The Bitter Truth

Natsume didn’t reply. His legs shivered as he stood in front of Akihiro, protecting him.

“Tsk…” Richard lowered his gun and turned back as the sirens continued to buzz. “If the world were to find out about your existence, war could break out. The next time we meet, it won’t just be me. The CIA will hunt you down, eliminate your friends and family. You can never escape them. The CIA isn’t very forgiving. ”

Richard and Janice walked away, disappearing into the darkness.

“Ayane…” Akihiro groaned in pain. His hands and legs were both bleeding. But his gut hurt the most, making it difficult for him to breathe.

“We’ll worry about her later. The cops will be here any time now. Someone must have heard the gunshots and informed the police. We need to get away fast.” Natsume said as he helped Akihiro stand up. He supported half of Akihiro’s body weight as they slowly walked away from the alleyway.

Akihiro seemed heavy. Natsume knew that he was muscular, but supporting him like this made him realise how big Akihiro was. It was pretty obvious that the battle had completely drained Akihiro’s energy. He was barely able to stand on his own two feet without Natsume’s help.

“Is Ayane safe? We need to find her…” Akihiro muttered. He was still in pain.

“What’s going on? Why was he trying to kill us?” Natsume asked.

“I don’t know...nothing he said made any sense to me,” Akihiro said as his wounds began healing. The scrapes on his hands and legs were disappearing. “How did he know about Ayane? We need to make sure she’s safe.”

“Don’t be stupid. You need to be going to the hospital right now! I’ll go check on Ayane.” Natsume said.

“No! If something were to happen there, you wouldn’t be able to protect her.”

They kept arguing until finally, Natsume gave up. “Fine, look- we’ve already reached her house. Once we check up on her, we’ll go to the hospital.”

It was a cold night and the streets were empty. They reached the sixth floor and walked up to Ayane’s door. Natsume rang the bell.

The door opened halfway through. Mr Kawasaki was standing at the entrance. He was smiling, probably expecting his wife and daughter to be back home but as soon as he saw Akihiro’s face, his smile disappeared, turning into a frown. He noticed Akihiro’s bruises and immediately tried to shut the door. But Akihiro’s foot stopped the door from closing.

“Where’s Ayane?” Akihiro asked as he continued to push onto the door.

“LEAVE MY DAUGHTER ALONE! I don’t want to lose someone precious to me again! ” Mr Kawasaki shouted. “DON’T TALK TO HER EVER AGAIN!”

“So you do know something...tell it to us!” Natsume shouted back.

Mr Kawasaki was taken aback for a moment. He looked at Akihiro and asked, “You don’t know?”

Seeing Akihiro’s confused face, he realised that Akihiro was also as clueless as Natsume.

Mr Kawasaki tried pushing even harder to close the door, but he was no match for Akihiro’s physical strength. “Looks like my age is dragging me down again...fine, I’ll tell you the truth. But on one condition. You will leave my house immediately once I’m done.”

They agreed instantly.

Mr Kawasaki let go of the door and allowed them inside the house. Ayane didn’t seem to have returned home yet. She had informed her father that she had met her mother on the way back home and was going to accompany her to buy groceries.

Mr Kawasaki guided them to the living room. He instructed Akihiro to lie down on the sofa as he grabbed the first aid kit. Natsume sat down beside Akihiro.

Mr Kawasaki grabbed a photo from his cupboard along with the first aid kit and walked back to the living room. He showed them the photo.

It was a very old photograph of a young scientist in his typical white lab coat standing next to Richard Brown.

“I didn’t work at NASA. I worked for the CIA…” Mr Kawasaki began explaining the story to Akihiro. As he revealed the truth about the human experimentation and Akihiro’s birth, Natsume found it more and more unbelievable while Akihiro struggled to comprehend it too.

But it was the truth. Akihiro indeed was very different from the rest. Mr Kawasaki went back to his room, grabbed a small device from his cupboard and showed it to Akihiro. It was a small metallic square box with a tiny palm-sized display on top.

-Sync Connected-

Akihiro sat up instinctively and looked around. He had heard the same sound in his head again.

“This is the ‘System’. This was the only item I took with me when the team had been disbanded. If you connect this with a computer or a display panel, it will display all the various information about your heart rate, adrenaline levels etc. The sound that you hear is played by the CPU in your head whenever this ‘System’ or another CPU is in the vicinity.”

It all started making sense to Akihiro. The blonde man, Richard Brown, was also part of these experiments. Thus whenever they met, he heard that sound in his head.

Akihiro laid back down on the sofa and continued listening to Mr Kawasaki.

“Ever since we had lost you in the sea, the operation had been terminated and the team had been disbanded too. So, I left the CIA and came back to my hometown with my wife, and had Ayane.” Mr Kimura finished explaining the whole story to Akihiro. Both of them were too shocked to say anything.

“It’s been almost 20 years since then huh...by now you must have developed the capability to feel emotions right?”

“He’s still in the process. Akihiro has been starting to feel emotions lately. That’s why it also seems like he has changed drastically…” Natsume said.

“I’ve been having headaches for the past few months but now its frequency has reduced,” Akihiro added.

“Those headaches must be the result of your brain being in conflict with the rest of your body. Neuroplasticity...your emotional side is developing and clashing with the rest of the logical side. Your brain isn’t used to producing signals required to feel emotions, so it makes sense as to why you would have constant headaches. It just means that your emotional side is growing.” Mr Kawasaki explained.

Akihiro placed his hand on his head. “My emotional side is growing…?”

“That is not the issue here. There are far worse things that you need to worry about.” Mr Kawasaki said. The tone of his voice changed from a mellow, sad tone to a serious one.

“What is it?” Natsume asked.

“Recently, I’ve noticed that some of my files have been looked through. I knew that we were being watched. The CIA is aware of your presence. If your existence were to be exposed to the world, it might lead to war. A war at this time, with such advanced technology, would completely destroy the world. The CIA must be trying to capture you. In the worst-case scenario, they will eliminate you.”

“War…” Natsume muttered.

“I was the one who proposed the idea. It was because of me that you were born. If I could, I would help you. But I can’t put my daughter at risk. I’m sorry. I cannot help you. That day, you were meant to die. Richard couldn’t do it so we hoped that nature would do it for us. But God protected you. There must be a reason why God protected you that day.” Mr Kawasaki said.

“But…” Akihiro muttered. His mind was blank. He was still struggling to comprehend it all. Everything was just too big a shock for him.

“You need to find a way to survive on your own, Subject 005.”