Ties

by Rob Morris

THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON HUMAN EVOLUTION, BREAKFRONT ISLAND, OFF THE COAST OF KAMAKURA, KANAGAWA, KANTO, JAPAN - 1996

"Thank you so much, Room Monitor. With all the guards late this morning, we have no escorts."

The discovery of a discarded plastic 35MM film canister had both Kakuzawas on high alert, and the guards who weren't being held up from entering or leaving were busy inspecting the ones that were. Kurama knew Subject Seven had to be gotten in for testing - the adage that they were only this young once worked double-time, since every twelve hours was a day, when dealing with a horned girl.

"I believe I can transport Subject Seven to her destination. She is a quiet one, well behaved, and with no abnormal activity at her eighteen months, I think I'm safe."

Not that he was in danger of infection by her. Hadn't he learned that the hard way? But that life was gone. No more children, no more wife. He recalled telling a man who nearly ended up working on the island that he could not see his daughter who was taken there - in fact, the very girl he now held in his arms - that of course he couldn't see her there. Now, that rule applied to him as well. Mariko was in a section of the facility he had no access to. He had saved her, and entered what was nearly indentured servitude to the Kakuzawas. But for all he could actually see her, she may as well have been dead.

"Let's hope, little one, that the tests we conduct upon you lead us to the origins of this mutation. By our best estimates, your father may have been one of the original infected."

Oddly, her little eyes seemed to attend his words. Was comprehension even possible, he wondered? This was a new species, and even the limited information they had about their development indicated wide variance in all skill sets.

"Number Seven - let's get you to a place where idle speculation gives way to hard science-"

He smiled despite himself. He was still holding a young child, and certain tender feelings were impossible to shut out entirely.

"-though not too hard for you, I hope."

The girl responded to his smile with her own, and then proved that, mutations and possible new evolution aside, she was still a Human baby. She playfully grabbed at his necktie, which practice meant was quite snug around his neck already.

"Number Seven-you must stop this! You are choking meeeee!"

Gasping for air, he acted to deny the baby her plaything by yanking it away, finally forced to throw the tie over his shoulder to keep her from simply grabbing it again.

"Young lady, there is civilized behavior, and then there is chaos..."

Chaos was indeed the order of the day, as a baby suddenly denied a plaything decided to make her displeasure known, at the top of her small but powerful lungs.

"oh, please don't cry..."

Kurama thought briefly of karma. The way in which he'd attempted to kill the newborn Mariko with all malice and forethought nearly became his undoing at the hands of another innocent Diclonius child. For some reason, he also thought back to the baby's cousin, a girl whose name he did not recall, who had admonished him to be the child's new parent.

"At least she was calmer than that demonic mother of hers. Number Seven...please stop crying!"

He looked about the corridors for any aid he could, and of course there was none. The alert meant that anyone not directly overseeing one of the girls was part of the lockdown to find out if a roll of film had been smuggled out, or was trying to be so.

"Wait. That door. I've never seen this part of the facility before. Is anyone inside this area?"

Kurama was now flatly desperate, and Number Seven's lungpower seemed as formidable as any hidden ability she might have. So he waved his access card, and surely enough, it let him in. Of course, he could not know that this level of access had been mistakenly assigned to him, and was only supposed to rest with Chief Minister Kakuzawa. A keystroke error on the part of an overworked tech meant this mistake could go forward and this tech would soon be unsuccessfully begging for his life.

"Hello? You over there? Could you help me?"

The woman was decidedly plain-looking, but to Kurama, she was a goddess if she could just calm his charge down. She did seem very surprised to see him in there, and there was good reason for this.

For in a way, this woman was a goddess, with the power to reshape Human evolution. Sadly, this power was held in the vise-like grip of a madman whose insanity Kurama would one day learn the full measure of.

"Please-she won't stop crying."

The woman immediately placed her gaze on the baby's head.

"Give her here. This child is a horned girl? There's more than one?"

Kurama was too agitated to take stock of this odd statement. Later on, he would wonder how anyone could work in the facility and not know there was more than one horned girl.

