Pandion (Genera #1)

Chapter 24

S atoru knocked. A middle-aged man, possibly the assistant, answered the door, took one look at Satoru and let them in.

“Hase-sensei,” Satoru acknowledged the somewhat older man seated behind the desk. The assistant gathered some files off the table and left the room.

“Harumine-san.” Hase-sensei gestured for them to take a seat, but there were only two seats. Kagesawa moved aside. “What a wonderful surprise. This must be your new link?” The sensei turned to Yajima, who denied it with a chuckle.

“It’s him,” Yajima said and gestured at Kagesawa. “I’m here to observe out of curiosity.” Evidently, even Yajima looked like the more suitable candidate.

Kagesawa fell back to his usual apologetic smile and tried to ignore Hase-sensei’s apparent disappointment and disbelief. Satoru had probably wanted to make a good impression, but Kagesawa could only do so much to make himself more presentable or admirable.

“Oh? W-Well, that’s… that’s great.” Hase-sensei struggled to even get the words out. “What brings you by?”

“I was hoping you could get us access to the research department. We have an unusual situation going on with the link.” The way Satoru spoke to the sensei suggested they were on closer terms than Kagesawa had anticipated. Promising.

“That’s going to be tricky. What sort of situation?”

“If you can do a full analysis of him, it’s probably going to be more informative than any explanation I could give you.”

“The lab is in use until lunch. We have an hour to catch up before then. I’d love to hear what you’ve been doing since graduation. With everything that’s been going on, I’ve been trying to get a hold of the old club members to check on them, but…” Hase-sensei turned to Yajima to explain, “I was involved in the Japanese Archery Club up until recently.”

“Archery?” Kagesawa glanced at Satoru.

“I used to be in the archery club,” Satoru said. “Hase-sensei is being modest. He was the backbone of the club. We did have an instructor as well, but he was one of Hase-sensei’s former students. Skilled, of course, but sensei is heaps better.”

“You flatter me. My back injury has gotten worse these past few years. It’s unfortunate, but I’ve had to give it up. Have you been keeping at it?”

“No, I haven’t had the chance.”

Satoru had never mentioned anything about archery, at least as far as Kagesawa could recall. Then again, it wouldn’t have surprised him had it been mentioned and he’d missed it. Finding out like this did not feel particularly good.

“Busy with work, I presume? Did you find something interesting like you hoped?” The sensei’s follow-up questions made Kagesawa cringe—especially when the man proceeded to laud Satoru as one of his best students, expecting him to have found something significant.

“If this situation with the EA ever clears up, we might have an opening at the research department for someone like you. I’d offer it to you on the spot, but with the threat of a mass-evacuation looming over our heads, we don’t know if we’ll be here next week. It’s too bad.” The sensei paused. “This is classified information, so I trust that you won’t mention it to anyone, but we received an enormous stack of data from a benefactor recently, and it’s been indispensable at furthering a lot of our research. Years worth of advancements in mere weeks! It’s sad we’re having to deal with these issues right now when we’re making so much progress.”

The sensei’s words caused Yajima to smack his tongue, annoyed. “Yes, I wonder who that little piece of shit could have been.” He was probably still peeved about some of the past info dumps that could have made a lot of money way back when.

“I’ve given you plenty of opportunities for profit in the past. Can’t you let it go?” Kagesawa had enjoyed the process merely for the challenge. The risk of anyone tracing it back to him was always significantly lower if no money was involved, so he would usually decline payment and consider it charity.

“I shit you not, I was ready to murder you a while back when I found out you’d off-loaded the latest batch for free. I’d been sitting on a couple of stacks to get a good price, and then I heard the fucking Osprey asshole had swooped in again and donated it for a ‘good cause’.”

“Pandion.”

“What?”

“Osprey was taken.”

“What? Where?”

“On the Tetris app. So I used Pandion.” Kagesawa could play dense for quite a while, but the poignant stares and heavy atmosphere were oppressive even for him. “Look, forget it. I’ll see if I can make it up to you somehow.” If his hobby had cost Yajima a sizable slice of income, he’d see if he could muster compensation. Having Yajima be mad at him and arguing about it was not worth it.

“Wait. Did I understand this correctly? You’re Pandion?” Hase-sensei finally managed to form the inquiry. “ The Pandion?”

“No, of course not. Do I look like I could be anyone?” Despite his slip, Kagesawa wasn’t about to admit to it. The sensei’s reaction was predictable, but why was Satoru looking at him like that? Hadn’t they worked on that data stack together? This was not news. “What?” Kagesawa glanced at Satoru.

“You sent that off to the SEU research department?” Satoru asked as if realising it for the first ti— oh, right. The review had interrupted them before Kagesawa had had a chance to show what it had all been for.

“Yes, and a few other parties. It was a good stack.” It had been exceptionally juicy. Lots of easily replicated and reproduced data, ample sample sizes, better-than-average transparency considering where he’d lifted most of it, thorough analysis, well-drafted, useful conclusions with no obvious fallacies and a healthy selection of potential applications.

