Nightmares [The Unlimited Hyoubu Kyousuke][complete]

Nightmares

I stood by his bedside and hummed a Russian lullaby, watching out of the corner of my eye as Hinomiya searched the floor near the door and stood up, holding his pendant. As he slipped it over his head, he looked at me. He always did that when he put it on. Why? Acknowledging the gift? Checking that his cover was still holding before putting himself in my power? I didn't look away. Hinomiya dropped his eyes and his cheeks colored. I wasn't certain if the boy's attraction to me—obvious since our first meeting in Deadlock—was genuine or part of the agent's cover.

That reminded me of one incident that grated in my mind. Why hadn't he pulled the trigger when I ordered him to kill Carlos? Hinomiya was a spy for USEI. His cover had gotten sniper training from the US Army. Both would have been trained to kill. Carlos hadn't been innocent by any stretch of the imagination, and Hinomiya's bosses wouldn't mind a dead ESPer or mafia boss if it got the agent closer to me. He needed to make that shot to keep his place in P.A.N.D.R.A..

Hinomiya hadn't pulled the trigger. Hadn't pulled it even though he probably expected me to kill him for that failure: some strong emotion, likely terror, had caused his powers to flare. For the hundredth time, I rechecked my assumptions. What if it wasn't terror? What if Hinomiya had fine enough control of his powers to fake the flare-up, and had been pretending to be less capable? In the end there seemed only two options: either he was a young man incapable of taking a life—even to save his own—or he was an assassin risking everything to seem harmless.

Philippe was asleep. The other children were also settled down, starting to snore softly or mutter in their sleep. They were too young to have been through so much, and they weren't completely safe even here in their bedroom. Hinomiya straightened up from his slouch next to the door. He had protected them tonight. But would he be an even greater threat to them tomorrow?

I turned off the lights when I left the children's room and strode to the end of the corridor, knowing that Hinomiya would fall in one step behind me like a faithful puppy. "Philippe is a powerful telekinetic. Your powers may have just saved children's lives."

Hinomiya shrugged. "I was just there."

I stopped walking and leaned ten centimeters closer to Hinomiya than he was comfortable with. "I suppose I can't get angry at you for removing the pendant, then. Even though you blocked me from teleporting to the children's deck."

"That's why you grabbed me, right? I understand, but... you have to know I would never hurt them."

No, the agent wouldn't hurt the children directly. It had been a foolish assumption. "It's good that there are those I can trust to protect them." I watched for that flicker of guilt that the boy always showed when I spoke of trust, but it wasn't there.

"You know I'd give my life to keep them safe." He was telling the truth. Interesting. What did Hinomiya think that his organization would do with the kids, if he succeeded in destroying the Queen? Did he imagine they'd be safer away from the terrorist vessel? He couldn't suspect what USEI really planned; the young man had looked positively ill when he discovered the ESPer experiments at Deadlock, and I don't think that was part of the act. I nodded gravely and turned to go back to my cabin, but Hinomiya grabbed my arm. He immediately let go and jerked away. Did he think he'd scared me? Really? I raised an eyebrow and waited.

"The boy—Philippe—he asked for his mother."

"He asked about his mother," I corrected.

"He dreamed about her," Hinomiya said. "She was his nightmare."

"Are you surprised?"

"I'd like to be. My parents—" he took a breath, and I thought again that the agent would have an easier time if his cover weren't quite so close to the truth. "When they found out, I was already in high school. Mandatory tenth-grade testing. They kicked me out. I ended up bouncing around for a bit until I was old enough for the army." He scuffed his boot on the floor. "They weren't exactly parent-of-the-year material, but they just kicked me out. They wouldn't have— they never tried to kill me." He swallowed. "How'd the kid survive?"

"I stopped her."

He picked up something from my tone. "Permanently?"

"Permanently."

Hinomiya looked down the hallway to where Philippe was sleeping, then back at me. "Good. That's— that's good."

I raised my eyebrows. He was incapable of kill a mafia boss, but he approved of my killing a little boy's mother? More evidence that the agent was a ruthless assassin playing helpless.

"How many of the others . . .?"

"Not many. Some of the children were abandoned, but most had guardians who died trying to protect them."

His voice turned gentle. "You got the kids out in time. You couldn't have—"

"Even I can only stop one genocide at a time!" I shouted. Hinomiya jerked back, and I felt the flare of his powers against mine. It was an instantaneous reaction; could he fake having so little control over his powers? I forced my voice to stay low, conscious of the sleeping children just down the hall. "I rescued most of the children from camps, prisons, medical labs. They were valuable specimens. Their parents either didn't care or were just in the way."

"I almost envy the orphans. At least they had people who loved them enough to die for them." Hinomiya glanced up, a wry twist to his smile. "I guess they still do."

"They do." If I played this right, gained the agent's loyalty, they would have one more. "Good night, Hinomiya. Don't let me catch you without your pendant unless it's for an equally good reason." I laid my hand on his chest, over the pendant. He blushed.

"Uh, yeah. Sure." He stepped back and scrambled for his composure. "Good night, old man."

I made my way back to my cabin, still trying to sort out which parts had been Hinomiya and which parts had been the lie.

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