The walk out of town was unmemorable, which in this case was a good thing. He didn't remember any of the people he'd seen, and he didn't remember any particular stares. He mostly just remembered the steadily mounting pain, and the overwhelming weakness. He knew those things weren't good, but as long as he could keep putting one foot in front of the other, they were survivable.

And he could. He made it out of town, and for a little while he thought he was lost, until he started seeing signs for the airport. At this point, he had genuinely no idea how he was still on his feet. It felt like the ground was tilting gently back and forth beneath him, and his head hardly felt attached to his body. He was alternately freezing cold and sweating through his shirt, so he knew his fever was spiking. He couldn't move his arm at all.

But he still kept walking.

He kept going until he made it to the cargo airfield, which was - thankfully - a lot less heavily guarded than the equivalent for passengers. All Kogami really had to do was sidle up to the fence, find the first hole he could, and wait until the employees loading up the Japanese plane trickled away. Once the coast was clear, Kogami squeezed through the gap in the fence, almost falling as the motion wrenched at his injured arm. He righted himself, clinging left handed to the fence until the world spun around him a little less, and then drifted towards the plane.

He didn't know where the security cameras would be, so a fair amount of his plan involved looking unthreatening until he identified their placement and could take them out from their blind angles. Kogami didn't know how well that was working, although he certainly didn't feel threatening. He felt hollowed out, and weak enough that a toddler could probably take him out.

Still, Kogami kept his head low and his knees bent, making his way across the airfield from as low a vantage point as he could manage. It was hard, especially without using his right arm to stabilize himself as he crawled along, but he breathed through the dizziness and kept going all the way up to where he could see the belly of the cargo plane.

Kogami dropped gratefully behind a sign that he couldn't read, presumably labeling the runway, and started scanning the body of the plane for anything that resembled a security camera. Sure enough, there was a black dot about halfway up the plane, angled towards the hatch that led up to the cargo area. He didn't know if there were any others, maybe on the other side of the plane, but that didn't really matter. He was going in this way, so he only needed to take out the ones pointed in that direction.

Kogami drew his gun left-handed, rising unsteadily to his feet. The pistol he was carrying was a newer model, and racking the slide would require two hands. He missed Masaoka's revolver.

Gritting his teeth, Kogami flexed his right hand and pulled the slide back. He almost missed the sound of the bullet chambering, losing it in his inadvertent yelp of pain. Whimpering softly, Kogami let his right arm drop back to his side, feeling the telltale dampness of fresh blood on his shoulder.

But that didn't matter now, because he was almost home. He'd made harder shots than the one in front of him now - hell, the shot that had started this whole mess had been harder. This one was left handed, but Kogami could make that work. When he was younger, he would have drooled at the thought of shooting lefty in the field.

Kogami sent a vicious curse towards the Kogami of fifteen years previously and aimed the pistol. His hand was shaking horribly - he would have steadied it with his right if he'd been able, but that arm was barely able to move.

The first shot struck the very edge of the security camera. It was a little harder to tell from down here, but Kogami was pretty sure it shattered the lens.

Not good enough. Like most of the security cameras in Tokyo, it was probably drawn to movement, and would be swiveling towards Kogami now. If even a little chunk of the screen was intact, if even a little portion of Kogami was visible, there was a chance it would get a clear shot of Kogami, and then it would all be over.

Kogami fired again. This time, his aim was a little better, and he hit the camera dead on. There was a little flash, so he knew the electronic bits that powered it had been destroyed. He hoped that he hadn't done anything that would actually damage the airplane - even Kogami wouldn't mix guns and airplanes normally. But it was a little late to worry much about that.

Kogami ran towards the plane. Since the plane was completely loaded by drones, and everything was presumably inspected before it was even loaded up, there was no obvious place for a human to enter. But the wheel had lots of handholds, and even one-handed and injured Kogami was a good climber. He had no choice but to rely on his right arm a little, which was so painful that at a few points, he was worried he might black out and fall. He thought he might have screamed at one point, but everything was so hazy that he honestly wasn't really sure.

He didn't really have a plan for when he got to the top of the wheel, but thankfully there was some sort of emergency hatch that he could open by prying open a panel and pushing the button. Which was a relief, because at that point, Kogami was shaking so badly he wasn't sure he could do anything more than that to make it inside the plane.

He barely managed to haul himself in through the emergency hatch. As soon as he did so, he collapsed onto the floor, panting for breath. He was so feverish he felt sick, and when he looked over at his arm, he saw that blood was spreading in a slowly widening patch out from the site of the bullet wound. The stab wound in his gut hurt so badly he wouldn't be surprised if that was bleeding too, but he couldn't see anything through the layers of bandages, his shirt, and his jacket.

