Through a glass darkly - Long Live The Queen (4/6)

[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 3

They watched the stream of people in the underground markets – it was easy to see why the boy would have picked tonight to move among them without being noticed. The markets were in an uproar, the beginning of a protest gathering down here. Most of these people were poor, afraid to be unable to pay the money the government wanted of them, and knew they were high on the list of working the mines. These were people that had nothing to lose. Later, once they had drunk the last of the fear away, these men would stream up the stairs to the old subway stations and protest in front of the government building.

A single man, already half drunk, was heating up the moods with a speech about his cousin that had obviously been sent to the mines. Bottles were waved, paroles shouted, the name of the princess fell over and over again.

The private detective and his client stood to the side, in the shadows. Kurogane in his long black coat, Fai in his military jacket and steel-capped boots. Fai had bought something honeyed on a stick and was licking liquid sugar off his fingers with visible relish. Kurogane couldn’t stop staring, finding it somewhere between repulsive and erotic. Fai flashed him a sticky smile when he noticed.

“Don’t get how you can eat that shit,” he grumbled. Fai merely snickered. Kurogane shook his head and turned back to watching people. Almost by chance, he saw the boy’s face among the masses. He had turned around, seemingly searching for someone, before he vanished among raised arms and moving bodies again. Kurogane tensed immediately and he heard Fai step up to his shoulder next to him. Without another word they moved into the crowd.

The boy’s head dipped up and down among the drunk protestors. He turned around again, then once more, then started to run. Kurogane cursed and fell into a run, as well. Pushing through the masses of stationary protesters, the chants and the sounds of breaking machinery loud in his ears. Easily ignored Insults were flung at him.

He reached the boy as he tried turn a corner, grabbed him by the collar and smashed him into the closest wall. The child grunted in surprise but did not scream as Kurogane had half expected him to. The boy stared up at him, defensively, not struggling once he realized he was overpowered, but getting his limbs together in case he would need to fight. He was panting and his hair was mussed.

Smart, Kurogane thought.

“Syaoran Li,” he growled. The shouts of the people outside were almost drowning out his voice, but it was enough to make conversation with the boy. “Reed let’s you pick the machinery yourself, does he?”

The boy stiffened, suspicion blooming on his face. “What do you want from me?” he asked.

“What I want from you is to stop whatever you’re doing to aid the Xiangese underground,” Kurogane answered, very calmly. “And if you don’t, I’ll find a way to make you.”

Syaoran tensed up at the threat, but his determination only seemed to grow. “Has Fei Wong sent you?” the boy asked, his shoulders hunching, with the defiant tone of a teenager. “I can assure you that I have no intention of stopping my work. No matter who you are.”

“Fei Wong?” Kurogane asked. “That the guy sponsoring Kyle?”

“Bad Kuro-tan, out,” a voice piped up from behind him. Kurogane looked over his shoulder in annoyance.

“I thought we had agreed that you’d stay in the crowd, idiot,” Kurogane said, but there was more exasperation than heat in his voice. Fai was not build to listen to anyone, he guessed. He stood at the opposite wall, shaking hair out of his glass-clear, madly blue eyes and smiled.

“There’s no reason to behave like a rabid dog,” he licked sugar off his lips. “Let’s talk this over like reasonable human beings, shall we?”

Kurogane stared at him for another minute, but then let go of the boy’s collar reluctantly. Syaoran shrugged to set his clothes right, and Kurogane watched for the little movements that pointed towards him preparing to dart. There were none. Only the burning gaze of a stubborn teenager preparing for a fight. Maybe the kid was an idiot, after all.

“So, let’s talk,” Kurogane said sourly.

“Kyle is probably going to come for me if I don’t return,” Syaoran said looking from the hulking detective to the bony soldier with the fever-bright smile. They must make a strange pair, Kurogane said. Two of a kind, yet as different as they came. “Just so you know what you’re getting yourself into.”

“We want to get you away from him,” Fai spoke fast, before Kurogane could find the right words to wrap his disgust into. “We know that you’ve been working on a... on something very dangerous. To yourself, to this City, to everyone around you. And we want to offer you a way out of this before it’s too late.”

“Why would you do that?” Syaoran asked, his face a mask. “Why not just kill me? Ain’t that what’s happening in Clow, everyday? Just another dead teenager in the streets?”

“We’re not here to kill you,” Fai replied harshly, pushing off of the wall and then hovering where he stood, as though he was holding himself back from doing something. His eyes were sparking. “We’re trying our best to keep a lot people from getting killed.”

“You can torture me, I won’t give a thing away,” the boy said, but his voice quivered at the word ‘torture.’

“We’re not going to hurt you, brat,” Kurogane replied impatiently. “We’re trying to fucking help.”

“You realize that the bomb you’re building is not used to cleanly assassinate Princess Sakura,” Fai said quickly, before Syaoran could answer. Kurogane shot him a quick glance – so it was a bomb that they were after. Not even Yuuko had seemed sure on that, up to now. “It is a weapon of mass destruction and will kill a third of the population of this city the moment it goes off, not even mentioning the harm the fallout will do over the decades.”

“I know what I’m building,” Syaoran said, but his eyes were wide with fear. His muscles were tensing, as though ready to attack or flee. Kurogane shifted so that he blocked the alleyway to the main street. Syaoran stared at him, then Fai. “How do you know?” he asked, his voice still displaying a bravery that he could not feel. Kurogane remembered keenly how it was to be fourteen-years-old and living in the streets. “If Fei Wong sent you, tell him I’m not about to chicken out.”

“We’re not with Fei Wong Reed,” Fai said. “I didn’t even know this Fei Wong existed, a few days ago. I have been trying to stop Kyle for the last few years. What I do know is that this is the one chance I will get to stop the assassination attempt on Princess Sakura.” His expression was intent and hard, and utterly honest. Syaoran glanced from him to Kurogane and back, looking unconvinced. His eyes met Kurogane’s, and belated recognition flashed across his face. “I know you,” he said.

“Kurogane,” Kurogane stated. He had not recognized the photo of the boy, but he must have been around the black markets when the kid had arrived in Clow. It would not have been unusual. “Private Detective. The guys in Shokangoku know me.”

“I’ve heard about you, you’ve been with Yuuko – you wouldn’t work with Kyle, from what I’ve heard about you – they say you’re way too nice,” Syaoran seemed relieved, sagging against the wall.

