Chapter 16: Twilight Zone
Gennai sighed as he surveyed displays in front of him. On five different screens a card showing the real world had been divided to allow him to inspect the damage he had to cause in detail. Hundreds of red dots were blinking and screaming for attention. Resigned he wrote his observations down and handed them to another him to pass it along to Lord Quinglongmon.
He then returned his stare to the offending points and stared analyzing. What to do where? Who? In what order? How to explain?
And the children….
Dr. Hiro Kido had experienced a lot of strange circumstances even before his youngest son became involved with another world.
For example one thing happened when he had just become a Doctor; the hospital had gotten a call late at night about an accident that happened at the outskirts of the city. A car had crashed into the side rail of a fairly simple street. An ambulance was requested along with a Doctor; despite it being his first time working outside a hospital Hiro had been confident in his skill. He had after all graduated with the best grades, nothing ,however, could have prepared Hiro Kido for what he had been about to see.
As it turned out the calling party had been the driver himself.
Back then mobile phones were still a rarity so the driver had walked to the next SOS box to request help. All that in itself wasn´t all that noteworthy had it not been for the fact that the driver had been the only person in the car and that he got impaled with an iron rod through the stomach during said accident. By all means the man should have been dead. But he wasn´t and didn´t die later. After few months Dr. Kido released him to the world once more.
But the incident that was happening at his hospital right now was definitely more uncommon and unnatural.
It was evening and the hospital was buzzing with live. Nurses hurried through the corridors, doctors were called in, OP rooms and beds were getting set up for the patients that were sure to arrive soon.
When exactly the entire hospital didn´t know, though. It wasn´t like they were arriving via ambulance. No, they were going to come right out of the PC, which was why Dr. Kido was supervising the linking of several screens and the arrival of beds to carry the patients and Digimon off to prevent a pile of bodies that would doubtlessly come into existence otherwise.
The more he thought about what was happening the worse he felt. He knew his son and his medical skills well. For an SOS to arrive wounds had to be too heavy and much that Joe didn´t know what to do. Preferring not to think about the alternative in which Joe wasn´t able to assess the state of health, Dr. Kido mentally formulated his next conversation.
And as unpleasant as it was Hiro once again lifted a phone of its holder and entered another familiar number.
Much too soon for his taste somone answered."Yes? Kamiya Yuuko here." He really hated this part of being a doctor. It was hard enough to do with strangers.
"Yuuko, it´s Hiro." He paused shortly. It never got easier, not with her, not with the other mothers. "Please stay calm and listen till the end." To his relieve she didn´t say anything, though he heard her taking a sharp breath. Idly he wondered to whom her thoughts jumped first. To Susumu, who was on his way back from work or to her children who were away doing their 'job'.
Children first, he´d say. Joe hadn´t said anything, but it had been obvious that his youngest had been expecting something big to happen. Apparently today had been the fateful day.
"A few minutes ago, Gennai sent this hospital a message. He said he´d sent the children through to us to the hospital and he said that…. That their condition is unknown."He paused to let her absorb his information, already expecting exclamations of denial that usually followed.
"No." It was just a faint whisper, but Hiro heard it anyway, because he had been waiting for it. "No! It can´t be. Please no! They promised!"
He really wanted to agree with her, but he couldn´t now. There were more important things.
"Listen to me", he interrupted her rambling, "their situation is unknown. Kari and Taichi could be just fine. But they are going to arrive here anyway, so please hurry and come over, too, before the paparazzi hear about this."
He didn´t wait for her to agree, ended the call and started dialing a new number, hating his job, his son´s choice and the Digital World.
He was cut off during his third call when the room suddenly lit up and the air filled first with silence and then steps and whispers of nurses who were trying to get the children who were still standing to lie down on a bed each and finally cries. Desperate, suffering and sad. Something a hospital was too familiar with.
He could tell at first glance that Yuuko was going to be disappointed.
