Chapter 4
Dead End of No Return
It was
impossible, Kataki thought. How
could it be possible that the man standing just feet in front of him had a
brother…who was a god? A god? Like
those in Greek mythology? Like the
Christian god? Like Buddha of
“I see you
have many questions swimming around in that head of yours. That is good,” Chryarnth said, breaking
the silence of what felt like ten minutes.
“I do not presume you an idiot and I respect your need to know certain
details of what is occurring around you, but unfortunately for you, I must
decline. What I need you to do is
assist Akuma in the retrieval of the remaining Aura Souls.”
“Fine,”
Kataki said. Did he even know what
he was saying? As though learning
the truth about Hisoka weren’t enough of a shock, Kataki was faced with yet
another unbelievable “truth.” And
where did this all leave him? For
so many years he let his anger and hunger for revenge guide him through what
little of a life he had. Now all of
that was gone, all of that replaced with uncertainty and bits of fantasy. There were no real gods, at least none
that recognized Kataki. If there
had been a god, would he have fallen from the cliff? Shouldn’t the god have come to his
rescue and saved him like a god should have done? Maybe there was a god there trying to
help; he just couldn’t see it.
Kataki
swallowed a putrid taste down his throat as he grasped exactly where he stood
in all of this. He was a tool, he
understood, a tool to be used and influenced just right in order whoever these
people were to take Hisoka while he was close to death, his energies down. Kataki felt this realization sting
painfully in his chest like the golden dragon sword that had plunged through
his chest only a few months ago. He
knew he was no longer in control.
Perhaps he never was. “And
when we find these…souls? Then what?”
“I’m going to
kill him. I’ve already told you
this,” Chryarnth said with an impatient flash of his eyes through the dark
shadows of the room.
Kataki
stepped forward, approaching Chryarnth not as his superior or even his boss but
as… What? A friend?
“I have to
know,” Kataki said. “I’ve lived my
life this long thinking… believing…”
Chryarnth
smiled. “That he was
responsible. Yes, I know. But if it makes you feel any better—or
perhaps it will make you feel worse—that one in the lab, Hisoka, did not let
you fall. Whatever happened up on
that mountain was sincerely an accident.
He only tried to do what he could to help.”
“But I saw—”
“—What you saw was Akuma under the surface. Hisoka has no control over him, as you
might have guessed.” At this moment
Chryarnth’s eyes ceased their usual glow through the darkness and looked almost
sad. Whether it was to hide this
weakness or something else, Kataki wasn’t sure, still Chryarnth turned away and
was silent for several moments. “I
will find out why he did this, why he would intentionally shatter his own soul… But when I do, I will kill him.” He shook his head quietly. “One like that deserves death over all
else.”
Kataki’s eyes
lowered to his enhanced right arm, clenching his fist tightly. This is what he was now, a half-human,
part machine. There was no going
back, no taking back the sins he committed, the blood he spilled, but he could
understand; he wanted to understand.
And if seeing him would help him move forward—
“I have to
see him,” Kataki said suddenly.
Chryarnth
said nothing but raised his head as though he was listening but unwilling to
give his input just yet.
Kataki raised
his metallic arm out in front of his face.
“You did this for me just so that you could get him, didn’t you? You could have told me the truth about
him long ago but you decided not to, so you could use me. You knew you could use my hatred to your
advantage and you did. I can’t
forget that. I can’t work for you
knowing what I know now.”
“That’s why?”
Chryarnth grinned to himself, hardly looking back at Kataki over his shoulder.
“That’s why I
have to see him. I can’t forget the
hatred even if it was misplaced… but…”
The soft, gentle face of Hisoka’s mother flashed in his mind. He was at the house for several hours
before Hisoka showed up and in that time he could feel the love of a mother for
her son. That is partly what drove
him on, in sheer resentment. He
never had that connection with his adoptive parents. He often though he would have been
better off alone, far away from Sakura…
Then his future was taken away from him, disappeared like a fading
dream. He tried to reach out to
touch it again, regain a little bit of those dreams, but he could never raise
his arm high enough, far enough. It
was always just out of his reach.
None of it was Hisoka’s fault.
His parents, Hisoka’s mother, Sakura… All of their deaths were on his
shoulders now. They would all still
be alive if he would have known the truth.
