But it is very possible that we will nibble at biotechnology's tempting offerings without realizing that they come at a frightful moral cost.-
Francis Fukuyama
1.
"Hinata-"
A hand grabs her. She's been here before-
"Hinata, wake up-"
Her eyelids are lead, but she's trying. Smoke is in the air; it's gagging her. The hand is more insistent now. Something's not right though, that's not the voice she knows. The voice she knows is trying to tell her-
"Hinata, wake up. Got something for ya."
Her eyes open and for a moment there's just a flash of light from the bare bulb overhead and shadows. Then the shadows resolve into a face and Hinata remembers she's not still ten, and the man above her is not the man of her dreams.
In any sense, really. She puts a hand to her head and groans.
"Kiba-kun?"
"Bad dreams?" Kiba's nose twitches like he smells the adrenaline still coursing through her veins. And who knows? With the gene splicing his mom got up to, maybe he could. She ignores the question all the same.
"How'd you get in?" she asks, sitting up, taking her sheets with as she rises.
"Shino keyed me in. Hey, why don't you ever give me your security codes?"
"I-"
"Why? Because then you could get into her room at night and watch her sleep," Shino deadpans behind them. "Oh, wait. You already do that."
Something shivers along her spine because, as far she knew, neither man had her security codes. Only one man did, and he'd only give them away if-
"What happened?"
Shino turns to stare at her.
"Just give her the invite. We've got to make it to work still."
"Invite?"
She stands up, tangling herself in bedding, and tries to pretend this is normal to have two men in her room before she's even gotten dressed. It doesn't work as well as she might hope; she can feel the heat in her cheeks. To distract herself, she turns to get a better look at the invaders. Kiba's looking rather put-together. Usually, she sees him in T-shirts advertising old bands, single-handedly eating all the pizza that was really meant for everyone. Today, it's a suit and tie- the perfect businessman. It's almost like looking at another person entirely. That alone gets her head back in the game.
Because Kiba is someone else when he looks like that- someone with a mission, when he looks like that.
"Is it an emergency?" she panics. "They need an FTF meet or something?"
Shino gives her a pitying look. "No. Get dressed. We'll put on some coffee. But we need to hurry. The boss dislikes tardiness in his workers. Even junior partners like Inuzuka-san over here."
Through her mirror, she watches them as they go, and gets busy making herself presentable. Trooping out to her living room a few minutes later, she finds Kiba poking half-heartedly at the keys of her computer in the corner, and Shino staring at the wall. No, not the wall, she realizes, but pictures.
"Hinata, who is this?" he asks, tapping a finger on a photograph of her sister. It's not a real photograph even, just something she'd clipped from a magazine, one of those tabloids that kept track of the rich and powerful. It's her sister's fifteenth birthday, and the smile on her face is beautiful, but it doesn't belong in a room like this one- a room in a sundry shop in the bad part of town where a no-namer who looks disturbingly like the girl in the photo lives. Suspicious, indeed. No wonder Shino cottoned on to it, Hinata thinks, kicking herself for sentimentality. It's not like her sister would know whether Hinata keeps pictures of her or not. Hinata's sister thinks she's dead. But Shino doesn't know that. Very few people do.
"The invite?" she repeats. Kiba leaps up to put some envelope of thick, heavy paper in her hand. Shino just stares some more at her.
"You aren't who you say you are, are you?"
A smile curves her lips. "I've not even sure that sentence made sense. Besides, we all have some secrets, don't we?"
"Well, duh," Kiba smiles, charming and goofy all at once. "That's why it's called a secret organization, isn't it?"
She laughs and even Shino smiles. Looking down, the invitation's engraved. Her fingers trace over the raised lettering. Something so fancy. It can only mean- Money. Power. Upper Hundred. Everything she'd been born into, and walked away from.
"I can't."
The look Kiba gives her says he's figured her out long ago, even if he hasn't puzzled out the details of it. She's a runner, he once told her, and that was true.
"Boss's orders, missy. Ya gotta come."
"You saw him?" Her voice is a whisper as she stares down at the card. More than anyone he should know…
"When do Kiba-san or I ever see the boss?" Shino cuts through her thoughts. "That seems to be a privilege just for you. He sent us out orders in the usual way, but we were told to deliver this ourselves too, in case you were...stubborn. Unsure. But this is important. Why? Because our...otherboss, Kankrou-sama, has been busy planning to reveal some new technology. Something big. Big enough to be taking the business public. I'm an engineer there, Hinata-san, and even we haven't been given clearance to know what it is we're working on. We just get the little bits and pieces of what we can individually do, but even that little bit…"
She chews her lips, crumples the fine, thick paper in her hands.
"I suppose I'll have to, then, won't I? Nobody who could recognize me will there even…Probably…"
Shino reaches back to the picture, tears it down from the thumbtack she'd stuck it in with, and hands it to her as he turns for the door. "Not even your eyes, Hinata-san?"
She never was as clever as she thought was. Her lips quirk a smile and her thumb works to smooth the creased edges Shino's rough handling had made.
"Kankrou's Puppet Emporium isn't an Upper Hundred company," she assures him.
"Yet," Shino says walking out, Kiba following behind. "It isn't an Upper Hundred company yet."
10.
"Don't you have anything nicer looking than that?" Kiba sticks his head out her closet long enough to lob the question at her and dives back in, tossing more clothes on the floor. It'll take her most of the next morning to clean up at the rate he's going, and the heat in her cheeks is now more from anger than embarrassment.
