Chapter 11 #3
Dan walked through the dark and thought about honor. About what it meant to the man who'd said it. About what it meant to him. They were not the same thing.
They had never been the same thing.
* * *
Back at the safe house, the tablet was already lit up.
Ring's face filled the screen before Raven had her tactical vest off. He looked like a man who'd been sitting in front of his computers for the last three days. His hair stood up on end, and there were dark bags under his eyes. The man probably hadn’t slept much since he’d been handed the information on the Scroll.
"You got them," he said.
"We got them." Raven set the camera on the table and attached it to the tablet. "Everything. Intake records, behavioral assessments, and training progressions. Decades of documentation."
Ring's eyes were already moving across whatever was coming through on his end. "The scope of this—" He stopped. Started again. "He trained more students than we anticipated. Significantly more. The compartmentalization was—" Another stop. "This will take me hours to fully process."
"Then start now," Raven said.
"Already started." A pause. His voice dropped slightly, losing some of its relentless energy. "Are you both—"
"We're fine," Dan said from across the room.
Ring looked at him through the screen. A brief assessment. "Okay." Then back to Raven. "I'll have a preliminary profile map by the time you land."
"Good."
"And Raven." Ring paused. "Whatever he said to you in there. He's wrong."
“How—?” Raven asked him.
“I had a live satellite. I saw one man go in, and he was in there a while with you. I figured he was being a dick.”
She looked at the screen. Something changed in her attitude as she stared at it. She smiled at Ring. "Go process the files," she said quietly.
The tablet went dark.
* * *
The safe house was very still. They'd secured the files. Checked their own status, which was just minor bruising from the guards, nothing requiring attention. The operational debrief was minimal because there was nothing to debrief. They'd gone in. They'd gotten what they came for. They'd come out.
Kuro had let them.
That sat in his gut like something undigested and rancid. He was at the kitchen counter, making tea again without thinking, when he heard her behind him.
Turning, he saw her standing in the doorway of the main room, her jacket off, the two personnel files in her hands. Hers and his. She held his out, and he crossed the room and took it.
They looked at each other.
The documentation of what they'd been. What they'd been made into. Kuro's meticulous, clinical assessment of two children he'd taken from orphanages and shaped into weapons.
"On the plane," she reminded him. “We’re going to read them on the plane.”
"Together?"
She considered that. "Separately, but together."
He understood the distinction.
Separate because the contents were private. Together because neither of them should read what Kuro had written about them completely alone.
"Okay, that works for me," he said.
She looked at the file in his hands, then up at him.
"He meant it," she said. "What he said at the end. He genuinely believes we'll honor him."
"I know."
"Does that—" She stopped. "Does it change anything for you?"
He thought about it. About the boy who'd loved Kuro with the desperate, uncritical devotion of a child given purpose. About what it meant that the man who'd given him everything had also tried to use everything he'd built in him as a weapon.
"No," he said. "It doesn't change anything."
She nodded and held his gaze for a moment. “It doesn’t change anything for me, either. If anything were to have changed, we might not be here now.”
It all solidified in one moment. The weight of the compound, the confrontation, the guards, the records, the old man's voice … All of it pressed into this small modern Japanese safe house in the middle of the night, with the two of them standing right in the middle of it.
He didn't reach for her. But he didn't move away either.
She was the one who moved. She closed the distance between where they were standing by half. Not much, but enough. Enough to say something without saying it.
"Try to sleep," she said. "We're on a plane in six hours."
"You, too."
She turned toward her room.
"Raven."
She stopped.
"Ring was right," he said quietly. "What he said to us in there. He's wrong."
She stood with her back to him for a moment, and he saw her shoulders move.
One breath. "I know," she said, turning.
“I know that up here.” She touched her temple.
“In here, it will take some time to believe.” She touched her heart.
“In here is confused and still in shock, maybe in a bit of pain, but … give me time.”
Dan stood in the kitchen with the tea and the files and the cedar forest pressing dark against the windows.
He’d give her all the time in the world.
He saw his Emi more and more when they spoke.
He glanced at the files and the memory of the man who’d been the impetus to tear them apart.
He sneered, “I will honor you, Kuro, just not in the way you think, you bastard.”