Through a glass darkly - Long Live The Queen (3/6)

[bottan]

Title: Long Live The Queen
Prompt: Through A Glass Darkly
Parts: [prologue] [chapter 1] [chapter 2] [chapter 3] [chapter 4] [epilogue]
Word count: ~ 28,000
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: violence, blood, terrorism, minor character death, major character death (somehow, but somehow not - it is complicated.)

CHAPTER 2

Kurogane woke, heart hammering against his ribcage. His cheeks were wet with tears that he hadn’t shed since he had turned fourteen and left the orphanage up in Heian.

He breathed deeply and sat up, wiping the remainders of the dream from his cheeks impatiently. Talking to Yuuko about the possibility of a war, as well as thinking of the boy that was alone in a city at the same age as him must have gotten to him.

His gaze fell on the photograph that he had left next to his futon. The boy didn’t smile in the picture – he held a book and looked surprised, brows still drawn together from concentrating on the text. It gave him a serious air. Of course a child like that wouldn’t be trying to unhinge an unstable government. As Kurogane looked at the picture, he felt a insistent tug in his chest, telling him to get over himself, already.

He gave a sigh and stared towards the neatly prepared suitcase in the corner of the room. He had sold most of his furniture, already, packed his things. Had been ready to leave, this evening. And now it was day, the sun beating down on the City relentlessly. His office upstairs was unbearably hot for another two hours, before the air conditioner kicked in and filtered the heat out.

He wondered whether Flowright was already up, even as he grabbed for his cell and pulled up the number. It rang only one time, before the owner picked up. There was no greeting on the other end, just silent waiting.

“Flowright,” Kurogane asked, just to be sure, voice still rough with sleep.

“Yeah,” the man’s voice rang out. He didn’t sound tired, just alert.

“I’m taking the case.”

Flowright let out a long breath. “I’m glad you’re saying that,” he admitted. “And please don’t call me Flowright – just Fai will be fine.” There was a moment of silence, and he sounded a tad insecure when he added, “So, what are we doing, next?”

“Meet up, talk details,” he said. “We’re going to find Xing Huo.”

*

The underground women shelter was a place that Sorata had started to call home, a long time ago. He had taken up the position as a guard for a few, probably simple yet complicated reason. Sorata had once had three sisters. Then, he had lost one of them to an abusive husband, and another to the mines when she could not pay her taxes. There was a hole in his chest, torn by guilt and sadness, that he was trying to fill working the job he did. He knew that none of these women were his sisters, but it made him feel less helpless, anyway. The trust that the women coming there were showing towards him was overwhelming, and it reminded him that there were things it was worth living for.

The shelter itself was well hidden among the tunnel systems of Clow, and very few knew how to find it. After Xing Huo had left, her name tarnished with the association of a terror cell, they had moved the whole construct. Many of the women had protested, some of them plain not wanting to move, others going as far as to say the woman had been right to do what she did.

The twisted thing was that Sorata knew Xing Huo had not been entirely wrong – he had known her since she had been twelve, and he knew that she was trying to help building a world in which orphaned, often under-aged girls would not be have to choose between death or the work of a prostitute. When thinking of her, Sorata remembered that not all wounds could be healed, no matter how hard you tried.

He cared for each and every of the women that lived there, short-term or long-term, whether they said their thanks or vanished over night. He made many friends, over the years, there. It even was the place where he first laid eyes upon the woman he was going to marry.

He was not a man that stopped caring, easily, and when Yuuko asked him to help finding Xing Huo, he had been torn. What would they do with her once they found her? Wasn’t she just one of the many that had stood up, that had tried to right a wrong that they saw with their own hands? Hadn’t she been one of the bravest of them all?

When he agreed, in the end, it was because Xing Huo had left the shelter willingly, and left behind a dozen women and as many children that Sorata still had to protect – even if it was from Xing Huo herself.

*

“Yo, Kurogane,” Sorata greeted from the street corner. It was a quiet part of Clow City’s tunnel system they had entered, the streets around them peaceful, opening up into housing and apartment sections – within the last decades, during the time of the population explosion in Clow, houses had been carved directly into the stone. They often were covered in plastic isolation and smooth structures of glass and metal, and like bubbles they nestled into the nooks and crannies of the natural caves, left by former water lines underneath the city. Lights over each door and from the windows were lining up in a row of fireflies, resting along the walls of the kilometer long, winding tunnels. It was considered a good place to raise children.

“Fai Flowright, my client,” Kurogane introduced. Sorata shook hands with both of them, bright smile on his face.

“It’s a pleasure,” Sorata said and shook his hand enthusiastically. “May I call you Fai”

“Please, go ahead,” he said with a smile just as sunny. “Flowright makes me uncomfortable, anyway.”

