Chapter 7 - Home
The moment those doors closed, Zyro knew that he was alone.
In this place, it should've been comforting. But, in this situation, it really wasn't. Now that Hideyoshi and the rest of his followers had left, there was only the two of them; himself and his clone.
Slowly, Zyro pulled his gaze away from the closed metal doors and turned back around to look at his doppelganger, hesitant from the fear and nerves that continued to wrack him even after Hideyoshi's departure. And the boy was just there; looking at him through half-lidded eyes that were far too tired for someone of his apparent young age. As expected, the boy said nothing.
Swallowing thickly, Zyro turned fully towards him and stood there with not a clue of what he was supposed to do.
What did they expect him to do? Talk to him?
The kid couldn't talk, so that was out of the question. Just stand there and decide? That would be more than a little awkward, considering that he seemed to still be as much a person as he himself was. And he knew for sure that he certainly didn't like awkward situations...
They had said they wanted them to get to know each other.
How? What was he supposed to do? Nothing was helping him with that question at the moment, especially not the way the kid was just staring at him.
"Uh..." The raven started, searching for something, anything, to say. "Hi?..."
Kuro simply blinked nonchalantly at that, his half-lidded eyes never leaving him. His heavy but quiet breathing was the only sound in the room other than Zyro's own voice, which echoed very briefly before fading.
"Y-you're... Kuro... Right?" The raven asked though he knew the answer to that question already. Still, it was something that the kid could at least respond to with a nod. But Kuro didn't do that. Instead, his gaze pulled away from the Ifraid Blader, and instead of wandering off to the side.
"Okay..." Zyro said quietly, licking his lips briefly, "That's okay..."
Again, Kuro's gaze shifted, this time to the opposite side of where he had been looking. Zyro watched him, confused at his actions.
"Are... Are you okay?" He asked, even though he knew that that question, in general, was pointless. After all, the boy was dying, if Hideyoshi was to be believed...
Once more, Kuro made no move to answer but instead turned his gaze towards the ceiling. It was a few moments before the lights suddenly dimmed, but only by a few notches so that everything around the room was still visible. Zyro looked up towards the ceiling in confusion and instinctively took a step back out of his own wariness.
Trying to breathe as steadily as he could, Zyro turned his gaze back towards Kuro, who was looking back at him once more that with that ever passive expression of his.
"Um..." Zyro said nervously and slowly nodded his head once, "Okay... That's cool..."
'Technology Affecting', the sticker on the door had said... Was this was that meant?
Unexpectedly, Kuro's face was suddenly lit up with a bright blue light, projected from a holographic screen that opened up in mid-air in front of the boy. Zyro watched this skeptically, and several orange lines and dots form on the translucent screen. One went straight across the screen and lay unmoving.
"We can speak, now..." Came a voice from the projection, causing the orange line to move with the volume of which the voice was speaking at. Strangely enough, the voice was that of a woman's, though with several different pitches and tones than one normally spoke with.
"Huh?..." Zyro questioned, staring at Kuro, skeptical.
The boy continued to look back at him intently.
"Well?" The projection asked, though this time it spoke in a man's voice. Once more, Zyro looked back and forth between Kuro and the projection, and was, soon enough, able to put two and two together.
"Is that..." He started, gesturing towards the hologram, "... you?"
This time, the boy actually did nod.
"I can't speak ANY other way." The projection spoke, it's warped way of speech ever present, "That's what happens..."
Slowly, Zyro nodded and licked his lips out of a nervous habit.
"Okay..." He said in agreement, "So... What are we talking about?..."
"You." Kuro answered, "And why you're here."...
"Sichiro?" Madoka questioned incredulously, looking at Tsubasa with raised eyebrows as they both stood on the far side of the room.
"Yeah." The Director said, "Not someone I would've immediately thought about, either..."
"B-but I don't get it..." The brunette stammered, "What does-" Briefly, she glanced over to the rest of the younger bladers who were now all gathered in Tsubasa's office.
Madoka had called Tsubasa beforehand, asking his permission if it would be fine to bring them over, especially considering how things had gone earlier that morning. However, Tsubasa had insisted that it was fine and that they should all be there, so she brought them along. Now they were all here (Ren having returned from wherever it was she had run off too), and waiting for... Well, whatever they were supposed to be waiting for.
