Chapter 11
"You guys, stop it!" Kari wailed, running toward the snarling, fighting boys. She'd seen them fight before, but this was deadly!
This wasn't their fault...
But this could kill them, all the same.
"You guys, please!" she cried, helpless, not sure what to do. They rolled over and over, slamming their fists into each other. Suddenly, TK broke free, leaping to his feet. Davis followed him, but TK was ready, and brought both fists around like a hammer, slamming them into Davis' stomach and winding him. As the stunned boy doubled over, TK grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him, hard. He stumbled back and hit the nearby wall of the building Kari had hidden behind, the impact driving the breath out of his body once again. Slowly, he slid to the ground, clutching his stomach. Kari felt her body turn to ice as this thing that wasn't TK strode purposefully forward, ready to finish the feud once and for all.
"TK! Stop!" she screamed, running to stand between Davis's unmoving form and the oncoming TK. "Fight it, TK, don't let it make you do this!"
TK's face twisted into a nasty grin, and he kept coming.
"TK?" Kari said in a very small voice, as her insides turned to water...
"Kari, get out of his way!"
Turning to look in the direction of the voice, Kari saw Patamon winging down the street toward her. The little monster's face was frantic, and he was pushing himself as hard as he could to reach her before...
Stars burst before her eyes. Stumbling back, Kari raised her eyes to TK's dark ones. His fists were clenched, and her chest felt as if it was in a steel vise, squeezing her tightly where he had struck her.
"TK..." she gasped, her brown eyes filled with tears.
"Move," he growled, raising his fists again.
"No," she whispered, choking on her own tears. "I won't let you do this to him. I won't let you force him to become a killer!" Shaking her hair, and a few tears, from her eyes, she clenched her fists at her sides. "Do you hear me? I won't let you!"
"Amusing," the virus hissed. "You don't have a chance." It lashed out again, snapping her head back. She clutched her bleeding lip, glaring at it...and her gaze softened at the sight of her friend's face.
"TK, please...remember me. Fight it..."
The virus laughed, and then suddenly became silent with single-minded purpose. It struck out with vicious force, once, twice, three times. Kari fell to her knees, her arms wrapped around herself as she bent double, still refusing to move from between the virus and its unconscious victim. Slowly, painfully, she struggled to her feet again, looking down at the cement as she wavered on unsteady balance.
"You foolish girl! Get out of the way!" the thing snarled. "This is futile! Do you think he can stop me from killing you, too?"
Kari raised her head, meeting its angry gaze with calm serenity.
"Yes," she whispered, her breath coming in short gasps.
"Then you are truly a fool," the virus said coldly, and slammed its fist into her chest with unnatural strength. She flew back, stumbling and falling over a pile of wreckage. There was a crunch as she landed, sprawled across the stone and metal.
She didn't move.
"Kari!" Patamon yelled, panicking as he finally-too late!-reached her. TK froze, staring at the still form lying on the ground.
"Kari?" he whispered, the darkness in his eyes beginning to churn. He paused, blinked, began to shake uncontrollably...
Then, suddenly, his face cleared, as the mist slipped from him in a cloud and died.
"KARI!"
Running toward her, horror in his eyes instead of darkness, TK fell to his knees next to the crumpled body. Kari's face was still, smeared with blood from a cut under her eye.
"Kari, wake up, please wake up, I tried to stop it, I tried as hard as I could," he wept, his words running into one long sentence. "Kari, please! Hold on..."
"What did you do to her?!"
TK turned to see Davis, struggling to his feet, his face horrified...his eyes clear and purple.
"I didn't do anything," TK said, still crying. "The virus...you saw what it can do..." He shuddered, feeling suddenly sick as memories of things he had done while under its power washed over him. Darkness swam before his eyes, and a wave of nausea passed through him, but he fought it down, along with the urge to pass out. When his vision cleared again, Davis was kneeling across from him, on Kari's other side.
"Is she...?" he said softly.
"I don't know," TK said, swallowing hard against the tightness in his throat. "I just don't know..."