“Sorata, pleased to meet you,” he said. “I’m usually guarding the women shelter for Yuuko, but as it is, I also take small jobs for surveillance. I have known Kurogane since was this tall,” he made a gesture to indicate somewhere around his chest.

“I can barely imagine he ever was that small,” Flowright – Fai – said. “He must have been an adorable child.”

“He was a brat,” Sorata deadpanned. They snickered. Kurogane rolled his eyes at the both of them and let his gaze wander through the calm streets.

“What are we looking at?” Kurogane asked Sorata in a low voice, partly to tear him away from a tantalizing conversation over Kurogane’s ‘monkey ears.’

“A delivery man that will come by in a bit,” Sorata said. “Xing Huo has the ware brought over from the markets and then collects it in the evenings. It is harder to follow a trace like that. We wouldn’t noticed if we didn’t know the women she was working with. Stand over there – he uses to come the same way.”

The three of them huddled in the shadows, looking more suspicious than they would have out in the open, for all that Kurogane was concerned, but waited to see.

After a while, a small, fat man appeared in the streets, carrying two loafs of flat bread under his arm. He stopped at one of the houses, and rang the doorbell and a woman stepped out, her hair long and white blond, gorgeous in a pale, fragile way. She took the bread with a thankful expression, and vanished shortly, only to count an amount of cash into the fat man’s hand. A small child toddled up to her and clung to her calf. She absent-mindedly petted its head, as she talked in cordial tones to the delivery man.

“Are you sure this is the right man you’ve been watching?” Fai asked.

“It’s a pretty good front, you have to admit,” Sorata smiled sadly. “Xing Huo has retained connections with the women shelter she worked with, back when she was still with us. There are a few women that feel like they owe her a debt, and many that are in need of the money, in order to raise her family. This is light work, as long as the military doesn’t catch them, and when have they ever paid attention to what is going on, down here?”

“They hide bags of chemicals inside the loafs, don’t they?” Fai whispered next to him. Kurogane threw him a surprised look, then looked back to the scenery in front of them. The man was leaving, waving a hand goodbye and the woman was returning the gesture before shooing the child back inside. The breads would be big enough, for sure.

“Might be,” he said. “You seen something like this before?”

Fai was hesitated for a split second. “I have heard of it, before,” he said. “I thought it was common.”

“Xing Huo will come and get the delivery in a few hours,” Sorata explained, checking his watch. “Which gives us time to talk to Mrs. Tsuyuri.”

Of course he would know her, Kurogane realized, working as the guard of the women shelter, after all. He slowly realized why Yuuko would have sent Sorata in order to help them. Apart from working in close quarters with Xing Huo for years, he was also the kind of honest, simple person who cared for the people around him and had no trouble when it came to reaching out towards them. If anyone had a chance to make that woman talk, it was Sorata.

*

The guard and the mother called Tsuyuri talked long and in low tones in the backroom. Kurogane and Fai waited in the living room, Fai having the child coaxed into his lap and trying to teach the girl a song. It was slow going, as she could barely speak, yet, but his face seemed to open up and the worry lines reduced as he talked to her. When the girl lost interest, Fai played some game with her that he made up on the go. It seemed to be a variation of “house,” involving cutlery and plates on the laid table and a few imaginary participants of their own.

Kurogane watched them and listened to the low murmur next door. At one point, he thought he heard soft sobs. Fai threw him an alerted glance, but stayed where he was. They would be useless in the face of old or new grief – Sorata was better prepared to deal with that. They kept waiting, not talking to each other, watching over the baby girl.

It had almost been an hour when Sorata emerged with a soft expression on his face. The woman’s eyes were red-rimmed, but otherwise she looked calm and controlled.

“It seems the let the boy out from time to time, in order to control the production of machinery parts of some kind,” he said. “Syaoran will be on the markets, two nights from now, on the 7^th hour.”

Kurogane nodded and Fai sat a bit straighter, both arms wrapped protectively around the toddler.

“Thank you very much, Mrs. Tsuyuri,” he said earnestly. The woman just silently shook her head, expression remaining tired and grim.

“Please do not tell the police I am doing this,” she said. Her hands were shaking. “I cannot make the money to rent this house without asking help Xing Huo. Please – I do not want to go to the mines. I want to keep my child. I need to pay the fees.”

“Why did you not stay with Yuuko, then?” Kurogane asked her, knowing it was unfair. “She could have given you work that would not have lead to the death of other people.”

“She has been good to me,” the woman said, earnestly. “But I don’t want my child to grow up, there. I’m sorry, Sorata.”

“I don’t take it personally,” Sorata smiled.

“Mama,” the kid said, maybe feeling her distress, and Fai set her to the ground. She toddled over to her mother, who lifted her into her arms. Kurogane turned his face away. In his mind, the memories of his dream were fresh. The sky on fire, his parents dead, the moon breaking apart in the sky.