When she looked over, Madoka could see the several pairs of eyes that wandered over to the two of them as they probably had several times, and sighed through her nose. All of them were distressed, to say the least.
Once more, Madoka turned back to Tsubasa, and leaned in slightly, resuming her former question.
"What does Sichiro have to do with anything that's going on?..."
"I don't know..." Tsubasa answered in as equally a hushed tone, "But Hideyoshi mentioned him when he was listing off people to blame... It was brief, so it's not like any specific attention was drawn to it... And Sichiro left roughly an hour ago, apparently saying that he had 'family emergency, and I don't think that's just a coincidence."
"Family emergency?" The brunette repeated skeptically, "But I thought that he didn't have any family..."
"He doesn't," Tsubasa confirmed. "So, yeah, I think it's a little weird that a guy who doesn't seem to have any living relatives would leave because of a 'family emergency'."
Madoka shifted, wrapping her arms around herself a little more securely.
"Do you think he heard what was going on?" The brunette asked.
"I'm sure he did." Tsubasa asked, "When I asked Tamako to page him to my office, she said that he'd left a half hour before. Which was roughly around when Hideyoshi contacted us to tell us about Zyro."
"So he ran..." Madoka stated, nodding slowly as she began to understand the situation.
"No one has been to his apartment yet, but, from the looks of it, yeah..." Tsubasa said, briefly looking over to the glass wall that stood to his right and her left. Madoka followed his gaze, her troubled eyes settling on the grey world beyond the windows. "And you don't run unless you have something to hide or something to run from." Tsubasa stated, "And I'll bet anything that he knows a lot more about what's going on then we think he does."
His amber eyes wandered back to her and watched her delicate expression with his own troubled gaze. After a moment, Madoka looked back at him.
"So, how do you propose we get a hold of him?" She asked, hoping beyond hope that Tsubasa had an answer to that. Unfortunately, he didn't.
"I have no idea." He answered, and shook his head...
"I know what they said to YOU..." Kuro and his projection stated, "They didn't lie; not entirely. They've BEEN SEARCHING FOR YOU for years, long before I was aRoUND."
Zyro, still eyeing Kuro warily, swallowed again, the thick bile in his throat always resurfacing no matter how hard he tried. "O-okay..." The raven said with a small nod, "But... I still don't get it. Why am I here? W-why am I so important to them?..."
"Because you're why they got ME in the first place," Kuro answered.
Zyro furrowed his eyebrows in confusion, and the boy continued.
"You were special. That's what they always said about YOU. And from your FILE I can see why... They found you and wanted you for themselves. But your PARenTS stood in the way."
"W-what?..." Zyro stammered, trying to comprehend what exactly he was hearing. "B-but I've lived with my parents my whole life, what sense does that make?"
"The KU-rogAne's?" Kuro questioned, the name twisted in his makeshift speech, "You shouldn't NEED ME to explain that to you... They are not your parents, ZYro, not by birth."
"But, I-"
"No questions," Kuro ordered harshly through his projection, and Zyro immediately shut his mouth. The words put through the hologram were of varying pitches, tones, and volumes, but the other boy's face spoke clearly as to what they were meant to sound like. His light blue eyes were slightly more narrowed, his eyebrows drawn together, and there was a barely noticeable frown on his lips. "We don't have long." He said, "Now listen."
Feeling his shoulders quiver slightly, Zyro obeyed and said nothing.
"Your birth parents were seen as a liability to them, so they got them out of the picture so they could HAvE you for themselves. These are them."
Zyro jumped slightly when two small, holographic screens opened up right in front of him. He took a step back in his surprise, but still looked at the screens obligingly. They were medical files, from what he could tell. On them were two different pictures, one of a man and the other of a woman. Both of them looked a little less than flattering, and it was clear - even to him - that the pictures were anything but new, since the bottom of both pages indicated that they were most recently updated back in the summer of 2002.
Anya Romanov, and Grigory Yakovich. Russian names...
"Both of them died in a car crash a YEAR AFTER you were born..." Kuro explained, his expression as calm as ever, "They drove off of a cliff, somehow, and they died in the explosion. Their bodies were barely recogniZABLE. I wonder how that happened."
