The next day was slow. Ken moved sluggishly, thanks to nightmares and strange dreams, many of them involving the Schwarz madman, which kept him awake. He didn't WANT to be thinking of Farfarello in the small hours of the night, but he found banishing him from his mind was impossible – even when he fell asleep, he dreamed of a handsome young boy with platinum hair, whispering urgently to him. The words were muffled and Ken couldn't understand them, but the youth seemed to be trying to tell him something very important. Then Ken had woken up.

Now, he sat at the table in the flower shop, watching Aya rub the same spot on the glass display case that he'd been rubbing for the last hour. All of them were distracted. Some strange things had been happening lately. Young people suddenly losing control of their base impulses and throwing themselves to their deaths, sometimes after attacking others in the vicinity. The police were baffled, as were Omi and Yohji, who had witnessed a similar incident earlier that day. They had seen a girl run into the street and die under the wheels of a car. They were shaken, but they had seen death, and he was not worried about them. His attention was caught by a sudden noise – the bell over the shop door jingled, and Omi's voice dispelled the remnants of his daydream.

"Sakura-chan!" he cried happily.

Aya looked away.

"Um… Aya…" Sakura mumbled, and Yohji, ever on the woman's side, prodded him.

"Oi, Aya, she wants to talk to you," he said pointedly. "We're not busy, so why don't you go ahead?"

Aya put the rag down and walked toward the door. From the dismay on Sakura's face, it was clear that she thought he was going to walk out. But then, suddenly, his voice stirred the stillness… low and somewhat unwilling. "There's a quiet café down the street. Would that be all right?"

Ken's heart panged when he saw Sakura's smile. The girl was setting herself up for heartbreak and he knew it – Aya was a cold bastard, who refused to allow time for anything that sidetracked him from finding his missing sister. He watched them walk away with a dull sense of foreboding.

"Ah, young love," Yohji gushed, but Omi didn't look nearly so rapturous. His face was concerned, and Ken caught his eye, seeing his own feelings reflected there. Omi understood. Sakura knew too much, and was a security risk, but she was a sweet girl who deserved better. Aya would distance her from them. He was good at driving people away.

Omi broke Ken's gaze and left the shop abruptly, and Ken glanced back down at the table. A customer came in on Omi's heels and Yohji greeted her enthusiastically, making an attempt to talk her into a spray of irises.

Aya returned a bit later, Omi about an hour after that, looking stormy. They didn't see Sakura again that week.

X-X-X-

Ken eyed Omi's computer screen with misgiving.

"Wunder X will rock your soul," Aya was reading in monotone. "Techno music. It's popular these days." Strange chords and strains filled the air, and Ken felt a sudden itch behind his eyes. He opened his mouth to say something, but suddenly the pain was excruciating. He pressed a clenched fist against his forehead, vision blurring as he heard Yohji groan. Omi cried something, and Aya replied sharply, and then everything went black.

He was floating alone in blackness, naked and cold. He tried to curl up to warm himself, but his body responded sluggishly. It was like moving while encased in wet concrete. His head still burned, and he felt an incredible energy housed within his chest, making him want to tear up trees and smash down mountains, destroy something, kill someone.

He tried to scream in protest, but he had no voice.

"Ken."

He turned with agonizing slowness toward the sound of the voice and heard himself whimper. No…

"Ken," Kase said more insistently, drawing closer like the ghost he was. "Ken, why did you kill me?" he wondered, tears of blood streaming down his face. He had never been handsome. Kase's strong point had been his brains. "I never meant to hurt you!" he cried, clutching with blood-covered hands at Ken's shoulders. "Couldn't you see that? Why did you kill me, Ken, WHY? We were friends... but you tore me open, and look at me now!" Kase was shaking, and Ken realized he was laughing. He tried to push his former friend's hands from his shoulders, but he had no strength. "LOOK!" Kase demanded, and Ken felt his chin tipping down against his will, his eyes going to Kase's torso. It was torn, flaps of ragged flesh hanging from the edges of the rip, intestines spilling out. They quivered as Kase moved, and Ken felt very sick. "You did this, Ken," Kase screamed, shaking Ken now, accusing. "YOU! I'll never let you go," he snarled, "I'll haunt you forever! You took my life! You took EVERYTHING from me! I'll drag you down with me, I'll make you wish you were dead, I'll…."

Ken closed his eyes and screamed silently, trying to curl in on himself, trying to make the apparition go away. He had no strength, no speed, no claws with which to defend himself this time, only his mind, which chanted make him stop, make him stop, make him stop.

