29 THE SOUTHERN BASE

When Shinsou reached the southern base, he had had no trouble entering. The guard came out once he lingered under the pines, and Shinsou had promptly brainwashed him. He had made the guard bring him into the base and to the prison warder, and had brainwashed the latter and the senior cult members into releasing all the prisoners.

Shinsou had been shocked by the condition of the prisoners. Some had obviously been tortured. They had terrible scars which looked like burns, and some had body parts with bright red skin which hinted that they had been scalded or boiled. He could tell by their faces that they may well have undergone psychological torture too.

He had asked the two heroes and the police officers to wait some distance away, because it wouldn't have done for the guard at the pines to see a crowd of people heading for the base entrance. When the prison warder had given the order to evacuate the building, he had called them over. Transport had to be arranged for some of the more incapacitated inmates.

While waiting for the evacuation to be completed, Shinsou had decided to check out the remainder of the base. It was not as large as the main one, and was similarly made up of different buildings, colour-coded. One building was, of course, the prison, and it also housed what he realised must be a torture chamber where the prisoners had probably been made to suffer. It contained numerous cruel-looking implements.

Another building contained a vast array of weapons. Shinsou even saw an attack helicopter in its cavernous basement. Yet another housed a series of laboratories next to rooms filled with explosives. There were also factories for munitions and chemical and biological weapons, as well as storage rooms for them. Then there were kitchens and sleeping quarters for cult members, as well as a warehouse for food and other supplies.

He was approaching the last building, which appeared to house more laboratories, when his phone rang.

"Tanaka?" It was Cerberus. "Just to inform you, we've evacuated the last prisoner."

"Good," said Shinsou, "I'll be along shortly."

He entered the building. The first floor laboratories were labelled 1A and 1B. The second floor, 2A and 2B. 3A, he knew, must be on the third floor.

The first and second floor laboratories looked standard, containing long tables and test tubes and other laboratory equipment. Laboratory 3A was different. Cold air wafted out the minute he opened the door. Instead of laboratory tables, the room housed a series of large, coffin-like capsules, stretching across the entire room, neatly laid out in rows.

Each capsule housed a body. The bodies were deformed, some quite grotesque, some in unnatural colours. Some of them looked like mere tree trunks, with eyes. They were the results, Shinsou realised, of Akahara's genetic experiments.

His heart sank. Please tell me Michelle Honda isn't among them, he thought.

He looked at the bodies with a growing disquiet. Why don't they dispose of them, he wondered. Surely they can't be keeping them for further research. He saw that each capsule was labelled by name as well as serial number. How ironic. It would have been more appropriate to catalogue them by number alone. The persons to whom those names belonged to no longer existed.

I should set the room on fire, he thought, to give these people a decent burial. At the very least, their families should be spared the horror of knowing how their loved ones had died. As he looked at them, it seemed incredibly sad to imagine that these had formerly been living persons, unique individuals, fathers and mothers and sons and daughters, who had once lived and laughed and loved and walked, whole and healthy, upon the face of the earth.

He put his hand in his pocket and took out the stone locket, trying not to feel any emotion. I don't want to find anything here, he thought, but I have to look.

He found her halfway across the room.

Shinsou stared at the body in the capsule.

"I can't ever let Obsidian see this," he thought, "I'm going to get some of those explosives from the other building right now, detonate them here, destroy this room … nobody will ever know …"

He was about to turn and leave, when her eyes moved.

Shinsou's heart jumped. He looked more closely at the body. It was hardly discernible, but the chest was rising and falling, barely perceptibly.

He looked at the next capsule. The body there, too, was breathing. He waited a while, and saw some slight movement in the eyes.

Shinsou felt a horror growing within him. They were still alive. All those grotesque and deformed objects in the capsules, were alive.

What kind of life existed in there, he wondered. Can their minds still think? Do they know what they've become? Or have they just become vegetables?

He felt as if he was in some sort of nightmare. They were alive, and there was no way he could burn that room down, now.

Perhaps it isn't Obsidian's Michelle Honda, he thought in desperation. He brought the locket out, and held it, suspended, just above the capsule.

Her eyes moved to look at it.

He removed the locket, and waved his hand in front of her face. The eyes did not blink or respond.

He suspended the locket above the capsule again, and her eyes fixed themselves on it. He moved the locket out to one side, and her eyes followed it.

He felt a sense of despair. It was her, and she could still recognise the locket.

