Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha, or I wouldn't bother writing my own fan
fiction to it. I do, though, own the plot!
A/N: Hi again, all!! I hope you liked the last chapter- did you all go back and see the edits I made? Anyway! Please don't forget to review at the end of the chapter- it really helps speed things up for the next one (reviews help with my poor pathetic confidence ^-^). Well, this is, as always, for all Inuyasha fans out there!! Enjoy!! And if you don't like it, tell me why so I can improve it next time! ^-^
Chapter Two- Program: Run
Boushu stared out at her audience, quiet for a moment, searching for what she called her 'reason'. Despite how easy it seemed to make each impassioned appearance, it was hard to sustain herself, to continue to make excuses to tour, to walk up to the next podium, to write the next speech. Sometimes she didn't find reason; all too often, it camouflaged, or was wiped out of many places. But sometimes, like a gem in the rough, Boushu found a pair of eyes for which she spoke, and found her 'reason' to keep speaking.
Today, the audience was as gracious as ice cream to her legs.
"Youkai are humanity's replacement for men. This is generally, if not officially, agreed upon. Yet there are two things prohibited all youkai," she held up two slender fingers to demonstrate, "They may never take the form of their owners, and... they may never be created as weapons. Both are ironic to the extreme," Boushu sneered. "Fashionable trends encourage youkai to look as close to human males as possible- torso, appendage structure... genitals," she drawled out slowly, ignoring the gasps. "When we have only our imaginations to limit youkai designs, why for the world would we replicate our oft-toted despised male halves?" She shrugged as though the answer was unimportant, and went on, "Miniscule details manage to keep these youkai from being destroyed in the model stage, and now it is rare to see youkai that do not stand on two legs, operate two eyes and talk with one mouth." She smiled fiendishly, her tight rosebud lips stretching out thinly. "But youkai crime. That is a much more complicated subject, isn't it?
"And the catch is, ladies," she said, her eyebrows inching their way up her forehead, "What exactly constitutes youkai crime? Because every woman knows, after all, that youkai... do 'not' have 'free wills'..."
***
Kagome fixed her grip on the las-gun, cursing her sweating palms as vulgarly as she knew how, and peered into the gloom of Tokyo. Few people walked the streets at night, for good reason, but tonight the city seemed more quiet than usual- it was holding its breath, waiting for something.
Keeping watchful eyes on the dark alleyway behind her, the policewoman unstrapped her navigator from her belt, checked the coordinates, and looked at the towering building across the street again before muttering a swearword under her breath. Five police cars hummed in front of the dilapidated doors although their seats were empty of personnel; a chill ran up Kagome's spine that had nothing to do with the fall air. Quietly, she pulled out the other gun and blinked away a bead of sweat.
'I expected a shitty place, but...' Bars pockmarked windows, telling of richer occupants who could afford a measure of security. The rest were void of even glass.
A scurry in the alleyway made Kagome whirl around, ready to shoot anything that moved. Seconds of thundering heartbeats passed before a limping creature scuttled out from the darkness, just slow enough to stop Kagome's finger from squeezing. 'Radiation creature,' she thought sourly as three too many legs were silhouetted by the moonlight for a simple street rat. She suppressed a shiver, glad that it wandered in the opposite direction.
'What the hell was that?' A shadow passed in front of the fifth floor window, catching Kagome's eye. She had an impression of tall slender grace, and white gleaming skin before it dissolved into shadows again. Blaring silence drummed in her ears. Where was sound? Where was the shriek of passion or terror that blemished each Tokyo night? Any copper would know better than to approach the situation solo, even an experienced cop. Especially an experienced cop. It was a verifiable death trap.
Before she could stop herself with rationality, Kagome was running across the road, reaching the door, and sliding through it with all the noise of a snake slithering through grass. She turned around, unsure of what to expect.
"Oh god," she whispered.
Kagome kneeled down, warily stretching a hand out, stricken by the blood still actively seeping from the woman's neck. As she moved closer, mesmerized by the horrific sight, the floor sucked nastily at her feet- fresh blood turning sticky and dry. Red stains crept wetly up her shoes, warming her toes. The woman's neck was punctured, a hole ripped through it so cleanly the dark marble tiles could be seen through the woman's neck. "Oh gods," Kagome repeated. 'Who could do this? What being could physically be capable of doing this?' Her stomach sinking rapidly to her knees, she brought her head up, surveying the rest of the corridor.
Although she had never seen such a place in person, the corridor was what Kagome imagined a war slaughter would look like. Bodies were draped everywhere, in mangled pieces. 'Could a youkai do this?' When programmed in a certain manner, Kagome knew that youkai were capable of almost any crime.
'...But something this heinous? This is more like a war zone. More like a slaughter, not a crime scene... I've never seen anything remotely like it. Youkai don't kill like this. They can't.' The scene before her said otherwise.
A moan kicked up amongst the piled bodies, the sobbing cry of a woman who knows she is dead but lives, and dirt cascading from the ceiling at the commotion like a lowering shroud. Severed heads, eyes wide and wild in a last contortion of fear stared at Kagome, accusing her of breathing. With a scream, Kagome realized her foot was crushing the bones of a severed hand.
