The Absence Equation - Chapter 3
Title: The Absence Equation - Chapter 3
Group/Pairings: NewS. Pairings: Koyama/Shige, Massu/Yamapi
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, cursing, sexual implications.
Words: 1,485
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
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Chapter 3 - 11
He was too damn old for this he thought, sliding under the covers and folding his hands behind his head. “Old” was his latest adjective to follow “too” - too smart, too lazy, too tired, too old. At twenty-eight, he wasn’t really too old for the job but he sure as hell was tired of it. When he’d first heard of mnemonic couriers, he’d laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. Anyone could send encrypted information over cyberspace nearly instantaneously. Why not spend the money you’d pay a mnemonic courier with on some really good ice to protect the info on its trip across cyberspace rather than placing the information in the fragile body of a human and waiting days to have the transfer completed? Ryo had never been a hacker.
His friend had spelled it out for him one night in ice cubes, nails, and a hammer. Dead drunk, he’d let the ice represent its technological counterpart, building a fortress out of the cubes and placing, in the protected center, a bottle cap.
“Ok,” Jin slurred, and carefully picked up a nail and the hammer. He placed the point of the nail in a dip in one of the top cubes. “This,” he said, gesturing with the hammer, “is a hacker. And this,” Ryo assumed he meant the nail, he was pretty drunk too, “is the hacker’s virus. Depending on how crazy the ice is, the hacker can just bash the hell out of the ice, or, if it’s insane, he’ll just set the virus in place and then start tapping, see?” He stared carefully at the nail head as he tapped it gently against the ice and they watched in silence as the nail bored through the ice. Jin picked up another nail and placed it in the center of the head of the first one and began tapping again. Ryo watched, strangely fascinated, as Jin bored through several cubes before one of the melting cubes slid off to the side and the whole structure collapsed. Jin swore. But Ryo remembered.
Well, the pay for this one was good, and seemed like it’d be pretty easy - Milan for two days and then back to the States. There were worse places to spend a couple days. He grinned, thinking of the beautiful blond women and piles of pasta. The girl at the trattoria earlier had had huge tits, wide blue eyes, and a saucy grin. He’d go back tomorrow and see if she didn’t want to improve Japanese-Italian relations. Jin would approve.
~~~
Shige frowned at the hacker. “Yeah, long time. Look, there’s no time for niceties, sorry. We’re in Munich and some crazies just busted into our room in the middle of the night meaning business - the killing kind. My partner jumped us out the window and he’s hurt bad.”
E.P. tapped his chin thoughtfully. “You’re couriering?”
Shige nodded tersely.
His av froze for a few minutes, looking off into the distance, and Shige knew he was checking things out. Suddenly E.P. looked at him. “Where? I have someone in the city who owes me a favor or three. They can get you guys to someplace safe and check over your partner. How bad is it?”
“He’s not dying unless there’s internal bleeding.”
E.P. nodded.
“Give me the coords.”
Shige sent them over to him and waited a moment.
“Ok. Ten minutes. I’ll contact you later about the next step.”
“Thanks,” Shige replied with a rush of air, so stressed he didn’t even think about the cost.
Ten minutes later on the dot, a dark van pulled up in front of the door and Shige was poised to grab Koyama and jump on the bike until a guy walked up to the door with his hands up. “E.P.’s friend. Coming in.”
The guy was huge, jacked up on steroids among other things and he picked Koyama up like he was a rag doll, but carefully, and deposited him in the back of the van. The trip to the safe spot was quiet and uneventful and Shige stayed crouched next to Koyama, stroking his cheek and whispering nonsense to him.
It was bad, he realized, when they finally got Koyama into the light. His back and ass were ripped apart and he had scrapes all the way down to his heels. Another guy, assumedly with some sort of medical expertise, had given Koyama a sedative and was picking gravel out of his back.
“Just a couple circuits damaged, but I can fix those up no problem. Where’d he get this done? It’s top-notch. A fall this hard should have done much more damage, but this shit is hardcore.” He grinned up at Shige and Shige glared at him until the man coughed and looked back down at his work.
“Chiba City,” he finally replied and watched the man’s grin return as he mouthed ‘cool’ but didn’t look back up.
The man finished cleaning Koyama up and wrapped his back to protect it and dosed him with another sedative. “He’ll be out all night. He should heal up fairly quickly with what I’ve given him but he needs to sleep it off. He’s going to have one hell of a hangover in the morning.”
Again the grin and Shige wanted to slap it off the man’s face but he had helped. Instead he sighed. “Thank you,” he said gratefully, and lay down on the bed next to Koyama’s.
In the morning he woke to see someone standing over Koyama. The person looked vaguely familiar from the back and Shige groggily sat up. The person turned to him with a grin.
“Prodigy.”
“…E.P.?” he said in disbelief and damned if he didn’t look exactly like his av. “What are you doing here?”
“I’d never seen Munich,” he replied with a shrug.
“Huh?”
“I hear they have great night life.”
