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The hum in the old Kabasaki plant wasn’t fully mechanical, nor fully chemical. It had a pulse to it. Like veins running beneath the concrete and rust — like the bones of the place still remembered what it had seen.
Uru’s breath hitched as the restraints around his wrists loosened, just slightly.
His fingers twitched. His vision was still sluggish, warped by the sedative, but the experience was over. He was awake. The girl was gone, and so was that damned detective. And yet, he didn’t stand. He could. The sedative had faded enough, his body quickly getting over it. But something pressed on his chest like phantom weight. Not fear — he wasn’t a man who feared very easily anymore — but instinct. A cold, animal-brained warning:
Wrong. Wrong. Leave.
His mind struggled to catch up. He blinked. And in that half-second of darkness, through the slits in his mask—
A man. Standing near the rusted shelves across from the machine. Tall. Still. Poised like a knife. Platinum hair. Sharp symmetry. A face almost familiar. Not the detective, not quite. Something… worse. The harder Uru tried to focus, the more the figure changed — subtly, impossibly — as if it was made from more than one person.
He blinked again. A mistake. This time, the man wasn’t there . He was behind him. He could feel it. Uru’s pulse lurched. He knew this room — had studied every bolt and console before this situation even happened. He’d stumbled upon it half-by-accident, and would have tested the machine himself, had it not been rigged so elaborately to break if moved or used improperly. Nothing should have been able to sneak up on him here. And yet, something had. Watching. Judging. The sense of scrutiny was so sharp it sliced through the air, prickling the back of his neck.
“… Detective? ” Uru rasped. His voice came out dry. Thin. Stupid. He hadn’t meant to say it. But those eyes — cold, vicious, calculating — they’d reminded him of something. Of that man. Detective Kaname Date. But more angular. Crueler. Like someone had sculpted that detective into a weapon.
And something else. A feeling beneath the surface. Like this man had once lived behind his eyes. Walked the same paths. Stared into the same voids.
The eyes reminded Uru of his own.
“Who are you…” Uru muttered, staggering to his feet. The restraints clattered against the armrests like bones as they fully fell away from his wrists.
No answer. Of course not. But the silence had weight to it. Like the very air refused to forget. Forget what? He turned, some deeper instinct tugging him toward the doorway. And sure enough—
There. The man. Standing in the entrance, still as death. Blocking the only exit. He wasn’t just a hallucination. Uru knew it. He had a presence. Heavy. Real. That inhuman posture, shoulders too square, head just too still — like he didn’t wear his flesh the same way everyone else did. He was wrong. Wrong in the way the world sometimes made things that never should have existed.
Their eyes locked.
Uru had stared death in the face. Many times. He had been death. Tearer. But this wasn’t death. This was something worse. The man looked at him not with fear. Not with hatred. But with recognition. Like he knew him. Not recently. Not from police reports or news clips. But intimately. Deeply. As if they’d grown up together — or might have, had the universe tilted just a fraction to the left. But the recognition was wrong, nonetheless. It felt hollow.
“Stop it,” Uru hissed, without thinking. His voice was taut and clipped, akin to a thread ready to snap. Not rage. Panic. Like a child getting stared down by an older brother who’d long since learned how to hurt him without even lifting a hand.
That thought made no sense.
The man smiled. Barely. No warmth. No amusement. Just that glint of recognition. And under it, unmistakable: disappointment. Like Uru had failed some test. Like he was a younger sibling who hadn’t lived up to the blood he didn’t know he shared.
That thought made no sense.
… Or too much sense. The feeling hit him like nausea. Like falling. Of course. He staggered forward, hand reaching out. As if to touch. As if to confirm. But when he blinked again, unwillingly—
Gone. The man was gone. Only silence remained. Only the machine, purring softly in the gloom of the room. He turned back toward it. Breathing in the chemical sting still hanging faintly in the air. Expecting… something.
But nothing came.
And he had no time left to waste playing whatever game that man wanted to start.