Ladies and Gentlemen,

Summer has officially begun and my exams are over. I am now free to get back to work on this story. I might have given some of you a scare there, but no worries--I have big plans for this yarn. Its a great diversion from the book I'm writing and a chance to explore some interesting things.

IWOBYD: oddly enough, the very day you posted your review I had just finished exams and decided to get working again, and when I got home I saw that you were hoping for more! Well then. Here is more! There will be still more in a fairly short amount of time (probably. I can't get too distracted from my book).

Enjoy.

The door slid open.

He was almost certain it had never happened before. Slowly, Suzaku Kururugi looked up at it, uncertain if his eyes were functioning properly. The door was, indeed, now open. He blinked at it, from where he was bent over against the wall. It occurred to him that, sometime in the past, it must have opened otherwise he wouldn't have been able to get in this room. And-he now recalled-it had also opened to let Jeremiah in.

But there was no one on the other side this time. No one stumbling into the cell, pushed by Britannian guards. In fact, he could see nothing beyond the door; the lights seemed to be out and the hallway gaped black.

"Jeremiah," said Suzaku carefully. "Is the-"

"Yes," said Jeremiah, whose shadowed form was equally as bent against the opposite wall.

"Why is the-"

"I don't know."

They both stared at the open door for a long moment. All at once, Suzaku remembered a feeling that he had felt long ago, a panicked urge to be free. For days and weeks he had felt that manic urge, until gradually with every time he awoke he seemed to grow less alive. He had desired to die. And after that, after it became evident that this was impossible, he had ceased to desire anything at all. For an immeasurable time now, he had felt nothing and forgotten all about all the things of life, like escape, or retribution.

But now he felt that panic anew. He stared at the door without blinking, certain that if he did so it would be shut before his eyes opened again. His every instinct told him to leap up and bolt through the door, to madly scramble for it as fast as he could. But some part of his mind held a strange superstition-that if he moved towards the door it would snap closed.

He looked across the cell to Jeremiah, who was staring towards the door with his jaw slack in amazement. He seemed to be experiencing the same indecision that Suzaku was. It had to be a trick. Yet to ignore the opportunity…

Slowly, Suzaku let his hand creep forwards over the smooth floor, testing. The door remained open. He rolled clumsily over onto his hands and knees, head bent back so he could watch the door. His eyes burned because he had not blinked them recently. Gradually he shuffled forwards, cringing at every soft sound of his hands and knees over the floor, with every lurching movement. He grew nearer to the door. It remained open.

It was going to slam shut. He was sure of it. As soon as he got close enough, it would slam shut.

Something unexpected happened and Suzaku nearly collapsed forward in astonishment: without warning a human silhouette appeared against the deeper blackness behind the door. What was especially startling about this was that Suzaku hadn't even heard any footsteps approaching down the hallway. There was a sudden intake of breath from Jeremiah behind him. Suzaku froze and stared at the new shape, uncertain if it had seen him in the darkness.

The shadow slid forward into the cell, on utterly silent footfalls.

A voice emerged, low and female. "Lord Jeremiah?"

Jeremiah cleared his throat and spoke weakly. "Yes?" Then he said, "May I help you?"

The unseen woman chuckled politely. "You have that backwards, I think."

Suddenly, a blinding light snapped into existence and Suzaku fell backwards with a hand shielding his face. The light was pale and cold, a tiny blue sun shining from the direction of the woman. He recognized it, belatedly, as a flashlight. In its illumination he saw the black gloved hand that held it, and a clearer picture of the newcomer. She was dressed all in black, a uniform Suzaku now recognized as that of a Britannian foot soldier. Her face was still in darkness, but he recognized the bulk of a night-vision set as she reached to pull it from over her eyes.

"Who is this?" she asked curiously, and Suzaku winced as the light blazed over his face again.

Jeremiah said affably, "The real Zero. Who are you?"

Her hand twisted upwards, so that the flashlight beam illuminated her own face, which was covered from the nose down by a tightly-wrapped black scarf. She lifted a finger to tug the scarf down under her chin, exposing her face, and smiled pleasantly. Suzaku stared in disbelief because he had never expected to see this woman wearing night-vision goggles and a Britannian combat suit.