"Oh, god!" she jolted up, careening into a hat stand supporting a disembodied leg, white bone protruding from the knee. It stuttered in place before falling in a ruckus on the hard floor. Kagome stood stock still, hardly daring to breathe in a kind of paralyzed fear that hadn't gripped her since she was thirteen. 'This is a big place. It couldn't hear it couldn't hear.'
Nothing happened. There was no sudden appearance of a ghastly being wielding a gun from behind her, nor a mass murderer jumping down from the ceiling armed with a machete.
"I'm getting paranoid, working Emergency too long," she breathed, more relieved than she was willing to admit, and bent down to right the fallen furniture.
An echoing noise sounded deep within the house. Dampened 'thumping' moved in rhythm, floors and floors above her.
She couldn't move from shock, from pure unholy fear. 'It's coming. The thing that did this is coming.' Kagome remembered the awful phone call, the woman's shrill voice on the phone, speaking in terrified whispers.
'Please, please! Oh, god! It's coming this way again, I can hear it! I can 'hear' it! Oh god! HELP ME!!'
'HELP ME!!' the words rang like a death toll in her ears. They were the last words, Kagome was certain, the woman uttered.
***
"I am asking the Council to answer my question!" Boushu raged, fist thumping in trademark style, neatly pinned hair coming wildly undone, lipstick nearly worn away by sheer use of her mouth. Her mouth was her life, her brain, her soul. From it, Boushu blindly believed, she could sway the oceans to roll another way. "As far as I'm concerned, as my people are concerned, you're bullshitting around, and I frankly am tired of it!" she threw glares at them all, daring them to come forth and speak true.
One woman leaned forward, hair in buns as strict as her countenance was now. She spoke as if to a disobedient child, "We will remind the speaker that she is here by our consent, by our very will and mercy, and if she would like to continue standing there as she is now, she should show more respect to her kind benefactors."
Boushu slammed a hand onto the podium, snarling, "If I am here, I know it is not for all the efforts of each one of you to prevent me. As of yet the highest body of power in the land has failed to meet my questions to the satisfaction of my clients, and I refuse absolutely, to leave here without an answer that is yet to my contentment!"
"'Your clients' as you often refer to them, who exactly are these people? Would you please be more specific as to who you are speaking of, Miss Boushu, for the Council's notes?" The same woman said, features hidden behind her glasses. With the odd lighting, Boushu could not be sure of who was talking at one time, much less if they were smiling. 'I could be preaching to a youkai, for all I know,' she thought, and wondered how far-fetched such thoughts were. It seemed every day youkai technology was advancing by previously impossible leaps.
Boushu gritted through clenched teeth, "I am not at liberty to divulge such information to this Council, nor would I if I possessed the authority."
On the other side of the long half-circle table Boushu was addressing, a woman waved a shadowed hand, "The Council hardly feels comfortable passing on possibly top secret information to unknown recipients. By telling us this information, it would be that much more conducive to your campaign, Miss Boushu, we're sure."
"Do I need to repeat myself to this esteemed and intelligent group?" she fumed, wondering how many times within the last five hours Boushu had been extolling the Council had attempted to wring that knowledge from her. 'I wouldn't tell on the life of every person in Tokyo Province, in the American Province, too, for that matter. Not to these people. God knows what the hell they would do.' "Now, if you please," she began, switching the conversation over, "Of my several questions for this Council, possibly the most important has yet to be answered. Please, Council, a straight response this time," she adjusted her glasses to read the neatly printed notes, "What 'is' the Alpha program? We have gathered that is was begun before the war, and is rumored to have to do with youkai." Quiet assailed her. "Council, I'll be frank. I am prepared to go to press with this unless I have reason not to. I would gladly blow the entire Alpha and Omega question wide open." Still nothing. "Very gladly," she repeated, eyeing each dark blob in front of her, hoping for the slightest sign.
The woman in front of her tapped her pencil lightly against the desk.
"Miss Boushu," a voice said from her extreme left. "It would be in our best wishes, and yours too, coincidentally, if you refrained from mentioning the Alpha and the Omega program to the public. Now, you are a very smart woman, so we are led to believe from the vids, yes? So we think we understand each other, yes?" A familiarity about the voice pricked Boushu's mind, but nothing clear surfaced.
Boushu's knuckles turned white as she gripped her notes. "Is that a threat, Council?"
After a pause, the woman just to her right warmly replied, "We don't make threats, Miss Boushu." She paused, then continued in a harder tone, "They are unnecessary and lead to many messy things to clean up afterwards."
"Then let me keep from believing that the World City Council is threatening me, because, you're right, Uhuri-sama," Boushu said baldly, "you will have trouble cleaning me up. I can assure you that."
"Miss Boushu, I was under the impression there were to be no 'names' involved in this," a voice stated frostily.
Boushu smile was just as cold, "Well, you all know mine, I didn't know why I shouldn't know yours."
"Many reasons," came the quick response.
