Akihito had actually been on his way to Eri's cell when he remembered Kurosaki. He'd almost totally forgotten about Kurosaki in the last few days and it had been a tremendous oversight on his part. Kurosaki was, perhaps, even more interested in Akihito's pet cases than Akihito himself was, and this particular case would definitely appeal to him. Akihito could not consider the idea of proceeding with this interrogation without having Kurosaki with him. At the thought, he smiled widely. This girl would be in for a shock when Kurosaki started on her.
Akihito's means of interrogating suspects rested on the tried and true principles of Good-Cop Bad-Cop, or as one of his subordinates had put it when neither he or Kurosaki had been around, Bad-Cop Worse-Cop. Akihito himself favoured playing the sympathetic interrogator, pretending to be merciful, trying to be nice. He was, after all, superior in rank if not in age to all of the men and women who worked for him. His second in these matters, the capable Kurosaki, had found playing the part of hard man very much to his liking. Junior to Akihito in both age-he was only just out of his teens, though you wouldn't have known it to look at him-and rank, he was in many respects the ideal partner for this job. If Akihito was to interrogate Eri, he was to do it with Kurosaki at his side.
Returning to the front desk he ordered the girl he found sat behind it to summon Kurosaki for him. Akihito was unsurprised to discover that he had not gone home yet. He knew that even if he had, he would have been more than willing to come back. Though Kurosaki was far from a rule freak (he was seen by some of his superiors as having a bit of an attitude problem if truth were told), he nonetheless held Akihito in the highest regard. He liked Akihito, the feeling was reciprocated and the friendship kept him above suspicion.
He arrived less than two minutes later. Kai Kurosaki was a tall young man, and not unattractive, yet there was something alarming about him. His one visible eye-the other was hidden behind a curtain of long blonde hair-was bright, not cold, but at the same time held a promise of malice. He was fairly slender and did not look that formidable, yet scores of-long since 'disappeared'-prisoners could have proved how deceptive his appearance was. Someone had once called him a lady-killer, and it was apt in both the literal and metaphorical sense.
"Hi." One thing Kurosaki was not was formal.
This would be a good night.
***
Despite the lateness of the hour, Hirose was not yet asleep. It didn't seem likely to him that he'd be able to get out of his office for some time. Events were beginning to get ahead of him, and the complicated balancing-act that he was having to perform just to keep the country together was reaching it's natural conclusion: chaos, downfall and ultimate destruction of everything he had fought so hard to preserve. There was too much to deal with.
There were rumours that their enemies were planning a major offensive with the intention of breaking the deadlock-this happened with a quiet regularity on both sides and had never been seen as a major threat before, and the only ones who were any worse off normally were the soldiers at the front and their relatives, yet this time it looked as if the enemy's plans might actually work. Their spies, for all that they had attempted to discover all that they could about the truth in the rumours were becoming frustrated, their attempts to discover anything at all about the plans were meeting with little to no results whatsoever. They knew they existed, they knew they were big. That was all. Even Nadeshiko hadn't found anything out.
The rebellions in the provinces were still continuing. The troops he had sent in to try to restore order had been routed or killed. The rumoured offensive meant there was no way to send in any support. If what he had been told was true, he would need as many troops as possible to fight at the front.
Koji was still missing. That morning, Akihito had arrived in his office to tell him what he had found out about the young man's whereabouts. The last time anyone connected with government had seen him, he had been at a small base near the front-line, presumably in an attempt to gain support for whatever it was that he was planning to do. Or had been planning. Koji was not the sort of man to wait around. If he had been attempting to conduct a military coup, it would have happened by now. That had been Akihito's views on the whole thing. That there was no need to worry. There had been several unconfirmed sightings of Koji (and his car) on toll roads and in service stations, the route seeming to confirm Akihito's belief that Koji was coming home, or at least moving away from the front. Even if he didn't come home, he probably intended to hole up somewhere. Apparently he'd had company, and he intended to play house with, in Akihito's words, 'whatever bimbo he was currently screwing' for a while.
