Talent Sampler
Title: Talent Sampler
Author/Artist: Pidge
Character(s) or Pairing(s): Xiao Mei, Yong Soo, Chun Hei, Sen, Chao-Fu, Takahito.
Rating: 18
Warnings: Death, violence, science, first person POV, oh my god how did this get so long.
Summary: The Asia Branch has its own fair share of dark secrets, as one Xiao Mei is destined to find out.
When you get in with the Hunters, you’re meant to feel flattered. Instead, I was terrified. My parents had come before me, great scientists and participants in the research over zombification and the human brain. They were big shoes to fill... and after they’d got killed by the very creatures they were experimenting on, I was more than a little anxious. But mother had always said that the mark of a good scientist was curiosity, and I had plenty of that at least. Which is why I was giving myself neck ache trying to see around the corners of the Hunter East Asia Branch Headquarters.
“Okay and this is the canteen.” Branch Head Yong Soo gestured towards the large, neatly ordered room filled with tables. “Food’s alright as long as you don’t mind the occasional fingernail in your kimchi.”
His assistant, Chun Hei, flicked his ear, ignoring his yelp of surprise. The two twins had been doing this back and forth all day. “And down there-” she pointed at a stairwell that lead down, probably underground, since I couldn’t see the bottom. “is the Science Department, where you’ll be working.”
A long, awkward pause appeared, and I shifted uncertainly. “Is there... something wrong?”
The Branch Head laughed. “Chun Hei-nunim’s scared of the Research Departme- ow!”
The deputy head was blushing furiously, embarrassed and with fist raised from where she’d hit her brother. “I’m not scared! The Research Chief is just a creeper, alright?” she defended, but kept her eyes on the stairwell, as though she was waiting for something to come out of it. “Look- okay, don’t tell him your family history, okay kid? He’s... he likes collecting.”
What she said confused me, and I opened my mouth to say so, but in a rare burst of tact, Yong Soo spoke over me. “Heeeey there Takahito!” the Korean laughed, landing a hand on my shoulder. It surprised me, so I looked up at him. His usually cheerful smile was somewhat stiffer than usual. “This is Xiao Mei, she’ll be working in the biochemistry department for you. Treat her nicely.”
The man in front of me seemed to barely be a man at all, more like a young boy. He was shorter than I, with short, dark hair that almost covered his eyes. Eyes that didn’t seem to blink as they looked at me. They weren’t particularly unattractive and his gaze was neutral, but I still felt suddenly exposed, like a specimen on an operating table. I tried not to shift uncomfortably, a mouse caught in the eye of an eagle.
“Nice to meet you.” he said softly, with a neat bow. “I’m sure we’ll get along fine.” The barest hint of a smile graced his lips, which seemed to be all the emotion he was capable of. “You look a little familiar. Who were your parents?”
“Nobody!” Chun Hei snapped quickly. “And you shouldn’t ask such personal questions about someone’s family, Shigure.”
The Science Chief bowed again, in apology this time. “My mistake. I was only curious. The mark of a good scientist is curiosity, after all.”
My heart skipped a beat. How did he know that? That was what mother...
“Curiosity killed the cat.” Chun Hei growled, apparently covering her worry with anger. Takahito’s gaze shifted over to the Branch Head, ignoring Chun Hei completely.
“If you would leave her with me, I can finish the tour of the Science Department for you.” he offered in that same soft tone. Yong Soo’s grip on my shoulder tightened slightly.
“Don’t you have work to do though?” he asked, phrasing it like a question when it was actually more like an order. Takahito shrugged one shoulder, lab coat weighed down with test tubes clinking against each other.
“I can delegate it. I’d like to get acquainted with my newest member of staff.”
“My staff.” Yong Soo stressed, freeing my shoulder and stepping forward, towering over Takahito by a head and a half. “And nothing’s to happen to this one, understand?” he murmured, almost too low to hear. The tiny smile on Takahito’s face twisted upwards in one corner, becoming a smirk. He met Yong Soo’s eyes with no hesitation.
“Advances in science can only be made with sacrifice.” he replied, voice similarly hushed. “And besides, accidents happen.”
“I will accidentally write a report on you if you get any funny ideas. If I didn’t owe you-”
“But you do owe me, don’t you.”
From the angle I was at, I couldn’t quite see Yong Soo’s face. But with the way his fists clenched, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Takahito looked away from his superior, locking eyes with me again. “Xiao Mei was it? Follow me and we can start on the tour.”
Yong Soo turned on his heel and stomped off, muttering something in angry Korean under his breath. I only spoke Mandarin and English, but whatever he was saying made his sister follow him, replying in a terse manner. This meant I was alone, with this stranger, who apparently knew my parents, and had also threatened the commanding officer of the Asia Branch.
I tried not to let my fear show on my face. Takahito wasn’t looking at me anymore anyway, heading towards the stairs and descending into the dark. “Come on, don’t you want to see all the equipment you’ll be working with?”
The spark of curiosity in me flared. I couldn’t imagine all the things I would get to play- I mean, work with down in the secretive labs of the Hunters.
I followed down the stairs.
They went on forever, or so it seemed, dimly lit by blue neon tubes. Takahito explained that several of their subjects were light sensitive down here, and that the common rooms and washrooms were better lit. They also had the Overlight chambers, which it was not recommended to go into without protective eyewear and a lot of sunscreen. I barely said a word as he explained the cleaning rotor, the locations of the ingredient and tool cupboards, the sub divisions of research and the people within them. But I was listening the whole time, trying to absorb it all. I resigned myself to asking questions later when he mentioned yet another name I couldn’t pronounce without effort.
“And this is my office.” he concluded. After all that I’d come to realise that he never really raised his voice or gave emphasis to anything he said. It was all a steady stream of words, almost like they meant nothing to him. “I ask only that you knock and wait for my answer before entering. Come at any time, I’ll probably be in here if I’m not in any of the labs. You start in Lab 5, do you remember where it is?”
“Yes.” No.
“Down the hall, take the first left, then the third door in the hallway you end up in there.” Takahito explained, opening his office door. It was dark inside, darker than the dimly lit hall. “I’ll likely see you later tonight. Right now, I have paperwork to do. Good day.” And with that, he shut the door.
First left, third door, okay. I can do this.
Just walk in.
I’m a big girl. It’s just a room full of people I don’t know. They’re not going to bite me or anything. It’s fine. I’ll be just fine.
The door labeled “Lab 5” suddenly seemed a lot more imposing than any slab of plain wood had right to be. But I wouldn’t turn back now. So I took a deep breath, raised my hand, and turned the doorknob.
Large, yellow teeth snapped three inches in front of my nose. “Not going to bite” my ass. I tried not to scream as I jumped back. It was a zombie, clear as day, skin hanging off its bones and one eye missing from its socket. And then as suddenly as the gruesome figure had appeared, it was gone, replaced by a woman holding a large paddle splattered with old, dead blood. Her lab coat was similarly covered in various types of body fluids, and her long black hair was tied back in a ponytail. The zombie, now on the floor, twitched once, but with it’s head smashed in, it would no longer move. The scientist breathed a sigh of relief, shouldering her paddle and looking me up and down. I hoped she wouldn’t hit me with it.
“You’re the new girl?” she asked. I nodded quickly. A smile came to the lady’s face. She was pretty under all the zombie goo. “Hi, I’m Đoàn Linh Sen. You can call me Sen though, I get that Vietnamese is hard for some people.”
I tried to recover my lost nerve. “I’m Xiao Mei, from Taiwan. It’s, um, nice to meet you.”
“Did you get it, Sen?” came another voice, male this time. Sen turned her head to call back that she had. From under one of the tables, a young man with short, spiked hair and glasses emerged, looking sheepish. “We need to get another paddle in here so I can help you hit them...”
“It wouldn’t happen in the first place if you didn’t leave the restraints so loose.” Sen grumbled back. “This is Suttikul Chao-Fa from Thailand. Chao-Fa, this is Xiao Mei from Taiwan, our new assistant.”
Chao-Fa grimaced. “From Taiwan? Now people are going to make ‘Thai-Tai’ jokes again...”
“Don’t be a baby about it, it’s all in good fun.” Sen teased, leaning her wooden paddle against the lab wall. I spoke up.
“Um- so what do you guys do?” I asked nervously.
Chao-Fa tilted his head at me. “Did Takahito not explain to you?”
“Give the girl a break, you know Takahito can drone on in that monotone of his forever. It’s hard to absorb his info dump for those of us who don’t have a photographic memory.” Sen shot him a look. The Thai man grinned.
“Don’t hate me because my brain is like a computer, Sen~.”
Sen rolled her eyes. “Please. If it meant I’d have to be as annoying as you, then I’d happily take Yong Soo’s brain instead.”
“Jealousy doesn’t become you, my friend.” Chao-Fu laughed, ignoring how Sen spluttered and turning to me instead. “We’re the zombification department. As you can probably see, we’ve been having trouble controlling the test subjects.” He indicated the dead body on the floor. It was starting to smell, breaking through the covering smell of bleach and antiseptic. “How much experience do you have with these kinds of things?”
“Um, I-” My parents had shown me a few times, and they’d talked about their work all the time at home. But Yong Soo and Chun Hei seemed to be keen to keep my family a secret, so I’d better not mention that. “I’ve done a lot of research, but nothing hands-on...”
“I guess we can’t expect that of you. You’d have to have family in the Hunters to get some practical experience.” Sen said, picking up the zombie by the ankles and dragging it towards a door labeled ‘Waste Disposal’. “Doesn’t matter, you’ll learn as you go. Grab some gloves and help me throw this thing in the incinerator.”
For the rest of the day, Sen and Chao-Fu introduced me to the instruments and apparatus they used for their experiments, as well as their numerous hypotheses that they were testing. My head was whirling with questions, but the two of them answered each of them patiently, sometimes having to go over things twice. They were really friendly. I liked them immediately.
“You know, you look like someone else I know, and I can’t put my finger on it.” Sen said suddenly, frowning at me.
“I wasn’t going to say anything, but you’re right, she does look familiar.” Chao-Fu added. He leaned forward, studying me over his glasses. I shifted uncomfortably. “Are you sure you don’t have family that works here?”
“I...” they were being awfully nice to me, and I wanted to be friends with them, so I glanced behind me at the door to check if nobody was there, and dropped my voice to a whisper. “You can’t tell anyone, especially not Takahito, okay?” I held out my pinkie finger. When I was little, I used to make promises like this with my friends. It was childish, but the habit had stuck. “Promise.”
Sen and Chao-Fu exchanged a glance, before they both locked fingers with me.
“My parents used to work in this department. They even did your exact job.” I confided, and it was like a weight off my shoulders. “But they were killed by one of their own experiments. Xiao Hua was my mother and-”
“Feng was your father...” Chao-Fu finished in an awed sort of tone. “I- I used to be a lab assistant, just doing run-about jobs, and I always looked up to them. Getting to work in their department was an honour itself, but now with their daughter...”
“You can’t tell anyone!” I insisted. “Yong Soo doesn’t want anyone knowing, so you shouldn’t spread it around.”
“If he does, I’ll throw him in the Overlight Chamber.” Sen assured me, nodding. “Your secret is safe with us. But you know,” she grinned. “Now we know your lineage, we’re not going to go easy on you!”
Chao-Fu leapt to his feet. “With you on our side, we’ll definitely be able to prove our number one hypothesis!”
I grinned back. “I’ll do my best!” I cheered, but then a thought occurred. “Um... which is the number one hypothesis?”
The Thai man thrust a piece of paper into my hands. “It’s very important work! Handed down from the higher ups especially.” he inflated, looking overly self-important. “We, my dear Mei, are trying to determine what point the soul leaves the body!”
