Chase the Morning - Inception 3/4
Later that night Massu watched with a keen eye as YamaPi left; he’d been hanging around after-hours a lot. It was worrying. For a job this big, he couldn’t afford for any of them to be in less than perfect condition. He’d have to ask Ryo about it. Ryo was the closest to YamaPi,
Ryo. ‘I can’t be him’.
Massu had been good at pretending that Ryo didn’t matter to him any more then Shige did (and, well Massu would break into a police station to get him out, but that was because Shige was the best chemist at least two countries over.) Ryo was. He wouldn’t say perfect. Ryo was far from perfect. Ryo was bitchy and rude and liked to wear baggy sweat pants and over-sized t-shirts. He wasn’t anything like a princess in a tower, or the type of girl his mother would have approved of.
But there was just something about him, something he couldn’t define, something he couldn’t put his fingers on, but god, it made him want. It made him want something fierce.
Of course, Koyama would notice something like that, and he’d just feel the need to say it. To make Massu think about it, take his feelings out of their box and poke and prod at them. The quirk of Ryo’s cynical little smile and the slightly rough edges of his chuckle when he was making fun of Shige or Koyama.
With all of that tangled up in his head he swiped a alcohol pad over the delicate bend of his elbow and followed it with the sharp gauge of the needle-- it was timed for twenty minutes down which would give him two hours in the dreamscape. There was that one moment, clinging to awareness but with the knowledge that you’re being pulled under and it felt a lot like drowning every single time. Being swallowed alive by your own subconscious. It happened because the dream is weaved by the mind at the same time as the dream sees the mind creating a bit of a looping paradox, a little infinity loop in your own head; but there was always that one second, right before everything clicked, the needle slipping until it found the groove and you could feel it. The pull of your raw subconscious before the mind caught up and started building. Then the dream sort of explodes around you all at once, between one gasping breath and the next.
Massu came-to in the middle of a city scene. It was the prototype for their first level. Massu’s mind was always summer unless they had a plan he couldn’t help the sunshine-- this was half focused and half just romping around his own subconscious. A horse and carriage came clopping down the street after a typical yellow New York Taxi (he’d been thinking about fairy tale princesses before he went under, and your thoughts directly influenced what happens which is why dream stealing is so easy.) His favourite high school teacher was manning a newspaper stand and smoking on a fat cigar.
He usually found his childhood dog wandering around, just waiting to bite his heels. These types of projections could be controlled, parts of his mind made into dream-flesh-and-blood, if he tried. Filling the spaces between with faces that always seemed slightly familiar to him, people he’d passed on the street maybe and happened to recall? It was impossible to tell.
The street was full of black and white suits, people who walked with purpose, the utilitarian-turn-erotic click of women’s heels as they power-walked down the road. No one in Massu’s mind was ever dawdling. All but one.
Koyama was sauntering, moving like he couldn’t be bothered to move any faster.
“You’re not supposed to be here.” Massu said, but he couldn’t help but smile a bit.
“I make a living of being where I am not supposed to be.” His projection of Koyama was a little softer then the real one, slouching the long lines of his body a bit more. “I like to think I’m one of the best.”
“You probably are.” Massu snorted, and the day was scorching hot, the sun high and full in the sky, not a cloud in all the endless blue.
“If you’re looking for Ryo, I’m supposed to be meeting him here soon.” Koyama reached into his pocket and drew out a pack of cigarettes.
“Why do you say that?”
Koyama squinted up at the sun, he shifted over until he could lean against the wall. Koyama gave him a blank look. “Because you’re always looking for him.”
“I am not.” The answer was automatic, though he knew it was an act in futility, arguing with the voices in his head as it were.
“He’s just always here then?” Instead of slightly mocking, Koyama’s voice was just playful, happy and pliant. It was how Massu always imagined he would have liked him best.
“Something like that.” Projection Koyama had the demure little head tilt down perfectly, soft lips pursing. This was ridiculous. “Why are you here anyways?”
“Because I am waiting for Ryo. We’ve got a date.”
Massu’s brain stopped, clicked, spun again. It was only through force of will alone that the whole street wasn’t spinning. It wasn’t really fair of his subconscious to be throwing him curve-balls he was not ready to accept yet. That was the worst part of dream sharing-awkward ways to get to know things about yourself. Usually very open, with co-workers involved, ways to get to know yourself, because the subconscious isn’t the one who has to deal with the embarrassment afterwards when things best left in the dark come out to play. He should just be glad that this was a private moment because he was staring at Koyama, mouth slightly open and at a complete lack for words.
Massu was sort of taken aback by the stab of possessiveness that made his stomach twist. He saw Ryo leave with women from the bar, he had seen Ryo make faces at numbers on his phone and joke around with Pi (and Jin when he was around) about some of the filthiest, loosest women you’d imagine. But this was different, this was Koyama, Koyama who’s easy to like because he was made of plastic and capable of figuring out exactly what you want from him. Koyama’s too dangerous.
