Sleeping Beauty 10
Intelligence work was part of K's past and he wished it had stayed there. It was like piloting a plane; if you didn't do it all the time, it wasn't safe to really do in a crisis. He was a music manager now, dealing with hysterical singers and picky keyboardists, with pink bunnies more than dodging bullets. Singers don't usually shoot back. Still his fingers remembered the combination for this safe, his finger print had been accepted. He was still K. He'd always be K.
The older part of him was locked in this safe though, hidden so well that even newer technology could not ferret it out. It was the dose that his partner should have had and didn't get. It was the last Kiss in all the world. If K had been thinking tactically, thinking like an intelligence officer, he might have realized the importance of that bit of information.
Sleeping Beauty was supposed to have died. The poison was supposed to have gone up with the lab. Of course, his partner wasn't supposed to get hit with the poison and be taken to a hospital as a John Doe either. By the time the antidote had been given to K and T located, the second dose of antidote wasn't required. Sleeping Beauty still haunted K's sleep from time to time, paralysis and loss.
Hidden better than his own memories, he'd left the safe and the antidote here when he'd left the agency. The building would have to fall down before anyone would find it and yet here he was, turning the combination. It was as though he were opening his own heart, as if ghosts might rage out at him the moment he pulled the door open.
Nothing raged out at him though, just the stale preserved scent of Ying's perfume, there for all these years. He took the black steel box from the safe and opened it in the same motion, thumb on the latch, pointer finger on the lid.. The vial was there, a single fingerprint in dried blood on the side. So much of his life had been washed clean, so very clean. Nothing was left of T, just a vial of medicine to save Shuichi and one slightly smeared finger print.
Seeing the vial, the memory of Shuichi falling, these brought him back to where he'd been years ago, time misting backwards over him like the scent of Ying's cinnamon perfume. When the phone rang, he reached to where it had been on the desk, when it had been his desk, leaning over and effectively dodging the bullet that went right over where he would have been. The window shattered, tiny shards of glass spraying inward, even as much of it dropped like a falling, tinkling curtain.
Medicine box closed and held to his chest, he dodged behind his desk, fumbling his mobile phone out. It was the present pressing back into him, the urgent need to make sure everything was fine that made him answer the phone while being shot at, glass from the window flying through the room. The caller id told him it was Tohma and he almost didn't answer, but the instinct of the present had the button pressed before he could decide. "Now is not good timing, Tohma-san."
"K-san, where is Shindou? Who did you shoot? I am very close and I heard it. You didn't shoot Shindou, did you?"
Glass still fell around him, raining down in sharp drops. "I didn't shoot anyone! Shindou-san is safe. He's in 'China'."
Tohma knew more of K's past than anyone. He know that K might go to 'China' in an emergency, but he did not know about Sleeping Beauty or T. "Stay away Tohma! I am fixing everything!"
"Put the phone down." Calculating and almost leering, the voice drew a sneer from K before he'd even looked up to find the masked intruder. "Your former colleagues are across town dealing with a very serious bomb threat." He made a dismissive 'tsk'ing' sound and smiled. "There is only building security, and they're terribly slow. Don't waste my time. Phone down, hands behind your head."
He set the phone down, face up, and slowly moved his hands behind his head, looking for any opening. The box of antidote went behind his head as well, to be shoved under some paper on the table.
"You've been played, K. The Sleeping Beauty made you stupid. You were American. Now, you're just a manager for a gay Japanese boy, running around on your belly after that blond asshole who'd bring such obscene music to America. Feel some shame!"
The dart hit K's throat, almost point blank and blood responded almost as if it could push the dart and poison out. K's breath caught, held, and then he ground out, "Kill you," as his arms relaxed, his chin dropped forward.
His attacker pressed a button on his watch. "Running slow," he said, tsking again. "I meant to have 45 seconds with you. I know you can hear me still. You're such a pervert! You know that? Think about that, uh? For the next ten hours. It's too bad you're not a girl. You're too pretty to be a man." Fingers, uninvited fingers, crept over his cheek, shoving him over onto his side, where they slipped behind his neck and broke his ponytail holder. In a moment, his long blond hair was spread around his face, arranged nicely. He wanted to snarl, to bite, to beat the living hell out of this guy!
