Weekend! :)

Hope everyone is doing well, and keeping cozily indoors if/when they can get away with it. I meant to break this chapter and the previous one into three parts, then went fuggit and made it an extra-long two-parter to avoid cruel cliffhangers.

Have I, however, avoided general cruelty to the characters? 'Fraid not.

CW: Gore, violence and mild body horror. The awful (or inevitable?) comes to pass...

Review, pretty please!


The night is close as a hot fist. The moon burns redly behind a dark smear of clouds. The lunar eclipse is in motion.

The group roars past the streets on their motorbikes. Kai and Yuri are on one, Dee and Yumi on the other. Dee has reloaded her Magnum and duct-taped it to the handlebars. Kai feels the weight of his own pistol in its holster. They tear down the expressway. The traffic is sparse, barely any cars at this hour. Behind Kai, Yuri clutches at her phone, trying to reach Saya.

"Any luck?" Kai yells.

"She's not answering!"

"Shit."

Wind rakes across Kai's body. Under his helmet, his face is clammy with sweat. They have one refuge: the safe-house at Nagahama, with its fully-loaded armory and underground bunker. Dee has contacted both David and Red Shield's HQ. The old man will be convening there with a full strike team. In the meantime, Kai stays alert for threats. He's sure the Diva lookalikes have reinforcements. They didn't materialize out of nowhere. They were shipped in somehow—by wheels, or by air.

Sent to capture Yumi and Yuri.

Around his waist, Yuri's arms tighten. She sucks in a gasp.

"You okay?" Kai asks.

"I-I'm not sure," she says. "I think—"

"What?"

"I'm cramping." Her words hitch between breaths. "Every—every five minutes."

Shit.

Kai's pulse thunders over the hornet-drone of the motorbike. The tachometer climbs into red.

"It'll be okay." He can't think of what to do, except reassure. "We're nearly ther—"

A bullet carroms off the road. Kai cranks the handlebars sideways. A second bullet whizzes past his helmet. Behind him, a car zags into view. A black Scion, square as a box. Kai has always found the model butt-ugly. Now it picks up speed fast, its engines a deafening roar as 70 kilometers an hour became 80, 100, 120…

The passenger window rolls down. A gunman thrusts a revolver out, firing off two shots at the motorbikes.

Kai swerves to the left. The bullets hit the guardrail, spitting sparks. A second volley of shots rings out, barely missing. The Scion—karma's dumbest practical joke—is gaining speed. To the right, Dee's Magnum cracks; Kai glances back to see a bullet shatter the Scion's rear-view mirror. Another bullet tears through the window, punching a cobweb into the glass. But the vehicle keeps pace with them,

Dammit.

"Yuri!" Kai shouts. "Hold tight!"

Before they hit the intersection, Kai drops one leg down, and wrenches the handlebars—hard. Tires screech. The engine whinnies. The bike spins in a close one-eighty. The moment it faces the charging Scion, Kai guns the throttle. The bike slews down the road, charging parallel to the Scion. In the flash of intersecting headlights, Kai sees the driver behind the wheel, and the single armed shooter in the passenger seat.

Blam.

Blam.

Blood splatters the inside of the Scion. Kai watches both drivers spasm, then crumple in their seats. Yuri's small hand grips his pistol. The tip is still faintly smoking. Kai hadn't had the chance to whip it out of its holster. But Yuri, both hands free, did.

The Scion fishtails, its left exterior scraping against the concrete barrier, wheels spinning across the asphalt. It decelerates rapidly, tumbling off the road and into a weed-choked benjo ditch.

"Damn," Kai mutters. "Nice shooting, Yuri."

Yuri laughs—but it mangles halfway into a groan.

"Please hurry," she says. "I don't wanna—give birth on your Yamaha."

Obeying, Kai brings the bike around, to the right direction of the road. Kicks the throttle, and shoots past the wreckage of the Scion, tailing after Dee and Yumi's bike. The roads snake westward. The buildings grow smaller, sparser, then disappear behind a shaggy treeline of sago palms. The tracks are dark beneath their overlapping foliage: no street lamps or neon-lit signs. The space feels weirdly constricted to Kai—a death trap.

Nearly there.

We're nearly—

Shadows spread overhead. Kai catches the stench of dried blood.

He and Yuri glance up as a winged shape swoops past the break in the trees. Its eyes glow a predatory blue. Its wings flap through the air, curved and fine-veined as a bat's. It lets off a ululating screech, the vocal equivalent of an ultrasonic alarm signal. Two more winged shapes dive through the trees. Their laughter tears through the humid air.

"It's them!" Kai shouts. "Those—things!"

The two Diva-shaped newcomers beat their wings, launching themselves at Dee and Yumi's bike. The third dives at Kai and Yuri. In the strobing moonlight, her body is a terrible sinewy shape, her teeth bared with mindless hunger—

"Fuck!"

Kai swerves the bike sharply left. Diva's clawed hand swipes past Yuri's flying hair and Kai's shoulder, tearing a hot line of blood down his back. Kai is too souped up on adrenaline to feel it. Teeth gritted, he guns the throttle. Ahead, the two Divas circle Dee and Yumi's bike like vultures. Dee wrenches her Magnum off the handlebars and fires off two shots. One bullet slices through the closest Diva's wing. She screeches, jerking in midair, wings crumpling like a butterfly's as she crashes down into a roadside bank of nettles.

The second Diva, darting past the gunfire, lashes out at the riders. Her talon-shaped foot swings at Dee, knocking her off her bike. Yumi curses, struggling to hold on to the handlebars. A brutal sideswipe unseats her too, claws raking across her torso, blood splattering. The bike skids across the road; both Yumi and Dee tumble down the grassy embankment, sprawling motionless.

"Yumi!" Kai snarls. "Dee!"

He jerks the handlebars, urging the bike toward the fallen women. Above, the third Diva's wings cut through the air. Her dark shape blots out the fingernail of moon peeping through the trees. Her claws lash out, curved like scythes. Kai cries out as they rip through his jacket sleeve. Blood soaks his clothes, running down his knuckles. He fights to keep a grip on the handlebars.

"Kai!" Yuri shouts. "Look out—!"