---
“You look like you’re having fun.” Chun Hei said as she sat down next to me in the Canteen. I raised my head from where it was resting on the table. I’d been up all night examining a half-deteriorated brain, and had barely got any sleep. The Deputy Branch Head shoved an apple and a bowl of rice into my hands. “Eat or you’ll pass out. Don’t let their bad habits rub off on you - staying up all night is never the solution to a problem.”
I mumbled my thanks and sleepily took a bite out of the fruit. Then someone whacked me on the back and I nearly choked.
“Hey there Xiao Mei, how’re you fitting in?” chirped Yong Soo, obscenely cheerful this early in the morning.
“Aww, we all love our little Mei Mei.” Chao-Fu appeared with his breakfast tray, deep bags under his eyes despite having fallen asleep on his desk about five hours before I gave up and went to bed. “Don’t we Sen?”
“Mmph.” Sen grunted, sitting at the table with her own tray and assuming the same position I had been before. Neither of us were morning people, it seemed.
“Well you survived the night, but I suggest going to bed.” Chun Hei said, finishing off her bowl of rice. I opened my mouth to protest that I had to be useful somehow, but she cut over me. “No, shut up. You’re tired, and when people are tired, people make mistakes, and we cannot afford mistakes in our line of work. Go get a few more hours sleep, I’m sure these two can handle themselves without you for another half a day.”
Sen mumbled something about preferential treatment and newbies, but Chao-Fu nodded in agreement with Chun Hei. “She right, go back to bed Mei.”
Well with all of them giving me such a look and with my brain pleading with me to get some more sleep, I couldn’t really say no. So I said my thanks and stumbled off back downstairs to the rooms the scientists used more for napping in than actually sleeping. I didn’t know where my real room was. Chao-Fu said he’d not been in his actual room for about three months now, and could only vaguely remember its location in the sprawling mass that was the Asia Branch. I decided I’d go find it after I woke up from my nap, however long that took.
The dim lighting of the hallway only made me feel sleepier. Shuffling past one of the doors, however, a small light from inside caught my attention. It was Takahito’s office. The light was an odd colour, changing slightly in intensity and shade every now and then. The door was open a crack, and I tried to peek through without getting too close.
It was like a night light on one of the desks, but not the normal kind. As I squinted into the unusually dark office, I could see it was something - I didn’t know what - suspended in a jar. An organ? But organs don’t glow, and certainly not all those different colours. Orange, yellow, pink, red, vibrant and intriguing and friendly and alive.
Someone shifted inside the office, and I quickly resumed my walking down the hall. Something told me I wasn’t meant to have seen that. Maybe it was some kind of secret project Takahito had been working on. He seemed like quite a private person.
I’d not gone three paces away though before the door’s hinges creaked open. I kept walking like my heart wasn’t pounding. He was there, watching me leave, I knew it. I could feel his gaze on my back.
“Curiosity killed the cat, Xiao Mei.”
Xiao is a common enough family name, but the way he said it... I knew he knew. And for some reason that scared me much more than any of the zombies or bodies we had in storage for experimentation. Stopping in my tracks, I glanced over my shoulder - and tried not to gasp at how Takahito looked. Large black gloves were covered in liquid, glowing the same colour as that of the thing in the jar in his room. A surgeon’s coat and mask left only his eyes visible. Those small, dark eyes, unblinking and watching me. I imagined, under that mask, that he was smiling.
Without another word, he went back into his office, and closed the door.
---
Three days later and I spilled what happened.
“Glowing stuff?” Chao-Fu said, looking away from the test tube of spinal fluid he’d been examining to stare at me. “On Takahito?”
“Probably ectoplasm.” muttered Sen absently, squinting into a microscope and writing down notes in Vietnamese on a pad beside her. It didn’t matter whether anyone else could read the language or not; with her handwriting it was practically an alien script anyway. “Takahito’s really interested in the soul and its properties too. Thinks he can determine aspects of it by traces left behind in bodies. Says it’ll help with post-mortem profiling.” she looked up, rubbing at her eyes. “You know, like with serial killers or prolific monsters too dangerous to keep alive.”
“Oh.” I said, leaning back in my chair and folding my arms. “He had something in a jar too. Looked like an organ.”
Sen shrugged, stretching. “Yeah, well, Takahito does that stuff. And it’s not like it’s unusual to have organs in jars around here. A load of schools have stuff like preserved frogs and eyes in jars for dissection.” She gave me a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry about it. He can be a bit creepy sometimes, but he’s pretty dedicated to his work, determined too. All the leaders of this department have been. It’s like a legacy, passed down from one to another. I guess it just takes a certain kind of person to get to the top.” she shot a grin at Chao-Fu. “And that’s why this guy will never be Section Chief.”
“That was uncalled for!”
While they bickered in the background, I span back round in my chair to my notes. I’d only been here half a week, so I’d not made much progress. Mostly I’d been reading what Sen and Chao-Fu had been doing so far. Fascinating things, some of them pushing ethics a little, but since the dead bodies had been surrendered with permission to them, well, there was no harm really in putting a person’s brain into a bowl of liquid nitrogen to see what would happen. Even if the brain was still technically attached to the body. Apparently, it had frozen the whole brainstem and spinal chord down to the coccyx.
Both the argument and my thoughts were interrupted when Chun Hei burst through the door.
“Oh, hello Deputy Head.” Sen said, standing from her chair as Chao-Fu did. I followed suit. “It’s unusual to see you down here. How can we help?”
“Neither of you have seen Anil?” she snapped, looking extremely stressed. Her hair was out of place, even though every time I’d seen her she’d looked immaculate.
“The Tibetan guy from biochem?” Sen wondered. “Not since last week.”
Chao-Fu frowned. “I’ve not seen him in ages. Is he not in his lab?”
“He’s not anywhere. There have been no reports from him handed in and he’s usually quite punctual.” the Deputy folded her arms. “No resignation note, no holiday request, nothing. I don’t know if he’s somehow got lost inside the facility, but this is concerning.”
A tense silence followed, during which the three others fell into deep thought. I nervously spoke up. “You don’t think an experiment of his went wrong and he was... um...” it felt out of place, for me to talk about this person I didn’t know. “Injured?”
Chun Hei shook her head. “Amil is always very careful with his materials.” she said, but continued to think. “... better to check though. Accidents happen. Stay there.” She turned on her heel and strode out of the room.
Silence fell.
“So we’re following her?”
“Yup.”
---
We searched high and low, Chao-Fu digging out a picture of Amil to show me. He looked like a friendly enough guy. Not a hair on his head, even though he was quite young, with a friendly, gentle smile on his face. From how Chao-Fu spoke of him, they’d known each other for a while, starting as teen interns in the research department nearly a decade ago. They were both workaholics, so they saw each other less these days, and thus Chao-Fu hadn’t noticed he’d gone missing.
“I thought he’d just got absorbed in work again.” he said, growing increasingly more concerned as he peered under the leaves of a very large, unknown plant. The lab was practically a rainforest of plant life, most of which I’d never seen before or even read about. “He stayed in his lab for a whole month once, didn’t even come out for food. Lived off the plants.” He sighed. “But if he’s not in here I don’t know where he’s gone!”
“He might have got knocked out somewhere. Keep looking.” Chun Hei ordered. Once she’d resigned herself to having us tag along, she’d started acting like a drill Sergeant. A really strict one.
I ducked under an over-sized sunflower to come face to face with a very large, very strange looking plant. A flower bud that size had no place on top of such a thin stem. The petals were yellow, lined with red, so much so that the tip of it looked like a pair of puckered lips. Carefully, I tapped them.
They moved.
The flower was surely big enough for a person to fit inside. A cold ball of dread settled in my stomach.
“Hey, everyone come see this thing!” I called, turning my head to shout. The second I looked away, I heard a loud rustling. Glancing back, I screamed and jumped out of the way as the flower, endowed with very large teeth on the inside of its petals, snapped at me. It missed, but still closed around a corner of my lab coat. I tried to wrench it out of its grip, but the flower was strong, pulling me closer, towards roots that had risen up out of the ground, ready to grab me and trap me. Ready to make me lunch.
“Hyah!!”
The roots that were about to wrap about my ankles were severed, writhing silently before falling dead still. Chun Hei used her sword to expertly cut away at any attacking roots. If the plant were able to scream, it probably would, but I had very little sympathy for something that was trying to eat me. The flower itself lunged for Chun Hei, but the expert swordswoman ducked under the bulbous head, and made a clean swipe for the stem. With a groan, the flower fell to the ground, dead.
“Đoàn, get me some acid to pour on this thing. I want it dead at the roots.” she panted, but as soon as she’d finished her sentence, the roots themselves started to shrivel up, pulling up dirt with them, until they were the size of a normal garden flower rather than thick as a small tree.
Under the freshly moved earth was a very decomposed body. The smell hit me right in the face, and I gagged, turning away.
“Amil...” Chao-Fu murmured. “No...”
Chun Hei sheathed her sword, and bowed her head in respect to the dead scientist before them. “... I’ll go inform Yong Soo. The three of you, come with me. We’ll need witness reports.” She strode towards the door with nothing more than that. Sen put a comforting arm around Chao-Fu’s shoulder and led him out. I followed last, closing the door behind us.
“What’s all the noise about?”
At the soft voice, every head turned. Takahito stood in the hallway, scrubs completely clean this time, looking innocently confused. I could see Chun Hei’s jaw clench from here.
“One of your scientists is dead for a week and you don’t even notice.” she spat. “That’s a pretty top job you’re doing there, Shigure.”
Takahito’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Who?”
“Amil. The Biochemist. He’s worked here ten years now.” Chun Hei ground out. I’d never seen anyone look so poisonously at a person, as though wishing they’d drop dead right there.
“Oh my, I’d not even noticed his absence. He did tend to lock himself away for long periods... he was so focused on his work, full of talent. A very admirable man.” he shook his head. “What a sad waste. A shame.”
“Don’t act like you’re sad, you soulless son of a-”
“I think you’ll find, Chun Hei-san, that I know much more about the workings of the soul than you.” Takahito’s voice took on a new edge that I’d not heard before. Was he angry? “So I’d be careful how you throw those terms about, if I were your position.”
“But you’re not me, or in my position, and thank the gods for that, because I’ll never allow you to get close to my brother again.” And with that, she stormed off up the stairs. “Đoàn, Suttikul, Xiao, move out!”
The other two did immediately as told, following up the stairs. I moved to go as well, when I heard Takahito mutter something to himself. Glancing back, I couldn’t see his face, but from how his shoulders were shaking, he was probably crying.
Or laughing.
---
Things were awkward for a few days in the lab after that. Chao-Fu was melancholy and listless, staring at a single empty test tube for hours before standing and claiming he needed to go to the bathroom for the 5th time. The knock on effect was that both Sen and I got depressed and demotivated. By the end of the week, enough was enough, and the older scientist threw up her hands and said, “We’re not making any progress, let’s just go get dinner somewhere nice.”
“In the city?” I asked, secretly excited at the concept. I’d not really been out to explore the city that the Asia Branch was located under. Hong Kong was such an exciting place, and yet I’d only really seen the airport and the official looking office building that served as the front for the Hunter complex that spread throughout the mountains that surrounded the bay city. “Wow, really? Are we allowed?”
“As long as we don’t cause trouble, should be fine.” Sen shrugged, pulling Chao-Fu out of his chair. “Come on, Amil wouldn’t want you to be miserable. You were both so cheerful all the time it grated on our last nerves, but it was still nicer than you moping about.”
Chao-Fu gave Sen a long look, then glanced over at me. He heaved a long sigh, and dusted down his lab coat. “Alright, alright. I guess you have a point. Let’s go out for drinks in Amil’s memory.”
Sen smiled, the first in a while. “That’s the spirit!”
And that’s how we ended up wandering around the streets of Hong Kong, doing car spotting, with boxes of noodles from a street vendor in hand. “Alright, so since it’s your first time out here, we’re taking you to the Banana Bar.” Chao-Fu informed me, in a manner that implied I had no choice in the matter. He’d greatly cheered up now he was outside in the not-so-fresh-actually-kinda-smoggy air.
