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Aoi wakes up to a pounding headache, an uneven, tilting feeling, and an unfamiliar creaking sound. For a minute, before consciousness really kicks him in the face and starts ringing alarm bells, it feels like the shittiest hangover he's ever had.
Then the kicking and alarm bell ringing really starts, alertness grabbing him by the shoulder and shaking until finally he forces his eyes open, and realizes that on no it's not a hangover, he's just inside what looks like a cramped ship's cabin slowly filling up with water.
"Fucking shit," Aoi curses, sitting bolt upright and throwing himself so hard onto the floor that he overshoots and slams into the opposite wall, bruising an elbow and throwing him off balance. He staggers, still off balance, until he adjusts to the weird tilt of the floor, and the walls, and holy shit is this ship sinking?
It is. Obviously it is. There's water pouring in from a window, and by the time Aoi's realized just how much danger he's actually in, it's reached his ankles. The door's locked when he tries it, and when he raises a hand to pound against it, he sees a heavy watch there that he knows isn't his.
(Watch is the wrong word, because it's not telling the time)
(It only has the number [5] on it)
He doesn't have the time to think about what might or might not be a watch, though, because the water's still coming in, and if the door's not going to break open, he needs to find another way out. So he tears the room apart, finding sealed briefcases, then keys, and then finally cards inside them. He finds notes about digital roots, and that gets him out of the room, into a hallway that looks just as flooded. Aoi follows the sound of splashing from up ahead, his feet grappling with the way the ground tilts downward in the direction the water's coming in from.
By the time he gets out of the narrow hallway and partway up an elaborate staircase, Aoi's boots and the bottom few inches of his pants are soaked through. He stampedes, less than gracefully, up a level and a half of stairs. The only thought in his mind is to get as far away from the flood of water as possible, so he can figure out what to do away from the immediate danger. It's only when he's gone a decent way up the stairs that he looks up and ahead and he sees--
His sister is standing there.
His baby sister, who had disappeared nine years ago, and never been found.
Aoi knows Akane the second he sees her, even though she's so much older now, a literal adult and not the too-small, too-skinny preteen she'd been when she vanished. But her eyes are the same as they've always been, and she's grown up to look a lot like their mother. He knows her, and he makes a choked noise of cut off surprise that feels like the only thing his overheating brain can manage right now. Akane hears the sound, and she turns and sees him too.
Those familiar eyes light up. Akane recognizes him, too.
"Aoi!" she says, and almost throws herself into his arms.
He stands there, halfway up a ridiculous staircase in a sinking ship, with a bracelet that says [5] on his wrist, and no clue how they'd gotten here. And it's okay, because he has his sister again.
Aoi doesn't know how long he stands there with her. Long enough for several other people to join them on the stairs, at least. And long enough that eventually a speaker crackles to life from somewhere overhead. Reluctantly, Aoi lets go of Akane, and gives his attention to the unknown, distorted voice that tells them about the Nonary Game.
-//-
Nine years in the past, Junpei wakes up on a tiny bed in a room that creaks and strains and then breaks, water flooding in until it's all the way up to his knees. He climbs back up onto the bed, legs tucked under him, and shakes stares with wide eyes at the scene in front of him. The last thing he remembers is watching over the rabbit hutch with Akane, and confronting the older kids that had showed up to hurt more of the class pets. Junpei remembers them beating him up while he tried to protect his friend--he can still feel the bruises--but someone's patched him up a little. There are bandages over the things that hurt the most, he just... doesn't remember that happening.
Someone had snatched him, and helped him, but then also put him in what looks like a sinking ship, maybe?
If they got him, does that mean they got Akane too?
Junpei decides that he has to go find out. She's obviously not in this tiny room with him, so that means he has to get out and go look for her.
(And also he should probably try to get out before the water gets higher)
Junpei sloshes through the water, digging around for anything that looks like it might help him get through what turns out to be a locked door. He manages it eventually, even though the explanation about digital roots trips him up a little bit. It takes him a couple tries to figure out how to make the cards he has add up to the right number, but eventually he finds a way to make them add up to the number on the door, and on the weird bracelet he's suddenly wearing.
(6 + 7 + 8 = 21)
(2 + 1 = 3)
The door unlocks with a heavy sounding clunk, and Junpei yells with excitement over his win before throwing all of his strength into shouldering it open. He splashes through the water in the hall outside--up to his waist--and follows the sound of other kids out of the hallway and up some stairs. He finds eight other boys and girls already waiting there, most of them about his age, a couple that look like teenagers. Most of them are as wet as Junpei is.
One of them is familiar.
"Jumpy!" Akane cries, and Junpei grins broadly as his friend slips between two of the other kids, and makes a beeline straight for him. She's clutching the present he gave her in one hand, tight, and her eyes are wide. "You got really hurt," she says.
"Nah," Junpei says. "It doesn't hurt at all."
(He winces)
(Talking makes a bruise he hadn't noticed on his jaw suddenly start throbbing)
"Is that from when you got kidnapped?" one of the other kids asks tentatively.
"Kidnapped?" Junpei asks, blankly.
"Well--" This comes from a tall boy with his eyes shut. "Yes, I would assume you were kidnapped just as the rest of us were. Unless you wanted to come here?"
Junpei flushes. "No," he says. "Of course not, I just didn't think about it all the way through yet and figure out I got kidnapped." He points to his face. "Anyway," he says. "I got beat up by a bunch of older kids that wanted to set a kitten on fire."
A girl makes an oh no noise, and Akane says, "He was really brave."
"Does this mean you two know each other?" the boy with his eyes shut asks.
And right then, before either Junpei or Akane can answer, is when they hear the voice for the first time.
-//-
So they have to find a door with a [9]. Which doesn't sound too bad on the face of it, especially since Aoi can already see a pair of doors nearby with a [4] and a [5] on them, but Zero--whoever he is--doesn't seem like the kind of guy that's going to make things easy for them. For all Aoi knows, the [9] door is ten feet underwater on one of the flooded decks somewhere.
