DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN ANY DEAD OR ALIVE CHARACTER. THOSE CHARACTERS BELONG TO TECMO, LTD. AND TEAM NINJA. I AM IN NO WAY INTENDING ANY COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT AND I'M NOT MAKING A PROFIT FROM THE USE OF THESE CHARACTERS. ANY CHARACTER NOT A PART OF DEAD OR ALIVE IS MINE AND MINE ALONE.

Author's Note: I'm glad people are still reading this story and I appreciate all the reviews.

Wolf: Hey, I hope you don't think my story stinks, but you are right on a few points. The alliance between Jack and Shark did happen quick, but that was mainly because of the fact thatJack knew Shark had something on what happened toKasumi. And this shirt was the only one he had to wear after he left Smith. Anyway, I hope you think it gets better.

Chapter Twenty-six

Monday, December 26

9:50 P.M.

Charity Medical Complex

Kasumi slowly lifted her head so she could see the door as one of the doctors walked into the room. This doctor was different than the one that treated her earlier, but it didn't matter to her, as long as someone could make her feel better.

"Hello," she whispered politely, her voice weak and frail.

The doctor smiled, but her eyes were filled with pity. "My name is Karei Makita. What's yours?"

Kasumi swallowed hard. "Kasumi," she mumbled.

Karei walked over to Kasumi and took a seat next to her bed. "How are you feeling, Kasumi?"

"My throat hurts."

Karei nodded. "That's to be expected. How's everything else?"

Kasumi swallowed again. "My arms are so sore....and my hip....what happened to me?"

"I was hoping you could tell me."

Kasumi noted the concern in the doctor's eyes. "Don't worry," she mumbled. "I feel better now."

Karei wondered what she must have felt like before if this was better. "So you don't remember what happened? What's the last thing you can recall?"

Kasumi closed her eyes and took a deep breath, ignoring the sharp pain in her chest. "I....was sleeping....and when I woke up....I felt sick. Do...you know what...it was?"

Karei could see that she was having a hard time speaking, but some things needed to be answered. "No, not yet. What happened before you got sick? Before you were sleeping?"

"...Smith..." she whispered. "...hurt....us...."

Karei wanted more answers, but Kasumi had passed out from fatigue. There was no use in pressuring her anymore, and now she had good enough reason to call the police. Makita left the room, wiping her eyes with a white tissue.

Ayane had been awake the entire time and was both angered and saddened by this female surgeon's interest in Kasumi. Why did she care so much about Kasumi and not her? Why hadn't the doctor checked on her yet? She felt so unwanted, just like when Ayame had revealed the truth about her and showed her who she really was...

She sat on her knees in the large room, nervous and alone. The woman on the other side of the curtain sighed and Ayane wondered what Kasumi's mother had to say to her that was so important.

"You wanted to see me?"

A few seconds of tense silence filled the air as Ayame brushed aside a tear. Finally she mustered up the courage to reveal the truth. "Ayane...the truth is I am your mother..."

Ayane let out a shocked gasp and looked at the floor.

"Forgive me..."

Shaking her head and clenching her hands into fists, Ayane rushed out of the room, her vision blurred with tears. She thought of all the times she and Kasumi had played together. All the times they had laughed together and cried together. But that meant nothing now. It was all an act, a cheap sham.

All the times Ayane had felt alone in the world was because of Kasumi. She had stolen everything Ayane had ever wished for...had ever hoped to achieve...and now she would pay.

On her way down the darkened streets of the Mugen Tenshin village, she bumped into Kasumi and Hayate.

"Hi, Ayane!" Kasumi said, beaming with her radiant smile.

Ayane looked upon her once best friend with tears and anger. "Stay away..."

"What's the matter? Are you okay, Ayane?" Kasumi's voice was filled with concern. "You can talk to me. We're best friends and best friends--"

Ayane felt like their entire friendship had been a lie. She shoved Kasumi to the ground and ran away with tears in her eyes. "Stay away!! I'm not your friend and I never want to see you again!!"