“Oh yeah! The place where everything is served on banana leaves. We can go there and just order dessert.” Sen added, gesturing with her chopsticks down one of the roads. “That way, I think.”
It was funny, to glance back at the mountains in the background, half hidden by the towering skyscrapers. All these millions of people going about their lives with no idea of the kind of things that went on beneath their feet. These were the people that we had to keep safe. I suddenly felt important, like I was working to achieve something great even if we’d not made any progress since I’d got there.
Somewhere up there, I hoped my parents were proud of me.
---
“Okay no,” Chao-Fu argued, waving his beer bottle in the air. “We’re assuming that the soul does indeed exist here.”
“Yeah, but we can’t prove that.” Sen sighed, resting her head on one hand. “It’s not a tangible thing.”
“But we know ghosts exist.” I piped up, brain swimming in the warm fuzzy feeling that alcohol gives after a nice meal. “Ergo so must the soul.”
“I’ve never seen a ghost.” Sen muttered. “Not got one bit of ‘Sight’ or whatever they call it.”
“Good thing you work with zombies then. Can’t discount that, Sight or not.” Chao-Fu knocked back the rest of his drink in one go. “But assuming the soul does exist for the sake of argument and, you know, everything we’ve been working to do for the past five years - if you could pick one particular version of the afterlife, what would it be?”
Sen groaned. “No, okay, I am not done with life yet, I’ve got too much to do and see. I’ll take reincarnation thanks.”
“That kinda doesn’t count as an afterli-”
“How about you, Mei?” Sen ignored Chao-Fu and turned to me instead. “What do you think?”
“Dunno, never thought much about religion.” I said, swirling the contents of my half-empty beer bottle. “Anywhere that’d let me see my parents again would be nice though.” I sipped at the beer. Not really a drinker myself, but I can handle one or two. “And I’d like for you guys to be there so we can hang out and have fun like this all the time.”
“So reincarnate with me.” said Sen. “All the cool and smart people are clearly reincarnating. Afterlife is for wusses.” She leaned forward and clasped my hands, eyes sparkling with glee. “Hey hey, let’s reincarnate as sisters or something so we can hang out forever.”
“I, er, I don’t think that’s how reincarnation works...” I laughed, trying to pull my hands away. “Do we get to pick?”
“We should.” Sen insisted, swaying forward a little. She’d had two more drinks than me and was starting to show it. “Like, if we’ve done something great in life. We should get to pick then.”
“Screw you guys, I’m gonna achieve nirvana.” Chao-Fu slurred slightly. Sen and I shared a look, and burst into laughter.
“You, enlightened?” Sen gasped, smacking her hand on the table. “Oh, no, please, my sides hurt! Mercy!”
I was trying not to tease him too much today, but I couldn’t resist a little jab at him. “Is that what you’re doing when you lock yourself in the break room for hours? Achieving enlightenment instead of working?”
Chao-Fu pouted. “Thanks for the faith and support, guys.”
“Aww, you know we’d love to have you as our reincarnation-brother.” Sen prodded him on the arm with a warm smile. The Thai scientist rolled his eyes.
“Okay, fine, but I’m going to be the big brother this time and you’re all going to look up to me.”
“Let’s hope you’re taller in the next life, then!”
“Hey!”
I don’t really remember much about the rest of the night. We went dancing and somehow found our way back home with our clothes and wallets in tact. Waking up, I found myself in an odd sort of pile on one of the futons in the break room, lying on top of Chao-Fu, with Sen’s head resting on my arm. We were all fully clothed so I didn’t worry about it too much, but I decided not to move until Sen had woken up and stumbled off to get breakfast. I had one hell of a hangover, and as I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror, I knew I was going to have to lock myself in the lab away from everyone else but my similarly hung over friends today. I was used to having only one particular lock of hair that sprung out of my head at an odd angle; today, every single hair had decided to do that.
As I stepped into the lab, I was grateful that Sen was doing an experiment with ultraviolet light. The main lights were off, and only the dim glow of computer monitors and Sen’s ultraviolet light-bulb lit the room.
I sat in my chair for a good half hour before I asked. “What’re you doing.”
“Trying to see if zombie blood looks the same under ultraviolet light as human blood.” Mumbled Sen, turning the lightbulb at an angle.
“Why?”
“For science.”
“Oh.” Basically, that meant that she was just messing around to occupy her time while her brain recovered. Sen, unlike Chao-Fu, didn’t like lazing around in bed all the time. She liked to have something to do, or she’d go stir crazy. I would personally go either way, but got the feeling that if I went back to bed, it would be then that Chun Hei or someone similar would burst in uninvited and wake me up anyway.
After five hours of surfing the internet looking at zombie apocalypse survival guides, I wandered out of the lab in search of food. On my way past the break room, I looked inside to wake Chao-Fu up.
He was sitting up on the futon, legs crossed in the lotus position, in little more than his boxers. I squeaked and closed the door.
“Mei? Is that you?”
“S-sorry!” I half-whispered through the door. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were actually meditating!”
“It’s okay. What time is it?”
“It’s about six in the evening…”
There was the sound of rustling fabric. “One sec, lemme get some clothes on.” He called, and opened the door a minute later, glasses and shirt back in place. “There, sorry about that.”
“No, no I should have knocked!” I could feel the blush rising in my cheeks. He’d been practically naked. If he’d walked in on me in that state of undress, I’d have slapped him!
“Hey, are you alright? You’ve gone all red.” He felt my forehead. “You didn’t eat anything bad last night did you?”
I jumped back. “No, I’m fine, I’m just- er- just going to go get food now!”
Chao-Fu blinked. “Well okay then, I’ll come with you-”
“I think Sen needs some help in the lab!” It was a really, really stupid excuse, one that he would probably see though. “I’ll bring some food down to you, okay? Bye!” And then I ran.
---
Stupid, stupid, stupid! No no no, I couldn’t be crushing on a coworker, especially not one who’s such a good friend to me. Why did I just run off like that, what was I, a schoolgirl in some stupid highschool shoujo anime? And I couldn’t even even tell Sen, because she’d definitely tell Chao-Fu and…
“What a mess.”
I wanted to agree with whoever said that, before I realised I was alone in the hallway. Stopping in my tracks, I noticed where I’d wandered past. Just behind me was Takahito’s office door, left slightly ajar once again. And once again, there was a strange light coming from inside. It was a different colour from before, soft greens and blues. Gentle. And it was somehow familiar as well, though I’d certainly never been in Takahito’s office.
I peered through the crack. All over the floor, the glowing substance spread out like liquid. From what I remembered ectoplasm was more like a sticky, gluey substance, where as this was more like water in how it flowed down what I assumed was a drain, the dark hole in the middle of the floor. In the glow of the mysterious liquid I could see the office was less of an office and more of a lab. An operating theatre of the experimental variety. There were test tubes full of different colours of light. Some of them seemed to be dimming to grey. They had timers next to them. An experiment on the mystery liquid?
All the green-blue light suddenly vanished from the room, and I heard someone gasp. The liquid on the ground turned grey and dark, stopped giving off light.
“What is this- already?!”
Scrambling sounds, searching for equipment. It was the most emotion I’d ever heard in Takahito’s soft voice. He was panicking.
“Got to save what I can…”
The experiment had taken an anomalous turn. I couldn’t look away. What would happen next?
“Ahh… safe.” Takahito sighed in relief. I understood the worry of having lost everything you’d worked for. Every scientist knows the frustration of an experiment gone wrong. “Almost lost it. But this should fit.”
Fit what? His charts? His predicted results? I wanted to ask, but felt like I was looking at something I shouldn’t. But rather than turning away, I nudged the door, just slightly. The hinges were silent, moving barely an inch. But an inch provided a lot more to see by.
An inch brought into view Takahito, picking up a large glass jar with a glowing organ suspended inside, the same colour as that of the liquid on the floor.
An inch revealed an operating table, surrounded by instruments.
An inch showed me who was on it.
---
I stopped running when I got to the ocean. The China Sea lapped at my feet, and I collapsed onto the pebbly beach. I couldn’t breathe. Either I’d run too fast or my lungs had decided that living wasn’t for me any more. I couldn’t process what I’d seen.
What had I seen?
What was that, that experiment? A hallucination? Was I insane? Because that liquid - I hesitated to call it blood - and that organ, it had come from a person. A person who had been living.
A person who was now dead.
More than just a person.
Sen.
What could I do? What should I do? I had to warn them. I’d seen another organ - before, the one that glowed orange and red and pink - that was another victim. And there would be more victims, possibly had been before.
Accidents. The Research Department had a lot of accidents. But some of these accidents were fatal, and some of them weren’t accidents at all.
Amil. Supposedly swallowed by his own plant. It wouldn’t take much to feed an already dead body to something that vicious. My parents, their bodies ripped to pieces so we only found bits of them to bury. What better way to dispose of evidence.
I couldn’t imagine what he would do to Sen’s body.
“I think you’ll find, Chun Hei-san, that I know much more about the workings of the soul than you.”
No, maybe I shouldn’t be so worried about her body.
What was Takahito going to do to her soul?
---
I avoided the Research Department, skirting around the entrance and trying to make it to Yong Soo’s office without bumping into anyone I knew. If I opened my mouth even once, the whole story would spill forth, this terrifying revelation of what Takahito was doing behind everyone’s backs, what he was covering up so effectively.
Someone grabbed my wrist, and I screamed.
“Shh!!” and another hand covered my mouth, pulling me into a small side hallway. The person holding me was strong, but I kicked out and tried to escape. “Xiao, will you settle down?!”
I suddenly recognised the voice. “Hmmpn hmmph?”
“Yes, it’s me.” Chun Hei whispered in my ear. “Were you heading to my brother’s office?” When I nodded mutely, she made an annoyed click with her tongue. “Stay out of there, Takahito’s inside.” My heart stopped and restarted. That was so close. I couldn’t imagine facing him. “He’s reporting an accident. I assume the reason you’re so tense is because you know what really happened.”
Finally, the tears that I’d been missing burst forth, and my legs lost their strength again. Chun Hei sat down on the floor with me as I sobbed out what I’d seen. She listened in silence as I explained the liquid, the organ, Takahito’s interest in souls, the string of accidents that plagued the Research Department. Once I got to Sen’s body, she put an arm around my shoulders. I got the feeling she wasn’t used to comforting people, the way she was awkwardly patting my arm.
“He’s a monster.” I cried, burying my face in my hands.
“No,” Chun Hei replied, voice low and simmering with anger. “he’s human, and that’s what makes it worse. A monster, you’d expect this from. As a human, he’s just a sick and twisted bastard.”
I sniffed and tried to pull myself together. “What can we do though? He’s holding something over your brother.”
The Deputy’s lips thinned. “Yes. I only wish I knew what so I could choke it out of him.”
“You don’t know?” that was surprising. Chun Hei seemed to know everything to do with her brother, sometimes more than he did.
But still she shook her head. “Yong Soo won’t say, he just brushes me off or tells me it’s fine, he can handle it.” Her eyes narrowed. “But this is too far. Takahito’s been allowed to carry on with this for long enough.” She stood, and pulled me up with her. “Come on, I’ll liberate Takahito Shigure’s head from his shoulders myself if I must.”
“Is that alright?” I asked. Even though Chun Hei was a Hunter as well as her brother’s secretary, I was worried for her. God only knew what Takahito could really do.
“Save someone else the job when he goes to hell and becomes a demon.” She strode down the hall, hand on her sword hilt. “Stay behind me.”
I probably couldn’t move out even if I wanted to. My legs were still shaking, as were my hands. We stood in front of the door, and I could hear Takahito speaking in Japanese to Yong Soo, who replied back in a stilted manner that suggested he was either uncomfortable with the topic or with the language. Maybe both. Chun Hei held up her hand, counting a signal.
