CONTAGION
CHAPTER EIGHT
"I fail to see the point in this," Komamura rumbled.
Unohana patted his hand before releasing it. "Think of it as a necessary precaution." She smiled vaguely at him, and went back to directing the Fourth Division members swarming over the area. Some were seeing to the Shiba siblings and the servants, while others were busy trying to make sure the house didn't fall down any more than it already had. Komamura had to admire their expertise. He wondered how they'd gotten so good at it.
"Thank you very much, Komamura-taichou," Kotetsu Isane said, drifting up behind him. Her skin was very pale, and the shadows under her eyes dramatically dark. "We appreciate your cooperation in this matter."
Komamura glared at her. "When did you or your Captain last get some rest?" he demanded.
"Fourth Division has drugs for such situations," Kotetsu assured him dreamily. "The situation demands our personal attention, sir."
"Hnnh." Komamura dropped a large hand on her shoulder and drew her aside. He didn't want everyone hearing this. "How bad is it?" he growled.
"You'd need to ask Unohana-taichou for that, sir --"
He snorted. "Give me a straight answer, Kotetsu-fukutaichou, and I won't need to disturb your Captain while she's working."
Kotetsu thought about that one. The soft rain had dampened her hair and plastered her feather-and-bead ornament flat. "It's -- well, Captain, you've seen the briefing? Hollows who have it can infect shinigami. The closer the contact, the higher the likelihood of infection. Shiba Kuukaku and her brother have a high risk of it. And as to other people who were there . . ." Her eyes moved to Kira Izuru.
"He doesn't look well," Komamura observed.
"He hasn't looked well for weeks," Kotetsu agreed.
"And he just collapsed," Komamura added.
He had the feeling that if Kotetsu hadn't rushed over to attend to Kira, she might actually have said something harsh at that point.
Maybe it was just a generic collapse due to injuries that Kira had received during the fight. Maybe. Komamura very much hoped so.
"There's this disease," Ichigo said.
Chad grunted.
"It's carried by reiatsu and you risk getting it if you fight Hollows that have it."
"So how do you know which Hollows have it?"
Ichigo frowned. He hadn't asked Urahara about that. "I suppose if they look weird and freakish and mutated --"
"Actually, Yasutora-san should be fairly safe," Rukia put in. "After all, when you hit something with one of your power blasts, Yasutora-san, it's already detached from your own reiatsu. It shouldn't be possible for it to come back and infect you -- right, Ichigo? So as long as you exercise sensible precautions . . ."
"Stand back and hit them," Chad said dryly. "I can do that."
It was at that point that Rukia's beeper went off, and further discussion was put aside in the general rush to find Hollows and kick seven bells out of them, and Ichigo quite forgot to ask Chad if he knew where Ishida had got to.
Kyouraku Shunsui peered at the piles of paper that filled the office. Someone had clearly not had enough room on her desk, and had borrowed his desk, and part of the floor while she was at it. The someone in question was currently kneeling between two lists and trying to match them date for date and name for name.
"My lovely Nanao-chan . . ." he started.
"Don't step there!" his lovely Nanao-chan snarled at him. "You'll disturb my organisation!"
He maintained his Captainly honour by standing in the doorway and not retreating. "Are you engaged in some sort of research project, Nanao-chan?"
She adjusted her glasses, which had slipped down the bridge of her nose, and looked up at him keenly. "You remember that data you had me investigating for you earlier, sir?"
"Mnh." He considered the tension in her hands, the bright eagerness in her eyes, the dust stains all over her uniform. "You've found something?"
"More than something." She waved a sheaf of documents at him. "I've been trying to locate the people who were involved in the original experiment. Barring Urahara Kisuke, whom I think you'd know more about contacting than I would . . ."
He adjusted his hat. "Since everything that's come up," he said regretfully, "any contact with him is going to have to go through formal channels. Yama-ji's been very definite about that. The old chap used some positively stringent language." He ignored the you-probably-deserved-that-language stare she was giving him with the ease of long practice. "So do you know about anyone else who was involved in it?"
"Well." She put the papers down again. "Frankly, sir, these records have been edited. Someone's been through them."
"Such as Aizen?"
"It wouldn't surprise me," she said darkly. "But if it was, I don't think he was the first. They were written very casually in the first place, from what I saw -- a lot of references to "so-and-so", or "the planned procedure", and hardly any full details. I'd suspect that there were full transcripts, but that they were either removed by Urahara himself, or by Kurotsuchi-taichou . . ." She sighed. "Or that they were censured on the orders of the Chamber of Forty-Six to bury whatever happened."
