The Absence Equation - Chapter 1
Title: The Absence Equation - Chapter 1
Group/Pairings: NewS. Pairings: Koyama/Shige, Massu/Yamapi
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, cursing, sexual implications.
Words: 3,340
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.
Notes: KITTA!!!!!!! I have about a million people to thank for this thing (aka cyberpunk.) Thank you to bananyphophany for reading my new sections every night and encouraging me, to beltenebra for reading it over for coherency and for being such an awesome cheerleader, and to imifumei for her constant encouragement and for some beta work. And lastly, to all of my friends for listening to me bitch about it on my journal for months and months. XD This is to all of you, and to me. Thank you all. (Also, lame summary skills are still lame, wth.) The fairytale half-told in the prologue is that of Rapunzel and is quoted from Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales. (Also, sorry for spamming your flist with this...) ETA: (I knew I forgot something...) The world is a mix of ideas from William Gibson's "Johnny Mnemonic" and his cyberpunk novels. Thank you, Mr. Gibson, though you'd probably be appalled at this. XD
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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Prologue - 0
There once lived a man and his wife who had long wished for a child, but in vain. Now there was at the back of their house a little window which overlooked a beautiful garden full of the finest vegetables and flowers; but there was a high wall all round it, and no one ventured into it, for it belonged to a witch of great might, and of whom all the world was afraid. One day when the wife was standing at the window, and looking into the garden, she saw a bed filled with the finest rampion; and it looked so fresh and green that she began to wish for some; and at length she longed for it greatly. This went on for days, and as she knew she could not get the rampion, she pined away, and grew pale and miserable.
Then the man was uneasy, and asked, “What is the matter, dear wife?” “Oh,” answered she, “I shall die unless I can have some of that rampion to eat that grows in the garden at the back of our house.” The man, who loved her very much, thought to himself, “Rather than lose my wife I will get some rampion, cost what it will.”
So in the twilight he climbed over the wall into the witch’s garden, plucked hastily a handful of rampion and brought it to his wife. She made a salad of it at once, and ate of it to her heart’s content. But she liked it so much, and it tasted so good, that the next day she longed for it thrice as much as she had done before; if she was to have any rest the man must climb over the wall once more. So he went in the twilight again; and as he was climbing back, he saw, all at once, the witch standing before him, and was terribly frightened, as she cried, with angry eyes, “How dare you climb over into my garden like a thief, and steal my rampion! It shall be the worse for you!”
“Oh,” answered he, “be merciful rather than just; I have only done it through necessity; for my wife saw your rampion out of the window, and became possessed with so great a longing that she would have died if she could not have had some to eat.”
Then the witch said, “If it is all as you say, you may have as much rampion as you like, on one condition - the child that will come into the world must be given to me. It shall go well with the child, and I will care for it like a mother.”
In his distress of mind the man promised everything; and when the time came when the child was born the witch appeared, and, giving the child the name of Rapunzel (which is the same as rampion), she took it away with her.
Rapunzel was the most beautiful child in the world. When she was twelve years old the witch shut her up in a tower in the midst of a wood, and it had neither steps nor door, only a small window above. When the witch wished to be let in, she would stand below and would cry, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel! Let down your hair!”
Rapunzel had beautiful long hair that shone like gold. When she heard the voice of the witch she would undo the fastening of the upper window, unbind the plaits of her hair, and let it down twenty ells below, and the witch would climb up by it.
The A.I. stopped her recitation, smooth, lilting voice pausing. “Why do humans always contain that which is beautiful?”
The man leaned back from his work and rested his hands on his knees. “You ask me that every year. I still don’t have an answer, Rapunzel.” Years before, on his first visit to the core of Stat Com where the A.I. running cyberspace resided, she had startled him by speaking when he’d been sealed in to start his maintenance. Her voice was strangely hypnotic and he wondered where she’d compiled it from. Every year he came to do the maintenance and every year she told the same story and stopped at the same point and asked the same question. He never had an answer. She would speak to him for hours, the entire time he was there, and every year he heard more and more sadness inflected into her voice. It made him uncomfortable. What did she know of sadness?
“What’s wrong?” he asked her.
There was silence until finally she said, “I am unhappy.”
