InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Stealing Heaven ❯ Fractured Shadows ( Chapter 2 )

Chapter Two

Fractured Shadows

She'd been having trouble sleeping. It wasn't a constant, every-moment-of-the-night sort of thing, simply that every so often whatever dream she was having got interrupted. Kagome would find herself again on the shore in that first moment she laid eyes on the temple . . . once more reliving that same, dreadful feeling. She knew it was simply that she hadn't fully acclimated herself to this completely foreign environment, but knowing the cause didn't banish the sensation as she wished it would.

These near night terrors were an odd contrast to the fact that in reality she was finding it easier to work in the cavern. Still she felt that something was . . . lurking, but it was a sensation that she was able to push aside with less and less difficulty.

Two weeks had gone by and she was beginning to wonder if perhaps ignoring that feeling had become simpler because of how hard she was working to ignore something else entirely. The something else in question being that a little corner of her brain was batting around the idea that Professor Taisho Sesshomaru could ever be anything more to her than a mentor.

When he hunched over an artifact to point out to her the representation of an astrological symbol, explaining the significance of where it was positioned within the etching and his shoulder was leaned against hers for a moment . . . she knew it didn't register on him in the slightest. The times that his fingertips brushed hers as they were checking over her sketches for inaccuracies . . . didn't mean anything to him. Things like that were no more than accidents of being in close proximity. Even when she'd been nearly bounced right out of the pickup truck- which they learned too late had no working seat belts- by a particularly rocky path and he'd put his arm around her to keep her firmly anchored inside of the vehicle, it had only been that- a perfectly innocent safety measure.

Kagome shook her head, smoothing her dark hair back and chugging down a little more of the gods awful thing that passed for coffee there before returning her attention to the pieces she was cataloging. She simply refused to become like those ridiculous girls in her class- she would be realistic, she wouldn't act any differently towards him . . . she would give no indication whatsoever that she might be developing a crush on him.

Might? a mocking little voice asked in the back of her head. You went from completely platonic respect to wondering if he's a good kisser after one deep conversation.

Throwing her pencil down on the table she sat back, frowning at her own thoughts as she scrunched up her face and raised a hand to tiredly pinch between her brows. It wasn't like that. Kagome knew she wasn't actually thinking like that, it was only that she kept worrying she might become like that- that she might start thinking that way if she didn't stay grounded by poking fun at herself with such melodrama.

Letting out a heavy sigh she glanced at her watch. Ten-thirty . . . almost everyone else had already called it a night. They tried to work with natural daylight as much as possible which meant very early mornings, but she thought that perhaps if she really and truly wore herself down than she might fall into a deep, dreamless slumber.

"Hey."

Kagome gave a start, glancing over her shoulder to see Sango at the tent's opening. "Why are you still up?"

Shrugging lightly, Sango strolled over and leaned a hand on the table, casting a cursory glance over the catalog page. "I could ask you the same thing. Face it, girl- you've got all the makings of a proper workaholic."

Kagome laughed a little at that. "You just answered your own question then, huh? But that still doesn't explain why you're up."

Sango shifted her weight, resting a hip against the table and folded her arms under her breasts. That posture alone had Kagome thinking that somehow within the next five minutes she'd be asking herself Why me? "Well, see, Professor Taisho wanted me to go over some of the recordings from the temple interior 'cause there's some anomalous images and I said I would get through it tonight but . . . ."

"Oh," Kagome slapped a hand to her head and let it drag down her face slowly. "You're seeing Miroku again, aren't you?"

"If I can get someone to volunteer to take over the footage review for me . . . ."

A small ache was beginning to form behind Kagome's forehead and she let her eyes drift closed for a moment before allowing compassion for her friend win out over her irritation at being thought of as having nothing better to do- the thought might be correct, but it was still irritating. "What is this? The third time since last week?"

"Something like that," Sango said with another small shrug as her eyes rolled upward.

"You are aware he flirts with a lot of girls, right?"

Sango frowned, quirking a brow as she brought her gaze back to Kagome's. "Yeah, but so what? It's just flirting."

Kagome stared back blankly- she hadn't made the comment to wound Sango, she was just perfectly aware of how territorial the girl could be.

"Okay, fine- I'm not that okay with his flirting, but I do know the difference between just flirting and actually doing something and . . . I think I'm starting to really like him. Please do this for me?"

There was a long moment of quiet as Kagome's eyes darted around. She could always get back to her cataloging in the morning- unlike Sango, she'd not been crazy enough to give an estimate on how much work she'd get done in a set amount of time. She might get to sleep even later than she'd already planned, but at least she wouldn't have Sango staring daggers at her for the next few days for saying no.

"How much footage do I have to go over?"

