The Left Side of Memories
Chapter 11

Hacking Vingulf's database hadn't yielded anything like what they'd expected. But it made more sense, now. Why Vingulf had suddenly left the witches alone. How Ryouta had managed to slip under the radar – because he was clever, but hardly street smart, and dealing with an organisation in the shadows would have probably been beyond any high school kid. Even beyond most adults. Even beyond the government, perhaps. If they'd appropriated so many children from their homes without being chased, then they'd slipped under that radar as well. Kuroha Neko was an exception, of course. A girl with evidence of death wouldn't be sought after, but the ones that had been essentially kidnapped were another story.

They'd gained a lot of information. A lot of it relevant to them. Not all of it helpful at the moment, but it might come in handy afterwards. He dropped Kazumi back off at the Observatory and went back to his laboratory. His files were fairly secure, but a hacker like Kazumi, and like that Freya witch, would easily be able to get to them. But those files were also irrelevant to them.

Except the research he'd done on the supplements, he realised belatedly. Why hadn't he used a computer not connected to any networks for that?

Because it would have been impossible, he answered himself. He needed to be able to access the network to research things. An unconnected computer was only good at holding records and simple processing, like what Ryouta was doing with it now. It wouldn't have been feasible to attempt research of the magnitude he'd needed back then.

But this Hexenjagd group was also under the radar…or were they? It was too bad they hadn't thought to check up on that while they were in the system. But even that niggled at him. It was poor security if one of their own witches could hack into their system. Though Kazumi claimed to have hidden her true ability, far happier facing elimination than killing with her power to prove her worth like the Freya girl. A system with holes, then. A system built on arrogance, on the belief that everyone valued their own lives above others when that was clearly not the case. And yet, if they'd needed Kuroha and Ryouta, they could have eliminated the others and left these two alone. Why leave all five? What sort of mastermind was behind Vingulf, to have so many wild cards in circulation?

Unless there was someone in the higher-ups who would much rather see Vingulf fall from the inside, which was possible but there had to be something else anyway, something covering that (or being that, if it wasn't true). Whether there was dissent in Vingulf was unimportant at the moment anyhow. It only mattered if they were within the facility, if there was a possibility then to bring it down from the inside. Not yet. Not until the scientists came calling, so to speak. When the other components of their grand scheme were ready.

And with the knowledge that Vingulf planned to leave matters regarding the witches alone, they could afford some planning, and some risks. Perhaps not another hack, with how Kazumi had struggled with this one. They'd work harder to protect their secrets. But there were still the girls, and their experiences in the lab. And there was still Nanami and whatever information she'd taken with her into Ryouta's mind.

She was whispering to him now, he thought. He'd decided to go ahead with the original plan anyway, though he'd modified his questions to ask more about Vingulf, their structure and their methods and the people involved, than what she could inform about her host's brain. Ryouta was typing answers now, rather more fluidly than if he'd have to think about the answers himself. He could follow Nanami's narration without having to pause and think, or rethink when that thread was lost, and that sped up the process and let him think about other things.

Now that they knew Ryouta's files had been accessed, what would they do? They could leave things alone, because they hadn't found anything that would help them in the immediate sense – but Kana's vision spoke against that. Her vision implied something would come out of accessing Vingulf…which meant it was one of the other two options. They'd whisk Ryouta away and do whatever had been done to Makina to him and keep him forevermore, or they would come under the guise of doctors and then continue their observation from afar.

As Ryouta's uncle, neither of those were favourable to him, but the second was far more so than the first. He'd rather Ryouta out of their thumbs entirely. He could see, however, that it would be impossible now. Perhaps impossible while Vingulf retained the structure they had, the immeasurable amount of power that the shadows hid. It would require making more contacts behind the scene. Planning an essential coup de tat, and then taking advantage of the commotion – or creating a commotion of another sort, when Vingulf came calling for their test subjects.

Ryouta closed the laptop. Kogorou slipped it into his bag and heard heavy footsteps approaching. He waited. They paused outside the door, then continued on. He had a childish impulse to chase them, and he did, bag slung over his shoulder.

