Chapter Nine | The Fifth and the Seventh
It looks like a small fort from the outside, watchtowers and barracks surrounded by sheer, industrial walls. Concrete, the edges of their brutalist design sharp and unyielding. From the top Cochlea looks like a compound, yet one among many of the military outposts that carve their own clear-cut dot of land amongst the skyscrapers and low apartments.
No building within two kilometres stands higher than the walls that surround the installation. Walls that dominate the skyline when observed by the footpath. Above, he can spy guard towers that jut from the interior, their half-moon roofs offering perpetual shade to the guard within. And through the stationary figures he sees peering out from a panopticon that takes up the centre of the base, or those that flit this way and that between the flanking towers, the true purpose of this unashamed flaunting of military might is laid bare.
This is a place meant to hold something within, not a bastion built in preparation for one final, glorious stand against the cannibal onslaught.
An innocuous cone of shining steel rests in plain view of the panopticon – but the doubled guards standing watch over the entrance that sits ant-like at its base, and their astonishing lack of guns, each one of them instead brandishing a simple case – tells Harry this is the entrance.
The cloak he throws over his shoulders has been an old companion, yet when it clings to him like a second skin he wonders how far the mystery of his newfound species goes. Because surely, the Cloak of Death and all other monikers it bears, a thousand fanciful lies spun over the centuries, was not made by the hands of a ghoul. Because why else would it decide now, after having accompanied Harry on every heart-pounding adventure he had taken since the bright young age of eleven, that it should reveal to him new tricks that he imagined Dumbledore would be hard pressed to explain.
It is cold to the touch, but bar the faint chill that covers him from head to toe there's no sign he'd ever put it on in the first place. There is no smooth shift of fabric across his knuckles as he palms his wand, letting it flick sharply to the right as he layers another sheet overtop himself, this one of silence. And as Harry's wand jerks to the left and his scent disappears from the air, he still has yet to feel that unnerving, impossible softness of the cloak.
He wonders if the Deathstick would have not weighed so heavily in his palm had Harry not snapped it in two and tossed the splintered remnants of it into a ravine. Would the stone turn on its own, a solemn dance that brings with it truth instead of lies, not those heady whispers beckoning him into the great beyond?
Harry brushes his thumb against his pocket, feeling out the contour of a marble. It is Kijima, a black thing that swallows the light, and he wonders where to leave the investigator's corpse to cause the most confusion. The most havoc once it's discovered.
If it weren't for the chill of the cloak and the now everpresent clutch of ice hanging where his heart used to be, Harry would worry over the thoughts that cross his mind. Instead they make their path through unnoticed corridors, sewers, and tunnels that he did not think his conscience was spotted with until tonight. It's not a painful thing. He doesn't feel especially cruel, sadistic, or otherwise insane – although he reckons that anyone who's mad doesn't think they are. They'd be quite opposed to it, and he remembers the glint in Bellatrix's eyes when Ron had cursed at her, screaming and shouting as they were dragged deep beneath Malfoy Manor, only to minutes later hear the agonized shrieks of their closest friend as lines were carved across her forearm.
Those were the eyes of a madwoman, yes, but were Harry to ask her of her sanity he knew, without a doubt, she would deny the frightening lack of it she displayed in her every breath and twitch of the eye.
What Harry feels could best be described as calm. It's a strange calm. An inhuman calm. It is the knowledge that what he has become is so much more dangerous than he was before, a creature that mages of sound mind had cultivated a healthy fear of. A new breed, one with all the strength and guile of a ghoul, yet with the magic that his own wield with a nonchalance that has always left him feeling disappointed.
And are they? Or is he so far removed from what he once was, so alien as to be considered beyond that of human, mage, and ghoul alike?
Harry doesn't know. He's not sure he wants to know, although he admits to himself that he's sure to find out one way or another. He always does, especially when he least expects it.
