The music:
Deftones - Passenger
Silverchair - Paint Pastel Princess
Lesiem - Humilitas

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Against the Wind
Chapter Ten

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"KinU, GyokuTo. This time, do it right."

Watari strained to see past the blackness that clouded his vision. I hope the last night was a pleasant treat. You son of a bitch, he thought furiously, yet he kept his composure. Enma's content gaze swept past him in a brief look, barely brushing against him, just before the god turned on his heel and started towards the main lab area.

Tategami waved an impatient hand in front of Watari's face. "Come on. We have work to do. You'll need to catch up first."

Watari's eyes narrowed slightly before he managed to clear his mind of the overload of murderous thoughts. A pleasant treat, indeed. He felt as though those simple words, delivered in a light, conversational tone, no less, had severed a hair-thin thread that still connected him with what he had left behind – with Tatsumi – and he had lost his hold on the foundation of his hope.

He pulled himself out of his thoughts by force, unwilling to face his former – and current, from the looks of it – partner again. But he'd had decades of practice in playing his role. "I'm coming," he said evenly, meeting Tategami's eyes. He watched her from under thick lashes as she passed by him, shaking her head, a half-smirk on her lips.

A pleasant treat. Watari smashed the little voice in his mind ruthlessly when it refused to stay silent. Did you watch? He caught himself asking as he drew a deep breath and followed Tategami and Enma in long strides to level with them, his steps as sure as his weak knees allowed. Or perhaps it was just another--

"--virtual simulation. Let me show you."

Watari's head whipped around. It took him half a second to realize that the words he had just overheard had not been any sort of response to his thoughts, nor had they been directed at him, to begin with. He stopped long enough to locate the speaker; a dark-haired woman he could not remember seeing before. Bent over one of the several computer monitors in the lab as he turned, she flung her lab coat out of the way and perched herself down on the seat. She looked busy, apparently explaining something to a young-looking man in the chair next to her.

Watari frowned. With the absence of her face in his memory – she could have been thirty, give or take a few years, and probably not dead long enough to have been there in his time – he tried to place the voice, but it did not sound familiar, either. He turned his attention back to the matters at hand. It would have been naïve to think any of his former colleagues were in fact still around.

Except that one of them was, and she stood at Enma's left side as Watari caught up with the two. She regarded him with the same, faintly contemptuous look, the reason for which he had yet to discern. Tategami Yukiko. He had been sure she was gone. By all rights, she should have been. That was what he had been told. Another lie, he mused.

"I do not suppose I need to remind you that certain rules, which I'm sure you are familiar with, do apply," Enma said, turning to measure Watari from head to toe. "Before you ask, you are not to contact anybody from your previous office. Every detail regarding the Project is meant to remain within this laboratory." Enma smirked. "This includes you, as well."

Watari arched his brow. So, I'm a 'work detail' now? He almost asked, but he found such questions rather pointless. He had a fairly good idea about the character of his work from now on. "Do I get a place to stay here, then?"

"You will stay in one of the staff rooms inside the facility. Tategami will take you there."

Watari glanced at the woman. She kept her face unreadable now and she nodded at Enma's words.

"I don't think you will need a place of your own for long, though," Enma added after a short pause. "For now, however, consider your accommodations taken care of."

His mouth felt dry as Watari parsed the new information and set it against his own suspicions. At least this time, he mused, Enma had laid out all the cards on the table right away. The royal flush, no less, said that small smile of satisfaction on the god's lips.

"As for your contract, we shall waste no time on formalities which are long completed. Your original agreement retains validity."

Sure it does, Watari thought sourly as he inclined his head in acknowledgment. You would not let me forget about it, would you?

"If you have any questions, your partner will take care of them." Enma shifted his feet and unfolded his arms, indicating that he intended to leave their company. Tategami stepped aside to give him more room to pass.

"I will return shortly to monitor the preparations. I cannot stress enough the importance of our success this time. However, I must leave you now," he said, locking his eyes on Watari's for a short moment. "I have an appointment with an accountant."

Watari held that gaze, unblinking; he put an extra effort into ignoring the painful knot in his stomach. Tatsumi, he thought. Keep your filthy hands away from Tatsumi.

He turned and followed Enma on his way out of the lab. Some rules had changed, obviously. He remembered how everyone in the Headquarters, Watari himself included, used to pause their work as Enma entered or left. Now, though, the other scientists – all several of them that he could see from his current spot – had not so much as raised their heads.

The dark-haired woman was still occupying the chair next to her younger colleague, gesticulating vividly to aid her explanation. A virtual simulation, she had said. Curious, that, Watari thought to himself.

