The building was just up ahead, and he wouldn't have to endure this cold for much longer. Damn Japanese winters at five in the morning. He had parked his car in the parking lot and started toward the building. He hugged his coat just a little tighter as he approached.
Click!
He stopped. That click came from right behind his head. Before he could turn around, a voice sounded.
"I have a gun. Get in the van."
And just on cue, a van pulled up. Something whooshed behind him, and he felt heat. Somebody was twirling a baton that was currently on fire, and they were twirling it literally right behind him. Another click sounded. It was the driver of the van. He was wearing a ski mask (cliché but effective), and he was holding a gun at him, too. He returned to a state of calm from his panic and looked the masked man straight in the eye.
They need me alive- if they didn't, they'd have killed me already, he thought. He moved toward the van, only to bolt for it a second later. He stopped dead in his tracks and pitched forward as he felt the unmistakable twist of a knife in his stomach. There was now a third man in front of him, still holding onto the knife.
The woman who first held him at gunpoint walked over. He immediately began to fight through the pain and shoved the third man away. He cradled his wound but he did not remove the knife, since it was probably the only thing keeping him from bleeding out. And then a gun careened into his head. He fell forward and turned on his side in effort to keep from falling on the knife. In his dazed state, he was vaguely aware of his hands being duct taped behind his back. They also duct taped his legs. The one that stabbed him picked him up and dragged him over to the van. He wrenched out the knife, eliciting a whimper, before throwing him in the back. The woman got into the back with him, undoing his coat, jacket, and shirt, before tending to his wound. That was the last thing he saw before passing out.
.o0o.
Mai sat at her desk, listening to the analog clock on the wall tick loudly away. However, Mai wasn't slacking off. She had been working all day- the boring paperwork that's never documented because it's so boring. But now, she was waiting… waiting for just the right moment. 3… 2… 1… The clock struck noon, and the teakettle whistled, and the voice from the office yelled, "Mai, tea!" Right on time. And Mai was ready this time. She knew the kettle like the back of her hand. She poured the tea and moved into her boss's room. She placed it down and turned around, not even waiting for a response. She knew she wouldn't get one–
"Mai, send Lin in on your way out."
…
Well, it was a start.
"Yes sir, mister boss-man," Mai said with a mock salute, but Naru didn't catch it; his face was behind his binder again. She let out a not-so-subtle groan before slinking out of his bat-cave of a workspace before moving over to Lin's. She knocked. When she didn't get a response, she turned the handle. The handle wouldn't budge. Damn. At least Lin had the ability to be nice to her (after they settled their differences over the Urado case), but today just didn't seem to be her day. Mai, defeated, walked back to her boss' office.
"Lin has his door locked and he won't answer."
Naru rolled his eyes and got out of the chair, saying nothing as he brushed passed Mai. Mai didn't need words to know he was ticked. Lin rarely locked his door, but when he did, nobody was to expect more than two words from him that entire week. She heard Naru banging on the man's door before giving up for the umpteenth time that morning. She returned to her desk and sat down. She looked for something- anything to do, but their workload had been run bone dry. They hadn't had a case in a while now. Although Mai was genre-savvy enough to know by now that thinking those things would only mean trouble for all of them.
She settled for putting her head down on the desk, nestled in her arms. Of course she drifted off to sleep. What else?
The air around her was thick and wavy. Little lights were floating around her. She was on the spiritual plane. A figure emerged from the shadows. It walked on four, long legs- its forelegs longer than its hind. It had a long, whip-like tail, and a long, slender neck. Its raisin-colored scales were small and smooth, like a snake's. And it had blades running up its forelegs. It stood at a whopping eight feet tall. It towered over little Mai, and yet, Mai felt no fear. She didn't need to.
"Hi Jack."
The figure nodded at her. She lifted her hands, and the creature lowered its reptilian muzzle into her soft palms. She stroked the being's face, looking into its beady eyes. It extended its back-facing antennae towards her face. She laughed as the thin instruments tickled her cheek.
"Don't do that, Jack! That tickles!" she giggled. 'Jack' nudged her, and she responded by stroking him again. A light flashed from behind the creature. Both pairs of eyes snapped to it. Another form started to take shape. Naru, Mai thought. Gene.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, stepping past Jack.
Gene stepped forward and extended his palm toward Jack. The lizard-creature hissed at his outstretched limb. Gene pulled his hand back and chuckled. "I suppose we have yet to get to know each other, eh big guy?"
Jack hissed again, only this time, opening his mouth to reveal sets of razor-sharp teeth and a pair of snake-like fangs. He folded them before closing his mouth and glaring at the ghost.
"Jack, play nice," Mai scolded gently.
Jack snorted before retreating to the shadows and disappearing. Mai's face fell. Her new friend did not like her old friend.
"It's okay, Mai. We don't have to be best friends."
"Yeah, but I like you both."
"Who's to say you have to like either or?"
"I want to be able to enjoy both of your company at once."
Gene nodded, understanding. "You are sensitive to antagonistic energies. It is only natural you would want peace."
Both he and Mai took a seat on the void. "So you still didn't answer my question," Mai said. Gene raised an eyebrow. "What are you here for?"
"Can't I just want to see you every now and then?"
"But ever since Jack bit you that one time, you haven't shown up when he's around. So what gives?"
"Perhaps I wanted to test the bounds again? It's been a month since we've been in the same general vicinity."
Mai narrowed her eyes. "There's something you're not telling me, and I don't know why you won't just spit it out."
"There are some things that I have no right to say, Mai."