"Miss Sayoko?" he said incredulously.

Her expression suddenly changed as her eyes widened and stared down at him. The flashlight left her face in darkness and flowed over him again. He squinted. Sayoko said, "Oh my…" with a slight waver in her voice. "Is it really you?"

For a moment he knelt, chewing his lip. His fists were pressed down into the floor, a stone-sharp pain in his knuckles. Then he felt a smile begin to spread over his face. He said, flatly, "Yes. I guess it is."

There was a kind of smirk growing on Sayoko's face, Suzaku could see as the flashlight moved over to Jeremiah's end of the cell. The pale light was just hovering over her lips as they bent in something like satisfaction. "So that's how it was done."

"Yes," said Jeremiah softly, then groaned as he spread his hands on the floor, attempting to rise to his feet.

"Here, let me help you," Sayoko said, but when Suzaku turned to her it was him she was helping, not Jeremiah. The woman knelt and supported his arm as he slowly extended his legs below him. Suzaku felt immediately light-headed as he rose to his full height, and his legs seemed to be constructed of paper. Sayoko's smiling face was before his now, inclined slightly up as she supported him.

She said, "You've gotten older. You could use a shave," then, inexplicably, warmly, "But you're still about as handsome as ever."

Suzaku blinked in astonishment and felt a slow embarrassment, almost a forgotten feeling down here in the dark. "Um…" he said gutturally as she propped him carefully against the wall.

Jeremiah coughed. He had felt his way to a standing position and was currently leaning nonchalantly against the opposite wall. He said, over his crossed arms, "I, however, have become even more handsome than ever." Then he chuckled pleasantly. "In any case, we should probably be going. How did you get in here, Miss Shinozaki?"

"Carefully," the Japanese woman said. "We've cut main and emergency power, but it should be back up soon. I have, um…" she appeared suddenly concerned. "A set of Britannian combat fatigues for one of you to wear. We didn't realize there were two of you to rescue."

Jeremiah and Suzaku turned to each other and began a polite argument, each insisting the other don the uniform. Eventually, after some input from Sayoko, it was decided that Suzaku would wear the armour because his flesh, unlike Jeremiah's, was pervious to bullets. They set off through the blackened tunnels, after Suzaku had pulled on the uniform over his prison clothing. Sayoko told them that for security's sake she was going to shut off her flashlight, and so Suzaku pulled his suit's night-vision goggles down over his face, bathing the angular tunnel in a grainy illumination. Sayoko led them, being the only person among them with any idea of the place's layout. Jeremiah followed, blindly, with a hand clamped over her shoulder, and Suzaku brought up the rear.

As they went, he absently perused the sensation of wearing one of these combat suits again--how long had it been? Not long enough. His fingers crept down to his belt, where they automatically undid the snap on his thigh-holster and slid the sidearm out. Its weight felt familiar. He hoped that he would not have to use it.

After only a few moments of walking, Suzaku felt a strange weakness overcome him. An ache flared in his thighs, and soon his legs were trembling with effort; he identified the feeling, with surprise, as fatigue. It was as though he'd been running for hours. He stumbled against the wall and caught himself, glaring down at his legs.

"Something's wrong," he said, his voice loud and shrill in the silence of the tunnels. "My legs."

Sayoko and Jeremiah turned. He saw Jeremiah's eyes searching for him vainly, glassy with the light-amplification. "Probably your muscles are weak," he rumbled with sympathy. "You haven't walked in months."

Of course. Muscle atrophication. It was the kind of thing he'd always known about, but had never expected to affect him. He'd never known he would ever end up spending this long in confinement. It was so strange--he seemed to have left the cell so far behind. Just ten minutes ago he had felt nothing, had barely even had an existence to call his own. Now he felt as though the cell was someone else's story, or some dim memory from years past. It was another world, and a different man had lived there.

Suzaku shook his head at the strangeness of the thought. And then he eased off the wall, ignored the burn in his legs, and continued on after the others.

They were accosted only once, on their way up to ground level.

Three Britannian soldiers found them in a pitch-dark stairwell and questioned them, relaxed at first, the NV goggles like the eyes of spiders, bulbous on their faces. The leader leaned on the rail, nodded down at Sayoko and gave her a casual salute. He said: "Anything wrong down that block?"