Ayame had deserted her and showered Kasumi with blessings. Blessings that could have been hers too. She felt like trash and only wanted to make their entire family pay. Kasumi's friendship meant nothing now. And as Ayane ran towards her home, she could hear Kasumi sobbing in the street, wondering what she had done wrong.

Ayane sighed and glared at her sister, who was still asleep in her cozy little bed across the room. Kasumi didn't deserve this kind of mercy. She betrayed them all and all she deserved was death. She continued to watch Kasumi and she immediately noticed that her sister was trapped in a terrifying nightmare. Ayane's lips parted in a weak smile as she relished her sister's misery.

Doctor Makita glanced at a nurse as she continued down the hall, remembering Kasumi's condition. She stopped her. "The patient in room 23A needs some pain killers and a glass of water. Could you make sure she gets it? It's very important."

The nurse nodded and walked away.

Karei sighed, again pondering the possibilities that might have befallen the young woman with the red hair. Whatever it was, it had to have been horrible. She thought of the other girl as well, the one with the short lavender hair. She would have to make it a point to speak with her too. She didn't want to look like she was playing favorites, but the only reason she was more concerned with Kasumi was the fact that she was clearly traumatized while Ayane appeared to be fine. But Makita knew that appearances weren't everything and that the other girl was probably just as hurt.

Thinking of this, Karei turned around and walked back towards 23A, wishing to make sure Ayane was all right as well.

Ayane heard when Karei entered the room and her smile faded instantly. "She's sleeping." Her voice was frail and scratchy, but still resentful.

Karei glanced at Kasumi and then back to Ayane. "I know. Actually, I came to see you. My name is Karei. What's yours?"

Ayane rolled her eyes and coughed. "Spare me your false concern. What do you want?"

"I just wanted to see if you're feeling okay. Do you need anything?"

"No, I'm fine. Thanks, but no thanks."

Karei wondered why this girl was putting up such a fight, but let it slide. "If you need anything a nurse will be by shortly. Don't be afraid to ask for help."

Ayane closed her eyes and sighed. "I'm tired....just let me rest."

Makita nodded and left the room.


Monday, December 26

10:00 P.M.

Organization Compound 21

The upstairs computer consoles glowed dimly, flickering on and off from time to time. Shark had said that the power was steady, but the systems had been damaged and a few of them were unable to retain electricity. Myamoto had said that there was something interesting up here, but so far Jack had been coming up empty handed.

"What exactly are we looking for Myamoto?" Jack asked, slightly irritated.

"There was supposed to be a room up here according to the map. This room looked like another storage area or something, but I can't find the door."

Shark sighed. "And I already told you that Smith never mentioned any secret room to me. Why don't you try one of the old consoles?"

Myamoto closed the laptop and reluctantly nodded. "Fine, but I don't think there's going to be anything useful in the database."

Jack shrugged. "Couldn't hurt to look, right?"

Myamoto cracked his knuckles and began typing commands on the keyboard. Soon he smiled and began to scan the shimmering screen intently.

"You find something?" Shark asked, a little surprised and a little worried. He hoped there were no records of his actions. He thought Smith would've purged the system, erasing everything. Apparently he had overestimated Smith's intelligence once again.

Myamoto nodded. "It's a time log of some sort. It seems to be a schedule."

Jack took interest. "A schedule?"

"Yeah. Unfortunately, the data is too degraded to see anything but a few entries made by Smith. It seems to be pertaining to Kasumi's questioning and the progress they made. You'll be happy to hear that she resisted them until the very end."

Jack only responded with a sigh.

Myamoto cleared his throat. "The last entry was on the seventeenth. It says that Kasumi mysteriously vanished along with one of the staff sometime in the middle of the afternoon. It mentions a secondary target, but after that everything's been too corrupted to make out. I'll keep looking for anything else."

Shark let out a sigh of relief.

Jack faced him. "Friday the seventeenth was the same day Kasumi was almost killed by Duncan. Do you know anything about how she escaped?"

