With each step she took, each corner they turned, each time Hilary ignored her questions, Clare's patience ebbed away a tiny bit more. Her lips were locked tight, her teeth biting down hard on the inside of her cheek. It was the only way she could keep from asking that same question for the umpteenth time, it wasn't getting her anywhere anyway.
The dimly lit torches lining the walls were the only sources of light, Clare couldn't even remember the last time she saw a window. The air was growing stale and warm the farther they walked. Her ears caught the light scuttling of rat's feet as they fled from the duo. Clare flexed her fingers again and again, her steps becoming harder with each passing second. They rounded another corner, and entered a hallway that was somehow even darker than the last. Clare grit her teeth when she realized she could no longer she Hilary's back. Biting back a growl, she closed her eyes and focused on the woman's yoki instead. Finding her signature was easy, but that wasn't the reason Clare's eyes snapped open, nor why she whirled around and drew her sword, waving it threateningly at the darkness.
No, that was because of the other yoki signature she sensed. It was incredibly faint, but it was there.
"Come out!" Clare shouted, her grip on the hilt tightening. "I know you're there, don't think you can hide from me!"
There was silence, followed by a shuffling of shoes on dirt, but nothing and no one appeared.
"COME OUT!"
"Clare," Hilary called out over her shoulder, a light suddenly forming around her as she lit a dead torch. "Relax, there's no need to shout."
The younger girl was about to shoot back all the reasons why this was not a time to relax and a perfect time to shout, when the mass of black started to shift, and the newcomer slowly came into view. As expected, she was a soldier, clad in an immaculate standard uniform with her sword firmly strapped to her back. The young woman had hair down to her mid back that flared at the ends. Her arms hung at her sides and her head was down, a picture of innocence and lack of threat. Clare stood strong and narrowed her eyes, ready for anything this person might attempt. Out the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of gray as Hilary moved forward and placed herself in front of Clare and the other soldier.
"Pardon my friend," the braided warrior said, placing her hands on her hips and briefly turning her gaze to the gleam of Clare's sword. "She's just shy around strangers. May I ask your name and what you're doing here?"
Clare craned her neck to look over Hilary's shoulder at the girl. With the light now in front of her, Clare had a much better view of the woman's face and the non-threatening act she continued to maintain.
"Forgive me," she said. Even her voice was low and docile. "My name is Miria, I'm currently ranked number 17. I didn't mean to alarm either of you, I suppose my curiosity just got the better of me."
'You think that's a good excuse?' Clare desperately wanted to demand of Miria. Something she couldn't quite place was stopping her. Be it the increasingly tense atmosphere building between Hilary and Miria, or the fact that Miria had an annoyingly higher rank than her. Either way, she stayed rooted to the ground, eyes darting from one to the other.
Miria was staring into Hilary's eyes, and it was only through her face and body language- clearing her throat and standing up straighter- that Clare could discern how Hilary looked at the moment.
"I overheard you talking before," Miria went on unprovoked. "I wouldn't have listened in, but what you said about a source of information caught my attention. I couldn't stop myself from following."
She looked Hilary right in the eyes as she spoke. At least, Clare was pretty sure she was. The three of them remained silent as Hilary appeared to be contemplating this explanation. She then strolled over to Miria, the light of her torch rippling wildly from the sudden movement. Clare watched her elder circle the unwelcome guest, examining her up and down while Miria stayed still and quiet like a good, obedient soldier.
Hilary stopped abruptly behind Miria.
"What makes you think my so-called source of information is relevant to you?" she almost sounded intimidating right there, but somehow maintained an indifferent tone of voice. "You have no idea where Clare and I are going."
"I know it involves the Organization," Miria coolly answered. "You wouldn't be here in a forbidden zone if it didn't. And I have questions of my own regarding their practices, but no other way of getting answers. I saw an opportunity and I took it, that's all."
A pregnant pause followed. Clare bit down on her lip, waiting impatiently for Hilary to do something, anything, besides study Miria's face like she was a science problem. And if she didn't soon, Clare would. Her fingers clenched around her sword.
