Chapter 6: Sublime and a Fortress
"General Komui? You called for me?"
It felt almost surreal, as if she was being submerged in water. Muted sounds drifted in sluggishly from outside the office. Paperwork was strewn all over the floor. Not there. Watery autumnal sunlight streamed in through the blinds, painting the table a warm mellow gold, picking out the gradients in the wood. Not there.
The general was standing in front of the window overlooking the courtyard, his back to her. There.
"Close the door," he said.
Lenalee swallowed, and complied. She nudged the jammer away from the threshold, watched as it swung shut, cutting her off from the rest of the Order.
She had never been to the office on her own. But Lavi was not here to accompany her.
In his stead, she had found a note. Gone on a mission with Allen. Komui said it was urgent, and that it is imperative that we leave without telling anyone, so I couldn't say goodbye. Please don't worry. I'll see you in a few days.
To her knowledge, there had been no missions scheduled for execution come that morning.
Her hands shook. She hid them between the folds of her dress.
"What do you know of Road?" Komui asked, hands clasped behind his back, still facing away from her.
She frowned in consternation. "I'm not quite sure I understand, General. I'm not the one who's had run-ins with her. Allen would know best."
"Yes," the general replied, "Allen has run into her thrice now, hasn't she? The first two times, after she was separated from the rest of the team. And most recently, on her first solo mission."
The floor dropped out of reach from beneath her feet.
Unexpectedly, unbelievably, he chose not to pursue the line of thought, opting instead to change the topic.
"What do you understand about the Order, Lenalee?"
He could be alluding to anything. Her muscles stiffened, tense, adrenaline shooting through her.
When she spoke, her voice came out level, radiating a calm she did not feel. "I know as much as the rest. I know that we operate mostly in London, though our dealings sometimes take us beyond. Our influence in the area is second to none, unchallenged by any save for the Noahs."
"You're absolutely correct," he said, "and what of our operatives?"
The inside of her mouth felt dry as dust. "Every operative has a specialisation. Guns, blades, or grappling. They start off as an apprentice, and graduate when they are deemed combat ready by their mentor. Thereafter, they are assigned a partner according to their fitness, preferred fighting style, strengths and weaknesses. Together they would undertake missions, and are sworn to secrecy on mission details."
The inevitable conclusion, "Any and all traitors are sentenced to death."
At this, he finally turned around, and the smile on his face sent chills down her spine. Eyes like chips of obsidian. A jagged slash of a smile, cold and calculating.
And Lenalee knew what this was about.
"Weeks ago, I found my desk out of order. Nothing major, of course, but enough to be strange, so I decided to check the cameras. There was nothing out of the ordinary that would have caused the discrepancy, and the lack thereof intrigued me. So I decided to rig up a trap."
Her blood froze in her veins.
"It took a bit of finagling, but eventually I figured out what the intruder was after. Out of our four most valuable operatives, the dossiers addressed to Kanda and you were left untouched. The preliminary research folder delineating a mission meant for Allen was doctored. Lavi's mission folder was tampered with, but only with regards to the departure time, so that it would coincide with Allen's mission. I must admit, I'm curious. What do you think is his or her endgame?"
"You already know. You must, if you've gotten so far. Why let it drag out for so long, if you already knew what it was going to culminate in?" Her gaze, flinty and resolute, a final stand, latched onto his face.
"Curiosity, I suppose," he mused. "I don't know everything. I'd like to be sure, but mostly, I just wanted to know why. What does Road want with Allen? Barring that, I'd like to know who's pulling the strings behind the scenes."
Dark eyes smothering like coal. Fingernails digging into the skin of her arms, drawing blood, marking her with bloody crescents.
Bring her home. The three words that echoed through the dreamscapes of her mind every night.
Briefly, she considered her options. Komui was the general, but to the best of her knowledge, he had never demonstrated any sort of competence in combat. She had her brass knuckles on her person, and few in the Order could stand up to her if she really wanted out. Two of them were out on a mission, and the third was recuperating in the infirmary.