“Oi,” Kurogane protested, but was cut off by Fai.

“What Fei Wong Reed is doing,” Fai said. “You have the chance to stop this. I believe that you didn’t mean to get caught up in this. But you did, and you’re a part of the scheme that will produce more corpses than the city can bury within a week. If I tell you that you could stop it, now, would you do it?”

“What do you think I’ve been trying to do, these last weeks?” the boy answered, his voice hoarse and thin. He flashed a glance towards the part where the alley opened into the busy street, paranoid panic in his eyes. “I shouldn’t be talking about it,” he whispered. “I’m late as it is.”

Kurogane opened his mouth, then stopped in his tracks.

“What do you mean, you’ve been trying to stop it?” Kurogane asked dumbfoundedly. “Why have you been helping them, then?”

Syaoran drew a deep  breath, as though he was not expecting to take another one before finishing his explanation. “They were trying to build a bomb, even before I was around. I told them I could do it better, make the explosion bigger – being Xiangese as I am, I didn’t have to do much to convince them I was on their side.” He spoke in an urgent whisper and Fai was stepping closer to even hear him.

“I have all the blueprints saved in my head,” Syaoran’s voice was barely audible now over the din of the street. “This Xiangese guy, Kyle, is helping me with the spare parts, but none of them has an idea what the bomb is supposed to look like.” There was fire in his eyes and he drew a calming breath. “I’m going to protect her,” he said, in a trembling voice that could not have been more clear. All noise seemed to fade out around them and it was only this boy, burning up from within over an idea. “I have seen her speeches, I have seen her on the screens. I can see how easy it would be to topple her from where she is standing. I have come here in order to protect her – I will not let Fei Wong Reed harm her. I will save her and I will save this city.”

Kurogane was stunned speechless for a moment.

“You’re serious,” he asked at least.

“I am,” Syaoran said.

“You’re a single teenager. Did it never come to your mind that you might need help?”

“Whom was I going to ask?” Syaoran replied. “The police is corrupt, the royal guards wouldn’t have believed me. Fei Wong Reed has been a ghost, no one has been able to get close to him. Getting this close was a chance that couldn’t pass up on. Not after what Kyle approached me and told me what they needed me for.”

“This will blow up in your face on the day of the coronation, kid,” Kurogane said, arms folded over his chest. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

“I’m not going to leave, now,” Syaoran said, firmly. “Kyle is not stupid, he will manage to make the bomb work, blue prints or none. I can manipulate it in a ways that he won’t even notice.”

“All I’m saying is that if you told us the location, we could get the bomb out of there,” Kurogane said, slowly, in a low voice. “There would be no need for you to stay with them.”

 “I’m not going to leave like that,” Syaoran said firmly. “If I leave now, we will lose Kyle and he will find another way to reach his goal.”

Kurogane exchanged a glance with Fai. He shook his head slightly no, his eyes wide. Kurogane set his jaw and ignored him.

“Okay,” he agreed, despite his reluctance. “Being on the inside is dangerous, but useful. But at least accept our help.”

Syaoran chewed his lip, considering his options. Finally, he nodded.

“I’ll be here, in this alley, the day after tomorrow, same time,” he said, speaking fast. “We can talk, then. I need to leave, now, they’ll get suspicious if I don’t show up.”

“Okay,” Kurogane agreed weakly. He grabbed the boy’s shoulder, squeezing once for reassurance, and handed him a business card. “Come here, that day – we can talk there.”  The kid barely glanced at the words to commit them to memory, then nodded at him, his face serious, then vanished in the shadows of the far side of the alley.

“I didn’t want this for him,” Fai said, sounding like he had lost something dear. Kurogane looked at him.

“He’s going to be okay, as long as we don’t muck up,” Kurogane murmured, as they left the alley and stepped back out onto the main tunnel. The protests were still going on, but the main noise of it had moved toward the front. “Can’t believe the brat is fooling Kyle.”

“I’m not sure I am believing it,” Fai replied, his voice as heavy as lead. Something inside Kurogane’s chest coiled at the dead expression in his eyes. He tried not to think about what he was implying.

*

When Kurogane had heard of Yuuko and appeared on her doorstep, beaten and battle-hardened from the streets, his eyes hollow and his stomach growling, it had been the first time within a year that he had not been thrown out of a room the moment he set foot into it.

You want to work for me? Yuuko had asked him. He had not yet known that she had not been human, back then, but he was not sure he would even have cared. The cisterns left a distinct impression on him, but he was too busy looking for whether one of the mooks surrounding her was going to attack him to truly notice. What can you do?

I’ll do anything, Kurogane had said. His voice had deepened in the last months, his muscles hardened, and he was growing, constantly growing. From the clothes he had brought from Heian were mere rags left that he, at best, could coil into a pillow for the night.

I’m a fast learner, he had said. I can learn anything you need.

Yuuko had looked at him, and there had been an expression on her face, softer than anything that Kurogane had seen on her, before.

I am sure we will find a place for you to stay, then, she said.

Kurogane nodded, still eying the men around her carefully.

When he fell asleep, that night, for the first time in a real bed in the last twelve months – had it only been a year? – he thought of Stink’s dead body in the street. The boy had been the only friend he had had. He felt like crying, but no tears were falling. He had forgotten how to shed them.

Kurogane took his first sip of alcohol the night after that, remembering his father who in his own grief had drunk himself to death.

*

With a grunt of resignation, Kurogane reclined from the kitchen table and reached out for the whiskey. He poured himself one, took a sip, then pulled off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes. He had been poring over the printed-out files he had pulled from the military library. The puzzle seemed just as unclear as before. His eyes wandered through the near empty room. Rays of sunlight were falling down through the trapdoor that lead upwards, into his office. Fuck, it had been getting late without him noticing.

He stood up, stretched and walked over to the ladder in order to push the button that would close all the blinds in the room upstairs. He climbed up a few rungs and pulled the trapdoor shut. It would get incredibly hot upstairs despite everything, in two hours. Not even the air conditioner really helped, at day. Back down, he pulled up a search engine for the local newspaper pulled up on the screen on the far wall of the room.

“Enter search term: archaeology,” Kurogane intonated. “Enter time span: seventh month, 109 after the invention of faster-than-light travel.”