He recognised the back of the man's head easily. 'Takachiho!'

The man paused, then turned. 'I'm surprised,' he said, though sounding remarkably unsurprised. 'I know my wife is at work so I was expecting no-one.'

'It's been…what? Thirteen years?' Kogorou raised an eyebrow. 'For Naoko and Ryouta to think you've been dead all these years. Do you plan to be the healing ghost?'

'For a scientist, you've adapted quite…colloquial tones,' the man responded, turning slightly. If the windows had been newly polished, he might have been able to make out the other's expression in them, but they were dill with dust. 'You are also aware for an unfortunate amount of information.'

'You can't fault me for that.' Kogorou smiles at that, though a tad sardonically. 'I am your brother in law. Your own curiosity though…' He frowned. 'Was it worth your family?'

'It is my family,' said the man cryptically. 'The valuable secrets are, of course, more preciously protected.'

'In other words, you strung my sister along.'

'Will you be the angry brother seeking revenge, then? Or the doting uncle?'

They were getting nowhere in their little game of words.

'Your children, then,' said Kogorou. 'You turned them both into test subjects. Did you plan to leave Ryouta as he was originally, or was he always your back-up plan?'

'The back-up, of course,' he said. 'He always was cleverer, and the dam incident provided a good opportunity to capitalise on it. Now, of course…'

'The crux of the matter.' Kogorou leaned against the wall. 'Why have you come here for?'

'Why, to see my precious specimen, of course.' And this time, it was Takachiho who smiled. His glasses caught the artificial light and gleamed, making that expression appear even more hollow. 'Some things simply can't be appreciated with the eyes of others.'

'Or were you perhaps worried about your son?' If there was a hole like this… His mind was spinning, though. Why Takachiho? Why Naoko? And where had Naoko found such a man, such a mess? It wasn't Ryouta after all. Ryouta had been involved before he'd even been born, and little baby Makina who'd never had a chance to know life as well. All unscientific thoughts, of course, but he was a man before he was a scientist. Naoko's sister. Ryouta's uncle. Maybe it was that which made him eccentric as far as scientists went, and not his personality quirks. Or maybe it was a combination of both. It didn't matter in any case. Or perhaps it did.

'And what have you appreciated?' he asked, when his previous question garnered no reply.

'The power of the human brain is disappointing when it comes to healing itself from injury,' replied the man. 'Of course, we've always known this…and done nothing about it. The alien brain on the other hand has astonishing regeneration, and retention, capacity…but lacks woefully in function. We'd blended the two to create what we'd hoped was the perfect hybrid however we seem to have fallen short on the alien concentration.'

'Retention,' Kogorou repeated. 'How have you fallen short in that?'

'Has it not occurred to you?' The man sounded disappointed, as though there'd been a set standard in their conversation and he'd fallen below it. 'A storage disk that records and wipes in essentially equal amounts will maintain equilibrium. In other words, it will always contain information and space, both. However, one that writes and cannot remove will eventually reach the point where there is not enough space left for new information, and then the point where the other processes that require that space – say, opening files, will become impossible.'

'And, in a cognitive viewpoint, the brain is essentially a computer,' Kogorou finished, catching the implication. 'So you're saying that, aside from the slowness of the regeneration,' and the only reason he knew the tissue was regenerating was because of Vingulf's files, 'Ryouta is also approaching the point where he's running out of space to record new information and input. Assuming you'd planned to enact your grand scheme with the original Valkryia and Grani, then it would have been a non-issue as far as back-ups went. But now it's a problem, because your new specimens are not yet ready, correct?'

'Essentially,' said Takichiho. 'Of course, there are elements of our plan known to no-one.'

Plan… Specimen…

Those words angered him, if only because they were talking about Ryouta – no, talking about human beings. Maybe it wouldn't have mattered if his nephew hadn't been involved, if he hadn't come to his door begging for help for those girls… But they were all non-issues now. Ryouta was involved. Those girls were also involved. And it turned out they were more deeply involved than they'd realised before.

'You're Ryouta's father,' he hissed finally, plainly.

'What is a father?' the man replied.