Mizumi's black eyes glanced with determination at her computer, slender fingers typed back and forth while her eyebrows furrowed in concentration. A hand ran past her short, reddish hair, as she rubbed the sweat out of her forehead. There was that article, that familiar, old, rotten paper resting next to her, laying wrinkled on the desk. Blazing inside the screen were the other various articles, the videos from the news, everything Mizumi had gathered through the past sixteen years. Focusing all her attention in the search of any clue, Mizumi never realized someone had entered the dormitory.
"Mizumi, stop it!" Kenji's manly voice said with a tone of monotone desperation.
"Bugger off, Kenji, I'm busy!" Mizumi snapped coldly, that topic always angered her since she had been very united to her father.
"Stop torturing yourself, dad will not come back!" Kenji snapped angrily, frutasted upon seeing his sister consuming herself in grief.
"Onii-chan, Daddy was kidnapped because he knew something, and I'll find the culprits!" Mizumi turned around and smiled with determination at her brother.
"Stop saying nonesense!" Kenji snapped, "Stay away, those damned things lost dad, I don't want you to end like he did, Mizzy-chan!" Kenji said pointing at the glowing computer.
"Don't you ever call me Mizzy again, Kenji-san!" Mizumi growled almost like an animal, standing up and glaring at Kenji with flaming eyes.
Frozen in his place by his sister's sudden outburst, Kenji didn't do anything to restrain Mizumi from storming outside of the room. The boy simply followed her with the eyes, only to see she was carrying a rather large bag, and a motorcycle helmet.
"Where are you going?" Kenji wanted to ask, yet no words escaped his mouth.
Ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
With a loud, thundering roar, a very large, 3000, blue Kawasaki, speeded off into the night. Mizumi was dressed in black leather, comfortable shoes, and was carrying a bag on her back. The woman was concentrated on the track before her, as she left the narrow, city tracks and penetrate the wide, always straight highway.
"I have searched everywhere without finding anything about what happened to my father. There is only one place left, and I'm sure I'll find what Daddy was doing to get him kidnapped." Mizumi was thinking all the way through her trip across the highway.
The Kawasaki took the next exit and emerged outside Tokio, in an industrial neighbourghood, where all the buildings were industries and offices. Mizumi drove calmly towards the most magnificent, the largest, the inmense building of the InSysMat-X company, her father's company. The moto surounded the building and penetrated a narrow alley next to it. Turning the vehicle off and covering it with the rubbish cans and various boxes and things she found, the woman rushed towards the emergency ladder.
Mizumi climbed up various floors, never looking down at the enormous height below her unprotected feet. The woman was conscious that her father's office was right at the oposite side, but it was safer climbing through the emergency ladder than going up the few dozens of floors inside the colosus, with the security guards and other workers. A light flashed before her, giving her enought time to leap aside and shelter in one of the few concrete pillars. The flashlight flickered for a few instants, before recovering normality, the same as Mizzy's heart was thumping at an enormous speed.
"How peculiar, I changed batteries just this morning." A man's voice spoke from inside, while the light vanished into the dark corridors.
Relaxing all her tense muscles, Mizumi let a breath escape her mouth, and her eyes closed momentarily. Once she was completely recovered from the fright and the shock, she continued her climb upwards. It was not much further, only several floors. The woman glanced at the street and smiled gently at the height. The Kawasaki was well hidden, and the darkness covered it, but the impressive heights almost made Mizumi believe she was able to fly. Far away, in the depths of the inmense horizon, the million of colourful lights of civilization glimmered, veiled by sparkling lights and the focus of a silver, crescent moon.
"Woah, no wonder Daddy liked the highest floor." Mizumi thought with a smile that returned her toughtness and harsh temper to the gentle and chirpy child she had been in the past.
The glimmer of a car was moving calmly, slow and vigilant across the streets below. The vehicle was heading her way, but Mizumi pushed it aside believing it must be the guard. The young woman turned around and returned to her climbing, careful, observant and concentrated. Upon reaching the last floor, Mizumi drew out a laptop from inside the bag she had been carrying. The woman turned it on and began typing, and minutes after, the door was wide open and waiting for her entrance.
