“T.E.N.A.N.T.”
Author’s
Notes: Yay for psyche cats! Mwahaha. Now you get to find
out why Ren was such an asshole.
He
sat rigid on the examination table, glowering through the glass at the doctors
who were discussing something amongst each other. Through their gestures, Gackt could only
guess that the subject of their discourse was himself. His eyes flicked to Fujimura who stood apart
from the others. They regarded each
other apathetically. Visible emotion was
a danger in this place: always. But it
seemed to the man seated on the steel table, that the Lieutenant’s eyes were
clouded by something…
The
doctors finished their altercation and turned back to the patient in the other
room. One of them pushed a button to the
intercom and spoke, his voice loud and gravelly, distorted by the poor connection,
“We have one more test.” With that, the
others walked through the air tight door that sealed off their patient from the
rest of the world.
*****
Cha
watched from the outside as the doctors went about preparing Gackt for a psyche
catechization. A risky venture, as
always, but even more so with a possibly unstable patient.
The
man on the table was instructed to lie down, which he did without question, but
he continued to watch Cha with his cold, dark eyes. A doctor unintentionally walked in between
them, blocking the Lieutenant’s view.
Gackt’s body
suddenly spasmed in pain on the table. Two of the doctors pressed their hands
against the other’s chest and arms, holding him down should he struggle.
Closing
his eyes, Fujimura recalled the bitter memories of his own experience of the
catechization…the needles, the plugs, the wires connecting his mind to the
unaffected computer; watching everything happen again and again, like a skip in
a disk, repetitive. All the pain, the
fear, the grief came back…
Cha
wondered for a moment if they were ever exposed to the procedures they
made others undergo. Once one was
“downloaded,” those heartless bastards had one’s entire psyche in their
sadistic little hands. Did they even
know what you saw when they rewound and played and fast forwarded…?
Tearing
his eyes off of the twitching body on the examination table, Fujimura turned to
the video monitors, which buzzed to life as the doors
to Gackt’s mind were opened…
Static.
“Try
the other frequency…” commanded on of the doctors.
More static. But, as Cha walked closer,
squinting at the screen, vague shapes began to immerge… “Can you run it through a filter?”
Apparently
they could. Every few seconds there
would be a visual ‘click’ as the images were run through again and again. Suddenly – “Stop!” The doctors froze in place.
Images supposedly at random.
Fire…a
uniformed man in a wheelchair grinning viciously…a girl with a bullet hole in
her forehead, a pool of blood forming around her…the symbol of the Tenant
Sovereign, dripping blood, bathed in…dark light…a little red-headed boy
crying…a clock, its hands spinning…time passing…snow…a white-faced woman with
dark painted lips and eyes…a dark-haired youth…white feathers…wings…the same
youth, his hair, encircling his face, cheeks flushed, laying in a bed, holding
a man’s hand to his cheek…his smiled…the woman again, but now, her beautiful
face was distorted in agony, eyes starring, slight body riddled with bullets, pale
thighs painted with blood…lace, dappled with blood…uniformed men with guns,
shouting, circling…one by one they fell or fled…the dead woman flashed across
the screen again…a bloody hand reached forward, stopping suddenly…a second
joined it, as bloody as the first…the hands shook as sudden realization hit the
owner…the hands disappeared…a prolonged image of the woman, distorted by…water?
tears? –
“NO
MORE!” Gackt shot up from the table,
eyes staring, unseeing. Silence. As suddenly
as it happened, his eyes rolled back, showing the whites,
and he collapsed onto the bed.
*****
Tipping
back in one of the straight backed chairs, Masa sat
with his companions in one of the many meeting rooms, to which the 4th
had access. No one had spoken in the last
twenty minutes and he didn’t think anyone was about to do so. Sighing to himself, he let the two air-borne
legs of his chair drop to the floor as he leaned forward to rest his head on
the table. The youth had the worst
headache. His head hadn’t pained him
like this since…
Blinking
back tears, he shoved the memories of the psyche cat into the back of his
mind. He didn’t want to think about
that. He was just glad that he would
never have to do it again.
