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Seto had an unnerving habit of staring directly into the camera. He would stand completely still - still enough that, for a moment, Kaiba would be half-certain that there had been a glitch in the recording. But then, as if on its own accord, one small finger would rise up his side and his small, sharp fingertip would start to pry at the corner of the biometry badge stuck to the back of his neck. He would pick at the edges of the badge - as if to pull it off - then pull a face, but would not break eye contact. He had a hard, uncompromising stare. He wasn’t old enough yet to know how to bury the irritation rising in his face. He looked at Kaiba like he knew something about the biometry badge that Kaiba did not. But he hadn’t figured out how to get it off. Not yet, anyway.
Kaiba counted each of those failed attempts as a small victory. Without the real-time biomarker feedback, the systems that kept this world from rejecting Seto and Mokuba’s bodies would break down. The Bridge would re-open, and they’d be expelled immediately. With enough data, and sufficient controls, he would learn how to permanently repress the rejection mechanism. But the whole project would fall apart if Seto ever managed to get the badge off.
Kaiba hated that unguarded face of his, and his curious, naive, wandering hands that would destroy him if he wasn’t careful about it. Kaiba’s own hands curled into knots watching him. He jabbed the intercom button.
“You had better stop that,” he said, making his voice as low and unrecognizable as possible.
Seto said nothing. But Kaiba thought that he saw his face glow with satisfaction as he refused to put his hand back down.
-x-
“And, uh,” Mokuba cleared his throat. He snuck a glance at Kaiba, then his eyes quickly fell away. “Item X59-B?”
Kaiba tried to keep from rolling his eyes. His jaw tensed with the effort it took to resist clenching his teeth, but he replied smoothly: “Prototype testing’s been doing well. Early test results show sheer forces remaining constant under all three treatment protocols. Should be ready for scale-up in eight to twelve weeks.”
Back straight, eyes direct, voice neutral - nothing excessive, nothing emotional - just straight to the point: A clean, efficient recitation. Enough to earn him another few days of peace, or, at least, the illusion of it.
“That’s great, nii-sama.” Mokuba said, chipper. He didn’t look up from his tablet. The long list of Kaiba’s active projects marched under his fingers like row upon row of dark, steely ants. Strong, sensible creatures, bearing on their backs strong quarterly earnings, falling supply costs, expanding market share. “And, uh…” He trailed off.
Kaiba had been subject to these twice-weekly check-ins ever since the official termination of Item XTI-13. The Dimension Bridge.
The Dimension Bridge. Had it been a dream? Kaiba remembered it as a wide, descending light that hummed with energy. Like standing inside a ringing bell. He had never touched it properly, but it had touched him with a warm, needling sting under his skin and a sweep of buoyant heat that had swept him off his feet and held him close against its own heavy, beating heart. His eyes’ watery burn had hurt and made everything soft, prismatic, and beautiful. That heart beat had sounded like someone singing.
It hadn’t lasted a moment longer than it took to get the wind knocked out of him.
And here they were, Kaiba and Mokuba seated across each other at Kaiba’s clinically white lab table twice each week, sealed in the aftermath. Loans taken out in haste, not yet repaid. Headlines buzzing with thinly veiled accusations, insinuations of this incompetence. A coterie of puzzled board members and investors, demanding to know the exact dimensions of the gaping black hole that their money had disappeared into. Kaiba, dutifully delivering his bi-weekly progress reports to KaibaCorp’s new (Acting) President. Kept under careful, caring supervision by the many hundred investors and employees who professed profound concern for his welfare.
“What is it?” Kaiba asked, and did not give him a chance to answer. “I would hate for our meetings to not be sufficiently comprehensive. For you to have to report that my performance today has been anything other than…perfectly satisfactory.”
“It’s…” Mokuba’s face squirmed, first into a deep, full-face frown, then second into a small smile as he pressed a button on his tablet. The screen went dark. He leaned in closer. “The lab resource usage reports? They’ve registered a spike of activity over the past week. Network usage, electricity, and, it’s, uh, there’s an inconsistency, the…The electricity used by each of your individual projects, when added up, it’s less than the electricity being used in the lab space as a whole? There’s quite a large discrepancy, actually…”
Kaiba only saw the solid black of Mokuba’s tablet. So, this was it, then? He felt that darkness closing in around him. Felt Seto and Mokuba, restless in the lab beneath his feet, straining towards the surface.
“Why did you turn that off?”
“I - “ Mokuba, who had been inching towards the edge of his seat, snapped back into a more professional posture. But he looked confused, a frown scribbled across his face. He looked at the tablet like he had forgotten it was there. “I just thought, maybe - off the record…?”
“There is no off the record. You know that.” Kaiba kept his voice as still, as hard, as a steel rule.
Kaiba knew what Mokuba thought about the termination of Item XTI-13, because it was the same as what everyone else thought. Their small-minded calculus: the project had been a vanity venture, an ungodly abomination, the product of a reckless and irresponsible madman and his army of enfeebled enablers. It had been - above all things - a spectacular failure; the only good thing that anyone could say was that it at least hadn’t killed anybody. At least, not anybody who was not already dead.
