InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity 8: Vendetta ❯ Gray ( Chapter 27 )

~~Chapter 27~~

~Gray~

 

-=0=-

 

 

Kurt pulled his coat a little tighter against the bitter December wind blowing off Lake Michigan as he lowered his shoulders and hurried across the street toward the small newsstand where he normally bought his paper. The bells above the door jangled merrily as he slipped inside, his body giving an unconscious shiver as he straightened up and sniffled.

 

“Tribune,” he said to the old guy behind the counter.

 

The man got up slowly and tottered to the end of the counter where he kept the few copies of the Chicago Tribune that he got in every day. “I tell you, son, those digital papers are going to run me out of business,” he said as he stepped back to the counter again.

 

Kurt nodded, understanding what the old guy meant. Newspapers, magazines, books . . . they were all readily available in digital format. The days of the old-fashioned books and dusty tomes, of the familiar musty smell of old paper . . . those days were being left so far behind.

 

“Just to make an honest living,” the man went on with a shake of his head. “Seems a little sad, doesn't it? What happened to the days when people held magazines or spent hours in a book store? M' granddaughter came home from school the other day, and I ask her where her books are. She give me this weird look and says, `Gramps, that's why we have the laptops,' . . . They do everything on those, you know? From kindergarten all the way up . . .”

 

“Sorry to hear that,” he replied.

 

“That be it for you?”

 

He opened his mouth to say yes, but a rack of tacky postcards caught his eye. Various greetings from Chicago were stenciled on each one with different pictures of the city's landmarks, he would have ignored them, but one in particular caught his eye. Without a second thought, he grabbed it and tossed it onto the counter along with a bag of chocolate candy. “That's it.”

 

“Five-seventy-seven.”

 

Kurt handed the man a crumpled ten dollar bill and waited for his change, stuffing the items into his knapsack.

 

“Stay warm, will you? They say there's a blizzard moving in . . .” the old man called after him.

 

Kurt waved a hand as he strode out the door, grimacing as a frigid blast of wind hit him square in the face.

 

`A blizzard, huh . . .'

 

He didn't care about a damn blizzard. Even the worst of them didn't seem too bad in the city, anyway. The longest he'd ever seen anything shut down around here was maybe twenty-four hours . . .

 

Turning a thoughtful eye to the skies, he blinked as the first fat flakes of snow landed on him. Even as he stood still, they fell thicker and heavier. That got him moving. Hurrying away from the small store, he grimaced. Roughly fifteen blocks from where he needed to be . . .

 

All around him, people were scurrying to get wherever they were going, like rats running from the light. Kurt hunched his shoulders forward to block some of the wind and hastened his step as he plunged forward. The temperature was dropping; he could feel it.

 

By the time he reached the facility on the outskirts of the city, he was damn near freezing. Stepping inside was a bit of a shock to his system, and even though he knew well enough that Harlan tended to keep the place hellaciously cold, it was still welcoming and more than warm enough in comparison to the outdoors.

 

Letting out a deep breath, he reshouldered his knapsack as he headed for the elevator.

 

“Evening, Doc,” one of the guards—Tony, according to his clearance badge—said as he stepped out of the security room. “News said that we're in for a helluva storm,” he remarked almost jovially as he pressed the locking panel beside the door to secure it.

 

“It's already started,” Kurt muttered.

 

“Aww, shit. I was hoping it'd hold off till I got home,” he confessed. “Have a good one.”

 

Kurt didn't reply as he continued on his way.

 

The rest of the trip to the basement was uneventful, blessedly devoid of doctors, and by the time he reached the holding area, his toes were throbbing with his pulse as the numbness wore off. When he stepped into the room, though, he wasn't greeted by the sight of the little demon. With a frown, he dropped the knapsack on the desk and turned around just in time to see the legion of security guards escort her into the room.

 

They seemed relieved to see him, and they left her there, wrists and ankles shackled together, as they made their hasty departures. Kurt narrowed his eyes as he stared at her, and she ducked her head, unwilling to look him in the eye. Hair lopped off unevenly, a long, angry-looking welt that started at her knee and disappeared under the dirty smock, he opened his mouth to ask her what had happened to her, but snapped his mouth closed before the question came out.

 

Making a face at his own perceived stupidity, Kurt stepped closer to unfasten the shackles around her wrists before propelling her toward the bathroom with a brusque little shove.

 

She stumbled but caught herself—he'd forgotten that she was wearing the short-chained shackles—but she went willingly enough. By the time she'd returned from the bathroom, she seemed to be in slightly better spirits. Crawling into her cage, she stuck her feet out so that he could unfasten the shackles. He did it, then closed the cage door as Harlan wandered into the room.