As if sensing this movement, and the millisecond long flare of yoki Clare accidentally released along with it, Hilary's eyes shoot to her, her lips twisted into a frown.
"Put that away," she said forcefully. "You're not starting a fight down here."
She then started forward and briskly walked by the stunned Clare with barely a glance in her direction. The light faded as she walked, leaving Clare and Miria in near darkness, listening to the sound of the older warrior's clanking footsteps.
"Are you two coming or not?"
Her shout made Clare's sword arm slacken and her jaw fall open. In the dim light, she could see Miria's eyes widen a tiny bit before she nodded and began walking. Swerving around Clare, making sure not to brush against her, Miria followed behind Hilary. Both young women keeping a steady pace that eventually brought Clare out of her stupor and charging after them, hastily returning her sword to it's sheath in the process.
Bypassing Miria, Clare made a beeline for Hilary and slowed once they were side by side. Hilary didn't acknowledge her.
"What are you doing?" Clare hissed, her eyes darting to Miria for a moment, making sure she was a safe distance away and wouldn't overhear.
"Hmm?" was Hilary's bored response.
"Don't 'hmm' me," Clare shot back. "Why are you trusting her? She could tell the higher-ups what we're doing!"
"You're right, she could do that," Hilary said bluntly and with a shrug. "And then we'll be punished severely for trespassing, breaking and entering, and several other serious offenses."
Clare opened her mouth, millions of responses swarming her mind and clamoring to come out, but Hilary wasn't done and a great deal faster.
"Should our new friend do this, she will be justly rewarded with a severe punishment for trespassing, breaking and entering, and several other serious offences."
And just like that, every single one of those millions of responses died in Clare's throat. She slowly closed her mouth, exhaling hard from her nose in an attempt to calm herself. Her head and eyes faced forward, as they would for the remainder of their journey. Her attention, however, was mainly on the sound of three sets of footsteps walking in tandem. That, and what had just been said to her, the implications they carried.
Though it was regulated to the very back of her mind and would remain there for years to come, a thought entered Clare's mind that maybe the Organization was more shady than even the common folk realized.
The large, iron door swung open with a high-pitched whine. Clare found herself staring into yet another void of blackness; Hilary's torch did little to help. Even when the trio stepped inside and her eyes began to adjust, Clare could make out nothing aside from a few tall, rectangular shaped on one side of the room. Hilary strode passed them, approaching the opposite wall and using her torch to light some candles, slowly bringing the room into view.
Clare had suspected from the start that Hilary would be bringing her to some kind of records room, and it appeared she'd been right. The bookcases she'd seen earlier were crammed with so many books and loose papers she was surprised it hadn't collapsed under it's own weight already. There were twelve of them in all, the back two were more sparsely filled with some shelves completely empty.
The right side of the room had a few more shelves, but most of the space was taken up by a table made of old hardwood that was splintered on the far end corners. A few chairs lined each side in general disarray. Clare approached it, lightly resting her palm on the surface and feeling it's cool temperature. She lingered a moment too long for Hilary, it seemed. The braided woman grabbed Clare roughly by the arm, pulling her away from the table and into one of the aisles past Miria, who was taking a large book out from a shelf against the wall.
Clare almost gagged as her nostrils were assaulted by a strong scent of dust and old parchment. Her face scrunched up, trying to inhale as little of the awful scent as possible. Hilary continued to drag her until they reached the very end of the line, at which point she let go and waved up and down the length of the bookcase.
"Everything you want to know is in this section," said Hilary.
Clare followed the still moving arm, noting the size of each book on each of the cases' six shelves.
"All this?" she asked incredulously.
Hilary's only answer to the younger girls amazement was a smile, before turning on a heel and going back the way she came.
"Start with the top shelf," she called over her shoulder.
Clare watched her go, her eyes narrowing and her lips all but vanishing. Breathing deeply to calm down, she reminded herself that Hilary was actually being helpful for once, and that she should be thankful for at least that. Hilary's insistence on being insufferable was a moot point at the moment.
Clare reached her arm all the way up and grabbed and opened the first book.
Miria snapped shut the book she'd been pursuing and set it aside as she reached for another one. Footsteps alerted her to one of her companion's arrival, but she didn't look up from the text, even when the one known as Hilary cleared her throat and spoke.
