~*Project: Moment*~
A Digimon Fanfiction by Bandit
~*Chapter 13- Never Say Die*~
Two hours before dawn, in his room by the medical ward, Joe suddenly sat up in bed.
"Confluence beams!"
"Cheez Whiz!" came a sleepy echo from across the room, and Joe frowned, squinting through the darkness at the futon on the floor where his cousin slept. One of the places hit by the bombing had been her dorm, and she'd decided to stay with him until it was rebuilt or she found somewhere else...and until her broken hand healed. Missy now sported a handsome fiberglass cast over her right hand and wrist. She'd refused to tell how it had gotten broken, but seemed very pleased with herself on that count.
"Missy...?" he said uncertainly.
"And a partridge in a pear tree!" she added, sitting up as well. When Joe's confused look only worsened, she shrugged, grinning. "I figured since you were having so much fun shouting out random things, I might as well join in. Or do you mind telling me what that little soliloquy meant?"
Immediately coming out of his startled daze, Joe leapt from his bed and began to scramble into his smartsuit. Missy started to get up, too, but put her weight on her bad arm and winced, letting out a little cry.
"Confluence beams," Joe repeated, more quietly, and threw her own suit to her from where she'd left it over the back of a chair. "I've been turning Sora's description of that thing's insides over and over in my head all night, and I just remembered a theory of James's that he's been working on..."
"What, Dr. Haiser?" Missy said, still perplexed, and began to awkwardly change into her suit.
"Exactly," Joe agreed, sealing the back of his and hurrying to the closet for his lab coat. "He kept going on about it at the last board meeting...he called it confluence beams, and it was a form of regenerative stimulation."
"Which means...?"
"Which means," Joe said, "that we may have a solution for our little problem after all. C'mon, Missy, we've got a lot of work to do."
"Right on it," Missy said instantly, and started for the door and her boots.
"Uh, Missy?" Joe said.
"What?"
"You might want to seal your suit."
"Oh, that...right..."
A loud hammering sound woke Sora from a deep sleep. She murmured something unintelligible and stirred slightly, not wanting to wake up yet. There was a vague feeling of 'bad' at the back of her half-conscious mind, and she knew that if she let herself come fully awake, the bad would return and hurt her again.
Something warm was at her back, and wrapped around her waist. She moved her fingers where they twined with it, and recognized hands, attached to arms, presumably attached to the person holding her close. She felt incredibly secure, curled in the arms of this warm person; more secure than she'd felt since her mother used to sit by her bed rubbing her back to help her sleep, when she was a little girl. Only that faint sense of some unknown threat threaded through the safe feeling, flawing it, and if she carefully avoided noticing it, she could just ignore it. Sora yawned sleepily, and snuggled closer, refusing to think long enough to remember...
Her fingers brushed a strangeness on one arm, and she touched it more carefully. It felt like a scar, running in a raised line from the middle of the forearm to the elbow. Sora frowned.
"Tai?" she whispered.
*bangbangbang!*
"Sora! Tai! Wake up and get out here, quick!"
Tai stirred then, blinking his eyes open with a confused expression.
"Wha...?"
Sora twisted to look at him. "Tai, what am I doing in...?" Then the events of the past night began to come back, and she went red. But they were still dressed...they hadn't, well, done anything they would have regretted later. She wondered at that for a moment. *I sure wasn't the one who had that idea,* she thought, blushing still redder. *I was too petrified to think twice...
*Why?* She quickly pushed the answer away, as quickly as she had the question. She didn't want to know just yet, didn't want those particular memories to surface until she could handle them.
"We've got a visitor," she said instead, with an ironic smile. Tai nodded, and began to sit up, but Sora stopped him.
"Thank you," she whispered, and gave him a quick kiss. "You really cared..."
"I couldn't, well...you know," Tai said, doing a bit of blushing himself. "But I didn't want to leave you alone. You were so scared..."
"You did just right," Sora said, and smiled. *Waking up in his arms is something I'm glad I got to do...and maybe, if I'd had a someday...*
At that moment, the meaning behind that cryptic thought finally began to break through her shield of comfort, and she stiffened in his arms. In the same instant, the banging came again.
"What on earth are you doing in there? This is important!!"
"Joe," Tai groaned. He slid out of bed and walked out into the hallway, running an exasperated hand through his mussed hair.
Distracted from her resurfacing fears, Sora smiled at the long-suffering look on his face, almost relaxing...but then, without Tai there to hold on to, the memories finally and without warning reasserted themselves, and she suddenly had to curl into a ball in the bed, clinging to her pillow to keep from throwing up. The urge passed quickly, and she lay there, breathing hard...
"What is it?" Tai said, opening the front door. The feeling of powerlessness was coming back again, and he was starting to get into a miserable mood.
"Tai, we've figured out a way," Joe said breathlessly, looking as though he'd just rolled out of bed as he hurried past Tai into the apartment...or tried to. Tai's heart gave a sudden leap at his words, and he grabbed Joe by the shoulder and spun the harried-looking doctor to face him, his eyes intent.
"A way?" Tai said, an urgent tone in his voice that made Joe gulp. He nodded.
"To get that thing disarmed without hurting Sora..."
Tai actually swayed. "Oh, my god," he said, his voice full of too many emotions to pick out any particular one, and sat down quickly on the edge of the Hide-a-bed.