"I don't need to know names, Council; I don't need to at all. In fact, wouldn't we all agree that names are just so hard to remember any more? Humans, men... 'youkai'. Although I've found for the last two you can easily replace a pronoun for the word 'thing' or increasingly 'slave' or even 'beast.' But it's harder, when you have something that's both man 'and' youkai, wouldn't you say?" Boushu said, seeing several Council members freeze, and went on smoothly, "Because I'm never sure whether to say 'freak of nature' or just run 'thing' and 'beast' together. I know!" she said with false brightness, "Why don't I call them 'Council members?' After all," she sneered loudly, "the name fits oh-so perfectly."
The woman directly in front of her erupted suddenly, climbing out of her seat and shrieking, "The Alpha Program was never supposed to be used in that manner! It was never supposed to be directly linked to the Shikon System! That was only for the Omega! I swear it- it was never supposed to b-" The woman collapsed onto the floor in a lifeless heap.
Boushu saw the woman sitting in the last right chair return her hand to the top of the table.
"Miss Boushu," the bun-haired woman broke the uneasy silence, "We can be reasonable. I'm sure that a... arrangement can be made," she carried on, ignoring the guards entered the room to roughly drag the heap away, "...but we expect something from you in return, understand?"
Pounding down the impulse wet her lips, Boushu said, "Naturally, Councilmember." She picked up her pen and took more notes during the next four hours than she ever had for any class. By the end, she was fighting to keep from trembling.
She did, as promised by the women, succeed in passing the information to her clients before the Council assassin caught up with her.
***
Equanimity had fled a long time ago, beginning when Kagome found the front door locked despite her every effort to break it free. Now Kagome ran as fast as she could down the stairs, as wild as an animal being chased and feeling death at its heels. For all she dared to turn around and face the disturbing 'thumps' she heard steadily approaching her, perpetual and constant, it might as well have been some oversized radiation rodent.
What mattered the most was simply: 'getting away'.
There were situations when even police knew to escape. A building full of dead coppers easily fell into Kagome's personal category as one of them.
All the running caught up to her in a bundle of fatigue, dragging her booted feet when she needed to lift them; she stumbled into a platform wall gasping like a fish for breath, unable to concentrate on the floor number her cheek was pressed against while black dots floated in her eyes. Her entire body was drained; she couldn't think past the corpses of cops in the front hall except to replay their broken bodies in her mind over and over again.
'I can't keep running like this. Sooner or later, it will catch up or I will collapse. Either I find an escape, or I'm...' There was no doubt that the thing would kill her. She forced her eyes to read the floor: level U5b. '"U"? This building must have levels underground. Most places don't have below-ground level floors,' she pondered confusedly, twisting the door handle. Often buildings were over sites full of nuclear radiation from the War and could not sprawl lower; it explained why cities towered so unbelievably high nowadays. 'What kind of place is this?'
"Pleasepleaseopen," she panted lowly, a stray thought of shame flittering through her mind: 'What would fellow cops think of this pitiful Higurashi Kagome?' "I don't care, please just open!" Kagome sobbed, slamming her palm against the side of the door in frustration.
"Miss Kikyou, you are allowed entrance into Go-shinboku Laboratory; please remember to pass through the sanitation station before proceeding into the Inner Sanctums, thank you."
'What the-?' Kagome didn't stand around to question her fortune, scrambling through the door as it slid open. It snapped shut with the same pleasant voice calling unnaturally loudly in the dank quiet, "Thank you Miss Kikyou!"
'Miss Kikyou? Who- where am I-' Bright lights turned on with a 'pop' of tell-tale unuse, blinding her momentarily so that when the sanitation sprays clicked on, bathing her body and clothes, Kagome barely stifled her scream of surprise.
"Miss Kikyou, you may now proceed to the Changing station, thank you!" The voice niggled at something in the back of Kagome's mind.
Although she wanted to yell out to the voice, "I'm not Kikyou, and where the hell am I," she settled for a disgruntled, "Urk," and went toward the space in the blank white walls where she thought the door would be: a vague outline of off-white defined its parameters. At a loss for what to do without turning a handle Kagome shoved at it dully.
"Miss Kikyou, please proceed to the Changing station, thank you! Please identify yourself at the door grid, thank you!" Obediently, a small grid lit up blue. Kagome looked thoughtfully down at her hand, remembering how she had got into this strange place. 'Ah... That's right, isn't it?'
The Changing station appeared as a small room ringed with locker-like booths on her immediate left and right, a long circle-stool encompassing the middle. She stopped at one of the booths, looking over the clothing hanging clean, pressed, white on the hanger and weighing her options. Would the creature know where she was? Could it get inside? It would be foolish to return to the stairwell, clueless as to whether the thing was waiting right outside or just a floor down.
"Miss Kikyou, please replace your clothes with the sterile set, thank you!" A piece in the chess set of Kagome's mind slid into place. 'That voice is male. Male!'
A shiver tickled her spine. 'Where am I?'
Her mind still split, she took her clothes off and stepped into the white jump suit, considering if she should ball her police uniform up and take it with her when the next door opened. "Miss Kikyou, you are now free to proceed to the Laboratory, thank you!"