It’s wrong.
“You’re on a date?” Massu tried to imagine it. Koyama’s long body curled around Ryo’s shorter one, all soft lips and bruising fingers. They would be awful for each other, or perfect. It’s hard to tell. Ryo’s demanding to cover up how needy he is and Koyama’s obliging and willing to bend and break and fuck if Massu knows what his sub-conscious is trying to tell him with this.
“Yeah.”
“You can come too. We’re just going to have food.” Ryo was standing behind him in his usual sweat pants, but his shirt today was tight showing off the sinewy muscle in his shoulders and the slim tightness of his chest. It was also baby pink with a horse on it. Really quite subtle.
Which is how Massu found himself eating with Ryo and Koyama and wondering how many minutes he had left until the drugs stopped and he woke up, because he’d found the fucking rabbit hole in his own head.
Koyama and Ryo were talking about baby names, and Koyama would wave his fork about as he expanded in detail on all the women he’s ever known named Chastity, and statistically they were more often than not in the sex trade.
Massu was wondering why he found this flat version of Koyama so annoying. Ryo wasn’t right either; he was snippy and harsh without any of the vibrancy of the real man. It was like looking at the world without shadows, so very flat.
Ryo kept giving him these looks out of the corner of his eye, while Koyama flicked his tongue against the spines of the fork in these ridiculous little kitten flicks that he remembered all too well. Massu decided there was apparently a whole fuck-tonne he didn’t want to know about himself, that he was learning right now. More to the point, why even bother trying to deny it, better to sit back and see what was going to happen. It wasn’t like anyone else was going to see this.
Outside the sun was still shining and Ryo had slung his arm low around Koyama’s waist and the two of them were watching him curiously.
“It’s not hard at all.” The tilt of Koyama’s smile matched the tilt of his hips; all flirty with the sun shining on his blond hair and making it glow. “It’s just like falling off a bike.” And before he could manage to say something about the merits of falling off bikes (and since when has anything that easy been good?) Koyama’s lips were on his and it was just like he remembered, Koyama’s mouth fit against his so soft and perfect and it was rising inside him, fuck. Massu wasn’t the type who wanted, he was the type who just plotted, took what he needed with a charming smile, but this felt like something big and different and weird.
Koyama framed the sides of his face with his palms, and tilted his head for an angle that was sweet and soft and nothing of what he expected at all. When it all stopped and both Massu’s feet were on the ground, his lips felt cold and maybe a little inexplicably lonely.
“Hey, don’t hog it.” And Ryo was elbowing into his face and there was no reality to compare to, just the press of lips against his own, a little rough and a lot soft. Massu made a soft sound in the back of his throat, surprise and a little confused. Ryo’s tongue was aggressive, just like the rest of him and Massu let it dominate for a bit, just tasting his passion and letting him take what he wanted. And he was sort of thinking about that argument that Shige and Ryo got into about whether this was considered a form of masturbation or not. Fucking in your dreams, because you could literally have anyone you could imagine.
The short hair at Ryo’s nape was silky between his fingers as he cupped the curve of his skull, and Ryo might be a figment of his mind, but he thought about this before, about how the curve fit right into his palm like it was meant to be there. It wasn’t hard to take control of the kiss and Ryo made a little growling sound in his throat that Massu could taste. There was the faint hint of garlic left over from dinner, and that should be so disgusting but he couldn’t help it and he chased it to the corners of his mouth. Like he was hungry for it.
Koyama’s laughter filtered in past the rush of blood in his ears and he could feel people beginning to stare at them, their eyes skittering down his back and the place where Ryo’s hands were crushing the fabric of his shirt at the small of his back.
Ryo bit at his lips as a sort of goodbye, a quick flick of his tongue to sooth the sting.
“Come with us.” Ryo pressed a quick kiss to the edge of his mouth. And the look in his eyes was dancing, dark and amused. It looked, three-dimensional. “I want to show you something.”
“I can’t.” But Massu could imagine it, the long splay of Koyama’s body under Ryo’s hands, how Ryo would pull and tug at his hair, and Koyama would give and give, stretching and folding how Ryo wanted him.
“Don’t you want it.” Koyama was playing the coy card, and like always Massu hated it. He wanted to tie Koyama to the bed next, make him fucking mad with it. Make him watch while Massu played with Ryo, kissed him long and hard, and pumped his dick nice and even. Made Ryo curse and sob and claw at his hands to make him do something. Oh yes, he’d make Ryo come all over Koyama and lick it off him. Then they would do it all over again. Massu shook his head slowly.