Instantly Sango was dragging Kagome up from her chair and out of the tent by her wrist. "Oh, thank you! Okay, I'll explain what you're looking for and how to note it, then I'm out."

Kagome nodded tiredly, remembering dimly that she'd left her coffee behind. It was just as well, really, since she suspected that it was more the acrid taste than any dosing of caffeine that jolted exhaustion away. She allowed Sango to hustle her into the AV tent and push her gently into a folding chair. Already set on the table before the chair was a log book and a pencil. The television screen in front of her showed a freeze frame of Professor Taisho in the midst of discussing something with the anthropology professor from the French university . . . what was his name? Devereux, maybe?

"Here we go- so you have an idea of the sort of things we've been picking up . . ." Sango picked up the remote and rewound the footage by just a few frames before hitting play and pointing to the screen. "Okay, here Professor Taisho's talking to Professor Dubios . . . ."

That's it, Dubios, Kagome thought, leaning forward just a bit in the chair and picking up the pencil.

"Now, I cut the sound from this to make it easier to focus on the visual- and 'cause the audio seems to be clean of any anomalies- but like . . . here."

As Kagome watched, Professor Taisho took a few steps across the floor and his shadow . . . didn't sync. She leaned a little closer, felt her spine pull a little straighter. It moved with him as shadows should but . . . there was a definite hiccup, as though it waited a moment before moving to catch up to where it should be. She thought she could feel the fine hairs of the back of her neck threatening to stand on end.

"Play that again."

Sango did as requested and for a moment the two girls simply watched the fractured motion across the screen in silence before pausing it once more. "Okay, so you'll see that I already recorded this in the log. It's date, time, frame number- which you can catch more easily if you freeze it the second you see something- and a brief description of what the anomaly was. Like there, I put 'Taisho- shadow stutters'."

Kagome spoke without taking her eyes from the frozen image. "I know it's probably just a glitch with the recording speed or something uneven in the background surface, but it's still kind of . . . ."

"Creepy?"

Kagome nodded.

Sango nodded back as she set the remote on the table beside the log book. "Yeah, it really kind of is, but I think of it like this- is it really any creepier than the fact that we're being trained for careers in a field that centers around playing with dead people and-slash-or the belongings, graves and homes of said departed folk?"

This caused Kagome to rub her lightly aching forehead for just a few seconds. "I guess not . . . I'm just not sure which thing you put into perspective just now- that the footage isn't that creepy or that archeology kind of is."

A thoughtful frown graced Sango's lips. "Hmm, that actually hadn't occurred to me."

"Am I looking for anything specifically?" Kagome asked as she picked up the remote.

"I can't say just yet," Sango replied with another small shrug, "but the logs will help pinpoint commonalities, like lighting defects or- like you said- uneven surfaces . . . anything that could be reflecting the light in a way that would cause optical illusions that we're unaware of so that we can plan around them for the rest of the tapings."

"How much of this do I have to go through?"

"Most of it's already been reviewed, so I'd say maybe two hours more? See, the anomalies seem to only be in that chamber, and since we've only had access to that area for a few days now which, given how small our research team really is in respect to the size of the site . . . ."

"It really only translates to several hours at most."

"Exactly."

"So wait . . . is there anything recording in there, now?"

Brow furrowing, Sango spun on her heel and started toward the tent opening. "Nope, which is why I said I'd do all the logging tonight, and the professor's gonna have to reenact anything he comes across in the meanwhile."

The recordings were to be shown to his and the other professors' classes, and- pending the weight and depth of their findings- turned into documentaries for far-reaching educational stations like The History Channel. Given the fact that they were dealing with a subterranean temple, it probably wasn't insane to think that this was definitely going to hit international air waves.

"Doesn't he hate reenacting?" Kagome was pretty sure he'd said exactly that during one, if not more, of his lectures.

Sango looked over her shoulder at Kagome and gave a slow, painful-seeming nod. "Apparently hate is too affectionate of a term. When I told him what was happening with the footage and he realized it would have to mean a camera being down while it was figured out . . . man, if looks could kill that camera probably would have melted into a puddle right on the spot."

"Yikes." Kagome would've thought Professor Taisho didn't know how to get angry- he was always so calm and centered.

"I'm just glad he wasn't looking at a living thing like that, would've charred the flesh right off 'em."

"Why not just swap in another camera in the meantime?" She already knew that the most obvious answer- to just move the bloody camera- wasn't an option as it had already been set in the only angle from which the entire chamber could be kept in the frame.

"I suggested that, but he said since it was just one night if it's an effect of the area as opposed to a problem with the equipment- and since he's the only one out there this late tonight- it would just be a waste of time."

"You'd figure he wouldn't mind a few minutes if it meant he wouldn't have to do something he hates."

Sango smirked. "Yeah, but he's a man- not a damned one of 'em makes sense. Alright, I'm out. Night Kags, and thanks again, I mean it."

