It was Career Day at the Daigo Children's Mental Care facility and the Minstry of Welfare's Public Safety Bureau was on full display, much to the delight of 12 fortunate youngsters.  A forty-minute show and tell brought the world of the MWPSB to life through interior holography of the Criminal Investigation Department. 

    Sharing center stage with Inspector Tsunemori and her Enforcers, detailed holograms of the Dominators, paddy wagon, security drones, and the wildly popular antics of a single pillbot stole the show.  But it was Director Ito's announcement of the main event—an official MWPSB manhunt—that brought a chorus of excitement that shook the windows of the dayroom.

    The manhunt was restricted to the main patient-care level of the facility.  On the run, Kogami and Kagari used what little of a head start they had to put as much space as they could between themselves and the half dozen, pint-sized Enforcers that pursued after them.  Urged on by Akane and her team of prepubescent Inspectors, the children struggled to contain themselves and keep quiet on the hunt. 

    "These guys don't quit."  Kogami raced down a set of stairs and into the atrium.  The sounds of pursuit were just around the corner behind him on the landing. 

    "We're so outnumbered.  Hardly seems fair."  Kagari deftly slid down the railing on his backside and jumped down, clearing the final five steps.

    "For them or us?"

    The sky above the atrium had produced an overcast day, filled with heavy clouds and the threat of rain.  In the atrium's dimness, Kogami could see a dim blue light coming from the corridor above them.  He signaled Kagari to be silent and pointed to the dull illumination. 

    "Gin and his model Dominator," Kagari whispered.  "That kid has a keen sense of direction."

    "He lives here.  He should know the layout of the place better than two Enforcers who just walked through the door."

    "I heard him telling Akane how to organize the manhunt.  Can't wait to tell Ginoza he has a twin."

    "Who happens to be a latent criminal.  That'll go well.  Better make sure he doesn't have a Dominator in his hand."     

    "I know, right!"  Kagari dared to look out from a set of glass doors into a narrow corridor.  "Never imagined this could be so much fun.  Thanks for coming, Ko."

    "Beats sitting around watching Ginoza scowling all day."  Kogami pulled him back and pointed to a shadow coming around the corner of the lowest staircase landing.  It's was Mi-Yeon, who had jumped the gun, exposing the pursuers before Sachi could pull her back.

    "What's the deal with your tag-a-long?  The little girl in the cat pajamas?"

    "An orphan, according to Torao," Kogami said.  "Her parents immigrated here from North Korea for a chance at a better life."

    Kagari propped himself against the wall, his face grave.  "How did she end up here?"

    "Parents were killed in a traffic accident, two weeks after they arrived.  She saw the whole thing.  Stopped communicating."

    "Talk about clouding your psycho pass."

    "Shepherd 1, this is Hound 2," Gin said.  "We have them boxed in."

    Akane fought to keep a straight face and her composure, knowing the comlink was open to her Enforcers.  "Hound 2, if you can safely take them into custody, proceed." 

    "That's our cue to surrender," Kogami said.  He leaned out of the door to watch the pursuers close in on them.

    "Shepherd 1, this is Hound 3.  My flight drone has them in the atrium, headed back toward the dayroom."  Sachi laughed.  "Did Mr. Kogami really think that switchback would fool me?"

    "He's a wily one," Akane said.

    "Okay, maybe me, but not my drone.  This pillbot you brought is awesome!"

    "I know Akane wanted us to surrender, but why do I feel outfoxed?" Kagari asked.

    "The Inspector's show and tell on CID protocol was a little too good!"

    "Freeze! MWPSB!" Gin yelled, jumping down from the landing.  He pointed the model Dominator at Kogami's chest.  A pinpoint of blue light appeared over the Enforcer's heart.

    "Crime Coefficient over regulation value," Akane said in her best imitation of the Sibyl System.  "Enforcement action required.  Non-lethal paralyzer.  The trigger safety is now released.  Aim calmly and subdue the target."

    Kogami pretended to be hit and went down on one knee, sprawling to the floor. 

    In horror, Mi-Yeon leaped from Akane's arms.  Angrily, she beat her fists against Gin's torso.  "It's just pretend, Mi-Yeon," he grumbled, fending off her blows.

    She ran to Kogami's side, pulling worriedly on his sleeve even as he sat up and pulled her into his arms.  "Gin's right.  I'm okay."

    Sachi's drone hovered over him, and then ignoring the downed Enforcer, raced to Kagari.  "Freeze! MWPSB!" a chorus of voices rang out in the hall.  Without warning, Kagari was swarmed by a dozen little Inspectors with popsicle stick Dominators. 

    "Crime Coefficient way over regulation value," Akane said, barely able to talk over her laughter.  "Enforcement mode:  non-lethal paralyzer.  Trigger safety is now released.  Aim calmly and subdue the target."

