Forget about "Akira's prediction comes true"

Actually let's try: Akira finally gets to wear a blazer again

Her eyes blinked open. Unfortunately, all they could see was dingy dropped ceiling tiles. She tried to sit up—with great effort—but was yanked back down by the tubes attached to her face.

"Calm down. Whatever you think, you're still a lot more human than not. You're not designed to take the kind of abuse you just went through."

She rolled her head to the side to see…Kimi standing there at her side, fingers flying over a tablet. "…How long was I out?"

"Almost three days. You woke up a couple of times and talked some, but I guess you don't remember that."

She shook her head and cleared her throat. It felt like she hadn't spoken for days. "It's like I blinked on the helicopter and appeared here. Is there a reason you're who I'm waking up to?"

Kimi stepped aside, revealing—folded up in an extremely uncomfortable position—Amon, in a chair in the corner of the room. He appeared to be deeply unconscious.

"He had to go out and help with that battle thingy for a while, but he came right back here. Very sweet if you ask me. But he has been out cold for…six hours now?"

"There was…a battle." Akira made a fumbling attempt to remove the tubing under her nose and around her ears, but her fingers were too confused to get the job done. She nearly screamed in frustration and tried to rip it off.

"Careful!" Kimi gasped and grabbed one of her wrists. There was another tube taped to the inside of her elbow. "Don't mess with it, you'll get blood all over the room."

Akira's eyes traced the line from her arm up to a dangling bag of liquid.

"IV nutrition. We had a lot of conversations before I finally convinced the doctors to try it and see what happened."

"Oh. Um…glad to be a guinea pig."

Kimi ignored the sarcasm and proudly spun around her tablet. "See? I made a graph. I've been monitoring you very closely. You were unresponsive by the time you got back here, and you had a seizure! One of the doctors thought you'd been exposed to that aerosolized toxin and tried to give you RC suppressants, but Chigyo came racing in and said to check your levels first. Your RC levels tanked, even below most humans. Single digits. So that one buff guy—Banjo, I think? We called him in and he did his healing thing."

Akira had been spending most of her focus on untangling the tubing from her ears and hair, but when she finally processed what Kimi was relating, she was brought up short. "Wait, back up, I had a seizure?"

"You were unconscious at the time. No big deal. My working theory is the levels were depleted trying to repair all the damage you took, and you're no longer able to survive on such low levels. When Banjo helped finish up the healing, your vitals and RC levels started looking better. Rocketed right up." Kimi pointed to a peak on the graph.

After that, it became sawtoothed. "Then you bounced around a bit. The IV nutrition improved your vitals best when your levels were lower, so we tried to time infusions to that. And finally—" she drew a finger along where the line smoothed out. "You stabilized and woke up."

"Alright," Akira whispered. Then, louder, "Can you help me get out of these wires and tubes? I can't afford to be laying here any longer than necessary."

"Oh." Kimi stopped short and stared at her. "Did I not explain? It's over. Furuta is dead."

The hallways were in a strange dream state. Some people were hurrying around with urgency, but there was no sense of danger in their movements. And some people were walking and talking as if they had all the time in the world.

Kimi had helped Akira out of bed. After grabbing a nurse out of the hall, a casual change of clothes quickly appeared. "The sooner you get moving again, the better. Besides, you have a visitor."

She roused Amon, barely, and sent him to stretch out in her hospital bed. It took a bit of shushing, but he was tired and confused enough to obey without too much resistance. On impulse, she gave him a kiss on the cheek before sneaking out.

And Akira shuffled into the hall. As she walked on tired, wobbly legs, Kimi explained where they were going. They were just taking a short trip, a few doors down.

"She showed up at the front doors. Touka was the one who recognized her." The scientist knocked on the door.

"Come in," called Touka.

There, on the other side of the door…was Maris Stella.

She circled around Akira's legs and looked up at her. A twitch of the whiskers was the only sign of recognition.

Acting like it's just a coincidence that you left that nice park full of vermin to trek across a ruined city, I see.

She looked healthy, though her once-luxurious coat had seen better days. It was unusually gray and grimy.

The cat sat nearby, daintily licking her paws and washing her face. Normally Akira would be happy to just watch and ponder how cute it was, but she was not the only one watching.

Ichika was sitting on the floor a few feet away, staring with intense focus. Every once in a while, she would blow raspberries, babble, and wave her arms, then watch for a reaction. She seemed determined to get the cat's attention.

Maris Stella serenely paused her grooming and scanned everywhere around the room except at the baby. Pointedly not spotting wherever the noise was coming from, she quickly returned to the business of tending her coat.

Touka called over from her visitor's chair. "I can tell it's your cat. They've been doing that for twenty minutes."

"I did raise her to be petty," Akira smiled.