“You don’t know how much.” This was a dream and he could have it, like he couldn’t in reality, but that would just be crossing lines and tempting danger. Massu wasn’t the best because he was dumb.
“Let’s go.” Ryo tugged on Koyama’s hand, their finger’s tangled.
Well, what the fuck was that?
The city continued around him, people milling about, each looking focused on their own tasks, suits and ties to fit the down-town business district setting. The streets were a literal maze of one-ways, road-work and cul-de-sacs that you wouldn’t see in real life, but would help to confuse the projections. It all looked good, sun high in the sky and shining on the windows. Massu watched the flow of yellow taxies as they congested the streets, quite literally lost in thought.
He hailed a cab, pulled a gun on the driver and slipped into the space he rather quickly fled. Massu pulled the cab into the flow again, making a face at the tacky interior-- the windscreen was lined with red little pom-poms and there was a bobble-head Jesus on the dash looking at him disapprovingly. Well yes, he’d robbed an imaginary cab, and apparently wanted to own Nishikido Ryo, and subconsciously wanted a threesome with Koyama too. There was a bit there dashboard Jesus might object to.
Massu drove the route they had planned; it would look a little different in Shige’s head, but the layout would remain constant. The cab stopped at the bridge, it was up now, and a cargo ship was passing under it, the long hull rust red and navy blue. Massu drummed his fingers on the wheel, watching the slow progress. There were so many things that could go wrong with this plan. Just trying to account for each one was ... boggling.
He got bored.
Massu drove off the bridge before it came down and the sudden change from driving to falling snapped him against his seatbelt and he woke up with a gasp, and a few minutes under still left to spare.
In halo of light cast by the lamp, just barely keeping the shadows of the rest of the warehouse at bay, he squinted at the high ceiling and the barely visible criss-cross of support beams. Something seemed off now that he was awake, the dream always seemed glossy, like photographs, never quite reality, you remember how the quality of the light in the moment had seemed just a bit different before the snap of the shutter.
There, on the chair set across from his, trailed one of the leads, like whomever had been hooked up had yanked out the needle and fled in haste. Massu stared at it hard, and the faint rust of dried blood on the end. Right. Who? His mind would have attacked anything they didn’t think belonged there, like a mental immune system, white blood cells swarming with teeth and nails and crudely grabbed weapons and shanks.
Near the end there, he’d dismissed it because, well, Koyama had grabbed him on the street and kissed him, but Ryo had sort of blipped, gone to the bathroom and come back quieter for a bit, before finding the thread of the conversation again. The change had been subtle, and only glaring in hindsight. If he had been looking for something amiss instead of trying to puzzle through why he wanted to fuck Koyama again.
Automatically he wiped down the injection site with alcohol and set about sterilizing the PASIV, hands not even stuttering over the second used lead. His first thought was Koyama because he would do something like that to fuck with him, but he didn’t have a motive. No one else in their group would be good enough to replicate Ryo though, sitting in his place so seamlessly that Massu hadn’t even noticed. Or--.
Well the only other option was that it was Ryo himself. He had even less motive to eavesdream on Massu. They were barely friends. They were just co-workers, well if illegal enterprises had co-workers. And this, this was the reason Massu didn’t think with his dick; he was above all this shit. He was tempted to just blame the whole thing on Koyama, because if he’d just kept his stupid mouth shut (which is why Massu gagged him in the first place) he wouldn’t need to worry about this thing concerning Ryo.
When everything was cleaned and snapped away in its shiny metal case Massu felt a little better. Everything in its right place. He couldn’t be worried about all this useless shit, they had a big job to do and he couldn’t afford the distraction.
--
Shige was confused. He didn’t like to admit it because he really was smarter than this lot of ugly bitches. Well, that was a little harsh, but he was tired. But he was quite confused-- the currents in the meeting were moving in funny directions.
Massu looked surly and it was a weird expression on his face. He downright refused to look at them, and he had his back to them so he could write on the white board. He had spidery handwriting, it slanted to the right and spilled across the board in perfectly evenly spaced letters. Shige often wondered if Massu suffered from some hitherto undiagnosed mental affliction; or more likely, he’d been diagnosed but was too stubborn to do anything about it. Obsessive compulsive control freak-ism.
YamaPi looked as bland as ever, if a little more... droopy. For lack of a better term. Shige had once deprived a test group of rats for sleep for days on end, but injected the somnancin at regular intervals, just to see if they would begin to break. YamaPi looked a lot like Spot did right before he snapped, killed and ate Blinky. Shige wondered if he should be worried or not.
