Chapter 3

When my food was brought to me, I found that I was ravenous. It felt like I hadn't eaten in a year. Of course I probably hadn't eaten since before we had gone to Cross Karokorum. Being unconscious, I had likely been given nutrition through an IV.

It turned out that while it hadn't been quite as long as a year, I had been completely unaware for more than three months. The news broadcasts were simultaneously informative, yet frustratingly unilluminating. Everything Dr. Raphael had told me was confirmed by the news reports, yet the information I truly wanted remained out of reach, my questions unanswered.

The Science Ninja Team had been saved the world. Berg Katse was dead. Galactor had been defeated. The Science Ninja Team had been disbanded. These data were known facts and repeated often. Yet I wasn't able to learn how the Black Hole Operation had been stopped. Why was everyone, apparently including Dr. Nambu and the rest of the Team, convinced that Galactor was gone? How had Katse died, and where was the proof of this statement? That purple freak had escaped certain death more than once before.

Most importantly, what had happened to the rest of the Team? We had gone to Cross Karokorum hoping to find Joe. I had thought I had heard his voice, but then the Galactors had attacked… had he survived? Dr. Nambu's prognosis had been grim, but still, perhaps if the others had found Joe, and managed to get him back to the God Phoenix… If anyone could have saved him, I knew it would be Hakase.

Ryu had surely survived. His strength and solid personality could see him through anything, He would have watched out for Jinpei, in my absence. I knew I could trust Ryu for that. My little brother had to be safe.

And then there was Ken. My heart ached, thinking of him. How I had longed for us to be together! We had never spoken of it directly, even as we had sat back to back in the doomed wreckage of the Crescent Base, but once or twice he had left me with the impression that after the war was over… Well, now the war was over, or so the general public believed, and here I was: lying in a hospital bed, my body altered to such a great extent that I was no longer human.

In my heart, I knew that Ken had survived. Gatchaman would endure. He would always be there… for the world, and for me. A silent tear slipped down my face.

Wherever Ken was, I hoped that he would find happiness.

If only I could do the same…

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The following day I got out of bed. After three months of unconsciousness, I expected my muscles to be withered and weak. But contrary to all logic, they were strong and firm; I had no trouble standing under my own power. The difficulty lay in controlling these limbs. They didn't feel like they belonged to me, and I was unable to move them with the amount of force or precision I desired. I'm certain I must have looked a comical sight, arms and torso flailing as I attempted to take baby steps across my room. I hurtled my body into the opposite wall, unintentionally smashing out large chunks of plaster and sending a rain of grayish-white powder to the floor.

"It will take time." Dr. Raphael pronounced gravely. "You will work on regaining your control each day."

And I did. It wasn't like there was much else I could do, even had I wanted to. I now understood that I wasn't in any immediate danger, and I knew that I couldn't go back. As a cyborg, no one would trust me, nor would they trust Dr. Raphael. Even I wasn't entirely certain about the man. If I somehow managed to return to the ISO, Dr. Nambu would run a battery of tests. I would be debriefed endlessly, and even afterward, I would still be different. Ken and the others would never be able to accept me. I was of no use to them in this condition.

But I did have valuable information, both about Dr. Raphael, and his theories about Leader X's inevitable return. No matter what had happened to me, I still owed it to Hakase, and to my former teammates, to pass on everything I had learned. And so my only desire was to escape this place and contact Dr. Nambu. Yet before I could do that, I had to take back command of myself.

The finesse of body movement was something of which I had long been aware. Growing up under Dr. Nambu's fostering had taken me from a gawky pre-adolescent to a woman fluent in gymnastics and martial arts: someone who could perform the greatest feats with the smallest amount of movement. Efficiency had been our primary goal as we had trained for the Science Ninja Team. Wasted movements meant wasted energy, and a greater chance that our enemy would see us. Now I recalled these lessons as I labored to regain the effortless intricacies of action that had once been second nature.