He stays on the edge of the conversation as the rest of the group congregates and starts trying to figure out what's going on. There's a really... weird collection of people here, he decides as he eyes up the other eight. Since everyone's wearing a bracelet like the one Aoi had woken up with, the ones that will apparently kill them if they don't play Zero's stupid game, they decide to come up with codenames based on their numbers.
Well, everyone except Aoi, because not everyone had been there when Akane shouted out his name (some of them had still been trying to escape the rooms they'd woken up in), but a few of them had. It feels sort of pointless to come up with a [5] codename when it's already spreading around that his name is Aoi, so he agrees to go with that.
"It sounds like the two of you know each other, then?" says the old man with bracelet [1]. Ace, for now.
"We used to," Aoi says shortly. "A long time ago." He doesn't want to explain to all these strangers, who for all he knows might be working for (or might actually be) Zero that Akane is his sister. He knows he's not exactly the easiest person in the world to get along with, and in a place like this, he doesn't want to tie Akane to him more than she already has been.
"So does that mean you know her name too?" asks bracelet [8]. Lotus.
"Yeah," Aoi says. "But I'm not going to be telling all of you her name just because she messed up on mine."
"It's okay!" Akane says. "I can come up with a codename." She thinks about it for a second, then says, "How about June?"
(June for [6])
"I like it," says the only other girl that looks like she's maybe about Akane's age. Clover. Bracelet [4]. "It's easier to remember than some of the others are."
"Are you addressing me?" asks bracelet [2].
"I still don't get what a snake has to do with your number," Clover says.
"Snake eyes," Snake says.
"Well I say it's hard to remember," Clover insists, sticking her tongue out at him. And it could have been a playful expression, something she would have done to anyone here, but Aoi recognizes the same kind of emotion there that he'd felt when he saw Akane for the first time. He looks between the two of them, mentally raising his eyebrows at how different they look, but doesn't waver in his guess that they have to be siblings.
"Anyway," Aoi says flatly. "There's only nine of us here, it probably doesn't matter if one or two of them are hard to remember We'll get each other's codenames down sooner or later."
"Aw," Clover says. "You're just saying that because you get to use your real name."
For some reason, this makes her laugh as she says it. Her probably-brother sighs.
"Is that everyone?" he asks, turning to face the group at large. "Or--no, I believe that there are two of us here that haven't stated a preference for their codenames."
"Oh, right," says bracelet [3]. A kid--probably only a year or two younger than Aoi, but his clothes and the stupid expression on his fame make him look younger. He's dressed in plaid and some kind of bright blue windbreaker, and Aoi half wonders if he'd been kidnapped on laundry day. "I still have to pick mine, don't I?"
"Only if you want us to have something to call you," Lotus says, waving a hand dismissively. Aoi gets the idea that she's probably as annoyed by [3] as he is. "Or else we can just call you Three, like Seven over there."
The man with the [7] bracelet, a self proclaimed amnesiac, scoffs. "It works, doesn't it?" he asks. "And you can't exactly complain that it's hard to remember."
Clover giggles, the bright sound at odds with literally everything else that's happening here. Aoi gives her a narrow eyed squint, trying to figure out how anyone could laugh in a situation like this. They've just been told that the person that kidnapped them has forced them to swallow bombs, and that the ship they're on will sink completely after nine hours. One way or another, if they don't get their shit together and figure out where the [9] door is, they're all going to die.
Akane will die. He's barely known she's still alive for nine minutes, he's not going to lose her to some stupid nine hour time limit, or a [9] door, or anything else. They are getting out of here, no matter what it takes.
"I think I'll pick Strike."
Aoi blinks. Turns around to glare at [3]. "What."
"For my codename," the kid says, apparently completely impervious to Aoi's death glare as he continues to babble. "Like, three strikes and you're out, baseball kind of stuff?"
This is met by complete silence, not just from Aoi, but from everyone else on the staircase. Behind... Strike's back, Akane facepalms. Her obvious dismissal of the idiot cheers Aoi up slightly, and he shrugs. "If that's what you want to use," he says. "Fine by me."
(Not his problem if the kid wants to make an idiot out of himself)
There's still the nervous looking guy with the bracelet that says [9] on it to name, but it turns out that it doesn't really matter what he wants to call himself. He decides to try and get fucking smart with the psycho killer that's kidnapped them into this murder game, and forces two of the others to scan open one of the numbered doors. He abandons the other two, and goes through alone.
Which, of course, kills him.
When they scan open the door he'd gone through, to see what had happened for themselves, there's not very much left to see. The eight remaining players huddle together outside the door, staring at the blood spattered halfway up the wall, and Aoi takes advantage of the fact that everyone's attention is elsewhere, and squeezes Akane's shoulder, tight. He has no idea what Akane's been through since the last time they saw each other, but whatever it is, it's not going to be as bad as this. He tries to offer her whatever comfort he can, and counts down the minutes until the nine hours are up, and they can escape (because of course they're going to escape), and he'll finally be able to take his sister home.
-//-
"I don't have a sibling," Junpei says blankly, when the announcement has finished. Everyone else is talking too, about the Nonary Game they've just been told they have to play, or about the Building Q where apparently a group of nine more kids are doing the same puzzles they're all about to face. Some of them are crying, and most of them look as scared as Junpei feels. But he looks over at Akane, who is standing right next to him--the two of them have been practically glued together since they met up on the staircase--and says it again.
"I wonder if they made a mistake," Akane says. She drops her voice to a whisper, and Junpei leans forward toward her, to be part of her secret. "I have a brother, but he's not here. Maybe they thought you and me were siblings."
"Why would they think that?" Junpei asks. "We don't even look like each other."
"I don't look a lot like Aoi either," Akane says. Aoi, Junpei assumes, is her brother. He's never actually heard Akane mention him. "And... he has to work a lot. He doesn't come home much, and we've been spending out whole break together to stake out the rabbit hutch at school, so maybe..."
"Or maybe your brother's in Building Q," Junpei says.
"I guess maybe we'll find out," Akane says. "If he starts sending us answers, like our siblings are supposed to."