“We’re not here to judge you or to forgive you,” Kurogane said, not looking at her, even as he felt he eyes drill holes into his neck. “As it is, you have helped us a lot.”

He heard her draw a breath to say something else, but he stomped out before she could say anything else. He stood in the tunnels, his heart beating faster than it should, and he had to suppress the urge to simply walk away from this. Fai joined him after a few seconds. Kurogane felt his eyes on him but refused to meet them.

“It’s not her fault, you know,” Fai said softly. “It’s this country.”

“I know,” Kurogane said in a rough voice. He knew.

*

The mines are the place they send you, when you cannot pay your debts, another runaway had explained to Youou when he had first arrived at Clow City. Youou had grown up thinking that working in the mines was a job like any other. The children around him, dirty and hardened, had laughed at his naivety.

They send you to the mines, telling you that you could work off your debts, but then they never let you out again, the boy they called Stink had said. The reason for the nickname was obvious.

Why do the people let them do that, Youou asked. It’s against the law.

Are you stupid, the boy said with obvious disgust. We normal people got no leverage, man. If you try to protest – bam – they send him to the mines, too. You run away – bam – they track you down with that chip you got in your arm. You better cut that out, seriously – you’re going to bring the cops down on us.

What chip? Youou kept asking, being more confused by the minute.

The chip in your arm, man, we all got it! Stink said and pulled up his sleeve to reveal his stringy biceps. A large, ragged scar ran across his upper arm. You gotta cut it out, if you don’t want the cops on your ass. Don’t you know nothing?

The chip was placed deep in the flesh, and Youou almost lost his right arm due to infection over the next two weeks. Stink stole medicine for him, and in the end the fever broke and the arm healed into a ragged, white scar.

*

The night was ending and the sky lighting up in rose colors. Kurogane jogged up the stairs of the subway station, on his way to research the working on the project for Yuuko. Damn witch and her prices, as though he had nothing else to do.

He was on his way to the military library – this morning, he had found an envelope with instructions shoved under his door, and a syringe he used to shoot a fake ID marker with the data of a non-existent sergeant under his skin. He had read and burned the paper upon committing passwords and usernames to his mind, and left the house early on.

It was by chance, that he noticed the man in the crowd. For a moment, he was convinced it had been a trick of the light, his eyes only slowly getting used to the brightness of early morning. But then, he saw it again, a bobbing head of blond hair. When the man looked over his shoulder, flash of tired, blue eyes and a smirk around his mouth, Kurogane was sure.

Fai had said he had something left to do, when they parted, and stated that he needed to go back to the place where he stayed. Kurogane followed the man for a few hundred meters, wondering whether he should catch up to him. Something seemed out of place, but Kurogane couldn’t put his finger on it.

As the sun was coming up, the neon lights and tall screens flickered and died around them. The tall skyscrapers that had been built at least thousand years ago were ancient ruins safe for the advertisements, nowadays. It was too hot to use them, most of the time. The solar sails, suspended from the black towers dominating the cityscape, were creaking as they moved towards light and heat. Pumps started working and water was slowly circled up the sides of their walls, heating in the beginning warmth that would rise to degrees unbearable for humans towards midday.

Fai’s steps were lighter than he remembered and there was a spring to them that Kurogane did not recognize. He seemed tired, but he seemed more carefree – younger, in some ways.

The man took a turn that led away from the main streets and towards a district that mainly harbored living quarters. His and Kurogane’s ways parted here, and the private detective could not say entirely why it was that he followed Fai, anyway.

The streets were now dominated with low, white buildings – underground apartment block that extended twenty stories below. Only their entrance halls laid over ground. Fai took a turn and vanished in one of them, neatly, anonymously, leaving no traces of his presence behind. Kurogane slowly came to a stop in front of the building, finger passing almost absent-mindedly over name tags next to the bells, searching the neatly printed rows for something he recognized.

Y. Flowright.

Please don’t call me Flowright – just Fai will be fine.

False names were not a seldom thing in the Clow City, even among friends – Kurogane hadn’t used his given name since he had entered Yuuko’s circle. But still, something about this was nagging him. For a moment, he considered ringing the man back up, then shook his head and took a step back.

It was none of business, even when the sinking feeling in his gut tried to tell him otherwise.

*

Once, a long time ago, there had been an age of ancient machines, of high technology, so advanced that nowadays not even the materials could be recognized. Many of them were left lying in the streets of Clow City, like art for the masses to ogle for the first days and urinals for the drunks in the years after. Some of them were confiscated by the military as soon as they were pulled out of the grounds.

There were robots, capsules, things that might have been weapons, vehicles. Some even called them alien technology, believing it impossible to humankind to build machines like these. What stood against that quite outrageous assumption were the clear signs that they had been customized to fit the human body.

However much they differed from each other, there was one thing they had all in common – they came from a time before the surface of the earth had been burned and cleansed of all life.

