35 Immortality

Under the Pheasant Faction's desperate cover and sacrifices, Oda Sandayu drove Akira and Hanako Arasaka swiftly out of the North Oak District.

With the faction hackers' concealment techniques, they slipped into this unmonitored badlands region. After setting up the necessary measures and disguises to evade the satellites overhead, Akira saw an Arasaka underground laboratory, larger and more heavily staffed than the Biotechnica laboratory he had seen days earlier.

The place was filled with Pheasant Faction personnel, people who had not been mobilized even for the critically important mission to rescue Hanako Arasaka. Even other senior members of the Pheasant Faction had never known of them.

In other words, the task these people were carrying out was more important than Hanako Arasaka's life or death—they were the true key to the Pheasant Faction's survival.

Akira stood on the laboratory's first underground level and looked through the glass toward the floors below. In his sight, crowds in white lab coats moved through the laboratory. Quite a few noticed Hanako Arasaka's arrival, yet they did not even have the time to look up and offer a respectful greeting, so frantically busy were they.

"Miss Hanako, these people were never deployed during the rescue operation," Akira asked softly. "What exactly are they?"

"They are Arasaka's most core experimental team."

Hanako Arasaka's voice was as calm as if she were discussing the weather, but her next words made Akira's pupils suddenly contract—

"They are conducting cloning experiments on KK."

The answer to an important secret had been revealed.

The connection between the biological experiments and KK had also been uncovered.

The experiment currently underway could indeed link the two, because neither could be done without the other.

"Cloning experiments on KK?!"

Akira's voice rose unconsciously, but Hanako Arasaka was not surprised. Even she had been