The Company (1/?)
Title: The Company
Pairing: Miyavi/Kai, Reita/Ruki (more to come)
Genre: Drama, Romance
Disclaimer: disclaimed.
Summary: There are pretenders among us, geniuses with the ability to become anyone they want to be. In 1985 PS Company isolated a group of young pretenders; exploited the pretenders for their research and profited from their genius until, one day, a pretender ran away.
The premise is shamelessly adopted from The Pretender, but you don't need to be familiar with that fandom to read this.
Many thanks to conser for the hand-holding and beta-reading.
::::
PSC Log #672331
02:37 JST (2008-12-03)
The moon was in hiding. The floodlights, which usually banished any hint of shadow from the grounds, were dark, having blown a fuse in a storm the night before. A heavy blanket of fog smothered any light that might have seeped over from the mainland.
Miyavi didn't know what had made him start running. He’d been staring into the darkness, feeling the humidity cling to his clothes and straining to hear the rhythmic slap of tide on rock; he remembered taking a deep breath, turning to go back inside and begin his next shift, but the next thing he knew he’d found himself sprinting barefoot across the gravel plain, reason and destination unknown.
Go, a voice inside him hissed. Don’t hesitate.
The security system engaged the second he reached the first fence and a cacophony of yips and howls started up in the background immediately after, but Miyavi wasn’t worried. He’d been in charge of that assessment. There was no point in having dogs on an island compound like PS Company’s - hidden speakers broadcasting an altered pitch to manipulate adrenaline levels and distract intruders was more than sufficient.
He was halfway up the fence when the barking grew louder, and was quickly accompanied by low snarls and the frantic scrabble of claws over stone. Miyavi swore fervently, then had to hold his breath while he negotiated his way through a coil of razor wire. Real dogs meant someone had ignored his report - or they’d expected him to run. Miyavi muttered another curse under his breath and jumped to the ground; either way, if he had at least two hundred pounds’ worth of gnashing teeth and muscle hot on his scent, he wasn’t going to stick around to find out why.
The second fence was cheap chain link, widely spaced and sharp with salt blown in from the sea. Scaling it too fast ran the risk of putting his foot through the links and wrenching his ankle - slowing him down just enough for the dogs to catch up and dismember him. He leaped at the fence in stride and used the momentum to haul himself up and over. His knuckles twisted and popped with the effort but the pain barely registered - he could snap them back into place when it was over. If he made it.
The gravel on the other side of the fence was slick, shifting out from under him when he landed. He stumbled twice before scrambling to his feet and bolting towards the cliff. He couldn't see the edge -- the fog was thicker near the water -- but the rocks beneath his feet were getting wetter and he could feel the mist from the tide clinging to his skin. He hit the edge out of stride, pitching over the edge with only a split second to swallow a great gulp of air before he crashed headfirst into the sea.
::
The worst thing about unscheduled morning meetings, Kai decided, was that coffee rations were always withheld until after the meetings were over. Handlers banging on his door, hauling him out of bed two hours early without telling him why; sticking him in a cold, damp room with harsh fluorescent lighting and leaving him there - that was annoying. Adding caffeine withdrawal on top of everything was unspeakable.
Kai groaned and pillowed his head in his arms, willing his muscles to relax. He knew the best way to deal with the Company was to keep breathing and conserve his energy but there was a different tension in the air that morning, making it a struggle to control the trickle of anxiety pooling in his gut. Across from him, Reita was equally agitated, biting his lips and fidgeting with the strap of fabric tied across his cheekbones while he glanced nervously at the door every eight seconds.
Aoi stumbled into the meeting room a few minutes later, scratching his stomach and glaring at the world in a way that meant he wouldn’t be capable of civil conversation for quite some time. Uruha, conversely, practically vibrated with contained energy. He joined them with bright eyes and a tiny grin, and after diving into his seat he continued to move, tapping a rhythm against his thighs with his hands. Kai glanced between them. Aoi and Uruha seemed so normal that for a moment Kai might have thought the heavy atmosphere was something he’d created in his mind, if not for the way their arrival seemed to drive Reita further within himself.
“What’s going on?” Uruha asked in a low voice, giving Reita a curious onceover.
Reita kept his eyes on the door. “Someone ran away.”
Uruha snorted. “No, really.”
Reita’s right shoulder jerked a half-shrug, then settled back into the tense tableau.
“Who?” Uruha finally asked. He had stopped tapping.
“Dunno. The handlers started making noise a few hours ago. Didn’t catch a name.”
Aoi shifted nervously and suddenly looked much more alert. “There’s no way,” he said. He didn't sound convinced.
“The floodlights are still offline,” Uruha hedged. “New moon last night, plenty of cloud cover.”
Kai felt his throat constrict. “We’re eight kilometers from shore,” he said.
“Whirlpools,” Aoi added.
Five minutes later they were still the only people in the room. Kai licked his lips. “Probably just a new job. Maybe another joint project,” he muttered. No one pointed out that there had never been a project that required a briefing at four in the morning. The four of them fell silent and pointedly ignored the two empty chairs at the end of the table.
Aoi opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by a sharp thump just outside the door and a litany of muffled curses. Ruki shuffled over the threshold a beat later, looking more than half asleep.
“S’going on?” he asked, covering his mouth around a yawn and collapsing into his seat beside Reita. He straightened a little when no one answered him. “What?” he repeated, wary under the weight of their stares.
Aoi, with his mouth still half open, recovered first. “Nothing. Reita’s an asshole.” He ran his hands through his hair and sighed. Kai felt himself relax, some of the tension leaving the room as Uruha and Reita visibly relaxed as well.
Ruki stifled another yawn. “Glad they woke us up early for that startling revelation,” he said, nudging Reita’s leg with his foot. Reita blinked and turned to Ruki but his reply was cut short by the arrival of their chief handler.
Yamada bustled into the room with cup of coffee, a sheaf of papers, a medium-sized cardboard box tucked under his left arm, and an air of distinct panic hanging over him like a thundercloud. His appearance was neat as always but the tightness around his eyes and mouth meant made Kai suspect Yamada hadn’t slept more than an hour or two.
Saying nothing, Yamada dropped the box and papers in front of him on the table and looked at each of them in turn while smiling tightly. He didn’t sit, rather he seemed to pace on the spot, still staring, and either not noticing or ignoring the way his audience focused mainly on the coffee in front of him. Kai felt a chill go up his spine.
“We’ve got a busy day planned for all of you,” Yamada began, “so I’ll try to keep this brief. First, there’s going to be a change to your wardrobes.”
“Don’t tell me. I finally get to wear real pants,” Uruha deadpanned.
Yamada’s smile faltered. “Not quite.” He opened the box in front of him, withdrawing a thin black strap with a plastic tag embedded in the middle. “Effective immediately, you’ll all be wearing one of these. At all times.” He tossed the strap in his hand to centre of the table then upended the box. Four more straps tumbled the table with a clunk.
Aoi blinked. “Are those-“
“GPS bracelets. For security - to keep you safe,” Yamada amended quickly. His voice shook slightly and Kai revised his earlier assessment: Yamada probably hadn’t slept at all. “Come on, socks off, put them on. I’ll have someone make check you’ve managed to fasten them properly before you eat breakfast.”
Uruha and Aoi shared a mutinous look before reaching to the center of the table to grab one of the bracelets. Reita licked his lips nervously, then reluctantly leaned forward and took one as well.
Ruki looked stunned - though Kai wasn’t sure whether that was because he was surprised by Yamada’s order or still just not fully awake - and startled when Kai elbowed him and dropped a tracker in Ruki’s lap. “Why?” Ruki asked, looking like he’d swallowed a rotten egg.