Sakura! The one person he
loved in this life was dead because of him. Because he drew strength out of hate instead
of love, power out of revenge, loyalty out of lies. There was no going back.
Kataki choked
on his words and swallowed hard again.
This time Chryarnth turned toward him, placing his hands on Kataki’s
shoulders. “Why do you want to see
him, really? For
him to forgive you? I doubt
he would even recognize your face right now…”
An odd
churning, warm sensation all of a sudden in his stomach surprised him. What was this feeling? He had to spit the words out quickly
before the feeling grew and made him sick.
“What do you mean? Of course
he’d recognize me.”
Chryarnth,
his hands still resting on Kataki’s shoulders, smiled and almost laughed
through his teeth. “Fine,
Kataki. If you want to see him, I
will not stop you. Just remember
what I said if you get no response.”
He nodded strongly and gave Kataki a sort of friendly pat on the
back. “I will call the lab to
expect you,” he said, reaching for the phone on his desk. “Oh, I will inform Akuma as well.”
“But he just
left here…”
“Yes, but he
travels slightly different than you might.
By the time you walk out that door, he will already be there.”
“How are you
feeling?”
The voice was
soft and warm and yet it felt like it came from such a long distance away. Frenier tried to lift his head to see who
spoke to him, but he couldn’t even move a finger. He was absolutely paralyzed.
“I… I can’t
move,” he said.
A young girl,
the same who had brought him here, sat in a soft sofa next to him, laying her
hands on a mechanical panel integrated into his chest. He felt her warm hands but felt little
else. She pressed a button here and
there, used a small screwdriver and adjusted a few bolts, then
finally she closed the panel, securing it safely.
“How about
now?” she asked, her eyes shining brightly from beneath her long bangs.
Frenier
wiggled his fingers and then clenched his fist. He felt the muscles come back to life,
felt their warmth cascade through him as he tried to sit up. “What happened to me?”
“Oh,
nothing to worry about. We
had to shut you down for a little bit, remember?”
“Shut me
down?”
“You’re not
exactly human any more, remember?
You would have been dead now if we hadn’t fixed up your body with
robotic parts. You’re sort of what
we call a prototype. And a fine one at that.”
A disgusted
look crossed his face. Was he
supposed to be thankful, grateful for whatever this people had done to
him? How were
they to know what was best for him?
How did they know that he wouldn’t have been better off dead than a
half-human, a dead human walking around in a hollow shell that could only feel
true life as long as all systems were running correctly? It was wrong, it was sick. Who were they to play god with him, to recreate
him exactly the way they wanted?
Frenier wanted to lie back down, to fall back beneath whatever black
veil he had just awoken from, to escape whatever hell he found himself in now,
but he couldn’t; he could feel it.
He had lost his humanity that night Hisoka fought with Kataki and there
was no getting it back. The old
Frenier was dead.
“Are you
alright?” the girl said after Frenier continued to stare in silence straight
ahead at the wall.
Frenier
blinked his one remaining human eye, the other flashed
a pale green light. “Yeah, I
guess. What did you just do?” he
said, placing a solely metallic hand on his armored chest. He winced at the hollow clanking sound
his hand made upon it.
“Well, like I
said, we had to shut you down for a little bit to upgrade all your systems, to
run diagnostics and to test everything before we awoke you. Believe me, it’s
not fun turning someone back on when they’re physical actions aren’t closely
regulated.”
Frenier didn’t
like the sound of that. “You’re
able to take complete control of someone like me? Is that what you mean?”
“Only
for a short period of time.
Trust me, we value free will very much. There are laws to protect ones like yourself from becoming complete automatons.”
“Somehow that
doesn’t make me feel better,” Frenier said, flexing his metallic right arm,
testing its range and flexibility. “You
said there were others like me?”
“Oh yes,” the
girl said as she stood and walked toward a large window on the far side of the
room. There were no curtains on
either side or above the window, which made it feel somewhat like a typical
castle window, letting as much light in through the gap during the day. Now that he had his wits about him and
the use of his body again, Frenier looked about the room. He couldn’t imagine this place being
deep in the capital city of
“What is that
smell?”
