150. (fic) soulxsoul, ch. 9
title: soulxsoul, ch.9
rating/genre: pg; au (sci-fi), drama, romance
pairing(s): ohmiya, sakuraba
words: 2,848
summary: nino doesn't think he's crazy, but he doesn't tell anyone about satoshi anymore. because how could you tell anyone that you have another person living in your body?
disclaimer: FICTION.
notes: finished. for really real. read on for the dramatic conclusion...
Chapter 1| Chapter 2| Chapter 3| Chapter 4| Chapter 5| Chapter 6| Chapter 7| Chapter 8
Aiba knows he should sleep, he’s tired, but instead he lies awake in the spare futon Nino laid out for him. He studies the pattern of light on the ceiling-jagged white coming from around the curtain in front of the balcony, and gently fanning orange from the crack above Jun’s door-and he listens to the soft sound of Sho, on the couch, breathing in and out. Aiba wonders how it is that Sho can make that sound when he isn’t really breathing, in his body that isn’t really a body.
Aiba shifts, trying to get comfortable, willing his brain to shut off. But it’s impossible; his mind is still reeling with everything that has happened in the last twelve hours. He had thought he was used to remembering things, things that were part of a different lifetime, but these memories are sharper than any he’s experienced before-and more painful for their sharpness. He knows, somehow, that it’s important, the fact that they have all managed to come together again like this, but there is still so much he doesn’t understand, that doesn’t make sense.
“How long,” Aiba says suddenly into the darkness, and he hears Sho jump, startled. “How long,” he says again, “have you been waiting for us?”
Sho doesn’t answer at first, and Aiba hears him shifting around-and wonders again, how is that possible, how does it work-before he finally speaks.
“I don’t really know,” Sho says. “I stopped counting after a while. Maybe…fifty…”
“Years?!” Aiba whispers sharply, propping himself up on one elbow and eyeing the shadowy outline of Sho on the sofa. “How-what have you even been doing all this time?”
“Well, I-” Sho cuts himself off, sounding guilty and uncomfortable. “Maybe I should wait and tell everyone in the morning, together…”
“But,” Aiba protests. “I just-I don’t understand. How you found us all again, or the ASD, what it is and why the agents are helping you, and-what did they tell you, anyway? Why did you start working for them?”
Sho shifts around some more, and Aiba can just see him in the low light: he rolls to his side, facing Aiba, with his hands tucked under his cheek like a little kid. “They don’t tell me much, actually,” Sho admits after a while. “But they told me they’d help me find you, all of you. That it was their job.”
“But who are they, really?” Aiba asks before Sho can explain any further.
“I don’t know,” Sho says again, almost embarrassed. “I mean, I just know their names, I know they run the ASD. I don’t think they’re human, or at least not anymore if they were once. They haven’t aged, and they don’t come down from the Third Floor anymore, ever since…well, since they found us, that first time. These things we can do,” and Sho gestures to himself and Aiba, “Encoding and Decoding, and Kazu and Satoshi, sharing a body without any damage to either of them-it’s not normal, you know? The agents said it was their job to find people like us, and help us. And that if I helped them, they’d help me.”
A hundred more questions burst to life in Aiba’s head, clamoring for attention, but he settles for: “What about Jun?”
“What?”
“He can’t do anything, can he? Why would they want him, too?”
“Well,” Sho says, “Kimura told me that they suspect Jun is a ‘Shifter’, although he wouldn’t tell me what a Shifter is. Just that it’s a ‘dangerous condition’ and they want to help him.”
Aiba thinks about that quietly for a moment, laying down and mirroring Sho’s pose. For five years he’s worked for the ASD, and he’s never really cared before what the senior agents do or why they do it-it had never seemed important, and he had had plenty of interesting things to keep him busy with the assignments he was given-but suddenly it seems sinister, troubling.
“Then…are we really going to give Satoshi a body?” he asks. “Or is this assignment just-?”
“No,” Sho says quickly. “We will. They promised.”
“And,” Aiba continues. “What about you?”
Sho falls quiet, even the sound of his breaths stopping for a moment. “There’s only one Vessel-one body. For Satoshi.”
