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zecretsanta · 11 months ago

Text

All Hail

To: @soraritsuka

From: @chessanator

Merry Christmas, Soraritsuka! I hope you enjoy this fanfic gift. It’ll probably become clear to you very quickly which of your prompts this is based on, but I’ll leave the suspense hanging in the air for now.

Ao3 Link

The Bringer

Aoi Kurashiki sat in the latest Crash Keys command centre, feet propped up on the row of in-built control consoles. The screens above his head flipped from one image to the next, and Aoi followed them with a carefully measured detachment. The information displayed up there was important: assignments for various Crash Keys agents, reports on that incident up in Minnesota… even updates on the stock market, no longer the sole lifeline it had been for them as children but still the fuel that allowed everything else to happen. But that importance wasn’t why Aoi was paying it attention.

It didn’t take long until the info Aoi wanted to see – something he could use – flashed by. In an instant he was in action, though he took care not to let any hint of his urgency be seen by the other Crash Keys members in the centre. After scribbling on a piece of paper he waved it in the direction of the nearest agent.

“Take this report to my sister. She needs to know about these updates from New Mexico.”

Then, only a minute after that first agent had scurried away: “We’ve got some concerns about the vehicle pool. Check ’em out and make sure their engines don’t explode on the highway again.”

After that: “Arrange a meeting to plan the next operation.”

All of these were an integral part of the running of Crash Keys, sure. All of them needed to be done. But the only reason Aoi had for ensuring they were all done at once was to empty the control centre of everyone else and be able to access the computers alone.

The truth was, ever since the two of them had slipped away from Building Q Akane had started to leave Aoi out of certain key facets of her objectives. He was well aware that the Nonary Game wasn’t the end of their mission; if anything they’d only ramped up in the year afterwards, recruiting more members and expanding their information-gathering options. Akane had never explicitly said she was excluding him. On the surface she seemed to be relying on him as much as ever, as evidenced by his position in this control centre. He still had his role, collating incoming information from across the entire organisation and passing out new instructions to their operatives. But Aoi knew that surface impression wasn’t the truth. The hole in what he’d been given access to was apparent to him, whether Akane acknowledged it or not.

Aoi wasn’t going to take it anymore.

Today was the day for him to uncover what his sister had been keeping from him. What he already had access to ought to be enough for that. And he knew that Akane would spend the day occupied by a dozen different small crises; the courier he’d sent ought to keep her away even longer. He swung his feet down to the floor, vigorously spun his chair to face the nearest computer console, and booted it up.

After half an hour of searching, Aoi realised what was confounding his efforts. As he encroached on the pieces of information Akane had kept away from him, he could start to identify the general shape they took: something about some fucked-up cult operating in the shadows in much the same way that Crash Keys itself did.

But at every step of the way he was confounded by other pieces of info that he also hadn’t seen before. A certain morphogenetic experiment, bringing back alarming but inconclusive results. Cases of agents experiencing debilitating headaches or mental breaks, with no known cause. Even, in later reports, hints of another group of fanatics; Aoi only realised they weren’t in any way related to the first cult after a painstaking delve into the evidence.

No wonder he’d assumed they were yet more pieces of the big thing Akane was keeping from him. And no wonder that, having mistakenly thought everything he was finding was part of one big whole, he’d spent most of his time searching being led completely astray. In the end, he settled for filtering out everything past June 2028. It was a blunt instrument, but at least he’d know everything left was relevant.

Once he’d done that Aoi was able to spot and understand the connections that tied everything else together. It was only then that Aoi was able to identify the cult, this so-called ‘Free the Soul’, and realise that several operations that Akane had told him were unconnected were in fact all targeting individuals connected to them.

With this information in hand he delved deeper into the computer network, ready to make some actual progress. He was now able to identify, with a bitter ironic smirk, the layers of obfuscation that his sister had used to keep him from piecing this together even while engaged in his role in Crash Keys. With a great deal of effort he worked his way to what had to be the key document, stored in a location you’d only search if you already knew what you’d find there. It had been authored by Akane, it had ‘Free the Soul’ as the main part of its title, and it seemed to be a summary of everything known about the terrorist cult. Aoi opened it up and read the first line.

‘I know you’re reading this, Aoi.’ Beneath that and above Akane’s signature was today’s date.

That had been… entirely too predictable. But Aoi didn’t have time to reflect on that at all. At the exact same moment the sharp scowl formed on his face, and before he could read even a single word more of Akane’s document, klaxons sounded across the Crash Keys base.

Aoi sprung to his feet. As the red of the warning lights swept and danced across the control centre he strode towards the way out. Only to find that just before he touched the door it opened itself. On the other side stood Akane, arms folded.

Aoi put on a self-assured smirk. “Okay. You didn’t need to rub it in,” he said.

Akane’s eyes widened; a confused gasp escaped her lips. “What do you mean?”

“I read your message.” Aoi gestured nonchalantly in the air. It was usually best to let Akane have her all-knowing fun. “That’s what this is about, right?”

“That’s…” Akane trailed off, shaking her head briskly. “This is something else. What you found doesn’t matter until after we’ve sorted this out.”

After all the effort he’d put into finding it?

“It’s just a coincidence this emergency happened at the same time you found that message. I couldn’t believe it, but it’s true. This emergency is real, and Crash Keys will truly be in danger if we don’t solve it.”

Aoi felt his awareness sharpen. Everything about Akane’s bearing, and everything coming through their shared connection, said that this was far more crucial than some morphogentically-powered practical joke. At least she was letting him in on it, this time. “What’s this about?” he asked, his tone serious in an instant.

Akane answered his question, her voice tense in a way Aoi hadn’t really heard since the day she had laid out, at age twelve, the plan to retroactively save her from the incinerator.

“I think we’ve made a terrible mistake.”

—

Eternally Preserve

Alice blew her whistle, sharply. “Once more!” she called out to the gaggle of young espers at the far end of the course, and they began to file back towards her: Clover bouncing along, Light maintaining his upright, princely bearing, Nona and Ennea slightly breathless but still giggling to each other some joke Ennea had made. When they were all lined up in front of her once more Alice waited just a couple of seconds to check their readiness. Then she sounded the whistle a second time, pressing the button on her stopwatch as the espers took off at a full sprint.

‘Baseless Training’: that was what some of her coworkers had called this when Alice had requested a transfer to the newly opened experimental division. On particularly sharp-mouthed SOIS officer had twisted the words into ‘Boot Can’t-p’. The idea that the most elite intelligence agency in the country was pouring this much time and resources into agents claiming to have psychic powers was ludicrous on the face of it, so Alice could understand where her colleagues were coming from. She just didn’t care. These new recruits were her last, best chance to get to the people who’d kidnapped her father, and Alice was going to take it.

That meant bringing them up to speed. It wasn’t as though SOIS could expect that the miniscule proportion of people with these special abilities would be the exact same people who had the military physiques and constitutions needed for the gruelling rigours of SOIS work. And the new recruits didn’t just have to operate at the peak of human ability. They needed to be able to do all that, wear themselves to the bone over hours of effort and then, at the end of it, still be able to use their esper powers on behalf of the mission.

There wasn’t yet much research into research into how espers coped with physical exhaustion. All Alice could provide was drilling, drilling and more drilling; she would have to hope this level of physical conditioning was enough.

At least her recruits’ teamwork was up to par. Alice took particular note of the moment when Clover, a couple of strides ahead of the group along the course, glanced back at the exact right moment to assist her brother in cornering tightly around the cones.

Alice was satisfied to see that each and every one of the trainee’s times had improved from the sessions before, even if they weren’t yet up to the standards of the agency’s usual recruits. As long as this final run went well she could be confident that the espers would be ready for the field by… No. Something was wrong. Alice didn’t yet know what, but her instincts were prickling.

Moments after Alice started dashing forwards Light let out a hoarse gasp. His legs buckled and he fell to his knees, his remaining carrying him skidding and tumbling across the grass. By the time Alice had caught up to the other runners, and brought them to a halt, Clover was knelt down by her brother’s side. Her wild pink hair fell across her eyes as she clutched at Light’s right arm. A mistrustful anguish contorted her expression.

“Light! What’s hurt you?!” Clover cried out. She glared up at Alice. “He didn’t just trip. Don’t you dare say he just tripped!”