The same small front-line base had been the scene of another incident which had seemed minor at the time but was rapidly becoming a major embarrassment for the army command structure. Two prisoners-of-war had escaped from the base, presumably with outside help. A mild humiliation but the episode hadn't seemed like anything important and at first Hirose had no idea how he'd even come to hear about it. Yet the name of one of the escapees-Shibuya-had sounded familiar for some reason. A few hours later, a chance remark by Akihito (who had also seen the report: Hirose suspected him of having hacked into his computer again) had led him to realise exactly what had happened.
"You'd have thought those guys would have taken more care. I'm sure there's a minister Shibuya in their government. Kid could have been a relation. It's not as if it's that common a name."
A few hours' careful investigation of the enemy's computer systems on Akihito's part had confirmed his suspicions. There was a minister Shibuya. He had no children, but was the legal guardian of his nephew, a seventeen-year-old blonde, who'd been conscripted and had been taken prisoner a few days after finishing basic training through sheer bad luck and had ultimately wound up in a detention centre at that camp. Naturally, they'd wanted him back and had sent over some captain Izumi to get him back. And of course those idiots at the base hadn't even realised who it was they'd got.
Hirose didn't show his feelings in the same way as Akihito did. Akihito was like an open book-almost anyone could read him. Hirose didn't let it show when he was angry, but years of being round him had taught Akihito to recognise the signs, and after telling him the bad news he had left in a hurry. Normally he would have taken any excuse offered to stick around. But Akihito had been busy more often than usual lately as well.
There was too much to think about for Hirose to relax. Akihito had become preoccupied with his work again (something that happened every few months-Akihito would take on a 'pet' case and practically disappear until the person he was dealing with was safely six feet underground). Koji was gone, last seen dangerously close to the front line. There were plans for an offensive mounting. The army had failed to recognise the significance of a prisoner's name, and they'd lost a potential source of information and a useful bargaining tool when the boy escaped. It was unlikely that he would be recaptured: the front was so close it was likely that he'd manage to make it back to comparative safety if the cold didn't kill him first.
His father-there was another worry he'd almost forgotten about due to the sheer number of other ones he had to deal with-his father was getting sicker. His doctors gave him less than two months to live. Already he no longer recognised Akihito-perhaps unsurprisingly, Akihito claimed not to care-or Hirose's wife, Kaoruko, and her infant son. Every time he saw Hirose, he asked him where Koji was. Hirose, loyal son that he was, promised that he would find the boy for his father, in spite of his own feelings of rejection and hurt at the sight of his father's preference for the uncontrollable Koji.
***
"I'm cold."
Katsumi didn't seem to have heard. He lay in the snow with his head resting in Yoshiya's lap and stared blankly at the rapidly darkening sky, occasionally blinking but otherwise making no movement. Yoshiya suspected he was in shock, even hoped that he was. At least if he was in shock he wouldn't be feeling any pain.
Yoshiya anxiously bit one fingernail and looked around. Stay calm, he thought to himself. Stay calm. He repeated it under his breath as if it had been a mantra. He forced himself to think logically; he didn't want to stay, but there was no way he could do anything but. He certainly wasn't going to leave Katsumi after everything they'd been through and survived together. He wished he knew a bit more about first aid. He wished he had some way to defend himself. Most of all he wished he'd never been conscripted.
"Say something," he said quietly. "Katsumi. Say something. Please."
Katsumi's injuries alone should not have proved fatal, Yoshiya knew that much about medicine. In an ideal world they wouldn't have. Yet right here and now they could very easily kill him. He was weakened already from the cold he had caught as well as from sheer exhaustion, not to mention that Yoshiya wondered if his friend had any real will to stay alive after what had happened to him over the past few weeks. He had a horrible suspicion that Katsumi would probably have regarded death as a relief.
