Chapter 2

Unmovable Desire

In the past two months, the weather across the entire globe seemed somehow different, as if changed somehow. There was a 7.6 earthquake in India, 6.3 in California, wildfires raged uncontrollably in England from droughts, sandstorms went for a good two-three days in a row in the middle east, tsunamis and crazy volcano activity in both Hawaii and Japan. No one really thought much of the whole ordeal; no one questioned why these things were suddenly happening all at once because these things did happen, though perhaps not as frequently in only a two month period.

That’s what Kaori was worried about. These were natural disasters that did occur every so often, but she knew better than to simply say, “It’s the natural course of the planet. Things will settle down again.”

“Not if the dragon god is lost,” she said to herself.

For the past two months Xein and she traveled from London to the far corners of Australia in search of this secret society that was somehow responsible for the abduction and experimentations of both Xein himself and his younger sister. This society or governing body, whatever it was, was not run out of one country but rather it was run by a mix of people all across the globe. They were interested in genetic engineering, cybernetics, anything that would push the definition of humanity to the next level— and become gods themselves.

One night as they sat in a warm coach on an all night train to Madrid, the dark red velvet furnishings almost warming the room on its own, Kaori couldn’t help but ask about Xein’s past, even though she knew it wasn’t something he enjoyed discussing.

“I wish I knew,” he said, his face turned away, looking out the window at the dark landscape whizzing past. “Those people stole so much from us…even our pasts. But the one thing I do remember is Maelyn. She was so small, I had to protect her. I had to accept what those bastards did to me so we could escape.”

“What do you mean, ‘accept’?”

“I could tell that Maelyn wasn’t taking to the drastic changes in her genetic structure and the sheer pain it caused but I couldn’t feel a thing. I just sat there, didn’t move a muscle and let them do whatever because I knew there would be a time they would perfect their techniques to the point they could no longer control their creation. That was about a year ago when I broke out.”

“And no one tried to stop you? They…just let you go?”

Xein then turned his head toward Kaori and grinned devilishly playful, and held out his arm, rolling back the long, baggy white sleeve of his shirt. Beneath the fabric were at least a dozen different shaped scars all over his arm. Some were long and narrow whereas others were short and appeared to have once been deep wounds. Kaori suddenly felt ashamed for asking in the first place.

“What’s the matter?” he grinned. “I suppose you wouldn’t want to see the ones on my back or—”

“—It’s not that,” she said, looking him in the face again. “They mutilated you.”

He laughed, pushing the sleeve back down over his arm. “Ah, that was the least they could do for science, for ‘humanity.’ But you know what’s funny?” Kaori couldn’t imagine anything could be funny about torturous experiments. Xein again turned his glance out the window. “The more they want to strengthen what they call humanity, the further away from it they get.” There was a long silence and then he signed, looking back to Kaori. “They took my sister’s humanity and made her a wolf.”

Kaori had heard of such ideas and theories but never actually knew them to be true and old. These people had been working at this level of genetic engineering for at least the past ten years. How could she have missed this? Unless she was too preoccupied with the thought of the return of the dragon god to see it happening. She admitted Hisoka took up a large portion of her time and thoughts, but all of her instincts and so-called “knowledge” of the dragon god were wrong. Hisoka was dead. She heard it on the news as Xein and she were leaving the country. Hisoka was not the dragon god she believed him to be. He couldn’t be, not if he’s dead. If he’s dead…

“You thinking about that kid again?” Xein said, happy to change the topic off himself.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “I’m just having a hard time believing those news reports.”

“I can understand that. They didn’t quite find the same number of bodies as those they declared dead, did they?”

Confused, Kaori said, “What do you mean?”

Xein simply blinked, astounded. Maybe she was too tired to see the obvious. “Okay,” he said, “let’s review. They reported the Ijiwarus—the two parents and daughter—as deceased. Their bodies were all recovered, including what’s-his-name’s mother—”

Kaori nodded, “Aiko. Kenage Aiko. Hisoka’s mother.”

“Right,” Xein said as though he were a teacher congratulating a student who gave the correct answer. “So the others that were pronounced dead yet not recovered at the scene were,” he raised his hands to count them out, “Hisoka, that Kataki kid, and the bystander that walked into the fray. How do we even know that? I mean, the people that weren’t supposed to be there. How do we know they’re missing if we never knew they were there to begin with. Unless someone else was there, watching the whole thing and then reported them all as dead? Maybe it’s all a big conspiracy.”

“It could happen,” she nodded.

“Then what are you upset about? The kid’s probably not even dead.”