Komui was smiling, still smiling, almost serene, entirely relaxed. It was disconcerting. It was wrong.
Her eyes flew wide open.
No, it can't be —
The tip of something cold, wickedly sharp, dug into her back, stealing the breath from within her lungs.
"I suggest you hold still," Kanda said flatly, "because I can't promise that it won't hurt."
The rooms in the basement were unfurnished, save for a thin mattress balanced on wooden slats. The tiles were cold beneath her feet. The room they had ended up in was draughty; the windows would not close properly.
The handcuffs were tight, wrapped as they were around her wrist, trailing chains that were fastened to the floor. Kanda sat cross-legged a distance away from her, with his back against the closed door. His gaze impassive, his expression terrifyingly blank.
"I see you've gotten much better. You don't even need the crutches anymore."
Slow breaths for calm.
"I'm sorry it came to this," she said.
Her words shrivelled up on her tongue.
Kanda Yuu, she found herself thinking, trying to reconcile words typed on paper in a file with the person before her eyes, an operative under the Black Order. Has served under Komui Lee for ten years.
A mission gone wrong, which left his partner critically wounded. All evidence indicated that he administrated the final blow. A bullet to the head. Invariably fatal.
There was nothing of the person in that clinical, foregone conclusion.
"My primary mission, " – her words, barely above a whisper, filled the space between them – "is to find out who the Order's sponsor is."
She stared into blank eyes, which stared back at her. Dead and flat.
"Ten years ago, nobody had heard of the Black Order. Unorganised and negligible, run by a ragtag bunch of ruffians and wannabes. On the other hand, the Noahs had a monopoly on everything that went down in underworld London. Everyone cowered in their shadow. No one could stand up to them.
"But that changed almost overnight. The Order gained funds, and more importantly, influence through connections. They rose out of obscurity, ascended through the ranks of the underworld, and quickly became a force to be reckoned with. The only conceivable threat to the Noahs' authority, as things stand now.
"I was to find out who that sponsor could be, how and why."
Dark blue eyes, whirlpools of empty desolation. There was a spark now, a whisper of presence, and relief suffused through her person.
"Why are you telling me this?" Kanda's voice was a low baritone.
She swallowed.
"I'm tired of secrets. I've always wanted to tell someone," she said. "I just never thought that that someone would be you."
His gaze sharpened. She was wildly, profoundly glad for that.
"There's nothing I can give you in return," he returned, his gaze fixed on the plaster behind her, his voice distant, "even if I do have the answers you seek."
Quiet. Drowning in void.
"It's Lavi, isn't it?" Her voice came out, the words tugging painfully on her heart strings, barely above a whisper. "Supposed heir to Bookman Management, the only competitor Enja Holdings ever had that was able to match them on equal footing. Enja Holdings is one of our largest backers and sponsors; they hired us to execute the kill order for the director and his family, but apparently, we weren't thorough enough. And then he came to you, with a request for refuge and a proposal."
"Why do you ask, then, if you already knew?" Her words had touched something in him, whipped him into a frenzy. Irate ultramarine eyes held her own, anger burning in their depths.
"I didn't know for sure. I had my suspicions, and I could make educated guesses. But when I went snooping and saw the preliminary research Lavi did on Azra Imports, I was absolutely sure. Who else would be influential enough to dictate the missions that should be undertaken?"
The air felt stale, almost too heavy under the debilitating silence.
"I know you don't care very much for me," – she spoke on an exhale, low and rough – "and it probably sounds rich, coming from me, but please listen when I say this. Don't trust Komui Lee."
He did not respond. So she took to filling the silence when the sound of her own voice. "You were in the room with us the whole time. You heard. Missions are rotated between operatives, and I knew that Allen was due for her first individual mission. He left Lavi's preliminary research papers there for me to find. So I doctored the file; I removed all mention of Enja Holdings, in order to make it look like a routine individual mission. He went along, assigning the mission to Allen alone, letting her walk into it without so much as a warning because he wanted to know what would happen if he did. If you hadn't insisted on going after her, Road would have had her."
