Song playlist: Best Laid Plans by James Blunt * [open to other song recommendations by reviewers]
Chapter 5
Illusion
/ɪˈluːʒ(ə)n/
1. an instance of a wrong or misinterpreted perception of a sensory experience
2. something that deceives by producing a false or misleading impression of reality
Something was happening.
Mika held his breath.
How long had passed since Yuu had fallen asleep? Ten minutes, or maybe longer? It was hard to read the wall clock in the cloak of darkness- but it didn't matter right now.
Ears straining, Mika listened to the corridor coming to life outside. The low rumble of unknown adult voices, doors being opened one by one, a strange rattling noise. As the footsteps began to approach Mika and Yuu's door, Mika quickly shut his eyes.
Within seconds the door creaked open and the room was invaded.
Mika pretended to be asleep. He felt rather than saw a foreign presence come closer to the two beds, before halting and reciting flatly, "TYO-M-08-298, TYO-M-08-299. Attendance round completed. Transfer the last two subjects."
It took all his willpower not to flinch as Mika's body was abruptly lifted up without warning. He was methodically carried over and laid flat on a chilly surface, like a corpse being lowered into its grave.
Keep still. Keep still. Don't move. Be a lifeless body, keep your eyes shut, breathe deeply and evenly, Mika chanted in his head to keep calm. He quenched the fluttering panic rising in his heart as his limbs were detachedly arranged by plastic gloved hands and his chest strapped down tight.
Then he was moving.
The rattling he heard earlier was vibrating through his body now, along with the squeaks and judders of rubber wheels. Mika realised he must be being pushed on some kind of trolley, and from the sound of a second trolley following close behind Yuu was probably being taken too.
The million yen question was where?
His body tilted and would have slipped down if it weren't for the strap binding his chest to the trolley. They were going downhill, even though Mika had been certain the only way downstairs in the orphanage was the staircase. Did that mean there was a hidden passageway?
"Passcode required," an automated voice stated evenly.
Seven mechanical beeps of buttons being pressed reached Mika's ears, and then the hiss of metal doors sliding open.
It was like a bubble had been burst. Voices flooded through, accompanied with the whirs and bleeps of electronic machines. The blinding white lighting illuminated through Mika's eyelids with a clinical, surgical harshness.
Mika's trolley was pushed further inside, twisting and turning corners until it finally stopped.
He waited for the footsteps to fade out before warily peering through slit eyes.
All clear- the strangers had left.
Mika shot up with wide, shocked eyes- only to be caged by his straps. He grit his teeth- hehated being restrained (it bought back memories of his parents, hands squeezing his wrists in a literally bruising grip, the hits that rained down-)- and deftly undid the buckles with stumbling fingers.
They fell limp, dangling to the tiled floor.
Jumping off the trolley, Mika spun around trying to take in his surroundings. He was in a metal walled room. The trolley he had been lying on was nestled in a hub of complicated looking machines with detailed graphs and charts attached. There were shelves cluttered with measured liquid containers, injection needles, scalpels and countless more equipment. Stands of IVs lined the walls with their half used sacs and the tiled floor was speckled with faded red stains.
It was like a hospital room, but with less fluffy blankets and more pointy objects.
Mika pinched himself. Hard.
"Ouch!"
So this wasn't some crazy ridiculous dream then. What was going on?!
Mika paced back and forth, gnawing his lip as he wrung his brain out. If the trolley went downhill, the Hyakuya Orphanage must have some sort of underground basement especially since there wasn't a single window in sight. If he had heard more trolleys upstairs, were the other kids kidnapped from their bedrooms too?
He had to find them.
Mika cautiously tested the doorhandle, meeting no resistance or lock. He slid it open inch by inch, peering warily for anyone on the other side. Lit by tinged green lighting above, Mika scanned the rows and rows of ominously shut doors.
The corridor was definitely empty.
In a flash Mika dashed over to the door closest to him and ducked his head in line with the thin gap at the bottom of the door. No shoes in sight. The room was safe to enter.