Never had one of the ancient machines been discovered over ground.

*

It took him another quarter of an hour to reach the library, sweat streaming down the back of the neck in the rising heat of the day by the time he stepped through the entrance. Maybe another twenty minutes later he had made it through the security protocols. He felt in no mood to make small talk with the security guards, and neither did they, this late in the night. Everything went smoothly, as expected from any plan prepared by Yuuko.

Kurogane settled down in a secluded research booth customized with three screens, entering username and password and gaining access security level 2. Through the doors of the glass box he could watch the tired soldiers that did the same kind of work as him – just for another employer.

He started by pulling up news articles on archaeology, and came up with unsurprisingly little. Yuuko had mentioned that something weird had happened out in the desert before Clow – ‘weird’ usually meant that the government suppressed the information flow rather effectively. Journalists that protested the strict orders of the government had been known to vanish in the mines.

He found a note in the local newspaper that a machine had been found on the day of Luna, but the week after that stayed quiet. He dug through the military files of the last week and pulled up the protocols of the encounter. Photos of the item started to roll down the screen to his right, as in front of him neat columns of text appeared.

The machine that had been found in the middle of the desert, had an elliptical shape, and was big enough to fit a single human inside. There were no doors visible. No way to enter it, no way to find out what it was.

Most importantly, the machine looked new. Relicts tended to look ancient and broken, but this one – this one looked like it had been polished to perfection, only a few days ago. The scientists that had been called to research the phenomenon said that it was highly unlikely that a finding left out in the plains of the desert would not have been found earlier. It seemed that the machine itself must have been transported to the place only recently. Still, no marks to show how it could have been brought there could be found, not even any that would have pointed to the machine having landed there with the help of thrusters. It seemed to have been dropped out of the sky, and from a very low distance.

X-ray seemed to be unable to pass the hull, but sonar had given them an idea that the hull was empty, on the inside. Some of the scientists suggested it might be a bomb, others thought it to be a modern object of flight. The general tone of the discussions was one of confusion.

Kurogane bookmarked the file and went through the newer records. The one from the day of Ignis seemed equally confused, and the day after that – today – all hell seemed to have broken loose.

The object had suddenly vanished, leaving as little trace as it had upon arriving. No one could explain what had happened, accusations were flying, scientists suspected each other to have stolen the machine in order to hog all the fame for themselves.

Kurogane scrolled further down, to the list of research personnel involved, ready to write the names down. He got to the third name before he stopped. The cursor blinked accusingly in front of one name among many.

Y. Flowright.

Kurogane hesitated a second before clicking the link.

Yuui Flowright, born 84 a. i. FTL. Diploma in theoretical physics. The file mentioned his recent works with the military, the ones that had been in protocols. Copies of the articles had been linked. A tiny photo that showed Fai’s face, much younger, maybe shortly after he had turned twenty.

The text was too short, even for a 25-year-old, Kurogane knew. He had the feeling that most of the passages had been censored and were inaccessible to his regular key card. What the fuck did a theoretical physicist have to do with archaeology, anyway, Kurogane couldn’t help but wonder.

Twin brother, Kurogane read. He clicked it with a sinking feeling.

Fai Flowright†, the screen listed. Kurogane stared at the little cross for a few seconds. Born 84 a. i. FTL, died 95 a. i. FTL. Cause of death: gastric cancer.

The same thing that his mother died of, too. An indirect victim to the radiation, to the war on the blood-red moon. He scrolled further through the records, but there was very little information on a dead child to be found, even in a City that chipped every newborn.

He remembered the young man, looking exactly like Fai but somehow not like Fai, walking into the apartment block. Y. Flowright. Could it be that Fai Flowright truly had not died as a twelve-year-old? Could that be the key to as to why had parts of the Yuui Flowright’s file been censored? How much of the file of the child had been carefully cut out, years ago?

Kurogane felt like he didn’t get the picture, yet. As though he was trying to put together a puzzle on a flat canvas, when truly he was looking at the pieces of a spherical object.

He had a vanishing archaeological object with Flowright’s name to it. One that was supposedly a few thousand years old but looked like new. He had Fai and Yuui Flowright, one of them apparently living in an apartment block underneath the city, the other listed as dead but despite his haggard appearance very alive and coming to him in order to stop a teenager from building a bomb that could lead to a civil war.

Kurogane kept searching for another hour, but could not find anything else at the security clearance he held. He printed out what he needed and rose from the screen. He stepped back through the controls and the underground exit into tunnel systems beneath the City. His head was buzzing with thought.

He only had been interested in Fai due to his connection with Xing Huo, at first – because he needed to know what kind of dirt he had on him, before he helped him against a ghost of an organization out in the underground. He had two options – either to dig further through the mud, which truly was no option at all, or to finally ask the man himself.

 ~ go to Chapter 3 ~