[Daffodil Like Yourself] Chapter 5
Aug. 4th, 2019 04:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
morphogenesistw: alcohol, drugs, bleeding/gore, knives/cutting wounds. please do not mix alcohol and pills.
Chapter Five
"Vonnegut's the butthole guy right?" Aoi said loud enough that an old woman camped at an ancient desktop a few seats away scoffed. ‘Whatever lady, public is public,’ he thought as he finished drafting his email. He and Light had set up camp at the end of a row of library computers and were talking about Vonnegut (blame the location) for lack of anything else to talk about. They’d taken to referencing his works back and forth and so far Aoi felt he’d won with God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, which Light admitted he hadn’t read.
"You should read Galapagos if you want insight into how vulgar he could be." Light loomed over his shoulder, a restless sentinel. "I bring him up to make a point—"
"Uh-huh," Aoi said. "It can wait." Sending an email was never so relieving. "Now they know where we are." His message to Akane was brief and loving, saying he’d be home soon so don’t leave HQ. He wrote to Junpei next. Junpei, anal as ever about security, was careful to switch email accounts often but there was one he stuck with: the pen name he shared with Seven for their stupid detective stories. One carefully-phrased email later, all Aoi and Light had to do was wait there. "So, what about crazy dead guys?"
“He also authored Slapstick in which the protagonist implements a new social policy that assigns every citizen a second middle name. Anyone who shares your second name, no matter how dissimilar, is considered family from that point onward. The idea—"
"Is that no one is ever alone again, gotcha, I read." Akane finished that one for both of them; Aoi checked out somewhere around the constant mentions of low-gravity erections.
"So what does a Daffodil like yourself want with a Carbon?"
"Why am I the flower?" Aoi returned the glower of some old guy staring at their computer. He rested his cheek on his palm and stared back until the man cussed under his breath and wandered down the row. Maybe in a city that felt so bereft of people despite its size people got attached to communal property and assumed it was theirs, but Aoi still had another thirty minutes on the computer. "Exactly what I said. You two to live. We all do. So I'm Carbon."
"'You're not exactly alone in this world. I have relatives of my own to look after. So why don't you take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut? Why don't you take a flying fuck at the moooooooooooon?'" Light crossed his arms, shifting his left to favor it. "Or at least that’s the attitude I expected." He seemed amused by himself, which Aoi guessed was his typical state.
"I’m full of surprises, but by all means take a break from me here." He was getting a migraine. Aoi's burning arm and ringing ears had nothing to do with Light, but blaming Light was easier than dwelling on the surgical scar on the back of his neck, on the brick wall he hit when he tried to transmit to his sister.
When he looked up he saw Light took his advice and wandered off. He watched Light walk behind a bookshelf and then Aoi returned to staring at his inbox, hoping for confirmation despite knowing he should wait. He swallowed and rubbed his jaw. He could use the time to research the implant. Earlier conversation made him and Light conclude it was an implant in Aoi’s neck, its purpose unknown to them. He didn’t like not knowing something.
Opening a browser, he searched for a few terms he remembered from talking shop with Akane and fell down a rabbit hole of medical and scientific journals. By the time he was done, his head hurt worse and he had to crack the knuckles of his right hand every few seconds just to test if they still held tension. He realized he had something to check with his companion, who was likely to be as reasonable as a wet cat.
Aoi had to pace the length of the place, peering around shelves and going upstairs into the various genre fiction sections looking for the jackass, before in frustration he went down and to the back and found Light sitting in the farthest corner of the media room. Headphones covered his ears and he held an old chipped CD player in both hands. He nodded his head to the music and despite his best effort to curl inward, he was too long and bony to look like anything but a forgotten scarecrow pitched into the corner. He didn’t jump when Aoi nudged his knee with the toe of his shoe. “Yes?” He removed the headphones. “Aoi?”
That was the first time he’d said Aoi’s name without simmering anger behind it. He sounded curious and calm. It felt weird.
Aoi shook his hands out yet again. “Tell me whatever you feel next,” he said and with that searched his thoughts for something easy to both remember and transmit. If words were beyond him he had images, sounds, and sensations: Mom’s savory oden, Akane’s laugh, how fast the desert flew by as he drove them away from Building Q—
Instead, Aoi wound back his left arm and punched the wall as hard as he could, pain immediately splitting his arm in two and making him yell ‘Fuck!’ loud enough that someone from the front desk came over. Beneath her scrutiny Aoi clutched his hand, feeling like a moron, and Light, chuckling, got to his feet. He handed her back the CD player, grabbed Aoi’s right arm, and dragged him to the front. They hid behind a column and Light shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Huh?” Aoi hissed through his nose, trying to muffle pained sounds.
“I feel nothing. Your experiment was a failure.” He lifted one shoulder. “Although by all means feel free to hurt yourself again.”
Aoi rolled with that fact and jumped into his next question:
When Aoi reached around Light and pressed his right hand to the base of the other’s neck, where the exact same raised sutures were, the same shaved skin, the same evidence that something thought inviolable had been taken away with a scalpel, Light froze. For a moment, they were in superposition, and then it was broken when Light slunk out of his grip like a cat. “Don’t.”
