Chapter 2: Enemy Territory

Something was wrong.

Seto noticed it too late. Flying over an endless blue ocean did not give him many clues to being off course, so it was only when he saw the streak of gray breaking the water that he began to feel a warning tingle along his spine. The approaching ship wasn't an aircraft carrier, at least not a proper one meant to carry a full squadron of jets, but it did have a landing strip and an unmarked tower, bearing no insignia of any country's navy. What kind of civilian ship would be modified to accommodate a private jet? And what were the odds he would cross paths with such a thing during his jet's maiden flight?

"It's always something," he growled softly, checking his GPS flight path only to find that, sure enough, his destination had somehow been rerouted.

"What was that, Seto?" Mokuba spoke too loudly in the headset, his enthusiasm still bubbling. During the flight so far, he'd chattered every minute away while Seto listened quietly, and even now, he said, "Ooh, how long would it take to fly to Paris? Could we go to Paris?"

Seto would have settled for just going home. As intended. But life rarely allowed him to follow through on any plan without complications.

Too often, deadly complications.

As he tried to reroute the autopilot, the system resisted him, acting as if an emergency landing had been ordered. He could perhaps disengage the system, but doing so would leave him without a flight path at all. Flying blind over the ocean. One miscalculation, and he would miss Japan entirely. In his head, he ran some brief calculations of how far he could get with his current fuel supply, as well as the odds of stumbling into an available landing spot in a foreign country. He ground his teeth.

If he were alone, he would risk it. Would he do the same with his brother in the backseat?

"Seto?" Mokuba's voice had turned hesitant.

Then a new voice crackled over the radio: "Blue-Eyes jet, zis is tower, requesting your landing."

It was a young man's voice, with a thick accent and a playful edge. Something stirred in Seto's memory, but he couldn't quite grasp it.

"Don't do anysing foolish, Kaiba," the stranger went on. "Accidents are fatal, und we wouldn't want ze brightest mind unter twenty-five to go wasting."

German. The brightest mind under twenty-five.

Seto would have said the man's name, but he didn't know it. After winning that grant three years earlier, he'd never given a second thought to his pink-haired competitor. He'd certainly never expected the man to reappear.

But it was always something.

"Who's that?" Mokuba asked.

Seto opened the return channel to the radio tower and spoke calmly. "Hair-gum, you do not want to test me. Not today."

The returning answer was completely in German and at least half profanity, if Seto were to hazard a guess. In the end, the stranger concluded sharply with, "You ought never to have tested me, Kaiba. Land ze jet."

The radio connection crackled with static, then ended. For a moment, there was silence, before Mokuba heaved a sigh through the internal channel.

"It's always something," the thirteen-year-old said sufferingly.

Despite himself, Seto's lips twitched. He looked out at the expansive blue circle of ocean joining sky, broken only by that gunmetal ship, growing larger by the second.

"What do you think, Mokuba?" he found himself asking. He'd never asked that before. "Keep flying blind or land in a trap?"

Perhaps Mokuba was as startled by the invitation as Seto himself. When it came to matters of consequence, their brotherhood had always been a dictatorship, and Seto didn't regret that—for thirteen years, he'd done everything in his power to keep his brother safe.

He was just coming to realize Mokuba had power of his own.

"Land," said Mokuba, with a certainty that made Seto raise his eyebrows. The boy went on to say, "After Marik, we can face anyone."

Seto smirked. "Roger that."

Since they'd already passed the approach point, he took firm hold of the controls and increased their speed, blasting past the ship's tower with a force that hopefully gave hair-gum a heart attack. Then he circled back, aligning with the landing strip, locking onto a final approach path.

And he landed in enemy territory.

As expected, Yori found chaos on the bridge. She and Yami entered a room of arguing KaibaCorp employees, one of them nearly bowling her over as the man darted into the hallway. Six people hovered around the controls, gesturing at screens, speaking over radios.

Noticing her, a man in sunglasses said, "You can't be in here. Guests—"

"She can," Roland said just as quickly, stepping away from the group.

Yori always knew she liked him. "Monsters in Domino, Roland?"