Aiba squeezes his eyes shut in counterpoint to the sudden squeeze in his chest. It’s selfish, but for a few frantic seconds he imagines pleading with Ninomiya to keep Satoshi with him, to let Aiba have the Vessel, for Sho, because at least Ninomiya can still be with Satoshi, can feel him, but maybe Aiba will never be able to touch Sho again. The moment passes, and Aiba lets out a shaky exhale.
“Sho-chan,” Aiba says after a pause. “What were you planning to do, after this assignment is over? After Satoshi has a body again?”
“I,” Sho begins, but that’s as far as he gets before falling quiet again. The silence lasts a long time, long enough that Aiba knows his suspicions are probably correct: while Aiba’s Decoding can unlock memories that people are not meant to remember, Sho’s Encoding can change memories, or lock them up like they were never there.
“You were going to Code us, weren’t you?” Aiba asks. “So we would forget you.”
But before Sho can explain himself, they are interrupted by a strident ringing. When Sho jumps and digs madly in his pocket, Aiba realizes it must be the sound of the other man’s cellphone.
“Yes?” Sho says when he finally answers. After a moment, he sits straight up on the couch. “Yes, sir, I-” Another pause. “Now? I-all right, but-yes, I’m coming now.”
And then he stands and begins walking to the door.
“Sho-chan, where are you going?” Aiba says, sitting up as well, but Sho is already gone around the corner. As Aiba gets up to follow him, Jun’s door opens, flooding the dark living room with yellow light.
“Is everything okay out here?” Jun ventures, with a look like even asking is against his better judgment.
“I don’t know,” Aiba says, untangling himself from his sheets. “Sho got a phone call and then all of a sudden-”
“Sir,” comes Sho’s voice, and the sound of the front door opening. “Er-sirs. Why-?”
“We’ll be taking over from here.” This is Kusanagi’s voice, and Aiba rounds the corner just in time to see the senior agent grab Sho by the back of the neck and-
And kiss him.
Aiba makes a strangled noise of shock and confusion, and stops so suddenly that Jun slams into him from behind. Before Aiba can even process what he just saw, Sho’s body goes limp, drops, but when it hits the floor, it is no longer Sho-just a lifeless, doll-faced shape in Sho’s clothes.
There is a pause, while Aiba looks from the empty Host to Kusanagi, who just smiles a little sadly. It is only now that Aiba notices the other four agents standing behind him.
“I’m afraid it had to be done,” Kusanagi says. “Unfortunately, Sakurai-kun will be resigning from his post.”
“NO!” Aiba shouts, makes to lunge forward, but Jun is already tugging him backwards, both arms wrapped around Aiba’s chest. The other agents are following Kusanagi through the door, but Aiba can only stare at the crumpled figure at their feet, struggling against Jun’s hold on him.
But Jun has apparently decided that whoever these people are, they are a threat, and he drags Aiba away from them and backwards through the living room, maybe towards the fire escape outside the balcony door. Aiba is still calling and calling to Sho, though it is clear the other man can no longer hear him.
That’s when Nino opens his door, rubbing his face and looking irritable. “What the hell are you all-”
But then he sees the agents, and Jun wrestling with Aiba, and after a split second of indecision, slams his door shut again. However, when he does, Kimura steps forward. He gazes at Nino’s door almost curiously, tilting his head a little to the side, and it slams open again with so much force that the knob lodges in the drywall and it does not bounce back. Nino stumbles through the opening-apparently he had still had his hand on the knob-and freezes, uncertain.
“Nino, get over here!” Jun says, one hand already on the sliding glass door. When Nino starts to dash towards him, Kimura speaks again.
“Stop,” he says calmly.
And they do.
Aiba stops struggling, but only because the air all around him feels suddenly solid, trapping him in place with Jun still behind him. Nino freezes in mid-stride, but his eyes are moving frantically from Aiba and Jun to the agents, now gathered in the living room. Kimura grins, looking pleased with himself, but then Aiba feels movement at his back.
Jun tenses, shaking with the effort, and then chokes out a “Let go!”
And they are loose again, all of them staggering a bit with the unexpected freedom of movement. Kimura’s eyes widen, but after a moment of shock, he says, sternly: “No.”
They are stopped again, and Kimura takes a step closer, eyeing Jun critically.
“Well done, little lost soul,” he murmurs. “I suppose you do have potential after all.”