It was probably a good thing that Clover was joining SOIS where such an attitude, even towards a superior, was appreciated as a sign of initiative. “Yes, I saw. This won’t affect his ratings,” Alice reassured the younger woman. She then assessed Light’s condition with a practiced eye: some pain that had caused him to fall, certainly, but no serious or permanent damage. Alice allowed herself a sigh of relief.

Alice’s judgement was confirmed a few moments later when Light raised his head. “It has passed,” he said, his tone measured and steady despite the aftereffects of whatever had brought him down. Relying on Clover’s arm for support he made his way to his feet. With his eyes still firmly closed he turned to face Alice. “A certain ripple, you could call it, in the morphogenetic field. Streaks of black and white swam across the images Clover was sending me. It was quite disorientating.”

With a quick glance towards the other espers present, Alice asked if any of them had endured the same thing. Shakes of heads all round, plus Nona’s murmured “No. Nothing like that,” confirmed that they hadn’t.

Alice weighed up the situation in front of her, and came to a decision. “I’ll need to report this to the higher-ups,” she said to Light. “Once I find out what we know I’ll pass it on to you all.” It looked like the rest of her day had just gotten a hell of a lot more complicated.

At the debriefing later that evening Alice addressed the SOIS director and the head science advisor, describing what had occurred during what should have been a routine physical fitness session. “It didn’t have much effect today,” she concluded, “but who knows what problems it could cause if it happens again. When it happens again. We don’t know what triggered it today, so we can’t prevent the next time.”

The science advisor nodded, then passed a pair of thin folders to Alice and the director. “Trainee Field’s report has been corroborated by the prototypes we’ve been testing. Certainly, something morphogenetic happened at that time. We’ll try to narrow it down further, but that will take time.”

Alice bristled at the insinuation against her subordinate’s trustworthiness, but held her tongue.

“What I don’t understand,” the director said, tapping the diagrams in the file with her fingertips, “is why only Trainee Field was affected. Not even his sister showed even a single symptom. Correct?”

“Yes. That’s correct,” Alice replied. She marshalled her thoughts, and then added, “The documents we appropriated from Cradle Pharmaceuticals suggest that espers can be divided into two classes. ‘Transmitters’ and ‘Receivers’. Surely that has something to do with it.”

“Light is a receiver, certainly,” the science advisor concurred. Then his lips pursed; his nose wrinkled. “That can’t be the sole factor. I was under the impression that receivers and transmitters both made up a good proportion of our recruited espers.”

“Then perhaps we should look at something only connected to the Field siblings, which then only affects Trainee Light because he is a receiver,” the director mused. She then fixed Alice with her piercing gaze. “You were the one to pick them up after that particular incident. I’ll leave the investigation of any leads related to that to you.”

It looked like the entire rest of Alice’s year had gotten more complicated, too. “Yes, ma’am,” was all Alice could reply.

—

The Peaceful World - Unwarranted

The streets of New York city bustled, and Hazuki Kashiwabara had to shimmy her way through the crowd to make progress along the line of shopfronts. At least that was something she was adept at: regular exercise had kept her limber and ready to take advantage of gaps, while her quickness of mind had her apprehending the flow of people and capable of anticipating the best route forward. So it didn’t take her long to reach the end of that block, where something finally brought her short by catching her attention.

A fancy-looking bookstore stood out among its neighbours. Hazuki quickly decided that this was an excellent place to browse next. Perhaps she could get Ennea’s and Nona’s Christmas presents early? It would be a surprise if she couldn’t find any books at all that would interest her daughters.

Once inside, Hazuki found that the back area of the bookstore had been given over to some sort of book promotion. A slick-looking presenter stood on a slightly raised platform, brandishing a microphone in one hand and gesturing towards a display board with the other. Another man – presumably the author – sat at a table to one side, stacks of the book in question piled in front of him. A small number of people had gathered in the open space in front, drawn in by the presenter’s spiel.

Hazuki had arrived just in time to catch the end of the presenter’s opening announcement. “– and the scientific basis of telepathy. This, and more, can be learned from this amazing compendium of the secrets of the universe!”

Hazuki sighed, and looked away. Once she had found such topics an amusing diversion that was fun to read about, if not actually believe; these days it hit too close to home. She turned away from the presentation and headed over to the shelves of fiction. And though the presenter’s microphone caused his speech to carry across the store – “Thank you, kind volunteers! May I please have you split into two groups so we can recreate this famous experiment.” – Hazuki kept herself from paying it any attention at all.

Just after finding a newly-published book by an author her daughters had enjoyed before, while she was mulling over whether it would make a good gift, the ringtone of Hazuki’s phone began to emanate from her handbag. Somehow, the tones sounded even more urgent than normal. Hazuki hurriedly extracted the phone and read the name that had appeared across the screen: ‘Nona’.

In an instant the phone was at her ear. “Nona?” Hazuki said, ignoring the pointed looks from the other shoppers around her. “What’s going on?” Even without being allowed to know the full details, Hazuki knew that it was too soon to expect a routine call.

“Mom!” The voice on the other end of the call was breathless, hurried. “I’m not supposed to tell you this, but… You have to get out of there! I can’t tell you why, but it’s not safe. Something’s about to happen. Please…”

Hazuki had sworn to herself that she’d always trust in what her children told. “I will,” she replied. “Thank you.”

The phone hung up just after. Hazuki had no idea what it had taken for Nona to steal those few moments for that call.

That just added to the urgency of the warning. Not even checking to see if she’d put the book back in the right place she headed back towards the entrance in as brisk a walk as she could manage. The path back to the door took her back through the central space, from where Hazuki could see over to the book promotion once more. There, the presenter was just finishing up the experiment he’d announced earlier.

“And so, let us see how many of you are now aware of what this pattern is. Though you had no ability to know about these images before today, that knowledge should now be available through the mysteries of the morphogenetic field.” The presenter pointed at the display board on his right, with now showed an abstract looking pattern of black and white shapes. He then reached for the first of a pile of folded-up pieces of paper and flourished it in the air. “And just as expected, our volunteers now recognise this picture as a…”

The presenter opened the folded paper with a dramatic snap. He glanced at some writing written upon it; his eyes went wide.

What the presenter said next had been intended as just a whisper to himself. But the microphone carried his alarmed and confused mutterings across the entire bookstore. “Huh? That’s not supposed how it’s supposed to go…”

As the rumbling commotion of the spectators grew into agitated shouting, and then yells and screams, Hazuki doubled her efforts towards the exit. Was this the danger Nona had tried to warn her about? It was best to get out while she had the chance.

Hazuki stepped out of the bookstore onto the bright New York street, only to find that both ends of the block had been cordoned off. On the other side of the streams of bright yellow tape stood ranks of riot police, equipped with shields and Kevlar and batons. As blinding spotlights were directed her way, Hazuki put her hands in the air and sank to her knees.

She’d barely been able to keep track of the storm that followed. What Hazuki remembered: as the riot police had swarmed and surrounded her to take her into custody, yet more phalanxes of them had stormed into the bookstore she’d emerged from. In handcuffs, she’d been dragged along the pavement and into one of the canvas tents that had been erected beyond the cordons. And there she’d been left, sat on a rickety metal chair, long enough that she thought she’d been forgotten about.

It was only after what had to have been hours – Hazuki had no way to tell the time, her wristwatch having been inaccessibly stuck behind her back when her wrists were cuffed together – that something happened. Two officers – a man and a woman, dressed in military khaki – ducked their way under the flap of the tent’s door and sat down on the opposite side of an equally rickety trestle table. The two of them stared Hazuki down for a while, an evidently practiced interrogation tactic, before the woman retrieved some papers from her attaché bag, placed them on the table, and opened her mouth to speak.

“Hey!” Hazuki got there first. “Get me my lawyer! I’m not saying anything until then.”

The male soldier scowled, and the woman rapped her knuckles harshly against the papers in front of her. The metal table resounded with a sharp ring, one that would have been uncomfortable to the ears if the sound hadn’t been dulled by the soft material of the pavilion that surrounded them. Hazuki did her best not to look intimidated.

Eventually, the woman said, “That’s no longer relevant. The Special Emergency Powers Act sees to that. You need to tell us what we need to know.” She paused, and Hazuki could feel the way her questioner was trying to make the implicit threats sink in. “What do you know about the incident that just occurred?”

Before Hazuki could even process that question the man jumped in as well: a staccato rhythm of interrogation that kept her off balance. “You stepped out from ground zero of what they’re telling us is a category nine mind-virus. You just strolled out of there without suffering any effects at all. How do you plan to explain that?”

