"SSSSSHHHIIIIIIIITTTTTT!!!"
I hear Kou scream this as we near the Mikado train station with mind- blowing speed. The squall of the rushing wind shrieks in my ears, damaged enough by Jarold's screeching guitar minutes ago. My hair whips, almost slashes my eyes, and I blink to wipe them. I watch horrified as the three- tower form of the building looms ahead of us, enlarging gradually but still fast enough to strike fear. We are nearing the end of the ocean bridge. Outside, the navy-blue ocean waves, spread out beneath the bridge like a magnificent aquatic carpet, and the night air becomes a howl against my clothes and body, though under normal circumstances it would be still in this weather. The train, however, isn't at this time.
"HEY!" Kou shouts. "I GOT AN IDEA!"
"WHAT?"
A pause. "Move to the left as much as you can, to the edge!" Pause. "When I say so, push off!"
A longer pause.
"ARE YOU NUTS?!!" Volt shouts, his voice abnormally gruff with pure disbelief. I don't remember him sounding like that before.
"TRUST ME!!"
I shimmy to the left, grunting with the difficulty of grasping the metal grid roof on a high-speed runaway train. Slowly I make progress, and before long, I am at the left edge. Ahead of me, Volt does the same thing. I can't see Kou, but I know he's following his insane idea. As I hang on, I hear a roar of an engine above my in the star-studded black sky, and I look up to see a fighter plane flying overhead. Is it... yes, it is the same one that shot out the train's brakes during our previous trip! What is it going to do this time?
It twists around, hanging a left, and points its machine-gun downwards toward the tracks.
RATARATARATATAARATARATA! It fires at the tracks, and explosions fill my eyes.
"WHAT THE HELL IS IT DOING?!!" Kou, again.
Ka-WHAM! The train, hovering by magnetic force, hits the gap where no electricity was running and trembles with a roar. It bumps against the metal track and skids, the magnetism gone. Bright orange and yellow sparks fly from the edge and fall to the serene navy-blue ocean, withering as they descend. Our train shakes turbulently, and at any time I can lose my grip. It is slowing down, however.
"Get ready! Any time now!" Kou informs us. Another tunnel, and we are now in Mikado's property.
A moment pass and I glimpse the platform, same as it ever was before, starting to shoot by.
"NOW!"
I let go, pushing off as hard as I can. Momentum carries me out like a stray bullet, the train becoming smaller in my vision. It crashes into the wall, and explosions ensue, rocking the place and bringing down debris from the ceiling.
My body slams to the ground, rolls for a minute, and then stops. I moan from the pain signals shooting throughout my limbs, but my head, blissfully, stays intact, albeit bruised and throbbing. I lie on my back, breathing with every ounce of energy I have, clearing my mind of the confusion. Above me stands a gray lamppost, tarnished with years, swaying in the whirlwind resulting from the crash. Heat from the flames engulfs the area, surrounding me like a desert storm. The ceiling, tiled with ivory- white marble, glows fiery orange as the train throws the flames' light upon everything.
I take time to ponder all this, when I feel a weight on my chest and a wet tongue on my nose.
"Ah...what?" I stare into wide, wet eyes, brown head, and white muzzle, topped with a button-black nose.
"Angelo?!" I sit up suddenly, startling the puppy, who jumps off and sits, wagging its furry tail and lolling its tongue in canine glee. I pick him up gingerly, afraid he might be injured without knowing it. "How did you get here?" He looks at me with innocent beady eyes and blinks, ignorant to my question and thinking about getting out of my shaky grip.
Kou comes up behind me and drops his arm around my shoulders from exhaustion. He huffs for a minute; I suspect he regrets suggesting the wild idea of jumping off a speeding train. Large beads of sweat are forming on his forehead from the formidable stunt and the heat of the fire in the station, trickling down his cheeks and dripping off his chin. He gulps.
"WHOO! Can't be-LIEVE we made that one! Thought we'll miss the platform and- ah, better not think of that now." He notices the ball of brown fur in my arms. "What- Hheeeeyyy... where did you come from, lil' mutt?" He grins, then looks at me. "How did he get here?"
"He must have followed us onto the train and hid somewhere without us noticing," Volt says, walking to us. "It's rather strange that he'll stay quiet when we confronted Jarold." He glances at the burning train. "But to escape the train... that's no easy feat."
