86
On the Margins
"Apropos of sleep, that sinister adventure of all our nights, we may say that men go to bed daily with an audacity that would be incomprehensible if we did not know that it is the result of ignorance of the danger." – Charles Baudelaire, as quoted by H. P. Lovecraft
Hiraga Ayaki awoke with a feeling that something was wrong. He distinctly remembered having gone to bed, but now he was seated upright in a chair drawn up to a table. Looking around, it only took him a moment to see that he was not in his temporary apartment, or in any other place he recognized. The room was nondescript in the extreme, with the undecorated floor, walls, and ceiling apparently made of the same bland gray material.
He could see everything perfectly, but he remained uneasy. It didn't take long for him to identify what was odd – the room had no windows, and contained no artificial light source. He could see, but there was no reason why he should be able to. Opposite from where he sat was an empty chair, and in the wall behind it a door. It looked uncomfortably like an interrogation chamber, something he was proud not to have had any previous experience with. As far as he could tell, he had none of his usual weapons on him, and a quick search for them confirmed the fact.
He stood up, intending to try the door, but at the same moment it opened from the other side, and Hiraga saw Sato Katsu enter, stepping out of darkness. Hiraga paused, surprised and wary. He hadn't met with his current employer in person for over a week, and that had been under circumstances much less strange.
"Sit down, Hiraga-san. I wanted to get back in touch with you, and this was the most convenient way to do it."
"Where am I?" Hiraga asked, remaining standing.
"Dreaming," Sato answered dismissively.
"But I'm not…" Hiraga began, but then fell silent as he thought about the strangeness of his surroundings. It didn't feel like a dream. But could a place like this exist in a real world?
"Yes, you're dreaming," Sato said. "Rather, you're in a state very much like dreaming, which I've induced remotely so as to update you on the situation. Now sit down. We'll have our talk and can then get back to what we were doing."
Slowly, Hiraga took a seat, and Sato sat down in the chair across the table.
"So," Sato said. "You've decided to remove yourself from our headquarters."
"How—"
"A function of this type of dream. Through the power that makes it possible, I am able to know the mind of anyone present."
Hiraga was silent a moment. "I am dreaming," he said eventually, slowly shaking his head.
"I'm surprised that you still have a capacity for doubt after all that you've seen recently. Now, if you will please stop interrupting, we can get this over with."
Hiraga said nothing, still unsure of himself, and Sato continued.
"I am no longer in the Digital World, and you will not be able to contact me there anymore. We are working to set up a link between the human world headquarters and the place where I am now, but it may take some time. We have six of the children taken into custody. Yes, that's why they weren't present tonight. I know that Lilithmon is dead. Do you know where BlackTailmon is?"
"Black… No, I don't."
"Then I want you to find her. The remaining children must not catch her, lest she give anything away regarding our organization. That is your current goal. After that you can monitor the remaining children, as before. We have another Digimon in the human world as well, but you don't need to worry about that. Now we're done. Get back to sleep. You'll remember our talk in the morning."
Sato stood up to go.
"By the way," he added. "I don't mind you hiding in your apartment, but I want you back at the base when there's work to be done. Don't disappear just yet. You won't like it when we find you."
Before Hiraga could think of a way to respond, Sato reopened the door and walked back out of the room. As he did so, the darkness beyond the doorway entered in his place, blotting out the room and deadening Hiraga's senses. From then until he woke the next morning, he was dead to the world.
The beach was as she had always imagined it. A few years ago she had gone on a vacation in Hawaii, but even its white beaches had been in the shadow of hotel buildings, and swarming with her fellow tourists, with her parents the only people among them that she knew. This beach was untouched. No buildings could be seen, just the shining yellow sand stretching infinitely far in either direction, and the emerald trees beyond it. There was no manufactured thing but what they had with them, and no sign that any human being had ever set foot on that fantastic shore.
The sea was calm, but Mimi felt the breeze gliding over her shoulders, adding a pleasurable coolness to the inviting warmth of the atmosphere. The ship lazily approached the beach. Soon she would be walking on it. She turned to Michael, who stood beside her, and smiled.
"We should tell Miyako-san and the others that we're almost there," Michael said, smiling back at her.
Mimi's smile vanished.
"What's wrong?" Michael asked, raising his eyebrows.
But she didn't know how to answer, because she didn't know what was wrong. For some reason the mention of Miyako was like a sudden splash of ice water…but she couldn't put her finger on why. She smiled again, a little nervously.
"No, nothing," she said. "I'll go get them."
There was a swimming pool set into a lower deck. Palmon could be seen reclining in one of the chairs at its edge, taking in the sun, while Betamon sat atop the steps leading down into the shallow end of the pool, cooling himself in the water. Mimi saw them as she turned away from Michael, and had to smile.
She knew that the other Chosen Children were inside the ship. She couldn't understand why. The weather was as gorgeous as the beach, and there was no reason not to be enjoying the day. It was really weird that she and Michael were the only two people on the deck. Not that she didn't like just hanging out with Michael, but…
As she made her way to the nearest door, her thoughts were interrupted by the sight of a dark cloud on the horizon, over the open ocean. Mimi frowned. Like the beach, the cloud stretched wide in both directions. There was something strange about it. Where the ship and the beach was, the sun shone down, unobstructed by even a wisp of white cloud. A picnic on the beach would not be so fun with that shadow lurking out on the water. But the cloud did more than ruin the perfection of the day. It made her uneasy.
