4:02am, Friday the 10th October, 2132.
“Yes, I’m okay… Yeah, he’s okay too… No, Mom, honestly I’m fine… No, you don’t have to come… Look, I’d better go… Alright, thank you… Goodnight… I love you too. Bye.”
Greaves’ voice woke Kato from a slumber as dark as death, and he was at once both utterly relieved and disappointed by the idea he was leaving it. He opened his eyes to see a hospital room lit in the warm glow of a bedside lamp, and as the blur of his vision was replaced by sharp clarity, he saw his partner standing by the window with her phone in hand.
Just then, she turned to him and noticed he was awake. “Kato!” She exclaimed, though it wasn’t long until the surprise and worry in her voice gave way to her usual, humorous self. “About time you stopped sleeping on the job. Just because you’re old doesn’t mean you can take it easy.”
Kato appreciated the way she joked with him, but he was too tired to reciprocate. It also didn’t help that he was in pain; even with the painkillers his shoulder burned.
“Where am I?” He asked.
Greaves gave a shrug. “I don’t even remember the name,” she admitted. “Some small hospital. Kami-something East.”
“Kamishiba East? Strange. I was born here.”
Greaves pulled up a chair and sat down by his side. “Can’t imagine you as a baby. Probably ugly.”
“All babies are ugly, Greaves. Unless they’re yours. What time is it?”
“4am. You’ve only been out a few hours. They took you into surgery, by the way,” she said, picking up a small plastic pot next to Kato’s bed. Inside, several small metal fragments rattled around as she gave the pot a shake. “Bullet ricocheted, apparently, and your coat was able to slow the rest down. You are ridiculously lucky, you know. This could have been a lot worse.”
Wincing, Kato reached up his uninjured arm and took the pot from her. He gave it a little shake of his own, then placed it down atop his blanket. “I knew that coat would save me one day,” he said.
“You always hated that coat, Greaves, but look at it now. A hero.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re clearly still high on anesthesia. It was horrible. Made you look like a Japanese Harrison Ford.”
“You know, Greaves, that’s probably the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. By the way, I’ll need you to go out and buy me another.”
“Sure. I’ll just note that down in my list of things I’ll never do.”
Kato started chuckling, but stopped when he saw the look of hesitation on Greaves’ face. “What is it?”
“They might sack me,” she said. “According to the security feeds, I started it.”
Kato shook his head, sighing. “Fuck ‘em. They pulled guns, not you.”
“But it was in response to what I did, Kato. There’s going to be a hearing. I’m suspended until then.”
He looked away from her, watching as the shadow of a nurse crossed the inside window. “Don’t worry about it. It’s just protocol, Greaves. You’ll be back in no time.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Something about this doesn’t sit right with me, Kato. Something doesn’t sit right at all.”
He turned back to her, raising an eyebrow. “How so?”
“The club. What happened. Do you think… Do you think it might not have been a coincidence?”
Kato furrowed his brows. He hadn’t considered that possibility, but almost immediately it seemed to make sense. “It was quite a coincidence, wasn’t it?”
She peered through the inside window, through the half-closed blinds, to make sure that no-one was standing outside Kato’s room. “What if it’s… Connected? I don’t want to sound paranoid, Kato, but this kinda shit… Even in Kanto, the chance of that happening are… You know?”
“Shit…”
Greaves took a deep breath. “Yeah. You see it too, right? The murders, the suspect, the witnesses… What happened at the hospital, then what happened at the club… Something big is going on here, something that someone out there doesn’t want us sticking our noses in.”
“Well, they did a good job. You’re suspended, I’m injured, and almost no-one else will believe half this shit,” Kato grumbled. “Maybe we should just let it go. By the time I get out of here there’ll be no trail left to follow. Maybe we should just take the warning and move on with our lives before this gets any worse.”
“Maybe not, Kato,” she said, looking down at his braced and bandaged arm. “That woman, Nami, is still alive. And she’s here.”
Kato perked up a little. “She’s here?”
“She’s just down the corridor. She has armed officers guarding her like you requested.”
“Is she awake?” Kato asked. “Could we speak to her?”