The road drops abruptly downward. The bike's wheels, zooming at full speed, grind across gravel, then spin through empty air. There is a giddy weightlessness, Kai's stomach floating toward his ribs. In a detached pocket of memory, he thinks of riding the Tilt-a-Whirl with Yumi and Yuri in the old days. Their giggles—high-pitched and sugar-charged—were the sweetest sounds in the world.

Then he hears Yuri scream—followed by a thud. Her body hitting the ground.

Yuri, Kai thinks frantically—a split-second before he collides with the rough gravel so hard it kicks the breath out of him. Pain lances across Kai's body, blistering-hot shards of it. His skull conks off the rocks with dizzying force. Somewhere in the distance, the motorbike tumbles end-over-end down the steep path.

Stunned, Kai sprawls on his back. Five moons spin across the sky. Five winged Chiropteran Queens cycle his prone body. Then they laugh, and hurtle toward him, resolving to four, three, two, one—

Kai unholsters his pistol. He steadies himself and fires. The bullet tears a chunk of Diva's wing off. She screeches at an unholy pitch. Then she plunges at him, straight on, a nosedive of deadly claws and fangs.

Kai rolls out of the way. Diva slams down across the path with a bone-crunching thud. The force kicks up a fan of gravel. Before she can right herself, Kai fires off another two rounds. One rips a ragged red hole through her arm. The other takes off a chunk of her ear. The gunfire doesn't slow her down. It just makes her angry.

Shrieking, she charges at him. In the distance, Dee's Magnum barks. Three bullets shred through Diva's skull. She spasms, blood spurting, the barrage knocking her backwards. Kai swivels to see Dee crouched at the embankment. She is in a sharpshooter's pose, gun extended, elbow propped on her upraised knee.

"Go!" she shouts. "Get the twins on the bike and go!"

"Dee—"

Fifty yards ahead, a blur of movement. The two remaining Divas. Their wings flap thunderously, their eyes a blazing blueness. Faster than the eye can track, they lunge towards Kai's group. Yuri, stirring feebly across the road, is closest to them. Kai's eyes widen, reflexes kicking in, his arms extending to let rip a barrage of gunfire before they can reach her—

Yumi is faster.

Her eyes flash in the gloaming, two red fireflies. She races through the waist-high grass, a jagged metal pipe—the bike's broken handlebar—clutched in her blood-slick hand. The two Divas spot her, then double on her—confident of their power, their capacity to overrun and overwhelm. Their wings span outward, limned by the moon. The grass bends with their breakneck path.

But Yumi moves like wildfire. Between one heartbeat and the next, she leaps at the closest Diva, snatching a hold of her leg, then leaping to claim her, astride her back like a harpy-slayer.

She slams the bloodstained pipe down between Diva's shoulderblades. A shocked howl rolls through the night.

Then the strangest thing happens. Diva arches, and goes rigid. Reddish tendrils begin to spread across her body. They race down her limbs, spanning across her wings, branching over her skull. There is a familiar sharp crackling, like ice breaking apart. Within split-seconds, her entire body is encased as if in stone.

Crystallized.

Then she drops down and shatters. A glittering red mist hangs in the air.

Kai stares in shock. "What the hell?"

Yumi doesn't waste time. Even before the first Diva has dropped, she's leapt at the second, in midair. Her pipe tears a bloody gash across Diva's flank. In moments, she's suffered the same fate, her skin webbed in red cracks. Yumi jumps off her spasming body, hitting the grass and rolling clear. Diva screeches, a plummeting mass that hits the ground and explodes like a crystal vase.

Yumi hurries to Yuri. In moments, Kai and Dee join them,

"Jesus!" cries Dee. "What was that?"

Yumi encircles an arm around Yuri, propping her up. "I just realized…"

"Realized what?"

"When those… freaks… first showed up. It wasn't like when Saya's nearby. It was more like sensing Yuri. Little pins and needles down my spine."

Yuri scrunches her brow. "Are you comparing me to backache?"

"Or leukemia."

Kai shakes his head. "If that's true…"

"These things weren't made from Diva's blood," says Dee. "They were made from Yuri's."

Yuri draws in a jittery breath. "In Karachi… when they tried kidnapping me. It must've happened then. They probably took a sample of my blood while I was drugged." Her frown shades into a glower. "It's why they're after us. If they get Yumi out of the way… their army is unbeatable."

"There's just one issue with that plan," Dee says.

The others stare at her.

"Otonashi. Her blood's toxic to Yumi and Yuri. Capture her as source material…"

"And they've got an army nobody can stop," Kai mutters.

"This is bad," Yumi says. "We need to find Saya. She—"

Yuri's breath comes in a shallow rattle. A stream of fluid trickles between her thighs. For a moment Kai thinks she's pissed herself. Then he sees the gleam of blood, and understands.

"Yuri," he breathes. "Are you—?"

She nods tightly. " My daughters. They're coming."

"The safe-house isn't far," Dee says, "C'mon. Let's get you outta here before—"

A raucous shriek erupts behind them. The sound sets Kai's teeth on edge.

The last Diva—shredded by Dee's barrage of bullets—has healed. Dried blood streaks her skin like tar. Her eyes are radioactive blue.

Yumi hefts her pipe and starts forward. "Two down. One to go."

But Diva—not-Diva?—doesn't attack. Angling her wings, she launches herself upwards, a powerful shutter-snap of momentum. Gravel scatters in her wake. Her laugh is a bone-chilling peal that stretches endlessly, looping after her body as she soars into the starless night, then fades away.

A moment later, from the darkly-looming trees, a bullet zips out.

The first erupts in a clod of dirt near Kai's foot. He jerks away. "What the—?"

A second bullet whizzes past his skull. At once, their group drops low—except for Yuri, who grimaces and curls into a ball on her side.

"What's going on?" Yumi asks. "Who's shooting at us?"

"I'm more concerned about where," Dee says. Her eyes scan the darkness, the moonlight flickering in matchstick rays through the sago palms. Then she hisses, "Gotcha."

Kai squints, and spots it too. A sniper crouched in the foliage, sighting along the barrel of his gun.

Dee reacts first. Raising her Magnum and centering the sniper in her crosshairs, she squeezes the trigger. The Magnum kicks solidly in her palms. The sniper's skull explodes, blood splattering the swaying fronds of the trees. At the same time, however, another shot echoes from the opposite direction.

Kai and Dee swivel, just as a dart buries itself closest to the twins. In the moonlight, an ampule glints, attached to a needle.