Koyama was the one closest to Shige; he liked to drop by when he wasn’t getting up to something highly illegal (or at least frowned upon) but Shige still couldn’t read him. Shige could admit to being a little socially awkward, usually drugs and money eased whatever his awkwardness couldn’t. Koyama never seemed to mind, he was always there, lounging on Shige’s couch and there to watch whatever Shige was into that month, usually with a fire extinguisher on hand. Still he seemed either unaware or unconcerned with the group dynamics. Shige had his suspicions which one it was; Koyama liked to hide behind the persona of an airhead, but he was sharp, razor blades and teddy bears. That was probably why Shige liked him so much.
“What’s going on?” He wrote across the top of his page and kicked Koyama in the foot to get his attention. Koyama was doodling little hearts and crosses in the margins of his notebook.
Koyama looked at him, shrugged fluidly and went back to shading in a huge heart he’d drawn. Completely unhelpful.
Shige tried to watch Ryo out of the corner of his eye; he seemed far away, staring blankly at something Shige couldn’t see. Which wasn’t too out of the ordinary for Ryo, he could build cities with his mind after-all and sometimes Shige would look up and see him lost in his own head.
“Is the plan ready to move forward?” Massu asked, tapping on the board with his pen and looking oddly uncomfortable standing in front of them all. The usually unflappable Massu had clearly well and truly been ‘flapped’ and Shige wondered if he was getting performance anxiety? Shige was. This was craziness, and he really couldn’t figure out what it was that was keeping him here, he shouldn’t have even come to begin with.
“I’m ready.” Koyama drawled, tapping his fingers in a lazy rhythm on his book, looking at Massu over the rim of his delicate little glasses.
“I’ve got the levels down.” Ryo shrugged out of his funk, looking somewhere around his shoes.
What the hell had happened when he wasn’t looking? Shige frowned.
“I’m ready.” YamaPi nodded.
“Shige?” Massu was looking at him and Shige felt his neck go hot.
“I’ve been having problems with the sedative.” It was painful to admit. He was the best, the best of the fucking best. He made normal PhDs look like idiots twiddling their thumbs and mixing up DNA-base code. But this, this was complicated and new, and if only he had more time he could solve it. “I can stabilize it the best I can and still keep the inner ear function intact.” That was a minor miracle in itself, and a lesser man wouldn’t have been able to do it under such constraints. Still, Massu was giving him a pinched look and Shige could feel himself getting defensive.
“Will it be ready in time?”
“Depends, do you want to be dropped into limbo?” Shige snapped. YamaPi stiffened, head snapping around to look at him, but Shige was caught in a stare-down with Massu. They were interrupted by a smooth voice.
“Don’t have a choice.” Tegoshi said simply, and everyone but Koyama jumped, turning to look at him. “We need to move.”
“It’s not perfect.” Some more time he could do it.
“Yokoyama Kimitaka the senior died last night, by the end of the week Yuu will need to make the flight from Sydney to Los Angeles. This is our chance to get to him.”
“Doesn’t he have some private jet?” Shige said. He couldn’t be ready in that timeframe, they were asking too much of science.
“Engine failure.” Tegoshi said calmly, but he looked amused, even Shige could tell that and he shivered a little. Tegoshi was the scariest mother fucker Shige had ever met and he’d been in contact (obliquely) with drug lords since he’d finished his Masters. “It can’t fly.”
“We’re going to need to find out who the attendant and pilots are, secure first class.” Massu tapped on the board, looking deep in thought. Massu was good at details, creepy obsessive focus on the details, which didn’t remind Shige of anyone at all. Really.
“Taken care of.” Massu spun on his feet, delicate little frown between his eyebrows, meeting Tegoshi’s amused smile. “I bought the airline.”
Shige gaped at him. “You bought the airline?” Tegoshi turned to look at him, smirk on his face and delicate Annie-curls framing his baby-face. Shige had never seen anything more dangerous.
“It seemed more... practical.”
Shige was actually kind of speechless.
“We’re set then.” YamaPi stood, “practice runs of the levels tomorrow morning.”
“Yeah.” Massu nodded sharply. “Everything’s settled then.”
Massu was the first out of there, back oddly straight as he moved towards the back, and Koyama did this weird thing, looking casual but moving fast, long legs pushing him after Massu. Ryo watched them go, odd look on his face before YamaPi distracted him by leaning over and asking him something about fail-safes.
Not wanting to catch Tegoshi’s attention (he’d been showing up closer and closer to Shige’s little corner these days and he wasn’t taking any chances) Shige levered himself up from his chair and set after Koyama. At least he could rant at him about the compound and at least get a pat on the head or something.
Shige heard them talking before he saw them, and Massu sounded furious, angry enough that Shige stopped in his tracks, breath caught in his chest. It would be wrong to listen to their conversation, but Shige hadn’t gotten to where he was by being a paragon of morality. Flattening himself against the wall and making his breath shallow (reminded him a lot of the time the police had raided his lab, that had been a really fun day).
