Chapter 20: Stormy Weather
When Goro went to see Dr. Maruki, he took Makoto's advice and went through the Metaverse. There should have been a Shadow at the door, guarding it as the human guard did in the real world. But to his surprise, there was no one. He exited the Metaverse and checked the real world, but the guard was gone there too. Interesting. Based on Shido's surprise before, Akechi reasoned that Shido knew who had planted the guard there and told them to knock it off.
As he pushed the door open and followed the hall to Maruki's office, Goro considered whether Kaede Wada was still at the top of the suspect list. Definitely. Signs already pointed to an associate of Shido's. This is more evidence.
The thought of Shido brought his words to mind again: No freelancing. We're reducing the body count now. Goro scowled at his self-righteousness. Shido had gotten all he could out of being selfish, and now he'd get to enjoy being noble. What a joke.
Goro pushed the office door open without knocking. Maruki was there, bent over a desk, writing something intently in another one of his notebooks. He didn't show any sign of stopping, so Goro took Jose's View-Master from his bag and peered through it. The Death card was still there over the doctor's head. Dammit.
Goro sat down opposite him and crossed his legs, lacing his fingers together over his knee. After a moment, he cleared his throat loudly and was gratified to see Maruki jump about a foot in the air.
"Akechi-kun?" said Maruki blankly. "What can I do for you?"
"You got what you wanted. Your 'sponsor' leaned on me, so here I am. The least you can do is drop the act."
"You know who the anonymous donor is?" asked Maruki. Then he added, "Is this something I want to know, or something I shouldn't know?"
"It's Masayoshi Shido," said Goro, watching the doctor's reaction.
Maruki nodded. "That's not a huge surprise. He was on my list."
"List…?"
Maruki flipped a few pages in his notebook and passed it over to Goro. Inside, he had scrawled, "Possible donors?" with a three-way Venn diagram underneath. The three circles were labeled "Motive," "Means," and "Opportunity." Shido was the only name that intersected all three, though there was a question mark under "Opportunity."
"Obvious," said Goro, tossing the notebook back. Seeing it laid out like that, it was rather obvious. It irritated him that Maruki had figured it out before him, but he had to admit a grudging respect. Whatever else one could say about him, Takuto Maruki was not stupid. And Goro was definitely stealing that Venn diagram idea.
"You said he leaned on you…?" said Maruki, flipping to a fresh page and readying his pen.
"Requested, threatened. They're one and the same with him," said Goro.
"I've never spoken to Shido-san personally. He uses a go-between to communicate with me. A man called Yamamoto. Actually, Yamamoto-san had a request for me, too. He said someone would come here looking for me."
"There you have it. They covered all the angles."
"So it would seem." Maruki considered him thoughtfully, chewing on the end of his pen. "You said you felt threatened. Is that why you're here?"
"I didn't say I felt threatened. I said he did threaten me."
"I'm surprised. I would have thought the change of heart would have made him more…agreeable."
Goro furrowed his brow. When he thought back, had Shido threatened him? His words had carried an implicit threat for so long that Goro was just used to thinking of things that way. "He…may not have threatened me as such. Does it matter? I thought you needed my help."
"Oh, I do. Desperately. I'm coming up empty on my own. I just want to know that you're doing this for the right reasons."
That phrase tweaked Goro's temper. "Right reasons? What makes you think you have the luxury of deciding that?"
Maruki shrugged. His calmness was infuriating. "Here's how I see it: Masayoshi Shido may have set this place up. He pays my salary. But my duty of care is to my patients, not him. I owe it to them not to waste my time on dead ends. Or worse."
"Worse?" growled Goro.
"Active harm. That would be worse," said Maruki, still calm but with a hint of disdain.
Goro uncrossed his legs and dug his fingernails into the chair arms.
"Are you being paid for your time?" Maruki continued. "What if I doubled your fee and you took the day off?"
Goro told him how much Shido had given him, and enjoyed watching the blood drain out of the perpetually poverty-stricken doctor's face.
"I take it you can't cover that," said Goro dryly.
"M-maybe in installments…" said Maruki.
Goro enjoyed watching him squirm for a moment, then changed the subject. "Well, anyway, I agreed to come here and help, whatever that means. You want to start with a few vials of blood for a baseline?"