A tranq dart?

Wzzzzt.

Another dart zips out. This one is aimed squarely at Yumi.

"Look out!"

Yuri launches herself at her sister. The dart sails past Yumi's head—and buries itself in Yuri's shoulder. Yelping, she yanks it out.

Before the gunman in the foliage can squeeze off another shot, Kai zeroes in on the target. A crouched figure blending with the treeline. A rifle rests across his shoulders. He must've been lying in wait while the first sniper distracted—and dispatched—Kai and Dee.

Leveling his own weapon, Kai fires at the gunman. One slug impacts his torso, the other sinking straight between his eyes. Jerking, he drops without a sound.

The forest lapses into silence. Keeping an eye out for more hostiles, Kai says, "We should get moving. There's probably—"

Yuri whimpers, and sags in Yumi's arms. Sweat glitters like melted frost on her skin.

"Yuri," says her sister. "Hang tight. We'll get you to the safehouse."

Yuri shakes her head. Her voice is depthless, half-translucent with pain. "It's… not that…"

Her palm is clapped against the spot where the tranq hit her. Gently, Yumi peels her fingers away. Shafts of moonlight dance through the trees. When Kai sees what is on Yuri's shoulder, he sucks in a ragged sound of anguish.

"Mother of God," Dee breathes.

A misshapen blotch, the color of a bone-deep contusion, blossoms across Yuri's skin like ink. In its wake, thread-fine veins streak outward, glittering red. Kai catches the tang of blood, and a high fruity stink, and understands.

Understands, and feels a rage boil up his gorge, a burn like bile. Full-body sickness.

"The poison," he rasps. "They shot her with the poison."

Yumi's eyes blaze into fire. "What?"

It is impossible for Kai to meet her stare. Impossible—because his eyes are fastened to Yuri. She shivers, and sweats—then goes into convulsions. Kai watches her head thrash, sending up droplets of sweat. Her lips are skinned back from her teeth, her breaths whistling erratically through her lungs. Then the whistling becomes a gurgle, pink froth spewing out. From her shoulder, the mark spans outward with dizzying speed. Red fissures tear across her throat, the side of her face. They creep down her arm, rupturing her fingers. The sound of them is bone-chilling. A fibrous ripping like steel through softness.

His daughter.

Cracking to hundreds of pieces.

Frantic, Yumi clutches her sister. "Yuri! What's happening?"

Kai wants to reach out. He wants to touch his daughters. Comfort comes effortlessly to him. Always has.

Except he can't move.

"Oh man." The words are warped with horror. He doesn't need to turn to recognize that Dee is panicking. "I gotta call HQ. Shit. Shit. She's frothing from the fuckin'—shit!"

Yuri's convulsions intensify. Her eyeballs roll back in half-mooning madness. Then blood hemorrhages into them. More blood bursts from her mouth. Blood all over. Every part of her jittering hard enough to crack.

"Yuri!" her sister is sobbing, tears spurting from her eyes. "Yuri! Please!"

Yuri is there. Kai sees her so clearly. And yet, superimposed over her, she is the way Kai remembers her. Not Yuri at thirty. Yuri at three-months-old. Her hands like pudgy starfish. Her eyes big blue buttons in a doll face. The little girl who chewed red bean paste with a gurgly openmouthed smile. The girl who'd always find the coziest kid-sized nook in the house to curl inside, playing with her dolly while the whole family went crazy looking for her. The girl who would nestle against Kai's chest at bedtime, the soft weight of her and her sister so perfect that Kai's entire world would narrow to nothing but the completeness of the moment.

What was your real face before you were born?

The koan always reminded him of Yumi and Yuri. He'd never been happier in all his years—pre-or-post Saya—than during those sunlit days of their childhood. For them, he'd remade himself completely. Become someone whose life bore no resemblance to the one before, a metamorphosis at the cellular level.

"Yuri! Oh God—Yuri!"

The memories dissolve. In their place is a rage so hot it melts across the surface of Kai's brain like the blast from a blowtorch. Colored splotches gather before his eyes.

Red. Blue.

The color of Yumi and Yuri's eyes.

What was your real face before you were born?


The moon, coppery and full, is circled by a hazy corona. The landscape of the gardens is dark.

Saya races down the pathway, sandals pelting the cobblestones. She can't see Tórir anywhere. But she knows he is chasing her. She can feel him—a galvanic rush that replicates the night in Sakurazaka Street. She understands what it is now. A call of the blood, coming to her from all points of the compass.

A malignancy that signals her to be ready.

On cue, the deep voice fills her head.

"You can't get rid of me so easily."

Tórir, taunting her at an arm's reach. Always appearing and disappearing whenever she tries to exit the gardens, warding her back with claws and fangs. Meanwhile, on the other side of town, her family are vulnerable prey. She has no idea what Tórir intends for them. She only knows it can't be good.

Yumi. Yuri. Kai.

Haji.

It is a mantra into which she channels her urgency.

Please hold on.

She vaults past a hedgerow clung with red jasmine flowers. Their sweetish scent blends with the fermented reek of the lakeside, where the earth is a damp stew. Saya wades through the mud, sword aloft. She needs to reach the pavilion on the other side. If she can scale its walls, she can leap to the nearest rooftop, and escape. She needs to—fast—before Tórir closes on her.

"Tsk. Where are you off to?"

A spear flashes past Saya's body, embedding itself messily into the mud. Not a spear. A sharpened stick, wrenched off a tree. It is followed by a second one, and a third.

Adrenaline flaring, Saya dodges the projectiles. The last one nearly sinks into her thigh. She rolls out of the way, and the sharp point shreds past the fabric of her kimono, tearing a sizzling line across her skin. Blood leaps in a hot burst.

Saya grits her teeth. Directly beyond the pavilion is a chainlink fence. It stretches fifteen feet, topped with barbed knots. She sprints through the mud, hooking her fingers into the wires. She climbs it one-handed, clumsy but determined, her sword clutched in her free hand. She doesn't care that her body is an open target for more projectiles. Tórir can make a porcupine of her if it means she escapes.

"Not so soon."

A hand grabs her ankle. Saya drops with a thud, swinging around in the same movement, sword ready. Tórir smiles in the pale wash of moonlight. His gaze is hot and electric, radiating hunger. But if he is expecting her to cower, he will be disappointed.