“That’s what I thought. You’ve got the exact same problem.” The weight of the implication hung over them both. Aoi’s whole body hurt now with real and imagined abuses. “SOIS was researching the mechanism behind esper powers, right? To see if it was hereditary. So if there’s a biological function that can ‘switch on’ espers—”
“There is likely a way to hamper its efficiency if one can’t ‘switch it off’ entirely.” Light sounded bitter as cold forgotten coffee. “And the most effective way to continuously do so would be some type of implant.”
The fact that Aoi couldn’t seem to turn his head without pain, that his right arm tingled constantly, that his ears rang. No, it couldn’t be blamed on stress anymore.
**
Junpei felt stuck; his phone was acting up and Akane’s, Seven’s, and Clover’s had frozen and then been wiped remotely. Same with the computers. They were being tracked closely and well; he would have to be twice as adept. It made it difficult to reach out to their contacts and, Akane worried, if Aoi was trying to reach them they didn’t know.
He replaced their phones with burners and tried not to worry. He gave Akane a kiss and said Aoi was fine, he was probably annoyed he’d been without his own phone for so long.
They still had the bright spot of the photographs of the two missing men. The photographs made Akane buoyant and Clover antsy. She demanded Junpei give her her phone back and his keys so she could drive west, not caring when Seven pointed out the photos were taken early that morning so Aoi and Light were likely elsewhere now.
Even better, Junpei got an email from Aoi in his latest work inbox. Seven and Junpei had confirmed the two weren’t at either safehouse, and they decided he and Junpei were headed to BWI Airport. The email just received from Aoi’s account placed him there, waiting by a Starbucks kiosk and bored.
Junpei and Seven were the only living Investigation members in the city as the other members were scoping out SOIS in LA and currently trapped in the state by wildfires. Junpei and Seven were the only ones going.
Akane and Clover tried to strongarm Seven, but agreed to stay after he said they needed people manning their base at the hotel because if this didn’t go well the two of them would need to save everyone like he knew they could. The two didn’t fall for flattery but they did agree to stay put.
This lead Junpei to a parking garage and someone who was definitely not Aoi poorly hiding behind a dark SUV and, well, fuck his life, he thought when he heard someone else coming up behind them.
**
Neither Aoi nor Light wanted to further discuss their theory and killed time separately in the library until the library kicked them out at 5:00pm. It was dark and to their right was a depressing street with more closed shops than people. The empty bus shelter to their left made Aoi contemplate riding the buses all night, but that wasn’t a productive plan. They couldn’t keep running aimlessly.
Aoi folded his arms, tucking his freezing hands into his sleeves. Where to go? Take the risk and go to the safehouse or back to Light’s place? Were Junpei and co. still in position or in the city?
"Junpei never came," Light said behind him.
"He gets lost everywhere he goes." It wasn't a good joke or comforting lie. "But he's never late. Something happened."
"Why is that?"
Because Junpei was maddeningly single-minded, pragmatic, and loyal. Because it did not take five hours to find a library.
Aoi tucked his chin to his chest, cold air stinging his nose, and confessed into his collar, "He never got my message. He'd be here otherwise. Bet he can't be." He shuddered, wishing for heat and a bed. "Let's get the hell out of here."
**
The unmanned safehouse was donated by a loose connection to the organization. One of the Greeks (as Aoi dubbed them) had a grandma who grew up in the city and held on to her family home all this time. Time had turned it into a vacant but well kept house in Federal Hill, and they arrived frozen and exhausted.
Their excitement was dulled by the realization that their access to heating was limited to a space heater they found in the attic studio. They had no choice but to share the room, but at least there were two twin beds. Aoi found himself still wearing everything except his shoes while he sat under a blanket on the mattress, steeping in his frustration that the house was empty. No sign of a struggle but no sign any of his people had been there either.
Light kicked the bed frame, nodded to himself, and muttered something half-hearted about sturdy antiques. He was lucky he couldn't see the portrait of a dead-eyed family on the wall. "So far your track record suggests I should've run in the opposite direction." He sat down on the other bed.
"Yeah and you'd still be in that basement without me." Aoi pulled a second blanket around himself. "Where did those leaf words get you?"
Light sighed and didn't answer the question. Instead he got up slowly and retrieved a lighter from his person, and a pack of cigarettes. Where the hell had he been hiding those? Aoi remembered Light bumping into someone while getting off their last bus but he didn’t know Light had pickpocketing in him, or that he was so good at it. "Excuse me. I'm going to attempt to salvage this day." He retreated to the bathroom and ran the fan.
Aoi almost thought about joining him; it'd been an off-and-on habit through his late teens, and the only compelling reason to quit was he was constantly getting sinus infections. If there was ever a day he needed one though...
Aoi lay back and held up a cell phone he plucked from the jacket pocket of a sleeping man on the bus here. Maybe that guy would be more careful from now on. It was close to 7:00pm but he felt like it was midnight. He tried Junpei just in case and the phone rang and rang. He couldn’t remember Seven’s number, whoops, and before he called Akane he decided to be nice and let Light talk to Clover.
Aoi got up and knocked on the bathroom door...and what greeted him was a weak, pained groan. “Hey?”