Junpei fidgets a little. "But that stuff isn't real, right?" he asks. "You can't really know what your brother is thinking."
"Maybe," Akane says. "I... don't know."
Junpei doesn't believe it at all. Being able to know what someone else is thinking sounds like magic, or something that would happen on a TV show. Not in real life. But Akane sounds like she's not sure, and he doesn't want to argue with Akane, so he doesn't.
The boy with his eyes closed, who Junpei is pretty sure by now is the oldest one there, walks over to the two of them while Junpei is still trying to figure out something else to say. "You two have bracelets [3] and [5], don't you?" he asks.
Junpei nods. Akane says, "Yes," out loud, and then elbows him for some reason Junpei doesn't get.
"Good," he says. "I'm trying to figure out how we can split up to go through the doors here. If the two of you go with bracelets [6] and [8], that will give you a digital root of [4], and the rest of us can go in door [5]. It sounds like you two know each other, so I think it makes sense to keep you together."
"Yes," Junpei blurts immediately. He likes that plan.
"I think door [4] is the right one," Akane agrees. When the older boy goes to tell everyone else the plan, she leans over again and whispers to Junpei, "He's blind. You can't just nod."
"How do you know he's blind?" Junpei asks.
"Because he said so," Akane says.
Junpei gives her a weird look, because no he hadn't.
Akane frowns, and holds her doll a little tighter. "Well," she says. "I... I thought he said."
"Maybe..." He shrugs. "You just saw him with his eyes closed?"
"Maybe," Akane agrees. "Or maybe..."
But she doesn't tell him the rest of what she's thinking, and Junpei has to let it go when people start calling them over to go through the numbered door.
-//-
"What the fuck are you giving me that for?" Aoi asks, when Strike tries to force a bookmark on him in the Second Class Cabin. He doesn't like Strike much so far--the guy acts like a complete idiot, he doesn't seem to be taking the whole situation seriously enough, and (worst of all) he's spending way too much time with Akane. Aoi had agreed to go through door [4] because it lets him stay with Akane, and doesn't force them to leave anyone behind.
If there had been any other choice, though, anything that forced Strike through the other door and away from Akane, Aoi would have voted for that in a heartbeat.
"It might be important," Strike says, thrusting the bookmark out toward Aoi again. "You know, for a puzzle or something?"
"The bookmark?" Aoi asks, skeptically. "You might as well say that creepy picture on the wall over there is going to be important."
Strike's expression lights up. Across the room, Lotus groans. "You just had to, didn't you?" she asks.
"Had to what?" he asks.
"What are you implying about the Funyarinpa?" Strike asks.
"The what?" Aoi asks. "Are you talking about the picture?"
"I wouldn't ask, if I was you," Lotus says. "I've already been informed that I'm a rude woman for not knowing, apparently."
Why is this his life right now? Aoi stares at Lotus, then at Strike, and resists the overpowering urge to strike him. Eventually, and because they really need to get through the room if they want to have any chance of finding the [9] door, Aoi snatches the bookmark out of Strike's hand and says, "Just give me that, alright? And go check out the bathroom or something."
Strike shrugs, apparently unconcerned now that the bookmark is out of his hands, shrugs and wanders off to check the bathroom. Or something. Aoi's not entirely sure he trusts Strike to stay on task long enough to get there, honestly.
"Seriously though," he says, when he and Lotus are alone. "What is a funyarinpa?"
"I have absolutely no idea," she says flatly. Then, after a pause during which the weird atmosphere of the room seems to settle a little, she adds, "Putting aside Strike's... contribution to the conversation, it is actually an interesting picture. I remember reading once about an experiment that was done with something similar..."
-//-
The older boy, whose name is Light and who is actually blind, like Akane had said, has a collection of four leaf clovers carefully tucked away in a pocket. He tells them all about his little sister, Clover, and how he'd gotten her the lucky charms for her birthday. The rest of them, who are getting tired and hungry and scared by now, gather around him and listen to the story with the hope that it's somehow going to make things better. And somehow, listening to his calm voice, Junpei realizes that he does actually feel a little bit better. He takes the clover that's handed to him, and listens to what the four leaves are supposed to mean, and decides that maybe they will get out of here.
"Did you get a clover?" he asks Akane, when the rest of the kids have spread out around the large hospital room where they'd reunited with the whold group. There are thre emore numbered doors here, and Junpei's not looking forward to going through one of them.
"Yes," Akane says. But she doesn't look as cheered up by it as a lot of the other kids do, and after a few seconds of silence, she asks, "Did you find a bookmark with a clover earlier?"
"No," Junpei says. "Why?"
Akane shrugs with one shoulder. She looks upset.
"Kanny?" Junpei asks, uncertainly. He doesn't know what to say, because he doesn't understand what she's feeling. Yesterday (probably yesterday) they'd been sitting on the hill behind their school, waiting to see if anyone's going to show up to hurt more animals. That had been the hardest thing he's ever had to deal with, and he'd felt like a hero when he stood up to the eighth graders and protected the animals and also his best friend.
Today, he feels more like the scared kitten soaked in gasoline that the older boys had been trying to hurt. Being kidnapped and forced to play a game that will kill them if they lose isn't something that kids like them are supposed to have to do.
"I think my brother is sending me things," Akane says at last. "That's how I was able to help solve the puzzles in the kitchen."
"Oh yeah," Junpei says. "That was really good." He hasn't been able to help much in the escape rooms so far, because he doesn't have anyone that can send him anything. By now he's pretty sure that everyone knows he doesn't have a sister or a brother, because he'd had to explain why he wasn't getting any puzzle answers behind the last numbered door. They hadn't exactly been upset about it, because none of them had asked to be here, it's not his fault, but Junpei still feels kind of bad about being useless. He'd tried to make up for it by running around and looking for the stuff they'll need, little bits and pieces that somehow, with the mystery help from the kids in Building Q, turn into a way out.
