Chapter Thirteen



"I understand she has unusual capabilities."

Himiko heard the voice as she swam upwards through darkness. She kept her eyes closed, of course -- give nothing away, don't betray that you're awake, lessons that Yamato had taught her -- but she tasted the air around her.

The smell of blood drowned out everything else.

"She does." That was Kagami's voice. "Precautions have been taken."

Her arms were restrained behind her back, crossed and bound at the wrists. She didn't try straining against the bindings yet, but she registered them, letting herself become aware of their light weight, their smooth texture. Plastic rather than metal. Probably resistant to my Corrosion Scent.

A sharply pointed toe caught her under the ribs, rolling her onto her back. She gasped as her head thumped against the floor, and let her eyes flicker open.

Hevn stood there, foot still meditatively extended. A folded scarf held her hair back from her face. She raised a blood-smeared hand to undo it, to let the yellow waves come spilling round her shoulders, and smiled down at Himiko. There wasn't even the familiar annoyance to her eyes, or the familiar briskness to her lips, but instead there was the slow comfortable smile of an adult who is at last freed from the needs of playing some game with children and can finally relax into her own nature. "Don't try to struggle, Voodoo Child," she advised Himiko. "It'll be easier on you."

Himiko's mouth was too dry for her to spit. She stared up at Hevn, and wondered if she had ever known the woman. "Why?" she asked. "Why -- why betray all of us --"

Kagami stepped gracefully to Hevn's side, the rips in his clothing seeming no more than casual accessorising. "Because my sister has never been your ally in the first place," he answered, and let his hand drift to stroke Hevn's cheek, turning her face to his, bending her into a willing kiss. Hevn's hair tumbled across Kagami's shoulder and seemed to mingle with his own for a moment in traceries of leprous gold.

Miroku -- it was the oldest-looking one now, the one she'd met as Miroku Natsuhiko -- coughed discreetly. "And after she's been taken up and deposited?"

Hevn partly disengaged herself from Kagami, still draping herself over him. "You will of course receive your payment. Have no fear. Everything has gone according to plan."

Himiko tried to coil her legs discreetly underneath her, but Miroku Natsuhiko caught sight of the movement and grabbed her collar, hoisting her to her feet by the tattered remnants of her blouse. "Ready to walk?" he asked pleasantly. "Good."

Kagami moved his hand slightly, and a sharp piece of mirror flickered into it. "And don't try Puppet Scent. You were given an injection while you were unconscious. If you attempt to produce it, even your rather unique metabolism will have -- problems."

"What do you know about my metabolism?" Himiko grated. It might be true. It might not. Either way, this wasn't the moment to try. A small enclosed space would be better.

Hevn threw back her head and laughed. "Shall we show her, brother?"

Kagami shrugged. "Why not? It's close to our route. If Miroku-san has no objection?"

Behind her, Miroku Natsuhiko snorted. "It makes no difference to me."

A cellphone in the folds of Hevn's skirts ran. She plucked it out, flicked it open, and held it to her ear. "Hevn here -- oh, really? Good. Thank you. I'll be right down."
Snapping the phone shut, she turned to Kagami. "Would you mind taking care of the Voodoo Child, brother? I've just been informed that our latest guests are awake."

Kagami swept a smooth bow. "Of course, sister. But first --" He caught her by the shoulders, and in a gesture that was as much hungry as it was sexual, pressed his lips against hers in another devouring kiss, hands tracing down over her torso. Hevn sighed as she returned it, body melting against him, hands locking behind his neck.

Himiko's vision blurred for a moment. The embracing pair -- brother and sister? How could that be? -- seemed to meld together like an insane sculpture, and it was only Miroku's grip on her collar, and her last remaining shreds of pride, that kept her standing as Hevn finally loosened herself and paced away.

Kagami chuckled, and was still chuckling as he led Miroku and Himiko to the far doorway.