The results were sparse and censored, but they were something. There was the one that Kurogane had found in the library – it was five lines long, barely mentioning that the ancient machine had been found in the desert of Clow. Another article, documenting that it had vanished, appeared two days after that. There hadn’t been any other entries for the week. Kurogane pulled the search window back up and considered.

“Mysterious phenomenon,” as well as “vanishing objects” and “ancient technology” brought up nothing of interest. He tried “diggings,” “excavations,” and variations thereof, without getting usable results.

At the end of his wits he entered “construction site,” and “mines,” as for all he knew many of the old robots had been found while either digging foundations or shoveling up uranium.

“Construction of Underground Highway to Kangoku stopped: unexpected groundwater found  crossing the planned route.”

Kurogane scowled at the headline. Groundwater? How deep were they digging? He scrolled through the article and found that some of the statements didn’t match up. There was talk of increased military patrolling at the construction site, a dozen of scientists spread across the territory, as well as the instant evacuation of any and all workers that had been assigned to the tunnel. Why would you do that, if all that you had found was water? It made sense to assign scientists, Kurogane guessed, but there was one common name that he was almost unsurprised to find.

“‘We will test the water in the coming days,’ Flowright, head of the research committee says. ‘It would be great news for the citizens if we could actually use it to fulfill Clow City’s daily needs.’”

Kurogane could just see his stupid, lying smile. He reached for his phone and put through a secure line to Yuuko – just voice, as he had no camera phone down here and was not particularly keen on seeing Yuuko’s face splayed across his wall in this very moment, either.

“Kurogane, dear,” she said.

“I’m not your dear,” Kurogane said, automatically, but there was no heat behind it. He was still deeply in thought over the article on his wall. “You need to get me inside the closed Highway construction site.”

“That will cost you, darling,” she said lazily.

“I’m doing work for you, here,” Kurogane scowled. “Give me some credit.”

“Hmm,” Yuuko murmured. “Possibly you could pay me back after you’ve ended that messy business of saving Clow.”

“Bloodsucker,” Kurogane said scathingly. Yuuko merely laughed, a deep, rich sound.

“Be there by the end of the night. Sorata will get you in.”

*

Kurogane breathed in the taste of pollution and ash as he zoomed towards the outskirts of Clow City. Wind whipped his face as the glider whirred through the traffic, and he tasted sand on his lips and heard it plink off of his goggles. The Buildings were plump shapes, rising from the sand like stranded whales, among them the high solar towers, dormant and reaching for the stars. They were almost invisible in a sky this thick with city light, safe for the fluorescent lights of advertisement climbing up their sides and hovering in the sky as though they were detached from the buildings.

He left the tarred streets and crossed into the loose sand of the desert, leaving a cloud of dust behind. Away from the lively parts, away from the neon lights. The two moons were shining more and more brightly in the sky the further out he got, and auroras were dancing in cyan and magenta across the heavens. Before him lay the desert of Clow. Stretching eternally into every direction, deadly cold at night, hot enough to bake your bones at day.

All life in Clow happened at night, most of the activity underground, in the tunnels systems, the negative levels of apartment complexes, the mines. A city of pale individuals, of the incredibly rich and the devastatingly poor, of miners with black, empty eyes, and those who commanded them. And besides them, the flourishing activity of the criminals and drug-addicts. Clow was a bubble, an unstable experiment drawing closer to an explosion. It was living in the ruins of the ancient city, trying to remember what it once had been.

Kurogane’s breath fogged in the air, colder out here than within the confines of the city, and for a few moments, not even half an hour, he could almost taste freedom.

Hidden from view among the plains of the desert, abruptly, even for those who knew it was there, a hole opened in the middle of the ground – the tunnel was wide enough to let two cargo gliders pass, high enough to swallow a truck or two. It was lit brightly with fluorescent lights and the draft from beneath carrying the noise of construction work with it.

Kurogane recognized Sorata the moment he looked up from the entrance of the tunnel, even as the light at his back hid his expression. Kurogane drove even the last few meters towards him, sending sand and dirt flying to the side. Silently, Sorata waited until Kurogane had dismounted, hands in his pockets.

“Yo, buddy,” Sorata greeted him and grabbed his hands in a firm grip. “Good to see you.”

“Yeah,” Kurogane said and was surprised that felt the same. Sorata was the simple kind of guy that would make him feel at ease, even when the world around him was shaking. “You can get me in?”

“Yeah,” Sorata seemed unfazed by his disinterest in small talk. “Come on, I got everything prepared over in the container.”

“You a construction worker, too, now?” Kurogane asked him, as Sorata casually greeted a bunch of workers and greeted back in a friendly demeanor.

“Odd-job man, remember,” Sorata smiled at him, and closed the door behind them. The container was small, big enough to fit a dozen of lockers and a table to play cards at and write records. Not even a computer, though Kurogane guessed that that kind of technique would melt in a steel container in the middle of the day. “What kind of ID do you have on you?” Sorata asked casually, fingering a small casing that Kurogane knew would hold a syringe with a new ID chip.

“Military sergeant, some guy Koryo,” Kurogane replied. “Dead, of course, just the saved information, no tracking possible.” Sorata grinned.

“Good, good, no re-chipping in that case – that’s always a hassle. Let me get your disguise, Sergeant.”

Sorata pulled a bundle of neatly pressed and folded clothes from a locker and dropped them on the steal table. Kurogane changed into military issue, dark blue pants and jackets, checking the stripes along his forearms to match his rank. Everything fit, as usual. Sorata also pushed a helmet at his chest. “Here, put that on – boots, too, we wouldn’t want a boulder to fall on you and smash you,” he smiled. Kurogane grunted but did as he was told.

At least, they stepped back out into the waning night. The sky was painted in rose colors, a single cloud the lazy idea that there might, someday this year, be rain again. It seemed endlessly far off. Kurogane followed Sorata down the sloping street, as the man talked in cheerful tones about his wife-to-be. Kurogane faded him out almost before he opened his mouth, used to his monologues.

Taking in the construction site, he realized that the military presence was even greater than he had expected it to be. The only construction workers that were still seen at the site were those packing up or covering machines in plastic planes to keep off the sand and wind and the controls were strict enough that even Kurogane would have felt insecure for a moment, had he not recognized one of Yuuko’s men among the security lines. The whole area had been fenced off, twice even. Once again, Kurogane was amazed by exactly how many string she was pulling in the background.