(He doesn't know exactly when he'd stopped thinking that stuff was impossible, but it's definitely happened)
(It's just that everyone else can so obviously see things he can't. They can see the answers when he doesn't even know the questions and that's how they're getting through these numbered doors)
"So your brother's in Building Q after all?" he asks, when Akane doesn't do anything but fidget. "I wonder if that means someone there is supposed to have a sibling here but they don't. And they're not getting anything from here, right? They're supposed to be, um--senders? Right? So they wouldn't even know that--"
"I don't think Aoi's in Building Q," Akane says, interrupting Junpei as he starts to babble. "I think he's somewhere else."
"How is he sending you answers, then?" Junpei asks.
"He just is," Akane says. "I think..." And then her eyes fill up with tears. "I miss him, Jumpy. And I don't think I'm going to see him for a really long time."
"Course you are!" Junpei says. "We're all gonna get out of here, and everyone's gonna see their siblings again!" He pauses, thinking about this, and then adds, "Except me, 'cuz I don't have any!"
He must be getting a little too loud, because one of the kids on the other side of the big hospital room yells "Yeah!" and then someone else punches the air. Feeling better now that people are agreeing with him, Junpei grins at Akane. "It's like Light said," he says. "Hope, faith, love, and luck, right? We're gonna find the [9] door and get out of here."
Akane doesn't look all the way convinced. But she hugs her doll closer and smiles a little bit. "Yeah," she says quietly. "Maybe."
-//-
Going through the [7] door is worse than going through [4] had been, because Aoi doesn't get to stay with Akane. He goes with Clover and Seven instead, who Aoi has barely even spoken to before this, leaving Akane to go through the [8] door with Lotus and Strike. Which annoys him, actually, because that kid's just not hiding the fact that he's attracted to her at all. They're literally in a murder game, the 9th Man has already died, and Snake is missing, and still Strike can't take his eyes off Akane.
(Neither can Aoi, to be fair, but he has a good reason)
(This is his little sister that's been missing for nine years, but to Strike she's just some stranger that he's never seen before)
Aoi tries to rush them through the Operating Room as quickly as possible, although things slow down a couple of times--when Seven starts off on some tangent about EDT that reminds Aoi of something Akane had said earlier about Ice-9, and then later when Clover starts to lag behind, and Aoi has to figure out how to motivate her to keep going. He ends up giving her the bookmark with the four leaf clover on it, and repeating the weird thing Strike had said in the Second Class Cabin about love and luck or whatever.
He doesn't expect her to perk right up when he does, because why would she? He'd kind of thought she might just get a laugh out of it, because it's the same as the codename she'd picked, but it really seems to mean something to her.
("So you were there?" she asks him)
("I have no idea what you're talking about," he answers)
She really calms down after that, so at least Strike had (accidentally) been good for something, by finding the bookmark.
"I'm really worried about my brother," she tells Aoi, while they stand in the Operating Room next to the creepy mannequin they've just dismembered. "I know he's blind, but he wouldn't have just gotten lost. Especially not so lost that we can't find him. So I'm scared... I--" Her eyes start to fill up with tears, and she wipes them away half-heartedly. "I'm scared he might be dead, and I might be next."
"I know exactly how you feel," Aoi says. "I have a little sister, and she's been missing for a long time. I tried not to think about how she might be dead for years, but sometimes I thought there was just no way she could still be out there after so much time."
"I'm sorry," Clover says, sounding startled. "I didn't know."
"It's okay," Aoi says. "I always tried not to talk about her." It had hurt too much. "So it's not weird to not have people know."
"You said you thought she might be dead though, right?" Clover asks. "Does that mean... you found out what happened to her?"
Aoi thinks of Akane, working her way through the [8] door with Strike and Lotus. "Not exactly what happened to her," he says. Yet. "But I know she's alive, and I had to wait nine years to find that out." He shrugs, sort of self consciously. "I wouldn't usually say this, but... maybe you just need to be patient. Maybe when we get through here, we'll find some other part of the ship, and Snake will be there."
Clover doesn't react to this encouragement the way Aoi had expected. Not that he usually gives out encouragement, so he's probably not very good at it. Still, he thinks it's weird for her to suddenly go still, and ask, "You said... nine years ago?"
"Yeah," Aoi says, wary. "Why?"
"Are you sure you weren't there, right?" she asks. "When you gave me the bookmark, and talked about what it meant."
"I have no idea where there is," Aoi says. "It's just some shit I heard from Strike earlier."
"Oh," Clover says. Then, "You don't have any other siblings that disappeared with your sister, do you?"
The conversation has gone way past Aoi's acceptable level of weirdness. He leaves the room, following Seven's distant shouted question of whether they're just going to stay in there for the rest of the nine hours, and after a few steps, Clover hurries after him.
-//-
After they've finished exploring the three hospital room doors, they split up to explore which parts of the ship they can get to now that they're starting to find keys. Junpei sticks with Akane, obviously, and they go to check out a bunch of elevators together. The ship is starting to really tilt now, leaning to one side as water continues to pour in, but everyone's in a better mood now than they have been for a while.
They still have probably half their time left, and they've already found five whole doors, and now that they've all been reunited and gotten out of the locked numbered doors, it seems like a weight off everyone's shoulders. Junpei can hear some of the other kids shouting and even laughing, once or twice, off in the distance. It's really starting to feel like everything's going to work itself out somehow. The guy that had kidnapped them hasn't done anything except yell at them about how the numbered doors work, and since then they haven't seen a sign of anyone outside their group of nine. And everyone there is nice, so that's okay. They just have to find three more doors, Junpei's pretty sure, and then they can get out.
"Do you think it's a good idea to go down on this?" Akane asks, when they get to the elevators.
"Yeah," Junpei says. "I mean, probably? If they didn't want us to be able to hit that--" And he demonstrates by slapping the down arrow by the elevator. "They would have locked it up, right?"
"I guess," Akane says, tilting her face a little to one side, considering. "It's just that it might be... you know. Wet down there."
"Oh yeah," Junpei says. "I guess it might." He looks at Akane, who's shorter than him, and is probably in more danger if the elevator's going to take them down to one of the flooded levels, and adds, "But I think that if either of us is going to get wet, it'd be you."