Touka pointed to a couple of small plastic dishes on the floor. "I don't know anything about taking care of cats, but I gave her water, Yoriko found a couple of tins of tuna in the kitchens, one of the investigators helped find litterbox stuff…"

"It's more than enough," Akira choked out. "Really. Thank you."

"Hey, of course. It's the least I could do for you." The ghoul sent Akira such a warm smile, it made her stop for a moment. It was strangely privileged to get that look that was reserved for someone's closest acquaintances, family and friends, and to recognize what it meant.

She stood up and gestured to the chair. "Here. You sit, I need to stretch my legs for a minute."

Akira's first impulse was to say no immediately. She reeled herself in—it wasn't about showing weakness, it was about accepting kindness. If Kimi had told the truth and it was really over, there were a lot of defensive instincts that she should try to unravel, she realized. So, with unsteady legs, she made her way across the room and accepted Touka's help in sitting with a bit of her dignity intact.

Looking over to the hospital bed, Akira asked, "And how is he doing?"

Kaneki—or it must have been him, judging by the white puff of hair sticking out—was buried under a mountain of blankets. Breathing, but otherwise in a deep sleep.

"Sleeping twenty hours a day. We're all crashing right now, though. It's like the whole city is hungover. The doctors think there's no need to worry yet, and to just let him rest for a while."

Akira nodded, thinking of Amon back in her room. "It feels like I need to find something else to do, like I'm forgetting something, but…you're right. Everyone's just sleeping in the aftermath."

"Take it while you can get it. I have no idea what happens next." Touka glanced over at the baby, who was still fully focused on befriending the cat. "Let me catch you up on everything you missed."

The two of them talked quietly for a while. About what had happened when Kaneki woke up, how Ayato had volunteered to accompany him back to where Furuta was hiding out and everyone knew it was his attempt to make up for Ichika's kidnapping, the renewed attacks on the Main Office…

Eventually, Kimi and a nurse popped in. Akira's blood was being monitored every hour—which was news to Akira—and it was time for another sample.

The nurse used the cannula still taped to her arm to draw a couple of milliliters of blood into a test tube.

"While we wait on the next results, you want to take another walk with me?"

The timing was good enough. Ichika was growing agitated at Maris Stella's disdain and Touka had to break away to comfort her. "I'll move the cat to your room when I get a free minute," she said over the baby's sniffling.

The blonde nodded, said her thanks again, and followed out.

Kimi led her to a small meeting room. "When things calmed out a bit, me and Chigyo ended up in here for a couple of hours. Just throwing things around, mostly. I'm better with theory and translational research, but he knows more about the…applied biology, let's call it."

The whiteboards were covered in a confusion of scribbles—the handwriting was neat enough, but it made little sense. Abstract shapes, arrows, and abbreviations neatly filled in every last bit of space.

And more overwhelming—it continued across the windows.

The researcher shrugged out of her white coat and draped it over the back of a chair, then put her hands on her hips and surveyed the room. "I know, it's a cliché, but we had a lot of thoughts and I didn't want to erase anything. I think that the most interesting thing is that, in general, there should be no immune reaction to your own RC cells, and if they can be accidentally upregulated, you should be able to trigger it on purpose…"

"Why would that be a good thing? It doesn't sound healthy for a human to run around with a ghoul's RC levels." Akira found herself an empty office chair. She only seemed able to stand for a couple of minutes at a time.

Kimi pointed to one corner of the windows. A list of bullet points was neatly laid out. "It was a thought I had. Having such unstable RC levels could eventually devolve into full-blown ROS or something similar, especially since you seem to be growing resistant to RC suppressant. Your…episode…took a lot out of you…Not just in terms of healing, but from how rough on you it was to ping-pong around between really high and really low levels."

Akira stared back at her, unimpressed. "Yes, I understand, don't descend into a homicidal rage for any old reason."

Kimi didn't seem to hear her, though. She appeared deep in thought about something else, opening her mouth to speak, but hesitating.

"What is it?"

"Normally…I wouldn't even say this…It would be so unethical in most situations, but you might be perfect."

Akira crossed her arms. "Let's hear it."

"It's just an idea right now." Kimi pointed at another portion of her scientific graffiti. "But with a bit of refining…We know, in some areas, humans and ghouls are surprisingly compatible. Humans have our own RC cells, right? And, Ichika and all the other hybrids are proof that humans and ghouls might be very close together on the tree of life. If humans have some genes related to RC cell expression and regulation, who knows what else we might have written off as junk DNA? No one's paid much attention to the genome of ghouls—yet—but I think there's going to be a lot of interesting projects there."

"Where are you taking this?" Akira tried to decode the writing that the researcher was gesturing at, but the shorthand used was indecipherable.