He started to roll up a sleeve, but Maruki held up his hands, looking perturbed. "No, no. No, I don't need to take your blood. I just have some questions for you."
"Fine. Dr. Isshiki always wanted blood. Guess I won't miss that."
"Dr. Isshiki…is she the woman who took over my cognitive psience research? Futaba's mother?"
"That's the one."
"Ah, then I suppose you worked with her for a time."
"If you want to call it that. She came up with experiments and I played the rat. It was her hypothesis that led to Shido's little untraceable assassination side hustle."
"What happened then?" asked Maruki, settling back into his chair.
"Is this part of the test?" snapped Goro, suddenly realizing Maruki had almost caught him unawares.
"Well…we could go through a bunch of boring, repetitive multiple-choice questions, or we could have a conversation. Which would you prefer?"
"Whatever. It doesn't matter what kind of test it is, I'll ace it."
Maruki nodded. "I have no doubt. Scholarship student. Top of your class every semester. That can't have been easy when you were also working for Shido-san."
"It wasn't, but I managed," said Goro with a touch of pride.
"When did you start working for him?"
"Toward the end of middle school, about three years ago now. That was when I was granted the ability to enter the Metaverse."
"I see. By that time, my research had already been scuttled…Shido-san gave what I'd done to Dr. Isshiki and instructed her to find out more, using you as a test subject. I'm sorry about that."
"Why? You aren't the one who did it."
"I'm sorry that it happened to you. Experimenting on a minor is, well…" Maruki stopped himself and looked abashed, as if he'd just realized he was criticizing a dead woman for something he'd also done.
"At least she was fair about it. Whatever she learned, I learned too. It made me stronger. I didn't hate her or anything. It…wasn't personal."
"You mean, her experimenting on you?"
"Killing her."
Maruki's face didn't even twitch, but he looked down at his notebook without writing anything into it. "You killed her using the Metaverse, then?"
"That's right. Just as she hypothesized, when I destroyed her cognitive self, her conscious mind shut down. She was…the first."
"Why did you do it, if it wasn't personal?"
"Shido's orders. He wanted to be the only person who knew about the Metaverse. At first, he used my talents against his own enemies. Later he realized he could make alliances and some extra money by selling my services. A win-win."
"Like you said before…you were Masayoshi Shido's untraceable assassin. How did you like that work?"
Goro shrugged. "I didn't mind it, mostly."
"Did you ever regret having to kill someone?"
"Sometimes."
"Like when?"
Goro's eyes flickered downward. "I couldn't control when a person would keel over, you know? Sometimes it happened right away, sometimes it happened hours or even days later. One of those people was driving at the time, caused an accident that killed three more. That was…unintended."
"Collateral damage, as they say," said Maruki.
Maruki set the notebook aside and turned away, reaching for something behind him. Goro heard ice rattling.
"Would you like some tea?" Maruki asked.
"No thanks. I prefer coffee," said Goro, wondering how long this would take.
Maruki spun back around, holding a tumbler full of iced tea, and took a healthy slug. "There's no such thing as patron-researcher confidentiality, so I'm just going to level with you."
"About time," said Goro through clenched teeth.
"The question Shido-san wants answered is whether you're a genuine sociopath. Do you feel any remorse for the things you did, or just…" Maruki shrugged and flicked his fingers as if he'd gotten some dirt on them.
It would be very easy to lie. Maruki had just told him what Shido wanted to hear. Well, Goro wasn't about to give either of them the satisfaction.
"Who cares about some worthless feelings? If I feel bad, would the wife or daughter of someone I killed feel better? Any corpses going to get up and start walking around again?"
"This isn't about anybody else but you," said Maruki. His pleasant, even tone hadn't changed. "Maybe from another angle…if you had last year to do over again, what, if anything, would you change?"
"I'd…" Goro started to say that he'd kill all the Phantom Thieves before they could interfere with his plan, but the words petered out almost immediately. He didn't believe it, and he didn't think Maruki would either. If he had the time back, would he join the Phantoms instead? Maybe form the team himself, be the leader instead of Ren? Or would he just be another Phantom Thief, a minor character in someone else's story? That idea, he found, he hated most of all.
