Note: I live in polar bear land and university was cancelled for a few days due to snow, so of course, instead of studying, I wrote this.

It's also ended up being super long because I said I wasn't going to do Maki's moment just yet but ended up doing most of it anyways because I'd already planned where in the plot this chapter was going to end (and didn't get to it, but that's ok); apparently Eli also needed her moment, so here we are. It's been fun - especially writing Maki because it's been awhile since I've done aggressive-type tsundere personalities with a load of sarcasm, so I hope you all enjoy surgeon!Maki.

"My father created the Edenra virus.

There isn't any real point in denying it… and to be honest, why should I? I've spent so damn long trying to run away from it and it's never worked out for me. I spent my time in university being followed by whispers everywhere I went, and those sure as hell didn't stop even after I'd graduated and started working. In those years, there were only two people who didn't treat me like absolute crap because of who he was.

But hell if I'm going to allow the rest of my life to be dictated by him. If he created this, then I'm going to find the solution to this. It's taken me a long time to finally stop feeling haunted by his legacy, and it's about time that I created my own." —Nishikino Maki

Maki stared stubbornly at the glowing screen of her laptop, as though it could offer her the answers to the questions she'd hastily scribbled on the inside ofher wrist while she'd been eating. Technically, it was a terrible habit, as Umi often mentioned, but unfortunately die-hard habits didn't just go away on their own. Besides, writing things on her wrist helped her remember things that she normally would've forgotten by the time she had an opportunity to think about them again. So what if it's going to give me cancer?

She had spent the last couple of hours in the university morgue, doing an autopsy on the man that had died at the scramble a few days ago. Upon initial assessment, she hadn't found anything to note. He had appeared to be relatively healthy, and sure, he had a few greying hairs on his head, but who didn't these days? Maki was convinced she would start sprouting some by the following week if the police department didn't stop piling autopsy after autopsy on her head.

When she had looked more closely, however, she noticed a few scars just beside the man's ears. While they could be passed off as normal scars, it was unlikely that he would have a bilateral set of straight, identical scars on his scalp. The only plausible answer to this particular conundrum was that he'd gotten a facelift. But why? she had mused as she inspected the skin underneath his jaw, the other telltale site of plastic surgery. Sure enough, she had found a few scars there that were again too straight and too neat to be from wounds.

The next thing on her list had been the bullet wound in his chest, since she couldn't figure out why the man would've needed a facelift, especially given his true occupation—thanks to Eli—and the relatively new quality of his facial scars. Unfortunately, she wasn't a physicist, but Maki had seen enough murder victims and action movies to know that sniper rifles tended not to leave anything behind if they hit their target. The hole in his chest was big enough to put a large fruit in, and it was also the source of her current dilemma.

She examined the bullet in question—securely tucked away in an evidence bag—while she thought. One of her lab techs had already run some tests on it, but he'd been unable to find anything on it apart from the victim's blood. The only thing that was odd about it was that it had no identification. Weapons manufacturers, at least in Tokyo, were required to put an identifying serial number on all their weapons, including projectiles said weapons could fire. Not only did the bullet in question have none, but the make of the bullet was also off from current weapon standards, but she didn't know enough about weapons to know if it was sub-optimal or not. Maki was rather hoping Umi would be able to bring a particular blonde down to the lab—researching weapons and calculating force of impact wasn't one of her fortes, but she could probably bully Eli into doing it.

Probably. If Eli was in a good mood.

The sound of the lab door being unlocked behind her startled her a little, but Maki didn't feel the need to turn around: there were three people that the door allowed access into the lab to, and one of them was herself.

The single set of footsteps behind her was too quiet to be Eli, and Maki turned around with the full intent to berate Umi for not dragging Eli along with her until she caught the expression on Umi's face. She clamped her mouth shut before she even opened it—there were times to have a smart mouth around Umi and now certainly wasn't one of them.

She waited, mentally counting to five as Umi gingerly lowered herself into the other revolving chair in her lab. When she got to five, and Umi still hadn't said a word, she broke the silence. "What?"

Umi pulled her phone out of her pocket and put it on Maki's cluttered desk before taking a breath. "How much do you trust politicians, Maki?"

