*HxH Disclaimer*

Author's Notes: Okay, fast update. :P I'll manage to "rush" through this one, since I'm overdue with the fic (according to the personal schedule that I have set, hehe), anyway. Have to finish this before school opens again. At least, the first few weeks of school will relatively still be light. :D

Once more, thanking my most awesome reviewers kunoich79, a guest reader, Kiniro-chan, Olhana, LordOfTheWest, Bai-Feng, and (happiness) a new reviewer, Kimnd! ^^ I think the boon and bane of a lot of readers and writers are plot twists and character deaths. xD I really didn't expect the last chapter to have as much hits but hey, I'm very glad that I still got readers despite Kurapica not really making an appearance.

Let's do this. :3

Living Things
By: DW-chan

Eleven: Memory

Francis Barrow expected pain, any sort of pain, from being flung to the floor, or thrown onto a nearby wall—anything that would certainly damage him in an utmost physical way, when he saw Kurapica grip him by the side of his laboratory coat.

But no pain met him. The youth simply held him by the coat, close to the neck, above the chest, only slightly constricting his movements. He saw Kurapica's blazing red eyes; he saw the palpable fear in them, the disarray, the conflicting thoughts that surely were chasing themselves in his head. Barrow had to study him awhile, but in the quickest way possible to know that the boy was somewhere in between berserk and prudent.

"She will not die," Kurapica told him, steadily, as though by simply stating it that it could be true. "You will tell me that my mother will not die." His grip neither tightened nor loosened. Barrow's eyes narrowed for a moment when he thought he saw the faintest glimmer of chain-like snakes wrap themselves around the boy's hand before disappearing again.

Barrow knew better than to sugarcoat Sianni's condition. "I can't say," he replied to Kurapica. It was only then he realized that his voice was quaking, but it was not the fear of possibly being maimed by an enraged Kurata. It was the genuine fear of actually losing a human life due to the loftiness of Project Lazarus's ambitions, only to be subjected to human error.

Human error.

Their game at playing gods was certainly coming to an end.

The scientist only felt a small push as Kurapica released him. A veil of exhaustion seemed to have enveloped the young man, but the luminous crimson of his eyes remained. Barrow took this instant to speak. Every second was precious in determining whether Sianni would live or die.

"We may be able to save her," Barrow said quietly, as calmly as he could. Kurapica's weary gaze met his. The boy's eyes were beginning to mirror a semblance of tears, but they never fell. His eyes shone like shattered rubies. It was both a magnificent and frightening sight.

"I want to believe you," was all the boy said. There was also an implication to how Kurapica said it, as though there was an unspoken, What choice to I have?

There was something bold and perfunctory in Barrow's movements as he took out the cylinder, and took Kurapica by the shoulder, which the seemingly dazed youth did not fight off. Barrow had no time to wonder that this was the first time he actually had any physical contact with Kurapica, and it was at the worst circumstances. It was like coming in contact with marbled oak: cold yet full of tenacious life.

There was no time for formalities: the explanations should only come after. "I need your thumbprint here, Kurapica." He produced the cylinder to the boy. "No questions now, no questions. This can save her life."

To his surprise, Kurapica took the cylinder from him, and affixed his thumbprint on the small side panel. There was a beep, and the cylinder opened; a syringe rose out where a hand can take it comfortably. The boy simply handed the cylinder back, and Barrow wordlessly took it.

"Damn you," the youth said, his voice solid and almost neutral.

Everything after appeared like a rush, both in fast-forward and slow motion, as though Barrow were observing things out of his body and through a movie reel. He barged into the recovery room; he tried to keep his focus on the visibly pained and colorless face of Sianni, and not on Ianto's dark and querulous gaze at him, or at Ryger's panicked, quivering eyes.

In a blink of an eye, he had made a makeshift tourniquet out of a rubber glove so an essential vein on Sianni's arm would protrude from her skin, and he had injected the syringe's contents into her body. He ignored the shock on Ianto's eyes, and even the man's attempts to rip him away from his wife. But Barrow only imagined the latter; Ianto did not seem to possess his son's belligerence.

"Dr. Barrow?" It was Sianni. He momentarily looked up at the sound of her voice.

"Yes?" he said gently. His hand only remained steady to administer the syringe on Sianni. Aferwards, it began to apparently shake again.

"Is it… is it because we're only living borrowed lives, isn't it?"