It was a dark room, cold and solid, and very uncozy. Asleep computers observed her from every corner. Neatly placed towers of papers stood still, here and there, between various pencils, pens, errasers, and other kind of objects fit for office work. Over every desk layed a rack full of cds, all of which seemed to have been situated there as the workers were leaving. Mizumi ignored everything, as much as it fascinated her, it was only a futile treat in comparison with the treasure she would find at the end of the cavern.
A guard passed by, with a flashlight. Mizumi was standing behind a door, not breathing, keeping her temper under control. As soon as the man was gone behind a corner, the girl kept her travel towards her father's office. It wasn't difficult, once the guard was gone, for it was one for every two or three floors of the building. The door as so simple, it was surprising nobody had been able to enter it in the past sixteen years. It was a single, wooden door with an ambarine glass decoration. Mizumi pulled out the laptop and began typing. Everybody thought the door had a key, what they didn't know was that it wasn't a phisical key.
"Done!" Mizumi said in a hissed exclamation.
Inmediately, the door vanished. The woman entered the office and gasped. It was like penetrating a world made out of snow and ice, for everything was white and glassy. Looking to her right, the woman saw the treasure that had been sixteen years waiting for her, there, still and calm, standing out in the darkness. Mizumi would have loved to explore every corner of her father's second house, but she had come to check his secret files, the knowledge that lost him.
"Codification... darn, I didn't count on that!" Mizumi whispered exasperated, staring at the flashing screen.
Looking left and right, checking the desk thoughtfully, Mizumi found something. It was a yellow post stick with something written on it. The woman pulled it out and placed it where the clarity was brighter, such that she could clearly read the contents.
"It's more simple than you think. Just think on what I loved the most, Mizzy." The note said.
"Daddy knew I would come!" Mizumi thought with surprise.
"What I loved the most..." Mizumi frowned glancing at the sparkling screen.
The girl placed a finger on a letter, but pulled it out timidly, only to let it rest over the same letter again. How could she know what her father loved the most when she had only been five the time he disappeared? Suddenly, she read the note again, there it was! How stupid could she be, when it was so clear. The note was directed to her, clearly, then her father knew she would come. After all, the two had shared many secret moments.
"Mizzy." The girl typed with happiness and renewed hope.
"Password Correct!" the computer typed, allowing her entrance to the database.
Hours passed by, and Mizumi was more and more surprised at the contents and the things she was finding. It was a whole proyect, an incredible work about virtual reality that dragged Izzy from one theory to another. When it was very clear, reaching the end of the proyect, the man finished with a sentence Mizumi didn't understand. That was the end of the proyect, and it lacked any conclusion, almost as if Izzy doubted of its vericity at the very end, when it was basically finished.
"We have worked so much! At first we wanted to create a virtual reality so faithful that it could be easily confunded with the reality we live in. As our work progressed, we discovered we could manipulate the reality, and that drove us to the belief that we were already living that virtuality. However, only we could manipulate it, other subjects could not make it work, even when programing the correct codes. I think we are right at the beggining. I know there is something else, but what? What makes me different to someone else?"
There was nothing else written. Mizumi believed he had found something after those words, and that had got him kidnapped, and probably murdered. Perhaps a guvernamental secret, or something darker. There was a loud crash and Mizumi raised her head alert. Tension acumulated in her body, and her heart began beating very rapidly. A strange, trickle like feeling began to flood through her body. The screen flashed a bright light when Mizumi looked at it, and the woman felt herself being dragged into it, being absorved. Mizumi yelled loudly, fear strangling her stomach with cold hands. Was this what happened to her father?
Mizumi oppened her tightly shut eyes. Incredible enough there was a sensation, a feeling of complete normality, and a slight trickle in her skin, like when you are charged with energy. The girl gasped loudly. This, everything around her was so odd. It looked like a labyrinth, but the walls were made out of silver and green, and the ocassional luminic database slithered past the walls' circuits. Behind her was a small corridor, and right into it flashed a bright, pure white light that seemed to be the door through which she had etered in this strange world. The girl looked forward, restraining the need of going back, and leapt backwards, gasping loudly.