 

“Ah, good. She's behaving herself again, is she?”

 

Sparing a moment to glance over his shoulder at the fat old bastard, Kurt shrugged indifferently. “Was it misbehaving?” he countered, deliberately referring to the little demon as `it' though mostly just to irk the researcher.

 

Harlan shrugged and pasted on one of his broadcast-news smiles. “Well, she had an incident and shoved Dr. Peterson . . . He's all right, but I think it took him by surprise. Anyway, just keep an eye on her. I think she's up to something.”

 

Kurt very nearly rolled his eyes at the censure in the doctor's tone. As though he had ever actually let his guard down around her . . . Damn fools, the lot of them. “Oh, absolutely,” he replied dryly. “Thanks for the warning. I'll be sure to watch out for any signs of trouble, yup.”

 

Harlan seemed a little confused by Kurt's acerbic answer, but he nodded at length and turned to leave. Kurt watched him go out of the corner of his eye and snorted. “Fucking moron,” he muttered under his breath before turning his attention back to the little demon, that had scrunched herself up into the corner of the cage with what could only be described as a sullen expression on her face. “Going to tell me why you freaked out?”

 

“No, I don't think I want to,” she replied tightly.

 

Why didn't that surprise him? Letting out a deep breath, he let his hands dangle between his knees as he eyed the little demon carefully. “Tell me anyway,” he commanded.

 

“He's not a scientist!” she blurted hotly, her cheeks blossoming in indignant color. “He's a dirty, disgusting, foul, putrid piece of work, and I'm not sorry for pushing him away!”

 

Kurt's frown deepened as he continued to stare at her. An idea of what had happened was starting to form in his mind, and if what he suspected were true, he wasn't entirely certain that he could blame her for doing what she'd done. “What did he do?” he asked quietly.

 

She shrugged, ears flattening at the perceived censure in his tone. “Maybe I don't have any rights, but I don't think that he should be allowed to . . . to touch me wherever he wants, either.”

 

And that spoke volumes as far as Kurt was concerned. With a terse nod, he pushed himself to his feet and strode over to the desk, somehow needing to distance himself from her though he was hard pressed to understand why he felt that way.

 

Her chart read `regeneration testing', which, he supposed, explained the shoddy job of cutting her hair, and while he knew damn well that he'd done the same thing; knew damn well that it would grow back without any real problems, Kurt couldn't help but wonder what was coming next . . .

 

The thing was, he knew that the other demons he'd brought in—those monsters who were barely cognizant enough to realize anything save for an inner bloodlust that Kurt could feel—hadn't lasted long in this place, and he was beginning to wonder exactly how much actual research had been done to any of them, given the circumstances. In truth, this was the first time he'd actually seen a demon once he'd delivered it, and while he knew enough to know that none of the others he'd brought in were still here, he didn't know particulars about what had ultimately happed to them, he knew well enough that they were dead.

 

Gaze shifting to the side, he found his eyes once more trained on the little demon. She was still pouting, wasn't she? Still very upset over whatever had transpired, and considering that he had a good notion as to what really had happened, he couldn't help but think that she had a right to feel that way . . .

 

`Right?' his conscience spoke up suddenly. `Since when do those things have any kind of right to anything at all?'

 

Wincing inwardly at the deadly accuracy of that voice, he forced his gaze away as the sickened feeling in the pit of his stomach started to gnaw at him. What the hell was wrong with him? Feeling sorry for a creature like that . . .? He knew well enough what those things were capable of, didn't he? Knew damn well that it didn't matter what kind of package she wrapped herself up in, the bottom line was the same: always the same. She was a demon, no matter what kind of name she claimed. And demons only understood destruction, bloodlust, and carnage. As such, they deserved to be destroyed.

 

Didn't they . . .?

 

 

-OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO-

 

 

“Zelig-san, have you heard from Griffin and Ryomaru?”

 

Cain turned and nodded as Mikio Izayoi slipped into the office with a nondescript black slim-file in his hands. “Yeah . . . Seems they tracked down the old mountain man, but according to them, he's a little . . . crazy.”

 

Mikio nodded, his expression registering his disappointment though he didn't look like he had really expected any different. “So he didn't have spiritual powers, after all . . .”

 

“Oh, no, he did. Griffin said that he knew they weren't human right off the bat, but . . .”

 

“But?”

 

Cain rubbed a hand over his face as he plopped down in the chair behind the desk. “He, uh, thought they were fairies . . .”

