CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Tetsuya locked the slightly damaged door and came slowly back toward the bed. It was neither a futon nor a Western-style bed, but something of a hybrid, about two feet off the floor. He knelt beside it and took Thalia’s hands in his, then raised his eyes to hers, full of silent agony. He had no words.

“As I said to Seizo, he reminded me of the best way to go about explaining this to you,” she said quietly. Her brief flare of temper had restored some of her strength, it seemed, though everything was far from all right. He wondered if anything would ever be all right again.

“I’m going to do something similar to what I do when I show criminals their crimes; except I’ll be going into my own memory and sharing it with you directly. You’ll see everything I saw; you may even see my body, since there were times I was pretty sure I wasn’t in it any longer.”

He nodded. “All right.”

“Please just – please remember how much I love you,” she said, crying again.

He embraced her, trying to be careful of her injuries, but bereft of words while full of love and pain that needed expression. He leaned back a little, kneeling beside her, and held her face in his hands.

“I can’t honestly remember the last time I was this afraid of what was about to happen,” he said, hurting her heart with the little-boy fear in his dark eyes. “But I know that whatever it is, I won’t love you less for it.”

“You are more than the whole world to me,” she replied, then leaned forward and kissed him, her tears tasting of salt on their lips. “Ready?” she asked.

“As much as I can be,” he replied. “How do we do this?”

“Let’s lie down. My forehead should touch yours; that’s all you need to worry about. Just try not to fight me when I come into your mind; it can be disconcerting.”

So they lay together, foreheads touching, hands clasped, fingers entwined. She took her memory and opened it honestly before him, letting him see everything she’d done and had done to her, from the time she had been taken until the moment he found her. She did not attempt to hide anything, though there was much she wished she could erase.

Anyone watching would have assumed that Harada was having a particularly vivid nightmare. When it was finally over, his eyes opened, his pupils contracted, and he was sweating as he did during training sessions at the dojo.

Thalia moved her head away to give him space, though she did not let go of his hand. There was a silence that spun itself out for what seemed a long time; then he let out a long, shuddering breath.

“Now I’m amazed at how calm you’ve been while still being stuck on this nightmare of a planet,” he said in a shaking voice. “We need to get out of here. I’m going to tell them we need to leave as soon as possible, although it’ll probably still be a few hours before that can happen.” He started to get up, but she held onto his hand.

“Tetsu, are you angry with me?” she asked, her good eye huge and frightened.

He was silent for a moment, confused by the question. “If I could get angry at you for things that are done to you – and in your case, through you – would it be worth your time to worry about what I feel?”

She smiled a little. “Well, when you put it that way, no,” she admitted. “But I know you’re not okay with any of it.”

“Of course I’m not okay with it, Thalia, the whole thing started when you were forcibly abducted with two hostages; it just got worse from there. I won’t lie and tell you I’m not furious, because I am – just not at you. I feel a lot of pain right now, yes, but none of it changes what I told you before: there is nothing that could make me love you less.” He kissed her face and neck gently, pushing her hair back and loving the silken weight of it. “Another thing I feel is an urgent need to get you the hell away from this place as soon as possible; do you want your sister to come while I’m gone?”

“Yes, please,” she said, and kissed his hand before finally releasing it. She found it a little surreal, difficult to believe, that the revelations she had so dreaded were less catastrophic than she had anticipated. Although perhaps that was too hasty; it might be that once he let it sink in, the consequences she had been expecting would come to crush her.

Gwyneth arrived and gave Tetsuya a quick affectionate hug before going to her sister. “I see some things never change, Thal. Here you are in another universe, still spending half your life with a black eye.”

“Tch! How many of those black eyes have been your fault in one way or another?” Thalia said, sounding more like herself. The sisters embraced, Gwyneth resting her head on Thalia’s shoulder, Thalia resting her cheek on Gwyneth’s head. Classic sisters pose, both of them so lovely, so young and so ancient at once.

Tetsuya shook his head to clear it of time’s mists; but he carried that image with him as he went to urge a hasty departure on the ship’s crew, and to get a team together for going briefly to the surface. He had developed a violent hatred of this place over the past hour, but he still had a job to do, and he was damn well going to do it. He knew well enough that if he did not, the horrors Thalia had lived through would all be for naught.