“I’m fine.” Light’s strained voice begged to differ.
“Get decent, I need to talk to you. Got a surprise.” Aoi opened the door and found Light bent over the sink, red welling and running down the back of his neck, hands bloodied, and the pilfered box cutter Aoi’d held on to from Light’s apartment in the basin. Aoi took it back; Light was an amazing pickpocket. "Oh what the fuck?!"
Light moaned and probed the back of his neck. Everywhere, everywhere, he seemed to bleed. "I think I almost had it," he got out, "but I need a new knife sterilized." It must’ve been an attempt to open the stitches. The mental calculus wasn't hard: smoke in hopes of calming down, take a deep breath, go to town on yourself like a frog on the lab table. Not hard, just incomprehensible.
Light protested when Aoi pushed a washcloth to his neck, blood soaking it and Aoi's stomach turning at all he remembered about bloodborne pathogens. "Take it out!"
"Are you trying to kill yourself?" he hissed.
Light's hands streaked blood on the sink, into the basin, and they struggled for the box cutter. Aoi managed to take it and throw it into the tub. Did Light even feel pain? His right palm was sliced too.
Light turned, grabbed Aoi's wrists, and squeezed until Aoi felt it in his tendons. Light shoved him against the door frame. Close as they were, it was difficult to repulse him. "I said get it out."
"Okay," Aoi said, and when released he yanked Light forward and suckerpunched him. Light crumpled, gasping, and then moaned piteously. Not in pain. "Sit still and you're gonna let me fix this." Aoi watched Light sink forward until his forehead was on the carpet. The bleeding had mercifully stemmed.
"How much longer must I wait and do nothing?" Light said, as if talking to himself.
Aoi stepped over him and found a first aid kit in a narrow linen closet. Along with a bottle of bourbon, which he agreed was a necessary companion to a first aid kit. "I know what I'm doing," he lied, and set the bourbon and a bottle of painkillers next to them. After explaining Light’s dazzling array of pain relievers he said, "Pick your poison." Light stayed hunched over on the floor like a frog. "Hey?"
"What's the point in self-preservation if I don't save her?" he murmured into the piling.
"You're not gonna save her if you don't get up.” Aoi rattled the kit. “Shut up and let me fix this so you can make yourself useful tomorrow.” What was the point of going in circles? He was hungry, tired, and beyond the point of fear or anger. “‘Cause I need you to do something, Daffodil-3.”
Light shook his head, and Aoi made a face at the thought of blood microbes scattering. “And who benefits from that? Not us.”
“Especially you two. While you were trying to paralyze yourself, I was working out a plan.” The thought of said plan was bitter, and heavy as granite. “If you help me out, and we win…” He threw his hands up. “We walk away. Forever. You two go back to instant ramen and harp gigs, but we’ll never bug you again.”
“Because you kept your promise the first time?”
“Hey, we didn’t have a binding contract last time.”
“Oh?” Light shook his head, wavering a little, struggling to hold his head up. Woozy no doubt from blood loss and lack of food.
“I’ll tell you while I’m doing this,” he said, pulling on Light’s collar.
Light considered this, then probed for the fallen bourbon bottle and pills. He opened the pill bottle, popped one, and took a slug from the bourbon that Seven would be proud of. “Just a moment.” The combination of pills, booze, and an empty stomach hit him fast and hard; soon he was bent over on the floor. Aoi had to nudge him to move.
Aoi held the needle from the kit over the lighter’s flame in an effort to sterilize it before taking a quick break to sneak a smoke, stub it on the windowsill, and throw it into the alley below. Light sat on the tub’s edge with his back to Aoi, and after cleaning the wound with peroxide Aoi forced himself to stick the needle into the other’s flesh.
Downwards, past the sub-dermal layer, the tutorial he had open on the phone said, and though he stiffened Light didn’t make a sound. Aoi broke down Plan B while he did this to distract himself. He was never amazing in Home Ec, but then again they hadn’t been sewing up human flesh. Slowly the wound came back together, sharp exhalations coming from Light as it got closer to the end, and in the end a tight zigzag line resealed the skin. Not pretty, but workable.
“You’ll live, and can’t give anyone Hepatitis now.” Aoi nodded and thought he hadn’t done a bad job.
“Do you think that’s,” or ‘thass’ in Light’s slur, “a plan?” When Light tried to get out of the tub he slid backwards and landed elbows-first, rolling over slowly until he was on his stomach on the floor. “It will work?”
“Of course, it’s my plan.”
Light muttered into the bathmat, “Hope, faith, love, luck.” He snorted. “I hate those words.”
Aoi stayed next to him on the floor. Witnessing someone erode their own dignity in the course of an hour was fascinating and embarrassing all at once. “They’re bullshit.”
“Never helped when anyone needed them.”
That was edging too close to territory Aoi himself refused to cross; the boundary of a world he didn’t live in anymore and never wanted to think about again. “That wasn’t your problem.”