Those fools, they’d shoot him down if he ever tried to pitch the sun. They’d scowl at the schematics and say, “Really, Kaiba-sama, the sun? Think of the supply chain management issues, think of the ROI! It just doesn’t pencil out, it’s far too expensive…” And there would be no convincing them, even though the sun was already hanging right there.
But, yes, whatever, Kaiba knew the rules. Every experiment conducted on KaibaCorp property, with KaibaCorp materials, on KaibaCorp time, was the property of the corporation. The corporation that had declared the Dimension Bridge an existential liability and which now sat with him, frowned at him, and spoke at him through Mokuba.
“Nii-sama…”
“This is your job now, Mokuba.” Kaiba turned the tablet back on. He held Mokuba’s gaze, as if he could hold it in his fist and crunch it. “Do it.”
“Oh - ” Mokuba took a moment to find his voice. “What - what have you been doing in there?”
Kaiba had re-activated the Dimension Bridge. Kaiba had repaired the wires and re-run the cables and hit the power button to turn the damned thing on. But Seto and Mokuba - the Seto and Mokuba that were waiting for Kaiba in one of Item XTI-13’s former lab spaces - they had come to him. They had been lost, and they had come to him.
“That’s standard maintenance,” Kaiba said. “Running diagnostics, installing system updates.” Back straight, eyes direct, voice neutral - nothing excessive, nothing emotional - just straight to the point: A clean, efficient lie.
He waited a beat for Mokuba’s countermove, for any flinch in his smooth, professional face.
But Mokuba released him, closed the door, and returned to his new office on the top floor.
-x-
Kaiba had built Seto and Mokuba as nice a house as he was able. It had all the required components: the kitchen was clean and efficient, a bathroom, two bedrooms - though at the moment they were only using one. The house was quiet, simple, and soft. Watchful. Safe. It gave them everything they needed; he hadn’t overlooked a thing.
It had worked perfectly, until the air recirculation system began to malfunction. One of the circuits had been pried open, completely dismantled.
Kaiba deployed a robot to fix it in the middle of the night and watched, on the video screen, as Seto watched the robot emerge from a nook in the side of the wall and begin to solder the circuit back together. Seto was a ghostly flash of heat on the night vision camera, his eyes a spotless celestial white. A pair of UFO high beams levitating over a cornfield at midnight. He moved silently, then held himself completely still, save the few times he tilted his head to listen to something that Kaiba couldn’t hear.
The air system was back in service for two days, then broke again, and broke differently.
This time, Kaiba poured over the security footage, and watched Seto methodologically strip the circuit apart until there was nothing left to solder back together.
He examined the busted circuit later. The first break had been simple, blunt, artless enough that it could have been an accident. But this second one was different - it was precise, complex - like an oil painting or an instrument - a labyrinth of golden, intricately twisted wire. It nearly stirred, and felt so imbued with intelligence that Kaiba would not have been surprised if it had tried to leap from his hand. This was the handiwork of someone who had known what they were doing, and who had savored the destruction. He studied it closely and felt it, unblinking, studying him back. It made his heart race.
Kaiba wondered why Seto had chosen this specific piece. Did he know that the air circulation system was the system that connected most directly with the outside world? Did he know what kind of danger he would be in if he ever managed to break it completely? Did he know what it did at all? Or was it simply fun, a convenient thing to play with?
Or was it a message? Seto had seen the house jump to respond to him before, and now he wanted to make it talk to him again? Kaiba smirked. Of course, Seto would be bored, confined to four rooms, whiling away the hours waiting for his body to calibrate to the outside world while his mind continued whirling, unrelenting, threatening to overheat.
Well, if it was a challenge that Seto needed, then Kaiba would rise to the occasion.
-x-
And it became a bolt of joy flashing through his days, racing down to the lab to read Seto’s latest message for him. He found it in Seto’s reimagined grease guns, steam traps, transducers, and regulators. They were beautiful, intelligent creatures - the intricacy and might of young Seto’s singular intellect made physical and refined, under Kaiba’s careful guidance and supervision, into greater and more triumphant testaments to his unlimited potential. Kaiba wasn’t surprised; Seto had always been extraordinary.
Kaiba took the grease gun, that small creature, and held it close to his chest.
-x-
The next thing he found surprised him. It didn’t look like anything. Just a handful of malformed metallic blobs.
Kaiba frowned. He prodded one of the little lifeless objects. Why would Seto make something so crude? Was he ill?
No, his biometrics were normal.
Kaiba turned to the security footage. And there, about five hours ago -
Seto was hunched over his latest puzzle, face folded into a deep frown. He moved with mechanical precision, so absorbed in his work that the puzzle looked like it was absorbing him. Mokuba hovered a few steps to the side.
Kaiba and Mokuba both watched the changing shades of Seto’s face and the fast, sharp, strong movements of his hands. He looked like he could set the whole thing on fire with his mind. And Kaiba regretted that he hadn’t watched the videos before. Seto in action. It was like watching something being born. And Kaiba was still holding the faceless, shapeless, stupid chips - he knew how this story would end. But, watching him, Kaiba could disbelieve anything. Seto would prevail, and he would create something beautiful -
“Do you want to take a break?” Mokuba asked.