Sora felt like her world was spinning around her and wouldn't stop. Her ears rang, and she fought down the panic that was rising in her like a tide.
"Why isn't he out yet?" she whimpered, staring into Izzy's monitor at the globe of writhing virus. "What's wrong?"
Joe ran into the room then, back from putting away the first-aid kit. "Sora?" She didn't look at him, but tightened her grip on Izzy's chair. Joe paled, getting a bad feeling about all of this... "Izzy, what's happening?"
"Tai's in there!" Sora cried, before Izzy could answer. "The virus has him!"
"What?!"
Izzy swallowed, regaining a little bit of composure. "The virus has stopped attacking the others, which is a good thing...but it's gathered itself into a sphere, which-unless I miss my guess-is decidedly bad."
"Huh?" Joe blurted, even more confused.
"Why?" Sora asked, biting her lip.
"A sphere is the strongest geometric shape there is," Izzy said, his eyebrows knit with worry. "If it's arranging itself into that formation, I would presume that it is because the virus wants to maximize its strength, probably because of a serious difficulty or hang-up in integrating its latest victim into its control network."
"Meaning...what?" Joe said, not sure that he wanted to know what the point of all that techno-babble was...
Izzy sighed. "Meaning, Tai must be putting up the mother of all fights against that thing," he translated, rubbing his temples wearily.
"Good!" Sora exclaimed, and clapped her hands together, hope flaring in her heart. "Then he'll beat it, and-"
Izzy interrupted, raising a hand. "Not good. There's no imaginable way for Tai to beat that stuff on his own. Period. And I've been getting some extremely negative readings on the way this stuff operates. Sora, if he keeps fighting it, he's..." He trailed off, as though his throat had tightened too much for speech. He looked haunted...
"What?" Sora cried, twisting her hands together. "Izzy, for the love of God, finish your sentences!"
Izzy gulped. "It's draining his strength too quickly," he said softly, his eyes grim. "Sora...it's going to kill him."
*coughcoughcoughhackcoughcough...*
Gradually, hesitantly, as if still not believing it was possible, Ken opened one eye...then the other. He was alive. Or, at least, he was pretty sure of it.
*If I am dead, though, I sure don't have much to look forward to...unless heaven is gray.*
It took him a second more to realize that the grayness was dust. A thick, heavy cloud of choking dust, gritty and dark, swirling around him and filling the air. As his ears recovered from the crash still ringing in them, he recognized the muffled rumbling and crunching of settling rubble. Ken frowned, disoriented.
*The cliff...we were on the cliff, and it fell...*
His skin, hair, clothes...all were gray with dust, except for places where dark red streaks punctuated the monotony. His eyes were bright splashes of blue in his dust-caked face. Sitting up with a groan and glancing down at himself, Ken decided that none of his injuries were life-threatening. He wiped his grimy face on his equally grimy sleeve, realized that he was getting nowhere, and sighed, blinking stinging dust out of his eyes as he racked his brains to remember the moments before the fall.
*We. Who's we...?*
He froze.
"Yolei!"
The cry was cut off by another fit of coughing, and he buried his face in his hands, trying to get his lungs back under control. Struggling to his feet, he wavered, nearly falling over again with coughing as he tried to get a good breath and instead was choked by the filthy air.
"Yolei! Can you hear me?"
Dizzy and dreading what he knew he might find, Ken stumbled through the roiling dust, futilely trying to shield his face with his sleeve as he called out Yolei's name. The choking cloud was so thick that he could barely see his feet, and he kept tripping and faltering over heaps of loose stone debris. His ankle screamed with pain, and he felt light-headed, but he kept going, doggedly refusing to give up...
"Yolei!"
*crunch!*
Startled, Ken leapt back. When nothing happened, he frowned and carefully knelt to get a better look at the object he'd stepped on.
It was a pair of spectacles. Bent beyond repair, both lenses cracked...but still recognizable.
And, after all, it wasn't like anyone else in the Digital World wore glasses.