Madoka. He knew the name. Madoka had been Katsumi's sister, but she was dead now. Like most of his family was dead now. Katsumi had only ever mentioned his family in passing, but Yoshiya knew that both his friend's parents had died as well.
"Katsumi, please."
No reply. Yoshiya looked down at Katsumi-the boy had either fallen asleep or was unconscious again. Sighing, he straightened up and attempted to think of what to do next, fighting down his feelings of panic. Panicking didn't help, wouldn't help. There had to be something he could do… but he couldn't leave Katsumi here. He'd probably have died before Yoshiya had managed to find his way back-if he did manage to find his way back. Katsumi needed a doctor, or at any rate some kind of first aid which he knew he couldn't provide. Yoshiya took several deep breaths and started to count under his breath, something his mother had often done when she was upset and she had always claimed helped calm her. Either she had been exaggerating its effect or he wasn't the kind of person it worked for or he was too keyed up for it to make any difference…
A sudden noise made him look up. Footsteps. This looked bad. Or rather, this looked even worse. Things were already bad.
***
Getting back out of the car, Takasaka began to wonder if perhaps he hadn't made a mistake indicative of a case of advanced paranoia. Maybe he hadn't been found after all. Surely if the secret police had managed to trace him to this deserted place, he would have known about it by now. He wasn't even sure the person he'd seen standing a few feet away from him had noticed him at all.
It had to have been total paranoia. Why else would he have shot three times at someone who wasn't even looking at him? Someone with his back to him? He knew he'd hit the person at least once, he'd seen him stiffen and fall.
But could you afford to take chances when you were on the run from the secret police? The simple answer was that you couldn't, that anyone you did not know for a fact was a friend could be safely regarded as an enemy. Common sense said as much. Don't take unnecessary risks: one of the first rules for making a successful spying career.
Looking down at the gun, he wondered what he should do. There were two ways things could head right now. He had either shot and wounded, perhaps killed a member of the secret police or the army who could have arrested him and taken him back to the capital, in which case he'd done the right thing, or he'd shot and maybe killed a civilian or an unarmed soldier or even a soldier from his own side-he was near the front after all-in which case he'd done something very wrong indeed. And the more he thought about it the less likely it seemed that the figure he had spotted had been any kind of a threat.
Still holding the gun, he made his way anxiously toward the street he'd run from a few minutes earlier, common sense telling him to back off, stay out of it, that he'd only make things worse, but he could not back away. The nagging doubts were getting more insistent. The secret police wore black. Enemy soldiers; dark blue when away from the front, camouflage when on active duty. This person had been dressed in grey.
Soldiers on his own side wore grey uniforms when working behind the lines.
Cursing himself under his breath, Takasaka broke into a run.
***
The first clue that Kimie Mori got of quite how drastically wrong Izumi's mission had gone did not become apparent until his friend had been gone for over a week. Slightly longer than he had imagined it would take, but there had been no reason to suspect anything had happened to him.
Working with the medical corps wasn't exactly at the cutting edge of army business and normally by the time anyone bothered to fill people like Kimie in on events, the event they were describing had become ancient history. The only time it was considered worth keeping them up to date with current events was just prior to major offensives, when they had to be prepared for a sudden surge in casualty numbers. Although he would have denied it vehemently, one of Kimie's reasons for staying friendly with Izumi was that he knew what was happening in the base at any given moment. One of the most common phrases heard on the lips of orderlies and nurses was 'what's happening?'. That said, most of the soldiers envied the men in the medical corps. In most cases, it was a safe job and you had easy access to the nurses. Most people who knew him thought the job was wasted on Kimie because he didn't think that the company of women was such a big deal. But what else could you expect from a fifteen year old of, in the words of Izumi, 'indeterminate sexuality'?