Kagesawa did not doubt there had been a lot of other people besides Yajima ‘sitting on that stack’ to profit from it. That was part of the satisfaction when he’d handed it off to where it was most likely to benefit as many people as possible.

“He’s been sending stacks our way for years.” Hase-sensei was still in a daze but made a valiant effort to shake himself out of it.

“Someone has. I wouldn’t know anything about it.” Kagesawa shrugged. He knew it was useless to deny it, but he nevertheless felt better doing so. “Um, can we get to scanning my head? Isn’t it lunchtime yet?”

Hase-sensei had recruited a colleague, Fujitani-sensei, to help with the scan.

Harumine had taken Fujitani-sensei’s introductory course on Link Dynamics, but it had been a large class. She mainly instructed the research students, so their paths hadn’t crossed since.

“Harumine-san, Yajima-san, could you please wait in the observation room next door?” She escorted them to the door of said room.

It was a booth large enough for four or five people, connected to the lab with a one-way mirror. It served two purposes: as a discreet vantage point to evaluate the students’ skills during an exam or to allow the students to observe experiments without causing a disturbance.

The booth was also sound proof, and since Harumine was unfamiliar with any of the controls, he had to rely on lip reading and the link to determine what was being said at the other side of the glass.

Yajima sat down and eyed the control panel in hopes of finding a switch to flip or button to push to eavesdrop, but after giving a few of them a go to no avail, he gave up.

“Does he still zone out mid conversation?”

“Hmm?” Harumine hadn’t expected to be spoken to. “Not that I’ve noticed.”

“Maybe he was doing that on purpose then.”

“Maybe you have a boring voice.” Harumine could recall being ignored occasionally but not while still in the middle of something.

Fujitani-sensei was hooking up the electrodes and calibrating the scanner. Kagesawa looked distracted but was answering their questions relatively promptly.

“Fair enough, I guess.” Yajima sat down and lifted his feet onto the edge of the control panel. “What about the moods?”

“What moods?”

“You know. That oppressive darkness that sneaks up out of nowhere. His face betrays nothing—he could be relaxed and laughing—yet that stuff oozes through like he’s not even aware of it. He doesn’t try to dampen it at all.” As if reacting to what Yajima had said, Kagesawa glanced at Harumine and dampened the link. “He can’t see us, right?”

That he’d looked straight at Harumine had admittedly been a little startling, even if he’d merely sensed Harumine’s rough location and made a lucky guess. There was no way he could have known it with such accuracy through the link.

“Did you relay my words to him?” Yajima sounded annoyed. “That’s unfair. I wish I could hear what they’re saying. Can you…?”

“He dampened the link just now.”

“Oh?”

“He’s getting quite good at it.” Annoyingly good on occasion.

“Considering where he was at, that’s a surprise. You must be a great teacher.”

“He’s doing it on his own.” The link had improved considerably lately, and alongside that, Kagesawa’s skills as well.

“What were the two of you chatting about?” Kagesawa popped into the booth.

“Your atrocious dampening skills.” Yajima made no effort to hide it.

“I think I missed that class.” Kagesawa laughed. “Seimei tried to teach it to me for ages, but I could never quite grasp it.” He reached for the bag Harumine was carrying, dug out his port extension and handed the bag back.

“Yeah, well, the way you were doing it was more like desperate strangling. I’m surprised you didn’t do damage by doing it like that.” It had worried Harumine initially, but since Kagesawa had never complained about it, he’d assumed it must have not been as bad as it seemed.

“Oh? That was how Shimizu taught it to me. I thought it was supposed to be a little painful.” Kagesawa attached the port extension, closed the door and returned to his seat in the other room.

Yajima looked at Harumine. Harumine slapped himself on the forehead and leaned down to tap said forehead to the control panel repeatedly.

“Shimizu? Who is that?”

“A previous link. A bit of an asshole what I’ve gathered.” Harumine heaved a deeply frustrated sigh to conclude his forehead abuse.

“He had another one? What happened to the old guy after me?”

“He retired.”

“Wow, so you’re what, the sixth?”

“Ooh boy.” Harumine wasn’t sure if it was polite to get into or whether Yajima even needed to know, but considering that some of it might have been avoided had Yajima decided to stick around or at least communicate his concerns regarding the DEFD, it felt satisfying to offload some of the blame. “You really should have had a talk with Kagesawa before you left.”

“What do you mean? About what?”

“Shit, if you thought being linked to him was a bad influence, and you knew about his DEFD, you should have said so, given him a proper heads up. You tapped out like a coward and left him to deal with it alone, fully knowing what he’s like.”

“What should I have done? Get his licence revoked and have him blame me for ruining his career?”

“Honestly? That doesn’t seem as bad.” It would have been devastating at first, but he could have built another career doing something else and probably been better off for it.

Yajima fell silent. He watched Kagesawa on the other side of the window as if trying to determine how he’d changed or what had happened. Harumine in turn wondered what Kagesawa had been like before Shimizu, or even before his first link Ayano-san, or if any intervention at any point could have made a difference.