Zyro could tell that that last statement wasn't meant for a genuine curiosity. The two screens in front of him then faded out and disappeared, leaving just the two of them and the other boy's projection.
"That was long after they lost every SIGN OF you. Because THEY WERE starting to talk... And that's not the worst they've done to people who try TO talk, and not just when it involved you. They'd DO ANYTHING to keep you this time... Which is why they'll lie, and THEY'LL cheat, and they'll put thoughts into your head... Which is WHY I'M telling you now, do not believe a WORD they say."
"They just kidnapped me." Zyro pointed out, loosely gesturing to the room around him as a vague reference, "What makes you think I would believe anything they say?"
There was a brief silence, and Kuro stared at him with half-lidded blue eyes. They narrowed, and the boy in the chair looked at him pointedly. Although he was frail, seemingly confined to a chair unable to speak on his own, there was no doubt that the boy was intimidating.
"Because you already did," Kuro said.
Zyro opened his mouth to protest but shut it almost as soon as he had opened it. As much as he hated it, he knew Kuro was right.
He had trusted those two blindly, ignorantly believing that not a bad thing in the world could happen. What was that to say about him?...
"One of the workers here?" Ren asked for clarification, raising a blonde eyebrow at both Tsubasa and Madoka. The two of them had come to the group of them after several more minutes of hushed conversation, followed by a phone call he made to one of his personnel and had seemingly decided to lay out the situation as it was. They had, uncomfortably, gotten through the confirmation that Zyro had, indeed, been kidnapped by the Tokyo WBBA, and that there was currently little any of them could do about it.
Almost instinctively, the children - though hardly children anymore, by this point - had turned to the Director, and asked him if he could find some way around it. Tsubasa hadn't answered right away, but he had said that he try and work on it.
All of Madoka, Minoru, and Maru knew that this was merely a try at hopeless reassurance, and they had a feeling that everybody else knew that as well. Tsubasa's hands were tied with the threat that Hideyoshi had made to him. And if there was nothing he could do, there was currently nothing that they could do. They had then finally gotten to the previous topic of Tsubasa and Madoka's hushed conversation; Sichiro, and whatever his involvement in this was. Needless to say, most of them were looking fairly baffled at the idea that one of the workers at Headquarters - one that was seemingly quite trusted, no less - could have anything to do with this bigger picture that they realized existed.
Hence, Ren's question. To it, Tsubasa could only nod.
"Yes, it seems so..." He said with a small sigh, "Hideyoshi briefly mentioned Sichiro Yamauchi during our... conversation... earlier. Which leads us to believe that he may have some answers to what's going on with this whole thing."
"So, why don't we find him?" Shinobu suggested, clearly seeing it as the most obvious objective, "And ask why the Tokyo WBBA would want Zyro in the first place?"
"We're trying." Tsubasa said, "I just sent some people out to check his apartment for him and see if he's there. He hasn't been answering calls from anyone in the past hour and a half, at least, so it's about safe to say that he overheard Hideyoshi's threat, and ran."
"Coincidence, much..." Kite muttered sarcastically, and Tsubasa's lips twitched slightly in a smile.
"So, we just... sit here and wait?" Eight asked for clarification, though he seemed quite displeased with the idea. Which was something shared with practically everyone else in the room.
"That's about all we can do." Madoka said with a shrug of her lithe shoulders, "We have no idea what their whole plan is, or how far they'll go to keep us quiet about it. I mean..." She trailed off on that last unfinished sentence and glanced briefly over at Tsubasa. The silverette must have known because he angled his head slightly away from her. "...They've already made verbal threats. We just don't know what other threats they could make..." She finished somewhat lamely, but no one said anything about it.
"Well, could they be watching us?" Ren asked, "Like... Now? I mean, we know it isn't impossible, so..."
"We have no way of knowing." Tsubasa said, swallowing thickly, "But they seemed able to hack into all the lines running into my office easily enough, so the chances of them being able to watch us is... Uncomfortably high."
"Kira hacked into your office once, didn't he?" Maru pointed out, "Maybe he could find out?"
"That would almost be pointless." Madoka said, shrugging her shoulders again, "If we could get him to try, they might find out, and things could get worse than they already are... I wouldn't try it, myself."
Tsubasa nodded in agreement with her. "Either way," The Director started, "the Tokyo WBBA's technology and security outweigh ours by at least 10 years. We aren't acting against them without them coming to know about it."