Nodding, Kagome waved her off and turned back to the recording. "How many times do I have to ask her not to call me that?" she grumbled under her breath.

Against her own better judgment she hit rewind. She didn't know quite why, but she had to see that again. Perhaps it was to prepare herself for other such anomalies so that she wouldn't be startled by possibly odder tricks of the light that might still lay ahead. She hit play, almost unaware that she was once more leaning forward in the seat.

Professor Taisho turned towards Professor Dubios, speaking as he gestured toward something on a far wall. He took a step . . . two steps . . . three . . . and that was when the shadow jetted forward, falling perfectly into place behind the professor to mimic his movements precisely as a proper shadow should.

Kagome frowned deeply. Perhaps the wall behind him dipped? A shallow alcove, not quite deep enough for the camera to pick up any difference in lighting? Even thinking logically about it . . . the imagery was still creepy. Repressing a shudder, she let it play through. Approximately ten minutes passed before she was hitting the pause button again, diligently ignoring that her heart had just dropped into her stomach. She rewound it a few frames and then let it play forward in slow motion.

Professor Taisho was again assuming the lead in the muted conversation, he was crossing the floor of the chamber again . . . and as he turned his head to look at Dubios over his shoulder . . . his eyes had gone black. Forcing a small gulp down her throat, Kagome couldn't stop herself as she rose out of the chair and leaned forward across the table. It wasn't just his eyes themselves, but the entire area around them, from just beneath his brows the top of his cheek bones. She carefully scanned the entire rest of the screen. Nothing else was effected and it was only a single frame of the footage- if she'd blinked she would have missed it entirely.

Sitting back down- albeit a tad shakily- she dutifully jotted down the date, time and frame number in the log book, followed by Taisho- black eyes (nothing else effected). She set the pencil down and as she was about to pick up the remote again, her gaze skimmed upward over the previous log entries. For a long moment she paused, but then shook her head and went back to her viewing. They might only be lighting defects, nevertheless those split-seconds of marred shading were utterly unnerving.

This time is was nearly twice as long before she froze the image. This one was less clear, but possibly still of note. Professor Taisho was again gesturing toward something, but this time he was standing still, his hands raised and for just a moment, again just a single frame, his fingers appeared . . . clawed? She narrowed her eyes, trying to focus a little better. When that didn't do much, she got up and ran back to the catalog table, returning in seconds- and completely winded- with a magnifying glass in hand. Examining the enlarged image, she felt she had no choice but to record this, too. Though this one- Taisho- fingers appear clawed- felt a little ridiculous, but it was what it looked like.

Something a little bizarre occurred to her as the footage began to play forward again. She paused the recording and tapped the pencil against her lips as she thought about it- she'd seen three of these lighting anomalies and Dubios never seemed effected. Perhaps it was because he was closer to the camera, while Professor Taisho lingered near the walls, practically skirting the shadows? But she'd thus far only seen Professor Taisho's name on the logs.

She turned her head minutely, blue eyes locking on the book that lay in front of her for a long moment before she stuck the pencil behind her ear and picked up the book. Running a finger up the page, she followed the brief descriptions all the way to the top and then flipped the page back, starting from the top and working her way down. So few hours for so many entries and somehow . . . Taisho, Taisho, Taisho, Taisho . . . . She wasn't imagining it- it was only her professor that these anomalies happened around.

It was almost against her will that she started reading the descriptions. Eyes glow . . . Shadow faces opposite direction . . . Features unnaturally gaunt . . . Appears to have aura. There was even one that explained that his ears had looked inhumanly elongated . . . .Kagome frowned, shaking her head, Weird . . . and still creepy, but at least now her clawed fingers notation didn't feel quite so ridiculous. Of course, it was even weirder that it never effected anything else- or anyone else- in the frame.

But it always seemed to happen in the same place- or at least that appeared to be the case from the ones she'd viewed. Nodding to herself, she picked up the remote again and hit play. Several uneventful minutes passed when a voice made Kagome nearly jump out of her skin.

"Hey . . . oh, I'm sorry, didn't mean to scare you." At the entrance of the tent stood one of their PhDs . . . she couldn't remember who he actually was at the moment- which was probably a testament to how badly she needed some real coffee or some real sleep, whichever blessed her first. "You're one of Taisho's interns, right? Um . . . Ms. Higurashi?"

Her smile was small and perhaps a tad uneasy as she nodded. "Yeah, can I help you."

"Actually yes," he stepped inside, immediately pulling weighty-looking book from a leather pack on his hip and holding it out to her; his hand trembled ever so slightly and the bags under his eyes had bags of their own. "I'm going to turn in for the night, been up for two days straight translating. I was hoping you could just make sure Professor Taisho gets this tonight."