Barrow quietly slid the tourniquet from Sianni's arm so it did not hurt her. "No, Sianni." He tried to meet her eyes, which were a dull scarlet; the grey of her eyes was beginning to surface, and the color on her face was returning. "It's not your fault. It's… ours."

Ianto was at his wife's side once more, and when he spoke to Barrow, his voice had certain timbre to it—not quite angry, but with a molten edge. "You can only steer a ship so far, doctor." Barrow tried to decipher the philosophy of the man's words, and Ianto spoke again. "It seems like it's no longer in your hands."

"I…" Barrow did not know what to say. He could only feel the relief wash over him as Sianni's breaths began to ease, and the paleness of her skin was washing away. He signaled Ryger to take Sianni's vitals once more.

"N-normal," Ryger marveled, even more relieved than Barrow.

There was a hiss of an opening door as Kurapica entered the recovery room, face flushed, but eyes no longer in their scarlet state. The boy's and his father's gazes met. He then walked past Barrow as though he were invisible, and he went to his mother's bedside, knelt, clasped her hands, and placed them on his forehead in unspoken solace.

Barrow felt weak at the knees. Tournay was dead. Sianni was alive. But what happened to Sianni could happen to Ianto soon enough; it could have happened to the rest of the clones had they been roused before their time. He did not notice the empty syringe fall from his fingers and roll innocuously onto the carpeted floor.

"Josef…?" he addressed Dr. Ryger.

"Thirty minutes, Francis," Ryger replied, as though remembering a protocol which Tournay had assigned to him for a moment like this. "Then we take her back to her capsule."

Barrow tried not to meet Ianto's judicious gaze on him, but he failed miserably.

"It's sudden and rapid cell degeneration, Francis," Dr. Ryger found the explanation. "I'd like to emphasis on sudden. In God's good earth had I not imagined that this would really happen. Nearly two years in the capsule, waiting to be awakened, and all that time, all vitals were normal…"

There was a ghost of a bitter smile on Barrow's lips. "Human error, Josef." He wearily leaned forward to clasp his hands in front of him where he sat, in another small, closet-like room adjacent to the recovery room. "Nothing more, nothing less." He took a sideward glimpse at the Kurata family to find Kurapica holding his bedridden mother's hand, and the boy was looking at him with his patented unreadable expression. But the youth's lips were hard. Barrow could not read minds, but he surmised that Kurapica was unsure whether to further condemn the Project's very existence, or to thank Barrow for saving his mother's life.

Ambivalence. Kurapica seemed to have known nothing but conflicting thoughts, emotions, and battling aspirations of his own future ever since he stepped into the Project. Barrow was surprised that Kurapica had kept his sanity thus far. Had Barrow not been subjected in the very madness of cloning in the first place, he himself would have lost his own mind long ago. Barrow only needed to take everything in stride. After all, he chose to remain in Project Lazarus for a number of reasons both known and still unknown to him.

"Remember, Josef, that years before Project Lazarus, cloning experiments had not become too successful. Infants born from cloning lived no longer than a few hours." So many innocent deaths. For a moment he wondered if the Institute ever regarded those deaths as human deaths, and provided proper burials to these motherless souls. Perhaps they did, or perhaps they never did.

"Francis," Ryger began after a while. "I've expected Zan to be here. Where is he…?"

Barrow did not expect to immediately reveal what had happened to Tournay. The Project had been going so smoothly that none of the team would be expecting an execution too soon—if not ever.

"He's not… going to be here awhile, Josef." No. He couldn't bring himself to tell Ryger. He swallowed hard. He could not bring himself to tell the team, and yet, he knew that the dreadful responsibility of letting the team know—and to have everyone move on as though a simple gale had passed—had fallen on his shoulders.

"I see." There was apparent quandary in Ryger's voice. However, the man made no further attempt to make inquiries.

"Ryger, kindly call a meeting," Barrow impulsively ensued. "As soon as Sianni is back in her capsule, we all need to talk. Project Lazarus has become too flawed. Tournay was right. None of the other clones should be wakened just yet."

"We failed, hadn't we?" Ryger's matter-of-fact way of saying it lightly took Barrow off-guard.

"No, Ryger," Barrow found himself answering. "We're not going to let this fail."

Ryger nodded, his tiny frame suddenly released from tension. He glanced at his watch and once again nodded to Barrow. "Thirty minutes."

The beginning of another lengthy ordeal awaited them all.

"How long?" Ianto asked of Barrow.

