Pandion (Genera #1)

Chapter 1

W hat shitty cosmic joke was this? Harumine Satoru, freshly graduated from the seven-year extended program of the top-ranking empath university in Japan, was being paired to work with the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel shirker delinquent Kagesawa Tsuyoshi.

Harumine stared at the man in mild horror. If he stretched his imagination to its very limit, he could name two positive but useless attributes: above average height and symmetrical features. Unimpressed by looks and quite capable of reaching the top shelf himself, Harumine had no such hole in his skill set that Kagesawa could fill.

“Are you absolutely sure?”

Only the Empath’s Association knew the exact selection criteria, but Harumine had always assumed they made these pairings after months of careful consideration. Why would the EA ignore his skills and training like this? Why saddle him with this deadbeat?

Kagesawa was at least a decade older than him, yet his CV read like that of a complete novice. It was probably the likes of him making a mockery of the empath profession, causing the recent decline in their image. With complete disregard of proper decorum, Kagesawa had questionable standards of personal hygiene, wore ragged and tacky clothes and seemed to have zero self awareness of his own lacklustre image. And what the hell was that stench anyway? A dead rat doused in weeks’ worth of stale aftershave?

“Let me see.” Kagesawa checked Harumine’s application card against his own. “Looks right to me. Is this your first time? Don’t be nervous.” He smiled at Harumine in that encouraging way older, more experienced people did, and it made Harumine feel not one bit better.

He wasn’t nervous. The linking process was nothing to be nervous about. He was lamenting the years of sacrifice and effort going to waste. Had he known who they would pair him with, he would have taken some time off for himself after his studies. A gap year would have been easier to explain than the upcoming low performance scores, months of poor job records and a cumbersome partner switch if, or likely when, Kagesawa became unbearable to work with.

They joined the queue to their designated processing room. Harumine had visited the linking facility during a school outing, but the ease and familiarity with which Kagesawa navigated the place was on a whole other level. He knew where to pop off for a coffee from a vending machine behind the corner, even though it wasn’t visible from where they’d stood in line.

“Want some?” he asked Harumine upon his return. Without waiting for an answer, he proceeded to chat with an employee at a nearby info kiosk.

“Well, if it isn’t Kagesawa-san. Did you lose your link again?” Even the info kiosk attendant treated him like a regular.

“No, no… Well, yes, technically, but I swear this time it wasn’t all on me!” Kagesawa looked embarrassed, but the appropriate level of shame would have prompted him to bury himself under two tons of gravel, a patch of pavement, a park bench and a little old lady feeding pigeons. Instead, he was making small-talk, gathering looks from the other empaths in their queues like a live broadcast from a disaster scene.

“I believe that, funny enough. They wouldn’t have invited you back so soon if you’d botched it yourself again.” The kiosk attendant laughed heartily. Kagesawa did not seem upset in the slightest. Harumine in turn wanted to disappear from the face of the earth.

Refusing to pair up at this stage would leave a permanent mark on his record, so all he could do was try to disguise his disgust as the kiosk attendant continued, “Let’s hope this one sticks better than the last… how many has it been this year? Five?”

Five?! Harumine threw up a little in his mouth.

“Don’t scare the boy! This is only the third. And mind you, the previous two were not all my fault.” Kagesawa turned to Harumine. “Don’t listen to him, it’s just a rough patch.”

“You were here twice in December though,” the attendant noted. “Not to mention October last year.”

“Hmm, what can I say? They don’t make them like they used to, haha.”

After so many previous links, the connection would be atrocious at Kagesawa’s end, if a link could be established at all, yet he was making these inane jokes? The attendant huffed, waved a hand at him and went back to what he was doing. The queue ambled forward a few agonising, short steps.

For the briefest of moments, Kagesawa looked serious, preoccupied by his thoughts. Then the obnoxious grin was back, and he turned to Harumine. “Third’s the charm, right? Maybe.”

Overlooking the obvious grievances, Harumine wondered what exactly had caused such an appalling turn rate. The link transcript listed reasons for the various terminations, but they were vague. Maybe once the link between them was established, he’d be able to make better estimates of Kagesawa’s skill levels and temperament. Perhaps then he’d understand why the man had failed so many times, what his merits were and, most importantly, why the two of them were supposedly compatible. Until then, Harumine’s stomach lining continued to deteriorate at an alarming rate.

“Don’t worry, it won’t hurt,” Kagesawa added.

