Akira does not do well with matters of the heart

They met the group in the lobby.

Leading the way was Kurona, the soles of her shoes clicking with each resolute step. A single splatter of blood across one cheek was the only hint that they hadn't had a pleasant stroll on the way over.

A bit behind her, Kimi was carrying an armful of lab notebooks and waving with her free hand. "We're here to help!"

The other researchers following behind her were looking pale-faced and frightened, in sharp contrast to her determination.

"I though about killing them all like you said I could," Kurona explained, "but then I saw all that nonsense. I thought we should keep some peons around to go through it all. As punishment."

"And we thank you for your restraint," said Akira as her eyes traced over what must have been thousands of pages of data in everyone's arms.

"Kano just walked out the door when he saw what happened in the city. He disappeared and left everything behind." Kimi shoved her armful of books at someone behind her. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a small hard drive in a black plastic case. "This is what we need to get into, though. Is there anyone here that can get into it? It's probably got some sort of password, but I think it's where Kano's most critical research is stored."

Marude walked up behind her and grabbed it. "Let's run it to the IT unit. They're looking pretty useless right now."

While Marude went off to find them a room for analyzing Kano's research, Kimi set some binders on the ground and started flipping through them.

The rest of the researchers were sent to an empty office nearby with orders to go through the rest of the notebooks and bookmark anything that might be useful.

Kurona leaned against the wall, and Akira paced. Neither was particularly interested in small talk.

People rushing back and forth passed them, only occasionally sparing a glance at the trio of women idling in the hall.

Another young investigator hurried past, but skidded to a halt and did a double-take at Kurona. "Hey! You're…Yasuhisa, right? Kurona?"

She glared at him.

He continued. "We had some classes together ages ago. You gave me your notes that time I was out with strep!"

Recognition dawned on her face. "Narasaki?"

"Yeah! I always wondered what happened to you and your sister after you two left. I missed you, you know? I couldn't hide from teachers without you in front of me."

Kurona was speechless.

"How have you two been?" He looked up and down the hall. "Is she around? I have five seconds to say hi."

"She's…she didn't…" The young woman floundered. "She died. A couple of years ago."

The boy—Narasaki—paused, his face falling. "Oh. I'm really sorry to hear that. Thanks for showing up here, though. I think we need all the help we can get right now." He looked down the hall at what was probably his team, circling up. "I need to go right now, but if things ever calm down I'd love to catch up."

With a stiff nod, Kurona watched him run off. She seemed stunned at the fact that her presence had made a small impact in someone else's life, and that her disappearance had caused ripples.

Akira tilted her head, considering. "Interesting. I almost forgot you used to be on an investigator track."

"I don't want to be recognized by these people…they'll just keep reminding me of my sister."

"There's no escaping that part, I suppose."

There was a long pause. Akira looked around again. No news yet.

It was Kurona who broke the silence. "We talked about it when we were kids," she sighed. "Which one of us would die first. I always said I wanted to, even if it was really selfish, so I wouldn't have to watch her die…and look at me now."

Akira shrugged. She might not be the best with handling delicate subjects, but the hidden value in Kurona's loss seemed obvious to her. "Like you said, one of you was always going to go first…you got the hard part, but you saved her from that grief." Maybe she should have couched it more gently, but Kurona didn't seem the type to appreciate such condescension.

"I wish I felt as noble as you make it sound. It just sucks most days."

"Of course it sucks. It's still noble, in its way. If being noble actually felt good, we wouldn't need any laws."

At the sound of someone running across the marble floors towards them, they both jolted and looked for the source. Kimi was unbothered, lost as she was in whatever she was reading.

A messenger sprinted up to them. "We're getting the hard drive unlocked, but they want someone who knows what they're looking at to go through it."

Kimi resurfaced at those words and jumped up. "Let's go, then."

They followed their runner to a computer room. No internet, but the computer's display was running on a large wall-mounted screen for everyone to see, as if it was some flashy presentation.

It hadn't taken the IT employee very long to get through the hard drive's security measures—a cybersecurity expert, Kano was not.

Marude was waiting for them. With immense agitation, he shooed away the tech guy and pointed at a chair in front of a computer. "Get to it," he ordered Kimi.

The scientist startled at the abrupt order, before setting down her armful of papers and taking a seat. "Alright."

"Would it kill you to not be a jackass for once?" Akira muttered her comment under her breath, but in the small, quiet room, everyone heard.