Himiko would not look back to see the body on the floor. She would not.

---

"I'm sorry," the voice said. It was a voice that had haunted Ginji's gentler dreams for years now. "I wish it hadn't had to be this way."

"Teshimine?" Ginji whispered, opening his eyes.

He was hanging against a wall in a large room, strapped by wrists, neck, waist, and ankles. Strangely, the air was free of the usual ambient prickle of electricity that he could always sense. It was as if he was in some sort of null zone, outside reality. The room itself was wide and empty, ceiling rising high above, traceries of something incomprehensible marked across the floor.

Ban wasn't there. Where was he?

Teshimine was standing in front of him. Ginji tried to throw himself towards him, to hug his oldest friend out of sheer joy and happiness, but found that he couldn't get out of his restraints. "Teshimine!" he shouted. "You're safe!"

Teshimine returned Ginji's gaze for a moment, then his eyes fell. "I am. I'm so sorry."

Ginji shook his head. "Don't be sorry that you're safe!" Though -- he was having problems remembering exactly what had happened before this whole being tied to the wall thing. There had been the bit with him seeing Teshimine all tied up and going to rescue him, and then the bit with an explosion of light.

It had been Masaki's trick with the light. It had been Masaki who'd done this to him. And -- "Where is Ban?" he asked, keeping himself calm, very calm, because this wasn't a moment for Raitei, and Teshimine wasn't a person who deserved Raitei. Teshimine was his friend.

"He's being kept for the ceremony," Teshimine said sadly. "Like you, Ginji."

"What ceremony?" A glint of metal caught his eye, and he turned his head to look. There were twisting wires all around his restraints and surrounding the section of wall where he was confined. With a flash of insight, he realised that it had to be something to do with the null zone effect. "Why us?"

"Because that was how Babylon City planned it." Teshimine wandered a couple of steps to the left, then back again. "Brains Trust has been working on this since before you were -- well, born, Ginji. You are one of the last game pieces on the board. And Midou -- he found his own way into it, and now there's no way out."

"Why did Masaki do this to us?" Ginji demanded, rage rising again before he could throttle it down. "He was always one of us!"

"Maybe," Teshimine agreed. "But he was always the leader of Brains Trust too."

---

"Wake up."

Hevn's fluid tones drifted across Kazuki's consciousness like the trail of a comet. Ah, he reflected sleepily, all was now well. She must have come to her senses and without a doubt she would soon be getting him down from whatever was suspending his arms above his head and locking his ankles down near the floor and she would also rescue Juubei, whose heavy breathing he could hear from across the room, and even though the woman could on occasion be extremely annoying, being brainwashed into turning temporarily on your teammates was not necessarily the world's worst crime, indeed, it could be overlooked quite easily, and she would surely reduce her commission the next time she found them a job in compensation . . .

A line of fire painted itself across his cheek. He hissed as his eyes flew open.

Dungeon cell. Chains. Juubei also in chains. Hevn in front of him with riding crop.

"You know," he said, a little slowly at first because his cheek stung, "you don't have to go on with this. Your friends are still here for you, Hevn --"

He fell silent as she put the riding crop under his chin and raised it.

"And what would you say if I told you I wasn't being controlled?" she inquired sweetly. There was a smell of blood and alcohol and gunpowder drifting from her, caught in the folds of her skirt, the waves of her hair. "What if I told you that all along I'd been working for the other side?"

There was an intake of breath from where Juubei hung in his own set of chains.

Kazuki calculated, strung webs of facts in his mind, spun them together till they came to a conclusion. "I would be impressed," he finally said. "That would be an extremely long and careful piece of work."

Hevn stroked the crop down his throat, then removed it, pacing round behind him, her heels clicking on the floor. Tap, swish, tap, swish, in slow deliberate steps. "You're quite right. It was a long piece of work. Years outside here. Building up a reputation. Making contacts. We needed an agent on the outside, of course . . ."