And so my days began to fall into a routine. When I wasn't sleeping or eating, most of my time was spent training: rebuilding the muscle tissue I had lost, and re-learning how to use my body. At first, something as simple as walking was a challenge. My body wanted to accelerate from zero to sixty in the space of a millisecond. It took a great deal of effort to learn how to control my movements, both great and small. The day I was able to simply place my hand on the table, rather than slamming it down, felt like a triumph.

I had begun with walking and sitting, but I continued by working on arm and hand movements: from lifting and pulling, to softly pressing buttons on a control panel. Slowly, I learned the difference between bouncing lightly on the ground and jumping up to the ceiling, between walking and stomping. Once I had these 'basics' down, I moved onto more complex movement. The grace and skill I had formerly possessed were gone, but I was determined to regain them, no matter how long it took.

From the moment I became capable of walking and running, I began searching for an escape. As my aptitude expanded, I was brought out of my room and to a gym of sorts, where workout mats and specialized gymnastics-training equipment were located. I stretched and pulled my muscles, seeking to regain my former skills, then worked with the parallel bars, the vault and the balance beam. But even as my physical self focused on these tasks, my mind was occupied with finding a weakness in Dr. Raphael's security that I could exploit.

Frustratingly, it appeared that there were none. There were no windows, and I never saw any doors, save the ones that led to the gym, my room, and my bathroom. Surely there must have been others; I became convinced that there were secret doors hidden in the walls. I spent days going over every square centimeter of the three rooms that were my world, desperately searching for something, anything, that could possibly be an exit.

Yet there was nothing.

Well, that wasn't exactly right. There was one avenue I hadn't explored. The corridor that took me to the gym continued onward. I was certain that there had to be something down there.

Of course, the obvious solution would have been to simply run in that direction, given the first opportunity. And I had tried… and failed. I had attempted to make a break for this perceived freedom on a number of occasions, but each time I had been repelled by the nurses who had been accompanying me. I quickly came to realize that Dr. Raphael had enhanced their physical abilities as well. Although none of them were individually as strong as I was, in a group they were perfectly capable of restraining me. At first, I was surprised to see them acting with this degree of speed and force, but I later came to learn that their surgery had not been nearly as extensive as mine, and so they had adjusted to their new bodies much faster than I was doing.

Yet I was continuing to adjust. Each day I improved, moving faster, gaining more control, and recovering the grace and agility I had lost. My fighting skills had returned to me after a month of this intensive program, and after two months I was moving so fast, and with such precision, that I stunned even myself. Needless to say, as my abilities became more enhanced, my guards became stronger and more numerous.

One day I nearly laughed out loud, seeing a dozen men and women surrounding my door, waiting for me to exit my room and walk down the corridor to the gym. Some of the 'guards' had clearly been roped into the task last-minute. While half of the people present were clearly medical personnel, the others were dressed in casual attire, save one. One man, whom I had not seen before, wore a technician's uniform.

Around his waist was a tool belt.

How many times had I see men and women dressed in this fashion running around the Crescent Base, repairing equipment, control panels, even the God Phoenix and our G-Machines? I understood the importance of such personnel. But right now, I was more interested in what this man was carrying.

I did my best to appear casual, my gaze flipping past the man and over the other members of my guard, smiling casually at all of them. The 'regulars' knew me, and some even returned the small greeting. Yet I knew that they would all be ready to jump in the moment I attempted to do something that was 'unauthorized'. In fact, I was counting on it.

I varied my step, moving in a slightly different pattern than usual, my eyes searching out the weak spot in their 'defense net'. Spotting a small gap between two of the makeshift guards, I moved slowly, passing the spot, then spinning rapidly on the ball of my foot and kicking my way through the empty space.