He crossed his arms and looked around. The place had undergone a complete overhaul, equipment-wise, since he had last seen it. The amount of newest technology tickled something in his mind. Under any other circumstances, he would have been more than looking forward to working there.

"Hey," Tategami called out to him, irritated. "Would you drop that absent-minded attitude?"

Watari rolled his eyes. "Would you drop that tone? It doesn't suit you."

She let out a derisive snort. "You would know." Turning to the workstation behind her, she tapped at a couple of keys, her eyes shifting between the two displays above. "You log in with your own name the first time," she said, not looking at Watari, now focused on the monitor in front of her. "This will generate a new set of access codes. You won't actually need them, though, it's just something the procedure requires you to do. They're auto-saved in your chip anyway. Inside the lab, Mother identifies us by comparing our unique patterns with her database. If it matches, you're in. If it doesn't, you're fucked."

Watari noted the change, quite significant in comparison with the old security system. He nodded. "And outside?"

"That's none of your concern. You're not going anywhere." She turned her head to meet Watari's gaze, a displeased noise slipping through her lips at his dubious countenance. "I'm dead serious, Watari."

"I'm tempted to argue the latter," he said, watching her out of the corner of his eye. He moved to half-sit on the desk and crossed his ankles. "But if you think I'll be your pushover, you're also dead wrong."

Tategami laughed. She straightened herself from her lean. "No? And what do you think you have been for the past thirty years?"

Eyes narrowed, Watari stood up as well and came face to face with the woman, just a breath away. "Your point?"

"My point, Watari, is that you are a tool. As am I, to be more precise, but the difference between us is that I have nothing to lose and, for me, this is much better than what you left me with."

He felt his heart pounding furiously against his ribs, but the surge of cold anger turned his face to stone. He opened his mouth, a retort ready to throw back at her, but Tategami cut in between his short breaths.

"Why do you think Enma has let you run loose for so long? That's the only reason you're still here. You made a perfect remote tool for Mother, for as long as it sufficed. You're here, right now, because it's time to stop playing and start doing what we should have done a long time ago."

Watari's mind raced across her words and his heart sank. It was beginning to make some twisted sort of sense. A remote connection between Mother and himself could have been open for years. He did not suppose he'd had a reasonable chance to notice, had they wanted to keep him unaware. Then again...

"Ah, you're finally catching up, aren't you," Tategami said, answering the involuntary, shocked look Watari knew was on his face.

A tool. All this time.

"Good for you, though. You won't need to go through the updates. But if you think you can just walk out of here, forget it. You heard Enma-sama's words – you're not supposed to leave the facility. You're not the Head Researcher anymore. Follow orders and remember your place."

Watari swallowed down the urge to argue with her. Getting out of the lab was not very high on his priority list; not at the moment, anyway. If he needed to do that later, he could probably find a way.

"While we're on that topic," he said instead, "who's in charge right now?"

"That would be me."

Watari turned around. The brown-haired woman he'd watched before bowed her head and gave him a bright smile. She looked short, now that he measured her at not much of a distance, and wore casual clothes, her lab coat draped over her left arm.

She extended her hand. "Long time, Watari-san."

Watari frowned. He searched her dark eyes, digging into his memory at the same time, but it returned nothing. He took the offered hand and shook it. "Do I know you?" he asked.

"You should," she said. "You were in my organic chemistry lab in 1976. My name is Touya Kagami."

Rubbing the back of his head with his right hand, Watari ran a mental search for the name. In 1976, he had started his second degree in chemistry, at the Kyoto University, indeed. But he would have remembered her; he seldom forgot any of the faces he had seen before.

"I'm sorry, I don't think I remember you," he said, a little embarrassed at such a memory lapse and half-suspicious of it being yet another trick. "Are you sure, though? Maybe you were in another group--"

"Quite sure." Touya chuckled, flipping the lab coat she had held haphazardly over her shoulder. "I taught it. And you're quite hard to forget."

Disconcerted, Watari nodded. He returned the smile she had given him, but he did not pull his eyes off her for a longer while. He watched carefully for any signs of uncomfortable tension in her posture, in her face; for anything indicating a lie. But Touya had either perfected the art of convincing acting, or she was telling the truth.

Tategami coughed into her hand. "This reunion after long years is very touching," she said pointedly, "but we're wasting time." She tapped her wristwatch with her finger. "Enma-sama is expecting results, in this century, preferably, and we're--"

"I appreciate the reminder, Tategami-san," Touya cut in, "but I'm long overdue for my lunch break. If you'll excuse me," she said cheerfully and gave a small bow of her head, tucking her hands into the pockets of her pants. "I'll be back in half an hour. If you're so kind to show Watari-san where he will be staying?"