"So, that's it." Ren stated flatly, "We just... Sit here. And wait to maybe find this guy you're talking about."
Tsubasa sighed with his nose but said nothing in response to that. Madoka looked over at him again, her turquoise eyes helpless and worried. It was a terrible feeling, and it was one that they all felt. They were sitting there, with the knowledge that Zyro had been kidnapped by one of the most powerful organizations in the world that wasn't the UN, and they could do nothing about it.
Surely, the world couldn't be that cruel?
But it was, and they had already known that...
"So..." Zyro started, trying, at the same time, to get his bearings together, "What's the point of this?... Us talking about this? Is this like 'welcoming party' or something? 'Cause it's not very welcoming..."
"No, you IDIOT." Kuro's projection said rather harshly, though the boy himself looked somewhat annoyed. Zyro swallowed the lump in his throat, and unwittingly backed up a step.
"I'm trying to help you." Kuro stated firmly, "If I was welcoming you to this place, I WOULDN'T HAVE bothered telling you ALL of this. I'm the best chance you have OF getting out of here. WE DON'T have much longer, so LISTEN."
Jumping slightly, Zyro nodded his head. He briefly glanced over his shoulder towards the doors that were shut behind him and wondered how nobody was hearing any of this...
"You don't believe anything they say. You don't LET YOURSELF be broken down by them. They'll DO anything to make sure you don't try to run, to make sure you trust them above all else; DON'T LISTEN to it. BUT DO what they say. Go through with the EXPeriments, if only to please them. The more com-plIANT you are, the more freedom you have, the easier this WILL be. Understood?"
Slowly, Zyro nodded, trying his best to process all that his doppelganger had told him to do. Confusing and overwhelming as all of this was, this seemed to be the best shot he had at getting out of this place. If there was any way out of this place...
"Good," Kuro said, and his annoyed expression regressed back into his calmer one. "Do that much, and I can help you get out of here..."
"But, how-"
"You'll see." Kuro interrupted him, and narrowed his light blue eyes further, silently telling the raven to not breach the subject. Somehow, Zyro knew better than to question him.
Even still, he still had his questions, and he glanced around briefly before asking them.
"Okay, but... I still don't get it." Zyro claimed, "Why would you want to help me?... We've never even met before now, so... Why?"
Surprisingly, Kuro's face - a face that perfectly matched his own - softened, and he didn't immediately answer the raven's question. When he did, he just barely looked away from the other boy.
"Because..." His projection spoke for him, "I was born here. I know what it's like to suffer AT THEIR hands so that can gather DA-ta and do their DAMNED expERIments. I've seen what they've done to other people they've BROUGHT HERE. They're taken, come here, AND NEVER leave. Kept in captivity, like animals. They don't give a damn about anyone's livelihood, have no respect for them even after they're dead and gone."
At that, the doppelganger actually looked slightly bitter, which almost made Zyro glad. As intimidating and coldly demanding as the kid was, he clearly had a conscious of what was right and what was wrong.
It took a second, but Kuro's expression softened again, and he looked back up at his look-alike once more.
"You're right." He said in the repeatedly changing voice, "We've never officially met BEFORE NOW. But I've seen you, I've watched... I've seen who you are, and you ARE NOT a bad person. The last thing anyone deserves is a fate like this, and I've spent months assuring that you would never have it. All I've ever truly wanted in in my life is to PROTECT you FROM THIS. That's the only reason I agreed to help him..."
Gently, Zyro furrowed his eyebrows at this and briefly looked away from his clone. He mulled over it for a few seconds but didn't say anything, deciding simply to take it as it was and not ask too many questions about it.
The boy in the chair, intimidating, immovable, seemed to be as sincere as he could possibly be about any of it. Zyro had to admit, the boy wasn't all as bad as it could at first seem to be.
"They're coming back," Kuro said suddenly, and Zyro raised his head quickly to look at him. Kuro's eyes, which had seemed to be focused on something else that he couldn't see, went back to Zyro's own, a grave expression on his face.
"Remember what I told you, and you'll be fine. DON'T TRY anything apart from that."
"But, w-wait!" Zyro said hurriedly, "W-what about you, what should I do? They want me to... to save you, don't they? W-what do I say to that?!"
"DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT." Kuro's projection said furiously, and the boy's expression became that intimidating glare once more, causing Zyro to jump unexpectedly. "They want you to save me for their own SELFISH REASONS, not because they care." Kuro went on, "And they'll DO ANYTHING to try and convince you it's the right thing. No matter what they say, no matter what THEY DO, no matter what they show you, don't you dare agree to save my life."
When Zyro only continued to stare at him in near disbelief, Kuro let out another exhausted breath and let his face soften ever so slightly.
"I've been dying for a long time, ZYro... I've had my time to come to terms with that if it's the one thing THAT CAN get me out of this DAMNED place... If you save me, it won't make a difference. I'd STILL BE here, with no chance of getting out into a world I have NO PLACE in. The moment I truly knew who I WAS, I knew I was never meant to last long... Not in this place... So, ZyRO, when I ask you not to save me, I ask it AS AN act of mercy..."
Silently, Zyro stared at the boy, mind riddled with the shock and disbelief that this kid - this kid who had been his apparent 'replacement' for all these years - was so ready to accept something like that like an adult who had already lived their entire life.
That was... Wrong.
Wrong for this boy, his own indirect creation, who was younger than he himself was at fifteen, was just willing to welcome death as though it were an old friend, and seemingly had not a problem with it. Zyro was so focused on these thoughts that he didn't notice the lights brightening back to their original setting when he had walked in. It was only when Kuro spoke for the last time, his expression exhausted and soberly forlorn, was the raven brought back into real time.
"Please..." Kuro's projection pleaded with him, "Just let us die..." With that, Kuro's projection disappeared, and that was when he heard a 'click!' from behind him, and the metal doors to the room opening up again. Startled, Zyro turned towards it and saw Director Hideyoshi reenter the room once again, his faithful followers accompanying him.
"So sorry about the wait." The man said with a condescending smile, his hands together patiently behind his back, "I trust the two of you behaved yourselves?"
Nervously, Zyro swallowed with a thickness that wouldn't stop reappearing and said nothing. The Director walked into the room until he was once more standing ever so slightly between Zyro and his doppelganger. He turned sideways so that he would be able to look at both of them, and Zyro shivered under the man's gaze.
"Well now," The Director started pleasantly, "Since we've given you more than enough time to get to know our Kuro, what do you have to say, Zyro?"
Zyro felt his heart pounding heavily in his chest, and he looked over towards his look-alike once more as Hideyoshi spoke, "Will you save him or not?"
Kuro returned his gaze, that exhausted, half-awake expression back on his face as it had been when he had first walked in the room. However, the raven knew that it was all just a lie, in some way or another. He continued to look at Kuro, who was breathing heavily from unnatural exhaustion as he always seemed to be, biting the inside of his cheek as he quickly made the decision in his mind. Who was he to disrespect someone's dying wish?
Without looking at Hideyoshi, Zyro shook his head slowly. He only just stopped himself from flinching when he felt the man's cold but calm glare center in on him.
"I see..." The Director mused slowly, his formerly calm and pleasant voice low and icy, "...I truly thought better of you, Zyro... I thought you had more compassion than that, especially to your own flesh and blood..."
Don't believe anything they say.
Don't fall for it.
As determined as he was not to, the raven couldn't help the stab of guilt that he felt in the corner of his heart.
Still, he made no move, mentally or physically, to change his mind.
"So sorry, Kuro." The man said to the boy in the chair, "It appears you'll have to wait..."
Despite the Director's words, Kuro made no move to respond, and simply breathed out heavily in his weakened state. With that, Zyro was lead out by the Director and his loyal followers and glanced back briefly before Kuro's doors closed to catch a glimpse of his look-alike. He saw the boy staring after it, a tired and solemn look on his face that the raven now knew to be nothing but a mask for what lay beneath.
"Well then." Hideyoshi said as he closed the doors to Kuro's room himself, and then turned back to fix his pointed gaze upon Zyro, "Since Kuro's fragile and delicate condition seems to emit no empathy from you..." The man slowly walked up, and Zyro felt himself involuntarily shrink under his intimidating shadow, "we may as well show you one of our other... more sensitive cases." Zyro just barely stopped himself from flinching when he suddenly felt the man's hand on his back, though he could do nothing for the tensing of his shoulders.