A few metres from her, into that weird new world, was a boy. The boy was about her age, but there was something about him, something that made him old and mature. The girl noted that, under the fisherman hat, strands of golden hair fell upon his forehead, over his ears and flooded over his neck. The eyes were blue, a bright, aqua blue that seemed to glimmer under the odd light of this place. Such light seemed to be trapped inside the boy's eyes. The boy, or young man, glanced at Mizumi with curiosity, and somehow with fear, inner fear of not knowing how the girl would react. The boy had a slim body, which was covered with green and yellow shorts, and a T-shirt with the same colours.
"I... I didn't touch anything, I swear!" Mizumi stuttered raising her hands and looking guilty.
Frightened, feeling like the culprit of a crime, Mizumi did the only thing she thought of. The girl turned around and began running towards the shinny, luminic door, ignoring the boy's desperate yells.
"Wait! Don't go that way!" the boy yelled fearfully, raising a hand as if trying to stop her.
Mizumi ignored such words, and fell face first into her father's office. The woman collided with the desk's chair and topled over. Groaning, Mizumi stood up. The following morning she would bear a bruise on the cheek, and every bone in her body was bound to hurt. Standing up and dusting her clothes, Mizumi was ready to leave. The girl would copy all database into her computer, only for further study. The young woman oppened her laptop and began typing the codes for activation of the bluetooth system.
"Wait, you can't be here!" the tired voice of an adult man complained in the darkness.
Mizumi raised her head to listen. The was a strange sound, like someone spitting, and a loud thud on the floor, which signalled someone had fallen. The girl's heart began beating loudly when she realized there were various set of feet heading her way. The fallen man had been killed doubtlessly, murdered with a silent gun. Mizumi had to think, and think fast. There was only one exit, but she was so high, and there was, apparently, nothing, not even a window seal, that would aid her.
The woman examined the suroundings through the window. True she was on the last floor but a few floors below, on the corner of the building, was a balcony. Now she needed a way to get there. Mizumi looked left, only to meet a flag with the InSysMat-X symbol, and a rope laying lazily on the metal pole, a thick rope.
The girl placed her laptop in the bag and hanged it over her shoulders. Ringht after, and with a speed that came from fear, Mizumi oppened the window, unrolled the rope, untied the knots and tied it on the window frame. When she was finished, three people entered the room, two men and a woman. They were all dressed in black suits, and they all carried glasses. The girl couldn't see their features in the darkness, but it was obvious they were older than her.
Mizumi's heart skipped a beat, and her stomach tensed along with all her muscles. The girl realized that right in that moment, the computer's screen rippled like a pond where you have thrown a stone. It was the first time she realized her fear seemed to affect electronic objects. Swaisting no time, Mizumi leapt into the empty night, kicked the wall and gripped the rope tightly.
With a yell of glee mixed with fear, Mizumi swinged into the night, heading for the balcony. When a few metres separated her from the door to escape, Mizumi let her hands open and the girl flew across the night. The arms open, the pride high, Mizumi landed, not with much expertise, into the solidness of the balcony's tiles. Not spending a second, the girl leapt into the building, jumping right through the glass door. That earned her a few cuts, and the alarm of the floor guard.
Mizumi rushed across the dark corridors, evading tables, desks, chairs and everything in her way. Guiding herself with intuition, the woman was heading towards the ladder as fast as her legs could carry her. Breathing laboured, the electronic objects seemed to spark, or react as her nervous body rushed past. It wasn't the moment to think about this odd event.
"Hey! STOP!" a guard, female, ordered while pointing her flashlight at the girl.
The woman dodged the other female and entered a room. Mizumi pounced upon the glass door and slammed her body onto the dense fluid. The glass shattered, cutting her clothes a little more, and gashing her skin such that blood poured, and the cuts itched. Loosing no second, Mizumi began her descent towards the street. Looking up as she was almost reaching the bottom, she saw the three shadows observing her from above.
