Title: The Absence Equation - Chapter 8
Group/Pairings: NewS. Pairings: Koyama/Shige, Massu/Yamapi
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, cursing, sexual implications.
Words: 2,000
Summary: First try: "The fate of the world as they know it rests in the hands of one Kato Shigeaki. Oh shit." Possibly more coherent try (though it sounds like a lame old-school sci fi jacket blurb): The A.I. guarding cyberspace is forced to choose between eternal imprisonment and self-destruction. With the fate of the world resting in their hands, they must race against time to give her a third option before it's too late.
Prologue - Chapter 1 |
Chapter 2 |
Chapter 3 |
Chapter 4 |
Chapter 5 |
Chapter 6 |
Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 |
Chapter 9 |
Chapter 10 |
Chapter 11 |
Chapter 12 |
Chapter 13 |
Epilogue ---
Chapter 8 - 1000
The moment the counter hit zero, time froze and Tegoshi was held suspended between life and death, speech and images firing through his brain so rapidly he couldn’t process them before the world went black. Some time later, his subconscious played out the scenes in his head, piecing everything together into a story, one unfamiliar to Tegoshi with gardens and towers, witches and princes, and a desperately lonely princess wishing for a happily ever after.
~~~
Ryo rose groggily to answer the hotel room’s vid phone at some ungodly hour - 10am, he realized when he saw the clock. Those fuckers. Jansen’s ugly face stared back at him and he blinked a couple times before holding up a finger and turning to the bed and urging a curvy blonde out of it with soft murmured words and a charming smile. Well, as charming as he could get at that hour of the day. She wasn’t complaining when he shut her out of the room with a blown kiss.
He dropped himself into the chair in front of the screen and scowled. “What?”
“We’re ready for your next move.”
Last time the man said that, he’d gotten a couple extra days in Milan. “And?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.
“We need you to fly out to Los Angeles.”
Ryo didn’t trust his shifty eyes. “And?” he prompted again.
Jansen pursed his lips. “We’ll need to install a couple prosthetics and some additional Microsoft slots.”
“What prosthetics?”
“Your left eye and right ring finger will be replaced.”
“Hell no! This was not part of the deal.” Ryo rose indignantly to his feet.
The man steepled his fingers under his chin. “You don’t really have a choice. Don’t worry, it will be a neat job, the best. And we will make it worth your while, of course. But I’m afraid you’ll find yourself without any other options.”
Ryo set his jaw. Well shit. Maybe he could get them to do something cool.
Ryo was unsurprised to find two men in neatly pressed black slacks and white button-downs with skinny black ties standing outside his door. He hefted his bag over his shoulder with a sigh and pushed his sunglasses further up his face. “Let’s do this, boys.” They followed him silently down the narrow, uneven steps of the old hotel and into a waiting car.
~~~
They were back in the Underground, the four of them clustered around the low-lying cot, Tegoshi motionless on it except for the shallow rise and fall of his chest. They couldn’t bring him to the hospital; it would have been too obvious what he had been doing when he flatlined. Instead, they had gotten his heart started and Yamashita had thrown him over his shoulder. They’d walked along casually, chit chatting and laughing, and if anyone noticed their trembling, they didn’t comment. Masuda hoped that Tegoshi’s reputation for wild living would provide any sort of cover and it’s possible that it worked. They wouldn’t know until later.
They’d been directed to the room of an older man with long dreadlocks who said nothing but worked diligently. And now they waited. Shige sat with his laptop open, working on the anti-virus and feeling guilty. But it was all he could do for Tegoshi. If, no, when, the man came out of this, he would want to know why Shige hadn’t been working the whole time. And if he didn’t, well, he would have wanted it this way. But he was definitely going to come out of this.
Shige leaned back, trying to rest his eyes, and watched Masuda lean heavily against Yamashita, worry and fear blanching his face and wrinkling his brow. Every time Tegoshi’s heart skipped a beat Masuda would let out a dry sob and Yamashita’s arm would tighten around him. Koyama hadn’t taken his hand off his mouth yet and Shige still felt the nausea roiling his stomach.
Eight hours and twenty-five minutes after the successful download, Tegoshi opened his eyes.
~~~
The trip to L.A. had been uneventful and Ryo spent most of it reading, sandwiched between Hans and Frans, as he’d decided to call the apparent mutes. In the car on the way to the operation site, though, he couldn’t focus. He wasn’t a non-mod by any stretch of the imagination, but he was pretty attached to his body parts, no pun intended. He’d never entertained the thought of replacing any body part that was functioning just fine as is. Like his mom always said, if something ain’t broke, don’t fix it. He drummed his fingers nervously on his thigh, registering the feel of the pad of his right ring finger against the roughness of his jeans in the back of his mind.
The office was done all in bright white, broken only by an occasional glimpse of tan skin or green plant or blue eyes. It only increased his nervousness. They made him sign some sort of paper bullshit written in a language he couldn’t read; his microsoft was for understanding spoken English, not written. He didn’t bother having it read to him, though, because he didn’t believe they would tell him the truth anyway. They’d made it clear that they were doing what they wanted with him. He doubted he’d be able to press charges when all was said and done. His last thought before he went under the knife was that he hoped they stuck to their word. It wasn’t a very convicted one.
