Of Cinder and Bone

by Kyoko M

  Kamala’s gaze didn’t waver. “Yes.”

  Fujioka took a deep breath. “Very well.”

  “I don’t understand. Why help us if you think it’s a suicide mission?”

  “Well, you are paying me a handsome sum of money.”

  “Misaki,” Kamala said quietly.

  The older woman sat back in her seat, closing the case now that everything was in place. She shut her eyes and listened to the faint hum of the tires on the road as they drove.

  “I had two rules in the bedroom. Never lie about what I want… and never make love to anyone.”

  She opened her eyes enough to meet Kamala’s steady stare. “I broke both of them the night I left.”

  Kamala linked her fingers and rested them on her knees. “Do you still have feelings for him?”

  “No. But I owe him. When I left, I was… unkind. I stomped on his heart and then scraped it off my boots like it was nothing. As time passed, I realized he wasn’t the one to blame. It was on both of us. I fell just as hard. I wanted to believe I was invincible, that I could continue through life this way, with no attachments, but I was wrong. I can’t repair the damage I did to him, but if I can save him, then I’ll sleep better.”

  The two women fell silent for a long while, each for separate reasons.

  “Thank you,” Kamala said. “We’ve asked so much of you and we have no right to, but… I appreciate it more than words can say. If I can ever repay you—”

  “There is only one last thing I ask of you.”

  “Name it.”

  “Make peace with your demons. You might be seeing them face-to-face soon enough.”

  ~*~

  Pretty much the only positive thing about being at Sugimoto Pharmaceuticals aside from seeing his dragon was the fact that Jack had access to painkillers. Shortly after he’d drawn Pete’s blood, his arm ‘woke up’ and proceeded to send paralyzing pain through his entire body. Yagami sent Watsuki to get him something to take care of it, and Jack highly approved. The pain vanished in seconds and left him comfortably mellow, despite still being held against his will and needing to cure the world’s only dragon in less than twelve hours.

  The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s extensive system of labs was nothing to sneeze at, but Jack still found the amount of equipment at Sugimoto’s R&D facility impressive. He put together a list of things he’d need to start working on the cure, and every single item was available somewhere in the premises. However, he knew he was only getting one piece of the whole story. The cell where Pete was being kept was a dead giveaway that something sinister had been in the works for a long time. R&D facilities sometimes did animal testing, but he suspected they’d been planning for this long before Pete arrived. He was determined to find out why.

  For a long stretch of time, he and Yagami worked in the lab in terse silence, speaking only when discussing whatever information they uncovered. Minako was also in the lab, and her proficiency with the equipment and the subject matter was also very telling. He didn’t sense any warmth between her and Yagami, which meant they were only colleagues of some sort.

  After analyzing Pete’s blood, they determined that they needed to inspect the production of growth hormones in Pete’s pituitary gland. In humans, the most common cause for gigantism was a tumor in the gland that caused overproduction of the hormone, which required a removal if possible. The treatments ranged from radiation to injections to surgery, all of which were dangerous to inflict on a young dragon. With her ability to resist inoculation, any method they chose to treat her with would be at their own risk.

  Jack also found that Sugimoto R&D had one other hidden treasure: the world’s most extravagant espresso machine.

  He stood leaning against the counter of the break room, blowing away steam from the top of the white coffee mug—a mug, no less, not Styrofoam, which blew his mind—and poring over what he’d already learned from their research. He found himself absently patting his pocket to look for his cell phone, forgetting that Watsuki had unceremoniously stomped it into little chunks on the sidewalk outside of Fujioka’s apartment. He hadn’t realized how habitual it was to chat with Kamala in his daily routine. He’d managed to push her out of his thoughts for a while, but the worry crept back over his mind like kudzu. Part of him wanted her here simply because her brilliant mind would make it that much easier to find a cure. The other part of him wanted her as far away from here as possible, somewhere she’d be safe and happy, as absurd as it sounded.

  He sipped the espresso and cringed. Still too hot.

  Jack glanced up from the mug. There were a couple of female scientists also in the break room eating lunch, speaking in hushed Japanese and glancing at him every so often. He’d been able to catch small snatches of the conversation, primarily about what he was doing there and how it was unusual for Yagami to be back in Japan after such a long stretch in the States.

  The break room door opened. Minako walked in, heading for the legendary espresso machine as well. Jack kept blowing away and taking tiny sips, relieved as the caffeine replenished his energy bit by bit.

  “So,” he asked casually. “What are you in for?”

  Minako watched the dark brown liquid well up inside the mug. “Excuse me?”

  “What brought you here? What’s your field of study?”

  “Genetic engineering.”

  “How long have you been with this company?”

  Minako poured steamed milk into the cup. “A month.”

  Jack’s eyebrows lifted. “Seriously? That’s it?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I’d have guessed longer. How’d they pull you in?”

