1:18am, Friday the 10th October, 2132.

When the man in white forensics overalls took his photographs of the crime scene, the flashes were red in Kato’s eyes. They should have been bright white, clear and blinding like a spotlight, but instead he saw flashes of crimson viscera that made him squirm with each picture taken.

“Can you… Can you calm down with the flash photography?” Kato asked.

The photographer paused, looking down at him. “Sure. I’ll do it later.”

Kato sighed and closed his eyes. He was out in the entrance hall of the nightclub, the red carpet too vivid for him to look at. The doors leading into the scene of the carnage were open, but there were too many people entering and leaving for him to see inside. That suited him just fine - the last thing he wanted to do was look back in that damn room.

“If you don’t stop moving this won’t work,” his medic told him, pressing an anti-bleeding pack tightly into the bullet hole in his shoulder. It hurt, but the drugs had numbed any feeling to the point he didn’t care.

“Just take me to the damn hospital already,” Kato grumbled. “I don’t want to be here. Where’s Greaves?”

“With the captain,” the medic replied. “Don’t worry about her right now, Detective. You’ve lost quite a bit of blood.”

Kato blinked for a moment. That explained the headache and the dizziness, he supposed. He looked up to where the IV drip hung from a cold, metal stand and attached to his arm, then slouched back slightly in his chair.

“Stop moving!” The medic complained. “You’re lucky, Kato. Extremely lucky.”

“Yeah? Well I don’t feel it,” he mumbled. He closed his eyes again. He was pretty sure he had passed out at some point, but his memory was too fuzzy to really remember. What he did remember - all too clearly - was the pain. Greaves had kept pressure on his wound right up until back-up arrived to storm the building, but even that memory was slowly fading. He was exhausted, his body demanding that he sleep. He tried his hardest to ignore it.

When something finally jolted him back to attention, he opened his eyes again to find the medic had secured the anti-bleed pack with a compress wrap. “Doin’ a good job there, doctor," he said, giving him a stupid grin.

“Right, he should be stable,” the medic said, though it took Kato a few seconds longer than he would have liked to realize that he was talking to someone else. “Where’s the cart?”

“Hang on,” Kato said, shaking his head. “I want to speak to the captain first.”

He was ignored. He soon found several men lifting him out of his chair and lying him down on his back on a stretcher bed.

“Don’t ignore me,” he complained. “I’m a damn detective sergeant and I want to speak to Captain Kurohiko. You’re treating me like I’m freaking dying or something.”

As though he had been summoned, Captain Kurohiko suddenly appeared by Kato’s bed. “What is it, Kato?” He asked, stopping them from wheeling the stretcher out.

Kato looked up at him, trying to squeeze the exhaustion from his eyes before speaking. “We had a lead on a guy from Fukaya General, Captain,” he said. “He might not be far. You need to send Greaves and a tea-“

Kurohiko shook his head. “I know, Kato,” he replied. “Detective Greaves has already briefed me. We’ll follow up your lead, but you should know that Greaves will be taking a few days leave.”

Kato furrowed his brows, the shock of the captain’s words enough to jolt him to attention. “What? Why?”

“You should know why, Kato. You were here for it. It’s a god damn mess.”

“Bullshit,” he argued. “She didn’t start what happened in there, she was defending herself. It got completely out of control.”

Kurohiko shook his head. “Don’t worry about that, Sergeant. The review will determine whether she was in the right or wrong. You just get yourself to hospital and rest. This whole thing is beyond a nightmare at this point.”

Kato scowled, but soon acquiesced. “Fine, but you tell Greaves I expect to see her there whether she’s off-duty or not.”

Kurohiko barely had time to reply as the medics began to roll Kato’s bed out of the nightclub. As the fresh air of the street outside hit him, so too did the tiredness, and as they pulled him up onto a waiting air ambulance Kato fell asleep.

1:25am, Friday the 10th October, 2132.

“I’m telling you, something’s strange about him,” whispered Yuji. “I don’t trust him. We should do this on our own.”

“He saved my life, Yuji,” replied Hiromi, her voice little more than a breath.

They did not think he could hear them, but he could. Aiden was watching the large TV the Centipedes had in their hideout, and some distance behind him Yuji and Hiromi were whispering beneath the sounds of a cheesy historical drama.

“Because of him we lost people. We lost friends!” Yuji whispered. “You shouldn’t have brought him here.”

“He can help us,” the girl replied. “There’s something strange about him. I don’t think he has anyone else and even if we got rid of him now, I think he’d still end up doing what he said. We’ve got so many enemies now, Yuji, why can’t we have an ally?”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“Because what if he’s not an ally, Hiromi?”

Aiden kept pretending to watch the television, to be too exhausted and half-asleep to properly listen to their words. Yuji’s distrust of Aiden seemed to come rapidly and without warning, and both he and Hiromi had spent the best part of five minutes arguing over whether they should give him a chance or not. Hiromi kept defending him, despite what she had known and what he had told her, and for Aiden couldn’t help but respect her.

“Look at him,” Yuji whispered. “He’s sleeping like nothing happened. Like people didn’t get killed right in front of us, like that crazy Sarratt bastard wasn’t a monster.”

“We don’t know what he’s been through. He’s exhausted! Besides, this is MY hideout, and me and you are no longer together. You have no say if he stays here or not and if you don’t like it, feel free to piss off.”

Yuji went silent for a moment, shock plastered on his face. “Fine,” he eventually said, “I’ll leave you with him.” He stood and moved towards the door and, when he reached for the handle, Aiden pretended as though the movement woke him.

“Hmm?” Aiden grumbled, shifting and looking around at the two of them. “Where are you going?”

“Got to make sure the rest of my guys are okay,” huffed Yuji, before he stepped out and closed the door behind him without another word.