“I knew it was a bad idea.” Massu hissed.
“I’m insulted.” Koyama answered, flirty and coy.
“You’re so fucking annoying.” Massu snarled, and Shige was really curious now, Massu didn’t get angry, he was never flapped, what on earth had Koyama done now?
“You don’t mean that-“ The sound of scuffling feet and Koyama grunting.
“Just. Leave me alone. I swear if I catch you again I will shoot you.” Shige flattened himself against the wall, thinking chameleon thoughts, but Massu was turning the other way and all but fleeing past where he was hiding. Shige waited a few counts before he peeked out from behind the corner, to find Koyama was standing alone in the middle of the dusty office space.
“You know,” He said, looking at Shige and it was obvious where Massu had hit him the skin on his cheekbone bright red with a forming bruise. “The saddest part of all that?”
“Hm?” Shige stepped into the room, tilting Koyama’s head to get a better look at the damage to his face.
“I don’t even know what that was about.” He laughed, wincing when it pulled on skin that was rapidly swelling.
“You didn’t fuck him?” Shige blinked. As far as he knew Koyama wasn’t the type to deny himself anything. A lavish life of crime and taking whatever he wanted. Hedonism at its best and most beautiful.
“Well I did.” Koyama admitted and Shige snorted, “ but he seems rather upset.”
“I didn’t know you were that bad.”
“The absolute worst.” Koyama agreed mockingly.
“I’ll go get some ice for your face.” Shige laughed.
~~
Shige couldn’t really remember the trip to the aeroport. He was a mess of nerves and anticipation. Shige was the stay-behind guy. He was always the one awake, watching for baddies, and just being you know, not in the line of fire.
He never went under.
Sitting in first class, listening to the dull roar of the engines as they cued up to be taxied onto the runway he came to the sudden realization that he really didn’t want to. Really shitty time for an epiphany. The seatbelt sign clicked on, the flight attendant, a tall lithe Asian man wandered down the aisle checking all the baggage was stowed and that seatbelts were on.
The no-smoking sign glared at Shige, and he glared back. He’d kill for a cigarette, or even something a little stronger. It was unwise to mix drugs and dream sharing-- the littlest things could affect what it was like down there. He was a scientist not a psychologist, and still it was fascinating. They were essentially tapping into the usually inaccessible subconscious and milking it for what it was worth. But the subconscious was tricky business; there was so much down there that was pure unknown, raw thoughts and emotions. Neurons firing and carrying signals, but they could be amplified, shared, the pathways in the deepest portions of the cerebrum explored and mapped.
Koyama was sitting in the row across from him, looking bored, long legs in a definite sprawl, but they were supposed to be strangers and so Koyama didn’t turn to look at him, just kept watching the window.
YamaPi was in the seat behind Yokoyama, and Shige squinted at the back of his head trying to imagine himself all tiny and swimming in his cerebral-spinal fluid. The exchange was perfect; Koyama had pick-pocketed Yokoyama’s passport during boarding, and slipped it in YamaPi’s pocket, with a rather bored look on his face. As if getting his dirty little fingers on Forbe’s number one most influential person wasn’t at least a little bit of a thrill. YamaPi was slick, and he’d make the scariest car sales man if he put his mind to it, but right now he was chatting up Yokoyama.
“I think this is yours?” YamaPi held the passport out with a small friendly smile.
“Yes. Thank you.” Yokoyama tipped his head, flipping open to the photo-page.
“Not getting very far without that. American customs aren’t the easiest.” Cue faint flash of YamaPi’s boyish smile. It seemed to work on Yokoyama too because he smiled back, and even from his distance Shige could see the smudges of bruising under his eyes and droop of his shoulders. Shige almost felt bad.
YamaPi stared at him, a little unnerving with his huge eyes so close, Shige knew from experience. “I couldn’t help but notice. You’re Yokoyama Yuu aren’t you? I’m sorry to hear about your father.”
“Yes, thank you.” He nodded, and he was a worse actor than Shige, all wooden movements and robotic facial expressions.
“He was a great man wasn’t he?” YamaPi was ploughing on even though Yokoyama looked rather uncomfortable by this point. “I mean, I’m sure you’ll do fine. Once things have settled I’m sure stock prices will rise again.”
“Thanks.” Yokoyama smiled awkwardly and twisted in his seat to face forwards. YamaPi sat back. Shige tried hard to look like he wasn’t watching, and he imagined he was failing that miserably but no one was looking at him. He was all the way at the back. A veritable fly on the wall he was.
Shige could see the exact moment that YamaPi slipped the first sedative into Yokoyama’s drink, the complimentary water was passed in front of YamaPi first as they had arranged with the flight attendant. He was of a slightly less than pristine moral cloth, and Shige liked him immediately.