Yamada continued as though Ruki hadn’t spoken. “This brings me to the second order of business.” He moved the empty box to the floor and separated the papers into two piles before sliding them to the other end of the table “As of this morning Ruki and Kai are both being assigned to a retrieval unit. We need you to prepare an analysis and locate an essential asset as quickly as possible. You have,” he checked his watch, “a little over two hours to prepare. I suggest you start with the documents in front of you.”
Ruki grumbled under his breath but dutifully began scanning the pages in front of him. Kai watched with growing unease, the issue of trackers forgotten, as Ruki’s posture grew more tense with every paragraph; at the end of the first page and Ruki glanced up and met Kai’s eyes, expression grim, before continuing to read. At the other end of the table, Reita, Aoi and Uruha were furtively conversing with tiny hand signals while they fastened their trackers.
Yamada cleared his throat. “We seem to be having some issues with compliance this morning,” he said, giving Kai a pointed look.
Mechanically, Kai reached out and opened the booklet closest to him. He skimmed the first paragraph without comprehension, struggling to reign in the exhaustion and apprehension that kept tweaking his mind in opposite directions. Making matters worse, he hadn’t been given time to grab his glasses before the meeting and had to squint to make out the words - words which, Kai realized, were definitely not common among PSC management. He licked his lips and read on with growing dread.
Security breach.
Misplaced asset.
Objective and whereabouts unknown. Possible leak.
Threat assessment.
Immediate retrieval required.
The cold fear that had been roiling in his gut spread throughout his body. Kai turned the document over as soon as he finished reading and cleared his throat, only to realize he had absolutely no idea what to say. A quick glance around the table showed that Ruki had already signaled the others, who looked as nearly shocked as Kai felt.
“So Miyavi’s gone,” Ruki said finally. “You couldn’t have just said that and spared us the ‘essential asset’ bullshit?”
“Although the situation is somewhat unique there was no reason not to follow standard protocol - previous relationship to the asset or no.”
Kai swallowed thickly, tasting bile.
“Helicopter leaves at seven, boys - and we’ll be checking those trackers before you leave.” On that note, Yamada swept the papers into the empty box and headed for the door.
“What about us?” Aoi called out.
“Behave.”
They sat in stunned silence, listening to the fading scrip-scrape of Yamada’s loafers as he scurried down the hall. No one moved.
After a long moment Kai sighed quietly and pushed back from the table. “I’ll see you at breakfast,” he told the others, just managing to keep the quaver out of his voice.
::
Miyavi woke to find himself facedown in a tide pool, with a spry old man in orange hip waders jabbing a piece of driftwood into his kidney.
“Roll over, son, I need to make sure you’re alive.”
Miyavi spat out a lump of kelp and squinted up at the man. “Alive?” he croaked. Looking up, he could see the fisherman’s kind smile, and beyond that a smallish boat that was at least two decades past its prime. A quick glance over his shoulder showed him the beginnings of dawn on the horizon - tiny rays glinting off the sea and skirting the island that was -
The island.
Miyavi scrambled to his knees. “I have to go.”
“Late for work, huh? Drinking does that. You young people sure are lightweights.” As he spoke the fisherman had wrapped his callused hands around Miyavi’s elbows and started leading him towards the docks. “And look at you, you’re a mess. Looks like you went up against a potato peeler and lost.”
“I have to go,” Miyavi repeated. “Now.”
“Yes, yes, you silly fish, shut up and come with me. We’ll get you cleaned up and you’ll be on your way.”
Ten minutes later Miyavi had a pair of faded orange coveralls pulled over his ruined clothes and a pair of battered leather work boots strapped around his feet. The coveralls were too wide and short enough that Miyavi’s ankles and a good portion of his calves were left exposed; and the shoes pinched his already battered toes but, Miyavi knew, were better than nothing. The fisherman had also offered him piping hot tea, which Miyavi gratefully accepted, and a portion of his lunch, which Miyavi had declined. Heavy food would only make him drowsy. Miyavi had things to do, and he wouldn’t be able to sleep safely until there were many more miles separating him from PSC.
“Thank you so much,” he said. “Really. I-“
“You’re late for work is what you are, so why are you standing here blubbering?”
Miyavi nodded, smiling as he looked down at himself. “Thank you.”
::
The five of them (six, as Miyavi was there just as often as not) had eaten breakfast together nearly every day since they’d been granted the privilege - one of the first allowances granted to them as a group. They’d spent time together before that but their group hadn’t really been cemented until Aoi and Uruha had outgrown their game of one-upmanship in who could pull off the most daring, but invariably aborted, escape attempts. (This pastime being one of many which had ensured that Aoi and Uruha had both spent much of their childhood confined to their rooms.)
There was no set location for their meetings - whoever was awake first and free to move about would choose a spot and wait for the others to trickle in by way of their curious group attunement. They had an unspoken rule that at least four days a week were to be spent in an area close to a security camera or microphone so as not to arouse suspicion from their PSC handlers; it had taken them six months to map out the areas which were truly private.
Kai had chosen a spot where he could hyperventilate in peace - the gravel courtyard, near the helicopter pad, halfway between the door and the first fence. He spent several minutes with his head between his knees until the panic melted into a state of mild shock. His muscles felt tired but tense, his mind seemed to be in a sort of mid-lurch stasis. There was nothing to do but sit and search his memory for signs of what Miyavi had been planning.
He sat for the better part of an hour, until the wind coming off the sea had numbed his skin and he was so cold his eyes were watering. He couldn’t think of a thing.
Uruha was the first to arrive, jerking him out of his thoughts by dropping an armful of pudding cups right into Kai’s lap. He didn’t say anything, just handed Kai a spoon and plunked down beside him on the ground. Reita and Ruki showed up next with a thermos filled with coffee and a quarter-loaf of bread.
Kai ate his bread and stacked his share of the pudding into the same pyramid he always did - opened the top cup halfway and slurped at his spoon just as he had the day before - and if he noticed the others pressing closer around him than they normally did, Kai didn’t mention it.
The crunch of gravel beneath Aoi’s boots announced his approach. “You think it’s a test?” he asked quietly after taking his seat, completing the circle.
Uruha shrugged. “Ankle bracelets are real. Mine’s chafing like a sonofabitch.” He lifted his pant leg to show them the raw skin and blisters starting to peek out from under the edges of the band. Aoi snorted and muttered something about prima donnas, snickering when Uruha whacked him on the shoulder.
“I don’t think it’s a test,” Reita mused around his spoon, most of his attention focused on the hallowed butterscotch he’d managed to steal from Ruki. “I checked his room. Someone tore it apart but it feels wrong for a simulation - and you know how much Miyavi hates those. He’d have found a way to tell us about it ahead of time just to get his part over with sooner.”
“Would’ve thought he’d tell us if he found a way out, too,” Ruki said.
Aoi crossed his arms over his chest, a sneer twisting his features. “So, what, Miyavi’s just gone, then? He just ran away and left us to-“ He broke off after Uruha jammed his elbow into Aoi’s side. Aoi glared at him. Uruha glared back, lifting his chin slightly. After a moment Aoi’s eyes widened and he turned to Kai. “Sorry,” he coughed.
Kai shook his head and smiled back at them, feeling like he was recovering from a punch to the gut and hoping it didn’t show. It probably did. His face felt rigid. After a moment of pretending not to notice the way the others were staring at him he cleared throat. “What about the ankle bracelets?” he asked.