"I wouldn't change a thing. Everything happened just the way it was supposed to. Didn't they tell you about Yaldabaoth and all that?"
"Yes." Maruki sipped his tea. "All the Phantom Thieves told me that even though they'd suffered, they wouldn't change things to return to the way they were before. Ultimately, they all felt they'd grown from their experiences. Is that how you feel, too?"
Goro hated to agree with Maruki. Really hated it. But when the man was right, he was right. "Yes," he said grudgingly.
"OK, then. I suppose you weigh your self-actualization higher than making things up to your victims."
"Now you're putting words in my mouth. I didn't say that," Goro growled.
Maruki's tone became cooler, less pleasant. He sat forward and Goro saw a glint in his eye not unlike the sharp look he'd had in his Palace. "No? You're aware that the things you did harmed people. You regret them. But as far as I can tell, you've resisted any attempt to atone or otherwise pay for your crimes. Isn't that right?"
"No. I did attempt to confess my crimes. The police refused to listen. I now know it's because Shido – your generous patron – pulled strings on my behalf."
"Interesting," said Maruki, making a note. "Odd, though."
"What is? An amoral psychopath like Shido doing something for someone else?"
"Well, yes, but I think we can chalk that up to his change of heart. I meant you. That someone so devoted to a personal concept of justice would leave it up to the judicial system, rather than pursuing your own version."
"So what? Isn't that what people like you want, anyway?"
"Not necessarily. There's what's good for society, and what's good for individuals. Those aren't always the same thing. Societal justice may be served by punishing you, but individual justice calls for something more personal. Like an apology."
"I suppose you'd love to see me grovel, huh?"
That, finally, got a rise out of the doctor. Frowning, he said, "I don't know where you've gotten the idea that I'm your enemy. All I've ever done is try to help you."
Sensing the fight he'd been itching for, Goro shot back, "You twisted me into something I'm not, just – just to suit your idea of perfection!"
"That's a bit much, don't you think? I changed almost nothing about you. That's precisely why you were able to defy me. We wouldn't even be having this conversation if I had made you a different person. Surely you can see that."
"Why change anything, then?" Goro pressed.
"Reversing the crimes you committed restored the people you harmed and removed your feelings of guilt and remorse – or should have, anyway. A win-win, from my perspective. It wasn't all about you!" Maruki sat back, exasperated.
"Then who cares if I apologize to my victim's families? What's it to you!" Unable to sit still, Goro got to his feet and started pacing.
Making an effort to keep his voice low and calm, Maruki said, "What I'd like to know is why, if you feel remorse, you wouldn't try to fix it."
"Because there is no fixing it! That's what I've been trying to tell you! None of the people I killed is ever going back to their family, and nothing I can do will ever change that!"
Feeling trapped, Goro left the office, slamming the door behind him.
Maruki took that in silently, with just a slight tightness in the jaw and a crease in his brow signaling that he was struggling with his thoughts. Then he started writing again.
"How long do we have to do this?" asked Makoto, again. She and Haru were taking a relaxing stroll in a beautiful park and it was making her edgy.
"At least thirty minutes. Otherwise it's hardly worth the time to come, don't you think?" Haru's tone was mild as always, but Makoto glanced over to see that Haru was fixing her with what Makoto had come to think of as her "Serious Business" face. The one Haru brought to board meetings when she wanted to get something done. The one Makoto had caught her practicing in the mirror, though that was Makoto's own little secret.
She's getting too good at that, Makoto thought with a shiver. Her mind went to the stack of logs that Haru kept on their balcony. When Haru was feeling stressed, she took an axe out there and chopped the logs into firewood. They were never low on firewood.
Makoto tried her best to look relaxed, but her brain kept going over the problem that Dr. Maruki had set for her. He had a theory about some way to cure the Mental Shutdown patients using Freudian concepts, but he was waiting to share it until Makoto shared her own thoughts.
The problem was that she didn't have any thoughts. After reading through a number of texts on Sigmund Freud and his theories, Makoto was stumped. She could admit defeat and just ask Dr. Maruki what he was thinking, but…ugh. Failure is not an option! Makoto told herself sternly, but every day that passed made her feel more anxious that nothing was coming to her.
Then one day, Haru told her that she had learned an incredible productivity tip from one of the top managers at Okumura Foods. Makoto, who was always trying to do more with less time, perked up at once.