The tunnel that should once make deliveries between Kangoku and Clow easier had been driven deeply into the ground and into the stone underneath the desert. There was no sign of the proclaimed water – no dampness on the walls, no change in the consistency of the sand, not even the smell of it in the air. Sorata took him down towards the deeper regions of the building project. The further they went, the brighter the lights seemed to get, until Kurogane had to blink tears out of his eyes. A shield informed Kurogane that they were “Entering Military Territory.” They passed one last, bored-looking patrol with machine guns, a type that Kurogane didn’t know and that he guessed to be military issued. They paid them no heed, after they had passed the first line of security protocols and Kurogane let out a silent, relieved breath.

He looked back one last time – the slope of the street, the size of the tunnel dwarfing the people that were working in it. The sky above was opening like a far away surface of a pond. As they ducked under a barrier tape, Kurogane felt like they were delving deeper down, sucked into a place that they could not escape from. The tunnel was getting more narrow around them, more winding, and soon lost signs of human influence. They were moving through a cavity that seemed to be naturally grown, Kurogane realized. Every few feet, a lamp had been attached to the low ceiling, throwing everything in harsh, surreal lightning and dropping inky shadows onto Sorata’s face every time he turned around. Only as Kurogane heard how loud their footsteps sounded in the brightly lit, narrowing tunnel, he realized that Sorata had stopped talking. The man had an expression of concentration written on his face.

“We had an eye on the scene even before you called Yuuko, you know. It’s why I could get you in so easily. Especially when she heard that a guy named Flowright was involved in this.” He sounded concerned. Sorata had always been an open book, unless he needed to lie. He never did, around Kurogane, not that he remembered. “Seems he’s a scientist, specialized in some kind of theoretical physics – it seems weird that he is involved in this kind of project.”

“Yeah, I know,” Kurogane nodded slowly. “What did they find, anyway?”

“We should be there, any second,” Sorata replied – and as though that had been the signal, the tunnel in front of them opened up and led into what seemed to be a natural cave. It was about twice Kurogane’s height, and deep enough that even with the lights in the middle of the room, the end of it laid in complete darkness. It smelled of water, down here, of moss and space undisturbed by human steps for a long time.

In the middle of the room, put into a cone of light by several, bright spotlights, stood an ancient machine. One of the lost technological findings of a lost civilization, long before Clow, that only slowly had resurfaced. And it was one that Kurogane recognized.

“Oh, fuck me,” he breathed and stepped closer. It looked like an oversized egg, opened at one side. Moss and lichen were creeping up the hull and into the open space that looked like a cockpit. There was enough room for exactly one person, a chair of an unknown material, the cushions long since broken up and rotten on the inside. A panel of buttons and screens that were destroyed by age and humidity.

As though it was moving on its own, Kurogane’s hand lowered onto the surface of the hull. Moss flaked off under the brush of his fingers and only left clean, white material. Kurogane could barely believe that this kind of machine was supposed to be a thousand years old. The kind of materials that had been used, back then, were incredibly even to Kurogane’s untrained eyes.

“How old did they say this was?” he asked lowly. It felt weird to talk, in here. When no answer came, he turned to look at Sorata. The man shrugged, eying the machine from a respectful distance. Kurogane had almost forgotten that superstition surrounded these machines like it did old, empty houses.

“A few thousand, maybe more,” he said vaguely. “I’m no scientist, just another construction worker busting the tunnel.”

Kuorgane turned back to the cockpit and started to walk around the machine. He remembered the photos from the military files. This capsule had exactly the same design of the one which had vanished out in the desert. The only difference was that the one in the desert had been closed and seemed completely new. He had never heard that anyone had succeeded in finding the machines’ original purpose, never mention repairing one of them.

Could it be... but no, this machine had clearly laid undisturbed for centuries. Still, it hit him as strange that twins of these machines should have been found, one young, one old.

“These things are always found underground, aren’t they,” Kurogane asked slowly.

“For all that I know,” Sorata replied. “I never heard of any of them just lying around.”

“Yeah,” Kurogane murmured. “Because a few thousand years ago, the surface of the earth was wiped clean of any resemblance of life, and these machines are all that are left for us to find.”

The military probably knew what had happened, millennia back – whether it had been a natural catastrophe, whether it had been a manmade one, whether the appearance of a second moon in the earth’s gravitational field stood in any relation to what was going to happen. But if they knew, as usual, they did not tell. Kurogane thought it barely mattered – it was of no concern to him where humans came from, it only mattered who they were in this very moment, as it would describe whom they were going to become.

Kurogane looked around. A few meters off, he spotted something glowing weakly in the light reflected from the roof of the cave. It laid on a soft bed of moss. He walked over and heaved it upright – it was the door that had been ripped out of the side of the machine, as expected. It was also heavier than he had expected it to be.

“Mind giving me a hand,” Kurogane prompted breathlessly. Sorata seemed reluctant but after a moment of hesitation helped him lift the burden. Together, they carried it to the machine and after one almost squished finger and a bit of banging around, managed to fit it into the side. It sank in with the satisfying smoothness of a well-oiled drawer.

“Woah, we dented it,” Sorata had a worried look on his face as he rubbed moss off of a spot close to the door. Kurogane scowled at it, and, indeed, the door had left a recognizable triangle mark on the otherwise indestructible-seeming hull. “We should get out, before the suits are coming back,” Sorata said with a light smile that did nothing to hiding his nervousness. “I wouldn’t want them to find out that we mucked about with the place.”

“You got a wrong identity on you, anyway, right,”  Kurogane said with a shrug. The man still seemed worried. Kurogane drew a breath and, almost without reluctance, said, “Let’s go, then. Thank you for leading me down here.”

Sorata smiled hesitantly at him, then slowly brightened up to his usual, carefree self. “Thanks from you – it must be a rare occasion, indeed.”

Kurogane rolled his eyes but didn’t comment. They made the way back up in silence, his mind still on the two identical ancient machines. When he stepped back into the cool desert air, back in his normal clothes, the world around him seemed different, sharper. Stranger. All and any recent and confusing change in his life had been focused around one person, it seemed. It would almost have sounded romantic, would it not have been so fucking irritating.