Saya swings her sword straight at his neck. The blade cleaves through sinew and artery, blood splattering. Tórir doesn't even flinch. Before she can complete the arc and decapitate him, he seizes the hilt, his palm overlaying Saya's. A twist, and her bones fracture for the second time tonight, the wrist giving out with twiglike sharpness. Saya snarls, in a furor beyond pain. Wrenching free, she pivots on her right foot, launching the left in a crippling hook-kick across his skull.

Tórir stumbles, head spinning around from the force of her blow. Blood sprays from his mouth. He dabs at it with a mild shock. Then his eyes smolder, and he goes all in, the ambush becoming an assault.

Saya remembers the night at Lycèe De Cinq Flèches, when she'd battled the Phantom. The way he'd toyed with her, a cat sadistically defeathering a canary. That's what this feels like. She has years of training on her side, battle tested and street proven. She has the unlocked reflexes of her ancestors, her joints rolling smooth as oil in their sockets. She has her sublime pure rage, and a target to channel it into.

Except it isn't enough.

Each time, Tórir smiles and ducks around her sword-strikes. It's as if they're operating on different speeds: he on double-time, while she swims through a thick sluggishness of molasses. His hand sharpens into a claw, the tips hard as bone-handled blades. He dodges her swipes and answers with his own, powerful slashes to her arms and legs and belly. The pain sizzles through Saya, blood seeping through her clothes, dripping across the grass. Each swipe lingers, almost lovingly, as if he is a butcher carving up a succulent shank of meat. They are both gasping: she from the exertion and him from excitement. His eyes are worse than his claws, peeling her open, an obscene vivisection down to her depths.

What was your real face before you were born?

Then a vision collides with terrific force against her skull. Not a warning from her mother and aunt. Not a borrowed memory from Diva. This is a spiked mace that crunches her mind apart with its immediacy, three separate brains bleeding into hers, wired together by a single blood-bond.

Terror. Violence. Rage. Haji and Sachi and V, battling for their lives against creatures with Diva's face. Yumi collapsed in a sobbing heap over Yuri's body. Yuri, her skin deteriorating into bright-dark webbing, red threads scintillating outwards as her body thrashes in agony. Blood bursts into the capillaries of her eyes, the same dull reddish hue of the moon.

A portent of doom.

Saya falters. A half-blink later, Tórir's fist collides with her jaw, an uppercut so hard it feels as if her skull will burst into fragments. The world goes gray at the edges. Saya lurches backward, her sword clattering into the mud. In the next beat, Tórir slams her down, astride her body. His eyes give off a manic glow.

"Better than before," he says. "But you are still holding back. Tell me—is it consideration, or cowardice?"

Saya's breath jitters in her lungs. "My family."

"Hm?"

"What've you—done to my family?"

He smiles, all softness, but with an edge of mockery. "That was the bargain. Giving your nieces to IBM-UAWA—in exchange for keeping you to myself. They will kill one, and use the other as source material. Build their army—without the threat of her sister's blood." He looms in, his hand smoothing down her blood-streaked cheek, thumb resting possessively on the line of her pulse. "Foolish hubris on their part. Once I sire daughters off you, they will leave those pale imitations in the dust. You will lead them, Saya. Be the Red Queen at her zenith, as Sunako was."

A wave of hatred rolls through Saya. "Under your thumb—as Sunako never would be."

"I told you before. I prefer if you come of your own free will." The chilled surface of his scorn melts into hunger. "More than that. It would be my utmost desire. I had my fill of resistance with the Blue Queen. All that mewling and misery. It was never to my tastes."

His hand slides from her throat to her breast, cupping it with a soft encompassing forcefulness. Saya's body revolts into gooseflesh. Her rational mind is a flash-pot of rage. Yet the melding of their bodies is familiar as an old scar.

His thumb skims her nipple, which goes tight and tender. She shivers.

"Oh yes," he whispers, "it's much better if you're willing. Like you are with Haji. Sweetness and wickedness all braided together. I cannot say I have had that before. Your mother wasn't capable of it. Tepid as a puddle of water. And Sunako? A pure carnivore. She would gnaw the flesh off my bones before she truly let me possess her. But you…" He nuzzles her neck, his palm stroking her breast. "You would be all mine. Belong to me and no one else. And I would make you like it so very much."

Saya's paralysis reverts to desperation. She struggles harder—then gasps as his grip tightens on her body.

"Is this not to your taste?" he sneers. "Well, I can always accommodate."

His body melts out of its original form and into a new one: a fall of dark hair, rich as velvet. Eyes like the bluest shards of ice above sculpted cheekbones. An eerie half-perfect illusion.

Saya shudders, overcome by disgust.

"Stop it!"

"No? Perhaps a What-If, then?"

He transforms again: a suntanned face of angular boyishness, red hair swept into sharpish spikes, a gaze that burns hot with intensity. Then again: the features softening to angelic paleness, pretty as a portrait, blond curls falling like silk across thickly-fringed green eyes. His smile is a full-lipped invitation.

Rage wings through Saya. This is elaborate theater. A ruse warped into foreplay. He has already given IBM-UAWA the order to attack her family. Now he is simply savoring his triumph over her. Whether she comes willingly or not, it's all the same to him. His bottom line is a phalanx of pureblood Queens.

Then Tórir whispers, "Yielding would also be in your family's best interest."

"What?"

"Because of the poison." He reverts back to his original form. His two-toned eyes pierce hers. "Red Shield will waste time—and lives—flailing for a cure. But I already have it. Tucked away here—" he taps his temple, "—as part of my tutelage under the Red Queen. She taught me the power of wolfsbane. The ingredients to concoct the deyði vial. But also the secrets to neutralize its effects."

Saya's throat constricts. "You're lying!"

"Am I?" His fangs bare themselves in gleaming-white punctuation. "Call my bluff, then. Risk the lives of your nieces, and their Chevaliers. Risk your precious Haji's life. Imagine him cracking to pieces, with your name upon his lips." His voice descends to a whisper. "I can spare you all that. Contrive an antidote. I have the resources. I possess the skill. Your loved ones needn't suffer. Come with me, and I will call off IBM-UAWA's attack. Better yet, we can decimate them with one blow. Forge our own army. Our own family."

"I—"

He kisses her.