By the time the seatbelt sign turned off, Yokoyama was already sedated.
“Shall we?” Koyama stood up, arching his back like a cat, his slim-fitting casual jacket riding high on his lean frame. “Time to get to work.”
“I’ve been working this whole time. Where have you been?” Shige griped.
The flight attendant was at the front, talking to the pilot through the open door, lounging in the doorframe. “Hey, Ginger.” Ryo snapped and the flight attendant straightened up, moving towards them and swaying with the pitch and tilt of the plane.
“Did you need something?”
“Just make sure this doesn’t move.” Ryo tapped the metallic PASIV case and he nodded. Shige wondered how much Tegoshi was paying his pretty face, and if it was enough.
“Yes, sir.” He tipped his head.
Shige set up the lines, watching them all prepare to inject; he had to go first because it was his dream they would be going into on the first level, meaning he couldn’t chicken-shit now. The needle went in with a sting he barely even noticed anymore, and he needed to inject higher up on his arm because all of the small veins in his arms had shrivelled from repeated use.
When Shige opened his eyes again he was standing in the middle of a street, and cars were rushing by on both sides, horns started to blare and someone swerved hard to avoid hitting him. Shige shrieked and covered his eyes. Hoping that this mission wouldn’t get off to a bad start.
“Shige.” Massu snapped, and he was there standing beside him but most of the traffic had stopped now, honking and yelling at them. Massu grabbed his sleeve and pulled him through the puzzle of stopped cars over to the sidewalk where the rest of the team was waiting.
He got there just in time for the sky to open up and begin pouring on them. Shige was instantly drenched right through the sports jacket he had dreamed up. Ryo was giving him a distinctly unimpressed look from where his fringe was being flattened to his forehead. He looked like a wet kitten, but Shige didn’t have the balls to say so right now.
“This was not part of the plan.” Massu sighed, pushing his sopping hair out of his eyes. Shige almost wanted to laugh. “Couldn’t you have taken a piss before we went under?”
“Sorry.” He muttered, feeling his cheeks heat. The rain was warm and wet, like dreaming of waterfalls and ... well shit.
“Lets keep moving.” Koyama said, “Shige.” Koyama tipped his head and Shige moved to YamaPi’s side. Shige still wasn’t the best shot, but he could take someone down, if they were right in front of him the gun a warm weight at the small of his back, and YamaPi was checking the slide on his side arm looking a lot more competent then Shige could ever dream.
“Tegoshi, go with YamaPi.” Tegoshi nodded, flanking the other side of Shige.
“Come on.” He smiled, and Shige nodded. He watched as Koyama stepped out in front of a cab, and when it slammed on the breaks just short of his legs, Massu reached in, silenced pistol first, to drag the driver out.
“Oh hell, you again?” Massu hissed, but he tossed the cabbie on his ass. Koyama crawled into the back seat, Ryo scrambling in on top of them.
“Time to find us a ride.” YamaPi smiled.
Shige wasn’t expecting it when Tegoshi shoved him out into the road, and a sleek black car screamed to a stop.
“Shige found one!” Tegoshi called and YamaPi yanked out the twig-like blond chick driving.
“Sorry honey.” He said, before slipping behind the wheel, reinforcing his smile with the business end of his gun. Shige was totally going to slap Tegoshi hard when he was under, like dick-slapping him or something.
“You know when I die the dream collapses.” Shige huffed. Sliding across the seats in the black Jaguar.
“Oh?” Tegoshi ticked his head to the side, huge faux-innocent eyes.
“It’s your dream, of course it was going to stop.” YamaPi sighed, turning the gear down so he could restart the engine. Still. He watched the swish of the wipers as they rain continued to pour down on them.
Right now Massu was pulling up to where Yokoyama would be and Koyama would be pulling him into the cab. YamaPi was going to find them and follow them to the drop point.
Well that was the plan.
The light was green and their car was rolling slowly through the intersection behind a maroon van when the world exploded in sound and motion. A silver SUV rammed the back end of the car causing it to spin all the way around in a crunch of metal as the rear windows exploded in blocks of safety glass that rained down on him.
“Shit!” Shige yelped, ducking instinctively. YamaPi wrestled with the wheel, trying to get the car pointing in one direction. Once it was all done water was pouring in the back window and trickling down his back and Shige was sitting in a pile of broken glass.
“Then what the fuck was that?” Shige muttered, it was his dream damn it.
“I don’t know.” YamaPi growled, shifting them down gear again and revving the engine to test if it still worked. People were gathering to gawk at them, and Shige was starting to get really nervous, during the few jobs he had worked before, the projections had turned violent and mobbed them. He’d had his arm broken first, and when he fell they broke his nose, his ribs and all the fingers on his hand and probably most of the bones in his palm too.