“Then why all the weird weather?” she wanted to say. Either Hisoka wasn’t the dragon god she suspected him to be and the weird weather across the globe were exactly what everyone else on the planet said it was, a big coincidence, nothing to worry about, or Hisoka was the dragon god and something happened to him to shift the balance of the world. She hoped for the later to be true though it didn’t comfort her in the slightest. Maybe he was the dragon god and was killed… Would that have caused the world to fall of kilter?

“Maybe not,” she said, “but I think the sooner we can find your sister, the faster we’ll know the truth about that night.”

The young boy with green hair had been in recovery for quite a long time but not nearly as long as he was in the cybernetic wing of this unknown society. If they hadn’t worked on him and replaced half of his body with metallic parts, he would have been just as that house turned out to be, nothing but a pile of rubble, scraps. His injuries were severe and yet he wasn’t very near death. Something inside him forced him to stay alive, to fight, but for what no one, not even himself, knew the answer.

For a good four months he lay unconscious, under constant tune-ups and repairs to his new body, but the one thing they could not repair was his mind, which lay dormant all until one cold morning when a young girl by the name of Sydirna was assigned to be his top cyber-bioengineer.

The boy had been out of the medical hospital for a long time and received tune-ups from a cozy and well furnished room in what appeared to be a rich man’s home, a mansion. Sydirna was making some find-tuning adjustments to the boy’s left arm when his eyes flashed open one human green and the other metallic blue. For a moment his eyes darted left and right, not understanding what he saw, where he was or why. Sydirna put down her tools and sat back, staring at him.

“Where—?” he said, his voice deep and very hoarse and dry from lack of use.

“It’s about time you woke up, boy,” she said in a strange accent he couldn’t place. “We thought you were never going to wake up and all our hard work be for nothing.”

His body made a strange jerking motion as though he were trying to sit up but couldn’t.

“Why can’t I move?” he said, eyes wide.

“Because you were being serviced. It’s common practice to restrict motor functions.” She again moved closer and did something to a small panel on his left arm, something made a single beeping sound and then a dozen small blue lights lit all over his body, on his legs, both arms, several above his left eye, two on his neck, five on his left hand and a dozen other places. He felt something change when she made that beeping sound. He no longer felt restricted, heavy as though weighted down by some unknown force not willing to let him go. He slowly sat up and looked about the room. They were the only ones there. Besides the slight humming of his own body, the rest was silent.

“My name’s Sydirna,” the girl said. “You mind telling me what your name is? Everyone’s been dying to know.”

He looked back to the girl, opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. His eyes told her everything.

“Hm,” she said. “Maybe you lost more than we could replace.”

He looked down at his own body, used his human right hand and touched his left. It was cold and hard yet felt strangely powerful and strong.

“What happened to me—? Did-did you do this?”

“Well, the smarter technicians did, yeah. I just do the easy stuff.”

“Technicians? What? What the hell did you do to me?”

She knew he was mad but she had to put him in his place. “Well, you had no left arm, part of a left leg, above the knee, no right foot, and the whole left part of your head was bashed in. I’m surprised your brain is even able to function after that. Oh, strike that. It functions because of the partitions we had to add for it to work. Nothing major. We just had to build most of your body from scratch.”

At this the boy jerked away from Sydirna, attempted to stand up but suddenly plopped back down on the red sofa in which he had been lying. A burst of black light exploded through his head, cutting off his vision and senses. It was like nothing else he had ever felt before, something between excruciating pain and ecstatic ecstasy. He didn’t know whether he should scream in agony or to laugh at the unknown blackness that gave him such a thrill. Then a second or two later, the lights came back on in his head and he could hear again. Sydirna was standing beside him again, this time adjusting something just above his left eye. He felt something click and then beep.

“There. That should be better,” she said.

“What… I-I don’t know what’s going on,” the boy said, utterly confused.

“Oh, that was nothing. Just a slight overload to some of these sensors up here,” she tapped her small pen-like instrument against his head to make a clanging sound. It seemed like a very hallow, empty sound to him.

Looking around the room again, the boy scrunched up his face and put a hand to his left eye. He expected his metallic hand not to be able to feel as his normal, uninjured right hand could but sensations flooded through his hand the instant it reached his face. It was like he could feel every nook and cranny, every segment of metal that came together, every flash of light that burned hot under his touch. 　He quickly retracted his hand and stared at it, amazed.

“The marvel of modern technology,” Sydirna said at his reaction. “I’d say your new additions are more sensitive than your old.”

“Yeah, I’d have to say the same thing,” he said.