Volt rubs the puppy's head and jaw with affection, and the dog passes a canine smile and slobbers on his hand. "Smart dog," he says, smiling also while wiping his hand on his jeans.
All of a sudden Angelo perks up his ears and sniffs the air, detecting a scent no human can discern. He leaps out of my arms, plops on his tiny paws, and then starts to run to the station entrance.
"Hey! Angelo!" We start after him, climbing the stairs to the entrance.
It isn't until we see the puppy waiting for us in front of an elevator that I suspect something wrong with the place. Normally, we would be inundated with hordes of security guards waiting to get some action from us, but the station this time is empty, with no sign of life except for us and the burning train. This strikes a warning bell in my head, but I'm soon drawn to Angelo sitting with the same dog smile, with elevator doors behind him.
The doors are gray, with blue lines drawn horizontally in the middle. Not much can be said about them. The puppy scratches at them, whimpering.
"Hey, don't do that." I pick him up. He sniffs again and points his nose at the elevator buttons, reaching his paws.
"What, you want to go up?" Behind me, Kou chuckles. I move to the plate on the bluish wall, set with only one button with an arrowhead pointing up. Angelo presses it, and it lights up.
"Jeez... that IS one smart pup!" Kou shakes his head in amazement. "He should be a guide dog for the blind. Or the lost."
The doors open, but before we can step in, Volt stops us. "Hold on. I don't remember elevators here." He looks inside. "Looks like the one in the Rocket Tower."
"Ah hell." Kou walks in. "See? Nothing wrong here. For once." He grins. "In three months, they can add anything new, like elevators, right?"
I realized suddenly that we have no idea which floor Dominique (if she is, in fact, here) is. I point this out.
"Damn. We have no way of finding out, either." Volt bows his head in thought as the elevator doors slide close. His eyes turn to the animal in my arms, smiling. "Unless Angelo can do something."
I look down at the ball of fur and he stares back at me with soft wet eyes. He then turns his attention to the array of buttons on the right of the doors. "Okay..." Walking over, I watch as he sniffs each button, then reach out and press two of them, claws clicking on the plastic coverings. Nothing happens. Volt furrows his eyebrows. "Oh...eight?" "Think he means eighty." I pressed that number in, and the elevator starts.
As we lean against the wall, I put Angelo, with great effort, into my jacket hood and tighten the drawstrings. Only his head is out, and he now rests it on my shoulder. We stand in silence, and with nothing to do, I look at my friends. Volt, as ever, has his arms crossed, his shoulders square from his huge build. His eyes, more reddish than brown, are half- closed, giving him the impression of sleepiness. His black leather jacket is showing some signs of wear; some spots were dull in the dim light of the cab. Contrasting them is his piercings, which, from my attention to them this time, evokes a memory from my mind. I still remember the day I first came into the bar, starting a huge commotion and facing off against him, a demon-like hulk ready to crush every bone in my body. He left me on the floor, defeated soundly, but rewarded with a job as a bouncer. I had vowed to only stay until I could beat Volt in a match, but now, I'm not so sure. Dominique made me change my mind.
I turn my head to the left and see Kou, his face full of worry. This is strange. Kou isn't one who lets anything trouble him to the point of concern. Although he can be serious, his tone is never such, as it always seem to be jovial. Despite, what Dominique had said to me once, "cute features" (I have no idea what made her say that) --- the tattoo reaching from his forehead, down his arms and body, and going somewhere to his ankles, and the face of a casual, joke-loving wisecracker, he is looking rather disturbed, as though something in his mind wasn't quite right. Maybe he's concerned that Dominique is in terrible danger, I think, but last time we were here, he didn't show that. Whatever the case, he isn't talking and breaking the echoing silence in the elevator cab.
Which Volt notices.
"Why aren't you talking, Kou? You always have something to say."
Kou looks up, his dark brown hair swinging. "I do?"
"Yes."
He grins sheepishly. "Sorry, just don't have anything in my head to talk about now. Except Dominique, maybe. God knows what happened to her. Who do you think is behind this?"
