84
The Operation
"But [he] was sorry that he looked again; for surgeon and veteran of the dissecting-room though he was, he has not been the same since." – H. P. Lovecraft, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
The Chosen Children disembarked at the first Odaiba station, and walked from there to their nearby apartments. Regardless of what it felt like, they hadn't been gone long – no more than a couple of hours – but it had been long enough for most of their parents to take notice. Yamato didn't face much scrutiny; his father was working overtime again. But Sora's mother had been waiting up for her daughter and guest, with the news of the previous night's outrages fresh in her mind, and Koshiro's mother hugged him tightly when he got home. He had left in a rush, and it was only now that he was able to give a fuller explanation.
On the part of all the children there was some reticence. They didn't want to worry their parents unduly, and they weren't in much of a mood to make repeated assurances that they themselves didn't necessarily believe. It was clear that some of the parents had been communicating with each other. The story had gotten around that the younger Chosen Children would be staying the night in the Digital World. It was believed, but the adults were still understandably nervous, especially those who were not as used to the idea of their children being fighters.
After BelialVamdemon's defeat, after Pukumon's defeat, after Armagemon's defeat, there had been hopes that the chaos was over for good. The last time it had really seemed to be the case. Four months passed without any sign of trouble. Daisuke and Miyako's sisters had gotten their partners, and had a little adventure in the Digital World, but that had come to seem so minor in retrospect. At the time it had seemed like a sign of trouble to come, but no new villain had crawled out of the shadows to challenge the newly partnered Chosen Children, and things had quickly returned to normal.
But now normal was shattered again. They were beginning to think that maybe it would never truly return.
Despite the terrible excitement of the day, or perhaps because of it, Jou fell asleep very shortly after getting home. Gomamon, though no less tired, stayed up a while to eat a few bowls of the rice that Jou's mother had made for dinner.
"I know you've got those dreams to worry about," he had told his partner, "but I can't dream them for you. May as well eat."
Jou smiled a little at that. He knew that Gomamon cared for his wellbeing as much as any Chosen Child's partner Digimon. He'd seen the little seal's concern growing by the day, and he was thankful for the brave face Gomamon always put on in spite of anything. On the 1999 adventure, he had been the perfect foil for Jou's pessimism, and their differences had established their friendship more firmly than any similarities might have.
Jou was especially grateful for Gomamon at times like these. He went to bed exhausted and worried about what had befallen his juniors, but at least he knew he had someone he could rely on, whatever dark times might be ahead. And there were dark times ahead, he knew. Nothing could entirely shield them from that.
That brought him back again to his missing friends. They had nothing at all to shield them from whatever was happening. He tried to imagine never seeing them again, and the thought made him sick to his stomach. The enemy hadn't been trying to kill them, but how long would it be before they changed their minds? What was happening now to Takeru and Hikari, who he had shared so many adventures with, and earnest little Iori, and the rest?
Sleep came to him quickly, because he was tired, but the questions haunted him even into unconsciousness – what would happen to them, what would happen to him, and what could they do to fight back. Even deep in sleep the anxiety was there, like a dull ache. And before long, it made the transition from abstraction to the coherence of a dream that didn't feel like a dream.
He was washing his hands. He put on gloves. He was nervous – terribly nervous – because what was coming would be difficult. It would be difficult and it would be horrible, perhaps the most horrible thing he had ever had to attempt: his first surgery. He wasn't ready for this. There was so much studying he had yet to do, so much school left to take. But now here he was, standing over the patient, the surgical implements at the ready, and his fellow doctors were standing there as well, silently looking at him, waiting for him to begin.
Jou looked down the length of the operating table. The patient was essentially featureless. Not only was the room too dim to see them well enough, but a sheet had been draped over the entire body, concealing its identity. He couldn't make out a definite shape. All that was visible was the small expanse of flesh where the incision was to be made, like a white canvas to be painted red.
Jou's pulse was pounding. He looked at the other doctors, silently pleading that one of them step in to take charge of the situation. But each just stared back, unspeaking. Why was it so dark? A surgery couldn't be conducted like this. He could barely make out the faces of his mute colleagues over their procedure masks – just their dark, staring eyes. None of them said a word, or made any move. It was his job to do, and he would have to do it.
Balancing his sense of duty against his rising panic, he reached for a scalpel. He could feel the cold of the metal through his glove, and it sent a chill through his whole body. The patient lay before him, already motionless and pale as a corpse. Fighting to keep his hand steady, he made his first incision. The blood began seeping out, and all the strength seemed to go out of his legs. He should have collapsed, but something – maybe the fixed gazes of the other doctors – held him on his feet.
He struggled to focus in spite of his faintness. He tried to complete the incision, but started back in horror when the body suddenly jerked under the knife. His back hit a wall that hadn't been there before, and unable to retreat he watched the patient thrash and quiver, the scalpel sticking upright in the skin. There was a flailing of arms under the sheet. He hadn't been able to discern any limbs before; it was as if the formerly amorphous patient had just now taken on a definite size and shape.