Then back to the woman. “None of the other civilians we picked up are in any state to ask for their lawyers. Not from in the bookstore; the ones we picked up from the sidewalks outside aren’t looking good, either. All we’re getting from them is wails and yelling and babbling about some fu– some fucked up nonsense. What makes you special?”

Hazuki didn’t know what to say to any of that. She glared defiantly back at the level stares of her interrogators, just hoping that they wouldn’t jump to the worst possible conclusions about her and knowing that nothing she said could prevent that.

Reprieve came from a blithe but commanding voice, speaking from just outside the tent. “I’ll take it from here,” came a statement that was just as much an inviolable order.

The woman seated opposite Hazuki sighed and shook her head, but she gathered up her papers without complaint. As her two previous interrogators stood up and filed out towards the exit, the speaker from outside raised the tent flap and strode in. The shining glint of her necklace’s golden ring, sitting as it did over a practical but well-tailored beige suit, heralded Alice’s arrival.

When the two of them were alone Hazuki breathed an exhausted sigh of relief. “It’s good to see you,” she said to the woman who’d been the first person they’d seen after escaping from that horrid death game.

Alice nodded in reply, a warm smile spreading across her lips. “I figured a softer touch would be better for all of us, not whatever those two clowns thought they were up to.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it,” Hazuki said. After stretching out all the tension in her shoulders – tension that she’d only just realised had been coiling up throughout her time in the emergency response pavilion – she glanced up at Alice and jingled the handcuffs that still held her wrists together behind the hard back of her chair. “Any chance of getting these off?” she asked.

“Unfortunately, no.”

“What?!” Hazuki gasped. “You can’t be–!”

“You’re a friend,” Alice said, “but that doesn’t mean I can take liberties.” She sighed, gesturing towards the exit of the tent and the New York streets outside: an outside world that had barely seemed to exist while Hazuki had been left to stare at plain white fabric. “Those two might have been ham-fisted, but they weren’t lying. It’s a nightmare out there. And across the country, too: I’m barely catching up to events in time to put out fires, not getting any chance to get ahead of this thing.” She leaned over the trestle table, locking eyes with Hazuki. “I need some reassurance you’re going to be safe. Not add to all our problems, even if you don’t mean to.”

Hazuki recalled the questions that the two soldiers had been asking her. “I-I don’t know why nothing happened to me. Some sort of weird buzzing in my head, then I left the store and that was it!” She forced herself to concentrate, digging up every last detail she could have subconsciously picked up along the way. “Maybe I’ve seen… whatever-it-was… before?” Would that have made her resistant, by inoculation?

Alice shook her head, sternly. “That’s not it. This was a book announcement by a world famous parascience advocate. Half the crowd in there had to be familiar with the Sheldrake experiment.”

But something was making Hazuki even more certain. “No…” she murmured. “I think I’ve seen all of it before. Including that bit extra, at the end, that made it happen.” Though what that extra was, and where Hazuki had seen it before, she couldn’t quite recall.

Alice pursed her lips tight. But, eventually, she nodded. “It’s worth looking into,” she said.

From there it was only a few bureaucratic hurdles before Alice arranged for Hazuki’s release, though it felt to her like an hour. When Alice knelt down behind Hazuki’s chair to finally uncuff her wrists she whispered into her ear.

“Thanks for this. I’ll make sure to overlook what Ennea did to give Nona that distraction. For a friend.”

—

By the Numbers

The detective glanced to his side, made sure Junpei looked as ready as possible, and then rang the doorbell of the house they’d arrived at. To be honest, he wasn’t sure if the kid would ever have his head completely in the game. He’d done his best to rub into Junpei’s skull that, if he was going to be a private eye, the routine cases were the ones that paid the bills. That both of them were going to have to do their best on this missing person case, if the detective was going to keep the leeway from his superiors that let them work together on the big stuff.

Even after all that, there was only one missing person case on Junpei’s mind most of the time. The detective would just have to trust it not to get in the way of this one.

The front door of the house creaked open and a middle-aged woman peered out through the gap. The detective was used to the reactions to his stocky frame and height that towered over most Japanese people; his police badge was already in his hand in anticipation as the lady began to flinch away.

“Mrs Matsuo?” he asked. “Can we come in? We’re here about the disappearance you’ve reported.”

Still a bit nervous, and certainly dazed, Mrs Matsuo responded slowly. “About Kenji…?” she said, weariness threaded through her voice. “I… Yes, of course. Please…” She trailed off, the open door as she stepped back finishing her sentence for her.

Once the detective and Junpei had stepped inside, the lady led them through to the living room. As they sat down on the offered sofa the detective looked around, taking particular notice of a photo framed on the side table that portrayed Mrs Matsuo and the man they’d come to ask about standing side by side. She was in no state to offer them refreshments and so she just sat opposite them, her head slightly bowed.

“Can you tell us what happened with your husband, when he went missing?” With the question asked the detective fell silent and leaned back, giving the woman room to answer.

Mrs Matsuo clenched her hands together and shook her head in tight, little jerks. “I-I don’t know. Kenji just left in the middle of the night. It was sudden. So sudden.”

The detective could see from her face the way the pertinent details were getting buried under her shock. He was about to pry further when Junpei spoke up first.

“Anything that happened beforehand? Did Kenji say or do anything that would give us a clue where he’s trying to get to?”

Mrs Matsuo met his gaze for just a second before looking away again. “Um… He was acting strange the evening before. But I don’t see how that could help you find him.”

Junpei put on a warm, beckoning smile. “Every little bit can help. We won’t know what information will be important until we seek it all out. Please, help us help him.”

That was a good start, on Junpei’s part. The detective settled in to watch Mrs Matsuo’s reactions, see what clues they provided on top of her words.

The lady blinked a few times rapidly, cleared her throat, then began to answer Junpei’s question. “Three days ago, I got back to find Kenji stood in here, yelling at the dog.”

The puppy in question – a young black and white terrier – had emerged into the living room to investigate the new guests, and was now nuzzling up against the side of the detective’s leg.

“He was just screaming at the top of his voice and waving his hands at him. Something about how the poor thing ‘wasn’t right’ and was ‘being so rude.’ All sorts of things like that. It didn’t make any sense.”

That was something that made this different from any other missing persons case. “Whoa!” the detective exclaimed, hoping that it sounded sympathetic. “Any idea why he was doing that?”

The lady vigorously shook her head. “No! I couldn’t believe he was doing that! He’s never been cruel to the dog before. And… I don’t think Kenji knew why he was doing it, either.”

“Huh? Mr Matsuo didn’t know either?”

“I asked him, and he just couldn’t answer me. I was so angry… I just sent him to bed, told him he should explain himself in the morning.” Mrs Matsuo put her head in her hands, guilt driving rivulets of tears from the side of her eyes. “By then, he was gone. He left that night. Never came back.”

The detective and Junpei asked a few more questions after that. They established that Mr Matsuo had packed for his disappearance, taking cash and cards and changes of clothes for five nights. The detective ran through a list of known associates, making sure they had all the details of everyone the missing man might have contacted or taken shelter with. And so the routine part of their investigation came to an end.

After they had made their goodbyes to Mrs Matsuo and exited her house, Junpei turned to the detective. “This isn’t just some guy having a mental breakdown, is it?”

The detective shook his head in agreement. Now back to talking just among themselves, he let his voice settle back into its more natural, rougher tones. “Nah. This was too planned out for some guy going nutso. If that was all this was, one of the beat cops would have picked him up wandering the streets by now.” He rubbed is forehead with his fingers, reading himself for what was to come. “Let’s get our asses back to HQ and put together what we’ve got.”

Back at police HQ, and after getting Junpei through his colleagues’ inquisitive gazes by talking up the benefits of collaboration with Junpei’s newly-joined private agency, the detective had taken over a conference room to act as the base of operations for this investigation. He’d projected profiles of the missing Mr Matsuo on the screens around the walls and spread the witness accounts the beat cops had collected from nearby houses on the central table. Then he’d set up computer terminals for himself and Junpei, from which they could follow up any leads and pursue their hypotheses into the wider world.

They’d begun their work of tracking where Mr Matsuo could have fled to, collating new information as it came in and bouncing ideas off each other. The detective had felt particularly proud, successful as a mentor, when Junpei had brought up the usage of the man’s credit and debit cards, which suggested even further that the man was in full possession of his wits – money drained from his accounts, and then a taxi out to no destination they could make sense of. Even so, they hadn’t made any concrete progress yet. Just as the detective was about to call for a coffee break his phone began to ring.