He tried to straighten his rumpled suit jacket as he talked. "We've got electricity and running water for now, and a few teams are cleaning out nearby grocery stores for food, but we're on our own for all intents and purposes." He looked straight at Akira, and she got a sense of how much responsibility he was carrying. "Outside contact is minimal, and no convoy of supplies is going to roll up out front anytime soon. This is a bad situation. We're racing against the clock until someone out there decides we're acceptable collateral and aims everything they've got at that monster."

The grizzled investigator had touched on a fear that was tickling at the back of her mind. Hearing him say it out loud was…sobering.

Frustrated, Marude finally yanked off his tie, balled it up, and threw it into the back corner. "Focus on fixing the problem. I'll try to be nicer later."

Akira swallowed hard. "You're right. We should focus on the problem."

"Let me see if there's anything useful on here." Kimi rolled her chair in front of the computer and pulled up the contents on screen. She silently clicked through files for a minute, before she came to something she didn't understand. There was a large folder, with dozens of files labelled "Perfusion 1," "Perfusion 2," and so on.

"What was he perfusing," Kimi mumbled to herself. She double-clicked the file. "I was in charge of perfusing the rats we ran tests on, and I didn't make any of these."

It loaded a video—an operating table with an unconscious child laying on it, a mask obscuring his face and a section of his chest framed by surgical drapes. It was the view from a camera set at a high angle, giving a clear view of the table. Standing to the side of the patient, inspecting a tray of instruments, was Kano.

"And you said this will surpass even the Quinx project?" The voice from offscreen sent a chill down Akira's spine. It was Furuta.

"Indeed," said Kano as he reached for a nearby tray and picked up a scalpel. He held it lightly, comfortably—like an artist would hold a paintbrush.

"Oh, no," Kimi said. She hit pause. "If this is how he made the Oggai, this isn't going to be pretty."

"I'm not leaving," growled Kurona. "I already knew he was a monster."

Akira had no desire to watch, but she felt compelled to. As if understanding what those children had been subjected to was her penance. "Keep going," she ordered.

Kimi hit play again.

Onscreen, Kano leaned over the patient and pressed his scalpel to the child's chest. With disturbing efficiency, the doctor had sliced through the skin and teased apart muscle to reveal flashes of bone. He grabbed a small electric saw and ran it down the sternum with a shrill grinding sound. A retractor was violently affixed, and after a few stomach-turning cranks the patient's beating heart was revealed.

She glanced over at Kimi. Judging from the horrified look on her face, Kimi already understood what was happening.

Akira clenched her fists, eyes wide, horrified at how quickly the boy on the table went from whole and healthy to his fragile organs just…exposed to the outside world. And how calm the surgeon was at the violence he was inflicting. Even so, it happened so quickly there was no time to collect herself or call for a break. She was along for the ride.

Something struck her about the procedure, how most human features had been obscured with drapes…he doesn't think the people on his table are people…they're just bodies to him.

"This type of operation is surprisingly physical," Kano commented. "Especially without an assistant."

"I'd love to lend a hand." Furuta, gowned up but with an ever-recognizable voice, wandered in frame to peer more closely at the exposed heart.

"You don't have the expertise necessary. Besides, it's a good workout. Now. We feed the saline through the left ventricle, and drain blood from the right atrium." He picked up several needles attached to tubing, one after another, and leaned in to affix them in the heart. The attachments jumped up and down with every heartbeat.

"It's so wonderful you've offered me the opportunity to test my theories. I'm sure this procedure would never clear an ethics board."

"No problemo," Furuta said in a breezy voice. "I thought I might take a page from that blonde traitor's book. Whoever has the best toys wins, and you do make the best toys."

Akira winced. Is that really what everyone thinks of me? Being called a weapons freak had never truly bothered her too much until that moment. She didn't even have any quinques at her disposal anymore.

Kano turned to the machine that the tubing was attached to and hit a switch. Blood began pouring out of one of the tubes, flowing into a drain on the floor. Clear liquid ran into the other tube, still being pumped by the heart. Within a minute, the patient began convulsing on the table he was strapped to. Legs trying to kick against restraints, hands curling and uncurling…

Akira rested a hand over her queasy stomach. She still couldn't look away. Judging by the shocked silence in the room, she wasn't the only one feeling that way.

"Freaky," said Furuta. "I thought you said they would die in the process."