"Oh, no..." Ken whispered, picking them up, gingerly avoiding the broken glass. He looked up, scanning the ground around himself, but the dust still hadn't settled, and it was impossible to see for more than a few feet in any direction. "Yolei! Please, answer me! Yolei..."
A slight breeze churned through the mist, and it parted like a curtain for a split second. The short moment was long enough for Ken to spot a smudge of familiar lavender through the gap. It closed instantly, but he was already on his feet, hurrying toward the spot.
"Yo-"
Ken fell silent, his blue eyes shocked.
Yolei lay on her side on a heap of rubble, her long hair spread around her like silk. Even the dusting of gray on it couldn't blot out the vibrant color. Dazed, Ken took a few steps forward, fell to his knees next to her, reached out to touch the vivid locks...
Her legs were half-buried, invisible beneath a heavy layer of the remains of the cliff. Her face was pale and smeared with dust and blood. Her left hand rested beside her face, palm up, fingers curled slightly. Her eyes were closed.
She didn't stir.
Ken's lips moved silently, but no words came out. His hand trembled as he gently touched her face. Words, cried out over the rumble of a shattering world, rang in his mind.
* "You can't make me leave you, Ken! I'm with you to the end, no matter what, and there's nothing you can do to change my mind, so just stop trying!" *
"The end," Ken whispered, staring at Yolei's silent lips, her eyelashes resting gently on her dusty cheeks, her slender fingers, unmoving...never moving....
Never again.
"NO!" The cry ripped from him like a curse, tearing his throat, tightening a strangling agony around his heart. "NO!" he cried again, and the cry became a sob, and his voice broke as tears began to make their muddy tracks down the dust on his face. "No," he whispered, her face blurring in his vision. "I wanted to take care of you, but I couldn't. I failed you...just like I failed everyone else." Gulping, he gazed at her still face. "I never told you..." He lifted a hand in helpless grief, and then slowly turned away, wrapping his arms around his knees and resting his face in them, letting the tears flow.
"I never even said goodbye," he whispered, and gave himself up to emptiness.
"You guys, stop it!" Kari wailed, running toward the snarling, fighting boys. She'd seen them fight before, but this was deadly!
This wasn't their fault...
But this could kill them, all the same.
"You guys, please!" she cried, helpless, not sure what to do. They rolled over and over, slamming their fists into each other. Suddenly, TK broke free, leaping to his feet. Davis followed him, but TK was ready, and brought both fists around like a hammer, slamming them into Davis' stomach and winding him. As the stunned boy doubled over, TK grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him, hard. He stumbled back and hit the nearby wall of the building Kari had hidden behind, the impact driving the breath out of his body once again. Slowly, he slid to the ground, clutching his stomach. Kari felt her body turn to ice as this thing that wasn't TK strode purposefully forward, ready to finish the feud once and for all.
"TK! Stop!" she screamed, running to stand between Davis's unmoving form and the oncoming TK. "Fight it, TK, don't let it make you do this!"
TK's face twisted into a nasty grin, and he kept coming.
"TK?" Kari said in a very small voice, as her insides turned to water...
"Kari, get out of his way!"
Turning to look in the direction of the voice, Kari saw Patamon winging down the street toward her. The little monster's face was frantic, and he was pushing himself as hard as he could to reach her before...
Stars burst before her eyes. Stumbling back, Kari raised her eyes to TK's dark ones. His fists were clenched, and her chest felt as if it was in a steel vise, squeezing her tightly where he had struck her.
"TK..." she gasped, her brown eyes filled with tears.
"Move," he growled, raising his fists again.
"No," she whispered, choking on her own tears. "I won't let you do this to him. I won't let you force him to become a killer!" Shaking her hair, and a few tears, from her eyes, she clenched her fists at her sides. "Do you hear me? I won't let you!"
"Amusing," the virus hissed. "You don't have a chance." It lashed out again, snapping her head back. She clutched her bleeding lip, glaring at it...and her gaze softened at the sight of her friend's face.
"TK, please...remember me. Fight it..."