“Listen,” she said as he continued to examine his hand, closing and unclosing it. “The techs are going to want to see you. They informed me to let them know if you awoke.”

“What do they want with me?” he said with a slight flutter of his voice.

“Well, considering you’re the first human cyborg in our facility—or anywhere for that matter—they’re gonna want to do some extra tests. But to do that, they may have to install some extra software into your systems.”

The boy looked up at Sydirna, his green hair falling limp over his robotic blue eye. “Why do I get the feeling that I have no choice in the matter?”

He could tell she tried to smile reassuringly at him but it didn’t work. Not only did it look fake it looked as though she knew something else that she wasn’t saying. He could see it, hanging there in her eyes, twitching just in the corner of her mouth. He knew something was not right.

Standing up at last, the boy turned his back on Sydirna and strode across the empty room decorated with ancient floor rugs and paintings on every wall. There was a window there, on the far side of the room where dust sparkled down to the ground in a beam of sunlight pouring through the window. The heavy, velvet red curtains were pushed to either side of the window to allow the sunlight to come into the room. There, in front of the window, he stopped, looking down at the ground far below which he couldn’t see through the thick layer of gray clouds. At long last he said, “Who am I?”

Sydirna had sat on the sofa and turned to face him at the window. She shook her head. “Nobody knows. We were hoping that you would be able to tell us.”

He did nothing but stand before the window, staring at something without really seeing anything. He almost felt as though he wanted another circuit overload to wash over him, to fade into the darkness and just let whatever take over, to not think. It hurt his head to think, so he didn’t do it. He turned away from the window and looked at Sydirna. “Fine. When can they be here?”

“Oh, they’re not coming here,” Sydirna said with a smile. “We’re going to them.”

“In two whole months we’ve only managed to acquire two Prism Auras. Tell me, why is this again?”

Chryarnth’s voice echoed cold and stern through the empty space of his office in the PCM building.

“Listen, Chryarnth, this is your quest not mine. It’s not my job to play some huge scavenger hunt across the planet for something I could care less about. Now if you don’t like what we’ve done for you, then perhaps it’s time that you start doing this shit yourself,” said an angry man on the other end of the phone.

Chryarnth simply gazed across his office with dreamy eyes. Nothing else mattered to him than finding those remaining pieces of the puzzle. And he was determined to make that the priority of everyone else as well. “Perhaps you do not fully understand your position in relation to mine, Captain Brendal. Sir, if I may be so blunt, I would have to say that you are the subordinate, not me.” There was a pause and a rumble on the line. Chryarnth smiled quietly to himself and went on. “Now, as I was saying, would you like to inform me why you’ve called off further searches for the remaining Prism Auras when no such command has been given to you?”

“Chryarnth, sir,” he added snidely, “no such searches have been called off, however, they have been put on an indefinite suspension until further notice.”

“Then I am giving you due notice that these searches may not be called off nor delayed in any way you find manageable. There will be no excuses if you cannot at least locate another in the next couple of days. They’re not that difficult to track.”

“If they’re not so hard to find, sir, then why don’t you lend us your expertise and pin-point the locations of these things yourself?”

Chryarnth continued as calm as ever. “Because unlike yourself, I have many other obligations to tend to. So, if we are finished with this conversation, I must be going. I trust that you will not fail me again.”

Without another word, Chryarnth hung up the phone with a cold clack.

“Sounds like that went along alright,” said a voice in the dark.

Chryarnth turned and looked over at the dark corner of the room to his right. There, beside a dimly lit table and chairs, sat a young man with short dirty-blue hair and a shiny black right arm. “Yes, as long as they don’t decide to take an indefinite break for some ungodly reason.”

“They’ll find them. They’ve already found two since the ‘accident.’” He couldn’t help but laugh at the word. “I’d be out there, too, if my repairs were complete.”

Chryarnth stood up at the thought and pointed a finger at a chilly torch which stood tall next to the unseen speaker in the shadows. Two puffs of fire burst from his finger and lit the torch, uncovering the man sitting there.

“You will have your revenge, boy. But first you must be properly healed.”

“If you call a cyborg tuning ‘healing,’” the boy chuckled. “What will happen when you find all of the pieces?”

Grinning again, Chryarnth turned away and stood in front of his desk, toying with a flicker of light on the end of his finger that seemed to taunt a short staff lying on the desk. On the end of the staff was a clear, circular orb, almost like a fortune teller’s crystal ball only this was barely three inches in diameter. Inside the orb fluttered two balls of color, gold and black. “What will happen?” he repeated fondly of the thoughts pounding through his brain. “Why, the god of this world will return to us, of course. And then we shall kill him.”