Mika slipped through- and froze rigid.
He had found Akane.
Her room was exactly identical to the one Mika had just escaped. The same machinery, the same hospital equipment, the same blood stained floor. The only difference was the IV puncturing Akane's arm as she laid on her trolley like a morbid twist on Sleeping Beauty. An unknown white liquid was being sucked like a leech from the IV bag and into her veins.
Mika staggered forward and reached over to shake Akane's shoulders.
"Hey! Hey, Akane, wake up! Please!"
She slumped back and forth in Mika's grasp like a ragdoll. No reaction at all. Mika felt a growing dread spreading over him- so he had been right all along. The food was drugging them into an unshakeable, scarily deep sleep.
A thin sheen of sweat was clinging to Akane's forehead. Mika wiped it with his hand, frowning at the sticky residue. He wanted to rip out the IV needle from Akane's arm…but he didn't know if it would make things better or worse.
Mika dragged himself out of Akane's room and took a closer look at the label on her door. TYO-F-07-297.
Six other doors had the same labels pinned to them.
TYO-F-07-296 revealed Kagame with a similar IV hooked into her arm, only with blood being sucked out instead.
TYO-F-04-295 held Sora with several deliberate cuts slashed precisely in her thighs and a thick yellow salve layered on top.
TYO-F-03-294 was Rika's room, who herself looked ghastly pale. A box of injection needles, some used and some bursting full, sat at the foot of her trolley.
TYO-M-02-293 showed Jun, linked up to so many heart rate monitors and devices that he looked like a circuit board.
With every door that Mika opened, his breathing became more erratic and his panic grew. He had to force himself not to grab every one of his family and drag them somewhere to hide. Finding out if they were all here was his top priority…
If Mika was the only one who hadn't eaten dinner, he was the only one awake. He was the only one who could save them all.
At last Mika found the last labelled door, TYO-M-02-292. The relief he felt at seeing Ken inside was warring with the worry that had been plaguing his mind since he had opened his eyes- where was Yuu?
Mika jerked at the sound of voices coming towards him. He hastily leapt to the other side of Ken's room and curled into a tight ball behind a stack of cardboard boxes.
There were people walking down the corridor.
Oh no…he had left Ken's door half open.
Heart thudding wild, Mika buried his face in his hands and stilled himself. To his immense relief, the strangers didn't seem to notice as they stalked straight past the room he was hiding in.
"Your daily report on the Hyakuya subjects will be given in meeting room 0.22."
"Understood, sir."
Wait…wasn't that voice…?
Mika waited until he was sure he was out of sight before creeping out of the room quiet as a mouse and trailing behind.
Eventually Mika found himself squeezed between a narrow gap in a wall, far enough to be safe but close enough to eavesdrop on the conversation in the meeting room.
"Report."
"The subjects have settled in completely to the Orphanage. The initial rebelliousness from the younger subjects such as TYO-M-02-293 have been curbed successfully. The subjects have bonded well together and formed strong familial attachments."
"Excellent. The higher their emotional bond, the more attached they'll become to the Orphanage and the less trouble they'll cause. Are there any discrepancies with the drugs?"
"No sir. Reaction time for the effects to take place is one hour, as before."
"It is imperative that the kitchen is kept off limits to the subjects. Keep your control over the food preparation area strict."
"Yes sir."
"The antidote pills?"
"Are being taken after every dinner by myself as instructed sir, to counteract the drugs in the food."
"Your health must not be risked. The subjects have accepted your role as the mother figure and it will interfere with their mentality if you are replaced."
"…Yes sir."
He couldn't believe it. Mika felt his body trembling violently. The first voice was male, deep, unknown but full of strong authority but the second voice he had recognised. That was the director.
His mind was reeling at what he was hearing. Everything had been a lie...they were being experimented on.
Mika choked on a sob, tears gathering in his eyes.
"What is the progress on subject TYO-M-08-299?"
"The newest subject showed signs of anti socialness on his arrival but his rooming arrangements and the delay before enrolling him in school have been as successful as always in making the subject accept the other subjects as their family and grow close to them."