Aiba stares at the agents and can’t even struggle, and Jun is motionless behind him again, apparently having exhausted whatever momentary power he had over the situation. Aiba doesn’t understand this, how this is happening, what the agents are doing here, but his panicking mind keeps going back to Sho, Sho, gone again and lying still on the floor.
Nakai steps up next to Kimura, and the two men exchange a glance.
“So how do we get them back?” Kimura asks.
“Nothing for it, I guess,” Nakai says. Kimura gives a little shrug, and Nakai sighs and rolls his eyes.
“Sleep,” he says.
And they do.
*
When Nino wakes, he feels stiff, lightheaded. He had been having the strangest dream, that the agents had shown up at his house, done some weird magic to freeze the air, and then…he doesn’t remember. The urgency of the dream, the need to run, is still with him as he comes back to consciousness.
He tries to sit up, and is then suddenly wide awake when he realizes: he is already sitting up, and he is tied to whatever he is sitting to. He jerks in an instinctive move to escape, then jerks again when he finds himself sitting in a chair next to the Reader facing a lifeless Host body. Not a dream, then.
“The fuck-” he growls, struggling violently enough to make the chair knock against the floor. The rest of his surroundings finally come into focus, but it is not the same little room where he last encountered the Reader. It looks almost like an interrogation room, brightly lit with a long mirror across one wall and only one door.
Satoshi, what’s happening? Nino calls frantically, his eyes never leaving the Host. Don’t go, whatever they do, don’t go-
Kazu. Satoshi is there, close, the feel of him laced with panic and confusion. Kazu, I don’t know what’s going on, why are we here? Kazu-
Nino tries to breathe, to regain some semblance of calm, because he needs to think, they need to get out. How had he gone from getting his memories back to this? He’s sure the two events are connected somehow. What is this, anyway? Kidnap? Abduction? For some reason he can’t quite recall, he knows the agents want them here, want them all here. Then where are the others?
His train of thought is interrupted when the door bursts open to admit Kimura, followed closely by the young man Nino had seen briefly during his first visit to the clinic, whatever his name was.
“Oh, you’re awake,” Kimura says with a kind of manic cheer. “Good morning.”
“Sir,” the young man says, and Nino suddenly and inexplicably remembers that his name is Ikuta. “I really don’t think using this much force-”
“And I really don’t care what you think,” Kimura says. He walks around to the far side of the Reader and places the Host’s limp hand on the glowing blue ring.
“Takuya,” and this is Katori, suddenly in the doorway and out of breath, “we need you to come back and help with Matsumoto, he’s getting a handle on this Shifting thing a lot faster than we expected.”
From somewhere outside of the room, Nino thinks he can hear a distant scuffle, and the sound of Jun calling his name. Katori dashes back down the hall. Satoshi’s presence beats around in Nino’s chest like a caught butterfly, desperate to be away from here, from the blank eyes of the Host body.
“God damn it,” Kimura sighs, enunciating carefully. He pauses for a minute, seeming to collect himself, then marches out of the room. “You,” he says to Ikuta as he goes, “finishing prepping the machine.”
After Kimura has left and Ikuta is standing uncertainly in front of the Reader’s keypad, Nino sees just one slim chance and finally speaks.
“Ikuta-kun,” Nino whispers to him, still testing the cords holding him to the chair. “Don’t do this. You don’t want to do this, right?”
Ikuta sighs, and when he looks up at Nino, his expression is not so much conflicted as annoyed. “No, I don’t, really. This isn’t proper procedure at all.”
Nino blinks, baffled, but tries again. “Well, can you untie me?”
“I don’t think that’s going to solve anything,” Ikuta says, shaking his head, and Nino gapes at him.
“Wha-yes it will! Just get me out of here, and-”
“And what? Kusanagi is still Carrying Sakurai, and all that business they fed him about a ‘Vessel’ for Satoshi was just bullshit to get him to bring the rest of you here-”
“What are you talking about?” Nino demands, frustration loud in his voice. “Are you going to help me or not?”
The commotion in the hallway grows in volume, and with a sound like a gunshot a long, jagged crack appears in the mirror on the wall.
“What the hell is going on?” Nino says, thrashing against his bonds now. “Just help me, please!”
Ikuta’s head whips towards Nino at that, and his eyes light up. “Say that again.”
“Help me!” Nino yells at him.