He leaned against the doorframe. "Yes," he agreed. "It seems a plausible supposition that they would have wanted to bury it very deep indeed. The Captains at the time heard the basic details, but other than that -- nothing. And of course, the later Captains, like Byakuya-kun or Toushirou-kun, wouldn't have heard about it at all."
She raised an eyebrow at him. "You don't think that's dangerous, sir?"
"My dear Nanao-chan." He smiled at her. "Who am I to go against official policy?"
"First in line, usually," she muttered.
"But it's not just that," he said, more seriously. "Nanao-chan, we need information, and you might be able to find it. Kurotsuchi-taichou wasn't involved at the time. That was established. If I thought that demanding to see all the records would help, then I would. But I think that you're right; they've already been censured and then picked over, and half the people on the project died in the first place. If there is anything that you can find . . ."
She adjusted her glasses again. "Sir, if you wish to be useful, you'll requisition death figures from Twelfth and Fourth for a decade each side of the experimental dates, together with anything on the archives on Shiba alchemy usage -- I'm thinking that's why Aizen staged that attack on their House -- and retirement figures, while you're at it. I'm trying to trace names."
"And a bottle of wine or two," he said helpfully.
"And a bottle of wine or --" she repeated, then caught herself mid-sentence. "Kyouraku-taichou!"
"I'm going, my lovely Nanao-chan, I'm going," he said as he slipped out of the room.
Ishida followed his senses through the streets of Karakura. There was a tingling in the air, a dryness, an oppressive weight of oncoming thunder; even normal people seemed to be able to feel it, and had withdrawn into their houses. Of course, he, as a Quincy, was a thousand times better able to sense it than them.
When the Hollow loomed in front of him, it was hardly a surprise. He had felt it streets away.
"Pitiful human soul," it hissed, "how is it that you are able to see arrgh!"
Ishida smiled as he blew it apart with a single arrow.
His bow of energy crackled in his hands once again. Everything was all right.
Everything was finally all right.
Perhaps if he went looking, he could find more Hollows to kill.
Renji caught up with Rukia and Ichigo and Chad in the middle of several large piles of dust. "You bastards," he said amiably. "You could have left some for me."
"Yeah, yeah." Ichigo slid Zangetsu back into its wrappings. "Ain't my fault you're a lazy-ass who wasn't around."
"Never mind that," Rukia cut in. "What did they have to say back there?" Her hooked thumb indicated the general direction of Soul Society.
Renji sighed. "I reported to Kuchiki-taichou. He said, 'Mm,' a lot."
Ichigo snorted. "Real helpful."
"Well, what do you expect him to say?" Renji demanded, perversely annoyed at the way that Ichigo had externalised his own thoughts.
"He could have said he was going to come here and talk to Urahara and do something!" Ichigo snapped. "We're not going to get anywhere if people don't talk about this!"
Chad dropped his hand on Ichigo's shoulder and squeezed. "Ichigo. You're angry."
"Damn right I am."
Rukia was staring at Ichigo. There was something in her gaze that Renji remembered; a sort of insight, an understanding that he had never valued until he'd lost it for too long. "Ichigo, what is it that's worrying you so much? We all know there's danger."
Ichigo ran his hand through his hair. "Shit. Look. You know my dad's a doctor."
Chad and Rukia nodded.
"So I know some basic things about anatomy and diseases and whatever."
"Yeah? So does Unohana-taichou. And she's not reacting like this."
"Then she's faking it," Ichigo said, with such certainty that it made Renji pause. "Look. Diseases are carried in different ways. Sometimes it's in the breath. Like tuberculosis. Sometimes it's by body fluid, like infected blood getting into a cut. Sometimes it's parasites, like fleas on rats with plague, or like mosquitoes with malaria. Sometimes it's touch. But this is new. This is reiatsu. You lot in Soul Society are raising reiatsu all the time. Fights with Hollows, fights with each other, even just losing your temper. And Urahara's saying that you can't even heal it without risking being infected. You can't fight Hollows who've got it without risking being infected. Renji, if it gets a serious hold on the population, you are not going to be able to stop it."
There was a long silence.
Renji scratched his head. "But if they can work out what they did last time, then they can just do it again this time, right?"
"In that case, I'd have thought Urahara would be looking more optimistic," Rukia said. "Oh, what happened about the Shiba?"