The girl was
toying with a small tool kit on a table next to the window, returning her
instruments when he spoke. She
turned her head to look at him over her shoulder and grinned almost with sad
eyes. She had something to tell
him, but she dreaded doing so. With
a sigh, she tapped her tool kit closed and turned around, biting her lower lip.
“What is
it? I can’t like that look!”
Frenier said, frowning, a totally new sensation flickered across his face as
his human skin wrinkled against the metallic side of his face. He saw from within his skull the green
light of his right eye flicker, and he hated it.
“I’m afraid
that’s one of the problems we’ve been trying to correct.” She couldn’t bring herself to speak
directly.
He was
growing impatient. “What problem?”
The girl bit
her lip again and twirled her hand around a small string on the bottom of her
shirt that was used to tie a small wrench or screwdriver to. “Apparently, all the other prototypes
were still able to feel the physical joys and pains of hunger and thirst… but
they’re unable to do either. I’m
afraid you have no digestive system any more.”
Frenier
couldn’t say anything. He only felt
his hands find their way to his stomach.
All of it was metal. All of
it was hollow. All of it was fake. He was fake.
“But look at
it this way, you’ll never have to worry about finding
something to eat… I always seem to
have that problem,” the girl said, attempting somehow to make the situation
better, more easily swallowed.
Frenier
sighed, shaking his head. It was an
odd feeling, touching his own stomach. He knew what he felt was fake, both of
his arms were metallic, although one more so than the other. Still both hands were completely
remade. He couldn’t understand how
he was still able to feel with these robotic hands as he had with human
hands. He wouldn’t have known
anything was different had he not seen his hands, heard the sound they made
against other metals. “Was that the
only problem you run into? With these prototypes?”
The girl said
nothing and simply turned her back on him again.
“C’mon, you
can’t keep doing this to me! I don’t
even know you but I know what that means.
You have to tell me. What
happened with these other prototypes?
Who are they?”
The girl
nodded reluctantly, turned back around and smiled. “You’re all set. Your supervisor will be in shortly to
give you your tasks.”
“Whoa, wait a
minute.” This time Frenier jumped
to his feet, a look on his face that cried, You don’t DARE
leave me without telling me what I need to know! But the girl seemed oblivious to his
facial expressions. Maybe his new
face was incapable of making any. “You’re
not leaving me. Not now. Not yet.”
“Sorry, kid,
but I have my orders. Bye.” The girl pushed a small blue button on
the side of the wall next to the door and a moment later the door slid open
automatically. Frenier tried to get
to the door before it closed again but he still had to learn how to walk
effectively, like normal. The door
closed just beyond his fingertips.
“Dammit!” he
cursed. He looked at the small panel
of three buttons on the side of the door.
He wasn’t sure which one the girl had pressed to open the door, but at
least he could use logical sense to figure it out. It wasn’t like there were so many
buttons that he had to figure out the precise pattern in which to press
them.
There were
three buttons all in a row. The one
on the far left was yellow, the one in the middle green, and the on the right
red. He first raised his right arm
to press a button and then realized how effortless it was to move his new
limbs. It was as though he had no
sense of the strength that used to be locked in his muscles alone. Now those muscles were iron. Only slight involuntary electrical
pulses were necessary to move his arm.
Aside from the weird sensation this gave him, that he could move without
necessarily feel that he was moving, he again turned his attention to getting
out of this room.
He looked again
to the panel. “Eeny,
meeny, miney, moe, huh? One’s
as good as the other, I guess,” he said to himself as he raised a pointed
finger toward the yellow button. He
pressed it once. Nothing happened.
“Okay… Next.” He pressed the red one next. Still nothing happened. Lastly, he pressed the green
button. Again, nothing
happened. “What
the hell!? She had to have
pressed one of these to get out of here!”
Then, as he
was about to start bashing a whole through the entire door with his new arm, a
voice echoed loudly—almost ear splittingly loud—throughout the small room.
“Sit
down. I’ll be there in a second.”
Hundreds of
miles north, in the desolate winter mountains of northern Japan, Akuma touched
his feet down in the snow just feet away from the entrance to the laboratory in
which a handful of carefully selected scientists were conducting experiments on
live subjects. One of them was
Hisoka.
“Ah, it’s
been a long time in coming, dear Hisoka.
And this time at last, I shall gaze upon you with my own eyes.”