Their teeth clack, and the slither of unseen tongue from mouth to mouth should make Saya retch. Instead her skin burns. The kiss gets inside her, finds her raw spots and rubs them with the friction of a brushfire. His lips are cool, like Haji's, but with none of the tenderness. His hands are the same, going everywhere they shouldn't, knowing her in ways only Haji should.

A cheat-code stolen with a drop of her blood.

Stop, she tries to say. Except her mind and body are disconnected.

Then she thinks of Diva, trapped in her tower, broomstick-thin rays of sunlight glowing through the cobwebs while the thumping heaviness of Amshel's body crushes her to the floor. She thinks of the chilling vision of Yumi crouched over Yuri's cracking body. Thinks of her mother's warning to choose wisely—for her sake, and the sake of her daughters.

Saya's teeth catch Tórir's tongue. She bites.

Blood spurts copper-hot into her mouth. Tórir's scream vibrates through her bones.

He wrenches free, blood dribbling from his mouth, his tongue nearly sliced in half. Saya's fist rises at the same moment, knuckles caroming off his jaw, making his teeth snap together.

Tórir howls—and Saya throws him off.

Snatching up her sword, she considers killing him for a split second. But the vision of her nieces and Haji intrudes, and she lets impulse tug her in the opposite direction. Nimbly, she scales the chainlink fence, rabbiting across the empty stretch of road and vaulting a dumpster to the nearest rooftop, aiming herself in high-flying bounds at the stretch of glittering city lights.

Yumi. Yuri.

I'm on my way.


Yomitan, Nakagami District, Okinawa

Japan

Haji has felt rage before.

Like a cellist playing by the ear, he can classify emotion by the depth of the bass clef, the frisson of the treble, the pitch of the alto. The first is the lowest: he can go silent and tight-lipped after a spat with Saya, only to melt into a froth of fondness as soon as she kisses him. The second is the slow-build, a smokeless boil of pressure that traps itself inside him, letting out in violent bursts of retaliation against battles lost, friends fallen, lopsided bargains to stay alive at the cost of killing off leftovers of his own humanity, until the balance of power shifts and the war is finished, or he is. But the third… that is rage. An infinitude of hatred both dark and light, hidden beneath his stoicism like a mirror-shard from Anderson's Snow Queen, encasing his real self in ice.

Haji wonders: if his body were to be hit hard enough, its surface cracking away, what would lie beneath?

What was your real face before you were born?

He stands by the wall of the safehouse. Not a fixture but a sentry, all five senses attuned to threats. The building is musty and dank: chalk colored walls, windows inlaid in mesh, doors with multiple bolts. Every room has a tomblike odor common to places with no habituation. But the security systems are state-of-the-art, the armory and medical facilities fully stocked. Dee and David are poised likewise at the main entrance. Armed guards and a chopper circle the safehouse's perimeter.

Inside, it is deathly quiet. Yumi sits hugging her knees on a steel bench. Her face is streaked with tear-tracks. But the eyes are dry, cored so deeply into her skull it is as if they have shrunken from what she'd witnessed earlier. She doesn't blink when Kai speaks to her. When V sits beside her, enveloping her hand in his massive one, she doesn't stir.

Haji thinks of Saya, the night the Zoo burned down. Her whole body laminated by a glaze of shock. Yumi reminds him of that. Sachi is worse, frozen in a tin-soldier pose at the corridor, a vein throbbing down the side of his neck.

"I should've been there," he keeps whispering. "I should've been there."

Haji understands the feeling. The rage at his own limitations, because the only worthiness of a Chevalier's infallible powers is to protect his Queen.

The knowledge compounds the visceral horror of the scene.

In the medical bay, Yuri is dying.

Haji can see her from the circular window of the quarantine ward. She is strapped to a bed. Her body is inadequately bundled into yellow hospital pajamas. Beneath, her skin is cracked in red lattices: arms, thighs, neck, jaw. Froth bubbles at the edges of her lips. She is heavily sedated to keep off the convulsions. But a fine tremor runs through her body, a deep-rooted vibration from the very core of her. Her hands curl and uncurl, the way they used to when she was dozing as a child.

Yuri's own children…

Haji's jawbone clenches, fangs grinding side-to-side.

Julia performed the emergency cesarean an hour ago. A necessity, to keep the toxin from reaching the infants. He can trace the after-effects on Yuri's body. A twisting knot of pink rising above the waistband of her shorts like a serpent. Her daughters, still in their cocoons, have been placed in incubators. Their heartbeats are normal. Nothing aberrant in the ultrasounds. Julia says they will 'hatch' at their own time—not before, and not after.

The same way Yuri's fitful grip on life will loosen.

Not before. Not after.

"I should have been there." Sachi has drifted to the window. He puts his hand against the glass, palm flat, fingers spread, like a convict behind a Plexiglas barrier. "Why wasn't I there?"

"You couldn't have known," Kai rasps. While the past hours have calcified Haji into a wrathful hardness, they have somehow desiccated Kai. His whole body is like a length of dead muscle, patchworked in bruises and scalloped with stitches. His eyes are perfectly blank, not sightless but shadowy. "You were trying to buy time, so she and Yumi escaped."

"It was not enough." Sachi takes a hiccupping inhale, like a boy trying to swallow a bitter medicine. "They got away. Those monsters with Diva's face."

"Right when we'd gotten the upper-hand," V sighs glumly. "It's like they'd gotten a signal to retreat."

"The same thing happened with ours," Kai says. "Yumi killed two of 'em. But the third flew off."

"Then the snipers attacked you." V scratches his bristly chin. "You think the whole thing was set up?"

Kai frowns. "Set up how?"

"To draw the twins out in the open. Nab one. Nix the other."

"Me," Yumi whispers.

The men stare at her. Yumi rubs a knuckle across her swollen eyes. "They fired the tranq at me. Yuri shoved me out of the way. That's why it hit her." Her lower-lip trembles. "They were afraid I'd kill their clones. With me gone, they could shoot Kai and Dee, then take off with Yuri. Use her blood to make more."

"Saya," Kai breathes.

The name jolts Haji into a semblance of life. His eyes meet Kai's.

"They'll be after her for the same reason," the other man says. "She's in danger."

Haji nods.