The scanning equipment was quite impressive. Kagesawa would have loved to take a closer look at all of it. He was trying to list the relevant symptoms to Hase-sensei, but he was getting distracted by all the tech he was surrounded by.

“Can you move aside your hair so I can take a look at your port?” Fujitani-sensei was holding an instrument Kagesawa did not recognise.

“Do you need the port itself, or…?” Kagesawa popped it off and handed it to her. Both of the professors gasped in surprise and stared at him, which was admittedly amusing.

Hase-sensei took the port and examined it. This being the SEU and their research department having close ties to the EA, they must have been aware of the true mechanics of the port. They were probably also well aware of the recent trend of port removals. Even so, it was another thing entirely to see it in person.

“I modified it a little. It’s banged up but functional.” Whether the scanner would be compatible with the modifications, Kagesawa couldn’t guess, but they would soon find out.

“Um, please re-insert it, and we will see… if, uh…” Hase-sensei handed it to Fujitani-sensei, who took a look at it before giving it back to Kagesawa.

“I’ll need to do some calibrations, but I think I can work with this.” She turned to the scanner and made the necessary adjustments. Then she attached the sensors onto the port and ran the first set of basic diagnostics.

Kagesawa waited, his patience ever so mildly strained. The two professors conversed in short, cryptic sentences that he couldn’t quite parse, but he could tell they were facing some unusual diagnostic data.

“This can’t be right.” Fujitani-sensei pointed out the results she was referring to. Hase-sensei frowned.

“Run the D42 for confirmation,” he requested, then turned to Kagesawa. “Do you mind if we pull up your medical records?”

“Go ahead, but if it’s about the DEFD, then yes, I have it.” It was no use to try to hide it, even if it meant exposing the fact he was still using the link and his port despite not having a valid licence. At this point, none of that mattered.

“But aren’t you linked to Harumine-san? How long have you known?”

“I found out after. Think what you want of me, but I wouldn’t have knowingly ruined his career.”

“The D42 profile does match the projected growth chart. However, it’s at stage forty-five. Shouldn’t it be something around fifteen, twenty max?”

“How old is your organism?” Hase-sensei asked.

“The first one is fourteen.” Kagesawa’s reply caused further stir.

“That’s what I thought. It could be two if you compare the beta patterns, but it’s not a typical response for a double insert.” Fujitani-sensei checked the readings against another chart to reconfirm it. “Considering the state of the port and the output, it’s safe to say the suppression module has failed. With the maximum combined age being under thirty, it still shouldn’t have reached stage forty-five. Something is accelerating it, and the anomalies that we’re aware of do not fully explain the rate.”

“It’s incredible. I’ve never seen one this far developed. You say it’s been repeating Harumine-kun’s input actions unprompted?” Hase-sensei was referring to the spontaneous morning routine Kagesawa had included in his initial list of symptoms. “It seems it might be very close to gaining its sentience,” Fujitani-sensei said. In a gentler tone, she added, “This is why there’s an advisory against neuroatypical empaths. We don’t know exactly what causes it to develop so much more rapidly. It’s possible it has something to do with the balance of neurotransmitters. There was a study on DEFD specifically where the tendency to hyper-focus and prolonged time in a flow state caused sporadic organism growth, but the EA pulled the plug on that research once it was deemed unethical.” She sighed. “I’d advise you to keep the link as passive as possible; dampen it as much as you can. I’ll have my team look at the data to see if we can stall its growth somehow.”

It was probably sound advice, Kagesawa thought. It just wasn’t what he’d wanted to hear. Keeping the link as passive as possible meant the end of any casual projected conversations with Satoru, but also no more—

Kagesawa dampened the link in an instant and glanced at the mirrored wall. Had Harumine caught that?

“What happens if it develops further?” Kagesawa wondered.

“Based on what we have, we’re leaning towards sentience. There’s no telling what that would do. We’ve seen two instances post-retirement where the mental health of the subjects deteriorated rapidly. It was impossible to prove what caused it, but the Arakawa quotient was immeasurable and the organism had surpassed stage fifty. In both cases, they suspected subclinical DEFD to be the culprit. The end result was disastrous, so our priority is to prevent it from happening to you. Do you have an extension with you? Do you need to borrow one? I’d like to run one full-load test for comparison, and then we’re done here for now.”

“Sorry?” Kagesawa turned back to Fujitani-sensei, who repeated her question. “Oh, yes, sure.” He was barely following the conversation, so clearly this was not the time to be lamenting the loss of a sex-life already on hold due to the present circumstances.

Satoru did look rather nice in a suit. Kagesawa hadn’t appreciated it before, but to be completely honest, he hadn’t really paid much attention to anything Satoru had worn when they’d first met. He’d subconsciously avoided even looking at his face.

Ah, damn. This would be challenging. He fetched his port extension from the bag he’d given Satoru, inserted it, tried to clear his mind from indecent thoughts and prayed none of that would affect the diagnostic data in an identifiable manner.