She stopped. Squared her shoulders. "I changed the departure time on Lavi's file, too, made certain that he wouldn't get back until after Allen left, so that he wouldn't be around to tip you guys off. Komui knew all of this, and he didn't say anything. I'm not implying that he doesn't care. But letting your guard down around him would be unwise."
"I already know all of that." Kanda spoke up a second time, hissing through clenched teeth. "But there's nothing for it. What would you have me do?"
He did not want to hear what she had to say. She supposed that was fair, because she did not want to hear herself speak either.
They were never all that close. But he had helped to look out for her, whenever Lavi was not in a position to do so. He was a friend, and a good one.
I don't want you to get hurt hung unsaid in the air, too close to the heart and too painful to give voice to.
He blinked, as if he had heard. When he spoke again, it was in a slow and deliberate tone. "You and Allen. Both cut from the same cloth. Same brand of stupidity."
The way he said it made it sound so absurd that she had to laugh.
And then, because she was a dead person anyway, and dead people had no use for secrets, "Allen's nightmares never really stopped. I'm the one who's been supplying her with the draught that keeps them at bay, but once she stops taking them, they'll come back in full force. You should be prepared for that."
He stilled, and she knew that it was the wrong thing to say.
"Did you not know?" Her voice was small, her words riding the barest gust of air out of her throat.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, and knew that no matter how much she repeated them, they would never be enough, "I didn't know. I thought Allen would have told you."
"I don't care," he snapped.
You do, she wanted to say, but she did not think that she could bring herself to inflict the sort of pain that revelation would bring.
The only thing that she could keep doing was to talk.
"I suspect her nightmares were not nightmares anyway, not in the traditional sense."
Night after night spent poring over files for information, talking, scheming. Training with fists and brute force. Candles burning down to stubs of wax, one for each night, because it was too risky to switch on the lights.
She closed her fists around air, and not for the first time, wished for the power to stop time. She had never wanted to betray the people she loved, on both sides, but wretched thing she was, it was all she was good for.
In her head, she could see the waves of her childhood, the only thing she remembered from before she surrendered everything she was to the war that would become her be-all and end-all. Sand slipping through her fingers, almost phantasmagorical; the sound of the ocean roaring in her ears. The water bearing towards her, sweeping away all traces of her footsteps. She let go, and it caught her, snatched her off the shore.
"That girl. She's a child of the house of Noah, cast out and left for dead." The words fell from her lips, unbidden, and try as she might, she would never be able to take them back. "Road did everything in her power to make sure that I was the one the higher-ups entrusted the mission to, because she knew she could trust me. That was my real mission. I came to bring her back."
Kanda could not think, could not see, could not breathe.
He should not be taking her words at face value. He should be holding them in contempt, stripping them apart, in search for the nugget of truth that must have been hidden amidst a flotsam of lies.
But the raw vulnerability in her face echoed the hole in his heart, and he wanted to trust her.
"Would you? If you could." He could not bear the desolation in his voice.
"I would have. I almost succeeded, as it was," she said in all honesty. "But trust me when I say that I would be very, very sorry if I did."
Finally, finally, she fell blessedly silent, as if she had been carved hollow, and there was nothing left to speak with.
Alma's voice, Alma's eyes. Too bright, too warm. Blood, blooming like lilies on his shirt, falling in sheets like rain, soaking through Kanda's shirt and into the pores of his skin. A damning stain that would never wash out.
I don't want to die, his best friend — his only friend — had said, and the words had echoed in his ears. The ghosts of his past, which would continue to haunt him for the rest of his life.
But Allen was still alive. Wonderfully alive.
No matter what else he had done, whatever he had asked of him, Allen had been Komui's gift to him. A second chance. He could not bring himself to hate him.