 

 

Mikio blinked in surprise, his left ear twitching madly as he absently reached up to fiddle with it. “Fa . . .? O-oh . . .”

 

Cain nodded as he dug a cigarette out of his pocket. “Yes, fairies. The two of them walked him to the nearest town—he was out on a whiskey run, I guess—but they weren't able to get much more out of him. Neither of them think that he had anything to do with Samantha's disappearance. In fact, Ryomaru said that he was pretty sure that the old guy couldn't have found his way out of a plastic bag—I'm pretty sure those were his exact words, anyway . . .”

 

Mikio pressed his lips together as though he were trying not to find humor in the situation, but given that Cain couldn't help but find it oddly amusing, he couldn't rightly fault the young man for thinking so, too. “I . . . I doubt Ryomaru appreciated that . . .”

 

Cain cleared his throat delicately, hiding a vague half smile behind the cigarette. “Probably no more than he appreciated being called a woman . . .”

 

“The . . . the old man thought . . .? Oh . . . Did Ryomaru hit him?”

 

Cain finally chuckled. “Actually, no.”

 

“W-wow . . .” Mikio spent a moment mulling over that before he shook himself slightly and made a face. “So we're back to square one.”

 

Cain's amusement died with that remark, too, and he nodded slowly. “So it would seem.”

 

Mikio let out a deep breath and flipped the slim-file open. Grimacing at whatever the file contained, he hesitantly leaned forward and handed it to Cain.

 

It was the mock-up of a missing person flyer with a smiling image of Samantha situated in the center. Below the large picture were three smaller ones, each from different angles and different distances. Below those were her statistics and a few contact numbers to call with information. Cain's gut reaction was to say no, to insist that the very idea was ludicrous. But Mikio had done what Cain understood should be done, hadn't he?

 

“I never wanted to go public with this,” Cain ventured, his voice throaty, raw.

 

Mikio nodded. “Me, either.”

 

Repressing the initial surge of irritation, he reminded himself that Mikio really was trying to do what he felt needed to be done, reminded himself that as hard as it was for him to look at such a clinical presentation, that it had to have been just has hard if not worse for Mikio to create.

 

I've been checking into it, and if we use Uncle's name . . . If we use his name, we can have this out in every major news outlet within hours.”

 

Cain nodded slowly, staring at the small calendar on his desk. All the pictures for the different months were images created by his children as they'd grown up. Gin had compiled them into a calendar and had presented it to him last year. Frowning at the date, he shook his head. One week until Christmas, but it didn't feel at all like it . . .

 

“Let me talk to the others,” he said at length. “I don't know how Kichiro will feel about this, but . . .”

 

Mikio nodded, understanding Cain's dilemma. As much as he might think that putting Samantha's face out there would be for the best, the level of impersonalization that always seemed to accompany such a thing was difficult to reconcile. “I just can't help but think that maybe someone's seen her . . .”

 

Cain nodded, smashing out the cigarette in the tin ashtray on his desk. “I know,” he replied. “I know . . .”

 

 

-OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO-

 

 

Plopping down on the high stool behind the counter with the row of monitors, Kurt frowned as he reached out to touch the control panel, his fingertip hesitating just over the master switch.

 

It had been bothering him all night, and as much as he was loathe to admit it, the little demon's strained silence was strange.

 

Pressing the button, he blinked as the monitors lit up, one by one. The three on the far end were changing displays of the security cameras located around the building—at this time of night, nothing to worry about. The one on the other end seemed to be the terminal screen, and the last one—the one directly before him, was caught up in a stagnant blue.

 

Pulling the keyboard shelf out, he read through the lines of text. It was a Marxim system: one often used in areas dealing with restricted information because it had a higher level of encryption. Most of the computers that ran it within a network, however, tended to be allowed certain levels of access. Kurt only hoped that this one had an open enough connection to get to the data he wanted.

 

“Enter access pass,” he mumbled, reading the screen. Glancing at the clipboard lying beside him on the desk, he typed in the words, “Project Demon.”

 

That worked, and Kurt brought up the main directories. Each one was presented as a cluster, and the top level clusters all seemed to be fairly straightforward. Clicking on the one called, `documentary', he wasn't surprised when the file opened, showing him list after list of daily video files. Some of them had locked icons on them, and he figured that if the system followed standard protocol, then the older archives had already been automatically written to some sort of hard backup, probably encode sticks. That was all right since he really wasn't interested in the older archives, anyway. No the one he wanted was the one from earlier during the day, and that one was simple enough to find.

 

`Archive 12.22.2070?'

 

Kurt typed in `confirmed' and waited for the video to load.