It was too easy an opening. "We?" he asked, and tried to keep his tone gentle, inquiring.

The crop cut across his back. He felt the thin silk of his clothing tear. "Babylon City," Hevn said, her words half drowned by Juubei's cry of fury.

It was a tiny wound, compared to many that he had known in battle. He ignored it.

"But it paid off. We found our straying Raitei and our wandering Voodoo Child." She laughed. "Life would have been so much simpler for the two of you if Raitei had stayed here all the time, you know. Or if you'd never come back once you left."

"Release him," Juubei growled.

"Or?" Hevn turned -- Kazuki could hear the sounds of her movement, even if he couldn't see her -- towards Juubei. "What are you going to do, samurai boy? You -- I swear you've been almost as much of a hindrance as this one has. The only useful thing you've ever done has been to drag him out of that Orpheus haze of his. And as for that --" She turned again, and lashed Kazuki across the back. Once. Twice. A third time.

Kazuki had to admit that she'd clearly had practice at it. He caught his breath. "You blame me for that?"

Hevn stalked round to face him again. "Because of that, I nearly got killed. Lucifer's damn scheming -- oh, it brought in plenty of information for Brains Trust, I'm not arguing with that, but then I had to go along as a sacrificial goat with you lot! Meddle with it all when I'm not even the one supposed to do the fighting! Go through that ridiculous training! And then have you turn on me and nearly kill me! I could have died!"

"Should I apologise for not killing you?" Kazuki asked.

The crop cut across his face, then across his chest.

"It was all a trick?" Juubei asked, a deep note of fury beneath his voice. "All your work with us? The assignments? Everything?"

Hevn took a deep breath, steadying herself. "Oh, the jobs were real enough. I needed to have your trust, and the best way to do that was to be a professional. But because of all of this, because you wouldn't sit there and wait to die on schedule, I've had to live with Midou's mauling, the Voodoo Brat's insolence, Ginji's emotional neediness, and not to mention you -- yes, the pair of you, you of the High Family and Noble Birth and Great Destiny -- looking down on me all this time, and almost killing me . . ."

She turned the riding crop between her fingers, looking at it, then dropped it. "Pointless. I couldn't hit you hard enough to hurt you the way that I want to, satisfying as it was to try. So I'm going to tell you this. Your Raitei is going to be the tool he was always born to be. Nothing more. Your world is going to end. You are going to be sacrifices. That's where it finishes. We brought the Black Thread users here to distract you. They failed. That doesn't bother me. I just want you to know that you have failed too. Game Over."

"Hevn!" Kazuki shouted after her, but she slammed the door behind her, and he heard the key turn in the lock.

---

Teshimine tucked his hands into his pockets. "Masaki raised me," he said flatly, "as I raised you. Does that mean anything to you?"

Ginji tried to square relative ages. "He's not that much older than you! Or than me!"

"He is, actually." Teshimine sighed. "All of them are. They just didn't show it. Gen -- yes, he was one of them, but he walked out and they let him go -- Gen was the only one who aged naturally, and even then I'm not sure. But Masaki," there was a softness in his voice as he spoke the name, "looks younger than he should be, and the Specialist looks younger still. Have you seen her?"

"I don't know," Ginji said. "Who is she?"

"She looks like a little girl, blonde, with a doll --" Teshimine cut off as he saw Ginji nodding. "Yes. That's her. She's not as devoted to this project as Masaki is, or at least, not for the same reasons. She's, well, cold. She just wants to know. I think she'd rip the cover off the universe if she could."

"What does Masaki want?" Ginji asked urgently.

"He wants to call down power. It's -- well, it's sort of mystical. You're the power source that'll let him do it. Don't worry," Teshimine said hastily. "It won't kill you. I'd never have agreed to it if it had meant it'd kill you. Ginji, you know me. I didn't want this to happen." There was genuine pain in his voice. "I helped where I could. I took a message from Gen to Paul. I couldn't do more than that."