"Sianni will have to be in the capsule again for another two months," came the scientist's reply. "Recuperating will not be easy. We will have to reformulate many of our once-trusted theories in order for Sianni—and everyone else—to live full lives once they are awake..."

"Do I have to return to the capsule myself, doctor?" There was a hint of a challenge in Ianto's tone.

Barrow found the courage to finally look at Ianto eye to eye. The Kurata man's grey eyes had a familiar resoluteness, the same one which he had seen in Kurapica. There was no shaking that resolve, not even if the world caught fire.

"We'll have to see. You were wakened a day later than Sianni. We'll have to heavily monitor you in the next few hours…"

"Or maybe," Ianto offered, his quiet voice firm and unyielding. "I would never have to return to the capsule."

"Ianto—" Barrow began.

Something like a momentary hair-raising glassiness filled Ianto's eyes, but as if straightened from a slap, they instantly cleared. "Very well, Dr. Barrow," Ianto acceded. "I am, after all, in the outside world. I am at the mercy of it." The tone of challenge stayed, as if Ianto were testing the waters of a bottomless black pool.

Ianto had walked away to gather with his son and wife before Barrow could say another word.

Sianni had been laid back unto the capsule, and Kurapica had not left her side. The deep lines of worry and apprehension had marked themselves on Sianni's still-youthful features.

"Could you believe it?" Sianni said to her son and approaching husband, trying to sound cheerful, but her words came out brokenly. "Days ago I thought that I was in a dream. Well maybe… maybe I still am dreaming. And I'm just about to wake up again, and then I'll be seeing you again, and everyone else, as if all this never had happened."

"Mother…" Kurapica trailed off. He could not bring himself to let go of her hand. He was fighting for the right words to tell her. But he knew that Sianni would only see through him. He had inherited the blaze in his mother's heart. If Sianni knew her heart, she would know his, perhaps, even as things had changed for him during the past five years.

"I'm scared," Sianni finally admitted, the words emanating from her like a shard.

Ianto, this time, was the one who replied in his gentle, comforting way. "Our son and I are scared, too." He had taken his place at the other side of the capsule, opposite Kurapica, and was reaching out to touch his wife's cheek. Sianni's eyes began to shimmer with tears. One fell and hit Ianto's hand.

"What if I never see you again—" she choked on her words.

"You know that's a lie, mother," Kurapica said. His eyes were still their calm cerulean. A part of him wished that he was in his mother's dream-world as well, and when he woke up, he'll be in his bed, at home, and Sianni would be outside, tending the garden, or perhaps making breakfast, and she would be singing in her melodic voice an old song in their native language. It seemed like a life so far away and long ago.

"You… you'd be a good boy?" Sianni had stopped crying, and some of her obstinacy had returned. She sounded like her old, vivacious self, but with a tremulous voice. She blinked, as if realizing what she had said may seem foolish to her nearly grown-up son, but still she pressed on. "Your nen chains…"

Kurapica was still for a while. He slowly held up his right hand, his eyes blinked scarlet in a manner of seconds, and then the nen chains pulsed to existence around his fingers. There was remorse in his expression. Then the vermillion in his eyes vanished; so did the chains.

"Disobedient child," Sianni told him. But it did not sound angry or disappointed. She gave her sad smile.

"I love you, mother." He returned the sad smile.

"If this procedure would really, really make me stay with you longer when I wake up, well… I'd take it. I said I would." Sianni reached out to touch Kurapica's face. "Darling, I love you too."

Ianto tried to suppress a smile. Sianni caught it in less than a second, and with the same hand she used to touch her son's face, she whipped it lightly, in scornful jest, on Ianto's chest. "And I love you, too, dear husband."

Ianto found Kurapica's gaze again in a thread of father-son understanding. "And that's why we love her, don't we, son?"

Kurapica's smile was earnest. "Yes."

Sianni's eyes darted between Ianto and Kurapica. "I'll be seeing you again." This time, she sounded certain. She swallowed hard. The sadness in her smile waned, now replaced with silent joy. "And you two better be there when I wake up."

Kurapica found the strength to release her hand. He stooped to tenderly plant a kiss on his mother's forehead.

"Do we have a choice?" Ianto retorted with a smile.

"Goose," Sianni snapped at her husband, lovingly, using an old nickname she gave Ianto when he would tease her relentlessly.