"No," said Sayoko. "We're just on our way up."

The soldier's head dipped in a nod. "Weirdest thing I've ever seen. Emergency power should be back in maybe ten minutes. Looks like all the locks held, at least on this floor." He gestured to the freshly closed door up on the landing behind his team.

Sayoko responded with remarkable cool. "One of them on the floor below us was open. We found this prisoner wandering."

But the soldier stared at Jeremiah with a cold silence. He said eventually, an odd tone in his voice. "Is that Margrave Jeremiah?"

"Um," said Sayoko, who swivelled around to look at Jeremiah where he was lingering with his hand on her shoulder. "It… could be. Maybe. I think you're right."

There was a sudden rustling of activity among the soldiers. The leader glanced nervously back at his companions, muttering something barely audible. Sounded like, " "Gefjun… Do you… you got one on you?"

The others patted themselves down, came up empty. Their body language became noticeably more apprehensive. The leader turned back to Sayoko. "He's… he could be very dangerous," said the soldier as though reluctant to remind Jeremiah that he had the potential to be dangerous. "You have a Gefjun disturber, right?"

The pause was enough to tip him off. "Damn," he muttered, and gave a quick hand signal. His team's rifles were up immediately and pointed towards Jeremiah. "Get back from him," he warned Sayoko and Suzaku. "Don't try anything, Margrave," and then more softly he spoke to his teammate: "Call for backup."

Suzaku saw the other soldier reach to his helmet, and recognized the gesture from his days in the infantry: the man was about to engage his helmet mic and contact his controller. The handgun was heavy in Suzaku's hand, as a sudden thrill of excitement went through him. He snapped the gun up, barely thinking about the aim. He squeezed the trigger. It cracked and bucked in his hands, sending off a terrific flare in his goggles. The man he'd targeted spun aside with a shout, his hand flailing in the air.

Even as the other two were reacting, Sayoko moved. Her arm scythed about, whipping towards them, and finished with an open palm pointed at the floor. Suzaku saw the blurs of darkness, and then the soldiers toppled over as though shot through the head. She suddenly flowed up the stairs, where the one Suzaku had shot was groaning and cradling his arm. Her elbow drove into the side of his head and silenced him.

Suzaku stood over her where she knelt retrieving her throwing-stars, one from each neck of the men she had killed. Their blood seeped across the landing, dribbled over the steps, a black stain. She smiled down at the survivor, and at where Suzaku's bullet had pierced cleanly through the meat of his palm. She said, "Your morals have not changed. Thankfully, neither has your aim."

It was the only time they were given any trouble during the escape. Sayoko risked a little light, and in the bluish glare Jeremiah put on the least bloodstained of the three uniforms. He pulled the headset over his eyes, straightened, and let his mouth spread into a grin. Suzaku could not help but return the smile. He felt a giddiness in him. It was not over--his life. His life went on. And he was smiling. If he was smiling, and if Jeremiah was smiling, then maybe all that had happened thus far did not really matter all that much. Maybe these were the smiles of madmen. Maybe they were skull-grins. Maybe it didn't make a difference.

For some reason, there in the darkness, he could not find a reason to stop smiling.

They climbed another ten or fifteen flights of stairs, such that by the time they reached the top Suzaku's legs were shaking again and he had to catch his breath against the wall. Then they pushed through the little door and out into the facility proper. Suzaku bit off a yelp of pain and quickly pulled his night-vision goggles up against the sudden blaze of white. The lights had come back on. He saw a pristine hallway with a tiled floor. Sayoko had pulled off her goggles, but Jeremiah hadn't. Jeremiah said: "Sayoko. Can I switch them off? My implant--"

"Oh," she said in realization, and reached over. She touched a switch on top of Jeremiah's goggles, and he nodded in satisfaction. With the goggles still over his face, his rather noticeable bronze implant was hidden.

