Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Talking To The Dead ❯ Chapter 9 ( Chapter 9 )

Chapter 9

A suicide mission.

Persia sent us on a fucking suicide mission.

Ken threw his body to the right, adrenaline-quick reflexes yanking his stomach clear of the range of his opponent's hard-heeled boot. He leaned backward just long enough to regain his balance, then twisted his torso sharply to the left, claws unsheathed and targeted directly at the least-resisting part of his opponent's anatomy.

A quick swipe upward through yielding flesh, and that horrible squelching noise that he could never quite avoid, no matter how meticulously he removed the bugnuks from the body...

A couple of steps to the right - turn spin thrust - dance the deadly dance, one he knew so intimately well -

The world around him blurred into hazy shadows of red and gray. The human body was his canvas and Ken was the artist, his blades bright with crimson ink.

Here was the place that made him, defined him.

Here was the one place he allowed himself to lose control.

Out of the corner of his eye he tracked his teammate, careful to keep him separated from the onrush of guards that seemed to pour into the hallway from all directions. Sena appeared to be holding his own fairly well, his chakram freshly anointed with the blood of the one of the targets that had tried to slip past between the horde of guards.

How the hell did all of this happen?

Yohji's plan had been very simple. Yohji would go ahead into the building immediately after he gave the 'clear' signal, on the hope that he would catch the primary targets all together at once, and make quick work of them. Three minutes later, Kyou and Aya would follow Yohji's route as far as the server room, where the majority of their work would commence. Ken and Sena were last - cleanup detail, there to take out any strays along the way that Yohji might have missed, and to provide backup as necessary.

Simple.

Perhaps too simple.

Everything had seemed to be going according to plan, at first. Kyou and Aya were already in the building by the time Yohji gave the signal, and Ken and Sena were only just slinking into the ground floor office hallway when Kyou confirmed his physical location over the comm.

A loud burst of static over the comm cut Aguri off mid-sentence. Ken never had the chance to discover what had caused the interference, as the hallway he and Sena had just entered was completely flooded with guards.

That had been fifteen minutes ago.

He had heard nothing over the comm since.

Ken panted heavily, dodging a punch from the right, and returning it with a well-practiced slash from his left. For not the first time this fight, he was thankful none of the guards appeared to be armed. Sloppy, he thought critically as he watched two men go down in one blinding flash of Sena's bloody chakram. These men have no idea of what they're up against.

And yet they kept coming, somehow oblivious to the mounting pile of corpses defining a perfect semi-circle boundary around the two assassins.

Each body was just another number; a means to a bloody end.

He felt a smile stretch across his lips as he evaluated his handiwork.

Don't underestimate me.

Static crackled in his ear, a startling but welcome distraction from the carnage surrounding him. Sena looked at Ken out of the corner of his eye and gave him a discreet nod.

"-linese! Laperm! Siberian! This is Havana! Do you read me?"

Ken palmed on his microphone as best as he could with the damaged fingers of his right hand. "Siberian and Laperm, copy," he grunted, dodging a kick to the abdomen.

"Balinese?" Kyou's voice held a fading note of hope.

A perfect fountain of crimson arced into the air, followed a moment later by the dull thud of dead weight impacting the floor. Ken stepped back from the fresh corpse and looked over in Sena's direction just in time to watch him finish off the last of the guards in the hallway.

In the distance, he could barely discern the red letters of the exit sign as it flickered above the door to the second floor staircase on the far end of the building. The growing knot he had been ignoring in his stomach twisted tight, bile rising sharply in his throat.

"Balinese?"

His comm must be working now - surely he'll respond; give a status update -

Silence.

"Balinese?" Kyou's increasingly panicked voice pitched higher in excitement. "Balinese? Balinese? Report status! Balinese!"

A sick feeling of dread washed over Ken as he reached up and slowly palmed off the microphone of his comm.

No...

His legs were moving of their own volition down the hallway, racing past the gray and black and red lifeless blurs offsetting the tasteful beige office carpeting and bright white walls. Breath after breath of copper-thick air sucked greedily into his panting lungs as he pounded down the corridor, desperate to make up for as much lost time as his legs would allow without giving out beneath him.