Tategami scowled, but she kept her silence under the other's sharp look. "Of course," she said in a cold voice.

Watari raised an eyebrow at their exchange. Tension had been an issue between the Five Generals ever since he had first walked into that laboratory thirty years before; despite the outside appearance of agreement and cooperation, it had always been there, anyway. Those two, he noticed from the second Touya Kagami had joined their company, held a definite dislike for one another.

Thinking something about rocks and hard places, Watari shrugged it off, for now. The air felt heavy and thick enough.

Tategami muttered under her breath in the general direction of the door where the Head Researcher had vanished. "The staff rooms are there," she said, pointing her hand towards a large door to her left. "Down the hall, the fourth one is yours. You'll find a computer there, and you can use any of these here, but don't get carried away." She half-turned, her eyes flashing a dangerous cold. "Everything you do is monitored. Try anything and I'll know it."

That figured. Watari shrugged. "What's with that attitude?" he asked, unfazed by her attempt at threatening him.

"Excuse me?"

"You and Touya. You've never liked authority, but--"

"She thinks far too much of herself," Tategami interrupted angrily. "Her position aside, which is a whole different story, she thinks I should worship the ground she walks on, just because she hooked the rest of me up to Mother and actually managed to pull me out of coma."

Watari gave her a questioning look. GyokuTo failed, Watari remembered the words crashing down on him as though he had heard them yesterday. Twenty five years since he had left had gone by in a flash. Mother rejected her as an intruder. The physical damage exceeded her healing abilities. Did it? Watari thought again, reassigning himself to the task of studying the woman at his side. She bore no visible signs of anything he remembered being told.

"What?" Tategami tilted her head, obviously displeased with having a pair of amber eyes fixed on her for so long. She took a few slow steps away from Watari. "You didn't know? I've got you to thank for the eighteen years of being a pile of meat, genius."

Watari shook his head. He recalled her face through a blurry mist wrapped around his memory; two nights before, in the darkness of the halls of the JuuOhCho, she had come to him. He made a mental note to ask about that later, even though the very thought of that night left him with a faint nausea gnawing at his stomach.

"You've told me as much before," he said. "So have the others, in fact," he added as he looked at her closely again. "Back then. But I think I'm missing something here. We both went in. We both failed."

"I read the reports, Watari, so keep your excuses to yourself," she said, facing him. "The recognition program at the entry gate had holes the size of Tokyo. And we know whose program that was, don't we?"

"Mine," Watari said, shrugging his shoulders. "And it wasn't bugged."

Tategami cast him a dark look. "Like from here to America."

"It wasn't." Against his better judgment, Watari followed the woman as she moved to walk away from the conversation. "I had a copy of it. I checked it back and forth more times than I care to remember. It was clean. Whatever messed up the test, it wasn't that."

"Vain excuses," Tategami shot back in a singsong voice, not bothering to look. "It's all there, in the reports. See for yourself. You screwed up, end of story."

"Tategami." Watari stopped. She stopped as well, but she did not turn. He ignored that. "If you know everything so well, you also know I wasn't told anything before I left. Talk to me. What the hell happened here?"

"I also know you didn't have to be told anything, because you stole the reports. And you got creative in getting rid of Hinote. And your little virus corrupted every piece of data it could to knock Mother down."

Watari swallowed thickly. He suspected she would have known about those; not that he could have done anything about it. Reports had been written, and people liked to talk. His spectacular leaving must have been the hot topic for years.

"I always knew you weren't smart enough to do something like that right, though," Tategami added, irony dripping from her words.

But I did, he thought. There was nothing left. Then he remembered her words, almost stumbling under a sudden wave of sickly heat. You made a perfect remote tool for Mother.

"They got it back," he whispered, sweeping a trembling hand across his face. Or it never happened to begin with.

Tategami's quiet chuckling stifled that thought before Watari recovered enough to do that himself.

"Of course they did. The same night, according to the report. You never learned, Watari. Arrogance such as yours makes you so easy to manipulate. You ran off, happy that you won. It never crossed your mind that three months, when you were out, had been long enough for them to prepare for that?"

It did, he thought. Only with the absence of the relevant data, it would not have worked. Watari closed his eyes. His head was spinning. "All right," he said at last. "Assuming what you say is true, then why wait twenty five years? If you didn't have to recreate anything, what took so long?"

Tategami swept her hair out of her face and made a wide gesture around her with her hand. "Technology isn't created in a day. What we did twenty five years ago, and what we can do now, is like heaven and earth. You're the only relict from the past, with your terminal being barely enough to make a connection. But that will soon be fixed."

Watari arched an eyebrow. "Meaning?"

