Disclaimer: Ultraman and all associated characters belong to Tsuburaya Productions. No infringement of any of the rights of the creators or distributors is intended. This fanfic may only be distributed with explicit permission from the author and without any monetary value exchanged.


Splintered Secrets

an Ultraman Moebius fanfic by Hoshikage

Chapter 3.


Teppei and Konomi had come first, sitting by Ryuu's side as he watched over Mirai, unable to make himself move.

"He'll be all right," Konomi had tried to encourage him.

"Absolutely!" Teppei had agreed. "He's been laid up here, what, a dozen times by now? He just needs a little time to rest, that's all."

Teppei was exaggerating, but Ryuu didn't have the heart to contradict him. He knew they were just trying to cheer him up. "Thanks," he'd mumbled, but he didn't say anything more.

Konomi took his hands in hers before they'd left. "Don't give up," she'd said encouragingly. "He needs you to believe in him."

And then Ryuu was alone in his vigil again.

He stared blankly at Mirai, not really seeing him anymore. His vision slid out of focus, replacing the still, pale face he saw with the smiling one that should have been there. Nothing moved, nothing changed. The clock might even have stopped on the wall. Ryuu knew in the back of his mind that it ticked relentlessly on, but he couldn't hear it.

He only started out of his fugue when Captain Sakomizu sat down beside him.

Ryuu looked at the Captain, half expecting one of his sympathetic talks. But for once, even the Captain seemed to have no words. He merely offered a weary smile, and sat back in his own chair, plainly intending to stay. For some reason he couldn't explain, Ryuu found that more comforting than words would have been.

In silence, both of them waited together.

*
Mirai drifted unwillingly back to consciousness. He tried to submerge himself back in the darkness, but pain gnawed at him, denying him rest. He squirmed uselessly against the heavy crystalline bands, then gave up and lay limp again, opening his eyes in resignation, searching for something to distract him from the ache that seemed to be throbbing all the way down through his very bones.

Urzan had vanished somewhere. Mirai turned his head to look around, finally taking note of the lab equipment. None of it was anything he recognized, though that didn't surprise him. It was fairly plain that it wasn't human technology either; the sprawl of crystal and wire looked nothing like the more solid machines he knew. He traced the wires with his eyes, following their paths from the glowing crystal that bound him to a large sphere that dominated one corner. It reached from floor to ceiling, and swirled inside with red and yellow light.

Mirai felt his stomach lurch. His Light. It was an all too visible reminder of the slow death that awaited him as the energy that formed his existence was leached away.

Mirai turned his head away, and saw Urzan open a door and step into the room. Immediately, a flare of helpless anger ignited inside him. Mirai clenched his hands into fists and glared furiously at the alien. Urzan turned and saw the look, but his six eyes only blinked, and if there was anything of discomfort in the alien's manner, Mirai couldn't read it. The indifference only made him angrier, and he demanded hotly, "Why are you doing this?"

Urzan blinked again and did not answer for a moment. Finally, as Mirai glowered at him, he responded, "I am not sure it matters."

"Just tell me!" Mirai snapped. "If I'm going to die for your experiment, you at least owe me that much!"

Urzan reached up with a taloned paw and scratched at his head. "That may well be true. But I must correct you. This is not an experiment. The results have already been proven."

Mirai frowned in confusion, not understanding. Urzan didn't wait for him to ask another question. "My people are dying out," he responded with the same odd indifference he always seemed to project. "Our sun fades day by day, and no other world can sustain us for long."

"You seem to be living on Earth without a problem," Mirai retorted, but Urzan shook his head.

"The Earth poisons us. I will die as soon as my mission here is complete. But it will be worth it, for the saving of all else."

Mirai stared at him, feeling somehow horrified at the lack of any identifiable emotion in the passionless speech. Urzan didn't wait for him to find words.

"Your Light will rekindle our sun. We know this, for one of your kind visited our world once before. He was nearing the end of his time in your plane of existence, and gave us the gift of more time to find another way. Yet even that great sacrifice was not enough to save us. We have searched every world we found since then, and none can provide us a new home."

"But--" Mirai protested, but Urzan leaned over him, looking suddenly more intent than before, and Mirai shrank away as much as the crystal bands would allow.