“But it was.” Light rolled to his side to face Aoi. “Clover looks at me like I can do anything. She thinks the leaf words are a magic spell, and I’ve never had the courage to tell her I don’t think so.” He sighed heavily, head lolling back onto the carpet. “I couldn’t be with her in either of the Nonary Games; I couldn’t do anything when she was kidnapped. She looks at me like a hero regardless. I don’t deserve a sister like her.”
‘We never do,’ Aoi thought, but what he said was, “You’re wasted, man. Sleep it off if you wanna be any good tomorrow.” He stood up and Light caught his ankle.
“I...” He released Aoi to bat his hand at the air weakly. “I meant it. Why was it you who came for me?”
The morphic fieldset showed them sending any other agents ended with dead Fields, and they’d spurned Junpei and Seven. It wasn’t a hard choice to save someone to whom he owed a debt. “I wanted to be able to say I tried.”
Light got to his feet by dragging himself up onto the toilet and then leaned against the sink for stability. “Thank you. I believe that’s your honest answer.” He waved his right arm weakly. “Now lemme ‘lone.”
Aoi yanked the door shut behind him. He sat in an old wooden chair and smoked two more cigarettes by the open window, freezing his lips and fingers but warming from the inside, and threw them out the window like sparks. What was littering after all was said and done? Tomorrow could end in worse no matter how the cards fell.
He played on his phone, set up a necessary assets transfer, forwarded papers to a notary, and sent confirmation to third-party vendors that starting tomorrow Crash Keys assets in these three regions would be destroyed—
And that’s when Light finally came out, shirtless, shuffling and then rolling facedown onto his bed. Alcohol had made him impervious to the cold and Aoi wished that could be him. He ignored Aoi calling out to him and when Aoi poked him, he was breathing just quiet. Aoi decided that was good enough and went back to his own bed.
They were in their own worlds, Aoi still messing with the phone, when a hand pressed to the back of his neck. “What?”
“You have a pulse,” Light mumbled. “I think you’re human.” And before Aoi could fire back Light fell on him, the full weight of his body almost crushing Aoi. He didn’t respond to Aoi’s complaints, and soft snoring clued Aoi in he was fine, just feeling his booze.
Goddamn it.
**
Clover woke before sunrise. She hadn’t slept well since Junpei and Seven didn’t return from BWI. She was alone now with Akane, who paced and made phone calls trying to see who could help her remotely, who was within flying or driving distance, and who she could call in favors from. It was different seeing her in this mode; she wasn’t being cutesy or plying Clover with obsequious hosting. She was polite on the phone but her face and the way she twirled her hair around her fingers showed she was annoyed, worried, angry.
Akane hung up, put a hand over her face, and then sat on the sofa.
“What’s wrong?” Clover asked.
Akane started like she didn’t realize Clover was there. “The earliest anyone will be here is this afternoon.” She pushed some hair behind her ear. “And I still can’t reach Junpei.”
Clover pursed her lips. “So we’re just supposed to sit here? No thanks.” She approached Akane and tried to take her phone; Akane held it against her chest and leaned away from Clover.
“Give me a minute, I’m still thinking—”
“Every time you have an idea I almost die!”
“Clover!” Akane flinched when Clover grabbed her wrist. But Akane surprised Clover; she pulled Clover’s hand back towards herself and caught Clover’s wrist from underneath with her other hand in an ‘L’ shape. Clover lost her grip and Akane scooted further away from her and sat on the phone. “I’m so sorry,” she said and clasped her hands in front of her chest. “Are you okay?”
Clover skipped surprise and went straight to angry; she leapt forward and shook Akane, yelling, “Give me the phone!”
Akane futilely tried to push Clover off of her and finally said, “I will!” When she was released, she sighed and said, “Let me explain first.” She held up a hand when Clover interrupted her. “Do you know what was on those drives Alice gave you?”
“I don’t need to! Alice is my friend and she asked me not to look.”
“Alice works for SOIS, and SOIS kidnapped the espers.” Akane’s face was stern, like she’d lost patience. “Whatever she collected and gave to you will prove it. I have someone working on finding any copies she may have made.”
“How do you expect me to believe that?”
Akane pulled the phone out and after a few moments swiping the screen, extended her arm to Clover. “Look.”
Clover read it and her heart sank: it was a log of an investigation into SOIS’ involvement with Hongou after arresting him. There was a timeline showing his release for trial and his subsequent disappearance on his way to prison. There was proof SOIS had funneled money into a fake subsidiary Hongou owned that he used to amass materials for the kidnapping and holding of espers. There was a list of all the SOIS agents who disappeared in the line of duty and Clover knew every name, every face.
“This is the information we could find on Alice’s personal computer. We think she was going to be a whistle blower, but unfortunately I learned today she’s in holding with SOIS.” Akane looked sad and concerned. “I guess they found out what she knew.”
“Is she okay?”
“I don’t know.”
Clover felt pulled in a dozen directions: her brother, Alice, Junpei, and Seven all needed her right now and she couldn’t help all of them right away. She curled her free hand into a fist. “There’s another problem then.” She told Akane she’d left her location on Alice’s phone, which given Alice’s current state meant her belongings were in SOIS custody, and SOIS knew Alice was a traitor. They must’ve been combing through everything she owned and monitoring incoming messages.