With that thought he pictures a page, crumpled between stony fingers, the ragged edges of it marking its abrupt departure from the book it had previously rested cozily within. Pipes. A single word that said so, so much, scrawled hastily beneath an excerpt detailing in clinical detachment the many ways in which a Basilisk may kill a man.
His toe clicks silently against the concrete he's squatting on, the walls of Cochlea thick enough to build a shack atop of, were he to have the inclination and sheer temerity to do so.
Now is better than never, he thinks to himself, spinning on the spot and reappearing a short distance from the entrance, the imperceptible snap of apparition drowned out by the groan and chitter of machinery that echoes dully through the whole facility. Even through it all, he can hear the purr of an engine down the block, around the corner, and past a park he'd apparated by making his way over. A train whizzes past in the distance, the whistle of air pushed out from between lengths of magnetized steel that will never touch, forever separated by empty space.
It's a magic all its own. He enjoyed the train quite a bit, actually. It put Harry to sleep like nothing else, and for a paranoid bastard like himself that was quite the feat.
He strides between the two investigators standing watch in front of the entrance and waits, leaning against the wall. It isn't too long before the pocket doors open so alike the distant train, that same low huff of air escaping as they separate, the burnished steel drawn apart. Harry slips past the investigator that blinks violently as he exits the facility, a whispered complaint just barely heard as they drift by.
Harry understands why as soon as he enters, the glare of lights within Cochlea oppressive in their intensity. He wonders if he'll spot a shadow that doesn't belong to the many people shuffling about the rotunda, or working their way up and down the stairs that spiral out from underneath. Silver is the first word to come to mind, every inch of the place shining dully like old cutlery, antiques that had been forgotten in a cupboard somewhere only to build up their own unique shimmer. Not quite dirty, not quite clean.
It's with ease that Harry makes his way down, faltering for a moment at the sight of the yawning pit that opens up beneath him. It looks as if it goes on forever, a hole bored into the depths of hell itself. He knows it doesn't from the fragments he managed to glean from Kijima's shivering mind, but now, upon looking at the billions, no, trillions that must have been invested in this facility – he begins to understand why it is called Cochlea.
The spiral is endless, a whorl of dizzying blackness that gets blacker still, something he thought only achievable through magic until this moment.
Down the stairs he goes, and if he holds his breath he feels like the steel column that runs through the middle of the facility, separated by gangways and a lattice of unwavering girders, begins to waver to the rhythm of the earth's slowly beating heart. His vision is dotted by a slightly darker shade of metal, bulkhead doors which have very evidently been made custom for the CCG. They're sinister in the way that they refuse to tell a story, not even a whisper of whoever is hidden behind their reinforced bars and latches.
A massive fan spins far above, pinned to the peak of the cone that juts from the earth and houses but the first few floors of this place, yet even with it the air is no less stale.
Harry can taste despair, chemical burns, and the rancid tang of spoiled meat that wafts up from the depths.
He loses himself as he treads deeper, listening to the howls that manage to eke their way out of the few open doors that fill the prison. Down and down he goes, spiraling into the unknown and the unthinkable. Shrieks are replaced with whooping, hollering, and the laughter of ghouls who, without a doubt in his mind, can only remember the sight of steel and glass, even their imagination failing to capture the fragmented memory of the last time they witnessed the sun overhead. The sorrow of Cochlea sinks its claws deeper and deeper into him, and Harry can't help but wonder if Azkaban is more humane than this. To at the very least draw out every last hope and dwindling memory of the times-that-once-were and could-have-been, only to leave a shell so that the electric mass of wrinkled meat it guards so jealously cannot let out a single, solitary spark of complaint.
It is a caged hell that does not owe its horrors to its guards alone. No, that honour is granted to the minds that dreamed it up in the first place, that put pen to paper and decided that this steel microcosm of suffering was worth building. To put years of labour, decades into fashioning something that even the most deranged back in Britain would have difficulty putting into words.
It is suffering distilled. Concentrated. Weaponized, so that even the rumour of the hell that awaits a captured ghoul, one unlucky enough to be given the burden of living, will drive them to any and all lengths to take as many captors with them in search of what may (hopefully) be an early grave.