Sure, Harumine was half a head shorter and on the lean side, and yes, this made him look a little younger than his twenty-five years of age… but that was hardly an excuse to treat him like a child!

“I know.” He gritted his teeth. Even with no actual work experience, his extended training trumped anything on Kagesawa’s pathetic excuse of a CV. Kagesawa clearly hadn’t bothered to read the introduction files, or he would have known not to be so condescending.

They waited in that festering limbo of awkward silence for ten more minutes before Kagesawa broke it again with another comment. “I should probably warn you it might be slightly unpleasant though,” he said. Harumine merely glanced at him. “I’m a bit hungover… Oh, don’t look so worried, it’s fine. It’ll be fine. Just a tiny headache, that’s all.”

At this, Harumine could barely stifle his groan. Only an imbecile would get drunk the day before linking. It was not only impolite but outright hazardous! If this meant his side of the link was going to be compromised—!

He took a deep breath. He could still recall how excited he’d been to link up finally, before he’d read the files and met the man.

Was there really no honourable way out of this mess? Maybe if the linking process failed completely, he’d be let off the hook? It was a tempting thought, but he was not desperate or cowardly enough to resort to actual sabotage. The remnants of his dreams were about to hit the fan and despite the torturous wait, he found himself at the door much too early to feel even remotely ready for it.

Two assistants helped Harumine and Kagesawa into their protective bodysuits and ushered them through the sterilisation corridor into the procedure room. After greeting and chatting with the entire team of different specialists, their assistants, doctors and nurses, Kagesawa finally quit the small-talk and let them get on with their tasks. He gave Harumine what was presumably an encouraging smile, strapped onto his chair and lounged in it as if enjoying a relaxing day at the beach. Harumine did his best to ignore him.

One of the assistants prepared the port at the back of Harumine’s head while he started the meditative exercises designed to make the linking process smoother for everyone involved. Not that it mattered considering who he was linking to, but forced into this situation, Harumine wanted to at least be able to take pride in his own flawless execution.

Kagesawa let out a few pained grunts as the assistant preparing his port gathered his greasy hair into two tight sections and tied them off to each side. She added a wide silicone port guard to the back of his head as an added precaution. The shuffling noise from his now incessant fidgeting was grating on Harumine’s nerves. Harumine shot back an icy stare, but the man was too obtuse to take notice. Thankfully, the backs of the chairs were lowered into position, and Kagesawa’s annoying face disappeared from view.

The team removed Harumine’s port and attached the calibration dock into its socket. Curious but unable to see what was happening behind his head, Harumine tried to relax and clear his mind.

“Kagesawa-san, can you please stay still? You know this part is crucial.” The doctor at Kagesawa’s corner was losing patience.

Struggling to perform his duties amidst Kagesawa’s disruptive interruptions, Harumine had no trouble sympathising with the entire team. He’d always admired the modern empath medical teams for their speed and efficiency performing these difficult procedures and, by the sounds of it, Kagesawa was not making their jobs any easier. All of this must have lost its novelty after the gazillionth time, but the man could have at least pretended to take it seriously!

Harumine felt the tendrils of the organism activating throughout his brain as Kagesawa’s genome was introduced to it. Some of the training sequences produced a similar effect, so the warm hum reverberating in his head was not unfamiliar. However, when the organisms formed the link and feedback flooded into Harumine’s consciousness, the acute stress-response took him by surprise. He would have jumped off his seat from the fright had he not been strapped to it. For the first few seconds of confusion and panic, he instinctively tried to dampen the fledgling link to cut off the feedback and make it stop.

“Calm yourself, Harumine-san!” The head of the genome transfer team pushed Harumine down by the shoulders to keep him still so he could complete the linking process. The specialist in charge of monitoring the organisms cursed volubly at his post behind them. Some of his equipment made a worrying whirring sound that cascaded into a wild series of alarms. A nurse hurried to administer a mild sedative. “Stop dampening immediately! Remember where you are; this is not the time!”

Being told off for his own stupidity would have made Harumine ashamed to the core had he not been in the grips of a sudden onslaught of headache and nausea. All he could do was to try not to move, let the link stabilise and wait for the procedure to be over.

When the nurse finally unfastened his straps, helped him up to sit and loosened the collar of his suit, he glanced at Kagesawa. The man looked different. Compelled to heave all over himself, Harumine had no time to ruminate on the differences.