87
Questions
"I have seen him once when I went down to play again in the garden of my childhood because of certain memories. And it was towards evening and the light was pale, and I saw Time standing over the little gate, pale like the light, and he stood between me and that garden and had stolen my memories because he was mightier than I." – Lord Dunsany, "In the Land of Time"
Koshiro had been the last of the Chosen Children to fall asleep that night. He had sat at his computer for well over an hour – tired, but unwilling to rest before he had given the situation careful thought. Like the others, he had been caught up in hoping that the encounter with Lilithmon would be the end of their suspense regarding the state of the younger Chosen. But now that the battle was over, and the shock of their disappearance had worn off, he was once again in a position to think carefully about the mysteries facing him.
The police had found nothing out of order at the building which the Chosen Children had told them about. Koshiro didn't know how that was possible, but according to what information he could find it was true. That his missing friends hadn't been found didn't surprise him as much. He and the others had been too blinded by their hopes to realize that the enemy would never intentionally leave them a clue as to where the others were being held. It was a sickening realization – he could understand why he had resisted its logicality earlier.
Takeru and the rest were not in the Digital World. That meant that they were either in the human world, in which case it was still possible to find them, or they were in that World of Darkness, in which case there was no known way for their elders to reach them. For now, Koshiro would have to think as if they were in his world. Together, he and Gennai could use their skills to try and locate them – probably more effectively than law enforcement could, but it would be a monumental task.
Then there was what needed to be done about the remaining threats in the real world. The monster that attacked Ugaki Chiho was still at large. It had struck tonight already, according to police reports. Its destruction was another priority. Koshiro was still trying to work out a pattern to the assaults, trying to figure out where the thing would attack next. If there had been no change in the situation by tomorrow night, the Chosen Children could split up and patrol likely areas of the city, and someone could be stationed near the address where Lilithmon had been defeated.
But besides all of these practical questions, there were others that demanded answers. The evidence, particularly the photographs which he and the others had found in the subbasement, pointed towards a network of human conspirators aiding the evil Digimon. But who, and why? Before now, the only humans believed to have associated much with Digimon were Chosen Children and their families, but that didn't seem to be the case here. It was different from the Kaiser situation. How did all this fit together?
There were too many unknowns. Normally that didn't bother Koshiro, who was always working steadily towards answering his many questions, but these matters were pressing, and these mysteries were deadly problems, not abstract research projects. He wanted to talk to Gennai. He turned around in his chair and looked at the room behind him. Tentomon was already soundly asleep. It reminded Koshiro how tired he himself was. He wondered if Gennai ever slept; the question had never occurred to him before.
Perhaps he should wait until morning to contact Gennai. It was getting late, and he was exhausted. A sleep troubled by the dreams was better than no sleep at all. At least, that was the case from a physical perspective.
Ken could feel himself sinking. All around him was darkness. By some extremely faint luminescence he was able to see huge, motionless shapes hanging over him like jagged mountaintops. There was a soft humming in his ears, but no real sound. Where was he? When was he? There had been a battle…in the desert. He and Wormmon had been fighting…something huge…immensely powerful…
Wormmon! Where was Wormmon? Ken kicked with his legs and swung his arms, managing to bring himself upright, or what he assumed to be upright. He was still slowly sinking, but now in the direction of his feet instead of his back. He looked around, trying to spot anything that might be his partner, but the silence remained unbroken, and he remained the only moving object.
"Wormmon!"
His voice echoed briefly, then sank into a dead quiet. He was about to call again when first one and then both of his feet touched down gently on a solid surface. Looking down, he saw light pulse through the floor, making it visible for the first time, and illuminating also some of the objects that had loomed over him since his arrival in this alien place. What he seemed to be standing on – in fact, what everything in this place seemed to be – was a massive crystal formation.
That didn't help him to determine how he had gotten here, or where his partner was. And wasn't there someone else, or other people that had been with them? He couldn't remember how that dim battle had ended. It occurred to him that he might be dead.
Koshiro came back to his senses suddenly; he must have been dozing. Gennai had just asked him a question.
"I'm sorry, Gennai-san," he said. "I didn't hear you."
"What did you want to talk to me about?" Gennai answered, seated across from his visitor at a low table. Koshiro tried to remember, embarrassed. Not only had he apparently fallen asleep; he couldn't recall what had brought him to the Digital World in the first place.
"I…had some questions," he said.