“Trackers. Figures we spent most of our adolescence working for privileges and mapping the security cameras only to have them pull something like this,” Aoi grumbled.
“No listening devices,” Uruha continued, “so the perverts among us can still jerk off in relative peace.” He shot a pointed look at Aoi. “Going outside a certain radius sets off an alarm unless you access the tracker remotely. Looks like it has mild shock capability, too, probably triggered the same way.”
“How mild?” Ruki asked, pursing his lips.
Uruha shrugged. “I didn’t feel like setting it off to find out for certain since the only device I had available was connected to my leg. Besides, it’s not like I could just go up and ask for a voltmeter when I’m supposed to be counterfeiting wine.”
“Counterfeiting wine,” Reita repeated flatly.
“It’s even less exciting than it sounds,” Uruha groaned. “I’ve spent the last three weeks with a microscope and they’re not going to let me quit until I’ve created a 1787 Château Margaux in a petri dish. The only upside is I get to drink the prototypes.”
“So that’s why you were so chipper this morning.” Aoi shot a quick glance over his shoulder, then stole a cigarette from Reita and leaned closer to the others, making a show of asking for a light. “There’s a code to unlock them manually. Cutting through the strap would also trigger the alarm,” he muttered. “So shutting them off would be simple but less subtle than Uruha in a miniskirt. I can look into an override, but it’ll take some time to get our hands on the tools needed to trick them into thinking the shackles are somewhere we’re not.”
Uruha gave Kai a sympathetic look. “Hopefully that won’t be necessary. Maybe he’ll get bored and come back home.”
“Wagging his tail behind him?” Kai crushed his empty pudding cup between his hands and stuffed it in his pocket. “Not likely,” he said, shaking his head.
Twenty yards away, one of the handlers had turned on the helicopter’s ignition. Kai could see the chopper blades starting to accelerate. Yamada stood beneath them, shouting for Ruki and Kai, impatiently waving his arms above his head.
::
“This is bullshit,” Ruki muttered. They were in the middle of the town closest to PSC. What should have been at most a half-hour trip had taken nearly three times that by the time the helicopter had landed on the other side of town and traveled back in by car. The point, the handlers had said, was subtlety. Ruki had been forced to bite his lip bloody to keep from pointing out that two large shiny black Hummers and four men in suits shadowing Ruki and Kai’s every move was the antithesis of inconspicuous. “If he’s so fucking important why the hell didn’t they just send a sweeper team the minute they noticed he was gone?”
Kai had been silent the entire ride over and only offered a noncommittal, “Hmm,” to Ruki’s quiet ranting.
Ruki continued undeterred. “What the fuck do they expect us to do? He’s got a seven-hour head start. We’ve got nothing - no computers, no trackers. Granted, he doesn’t have any form of ID or money but he’s a Pretender. He could be hiding out in Tokyo or halfway to Okinawa by now.”
“Miyavi’s good at shocking people,” Kai said. “And you heard what Yamada said about us behaving. There’s no way they’re going to give us access to any tech we could feasibly use against them less than twenty-four hours after another pretender disappeared.” He glanced at Ruki sidelong. “I thought you’d be taking advantage of the holiday.”
Ruki grinned without humour. “Pretty sure holidays don’t usually include a handler in your face at four in the morning. Looks like they’re done alphabetizing codenames or whatever the fuck they’re doing, let’s go,” he said, flicking his cigarette into the gutter.
In spite of what Yamada had told them during the briefing, Ruki and Kai’s suggested plans of action had been soundly ignored. The handlers escorting them had laid out a set of instructions as soon as they’d reached shore. Two handlers would bring Ruki to the police station where he would look - but say and touch nothing - while they tried to convince the officers to register a report of a missing psychiatric patient named Miyavi. Afterwards, Ruki would tell the handlers whether or not he thought the police were corruptible to the handler’s will. Kai, having been dubbed the responsible one, would wander around with one only guard and question anyone who might’ve seen Miyavi. The last handler would stay with the cars presumably catching up on the crosswords.
Other than that Kai and Ruki’s job seemed to be - well, Kai wasn’t sure why they’d been called in. Standing around conversing with strangers definitely wasn’t what PSC typically considered “efficient use of Pretender resources.” The general chaos of the day suggested that Miyavi’s escape had triggered some sort or power play amongst the staff but Kai wasn’t in a position to do anything more than duck and cover.
Kai tried not to fidget while Hagiwara, the handler assigned to him, issued reminders of unnamed-but-dire consequences should he “get any ideas.” The vague threats weren’t able to completely kill the anxious, almost-giddy feeling in his chest. He’d only been out in public a handful of times in his life, and none of those times had been when the sun was shining.
He spent the next half hour poking in and out of shops, Hagiwara following close behind while Kai asked employees and the occasional passerby if they’d seen anyone matching Miyavi’s description. The results were pretty much what he’d expected. No one had seen him, but there were plenty of old women who cooed over his dimple before elbowing him out of the way for cheap daikon.
To Kai’s surprise, they got lucky on the twelfth shop, where the young assistant hesitated a split second too long for Kai to believe she hadn’t seen anything.
“Are you sure you didn’t see him?” Hagiwara pressed.
“He’s about this tall,” Kai added, raising one hand over his own head, “with sort of mid-length hair. Choppy.”
“Lots of guys like that around here.” Her responses were layered with the curious mix of disinterested hostility Kai now recognized as inherent in teenagers. “You related?” she asked, flicking her gaze from Kai to Hagiwara.
Kai fleetingly wondered if the police would ask Ruki the same question. If so, he regretted that he wouldn’t be there to see the sour expression such a question would put on Ruki’s face. “No, he’s my employer. Miyavi is a - colleague.”
“Huh.” The girl looked at him for a moment, then shook her head and started sweeping again. “Didn’t see anybody.”
“He do something?” Kai looked past the girl to see a man looming behind the counter. He wore the same apron and eyebrows as the assistant but his glare showed many more years of polish. When Kai didn’t answer immediately the man frowned harder. “Your guy, what’d he do?” he repeated, crossing his arms over his chest. Kai caught a glimpse of what looked like a prison tattoo on the inside of the man’s wrist.
Kai shook his head and put on his best completely-harmless-and-not-worth-beating expression. “Nothing,” he said. “He didn’t do anything, I’m just worried. It’s not like him to go running off in the middle of the night like that, and he doesn’t know the area very well.”
The man looked Kai up and down, ignoring the handler entirely, and thought it over for nearly thirty seconds. Finally swiped at his nose with the back of his hand and headed back to the kitchen. “Try Takeda, down at the docks,” he called over his shoulder. “I think he talked to your guy.”
::
Takeda turned out to be a fisherman who possessed a frightening amount of strength for a man of seventy-two. He also gossiped like a thirteen year-old girl, which only served to further unnerve Kai. “Oh, sure!” he exclaimed. “Pale guy, dark hair, real skinny, about this tall?” He mimed a line about six inches above his own head and didn’t wait for Kai to reply before continuing, “Yeah, scraped him off the rocks this morning. Soaked right through, shirt torn, no shoes, he looked pretty awful. You young guys really can’t hold your drink, huh?”
Kai rubbed at the back of his neck and smiled tiredly. “No, sir. Did you happen to see which way he went?”
“I gave him some tea and a spare set of coveralls. Soon as he warmed up he started asking for directions to the nearest auto shop and I told him, I says, that piddly little mom-n-pop up the street is the only auto shop, and off he went. I gotta say though, your friend seemed a little disoriented. Twitchy too,” Takeda mused, frowning thoughtfully. “Better get to him soon.”
Kai nodded his thanks and started back up the dock while Hagiwara radioed Ruki’s team with the news.
