Line 15

## Line 15: Double Cross

Cover of the fifteenth chapter

**Double Cross** (ダブルクロス, *Daburu Kurosu*?) is the third chapter of the third volume and the overall fifteenth chapter of the *Devils' Line* manga series.

## Summary

Scenes of the Ikebukuro Incident play out - police cars, news reports, and social media reactions to the devil drinking blood.

Oryo wakes up from a nightmare about these events.

A flashback to the previous day (the day of the incident) starts from his perspective. Oryo has started a new job at Bar Cross, a Bar exclusively for devils, and his two female coworkers seem to like the energy he brings to the place.

His boss, Kiwako Oe, asks him to go out back and check how much beer is left. While he's out there he hears a noise and looks up to see Zero Two pushing Fifteen off a building. He tries to save him, but is unable to make it before he hits the ground. He hears him say something, but is unable to make out what it is. As Fifteen's blood pools around him, Oryo starts to transform and retreats back to the bar.

He starts scratching his arm to contain himself as he waits for his coworker, Wataru Akase, to get a sedative. By the time he's settled down, the incident is all over the news. It's being reported that the suspect threw himself off a building, but Oryo confesses to his coworkers what he saw. They say he should report it to the police. Oryo can't believe that boy was the one who assaulted the weather reporter.

Oryo informs the police and the next morning gets a call from F Squad's Sawazaki. They exchange pleasantries, then Sawazaki asks to meet with him to discuss the details of what he saw and he agrees.

At the police department, everyone seems to be busy with a part of the investigation and they are all working in pairs, so Asami suggests Sawazaki do the same. B Squad's Makimura volunteers to go with him to meet Oryo.

Asami also suggests getting more humans into F Squad since they only have two. Sawazaki doesn't think anyone would want to join. It seems he's seen as something of a devil-sympathizer. Even Asami thinks his sympathy goes too far.

He goes on to ask what old case Sawazaki's been researching so hard that he's missing sleep. He doesn't tell Asami, but he's been looking into other cases of blood drinking and trying to find any other instance of human blood healing a devil, but he can't find mention of it anywhere in 30 years worth of cases. He finds this very suspicious.

Meanwhile, Hans Lee is trying to figure out why Sawazaki hid the evidence from the sniping incident with Anzai. He drinks his morning (at last) dose of blood. Before the dose, his left eye is normal and squinting as if he can't see well through it, but after the dose, it transforms and opens almost as wide as his other eye. Drinking the blood is as easy as taking medicine for him. Hans deduces that because Anzai lost control, Sawazaki wanted to keep it a secret. He wonders if what he did was wrong and why drinking blood is illegal in the first place. He mentions a lab where devils drink blood for experiments, which implies that he was one of the test subjects. He laments never finding his cross necklace.

Sawazaki continues thinking about the blood drinking cases he's gone through and remembers one where the suspect was named Tamaki Anzai, but he passes it off as an Anzai unrelated to Yuuki.

Oryo is still trying to cope with the horrible sight he saw. As the images replay in his mind he finally makes out Fifteen's last words - Backstabber.

Then, he is suddenly confronted with a hooded Zero Four pointing a gun at him.

## Chapter Notes

* Oryo witnesses Fifteen being pushed from the building by Zero Two and informs the police.
* Oryo has found a new job at Bar Cross, a bar for devils.
* Sawazaki discovers that devils healing after drinking human blood is something being kept off the records.
* He also discovers a case where Tamaki Anzai was the suspect.
* Hans Lee drinks his last dose of blood.
* Hans Lee wonders why drinking blood is illegal.
* Oryo figures out that Fifteen was betrayed.
* Zero Four confronts Oryo with a gun.

## Characters

* Oryo
* Wataru Akase
* Kiwako Oe
* Fifteen
* Takashi Sawazaki
* Yousuke Asami
* Takeshi Makimura
* Hans Lee
* Zero Four