"The one before you was ancient, at the end of his strength. You are young and at your strongest. Your light will turn our sun back into a great, life-giving star. We will have millennia of time ahead of us. Your life will save millions. Is that not what your kind do?"

Mirai shook his head desperately. "Not like this! There must be another way! I could search for another answer for you - if only you'd let me--"

Urzan's tone became scornful. "Are you so afraid, then?"

"No!" Mirai cried. "That's not it! But I must protect the Earth. I was charged with it--"

"Ah," Urzan said, leaning back. "The humans, then, are more precious to you than my own people. I understand. We knew that the humans were beloved of your kind."

"No!" Mirai cried again in helpless frustration. Why couldn't this creature understand that he had a duty? If Urzan had merely asked for help, Mirai could have returned to the World of Light, asked his family for help for Urzan's world. Surely they would have known of something to do, even if he did not. "Please, Urzan. No one needs to die. The others would help you if I asked them!"

Urzan shook his head. "I cannot take that risk. My time is ending now, and there is no one else left to follow in my footsteps. You are the only hope we have left." He turned away.

Mirai wrenched at the bands holding him, uselessly. "Urzan!" he cried in protest.

Urzan went to something that looked like a control panel on the other side of the room, and paused to reach out to the glowing controls. He turned and looked at Mirai over the bony ridge that formed his shoulder. "I am disappointed," he said coolly. "But perhaps it is merely that you are young, and lack the wisdom of our great savior of the past. I had hoped to spare you pain, but my time is short."

Mirai stared in horror as Urzan took hold of two glowing knobs of crystal and drew them upwards in their channels. In immediate response, the crystal bands around Mirai's limbs glowed more brightly, pulsing like a heartbeat, and Mirai felt the Light inside him surging painfully, burning inside him before it was dragged relentlessly away, like a stream of power being pulled from him that flayed him raw as it was torn from his body. Mirai struggled, a cry of anguish wrenched from his throat, fighting desperately to regain control. But the harder he fought to wrench the power back, the more it flared and seared him, until he collapsed with a faint whimper into the only remaining refuge he had, the deep darkness of unconsciousness.

*
Ryuu looked up as the door opened again. This time, it was George and Marina who came in. Ryuu blinked. Marina's hands were bandaged, and George had a headband of bandages as well. He hadn't even realized they were hurt. "What happened?" he blurted. "Are you two all right?"

Marina flushed. "I'm fine, really," she said. "The backs of my hands got a light burn from one of the explosions. But really, it's not bad."

George rubbed at his head. "They're overreacting," he grumbled. Then he looked at Mirai, and frowned, his eyebrows knitting together as his expression grew dark and stormy.

Ryuu saw that Marina was throwing strange looks in Mirai's direction, too. Not the kind of look he would have expected, either - she didn't look worried so much as... uneasy. "We would have been here sooner, but they kept us for so long..." Her voice trailed off as she seemed to stop paying any attention to Ryuu at all. "George, do you...?"

"What?" Ryuu asked blankly. Captain Sakomizu stood up, his expression suddenly intent. Ryuu blinked. Whatever was going on, he didn't get it at all. "What's going on? Why are you staring at Mirai like that?"

George strode over to the bed, staring down fixedly at the still form lying on it. "That's not Mirai," he growled.

Ryuu bolted out of his chair. "What?"

George reached down, and his hand sank right into the skin of Mirai's chest. Ryuu gaped as George twisted something, and Mirai's image flickered and vanished, leaving behind a faceless mannequin.

Marina swallowed, her face pale. "It was buzzing," she whispered. "Just like the cloaking effects on those guns..."

Ryuu whirled to stare at her. "What are you saying? What the hell is going on here?"

Captain Sakomizu laid a hand on his shoulder. "Ryuu, calm down!" The affable mask he wore had slipped away, replaced by a hard, drawn expression. "Everyone to the operations room, now. We need to go over the security camera footage."

"Roger," Marina and George said, and ran out the door. The Captain followed. Ryuu stood still, staring at the dummy, his mind whirling.

The same cloaking tech as the guns had. The whole thing... the whole thing had been a setup. All of them hurt, nearly killed, for this. But why? Why Mirai?

Ryuu seethed, whirling to barge out the door. He stormed toward the operations room, swearing to himself that whenever he found who had done this, they were going to pay.

And pay dearly.

