Soldiers [Detective Conan] [Crow series 1/2]

you're in

29 July, 2010

Suffolk, England, UK

Given the choice between landing at RAF Lakenheath or Ramstein AB, it's not even a damn toss-up.

(Coming from Kabul, one of those options takes an hour less, is a more comfortable drive to the next civilian airport, and involves a cosy nonstop flight from Frankfurt to JFK International.
The other option comes attached with a disgustingly luxurious London hotel booked by an overbearing MI6 agent parent.)

Shuu'ichi* Akai was not given a choice.

(* - usually transcribed as Shuichi,
with the characters 秀一 in Japanese.)

So much for the chances being 50/50.

At least the debriefing pack that the USAF Colonel handed him while dropping him off in Cambridge included a wad of hard cash (in addition to a Platinum AmEx card, a new internationally contracted smartphone, and a goddamn iPad, jesusfuckingchrist they really went all out) and orders to report to FBI HQ in New York ASAP.

So Shuichi spent the morning washing up at a local gym (finally got to properly shave stubble off, and also properly condition his hair again), hitting up an Oxfam for clean clothes (no time for a laundromat, and the only dark clothes available in his size were a black t-shirt with a Japanese cartoon on it and faded grey jeans), booking himself the next-best flight to America on some Costa Coffee wifi (with a decent croissant and mid-tier coffee), and finally calling himself a cab to London (with his extremely worn military duffel bag on the backseat next to him).

There's no point in hiding from MI6, at least not when you're in the Queen's own country.

The least Shuichi can do is meet her on his own terms.

(The secret reason for Shuichi buying some fresh clothes: Mum will go ballistic if she finds that he's been cycling through the same handful of outfits for the past few months. It wouldn't be hard to figure out, either: the industrial-grade washing machines at the various barracks he worked at are brutal to everything that's not fatigues.)

Besides, there's a relief in not being surrounded by people for once.

Shuichi doesn't have a problem with crowds or even public transport by any means. But after the last weeks (hell, months**), he's happy not to have to scan the faces of nearby civilians while wondering which will have to be peeled from the baked asphalt within the next hour. It's nice to breathe a little more freely, even if the taxi smells of stale smoke.

(** - and hell months, no comma)

(Despite his frequent assignments in hot warzones, Shuichi is not a soldier.
He's just a special agent who's become very good at soldiering on.)

Anyway, the motorway isn't so packed on a Thursday. The taxi driver (c. 178 cm, light-skinned second-generation British-Arab, late 50s, brown eyes, pockmarked scars on clean-shaven face, passed the background-check) is friendly enough without being overbearing. The radio is on, but turned low: BBC Radio 3. A pine-shaped hanger that's lost all scent dangles off of the rearview mirror next to an oversize nazar amulet.

(These teardrop-shaped ornaments of blue glass are very common across Western and Central Asia, especially but not exclusively in Muslim societies. Concentric black, light blue, white, and dark blue circles form an abstract sort of eye shape. The intention of these charms is to ward off the evil eye. 'Nazar' literally means 'sight' or 'surveillance'.)

Shuichi can't help but smile and comment on the familiar object; and the driver gives all the expected small talk. He's going to take the family to visit the Damascus shrines in autumn, he says, it'll be his kids' first time. The conversation is pleasantly normal.

It's the little things.

(The blue glass has shattered into the girl's dark brown eyes.
She's unconscious. Her older brother is screaming. Her mother is begging him. Blood is everywhere.
English orders are flying around. American bullets are flying around.
In Pashto, Shuichi tells the family how he's going to save the girl's life.
The mother begins reciting Surah 32, al-Sajdah. It's a strange choice.)

The nazar swings under the rearview mirror. Tiny two-tipped swords of tin dangle below it, symbols of the Shi'a sect within Islam.

It doesn't matter, Shuichi thinks absently, But it's always the little things that are important.

Then he swiftly compartmentalises the memories and pulls out the palm-sized ring-bound notebook from his leather jacket's breast pocket. He picked it up at the beginning of this summer's Overseas-Ops shift at some civilian airport, and frankly he's got now idea how it survived. Was it Germany where he got it? Frankfurt?

He spots a price tag: '99.82', no currency.

With that denomination, it's unlikely to be Euro unless that orange acrylic cover and 250 sheets of A7 lined paper were extremely overpriced. It's more likely to be Turkish lira or Ghanian cedi.

The first true notes are definitely from Accra.

May 4-9, there's meeting logs with his handlers, intel on that South Sudan coup, and surveillance notes on a possible Crow site. Only the latter of these was truly interesting to Shuichi (his notes get very... insistent), but the office in the centre of the city turned out to be a red herring. Still, he knows that even those need to be laid out.

(His notes of those days also include drawings, both in pencil and his usual black or blue ballpoint pen.
They're not of high artistic quality, but they are practical and recognisable.
There are floor plans where he even used a ruler, quick portraits of persons of interest,
a sketch of the improvised football pitch he could see from his hotel room.
The kids' team tactics are vaguely indicated with dots and arrows, indicating that he must have absently watched them a lot.
There's occasional song lyrics too: back then he had an iPod with nothing but the three Gorillaz albums on it.
He can't remember where or when he lost it.)

Then there's a rough map of Lake Volta with the relevant oil pipelines drawn in, accompanied by a shorthand list of the British and American personnel he was interfacing with on behalf of the Ghanian CID.

What did they introduce me as? he tries to remember, 'Specialist Agent'...? Jesus Christ, that's not even a real fucking job title.

It'd been a very spontaneous mission. But just about everyone who's ever encountered him knows that Shuichi Akai is always ready for something spontaneous and violent. For better, or for worse.

And they didn't mention a country I was working for either. Shuichi scoffs under his breath. What an international goddamn circus.

"Everything awright?" asks the taxi driver at the sudden sound.

"What? Yeah, s'awright," Shuichi waves him off. "Just remembered something, er, annoying."

The driver taps at the radio, "My wife always tells me to find music that gives me happy thoughts."

Must be nice having those, Shuichi thinks, but doesn't say out loud.

Instead he says, "It's good to have someone looking out for you like that."

"It really is," smiles the driver, obviously and sickeningly in love, "She really saved me, Noorati."

The wife's name is probably Noor or Noora, but with the possessive Arabic 'ti' ending, another meaning emerges: 'my light'.

Must be nice, Shuichi thinks again.

He forcefully doesn't think any further on the matter. His eyes slide from where they'd been watching their own olive-green reflection in the window, back to the notebook.

May 13 is when they heard about the strange circumstances of Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771.

Shuichi thinks he remembers the US embassy's aircon being particularly cold that morning; because in the margins of his notes there's doodles of snowflakes. The crashed flight over a kilometre west of Tripoli International Airport really was just another tragedy that showed up in the news (alongside the more immediately alarming ever-swelling smoke from that Iceland eruption) – until the Libyan Mukhabarat reached out.

The contact immediately struck Shuichi as strange. His reasoning could be summarised in four points:

1) Geopolitics.
The relationship between the United States and Libya is still somewhat tense. A US embassy was only re-established in Tripoli four years ago – after most of a Cold War's worth of hostility and ideology to the contrary. For the Libyan secret services to actively reach out to US embassies in the northwest and west of Africa over a plane crash of all things... either they were setting a trap, or they were desperate.

2) The manner of communication.
Short simple emails were routed through Tripoli's US embassy mere hours after the crash (10 am local time).
Shuichi's own programming capabilities weren't up to par (worrying in itself, he did receive major training in that area back in 1998... oh, that explains why.) but the cyberintelligence agents he asked to double-check found a dense layer of encryption, behind which was a secret long list of other recipients copied into the mails.
For all the high-tech informatics (they told him the encryptions were Russian-style, which didn't mean much to Shuichi but really scared his bosses), all they did was the equivalent of clicking 'BCC' on Yahoo Mail. It was obviously clumsy and hasty.

3) Contents.
On one hand, they were asking for technical expertise on chemical and potentially biohazardous leaks (which raises the question: what can't they handle on their own?).
On the other hand, the were promising all the anti-Jihadi intel they had (which is something that any well-respecting US intelligence officer would gulp up).
It felt internally contradictory: asking for something so specific and then dangling such obvious bait.

      4) Clout and criminality.
As national intelligence agencies go, the Libyans are as nasty as they come.
From Shuichi's own experience with the Black Organisation in particular, he remembers Rum was on first-name-basis with some of those motherfuckers. (Though that might not mean much, because he knows there's Crow double-agents dotted all over the world.) In fact, a few of those BCC names were ones he remembered from his work with Rum.

Any interaction with the Mukhabarat was a dance with the devil.

All in all, it was beyond suspicious and likely a telegraphed trap.

But all in all, the Libyan secret service still seemed unusually spooked. Urgency and desperation made the attempted upper hand they were trying to gain, very heavy indeed. And they obviously didn't know that a former Crow would be reading any of this, let alone that it would be Rye.

But Shuichi remains surprised that his superior officers agreed to his plan. It was impulsive and violent, a show of force.

May 14 with the distant dawn prayer echoing, he'd rocked up at the crash site with two Black Hawks, four Apaches, and a prototype AH-1Z Viper. Onboard were USAF and USMC officers armed to the teeth, a platoon of SAS reserves, and a scientist taskforce recruited from NAMRU 3.

Overwhelmed by what must have seemed like an actual US invasion force, the Libyan security forces gave up their command of the situation in short order.

(When the Libyan force commander recognised Agent Rye, he surrendered immediately.
It was a high-ranking Air Marshal whom Rye had initially met under the codename Pinot.
Now, he was Mohammad Abdullah al-Magrahi, a name which in the context of this crashed flight immediately struck Shuichi as simultaneously suspicious and ironic.)

The actual location of the crash was a large sandy lot in an otherwise impoverished part of Tripoli District. Strangely there was no impact crater or gouge where the plane skidded along – just the shattered debris of the plane and any trees or cars that were in the way.