"Whatever plagues Domino is the least of my concerns, I'm afraid." Pausing, he directed one of the other employees to a monitor, then came to stand by her, giving a nod to Yami. "Mr. Kaiba has gone missing."

Yori's stomach fell.

"Missing?" Yami repeated sharply.

"I noticed a radio interference shortly after he departed. Now his tracking signal has disappeared somewhere in the ocean."

"He crashed?" Yori's throat tightened around the words.

Roland met her eyes, his expression grim. He'd tucked his sunglasses into the pocket of his button-up, and without them, he no longer looked the part of the unflappable guard. Between the worried creases around his eyes and the disheveled wave of his hair that spoke to how he'd run his fingers through it several times, he looked like a frantic father.

"We don't know," he said at last.

"If he did"—Yami gave a hint of a smirk—"I pity the sharks."

One of the employees snorted, and the tension in the room seemed to ease a fraction of a degree.

"I'll go get him," Yori said, speaking before she even realized she'd come to the decision. At Yami's frown, she shrugged. "I can fly. Dante can, anyway. I'll figure something out." She met Roland's eyes. "Where did the signal disappear? How can I track it?"

The guard stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. "We don't know. Everything on our end has been scrubbed; someone's been in our system."

Sabotage. Yori's mind turned immediately to Haku, waiting in Domino City. He'd sent Alister. He'd overtaken Seto's mansion; Yuugi had seen it firsthand. Only days earlier, Yori would have said with confidence that her ex couldn't navigate a computer system, certainly couldn't outsmart Seto Kaiba with his, but that was before she'd seen Haku override a Duel Disk. That was before everything devolved into gods and monsters.

Now she didn't know what to think.

"Here she is," said a rough voice from the doorway.

Yori turned to see the man who'd almost knocked her over when she'd entered. He was accompanied by a pretty redhead in a KaibaCorp maid uniform and a scowling Joey Wheeler, buzzing around him like an angry wasp, demanding to know what the big idea was.

"It's alright, Joey," said the maid, which did nothing to calm the wasp.

Yori tried and failed to remember the girl's name. Joey had definitely introduced her when they all held their discussion in the lounge, but Yori's mind had been occupied by other things.

Most of the other finalists and guests crowded the hallway outside, kept at bay by employees, adding to the clamor. Fuguta skirted Joey and came forward to speak quietly with Roland. As they conversed, Roland slipped his sunglasses back into place, his expression once more the stoic mask of a bodyguard.

Yuugi appeared as a spirit beside Yami. Presumably he'd been filled in on Seto's disappearance, because he didn't ask what was happening. Instead, he watched the KaibaCorp maid, his expression a concerned frown.

"I worried that Joey was trusting the wrong person," he said quietly.

Yori raised an eyebrow.

Sheepishly, Yuugi admitted, "While I was severed, I saw her fiddling in one of the control rooms. I would have brought it up, but there was . . . a lot happening at once. I honestly forgot."

The way his frown deepened said he blamed himself.

When Roland stepped forward to speak with the girl, Joey blocked his path. The boy was only an inch or so shorter than the guard, and his expression spit enough fire to make up the difference.

"What's going on here, pal?" Joey demanded. "Rich-boy's been firin' accusations as quick as he's firing people, and I got half a mind to—"

"Mr. Kaiba's gone missing, and our system has been infiltrated by this corporate spy."

"Joey," Yori said quietly, moving to stand beside Roland. "Let him work."

Joey barely cast her a glance. "She ain't a threat, sunglasses! If Rich-boy bought half-a-cent's worth of sense, he'd . . . You said 'missing?'"

While Joey's stance wavered, Roland shouldered forward to face the maid. Every question the guard asked went unanswered. She only stared up at him with cool green eyes and a detached expression.

Yori pursed her lips. After a few minutes of watching Roland get run in circles, she caught Joey's elbow and leaned in close.

"Can't you get her to talk?" she hissed. "Yuugi saw her poking around in a control room. She's done something, and every second we waste leaves Seto and Mokuba stranded in the ocean."

As she spoke, she couldn't stop thinking about the last time she'd seen Seto dragged into the ocean. She'd barely saved her friend from that.

What if she couldn't save him from this?

Though Joey shrugged off her hand, he didn't tell her to get lost. He glanced at the maid, then cursed under his breath.