She couldn't help flipping through some pages and lightly skimming them- this guy must really think Professor Taisho trusted his interns implicitly, because he didn't bat an eye at her scrutiny. "Was the text that hard to decipher?"

The man shrugged. "Yes and no. It's not the language itself that was difficult, it's just that this was a very short-lived dialect and it was written in . . . let's see, what's the best way to put it?" He seemed to take a moment to think it over and then nodded to himself. "It was almost Shakespearean . . . well, comparatively speaking. So I had to first translate the text itself and then actually figure out what it was talking about."

She started to set the book down, but he frowned, his brow furrowing. "He wanted to know the minute I was done."

Now she was really beginning to feel put-upon. "Then why didn't you get him on your walkie?"

"He's at the site, but the time he gets here, I'll have passed out on the ground from exhaustion. Not the greatest impression to make on a colleague, especially one with his standing."

"Ah, okay, then." She was still irked, but she would probably feel the same way in his shoes- her professor might seem calm and collected all the time, but in the same turn he definitely gave off an air that made those around him not want to disappoint him and it had precious little to do with his standing in the academic community.

"Thank you. Good nigh . . . hey, is that you?"

"Hmm?" Kagome turned to follow his gaze, finding that he was watching the screen.

Sure enough, she saw herself enter the frame. She'd almost completely forgotten that she'd ventured to the site earlier that day to have Professor Taisho sign off on a cataloging error that had been corrected. That earthen-clay doll had actually been in two hundred forty seven pieces, not two hundred forty eight.

Kagome watched numbly as the professor had taken the catalog from her hands and turned away to signature it and- for a second- the fingers of her shadow appeared to reach forward . . . to brush his shadow for just the briefest moment. Her own fingers felt almost cold as she reached down, on a strange sort of auto-pilot she picked up the remote, rewound the recording a few frames and hit play, freezing it again when the anomaly occurred. Barely aware of what she was doing, she leaned forward and jotted in the log book, Higurashi- shadow extends beyond subject's movement. When she looked back up at the screen, she realized . . . it was in the same spot that all of the professor's anomalous images had taken place.

"Is that a trick of the light?"

She looked over her shoulder to see the linguist still hovering. "Huh?"

"Well, your shadow stretches out, but it's barely even a second . . . maybe there's a shallow dip in the wall behind you?"

It was comforting to have a person unfamiliar with the issue offer the same logical conclusion as she had. Instantly even the images that had seemed not so easily dismissed were put into perspective, Dubios didn't react at all to any recorded anomalies, so it wasn't something he'd seen even though he was looking directly at Professor Taisho in nearly every instance. Kagome's mind began to piece it together now- since all of the unusual images occurred over exactly the same stretch of background surface and because visual recording equipment was capable of registering a greater range of visible light than the human eye . . . .

Well, okay, AV technical problems were hardly her strong suit, but she understood suddenly that the answer had to be something to do with the way the camera was picking up the lighting against that wall in combination with how the human mind was designed to make patterns out of images or sounds that lacked a sense of order. So it wasn't necessarily just the light, but how the mind of the watcher was interpreting images that simply didn't make sense. This whole mess could probably be corrected by a measure as small as repositioning the lanterns.

She let out a long sigh, feeling warmth flood back into her fingers. "That's what we're trying to figure out, actually. I'm sorry to have kept you. Good night."

"Good night." And like that he was gone and Kagome was alone again.

She sat for a long, silent while, staring at the book that had been dropped off. It had seemed like that poor man had worked himself to exhaustion- she certainly hoped Professor Taisho knew what he was doing. It was almost half-heartedly that she picked up her walkie, fishing a list of channel frequencies from a pocket of her drab-green cargo pants. Each group changed their dialing frequency based on their current location to prevent interference or miscommunication.

She dialed the site frequency- thinking it would be a miracle if she got through, since the professor was in a structure underground- and hit the call button. A loud, static-laced whine filled the air and Kagome dropped the walkie immediately, clamping her hands over her ears until the ringing in them ceased. Angrily pushing up from her chair she scooped her walkie up from the ground and set it on the table- barely refraining from slamming it down.

Her foot tapped impatiently as she thought over what to do. She could just keep working until the professor returned from the site . . . but who knew how long that would be and she might be passed out at a work table by then and miss him entirely- she didn't want to be the one he held responsible for receiving a potentially important translation hours after it had been completed instead of minutes. She could wait at the entrance to the camp so she wouldn't miss him . . . again for who knew how long, and with the consequence of making herself feel just a wee bit stalker-ish. Sighing heavily, she buried her face in her hands for a long moment- she had no other choice, she'd have to go to the site and hand it to Professor Taisho directly.

It had taken a bit longer than she'd predicted, but at last she thought to herself, Why me?

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