"There's a couple of different ways I could go about it…but the upshot is I think it would be possible to grow a kakuho. From scratch. As in, with some of your own DNA."

"…Why?"

"The artificial ghouls are stable, more or less. More stable than you. The problem is that not everyone is a good candidate for a transplant, and even then there's some graft-versus-host issues in the recovery period."

"Wait, why would that be a problem again?"

Kimi ignored her. "But you've gotten accustomed to higher RC cells so there wouldn't be a huge reaction on that front. You might actually benefit…because a kakuho doesn't just exist to form kagune, I think it plays a major role in mediating a ghoul's RC levels."

"I have time, though. Right?"

"Yeah. Especially since it looks like things are quieting down. No big battles on the horizon hopefully means no injuries that'll disrupt your equilibrium."

Akira had to force the words out. "How long?"

"Hard to say. I have so little data. Give me another month and I can tell you if it'll be one year or ten." A chime sounded from the pocket of her abandoned white coat. Kimi raced over to check her phone. "Oh! Good!"

"That's good. Cell phones are working again."

"They've been back online for almost a day," came the absentminded response. Kimi kept scrolling through her phone. "These are your latest test results. You're around where some of the Quinx are, and they can usually eat human food…"

She grabbed an apple from a bowl of fruit in the center of the table, and tossed it to Akira.

Akira barely moved fast enough to catch it. "I haven't been eating much the last few days," she finally admitted with a tremor in her voice. She stared at the shiny red-orange skin of the fruit. It looked like a fine apple, but didn't inspire much hunger.

"Amon noticed, he mentioned it while we were debating what to put in your IV. On paper, you should still be able to eat human food right now. Let's find out."

With a deep breath and a healthy bite, Akira's teeth crunched through the skin and the flesh of the fruit. Chewed, swallowed. Her stomach felt a bit uneasy, but no uncontrollable nausea. "Maybe it should taste…sweeter than it does. But tolerable." She took one more bite, to make sure. The second mouthful went down easier.

Kimi nodded eagerly. "It's a positive sign, that you have time. I'd need time. I'm just saying, it looks like you're maintaining for now. If you ever go downhill, if you can't sustain those RC cell levels indefinitely without breaking down, this might be the answer. But I'd need a lot of time and research to be ready for that day, when it does come."

"So now it's 'when,' not 'if.'" Akira walked by the windows, looking at the rebuilding that was beginning out front. "What you're saying is…you're asking permission to turn me into an artificial ghoul." I see why Kano accepted you into his inner circle.

"Maybe it won't be needed at all. But just in case…don't you want everything in place when the day comes?" She continued at full speed. "Plus, we could learn so much about so many different things this way. Curing ROS, reprogramming RC cells to grow specific organs, the ghoulification process…It would be wrong to do this to someone off the street, but you are a perfect naturally occurring test subject."

Her shoulders dropped, eyes unfocused. All of past Akira's shelving of future problems was quickly becoming a headache for present Akira. "I'll keep giving you as much data as you want, and you let me know as soon as you have a timeline. You said I have time, right? I need a little bit of time."

She returned to her room. Amon had since disappeared. It wasn't anything to worry about. Everyone who was ambulatory was being pulled in a million different directions. Without meaning to, she sat back down on her bed and promptly fell asleep.

At some point later in the afternoon, she was roused by the sound of him entering to check on her.

"I'm sorry I missed you."

Akira garbled something unintelligible back.

"It's okay. You still need rest, we can talk tomorrow." A blanket settled over her, her hair was brushed out of her face.

"Where were you?"

"Helping to clear a road through the city. Then I found that scientist who helped us out with Shinohara and volunteered a blood sample."

"Oh, I bet she loved that." She cracked her eyes open and saw his shadowy outline in the dark room.

"She did. I couldn't think of anything else that might…help you. Now go back to sleep."

Fluffing her understuffed pillow, she settled in to sleep. "You didn't have to do that," she slurred out. But she had a smile when she heard him quietly leave and click the door shut behind him.

Someone grabbed her shoulder and was shaking her awake. Gently, sure, but being woken up that suddenly still filled her with unreasonable rage. Speaking through clenched teeth, she ground out, "I swear, Amon, if you need to talk that badly you're not gonna like what I say…"

"Sorry to disappoint, but I'm a little on the shorter and weaker side. Flattered you could confuse us, though!"

She cracked one eye open. The morning sun blinded her for a moment before her attacker came into focus. "Nagachika. What the hell are you doing here?"

"Akira…" Hide tilted his head to the side. "Kaneki would be preferable, but he's still pretty groggy. You seem sharp enough."

The hair on the back of her neck rose. Every instinct was telling her that Nagachika was up to no good. "What do you want?"