::
Ruki came back autoshop fifteen minutes later with a tube of hand sanitizer clenched between his teeth, using both hands to slather layers of gel up past his elbows and around his neck. He scowled when he caught Kai smiling at him.
“What, the shop wasn’t up to your standards?”
“Shut up,” Ruki muttered. “You owe me. Big time. Fuck, I’m never going to get the grease off these shoes. Leather soles, you know?” He made a small tsk-ing noise and sighed before continuing. “Anyway. Country and Bumpkin back there told me he showed up about six o'clock and fixed five cars in an hour before taking off on a scooter - some rusted piece of shit the owner said he could have it if he could get it to start. He was on the road thirty seconds later. Now, Bumpkin would bet his mother’s life Miyavi headed north but Country thought he’d said something about-“
“Osaka.”
Ruki’s mouth snapped shut and he glanced over to see if any of the handlers had overheard. “Lucky guess, I’m sure,” he said bemusedly.
“Something like that. Anything else?”
“Nah. They couldn’t decide whether they wanted to hit him for making them look bad or blow him for doing their heavy lifting. Anyway, the whole place is a visual shrine to VW Beetles and Escalades so it’s not like they’ve got spare brain cells to be taking notes on strange drifters anyway. “
Kai laughed. “Snob,” he said, shaking his head and smiling fondly despite the helpless feeling that was settling into his bones.
“What?” Ruki asked. “It’s true.”
::
That the coveralls were both phenomenally ill fitting and a cataract-causing shade of orange had been a surprising boon to Miyavi. He’d stopped at a gas station at the edge of the third town he’d passed and, with a few expansive gestures and some lively conversation as he paid for his gas (with change straight from the shopkeeper’s own wallet), the shopkeeper never noticed that Miyavi had slipped two t-shirts and a pack of underwear into his pockets before leaving. After that it had been a simple matter of changing his clothes and hiding the ancient scooter behind a copse trees at the side of the road.
He’d taken off in the first car he found unlocked.
The sedan he’d ended up with was blooby and beige - boring, but not something anyone would look twice at for the short time Miyavi would have it in his possession. Plus, it had a sunroof, which Miyavi had always thought looked cool.
In practice, he discovered, a sunroof was pretty fucking amazing. With all the years he’d spent at PSC Miyavi was used to breathing recycled air and he’d never been in anything fast enough to make the wind press ripples into his skin. He had never felt more alive and engaged than at that moment, driving in the early afternoon on a sunny day with the windows down and the sunroof wide open. When the roar of the wind became monotonous he started fiddling with the radio presets. The small wonder of hearing the voice of someone he’d never met coming through the speakers, telling him about places he’d never been and not asking a single thing in return, was electric.
Feeling refreshed, he pulled off the highway and ditched the car in a parking lot an hour outside Osaka. Fragmented formulas and blueprints flitted through his mind, which seemed to be running at warp speed, sharp and clear but too fast for him to catch and individual piece, and his body felt perfectly responsive. Ready for anything.
A passing trucker stopped shortly after Miyavi stuck out his thumb and offered to drop Miyavi at the first library they saw on their way through Osaka. The driver, Haruma, seemed eager for company but was happy to carry the conversation on his own, leaving Miyavi to lose himself in his thoughts as he watched the landscape fly by.
“You seem pretty excited, kid,” Haruma said as they pulled into Osaka proper. “Got a girl waiting for you at the end of the road?”
For a split second Miyavi saw Kai smiling at him in his mind’s eye but when he blinked all he could see were the cars around him and the sky overhead. He shook his head and smiled. “Going to meet my family,” he replied.
::
Kai spoke less on the ride back to the helicopter than he had on the way into town. Finding Miyavi so easily after his brazen escape had been a long shot by any logical standard, now he had to come to terms with the reality. He turned away from the window, pulled his feet up onto the seat and pressed his forehead to his knees, eyes scrunched tight with exhaustion.
"You aren’t angry.” Ruki’s spoke quietly, shifting his gaze away from the window to study Kai; on any other day Kai would’ve been embarrassed at how badly he’d startled. When Kai didn’t reply Ruki licked his lips and continued, “Miyavi. That he left like that." He sounded puzzled.
Kai gave Ruki a sidelong glance. "I’m choosing not to be.”
Ruki narrowed his eyes. “Choosing,” he repeated, after a moment.
Kai sighed and let his head thump back against the headrest. “My reactions are the only thing in my control at this point,” he said, staring blankly at the ceiling. “I can be happy that he's happy, because Miyavi’s my friend and I care about him, or I can be miserable. And he will still be happy without me."
Ruki frowned. "But you're going to help bring him back."
So long as their wellbeing depended on the Company, Kai wanted to say, but he hated seeing his friends unhappy, and Miyavi had never liked being caged. He couldn't say that to Ruki in a van that was very likely being monitored, so Kai chose the simplest answer and said, "Yes, I will."
Ruki gave him a searching look, then shrugged and sat back in his seat. A few minutes later he asked, "If he went to the mountains do you think they’d send us, too?"
Kai smiled. Ruki had always wanted to go to the mountains.
::
PSC Log #37244-c
20:57 JST (2000-05-17)
“The stars are bright tonight,” Reita said.
“Moron. Most of the bright ones are satellites, and most of those are illegal,” Ruki huffed, settling back so that his head was pillowed on Reita’s stomach.
Uruha pursed his lips. “Maybe we made one of them.”
“Not likely,” Aoi said. ”Depends who they sold it to, when and where they launched it.”
“Well, aren’t you just the slickest anchovy in the can.”
“Shut up, Uruha.”
“Make me,” Uruha said. A second later he yelped, twisting away from Aoi’s deviously pointy fingers and nearly crushing Kai in the process. Kai pushed Uruha back towards Aoi, smiling as Uruha’s giggles pierced the twilight.
“I saw her again last night,” Miyavi said, once Aoi had stopped tickling and Uruha had quieted down.
Kai turned his head to the left to meet Miyavi’s gaze. “Saw who?”
“My mother. In a dream. She was wearing purple shirt and her hair was tied back.” Miyavi pressed his back more firmly against the ground and reached up with one hand, fingers spread as if to pluck a star from the sky. “She was smiling at me,” he said.
“No offence, Miyavi, but you had to be-“
“We were in Osaka, I think. She was in the kitchen, baking a cake with three candles on top. I remember.”
Kai felt something tighten in the pit of his stomach. Reita and Ruki had fallen silent as well.
Without looking up from where he was tying Aoi’s shoelaces together, Uruha said, “Earliest thing I remember is one of the handlers saying I could have a toy train so long as I built it myself. No parental units to speak of.”
Aoi tilted his head. “Maybe Sakai-san is your dad,” he said.
Uruha wrinkled his nose and shuddered. “Don’t even joke about that.”
“Relax,” Reita snickered. “You know he can’t be. He’s got a cleft chin.”
Ruki inhaled deeply, puffing his cheeks with air. After a moment he said, “But we had to come from somewhere, right? Everyone has parents.”
“Sure,” Aoi replied, “only yours are a couple of test tubes.”
“That’s funny, I heard one of the handlers went away on vacation and had to scrape you out of a petri dish when he came back,” Ruki retorted, snuggling more tightly against Reita’s side.
Reita’s voice was soft in the darkness. “I don’t remember anything.”
“That’s just genetics anyway,” Kai said, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. “It’s not like they raised us or anything. You guys are all the family I want, anyway.”
Miyavi stared at the sky and said nothing, but squeezed Kai’s hand a little tighter in his.