Three, two, one.
She slammed open the door, and drew her sword with a loud cry. Takahito didn’t even have time to turn around before her sword came swinging at his neck. His head flew off, bouncing on the ground as his body collapsed to the floor in a shower of blood.
At least, that’s what would have happened, if Chun Hei’s sword had not stopped mere millimeters before the scientist’s jugular.
“Wha-” she gasped, entire body frozen but shaking with the effort of trying to move. Behind his desk, Yong Soo put his face in his hands. Takahito slowly turned to look at Chun Hei, an unimpressed expression on his face.
“Once upon a time, you would have killed me with that hit.” His soft tones sounded all the more sinister with how calmly he stood with a blade to his throat. “Not now. What was once your talent is now my talent. Your sword mastery is no longer under your control.”
Chun Hei’s wrist flicked away from his throat, and she went into a complicated series of kata that were beautiful to watch, but from the look on her face, completely out of her control. Her eyes were wide and terrified. She froze stock still in what looked like quite an awkward pose. Takahito walked close to her, until their noses were almost touching.
“I told you before. I know much more about matters of the soul than you.” His eyes, black and empty and like gazing into the abyss, moved over to me. “And I suppose you think I am a demon now. A monster.” How did he always know? It was the most disturbing thing about him. “I’m nothing like that. I’m nothing at all. All I did was perfect a technique people had been searching for years. Just a scientist, like you. Like your parents.” He smiled, wide and bright, and I was struck by how similar it was to my mother. “She had a lovely smile, Xiao Hua. I use it sparingly, lest it run out.” I could hear Chun Hei starting to hyperventilate with effort, trying to inch away. Fear was all that kept me from running. “Your father’s way with words, however, I try to exercise at every opportunity. Such talented people.”
“Stop it, Takahito.” I’d never heard Yong Soo sound so tired, so stressed. “Stop it or-”
Chun Hei switched her grip on her sword, pointing it towards her stomach. Her jaw clenched. Takahito didn’t even look back at the Asia Branch Head. “Or what, Im Yong Soo? You’ll come and kill me? Is it worth losing your sister for a second time?” The sword jabbed closer to her stomach, and Yong Soo leapt up out of his chair.
“No!” it was more a yelp than a shout. “No, stop it. Not again.”
“Yong Soo…” Chun Hei gritted out between clenched teeth. “What’s he talking about.”
“He said he’d bring you back, nuna!” Yong Soo cried desperately. “And he did, you’re here and I’m thankful but-”
“I kept my insurance.” Takahito said in such a careless manner he may as well have been talking about the weather. “Opportunities arise, one must grasp them while they can. Maybe one day I’ll possess your sword talents myself, rather than just your control over them.” His eyes slid over to Yong Soo. “I’d have to kill her for that.”
He was looking away for long enough that I could inch over and grab a small letter knife. Now for the timing. I’d never killed a person before, or even wielded a knife as a weapon. There’d never been the need. But now, with anger and hate burning in my chest at what he had done, what he continued to do, I could do it. I would end this.
“Takahito, we can fix this.” Yong Soo tried to reason, raising his hands. “Don’t hurt anyone.”
“How can you bargain with this bastard, Yong Soo?!” Chun Hei hissed at her twin. “I’ll live through a stab wound, damn it, just kill this guy!”
“I don’t want you hurt again!” the younger brother shouted. “You don’t even remember what happened to you. You were dead, nuna, dead! I ran with you bleeding out in my arms. And after he brought you back, I made sure we took desk jobs so high up we wouldn’t have to go fight any more-”
“And instead we’d live here, manipulated and living in fear of this little shit? Pandering to him even if he’s a murdering psychopath?”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“And I’ve been spending this whole time trying to protect you!”
Takahito watched the siblings argue with a detached sort of interest. With his eyes away from me, I saw my chance.
My knife collided with steel, Chun Hei’s blade parrying my strike. “A nice attempt, Xiao Mei.” Takahito turned back towards me. He’d never taken his attention off me at all. “You’re very persistent. Very curious. I like it. Perhaps I should take it from you.”
I tried again, but though my stab went lower, it was blocked once more, sparks flying where the blades clashed.
“Stop it, Xiao!” Chun Hei pushed my blade back. “If you try again my parry will end up in a killing blow. Just stay still.”
“She makes an excellent point. Stay exactly as you are.” He walked around us towards the door. “I’m going to my lab. Once I’ve cleaned off the table, I expect to see you down there, Xiao Mei.” He closed the office door behind him.
Silence, heavy and poisonous like smog, settled.
“Drop the sword, nuna.” Yong Soo sat down heavily in his chair.
“Why, so you can pretend this didn’t happen?” Chun Hei snapped at him.
“He only controls your sword abilities. Drop the sword, he loses control.”
His sister blinked at him, and then with apparently great effort, released the sword, letting it clatter to the ground. Her breath left her in a sigh of pent up tension. I too dropped my knife, and stumbled back until I hit the wall. The silent tension returned.
“Why couldn’t I do that earlier… I was trying…” Chun Hei was starting at her hand. Yong Soo shrugged a shoulder.
“Maybe his power’s stronger when he’s closer. He’s got a little bit of your soul inside him, so-”
“Inside?” the older twin reeled back, repulsed. “He puts them inside?!”
“I guess that’s why they look like organs…” I murmured, curling up into a ball and hoping I’d wake up from this nightmare. “Sen… and my parents too…” My head snapped up as a horrifying realization came to me. “Chao-Fu!”
“Bless you.” Said Yong Soo.
“No, Chao-Fu, he’s still in the labs!” I scrambled to my feet. “God knows what Takahito will do if he finds him! I have to go!”
“Xiao Mei!” I could hear Chun Hei calling after me, but after fighting Takahito’s control she was too exhausted to run after me. I was moving faster than I’d ever gone before, adrenaline fueling my legs. I jumped down most of the stairs to the Labs, and barged my way into Lab 5 only to find it empty. Spinning on my heel, I ran to the break room, but that was empty too. No, no, no, where was he?
I ran past Takahito’s office, and skidded to a stop before doubling back. I’d never seen the room lit up with so much light, so many bright colours. My throat tightened. Without hesitation, I kicked the door open fully. Takahito would not get the last thing I had left!
Chao-Fu stared at me. “… Mei? You’re alright?”
He was covered in bright liquid. The blood of a soul, of a hundred souls. It was all over the floor, multi-coloured drops from all over the spectrum. It lit up the whole room, made it almost painful to look at.
“Chao-Fu…” I breathed, blinking tears out of my eyes. “What is…”
“I figured it out.” Chao-Fu sounded just as stunned as she did. “Why Amil died when he was always so careful. Where Sen vanished to. How such intelligent people as your parents were so easily killed by their own subjects.” I noticed that under the liquid he was wearing scrubs, and in his hand was a small scalpel, bright silver in the dark. “It was him. Him all along.”
“He stole the bits of their souls he wanted.” I added, bringing our total information together. “He was always so jealous of everyone else, so empty. He broke them and took the pieces to create something that shouldn’t be.”
“I don’t think he even had a soul to begin with.” His gaze shifted to the operating table. “Everything I’ve found is from other people.”
Takahito’s eyes stared straight ahead at the ceiling. He didn’t move, didn’t even twitch. He was either dead, or very heavily sedated. I wouldn’t put it past him to sleep with his eyes open.
“We have to take them out of him.” I said, voice shaking. “We’ve got to set those souls free. Sen’s in there. She wanted to go reincarnate, remember?” It sounded stupid, to talk about such carefree times now, in the middle of all this mess. “… did all this come from him?”
“I destroyed his equipment.” Chao-Fu admitted. “The second he saw, though, he doubled over, and more stuff came out. Then I knew they were in him, so I…” he looked at the tiny knife in his hand with fascination. “It’s like halfway between magic and science, this little thing. To cut open a soul. It doesn’t even harm the body.” He demonstrated, dragging it along the inside of his arm. I reached to stop him, but the blade cut deep. When he removed it, however, there was no wound. “The soul heals quick unless you cut something out of it.”
“Chao-Fu, we have to destroy it.” This time, I was firm. “This isn't something anyone should be able to play around with.”
“But-”
“Xiao Mei!” came Chun Hei’s voice down the hallway. “Are you alive down there?”
“Yes!” I called back.
“Good! Now come here so I can kill you for running off!”
I couldn’t help but smile a little. Takahito was getting his come-uppance, and the souls would be set free. It was going to be okay.
A raspy laugh came from behind. Chao-Fu and I span to face the operating table. Takahito had turned his head towards us, and was smiling.
“Foolish.” He wheezed. “To think it ends here. These souls have nowhere to go. They’re just spare parts.” He closed his eyes. “You can never fully repair a broken mirror, even if you had all the pieces. That blood, from the soul. It will never come back. Once you’ve killed a soul, it’s dead.”
“No…” gasped Chao-Fu. “Then- Amil and Sen-!”
“Gone.” Takahito laughed. “Forever. How sad.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “Indeed, how sad…”
Chao-Fu’s grip on the knife had gone white-knuckled. “You… bastard!” he lunged forward, raising the knife to plunge it into Takahito’s chest.
“Stop!” Yong Soo appeared in the doorway with Chun Hei riding on his back. “Chao-Fu, if you damage Chun Hei’s soul, I will personally have you hunted down as an enemy of the whole organisation, on par with him.” he shot a look at the prone scientist on the table. He shuffled closer to the table, Chao-Fu still frozen in place. “Nuna, which one is yours?”
Chun Hei immediately pointed to a small red, yellow and orange flashing artery, next to the heart-like organ. “That. That’s mine. I can feel it aching.”
Yong Soo nodded, glancing over at the Thai scientist. “Cut it out of him.”
I could see how much restraint it took not to just stab at Takahito’s body, but Chao-Fu’s work was expertly precise. Takahito arched in a silent scream as the soul piece was carefully removed. I didn't feel sorry for him. I couldn’t pity someone like him.
Chun Hei reached out for her soul, and as soon as she touched it, a shock of light filled the room. The piece was gone from Chao-Fu’s hand, but the Deputy head wriggled off her brother’s back, drew her sword, and did several kata on her own, just to prove she could.
“Excellent.” And with a deft move, she cut off Takahito’s head.
---
I knocked on the door.
“Come in!”
The hinges really needed to be oiled; they’d been squeaking like mice for months now. “Got the reports on stages of zombie infection for you.” I said, dumping them on the desk. Chao-Fu looked up at me and smiled. The new Research Department Chief job was shaping up nicely for him, even if it meant he couldn’t slack off any more. He’d really become a hard worker recently. I was proud of him.
“Thanks Mei. You couldn’t run in to the city and grab me some of those noodles from that one corner shop, could you?” he pleaded. I rolled my eyes and grinned.
“As long as you finish your paperwork.”
“Yes mother.” He sniggered, handing me a file. “Run this past Chun Hei’s desk while you’re at it. I know Yong Soo will never read it, so better to give it to someone who will.”
“You’re the boss.” I gave a mock salute and made my way out. Something blue-green caught my eye for a second, and I looked back. Nothing there but an empty office book case.
“You okay?” Chao-Fu asked, chewing on his pen.
“Mm, yeah, fine.”
Trick of the light.
Notes:
- Oh my god this is like 10,000 words on its own and about 20 pages long. What am I doing.
- For best results, consume with this. It was this video that originally inspired me, and is from which I take the title of this not so little fic.
- Help for who characters are in relation to Hetalia: Chao-Fu is Thailand, Sen is Vietnam, Xiao Mei is Taiwan, Amil is Tibet, Yong Soo is South Korea and Chun Hei is North Korea. Originally, Takahito was just the kid from the above video, but now he's kind of morphed into an imperial or black!Japan sort of character. Just trivia: Takahito is written with the characters "hawk" and "person". I find hawks to be kinda intimidating and threatening even when sometimes they're not very big.