If he listens, truly listens, his ears pricked up like a dogs, Harry can grasp but a sliver – a solitary, infinitesimal atom – of the agony the inmates of Cochlea have endured. An agony that grows more evident as his steps take him deeper and deeper still.
When he spots the pistons, he fears his heart may break.
Harry doesn't know his place in the world anymore. He's not sure of who he is nor what he wants out of life, only the vague intention of aid guided by his long-forgotten saviour complex fuels his strides. But when he sees great metal cylinders caked in meat, blood dripping from their dented length within which stubborn fragments of bone cling, Harry wants to vomit.
He wants to empty his soul over this chasm of gore, an apparatus built for the crushing and juicing of something so close to human, but not close enough. Not to matter in any meaningful way. It is an industrial meat grinder, built to specifications beyond the scope of the facility that holds it. It is a declaration.
You are but meat and bone, and it is only by our grace that you still live.
This is where the stench of rotting meat originates from, pungent and thick enough to colour the air with a fetid cloud of decay. As Harry stares at the grinder, frozen, his hands curled over a railing that squeals under his grip, he hears a scream from above.
He looks up just in time to see a ghoul tossed from the upper floors into the great chasm. Were his senses not drawn tight, pushed beyond whatever mortal boundaries once held them, he would be nothing but a blur. Instead, Harry sees the man drift like a feather, his mouth wide, animalistic, as that scream is pushed out from some deep, primal part of him that once lay hidden. The ghoul flails, clawing uselessly at the air in some instinctual attempt to break his fall, to not crash against the mulch that remains of the poor souls to come before him.
His hand is the first part of him to make contact.
Harry can see in perfect detail as it slams into the steel, knuckles first, as if to punch his way through. Instead his wrist curls, flexes, as the bones above and beneath are pushed against each other with no way to move but out. And they do.
It's like shrapnel, the way his skin bubbles and tears, dull white just barely breaching the surface before rocketing away. The rest of his arm follows suit, snapping in the middle and impaling his chest, his lungs, and bursting out his back – but not without prying his shoulder blade apart along the way, his uniform torn as it's splayed outward in some grotesque imitation of a wing.
Fly, fly, little bird.
He crumples in on himself like the bag of meat he is, blood bursting in a corona around the back of his skull, chunks of what used to be his face all but fusing with the steel. Ribs crack, shatter, and tear. His spine jerks, rolling with the shock but entirely unable to hold itself together. It comes apart at the seams.
It's only below the ankle that he seems to come away unscathed, though Harry knows that were he to lift the man's foot it would just wobble in his hand, nothing but a sack of blood and bone loosely held together by a sausage lining, one moulded into the vague shape of a foot.
The ruins of the man lay twitching, one mashed eye unblinking as it leaks, mingling with the rest of the soup that he's become. He is only vaguely recognizable as a man, as a person, as anything other than a thing to be gawked at in morbid delight. A fascination the investigators above share, one cheering quietly that "Its head fucking exploded! Never gets old."
There is a flicker of consciousness in that sole remaining eye, be it the final flash of a synapse that, in a heartbeat, had been crushed between cheekbone and the shattered remnants of his spine – or even just a trick of the light. Whatever it is makes Harry's breath hitch, unable to tear his gaze away as the pistons, the great machine, whirr into motion. The sound of metal crashing against metal, a thousand tonnes of it with only a thin, crimson paste to separate, is enough to deafen. But even then it still can't drown out the dying echo of that man's screams, even once all that's left of him is but another smear, glistening in the fluorescent light.
Ice begins to form beneath his feet, clinging to the trusses that hold the gangway together. Harry doesn't pull his eyes away from the gruesome pit that dominates the bedrock of Cochlea, instead he leaps over the rail and lands just outside it, staring past the machinery to see a heap of gore below, workers in hazmat suits hosing down the sodden mess so they can more easily chip at it with shovels.
