Not only was the Security Bureau unable to comprehend it—the East City Police Headquarters couldn't accept it either!
After all, according to the East City Police Headquarters' records, the SWAT officers accused of being robbers had served on the force for at least nine years! Many officers claimed to know them well and could even recount everyday details of their time together.
And when the operation had been decided upon, their names had been on the roster of participating officers as well!
It was just that the situation had been too chaotic at the time. In the rush, there had been no time to carefully verify the roster or count the members of both teams. No one had noticed that the list contained seven extra people who did not exist.
Without wasting much time, the Security Bureau's Heart Pivot examination revealed that every officer involved in the operation, as well as the other members of the SWAT teams, had been affected. Three to four days earlier, during an ordinary group dinner, every participant had received subtle hidden suggestions to varying degrees. As though they were close brothers who had always been on the same wavelength, memories of people who did not exist had welled up in their minds!
The clerk in charge of the headquarters archive—the one who had provided the headquarters with surveillance leads that morning—had vanished without a trace before the Security Bureau could arrest him.
By the time East City Security Bureau personnel stormed the prison hospital, all they found was a signed list of personnel received... and the seven men were not on it at all!
Three hours later, after searching all of East City, Security Bureau agents finally found the utterly mangled prison transport van in a parking lot. In the surveillance footage, it had