- Plz don't hate me. >3>
Author/Artist: Pidge
Character(s) or Pairing(s): Xiao Mei, Yong Soo, Chun Hei, Sen, Chao-Fu, Takahito.
Rating: 18
Warnings: Death, violence, science, first person POV, oh my god how did this get so long.
Summary: The Asia Branch has its own fair share of dark secrets, as one Xiao Mei is destined to find out.
When you get in with the Hunters, you’re meant to feel flattered. Instead, I was terrified. My parents had come before me, great scientists and participants in the research over zombification and the human brain. They were big shoes to fill... and after they’d got killed by the very creatures they were experimenting on, I was more than a little anxious. But mother had always said that the mark of a good scientist was curiosity, and I had plenty of that at least. Which is why I was giving myself neck ache trying to see around the corners of the Hunter East Asia Branch Headquarters.
“Okay and this is the canteen.” Branch Head Yong Soo gestured towards the large, neatly ordered room filled with tables. “Food’s alright as long as you don’t mind the occasional fingernail in your kimchi.”
His assistant, Chun Hei, flicked his ear, ignoring his yelp of surprise. The two twins had been doing this back and forth all day. “And down there-” she pointed at a stairwell that lead down, probably underground, since I couldn’t see the bottom. “is the Science Department, where you’ll be working.”
A long, awkward pause appeared, and I shifted uncertainly. “Is there... something wrong?”
The Branch Head laughed. “Chun Hei-nunim’s scared of the Research Departme- ow!”
The deputy head was blushing furiously, embarrassed and with fist raised from where she’d hit her brother. “I’m not scared! The Research Chief is just a creeper, alright?” she defended, but kept her eyes on the stairwell, as though she was waiting for something to come out of it. “Look- okay, don’t tell him your family history, okay kid? He’s... he likes collecting.”
What she said confused me, and I opened my mouth to say so, but in a rare burst of tact, Yong Soo spoke over me. “Heeeey there Takahito!” the Korean laughed, landing a hand on my shoulder. It surprised me, so I looked up at him. His usually cheerful smile was somewhat stiffer than usual. “This is Xiao Mei, she’ll be working in the biochemistry department for you. Treat her nicely.”
The man in front of me seemed to barely be a man at all, more like a young boy. He was shorter than I, with short, dark hair that almost covered his eyes. Eyes that didn’t seem to blink as they looked at me. They weren’t particularly unattractive and his gaze was neutral, but I still felt suddenly exposed, like a specimen on an operating table. I tried not to shift uncomfortably, a mouse caught in the eye of an eagle.
“Nice to meet you.” he said softly, with a neat bow. “I’m sure we’ll get along fine.” The barest hint of a smile graced his lips, which seemed to be all the emotion he was capable of. “You look a little familiar. Who were your parents?”
“Nobody!” Chun Hei snapped quickly. “And you shouldn’t ask such personal questions about someone’s family, Shigure.”
The Science Chief bowed again, in apology this time. “My mistake. I was only curious. The mark of a good scientist is curiosity, after all.”
My heart skipped a beat. How did he know that? That was what mother...
“Curiosity killed the cat.” Chun Hei growled, apparently covering her worry with anger. Takahito’s gaze shifted over to the Branch Head, ignoring Chun Hei completely.
“If you would leave her with me, I can finish the tour of the Science Department for you.” he offered in that same soft tone. Yong Soo’s grip on my shoulder tightened slightly.
“Don’t you have work to do though?” he asked, phrasing it like a question when it was actually more like an order. Takahito shrugged one shoulder, lab coat weighed down with test tubes clinking against each other.
“I can delegate it. I’d like to get acquainted with my newest member of staff.”
“My staff.” Yong Soo stressed, freeing my shoulder and stepping forward, towering over Takahito by a head and a half. “And nothing’s to happen to this one, understand?” he murmured, almost too low to hear. The tiny smile on Takahito’s face twisted upwards in one corner, becoming a smirk. He met Yong Soo’s eyes with no hesitation.
“Advances in science can only be made with sacrifice.” he replied, voice similarly hushed. “And besides, accidents happen.”
“I will accidentally write a report on you if you get any funny ideas. If I didn’t owe you-”
“But you do owe me, don’t you.”
From the angle I was at, I couldn’t quite see Yong Soo’s face. But with the way his fists clenched, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Takahito looked away from his superior, locking eyes with me again. “Xiao Mei was it? Follow me and we can start on the tour.”
Yong Soo turned on his heel and stomped off, muttering something in angry Korean under his breath. I only spoke Mandarin and English, but whatever he was saying made his sister follow him, replying in a terse manner. This meant I was alone, with this stranger, who apparently knew my parents, and had also threatened the commanding officer of the Asia Branch.
I tried not to let my fear show on my face. Takahito wasn’t looking at me anymore anyway, heading towards the stairs and descending into the dark. “Come on, don’t you want to see all the equipment you’ll be working with?”
The spark of curiosity in me flared. I couldn’t imagine all the things I would get to play- I mean, work with down in the secretive labs of the Hunters.
I followed down the stairs.
They went on forever, or so it seemed, dimly lit by blue neon tubes. Takahito explained that several of their subjects were light sensitive down here, and that the common rooms and washrooms were better lit. They also had the Overlight chambers, which it was not recommended to go into without protective eyewear and a lot of sunscreen. I barely said a word as he explained the cleaning rotor, the locations of the ingredient and tool cupboards, the sub divisions of research and the people within them. But I was listening the whole time, trying to absorb it all. I resigned myself to asking questions later when he mentioned yet another name I couldn’t pronounce without effort.
“And this is my office.” he concluded. After all that I’d come to realise that he never really raised his voice or gave emphasis to anything he said. It was all a steady stream of words, almost like they meant nothing to him. “I ask only that you knock and wait for my answer before entering. Come at any time, I’ll probably be in here if I’m not in any of the labs. You start in Lab 5, do you remember where it is?”
“Yes.” No.
“Down the hall, take the first left, then the third door in the hallway you end up in there.” Takahito explained, opening his office door. It was dark inside, darker than the dimly lit hall. “I’ll likely see you later tonight. Right now, I have paperwork to do. Good day.” And with that, he shut the door.
First left, third door, okay. I can do this.
Just walk in.
I’m a big girl. It’s just a room full of people I don’t know. They’re not going to bite me or anything. It’s fine. I’ll be just fine.
The door labeled “Lab 5” suddenly seemed a lot more imposing than any slab of plain wood had right to be. But I wouldn’t turn back now. So I took a deep breath, raised my hand, and turned the doorknob.
Large, yellow teeth snapped three inches in front of my nose. “Not going to bite” my ass. I tried not to scream as I jumped back. It was a zombie, clear as day, skin hanging off its bones and one eye missing from its socket. And then as suddenly as the gruesome figure had appeared, it was gone, replaced by a woman holding a large paddle splattered with old, dead blood. Her lab coat was similarly covered in various types of body fluids, and her long black hair was tied back in a ponytail. The zombie, now on the floor, twitched once, but with it’s head smashed in, it would no longer move. The scientist breathed a sigh of relief, shouldering her paddle and looking me up and down. I hoped she wouldn’t hit me with it.
“You’re the new girl?” she asked. I nodded quickly. A smile came to the lady’s face. She was pretty under all the zombie goo. “Hi, I’m Đoàn Linh Sen. You can call me Sen though, I get that Vietnamese is hard for some people.”
I tried to recover my lost nerve. “I’m Xiao Mei, from Taiwan. It’s, um, nice to meet you.”
“Did you get it, Sen?” came another voice, male this time. Sen turned her head to call back that she had. From under one of the tables, a young man with short, spiked hair and glasses emerged, looking sheepish. “We need to get another paddle in here so I can help you hit them...”
“It wouldn’t happen in the first place if you didn’t leave the restraints so loose.” Sen grumbled back. “This is Suttikul Chao-Fa from Thailand. Chao-Fa, this is Xiao Mei from Taiwan, our new assistant.”
Chao-Fa grimaced. “From Taiwan? Now people are going to make ‘Thai-Tai’ jokes again...”
“Don’t be a baby about it, it’s all in good fun.” Sen teased, leaning her wooden paddle against the lab wall. I spoke up.
“Um- so what do you guys do?” I asked nervously.
Chao-Fa tilted his head at me. “Did Takahito not explain to you?”
“Give the girl a break, you know Takahito can drone on in that monotone of his forever. It’s hard to absorb his info dump for those of us who don’t have a photographic memory.” Sen shot him a look. The Thai man grinned.
“Don’t hate me because my brain is like a computer, Sen~.”
Sen rolled her eyes. “Please. If it meant I’d have to be as annoying as you, then I’d happily take Yong Soo’s brain instead.”
“Jealousy doesn’t become you, my friend.” Chao-Fu laughed, ignoring how Sen spluttered and turning to me instead. “We’re the zombification department. As you can probably see, we’ve been having trouble controlling the test subjects.” He indicated the dead body on the floor. It was starting to smell, breaking through the covering smell of bleach and antiseptic. “How much experience do you have with these kinds of things?”
“Um, I-” My parents had shown me a few times, and they’d talked about their work all the time at home. But Yong Soo and Chun Hei seemed to be keen to keep my family a secret, so I’d better not mention that. “I’ve done a lot of research, but nothing hands-on...”
“I guess we can’t expect that of you. You’d have to have family in the Hunters to get some practical experience.” Sen said, picking up the zombie by the ankles and dragging it towards a door labeled ‘Waste Disposal’. “Doesn’t matter, you’ll learn as you go. Grab some gloves and help me throw this thing in the incinerator.”
For the rest of the day, Sen and Chao-Fu introduced me to the instruments and apparatus they used for their experiments, as well as their numerous hypotheses that they were testing. My head was whirling with questions, but the two of them answered each of them patiently, sometimes having to go over things twice. They were really friendly. I liked them immediately.
“You know, you look like someone else I know, and I can’t put my finger on it.” Sen said suddenly, frowning at me.
“I wasn’t going to say anything, but you’re right, she does look familiar.” Chao-Fu added. He leaned forward, studying me over his glasses. I shifted uncomfortably. “Are you sure you don’t have family that works here?”
“I...” they were being awfully nice to me, and I wanted to be friends with them, so I glanced behind me at the door to check if nobody was there, and dropped my voice to a whisper. “You can’t tell anyone, especially not Takahito, okay?” I held out my pinkie finger. When I was little, I used to make promises like this with my friends. It was childish, but the habit had stuck. “Promise.”
Sen and Chao-Fu exchanged a glance, before they both locked fingers with me.
“My parents used to work in this department. They even did your exact job.” I confided, and it was like a weight off my shoulders. “But they were killed by one of their own experiments. Xiao Hua was my mother and-”
“Feng was your father...” Chao-Fu finished in an awed sort of tone. “I- I used to be a lab assistant, just doing run-about jobs, and I always looked up to them. Getting to work in their department was an honour itself, but now with their daughter...”
“You can’t tell anyone!” I insisted. “Yong Soo doesn’t want anyone knowing, so you shouldn’t spread it around.”
“If he does, I’ll throw him in the Overlight Chamber.” Sen assured me, nodding. “Your secret is safe with us. But you know,” she grinned. “Now we know your lineage, we’re not going to go easy on you!”
Chao-Fu leapt to his feet. “With you on our side, we’ll definitely be able to prove our number one hypothesis!”
I grinned back. “I’ll do my best!” I cheered, but then a thought occurred. “Um... which is the number one hypothesis?”
The Thai man thrust a piece of paper into my hands. “It’s very important work! Handed down from the higher ups especially.” he inflated, looking overly self-important. “We, my dear Mei, are trying to determine what point the soul leaves the body!”
---
“You look like you’re having fun.” Chun Hei said as she sat down next to me in the Canteen. I raised my head from where it was resting on the table. I’d been up all night examining a half-deteriorated brain, and had barely got any sleep. The Deputy Branch Head shoved an apple and a bowl of rice into my hands. “Eat or you’ll pass out. Don’t let their bad habits rub off on you - staying up all night is never the solution to a problem.”