She was taking a step forward when she heard like a knife in her chest from the Sanitation Room, "Program Alpha, serial number: one-zero- zero-zero-zero-one A, you are allowed entrance into Go-shinboku Laboratory; please remember to pass through the sanitation station before proceeding into the Inner Sanctum, thank you!"
No. It was letting the creature in too. 'Oh, gods, no.'
Forgetting her things on the stool, she snatched up her belt with her guns and tools on it, and sprinted to the next quarter, but barely felt it slip through her numb fingers when the door settled close again.
Along the walls and even the ceilings, innumerable tubes and pipes wove a tangled web up and down, sideways and diagonal, leaving just enough space to form a path tall enough for a human to pass under but she noticed them only because they defined her pathway by leaving no other space to move. 'I have to run. I have to get away!' Her breath came in quick gasps and, moving with inexorable deliberation, the burning pain of overused muscles screamed at her to collapse. Setting her teeth grimly, bullets of sweat dripped into her eyes. Blurred vision attacked her; Kagome stumbled on a loose pipe poking out from the tangled web ensconcing her in the epitome of her generation. Arms wind-milling, she overcompensated and found herself in the air, crashing painfully into a jutting pipeline.
Faintly she heard, "Program Alpha, serial number: one-zero-zero-zero- zero-one A, please proceed to the Changing station, thank you!" Kagome pushed herself up, holding back the grunts of pain that jolted up her elbow and shoulder. She forced herself into a run with a relentlessness she had never known existed in herself before, had never been unlocked before.
Her feet caught on each other as she dragged herself around a nest of pumping and wheezing machines, almost careening into the wall when the passageway stopped. She slapped at the cement bricks wordlessly until light blue flashed at her touch, and the door slid open.
Kagome expected the expressionless male voice to announce her entrance, but in its place rang a soothing female instead, "Miss Kikyou, you have entered the Inner Sanctum." She hesitated, body twitching forward, but there was nothing more. Slowly, blinking to adjust to the abrupt brilliance, Kagome walked forward.
***
She waited, patiently. Extreme emphasis on the "patiently," because it was an idea Kagome had just come to terms with at twelve and rather like the abstraction. She knew for a solid fact that not many twelve-year olds understood "patiently" the way Kagome understood it; Kagome had easily turned it into an art form.
Beside her, Saniya was silent, her head bent in a way that hid her face from the other children. Kagome knew it was another solid fact that Saniya did this on purpose. Saniya was patient as well, but she was also silent. And careful. And, Kagome knew, painful.
Kagome was not as good at "silent" and "careful" as Saniya, but nor did she know "painful" like Saniya did. Nonetheless, Saniya's pain was Kagome's pain, and this was why Kagome sat by Saniya all the time.
Or maybe it was why Saniya sat by Kagome.
"Kagome-nee-san."
The black haired girl tore her eyes off the wild students romping around the gymnasium, turned toward her little adopted sister,"Saniya?"
"You miss Souta." It was not a question.
Kagome resumed her original position in silence.
"Souta is not gone," she said finally.
Mangled face still hidden by tan locks, Saniya stood up, "You're a liar!" she said angrily. "Do not lie to me!"
"Mom said so, Souta is not gone." She couldn't look at Saniya.
Saniya thrust out an trembling finger, pointing with fury only barely restrained. The hair fell back from her face, allowing the sun through the windows the hit the trenched hole where her left eye should have been, "That thing is not our brother!"
The boy in question watched the exchange from his seat in front of them. He blinked now and then. Mostly, he awaited orders.
***
Firstly, once her eyes adjusted, she noticed the absence of the pipes in exchange for only four huge tubes running from the top of each wall to connect to...
That was what she noticed second.
It was immobile, frozen in time and space. There was only the quiet humming of machines working, instead of the loud coughing and churning that had assaulted her ears as she ran. It was peaceful. Like Eden.
The room was not big, obviously meant for one thing only: to contain a certain being. The being stood before her like a statue. She moved closer, all thoughts of chase and hunt vanished by the thing in front of her eyes.
'A...'
"Boy," she whispered, finishing her thought out loud.
He was tall, even on the raised platform, slender, but well-muscled, 'very' well-muscled, especially in the thighs, and even his calves and...
He was also completely nude. Kagome blushed for a moment, but her eyes had minds of their own and moved determinedly upward. They took in a stomach etched in steel that reminded her of those creations by the- which lost civilization? Oh, like the Greeks. His arms were connected to the tubing- she could see where they buried under his skin, twitching slightly: pumping something into him. One pipe touched his neck. The fourth one planted itself over his heart. Iridescent silver flowing hair fluttered unnaturally, moved by an imperceptible air current formed by the recyclers in the ceiling.
Kagome moved forward, entranced by his perfect skin, by the vibrating tubes punched into him. She reached up to touch the smooth skin of his arm, lightly drawing her finger down to rougher hands and overlong nails. 'Like claws?' a stray thought awoke from her blank mind. Soft relaxed muscles rippled beneath her touch. They hardened as though tensed as her finger passed, but were unnoticed by the mesmerized woman.
Her eye caught something strange on his arm and she moved closer, squinting to see the lines that were scratched on his skin like scars-
"The Omega."