On the matter of Izumi's mission, however, Kimie knew just as much as the other people in the base on how it was progressing in that he knew nothing at all. Knowing Izumi personally, though, it seemed unlikely to him that he would abandon it halfway through regardless of how well (or otherwise) it was progressing, nor did he have any reason to assume that Izumi was in any way in danger. Nonetheless…
Nonetheless.
"Anyone seen Izumi?"
No-one had. Izumi was gone. He had probably been captured or killed. Gone too long for Izumi. Gone too long full stop. The week he'd been meant to be away for had already passed. If Izumi's mission was meant to be over in a week, Izumi would have seen to it that it was. He was that kind of person.
The worst thing about it was that there was nothing he could do to help.
***
Eri had no idea what the time was any more. Since her arrest-two days ago, though she had no way of knowing that-she had been kept in a windowless cell, her isolation only relieved by the guards who had come to interrogate her. She had heard rumours of the methods that they used, but as of yet she had not suffered such treatment herself. She hadn't wondered why this might have been-an oversight on her part. She hadn't realised that she was being left alone because Akihito had told her potential interrogators that this girl was his and anyone who touched her would be answerable to him. Or worse, to Kurosaki. Akihito didn't work in this building full-time. Kurosaki did. He was a professional interrogator.
Eri had been lying on the thin mattress construction that passed for a bed, still dressed in the flimsy pyjamas she had been wearing when she was arrested. The night was bitterly cold: blizzards had been forecast again. She was attempting to get some sleep (the light was left on all day and all night, and Eri had come to the conclusion that she should sleep when she was tired) when Akihito walked into the room. She sat up, her eyes widening in recognition. This Akihito Nanjo she had heard so much about since arriving was the man she'd met a few nights ago, the one she'd tried to flirt with. However, she did not quite realise what he was doing there-she still could not connect him with her current position, in spite of his uniform and his much-publicised links with the Secret Police. Another man stood a few feet behind him, smiling without a trace of humour. He wore red lipstick (decidedly non-regulation, this, even among the female members of the secret police, but Kurosaki got away with it because he was Akihito's friend) which reminded Eri of Koji, but she didn't recognise him at all.
"Miss Ijima…" Akihito began, then paused as if he had made a mistake and smiled at her in a way that she finally registered as alarming. "Eri."
Eri? But he didn't even know her! How dare he be so familiar?
Eri had forgotten that it was common behaviour for detainees to be addressed by their first names. Another way of removing any pretensions to dignity that a prisoner might still be clinging on to. Despite this, his manner was friendly. A little too friendly. The wolf in fairy stories behaves in exactly the same way, just before he runs off to eat grandma. Behind him Kurosaki lurked like a ghoul, still smiling.
"Eri," he repeated, "I have a few questions I would like to ask you. Come with me."
Some would have refused and accepted the consequences, whatever they turned out to be-anything was better than being alone with this man… with these two men-but Eri smiled vaguely, uncomprehending, and got to her feet.
***
"Sorry. I'm really sorry."
Yoshiya, still kneeling in the snow, shook his head in disbelief. This whole situation, he thought to himself, is just totally, utterly stupid. "That isn't much good!" he replied angrily. "You just shot my friend! What are you going to do about it? Are you going to leave him to get on with bleeding to death or are you sorry enough to actually help us out here?" Who the hell is this guy? he wondered. One thing he didn't seem to be, if you asked Yoshiya, was dangerous. He seemed pretty inoffensive. So what the hell he had been doing running around the front lines carrying a gun and shooting at total strangers was a total mystery. Then again, Yoshiya realised the man was probably wondering exactly the same thing about Katsumi and himself. What the hell ARE we doing here? It was a good question.
Takasaka was. These two were hardly typical soldiers. They weren't even equipped for the front line. They certainly weren't dressed for the weather. It was way too cold to be dressed so lightly, didn't either of them have a winter coat? More to the point, what on earth were they doing in enemy territory? Not that this was really the time to think about things like that. He could always ask them later…
"I've got a car," he began hesitantly.