I mumbled my thanks and sleepily took a bite out of the fruit. Then someone whacked me on the back and I nearly choked.
“Hey there Xiao Mei, how’re you fitting in?” chirped Yong Soo, obscenely cheerful this early in the morning.
“Aww, we all love our little Mei Mei.” Chao-Fu appeared with his breakfast tray, deep bags under his eyes despite having fallen asleep on his desk about five hours before I gave up and went to bed. “Don’t we Sen?”
“Mmph.” Sen grunted, sitting at the table with her own tray and assuming the same position I had been before. Neither of us were morning people, it seemed.
“Well you survived the night, but I suggest going to bed.” Chun Hei said, finishing off her bowl of rice. I opened my mouth to protest that I had to be useful somehow, but she cut over me. “No, shut up. You’re tired, and when people are tired, people make mistakes, and we cannot afford mistakes in our line of work. Go get a few more hours sleep, I’m sure these two can handle themselves without you for another half a day.”
Sen mumbled something about preferential treatment and newbies, but Chao-Fu nodded in agreement with Chun Hei. “She right, go back to bed Mei.”
Well with all of them giving me such a look and with my brain pleading with me to get some more sleep, I couldn’t really say no. So I said my thanks and stumbled off back downstairs to the rooms the scientists used more for napping in than actually sleeping. I didn’t know where my real room was. Chao-Fu said he’d not been in his actual room for about three months now, and could only vaguely remember its location in the sprawling mass that was the Asia Branch. I decided I’d go find it after I woke up from my nap, however long that took.
The dim lighting of the hallway only made me feel sleepier. Shuffling past one of the doors, however, a small light from inside caught my attention. It was Takahito’s office. The light was an odd colour, changing slightly in intensity and shade every now and then. The door was open a crack, and I tried to peek through without getting too close.
It was like a night light on one of the desks, but not the normal kind. As I squinted into the unusually dark office, I could see it was something - I didn’t know what - suspended in a jar. An organ? But organs don’t glow, and certainly not all those different colours. Orange, yellow, pink, red, vibrant and intriguing and friendly and alive.
Someone shifted inside the office, and I quickly resumed my walking down the hall. Something told me I wasn’t meant to have seen that. Maybe it was some kind of secret project Takahito had been working on. He seemed like quite a private person.
I’d not gone three paces away though before the door’s hinges creaked open. I kept walking like my heart wasn’t pounding. He was there, watching me leave, I knew it. I could feel his gaze on my back.
“Curiosity killed the cat, Xiao Mei.”
Xiao is a common enough family name, but the way he said it... I knew he knew. And for some reason that scared me much more than any of the zombies or bodies we had in storage for experimentation. Stopping in my tracks, I glanced over my shoulder - and tried not to gasp at how Takahito looked. Large black gloves were covered in liquid, glowing the same colour as that of the thing in the jar in his room. A surgeon’s coat and mask left only his eyes visible. Those small, dark eyes, unblinking and watching me. I imagined, under that mask, that he was smiling.
Without another word, he went back into his office, and closed the door.
---
Three days later and I spilled what happened.
“Glowing stuff?” Chao-Fu said, looking away from the test tube of spinal fluid he’d been examining to stare at me. “On Takahito?”
“Probably ectoplasm.” muttered Sen absently, squinting into a microscope and writing down notes in Vietnamese on a pad beside her. It didn’t matter whether anyone else could read the language or not; with her handwriting it was practically an alien script anyway. “Takahito’s really interested in the soul and its properties too. Thinks he can determine aspects of it by traces left behind in bodies. Says it’ll help with post-mortem profiling.” she looked up, rubbing at her eyes. “You know, like with serial killers or prolific monsters too dangerous to keep alive.”
“Oh.” I said, leaning back in my chair and folding my arms. “He had something in a jar too. Looked like an organ.”
Sen shrugged, stretching. “Yeah, well, Takahito does that stuff. And it’s not like it’s unusual to have organs in jars around here. A load of schools have stuff like preserved frogs and eyes in jars for dissection.” She gave me a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry about it. He can be a bit creepy sometimes, but he’s pretty dedicated to his work, determined too. All the leaders of this department have been. It’s like a legacy, passed down from one to another. I guess it just takes a certain kind of person to get to the top.” she shot a grin at Chao-Fu. “And that’s why this guy will never be Section Chief.”
“That was uncalled for!”
While they bickered in the background, I span back round in my chair to my notes. I’d only been here half a week, so I’d not made much progress. Mostly I’d been reading what Sen and Chao-Fu had been doing so far. Fascinating things, some of them pushing ethics a little, but since the dead bodies had been surrendered with permission to them, well, there was no harm really in putting a person’s brain into a bowl of liquid nitrogen to see what would happen. Even if the brain was still technically attached to the body. Apparently, it had frozen the whole brainstem and spinal chord down to the coccyx.
Both the argument and my thoughts were interrupted when Chun Hei burst through the door.
“Oh, hello Deputy Head.” Sen said, standing from her chair as Chao-Fu did. I followed suit. “It’s unusual to see you down here. How can we help?”
“Neither of you have seen Anil?” she snapped, looking extremely stressed. Her hair was out of place, even though every time I’d seen her she’d looked immaculate.
“The Tibetan guy from biochem?” Sen wondered. “Not since last week.”
Chao-Fu frowned. “I’ve not seen him in ages. Is he not in his lab?”
“He’s not anywhere. There have been no reports from him handed in and he’s usually quite punctual.” the Deputy folded her arms. “No resignation note, no holiday request, nothing. I don’t know if he’s somehow got lost inside the facility, but this is concerning.”
A tense silence followed, during which the three others fell into deep thought. I nervously spoke up. “You don’t think an experiment of his went wrong and he was... um...” it felt out of place, for me to talk about this person I didn’t know. “Injured?”
Chun Hei shook her head. “Amil is always very careful with his materials.” she said, but continued to think. “... better to check though. Accidents happen. Stay there.” She turned on her heel and strode out of the room.
Silence fell.
“So we’re following her?”
“Yup.”
---
We searched high and low, Chao-Fu digging out a picture of Amil to show me. He looked like a friendly enough guy. Not a hair on his head, even though he was quite young, with a friendly, gentle smile on his face. From how Chao-Fu spoke of him, they’d known each other for a while, starting as teen interns in the research department nearly a decade ago. They were both workaholics, so they saw each other less these days, and thus Chao-Fu hadn’t noticed he’d gone missing.
“I thought he’d just got absorbed in work again.” he said, growing increasingly more concerned as he peered under the leaves of a very large, unknown plant. The lab was practically a rainforest of plant life, most of which I’d never seen before or even read about. “He stayed in his lab for a whole month once, didn’t even come out for food. Lived off the plants.” He sighed. “But if he’s not in here I don’t know where he’s gone!”
“He might have got knocked out somewhere. Keep looking.” Chun Hei ordered. Once she’d resigned herself to having us tag along, she’d started acting like a drill Sergeant. A really strict one.
I ducked under an over-sized sunflower to come face to face with a very large, very strange looking plant. A flower bud that size had no place on top of such a thin stem. The petals were yellow, lined with red, so much so that the tip of it looked like a pair of puckered lips. Carefully, I tapped them.
They moved.
The flower was surely big enough for a person to fit inside. A cold ball of dread settled in my stomach.
“Hey, everyone come see this thing!” I called, turning my head to shout. The second I looked away, I heard a loud rustling. Glancing back, I screamed and jumped out of the way as the flower, endowed with very large teeth on the inside of its petals, snapped at me. It missed, but still closed around a corner of my lab coat. I tried to wrench it out of its grip, but the flower was strong, pulling me closer, towards roots that had risen up out of the ground, ready to grab me and trap me. Ready to make me lunch.
“Hyah!!”
The roots that were about to wrap about my ankles were severed, writhing silently before falling dead still. Chun Hei used her sword to expertly cut away at any attacking roots. If the plant were able to scream, it probably would, but I had very little sympathy for something that was trying to eat me. The flower itself lunged for Chun Hei, but the expert swordswoman ducked under the bulbous head, and made a clean swipe for the stem. With a groan, the flower fell to the ground, dead.
“Đoàn, get me some acid to pour on this thing. I want it dead at the roots.” she panted, but as soon as she’d finished her sentence, the roots themselves started to shrivel up, pulling up dirt with them, until they were the size of a normal garden flower rather than thick as a small tree.
Under the freshly moved earth was a very decomposed body. The smell hit me right in the face, and I gagged, turning away.
“Amil...” Chao-Fu murmured. “No...”
Chun Hei sheathed her sword, and bowed her head in respect to the dead scientist before them. “... I’ll go inform Yong Soo. The three of you, come with me. We’ll need witness reports.” She strode towards the door with nothing more than that. Sen put a comforting arm around Chao-Fu’s shoulder and led him out. I followed last, closing the door behind us.
“What’s all the noise about?”
At the soft voice, every head turned. Takahito stood in the hallway, scrubs completely clean this time, looking innocently confused. I could see Chun Hei’s jaw clench from here.
“One of your scientists is dead for a week and you don’t even notice.” she spat. “That’s a pretty top job you’re doing there, Shigure.”
Takahito’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Who?”
“Amil. The Biochemist. He’s worked here ten years now.” Chun Hei ground out. I’d never seen anyone look so poisonously at a person, as though wishing they’d drop dead right there.
“Oh my, I’d not even noticed his absence. He did tend to lock himself away for long periods... he was so focused on his work, full of talent. A very admirable man.” he shook his head. “What a sad waste. A shame.”
“Don’t act like you’re sad, you soulless son of a-”
“I think you’ll find, Chun Hei-san, that I know much more about the workings of the soul than you.” Takahito’s voice took on a new edge that I’d not heard before. Was he angry? “So I’d be careful how you throw those terms about, if I were your position.”
“But you’re not me, or in my position, and thank the gods for that, because I’ll never allow you to get close to my brother again.” And with that, she stormed off up the stairs. “Đoàn, Suttikul, Xiao, move out!”
The other two did immediately as told, following up the stairs. I moved to go as well, when I heard Takahito mutter something to himself. Glancing back, I couldn’t see his face, but from how his shoulders were shaking, he was probably crying.
Or laughing.
---
Things were awkward for a few days in the lab after that. Chao-Fu was melancholy and listless, staring at a single empty test tube for hours before standing and claiming he needed to go to the bathroom for the 5th time. The knock on effect was that both Sen and I got depressed and demotivated. By the end of the week, enough was enough, and the older scientist threw up her hands and said, “We’re not making any progress, let’s just go get dinner somewhere nice.”
“In the city?” I asked, secretly excited at the concept. I’d not really been out to explore the city that the Asia Branch was located under. Hong Kong was such an exciting place, and yet I’d only really seen the airport and the official looking office building that served as the front for the Hunter complex that spread throughout the mountains that surrounded the bay city. “Wow, really? Are we allowed?”
“As long as we don’t cause trouble, should be fine.” Sen shrugged, pulling Chao-Fu out of his chair. “Come on, Amil wouldn’t want you to be miserable. You were both so cheerful all the time it grated on our last nerves, but it was still nicer than you moping about.”
Chao-Fu gave Sen a long look, then glanced over at me. He heaved a long sigh, and dusted down his lab coat. “Alright, alright. I guess you have a point. Let’s go out for drinks in Amil’s memory.”
Sen smiled, the first in a while. “That’s the spirit!”
And that’s how we ended up wandering around the streets of Hong Kong, doing car spotting, with boxes of noodles from a street vendor in hand. “Alright, so since it’s your first time out here, we’re taking you to the Banana Bar.” Chao-Fu informed me, in a manner that implied I had no choice in the matter. He’d greatly cheered up now he was outside in the not-so-fresh-actually-kinda-smoggy air.