"Tai? Are you okay?...oh, good morning, Joe," Sora said, coming out of the bedroom looking pale but determined, wrapped in a blanket to ward off the early autumn chill of the apartment.
Joe blinked, looking from Sora to Tai to the empty Hide-a-bed to the bedroom door and back to Sora again.
"Good morning..." he said finally, looking more than a little awkward, and seemed to decide Not To Ask. Sora almost giggled. Then she remembered Tai.
"What's wrong?" she said, coming into the room and sitting down next to him. He turned to face her, and something about the look on his face both startled her and gave her a sudden feeling of hope.
"Joe has something to explain," he said quietly. Sora frowned, puzzled, and looked up at their old friend.
"I'm listening..."
"...so he's gotten the concept largely pinned down, and he's been toying with models, but he can't get a good configuration set up. He says that's all that he's missing...no, hang on, he's off on the frequency, too. He can't figure out just what area of the spectrum triggers the cell multipli-"
"Is there a silvery light in this spectrum?" Sora interrupted suddenly. Joe blinked.
"Uh, yes, I think that was the color of one of the frequencies he was examining..."
"Joe, the lights in that thing were silver!" she exclaimed, beginning to feel her old fighting spirit coming back. "They all were shooting these silver beams at me, at the spot where I was hit..."
Joe's face had taken on an odd look, and his voice was composed but urgent. "Sora, can you tell me anything about the way those lights were arranged?"
Sora screwed up her face, thinking. "They were in circles," she murmured. "Linked circles... It reminded me..."
"Of what?" Joe said, catching her wrists and giving her an impatient little shake.
"Of a soccer ball," Sora said softly, looking quite startled. "They reminded me of a soccer ball..."
"Circles of five around one in the middle?" Tai said, just as taken aback.
"And the circle parts all linked together," Sora said with a nod.
"If I wasn't in such a hurry, I'd be amused by the irony," Joe said dryly. "But I have to go tell James about this, and fast. It's already six in the morning, and the Arena clock says we've only got about twelve hours to go..."
Sora swallowed. "Another race against time?"
"It's what we seem to do best," Tai said with a sigh. "But we've got a fighting chance now. That's a helluva lot better than nothing, in my book."
"In everyone's book," Joe agreed, standing up. "Get dressed, you two...we've got a long day ahead of us."
Izzy didn't know why he'd been dragged into the med ward with his team of technicians, but he definitely didn't feel comfortable in a hospital. Especially one packed to the brim with injured and dying. However, Commander Macbeth had told him to show up here with a dozen of his best men and women, and he'd learned a long time ago not to question her orders.
So, Izzy had come, and had stood around waiting for five or six minutes, trying not to look at the young woman in the nearby bed whose arm was now a tourniquet-bound stump, or the man next to her, little more than a boy, unconscious and faintly green as the IV in his arm pumped some unidentified but powerful liquid through his veins. His team of technicians seemed just as uncomfortable. They were men and women used to the bloodless maintenance of hard- and software; the sight of human suffering was unnerving them to no end.
They were all very relieved when Joe, Missy, and half a dozen other doctors and aides hurried through the door of the ward and asked them to come with them. Trotting eagerly out of the room, Izzy quickly cornered Joe, who appeared to be sharing leadership of the little group with a short, sharp-faced, intelligent-looking man with reddish-brown hair and a well-groomed mustache. He reminded Izzy of a fox, and Joe quickly introduced him as Doctor John Haiser.
"We're going to put together a machine," Dr. Haiser began without preamble. "And if we're very lucky, it's going to save us all."
That got Izzy's attention.
"I'm listening," he said, leaning against the doorframe and meeting the doctor's searching gaze.
"It's a concept I've been toying with for quite a while...a pet project, if you will, that may just grow up into a very valuable medical tool. But what we need to do here is accelerate its growth, because we have only eleven and a half hours or so to build this contraption before everything within two miles' radius of this complex goes boom in a big way."
"So what are my people and I here to do?" Izzy asked instantly. Dr. Haiser gave him a long, studying look.
"I'm glad to see I'm dealing with someone who doesn't dawdle when things need doing," he said after a moment. "We're looking at a light frequency generator, with minor radiation included in the mix, that will, if put together right, cause human tissue to regenerate itself at far-higher-than-normal speeds. In other words, we're building a machine that repairs people."
Dozens of possibilities for that kind of apparatus leaped to Izzy's machine-oriented mind. Outwardly, however, he stayed calm.
"And you need us...why? We're not mechanics, you know. We're programmers."
"Exactly. And you're the best, am I right?"
"Just about," Izzy said matter-of-factly, without pride or hesitation.
"Then you're the most vital part of this project, besides us scientific folk and our theories. This is not going to be a simple point-and-click contraption. It's going to need to be able to focus on pinpoint areas, to tell different types of tissue or organs from one another by scanning and comparing them with DNA-pattern memory banks, to keep track of dozens of different vital areas at once and to assign different beams in different quantities to each one...this is going to be one smart piece of equipment, and you guys are here to give it those smarts. And you're going to have to do it in just a few hours. Are you up to it?"
Izzy's eyes were afire with the idea of a challenge. "Bring it on," he said, with a slight, quirky grin.
Dr. Haiser nodded approvingly. "Right. Come on, then. You'll want to get holed up somewhere with the data and specifics we've put together. There's a team of mechanics already working on the machine itself."
Izzy nodded, and called a member of his handpicked team over. "Spence!"
