Bungo Stray Dogs - Volume 4 Chapter 3 Part 5

Chapter 3 Part 5

The band of thieves were apparently being kept in the same hostage cellar where Kunikida and Atsushi had been held captive last time. According to Kunikida, they made sure the boss wouldn’t be able to escape using his skill, so there was nothing to worry about.
Atsushi had just one thing on his mind as he walked to visit them: Was there any way he could grant them a pardon? Sure, they were criminals, but they weren’t bad people. There was something about them that you just couldn’t hate. Besides, four million people would have died without their help. Was there no way to negotiate things with the special operations division and have them released?
They would have to vow never to commit another crime, but the boss would surely never quit being a thief. He was probably harder to convince than the Special Division for Unusual Powers.
How should I explain all this to him…?
By the time Atsushi had finished that thought, he’d ended up walking all the way to the hostage cellar. There were no guards. Everyone was probably too busy handling and cleaning up after the colonel. Atsushi knocked on the iron door, which creaked open on its own.
Oh? Are they not being held here? Maybe they were handcuffed with some sort of special device, so they didn’t even need to lock the door?
Or maybe…they already got away? But so quickly…?
I guess Kunikida was right. Maybe the boss should start calling himself the Master of Escape instead.
Atsushi quickly opened the door all the way and looked inside, but all his predictions were off.
Inside the room was Virgo. Dead. “…?!”
Atsushi’s head went blank.
He was dead. There was no mistake about it. His throat had been sliced open, and he had died in a pool of his own blood. His eyes were open as if he had taken his last breath the second before he realized what had happened to himself. He hadn’t been dead for long, perhaps no more than five or six minutes.
Why? Why Virgo?
Atsushi thought back to when Virgo was alive. He thought about his weary clerk-like demeanor and how he was always at his wits’ end dealing with the boss’s recklessness. But even then, Virgo was a talented engineer and an essential member to the band of thieves.
Why would somebody kill Virgo? Judging by the time of death, he was murdered after the colonel was knocked out by the gas. The colonel couldn’t have been the one who did it. But then…who?
Atsushi looked at the ground. Pools of blood seemed to seep out of the floor. Bloody footprints continued to the exit, but they were incomplete, so it was hard to tell the size of murderer’s foot or what kind of shoes they were wearing. Nevertheless, it was clear that the one who did this walked with relatively long strides.
The three thieves were supposedly locked in this room together, which meant Gab and the boss were still alive…or were not killed here at the very least.
Atsushi found something burned under the table, slightly away from the body. It was a piece of blackened metal plate. Atsushi had seen this before. It was a piece of the flash bomb the boss hid in his body with his skill. In other words, the boss must have run away.
But who had come here and killed Virgo? Surely Gab and the boss must have been startled, but he was able to quickly use the flash bomb and escape. He must’ve gone straight through the door with Gab. These were probably their footprints when they got away. The murderer was likely still chasing after them as well. Just when Atsushi was about to run after the footprints, his cell phone rang.
“Atsushi, where are you?!” Kunikida demanded on the other side of the phone.
“Kunikida, I—”
“The weapon’s gone!” yelled Kunikida, cutting him off. “The safe was open when we got there, and the weapon was already gone! We found the colonel’s severed hand by the safe. The criminal must have used his fingerprint to open it!”
“What?! Is the colonel—?”
“He was killed the moment the guard took his eyes off him.”
What was going on? The terrorist—the colonel—was killed? Why? Who would do such a thing? Was the colonel not the real mastermind behind all this?
“It seems like there’s still more to this case than we thought.” Kunikida’s voice was tenser than anyone else’s Atsushi had heard today. “This is nothing more than mere speculation, but someone was probably
using the colonel to activate the weapon for them. While prediction and assumptions could be dangerous…everything would make sense if that were the case. The colonel was killed to keep him quiet.”
A mastermind pulling the strings…

The real terrorist…
“This is an emergency. Find the weapon. Dazai and I will search underground. You search the surface. I don’t care if you have to beat up every suspicious person you run into! Find it!”
It must have been an emergency if Kunikida was willing to go so such extremes. After replying, Atsushi hung up. Phone still in hand, he thought about everyone involved that he had met so far. Was there really someone else behind all this?
Kunikida had mentioned the colonel’s hand had been cut off—the first thing that came to Atsushi’s mind was Akutagawa’s skill. But his actions wouldn’t make sense if he were the one behind this. Breaking into the island’s underground zone from the sea just to kill Atsushi would be pointless. Besides, he didn’t have a motive, either. Activating the weapon would turn the Port Mafia’s territory to ash as well.
Then who? Someone with a motive and the capabilities, and who could easily use a soldier like the colonel as one of their pawns…
Atsushi couldn’t think of anyone who matched that description—
—aside from one person.
No… It couldn’t be.
But no one else could have possibly done this.
Atsushi recalled the serious, straightforward look in that person’s eyes. And that person was the time traveler H. G. Wells.