His hand hangs, looming over the pit. It opens, a simple marble falling only to land unnoticed at the top of the heaving mass of what-once-was the living, breathing wonder that is a person. Not human, not in the way that those men below – clad in neon yellow plastic that crinkles with every jagged plunge of a spade – would think of the word, but a person all the same.
The crimes of the man who fell are endless, his victims the throne on which he now rests. With a snap of his fingers, the marble transforms, and in its place lies the frozen corpse of Kijima Shiki.
It takes a moment for any of the workers to notice, one tilting his head in confusion before he abruptly drops his shovel, the metal clanging against the floor and gaining the other's attention. He points in silent mockery, before jerking towards the hill of red. The man falters, stumbling backwards, a croaked title emanating from his mask.
"Associate-Special Class? Sir?"
There is no answer.
"You- go- go get Arima!"
Like rats they scrambled, running every which way. One of them, the man who froze, made a vain attempt to climb the pile of gore, slipping halfway up and face-planting in the mess. He pushed himself off, wiping the chunks off his goggles and cursing the whole while. Harry stood in wait, the name they had said, Arima, tasting of ash and decay.
The Reaper.
But what got his attention was the sensation of something noticeably bright at the edge of his palate. A footnote, just barely there, yet its subtlety made it all the more evident.
A siren went off above, blaring furiously as lights began to switch on, painting the previously silver walls of Cochlea a startling red. It was fitting, for it to look as blood-soaked as it truly was. The ghouls that had been screaming a short while ago now began to jeer, taunting their captors.
It was almost surprising how quickly everything devolved into outright havoc. Gleaning the surface thoughts of a nearby investigator, Harry realized nothing like this had ever happened. The walls of Cochlea had been considered impenetrable, until now.
"Sir, this way- he just, he appeared exactly like this sir! Something must have dropped him from above!"
A turn, and in absolute silence Harry appeared below, now level with the hideous mess he had only seen from on high a moment before. It was… immense. He hadn't grasped the true size of it until now, the mass of meat and offal a dozen feet tall, at the least. It must be made up of dozens of corpses, and he doubted all of them belonged to ghouls. Was this where the man Kijima was interrogating would have ended up? Just another indistinguishable lump of glistening red to add to the heap.
To his left, Arima walks into the grand room, so much like the flood tunnels beneath the city. Perhaps this is a part of it, far deeper than the rest. It's evident in the broad concrete pillars that hold up the ceiling. Arima is just as broad, all shoulders and wrapped tightly in the long white coat that all investigators wear. Doves. It was an apt name, spoken in fearful whispers by ghouls he'd watched over the last couple of weeks.
The man was stone-faced, inhumanly so. There wasn't a single flicker of distress as he looked up at his dead compatriot, hands clasped before his waist.
"He fell?"
"We think so sir, something must have dropped him through the gaps when the compactor was switched off."
"A ghoul?"
"We don't know."
Harry approached, unnoticed by all, except-
By some sixth sense Arima's gaze flicked to the side, and for the first time since he appeared the man showed a flicker of emotion. Confusion, evident only in the near imperceptible crinkle of his brow. He turned back to the grisly sight, his frown wiped away in an instant.
"Go look over the surveillance footage," he orders, his gaze unwavering.
"Yes sir."
Following the remainder of Arima's unspoken command, the rest of the cleaners and investigators spring into action, quickly leaving the room.
A few moments go by, the distant sound of footfalls soon swallowed by the klaxons and clamour above. "Come out. I'd like to speak with you," Arima intones, his eyes tinted with something vaguely curious as he surveys the empty hall.
Harry tilts his head, putting out a tentative feeler to brush against Arima's mind. He's… pleased by the sight of Kijima, something that makes Harry frown. Why?
"I don't know if you're here still, but know that I bear you no ill will. In fact, I think you're precisely who I've been looking for all these years."