Takasaka had carried Katsumi to the car, followed by Yoshiya, looking anxiously around as if he expected any minute to be attacked again though he knew the town was deserted. But he'd 'known' the town was deserted before. That hadn't stopped this man… Takasaka… funny name, that… from being there as well. Yoshiya didn't know if he could trust him, but like the time they'd met Izumi, did he have any choice in the matter? The only alternative was staying put. That would have probably killed him and would definitely have killed Katsumi. What could you do in a situation like this? You had to take your chances where you found them.
Takasaka had been driving down a rudimentary metalled road in silence for about ten minutes when he finally spoke to Yoshiya, who sat in the back seat holding his own gun in a mildly threatening way. He didn't know how proficient the young man was with firearms but at this distance he could hardly miss. Asking Yoshiya if he had the safety catch on seemed like a pretty good idea, but… he didn't want to risk offending him. He wasn't surprised that his new companion had misgivings. He wouldn't have believed in Yoshiya's good intentions had their situations been reversed.
"Where are you trying to get to anyway?"
"How's your friend?" Takasaka spoke anxiously.
Katsumi lay curled up on the seat next to him, covered with the thin blanket Takasaka had been sleeping under since leaving the city, his head in Yoshiya's lap again. His shoulder had been inexpertly bandaged with one of Takasaka's shirts, his arm immobilised in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Yoshiya couldn't help but wonder what he'd actually say to the boy when he came round-and he probably would, he wasn't that badly hurt after all; though a lot of it, worryingly enough, depended on whether or not he wanted to stay alive-how he'd explain it to him. He'd already decided not to tell Katsumi that Takasaka had been the person who'd shot him. It wouldn't have been politic.
At the same time, he didn't want Katsumi to come round. They had no morphine, nothing that would help him cope with the pain. He was even half-considering hitting Katsumi with the butt of the gun he was holding if he did come round, in the hope that it would knock him out again.
***
"What, exactly, do you want with me?"
Izumi had at first been convinced that Koji's interest in him was wholly sexual, but that didn't seem to be it. He'd been with Koji for over a day and so far the man hadn't actually made a move. It had surprised him, going by the rumours he'd heard about what happened to prisoners of war, which he supposed was what he was, though his situation was far from typical. Maybe he wasn't actually in prison, but he was certainly a prisoner. Part of him felt that he'd rather he had been; at least he'd have known what to expect, more or less.
He knew that Koji's motives couldn't have been a hundred per cent pure. The guy looked like a vampire, there was something horribly carnal about him. Koji was seen by those who knew the two men as rather similar to Akihito's sinister friend Kurosaki (if anything, Koji was regarded as the less alarming of the two, but Izumi wasn't to know that). Not to mention that Izumi, a total army brat, had never come across a single high-ranking member of his own country's army with a halfway similar attitude. Never come across a general so young.
Then again, his side promoted people through merit, not birth.
Koji didn't actually know what he'd wanted from Izumi, apart from to make sure he didn't get away from him. He wanted to know him in every sense of the word, but was trying to force himself not to think of Izumi. Koji was not, as some would have been surprised to hear, totally amoral. He didn't think it was natural to have such strong feelings about a soldier he'd never even met before and another man at that…
He'd have to ask Nadeshiko to find something out about this Izumi for him next time he got into contact with her. Nadeshiko was good at things like that, after all; she was a great source of information.
He was in a quandary. Now he'd got Izumi, he didn't know what to do with him. He couldn't very well take the boy back home to meet his family. His father was half-dead, his brothers were both crazy; Hirose acted like a robot all the time and Akihito was childish and unpredictable and acted on every whim that flitted into his empty head. Izumi wouldn't be safe there. Akihito would probably take it upon himself to have Izumi interrogated by vampire Kurosaki on the grounds that he had to be some kind of enemy agent. Koji wasn't shocked by much and even less scared him, but Kurosaki did both. The man was a fanatic.
To be continued...