"I'll answer them if I can," Gennai told him.
Koshiro thought back, but his mind had been emptied of what had happened to the younger Chosen Children, and the nightmares, and the battles he and his friends had fought so recently in Tokyo.
"It wasn't anything important, really," he said, stalling. Something was nagging at the back of his mind, something that felt important, but he couldn't quite uncover it. What was wrong with him? The way Gennai was looking at him didn't help. The Agent's expression had a grim cast, and looked more disappointed than expectant. Koshiro was about to excuse himself on the grounds that he didn't feel well, which wasn't far from the truth. But then Gennai started speaking.
"That's always been a problem," Gennai said. "It's good that you ask questions, Koshiro, but at times you've been focused on asking the wrong ones. Unfortunately, that becomes a very big problem, since the other Chosen Children don't ask any questions."
"I don't understand, Gennai-san," Koshiro said. His unease was growing.
"That bothers you, doesn't it?" Gennai asked. "Anytime that you can't understand something? Have you ever learned something that you wished you had not? The truth can be painful sometimes, or frightening."
"I can't…think of anything like that," Koshiro said, hesitantly, wondering why the conversation had gone so far off course.
"The Digimon Kaiser is one example," Gennai said. "When Ken was forced to confront the true meaning of his actions, it nearly destroyed him."
Gennai stood up, turned away from Koshiro, and looked out the transparent doors at the lakebed which served as his garden. There was little to be seen. It was apparently night, and the yard was invisible in the dark. That fact registered for the first time, and Koshiro wondered why he hadn't come during the daytime.
"You still haven't reminded him yet, have you?" Gennai continued. "About Ryo, and Millenniumon?"
"No," Koshiro said. Maybe the question should have surprised him, but it seemed strangely natural. It occurred to him that just recently he had been feeling guilty about never explaining to Ken what had happened. Something had reminded him of Ryo, but, like before, he was unable to remember what it was. "He's never asked."
Gennai turned back to his guest and smiled, a little sadly. "We're very selfish, aren't we?"
"Selfish, Gennai-san?"
"I've been keeping the same secrets that you have, after all. And I have some secrets all my own. That's what I mean about asking the right questions. Think about it. Didn't the Four Holy Beasts and I have to know who the Digimon Kaiser was from the beginning? And I told you how I kept Tailmon's Holy Ring until BelialVamdemon was destroyed. I've always waited until the last moment to tell the Chosen Children what I knew. And there's more."
Gennai walked back towards the table. Koshiro rose up on one knee in preparation for standing. He watched Gennai's face carefully, wondering where all this was going.
"I'm glad you came tonight, Koshiro," Gennai said. "I wanted to tell you about the rest, before—" Without warning, Gennai's face contorted with pain. He leaned forward, but managed not to collapse.
"Gennai-san!"
Koshiro was on his feet now, alarmed. Gennai staggered forward, putting a hand on Koshiro's shoulder to steady himself.
"It's too late," Gennai said through gritted teeth. "You asked me about it once, but I didn't know the truth until it was too late. Piemon's black ball…"
"What's wrong?" Koshiro asked. He remembered the vision he had seen of the old castle, when Gennai and Piemon had fought for the Crests. The Dark Master had embedded something in Gennai, but what did that…?
"I'm sorry, Koshiro," Gennai said, squeezing his eyes shut. His face had gone very pale, almost a dead white. "I can't…" Suddenly the eyes popped open again, and Koshiro saw that there was something wrong with them. Gennai's blue eyes were yellow. Not merely jaundiced, but a total change of color.
"Gennai…san…"
"But it is time you learned," Gennai said. There was blood on his lips as he moved them, seeping out of the skin. "That was what you've always wanted, right?"
Koshiro pulled back in fear, but the hand on his shoulder gripped him, digging the lengthening nails in. He remembered now what he had come to talk about.
"You'll know the truth soon," Gennai said, as his hair grew and reddened, tangling itself into crazy patterns. "The Chosen Children will all know the truth," he continued, and it was as if two voices were speaking from the same throat. "And they will despair."
Koshiro wrenched out of the grip of the monstrosity his friend had become, staggering backwards as the transformation continued. His back came up against a shoji, and in his hurry to get away he crashed right through the wooden frame and the paper, and lost his footing when the floor ended beneath him.
He fell back off the house's porch, into the grass of the yard. The Gennai-thing sprang forward, so that it stood silhouetted in the light of the hole Koshiro had made in the wall.