Volt shakes his head while adding, "I can't say. It shouldn't be Mikado. Hell, we shouldn't even be here, if it weren't for Angelo. We all know he's dead, and he wouldn't allow a successor to take his place, even if he's dead. I recall once when a reporter, during the opening of the Magatama Tower, asked him who he would choose as a successor. He replied that when he goes, the company goes with him." He shakes his head again. "I knew there was something wrong with him the day I first met him, but I couldn't say what then. Honestly, I can't even say what now."
"You know..." Kou speaks up, "If Dauragon could make a bionoid based on his sister, don't you think he can make one of himself?"
"So you're saying that we might have faced off against his replica, or that we did fight the real McCoy while the bionoid waits for revenge? That's impossible."
"What?" I ask. "Why?"
"A bionoid needs an actual, organic brain to function. As I have heard it, the brain from a subject is taken and implanted into the cavity inside the bionoid's skull. Dominique died from lung cancer - I believe her father was a heavy smoker - but her brain was still healthy. The doctors at Mikado took out her brain moments before she 'died' and transferred it to the mechanical body."
"...So, she, along with other bionoids, isn't like robots?" Meanwhile, Angelo is showing interest in the conversation.
"More like cyborgs. But only the brain and spinal cord are the organic parts."
"What about, what's his name, PD-4? There was an army of them, but I don't think it's possible to have identical brains in identical bodies, if you know what I mean." PD-4 was a bionoid we faced in Mikado, ruthless and reticent. His right arm extended and functioned like a whip, but eventually we took him out. A group of them, however, was more than we could handle, and if it wasn't for Dominique, we wouldn't have survived.
"I don't have many details on him," Volt replies, "but from what I know, there is a control PD-4, another 'cyborg' like Dominique. Apparently, those clones we faced have computer AIs programmed to function like his mind. He was still in development while I was working in Mikado, though, so I don't know anything else about Project D-4."
"You sure know quite a bit, Volt." Kou smirks. "Had a lot of access to everything in Mikado, eh?" Volt gives a gentle smile. Just then, we hear a bell ring when the elevator reaches the designated floor.
"Whoop. Here goes."
The doors open. And what we see before us makes us gasp in surprise.
Along the gray walls, blood is spewed everywhere. Bodies of security guards slump against the walls, the crimson of the blood mingling with the bright red of their uniforms. Some, to our horror, have their stomachs ripped open, organs spread out on their bellies and floor. The floor is equally covered in blood and corpses, some in a sleeping position, some with their limbs akimbo. A few are missing their heads, having instead a puddle of red. Another few have heads crushed beyond recognition, with limbs fractured the same, and I can not turn away from one of them, as an eyeball, slightly crumpled, dangle from the eye socket by a nerve, though try I did.
For a long moment that spans an eternity, we cannot speak. The hallway is deadly silent.
"Je....sus." Kou shakes his head, slowly at first, then more rapidly. "What in fuckin' hell happened here?"
Slowly, we step over the corpses, spending every effort not to touch them. The more we travel down the hallway, the more dead men we see, sprawled in every position possible. I feel my throat clenching and my stomach lurching, but I keep it in. We do not say a word as we walked cautiously amongst the spread of bodies. A dead silence hangs from the ceiling and drifts to the floor.
At the end of the hallway, there is a bridge with a metal floor and glass windows, forming a tube that leads to another tower. We approach here, when Volt stops us. He gestures to us to be quiet. I strain to hear any suspicious noise, but the hall is mute. Volt turns his head to the left, attentive, seeking for whatever caught his attention in the first place. I can't see his face from the right of him, but I can tell he is watching for anything. He turns to the right.
I catch a flash of red, before a fast blur sweeps by and slams into Volt. He grunts loudly, and both of them crash through a large window, disappearing over the edge!
"VOLT!"
Kou and I run to the window and look down. We barely see two figures falling to the ground before they are too far to be seen. Glass shards tumble with them, sparkling in the night lights.
"VOLT!" Kou shouts, but there is no reply. He breathes hard, and looking for a better view, he steps onto the bridge.
CLICK! WHIIRRRRR....
He turns back with horror as piece by piece the bridge withdraws, the pieces of steel drawing towards him, leaving a widening space between him and me. He turns again and runs away from the collapsing bridge, with the gap chasing after him, leaving me alone.
I can't do anything. What can I do? Desperately, I search for a way across. But a voice stops me. I listen.
"Sion..."
This voice is soft but clearly belongs to a man. It is deep and whispers to me, but where is it?
"Over here..."