Pulling her gaze away from it, she walked into the lounge, a little surprised not to see anyone sitting in any of the chairs. At one side of the room was a bar with some snacks set out atop it, but all the stools were unoccupied. Was everyone in their cabins? She couldn't hear any sounds of talking or laughing, even when she stood at the top of the stairs leading below deck.
"Miyako-chan? Daisuke-kun?"
Her calls were met with silence. Hesitating, she told herself that they must be in some other part of the ship. If someone had heard her, someone would have answered. Wouldn't they? She shook her head as if to clear it. The shadowy clouds must have unnerved her more than she had thought. Looking down the stairs again, she felt something like dread coming over her. She couldn't hear anything, but it did seem as though a strange smell was rising from below. A damp, heavy scent, as though seawater had somehow found its way into the belly of the ship.
"Mimi-san?"
The voice made her jump, even as she recognized it as Michael's. She thought she detected a note of concern in his call, and quickly left the stairs to see what might be the matter, happy for an excuse to get back outside. On the deck it was not as warm as she had remembered it being. The chill from inside the ship had stuck with her. She could see Michael standing in front of her, near the railing overlooking the lower deck. Instead of looking at her, his gaze was fixed on the ocean, and turning to her left she could see why.
The dark clouds that had hung on the horizon when she entered the ship had drawn suddenly closer. Now they loomed so near that the ship was almost in their shadow. Beneath them the color of the blue water and sky had been perverted into a dirty gray, and the pleasant breeze had been replaced with a wet spray that carried with it the same unwholesome scent that Mimi had smelled rising from below deck.
"What – What is it?" she asked, not really expecting Michael to know the answer. The suddenness of the change had terrified her into demanding an explanation.
"Mimi-san! I think we—"
He was interrupted as the ship gave a sudden lurch in the motionless sea, causing it to pitch towards the beach, and sending both Mimi and Michael tumbling across the deck. The ship continued to rock back and forth, though with less violence. Mimi managed to get back on her feet just long enough to stumble over to the railing overlooking the lower deck. She grasped it, managed to keep her momentum from throwing her over, and clung there. Michael was not far from her, also hanging onto the rail. He must have hurt himself somehow – there was blood trailing down his forehead, and he looked stunned.
She called his name, and he looked in her direction, but before she could recover and go to him, the ship gave another lurch. Michael lost his grip and slid almost to the far rail, the one nearest the beach. Mimi wanted to help him, but with the ship under this mysterious assault it was impossible. She cast a wild glance through the rails, to the lower deck where she had seen Palmon and Betamon earlier.
She was able to spot them immediately, a pair of bright green shapes in the drab, ever-darkening day. Palmon had one arm's worth of vines twined about the ship's railing, while with the others she was holding onto Betamon, which had kept him from being thrown off the deck. Despite the violence of the ship's motion, there was very little sound either from the ship or from the water, and Mimi could hear Betamon shouting for his partner.
"Michael! I need to evolve!"
Palmon raised her head at the other Digimon's exclamation, and her eyes seemed to find Mimi on the upper deck.
"Mimi!"
Mimi understood. Letting go of the railing with one hand, she reached for her Digivice. Togemon wouldn't be much use, but if Palmon could Super Evolve she might be able to move the others one by one to the safety of the beach. Mimi unclipped the Digivice from her skirt. As she did so, a shadow fell over the deck. From her left, the direction of the open ocean, there was a sudden blast of cold wind and spray.
Mimi screamed as the ship rocked again, sending her Digivice clattering across the deck – not because of the unexpected wind, but because she had heard a sound that seemed to originate inside her head – a vicious roaring hiss that set her every nerve tingling. She recovered quickly, but not nearly quickly enough to regain the Digivice.
She looked to her right, the direction in which it had gone flying, and saw Michael again. He was at the side rail, holding on with one hand, and in the other…he had her Digivice. His eyes met hers, and his expression said that he could barely believe what he'd managed to do. "Mimi-san!" he called, holding it out in her direction. She couldn't reach it from there, of course, but in spite of that, in spite of the darkness, and the line of blood on Michael's face, she had to smile.
"Mic—" she began, but her cry of gratitude changed to a wail of horror as something black and indistinct rose up over the edge of the deck, fastened itself on Michael's ankle, and wrenched him between the rails in one rapid, bone-breaking motion. Then he was gone. Beyond the railing Mimi could see the beach and its trees – her ideal – disintegrate into black ash. The stench from before was rising all around her, and she had no one and nowhere to turn to.
There came an appalling crash as the ship burst open from within, and a flood of dark shapes emerged from it. They swarmed so thick that she couldn't tell them apart, but she thought she glimpsed the semblances of all the frightful and evil Digimon from her past, and other forms more horrific. Somehow, with a sight that was not eyesight, she saw them all at once, in every direction. She saw her battered, horrified friends caught up in the horde's clutches, and Palmon and Betamon consumed by darkness and shredded into data.
Then she was again aware of her body, as the talons and tentacles and cold fingers latched onto her, and she was dragged down, beneath the surface of the black water, and into a suffocating, all-encompassing darkness.