"TYO-M-08-299 is our central key project. He is priceless beyond all worth- you must not let him escape our grasp. The abuse reports of a pair of parents calling their child the son of the devil was all we needed to investigate into him, and to finally find what we've spent decades searching for. With intensive testing we can break down the properties of his blood to locate and possess his counterpart-"
A shrieking alarm pierced through, cutting off the man's sentence. Mika shrunk back as far into his hiding place as he could go as several white coated people ran in a panic past him.
"Sir, TYO-M-08-298 is missing!"
"What do you mean he's missing?" the man's voice was chillingly cold like a blizzard. Mika shivered. "Are you telling me that the subject got up and walked off?"
"H-his trolley is empty sir," someone stammered out.
"There must be some abnormality in the food drugs, or even worse there's a breach in security and we have an intruder. Go call the guards and find the subject, immediately-"
A second alarm cut him off again, this one considerably louder like a blaring klaxon.
"Sir!" a second group of lab coats were rushing to the meeting room. "TYO-M-08-299 is out of control!"
The man didn't even bother to reply, striding through the crowd at the door. The people hurriedly tripped over themselves to move out of his path like the red sea parting for Moses. They scurried at his departing back like a pack of well-trained dogs.
Mika ran after them. He watched them swarm into a room a few corridors away, before gluing himself to the crack in the doorway as soon as the coast was clear.
It was pure chaos.
Machines were beeping erratically and a heart rate monitor was leaping off the charts. Yet more people in white coats were darting all over the place as they tried to salvage the situation.
In the centre of the storm was Yuu. He was awake and writhing, struggling against his numerous bindings on his ankles and wrists, tossing and turning like a feral beast. Hands were pinning him down, only to be repeatedly knocked away by his wild movements.
But worst of all, Yuu's lips were parted in a high pitched, piercing scream. Mika collapsed to his knees, hand clenched on his heart as he felt the rebound of Yuu's pain resonate within him.
Drowned out by the noise, Mika could distantly hear the man in charge demand, "What happened here?!"
"Sir! His bloodstream has become corrupted-"
"Why has it become corrupted? Your orders were to take blood samples and examine them, nothing more!"
"But sir," the person defended agitatedly. "We only wanted to test his reaction to the serum we've developed. If we can enhance his physical body then think of the possibilities, the power-"
Yuu's scream increased in volume tenfold and drowned out the arguing. Mika peered through his haze of agony to watch in horror as a blackness spread through Yuu's veins, a stark contract against his paper white skin.
Suddenly, the scream stopped. The lights flickered, swayed, then they were plunged into darkness.
On October 16th 2004 a baby was born in St Luke's International Hospital in Japan.
"Congratulations, it's a boy!"
Mizuki Amane was beyond exhausted, drenched in sweat and panting but she still found a smile blooming on her face at the sight of her newborn son. As the nurse cleaned up her precious child and her husband gripped her hand tight with tears in his eyes, she felt like she was in a dream.
"Here you go, Mrs Amane. You have a healthy baby and there doesn't seem to be any complications. I'll just go and prepare a crib for him to sleep in and then I'll come back soon."
Mizuki was gently handed her son and the nurse left. She cradled him in her arms, rocking him ever so slightly and counting his fingers and toes.
A coo rose in her throat as her son sleepily blinked his eyes, only to transform into a scream.
The baby looked back gurgling happily with red eyes and a blood red stone emerging from the back of his left hand.
Mika saw a pair of glowing red eyes slit open from the darkness of the room.
The ground began to rumble and shake.
A twisted black wing erupted out from Yuu's back, enveloping them all and flinging Mika into unconsciousness.
Author's notes: Yup...there we have it. This chapter was hands down so hard to write but it managed to get out in the end.
On a happier note, this fic has passed 10k wordcount wohoo :D If you didn't know already, I update my tumblr (castiza dot tumblr dot com) whenever a new chapter is up so feel free to follow me for notifications, or if you just want to chat with me.