He stopped to get Seizo, who was in the common area with Saya, Yamamoto and Kyoko. His body was present, at least, but he was not participating in the game of Pick-Up Sticks currently in progress, nor paying any attention to the general conversation. There were times when the young captain reminded him strongly of himself, Tetsuya thought, and this was one of them.

He didn’t have to say a word; as soon as Seizo saw him in the doorway he came over, a set, grim look in his eyes. Saya looked up anxiously, so Harada gave her a reassuring smile as they departed. At least, that’s what he hoped it was.

“You know she doesn’t lie,” Harada said as they started down the corridor, referring to Thalia.

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“I think I know that, yes,” Seizo replied.

“Trust me, you’ll know if she tries. It couldn’t be more obvious if she had a sign attached to her forehead that started blinking ‘Liar’ as soon as she says something even slightly untrue,” he said, smiling as he remembered the time she tried to claim she had no idea where his uniform pants were. She borrowed them to take measurements for Gwyneth, who was making the wedding clothes. She hadn’t wanted to tell him about it, for whatever obscure female reasons she’d cherished. When he asked casually if she knew where they were, all she said was ‘No’, but the guilt dripping from her tone and reflected in her face gave her away instantly.

“To you, maybe,” Seizo replied. “She’s fooled me good once or twice, as I recall. But I’m willing to take your word for it that you’d know if she lied to you.”

“She wouldn’t do that, not about something serious,” Tetsuya said, frowning.

“Not maliciously, I agree; but I think she would lie to us if she thought it was the right thing to do, or if she thought it would protect us.”

“Anyway, she isn’t lying about this. We still haven’t read any letters, including the one that set you off, but she was not raped by any human being.”

Seizo stopped, his face a picture of conflicted feelings. “But then – she and Sekiguchi” –

“It wasn’t her,” Tetsuya said, interrupting. He shook his head, hating that he couldn’t get rid of the image of his beloved, possessed, ravaging the other man. “And I didn’t say she wasn’t raped. In a sense she was. Remember when Gwyneth said Thalia was terrified of the planet?”

“Yes,” Seizo said, furrowing his brow. “Is there some … thing … here?”

“Not something we can go kill, unfortunately,” Harada replied. He explained it to Seizo as well as he could; the shrieking empty hatred and rage that still inhabited the dying planet – all that was left of the elemental spirits that had once sustained its rich variety of life; the desperate hunger they had for vengeance, and the opportunity they saw when a Fury arrived on their world. He described how overwhelmed Thalia’s whole personality had been when they swarmed her, and how she became something possessed.

“It sounds crazy to me,” Okada said, shaking his head. “But somehow I can believe almost anything about this place.”

“The Kaizoku were ended effectively here, from what I saw, no doubt of that. I hate to say it, because I want to get Thalia away from here immediately, but we should take a look, gather some evidence. I don’t want to mention it to her in her current state of mind, but it’s important for deciding how we handle this aspect of the whole situation. We might or might not want to have her take credit for this, as if she’d been acting as an officer. That’s one of the things I think we have to see the results in order to decide.”

“I’m with you,” Seizo said. “And if we do find anything, we kill it.”

“Good. We’ll ask Kirito to come, but that should be the extent of the party that goes down there,” Harada replied.

“What about these things that attacked Kaa-chan?” he asked. “Do we need to be concerned about that?”

“No. Sekiguchi had no idea they were there at all; we’re like him rather than like her in that way, so the influence we feel shouldn’t be more than a shift in mood, as I understand it.” They did not waste time; Harada wanted to get this over with and get back to Thalia as quickly as he could, and he wanted to get the hell off this planet and put it behind them without delay.

Kirito was glad of the distraction; he was restless, having spent so much time on board one ship or another, and he thought it would be nice to be back on land for a bit – even alien land.

His curiosity was piqued also by the caution Okada and Harada were showing, as if the land itself were a hostile threat. They were not usually over-cautious, and no more superstitious than he was himself. He wondered if they were pranking him with their warnings of elemental spirits full of rage; but he shrugged it off, grabbing a cloak and his katana on the way out.

Harada and Okada had an unspoken agreement not to mention this foray onto the planet to either of the Cairde sisters, in order to avoid unnecessary anxiety and argument from them. In Thalia’s case, Harada was especially wary of anything that might arouse hysteria again.