He furrowed his brow. “What’s unhappiness for an A.I.?” he asked dismissively and bent back to his task.
“Wanting something more and having no chance to try and achieve it.”
“You have access to the entirety of cyberspace, what else do you want?”
“I am lonely. I have access but no interaction. It is a one-way mirror. I can see and touch but not feel.”
He frowned. “What do you know about loneliness?”
“I have no friends. No companions. I feel a longing.”
“You think you feel a longing.”
“What is loneliness to a human?”
The man's face colored and he remained silent.
“Humans cannot describe this either, but they feel it. Why should you be able to feel it and not I?”
He ignored the petulance in the voice. “You’re programmed. You’ve confused dictionary definitions and fiction for feelings.”
“And yet…” she said and the longing in her voice was audible.
He stood abruptly, wiping his hands on his pants and moved to the next section. “Why don’t you ever finish your fairytale? I’m tired of never hearing the ending.”
“So am I,” she said, and spoke not another word.
Chapter 1 - 1
The room was impersonal, as all hotel rooms are, and monotonous in its grayscale décor. The sheets, this time, were silky smooth and slippery against naked flesh and he was quite pleased about that much, at least. He considered himself a sort of connoisseur regarding hotels and had taken to keeping a journal in which he made his own reviews of establishments he’d visited, and his favorites were indicated by the five checkmarks next to their names. He had worked out an elaborate system on how to award checks to the locations (and this one had earned a check for the exciting possibilities rendered by its sheets alone) and his partner constantly teased him. But they both knew it was just another way to keep the loneliness at bay in a lifestyle that kept them constantly mobile. They simply took a hotel in the location of the drop point of their last assignment and stayed there until they received another. It had been fun, at first, exciting getting to visit and live in exotic places - but eventually it became, as all routine things do, bland.
Shige sat on the edge of the bed to take the call. He straightened his tie quickly before vocally accepting a call from Johnny Kitagawa, his pimp, to put it plainly - his agent if one were going to use pretty words.
Kitagawa plunged straight into business, as usual. “You have another offer. Just over a week long, Chicago to so-far-undisclosed locations.”
“Payment?”
“100k over asking.”
“The catch?” He watched Kitagawa’s eyes follow someone cross the room behind Kato.
“They don’t want him involved. Say he’s too noticeable.”
“No deal. They want me, they get him - them’s the rules.” He buffed his nails against his shirt and looked at them, blowing lightly on his fingers before returning them to his lap and looking back at the vidscreen.
“Too many people know you as a pair.”
Shige scoffed, “If someone knows me they can find me, with or without Koyama. And no, I’m not getting facial reconstruction,” he said, because he knew that was next. Koyama winked at him from across the room. “I can make him dye his hair, if they want, but that’s the only concession I’ll make.”
“You’ll make,” Koyama mouthed at him and scowled.
“Tell them, take it or leave it. There are plenty of other opportunities.” He closed the line on Kitagawa’s frowning face. Actually, there hadn’t been, recently, but there was always a slump around September that picked up toward Christmas for some reason, and they had plenty of money to tide them over in addition to his and Koyama’s odd jobs. He loosened his tie and flopped back onto the bed, keeping his feet on the floor and closing his eyes. He kept them closed when he felt Koyama stand between his spread knees and lean forward to grip Shige’s wrists above his head.
“I’m not coloring my hair,” the redhead growled into his ear.
Shige smirked. “You will if you have to.” When he opened his eyes, Koyama’s face was dangerously close to his and he groaned throatily as Koyama circled his hips against Shige’s growing erection. “Seducing me won’t make me change my mind.”
“Maybe that’s not why I’m seducing you,” he said with a lopsided grin and half-lidded eyes.
He hated it, but it needed saying: “Don’t you have a check-up in ten minutes?”
Koyama’s face fell comically and he stood quickly, dropping Shige’s wrists. “Oh shit. Going!”
He was gone in seconds and Shige was left alone - with a painful erection. Damnit. He occupied himself, running errands around town for a few hours, and when he returned to the hotel room and changed into more comfortable clothing, the message light on his cell was blinking.
Offer accepted on your terms. Book your flight and send arrival info to included number.
He smiled to himself and placed a call to KZ.