The phone was out on the table, and Junpei was able to get a look before the detective was able to pick it up and answer. His eyes narrowing in first concentration, then surprise, Junpei read out the caller ID that had shown up across the screen. “Huh? ‘Exhibitionist Demon Lady’, it says… Is that Lotus?”

The detective snorted. “Yep. We’ve kept in touch, ever since… you know.” It wasn’t like anything more needed to be said about that event in both their lives. “But why the hell’s she calling me now?”

Junpei shrugged. “You got any choice but to pick up the phone?”

The detective did so. “Hey, Hazuki! What’s up?”

The voice came from the other end of the line, sultry and jocular. “It’s been crazy here like you wouldn’t believe. Or who knows. Maybe you would.” Hazuki paused then, the faintest tremors of barely picked-up speech coming through the speakers as she conversed with someone in the room with her. “I caught wind of something that might interest you. People are going crazy in a number of different places, and they might be connected.”

Junpei perked up, eyes narrowing as he peered towards the phone the detective was holding. “Huh? Could that have anything to do with our case?”

That drew a response from the other end of the line as well. “Is that Junpei? Say hi to him for me.”

The detective duly put the call on speaker so that Junpei could take part. Then he continued speaking to Hazuki. “So how’d an ol’ lady like you get mixed up in this?”

Her gasp of rage wasn’t so much heard as projected all the way across the call to blast into the detective’s ear. “I’d kick your ass for that! If only we were in the same country… Anyway, it wasn’t my fault. I just happened to be around when the big one happened.”

Obviously, that wasn’t the whole story. But the detective had learned not to look a gift belly-dancer in the mouth. “So this bull isn’t just happening in Japan?” Hazuki had moved away to America a few months back, when her daughters had gone to live there. “It’s happening all over the world?”

“No. Just the USA and Japan. Nowhere else, at least for now.” A deep sigh crackled over the connection of the phone-call. When Hazuki’s voice came back it was lilted with an ironic “Now, what else has happened recently that connected America and Japan?”

Something that had involved a connection between Japan and America? There was only one thing that came to the detective’s mind.

“I can’t fucking believe it. The Nonary Game?” the detective said, his voice drained, wearily resting his head on his palm.

“I can’t fucking believe it. The Nonary Game?!” Junpei said, his eyes shining with a desperate, all-consuming, desire, his voice rising with uncontrolled hope as he leaned unconsciously in towards the phone.

“Yep. I guess I’ll be seeing you soon.” After that Hazuki hung up.

With that extra clue in hand – and after some not-entirely-legit strings were pulled by Junpei’s detective agency – it wasn’t long until the two of them tracked the missing Mr Matsuo to an airport, buying tickets to San Fransisco under an assumed name.

“How’s your passport situation?” the detective asked Junpei.

“Not great,” Junpei said with a smirk. “They’ve been iffy about it ever since I ended up outside the country with no idea how I’d got there.”

It didn’t matter. That wasn’t enough to stop the two of them from getting where they were needed.

—

Hard-Earned Fortune

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just take you in right now,” Clover Field said to the man in front of her, the muzzle of her handgun buried in the messy white of his hair. “Why shouldn’t I throw you in the slammer like you deserve?”

A strained chuckle came from Aoi Kurashiki as he held his hands out to either side. “Is this any way to greet an old friend?”

Clover tilted the gun slightly, savouring the grind against the back of Aoi’s head. “Nine…” she hissed. “Eight. Seven…”

“Jeez!” Aoi exclaimed. “I’ll tell you why we called you out here. Calm the fuck down, already.”

Certainly, the dingy back alley the two of them were in was a good location for a clandestine meeting, which was probably why the mysterious note calling her out here had specified it as her destination. It was equally an excellent location for an ambush, which was why Light was sitting two blocks away in a van filled with reinforcements, waiting for the merest thought of alarm from her. And why Clover had undertaken to get the upper hand on whoever came to meet her, by every trick and method her SOIS training had instilled in her.

That strategy had led her here, sidearm planted satisfyingly in the back of the man who had kidnapped her and her brother only so many months ago. Still, Clover knew a single arrest wasn’t the objective of this little operation. She gritted her teeth, and said, “Go on. Tell me.”

“My sister and I were looking for a team-up. Join forces. Crash Keys and SOIS, having a nice little house party together.”

Clover could just imagine his smirk, even looking from the wrong side of him to see his face. “Why would we want to do that? What have we got to gain from teaming up with you?”

Aoi scoffed. “I’d have thought you’d already have a good guess on that. You gonna make me say it?” He shrugged, and Clover by well-ingrained instinct shifted her attention to his hands, making sure this wasn’t the start of him trying something. “Guess you are. Akane’s got some idea about the struggles you chumps are having with that so-called ‘mind virus’. And whatever you’re telling the average joes, we both know it’s morphogenetic in origin. You guys and us are the only fuckers who know anything about this, so we’re the only ones with any chance of dealing with it. Admit it. You need our help.”

“It’s not just that,” Clover snapped. “You’ve got some other angle on this. Haven’t you?!” The two Kurashiki siblings had kept up their façades for nine hours back then, impeccably. Clover was never gonna take anything either of them said at face value, ever again. “I just bet it’s some scheme to get one over us, while we’re busy trying to solve the real problems.”

“I’m not gonna try lying to you,” Aoi replied. “Of course we’ve got some agenda. Who the fuck hasn’t?”

“Then tell me! Tell me, or any deal’s off the table.”

Aoi Kurashiki grunted. “I can’t tell you just whatever… I’m not hiding anything that’ll be a problem to SOIS. Fucking god, Clover, I swear I’m not!”

“Then prove it! What are you hiding?”

“You think you can just do whatever you want, ’cause you’re with the government,” Aoi spat. His tone was as cocky as always, but something about him was almost… desperate. Clover was about to press him further when he suddenly spoke again. “A hostage.”

Clover squinted her eyes. “Huh? A hostage?”

“Yeah. Against Crash Keys’ good intentions.” Aoi’s shoulders relaxed and slumped as he let out one final half-laugh. “I guess you’re gonna get to throw me in the slammer after all.”

Back at SOIS HQ they’d set up a meeting room so that Alice’s squad of espers could prepare the next stage, as they moved on from just managing one crisis after another to actually being able to get ahead this thing. A meeting room specifically chosen so that Aoi Kurashiki could be handcuffed to the table.

“You really think this is necessary?” he complained, testing the range of motion the restraints gave him.

“Perhaps not,” Light said as he sat down on the opposite side. “Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that it is a reassuring precaution. Perhaps you could take a moment or two to reflect on why this has happened.”

Aoi scowled. Then he turned with a plaintive expression towards Alice, who’d taken position at the head of the table.

“I wouldn’t have gotten to where I am today if I hadn’t learned to trust my subordinates’ judgement,” she said to him.

As Aoi sulked and sank, defeated, into his seat, Clover opened up her laptop. “Here’s what we’ve got!” she exclaimed, plugging in the flash drive Aoi had brought along to the rendezvous. The maps it contained were projected onto screens around the room, to which Clover added streams of camera footage from her own investigations. “It really does look like this is the place all those people are going. See? There’s that group from New Mexico we lost track of, going into the big building.”

“Very good. That’s impeccable proof that this is where we need to go,” Alice replied. She glanced at Aoi. “How come your people knew about this place?”

“What can I say?” Aoi said with a languid gesture. “It wasn’t any great feat of detective work. These people just happened to use one of the same construction supply companies we did, back when we were retrofitting Building Q. We noticed people were purchasing the same sort of stuff, put three and six together, and got a great big screaming ‘look here’ sign.”

“Hey!” Ennea interjected, tapping the side of her head. “Is it, like, just a coincidence they used the same company?”

“Heh. No,” Aoi replied. He didn’t volunteer anything more.

“Now we have a target location,” Alice said, “we’ll need to infiltrate. Find out what’s in there, what’s causing the morphogenetic mind virus and, if possible, what we can do to cut it off for good.”

“What’s the plan?” Light asked.

“This one won’t be a direct assault. Until we know what’s inside, we can’t take the risk that some of them will escape and set up shop again somewhere else. Looks like a quiet infiltration’s on the cards.”