Akane to her credit didn’t call her an idiot; she didn’t rub anything in. She just folded her hands in her lap, looked at Clover dead-on, and said, “We need to go then.”
Chapter Five
"Vonnegut's the butthole guy right?" Aoi said loud enough that an old woman camped at an ancient desktop a few seats away scoffed. ‘Whatever lady, public is public,’ he thought as he finished drafting his email. He and Light had set up camp at the end of a row of library computers and were talking about Vonnegut (blame the location) for lack of anything else to talk about. They’d taken to referencing his works back and forth and so far Aoi felt he’d won with God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, which Light admitted he hadn’t read.
"You should read Galapagos if you want insight into how vulgar he could be." Light loomed over his shoulder, a restless sentinel. "I bring him up to make a point—"
"Uh-huh," Aoi said. "It can wait." Sending an email was never so relieving. "Now they know where we are." His message to Akane was brief and loving, saying he’d be home soon so don’t leave HQ. He wrote to Junpei next. Junpei, anal as ever about security, was careful to switch email accounts often but there was one he stuck with: the pen name he shared with Seven for their stupid detective stories. One carefully-phrased email later, all Aoi and Light had to do was wait there. "So, what about crazy dead guys?"
“He also authored Slapstick in which the protagonist implements a new social policy that assigns every citizen a second middle name. Anyone who shares your second name, no matter how dissimilar, is considered family from that point onward. The idea—"
"Is that no one is ever alone again, gotcha, I read." Akane finished that one for both of them; Aoi checked out somewhere around the constant mentions of low-gravity erections.
"So what does a Daffodil like yourself want with a Carbon?"
"Why am I the flower?" Aoi returned the glower of some old guy staring at their computer. He rested his cheek on his palm and stared back until the man cussed under his breath and wandered down the row. Maybe in a city that felt so bereft of people despite its size people got attached to communal property and assumed it was theirs, but Aoi still had another thirty minutes on the computer. "Exactly what I said. You two to live. We all do. So I'm Carbon."
"'You're not exactly alone in this world. I have relatives of my own to look after. So why don't you take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut? Why don't you take a flying fuck at the moooooooooooon?'" Light crossed his arms, shifting his left to favor it. "Or at least that’s the attitude I expected." He seemed amused by himself, which Aoi guessed was his typical state.
"I’m full of surprises, but by all means take a break from me here." He was getting a migraine. Aoi's burning arm and ringing ears had nothing to do with Light, but blaming Light was easier than dwelling on the surgical scar on the back of his neck, on the brick wall he hit when he tried to transmit to his sister.
When he looked up he saw Light took his advice and wandered off. He watched Light walk behind a bookshelf and then Aoi returned to staring at his inbox, hoping for confirmation despite knowing he should wait. He swallowed and rubbed his jaw. He could use the time to research the implant. Earlier conversation made him and Light conclude it was an implant in Aoi’s neck, its purpose unknown to them. He didn’t like not knowing something.
Opening a browser, he searched for a few terms he remembered from talking shop with Akane and fell down a rabbit hole of medical and scientific journals. By the time he was done, his head hurt worse and he had to crack the knuckles of his right hand every few seconds just to test if they still held tension. He realized he had something to check with his companion, who was likely to be as reasonable as a wet cat.
Aoi had to pace the length of the place, peering around shelves and going upstairs into the various genre fiction sections looking for the jackass, before in frustration he went down and to the back and found Light sitting in the farthest corner of the media room. Headphones covered his ears and he held an old chipped CD player in both hands. He nodded his head to the music and despite his best effort to curl inward, he was too long and bony to look like anything but a forgotten scarecrow pitched into the corner. He didn’t jump when Aoi nudged his knee with the toe of his shoe. “Yes?” He removed the headphones. “Aoi?”
That was the first time he’d said Aoi’s name without simmering anger behind it. He sounded curious and calm. It felt weird.
Aoi shook his hands out yet again. “Tell me whatever you feel next,” he said and with that searched his thoughts for something easy to both remember and transmit. If words were beyond him he had images, sounds, and sensations: Mom’s savory oden, Akane’s laugh, how fast the desert flew by as he drove them away from Building Q—
Instead, Aoi wound back his left arm and punched the wall as hard as he could, pain immediately splitting his arm in two and making him yell ‘Fuck!’ loud enough that someone from the front desk came over. Beneath her scrutiny Aoi clutched his hand, feeling like a moron, and Light, chuckling, got to his feet. He handed her back the CD player, grabbed Aoi’s right arm, and dragged him to the front. They hid behind a column and Light shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Huh?” Aoi hissed through his nose, trying to muffle pained sounds.
“I feel nothing. Your experiment was a failure.” He lifted one shoulder. “Although by all means feel free to hurt yourself again.”
Aoi rolled with that fact and jumped into his next question:
When Aoi reached around Light and pressed his right hand to the base of the other’s neck, where the exact same raised sutures were, the same shaved skin, the same evidence that something thought inviolable had been taken away with a scalpel, Light froze. For a moment, they were in superposition, and then it was broken when Light slunk out of his grip like a cat. “Don’t.”