"Got to run, have an air current to catch. Thank you so much for getting the Kiss out for us. I think Sleeping Beauty was originally a French story. If whoever was on the phone is still listening. Take a look at Paris in the next couple weeks. I think they'll be much more peaceful soon, sleepy sleepy peaceful. Sin is history, pornographers!"
K snarled, furious and he was sure his lip moved, just a little.
Tohma's voice screamed through the phone. "K! K-San!"
The thief picked up the phone as he stood, picking up the box of antidote. "Tsk tsk. K is sleeping so beautifully. A blond angel. Now that we've got the Kiss, all the sinners are going to go to sleep. All your evil will stop. Talk to him, if you like. I hear it helps with the desperation."
He dropped the phone back by K's head and it slid down, disappearing partially under blond hair. Kicking K's thigh, nudging his legs apart. If it was designed to make K even more furious, it worked just fine.
"K?" Tohma's voice was tentative, calmer, but still quite menacing, "K-san, let me help. I am coming."
Terror clawed K. Failure, paralysis, death, not only for him, but for Shuichi as well and there was such risk for Tohma. K would have cried in frustration if he could have. "Gomen," he wheezed in broken sounding Japanese.
"What is happening? Are you hurt?"
The Sleeping Beauty poison he remembered wouldn't have let him reply, not to apologize or to snarl. He groaned then, forcing some air back out of his lungs.
The responding security was, as the thief had predicted, standard building security. Only two guards came in, guns drawn, moving along the perimeter of the ruined office. K could only hear them, walking over the glass, talking to each other. One of them thought he might be dead, but didn't want to take his pulse to check. This didn't improve his mood either. Knowing it wouldn't work, he tried anyway, "Tohma."
"K!" Relief flooded Tohma's voice. "What floor? What room?"
As control returned to his body, it came in little steps, first his voice, and then a small twitch in his fingers. Response and control increased from there. He shoved the phone closer to his face, pasting hair into his mouth. "I'm immune." His voice was rough, the sounds smeared together. "The kiss is still in my blood. Tohma it was a trap. Terrorists."
"What? Terrorists? He was serious? Paris?"
One of the security guards squatted down in front of him, brushing his hair out of his eyes. "Are you hurt, Sir?"
"No, no," K lied. "Have to get the antidote back. Shuichi needs," he said, lower, aiming the words at Tohma, trusting the keyboardist more than he'd know.
"I will be right there!" Tohma said, voice staticky in the phone.
"Sir, EMS is on the way. Can you give me any information?"
"No. I am fine. Tohma, hurry." He wasn't fine yet, even though he'd managed to sit himself up. Neither of his legs had any sensation. His voice slurred and he worried that would only bring Tohma more quickly.
The security guard reached out and jerked the phone from his still weak fingers. "I don't think he needs to hurry."
When the other security guard came around the desk, the one in front of K brought his pistol around and fired without warning. K lunged ineffectively, causing the man to have to fire twice. The impact knocked the second security guard back, hands over his chest. Somehow in the movements, the lunge and the shot, the first guard got a handful of blond hair in his fist. Roughly, he jerked the former agent to his feet. "My uncle thought the Kiss would be like a vaccine. I didn't believe him. Maybe it's just you. Either way, we just have to tie up all those loose ends."
"You need therapy!" It was a private joke, very quiet in Bad Luck and Nittle Grasper inner circles.
"I need therapy? You're the one helping them strangle the world with filth! You sold out your American heritage to Seguchi Tohma, crawling after him like a little lap dog!"
K swung at him, but he was too weak to cause any damage yet.
"You're recovering so quickly! It's amazing. Too bad we can't have you to the lab for a while." They'd drawn near the opening, the shattered window with a couple dozen floors between them and the sidewalk. "Have you ever wanted to fly, K?"
The conversation had been in English. When Tohma's voice joined them, in English, they both turned to look. The owner of Nittle Grasper Records had lost his coat and his bare arms flexed under unfashionable sweat. "Let go of him."
This was the unexpected event. In that moment of hesitation, K jerked himself free. The fake security guard brought his pistol up to aim at Tohma. Tohma fired.
Taser darts shot out, imbedding into the man's chest and hip. He jerked forward, reaching for the barbed darts. K interlaced his fists and hit him hard on the back. Tohma had crossed the room and was prying the pistol from the man's hand, careful not to get any of his own prints on it by use of a red silk handkerchief. "It was a present from Eiri, my lucky silk." He smiled very softly at K, tenderly almost, then kicked the man on the floor before putting a foot on the back of his neck.