"Yes. We bring them here out of an abundance of caution. We feel they may gain strange abilities one day, but the age threshold has yet to be determined. Number Seven is normally a very good girl, but now she won't stop crying."

The woman in fact did not work there, though everyone who did would soon enough know this woman's works. In particular, the security staff.

"You call her Number Seven? She looks about three years old, but she still has crying jags like these?"

Kurama realized something strange, this time about himself. He had been using the English pronunciation of 'Seven' rather than the Japanese, almost unconsciously.

"Seven, like all Diclonius, ages twice as quickly as normal Human children. As to calling her that, I suppose I use 'Seven' to differentiate from Nana, which in our land can also be a proper given name. She is just an experiment, after all."

The woman, whoever she was and where ever she had come from, seemed to be able to do magic with the child, and she was once again calm and cooing.

"I-how horrible. Here, you hold her again. Perhaps you should remember, if she ages so quickly, then any time spent away from you seems longer, and her time with you more precious as a result."

Kurama almost felt compelled to correct her.

"She and I have no connection. She is just an experiment."

The woman turned and walked away as she responded.

"You called her a good girl. People don't call experiments such. I can see the affection in your eyes. My own husband refused to even hold our child. I am a simple thing, but not as stupid as some seem to think. Now you should go."

Kurama realized that, even with the lockdown, he had taken a very long time to get where he was supposed to be, and so heeded the woman, taking his charge directly to her observation room.

In weeks to come, he would try to find this helpful woman again. But construction in that part of the facility meant that he could never even find that one door again, and if he had, his mistaken access had long since been removed.

In the observation chamber, he saw that no staff had yet arrived.

"Room Monitor Kurama to Security. Is the lockdown still in effect?"

*Just now lifted, Room Monitor. Turns out some poor dope is on a sugar-restricted diet, and used the film roll to sneak jelly beans past his nagging wife. If the Kakuzawas don't throw him out the door, the other guys are gonna rag on him something fierce.*

Yet the backlog meant that it might still be an hour before the staff got in there, so Kurama shrugged and began to see what if anything he could observe from the child.

"Now, Number Seven, speak. You should be ready to by now."

He pointed to his own throat, and gestured at hers. But now not even so much as a coo or a gurgle came out.

"Number Seven-speak. Say something."

She was the proverbial child who had been unable to stay quiet who now would not utter a sound. Exasperated, Kurama raised his voice, though he did not yell.

"Nana!"

The girl's eyes lit up, and she did indeed say her first word, one that had Kurama's eyes wide as saucers.

"Papa!"

Elsewhere in the facility, a big man glared at a small but determined woman.

"You say you passed no message on to him? Why should I believe you?"

She was sadly very used to this game, and his ascendant paranoia.

"Why would I even try that? I thought at first his entry might be some sort of test or trap for me. Kurama, you say his name was-he works for you, like everyone else here. My concern was for the little girl he held."

Chief-Minister Kakuzawa seemed unmoved.

"Why would you not wish to even try and escape?"

It was her turn to glare.

"Even if I escaped, even if I found my way out, and even if I then avoided your grasp on the outside, how would I ever see my son again? You let me see him rarely enough, and hold him almost never. Check your own cameras and microphones, and don't tell me you don't have them. I told Kurama nothing."

Kakuzawa moved to exit the smaller room in which she was being temporarily kept, until the new wing could be finished and isolated from all accidental intrusion.

"If your behavior has been as model as you claim, you may get to visit with our son by the end of this month. But on the off-chance you should see Kurama again, make no attempt at alliance with him."

She may well have been a simple girl, as many had called and dismissed her as, but she saw little to no chance of meeting Kurama again, and in this, she was quite correct.

*So-he seems to fear Kurama for some reason. He needs his services, but worries that his intellect will see the Doctor to his schemes' undoing. Yet he couldn't reason out a small child's love. Live for your Nana, Kurama. Just as I live to see my son, and maybe-just maybe-one bright day, to once again see and hold my daughter, my precious Kaede.*