Chapter 29
Gin walked along a windswept park trail. The bitter breeze slapped against his face as it had on the many occasions he'd waited in the area before, though he wasn't there to wait for a companion today.
The first buds were starting to form on the mess of cross-hatching tree branches overhead. It altered the familiar shapes of the trees; knotting the backdrop he had grown accustomed to in the previous weeks. This park had become a favored location to meet up with Sherry in the afternoon, but the season for afternoons like that had passed.
He had let it pass. It wasn't as though 'goodbye' was as inevitable as the end of winter. But, the way she'd looked at him then, like a favorite mug that had slipped from her hand and shattered on the floor; like she was still lying to herself about how she could glue the pieces back together. He couldn't bare it.
His shoe snagged on a dried twig that had fallen on the path and he came to his surroundings again. There was a woman walking towards him whom he hadn't noticed until then. He cursed his distracted state turning to address the fast-approaching party.
It was Akemi Miyano, Sherry's sister. She should have been out the country. He wondered if Sherry knew her sister was back in Japan.
"Gin?" She had a tight grip on the strap of the bag on her shoulder, and the lines of her body were tense, her expression serious. "We have a lot to discuss."
"Regarding?" He asked. Compared to her, his posture was relaxed. And Gin was never at ease in public.
"My sister." her mouth was taught. Suppressing the anxiety of talking with him? Or was it anger? Gin was having a hard time caring regardless.
"Then I doubt it." He turned to walk away.
She sprinted to cut him off, standing firmly in his path. It wasn't fear then.
"We do."
Her coming to this park meant she'd predicted the movements of a member whose rank was so far above her that, were it not for the unusual situation of their first encounter, she would never have even had the opportunity to know of his existence. "How did you know to wait for me here?"
"I figured it was a drop or meeting location. I followed her to this location once, I assume to report to you. You are the one in charge of her work aren't you?"
He nodded.
"It is my understanding that the Organization has acted against the wishes of my late parents, voiding their guardianship of my sister that was contingent on compliance to certain wishes voiced before their passing."
"What does it matter? She's a legal adult now."
"But at the time when she gained membership of the Organization, she would have needed consent from a legal guardian, which the Organization could not have granted her without losing their position as said legal guardian. They then would be without the pull to give her permission in the first place. It is a legal paradox, as per the terms of my parents' will." She smiled reaching her ultimate point. "The membership of my sister to your Organization is, therefore, null."
"Legally," he shrugged the information off. The Organization only thought of itself as a business or legally bound entity when they wanted to use some advantage it could offer them. "What is it you thought you could do with this information?"
"I want out. I want my sister out. She isn't bound to you. Not really. I want you to let her leave." She had only grown more determined as she spoke, sure she had the winning hand of the argument.
"Heh," he tucked his hands in his pockets. "It's not going to happen. You can understand why the Organization wouldn't exactly consider itself bound by legal tethers." He scrunched his coat to flash where his gun was concealed within.
She startled back, taking the threat as he'd intended. He walked past her, a frown settling on his features. The idea of losing Sherry again twisted something sour in his stomach.
'She wasn't bound to him,' was it? His mind circled back to her words. She hadn't ever been. 'Not really.'
Gin came to a river stone retaining wall and regarded the signs of coming spring in the park; small patches of new growth and the sharp points of ground flowers cutting out from the soil.
He knew what Sherry would choose, and it wasn't the Organization. It wasn't him.
...
She couldn't bring herself to touch the cold steel countertops in the lab today. Sherry walked down the aisle between them holding her stomach and looking over the shoulders of scientists working under her.
It wouldn't be long before they had a completed prototype of the toxin and all she could do was stand back and watch it come together. Soon enough working itself became the easy part. If she had a task to do than she could quiet her mind of the bigger picture. It was when she had an absence of something to do that she was reminded of how alone and trapped she truly was now.
Lying awake at night her mind would wonder. She couldn't let herself think about the poison, not without breaking down entirely. Instead, her thoughts came to Gin. Thoughts of the months before, how she fit in his arms, the weave of fabric on his coat running beneath her fingers, the feel of his hands through her hair.
Her body remembered how it felt to be held, wrapped in his warmth. To feel the soft heat of his skin against hers. It left the bed sheets feeling too flat and barren.
She worked late nights, perfecting the toxin, running trials and studies until she could come home tired enough that the bed felt welcoming once more.