"I think this looks fi-"
"He just wants to make a good impression, Hinata-san. Why? Because, undercover or not, we have to make a living too. Kankrou's the only job that pays," Shino drawls from where he's lounging in the living room. Giving up, she makes her way over to him, but can't seem to settle enough to sit. For the second time in a week other people are in her home; the fact feels like insects crawling across her skin. She keeps glancing back through the door to see Kiba as he throws things around, steps on the clothes he's discarded, and makes faces at anything he finds particularly ugly.
"My clothes do not deserve faces, Kiba-kun! I don't have to go, you-"
"Yes," Shino's hand grips her wrist. "You do. And we'll find something that will get his attention."
His attention? Hinata wonders if Shino means this Kankrou that heads up the company, or the man's brother, the one in charge of the security, the one even Kiba acts a little scared of. Not that it matters. She'll bat her eyes at who she's told to.
"Don't you have anything more... flashy?" Shino says the last word with at least as much disgust as Hinata herself would have said it. Whereas Kiba's in fancy duds, Shino is just the same, no pretense about him. His real identity, she knew, was his disguise, for no one ever wanted to be too close to an Aburame and no one ever wanted to looked to closely at what they did. The Aburames were inventors, brilliant if Shino was anything to set the standard by. They seemed almost born with an innate sense of all things digital. And, according to Shino, that was pretty close to the truth. He'd pulled up his sleeves once to reveal to all the circuitry and wires twisting beneath the cloth. They had connected directly into his flesh, then into his nervous system beneath. It repulsed her and made her sure that Shino could not know the true goals of what it was they were doing. She tried not to let it ever show on her face. Still, that much machinery grafted into a man….
"Flashy?" she repeats, making it a question, and Shino releases her.
"Sex sells, Hinata-san."
Behind her Kiba makes a loud whoop.
"Yes! This is a party, Hina-chan! You should wear something like this!"
He comes galloping into the room, something like an over-excited puppy, and dumps the clothes over her head. Peeling them off, Hinata sees they aren't...well, they aren't much. Much cloth, that is. Her face turns red all over for a second time this evening and its only half past six.
"I-I- c-can't-"
"You will look lovely, Hinata-san," Shino assures her, pushing towards the door. "Like a Corporation Princess. Which you aren't, of course."
The last part is said so sarcastically that she almost remarks on it. Shino and Kiba both are getting entirely too presumptuous for their own good except- she's still too embarrassed about the clothes. She sighs, strips, and changes.
Whatever else she might look like in this, it's not a Corporation Princess, or even like an Upper Hundred Family's lowliest lab assistant out to her first meet-and-greet social occasion. Not that Kiba or Shino would know what either looked like, unless they scan the tabloids. The Inuzuka consisted of only Kiba, his mom, and sister, who had all naturalized within the last ten years. The Aburame were the real deal- one of the Upper Hundred families that owned and controlled over 90% of the economy and the technical industry- the field that drove all the rest. But they were only... technically Upper. No invites to the parties Hinata had once known as a child, no back room deals, no power- just money and even that not as much as they probably should be making. Even to the most ambitious Corporations trying to cut themselves on the bleeding edge of how far machine and man could be integrated- even to them, the Aburames were "aesthetically upsetting." Or those were Shino's words, anyway. Now Shino was part of this spy cell, this organization, in an effort to make a power play and topple the Upper Hundred's current reigning kings. How much of his current actions were known by his family… it was an unknown and another reason Hinata was so uncomfortable having him around, even if she rather admitted to liking the man.
Still, she thinks, flouncing her hair and giving the girl in the mirror once last once-over, it isn't Upper Hundred, and the men who work at the Emporium will know what best to wear to the Emporium, what best will sell.
11.
The party is at once both larger and more intimate than she had realized it would be. No one Upper Hundred, of course. That was worry over nothing; Kankrou could only wish he'd attract that kind of attention. But the guests were all living in the Central District, certainly. Kiba was probably the only no-namer hanging about, and he had been naturalized at least. She didn't count herself, of course, and was sure no one else would either, which was a relief frankly. No, no one would recognize her here. All been to college and had jobs and money and things that...meant something. Something to the right kind of people, anyway. The conversation is sparkling and the laughter's, dare she say, melodious almost, and the food exceptionally good.
She turns to her conversational partner, whose conversation is, sadly, not so sparkling as it might be.
"Is it as good of a turn out as you had hoped?"
Gaara no Sabuto shrugs. The action causes the ice to chink against the side of his glass, and Hinata can't help but feel frustrated that ice seems more expressive than he does.
"It is my brother's business."
And I don't care is left unsaid, but definitely implied. Or maybe he's preempting any corporate espionage. Well, she's not corporate, but she takes a moment and voices another nicely phrased question.
"You do not wish to talk of your brother, or you do not wish to talk of his business, then?"
At that, he did look her, just for a second, first at her face and then at her- she blushes and realizes that Kiba had been right. He looked at hercleavage.
Well, use what you've got, she reminds herself and moves her shoulders in a way she knows will move...other things.
"We don't have to, if you don't want to," she says, though it's a lie of course. Her hand moves to his shoulder and he lets her leave it there. "But, I'm very excited to see what they're unveiling! Kiba-san said even he doesn't-"
"Inuzuka needs muzzled, if he wants to work here."
He moves in, too close for her comfort, and the look in his eyes is not kind. The sudden aggression has her recoiling her hand, and she wonders how angry her team would be if she let this conversation slide back into banalities or if she leaves all together and she doesn't learn anything more. Both options looks tempting right now.
Instead she runs her fingers down the man's arm. He hisses and grabs them, squeezing in a way that's painful.
"Don't."
"I-I'm sorry. I-I d-didn't think th-there was a-any-" she gestures, wiggling fingers to mean circuitry or wires or- or whatever it was she'd upset by touching him that way.
