The Jaimec authorities’ snap-searches turn a new legal measure into a sudden street-level threat: James Mowry nearly falls into a search, escapes through a house when police lines trap a crowd, and responds by destroying the papers that identify him as Shir Agavan. The episode shows how an unpredictable search can endanger him even when he is not among those actually caught, and how escape requires more than getting clear of the street: his old identity must be abandoned too.

From a New Law to a New Tactic

The searches followed a new law introduced that morning, but the authorities did not confine themselves to what that law prescribed. They devised the snap-search as a further, dangerous technique. The distinction matters: the danger to Mowry does not arise solely from a known legal procedure, but from the authorities’ willingness to extend their methods beyond the law’s immediate scope.

The tactic’s defining feature is its uncertainty. Mowry recognizes that no one can tell when or where the next blow will fall. A person cannot simply avoid a known checkpoint or calculate a safe route from a predictable schedule; the possibility of an abrupt search unsettles ordinary movement throughout the streets. The first grab nearly catches Mowry, a warning that even an operation he survives can narrow his room for action afterward.

The Street Trap

While heading for a rendezvous, Mowry encounters uniformed police extending a line across the street. At the same time, a second line forms four hundred yards farther on, enclosing the stretch between them. The people caught in the space between the lines are a dumbfounded crowd, suddenly halted rather than gathered there by choice.

Plainclothes members of the Kaitempi then appear from among the trapped people. They begin searching everyone who has been stopped, moving swiftly and expertly. The scene combines a visible barrier with less conspicuous agents: the police lines contain the crowd, while the plainclothes officers conduct the searches. The operation is not presented as a formal summons or an orderly examination. Its force lies in how quickly the street becomes a confined space in which everyone caught between the lines is exposed to scrutiny.

Escape Through a House

Mowry avoids the mass search by ducking into a doorway and bolting through a house. The route is a practical break from the trap: rather than remain in the halted crowd, he cuts through a building and gets beyond the search. The narrowness of his escape is emphasized by his earlier near-capture and by the scale of the operation around him.

Once outside the trap, Mowry is ignored. He does not treat this reprieve as a victory to celebrate. He fades into the background as inconspicuously as possible and hurries home. His caution follows from the nature of the tactic: a successful escape from one cordon does not make the surrounding streets safe, especially when the timing and location of another search cannot be anticipated.

The Cost of Getting Clear

In his room, Mowry burns every document relating to Shir Agavan and crumbles the ashes into fine dust. The destruction makes the escape consequential beyond the immediate danger of being searched. Shir Agavan is an identity he resolves never to use again; the papers that could connect him to it are not merely hidden or set aside but reduced to ashes.

From one of his packages, he takes a new set of papers identifying him as Krag Wulkin, a special correspondent for a leading news agency. The sequence links the snap-search directly to a change of identity: after escaping the street operation, Mowry removes the documentary traces of one persona and equips himself with another. The event therefore marks both a tactical survival and a point of no return for the identity of Shir Agavan. The authorities’ unpredictable searches force him to treat even the papers in his room as a vulnerability, while the new documents provide the basis for his next assumed role.