Shinsou put the locket back into his pocket. I have to get out of this room in order to think clearly, he thought, or I'll go mad.

He turned around, and found himself looking into the face of Akahara.

He hurriedly averted his eyes, but it was too late. He felt the terrible, irresistible force of the cult leader's mind pushing out.

"Hitoshi Shinsou," the voice was deep, "I've been wanting to meet you, lately."

I've got to fight him, Shinsou thought. I can't succumb …

But he could feel his mind descending into a thick fog.

"You are Shinsou, are you not?"

"I am," said Shinsou.

"Disarm yourself."

Shinsou brought his whip out, and dropped it onto the floor.

"Follow me."

Shinsou only heard the words dimly. He followed Akahara out of the laboratory, into an elevator, down one floor, two, three …

He walked along, oblivious of his surroundings. After what seemed a long time, they halted. His mind was in a fog; but some small part of it told him that they were in the torture chamber.

Akahara was speaking quietly to him. "You've ruined my empire, Shinsou. All that I've painstakingly built up. The glorious future that was waiting …"

Shinsou was vaguely aware that the cult leader was affixing a collar to him, to which some cords were attached.

"I have a use for you. But I only need your mind and voice and will. Your body I shall break, slowly, painfully."

He pulled the cords, and then slammed Shinsou against the wall.

"We shall go through everything in this chamber, slowly. Starting with walling, then ebi-zeme. I shall relish every minute, inflicting retribution on you for destroying the dream of a better world."

He proceeded to smash Shinsou into the wall a few more times.

"You must be wondering, how did I know it was you? Ah, but you knew I had planted a spy within the Directorate, didn't you? My spy suspected you, and your presence here has proved me correct."

He continued the smashing, until Shinsou collapsed in a haze of pain.

Akahara bent down and removed the collar.

"I'll enjoy slowly breaking you, Shinsou. You'll regret you ever tried to interfere with me."

He went over to a table at one side, and picked up a whip. He continued speaking quietly, dispassionately.

"I know you can still hear me, Shinsou. You can listen to my voice, while you slowly recover your faculties. I can inflict psychological torture on you, too."

Holding the whip, Akahara looked down at the still form on the floor.

"Bow down before me! I want to see you prostrate yourself before me."

Shinsou slowly crawled forward, and prostrated himself.

"Your legend's going to end here, Shinsou. Yours, and that phasing witch sidekick of yours."

Something seemed to register in Shinsou's brain.

"She means something to you, doesn't she, Shinsou? My spy told me about her as well. I won't destroy your mind, so that everything will be clear to you."

Some of the fog in Shinsou's mind was clearing.

"I'm going to search the witch out, and make you kill her. A lingering death, not like the swift way in which I shot and killed the Yamada girl. I'm going to make you give her a slow and agonising end, all the while totally aware of what you're doing."

Shinsou drew a breath; the fog was lifting.

Misa, he thought. The memories came flooding back. He remembered the first time they had met in Toyama, her face in the moonlight as they looked down on the town above the roof of the café. He remembered the first time they had kissed, that intense moment on the hillside in Ematsu. And he remembered her lying in the back seat of a car, tears streaking her face, dying.

"You're going to help me, Shinsou. I have a use for you, someone who can control the minds of many at once. You've torn down what I built, but I'm going to use you to build it up again. I will bring about the new age again with your aid, even greater and mightier than before."

Shinsou slowly lifted himself up till he was on all fours.

"I'll see you in hell, first," he said, through clenched teeth.

He pushed out with the force of his own mind, fighting, his will fierce against Akahara's.

"What did you say? – " said Akahara, and then fell silent.

Shinsou slowly got to his feet, and there was a cold fury in his face. Akahara was standing, staring blankly into space.

"Drop the whip."

Akahara let the whip fall to the floor.

"Bring out the gun that you killed Mai Yamada with."

Akahara took the revolver out of his pocket.

"Point it at your head."

Akahara obediently pressed the muzzle of the gun into his head.

Shinsou looked at him, his eyes blazing.

"You're going to die, you son of a bitch," he said slowly, "You're going to die. Even this is too good for you. You're going to rot in hell. I'm going to make you blow your own brains out. You're going to die, for what was done to Misa, for what you did to Mai Yamada, Shibata, Obsidian, and all those other innocent people."

He paused, then took a deep breath.

"Pull the trig – "

"SHINSOU, STOP!"