Raising his voice, he said, "Sunglasses. Give us a few, will you?"

Roland sized up the situation, then gave a curt nod and stepped back.

Krisalyn hated the betrayal in Joey's eyes. The furious guard, the glaring employees—none of that bothered her. She'd had enough experience with press hounds to keep a cool face before barking dogs.

But Joey wasn't barking. He was looking at her with brown puppy eyes instead, and she hadn't prepared for that.

You know what happened to Kaiba? he asked, though it didn't seem to be a question. His sad eyes said she knew, and he was disappointed.

She found herself tensing, hugging her arms across her chest.

"Kaiba's been nothing but terrible to you," she said, hopefully speaking in a quiet voice, but it was always hard to be certain.

Sure, but that don't mean I'd see him drown.

No, quite the opposite—Joey had been leaping to Seto Kaiba's defense all day. He'd faced down literal monsters to save the soulless corporate scumbag who'd named him "Wannabe Wheeler" in a public ranking system, a man who did nothing but hurl insults toward Joey and everyone else.

Seto Kaiba was a plague. He deserved every punishment coming his way. She'd been so certain of that each step along her road to Battle City, but somehow the condemnation had become hollow in her mind, like words spoken that she couldn't hear.

"He won't drown." She was wrong to say it. It was an admission of some kind of knowledge, and she saw every employee in the room snap to attention in the background. Her father would have been ashamed of her slip in public face, as if he'd never spent rigorous hours with each of his children, teaching them to separate emotion from response, to project only unshakable calm.

Kris didn't feel unshakable at the moment. Not after monsters on the beach. Not after glancing around the control room and seeing every face on edge, every employee working with a frantic energy that went beyond duty, edging closer to something like devotion. How did Seto Kaiba inspire that in anyone? She'd expected everyone to be secretly glad he was gone, even if they had enough tact not to speak the words aloud.

She'd expected Joey to be glad.

Even now, he didn't expose what she'd told him, didn't confirm she was a spy to everyone else. He just looked at her with those hurt eyes.

You're the problem, she wanted to say. He'd stood between her and a guard the same way he'd stood between Kaiba and a monster. It wasn't that Kaiba was misunderstood or her brother was wrong; it was that Joey Wheeler was too kind-hearted.

And her own heart was all tangled up in those brown eyes.

"What a mess," she whispered. Maybe she didn't voice it at all.

Joey said, You can tell me.

That was just the problem. She would have told him anything. She'd already told him too much.

Kris shook her head, forced her spine to straighten when it wanted to curl. "I can't. I won't betray my brother."

It was too much information again, but saying it renewed her resolve, allowed her to remember that she had loyalties running deeper than brown eyes.

Joey blinked. Your brother? You got a brother put you up to this? Then his expression grew stormy, and his eyes narrowed. Where is this guy? He ain't on the blimp. He sent you in alone.

Calm mask hopelessly gone, Kris narrowed her own eyes. "You're implying something I don't appreciate, Joey."

Oh yeah? Well, I'm a brother, too, and I hate Rich-boy as much as I ever hated anyone, but I wouldn't throw my little sister into it.

Her next retort faltered. She pressed her fingertips into her arms and shook her head. Zigfried wasn't throwing her into anything. He'd asked for help, and she loved him, so she'd helped. The only reason he hadn't done it himself was that Kaiba would have recognized him.

"He has reasons," she said simply. "And I agreed."

Right, and what'd it cost? You're facing jail, and he's scot-free. If it was my sister gettin' caught for anything, I'd at least be right there with her.

It was her own fault for drawing attention. Z had expected her to slip away as soon as her job was done, but she'd lingered to watch Joey.

Of course, she'd told Z from the start that it wasn't a good idea to board the blimp, to be trapped hundreds of miles out in the ocean in such proximity with Kaiba, to have a KaibaCorp vessel be her only way home. She'd asked him to at least pick her up on the island, but he'd said it would draw too much attention. Expose the plan. If Kaiba had any suspicion, he would never fall for the trap.

Without meaning to, Krisalyn had gone white-knuckled. She forced herself to relax.

