Chapter Three
Chris stood outside the door to Sarah's bedroom with his arms folded, an irate scowl on his face as he had to listen to Sarah explain how a bra worked. He tried to let his mind drift back to a time when he would have found something like this to be heaven on earth. But that was a life time ago and he couldn't comprehend how anyone could find this situation arousing, he even doubted if his younger self would be much happier with the situation than his older self was.
"Damn it, I wish this chain was a bit longer so you could actually come look at this stuff with me," he heard Sarah complain. Even though it was a minor inconvenience to her he still took pleasure in any suffering his misery could inflict upon her.
"I can make the chain as long as it needs to be, or hide it entirely if it becomes inconvenient," said Ikaros in that monotonous tone.
The next instant Christopher slammed open the door. His face was red, his teeth bared like a rabid dog. "Why didn't you say that BEFORE super woman nearly ripped my arm out of the socket and then dragged me here?!"
"Forgive me master. You did not ask."
Chris smacked his face with his chained left hand and yelped in agony as the metal smashed into his cheek. "Please... Make this thing go away! For the love of all things good and holy... Make it go away!"
Ikaros nodded at Chris and then the chair vanished from existence save for a few links and a half which remained dangling from Ikaros' choker.
"Alright Chris... Now could you get the fuck out?!" yelled Sarah while covering up with a random dress she had pulled out of her closet.
"You realize I actually know the real you. Unlike your legion of social media droolies, I am immune to your impossibly firm yet bouncy and spectacularly ginormous gazongas."
"Get out!" she yelled while throwing a cloths hanger at him which he ducked and then casually walked away with a wave of his hand.
"Fuck you Chris!"
"I used to dodge bullets for a living bitch! It'll take more than that!"
Sarah turned to Ikaros with a devilish grin, "You said you could make that chain invisible right? So it's still there?"
"That is correct," answered Ikaros.
Sarah took a hold of the remaining visible chain on Ikaros' choker and felt her way through the invisible chain until she was in position to give it a violent tug. There was a loud thud from her living room and then a yell of pain, "Ahhh! Fuck you Sarah!"
Chris opened his fridge and took out an energy drink, after popping the top he chugged it down and let and let out a contended "Ahhh" before throwing the can into his overflowing trash can.
"Master. Please give me a command. What would give you pleasure?" asked Ikaros from where she was sitting on the floor.
Chris sighed in frustration as he was about to sit down on his couch. He looked around his home and then down at Ikaros, she wanted something to do, and if he was going to be honest with himself, he needed something to do as well. Not being at work was making him crazy.
"I suppose there is something you could do if you really want to. You can help me clean this place up. As you can see, I never really bothered since all I do these days is sleep here."
"Do you wish for me to clean your home master?" asked Ikaros.
"No. I said I want you to help me clean it if you want to!"
Ikaros nodded while Chris walked over to his kitchen area. "I guess I'll start over here..." he looked over his kitchen space with a groan. "This is probably going to be the most disgusting chore and I'd rather you-What. The. Actual. Fuck?"
The dishes in and around the sink which had been laying around used or otherwise for over a year now suddenly started washing themselves in the sink with a sponge, scrubber, dish soap, and water. Chris looked around the apartment while everything started moving on their own and sorting themselves out. Trash for floating into old plastic bags, tying themselves up and landing neatly by the door. Laundry went into the washer in the corner of his kitchen area and at the center of it all was Ikaros holding up some kind of strangely glowing pink card...
"Hey God? Chris Murrow here. I'd like to check out now. Thank you," he said and then promptly collapsed onto the floor.
Chris felt a gentle slap to his face. When he awoke he caught the offending arm and threatened to punch the person touching him when he realized it was just Sugata. So instead of punching him he pushed the man onto the floor and stood up quickly to point down at him, "What the fuck are you doing in my house?!"
Before he could offer an explanation a woman with long purple hair cleared her throat to get Chris' attention. "There's no need to be upset. You were unconscious so we let ourselves in."
"Oh, I see. I was out cold, so you figured it would be ok to intrude and make yourselves at home. Who may I ask are you exactly? You're pretty so I won't use harsh language, even though I'm actually equally outraged that you're in here uninvited."
The woman smiled devilishly at Chris. "You certainly have the right to be offended, so I don't hold that against you. I'm a friend of Sugata's, my name is Mikako-"
"Satsukitane. I've heard of you. So to what do I owe the privilege of having a Yakuza heiress in my home with this freak show here," he said while gesturing to Sugata, "And feel free to invite your goons inside as well. I think there's four of them outside in the hall. I'd offer you all something to drink but I just had my last Red Bull a little while ago."
Mikako's smile intensified at Chris, "I'm impressed. I heard you're ex-military, but to be honest I didn't expect you be so intense. Your boss didn't do you much justice with her description of you."
"Doesn't surprise me, she's pretty jaded towards me," he said casually and sat back down on his couch. "Go ahead and take a seat anywhere you like. You're already here so make yourselves at home."
"Jaded isn't exactly the word I would choose. Frustrated, I think would be more apt. Frustrated with your dispassion for your work and your life."