The tip was: once a day, every day, take at least half an hour to do nothing.
Makoto's look of deflation must have been comical, because Haru giggled behind her hand and admitted that she felt the same way. "He said to think of my mind as sort of a jewelry box, and my thoughts as rings and necklaces and such. If the box is already full, nothing new can fit in. See?"
Makoto couldn't picture her mind as a jewelry box — more like a Buchimaru pencil case stocked with every kind of writing implement imaginable — but the analogy made some sense. Every day she went to her classes, where more things got stuffed into her mind. No wonder Freud was getting lost.
Haru suggested a stroll around Kyu Shiba-Rikyu Gardens, where their agenda was to clear their heads and not think about school, work, or Sigmund Freud. Makoto sighed and resigned herself to making no progress for another day, but it wasn't like she had any better ideas.
Following the well-worn pathway around the park, Makoto tried to shut out her inner monologue and focus on the sights and sounds around her. Wind rustling the trees, low chatter from other visitors, birdsong. The closeness of the hot, humid air. A lovely, ancient-looking stone bridge reaching across the lake that sat at the center of the park.
They crossed the bridge to a little island, then paused to look out over the water to another island. The other island had no bridge. No way to get to it, unless I were a duck. Do ducks think of land the same way people think of water, just something they have to cross to get to the next pond? Makoto thought idly.
That was when it occurred to her. Everything she knew about the Metaverse and everything she knew about Sigmund Freud finally clicked together. She pulled out her phone immediately, hoping to contact Dr. Maruki right away, before she lost her train of thought.
Still, she knew she had to be cautious since her run-in with the guy at St. Luke's, so instead of texting Dr. Maruki's personal number, she went through the hospital's patient portal to send him a secure message. The website was taking forever to load…she hopped from foot to foot, waving the phone above her head as if that would make the website appear faster, like a Polaroid photo.
Haru began to say, "Mako-chan, you're not supposed to be using your phone —"
"One sec, Haru!"
Finally it loaded, and she tapped through the menus to find the little message box. Fingers flying, she typed out, "I have an idea about the mental shutdowns. I think Akechi could use his abilities to revive them, if we can come up with a way for him to do it safely. Let's talk and see if we can come up with a test." She included a bullet-point sketch of her idea, and hit send.
As soon as the message was sent, she called up Ren. Voice mail. Not surprising, as he would be in school at this hour. She left him a message. "Ren-kun, Dr. Maruki and I may have come up with a way to reverse mental shutdowns, but we need Akechi's help. When we asked him before, he wasn't willing, but…I think he'd listen to you. Can you convince him? Give me a call when you get this."
Haru smiled as she ended the call. "May I assume this means you've had a breakthrough?"
Makoto was so excited she threw her arms around Haru. "I did it, Haru! I think this could really work! We might be able to reverse Mental Shutdown Syndrome!"
Haru's eyes betrayed just a touch of regret — sadness that this news came too late to save her father — but only when Makoto wasn't looking. When Makoto let go of Haru and stepped back, Haru was smiling warmly. "I'm so glad, Mako-chan. Tell me all about it while we walk. Afterwards, let's get some lunch. This deserves a celebration."
Moments after Makoto left her message on Ren's voice mail, a transcription of it had sent itself to Kaede Wada. He was passed out in a club girl's cleavage. The girl was trying not to disturb him, while at the same time bending over to get at the last of the dust from a line of cocaine on the table in front of them.
The buzz from his phone woke him up. He blinked. What time was it? He pulled the phone out of his pocket. It said 3:30, which didn't help him at all. Yawning, he looked at the message. His eyes widened with every word, until he reached the end.
He jumped up, jostling the girl, and started pacing. He ordered the phone to dial Maeda and waited.
"She did it! Niijima! She figured out how to fix them!" he babbled into the phone.
"Slow down. No, shut up," ordered Maeda. "I'm not alone."
The line went silent. Wada pinched the bridge of his nose and paced faster.
Finally, Maeda came back and said, "Now slow down and explain what you mean."
"The Niijima girl. She called one of her friends and told him she had a way to fix the mental shutdowns."
"OK. OK. How do you know this?" he demanded.