My foot made it through; the rest of my body did not. Within seconds, the dozen guards were restraining me, forcing me to the floor and physically holding me down as I grunted and rolled, doing my best to get free of this crude, but effective, system of restraint. Although I was capable of movement, I was unable to dislodge their 'tackle attack'. After some time, I gradually ceased my struggles, capitulating to their desires. Shamefaced, I hung my head, seemingly incapable of meeting anyone in the eye. I was frog-marched down the corridor to the gym and unceremoniously thrown inside. The normally soft beep of the electronic lock on the whisker-reinforced door behind me echoed in my ears.

Silently, I got to my feet, quietly walking over to the workout mats and beginning my stretching routine. My humiliation was nothing; I had achieved my goal.

For in my sleeve was concealed a micron-enhanced electron screwdriver.

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The screwdriver was a useful tool, yet unfortunately it wasn't everything I needed. I spent about a week working on my mangled bracelet, recognizing that there was something else I required. My communicator's components were simply too tiny to hold with my fingers, but clearly a set of electron pliers was hardly forthcoming.

I began to make a small show of checking my appearance before I left my room, occasionally chatting with the nurses and bemoaning the lack of beauty supplies; attempting to form a female bond with at least one of my charges. This turned out to be much easier than I had expected. Apparently the inaccessibility of certain mundane items was a common conversational topic amongst Dr. Raphael's people. I lamented the state of my hair (which had been burned in back when I had been hit by the laser fire at Cross Karokorum) and my skin. I wished aloud for access to basic female primping accoutrements. And the female nurses commiserated with me. They helped me trim my hair to shoulder length, removing the scorched bits. They smuggled in moisturizers and a decent hairbrush. We discussed tricks to proper nail care with limited manicure resources.

Taking advantage of this situation, I carefully allowed one nurse to 'accidentally' hear my quiet plea for a pair of tweezers as I closely examined my eyebrows in the mirror one afternoon, and sure enough, a few days later, the requested item had been provided. I pushed aside my natural disgust that these people were so willing to believe that the Swan was an airheaded female only interested in her looks and simply took advantage of the gift I had been given. Sure enough, I tweezed my brows, showing them off to the obliging nurse, but those little tweezers also provided me with another vital tool I needed to begin repairing my bracelet.

Of course, with these simple accoutrements it was still going to be a long time before I was able to activate my bracelet, much less send out a signal. But I diligently spent a few hours each night on this task, desperately hoping that I would eventually be successful. The fact that this was taking weeks, after I had already been gone for nearly half a year, didn't bother me. After all, the war with Galactor was over, and I had all the time in the world.

Right?

Although to hear Dr. Raphael speak, it sounded like time was a precious resource. He seemed convinced that Leader X would return at any moment. Every few days he came to speak with me, pleased by the progress I was making in attaining control of my body, yet still frustrated with the overall pace of my development. Curiously, he never mentioned my attempts to escape, although surely he must have known.

In any case, I no longer attempted to get away. My purpose in doing so had been to contact Dr. Nambu, and now I understood that I was more likely to achieve that goal by fixing my bracelet and sending a signal. The nurses and guards who were sent to watch my movements grew more relaxed, and even somewhat friendly, each of them assuming that I had accepted my existence here in Dr. Raphael's lab as a matter of course.

To some extent, this was true. After all, what else did I have? I couldn't go back to the Science Ninja Team, not as some half-human hybrid: a monster of the sort we had only sought to defeat during the war. Even if I owed it to Dr. Nambu to inform him of Raphael's beliefs, I wasn't under any obligation to return to the Team now. Besides, the hurtful truth was… I knew they'd be better off without me.

It was with these thoughts on my mind that I entered the gym the following day. I had expanded my routine to include strength–training and cardiovascular exercises, improving my biological body and allowing my cybernetics to incorporate themselves into that physical growth and development. I knew that this was making me less human, but since I had given up on returning to a normal life, I did my best to push any regretful feelings aside.

I moved quickly through my warm-up routine, then approached the weight-lifting machine. Automatically I sat down, placing my legs on the device to begin working the muscles on the lower half of my body. But when I went to push against the resistance, I discovered that I could barely move my feet. My calves strained and trembled, and sweat ran down my face as slowly I pushed the weights upward, then gradually lowered them. I didn't understand! I had done these exercises only yesterday, carefully checking the weights and setting the machine to my specifications.