Ginji shook his head. This nonsense about calling down power could wait. "Where's Ban?" he demanded. "What have you done with him?"

Teshimine bit his lip. "I have to do what Masaki wants. He's the one who understands about all this. He raised me, Ginji, do you understand that? He's always been there for me. I can't disobey him now."

"Where's Ban?" Ginji reached for Raitei, for the bloom of power, but there was nothing there to root him in the lightning. There was rage but no thunder, fury but no storm. "Where is he?" he demanded, and heard his own voice crack with fear.

"I'm so sorry," Teshimine said, and walked away, steps hurrying and guilty.

---

They eventually came to a room of glass tubes surrounded by computers. Miroku Natsuhiko had shifted his grip to Himiko's shoulder. More than once she had considered releasing Puppet Scent and testing what Kagami had said, but their route had taken them through wide corridors with good ventilation, and she wouldn't have been able to raise enough of it fast enough. But there was a clock ticking away in the back of her head, and it said, time is running out, time is running out.

"Is this supposed to mean something to me?" she asked rudely, hoping to provoke Kagami into a reaction or a mistake.

It didn't work. He turned to smile at her again, smooth as a mirror. "These are your parents, Voodoo Child. Your cradle. Your birth."

She looked at the tubes again, and this time they made sense, they fitted the familiar patterns of science fiction and futuristic nightmares. She'd always tried to put thoughts of her parents as far away as possible, so that they would not trouble her, and she had repeated to herself each night that Yamato was the only parent she needed, the only parent she would ever need, but this . . . "No," she whispered, and heard her voice echo against the glass.

"All of us." Kagami drifted forward to lay a cold hand against her cheek. "Do you think you are the only child of Babylon City? All of us. Teshimine, Hevn, myself, your brother, Raitei, you . . . We are the chosen children, Lady Poison. Except they chose you and your brother for something else."

Anger flared in her beyond what she could have expected. So quick, so hot, so painful. "And what do you know of my brother?" she demanded.

Kagami turned her to stare at her own reflection in the nearest glass tube. "They wanted to call down powers, Voodoo Child, but they needed flesh to house them. Your brother and yourself were made for that. You were to be flesh puppets. That's why you were made -- resilient. But your brother was a fool." His face twisted into a sneer. "You and he, the only two survivors of the program, and he took you and ran."

"But something found him anyhow," Himiko said, staring into her own dark eyes as if her reflection could answer her. Big brother. You tried to save me. You always tried to save me.. "Was that you too?"

Kagami laughed as if she was flirting with him, the malice falling away to leave him all bland smiles again. "Oh, that was a miscalculation, I hear. When Raitei began coming into his full power, he started the program early, and something came through. A good thing that you weren't taken too."

"Ah." It was astonishing how calm she could be, as calm as the fury of the Red Death moments, as calm as an avalanche in the second of its fall. "Ban saved me twice, then, didn't he? By taking Raitei away from you?"

"There isn't a third time," Kagami whispered. "We have him now. And Raitei. All of you."

Himiko flicked her eyes to look at him, and saw a dozen reflections, all grinning. But only one of them was touching her. "Did you really hate my brother that much?" she asked idly, and tasted the beginnings of Puppet Scent in her lungs, sweated it out of her pores silently. "What was he to you?"

"He was a fool," Kagami spat, moved to reaction.

The air burned. She choked, bent over, was held upright only by Miroku Natsuhiko's grasp. He caught her by both shoulders, swung her into his arms as she struggled to breathe.

"Ah. How sweet. You had to fight." Kagami patted her cheek again as she focused on the movement of air in and out, as she tried to concentrate on his face through hallucinatory glimpses of darkness. "Don't worry, Voodoo Child. It won't matter soon. When they come through, you won't be there any more. Ever again."

---

GetBackers Fanfic Page