The virus laughed, and then suddenly became silent with single-minded purpose. It struck out with vicious force, once, twice, three times. Kari fell to her knees, her arms wrapped around herself as she bent double, still refusing to move from between the virus and its unconscious victim. Slowly, painfully, she struggled to her feet again, looking down at the cement as she wavered on unsteady balance.
"You foolish girl! Get out of the way!" the thing snarled. "This is futile! Do you think he can stop me from killing you, too?"
Kari raised her head, meeting its angry gaze with calm serenity.
"Yes," she whispered, her breath coming in short gasps.
"Then you are truly a fool," the virus said coldly, and slammed its fist into her chest with unnatural strength. She flew back, stumbling and falling over a pile of wreckage. There was a crunch as she landed, sprawled across the stone and metal.
She didn't move.
"Kari!" Patamon yelled, panicking as he finally-too late!-reached her. TK froze, staring at the still form lying on the ground.
"Kari?" he whispered, the darkness in his eyes beginning to churn. He paused, blinked, began to shake uncontrollably...
Then, suddenly, his face cleared, as the mist slipped from him in a cloud and died.
"KARI!"
Running toward her, horror in his eyes instead of darkness, TK fell to his knees next to the crumpled body. Kari's face was still, smeared with blood from a cut under her eye.
"Kari, wake up, please wake up, I tried to stop it, I tried as hard as I could," he wept, his words running into one long sentence. "Kari, please! Hold on..."
"What did you do to her?!"
TK turned to see Davis, struggling to his feet, his face horrified...his eyes clear and purple.
"I didn't do anything," TK said, still crying. "The virus...you saw what it can do..." He shuddered, feeling suddenly sick as memories of things he had done while under its power washed over him. Darkness swam before his eyes, and a wave of nausea passed through him, but he fought it down, along with the urge to pass out. When his vision cleared again, Davis was kneeling across from him, on Kari's other side.
"Is she...?" he said softly.
"I don't know," TK said, swallowing hard against the tightness in his throat. "I just don't know..."
Sora felt like her world was spinning around her and wouldn't stop. Her ears rang, and she fought down the panic that was rising in her like a tide.
"Why isn't he out yet?" she whimpered, staring into Izzy's monitor at the globe of writhing virus. "What's wrong?"
Joe ran into the room then, back from putting away the first-aid kit. "Sora?" She didn't look at him, but tightened her grip on Izzy's chair. Joe paled, getting a bad feeling about all of this... "Izzy, what's happening?"
"Tai's in there!" Sora cried, before Izzy could answer. "The virus has him!"
"What?!"
Izzy swallowed, regaining a little bit of composure. "The virus has stopped attacking the others, which is a good thing...but it's gathered itself into a sphere, which-unless I miss my guess-is decidedly bad."
"Huh?" Joe blurted, even more confused.
"Why?" Sora asked, biting her lip.
"A sphere is the strongest geometric shape there is," Izzy said, his eyebrows knit with worry. "If it's arranging itself into that formation, I would presume that it is because the virus wants to maximize its strength, probably because of a serious difficulty or hang-up in integrating its latest victim into its control network."
"Meaning...what?" Joe said, not sure that he wanted to know what the point of all that techno-babble was...
Izzy sighed. "Meaning, Tai must be putting up the mother of all fights against that thing," he translated, rubbing his temples wearily.
"Good!" Sora exclaimed, and clapped her hands together, hope flaring in her heart. "Then he'll beat it, and-"
Izzy interrupted, raising a hand. "Not good. There's no imaginable way for Tai to beat that stuff on his own. Period. And I've been getting some extremely negative readings on the way this stuff operates. Sora, if he keeps fighting it, he's..." He trailed off, as though his throat had tightened too much for speech. He looked haunted...
"What?" Sora cried, twisting her hands together. "Izzy, for the love of God, finish your sentences!"
Izzy gulped. "It's draining his strength too quickly," he said softly, his eyes grim. "Sora...it's going to kill him."