And then her circadian rhythm would adjust and she would be staring up at the ceiling again thinking of all his different types of smiles; his grin when a plan of his went through perfectly; his smirk when he was flirting and teasing her; the slight dazed smile she caught sometimes when he looked at her. Then she would remember how her chest burned with joy when they were together, and when she saw him smile. Thoughts of him consumed her until all she could picture was a sadistic smile twisting his features, making them foreign to her, dark and cruel.
Then she would work later and chase away thoughts of him with equations and formulas and data tables.
...
The preliminary batch of the toxin was completed, and Gin had been putting off going to pick it up and checking in with its progress in person all day. In wasn't that he didn't want to see Sherry. In fact, he ached to be near her. The thought of going to meet with her brought about a physical longing in his chest. That was part of the problem. If he saw her all he would want to do was hold her, and that was the very last thing she wanted now.
The idea of holding her spiraled unhelpfully in his thoughts as he drove to the labs. The route was automatic, and it made focusing on driving rather impossible. He remembered the first of many mornings he woke to her sleeping face. The memory wasn't significant because she had looked particularly peaceful or beautiful, although her soft face had certainly been wonderful to look at. He had truly fallen asleep next to her, and for a moment had trusted her more than he once thought it was wise to trust anyone. And even at that realization he had only smiled and pulled her closer, tucking her head against his chest.
He pulled his car into a space in front of the drug company where the labs were located. It was late enough in the day that she might have already gone home for the day. He wasn't sure if he was hoping for her to be there or not at this point.
Most of the lights in the building were off, excepting one. He opened the lab's door to find Sherry still awake and working. She didn't seem to notice his entrance.
"Made late nights a habit then?" He asked. He had expected her to startle at his sudden presence. She didn't, she also didn't look up from her work.
"The case is on the counter there." A steel briefcase rested on the countertop closest to the door. He stepped passed it, toward where she worked in the far back corner.
"You aren't required to work this late." Gin said.
"You said you would be here today," she sighed looking up for the first time. "You're the one who is late." She went back to looking into her microscope. Several slides were laid out across the counter by her. The only recognizable sample appeared to be a hair.
"These from the rat test group then?" He asked stepping closer. She startled at his presence this time and looked up in time to see him reaching out to grab a glass slide. She swatted his hand away in a near protective gesture.
"It will all be in the report, Gin." She glared at him, waiting for him to leave. This expression was perhaps worse than before when she looked on him like some broken thing in need of mending. She'd given up on that; given up on him.
He obliged to her wishes and left, taking the case on his way out.
...
Inside the steel case were twelve red and white capsules of the prototype poison. Gin's assignment was comprised of a list of twelve corresponding names. They were the identities of those their rivals had recently contracted in order to acquire the needed resources to attack the Organization. The list consisted of mostly civilians with little to no previous connection to the criminal underworld; doubtless their rival's own targets of extortion.
It was quick work. The type of work that had to be done, but Gin did not want to put much thought into or remember in detail after the fact. One by one the padded spaces within the case emptied, and the task was complete.
Gin ducked into his car and nodded to Vodka who was waiting in the passenger seat.
"That was the last name on the list, correct?" Gin asked, pulling out his keys. He had just used the last of the poison capsules so it should have been.
Vodka didn't immediately confirm and the sound of light rain on the car's roof filled the space. He wouldn't need to look down at a physical list to know. It was why he made such an ideal secretary, no paper trail out in the field.
"Not exactly." Vodka said eventually. "The first target, that company president who was smuggling in weapons for our rivals got away. That was when we had a run in with that detective who had been causing trouble for the Organization."
"We're short one capsule now then." Gin surmised. His gaze settled on a drop of rain falling in a slow stream down the window glass. It had rained that night as well, later in the evening. He thought back to the events before then, to the blackmail threat they'd used to lure out the company president. He could still picture the greasy man clearly, but that detective brat they caught spying on the transaction, he was only a hazy memory now. Focusing on it, Gin could recall that he'd ended up as the first victim of the poison rather than the company president whom that capsule was intended for. Still, the specifics of his face were harder to settle on.
"I'll contact the labs and have them prepare another batch." Vodka said as a matter of course.
"Good," Gin confirmed when he realized his subordinate was waiting for affirmation for something. He had barely heard him, his focus was still in the past. Or what little he could remember of those events.
A drop of rain collected with another and raced down the glass all at once. He shirked off the attempt to remember events best left in the past and started up the car.
...
It was the following day before Gin realized the inevitable repercussions of calling into the labs for another batch. Everything clicked when he saw Sherry's furious face barge into his office, and he understood his mistake even before she slammed a thick stack of papers onto his desk. Twelve names he was trying hard to forget were lined up in a neat column on the top document; the very twelve names of people he'd used her drug to kill.