"Maybe I should hold my breath?"
"What, so you don't swallow any?"
"Right."
"I don't know..." Junpei looks at Akane, then at the elevator, then back at Akane. The problem is, he's never been on a boat before. He doesn't really know how much danger they're really in here. It'd be way better if they had someone around that knew about boats. Absently, his brain still mostly focused on the elevator problem, he says, "It'd be nice if we had some seamen."
Akane giggles. "You mean sailors?" she asks.
"Right," he says. "Sorry, I couldn't think of the word. Look, should we just try sending the elevator down and then call it back up, so we can see if it's safe?"
"Good idea," Akane agrees, and when they try that, the elevator comes back up perfectly safe and dry. They move on, and neither of them spends any more time thinking about that conversation.
-//-
The next couple hours pass in a blur for Aoi. They hear that Snake's body has been found, behind the [3] door. Aoi goes back to take a look at it with some of the others, just to confirm for himself what had happened, but regrets it when he sees how thoroughly the bombs had blown him apart--just about the only thing left intact is a single bone in his left arm.
He goes into another numbered door, this time with Ace and Clover. The three of them find a dead body there, too, a complete stranger this time, dressed in a captain's outfit. They talk for a while about whether he might be Zero, but Aoi doesn't believe for a second that Zero would have committed horrible, violent suicide in the middle of his big plan.
And then somehow, the discussion about horrible, violent suicide turns back to the corpse in the shower room, and when Aoi mentions the bone in its left arm, Clover realizes that no, actually, it can't have been her brother after all.
"He has a prosthetic left arm," she tells Aoi, almost bouncing with excitement. "So if you saw a bone, it can't have been his arm."
Aoi barely knows what to think, at this point. "That's good," he tells Clover, because behind all the confusion, he can recognize that she's just gotten her sibling back, and he's still fighting to get back to Akane. "Maybe when we get out of this numbered door, we can figure out where your brother actually is."
Clover nods, with the furious energy of someone too busy trying not to cry to actually get any words out. "I didn't think he was going to make it out this time," she says.
"You didn't--" Aoi stops what he's doing, which is very carefully searching around the captain's body for clues. But he stops, and frowns at Clover. "What do you mean, this time?" he asks.
"This isn't the first time we've had to play the Nonary Game," Clover informs him. "Nine years ago, the same thing happened." She frowns, a storm cloud passing over the bright sky of her excitement over learning her brother is still alive. "Well, almost the same thing. They were doing an experiment, so they set one version of this ship up in the ocean to sink, like this one is. And the other one was a simulated sinking, in a warehouse in the desert in Nevada."
"How do you know about that?" Aoi asks.
"Um," Clover says. "Well the thing is, the groups in each location were made up of pairs of siblings. My brother and I were there, he was on the ship, and I was in the warehouse."
"So you've played this game before?" Aoi demands. "That's--why didn't you say anything?"
"My brother asked me not to!" Clover protests. "Besides, just because I know these games have happened before, that doesn't mean I know who did it this time."
"Are you Zero?" Aoi asks. "Is Snake?"
Clover huffs, and glares at him. "No," she says, and Aoi's surprised that he actually believes her. She obviously hadn't been faking it when she reacted to thinking her brother was dead--Aoi knows what that it's like to lose a sibling, and he really believes that Clover had believed Snake was dead. And there's no way Zero would just... let an accomplice wander off and get himself murdered in the middle of the game. Or fake murdered. Whichever.
The point is, Aoi doesn't really think that Clover or Snake are Zero, even if they do apparently know more about these games than they've admitted to.
"Okay," he says. "Well--thanks for telling me." IF she hasn't trusted anyone else with that information yet, then it means a lot that she'd told him. "Can I ask another couple of question sabout what happened nine years ago, though?"
"Sure," Clover says. "But--I don't know everything behind what happened, because I was only a kid back then."
"You know more than I do," Aoi says. My first question is--what did they think they were doing with that experiment? Why kidnap siblings in the first place?"
"Oh," Clover says. "Because of the morphogenetic field. So we could send information about the puzzles from the warehouse to our siblings on the ship."
Aoi nods at this, and only after several seconds does he realize that neither he nor Clover should be so casual about that. But in the past few (less than nine) hours have been so crazy that it just sounds normal. Lotus had mentioned the morphogenetic field several numbered doors earlier, and Aoi has also heard enough about ice-9 and crystallization of glucose and about half a dozen other conspiracy theories that when Clover says this, Aoi just sort of nods along.
He doesn't have time to ask more questions, though, because Ace comes back to ask them why they if they're still coming, or if they've forgotten that they only have a couple hours left to get off this ship. He does have a point, so as much as Aoi would have liked to be able to keep asking Clover questions, to try and figure out what that first Nonary Game has to do with what's happening now, he doesn't. Instead, he goes back to the process of finding a way out, and with surviving.
And then...
Well, then they meet back up with the surviving and accounted for Nonary Game participants, and learn from a breathlessly excited Akane that they've found the [9] door. Doors. Apparently, there's two of them, both hidden in a place like a chapel, somewhere below them. Which would have been good news. Is good news.
Except that when they get there, and do the math on the remaining bracelet numbers, they realize there's no way for all seven of them to pass through the doors. They're still making their exhaustive way through their options when Strike makes the decision for them, by pulling out a bulky golden revolver from somewhere, and holding it up to Akane's temple.
-//-
Junpei and Akane are in the fastest group, the third time they go through a set of numbered doors. He's a little bit proud of this, in a weird way, because he can't even really help with the puzzles, but he must still be contributing somehow, if their group is going so fast. Akane tells him he helps by being funny, which Junpei can't figure out how to feel about. But he's getting better at guessing which parts of a room might turn out to be important, so his strategy of running around and grabbing stuff for everyone else to use for the puzzles is doing something, anyway.
