And here we are! It was both a long and a short journey. Updates on the status of the next part are in my author profile. Thank you, everyone, for your support!

Epilogue: Escape Velocity

Pakunoda found her quarry in the last place she would have expected: the airship's exclusive lower lounge. In retrospect, she should have known it. The man simply loved being impossible to predict.

"Hisoka," she greeted him with courtesy. Years of pretending kept her smile polite. "There you are."

The magician, face clean and hair slicked down and dressed in a formal business suit, nodded with equal civility.

"Mind if I join you?" She was already seated across from him, waving aside a waiter, before he could respond. "I think it's time we continued that chat."

"Of course." A flash of teeth was his answer. "Anything the famous Pakunoda considers worth my time … You've caused quite a commotion, you know. The Spider's antics never fail to amuse."

Irritation narrowed her cool eyes. "So glad that we keep you entertained."

He saluted her with his glass of whiskey, a quite clink of ice accenting the gesture.

"There's no chance that Phinks or Feitan will show up?" she demanded.

The chain would kill her the moment she began to breathe the same air as her comrades. It wouldn't be enough time to get off even a single memory-bullet.

I'll do what I can, when the time comes. Pakunoda tucked a strand of colorless blond hair behind her ear. Trust Dancho to follow the trail. And come up with a plan. The chain around her heart twisted uneasily … though she suspected it was just a phantom sensation: the illusion of her own paranoia.

The magician patted the briefcase resting at his side. "Those two are enjoying themselves. I doubt they'd come back out for anything less than Kuroro." His expression turned cunning. "Speaking of our beloved leader…"

"I've kept your secret, and you've kept mine."

"I'm surprised," he replied after a moment – and it sounded like the truth, at last. His expression turned vaguely disappointed. "And here I was, looking forward to persuading you."

"You said it yourself," Pakunoda shrugged. "Your only interest in Dancho is fighting him."

"That's right."

"I just don't think he'll lose to someone like you."

Hisoka's eyes turned flat and dead at her bland smile.

"Be careful, Pakunoda."

The Spider smirked. "I am."

His eyes glinted coldly, and he slid a scrap of paper across the table to her.

"This is the address?" she took it eagerly – an unguarded weakness she normally wouldn't betray … but Hisoka meant little to her now.

"Yes." The man eyed her in speculation. "I'm curious, of course, why you chose the Kurata as your partner. An odd way to play. For someone so cautious."

"I'm not playing." She got to her feet, leaning over to kiss the air beside his cheek – keeping up this ruse that they were old friends. "Goodbye, Hisoka."

I doubt we'll meet again.

She could feel his gaze, cunning and dangerous, clinging to her as she left the lounge.

Unlike the lower levels, the upper observation deck was mostly deserted – which suited her just fine. Pakunoda watched York Shin disappear in the airship's windows; her departure from the city a quiet, unremarkable ripple. Traveling unnoticed was one of her specialties.

She would slip off the ship at the next stop, and set about finding herself a computer. Access to the Hunter Site was restricted to members, but stealing the card off of a rookie would be the simplest part of her plan.

What little plan she had, now.

But there's no choice but to continue.

She could not return to the Ryodan, possibly not ever. Paku examined her torn nails and smiled with self-deprecating amusement. Maybe, she admitted, it would have been better to stay. To face Dancho and the others and endure the accusation and betrayal on their faces … but she'd wanted something to show for that betrayal. She'd wanted to hand all the chain-user's secrets over in exchange: proof that despite everything she was still loyal. That everything she did, she did for the Spider.

Foolish. Now everything she'd feared they would wonder behind her back had become a certainty. Rather than endanger the trust of the only people important to her, she'd lost it completely. So very, very foolish.

This was what happened when people got attached. No one ever set out to hurt or betray … it just became inevitable as years passed and secrets grew and old promises were forgotten. It was simple, human stupidity.

Too bad, girl, she smirked at the absent Kurata, wandering somewhere in the city falling away below. You had your chance to know the answers. What better way, after all, to deceive than to tell the truth? Paku had long ago learned to blend reality and illusion together – to the point where only a very few people could catch her in an actual lie.

The Kurata had been right not to trust her. But then she'd out-smarted herself, grasped the available facts and taken off in the opposite direction. Leaving Pakunoda to exploit the weakness of her unguarded back.

It was naïve of the child to threaten any of the Spiders with death. Ubo also thought like this. Paku tapped cracked fingernails against the glass. None of us would sell the Spider to save our lives.

Hisoka didn't count. He wasn't a Spider. She suspected he didn't even know about Kurapika's nen-sealing technique … he'd simply heard of such things and seized it as a convenient cover. The irony left her grimacing at her own reflection.

For good or for ill, he's not my problem.

The Kurata girl, on the other hand … Her existence was a mistake. If she'd only died with all the others! The curses would have stayed sealed for all eternity, drowned in their own darkness.

Instead, the ghosts of the Kurata clan had been spat back up, dragged themselves out of hell, to haunt Paku and the rest of the Spiders with their bitterness and impotent hatred for the world. Four years since the Kurata clan died by our hands … I had almost forgotten, myself. Ironic, really ― it had been so long that even her perfect memory started to fade.