Jou was still conscious of the other doctors' presence. He expected them to rush forward, gather around the patient, figure out what had gone wrong, but they only turned their heads to continue looking at him with expressionless expectation. His attention was drawn back to the patient when the moving arms threw the sheet off their face. Despite his fear Jou hurried to the head of the operating table, because in the dim lighting he thought that he had caught a glimpse of his father's features. He shoved past the loitering doctors, only vaguely registering that instead of having solid bodies they seemed to be just hollow clothing.
The patient's convulsions had somehow allowed the sheet to fall back into place, but Jou tore it off again. There was nothing beneath it. Dr. Kido – or at least someone – had been covered by that sheet, but now there was no patient at all. Jou turned in surprise back to the table, where only a lump lay hidden under the sheet. Without thinking, Jou tugged the sheet entirely off the operating table.
Now the patient wasn't human at all, but Gomamon, the scalpel embedded in the white fur of his belly. The little Digimon gave a convulsive jerk as the sheet was ripped away. Drops of blood flew as he flopped on the table like a suffocating fish.
"Gomamon!" Jou called, bending over the table in a panic. "Ah! Give me a second!" He reached out with both hands to try and still his partner's movement. But before he could even get a hold, Gomamon's body went rigid, and exploded into a cloud of bright red data, like a mist of blood.
Jou's hands remained suspended over the table, quivering. His mind was racing, trying to get a handle on what had just happened. Had he just killed his Digimon? No – something was wrong. This was like a nightmare. But it felt real enough – he could really feel it when the freezing cold hand grasped shoulder, and the long nails dug painfully into him through the fabric of his scrubs.
He whirled about, and the hand disappeared. One of the other doctors stood behind him. Whereas before they had been about his own height, this one was smaller, shrunk down to child size. And it wasn't a doctor. The green surgeon's uniform had been replaced by a white smock like the ones worn by students helping to serve lunch. The cap had changed too, but the mask remained the same. The eyes above it were green and glassy in the dim light, but despite their expressionless deadness there was a disturbing familiarity about them. As Jou watched, a dark stain appeared and began to spread across the surgical mask. With a snapping of its straps the mask fell away from the face, and the sewn-together mouth.
"I-Iori-kun!" Jou cried, recoiling. He had no idea what to do. He couldn't tell for certain whether the boy was alive or not. Behind him he heard other masks coming off, and as the room suddenly brightened he turned around to see the other known faces of the Chosen Children. In that flash of light he saw the mouths sewn shut and the eyes staring. Then all at once the room was plunged into total darkness, and fabric rustled as the corpses groped blindly towards him.
The next moment he was awake, breathing hard as he lay in his bed. The rustling continued, and for a moment his terror stayed with him. Then he realized that it was only Gomamon squirming around in the sheets, trying to make himself more comfortable. Jou's heartbeat gradually slowed. He propped himself up on his elbows to look down the bed. Gomamon's green eyes regarded him.
Jou smiled to let his partner know that everything was alright, though the expression probably resembled a grimace more than anything. He frowned when he lay back down again. If Gomamon was still awake, that meant that not much time had passed since Jou had fallen asleep. He closed his eyes and tried to relax again, but it was hard. The dead faces of his friends from the dream formed themselves in his mind's eye.
He knew that it might take him a while to get back to sleep, consumed as he was by worry for their safety. But then, sleep wasn't a very appealing prospect at the moment. He knew that if he did manage to fall asleep again, his first awful dream of the night would not be his last.
The people of Japan slept, and dreamed. For about a week now they had become the victims of increasingly disturbing and increasingly vivid dreams. No one suffered from them as much as did the twelve Chosen Children, upon whom so much dark hatred was focused, and whose every nightmare was tailored to them like a systematic attack. But the dreams came to everyone, indiscriminant. Visions of darkness and devastation, a sense of rising tides of oily evil, mental prophecies of horrors to come. Those children who had received their Digimon partners the previous year caught glimpses of terrifying monsters, and Professor Takenouchi awoke after midnight from a dream in which the awful beings from his studies in folklore took physical form before him.
It was the same outside of Japan as well. Over the last week, wherever night came and people slept, the call made itself felt. In Hong Kong, the Hoi brothers had noticed the eerie similarities in their nocturnal impressions, and in Moscow Lara had woke shivering after a dream of black snow. In one of her dreams Catherine Deneuve had imagined something crawling out of the Seine's black waters, and in New York Gummymon had asked Wallace one morning why he'd been crying in his sleep.
And now, in that other world where there was no day or night but only a darkness eternal, the six captured Chosen Children were being pulled from oblivion into nightmares as vivid and inescapable as their reality.