Shinsou whirled around.

Professor Hadron was standing at the door of the chamber, breathing heavily, with Magnetron and Klystron behind him. The Twins were looking terrified.

"That's you, isn't it, Shinsou?" panted Hadron, "The Twins made me come here. Magnetron knew you would try killing Akahara, to avenge Arakawa-san. It's a mistake, Shinsou. Don't do it!"

Shinsou felt a surge of anger well up within him. Curse Hadron, the interfering, stuttering, idiotic fool.

I can still do it, he thought. Pull the trigger, tell him to pull the trigger.

But he looked at Akahara, and knew it was too late. The moment had passed.

Shinsou put his hand to the back of his neck and closed his eyes for a moment, still feeling the pain from the walling Akahara had inflicted on him.

"I'll have to bring the bastard to the main base," he thought, wearily. But the danger of someone interfering with his mind control along the way was too great. It would be safer to leave him here in one of the high security cells, brainwashed, until the others came.

"Wait there," he said curtly to Hadron. He turned, and made Akahara walk over to the prison.

"I could kill him here," he thought, as Akahara entered one of the cells. But he knew that he could no longer do it.

He entered a combination into the number panel, and the door slid shut. Then he went back to look for Hadron and the Twins.

They were no longer in the torture chamber. He left the prison building. The next building housed laboratories and explosives. He approached the entrance of one of the laboratories.

Suddenly, Klystron was screaming.

"Shinsou-san, watch out!"

There was a swift whistling noise, and he felt a stinging pain. A dart was embedded in his arm. Quirk-nullifying, he thought. Cursing, he snatched it out, but it was too late. Hadron was standing ten feet away, holding a dart gun, and there was a malicious expression on his face.

"I've wanted to do that to you for a long time, Shinsou," he said, lowering the gun, "How I've wanted to do it every time you set foot in my lab. You've been interrogating everyone around you, haven't you? I always had a cold feeling in my heart whenever I saw you come in."

Shinsou said slowly, "You were the spy."

"I was the spy," smirked Hadron. "And I made sure every time you came near me, I created some diversion, like calling the Twins over. I saw to it that you never had the chance to strike up any sort of conversation with me."

"I should have," said Shinsou, grimly.

"You've destroyed all our plans, Shinsou," said Hadron, "We were going to build a whole new world. I suspected that they would put you on this case, but I had a hard time confirming it. After the rumours started flying around that you cracked the Shiramine and Kusanagi cases, every significant happening in the Directorate started being attributed to you. I was trying my best to find out, but that paranoid Aizawa led me a fine dance. He left nothing to chance. He was always bypassing me, giving instructions directly to the Twins, whom he trusted. I planted bugs all over the place, trying to find out who had been assigned to investigate Hikari. But that fool kept making Magnetron remove them. Those damn robots didn't trust me, either. They were more loyal to Aizawa than to me, curse them."

He waved his right hand, and several glowing orbs emanated from it. With a flick of his hand, he sent the orbs smashing into the Twins, causing them to squeal in pain.

"Stop that!" Shinsou was halfway across the room when he saw that Hadron had swiftly placed another ten orbs above the Twins.

"Another step and I'll kill them, Shinsou," Hadron snapped. He smiled unpleasantly. "You've never seen my Quirk, have you? These are high energy plasma. One orb may only cause you a lot of pain. But I can conjure ten, twenty in a second with no difficulty, more than enough to put any of you out of action for good."

Shinsou suddenly noticed the number of cracks and fissures on the Twins' bodies. He realised that they hadn't been looking terrified earlier because of Akahara. Hadron had been hurting them, forcing them to come with him.

"Leave them alone!" he said, angrily, "Why did you bring them?"

"I knew you wouldn't trust me if I turned up on my own," sneered Hadron, "Stupid robots, always foiling my plans. I would have gotten rid of them long ago, except that I couldn't have run the lab without them."

Shinsou was measuring the distance between them, trying to estimate how fast he could get over there and overpower Hadron.

"I suspected you," Hadron said again, "but I didn't dare tell Akahara without proof. In the end he became impatient, especially after first Carousel and then Despair was killed. He knew someone was infiltrating us. He used his mind control on me to make me confess my suspicions about you. And he was angry after that. But I can redeem myself now. I shall kill you and free Akahara, and that shall more than restore my standing with him."

Shinsou stalled for time.

