Chapter Thirty-Two: Inner Voices

The bruise on my wrist caught my brother's attention now. He asked me who had done it. He wouldn't stop trying to get the answers out of me, and I never said a word. I just came up here and locked the door.

I've never locked my brother out before.

But how could he not know he was the one who had clutched my arm so tightly it had bruised that badly?

I had only wanted to wave goodbye to Yugi, but somehow, he didn't want me to do that and so, he dragged me away from the window, clutching my arm.

Why, Seto?

Why?

"I would never!" I spit out vehemently.

"I see the truth. Do not try to deny what the soul room holds. All there is laid bare!"

"Me? Murder Mokuba? You're fucking mad!"

"Not me, but you have been. I see it all—how you grew angry towards him and even squeezed his arm so tightly he got a bruise, how you hit him in the chest once, how you eventually came to strangle him, how jealous you were of Yugi, and how you burned the body afterwards!"

"Shut up! Shut your lying bastard's mouth right now!"

I wouldn't listen to any more of this spinning tale the ludicrous man spewed. Leaving was wise before I really did commit murder. Pacing out of the darkened area—out of the foreign place that had once been my room—Shadi remained behind, not even attempting to follow. He had the Necklace in his hands, I had seen him take it. He had what he came for. What else had he to do other than ruin a life? All a bit more fun in the line of his day's work, I imagined.

"Look for the tape, Seto Kaiba. The tape from the glasses."

His next words were halted as I slammed the door to my room and started to pace down the hall.

"Yet, you cannot be held accountable during the weighing of—"

"MOKUBA'S—NOT—DEAD!" The door slammed the finality of the conversation.

Two months and twenty-seven days. Why, why did I still hold out so much hope that my brother would be alive? Hope was harder to kill than a Toon Blue-Eyes White Dragon. And just as able to murder one's pride and dignity by twisting around one's bearer until the hollow husk no longer could support the weight of breath.

The glasses were what Shadi told me to find.

"What are those glasses for? I knew it! You really do need them; you were lying before."

"They're not for my eyesight; they're a type of secret camera."

"Really? Can I see?"

I had handed them right on over, and I even remembered, now, Yugi commenting on them when he was talking with my brother. Well, not Yugi. Yami.

"Since when did you wear glasses, Mokuba?"

"These? These aren't real glasses. They're camera ones! My brother is letting me wear them and I'm filming my creation."

I had never thought of them before. No one had ever mentioned them in the reports. How could I have never thought of them before? It seemed like such a small thing, and yet, I had known they were taping. Could it be possible the glasses still lay here somewhere, showing the truth of the incident?

Then it'll show I didn't do it, I thought, running a shaking hand through my hair. That damned bastard…claiming I killed Mokuba. Not only is Mokuba alive, but I would never harm my brother!

Except you nearly hit him before.

That voice never shut up no matter how I raged or pounded at my head. A dull throb constantly knocked against my head these days, but even that wouldn't cease the voice.

And if you nearly hit him before, what's to say you wouldn't go farther? What's to say, with your baffled memory, you didn't hit him already?

How many hairs had I already ripped from my tortured head? How deep were the gauges from my nails as I dug at my face and tried to get the voice out? In all my life, the voice of a conscience had been easily stifled and killed. This voice didn't seem to be a conscience. It seemed to be a demon intent on driving me to suicide from guilt or just to stifle the nasty, slimy sound of it.

This couldn't last. This half-life, this guilt and fear, hope and cynicism.

Answers.

The glasses. It was time to begin hunting.

The entire collection of what had been used in the haunted mansion setup had been piled up and away. Even with my frantic determination to find some hint of evidence, a rogue fingerprint on one of the objects used in the game, even with that, I didn't remember the glasses.

"They must not have been picked up with the rubble…someone might have overlooked them. No…impossible they were overlooked with the lights and searching that we all did. My basement had turned into a different place after that searching."

How could I not have thought of them, not found them missing? Where the hell were they?

Frantically, I dug through everything I had gone through before. But the glasses, as I suspected, didn't linger there.

"Where could they be? Where could they possibly be?" I muttered to myself, ruining my hair further with my constant rifling through it. Heading back to the basement, I still did not believe they'd be there. But where else had I to look? The search would take countless hours. But I would have to do it.

As sun dawned over the mansion and filtered to the house its golden rays, I remained down under the earth, thinking it fitting I hid from its purity and blessing, that I rested among the worms where I belonged. If what Shadi said were true…I faced the darkness like my brother did.

Without all the fake walls, searching the basement proved a lot easier than before. The floor was mostly bare, and I would have seen the glasses even with their small size. Boxes of things that seemed to collect in everyone's basement regardless of status was where I planned to go next, but I decided that the tomb-like feeling of the room had grown too oppressing. Yes, I deserved to feel in a sepulchral, but my body would work better if I had more light and heat.

The fireplace had no logs in it, only ash, so I readied some of them and poured lighter fluid on them; a can always sat ready nearby. Before I could get the match lit, though, one of the logs slipped free of the setup I had them in.

"Stupid things…"

Carefully, I maneuvered it around once more, but as I set it firmly in place, the ash at the bottom near it sprang up in an odd design. The log had rested unbalanced because it sat on something. So, I pried free the hardened piece of debris from under the log and looked at it closely, wiping and blowing off the ash.

It was a lens.

"The…glasses."

Instantly, I threw all the logs out of the fire pit and dug in the pile of old ash. Why had I never thought to look through the ashes for clues?

In pieces, but rather whole pieces, I found the spying glasses. It was well I had made them fireproof and as indestructible as I could. They wouldn't have lasted in the fireplace without it, assuming they had been tossed in while the fire blazed.

"Could the tape…could it be intact?"

Taking all the pieces upstairs once more, I went into my workroom and looked closely at the blackened metal that held the tiny film capsule. With a lot of work, eventually, with enough prying, I could force open the catch. Inside, the chip looked whole and undamaged.

"Mokuba…" I said, staring at the chip that rested in my fingers. So fragile, so tiny, and yet, the chip carried within it, most likely, all my desperate answers.

My special laptop would hold the chip and play out the video; I wasted no time readying the computer and putting in the memory chip to show me the footage of that night. Never had anyone else in the history of cinema stared as riveted as I did at my screen.

"Please work," I found myself whispering and hoping, even as I grew frightened of what I might see. What terrible things had my brother witnessed?

My hands gripped the arms of the chair, turning them whiter than fresh snow blazing in the noon sun and reflecting the peerless clouds.

What would the glasses show me?