(Interrogations of Pinot on 16/5 & 17/5 were fruitful, if only 79% reliable. Still, as an intelligence officer he had plenty of lists.
The first list was of various civilian and military collaborators under his jurisdiction.
The second list was of fully ranked Crows he regularly worked with: Rum, Mahia, Stout, Arrack, Cognac, Shalgam, Korn, Tequila.
The final list was of Crows that were KIA or MIA – Manx, Shiraz, Kina Lillet.)

(This intelligence would form the basis of counter-Crow MENA operations for the next months.)

While Shuichi interviewed the people who had already been investigating the crash, his men got to work. New security measures were enforced to make sure no further contamination may occur, and the entire perimeter was cast under a huge white lead-lined tent. Inside, there were mandatory breathing masks and hazmat suits, as well as a mobile laboratory for processing biohazardous material. Outside, part-confused, part-frightened locals were subjected to a series of health tests themselves.

The strangeness at the site continued beyond the lack of 'impact crater'. Despite having been left in the blazing Saharan sun for over 24 hours, none of the torn and broken human remains showed any signs or decay – not even a fly buzzing macabrely on an eyeball. This, even Shuichi could understand enough to be disquieted by.

(Something about the mixed military-scientific feel still reminds Shuichi of the younger sister of the woman he used to infiltrate the Crows.
His notes from that week in May mention the girl a lot: Sherry, and rambling attempts at psychoanalysing what was obviously a former child soldier.
It all turned out to be irrelevant, anyway.)

The overall procedure was impressive and yielded fruitful results – even if Shuichi still doesn't understand them. He isn't a scientist. His notes mention 'anomalous reactive nature of organic contaminant' and 'mutation in microbiological material' and 'containment unnecessary due to brief half-life of compounds'; and that was enough for him then. Eventually the bodies started decaying normally, too.

(Knowing what he does now, Shuichi wishes he'd at least taken the scientists' names.
He still doesn't understand the details, but he knows that something was being tested back there.)

His handlers and superiors were also satisfied. Shuichi was feeding them fresh human networks: lists of names, allies both willing and forced, tribal and familial connections, collaborators in Libyan military intelligence. A few of them are written in the notebook, especially on pages dated later in the week, but always with a degree of suspicion. Shuichi didn't share his bosses' optimism.

It all turned out irrelevant, anyway, He repeats the thought to himself, forcefully.

Reading through those notes now, Shuichi finds himself remembering a film he watched with his kid sister Masumi. Was it last year? It must've been, since in December 2008 he was busy hiding from his hunters; and he only ever sees her around Christmas anyway.

It's strange, because he remembers the movie being British, with impressive scenes of an uncannily desolate central London. It's actually nothing like that week in the ruined outskirts of Tripoli was. The association doesn't make sense. (He also probably fell asleep at some point while watching the film. The story Mas told him later had zombies or something and he would remember something so silly.)

Shuichi's gaze drifts outside.

It should be around midday, but the overcast sunstruck British sky doesn't give it away. It's nauseatingly nostalgic.

He's tempted to crack the window and feel the breeze. The driver probably wouldn't mind either, he's currently humming along the music (Radio 1, now – when did he change the channel?) with such cheerful delight that Shuichi is tempted to stop revising the results of his work abroad and just listen in peace.

I wonder if Masumi's in school right now? Is it the summer holidays yet? She's in sixth form now, right?

In his little notebook there's nothing much for the next weeks.

That doesn't mean he did nothing.

Definitely fucking not.

In June, the CIA demanded 'specialist agent' Shuichi Akai's expertise on Central Asian intelligence services in 'dealing' with 'the situation' in Kyrgyzstan.

It was always going to be a waste of resources. The American foreign policy instinct to meddle in civil unrests in faraway countries is undeniable (hell, sometimes it even comes with silver linings) but on no planet are there any strategic benefits of interfering in Central-fucking-Asia in the year 2010. Shuichi could've told them that.

(He did, too. It immediately ruined any good will he'd built up from his work in Libya. Being a simultaneously disgraced and irreplaceable field agent is a double-edged sword.)

He didn't have an incentive to resist his bosses' (admittedly vague) orders anyway. Shuichi had his own goals in the area. After all, the Black Organisation has major connections in the former Soviet republics.

(He knows with 100% certainty that one Crow Executive strongly favours recruiting from this background.
In particular the Crow head of human resources (an apparatchik if Shuichi ever saw one) is 89% likely to be from a Central Asian SSR.
He is also 60% sure that there were a series of Black Organisation purges in 1999 which centred at least in part around the Fergana Valley,
a region in Central Asia where several national borders wrap around each other.)

Investigations during civil unrest are also a double-edged sword.

Neighbourhoods turn on themselves, old allies are suddenly mired in ethnic clashes, people get so fucking busy and bogged down with their own nonsense that everything else seems extraneous. Suspects and innocents alike become paranoid, irrational, clumsy, obsessive, desperate, violent.

Whichever wordsmith keeps forging these double-edged swords needs to calm the fuck down.

Realising the wordplay in his own thoughts, Shuichi manages to crack a little smile. He isn't usually this eloquent with his words, that's always been his siblings' thing (inherited, no doubt, from their father's love of clever multilingual puns).

"'Scuse me, sir," the cabbie speaks up, "Mind if I smoke?"

Shuichi glances up absently. "Go for it, mate."

"Cheers! I'll crack a window," the driver says, and Shuichi takes that as a cue to open his own window a little, too.

The breeze is as expected: fresh yet warm, a little outer-London smog already, and full of potential for an approaching summer drizzle. The wind catches in Shuichi's long dark hair, and he instinctively runs his fingers through it. The faint damp twists and curls the ends: just the barest elements of his father's Caribbean heritage peeking through.

Despite being the eldest of his siblings, Shuichi has gotten the middle ground.

(As the middle child, Shukichi inherited their father's Japanese genes, skin fair and hair pin-straight like he's trying to set some kind of scientific geometric standard. The 'Kitsch' nickname doesn't actually suit him at all, always well-dressed as he is. Little Masumi's the opposite of course, with her thick curly hair and darker skin tone and freckly cheeks. Despite never meeting Dad, Mas has the same love for strange hats as him. Shuichi has no idea how Mum can deal with the resemblance.)

Shuichi Akai has no notes on June's Kyrgyzstan operations because he systematically destroyed them all.

(Records of nights spent stalking semi-legal bars.
Receipts and recipes of strange drinks orders.
Sketches of strangers with cold eyes.
Transcripts of violent interrogations.
Lists of physical and psychological weaknesses.
Details on the cadence of screams.
Ciphers spreading over six languages.
Tally lists of captured firearms and ammunition.
Scribbles of a tattoo he can't get out of his head.)

Shuichi believes that the notes he made were unsatisfactory.

paranoid/irrational
clumsy/obsessive
desperate/violent

The investigations did not attain the rigid analytical standard he holds himself to. The serious pursuits of truth and justice were not maintained to an acceptable degree.

("I think this is the real you, Rye.")

Shuichi tightens the grip on his hair (and feels a phantom hand around his throat and his heart lurches-)

Shut the fuck up. he thinks violently, You had no idea what I really am. You've got all that fucking KGB-Spetsnaz-wolf paranoia and you never suspected me, not once.

There's no answer.

Of course there isn't. The low smoke-roughened bergamot-flavoured voice is just a memory.

Shuichi irritably sits up straighter again, forces his whole body to readjust, and brings his hands down in front of him to tug a hair tie from his wrist. He's got to at least it out of his face, he can get it cut at the airport, he can-

The moment his fingers leave his hair, any sharp intentions die.

...the breeze does feel better in open hair.

Shuichi tells himself that he doesn't need to be irrational about this. He started growing his hair out long before he started the most all-consuming and goddamn personal undercover mission of his life. It was 2000 or 2001, probably: three to four years before he started infiltrating the Black Organisation. These things are not connected.

And yet... for all the obviously evil and fucked up bullshit and for all the murder and inhumanity, Gin did teach me a lot about haircare. I wonder where he learned that? I wonder why he grew-...

Shuichi cuts his own thoughts off by sharply snapping the hair tie against his inner wrist. It stings and throbs when it hits a yellowing bruise.

Stop. Do better.

And he will do better.

His eyes track back to his notebook's price sticker.

99.82, no currency. Was it lira?

He pushes his thumbnail under one edge. It peels a little, but after months among humid lakes and arid deserts the glue's gotten too gummy to give in to anything short of acetone.

I arrived from Germany initially... did I switch in Istanbul? Istanbul, then Incirlik, then Cairo, then Accra? Did I even travel via Incirlik back in May?

He could find the flight documents somewhere in his emails.

The downside would be switching on that MI6-bugged phone, though. If he can get another hour of peace and quiet before dealing with her...

I'll bite that bullet when it gets here.

After the fruitless excursion in Central Asia, Shuichi was supposed to head to Arifjan in Kuwait for a complete debrief of his various operations (set for 21/6). After that, the plan was to return stateside via Turkey, meeting Agent James Black in Incirlik (23/6) for the last leg of the journey; arriving 26/6 at JFK and returning to HQ.

James Black is a decent man, a close family friend, one of Shuichi's most trusted colleagues. He's a proper old Cold War geezer too, ex-SAS and now in the FBI, always has a story for everything. He might be a bit set in his empire-flavoured stiff-upper-lip ways, but Shuichi wouldn't have even gotten his start in international intelligence work if it wasn't for James' help.

(He also knew Shuichi's parents at the height of their various MI6 careers.
One of Shuichi's fondest childhood memories is when James got deep enough into his scotch one
Christmas to start comparing them to Benedick and Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing.
He'd never seen his parents to mortified before, it was extremely funny to him and Kitsch.
He thinks now that it might have been one of the last Christmases they all had together. Mas wasn't even born yet.)