Psyche
catechizations were a good idea, he guessed.
They at least worked the way they were supposed to, identifying any
“weak links,” spies, and psychotics before it was too late to do anything to
prevent whatever downfall they would bring to the cause. Masa only wished
that the scientists that had created the procedure had found, or would find if
they were still alive, a way to make the process at least a little less
painful. A dose or two of Morphine or Vicadin or whatever those quacks in lab coats had in stock
would be great before being stuck full of needles and wires and hooked up to a
CPU.
The
door to the meeting room opened and Cha walked with heavy steps into the room,
taking the closest chair to him and collapsing, boneless, into it. The blond lieutenant looked positively green.
“Sir?” Toshi questioned, worried.
Cha
didn’t budge, but groaned in response.
“Sir,
if I may say, I think you look like shit.”
The
other nodded and slowly brought his head up to regard his comrades. “I bet I do.”
“What
happened?” Masa murmured. A sudden surge of pain lanced through his
head. He winced and pressed his fingers
to his temple.
Their
superior officer sat silent for a moment but finally, stated quietly, “A lot of
things…to our friend that is. We – the
doctors and I – we only saw the abridged version, and even so, only a part of
that. But…I think it’s safe to say that
he’s gone through…Hell…” His voice faded
as he spoke. Then, to himself,
“No one should have to see that…”
“Sir?”
This
new voice startled most of them. Ren
hadn’t spoke since they arrived.
“Aa?”
Ren
fidgeted. “Can…can we access his
REM-files [1]…?”
Cha
looked at his subordinate, not really understanding. Why...? “Yeah…” he stated as he withdrew his ID card,
“…but you’ll need a password…”
*****
Ren
typed password after code after ID number into the computer, slowly but surely
gaining access to what he needed. Cha
warned him about what he would see. He
didn’t care. He needed to know. He needed…
Soldiers
in his rank weren’t permitted access to the psyche cat database, much less use
it – discovery would mean court martial for him and, possibly, Cha as well
considering he had given the required information to him of free will…and
considering the fact that Cha wasn’t much liked by the leaders of the
organization. Asking too many questions
and thinking for yourself when you were given strict orders wasn’t rewarded
often.
Finding
what he was looking for, Ren stood and stretched before delving into the mind
of a murderer. Looking around he noticed
how gloomy the bunker looked, even with the posters and pictures and cards to
the other soldiers from their respective homes.
Walking
over to one picture he regarded a happy family – complete with a dog which sat
in the little girl’s lap, tongue lulling out of it’s
wide mouth with a blissful contentment only a dog could possess. Flipping the photograph over, he read the
back:
~David~
Can’t wait to see you
again!
With all our love, hope, and
prayers!
Swallowing
past the painful lump which had surfaced in his throat, Ren swiftly replaced
the picture and, wiping furiously at his eyes, walked back to the
computer.
Clicking
on Gackt’s folder, he searched the contents for
something…anything…
There.
Clicking
on one subfolder, he opened the file.
…a
girl with a bullet hole in her forehead, a pool of blood forming around her…
Ren
bit back a cry. “‘Neesan…”
he whispered, touching the screen, wanting to feel so much more than just the
cool glass under his fingertips.
Going
back to the beginning of the selection the doctors had saved, he went through
the frames of the file one by one, playing the audio as quietly as he
could.
Voices,
almost covered with static, but distinct.
The TS soldiers…his murdered sister…and another…Gackt?
“Here’s
the spy, sir. We captured her just
outside the base. She had this with
her.” One of the uniformed men tossed a
disk onto a wooden table.
“Thank
you, captain. You are dismissed.” The men saluted and walked out,
chuckling about how the captive would make a good whore.
Ren
grit his teeth, taking deep breaths.
The
frame shifted. Gackt must have stood and
then sunk to his knees, as the girl’s face was directly in front of the screen.