I follow the mysterious voice...
I hear Kou scream this as we near the Mikado train station with mind- blowing speed. The squall of the rushing wind shrieks in my ears, damaged enough by Jarold's screeching guitar minutes ago. My hair whips, almost slashes my eyes, and I blink to wipe them. I watch horrified as the three- tower form of the building looms ahead of us, enlarging gradually but still fast enough to strike fear. We are nearing the end of the ocean bridge. Outside, the navy-blue ocean waves, spread out beneath the bridge like a magnificent aquatic carpet, and the night air becomes a howl against my clothes and body, though under normal circumstances it would be still in this weather. The train, however, isn't at this time.
"HEY!" Kou shouts. "I GOT AN IDEA!"
"WHAT?"
A pause. "Move to the left as much as you can, to the edge!" Pause. "When I say so, push off!"
A longer pause.
"ARE YOU NUTS?!!" Volt shouts, his voice abnormally gruff with pure disbelief. I don't remember him sounding like that before.
"TRUST ME!!"
I shimmy to the left, grunting with the difficulty of grasping the metal grid roof on a high-speed runaway train. Slowly I make progress, and before long, I am at the left edge. Ahead of me, Volt does the same thing. I can't see Kou, but I know he's following his insane idea. As I hang on, I hear a roar of an engine above my in the star-studded black sky, and I look up to see a fighter plane flying overhead. Is it... yes, it is the same one that shot out the train's brakes during our previous trip! What is it going to do this time?
It twists around, hanging a left, and points its machine-gun downwards toward the tracks.
RATARATARATATAARATARATA! It fires at the tracks, and explosions fill my eyes.
"WHAT THE HELL IS IT DOING?!!" Kou, again.
Ka-WHAM! The train, hovering by magnetic force, hits the gap where no electricity was running and trembles with a roar. It bumps against the metal track and skids, the magnetism gone. Bright orange and yellow sparks fly from the edge and fall to the serene navy-blue ocean, withering as they descend. Our train shakes turbulently, and at any time I can lose my grip. It is slowing down, however.
"Get ready! Any time now!" Kou informs us. Another tunnel, and we are now in Mikado's property.
A moment pass and I glimpse the platform, same as it ever was before, starting to shoot by.
"NOW!"
I let go, pushing off as hard as I can. Momentum carries me out like a stray bullet, the train becoming smaller in my vision. It crashes into the wall, and explosions ensue, rocking the place and bringing down debris from the ceiling.
My body slams to the ground, rolls for a minute, and then stops. I moan from the pain signals shooting throughout my limbs, but my head, blissfully, stays intact, albeit bruised and throbbing. I lie on my back, breathing with every ounce of energy I have, clearing my mind of the confusion. Above me stands a gray lamppost, tarnished with years, swaying in the whirlwind resulting from the crash. Heat from the flames engulfs the area, surrounding me like a desert storm. The ceiling, tiled with ivory- white marble, glows fiery orange as the train throws the flames' light upon everything.
I take time to ponder all this, when I feel a weight on my chest and a wet tongue on my nose.
"Ah...what?" I stare into wide, wet eyes, brown head, and white muzzle, topped with a button-black nose.
"Angelo?!" I sit up suddenly, startling the puppy, who jumps off and sits, wagging its furry tail and lolling its tongue in canine glee. I pick him up gingerly, afraid he might be injured without knowing it. "How did you get here?" He looks at me with innocent beady eyes and blinks, ignorant to my question and thinking about getting out of my shaky grip.
Kou comes up behind me and drops his arm around my shoulders from exhaustion. He huffs for a minute; I suspect he regrets suggesting the wild idea of jumping off a speeding train. Large beads of sweat are forming on his forehead from the formidable stunt and the heat of the fire in the station, trickling down his cheeks and dripping off his chin. He gulps.
"WHOO! Can't be-LIEVE we made that one! Thought we'll miss the platform and- ah, better not think of that now." He notices the ball of brown fur in my arms. "What- Hheeeeyyy... where did you come from, lil' mutt?" He grins, then looks at me. "How did he get here?"
"He must have followed us onto the train and hid somewhere without us noticing," Volt says, walking to us. "It's rather strange that he'll stay quiet when we confronted Jarold." He glances at the burning train. "But to escape the train... that's no easy feat."