Replaying the night from different angles, clues rearrange themselves with chilling clarity. Saya knew. She knew something was going to happen. She knew she was marked. But instead of letting him protect her, she'd jettisoned him. Sent him off to Yumi and Yuri as a borrowed bodyguard, and gone off by herself.

Gone where?

To IBM-UAWA?

To Tórir, and the torments guaranteed at his hands?

Haji tries to unthink it. But the signs are everywhere. The night she'd offered him her blood as a parting gift. The radio-silence she'd maintained while he was at Omoro. Earlier, when he'd swung by the villa, calling her name in desperation, she was nowhere. He could smell her departure hours ago, an aroma of lipgloss and a salt tang of tears hovering in the air. Her peridot engagement ring lay untouched on the dresser.

Saya.

What have you done?

Haji's rage masses into a missile of momentum. He jerks from his slouch against the wall.

"Kai," he says. "Stay with Yumi. I must look for Saya."

Yumi's eyes widen. "Haji, no!"

"Yumi—"

She clutches his sleeve the way she'd done in her childhood, whenever he was readying to depart for a mission. "Please. What if they attack you too? What if—?"

The silence is blasted-open by the shriek of alarms. The entrance door swings open. Dee and David hurry inside.

"We've got company," Dee announces.

Renewed tension whip-saws through the air. Everyone exchanges looks.

"What is it?" Kai dares. "More clones?"

Dee shakes her head. "We're not sure. The scanners have picked up a single intruder. Moving in at crazy speed."

"Shit. Are the entrances covered?"

"Our agents are locked and loaded. But if the hostile infiltrates the first zone, we'll need major firepower."

V flexes his arms to loosen the lock of neck and shoulders. Beside him, Sachi idly cracks his knuckles.

"We'll handle it," V says. "Keep your guard up. It could be a diversion."

"Or a trap," Sachi murmurs.

Haji exhales. Trap or not, they must subdue the threat. Then he must find Saya. Find her, and shake her hard, until all those misaligned shards of martyrdom inside her dislodge themselves, and she explains what exactly she was thinking. He will do it, once she is here. Once, and not if, because he refuses to yield to the possibility that she has been captured. Or worse.

Sachi and V stalk down the corridor. Haji glides silently after them.

Midway, it hits him—

Haji.

The voice—Saya's voice—lodges deep as a fishhook into his brainpan. A voice not spoken, but sensed. Haji stops on a sharp intake of air. Between a Queen and Chevalier, telepathic communiqué is no rarity. But this is the first time he's felt the connection so powerfully. As if her words, her breath, are as real as the room itself.

Haji.

Let me in.

His eyes widen. Suddenly, Saya's presence is maddingly visceral. Here. He feels it as a mechanism in his body, a code of intimacy activated by the fingerprint of her blood. Blood he had imbibed that enchanted night, deep draughts of it quaffed down from her neck. He feels that blood now, in his veins but also as a massing force, a sensory heat-wave.

A primal spark of homecoming.

"Call off the guards," he says.

V and Sachi turn to squint at him.

"Bruh, what?" V says.

"Haji," Sachi begins, convinced the elder Chevalier has gone doo-lally. "It is too risky to—"

Haji is already racing past them. "Call off the guards."

"Haji—you can't just—"

"Do it." He spares them only the briefest glance. "That is no enemy. That is Saya."


Yabuchi Island

Uruma, Okinawa Prefecture 904-2304

Japan

When Tórir steps past the doorway, Carsten gasps, and claps a hand over his mouth.

"Jesus! What happened to you?"

Tórir doesn't answer. His skin is streaked with mud; his clothes are caked with it. His mouth is still speckled with blood from where Saya nearly bit off his tongue. It has healed already. Yet the sensation fizzes in an electrifying lather: her hot mouth, her sharp little teeth, the lush ferocity of her body beneath his.

The memory makes Tórir's sensorium seethe, and it is the best he has felt in months. Longer.

Not since the Red Queen first took me...

Carsten is blabbering about something. Tórir tunes it out, and goes to the wash closet. On autopilot, he strips off his clothes and steps into the shower. Scrubs off in the divine heat of the sluicing water, before toweling off and changing into the extra pair of clothes he's ordered Carsten to keep in the wardrobe. Lately, he's spent morning and night at the facility: tenacious and tireless in his work alongside Dr. Collins and Carsten in the laboratory, or during visits from the mild-mannered Lee Wèizhuāng on behalf of IBM-UAWA, or conferences with the smirking Van to detail his progress on Project Epsilon.

Their hard work has come to fruition. But Tórir cares not for the rewards. His mind, functioning in optimal secrecy, was devising its own schemes, barely distracted by the steady mania of the months-long routine.

Saya.

It is time to take her.

His gambit at Fuzhou Gardens was unsuccessful. But that hardly matters. There are any number of ways he can capture her, depending on how fast he wants to be, or how much physical and emotional misery he is game to let her endure beforehand. Each plan promises its own sweet satisfactions. But he is tired of weighing one ploy against the other; he is out of time. So is she, with her Long Sleep nearing. He is ready to make his move.

Stepping out of the bathroom, aromatic curls of steam wafting after him, Tórir heads for the elevator. Carsten is still there, his mouth in perpetual motion.

"...sent out the proto-Queens..."

Tórir pushes the button. The cabin arrives with a quiet Ding. The doors slide open.

"...couldn't complete their objective..."

Indifferent, Tórir steps into the cabin, its interior featureless. Carsten scurries after him. His pudgy body exudes sweat; the air holds a stench of rising panic.

"...snipers shot the wrong Queen... IBM-UAWA won't like this..."

Tórir stares straight ahead. The elevator descends past the building's basement, to the subterranean den beneath. The Antechamber, as it has been nicknamed. Yet, to Tórir, it reminds him nightmarishly of Home. Not his home on the Faroe Islands. His centuries-old prison after the battle with the Red Queen. The cavern burrowed into the island's bedrock. The smothering dark that was alive with sounds: the slitherings of the habu, the skitterings of bats, the tricklings of water. The place where he'd remained, in a disoriented stasis, until he was freed into limitless life.

"...already received a call from Van..." Carsten is saying. "...the higher-ups are pissed..."

Tórir says nothing. The elevator reaches its destination with a quiet rumble. The doors open, and for a moment everything outside is steeped in almost perfect darkness. Then Tórir steps out, and hits a switch.