Ikuta smiles like Nino has just solved all his problems, but instead of coming and untying Nino, he turns away, to the wall and an ancient rotary wall-phone that Nino doesn’t remember being there a minute ago. As Ikuta picks it up and begins to dial, Jun bursts through the still open door.
“Nino!” he says, but before he can cross the room, someone outside shouts “Down!” and Jun hits the floor like a giant hand is pressing him into the linoleum. Kimura strides in a moment later and puts a foot in the middle of Jun’s back for good measure.
“And stay down,” he adds, almost like a command. “Is the Reader-?” Kimura begins, but then he looks up and sees Ikuta with the phone in his hand. “What are you doing?”
Ikuta ignores him, speaking into the phone. “Sir? Yes, I know you don’t like to be disturbed, but we have something of a situation down here.”
“Who are you talking to?” Kimura demands, reluctant to leave Jun, but obviously unhappy about what’s going on across the room.
“Yes,” Ikuta says, continuing his conversation. “I received a request for assistance, but things have gone somewhat beyond my-now, sir? All of them? I’ll send them up.”
“You’re working for him!” Kimura says as Ikuta hangs up. He crosses the room and continues to shout things at the other man-something about how he should have known, he could have used him all along, and Ikuta raises his hands and responds in a calming tone-but Nino doesn’t have any idea what they’re talking about, and isn’t listening anyway, he’s watching Jun.
Jun is still pressed to the floor, but his teeth are clenched and Nino thinks he can hear him muttering something, which he finally makes out over all the other noise.
“Get up,” Jun is saying. “Get-up.”
And then he bursts to his feet and Nino can feel the movement from all the way across the room, like a blast of wind. It rips away the cords holding him to the chair like they are made of crepe paper, and the crack in the mirror snaps into a longer spider-legged gash. This gets Kimura’s attention, and as he turns, the glass gives a high-pitched shriek. Nino dives out of the chair and away from the mirrored wall, but it’s too late: the glass is exploding outward to shower the room with razor shards.
But somehow, in the middle of it all, Nino clearly hears Ikuta say: “Time to go.”
And they do.
chapter 10
Author's Note: ...read on! I'll save my ramblings for the last chapter :)
rating/genre: pg; au (sci-fi), drama, romance
pairing(s): ohmiya, sakuraba
words: 2,848
summary: nino doesn't think he's crazy, but he doesn't tell anyone about satoshi anymore. because how could you tell anyone that you have another person living in your body?
disclaimer: FICTION.
notes: finished. for really real. read on for the dramatic conclusion...
Chapter 1| Chapter 2| Chapter 3| Chapter 4| Chapter 5| Chapter 6| Chapter 7| Chapter 8
Aiba knows he should sleep, he’s tired, but instead he lies awake in the spare futon Nino laid out for him. He studies the pattern of light on the ceiling-jagged white coming from around the curtain in front of the balcony, and gently fanning orange from the crack above Jun’s door-and he listens to the soft sound of Sho, on the couch, breathing in and out. Aiba wonders how it is that Sho can make that sound when he isn’t really breathing, in his body that isn’t really a body.
Aiba shifts, trying to get comfortable, willing his brain to shut off. But it’s impossible; his mind is still reeling with everything that has happened in the last twelve hours. He had thought he was used to remembering things, things that were part of a different lifetime, but these memories are sharper than any he’s experienced before-and more painful for their sharpness. He knows, somehow, that it’s important, the fact that they have all managed to come together again like this, but there is still so much he doesn’t understand, that doesn’t make sense.
“How long,” Aiba says suddenly into the darkness, and he hears Sho jump, startled. “How long,” he says again, “have you been waiting for us?”
Sho doesn’t answer at first, and Aiba hears him shifting around-and wonders again, how is that possible, how does it work-before he finally speaks.
“I don’t really know,” Sho says. “I stopped counting after a while. Maybe…fifty…”
“Years?!” Aiba whispers sharply, propping himself up on one elbow and eyeing the shadowy outline of Sho on the sofa. “How-what have you even been doing all this time?”
“Well, I-” Sho cuts himself off, sounding guilty and uncomfortable. “Maybe I should wait and tell everyone in the morning, together…”
“But,” Aiba protests. “I just-I don’t understand. How you found us all again, or the ASD, what it is and why the agents are helping you, and-what did they tell you, anyway? Why did you start working for them?”