They moved through the facility without incident. Seemed like everywhere people were bustling around with important things to do. It occurred to Suzaku to ask Sayoko just who she was working with and how they'd killed the power, but now seemed a bad time. He focused on looking as though he was in a hurry to get somewhere and carry out important duties. He didn't look at anyone, only stared at Sayoko's back as she led them wordlessly through twists and turns in the complex. Eventually they exited through a set of glass doors and began to cross a paved section--outside.

It was the feel of open air, and of wind sliding over his cheeks, that nearly stopped Suzaku from moving. Nearly paralyzed him with a trembling awe. He had forgotten the wind. Literally forgotten that it existed, and now here it was all around him, nipping at him, apparently as happy with the reunion as he was--

Sayoko turned and motioned feverishly. He was standing in the middle of the road, staring at nothing. Embarrassed, he jogged to catch up with them. It was night, and cloudy. The stretch of pavement was wide, and in the distance he could see the silhouettes of guard-towers, and the snarls of barbed wire atop pale stone walls. Seemed overkill, really, for a prison located underground whose occupants never left their cells.

There was a tang of smoke on the air, and maybe something like slagged machinery. Smelled like a battle, actually, from what Suzaku could remember about battles. He looked around as he moved, seeing a lumbering cloud of smoke at one corner of the facility, at the base of which something was on fire. Suzaku caught up to Sayoko and Jeremiah, and said, "So how did--"

"I'll tell you later," she snapped. "Get in."

They were at a hefty military vehicle, a troop-transport truck. Sayoko had the key, and obviously intended to drive. Jeremiah and Suzaku got in the back, silently. The truck roared to life, and then set into motion. Suzaku leaned his head wearily against the window. Too much action for one day…

At the gatehouse, Sayoko offered some credentials to the guard. These were good enough that they were let immediately through. Soon they were hurtling down empty night-time highways. Sayoko drove intently for a long moment, checking her mirrors incessantly, as though worried about pursuit. Before long she relaxed, however. She slowed down, peeled off her headset and tossed it onto the passenger seat. Then her eyes found Suzaku's, in the rear view mirror.

"So," she called over the thrum of the engine. "Here's what happened: Miss Anya Alstreim found out where you were being kept--Jeremiah--and when I came to her she was already scheming something. So I offered my help. We planned and carried out the operation. While I infiltrated the prison, Miss Alstreim staged an attack. After all, the Knights of the Round are known to sometimes test the defences of these facilities--"

Suzaku snorted. "I don't know if this counts…"

"Right. Well, we'll see. She didn't get permission from the Knight of One, or anyone else, so there could be trouble."

"Knight of One…" Suzaku mumbled.

"That's Gino Weinberg now," Sayoko told him.

"I know," said Suzaku. "His promotion was my idea. Back when I was Zero."

"Maybe he'd help us--"

"Maybe," said Suzaku dubiously.

"Anyway," Sayoko went on, "She took out the generators and made a fairly terrific distraction. The rest was easy. I slipped in with these combats, unlocked your cell, and made my way down there."

"Well done," Jeremiah put in grandly, and clapped his hands together a few times. "We'll have to find some way to thank you."

Sayoko's voice was tight, suddenly, with emotion. "Thank me by helping me rescue Nunnally."

Jeremiah smiled. "Of course. That will be our next step, I assume." His turned to Suzaku across the back seat, his living eye glinting with a kind of zeal. "Eh, Suzaku?"

Suzaku only nodded listlessly with his head against the window. All the energy had seemed to drain out of him the moment he was sitting again. He wanted nothing more than to use his body again--like the old days. Maybe to go for a run. He remembered in the distant past how he had felt after a few solid hours of training with Todou: the blaze of exertion in his forearms from holding the bokken, the ache of the various temperate hits Todou would inflict with the wooden sword.

Now, though, all he felt was a kind of bone weariness. All the cares had come back to him. The things that he had so ruthlessly shed, the things of life that had vanished from him while in prision--they were all flooding back now. Already the non-existence he had enjoyed was being replaced by all the old tensions and worries. Amazing. Amazing, how now he could almost remember that cell with fondness.

It was the closest to death he had ever been.

It had been a featureless place. It had nothing--but it didn't need to have anything. It was a place where a soul could exist sealed away from the world, as good as dead. And with enough time not even boredom had existed anymore, blasted away by the sheer inexorable blackness. It was a place where there had been absolutely nothing. No life. No death. Nothing. The sheer bliss of it! Of being nonexistent! There had been times in that place when he could almost grasp the feeling of it.