He opens his mouth to reply, and then the lights go out. She panics for a minute, worried it was at this Gaara no Sabuto's signal, that something is coming for her, but then her biochips activate with a fizzle of electricity and she looks and sees.
Gaara doesn't drop her hand, but his other reaches up to an earpiece, no doubt wired to a security team, and he's whispering short, terse words into the mic. Around them are murmurs of alarm and someone drops to the ground. There's a sort of yell as the body sags into another person on the way down.
The lights come back on so suddenly, Hinata doesn't even have time to turn off her biochip. Gaara's eyes flicker up to her still-opaque white ones. He doesn't look surprised by what happened, or angry that, as head of security, he's about to be pulled over the carpet for- whatever it was that just happened. He certainly doesn't look like a man with a body (or what looks like a body, Hinata is quickly forming her own ideas on that) on the floor.
Well, Hinata thinks, this mission just went to hell in a hand basket, because, cool as ice, the next words out of this Gaara's mouth are, and "Everyone stay where you are. I'm having someone contacting the police even as we speak."
100.
She abandons ship as soon as Gaara's got his eyes off of her, but has to settle for hanging around at Kiba's side, because guards have been posted at the doors and it would create more attention to leave at that point than it would to stay.
At least, she hopes. She is stuffed in a rather attention-getting dress, after all and if they look past her- well, past her décolleté its highly likely somebody's going to notice the Upper Hundred biochip stuck into her supposedly no-namer face. Nothing to do but wait things out and hope for the best.
A tall, blond woman has hands covered in blood. She tried to resuscitate a heart. No luck, it seems. The "body" is taken away before Hinata can examine it, or even do more than glimpse its limp wrists as it's quickly draped with a tablecloth in lieu of any proper sheets. So instead, Hinata leans her head against Kiba shoulders. Maybe others will think she's tired, or crying, or who knows. She certainly doesn't care at this instant, so long as they don't realize there are now bulging veins along the side of her head.
Technology grafted into humans disgusts her, its true, but on nights like tonight she's thankful for her biochips. Seeing everywhere, though anything -even though darkness say, or even though solid objects like sheets- has its up points.
A riddle: A man bleeds out, but there's no weapon and no one to do the deed. And underneath the sheet, the man also has no heart.
So, how did the man die? By never being alive.
From where she's standing, Hinata thinks they found what they were looking: Transhumans, AIs, Life- sort of.
She wonders, in an abstract way, as she rolls her neck around so that her head rests more comfortably against Kiba, was someone else's consciousness animating the thing, helping it to talk and move before it died? Did they feel it when that thing "died?"
And far more importantly, how many more does Kankrou's Puppet Emporium have? And how many more functions do they do? Because surely you don't spend thousands on making a robot that can die. Wouldn't you spend more on making a person that can do anything but?
Kiba and Shino are going to be pissed, but, if the answer is anything other "zero more transhumans," their place of employment is very likely going to go up in flames in the coming weeks.
An hour of lingering moves torturously slow, with no one quite willing to sit, but nobody just wanting to stand around, and it yields nothing more than a trio of what, she learns, are not even proper police.
A ripple of murmuring goes through the crowd, expensively draped bodies moving with more purpose now, suddenly. Detectives, they say. She catches a glimpse of no more than tops of heads and the crush of the crowd is too much to risk the biochips again.
"Ya got your identification cards on ya?" Kiba leans down to rumble into her ear.
"Yeah. Always," she says.
Kiba nods. "Good. Then let's try and get out of this crazy place. Changing of the guards happening at two o'clock. Let's split."
She glances over and sure enough a short, thickly build blond man is talking purposefully to the security, and all at once the entire party seems to take notice and surge towards him.
"Looks like everybody else has seen him too."
"Yeah," Kiba grumbles.
"No helping it now. Let's just try and get out as fast as we can." She hasn't seen Shino since this all began. If they're lucky he's been able to find more information than a glorified office boy and his date are going to at this point.
"Shino knows what to do," she says partly to reassure herself, and partly to get Kiba to quit being so obvious in looking around.
"Fuck all" he says finally, and starts pushing his way through the crowd. Hinata hurries to follow before any gaps close behind him. Kiba's frame is large enough that she almost slips by the doorman of a detective. He catches glimpse of her too late though, and his shouting at her is lost to the crowd.
The two of them keep up a brisk pace, not glancing back until they are almost at Kiba's place. While it bothered her that Kiba knew the security codes for the apartment at the back of her store the other day, Kiba has never been cautious about letting Hinata into his life.
Only when they're at the corner of his street does he stop and lean against a wall.
"What a waste."
"Oh I-I don't know," Hinata bites her lip, and then breathes out all at once. Too much adrenaline's racing through her. "D-depends on how you look at it. We found exactly what we were hoping we wouldn't."
Kiba gives her a strange look.
"'Spose. Look, you wanna come in?"
She laughs, not meanly or at him, but at the ease in which he's switched modes from mission to casual interaction. He is, if she isn't mistaking, hitting on her just a bit.
"No thanks," she says. "I'll be fine heading home. "
"What about the private eyes?"
She turns back to him, only half-feigning unconcern. "We got away without even a retina scan."
She turns and is halfway down the block when she hears Kiba call out one last time.
"You'll still let-" he breaks off, searches for a good word- "our mutual friend know, right?"
She laughs again. Oh, but she's exhausted by all this some days. "I'll let our mutual friend in on things. I always do, you know. I always do."
101.
In her dreams, there is always smoke. It coats the throat, and she'll wake up gagging. Just like tonight. She stares in the dark that is not dark. Still, after all these years, it is part repulsion and part fascination that some chip in her eyes is doing this, letting her see, in the dark, through the roof, through the floors to every little thing around her. So she doesn't bother turning on the light as she makes her way to the box in the corner of the room and turns it on.