The young man, who looked about twenty or twenty-one, came immediately.
"Izumi?"
"I trust your judgment. Go pick out another dozen or so people first-rate at complicated programming and bring them, fast. Tell them it can't wait. I don't care if they're burying their mother; tell them to do it later. Got it?"
Spence hesitated, then nodded resolutely. "Got it. Be back in twenty or so?"
"Sounds good," Izzy agreed, and followed Dr. Haiser and the other medical folks out of the room, the rest of his team behind him.
"Tai, we've got to tell them," Sora insisted.
"I don't know..." Tai hadn't been putting up much resistance to the idea, but his sense of duty was still clinging to him enough to give him pause.
"Oh, come on," Sora said pleadingly. "I saw them out of my window last night, and they look awful! Especially him. If anyone needs this news, they do."
"But we don't know if we have news or not yet," Tai pointed out. They'd been arguing gently about this since Joe had left to let them get dressed. Sora wanted to tell TK and Kari about their possible solution; Tai still felt that they should keep it quiet until they had a more definite idea of whether or not it was going to work.
"It doesn't matter. We won't know for sure if this is going to fly until the countdown ends, Tai," Sora said firmly. "And any hope is better than no hope at all."
He sighed, nodding. "All right. We'll go tell them...but I am not taking the blame if it flops and they end up emotionally crushed."
"If it does flop, you won't be worrying for long," Sora said darkly, and got up to head for the door. Tai followed her, and soon they were hurrying across the central courtyard by the light of the dawning sun.
Kari was already up and making breakfast when she heard the knock on their door. She quickly moved the frying pan she was using to a trivet and sprinted to the entry hall, wiping egg from her hands onto a dishtowel. As she threw open the door, she was greeted by her brother's face.
"Tai!" she exclaimed, near-wild with relief as she threw her arms around him, eggy dishtowel and all. "I am so glad to see you! I was so worried about how you were doing, and TK, well, you'll see in a minute, but he's been so miserable, and I can't get him to cheer up...are you okay?" She paused in her tirade, finally noticing the odd, half-hoping expression that had lit Tai's eyes since he'd heard Joe's news.
"You'll see in a minute," Tai quoted her, stepping inside as she let go of him. He was followed by Sora. Kari spotted her and started forward, then hesitated, twisting her hands nervously in the dishtowel.
"Sora?"
Sora met Kari's gaze with a smile.
"It's okay, Kari," she said gently. Kari's face warmed with relief, and she gave her old friend a hug as well.
"How are you doing?" she whispered into Sora's ear, in a private girl-to-girl tone. "How's Tai taking all of this?"
"Pretty well, to both questions," Sora whispered back. "And like he said, you're about to get a bit of a surprise."
Kari frowned, but didn't ask. "Okay," she said instead, sounding dubious, and led them into the living room, pausing to open the oven door and give the hash-browns cooking inside a poke with a spatula, and to quickly stir the miso soup simmering in its pot a few times.
"Where's TK?" Sora asked as they sat down. Kari sighed.
"Still in his room," she murmured. "He's been in awful shape ever since the attack began. I think it really grated on him to not be able to help any of you guys, or me. We had to take shelter in the main building, and he hasn't forgiven himself yet...and now, what with the clock ticking away..." She shrugged helplessly.
Tai shook his head, though whether for TK or his sister he didn't know. Kari was so bent on fixing everything that was wrong in the world that it was probably hurting her just as much as TK to see him moping around the house. He reached over to give her hand a reassuring squeeze before asking if he could have a chance at rousting TK out.
"I guess," Kari said, looking both uncertain and grateful. "I mean, it can't hurt anything if you have a stab at it..."
"Don't be so sure," Sora said cheerfully. Kari stared at her...and then cracked a smile.
"Sora...are you *joking* with me?"
Sora shrugged. Kari's smile widened. "I can't believe it! You've got the most reason to be afraid of anybody here..."
"Then maybe I also have the most reason to hope," Sora said, smiling back. "Tai, I think you'd better get in there and talk some sense into that boy."
"Beat it into him if you have to," Kari put in, with a roll of her eyes. "I can't believe he's acting like this...and he just keeps getting worse, too. I don't think I can stand it much longer, to tell the truth."
Tai smiled at her good-natured honesty, and got up, leaving the girls to talk as he headed for the door opposite Kari's room; the one belonging to TK.
Rapping on it, he called quietly inside. "TK?"
Silence. Then... "Tai? When did you get here?"
"Just now. Mind letting me in?"
There was another pause, as if he was deciding, and then the door opened. Tai went quickly inside, before TK changed his mind.
TK had already taken a seat again, on a wicker chest at the foot of his bed. Looking at him, Tai winced. He was dressed and groomed, so that wasn't what hit you about him, but the slump of his shoulders and the droop of his head were not what Tai would call signs of optimism...and to see TK without hope was, as Kari said, not a fun experience.
"So, where do I sit?" Tai said, trying for cheerfulness. TK motioned to an armchair near the window-which had the shade pulled down-without turning his head. Shrugging, and then remembering the boy couldn't see him and wincing again, Tai sat down.
"Did Kari get you to come?" TK said quietly.
"No, actually it was Sora's idea," Tai replied. TK flinched at his friend's name, but covered it quickly.
"How is Sora?" he asked. Tai sighed.
"As well as can be expected...which is to say, not too bad." TK lifted his head at that, startled.