Shuichi is reasonably fond of the old bastard, and he'd been looking forward to the familiar face. Hell, he'd even been looking forward to returning to the New York office and just doing normal federal agent work for the rest of summer. No Crow bullshit, no political fallout, no spiralling obsessions.

Of course he should've known better. Delays came hard and fast in the last week of June: diplomatic scandals in Israel, sandstorms over Kuwait and Iraq. Black's expertise was needed urgently; Shuichi's return to America was postponed.

In his notebook there's a few doodles, obviously from this time despite being undated. Not many words except for disparate song titles and lyrics from the radio for him to find later. Mostly though it's small sketches of scenes in Kuwait City: kids playing football and cricket, an old man feeding pigeons by a mosque, a pair of young men as they try to steal a Toyota for joyriding, rich young local women loitering and gossiping at the mall.

(One of them noticed he was drawing them. Her handwritten phone number stands in contrast to Shuichi's usual penmanship. He wonders absently if it she did it out of boredom, or out of desperation to feel anything at all. He doesn't remember her name because she probably never gave it, but he does remember that she didn't take her ring off.)

On June 25 half a dozen fully-stacked NATO troops were killed in coordinated attacks across Afghanistan.

Final casualty count was fifty-nine. It was a case of SNAFU: Situation Normal, All Fucked Up.

There was no immediate intelligence on the culprits, but somewhere between the twelfth and twentieth hour of emergency conferences, a list of the victims ended up being circulated. Shuichi recognised several names that Pinot had spilled. Incidentally, his superiors from the Afriqiyah Air situation were in the same meeting – they used their new contacts with the Libyan Mukhabarat to figure out that the Air Marshal who'd been in charge of the airstrip had gone missing.

(The exact point in the notes where Shuichi realised this is marked by the word 'CROWS'.
It is capitalised, heavily underlined, even highlighted in neon yellow.)

There's an old saying:

'The best place to hide a leaf is in a forest.'

Over the years, Shuichi has heard many of variations on it. Some refer to specific species: pines or oaks or alder trees. Some use the violent imagery of forest fires. The core idea remains the same, though: purposefully creating disorder in order to disguise the true target of an operation.

(The voice he heard it in most frequently always tasted of smoke.)

There are always more layers under the ash.

There was no doubt that the disappearance of Pinot and the attacks on the NATO troops were connected. There was no doubt that the Black Organisation had struck out in order to simultaneously clean up their mess and achieve unknowable yet distinctly anti-American political goals. There was no doubt that any agencies associated with NATO who had a passing knowledge on the Black Organisation had an obligation to respond.

June 26 CNN reported a scaled-down version of the NATO deaths. By that time, Shuichi and his colleagues were already landing at Bagram Airfield north of Kabul.

Shuichi Akai had been to Afghanistan a few times before.

(The city of Kabul got bitterly cold in winter and Shuichi liked how it pissed off the US Army types.
He knows locals there, too: he's especially fond of an older married couple, doctors who'd somehow survived both the communists and the Islamists.
Their stories were always breaths of fresh air.)

Shuichi Akai had never been to the Salt Pit before.

It's relatively small as prison complexes go, built over only four months in 2002. But the way the black site prison operates is a gigantic nightmare: constantly pitch-black, constantly loud with music, constantly reeking of human anguish. Salt Pit is torture site, nothing more and nothing less.

Shuichi still doesn't know what the fuck he'd done wrong for his bosses to station him there, and as a senior interrogator of all things.

Knowing the Company, they probably thought it was a reward. Miserable bastards.

Over the next few days, anonymous suspects started being delivered to his interrogation cell. Shuichi was given dossiers, lists of connections, interrogation orders, torture transcripts. The job was extremely clear and he was never left alone with a subject. Everything was tightly controlled, from stationery to phone calls to his walk back to his dormitory room.

When the CIA cracks down, there's no room for disgraced field agents who make their own rules.

(Shuichi vaguely remembers that he stopped wearing his usual leather jacket for this time.
He figured it was better to not even be tempted by taking personal notes.
He regrets it now. But it would've been irrelevant...)

         It can't all be irrelevant.

Shuichi nearly startles at how desperately the thought shoots through his mind.

But if he thinks about it in the relative peace and comfort of this cab, he knows he's right. The poor bastards he... interrogated, they were human too. They meant something – hell, to someone out there, they meant everything. And what the interrogators did, what he did-

Calm down, he tells himself forcefully, It's irrelevant, not because they don't mean anything, but because it's hopeless.

But then comes another desperate thought: I am hopeless.

Shuichi Akai is no fucking hero. He's just one man, what could he do? Record and leak it all, like that Army intelligence woman with the War Diaries? Don't kid yourself. You're no hero.

You're a goddamn hypocrite, as bad as the Agency and as bad as the Crows. What happened in Kyrgyzstan? What happened with that serial killer in New York? What happened with Gin? What happened with Gitmo and in Madrid and with those mercenaries in Yemen? What happened in those first years in the CIA before they got sick of your shit?

               'I'm a scary gargoyle on a tower-'

The familiar song on the radio pulls him out of his dark thoughts.

Music...

...that's right. He's sure he still had the iPod at this point in time. It was pretty beaten-up and the screen very cracked, but he remembers going to a black market in Kabul to buy a replacement charging cable. After hours of loud music and darkness he drifted away to Damon Albarn's soft voice.

No. No.

I'm not like them. I'm not a system or institution. I'm just one man trying to fight for what's right, whether they want me to or not.

("Like father like son, eh? Akai.")

The distant memory of the very different voice actually makes Shuichi flinch. Roughened by age rather than smoke, with a gentle elderly amusement that belies a razor-sharp mind; it was a casual comment with heavy implications.

Lord of Frenzy.
God of Gallows.
One-Eyed Allfather.

At the time, Shuichi had been otherwise occupied. But remembering the words now, years later – he hastily flicks forward in the notebook to the present page and jots down:

Shuichi frowns and scribbles out the last line. Unprofessional. (But it is the most likely reason Rum figured him out. For fuck's sake, what a clumsy habit not to drop...)

Then he reads over his thoughts again. His preliminary deductions and speculations are satisfactory, and he is overall pleased that he remembered the comment how and when he did. Thinking about it now, Rum is absolutely the key to finding more answers regarding the disappearance of Tsutomu Akai.

After I get my teeth through my primary objective. Priorities.

He glances up at the cabbie. "Sorry mate – could you turn up the music a notch?"

"Sure thing," says the driver.

As the catchy synth of Rhinestone Eyes rises, the remaining dregs of fog clear from Shuichi's mind. He's got a place he's coming from and a place he's going to. He's got a stable new set of clues. He's just got to finish this revision, and then he'll be well on his way back to America.

He takes a final compartmentalising breath and flips back to where he was before in the notebook.

July 4, a new commander-in-chief took charge of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. The same day, the Swiss Embassy in Tehran publicised evidence that the CIA abducted an Iranian nuclear scientist. The same day, a prominent Lebanese religious and political figure suddenly and mysteriously died.

These news items were entirely irrelevant to Shuichi being released from Salt Pit duty the same day. (Even if his personal notes of that day, the first in a long while, saw some wild madcap connections.)

On the evening of July 4 Shuichi returned to his dorm and a new urgent job was sprung on him. His task would be to coordinate for the Afghan Police and the ISAF in a major ongoing drug bust in the south of the country. The previous coordinator had been suddenly and critically injured.

('Struck by lightning', Shuichi's notes say.
It was only as he wrote those words, that he noticed the raging thunderstorm outside.
The officer who has giving him the orders did not appreciate his laughter.
It still makes Shuichi grin now.)

The storm had calmed down by the next morning. Shuichi arrived at the airfield just after dawn with all his belongings packed, desperate to get out of the dorms he'd been stuck in for the past weeks. The air was muggy and the stink of kerosene carried far, but it was fresh and that was what mattered.

The Osprey helicopter he was supposed to take to Helmand Province was already there, along with the rare female pilot (ca. 170 cm, Arab-American, darker skin, no hijab, US Marine). She offered him a cigarette that tasted faintly of bergamot (and a walk further from the flammable areas), and they ended up having a pleasant conversation about a very good tobacconist in the north of the country. Then the other people who were to be deployed showed up, and they got going.

There was not much else that was 'good' about the fortnight that followed.

(Helmand Province is named after the Helmand river, around which civilisation settled over four thousand years ago.
Nowadays it is a hotbed of Islamist insurgency and one of the most dangerous regions in an already dangerous country.
Helmand also produces up to 42% of the world's opium.)

In addition to the dangers of an active warzone was the misfortune of having to work with the US Army. (All the Marines Shuichi met this summer were auxiliary. Not as if they're much better.)

Where the CIA were cold and inhumanly efficient, the Army were heated and loudly cruel. They talked about locals like they were cattle. They talked about each other like it was a game. They talked about the world like it was nothing. They talked and talked and talked.

(Shuichi's daily notes of those two weeks are detailed.
They are truthful records on nihilistic violent morons.
They are also in the Cyrillic script.
He didn't want to risk unwanted eyes.)

When they finally tried to act, Shuichi broke a total of three elbows, five knees, two hips, six clavicles, nine wrists, and a sternum.

July 18 is where the tally is noted down. The page also has a summary of the pre-trial hearing, surrounded in the margins by doodles of feathers and snowflakes. Though admittedly, the feathers look a little more like angular leaves or maybe ferns.

Clearly his superiors had been very sharply reminded of the double-edged sword that was 'disgraced' 'loose cannon' 'irreplaceable field agent' 'cowboy' Shuichi Akai. (Hah, maybe that's what 'Specialist Agent' meant.) Because of who he was, his actions couldn't reasonably be punished even if they hadn't been justified; and obviously his value and potential to the lofty goals of freedom and security were being wasted by forcing him to slum it with the Army.

