*Please note that this story contains depictions of graphic violence, drug withdrawal and unsafe sex practices. While there are no graphic depictions of rape, rape is referenced throughout the story.*
This is my first Finder story. Not sure how long it will be or how sexy. But if you like angst, you'll find a lot of it here. Please let me know what you think!
Chapter 1
The room was reached by a narrow back staircase, grimy walls a lurid shade of green, lit only by a single naked bulb on the upper landing. The three men pushed their way past the protesting owner of the house and up the stairs. At the top, the chipped panel door was locked but gave way to Suoh's furious kick and the men were assaulted with the reek of unwashed bodies and the vinegar smell of heroin. Suoh fumbled along the wall but found no switch. In the poor light from the landing, he could just make out the dark humps of bodies on the floor. There was almost no reaction that he could see or hear to his violent means of entry, only a low undercurrent of soft moaning. Reaching into his coat, he pulled out a small but powerful flashlight but before he could turn it on, it was jerked from his grasp.
"Boss, let me—" he started but was cut off.
"Move."
Asami flicked on the flashlight and stepped into the room, choking on the smell. This was by far the worst of the shitholes they had searched and some small part of him hoped he didn't recognize anyone among the bodies slumped pathetically along the walls. Even if it meant starting from scratch, it might be better than finding him here. Still, he had to look, had to be sure.
Methodically, he started to the left of the door and worked his way around the room, shining the light into the faces of the miserable things huddled on the floor. Boy after boy, thin, dirty, ranging in ages he preferred not to think about. Some of them squinted against the glare; one or two threw up a hand to block the light; a few cringed, curling tighter into themselves. None of them spoke, and he was glad. If they had, he would have had to acknowledge they were human, all of these boys. In that moment, he could only focus on one boy. The one he had lost.
They had been searching nearly two months, aided by Fei Long, but even with his connections on the mainland, they couldn't possibly reach into every brothel in Asia. Leads had been few. The last concrete evidence had been five weeks ago, shaky cellphone video from an unnamed informant showing a boy who could have been Akihito being hustled out of a car by two nondescript men with baseball hats pulled down over their faces. That video had sent them to Macau for a month of fruitless searching until a tip had led them here, to the back alleys of Dongguan.
Asami kept moving, boy by boy. Once or twice, he stopped to turn a face up so he could get a better look, all with that same glassy-eyed stare, pupils blown by the dark and drugs. They let him hold them by the jaw, unprotesting, and fell back silently when he released them, dead to the indignity of being inspected.
In the far corner, one of the boys lay prone on the bare, blackened linoleum floor and didn't respond when Asami nudged his hip with the toe of his shoe and Asami left it at that. The boy with his shorn, black hair wasn't Akihito.
Back out on the landing, Asami returned the flashlight to Suoh.
"He's not here."
Laughter crackled up from the bottom of the staircase where the owner stood, his fat arms crossed over his belly.
"So you didn't find what you were looking for?" he shouted over the noise of the music pounding from the bar below them. "I told you we don't have no Japanese here!"
Asami jerked his head at his men and they filed down the stairs behind him. The owner stopped laughing when Asami stopped in front of him but stood his ground and tried to brazen it out.
"You bust up my place! I pay plenty of money for protection from thugs like you. You wait until Shen Jei hears how some big asshole yakuza come in here and break up my place looking for his little whore!"
Only those few most familiar with Asami would have picked up on the minute play of muscles that flickered across the disciplined planes of his face. And only those few would understand what it meant. The other man had given himself away.
With a barely perceptible flick of his eyes, Asami signaled to Suoh, who grabbed the brothel owner by the arms, dragged him—heavy as he was—out of the stairwell and forced him hard onto one of the metal chairs in the empty reception room. Inaba, the other bodyguard, produced a pair of handcuffs and chained the owner to the chair.
Asami pulled out his cellphone and punched up a contact list. The call was almost immediately answered.
"Fei Long," the voice on the other end said.
"What do you know about a two-bit Dongguan gangster named Shen Jei?" Asami asked without preamble. There was a second of silence before Fei Long answered.
"Where are you?"
Asami gave him the address of the brothel.
"Give me five minutes," came the reply.
It took ten. Asami stood, never shifting the cold, focused fury of his gaze from the now sweating brothel owner, who looked nervously away, even when Asami's cell rang again.
"Yeah?"
"He's there."
"What?"
"Akihito. Asami, they're holding Akihito there."
"Impossible," Asami said tightly. "We searched every room."
The owner's head swiveled around, almost involuntarily.
"Or did we?" In one swift, fluid motion, Asami pulled his gun from its holster, jamming the end of the barrel against the other man's head, directly between his eyebrows. "Where is he? Where are you hiding him?"
"I'm not hiding nobody!"
The gun was drawn back and came down with a crack against the side of the owner's head.
"Where—is—Takaba—Akihito?" Each word punctuated with another blow.
The man's head lolled crazily on his shoulders, blood spidering over his face. Still he smiled, his teeth grotesquely red.
"You looked," he wheezed, "and you didn't see him."
Another skull-splitting blow sent blood spraying over the wall.
"I will tear this place down board-by-board and burn the rubble with you buried in it! Tell me where he is!"
"Asami!" Fei Long's voice called sharply out of the phone."Is it possible you're only looking for a blond?"