"'Not too bad'?" he blurted. "Tai, she's doomed! We all are..."
"Not necessarily," Tai calmly said.
TK was silent for a long moment, carefully turning that statement over in his mind. Then he seemed to look straight at Tai, his ruined eyes intent, as if struggling to see again. For a moment he seemed almost like the old TK again, before the accident.
"Tell me," he said, softly, but with an intensity in his voice that nearly made Tai regret coming here with such uncertain news. It was too late by then, though, and he might as well play it cool.
"Come out to the living room," he countered. "Kari needs to hear this too, you know."
Without hesitating, TK stood up and went out into the hallway, his feet unfaltering. Tai wondered for a moment how he knew how far to walk. Had he gone through the house and counted his steps? Had he and Kari worked out some other system? Tai had long ago resigned himself to never knowing how TK had gotten around so much of his handicap, but it still niggled at him sometimes, the confident way that the blind youth could walk around his own house, as if he still saw every line in the wallpaper, every detail of the carpet, every shadow behind every door...
*Hope,* Tai thought, and wondered for a split second how well TK had been getting around since the attack. Not as well, he'd be willing to wager. *It's hope that does it. That's what gives him that confident stride. I guess in a big way, Sora was right. She's right like that a lot...* he added thoughtfully. Then he heard Kari's exclamation of surprise, and remembered he was supposed to be following TK into the living room. He did just that, to see TK taking a seat next to a startled-looking Kari.
"Well?" he said as Tai came into the room. Tai didn't miss a beat; he sat down across from them, pulling up a chair, and leaned forward slightly.
"Joe had a brainstorm," he began. "Last night, he remembered a contraption a colleague of his had been working on, and thought it sounded like the stuff Sora saw inside that Swoopmon."
"'Stuff,'" Sora said with a snort. "Very scientific, Tai." TK let out a start, half-turning in his surprise.
"I really don't like this whole sightless thing," he said wryly. "Sora, when did you get here?"
"I've been here," Sora said with a shrug. "I thought Tai had told you. Sorry for surprising you."
"'Tsall right," TK allowed. "You were saying, Tai?"
"Well," Tai continued, "Joe discussed it with him and us, and he thinks this contraption could assist in the surgery necessary to disarm that thing they put in Sora, and make it possible to pull the operation off without any ill effects...or at least, nothing fatal. We've got a fighting chance, guys."
Kari was silent, taken aback. TK, however, smiled.
"And that's all we need, isn't it?" he said, his dejected posture already beginning to straighten. "A fighting chance."
"Hope doesn't do well in a hopeless situation," Kari observed dryly, getting her voice back.
"But it flourishes on the tiniest ray of light," Sora said with a knowing grin. "We'll leave you two to think that over, then. It's getting toward breakfast, and we really ought to head out."
"I made enough for four, easily," Kari said, putting a hand on her arm to stop her getting up. "I thought we might get some visitors. Not everyone has kitchens that used to, you know."
"A good point," Tai nodded. "Well?"
"Sounds good to me," Sora said. "Did I see miso back there?"
"You did indeed," Kari said with a smile. "Feel like helping to lower the level in the pot?"
"I'm starving," Sora said, standing up. "And I hardly ate yesterday. One more thing hope does; it whets the appetite."
"Amen to that," Tai agreed. "But you might not want to eat, Sora. If they get that thing put together in time, you're going into surgery."
Kari, who had had her appendix out in the tenth grade, nodded. "He's right, Sora. If you eat anything much, you're going to have the worst stomachache in your remembered life when you wake up."
Sora scowled. "I've got a stomachache now...from hunger. Are you guys going to deny a poor famished girl her potential last meal?"
"You can have as much of my miso as you want, Sora," Kari said with a sly smile, "*after* your surgery. If you want it."
"I think I know the answer to that already," Sora said with a scowl. "You've been through all this before, haven't you?"
Kari shrugged. "Well, *I'm* hungry. And I'm not going to get sliced and diced today either, with a little luck, so I think I'll go tuck in."
She headed to the kitchen with a small teasing grin, and TK followed her. Tai got up to do so, but saw Sora's crestfallen face and hesitated.
"I hate you," Sora moaned at Kari's retreating back.
"You don't mean that, do you?" Tai said lightly. Sora sighed, smiling in spite of herself.
"No. Go ahead, Tai. I don't grudge you your breakfast...well, no more than's natural."
Tai laughed, but offered her his arm.
"At least come sit with us."
"I don't know if I can control myself if I do," Sora said, half-joking, but linked her arm through his, walking with him after the two younger Digidestined. She still didn't know for sure that this wasn't her last day, and she wasn't wasting even a minute of time available to be spent with Tai and her friends.
Especially Tai.
__________________________________
Coming soon- Chapter 14: Through the Fire
(AN) I'm not totally happy with that chapter title; it may end up changing between now and publishment. (Publishment...is that a word? -_-* ) However, pending title aside, y'all might want to look forward to this chapter. It finally details the story of *why* Sora and Tai were so apologetic when they reunited...and why Sora was so torn up over him in the first few chapters...
On a less portentous note, guess what! This story now has almost 50 reviews, making it my most successful tale ever! *glows for a moment in happiness* Minna-san arigatou! This is most inspiring...more of this may just keep the chapters rolling! Remember, if you're wanting to keep readig this, there's a little button down there you can push to let me know... ^_^ I'm so evil sometimes. -Bandit O_o
A Digimon Fanfiction by Bandit
~*Chapter 13- Never Say Die*~
Two hours before dawn, in his room by the medical ward, Joe suddenly sat up in bed.