July 20 an international conference on the future of Afghanistan opened in Kabul. It was a perfect excuse to remove Shuichi from the city and relocate him to an office in Herat.

This office turned out to be relatively large, and entirely unoccupied except for the cleaner who came just before lunch every day. His lodgings were in a private little flat on the floor above. His job was to quietly work on sorting interrogation files and finding connections to the NATO hits. He was supposed to report back to HQ in Kabul once daily, but they didn't mind when he did.

(While there he finally got to talk to that tobacconist.
Shuichi isn't ashamed that 40% of the space in his duffel bag is currently being taken up by three large cartons from that shop.
The store owner himself was a wideset Hazara man, who didn't tell him about other buyers
but did happily divulge information on other brands that work with real bergamot.
Shuichi is incredibly satisfied with the list.).

It felt like his time in Afghanistan was coming to an end. At the time, Shuichi was pleased about this. He doesn't remember the exact feeling now, but the notes from those days are surrounded by some most whimsical drawings and comments yet.

(There's sketches of the pigeons and sparrows and larks that nested outside his office.
A brief note from 22/7 that he called James Black, and a rough portrait from memory.
The words 'Christmas plans' surrounded by menacing question marks, and notes on presents.
A loose sketch of the mostly reconstructed Herat Citadel, Alexander the Great's fortress.
A doodle of a silly-looking jellyfish with googly eyes and roller-skates.)

Hold on. That's another song from this year's album. Did I still have the iPod then? Wait, is it somewhere in my bag after all?

Shuichi sits up and starts reaching for his duffel bag, but stalls when he sees the scenery outside.

The taxi is now taking a large loop around a junction, and the metropolitan skyline is much closer.

He definitely recognises the road signs too, but it's been a while since he's driven around London. He does know that they're coming from the north, and they're probably going to be looping westward around Watford before turning south to get to Heathrow.

Mum's absolutely waiting for me there. Fuck, forget biting bullets, I'd rather chew gravel.

"Don't look so worried, mate," comments the driver. "We'll get there in time. Half hour, tops."

Shuichi's flight departs in two hours. For a civilian this would be pushing it, but with his various clearances (and lack of proper suitcases) he knows this is well within the margin.

"I'm not worried," Shuichi tells the cabbie. "I'm feeling lucky."

The driver laughs, hoarse and a little wheezing. "I bet you are, punk!"

"Punk?" Shuichi echoes. Sounds like something Mas would say.

"You know, Dirty Harry?" the driver seems to realise that Shuichi is not recognising the reference.

Another Gorillaz track? Is this a joke?

"'Did I fire six shots, or only five?'" the driver tries again, "The old movie with Clint Eastwood?"

'I'm useless, but not for long,
the future is coming on...'

"Oh, yeah," Shuichi vaguely remembers (over the song chorus murmuring in his brain). It's an old one, he thinks his Dad might've had it on VCR back when they lived in... was it London, actually? Or Honolulu? Or Chicago? "Been a while since I've seen that film, sorry."

The driver shakes his head, amused. "Gotten a lot of weird passengers, but someone who doesn't know Clint Eastwood is a first."

Shuichi doesn't know what to say to that, so instead he chuckles blankly: "Haha."

"No offence," the driver tacks on unnecessarily. "Just a bit weird, innit."

"None taken," Shuichi shrugs, already glancing back down at his notebook.

July 24 an elite SAS unit knocked on his office door just after lunchtime.

They wanted to cooperate with him to find and halt Black Organisation activities in the area.

At the time he'd immediately assumed that it was James who had established the contact. The phone call had only been a few days earlier, after all – and even in these classified circles, the Black Organisation is something only few people know about.

(This assumption turned out to be fatal.)

But Shuichi had spent most of that phone call (aside from dodging questions about if he was coming home for Christmas) telling James about the Crow connections he'd been making so far. Between the Salt Pit interrogation reports, the intel from Pinot, the lists from the NATO hit, and the suspicious nature of the Air Afriqiyah crash, both of them concluded that Shuichi was getting to the bottom of a pretty hefty conspiracy.

(This turned out to be halfway correct.
The target was him, though.)

Shuichi has a lot of enemies in a lot of different fields.

Some prefer finding him alone. Some prefer baiting him in. Some prefer obliterating his comrades. All of them have more resources, less morals, and deeper and darker and more intricate plans than him.

Here we get to the differences between me and those institutions again.

Shuichi scowls, before quickly snapping the hair-tie against his wrist again.

Take it easy, Shu. We still don't know for sure how deep this hole goes.

On the page dated 24/7 there is a new case title, 'Black Lab Investigation'. Below that is a list of the names of the six elite British soldiers, ages ranging 28 to 51, with experience in various clandestine operations and warzones (and, no doubt, crimes against humanity).

(Major N. Anderson, 51
Captain J. Haas, 39
Lieutenant B. Griffith, 33
Second Lieutenant J. Lincoln, 28
Sergeant Z. Firtinasi, 44
Specialist Chemical Warefareman D. Hughes, 50)

Below that are the notes on the files that the SAS had brought with them.

(The files had been splayed out across Shuichi's office for a good six hours. No-one had been permitted to take pictures or make photocopies.
So instead, Shuichi had noted down the core details, even though Maj Anderson had assured him this wasn't necessary because they'd be taking their files with them.)

The concrete point of investigation was a series of unsolved deaths among various international public figures over the last five years. The murder 'weapon' seemed to be a combination of a neurotoxin and hallucinogen: some kind of MK Ultra or Unit 731 bullshit, or (more realistically) a fresh Novichok variant. That's where Spc Hughes came in, he was their science officer (supposedly he worked in various secret government 'projects' before this).

(Because there's so much information, the notes continue over several pages. They're far more detailed that Shuichi's bullet-points on the Air Afriqiyah case.
Beyond that is a messily sellotaped-in and folded thrice map of Afghanistan with several sites marked with red Sharpie.
Six of these were the spots around the country where the NATO hits happened – information Shuichi already had.
The remaining locations were supposedly black prisons turned into human testing laboratories, where this mystery toxin may have been developed.)

Shuichi absently flicks his finger against the attached map. Even folded up, the marker ink has bled through the thin paper. The red splotches aren't subtle.

Grim fucking omen if I ever saw one.

Shuichi knows that the Crows have a huge R & D division that (to his knowledge) specialises in organic chemistry and biotechnology. He has wild theories about their purposes, but nothing concrete. Given the Organisation's range of means, something like Novichok seems too banal...

(During his time infiltrating the Crows, Rye visited several scientific facilities:
> one lab a few kilometres north of Tokyo, where he went several times and where he encountered the teenaged and unpleasantly blank-eyed prodigy Sherry;
> one desolate facility in Kansai, which he had been sent to investigate alongside an affably efficient middle-aged German woman called Jägermeister;
> one very advanced and active 'cancer research' facility underneath Pripyat, which Gin took him to on the way back from a joint assassination in Munich.)

Back in that office in Herat – with all the information put before him, months of fieldwork and taking ever-worse orders behind him, a crew of elite British forces (seemingly) at his command – Shuichi was hooked.

After spending the day planning (and the evening drinking sensibly to become more comfortable with each other; and Shuichi did carefully note the drinks of choice just in case) the seven of them headed for the sites in the northwest and north of the country early on 25 July.

There were four in total, visited in the following order by helicopter: one in the Paropamisus Mountains bordering Iran, one in Faryab Province underground the border to Turkmenistan, and two along the Amu Darya river (one on the border to Uzbekistan, one on the border to Tajikistan). Shuichi specifically noted the relative proximity of these laboratories to former SSRs.

Irritatingly, all four sites yielded the same results: complete annihilation.

All wasn't lost, exactly. The rubble and ruins of the destroyed laboratories were still identifiable; and Spc Hughes assured Shuichi he was finding plenty of material and data. The shattered concrete from the last site was even still warm to the touch, indicating that the explosions to destroy it had occurred recently.

(In retrospect, Shuichi does not recall seeing epicentres of any such a series of explosions.
The rubble was blackened, but in retrospect he isn't sure if it was soot, either.
These are alarming points which he now jots down in the margins of his initial reports,
including a theory of an unknown chemical weapon being used, and today's date and place: 29/7/10, London.)

It seemed obvious that the Crows knew they were being hunted. Proper procedure was destroying evidence, people, tracks left behind. But these attempts were clumsy, hasty even – and leaving far too many traces. He was close. All he had to do was act faster.

You fucking idiot, he thinks bitterly. Wasn't it too obvious?

On 26/7 (after spending the night in Mazar-e-Sharif) Shuichi and his SAS squad decided not to waste time scouring the Hindu Kush in the northeast of the country.

(This mountain range extends from Badakhshan Province in Afghanistan up through Tajikistan, Pakistan, and even into China.
In recent history, it was where the various Afghan mujahideen forces set up their various bases;
and after 2001 the US declared it a militarised conflict zone again.)

Shuichi was 85% sure that some connection or path of communication existed between the guerrilla groups in the north of the country and some factions within the Black Organisation. However given the urgency of this laboratory Crow Hunt, he let himself be convinced to head for the next major map markers.

It was the right decision, he tells himself now. That, at least, was the right decision. The Hindu Kush would've been a wild goose chase.

These were the locations where the NATO companies were hit. (This should have been Shuichi's first port of call upon arriving in the country, and he remembers hating the CIA even more for sticking him in the Salt Pit. He still does, now.) The squad travelled the country through several hot warzones and insurgent ambushes over the next day and a half.

(2nd Lt Lincoln ended up badly injured, he had to be left at the American hospital in Kabul.
Shuichi wonders now if he knew what was coming, if he was lucky to get out.
It was a shame, too, because he'd mentioned knowing someone who could fix Shuichi's iPod screen.)

(Wait a fucking second... did that little Sandhurst rat take my iPod?)

