So, I've been wanting my updates to stay within at most one month of one another for each particular story, but it seemed I just couldn't make it happen for this one. Either way, I hope you'll appreciate the update!
Chapter Eight: A Dangerous Mind
"Motherfucker…" Kaiba hissed. He cradled his arm close to his body and lurched into a standing position. It hurt like a bitch to even breath. He tooth a moment to suck air in and out through his teeth before he began walking forward. The pain in his wrist and the quickly draining adrenaline left him dizzy and nauseous, so he took a moment to rest against the wall until most of the queasy feeling faded.
No way in hell would he be able to ride his motorcycle back like this.
Thank god for ambidexterity, he thought dryly as he pulled out his phone again and speed-dialed.
"Roland, I am currently unable to ride my motorcycle back. I need someone to retrieve it for me and I also need someone to come pick me up." He grimaced at how tight and breathless his own voice sounded.
"Yes, Master Kaiba. Where is the bike?"
He didn't bother asking about Seto Kaiba's location - after one too many kidnapping attempts, he'd made it a habit to wear a GPS tracker everywhere he went.
"Do you remember that run-down game shop? It's there."
"Roger." A moment of silence. "Do you need medical attention, Master Kaiba?"
Blue eyes, tight around the corners, stared down. Black and blue and purple was starting to gather at his wrist, as well as swelling and localized redness. It didn't look too promising. "Yes. I may have sprained or fractured my wrist." He limped out of the alleyway. "Maybe other injuries. It's hard to tell when I ache all over," he commented with no small amount of dry wit. "I was already contacted by the team assigned with collecting Doctor Bakura. I need you to get the message out that no one will engage with anyone suspected of being infected by an organism. Not until we get more information. They are incredibly dangerous, and it is nearly impossible to reason with their hosts when they have such ability to interfere."
"Understood." A quick breath. "A vehicle has been dispatched to pick you up. An extra passenger is also there to drive the bike back to wherever you wish."
"Hn." Kaiba grunted.
"Will that be all, Master Kaiba?"
"No. I want you to gather all of the surviving researchers from my father's team. Hopefully they learned enough to give us some sort of advantage against these things. That'll be all," and he hung up.
He scrubbed his free hand across his face, careful to avoid any tender spots. What a long fucking week.
Yugi was breathless with fear and anger and frustration, and he wasn't sure how much of it was his own. But the beast ran without pause, faster than ever. Each building was thrown behind them in long gray streaks. Yugi could feel his heart pounding like huge wings in his ears.
The beast was badly shaken.
Whatever. We have more important things to worry about now.
The memory of those words echoed in his head like ripples on the surface of a pond.
There are others like you, Yugi decided to think directly to the black in his veins.
"Yes."
How many?
"I do not know. But, currently, there is only one that I know of that he could have possibly been referring to." A pause as they lunged over an intersection. "The Devourer."
Pale white hair whipped about wildly. Way up here, the wind was fierce and cold. But the thin boy perched on the edge of the roof seemed unaffected.
Bloodshot brown eyes stared up at the building before him.
"He overpowers others like us, overwhelms them into submission and then absorbing them into himself. Each time, with each victim, he grows in power."
Unblinking, he tilted his head. This host was physically better suited for his needs, but the previous had much more important information trapped inside his head.
But it was brought here.
KaibaCorp Tower.
"If you think I am ruthless… well, let's just say that he has me beat in all aspects."
Ghostly white skin was stained pink and brown by blood, and fine-boned fingers tightened around the edge of the concrete. Veins pulsed black, and then that roiling darkness was seeping outwards. A black beast grinned up at the seemingly endless tower of glass. So many jagged teeth snarled with delight, and the beast skulked away, toward the opposite edge of the building.
"He knows only lust for power and blood."
Eerie eyes, white and oblong and reptile and heartless. Then it was turning again, a split-second before it was sprinting. Its huge feet pounded audibly on the tar roof. With a deep, maniacal laugh that vibrated the very air, it lunged over the edge in a wide arch.
"Seto Kaiba is a fool if he thinks he can stop him."
Huge black claws slammed into thick glass, pierced it. Spiderweb cracks veined out, but the beast was already on the move. Powerful arms and legs pumped as if the beast were only sprinting across the ground as it scaled up the glass wall. Small shards of glass fell down, but the sturdy stuff stayed mostly in place even as it was fractured by indomitable talons.
A snarled laugh, a long, pick, slick tongue lolling out of a maw of razor sharp teeth.
Yes, this was more like it. This was what a perfect host felt like.
He'll stand no chance, that one.
His office phone started ringing as soon as he took his seat.
Kaiba groaned, and reached his free arm - the one not wrapped in a sling - forward to pick it up.