And now here they are, sitting in the creepiest chapel Junpei's ever seen, waiting for the rest of the group to catch up to them. The rest of the kids they'd gone through the last numbered door with had gone back up to wait, and tell everyone what they've found. But Akane's been a little weird and quiet for the past couple hours, and Junpei's starting to get worried about her. He'd thought that maybe if he can talk to her alone, he might be able to figure out how to help.
But Akane doesn't say anything for a long time, no matter how Junpei tries to start a conversation. When she does eventually say, "I think I figured out how my brother is sending me things," Junpei is relieved. Just to hear her say something.
"Is he in Building Q after all?" he asks.
"No," Akane says. "He's really far away."
"Building Q is pretty far away," Junpei says. He doesn't know anything about Nevada, but some of the other kids are American, and had been able to explain that it's in the middle of a desert. Junpei would really, really like to be in the middle of a desert right now, honestly, but he's pretty sure that for a ship as big as this one to be sinking, they have to be in an ocean somewhere.
"Not that kind of far away," Akane says. "I think he's in the future."
Junpei blinks. "How...?" he starts, but isn't sure how to finish the sentence. Akane probably doesn't know how, just like none of them knows how anything so far has worked.
"He's playing in another Nonary Game," Akane explains. "But he's all grown up. I didn't realize at first, because I can't see him when he's sending, but we're both there too."
"Oh come on!" Junpei complains. "I don't wanna play the Nonary Game again!" He wants to go home, and see his mom and dad, and see Akane at school just like they used to.
"I don't either," Akane says, and the two of them huddle instinctively a little bit closer for a second, before she continues. "It's not just us," she tells Junpei. "I think Light's there too. And his sister."
"The one he collected all the four leaf clovers for?"
Akane nods. "She seems nice," she says. "Except that sometimes, she murders everyone with an axe."
"Uh," Junpei says. "How do you... um. How do you sometimes murder a lot of people with an axe?"
"I don't know," Akane says, in a small voice. "But sometimes it happens, and sometimes it doesn't."
"Are they all playing the Nonary Game more than once?" Junpei asks. "Or--are we all, since we're there too?"
"I don't think so," Akane says. "I think it's just different futures. But I don't understand how."
"Maybe you're tired," Junpei says. "And just seeing one future, and imagining the rest?" He doesn't know exactly how 'maybe you're only seeing one future' has become the reasonable option, but it has. Akane shakes her head to it anyway though, and says, "No. They're all happening, all at once. But... some of them are better than others."
"What kind of better?" Junpei asks.
Akane's quiet for a second. Then she asks, "You wouldn't ever hurt me, Jumpy. Right?"
"No way," Junpei says, shaking his head hard. "I don't care how many futures there are, I wouldn't hurt you in any of them."
Akane nods, like this is exactly what she'd expected to hear, and leans over against him. "I know," she says. "So I guess there must be something funny going on in that one."
-//-
Aoi's hands hurt where they're squeezed into fists, and every inch of his body is tense from the effort of stopping himself from launching across the chapel and punching Strike in his stupid fucking face.
"I wouldn't do that," Strike says, as if he knows exactly what Aoi is thinking. His face, his whole posture, really, have changed. So far, he's seemed like a happy go lucky kind of idiot, a little slow with the puzzles but always quick with a stupid joke. Now his eyes look like they've gone somewhere far away, almost disassociating from the things he's doing to Akane. Aoi might have said he looked like he doesn't want to be doing this, except that it doesn't fucking matter what he does or doesn't want to do. It matters that he's doing it, that he's holding a gun up to Akane's head, and it matters that she's terrified.
"That's my sister," Aoi spits out, and is vaguely aware of the others around him reacting to this. He doesn't care, because none of them matters right now. Akane matters, and Strike matters, and getting the two of them away from each other matters.
Strike doesn't react at all. He doesn't even seem surprised. "Then you should probably remember that I'm holding a gun to her head," he says. "Right? And do what I say." He jerks his head toward the rest of the group. "Maybe convince them to go along with it too."
"He doesn't have to convince us to do anything," Lotus says. "None of us are monsters, and we're not going to let you just stand there and kill June."
"Is this how you killed Snake, too?" Ace asks. Apart from a slightly brittle edge, his voice sounds surprisingly calm.
"Didn't kill him," Strike says, and for a second his distant gaze focuses sharply on Ace. "Did I?"
"Well I--" Ace stumbles, then rallies. "You're the one with the gun."
Akane whimpers, and Aoi takes half a step forward. Strike catches the movement and shifts slightly so he's facing Aoi, making sure he can see exactly how tightly he has the gun pressed against Akane's head. "That's right," he says to the group at large. "I am the one with the gun. So here's what needs to happen."
Everyone else is completely silent, waiting to hear what he's going to say.
"Ace," Strike says. "Lotus. The two of you go scan in your bracelets."
(Aoi does the math in his head)
(8 + 1 + 3 + 6 = 18)
(1 + 8 = 9)
"You're taking them through the [9] door," he says out loud, somehow forcing the words out, past his surprise.
"We're getting out of here," Strike says. He gives Aoi a grin that doesn't even come close to reaching his eyes. "Cheer up," he says. "If you're telling the truth about June being your sister, you should be happy to know that at least she's getting out."
Ace and Lotus have both scanned their bracelets during the time it takes for him to say this. Strike moves himself and Akane backward, mumbling something to her that makes her reach a shaky hand out toward the RED to scan her own bracelet. Then he lets go of her for the half second it takes to scan his own. He does not, Aoi notice, use the hand holding the gun to do this. If he had, Aoi thinks he probably would have run after them in a second. Whatever it takes to get Akane safe.
"See you on the other side," Strike says, as the door opens. "Or, you know. Probably not."
And then they're gone.
Aoi looks at the others, at Seven and Clover, and he just--screams. Frustration and panic and fear finally boil over and he screams until his throat hurts, then he charges across the room and smashes his whole body into the closed [9] door. He does it again, and again, and then Seven grabs him and physically holds him back, shaking him until the adrenaline starts to drain out of Aoi's brain, so he can sort of focus again.
"There's another [9] door," Clover says, a little uncertainly. "I know you're upset about June, but maybe we can find a way to follow her?"