The spidery network of wires overhead ignites the infra-red bulbs. In the blistering radiance, the space is revealed to be a narrow fissure carved into the belly of the earth. The air is ripe with the stench of salt and fermenting urine. Cameras are fitted into the ceiling: the walls are hollowed out into hi-tech cages: thick-walled and tight-sealed.

And swarming inside them: a firefly glow of blue eyes.

Tórir smiles.

"...You should get in touch with IBM-UAWA..." Carsten is saying. "...They'll cut off our funding if..."

Tórir understands what Carsten is saying. And what he's saying tells him quite enough.

"...we're in deep shit, man! You gotta..."

Tórir lifts a lazy fist and knocks Carsten to the floor.

"Ow!"

Carsten tumbles like a sack of lard. Blood dribbles from his mouth.

"Tórir—what the hell're you—?"

"Thank you, Carsten."

"Wh-what?"

Tórir glides down the corridor. In excavating the Antechamber, the workers had carved out the bare rudiments of a design into the rocks. The cavern is shaped like a hexagon, and bisected by a narrow walkway. It is sparsely-lit, the infra-red bulbs dangling at intervals, so patches of the space are in complete blackness. But the feeble light is enough to delineate the contours of the cages—and their occupants.

Chiropteran Queens.

Dozens of them.

They huddle in the shit-crusted enclosures. Each cell is illuminated by a bare bulb; the humidity of their recycled breath hangs in a murky corona around the light. Through the bars, their muscular bodies glisten with moisture. It is the drugs. They keep them pliant, but never truly at rest. Hands and feet spasm; lips open and close. No words come, but that's expected. In the gloaming, Tórir can see the glistening stubs in their mouths, where the tongues have been cut out and cauterized.

Who needs slaves that talk back?

"Tórir—why'd you hit me? What the fuck—?"

Speaking of...

Carsten has climbed clumsily to his feet. He is panting in the fetid air: half-outrage, half-terror. It is evident that he doesn't yet comprehend his fate. No surprise. He's already demonstrated himself a foolish child. Befriending a monster, and daring to treat him as an equal. A friend. As if friendship was ever in Tórir's capacity to comprehend.

What was your real face before you were born?

Tórir's smile widens to show fangs.

"Thank you, Carsten," he repeats. "Thank you for your service."

"Wh-what?"

"Without you, I could never have accomplished this." Tórir gestures to the cages. "I could never have recaptured my dream."

"You're... You're welcome?"

Carsten still doesn't have the sense to turn tail and run. Instead, he edges closer. Maybe he can't comprehend the message his lizard brain is transmitting. Or maybe he can—and doesn't believe it. The genius misfit always overcomes all obstacles, doesn't he?

Tórir sneers inwardly, then reaches out to squeeze Carsten's shapeless shoulder and move in on his ear, whispering into its piglet-pink whorl. "Tell me, Carsten. Have you ever seen a Queen feed?"

"Huh?"

"A true Queen. In her natural habitat."

"I—"

Carsten's eyes meet Tórir's. Whatever he sees there makes dread steal across his features. His heart beats like a drum. The rhythm saturates the foul atmosphere with hypnotic musicality.

Of course the Queens in the cages sense it. It is an instinctual arithmetic. They are calculating the odds of Carsten's survival and arriving at zero. The possibility excites them. They paw at the steel mesh, lisping and cooing. Bottomless hunger radiates off them: a pressure massing through the space, a darkness gathering like a storm-cloud at the horizon. Maybe, like Tórir, they are intrigued by the succulent plentitude of blood in Carsten's body: beating in the veins at his temples, pooling in his beer-belly and back-flab, lapping at the folds of flesh under his chin, a buttery cushion for his jugular.

What would happen if Tórir slashed it open? Blood spraying everywhere, a rainfall of sweetness like a burst melon. That would be a sight to see.

"T-T-Tórir." Carsten's voice is a jitter. "Tórir. What's going on?"

"Nothing at all."

Tórir reaches for the panel at the end of the corridor. The console to unlock the cages. He enters a sequence of digits. A high-pitched beep sounds off. With a pressurized hiss, the cages spring open.

Alarmed, Carsten jerks back. "Tórir! You can't—"

Inside the cells, the Queens' glazed little eyes sharpen into focus. Their lips part, a childlike ardency in their expressions that is at odds with the lascivious darting of their tongue-stubs between white fangs. Then their chilling laughter washes over the caverns, and Carsten comprehends his fate.

"No! No no no—"

He turns to flee. Tórir trips him up with a well-timed boot.

Carsten falls flat, a quivering bowlful of jelly.

"Tórir! Please, I—"

The Queens have already lunged, tailed by their silky laughter. Carsten's comical scream—"Eeeeeeee!"—is followed by liquid sounds of carnage, and dark gouts of blood splashing the walls, the copper tang mingling with the room's rotten stench.

Thirty minutes later, clean-scrubbed and well-fed, Tórir ascends the elevator again.

When the doors open, Lee Wèizhuāng—the representative from IBM-UAWA, cloaked as always in his uniform of professional blandness and a sour whiff of cats—is waiting for him.

"Mr. Tórir," he says politely. "Have you seen Mr. Andresen?"

Tórir shakes his head.

"Ah. No matter. If you don't mind, there is some paperwork I would like you to look over. If you'd be so kind—"

He gestures, obsequious, to the nearby office. Tórir complies.

While below, in the simmering darkness of the Antechamber, his army fortifies itself for the war.


Yomitan, Nakagami District, Okinawa

Japan

In the room's washed-out pallor, Saya stands alone, staring through the window at Yuri's wasting body. Blood of a shocking darkness streaks her skin. Her eyes are red-rimmed, the lines of her face wavering. It is like seeing her through a glaze of rain-sheeted glass.

Standing at the doorway, Haji waits for her to turn around.

She doesn't.

Instead, she whispers, "This is my fault."

Haji opens his mouth, then closes it.

When she'd first entered the safehouse, she was nearly sagging from exhaustion. The family had wept, and embraced her, glad she was unhurt. Haji had stayed apart, watching their reunion. Every particle in him yearned to touch her. But Saya's gaze kept skirting his, refusing to make eye-contact. He could rationalize it as disorientation—she was bloodsplattered in the blatant aftermath of a battle. Her family were on her at once, their despair for Yuri making a thick bubble, trapping Saya inside it.