"Mr. Kaiba! Check the outside cameras! There's-"
But he already had the feeds pulled up onto his monitor. "Jesus Christ."
It was scaling right up the side of KaibaCorp Tower.
He blanched. He must've really pissed the thing off, and now it was here to finish the job.
But then he looked closer.
It was bigger than the one Yugi had in him, nearly by fifty percent. The strange, pupiless eyes on its oblong face were white, not red, and it was a murkier, wetter black.
It was…
"Doctor Bakura…" he breathed out.
"What do we do?" the voice on the other end cried.
"Get into the panic rooms immediately. This thing will kill without hesitation. Put the entire building on lockdown."
Slicked with sweat and pulsing with adrenaline, Kaiba slammed the phone into the cradle and stood up.
What could it possibly want? Out of all the buildings it could choose to climb up…
It didn't seem like a coincidence, not to Seto Kaiba.
Glass burst and then scattered like so many solid, sharp raindrops. It had taken but a couple of blows from large, black fists to shatter the thick window, and then it was climbing inside, so nimble for something so brutish in size and manner. It was crouching amongst the broken glass.
"So fast, like insects scrambling for shelter," he rumbled, and it trailed off with a throaty, inhuman chuckle. "As they should."
A laboratory. They were keeping the puzzle box in a laboratory.
"Where art thou… Pharaoh?"
"We were sealed away before he could manage to make me his next meal. Though I know, with determination such as his, he still hunts for me."
But there was one, a shaking and shivering woman quivering in the bathroom. It took a half-hearted tackle for him to take down the locked door.
"Oh, little mouse. Come here."
A loud wail, and slimy black lips parted wider into a blood-curdling grin.
"I don't want to hurt you," he rumbled. He towered easily over the stall and peered down at her.
Streaked with tears and snot and despair, she looked utterly pathetic and wholly delicious.
The long pink tongue rolled out, and she cried louder.
Thick claws curled around the upper edge of the door, and but a twitched from corded arms and he was ripping the door right off. It came with a horrible metallic shriek that easily muffled the woman's piercing scream. He tossed the door - crumpled like waste paper - aside, and one massive foot stepped within, and he was looming over her.
"Do you want to live, little mouse?" He rumbled, and his tongue flicked out - nearly a meter long - to brush her wet, salty cheeks. They taste so much better when they are soaked in tears, he decided.
She shuddered and sobbed, but she managed a shaky nod.
Black receded, and hovering above her was a pale, delicate boy with bloodshot eyes.
"Then you'll tell me where the laboratory is."
Kaiba's eyes widened when he saw the figure stalking about the halls of KaibaCorp Tower. White hair, ruffled and unkempt. Pale skin stained pink and brown with blood.
Ryou Bakura. Doctor Bakura's only living child.
That means the remains…
The beast had devoured its previous host.
A woman, shaking with fear - visible even through the security cameras - glancing back at her captor with wide, horrified eyes.
It seemed that it had gotten itself a guide. No matter how unwilling.
Where did it want her to take it?
His presence behind her was oppressive in the elevator, and her finger shook as she extended it to press the button.
"T-The doors past the elevator terminal will be locked. I-I don't have clearance to get past them," she whimpered, gripping the railing as her knees threatened to give out under the weight of her mortal fear.
"Worry not. Doors are no obstacle for me," he chuckled darkly.
His voice reminded her of those voice encryptors. Multi-toned, like several voices speaking at once. Deep and horrid and malevolent. His voice dripped with delighted, depraved malice. He said he would spare her if she helped him, but she doubted it. He would surely kill her after he got what he wanted, she was certain.
Ding, and, stumbling and breathless, she led him out of the elevator. Just as she had said, the doors before them where sealed shut. The researchers had cardkeys, she knew.
But this slight, pale boy stepped forward, and his delicate hands curled around the door handles. Black pulsed along the veins on his arms, and with what seemed like the slightest tug, he was wrenching the doors off their hinges as if he were yanking a tablecloth off a dining table. She shuddered with horror. He could probably tear a man in half with a quarter as much effort.
Immediately, alarms blared, shrill, banshee-like, and the boy - the monster - snorted with annoyance.
He discarded the crumbled doors to the side.
He went to cross the threshold, and her instincts seized the moment. She darted back, dodged into the fortuitously still-open elevator, and pressed a button.
He grinned, maniacal and dark over his shoulder, but it was cut off by the doors sliding closed. Her sigh of relief was a cry, and she collapsed against the wall of the elevator with a sob.
Kaiba let out a breath when he saw his employee dart into the safety of the elevator.
"Thank god," he muttered, scrubbing a hand over his face.
The monster wearing Ryou's face only grinned, unhinged, rather like an escapee from some asylum than the mild-mannered boy he was supposed to be. He advanced through the threshold.