When he woke, it was with a numbness in the left side of his face and a very dull throb in his right hand. He licked his lips and slowly waited for his eyes to focus. He couldn’t seem to get any sort of depth in his sight and that’s when he remembered. He raised his left hand up to gingerly touch his left eye and his fingers met gauze. His heart rate sped a bit.
He heard the door click open and then a rich alto voice, “Don’t be alarmed,” she said. There were fingers on his left arm and a woman appeared in his line of sight.
“How do you feel?”
He shrugged. “Numb,” he said, pointing to his eye. “And my hand hurts a bit.”
The lady nodded and jotted something down on a pad before helping him sit up. She waited for him to focus on her before touching her own left eye, then right hand. “Don’t touch.”
He nodded. Three hours later the doctor came in and checked his hand, nodding to himself and muttering, “Ok.”
The next day he was driven back to check the eye. When they removed the gauze, he was surprised to see that nothing really looked any different, maybe a little more blurry, was all. He felt a little disappointed. The doctor clucked and nodded and the woman from before handed him a mirror with a smile. “No scar,” she said.
And he brought his right hand up to his left eye, gingerly touching. She was right.
~~~
Tegoshi was obviously confused when he woke up. His eyes were unfocused and he had an innocently puzzled expression that Shige bet was making Koyama itch to rub his back soothingly. They squeezed in as close as they could without touching the ‘doctor’ who was sitting Tegoshi up carefully and checking his eyes and asking him questions.
“What’s your name?”
“Tegoshi Yuya.”
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
Tegoshi gazed at him. “Three.”
“Do you remember wh-“
Tegoshi sat forward suddenly and grabbed Shige’s hand, causing Shige to gasp in surprise. “Did we get it?” he asked earnestly.
Shige nodded and Tegoshi relaxed back against the wall, heaving a shuddering breath. “Okay.”
He looked terribly fragile, the graceful bones in his face seemed brittle under skin pulled too tight with lack of sleep and excess of worry. Shige was sure he wasn’t the only one who wanted to pull the young man to him and cradle him until he slept.
The doctor finished his exam and Masuda followed him out of the room to negotiate payment and Koyama was already moving to make Tegoshi more comfortable as he struggled to sit up straight. “How’s the anti-virus coming, Shige?”
And for once Shige didn’t grind his teeth at the familiarity. He guessed that when a person watches a man dying and saves his life, it bound the two of them in some way. “All right. I need to start working on a simulation program so I can test it out when it’s done. I think it’s almost finished but…”
Tegoshi nodded. “We’ll move cities tonight.”
Shige and Koyama both protested at the same time. “No!” “You’re definitely not ready yet.”
Tegoshi smiled a little. “I’ll be fine. There’s work to do. Besides, they’re still looking for us and after the break-in, I think there will be others looking for you too, Shige.” He shifted uncomfortably. “Like the mafia and yakuza weren’t enough,” he added ruefully.
Shige couldn’t agree more.
Masuda returned and helped Tegoshi to stand and Koyama attached himself to the smaller man in a such a way that it was difficult to tell he was actually supporting almost his whole weight, rather than just playing doting boyfriend.
In the car back to the hotel, Tegoshi was tucked against Masuda’s side, cradled between him and Koyama, fast asleep, eyelashes fluttering against distressingly pale cheeks with every trembling breath. No one spoke on the way. The first to say anything was Tegoshi as he sat on the bed watching while Masuda packed Tegoshi’s bag and gripping the mattress hard enough to whiten his knuckles as he struggled to stay upright. Shige wanted to make him lie down but knew the hacker would just push him away with a brittle, “I’m fine.”
“Jansen is probably having kittens right now, wondering where the hell you are. He’s probably pushing up the other courier’s agenda.” He lowered his head until his chin nearly touched his chest. “Yamashita?”
Yamashita didn’t look up from where he sat at Shige’s laptop working on the decryption. “Close.”
Tegoshi hummed and rocked back and forth a little. “I don’t know,” he admitted.
“We’ll just move,” Shige replied. It was weird seeing Tegoshi helpless like this, uncertain. It was abnormal and he didn’t like how uncomfortable it made him to see him so vulnerable. “It won’t be long. We’ll have the info and we’ll find him and then we’ll know where to go. For now, we’ll go south.” There was no reason to go south except that it was movement; they needed to keep moving.
Nodding, Tegoshi finally lay back and laced his fingers over his stomach.
Thirty minutes later Yamashita had cracked it, a feat even if he had already known part of it, and Shige couldn’t help but admire the man who had quietly done it and simply announced his success softly and stood to let Shige access it. Shige thought it would have taken him at least another few hours - it would have taken him that long, not that he’d tell anyone that.
Yamashita shook each of their hands as they filed out of the room. He had to get back to the non-mods; they’d called him back from his “family emergency” and demanded his return within 24 hours of the call which he had gotten only an hour after the completed download.
Shige held on a moment longer. “They won’t link you to it, will they?”
Yamashita shrugged, cool. “I don’t think so. I covered myself and this is standard procedure in a business emergency.”
Shige didn’t want him to go but understood the necessity. Besides, Masuda was worried enough for all of them, he thought, catching sight of his distraught face. He left them to say their goodbyes.
Masuda’s face was carefully blank as he slid into the cab next to Shige a few minutes later.
“He’ll be fine,” Shige told him, looking straight ahead. He saw Masuda nod out of the corner of his eye.
Chapter 9