"Come on, Watari, spare me that innocent, clueless attitude," she huffed, glancing at her wristwatch. "Your hardware is as old as dust. You'll get your new toys when Touya comes back."

They were not wasting time, Watari mused with a soundless sigh. He had taken the plunge. Now it's sink or swim. "Fine," he said. "Let's see what you've got."

He caught his curious streak running rampant across his thoughts, but self deprecation in that regard made no sense at all. If he had to be there, if the ways he had chosen decades ago had led him back to where he had started from, he could at least see where they led from here.

Tategami smirked. "Curiosity is a weakness," she said.

Watari mirrored her expression, half-aware that he was taking her up on a challenge, the rules of which had not yet been stated. "It's the mother of progress," he said. "Though, maybe it's a weakness, too. Same as arrogance."

"Yours, or mine?" Tategami walked back and stood in front of him, confirming the challenge with a pointed stare fixed upon Watari's face.

He tipped his head. "That's yet to be seen."

She glanced at him with narrowed eyes, letting the silence seal the moment before she checked the time again. "You have fifteen minutes. Take a look around. If you need anything from your place, have someone fetch it. Though, most of it is already here."

Watari grumbled at the annoying practice of entering people's houses without their consent that Enma seemed particularly fond of, but he nodded and looked away, around the lab, over his shoulder at the exit.

"All right," he said and started on his way towards the staff rooms.
-

The room was spartan. Roughly five square meters, enough to fit a futon, a small closet, and a desk. Watari flipped the light switch by the door and glanced around. The first thing that struck him was the permanent absence of daylight. Located underground, the entire facility had not so much as one window overlooking the outside world. The room that would be his, from now on, lacked them as well. Watari sighed.

The computer on the desk was a laptop. He perched himself down on the chair and turned it on. He thought back to the meeting with Touya, unsettled once again at the lack of any kind of memory of her. He would have remembered, he thought. But guessing the reasons why she would have lied was beyond him.

Mother's database turned out to be accessible through his computer, already connected to the network as Watari logged in. He typed in the name and leaned back in the chair, stretching as he waited for the machine to complete the search. Not that he would discover any traces of conspiracy, if one was at work, but he was curious who the new Head Researcher was, where she had come from.

The only results were a generic personal file, with a picture and basic information. Touya Kagami, born in Kyoto in 1945, was a neuroscientist with doctorates in supramolecular chemistry and neurophysiology, and specialized in neuroengineering. Watari whistled. Computational neuroscience was a rather extensive field; Touya seemed to have had a busy life before she died, at the age of thirty seven, he read further in the file. She had started her job at the JuuOhCho's Science Department in 1982, soon after her death.

Watari frowned. He had left the Five Generals the same year. What a coincidence, he thought sourly. Only not.

Any further information regarding Touya's life or death came up as undisclosed, which Watari knew meant as much as that he would need higher clearance to access it. But the brief overview of her career listed her as an assistant to one professor Sugitani Hiroshi, whom Watari remembered indeed, though vaguely, as one of his teachers. She might have told the truth; according to her file, anyway.

Watari took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes, wondering to what extent he should trust the information he had read. Tategami had been right; with so much time to make sure everything would go as planned, they could have prepared for every one of his questions and throw ready answers into his hands. They would match the carefully crafted picture, to put his suspicions back to sleep.

But he did not have to trust it, he thought; or them, for that matter. So he closed the file, committing the information to his memory with a grain of salt in between the lines.

He looked up and ahead, fixing a blank look at the white wall for a longer while. Artificial light and recycled air. He had never realized how much it could bother him, until he ended up with it as the only option. Outside, he knew, the sun shone through the thick branches of the sakura trees, and his old friends would sit at the tables and talk over tea. Terazuma would smoke and Tatsumi would scowl at him for a pointless waste of money. Bon would ignore Tsuzuki's excitement over dessert and hide himself behind a book. Wakaba would--

Watari shook his head. They would move on, and so would he, and thinking such thoughts wasn't helping him with that at all.

He pondered looking up Tategami's file as well, but he gave up on that idea, remembering her words that warned him against stepping out of line. He did not suppose she had made empty threats. Monitoring him, especially in there and while he moved inside the network, was an easy task. She would be on his case again, and Watari would rather put such arguments off, at least until he made sure he could stand his ground.

The clock on the computer read three minutes to two. He rose from the chair and stretched again, breathing deeply to compose himself. He wrapped his arms around himself and closed his eyes. A pleasant treat, Enma's voice assaulted him anew. No, he thought, redrawing the image of Tatsumi in his mind. It would have to be cheap to have been just a 'treat'.
-

Touya had returned from her lunch break by the time Watari reappeared in the main lab. She looked up from the papers she had been reading and gave a small nod, beckoning him to join her with a wave of her hand.