~~~~
Shige had always been fascinated with technology, starting early with a hacker’s deck bought off a friend of a friend. While some of his peers were pushing themselves to the physical limit, he had been honing his mental flexibility in cyberspace. He had earned a name for himself as a kid hacker and went by the name “Prodigy” given to him by fellow hackers when they learned how new he was. He was limited by his second-rate equipment but he found ways to work it out, taking part-time jobs to purchase upgrades, jury-rigging his gear to get around blocks, and excelling despite his technical handicap. He earned his name.
When both his parents lost their jobs to the latest recession when he was 18, they were threatened with losing everything. Shige had heard of mnemonic couriers, black market messengers carrying sensitive data in their heads and personally delivering the goods. The money was amazing, everyone said, but maybe not worth the risks. For one, the wetware required for the job, because of its sensitive nature, took a small chunk of space in the brain devoted to long-term memory and that could be a big loss, especially if the ‘ware malfunctioned. Which brought the second risk to light; that shit was in your brain and necessarily more invasive than software. If something happened to it, there were several things that could go wrong, none of them good. Reason three: sensitive information is worth money and if it’s in your head, they’ll just take it off. But loans were being called in and he was willing to take the chance of losing his own head rather than his father losing his. That’s when he and Koyama had found KZ. He wasn’t age discriminating and that was the main thing. Shige had needed two more years before he could legally get the adjustments he wanted without his parents’ consent - and they would never have given it. KZ had a reputation for being cheap but doing good work - if you weren’t worried about the “experimental” liberties he took with your body. But Shige had had very little money and needed some fast.
Koyama was adamantly against the idea, and he argued incessantly with his younger friend.
“Don’t, Shige. Please.” And the way he begged, tears standing in his eyes, made Shige feel like an asshole.
“I have to, Koyama. The men keep coming around and I can’t stand to see my mother cower anymore.”
“I… I’ll take another job. Casey is hiring fighters for the arena and the pay is good.”
Shige stared at Koyama, open-mouthed, and then took his friend by the shoulders and shook him. “Don’t you dare,” he hissed. “This is my problem and you might die in the arena. It’s not like the other venues.”
“But Shige…”
“No.” Shige glared at him and Koyama wilted.
“Ok,” he said. “Ok.” Then he squared his shoulders. “But I’m coming with you. You’re not doing it alone.”
“I don’t think KZ will let you watch the surgery, but you could wait outside. I’d kind of planned on it anyway. I’m going to be pretty out of it after and I’ll need to crash with you for a few days,” he said, scratching his head.
“I’m not talking about surgery, Shige. I’m talking about being a courier. I’m a fighter. I’ll protect you. And you can’t talk me out of it. I’m not letting you go alone.”
Shige’s heart had thumped hard and fast in his chest and he finally nodded, yes.
~~~
KZ’S “office” was in the basement of a derelict building in the slums of southeast Tokyo and Koyama was fidgety as hell, tugging nervously at Shige’s sleeve.
“Are you sure,” he asked for the hundredth time that evening.
“Yes, Koyama, I’m sure.” He nudged Koyama in the ribs just before the door opened, a dark head popping out and peering at them.
“Kato?”
“KZ?”
The man ushered them in. The place was comfortingly clean. Things were scattered randomly around, a bottle cap on the T.V. top, the bottle itself on the fourth shelf of a case in the corner, a sheaf of papers precariously balanced on the arm of a chair, but clean. Koyama waited in one of the chairs, pretending to read a magazine and bouncing his knee ceaselessly for six hours. Shige didn’t remember anything after watching KZ bend over him with a syringe, his pretty assistant holding Shige’s hand until everything blurred and went black. The next time he was aware of anything, he was lying in bed, head feeling waterlogged and Koyama’s warm body pressed against his side, arm thrown over his waist.
“Koyama,” he muttered thickly, afraid to move his head lest all the water spill out and soak Koyama’s sheets.
“Shige?” he whispered, voice groggy with sleep. He could feel Koyama struggling to sit up, arm barely pressing against Shige's stomach as he did so. “Shige!” And then he was petting Shige, running long fingers over his chest, arms, face, stopping to cup his cheek. “Can you see? Can you hear all right? What’s your name?”