Frustrated, I got up, moving over to examine the weights. Due to my cybernetic enhancements, my basic strength was more than that of the most accomplished human bodybuilder, and Dr. Raphael had apparently obtained custom weights far beyond normal limits. I had previously set the weights to three hundred kilos, which was straining my legs only slightly.

Yet now the weights were set at five hundred kilos.

Was someone playing a joke on me? Whoever it was, I didn't find the situation funny. Carefully I reset the machine, removing the extraneous two hundred kilos. I was about to sit down again when on a sudden impulse I checked the arm weights. Only the day before I had moved up on these exercises, and had begun bench-pressing two hundred kilos.

Now it was set to three hundred and fifty.

My irritation quickly dissipated, only to be replaced by an intense curiosity. This wasn't a joke.

Quietly I adjusted the machine back to my settings, then sat down and began my workout once more. Yet even as I exercised my physical body, my mind was working overtime, attempting to make sense of this information. The nurses and other personnel here were all 'enhanced' in some way, as far as I could tell, save for Dr. Raphael himself. Yet none of them had been involved in surgeries as extensively as I had, and none of them individually were as strong as I was.

There was someone else.

I couldn't think of any other explanation. I was the only person who used these facilities. At least, I was supposed to be the only person who used these facilities. And even if, for some reason, one of the other personnel had exercised on this equipment, they should be using less weight than I did, not more. The only other possibility I could think of was that there was another person, like myself, who was being trained for Dr. Raphael's purposes.

At first, I was shocked by this notion, but when I thought about it, it didn't seem so surprising. Dr. Raphael wasn't exactly one to reveal his motives, or lay all of his cards on the table. For all I knew, he had many goals, and defending against Leader X's return was only one of them. It made sense that he might be creating a series of 'specialist' cyborgs to attain his various objectives. Of course, I could never ask the Doctor about these objectives. The only person who might give me further insight was this other 'specialist' cyborg… if he or she even existed at all.

Outwardly, I gave no sign that I had noticed anything amiss, and returned to my room quietly. I wasn't entirely certain what to do with my new information, and so I let it stew in the back of my mind while I concentrated on my other goal.

I had nearly finished fixing my bracelet.

It hadn't been easy working on the communication device embedded in the faceplate, and I had had some difficulty even diagnosing the problem. I recalled that while the transformation feature of the bracelet was highly complex, the transmission function was relatively standard, albeit equipped with a 'reset' function that could even self-repair. It was this reset function that had allowed me to obtain some functionality with my bracelet. The faceplate had been scorched by laser fire, and many of its components had fused together. Given enough time, the system could create appropriate bypasses, but first the reset had had to be initialized. I had achieved this feat a few days prior, and each night I eagerly examined my bracelet for signs of restoration. The transmission system, being the simplest function of the bracelet, was likely to be the first procedure I could expect to attempt.

That night, after my evening meal, I pulled out the bracelet. To my delight, the red light on the faceplate was lit up. I could hardly contain my excitement, but did my best to remain calm. Gently, I pressed the faceplate, initiating a 'home transmission', which was the default setting for that system. Without further instruction, the Science Ninja Team bracelets were always set to connect to Dr. Nambu's communications port.

I held my breath as I heard the familiar soft chime, indicating that the bracelet was activating. It was taking longer than it should, but then, perhaps it was simply working its way around the newly-created bypasses?

"Dr. Nambu…" I said quietly into the bracelet. "This is G-3, contacting Dr. Nambu…"

Yet there was no answer.

Was it working? I couldn't tell. Carefully, I initiated a 'ping' command. The results of my request were clear.

My signal was being blocked.

I sighed in frustration. It appeared that my bracelet was functioning the way I had expected. Unfortunately, I hadn't anticipated a dampening field getting in the way of my transmission. Damn that Raphael! He had neatly constrained my best means of communication with the ISO.

