DotHack: Rejoinder

A DotHack fanfiction by Renfro Calhoun

Disclaimer: Project .Hack and attached concepts are property of Bandai and Cyber Connect. They are used without permission, but with the utmost respect.

Notes: Well, guess there's no denying it. Writing is just plain harder than it used to be, thanks to a combination of little free time, work-related stress, and a mind easily distracted by video games, shiny objects, and even itself. Oh well. Also, I'm going by what the wiki says for Balmung's age, putting him at 18 "at first appearance," presumably just prior to Sign; insofar as canon is concerned, Rejoinder takes place a little over a year and a half since the end of Quarantine. If anybody has more accurate information, please let me know. Thanks for putting up with me, folks ^^;

Obsession

From: Lios

To: Stolls

Here's what we know for certain happened:

- At about 3pm, the tree at Sigma: Chosen Forbidden Remnant became active and engaged players and administrators within range. It it is known that the character Poet suffered what appeared to be a data drain.

- Sometime during the battle, senior auditor Chise Koriyama was found unconscious at her computer. She was discreetly taken away by paramedics from a private hospital.

- The blackout occurred at roughly 3:15 and lasted for five minutes, affecting ten city blocks. Data loss for the company was negligible, but records of trades on the Nikkei within the last hour or so were lost. Most were recovered in the interim before the market closed.

For obvious reasons I can't repeat what I said over the phone. Suffice it to say what I told you happened just before the blackout. I suspect its records were not among those recovered.

Koriyama reported directly to Kei Akanose, a member of the board and one of the more vocal opponents to the sale of The World. However, there are two things to consider: Chise worked in another department and didn't appear to have any professional contact with Watarai; and she didn't appear to have any interest in The World itself, certainly not in playing it, and thus wouldn't know of Albireo either. The office was locked up and no police were called.

I hope you understand what I'm asking of you. There's a parking garage five minutes south of the main CC tower. Be there at 8pm tomorrow night.

"Guilty."

Slowly, groggily, the detective pushed off the couch. The room dipped and swam, its details hidden in a murky haze. He knew where he was, but none of it seemed familiar to him. Who... who's there? Somehow his own thoughts seemed to echo across the room, and he staggered towards the glow of the computer.

His foot rolled something away, and it clinked against the leg of a coffee table. He looked down, seeing an empty beer bottle. What the... when was I drinking?

As if to accent the thought, he wobbled unsteadily, still making his way to the glowing screen. No, I'm still lucid. Tipsy, maybe. But when did I even get beer? How long was I asleep?

He looked for the clock on the computer, but it wouldn't pop up. The text of an email stood prominently over the screen, covering up the desktop. Dean reached for the mouse and keyboard, but couldn't find them. He blinked, trying to clear his vision as he read the text; something was wrong, he knew this much, but his mind couldn't quite pin down what.

It's never going to let you go.

"Who sent this?" Dean wondered, unaware he'd spoken aloud. "This wasn't what I read..."

Somehow he felt compelled to turn around, and he was drawn back across the room. The shape of the room seemed to shift, the kitchen counter becoming more definite amidst the haze. I can fix this, said an echoing thought in his voice. I can figure this out.

A phone rang, an old rotary he didn't remember owning. He stared blankly through a sudden sheet of reinforced glass as he reached for the receiver. A woman's voice drifted through the earpiece, a strained voice he recognized but couldn't place.

"I'm glad you understand," she said quietly, her words almost cracking.

"I'm sorry," Dean murmured. He didn't know why. "Space is... the least I owe you."

"Just... get better, okay?"

"Sure. And Claire... thanks," he smiled weakly.

"For what?"

"For not hating me."

She tried to smile back. He couldn't see her, but he knew she was trying. "Take care of yourself, Dean."

The line went dead. He turned and looked at the phone, but it was gone; his hand now held nothing. A simple white business card lay flat on the counter, and he automatically picked it up.

She abandoned you, the card read.

"No... no, that's not true. I... I let her go. She didn't want to wait for me, and I didn't want her to."

The words twisted before his eyes; he blinked and the card had a reply. And you abandoned her.