The question surprised her—not because it was unexpected, but because she knew Umi knew the answer to it: Maki trusted politicians about half as far as she could throw them.

She raised an eyebrow before raising a finger to twirl at a lock of red hair. "I don't," she replied. "Why?"

"Toujou-sama just manipulated Eli into helping her for God knows how long."

Maki stared at her blue-haired friend for a full ten seconds. She was on the brink of asking if Umi had finally mastered a poker face, but then she remembered that Umi didn't joke.

"Toujou? Toujou?" she spluttered. "As in, head of state, Toujou?"

Umi nodded.

Maki pushed her chair away from the table so fast that Umi started. "You're actually serious. No, wait. Scratch that. Eli's actually serious about this. Did she leave already? Is she stupid?"

Umi hadn't moved from her chair, despite Maki's reaction. "Why didn't you stop her, Umi?" she demanded as she stood up, disbelief and anger coursing through her veins as she started to pace—her favourite method of dealing with stress.

"You know what she promised her, right?" Umi sounded resigned.

Maki didn't, but she could guess, especially from the emphasis Umi had placed on certain words in that particular sentence. Of course. "Damn it," she cursed. "Damn it, Eli! She puts on this frost queen impersonation until someone brings that up, and then all of that goes out the window." You… you sentimental idiot, Eli.

Umi had watched her outburst with furrowed brows, chin resting on her hands, clearly thinking hard. "So, you definitely think Toujou-sama cannot be trusted, then."

Maki felt her hands clenching into fists. "No way," she growled. She shook her head, trying to clear it. "Politicians don't give a crap about the people that actually live in this city. It's all about the stinking rich corporations, the powerful companies, and the stupid bureaucracy that allows them to do whatever the hell they want." Her voice hardened as she continued. "Toujou's no different from the rest of them. She just tries to hide it behind her pretty little face."

She finally sat back into her chair with a thump, feeling drained as silenced ticked between them for several minutes. She almost wanted to go out there and drag Eli back herself. "Why is she so damn irrational whenever it comes to things like this?" she burst out suddenly, unable to contain her frustration.

Umi stood up to collect her bow from where she'd left it on one of her operating tables. There was a subtle hint of sorrow in her voice as she spoke. "You know why."

Finally defeated, Maki found that she had no argument for that particular insight. She did, indeed, know why.

If I was her, could I do what she's about to do?

Eli found herself standing outside the district building. She had never been to this particular building before, although she had seen it more times she cared to count on television, thanks to it being Toujou's location of choice whenever she had to appear in front of the media.

Pulling her blonde hair into a ponytail and sticking the stray ends behind her ears, she walked through the large gate, consciously aware of the curious looks she was already attracting from various politicians. I should've thought about what I was wearing before I came here. With exposed shoulders and several intentional rips on her jeans, she stuck out like a sore thumb.

Ignoring the looks, she strode forward purposefully, fingers on both hands curled into fists at her sides. When she entered the building, the foyer was mercifully emptier than the grounds outside—there were always some sort of activist group doing gatherings in the lawn outside the district building and Toujou had made it illegal for peaceful demonstrations to be stopped.

The same receptionist that had greeted her the previous evening at Toujou's office building was sitting behind a similar desk. Eli noted that she also looked like she hadn't slept, judging from the bags under the rim of her glasses. She looked up as Eli approached her, and straightened several stacks of paper on her desk as she pointed a man down a particular hallway.

Eli was slightly taken aback when the woman rose and gave her a small bow. "Ayase-san," she greeted in the same small voice as she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose a little. "Please come this way," she said. Eli caught the nameplate on the woman's desk as she led her up a flight of stairs: Koizumi. It wasn't a surname she recognized, but she made a mental note to remember it in case it came up in her files in the future.

Koizumi paused outside of a large set of double doors. Even if she'd never been to the district building before, Eli could guess whose office this was. She watched as the brown-haired young woman raised a timid hand to knock twice, and a face she had seen many times on television opened the door a few moments later.