Joey relaxed too, running a hand through his hair, dislodging a few stubborn grains of sand that dropped onto his collar. He glanced past her at the door, and he sighed. Then he stepped closer. She could hear the rumble of his voice when he spoke, catch the edges of words.

Look, he said, I know what it's like. Your brother's all swallowed up in revenge, ain't he? I'm startin' to realize Kaiba's got a million enemies, and we all got the same shadow. He's a jerk, so we take a swing. I get it. I've done it. The problem is that bein' all swallowed up in something like that means we're blind to everything else. When I took my swing at Kaiba, I put my friends in danger. I put Mokuba in danger—just didn't know it—and Rich-boy may be the haughtiest prick to ever walk the planet, but that kid brother of his is innocent, and he always gets caught in the swings.

Though Krisalyn resisted the urge to retreat, she leaned back the slightest bit. Her mind summoned the image of a black-haired thirteen-year-old, smiling and waving at employees as he ducked in and out of the staff room.

Zigfried wouldn't hurt Mokuba. He had no reason to.

. . . Except hurting his brother would hurt him. If nothing else happened, that was still undeniable.

As if sensing her weakness, Joey moved in for the final blow. That kind of tunnel-vision, it swallows everything, Kris. Everything. My sister means the whole world to me, and the only time I've ever hurt her . . . He faltered for a moment, swallowing. Though he blinked hard, he didn't look away, didn't drop her eye contact. The only time I've ever hurt her was when I got tunnel-vision, and I forgot the one thing I always promised I wouldn't.

She did feel forgotten.

Even admitting it felt like a betrayal of its own. Kris's jaw trembled, and she stilled it. Didn't Zigfried deserve justice? He'd never forgive her if she ruined his plan now.

Someone new tapped her on the shoulder, and Kris tensed, angling just enough to see a slim brunette girl. Serenity Wheeler. Though Kris waited for her to speak, the younger girl just stared until it became uncomfortable.

Kris licked her lips. Though she ordered herself to silence, her voice said, "If it were Joey, you'd support him, wouldn't you?"

I would, Serenity said, and for a moment, Kris felt her conscience ease.

Then the girl added, Unless what he actually needed was saving. Then I'd try that. Even if he didn't want it.

The entire room was against her—the entire world, it seemed, every argument and evidence coalescing to a tidal wave she couldn't deny. All that remained was for it to crash.

Krisalyn pictured her brother standing next to her, the way she'd imagined he would be during their reunion after Battle City, Z smiling brightly, pink hair perfumed to perfection, finally at rest in a way he'd never been since losing DreamSight to Kaiba. He would have slung an arm around her shoulders. He would have said, Danke, Schwesterherz.

She'd wanted so badly for that to be real.

Instead, she had to face reality. Kaiba's guard had told her the company would press charges against her for espionage. Even if she managed by some miracle—and her father's backdoor dealing—to evade conviction, her skating career depended on public opinion. Her reputation would be tarnished by a criminal trial, maybe irreparable, and perhaps she could live with that if it meant real happiness for Z.

But what if, when the smoke settled, Z wasn't any happier than before? What if Joey was right about tunnel-vision, and Z did something he regretted, something that landed him with charges worse than corporate espionage?

She curled her fingers against her damp palms, the same sweat cold on her back. Z had never told her the entire plan, always kept one part of it shady, dancing around any mention as if it made even him nervous. Above everything else, that had scared her from the start. And maybe she'd been willing to take chances with Kaiba's life and career, but she'd never thought about the same being true for Zigfried.

Krisalyn took one step toward Joey, then around him. She looked into the face of Kaiba's stoic guard.

"Before I answer any questions, I want some assurances," she said.

And she felt the tidal wave crashing behind her.

Note: Happy Halloween! It's my tradition to do something for Halloween, and I'm sorry it's the very bare minimum of a normal update this year. But it's something.

As it turns out, my day job as an author is kicking my butt. After I worked on it all year, my publisher rejected the sequel to my book. Then they requested a different book entirely. I'm grateful to finally be published, but I think "bittersweet" would be an accurate description of the experience. Nevertheless, I will work it out. And I have Coming Home and you readers for comfort. I'm not alone. Wishing a spooky, fun-filled Halloween to us all! ^_^