Watari had fought a short episode of nauseating fear before he left his room to come here. Now, as he crossed the distance between himself and the Head Researcher, he still felt the minute trembling of his hands. So he slid them into the pockets of his jeans and kept them there until he joined Touya by her desk. He gave his head a small shake to let his loose hair partly hide his face.

"There you are," Touya greeted him cheerfully. She picked up a folder from the desk behind her back and shoved it into Watari's hands, together with the papers she had been reading.

"I thought you'd like to read up on the specifics," she said. "This is the new memory chip. Yours would be fine if we were working locally. But even the predicted amount of data per second you're supposed to start from is too extensive, it wouldn't handle that. And we don't want to hurt you."

Watari nodded. "Do I get a local test run before it goes live?" he asked lightly, but his focus went into suppressing a shudder. Déjà vu, he thought.

"Sure you do." Touya grinned and patted him on the shoulder. "We need to implant these first, though." She produced a small test tube from one of her pockets and gave it a shake. "There's five of them, about six microns worth of silicon to go with the chip you already have. They should do the trick without replacing the entire terminal." She took a slightly deeper breath. "That's the least invasive upgrade method I could think of."

Watari gave her a wry smile. That didn't sound very pleasant at all. "How does it work?" he asked. He tucked the papers under one arm and took the small tube from Touya's hand. He brought it up to take a closer look. Apart from the transparent liquid half-filling the glass, physiological salt solution, more likely than not, it looked empty.

"It goes into the epidural space around your spine cord," Touya explained. "The signal to and from your chip is carried by the electrical impulses – those emit their own as well and it's strong enough to pass through the meninges. I'll inject it into your lower back area. It will take them longer to establish the connection, but I don't want to risk a spine injury anywhere higher. It would take you a while to recover from that."

"Fine with me," Watari agreed, though with little conviction. The idea of trusting any one of them with his body again did not sit well with him.

"Just so you know, though you probably do," Touya said, retrieving the tube from Watari's hand. "It's a foreign object; five of them, in fact, however small. The initial sensation won't be pleasant. Give yourself some time to get used to it."

"The concept of taking time has never been particularly popular around here," Watari said, his voice dry. He put the papers away and reached back to secure his hair in a loose braid.

Touya looked at him through half-closed eyes, waving a dismissive hand. "Ignore Tategami. She likes to pretend she's the center of the universe. It's a pity that's not genetic, or I would have tried to extract it from her and I bet nobody would mind."

Watari laughed, tossing the end of his braid over his shoulder. "Shame, indeed."

Touya grinned. "Come on. I'd like to get done with this before Enma comes back. He's getting impatient and I hate it when he's staring at my hands while I'm trying to work."

Following her towards what he still remembered as the infirmary, Watari chuckled inwardly at how familiar that sounded. "I wonder why," he muttered under his breath. "Some things never change."
-

"Can I ask you something?"

Touya closed the door behind them as they entered and locked it.

Watari watched the lights blink on, absently chewing on his lower lip. He nodded. "Sure."

Touya crossed the room towards the sink. She opened the tap and began to wash her hands. "Was she like that before? Tategami, that is."

Watari sat down on one of the two hospital beds by the wall. "Well," he started, rubbing the back of his neck. "She's never been the sweet type, if that's what you mean. She's one of those people you can expect to pull any sort of stunt, and if you end up surprised, it's your own fault for having underestimated her ambitious nature. Though, I don't remember her this bitter."

Touya reached for one of the towels that sat on a cabinet next to the sink. She nodded thoughtfully. "I guess coming back to find out you're not much of anything, after eighteen years, can do that to you," she said.

Watari frowned. "Not much of anything?"

"Ah, right, you might not know that yet." Touya picked a pair of latex gloves from a shelf in front of her and put them on. "Her body sustained critical damage during that infamous experiment, twenty five years ago. Frankly, Enma should have reincarnated her, but he insisted we saved what we could. That is, given her brain was pretty much all he cared about, there wasn't much of it."

"I wouldn't know." Watari shrugged. "She looks fine to me."

Touya stopped halfway through putting on the second glove. "That's not her body you saw," she said quietly. "Her body, or whatever is left of it, is permanently connected to Mother. What you see is her holographic projection of herself. You're familiar with that technology, yourself."

Watari's mouth hung slightly open. He stared at Touya for a moment, then blinked back the initial shock. Tategami's bitterness, the way she had said that her current state was better than before, and how she, too, was just a tool – it suddenly made sense.

"How come I survived, if she didn't?" he said at last, half to himself, half to Touya, who walked over to where he sat and stood in front of him.