"We'll be there," Ianto said to his wife, softly. "Sleep well, Sianni. Don't worry about us. We'll be there." He leaned over, and for the first time in many years, Kurapica saw his parents kiss again. He had always felt uneasy, as a little boy, when his parents kissed in front of him. Sometimes they would kiss in front of him just to tick him off good-naturedly, and waited until Kurapica would say, "Ewwww." He couldn't find himself to say that now.

The rest of the procedure slipped through everyone like butter. When Kurapica and Ianto finally stepped away from the open capsule, Ryger went forward and punched in a code at the capsule's side panel.

"Once the capsule closes, a harmless gas will emit through these fissures. You'll be asleep in no time, Sianni," the doctor explained.

"I'm ready," she said.

When the capsule closed, there was a slight fogging under the transparent glass, and before Sianni's eyes closed, her gaze was on her family. Then, it was over. There, she slumbered, like a fair-haired princess under ice.

Kurapica neither heard Barrow's voice call his name nor did he even feel his father's warm grasp on his shoulder. He could only remember his mother's face, the nen chains which he had not yet parted from even as she had begged him to, but then his mother's beautiful face emerged in his thoughts once more. He shook his head, smiling lopsidedly, and reprimanded himself for not telling her that she was beautiful.

Because, maybe, that chance will come again.

Ianto had chosen to stay for a bit longer in the reservatory viewing room. Kurapica, in a moment of weakness, had left the reservatory nearly as soon as Sianni had fallen asleep in her recuperation pod. He found his way up the main lounge of the facility; he was facing a deep night outside the tall glass windows. There was no moon, but the stars were strung at the zenith, like the million faraway suns that they were.

His hands were at his sides. He could not bring forth any grating emotion in his heart, not even hate or anger. He even felt a sense of emptiness. He only wanted to be alone for a while, and it felt strange to him, wanting to be alone now, after being alone all this years. He wanted to be alone so he could think, yet he couldn't think. His mind was drawing a blank. He realized that he did not know where to go from there. With the clones of his clan asleep, and his father left under heavy medical supervision for the slightest signs of deterioration, he felt that he had to once more wield a fate for himself.

He heard a small, tapping sound nearby. It was not a threatening sound, and Kurapica felt no need to bring up his guard. He simply turned to the sound, and was not at all surprised to see a slight man, past his middle age, by the small fountain adorning the lounge.

"May I join you?" inquired the man.

Kurapica shrugged. "The lounge is for everyone." He didn't remember seeing the man before, but then again, the facility housed more than the scientists. There was security, the maintenance staff, the mechanics…

The man smiled and limped his way towards the boy. The sound of his cane was muted as it hit the carpet.

The man was soon by his side. He only stood a little taller than Kurapica. The boy's eyes narrowed a bit, but not out of hostility. There was something oddly familiar about the man, and he could not place the familiarity. He started when the man looked at him, as if sensing his scrutiny.

"Yes, you've heard of me before," said the man.

"I didn't say anything—"

"This old man's eyes are still sharp, lad." The man jokingly tapped the side of his withering brow. "I've seen how you looked at me just a moment ago."

"Then who are you?" asked the youth.

"Dr. Sarvi Henaro," replied the man, holding up his hand. The boy's forehead furrowed for a moment, but he took the man's hand, nonetheless.

"The Father of Project Lazarus," Kurapica intoned, as though he were proclaiming a dark accolade.

"Is that what they call me?" Henaro asked with true inquisitiveness.

"That's what I named you," Kurapica offered.

"Ah."

The boy turned to Henaro, his blue eyes tried to hide his confusion in vain. "How long have you been here?"

"Well, a mere two days, Kurapica."

Kurapica tried to hide his surprise as well.

"I know your name as well, lad." There was no rising threat in the man's voice.

"Of course you would." Kurapica only wanted to sound the least bit impetuous.

Henaro gestured with his cane. "You're wondering why I've only showed up now, when I could have showed up a long time ago."

Kurapica shrugged once more. "You're also a Hunter. You had your own business."

"True." Henaro had turned to face the glass window and the burst of stars beyond. "I'm also stricken with a rare disease."

Kurapica realized that he had forgotten about that until now. "Yes, I heard."

Henaro sounded amused. "Not very chatty, are we, lad?"

Kurapica regarded him for a moment, but did not say anything. Henaro sighed.

"Your mother will be all right."

"She better be all right."

The Hunter-Scientist laughed a small laugh, surprisingly hearty and full, unbecoming for a man with a near-skeletal body ravaged with disease. "If you trust Dr. Barrow," he said, his voice kind, "you know that she, and the forty-one others of your clan, will be all right."