She uses a computer- an archaic machine, at least according to Shino - with a slow enough connection that it could get her killed some day, he says. But she will never leave a message to be sent so late that seconds could make the difference between her life and death, is what she replies. Shino brought her a datapad to use as his unspoken reply to that. Its an expensive, but unused gift, but still, the thought was nice. It makes her smile to think how over the years these strangers and strays she's watched been picked up have somehow become the closest she'll ever have to family again. With this in mind, she pauses for a moment, feeling the screen's glow on her skin, and then logs in.
435.085 2342.33 .exe Scanning
…
…
…
… Match found: webhost/GIM2028beta/sharnigan =Creating resource tag General =Creating resource tag Internal
=Creating buffer Autodetect
*** error # 25.1 *** incorrect login =initiating bypass /***pwd/kaiten/accepted***
[XXX] can't sleep?
[kaiten] I'm always on at this time
[XXX] That's because you always can't sleep. How did the party go?
[kaiten] Someone died.
[XXX] Ours?
[kaiten] No. Nothing so traumatic. A transhuman. Kiba's right. These puppets are not organic, but they're alive. Or at least they can be killed.
[XXX] So it was worth getting dressed up, then?
[kaiten] They told you about that?
[XXX] They tell me a lot of things.
[kaiten] They tell you the copshop got called in?
[XXX] At an Upper Hundred party? You'd think it would be on one of the news stations by now.
[kaiten] Okay-
[kaiten] Not the cops exactly. I don't think they connected me to, well, me.
[kaiten] And Kankrou's Puppet Emporium isn't owned by one of the Upper Hundred yet.
[XXX] He just wants it to be.
[XXX] How'd the transhuman die?
[kaiten] Blood burst out its chest. Disgusting really.
[XXX] You saw it?
[kaiten] Yes. In the dark. No weapon. It did it on its own.
[XXX] Can be killed on command? Interesting
[kaiten] What next?
[XXX] Shino knew nothing about this transhuman?
[kaiten] Puppets, they called them.
[kaiten] And No. Not when I last talked to him.
[kaiten] Kiba either.
[kaiten] But Shino stayed behind after everything. He may have more when we next talk.
[XXX] Good. Send them to searching. We spent a lot of time having them infiltrate. Someone at that company is building AIs, if we're lucky. Building their idea of immortality if we're not.
[XXX] Do you think these "not-cops," who ever they are, will find anything?
[kaiten] No weapon. No person. Real person anyway. No murder, really. Can't see them doing much.
[XXX] But they don't know that. Let me know if you think you need to be pulled out.
[kaiten] I'm sure that won't be necessary. Really. I'll put a trace on any net activities they do, if I can find out their access codes.
[XXX] Do as you see fit. I trust your judgment with this. Email your team. Meeting at the usual time.
### [XXX has logged off at 03:31:14] ### [kaiten has logged off at 03.31.48] ###
=Confirming dataraven ping =Deleting traceback 435.085 2342.33 .exe/deletion confirmed =Access terminated
The words erased themselves from the screen, and she sighed. Some days it seemed like a lifetime since she had first talked to Itachi. Actually, some days it seemed like a lifetime since she had last talked to Itachi, but that first, real time held more space inside her head than anything else at any given time. She never wanted to go through a time like that again, when Uchiha Itachi might decide she needs to "be pulled out" of her own life. Statistically, she knows she's damn lucky that she's never need to be uprooted from the quiet little life she'd made using the cover of her fake identity, but something told her that losing her life in that way would be no easier the second time.
Uchiha Itachi had been a figure in the background of her childhood. Proper playmates to breed proper…breeding for the future, perhaps. She didn't know. Their families had been friends. Perhaps her father really had enjoyed Uchiha Fugato's dinner conversation skills. Or, perhaps he had been more interested in the Uchiha Corporation's experiments- those kinds that one barely even heard rumor of, it seemed too unreal to even talk about. That's was Itachi's suspicion that he'd told her about, while they'd watched her house burn one night. That first, real time they'd talked.
"They'll think you died, Hinata-chan."
There'd been a fire. She should have been hot, but she'd been cold and Itachi had opened his arms to her. She'd stood inside the circle of his arms and felt heat from his chest seep into her back as they'd watched the flames. There'd been no other sound but his voice and the fire, when he'd told her that. They'd stayed until the shouting started. Then he'd taken her away and she'd slept.
She still dreams of those same dreams some nights (like tonight).
When she'd woken, Itachi had told her about his brilliant cousin. So smart. So able. With the biochips they'd implanted, Shisui had been able to project his very thoughts into holograms for people to see. This hadn't been news to Hinata. She'd seen this particular Uchiha give such a demonstration mere weeks before at a dinner party of some family or another's. She hadn't understood why they were talking of him at all. There'd been a fire, didn't Itachi remember that? She'd moodily said as much.
"But you haven't seen him for awhile now, have you Hinata-chan?" Itachi'd laughed. It hadn't been a pleasant laugh. His eyes had been so very tired, and he'd told her what had happened to this boy he'd loved so well, about walking in on a family corporation's lab to find Shisui dead. He'd described the coldness of the body, how rigor motris had already begun setting in. And then he'd described the voice that had spoken to him from the screen.
"It said it was Shisui, but it was just machinery. It spoke like him. It remembered like him. I talked to it for two hours."
"And then what happened?" she'd asked and in that moment she had realized, suddenly. Could have said the words along with this strange boy who had come into her house at night, who she had let take her, who had, to all intents and purposes, murdered the future that she might have had.