Why did children, his child, have to be the one chosen?
Kari was digging restlessly with Gatomon on her shoulder and growing more panicked with every second. She didn´t have the energy or the will to hold it back any longer and she felt tears tickling her eyes, because she knew that this was the place where she and Gatomon were going to die. Dying, leaving the DigiWorld behind unprotected and helpless. Newer Digidestined will have to take over, suffer from killing innocents, experience despair and sorrow only to have their partner fall in the end. A first tear ran down her cheek and merged with the ever rising water at her waist.
She´d never talk to her friends again, never see her parents again, never again eat her mother´s exotic food, never see her father come home from work exhausted, never again could she speak to her brother and tell him how much he meant to her.
She still had so many things she still wanted to do. Kari didn´t want to die.
Her Digivice started glowing. It filled out the entire little space she, Takuya and Gatomon were in and it turned blindingly white. Kari didn´t close her eyes, not having the strength left to do so, but when it dimmed, she no longer was buried by tons of stones and rocks. Suddenly her lungs didn´t ache anymore from lack of oxygen, dirt no longer tickled in her face, it wasn´t unbearably hot any longer.
It was still bright, but a different kind of bright, a plain one.
Her legs gave out now that she didn´t have anything left to lean on and Gatomon dropped from her shoulder clumsily; falling to the ground and gasping for fresh air. Kari didn´t get that far. She managed to keep kneeling unsteadily till somebody carefully pulled on both her arms and helped her stand and told her that everything was alright and that she was going to be fine. Kari hardly heard the female voice; instead she identified her surroundings as a hospital.
A nurse helped her then, she guessed.
What about Gatomon? Glancing back as she was led towards a unbelievable comfortably looking bed, Kari saw that Gatomon was picked up by a nurse as well. That was when a mob of chestnut brown riddled with red strains caught her eye and tortured her ten times over, strangled her heart and froze her soul.
"Nii-chan!"
She ripped her arm away from the nurse and stumbled over to him through a chaos that had broken out with her scream. She noticed familiar figures in her sight, but didn´t bother to identify them, knowing hat she would come to regret her ignorance later. It didn´t matter, because she wasn´t sure there even was a 'later'. She only had eyes for her beloved brother, who wasn´t moving and had to be carried onto a bed and a pick ball that was strained with red and wasn´t moving either; looking dead.
Her brother! Koromon!
Slow as she was the nurse quickly caught up with her, pulled her carefully in the other direction against her will.
She was too weak!
Kari hadn´t been able to protect them, they got hurt, her brother, Koromon, Matt, whose bed already got pushed away, Joe, who was just lying there unmoving, TK, who sat on a bed holding Patamon in his arms, Mimi who was crying and Davis. Davis, whose dark brown hair had become even darker from blood and whose arm was bent in a strange direction and Chibimon, who despite being wounded himself never left Davis´ side, even with all many nurses swarming around him. And-
-everything darkened.
Izzy always thinks a situation through first before acting, but he was hard pressed to do so when he was no longer in mortal danger and so obviously save. There was almost nothing that could keep him rooted in place; even more so since he was the only one that had only sustained few scratches thanks to AtlurKabuterimon. He and the others were save and relived and that was all he needed to feel for now.
Because his logical thoughts and natural curiosity far outweighed unclear and confusing feelings his first urge was to suppress everything else and store it away for later. Finding out just how they had come from a remote and sealed off collapsed canyon in the Digiworld to a hospital in Odaiba was much higher on his priority list.
That was until he was unable to distance himself form his feelings and they returned while growing from unstructured and confusing to full grown horror, fear worry and guilt at the sight of Davis and Tai.
If only he had planned better, if he had created a better strategy. His brilliant mind came up with so many other things he should have done better to prevent this, especially now that he could look back. There were so many glaring mistakes. Why again had he thought they could take on an army that outnumbered them about one to onehundred? Why did he not bother to make sure they had a save escape route?