Then someone had stomped on his neck and that was all he remembered about the first time he’d been mobbed to death. This scene was beginning to look really familiar, with all the projections gathering around them.
The engine roared, and people stared, and YamaPi put them in gear and pulled away, leaving a crunch of glass behind. The back was dented in, and all the rear windows blown out, but they were moving still.
“Everything is under control.” YamaPi said from between grit teeth.
Shige thought of Spot again. “I’d hate to see it out of control.”
When they arrived at the next block, the sound of gunfire was deafening.
“Holy shit.” Shige gaped.
“Get down.” YamaPi yelled and Shige did just that, sinking low in his seat and completely ignoring the piece of glass trying to lodge itself in his ass.
Shige had no idea what was going on, but the engine was roaring and YamaPi was driving with one hand and shooting with the other. Shige saw the man’s face and the barrel of his gun turning towards them even as YamaPi ran him down. The car jerked as they rear-ended another car, pinning someone on the other side.
Tegoshi was sitting up, pulling out a silenced pistol and leaning out the window (handy how it wasn’t there anymore.) YamaPi pushed the car into reverse, hitting another car with the already crumpled tail end into a small hatchback. The taxi was boxed in by cars and men dressed in sleek black were advancing on it, all guns blazing and terminator sunglasses. Shige felt the urge to laugh hysterically. With his face still mostly hidden he peeked over the edge and shooting blindly at the one nearest to him.
“Go go go.” YamaPi was chanting, and there was an awful racket, multiple guns going off at once, the blaring of car horns, at least one car alarm shrieking and wailing loudly. The sound of metal crashing into metal was loud, screaming even. Shige’s heart was beating too loud in his ears.
Suddenly YamaPi was pressing down hard on the acceleration, flicking up through the gears rapidly and swerving hard enough that Shige could feel the Gs low in his gut. He clung to his gun, but the car pulled out of the drift with a roar of the engine and they were shooting off, the sound of gunfire fading quickly.
Of course it was a cock-up already.
Which was about when he noticed that Tegoshi was white as a sheet and there was blood mixing with the warm rain running down his wrist where his hands were pressed to his chest.
“Oh shit.” Shige squeaked.
“What?” YamaPi barked, and they were winding in and out of traffic horns blaring in their wake, flying down the street at a very unsafe speed.
“Tegoshi’s hurt.” Tegoshi was looking at him, eyes glassy with pain. Shige quickly shrugged out of his jacket, the wet material heavy and clingy.
He pressed it against the wound, and Tegoshi let out a groan of pain.
“Fuck.” YamaPi said eloquently. Shige couldn’t agree more.
They pulled into the warehouse to find Koyama and Massu fighting, colour was riding high on Koyama’s face, clothes clinging to his lean frame. Massu looked: not angry. He actually looked a little scared.
“Where were you?” Ryo snarled at them once he’d closed the door; there was a cut on his cheek that looked an awful lot like he’d almost taken a bullet to the face. That would have blown a bit of a hole in the plan.
“Out of my way.” Shige said, voice cracking over the words as he all but carried Tegoshi out of the smashed up Jag; there were bullet holes all across the boot and Shige wasn’t thinking about them at all. That way madness lay. Tegoshi was gritting his teeth, but he was making this really soft whining noise and Shige was close to really freaking out now. If Tegoshi went down, he was down lost to the lowest levels of limbo, gone forever and then what would happen to them? They all but destroyed one of the most powerful men in the world while mind-fucking another. Game over, real death.
“We were hit by another car.” YamaPi grit out. Koyama was at his elbow pulling out bandages and tape, long fingers moving quick and sure over his tools, not shaking like Shige’s. He was hyped, fucked up worse than a bad trip.
“He wasn’t supposed to have a militarized mind.” Massu was saying loudly, “it didn’t show up in the research.”
“Well it sure as fuck showed up now.” Ryo was snarling back and Koyama’s face was drawn and grim, moving aside the wet jacket to get to the single bullet wound on Tegoshi’s chest. He sucked a quick breath through his teeth and pressed the jacket back.
“He’s not going to survive that.” Shige said bluntly. Shot to the lung, almost definitely fatal without emergency surgery. “Fuck.”
“Relax, and hold the pressure in place.” Koyama said, pulling a knife out of a sheath at the small of his back and slicing through a plastic bag that he pulled out from under the table. He was slicing a large square out of it.
Massu and YamaPi would be with Yoko now, playing the roles of kidnappers to get his mind primed for the next level.
“How bad is it?” Ryo asked.
“What do you fucking think.” Shige snarled back, and Tegoshi moaned, blood flaking his lips. The area was soaked with blood but Koyama was wiping it away with Shige’s jacket and pressing his square of plastic bag over the hole and taping it down tight.