With a proud smile, Mizumi leapt off the last floor and landed gracefully on the pavimented street. The woman ripped the rubish off her moto, kicked the bins aside and mounted on the vehicle. Mizumi didn't wear the helmet, she didn't have time. Starting the two wheeled object, the moto speeded off into the night, the rubber wheels screeching on the pavement. There was only one thought in the woman's mind, to escape, to return home. This must have been Izzy's thoughts the night he disappeared.
"This is all too weird." Mizumi thought as she drove through the night. "What happened to Daddy? I think I feel just the same as he did, when I thought I was just one step to the end, I find myself at the beggining of the journey. Who was that boy? What was that place? Why do objects seem to react oddly when I'm near?"
The journey was frantic, she was going very fast in her hurry, but she was alone. Not for long since she saw, through the mirrors, two large cross motos in her pursue.
"Shit!" Mizumi exclaimed pressing on the handler to speed the vehicle.
The three motos speeded past the night, in equal speed, maintaining the distances. The three vehicles were balanced in power and in strength. Mizumi didn't know what to do, maybe while reaching Odaiba, she would be able to get rid of them. Here, in a highway, it was impossible. The woman gasped in shock. Crossed in the highway, ocupying the whole of it, was an enormous lorry.
"Oh damn! What can I do now?" Mizumi thought rapidly while diminishing speed.
Calculating here and there, watching through the mirrors just how the other two motos were getting closer, the girl took the only decition she could. It was risky, she knew it was very dangerous and that there was a very big probability that she wouldn't make it. However, if she let this strangers get her, she would deffinitely be done for. So, the woman increased speed again and headed towards the lorry, under the surprised gaze of the other two riders. Closer, closer, maintaining speed, there was just one single chance that she would make it.
Just when the truck was close enough that it seemed it would fall upon her, Mizumi manouvred in a way that pulled a yelp of surprise from the pursuers. The woman threw the weight over the left side and pulled the moto down. Mizumi bent her leg and drew it towards her body. The vehicle slipped down and beggan sliding towards the truck. It passed right under the enormous belly, ripping golden and silver sparks from the pavement and screeching like a seagull. When the light of a full moon fell upon the vehicle once again, Mizzy pushed up with the left leg and the moto stood up.
The other two motos' wheels screeched on the pavement. Mizumi breathed heavily while glancing at the truck. It was incredible but she had managed it. Loosing no more time, the girl speeded off on her, once magnificent moto. The left side was completely scratched, and part of the cover had fallen off, or was cracked here and there.
Apparently, the young woman would manage to have some peace. Unfortunately, a car was on her pursue now, just as she entered Odaiba. Desperate, the girl rushed off, evaded an unfortunate passerby, and ran across the empty streets. The vehicle entered a dark alley, and Mizumi dismounted hoping the car would not have noticed her.
"We got you!" said a very serious voice behind her.
Mizumi turned around and saw the two men and the woman blocking her exit. The three were aiming at her with three, large guns. Terror filled her once again and Mizumi began shaking her head, tears itching her eyes as a thick frustration began to consume her.
"What do you want from me?" the girl yelled angrily, salty drops falling from her black eyes.
"Nothing, just finish with your lot and rid the world from scum like you!" the woman said with a cruel sneer.
"What lot? I'm just a teenager!" Mizumi snapped more bravely.
"Don't act stupid with me, girl. You know perfectly well what I'm talking about!" the woman said aiming at Mizumi with more precition.
The girl shut her eyes and got ready for what was to come. There was that nagging feeling inside her, that terrible thought of not understanding what whas happening, and that sadness for not having found her father. However, it seemed this people were also after her father, for reasons she doesn't know, and would never understand.
"Perhaps, death isn't so bad." Mizumi thought trying to cheer herself.
Mizumi was surprised, but the three pursuers never knew what attacked them.
To Be Continued...
AN: OK, I got to continuing this fanfiction, although nobody liked it. I had a really good idea, and decided it was better if I finished it. I am planning on finishing everything I've got started, then work full time on my book, a very thick critic to society. Well, please, tell me what you think about it. It gets more interesting throughout the next chapters.