Chapter 3: Degrees of Separation
I want out.
Lights so bright that they hurt her eyes. The sound of running feet, pattering on the whitewashed marble floor. Her panicked reflection gazing up at her, eyes wild with fright.
They lied. They were never going to help me find him.
Her feet threatening to give out beneath her as she rounded another corner, her breath coming in rough gasps.
Vaguely, she heard shouts of frenzied excitement and the clomps of heavy, booted feet pounding on the floor from behind her, edging closer and closer. She felt the tremors through her shaking legs, her trembling arms, shooting all the way up her body.
You don't have to come with me.
Something heavy and hard grasped her shoulder roughly and she gasped, having felt something wrench beneath her skin. Uncontrolled sobs tore themselves out of her throat, and she struggled, fists swinging like an untamed animal, refusing to go down without a fight. She had to escape from this cursed place, find Mana...
Mana.
The foreign weight that had but a moment ago threatened to bowl her over was suddenly lifted from her shoulders. She collapsed into a heap on the floor, face slack and eyes blank.
Run!
A strong voice issued from behind her, and hands once again rested themselves on her shoulders. But these hands were different. They were smaller, their touch infinitely gentler, pulling her up to the light instead of felling her. She knew that if she held them both up and pressed them together, palm to palm, their slender fingers would come up to the same length.
We match, that person had said, once upon a time.
I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I got caught, despite the head start you gave me.
Hoarse, stretched out syllables slipped out from her lips in between nerve-wrecking sobs, missing words between words, and she felt so, so tired but she had to run she had to escape—
It's okay. Everything will be alright. I'm here now, the voice came again. There was a soothing quality to her words that buoyed her, gave her the strength to raise her head —
Only to see Road smiling down at her.
"... prentice!"
Her eyelids felt heavy, too heavy to lift. It felt as if she was underwater, legs kicking and arms flailing as she struggled upwards, upwards, towards the light. Her head broke through the surface of the water —
"Idiot apprentice!"
Her eyes snapped wide open, and she bolted upright.
She regretted the action immediately. The sun's rays stabbed at her retinas viciously, making her eyes water. She winced, rubbed at them with one hand. Then she made the mistake of looking up.
Grey irises, still bleary with sleep, met stormy blue ones, and Allen found herself staring into the eyes of one Kanda Yuu.
He did not flinch away. She felt oddly small beneath his piercing, searching gaze, as if she was still his apprentice, and he had just reprimanded her after one of their practice duels —
The events from the day before came flooding back into her mind, slamming into her with all of the force of a whirlwind, leaving her winded and gasping for breath.
She narrowed her eyes at him. Folded her arms, sat up straighter.
"Can I help you?" her voice came out perfectly bland.
He did not back down. Continued staring at her, unperturbed and unblinking. It made her want to look away and squirm —
She did none of those things. Instead, she drew herself up to his eye level, so that she could return his stare with her own.
To her surprise, he looked away first. The light that filtered through the blinds gave his dark hair a tint of midnight blue, thrusting his profile into sharp relief.
"Never mind," he snorted.
Her hands clenched to fists, buried within the folds of the infirmary blankets. She wanted to scream in frustration.
"I know you disapprove. But Komui—"
"Komui fucked up, and he knows that this one is on him," he snapped.
It was as if water, in all of their combined weight, had broken through a dam with force. Her words came spilling out of her, her voice taut with barely concealed anger. "I could have handled it on my own."
"And you did such a fucking fine job of that," he sneered.
She snarled. Raised a fist and let it fly, willing it to connect, so that she could wipe the smirk off his smug face —
He caught her fist in mid-air. His grip was like iron. He squeezed, as if willing her to submit, or he would break her bones.
It would be a cold day in hell.
"I hate you," she spat.
His eyes widened marginally. Only for a second, and then it was gone, but she knew she had gone too far.
"Good to hear," he said placidly. He released her fist. It fell onto the blankets, limp.
No, she wanted to say, I didn't mean it. Wait.
The words never made it past her lips.
He blinked slowly, face blank, eyes inscrutable. Then he stood up from the chair by her bed, retrieved his crutches, turned and left the room, stopping only to pull the door close behind him.
He did not look back.
"Komui," Kanda said, walking into the office without preamble. The fact that he was leaning heavily on his crutches detracted from the impact an unannounced entrance usually had, but in this case, he would take whatever he could get.
Komui looked up from the paperwork on his desk. Blinked once, then twice. Reached up to his nose with a finger, flicked his spectacles up, "What are you doing out of the infirmary?"
"The mission." Kanda ignored his question. The answer was not his to know.
Komui sighed. Closed his eyes, pinched his nose bridge. When he next opened them, there was only resignation.
"Close the door," he said, and Kanda frowned, before complying.
Komui almost never closed his door. Most of the Black Order operatives, barring Kanda, knew better than to charge in without prior notice. Even Lavi, who had clearance to disturb Komui as and when he needed to, rarely invoked this privilege.