    But rather than aim their handcrafted Dominators, the children pounced on Kagari and knocked him to the floor.  Tiny hands and tiny fingers poked and prodded, tickling the Enforcer into surrender while he wheezed with every attempt to breathe.  "Are you kidding me?" he gasped, twisting and turning across the floor.  "This might be worse than the real thing!"

    The echo of innocent laughter slowly faltered and then died away, drowned out by a more immediate noise.  It was the discordant sound of concrete cracking under the brunt of a freight train slamming into it.  Such was the force of the earthquake that struck.  Caught off guard, Kogami felt the ground beneath him suddenly shift.  He tightly wrapped his arms about Mi-Yeon to protect her while he was thrown into the wall in front of him and then flung ten feet back.

    Blood dripping from his forehead, he struggled to his knees to gain a better sense of balance as the floor continued to shudder beneath him.  "You hurt?"  He took a quick assessment of the frightened girl in his arms.  "Kagari!"

    "Right here, Ko!  It's an earthquake!"  He grabbed Kogami's outstretched hand and pulled him to his feet.

    "Children!" Director Ito called.  She came running down the landing.  "Remember your drills.  Calmly make your way to the emergency shelter now."

    "Got to love preparedness," Kagari said. 

    "Enforcers!" Akane shouted, as the lights flickered above them.  "Help with the smaller children."

    Kogami tightened his grip about Mi-Yeon and hurried after the director, who led two other children by the hand.  Behind him, Kagari scooped up another as Akane brought the older children in a line.

    "Dr. Torao!" Director Ito yelled.  She trotted down the dust-filled corridor, screaming his name. 

    Kogami squinted as debris from the ceiling fell on them, creating a swirling fog of dust.  He recognized the physician and saw several  orderlies as they rushed into a smaller, narrower hallway ahead.  Emergency lighting glowed from beyond the open shelter door.  Torao seemed in a great hurry and not particularly interested in the children racing toward him.  Seeking safety for himself, he stepped inside the door as it began to close. 

    "Son of a—" Kagari quickened his steps.  "I know he can see us!"

    Kogami bit his lip in fury, not quite believing what was happening before his eyes.  "What's a few latent criminals in his view, even if they're children?"  He put his hand over Mi-Yeon's head as larger pieces of debris from the ceiling began to fall.  "Stay close to the walls to avoid rubble."

    "Dr. Torao!"  Director Ito let go of the two children she had been leading and rushed forward to the shelter hatch.  "The children!  Dr. Torao!"  She stumbled over a pile of rock and fell headlong between the closing doors. 

    Torao and his orderlies escaped into the recess of the earthquake shelter and stood idly by as the doors sealed on Ito.  She screamed in terror, convulsing hysterically as the portal pressed against her body and cut her in half. 

    "Close your eyes and hang on me," Kogami whispered to Mi-Yeon.  He let go of her temporarily and snatched the other two children that Ito had been leading away from the door.

    "Ko!" Kagari yelled in shock.

    "Don't let them look at it!"

    "What are we going to do?"

    "The dayroom?" Akane asked.

    "No time!"  Kogami ducked into an alcove beneath a nearby staircase.  He pulled Akane into the makeshift shelter him.  "Get the kids on their knees:  crash positions, heads down."  Long legged and agile, he ran across the way and leaped onto a display case, which hung on the wall some 12 feet feet above the floor.  Hanging onto it by his fingers, he used his weight to pull it loose.  "Kagari, a little assistance."

    "You are redefining the term shelter in place!"  Kagari jumped and landed on the display and gave it a violent pull until it broke free from the metal moorings in the wall.

    As the earthquake continued to violently shake the building, Kogami and Kari rode the display case down from the wall, using it as a buffer against the falling debris above them.  "Gonna need your belt, Kagari," Ko said as he slipped the knot of his tie.  He yanked it from his collar and lashed it against the edging of the board to use as a handle at one end.  "Don't want to lose any fingers while we hold this thing in place."

    Kagari laughed nervously and stripped the belt from his pants.  "Think this will work?"

    "It's got to," Kogami replied.  "We don't have much choice." 

    While the building shook and rocked in the tumultuous throes of the earthquake, the two men took opposite sides of the dismantled case and held tight as debris fell against it.  Kagari strained against the weight of the rubble dropping down on them.  "Well, if we can hold it, we can keep the ceiling from killing us, but what about the dust.  It's going to get hard to breathe in here."

    "Put your shirts over your mouths," Gin said.

    "Kid's got a point.  Akane?"  He leaned hard against the makeshift wall and lowered himself so that she could reach around him, button his shirt, and then pull it up around his mouth and nose.  The worry in her eyes gave him a second wind, despite the strain on his muscles.  "We'll be alright, Inspector.  Keep a brave face for the kids."