  “A favor for a friend.”

  Jack snorted. “Didn’t think Yagami had any.”

  “It wasn’t for him.”

  He regarded her thoughtfully. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but it strikes me that you actually give a shit what happens to Pete. What’s your stake in all this? You know that if I somehow make it out of here, the shit-storm that follows will level the place.”

  She stirred a spoon into the coffee with small, precise circles. “In your research pursuing this endeavor, how much time did you spend on cultures built around the study of dragons?”

  “Some. I wrote a few papers on the ecological impact their disappearance had on the environment, and those intersected with societies who used to fuel their local economy off of dragons, whether they were hunting them or trying to save them from extinction.”

  “Some of those groups are more than conservationists,” Minako said quietly. “Dragons were not just your average reptiles. They were the evolutionary bridge between reptiles and the more intelligent species capable of cognition.”

  “Right,” Jack said. “Most reptiles rank lowest on the scale for animal cognition and intelligence. Dragons fit closer to the tier that some birds of prey belong to, since they were capable of short term memory and basic environmental problem solving.”

  “The people I represent are focused on similar principles of yours. We want dragons to be brought back into the world in order to study them. We have so many pieces of information from history, but they were silenced so early on that there are vast gaps in our knowledge of them. It’s not for our own benefit. It’s for the future generations of the world. Dragons might hold the key to other scientific marvels that mankind hasn’t even grasped yet.”

  “I agree with you there,” Jack said, smiling faintly out of habit. “I mean, I’ve read dozens of books about how the larger species were able to fly. Scholars could debate that ability until the cows come home.”

  “Then you understand my decision to work here in spite of…” She nipped her bottom lip, and a look of disapproval skittered across her face for a second. “…the unscrupulousness of our company.”

  “Is that directed at Yagami or Okegawa?”

  Minako didn’t reply; she just sipped th
e coffee. Jack nodded sagely. “You’re a smart woman indeed.”

  He sighed and checked the clock on the wall behind them. “We’d better get back to it. Won’t be long before Yagami gets testy or blows up the lab with the sheer force of his ego.”

  A soft sound escaped Minako that Jack later realized was a laugh. He held the door for her and they returned to the lab.

  Only to find Kazuma Okegawa there.

  Yagami and the shateigashira were having a rather spirited argument when the two of them stepped inside the lab, and both men immediately fell silent once they realized who had entered. The scowl on Okegawa’s face melted into a mask of smug arrogance as his dark eyes fell across Jack.

  “Jackson-sensei,” he said, drawing out each syllable in a mocking tone. “How nice to see you again.”

  “Fuckface!” Jack said cheerfully, setting his coffee aside. “Glad you could make it.”

  He grabbed a beaker and launched it at the yakuza lieutenant. Okegawa blocked it with his forearm and it shattered in half.

  Jack didn’t waste a single second.

  He tackled Okegawa to the floor and pinned his arms beneath his knees, cocking his fist and landing a vicious right hook to the nose.

  “That was for Pete,” he snarled, and then hit him a second time. “That was for threatening Kamala.”

  A third time. “That was for the dragons you murdered.”

  Jack grabbed two handfuls of Okegawa’s blood-splattered white shirt and grinned. “And this is for Detective Colin Stubbs.”

  He slammed the top of his skull down on Okegawa’s face, breaking his nose. Okegawa wrenched his arm loose and slammed Jack’s head into a nearby cabinet. He then rolled out from underneath him to his feet and kicked him in the ribs once, twice, until Watsuki came up behind him. The giant bodyguard grappled him into a full-nelson while Yagami went after Jack, who recovered and tried to lunge for Okegawa again.

  “Knock it off!” Yagami bellowed. “Both of you!”

  Okegawa spat blood in Jack’s direction. “Cheap shot, kusottare.”

  “I’m not the one with the broken nose, bitch.”

  “Kuso kurae!” Okegawa struggled harder, but Watsuki might as well have been a granite wall.

  Yagami’s feet slid across the tile floor as Jack kept coming for him. “We don’t have time for this! Do you want to save your dragon or not, Rhett?”

  Jack’s chest heaved with heavy breaths. He saw nothing but red, laser-focused on Okegawa and the thought of making him bleed in places other than just his nose and mouth. His hands ached to get around his throat and squeeze until the criminal’s windpipe gave under his grip.

  “Killing him won’t take more than a second,” he growled. “I’ve got time for both.”

  He moved to shove Yagami away, but Minako stepped between him and the yakuza lieutenant. He froze and gave her a glare that could flash-fry a small ocean. “Move.”

  “You will have to move me yourself,” Minako said calmly.

  Jack gritted his teeth. He flexed his hands open and closed a couple times, mulling the thought over. After all, she was a perfect stranger at this point. It gave him some leeway. He wouldn’t actually hurt her.

