#not me sobbing over the fact that ryuu REALLY started living his life to the fullest

[tenacquity]

ryuu's always had an innate sense of curiosity to him an intrigue that's just . . . been there but not really pursued until he got swept into the trip to london and became a lawyer

truly, it's the idea of "unlocked potential"

he can be observant when he's actually putting his mind to it (as opposed to being pretty oblivious otherwise) he genuinely does enjoy sorting through mysteries and finding out how things work (both scientifically and psychologically when it comes to figuring people out)

it honestly just took kazuma's influence and unending belief in his abilities to fully engage in them, and said curiosity and thirst for knowledge is only encouraged and amplified by his exposure to the great detective and all the cases they've solved together (๑˘︶˘๑)

[k-itsmaywriting]

Vessels: Chapter 3

CONTENT WARNINGS: body modification&horror, references to trauma and PTSD, references to psychological manipulation, implied/referenced character death

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

Shirayuki pokes her head out of the emergency exit door. If she didn’t lose count on the way down the stairs, she’s on the seventh floor where Obi works. Dr Gazelt should be repairing him here.

Large doors to the lab face her from the other side of the floor, several paths branching from the main corridor to lead to the offices, the kitchen and the elevators. The bathrooms are on the way from the exit.

She was never allowed a step away from the elevators when she visited to pick up Obi, but she can guess where she’ll find him.

If she’s lucky, Zen might only now start to suspect she’s not where he thinks she is, though she’s not sure how long he would avoid checking the women’s restroom. She needs to find Obi, hide a safe distance away until he’s completely healed, then find an opportunity to wake him up and escape.

And while she has all that to worry about, she needs to find concrete evidence on Kain’s crimes.

Turning on her phone’s video recording, she creeps out the door and across the hall, pausing to check her surroundings at every branch and door. Every step she takes is heavier, shakier, with one hand dragging along the wall while her heart races. She tries to push away the loops in her brain, of Obi running across the street, of the truck, of him flying across the road and—

She grits her teeth harder, trying to bite back the tears. Trying to not think about how she almost lost him, how she should’ve been faster, should’ve stopped him from crossing that street.

At the other side, she peeks through the glass between her and the engineering lab. It looks more like an operating room, with circular lights hovering above long benches, each with a person on top. But on the one further from the door, the light spins, and from its edges there are mechanic arms extending and retracting in and out of the body. She presses her phone camera against the glass and shifts a little to the side for a better look.

It’s Obi.

There’s no one else in the room. Shirayuki immediately grabs for the door handle, tries to open it—darn! She needs a key card—

“Dr Lyon?”

Shirayuki gasps and spins, crashing her back into the door. In front of her, a woman holds a steaming mug in her hand and a deeply sympathetic look. “I’m really sorry for startling you,” she says. “Obi is okay. His life isn’t in danger.”

“Dr Garrack Gazelt,” Shirayuki breathes as she slides her hands behind her back, “He…he’s fine? Really?”

“Yes. Even though his arm was quite damaged, we didn’t have any blood loss to worry about, so you can relax.” Garrack pulls a keycard from her pocket and steps past Shirayuki before pressing it against the lock. It beeps green. “On another note, Dr Lyon, I thought Zen Wisteria was with you.”

Shirayuki gulps, keeps her voice low, “He…said he had other matters to attend to.”

Garrack hums as she motions Shirayuki to follow her inside. She closes the door behind her and crosses towards the control panel next to the right bench, and Shirayuki takes note of the way she tosses her card on top of another on the table. There is a beep next to her, and suddenly a holographic wall shoots from the floor to the ceiling, hiding away the bench Obi lays on.

“Dr Lyon, please, have a seat. This…must be really hard for you.”

Shirayuki turns around. There is a row of chairs near the door, out of the view of the window, she hopes. She takes a seat, holding her phone with the camera facing up.

The rest of the room is filled with cabinets and closets neatly placed towards the edges of the room, but charts and sticky notes are stacked in a storm of diagrams and notes along the walls. On the bench next to Obi’s, there is a smaller figure. It’s covered head to toe with a white sheet that drapes to the floor. And from a head of dark brown hair, trails of coloured wires snake off the bench to another control panel. She thinks it must be Ryuu.

She suddenly looks at Garrack’s back as she works at the panel, dread filling her. Garrack is in charge of building Ryuu’s brain, and she doesn’t seem shocked by the fact Obi is an android. Was she—?

“Our AI has fixed the vast majority of damage on his arm,” Garrack reports. “It’ll finish reattaching his arm to his shoulder in another few minutes. After that I’ll have to deal with the effects of the trauma on his brain. You can get him home after I’m done, and he’ll wake up tomorrow not knowing any of this happened.”

Shirayuki’s mouth gapes. “What?”