But now it had all been carried away to some other place. Now he could barely remember what it felt like. It was as though his old self had been waiting on the doorstep of the cell to reclaim his body. Nothing had changed, after all that time in the dark! And the tiniest part of him, the smallest hateful part, wanted to go back.

So now he did what he could. He slid his head far down the chilly window, and went slowly to sleep.

Suzaku awoke from under a cloudy heat. It made no sense, at first. Why was he awake? And why was it warm? It was never warm. It was never cold, either. It was never anything at all.

But then the bleariness of sleep receded from his mind and he remembered what had happened. He lay awake for a few seconds without knowing anything except that he was free. Then he began to notice other things: he was warm because he was under a thick blanket on a tall bed. The light in the room was dim, bleeding in around the edges of a heavy curtain. The ceiling was white. The carpet was an undeterminable greenish-brown color common to hotels. The air smelled clean, faintly perfumed.

Slowly, Suzaku Kururugi sat up. His back was hurting. And his legs. In fact, now that he was paying attention, he noticed there were few parts of him that did not hurt. He groaned, reaching up to paw in his tangled greasy hair.

Someone was singing. An operatic bass voice over the hissing of a shower. Suzaku frowned. It seemed that he was listening to Jeremiah Gottwald singing in the shower. A murky smile spread over Suzaku's face, and then he shook his head in disbelief and fell back on the bed, arms spread wide. He stared for a long while at the ceiling.

A few minutes later the bathroom door came open and Jeremiah issued out of it, wearing a white bathrobe and ruffling his hair with a towel. He was still singing mindlessly, nonsense words, as he sat on the edge of a second bed and flipped the towel over his shoulder. His turquoise hair lay flatter than normal with dampness. He turned a broad grin upon Suzaku:

"You should have a shower. But don't shave, the stubble makes you harder to recognize."

Suzaku lurched up onto his elbows and blinked at the older man. "…Where's Sayoko?"

"Taking care of a few things, and catching up to Anya, I believe. She didn't stay with us here. We're supposed to meet the both of them in, I believe," he leaned to glance at the clock, "three and a half hours, at the Shopping Centre." Then Jeremiah waved a hand in the direction of the bathroom, and said pleasantly, "Shower. Please. For the sake of my nostrils."

Suzaku didn't move. He said, "Where are we?"

"New Tintagel. On the outskirts; we'll have to take a taxi downtown to meet the others. Sayoko left some money and clothing."

Suzaku frowned. New Tintagel was one of the larger cities on the east coast of mainland Britannia. With Pendragon obliterated, it had taken on a lot of government functions including being the new seat of the House of Lords. They had a lot of enemies in this city.

"Um," Suzaku scratched his cheek. "What about your implant? That's pretty visible."

Jeremiah was smiling. "Sayoko left a roll of gauze. I'll just bandage it up. It will look as though I've had some terrible facial injury."

Suzaku nodded sombrely. Then he pushed the blanket down off his body and eased his feet down to press into the carpet, wincing. He slouched there for a minute, massaging the back of his neck. "Did you carry me in here?"

Jeremiah nodded with a vaguely amused look. "You were sleeping so soundly."

Suzaku snorted. He heaved up to his feet and went in to the bathroom. The mirror was still fogged up from Jeremiah's shower, the atmosphere thick with heat and moisture. Suzaku closed the door. He wearily pulled off the remainder of his combat suit--Jeremiah and Sayoko had already removed his body armour, probably so he could sleep better. Underneath was the prison uniform: Suzaku tore it off and stared distastefully at its rumpled pile on the bathroom floor. He looked at himself in the mirror. He was thin and pale, and his hair was almost shoulder-length and thick with grease. His cheeks, chin, and upper lip were sparsely covered in brown hair. He scratched quizzically in the stubble. It was hard to imagine that Sayoko had been serious when she'd called him handsome.