"How did you?" K asked, holding himself up with a hand on the wall.
"I followed you since you took Shindou-san. What is going on?"
"Couldn't leave him in the hospital," K said, not giving any explanation more than that. "You know what I used to do. Before I left, I was poisoned. It is the same poison that Shuichi was hit with. I came here to get the only antidote. It was a trap. They meant only for me to come here to get it so that they could steal it. I have to stop them or many more people will die."
Tohma hadn't moved his foot from the fake guard's neck. "Do you know where it was taken? Can more be made?"
K pointed to the broken window. "If more could be made, they'd have done it."
"But you are immune. Is it a virus? Perhaps the antibodies are in your blood."
"Perhaps," said a new voice, confident, disgusted, coming from a man blocking the door. "What are you doing in my office, K?"
"Rackles. Or is that R now? Better question is," K pulled his own gun now, just dying to shoot someone! Finally. "Why weren't you in your office!?"
"What was in the safe?"
"Can he help us, K?" Tohma studied the man, respectful, but so slightly that it wasn't really respect.
"Help you to what? Ruin my office?"
"No, you do that fine. We need to make an antidote, very quickly," K said, letting Tohma slip an arm around him as other agents came into take care of the captured security guard.
"And we need to hunt down some very rude terrorists," Tohma added, holding K just a little more securely than was needed.
K's replacement eyed them. "It's Shindou Shuichi? He's been poisoned?"
Tohma locked his fingers behind his back, hiding the taser gun, and submerging his urge to shoot this uncooperative man. It worked so well for K most of the time though. "Yes, it is the singer from Bad Luck."
"Bad Luck? I hear Yuki Eiri is writing a story for him. You know our labs are always at your disposal, K. It's good to know we can count on your help in special situations as well."
The pistol shook as K brought it. Strength faded in his legs and he found more of his weight resting on Tohma. "I wouldn't let you go," Tohma said softly.
"What he wants, it's expensive, Tohma."
"Then we'll pay together."
Intelligence work was part of K's past and he wished it had stayed there. It was like piloting a plane; if you didn't do it all the time, it wasn't safe to really do in a crisis. He was a music manager now, dealing with hysterical singers and picky keyboardists, with pink bunnies more than dodging bullets. Singers don't usually shoot back. Still his fingers remembered the combination for this safe, his finger print had been accepted. He was still K. He'd always be K.
The older part of him was locked in this safe though, hidden so well that even newer technology could not ferret it out. It was the dose that his partner should have had and didn't get. It was the last Kiss in all the world. If K had been thinking tactically, thinking like an intelligence officer, he might have realized the importance of that bit of information.
Sleeping Beauty was supposed to have died. The poison was supposed to have gone up with the lab. Of course, his partner wasn't supposed to get hit with the poison and be taken to a hospital as a John Doe either. By the time the antidote had been given to K and T located, the second dose of antidote wasn't required. Sleeping Beauty still haunted K's sleep from time to time, paralysis and loss.
Hidden better than his own memories, he'd left the safe and the antidote here when he'd left the agency. The building would have to fall down before anyone would find it and yet here he was, turning the combination. It was as though he were opening his own heart, as if ghosts might rage out at him the moment he pulled the door open.
Nothing raged out at him though, just the stale preserved scent of Ying's perfume, there for all these years. He took the black steel box from the safe and opened it in the same motion, thumb on the latch, pointer finger on the lid.. The vial was there, a single fingerprint in dried blood on the side. So much of his life had been washed clean, so very clean. Nothing was left of T, just a vial of medicine to save Shuichi and one slightly smeared finger print.
Seeing the vial, the memory of Shuichi falling, these brought him back to where he'd been years ago, time misting backwards over him like the scent of Ying's cinnamon perfume. When the phone rang, he reached to where it had been on the desk, when it had been his desk, leaning over and effectively dodging the bullet that went right over where he would have been. The window shattered, tiny shards of glass spraying inward, even as much of it dropped like a falling, tinkling curtain.
