PHONE CALLS
"He jumped?!"
"Yes."
"Did he make it across?"
"No."
"Shit!"
"Mokuba!"
"Sorry. Is he…"
"He's still alive, just. He was lucky in that we were only three floors up."
"Only?!"
"And he landed on a pile of trash, which must have softened his fall."
"The board are gonna go nuts."
"With any luck, we can keep this contained and the board will never know. I could certainly do without Felton and the others getting themselves worked up about it."
"What did the police say?"
"They haven't said anything yet. Our team were the first ones to get to him, so they transferred him to a hospital. Roland suggested initiating protocol for the situation, and I let him get on with it."
"We have a protocol for this?"
"Gozaburo did apparently."
"Huh, figures," Mokuba's tone was suddenly cold, as it always was when their adoptive father was mentioned. "So was MacIntire your guy?"
"I don't know. I mean, yes, he definitely led the group that set the bombs, but," Seto hesitated, remembering MacIntire's final words to him before he bolted, "there was something he mentioned..."
"Do you think you're still in danger?"
"No," Seto answered quickly, not wanting his doubt to filter through to his brother. "No, I'm sure he was just trying to throw me off. He was pretty desperate."
"Desperate enough to jump."
"His calculations were off, that's all. Which is why it's so important to keep up with your studies."
Mokuba groaned. "Only you could turn something like this into a nag about studying."
"It's important, Mokuba."
"So I don't nearly die jumping off a building?!"
"Among other things. Anyway," Seto's tone changed, lightening the mood, "enough about my adventures – what's going on there? Anything major to report?"
"Nothing that I couldn't handle. The purchase of that small manufacturing firm went through without a hitch, oh, and those books came in."
"Books?"
"The ones about your 'Journey' at Kaiba Corp. that the board commissioned."
"Great," Seto said without enthusiasm.
"Also, that stuck-up doctor lady, Felicity Wilkins, says you're a jerk for not having bothered to cancel your appointment with her."
"She said that?" He was almost impressed.
"Well, reading between the lines she did. She's going to send you a bill for her wasted time."
Seto huffed out an amused breath; there were few things he found more entertaining than annoying his therapist. "No other messages?" His tone was unconvincingly casual.
"No."
There was a long pause and Mokuba mentally dared himself to ask his brother who he was expecting to hear from. It had been the same all week, every time they'd spoken, Seto had asked about messages and had never seemed satisfied with the reams of business calls that had come in for him. Mokuba suspected he knew who his brother was hoping to hear from but wasn't sure how to bring up the subject.
"Okay," Seto said before Mokuba could find the right words. "I'm due back in at JFK at about seven tonight, your time. How do you fancy getting take-out? I think I deserve a bit of a break after a week in soulless hotel rooms."
"Umm, I can't, I'm really sorry." Mokuba's voice was pained. An evening like Seto had described was incredibly rare and usually he would instantly cancel any plans to spend such quality time with his brother. "It's just, well, it's Yugi and the gang's last night in New York before they head back to Domino. I promised that I'd go to a club with them. I mean I suppose I could go for a bit and then – or maybe we could change their flight or something or—"
Seto smiled at Mokuba's awkward attempts to find a solution. It meant a lot to him that his brother was still so eager to spend time together, even though Mokuba had plenty of his own friends and was constantly being invited on nights out and to parties.
"Stop, stop," Seto interrupted as Mokuba was in the middle of suggesting they commission the private jet to take them back to Domino. "It doesn't matter. We can do it another night. I'll probably crash out early anyway with the jetlag."
"Are – are you sure?"
"Yes, it's fine." There was an almost imperceptible pause. "So… who's going?"
0oooo0
There was a rattle of metal against metal as a key turned in a lock. A moment later the sound came again from a different part of the door. After the third and final lock was unlatched, the door finally swung open, and a woman strode into the apartment; heading immediately for an expensive looking security device on the nearest wall which was beeping in an ever-increasing pitch. She typed in a long series of numbers and hit the enter button which shut off the grating noise. And then she turned.
Illuminated by the light from the doorway, Mai's expression was harsh, the glow highlighting a deep furrow in her brow as she moved back to the entrance to pick up a bag of groceries. She kicked the door shut and walked across the dark apartment seeing her way by the streetlights that cast a dull orange glow through her windows.
She dumped the groceries on top of a pile of unopened bills and picked out a tin of spaghetti hoops. Opening the tin, she sloppily decanted the contents into a plastic cereal bowl before sliding it into a microwave and spinning the dial to set it to three minutes. Only then did she allow her hand to go to her jacket pocket where she kept her cell phone.