Live a lie long enough, she began to file her nails back into an acceptable shape, and you'll come to believe it.

Killua threw open the window of the train, leaning over the edge to listen to the echoes of the deserted station. Three guards on this side of the platform – probably professional hunters, though not all that skilled – and another group on the other side. After the first copy of the game had been stolen, Battera upped his security measures, so all the hunters hired to play were taking a private train out to his private estate.

Of course, Killua and Gon were among them. The Zaoldyek smirked to himself. Despite numerous distractions and blind alleys, their goal in York Shin had been met: both he and Gon had developed hatsu into workable attacks.

We've achieved an even better level of strength.

They had qualified for the job of clearing Greed Island … though they weren't seriously playing to win … so he should feel smug and satisfied at this point. But not knowing the employer's goal made him twitchy. After all, when working as an assassin the first step was to know the man signing the check – as his father had taught him – and only after you were sure that the job held no hidden traps did you set about doing it.

"Find out what's underneath the money, but never get involved in it."

Business was business: and that meant acting out of impersonal efficiency, not personal ideas.

But that's father's way of thinking. Killua was a hunter now, not an assassin. I don't have to follow anybody's rules anymore.

"Still, I wonder what he's after," he muttered to himself.

"Battera?" Gon jumped around in his seat, still high from the elation of qualifying. "I saw an interview, and he said that it was 'love.' He bought all the auction's copies of Greed Island because he wants to have all of the thing he loves for himself."

"He doesn't even play it," Killua grumbled, sliding sideways into the cushions and propping his feet up on the windowsill. How is that love?

He dug the last fortune cookie, swiped from the restaurant where they had said goodbye to Leorio, out of its plastic wrapper. He's paying millions of zenni to whoever completes the game that could kill you … There has to be a reason. People didn't just throw money like that away.

"I figured one thing out, at least," he shared what he had concluded from the contract that Leorio had helped them decipher before they committed to signing it.

"One: be prepared for injury or death in the game. Two: Battera keeps anything you bring back from the game. Three: five billion zenni to the person who first completes the game." That was the gist of the contract they had agreed to.

"Oh?" asked Gon, readjusting the fishing pole sticking like a flag out of his backpack. "What did you spot?"

"Something can be brought back from the game to reality." Killua waved the cookie in a gesture encompassing the private train, the professional hunters, and the situation in general. "And it's that something that Battera wants at any cost."

Gon smiled. "It must be what he loves, right?"

"I guess." Killua licked the last flaky crumbs of sugar off his fingers.

Unread, he let the scrap of paper from inside the fortune cookie flutter out the window as the train picked up speed and carried them off to their next adventure.

Kuroro woke suddenly, a startling rush of returning consciousness leaving him exactly where he had fallen asleep: at a table piled with books and papers.

It's been a while since I drifted off like that. Amused by the lapse and its evidence of carelessness, he ran a hand through his disordered hair and shook off the clinging haze of unfinished dreams. His mouth tasted stale with sleep and he had a slight crick in his neck from the impromptu nap. Maybe I'm getting old.

But there were more pressing matters to worry about than the whims of time, and they occupied at him all the way into the bathroom.

I am … probably not going to recover my nen. It had taken him days to accept that his worst case scenario was, in fact, a reality. He stared at the water gushing from the tap, but made no move to wash his face like he'd planned.

None of his followers had noticed yet, but it was only a matter of time before someone realized what had happened … If he continued working in close association with them, that is. Ordinarily, Kuroro preferred to leave as soon as they completed the job – the Ryodan was not a conventional organization, and treating it as such only put them all under an annoying amount of internal stress – and he enjoyed spending time unfettered by other people's demands.

Besides all that, he liked to maintain an enigmatic, aloof image.

But perhaps I should join Phinks's team, searching for a nen-eraser, this time. From what he'd read about the game, only a rudimentary projection of aura was necessary to enter Greed Island … and he was still perfectly capable of doing the basic exercises. He wasn't crippled.

But his hatsu, his beautifully crafted book with its collection of skills was gone. Or rather, it was out of reach. The aura would build up around his hand – until he could almost feel the cover against his palm and fingers – then the power would burst like a light-bulb fed too much electricity. In the end, all he got for his trouble was a stinging, numb tingle of pain in his right arm.

Kuroro tried and failed again to summon the book, his hand closing on empty space.

Then a piece of paper crumpled between his fingers.

For a moment, confidence and the expectant upsurge of success spiked within him … until he looked down and realized that it was only the last thing he'd been reading before he slept: the prediction Neon Nostrad had written for the chain-user.

Unthinking, he must have carried it into the bathroom with him.

I must be tired, to start missing obvious things like this.

He'd taken to brooding over the fortune in his spare moments, trying to pry out hints of the Kurata's future or his own past. But the exercise was proving to be one of futility.

'Where three roads meet you are standing
in the gathering and scattering of ashes.
Your prayer that not one thing be lost
will be denied again
unless you choose that which is loved.

A door opens, but the way is barred.
Blood of the fallen paints the lintel and threshold,
and in all your oceans there is no salt to purify.
Do not take the offered hand
for it has not been outstretched to aid you.