“That’s what I thought. You’ve got the exact same problem.” The weight of the implication hung over them both. Aoi’s whole body hurt now with real and imagined abuses. “SOIS was researching the mechanism behind esper powers, right? To see if it was hereditary. So if there’s a biological function that can ‘switch on’ espers—”
“There is likely a way to hamper its efficiency if one can’t ‘switch it off’ entirely.” Light sounded bitter as cold forgotten coffee. “And the most effective way to continuously do so would be some type of implant.”
The fact that Aoi couldn’t seem to turn his head without pain, that his right arm tingled constantly, that his ears rang. No, it couldn’t be blamed on stress anymore.
**
Junpei felt stuck; his phone was acting up and Akane’s, Seven’s, and Clover’s had frozen and then been wiped remotely. Same with the computers. They were being tracked closely and well; he would have to be twice as adept. It made it difficult to reach out to their contacts and, Akane worried, if Aoi was trying to reach them they didn’t know.
He replaced their phones with burners and tried not to worry. He gave Akane a kiss and said Aoi was fine, he was probably annoyed he’d been without his own phone for so long.
They still had the bright spot of the photographs of the two missing men. The photographs made Akane buoyant and Clover antsy. She demanded Junpei give her her phone back and his keys so she could drive west, not caring when Seven pointed out the photos were taken early that morning so Aoi and Light were likely elsewhere now.
Even better, Junpei got an email from Aoi in his latest work inbox. Seven and Junpei had confirmed the two weren’t at either safehouse, and they decided he and Junpei were headed to BWI Airport. The email just received from Aoi’s account placed him there, waiting by a Starbucks kiosk and bored.
Junpei and Seven were the only living Investigation members in the city as the other members were scoping out SOIS in LA and currently trapped in the state by wildfires. Junpei and Seven were the only ones going.
Akane and Clover tried to strongarm Seven, but agreed to stay after he said they needed people manning their base at the hotel because if this didn’t go well the two of them would need to save everyone like he knew they could. The two didn’t fall for flattery but they did agree to stay put.
This lead Junpei to a parking garage and someone who was definitely not Aoi poorly hiding behind a dark SUV and, well, fuck his life, he thought when he heard someone else coming up behind them.
**
Neither Aoi nor Light wanted to further discuss their theory and killed time separately in the library until the library kicked them out at 5:00pm. It was dark and to their right was a depressing street with more closed shops than people. The empty bus shelter to their left made Aoi contemplate riding the buses all night, but that wasn’t a productive plan. They couldn’t keep running aimlessly.
Aoi folded his arms, tucking his freezing hands into his sleeves. Where to go? Take the risk and go to the safehouse or back to Light’s place? Were Junpei and co. still in position or in the city?
"Junpei never came," Light said behind him.
"He gets lost everywhere he goes." It wasn't a good joke or comforting lie. "But he's never late. Something happened."
"Why is that?"
Because Junpei was maddeningly single-minded, pragmatic, and loyal. Because it did not take five hours to find a library.
Aoi tucked his chin to his chest, cold air stinging his nose, and confessed into his collar, "He never got my message. He'd be here otherwise. Bet he can't be." He shuddered, wishing for heat and a bed. "Let's get the hell out of here."
**
The unmanned safehouse was donated by a loose connection to the organization. One of the Greeks (as Aoi dubbed them) had a grandma who grew up in the city and held on to her family home all this time. Time had turned it into a vacant but well kept house in Federal Hill, and they arrived frozen and exhausted.
Their excitement was dulled by the realization that their access to heating was limited to a space heater they found in the attic studio. They had no choice but to share the room, but at least there were two twin beds. Aoi found himself still wearing everything except his shoes while he sat under a blanket on the mattress, steeping in his frustration that the house was empty. No sign of a struggle but no sign any of his people had been there either.
Light kicked the bed frame, nodded to himself, and muttered something half-hearted about sturdy antiques. He was lucky he couldn't see the portrait of a dead-eyed family on the wall. "So far your track record suggests I should've run in the opposite direction." He sat down on the other bed.
"Yeah and you'd still be in that basement without me." Aoi pulled a second blanket around himself. "Where did those leaf words get you?"
Light sighed and didn't answer the question. Instead he got up slowly and retrieved a lighter from his person, and a pack of cigarettes. Where the hell had he been hiding those? Aoi remembered Light bumping into someone while getting off their last bus but he didn’t know Light had pickpocketing in him, or that he was so good at it. "Excuse me. I'm going to attempt to salvage this day." He retreated to the bathroom and ran the fan.
Aoi almost thought about joining him; it'd been an off-and-on habit through his late teens, and the only compelling reason to quit was he was constantly getting sinus infections. If there was ever a day he needed one though...
Aoi lay back and held up a cell phone he plucked from the jacket pocket of a sleeping man on the bus here. Maybe that guy would be more careful from now on. It was close to 7:00pm but he felt like it was midnight. He tried Junpei just in case and the phone rang and rang. He couldn’t remember Seven’s number, whoops, and before he called Akane he decided to be nice and let Light talk to Clover.
Aoi got up and knocked on the bathroom door...and what greeted him was a weak, pained groan. “Hey?”
“I’m fine.” Light’s strained voice begged to differ.