"Come along," Hideyoshi demanded softly, that decisively pleasant tone back in his voice. This time, Naomi lead the way, while the Director stayed in step with Zyro (something that he desperately wished the man hadn't decided to do) and the four finely-dressed men and women walked behind and beside them. They passed, once again, through multiple hallways lined with doors and other corridors that lead to different places and rooms, though Zyro paid no attention to them this time. The only thing he really paid attention to was that they went into another elevator, and descended another level (or two, or three, or...) before coming out onto a slightly quieter floor.
It was unsettling, the unnatural quiet that surrounded them as they walked, their footsteps echoing loudly against empty metal walls and ceiling. Hideyoshi never left his side, and his hand still remained as they walked steadily through the halls to an unknown destination. It was only when the man started talking again did Zyro assume they were getting close to... wherever it was they were going.
"Kuro has always been one of our more private cases in the facility." The Director told him, "We never let just anyone interact with him; he's very precious to us... Do believe me when I say that I care for him deeply, Zyro. And I would never have asked you to save his life if I was not desperate."
Naomi stopped walking and turned to face one of the several doors that lined the hallway. This one had a label that said:
"Research Sector 5-8
Authorized Personnel Only"
"He's been in his delicate state for quite awhile now." Hideyoshi continued as Naomi swiped her key-card through the card reader on the wall, "And we've tried effortlessly to try and find a way to save his young life... So, when we finally found you, I truly believed that there was hope for our boy yet. Though, it appears that I was wrong in my assumption that you would care enough to save an innocent life."
Zyro swallowed thickly as he watched the cold woman type in a passcode on the keypad, and the door slid open.
"However, I won't be quick to make judgments on you. I do still believe that you have the sympathy to save Kuro's life."
Don't believe a word they say
The room was dark, far darker than the bright fluorescent lights of the hallway, and it took Zyro's eyes a few moments to really adjust to the darkness as they walked in. "Which is why I believe that it's important to introduce you to someone who may be able to change your mind..." Zyro furrowed his eyebrows at those words, confused for a moment. But only a moment, for Naomi suddenly stepped to the side and he was revealed to a glowing source of calm light near the far end of the curved room.
However, the moment he laid his eyes upon it, he froze in abstract horror. His breath hitched and the faint gasp that left his lips was barely noticed by his own ears.
Suddenly, he couldn't feel the unwanted hand on his shoulder anymore, because he realized that that was one of the least horrifying things he could've wanted in this place.
Especially compared to this.
"So, Zyro..." Director Hideyoshi's cold and commanding voice started, boring into his ears from a distance that wasn't there, "Am I wrong?"...
Fitting the spare key from the owner into the keyhole, Ayano carefully turned the lock and opened the door to Sichiro's apartment.
Of course, she hadn't resorted to consulting the owner upon arrival. She had tried knocking on the door for about ten minutes at the most, with no answer from anyone on the other side. She had even tried calling the man's name through his door, but still, there was no sound from within. She found this unusual, seeing as how Sichiro was practically never anywhere other than work or home, especially these days.
It was only after about the ten-minute mark did she finally decide to head back downstairs to the front desk and get a key from the owner.
Tsubasa had asked her to be the one to go and check on Sichiro, as he was apparently not responding to any phone calls or means of contacting him, and she had agreed. It was the least she could do at this point, considering the man's uncharacteristic behavior as of late.
As little as she knew about Sichiro, she knew he wasn't prone to paranoid or erratic behavior, as he had been most recently displaying. Not to mention the events of her last visit to him just yesterday. Whatever was going on with Sichiro, she was determined to find out, no matter how much he believed that she wouldn't keep his secrets.
Slowly, the greenette pushed the door to the apartment open, pocketing the key as she took it out of the lock, and gazed into the menacing darkness that lay beyond the doorway as she stepped inside.
It was cold.
Unnaturally cold. Sichiro didn't use the thermostat, as far as she knew, but it was colder than it should be, even for that.
"Sichiro?" She called out, her voice seeming to echo back to her in the unusual emptiness. Reaching over, she flicked on the hall light and made her way to the living room.