"I don't want her to go," he confessed.
"You won't be able to stop her." She pitched her voice lower, a guttural sound.
"I don't think I can keep her from anything she wants to do." It was a difficult thing to admit to.
It worked. Lenalee cracked a smile.
Help me. Komui's eyes were haunted, his voice hollow. I know it's too much to ask of you. But it's not something that I can ask of Lavi.
"For the record, I don't blame you for what you have to do. I knew, from the start, what would happen if I was found out. I chose to undertake this mission anyway. I'm just glad that it's you."
"Why? Because I'm the only alternative you have, besides Lavi?"
It was only half a lie. Lavi would have refused. Lavi would have raged, and in his rage was the power to lay waste upon the Order, bring them down to their knees. He was their salvation, but a double-edged one. Komui would not, could not have risked it. Lavi was never an option.
"Because you're you. You're a good person, and what happened to you was a travesty. But it means that you understand, and that I can trust you to make it quick and painless." All of the spoken and unspoken words. Shaking to his core. Falling apart.
That was the problem Kanda had with words. Transient, intangible, formless, seamless. It was the quintessential weapon, a devastating one, one could not hope to defend himself against when better men have tried and failed. It lodged between his ribs like an arrowhead, dredging open old injuries and reawakening an ache so deep that it hurt. He had thought that he had buried that part of himself with Alma, on the outskirts of that lonely town beneath the sky. He had thought wrong.
His legs shook with the effort of holding him up. He staggered over, step by halting step, before dropping to all fours by her side.
He had been stupid, so stupid. Her answers had been restitution for her perceived crime, and she had paid it in full. Now he was the one in debt, and he owed her this.
"Just... tell me one thing. Please," she looked so helpless, so lost, tugging at his sleeve, "How did you know it was me?"
She deserved an answer. "It wasn't just the names on the files that were doctored. There's also the dates when it happened, that night when you'd broken into his office. You were the only one who was around on all three nights. The rest of us were either on missions, or had an alibi."
She let out a sound, somewhere between a sob and a laugh. "I see. I really fucked up, didn't I?"
And then her shoulders began to shake, and the only thing he could do was to hold her, hoping that it would offer her a modicum of comfort.
"Tell me what to do," he whispered.
"I don't have to. You already know what to do." Her smile was shaky. A trail of silver slid down her cheek, tracing the contour of her jaw, falling to her chin.
He did. "It'll be easier if you don't watch." His breath hitched. The heft and shape of regret on his tongue, bitter and frayed around the edges, burning like ashes and firelight.
She closed her eyes. He reached for the knife in his pocket. It shook in his grip.
He hated working with blades. It made things too complicated. Too personal. It made it so much harder to kill somebody, because it meant that he had to bear witness as the life left their eyes, as their chest stilled, as their lifeblood leached out onto his hands. But it was his life now.
He had taken Alma's blades, hoping that it would make things easier. It had not.
"I'm sorry." His voice cracked, his words tumbling in and over themselves. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
His hand jerked as he drew the knife across her neck, and it felt like being flayed to the bone. A thin, jagged line of crimson trailed in its wake.
Her body slackened. Her head lolled to one side, ruby red spilling over the mattress like scattered jewels, winking in the sunlight.
His knife clattered where it fell to the floor.
"He told me that it allowed him to remember, and that that was something he could live for." His hand shook with his words, an unaccountable mess. "I tried. I tried my best, but I can't do it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
Lost hope buried beneath a forbidden city. But it was not his due to lie to the dead.
Author's Note: And with this, ladies and gentlemen, the story shows its true colours XD *Is not sorry*
To be very honest, I had been looking forward to posting this chapter. It's the real turning point in this story really. Everything I've hinted at is finally, finally coming together in a way that makes sense XD
There isn't much longer to go now; it's a straight shot from here on to the end. Brace yourselves! It's going to be a wild ride XD