Gripping it in one hand she took a deep breath before turning it around so that she could see the screen by the light of the microwave. Clicking the unlock buttons brought the screen to life and the blank image reflected in her eyes.
No messages. No texts. No missed calls.
Her breath came out in a long sigh, and she leant back against the counter to watch her dinner turning in bubbling circles.
It had been six days since she'd been trapped with Seto in the bomb-damaged lift at Kaiba Corp. Six days since he'd asked if he could call her. She remembered her eager response with another irritable frown. What was annoying, she decided, wasn't that he hadn't called, but that she'd given him the perfect opportunity to step away and he'd chosen to ignore it. If he'd just agreed that their kiss had been a reaction to their near-death experience, that it had merely been adrenaline, as she had suggested, then they could have left it at that. Maybe had a shared wry joke about it if they bumped into one another again. But no.
The microwave pinged, and she gingerly moved the hot bowl onto the counter in front of her.
As she pulled open her cutlery drawer, she recalled the way he'd looked at her as he'd dismissed her suggestion. "You and me, Mai," he'd said, "that wasn't just adrenaline." His words were etched into her memory as clearly as the kiss they had shared.
But he hadn't called.
She gave the hoops a quick stir before walking to the windows, tugging sharply on the mismatched curtains to close them. Only when the apartment was completely swathed in darkness, did she flick a switch to turn on a single bare bulb that illuminated the sparsely decorated space.
She'd called. Or at least she'd tried to. Phoning the main office number that she'd found on the internet had proved to be as fruitless as it had been humiliating, but she'd tried because she had thought there had been something to his words - had been something special about their kiss. She shook her head, repeating the mantra that none of it mattered. That it was his loss. That it would most likely never have worked out between them anyway.
She sighed again and then moved towards what looked like a bricked in fireplace that jutted into the middle of the living space. A low-level sideboard was pushed hard up against the wall and only very close inspection would have revealed that its squat, ugly legs didn't actually touch the floor.
Mai double checked that there were no gaps in the curtains before she reached around the corner and pulled. The 'fireplace' began to move, taking the sideboard with it. Mai grimaced as pain shot through her bad arm, but she continued to drag the wall round in a gentle curve until a hidden alcove was fully revealed.
It was a tight space, every inch being utilised to capacity with shelving that contained books, files, notepads, and her precious cards. A deeper shelf held an old computer and, beneath that, hidden in the darkest recesses, was a sizable metal briefcase that was sealed with a five-digit code.
She flexed her fingers, trying to dissipate the discomfort even as she crouched down, twisting herself into the narrow space beside a wooden chair. She was reaching out for the briefcase when a sudden noise made her jump, banging her head painfully on the underside of the desk. She turned in panic only then realising that the sound was being accompanied by a vibration and that both were coming from her jacket pocket. Mai reached for her buzzing phone, but her overeager fingers lost their grip, and the phone skittered away from her across the floor. Swearing liberally, she crawled after it, once more aware of the fact that her heart was beating far more excitedly than it should.
Grabbing the phone with an outstretched hand, she pressed the connect button with her thumb and brought it to her ear.
"Mai?"
It was a girl's voice and Mai forcibly suppressed the sense of disappointment she felt rising in her chest. "Serenity!"
"Oh, it is you!" Serenity seemed excited. "It is her!" Her voice became muffled as if she was talking to someone else, "I told you!" Serenity came back on the line. "Sorry, Certain people thought you might have given me a false number."
Mai had no response to this since giving people false numbers was something of a trademark of hers. "How's everything going?" she asked instead, changing the subject. "Still enjoying New York?"
"Oh my god, Mai, it's been so much fun. Téa's been filling every second with activities for us all."
As her friend began to chatter excitedly about what she had been up to during her stay, Mai slowly twisted herself around so that her back was against the wall, her legs pulled up close to her body. Casting a brief glance upwards, she saw the bowl she'd left on the counter and her false smile wavered as she contemplated her swiftly cooling evening meal. What the hell had happened to her life that she was living in this scum hole, jumping at the phone in the hope that a man (a man!) was going to call her.
Something in the pitch of Serenity's voice alerted Mai to the fact she had been asked a question and she berated herself for not having paid attention.
"I know it's really late notice and everything," Serenity said after a moment, obviously interpreting Mai's silence as indecision. "I'm really sorry but I lent my phone to Joey and he lost it, like he does, and he only found it today! So anyway, that's why I didn't get in touch sooner but it's our last night and I would be really sad if I didn't get to say goodbye to you… so?"
Mai had no idea what she was being invited to and was about to make some lame excuse when her eyes once more strayed to the bowl of spaghetti hoops.
"Three questions, hon – where, when and do they serve food?"