Izzy obeyed the nurse uncomplainingly as he thought about many different scenarios. He only stopped once to take Mochimon in his arms.
Cody connected with the ground firmly but surprisingly painless. Tired he opened his eyes and it took him a long time to realize that he was looking at a ceiling. A solid, white, and unmoving ceiling. The last time he remembered there had been no such thing. And yet it was there; white decorated with sterile, square lamps.
He was in a house. Why? How did he get there? Who saved him? He had been falling and trying to protect Armadimon-
Armadimon!
He abruptly jerked upwards only to notice then that he had been lying on a solid ground. His arms were still holding Armadimon and Cody noticed with unbelievable relieve that he was still breathing. The hole in his body was still closed by ice, which he saw now was partly made of Armadimon´s own frozen blood. Just looking at it he wanted to despair.
However, he chose to instead avert his eyes and search for help.
Had he been in his normal state of mind Cody would have been surprised to see that he was in what appeared to be a hospital with nurses hurrying around, trying to talk to him and coax Armadimon out of his arms and Dr. Kido together with some other doctors run off with occupied beds. Three beds if he counted right.
Cody was also mildly aware that it was terribly loud around him, but somehow if didn´t register in his mind.
Equally distant he watched as four Gennais materialized out of a screen. One headed directly towards him while two others took Koromon and Wormmon out of Ken´s and a nurse´s hold. The fourth one walked over to a nurse in charge, exchanged few words with her and then walked over to Koichi´s bed, which was getting pushed out of the room. He saw a blond woman enter and recognized her as Matt´s and TK´s mother. She never stepped more than one foot into the room before being forcefully pushed out by a male nurse. Cody saw him lock the door behind her.
How Cody saw all that was a mystery to him when he was actually reacting to Armadimon related happenings only.
One Gennai had arrived in front of him and knelt down to his eyelevel. Cody didn´t know who that Gennai was but encouraged by the kind smile he was showing he handed Armadimon carefully over to him. The Gennai lookalike didn´t spare him a second glance and instead hurried back towards a screen only to disappear with two others of his kind and two more badly hurt Digimon.
Without Armadimon to keep him going Cody felt lost and was finally overwhelmed. First his eyes stung, then the noise suddenly flowed back into his brain and finally everything turned black around him.
Gennai surveyed the data and slowly melting ice lying on a table in front of him.
His copies had brought the Digimon with live threatening injuries to the castle where they were equipped best to take care of heavy injuries while he had made a raw analysis of important data. When the group of Digidestined had been forced to a gate he had created Gennai had quickly scanned their health and with horror he had seen that they were all wounded more badly than ever before. He was pleased to see, however, that their numbers had increased by one again; a young boy he identified as Tommy with the help of profiles Izzy had sent him.
It had been his ingenious idea to use the theory Izzy had sent him about the digital gates to temporally open all doorways and force a transfer with the help of the children´s Digivices; sending an order to transport every human in their vicinity to a location he had set.
And how luck it was that he gave the order and that he had defined human loosely in it. The effects of that one action could sadly be seen all over the world, though.
Gennai had decided to act when he lost contact with Izzy´s laptop and looking back on it now he saw just how fortunate it had been that he had acted so fast. It saved the children´s lives, he concluded as he looked at a picture of the former battlefield.
He had a photo of it in front of him together with other data from the transfer.
He frowned as he looked at it. Without analyzing the deeper details he couldn´t be absolutely sure, but the picture the numbers gave him almost convinced him that it was an irreversible process he was looking at. He couldn´t help but feel sad and sorry for the children, even if they had said they were prepared, even if they had said it couldn´t be helped and that they were fine with it. Gennai knew they weren´t. Children were children for a reason and not made for such grave decisions.
Promising himself to get back to that matter later he put the records aside to pick up different ones in their stead.