"You can't make me stop." Nails dug into his shoulders and he felt his own blood mix with the cooling fluid on Kase's hands. "You're not strong enough. You can't really kill me where it counts!"

Help me, Ken thought, his mind strangely, eerily clear. Someone, help me. I'm dreaming. Someone wake me up. Someone… kill him for me… I can't do it… I can't… I CAN'T!

"You can't, you can't," Kase mocked, clinging to Ken, pressing the length of his body against his. "You're too weak! You're a murderer wracked by guilt, and as long as you have guilt, I'll never die! You will never kill me, Ken, you'd have to be more than just a murderer to do that. You'd have to be…."

Ken's eyes snapped open.

Kase stopped in mid-tirade and lurched oddly forward.

There was a moment of perfect silence, when Ken met Kase's gaze with equal shock and incredulity. Then the other man began to fall away from him, toppling backwards, grasping hands releasing their hold.

"Ken…" he whispered. "You don't… understand… I hated you, but I …loved you… too…."

"It is the worst of all curses," said a familiar cool, melodic voice.

"What is?" Ken heard himself whisper as cold blood trickled over his skin, making it crawl in disgust.

Farfarello smiled faintly at him as he yanked his spear from Kase's corpse. "Hating those you love."

Ken looked into that amber eye and felt his sanity breaking. He couldn't hold the madman's gaze or he'd become mad. With a supreme effort of will, he tore his eyes away, letting them fall on the corpse at Farfarello's feet.

It was no longer Kase, but Ruth.

"It is the worst of all curses, hating those you love."

"But you killed her willingly," he protested. "Didn't you? Or did she really just get in the way when you were trying to kill me?"

"She was a willing sacrifice," Farfarello replied. Suddenly, he was no longer a killer clad in violet and black, but a young boy in a checkered shirt and school pants. "She died for her own sins, as we all shall die."

"She lied," Ken protested, "I know she lied, but she was afraid. When she told you the truth the first time, you killed them all! She was a good, kind woman who wasn't afraid of anything, and you destroyed her, and called her a fool! She died LOVING YOU!"

"She died with hope in her eyes," said the child, Jei, staring down at the corpse with mild sadness in his bright yellow eyes. "She wasn't afraid because she knew she'd go to Heaven. Maybe she was right. But you and I… we will, both of us, reside in Hell one day. Are you going to preempt judgment, Hidaka Ken?" he wondered, advancing on Ken where he floated, and suddenly he was Farfarello full grown, clad in jeans and a t-shirt, feet bare, as he'd been in the park. "Are you going to make a hell of earth as well?"

"I don't know!" Ken was afraid. He'd seen what Farfarello could do to a person, things he never wanted to see again, scenes that sometimes haunted him in his darkest nightmares. "I don't know. No. I want to be happy. I want something else, I never wanted this life, I didn't have any choice! I died, don't you understand? In that fire I DIED!"

"All who are born, die," Farfarello told him softly, standing before him calmly. "You and I, kings and paupers, saints and sinners too. But you are not dead now. You are asleep, and it is time for you to wake up. So, wake up, Siberian kitten," he murmured, placing a hand on him, slender, scarred fingers spreading to cover his chest. "WAKE UP."

Ken woke up. He was propped in the easy chair in the mission room, his neck stiff from being tilted at an odd angle. Next to him, Yohji was draped unceremoniously across the couch, and Aya hovered over Omi's shoulder as they both stared at the computer and talked in hushed voices. He groaned quietly, bringing their attention to him, and rubbed at his neck.

"Ken-kun!" Omi exclaimed. "Are you all right? How do you feel?"

Ken took a moment to figure out the answer to that question. Aya's violet gaze bored into him as he searched himself. Did Aya know he could feel the tiny cracks in his soul spreading? That they crept upwards and outwards like the roots of trees and crumbled his sanity bit by bit?

No. Aya cared only for his sister.

"I'm fine," he assured Omi gently. "Tell me what's going on.

Yohji woke up shortly after the beginning of Omi's explanation. This music, by the artist Wunder X, contained frequencies designed to confuse the human brain and drive those who listened to it insane. It was not 100 effective, but definitely dangerous. Only he and Yohji had been affected by it.

"This CD is sold by Indies," Yohji commented. "The distributor is fictitious."

"And the artist as well," Ken ascertained.

There was a footstep on the stair. "We know who it is," Birman said.

Ken felt the stone in his gut grow colder.

X-X-X-