Sho shifts around some more, and Aiba can just see him in the low light: he rolls to his side, facing Aiba, with his hands tucked under his cheek like a little kid. “They don’t tell me much, actually,” Sho admits after a while. “But they told me they’d help me find you, all of you. That it was their job.”
“But who are they, really?” Aiba asks before Sho can explain any further.
“I don’t know,” Sho says again, almost embarrassed. “I mean, I just know their names, I know they run the ASD. I don’t think they’re human, or at least not anymore if they were once. They haven’t aged, and they don’t come down from the Third Floor anymore, ever since…well, since they found us, that first time. These things we can do,” and Sho gestures to himself and Aiba, “Encoding and Decoding, and Kazu and Satoshi, sharing a body without any damage to either of them-it’s not normal, you know? The agents said it was their job to find people like us, and help us. And that if I helped them, they’d help me.”
A hundred more questions burst to life in Aiba’s head, clamoring for attention, but he settles for: “What about Jun?”
“What?”
“He can’t do anything, can he? Why would they want him, too?”
“Well,” Sho says, “Kimura told me that they suspect Jun is a ‘Shifter’, although he wouldn’t tell me what a Shifter is. Just that it’s a ‘dangerous condition’ and they want to help him.”
Aiba thinks about that quietly for a moment, laying down and mirroring Sho’s pose. For five years he’s worked for the ASD, and he’s never really cared before what the senior agents do or why they do it-it had never seemed important, and he had had plenty of interesting things to keep him busy with the assignments he was given-but suddenly it seems sinister, troubling.
“Then…are we really going to give Satoshi a body?” he asks. “Or is this assignment just-?”
“No,” Sho says quickly. “We will. They promised.”
“And,” Aiba continues. “What about you?”
Sho falls quiet, even the sound of his breaths stopping for a moment. “There’s only one Vessel-one body. For Satoshi.”
Aiba squeezes his eyes shut in counterpoint to the sudden squeeze in his chest. It’s selfish, but for a few frantic seconds he imagines pleading with Ninomiya to keep Satoshi with him, to let Aiba have the Vessel, for Sho, because at least Ninomiya can still be with Satoshi, can feel him, but maybe Aiba will never be able to touch Sho again. The moment passes, and Aiba lets out a shaky exhale.
“Sho-chan,” Aiba says after a pause. “What were you planning to do, after this assignment is over? After Satoshi has a body again?”
“I,” Sho begins, but that’s as far as he gets before falling quiet again. The silence lasts a long time, long enough that Aiba knows his suspicions are probably correct: while Aiba’s Decoding can unlock memories that people are not meant to remember, Sho’s Encoding can change memories, or lock them up like they were never there.
“You were going to Code us, weren’t you?” Aiba asks. “So we would forget you.”
But before Sho can explain himself, they are interrupted by a strident ringing. When Sho jumps and digs madly in his pocket, Aiba realizes it must be the sound of the other man’s cellphone.
“Yes?” Sho says when he finally answers. After a moment, he sits straight up on the couch. “Yes, sir, I-” Another pause. “Now? I-all right, but-yes, I’m coming now.”
And then he stands and begins walking to the door.
“Sho-chan, where are you going?” Aiba says, sitting up as well, but Sho is already gone around the corner. As Aiba gets up to follow him, Jun’s door opens, flooding the dark living room with yellow light.
“Is everything okay out here?” Jun ventures, with a look like even asking is against his better judgment.
“I don’t know,” Aiba says, untangling himself from his sheets. “Sho got a phone call and then all of a sudden-”
“Sir,” comes Sho’s voice, and the sound of the front door opening. “Er-sirs. Why-?”
“We’ll be taking over from here.” This is Kusanagi’s voice, and Aiba rounds the corner just in time to see the senior agent grab Sho by the back of the neck and-
And kiss him.
Aiba makes a strangled noise of shock and confusion, and stops so suddenly that Jun slams into him from behind. Before Aiba can even process what he just saw, Sho’s body goes limp, drops, but when it hits the floor, it is no longer Sho-just a lifeless, doll-faced shape in Sho’s clothes.
There is a pause, while Aiba looks from the empty Host to Kusanagi, who just smiles a little sadly. It is only now that Aiba notices the other four agents standing behind him.
