Beyond the Horizon

30. Plotting

Nezumi hunched on the edge of his cot, elbows on knees, gaze boring into the concrete floor.

          Tell me, do you even know why your parents were included in the first trials?

          Nezumi grit his teeth. Try as he might to shut out Rashi's insidious words, they just kept bouncing around his head, clanging louder and more painfully with every rebound.

          Rashi was just trying to screw with him. The man was psychotic and biased as hell, and he referred to the prisoners as though they were animals rather than humans. Everything that came out of his mouth was twisted by his hatred and fear. Naturally, he would paint Nezumi's parents as violent scum who didn't care a whit for human life.

          Nezumi knew his father had a temper—hell, he'd been on the receiving end of it more than enough times in his youth. He could easily imagine his father going into a rampage and killing his captors in a desperate attempt to escape. Nezumi understood that. The Lab had set themselves up as the enemy and they treated the prisoners like subhumans, so they shouldn't be surprised when, robbed of any other way to defend himself, his father attacked with the only weapon he had: his teeth. It was inelegant and feral in execution, but it was all he had, and his father would do anything to survive.

          Nezumi couldn't care less about the Lab lives that were ruined that night. Those who chose to be a part of this monstrous project deserved whatever violence they had coming to them. Nezumi only wished his father had finished the job on Rashi and torn his arm off, too.

          Nezumi understood the violence at the Lab. But...

          Killed a man and woman on the outskirts of Tokyo and ditched their bodies in an alley just so he could steal their car.

          That was murder, plain and simple.

          But Nezumi couldn't believe his father would do that, and he couldn't believe his mother would ever allow it.

          His mother was one of the gentlest souls Nezumi had known; the Lab agents were one thing, but she would never allow innocents to get caught in the crossfire. His mother's heart broke when she saw a wounded animal. She had cried the first time Nezumi fell out of a tree and twisted his ankle, even though he insisted over and over again that he wasn't hurt badly, that he could walk just fine.

          His mother could conjure fearsome storms, but until the night Horizon Labs had shattered their peace, Nezumi had never seen her whip up more than an agitated gust when she and his father disagreed on something. Most days, it was light breezes to tickle Nezumi's cheeks; or soft flurries when Nezumi wished to light a fire and drink hot cocoa; or whispering rains to lull him to sleep after a nightmare.

          And yet Rashi told him that his parents were criminals, and if not both killers at the start, then murderers by the end of their escape.

          No fucking way.

          If Nezumi was willing to break his own heart, he might admit his father was capable of such cruelty if he felt it absolutely necessary. But he could never believe his mother would be complicit.

          I can't think about this. I can't. I have so much other shit to deal with right now.

          Like Shion being missing, and the scrambler problem, and his aching arm, and his bruised ribs. He had his own captivity to survive, his own partner to save. Right now, Nezumi could perfectly sympathize with his father; if it meant he could rescue Shion and break them out of the Lab, he would gladly tear out some throats to do it, starting with Rashi's.