*

The door opened with a creak under his fingers and colored light streamed into the messy office room. Fai had turned his face to the side, his profile lit in the colors of the advertisements behind him. He seemed to intently be staring down the alley, then looked up to the surveillance camera that was pointed at Kurogane’s door.

“If you’ve been followed, it’s probably just Yuuko,” Kurogane murmured, scratching his nose. “Are you gonna come in or stand out there all night?”

Fai nodded slowly and stepped into the room. Kurogane checked the alley after he had entered, then looked up to check for the reflection of a camera up on the roofs. Not a single soul he could make out. He pulled the heavy metal door shut and locked it.

“Sit down,” Kurogane indicated the couch that was still littered with boxes of trash he had not yet gotten around to throw out. Fai pondered his options for a moment, before tenderly sitting down on the arm rest of the couch.

Kurogane grabbed a rough map from the place in which they expected Kyle to have set up quarters and spread it on the coffee table. He weighed the edges down with an ashtray and two empty beer bottles.

“Where’s Syaoran?” Fai asked, carefully. Kurogane shrugged, avoiding eye contact on purpose.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Fai looked to the door as though waiting for a knock. Kurogane got it, he felt that something was amiss, as well. But as they had no possibility to get to the boy apart from interfering with his routes to the scrap metal dealers, they couldn’t really do a thing but wait.

“We’re pulling this through, even if it’s going to be harder without the boy,” Kurogane said.

“It’s going to be impossible without him,” Fai bit out, then bit his tongue and looked to the side.

Kurogane tapped a pen against the rough plans on the table, based off of the building opposite of the warehouse that Kyle had moved into. They knew nothing beyond the basic layout, copied from the warehouse that was opposite of the one that Kyle occupied. Syaoran had mentioned the last time they met up that bomb was hidden four levels down and moved on a regular basis. They would have to enter from the ground level and work their way down, as there was no connection to the tunnel systems below Clow City that Syaoran knew of.

Old plans, pulled from the military computers, had not gotten them any further, either.

Fai seemed to be convinced that destroying the bomb would be enough – to him, the coronation was the vital point to the peaceful future of Clow. Kurogane was more realistic.

On the long run, it would not be enough – they’d have to cut Kyle, who seemed to be adept and willing enough to build bombs, off from any kind of supplies and the possibility to gather a new extremist group around him. Fei Wong Reed remained a factor in the dark – even Syaoran had not seen him, before, and Fai seemed massively confused as to how he figured into the whole equation.

They were stranded with two possibilities – to either get whole group all arrested or killed. And as Kyle had bribed the shit out of the police, Kurogane was mentally preparing to get his hands dirty.

It mattered to know that both Kyle and Fei Wong were in the building, so he could be sure they would be able to kill him – that’s what he needed Syaoran for. He carefully did not think about what he would do about Xing Huo. He did not think she would try to put together a terrorist group on her own – but, on the other hand, he had not expected her to join one, in the first place.

“We’re running with what we know,” Kurogane said at length. “We can’t afford to wait another day, they’ll move out of there faster than that.”

“We’ll put Syaoran into danger,” Fai bit out.

“This whole fucking city is in danger,” Kurogane spat. They both fell silent. “I could ask Yuuko for backup,” Kurogane said.

“No! No,” Fai said, rubbing a hand over his face. “It’s fine. Backup will only make things messier, in this case.”

“You sure,” Kurogane asked.

“Absolutely. Don’t get anyone else involved, it’s bad enough as it is.”

Kurogane looked at him, long and hard. How came it that Fai was so afraid of people? He knew he would have to ask, someday – and now, with the both of them suspended in weightlessness until the boy arrived, seemed as good as ever.

“I have heard of your brother,” Kurogane said, watching Fai carefully. The man stiffened, his face opening up in surprise for a split second before shutting down entirely.

“Have you,” he said flatly.

“Does he know you’re not dead?”

Fai let out a short bark of laughter, then adverted his eyes and shook his head.

“You got it all wrong, Kuro-tan,” he said with a smile that looked half-amused, half-bitter. “You did research on me?” Kurogane did not answer the rhetorical question. “Of course you would have – doing research is your job, after all.”

“Let me ask you this, then,” Kurogane changed tactics. “Why does the government call a theoretical physicist to an excavation site? What have they found out?”

“I don’t know,” Fai stated, shaking his head, in an expression that was not even trying to hide that he was lying. “Ask Yuuko for a higher clearance on the military files and tell me if you find out.”

“Don’t fuck with me,” Kurogane growled, flat palm slamming down on the table. Fai recoiled from the pang, eyes wide. One of the beer bottles keeled over and landed on the floor with a crash. The man stared at it. “I have held these questions back for as long as I could, but I need to know about your connections to the government or I can’t trust you with this case, anymore.”

“It’s my case, Kurogane,” Fai snapped. His eyes were blazing. “I care about its outcome. Why would I want to corrupt it?”

“You tell me,” the private detective growled. “How did you know what Kyle was up to when not even Yuuko did?”

Fai clenched his teeth and stayed silent. Kurogane rose almost violently from his chair, pacing the office three times, breathing deeply, before coming to a stop in front of Fai.

“I can’t tell you, okay,” Fai bit out, angry but seemingly honest. “I cannot. And whatever you’re planning, you have to keep away from Yuui Flowright – you’re endangering the outcome of this whole mission more than you know.”

“I do not work ‘missions’ with people I can’t trust.”

“It’s my life you’re playing with by doing this kind of research, Kurogane,” Fai snapped. “Just believe me. In this case, Yuuko’s need to get behind everything that’s happening in this city is more destructive than helpful.”

“Why have you come to me in the first place, if you were not prepared to be honest?” Kurogane said lowly. He knew it was not fair – fuck, it was not rational – and he stared at the black screen of the TV instead of at Fai. His own face, pale and distorted with far too much anger, was staring back at him. He was getting too involved. He had seen something of himself mirrored in the man before him, and it was too late to stop caring.

“I can’t do it on my own,” Fai murmured, fingers twitching. “Believe me, this is not about me. Because no matter how hard I try, it’s not enough, it’s never going to be enough to save even a single girl.”

“You make no goddamn sense,” Kurogane growled. Fai dragged a hand through his hair, letting out a sigh.