"Sichiro, are you here?" She tried again, looking throughout the small room, only to see the dark and bare front room. The blinds to the veranda were drawn tightly, and none of the appliances in the kitchen seemed to be plugged in, judging by the lack of lights. It appeared that Sichiro had even gone through the trouble of unplugging his stove for... Whatever reason.
Sucking on her lip, Ayano walked away from the living room/kitchen and walked down the short hallway behind her. She flicked on the hall light and peered into the dark bathroom.
Nothing there, either.
The closet had nothing but spare blankets and a cardboard box of old books in it.
Finally, she came to the bedroom door at the end of the hall, and slowly twisted the knob to open it. She reached inside and turned on the light as she entered, and was immediately met with a more unsettling feeling than she could have previously anticipated.
Sichiro's bed was perfectly made, and the blinds were drawn tightly on the window, but the drawers to his single dresser were half open and in disarray. There were a few shirts and other various clothing articles hanging out of them. Someone had seemingly just grabbed a bunch of clothes and left them like that.
Then there was the suit that was folded neatly on top of the wooden dresser. The one that Sichiro always wore and undoubtedly had various pairs of in his closet. He practically never wore anything else but his suits, for as long as she'd known him... And now, here it was; neatly folded on the dresser that had been ransacked of at least half of its contents. And no one to be found.
"Oh, Sichiro..." Ayano said with a worried huff of breath, "Where did you go?..."...
It was hardly twenty minutes after they had all established where they stood in this whole mess did the desk on Tsubasa's desk break through their silence with it's ringing. Everyone immediately turned to look at it, and a few of them jumped at the sudden interruption to the mutual silence that had laid between them.
At once, Tsubasa stood up from his chair and leaned over, picking up the receiver and pressing it to his ear.
"Hello?..." He asked in an uncharacteristically subdued voice. Everyone else leaned in from where they were to listen to the one side of the conversation that they could hear. "...Alright, send her through."
Folding her arms firmly over her chest, Madoka watched Tsubasa with a calm earnest in her expression. The silverette glanced at her once, before looking away and licking his lips in a nervous gesture. Then, after several seconds, a click was heard from the other end of the line, and Tsubasa started talking again, using as collected a front as he could.
"Ayano. You're at Sichiro's apartment?... Is he there?..." He let out a frustrated sigh through his nose, "Alright. Thanks for trying... No, not yet. We're working on it, though. Just get back to Headquarters and we'll figure the rest out... Alright. See you then."
With that, he half-slammed the phone back into the receiver and was left with nothing but a hopeless sigh.
"So?" Madoka asked, taking a small step closer, "Was he there?"
"No..." Tsubasa said with a sigh, shaking his head, "From what she said, the place is more or less abandoned. Everything unplugged, drawers empty... He's been gone for well over an hour, and god knows where he could be at this point."
"So he just made a break for it?" Kite asked.
"Looks like it..." Tsubasa confirmed, "And we can't actually do anything to track him down. He's been one of our most trusted personnel for years now, and he's hard to keep track of, anyway, so we hardly bothered to try."
"Well then..." Shinobu muttered quietly, almost to himself.
"So much for that." Ren sighed, leaning forward on her knees.
To this, Tsubasa didn't say anything and simply turned away. It was only when it seemed that the silence would settle in again that a well-known buzzing cut through the air. Most of them almost immediately reached into their pockets to check their phones, but we're only stopped by Tsubasa's statement of, "It's me."
"I thought nobody called you on your cell unless you're out?" Madoka questioned, quirking an eyebrow.
"They don't," Tsubasa confirmed as he pulled the device out of his pocket. He also knew for himself that there was actually only a handful of people who actually had his cell number. Even then, they didn't often use it unless it was important.
However, it only took one look at number and name displayed on the screen for Tsubasa to understand the meaning of it.
"It's Sichiro." He said suddenly, drawing several looks of shock and confusion from the others before he slid the screen across and immediately put it on speaker.
"Sichiro, is that you?" Tsubasa asked, his voice more desperate-sounding than he meant it to be.
"Director, listen to me." Sichiro said at the other end of the line, his voice brought down into a hushed whisper, "Whatever Director Hideyoshi says, no matter what he promises you, do not listen to him, alright?"
"Um, okay, w-why? What's going on?" Tsubasa asked, "Where are you?"
