CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Seizo ran over to them. “What? You don’t believe she can recover?” he asked, his heart pounding and his eyes wide.
“Oh, no, Captain – I merely said I don’t think a complete recovery of mobility in her arm is possible,” the medic explained.
“But she’ll live?” he asked, near tears.
“She’s lost a lot of blood, but I believe she’ll pull through fine,” one of them said a little cautiously.
The other two were already carrying Yamamoto up the ladder, strapped to a backboard and still unconscious.
“Sir, if you could step aside, we can get her up and loaded into the airship. It’s best to move as fast as possible,” Thalia’s medic said.
“Of course,” Seizo said, moving out of the way. He watched as they strapped her to a backboard as well, since that was the best way to move an unconscious person vertically; she looked very pale, and so tiny, hardly more than a child, except that her shape belied such an assumption of youth.
“Kaa-chan,” he whispered, letting one or two tears escape when they were just about through the hatch with her. His attachment to her had deepened fast since their reconciliation on stakeout, and he could not bear anything terrible happening to her, especially as a result of his slowness to arrive. Objectivity told him the timing was what it was, and could not have been predictively altered to her benefit; guilt spoke with a far louder voice, however.
Okada Seizo now wanted nothing more than to be on his way to the hospital to sit at Thalia’s bedside. However, as the ranking officer present, he could not leave until the whole thing was over.
He went back up onto the ship, surveying the outcome of the battle. Casualties had been sustained on both sides, but the Shinsengumi fared better overall. Hellfire Rising was decimated, but the only one of their leaders in evidence was Furutani Aimi, who’d been killed in the initial bazooka blast. Okada had the men search the ship three times, but neither Sekiguchi Teiji nor any of his other officers was present.
This bothered him more than he wanted to let the others see, but there was nothing to be done about it for the moment. His cousin, the Navy officer who had vouched for them and come along on this voyage in order to ensure the safety of the Navy’s valuable new technology, found him on the main deck of the now-overrun Hellfire Rising ship.
“Time to be getting back,” he said. “This is over, and I promised to have the sub back within half an hour from now.”
Okada nodded. “Thank you, Cousin. I will not forget this,” he promised with a grateful smile.
When his cousin was gone, Okada cursed vilely. He was very displeased with the results of this day’s battle; the fact that Sekiguchi and Wataru were both still at large, as far as he knew, was nothing short of appalling in light of recent events. None of this could be considered ‘over’ until the principal players were dead on one side or the other; Okada knew the way Sekiguchi worked. If Harada and Thalia were not dead, and still occupied his attention, he would not stop until they or he were dead. Given the strategic ability of this enemy, as well as the stakes, Okada Seizo would by far rather not have walked away without certain knowledge of the enemy’s death.
Wishing would not make it so, however. He called the men to regroup and get back on board the submarine for the trip home.
***
It was hours before Okada made it to the hospital; when he did, he found the seats in the waiting area already occupied – most of them by people he knew.
“Kiri-sama,” he said, approaching Kirito with a half-mocking term of respect where he was sitting, arms crossed and half asleep. “Has there been any news?”
Kirito looked up at him. “About which one?” he asked grimly.
“All of them, but mostly Thalia-san,” he replied.
“Sure, the doctors have been out here saying things in that stupid pedantic way they have. They’re all still alive.”
Seizo knew better than to buy into Kirito’s pretense of apathy, but it did still annoy him in his current frame of mind.
Kyoko intervened: “Thalia-san is still in surgery now; they’re putting her arm back together. Part of the bone was shattered, so they wanted permission to use some experimental biomechanical components; since she has no blood family here, Kato-san gave consent. They think she’s out of danger, providing her body does not reject the artificial implants, thanks to a few blood transfusions from Kiri-san and Kato-san.”
Seizo closed his eyes in relief. “You’re both her blood type, eh?” he remarked to Kirito. “Good to know.”
Saya was looking at him in a startled way. “You really love Thalia-san,” she said with something like wonder.
He shrugged, irritated to find himself on the defensive. “We all do,” he said, and walked away. Saya followed him with her speculative gaze. It was rare for Okada Seizo to show his softer feelings so plainly.
“He didn’t wait for news on the others,” Kirito remarked. “Saya, way to chase him off before it’s time for the bad news.”
“Hasn’t he wanted Harada-san's job for years? Maybe it won’t be bad news, it’ll just give him something to hope for,” Saya retorted.