"It wasn't him, of course. A mind is like a computer in a lot of ways. Runs on electricity, did you know that, Hinata-chan? Of course you did. But a computer is not your brain. There's no…no whatever makes you, you. This computer might remember a time Shisui made me laugh, but it couldn't understand what was funny. It could tell you what Shisui had known, and maybe even create what Shisui had created. But it would never be able to see why Shisui wanted to do any of it."
"T-they created a f-forever-life," she'd whispered and the words had sounded, even then, to her own ears, remarkably stupid, remarkably young.
Remarkably impossible.
"An existence, perhaps, not a life," Itachi had corrected her, as he'd turned on the TV. There'd been a strange moment of silence as he'd flipped around, finally settling on a news report about the house fire and her supposed death. "You can't create a machine heart. At least- I don't think. I don't think it can really be alive, but just to be sure…"
Even years later she can still remember how heavy those words had felt in the air. She'd turned to him then, unable to keep her eyes on the screen when more important things were clearly happening now, in front of her.
"Just to be sure- I killed it. I fried the whole electric system to the entire damn Uchiha Corporation. Brought it all down with a few cups of water. Less water than it would take to drown a kid."
"Why?"
He'd turned to her disbelieving.
"They'd killed my cousin, Hinata," he'd said very slowly, an appalled look on his face at her lack of understanding. "They killed him and set up a computer program to take his place, and people weren't even supposed to notice."
"No," Her thin hands had reached out from the blanket he'd draped on her while she'd slept. Her chewed-on nails had dug into his forearm. "Why did you set fire to my house? Why did you come into my room? Why are you telling all this to me?"
He'd reached back out then and muted the screen. Closed captioning had flickered into view. She remembered turning and reading it on the screen as her own picture came on and a strange woman with very nice hair and a professional look talked about what a promising eleven year old she'd had been. Obviously, she'd thought, the news anchor had never met her. She'd been surprised no one in her family had thought to set her straight. But then, wasn't it a rule, you had to speak kindly of the dead?
"I hadn't really wanted to do it. A fire to an Upper Hundred house is the sort of story that's only going to work once. And my brother's still- well, I was going to use this for him, instead, but then I hear your family's gotten real involved in my family's creepy little foray into immortality," He'd sighed, and looking back on it now, Hinata sees his nineteen year old self as so young. He'd leaned back into the coach as he'd recounted the next part.
"Its dicy making a man out metal and wires. Shisui was the first to- in their eyes at least- succeed. Others had died. No-namer kids they'd picked up off the streets, even a few other Uchihas. My family thinks, the best, the brightest have best chance of surviving. That's why Shisui. Your father wasn't so sure, according to the reports. He wanted to try it on 'less valuable goods' first."
Itachi'd been giving air quotes to those last words when he'd turned to see her face and with amazing speed had somehow managed to get her to the bathroom in time. Later, with her forehead against cool porcelain, she'd cried, while Itachi had outlined his plans to murder his own family and somehow save his brother.
She hadn't listened, not at all. Her family had wanted to cosign her to being nothing more than a voice in the circuitry.
Unbelievable.
Probably true.
Even now, years later in the dark, it makes Hinata shiver.
Probably. Probably true. She would never know for sure, and, some days, what she desperately wants more than anything is to walk away from this computer Itachi has given her, away from the sundry shop Itachi owns where no tech supplies are sold at all, away from this spotty trail of paperwork Itachi has tailored just for her and that she had turned into a life. But then she doesn't some days. She really, really doesn't.
Instead, she stretches, thinks about getting a cup of tea, decides against it, turns back to the screen, and begins drafting e-mails to her team.
110.
It takes them a week to make it to her. Just enough time to start letting her guard down, not enough to time to actually be safe. But she forgets, she always forgets. You never are actually safe. She hears the bell that alerts her someone is at the shop door, turns -
"Hello, can I help-"
-and almost physically wretches. Framed in the doorway was a woman with a crude anamatronic arm and shock-pink hair dye. Beside her is a man she recognizes. He was taking eye scans at the Emporium. He was sort of cute looking, actually, but it is the third man that keeps her attention. "- you?"
Had he been there the night before? How had she missed seeing him?
"Can we ask you some questions?"
She knows she is staring, must look like a gaping fish in open air, but, oh gods, how he looked like his brother. Same lean build, same strong jaw that they'd both needed to grow into...Same ocular biochip caching everything to be reviewed relentlessly over and over till they got the answers they wanted.
Maybe they wouldn't stay long. A girl could hope.
They file in, grim-looking. Flipping the switch, her store goes on lock down and she gestures in the doorway to her apartment. Act normal, she reminds herself.
No, don't act.
Be.
Normal.
She wonders what they see, when they look around. A hopelessly old-fashioned room with not an electric plug-in sight? A set of too-bare walls where only a week before, Shino had ripped down photos of her discarded life? It all seemed too empty and incomplete to be a real life, she suddenly thought; who would ever guess this is where she's lived for eight years? Could they possibly buy into this as the life of a no-name nobody? A girl could hope, she repeats to herself.
"Do you want something to drink? Or eat?"
"Sure!" The blond man smiles. He has strange marking on his skin. Hinata can't tell if they're tattoos or lose wiring that's somehow poked out from under the skin, but its sexy as hell. Itachi would kill her for even thinking that. This could be the enemy. The enemy is never cute.
"Hey, I'll help you."
"Thanks-?" she leaves the end of the sentence a question that the man quickly fills in.
"Naruto," he says. "And this is Sakura, and man with the stick up his ass is Uchiha Sasuke."
She moistens her lips, twists her fingers. It's her habits that will give her away, but her body seems to move on its own. Uchiha Sasuke was here.
In the kitchen, their bodies brush close. In her old life she'd never even seen the kitchen; food had just magically appeared all on its own via servants she never saw, but since then, since she's died, every apartment she's ever had came with a kitchen approximately the size of a matchbox.