    Akane nodded and knelt down into the cramped space, whispering and gesturing for the children to pull their medical smocks over her mouths and noses.  Beyond their makeshift shelter, the lights winked off in response to a powerful shockwave and then came back on.  With a final thunderous noise that shook the entire building, the darkness returned bringing silence and finality.

    "Ko, I can't feel my fingers." Kagari groaned, continuing to strain against the display case, their wall of protection where there had been none.

    Kogami was having the same difficulty.  As he propped his weight against their only protection from falling debris, his lower back became one roiling knot of spasming muscle.  Strained by the sheer physical effort, it had grown so hot and intense that when he did release, he was certain to collapse. 

    Behind him, in the dark alcove, he heard the whimpering of frightened children, and Akane's soothing voice as she tried to reassure them.  It was ironic to him that they had ridden out the worst of the earthquake beneath a staircase, shielded behind a wall display that brandished the facility's motto:  One child at a time.

    "Ko, I can't keep this up."

    "On the count of three.  One—two—three!"  Kogami tried to step down from from his counterweight position, but his legs gave out.  He fell to the floor on top of what he thought was a child.  Scrambling in horror at harming any one of the children, he realized it was just a planter and collapsed to the floor beside it with an exhausted groan.  On the opposite side, he heard a panting Kagari hit the floor.

    "Mr. Kogami?  Mr. Kagari?" Akane asked, concern in her voice.

    "I'm good."

    "Me, too," Kagari said.  "Just have to get the feeling back in the rest of my body."  He chuckled, his soft voice echoing in the darkness.  "Hey, Ko, our wall didn't move.  Must be a ton of debris out there."

    "Better out there than on top of us."

    The darkness under the staircase dissipated when Akane activated her wristcom.  "No server connection," she reported. 

    "Comm towers must be down," Kagari said.

    Kogami wiped the sweat from his brow and eyes.  "Any chance of us restoring even a limited connection?"

    "Ko, you're confusing my good looks for Shion's brains.  I may be a world-class gamer, but my only concern is connection speed, not how to make them."

    "Wasn't asking you," Kogami said evenly.  He jerked his thumb toward Sachi.  "I was asking her."

    "Kogami, she's just a kid," Akane chided him.  "We could send out the pillbots.  But they work in teams of four, three at the minimum.  We only have the one."

    "Inspector Tsunemori,  we have one pillbot and my flight drone," Sachi said from the corner.  Her voice was subdued and frightened.  "Mr. Kogami is right.  There is a way to get a limited server connection.  The dayroom is hard-wired and doesn't rely on wireless communications.  Even if it's damaged, with my drone and the pillbot, we could temporarily fix it.  That is...if we can get there."

    "There's no way to know if that part of the building survived," Akane said.

    "The dayroom was the first room built for this facility.  Everything else was built around it," Gin said.  "It is structurally stronger than any other part of the building.  If there was any place capable of surviving a quake, it's there.  Besides the hard-wired connection, it's got supplies:  food, water, and medical gear."

    "Which is where my flight drone and the pillbot come in.  I can send the drone out to check the damage.  Maybe even find a way back to the dayroom, which isn't that far from the atrium."

    "Isn't the flight drone's range limited?" Kagari asked. 

    "Yes, but with the pillbot, the range is more than doubled."

    "CID standard operating procedures and protocols sunk in better than anticipated, Inspector Tsunemori."  Kogami sat up on his elbows as Mi-Yeon wrapped her arms about his neck.  "Sounds like we have a plan.  Permission to put it into action?"

    "Absolutely."

    Kogami sent Mi-Yeon back into Akane's embrace and got to his feet.  Too tall to stand in the alcove, he was hunched over as he put his shoulder to the makeshift wall.  "Have to assume the majority of the debris is at the bottom."  He was slightly out of breath from trying to push the wall free.  "There'll less weight at the top to make an opening for the drone.  Kagari?"

    "On it."  Kagari executed a front leap, jumping from his back into a squatting position.  "Get ready, Sachi."

    As the Enforcers threw their combined weight against the ruined display wall, dust, rocks, and larger debris fell on top of them, thickening the cloud of irritants within their small alcove.  Kogami coughed and leaned hard into the wall until the debris field above them cleared.  The tumble of rubble was replaced by the steady whisper of the flight drone.  It's light winked on, bathing the area in brilliant illumination.  With the pillbot latched tightly to the top of the drone, it flew unerringly through the small opening and into the area beyond their dark world.

    "Oh, this doesn't look good at all," Akane said, peering over Sachi's shoulder.  "The entire atrium has sustained considerable damage."