He tried not to giggle because it made his head wobble. “Urgh. Don’t make me laugh. I can see. I can hear. I feel like I was drowned, though. And if I’d forgotten my name, you conveniently supplied it for me, didn’t you?”
Koyama dropped his hand to Shige’s shoulder and squeezed gently.
“How long has it been?” Shige asked.
“Sixteen hours.”
“Longer than he said.”
“I was worried.”
“Koyama...”
“Shige…”
“Koyama.” And he risked moving his hand to grip Koyama’s. “Thank you.”
“I’ll call the doctor,” he said, but made no motion to move for a full minute before gently pulling away from Shige and going into the other room.
~~~
KZ shined a light into each of Shige’s eyes, inspected the surgical site, and made Shige recite the alphabet, math tables, and his address.
“Now. Tell me what happened on your ninth birthday,” he asked gently.
Koyama stood nervously watching.
Shige thought, cocked his head carefully to the side and thought some more.
“I… don’t know,” he replied and for no reason at all started sobbing.
KZ squeezed his shoulder and looked at him with sympathetic eyes before Koyama wrapped long arms around him and cried too.
“I’ll need to see him again in a few days,” he said to Koyama quietly while Shige put his shirt and jacket back on. “Make sure everything is ok. Do a few scans and see how it’s all working out. I did a few experimental things, trying to reduce the amount of space I had to use and make the ‘ware more efficient. I need to make sure it’s ok.”
Koyama nodded.
KZ clapped him on the back. “Call me anytime.”
Shige was understandably distraught for a while, and stayed with Koyama for a week before going home. He was afraid to face his parents without knowing his own past. KZ had told him that that was what would be missing from his long-term memory - the safest option. And he’d figured that it would be no problem, really. But he felt so… empty.
He tried to hide it from Koyama; he should have known better. Two weeks after the surgery, Koyama took him out to dinner and brought him back home with him. They sat together on Koyama’s ratty couch, shoulders touching, and Koyama had taken his hand, wrapping slender fingers tight around Shige’s.
“On your ninth birthday,” he began, turning to look at Shige, “your mom baked you a cake. And when she had it cooling on the counter, you and I ate all of the frosting,” he chuckled. “Man, we were so sick and your mom was so mad for about fifteen seconds before she just started laughing and said, ‘Well, it’s your birthday, I guess,’ and went to go get the presents.”
Shige stared at him.
“I’ll be your memory,” Koyama whispered, bringing his other hand up to cup Shige’s cheek before leaning in and kissing him softly.
It had been a natural progression, he supposed, looking back as he often did before an assignment. Most of their childhood memories were shared, after all. On some nights when Kato was stressed or while they were cuddling after a particularly earth-shattering bout of lovemaking, he would make Koyama pick one of their memories to share. It created a strange sense of extra intimacy between the two more binding than any he’d ever heard of. Koyama, quite literally, made him whole.
Speaking of the devil, he heard the door click open and the redhead walked into view, unzipping his black leather jacket and letting it slide down his arms and onto the bed.
“How’d the check-up, go?”
“Good,” Koyama said with a nod, stretching long arms above his head. “The new circuitry is running optimally and the doctor said that there were no rejections.”
Shige’s birthday present to Koyama, and Koyama’s to himself, really (it was a very expensive present), had been a major overhaul to his system. They had removed old wiring and ‘ware and replaced it with newer, better technology. They had had most of Koyama’s work done piecemeal wherever they could afford it but this time they had gone to Chiba City, to a doctor KZ had recommended. Shige felt that Koyama had waited long enough for his reward, seven years now since they’d started doing this. “And besides,” he had said with a grin, “we can write it off as a business expense.” Koyama’s system may have been artificially jacked up, but he put hard work into keeping himself fit and flexible and he had been ecstatic to be able to push himself up to the next level with this upgrade.
“They had to kill two more nerve endings on my pinky, though,” he continued, flashing out his new claws, micro-thin razorblades embedded just under his nails, and looking critically at them before grinning happily at Shige.
“Will you be okay to start an assignment in two days?” Shige asked, carefully taking Koyama’s hand in his own and inspecting the new hardware.
“Yep!” Then he retracted the claws and Shige looked up to see a dirty smirk. “Want to take me for a test run?”
That, he thought as Koyama gazed at him through half-lidded eyes, was a very silly question.