Fujiwara Hayato was Toujou's chief advisor. In his sixties now, he had been a prominent Tokyo politician starting over thirty years ago. A staunch supporter of the senior Toujou's platform, he had seen fit to continue to advise his daughter after his death. However, he belonged to an elitist circle of bureaucrats and businessmen alike, and Eli wondered if he had ever known what it was like to fight for his life in the streets of Tokyo in the first few days after the Ceresis attacks. Based on his current opposition of Toujou's newest law-in-making, she doubted it.

He looked down at the two of them as though they were pests he wanted to get rid of. Judging by the expression on his face as he raked his steel-grey gaze over Koizumi, he didn't have a very high opinion of her. Eli watched the expression in his eyes harden as they landed on her, but she refused to break eye contact, holding his gaze with an emotionless one of her own. By nature, she didn't back down from that sort of scare tactic.

"Uhm, Toujou-sama told me to show Ayase-san to her office when she got here," Koizumi stammered, clearly intimidated by the man who didn't seem to want to open the door wide enough to let them though.

"Ah, she's here already?" Toujou's voice carried through the crack in the door. "We'll continue our discussion later then, Fujiwara-san." The tone in her voice was cheerful, but clearly dismissive, as the older man let himself out, sending a contemptuous look their way as he left down the hallway.

Koizumi pushed the door open a little wider and held it open with her arm. It was obviously an invitation and Eli felt apprehension grip her stomach as she walked through the door.

Toujou's office was exactly the same as it always appeared in press conferences—there was too much plush and crystal and briefly Eli wondered how many starving people on the streets of Tokyo it would've fed during the worst of the Ceresis attacks if the government didn't spend it all on the district building. But she wasn't here to question—at least, now wasn't the time—and she made note of the watchful gazes of two armed soldiers standing guard on either side of the inside of the door.

Toujou herself was dressed in a matching blue outfit this morning, and Eli noticed that she had taken out the braid she'd worn in her hair the previous night before she bent her head in a customary bow. When she looked up, Toujou was resting her chin on both her gloved hands as she motioned for her to sit.

"I wanted to speak to you briefly before the district meeting today." Her voice was significantly less animated as Eli sat down. "As you know, the district leader of Kyoto went missing this morning."

Eli resisted the temptation to ask what that had to do with her. The gaze in Toujou's green eyes grew serious as she continued. "I don't expect this to be an isolated event, nor is it a coincidence."

"Why not?"

It was time to figure out just what Toujou was planning, and if she had to antagonize her in the process, then it was all the quicker to the real person underneath the charismatic mask.

"I know you are a smart woman, Ayase-san," Toujou replied delicately. "You wouldn't be sitting here in front of me if you weren't. That being said, I didn't just hire you for your intelligence. You'd be correct in assuming that part of my personal interest in you is that you work for yourself and have no ties to any business or military corporation in this city. If our partnership is to continue, I expect things to remain that way."

If that was what Toujou had been concerned about, then she had no cause for worry. Eli bit her lip before she could ask about what Toujou had promised her in return.

Toujou's voice grew thoughtful as she continued. "However, your performance last night was no less than what I expected of someone of your reputation. As Kouchou explained to you last night, your anonymity will be preserved during this time. Of course, it also goes without saying that anything you see or hear—or discuss with me—remains confidential, but I believe Kouchou already touched on that. You qualify—along with the people you live with—for personal security as well. I will also see to it that accommodations will be made for you in the district building should you choose to live here during this time."

"No thank you," Eli replied stiffly without hesitation, knotting her hands her in lap.

A small smile twitched at the corner of Toujou's mouth. "It is up to you whether you want to use it, of course, but the accommodations will be made." She stood up, rearranging her hair that rested on her left shoulder. "Now, I believe it's time for the district meeting."

Without so much as a backwards glance, she made her way to the door, leaving Eli utterly speechless. What? But we haven't even discussed— Irritated frustration grated against her nerves as she tried to control her temper, biting down on the inside of her cheek until she was sure she wouldn't say something that would get her arrested. Casting a wary glance at the two soldiers who were clearly waiting for her to get out of the room, she stalked forwards and almost slammed the door behind her before she remembered where she was.

Eli spied Toujou's long, violet hair down the hallway, and assumed that she was supposed to follow. I can't believe this. She realized that her slender fingers were trembling and she clenched them into a fist again.