Atsushi dashed. The island had made an emergency announcement telling all guests to go inside, so Atsushi could run as quickly as his legs would take him without worrying about any tourists out and about. He was heading toward the clock tower in the center of the island. There should be an underground room in the woods that Wells had been using near the tower. The last time Atsushi was there was when he saw the camera’s light and had his consciousness sent back in time, so he felt he might figure something out if he went.
Wells killed Virgo and the colonel and stole the weapon—Atsushi honestly didn’t believe this hypothesis. There was no way it was her. She was distraught that her skill had been used to create a weapon of mass destruction, and she came to this island all by herself to prevent that from activating. Even sending Atsushi to the past was to stop the weapon from being activated, which he did. In other words, this situation wasn’t what she desired.
Atsushi suddenly remembered something. Last time he went inside the underground room, they’d had to break the door’s chain and pry it open. Wells had pulled out a military-grade knife and tried to break it herself. It had a rather large blade. It would have been a piece of cake to cut open someone’s throat with that.
Did she really do it? Wells? I don’t want to believe that her sense of justice was all part of some scheme.
But when he reached the pathway to the woods near the clock tower, he realized his wishes were far too optimistic. There was someone collapsed on the ground in a puddle of blood.
“Gab!”
He rushed over to the wounded teenager. Gab was holding his stomach.
When Atsushi reached out to touch him, Gab slightly grimaced. “Gab, what happened? Where’s the boss?”
“I…failed…,” Gab groaned feebly while clutching his abdomen. His face was pale. “The boss…is behind me…”
Atsushi looked behind him. Gab was collapsed on top of a small staircase on the path. Atsushi didn’t notice at first, but there was about a three-foot drop-off behind Gab. At the bottom was the boss. His eyes were wide-open as he lay still like a stone statue. There was no light in his eyes. There was less blood around him than Gab, but fresh blood was still trickling weakly out of his neck. It was too late.
“No…”
The boss who used to be brimming with confidence… The individual who looked up to Arsène Lupin and wanted to become the next legendary phantom thief himself… The cheerful man who cared about his friends more than anything…
“Gab, what happened? Who did this to you?!”
Gab opened his mouth and tried to say something, but he could only gasp faintly. It was like the wind whistling through an opening. Gab’s wound was fatal as well. His blood pressure had dropped due to the acute blood loss. It wouldn’t be long before his life faded away. “Don’t die, Gab! I’ll go call for help!”
“Hey… Matasaburo…” Gab’s face twitched as he managed a smile. “You weren’t…a thief after all…”
What was he talking about? Was the decrease in blood pressure cutting off oxygen to his brain and sending his consciousness elsewhere?
“No. I’m an agent at a detective agency,” replied Atsushi. “I’ll apologize and make it up to you as much as you want later! So please…! Stay with me!”
“Sorry, but…it doesn’t look like that’s gonna happen, Matasaburo…” “My name isn’t Matasaburo. It’s Atsushi. Gab, I’m gonna go find you
some help!”
“Atsushi…huh? Listen…” Gab reached out with a trembling hand. “My name…is…Gabri…el…”
His arm then lifelessly dropped into the puddle of blood. Unable to even blink, Atsushi watched the final moment of Gab’s life. A gust of wind suddenly ran through the woods, causing the trees to rustle ominously.
Why? Why did Gab have to die? Why did the boss and Virgo have to die?
“I’m the boss’s number one disciple, so I’ll just make you my number one disciple! You’re the disciple of the Great Phantom Thief ’s disciple!”
The first time I came to this island, I thought it was so beautiful. I thought about how lucky I was to be able to spend time on such a wonderful resort even though it was for work. But I was wrong. This island is hell—a man-made hell that sails the ocean.
Atsushi checked the positional relation between Gab and the boss. Gab was on top of a hill in a pool of blood while the boss was at the bottom of the drop-off. The boss was surrounded in less blood. They must have both been attacked in the same area, but the boss fell. Atsushi looked up at the clock tower. It was 12:42.
All of a sudden, he noticed a familiar silhouette on the top floor of the tower. A woman with blond hair in a suit: Wells. There was no doubt about it. Before Atsushi could even process what was going on, he was already running.