Aoi doesn't answer right away. His brain's been through too much in the past--what is it now, seven hours? Eight? It's making connections that don't exist, summoning up memories that had never happened. He can remember, even though there's no way for it to have happened, Snake going after Clover's killer, and he can completely understand the instinct to go and go and keep going, to not let a stupid thing like multiple gunshot wounds stop him from getting revenge.
He can remember that with so much clarity, even though it hadn't happened. And he can also remember--almost by accident--the way they'd gotten Snake back.
(And Snake could get them through the other [9] door, couldn't he?)
(2 + 4 + 5 + 7 = 18)
(1 + 8 = 9)
"Truth had gone," Aoi mumbles, and scrambles on unsteady feet toward the coffin he's barely even seen at the back of the chapel. "Truth had gone."
-//-
It's easy for the nine of them to split themselves up to go through the two [9] doors. With all nine of them reunited after the most recent set of numbered doors, they have plenty of options for how to do it.
Junpei makes sure they pick one that will keep him and Akane together. They're so close now that he's scared to let her out of his sight for a second, especially after the weird conversation they'd just had. Junpei had told her that he'll never hurt her in any future, and he'd meant it. He doesn't want to let her get hurt, either.
The two groups solve their puzzles and meet back up, which is the good news. The bad news is that the path takes them straight into an incinerator, and this time there's only one [9] door on the other side.
They're all still shouting at each other, everyone trying to make sure their voice is heard, when someone new shows up.
"Hey, kids!" an adult's voice yells, and all nine of them jump, and turn around, and look up.
-//-
"There were a whole bunch of kids," Seven tells Aoi, Clover, and Snake, as they make their way through a series of puzzles that Aoi has exactly zero patience to deal with right now. "I mean, I'd heard the reports that eighteen kids had gone missing, but I didn't expect them to all just be standing around in an incinerator, you know?"
"One of them was my brother!" Clover chirps, and her happy, perky excitement at having Snake back is doing absolutely nothing about Aoi's fear for his own missing sibling. He takes a deep breath, and forces himself not to snap at her.
"So this really was the first Nonary Game?" he asks. "Seven, you were involved too?"
"Yep," Seven says. "My memory only just started coming back, but I was definitely there. Investigating the nine pairs of missing siblings."
"Eight pairs," Snake corrects him. "There were two children in the group I was in that weren't related."
Who cares, Aoi just barely stops himself from asking. There's no way it can make a difference now.
"Junpei must have been there as a complete accident," Snake continues, sounding thoughtful. "He told us that he didn't have any siblings. And Akane..."
"Akane?" Aoi repeats, sharply. "There was--" Nine years ago. The same time that his sister had disappeared. "There was an Akane on the ship?"
"Yes," Snake says, and Aoi knows he can't see him, but the weight of Shanke's closed eyes pointing at him makes Aoi feel like he's being scrutinized. "There was. She didn't have a brother in Building Q, she said. It seemed that her brother hadn't been kidnapped with her."
"Her..." Aoi has to stop what he's doing, which is solving some kind of puzzle with a bunch of emblems. His hands are shaking too much to be able to do it right now, anyway. "June's name is Akane. Do you remember her full name? The Akane from the first Nonary Game?"
There's a brief pause. Snake seems surprised, but then he says, "Yes," and Aoi's whole body turns cold. "Her name was Akane Kurashiki. But she can't have been your sister, because Akane Kurashiki died."
"No she didn't," Aoi says, instantly, almost before Snake has finished talking. "Because my sister is Akane Kurashiki, and she's alive."
-//-
Junpei misses it when Akane drops behind the rest of them. The detective has managed to get all of them out by now, the smaller group of kids that hadn't been able to go through the final [9] door while he was figuring out how to do it, and they're all running up a long spiral staircase that makes Junpei dizzy and tired. It feels like it's going to keep going and going forever, which is probably why he misses the exact moment when Akane disappears.
"Wait!" he calls, and his voice is thin and high. It sounds younger because of how long he's been running, and how out of breath he is. "Wait, Mr. Detective! Akane's gone!"
"What?" The big man turns around, eyes flicking from one kid to the next like he's counting. "Where did she go?"
"She must have gone back," Light says. He's panting from the run too. "I didn't feel any branches off this staircase while we were running."
"Dammit," the detective curses. "Keep going, kids. I'll go back and find her."
Junpei does not keep going. He turns around and runs back down the stairs with the detective, and he can hear Light following them too. Nona, the other girl that hadn't been able to go through the [9] door, shouts that she's going to tell everyone else what happened, and keeps going up. Junpei can't even blame her for running--even while they're all running back down, he knows that it's stupid. It's just...
(He'd promised Kanny that he wouldn't let her get hurt)
The incinerator doors are closed again, and the alarms are blaring, counting down until the moment it's going to activate, and set Akane on fire. There's a man yelling, too, angrily ranting and raving at Akane about how all she has to do to get out is get the answers from her brother in Building Q, all while Akane cries that her brother isn't in Building Q.
He's in the future, Junpei thinks, as Akane starts crying for her brother, starts crying, "Aoi, help me!" and maybe they don't have this puzzle in the future, maybe the Nonary Games then aren't going to end in an incinerator, because Akane doesn't stop crying for her brother until the countdown finishes, and the flames in the incinerator burn her alive.
-//-
Aoi hears Akane's voice in the incinerator. Not the Akane that's been calling herself June, but the Akane he remembers from nine years ago. The little girl that had disappeared, crying and calling his name. The way she used to when she had nightmares and couldn't sleep, when she fell down and skinned a knee. His heart is breaking, and he yells her name at the top of his lungs.
Strike, sitting on the side of the incinerator, curled up and wheezing around fresh injuries, manages a laugh. Aoi, who had been the one to give him those injuries, who had punched him in the face and then pushed him down and kicked him so hard in the stomach he can only hope he'd broken ribs, turns to glare at him. "What the fuck did you do to my sister, you psycho?" he shouts.