As annoyed and as furious as she was, now was not the time to have an outburst, especially when she was surrounded by security guards, and especially not at the leader of the Tokyo District herself. She took a long breath in through her nose, forcing herself to relax. To sabotage Toujou's expectations of her now would be more or less suicide—there would be about thirty different politicians in the room and Eli was pretty sure a number of them had the influence to have her arrested and tried on the grounds of refusing to cooperate. All Toujou had to do was say the word. Damn it.

She realized that Toujou had stopped just outside of the door labelled Conference Room. Her security guards were standing a respectable distance back from them as Eli stopped behind her. "I don't need to find out anything from any of the other districts today," Toujou murmured in a low voice without turning around. Her voice was so quiet that if it hadn't been for the fact that she was the only person Toujou could've possibly been speaking to, Eli might not have paid any attention to it at all. "All I want you to do is to stop any attempts any one of them might be making to gain information from us. Can you do that?"

Eli was taken aback, momentarily forgetting her annoyance with her current head of state. She narrowed her eyes as she thought through what Toujou had just said, realizing that Toujou had already calculated the risks versus the benefits of the sacrifice she was choosing to make. For the first time, Eli felt a small prickle of admiration for the young woman in front of her—there was a reason she had stayed in power in the eight years since her father's death.

"Yes," she replied.

Toujou gave her a glance out of the corner of her eye. "Good. You'd better get ready then," she said, as she opened the doors.

One of the security guards beckoned her over to a corner before several of the politicians already in the room could gape at her. She noted that there were less than a dozen of them present and realized that these were not the people Toujou held debates with, but her advisors. A thin sheen of sweat was beginning to form in her palms and Eli realized she'd forgotten her gloves. It wasn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but the mixture of apprehension and frustrated impatience was beginning to make the smallest dents in her outwardly calm disposition. Get a grip on yourself.

The computer screen was already loaded with the details of the upcoming conference and Eli realized that this conference in particular would not be broadcasted to any media outlet. Briefly, she thought back to what Kouchou had told her the night before about leaks happening in the district building, and wondered why Toujou had chosen to hold this conference here, before she remembered that that was exactly why Toujou had hired her in the first place.

Video feed of the other nine district leaders in Japan began to pop up in the conference room. Eli scanned them quickly before glancing up once at Toujou. Video of her advisors were not being broadcast to the other district leaders, and it seemed that the other district leaders were employing the same tactic. However, just because she couldn't see them didn't mean that they weren't there.

Quickly typing a basic program to monitor the firewall that Toujou's tech specialists had already set up, Eli sat back in her seat a little, only half-paying attention to the things that were being said.

The first blip on her radar came about halfway through the conference, and it caught her attention almost immediately, alerting her to an attempt made to crack the rudimentary firewall. Quickly rewriting the security protocol, she ran a program of her own, fishing out several different protocol addresses it could've belonged to. Noting with grim satisfaction that whoever it was was having more difficulty with her rewritten security, Eli set her sights on cracking the exact address the breach had come from.

Her first investigation revealed over fifteen different places the address could've come from, all from different parts of various districts in Japan. This did not surprise her. She opened up a new window on the side of her screen, wishing that she had thought of this particular program before she'd come: networks were as unique as fingerprints, and packing terabytes of data on one fibre-optic cable was going to leave some residue data lying around somewhere. It was possible to trace that sort of data, if you knew what you were looking for. Typing as fast as possible, she set the program to search for potential matches within the parameters she had set. You can fool a basic program, but you can't hide where you're doing it from.

Two matches came up on her screen as the program she'd written crunched through network data, occasionally necessitating Eli to bypass a security protocol or two, while she monitored her own security on Toujou's network. One was Kyoto's Hall of Justice. Not likely, given that it had been Kyoto's district leader who had gone missing, but she supposed she couldn't just dismiss the possibility.

The other was registered to a Misawa Shou in Osaka, Japan. To be precise, the address of the network that had been trying to breach the security protocol was registered to an office building in downtown Osaka. It had been easy for Eli to hack into the building's directory and compare it to Osaka's list of businesses that were recorded in Osaka's official government record.

She was alerted once again to another attempt at cracking the security on Toujou's network. Specifically, they were after control of the security cameras—the exact tactic Eli had used the previous night. Clearly, whoever it was had either smartened up or they'd gotten someone a little more competent.