Shark shook his head. "I left before that. She was only here a couple days when I quit. I figured Smith would've killed her. Sorry, but I don't know anything about that," he lied.

Jack looked suspicious, but asking more questions would only raise a red flag. It would be best to talk to someone else who was there: Kasumi herself.

"The secondary target must've been Ayane," Jack said. "That would explain how she got tangled up in this mess."

Myamoto nodded in agreement. "Hey, here's something else. It's a log of some sort of trial and error techniques used on Kasumi during her stay here." Myamoto paused to examine the file on the dim display. "Whoa....that's terrible...."

Shark gave a slight nod. "I never actually saw her, but you could hear her screams from up here."

Jack gritted his teeth. "I don't want to know what they did. I've already seen the results and I have no desire to know what caused her so much anguish. I just want them to pay for it."

Myamoto nodded and eyed Shark with distaste. "How did you do it?"

Shark looked confused, impatient, and slightly worried. "Do what?"

"How could you stand by and do nothing when you knew that she was in so much pain?"

Jack was interested immediately. "I'd like to know that too. What kind of man can sit up here and listen to that kind of suffering without taking action?"

Shark rolled his eyes. "Money is a very persuasive item. That's the main reason that I stuck around for as long as I did. But I left didn't I?"

Jack nodded. "I guess so, but why didn't you try to help her?"

Shark needed to change the subject quickly before he slipped up. "Quit asking so many damn questions! I don't have to help you, but I chose to anyway. So quit interrogating me before I decide to leave."

Jack glared at Shark. "What are you so afraid I'll find out? What's the big secret, Shark?"

"None of your business! Now do you want to search for a way to take down Smith or do you want to keep bugging me?"

"I want to keep bugging you. Now tell me what you did. I know that you know something else about Kasumi," Jack persisted stubbornly.

"Oh yeah? And what exactly makes you think that?"

Jack stared Shark in the eye. "When we met I told you the story of how I killed Duncan in the park and saved Kasumi's life. You say you never saw her, but as soon as I described her in my story, I could tell you recognized her. I have to admit you're a better actor than most liars I know, but you're no Paul Newman. I can easily tell that you've been lying."

Shark grumbled a few colorful curse words and sighed. "You're right. I do know more than I'm saying, but I'll be damned if I'm going to tell you anything!"

Jack was just about to yell at Shark to tell him more, when an alarm screamed throughout the empty base. Jack clamped his hands over his ears and winced. "Myamoto shut that damned thing off!"

Myamoto frantically typed in a few commands and sighed with relief as the loud alarm died away.

Jack removed his hands from his ears and glared at his hacker friend. "What the hell was that? Did you do that on purpose?"

Myamoto turned to Jack, clearly confused. "I didn't set it off. Something else did."

Jack momentarily forgot all about Shark's dark secret and remembered the room that Kasumi had been held in. He remembered that he had felt something strange when he looked at the wooden door and now he realized what it was.

"Someone or something else is in the building with us."

Shark looked like he was going to laugh. "Why would anyone want to come to this hell hole?"

Jack shrugged and got out his Beretta. "I don't know."

"How do you know for certain?" Myamoto asked.

Jack pointed towards the stairs that led to the basement. "The room that was used to question Kasumi was locked. I remember leaving that door wide open. Plus, the generator was broken."

Shark shook his head. "That generator's been broken for a long time. It was busted even before you girlfriend was brought here. And that door could've been blown shut."

"How? There's no wind down there."

Just as Jack finished his sentence, the power failed shrouding them all in a thick eerie darkness.


Monday, December 26

10:11 P.M.

Organization Compound 32

Smith had just returned to the main floor of his old base and was appalled at the ruins that were spread out before him. Damaged consoles littered the floor and live wires were strewn about without any sort of order. The place was a complete war zone.

"Wow, that guy really screwed this place over."

Smith glared at Thomas. "Shut up and help me assess the damage. I can't get into contact with my agent unless this place is operational. Sending her into DOA 4 won't matter unless we have some sort of base of operations."