“Thanks for helping, anyway” he said softly. Kurogane was silent for a moment.

“I didn’t mean to flip like that,” Kurogane almost-apologized, rubbing the back of his neck as he turned away. Fai caught him by the arm and the detective looked down at him. The traveler’s mouth was opened slightly, as though he had been about to say something, but forgotten what. He licked his lips, nervously, and a warm shiver ran down Kurogane’s back and pooled at the base of his spine. Fai’s fingers dug deeply into his arms as he pulled himself up, coming to a stop centimeters from Kurogane’s face. His lashed fluttered, eyes darting nervously, something was spreading over his face that was possibly realization. Kurogane couldn’t breathe.

The phone rang and Kurogane broke eye contact. He stumbled back out of Fai’s personal space as though he was fleeing, and hit the button on the far side of the wall. The wall flickered and a small parcel concentrated to display Yuuko’s face against the darkness of the former cistern.

“Kyle has moved,” she said and blew out smoke. Her lids were heavy and her voice formal and cool. “The boy had no chance to leave, but it seems he left a message. Smart boy, mouthed it into a surveillance camera. He does not know where they’re going, but he feels that he will not be able to leave, again, before the coronation.”

Kurogane cursed loudly and banged a fist on the desk. If they had moved faster, maybe if they had started moving out, yesterday, without telling the boy-

“How did they know?” Fai asked in a hollow voice. “Does this have something to do with Fei Wong Reed?”

Yuuko stayed ominously silent. Maybe, she truly didn’t know.

“Even if he knows it was Syaoran, we can’t do a thing about it, alright,” Kurogane ground out. “Don’t think about it. We’re going to catch them tomorrow, at the coronation. We’re going to be there on time.”

Fai closed his eyes, an intense look of concentration appearing on his face.

“Thanks for contacting us,” Fai said in a silent voice, upon looking up after a moment. “But I need to talk to Kuro-pin alone, for a while.”

“Very well,” Yuuko’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t comment further on being cut out of the discussion. Probably his apartment was bugged, anyway, Kurogane thought with a flare of resigned anger. He nodded at her, then hit the button behind his desk that would cut off the voice and image transmission.

“I have a suspicion concerning Fei Wong Reed,” Fai said into the dark, heavy silence of the room. “You should know before we’re going to fight him. I will have to take the risk to explain to you who I am.”

Kurogane waited quietly for Fai to go on. Waited almost for a minute. Finally, Fai turned his back on him and walked to the door.

“Come on,” he said. “There’s something I need to show you.”

*

Fai had been leading them through a labyrinth of tunnels for a good while, at first through parts that Kurogane knew fairly well, then, after passing a tunnel that Kurogane thought to have been buried after an earthquake, through tubes that were new to him. The flashlights they had brought where ghosting over the light, yellow stone. He let his fingertip glide along the uneven walls, the weird feeling of entering a parallel world – a world extending right under his nose for years without him ever noticing – spreading through his chest and stomach and making it hard to breathe. The air was stale, and sand was grinding under his boots. He looked back and didn’t recognize the tunnels that they had come through. It was almost surreal – Kurogane had not gotten lost anywhere within Clow in the last ten years.

When he turned back to the front, Fai had vanished. Slipped his fingers, dissolved into thin air – it was the feeling that constantly radiated off of Fai. Fei Wong was a ghost, Yuuko had said, but what was Fai?

Kurogane kept walking, watching the indentures in the sand left by Fai’s heavy boots – and suddenly, unexpectedly, the mouth of a low tunnel opened to his right. He had to crouch to enter it, following Fai’s footsteps on the ground without knowing where they would lead him. A hidden chamber, barely high enough to stand and a dozen feet deep, within a tunnel he didn’t know existed.

Fai turned to face him with a hollow smile and wide eyes, arms crossed over his chest. Kurogane’s eyes locked immediately on the dominating, white hull behind him. Fai punched a button on the flashlight and it unfolded into a glowing ball of light that he lowered into the sand next to his feet. It was throwing long, black shadows across the walls, giving the scene a surreal touch. Kurogane blinked, blinded for a moment.

“You stole it,” Kurogane said lowly, unfolding his limbs as well as it was possible in the dark room.

“To say that I was taking back what’s mine would be more accurate,” he said with a grim smile and stepped to the egg-shaped capsule – a replica of the ancient machine that Sorata had shown him a few days ago.

Fai’s hands flew across the hull in a quick combination of touches, and of it the unblemished surface opened a door with a smooth hiss. Soft light spilled from the capsule onto the sand, as though the door into a warm, homely room was opened. The seat was covered in white leather, control lamps alight along the control panels, and the screens showed different renderings of their surroundings. Fai glided onto the seat as though he had done it a hundred times, before.

“I didn’t know you could build them,” Kurogane said in a voice carrying wonder. One hand firmly on the doorframe, he leaned in, taking in the small space. The moment the door was shut, the cockpit would have a claustrophobic feel, despite the large screens displaying the outside.

“You can’t,” Fai said, twisting on the seat and digging for something behind the seat. “The alloy used for the hull is still a mystery to us. But you can repair the tech on the inside, if you know how it’s supposed to work.” He threw Kurogane something that looked and felt like a gun, but not like any that Kurogane had ever seen. It was black and smooth and fit his hand as though it was made for it. He could not see a trigger or an ammo clip that he could have changed. Fai pulled another one out for himself.

“They leave no bullets or rounds that could be matched to you – they’re useful,” Fai explained grimly. “It’s locked, now – I’ll show you how to use it, later.”

Kurogane nodded and pushed the weapon into the waistband of his jeans. It was a comforting, strangely familiar weight against his back.

“How did you get that thing down here?” Kurogane asked. There clearly wasn’t enough space to maneuver it in or out, and even as it was one of the less pressing questions, it had nagged him the moment he had entered the room.

“Ah,” Fai made, fingers flying over the keyboards of the control panels, switching through data streams and flickering images of sonar, roentgen and other solutions of the rock around them as easily as breathing. “It doesn’t have particular problems moving past dense matter. Figuratively speaking, you could say that it was folding up the less convenient parts of reality and was moving through the holes in between.”

Kurogane tried to process that. “You’re saying this machine is bending the laws of the three-dimensional  space around it?”