"Finding everything you're looking for?"
Miria didn't miss the undertones of mocking in the older woman's voice. She turned another page, skimming through wordy paragraphs written in faded ink. Murmuring to herself, she went to the next page and repeated the process.
"I'm not really sure what to look for, honestly," she admitted.
She could feel Hilary's eyes on her burn deeper. Miria sighed and raised her head, placing the book on top of the first one.
"You'll probably think I'm silly," Miria said, thinking herself silly enough for confiding in a total stranger. "I've been here for over a year now, and while I've never been able to confirm it, I keep getting this feeling, more and more lately, that the Organization is hiding things from us."
Hilary's eyes went so high on her forehead, Miria wondered if they would merge with her hairline. Much to her consternation, a low chuckle reverberated in the older woman's throat.
"Hiding things," she repeated with a grin. "I've never heard that before. The Organization has always been so open with information!"
Miria's eyes narrowed. "I mean it."
"I know," Hilary answered, surprising Miria. "You think you're the only one whose thought about it?"
Hilary grabbed one of Miria's discarded books, never once breaking eye contact until the book was open in her arms. She dropped her eyes to it, running her fingers softly done the pages and pacing aimlessly.
"If that's all you're hear for, I'm sorry to say there's a good chance you'll be disappointed."
Miria blinked, feeling an unpleasant weight drop into her stomach.
"What do you mean?" she asked, stepping in front of Hilary to halt her movements.
Hilary looked up beneath her eyebrows, her expression cooling. Inhaling deeply, she straightened up, revealing a two to three inch height difference between the two.
"I've come down here several times since I first found it," Hilary said, moving around Miria to pace again. "I've looked through almost every book and paper in this room. I've found records on soldiers from now, all the way back to the very first generation. Not only that, they have reports of various experiments the Organization has performed, both successful and failed. That area I showed Clare makes up the latter." She paused as she sat heavily on the closet chair. "Other than that, I've never seen anything else. I get the feeling all the really secret stuff you're interested in is being kept elsewhere."
Miria bit her lip, wanting to say something, but drawing a blank. Hilary seemed to take that as a cue to go on.
"So," she clapped her hands together. "You are free to come down here whenever you want and I won't tell, but don't expect to discover anything life changing."
With that, Hilary seemed to completely lose interest in the conversation. Her focus went back to the book, but Miria could not be sure that she was really reading or just ignoring her. Either way, Miria did not feel like delegating that with a response and went back to searching the shelves for anything that might be relevant. To what, she didn't know, must as it pained her to admit. But she knew what she'd seen and what she'd heard and how strange and uncomfortable it made her feel. She knew in her gut that a deeper side to the supposed protectors of the humans existed, and she would find it no matter what anyone said. Beside, Hilary said she'd only looked through almost every book.
It was several minutes later, while she was carefully reading the ink letter on the spine of each book, that another thought struck her. Miria started, unable to resist turning her attention back to her unwitting guide, though she had no idea if Hilary would answer this particular question.
"How did you find this place?"
To her surprise, Hilary eyed her immediately. Her foot was tapping at a slow rhythm against the dirt floors as a knowing look dawning over her features. Using her head, she made the tiniest gesture at the opposite end of the room.
"Go in that section one day," she said. "Look up Cammory Disaster. It's very compelling."
Miria wouldn't get another word from her.
Clare found it easy to shut out the noise around her. Hilary and Miria were speaking softly already, so all she really had to do was sit at the far end of the table and keep her head down in the crinkly pages. Having gotten used to the awful smell, it worked out pretty well.
She'd already gone through more records than she could count, all detailing experiments undertaken in the last few hundred years, many of which, she noted, resulted in horrible failure. With that failure came the deaths of many soldiers, all of whom were apparently listed as 'killed in the line of duty.' Clare snorted.
