Chapter 129

Camilla and Dominic watch the hijacked broadcast from their living room in mounting dread. In the studio, the intruders' leader silences the confused staff and asserts control; when director Eiger objects, a bullet fired at his seat convinces the room the guns are real. The leader calms the resulting panic with a pledge that cooperative hostages will go unharmed, framing the takeover as a demonstration of how things in Ostania ought to be. His group locks down the control room and transmitter, warns the government against cutting power to the tower or its relay stations, denies having demands or political complaints, and hands the producer a list of people to be brought to the studio within the hour.

Among the captives, three trained killers sit paralyzed by their own cover stories. Loid reads a political motive into the operation but judges direct infiltration too dangerous without more intelligence; he pictures impersonating the leader only to imagine Yuri unmasking him in front of Yor. Yor mentally rehearses cutting down every gunman in the room, then abandons the plan twice, first over the unseen hostiles elsewhere in the tower, later from terror that Loid would recoil from her brutality and seek a divorce. Yuri weighs bolting to alert the SSS even if it outs him to his sister, but visions of Yor caught in gunfire and his own death, plus the memory of Chloe's warning against throwing his life away, hold him in place. A bathroom ploy collapses when Loid and Yuri raise their hands at the same instant and neutralize each other with mutual suspicion; Yor's turn generates extra guards on Yuri and too few targets around herself to be worth striking. All three return to their seats having accomplished nothing.

Twenty-five minutes on, the leader An-D learns the people on his list, the rest of the Five-Year Love Plan cast, are on site. Over at SSS headquarters, the superior deduces that the Minister of Broadcasting shipped the actors over without consultation because his mistress Allegrossa sits among the hostages, confirming the affair rumors. He orders a covert infiltration readied, with lethal force authorized should executions or public unrest begin, and insists the response look deliberate rather than panicked. Then An-D cheerfully reveals the hijackers' actual objective, floored hostages and SSS alike: they intend to reshoot Five-Year Love Plan.

The hijackers cement control of the studio, control room, and transmitter, warning authorities against cutting the tower's power and demanding a list of individuals be delivered within an hour.

Loid, Yor, and Yuri each privately plot countermeasures and each stand down, checkmated by the need to protect their secret identities from one another.

The SSS prepares a covert infiltration after realizing the Minister of Broadcasting sent the drama's cast to protect his mistress Allegrossa.

An-D announces the hijacking's goal: a full reshoot of Five-Year Love Plan.

The chapter's centerpiece is the three-way gridlock gag, with the Forger household's spy, assassin, and secret policeman all neutralized not by the hijackers but by each other's presence.

Russel, Martin, and Christopher debut here, and the SSS superior's scene confirms the long-rumored affair between the Minister of Broadcasting and Allegrossa that Loid flagged in the previous chapter.