"No, I... what? You don't understand, I..." he started, but the card grew indistinct. As he wondered if the card meant two different people, it suddenly dawned on him that the card was gone. His breath grew shallow, his hands clenched, his head fell. "It was my fault."

He pushed himself back to his feet, a muted chorus of background whispers coming from his brain, but just barely reaching his ears. He spun and whirled, looking for something distinct, concrete, anything he could put his hands on to stabilize himself. Nothing seemed to register anymore; his desk, his couch, the counter at his back just moments ago, nothing. Slowly the room faded from sight, a single spot of light left. Sniffles and whimpers came from seemingly nothing, sounding familiar, but he still couldn't place it. Something blocked him, mocked his attempts to think, to remember, to act.

Against the darkness, a glint of light flashed along a gun barrel. His analytical side kicked in, adding details: an Uzi, a 50-round 9mm clip, effective range of just over a hundred meters. The smell of spent gunpowder caused his nose to twitch, and suddenly empty brass appeared, lying in a trail on the ground leading to the hovering gun. The barrel pointed to the spot of light, to what or whoever it was that was crying.

"Hiro... I put you in danger."

The whispers grew louder, harsh words meant only for him: weakness, guilty, coward, suffer, betrayal, disgrace.

The images vanished. He somehow squeezed his eyes shut, trying to shut out the voices. "No... no, I paid for it. I did my time. I did my best."

I endanged him, the whispers accused, the words tearing into him like a knife. He clutched at what he thought was his head, though he could no longer tell. "No, I-I saved him! Stop this, he's okay now!"

Nothing appeared to his eyes, but the words kept coming. Claire abandoned me. "No! She understood... I didn't want her to suffer too! Leave me alone!"

I hurt my family, my friends... I let them down. "They stood by me! They forgave me! Damn it, stop this!"

The World is falling apart. I can't figure it out. "I'm... I'm trying my best! Let me go!"

They're going to kill me. I'm doing no good here. "No! I have to fix this! I have to make this right! Please... let me go!"

Failure... "Stop... please..."

Hopeless... "Stop!"

Guilty. "Stooooop!!"

He shifted, rocked back and forth uneasily. Something soft and comforting cushioned his back and legs. Though he had screamed himself hoarse, his throat felt only dry and cottony. He reached up to rub his eyes and rolled over, but gave a little shout as he suddenly tumbled off of the soft surface.

You keep coming back again...

Dean landed clumsily on his arm, paper crunching under his body. His eyes opened, and although his vision was still blurred, his room quickly came into focus. Everything was where he left it: the TV, the computer, the anime calendar, the coffee table whose leg was inches from his face, the photo of his old precinct, and so on.

"You keep coming back for mo-ore..."

A woman's voice echoed electronically from a set of speakers. He blinked and slowly crawled out from between the table and the couch, still shaking off the effects of his dream. Wonderful. Like I didn't have enough bullshit on my mind.

Slowly the detective got to his feet, trembling but awake. He drew in a sharp sniff, gulping down hard and trying to forget what the whispers had sounded like. As if some intangible obstacle was suddenly removed from his mind, he recalled the minutes before his collapse on the couch. Lios' email added yet another dimension to the case: on top of insider trading, Dean now had a coma victim who was a potential scapegoat, a coverup that he couldn't explain, let alone prove. It still didn't add up, and something about the way Lee had said "scare away" still stuck with him.

Dean could almost see where he had nearly paced a hole in the floor, trying to figure out what he was missing to link everything together. Fatigue had caught up to him, and he wound up taking a catnap.

Guilt and doubt took it the rest of the way.

"You keep coming back again..." droned the singer. The song's title was known to him: Crystal Method, "Coming Back." The detective swore his media player was mocking him.

He glanced at the clock. Four in the morning. Good grief.

"You keep coming back for mo-ore..."

Dean groaned as he sat down, feeling a bone pop in his lower back. "Oooh... okay, let's see... what am I missing..."

He had not yet noticed the blinking light on his answering machine.

Hiroshi rolled his thumb up the mouse wheel, its faint clicks just louder than the whirr of the computer and ceiling fans. The images of battle stutter-skipped past his face, seconds breezing by as knights, players, and the monstrous tree's attacks flickered in and out of view. In stop-motion the tree split open, the eyes rocketing to the sky, and Hiro paused the playback as they sighted down the heroes below.