One in particular that caught her attention was an account from back when male soldiers were still in use. The goal was to create a soldier who could kill via touch. That anyone thought it would work coupled with the fact that this was attempted twice utterly baffled Clare. The first try resulted in a miserable beast described as having no discernable shape and no higher brain functions. It could move and had some method of vision and hearing, but that was it. The creature secreted an acid like substance that burned through anything it touched, from the sturdy metal of the claymores they carried to human flesh. The last paragraph listed the monster as destroyed, though Clare had no idea how they managed to do it. The second attempt had a much more traditional outcome; the soldier awakened and escaped during the process. Disconcertingly, the awakened being was listed as missing.
Clare shook her head, reminding herself that she had no time to get caught up in trivial matters. She turned the next page with more force than was necessary, coming dangerously close to tearing the paper. It took several more minutes, minutes that went by like a snail and left Clare's frustration to grow exponentially. She was close to throwing the book against the wall when she found it.
Several of the records were accompanied by drawings of the experiments, and this was one of them. Her eyes drank in the inky black lines that formed the cause of her nightmares. It was an exceptionally good drawing, whoever did it must have been in it's presence for a long time to be so accurate. That alone was a feat.
Something welled up in Clare's stomach. She finally got herself to look away from the picture's feline eyes and begin reading.
'…to create a weapon against the rogue soldier, this creation's power would have allowed it to travel into the mind of it's target, invade it's psyche and discover the secrets, fears, memories hidden inside. The creation would then bring them all to the forefront, causing the victim to relive their memories and hallucinate their fears. The creation will distort everything they've ever thought they knew. The target would be rendered immobile from the sudden trauma and easy to eliminate…'
The page went on to say that the first attempt at experimentation had gone array and the test subject escaped, never to be found even all these years later. Nothing more was said on the status of the project, whether it was cancelled or continued, but by then, Clare could no longer focus on the printed words. She very slowly straightened in her chair, staring aimlessly into the flickering light of a torch bolted to the wall.
Phrases she had just read were repeating again and again in her mind's eye. 'Travel into the mind of it's target… invade it's psyche… distort everything…'
"So that's it," Clare said so softly she almost couldn't hear it herself.
She went over everything that had been happening since that day, slowly but surely piecing it together. That 'Devil' had to be the failed experiment this book talked about. It must have hidden in that forest for years, preying on unsuspecting passer-by, driving them to insanity with visions of their fears and desires. It all made sense to her now, that monster had used Clare's past against her, taking the object of her hatred, Teresa, and twisting Clare's memory of her into something else. No wonder she had that dream, of Teresa as a, dare she say it, motherly figure. That beast took her mother and Teresa and somehow forced her to see them in the same light, all to confuse and traumatize her like it did all it's prey.
Clare's shoulders began to shake and she bit back a sob, that last thing she would ever do is cry in front of anyone, especially these two. Her mother's face as she died, eyes bulging and hair soaked in blood, was one of her strongest memories, right up there with Teresa's murderous face. The idea of Teresa and her mother being in any way akin to each other made bile rush to her throat. Swallowing hard, Clare swiped the book away, not wanting to see those eyes, even if it was just a drawing, for one more second. She shoved some hair off of her forehead, which was covered in a thin layer of sweat despite the lack of heat.
Clare closed her eyes and opened them again, a strange calm washing over her like a waterfall. This changed nothing, she realized. Those dreams would not happen again, and even if they did, she knew the truth. Teresa was her enemy, she always had been. Clare had vowed to kill her and take her head and she would see that through no matter what. And maybe she'd find that monster again one day and have another go at it. She owed it so much, after all.
A hand slid into her line of vision, bringing Clare out of her thoughts, though not completely. She didn't need to look up to know who it was, that yoki signature had become quite familiar.
"Finished?" asked Hilary. "Because we shouldn't stay much longer."
Clare eyeballed her, noting Miria a few steps behind, waiting patiently for the two of them. The youngest soldier took a deep breath and stood up, not caring about the book that lay forgotten on the table.
"Let's go," was all she would say before heading to the door. She didn't even bother to check if they were following her out.
"You can go back whenever you want, now that you know the way," Hilary muttered in Clare's ear as they walked through the main hallway of Headquarters. Handlers and soldiers alike walked by without giving them so much as a second glance, completely unaware of what the trio had been doing.
