Hideo reaches the door and shoves it open. We hurry inside. The last thing I see when I look back are the countless determined faces heading toward us. Then I slam the door shut, sealing them out.
I’m trembling all over. Hammie’s gone. Asher’s gone. And if we don’t get to the end of this soon, if we don’t restore Zero’s mind to Sasuke’s, they may never come back.
After the strange, wordless bustle of the Shibuya illusion, this street looks calm and quiet and dim, lit only with streetlights and the occasional stripe of golden yellow light streaming out from homes.
It’s the street where Hideo’s parents live, but everything looks different at night, and a subtle mist floats around us.
Hideo’s breath fogs in the air as he stares at the house. “This is before Dad planted the spruce in the front yard,” he says in a soft voice. “The door’s a different color, too.”
I remember that. When I’d visited his home, the door had been painted a deep red, but in the Memory Hideo had once shown me of his younger self sprinting back home, the door had been blue. That’s the color it is here.
Hideo hesitates, as if he were afraid to walk closer. This is a nightmare that he’s trapped in, just like how Zero had once used my worst memory against me.
Roshan starts walking toward the house. “Emi,” he says quietly, “you and Hideo stay back. I have my shields; it’ll be safer for you both that way. No doubt there are security bots here, too.”
Hideo shakes his head once and steps in front. “Watch Emi,” he replies, then sweeps a hand across the scene. A menu grid appears. “I’m such an integral part of this scene that I’ll blend in easily. Zero’s not going to find me.”
We head up to the house. As we draw near, I can hear the sound of muffled voices in the house, the recognizable hum of Hideo’s mother and the lower rumble of his father. Hideo approaches the home, opens the door, and leads us in.
It’s a warm, comforting space, as neat and tidy as I remember it—except without the sculptures that Hideo’s father would later make in remembrance of Sasuke. In fact, there are still photos of Sasuke on all the walls, portraits of him with Hideo and with his parents. This must be a memory from when he was still back home.
“Hideo-kun!”
We turn in unison at the sound of Hideo’s mother bustling into the room. She looks startlingly different from how I’d seen her in person—here, she looks like the original sun instead of the shadow, with a straight back and a sharp gleam in her eyes, her smile cheerful and energetic. There’s something painful in seeing her this way, before Sasuke disappeared.
Beside me, Hideo makes an instinctive move toward her before he forces himself to stop. His hands bundle into fists at his side. He knows this isn’t real.
The floor beneath us shudders for a moment. Roshan braces himself against the wall before exchanging a wary look with Hideo. Already, Hideo’s motioning for us to back up.
Hideo’s mother pauses with a frown at the sight of her son hesitating. “What’s the matter?” she says as I read the translation. She glances back in the kitchen and motions for someone to come out. “Come help your brother.”
I blink. When I do, Hideo’s mother is gone, as if she’d never been there in the first place. Hideo stares back as the person who emerges from the kitchen isn’t Sasuke—but Zero. His black armor glints in the low light as he tilts his head slightly at us. Beneath us, the ground trembles harder.
He looks straight at Roshan, then Hideo, then me. “There you all are,” he says, his voice deep and cold.
He shouldn’t be able to see us behind our encryption unless he touches us—we’re supposed to be invisible to him. But there he is, or some shell of him, or a proxy. Whatever he is, he knows we’re here.
“The house,” Hideo suddenly murmurs at the same time I realize it. This time, the trap had been the entire house, and all three of us had been exposed the instant we stepped inside.
Zero turns his attention to his brother. Then, he lunges.
Roshan moves even before I can. He brings his forearms up in a cross, and a glowing blue shield arcs protectively before him and Hideo. Zero clashes against it—the force of it splits the shield cleanly in half. Zero seizes Roshan by the neck and slams him against the wall.
Roshan lets out a gasp as he struggles. I lunge toward them to pull Zero off, but Hideo grabs my wrist. “Sasuke,” he says in a hoarse, furious shout. “Stop this.”
Zero glances back at Hideo. “I know why you’re in here. I know what you’re looking for.” He drops Roshan, who crumples to the ground as he holds his throat.
I rush to his side, but Roshan’s hand flies up, warning me to stay away. Already, he’s slowing down, his eyes turning blank and emotionless. His hand slowly drops back to his side. As it happens, the world around me flickers briefly with a memory.
It’s of Roshan waiting inside a hospital room where Tremaine is resting, hooked up to a bunch of wires. Roshan is leaning his head into his hands, his elbows sinking into the bed. Looped around one of his hands are his prayer beads, and now he’s running his thumb across each turquoise sphere unconsciously. His dark curls are a wild mess, the evidence of his fingers raking anxiously through them.
My gaze goes to Tremaine. His wound is as I remember it, his head still wrapped in thick layers of gauze. Nearby in the adjoining waiting room, the other Riders and Demons are finally calling it a night and heading out into the stairwell exit.
This memory is from the evening after I left the hospital, when I went to see Hideo.
The room’s quiet, except for the regular beeping pulse from a monitor. When I look closer at Roshan, I notice he’s clutching a crumpled piece of paper in one fist. It’s a list of hastily scribbled dates, all set for a couple of days from now, one after another—follow-up appointments and an additional surgery and physical therapy. Maybe they’re treatment benchmarks for Tremaine to hit, dates when Roshan plans on being here in the room.
At first, I think Tremaine is still unconscious—but then his mouth shifts a little, his lips peeling open in their cracked state. Roshan looks up from his hands to meet Tremaine’s gaze from under his heavy bandages. The two stare at each other, then exchange a wry smile. Now I can see how puffy and swollen Roshan’s eyes are, and the dark circles underneath them.
“You’re still here,” Tremaine croaks out.
“Leaving any minute,” Roshan replies, even though I can tell he doesn’t mean it. “These chairs are the most uncomfortable things I’ve ever sat on.”
“You and your sensitive ass.” In spite of everything, Tremaine still has the ability to roll his eyes. “You used to complain about my bed back in the Riders’ dorms, too.”
“Yeah, it sucked. If there was ever a reason for you to leave the Riders, it was because of that damn bed.”
There’s a pause. “Where’s Kento?” Tremaine finally asks.
At that, Roshan sits back, his prayer beads sliding back down onto his wrist. “Flying to Seoul with two of his teammates,” he replies. “He needs to be back in time for a parade in their honor. He sends his best.”
Tremaine doesn’t follow that statement up with anything other than a cough, which makes him squeeze his eyelids together in pain. After another long silence, Roshan leans his elbows back on the bed. “Emi told you to stay away from that institute’s files,” he says.
“It wasn’t my hacking that exposed me,” Tremaine replies. “I stumbled against a stupid plant in that hall, and the vase tipped over and broke. Shit happens.”
“Yeah, well, you can only handle a hole in your head so many times before you don’t make it through.” Roshan furrows his brow and looks down again. He doesn’t speak, but I can feel the burn of his anger in his clenched jaw, his hands clasped tightly together.
“What are you thinking?” Tremaine says in a quiet voice.
Roshan shakes his head. “I’m thinking that I’m sorry,” he replies.
“Why the hell are you sorry?”