    "Looks better than I expected actually."  Sachi manipulated the drone controls and guided it through the nearby ruins of the facility.  "There's the corridor to the dayroom.  It looks accessible."

    "What's that light?" Kogami asked.  He brushed the debris from his hands, frowning at a bleeding cut between his fingers.

    "Can't tell," Sachi said.  She brought the drone in for closer examination.  "Sunlight?  I can try to get a better look."

    "Not worth it.  Wherever it is, it's somewhere we can't get to right now." Kogami pointed the drone's readout sensors, which indicated a height of 50 feet.  "Head into the corridor leading to the day room.  Once we can get everyone into a safer area, we can come back and check out where the sunlight is coming from for ourselves."

    Sachi guided the drone back down and into the main corridor off the atrium.  While heavily damaged by debris falling from the ceiling and general loss of structural integrity, the hallway was mostly intact.  Large piles of debris and concrete offered only minor obstacles on the path.

    "There it is!" Gin shouted, getting suddenly excited.  He calmed himself, blushing from his reaction. 

    "And the emergency lights are on," Sachi said.

    "Seems safe enough," Kagari said.  "Ko?"

    "I'd rather wait this out there than here under a staircase."  He climbed onto some of the debris that had fallen in on them.  "Let's just hope for a quick rescue and no aftershocks."

    Struggling with the enormity of the weight on the other side of their wall, Kogami and Kagari forced the display over onto its side.  The case fell onto its side and made a steeply angled path on which to climb over the debris field and down into the atrium.  Kogami positioned his hands on the staircase edge and with a pull up, kicked out of the alcove and onto the wall.  Working to get his balance, he walked down to the floor. 

    "Wait before you send them."  The base of their walkway was right beside the severed lower half of Director Ito's body.  Tearing a decorative quilt from the wall, Kogami laid it over the body.  "The kids shouldn't have to see this."

    "Can you see where that light's coming from?" Kagari asked.  He helped Akane up onto the makeshift walkway and then began handing her kids as Kogami gathered them together on the floor.

    "Looks like the top of the atrium," Kogami replied.

    "It is," Gin said.  He pointed in the direction of the one concentrated ray of sunlight in the darkness.  "Looks like the building next door may have collapsed on top of us."

    "Talk about claustrophobia," Kagari complained.  He walked in the front of the group as they made the move to the dayroom. Akane was in the middle, among the children, while Kogami brought up the rear.

    "I'm glad we came here today," Kogami said.

    Kagari shot him an odd look.

    "If this happened on any other day, it might be days before anybody got to these kids.  With an Inspector and two Enforcers unaccounted for, help will get here all the sooner."

    "Nothing wrong with rescuing ourselves."  Kagari went ahead at a distance and stood gazing up at the opening above them.  "What?  That's got to be 50 feet up."  He searched around for a way to the rift.  Finding none sturdy enough to hold his weight, he grasped a section of exposed rebar and started climbing.

    "Kagari!" Akane shouted.  "I don't think that's a good idea right now."

    "She's right.  Get down from there before—" Kogami's voice was drowned out by an aftershock that shook the building foundation.  He pushed Akane and as many of the children as he could against a nearby wall and fought to shield them with his body as more debris and dust fell from the ruins of the damaged facility.

    With a howling cry of alarm, Kagari fell thirty feet back to the floor, landing on a pile of broken columns.  While conscious, he did not immediately move and groaned through grit teeth as he fought to brace himself through the pain.  As quickly as it struck, the tremor ended, but it took several long minutes for the building to stop making noise as it resettled within its own crumbled foundation.

    "Idiot." Kogami pushed away from the wall.  More light was streaming through the hole above them, highlighting Kagari's dust-covered figure in the darkness.  "Are you hurt?

    "My wrist," Kagari said in defeat. 

    "Looks broken." Kogami glared at him.  "Should have landed on your head.  Would have caused less damage.  This isn't the time, Kagari.  Not with the kids here.  The priority is to get them to the dayroom."

    Kagari met his eyes and then looked away in shame, his cheeks matching the color of his hair.  "I just thought the paddy wagon might have survived the earthquake.  The parking lot wasn't that far away."

    "That's the problem, you were thinking." Kogami pulled him to his feet.  "I'm certain the van survived the quake, and we may even have a way up to it."  He looked at Sachi as she cradled the flight drone in her arms.  "But now—"

    "—isn't the time," Kagari said.  He gasped as he tried to flex the wrist, and the broken bone shifted painfully. 

    Kogami looped Kagari's belt around the younger Enforcer's neck and gently helped him place his arm in it.  "Until we can stabilize this, it's going to hurt like hell."

    "Can I use your tie as a sling for my pride?"

    Kogami rolled his eyes and gave the injured Enforcer a shove back toward the corridor.  "Get moving before I break the other one."