Suzaku stood beneath scalding water in the shower and lathered himself for almost an hour. Finally, Jeremiah came to knock patiently at the door. They would have to leave soon or be late for their meeting with Sayoko and Anya. When Suzaku stepped out of the shower his skin tingled, and parts of him had turned bright pink. He dried himself, stepped forward. On an impulse, he swept his hand through the condensation on the mirror, and for a moment stared into his own emerald eyes. At least those would always be his.

He wrapped a towel around his waist and went out, the air of the room chilly after the shower. Sayoko had left clothing for him, a simple pair of jeans and a white short-sleeved shirt. Jeremiah was lounging in a chair to one side, one leg folded up onto the other. He was similarly dressed in casual clothing. With few words, Suzaku dressed himself, tucked in his shirt, and crossed his arms, waiting.

Jeremiah stood. "You look scruffy."

They left the room and checked out at the front desk. Jeremiah called a taxi while Suzaku waited on a leather couch in the lobby. They had stuffed all their old clothes into the shopping bags Sayoko had brought their new ones in. These bags, on the way to meet their taxi, they tossed into a garbage dumpster behind the hotel restaurant.

They rode for almost an hour in the taxi, over first country high-ways, and then city promenades, the roads rising up into bright helixes of steel and concrete, winding in and around the spires and towers of the city. Here and there were erected gigantic solar panels on steel frames, which supplied some of New Tintagel's power, as was customary for Britannian cities. Unlike the Tokyo Settlement, however, the weather in Britannia wasn't always sunny enough to rely on these. During the winter, Tintagel and the other metropolises relied on hydroelectric power, wind power, and their solar reserves. As Zero, Suzaku had seen documents suggesting that some scientists were trying to use the technique of a FLEIJA device to generate safe power. Having seen FLEIJA destruction for himself, he harboured deep reservations about such research.

They drove into the heart of the city. The causeway dipped down, swerving until it led them into a tunnel. Here the driver navigated carefully, around other taxies, cars, busses, and finally came to a halt next to the curb beside a massive set of doors. This was the main entrance for the Shalott Memorial Shopping Centre, or just the Shalott Centre. It was the largest and busiest mall in the world. Suzaku had never been before.

They paid the driver and disembarked into the faux-day of the underground, the lights gaudy and thick with advertising. They went up the wide front steps with their brass handrails, and Suzaku stared far up as they did so, seeing the art-deco façade of the place, a vaulting marble wall, carved with pillars and gargoyles, almost pyramidal in its design.

They went inside, browsing. It was good that they had left extra time to meet the others, for the concourse was sprawling and mazelike. Jeremiah knew only the name of the coffee shop they intended to meet at. Suzaku and he consulted lengthily with a map of the place before they located it and set off, over the jumble of walkways, the tangled silver escalators.

Eventually they arrived. The place was small and somewhat secluded, hollowed back into the shiny exterior, darker and rustic inside. The walls and floor were stylish and wooden. Jeremiah and Suzaku were early, and so browsed around the adjacent shops for a little while. In a boutique next door, Suzaku stood rotating a rack full of sun-glasses until he could find a pair he liked. He selected a set of black aviators and put them on his nose, staring at himself in the narrow mirror. With his eyes covered, he could barely recognize himself.

Jeremiah nodded appraisingly at him, his good eye blinking beside the swath of bandages covering the other half of his face. "Good choice."

So it was sporting a nice new pair of shades that Suzaku stepped back into the coffee shop and made for the back corner. Sayoko and Anya had arrived by this time, had obtained the only booth in the establishment, in the rear next to a brick fireplace. Suzaku and Jeremiah slid in beside them and for a moment nothing was said; Suzaku nodded grimly to Sayoko and Anya in turn, his gaze lingering for a moment on the latter, who he had not seen in quite some time. She had not changed much. The array of pink hair was the same, and the fact that she rose only as tall as his shoulder. She offered her usual solemn rosy stare, as though not in the slightest amazed by his sudden reappearance, alive, if thinner and covered in hair.

Anya told him, sagely, "They sell caramel mochas here. I saw on the menu."

Suzaku said, "Um. Good to see you, too."

"Sayoko said you were really Zero all this time," Anya said with boredom. Her small hand came up holding a pink phone; she aimed the camera at him and it make a little clicking noise. "You look like a monkey."

"Thanks."