She blushes when Naruto grabs her wrist. "Excuse me, I just need to reach-"
"Hey, it's okay. We're not gonna bite ya, know." He gives her a smile and her hand comes down without ever getting what she was reaching for. Snacks are made without any other words exchanged, but the smile never quite leaves Naruto's face. Her shoulders relax and she might be smiling too.
They let her get so far as pouring the tea before starting in again. Even I'll keep as much of the truth as I can. Itachi had told her once about the art of the lie .Even I could use less to remember. It'd been a thin joke from the early days of her-what? Apprenticeship? Partnership? Call it what you will, she supposes, it had been too early for jokes to come easily, but that one had surprised a laugh out of her. As if Itachi needed help remembering; the Uchiha clan was famous for the hardware they developed to keep everything cached to in their memory. That sense of laughter has kept the memory fresh even years later and so she keeps the story simple and tries not to lie.
Sasuke does most of the questioning and, now that she's close to him, she can see all the ways the planes of his face are still the same, from childhood to adult. Looking more closely, Itachi is not so apparent in his face as she has at first thought.
He stares at her, and she feels a thrill of fear that perhaps his thoughts are somewhere along the lines of her own. His questions become more abrupt, intense and the stutter in her answering begins to be less show and more real. Is he trying to trip her up?
"How long have you worked here?" the girl finally interrupts. The girl is kind. Correction: the question is kind. Meant to be anyway, as it could potentially steer the conversation in another direction, away from what to most people was probably a very disturbing event, seeing a dead body and all.
"About eight years," Hinata says.
"What did you do before that?"
And here's where they get the saying no good deed goes unpunished. Because surely whoever said that had been in Hinata's predicament before. Screwed over by a good deed someone tried to do them.
"Nothing much." It's not a lie, really. She rubs her fingers where clan rings once were. Stops herself. Starts at it again.
"Nothing?"
She fists her hands to keep temptation further at bay.
"How is any of this relevant?" she asks.
"Your background is… suspicious. We're just trying to get a better handle on you," the woman- Sakura- explains, as she lifts her tea cup to her mouth. Her arm creaks as she does so, and Hinata's eyes can't help but follow the movement, a small repulsion crawling through her spine as she thinks how close it is from a machine arm to a machine body to a machine mind.
She shakes her head as if to physically rid herself of that line of thinking. Even she has not been left untouched by technology, after all. These round-about thoughts chasing each other are making her head ache, and sending these detectives away no faster. Time to stop the charade; she's got things to do, and Itachi- well, she can only imagine what news of his brother will do to him. Not that he'd ever let her see any of his reactions.
"I didn't do anything, and I didn't see anything. I know I don't have any rights here, but neither do you and I'd like it if you could leave now so I can reopen my shop."
It's rude, but it gets them up. Naruto pauses at the door jam, looking sheepish. "I'm sorry if my friends came off kind of harsh. We really need some leads on this case."
Her heart tugs at that boyish smile. He really seems too sweet to get mixed up in all this, even if, logic dictates, a detective is use to seeing bad things go down.
"It's misty out." Sakura interrupts, her face, as it has been the entire time, a grim set of lines. Sasuke doesn't look at anyone as he says, "We should be fine."
A mist means a storm, and a storm, in this neighborhood at least, almost certainly means a power outage. It isn't a bad neighborhood- not really, but it isn't the Central District either, not even close. Lack of a power source will bring out supped-up junkies- the kind of sick souls who were more machine than man, the kind who'd slit your throat for the battery that ran the watch on your wrist, they were that hungry for more juice. So, against her better judgment, she lets them stay.
"Wait it out. It's not really safe," she says.
Sakura pulls a face. "No, we'll be fine. We've got-"
"Yeah," Sasuke interrupts her. "We'll stay."
She leans on the counter. Sasuke's sudden intrusion into the conversation has frozen them all; none of them make to move back into her apartment. It looks to be a very awkward time when Naruto bursts forward, grabbing something from the racks.
"You got an extra roll of change?" he asks apropos of nothing. Unsure of what's happening she nods. He shoves a few bills in her direction, so fast, she's not even sure he really looked to see what sort of money he's giving away. "For the cards, and change in coins. You're not busy, right?"
Her silence speaks for her.
"Okay, you get the coins, and I'll set up in the living room." Naruto grins.
When she walks back into her living room, she sees what they wanted after all. Four hands are already dealt. Stealing a sideways glance at the almost-last son of one of her family's oldest friends, she takes her seat beside him. This way she's out of his direct line of sight. Out of sight, out of mind as the saying goes and it's not like he's figured her out yet.
They play eight rounds, and she can feel Sasuke's body heat radiate against her. Naruto has the worst poker face, all huge grins, and laughter that's infectious, and frowns and whining when he's down,and yet, somehow, he's won at least a few of the hands. The tension in her shoulders is relaxing as Sakura makes yet another wise-crack at Naruto's expense. He laughs uneasily and turns to Hinata, trying to deflect the attention away.
"Hey Hinata, you're actually pretty good."
The last thing she wants is more attention on her.
"I think Uchiha-san's still won more than I have."
"Eh, Sasuke used to be a dealer, so you shouldn't feel too bad. Actually," Naruto leans back, arms overhead, flashing everyone a look at his cards. She can't decide if it's on purpose or not. "We all met two years ago at a casino. That's how we came up with our name, 'The Lucky Sevens Detective Agency.'"
"You came up with that name. I still think it sounds like a Chinese grocery store," Sakura pulls that same face again, running a hand through her short bob. She's really in need of a new dye job, Hinata notes absently. The pink doesn't cover the roots. "I was working as a part time security officer to pay for college, and Naruto-"
"Was a big shot high roller who won the games based on pure skill," he interrupts, wagging his ears. He might even think this makes him look cool. Hinata smiles at that.