“Oh yeah! The place where everything is served on banana leaves. We can go there and just order dessert.” Sen added, gesturing with her chopsticks down one of the roads. “That way, I think.”
It was funny, to glance back at the mountains in the background, half hidden by the towering skyscrapers. All these millions of people going about their lives with no idea of the kind of things that went on beneath their feet. These were the people that we had to keep safe. I suddenly felt important, like I was working to achieve something great even if we’d not made any progress since I’d got there.
Somewhere up there, I hoped my parents were proud of me.
---
“Okay no,” Chao-Fu argued, waving his beer bottle in the air. “We’re assuming that the soul does indeed exist here.”
“Yeah, but we can’t prove that.” Sen sighed, resting her head on one hand. “It’s not a tangible thing.”
“But we know ghosts exist.” I piped up, brain swimming in the warm fuzzy feeling that alcohol gives after a nice meal. “Ergo so must the soul.”
“I’ve never seen a ghost.” Sen muttered. “Not got one bit of ‘Sight’ or whatever they call it.”
“Good thing you work with zombies then. Can’t discount that, Sight or not.” Chao-Fu knocked back the rest of his drink in one go. “But assuming the soul does exist for the sake of argument and, you know, everything we’ve been working to do for the past five years - if you could pick one particular version of the afterlife, what would it be?”
Sen groaned. “No, okay, I am not done with life yet, I’ve got too much to do and see. I’ll take reincarnation thanks.”
“That kinda doesn’t count as an afterli-”
“How about you, Mei?” Sen ignored Chao-Fu and turned to me instead. “What do you think?”
“Dunno, never thought much about religion.” I said, swirling the contents of my half-empty beer bottle. “Anywhere that’d let me see my parents again would be nice though.” I sipped at the beer. Not really a drinker myself, but I can handle one or two. “And I’d like for you guys to be there so we can hang out and have fun like this all the time.”
“So reincarnate with me.” said Sen. “All the cool and smart people are clearly reincarnating. Afterlife is for wusses.” She leaned forward and clasped my hands, eyes sparkling with glee. “Hey hey, let’s reincarnate as sisters or something so we can hang out forever.”
“I, er, I don’t think that’s how reincarnation works...” I laughed, trying to pull my hands away. “Do we get to pick?”
“We should.” Sen insisted, swaying forward a little. She’d had two more drinks than me and was starting to show it. “Like, if we’ve done something great in life. We should get to pick then.”
“Screw you guys, I’m gonna achieve nirvana.” Chao-Fu slurred slightly. Sen and I shared a look, and burst into laughter.
“You, enlightened?” Sen gasped, smacking her hand on the table. “Oh, no, please, my sides hurt! Mercy!”
I was trying not to tease him too much today, but I couldn’t resist a little jab at him. “Is that what you’re doing when you lock yourself in the break room for hours? Achieving enlightenment instead of working?”
Chao-Fu pouted. “Thanks for the faith and support, guys.”
“Aww, you know we’d love to have you as our reincarnation-brother.” Sen prodded him on the arm with a warm smile. The Thai scientist rolled his eyes.
“Okay, fine, but I’m going to be the big brother this time and you’re all going to look up to me.”
“Let’s hope you’re taller in the next life, then!”
“Hey!”
I don’t really remember much about the rest of the night. We went dancing and somehow found our way back home with our clothes and wallets in tact. Waking up, I found myself in an odd sort of pile on one of the futons in the break room, lying on top of Chao-Fu, with Sen’s head resting on my arm. We were all fully clothed so I didn’t worry about it too much, but I decided not to move until Sen had woken up and stumbled off to get breakfast. I had one hell of a hangover, and as I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror, I knew I was going to have to lock myself in the lab away from everyone else but my similarly hung over friends today. I was used to having only one particular lock of hair that sprung out of my head at an odd angle; today, every single hair had decided to do that.
As I stepped into the lab, I was grateful that Sen was doing an experiment with ultraviolet light. The main lights were off, and only the dim glow of computer monitors and Sen’s ultraviolet light-bulb lit the room.
I sat in my chair for a good half hour before I asked. “What’re you doing.”
“Trying to see if zombie blood looks the same under ultraviolet light as human blood.” Mumbled Sen, turning the lightbulb at an angle.
“Why?”
“For science.”
“Oh.” Basically, that meant that she was just messing around to occupy her time while her brain recovered. Sen, unlike Chao-Fu, didn’t like lazing around in bed all the time. She liked to have something to do, or she’d go stir crazy. I would personally go either way, but got the feeling that if I went back to bed, it would be then that Chun Hei or someone similar would burst in uninvited and wake me up anyway.
After five hours of surfing the internet looking at zombie apocalypse survival guides, I wandered out of the lab in search of food. On my way past the break room, I looked inside to wake Chao-Fu up.
He was sitting up on the futon, legs crossed in the lotus position, in little more than his boxers. I squeaked and closed the door.
“Mei? Is that you?”
“S-sorry!” I half-whispered through the door. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were actually meditating!”
“It’s okay. What time is it?”
“It’s about six in the evening…”
There was the sound of rustling fabric. “One sec, lemme get some clothes on.” He called, and opened the door a minute later, glasses and shirt back in place. “There, sorry about that.”
“No, no I should have knocked!” I could feel the blush rising in my cheeks. He’d been practically naked. If he’d walked in on me in that state of undress, I’d have slapped him!
“Hey, are you alright? You’ve gone all red.” He felt my forehead. “You didn’t eat anything bad last night did you?”
I jumped back. “No, I’m fine, I’m just- er- just going to go get food now!”
Chao-Fu blinked. “Well okay then, I’ll come with you-”
“I think Sen needs some help in the lab!” It was a really, really stupid excuse, one that he would probably see though. “I’ll bring some food down to you, okay? Bye!” And then I ran.
---
Stupid, stupid, stupid! No no no, I couldn’t be crushing on a coworker, especially not one who’s such a good friend to me. Why did I just run off like that, what was I, a schoolgirl in some stupid highschool shoujo anime? And I couldn’t even even tell Sen, because she’d definitely tell Chao-Fu and…
“What a mess.”
I wanted to agree with whoever said that, before I realised I was alone in the hallway. Stopping in my tracks, I noticed where I’d wandered past. Just behind me was Takahito’s office door, left slightly ajar once again. And once again, there was a strange light coming from inside. It was a different colour from before, soft greens and blues. Gentle. And it was somehow familiar as well, though I’d certainly never been in Takahito’s office.
I peered through the crack. All over the floor, the glowing substance spread out like liquid. From what I remembered ectoplasm was more like a sticky, gluey substance, where as this was more like water in how it flowed down what I assumed was a drain, the dark hole in the middle of the floor. In the glow of the mysterious liquid I could see the office was less of an office and more of a lab. An operating theatre of the experimental variety. There were test tubes full of different colours of light. Some of them seemed to be dimming to grey. They had timers next to them. An experiment on the mystery liquid?
All the green-blue light suddenly vanished from the room, and I heard someone gasp. The liquid on the ground turned grey and dark, stopped giving off light.
“What is this- already?!”
Scrambling sounds, searching for equipment. It was the most emotion I’d ever heard in Takahito’s soft voice. He was panicking.
“Got to save what I can…”
The experiment had taken an anomalous turn. I couldn’t look away. What would happen next?
“Ahh… safe.” Takahito sighed in relief. I understood the worry of having lost everything you’d worked for. Every scientist knows the frustration of an experiment gone wrong. “Almost lost it. But this should fit.”
Fit what? His charts? His predicted results? I wanted to ask, but felt like I was looking at something I shouldn’t. But rather than turning away, I nudged the door, just slightly. The hinges were silent, moving barely an inch. But an inch provided a lot more to see by.
An inch brought into view Takahito, picking up a large glass jar with a glowing organ suspended inside, the same colour as that of the liquid on the floor.
An inch revealed an operating table, surrounded by instruments.
An inch showed me who was on it.
---
I stopped running when I got to the ocean. The China Sea lapped at my feet, and I collapsed onto the pebbly beach. I couldn’t breathe. Either I’d run too fast or my lungs had decided that living wasn’t for me any more. I couldn’t process what I’d seen.
What had I seen?
What was that, that experiment? A hallucination? Was I insane? Because that liquid - I hesitated to call it blood - and that organ, it had come from a person. A person who had been living.
A person who was now dead.
More than just a person.
Sen.
What could I do? What should I do? I had to warn them. I’d seen another organ - before, the one that glowed orange and red and pink - that was another victim. And there would be more victims, possibly had been before.
Accidents. The Research Department had a lot of accidents. But some of these accidents were fatal, and some of them weren’t accidents at all.
Amil. Supposedly swallowed by his own plant. It wouldn’t take much to feed an already dead body to something that vicious. My parents, their bodies ripped to pieces so we only found bits of them to bury. What better way to dispose of evidence.
I couldn’t imagine what he would do to Sen’s body.
“I think you’ll find, Chun Hei-san, that I know much more about the workings of the soul than you.”
No, maybe I shouldn’t be so worried about her body.
What was Takahito going to do to her soul?
---
I avoided the Research Department, skirting around the entrance and trying to make it to Yong Soo’s office without bumping into anyone I knew. If I opened my mouth even once, the whole story would spill forth, this terrifying revelation of what Takahito was doing behind everyone’s backs, what he was covering up so effectively.
Someone grabbed my wrist, and I screamed.
“Shh!!” and another hand covered my mouth, pulling me into a small side hallway. The person holding me was strong, but I kicked out and tried to escape. “Xiao, will you settle down?!”
I suddenly recognised the voice. “Hmmpn hmmph?”
“Yes, it’s me.” Chun Hei whispered in my ear. “Were you heading to my brother’s office?” When I nodded mutely, she made an annoyed click with her tongue. “Stay out of there, Takahito’s inside.” My heart stopped and restarted. That was so close. I couldn’t imagine facing him. “He’s reporting an accident. I assume the reason you’re so tense is because you know what really happened.”
Finally, the tears that I’d been missing burst forth, and my legs lost their strength again. Chun Hei sat down on the floor with me as I sobbed out what I’d seen. She listened in silence as I explained the liquid, the organ, Takahito’s interest in souls, the string of accidents that plagued the Research Department. Once I got to Sen’s body, she put an arm around my shoulders. I got the feeling she wasn’t used to comforting people, the way she was awkwardly patting my arm.
“He’s a monster.” I cried, burying my face in my hands.
“No,” Chun Hei replied, voice low and simmering with anger. “he’s human, and that’s what makes it worse. A monster, you’d expect this from. As a human, he’s just a sick and twisted bastard.”
I sniffed and tried to pull myself together. “What can we do though? He’s holding something over your brother.”
The Deputy’s lips thinned. “Yes. I only wish I knew what so I could choke it out of him.”
“You don’t know?” that was surprising. Chun Hei seemed to know everything to do with her brother, sometimes more than he did.
But still she shook her head. “Yong Soo won’t say, he just brushes me off or tells me it’s fine, he can handle it.” Her eyes narrowed. “But this is too far. Takahito’s been allowed to carry on with this for long enough.” She stood, and pulled me up with her. “Come on, I’ll liberate Takahito Shigure’s head from his shoulders myself if I must.”
“Is that alright?” I asked. Even though Chun Hei was a Hunter as well as her brother’s secretary, I was worried for her. God only knew what Takahito could really do.
“Save someone else the job when he goes to hell and becomes a demon.” She strode down the hall, hand on her sword hilt. “Stay behind me.”
I probably couldn’t move out even if I wanted to. My legs were still shaking, as were my hands. We stood in front of the door, and I could hear Takahito speaking in Japanese to Yong Soo, who replied back in a stilted manner that suggested he was either uncomfortable with the topic or with the language. Maybe both. Chun Hei held up her hand, counting a signal.
Three, two, one.