"Just listen!" The other man hissed, and Tsubasa bit his lip to silence himself of the questions racing around in his head. "I don't have long, so I have to make this quick... Whatever you do, don't listen to a word that Hideyoshi tells you. He's going to hurt Zyro whether you go against him or not, and that kid is not coming back unless you do something about it...! I've known Hideyoshi for a long time; I've seen the things he's capable of, and he is a backstabbing ass when it comes to promises. If you don't do something, nobody is going to be able too. Alright?"
Slowly, Tsubasa nodded his head. It was a lot to take in at such a moment's notice, but he would have to make do.
"Um, alright..." He said, almost breathlessly. Everyone that was crowded around him and the phone exchanged glances, varying emotions corresponding between all of them.
"Good..." Sichiro sighed, keeping his voice low, "Look, everything's already screwed as it is; I shouldn't even be calling you, but something big is going down, Director, and Hideyoshi is the one pulling all the strings... He's going to find out about this, and you need to be well out of the line of fire when he starts firing, because it's going to happen, and soon."
"S-Sichiro, how do you know all of this?" Tsubasa tried, licking his lips nervously, "What's going on?"
"I can't say, not like this." Sichiro told him, a sense of urgency leaking into his voice, "I might not even be able to ever tell you after this, but if you're going to act, you need to act now. And then get the hell out, because I will be damned if he does not have eyes and ears everywhere on you right now. Alright?"
"Y-yeah, alright," Tsubasa said with a shaky nod. It was bad enough that everyone else was nervous, let alone him.
"Good. Good..." Sichiro breathed on the other end before a crackling sound was heard from a distortion in the audio, "Crap... I have to go; listen to what I said, and stick to it... Zyro's depending on it..."
"Wait, Sichiro-" But before Tsubasa could say anything firmly, the call was ended, leaving him hanging on his own words.
Somewhere, on the other end of town, Sichiro was smashing his cell with the heel of his boot, and shoveling the remains into a sewage grate, before removing himself from the back alley of the old library.
The rest of them were left dumbstruck as though they had just been rammed with a brick wall, staring at the phone that still lay in Tsubasa's hand as though it were going to do something more. But it didn't, as was to be expected.
Forcing herself to breathe steadily, Madoka looked up at Tsubasa, who instinctively returned her gaze.
"Well?" She questioned, her expression wary but with a resolute determination to be admired. "What do we do?"
Tsubasa hardly needed to think about it...
"You know, I was probably a fool to expect anything better from you." Hideyoshi claimed as they stalked all briskly down the corridor, his hand placed on the small of Zyro's back uncomfortably, "I had such high hopes that you would be able to get along with your fellows... But I see that you don't hold too much regard for them, as I previously thought you would. Quite a disappointment, really."
Still recovering from the psychological shock, Zyro staggered and nearly fell as they came to a halt in front of the door of the room he had awoken in. Naomi took out her own key-card, and Zyro watched in silent anxiety as she slid it through the card reader. His shaking was barely under control, and his breathing heavy from the picture that was still fresh - and probably always would be - in his mind. How sick did these people have to be to...
"Even still," Hideyoshi continued "that doesn't mean we can't integrate you into our system... I think you'll be able to provide us with some well-needed information, and some... interesting results."
The raven shivered at the mere thought, and he remembered Kuro's words to simply oblige. He would - of course, he would - but...
The sticker - the one he hadn't noticed before - on the door disappeared as it opened, into the wall, and he was roughly shoved inside by Hideyoshi's unwelcoming hand. Zyro righted himself the moment he was able to and immediately turned around, looking on in fear at the man who stood smiling in the doorway.
"This has been a long time in coming, Zyro..." Hideyoshi claimed, "And I suspect that it will well worth the wait. However; I'm afraid we'll have to wait a little longer before we can really begin... I hope you can be patient with us." Zyro shivered hard, the goosebumps on his flesh making him uncomfortable in his own skin.
Wait... Oh yes, he could wait... He would wait forever if they let him.
"But until then..." Hideyoshi watched him with a predatory gaze and smiled at him as Naomi tapped in the code on the keypad. "Welcome home."
It was the last thing Zyro heard before the door slammed shut.
Subject ZERO
Class: Unknown
Sentient
Non-Human
Life-Giving
Authorized Personnel Only