Kaiba tensed all over. “No.”
Mokuba sat crossed-legged on the floor. “But what if this one’s too hard?”
“I’ll figure it out. There has to be a trick to it somewhere. I just have too…” His voice faded away as Seto sank back into concentration.
Mokuba stayed by Seto’s side as he continued working. He was quiet and still, a fuzzy dark splotch on the video that was standing then - where did all the time go? - curled up asleep in a ball at Seto’s side.
Seto turned towards Mokuba and Kaiba could not see his face but could see his arm gently resting where it looked like Mokuba’s shoulder should be.
“I will get us back to the orphanage,” Seto said in a soft whisper with a steel beam lanced through it. “I promise. This has to be the last one. If I can crack this test, they’ll let us go back.”
What a stupid thing to say! How could Seto have gotten it so completely wrong - ?
Didn’t he know what would happen to them if they went back?
Kaiba froze the video on the two of them. For just a moment. It was like holding them.
A few hours later they were laughing. They were picking over something together. A checkerboard? Where had that come from? They were holding the same things that Kaiba was holding and Seto’s previous project - the few remaining scraps of it - sat forgotten.
Kaiba looked down at the small game pieces clinging to each other in his hand. Seto and Mokuba were still giggling together on the video screen - a golden, floaty sound.
When he heard the siren it sounded like a dream. The emergency lights went up in a wild flush of flashing red. They made rows of big, pulsing eyes - glossy, staring at him from everywhere.
Seto had gotten his badge off.
Kaiba didn’t feel his feet, felt like he was nothing but his own siren heart as he raced down to the XTI-13 lab.
It was already falling apart. The house he had built was collapsing into white noise. The sirens were a tornado of sound that seemed to lift up and carry him from room to crumbling room. He couldn’t hold on to anything.
Kaiba found them standing at the foot of the Dimension Bridge. The bright Bridge stretched out forever, until the other side was nothing but a tiny blinking point of distant light. Kaiba ran to them. He wouldn’t let them leave! He’d stop them, he’d shut the whole thing down, he’d make them come to their senses -
The Bridge flashed like lightning. It trembled as they took their first steps on. Mokuba held Seto’s hand. Did he know where they were going? Kaiba must have said something - or yelled - because before he disappeared Seto turned to him and stared and the Bridgelight fell across his face and Kaiba thought do you know where you’re going do you know what you’re doing do you recognize me as one of the creatures that you made? You’re so small. Do you have any idea how small you are? And I do remember you. I don’t want you to go. Kaiba stopped running. But he had forgotten that he had ever been as small as that. In his memories he had always been so big. Perhaps there was still time - he could run, he could grab them. They were close enough to touch. He could force them to change their mind. But he couldn’t put that badge back on, he couldn’t hold Seto down and wrestle him into being anything that he did not want to be. He did not want to try. Kaiba could see him so clearly. Seto was a star. He was gone, but he was still shining.
The alarms stopped ringing, and the lab buzzed with silence. Seto left a massive emptiness behind; Kaiba was the only thing left.
-x-
“What about Item B623-9? You had reported some technical issues with that one during our last meeting.”
“Everything’s been worked out. It was just a broken rotator.”
“Oh, great!” Mokuba smiled and made a note on his tablet. “I knew that you would figure it out, nii-sama!”
Mokuba continued clicking away on his tablet. They were nearing the end of their allotted meeting time, the time when Mokuba would click his briefcase closed and Kaiba would become just another entry on his long list of direct reports. Kaiba twitched in his seat. Would Mokuba remember - ?
“There was one final thing.” He watched as Mokuba’s eyes lit up the color of intrigue when Kaiba reached forward and turned the tablet off. “Off the record, this time.”
“Ok…”
Kaiba hadn’t gone back to the room that belonged to Item XTI-13. He couldn’t even walk the hall. He was taunted by the empty space it left behind, the empty-skull feeling of it all, the reflection of his failure, the one-way bridge that led to somewhere that he could never see. He wondered about them, hoped that he had managed to give them something that they would find worth remembering. Wondered if he had succeeded only in making them worse.
“Now you can’t tell anyone about this,” Kaiba said as he reached for the box he’d been keeping under the table. “Because this might be Kaibacorp’s greatest product yet.”
“Oh really?” The corner of Mokuba’s mouth quirked up. He looked at Kaiba like he didn’t quite recognize him. Or maybe it was Kaiba that didn’t recognize the look.
Kaiba held a finger to his lips, then cracked open the checkerboard and laid out Seto and Mokuba’s two dozen little checkers pieces.
“What…?” Mokuba picked up one of the pieces. He snorted, rolled his eyes, and laughed. “You’ve been really hard at work, huh?”
This was the other thing that Seto had left behind. Mokuba, a little incredulous, smiling at him shyly from very, very far away.
“Oh, like you wouldn’t believe.”