“Get decent, I need to talk to you. Got a surprise.” Aoi opened the door and found Light bent over the sink, red welling and running down the back of his neck, hands bloodied, and the pilfered box cutter Aoi’d held on to from Light’s apartment in the basin. Aoi took it back; Light was an amazing pickpocket. "Oh what the fuck?!"
Light moaned and probed the back of his neck. Everywhere, everywhere, he seemed to bleed. "I think I almost had it," he got out, "but I need a new knife sterilized." It must’ve been an attempt to open the stitches. The mental calculus wasn't hard: smoke in hopes of calming down, take a deep breath, go to town on yourself like a frog on the lab table. Not hard, just incomprehensible.
Light protested when Aoi pushed a washcloth to his neck, blood soaking it and Aoi's stomach turning at all he remembered about bloodborne pathogens. "Take it out!"
"Are you trying to kill yourself?" he hissed.
Light's hands streaked blood on the sink, into the basin, and they struggled for the box cutter. Aoi managed to take it and throw it into the tub. Did Light even feel pain? His right palm was sliced too.
Light turned, grabbed Aoi's wrists, and squeezed until Aoi felt it in his tendons. Light shoved him against the door frame. Close as they were, it was difficult to repulse him. "I said get it out."
"Okay," Aoi said, and when released he yanked Light forward and suckerpunched him. Light crumpled, gasping, and then moaned piteously. Not in pain. "Sit still and you're gonna let me fix this." Aoi watched Light sink forward until his forehead was on the carpet. The bleeding had mercifully stemmed.
"How much longer must I wait and do nothing?" Light said, as if talking to himself.
Aoi stepped over him and found a first aid kit in a narrow linen closet. Along with a bottle of bourbon, which he agreed was a necessary companion to a first aid kit. "I know what I'm doing," he lied, and set the bourbon and a bottle of painkillers next to them. After explaining Light’s dazzling array of pain relievers he said, "Pick your poison." Light stayed hunched over on the floor like a frog. "Hey?"
"What's the point in self-preservation if I don't save her?" he murmured into the piling.
"You're not gonna save her if you don't get up.” Aoi rattled the kit. “Shut up and let me fix this so you can make yourself useful tomorrow.” What was the point of going in circles? He was hungry, tired, and beyond the point of fear or anger. “‘Cause I need you to do something, Daffodil-3.”
Light shook his head, and Aoi made a face at the thought of blood microbes scattering. “And who benefits from that? Not us.”
“Especially you two. While you were trying to paralyze yourself, I was working out a plan.” The thought of said plan was bitter, and heavy as granite. “If you help me out, and we win…” He threw his hands up. “We walk away. Forever. You two go back to instant ramen and harp gigs, but we’ll never bug you again.”
“Because you kept your promise the first time?”
“Hey, we didn’t have a binding contract last time.”
“Oh?” Light shook his head, wavering a little, struggling to hold his head up. Woozy no doubt from blood loss and lack of food.
“I’ll tell you while I’m doing this,” he said, pulling on Light’s collar.
Light considered this, then probed for the fallen bourbon bottle and pills. He opened the pill bottle, popped one, and took a slug from the bourbon that Seven would be proud of. “Just a moment.” The combination of pills, booze, and an empty stomach hit him fast and hard; soon he was bent over on the floor. Aoi had to nudge him to move.
Aoi held the needle from the kit over the lighter’s flame in an effort to sterilize it before taking a quick break to sneak a smoke, stub it on the windowsill, and throw it into the alley below. Light sat on the tub’s edge with his back to Aoi, and after cleaning the wound with peroxide Aoi forced himself to stick the needle into the other’s flesh.
Downwards, past the sub-dermal layer, the tutorial he had open on the phone said, and though he stiffened Light didn’t make a sound. Aoi broke down Plan B while he did this to distract himself. He was never amazing in Home Ec, but then again they hadn’t been sewing up human flesh. Slowly the wound came back together, sharp exhalations coming from Light as it got closer to the end, and in the end a tight zigzag line resealed the skin. Not pretty, but workable.
“You’ll live, and can’t give anyone Hepatitis now.” Aoi nodded and thought he hadn’t done a bad job.
“Do you think that’s,” or ‘thass’ in Light’s slur, “a plan?” When Light tried to get out of the tub he slid backwards and landed elbows-first, rolling over slowly until he was on his stomach on the floor. “It will work?”
“Of course, it’s my plan.”
Light muttered into the bathmat, “Hope, faith, love, luck.” He snorted. “I hate those words.”
Aoi stayed next to him on the floor. Witnessing someone erode their own dignity in the course of an hour was fascinating and embarrassing all at once. “They’re bullshit.”
“Never helped when anyone needed them.”
That was edging too close to territory Aoi himself refused to cross; the boundary of a world he didn’t live in anymore and never wanted to think about again. “That wasn’t your problem.”
“But it was.” Light rolled to his side to face Aoi. “Clover looks at me like I can do anything. She thinks the leaf words are a magic spell, and I’ve never had the courage to tell her I don’t think so.” He sighed heavily, head lolling back onto the carpet. “I couldn’t be with her in either of the Nonary Games; I couldn’t do anything when she was kidnapped. She looks at me like a hero regardless. I don’t deserve a sister like her.”