"Nothing I know of the Epitaph suggests anything specific after the Wave," said a line of text bearing Balmung's name, a chat window overlaying the bottom left corner of the video program. "And the Internet isn't any more helpful."

Orca popped up next, echoing Balmung's comment. "I've tried every way I can think of describing what happened, but nothing comes up in any search."

Hiro sighed, rolling the mouse wheel back. With The World down for the night and BlackRose's exam early in the morning, he was left to confer with the two Descendants. On the way out, BlackRose had offered to run the event - heavily abridged, of course - by a few of her friends from school who had helped her before. Kite had gladly accepted, though Hiro silently worried they'd have about as much luck as he would.

"Maybe we're looking at this from the wrong angle," Balmung suggested. "I doubt this creature was implemented in The World from the beginning, and it may have spawned prematurely from the attack."

Hiro took his hand off the mouse and typed out a reply. "Looking over the battle doesn't show much to identify it, just what we already know: it can use data drain, and it showed an interest in us three."

"Knowing Cyber Connect, that could be a lot of things," was Orca's reply, paired with a flat-line emote. "If they're responsible."

The youth ran the recording back, just prior to the data drain of Poet. He closed his eyes and rubbed them vigorously, fatigue catching up to him; though he hadn't done much physically, The World was taking its toll in other ways. He gave a yawn as he clicked play, a blind shot that the opening attack might tell him something useful.

We're running out of ideas. At this rate we'll have to wait for it to strike first, if it's even going to. He frowned. Which puts us right back where we were before.

He watched as Poet went on about the danger, begging the group of knights to leave. He saw the tree start to shudder and move, heard the explosion of energy as a beam of light shot out and strike the Twin Blade. Is there even anything to see here? What if there's nothing?

Something did catch his eye. He'd seen enough players attacked by data drain - one of whom he was currently chatting with - to know what it looked like, and Poet being struck looked authentic; her scream certainly sounded the part. But something seemed off nonetheless, and he wound the camera back further as he typed out a response with his free hand.

"Could it be sabotage? Someone from Asara or another rival?" Orca asked.

Balmung couldn't discount the possibility. "I suppose anything's possible, especially with all this talk about selling off The World."

Hiro watched carefully as Poet appeared, and waited for her to finish speaking. Her stance seemed strange, and it took Hiroshi a matter of seconds to figure out why. "Orca," he typed suddenly, "that disc you gave me has our first encounter with the tree, right? After the field was locked?"

A short pause. "Yeah. Why, do you have an idea?"

"Maybe. Hold on." Hiro broke away from the computer, quickly rifling through the small pile of papers and other junk scattered around the keyboard. Never the neatest of online heroes, Hiroshi had left his desk especially cluttered lately. Still, he quickly found what he was looking for; he popped the disc in the drive, staring impatiently at a spinning hourglass as the computer read the contents.

I still don't know why he doesn't just get a flash drive, he thought, but stopped as a folder popped up showing the disc. He found the video file and cracked it open, running it on the same program to thumb through it second-by-second.

Kite and company ran up to the tree, the camera locked in first-person from Orca's point of view. "It IS a tree," Poet repeated, drawing her eyes up the length of the tree. "Where did it come from?"

Hiro frowned, fast-forwarding again. Orca turned his attention to the knights as they teleported in, though his position still had a clear view of Poet. The female Twin Blade turned to face the nearest knight, but seemed to register little surprise. In fact, although Orca's own movements made it hard to be certain, Hiroshi could swear Poet had completely stopped moving; no idle animation, no breathing, nothing.

Like what happens when someone steps away. Hiro paged through the seconds, keeping his eyes on Poet. Though their conversation with the knights was relatively short, Orca fortunately had kept Poet in his field of view the whole time. Pausing the video, he typed in the chatbox, "I think the encounter may have been staged."

"How so?" asked Balmung.

Hiro squinted at the frozen image, even now wondering if he was seeing things. Still, he entered his hunch into the box: "I'm not sure, but I think Poet stopped moving just before the data drain, and again during our first encounter with the knights."