*coughcoughcoughhackcoughcough...*
Gradually, hesitantly, as if still not believing it was possible, Ken opened one eye...then the other. He was alive. Or, at least, he was pretty sure of it.
*If I am dead, though, I sure don't have much to look forward to...unless heaven is gray.*
It took him a second more to realize that the grayness was dust. A thick, heavy cloud of choking dust, gritty and dark, swirling around him and filling the air. As his ears recovered from the crash still ringing in them, he recognized the muffled rumbling and crunching of settling rubble. Ken frowned, disoriented.
*The cliff...we were on the cliff, and it fell...*
His skin, hair, clothes...all were gray with dust, except for places where dark red streaks punctuated the monotony. His eyes were bright splashes of blue in his dust-caked face. Sitting up with a groan and glancing down at himself, Ken decided that none of his injuries were life-threatening. He wiped his grimy face on his equally grimy sleeve, realized that he was getting nowhere, and sighed, blinking stinging dust out of his eyes as he racked his brains to remember the moments before the fall.
*We. Who's we...?*
He froze.
"Yolei!"
The cry was cut off by another fit of coughing, and he buried his face in his hands, trying to get his lungs back under control. Struggling to his feet, he wavered, nearly falling over again with coughing as he tried to get a good breath and instead was choked by the filthy air.
"Yolei! Can you hear me?"
Dizzy and dreading what he knew he might find, Ken stumbled through the roiling dust, futilely trying to shield his face with his sleeve as he called out Yolei's name. The choking cloud was so thick that he could barely see his feet, and he kept tripping and faltering over heaps of loose stone debris. His ankle screamed with pain, and he felt light-headed, but he kept going, doggedly refusing to give up...
"Yolei!"
*crunch!*
Startled, Ken leapt back. When nothing happened, he frowned and carefully knelt to get a better look at the object he'd stepped on.
It was a pair of spectacles. Bent beyond repair, both lenses cracked...but still recognizable.
And, after all, it wasn't like anyone else in the Digital World wore glasses.
"Oh, no..." Ken whispered, picking them up, gingerly avoiding the broken glass. He looked up, scanning the ground around himself, but the dust still hadn't settled, and it was impossible to see for more than a few feet in any direction. "Yolei! Please, answer me! Yolei..."
A slight breeze churned through the mist, and it parted like a curtain for a split second. The short moment was long enough for Ken to spot a smudge of familiar lavender through the gap. It closed instantly, but he was already on his feet, hurrying toward the spot.
"Yo-"
Ken fell silent, his blue eyes shocked.
Yolei lay on her side on a heap of rubble, her long hair spread around her like silk. Even the dusting of gray on it couldn't blot out the vibrant color. Dazed, Ken took a few steps forward, fell to his knees next to her, reached out to touch the vivid locks...
Her legs were half-buried, invisible beneath a heavy layer of the remains of the cliff. Her face was pale and smeared with dust and blood. Her left hand rested beside her face, palm up, fingers curled slightly. Her eyes were closed.
She didn't stir.
Ken's lips moved silently, but no words came out. His hand trembled as he gently touched her face. Words, cried out over the rumble of a shattering world, rang in his mind.
* "You can't make me leave you, Ken! I'm with you to the end, no matter what, and there's nothing you can do to change my mind, so just stop trying!" *
"The end," Ken whispered, staring at Yolei's silent lips, her eyelashes resting gently on her dusty cheeks, her slender fingers, unmoving...never moving....
Never again.
"NO!" The cry ripped from him like a curse, tearing his throat, tightening a strangling agony around his heart. "NO!" he cried again, and the cry became a sob, and his voice broke as tears began to make their muddy tracks down the dust on his face. "No," he whispered, her face blurring in his vision. "I wanted to take care of you, but I couldn't. I failed you...just like I failed everyone else." Gulping, he gazed at her still face. "I never told you..." He lifted a hand in helpless grief, and then slowly turned away, wrapping his arms around his knees and resting his face in them, letting the tears flow.
"I never even said goodbye," he whispered, and gave himself up to emptiness.