"You were the one who got Nakamura installed as Director General, weren't you," he said.

"That idiot was put there to distract you from me," said Hadron, "and to disrupt the operations of Covert Ops. You were getting too close to finding me out. I guessed you were systematically brainwashing all those around you, and when you were done you were going to start on all the other Divisions, one by one."

He began to conjure orbs, one after the other, until there were about a hundred suspended in the air around the room.

"And now, you'll give me a little bit of entertainment, Shinsou," he purred, "Don't bother about any of the other heroes rescuing you. I've locked the base doors from the inside. I think you deserve a painful end. But I won't kill you right away, since you've delivered Akahara to me. Once I release him, I, the only one left loyal to him, will be exalted. We'll start over again, building the new world order."

He raised his hand, about to send the orbs shooting toward Shinsou. At this moment, Klystron, injured as she was, suddenly stood up with an effort. She sent a weak streamer of glowing magnetic field lines shooting toward Hadron.

Hadron, distracted, turned, and in that split second, Shinsou closed the distance between them. One quick punch and kick, and he had Hadron on the ground. The Support Head was writhing in pain, but he generated a plasma shield around his body, so that Shinsou would not be able to touch him. In doing so, he lost control of the orbs. They flew around madly as their creator's control went awry, and they now came falling like rain. Shinsou felt a burning pain in his shoulder and legs as several smashed into him. He could hear the Twins squealing in pain.

Some of the orbs fell on the laboratory tables, and a white, hot fire sprang up as they ignited the flammable contents of the flasks there. The blaze quickly spread, as more and more of the liquid on the tables were set alight.

Shinsou, unable to touch Hadron, picked up a nearby chair. Hadron, seeing that he was about to bring the chair smashing down on him, managed to struggle to his feet. He turned and ran, his plasma shield still glowing around him.

Shinsou was about to give chase, when he suddenly spied Magnetron's gadget bag on the ground. Ronald Ray Gun was sticking out of it.

He picked the gun up in one swift movement and aimed it at Hadron. A jet of white light shot out of it, smashing into the fleeing figure. Hadron gave a loud cry, and then fell down and lay still.

A huge explosion suddenly erupted nearby, and half the room was in flames. They reared up, reaching all the way to the ceiling.

I have to get the Twins out, Shinsou thought.

He turned to look at them, but the fire was already coming.

As he saw the inferno bearing down upon him, and the heat and flames overwhelmed him, his final thought was that he had promised Misa he would come back.

.

.

Shinsou opened his eyes. For a moment, he couldn't remember where he was. He could feel scorching heat, and hear the crackle of flames. The parts of his shoulder and legs where the plasma had hit him felt as if they were on fire. He was vaguely aware that someone was next to him, weeping.

He sat up. Magnetron was sitting there, with Mary Poppins around his neck. Through the glow of the force field, Shinsou could see flames leaping and dancing.

Magnetron was badly injured. His right arm was hanging at a strange angle, and numerous parts of his golden exterior were broken. They were some distance from the fire, and Shinsou realised that the little robot, wounded as he was, had somehow managed to drag him away from the flames.

Magnetron was crying heartbrokenly.

"O Sh-Shinsou-sama," he sobbed, when he saw that Shinsou had woken up, "Klystron is d – dead!"

Shinsou felt a pang in his heart. Klystron! She had tried so hard to help to the very end.

He could feel the intense heat from the flames. The fire was still spreading. He wondered if the force-field would hold. There was smoke everywhere, and it was impossible to see more than a few feet. The laboratory was huge, and he had no idea in which direction the exits were.

"Magnetron," he said urgently, "We have to leave here before the fire reaches the rooms where the explosives are housed. We have to get to the north wall where the exits are. Are you able to channel your magnetic field lines like a compass to give us the direction?"

Magnetron was still weeping inconsolably. His was a sad and drooping figure, a far cry from his usual buoyant self, his body racked by shuddering sobs at the loss of his twin. Shinsou thought for a moment that he had lost control of his senses, but after a few more seconds, he managed to sob, "A-Affirmative."

Glowing magnetic field lines began to issue forth from him, pointing the direction in which they should go.

Shinsou picked the little robot up, and spoke in his ear.

"I owe both you and Klystron my life, Magnetron," he said, "I'll get us out of here."

Holding the still sobbing robot close to him, and ignoring the pain in his legs, he turned in the direction the field lines were pointing, and ran.