Yusei took the steps three at a time. Crow's head jerked up from the couch and he sprung to his feet, mouth opening in a question, but Yusei just shook his head as he half ran over to the arcade machine shoved into the corner of the room.
"Where have you been?" Jack said looking up from the kitchen table. "You didn't answer your phone..."
His voice trailed off when his eyes lifted up to Aki and Luka, who were following much more slowly as Luka clung to Aki's shirt. Yusei saw Jack's eyes narrow briefly, and knew that he was noting the fact that Lua was not there. Right, Yusei hadn't gotten a chance to tell them before he had bolted off at the call. He'd tell them in a second he just had to—confirm.
He heard Aki's and Crow's voices interchanging as he shoved the machine back around, fumbling with the cords to get it turned back on.
"Seizure—Lua had a seizure?" Crow's voice broke out over Yusei's concentration.
"What does the game have to do with it?" Jack's voice said. "Yusei, seriously, what the fuck are you doing?"
Yusei pulled himself back around the machine and fumbled for the switch. As the screen came back on, he turned his attention back to the others. His mouth started to open in order to explain what Luka had said about how Lua had been reacting this morning, about thinking something might be wrong with this game, but something Aki's face made him pause.
Her face looked white all of a sudden, eyes fixed on the machine. He could see her hands shaking ever so slightly as they slid off of Luka's shoulders. Her eyes were...distant, somehow. As though she had just seen a face in a crowd that looked familiar but she couldn't quite place.
"Aki?" he said. "Are you okay?"
Aki blinked, snapping out of it.
"Oh, I...I think so," she said. "Sorry, I don't know...what just came over me."
She frowned, walking towards the arcade game. She leaned over it, looking up and down its sides, running her fingers over the top.
"This...this is the game that Lua was playing? The one that he was acting strangely about?" she said.
"Yeah, that's it," Luka said, swallowing thickly.
"What the fuck does that fossil have to do with Lua's seizure?" Jack said, his voice actually shaking a little bit. "Fuck—Yusei, how bad was it, do we need to go to the hospital?"
"Aki, you okay? You look...sick," Crow said.
Aki didn't answer for a moment, biting the tip of her tongue as she slid her fingers over the buttons, eyes flickering up to the screen. She did look sick, Yusei realized. Her face was so pale, and her knuckles were white. She looked like she was going to throw up, the way that her shoulders hunched over the console.
"Aki?" he said.
He started to reach for her shoulder, but noted a very subtle tensing of her muscles, and let his hand drop. She didn't want to be touched right now, but she wasn't going to say it out loud—she still did that, even several months after meeting her. Never told him when she needed space, he had to learn to read it. He understood—she didn't feel safe, yet, telling people where her boundaries were, for fear that they would become angry with her.
But this wasn't just that. He had spent enough time around Aki in the past few months to understand that this wasn't just her being nervous. Something...something was deeply wrong. Was it the game? She hadn't even started playing it.
"I'm okay," she said. "I just...my head hurts. It must be the stress."
Lying, Yusei thought. She's lying. Her voice is too light.
"Aki," he said, softly. "It's okay."
The room grew quiet for a moment. Aki's shoulders crumpled inwards slightly.
"It makes me feel sick," she said. "This thing—I've never seen it before, but it...I..."
She shook her head, putting a hand over her mouth as though she were going to throw up. Then, all at once, she dug into her pocket and pulled out a coin. Yusei stepped forward, but she was already feeding it into the slot and then standing up straight, putting her hands on the controls.
"Aki—"
"I'm just—testing," she said. "To see if this is what hurt Lua."
"Aki, no," Yusei said, stepping forward again, almost putting his hand on her shoulder. "If this is what did it, you could get hurt too."
"You were planning on testing it yourself, weren't you?" Aki said. She wouldn't look at him, wouldn't meet his eyes. "Someone has to. I'm just making it me."
"Aki, I can't let you—"
Aki's eyes lifted to his, then, and his words died in his throat. Her face was still so pale. But her eyes, her eyes had a flame behind them—small, but...fighting. His heart jumped. He wasn't sure if it was from that fighting spirit he saw, small but fierce, or if it was because he was...afraid.