:: to be continued ::
Pairing: Miyavi/Kai, Reita/Ruki (more to come)
Genre: Drama, Romance
Disclaimer: disclaimed.
Summary: There are pretenders among us, geniuses with the ability to become anyone they want to be. In 1985 PS Company isolated a group of young pretenders; exploited the pretenders for their research and profited from their genius until, one day, a pretender ran away.
The premise is shamelessly adopted from The Pretender, but you don't need to be familiar with that fandom to read this.
Many thanks to conser for the hand-holding and beta-reading.
::::
PSC Log #672331
02:37 JST (2008-12-03)
The moon was in hiding. The floodlights, which usually banished any hint of shadow from the grounds, were dark, having blown a fuse in a storm the night before. A heavy blanket of fog smothered any light that might have seeped over from the mainland.
Miyavi didn't know what had made him start running. He’d been staring into the darkness, feeling the humidity cling to his clothes and straining to hear the rhythmic slap of tide on rock; he remembered taking a deep breath, turning to go back inside and begin his next shift, but the next thing he knew he’d found himself sprinting barefoot across the gravel plain, reason and destination unknown.
Go, a voice inside him hissed. Don’t hesitate.
The security system engaged the second he reached the first fence and a cacophony of yips and howls started up in the background immediately after, but Miyavi wasn’t worried. He’d been in charge of that assessment. There was no point in having dogs on an island compound like PS Company’s - hidden speakers broadcasting an altered pitch to manipulate adrenaline levels and distract intruders was more than sufficient.
He was halfway up the fence when the barking grew louder, and was quickly accompanied by low snarls and the frantic scrabble of claws over stone. Miyavi swore fervently, then had to hold his breath while he negotiated his way through a coil of razor wire. Real dogs meant someone had ignored his report - or they’d expected him to run. Miyavi muttered another curse under his breath and jumped to the ground; either way, if he had at least two hundred pounds’ worth of gnashing teeth and muscle hot on his scent, he wasn’t going to stick around to find out why.
The second fence was cheap chain link, widely spaced and sharp with salt blown in from the sea. Scaling it too fast ran the risk of putting his foot through the links and wrenching his ankle - slowing him down just enough for the dogs to catch up and dismember him. He leaped at the fence in stride and used the momentum to haul himself up and over. His knuckles twisted and popped with the effort but the pain barely registered - he could snap them back into place when it was over. If he made it.
The gravel on the other side of the fence was slick, shifting out from under him when he landed. He stumbled twice before scrambling to his feet and bolting towards the cliff. He couldn't see the edge -- the fog was thicker near the water -- but the rocks beneath his feet were getting wetter and he could feel the mist from the tide clinging to his skin. He hit the edge out of stride, pitching over the edge with only a split second to swallow a great gulp of air before he crashed headfirst into the sea.
::
The worst thing about unscheduled morning meetings, Kai decided, was that coffee rations were always withheld until after the meetings were over. Handlers banging on his door, hauling him out of bed two hours early without telling him why; sticking him in a cold, damp room with harsh fluorescent lighting and leaving him there - that was annoying. Adding caffeine withdrawal on top of everything was unspeakable.
Kai groaned and pillowed his head in his arms, willing his muscles to relax. He knew the best way to deal with the Company was to keep breathing and conserve his energy but there was a different tension in the air that morning, making it a struggle to control the trickle of anxiety pooling in his gut. Across from him, Reita was equally agitated, biting his lips and fidgeting with the strap of fabric tied across his cheekbones while he glanced nervously at the door every eight seconds.
Aoi stumbled into the meeting room a few minutes later, scratching his stomach and glaring at the world in a way that meant he wouldn’t be capable of civil conversation for quite some time. Uruha, conversely, practically vibrated with contained energy. He joined them with bright eyes and a tiny grin, and after diving into his seat he continued to move, tapping a rhythm against his thighs with his hands. Kai glanced between them. Aoi and Uruha seemed so normal that for a moment Kai might have thought the heavy atmosphere was something he’d created in his mind, if not for the way their arrival seemed to drive Reita further within himself.
“What’s going on?” Uruha asked in a low voice, giving Reita a curious onceover.
Reita kept his eyes on the door. “Someone ran away.”
Uruha snorted. “No, really.”
Reita’s right shoulder jerked a half-shrug, then settled back into the tense tableau.
“Who?” Uruha finally asked. He had stopped tapping.
“Dunno. The handlers started making noise a few hours ago. Didn’t catch a name.”
Aoi shifted nervously and suddenly looked much more alert. “There’s no way,” he said. He didn't sound convinced.
“The floodlights are still offline,” Uruha hedged. “New moon last night, plenty of cloud cover.”
Kai felt his throat constrict. “We’re eight kilometers from shore,” he said.
“Whirlpools,” Aoi added.
Five minutes later they were still the only people in the room. Kai licked his lips. “Probably just a new job. Maybe another joint project,” he muttered. No one pointed out that there had never been a project that required a briefing at four in the morning. The four of them fell silent and pointedly ignored the two empty chairs at the end of the table.
Aoi opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by a sharp thump just outside the door and a litany of muffled curses. Ruki shuffled over the threshold a beat later, looking more than half asleep.
“S’going on?” he asked, covering his mouth around a yawn and collapsing into his seat beside Reita. He straightened a little when no one answered him. “What?” he repeated, wary under the weight of their stares.
Aoi, with his mouth still half open, recovered first. “Nothing. Reita’s an asshole.” He ran his hands through his hair and sighed. Kai felt himself relax, some of the tension leaving the room as Uruha and Reita visibly relaxed as well.
Ruki stifled another yawn. “Glad they woke us up early for that startling revelation,” he said, nudging Reita’s leg with his foot. Reita blinked and turned to Ruki but his reply was cut short by the arrival of their chief handler.
Yamada bustled into the room with cup of coffee, a sheaf of papers, a medium-sized cardboard box tucked under his left arm, and an air of distinct panic hanging over him like a thundercloud. His appearance was neat as always but the tightness around his eyes and mouth meant made Kai suspect Yamada hadn’t slept more than an hour or two.
Saying nothing, Yamada dropped the box and papers in front of him on the table and looked at each of them in turn while smiling tightly. He didn’t sit, rather he seemed to pace on the spot, still staring, and either not noticing or ignoring the way his audience focused mainly on the coffee in front of him. Kai felt a chill go up his spine.
“We’ve got a busy day planned for all of you,” Yamada began, “so I’ll try to keep this brief. First, there’s going to be a change to your wardrobes.”
“Don’t tell me. I finally get to wear real pants,” Uruha deadpanned.
Yamada’s smile faltered. “Not quite.” He opened the box in front of him, withdrawing a thin black strap with a plastic tag embedded in the middle. “Effective immediately, you’ll all be wearing one of these. At all times.” He tossed the strap in his hand to centre of the table then upended the box. Four more straps tumbled the table with a clunk.
Aoi blinked. “Are those-“
“GPS bracelets. For security - to keep you safe,” Yamada amended quickly. His voice shook slightly and Kai revised his earlier assessment: Yamada probably hadn’t slept at all. “Come on, socks off, put them on. I’ll have someone make check you’ve managed to fasten them properly before you eat breakfast.”
Uruha and Aoi shared a mutinous look before reaching to the center of the table to grab one of the bracelets. Reita licked his lips nervously, then reluctantly leaned forward and took one as well.
Ruki looked stunned - though Kai wasn’t sure whether that was because he was surprised by Yamada’s order or still just not fully awake - and startled when Kai elbowed him and dropped a tracker in Ruki’s lap. “Why?” Ruki asked, looking like he’d swallowed a rotten egg.