Aoi took that moment to interrupt. “And you’d better not step on Crash Keys’ toes while you’re at it. That’s half of why I’m here.”

Actually, the whole of why he was here was that Clover had hog-tied him and dragged him back to base. Clover let a scornful smirk in Aoi’s direction be her only acknowledgement of that fact.

“We’d be doing this anyway,” Aoi continued, “even if you chose not to co-operate with us. It’s too important to our organisation’s goals. Having your guys along for the ride is good, but mostly I just wanted to make sure you didn’t stumble into us halfway through and fuck this up.”

Alice sighed and rubbed her forehead with her fingers. “Yes. It looks like agents of Crash Keys will be engaging alongside you when you enter the building. Respect their expertise, but do not place your complete trust in them. I’m sure you understand why.”

“Do you have to talk about us like I’m not sitting right here?” Aoi said.

Into the silence that followed Nona hesitantly, shakily, raised her hand. “Alice… you said… when we enter the building. Us newbies?”

“Yes,” Alice said with finality. “It’ll be your first major mission. You’ll be supported by more experienced agents, sure. But, given the nature of what we’re looking for, you’ll need to be on the front lines. It might be that you’re the only ones who’ll be able to recognise the morphogenetic cause.”

At Alice’s pronouncement, a deathly pallor descended on the other espers in the briefing room. Nona, lips almost white with how much she was pursing them, wrapped her arms round her sister’s elbow; Ennea, in turn, leaned into it. For Light… well, no one else would have been able to tell that his demeanour had changed. But Clover knew her brother well enough to see his uncertainty. Who knew how it would have been if they weren’t all trying to keep brave faces in front of this outsider among their midst.

Clover gritted her teeth. She slammed her palms down on the table, half-standing up in the process from sheer momentum. “We can do this!” she hollered. “We’ll kick their asses.”

“That’s right, Clover,” Alice said, her smile warm and proud. “I wouldn’t have recommended you all for this mission if I thought there was any risk to my impeccable reputation. This is what all the training was for. We do our best here, and we can put the convulsions of the last few weeks behind us.” She pressed a button, bringing up a schematic of the building on the screens. “Now, the plan is…”

—

Markings of a Moment in Time

Akane Kurashiki peered around the corner, making a mental map of what would come next as they made their way through the building. A carefully application of pressure to the construction supply company had produced rough blueprints of the complex they were infiltrating, from which Crash Keys had been able to identify the likely heart of the facility. Through careful inspection of the plans, reasonable assumptions about how the people inside were using the space, and some morphogenetic insights Akane herself had supplied – with no desire to explain what it’d taken to arrive at them – they had plotted several routes to that central point with good opportunities for cover and that should avoid most of the foot traffic.

Akane had led a small team of Crash Keys agents along one such route. She knew that SOIS had infiltrated via the other routes. With luck, they would all make it through to here, on the ninth floor of the central building.

All Akane had to do now was ensure the safety of this last stretch. So she peered around the corner of the corridor, examining the path to the plain and simple, but strangely foreboding, door that was the entrance to the heart. She was ready to lead her people towards it – Not just yet. Someone was coming.

She waved her team to hold back, then focused her attention on the man who’d just appeared into view from a corridor crossing their path. Middle-aged and Japanese, he was distracted from his surroundings by the phone pressed against his ear. The drained, hollow look in his eyes marked him as a victim of the morphogenetic field; the driven purpose of the stride reminded Akane that he was still an opponent. Indeed, everything they’d seen of the people drawn to this place had reminded Akane of a cult. Maybe not as bad a cult as Free the Soul was looking to be, but enough to still make this a more immediate concern for Crash Keys.

What the man was saying did nothing to dispel that impression. “It’s almost time… It’s almost time,” he kept muttering into the phone. Whoever was on the other end of the phone call seemed to be acting like this was a normal thing to hear.

It wasn’t long until the man had passed by, the sound of his babbling receding away. Akane and her squad wouldn’t have a better chance to make to their target. Akane beckoned them forward, then stepped with purpose out into the corridor. They crossed the space with quick, soft steps and gathered in a well-practiced formation around the door.

They’d expected, going in, that the target door would be secured. Locked, guarded perhaps, maybe even booby-trapped. Akane found none of that. Instead the door opened immediately to her touch. Suppressing her surprise in front of the people she had gathered to her cause, Akane stepped inside.

And in there, in the heart of the cultists’ facility, Akane found… another corridor. This one was markedly different to the corridors they’d passed through to arrive, however. The light was dimmer, only coming from small circles in the ceiling and the occasional lamp hung on either side. Brass handrails ran along the dark grey walls. The entire corridor somehow managed to seem like it should have been a lot longer than it was; instead it was only a dozen or so metres to the other end, and the pair of doors there that led back out the other side. Those doors, made from solid oak, were decorated with intricate patterns around two golden diamonds. A spear-and-shield symbol was carved into the lock below the door handle.

Just as Akane had taken it all in those two doors swung open. For a second Akane tensed up with readiness; had they been discovered? But then Akane was put at ease. The overwhelming pinkness of Clover, at the head of the newly-arrived group, made it obvious that this was one of the SOIS squads that had infiltrated alongside Crash Keys. Beside Clover was her brother Light. And further back, escorted by the squad of extravagantly-dressed SOIS agents that were backing the Fields up, was Akane’s own brother Aoi.

“These chumps,” Aoi said by way of explanation, even as the agents surrounding him bristled warily, “didn’t feel like they could spend a moment out of my company.”

Akane smiled gratefully at him. He’d taken on the risks, to make up for her mistake. “You’ve done well,” she said in reply.

By now Clover, Light, and the agents who’d accompanied them were peering around the corridor they’d entered, curious and cautious in equal measure. Clover, who’d been examining the smaller doors leading off to either side of the corridor, suddenly perked her head up with confusion. Her nose wrinkled. She glanced first, beseechingly, at the more experienced SOIS agent searching nearby, then turned towards Akane with suspicion in her eyes. “This place feels real familiar, somehow…”

It wouldn’t do Akane any good to hide it. Even if Clover and Light didn’t eventually come to the realisation that was already on the tip of Clover’s tongue, the earpieces they all wore could connect them within seconds to someone who could answer the question for them. SOIS had gone over Building Q with a fine-toothed comb after she’d abandoned it, after all.

“It’s the second class cabins,” Akane stated, her voice unwavering but nevertheless subdued.

Clover’s eyes narrowed. “Huh?! As in, the Nonary Game… How the hell did we end up back there?”

“Not exactly. We didn’t suddenly teleport hundreds of miles. But it’s certainly a very good recreation of them,” Akane said.

Even with his eyes closed, Light took in his surroundings. “There are a great many things about here that remind me of the Gigantic, it is true. And the general atmosphere… Still, it is not quite something I recognise.”

Aoi scoffed cockily. “Yeah, sure. The two of you didn’t get to come through here, so I guess it –”

“In this timeline,” Akane interjected.

“In this timeline, right.” Aoi nodded exaggeratedly. “In any case, I guess it stands to reason you guys wouldn’t recognise it on sight.” He turned towards the side door that Clover had been examining, pointing out the plate that read ‘B93’. “Or we gonna have a look at what else they managed to put together, or what?” He opened up that door and slipped inside.

Akane went the other way, into the door labelled ‘B92’. Her first sight inside just confirmed how much this space was drawing from her Nonary Game. The same calming blue wallpaper covered the walls, the same pattern of checkered tiles could be found in the ensuite, even the box of matches and the tiny golden key that she’d included for the escape puzzle were in the carefully chosen locations she’d designated.

Light and Clover had followed Akane in. “Is there any particular reason why the victims of this mind virus would choose to recreate part of your Nonary Game?” Light asked. “It’s a peculiar choice, for the inner sanctum of a facility such as this.”

“I’m not certain, yet,” Akane replied. A half-truth.

Clover folded her arms, tapping her foot. “Well, when we work out what’s causing this whole thing, then we’ll know what you’ve got to do with it.” She glanced around the cabin. “So? Where the hell is it? What in here’s causing the morphogenetic field to get so crazy?”

Akane closed her eyes. It was true that this place, this replica of the second class cabins, was a place of morphogenetic power. The cultists had built it to be so. But at the same time… “This place isn’t complete yet. We came here too soon. Whatever’s at the heart of this, it’s not here yet.”