"That was an incomplete batch of the drug, meant for trials. Not for killing random civilians." She was fuming, leering down at him across the desk.
"It was ready enough, we needed to send a message they would receive." Gin said, trying to remain clinical. He was, however, having a hard time keeping his gaze from falling to the hit list she'd slapped in front of him. "Consider this your test batch."
"Innocent civilians, that's your test group?" The unrestrained fury in her voice brought his attention back to her.
"They were pawns of our rivals, not innocent bystanders." Gin explained firmly. "It was a show of power needed to end the conflict."
"It was an unwarranted massacre."
"It worked." He snapped. "You were creating a poison. What did you think was going to happen?"
Uncomfortableness moistened in the air as Gin immediately realized this was entirely the wrong thing to say. Her eyes, already watery from her yelling at him, swelled with tears, and her jaw quaked. She fought them off looking down to the side. He hesitated, and she let the silence fill the space between them.
" I was doing my job." Gin said with a breath. "Those were the orders."
"So that's it then." She said softly, her words echoing her silence tears. "You would kill people, dozens and dozens of innocent people, for them." Her voice found a sudden venom with that last word. She looked up to stare straight into his eyes. "Without question."
"You speak like you're not part of the organization. Sherry."
She sunk upon hearing him call her by her codename. Her shoulders fell with her expression and it was clear that she felt the weight of that codename for perhaps the first time since she received it.
She sprang back at him, her expression changing and her voice in near-violent sobs. "And you speak like you're not even human!"
"You're going to cause trouble for yourself if you keep speaking against the Organization like this." He warned her. He stood, placing his palms solidly on the desk, and searched her eyes sincerely. Her words were becoming dangerous for her own sake.
"I expect I will."
"What do you hope to accomplish with your defiance? Don't you ever think these things through?" He walked around the desk to her. "Leaving the organization is just another of your romantic notions. An impossible fantasy. A wanton dream you can never see realized. There is no leaving." There was unfaltering loyalty, or there was death. Brandy's death had proven that.
She squeezed out a bitter expression; her face was turned and her eyes closed as she spoke. "Then you can add my codename to your list, but I won't be used to kill more innocent people."
He reached out and grabbed her shoulder. She flinched away from his touch and a familiar jerk within him yanked after her. It was that same feeling from before, like they were connected by threads. He felt it first when Sherry flinched away from Brandy's touch in that alley, but he hadn't fully understood what it was then. That came with time as he felt a growing need to protect her. The understanding of this was doubly hurtful now as it was him whom she needed protection from.
She snatched the list off the top of the stack. "I'll be halting all work towards completing the poison to investigate its effects on the people from the trials."
Gin didn't look up to meet her face. "We have a low ranking crew that confirms hits, there isn't a need for you to do this yourself."
"No. I played a part in the death of each of these people and I'm going to account for each and every one of them." She was struggling to be strong and immovable on this point; fighting to be strong and immovable standing up to him. It was a painful realization. "Now step aside, and let me do my job." She walked away from him again, and he just stared off to the side of the room as she left, uncertain of what he would even stop her to say.
...
The glow of the backlit bar shelves shined through the liquid in Gin's glass and reflected its warm color onto the black slab of granite before him. Gin was sitting alone at a bar counter when Vermouth happened upon him, as she always did when he expressly did not want to see anyone, least of all her. She slipped behind the counter and considered the selection.
It was only a small bar tucked away in one of the Organization's buildings, but knowing Vermouth she would have something stowed away here of exceptional taste and expense. She set a glass bottle on the countertop and regarded him.
"Still moping over a girl?" She asked. "You, the compassionless killer."
He looked up from his glass of golden liquid, a malicious glint in his eyes, like she had just given him a good excuse to shoot her.
"Fine," she threw up a casual exasperated gesture, and slipped a cigarette from her inner jacket pocket, leaning across the counter towards him. "Continue to brood, but you're not going to succeed in drowning any memories. Consider alternatives to emptying the liquor cabinet. Your high tolerance to its poison makes this an exercise in futility, though no less pathetic." She slid the thin roll of paper into the pocket over his chest, then tossed a wave back at him as she walked away, already another smoke between her fingers, and the bottle of wine in her other hand.
She stopped at the door. "And Gin," she waited for his attention. "When you're ready to consider a vice that doesn't impede your ability to function, you know where to find me."