Yamada continued as though Ruki hadn’t spoken. “This brings me to the second order of business.” He moved the empty box to the floor and separated the papers into two piles before sliding them to the other end of the table “As of this morning Ruki and Kai are both being assigned to a retrieval unit. We need you to prepare an analysis and locate an essential asset as quickly as possible. You have,” he checked his watch, “a little over two hours to prepare. I suggest you start with the documents in front of you.”
Ruki grumbled under his breath but dutifully began scanning the pages in front of him. Kai watched with growing unease, the issue of trackers forgotten, as Ruki’s posture grew more tense with every paragraph; at the end of the first page and Ruki glanced up and met Kai’s eyes, expression grim, before continuing to read. At the other end of the table, Reita, Aoi and Uruha were furtively conversing with tiny hand signals while they fastened their trackers.
Yamada cleared his throat. “We seem to be having some issues with compliance this morning,” he said, giving Kai a pointed look.
Mechanically, Kai reached out and opened the booklet closest to him. He skimmed the first paragraph without comprehension, struggling to reign in the exhaustion and apprehension that kept tweaking his mind in opposite directions. Making matters worse, he hadn’t been given time to grab his glasses before the meeting and had to squint to make out the words - words which, Kai realized, were definitely not common among PSC management. He licked his lips and read on with growing dread.
Security breach.
Misplaced asset.
Objective and whereabouts unknown. Possible leak.
Threat assessment.
Immediate retrieval required.
The cold fear that had been roiling in his gut spread throughout his body. Kai turned the document over as soon as he finished reading and cleared his throat, only to realize he had absolutely no idea what to say. A quick glance around the table showed that Ruki had already signaled the others, who looked as nearly shocked as Kai felt.
“So Miyavi’s gone,” Ruki said finally. “You couldn’t have just said that and spared us the ‘essential asset’ bullshit?”
“Although the situation is somewhat unique there was no reason not to follow standard protocol - previous relationship to the asset or no.”
Kai swallowed thickly, tasting bile.
“Helicopter leaves at seven, boys - and we’ll be checking those trackers before you leave.” On that note, Yamada swept the papers into the empty box and headed for the door.
“What about us?” Aoi called out.
“Behave.”
They sat in stunned silence, listening to the fading scrip-scrape of Yamada’s loafers as he scurried down the hall. No one moved.
After a long moment Kai sighed quietly and pushed back from the table. “I’ll see you at breakfast,” he told the others, just managing to keep the quaver out of his voice.
::
Miyavi woke to find himself facedown in a tide pool, with a spry old man in orange hip waders jabbing a piece of driftwood into his kidney.
“Roll over, son, I need to make sure you’re alive.”
Miyavi spat out a lump of kelp and squinted up at the man. “Alive?” he croaked. Looking up, he could see the fisherman’s kind smile, and beyond that a smallish boat that was at least two decades past its prime. A quick glance over his shoulder showed him the beginnings of dawn on the horizon - tiny rays glinting off the sea and skirting the island that was -
The island.
Miyavi scrambled to his knees. “I have to go.”
“Late for work, huh? Drinking does that. You young people sure are lightweights.” As he spoke the fisherman had wrapped his callused hands around Miyavi’s elbows and started leading him towards the docks. “And look at you, you’re a mess. Looks like you went up against a potato peeler and lost.”
“I have to go,” Miyavi repeated. “Now.”
“Yes, yes, you silly fish, shut up and come with me. We’ll get you cleaned up and you’ll be on your way.”
Ten minutes later Miyavi had a pair of faded orange coveralls pulled over his ruined clothes and a pair of battered leather work boots strapped around his feet. The coveralls were too wide and short enough that Miyavi’s ankles and a good portion of his calves were left exposed; and the shoes pinched his already battered toes but, Miyavi knew, were better than nothing. The fisherman had also offered him piping hot tea, which Miyavi gratefully accepted, and a portion of his lunch, which Miyavi had declined. Heavy food would only make him drowsy. Miyavi had things to do, and he wouldn’t be able to sleep safely until there were many more miles separating him from PSC.
“Thank you so much,” he said. “Really. I-“
“You’re late for work is what you are, so why are you standing here blubbering?”
Miyavi nodded, smiling as he looked down at himself. “Thank you.”
::
The five of them (six, as Miyavi was there just as often as not) had eaten breakfast together nearly every day since they’d been granted the privilege - one of the first allowances granted to them as a group. They’d spent time together before that but their group hadn’t really been cemented until Aoi and Uruha had outgrown their game of one-upmanship in who could pull off the most daring, but invariably aborted, escape attempts. (This pastime being one of many which had ensured that Aoi and Uruha had both spent much of their childhood confined to their rooms.)
There was no set location for their meetings - whoever was awake first and free to move about would choose a spot and wait for the others to trickle in by way of their curious group attunement. They had an unspoken rule that at least four days a week were to be spent in an area close to a security camera or microphone so as not to arouse suspicion from their PSC handlers; it had taken them six months to map out the areas which were truly private.
Kai had chosen a spot where he could hyperventilate in peace - the gravel courtyard, near the helicopter pad, halfway between the door and the first fence. He spent several minutes with his head between his knees until the panic melted into a state of mild shock. His muscles felt tired but tense, his mind seemed to be in a sort of mid-lurch stasis. There was nothing to do but sit and search his memory for signs of what Miyavi had been planning.
He sat for the better part of an hour, until the wind coming off the sea had numbed his skin and he was so cold his eyes were watering. He couldn’t think of a thing.
Uruha was the first to arrive, jerking him out of his thoughts by dropping an armful of pudding cups right into Kai’s lap. He didn’t say anything, just handed Kai a spoon and plunked down beside him on the ground. Reita and Ruki showed up next with a thermos filled with coffee and a quarter-loaf of bread.
Kai ate his bread and stacked his share of the pudding into the same pyramid he always did - opened the top cup halfway and slurped at his spoon just as he had the day before - and if he noticed the others pressing closer around him than they normally did, Kai didn’t mention it.
The crunch of gravel beneath Aoi’s boots announced his approach. “You think it’s a test?” he asked quietly after taking his seat, completing the circle.
Uruha shrugged. “Ankle bracelets are real. Mine’s chafing like a sonofabitch.” He lifted his pant leg to show them the raw skin and blisters starting to peek out from under the edges of the band. Aoi snorted and muttered something about prima donnas, snickering when Uruha whacked him on the shoulder.
“I don’t think it’s a test,” Reita mused around his spoon, most of his attention focused on the hallowed butterscotch he’d managed to steal from Ruki. “I checked his room. Someone tore it apart but it feels wrong for a simulation - and you know how much Miyavi hates those. He’d have found a way to tell us about it ahead of time just to get his part over with sooner.”
“Would’ve thought he’d tell us if he found a way out, too,” Ruki said.
Aoi crossed his arms over his chest, a sneer twisting his features. “So, what, Miyavi’s just gone, then? He just ran away and left us to-“ He broke off after Uruha jammed his elbow into Aoi’s side. Aoi glared at him. Uruha glared back, lifting his chin slightly. After a moment Aoi’s eyes widened and he turned to Kai. “Sorry,” he coughed.
Kai shook his head and smiled back at them, feeling like he was recovering from a punch to the gut and hoping it didn’t show. It probably did. His face felt rigid. After a moment of pretending not to notice the way the others were staring at him he cleared throat. “What about the ankle bracelets?” he asked.
“Trackers. Figures we spent most of our adolescence working for privileges and mapping the security cameras only to have them pull something like this,” Aoi grumbled.