There was almost total silence on the planet’s surface, which struck them all as eerie. Silence is a relative entity; silence in a room with even one other living creature in it still hums with the barely discernible sounds of life, present everywhere on living planets. Inside buildings, generators or appliances create white noise that goes unnoticed until it is no longer there.

But this planet was very nearly dead; the silence of death is profound, its stillness absolute.

Kirito hesitated, not liking the silence, the stillness, or the vague but inescapable sense of hunger driven to madness that lurked here.

Okada looked at him. “I get it, boss; it’s creepy. Why do you think Harada-san asked your sorry ass along to protect us?” This earned him glares from both directions, but also yielded the results he wanted: they moved on more quickly, heading for the Kaizoku headquarters nearby.

If Tetsuya had hidden any doubt in his heart about Thalia’s account of what had happened here, it was instantly dispelled when he stepped foot onto the land himself. His expression did not change, but his skin felt as if it was trying desperately to crawl inside his bones.

His revulsion toward the planet grew with every step he took; the fact that his senses perceived nothing threatening or unusual only made his instincts sharpen their alert. He wondered if Thalia’s memories had gotten under his skin to such an extent that he was imagining a threat where none now existed.

“I don’t think we should be here,” Kirito said, and though he spoke in barely more than a whisper, the other two heard him clearly.

Harada nodded. “I guess it’s not just me, then,” he agreed, also in a whisper.

“Are we going back?” Okada asked. He would never admit it, but it would be a relief to him if the answer was yes.

“That would just prolong our stay, and we’d end up returning anyway,” Harada said, negating this reluctantly. “We need to at least survey the scene, especially given all the scandal that’s waiting when we get home. Natsume Ishida has been enjoying himself with the press at our expense quite enough, don’t you think? What do you imagine his reaction will be when we bring home a ship full of dead and captured Mimawarigumi? Besides the fact that it’s our job.”

“It’s not my job,” Kirito retorted. “But I’m damned if I’ll run away from an invisible enemy.”

So it was decided. The trio proceeded with extreme caution up to the building, where they discovered the first evidence of Thalia and Sekiguchi’s dance of death; the guards who had challenged them at the door.

Seizo was fascinated in spite of himself. He leaned over the first one, a huge alien from a species somewhat resembling a terrestrial crustacean, whose thick exoskeleton had not prevented him from being sliced in half by a perfectly clean blade. “What the hell were they using for weapons?” he asked, staring at the wound in disbelief.

Kirito was staring with equal fascination. “That’s crazy. I’ve gone up against these guys before, and their body armor is incredibly tough. Maybe Sekiguchi had some new technology – he’s been innovative that way in the past.”

Harada shook his head; he’d seen this happen from Thalia’s viewpoint. “This was Thalia’s kill. Don’t ask me how right now; some crazy shit happened here, obviously, which I can explain later.”

Kirito looked again, then whistled softly. “That’s one dangerous woman you’ve got, Vice-Chief,” he said in admiration.

“You have no idea,” Harada replied with a faint smile.

They were all warriors, and as such, carnage was nothing new to them. However, none of them had expected the extreme height of violence they found evidenced inside; the knowledge that all this destruction had been wrought by two people was breathtaking.

“Fucksticks,” Okada said, his eyes wider than usual with awe. “My mom did this?” He looked far more delighted than horrified, Harada thought dryly.

“Not entirely alone, but yes,” he said. He was, of course, the most prepared of the three, having seen all this with Thalia; but walking into it was quite different from seeing it like a movie playing on a screen.

It was definitely coming home to him that Thalia had not been in control of herself. She was violent when she needed to be, and sometimes when she really didn’t entirely need to be; he wouldn’t think of denying that. However, she did not enjoy violence for its own sake. She loved justice and balance, not death and destruction.

“How the hell would we ever explain this?” Okada asked.

Harada shook his head. “I think we better hope we never have to.”

“Tch! I don’t believe it, and I’m seeing it with you,” Kirito said.

They wound their way past dozens upon dozens of corpses, trying to avoid slippery puddles of ichor, blood, and entrails; there should have been flies buzzing somnolently all over this place by now, but there were no flies or their equivalents left on this dead planet.

When they got upstairs, the first thing that met their eyes was the bloated corpse of the Kaizoku lieutenant, sand still spilling out of every orifice.

The second thing that met their eyes, immediately after the first, was the figure of a naked child, a little girl, standing over one of the other bodies and eating part of its leg.