Kagome whirled around like she had been struck.
A/N: Hi again, all!! I hope you liked the last chapter- did you all go back and see the edits I made? Anyway! Please don't forget to review at the end of the chapter- it really helps speed things up for the next one (reviews help with my poor pathetic confidence ^-^). Well, this is, as always, for all Inuyasha fans out there!! Enjoy!! And if you don't like it, tell me why so I can improve it next time! ^-^
Chapter Two- Program: Run
Boushu stared out at her audience, quiet for a moment, searching for what she called her 'reason'. Despite how easy it seemed to make each impassioned appearance, it was hard to sustain herself, to continue to make excuses to tour, to walk up to the next podium, to write the next speech. Sometimes she didn't find reason; all too often, it camouflaged, or was wiped out of many places. But sometimes, like a gem in the rough, Boushu found a pair of eyes for which she spoke, and found her 'reason' to keep speaking.
Today, the audience was as gracious as ice cream to her legs.
"Youkai are humanity's replacement for men. This is generally, if not officially, agreed upon. Yet there are two things prohibited all youkai," she held up two slender fingers to demonstrate, "They may never take the form of their owners, and... they may never be created as weapons. Both are ironic to the extreme," Boushu sneered. "Fashionable trends encourage youkai to look as close to human males as possible- torso, appendage structure... genitals," she drawled out slowly, ignoring the gasps. "When we have only our imaginations to limit youkai designs, why for the world would we replicate our oft-toted despised male halves?" She shrugged as though the answer was unimportant, and went on, "Miniscule details manage to keep these youkai from being destroyed in the model stage, and now it is rare to see youkai that do not stand on two legs, operate two eyes and talk with one mouth." She smiled fiendishly, her tight rosebud lips stretching out thinly. "But youkai crime. That is a much more complicated subject, isn't it?
"And the catch is, ladies," she said, her eyebrows inching their way up her forehead, "What exactly constitutes youkai crime? Because every woman knows, after all, that youkai... do 'not' have 'free wills'..."
***
Kagome fixed her grip on the las-gun, cursing her sweating palms as vulgarly as she knew how, and peered into the gloom of Tokyo. Few people walked the streets at night, for good reason, but tonight the city seemed more quiet than usual- it was holding its breath, waiting for something.
Keeping watchful eyes on the dark alleyway behind her, the policewoman unstrapped her navigator from her belt, checked the coordinates, and looked at the towering building across the street again before muttering a swearword under her breath. Five police cars hummed in front of the dilapidated doors although their seats were empty of personnel; a chill ran up Kagome's spine that had nothing to do with the fall air. Quietly, she pulled out the other gun and blinked away a bead of sweat.
'I expected a shitty place, but...' Bars pockmarked windows, telling of richer occupants who could afford a measure of security. The rest were void of even glass.
A scurry in the alleyway made Kagome whirl around, ready to shoot anything that moved. Seconds of thundering heartbeats passed before a limping creature scuttled out from the darkness, just slow enough to stop Kagome's finger from squeezing. 'Radiation creature,' she thought sourly as three too many legs were silhouetted by the moonlight for a simple street rat. She suppressed a shiver, glad that it wandered in the opposite direction.
'What the hell was that?' A shadow passed in front of the fifth floor window, catching Kagome's eye. She had an impression of tall slender grace, and white gleaming skin before it dissolved into shadows again. Blaring silence drummed in her ears. Where was sound? Where was the shriek of passion or terror that blemished each Tokyo night? Any copper would know better than to approach the situation solo, even an experienced cop. Especially an experienced cop. It was a verifiable death trap.
Before she could stop herself with rationality, Kagome was running across the road, reaching the door, and sliding through it with all the noise of a snake slithering through grass. She turned around, unsure of what to expect.
"Oh god," she whispered.
Kagome kneeled down, warily stretching a hand out, stricken by the blood still actively seeping from the woman's neck. As she moved closer, mesmerized by the horrific sight, the floor sucked nastily at her feet- fresh blood turning sticky and dry. Red stains crept wetly up her shoes, warming her toes. The woman's neck was punctured, a hole ripped through it so cleanly the dark marble tiles could be seen through the woman's neck. "Oh gods," Kagome repeated. 'Who could do this? What being could physically be capable of doing this?' Her stomach sinking rapidly to her knees, she brought her head up, surveying the rest of the corridor.
Although she had never seen such a place in person, the corridor was what Kagome imagined a war slaughter would look like. Bodies were draped everywhere, in mangled pieces. 'Could a youkai do this?' When programmed in a certain manner, Kagome knew that youkai were capable of almost any crime.
'...But something this heinous? This is more like a war zone. More like a slaughter, not a crime scene... I've never seen anything remotely like it. Youkai don't kill like this. They can't.' The scene before her said otherwise.
A moan kicked up amongst the piled bodies, the sobbing cry of a woman who knows she is dead but lives, and dirt cascading from the ceiling at the commotion like a lowering shroud. Severed heads, eyes wide and wild in a last contortion of fear stared at Kagome, accusing her of breathing. With a scream, Kagome realized her foot was crushing the bones of a severed hand.