The next mental nudge Arima receives is a knocking at the door, Harry making himself known. This man, out of anyone in the CCG, should be more than aware of the existence of the magical world. His thoughts are confirmed by the next words to leave Arima's mouth.
"Ah, you're still here. You're one of them."
It's a gamble, but… Arima Kishou- a name burdened by a thousand corpses and a thousand more, but within it is a vain, childish hope for something implacable.
What? What do you want? This dream that's so naive it splays sweet across my tongue like candy?
The cloak doesn't come off Harry, instead it grows translucent, following his subconscious wants without question or hesitation. He appears as a heat mirage, something vaguely human shaped and just barely alive. A ghost, dreamed up by a blind man.
"What are you? A yōkai?"
"I don't know what I am," Harry says, his voice steady and honest. "One of your researchers tried to turn me into a ghoul. He only partly succeeded."
Something lights up in Arima's eyes. Understanding. "Kanou."
"He's dead."
"I would assume as much. How did he manage to get his hands on a wizard?"
"There was an accident. I happened to be in the wrong place at the right time, and with what little I could learn of the man, I still know he was an opportunist just as much as he was a schemer."
Arima nods in understanding. "That he was." He turns, head ever so slightly inclined towards the corpse that sat like a candle atop some grotesque mockery of a cake. Red velvet, served bloody. "How did you cross paths with Kijima?"
"I was listening for an investigator. I… wanted to see your people at work. The worst of them, the ones you keep hidden and locked up because they're more dangerous than the things they hunt."
"It sounds like you're describing me."
"I wouldn't say so. I'm not dead, am I?"
A smile, just the slightest thing. Arima really can feel something, he just chooses not to show it.
Smart.
"So you wanted to learn how we work? What are your thoughts, investigator?"
Harry snorts. "I think it's rotten to the core."
"Then we're in agreement. You are who I've been looking for…" He trails off, lost in thought. Only for a moment though, Arima quickly collecting himself and humming quietly. "What piqued your curiosity? The experiment you were subject to, or something else?"
"It was an old man, actually. He asked me to salt and burn the CCG. I told him I'd have to look into it first, and come to a conclusion of my own."
The hope in Arima's eyes is childlike, and Harry knows immediately that this too is his dream. This is what drives the man in front of him. He is a revolutionary, cloaked in white and yearning desperately for a way to cure the rot he sees without drenching himself in blood.
To not drench himself in more blood, more than he has already spilled. Enough to drown Tokyo and the countryside beyond in a river of flowing red. The corners of his eyes are dripping with the stuff, and every time he opens his mouth it comes flooding out, pouring like a waterfall in endless mockery of the peace that he so desperately wants.
"And what did you decide?" Arima asks, and if Harry weren't listening for it, he never would have heard the anticipation that coated every word, thinner than paper and just as fragile.
Harry looks up, beyond the machine meant to pulp and stir the blood of hundreds. Past the whirling spotlights that flash in warning, riling up the entirety of the CCG and sending peons and officers alike scrambling to sort out the insult that has been left at their door. Now that Harry thinks about it, it's more a declaration of war.
I can slink through your most hidden safehouses. I can find you where you eat, where you shit, and you'll be none the wiser.
"I think you should step away from that compactor, because I'm about to tear it apart."
And he does, in a burst of glorious red, the bombarda that leaps from his wand shines brighter than any of the lights whirring about the spiral stairs above. The sound of it is deafening, echoing through the tube of the facility, amplified. It's a pipe bomb on a far grander scale than any terrorist or revolutionary has ever pictured, and the shockwave sends ripples towards the surface that shake the fan at the peak of Cochlea, rattling it in its cage.
Steel rains down from above, a shield wrapped around Harry and Arima both, protecting them from the thousands of tonnes that pour down on them. The debris rolls uselessly off a barrier that defies all logic and reason, and Harry grins at the sight of it all, heart pounding in his chest not in fear but excitement.
He missed the chaos that comes with fighting for what he sees as just, and how exhilarating it is.
Harry grins, and were he to glance to his side, he would see Arima do the same.