The laboratories? What could he possibly want there?
And then it struck him all at once.
The puzzle box.
He was looking for the other organism.
But that one was long gone. It was wherever it had taken Yugi after their alleyway encounter. The only way it could have known about it was… if…
If it had access to Reiji Bakura's thoughts and memories.
With a snarl that rippled over the speakers, the beast advanced farther, tearing off doors and staring into each laboratory and supply closet and storage room as it went. Kaiba gulped. A few more doors and it would find where they had decided to keep the box. It was still under continuous study and scrutiny. The technology alone -
And then the beast paused at its current door. With a chilling, animal-like turn of its head, it looked farther down the hallway.
"There you are."
The words drifted, rough and gravelly, over the speakers. A growling, undulating chuckle, and it stepped toward that door. Hinges screamed in protest, a glass window shattered under the attention, and the door was cast aside as if it were nothing more than garbage. He stalked inside. And paused.
The heavy golden puzzle box was sitting on a table. Opened.
Empty.
Black pulsed around his figure. But a swing of his arm and a blood-curdling roar, the box was flying across the room and smashing into the glass window of a cabinet.
"No! Where is he?!"
A dark surge, wet slime, and a monster stood in Ryou's place. A jaw dropped open, distended wide, dozens of sharp teeth parted like some nightmare-fueled bear trap, another angry bellow that made instruments shiver in their cabinets.
"You have escaped me for the last time!"
The fear vibrating through their bond shook Yugi to his core.
The beast was genuinely afraid of this other… parasite.
If it comes to it, I'm sure we can fight him off, Yugi thought, mostly to himself.
"I have little hope of that."
What? So you're saying that we're doomed?
"More or less."
The beast basically bored a hole back to the outside, roaring and raging all the while.
Kaiba thought it was safe to say that the beast was not a happy camper.
The tore and smashed its way through the bowels of KaibaCorp tower. Black limbs extended into solid shapes, resembling blades or axes, to cleave through doors it decided it didn't have enough time to rip down.
Kaiba had figured it all wrong.
He'd thought that they would be equal threats, did not think that they would have differences in abilities or strength.
He was wrong.
This thing wearing Ryou's body was… indescribably dangerous. It was larger, stronger… angrier. It had rage like a mad bull, and violent intent like a rabid dog. Yugi could seemingly curb the brutal urges of his passenger, but Ryou had no such control.
With a gulp, he palmed his clammy face.
The beast finally crashed through a glass window to leap outside, and it quickly fell out of view of his camera.
He had to find a way to combat them, and fast.
Or all of Domino City would be on the menu.
"Thinking he can just toss me aside like that… little shit will see what's what…" Gozaburo grumbled. That annoying prick of a so-called son might have wrested control from his grasp, but there were still innumerable little moles on his side. Money and fear were the segues of the business world, and Gozaburo still had both in his grasp.
As if cued in to his thoughts, his cell rang.
"What's going on?" He snapped, impatient for the news.
"There's another organism. It just broke into KaibaCorp Tower. It left but a few minutes ago."
"And the other one?"
"We don't know it's location. This one seems to be searching for it. You… you should have seen it, Mr. Kaiba. It was magnificent."
"I want it," Gozaburo growled. "I don't care what you have to do. Assemble a collection team and get me that symbiote. Steal it right from under that punk's nose if you must."
Despite Seto Kaiba's swift, decisive, and rather elegant takeover of KaibaCorp, there was, of course, still a faction within the company that immediately sided with their previous president and CEO. However, it could be said that these people were not following Gozaburo out of loyalty or any other sort of feeling of devotion.
No, Gozaburo Kaiba was a tyrant, but still within his grasp were materials the likes of which could never see the light of day.
These people cowered in Gozaburo's shadow for self-preservation, not out of admiration.
Some rallied under Gozaburo's flag simply because they were cowardly old men who feared the power, strength, and youthful cunning Seto Kaiba was already bringing into play.
Seto Kaiba had already made it obvious that he was there to effect revolution and innovation in KaibaCorp. It had grown stagnant in recent years, stale as old men in board rooms became lazy and fermented in their wealth.
New, Seto Kaiba needed new ideas, new faces, new energy to revitalize the company and bring it back to its former glory. Old men who wished for nothing more than to spend their money on pretty women and fast cars would simply not meet his needs.
In other words, the board members felt a purge on the horizon.
It had started with his own father, and, one by one, he would hunt them down and expel them from their places in power. He was ruthless, and he was tenacious, a lone wolf, but with cunning such as his, it was only a matter of time before he had a pack of young followers trailing at his heels.
Yes, they were about to bear witness to the slaughtering of a dynasty, only for a new empire to be built upon its ashes.