Now, that bubble is a forcefield. Her demeanor is the same, a doomsday darkness beyond ordinary dimensions.

Where has she been? Haji wants to ask. Except her body is an evidentiary treasure-box: the redline of adrenaline abating into tiny tremors, the salty reek of a body in recent distress, the heartrate that would make an EKG monitor do cartwheels. Beneath that is something else. Lost and found. An absence of the unearthly joules that fizzed around her in the early days, a familiar presence overtaken by an unfamiliar one.

It is gone, but she isn't emptied. Her scent is salted with a complex olio that makes him suspect—

It can't be.

"Saya." It is a grating rasp. "What happened?"

She doesn't answer right away. Her fingers trace the Plexiglas wall, as if to reach through and caress Yuri.

"Maybe it's punishment," she whispers, "Because I failed to stop Tórir."

Tórir?

Haji's senses sharpen like a scimitar.

"Did he attack you?"

"I went to see him. At Fukushūen. We fought."

Dismay inverts into anger. His hands clench into fists. "You swore you would not act recklessly!"

"You made me promise," she says. "But I never said yes."

"Saya—"

"I couldn't let him live, Haji. Not while knowing what he could do to my family."

Family.

Something stirs behind her delicate facial map. Something beyond the surface of accrued blood and guilt. The hairs rise on the back of Haji's neck.

"Saya," he says. "Tell me the truth. What happened at Fukushūen?"

"He didn't rape me."

Relief seizes him like vertigo. But he cannot allow himself to succumb. Not when the signals of her body are so disquieting.

"So then—" His focus bullseyes on her belly. "How?"

Saya sucks in a breath. Excitement—just a flicker, then gone—crosses her profile, and Haji feels the echo behind his own ribs. A secret resonance of possibility not yet realized.

Slowly, she turns. Her eyes are dark with unshed tears. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry?"

"I made the choice for both of us."

Her palms are starfished across her belly. The gesture detonates through Haji with the full force of its significance. His heart skips with a truth too tantalizingly close to terror.

"Saya..."

He seeks her gaze, but she withdraws it. "I checked with Julia. She wants to run extra tests. But she's compared the notes with my old readings. With Yuri's. She told me—" He can feel her holding her breath. Then a gust. "She says I'm pregnant."

Pregnant.

Haji's expression collapses into blankness as he processes this. And processes. And processes. He fears he might be struggling on the pin for eternity. Then their gazes meet and the prolonged pause cracks into words.

"How—" He swallows. "How far along?"

"About four days."

His knees feel weak. Any second now she'll snap her fingers and break the spell. Or bash his head into the wall.

Either way, he'd be powerless to resist.

"The children," he breathes. "They are mine?"

"Who else? It's not like I have any other takers!" She lets off a laugh, so shaky it verges on a sob. "I know it's the worst time. I also don't care. Julia knows. But I haven't told anyone else. Not even Kai. I wanted to keep it a secret. Until we've killed Tórir. I don't want him, or anyone, taking this away from me. From us. Not until—"

She doesn't finish.

In an eyeblink, Haji closes the space between them. Catching her in his arms to whirl her in a circle, not a dance but the narrowest save from the cascading tip of disaster. Squeezing her hard, he absorbs the throb of her heart. No sign of a second pair overlapping it. It's too soon. But her scent is strange—that alloy of hormones ripened by body-heat into a soup of aldehydres and alkenols. Her skin is fizzy, as if she is running a high fever.

To cool her off, he dots a dozen kisses across her face. The contours of her profile are like the grooves of a key, fitting inside his chest to unlock a chamber of purest joy. Nothing comes close to it. Not the days of azure-bright picnics and candle-lit cello lessons in their childhood. Not the shot of dizzying adrenaline when his wings first erupted to slice in monstrous swathes through the night sky. Not the lightning-bolt that lit up the Chrysler Tower and Amshel's exoskeleton in a macabre Halloween ornament. Not the impossibly sweet slide of Saya's lips against his, or her crooning sighs when his tongue first circled the crinkled-rose blush of her nipples. Not the night she finally offered him her throat, the pulse singing a siren's song beneath her skin and his fangs an itching temptation and oh, didn't she smell divine...?

Squeezing her hard, he breathes her in now, deep grateful draughts. The words break loose thickly from his chest. "Why did you…?"

"Hm?"

"Why did you not tell me?"

She shivers. "I needed to do something first."

"Do what?"

The florescent lights catch in the red facets of her eyes. "I needed... to see my mother."

"What?"

"Haji." She touches a fingertip to his lips. "I promise I'm not crazy. I need you to hear me out. Please?"

He nods with reluctance. But as she begins, a day-dreamy sense of unreality passes over him. He's heard similar strangeness from her lips, and never dismissed it at face value. Tales of sorcerer's snakes and dead dynasties and a ghost residing in Saya's bones. But this is beyond the pale. The Qabalistic ambiguity of pathworking. A yuta whose human skin conceals a supernatural prowess. A space outside of time, where Saya held dialog with her ancestors.

Once, when she brings up Diva's exorcism, he dares to interrupt. But she pleads with her eyes to let her finish.

When it is over, Haji tries to keep his cool. To be impartial, open-minded. Except his mind stutters and comes up blank. It's not that her explanation makes no sense. The opposite. It makes too much sense. It accounts for the …absence… around her. A rollback to the steady sweetness that is Saya—not a splintered shell, her eyes defined by disconnection and daydreams, with an eerie vibe of the otherworldly that he could never shake off.

That vibe is gone.

What was your real face before you were born?

They stare at each other for long moment. His eyes go from her belly to the necklace dangling at her breast. The rock—a final fragment of Diva—glitters surreally.

"So?" she swallows. "Do you believe me, or not?"

"Saya…"

He can't begin to answer.

"I know it's not our way," she says. "But this isn't about belief. It's about defeating Tórir."

"Saya, I think—"

"What?"

Dozens of conflicting impulses wing through Haji. They are flattened by the familiar heaviness of resignation. "I think we need to summon reinforcements."

Saya opens her mouth to ask, "Who?" Then she understands. Quietly, "I'll call him."

"So long as he is of use."

"He has to be." Saya's attention shifts past Haji, to the ruination of Yuri's body. "We have no other options."


Next installment: The Countdown Begins.

Hope y'all enjoyed! Review, pretty please! :)