Garrack’s body suddenly tenses, but she says nothing else. Shirayuki waits for her to ask something, like she didn’t actually just say what she did. She hopes she didn’t just say what she did.

But Garrack’s shoulders slowly fall back as she lets out a long, deep sigh. “And this is what happens when I don’t get to sleep…”

“What do you mean he won’t know about any of this?”

Garrack turns to face Shirayuki, hands shoved into her pockets. “This incident has most likely caused a great deal of trauma to Obi’s brain,” she says flatly, like she’s rehearsed it. “So that he won’t have to experience the effects, the memory of the incident can be removed, thus preventing any psychological pain that would come from it.”

Shirayuki frowns. That’s not what it’s really about. “You’re trying to hide the fact he’s an android from him.”

Garrack presses her lips together. “You’re too clever for your own good, Shirayuki.”

“That is Dr Lyon to you, Dr Gazelt,” she grits. “And what’s the point of hiding the truth from him? To make him stay ignorantly loyal to you? To protect yourselves from the law?!”

Garrack snaps, “Kain’s government makes the law. They’ll always find a way around it, no matter what bullshit reason they come up with to do it. Don’t think for a second he hasn’t done something like this before.”

Shirayuki’s heart drops to her stomach. Suddenly Garrack, with the bags under her eyes and life crawling away from her exhausted sighs and hunched shoulders, looks sad, broken like cracked glass. Not just tired.

“I figured the only reason you didn’t come straight here,” she says, “is because you were with Kain. And let me hazard a guess as to what happened there – he used Obi’s life as leverage to make you give up your work so that only he could have it? Instead of the people who really need it? I used to operate on brain injuries and diseases, Dr Lyon, but now I build and manipulate them to make them tools for people other than themselves.”

“But why…?”

Garrack looks towards the holographic wall surrounding Obi, but Shirayuki thinks she’s not looking at him. “They took someone from me, a child that I promised I would protect. I thought I could bring him back.”

She imagines Garrack, different from the one in front of her, with brighter eyes and a stronger body, with a boy with aqua blue eyes and brown hair. But then she imagines him gone, and Garrack destroyed. Bent over herself as sobs rip through her at Kain’s feet – a brilliant woman forced into a cage, trying to bring back what she lost through the only way she knows she possibly can. Surgery. Neuroscience.

“Be honest with me, Dr Lyon” Garrack says, still staring at the holographic wall, “Do you want Obi to know that this is the life he lives? That just as he was turning over a new leaf, his body was violated and turned into nothing but a tool for the Wisterias to use for as long as he exists? It’s a lot less painful to live the way he has been all this time, not knowing, never remembering.”

Shirayuki tries to take a deep breath, tries to hide how her entire body shakes. “Maybe. But Obi is my best friend, and I won’t let him be a tool for the rest of his life, not when I know. Not when I know he would fight for me.”

Garrack looks at her again, pity in her eyes. It makes her guts twist. Why does everyone look at her like that when she talks about him?

A flat but chipper voice cuts the silence, “Reattachment complete. The patient is now in excellent physical condition.” The holographic wall and mechanic arms disappear in a swoop.

Obi is still asleep on the bench, wires slithering to the panel Garrack stands in front of from his head. Shirayuki stares at his face, surprisingly relaxed, and thinks it might have something to do with the wires buried in his hair. Maybe Garrack is right. Maybe it’s just better to choose the lesser pain, to go on living like nothing is wrong if it means smooth-sailing, or at least in one’s own reality.

Garrack sighs deeply. “You know what’s stupid about all this? Kain wasn’t even meant to be a part of any of this shit. He just does favours for Izana and Zen, like nab some people they can use for their prototypes and cover up their tracks, maybe because he wants something from all their work. But that doesn’t really have anything to do with me anymore. I’m just following orders at this point.”

“But Obi will still be hurt. You’ll still manipulate his reality so that he can be controlled. And I can’t let that happen, I won’t.” Shirayuki suddenly stands. “Dr Gazelt, listen to me, we don’t have to do as Kain says if he can’t take away the people that he’s holding hostage.”

Garrack narrows her eyes.  “What do you mean?”

Shirayuki raises her phone and turns on the screen, still recording. “We could bring Kain’s crimes to light – expose him for his crimes.”

In an instant, Garrack’s eyes are as wide as saucers, and her skin that of a ghost. “You’re crazy.”

“Maybe I am,” Shirayuki says firmly, “But even if neither Obi nor I remember anything after tonight, or even if Kain kills me, I’m not going down without a fight.”

“You won’t be just going for Kain.” Garrack steps forward, frantic. “You’re going for Izana, Zen, and every single person who has ever been involved in this. Even Obi and Ryuu. If you succeed, both of them might just be destroyed. And that’s if anyone can even punish them for what they did.”