A crash sounded, almost like a vase smashing into the floor. Mai jumped. There were no vases in this place. And there certainly wasn't a floor for a vase to break on. Mai's head whipped from left to right, frantically searching for the source of the noise. Gene grabbed her hand and squeezed it. Mai looked at him. He was not looking at her. He was staring behind her. She turned around and followed his line of sight, but there was nothing. Nothing but the void.
The lights were still on, but the sky had started to grow dark. The door to Naru's office was ajar. That was odd. However, what really caught her attention was that Lin's door had a big damn hole in it, with pieces of vase everywhere. It was almost as if someone had tried to bash his door down. How the hell did I sleep thought that? Mai thought. Better yet, what happened?
A flash of blue caught her eyes. She looked outside. There was a police car in the parking lot. Mai ran outside. What the hell was going on, and why did she sleep through it? She grabbed her coat and moved to the door, only for Naru to enter.
"What happened?" Mai asked.
"Apparently there was some kind of a… struggle on our property."
"A fight?"
Naru nodded, albeit hesitantly. "Someone found blood and tire marks on the ground and called the police."
Mai could tell there was something on Naru's mind. He seemed too troubled for this to be something minor. She decided to help out- possibly lighten the mood. "Why don't I make us some tea? Here, let me take your coat."
Naru's eyes widened and he whipped his head around to the coat stand. There were no coats on it. He was wearing his, and so was Mai. Two coats. Mai, at that point, became very worried indeed.
"Naru, what is it?"
"It's Lin. He's been kidnapped."
"Kidnapped?"
"Or incapacitated in some way or another. Don't you see? His coat isn't on the rack."
Mai's brow furrowed. She had just assumed he'd taken it into his office. But he'd never done that before, so it was suspicious that his coat wasn't there. And Mai didn't see it anywhere else.
"But why would someone want to kidnap Lin? I mean- he's Lin!"
Naru shook his head. "He doesn't have any enemies, at least not the kind that would go to the measure of kidnapping. Those are my enemies." Mai's eyes widened at that last bit. Naru saw this, but he paid it no mind. "The only reason I could see anyone kidnapping Lin would be because of me, somehow. Or something else."
"But Lin has his shiki, doesn't he?"
Naru remained poker-faced, but Mai had a point. Lin had shiki, and they could do damage against humans. They had before. So why didn't they now? And by now, they would have made their distress known to one of them.
"Mai, didn't you take a nap today?" Naru asked.
"Yeah, so?"
"Did you see anything?"
"I… nothing out of the ordinary." The visit with Gene went unsaid, but it needed no saying, most certainly in Naru's case. He nodded.
"Go to the sofa and sleep some more. See if you can find anything."
"Okay." She moved over to the couch. The kettle whistled.
The air was thick and musty. There was a smell lingering about- something along the lines of rust. However, it smelled too… natural to be oxidizing metal. His stomach hurt. When it wasn't a dull throbbing, it was a sharp spasm, right up his torso and into his throat. He pressed his right hand to the epicenter of the pain before realizing how bad of an idea that was. He bit through the pain before placing his hand back down at his side. The floor beneath him had a thick, sticky liquid spilled in certain places. He took a deep breath, only to choke on the smell. Swallowing down an urge to vomit, his head lolled to the side. He then dared to open his eyes. The distorted face of a child stared back at him, expression and body devoid of life. Only a soulless terror remained.
Lin shot straight up. He propped himself upright, only to wish he had stayed asleep. He was in a dark room, blood lining every other inch of the place. His suit was stained in the mess. And to top it all off, at least a dozen children's corpses lay in the room with him- bodies mangled into broken shapes, each and every one of them dead. Ignoring the pain in his stomach and in the back of his head, he rose to his feet. He looked around the room some more. There was an iron door with a wheel attached to it, like a submarine. He moved over to it, trying his best not to slip in the mess all around him. He tried the wheel. It didn't budge. However, he did hear echoes from behind the door. Footsteps. And screaming. Another child, and two more voices.
"Rejected. Every single one of them rejected!" said one.
"You mustn't lose heart," the other replied. "He will surely accept one of these two."
"He weakens by the second. There won't be much of him left to do any accepting."
"All the more reason to prepare these ones faster."
"With more care."
"But faster."
"With care."
The wheel screeched. Lin, using the sound as cover, returned to the place where he woke up and lay down. He hoped that the two coming in wouldn't notice he had changed. The door hissed, and steam emerged from the other side. A little girl in a pink dress was thrown in. She couldn't have been more than eight years old. A boot kicked her all the way in and threw her down. Lin's eyes were closed, but he didn't need them to tell what those monsters were doing to her. He also didn't need his eyes to tell that the two adults had quickly shut the iron door, leaving the girl to frantically pound on it, begging to be let out.
When he was sure that the two others were out of earshot, he rose from his position, minding his head and stomach. The girl was still screaming and crying.
"Uh, hello?" he asked.
The girl turned around. Her eyes widened. Lin didn't think that her screams could get any shriller, but they did. He did his best to ignore it and came to kneeling.
"Please, I won't hurt you," he said softly. He extended his hand as the little girl turned around. She ducked into a corner, trying to make herself as small as possible. Lin, against his every instinct, got up and moved over to her. She cried out when he put a hand on her back, but as he stroked her, she seemed to calm down. Eventually, she unlocked herself from her position, and Lin was able to pull her into a hug. Now, on any other occasion, he would be completely against doing something like this. But this wasn't just any other occasion. They were both marked for death. And there was little hope that they would make it out alive.