Greaves looked at him with concern. “I don’t know and no. Kato, you can’t get out of bed even if she was awake, and I’m not allowed to see her.”
Kato looked to the window. “If you’re right, Greaves, then she could be in danger. The kind of danger a couple of tactical officers can’t stop.”
“Then I should go and warn them,” she replied, standing up. Before she could leave, however, Kato stopped her.
“Greaves, wait. Can you speak to Captain Kurohiko? In person, I mean. Not over the net.”
Greaves shook her head. “My security clearance was revoked, Kato. And he won’t speak to me while I’m under investigation.”
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“Really? Shit,” he mumbled, looking around. “Then where’s my phone?”
“Bagged by forensics, same as mine. Kato, what’s wrong?”
He turned to look at her, pushing himself up against his pillows. “Greaves, you need to get hold of the captain. When the attack on Fukaya General happened, there was a spec ops team there. We met them there - the captain will remember. If he can, tell him to get hold of them. Tell them to contact me - they have my number.”
Greaves blinked at him. “What? Kato, even if I waited outside the precinct all damn day to catch him, and even if he did speak to me, and if he even can contact them? You don’t have your phone, remember?”
“Then get it back. They’ll have copied all my phone data anyway. Just bat your eyelashes and show the forensics guys your boobs or something. This could be a matter of life and death.”
“Show my… Kato, just because you’re injured doesn’t mean I won’t smack you.”
“Greaves, please!” He snapped. “Just do it. After that, you can smack me as much as you damn want.”
She stared down at him a moment, then huffed. “Fine, Kato, I’ll do it. Just make sure you get some rest, alright? At least one of us needs to.”
A few minutes after Greaves left the room, Kato shuffled his way out of bed. As soon as he disconnected himself from his EKG machine the room was filled with a medical alarm, and two nurses marched in to find him standing by the window and looking out at the city lights.
“Sergeant Kato?” One of them asked, switching off the alarm. “Are you alright?”
He turned to them, his arm resting in a sling. “I’m fine. I just needed to stand up.”
“Well, you should get back into bed,” said the second, already approaching to try and help him. Kato refused her aid.
“Just a few minutes, nurse,” he said. “I’m fine. I don’t need help. I just want to walk around my room a little.”
The nurses eyed each other, then relented. “Fine,” one said, “but I will be back to check in fifteen minutes. You have just had surgery, Detective, and you need to rest.”
“I understand,” he replied. “Thank you.”
When the nurses left, Kato hobbled to the window and looked through the spaces between the blinds until other duties took them out of sight. Then, he opened the door and stepped out into the corridor - bare-footed and only half dressed - and shut it again behind him.
He walked on down the hall, watching out for the two nurses all the while, and turned a corner to see a doctor leaving a room guarded by armed police. The doctor immediately walked off in the opposite direction, and Kato approached the guards.
“Is she awake?” He asked, pausing to try and look in through the room windows. The blinds were shut.
One of the guards turned to look at him, a submachine gun hanging across his body armour. “Detective Sergeant Kato?” He asked. “What are you doing here?”
Kato didn’t know the man, but he couldn’t refuse the gift of being recognized. “I need to talk to her. How is she?”
The guard looked him up and down, clearly uncertain about his physical state. “Well, she was awake earlier, but…”
“Good,” he said, stepping to the door before either of them could think to question him. “I’ll only be a few minutes.”
They didn’t stop him. A second later he was slipping into an unlit room, and closing the door behind him to see the figure of a woman lying on the bed on her side, facing the window away from him. She seemed to be breathing peacefully, and the machine by her bed released faint, rhythmic beeps.
Almost immediately, Kato wondered if he had made a mistake. He wanted to talk to her, true, but wasn’t he overstepping his place? He would be interrupting her, depriving her of the rest she needed to recover from her ordeal, and it suddenly occurred to him that he could find himself as suspended as Greaves just for being there.
“Shit..” He whispered beneath his breath. Why was he in such a rush? He didn’t have to be there; he could return in a few hours once both of them had properly slept.
He turned back to the door.
“Who’s there?” Nami asked, her voice faint.