*
Teppei's jaw dropped when he heard the news. "Mirai?" he repeated incredulously. "Kidnapped? Right out of the infirmary?"

"So much for security," Ryuu snarled from where he sat hunched in his chair, a murderous expression on his face.

"How horrible," Konomi whispered.

"We need to find out what happened," the Captain said, pacing the room like a caged tiger. "We'll go over all the security cameras. Teppei, I want you to track everyone who might have been in the area - mechanics in the hangar, every single nurse or attendant in the infirmary."

"Yessir," Teppei said, turning to call up the duty roster. He started looking through the lists of names, groaning at the sheer number of them. There had been a lot of people who could have been behind this, if there was a traitor - and he shuddered to think of that possibility, but he knew he had to face it. He had to count more than just the mechanics or the medical staff. They had passed through two sections on their way - it could just as easily have been someone lurking in the hallway!

But he had to start somewhere, and the medical staff seemed like the logical place to start. It would have been easiest to make the switch after Mirai had been transferred to the recovery room...

He heard the others talking in taut voices as he searched, but he only had half an ear tuned to the conversation, until a name he knew made him look up. "What was that?"

"The cameras fritzed out in the recovery room a few minutes after they brought him in," Konomi said, looking back at him.

"Naturally," Ryuu growled.

"But it looks like the last one there was Doctor Nakamura," Konomi finished, and started to turn back to her screen. Teppei felt his blood run cold.

"But... Doctor Nakamura wasn't on duty today," he said, pointing at his own screen.

"What? Are you sure?" George demanded.

"Positive!" Teppei insisted. He knew Doctor Nakamura, he had a lousy bedside manner and had berated Teppei the one time he'd gone into the infirmary after getting himself scraped up on a mission. Teppei had made a mental note to avoid him at all costs, and so he'd had his usual flicker of relief at seeing that he wasn't on the duty roster when he'd called up the records... "He shouldn't have been here at all, it was his day off! If he was here, what would he have been doing here instead of off playing golf or something?"

The Captain's face grew colder still. "Well. It looks like we've found someone to talk to."

Teppei was very glad, at that moment, that he wasn't on the Captain's bad side.

But the moment didn't last long. The Captain looked at him again, and though his face was grim, the burning anger in his eyes wasn't glaring at Teppei. "Teppei, you and Konomi keep looking for a trail in the camera footage. Anything that can tell us which way he went. I'd ask you to trace Mirai's communicator, but I have the feeling it's still in the infirmary locker with the rest of his gear."

Konomi nodded. "I tried that already," she said in a small voice.

The Captain smiled tightly at her. "Good thinking. If anything else comes up, contact us." He gestured to Ryuu, George, and Marina, and they all got up and followed him. Teppei saw with a chill that they grabbed their guns as they left.

This is bad.

It had never occurred to him before that they wouldn't be safe in Phoenix Nest. Somehow, in their fight against monsters, it had never seemed even remotely likely that they would have to worry about a threat from other humans. Everyone surely understood that they were fighting to save as many lives as they could...

He looked at Konomi, and saw the same fear he felt in her white face. He got up, and took out two guns from the locker, holding one out to her.

"Here," he said, swallowing. "Just in case."

She hesitated, but finally took it from him. "Do... do you think Mirai-kun is all right?" she asked, and he had the feeling she had asked that because she was too afraid to ask the real question in her mind.

Teppei almost fell back into his chair, setting the gun down in easy reach. "He will be," he said. "We'll find him."

Mirai was the one who had brought them all together. Teppei was determined that they wouldn't let him down now. Taking a deep breath, he bent back over his screen, calling up the camera footage for the hallways that branched off from the infirmary. There had to be a clue somewhere.

And he was going to find it.

*
"Damn it!" Ryuu snarled, storming back toward the operations room. "We're back to square one!"

Marina bit her lip as she followed. She couldn't stop herself from looking furtively over her shoulder, as though at any moment someone might leap out at her too...

She shook herself. Get a grip! She squared her shoulders and followed Ryuu, steadfastly looking ahead.

The trouble was, they'd found Doctor Nakamura... or rather, the machine that had projected a hologram of him, just like the one that had projected an image of Mirai in the infirmary. It was likely that they didn't have to worry about an actual traitor, at least, but in a way, that only made things worse. If someone could slip in and out of their security by sheer virtue of looking like anyone...

