[CONTENT WARNING: body horror, graphic description of human experimentation]

Severance Package

Zimmermann and his team didn't get a chance to defend their case, of course. The recovery team had found them strewn around the Ministry, unconscious but otherwise unhurt. Beat had done his job to perfection out there. Apparently none of the rogue attacking party had made it out of the forest cover around the Ministry, so while they were still a liability for going around Three and "Seven's" directions and the General by association, there was no need to directly engage with the foreigners during what was an internal matter. Netto couldn't help but smirk at the knowledge that they'd been corralled by a tiny cartoon bird; one last insult to add to their impending injury.

The members of Zimmermann's disobedient team were sedated, ensuring they wouldn't regain consciousness until it was time. They were separately loaded into eight of Two and Four's special cages, one part steel and one part Dimensional Area, then shipped to the harbor by truck to await their release from active duty. The General had reviewed the footage of the Net Police debacle that had made it online, and deemed an additional ten of the injured men to be too prominently featured. They were given shots of Two and Four's blocky, reddish-black blood-and-substantiated-data slurry to stabilize their wounds; its side effects no longer mattered at worst and were more likely a feature at this point. Then, they were loaded into cages as well.

As to why they were being dealt with here and not back home in Darkland, Eight's explanation made all too much sense. "The General suspects we have a leak," she told Netto and Three, twirling a strand of curly green hair around her finger. "If the Japanese defenders catch wind of our departure tomorrow night, we need them to disappear proper this time."

"That would explain a lot," Three said sourly. "The Net Saviors and their friends have been far too fast on the uptake."

"But who would be foolish enough to turn on us?" Netto smirked. "Not like they'll have anywhere to go."

"They can pick which side executes them and where, I guess," Eight shrugged. "We'll flush 'em out here if they let us, or we'll see what happens back in the Citadel."

It was only when Netto was alone in the harbor warehouse's mess tent that he allowed himself to think on this new information.

He would need to decide upon someone to receive his information faster than he'd been ready for. Soon, he would be back in the Citadel, activating the link that would not only send Rockman and Punk to safety… but also seal his own fate.

The noose was beginning to tighten.

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Mary and Kaita wanted to learn more about what had been happening than anyone would tell them, so Ring and Turboman were dispatched to the Internet City search engines. Afrikku was a 'conflict zone', but the first result for what that meant was a cartoony video from the University of Tokyo website with weirdly jaunty stock music about researching in conflict zones. There was little said about why anyone was fighting, other than Ameroupe 'stabilizing the region' so they could make 'important manufacturing deals'. This was, after all, supposed to be an era of peace. Japan was obligated not to act aggressively by its constitution, anyway, so it was the last place that needed to know otherwise.

"It's like we're supposed to think it just came out of nowhere," Mary said, bewildered at the lack of results.

Kaita muttered, "Like it's a fight with nobody really in it."

"Why can't the people who were there to begin with just… decide who gets what amount of the minerals?" Turboman wondered. "And if Creamland's there, too, where does Poipu-san fit into this?"

"She… she's a princess!" Kaita protested. "And she's nice! Princesses don't do that kind of stuff, do they?"

"Our monarchy is just a bunch of figureheads, and that goes for most places, but they can still influence policy," Turboman explained.

"So it's really hard to say unless we just ask her," Kaita summed up, annoyed. "And if we do, and she is a bad guy, just not a bad guy toward us… then what?" He crossed his arms. "This is so confusing. I hate this."

"I don't think we can afford to anger her." Mary pointed out, "Creamland's a small country, but it's still a small country. We just don't have the resources here to do whatever you're thinking of doing."

"That's… the problem with Meiru-san and Enzan-san's plan, isn't it?" Kaita said. "Darkland's a small country, too." The group fell silent.

"Argh! Now what do we do?" Turboman wondered. "It's all gone skidding out of our control. Feels like we need more people, or something…"

That was the cue Mary needed to remember a strange afternoon that had also started in front of the Internet City search engines, and in its course meeting a ragtag team that had assembled from thin air. "More people…?"

Ring exclaimed, "That's it!"

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The blondes were ready with the ambush when Netto finished his midday meal. For a moment, inside the windowless warehouse they'd set up camp in, it felt like he'd never left their home base beneath the Citadel.

"We need another steady pair of hands," Four explained. "Don't you want something more interesting to do before we get picked up?"

"This entire operation's been rather beneath your talents," Two remarked lightly as they started walking, not giving Netto a chance to make an excuse. Her voice had always had a soft, lilting quality to it that Netto found unnerving, as if she didn't really care whether anyone else understood her. Or about anything happening around her at all. "It's a shame the General's idea of picking up a new field agent didn't pan out."

"At least, not in the short run," Four added. "We do still have a potential Ninth waiting to return to base with us, even if he's a ways away from initiation."