Volt rubs the puppy's head and jaw with affection, and the dog passes a canine smile and slobbers on his hand. "Smart dog," he says, smiling also while wiping his hand on his jeans.
All of a sudden Angelo perks up his ears and sniffs the air, detecting a scent no human can discern. He leaps out of my arms, plops on his tiny paws, and then starts to run to the station entrance.
"Hey! Angelo!" We start after him, climbing the stairs to the entrance.
It isn't until we see the puppy waiting for us in front of an elevator that I suspect something wrong with the place. Normally, we would be inundated with hordes of security guards waiting to get some action from us, but the station this time is empty, with no sign of life except for us and the burning train. This strikes a warning bell in my head, but I'm soon drawn to Angelo sitting with the same dog smile, with elevator doors behind him.
The doors are gray, with blue lines drawn horizontally in the middle. Not much can be said about them. The puppy scratches at them, whimpering.
"Hey, don't do that." I pick him up. He sniffs again and points his nose at the elevator buttons, reaching his paws.
"What, you want to go up?" Behind me, Kou chuckles. I move to the plate on the bluish wall, set with only one button with an arrowhead pointing up. Angelo presses it, and it lights up.
"Jeez... that IS one smart pup!" Kou shakes his head in amazement. "He should be a guide dog for the blind. Or the lost."
The doors open, but before we can step in, Volt stops us. "Hold on. I don't remember elevators here." He looks inside. "Looks like the one in the Rocket Tower."
"Ah hell." Kou walks in. "See? Nothing wrong here. For once." He grins. "In three months, they can add anything new, like elevators, right?"
I realized suddenly that we have no idea which floor Dominique (if she is, in fact, here) is. I point this out.
"Damn. We have no way of finding out, either." Volt bows his head in thought as the elevator doors slide close. His eyes turn to the animal in my arms, smiling. "Unless Angelo can do something."
I look down at the ball of fur and he stares back at me with soft wet eyes. He then turns his attention to the array of buttons on the right of the doors. "Okay..." Walking over, I watch as he sniffs each button, then reach out and press two of them, claws clicking on the plastic coverings. Nothing happens. Volt furrows his eyebrows. "Oh...eight?" "Think he means eighty." I pressed that number in, and the elevator starts.
As we lean against the wall, I put Angelo, with great effort, into my jacket hood and tighten the drawstrings. Only his head is out, and he now rests it on my shoulder. We stand in silence, and with nothing to do, I look at my friends. Volt, as ever, has his arms crossed, his shoulders square from his huge build. His eyes, more reddish than brown, are half- closed, giving him the impression of sleepiness. His black leather jacket is showing some signs of wear; some spots were dull in the dim light of the cab. Contrasting them is his piercings, which, from my attention to them this time, evokes a memory from my mind. I still remember the day I first came into the bar, starting a huge commotion and facing off against him, a demon-like hulk ready to crush every bone in my body. He left me on the floor, defeated soundly, but rewarded with a job as a bouncer. I had vowed to only stay until I could beat Volt in a match, but now, I'm not so sure. Dominique made me change my mind.
I turn my head to the left and see Kou, his face full of worry. This is strange. Kou isn't one who lets anything trouble him to the point of concern. Although he can be serious, his tone is never such, as it always seem to be jovial. Despite, what Dominique had said to me once, "cute features" (I have no idea what made her say that) --- the tattoo reaching from his forehead, down his arms and body, and going somewhere to his ankles, and the face of a casual, joke-loving wisecracker, he is looking rather disturbed, as though something in his mind wasn't quite right. Maybe he's concerned that Dominique is in terrible danger, I think, but last time we were here, he didn't show that. Whatever the case, he isn't talking and breaking the echoing silence in the elevator cab.
Which Volt notices.
"Why aren't you talking, Kou? You always have something to say."
Kou looks up, his dark brown hair swinging. "I do?"
"Yes."
He grins sheepishly. "Sorry, just don't have anything in my head to talk about now. Except Dominique, maybe. God knows what happened to her. Who do you think is behind this?"
Volt shakes his head while adding, "I can't say. It shouldn't be Mikado. Hell, we shouldn't even be here, if it weren't for Angelo. We all know he's dead, and he wouldn't allow a successor to take his place, even if he's dead. I recall once when a reporter, during the opening of the Magatama Tower, asked him who he would choose as a successor. He replied that when he goes, the company goes with him." He shakes his head again. "I knew there was something wrong with him the day I first met him, but I couldn't say what then. Honestly, I can't even say what now."
