The computer program

18. Six days at the bottom of the ocean

I dried my tears, happy to admit the alcohol had helped.

"I can't believe I didn't notice the note until today", he murmured.

Madara was looking at the note again, brows furrowed. It didn't take a genius to figure out he was concerned about something.

"Are you going to tell me or not?" I asked.

"Izuna..." He kept his eyes on the note. "There's something about the note that bothers me. It's the colon."

He showed me.

I'm still here: <3

xx, T

The colon before the heart was strange. I had noticed it, but hadn't really thought about it much.

"Is he trying to tell you something?" Madara asked.

"If there was, he would have just told me", I said with a shrug.

"Didn't you say the room was mic-ed?"

That was true.

I felt a pang of something in my heart then; hope.

But as soon as it was there, it was gone.

"Then why the cryptic message? Couldn't he just have written what he wanted?"

Madara's frown deepened.

"There were cameras..." he murmured. "In case you found it in the room and opened it, he didn't want the cameras to catch the literal meaning."

I felt I became irritated then, and sighed.

"Look, I don't know what you're trying to say, but-"

I was suddenly stunned into silence.

And Madara had noticed.

"What?" he asked. "What are you looking at?"

He followed my gaze, and saw I was looking at...

His laptop.

Madara's MacBook was full of stickers, of his favourite bands, of dinosaurs on skateboards, and...

A heart. That glittered.

<3

"What's that?" I croaked, pointing.

"That heart..." Madara said. "It's the symbol of the heart association of our city. Against heart disease. Why?"

My blood froze to ice.

It was the exact same sticker that had been on the computer in Hashirama's lab where Tobirama was stored.

"I need to go", I said.

I chugged my drink down before running out of Madara's front door.

I shouldn't have chugged the drink down before running out of Madara's front door.

As I ran to the university site, I felt myself becoming dizzier and dizzier. I wasn't used to drinking, which made me affected by even one drink. I hoped no security guard or police officer would pass me and decided to take me in for being too drunk or something. I had no idea how those things worked.

But it was a welcome distraction, the dizziness. The nausea. If my mind had been razor-sharp, I believed I would have been torn apart.

Please... I thought. Please!

But I didn't allow myself to feel too much hope. This was ridiculous, I told myself. Well and truly ridiculous.

I kept running. I had only been to our hill, otherwise I hadn't been on campus since I graduated. Once in front of the building of Hashirama's old lab, it struck me how small it looked. I remembered thinking it was quite ominous last time I had been here, but now, it looked pathetic. I took out my old university card, banged it against the card reader, my heart beating hard against my chest.

"Please, please, please, please..." I murmured as a mantra as I pressed in my code.

It worked.

I ran to the lab, opened that door as well.

And in the room stood the computer that had started everything, the sticker with the glittery heart still on it.

I staggered into the room, comprehensively drunk now, catching myself with my hands on every desk all the way to the desk where the computer stood. I must have been quite the sight. With trembling hands, I hacked myself into it. I felt like I was going to throw up; if it was because of the alcohol or because of the nerves, I didn't know, but probably a bit of both.

As the desktop came to life, I saw that the AI icon of his program was gone, and my heart sank.

"Nooooooo!!" I wailed.

But then I saw a different icon.

An icon with a heart.

<3

Hidden from the ethics board in plain sight.

Without thinking, I clicked on it.

Hello, Izuna.

"No..." I whispered.

This wasn't happening. It couldn't be happening. This couldn't be him. It was a different AI who knew my name and-

God you're cute when you're drunk...

Okay it was definitely him.

I fell to my knees and scream-cried.

Umm, if you stop crying for a moment. The ethics board put Hermes' body back in the freezer then forgot about it. Your brother still a neurosurgeon?

;)