Renji frowned. The whole Shiba thing rankled. He couldn't help feeling that if he'd got there five minutes earlier with Urahara's warning, then things would have been different. "Ichimaru Gin and some weird Hollows attacked. Komamura-taichou and Kira-fukutaichou got there in time to get everyone out alive, but the house got kinda trashed. They're investigating. Ichimaru got away."
"It's a good thing that you got there in time with the warning," Chad said.
"I was too late," Renji muttered.
"No," Rukia said. She glanced at Chad for a moment, and he nodded. "You were in time. Too late would have meant that they were dead. Or worse." She folded her arms, her lips thin and tightly pressed together.
Ichigo coughed. "So, hey, Renji. Want to help us get rid of some Hollows?"
"Sounds good," Renji agreed, glad to break the mood.
"There it is again," Chad muttered.
"What?"
"There's something following us," Chad said patiently. "It creeps around. It's sort of pale and has odd eyes."
"I haven't seen it," Rukia said, with just the faintest undertone of brittleness to her voice.
"That's because it keeps on avoiding you and Ichigo," Chad said. "It's being careful to hide from you two. I don't think it's being as careful to hide from me."
Renji turned round and stared in the direction that Chad had been looking in. "I can't see anything either."
Chad shrugged.
"We'll keep an eye out for it," Ichigo said. "Perhaps it'll show itself later."
Nanao found Kotetsu Isane in one of the restrooms of Fourth Division. The taller woman was sitting with a cup of tea between her hands, staring at it as though she wasn't sure what to do with it.
Nanao was familiar with the symptoms of extreme exhaustion. She poured herself some of the tea, and sat down opposite Isane. "Kotetsu-san?" she prompted her.
Isane blinked and looked at her, eyes taking a moment to focus. "Ise-san. You don't need to be so formal, you know. Wait, is this an official visit? Because --"
Nanao shook her head. "Not official at all. I just came over to check on something. Drink your tea, Isane. You look as if you're about to fall asleep."
Isane blushed. "I feel that way." She sipped her tea. "It's being . . . busy."
"It looks it." The corridors had been full. The wards more so. "I'm assuming most of the cases are quarantine rather than strict infection?"
"Yes. We've had some cases -- this is on a need-to-know basis, by the way -- where the infection took a little while to assert itself. It's safer to quarantine everyone and then check them."
"Have you had any success in treating it?" Nanao asked, and couldn't keep an undertone of concern out of her voice.
"Some." Isane drank more of her tea. "We've found that high application of reiatsu from one healer of Unohana-taichou's level, or several lower-level ones working together, can manage to stabilise the patient and even burn it out of their system. But the healers have to be shielded while they're doing it so that they don't get infected, and the whole thing is very labour-intensive."
"So," Nanao said dubiously, "as long as we can keep it within the boundaries of our capacity to treat it that way . . ."
Isane nodded. "That long. Yes." She took a breath. "What was it you wanted to see me about?"
Nanao drank some of her own tea before answering. The data in Twelfth's records had said that someone from Fourth had been involved. Could it have been Unohana-taichou herself? If so, then direct questions to Isane weren't going to get her anywhere. She'd have to leave it to her Captain to talk to Unohana-taichou himself. But possibly some general information might help. She'd been through the figures on deaths and discharges from Fourth at that period, and there hadn't been any losses from the higher-ranking seats at the point of Urahara Kisuke's exile. She needed more information. "I'm looking into something that happened about a hundred years ago, around the time of Urahara Kisuke's exile," she started. "It may have to do with what Aizen Sousuke's doing now."
Isane frowned thoughtfully and toyed with the feather in her hair ornament. "I was only third seat then. I take it that it's Fourth Division you're thinking about?"
Nanao nodded. "I'm really looking for anomalies. Anything unusual that sticks in your memory. We don't know exactly what Aizen was doing or is doing, so anything may be relevant." She felt a twinge of guilt at dancing round the subject like this -- misleading a colleague, even -- but consoled herself with the thought that if there was a logical connection to be made with the disease at this point, Isane of all people should be well-informed enough to make it.
"Mm." Isane refilled her cup of tea. "Honestly, the person who would have known is the very one who isn't here. My predecessor as vice-captain. He died in a mission a couple of years after Urahara . . . left. If anyone other than Unohana knew, he'd have been the one."