"Oh, god!" she jolted up, careening into a hat stand supporting a disembodied leg, white bone protruding from the knee. It stuttered in place before falling in a ruckus on the hard floor. Kagome stood stock still, hardly daring to breathe in a kind of paralyzed fear that hadn't gripped her since she was thirteen. 'This is a big place. It couldn't hear it couldn't hear.'
Nothing happened. There was no sudden appearance of a ghastly being wielding a gun from behind her, nor a mass murderer jumping down from the ceiling armed with a machete.
"I'm getting paranoid, working Emergency too long," she breathed, more relieved than she was willing to admit, and bent down to right the fallen furniture.
An echoing noise sounded deep within the house. Dampened 'thumping' moved in rhythm, floors and floors above her.
She couldn't move from shock, from pure unholy fear. 'It's coming. The thing that did this is coming.' Kagome remembered the awful phone call, the woman's shrill voice on the phone, speaking in terrified whispers.
'Please, please! Oh, god! It's coming this way again, I can hear it! I can 'hear' it! Oh god! HELP ME!!'
'HELP ME!!' the words rang like a death toll in her ears. They were the last words, Kagome was certain, the woman uttered.
***
"I am asking the Council to answer my question!" Boushu raged, fist thumping in trademark style, neatly pinned hair coming wildly undone, lipstick nearly worn away by sheer use of her mouth. Her mouth was her life, her brain, her soul. From it, Boushu blindly believed, she could sway the oceans to roll another way. "As far as I'm concerned, as my people are concerned, you're bullshitting around, and I frankly am tired of it!" she threw glares at them all, daring them to come forth and speak true.
One woman leaned forward, hair in buns as strict as her countenance was now. She spoke as if to a disobedient child, "We will remind the speaker that she is here by our consent, by our very will and mercy, and if she would like to continue standing there as she is now, she should show more respect to her kind benefactors."
Boushu slammed a hand onto the podium, snarling, "If I am here, I know it is not for all the efforts of each one of you to prevent me. As of yet the highest body of power in the land has failed to meet my questions to the satisfaction of my clients, and I refuse absolutely, to leave here without an answer that is yet to my contentment!"
"'Your clients' as you often refer to them, who exactly are these people? Would you please be more specific as to who you are speaking of, Miss Boushu, for the Council's notes?" The same woman said, features hidden behind her glasses. With the odd lighting, Boushu could not be sure of who was talking at one time, much less if they were smiling. 'I could be preaching to a youkai, for all I know,' she thought, and wondered how far-fetched such thoughts were. It seemed every day youkai technology was advancing by previously impossible leaps.
Boushu gritted through clenched teeth, "I am not at liberty to divulge such information to this Council, nor would I if I possessed the authority."
On the other side of the long half-circle table Boushu was addressing, a woman waved a shadowed hand, "The Council hardly feels comfortable passing on possibly top secret information to unknown recipients. By telling us this information, it would be that much more conducive to your campaign, Miss Boushu, we're sure."
"Do I need to repeat myself to this esteemed and intelligent group?" she fumed, wondering how many times within the last five hours Boushu had been extolling the Council had attempted to wring that knowledge from her. 'I wouldn't tell on the life of every person in Tokyo Province, in the American Province, too, for that matter. Not to these people. God knows what the hell they would do.' "Now, if you please," she began, switching the conversation over, "Of my several questions for this Council, possibly the most important has yet to be answered. Please, Council, a straight response this time," she adjusted her glasses to read the neatly printed notes, "What 'is' the Alpha program? We have gathered that is was begun before the war, and is rumored to have to do with youkai." Quiet assailed her. "Council, I'll be frank. I am prepared to go to press with this unless I have reason not to. I would gladly blow the entire Alpha and Omega question wide open." Still nothing. "Very gladly," she repeated, eyeing each dark blob in front of her, hoping for the slightest sign.
The woman in front of her tapped her pencil lightly against the desk.
"Miss Boushu," a voice said from her extreme left. "It would be in our best wishes, and yours too, coincidentally, if you refrained from mentioning the Alpha and the Omega program to the public. Now, you are a very smart woman, so we are led to believe from the vids, yes? So we think we understand each other, yes?" A familiarity about the voice pricked Boushu's mind, but nothing clear surfaced.
Boushu's knuckles turned white as she gripped her notes. "Is that a threat, Council?"
After a pause, the woman just to her right warmly replied, "We don't make threats, Miss Boushu." She paused, then continued in a harder tone, "They are unnecessary and lead to many messy things to clean up afterwards."
"Then let me keep from believing that the World City Council is threatening me, because, you're right, Uhuri-sama," Boushu said baldly, "you will have trouble cleaning me up. I can assure you that."
"Miss Boushu, I was under the impression there were to be no 'names' involved in this," a voice stated frostily.
Boushu smile was just as cold, "Well, you all know mine, I didn't know why I shouldn't know yours."
"Many reasons," came the quick response.