"The app, how else! Her friend must have installed it. It picks up everything from the phone."
Maeda had a hard time wrapping his mind around that. "That's ridiculous. It records everything said by anyone who has it installed? Is that legal?"
"Well…it's not illegal. Look, it's all in the perms and the TOS!"
Maeda muttered something about binding Wada's arbitration and sticking his perms straight up his TOS. "Fine, but how are you sorting it out, all that noise? You couldn't possibly be listening to it all."
"Oh yeah." Wada had completely forgotten that he never told Maeda about this project. "All the raw audio dumps into a transcription app. Then the transcripts go through a filter that picks out certain words. If they appear close enough together, I get a text. Mental shutdowns AND Maruki OR any synonym of fix."
Maeda was dead silent. Finally, he said, "You're shitting me."
"It's not magic, dude. I banged out the logic in like a day and a half, then I let machine-learning do the rest." There were some mind-expanding drugs that also deserved some credit for this feat, but Maeda didn't need to know that.
Setting aside the indignity of being called "dude" for the moment, Maeda pressed, "Isn't anybody going to notice, though? Can you seriously just get away with something like that?"
"Meh, some security researchers, maybe. Ivory tower dingleberries."
"The thing about researchers is that they're good at finding things out," Maeda pointed out. He sighed. "Send me the text."
Wada sent him the text and waited while he read it.
"What's this about Akechi? What does that brat have to do with anything?" Maeda asked.
Wada re-read the text, but nothing new came to him. "I don't know, but Shido mentioned him too. Hang on a sec."
Wada ran a quick search on #GoroAkechi. Photos of Akechi at some karaoke joint with a bunch of girls popped up. Then photos of Akechi at a Catholic church in Kanda. He frowned and scrolled further, going back in time. Photos of Akechi at school. Photos of Akechi at Dome Town, more girls. That kid really pulls tail, thought Wada, grudgingly impressed. He gleaned that a mental shutdown was attempted at both Kanda and Dome Town, but didn't end up happening.
"That little shit," said Wada. "He's been blocking us somehow. We've never sent the mob after him, though. We could give it a try, see how he does when he's the target."
"No!" said Maeda immediately. "We overuse the app, it can get traced back to us. Remember, we talked about this. We agreed, no more than three personal scores apiece, and we're done. Then we let the other targets cover our tracks for us."
Dammit! thought Wada. He had already used up his three hit jobs. In all honesty, when he agreed to that, he never thought Maeda would actually enforce it. "Do you have a better idea?" he demanded.
"Give me a minute," said Maeda.
The minute felt like an hour. Wada paced back and forth, told the girl to get them some drinks. For the first time, he felt like their operation might be uncovered. When he worked for Shido, his exposure was limited; he could always blame Shido and claim he knew nothing about any illegal activities. But now he was in charge. The only other person to blame was Maeda, who would surely be doing the same to him. Every second was like torture as he imagined cops coming into the club, perp-walking him out of the building, photographers' flash-bulbs popping in his face, getting shoved into a cop car and finally thrown in prison.
"Too hot," Wada muttered, barely realizing he was speaking out loud.
"What?" said Maeda, snapping him back into the here-and-now. "I've got a plan. You have a key part in this, so pay attention."
Wada gulped at "key part," but he'd hear Maeda out. If he had to give the old guy one thing, it was that he was pretty good at running operations. He'd just open his mouth and lay out a whole project from one end to the other. That was not Wada's wheelhouse. He was a disruptor, not a maintainer. Good at grabbing opportunities, not keeping things running from day to day. That was why Maeda was the planner and Wada the money guy.
Maeda said calmly, "If Shido's going to do a big presser, he'll get in touch with me next. He'll send me his speech like he always does. Here's what you're going to do. You're going to be in the audience, front and center, right where he can see you."
"What? Why do I have to do that?" Wada asked nervously.
"Because Myojo is going to send out some Starbursts during the speech, and you're going to be standing there without your phone."
"Huh? Without…oh! You'll do the Starbursts and I'll have an alibi!" Wada felt a rush of relief.
On the other end of the line, Maeda's tone darkened. "Yes. That's the fallback plan. But if we do this right, Niijima, Maruki, Akechi, and Shido…well, let's just say none of them will be a problem for us ever again."