"Let me do this," she said, and he heard the pleading behind this. "Please. There's something...something I have to figure out."
He met her eyes for a long moment. Then he found his hand dropping on top of hers, where it rested on the joystick.
"If you start to feel sick, stop immediately," he said. "Okay? Don't push yourself. We might be overthinking this."
She nodded. Yusei squeezed her hand lightly, then he stepped back. Aki's eyes moved to the screen, her pupils dilating in their hazel pools. Her fingers curled around the joystick as she took her position, and the intro screen with the little pixel man started.
"What the fuck are we doing playing with this thing?" Jack said. "Lua's in the hospital and you're playing a video game?"
"Lua was acting like he was still playing it this morning," Luka said. "A-and...there was something strange about it..."
"So you think the game caused his seizure?" Jack said.
"Well, I mean, they have epilepsy warnings on video games yeah?" Crow said. "Could be it..."
"The day after he was playing?" Jack said. "I don't believe this. I'll go to the hospital my fucking self."
Jack turned on his heel and started for the stairs, his fists at his sides. But Luka grabbed the end of his coat and tugged him back.
"Jack—please," she whispered. "I—I was the one that brought it up. I need to know...I need to know if this is what happened. V-Visiting hours are over anyway. They won't let you in."
Jack turned over his shoulder, mouth open as though to argue. But something in Luka's terrified face seemed to make him pause. His mouth closed as he looked at her for a while.
Then he sighed.
"Fine," he said. "I'll stay right here."
Immediately, Luka glued herself to Jack's chest. Jack jumped at first, but then his hands automatically dropped down over her shoulders, rubbing them gently.
Yusei returned his attention to Aki. His heart was in his throat, pumping so loud that it was making him feel like he was choking.
It's just a game, he thought. Right? It's just a game. Aki isn't in any danger. It was just a coincidence.
Aki moved her character through the side scroller, her eyes flicking up and down towards the appearing enemies. Was it just Yusei's imagination, or were there more enemies this time than when Lua and Rally had been playing? And he definitely didn't remember that little squid with thorny tentacles showing up in the first level.
But Aki played so effortlessly that it was as though she had played before. Her fingers buzzed over the buttons, slipping on and off the joystick so fast it seemed inhuman. Her gaze trained on the screen with such intensity that, for a brief, worrying moment, Yusei thought he saw her Witch persona staring out of her eyes.
"Aki, have you played this before?" Crow said. "Goddamn—you haven't even taken a single hit."
Aki didn't respond. The screen flickered as Aki hit the same red button that Rally had hit, the one that had made the screen go black. But this time, the black only lasted for a second, a second that made Aki's fingers go haywire. The second the screen came back on, it was somewhere else entirely—was this the first level? Was this any of the levels that Yusei had seen before?
Her character was still standing on top of a red button, but it looked like it was in the middle of a jungle, vines hanging down and swinging in soft pixelated swoops. But Aki didn't even flinch—she didn't even seem to flicker out of her concentration, moving onward as though this were completely normal.
"Aki?" he said. "Hey. Aki."
The screen did the flicker again, and this time, Yusei thought he saw the afterimage of something flash over the screen. Was he imagining things? No, there it was again, in the corner this time.
Aki didn't move, didn't even respond to Yusei.
"Aki," he said again. "Aki, are you okay?"
Something was wrong—her breaths were so shallow and quiet that for a second he thought she wasn't breathing at all. Crow moved forward at the same time as Yusei, but Yusei was closer.
"Aki, I think—you need to stop," Yusei said. "Aki!"
He put his hand on her shoulder—was she really that concentrated on the game?
A blur of motion caught him and he tried to stumble back—and the next thing Yusei knew he was on the floor, his head spinning and lights popping in front of his eyes. He heard Luka's voice crying out, heard Jack shouting, heard a grunt and yell from Crow but he couldn't focus on it, couldn't remember—what the fuck had just—
He tried to lift his head and his stomach turned, his head pulsing. God what had hit him?
His vision blurred for a moment. His ears felt thick with cotton and he couldn't hear what anyone was saying—oh god, wait, what was—
His vision cleared and he felt his stomach drop out.