"Nothing," Strike says. The words, broken by Aoi's earlier kick, are almost inaudible under the blaring sound of the incinerator alarms. "Come on, you get it now, don't you?" He laughs again, and it sounds even worse than the first try had been. "She always said you were smart."
Aoi stares at him. And then somehow, his train of thought bolstered by histories that don't exist and somehow very much do, says, "You're not Zero." He'd thought that Strike might be, after all. He'd held a gun to Akane's head, after all, which cements him in Aoi's mind as a villain.
"Maybe you could say I'm Zero's assistant," Strike says. "But that's about it."
"Then the real Zero..." Aoi says.
From the past, from somewhere else in the morphogenetic field, he hears Akane crying for help, shouting his name.
It doesn't matter. Aoi turns his back on Strike with a noise that's almost a growl, and focuses in on the last puzzle.
It's a sudoku.
-//-
Junpei is back home with his parents when he finally sees Akane again. His chest is heavy with the aftermath of heavy crying, but he doesn't have anything to cry about. His body remembers losing her. But his brain remembers the incinerator doors finally opening to let her out, so she can escape with the rest of them.
"Are you dead, Kanny?" he asks, when she walks right into his bedroom without his parents even noticing. "Are you a ghost?"
"I think I'm a Schrodinger's Cat," she says.
Junpei has no idea who Schrodinger is, so he just says, feebly, "I like cats."
Akane smiles at him, and hugs him, and for a few seconds she definitely exists. Then she pulls away, and Junpei isn't sure again.
"I figured out why my brother was playing the Nonary Game in the future," Akane tells him. "And I think he needs to do it for me to be definitely alive. But it's not going to just happen if we don't make it happen."
"Then I guess we have to," Junpei says. "But um. How?"
"Your parents got money," Akane says. "Right? So they don't tell anyone about how you got kidnapped?"
"I think so," Junpei says uncertainly. "They said I can't use it until I'm older, though."
"Because it's in a trust," Akane says. "I was paying attention."
Junpei hasn't been. He's been thinking a lot more about what happened to Akane, and jumping every time he hears the microwave beep, the way the DEADs had, and crying the one time he'd walked past someone cooking outside, and smelled the fire and the ash.
"When you're an adult," Akane says. "You're going to get a lot of money, as long as you and your parents don't say anything about what happened before then. I might too, if I'm alive enough."
Junpei shudders. He's not even sure if she's alive or not, and he hates the way that makes his brain hurt.
"And we can use that to make the next Nonary Game happen," Akane says. "And save me."
"Junpei!"
He tears his eyes away from Akane as his mom pokes her head into the room. She looks concerned, but she always looks like that now. She's barely let him out of her sight since he and the eight seven other survivors of the sinking ship had been brought back to dry land. "Um," he says. "Yeah, Mom?"
"Just wanted to check in on you," she says, with a smile that doesn't reach her eyes. "Are you okay?"
"I'm okay," he assures her. He gives her a smile back that also doesn't feel like a real smile, which slides off his face as soon as she's gone. Then for a few minutes he just sits there, sad and quiet, wondering what he's going to do next.
Eventually, Akane touches his wrist, and he remembers that she's here, and she's alive (maybe).
His mom hadn't seen her at all.
"Will this definitely save you?" he asks Akane. "I mean--you'll be all the way alive, if we make another Nonary game?"
"Yes," she says. "As long as we're working toward that timeline, I think I'll be at least a little bit alive. And if we can get there..."
She doesn't finish the sentence. She doesn't have to.
"Then we'll do it," Junpei says. "Whatever it takes. I promised you I wouldn't let you get hurt, Kanny, so I can't--" He looks right at her, alive and dead and his best friend, and his vision swims. "I can't let you die!"
-//-
Akane and Strike--Junpei, he can pretty much guess by the time it's all over, now that Seven is remembering things, and Snake is starting to put the pieces together--are gone by the time Aoi finishes solving the puzzle.
They're gone, but she's alive. Aoi's sure without knowing how he's sure.
The remaining eight players leave the ship, which turns out not to be a ship, but a warehouse in the middle of a wide, flat desert. For a second, as Aoi stands on its roof and looks out along the empty horizon, he swears he can see a jeep disappearing over the horizon.
Ace is tied up. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Aoi can remember a history where Ace admitted to being the one that had organized the Nonary Game nine years ago, had lost his mind (or stopped pretending he hadn't lost it a long time ago), and murdered half the group.
(He can remember timelines where Clover had gone axe crazy too, but that feels different)
(Ace is the kind of person to maliciously lose his mind, and Clover had been wild with grief when she believed her brother was dead)
The rest of them, though, get moving. They find a second car waiting for them, fully gassed up and stocked with food, water, and maps.
"So I guess we just leave," Lotus says, crossing her arms. For the first time, as they stand around baking in the hot summer sun, she's the only one that seems to be dressed appropriately. "We just go home, and go back to our normal lives."
"That's what we did last time," Light muses.
"I'm not doing that," Aoi says. "I'm going to find my sister."
"Your sister turned out to be Zero," Clover reminds him.
"And my sister," Aoi tells her. "If Snake had been Zero, would you be giving up on him?"
Clover, after a second, smiles at him and shakes her head. "Well when you put it like that," she says. "Maybe you'll need help."
"Maybe I will," he says.
"But we should at least start by getting out of this desert," Seven says. "Before we all decide to go chasing after a couple of Zeros."
"Yeah," Aoi acknowledges. "We should do that first."
"Then food," Lotus says. "And sleep."
Aoi doesn't say anything.
"Food and sleep," Lotus repeats, her voice slightly louder. "Then chasing down your mastermind little sister and her boyfriend."
"Boyfriend," Aoi scoffs. "That guy? No way."
(She deserves better)
"You didn't see the way he was acting after we went through the [9] door," Lotus says. "I've never seen anyone not want to shoot a hostage so badly."
Aoi grumbles and turns away. "Boyfriend," he mutters.
Yeah, he's definitely going after the two of them, as soon as he possibly can. He needs to give Junpei a serious talk about treating his sister right, and he needs to--
He needs to see Akane again.