Kurapica wanted to say, If I didn't trust Dr. Barrow, I'd be giving up on everything I'd ever fought for. If I didn't trust him, or anyone in Project Lazarus, I'll be hanging on to nothing, but he continued to keep his quiet.

"Well, keep your secrets, Kurapica." Henaro smiled his wrinkled smile. "I'm only glad that I have finally met you."

Kurapica felt a strange knot in his belly. "I wish I could say the same about you, Dr. Henaro."

The man was nodding with an odd twinkle in his eye. "Well, I'll be off now. Good night, lad." Henaro began to walk off, cane pressing against the floor, his wispy frame wobbling away from sight, to a set of doors on another side of the lounge.

Just when Dr. Henaro left, the main doors of the lounge slid open.

Kurapica found Dr. Barrow by the threshold, looking haggard than usual, and older than his thirty-two years.

"There's something you need to know, Kurapica," said the man, with a silently grappling urgency.

He had spoken about trust for Dr. Barrow not a long moment ago. Now, he wasn't too sure. Kurapica nodded, acknowledging the scientist.

"It's called Project Nexus."

Kurapica sat across Dr. Barrow. The scientist had brought with him the very same files which Tournay had revealed to him. He had arrived with the judgment that Kurapica, as he had always believed from the very beginning, had the right to know. If Henaro would have his head as well, so be it.

"A renegade experiment," Kurapica repeated what the scientist said before proclaiming about Project Nexus.

"Nexus means the center, the core. It also means the connection, the link." Barrow clicked another file, which revealed a small dose of information. "Though I hardly doubt that would be the reason Project Nexus was named the way it was, even when I first thought that there was a definite relation."

"Then what is it?" Kurapica had somehow mirrored Barrow's urgency.

"I'm honestly not sure yet, Kurapica," said the man, and he attempted a transparency which he wished the boy would willingly understand. "But this, I know. Project Nexus is partly about Eugenics. It is about the creation of the perfect human gene pool."

"What does that have to do with Project Lazarus, Dr. Barrow?"

"One of our theories is…" Barrow sighed, cleared his throat, and clenched his already clamped fingers. "That the Scarlet Eyes is a product of advanced human evolution. Now, this is not mutation, Kurapica. This is something that is quite the opposite. Most Institutes consider mutation as an aberration. But this…"

"I'll rephrase my question, Dr. Barrow," Kurapica said, cutting the scientist off, but trying not to sound too impudent. "What does Project Nexus have to do with the Scarlet Eyes?"

"Very similar to Project Lazarus: human cloning."

Kurapica's eyes widened, hardened. His entire body seemed to turn to stone. His jaw was set.

"Dr. Barrow, I know you've something more important to show me. Show me, then."

Barrow nodded, his eyes blinking once, as though he were pushing a heavy weight off his mind. He tapped the tiny laptop a few times; then with reckless ceremony, he flipped the laptop so that the screen was facing the Kurata youth.

"They have, also in their possession, four pairs of Scarlet Eyes."

The boy was somehow affixed to the screen. Barrow saw sheer consternation in the youth's face. Barrow deemed to continue. "That also means that they have also successfully cloned four of your clanspeople."

Forty-two in Project Lazarus, compared to four in Project Nexus. How was that hardly a competition? And yet Nexus was a renegade, unsolicited Project. They could have been shut down, but they weren't. They could have been stopped, but they haven't. Nexus held more secrets than Lazarus could ever have, it seemed. There was no knowing yet what great advantage four clones had over forty-two.

Kurapica on the other hand, felt as though his heart had jumped into a spiraling abyss. The clones were named. He knew each and every one of them from his younger days; he knew them growing up, as their village was tiny and tightly-knit that everyone somehow knew each other openly.

He saw four names, but one particular name imprinted itself in his mind the most.

He had found him.

Pairo.

A/N: Yes, yes, of course I had to include Pairo in this mess, right? *cackle* The concept of the story gave me every opportunity to, so I grabbed it. xD

Project Lazarus will, for now, be coming to a close, as will Part I of my story. As I keep babbling about, Project Nexus will be the main concern of the sequel. Only a chapter-in-a-half more. ^^;;;

Leave those comments, reviews, remarks, the whole shebang right there, luvs! I welcome all sorts of new reviews from new reviewers. I really appreciate reviews; I take time to consider your feedback and see if I can tweak the following chapters according to the feedback. So yea, each remark is precious! :D

Cheers!

DW-chan :3