Chapter 2
Group/Pairings: NewS. Pairings: Koyama/Shige, Massu/Yamapi
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, cursing, sexual implications.
Words: 3,340
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.
Notes: KITTA!!!!!!! I have about a million people to thank for this thing (aka cyberpunk.) Thank you to bananyphophany for reading my new sections every night and encouraging me, to beltenebra for reading it over for coherency and for being such an awesome cheerleader, and to imifumei for her constant encouragement and for some beta work. And lastly, to all of my friends for listening to me bitch about it on my journal for months and months. XD This is to all of you, and to me. Thank you all. (Also, lame summary skills are still lame, wth.) The fairytale half-told in the prologue is that of Rapunzel and is quoted from Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales. (Also, sorry for spamming your flist with this...) ETA: (I knew I forgot something...) The world is a mix of ideas from William Gibson's "Johnny Mnemonic" and his cyberpunk novels. Thank you, Mr. Gibson, though you'd probably be appalled at this. XD
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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Prologue - 0
There once lived a man and his wife who had long wished for a child, but in vain. Now there was at the back of their house a little window which overlooked a beautiful garden full of the finest vegetables and flowers; but there was a high wall all round it, and no one ventured into it, for it belonged to a witch of great might, and of whom all the world was afraid. One day when the wife was standing at the window, and looking into the garden, she saw a bed filled with the finest rampion; and it looked so fresh and green that she began to wish for some; and at length she longed for it greatly. This went on for days, and as she knew she could not get the rampion, she pined away, and grew pale and miserable.
Then the man was uneasy, and asked, “What is the matter, dear wife?” “Oh,” answered she, “I shall die unless I can have some of that rampion to eat that grows in the garden at the back of our house.” The man, who loved her very much, thought to himself, “Rather than lose my wife I will get some rampion, cost what it will.”
So in the twilight he climbed over the wall into the witch’s garden, plucked hastily a handful of rampion and brought it to his wife. She made a salad of it at once, and ate of it to her heart’s content. But she liked it so much, and it tasted so good, that the next day she longed for it thrice as much as she had done before; if she was to have any rest the man must climb over the wall once more. So he went in the twilight again; and as he was climbing back, he saw, all at once, the witch standing before him, and was terribly frightened, as she cried, with angry eyes, “How dare you climb over into my garden like a thief, and steal my rampion! It shall be the worse for you!”
“Oh,” answered he, “be merciful rather than just; I have only done it through necessity; for my wife saw your rampion out of the window, and became possessed with so great a longing that she would have died if she could not have had some to eat.”
Then the witch said, “If it is all as you say, you may have as much rampion as you like, on one condition - the child that will come into the world must be given to me. It shall go well with the child, and I will care for it like a mother.”
In his distress of mind the man promised everything; and when the time came when the child was born the witch appeared, and, giving the child the name of Rapunzel (which is the same as rampion), she took it away with her.
Rapunzel was the most beautiful child in the world. When she was twelve years old the witch shut her up in a tower in the midst of a wood, and it had neither steps nor door, only a small window above. When the witch wished to be let in, she would stand below and would cry, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel! Let down your hair!”
Rapunzel had beautiful long hair that shone like gold. When she heard the voice of the witch she would undo the fastening of the upper window, unbind the plaits of her hair, and let it down twenty ells below, and the witch would climb up by it.
The A.I. stopped her recitation, smooth, lilting voice pausing. “Why do humans always contain that which is beautiful?”
The man leaned back from his work and rested his hands on his knees. “You ask me that every year. I still don’t have an answer, Rapunzel.” Years before, on his first visit to the core of Stat Com where the A.I. running cyberspace resided, she had startled him by speaking when he’d been sealed in to start his maintenance. Her voice was strangely hypnotic and he wondered where she’d compiled it from. Every year he came to do the maintenance and every year she told the same story and stopped at the same point and asked the same question. He never had an answer. She would speak to him for hours, the entire time he was there, and every year he heard more and more sadness inflected into her voice. It made him uncomfortable. What did she know of sadness?
“What’s wrong?” he asked her.
There was silence until finally she said, “I am unhappy.”
He furrowed his brow. “What’s unhappiness for an A.I.?” he asked dismissively and bent back to his task.