And how they feared it.
So when they received the call from Gozaburo, they rushed to appease him.
Yes, they would dispatch men in pursuit of the second creature, despite Seto's orders to stand down until further knowledge was gained. With this victory, leverage could finally sway in Gozaburo's favor and their perches would be secure.
But little they knew of the beast they were dealing with.
It was within minutes of the beast's departure from that window that the team was dispatched. They spared no expense - drones scoured the skies above, their tiny electronic eyes scanning the streets - armed and armored men piled into black vans. Pelting across rooftops, the organism was easy to track in broad daylight.
Though following it was a different matter altogether.
But the beneath the armor, the men perspired, though not from the heat.
They'd heard the tales, the stories of gore and the rumors of missing men who had been in their places not days before. Perhaps instinctual, some primal animal sense not quite lost by human evolution, they felt it deep within.
They were lambs being sent off to the slaughter.
Guns don't work.
Tasers don't work.
What were they supposed to do?
None voiced their concerns. They swallowed them down, clutched their guns tighter.
Like a child might clutch a blanket.
Perhaps he had gone numb from the pure, terrified anxiety clouding his thoughts, but Yugi suddenly noticed the buildings rushing by below them.
He recognized them.
Where… where are we going?
No response.
Where are you taking us!?
Though deep inside he knew, and his heart stuttered, horrified, in his chest, as they loped closer and closer to a certain apartment building.
Hey! Stop! No! Turn around! Right now!
But the beast didn't listen. If anything, it pushed harder, as if the physical exertion could somehow keep Yugi from taking control or holding them back.
You've put enough people in danger already!
Yugi was frozen, paralyzed. He could only watch as they, nimble as a flea, leapt onto that particular roof. They did not continue on as Yugi had hoped they would, did not use this building simply as a stepping stone in their twisted, aerial version of Frogger.
No, they scaled down the brick siding as easily as a gecko or spider. The black receded from Yugi's skin, but he was not yet the master of his own body.
The door to the vestibule was locked - of course, a guest usually could not get in without being buzzed in by one of the residents. But instead of ripping the door off as Yugi feared it might, the beast only lifted a hand. A pulse, black slime filling in the keyhole, and then the audible click of the deadbolts disengaging.
Yugi watched with wide eyes.
Not for the first time, everything felt suddenly unreal, like he had just unlocked a cheat on a video game that allowed him to pick any lock.
He tensed his muscles when the door swung open by - apparently - his own hand. That rush of cold, the one that compelled him forward just like a hard shove, or perhaps a hard tug, like a puppet on strings. He was stumbling through the halls, and the growling in his head seemed to ripple his brain matter.
"Why are you being so difficult?!" that rumbling voice snapped between his ears.
First my grandpa, then Kaiba… Yugi strained back.
The closer they got to that one door, the harder Yugi fought, thrashing against the cold chains wrapped tight about him. They collapsed against the wall. Skin blotched red in some areas and pale in others. Cold sweat, panting breaths.
Please… no…
"She will help us, Yugi."
At what cost?
He'd lost everything so suddenly. His normal life, his peace of mind, his privacy, his grandfather. Putting everyone and everything in danger. Exhausted, physically and emotionally, he surrendered, and they staggered forward and slumped bodily against her door. Trembling white knuckles lifted up and rapped faintly against the wood.
With their advanced senses, they could hear the shuffling and breathing on the other side. Yugi closed his eyes tightly.
I know I'm going to regret this.
They dragged themselves off of the door as footsteps came nearer.
The door opened, and Yugi guiltily met wide blue eyes.
"Yugi, what are you doing here?"
"Hi, Tea."
The beast perched from the rafters and eye the carnage below with something akin to delight. Perhaps they thought it was fortuitous that they had cornered him in a warehouse, but they had only met their doom.
A long, slick tongue swiped over gore-stained teeth. He hadn't such a large meal since the desert.
Strange little things floated about. Drones, his host's memories and thoughts told him. They were far away and faint, like whispers in the fog. The best, for sure. A shrill ringing caught his attention, and he looked back down to the scattered viscera and huge pools of blood.
He jumped down. Gore splashed up about him.
He ducked low to a discarded, shredded piece of clothing. A cell phone.
Black dissolved and there stood a pale boy, whose hand easily crept into the pocket and pulled out a cell phone. It wasn't too difficult to answer, and he lifted it up to his ear. He said nothing, but he could hear his own controlled breathing fuzz into the receiver.
"Let's make a deal. You want that other symbiote, right?"
A rumbling growl.
"Then I'm sure you wouldn't mind some help. But only for a price."
A pause, and then that voice, dichotomous and hair-raising. "Name your price."
END PART