"I would have liked to have had that Tenth, though," sighed Two. "Think of all the information we could have sent him to collect."

Zimmermann appeared to still be unconscious when they entered the girls' temporary lab, only fenced off from the rest of the warehouse by some fabric partitions. He was naked and shackled to the steel table in the center of the room, under the deactivated Dimensional Hood that Two and Four used to stabilize their victims on the operating table.

Laid out around the room were the many and varied tools of the two scientists' trade. The other seventeen ex-soldiers' cages lined the walls, some of their occupants awake and staring back at the three Silvers with scared eyes. Space was at a premium in this field laboratory, with a lot of the standing area taken up by various monitors, so some of the tools rested on top of the cages.

"Find me when he wakes up, I guess," Netto said, not especially wanting to be there for that part. The subjects Two and Four worked on had to be conscious and not anesthetized while the surgery was being performed. Otherwise, they would invariably be rendered catatonic. Seeing them realize where they were was never a nice feeling.

"Nah, he's awake," Four said. "I can sense his fear." In another life, Netto figured he would have had some kind of wisecrack ready to deflate Four's over-the-top proclamation. But the General was always watching what happened in the blonde girls' lab somehow, and he did not appreciate Netto's sense of humor. Or anything Netto said at all. "Strap on the vital signs monitor and I bet his heart'll be racing."

"You heard her," Two told Zimmermann placidly. "Stop pretending."

To his credit, Zimmerman wasted no further time. "Unhand me," he snapped. "I outrank you all!"

"You've been terminated," Two explained, connecting the vital signs monitor to Zimmermann's hand.

As Netto watched the lab's central monitor to make sure the connection was successful, Four reminded her victim, "And nobody who knows about us can leave special ops!" After a moment, she turned to Netto. "You oughta remind him that we exist beside his chain of command, not below."

"Seven never was the talkative sort," Two pointed out.

"I demand an audience with General Haine," Zimmerman growled. "I've been nothing but loyal to my country. I've followed every order I was given!"

This phase of bargaining was the same no matter who the subject on the table was. Netto brought up the programs that would be necessary for the planned operation.

"Nuh-uh," Four said, singsong. "You weren't supposed to try and attack the Japanese Ministry of Science."

Seeming to already realize his current tack wasn't going to work, Zimmerman begged, "I have a wife. I have–I have two daughters!" Zimmermann looked wildly from face to face for sympathy. "They're a lot like you. They're–they're very bright, they're going to wonder what happened to me…" But it was hard for him to keep this act up under Two and Four's unchanging expressions.

Perhaps Netto's face was sad. Perhaps it was stony. He wasn't quite sure what sort of expression he had in these situations.

"They're not like us, dummy!" Four beamed. "Nobody's like us!"

When these things inevitably happened, Netto simply concentrated on doing the job expected of him. The General had always had a punishment waiting if he stopped cooperating with his senior Silver Division members. There was little doubt left in Netto's mind that, even a whole ocean away, the General would know if he didn't do as he'd been told. The warehouse was probably under complete surveillance, just like the facilities in Darkland had been, so the old man had to be watching Netto that moment.

Being under the General's omnipresent scrutiny was yet another thing Netto really, really hadn't missed.

"Recording started at fourteen twenty hours on May sixteenth," Two said dispassionately. "Activate the Dimensional Hood," she ordered.

That was where Netto came in. "Dimensional Hood, activated," he reported as the first program began to run. The space beneath the Dimensional Hood was much more stable than a full-fledged Area would have been, and it was narrow enough that if something went very wrong, the subject beneath it would die long before getting a hand on any of the scientists.

"At least let me talk to the General," Zimmermann begged.

Meanwhile, Two had been preparing a rather large syringe with fluid whose texture twitched and flickered. "Inserting the Fusion Code," Two announced for the record.

"Please–!"

"Here we go!" Four shouted exuberantly.

Netto had to think that having the Fusion Code administered was not actually all that painful. It was probably just the sensation of it spreading through the body, of knowing there was no getting it out, that always made the subjects gasp and fight against their bonds.

He looked into the main monitor. "Vital signs stable. Fusion Code fully accepted by the subject. Ready for virus sample," he stated.

Four practically skipped to the terminal next to him. "Preparing initial virus sample!" It was a Bajiliko virus, a tree-like thing wearing a mask in front of its main bulb of greenery. Four typed in a system command, and the poor thing squealed as it ripped into three packets of data. "Transferring into Dimensional Syringes!"

In the three Dimensional Syringes, the remains of the Bajiliko materialized as a neon green liquid. Two, Four, and Netto each took one. Two stood at Zimmermann's neck, while Netto and Four lined their Dimensional Syringes up with each of their hyperventilating victim's arms.

"No, please, no–"

Over Zimmermann's begging, Two said, "Administering first Virus Infusion in three… two… one..."