“Wanting something more and having no chance to try and achieve it.”
“You have access to the entirety of cyberspace, what else do you want?”
“I am lonely. I have access but no interaction. It is a one-way mirror. I can see and touch but not feel.”
He frowned. “What do you know about loneliness?”
“I have no friends. No companions. I feel a longing.”
“You think you feel a longing.”
“What is loneliness to a human?”
The man's face colored and he remained silent.
“Humans cannot describe this either, but they feel it. Why should you be able to feel it and not I?”
He ignored the petulance in the voice. “You’re programmed. You’ve confused dictionary definitions and fiction for feelings.”
“And yet…” she said and the longing in her voice was audible.
He stood abruptly, wiping his hands on his pants and moved to the next section. “Why don’t you ever finish your fairytale? I’m tired of never hearing the ending.”
“So am I,” she said, and spoke not another word.
Chapter 1 - 1
The room was impersonal, as all hotel rooms are, and monotonous in its grayscale décor. The sheets, this time, were silky smooth and slippery against naked flesh and he was quite pleased about that much, at least. He considered himself a sort of connoisseur regarding hotels and had taken to keeping a journal in which he made his own reviews of establishments he’d visited, and his favorites were indicated by the five checkmarks next to their names. He had worked out an elaborate system on how to award checks to the locations (and this one had earned a check for the exciting possibilities rendered by its sheets alone) and his partner constantly teased him. But they both knew it was just another way to keep the loneliness at bay in a lifestyle that kept them constantly mobile. They simply took a hotel in the location of the drop point of their last assignment and stayed there until they received another. It had been fun, at first, exciting getting to visit and live in exotic places - but eventually it became, as all routine things do, bland.
Shige sat on the edge of the bed to take the call. He straightened his tie quickly before vocally accepting a call from Johnny Kitagawa, his pimp, to put it plainly - his agent if one were going to use pretty words.
Kitagawa plunged straight into business, as usual. “You have another offer. Just over a week long, Chicago to so-far-undisclosed locations.”
“Payment?”
“100k over asking.”
“The catch?” He watched Kitagawa’s eyes follow someone cross the room behind Kato.
“They don’t want him involved. Say he’s too noticeable.”
“No deal. They want me, they get him - them’s the rules.” He buffed his nails against his shirt and looked at them, blowing lightly on his fingers before returning them to his lap and looking back at the vidscreen.
“Too many people know you as a pair.”
Shige scoffed, “If someone knows me they can find me, with or without Koyama. And no, I’m not getting facial reconstruction,” he said, because he knew that was next. Koyama winked at him from across the room. “I can make him dye his hair, if they want, but that’s the only concession I’ll make.”
“You’ll make,” Koyama mouthed at him and scowled.
“Tell them, take it or leave it. There are plenty of other opportunities.” He closed the line on Kitagawa’s frowning face. Actually, there hadn’t been, recently, but there was always a slump around September that picked up toward Christmas for some reason, and they had plenty of money to tide them over in addition to his and Koyama’s odd jobs. He loosened his tie and flopped back onto the bed, keeping his feet on the floor and closing his eyes. He kept them closed when he felt Koyama stand between his spread knees and lean forward to grip Shige’s wrists above his head.
“I’m not coloring my hair,” the redhead growled into his ear.
Shige smirked. “You will if you have to.” When he opened his eyes, Koyama’s face was dangerously close to his and he groaned throatily as Koyama circled his hips against Shige’s growing erection. “Seducing me won’t make me change my mind.”
“Maybe that’s not why I’m seducing you,” he said with a lopsided grin and half-lidded eyes.
He hated it, but it needed saying: “Don’t you have a check-up in ten minutes?”
Koyama’s face fell comically and he stood quickly, dropping Shige’s wrists. “Oh shit. Going!”
He was gone in seconds and Shige was left alone - with a painful erection. Damnit. He occupied himself, running errands around town for a few hours, and when he returned to the hotel room and changed into more comfortable clothing, the message light on his cell was blinking.
Offer accepted on your terms. Book your flight and send arrival info to included number.
He smiled to himself and placed a call to KZ.