She rewrote the algorithms on the firewall before she set about creating a new one—she would be a very poor hacker indeed if she didn't know how to deal with a security breach herself. Whoever it was was trying to overload the system's servers with too much data at one time—enough to make it shut down and restart, restoring defaults that allowed for easy outside access. It was a simple enough solution to rewrite the data parameters of Toujou's network, disallowing access in data increments greater than what she absolutely needed to run the conference.

Eli waited for a few minutes after inputting her revised protocol, but the change seemed to have stopped the attempt for the time being, and she gave herself a small moment to take a breath.

For the first time, Eli allowed herself to pay attention to what was actually being said in the conference itself.

"I'm sure you can understand the need for greater security protocols around the district leaders, Toujou-sama. I suggest that you raise your budget for personal security before extending that kind of financial assistance to the… less fortunate in your district."

Eli did not miss the derisive tone in the older man's voice.

Toujou's voice was sweet as she replied. "And I suggest you focus on your own district before worrying about mine, Harada-sama."

The man let out a snort, but didn't press the issue. "I don't see anything of value to continue to talk about. Meeting adjourned." Before any of the other district leaders had a chance to say something, he disconnected.

Toujou signalled at one of her tech specialists to cut the call as well, before her advisors erupted into a babble of noise. Toujou got up from her seat and slowly paced once at the front of the room. On her way back, she passed Eli. "Meet me in my office," she murmured quietly, too quietly for the rest of her advisors to hear, before dismissing her along with the rest of her tech specialists.

Eli stood outside Toujou's office, arms crossed over her chest as she waited. Impatient nerves prickled against her skin as she waited for the district leader to return, although there was no doubt that she was discussing what had just transpired in the district meeting she'd attended less than half an hour ago. While she had certainly gathered some interesting information, the importance of that information paled in comparison to what she hoped Toujou would deliver.

Unease grasped the bottom of her throat tightly, and she swallowed, suddenly remembering Umi's dire warning for her to be careful.

I'm already too deep into this to back out now, Umi. You know that.

But it was worth the risk—whatever it would end up being. The information Toujou had had been hidden from her for too long, and no matter what the risk entailed, whether it was on her own life or the morals she had set for herself, Eli was determined to obtain it.

The sound of high heels against marble alerted her to the presence of Toujou, accompanied by a pair of guards. She opened the door to her office, and Eli followed her through it. Toujou beckoned for her to sit down, but didn't do so herself. Instead, she clasped her hands behind her back and faced the window, looking out into the sunny grounds.

"What did you find out, Ayase-san?"

Eli was fairly certain that Toujou already knew the answer to that particular question, but she decided to humour her. "Someone was trying to get past your security," she said slowly, keeping her tone carefully neutral.

Toujou did not seem surprised one bit by this information. "As I suspected. I assume they didn't succeed."

"No. But I'm almost sure that it was Osaka," Eli supplied, her heartbeat racing against the back of her throat, hoping that Toujou had at least secured her office from potential bugs.

Toujou half turned at that revelation, a serious expression in her thoughtful green gaze as she looked at Eli. "You did more than I expected you to. Thank you," she said, before turning around to sit down. Eli waited, heart rate increasing, as she leafed through the piles of paper on her desk.

The plum-haired woman lowered the volume of her voice as she removed several pieces of paper that had been clipped together. "We didn't have time discuss the second part of our deal before the meeting started. I haven't forgotten what I promised you, Ayase-san. But before I approve a proper investigation, I wanted to clarify with you that the information I have is correct." She handed Eli the small stack of papers. "This is who you're looking for… correct?"

Eli could've sworn that her throat had suddenly dried up and that she had momentarily forgotten how to breathe. The name on the front of the file hit her like a physical blow to the chest: Ayase Alisa.

Her younger sister had been fortunate—very fortunate, the paramedics later said—to have been spared by the Ceresis that had inevitably devastated their family home. For the first few weeks, Alisa had recuperated in the local city hospital, before Eli had brought her home. Umi and Maki had welcomed the younger girl, knowing and understanding that she, too, was an orphan just like the rest of them.