"Confluence beams!"
"Cheez Whiz!" came a sleepy echo from across the room, and Joe frowned, squinting through the darkness at the futon on the floor where his cousin slept. One of the places hit by the bombing had been her dorm, and she'd decided to stay with him until it was rebuilt or she found somewhere else...and until her broken hand healed. Missy now sported a handsome fiberglass cast over her right hand and wrist. She'd refused to tell how it had gotten broken, but seemed very pleased with herself on that count.
"Missy...?" he said uncertainly.
"And a partridge in a pear tree!" she added, sitting up as well. When Joe's confused look only worsened, she shrugged, grinning. "I figured since you were having so much fun shouting out random things, I might as well join in. Or do you mind telling me what that little soliloquy meant?"
Immediately coming out of his startled daze, Joe leapt from his bed and began to scramble into his smartsuit. Missy started to get up, too, but put her weight on her bad arm and winced, letting out a little cry.
"Confluence beams," Joe repeated, more quietly, and threw her own suit to her from where she'd left it over the back of a chair. "I've been turning Sora's description of that thing's insides over and over in my head all night, and I just remembered a theory of James's that he's been working on..."
"What, Dr. Haiser?" Missy said, still perplexed, and began to awkwardly change into her suit.
"Exactly," Joe agreed, sealing the back of his and hurrying to the closet for his lab coat. "He kept going on about it at the last board meeting...he called it confluence beams, and it was a form of regenerative stimulation."
"Which means...?"
"Which means," Joe said, "that we may have a solution for our little problem after all. C'mon, Missy, we've got a lot of work to do."
"Right on it," Missy said instantly, and started for the door and her boots.
"Uh, Missy?" Joe said.
"What?"
"You might want to seal your suit."
"Oh, that...right..."
A loud hammering sound woke Sora from a deep sleep. She murmured something unintelligible and stirred slightly, not wanting to wake up yet. There was a vague feeling of 'bad' at the back of her half-conscious mind, and she knew that if she let herself come fully awake, the bad would return and hurt her again.
Something warm was at her back, and wrapped around her waist. She moved her fingers where they twined with it, and recognized hands, attached to arms, presumably attached to the person holding her close. She felt incredibly secure, curled in the arms of this warm person; more secure than she'd felt since her mother used to sit by her bed rubbing her back to help her sleep, when she was a little girl. Only that faint sense of some unknown threat threaded through the safe feeling, flawing it, and if she carefully avoided noticing it, she could just ignore it. Sora yawned sleepily, and snuggled closer, refusing to think long enough to remember...
Her fingers brushed a strangeness on one arm, and she touched it more carefully. It felt like a scar, running in a raised line from the middle of the forearm to the elbow. Sora frowned.
"Tai?" she whispered.
*bangbangbang!*
"Sora! Tai! Wake up and get out here, quick!"
Tai stirred then, blinking his eyes open with a confused expression.
"Wha...?"
Sora twisted to look at him. "Tai, what am I doing in...?" Then the events of the past night began to come back, and she went red. But they were still dressed...they hadn't, well, done anything they would have regretted later. She wondered at that for a moment. *I sure wasn't the one who had that idea,* she thought, blushing still redder. *I was too petrified to think twice...
*Why?* She quickly pushed the answer away, as quickly as she had the question. She didn't want to know just yet, didn't want those particular memories to surface until she could handle them.
"We've got a visitor," she said instead, with an ironic smile. Tai nodded, and began to sit up, but Sora stopped him.
"Thank you," she whispered, and gave him a quick kiss. "You really cared..."
"I couldn't, well...you know," Tai said, doing a bit of blushing himself. "But I didn't want to leave you alone. You were so scared..."
"You did just right," Sora said, and smiled. *Waking up in his arms is something I'm glad I got to do...and maybe, if I'd had a someday...*
At that moment, the meaning behind that cryptic thought finally began to break through her shield of comfort, and she stiffened in his arms. In the same instant, the banging came again.
"What on earth are you doing in there? This is important!!"
"Joe," Tai groaned. He slid out of bed and walked out into the hallway, running an exasperated hand through his mussed hair.
Distracted from her resurfacing fears, Sora smiled at the long-suffering look on his face, almost relaxing...but then, without Tai there to hold on to, the memories finally and without warning reasserted themselves, and she suddenly had to curl into a ball in the bed, clinging to her pillow to keep from throwing up. The urge passed quickly, and she lay there, breathing hard...
"What is it?" Tai said, opening the front door. The feeling of powerlessness was coming back again, and he was starting to get into a miserable mood.
"Tai, we've figured out a way," Joe said breathlessly, looking as though he'd just rolled out of bed as he hurried past Tai into the apartment...or tried to. Tai's heart gave a sudden leap at his words, and he grabbed Joe by the shoulder and spun the harried-looking doctor to face him, his eyes intent.
"A way?" Tai said, an urgent tone in his voice that made Joe gulp. He nodded.
"To get that thing disarmed without hurting Sora..."
Tai actually swayed. "Oh, my god," he said, his voice full of too many emotions to pick out any particular one, and sat down quickly on the edge of the Hide-a-bed.