Shirayuki won’t be fazed. She won’t – she refuses. “But if we get this out, we’ll have the people on our side. And when we do, not even the Wisterias can stop us.”

“This government is corrupt for a reason! The Wisteria family was one of billionaire entrepreneurs and developers before the meteor, so they’re very good at running under morality’s nose, and controlling everything and everyone. Kain and his father before him didn’t exactly keep this power for three whole decades by letting people who threatened their power stay alive!”

“Prime Minister Kain Wisteria threatened to keep Obi’s brain prisoner to keep utilizing him for Izana and Zen’s android project if I refused to give him rights over all of my research that is meant to potentially regrow Earth’s ecosystems. But given his track record, that’s not going to happen if I say yes! And if I say no, he’s going to find another way to make me!”

“You’re only going to mess things up, it’s not worth it!”

“I don’t have a choice now!!”

Shirayuki barely recognises her own voice anymore. Her throat burns still, but her voice starts to shake again. “Dr Gazelt, please help me. I don’t want to have to do this alone. I need your word.”

Garrack breathes hard, but still says nothing.

Shirayuki presses her lips together and takes a deep breath, shoving the fear down her chest. “I’m sorry, then, but I don’t have much time before Zen finds me.”

“You ran—?!”

Shirayuki surges forward, hurling her whole body into Garrack, shoving with both arms. They both fall to the ground and Garrack’s skull hits the ground. Shirayuki gets back up on her elbows, off of Garrack with a final shove and scrambles to the table by the control panel to snatch both keycards.

Behind her, Garrack groans, holding the back of her head. Shirayuki doesn’t think she’ll be getting up soon, not with that hit or the exhaustion. She rushes for the control panel next, disconnecting every brain related process she can see. Next to her, wires pop out of Obi’s hair and fall to the floor.

Obi’s eyes start screwing shut and he grits his teeth in pain. Shirayuki grasps her hands onto the sides of his face. “Obi, Obi, can you hear me?”

He immediately grabs her hands, eyes flying open. He gasps, “Sh…Shirayuki?”

“Obi, I need you to listen to me,” she says quickly. “I need you to get out of here as fast as you can. Zen is going to find me any second. I’m trying to find evidence on Kain Wisteria’s crimes in your offices. I need you to run.”

His eyes are still wide, panicked, terrified. But she needs to go. They both do. Shirayuki spins and bolts for the door, dodging over Garrack reaching to grab her ankle. As she runs through the hall, she looks at the cards in her hand –one blank, one not, with a small sticker that says 706 Obi. That’s where she goes.

She smashes the card into the door, stumbling into the room when she opens it. She slams the door behind her, shuts the blind, and hurls the chair in front of the door. She yanks open the top drawer, grabs every folder and lets them stagger on top of each other on his desk. She holds her phone above the desk with the flashlight on as she sifts through the folders. One is called Project Ryuu, but the one underneath it—

Project Shirayuki.

She stills.

Suddenly everything is too loud again. Her ears ring, she can hear banging on the door and an odd mix of Garrack and Obi’s panicked voices outside.

Why is there a folder with her name on it? Why is she being called a project?

She sets aside Ryuu’s folder and opens the one with her name across the cover.

The first few pages are all text – purposes, goals. Next are sketches and diagrams and she starts to turn the pages faster, through synthetic organs and robotic limbs and pages upon pages of brains. Then her personality is broken apart, listed into traits and values, circled and connected to each other, with her passions and life goals in mind maps. Stories, memories, are attached – everything that makes her, her, everything she keeps in her soul on the page in simple prose. Shirayuki first became interested in botany when her grandparents gifted her with a book. She read it so many times it tore.

Shirayuki became passionate about conservation after learning about what the world was like before the meteor. This was at an excursion to the science museum in high school. This is also where she met Obi.

She continues to flip through the file, letting the pages fall. Suddenly the pages change to those of a faded, lined journal, filled to the brim with Obi’s handwriting. It’s all just logs from three years to eight months ago on her construction, progress and performance like…like she’s a thing, an experiment. Like she’s not a human being.

But…she supposes she’s not.

And that crushes her.

Her head starts to pound and she falls to her knees, dragging half the folder with her and pages scatter all over the floor. Her breath comes too fast, too heavy, but at the same time not enough at all. She grabs at the neck of her dress, edges of her vision turning white.

She’s not a human. She’s not a person. She was never a person.

The door bursts open and Obi shoves the chair aside, dropping to his knees. He grabs Shirayuki by the shoulders, turns her to him and shakes her. He’s yelling something but his voice just swims in her ears as she stares with wide, glassy eyes. Then suddenly he’s pushed over, and she sees the pant of Garrack’s leg and a sparking rod in her hand. The world flips over again, and so does she. A sharp pain sears through the back of her neck and a sound she doesn’t know rips through her throat.

Everything is black, but she doesn’t feel her eyes close.