These ones were notes about the barrier that was keeping the Human and Digital world apart after his emergency orders. These results weren´t looking too good either. The line was frighteningly thin.
He sighed and was just about to write his next report to Lord Quinglongmon when a clone disturbed the peace of his office.
Dr. Hiro Kido decided that after he had taken care of the heavily wounded children and assured their parents that no one had suffered lasting injuries it was best to take a look at the three children that had no parents come for them.
When he arrived at their room – he had let them be put together to keep a better watch on them since he knew at least one of them had a dangerous habit- he found the digital man with the name Harry sitting on a chair and watching the children attentively. Gennai had requested of the hospital that they only treated the wounds the three had suffered with the simplest medications and asked that Harry was going to treat any complications that would appear or heavier injuries.
And frankly speaking, Dr. Kido was terribly glad that he didn´t have to worry about them, because he had no idea what to do. He had thrown a quick look at their stats in between his treatments of the other children and found them literally impossible.
At least two of them should be dead. The boy Dr. Kido had already treated once had a temperature of normally deadly 47°. Another boy, the smallest, on the other hand had hypothermia with 32°.
It was early morning when Hiro stepped into the room; it had been about ten hours since the children arrived and he was tempted to just turn around and leave the room when he was assaulted by the unpleasant and definitely unnatural high room temperature; it was winter, the window was open and yet it was about as hot as in summer.
"How are they?" While he knew none of the three personally and their state didn´t unsettle him as much as the wounds and scratches of his son and other children he had seen growing up, he was still unsettled when he thought about these three´s parents who had no idea where their children were or even if they were still alive.
"Getting better, we think," the clone of Gennai replied politely, "the temperature of all of them is going down." He got up and put a finger on one of the older boy´s forehead. "Takuya already stopped sweating and his temperature has gone down to…" the digital man closed his eyes in concentration, "…42°."
Dr. Kido couldn´t believe that he thought of that number as healthy.
Harry removed his finger and walked over to the next bed in line while Dr. Kido idly wondered how useful it was to be able to take temperature with a simple finger. Stopping at the bed of the dark haired boy with the most severe injuries -up to seven stitches were needed to make him stop bleeding just at one cut- Harry expression fell to concerned and he sighed silently.
"Koichi is getting much better as well, he has recovered best as far as we can tell. Sadly, however, that is because he is responding to a special treatment I´ve used. As you can see," he pulled an arm of the boy from under his blankets and showed Hiro three stitches, "this wound has healed already a three days' worth."
Indeed. Had he not known how old the cut really was Hiro would have estimated it to be few days old. It was unnatural, sure, but not more than the other two´s conditions, yet apparently it seemed to bother Harry quite a bit, when it in reality was good and could possibly save many lives in the future if they could find out what made the healing process speed up.
"Why do you think it is bad?" He asked, wording a question Harry surely had expected.
"Because what I tried shouldn´t have helped if everything was all right with him."
"What other problems does he have?"
"An illness that no medicine in the world can heal. They all have."Harry gazed at the three.
For a frightening moment Dr. Kido thought his son was included in that ominous 'all', but then he remembered that Gennai had requested special care for the three in this room only and he relaxed. Guilt was tickling his mind, though, because he was happy that it was not his son, but other people´s children instead.
"Is it contagious?" He only asked, sensing that the digital man wasn´t going to say much more on the matter.
Harry shook his head and walked to the last bed after putting the black haired boy´s -Koichi´s- arm back under the cover.
"Tommy´s temperature has fallen as well to 30°", he informed Hiro after repeating the process of taking temperature with one finger, "but unlike with Takuya we can´t even guess how far it is supposed to drop."
"So what are you going to do?" He questioned, wanting to be informed as much as possible about how the digital men were planning on getting the most unknown boy back to health.
"We wait until one of the other two wakes up to hopefully add to our database."