She leaned forward, hands on her thighs, leveling her face with Watari's. "Not here," she whispered. Then she straightened herself. "It won't take long," she said in a much louder voice. "Remove your sweater and lie down."

Watari frowned. The room was probably monitored, just as the others, but he did not like the strange sense of secrecy that suddenly filled the air. He took off his pullover and reached to undo the zipper on his back.

Touya gave him an amused look. "A bodysuit?" She chuckled. "Here, let me help you. Gods, I've always regretted not having lived to see more of the 80's."

Watari smiled, shaking his head. He half-turned and swept his hair out of the way. "So have I."

"Lie on your left side," Touya instructed him. "Draw up your knees and tuck your chin." She placed her hand on his shoulder and gently pushed him down. "And for gods' sake, relax a bit. You're so stiff you look like you're about to break."

Watari did as she said, though the relaxation part was much harder to carry out. The last time he had been in that infirmary, he had woken up after ninety seven days of coma, just to find out that everything around him – and a lot inside him – had changed. It did not make repose an easy task.

"I'll inject a bit of a local anesthetic into the skin to lessen the pain. You'll feel it anyway, but it shouldn't hurt much after this."

Watari cringed inwardly at the sensation of Touya's gloved fingers feeling for the right spot on his back. The cold of the antiseptic she used to clean it, and the sting of a small needle, had subsided quickly. He wondered if any of the things he would have to do had any chance of resulting in a replay of the failure from quarter of a century ago. He suspected they did, though it was a bit too late for second thoughts.

"Give it a minute or two. When the skin is numb, I'll give you the proper injection." Touya pinched the spot. "Just make sure you don't move. I'll make it quick. Feel anything?"

Watari took a deep breath. "Nope."

"Good. Give me a moment."

Watari closed his eyes. He listened to the sound of Touya's footsteps against the tiled floor, trying to keep his breathing even to stay calm. The smell of antiseptics and the knowledge of where he was triggered memories he would have rather kept at bay. And the realization that he no longer had a way back crashed down on him hard. For a moment, the darkness under his eyelids felt like the only safe place he knew, and the quickening of his heartbeat urged him to get up and run.

But he knew; wherever he went, it would not be far enough. So he clenched his fists and gave himself a mental punch.

Behind him, Touya was putting on a fresh pair of latex gloves. "You all right?"

Watari let out a deep sigh. "Yes."

"Good," she said. "Let's get on with it."

He kept his eyes closed against the dull sensation of something breaking into his body by force. Wincing, he let out a quiet hiss as the needle struck the target and he tried hard not to move, but he was not sure he succeeded.

"Good... good." Touya's voice had a calm, soothing tone to it. "I need about ten seconds to get this in, and we're done. Think you can do it?"

Lacking permission to move, Watari stopped himself from shaking his head. "I'm not a kid, you know?"

"You sure? You look young." There was a grin behind these words, he could hear it.

"Ye-es! Oh, gods," he almost choked on the words as a sudden fire erupted somewhere in his lower back. "Sorry," he breathed.

"That's fine," Touya said lightly, pressing something cold to the spot where the needle had gone in. "I'm done, anyway."

Involuntarily, Watari shuddered. He felt warmth spreading through his body; his heart rate went through the roof and he breathed deeply to force it back down. Brushing his hand across his forehead, he propped himself up on the opposite elbow and turned his head.

Touya stood above him, removing her gloves. "Give it three to five hours to establish the connection. The we'll test it. I'm not expecting any major problems, though."

Watari nodded. He moved to sit up. Dizziness washed over him and he caught the edge of the bed to steady himself. The warm sensation kept spreading through him; he blinked, suddenly aware of how tired he felt.

Touya helped him back into his clothes. Watari's mouth was dry as he swallowed to tame the sick feeling in his stomach. He felt Touya's hands on his arms as his eyes slid shut; he could not force himself to keep them open any longer.

"Sleep, now," he heard her quiet voice behind his ear as she laid him back down on the bed. Covered with something warm and heavy, Watari did not care enough to shrug off the hand that rested lightly on his head.

--

"You should not have gone so far."

"Really. Look who's talking."

Woken by the sound of hushed whispers behind him, Watari kept his eyes closed, waiting for his focus to return. He felt a little numb, and still warm; the dull pain in his back, though there, was not too bothersome.

"You pushed him too hard."

He recognized Touya's voice; the other one – now a stifled chuckling – belonged to Tategami.

"Come now. Enma liked it. It's a tough job to break him, anyway."

"You please Enma out of spite, don't you?" Muffled steps made the words all but inaudible. "I still don't think it was necessary to go so far. He didn't know you were still here. If you keep driving him insane like this, he'll snap."