Kato froze, then turned to look over his shoulder. Nami had rolled over to face him, her neck covered in dressing, and even in the dark her skin looked so… Pale. She was like a pearl beneath a falling mess of pink hair.
“I apologize,” he answered. “I didn’t realize you were sleeping.”
She frowned at him. “You make a habit of just walking into people’s rooms?” She asked. “I can still shout loud enough for the cops outside to hear.”
He turned to her again. “They let me in, actually,” he said. He must have been an imposing presence, standing there in the dark; a shadowed silhouette against a door that was supposed to keep shadowed silhouettes out. “I’m Detective Sergeant Kato Akihiko.”
“Oh,” she mumbled. She sounded almost defeated, then rolled onto her back and let her head rest against her pillows. Kato couldn’t imagine what wound was beneath her neck dressings, and part of him didn’t want to know. “Do you really need to speak to me right now?” She asked. “I’m tired. And I don’t feel well.”
Kato frowned and took a step closer. “Do I need to? Probably not. But it’s probably best to.”
She glanced at him again. She was growing used to the dark by then, and was starting to make out his details. “You’re a patient?”
He nodded, slipping down into the chair by her bed with a somewhat pained groan. “Got shot,” he said, as he turned on the lamp at her bedside. All of a sudden, the room was filled with a warm glow.
“Oh,” she replied, examining his arm and shoulder. “Did it hurt?”
“Did it…?” Kato mumbled, almost dumbfounded. “Yeah, it hurt.”
“Thought so. Never been shot, myself. Always tried to stay out of that stuff. So what do you want to know? I take it you want the guy who attacked me?”
Kato nodded. “Do you remember him?”
She narrowed her eyes, as though straining her vision might better reveal the past. “I don’t know…” She admitted. “I see… Glimpses, but I can’t make anything out. I… The doctor said I wasn’t raped, you know. I’m glad about that. But at the same time… I just don’t understand, you know?”
As Kato listened, he saw tears forming at the edges of her eyes.
“At least that’s a motive I can kind of understand. But instead I was just attacked… He bit me like some wild beast and just… I don’t know. They told me that there was blood everywhere, like I was being drained like a slaughtered cow.”
“He lost consciousness, you know. Did they tell you?”
“Yeah,” she replied, smirking as though she found it as amusing as it was absurd. “I guess he was up to his eyeballs on drugs. I don’t know. I don’t remember him being on drugs. I wouldn’t have let him come back with me if he had been on drugs.”
“You let him go back with you?”
She shrugged. “I don’t really remember. I think so, yes… I was at work. Something happened but I don’t know what it was. It’s like someone opened my brain and took out all the parts of my memories that made them real. I felt sorry for him, I think. He was lost and… Something made me want to look after him. Or, no, it wasn’t that… It’s like he was my boyfriend, almost, even though I didn’t know him. I felt responsible for him.”
Kato wasn’t sure how much, if any, of what Nami described was useful, but he didn’t interrupt her. When her words finally trailed into silence he placed a compassionate hand over her own, and she looked down at it as though the gesture was alien to her.
“But you don’t know what he looked like? His name?” He asked.
“No, sorry,” she replied. “It’s almost there, but not quite. Like a word stuck on the tip of my tongue.”
“You said that you felt like he was your boyfriend. Could he have been? Is it possible you knew him? An ex, perhaps?”
“No. No, I remember all my boyfriends. He wasn’t one of them.”
Sighing, Kato removed his hand. “And afterwards? What happened at Fukaya General? What do you remember?”
She shrugged. “I don’t remember anything. Something bad happened there, didn’t it? Guess I’m just unlucky.”
Kato didn’t want to tell her everything. It was probably best to let the doctors do that in their own time. Yet, just as he was about to ask his next question, Naomi suddenly turned over away from him and vomited over the side of her bed. Alarmed, he stood up and rushed around to that far side to see a clear liquid, mixed with the red stains of blood, covering the floor.
“I’ll get you some help,” Kato said. Nami stared at the window as he turned, shaking and breathing heavily, and just as he reached the door she called out.
“Detective..?” She asked, turning back to look at him. “I remember his name.”
Kato stopped an inch from the handle. “You do? What is it?”
“Aiden.”