“There are a few more dimensions than that, which explains how that is possible in the first place, but yes,” Fai smiled at him absent-mindedly.

As Kurogane tried to process that, his fingers almost unconsciously felt along the hull of the machine. They caught on something – he lifted his hand to look at a tiny, triangle-shaped dent next to the door. It looked something like the mark he and Sorata had left on the moss-covered machine, the day they had lifted the door back into its angles.

To be more precise, it was identical. Kurogane’s thoughts froze for a moment, and something fell into place with an almost audible click.

“You’re not only bending space,” Kurogane murmured. Fai looked at him attentively but without surprise. “This is the machine they found while digging that tunnel. Changes that are made to the one we have found in the tunnels are influence the hull of this one, as well. You are bending time.” Kurogane looked at Fai, the world around him seeming to slowly shift. “You have repaired a machine that can travel through time. And you are the theoretical physicist Yuui Flowright.”

“I am,” Fai admitted. Emotions were flickering over his face too fast and complicated to read. “I have taken the  name of my dead brother a few years after the start of the civil war, much like you have taken a new name after entering Yuuko’s circle.”

Kurogane must have been gaping, because something like a twisted smile played over Fai’s features.

“Yeah, I did research on you, too. I could not approach anybody – I would have to approach someone who was the least likely to influence the behavior and surroundings of the younger version of myself.

“This is why it is so important that you do not come close to him – to me – for now. Anything that changes his opinions of the world, too much, will change me in return. I might not even be the one to know it happened, as my memories adapt according to changes made in the past. As it is, I do not remember having seen you before the start of this mission, which is a good sign.”

“How is it even possible that you exist in the same timeline?” Kurogane rubbed a hand over his forehead, trying to make sense of something that felt too big to understand. “Parallel dimensions, or something?”

“Ah, it’s a bit more complicated than that, we think,” Fai said, shifting in his seat to face Kurogane more fully. “We have wondered the same thing – after all, the matter of which Yuui in this timeline is made, and the matter that makes up me, are one and the same. It should, strictly speaking, not be possible for it to be in two places at once, and thus impossible for me and Yuui to exist next to each other.

“It seems that it is still working, because I’m not truly entering this timeline – not entirely. We think that bending space-time in order to travel back as far as ten years puts a heavy strain on the dimensional construct. Like a rubber band, strained too much, I will on the long run either pull me back into my timeline – or snap.”

“What happens if it snaps?” Kurogane asked, brows drawn into a scowl. Fai chuckled lowly, shrugging.

“Imagine that my body was the rubber band, I guess,” he smiled lopsidedly. “We have not really gotten around to try, yet.” Kurogane looked at him, long and hard, and Fai, in the end, averted his gaze, one hand playing idly through a drop-down menu along the screens without ever opening anything. “If I succeed on this mission, travelling back in time will never be necessary for Yuui in this timeline, and I will lose my memory up to this point and existence as the immediate future is being rewritten. At least we hope that that is going to happen, instead of plainly working up a paradox around which time-space will collapse. If I do not manage to stop it, I will most probably die in the flames of the bomb.”

“How can you be sure the universe is working like that? How is it even possible that, as you rewrite the past, your own involvement is not being cut out of it?”

Fai looked at him with hollow eyes. “I can’t explain it. I only know that some things remain, because this is not the first timeline in which I have returned, here.”

“You have travelled her, before?”

“Not me, but alternate versions of me,” Fai corrected with a long sigh. “It’s kind of complicated from here on.

“On the evening of the coronation of Princess Sakura, 109 a. i. FTL, Yuui Flowright will get an anonymous note ordering him to this very place. He finds the repaired time machine, a replica of the one that he has been researching in the Kangoku-Clow tunnel. There will be a data chip, a log holding the records of everything that happened to his ten year older self. The time machine will vanish as it is pulled back into its own time, but the records remain.

“He will gather a team of scientists, as he watches helplessly how the world around him changes for the worst. The cistern in which Yuuko resides has cracked and broken during the explosion, diggings that Yuui puts in action in order to recover the machine that has saved her personality remain fruitless. Without her calming influence and without the voice of the princess in their ears, the populace erupts into civil war.

“The people are fighting the government, the royal house is head- and powerless. The radioactive fallout of the bomb starts killing the survivors of the attack, and slowly but surely the cities of Clow turn into a battle zone. Among the chaos, Xiang seizes the chance to attack Clow and clean the cities, one by one, from the rioting populace and what is left of the government.

“Yuui escaped being apprehended by the Xiang military forces, barely. In the end, he comes to the conclusion that the best course of action is to change the past and to prevent the last decade from happening. He changes his name to Fai – a dead man walking – starts with the help of the records to repairs of the time machine, learns all there is to learn from the logs he found. And then, travels back in time, in order to stop this. And it starts over, again.

“There are microscopic cameras taking all that I see, microphones catching all that I hear – that is what I base all my assumption over this timeline and Kyle’s movements off from.”

Fai let out a shivering breath, raking a hand through his hair and averting his eyes. Kurogane watched him, silently. Wondered how bad it must have been. Wondered what he had seen, what had made him the person he was – someone who had so little to lose that he could give it up without looking back.

“I think-“ Fai stopped. “My reason to tell you all of this. Fei Wong Reed has never mentioned, in none of the timelines I have watched, before. He appeared out of nowhere – you said that Yuuko has been unable to track him down, and I am just as clueless. I think-“

“You think he’s a time traveler, too,” Kurogane finished the thought. Fai nodded with wide opened eyes. “Why would he come here?” Kurogane asked. “To hinder us from saving the princess?”

“I do not know,” Fai shook his head helplessly. “And we have no way to find out. But we must be prepared for the possibility that he knows that we’re coming. That he knows what our moves are going to be and that he might have ways to counter them.”

“Fuck,” Kurogane said, raking a hand through his hair. “How do you even work around that?”

“It might help to know – I have tried to change the past, over and over again, and details have changed along the way, every single time,” Fai said. “It will not be as easy as he might think.”

“Right,” Kurogane nodded. “What did you... the alternate you do the last time he came here? Did you seek me out, too?”

“Generally, I’ve been trying to avoid help, so far. It seems I tried to stop the bomb on the day of the coronation. On my own,” Fai smiled bleakly. “It did not work out particularly well. It seems I found Syaoran Li dead, and was unable to match the blue prints I had to the machine. I have been blown up about two dozen times, now, Kurogane, once more won’t hurt, believe me.”