"Marude put me in charge of picking out a few people. Amon's great, but he's a bit intimidating at first glance, and I think he'd be too uncomfortable on camera."

She sighed and pulled her pillow over her face. "Spell out what you're talking about before the anticipation kills me."

Akira's hair was braided back with more care than usual, and pinned into a neat chignon. She looked tired, though that was nothing a touch of cover-up and some mascara couldn't fix.

Her wardrobe requests had been met very quickly. A very nice Prussian blue blazer with jaunty three-quarter length sleeves, an ivory silk blouse, and a smart pencil skirt completed the look.

Staring in the mirror, she reached up to adjust her collar, smooth down her hair…and was swamped with a sudden wave of déjà vu. She was getting ready for work on an average morning. The details would differ, but in general the days would be the same. Paperwork, investigations, training, the occasional operation. She'd never plotted behind the backs of the colleagues she respected most, or kept secrets that got people killed, or descended into a bloodthirsty rage. She'd never shared coffee with ghouls, commiserated with them about the annoyances of everyday life, laughed with them…

It was disconcerting to look at that reflection, see who she'd always seen, and be so utterly changed on the interior.

With a shake of her head, she turned around to slip on a pair of understated beige pumps near the door. Not broken in, she sighed. I better not get stuck walking around in these all day.

Other people often brought up how pretty she was when dressed this way—something that still left her mildly pleased if a bit mystified. Most days, she didn't care too much about looking pretty. Looking presentable was a far greater priority. This type of outfit used to feel like professional battle armor.

Now…she still felt more confident and more prepared than she had in a T-shirt and sweatpants, but there was a new sense of the weaknesses lurking under her own skin. She suspected that it would never go away, no matter what she wore.

Hide was waiting for her in the hallway outside.

She felt the need to explain her nervousness. "It's been a while since I did anything like this."

A nondescript man in a dark suit approached and began to pat her down very, very thoroughly.

Hide gave her the rundown while she was being manhandled. "He's just here to shake hands with some of the first responders and give reporters a few sound bites. It's mostly a photo op. But while he's on site, he wants to take some time to start talking about where we go from here. His team will probably be recording in some way, and he'll have security with him. No journalists in the room, but they'll see you go in."

Akira nodded. "And, hypothetically, if I voted for the other guy…"

Hide laughed. "If it comes up, tell the truth but make it funny. You'll get away with murder that way."

Finding no hidden weapons, the bodyguard turned to lead them to the elevator. Aside from the clicking of her heels, they walked in silence. It was a very quiet ride up to the floor where the meeting would take place.

Before the doors opened, Hide looked askance at her. "Don't stress too much. Remember, we're just trying to set the tone."

There were several intrepid photographers and reporters on the other side. Not many were brave enough to travel to the heart of the ghoul infestation, but the ones that had journeyed in were bold. She hurried to the door of the conference room, shielding her eyes from a couple of flashes.

She was quickly ushered to a seat at an expansive table. Marude was already seated next to Aura. Soon after she settled in her seat, a glass of water was set in front of her. She nervously sipped it. Within the next three minutes, they were joined by Juzo, Ui, and Urie.

Akira glanced at Hide, who was standing back near the windows. He winked at her. Good job, she thought. It's a nice cross-section of the CCG's best and brightest, no history of going soft on ghouls, and incidentally, they all turned out to be surprisingly cooperative when necessary.

Followed immediately by another thought—Really, I'm the only one who doesn't belong here.

Because sitting across the table from them, flanked by security, was the Prime Minister.

I'm kind of partial to extreme fatigue rather than any sort of coma, in terms of assuming that Kaneki (and to a lesser extent Akira) was more catching up on sleep and maybe awake for brief periods of time. That's mostly for my own peace of mind since, barring a medically-induced coma, anyone being unconscious for two weeks straight is a huge medical emergency!

Confession: I am a reader of Cormac McCarthy and every. damn. time. the cat has come up, I've typed out Stella Maris then remembered that was wrong and had to go back and switch it to Maris Stella at the last minute…if you wanted to know why I don't bother to have characters with the family name first, that's why. I have a great memory for vocabulary, but that's a double-edged sword: names are locked in my mind for all eternity however I first heard them (here, as they were in the English translations), and it takes a lot of time and effort to go back and fix all my blunders.

Between covid a few weeks ago and a non-serious veterinary situation that took up a lot of my free time this week, I've felt more disorganized than usual for the past couple of chapters! I've mostly kept it contained to making some weird indecisive choices with my little bumpers. I intended this to be the last regular chapter, but decided to cut it short because I didn't have time to get the whole thing up to par…but there's only 2 (maybe 3) chapters left!

Next week: I…haven't thought of a good one yet and it's getting late, see above :)