Still hot.

He ate it right there, standing.

Before it cooled. No putting it off.

He smiled.His face still remembered how.

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After that, he became the kind of manwho asked every kid he met for their name first.

Article 1 of the new rules,set by a man who had never once asked a name.

He gave them shelter, fed them, taught them timing,and one by one, people gathered around him.

In time, people came to call that crew Ash Breaker.

Why their leader went on and on about chicken,nobody ever asked.

Ash Breaker never turned down a subject interception job.

That was the policy Drax set.

To the citizens it was an interception.To the government, a payout.

To Drax, it wasa funeral.

For the other Danbis, never scrapped,still drifting through the world.

And in the wreckage after every fight,he always picked something up, quietly.

A subject's data core. A fragment of a project log.

Proof of the things NAVII says "don't exist."

Someday you'll come,for that one single moment in time.

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Where all of it was piling up,nobody on the team knew.

Chicken is timing.Put it off and you're too late.

A truth he knew better than anyone.

But revenge, that, he put off.

Blow it open now, and it wouldn't be the company that burned.

It'd be his new family.

And then...

Before the timing for revenge ever came,the company came first.

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[Dynamite Blue Office: Night]

Blackout.

The fan, the fridge, Lilly's notification chimes.

All of it cuts out at once.

A single light from Lilly's phone flicks on.

The corner of the office the light reaches.

One large silhouette.

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[8 hours earlier]

An empty office.

The door is open.

It's standing in the doorway.

A cloth is draped over it.

Someone beside it.

Backlit, the face doesn't show.

No answer.

The acquaintance pulls the cloth away.

Dust. Scratched selector glass.

Turns around.

The doorway is empty.

The Boss is left alone.

Looks at it a long time.

Decides to tell no one.

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[Present]

The five of them scatter to their posts.

The one thirty seconds this company looks competent.

Sean Terry pounds it with his fist a few times,and with a bang, the generator roars to life.

Lain rolls up his pant leg. An old-model Jagear is exposed.

…

Nothing happens.

Click.

Lilly's phone dies.

Total darkness.

Vrrrmmm...

The fluorescent lights come on one by one.Starting from the hallway. Following the ceiling.

A fan spins. The fridge hums.Lilly's phone gives its charging chime.

Everything comes back at once.

In the now-bright corner of the office, the whole of it is visible for the first time.

Dust. Scratched selector glass.

Ru crouches down in front of it.

There's a sound of something being pried loose.

Dust. Rotted wiring. A circuit board some forty years old.

Ru pulls the parts out one by one.

Then her hand stops.

Something wedged between the boards.

A single coin.

Stuck there so long it left a mark on the board.

Ru drops the coin into the slot.

Click.

It swallows.

And then,

The jukebox lights up.

In that instant, the fan stops. The fridge stops.Lilly's phone cuts its charging chime short.

Everything goes out at once.

Only the fluorescent lights remain, one shade dimmer.

The five of them gather in front of it.

Five faces reflect in the scratched selector glass.

Somebody's story.

The speaker opens.

It isn't a song.

In between them, different voices slip past, a few seconds at a time.

Boss's hand comes to rest on the volume knob.

The sound cuts off.

Silence.

The fluorescent light goes out again.

That one second with nothing left but the jukebox's glow.

Reflected in the glass, Boss's eyes look red for just an instant.

The fluorescent light flickers back on.

It must have been the light.

In that instant, Lilly's camera battery dies.

Ru lays a hand on the jukebox and runs a diagnostic.

A long moment. Then once more.

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Silence.

No one answers.

Not even the Boss.

Track 13

The noise dies down.

The selector stops.

A single track cues up.

The title field is empty. Only a number.

Sean Terry's laugh cools alone in the empty air.

Sean Terry falls silent.

Lilly raises her camera, then slowly lowers it.

Instead of an answer, the playback cuts out.

Ru rests a hand on it. For a long while.

And then.

The jukebox turns its own volume down. Just a little.

The fluorescent light returns to its usual brightness.The fan spins. The fridge whines.

Nobody looks.

All five of them, still standing there in front of it.

Clink.

In the coin return.

One more coin.

The date column is blank.

One box to fill in, every month.

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