‘We never do,’ Aoi thought, but what he said was, “You’re wasted, man. Sleep it off if you wanna be any good tomorrow.” He stood up and Light caught his ankle.
“I...” He released Aoi to bat his hand at the air weakly. “I meant it. Why was it you who came for me?”
The morphic fieldset showed them sending any other agents ended with dead Fields, and they’d spurned Junpei and Seven. It wasn’t a hard choice to save someone to whom he owed a debt. “I wanted to be able to say I tried.”
Light got to his feet by dragging himself up onto the toilet and then leaned against the sink for stability. “Thank you. I believe that’s your honest answer.” He waved his right arm weakly. “Now lemme ‘lone.”
Aoi yanked the door shut behind him. He sat in an old wooden chair and smoked two more cigarettes by the open window, freezing his lips and fingers but warming from the inside, and threw them out the window like sparks. What was littering after all was said and done? Tomorrow could end in worse no matter how the cards fell.
He played on his phone, set up a necessary assets transfer, forwarded papers to a notary, and sent confirmation to third-party vendors that starting tomorrow Crash Keys assets in these three regions would be destroyed—
And that’s when Light finally came out, shirtless, shuffling and then rolling facedown onto his bed. Alcohol had made him impervious to the cold and Aoi wished that could be him. He ignored Aoi calling out to him and when Aoi poked him, he was breathing just quiet. Aoi decided that was good enough and went back to his own bed.
They were in their own worlds, Aoi still messing with the phone, when a hand pressed to the back of his neck. “What?”
“You have a pulse,” Light mumbled. “I think you’re human.” And before Aoi could fire back Light fell on him, the full weight of his body almost crushing Aoi. He didn’t respond to Aoi’s complaints, and soft snoring clued Aoi in he was fine, just feeling his booze.
Goddamn it.
**
Clover woke before sunrise. She hadn’t slept well since Junpei and Seven didn’t return from BWI. She was alone now with Akane, who paced and made phone calls trying to see who could help her remotely, who was within flying or driving distance, and who she could call in favors from. It was different seeing her in this mode; she wasn’t being cutesy or plying Clover with obsequious hosting. She was polite on the phone but her face and the way she twirled her hair around her fingers showed she was annoyed, worried, angry.
Akane hung up, put a hand over her face, and then sat on the sofa.
“What’s wrong?” Clover asked.
Akane started like she didn’t realize Clover was there. “The earliest anyone will be here is this afternoon.” She pushed some hair behind her ear. “And I still can’t reach Junpei.”
Clover pursed her lips. “So we’re just supposed to sit here? No thanks.” She approached Akane and tried to take her phone; Akane held it against her chest and leaned away from Clover.
“Give me a minute, I’m still thinking—”
“Every time you have an idea I almost die!”
“Clover!” Akane flinched when Clover grabbed her wrist. But Akane surprised Clover; she pulled Clover’s hand back towards herself and caught Clover’s wrist from underneath with her other hand in an ‘L’ shape. Clover lost her grip and Akane scooted further away from her and sat on the phone. “I’m so sorry,” she said and clasped her hands in front of her chest. “Are you okay?”
Clover skipped surprise and went straight to angry; she leapt forward and shook Akane, yelling, “Give me the phone!”
Akane futilely tried to push Clover off of her and finally said, “I will!” When she was released, she sighed and said, “Let me explain first.” She held up a hand when Clover interrupted her. “Do you know what was on those drives Alice gave you?”
“I don’t need to! Alice is my friend and she asked me not to look.”
“Alice works for SOIS, and SOIS kidnapped the espers.” Akane’s face was stern, like she’d lost patience. “Whatever she collected and gave to you will prove it. I have someone working on finding any copies she may have made.”
“How do you expect me to believe that?”
Akane pulled the phone out and after a few moments swiping the screen, extended her arm to Clover. “Look.”
Clover read it and her heart sank: it was a log of an investigation into SOIS’ involvement with Hongou after arresting him. There was a timeline showing his release for trial and his subsequent disappearance on his way to prison. There was proof SOIS had funneled money into a fake subsidiary Hongou owned that he used to amass materials for the kidnapping and holding of espers. There was a list of all the SOIS agents who disappeared in the line of duty and Clover knew every name, every face.
“This is the information we could find on Alice’s personal computer. We think she was going to be a whistle blower, but unfortunately I learned today she’s in holding with SOIS.” Akane looked sad and concerned. “I guess they found out what she knew.”
“Is she okay?”
“I don’t know.”
Clover felt pulled in a dozen directions: her brother, Alice, Junpei, and Seven all needed her right now and she couldn’t help all of them right away. She curled her free hand into a fist. “There’s another problem then.” She told Akane she’d left her location on Alice’s phone, which given Alice’s current state meant her belongings were in SOIS custody, and SOIS knew Alice was a traitor. They must’ve been combing through everything she owned and monitoring incoming messages.
Akane to her credit didn’t call her an idiot; she didn’t rub anything in. She just folded her hands in her lap, looked at Clover dead-on, and said, “We need to go then.”