"This place is a wreck. You'd be better off to find a new hole in the ground to crawl into."

Smith ignored the British man and walked upstairs to his darkened interrogation chamber. On his way up the stairs he noticed that the door to the storage area was wide open, which told him that someone had been snooping around after the fight. He cursed and ran back down the flight of stairs, heading straight to the opening in the wall. He needed to see what they took.

Thomas reluctantly followed his boss down the narrow passage and at the bottom he was greeted with nothing more than a very dark room filled with scattered boxes and their spilled contents. He noticed that most of the boxes were tipped over on their sides or lying upside down on the cold concrete floor. Papers were scattered everywhere.

He watched in amusement as Smith frantically inventoried the spilled contents, panic clearly etched into his voice. "What did he take?!"

Thomas shrugged and started to play with his lighter, like always. "Does it really matter?"

"Of course it does! Now, help me search you idiot. Jack can't be allowed to learn our secrets!"

Thomas sighed and irritably helped Smith gather the papers on the floor into neat piles and return them to their designated boxes. But soon he got tired of helping Smith clean up the massive mess and leaned up against an empty shelf. Smith glared at him and stood up, finally realizing that there was no way they could tell what Jack Wallace may have taken. There was just too much information to sort through.

"Damn!" Smith yelled as he kicked an empty box. "I'm going to kill that girl if I ever see her again! She's caused more trouble than any other enemy I've ever had."

"Why don't you just leave her alone? Cut your losses and run--"

"Cut my losses?! Run?!" Smith yelled. "Do you know what I'm going to do?"

Thomas shrugged and put away the small Zippo in the palm of his hand. "What?"

Smith smiled darkly. "I'm going to hunt her down. And when I catch her I'm going to make her watch as I slaughter her sister, her boyfriend, and her entire village. And then I'm going to rip out her guts with a rusty knife!"

"Man, you are one messed up yank. You're bloody crazy! Just leave her alone and find someone else to 'ask.'"

Smith shook his head. "No, I will find her. But for now I must prioritize. First, I need to get this dump operational. Then I need to send my agent into DOA 4. After that, I'll concentrate everything I have on Kasumi and Jack."

Thomas simply shook his head. "They'll be back, you know. They'll show up here, or they'll go back to Forest Park."

Smith froze. "Forest Park? How do you know anything about Forest Park? I hired you after I left that place."

Thomas grinned. "I have been keeping an eye on you for quite a while. I was just waiting to make my move. But when I heard you kidnapped a young woman in the woods outside of town, my curiosity got the better of me. I needed to see what you were up to, so I waited and watched. And then you called me, when Duncan was killed and your traitor had freed your only source of useful information. I was going to kill you, but when you told me how much you were willing to pay, I couldn't refuse."

Smith was pissed, but soon realized that anger wasn't going to help. He remained silent, unsure of what to say.

Thomas rolled his eyes. "So that's how I know that Jack might want to return to the forest if he doesn't come here."
"It doesn't matter where he goes."

Thomas was intrigued. "Why is that?"

Smith laughed. "Because I've changed the security codes here. There's no way he can get back inside. And in the forest, there will be a deadly surprise waiting for him."

Thomas wanted to know more, but Smith walked up the stairs. He shrugged and quietly followed, ready to get to work repairing the damaged consoles that littered the main room. The faster he worked, the more he was paid.


Monday, December 26

10:31 P.M.

Organization Compound 21

Jack and the others had all gathered in the big room, right outside of the inner building's entrance to discuss this new threat.

"What makes you think there's something here?" Hayate asked.

Jack sighed. "I told you already! That door had been locked, and I didn't do it. There's got to be something else in there."

Hayabusa remained calm, as usual. "When we were searching through the junk pile, you looked into the room through a small barred window. Was there anything inside?"

Jack shook his head. "I don't think so. I'm pretty sure there was nothing there."

"You don't think so? You're pretty sure? You either saw something or you didn't, Jack," Shark said, irritated. "We can't afford any unnecessary complications."

