36. Secrets

Aya lay still, his head turned to the side, his breathing levelling out much quicker than Yohji's frantic gasps. "Yohji."

His tone caught Yohji by surprise - calm, deep, running through him like a tremor and washing over Yohji with a shower of goosebumps. He squirmed and strained, slowly brushing sweaty red bangs from Aya's cheek. Aya did not move or look at him. Yohji hugged him firmer. "Ayan..."

Aya let go of a deep breath. "It's never going to work. Why can't you see this?"

Yohji felt himself sink a little more against his trim form as he played with a strand of crimson, twisting it and watching it spring back to smooth and straight. "I don't know... habit?"

"You like playing dumb?" Aya's fingers twisted from the shelter of Yohji's hand to cup it, tracing sharp knuckles and kneading long, wire-scarred fingers. "We are too different."

"How?" Yohji murmured, relaxing into Aya's touch.

"I like what I do. You don't. I'm not afraid of dying. You are." Aya tensed, Yohji raised himself a little on his elbows, to allow him to half-turn onto his side. Aya looked up at him unsmilingly. "I don't think hope is useful. You still have a chance, Yohji. I don't."

Yohji stared down at him, the echo of his voice filling Yohji's mind. Dry words, free of grief or self-pity. "You sound like-"

Aya shrugged, winced with pain, and Yohji shuffled back and sat up to ease the pressure on him. "Ayan..."

"I am... I am here instead of somebody else. You're still talking of her in your dreams." Aya struggled to sit up. "And you like your idea of me. Of Ran. You don't like me."

Yohji seized him and pulled him up and close. "Ah, here we go again... man, Ayan. You sound so... reasonable, but people change, don't they? We all change, somehow."

Aya loosely wrapped his hurting arms around Yohji and laid his face against Yohji's shoulder. "Even you."

//Even you.//

Yohji sat still, between Aya's knees, the reek of sweat and blood mingling with the smells of sex and stale tatami mats. "Somebody's gotta do it," he murmured hoarsely. "Somebody's gotta like you, Ayan."

A small shudder ran through Aya. A laugh, or at least something close to a chuckle, Yohji could tell, and he felt a little lighter for it. A smile curved his lips as he ran his fingers through Aya's hair. "You look such a mess now. Smoke some pot, you'll sleep better."

"What are you planning?"

"Look how Kenken's doing; he's been too quiet. Fake a mission report so that red bitch stops yapping for a while."

Aya quirked a grin. "You're not going to fool her for long."

Yohji shrugged. "Just buying time. I'm not sure whether Omi would like her to know. Or what she'd do if she found out. It's just a hunch, really, but I'd rather scrape around a bit before giving her the news." He slowly stroked Aya's back, from neck to bottom, to linger at the dip between Aya's buttocks. A small pause, then, "You're sticky..."

Aya snorts. "I'll wash."

"Ay-"

"I'll wash." He is up and on his way to the bathroom down the hall without another word.

Yohji brushes over the soiled, rumpled sheets and one-handedly lights a fag. "Fuck you too, Fuji," he mumbles, barely above his breath.

xxx

Slowly, Omi ate while trying to focus, reeling off scenarios and possibilities, combining and calculating. The coffee helped. Knowing Schuldig was not in the same room helped, too, and he firmly blended out any thoughts of Farfarello or Nagi.

Crawford had lit the second cigarette. The air conditioning was off, the room blue with smoke and tension. "You wonder why you are here but you won't ask me to tell you. You are playing my game, Bombay."

Omi glanced up blankly, mouth full with stale bread. "Two can."

Crawford reached into his shirt pocket and laid a black disc case onto the desk. "Perhaps it would be better to come to an agreement."

"Why should we?"

"Because you are here. You are alone. You have been hunting for certain pieces of information for a long time without informing your organisation. They might say you breached security rules by exposing yourself more than necessary, using their equipment and resources for your own personal gain, and ignoring their orders."

Omi huffed. "How is this different from what you are doing?" He was half-bluffing, driven by instinct, subconscious, curiosity - or perhaps the rush of the chase even now as he was meeting Crawford's cold gaze. It usually made sense to pay heed to a hunch, according to Yohji... "I'm here because you wanna offer me a deal. Something out of regs, out of sight, right? Go on then, perhaps I'll consider."

"Don't get cocky." Crawford did not raise his voice or change his tone. "You are here because I believe you know what you are doing."