Each scene granted less than the last. It had been a month since the attacks, all at various extremely active areas. The NATO troops hadn't been there for fun, after all. Afghanistan is occupied land.

Early on July 27 in Zabul Province (the southeast of the country), Sgt Firtinasi and Lt Griffith managed to track down one surviving NATO officer (originally of a Danish force). He had survived and escaped capture, and gone into hiding with a local family of goatherds in return for most of his equipment. The experience had left him heavily injured and paranoid.

(When the unit found him, the man immediately started shooting.
Three were injured: Cpt Haas in the arm, Sgt Firtinasi in the cheek, Spc Hughes lost a finger.
Then Shuichi and Maj Anderson managed to disarm and restrain him.)

After explaining they were allies (and some quick first aid), the survivor told them his story. It was fairly dramatic, involving kidnapping, transport to another location, torture, executions. Eventually a series of extremely unlikely coincidences led to him managing to escape and being rescued by goats.

Shuichi hadn't been so utterly unconvinced of something in a long while. As morning bled into midday, it started feeling increasingly like a waste of time, and then increasingly like a clumsy Psy-Op. But then the survivor mentioned 'a battered older man in dress uniform with a Libyan accent'.

(Arabic is a language that is spoken natively in over 25 countries in the world, ca. 15 million km².
There are vast regional and continental varieties in the vernacular language, including grammatical differences.
Example: Shuichi himself speaks Standard and Egyptian Arabic, and is generally capable at
recognising and somewhat replicating most other vernaculars as he hears them.)

(All this to say: like most North African versions of Arabic, Libyan is extremely distinct.)

Upon further questioning (and showing some photographs) it became apparent that Mohammad Abdullah al-Magrahi (aka Pinot), the missing Libyan Air Marshal and senior Libyan intelligence officer, had been found. In fact, he had been executed, by 'a cheerful younger Arab guy in a black denim jacket who spoke fluent English'.

The clothing detail was important. Not even mercenaries or undercover agents casually wear pitch-black civilian clothes while traipsing across a desert warzone.

(It does put into perspective that Shuichi himself had been wearing his trusty black leather jacket during this entire excursion.
But to be fair, at least he deigned to wear a bulletproof vest and fatigues underneath.
And at least he wasn't executing high-ranking military figures of sovereign nations.)

(Not anymore, anyway.)

With this encounter resolved, the unit flew to the nearest major city: Kandahar. The injured needed proper medical attention, the poor NATO bastard needed extraction, and their helicopter needed a some pretty necessary repairs. They calculated half a day to regroup.

(Kandahar is Afghanistan's second-largest city, and another one built by Alexander the Great –
though there have been excavations of much older prehistoric sites at the location.
In more recent history, Kandahar has become central in the US-led NATO and ISAF missions against the Taliban.
Just this spring, Operation Moshtarak was launched from there.)

Shuichi believed that the volatile nature of the city made for a perfect investigative area. His colleagues disagreed. Shuichi left them at the hospital to do his own research, with a promise to link up before the evening prayer rung out. Maj Anderson had gotten them an entire floor in a hotel; a rare luxury.

Wandering through the streets of Afghanistan's assassination capital was the first time after a very intense 72 hours that Shuichi had any time for himself alone.

And it was then that he finally got to thinking how strange the situation he'd found himself in was. The strange feeling about it being a Psy-Op returned, not as an irritated joke in the back of his mind but as a genuine consideration at the front of it. It's not that things didn't add up – they did, and far too cleanly at that.

Shuichi ended up settling down in a little café, smoking cigarette after bergamot-flavoured cigarette and noting down his soaring thoughts.

(On the NATO guy: he never 'remembered' any concrete details like where or by whom he was attacked or captured, yet still managed to all but namedrop Pinot and his Crow murderer.
On the Black laboratories: perfectly orchestrated scenes, feeling increasingly less like tracks he was finding and chasing, and more like they were leaving him breadcrumbs and bait.
'Hide a leaf in the forest', underlined repeatedly.)

Hide a leaf in the forest, Shuichi thinks bitterly, You bell-end, you were so fucking close. But it was a forest fire, and you were the goddamn leaf.

(Other notes included speculation on possible corruption in the CIA, on the true purpose of a 'hallucinogenic neurotoxin',
on Pinot's true role in the Organisation, on who his Arab Crow assassin was.
Shiraz immediately came to mind, but according to Pinot's own intel Shiraz was KIA in 2006.
Besides, when Rye had encountered Shiraz, he wore black military fatigues and a keffiyeh as a scarf.)

That's another mystery, Shuichi frowns, absently tapping the pen against his leg. I'll have to put a pin in it.

From the corner of his eye, Shuichi catches the road signs for Watford coming up. They're close.

Though knowing my luck, that whole description was disinformation too.

Back at that café in Kandahar, Shuichi also decided to call up HQ. He didn't tell them about his ever-growing paranoia or even the depths of the weird fucking science going on – it was just a rough update on his location, and the dwindling numbers of his special forces unit.

HQ was less angry about this particular bit of cowboy behaviour than expected. In fact they suggested that if he needed tactical support or manpower, he should reach out to the US Marine Corps based in neighbouring Helmand Province. It was a surprisingly forthcoming offer (even if Shuichi was reluctant to return there).

Still – he needed the backup. On the walk back to the hotel he also realised that he liked the idea of a more mixed group.

(Maybe it had already started dawning on him: how ominously omnipresent his current companions had been over the past few days.
How someone was always trying to look at his notes. How frightened the NATO guy seemed of them...)

He returned to the hotel to find the unit stitched back together (literally, haha). He told them about the plan to acquire USMC support, and funnily enough Maj Anderson had the perfect solution for the Helmand issue: apparently a personal friend of his was a Marine colonel currently in Nimruz Province. It was decided that they would spend the night in Kandahar and fly to the US base in Delaram, Nimruz in the morning.

Something about it rubbed Shuichi the wrong way, even then. But he didn't know what it was, yet.

(Unfortunately, that night Lt Griffith rubbed him very much the right way.

Little whore, Shuichi thinks with a rueful smirk. Still ended up dead, didn't you?)

They landed in Delaram in the late morning of 28/7 (can't fucking believe it was only yesterday), only to find out that Maj Anderson's US Marine associates had headed towards Zaranj at the other end of the Province first thing in the morning. By this point, Shuichi was getting sick of the delays, sick of others knowing more than him, sick of being told where to go and what to do. So while Maj Anderson set about trying to organise transport to Zaranj, Shuichi simply climbed into a nearby Humvee, hotwired it, called his crew to join him and drove right out the gates.

It had been nothing more than a gasp of rebellion. About an hour into a three-hour drive down Route 606, they came across a civilian bus headed in the same direction as them that had broken down. They had run out of fuel and several of his officers were keen to help, and Shuichi himself might be an arsehole but he isn't someone to leave people behind if they need help.

Being an arsehole might be better for my survival in the long run, though...

Strangely enough, about fifty minutes later their Humvee was stalling to a stop, maybe half a mile away from a small city (Khash, according to Cpt Haas). Shuichi did find this sudden breakdown highly suspicious all things considered, but there was no time to investigate because this city happened to be where Anderson's Marine friend was 'pacifying a local insurgency' (the relative proximity put them in range of the shortwave radio frequency).

At the town's main bus intersection they finally managed to meet Anderson's elusive Marines. (Shuichi remembers Griffith and Firtinasi being jokingly surprised they even existed at this point – he wonders now how much this collegial ribbing was genuine.) The Americans said they could provide transport, but most of the SAS men realised they'd forgotten to grab their kit bags from their old Humvee (a very sloppy excuse, in retrospect), so only Shuichi and Sgt Firtinasi joined them in taking the local public transport.

(Buses in Afghanistan, much like those in surrounding nations, are somewhat old-fashioned in that they have two 'entrances': the front door, and the open back.
This means that if you're running after a bus, you may actually manage to get on if you're quick enough.
It also means that if you want to get off the bus, you might be able to just step off the back rather than wait for it to stop.)

Something about this bus ride was immediately disquieting. As his new allies started cheerfully conversing and Sgt Firtinasi tried to offer him a seat, Shuichi felt oddly cold in the crowded space. He opted to be as far by the back entrance as possible, bag slung half over his shoulder, scanning the interior.

That was where he was when he spotted the woman getting on at the front (ca. 160 cm, approx. 20-30 y.o., darker skin and broader body type, dark red headscarf and long loose dress with distinct Balochi embroidery, light brown eyes made larger with heavy eyeliner use, elegantly aquiline nose).

Rationally, he knows it's impossible that he recognised her; because he knows he's never seen that woman's face before. He also knows he'll never see her again.

(Like thousands of other agents, Shuichi has been systematically trained to recognise and catalogue individuals' appearances. But...)

Irrationally, her face is now seared into his memory along with the faces of every other person he's seen die, and many others that he hasn't.

(Gin was unusually pleased when he found out about Rye's peculiar specialty for dead faces.
With his usual macabre delight he recited an old-fashioned Soviet figure of speech about them making a perfect pair-)

Shuichi snaps his hair tie against his wrist again.

This isn't about him. This is about what happened yesterday.

But Shuichi cannot place what alerted him. Maybe it was that the woman glanced across the bus and made eye contact with him, in a rural area where local women do not make eye contact with men (especially foreigners, and for good reason). Maybe it was just his instincts about the whole rotten situation finally catching up to him.

(Maybe it was something else, something he can't remember now despite everything.
Something uncanny...)

On nothing more than a strange shivering hunch in the blazing summer heat, Shuichi stepped off the back of the bus less than a minute after it had started driving again. No-one one noticed until it was too late.

The official reports spoke of an explosion on a civilian bus in Nimruz Province, but that's not what Shuichi experienced.