  Still, she was short and dark-haired and the dissention in those brown eyes was strikingly similar to those of an equally short, dark-haired intelligent scientist who would kick his ass for getting into a brawl and wasting precious time. Jack took a deep breath and stilled the violence humming through his limbs and down his spine.

  “Fine,” he said, the word bitter on his tongue. “Pretty boy gets a thirty-minute pass. That’s about how long it should take for the cure to synthesize, and then I snap his neck.”

  “You’ll try,” Okegawa sneered.

  Yagami jerked his head towards the door. “Get him out of here. I’ll deal with him in a minute.”

  Watsuki hauled Okegawa along until they were outside the lab. Jack stared after him the whole way until he’d disappeared from view; a look that was eerily similar to a lion watching someone drag an injured wildebeest right out of its claws.

  He nearly flinched when Minako reached up towards his face, tilting his head. “Are you hurt badly?”

  Jack touched his temple. No blood, though he could feel a bump rising near his hairline. “No. Always been hard-headed.”

  “You don’t say,” Yagami muttered. “Now you said something about the solution synthesizing in about half an hour?”

  “Yeah. I’ve got it going on the centrifuge. Since your tests showed that Pete doesn’t have a tumor, it’s most viable to treat the problem with an injection. We can’t operate on her until we find a way to anesthetize her. What I need from you is a better way to restrain her. Why are the chains so loose?”

  “We had to cobble something together at the last second. They were made for something larger than her. Besides, the chains are to keep her from scratching a hole in the glass, not to hinder all her movements.”

  “Well, if her growth keeps accelerating, that’s going to be harmful rather than helpful. Do better.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Yagami left the lab.

  “Minako-san, I need you to check my math here on the solution and see if you can figure out a dosage. You’ve been working with Pete for a while, so I’m sure you know her current metabolic rate better than I do. I’ll finish my notes and then triple-check them before we risk a first trial.”

  “Hai. However,” she pointed towards his arm. “Take care of that before you start.”

  Jack glanced down to see a splotch of bright red spreading through his shirt sleeve. “Damn. Stitches popped loose during the fight. I’ll be back.”

  He went down the hall to a supply closet, grabbed a First Aid kit, and went into the bathroom. He cleaned up and re-wrapped the wound as best as he could. It wasn’t nearly as neat and precise as Kamala would have done it, but it would keep him from bleeding to death.

  Jack washed and dried his hands, then scooped up the kit before getting ready to head back to the lab. On the way to the door, he heard muffled voices and paused as he realized he recognized them. He glanced up at the ceiling to see a vent sticking out of the wall. Next door was a small conference room, and he could hear the occasional grunt of pain from Okegawa, which led him to believe Yagami was patching him up. Anger welled up in his chest again, but he stifled it and flipped the lock on the bathroom door. He eased next to the wall and closed his eyes, opening his senses fully to concentrate on the conversation. He wouldn’t be able to catch every last word and translate it properly, but odds are, he could get a general idea of what the two of them were talking about. Considering he didn’t know what they planned to do to him after he cured Pete, he figured it wouldn’t hurt to eavesdrop.

  “I told you not to come here,” Yagami spat, ripping open the cupboard behind him and bringing down gauze and medical tape. “What part of that didn’t you understand?”

  Okegawa sat on the table with a washcloth pressed to his nose, absorbing the blood. The shiny tile floor beneath him was spotted bright red already and he stared at the drops, scowling through the pain. “You’re not my keeper. And I was the one who arranged for Jackson to get into your custody, so maybe you shouldn’t be so quick to berate me.”

  “Why shouldn’t I? I’ve been busy enough cleaning up your goddamn mess,” Yagami said, slamming the medical supplies on the table next to him. Okegawa dropped his hand and Yagami flicked on a small penlight, tilting his head upward to examine the damage. “Offhand, it looks like a Type 1 fracture of the cartilage, not the bone. Once the swelling is down, we’ll do a CT scan to confirm it. For now, I’ll pack it. Hold still. It’s going to hurt.”

  “I can take it,” Okegawa grunted. “And once you’re done here, I will kill him.”

  “Shut up,” Yagami growled, tearing the gauze into strips. “You’re not going to kill anyone else, not after that fiasco in Cambridge with the
police detective. You should be behind bars right now, you and your cronies.”

  “Why? Because I did what was necessary?”

  “Necessary for what? What do the yakuza know about the importance of that dragon to this world? All they’ll do is exploit it. You should know better, otōto. They’re leading you by the nose and trying to manipulate you into throwing your life away.”

  “It’s not like that. You don’t know what we can create with that dragon, aniki. It’s unlike anything we’ve ever dreamed of.”

  “And what’s that? Some kind of mutant that you’ll throw in a cage somewhere to siphon off money from tourists?”

  “No. We found her. We found Baba Yaga.”

  Yagami froze. He lowered his hands from the shateigashira’s swollen nose. “What?”