Shige just shook his head. “Yeah, okay. Um…” And then he realized he’d never negotiated terms with E.P. when he’d asked for the hacker’s help. Shit. They were acquaintances - they’d even partnered a few times in the past on Shige’s odd jobs between courier jobs. They were not friends. And the man had a reputation for being wily. “What do you want?” he finally asked.
E.P.’s lips turned up at the edges and his eyes narrowed just a fraction and Shige actually shuddered. He turned back to the bed. “Oh nothing… yet. I like when people owe me favors,” and he trailed his fingers in the air above Koyama’s upturned palm.
Shige had to clench his fist hard enough to bring blood to the surface of his skin where his nails bit into the flesh of his own palm. He took deep breaths through his nose and forced himself to loosen his fingers. That was part of E.P.’s reputation, too, to see just how far he could push people and sure enough he had turned his head just far enough to watch Shige’s reaction with a sly smile. Then he laughed, low and musical and bounced to a chair and sat.
“I’m sure we can work something out later, Prodigy.”
Suddenly Koyama stirred, a quiet moan escaping his lips and Shige was at his side instantly, not caring that E.P. was watching this, too.
“Koyama,” he whispered, taking the man’s hand in his own and running fingers down the cheek not pressed against the mattress.
Koyama opened his eyes to mere slits and groaned. “Shige,” he said hoarsely, “what the hell hit me?”
Shige’s laughter was tinged with hysterical relief. “Asphalt, baby.”
The medic came up on the other side and started undoing the bandages on Koyama’s back and peeling them off carefully. “Looks good,” he said, and Shige thought it still looked a bit like raw meat but at least it was clean and it did look better than it had last night.
Koyama wrinkled his nose. “Did I damage anything important?” he asked, and suddenly Shige was angry. He knew Koyama was referring to the circuits, not necessarily himself, and his fingers tightened involuntarily around Koyama’s hand. Koyama crooked his head up to look at him and squeezed his fingers back pleading with his eyes. He always had known him too well.
“Nothing a little soldering and a soft touch couldn’t fix up,” the medic said with a cheeky grin. Shige felt Koyama relax.
“Those guys last night…” Koyama paused and hissed as the guy did something to his back. “They were serious business. Yakuza and Russian mafia… together.”
The room went eerily still, the only sound the medical equipment humming in the background. The yakuza and Russians were not on friendly terms. That they were working together meant they had to and preferred to send their own men to watch the other guys.
“My, my,” E.P. drawled thoughtfully from his chair. “Just what are you carrying, Prodigy?”
Shige didn’t know, and wasn’t sure he wanted to, either.
Chapter 4
Group/Pairings: NewS. Pairings: Koyama/Shige, Massu/Yamapi
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, cursing, sexual implications.
Words: 1,485
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 3 - 11
He was too damn old for this he thought, sliding under the covers and folding his hands behind his head. “Old” was his latest adjective to follow “too” - too smart, too lazy, too tired, too old. At twenty-eight, he wasn’t really too old for the job but he sure as hell was tired of it. When he’d first heard of mnemonic couriers, he’d laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. Anyone could send encrypted information over cyberspace nearly instantaneously. Why not spend the money you’d pay a mnemonic courier with on some really good ice to protect the info on its trip across cyberspace rather than placing the information in the fragile body of a human and waiting days to have the transfer completed? Ryo had never been a hacker.
His friend had spelled it out for him one night in ice cubes, nails, and a hammer. Dead drunk, he’d let the ice represent its technological counterpart, building a fortress out of the cubes and placing, in the protected center, a bottle cap.
“Ok,” Jin slurred, and carefully picked up a nail and the hammer. He placed the point of the nail in a dip in one of the top cubes. “This,” he said, gesturing with the hammer, “is a hacker. And this,” Ryo assumed he meant the nail, he was pretty drunk too, “is the hacker’s virus. Depending on how crazy the ice is, the hacker can just bash the hell out of the ice, or, if it’s insane, he’ll just set the virus in place and then start tapping, see?” He stared carefully at the nail head as he tapped it gently against the ice and they watched in silence as the nail bored through the ice. Jin picked up another nail and placed it in the center of the head of the first one and began tapping again. Ryo watched, strangely fascinated, as Jin bored through several cubes before one of the melting cubes slid off to the side and the whole structure collapsed. Jin swore. But Ryo remembered.
Well, the pay for this one was good, and seemed like it’d be pretty easy - Milan for two days and then back to the States. There were worse places to spend a couple days. He grinned, thinking of the beautiful blond women and piles of pasta. The girl at the trattoria earlier had had huge tits, wide blue eyes, and a saucy grin. He’d go back tomorrow and see if she didn’t want to improve Japanese-Italian relations. Jin would approve.
~~~
Shige frowned at the hacker. “Yeah, long time. Look, there’s no time for niceties, sorry. We’re in Munich and some crazies just busted into our room in the middle of the night meaning business - the killing kind. My partner jumped us out the window and he’s hurt bad.”
E.P. tapped his chin thoughtfully. “You’re couriering?”