Kano pointed at the heart. Its beating had died down in spite of the body's surprising amount of movement. "He is dead. Notice how pale the tissue has gone. The system's been flushed of human blood. The saline has a vasodilator added, for later. That's what the muscles are reacting to. Now be quiet, I need to work quickly."

With calm efficiency, Kano used surgical tape to stabilize the tubing and the retractor in the still-open chest cavity. Then he unbuckled the straps holding the boy's limbs down. "I do need your help for this part. Grab the legs."

With care, they rolled the body over.

Kano again adjusted surgical drapes framing the boys spine, picked up his scalpel once again, and created an incision.

He reached for another tray. When he uncovered the contents, a tray of ice and a plastic-wrapped dark red blob of tissue was revealed. Kano unwrapped the organ with gentle hands.

"The beautiful thing about a kakuho," he said as he worked open the incision on his patient's back, "is how resilient it is. It will graft itself just about anywhere you place it, taking root with minimal help from the surgeon. I used to waste so much time making sure everything was perfectly stitched in place, but now we know that none of that is necessary. Unless, of course, the body rejects it. Previously, we've simply screened for promising candidates with moderate success. I believe we've finally found a workaround, though."

The ghoul organ was quickly eased into the incision as he spoke. He appeared to do some minor adjustments with some forceps, tied a couple of quick knots with some suture thread, and straightened up with a satisfied nod of his head. Rapidly closing the incision with staples and slapping some surgical tape over the cut, Kano rolled the boy's body onto his back again—less delicately this time. He flipped a valve on his perfusion pump, turned it on again, and watched with a smile as blood instead of saline was fed into the heart.

The body again began to convulse.

"Performing the procedure while the subject is functionally dead leaves the body practically defenseless against the immediate transformative effect of the transplant. And this full transfusion should jump start the process so quickly, it obliterates any remnants of our subject's immune system with minimal risk of rejection."

"Brilliant!" said Furuta. "And all it takes is a quick round trip to the afterlife. Will that have any effect on them when they wake up?"

Kano shrugged. "Perhaps. I'd expect some pumphead. The healing effects may counteract some of the damage caused by oxygen deprivation."

"That's fine. They don't have to be smart, they just have to understand orders."

They both watched as ghoul's blood was sent circulating through the small body. Kano leaned into the cavity and inspected the heart, then stepped back with a satisfied smile. "It's restarted."

Indeed, the heart was again moving, picking up strength with every beat.

Kano removed the rib spreader, and quickly stapled the skin together. He snapped off his surgical gloves and tossed them on the floor. Turning to face Furuta, again standing offscreen, he said, "Now. Pending the success of this first attempt, let's discuss how large of a cohort you'd like—"

The recording cut off.

Marude cleared his throat. "I don't know what that was supposed to accomplish other than give me nightmares."

"We have a new appreciation for the lows that Kano and Furuta sank to," Akira pointed out.

"I can't believe it." Kimi covered her face with her hands, distressed. "He kept that from everyone. If I'd known, I would never have…At least, I don't think I would have stayed…"

"Well, he obviously didn't run every little thing by you." The old man closed his eyes, thinking. "So he was running pilot studies on college kids that rolled into his operating room, kidnapping injured investigators—"

"Experimenting on orphans," Kurona interjected.

"Experimenting on orphans, and then doing worse experiments on more orphans, all in secret with single-minded determination…but he walks away from all of it when the Dragon appears…" He took a long pause, then slammed his fist on the table.

Everyone jumped.

"Because he's done. This is what he was working towards."

"Giving us all nightmares?"

Marude glared at Akira. "Yes. We cross him off the list of problems to worry about. Now, on to the next problem. Everyone who ever ended up in a room alone with this guy got turned into an artificial ghoul."

Everyone in the room looked at each other, nodding reluctantly. No one could really argue with Marude's logic.

He continued. "We need to find out if the bastard did any work on Furuta. Whether he's human or ghoul will affect our approach. If we go at him with the wrong weapons, lives will be lost."

That thought didn't phase Akira. "I'm pretty sure his RC levels wouldn't matter to a rocket launcher."

Marude sarcastically applauded her. "Practical. But explosive ordnance is in short supply after the initial assault on the Dragon. Same with our RC suppressants. We need to know the right way to attack. I won't waste lives or weapons on bad intel, so figure out how to get us the information we need." He turned his attention to Kimi. "And you. Now we know the building blocks for this Dragon, you figure out how we can take it apart."