Kirito snorted. “If you bought into that ‘I-hate-you-and-want-to-kill-you’ line of BS, you’re sillier than I thought – which is hard to accomplish. Those two are like brothers. Adversarial brothers, but still.”
“Sounds like you’re talking about yourself and Harada-san,” Saya said.
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“Why don't you stuff your face with pastries or something, gimme a little peace and quiet,” Kirito snapped.
Saya and Kyoko exchanged a knowing glance. Kiri-san was really worried, they knew. Everyone here was.
Okada wandered toward the Shinsengumi section of the waiting room. Kato was sitting there, his face set in lines of worry. A frisson of unease ran up and down Seizo’s spine.
“I heard our Lieutenant is going to be fine. What about the Vice-Commander and Yamamoto?” he asked in a low voice.
Kato looked up at him. “Yamamoto has seven broken bones and internal bleeding, but if all continues to go well, he’ll recover fully given enough time.” Seizo winced; that was worse than he’d thought. Kato continued, looking at the floor. “Tetsu has three injuries that would have been life-threatening if they had gone even a few hours longer without treatment; that’s nothing really new for him, of course, but he also received a concussion which led to swelling of the brain. They’re trying to relieve the pressure. He’s in a coma, and they won’t know if there’s been permanent brain damage until and unless he comes out of it. The next 48 hours are crucial, they say; he could go either way very quickly.”
“Either way?” Seizo repeated, stunned.
“He could recover and wake up, or he could take a turn for the worse and die,” Kato said bluntly.
Okada Seizo reeled, then sat down heavily in the seat next to the Chief which a junior officer had vacated in deference to him. This news hit him a lot harder than he would have believed it could; the rivalry between himself and the Vice-Chief was of such long standing, with so much real bitterness behind it, that the complex duality of it was obscure. It was hard for anyone – including themselves, most often – to perceive the bond of brotherhood between them, the depth of friendship and solidarity in their constant bickering and occasional fighting, but it was there; if he had ever doubted it, the doubt had just been erased.
“Can we go in and see him?” he asked after absorbing the shock.
“Yes. It’s been a couple of hours, so I’ll go with you,” Kato said, rising wearily from his seat. “Yamamoto is still not conscious either, but they’re keeping him sedated for at least a few hours, to let him rest from the pain.”
“Yama’s tougher than he looks; he’s been through worse than this,” Okada replied, not dismissively, but with confidence. “I think we should consider a promotion of some sort for him.”
“To what? You know he hates leadership – and he’s right to. His skill set is very specific to the job he does,” Kato replied, raising his hands helplessly.
“We could just give him a raise and a title, then; and one of our uniforms.”
“I have a feeling he won’t want to wear the uniform,” Kato said, chuckling. “But yes, it’s a good idea. He more than deserves it after all he’s been through.”
They entered the Intensive Care Unit, where Tetsuya lay silent and inert. He was hooked up to monitors, but breathing on his own; he was swathed in bandages and dressings for his many wounds, and most of his visible skin was bruised. He bore bruises in every stage of healing, from older brownish-yellow ones to deep black and purple newer ones.
Okada Seizo could not speak for several moments. He had an urge to turn around and run out of the room; more than anything, the silence and stillness were unbearable.
“It’s like that’s not him, isn’t it?” Kato said. “It’s almost intolerable.”
Okada nodded in agreement, still unable to speak.
“I heard you and Kirito-san gave Thalia-san blood transfusions,” he said finally, still staring at the unnaturally still form of the Vice-Chief. He didn’t want to bring up the biomechanics just yet.
Kato nodded. “We’re both the same blood type as she is – I wasn’t sure she could take human blood, since she’s half Fae, but there wasn’t any other choice but to try if we wanted her not to die of blood loss. Thankfully, it seems she’s doing fine, so I can say I was useful to at least one of my wounded officers.” Okada was dismayed to hear the bitterness in the Chief’s voice, so unusual in him.
“Chief, we all take the risk of something like this, or worse, every day – yourself first and foremost,” he pointed out. “Harada-san would be the first to remind you of that.”
“But you guys have always protected me,” Kato replied, his eyes filling up again with tears that spilled freely. The Chief had never seen a reason to be ashamed of his emotions, a trait his men both envied and pitied.
“That’s our job, Kato-san; loyalty to you is the only real reason we’re here – at least speaking for myself and Harada-san.”
The Chief had no words, but nodded after a moment and clapped his subordinate on the shoulder. Okada stood there silently gazing down at his friend, rival, enemy, and brother; he showed nothing on his face. Inside, however, he was making a promise:
Harada-san, I will bring her to see you as soon as possible, I swear it.