And for the first few years, things had been alright. Money was tight on more than one occasion, but they had managed. It had involved more than a fair number of sleepless nights on Eli's part, but she was determined to keep her family—her new family—together no matter what.

When Alisa had graduated high school, three years later, Eli had encouraged her to continue with her ballet training in the studio that had been rebuilt downtown, and made the effort to pick her up at the end of her practices if she was able to make it. After central Tokyo had been rebuilt in the aftermath of the first Ceresis attacks in 2022, all of them had no choice but to carry on in a life that was different from the one that had existed before the Ceresis, but was still life just the same.

But February 2026 would change all of that. A man from the outer district, infected with Edenra, had stumbled into the heart of Tokyo on February 14th, 2026. To the present day, no one was certain what he had intended to do: some said that he had known he was about to turn, and wanted revenge on the privileged, non-infected citizens who had shunned him, while other claims stated that he had just been starving, homeless, and desperate. But whatever his intentions had been, he had transformed into a Ceresis in the middle of downtown Tokyo.

Within half an hour, the city had been enveloped in chaos.

The army scrambled to mobilize the forces that now knew how to deal with the Ceresis, but the soldiers would not make it in time to save the hundreds of thousands of citizens out of a city whose population had already been reduced to a third of what it had been pre-2022 from infection.

Eli had gone to pick up her younger sister that day. When she'd heard the screams, the gunfire, and the roar of inevitable flames, she had run to the ballet studio that Alisa was still at. The door to the studio had sagged wide open as she slipped through it. She had spotted Alisa with a knot of other students, and had tried calling her name, but her sister hadn't heard her over the amount of noise and panic that gripped the small building.

She had been forced to hide when a Ceresis had forced its way through the hastily-barricaded door. Hidden next to a glass display case near a supply closet, she had caught sight of Alisa hiding across the room from her. But she had been wholly unprepared for the moment when the Ceresis had clawed open the gas pipe—combined with the flames that were coming from the building next door, it had created an almost instantaneous explosion.

Eli had raised her arms to protect her head as the lights blew in the room, but a piece of glass had sliced across her forehead, opening a gash above her right eyebrow as the roof of the building had begun to cave in, trapping her in the doorframe of the supply closet. Hastily wiping blood off her face, coughing in the rising smoke, she had frantically searched for her sister in the dark aftermath of the explosion, finally locating her in roughly the same location that she had been in before, only with the lone Ceresis advancing on her.

Even now, three years later, she still could not completely process the events of the next few minutes. She was certain that she cried her sister's name out loud the same moment a few soldiers had broken through the ruined building, alerting the Ceresis and aggravating it. In the ensuing chaos, she was not sure if Alisa had heard her. But Eli was absolutely positive about one thing—she had seen the Ceresis take a swing at Alisa, and it had connected with her arm. But she couldn't move from where she was, unable to get past the heavy wood blocking her way and when she'd swiped her hand across her forehead it had come away sticky with blood.

Eli never saw her sister again.

She was not completely sure how she had ended up curled in a ball underneath a blanket on the floor of the hospital hallway. She had only been aware of the passage of time because Umi had come in sometime during the night, frantically shaking her once or twice before pulling her into an very uncharacteristic hug. The two of them had watched in silence as a laboratory technologist had taken her blood to test for the presence of the Edenra virus, even though Eli knew that it would be negative. But when she'd asked about Alisa, she had gotten an answer in the form of a single sentence: "I don't know."

February 14th, 2026 would come to be known as Bloody Valentine. It was in the aftermath of that day that Tokyo District's new head of state, Toujou Nozomi, legalized the right of non-infected humans to carry a weapon at all times.

In the months that followed, no matter whom she asked, whether it was the hospital or the government, she had gotten the same three word response. But Eli was sure that it wasn't because they didn't know—it was because she wasn't allowed to know the answer.

Maki had looked in the hospital database for her, but had found nothing except for Alisa's previous hospital record that didn't date past October 2022. Eli had hacked into the same database, but had found no evidence that Alisa's record had been changed in any way.

She had spent more than one sleepless night sitting in front of her laptop, stubbornly staring at the bright screen, wondering if it was worth it to hack into the government's database. She would talk herself into actually doing it, then Umi would wake up the next morning and talk her out of it. "So what if you get the information?" the blue-haired woman had demanded. "Do you think you can use it if you're imprisoned for the rest of your life? Is that information worth throwing everything you have away for?"