The researcher nodded. "Yeah. I still want to talk to those witnesses from the 24th but I'm starting to get some ideas about what makes it tick. Wait—" Kimi sat up. "Where are you going?"

Kurona had crossed the room in near silence. Her hand was on the door.

"You crossed Kano off your list. I didn't." At the door, Kurona's monotone voice carried through the room, although she didn't turn to face them. "I'm going to go track him down. And I'm going to kill him."

Akira waffled on whether to say anything for a moment but decided to speak. "Kurona, wait."

"You're not going to stop me."

"I'm not trying to. Takizawa is hanging out in the area. He might appreciate a chance at revenge, too. Just a thought."

Kurona scoffed and stormed out.

If she stopped moving, she'd either collapse in exhaustion or implode, and she wasn't ready to do either just yet.

Akira thought it might be good to check out the perimeter during this lull where no one seemed to need her. She was not in the right shape to go out past the wire—that would have to wait until she got some sleep—but it should be safe enough to check out how things were going outside the building. Plus, a bit of fresh air sounded nice.

She wouldn't be going empty-handed, though. There wasn't much in the way of spare quinques laying around. It was fortunate that she had a stash in the building. She didn't get the moniker of weapons freak for no reason, after all.

"Hey, Chigyo." She'd finally caught him helping the group of non-combat personnel that had been going around the building, breaking into all the vending machines and providing a steady stream of snacks.

He dropped his lockpicks in shock and stared at her, leaning back as if he thought she was going to hit him. "…Yeah?"

"Oh, stop it. I'm unarmed. I need to get to my father's quinque collection."

That was not what he expected. "Are…you…allowed to have access to quinques?"

Akira bit back some choice words. "You could bother Marude to see if I have permission, but he might not be as nice to you as me."

"No need to threaten me!"

"That's not a threat. I'm just stating facts. Your two options are to let me get to the quinques or bother Marude."

He didn't immediately budge, so she took a deep breath and admitted, "The truth is, I don't have the time or patience to do whatever song and dance is expected of me to apologize for using you, but I am. I'm sorry, and we can talk about it as much as you want later, but please. I don't have any weapons, and I need one."

A thought popped into her head—some phrase she'd heard from Amon, the litany of humiliation or something like that. She really couldn't sum up how she felt recently any better.

Chigyo looked aghast. "Wait, you used me? What? When?"

"Can we circle back to that later?" Akira cursed her big mouth for a moment. "I really need your help right now."

He crossed his arms, turned around, huffed for a moment, and spun back to face her. "Fine! It's not like that could make things any worse."

One awkward, silent elevator ride later, and Akira was staring at her father's collection again for the first time in a long time. The stacks of quinque cases lining those storage shelves felt less like a legacy and more like a burden.

As Chigyo watched, she ran her fingers along the shelves and brought to mind what each one was. She knew most of them by heart, but she'd never had any special attachments outside of the Fueguchi models. None of the others were quite as powerful, either.

The flashy, devious ones failed to pique her interest. Really, she just needed a simple weapon. No learning curve, just something with a good reach to it.

Past the neat line of cases, she laid eyes on the small rack of older quinques—before they were even built to collapse down into suitcase sizes. There. That spark of intuition lit up and told her she'd found what she was looking for.

It was a polearm built from a kokaku-type, with a long, curved blade at the end. After a moment of thought, she also grabbed a pair of serrated bikaku-based knives modeled after diving knives, and strapped the set to her leg. "That should suffice," she muttered to herself.

She was about to leave, but she turned and looked back at the wall of cases. Her father's life work, and—at one time—a mission she thought she'd carry on. She'd turned out to be better at losing quinques, more than anything.

"You know what, Chigyo?"

"What?"

"Help me grab as many of these as you can. We're going to take them upstairs and distribute them to anyone who needs a weapon."

"I mean…or we could just use that." He gestured with his thumb to the cart sitting against a nearby wall.

This is one of those things that's weird about fanfiction, when we—the fans—already have a sense of who the villains are and what cards they're holding, but I think the reveal that Furuta…ahem…had work done deserved a little more attention than it got.

It's not super critical to the plot, but I kept wondering how the Oggai were made, and I thought to myself, what's the most messed-up procedure I've ever heard of…

All surgeons are a touch psychopathic, I think. Even if you intend to help, there's something in the normal human psyche that resists taking a knife to someone.

Next week: Akira enjoys some fresh air and exercise