Shige nodded tersely.
His av froze for a few minutes, looking off into the distance, and Shige knew he was checking things out. Suddenly E.P. looked at him. “Where? I have someone in the city who owes me a favor or three. They can get you guys to someplace safe and check over your partner. How bad is it?”
“He’s not dying unless there’s internal bleeding.”
E.P. nodded.
“Give me the coords.”
Shige sent them over to him and waited a moment.
“Ok. Ten minutes. I’ll contact you later about the next step.”
“Thanks,” Shige replied with a rush of air, so stressed he didn’t even think about the cost.
Ten minutes later on the dot, a dark van pulled up in front of the door and Shige was poised to grab Koyama and jump on the bike until a guy walked up to the door with his hands up. “E.P.’s friend. Coming in.”
The guy was huge, jacked up on steroids among other things and he picked Koyama up like he was a rag doll, but carefully, and deposited him in the back of the van. The trip to the safe spot was quiet and uneventful and Shige stayed crouched next to Koyama, stroking his cheek and whispering nonsense to him.
It was bad, he realized, when they finally got Koyama into the light. His back and ass were ripped apart and he had scrapes all the way down to his heels. Another guy, assumedly with some sort of medical expertise, had given Koyama a sedative and was picking gravel out of his back.
“Just a couple circuits damaged, but I can fix those up no problem. Where’d he get this done? It’s top-notch. A fall this hard should have done much more damage, but this shit is hardcore.” He grinned up at Shige and Shige glared at him until the man coughed and looked back down at his work.
“Chiba City,” he finally replied and watched the man’s grin return as he mouthed ‘cool’ but didn’t look back up.
The man finished cleaning Koyama up and wrapped his back to protect it and dosed him with another sedative. “He’ll be out all night. He should heal up fairly quickly with what I’ve given him but he needs to sleep it off. He’s going to have one hell of a hangover in the morning.”
Again the grin and Shige wanted to slap it off the man’s face but he had helped. Instead he sighed. “Thank you,” he said gratefully, and lay down on the bed next to Koyama’s.
In the morning he woke to see someone standing over Koyama. The person looked vaguely familiar from the back and Shige groggily sat up. The person turned to him with a grin.
“Prodigy.”
“…E.P.?” he said in disbelief and damned if he didn’t look exactly like his av. “What are you doing here?”
“I’d never seen Munich,” he replied with a shrug.
“Huh?”
“I hear they have great night life.”
Shige just shook his head. “Yeah, okay. Um…” And then he realized he’d never negotiated terms with E.P. when he’d asked for the hacker’s help. Shit. They were acquaintances - they’d even partnered a few times in the past on Shige’s odd jobs between courier jobs. They were not friends. And the man had a reputation for being wily. “What do you want?” he finally asked.
E.P.’s lips turned up at the edges and his eyes narrowed just a fraction and Shige actually shuddered. He turned back to the bed. “Oh nothing… yet. I like when people owe me favors,” and he trailed his fingers in the air above Koyama’s upturned palm.
Shige had to clench his fist hard enough to bring blood to the surface of his skin where his nails bit into the flesh of his own palm. He took deep breaths through his nose and forced himself to loosen his fingers. That was part of E.P.’s reputation, too, to see just how far he could push people and sure enough he had turned his head just far enough to watch Shige’s reaction with a sly smile. Then he laughed, low and musical and bounced to a chair and sat.
“I’m sure we can work something out later, Prodigy.”
Suddenly Koyama stirred, a quiet moan escaping his lips and Shige was at his side instantly, not caring that E.P. was watching this, too.
“Koyama,” he whispered, taking the man’s hand in his own and running fingers down the cheek not pressed against the mattress.
Koyama opened his eyes to mere slits and groaned. “Shige,” he said hoarsely, “what the hell hit me?”
Shige’s laughter was tinged with hysterical relief. “Asphalt, baby.”
The medic came up on the other side and started undoing the bandages on Koyama’s back and peeling them off carefully. “Looks good,” he said, and Shige thought it still looked a bit like raw meat but at least it was clean and it did look better than it had last night.
Koyama wrinkled his nose. “Did I damage anything important?” he asked, and suddenly Shige was angry. He knew Koyama was referring to the circuits, not necessarily himself, and his fingers tightened involuntarily around Koyama’s hand. Koyama crooked his head up to look at him and squeezed his fingers back pleading with his eyes. He always had known him too well.
“Nothing a little soldering and a soft touch couldn’t fix up,” the medic said with a cheeky grin. Shige felt Koyama relax.
“Those guys last night…” Koyama paused and hissed as the guy did something to his back. “They were serious business. Yakuza and Russian mafia… together.”
The room went eerily still, the only sound the medical equipment humming in the background. The yakuza and Russians were not on friendly terms. That they were working together meant they had to and preferred to send their own men to watch the other guys.
“My, my,” E.P. drawled thoughtfully from his chair. “Just what are you carrying, Prodigy?”
Shige didn’t know, and wasn’t sure he wanted to, either.
Chapter 4