“You’re not alone, this time, though,” Kurogane murmured. Fai’s smile fell and for a moment he seemed like he was about to cry. Kurogane didn’t know where to look, so he kept staring at him, helplessly, out of his depth. Fai lowered his head, shielding his eyes with one hand and nodded silently.

“You don’t plan to sleep in this rat hole, on the last night before the world ends, do you?” Kurogane joked weakly. Fai showed no reaction, and Kurogane gently put a hand on his shoulder. “C’mon, let’s go home.”

*

It was the first time in a very long time that Kurogane took someone down the trapdoor in the corner of his office. Fai climbed down the stairs apprehensively, as though he wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to be here. Kurogane pushed the button that closed the door overhead Fai with a silent click, as well as the shutters in the office above, shutting out the noise and light of Shokangoku district.

His private room seemed much emptier than the office above; a kitchenette, a table with two chairs – one of them unusable due to the magazines and newspaper that piled high on them – an unmade futon, a small bathroom behind a row of empty cupboards. Kurogane automatically gravitated towards the kitchen, opening the cabinet above and reaching for the golden liquor.

“Whiskey?” Kurogane asked, pulling out two glasses.

“No, thank you,” Fai replied absent-mindedly. He still stood where he had entered the room, looking about the apartment. Kurogane felt his presence like a weight on his chest, a burn at his back. He seemed like a living, breathing invasion to a room, undisturbed safe for Kurogane himself for years.

Fai gravitated towards the packed suitcase, but it was not the bundles of clothes that were dragging him closer. The only anomaly in the impersonal room was a bleached-out poster of blooming orange trees hung up on the wall overhead the suitcase. It was visible from the bed, once it was made, like a dream that had taken place in nooks and crannies of Kurogane’s consciousness, born from an idea his mind latched onto upon finding the picture in a cheap magazine. Fai let his fingertips brush over the light green and yellow print.

“The orange plantations of Heian,” Fai murmured, his eyes alight with something like memory. The poisoned, beautiful landscape of Kurogane’s hometown. Death in every single of its fruits. “Is this where you were going to go, the evening I came to you?”

“It’d be insanity to go there – they’re still fighting the fallout,” Kurogane looked away but didn’t deny it. He didn’t talk the past, usually, but there barely had been anyone to ever tell, either. “I once had family there.”

“The radioactive fallout,” Fai repeated, like remembering a far-away dream. “The northern lights lighting up the horizon, after the war on Soror. The poles and the green zones were infested, leaving only the desert habitable.”

“My mother died of cancer when I was seven, my dad of alcohol when I was twelve,” Kurogane said. The whiskey was heavy in his hand, the words were thicker in his throat than he had expected. “I ran away from the orphanage, after that. Almost starved in Clow City before Yuuko took me in.”

“Hundreds of runaway children in this city,” Fai quoted his own words back at him. He looked at him with eyes that were filled with sadness and something else – possibly understanding. “Is that why you are helping me? Because there is nothing left to you that matters, either?”

Suddenly, Kurogane was overwhelmed by the closeness of Fai, of all people, in these empty rooms that had never been his home but always been a place of silence and retreat. He felt bared, cornered, naked under those understanding eyes. His heart was beating too fast, he couldn’t think. He put down the whiskey with a hollow clanking, and followed the pull towards Fai, half thinking he would throw him out of the room, half thinking he would hit him.

He grabbed his shoulders and hurled him against the wall almost violently. They were standing so close they were sharing a breath.

There was no surprise in Fai’s eyes, just sadness, accumulated years of being alone, of loss, and need. It was as though finally, finally Kurogane could see, could read, could understand what had happened to Fai, how he had turned out like this. It would be over tomorrow, one way or another. Nothing mattered, anymore.

Kurogane kissed him, with the desperation of a drowning man, kissed him like he was breathing after years of living beneath the water, breaking through the surface, tasting life on his lips and tongue. Fai closed his eyes, melted against him with a soft sound, letting him enter, kissing back softly and possibly there was wetness on his cheeks. They were lost among time and space – lost between memories and an unknown future, lost among the streams of time itself.

Kurogane crushed Fai against the wall, searching for contact, grappling for support, not caring as blue skies and ghostly orange trees tore under his fingers. What were they but dreams of a time that he couldn’t bring back? A mirage of beauty, where sickness and despair slept in the ground? Death had hidden itself in the beautiful colors of the northern lights, that shone over the poles every day of the year.

They slowly sank to the floor and nothing mattered, anymore.

“Kurogane, I will be gone by the end of tomorrow,” Fai gasped against his mouth. His eyes were fogged over mirrors, and Kurogane could not see what laid behind them. Even this close, so physically close their noses brushed, he could not read in them. “I don’t want you to regret this.”

“What happened to me, in the alternate timeline?” Kurogane asked, pulling away carefully. Fai averted his eyes.

“You died in the bomb attack,” Fai said silently. Kurogane closed his eyes briefly. “You never left the city on time. I would not have asked you for your help, had you survived. Too many things might have fallen apart.”

“I am more likely to live, tomorrow, than in any timeline before,” Kurogane replied, kissing his forehead gently. “You might be saving my life, here,” and it had more than one meaning.

Fai pushed him away, searching his face. Let me have this, Kurogane could not say, but his touch radiated, his fingers told where they dug into Fai’s shoulder and side. Give me something to remember you by. Don’t leave me, so easily. Remind me what it means when something matters.

“Okay,” Fai whispered. Kurogane pressed their foreheads together, feeling selfish and yet glad. His fingers glided over the stubble on Fai’s cheeks, softly. When they kissed again, it was more gentle, less of a haze, more controlled. “Okay.”

*

Morning melted into noon and noon into evening. Kurogane was woken by sundown by the chanting in the streets – long live the princess, long live the queen. Fai was by his side, a gentle rise and fall of a breathing body against his side. He pulled him close, burying his nose in sleep-mussed hair that smelt like the desert. Fai hummed against him contently, half-awake, too far away to remember where and who they were. An illusion of peace.

He remembered the taste of oranges against the roof of his mouth, but his dreams were foggy and without clear shape.

 ~ go to Chapter 4 ~