"-Was bankrupting the place with his crazy luck," Sakura continues, thoroughly ignoring the man in question. "He won a ridiculous bet against Sasuke and I, and dragged us along when he decided to start a detective agency."
"Anyway, the fact that you're beating me means you've got some kind of crazy skill too. It's almost as if you can see what cards I'm holding."
Of course, her biochip isn't activated, but it's just the right words to trigger memory. At Naruto's statement, Sasuke jerks up. His cards fall to the table and scatter. The six and the ace of clubs flip over, so even people who are not Hinata can see. His hands tremble as he speaks, voice high and fast.
"What were you thinking when you kept your name? Given how snobbish your family is, I can't picture them associating with anyone who would be in this district, so perhaps it wasn't as reckless as it appears, but still-"
"I-I don't know what you're t-talking about." The stutter, she thought, more than anything, had to be giving her away. Eyes can be replicated. A good cypherpunk could duplicate a person's voice, but the flaws are things no one would waste time making again.
He studies her, fingers running over the worn edges of his cards as he picks them back up. Eyes are drinking her in, a relic from a past destroyed, she realizes. After a moment he speaks, his words carefully measured. "If I promise not to tell your family, will you tell us what you saw?"
"My mother named me. It was her hope for me." Hinata answers his first question and then his second. "I was telling the truth, though. I didn't see anything."
"So there was no knifeman," Sasuke prompts. He doesn't ask for a recitation exactly, but he visited her hospital room every day for a week after they put her own ocular "upgrades" in, back when they were kids and didn't know the world could be such a hard place. He knew what she could do. She sighs.
"No knifeman and no knife. When the lights blacked out, I activated my implant. No one touched the man, but blood spurted out of his chest and then he fell down. The only one carrying in a 10 m radius was Temari, and she had a laser pointer and those cauterize when they hit. Shino was standing in the path a projectile would have taken given the angle of the wound, and besides, there was no impact. Something hitting his chest should have pushed him backwards, but he just fell down."
Sasuke nods, taking it all in like he already knew. Maybe he did. Sasuke was smart as hell when he was eleven, and people don't generally get dumber. She waits for him to ask for the rest, if she knows who - or rather what- the man really is.
"We'll be going now," he says instead, and they all stand up, the small change and cards left scattered.
"I-" the words choke in her mouth and she changes what she might have said. "I heard about your family. I'm sorry."
Which is the truth, if not all of it.
What a liar she is.
"So am I," he says, and the three of them walked off into the night, the rain still pouring down.
111.
She stares the glow of the screen in the dark. It has taken her eight hours to come to this decision. She kicks herself over dragging her feet, over pretending. It's all so much posturing.
Because, of course, there was no decision.
There has never been a decision. Not in eleven years has there ever been a decision. She'll always be Itachi's in some way or another. Itachi gave her her life, but also murdered his family. She never forgets either thing, and so, she'll always be his Girl Friday in the end.
Her fingers get to work.
private class SMSCUchiha implements Runnable{
public final static int SYNCHRONOUS=0;
private final static int ASYNCHRONOUS=1;
private Thread myThread=1;
private int mode=1;
private String recipient=1;
private String message=1;
private int status=-1
private long messageNo=-1;
public SMSClient(int mode) {
=mode;
}
private int sendMessage (XXX, GET YOUR EARPIECE IN){
=XXX;
=message;
.println("XXX" + recipient + " GET YOUR EARPIECE IN " + message);
myThread = new Thread(this);
();
/ run();
return status;
}
public void run(){
Sender aSender = new Sender(recipient,message);
try{
/send message
();
/ .println("sending ... ")
It's not something to be shared with just the glow of the cursor between the words and the reality of what those words mean. Of course, it's not something you can really just say-say either. But, it's better than nothi-
"Must be big, whatever it is," the earpiece she's put on says. There's no remonstration in his voice. Itachi has always been remarkably indulgent to her...brotherly, almost, which is-ironic, considering her message.
"I got a visit today," Her voice is calm, which is a relief. Stuttering can crackle horribly down the line, but the childhood habit has never been completely kicked. "The Lucky Seven Detective Agency. With one Uchiha Sasuke leading the them."
Nothing on the other end. She licks dry lips.
"Well, maybe not leading. It was hard to tell the dynamics. Its..." Its not what she needs to say. "Its just that- he recognized me. He didn't ask; I didn't explain-Well, I did explain, but just about the body and the transhuman -t-the puppet thing,- b-but...J-just that. Only th-that. I-I-"
"What sort of implants do these people have?"
It's the right question of course, but at the wrong time, Hinata feels.
"D-don't you want to-"
"Of course," he answers as if its obvious, as if he's talking about the weather, not about whether the boy he killed for in order to save was at her door in the most literal of ways. "But it's not just me, in this scenario. Are they likely to be sympathetic?"
"Well..."
She isn't sure she can answer that. They seemed nice, is what she knows. And they weren't going to tell on her. Itachi hasn't asked about that though. Somehow, she feels a little bit less The Good Solider in this moment, thinking that. She answers his first question anyway. No one said joining a revolution was easy.
"Sasuke has his eye implants of course, but you knew that. Nothing more. The woman he was with had an automatronic arm. Looked like it could handle lifting a ton, or close to. The third man... I don't know. Nothing obvious to look at him. W-w-without activating my chip, that is..."
"Of course."
A beat.
"I assume since you are calling me and haven't activated any of our safety measures that the Hyuuga Clan- or at the very least the police- aren't about to descend down upon you?"
Ah, so he did remember after all. Hinata feels herself flush.