"I don't need to know names, Council; I don't need to at all. In fact, wouldn't we all agree that names are just so hard to remember any more? Humans, men... 'youkai'. Although I've found for the last two you can easily replace a pronoun for the word 'thing' or increasingly 'slave' or even 'beast.' But it's harder, when you have something that's both man 'and' youkai, wouldn't you say?" Boushu said, seeing several Council members freeze, and went on smoothly, "Because I'm never sure whether to say 'freak of nature' or just run 'thing' and 'beast' together. I know!" she said with false brightness, "Why don't I call them 'Council members?' After all," she sneered loudly, "the name fits oh-so perfectly."
The woman directly in front of her erupted suddenly, climbing out of her seat and shrieking, "The Alpha Program was never supposed to be used in that manner! It was never supposed to be directly linked to the Shikon System! That was only for the Omega! I swear it- it was never supposed to b-" The woman collapsed onto the floor in a lifeless heap.
Boushu saw the woman sitting in the last right chair return her hand to the top of the table.
"Miss Boushu," the bun-haired woman broke the uneasy silence, "We can be reasonable. I'm sure that a... arrangement can be made," she carried on, ignoring the guards entered the room to roughly drag the heap away, "...but we expect something from you in return, understand?"
Pounding down the impulse wet her lips, Boushu said, "Naturally, Councilmember." She picked up her pen and took more notes during the next four hours than she ever had for any class. By the end, she was fighting to keep from trembling.
She did, as promised by the women, succeed in passing the information to her clients before the Council assassin caught up with her.
***
Equanimity had fled a long time ago, beginning when Kagome found the front door locked despite her every effort to break it free. Now Kagome ran as fast as she could down the stairs, as wild as an animal being chased and feeling death at its heels. For all she dared to turn around and face the disturbing 'thumps' she heard steadily approaching her, perpetual and constant, it might as well have been some oversized radiation rodent.
What mattered the most was simply: 'getting away'.
There were situations when even police knew to escape. A building full of dead coppers easily fell into Kagome's personal category as one of them.
All the running caught up to her in a bundle of fatigue, dragging her booted feet when she needed to lift them; she stumbled into a platform wall gasping like a fish for breath, unable to concentrate on the floor number her cheek was pressed against while black dots floated in her eyes. Her entire body was drained; she couldn't think past the corpses of cops in the front hall except to replay their broken bodies in her mind over and over again.
'I can't keep running like this. Sooner or later, it will catch up or I will collapse. Either I find an escape, or I'm...' There was no doubt that the thing would kill her. She forced her eyes to read the floor: level U5b. '"U"? This building must have levels underground. Most places don't have below-ground level floors,' she pondered confusedly, twisting the door handle. Often buildings were over sites full of nuclear radiation from the War and could not sprawl lower; it explained why cities towered so unbelievably high nowadays. 'What kind of place is this?'
"Pleasepleaseopen," she panted lowly, a stray thought of shame flittering through her mind: 'What would fellow cops think of this pitiful Higurashi Kagome?' "I don't care, please just open!" Kagome sobbed, slamming her palm against the side of the door in frustration.
"Miss Kikyou, you are allowed entrance into Go-shinboku Laboratory; please remember to pass through the sanitation station before proceeding into the Inner Sanctums, thank you."
'What the-?' Kagome didn't stand around to question her fortune, scrambling through the door as it slid open. It snapped shut with the same pleasant voice calling unnaturally loudly in the dank quiet, "Thank you Miss Kikyou!"
'Miss Kikyou? Who- where am I-' Bright lights turned on with a 'pop' of tell-tale unuse, blinding her momentarily so that when the sanitation sprays clicked on, bathing her body and clothes, Kagome barely stifled her scream of surprise.
"Miss Kikyou, you may now proceed to the Changing station, thank you!" The voice niggled at something in the back of Kagome's mind.
Although she wanted to yell out to the voice, "I'm not Kikyou, and where the hell am I," she settled for a disgruntled, "Urk," and went toward the space in the blank white walls where she thought the door would be: a vague outline of off-white defined its parameters. At a loss for what to do without turning a handle Kagome shoved at it dully.
"Miss Kikyou, please proceed to the Changing station, thank you! Please identify yourself at the door grid, thank you!" Obediently, a small grid lit up blue. Kagome looked thoughtfully down at her hand, remembering how she had got into this strange place. 'Ah... That's right, isn't it?'
The Changing station appeared as a small room ringed with locker-like booths on her immediate left and right, a long circle-stool encompassing the middle. She stopped at one of the booths, looking over the clothing hanging clean, pressed, white on the hanger and weighing her options. Would the creature know where she was? Could it get inside? It would be foolish to return to the stairwell, clueless as to whether the thing was waiting right outside or just a floor down.
"Miss Kikyou, please replace your clothes with the sterile set, thank you!" A piece in the chess set of Kagome's mind slid into place. 'That voice is male. Male!'
A shiver tickled her spine. 'Where am I?'
Her mind still split, she took her clothes off and stepped into the white jump suit, considering if she should ball her police uniform up and take it with her when the next door opened. "Miss Kikyou, you are now free to proceed to the Laboratory, thank you!"