It wasn’t clear that Clover was going to accept that, just on Akane’s word. But the other SOIS agents had pulled out various devices and were waving them around: experimental prototypes that allowed them to test the morphogenetic field what Akane knew as plain fact.

“Damnit! I thought we were so close, too,” Clover said with a scowl. “I guess we’ll just have to round everyone up, see what we get from them.”

The SOIS agent nearest to her put a finger to her earpiece, listened carefully, then nodded at Clover. “HQ are saying that we should clear out before the ordinary police move in. Avoid crossfire. So let’s…” She cut off suddenly; when she spoke again her voice was harsher, more urgent. “Reports are saying that the opponents have spotted our infiltration points. They’ve moved guards into the parts of the construction site we used. The other teams have successfully exfiltrated, but our path is cut off. Crash Keys’, too.”

“Are we gonna have to fight our way out?” Clover asked. Her voice was half-filled with trepidation, half psyching herself up.

Akane concentrated, delving deep within herself for each and every detail she’d picked up about this facility and the people who’d been drawn their like moths to a flame. “There may be a way out, without violence,” she said. “But you’re going to have to trust me.”

The two groups, now moving as one, had left the recreated second class cabins. They’d found a storeroom, and purloined from there everything they expected to need. Now they were gathered at their final resting point, sheltered just off to the side of the open foyer that took up most of the building’s ground floor.

Akane’s planned exit? Through the main entrance, in plain sight.

“Remember the one thing we know about these people,” she said. “They all just got caught up in this thing and came here. They don’t know each other. They aren’t entirely sure themselves what they’re doing here. If we move through with purpose, we’ll appear to belong just as much as any of them.”

Clover shrugged. “It’s as good a plan as any I’ve got.”

“Very well,” Light added. He held out his robe from among the ones they’d taken from the storeroom. “It seems that being compelled into strange, cult-like, garb is just something I have to expect these days.”

Strange it was, as were all the other robes they’d taken. Black divided from white into uncoordinated blobs all along the fabric, like wearing a Rorschach test.

Light turned to his sister. “Clover, please help me don this. It would be a shame to get this far and be caught out by a misplaced hood.”

After they had done so, and after all the other members of the group had put on robes as well, Akane stepped forward into the open light of the foyer. She surveyed the crowd milling about in front of her, took a single second’s judgment, and then plunged in. By an instinct trained over a decade of preparation, she knew not to be tempted to scrutinize the people she passed for their reactions. She just kept walking forward with a steady pace, hoping that those behind her – SOIS and Crash Keys both – were following her lead.

They were about halfway across the space, the towering glass of the exit coming closer and closer. No-one had noticed them yet. It had to be working.

And then one of the figures in front of her diverted from their expected path. Akane collided with them, barely stifling her gasp of surprise, and the two of them tumbled to the floor.

Akane looked down at the man who had stopped her. As the hood of his robe fell away, a kind and innocent face looked back up at her.

“…Jumpy?”

“Kanny?”

“What are you doing here?!”

“Huh? What are you doing here?! You –” Junpei’s face contorted in a desperate confusion. He mumbled, “We were investigating a missing person. Plan was for us to sneak in and see if we could find him. But you…”

Akane got up as Junpei trailed off and helped him to his feet. At this point she noticed three things. One: the imposing figure of the detective who had rowed her away from the Gigantic a decade ago. How on Earth he’d managed to disguise himself using a cultist’s robe and sneak in… His actions against Cradle had proven his aptitude for stealth, however surprising that would seem from first glance.

Second: an unnatural silence had descended on the foyer. The entire crowd of cultists had turned to face the escaping group, hollow-eyed stares boring in.

And third, Akane’s disguising robe had fallen away in the tumble.

“Interlopers!” came one astonished shout.

“Her! In the purple,” a hiss-like cry came up from somewhere in the mass of people. “She’s the one who did this to us!”

Then the crowd rushed in, a berserker wave.

Akane knew that Aoi and the Crash Keys members she’d brought with her could handle themselves. The hand-to-hand skills of the SOIS didn’t need to be mentioned. And the detective had decades of experience bringing down violent criminals. Once they could just form ranks they’d be able to hold out against these random untrained people plucked from the street.

But there was a second or two before that could come together. Grasping hands reached in towards Akane. She flinched back, flailing with her arms. And the Junpei stepped into the way, batting away a couple of the arms.

“Kanny! Run!” he cried out. Then he was yanked off his feet and drawn away, disappearing from sight into the mass of people.

Akane reached after him, but it was too late. The detective came up on one side of her, shielding her from blows, and Aoi pulled her back by the arm. “Fuck it, Akane! You can’t do anything,” he said. “Junpei’s gone.” Ignoring her protests he dragged her back into the squad of agents, who’d attained a defensive formation too late for it to count.

The cultists formed up around them, more arriving by dribs and drabs at the back as they were drawn to the commotion. For a moment a ring of no-man’s land took shape between the two groups. Then a piercing battle-cry went up, and the enemies charged.

“All hail the Funyarinpa!”

—

Two-Pronged Strike

It was a good thing that Light Field’s character inclined him towards calm, reflective confidence and an unwavering poise. The sudden rush of attackers was enough to test even his nerves. He held his own as the melee began, but by the time he was rotated out of the front lines by the more experienced SOIS agents his muscles were aching. The attackers showed no signs of relenting.

In the centre of the defensive ring, Light joined Akane and Aoi; he could keep track of Clover as well through the flashes of her heightened emotions that he was receiving. It looked like they were all still safe so far. Except, of course for Junpei.

“We ain’t gonna last long,” grunted the detective, even as he held onto one side of the formation practically single-handedly. “They’re just gonna keep coming, until we’re exhausted.” The rumbling sounds of the fight interrupted just then, and when they subsided the detective was panting. “There’s gotta be somewhere with some cover, where we can make a choke point. Right?”

For a moment Light had expected Akane to answer. Her information on the facility had been better than SOIS’ own, and coming down here had been her plan. But her shallow, laboured breathing conveyed her current mental state as clearly as spoken words. Light decided to answer on his own initiative.

“There is still construction in progress on the south-west side of the building. Perhaps we can use that?”

“Sounds good,” the detective replied.

Light kept pace as the group pushed that way, forcing their way through the attacking crowd and across the foyer. When they reached the edge, they ducked their way, one by one, through a hole in an unfinished wall that demarcated the start of the construction. Once they’d all escaped the deafening fury of the foyer and into the sheltering quiet of the construction site the detective turned. He gave one solid kick to the supports of some nearby scaffolding, bringing the web of metal bars crashing down on top of the entrance. The pursuit was blocked off, a moment of peace bought.

Light’s earpiece – Clover’s too, and presumably the other agents’ as well – pinged at that moment. “It’ll be twenty minutes before regular law enforcement is ready to move in,” Alice’s voice came through it, the hint of worry not detracting from the clarity of her tone. “Hold out until then and we’ll see you home safe.”

As the veteran SOIS agents who had come with Light and Clover fanned out, surveying the lay of the land, Light tested out the sounds of the new environs. The first impressions seemed promising: the clear tones of metal laid out the positions of the rest of the scaffolding, the dull crumbling of shifting footsteps acted as a polite warning from piles of rubble. This was a stage on which Light could pull his full weight.

Meanwhile most of the Crash Keys members were also exploring the construction site, following SOIS’ lead. A couple had stayed behind with Aoi near the blockade of scaffolding, tending to Akane. Light and Clover approached them.

“Perhaps an explanation is in order,” Light said to Akane. “The people who just attacked us seemed very much convinced that you are to blame for their condition. They were quite aggrieved, in fact.”

Akane shrunk away under the glare of his closed eyes. Then she steadied herself, taking in a deep breath. “I included a certain item in the Nonary Game,” she stated, “in order to establish certain ideas about the morphogenetic field. It was necessary at the time, for the game to conclude as it did, and I won’t apologise for using it. But… I regret the side-effects of that choice.”

“Hah!” Clover spat. “It’s not so easy, is it? When it’s your boyfriend’s life on the line.”

“Junpei’s life has always been on the line. I accepted that a long time ago.”

Aoi grunted to himself. “I can’t believe Junpei went off like that, back when we were going through the second class cabins. Even as a joke… I should have knocked some sense into him before he could get that far.”