“Is he alright?” Aiden asked, turning to watch Hiromi, who sat at an old table with one foot up on her chair.

“He’s stressed. Scared. Same as all of us,” Hiromi replied. All of a sudden, she was looking at Aiden’s bare chest. “You need to get some clothes, dude.”

Aiden looked down at the torn, bloodied trousers he still wore. His shirt was gone now, though he had no idea where he had finally lost it. “Do you have any spare?” He asked.

“I do, actually,” she replied. She stood and walked over to an old wooden cupboard and opened it. “There are no trousers or shoes or anything, but here – “ she threw a black t-shirt and a pair of grey socks over to where Aiden was sitting, who immediately pulled the shirt over himself.

“Thanks,” said Aiden. “I’ll pay you back.”

Hiromi laughed at that. “How? You have no money, no identity. You don’t even have a memory, unless you were lying. And not to sound cliché, but I know a liar when I hear one.”

“Still, you didn’t have to do this,” said Aiden. “I appreciate it.”

Hiromi blushed slightly at his words, and pretended to rub her eyes out of tiredness to hide it. “I owe you, that’s all,” she said.

“You keep saying that, but I seem to remember that it was you who shot him, not me.”

"Don't say that!" Hiromi told him suddenly. "I don't want that kind of blame put on me."

"Oh, sorry, I was just-" Aiden tried to apologize, but found himself stopped when Hiromi shushed him and stood up from her seat. Without warning she began to unzip the leather of her bodysuit, and Aiden watched openly as she climbed out of it.

"Don't you get hot in those suits?" He asked her.

"No. They've got breathe tech in them," she said, turning away from him without care. Soon she was pulling shorts and a shirt out of her clothes cupboard and slipping into them. "They're real expensive, you know. They're abrasion-resistant, surprisingly hardy and yet still flexibe. It's made out of... Synthetic something or other, I can't remember. The point is, I don't wear this suit because I like looking like a latex whore, I wear it because it's actually practical. Though I must admit, it looks cool, and that is pretty important these days. Are you gonna make me watch this shitty history show?"

By the time Hiromi had asked that last question, she had taken a seat on the sofa next to him, though she was leaning in the opposite direction. Aiden shrugged and passed her the remote and she began to flick through the channels, stopping only when the local news station showed a smartly-dressed woman talking.

"A mass shooting has occurred near downtown Fukaya this evening,” the reporter said. “Only 2 kilometers away from Fukaya General Hospital. The Kanto Megapolis Police Department have yet to release any official statement regarding the matter, and it is unclear if this shooting is connected to the night's earlier terrorist incident, which now has a confirmed death toll of 63."

They were both silent as the woman read her report and the media cameras hovered around the cordoned area outside the nightclub. The police were swarming the street, and forensics units were entering and leaving the building.

"I know that club," said Hiromi. "That's Redpool. That's right around the corner from our bar."

"I walked past it," Aiden revealed. "I'm sure I did. It must have been right before it happened."

Hiromi ran her hands up through her hair. "This can't be a coincidence," she whispered, growing uneasy. "What the fuck is happening?”

When Aiden didn’t reply, she turned to look at him. "This has something to do with you, doesn't it?"

"I... Don't know," he replied, though he knew in his heart that she was right. It was too much of a coincidence to not be.

Hiromi was trying not to panic. As she sat there watching him, trying to keep her breathing steady, Aiden could hear her heartbeat increase and smell a coppery sweetness beneath her skin that knocked him sick. All of a sudden, he was looking at her with a hunger that had been with him, suppressed, for far too long.

"Maybe you should go to the police, Aiden. I never thought I'd say that, but maybe you've gotten involved in something too big for you to handle. I don't know what's happened to you, or what you've done, but this could be ge-"

As she spoke, the sound of her voice began to fade until soon all Aiden could hear was the pumping of her blood through her heart, and the rushing of it through her veins. He could smell it so vividly that he could mark the exact parts of her anatomy where he could bite down and taste her most effectively, and the possibility of such a taste grew unbearably enticing.

"What are you doing?" Asked Hiromi, as Aiden began to grow closer to her across the sofa. She leaned away nervously, but he crawled along the cushions and hovered over her lips so gently and with such passion that she did not even consider that maybe she did not want it - want him. Soon his lips touched hers, and she released a sigh that told of a longing finally victorious. Aiden kissed her, and ran his hands down her side, and when he looked up again he saw strangely silver eyes that did not belong to Hiromi… They belonged to Nami.

Suddenly, Aiden saw Nami's body below him in a half-remembered dream, her last breaths beginning to fade as her blood pooled beneath them. He remembered the taste of it in his mouth, the warmth on his tongue and behind his teeth, and how it so very much smelled of her - that kind woman who had offered him shelter. That kind woman he was sure he had killed.

Hiromi drew her lips away from him and reached up to take hold of his face, but Aiden suddenly became aware of what he was doing to her, of what he was going to do, and pushed himself away.

“What are you doing?" Asked Hiromi, her voice a hazed and pheromone-filled drug-trip.

"You need to get away from me," Aiden told her. He could still hear her heart beat, he could still smell what she would taste like.

"What do you mean?" She asked him, her voice slightly more aware. "Did I do something wrong?”

She tried to reach out to his hand, but Aiden pushed it away and recoiled. He half-fell, half-stood from the sofa, and as Hiromi’s confusion grew he retreated across the room. "I'm sorry, Hiromi," he forced himself to say. "I won't harm you again."

If Hiromi tried to protest, or to ask what was wrong, Aiden did not hear her. He left the hideout as quickly as he dared and shut the door behind him, and before he realized what he was doing, he had run into the old service elevator and pressed the first button he saw. The doors and shutters closed and blocked the hall from his view, and soon he was riding the elevator to the surface.