“I’m afraid it had to be done,” Kusanagi says. “Unfortunately, Sakurai-kun will be resigning from his post.”
“NO!” Aiba shouts, makes to lunge forward, but Jun is already tugging him backwards, both arms wrapped around Aiba’s chest. The other agents are following Kusanagi through the door, but Aiba can only stare at the crumpled figure at their feet, struggling against Jun’s hold on him.
But Jun has apparently decided that whoever these people are, they are a threat, and he drags Aiba away from them and backwards through the living room, maybe towards the fire escape outside the balcony door. Aiba is still calling and calling to Sho, though it is clear the other man can no longer hear him.
That’s when Nino opens his door, rubbing his face and looking irritable. “What the hell are you all-”
But then he sees the agents, and Jun wrestling with Aiba, and after a split second of indecision, slams his door shut again. However, when he does, Kimura steps forward. He gazes at Nino’s door almost curiously, tilting his head a little to the side, and it slams open again with so much force that the knob lodges in the drywall and it does not bounce back. Nino stumbles through the opening-apparently he had still had his hand on the knob-and freezes, uncertain.
“Nino, get over here!” Jun says, one hand already on the sliding glass door. When Nino starts to dash towards him, Kimura speaks again.
“Stop,” he says calmly.
And they do.
Aiba stops struggling, but only because the air all around him feels suddenly solid, trapping him in place with Jun still behind him. Nino freezes in mid-stride, but his eyes are moving frantically from Aiba and Jun to the agents, now gathered in the living room. Kimura grins, looking pleased with himself, but then Aiba feels movement at his back.
Jun tenses, shaking with the effort, and then chokes out a “Let go!”
And they are loose again, all of them staggering a bit with the unexpected freedom of movement. Kimura’s eyes widen, but after a moment of shock, he says, sternly: “No.”
They are stopped again, and Kimura takes a step closer, eyeing Jun critically.
“Well done, little lost soul,” he murmurs. “I suppose you do have potential after all.”
Aiba stares at the agents and can’t even struggle, and Jun is motionless behind him again, apparently having exhausted whatever momentary power he had over the situation. Aiba doesn’t understand this, how this is happening, what the agents are doing here, but his panicking mind keeps going back to Sho, Sho, gone again and lying still on the floor.
Nakai steps up next to Kimura, and the two men exchange a glance.
“So how do we get them back?” Kimura asks.
“Nothing for it, I guess,” Nakai says. Kimura gives a little shrug, and Nakai sighs and rolls his eyes.
“Sleep,” he says.
And they do.
*
When Nino wakes, he feels stiff, lightheaded. He had been having the strangest dream, that the agents had shown up at his house, done some weird magic to freeze the air, and then…he doesn’t remember. The urgency of the dream, the need to run, is still with him as he comes back to consciousness.
He tries to sit up, and is then suddenly wide awake when he realizes: he is already sitting up, and he is tied to whatever he is sitting to. He jerks in an instinctive move to escape, then jerks again when he finds himself sitting in a chair next to the Reader facing a lifeless Host body. Not a dream, then.
“The fuck-” he growls, struggling violently enough to make the chair knock against the floor. The rest of his surroundings finally come into focus, but it is not the same little room where he last encountered the Reader. It looks almost like an interrogation room, brightly lit with a long mirror across one wall and only one door.
Satoshi, what’s happening? Nino calls frantically, his eyes never leaving the Host. Don’t go, whatever they do, don’t go-
Kazu. Satoshi is there, close, the feel of him laced with panic and confusion. Kazu, I don’t know what’s going on, why are we here? Kazu-
Nino tries to breathe, to regain some semblance of calm, because he needs to think, they need to get out. How had he gone from getting his memories back to this? He’s sure the two events are connected somehow. What is this, anyway? Kidnap? Abduction? For some reason he can’t quite recall, he knows the agents want them here, want them all here. Then where are the others?
His train of thought is interrupted when the door bursts open to admit Kimura, followed closely by the young man Nino had seen briefly during his first visit to the clinic, whatever his name was.
“Oh, you’re awake,” Kimura says with a kind of manic cheer. “Good morning.”