"We'll teach you, Chosen Children!" it called out into the dark. "The world is not what you think it is!" The thing doubled over, and Koshiro saw in a daze that its back was bulging. With the sound of ripping fabric, writhing feelers tore their way out of what had once been Gennai, lashing out at Koshiro where he lay. Like so many envenomed whips they stung him, tearing at his torso, piercing his face, worming their way into his brain where they burned like lit matches.
"Koshiro-han!"
Koshiro lurched up in his bed. Tentomon was beside him, prodding him.
"Koshiro-han, you were dreaming."
Quickly, Koshiro raised his hands to inspect his face and chest. He was unharmed.
"Th-thank you, Tentomon," he said. "I'm fine now." He looked over his shoulder, to where his computer sat on his desk. Slowly he managed to bring his breathing under control and his thoughts to order. He wasn't sure what the dream had meant, if it was supposed to mean anything, but he knew that something needed to be sorted out. Tomorrow, he thought, I'll talk to Gennai-san.
Ken turned about, taking in his surroundings. Now that his descent had stopped he seemed to be able to move normally. Strange as this place was, it didn't feel unreal, or different from the rest of life.
"Worm…mon?" Ken asked the emptiness. The height of the crystal platform on which he stood was impossible to judge; its translucent depths might have gone on forever beneath him. Out of it, mostly at the edges, grew peaks and obelisks of milky crystal, some of them rising to towering heights. Here and there the plateau's regularity was broken by smaller formations, only a few feet high. Everything beyond the platform was a deep blue darkness, without horizon.
He walked towards the edge of the plateau, curious as to what could be seen from there, when he was stopped by a sudden change in the quality of one of the small crystal formations in his path. Without a sound, it had become transparent instead of translucent, and encased within it he could see the shape of his partner.
"Wormmon!" Ken dropped to his knees and pressed both hands against the crystal's surface, but the Digimon remained unmoving. In another moment the image had faded, the light ebbed away, and there was only a dark crystal before him. For the first time he noticed that it was shaped uncomfortably like a tombstone. "Wormmon… Where are you?" His heartbeat was getting faster. "What happened to you?"
Ken turned away from the crystal, checking his surroundings again, but he was still alone. He did notice, however, that one of the other smaller crystals, one not much taller than he was, was glowing. As he turned his gaze on it, it also became limpid, and Osamu was staring at him from inside, looking the same as he must have on the day when the photo on Ken's desk had been taken.
Despite knowing that it wasn't really his brother, Ken instinctively stepped towards the vision, but as he approached the image changed and he saw himself there in the crystal – Ken as he had been three years ago. He stopped in confusion, and the image faded as the light left the crystal.
Why? he asked himself. Why show me my younger self? And another voice whispered, Because this is a graveyard, and you're dead too.
Light flashed up one of the monstrous crystals in the distance, and the magnified form of the Digimon Kaiser appeared in it, whip raised, teeth exposed in a cruel smile. Ken flinched and turned away. He needed to find Wormmon – the real, warm, living Wormmon – and get out of this place. He could see another of the smaller crystals transparent, and in it a person he didn't recognize: a short old man, bald except for a white mustache and topknot. Ken resisted the urge to pause and wonder what it meant. He had never seen that person before…had he? As the thought crossed his mind, the crystal went dark, and the silence of the place was broken as a large crack appeared in it.
Light pulsed in the distance, and one of the largest crystals revealed its image, a huge full-body portrait of a boy about Ken's age. His features, with his brown hair and blue eyes, was unremarkable, but the sight of him froze Ken in his tracks. His eyes went wide and his mouth opened.
"I know you!" he said. "Who…Who are you!?"
The picture didn't answer. It began to dim, and a new shape took its place. At first Ken thought it was Chimairamon, but the outlines became clearer and he saw that it was something different, something worse. A shape he only remembered seeing in nightmares.
With an apocalyptic crash, the massive crystal shattered, spraying shards in all directions. Ken raised an arm to protect himself and staggered backward. Everywhere around him, massive cracks were working their way across the darkening crystal landscape, but before the light failed entirely Ken detected movement below him, a darker shape gliding through the solid floor on which he stood.
As the plateau crumbled into a billion gemstones, and Ken felt himself falling, he called out his partner's name. It was a last appeal to whatever might be good in all that darkness, but even as he screamed he knew in his heart that there would be no answer.