" N-n-no. I don't think so. Sasuke promised and- Naruto seemed nice."
"Hmph," She could almost hear the smirk. Never did figure how he manages that. "Is he blond? You seem to have thing for blonds."
Wha-" Her cheeks heat up even more. " I d-do not have things for- f-for people!"
"No," Itachi agrees, "You generally don't. But you do want to tell them, don't you? Do you want to let them in?"
And that brings her up short. She swallows and then breaths, and then-
"I-I thought... yeah, I thought I might. You did all this for him, didn't you?"
There's a long silence- so long Hinata reaches for the jack, just to make sure the connection is still good, but no, everything's working. Itachi just has nothing but breath to whisper in her ear. She should take back what she said, but instead licks her lips and waits. She was right about Kiba. She was right about Shino, and Asuma and Kurenai and half a dozen others over the years. And none of them have ever mattered more than this single one did.
"Do as you see best."
The connection this time really is severed.
Decisions, decisions.
1000.
Hinata has an earpiece, but it isn't something she uses on a regular basis. It's not her cover story. It's not- It's not her. The locals, who come in for those everyday little things-those bits and bobs you never realize are important till you're out- to them she's just a local eccentric. Silly Hinata doesn't like technology, isn't she an odd one? But harmless, she makes sure they say, completely harmless.
So, no, Hinata doesn't use an earpiece. She uses a phone. But the thing of it is, no one else uses a phone. Too quaint.
Which is why when it rings two days after her chat with Itachi, she just about jumps out of her skin.
"Do you know how hard it is to find a phone?" The voice on the other end demands loudly when she picks up the receiver.
She winces from the volume and scrambles to put a face to the man on the other end of the line.
"Well," it continues. "Do you?"
"Um, no?"
"Damn hard, and a phone book? Forget about it! But we thought-" He's cut off. There's some ambient noise, and muffled voices in argumentation.
"Hello?" she says.
Nothing and then-
"Hello? Hello? Is this Hinata-san? This is Sakura from the Lucky Sevens Detective Agency. You know, from the other day?"
Haruno Sakura: Firmly middle class; grandparents naturalized as adults; father deceased; mother living; went to Leaf Elementary; tested for, and was accepted into, Kohona Academy for high school; went on for medical training at a reasonably priced university; studied with one rather famous professor, but dropped out third year due to an accident that cost her her arm; went to work for a casino; and then went off the grid, mostly, except for the erratic paycheck going into her bank account, presumably because she'd joined up with this detective agency and they had the odd case or two. Yes, Haruno Sakura, she thinks, I know you.
"This is Hinata."
"Oh," the voice- Haruno Sakura - says. "Sorry about earlier. That was Naruto. Raised by wolves, you know."
Well, not by wolves, but close, Hinata thinks. Uzumaki Naruto: Off-grid and without electronic identity until the approximate age of nineteen, records indicate he testified that he grew up an orphan on the streets. Sponsors to naturalize included an erotic writer and a grim looking man with only one eye. With no birth records, education records, or documentation of cyberization of any kind, the most solid information Hinata was able to get on him was his bank account number and library card.
And that he had a really nice laugh.
Damn, she wasn't going to think about that. Even if she can hear them laughing and playing-fighting on the other line right now.
"Ah, yes."
An inane reply, especially considering the only thing she's been doing between researching these people in the past two days is trying to figure out how to naturally approach them.
But it does the trick.
"Oh," Sakura laughs into the phone. "Sorry. We must sound nuts! I was just thinking- you seemed nice-"
"Thank you."
That gets her laughing more, and it feels good to joke. "That sounded rather pompous, didn't it? But I- we- were thinking it might be nice to hang out. Especially since you know Sasuke already."
She hears a muttered grumbling on the phone and thinks it might be something along the lines of "quit trying to get into Sasuke's pants." Hinata decides it's probably better manners to pretend she can hear nothing of Naruto. Sakura must think this is the best course too, and continues, "I just made a cake and I'm a good cook really- Okay, okay, Naruto! Naruto says to inform you, I'm not a good cook, but I am a good baker- and you better not disagree with me, Naruto! I saw you licking the spoon, you know."
That last bit she says away from the speaker and Hinata smiles again. It's a rather nice opening for her really. She could be more forthcoming, she supposes. Legally, phones are still harder to tap than emails are to trace, but she trusts nothing to chance these days. After all, her cover's already been blown once this past week.
"No," she says deliberately sweet, thinking calm thoughts to keep her voice on an even keel. "No, that sounds great. I love sweets. But why don't you bring it over to my place? I could order a pizza, maybe? We could talk..."
"Great! We'll let Sasuke know!"
Her mind flashes back to Sasuke as a child- serious, a little disdainful or even pouty about anyone who was less serious than he. He'd been a good companion for her own unlaughing childhood-self, but now she wonders how he takes these two, who seem so light and-no other polite way to say it- rather goofy, even.
Itachi rather likes silliness in others, though he was rarely anything but (deadly) serious himself. How alike. How different. She smiles, knowing that even if they can't see her, Sakura will hear it through the receiver, and Hinata has reason to be happy.
Sure, she's lying to two perfectly nice people who have done nothing more than befriend the wrong person to get themselves involved in this. But she's also setting her plans in motion remarkably easily.
"Well, good then." she says. "You like pepperoni? M'kay. See you then."
On the other end there's a bright farewell and Hinata waits until Sakura hangs up. In a little under three hours, she'll hear Naruto laugh again, family will reunited in a way her own can never be, and they'll have three new recruits to help shoulder the load in this sometimes endless-seeming battle she's gotten herself tangled up in fighting.
She smiles, for real this time.
"Welcome to the revolution," she says to the dial tone on the other end.