She slammed open the door, and drew her sword with a loud cry. Takahito didn’t even have time to turn around before her sword came swinging at his neck. His head flew off, bouncing on the ground as his body collapsed to the floor in a shower of blood.
At least, that’s what would have happened, if Chun Hei’s sword had not stopped mere millimeters before the scientist’s jugular.
“Wha-” she gasped, entire body frozen but shaking with the effort of trying to move. Behind his desk, Yong Soo put his face in his hands. Takahito slowly turned to look at Chun Hei, an unimpressed expression on his face.
“Once upon a time, you would have killed me with that hit.” His soft tones sounded all the more sinister with how calmly he stood with a blade to his throat. “Not now. What was once your talent is now my talent. Your sword mastery is no longer under your control.”
Chun Hei’s wrist flicked away from his throat, and she went into a complicated series of kata that were beautiful to watch, but from the look on her face, completely out of her control. Her eyes were wide and terrified. She froze stock still in what looked like quite an awkward pose. Takahito walked close to her, until their noses were almost touching.
“I told you before. I know much more about matters of the soul than you.” His eyes, black and empty and like gazing into the abyss, moved over to me. “And I suppose you think I am a demon now. A monster.” How did he always know? It was the most disturbing thing about him. “I’m nothing like that. I’m nothing at all. All I did was perfect a technique people had been searching for years. Just a scientist, like you. Like your parents.” He smiled, wide and bright, and I was struck by how similar it was to my mother. “She had a lovely smile, Xiao Hua. I use it sparingly, lest it run out.” I could hear Chun Hei starting to hyperventilate with effort, trying to inch away. Fear was all that kept me from running. “Your father’s way with words, however, I try to exercise at every opportunity. Such talented people.”
“Stop it, Takahito.” I’d never heard Yong Soo sound so tired, so stressed. “Stop it or-”
Chun Hei switched her grip on her sword, pointing it towards her stomach. Her jaw clenched. Takahito didn’t even look back at the Asia Branch Head. “Or what, Im Yong Soo? You’ll come and kill me? Is it worth losing your sister for a second time?” The sword jabbed closer to her stomach, and Yong Soo leapt up out of his chair.
“No!” it was more a yelp than a shout. “No, stop it. Not again.”
“Yong Soo…” Chun Hei gritted out between clenched teeth. “What’s he talking about.”
“He said he’d bring you back, nuna!” Yong Soo cried desperately. “And he did, you’re here and I’m thankful but-”
“I kept my insurance.” Takahito said in such a careless manner he may as well have been talking about the weather. “Opportunities arise, one must grasp them while they can. Maybe one day I’ll possess your sword talents myself, rather than just your control over them.” His eyes slid over to Yong Soo. “I’d have to kill her for that.”
He was looking away for long enough that I could inch over and grab a small letter knife. Now for the timing. I’d never killed a person before, or even wielded a knife as a weapon. There’d never been the need. But now, with anger and hate burning in my chest at what he had done, what he continued to do, I could do it. I would end this.
“Takahito, we can fix this.” Yong Soo tried to reason, raising his hands. “Don’t hurt anyone.”
“How can you bargain with this bastard, Yong Soo?!” Chun Hei hissed at her twin. “I’ll live through a stab wound, damn it, just kill this guy!”
“I don’t want you hurt again!” the younger brother shouted. “You don’t even remember what happened to you. You were dead, nuna, dead! I ran with you bleeding out in my arms. And after he brought you back, I made sure we took desk jobs so high up we wouldn’t have to go fight any more-”
“And instead we’d live here, manipulated and living in fear of this little shit? Pandering to him even if he’s a murdering psychopath?”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“And I’ve been spending this whole time trying to protect you!”
Takahito watched the siblings argue with a detached sort of interest. With his eyes away from me, I saw my chance.
My knife collided with steel, Chun Hei’s blade parrying my strike. “A nice attempt, Xiao Mei.” Takahito turned back towards me. He’d never taken his attention off me at all. “You’re very persistent. Very curious. I like it. Perhaps I should take it from you.”
I tried again, but though my stab went lower, it was blocked once more, sparks flying where the blades clashed.
“Stop it, Xiao!” Chun Hei pushed my blade back. “If you try again my parry will end up in a killing blow. Just stay still.”
“She makes an excellent point. Stay exactly as you are.” He walked around us towards the door. “I’m going to my lab. Once I’ve cleaned off the table, I expect to see you down there, Xiao Mei.” He closed the office door behind him.
Silence, heavy and poisonous like smog, settled.
“Drop the sword, nuna.” Yong Soo sat down heavily in his chair.
“Why, so you can pretend this didn’t happen?” Chun Hei snapped at him.
“He only controls your sword abilities. Drop the sword, he loses control.”
His sister blinked at him, and then with apparently great effort, released the sword, letting it clatter to the ground. Her breath left her in a sigh of pent up tension. I too dropped my knife, and stumbled back until I hit the wall. The silent tension returned.
“Why couldn’t I do that earlier… I was trying…” Chun Hei was starting at her hand. Yong Soo shrugged a shoulder.
“Maybe his power’s stronger when he’s closer. He’s got a little bit of your soul inside him, so-”
“Inside?” the older twin reeled back, repulsed. “He puts them inside?!”
“I guess that’s why they look like organs…” I murmured, curling up into a ball and hoping I’d wake up from this nightmare. “Sen… and my parents too…” My head snapped up as a horrifying realization came to me. “Chao-Fu!”
“Bless you.” Said Yong Soo.
“No, Chao-Fu, he’s still in the labs!” I scrambled to my feet. “God knows what Takahito will do if he finds him! I have to go!”
“Xiao Mei!” I could hear Chun Hei calling after me, but after fighting Takahito’s control she was too exhausted to run after me. I was moving faster than I’d ever gone before, adrenaline fueling my legs. I jumped down most of the stairs to the Labs, and barged my way into Lab 5 only to find it empty. Spinning on my heel, I ran to the break room, but that was empty too. No, no, no, where was he?
I ran past Takahito’s office, and skidded to a stop before doubling back. I’d never seen the room lit up with so much light, so many bright colours. My throat tightened. Without hesitation, I kicked the door open fully. Takahito would not get the last thing I had left!
Chao-Fu stared at me. “… Mei? You’re alright?”
He was covered in bright liquid. The blood of a soul, of a hundred souls. It was all over the floor, multi-coloured drops from all over the spectrum. It lit up the whole room, made it almost painful to look at.
“Chao-Fu…” I breathed, blinking tears out of my eyes. “What is…”
“I figured it out.” Chao-Fu sounded just as stunned as she did. “Why Amil died when he was always so careful. Where Sen vanished to. How such intelligent people as your parents were so easily killed by their own subjects.” I noticed that under the liquid he was wearing scrubs, and in his hand was a small scalpel, bright silver in the dark. “It was him. Him all along.”
“He stole the bits of their souls he wanted.” I added, bringing our total information together. “He was always so jealous of everyone else, so empty. He broke them and took the pieces to create something that shouldn’t be.”
“I don’t think he even had a soul to begin with.” His gaze shifted to the operating table. “Everything I’ve found is from other people.”
Takahito’s eyes stared straight ahead at the ceiling. He didn’t move, didn’t even twitch. He was either dead, or very heavily sedated. I wouldn’t put it past him to sleep with his eyes open.
“We have to take them out of him.” I said, voice shaking. “We’ve got to set those souls free. Sen’s in there. She wanted to go reincarnate, remember?” It sounded stupid, to talk about such carefree times now, in the middle of all this mess. “… did all this come from him?”
“I destroyed his equipment.” Chao-Fu admitted. “The second he saw, though, he doubled over, and more stuff came out. Then I knew they were in him, so I…” he looked at the tiny knife in his hand with fascination. “It’s like halfway between magic and science, this little thing. To cut open a soul. It doesn’t even harm the body.” He demonstrated, dragging it along the inside of his arm. I reached to stop him, but the blade cut deep. When he removed it, however, there was no wound. “The soul heals quick unless you cut something out of it.”
“Chao-Fu, we have to destroy it.” This time, I was firm. “This isn't something anyone should be able to play around with.”
“But-”
“Xiao Mei!” came Chun Hei’s voice down the hallway. “Are you alive down there?”
“Yes!” I called back.
“Good! Now come here so I can kill you for running off!”
I couldn’t help but smile a little. Takahito was getting his come-uppance, and the souls would be set free. It was going to be okay.
A raspy laugh came from behind. Chao-Fu and I span to face the operating table. Takahito had turned his head towards us, and was smiling.
“Foolish.” He wheezed. “To think it ends here. These souls have nowhere to go. They’re just spare parts.” He closed his eyes. “You can never fully repair a broken mirror, even if you had all the pieces. That blood, from the soul. It will never come back. Once you’ve killed a soul, it’s dead.”
“No…” gasped Chao-Fu. “Then- Amil and Sen-!”
“Gone.” Takahito laughed. “Forever. How sad.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “Indeed, how sad…”
Chao-Fu’s grip on the knife had gone white-knuckled. “You… bastard!” he lunged forward, raising the knife to plunge it into Takahito’s chest.
“Stop!” Yong Soo appeared in the doorway with Chun Hei riding on his back. “Chao-Fu, if you damage Chun Hei’s soul, I will personally have you hunted down as an enemy of the whole organisation, on par with him.” he shot a look at the prone scientist on the table. He shuffled closer to the table, Chao-Fu still frozen in place. “Nuna, which one is yours?”
Chun Hei immediately pointed to a small red, yellow and orange flashing artery, next to the heart-like organ. “That. That’s mine. I can feel it aching.”
Yong Soo nodded, glancing over at the Thai scientist. “Cut it out of him.”
I could see how much restraint it took not to just stab at Takahito’s body, but Chao-Fu’s work was expertly precise. Takahito arched in a silent scream as the soul piece was carefully removed. I didn't feel sorry for him. I couldn’t pity someone like him.
Chun Hei reached out for her soul, and as soon as she touched it, a shock of light filled the room. The piece was gone from Chao-Fu’s hand, but the Deputy head wriggled off her brother’s back, drew her sword, and did several kata on her own, just to prove she could.
“Excellent.” And with a deft move, she cut off Takahito’s head.
---
I knocked on the door.
“Come in!”
The hinges really needed to be oiled; they’d been squeaking like mice for months now. “Got the reports on stages of zombie infection for you.” I said, dumping them on the desk. Chao-Fu looked up at me and smiled. The new Research Department Chief job was shaping up nicely for him, even if it meant he couldn’t slack off any more. He’d really become a hard worker recently. I was proud of him.
“Thanks Mei. You couldn’t run in to the city and grab me some of those noodles from that one corner shop, could you?” he pleaded. I rolled my eyes and grinned.
“As long as you finish your paperwork.”
“Yes mother.” He sniggered, handing me a file. “Run this past Chun Hei’s desk while you’re at it. I know Yong Soo will never read it, so better to give it to someone who will.”
“You’re the boss.” I gave a mock salute and made my way out. Something blue-green caught my eye for a second, and I looked back. Nothing there but an empty office book case.
“You okay?” Chao-Fu asked, chewing on his pen.
“Mm, yeah, fine.”
Trick of the light.
Notes:
- Oh my god this is like 10,000 words on its own and about 20 pages long. What am I doing.
- For best results, consume with this. It was this video that originally inspired me, and is from which I take the title of this not so little fic.
- Help for who characters are in relation to Hetalia: Chao-Fu is Thailand, Sen is Vietnam, Xiao Mei is Taiwan, Amil is Tibet, Yong Soo is South Korea and Chun Hei is North Korea. Originally, Takahito was just the kid from the above video, but now he's kind of morphed into an imperial or black!Japan sort of character. Just trivia: Takahito is written with the characters "hawk" and "person". I find hawks to be kinda intimidating and threatening even when sometimes they're not very big.
- Plz don't hate me. >3>