Nanao tapped her finger against the side of her cup. "I was only a lower seat then myself. That was . . . Shiba Isshin, wasn't it?" The name had been on the death rosters a couple of years after the Urahara business, and she hadn't considered it a high likelihood. He'd been marked as "missing on mission, presumed dead".
Isane nodded. She lowered her voice. "He was slipping into a decline, towards the end. He'd always been so cheerful, even more than Shiba Kaien was -- but over the last few years, he just got more and more depressed. Unohana-taichou did everything she could to try to help him. I've seen it sometimes, in other healers here. They just look around at all the people they can't help, and they give up. That last mission, the one he didn't come back from -- I think Unohana-taichou knew it was going to happen. I think she expected it."
"It was Shiba Mansion that just got attacked," Nanao said slowly. "If Aizen Sousuke had been looking for something connected to him --"
"No," Isane said. "They wouldn't have kept anything. What I heard, between the two of us, was that they thought he'd somehow disgraced himself. Even though Unohana-taichou herself said that his actions had always been everything that was proper! They felt he was to blame! I heard they even took his name off the House records."
Nanao thought back to all the times she'd spoken to Shiba Kaien, vice-captain to vice-captain, friend to friend. "Kaien never mentioned him," she was forced to agree.
"Isshin was a good man," Isane said firmly. "His family got it wrong. He was a little eccentric, but he was one of the best healers I've ever known! I can believe that he died in the line of duty far more easily than that he'd somehow given up and run away."
The tiny worm of cold certainty twisted and grew in Nanao's stomach. The timing fitted. It fitted too well.
Isane clearly had no idea what Shiba Isshin might have been running away from.
Orihime skipped happily on her way home. Naturally she was as disturbed as anyone else by this horrendous disease, but at least they had a plan to deal with it. Plans were vitally important. Without plans, they might as well be trying to drain a swamp while vicious man-eating alligators were attacking them and they wouldn't even have guns and lassoos to hold them off with.
She reached a convenient alley, turned down it, and sat on a small flight of steps. The house behind her had been empty for years. Nobody would see her here.
"You can come out now!" she called.
Light flashed on either side of her face, blinding her for a moment, and her six protectors came loose from her hairpins, buzzing around her head.
Tsubaki was the first to speak. "Stupid girl! Are you out of your mind! Going off on your own like this -- you could be kidnapped!"
Orihime sighed. "But Tsubaki-kun, you're all here to protect me, aren't you? And it's Ichigo and Rukia that Aizen's been interested in, or Urahara-san. Not me."
Tsubaki folded his arms and perched himself on her knee, glaring at her over his mask.
"Besides," Orihime added, "if I do get attacked by one of the sick Hollows, I think I could heal it."
"We could try," Shunou chirped. "But if you get infected first --"
"I've thought about this," Orihime said stubbornly. "First I shield myself. Then I heal it. Then if it won't be reasonable, I use Tsubaki to send it on. I promise that I won't be reckless, but I have to try. It could happen to anyone. It's not the Hollows' fault. What if it had happened to Sora, when he was one?" Her voice wavered for a moment. "All the Hollows were someone else. Once."
"You're a soft-hearted ninny, mistress," Tsubaki snarled. "We're clearly going to have our work cut out keeping you safe."
Orihime smiled at him. "You're my little death robot laser," she said.
Ulquiorra knelt before his master. His right eye socket ached in the dull but familiar way, as the eye there regenerated itself. It was a minor pain, easily ignored, alleviated by Aizen-sama's praise.
"Very well done," Aizen-sama said. Images flickered and rippled in the space between them, casting shadows on the wall. "The Kurosaki boy and his friends are unlikely to be a significant threat, but should Urahara try to use them against us --"
He broke off. Ulquiorra dared to raise his eyes, and saw one of the rarest expressions to ever cross his overlord's face. Surprise. There was something in the image that Aizen-sama had not expected.
He hadn't thought much of it himself, except inasmuch as it demonstrated the mortal trash's fatal weaknesses and human failings. A house. A sign. The Kurosaki boy and the Kuchiki girl approaching it. A man standing in the doorway and waving to them. Two children behind him.
Aizen-sama's eyes seemed to glow. "Ulquiorra," he said, "my fourth Espada, you have given me something I hadn't dared hope to find." He closed his hand around Ulquiorra's eye. "Find me Ichimaru. Tell him that I want to see him at once. We have the opportunity to deny the enemy any hope at all, and I believe that we shall take it."