Shrouded in fever like a flame upon the deeps
you must open your eyes
before the depths of memory close over your head.
The angel of massacre descends once more
to lament the sacred waters.'

Like all the others it was a riddle … but one that meant nothing to him. Whatever message the words communicated to Kurapika (blood-type AB, birthdate April 4th of seventeen years ago), it meant nothing to him. If I remembered what happened — But complaining about the lack of clear information was an inefficient use of time.

A splotch of red appeared in one corner, seeping through the paper.

Blood?

The Spider flipped the page around, more curious than perturbed in those first few seconds before he understood what was happening.

His right hand was bleeding … the hand he'd lost to the curse … Another symptom, probably, connected to the loss of his hatsu.

Evidently, there are some things even Machi's threads can't reattach.

Dark drops of red oozed from beneath his fingernails. He'd tracked it everywhere, he saw now, on everything he'd touched: the faucet handles, the doorknob, the chipped white counter tiles, a thumbprint even smeared across the tattoo on his forehead.

Kuroro stood at the sink a long time, the gurgling language of water rushing in his ears, staring at his empty hand. Then he started to laugh.

Kurapika trudged through the desert, days away from the nearest sign of human beings. She had run out of food yesterday – but there were enough cacti in the area to keep her fed and supplement her waning supply of water. Enough to survive, at any rate. She suspected that she had begun to lose her grip on the reality of this ill-planned trek somewhere around the fourth day … but around the same time she'd ceased to care.

Filthy, covered with sand and the reddish dust from scrambling up and down rock formations, she didn't even register the smell of her own sweat. The uncaring sun stared down at her: a scorched, flaming eye that followed her bug-like progress through the endless wastes.

Exhausted, she threw herself down in the shade of another cliff.

A shadow of memories and regret lay beside her.

"Are you real?" she asked, days of silence finally cracking her determination to ignore the illusion. The lack of water burned in her throat and cracked her lips with a sudden taste of blood. "Or are you my mind playing tricks?"

I am.

"The strongest in the Ryodan." She laughed bitterly. "So I got what I wanted."

A real match.

For a moment, just breathing hurt in a way that had nothing to do with the heat and dehydration.

You don't seem surprised that I'm here.

She wanted to say something different, but could only repeat the words from her memory – conversations long finished and meaningless now. The hollow murmurs of the past.

"I've seen ghosts before."

It's only a matter of time—

"You lied to me. You said they were all dead." Her voice whispered across barren rock and sand. "You said that you didn't remember because we weren't worth it. You lied to me!"

She shouldn't have felt betrayed – but somehow, she did. The Ryodan, my comrades, even my friends! No one could be completely trusted. No one could be believed.

I told you the truth.

"I won't accept that!"

This is just the way it is for us.

"You were weak." She struck out desperately, but he was an illusion – a mirage of the wasteland conjured up by conscience and the pitiless sun. Even his spirit had vanished from this world. "The chain broke because I was too weak to hold you any longer. Because you didn't hate me enough. That's the only reason!"

Ubo smiled.

And she could no longer deny the truth.

"How could you just let go of your regrets? How could you—"

I've seen unhappy people before. The big man shook his head. I wish I had the chance—

"There are no second chances." Her arms crossed defensively, curling around her torso to keep herself from falling apart. Grit from the desert crunched between her teeth, scraping against her dry tongue. "There are more important things than what you want. More important than what anyone wants! Thief!"

It was fun.

"I hated it. I hate you. I'll never stop hating you! You and your damned Spider."

It didn't matter what Pakunoda said. What the Ryodan did or did not know. So what if they had lost their memories? She hated them more for having the luxury, the peace of forgetfulness! After what they had done—

Nothing in particular.

"I hate you." Her breath sobbed out, broken and ashamed. "I hate you."

The best feeling is crushing all that conviction with your hands.

She turned her back on her own shadow, but the darkness clung to her doggedly – step for step across the wasteland.

The humans were taken completely by surprise when her children crawled up the feeding chutes to attack them. Deep joy clawed at the Chimera Queen's insides with all the ferocity of her hunger. She had timed the invasion well – waiting until the strongest of the presences she sensed above had retired during the nocturnal lull of human activity. Their movements had become predictable, and she took ruthless advantage of it.

Through the telepathic link that connected her to the very thoughts of her servants, she ordered them to capture the humans and carry them down to her.

Most of them survived the trip.

Fascinated, she watched their flexible lips move to produce meaningless sounds as they were dumped at her delicately arched feet. She imitated the motions – but the mandibles protruding from her own mouth prevented her from duplicating the strange effect. It amused her to hear the variety of noises that emerged from the humans when they saw her doing that.

In the end, she ate them anyway.

And then the Queen began to make new plans, her intellect swarming with ideas now that she had devoured the superior reasoning capabilities of her creators.

She could feel the pull of the surface calling to her – somewhere there would be a perfect place to construct her own nest. A throne she carved out for herself, that would stand in the home of generation after generation of her children. Somewhere, there was a place she longed to reach.

The top of the world.