“Sir,” the young man says, and Nino suddenly and inexplicably remembers that his name is Ikuta. “I really don’t think using this much force-”
“And I really don’t care what you think,” Kimura says. He walks around to the far side of the Reader and places the Host’s limp hand on the glowing blue ring.
“Takuya,” and this is Katori, suddenly in the doorway and out of breath, “we need you to come back and help with Matsumoto, he’s getting a handle on this Shifting thing a lot faster than we expected.”
From somewhere outside of the room, Nino thinks he can hear a distant scuffle, and the sound of Jun calling his name. Katori dashes back down the hall. Satoshi’s presence beats around in Nino’s chest like a caught butterfly, desperate to be away from here, from the blank eyes of the Host body.
“God damn it,” Kimura sighs, enunciating carefully. He pauses for a minute, seeming to collect himself, then marches out of the room. “You,” he says to Ikuta as he goes, “finishing prepping the machine.”
After Kimura has left and Ikuta is standing uncertainly in front of the Reader’s keypad, Nino sees just one slim chance and finally speaks.
“Ikuta-kun,” Nino whispers to him, still testing the cords holding him to the chair. “Don’t do this. You don’t want to do this, right?”
Ikuta sighs, and when he looks up at Nino, his expression is not so much conflicted as annoyed. “No, I don’t, really. This isn’t proper procedure at all.”
Nino blinks, baffled, but tries again. “Well, can you untie me?”
“I don’t think that’s going to solve anything,” Ikuta says, shaking his head, and Nino gapes at him.
“Wha-yes it will! Just get me out of here, and-”
“And what? Kusanagi is still Carrying Sakurai, and all that business they fed him about a ‘Vessel’ for Satoshi was just bullshit to get him to bring the rest of you here-”
“What are you talking about?” Nino demands, frustration loud in his voice. “Are you going to help me or not?”
The commotion in the hallway grows in volume, and with a sound like a gunshot a long, jagged crack appears in the mirror on the wall.
“What the hell is going on?” Nino says, thrashing against his bonds now. “Just help me, please!”
Ikuta’s head whips towards Nino at that, and his eyes light up. “Say that again.”
“Help me!” Nino yells at him.
Ikuta smiles like Nino has just solved all his problems, but instead of coming and untying Nino, he turns away, to the wall and an ancient rotary wall-phone that Nino doesn’t remember being there a minute ago. As Ikuta picks it up and begins to dial, Jun bursts through the still open door.
“Nino!” he says, but before he can cross the room, someone outside shouts “Down!” and Jun hits the floor like a giant hand is pressing him into the linoleum. Kimura strides in a moment later and puts a foot in the middle of Jun’s back for good measure.
“And stay down,” he adds, almost like a command. “Is the Reader-?” Kimura begins, but then he looks up and sees Ikuta with the phone in his hand. “What are you doing?”
Ikuta ignores him, speaking into the phone. “Sir? Yes, I know you don’t like to be disturbed, but we have something of a situation down here.”
“Who are you talking to?” Kimura demands, reluctant to leave Jun, but obviously unhappy about what’s going on across the room.
“Yes,” Ikuta says, continuing his conversation. “I received a request for assistance, but things have gone somewhat beyond my-now, sir? All of them? I’ll send them up.”
“You’re working for him!” Kimura says as Ikuta hangs up. He crosses the room and continues to shout things at the other man-something about how he should have known, he could have used him all along, and Ikuta raises his hands and responds in a calming tone-but Nino doesn’t have any idea what they’re talking about, and isn’t listening anyway, he’s watching Jun.
Jun is still pressed to the floor, but his teeth are clenched and Nino thinks he can hear him muttering something, which he finally makes out over all the other noise.
“Get up,” Jun is saying. “Get-up.”
And then he bursts to his feet and Nino can feel the movement from all the way across the room, like a blast of wind. It rips away the cords holding him to the chair like they are made of crepe paper, and the crack in the mirror snaps into a longer spider-legged gash. This gets Kimura’s attention, and as he turns, the glass gives a high-pitched shriek. Nino dives out of the chair and away from the mirrored wall, but it’s too late: the glass is exploding outward to shower the room with razor shards.
But somehow, in the middle of it all, Nino clearly hears Ikuta say: “Time to go.”
And they do.
chapter 10
Author's Note: ...read on! I'll save my ramblings for the last chapter :)