“No listening devices,” Uruha continued, “so the perverts among us can still jerk off in relative peace.” He shot a pointed look at Aoi. “Going outside a certain radius sets off an alarm unless you access the tracker remotely. Looks like it has mild shock capability, too, probably triggered the same way.”
“How mild?” Ruki asked, pursing his lips.
Uruha shrugged. “I didn’t feel like setting it off to find out for certain since the only device I had available was connected to my leg. Besides, it’s not like I could just go up and ask for a voltmeter when I’m supposed to be counterfeiting wine.”
“Counterfeiting wine,” Reita repeated flatly.
“It’s even less exciting than it sounds,” Uruha groaned. “I’ve spent the last three weeks with a microscope and they’re not going to let me quit until I’ve created a 1787 Château Margaux in a petri dish. The only upside is I get to drink the prototypes.”
“So that’s why you were so chipper this morning.” Aoi shot a quick glance over his shoulder, then stole a cigarette from Reita and leaned closer to the others, making a show of asking for a light. “There’s a code to unlock them manually. Cutting through the strap would also trigger the alarm,” he muttered. “So shutting them off would be simple but less subtle than Uruha in a miniskirt. I can look into an override, but it’ll take some time to get our hands on the tools needed to trick them into thinking the shackles are somewhere we’re not.”
Uruha gave Kai a sympathetic look. “Hopefully that won’t be necessary. Maybe he’ll get bored and come back home.”
“Wagging his tail behind him?” Kai crushed his empty pudding cup between his hands and stuffed it in his pocket. “Not likely,” he said, shaking his head.
Twenty yards away, one of the handlers had turned on the helicopter’s ignition. Kai could see the chopper blades starting to accelerate. Yamada stood beneath them, shouting for Ruki and Kai, impatiently waving his arms above his head.
::
“This is bullshit,” Ruki muttered. They were in the middle of the town closest to PSC. What should have been at most a half-hour trip had taken nearly three times that by the time the helicopter had landed on the other side of town and traveled back in by car. The point, the handlers had said, was subtlety. Ruki had been forced to bite his lip bloody to keep from pointing out that two large shiny black Hummers and four men in suits shadowing Ruki and Kai’s every move was the antithesis of inconspicuous. “If he’s so fucking important why the hell didn’t they just send a sweeper team the minute they noticed he was gone?”
Kai had been silent the entire ride over and only offered a noncommittal, “Hmm,” to Ruki’s quiet ranting.
Ruki continued undeterred. “What the fuck do they expect us to do? He’s got a seven-hour head start. We’ve got nothing - no computers, no trackers. Granted, he doesn’t have any form of ID or money but he’s a Pretender. He could be hiding out in Tokyo or halfway to Okinawa by now.”
“Miyavi’s good at shocking people,” Kai said. “And you heard what Yamada said about us behaving. There’s no way they’re going to give us access to any tech we could feasibly use against them less than twenty-four hours after another pretender disappeared.” He glanced at Ruki sidelong. “I thought you’d be taking advantage of the holiday.”
Ruki grinned without humour. “Pretty sure holidays don’t usually include a handler in your face at four in the morning. Looks like they’re done alphabetizing codenames or whatever the fuck they’re doing, let’s go,” he said, flicking his cigarette into the gutter.
In spite of what Yamada had told them during the briefing, Ruki and Kai’s suggested plans of action had been soundly ignored. The handlers escorting them had laid out a set of instructions as soon as they’d reached shore. Two handlers would bring Ruki to the police station where he would look - but say and touch nothing - while they tried to convince the officers to register a report of a missing psychiatric patient named Miyavi. Afterwards, Ruki would tell the handlers whether or not he thought the police were corruptible to the handler’s will. Kai, having been dubbed the responsible one, would wander around with one only guard and question anyone who might’ve seen Miyavi. The last handler would stay with the cars presumably catching up on the crosswords.
Other than that Kai and Ruki’s job seemed to be - well, Kai wasn’t sure why they’d been called in. Standing around conversing with strangers definitely wasn’t what PSC typically considered “efficient use of Pretender resources.” The general chaos of the day suggested that Miyavi’s escape had triggered some sort or power play amongst the staff but Kai wasn’t in a position to do anything more than duck and cover.
Kai tried not to fidget while Hagiwara, the handler assigned to him, issued reminders of unnamed-but-dire consequences should he “get any ideas.” The vague threats weren’t able to completely kill the anxious, almost-giddy feeling in his chest. He’d only been out in public a handful of times in his life, and none of those times had been when the sun was shining.
He spent the next half hour poking in and out of shops, Hagiwara following close behind while Kai asked employees and the occasional passerby if they’d seen anyone matching Miyavi’s description. The results were pretty much what he’d expected. No one had seen him, but there were plenty of old women who cooed over his dimple before elbowing him out of the way for cheap daikon.
To Kai’s surprise, they got lucky on the twelfth shop, where the young assistant hesitated a split second too long for Kai to believe she hadn’t seen anything.
“Are you sure you didn’t see him?” Hagiwara pressed.
“He’s about this tall,” Kai added, raising one hand over his own head, “with sort of mid-length hair. Choppy.”
“Lots of guys like that around here.” Her responses were layered with the curious mix of disinterested hostility Kai now recognized as inherent in teenagers. “You related?” she asked, flicking her gaze from Kai to Hagiwara.
Kai fleetingly wondered if the police would ask Ruki the same question. If so, he regretted that he wouldn’t be there to see the sour expression such a question would put on Ruki’s face. “No, he’s my employer. Miyavi is a - colleague.”
“Huh.” The girl looked at him for a moment, then shook her head and started sweeping again. “Didn’t see anybody.”
“He do something?” Kai looked past the girl to see a man looming behind the counter. He wore the same apron and eyebrows as the assistant but his glare showed many more years of polish. When Kai didn’t answer immediately the man frowned harder. “Your guy, what’d he do?” he repeated, crossing his arms over his chest. Kai caught a glimpse of what looked like a prison tattoo on the inside of the man’s wrist.
Kai shook his head and put on his best completely-harmless-and-not-worth-beating expression. “Nothing,” he said. “He didn’t do anything, I’m just worried. It’s not like him to go running off in the middle of the night like that, and he doesn’t know the area very well.”
The man looked Kai up and down, ignoring the handler entirely, and thought it over for nearly thirty seconds. Finally swiped at his nose with the back of his hand and headed back to the kitchen. “Try Takeda, down at the docks,” he called over his shoulder. “I think he talked to your guy.”
::
Takeda turned out to be a fisherman who possessed a frightening amount of strength for a man of seventy-two. He also gossiped like a thirteen year-old girl, which only served to further unnerve Kai. “Oh, sure!” he exclaimed. “Pale guy, dark hair, real skinny, about this tall?” He mimed a line about six inches above his own head and didn’t wait for Kai to reply before continuing, “Yeah, scraped him off the rocks this morning. Soaked right through, shirt torn, no shoes, he looked pretty awful. You young guys really can’t hold your drink, huh?”
Kai rubbed at the back of his neck and smiled tiredly. “No, sir. Did you happen to see which way he went?”
“I gave him some tea and a spare set of coveralls. Soon as he warmed up he started asking for directions to the nearest auto shop and I told him, I says, that piddly little mom-n-pop up the street is the only auto shop, and off he went. I gotta say though, your friend seemed a little disoriented. Twitchy too,” Takeda mused, frowning thoughtfully. “Better get to him soon.”
Kai nodded his thanks and started back up the dock while Hagiwara radioed Ruki’s team with the news.