Kogami spent a few moments lying on the ground and trying not to pass out. When the world finally stopped spinning around him, he pushed himself part way up and started looking around.

He was in the cargo hold of a plane, something he'd never seen before outside of movies and Kagari's old manga. It didn't really look like those versions, which he assumed dated back to the days of a less automated society. This mostly looked like the warehouses he'd raided with the MWPSB: sterile, organized, and almost imposingly neat.

Not for long. Kogami looked down at the patch of blood he'd left on the floor, then back at the orderly rows of crates that greeted him. If someone bothered to inspect the inside of the plane, he was pretty much screwed, but he could at least make it hard for them to find him.

Kogami pushed himself to his feet with one hand, crying out as his stomach throbbed. There was no more reason to be quiet. No one was here to overhear him.

He stumbled towards the row of crates, slipping between the first few and steadying himself against their tough plastic sides. There probably wasn't much time left before the plane took off, and Kogami wanted to be safely hidden by then, but he couldn't move very fast anymore. His body was shutting down around him, and all he could do was hope that he was safe before it gave out completely.

Blackness flickered at the edge of his vision, and Kogami realized deliriously that his hand felt numb against the crate, barely attached to the rest of him. If someone did search the plane, Kogami wouldn't be able to hear them coming. He would be unconscious. If they found him, he wouldn't wake up until he'd already been arrested. If they didn't want to bother with arresting him, then he'd simply never wake up.

Barely thinking straight, his thoughts clouding the inside of his head like a thick fog, Kogami collapsed against the nearest crate. He pawed at the top, searching for the release button the ones back home in Tokyo usually had. His fingers were numb, and he didn't know he'd found it until the top of the crate hissed and released.

Kogami shoved it part of the way off, knowing he'd never get it back on if he let it fall all the way to the floor. He looked inside, blinking back the spots swimming across his vision.

Bags, full of what looked like some kind of freeze-dried food. Kogami didn't check any further, just reached inside and started pulling the contents up and out of the crate.

The bags were heavy, heavier than they'd looked. Kogami only managed the top layer before his arm gave out underneath him and his fingers released the bag they'd been holding, letting it slip uselessly back into the crate.

That didn't matter. Kogami had made enough room. Gracelessly, he swung one leg over the side of the crate and slithered into it, nestling himself in among the plastic bags. It was a tight fit, but the closeness felt good, providing an evolutionary sensation of security.

Kogami knew it was a false one, but it felt good all the same.

Kogami wasn't completely clear on Ginoza's plan for collecting him once he arrived back in Japan. Honestly, he wasn't even sure if Ginoza had a plan - he was mostly just hoping he could figure one out in time. But he assumed that things would be much easier on Ginoza if he knew exactly where Kogami was located, especially if Ginoza himself wasn't able to come to collect him.

Which meant there was still another thing Kogami needed to do before he could allow himself to pass out.

Kogami squirmed around until he could get the transponder to his ear, and then called Ginoza. Ginoza picked up immediately - he'd clearly been waiting for the call.

"Shinya?" he sounded breathless. "Did you make it? Are you alright? Do you need…did you…?"

"I got on the plane," Kogami said. He was alarmed by how raspy his voice sounded. He wasn't sure when that had happened.

"How do you feel?" Ginoza fretted. "Did your arm start bleeding again? You didn't see anyone, did you?"

"I'm fine." Kogami surprised himself by not wanting to talk to Ginoza longer than he had to, regardless of how worried the other man sounded. That, more than possibly anything else, was a true mark of how exhausted he was. Checking in with his husband felt like one more thing to do, a task to check off the list before he could finally, finally rest.

"I'm glad," Ginoza said. "Were you going to tell me where you were located?"

"Oh," Kogami said. He was glad that Ginoza had figured that out, because he honestly doubted he would have remembered alone. "I'm…."

He trailed off. Thinking was getting hard. He was already having a hard time tracing back the path he'd took when he'd gotten onto the plane, and it had been less than five minutes ago.

"Went up near the wheel well," he finally managed. "Then straight towards the nose. There's a big gray crate. Well, I guess there's a few, but mine is…the bloody one."

"That's…good to know," Ginoza said delicately.

"I think…think I need to go now," Kogami said. His head felt unattached. "Gotta…fall asleep. See you when…."

He trailed off again, not sure what he'd been about to say. He thought Ginoza might be saying something else to him, maybe asking him another question. But he couldn't be sure about that, and he certainly couldn't respond.

His eyes closed, and he fell asleep.