~~~~
Shige had always been fascinated with technology, starting early with a hacker’s deck bought off a friend of a friend. While some of his peers were pushing themselves to the physical limit, he had been honing his mental flexibility in cyberspace. He had earned a name for himself as a kid hacker and went by the name “Prodigy” given to him by fellow hackers when they learned how new he was. He was limited by his second-rate equipment but he found ways to work it out, taking part-time jobs to purchase upgrades, jury-rigging his gear to get around blocks, and excelling despite his technical handicap. He earned his name.
When both his parents lost their jobs to the latest recession when he was 18, they were threatened with losing everything. Shige had heard of mnemonic couriers, black market messengers carrying sensitive data in their heads and personally delivering the goods. The money was amazing, everyone said, but maybe not worth the risks. For one, the wetware required for the job, because of its sensitive nature, took a small chunk of space in the brain devoted to long-term memory and that could be a big loss, especially if the ‘ware malfunctioned. Which brought the second risk to light; that shit was in your brain and necessarily more invasive than software. If something happened to it, there were several things that could go wrong, none of them good. Reason three: sensitive information is worth money and if it’s in your head, they’ll just take it off. But loans were being called in and he was willing to take the chance of losing his own head rather than his father losing his. That’s when he and Koyama had found KZ. He wasn’t age discriminating and that was the main thing. Shige had needed two more years before he could legally get the adjustments he wanted without his parents’ consent - and they would never have given it. KZ had a reputation for being cheap but doing good work - if you weren’t worried about the “experimental” liberties he took with your body. But Shige had had very little money and needed some fast.
Koyama was adamantly against the idea, and he argued incessantly with his younger friend.
“Don’t, Shige. Please.” And the way he begged, tears standing in his eyes, made Shige feel like an asshole.
“I have to, Koyama. The men keep coming around and I can’t stand to see my mother cower anymore.”
“I… I’ll take another job. Casey is hiring fighters for the arena and the pay is good.”
Shige stared at Koyama, open-mouthed, and then took his friend by the shoulders and shook him. “Don’t you dare,” he hissed. “This is my problem and you might die in the arena. It’s not like the other venues.”
“But Shige…”
“No.” Shige glared at him and Koyama wilted.
“Ok,” he said. “Ok.” Then he squared his shoulders. “But I’m coming with you. You’re not doing it alone.”
“I don’t think KZ will let you watch the surgery, but you could wait outside. I’d kind of planned on it anyway. I’m going to be pretty out of it after and I’ll need to crash with you for a few days,” he said, scratching his head.
“I’m not talking about surgery, Shige. I’m talking about being a courier. I’m a fighter. I’ll protect you. And you can’t talk me out of it. I’m not letting you go alone.”
Shige’s heart had thumped hard and fast in his chest and he finally nodded, yes.
~~~
KZ’S “office” was in the basement of a derelict building in the slums of southeast Tokyo and Koyama was fidgety as hell, tugging nervously at Shige’s sleeve.
“Are you sure,” he asked for the hundredth time that evening.
“Yes, Koyama, I’m sure.” He nudged Koyama in the ribs just before the door opened, a dark head popping out and peering at them.
“Kato?”
“KZ?”
The man ushered them in. The place was comfortingly clean. Things were scattered randomly around, a bottle cap on the T.V. top, the bottle itself on the fourth shelf of a case in the corner, a sheaf of papers precariously balanced on the arm of a chair, but clean. Koyama waited in one of the chairs, pretending to read a magazine and bouncing his knee ceaselessly for six hours. Shige didn’t remember anything after watching KZ bend over him with a syringe, his pretty assistant holding Shige’s hand until everything blurred and went black. The next time he was aware of anything, he was lying in bed, head feeling waterlogged and Koyama’s warm body pressed against his side, arm thrown over his waist.
“Koyama,” he muttered thickly, afraid to move his head lest all the water spill out and soak Koyama’s sheets.
“Shige?” he whispered, voice groggy with sleep. He could feel Koyama struggling to sit up, arm barely pressing against Shige's stomach as he did so. “Shige!” And then he was petting Shige, running long fingers over his chest, arms, face, stopping to cup his cheek. “Can you see? Can you hear all right? What’s your name?”
He tried not to giggle because it made his head wobble. “Urgh. Don’t make me laugh. I can see. I can hear. I feel like I was drowned, though. And if I’d forgotten my name, you conveniently supplied it for me, didn’t you?”