"Too bad."

Watari clenched his teeth, forcing his eyes open as the words sank in. Back to full consciousness, he willed himself to lie motionless, and listened.

"Look, chief. I might have to hear your opinion, but I don't have to agree with it. And I don't."

"You should."

"Not really. I have--"

Tategami broke off as the door opened and someone walked in. Feet shuffled against the floor.

"DaiOh-sama."

Watari tensed. He closed his eyes.

"You were right," Enma said. "He did talk to the secretary. I am not sure how much he told him, but probably more than enough."

Tategami let out a triumphant snort. "I knew it."

Watari's heart skipped a beat. So they couldn't listen in on his conversation with Tatsumi, back in Chijou. Not without him. Tategami herself could not have done it, but she seemed to have done a damn good job at predicting what he would do. He cursed mentally, focusing to keep his breathing even, not to give himself away.

"It doesn't matter, much. Although it makes for a useful bonus, indeed."

On the verge of shaking with anger, Watari cursed Enma out in his thoughts, time after time. He could imagine how the god had pushed Tatsumi, with his sneaky way with words he used to gain the information he was after. Had he threatened Tatsumi? He very well might have, Watari knew; certainly not above that, Enma played his cards with a sure hand.

And even his current 'partner' did not play for his team. Watari could hardly push himself to even think of Tategami that way.

"I want him inside Mother as soon as he wakes up."

"With all due respect, DaiOh-sama, he might--"

"That's an order." Enma cut Touya off in a cold voice. Footsteps, most likely his, sounded in the suddenly too quiet room.

"GyokuTo should also return to her place."

"Yes, Enma-sama," Tategami gave a terse reply. She walked towards the door.

As both of them left and the door closed behind them, Watari heard Touya let out a heavy sigh. He opened his eyes and turned to lie on his back. He squinted to glance at her; perched on the edge of a chair, she held her hand pressed against her eyes. Watari reached behind, feeling around the pillow until he found his glasses. He put them on.

Touya looked up. "Hey, you're awake," she said somewhat tiredly. "You heard, didn't you?"

He nodded. He had to wonder, what business that woman had to argue his case. Last time he checked, it was anything but safe a thing to do, around those people in particular.

He moved to sit up, wincing at the sudden pulsation of pain in his temples. "What did you give me?" he asked.

Touya stood and walked over to the bed. "Lie down," she said in a calm voice. "The headache will pass. The needle might have nicked the covering of the spinal cord. And I gave you mild sedatives."

Falling back against the bed, Watari cursed under his breath. "What for?"

"The chips are microscopic, but they move around highly sensitized nerves. Each time one of them strikes a nerve, it causes pain." She shrugged. "I tested it on myself, so trust me on this."

Watari gave her an irritated look. "You could have told me," he said.

"You've just slept through most of the relocating phase, so no need to get angry. I didn't tell you because you're under enough stress as it is, that's all."

"What time is it?" he asked.

Touya glanced at her watch. "Seven thirty."

Watari let his head roll to the side, away from her, and slowly closed his eyes. Now that he lay down, the headache had begun to subside.

Touya dragged a chair across the room and put it next to him. "I know you don't trust me," she said as she sat down. "Quite understandable, and I'm not expecting you to do that. But believe it or not, I have no intention to harm you. I'm just doing my job, and I'm doing it to the best of my abilities."

Deep down, Watari agreed. Trust was out of question, as was anything beyond the necessary cooperation, for that matter. But she did not strike him as an ill-willed person so far.

"That's fine," he said after a longer moment of silence. "I appreciate it."

Touya let out a humorless chuckle. "You don't, and I can't blame you. But that's all right." She rose to her feet. "When you get up, do it slowly. Rapid movement will make that headache worse. I'll get you something for it."

Watari gave her a small smile. "Thanks."

"No problem," she said over her shoulder on her way out the door.
-

Left to his own devices, Watari lay still for a few minutes, staring at nothing in particular on the white ceiling above him. Seven thirty, he thought. It would start getting dark soon. Tatsumi would leave the office and go home. He sighed. It felt as though it had been so long ago when he waited outside Tatsumi's house, though only a day had passed. Eternity like this, if he continued to count days, not months or years, seemed long beyond any stretch of imagination.

He picked himself up, slowly this time, pressing one hand to his temple to soothe the pain that had taken up residence there again. This won't be easy, he mused, and it was only the beginning. His back still hurt, though if he should believe Touya, he did not have much to complain about. He remembered pain far worse than that.