 

It only took a few seconds for the video to buffer, and the blue screen flashed once, twice, then opened the file. Boring stuff, for the most part: Harlan murmuring their plans for the day into the ear mic that was set on `record'. He and his cronies watching as security guards fastened the little demon to the neck collar and stints jutting out of the wall. Today's experimentation had obviously not been of too much concern to her, and while he could discern a certain wariness about her, she seemed calm, overall.

 

Arms outstretched, feet parted wider than her shoulders, neck secured to the chain that was anchored in the beams above her, she couldn't have done much from that position, could she?

 

With a grunt, he hit the forward button, scanning through the video since they didn't seem to be doing much to her at that point.

 

Stopping when Harlan stepped in front of the camera, Kurt frowned and backed up the video. “Here, Dr. Peterson . . . I need to make a few calls . . . my wife wants me to see if we can't get her parents into the Restaurant de Scion . . .”

 

Peterson took the earpiece and slipped it over his ear with a broad grin. “No problem, chief . . . I'll carry on without you.”

 

Harlan moved out of the picture, the sound of his heavy footsteps moving away. Kurt glanced over at the cage. The demon hadn't moved and seemed to be sleeping—just as well, he figured, plugging in a set of earphones and positioning them on his head.

 

The bastard actually grinned and winked at the camera, rattling around with something that was just out of view. When he crossed over to the little demon again, though, Kurt saw the scissors in his hand. “Now be still . . . this won't hurt a bit,” he said in an exultant sort of tone. To her credit, she somehow managed to keep a completely blank, even somewhat vague expression on her face as he snatched the length of her hair in his hand and pulled firmly, forcing her to turn her head. He wasn't exactly cruel in the way he handled her, no, and certainly that couldn't have been what had set her off . . .

 

Peterson pulled his hand down a little and lopped off her hair with a loud `snick' of the scissors, letting the silvery strands fall onto the floor as a little laugh escaped him.

 

She didn't react as he set the scissors aside and moved in closer, quickly tugging the snaps on her shoulders open—the snaps that held her smock up. She didn't even blink as it slipped down her body, only to gather around her knees that were spread too far for the smock to pass. With a chuckle, Peterson bent down, retrieved a long lock of her hair off the floor and using it to trail up and down the center of her body, between her breasts down to her belly button and back up again. She had her face turned to the side; Kurt couldn't see it, but Peterson, the bastard . . .

 

“Oh, you like it, don't you? See? You're not so different from a real woman, are you?”

 

The little demon didn't move.

 

He toyed with her awhile longer, and with every passing second that he forced himself to watch the tape, the more disgusted Kurt became. That damned Peterson . . . Flicking the strands of hair over her nipples, reaching down with his free hand, fondling her between her legs . . . the sound of the bastard's heaving breathing was the only sound in the audio file—the little demon said nothing, did nothing.

 

Kurt was almost ready to turn the tape off—too disgusted to watch any more—when the idiot finally stepped back with a harsh laugh. “You want to touch me, don't you?” he asked in a ragged tone. “You'll be a good little girl, right?”

 

And all he could do was shake his head when the damn fool reached over and unlocked her wrist. What happened next was nothing more than a blur of motion as her hand shot out. Peterson screamed and flew back across the room out of the view of the camera. The little demon just stood, staring, her free hand pressed against her lips, her eyes wide with a horrified sort of expression. Moments later, the thunder of footsteps preceded the entrance of the security guards. They rushed toward her—one of them smacked her thigh with a bobby stick—manhandling her as they forced her into the wrist restraints.

 

Kurt narrowed his eyes as he rewound the video, slowing it down to see if he could discern the actual attack. He couldn't be sure—the image was awfully blurry—but he thought that maybe she'd only slapped the doctor, albeit hard.

 

With a sigh, he hit the main power button, shutting off the system without bothering to do it the right way. The entire thing left a bitterness in him, one that he neither understood nor wanted to try to . . .

 

It bothered him, damn it. He'd told them numerous times that she could be dangerous, hadn't he? He'd warned them about letting her have even an inch, and yet . . .

 

And yet he couldn't bring himself to be irritated with her for it, either. What he'd seen had sickened him, hadn't it? So exactly what had she felt at the time?

 

 

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A/N:

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Final Thought from Kurt:

Damn fool …

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Blanket disclaimer for this fanfic (will apply to this and all other chapters in Vendetta): I do not claim any rights to InuYasha or the characters associated with the anime/manga. Those rights belong to Rumiko Takahashi, et al. I do offer my thanks to her for creating such vivid characters for me to terrorize.

 

~Sue~