Though no one answered this unspoken promise, Seizo somehow left the room certain that Tetsuya had heard it.
***
In this he was correct, although of course he had no way of realizing the circumstances under which Tetsu thought he was hearing it.
Harada Tetsuya had no idea that his physical body lay in a hospital bed, comatose. He was dreaming deeply, and in his dream he had somehow regressed almost a full day from his last conscious moment, back to when he awoke for the first time on the Hellfire Rising ship. This was the way his consciousness chose to process his comatose state, but it was as real to him as when it had first happened. He was disoriented, then tempted to despair.
He must have dreamed everything from the moment he had been kicked in his wounded shoulder, he thought; none of it had happened, and he was still lying here with less and less hope of escape every moment. He wondered how much time had passed.
He consoled himself with the thought that if he was still here, he had been successful in preventing anyone – most importantly Thalia – from finding him and thereby putting themselves in danger. He noticed that his body was in a significantly greater amount of pain than it had been earlier, and assumed they had been beating him after he’d passed out.
He tried the sensory investigation he had engaged in before, when he first surmised he was on board a ship. He might even have been wrong about that, he realized, if none of the rest of what he thought he remembered had happened.
After listening hard, trying to feel what was beneath and around him, and smelling the air for several moments, he had to admit that either his location had changed entirely while he was unconscious or he had been delusional in his conclusions earlier. Nothing was the same; he was lying on something soft but cold; he heard nothing but a rhythmic series of whirrs and beeps, with occasional footsteps or murmuring voices in the distance; and the smells were complicated. The predominant smell was antiseptic, with an unpleasant hint of rotting meat wafting over him every now and then.
This gave him several nightmarish images in succession, which he banished with a superhuman effort to retain some modicum of his sanity, in case he was ever in a position to use it again.
He thought of Thalia, because she was the anchor to the things he valued most; the only lifeline to keep him from mentally snapping in his helplessness. He thought of her eyes, her smile, her hair as it blew in the wind – so many times she had been walking beside him and the wind had blown her hair into his face; he had never mentioned it because he didn’t want to embarrass her, but even more than that, he didn’t want it to stop.
He loved the way she smelled; her hair was scented with jasmine, and her body with something more invigorating; cinnamon, he thought, or perhaps something more exotic, from her own world.
He wondered at length what her world was like, and what other sorts of clothing from there she might have in her wardrobe, regretting he had never seen more of it on her. He wondered if her whole family was made up of people as beautiful and talented as she was, and doubted it was possible. He lingered a little while on regrets that he had never been able to meet any of them.
He wondered, too, as time went on, if they would ever have gotten married, and if they had, he wondered whether she would ever have wanted to take him back to her world for a visit.
This was a longing he would never have explored, or even so much as acknowledged to himself, if he had retained any real hope of escape. Rescue was something he had done his best to prevent, at least when it came to Thalia. As for the Shinsengumi, he did not believe they had sufficient resources to find him before it was too late. He had given himself up for lost, and only wanted to pass the time until oblivion in the pleasantest way possible.
He was startled, then shocked, when he came out of his reverie to hear the familiar voices of Kato and Okada nearby. He could not distinguish most of their words, but he was confident they would come in, find and release him; only slowly did it dawn on him that they knew he was there, but either could not or would not do anything to help him. Despair deepened even further; but then Seizo’s voice came closer, and Tetsuya heard his promise to bring Thalia to him as soon as he could.
This made no sense to him; did they not have enough sense to keep Thalia away from their enemies? Why would they bring her here? Why did they not take him with them, if they were leaving? Were they betraying him, or Thalia, or both? Were they somehow conspiring with Hellfire Rising to bring about the government’s downfall, all in the short time since he had been a prisoner? He could never believe that, of course, but rational explanations were eluding him.
Briefly he struggled against his immobility, but could feel neither movement nor anything restricting him from moving. Even the pain he had felt earlier was distant, hardly noticeable. He must be so numb by now, he thought, that he could feel nothing in any of his limbs, and they had become unresponsive. This brought him back to his original, more visceral fear of voiceless, blind paralysis; panic was for several moments very near him.
Then came a period of merciful unconsciousness.
Had he but known it, his unconsciousness was brought on by a dose of sedative, administered by a nurse who was alerted by his blood pressure and pulse monitors that he was becoming agitated. She scolded the visitors out of the room, blaming them for upsetting him.
Kato and Okada left guiltily, wondering if the nurse was right.