Chapter 26: Feed the Dog

Mio

This was worse than Integration Sickness.

At least then she could still read manga on her phone. Listen to music. Pretend the fever was just a bad flu and wait for it to pass.

This felt like her spine chained to a sinking anvil.

The coughing came without warning. She could taste the blood before she felt it, thick and wrong, coating her tongue. She swallowed it down. Coughed some more.

She waited for death. For peace.

It didn’t come.

Something else did. A voice, small and fierce, cutting through the dark.

“If you die, I’m selling the dog.”

Dog?

She tried to hold onto the thought. Couldn’t. The dark pulled her back under.

When she surfaced again, there was weight on her hand. Small fingers, gripping tight. And swollen eyes peering up from the side of the hospital bed.

A ghost? No. Ghosts don’t cry.

“Onee-san!” Nana picked herself up from the floor. Must have been sleeping there. Her uniform was wrinkled, creased in strange places from concrete and chair legs. Her hair was a disaster, white strands matted against one cheek. She looked like she’d aged three years in one night.

Nana. It’s Nana.

No. It couldn’t be. Nana was home, where it was safe, guarded by Can because Mio had said so. She wouldn’t be in such a cruel, monstrous place.

Mio wouldn’t allow it.

She blinked. Expected her sister to dissolve. Fever dream. Hallucination. Something.

But there she was. Wide eyes, brown and wet.

Mio took in her surroundings. A small room, white walls, no windows. In the center, an obelisk hummed. An incursion core, she realized. Connected through tubes and runes, pumping her body with yellow substance.

And there it was: the badge etched into the door sigil.

Bureau.

“Are you dying?” Nana shook her leg. “Hey!”

“Ow—don’t do that.” Mio flinched, recoiling what little she could. Everything hurt. Breathing hurt. Existing hurt.

Blood on the blanket. Old and new.

Then she saw her right arm.

Veins blackened and pulsing. Her palm scorched raw, blistered skin cracked in the shape of geometry that shouldn’t exist, lines burned into her flesh. The runes. Final Vigil. The price of holding something meant to be fired, not carried.

Mori’s heat. The hunger uncoiling. Can dissolving into sludge. The debt notification flashing red. Nana’s face in the doorway—

The pressure hit her throat second. The vomit followed.

Nana gagged, then looked away. “Ew!” She stuck her tongue out.

Bile, dark and muddy, splattered the floor.

“Please look away, Nana.”

“No!” She gagged again but didn’t move.

“Why are you here?” Mio managed to croak.

“The old man helped me.”

Segawa.

“We don’t have a dog, Nana.”

Nana blinked. “What?”

“You said…” Mio’s throat was sandpaper. “Sell the dog.”

“Oh.” Nana’s face twisted, caught between relief and something else. “Yeah we do. Can!”

“Where is he?”

“He’s—” Nana looked around the room. At the obelisk. At the white walls. The sealed door. No tiny knight. “He was here. I followed him here. Through the building. But then I lost him in the—”

Mio raised her arm.

Her right arm.

Pink and raw where new skin had crawled over the burns. The geometry scars were still there, faint lines that would fade but never quite disappear.

“Inside,” she said. “Me.”

Nana stared at her.

“You ATE him!?”

“Not quite.”

The memories were there, at the edge. Black biomass hitting her palm. The knight’s armor folding inward, crawling up her wrist. Eight hundred years of standing guard bleeding into her skull.

A girl with green eyes who gave him a name.

“Is he—”

Three knocks. No rhythm.

Segawa stepped in, followed by Kagami. Black hair. Brown eyes. The one who’d caught her like she weighed nothing.

“Good. You’re still alive.” Then Segawa saw the mess. Nana on the floor. Mio’s arm raised. “Am I interrupting?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He stepped inside anyway. “Kagami.”

The boy pulled a handkerchief from his suit pocket. Crossed the room. Brushed something from Mio’s chin. Bile, she realized. She’d thrown up at some point. Couldn’t remember when.

He didn’t blink once.

Then he stepped aside. Furniture.

“We need to reassess you, Mio.” Segawa’s voice pulled her back. “Ishida’s baseline. Agent Mori and Agent Shizuka’s field reports. They all land on the same conclusion.”

She found words. Barely. “What’s that?”

“Officially, you will become an Agent.” He watched her face. Let the silence sit.

“Non-negotiable.”

“No.” Mio met his faded brown eyes.

Kagami shifted his foot.

The movement was small. But Nana noticed. Mio saw her notice, saw her sister’s shoulders tense, saw her inch closer to the bed like she could protect someone from whatever that shift meant.

Segawa’s expression didn’t change. “No?”

“No.”

Kagami shifted his foot again.

Nana’s hand found Mio’s, the one that wasn’t scarred. Small fingers, trembling, gripping tight enough to hurt.

Nobody spoke.

The obelisk hummed.

“Remember our first talk? Leverages?”

Mio’s throat tightened.

“I’ve got two now.” His gaze touched Nana first. She stopped breathing. Then Mio. “You also almost discharged a lethal ability on government grounds. That’s a minimum ten years in reinstitution.”

“My license is valid.”

“Was revoked. Yesterday.”

“I met quota!”

“Database has never registered any Tamei Mio.” He shrugged.

Mio’s jaw tensed. He’d thought this through.

She leaned forward, dismissing Kagami’s half-step toward her.

“I’ve got one too.”

“Oh?”

“I know about your caged little champ.” She said the word like a slur.

For the first time his shoulders dropped, followed by a sigh.

“Damn Stasis,” he muttered. “How much did she tell you?”

Nana’s grip tightened.

“Enough. What’s Nami like?”

Kagami stopped moving.

Segawa opened his mouth, but the voice that spoke wasn’t his.

“You don’t qualify to say her name. Speak it again and I rip your jaw off.”

The room went cold. Not Shizuka-cold. Human cold.

Mio’s hand tightened around Nana’s.

“You know her?”

He adjusted his collar.

“I know that by the time Segawa-san blinks, your tongue will be between my fingers.”

“Kagami. That’s enough.”

Then he went still again. Just like that.

Nobody moved.

“Mio.” Nana’s voice was a whimper. “Aren’t they the good guys?”

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