The bus had gotten maybe thirty meters away when the screams started. Shuichi had seen his fair share of bus hijackings and bombings in his life, a disproportionate amount of which were in this country – so he knew to take cover. This meant he didn't see exactly what happened – but he heard it.

There was no explosion.

There was the sound of metal screeching, glass shattering, the screams abruptly stopping – the feeling of intense heat radiating from behind the low wall he'd leapt over – the stench of burning rubber and fatty meat and battery acid – but there was no explosion.

His first thought was that he'd gone spontaneously deaf – but then the shouting and gunfire of confused soldiers and the anguished crying of injured civilians started. His second thought was of some kind of nuclear detonation – but levels on the Geiger counter that Spc Hughes had distributed to each of them at the start of this mission were ominously normal. His next thought was that the device was defective – but then he spotted none other than Spc Hughes himself sprinting towards the bus.

So he chanced a glance himself, and found the bus was not burst open and burning out.

Its metal carcass was rusted as if it had been standing out there for decades. Material that looked like soot was smeared against the remains of the bus and the surrounding street. While the glass windows had shattered outwards to impale survivors in a twenty-metre radius, many other injuries Shuichi spotted immediately reminded him of electrical or chemical burns. He wasn't sure what had happened to the passengers of the bus.

These were the chemical weapons Shuichi had been tracking all summer: the 'anomalous organic contaminant' and 'biohazardous material' and 'disruptive mutagen compound'.

And Spc Hughes was picking through the remains. With Shuichi out of sight, he was suddenly barking orders: to scour the area, to check on survivors, to find and confirm targets. His accent wasn't Queen's English anymore either, but a Mississippi drawl.

The best place to hide a leaf is in a forest.

Shuichi spotted the young girl, her crying brother, and their mother in a nearby doorway. He knew how to treat the immediate injury; and they had a home he could hide and regroup in – it was a mutually beneficial agreement and that was how it happened.

(Surah 32, al-Sajdah, is believed to be one of the earlier recorded chapters of the Quran.
It refers to a lot of Muslim theological and eschatological concepts: revelation, resurrection, the day of final judgement.
It is not a prayer for the health, survival, or indeed mourning of an injured child.
It does supposedly reference an angel of death.)

A small pathetically human superstitious part of him was scared that his presence here would ruin this family. That the broken nazar and his sheer malevolent presence were a bad omen. But he knew the reality was far worse: the people after him were monsters and would execute his helpers if they found out.

Still, he had to ask the boy for one more favour: to borrow the family's phone (in return for all his remaining medical equipment). On the bricklike Nokia he called up James Black.

(The call initially didn't go through. But in unpacking his military duffel bag to retrieve his medical equipment,
he also found that most of the files he'd been hefting with him had gone missing and the weight
had been made up for by a telecommunications disruptor.
Hazy suspicious came into very sharp focus in that instant.)

The phone call went through the second time; and James confirmed that he had never contacted anyone about their last call. He also added that firstly, 'Chemical Warfareman' was a designation he hadn't heard in decades (possibly in connection with a now-defunct NATO bioweapons project), and secondly, there seemed to be a connection issue back when they talked in Herat.

So Shuichi had to conclude that the Crows he'd been hunting had actually been shadowing him this whole time.

(He would call it a miracle that he survived travelling with them for this long, but he does not believe in miracles.
Rather, this indicates a learned caution: they would rather lure him into this chemical/bioweapon trap than risk another New York 2009 or Madrid 2008.)

He didn't need to physically note down his next order of business at the time. It was obvious that he had to cull his hunters, retrieve the lost intel, and get out of the country as fast as possible.

It took him from midday to sunset prayer to accomplish this. He's pretty sure Hughes (or whoever that scientist man really was) might have survived his injuries, since he could still drive their abandoned Humvee away towards Zaranj. Alternatively, he had a Crow partner lying in wait. Either way, it wasn't something Shuichi could reasonably purpose.

So instead he bought a car from the local mayor with two looted SA-80s and a Jericho, and drove back to Delaram and from there managed to commandeer a flight to Kabul and from there fly back to Europe.

During the seven-hour flight from Bagram to (what turned out to be) Lakenheath, Shuichi had thought a lot about what the deal with those SAS men was.

He now considers the likelihood that they were all named and feathered Crows relatively low. Most likely, it was just the chemical weapons specialist (given how he was ordering people around) – though he finds the possibility of the Organisation having history with a former NATO project unnvering. However, a Crow background isn't necessary for all of those soldiers to be corrupt, because they sure as fuck were dancing to that tune.

The common figure of speech nowadays is that "a few bad apples" shouldn't be seen representative of the whole bunch.

This is a fallacy, of course.

It's never just a few bad apples. A rotten apple turns the whole barrel bad, and a rotten barrel infects other barrels. And when so many bad apples keep showing up, you have to wonder if the barrel-makers aren't using some naturally rotten materials from the start.

That's Shuichi's understanding of the institutions and systems he works for. He isn't naïve. He knows that even at their best they're just imperfect solutions, most of them are corrupt in some way, and at worst they're so rotten they don't even need outside influence to ruin them. But they give him access to what he needs to fulfil his goals.

And that's why so much turns out to be irrelevant. Even if the people aren't.

The air now doesn't smell of rotting blood and battery acid leaking into sand, but of comfortable British dampness and lead-free exhaust emissions.

His free hand is idly tapping along to the music on the radio. It's a Pink Floyd song, one that his father loved so much he nearly named his daughter after the female vocalist. Shuichi wonders what made him go for 'Masumi' instead, before she was even born.

Dad was always weirdly whimsical. I guess that's why he went along with so much of Mum's bullshit.

Soon, Shuichi's cab is pulling off the dual carriageway, taking the exit for Heathrow Terminal 2, and slowing to a crawl in the queue leading up to the drop-off point.

Shuichi puts his notebook securely back in his breast pocket, pays his driver (£200, the man expresses baffled gratefulness that he didn't pay in 50-pound notes), grabs his bag, and heads in.

As anticipated, check-in is a breeze. He's already striding over to the security checks when he remembers that the UK instituted those no-smoking laws a few years ago. It wasn't even that recently – Shuichi supposes he just doesn't spend much time in closed public spaces when he's here.

So he follows the signs to an outside smoking area first (seems that the signage has improved, probably because of the Olympics coming up in two years) and pulls out the pack of Marlboros that he bought back in Cambridge.

After all, he really shouldn't waste any of those precious bergamot cigarettes he got in Herat-...

A phantom scent catches his nose, and Shuichi hesitates for a moment.

I shouldn't, he tells himself firmly, and lights his cigarette. If I open one of those boxes they'll give me shit for it at security.

               A phantom feeling of lean scarred fingers brushing through his hair-

...and as for you, I'll catch you eventually, beloved enemy.

                                 -a phantom whisper of half-affectionate, half-threatening nicknames.

You, and your smell, and your thirst for blood.

So Shuichi does what he's been doing for most of his life (and with some singular exceptions, succeeding at) – and controls his base urges.

The brand-name cigarettes are fine, after all. They still taste like smouldering tobacco smoke and they still fulfil his unfortunate nicotine addiction. His thoughts remain a hazy grey rather than sinking into the dark unknown. Everything is fine.

Once he finishes a second cigarette (it's a long flight), Shuichi firmly crushes both under his heel and beelines for security. Instead of queuing up with the civilian passengers he goes right to a security officer and shows him the Interpol and NATO certification pages in his passport. The woman looks pretty alarmed and guides him right to the usual security room that's reserved for diplomatic and military travellers.

Still, the staff there raises their eyes eyebrows pretty fiercely when their see he small arsenal Shuichi planning on bringing onboard.

"Got a license for those?" the officer in charge half-jokes.

"Obviously," says Shuichi, and shows him his various documents. "NATO contractor."

"Among other things," the guy marvels, trying to hide the mixture of impressed concern and fearful awe as he runs the documents through the scanner. "Jesus, I feel like I'm in a bloody spy movie just reading this..."

"It's not all it's cracked up to be," Shuichi mutters sarcastically. Then he remembers he should probably try and be collegial, so he forces a cocky chuckles and adds: "Much fewer fit birds in bikinis, for one."

Predictably, that actually gets a laugh out of the security officer. "Hah! I bet. So about these cigarettes..."

"Customs declaration," Shuichi taps the piece of paper stapled to the recall notice he received back in Kabul, before flipping to the next page, "And this clears me for taking firearms and ammunition in my hand luggage."

"R-right," the officer seems pretty relieved that he won't have to actually try and challenge Shuichi on anything. "That all looks fine – just gotta stamp the passport you're going to be..."

Shuichi flips the page on his American passport with a dry, "Cheers, mate."

Thirty seconds and several quick stamps later, Shuichi is tucking all his paperwork back into his Kevlar-lined passport booklet, and from there into the inner pocket of his jacket.

"We're done, right?" Shuichi asks the security guys after shouldering his bag once more (and noting that the iPod is indeed not present). "Got a flight to catch..."

"E-er, yeah- I mean, yes, sir!" the lead officer splutters, "Have a safe flight."

Shuichi manages not to say 'you too'. Instead he casually brushes two fingers past his temple in a lazy sort of salute, and heads out of the security cabin's other exit.

With another forty-five minutes before the flight departs, Shuichi tries to avoid spending too much time in Duty Free. Aside from the cheery prospective and past tourists being generally irritating to circumvent, it's the alcohol section which makes him feel genuinely uneasy.

(Like he's surrounded by hungry ghosts and beloved enemies.)

So far, so good, he thinks as he clears the first major shop, Now which way is my gate-

"Shepherd, my darling boy!"

Shuichi flinches. Fucking jinxed it. Idiot.

Then, he very slowly rights himself to his full height (compartmentalises his highly flammable and cawing thoughts away) and looks over his shoulder.