Jack glared at him. "You're an unnecessary complication, Shark. I'd shut my trap if I were you. You're on thin ice as it is, so don't push it."

Shark shrugged and remained silent.

"I say we get the hell out of here," Myamoto whispered. "This place gives me the creeps and we've been down here for two and a half hours. If there was anything to find, we would have found it by now."

"No!" Jack shouted. "I'm not leaving empty handed. We need to find a way to take this guy down. Kasumi's been through too much to let him get away with this!"

Hayate nodded. "Then there is only one course of action we can take."

"What's that?" Jack asked.

"We find out whatever set off that alarm and destroy it."

Jack nodded. "If it means I can get to Smith and avenge Kasumi, then bring it on. I'm ready."

Myamoto tugged on Jack's jacket sleeve. "Are you suicidal?! What if it's some kind of--?"

Jack checked the load on his Beretta. "Whatever it is, I'm sure I can kill it. And if I can't kill it alone, I'm sure all of us working together can take out anything."

Hayabusa gave a slight nod. "Good. Then let's go find it."

Holding the Beretta in his right hand and the pen light in his left, Jack lead the way into the darkened base, followed closely by the two ninja warriors. Shark and Myamoto stayed in back of the loose formation ready to fight, but knowing that there wasn't much they could do if it got ugly since they were both unarmed.

Jack stealthily crept down the stairs that led into the basement and was poised to shoot anything that moved even a millimeter. But when he reached the bottom of the steps, there was nothing there except the long shadows being cast by his flashlight. However, he did feel that something had changed since he had last seen the hallway nearly half an hour earlier.

Not sure what to expect, Jack continued down the narrow hall, ready for almost anything to jump out of the shadows and tackle him. It was nerve wracking to know something was there, but not know where it was or even if it was dangerous. But knowing Smith, this place was probably riddled with all sorts of traps.

Jack stopped as he neared Kasumi's old cell and looked behind him to make sure everyone was accounted for. After he was positive everyone was still present, he walked towards the locked wooden door. But when the bright beam from his light washed over the door, he was shocked. It was wide open and the padlock was nowhere to be seen.

"Damn!" Jack whispered.

Myamoto gazed at the door and slowly whistled the theme song for X-files.

"Knock that off!" Shark shouted. "This isn't funny."

Myamoto laughed. "Why? Is the big bad thug afraid of the dark?"

Jack whirled around and glared at both of them. "Shut up, both of you! We need to keep our eyes open. We can all make fun of Shark later."

Myamoto nodded and Shark rolled his eyes. Both were the responses Jack expected, so he cautiously entered the small dark room. As he stepped through the doorway, he scanned the room, seeing absolutely nothing new. There was still a gory mess on the table and a few tattered strips of stained clothing. The metal cart was still where he had last seen it and there seemed to be nothing out of place.

Myamoto stepped inside after him, followed by the others. "Are you sure this door was locked, Jack?"

Jack nodded. "I swear it was. I'm positive it was sealed earlier.

"Well, it looks like--"

Myamoto was interrupted when the wooden door was slammed shut behind them making a deafening slamming sound. Jack swore under his breath as he heard the sound of the padlock being replaced on the handle, sealing them inside.

"Stand aside," Jack said quietly.

He raised his pistol and fired into the wooden door, emptying his entire clip. He could hear a few of the bullets striking metal on the other side of the door, but that was it. Jack reloaded the jet black weapon and sighed as he heard heavy footsteps fade away in the dark hall outside.

He put away the gun and sighed. "I think it would be fair to say we're in deep shit. Any ideas?"

Shark shook his head and took a seat in his old chair. "No, but I am really starting to get pissed at whatever is in here with us."

Jack nodded. "That makes both of us."

Hayabusa looked completely calm. He was even more composed than Hayate. Jack wondered how he could remain so stoic all the time, but shrugged it off and began to examine the door for a way out. But after about five minutes of close examination, Jack sat down on the floor and stopped searching. He was sure that an idea would come to him soon, but he wondered if it would come soon enough.