“Bandage that.” Koyama tossed the tape at him, just in time for YamaPi to come back, balaclava pulled down over his face so you couldn’t see anything but the grim line of his mouth and the hard set of his eyes.
“Koyama, you’re on. You’ve got an hour.”
“What?” Koyama hissed, “I was supposed to have more time than an hour. I was supposed to have all night to break him.”
“Well you’ve got an hour.” And YamaPi was grabbing Koyama’s hands, pulling them behind his back and between one breath and the next Koyama’s form melted away, until he was a short bug-eyed looking man that Shige recognized from photos as Subaru, the right hand man. YamaPi put a rough burlap sack over his head and Koyama let out a sudden yowling yell. It set Shige’s hair on edge.
He was entirely on edge. One wrong shot, one bullet too close and he’d lose his mind entirely, scattered on the shores of his own subconscious reducing his brain to scrambled eggs. He’d relied on his brain for so long, going at the world with nothing but his mind and a bad attitude. His fingers tripped over the wrapping but he managed to get Tegoshi patched up.
“Shige.” YamaPi was looking more than a little wild. Ryo had gone after Massu somewhere else, probably checking the doors, the last thing they needed was a mob of projections beating down the door. He trusted Ryo’s maze, but they were supposed to have more time than this.
“If you ask me how he is- I will fucking kill you.” Okay so maybe he was a little more on edge than he’d thought. Scrambled eggs.
“The sedative, what exactly happens when we die?”
Shige stared at him.
“Nothing. Shit, YamaPi. It’s nothing, you go down as far as you can go, there is nothing, limbo, time passes like fucking molasses there.”
“It’s not nothing.” YamaPi said tightly.
“Might as well be. You can’t wake up by a shot in the head until the sedative wears off, only the kick will wake you. By that time your brain would have turned to mush.”
“Then we’ll just not-die.” YamaPi nodded like it was that easy. Shige couldn’t share his enthusiasm. He felt moments away from flying to tiny pieces, shattering into a gibbering useless mess. “We’ll take Tegoshi down with us, it will buy him some time.”
“You’re going to go down? That’s suicide.”
“We don’t have a choice- continue the job. If we stay here we die.”
“If you go deeper you’ll die, security is only going to get worse.” Maybe he wasn’t breaking; maybe he was actually the only sane one. This is what sanity felt like, this fragile shaking feeling.
“We can’t stay here. Tegoshi’ll be dead in a manner of hours, and then we’ll lose him. Listen, Shige,” YamaPi was stepping closer to him, damp and warm all up and Shige’s face. He flattened himself against the table as much as he could. Scrambled eggs, Spot. Oh shit. “You didn’t see who was driving that car that hit us did you.”
“No.”
“Oh, okay.” Shige desperately wished that Ryo would come and do that weird mother henning thing he did when YamaPi got really weird, giving him squinty eyed looks and distracting him with crass comments about female celebrities. Somehow Shige didn’t imagine cracking a joke about J.Lo’s ass would help him any right now, he could only wish. “Go set up the van, I’ll stay with him.”
Shige was more than happy to leave YamaPi’s side.
The plan was remarkably simple (unless you were Shige, then it was hopelessly tangled, a relay of neurotransmitters and sedative that needed to be balanced and finely tuned, but he couldn’t do it manually. Needless to say he did not appreciate them harping on his job when it was clearly the most difficult.) Right now Koyama was Subaru, well a very careful replication of him from the stubborn tilt of his chin down to the slight nasal drawl he had, pretending that he too had been kidnapped, tortured for the information the shadowy bad guys wanted.
There was a safe, and only Yokoyama knew the number for it. Only there was no safe, but Koyama would tell him there was something in there, something special, something life changing. An alternate will, a scrap of paper with a few legal signatures that gave him the option of breaking up the company. A chance to start fresh, to mash the mould and make his own model. It was almost romantic. Almost. You plant the seed, to give it some reinforcement and hopefully when they all wake up it will have grown, taken hold in Yokoyama’s mind.
He took the slim silver case and set it up in the middle of the van, strapping it into place and topping up the levels, checking the leads and making sure there would be no problem with them going down into the next level.
“We need to move or we’ll be surrounded.” Massu came up to him, hefting an assault rifle.
Shige didn’t want too, but he would. Yokoyama was sedated and strapped in the van, Tegoshi next, lolling like a rag doll in the seat. Koyama was already in, stripping out of his coat so he could reach the crook of his elbow, sliding the needle in quickly. The next world would be his.
“Hey,” Ryo was looking at Shige dark eyes and a his mouth a thin angry line. “Don’t fuck it up. Or I will find a way to destroy you. Got it?”
“It must be sad to be such a massive twat.”
“It’s awful.” Ryo agreed with a solemn face.
Part 4