On some of her worst days, Eli was convinced the answer was yes. But she had never actually followed through with her intent—because at the end of the day, she knew Umi was right. She was after that information for a reason, and there would be no point to obtaining it if she couldn't follow up on it. Even now, years later, the thought of it haunted her, lurking at the back of her mind almost constantly.

Until one day, she received a call from the government itself offering her the information that she had been denied for years.

Eli realized that she was holding onto the thin stack of paper so tightly that she had already crinkled the pages. "Yes," she finally whispered, hating how her voice had caught at the back of her throat because it was so constricted.

She finally looked up to notice that Toujou was staring at her with a strange, unreadable expression on her face. She stood, holding out the stapled pieces of paper. "Yes," she repeated.

Toujou took the file from her, but did not drop her gaze, as she stood too.

She brushed past Eli on her way to the door, but paused before she reached the doorknob. "Ayase-san."

There was an odd, almost pleading quality to her speech as well, but Eli couldn't understand why Toujou would ever feel the need to pity her. "Are you sure you want me to follow through with this?"

She whipped her head around, staring at the district leader in disbelief. "W-What?" she asked hoarsely, before clearing her throat once. "Of course I'm sure."

Toujou breathed in slowly once before she spoke again. "The truth, Ayase-san, is both beautiful and terrifying. Some people spend their whole lives searching for it and never find it, not because they don't look hard enough, but because it is something they cannot accept. Are you truly prepared to accept whatever the truth may be?"

She didn't wait for an answer before opening the door and exiting the room, leaving Eli to stand there.

Maki pushed open the gate to her family mansion, fumbling with the latch as she let herself in. Behind her stumbled a slightly taller blonde, who was supporting a young woman with blue-black hair. "You… don't have to come in with me," she repeated for the umpteenth time.

"No," Umi instantly argued. "We're coming."

Maki didn't bother repeating herself, but led the way up the small stone path that led to the front door. Before she'd even laid a hand on the doorknob, however, she heard the distorted gargle of a laugh. She thought she recognized the voice, but a haze had stolen over her senses, dulling them.

She wrenched the door open, not knowing what exactly to expect and yet fully expecting the worst. She held the heavy wooden door ajar to let Umi and Eli in, before closing it behind her.

"Maki…" Eli's voice was a croak. "Who's that?"

Squinting in the gloom, she could also make out the hunched silhouette of a man not far away from them in the ruined foyer. She recognized the lab coat he was wearing, because it was one she had tried on many times when her father was not home. "Papa?"

The man did not appear to hear her, and the three of them approached him warily, cautiously stepping over cracked floor tiles and glass shards. Her father was crouched near the stairs, cradling something in his hands as they neared him. "Papa?" she repeated.

"They wanted me to do it… They wanted all this. They can't blame me… I only did what they asked me to do." Maki couldn't seem to understand what her father was saying.

"Papa? I-It's me." She knelt beside him, barely paying attention to the glass that dug into her knees before she gasped. She couldn't see exactly what he was holding in his hands, but it was dark with blood that seeped onto the floor and it instantly made her nauseous.

"They wanted me to do it…" he repeated. "This is what they get for letting me make this."

She could not understand what he was saying—because that meant that her father had created the monstrosities that were roaming the streets of Tokyo outside and her father would never have willingly created things like that. He'd always told her about the importance of human life, how hard he was working to make life better for people—that was why he'd become a doctor. Maki could not associate that man with the man kneeling in front of her.

Hot tears burned at the corners of her eyes, but Maki was past caring about crying in front of other people at this point. "I-I don't understand," she stammered, hastily wiping her face. "A-Are you saying you did all this?"

Her father was silent for several long minutes, broken only by the sound of slightly laboured breathing. Who it belonged to, Maki couldn't tell.

"Maki…?" he finally rasped, turning to look at her with an expression she couldn't understand in his eyes. "Have… you been here long?"