She heard George moving hard on her heels, close against her back in a way that made her wonder if he was trying to comfort her, or himself. At least she knew, in a way that no one else could, that everyone here was who they appeared to be. There was no buzzing in her ears here, no sounds other than the normal ones the base made all the time.

As they entered the operations room again, she found herself listening at Teppei and Konomi, and immediately felt both guilty and relieved when she still heard no buzzing. She dropped into her chair and rested her head in her hands for a moment, and then winced as her hands sparked pain in response.

Konomi had jumped up in excitement, transparently hoping for good news. Marina felt a pang as her face fell again when the Captain admitted that they had found only a holographic projector. She had to turn away from Konomi's naked worry, too much like her own. They had to find Mirai. They needed him - without him, there was a gaping hole in the air, an emptiness that grated on everyone's nerves. George was looking almost as dark and stormy as Ryuu, the Captain was like an ice statue, Teppei and Konomi were terrified...
And truth to tell, so was she...

She looked up at the sound of keys. The Captain was sitting at his own station, and she was startled by the expression on his face as he pressed keys. No one else was looking, so no one else saw, but... why was he looking so sad? What was it that he was typing that could make him look as though he was committing an act of terrible betrayal?

And then the holographic screen blinked into existence, and a blinking blip shone radiantly at them.

Ryuu blinked. "What's that?"

Teppei rattled off the coordinates that scrolled across the screen. "That's... hey wait a minute, that's the Koemon District again..."

Marina stood up, slowly. "That's where Mirai is," she said in sudden understanding. "Isn't it?"

The Captain looked up at her. "I think so, yes."

Teppei stared at him. "How?" he breathed. "That's an energy scan..."

"It doesn't matter!" Ryuu interrupted, grabbing up his helmet again. "If that's where he is, then let's move it!"

Konomi jumped up. "I'm coming too!" she insisted. "I can't just sit here when Mirai-kun needs our help."

Teppei grabbed up his own gun. "Me too. Besides--" He glanced at the screen. "With an energy reaction like that, who knows what we'll find in there."

The Captain nodded. "Let's go, then."

Marina watched the Captain as they all grabbed their equipment. He looked determined... but so very tired, and sad.

What was going on here?

George touched her elbow, and as she glanced back at him, he shook his head at her. So, he had noticed too...

But he was right. They had more important things to worry about now than a mystery. They had a rescue to make.

She pulled her helmet on firmly. We're on our way, Mirai!

*
"Anything?" The Captain asked quietly from behind him.

George shook his head, peering into the dimness of the hallway ahead of them. The sensors had led them to this building, but the energy reaction they were following was deep inside, and they were going to have to get there the hard way - penetrating through the entire rest of the building from the narrow service door they'd found in an alley. George had logically volunteered to take point. If anyone would be able to see anything useful considering that most of the lights seemed to be out, it was going to be him.

"There's a door on the right," he passed back over his shoulder. "Don't see anything out of the ordinary."

"Well, that's the way the energy reaction is, all right," Teppei said, looking at the tiny scanning unit in his hand.

"All right everyone, quietly now," the Captain urged, and they all slipped along the hallway to the door, moving as stealthily as their boots would allow. The uniforms hadn't really been designed for sneaking around, they were more like lightweight armor than anything else. George had the brief sardonic thought that maybe they should have traded them in this once for ninja gear. To Marina the noise they made was probably more akin to a herd of elephants than a small group of people.

Ryuu gently turned the knob, experimentally, and the door opened.

George moved through the door first, into a wider, open space, a large room. Two doors, one on the left, one on the right. He identified those immediately as he moved farther in, his eyes roving as he searched for obstacles. A big desk on the left that they'd have to go around, and--

He stopped.

"George?" Konomi asked, puzzled.

"Shh!" Marina hissed, sounding suddenly frantic.

George saw a flicker of light in a corner. Yellow - then red -

George shoved backwards, slamming into Ryuu, trying to get everyone back to the door. "Look out--"

And then light exploded in front of his face, blindingly bright, and a shock of energy ripped through him, sending him careening into a wall and then into a heap on the floor as the sudden assault of light vanished just as abruptly into complete blackness.


--To Be Continued--

Back to Splintered Secrets, chapter 2

On to Splintered Secrets, chapter 4

Ultraman Moebius fanfiction page