"Tai? Are you okay?...oh, good morning, Joe," Sora said, coming out of the bedroom looking pale but determined, wrapped in a blanket to ward off the early autumn chill of the apartment.
Joe blinked, looking from Sora to Tai to the empty Hide-a-bed to the bedroom door and back to Sora again.
"Good morning..." he said finally, looking more than a little awkward, and seemed to decide Not To Ask. Sora almost giggled. Then she remembered Tai.
"What's wrong?" she said, coming into the room and sitting down next to him. He turned to face her, and something about the look on his face both startled her and gave her a sudden feeling of hope.
"Joe has something to explain," he said quietly. Sora frowned, puzzled, and looked up at their old friend.
"I'm listening..."
"...so he's gotten the concept largely pinned down, and he's been toying with models, but he can't get a good configuration set up. He says that's all that he's missing...no, hang on, he's off on the frequency, too. He can't figure out just what area of the spectrum triggers the cell multipli-"
"Is there a silvery light in this spectrum?" Sora interrupted suddenly. Joe blinked.
"Uh, yes, I think that was the color of one of the frequencies he was examining..."
"Joe, the lights in that thing were silver!" she exclaimed, beginning to feel her old fighting spirit coming back. "They all were shooting these silver beams at me, at the spot where I was hit..."
Joe's face had taken on an odd look, and his voice was composed but urgent. "Sora, can you tell me anything about the way those lights were arranged?"
Sora screwed up her face, thinking. "They were in circles," she murmured. "Linked circles... It reminded me..."
"Of what?" Joe said, catching her wrists and giving her an impatient little shake.
"Of a soccer ball," Sora said softly, looking quite startled. "They reminded me of a soccer ball..."
"Circles of five around one in the middle?" Tai said, just as taken aback.
"And the circle parts all linked together," Sora said with a nod.
"If I wasn't in such a hurry, I'd be amused by the irony," Joe said dryly. "But I have to go tell James about this, and fast. It's already six in the morning, and the Arena clock says we've only got about twelve hours to go..."
Sora swallowed. "Another race against time?"
"It's what we seem to do best," Tai said with a sigh. "But we've got a fighting chance now. That's a helluva lot better than nothing, in my book."
"In everyone's book," Joe agreed, standing up. "Get dressed, you two...we've got a long day ahead of us."
Izzy didn't know why he'd been dragged into the med ward with his team of technicians, but he definitely didn't feel comfortable in a hospital. Especially one packed to the brim with injured and dying. However, Commander Macbeth had told him to show up here with a dozen of his best men and women, and he'd learned a long time ago not to question her orders.
So, Izzy had come, and had stood around waiting for five or six minutes, trying not to look at the young woman in the nearby bed whose arm was now a tourniquet-bound stump, or the man next to her, little more than a boy, unconscious and faintly green as the IV in his arm pumped some unidentified but powerful liquid through his veins. His team of technicians seemed just as uncomfortable. They were men and women used to the bloodless maintenance of hard- and software; the sight of human suffering was unnerving them to no end.
They were all very relieved when Joe, Missy, and half a dozen other doctors and aides hurried through the door of the ward and asked them to come with them. Trotting eagerly out of the room, Izzy quickly cornered Joe, who appeared to be sharing leadership of the little group with a short, sharp-faced, intelligent-looking man with reddish-brown hair and a well-groomed mustache. He reminded Izzy of a fox, and Joe quickly introduced him as Doctor John Haiser.
"We're going to put together a machine," Dr. Haiser began without preamble. "And if we're very lucky, it's going to save us all."
That got Izzy's attention.
"I'm listening," he said, leaning against the doorframe and meeting the doctor's searching gaze.
"It's a concept I've been toying with for quite a while...a pet project, if you will, that may just grow up into a very valuable medical tool. But what we need to do here is accelerate its growth, because we have only eleven and a half hours or so to build this contraption before everything within two miles' radius of this complex goes boom in a big way."
"So what are my people and I here to do?" Izzy asked instantly. Dr. Haiser gave him a long, studying look.
"I'm glad to see I'm dealing with someone who doesn't dawdle when things need doing," he said after a moment. "We're looking at a light frequency generator, with minor radiation included in the mix, that will, if put together right, cause human tissue to regenerate itself at far-higher-than-normal speeds. In other words, we're building a machine that repairs people."
Dozens of possibilities for that kind of apparatus leaped to Izzy's machine-oriented mind. Outwardly, however, he stayed calm.
"And you need us...why? We're not mechanics, you know. We're programmers."
"Exactly. And you're the best, am I right?"
"Just about," Izzy said matter-of-factly, without pride or hesitation.
"Then you're the most vital part of this project, besides us scientific folk and our theories. This is not going to be a simple point-and-click contraption. It's going to need to be able to focus on pinpoint areas, to tell different types of tissue or organs from one another by scanning and comparing them with DNA-pattern memory banks, to keep track of dozens of different vital areas at once and to assign different beams in different quantities to each one...this is going to be one smart piece of equipment, and you guys are here to give it those smarts. And you're going to have to do it in just a few hours. Are you up to it?"
Izzy's eyes were afire with the idea of a challenge. "Bring it on," he said, with a slight, quirky grin.
Dr. Haiser nodded approvingly. "Right. Come on, then. You'll want to get holed up somewhere with the data and specifics we've put together. There's a team of mechanics already working on the machine itself."
Izzy nodded, and called a member of his handpicked team over. "Spence!"
