Chapter Five: Visitor

Rockman awoke to the sound of quiet footsteps. The room was dark after hours and no lights revealed the owner of those steps. Had they been noisier, he would have ignored them, but these made it clear the person did not want to be seen. He frowned as the form of a woman was silhouetted against the moonlit window. "Who are you?" He growled. His countenance had grown steadily darker the longer Netto remained in a coma. The figure jumped slightly and Rockman flinched back as a flashlight beam hit him across the face.

"Sorry." The figure whispered. The strange woman came around to his side and lifted the PET to her face. Rockman could see soft chocolate brown eyes in the meager lighting the flashlight gave. The woman had set the flashlight on the desk as she fumbled in her pocket for something. "As you already know, I'm sure; this isn't a true form of HBD. What you didn't know is I created it, and what I create; I can destroy. This syringe is loaded with the original virus, and the second one has the antidote to it. I labeled both properly so no one could make a mistake of giving Netto the wrong one, because a double dose of the virus would be an automatic death sentence." Rockman held his tongue. What this woman had done had been an automatic death sentence for Netto.

She continued speaking, unknowing that Rockman had already labeled her for dead. "Now, you need to make certain whoever finds this makes another copy of the antidote so they can compare the original against the virus in Netto's body. Did you get all that?" She finally looked at him after fumbling with the two syringes. They now lay on the table in front of Rockman's place. Rockman nodded as he filed the information away.

She blinked at him; then grinned teasingly. "Need to ID me?" She asked with a gently mocking tone. She set the PET down and picked up the flashlight and held it to her face. The flashlight illuminated a small-boned face with soft chocolate eyes and matching hair. Her smile was not at all mocking, as though she understood why he would want to ID her. She leaned down closer to the PET. "My name is Perdita. It means lost." She patted the top of the casing like it was his head and hurried from the room. Rockman frowned after her; then left to find Hikari-hakase. He would need to analyze the samples left by the woman.

Perdita smiled as she headed from the hospital. Finally, something was right in her life.

Rockman had informed Hikari-hakase about the two samples and the woman that had left them. The scientist immediately headed down to sci-labs to analyze the samples. It was now dawn and Rockman was currently running a program to try and ID the woman, while Hikari-hakase completed his work on the samples, but he had run into a few snags. The program had failed to find a match based on the name and the picture, so now he was running the program based on only the face. The program had been running for several hours, so he was also trying to sort through the amount of homework that Netto had amassed during his coma.

Rockman held firm to the belief his brother would recover. He had to or else he'd lose it. The program beeped jolting him from his dark thoughts. He blinked, trying to reorient himself, and turned to view the results. There were three matches; two adults and one child. He glanced through the adults and threw them out. They didn't match the woman he'd seen that night. He frowned, but brought up the child. He blinked in shock. The same soft brown eyes the woman had stared back at him. He pulled up the information on the child. Her name was Eva Weston. She had been proclaimed dead at the age of seventeen after she had been kidnapped from her daycare ten years prior.

He pulled up the family information. Two parents, deceased as of last year, and a younger brother, Adrian Weston, who had been kidnapped that same day.

Rockman stared at the information on the screen. Amit had said the creator of the virus had been viciously abandoned by her family, but the information here said that she had been kidnapped.

He jumped in shock as Hikari-hakase came into view. "I have completed in analysis of the two samples, Rockman. We should be able to administer Netto with the cure for his virus. What did you discover on Perdita?"

Rockman sent the information to his computer. "I discovered the name was a façade. This child is the closest match, but I don't understand how that could be. Unless Eva was taken and kept by this group."

"Eva?" Hikari-hakase pulled the information up at soon as it was available. His eyes widened in shock. "What!" Hikari-hakase pulled away from his computer and face Rockman. "Rockman, are you absolutely certain this was the woman you saw?"

Rockman nodded confused by his father's reaction. "Yes. She had the same features and the same eyes. Perdita was about the age Eva would be according to the dates on the file. Why?"

The scientist leaned back against his chair and placed his hand against his forehead. "I met your mother while attending a party with one of my friends. Her name was Angelica Weston." Rockman's eyes widened, but he kept silent. Hikari-hakase sighed and he remembered his old friend. "She had just married her old friend, Allen, and we were celebrating her marriage. Angel had named me the godfather of her children in her toast." He smiled faintly at the memory. Rockman waited patiently for his father to continue.

Hikari-hakase shook himself out of his thoughts and sat forward. "I'm getting off track. The point is that until Eva and her brother had been kidnapped, Angel and Allen kept in touch, but after the loss of her children, Angel began to lose sight of everything. She stopped communicating and her husband was hard-pressed to keep up with all the questions their friends sent, so I stopped sending anything. I regret that now, after they both died in that car accident, but if this is truly Eva, then maybe I have a way to make it up to them."

Rockman nodded thoughtfully. "Were you close to Eva?"

Hikari-hakase smiled. "She used to cheer every time I came over. Her brother didn't know me as well, but he always seemed to follow his sister in everything. So he'd cheer too."

"Maybe that's why she helped us." Rockman stated. "Maybe she remembers you."

Hikari-hakase looked doubtful. "Perhaps, Rockman, perhaps." Then he brightened up and took the antidote to Netto's virus from its place. "Now let's go get your brother back on his feet."

Rockman felt like cheering himself.

Rockman could only watch in disbelief as they tried to stabilize Netto enough to get the antidote into him. The thrashing was making it impossible. It had taken almost three days to compare the original virus to the strain within Netto, and there had been a few differences, but Netto's condition had deteriorated as they sought to isolate the virus and compare it as the woman had suggested. Rockman would have thought she did it on purpose, but Hikari-hakase said it had been to check for any signs of the virus mutating. Too much mutation, and the antidote could have no or ill effects on Netto. The original virus allowed them to track what had changed and modify the antidote accordingly.

Rockman could feel his brother's fear through the bond. Netto was reaching out for support. As he sent what help he could give, someone struck the table where the PET was resting. The PET teetered and fell, striking the power switch with the corner of the table. Rockman's world went black as he watched the floor rise to meet him.

Mariko-sensei walked into the classroom in much better cheer then she had been since that day one week ago when Netto had landed in the hospital. She came in and took roll call, much the way she had before. In fact, some of the students almost thought she would comment on Netto's tardiness again, but that would require him being capable of coming to school; although, the students did notice when she disregarded the absence of Meiru.

"Now students, I know this has been a trying time for all of us. Hikari Netto has been an integral part of our classroom." The students looked at each other. It sounded as though Netto had died, but the teacher wasn't acting right for that to have happened. She continued. "We have missed him greatly and now," she turned to the door, "we can tell him so."

Hikari Netto, the undercover Net Savior and chronically late student, was wheeled in on a wheelchair. The students were silent in shock as they took in Meiru beside him and Enzan pushing the chair. Rockman was calmly sitting in his PET with a huge grin on his face. Netto looked around the classroom and grinned. "For once I'm not late."

Rockman sighed as the classroom went up in cheers at his recovery. This would be the only time he was not late.

Sure enough; next morning:

"Why didn't you wake me up, Rockman!"

Times were now back to what should have always been.

Sitting in his office, Hikari-hakase watched the screen before him blankly. His mind was back in time where a seven-year-old girl bounced happily on the balls of her feet. "Yuui-chan! Yuui-chan!"

"Eva-chan. I'll find you, honey. I'll find you."