"Hi, Jeremiah," she turned to him. "How was jail?"

"Not good at all," he said with relish.

"That's too bad," Anya turned her grim pink stare down and inspected the photo she'd taken of Suzaku.

She and Sayoko had ordered drinks, which arrived now; inexplicably, Anya had ordered a black tea instead of the caramel mocha she'd mentioned. The waitress took orders from Jeremiah and Suzaku; tea for the former, plain water the latter. They sat for a long while, their conversation meandering pointlessly. Suzaku did not pay attention to anything that was being said by the others. Eventually, after all the drinks had arrived, they started talking about more serious matters.

Jeremiah leaned in and spoke quietly. "I saw Nunnally at Aries palace. So what is our best approach to rescuing her?"

Sayoko said, with her elbows primly together on the table, "They could have moved her, don't forget. Especially considering you saw her, and now you've escaped. Maybe she's somewhere more secure now."

"Except that nowhere is more secure than Aries," said Jeremiah. Then he shrugged. "We need a source of information from within the government." And his orange eye looked up at Suzaku. "Ideas?"

Uncomfortably, Suzaku scratched his cheek. "Well. Before, I was in the government. But now I'm never going to be able to get information. That's the thing about Zero--you either are him or you're not, no middle ground."

"It's too bad you're not any more," said Jeremiah ruefully. "Schniezel would make a good asset right about now."

"Hold on a moment," Sayoko raised a palm to stop him, took a long sip, and exhaled. "So. Um. Who is Zero right now, then?"

Suzaku and Jeremiah exchanged frowns. "That is," said Jeremiah, "An excellent question." And he sat back with his long fingers entangling his chin. "Some person, probably. An ally of whatever faction is keeping Nunnally unconscious." But he looked perplexed.

Jeremiah went on, "You know, it was his voice that was wrong, when I met him. But it wasn't a stranger's voice, either. I knew something was wrong because it wasn't your voice," he gestured at Suzaku. "But I still recognized it. It took me a long time in prison, thinking it over, to finally realize it--I can scarcely believe it took so long. It was Lelouch's voice."

Suzaku's fingers curled into a fist. He knew that Jeremiah didn't mean it in that way. He knew Jeremiah didn't mean he was back, but still Suzaki was tense all over, just hearing that even his voice was back, like some poltergeist playing tricks.

"They used the wrong voice, then," Sayoko said, startling Suzaku. "A voice-modulator, like I used when I was impersonating Lelouch. But they used the voice of the old Zero, not Suzaku."

"Exactly," said Jeremiah. "So Zero could be anyone. He might not even always be the same person in every appearance."

Suzaku sat back. He was half-listening. In his mind he was trying to conjure up the sound of Lelouch's voice. If he ever met the new Zero… to hear that voice again… how would it feel? Nostalgic? He wondered.

Anya spoke, finally. She said, "So we need to get to the new Zero. Make him talk."

"That's true," Jeremiah was nodding. "He's the only person we know is our enemy."

Sayoko said, nodding. "The sooner the real Zero is back, the sooner we control Schniezel."

Suzaku looked up warily. They wanted him to go back behind the mask. He cleared his throat, then merely looked back down again. His thin fingers tapped nervously on the table. To be Zero. It was his punishment for all he'd done, but it wasn't the punishment he'd wanted. The punishment that he'd yearned for all this time was really no punishment at all, but a refuge. And in the cell he had found a measure of that refuge.

Now everything had crowded in at him again. He stared up at the others from beneath his tousled brown bangs. Their lips moved, speaking, making plans. They were grabbing the smoothness of the world, its white-paper simplicity, and crumpling it on itself, wrinkles and tears multiplying. It was all just building up upon itself, wasn't it? Since the dawn of time, mistake after mistake, until now every step brought them farther from perfection.

He craved the desolate calm he had caught in flashes in the cell. He had glimpsed it there in the dark. Something that allowed him to, in brief instants, understand what it meant to die. Something vast and immaterial, looming far above the scratching and squalling of humans in the dust and ruin of their own making. He had felt its presence, some dark saviour waiting to emerge and smooth out the wrinkles, correct the mistakes. And bring it all back to Zero.