"Stopped moving? You mean she froze?" asked Orca. Hiro could almost picture him scratching the back of his ear, one of his friend's tells for when he didn't follow.

"Yeah, like she went away from her computer. Or... was never there in the first place, I don't know. But something about this looks wrong. Scroll to 2:59 on the video and focus on Poet, you'll see what I mean."

He took a small sip from a glass of water, slick with condensation from melting ice; it almost slipped from his hand as he set it back down. As his friends reviewed their own footage, Hiro thought more about his previous encounters with the Twin Blade. She hadn't made the slightest effort to not appear mysterious, even acknowledging that he had reason to doubt her. His mind took this in several very different directions, ranging from roundabout honesty to a stalling tactic to just trying to keep him and his friends off their guard.

Whatever the reason, the creature's appearance no longer seemed coincidental, which Balmung and Orca soon noticed as well. "I... think he might be on to something," said Orca. "I've got a clear shot of her as she enters the field. When she's not talking, she doesn't move at all."

"Hmm. But what does this mean?" asked his fellow Descendant.

"It means whoever - or whatever - is controlling her, it's not a person. At least, not at the time."

"She knew to be there," Balmung pointed out. "She was there to ask Kamui about Albireo, there to fight off the data bug, there to warn us about the creature right when it broke out. And why would the tree open its attack on her, when there were plenty of other targets nearby? Especially if the creature was so interested in us?"

"Someone is behind this," Hiro typed in. "Someone who knows both the history of the company and the secrets of The World."

"So what do we do with this information?" Orca asked.

Hiro looked down at the keyboard for a moment, piecing together his disparate thoughts into a single theory. "Poet implied The World could be used to create another AI. Her exact words were, 'The poem left things behind.' If she was lying, then she's hiding the fact that it was created elsewhere. If she's telling the truth, then she does know about the game and the company."

"Either way, it means a person was controlling Poet," said Orca, catching on. "But yet they were't, or at least not directly."

"Yeah, I don't know what to make of that." Balmung digitally shrugged. "But if someone's going through a lot of effort to make that data drain look real... they'd need some way to protect themselves. Make sure they weren't harmed offline."

"I'm passing this along to Dean and BlackRose," Hiro typed. "Maybe they'll be able to think of something we haven't."

Morning had come all too quickly, her mind a jumbled mess of formulas, historical dates, English grammar and other things crudely pounded into her brain. Despite a mere five hours of sleep, she had practically hopped out of bed, almost choking down breakfast as she rounded up her notes and bookbag. Her parents had wished her luck; she worried the luck was wasted on the testing center being ten minutes away on foot.

The building loomed large in front of Akira, and she tightened her hold on her bag as she stared into its gaping maw. Ahead of her, other students dutifully filed into the building, chatting with a mix of excitement and dread over the entrance exam. With standardized exams over several months ago, a few private universities - including the one she was aiming for - were working under a pilot program to run their own exams during the summer months.

She heard a few of the closer ones mention grueling sessions at the nearest cram school, as if to contrast her own unreadiness. Come on, Akira. You can do this! Just... forget about The World for a moment. She took a deep breath, steadying herself, briefly wishing she was instead locking horns with the corrupted monster back in Lambda Server. You studied your heart out for this, and you will remember it. Just relax.

Thoughts of The World soon reminded her that she'd planned to meet Yuuko and the others, in hopes of picking their brains about The World. Yuuko, in particular, knew more about the Epitaph than the rest of her friends put together, and she knew a fair bit about the company as well. Hiroshi's email suggested Poet's 'death' had been staged somehow - it took considerable willpower to not shout "I knew it!" when she read this - and she spent most of her walk mulling over the questions that information raised.

She didn't know how Poet was linked to the infection, what was causing it, or even who she was. But she was going to find out something; for him, if nothing else.

A ringing bell jarred her thoughts, bringing her back to reality. Swallowing quietly, Akira shoved those thoughts aside and took her first steps towards the testing center. The mystery was going to wait.

Just relax. It's only your future, she thought with a flippant smirk. Adopting some of her character's outer confidence, Akira pushed through the revolving door and stepped inside.