Crow's arms were latched around Aki's, holding her back from behind. Yusei could see the thorny vines twisted around her arms, as though they had grown out from under her sleeves like extra tentacles, whipping around, trying to get at Crow as though they were alive. Aki's mouth was open wide in a silent scream, her eyes wild as she kicked and flailed in Crow's grip. Crow yelped as a vine hit him in the head and he lost his grip on Aki. Luka was crying as Jack shoved her forcefully behind the couch, out of the way of the wild swing of the vines.
"Izayoi, goddammit you almost killed Yusei!" Jack was screaming. "What the actual fuck!"
What? Aki had—Aki had attacked him. She had used her psychic powers on him. That was what had happened—ugh, fuck— Yusei's head spun as he felt something warm on his head and realized that he was bleeding, the thorn must have hit him across the head.
"A-Aki," he managed to get out through a thick throat. "Aki."
Aki's body went entirely stiff. The vines froze. For a second, she only stood there, staring straight ahead, eyes wide as though she had just seen the most horrifying thing in her life.
And then...slowly...the vines receded, disappearing under her sleeves. Some color returned to her cheeks, and a tremble started to run through her body.
Aki blinked. For a second, her knees looked like they were going to buckle, like she was going to collapse.
Then her eyes fell on Yusei lying on the floor. Her face went white again.
"Oh—oh my god," she mumbled. "I just—I just—"
Both her hands pressed over her mouth, eyes wide and terrified.
"Aki," Yusei said again, trying to sit up. He pressed his hand to the side of his head, hoping he'd hide the blood from her. It wasn't as bad as he had thought, just a scratch. "Aki, it's okay. I'm okay."
Aki shook her head wildly.
"Oh my god, I hurt you," she said. "I—oh god."
Yusei tried to reach towards her—it wasn't her fault, something had gone wrong, whatever that had been it wasn't Aki—
But Aki ducked away from his grip, from Crow's, from Jack's wild swing. She bolted for the stairs, taking them two at a time.
"Aki!"
"Izayoi!"
It was too late—she had already flung door open and disappeared into the night. Yusei's head spun as he reached towards empty air. He could feel the warm blood underneath his palm—he could still see the afterimage of Aki's horrified face.
"Aki," he whispered, his voice empty in the silence.
. . .
This was a bustle of activity like they hadn't had in months. You could hardly move for the people in their coats and suits running up and down the halls with piles of paper and computer readouts and clipboards.
"I want a list of every single person admitted to a hospital in the last two days.
"Yes, sir, we're already on it."
He strode with purpose, his fingers clenched around a paper coffee cup that had gone cold hours ago. His assistant hurried to keep up, his shoes squeaking on the floor.
"Everything else goes on hold, do you understand me? We are on total lock down until whatever remains of the Callisto Project has been recovered—we have lost too much in these last few months, I won't have us jeopardized again."
"Yes, sir," the assistant parroted.
"Sir!"
A woman's voice cut above the commotion, and he stopped cold, almost making his assistant run into him. The woman ran down the hall, waving a paper over the heads of everyone else.
"Sir," she said breathlessly as she came to a stop in front of them. "I—"
"This had better be important," he cautioned, a dark tone in his voice indicating what might go wrong if it wasn't.
"It is sir, it is," she said, gasping for breath between syllables. "The diagnostics on the statistics from the Callisto Project just came back, and we think we've cross-referenced back to the subject it located."
She handed the file over, and the man snapped it between two fingers, glaring down at it with his lips curled.
Slowly, his angry expression faded, replaced with an expression of surprise.
And that was quickly replaced with a slow grin.
"Well, well, well," he said. "It looks like we've already hit gold, so to speak."
He handed the file back to the woman.
"Send out a team, bring him in. If these readings are correct his soul is already in the Outlands, and we should be able to do the necessary tests."
"Yes, sir!"
She ran off, leaving him alone with his cold coffee and his fidgeting assistant. He stared off down the hall, at the bustle of activity that was—still—a far smaller to-do than he used to enjoy before everything had gone downhill.
"This could be what we need," he muttered. "This could be what we need."
He looked down at his palm, at the scars that had burned there from a long ago injury. He curled up his hand in a fist around it.
"We willrise again," he said. "The Arcadia Movement will not be destroyed."