A petite white woman (164 cm) appearing in her early 40s (in fact she is 52) dressed in lilac-coloured business-wear is cheerfully waving at him from across the Heathrow Duty Free quadrangle. He dutifully stops and waits for her to trot over to him in her patent leather shoes; noting that she's still styling her peroxide blonde hair into victory rolls rather than literally any less-effort hairstyle from the last forty-odd years.

I suppose I can't complain. My hair takes effort too. Maybe I should cut it after all...

"Hi Mary," he says once she's in normal earshot of him.

Mary Sera gasps, putting her hands on her hips. "Is that any bloody way to greet your mother, Shepherd?"

"My name is Shu..." he trails off and shakes his head. Sometimes his mother does get in a more British mood and calls him by his English name, despite everything. "Whatever. If you wanna talk to me before my flight you'll have to get me a coffee."

(The 'English' names of his siblings are Keith for Shukichi, and Melissa for Masumi.
Kitsch doesn't mind his English name so much; Shuichi personally despises his and the overall concept; and he's never heard Mum call Mas 'Melissa'.
He isn't sure if it's favouritism or just because the Japanese name was one Dad chose.)

"Shuichi," she narrows her grey-blue eyes. "I am your mother, not some lower-ranked officer you're trying to get rid of."

Shuichi sighs. Then, he puts out an arm for her and says in comically Proper British, "Would you like to join me for a quick coffee, Mum?"

"Why, I'd love to!" Mary grins, looping her arm through his and nuzzling her face into his shoulder in a momentary half-hug. "Let me pay for it too, I so rarely get to treat my favourite boy."

Shuichi snorts, immediately dropping the accent (though he does let her hold on, because at the end of the day he does love his mother dearly), "Don't let Kitsch catch you saying that."

"He shan't," she sniffs dramatically. "Your brother's on the other side of the world – again. I'm starting to think neither of my boys love me."

"You're right, we don't," he plays along with her melodrama – a tradition, at this point, and he can't help but grin faintly: "We're horrible ungrateful little brats who hate their loving mother despite everything she's done for them."

"I knew it," she gives a single theatrical sob, before coughing into a giggle and then laughing outright. "Lord! I missed so much, Sheppy."

Shuichi can't really reciprocate that particular sentiment, especially after the horrible childhood nickname, but he can say: "I'm sure Kitsch does love you, Mum."

"You little shit!" she laughs, even as she affectionately squeezes his arm. "Say, were you smoking, my lovely?"

The scent has been lingering on his clothes, and Shuichi knows there's no point in lying. "Yup."

"Remorseless!" Mum huffs, "Just like your poor damn father."

"It's alright," Shuichi says in French, "It's not a pipe."

It's a bit too cruel, maybe – loosely reciting some of his late father's last words back to her.

But Mary Sera just chuckles sadly, the way she always used to when a teenage Shuichi asked her about trying to figure out what that message meant. And then she hugs him properly, and it doesn't feel as cold or forced as Shuichi expected.

(In fact, it is warm and kind, and smells of lilacs. Shuichi realises vaguely, as he wraps his arms around her shoulders, that in his absence he may have once again accidentally forgotten that human beings may require genuine physical comfort in order to survive.)

"Now!" Mum pulls away and pats his elbows, "Let's take a look at your- good lord, Shuichi, what on earth are you wearing?"

He looks down himself. "You're gonna tell me I can't wear leather jacket and jeans anymore?"

"Don't be obtuse, love," she laughs, reaching out and straightening his shirt for him, "The pretty characters on your t-shirt – oh, your sister used to love those magic sailor girl animes cartoons!"

Shuichi grimaces (Goddammit, shopping at Oxfam didn't work out at all.) and quickly zips up his jacket. "How's Mas doing, anyway?"

"Oh, she's great," Mary breezily loops her arm through his again and keeps dragging him along, "It's the summer holidays so she's gone for a trip to Europe – Rome, I think? Maybe Berlin."

"Europe? Alone?"

"Of course not!" Mum laughs, "Unlike you, she's managed to make plenty of friends. And yes, I ran background checks."

"What the fuck, Mary-" he starts angrily, but her reproachful gaze quiets him down real quick and he glances up and away as he finishes lamely: "I... I have... erm. Friends."

That might have been the most unconvincing lie I've said in a while.

"Oh I'm sure you do now, darling," Mary says consolingly. Then she perks up as something catches her eye and she lets go of him, "How about this! You'd look so handsome!"

Shuichi follows her gaze to find her already striding confidently into some overpriced boutique-looking clothing store. It stocks fine shirts, pressed trousers, plaid and tartan patterns and fabrics.

("Capitalist parasites," murmurs the memory of a smoky voice.
Shuichi struggles not to agree.)

"Here!" Mary thrusts an armful of button-down shirts to his chest and plucks his duffel bag from his shoulder.

"Mum, I get shot at on a daily basis," Shuichi mutters, "There's no point getting me an Armani shirt."

"It's Burberry, darling!" she corrects him, "Good British pedigree, none of that overblown Italian nonsense."

"Uh-huh," says Shuichi, looking at the price tags.

"And please do hurry, I really would love to catch some tea or coffee with you before you have to catch your flight."

Reluctantly, Shuichi trudges to the changing rooms. It's not difficult to sort the brighter colours and stupid patterns from what his mother has him, leaving him with one olive green paisley button-down and two plain-coloured ones (one blue, one indigo). Halfway through changing he glimpses his reflection in the mirror and frowns as he spots a bite-shaped bruise along his right trapezoid – a fading souvenir from his night with a man who Shuichi ended up shooting the next day.

Funny how that keeps happening, he thinks as he goes back to buttoning up the shirt.

It does fit well, at least. Mary Sera's MI6 training has always doubled for parenting techniques: whether using her person-of-interest recognition training to correctly choose fitting clothes, using tech resources to keep track of her various wayward children, or any number of reflexes and trained dexterity to (almost literally) juggle children of varying ages.

Shuichi exits, shrugging his leather jacket over the blue shirt.

Mary is chattering away to the young white ginger woman behind the cash register. His duffel bag is still slung casually over one of her shoulders, indicating the hard wiry muscle hidden under that petite frame and pastel pantsuit.

"...and oh! There he is!" Mum twirls on her heel as she to smile at him, "My gorgeous boy – isn't he handsome, Heather?"

The civilian woman startles out of her daze and immediately blushes so hard her freckles disappear, "Um, y-yes!"

Shuichi resists rolling his eyes while Mum hands over her credit card. He's aware of the effect he has on women. Instead, he takes his bag back and tries to keep an eye on the civilian airport patrons passing by.

"Look at that," Mary is nudging five minutes and various removed clothes tags later, as they finally trundle out of the shop. "That sweet girl was smitten! You know, if you dressed properly, you'd find a girlfriend in no time."

Shuichi's mind flashes to (a tall green-eyed man with long pale hair) a pretty blue-eyed girl with mid-length dark hair.

("Moya Olyvka" hits harder than "Dai-kun".

In more ways than one, too. Bastard.)

"Oho, I know that look," Mum nudges him again, "You already have someone in mind!"

Shuichi grins bitterly. "Dad used to say that beautiful people will ruin your life."

He was right.

"Oh, you remembered that?" Mum giggles, almost flustered at the memory, "I think... yes, of all the wedding vows, those were my favourite."

"Yeah?" Shuichi cocks an eyebrow. "Was that y'all's second? Or third?"

"Y'all? You've been around Americans too long, my lovely," she clicks her tongue. Then her eyes catch on yet another shop, "How's this place?"

At least this time she doesn't run off toward her location of interest. It's a surprisingly non-chain coffee shop, given a rustic look by the wooden panelling and cosy velvet chairs, and a pleasant amount of green foliage to provide a modicum of privacy.

"Looks expensive," he comments, "And not a huge queue, either."

"Well, that's perfect, right? We're on a time crunch and I have the money," she smiles and begins striding over.

To avoid his mother seeing him scowl at her mention of her very rich background, Shuichi glances over his shoulder at the departures board. Still half an hour before boarding.

"And for your information," Mary carries on primly once he catches up, "It was the fifth. I was already pregnant with Masumi at the time."

Shuichi nearly laughs. "You have to understand that you've not been the best role models when it comes to romantic relationships."

"Nonsense!" Mary laughs. "We always loved each other above all, that's what all the weddings prove and that's what's most important in a relationship."

"And the divorces?"

"W-well!" she splutters, a little embarrassed, "Tom and I decided that divorces are just as fun as weddings."

For about the millionth time in his thirty-one years, Shuichi thinks very lucidly that he really doesn't fucking understand his parents at all.

As a kid he thought it was because they were smart and cool secret agent adults. He realised somewhere between ages 12 and 13 that this may not be the case. Now, he knows that they were just disastrously in love, hated admitting it to each other's faces, and impossibly stubborn.

By this point, they've reached the counter at the coffee shop.

Mary's Perfect Customer Face slides on with practised ease: "Good afternoon! I'd like an Earl Grey tea please – and for food, two slices of that delicious-looking leek quiche, a slice of Victoria Sponge, and a pastel de nata. And – Shepherd, darling, what would you like?"

Shuichi wonders absently if he should maybe order some food too. That croissant feels like centuries ago, and before that last meal had been two MREs back in Kabul... "A plain black coffee."

"An americano, of course," she grumbles.

Shuichi leans on the counter, past his mother, and tells the barista: "Make it a double, and another espresso on the side."

The barista nods, clearly a little alarmed by the tall menacing man – and once Mary swipes her credit card, he gives Mary an order number and encourages them to find a table they'd like to sit at.

"Goodness," Mary smiles as Shuichi drops heavily into a seat at the back of the café that overlooks the entrances and everyone within. "You must be very tired after all that work you did abroad."

"It's been a long few weeks," he tries to brush her off. He doesn't have it in him to be tired – there's too much to do, and not enough people to trust. It's frankly a miracle he napped for a few hours on the Kabul-Lakenheath flight.