“Well,
they’re right in a few things: you are a spy…”
The girl glared at him. “…and…you
are beautiful.”
The
frame shifted again, and Ren watched his sister disappear as Gackt turned his
back on her.
“I’ll
give you no information, so stop stalling and kill me already.”
“I
don’t want information. This,” he said,
holding up the disk and turning back to her, “is all they need.” Gackt sunk to his knees again. “The way I see it, you have some choices.”
“Oh really?” She wasn’t convinced.
“Yes. One: I can release you, say it was a
mistake.”
“They’d
watch me for the rest of my life, find my friends, prevent
me from helping the cause…”
“…Two:
You could escape.”
“They’d
catch me eventually – they have vehicles, all I have are my feet. Besides, my brother is the red-head in the
mess hall being tormented by your underlings, one of whom, I might add, stole
his stuffed animal which was a gift from our father before he died in a raid
three years ago. It’s very dear to him,
as he is very dear to me. I couldn’t
leave him.”
“You
could create a diversion.”
She
shook her head. “I have nothing to
create one with. Not to mention the camp
is crawling with those bastards. I
wouldn’t get far.”
“…Three:
You could come with me.”
“I’d
rather not be a Tenant whore, thank you.”
“You
wouldn’t be my whore. I’d protect
you…from them…Nothing would come of it.
You would have access to everything on the TS mainframe.”
“As
tempting as you make it sound…I couldn’t.
Eventually I’d be taken by those grinning snakes. Whether your subordinates or your superiors,
we’d slip somewhere and they’d get me.
Perhaps kill you. And you seem
like a nice enough guy…”
“I
figured as much…”
An
uncomfortable silence settled over them.
Gackt not wanting to say it, her expecting it.
“Kill
me.”
“What?”
“Kill
me. It’s the only option that will
work.”
“What
do you mean, the ‘only option?’”
“I
can barter my life for my brothers, die a martyr to the cause, and you’ll
answer to no one.”
Gackt
looked away… “There’s been too much death…why…?”
“Please?”
He turned
back to her. She was crying. Gackt nodded.
“As you wish…” He took gun from
the cupboard and, with shaking hands, turned it on her. “I’ll make it fast…painless.”
She
nodded tearfully, taking a deep breath to settle her heart. Closing her eyes, she waited.
Gackt
fired.
The
girl toppled over backward and lay on the ground, still.
The
guards that had been outside the door ran in to stand at attention.
“Clean
this up.”
“Yes,
sir,” they said in unison, saluting and taking the girl’s body.
“…Be
gentle.”
They
hesitated, but nodded, being careful as not to jar the corpse too much. Gackt walked quickly up to one of them and
took the man’s shoulder. “Did you hear
anything?”
“N-no sir, not before the shot.”
“Good. If anyone asks, inform them that it was a
routine elimination of a spy plotting against the Sovereign. If they have any questions, they can come to
me.”
“Yes
sir.”
“And
the boy in the mess hall – a little red-head…”
“…Yes
sir?”
“Send
him home, without injury. Don’t follow
him. Return the stuffed animal you stole
intact to him.”
“Y-yes, sir.” The man sounded surprised that
his commander knew anything about the boy.
When
the guards had left, Gackt returned to his table and took the disk in
hand. A girl had died for it, for her
‘cause’ as she had said. More innocent
blood, shed without reason. “God forgive
me…”
Taking
the disk between his hands, the man snapped it clean in half and, tearing the
film out of it and tearing it to shreds, he tossed the
pieces into the metal waste basket next to the desk. Taking a sip from the wine glass next to his
arm, he poured the rest of the liquor over the remains of the disk. Lighting a match, he dropped it into the
basket and watched as the flames ate the evidence with hungry, red mouths.
The
file ended. The screen went black.
Ren
buried his face in his hands and cried.
[1]
“REM-files” = “Reminiscence files,” or the data acquired from a psyche
catechization