Tears of disappointment welled up in my eyes, but I angrily forced them back. I had worked toward this goal for weeks, but it wasn't all in vain. If Dr. Raphael wanted me to fight against Leader X, then he had to release me eventually. And once I was out of this place, I would finally be able to contact Dr. Nambu.

Still, this was of small comfort as I lay there in my de facto prison cell. I rolled onto my side, closing my eyes and willing myself to fall asleep. However, it seemed that sleep was not to be had, as only a few moments later, Dr. Raphael burst into my room, announcing his presence with a shout.

"What the hell do you think you are doing?"

I turned, astonished. I hadn't seen him this angry since I had attempted suicide months before.

"I'm not certain what…"

"You damned well know 'what'! You tried to communicate with the ISO!"

I could hardly deny it, but I certainly wasn't going to apologize. It was my duty to inform Dr. Nambu of any potential threat, whether I was still on the Science Ninja Team, or not.

"You ungrateful bitch!" Raphael raged, his usually distant demeanor torn to shreds by his fury. "I've taken you from Death's door to a new body, trained you, enhanced your capabilities… and for what? So you can tell your precious ISO where to find me? So I can be…" My mouth fell open. The expression on his face wasn't merely angry, it was… fearful. Instinctively, I guessed at the reason.

"So you can be… found?"

Raphael's scowl was my answer.

"You don't want to be found…." I said slowly, "because you worked for Galactor?"

"That fool Anderson doesn't understand!" Raphael spat. "That self-righteous bastard can't see any shades of grey. He assumes that because I worked for Galactor in the past, I serve them still. He doesn't understand that allegiances can change… and for good reason!" A feeling of shame passed though me. The Doctor had a point, and I could understand why he felt the way he did.

"I wasn't intending to speak with Director Anderson." I admitted. "I wanted to talk with Dr. Nambu. He deserves to know about your theory that Leader X will return… he deserves a chance to prepare as much as I do."

"You don't want to rejoin your precious Science Ninja Team?" Raphael asked sarcastically.

"No…" I whispered. I could see the Doctor's expression of disbelief, and I hurried to explain. "I… I don't belong there. Not like… this. But they deserve to know."

"Well, it's something, at least." he muttered, his former fury now dialed back down to a mild irritation. "But still, you need to think through your actions, girl! Even if you weren't intending it, the location of this base could be traced through a signal such as yours! And it might not even be the ISO that's doing the tracing."

"Not the ISO?" I queried. "Who else might care? Galactor is gone…"

"Galactor is not gone!" Raphael hissed. "They're regrouping. They know as well as I do that X will return. That their organization will rise again. This is why I need you out in the field! But how can I send you out there when I can't trust you not to run back to the ISO?" He glared at me, his bushy brows bristling with indignation. I stared back calmly, knowing that he was right. If he released me, for whatever reason, the first thing I would do would be to contact Dr. Nambu. But as for going back… I wasn't comfortable with that idea. I didn't want to face the others… face Ken… in this half-human form. Still, I desperately wished to talk over these matters with Dr. Nambu. I had always trusted him with this kind of dilemma, and he had been the closest thing I had ever had to a father. There was no doubt in my mind that the right thing to do would be to contact Hakase.

"If only you could be more like…"

My head jerked up as the Doctor's quiet muttering jolted me away from my thoughts. What had he said?

"If only I could be more like… who?"

"Like I thought you would be!" Raphael snapped, but I definitely got the impression that he was covering for an unintended slip. "I would never have invested my time and energy in you if I had imagined for one moment that you would give me this kind of trouble…"

"I suspect that anyone in my position would do the same."

His mouth opened, as if to say something to refute my statement, but then closed abruptly. He shook his finger sharply in my direction, then turned and stormed out of the room without another word. The door closed behind him, and it was only then that I let out a long sigh of relief.

What the heck had just happened?