The young man, who looked about twenty or twenty-one, came immediately.
"Izumi?"
"I trust your judgment. Go pick out another dozen or so people first-rate at complicated programming and bring them, fast. Tell them it can't wait. I don't care if they're burying their mother; tell them to do it later. Got it?"
Spence hesitated, then nodded resolutely. "Got it. Be back in twenty or so?"
"Sounds good," Izzy agreed, and followed Dr. Haiser and the other medical folks out of the room, the rest of his team behind him.
"Tai, we've got to tell them," Sora insisted.
"I don't know..." Tai hadn't been putting up much resistance to the idea, but his sense of duty was still clinging to him enough to give him pause.
"Oh, come on," Sora said pleadingly. "I saw them out of my window last night, and they look awful! Especially him. If anyone needs this news, they do."
"But we don't know if we have news or not yet," Tai pointed out. They'd been arguing gently about this since Joe had left to let them get dressed. Sora wanted to tell TK and Kari about their possible solution; Tai still felt that they should keep it quiet until they had a more definite idea of whether or not it was going to work.
"It doesn't matter. We won't know for sure if this is going to fly until the countdown ends, Tai," Sora said firmly. "And any hope is better than no hope at all."
He sighed, nodding. "All right. We'll go tell them...but I am not taking the blame if it flops and they end up emotionally crushed."
"If it does flop, you won't be worrying for long," Sora said darkly, and got up to head for the door. Tai followed her, and soon they were hurrying across the central courtyard by the light of the dawning sun.
Kari was already up and making breakfast when she heard the knock on their door. She quickly moved the frying pan she was using to a trivet and sprinted to the entry hall, wiping egg from her hands onto a dishtowel. As she threw open the door, she was greeted by her brother's face.
"Tai!" she exclaimed, near-wild with relief as she threw her arms around him, eggy dishtowel and all. "I am so glad to see you! I was so worried about how you were doing, and TK, well, you'll see in a minute, but he's been so miserable, and I can't get him to cheer up...are you okay?" She paused in her tirade, finally noticing the odd, half-hoping expression that had lit Tai's eyes since he'd heard Joe's news.
"You'll see in a minute," Tai quoted her, stepping inside as she let go of him. He was followed by Sora. Kari spotted her and started forward, then hesitated, twisting her hands nervously in the dishtowel.
"Sora?"
Sora met Kari's gaze with a smile.
"It's okay, Kari," she said gently. Kari's face warmed with relief, and she gave her old friend a hug as well.
"How are you doing?" she whispered into Sora's ear, in a private girl-to-girl tone. "How's Tai taking all of this?"
"Pretty well, to both questions," Sora whispered back. "And like he said, you're about to get a bit of a surprise."
Kari frowned, but didn't ask. "Okay," she said instead, sounding dubious, and led them into the living room, pausing to open the oven door and give the hash-browns cooking inside a poke with a spatula, and to quickly stir the miso soup simmering in its pot a few times.
"Where's TK?" Sora asked as they sat down. Kari sighed.
"Still in his room," she murmured. "He's been in awful shape ever since the attack began. I think it really grated on him to not be able to help any of you guys, or me. We had to take shelter in the main building, and he hasn't forgiven himself yet...and now, what with the clock ticking away..." She shrugged helplessly.
Tai shook his head, though whether for TK or his sister he didn't know. Kari was so bent on fixing everything that was wrong in the world that it was probably hurting her just as much as TK to see him moping around the house. He reached over to give her hand a reassuring squeeze before asking if he could have a chance at rousting TK out.
"I guess," Kari said, looking both uncertain and grateful. "I mean, it can't hurt anything if you have a stab at it..."
"Don't be so sure," Sora said cheerfully. Kari stared at her...and then cracked a smile.
"Sora...are you *joking* with me?"
Sora shrugged. Kari's smile widened. "I can't believe it! You've got the most reason to be afraid of anybody here..."
"Then maybe I also have the most reason to hope," Sora said, smiling back. "Tai, I think you'd better get in there and talk some sense into that boy."
"Beat it into him if you have to," Kari put in, with a roll of her eyes. "I can't believe he's acting like this...and he just keeps getting worse, too. I don't think I can stand it much longer, to tell the truth."
Tai smiled at her good-natured honesty, and got up, leaving the girls to talk as he headed for the door opposite Kari's room; the one belonging to TK.
Rapping on it, he called quietly inside. "TK?"
Silence. Then... "Tai? When did you get here?"
"Just now. Mind letting me in?"
There was another pause, as if he was deciding, and then the door opened. Tai went quickly inside, before TK changed his mind.
TK had already taken a seat again, on a wicker chest at the foot of his bed. Looking at him, Tai winced. He was dressed and groomed, so that wasn't what hit you about him, but the slump of his shoulders and the droop of his head were not what Tai would call signs of optimism...and to see TK without hope was, as Kari said, not a fun experience.
"So, where do I sit?" Tai said, trying for cheerfulness. TK motioned to an armchair near the window-which had the shade pulled down-without turning his head. Shrugging, and then remembering the boy couldn't see him and wincing again, Tai sat down.
"Did Kari get you to come?" TK said quietly.
"No, actually it was Sora's idea," Tai replied. TK flinched at his friend's name, but covered it quickly.
"How is Sora?" he asked. Tai sighed.
"As well as can be expected...which is to say, not too bad." TK lifted his head at that, startled.
