Disclaimer: I do not own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.
The research center, the room with the now defused bomb.
"This amount of C4…" The young man couldn't stop staring at the explosives. "You don't smuggle this much into a building under a jacket. Especially not with the security measurements Tsuru had set up… and how did it get in here, of all places?"
"If you're honest with yourself, you already know the answer", Chance replied quietly. He hated moments like that, breaking the news to a client that a very near and dear one had betrayed him. He'd rather take another round with the bomb instead.
"This is just not possible. Why should he…?"
The room's steel doors slid open and the CEO-to-be let the sentence trail off.
"Because you were on the verge of doing something terrible", his father, the old CEO, said.
Chance wondered if he should leave the two alone, but there was still the possibility that the old man would try so set off the bomb after all. And this bulk under his jacket… the CEO was armed. He decided to stay, his gun at the ready.
The son was lost for words.
"You don't understand, do you?", the father said softly. "This anti-flu remedy you developed… you used bio-hacking to make it. Discovered a whole new method of manipulating viruses. You're using it for a good cause, but once the method becomes public… it could easily be turned into one of the most terrible weapons ever, right along with the nuclear bomb."
Chance suddenly felt very cold. All the relief he had felt when the bomb was defused had disappeared. Was it true what the old man was saying?
"Why didn't you just talk to me…?" The young man was devastated.
The father shook his head. "If I had known what you were doing, I'd have stopped you years ago. But you were so keen on proving yourself to me, on impressing me… you used your own sponsors, your own money for your funding and kept your results secret from me, all to…create a splash… "
Chance tried to calm himself, tried to think clearly. Had he just helped to move the world a little closer to destruction?
"You killed Tsuru over this…" The son was crying by now.
"If you let this remedy out on the market, he'll have been only the first victim in a long, long line."
For a long moment, silence reined.
Chance weighed his options and realized he had none. There was nothing he could do to stop the young man from making the remedy public. All he could do was hope that the father's words got through to him. All the effort, all the danger, all the death… the scientist, the Crane… This was ridiculous in its senselessness.
The son got up. "You totally lost it. Because of the vague possibility that someone might use the remedy for something bad you were willing to kill hundreds of people?"
"There will be hundreds of thousands, should that "vague possibility" become a reality."
Chance looked from one to the other and felt the urge to rub his hands together, he felt so cold.
Nothing he could do…
Who of the two was right? He felt incredibly lost. Part of him actually wished the old man would try and set off the bomb after all. The look of peace on the Crane's face kept coming back to him. He got up and walked out of the room.
Peace.
He was almost at the elevator when he heard a gunshot. He didn't go back to check what had happened. Instead he stepped into the cabin, realizing that he needed to find the boy and explain to his mother what had happened to the Crane. Unless, of course….
But the building didn't explode.
He went to find Isamu.
… … …
San Francisco. The warehouse. A couple of days later.
Chance had remained behind at the research center to help the boy Ilsa had rescued and his mother with getting started into a new life. Guerrero wasn't quite sure why, but Chance would tell him eventually.
Anyway, Chance's absence had given him time to finally use the program he had installed on the office's computer and feed it with the test result he had gotten from one of his contacts. At first nothing alarming had popped up, but Guerrero wouldn't have been Guerrero, hadn't he dug deeper.
In hindsight, he wished he hadn't.
The information had shown up an hour ago, and he still couldn't stop staring at it, as if it would somehow go away again.
Oh damn.
This was … bad?
A totally alien thought crept up in his mind.
He needed to talk to Winston about this.
... … …
Chance felt immeasurably tired when he stepped out of the office's elevator. All his limbs felt like lead. Being with Isamu and his mother had been hard. The boy was devastated when he found out his friend was dead and the woman couldn't stop crying. Aside from this the news came through that the old CEO of the pharmaceutical company had died in an "accident" in the safe room of the new research center. Rumor had it that he had committed suicide, but Chance suspected he had gone for the bomb after all and the son had somehow managed to get hold of his father's gun.
Whatever was going to come out of this in the end, it was out of his hands and that thought, together with the recent discoveries he'd made about the Crane's personal life, added to the deep feeling of complete senselessness he had been carriying with him ever since the defusing of the bomb. What was he doing all that for? He thought of Ames, trying to save her brother, trying to give her life a meaning.
Peace.
The sounds of a TV caught his attention. Ames, upstairs in his living-room. He'd almost forgotten she was still – living? staying? – here.
"I thought you'd come back tomorrow", she smiled sheepishly as he walked in. "I hope you don't mind?", she asked, feet propped up on his coffee table, large bowl of popcorn in front of her.
"What's on?", he asked.
"Jersey shore is next", she munched.
He sat down by her side. For a while nobody said a word, then Ames quietly murmured: "I understand why you saved me."
Chance took a deep breath. "And I understand why you didn't want to be saved."
He looked so terribly forlorn, Ames reached out and pulled him into an embrace, like she would have embraced a child. He hesitated, struggled for a moment, then gave in. Hugged tightly in her arms, he watched Jersey Shore.
… … …
Other end of the city, same time, a studio slightly resembling a dentist's office.
Ilsa's hand hovered above the door handle for a moment. Should she really…? But then somebody from the inside – oh, it was the artist himself – had already noticed her arrival and there was no going back anymore.
"I'm glad you could find me an appointment on such short notice", she told him.
He smiled and led her to a room with two chairs, impressive looking equipment (again, not unlike a dentist's) and lots of pictures on the walls. "I feel honored you asked for my services, Mrs. Pucci. Now tell me, what can I do for you?"
She removed her jacked, revealing that she was wearing nothing but a top with spaghetti straps underneath. He took in the henna tattoo with professional admiration. "That's an awesome piece of work. Do you want me to conserve it?"
"Just one element." She took a picture out of her purse. It had taken her ages to draw it with the help of a mirror. "There's one sign on my shoulder blade which looks like this…"
He studied the picture that showed a single Kanji - 絆
"I want to keep that one."
He nodded, motioned her to sit down and, after a moment of preparation, began to work.
As the tattooist's needle broke skin, the thinnest trickle of blood ran down her back.