"You know..." Kou speaks up, "If Dauragon could make a bionoid based on his sister, don't you think he can make one of himself?"
"So you're saying that we might have faced off against his replica, or that we did fight the real McCoy while the bionoid waits for revenge? That's impossible."
"What?" I ask. "Why?"
"A bionoid needs an actual, organic brain to function. As I have heard it, the brain from a subject is taken and implanted into the cavity inside the bionoid's skull. Dominique died from lung cancer - I believe her father was a heavy smoker - but her brain was still healthy. The doctors at Mikado took out her brain moments before she 'died' and transferred it to the mechanical body."
"...So, she, along with other bionoids, isn't like robots?" Meanwhile, Angelo is showing interest in the conversation.
"More like cyborgs. But only the brain and spinal cord are the organic parts."
"What about, what's his name, PD-4? There was an army of them, but I don't think it's possible to have identical brains in identical bodies, if you know what I mean." PD-4 was a bionoid we faced in Mikado, ruthless and reticent. His right arm extended and functioned like a whip, but eventually we took him out. A group of them, however, was more than we could handle, and if it wasn't for Dominique, we wouldn't have survived.
"I don't have many details on him," Volt replies, "but from what I know, there is a control PD-4, another 'cyborg' like Dominique. Apparently, those clones we faced have computer AIs programmed to function like his mind. He was still in development while I was working in Mikado, though, so I don't know anything else about Project D-4."
"You sure know quite a bit, Volt." Kou smirks. "Had a lot of access to everything in Mikado, eh?" Volt gives a gentle smile. Just then, we hear a bell ring when the elevator reaches the designated floor.
"Whoop. Here goes."
The doors open. And what we see before us makes us gasp in surprise.
Along the gray walls, blood is spewed everywhere. Bodies of security guards slump against the walls, the crimson of the blood mingling with the bright red of their uniforms. Some, to our horror, have their stomachs ripped open, organs spread out on their bellies and floor. The floor is equally covered in blood and corpses, some in a sleeping position, some with their limbs akimbo. A few are missing their heads, having instead a puddle of red. Another few have heads crushed beyond recognition, with limbs fractured the same, and I can not turn away from one of them, as an eyeball, slightly crumpled, dangle from the eye socket by a nerve, though try I did.
For a long moment that spans an eternity, we cannot speak. The hallway is deadly silent.
"Je....sus." Kou shakes his head, slowly at first, then more rapidly. "What in fuckin' hell happened here?"
Slowly, we step over the corpses, spending every effort not to touch them. The more we travel down the hallway, the more dead men we see, sprawled in every position possible. I feel my throat clenching and my stomach lurching, but I keep it in. We do not say a word as we walked cautiously amongst the spread of bodies. A dead silence hangs from the ceiling and drifts to the floor.
At the end of the hallway, there is a bridge with a metal floor and glass windows, forming a tube that leads to another tower. We approach here, when Volt stops us. He gestures to us to be quiet. I strain to hear any suspicious noise, but the hall is mute. Volt turns his head to the left, attentive, seeking for whatever caught his attention in the first place. I can't see his face from the right of him, but I can tell he is watching for anything. He turns to the right.
I catch a flash of red, before a fast blur sweeps by and slams into Volt. He grunts loudly, and both of them crash through a large window, disappearing over the edge!
"VOLT!"
Kou and I run to the window and look down. We barely see two figures falling to the ground before they are too far to be seen. Glass shards tumble with them, sparkling in the night lights.
"VOLT!" Kou shouts, but there is no reply. He breathes hard, and looking for a better view, he steps onto the bridge.
CLICK! WHIIRRRRR....
He turns back with horror as piece by piece the bridge withdraws, the pieces of steel drawing towards him, leaving a widening space between him and me. He turns again and runs away from the collapsing bridge, with the gap chasing after him, leaving me alone.
I can't do anything. What can I do? Desperately, I search for a way across. But a voice stops me. I listen.
"Sion..."
This voice is soft but clearly belongs to a man. It is deep and whispers to me, but where is it?
"Over here..."
I follow the mysterious voice...