She could not understand that question either, until he raised a gun in violently shaking hands, pointing it at her. She scrambled backwards on her hands in surprise as he looked around wildly. "W-What are you doing?" she cried out, almost tripping in her haste to get back up, not missing the gasps from Umi and Eli behind her.

Her father rose too, not lowering the gun he kept pointed at her. "I'm sorry, Maki…" There was a crazed, desperate tone in his voice as tears slipped down his face. "But you… you weren't supposed to know that. You finally found some friends… but they're not supposed to know either."

She shrieked as he missed the first shot because of how badly his hands were trembling, stumbling backwards until her back hit the wall. Covering her head with her arms, her mind could barely process what was going on, but could somehow rationalize that her hands would do nothing to protect her if he actually managed to hit her.

"Why?" she yelled back at him, tears blinding her vision almost completely.

He fired again, missing her by several feet and shattering a vase that had stood at the foot of the stairs. "You weren't supposed to know, Maki…" he repeated, squeezing the trigger and missing Umi by inches. "You weren't supposed to know I did this."

"Stop!" she screeched. "Stop this!"

Maki woke with a gasp. Her head was on the cool metal surface of one of her operating tables and she blinked in the hazy light. Her computer was still on, its bright screen contrasting sharply with the dimness of her lab. She let out a frustrated growl as she rubbed her eyes a few times. That dream again…

She shook her head, running her fingers through red hair several times as she tried to clear the last vestiges of her dream from her mind. She looked for her watch, before remembering that she'd removed it from her wrist before she'd started the autopsy.

The time on her computer read 19:31. Cursing to herself, she remembered what she was supposed to be doing before her impromptu nap. The bullet that the police department had collected from the scene was still in its evidence bag, the plastic surface reflecting the light from her computer screen.

She threw a container of cup ramen into a large beaker, adding in some mayonnaise and a few tomato slices she kept in the small fridge at the back of her lab before putting it on her hot plate. While her meal heated, she examined the bullet again.

I really should be getting back to my research, she told herself, but the mystery of the bullet couldn't escape her thoughts. She glanced once at the heating units she'd installed into the wall opposite her computers that contained her still-growing samples—they probably wouldn't be ready for her until the following morning.

Maki furrowed her brows as she thought, playing with the bullet in the bag, before she pulled out her cellphone. There was a single message on it from Umi, letting her know that she would be spending the night at Kotori's place. She picked Umi from her list of contacts and waited for the line to connect.

It rung three times before someone picked up. "Maki? What is it?" Umi's voice filtered through the speakers.

"Umi, when are you seeing Hoshizora Rin next?" she started without preamble.

"Rin? In a few days. Why?" Umi sounded slightly suspicious.

Maki resisted the temptation to roll her eyes, partially because Umi couldn't see her. "I need someone with her kind of expertise to help identify something. Do you think she'd be willing to do it for you?"

Umi was silent for a few moments. "I suppose…" Her voice trailed off. "This isn't something dangerous, is it?" she added after a brief pause.

"Not anymore," she replied, drumming her fingers on the metal surface of her desk. At least, I'm pretty sure it isn't, if Hoshizora knows what she's doing.

Umi's sigh came out as slightly crackly over the phone speakers. "Fine. Just remember to give it to me tomorrow before I leave," she said, before cutting the line.

Maki snorted once as she put her phone down, before wheeling her chair over to her hot plate and taking her beaker full of noodles off of it and sticking her fork in her mouth. She decided to turn on the news while she ate before she checked on her samples again. There was an entire array of analysis that she'd hoped to get done before the end of the week, and pipettes didn't pipette themselves. She could hire a lab technician of her own, of course, but she didn't think she actually trusted anyone else with anything that stayed in her personal laboratory. Well, there were exceptions, but Eli and Umi couldn't tell the difference from a PCR machine to a scale, and more importantly, knew better than to touch her samples.

Her current position had not been easy to achieve—the label "Nishikino's daughter" had followed her nearly everywhere for seven and a half years, and it had taken most people a long time to realize that she was serious about what she wanted to do. It was only after she'd garnered an exceptional reputation as a very efficient surgeon that she had been granted access to Edenra samples and had been allowed to conduct her own research on it.

Maki found that she was gripping the glass beaker in her left hand hard enough to see her skin whiten. No matter what, I'll find the solution to this.