"I heard," she gives him a faintly critical once-over, "Messing with the Libyans? Getting in fights in Afghanistan?"

Mum knows about Nimruz-?!

He stops his sharp thoughts in their tracks.

No, she doesn't know. If she knew, she'd be terrified from the start and trying to wring as much information out of me. She's just disappointed. It's about the US Army dickheads. She can't know. James would never tell her and only four other people have clearance.

"...doing lord-knows-what in Kyrgyzstan?" she finishes her list, "Good grief, love, I thought you were done with the Company?"

Shuichi doesn't have the time nor energy to get into an explanation why he still does jobs for the CIA despite having been effectively removed from their official roster of agents five years ago. Access to a global network of resources in return for competent clandestine immoral manpower is a deal only few would accept.

So he just says, "It's classified."

"Pull the other one, it's got bells on it," she huffs. Then she leans back into his personal space and gently tugs at a lock of hair falling over his shoulder with a reproachful, "Oh, honestly darling, that hair...?"

He gently but firmly takes her wrist and removes her hand from his hair. "I'm not cutting it."

"I'm not asking you to!" she squeaks defensively, tugging her hand back and wrapping her fingers around each other, "I... just. Doesn't it get in the way?"

He briskly ties it into a low ponytail. "It really doesn't."

She looks at him for a moment, like she wants to say something unpleasant. Like she knows why he's grown it out, why he kept it long, how he learned to care for it and who taught him in what circumstances-

"If you say so," she sighs.

And then the barista calls out their order number, and Mary heads over to pick up their drinks.

Shuichi could kick himself. Of course she doesn't know. She might be MI6 but she doesn't know about the Crows. And anyway, I didn't grow it out for Him. I just decided I could keep it long with-

A whiff of Earl Grey tea harshly tears Shuichi out of his self-justifications.

(black keemun leaves
smoky lapsang suchong 
bergamot orange oil)

Mary is returning to their table, dextrously balancing a platter with their various orders atop: the pastries, the coffee and espresso, her little pot of tea and accompanying clear mug.

The moment she puts the tablet down, Shuichi grabs his espresso and throws it back like it's a shot of vodka. It nearly scalds his mouth and tongue – but that's better than that nearly-familiar scent staying in his sinuses for the next several hours.

Mary passes him one of the plates of quiche, and by the time she's handing him the slice of cake he's already devoured his quiche so she gives him the other slice too.

"Have you been eating properly, baby?" she asks, half-amused and half-worried.

"Yeah," he shrugs, "Just hard to get a proper meal when you're on the road."

"Mhm," Mary purses her lips, a smidge more concerned now. "I'll get you a few sandwiches from here too. You can eat them on the flight."

He shrugs again. "I couldn't stop you if I tried."

"Silly boy," she grins, bouncing up again and ruffling his hair, "I'll be right back."

Shuichi has a staring contest with her steaming pot of tea. Did she always like her Earl Grey this strong? Surely it's steeped enough by now?

"Here you go!" she drops the paper bag onto the table, "All wrapped up for you. You will have to eat it before you reach Iceland, you know hoe security on America-bound flights is with tinfoil."

"...thanks," he mutters. Part of him still gets overwhelmed by the sheer degree of care his mother shows him, despite all the bullshit he's put her through.

To be fair, she and dad put me through plenty of bullshit too. It's fifty-fifty, really, we're all to blame.

"You know, love," Mum starts as she finally pours herself some tea, in the same tone as when she had to explain to a ten-year-old him that the family dog was being put down, "Given how much you tried to give me the run-around with the flights and the taxi, I'd almost think you didn't want to meet me."

Shuichi scoffs. "What gave it away?"

"Pft! You really are such a brat sometimes!" she tuts fondly, and takes a sip of her tea. "Oh... what a lovely cuppa. How's yours?"

Shuichi grinds his teeth so he won't think about the smoky-citric-bitter-herbal scents she's drinking and stuffs another forkful of cake in him mouth. "Mmh. Good."

She smiles warmly – but something about it is so sad even Shuichi can recognise it.

He washes down his mouthful with a gulp of (frankly, excellent) coffee and tells her: "Please stop looking at me like that."

"I'm sorry," she lowers her eyes, "I just – I really do worry about you, Shep."

"I'm thirty-one," he tells her firmly, "I've been trained by the best in the world. I can take care of myself."

"I know you physically can – but... oh, Shuichi," she reaches forward and gently brushes her fingers against his bruised knuckles, "If there's anything you need help with – you've got a place to come back to. I've got my mother's old place up in the Midlands, and James has helped a lot of people get out of the service too..."

"I don't need help, Mary. And I'm fine with the work, too."

"I..." she returns her hands around her mug, as if it's going to somehow anchor her when she's started of drifitng away. "I know you're in deep, Shuichi. You and Tom – you're just alike when you get your teeth in something."

A chilling unease runs up his spine at the direct mention of his core motivation. He manages to fight the urge to recite Tsutomu's usual figure of speech about the chances being 50/50, about both sides being to blame.

But clearly, Mary still recognises something about his hesitation, because she continues: "I know you said you weren't going to follow in his footsteps, but you're my boy. You don't need to use your words for me to know what you've been up to."

He really used to think they were infallible, Marianne Serafim and Tsutomu 'Thomas' Akai. And not just in the way that a child thinks of their parents, but the way anyone might think of their heroes.

('We could be heroes!'
an echo of a song once loved by the whole family hums in his mind,
'Just for one day...')

But then Tsutomu disappeared, with his last message arriving in October 1993. Heroically, Mary didn't fall apart – but unheroically, she sharply came together in a small compact force of energy. She became more restrictive and controlling, spontaneously moved the family from Japan to the UK, dropped half the syllables from her first and surname, changed the kids' surnames to match hers, used her connections to change birth and marriage certificates, refused to let any of her children out of her sight. Of course a bitterly angry testosterone-filled Shuichi was going to fight that.

Presently, Shuichi knows he needs to stop her train of thought. He has to keep his family safe too, just like she did seventeen years ago. He has to keep her from opening Pandora's box.

He opens his mouth-

"There was something..." she starts, and her voice is lower now, not a whisper but a particular vocal frequency that (with the airport crowds outside) makes it hard to pick up on audio surveillance. "Something about this 'Organisation' your father was investigating. I didn't catch much, but there was a curious way it was talked about. See: it was black – not like the colour, but like the term used to discuss clandestine operations."

The dread sinks dark and heavy in his stomach (or maybe that's the food he ate too quickly). But oddly, it's not panic that floods his system. And it's not resignation. It is the same calm controlled tension as when he is gazing down the scope of his preferred Accuracy International rifle.

Shuichi Akai regards his MI6 agent mother.

('Whatever happened to all of the heroes?'
a different song scoffs, one that his father liked very much)

She, and her late husband – they're just people like him. He knows that his weaknesses (obsessions, paranoia, irrational) are not unique. He knows most of his idiosyncrasies (taking notes, clocking expressions and gestures, rarely saying what he means) are inherited, either by blood or by habit, from them.

"...don't look at me like that, Shepherd. I know you know what I'm talking about."

He knows that she cannot possibly be allowed to know what he's done. What he's still doing. How deeply he has already gazed into the abyss – how silky-softly it welcomed him – how sticky it remains in the crevices and fissures of his mind.

Shuichi says, decisively: "...I know that you don't know what you're talking about."

Mary's expression flickers from initial hurt to confusion, to something very close to genuine fear (which Shuichi only recognises it because it's the same expression she had when she got that final phone call from Dad), before finally settling into the appropriate and expected degree of maternal offence.

"Don't you pull that shit on me, young man," she glares at him, "I am your mother."

Shuichi can't help but smirk fondly at that. "Yeah, Mum. You won't let me forget, either."

Another fraction of a second where emotions cross her face – too quick and complicated for him to clock it all. Maybe more fear, more realisation-

"-Icelandair flight for Keflavik International will be boarding..."

"Right," Shuichi stands up sharply, "That's me."

"Oh, already?" Mum's shoulders drop in disappointment, "Baby, please don't be a stranger..."

"Don't try to track me down like this again," he says as he hefts his bag over his shoulder again, "You know we do dirty work. it'll just make you sad to remember your son does it too."

"I... I'm just worried about you," she says again, and reaches out and grasps his hand.

('Are you hoping for a miracle?'
the much more recent song flickers though his mind-)

He thinks about the ended lives, the empty drinks, the shards of glass in brown eyes.

Shuichi squeezes her hand back. Then he lets go to grab the paper bag of food she'd ordered for him, and smiles the way he has for seventeen years: "Don't be."

(-and finishes in:
'It's not enough, it's not enough.')

It's only much later, when he's on the plane and decides to change back into his t-shirt, that he finds the present.

His old iPod, still battered and cracked, is lying on top of his guns and folded clothes and cigarette boxes. With it is the charging cable he bought in Kabul, a fresh set of earphones, a plain black beanie and knitted scarf, and a cheesy London souvenir postcard.

Mum's handwriting is unmistakable:

Well, thinks Shuichi dryly as he reads  over the last  post-post-postscript, I can't very well do that on the plane.

But he can plug the iPod into his portable charging block and see what his mother decided what parts of home he should 'take with him'.

He's pleasantly surprised. He finds all of the old classics: Dad's heavy metal, punk and psychedelic rock bands – the varied range of alt-rock, garage and Britpop that Shuichi started listening to after he returned home after 2000 – one of Shukichi's J-rock albums which accidentally got smuggled in – a few select Elgar and Beatles tracks from Mary's own collection.

He also finds the contents of the one mixtape that a much younger and angrier Shuichi owned between ages 14 and 17.

Got a hunch these songs will make a lot more sense to me now than they did to that angsty little brat.

He grins ruefully as he sticks his headphones in and hits play.

            'The world is a vampire, sent to drain.
            Secret destroyers, hold you up to the flames...'

-x-