"No offense, but I have the feeling you didn't come here to do a psychological profile of me," said Chris in all seriousness.
"I came here to see Ikaros. Mikako just wanted to come along," said Sugata.
"Ikaros?" Chris looked around. "Where is she anyway? Ikaros?" he called out to her.
"Yes Master?" said Ikaros while walking out from the bedroom.
"You have visitors..." said Chris. He then sighed and sat back down, "When she wasn't here in the living room I was hoping that maybe the whole thing was just a bad dream..." he looked at Mikako's blank stare and shrugged, "Not important. But I'm still curious. What are you doing with this guy?"
"I support his research, hence why we came to this particular middle of nowhere," she answered as if it should have been obvious.
"You actually buy into this guy's insanity?" Chris asked incredulously.
Mikako shrugged her shoulder, "Well, he's my fiancé. Unconditional support is expected. No matter how far out there-"
"That guy's your fiancé?!" he asked with a stupefied expression on his face and turned to look at Sugata who was trying to talk to Ikaros but only getting the same conditioned responses that Chris himself got. "...there's no justice in this world," he loathingly muttered to himself.
Chris turned her full attention over to Sugata and couldn't help but take some perverse pleasure in the frustrated look on his face. As if the answers to life, the universe, and everything was just outside his reach.
"What can you tell me about the hole in the sky?" he asked her calmly, even though it was obvious to anyone his head was about to explode.
"I'm afraid I have no information regarding that phenomenon," answered Ikaros.
"Is that where you came from?" asked Chris who decided to throw Sugata a life line.
"I'm afraid I have no information regarding the Synapse," replied Ikaros.
"Does the Synapse have something to do with that hole in the sky?" asked Chris.
"Yes."
Both Chris and Sugata were stunned by the answer.
"Alright Ikaros. Who sent you to me?"
"I'm afraid I have no information regarding the Synapse," she answered.
Chris looked at Sugata and felt the first genuine smile he'd ever given to anyone in a long time work its way across his face. "She's conditioned to avoid explaining her origins. What we need to do now is gather more information on our own and find more direct questions to ask her that don't violate her conditioning."
"Yes, that makes sense. The question now is, where do we begin?"
Chris stood up and motioned for Sugata to follow, "When the hole first appeared it was big news. But as you know, once NASA explained that the hole in the sky was some kind of natural phenomenon caused by some kind of scientific mumbo jumbo I won't even pretend to understand everyone simply accepted that and stopped giving a fuck except for nut jobs like you who made it their mission in life to find some higher purpose for the hole. Be it religious or pseudo science."
"I'm not sure if I should be taking offense here or not..." said Sugata with a cautious tone.
"I don't care how you take it. Just look. A couple years ago..." Chris pulled a newspaper article from the pile on his desk which somehow didn't rearrange itself. "They launched a probe into the hole to gather data."
"Yes. I remember that. That was when I decided to start doing my own research. They said the probe simply confirmed that the phenomenon was caused by a change in the Earth's magnetic field. But when they released the data for independent confirmation there a few very prominent researchers claimed the data was falsified," explained Sugata.
"Yes, and they lost their jobs short after releasing statements. Independent groups who tried to launch their own probes into the hole weren't allowed to, and a few who tried to do it anyway failed to launch their probes, I spoke to a few and they said it was just a mechanical failure and they couldn't afford to try again. But there were too many failures for it to just be a coincidence. Anyone who did try again though suddenly dropped off the Face of the Earth itself. I didn't care enough to keep looking into this but now Ikaros makes me wonder what they actually found there and if they're covering it up somehow."
Sugata nodded along, "I didn't know about the disappearances. But I do know some people personally who say they were intimidated into stopping their research. The Dark Web is full of stories like that. Fortunately for me I'm not easily intimidated. I've grown up with scary people," he said while gesturing to his fiancé.
"Yeah... So you're throwing your money and muscle behind his research?" Chris asked Mikako.
"That's part of it. But yes. Let's just say it was two birds with one stone," she answered with a grin.
"Right. Respectfully, the less I know about the other thing, the better I'll feel about all this. Unless the other thing has something to do with the first?"
Mikako shook her head, "It doesn't. They're completely separate things."
"Alright then... What the hell? This is more interesting than anything else I've got going on. So against my better judgment, I'll help you. But if either of you try to involve me in anything else... I'm out. I don't want to know about anything else you do, I don't want to see anything else you're involved in, and if I ever get questioned by the police, I want to be able to confidently say I don't know shit and have it be true. Do we have a deal?"
Sugata nodded and then looked over at Mikako who nodded as well. "Yes, we all agree on that," she stated.
Chris turned to Ikaros and looked down at her sitting on the floor, watching them with those blank emerald eyes, "Now... Where do we even start?"
"We could start by going back to the scene where you first encountered her. There was some debris that fell around the area. That could give us some important clues," Sugata suggested.
"Let's do it," said Chris with a firm nod.
A/N: Sorry for the lack of updates. But real life has kept me pretty busy of late.
Thank you for reading and I hope you'll continue to be entertained. My goal with this little project is to have fun and give people a few laughs. But since this is the first time I've ever tried writing a story outside of school or college please forgive me if it's not all that great.