::
Ruki came back autoshop fifteen minutes later with a tube of hand sanitizer clenched between his teeth, using both hands to slather layers of gel up past his elbows and around his neck. He scowled when he caught Kai smiling at him.
“What, the shop wasn’t up to your standards?”
“Shut up,” Ruki muttered. “You owe me. Big time. Fuck, I’m never going to get the grease off these shoes. Leather soles, you know?” He made a small tsk-ing noise and sighed before continuing. “Anyway. Country and Bumpkin back there told me he showed up about six o'clock and fixed five cars in an hour before taking off on a scooter - some rusted piece of shit the owner said he could have it if he could get it to start. He was on the road thirty seconds later. Now, Bumpkin would bet his mother’s life Miyavi headed north but Country thought he’d said something about-“
“Osaka.”
Ruki’s mouth snapped shut and he glanced over to see if any of the handlers had overheard. “Lucky guess, I’m sure,” he said bemusedly.
“Something like that. Anything else?”
“Nah. They couldn’t decide whether they wanted to hit him for making them look bad or blow him for doing their heavy lifting. Anyway, the whole place is a visual shrine to VW Beetles and Escalades so it’s not like they’ve got spare brain cells to be taking notes on strange drifters anyway. “
Kai laughed. “Snob,” he said, shaking his head and smiling fondly despite the helpless feeling that was settling into his bones.
“What?” Ruki asked. “It’s true.”
::
That the coveralls were both phenomenally ill fitting and a cataract-causing shade of orange had been a surprising boon to Miyavi. He’d stopped at a gas station at the edge of the third town he’d passed and, with a few expansive gestures and some lively conversation as he paid for his gas (with change straight from the shopkeeper’s own wallet), the shopkeeper never noticed that Miyavi had slipped two t-shirts and a pack of underwear into his pockets before leaving. After that it had been a simple matter of changing his clothes and hiding the ancient scooter behind a copse trees at the side of the road.
He’d taken off in the first car he found unlocked.
The sedan he’d ended up with was blooby and beige - boring, but not something anyone would look twice at for the short time Miyavi would have it in his possession. Plus, it had a sunroof, which Miyavi had always thought looked cool.
In practice, he discovered, a sunroof was pretty fucking amazing. With all the years he’d spent at PSC Miyavi was used to breathing recycled air and he’d never been in anything fast enough to make the wind press ripples into his skin. He had never felt more alive and engaged than at that moment, driving in the early afternoon on a sunny day with the windows down and the sunroof wide open. When the roar of the wind became monotonous he started fiddling with the radio presets. The small wonder of hearing the voice of someone he’d never met coming through the speakers, telling him about places he’d never been and not asking a single thing in return, was electric.
Feeling refreshed, he pulled off the highway and ditched the car in a parking lot an hour outside Osaka. Fragmented formulas and blueprints flitted through his mind, which seemed to be running at warp speed, sharp and clear but too fast for him to catch and individual piece, and his body felt perfectly responsive. Ready for anything.
A passing trucker stopped shortly after Miyavi stuck out his thumb and offered to drop Miyavi at the first library they saw on their way through Osaka. The driver, Haruma, seemed eager for company but was happy to carry the conversation on his own, leaving Miyavi to lose himself in his thoughts as he watched the landscape fly by.
“You seem pretty excited, kid,” Haruma said as they pulled into Osaka proper. “Got a girl waiting for you at the end of the road?”
For a split second Miyavi saw Kai smiling at him in his mind’s eye but when he blinked all he could see were the cars around him and the sky overhead. He shook his head and smiled. “Going to meet my family,” he replied.
::
Kai spoke less on the ride back to the helicopter than he had on the way into town. Finding Miyavi so easily after his brazen escape had been a long shot by any logical standard, now he had to come to terms with the reality. He turned away from the window, pulled his feet up onto the seat and pressed his forehead to his knees, eyes scrunched tight with exhaustion.
"You aren’t angry.” Ruki’s spoke quietly, shifting his gaze away from the window to study Kai; on any other day Kai would’ve been embarrassed at how badly he’d startled. When Kai didn’t reply Ruki licked his lips and continued, “Miyavi. That he left like that." He sounded puzzled.
Kai gave Ruki a sidelong glance. "I’m choosing not to be.”
Ruki narrowed his eyes. “Choosing,” he repeated, after a moment.
Kai sighed and let his head thump back against the headrest. “My reactions are the only thing in my control at this point,” he said, staring blankly at the ceiling. “I can be happy that he's happy, because Miyavi’s my friend and I care about him, or I can be miserable. And he will still be happy without me."
Ruki frowned. "But you're going to help bring him back."
So long as their wellbeing depended on the Company, Kai wanted to say, but he hated seeing his friends unhappy, and Miyavi had never liked being caged. He couldn't say that to Ruki in a van that was very likely being monitored, so Kai chose the simplest answer and said, "Yes, I will."
Ruki gave him a searching look, then shrugged and sat back in his seat. A few minutes later he asked, "If he went to the mountains do you think they’d send us, too?"
Kai smiled. Ruki had always wanted to go to the mountains.
::
PSC Log #37244-c
20:57 JST (2000-05-17)
“The stars are bright tonight,” Reita said.
“Moron. Most of the bright ones are satellites, and most of those are illegal,” Ruki huffed, settling back so that his head was pillowed on Reita’s stomach.
Uruha pursed his lips. “Maybe we made one of them.”
“Not likely,” Aoi said. ”Depends who they sold it to, when and where they launched it.”
“Well, aren’t you just the slickest anchovy in the can.”
“Shut up, Uruha.”
“Make me,” Uruha said. A second later he yelped, twisting away from Aoi’s deviously pointy fingers and nearly crushing Kai in the process. Kai pushed Uruha back towards Aoi, smiling as Uruha’s giggles pierced the twilight.
“I saw her again last night,” Miyavi said, once Aoi had stopped tickling and Uruha had quieted down.
Kai turned his head to the left to meet Miyavi’s gaze. “Saw who?”
“My mother. In a dream. She was wearing purple shirt and her hair was tied back.” Miyavi pressed his back more firmly against the ground and reached up with one hand, fingers spread as if to pluck a star from the sky. “She was smiling at me,” he said.
“No offence, Miyavi, but you had to be-“
“We were in Osaka, I think. She was in the kitchen, baking a cake with three candles on top. I remember.”
Kai felt something tighten in the pit of his stomach. Reita and Ruki had fallen silent as well.
Without looking up from where he was tying Aoi’s shoelaces together, Uruha said, “Earliest thing I remember is one of the handlers saying I could have a toy train so long as I built it myself. No parental units to speak of.”
Aoi tilted his head. “Maybe Sakai-san is your dad,” he said.
Uruha wrinkled his nose and shuddered. “Don’t even joke about that.”
“Relax,” Reita snickered. “You know he can’t be. He’s got a cleft chin.”
Ruki inhaled deeply, puffing his cheeks with air. After a moment he said, “But we had to come from somewhere, right? Everyone has parents.”
“Sure,” Aoi replied, “only yours are a couple of test tubes.”
“That’s funny, I heard one of the handlers went away on vacation and had to scrape you out of a petri dish when he came back,” Ruki retorted, snuggling more tightly against Reita’s side.
Reita’s voice was soft in the darkness. “I don’t remember anything.”
“That’s just genetics anyway,” Kai said, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. “It’s not like they raised us or anything. You guys are all the family I want, anyway.”
Miyavi stared at the sky and said nothing, but squeezed Kai’s hand a little tighter in his.
:: to be continued ::