Medicine box closed and held to his chest, he dodged behind his desk, fumbling his mobile phone out. It was the present pressing back into him, the urgent need to make sure everything was fine that made him answer the phone while being shot at, glass from the window flying through the room. The caller id told him it was Tohma and he almost didn't answer, but the instinct of the present had the button pressed before he could decide. "Now is not good timing, Tohma-san."
"K-san, where is Shindou? Who did you shoot? I am very close and I heard it. You didn't shoot Shindou, did you?"
Glass still fell around him, raining down in sharp drops. "I didn't shoot anyone! Shindou-san is safe. He's in 'China'."
Tohma knew more of K's past than anyone. He know that K might go to 'China' in an emergency, but he did not know about Sleeping Beauty or T. "Stay away Tohma! I am fixing everything!"
"Put the phone down." Calculating and almost leering, the voice drew a sneer from K before he'd even looked up to find the masked intruder. "Your former colleagues are across town dealing with a very serious bomb threat." He made a dismissive 'tsk'ing' sound and smiled. "There is only building security, and they're terribly slow. Don't waste my time. Phone down, hands behind your head."
He set the phone down, face up, and slowly moved his hands behind his head, looking for any opening. The box of antidote went behind his head as well, to be shoved under some paper on the table.
"You've been played, K. The Sleeping Beauty made you stupid. You were American. Now, you're just a manager for a gay Japanese boy, running around on your belly after that blond asshole who'd bring such obscene music to America. Feel some shame!"
The dart hit K's throat, almost point blank and blood responded almost as if it could push the dart and poison out. K's breath caught, held, and then he ground out, "Kill you," as his arms relaxed, his chin dropped forward.
His attacker pressed a button on his watch. "Running slow," he said, tsking again. "I meant to have 45 seconds with you. I know you can hear me still. You're such a pervert! You know that? Think about that, uh? For the next ten hours. It's too bad you're not a girl. You're too pretty to be a man." Fingers, uninvited fingers, crept over his cheek, shoving him over onto his side, where they slipped behind his neck and broke his ponytail holder. In a moment, his long blond hair was spread around his face, arranged nicely. He wanted to snarl, to bite, to beat the living hell out of this guy!
"Got to run, have an air current to catch. Thank you so much for getting the Kiss out for us. I think Sleeping Beauty was originally a French story. If whoever was on the phone is still listening. Take a look at Paris in the next couple weeks. I think they'll be much more peaceful soon, sleepy sleepy peaceful. Sin is history, pornographers!"
K snarled, furious and he was sure his lip moved, just a little.
Tohma's voice screamed through the phone. "K! K-San!"
The thief picked up the phone as he stood, picking up the box of antidote. "Tsk tsk. K is sleeping so beautifully. A blond angel. Now that we've got the Kiss, all the sinners are going to go to sleep. All your evil will stop. Talk to him, if you like. I hear it helps with the desperation."
He dropped the phone back by K's head and it slid down, disappearing partially under blond hair. Kicking K's thigh, nudging his legs apart. If it was designed to make K even more furious, it worked just fine.
"K?" Tohma's voice was tentative, calmer, but still quite menacing, "K-san, let me help. I am coming."
Terror clawed K. Failure, paralysis, death, not only for him, but for Shuichi as well and there was such risk for Tohma. K would have cried in frustration if he could have. "Gomen," he wheezed in broken sounding Japanese.
"What is happening? Are you hurt?"
The Sleeping Beauty poison he remembered wouldn't have let him reply, not to apologize or to snarl. He groaned then, forcing some air back out of his lungs.
The responding security was, as the thief had predicted, standard building security. Only two guards came in, guns drawn, moving along the perimeter of the ruined office. K could only hear them, walking over the glass, talking to each other. One of them thought he might be dead, but didn't want to take his pulse to check. This didn't improve his mood either. Knowing it wouldn't work, he tried anyway, "Tohma."
"K!" Relief flooded Tohma's voice. "What floor? What room?"
As control returned to his body, it came in little steps, first his voice, and then a small twitch in his fingers. Response and control increased from there. He shoved the phone closer to his face, pasting hair into his mouth. "I'm immune." His voice was rough, the sounds smeared together. "The kiss is still in my blood. Tohma it was a trap. Terrorists."
"What? Terrorists? He was serious? Paris?"
One of the security guards squatted down in front of him, brushing his hair out of his eyes. "Are you hurt, Sir?"