Before Akuma
left the PCM building he visited a wonderful armory of all sorts of ancient
treasures. He picked out a well polished
set of ebony armor lined with gold plating that artistically formed the head of
a snake on the breastplate. He wore
the black helmet Chryarnth handed him before he left the office, suggesting
that he should keep his identity hidden for now, especially when his facial
features resembled Hisoka so closely.
All but the eyes, his slightly darker hair and his
devilish grin. Hidden by a
mask, these things would never be known.
Then before he left the armory, his eyes hit on a shiny object in the
corner of the room. Almost being
pulled toward it, Akuma let his hand fly forward to grab a hold of the hilt of
a perfectly crafted broadsword. And
somehow it too was made from the same black material as his armor. Perfect, he thought.
He took two
steps toward the unguarded entrance to the lab. He thought the place was well enough
into the boon-docks that no sentry was needed, and yet he had to chuckle. Even if there were guards, no one would
be able to stop him.
Akuma stepped
up to the double doors made entirely out of some hard, infallible kind of
metal. He cracked his neck
excitedly and entered the passcode into the panel to the right of the
door. Instantly, the doors
opened. Walking inside as though he
had done so a million times before, Akuma was greeted by no one, nothing but
silence. There was a map of the
entire structure a little further in away from the entrance but he didn’t
bother looking at it. He knew
exactly where he was going.
Far below the
ground, on the 13th floor in the basement, Hisoka’s eyes burst open
along with an anguished cry of pain that echoed in the halls three floors
above. There were no scientists
anywhere near him, the wound from the wire that was
shoved through his stomach in search of something was completely healed even
though he couldn’t recall anything happening in the time between the two. He coughed three times and spit out a
small bit of blood. He was tired,
so very tired. All he wanted to do
was rest. But in these short “breaks”
he would come to just long enough to get a decent glimpse of where he was and
possibly attempt an escape. He
tried to ignore the feeling that escape was impossible.
Hisoka raised
his head and looked to his hands which were both restrained by multiple belts
of unknown material. They looked
leather and yet they couldn’t have been through all of his fiery moments; they
would have easily been destroyed.
Still these restraints held firm.
He couldn’t raise his arms more than an inch. He tried to raise his legs but they were
restrained just the same. Clawing
the cold operating table on which he was imprisoned on, Hisoka weakly let his
head fall back down, a hallow echo of the metal of the table ringing in his
ears.
How long he
had been trapped here, he didn’t know.
He was only aware of a few things that went on in these rooms, all of
which caused a wave of pain to spread through his entire body at the mere memory
of it. Before that, he remembered
the look of his murdered mother on the floor of his house, Kataki’s psychotic
face as he threw him out the window and as they fought, but he couldn’t
remember what happened after that.
How he came from that bloody landscape to this laboratory, he could only
guess. Where was Kataki, he
wondered. Maybe he was dead, or
maybe he was in a room just like this one, being experimented on like an
animal. He didn’t belong here, he
had to get back—
To where? There was
no one left. Everyone close to him—his
mother, Sakura, even his friend Frenier—was dead; that he remembered. Oh, Sakura! She died trying to stop Kataki’s pursuit
of blood, but she underestimated his resolve, a mistake she would take to the
grave.
Tears again
rolled down the sides of his face.
It was hopeless. Even if he
could muster up the strength to free himself, where would he go? There was nothing left for him, nothing
but endless torment and death.
“You are
destined to die.”
The words did
not come from inside Hisoka’s head like they had before. He ignored the sound for only a few
moments until he realized that he had not thought or remembered them. Something deep within him ached the
moment he realized who stood at his side, glaring down at him through a dark
mask that couldn’t hide the glow of the wearer’s red eyes. Hisoka gasped and tried to back away as
best he could in his restraints. He
tried to yell at the person but the ache within him stole his voice and replaced
it with another coughing fit.
The figure
stroked a fully armored hand up and down Hisoka’s right cheek. “Shh, there there, now.
It won’t be much longer.”
The hand gradually found its way over Hisoka’s bare chest and playfully
drew an imaginary circle around his breastbone. “It’s in there, isn’t it?” the figure
said, knowing full well what the answer was. “Don’t worry. Once I find the other pieces, we’ll be
able to remove this one, too. And
then you can rest. Forever.”