Light would have desired to press that further for more details. But now wasn’t the time. The sounds of the mind-virus victims on the other side of the barrier were getting louder, bit by bit, and they worked away at the pile of tangled metal. One wiry young man, working his way through a gap at the top by a desperate, manic effort, burst through into the construction site. He pulled himself to his feet, ducked under one last metal bar hanging in his way, and then ran down the side of the barrier towards them.

The clang of feet on metal told Light exactly where this man was at all times. As the attacker leapt wildly Light caught him out of the air and flipped him onto the floor.

Clover was immediately by Light’s side, pinning one of the attacker’s arms with her knee. “Hey! What are you doing? The hell’s up with you, anyway?”

Not the most precise of interrogations, but the man responded. “I just saw it, one day…” he mumbled. “I saw it, and knew that it was the Funyarinpa. That it was important.”

“How the fuck does that add up to you attacking us? Like crazies?!” Aoi said.

“Yeah,” the detective added. “You and loads of other guys left your homes, your lives, behind. What’s it all for?”

“I can’t get it out of my head. The Funyarinpa, it’s… it’s all I can think about!” The young man groaned, as though exhausted from an entire marathon’s worth of effort. “If we can make this work then it’ll make sense. I just want it all to make sense.”

By then the agents who had set off to explore the area were coming back. And they weren’t just returning in order to rejoin the group; they were backing up, slowly and carefully, attention fixed cautiously outward. Beyond them, hooded figures circled with heavy, uncertain footsteps. Just as the cultists that had attacked them in the entrance lobby were working on widening the hole that first man had used, others must have been finding their way in through other parts of the construction site. They’d settled for just watching, for now, and the crowd was diffuse. But more and more were arriving over time. They drew closer.

Light, Clover, and all the others that had stayed at the opening stepped forward. Now that their respite had come to an end, every hand would be needed to stave off an attack and keep themselves going long enough for rescue to arrive. While the detective kept an eye on the widening hole in the barricade Light, Clover and Aoi joined the defensive line of SOIS agents facing the gathering crowd of robed figures. With the sheer number of people in front of them, however unskilled, they needed to avoid being flanked: staying in formation, and using the clutter of half-finished construction work to anchor the ends of the line.

“We just need to take them out,” Clover muttered. “We can manage that.” Light felt her heightened emotions drift her thoughts towards the gun at her hip.

Light placed his hand on her arm. “They are victims in this. Just as we were,” he said.

“Yeah, sure,” Clover replied. Trusting warmth came through in her voice despite the sarcasm. She settled into a fighting stance and raised her fists.

The cultists had worked up the will, egging each other on, to encroach forward towards the territory held by the agents. Bit by bit, the momentum built up: not quite the mad rush of the foyer, but before Light knew it he was in hand-to-hand combat. Someone tried to push him back in an unskilled bull-rush. Light redirected the flailing strikes and sent the attacker stumbling back; there was a gratifying thud as they collided with more cultists coming up behind. Clover was doing just as well, fending of blows from three men at once and then delivering a swift kick to the groin of the one who faltered first.

And then one of the robed women pulled out a crowbar. She raised it high above her head and sung it down with a primal yell.

Clover screamed as she caught the metal on her right forearm; the breaking of bones was audible to even those without Light’s exceptional hearing. The crowbar wielding woman made to swing again, and Light was just able to get his left arm in the way before the rod of metal came down once more on Clover’s head.

It didn’t hurt. That arm didn’t feel any pain. Something else, coursing through his entire body… it felt much worse than mere pain.

Beside Light, Clover struggled to stay upright. “I can still…” she said through gritted teeth, “…fight. I can still do this!” She waved her left arm, as much to convince herself as to convince him. “See? I’m not –” An involuntary gasp cut off her words.

“No, Clover,” Light said. “Stay back here. Stay back, and keep your eyes open.”

“What are you going to do?”

“What I have to.” Then Light turned and stepped forward into the onrushing crowd.

Did the people in front of Light know what was allowed to him by Clover’s open eyes? Did they know what it meant for them that his own eyes were open, too?

The attackers moved to take advantage of Light stepping out of the line, hurrying to surround him. This was why the SOIS agents had been so concerned about being flanked, after all. Once one of the hooded figures was behind him they moved in, aiming a low strike at the small of his back. The woman who’d swung at Clover, who had been backing away with unsteady, stumbling footsteps, raised her arms again as she saw Light coming for her. She lashed out with the crowbar at the exact same moment.

Light dodged both strikes with an effortless lean to the side.

Even as more of the Funyarinpa cultists surrounded Light, attempting to interfere with his approach on the woman who had hurt his sister, none of it concerned him. A knowledge better than mere vision guided his actions. As long as Clover, watching over him from where he’d left her, knew where his opponents stood and what they did she could send him that information. They couldn’t lay a finger on someone with that perfect knowledge. And while such a number of attackers were trying and failing to deal with Light, the rest of the SOIS agents gained a moment of relief.

After knocking the wind out of one man and efficiently sending another off-balance and careening away, Light closed with the crowbar-wielding woman. In her panic she didn’t even attempt anything before Light grasped her wrist and disarmed her. Then he threw here over his shoulder onto the hard concrete floor.

For a moment Light was torn about what to do with her. His duty called on him to continue using his ‘advantage’ in this melee for the benefit of everyone else fighting; a bitter poison inside him reminded him of the shattering crack of Clover’s bones. Indecision held Light motionless, just for a second.

And then, all at once, all across the construction site, something changed in the voices and breaths of the Funyarinpa cultists. Light could hear every last subtlety of it.

As one, the robed figures began to retreat away from the line of agents, all the tension gone from their movements. One of them stepped cautiously forward to get between Light and the woman on the ground, kneeling to shelter her with his body, hands held in surrender. “It’s happened. It all makes sense now,” the man said to Light. The hopeful hint in his voice only grew as he continued speaking. “A truce? We don’t need to fight you anymore.”

Light’s decision was made for him. He nodded.

The man whispered his thanks and helped the woman to her feet. Then the crowd of Funyarinpa cultists melted away from the construction site as gradually and unobtrusively as they’d entered, leaving SOIS, Crash Keys, and the detective in the quiet, empty expanse.

—

The Thing in Itself

When Junpei Tenmyouji regained his bearings he was in a small but cosy room, the half-light and the ache of his body from the rough manhandling leaving him almost drowsy. That wouldn’t be good; Junpei forced himself to stay alert and pay attention to his surroundings. The room was L-shaped, the wallpaper a pleasant calming green, and Junpei was sat at the corner of it. From there he could see the entrance door just feet away to his right, hints of an ensuite shower through a crack in a door just beyond that, and to his left a blue sofa and a glass cabinet in what was a small lounge area.

This all seemed very familiar to Junpei. Was this one of the second class cabin? From the Nonary Game? If Junpei could just check things out closer up he might be able to confirm it.

It was at this point that Junpei realised that he was firmly tied to the seat he’d been sat it.

“Hey!” he called out as loudly as his lungs could manage. “Let me the hell out of here! Goddamnit!” Would any of the hooded figures who’d carried him here be close enough to hear him shouting? Would they care, if they did?

As it turned out, one did respond to Junpei’s yells. The entrance door opened up and someone – wearing a robe with the same pattern of black and white blobs – stepped into the cabin. He went past Junpei into the open lounge space and then stopped, as though pondering.

“Why the hell did you bring me here?” Junpei spat, struggling to turn in his chair to face the man. “Who are you? Show me your face, damnit!”

The man turned. His head had been covered by the robe’s hood but under Junpei’s glare he lowered it. The face underneath was that of a middle-aged Japanese man, one that triggered a spark of recognition in Junpei the moment the fabric fell away.

“Huh? Kenji Matsuo?”

The expression of the man Junpei had been hired to find was hollow-eyed, worn down by exhaustion and anxious uncertainty. But that didn’t stop Kenji’s eyes from registering his surprise. “You… know my name?”

“Yeah. Your wife asked me to come find you. At least that seems to have worked.” Junpei sighed. “What the hell are you even doing here? Your family back home’s going crazy with worry.” It was hardly his first priority right now, but convincing this guy to go home would be the easiest solution imaginable to the case he’d come on.

“I… I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t want to hurt them, but… I couldn’t just leave it.” Kenji shook his head fitfully. “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to see it.”

“How did all this–” Junpei craned his neck as though to take in the entire towering edifice of the building they were in “–happen by accident?”

“I owe you an explanation,” Kenji replied. He turned away ever-so-slightly, and under his breath he mumbled, “I owe my wife an explanation, too.”