"No, no," K lied. "Have to get the antidote back. Shuichi needs," he said, lower, aiming the words at Tohma, trusting the keyboardist more than he'd know.
"I will be right there!" Tohma said, voice staticky in the phone.
"Sir, EMS is on the way. Can you give me any information?"
"No. I am fine. Tohma, hurry." He wasn't fine yet, even though he'd managed to sit himself up. Neither of his legs had any sensation. His voice slurred and he worried that would only bring Tohma more quickly.
The security guard reached out and jerked the phone from his still weak fingers. "I don't think he needs to hurry."
When the other security guard came around the desk, the one in front of K brought his pistol around and fired without warning. K lunged ineffectively, causing the man to have to fire twice. The impact knocked the second security guard back, hands over his chest. Somehow in the movements, the lunge and the shot, the first guard got a handful of blond hair in his fist. Roughly, he jerked the former agent to his feet. "My uncle thought the Kiss would be like a vaccine. I didn't believe him. Maybe it's just you. Either way, we just have to tie up all those loose ends."
"You need therapy!" It was a private joke, very quiet in Bad Luck and Nittle Grasper inner circles.
"I need therapy? You're the one helping them strangle the world with filth! You sold out your American heritage to Seguchi Tohma, crawling after him like a little lap dog!"
K swung at him, but he was too weak to cause any damage yet.
"You're recovering so quickly! It's amazing. Too bad we can't have you to the lab for a while." They'd drawn near the opening, the shattered window with a couple dozen floors between them and the sidewalk. "Have you ever wanted to fly, K?"
The conversation had been in English. When Tohma's voice joined them, in English, they both turned to look. The owner of Nittle Grasper Records had lost his coat and his bare arms flexed under unfashionable sweat. "Let go of him."
This was the unexpected event. In that moment of hesitation, K jerked himself free. The fake security guard brought his pistol up to aim at Tohma. Tohma fired.
Taser darts shot out, imbedding into the man's chest and hip. He jerked forward, reaching for the barbed darts. K interlaced his fists and hit him hard on the back. Tohma had crossed the room and was prying the pistol from the man's hand, careful not to get any of his own prints on it by use of a red silk handkerchief. "It was a present from Eiri, my lucky silk." He smiled very softly at K, tenderly almost, then kicked the man on the floor before putting a foot on the back of his neck.
"How did you?" K asked, holding himself up with a hand on the wall.
"I followed you since you took Shindou-san. What is going on?"
"Couldn't leave him in the hospital," K said, not giving any explanation more than that. "You know what I used to do. Before I left, I was poisoned. It is the same poison that Shuichi was hit with. I came here to get the only antidote. It was a trap. They meant only for me to come here to get it so that they could steal it. I have to stop them or many more people will die."
Tohma hadn't moved his foot from the fake guard's neck. "Do you know where it was taken? Can more be made?"
K pointed to the broken window. "If more could be made, they'd have done it."
"But you are immune. Is it a virus? Perhaps the antibodies are in your blood."
"Perhaps," said a new voice, confident, disgusted, coming from a man blocking the door. "What are you doing in my office, K?"
"Rackles. Or is that R now? Better question is," K pulled his own gun now, just dying to shoot someone! Finally. "Why weren't you in your office!?"
"What was in the safe?"
"Can he help us, K?" Tohma studied the man, respectful, but so slightly that it wasn't really respect.
"Help you to what? Ruin my office?"
"No, you do that fine. We need to make an antidote, very quickly," K said, letting Tohma slip an arm around him as other agents came into take care of the captured security guard.
"And we need to hunt down some very rude terrorists," Tohma added, holding K just a little more securely than was needed.
K's replacement eyed them. "It's Shindou Shuichi? He's been poisoned?"
Tohma locked his fingers behind his back, hiding the taser gun, and submerging his urge to shoot this uncooperative man. It worked so well for K most of the time though. "Yes, it is the singer from Bad Luck."
"Bad Luck? I hear Yuki Eiri is writing a story for him. You know our labs are always at your disposal, K. It's good to know we can count on your help in special situations as well."
The pistol shook as K brought it. Strength faded in his legs and he found more of his weight resting on Tohma. "I wouldn't let you go," Tohma said softly.
"What he wants, it's expensive, Tohma."
"Then we'll pay together."