At any rate, Komui was smarter than most people gave him credit for. He knew better than to carry out anything that was top-secret at his desk, where everyone and anyone could just walk in on him. Kanda could personally attest to this.
"I assume this is with regards to the mission." Kanda did not believe in beating about the bush.
"You would be right to assume so." Komui sighed, all traces of levity gone. In the space between one heartbeat and the next, Komui seemed to transform. An explosion of wrinkles bloomed around his eyes, exhaustion marring his expression. His form withered, turning almost frail.
It made Kanda uncomfortable. Bearing witness to people's moments of weakness always did.
"So it would seem," Komui ploughed on grimly, "that the mission folder had been tampered with."
Kanda's blood ran cold.
What, how, who?
"And you would know because?" were the words that eventually made it past his lips.
"What did you notice about the warehouse when you were there, Kanda?"
"What?" He hardly thought that would be relevant.
"Just answer the question."
The warehouse had seemed almost entirely abandoned. And no wonder, because the company it had belonged to had gone bankrupt, and ceased operations soon afterwards.
Like a ghost town, with all of the infrastructure still intact, missing only the inhabitants. Gravel had crunched beneath his boot as he made his way through the corridors, following the blueprint of the building that he had memorised; line by line, every notch and divot on the paper, before he had burnt it. As per usual mission directives.
The narrow walkway opened up into a massive hall, occupied by machinery that gone rusty, having been left to gather dust for as long as they would stand. Foreboding skeletons, larger than life, casted long, inky shadows that stretched the entire length of the room. A wasteland of man-made parts. A graveyard construction.
Boxes upon cardboard boxes, crumpled and carelessly strewn around. Kanda had given them a quick once-over, on the off-chance that they contained anything important. There was nothing but the lingering scent of mould and sodden cardboard. He had searched for labels, but they had either been peeled off, or were too faded for him make out anything useful.
Layers upon layers of yellowed tape. Dust that rubbed off onto his fingers in grimy streaks of black. Water dripping down from the banisters. Kanda had backed off soon enough.
"The factory belonged to Azra Imports," Komui said.
Azra Imports. Kanda was consumed by a feeling of déjà vu. The name rang a distant bell, tolling long and hard, as it had when he had first cracked the cover of the mission folder. But there was nothing in the folder regarding the company beyond that first mention. Neither did Komui have anything of import to impart on that matter. So he had pushed it aside.
"I see you recognise the name," Komui said, satisfied. "They had filed for bankruptcy, and were bought up by Enja Holdings."
Enja Holdings. That name, Kanda did remember.
"Enja holdings? The Enja Holdings? The conglomerate?"
It was a little of an understatement. A major investment company headquartered in central London, with sweeping influence that extended past the borders of the city, they held claim to a diverse portfolio of stocks that gave them a hand in almost every sector, from pharmaceuticals to real estate. This had not always been the case, but the only company that had ever been able to stand toe-to-toe with them had been dissolved when the founders died.
"That very one." Komui nodded, satisfied.
It felt like a bad joke.
Kanda frowned. Azra Imports had been a relatively small, home-grown manufacturing company. They had done moderately well, but things went to shit when the financial crisis hit, and the company haemorrhaged money. They limped along as best as they could, but all that accomplished was to put the inevitable off. Eventually, the business folded, and the entire company went up for sale. Shares, factories, warehouses and all.
What would a major investment company like Enja Holdings want with Azra Imports?
Komui's hands were steepled when he spoke up next. "I know you know exactly what I'm driving at."
"So it's suspicious. But what has it got to do with the mission?" Kanda asked waspishly.
But even before he had finished speaking, there was a sudden spark of life, an idea flaring into being, all blurred out shapes and incoherent moving parts.
Maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe it was all baseless paranoia, and they were reading too much into this.
But if it was not, if they were right...
It's not about Azra Imports, Kanda realised. It's not about the why, but the who.
"Lavi," he surmised, looking to Komui for confirmation.
He nodded, expression pinched.
If they were right, then this whole matter went beyond a single mission. If they were right, the implications for the Order were grave.
In Kanda's mind, Lavi was a clown who liked to entertain using cheap tricks, often flippant, occasionally an airhead, and very much a fool. But he was also meticulous, and, if nothing else, driven. He would never have missed out such a crucial detail, not when it had to do with his entire reason for living, not when it was what drove him to join them in the first place.
In that space between words, something in the atmosphere shifted, gaining a semblance of definition, dawning gravity. Kanda had to force himself to keep his expression still and his muscles relaxed. The man that had up till then been sitting at his desk stood up, and Kanda locked eyes with the man he knew as the general.
"To date," – the general held up three fingers – "Only two people on this base should have any knowledge of this besides me.
"Lavi."
"And me," Kanda finished. The words tasted like ashes on his tongue.
"I hate to point fingers, but at this point in time, we have to consider the very real possibility that we may already have invited the enemy into our midst."
Author's Note: And so... With this chapter, the main part of the plot officially begins XD If anyone has any thoughts, I would love to hear about them either through PMs or reviews! :D