"Flattery, yeah."

A tiny twitch in the corner of that thin-lipped mouth broke the symmetry of Crawford's face. It looked oddly out of place. "Credit where it's due. But I will make an exception." A nod at the disc. "Your clients might be displeased if you return without result. This is part of the data we obtained from the laboratory."

Omi could not help but shrink back, his stomach churning and making the last mouthful of bread taste bitter-sour.

"We keep the rest," Crawford said, snagging his gaze again, and Omi knew the man read him as clearly as a newspaper. Nearly twice as old as Omi and just as wily, with the advantage of experience and training, he was calling the shots, even though Omi realised he was being treated carefully.

//Like some blind ammo, you never know what sets it off.// "And you want what in exchange?" He was glad that his voice did not shake.

"We want to be left alone."

"Then stay out of our patch. We chased down that sicko, and we raided the lab. We can still hunt you down."

"Perhaps. You will find that he cannot confirm any of that anymore, and that the lab has disappeared. The only evidence are the records we obtained."

Omi stared at the disc and felt his throat go dry. Manx would be mad. Persia would be more than displeased. "So..." He had to swallow and wiped his face with the back of his hand. "What is it you're giving me?"

"Everything - files, pictures, vids, lab logs."

"And what do you keep?"

Crawford slowly blew a stream of smoke from his nose and squashed out his cigarette in a large stainless steel ashtray on his desk. "He was messing with the human genome. Genetic experiments with stem cells, embryos, tissue cultures. Cross-species series and sensory enhancements."

A shudder ran through Omi. He fisted his hands in his lap to hide the tremor. Crawford pushed the cigarettes across the desk. Omi lit up without a word.

"One of the files on your disk holds a sequence of DNA tests. Prodigy found them and thought you might like his present, so I included them."

"He found them?"

A fine smirk that did not reach Crawford's eyes. "As he does."

Warily, Omi drew a lungful of smoke and let it go in a long, deep breath. "They're for private viewing?"

"That's up to you."

"What's in it for you?"

"Who knows?" Crawford flicked some ash into the tray. "I intend to let Kritiker know we have the rest of the stuff, but not yet."

"You want to sell it to them?"

"I want to sell it. Until then, it might work as our insurance."

"Ah... that night... we would have been gone, but somebody had altered the firewall."

"Prodigy did a good job. Like the night before Christmas - suddenly all was frozen." Oddly, there was no spite in Crawford's voice, and his expression relaxed somewhat. "I intend to take you back tomorrow night. I think Balinese is most likely to collect you."

xxx

Omi lay back on the bed that felt uncomfortably big and soft, and folded his arms behind his head. Staring up at the ceiling, he was thinking. Wondering what Crawford held in store for him, what those files meant, where Nagi had gone... and the others, for that matter. Schwarz had the unsettling habit to melt away as if they had no substance at all, and Omi caught himself thinking he preferred them within sight.

//Jesus... the way Aya came back... way to go, Yohji went to pick him up, of course...//

A fresh wave of bitterness washed over him, and he let it flow, fill him to the brim until it pushed against his eyes and made him grope for a corner of the sheet to wipe his nose with.

xxx

"So?" Schuldig crouched at Crawford's feet and hugged his knees.

"Get up, you look like a dog. If we play this well, we might even gain. The data I managed to decode will be useful, something to hold off the wolves for a while. I was wondering why Kritiker want them so bad."

"Because," Schuldig rose and perched nervously on the edge of the desk, "Persia wants to shove his ass onto his brother's place? And bang, he'd be back in business, just like that." He clicked his bony fingers. "Making perfect clones of anyone who pays enough. Wow."

"Customised," Crawford corrected him, not quite calm beneath his veneer of composure.

For a few heartbeats, their eyes met, and Crawford read sheer terror behind the customary frosty disdain in Schuldig's face. "I think they're already working on it, back HOME," he said quietly. "Making better versions of us. Tell me, what does happen to failed experiments?"

Schuldig ground his teeth.

"I need Bombay to get back to us. He will. He will have more questions than answers once he's decoded that file. I need Kritiker to have an interest in our goods before our good masters get pissed off in earnest. It's all in the timing."

"So that's why you're going HOME?" Schuldig rasped.

"To find out how they are progressing, yes. And to tell them how successful we've been."

xxx

Next chapter: Exchange