"The Third Resource Recycling Facility."
One of the men in black spoke those words while looking out at a group of buildings filling one section of District 5.
The facility was right next to the border with District 7. The van used by Accelerator and the Hound Dog runaway had been found abandoned near a park on the District 7 side.
"He's fled to quite a troublesome place, Nancy."
The woman spoken to smiled upon hearing her colleague's words.
"What do you mean 'Nancy'?" she muttered to herself.
But that was her codename, so there was no helping it.
Nancy was an Asian who looked like the standard Japanese woman. Her hair and eyes were black, but she did not have the slightest complex about it. In fact, she would have preferred a codename in kanji. She guessed Kihara Amata was the type to choose a flashy screen name on the internet.
Nancy's entire body was covered by the black armored outfit and mask she wore, but it was not enough to hide the body lines of a fully-grown woman. Hound Dog was made up of the scum of society whether they were men or woman, so a few other members were women too. However, she did not feel any solidarity with them just because they were the same sex. Some of those in the organization were former Anti-Skill members who had grown addicted to the high of cornering suspects or analysts who had suggested using "torture that does not leave any marks" during an investigation. Basically, all of them were horrible people who deserved contempt.
Nancy lightly waved around the tool in her hand.
The device that looked like a toy gun was an olfactory sensor.
At the portion just above the grip where a handgun's hammer would be, a small LCD monitor of about 3 inches was attached. Multiple bar graphs were constantly fluctuating up and down on it. They resembled the audio bars displayed on a stereo's screen.
"The target's scent continues in that direction. There's no mistaking it," said Nancy to her colleagues behind her.
The target's scent.
A police dog would have been unable to track the scent on a rainy day like this, but they had mostly solved that problem. When scents were washed away, they were usually mixed with other scents rather than actually eliminated. This sensor could handle that mixed scent.
They looked in the direction the scent led.
"That's a huge facility," said one of the men in black standing next to Nancy.
It was a pointless comment, but it was exactly right.
The facility spreading out before them was about 2 kilometers square. It was used to recycle trash. Academy City had few resources, so it would recycle the standard paper products as well as metals such as iron and aluminum, petroleum products such as rubber and plastic, and many other types of materials. This facility collected resources from District 5 and three other surrounding districts and then processed them into a usable form.
The vast facility was somehow reminiscent of a coastal petrochemical complex. One section was lined with cylindrical fuel tanks with radiuses of over 100 meters. Another section contained factories with countless smokestacks sticking up.
Nevertheless, it was a recycling facility.
It was almost too perfect a place for scum to fight it out.
"Nancy, what do you think he's trying to do?" asked Rod. "This facility does not seem important strategically. But slipping past the security would have been too much work simply for somewhere to hide."
"Hmph. The answer might be surprisingly simple," replied Nancy casually. Rod looked dissatisfied, so she waved the olfactory sensor in front of his face. "He might want to travel through a waste treatment plant in order to eliminate his scent and escape from this thing."
"So he knows about our equipment?"
"That idiot Orson ran off with the target and that van had some spare equipment in it."
It would be difficult to fool the olfactory sensor simply by getting the smell of garbage on oneself. He would need to use some type of cleaning agent that changed the molecular structure of his scent. Hound Dog's suppression team had developed their own version, but a material recycling facility might have some similar chemicals.
"Such desperate measures," muttered Nancy with a thin smile before turning to her colleague. "Rod, do we have the layout of the facility?"
"I've already gotten it from the Bank."
"Send it to everyone. Include the number of workers and the patrol routes."
"We don't need to worry about patrol routes," readily replied the man known as Rod. "The facility is mostly automated. There are about 14 workers, but they all sit in front of keyboards in the control center. It seems they call in some external organization to deal with any mechanical maintenance."
"Good. That will save us some time in cleanup."
With that offhand comment, Nancy handed the olfactory sensor to a colleague. She then began to check the submachine gun hanging from a shoulder strap.
Rod lightly waved the small device displaying the layout of the facility.
"There are exits in 24 locations. We do not have enough people to cover every exit and check the inside of every single part of the facility."
Hound Dog's forces were currently spread between a few different groups: one to create a diversion against an unknown enemy, one to pursue Last Order, one to guard Kihara Amata, etc. For that reason, they had only about 10 members here.
"We just have to guide the target's movements. He should think we have a large number of personnel. We will attack from Point A on the map and then go in for a surprise attack at Emergency Exit C once his focus has been guided there. If we toss in a few explosives, it should shake him. Understand?"
"What if he uses his powers to break through? We can't guide him then."
"Don't worry."
Upon hearing Rod's voice, Nancy looked back towards the facility.
With its thick concrete, and layer after layer of intertwined metal pipes, the group of buildings was reminiscent of a heavy industrial facility.
"If what Kihara-san said is true, the target is not that almighty."