Koichi opened his eyes and knew immediately he was dreaming, but it wasn´t an unwelcome one, quite on the contrary he felt more comforted by it than he remembered being for a long time.
Darkness behind him, Light in front of him and grey twilight in between were calm, soft and radiated belonging. It was endless and yet Koichi didn´t feel lonely. He felt at home and he wouldn´t have moved from the darker part of the zone had he not seen a shadow appearing in the light part.
The form wasn´t quite as tall as an adult, but was still bigger than a child. Judging by the outlines the shadow had the same body structure as him and as the swaying form stabilized Koichi saw an all too familiar ponytail and a reassuring back.
Knowing fully well that in a dream time didn´t move normally and that there was no need to hurry he still moved faster towards the silhouette than he should with his wounded body. But he didn´t care, because it was Koji who had appeared. His little and yet so much stronger brother.
Koji turned around to him when Koichi left the twilight part of the zone and entered light´s part. Koichi wanted so much to run up to him and hug his twin, but he slowly came to a stop at arm's length when he saw the distant and empty look in his twin´s eyes.
The fright he felt right then was different from what he had felt ever before. It was a dream and at the same time he knew that it was really Koji standing in front of him, and not a projection of his wishes. It was Koji himself and it hurt Koichi to see an absolutely empty expression on his twin´s face. Empty just wasn´t Koji; while his face was often blank his eyes never were, especially not when looking at him.
Koichi would have sworn right then and there that he would make the one responsible regret had it not been for dawning realization that made Koichi´s worries seem petty on Koji´s face. Physical harm was one thing, psychical another.
"Koji?" He asked tentatively. Just to reassure himself; it wasn´t like Koji would forget him.
"Koichi." Koji smiled softly. "You are save."
"Yeah." Koichi didn´t have to ask what Koji meant. He knew his twin was talking about his time inside the fortress, his battle against Phelesmon, and he knew that it had been Koji´s presence back than that had allowed him keep on fighting, that it had been him, who saved him during his evolution and that Koji had been the one to move Lowemon´s arm to protect him. It was always him who did the saving and not the other way around. Even though he was the elder.
He felt like laughing looking back on it now. Koichi could never save Koji. Of course the rescue wasn´t going to work. Koichi wanted to cry.
"Do you know where we are?" Koji asked looking around and his eyes leaving his twin´s for the first time.
Koichi shook his head. "I like it here," he said taking in the scenery again as well.
Koji nodded and returned to watching him, a faraway look in his eyes. "Where my body is, I can´t move," he said after a while.
Koichi stiffened and Koji smiled at him in a sly way that he had surely copied from Takuya, he noted with fondness. Not that he would ever say that out loud. Koji most likely wasn´t aware of it anyway.
"But I can move my mind. They thought channeling my energy to control others was going to be easy." Koji scoffed. "They have no idea what they got into whey we got dragged into this mess for their petty ambitions."
"They sure didn´t," Koichi agreed, "they are going to regret it when Takuya is going to trample down the door to the leader ´s quarters screaming bloody murder."
Koji snorted. "I´m sure that will be a pretty good wake up call, but actually I was planning on bothering them while they were still asleep." Koji stuffed his hands in his pockets and turned a little away from him, but his eyes never left him. "You see, while I can move my mind I can´t leave my body alone."
Koichi nodded, understanding all too well what a body without a reasonable mind was capable of.
"I was wondering," Koji continued, now with a smirk that usually spelled trouble for Takuya, "do you think, seeing how we somehow are talking like this despite being far apart, that you can help me out with that?"
Koichi was infected and had to smirk as well.
"My pleasure."
In case you didn´t know, 'Nii-chan' means 'big brother'.
Now, that was definitely a sudden cut. One moment as good as dead and the next beautifully save and taken care of. Hope it was a good surprise. xd
I gave the name Hiro to , because I thought if fit him well, better than some other long syllabled Japanese name.
I´m looking forward to reviews and comments. :) And thanks as always.