Too late...

Scenes of the recent carnage still fresh in his vision, his mind transposed shaggy blond hair atop the empty visage of last man to go down by his hands.

No!

The image shifted, from shaggy blond hair to short brunet, a broken crossbow off to the side - a mission compromised, a web of lies, two lives destroyed...

No. He could not - he would not let Yohji down. He would do whatever was necessary to save his friends, anything, even if-

A firm grip on his shoulder jerked him back into awareness. He spun around, slicing out instinctually at his attacker with both of his hands.

It was a testament to Sena's agility that he danced away from the lethal slash completely unscathed.

"Ken!"

The shock of the sound of his given name spoken so carelessly aloud snapped Ken out of his trance. Sena tentatively reached a hand forward, only to have it batted away, as Ken backed away from his proffered comfort.

Now was not the time - not with Yohji in danger, not with the targets still alive. The rejection would hurt Sena, but he knew it would be better for the boy if he never got involved any deeper than this - if he never let himself get attached to any of them...

"No time!"

No time for comfort. No more time for delays. An urgency permeated the air, warning him, compelling him to move as quickly as possible... every second counted, and he had already wasted far too many.

He refused to lose two friends to this mission.

"Siberian!" Sena's voice echoed an indeterminate distance behind, ragged and hurt but still determined, following him despite Ken's odd rejection.

He lengthened his stride, hoping his longer legs would outpace his younger partner. He needed to get away from Sena - not just Sena, but everyone else in the building except the targets. No one else needed to get caught up in this mess. Sena should just go back to the relative safety of Kyou and Aya and get as far away from the upcoming carnage as possible.

Sena was too young to be participating in this bloodbath; what business did Kritiker have recruiting him at his age?

The image of bright smiling blue eyes and a yellow apron flashed into his mind.

Ken swallowed hard; he knew what effect it had already on one person he had made the mistake of caring for.

It was too late to save Omi.

But perhaps it was not too late to save the rest of his teammates.

He stumbled up against the door, pausing a moment to look behind him as he caught his breath. Sena rested in a similar position, back plastered against the wall about a quarter of the building length down from his position. He could see the boy's chest heaving, gasping greedily for oxygen into his overtaxed lungs.

Good. That means he'll stay there for a little while. Ken allowed himself a small smile.

And hopefully stay safe.

He turned around and twisted the knob, throwing his full body weight against the door on the off chance there was a guard waiting on the opposite side. The coast was clear; he took the stairs two at a time, ascending to the fifth floor without needing to pause for a breather.

He stopped in front of the door. There had to be a guard on the opposite side, he realized. They would be fools to leave any access portal unguarded with the Minister there.

Only one way to know...

He crouched back, threw the door wide open, and lunged forward into the hallway. He had guessed correctly, he realized belatedly, when the obstacle in front of him went down hard enough to be rendered completely unconscious.

Ken stumbled to his feet, sore and out of breath, but too focused to mind any physical discomfort.

Where is he?

Not for the first time he rued his own inattention during the mission meeting. He stalked down the corridor, past countless closed, locked doors, and was beginning to consider breaking one of them down when someone far off to his right caught his eye, trying to blend unnoticed against the wall next to the only open door in the hallway.

As the person came into better focus, Ken increased his speed, confounded by the impossible image in front of him.

How the hell did he get ahead of me?

Sena's head jerked in Ken's direction, wide-eyed and shocked, frantically shaking his head and gesturing to Ken to keep his distance.

Under more normal circumstances, Ken would have heeded to the warnings from another teammate. But it had already been far too long. He had already come this far, and he would only stop when his body gave out underneath him. He raced ahead, heedless of the Sena's panicked attempts to stop him.

He would do this for Yohji. He would do it for Omi.

It was time to end this charade.

"Ken!"

Blinding pain tore through his left shoulder only a second after he landed on the floor, the report still echoing in his ears; the blades of his bugnuks already sunken deep beneath him into the lower intestines of the dying body of the man responsible.