"'Not too bad'?" he blurted. "Tai, she's doomed! We all are..."
"Not necessarily," Tai calmly said.
TK was silent for a long moment, carefully turning that statement over in his mind. Then he seemed to look straight at Tai, his ruined eyes intent, as if struggling to see again. For a moment he seemed almost like the old TK again, before the accident.
"Tell me," he said, softly, but with an intensity in his voice that nearly made Tai regret coming here with such uncertain news. It was too late by then, though, and he might as well play it cool.
"Come out to the living room," he countered. "Kari needs to hear this too, you know."
Without hesitating, TK stood up and went out into the hallway, his feet unfaltering. Tai wondered for a moment how he knew how far to walk. Had he gone through the house and counted his steps? Had he and Kari worked out some other system? Tai had long ago resigned himself to never knowing how TK had gotten around so much of his handicap, but it still niggled at him sometimes, the confident way that the blind youth could walk around his own house, as if he still saw every line in the wallpaper, every detail of the carpet, every shadow behind every door...
*Hope,* Tai thought, and wondered for a split second how well TK had been getting around since the attack. Not as well, he'd be willing to wager. *It's hope that does it. That's what gives him that confident stride. I guess in a big way, Sora was right. She's right like that a lot...* he added thoughtfully. Then he heard Kari's exclamation of surprise, and remembered he was supposed to be following TK into the living room. He did just that, to see TK taking a seat next to a startled-looking Kari.
"Well?" he said as Tai came into the room. Tai didn't miss a beat; he sat down across from them, pulling up a chair, and leaned forward slightly.
"Joe had a brainstorm," he began. "Last night, he remembered a contraption a colleague of his had been working on, and thought it sounded like the stuff Sora saw inside that Swoopmon."
"'Stuff,'" Sora said with a snort. "Very scientific, Tai." TK let out a start, half-turning in his surprise.
"I really don't like this whole sightless thing," he said wryly. "Sora, when did you get here?"
"I've been here," Sora said with a shrug. "I thought Tai had told you. Sorry for surprising you."
"'Tsall right," TK allowed. "You were saying, Tai?"
"Well," Tai continued, "Joe discussed it with him and us, and he thinks this contraption could assist in the surgery necessary to disarm that thing they put in Sora, and make it possible to pull the operation off without any ill effects...or at least, nothing fatal. We've got a fighting chance, guys."
Kari was silent, taken aback. TK, however, smiled.
"And that's all we need, isn't it?" he said, his dejected posture already beginning to straighten. "A fighting chance."
"Hope doesn't do well in a hopeless situation," Kari observed dryly, getting her voice back.
"But it flourishes on the tiniest ray of light," Sora said with a knowing grin. "We'll leave you two to think that over, then. It's getting toward breakfast, and we really ought to head out."
"I made enough for four, easily," Kari said, putting a hand on her arm to stop her getting up. "I thought we might get some visitors. Not everyone has kitchens that used to, you know."
"A good point," Tai nodded. "Well?"
"Sounds good to me," Sora said. "Did I see miso back there?"
"You did indeed," Kari said with a smile. "Feel like helping to lower the level in the pot?"
"I'm starving," Sora said, standing up. "And I hardly ate yesterday. One more thing hope does; it whets the appetite."
"Amen to that," Tai agreed. "But you might not want to eat, Sora. If they get that thing put together in time, you're going into surgery."
Kari, who had had her appendix out in the tenth grade, nodded. "He's right, Sora. If you eat anything much, you're going to have the worst stomachache in your remembered life when you wake up."
Sora scowled. "I've got a stomachache now...from hunger. Are you guys going to deny a poor famished girl her potential last meal?"
"You can have as much of my miso as you want, Sora," Kari said with a sly smile, "*after* your surgery. If you want it."
"I think I know the answer to that already," Sora said with a scowl. "You've been through all this before, haven't you?"
Kari shrugged. "Well, *I'm* hungry. And I'm not going to get sliced and diced today either, with a little luck, so I think I'll go tuck in."
She headed to the kitchen with a small teasing grin, and TK followed her. Tai got up to do so, but saw Sora's crestfallen face and hesitated.
"I hate you," Sora moaned at Kari's retreating back.
"You don't mean that, do you?" Tai said lightly. Sora sighed, smiling in spite of herself.
"No. Go ahead, Tai. I don't grudge you your breakfast...well, no more than's natural."
Tai laughed, but offered her his arm.
"At least come sit with us."
"I don't know if I can control myself if I do," Sora said, half-joking, but linked her arm through his, walking with him after the two younger Digidestined. She still didn't know for sure that this wasn't her last day, and she wasn't wasting even a minute of time available to be spent with Tai and her friends.
Especially Tai.
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Coming soon- Chapter 14: Through the Fire
(AN) I'm not totally happy with that chapter title; it may end up changing between now and publishment. (Publishment...is that a word? -_-* ) However, pending title aside, y'all might want to look forward to this chapter. It finally details the story of *why* Sora and Tai were so apologetic when they reunited...and why Sora was so torn up over him in the first few chapters...
On a less portentous note, guess what! This story now has almost 50 reviews, making it my most successful tale ever! *glows for a moment in happiness* Minna-san arigatou! This is most inspiring...more of this may just keep the chapters rolling! Remember, if you're wanting to keep readig this, there's a little button down there you can push to let me know... ^_^ I'm so evil sometimes. -Bandit O_o