The mask slipped then. Gods! No, it was impossible! Red, green, purple, surely he would have recognized Akihito whatever color his hair. Even black, like the boy on the floor upstairs, the unconscious one who hadn't opened his eyes.
"Watch him," he ordered Inaba.
He took the steps three at a time, Suoh on his heels, back to the nightmare room at the top of the house. Even with the door wide open, none of the terrified boys had moved. Asami strode past them and dropped to his knees beside the inert body in the corner. Suoh came up behind him and turned the flashlight on the boy. He was curled on his side with his face to the wall, dressed in a filthy t-shirt and cheap sweat pants, his feet bare. His black hair had been close-cropped by a careless hand, ragged and uneven.
With infinite tenderness, Asami put a hand on the boy's shoulder and slowly rolled him onto his back. The boy's head flopped lifelessly to the side and Asami felt it like a blow to the chest. Behind him, he heard Suoh's gasp.
"Shit," Suoh said.
Asami couldn't speak, all air driven from his lungs by the force of that revelatory blow. It was him. Gods, it was him. And he looked half dead, his skin unnaturally pale, blue smudges like bruises around his eyes, cheeks gaunt, the bones of his arms standing out in graphic detail under wasted tissue.
When he was able to take in enough air to drive speech, Asami smacked Akihito's cheek with careful measure.
"Takaba," he said. "Hey, Takaba." But got no response.
"Is he breathing?" Suoh asked.
Asami trailed his hand over Akihito's jaw and down the side of his neck, his fingertips picking up the faint burr of Akihito's pulse and drawing it through his own body like a tremor.
"He's alive."
Another slightly sharper smack.
"Come on, kid. Open your eyes."
He needed to see, needed to know if that same shadow that had numbed the souls of the other boys had staked a claim here.
"Akihito!" The word rang with a familiar, sharp command that even the obstinate brat usually responded to. He had to, even now, even like this. The bruised eyelids quavered and moved slowly, maddeningly, as though they were too heavy to lift. Behind them, black pupils drowned hazel, and if that fierce light was still there, it couldn't penetrate that darkness. Akihito stared unseeingly past Asami.
"Akihito!" Asami gave him a little shake. "Look at me!"
But he only succeeded in shaking a wordless moan out of the boy, and the heavy lids fell back into place.
Asami pulled Akihito's left arm across his body, turning it to expose the soft flesh in the bend of his elbow to the light from the flashlight, the blue marks of needle tracks like poison darts to his own heart.
With one arm under his shoulders and one under his knees, Asami lifted Akihito off the floor. He knew the heft of this body so well, had carried it this way too many times not to be knifed through by the change, how light it was, how pronounced the bones against his arms, how utterly lacking in resistance. The knife lodged hilt-deep in his throat until he thought he would choke on it.
"Come on." He somehow managed a guttural growl and followed by Suoh, strode out of the room and down the stairs, Akihito a dirty, limp bundle in his arms.
"Inaba!" Asami barked when they reached the reception room. "Contact the airport. I want the plane ready to go in half an hour. Then call Kirishima and give him our ETA. Tell him to have Dr. Nagato on standby."
The bundle in his arms tensed and a thin hand reached up and closed over the lapel of his coat.
"Asami?"
A hoarse whisper he could barely hear.
"It's okay, Takaba," he said in a voice neither Suoh nor Inaba recognized. "I'm taking you home."
Akihito's head turned weakly back and forth. His lips moved but no sound came out.
"What was that?" Asami pulled the boy closer. "I can't hear you."
Eyes closed tight with effort, Akihito drew a shaking breath.
"The others…" His voice was barely audible, carried on a tremulous gasp of air. "Can't leave them."
With five breathless words, Akihito dropped the weight of the boys in the upstairs room across Asami's shoulders, but Asami was built to carry far more than that, and those five words told him that the light he was looking for still burned somewhere inside this broken boy.
"Inaba," he said again. "Call Fei Long. Tell him we have Takaba but there are about a dozen boys here that need attention. If they can't or don't want to go home, he can at least find them safer work."
"You think you just gonna walk out of here, you sonofabitch?" the owner snarled. "You don't take what's mine, bought and paid for!"
Asami smiled—with all the warmth of a Siberian winter.
"You really don't know who I am, do you?"
The owner brazened it out to the last.
"I know you're a dead man," he spat. "You and that piece of nothing you came for. He probably gonna die anyw—"
Suoh silenced the man with a solid punch to the side of his head.
"Inaba," Asami said, this time with studied courtesy. "Please also tell Fei Long we'll need cleaners."
"Cleaners?" Inaba asked. "What for?"
"Because Suoh is going to blow this rat's brains out. Right now."
Suoh knew an order when he heard one, put the barrel of his gun against the owner's temple and fired. Asami stood, watching the man's gore run down the wall with icy satisfaction until he became aware that Akihito was jerking against him. The kid had never had gotten used to seeing someone shot in front of him, no matter how much they'd been begging for it.
"It's okay. We're going."
Asami swept down another set of stairs and through the shabby, badly lit nightclub on the first floor. If anyone noticed the tall, dark, well-dressed man carrying the skinny, dirty boy and followed by a hulking brute with a blond buzz cut, no one seemed to care. And none of them would have been able to tell from the tall man's impassive face that the boy in his arms was—in that moment—his fragile tether to sanity.