None of them spoke a word to each other the whole way back. Miria seemed lost in thought, about what, Clare didn't know nor care. Hilary began talking the second they were out in the open and didn't seem ready to stop quite yet, much to Clare's growing annoyance.
"Just be sure not to get caught," the braided soldier went on. "If one of us gets found out, it'll only be a matter of time before they get the other two regardless of whether or not we talk."
She trailed off there, leaving Clare hoping that she'd stop for good now and that the three of them could peacefully go their separate ways. Fate, it seemed, wasn't on her side, and it wasn't even Hilary this time breaking the silence.
The high pitched chuckled sent a chill down her spine. Even worse was that she knew immediately who it was, having heard that laugh many times while recovering from her surgery. Clare, Hilary and Miria all stopped when the gaunt faced doctor appeared in front of them. Clare looked his bone thin body up and down, wondering how such an emanciated looking man could move so fast. Elgiz grinned widely at them, all his white teeth showing.
"Well, hello Clare," he greeted her with an awkward sort of wave. "Lovely to see you again! How has your day been."
Clare frowned. She remembered Elgiz's insistence on small talk as well. He would ask her that question every morning, afternoon and night when he came in for a check-up. She rarely gave him an answer then, and she didn't plan on it now.
"Sorry, Elgiz, we're a little busy right now," Hilary spoke up, patting Clare and Miria on the shoulders. "Lots of things to discuss between girls, you know?"
"Oh, of course," Elgiz nodded, with a cheery disposition that sound like something he practiced in front of the mirror every day. "I'll leave you to it."
Hilary nodded, an obviously fake smile plastered across her features. Still gripping their shoulders, she guided Clare and Miria around the doctor, refusing to make eye contact. Clare was confident they gotten away from him, when his voice rang out a second time.
"Don't be afraid to come to me if you want to talk," he was grinning again, his eyes boring into Clare's when she turned her head. "I like to think we're all a big happy family here, what do you think, Hilary?"
He followed this with another laugh, this one louder and with a great deal more humor. Clare decided she preferred the other one. This time, Hilary did not answer him, but merely growled and continued walking.
"Who was that?" Miria whispered in Clare's ear once they were out of his line of sight.
"Nobody," Clare answered without even looking at Miria.
They parted in the lounge area. Hilary reminded the two younger warriors one more time of the penalties if they got caught, though all three knew she didn't need to. From there, Clare found herself wandering the halls with no destination in mind. She'd considered going back to her room and trying to rest, but she had no idea what her dreams would have in store for her. She thought about going to the training grounds, but didn't have the energy for fighting right now. This left her staring out a window at the cloudless sky, nothing on her mind except the life she used to have. This was how Rubel found her.
He'd been assigned to her as a handler, and so far, Clare didn't like him one bit. The bald man's smile was all wrong. He wore it constantly and yet it was never happy. He wore sunglasses no matter what the weather was like, he didn't even take them off indoors. When he coughed to get her attention, Clare had to hide her discomfort at the reflection of her face were his eyes should be.
"I've been looking everywhere for you, Clare," he said pleasantly.
She didn't answer.
"You have an assignment," Rubel went on, leaning against the wall beside her. "It just came in."
This time, Clare offered him a look and sighed heavily. She really wasn't in the mood for this right now.
"Where am I going?" she asked, resigned. "How many youma?"
"None," he answered curtly, his odd smile growing.
This got Clare's complete attention. Her troubles momentarily forgotten, she stared into the shining lenses as the implications of that statement clicked in her mind. If she was being sent on assignment and it wasn't a youma, that could only mean-
"Congratulations, Clare. You're going on your first awakened being hunt."
A/N: So this chapter required a full rewrite before I was satisfied with it. I've had writer's block for the last week, which is why it took way longer than I'd been hoping. For that, I humbly apologize.
On a side note, there's a funny story to this chapter.
See, when I first started writing this back in 2010, I had the first five chapters (not counting the prologue) planned out, including the 'Devil' monster and it's mindrape powers. Several months later, chapter 107 of the manga introduced Raftela.
Now, I get to feel all superior like I predicted Yagi-sensei's next move. :D