One of the advantages of not thinking was that Netto's hands never shook when he pressed the needle down into the subject's arm and pushed the Dimensional Syringe's contents in.

They stepped back, Netto returning to the main monitor, and waited. Zimmermann's vital signs changed first; his pulse rate stuttering, his temperature and respiratory rate spiking. As his vitals continued to worsen, he began to wordlessly whine, then scream, writhing on the table. This, Netto had to imagine, was the beginning of the painful part. He stopped himself from thinking on it in any further detail before he could become too horrified to continue.

They needed Zimmermann's heart rate to settle, so now the second program came in. "Activating Stabilization Environment," Netto announced. This added a yellowish cast to the light of the Dimensional Hood; more importantly, now that Zimmermann was a Virus Fusion, they had some control over what his body did. Zimmermann himself was not calm, but his vitals started to return to normal.

As their subject's crying began to subside, Four looked him over and made a face. "Ugh, he's wet himself. Gross."

With Four distracted, it was up to Two to continue, "Preparing second Virus Infusion." Another Bajiliko, another confused and pained squeal as it was divided, and once again the three scientists assumed their positions around Zimmermann's head and arms.

Across from Netto, Four was grinning fiercely with anticipation. The second dose always produced the most interesting results.

That was another thing Netto couldn't let himself think too long on. Instead, he focused on Two's calm, lilting voice. "Administering second Infusion in three… two… one…"

After delivering the second shot of Infusion, Netto returned to the main monitor, not wanting to look at the man himself as Zimmermansn's vitals skyrocketed. But after he heard a horrible shriek and the sounds of splintering bones, Four was at his side, pulling him back around. "Check this out!"

Zimmermann wailed as his jellied nose and ears slid off his head, leaving behind a set of holes. Various other small appendages were similarly turning gooey and peeling away further down his body. Netto couldn't decide if Zimmermann's ragged screams were out of pain or just the shock of having things so important to him leave his body. His face was deforming outward, swallowing his neck up and changing his screaming into something inhuman. What looked like boils began to erupt all over his body, bursting and coating Zimmermann and the Dimensional Hood with a ruby-red mix of blood and data. What escaped from under the Hood landed in blocky masses that occasionally twitched on the floor, slowly disintegrating into deletion. The smell was inescapably wretched.

Two and Four didn't so much as flinch. "What a shame," Two said, not raising her voice to be heard over Zimmermann at all.

"Let's insert another Infusion. He can take it," Four said, as blinkered as Netto had ever seen her.

"But then we'll take off too much skin," Two pointed out. "It needs to be functional in case the worst happens. I suppose two viruses it is."

The putrid blood-data was pouring out of the Virus Fusion's face. Netto bit down on his lip rather than let out a sob as he heard the unmistakeable sound of Zimmermann choking on the stuff pouring into his gaping mouth and nose holes. "I need Extra Code," Four ordered.

Netto prepared the Dimensional Syringe first, as was his job. "Extra Code," he said aloud so that Four wouldn't have to wonder where it was coming from. He had no idea what the stuff inside was, since he'd never wanted any more to do with the girls than was necessary, but it always had the same effect. When Four shot it into each sore, the blood-data thickened and stabilized.

Once she was finished, Four stepped back to admire her work. "That's so cool." Zimmermann's skin was now broken up by what looked like tree bark puffing out from beneath the flesh surrounding it. A mask was still in the process of pushing itself out of his oversized, deformed face, its spikes oozing out of the blood-data soup below it.

Somehow, Netto doubted that there was any skin or bushy "skin" underneath the Virus Fusion's mask as in the original Bajiliko. Zimmermann was clinging to it with his half-melted fingers as if there wasn't.

"Vitals stable," he said emotionlessly.

"Procedure completed at fourteen fifty hours," Two said for the record. She silently went to the door, ushering in the three agents waiting outside. They returned the thing that had been Zimmermann to its cage, sealing the physical half of its fortifications shut before Netto stepped in and activated the Dimensional Area half. Then, they set to work cleaning the leftover blood-data off of the floor, table, and Hood. There were, after all, seventeen other subjects for Two and Four to pick from.

"Wow, that was fun after all!" Four said cheerfully.

Two merely smiled. "Now, then. We need to have them all converted by this time tomorrow; let's see how many we can get through before midnight," she said.

"Oooh, a challenge!" enthused Four.

a/n: ...well, hopefully putting the cw in bold and underline got across its seriousness. i apologize if it didn't and ciel and kalin–er, two and four scared you.

so far, a whole lot more people than usual have been following along, according to stats! and if you made it through all of that up there to reach here, thank you so much for reading! now that we're this far into the posting, i can honestly say a review would help a whole lot at this phase in the writing, whether it's a simple "it is interesting so far" or more of a "i'd like it if you touched more on [thing] or cleared up [thing]". helps me figure out how many and which sorts of narrative spices i should bust out for the last half, you know?