Carefully, he eased himself off the bed and waited out the moment of nausea his body welcomed the change of position with. Enma had ordered the test run tonight, he recalled; somebody would come to call him soon. He decided he would not give Tategami the pleasure of fetching him, this time.
-

The main lab looked less crowded, now that most of the assistants had left for their respective homes. A few of them still worked on their computers; writing their daily reports, Watari guessed as he took a quick inventory of the room. Touya sat at one of the far desks, fumbling in the drawer. Tategami was nowhere in sight.

Watari crossed the lab towards the Head Researcher's desk. "I feel like I got hit by a truck," he said with a little wry smile.

Touya glanced up from her task. "That would have been a fairly small truck, all things considered."

"Thanks, I already feel better."

She grinned. "I wouldn't hook you up tonight, if it were up to me, but Enma insisted," she said, her voice serious now.

"I know." Watari nodded. "That's fine, I guess. Something about not wasting precious time, hm?"

Touya shut the drawer and stood. "Something along these lines."

"Well," he said, brushing his hair, long since not braided anymore, out of his face. "Now, or later, whatever floats his boat."

"I'm glad you agree."

Watari caught a glimpse of Touya's ducking a little at the sound of Enma's voice coming from a doorway at the other end of the lab. He kept his own expression neutral, turning to take a look of his own.

Touya's chair made a screeching sound against the floor, pushed out of the way in a sudden, nervous movement. "Let's do it, then," she said hurriedly, exchanging quick looks with Watari before she began walking towards the room Enma had emerged from.

On his part, Watari recoiled inwardly as he thought twenty five years back, to the last time he had been in that room. He had let his bitterness and his rage loose there, which damaged Hinote Katai – his former second in command, back then – most likely beyond healing. The man had deserved it, Watari had believed then, and he still thought as much right now. For the sour aftertaste the incident had left, he still regretted nothing of what he had done.

The room looked none to impressive – five by six meters, by rough estimation, it passed for yet another den, similar to many others inside the Science Department. With a single computer terminal, two chairs – each equipped with a keyboard – and a set of four ceiling lamps, it looked nothing like Mother's main operation center it was.

Watari passed by Enma at the door, making no eye contact, though he felt the god's triumphant stare on him all the time. He could almost hear his thoughts; that victorious fulfillment of the promise he had given Watari a few days before.

You will come to me, he had said, and those words had engraved themselves deep in Watari's mind. And come you have, Enma's entire posture whispered, proud and satisfied almost beyond restraint.

He shrugged, anxious enough without reminding himself of that horrible night in his apartment, when the god had come to him. The pain in his head assaulted him anew as he sat down in one of the chairs; he made sure none of it showed on his face. He would add not so much as an ounce to Enma's satisfaction, if he could help it. It seemed rather ironic, now that he was there, about to do what Enma had wanted him to do all along. He might have won Watari's cooperation, but he would not have his pride.

He pulled the keyboard closer to rest under his hands, glancing over at Touya, who had taken her position by the main terminal. He met her eyes; that worried look on her face did nothing to soothe his own fear.

And fear he did – the last time he had done that had cost him over three months worth of his time. The collective sum of consequences that followed exceeded the gain by large.

"Ready when you are," Touya said, turning to the computer.

Watari took a deep breath and tapped nervously at the keys. Here goes nothing, he mused, a second before he confirmed his login with a click of the enter key.

--

It was white.

Watari felt himself drift away, as though his consciousness had dissipated, sucked in by a vacuum stronger than his subconscious wish not to go in. When he opened his eyes, the brightness struck him; surrounded by nothing at first, he lifted his hand to give his eyes something to rest on. He knew he was looking at a virtual image of himself – identical with his real flesh, down to the faintest bruise, still vaguely visible around his wrist. He drew a breath, ignoring the knot in his stomach, as he tried to compose himself and stop his hands from shaking.

He looked up as his surroundings began to change. As if drawn by an invisible hand, the first lines appeared around him – the outline of a spacious room, slowly filling with details as the seconds rolled past.

Watching the virtual spectacle with cautious eyes, he felt uneasiness well up in him – he knew that place, he thought frantically, and it sure as hell wasn't what it should have been. The walls, the windows, the desks appeared, and he watched in rising panic, trying to gather coherent thoughts to figure out what to do. He felt himself go rigid at the sight of the person sitting atop one of the desks.

"Welcome back," Tategami said with a smirk. "Like my little surprise?"

Watari squeezed his eyes shut. The image of the EnmaCho – as real as it was not – still burned him inside his mind.

"Turn it off," he heard his own hoarse whisper, the words broken around the edges as an excruciating pain knocked him off his feet. He was falling apart, he could swear; the searing fire shot up his spine, left him nearly breathless, curling up on himself to escape the pain.

"Stop it," he groaned, spending the last of his breath. "Mother!"