He retracted his claw as quickly as possible, not even flinching when the man's blood splattered across his face. His shoulder screamed in pain, blood loss already starting to make him woozy. Frantically his eyes searched the room for any sign of his missing teammate; even the damn cowboy hat would be a welcome sign right about now, if only it meant that-

The cold metal muzzle of a gun shoved unceremoniously against his forehead doused Ken back to cold reality.

"You have the count of three to tell me who you work for." The gun pressed in at the point directly between his eyes. Even if he wanted to, he could not see his assailant to determine whether it was one of his targets. "Otherwise I'll blow your brains out, and let the DNA lab let me know next week."

Ken looked up in dumbfoundment. H-How did he - where did he -?

"One."

He lowered his eyes to the floor. What was the point? Even he was not sure any more of exactly who - or what - employed him. Would it really make a difference if he told them? They probably already knew more about his employers than him!

"Two."

Was this really the end?

I'm sorry, Omi.

A truly pathetic way for an assassin to die.

In the end, he was just another Kritiker failure.

He closed his eyes.

I'm sorry I couldn't save you.

"Thre-"

"He works for me."

Ken jerked his head sharply to the right to follow the voice... and stared, unwilling or perhaps unable to believe the scene transpiring before his very eyes.

Sena?

Impossibly foolish, yet none other than Sena Izumi stood standing in the doorway, poised and defiant with weapon drawn. The gun that had been trained on Ken only seconds before switched its focus to the spot where Sena faced off the remaining man in the room.

"Release him."

The authoritative ring in the voice sounded completely natural, as though the person speaking already had many years' experience giving orders. Familiar, even... The pain was beginning to overwhelm Ken's senses. The edges of his vision blurred together, sharp lines reduced to indistinct shapes - not much longer now, and everything around him would fade away into blackness...

His eyes drifted down to the dead zone between his opponent's gun, and the crossbow tightly gripped in Sena's left hand.

Crossbow?

Now certain the pain was making him hallucinate, Ken pinched his leg hard and looked again.

Huh?

The crossbow gleamed silver and black in the light cast by the halogen lamps overhead.

Only one person he knew used a crossbow... and it was not Sena.

No. A chill gripped his body - the first onset of shock, he recognized dimly - as his mind bridged the gap to the single, inevitable conclusion.

Impossible - there's no reason for him to be here!

His heart reeled as his mind raced in flat-out denial.

I won't believe it! I can't believe it! It's not true!

There's no way possible that's-

"Mamoru Takatori."

The door at the far end of the room slammed shut to admit the last two of the targets, Koji Inamaki, Minister of State for Science and Technology Policy, and Toshihiko Takamura, Inamaki's head programmer. In a flash each had drawn their guns, moving in perfect synchrony across the room to cover any sudden moves by their prey.

"Mamoru Takatori," Inamaki spoke again, rolling the name around on his tongue, tasting it. How was it possible to make a name sound so obscene? "I should have expected no less from the last surviving member of the Takatori clan."

With dread Ken noted that the gun from earlier had at some point swung back to re-train on him, a deterrent from foolish heroics.

"What do you mean?" Deadly ice ringed the tone of what clearly sounded as Mamoru Takatori's voice.

"What do you think it means?" Takamura stepped forward, boldly pressing the muzzle of his gun against the underside of Mamoru's chin, forcing him to have no choice but to stare up into the eyes of the man about to end his life.

"It means your grandfather is dead. And you'll get to die with him - by the same gun, no less. Isn't that sweet?"

The muzzle slid languidly down Mamoru's neck, across his collarbone and down his chest, to where it came to rest directly over his heart.

Takamura's voice dripped like honey laced with arsenic.

"The only good Takatori," he whispered, cocking the hammer, "is a dead one."

In that single instant, Ken's world converged to a solitary point.

For the first time in more than six months, he knew exactly what needed to be done. Exactly what he needed to do.

Ken lunged for Mamoru.

Four simultaneous gunshots rang out in the air.

Twin explosions rocked the foundations of the building like a miniature earthquake.

The lights flickered and dimmed twice, before failing utterly and flooding the room in darkness.

The world had gone to hell.

The image of a young boy in a yellow apron with bright blue eyes flashed in Ken's mind in the final moment before his vision went completely black around him.

Smile for me, Omi...