Junpei curled his lip into a scowl, but nodded.

“There’s one more thing that needs to happen, before anything I say will make sense to you. Don’t worry, it’ll get here soon.”

Junpei was about to get impatient, but then the entrance door opened again. Two more cultists stepped through it carrying a golden portrait frame between them. In silence they carried it to the wall at the end of the ‘L’ and hung it there, facing Junpei. It was the Funyarinpa.

Huh? Hadn’t Lotus explained him, back during the Nonary Game, that this was a picture of a dog? She’d traced it out, and he’d certainly been able to see the dog in the image. But now he couldn’t see the dog at all. There was the Funyarinpa, and nothing else.

“I just came across this picture while flicking through late-night reruns,” Kenji explained. “I ended up on this kooky show about paranormal stuff. Some sort of experiment they were doing about how more people were now able to see what was in the image?”

“Yeah, I know,” Junpei replied. He passed on the explanation that Lotus had given him a year before. “So before they did it, people would be able to see lots of different objects in the pattern, or nothing at all. Afterwards, there was an increased chance that they’d be able to see the dog.”

“But that’s not what happened.” Bitterness was laced through Kenji’s voice. “All I could see was that it was the Funyarinpa. Everyone else here has a similar story: just coming across this image by accident, seeing the Funyarinpa, and not being to get it out of our heads. We all knew that there was a place we could go, where we might be able to put our heads together and work out why this was happening to us and what it meant.”

“You sure gave us the runaround when you left Japan to come here,” Junpei said.

Kenji smiled sheepishly. “The idea just came to me. I didn’t mean to cause anyone any trouble.”

“So,” Junpei said, “you all came here. You ‘put your heads together’, or whatever. Built all this up, and made these mock-ups of the second class cabins. Then you attack my friends and haul me up here.” He made a show of struggling with the bonds that held him in his seat. “Did you actually get anything from all that?”

However rhetorically Junpei had meant that, Kenji answered with, “Yes. I think we did.” He rubbed his brow for a moment, then added. “I think we’ve worked out what the problem is. Why the Funyarinpa’s causing all of us who’ve come here such mental pain.”

“And? What is that?”

“We know the Funyarinpa is important. Every part of us is saying that it’s blasphemous to think otherwise. But there’s nothing else. We all know we have to do something, but there’s nothing in what we received to tell us what that something is.”

Not a surprise, Junpei realised. It had all started as a heat-of-the-moment joke, carried on long enough to make a point and no further. Of course there was nothing more to it than that. Was this… his fault?

Something on Junpei’s face must have conveyed what he was thinking about, because Kenji narrowed his eyes at that moment into a tight, suspicious glare. “You were there, weren’t you? When it first happened? I thought I recognised you.”

“Could have seen me from anywhere,” Junpei replied, his eyes wandering off to the side.

Kenji scratched his finger through his beard-stubble. “No… we only got flashes of it, but enough. It was you, and that skimpy woman, that punk kid, all looking at the Funyarinpa. We got enough to know you were here.” Then the man snorted. “And you recognised this room when you came in.”

“Fine!” Junpei exclaimed through gritted teeth. “It was me! I made the Funyarinpa! I’m the one who did this to you.”

Kenjo Matsuo nodded, then slowly drew closer to loom over Junpei, still trapped in his chair. “Yes. And I think I know exactly what we need to do with you.”

“And so they elected me Funyarinpope,” Junpei said to the assembled group of his friends and their colleagues.

He’d come back down to the bottom of the building, with Kenji Matsuo and a couple of the other worshippers in tow, to view the aftermath of the conflict that had erupted after he’d been carried away. Now his friends stood alongside the Funyarinpa worshippers, an uneasy truce holding among them. Wounds were being tended on both sides, and one young acolyte – Junpei now knew her name was Jessica – was speaking to Clover with a stutter in her voice and her hands intertwined contritely in front of her.

On the other side of Clover stood Light, and as Junpei had finished his speech he raised his hand with a question. “Can we be sure that the various convulsions of the past few months will come to an end? It would be just terribly sad for us to remain at odds.”

“I hope so,” Junpei replied. “I’m not sure exactly how it works, but the Funyarinpa should be stabilised now. A real idea worth believing in, not just a mind-virus. That should make everything better. If it doesn’t… I’ll just have to keep working at it.”

The detective Junpei had been working with laughed heartily. “It’s a hell of a step up from being PI, Junpei,” he said. “So, what will you do now?”

It took Junpei a moment to decide, but when he did his voice was certain and unwavering. “I’m going to go with them. We can’t use this place now–” And it really was ‘we’, wasn’t it? “–but we can set up somewhere else. And when we finally find somewhere, and gather everyone together who was affected… I’m going to take responsibility for what I created.”

For a moment it looked like that was the end of it. Certainly plenty of the others thought it was: the SOIS agents gradually retreated from the building, while the Funyarinpa worshippers dispersed to clean up the detritus from the fight. But Junpei knew there was one thing left to happen.

There she was. As the rest of the crowd melted away around her Kanny stood in place, eyes fixed on Junpei. For a moment he’d been tempted to have one of his new followers keep an eye for her leaving; in the end he was glad he’d left it to trust.

Junpei stepped down off the makeshift wooden platform he’d been using. He didn’t realise the way his breath had caught in his throat until he was half-way across the distance to her. When he finally reached Kanny he didn’t now whether to leap in for a hug, to scold her, to turn and run back the way he’d came.

It was Kanny who broke the silence. “I guess it is your turn, to do the thing and then vanish without a trace.”

“This is something important. Something only I can do. You came here to make sure that what we did in Building Q doesn’t cause any more problems. If I do this, I can make sure that happens.”

“I know the feeling.” Akane glanced over towards the edge of the foyer, where her brother Aoi was watching over her warily. “I… I’ll have to go soon too, to sort out the aftermath of this. Is this really it? Again?”

That finally gave Junpei the impulse he needed to cross the last few feet and grab her hand.

“Don’t worry. Funyarinpa willing, we’ll meet again.”

—

Epilogue: Highest/Lowest

Being one of the world’s wealthiest men came with its advantages, even in prison. Gentarou Hongou knew that well. After all he was sitting in a luxurious open-plan living room, bottom resting on the finest of sofas, watching the world go by through a widescreen television. Only a few bars on the windows were there to remind him that the barely-better-than-apes of the world disapproved of his actions. Even after his utter defeat, Gentarou had not a thing to be concerned about.

And Gentarou Hongou was bored.

All his accomplishments had come to nothing. All his ambitions unfulfilled: especially that final one, which would have established him as the greatest scientist the world had produced in the twenty-first century. Now all he had was his wide-screen TV and the chance to watch lesser people’s accomplishments. Lesser people’s ambitions.

He flicked channel over to a news broadcast. Something about some new religious movement? It seemed utterly irrelevant, at first, but then the footage switched to a press conference given by the religion’s supreme leader.

Was that the brat? Junpei? Gentarou could only tell because the elaborate vestments the young man was wearing – still somewhat uncomfortably – had a colour scheme patterned after the garish cyan and the black-and-red chequer he had worn during the Nonary Game. So this was where he’d ended up? Gentarou would never have guessed.

Junpei apologized for something or other that Gentarou had no context. He promised that things were mending, and hope for the future. All the things that, as head of Cradle, Gentarou had made subordinates do for him at these sorts of apology press conferences. Until the last one.

It was an interesting curiosity, but it seemed to have nothing to do with Gentarou Hongou. That, of course, was the most important factor.

But then Junpei unveiled something on a plinth next to him: the main symbol of his new faith. Gentarou saw a painting, the image constructed from a number of black and white shapes. At first they looked like just a random collection of abstract blobs, and Gentarou scoffed. And halfway through that breath, something clicked inside his mind. Those previously abstract shapes reaching out and connecting to each other and forming something whole – something with meaning. Funyarinpa.

Gentarou’s brain wasn’t supposed to be able to do that. He tried it again. Yes: there once again were the meaningless components, and as he stared they coalesced into a coherent concept once more. He was actually able to make that happen. For this first time, only with this Funyarinpa; one day, for anything he would put his mind to.

Gentarou Hongou smiled to himself with a sincerity he hadn’t had for quite some time. It had taken over a decade, and only through means entirely unexpected. But, somehow, his grand experiment had accomplished its goal after all.

#submission #999 #funyarinpa #soraritsuka #chessanator #zecret santa 2023

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