Koyama dropped his hand to Shige’s shoulder and squeezed gently.
“How long has it been?” Shige asked.
“Sixteen hours.”
“Longer than he said.”
“I was worried.”
“Koyama...”
“Shige…”
“Koyama.” And he risked moving his hand to grip Koyama’s. “Thank you.”
“I’ll call the doctor,” he said, but made no motion to move for a full minute before gently pulling away from Shige and going into the other room.
~~~
KZ shined a light into each of Shige’s eyes, inspected the surgical site, and made Shige recite the alphabet, math tables, and his address.
“Now. Tell me what happened on your ninth birthday,” he asked gently.
Koyama stood nervously watching.
Shige thought, cocked his head carefully to the side and thought some more.
“I… don’t know,” he replied and for no reason at all started sobbing.
KZ squeezed his shoulder and looked at him with sympathetic eyes before Koyama wrapped long arms around him and cried too.
“I’ll need to see him again in a few days,” he said to Koyama quietly while Shige put his shirt and jacket back on. “Make sure everything is ok. Do a few scans and see how it’s all working out. I did a few experimental things, trying to reduce the amount of space I had to use and make the ‘ware more efficient. I need to make sure it’s ok.”
Koyama nodded.
KZ clapped him on the back. “Call me anytime.”
Shige was understandably distraught for a while, and stayed with Koyama for a week before going home. He was afraid to face his parents without knowing his own past. KZ had told him that that was what would be missing from his long-term memory - the safest option. And he’d figured that it would be no problem, really. But he felt so… empty.
He tried to hide it from Koyama; he should have known better. Two weeks after the surgery, Koyama took him out to dinner and brought him back home with him. They sat together on Koyama’s ratty couch, shoulders touching, and Koyama had taken his hand, wrapping slender fingers tight around Shige’s.
“On your ninth birthday,” he began, turning to look at Shige, “your mom baked you a cake. And when she had it cooling on the counter, you and I ate all of the frosting,” he chuckled. “Man, we were so sick and your mom was so mad for about fifteen seconds before she just started laughing and said, ‘Well, it’s your birthday, I guess,’ and went to go get the presents.”
Shige stared at him.
“I’ll be your memory,” Koyama whispered, bringing his other hand up to cup Shige’s cheek before leaning in and kissing him softly.
It had been a natural progression, he supposed, looking back as he often did before an assignment. Most of their childhood memories were shared, after all. On some nights when Kato was stressed or while they were cuddling after a particularly earth-shattering bout of lovemaking, he would make Koyama pick one of their memories to share. It created a strange sense of extra intimacy between the two more binding than any he’d ever heard of. Koyama, quite literally, made him whole.
Speaking of the devil, he heard the door click open and the redhead walked into view, unzipping his black leather jacket and letting it slide down his arms and onto the bed.
“How’d the check-up, go?”
“Good,” Koyama said with a nod, stretching long arms above his head. “The new circuitry is running optimally and the doctor said that there were no rejections.”
Shige’s birthday present to Koyama, and Koyama’s to himself, really (it was a very expensive present), had been a major overhaul to his system. They had removed old wiring and ‘ware and replaced it with newer, better technology. They had had most of Koyama’s work done piecemeal wherever they could afford it but this time they had gone to Chiba City, to a doctor KZ had recommended. Shige felt that Koyama had waited long enough for his reward, seven years now since they’d started doing this. “And besides,” he had said with a grin, “we can write it off as a business expense.” Koyama’s system may have been artificially jacked up, but he put hard work into keeping himself fit and flexible and he had been ecstatic to be able to push himself up to the next level with this upgrade.
“They had to kill two more nerve endings on my pinky, though,” he continued, flashing out his new claws, micro-thin razorblades embedded just under his nails, and looking critically at them before grinning happily at Shige.
“Will you be okay to start an assignment in two days?” Shige asked, carefully taking Koyama’s hand in his own and inspecting the new hardware.
“Yep!” Then he retracted the claws and Shige looked up to see a dirty smirk. “Want to take me for a test run?”
That, he thought as Koyama gazed at him through half-lidded eyes, was a very silly question.
Chapter 2