She was taking a step forward when she heard like a knife in her chest from the Sanitation Room, "Program Alpha, serial number: one-zero- zero-zero-zero-one A, you are allowed entrance into Go-shinboku Laboratory; please remember to pass through the sanitation station before proceeding into the Inner Sanctum, thank you!"
No. It was letting the creature in too. 'Oh, gods, no.'
Forgetting her things on the stool, she snatched up her belt with her guns and tools on it, and sprinted to the next quarter, but barely felt it slip through her numb fingers when the door settled close again.
Along the walls and even the ceilings, innumerable tubes and pipes wove a tangled web up and down, sideways and diagonal, leaving just enough space to form a path tall enough for a human to pass under but she noticed them only because they defined her pathway by leaving no other space to move. 'I have to run. I have to get away!' Her breath came in quick gasps and, moving with inexorable deliberation, the burning pain of overused muscles screamed at her to collapse. Setting her teeth grimly, bullets of sweat dripped into her eyes. Blurred vision attacked her; Kagome stumbled on a loose pipe poking out from the tangled web ensconcing her in the epitome of her generation. Arms wind-milling, she overcompensated and found herself in the air, crashing painfully into a jutting pipeline.
Faintly she heard, "Program Alpha, serial number: one-zero-zero-zero- zero-one A, please proceed to the Changing station, thank you!" Kagome pushed herself up, holding back the grunts of pain that jolted up her elbow and shoulder. She forced herself into a run with a relentlessness she had never known existed in herself before, had never been unlocked before.
Her feet caught on each other as she dragged herself around a nest of pumping and wheezing machines, almost careening into the wall when the passageway stopped. She slapped at the cement bricks wordlessly until light blue flashed at her touch, and the door slid open.
Kagome expected the expressionless male voice to announce her entrance, but in its place rang a soothing female instead, "Miss Kikyou, you have entered the Inner Sanctum." She hesitated, body twitching forward, but there was nothing more. Slowly, blinking to adjust to the abrupt brilliance, Kagome walked forward.
***
She waited, patiently. Extreme emphasis on the "patiently," because it was an idea Kagome had just come to terms with at twelve and rather like the abstraction. She knew for a solid fact that not many twelve-year olds understood "patiently" the way Kagome understood it; Kagome had easily turned it into an art form.
Beside her, Saniya was silent, her head bent in a way that hid her face from the other children. Kagome knew it was another solid fact that Saniya did this on purpose. Saniya was patient as well, but she was also silent. And careful. And, Kagome knew, painful.
Kagome was not as good at "silent" and "careful" as Saniya, but nor did she know "painful" like Saniya did. Nonetheless, Saniya's pain was Kagome's pain, and this was why Kagome sat by Saniya all the time.
Or maybe it was why Saniya sat by Kagome.
"Kagome-nee-san."
The black haired girl tore her eyes off the wild students romping around the gymnasium, turned toward her little adopted sister,"Saniya?"
"You miss Souta." It was not a question.
Kagome resumed her original position in silence.
"Souta is not gone," she said finally.
Mangled face still hidden by tan locks, Saniya stood up, "You're a liar!" she said angrily. "Do not lie to me!"
"Mom said so, Souta is not gone." She couldn't look at Saniya.
Saniya thrust out an trembling finger, pointing with fury only barely restrained. The hair fell back from her face, allowing the sun through the windows the hit the trenched hole where her left eye should have been, "That thing is not our brother!"
The boy in question watched the exchange from his seat in front of them. He blinked now and then. Mostly, he awaited orders.
***
Firstly, once her eyes adjusted, she noticed the absence of the pipes in exchange for only four huge tubes running from the top of each wall to connect to...
That was what she noticed second.
It was immobile, frozen in time and space. There was only the quiet humming of machines working, instead of the loud coughing and churning that had assaulted her ears as she ran. It was peaceful. Like Eden.
The room was not big, obviously meant for one thing only: to contain a certain being. The being stood before her like a statue. She moved closer, all thoughts of chase and hunt vanished by the thing in front of her eyes.
'A...'
"Boy," she whispered, finishing her thought out loud.
He was tall, even on the raised platform, slender, but well-muscled, 'very' well-muscled, especially in the thighs, and even his calves and...
He was also completely nude. Kagome blushed for a moment, but her eyes had minds of their own and moved determinedly upward. They took in a stomach etched in steel that reminded her of those creations by the- which lost civilization? Oh, like the Greeks. His arms were connected to the tubing- she could see where they buried under his skin, twitching slightly: pumping something into him. One pipe touched his neck. The fourth one planted itself over his heart. Iridescent silver flowing hair fluttered unnaturally, moved by an imperceptible air current formed by the recyclers in the ceiling.
Kagome moved forward, entranced by his perfect skin, by the vibrating tubes punched into him. She reached up to touch the smooth skin of his arm, lightly drawing her finger down to rougher hands and overlong nails. 'Like claws?' a stray thought awoke from her blank mind. Soft relaxed muscles rippled beneath her touch. They hardened as though tensed as her finger passed, but were unnoticed by the mesmerized woman.
Her eye caught something strange on his arm and she moved closer, squinting to see the lines that were scratched on his skin like scars-
"The Omega."
Kagome whirled around like she had been struck.