Released – Chapter 20

“Usagi, call an ambulance!”

Usagi quickly reaches over to the door’s panel and hits the medical emergency button.

A voice comes through the speaker, “Medical teams have been dispatched to your location. Estimated arrival time is three minutes. If this system has been used in error, please cancel within the next thirty seconds.”

I’ve never had to use the medical emergency button, and I’m panicking now hearing the voice come out of the panel. Lucy helps me lay Helena on the floor, and Usagi crouches down over her. He puts his hands on either side of her face and leans close to her.

“Helena, can you hear me?”

She blinks her eyes a few times but remains mute. Her body convulses again, and I have to stop myself from bursting into tears. I’m not good with this kind of stress.

Sakai steps past us all and scans the room. He takes in every single thing he passes as he quickly walks her apartment: Helena’s kitchen table loaded with neatly stacked dishware, her collection of shoes at the door, her bag lying on the floor next to the couch, and finally the takeaway cup of coffee spilled all over the couch and coffee table. He picks up the cup, smells it, and tastes a remnant of liquid still clinging to the lip.

Usagi looks from Sakai to me, and I’m sure we’re thinking the same thing.

Leaning over Helena, I search her vacant eyes. “Did you come straight home from work, Helena?”

Her head shakes right before her eyes close, and she loses consciousness. She’s still breathing, and her body continues to convulse. Footsteps pound down the hallway as three medics come flying into her apartment. Usagi and I step back.

“What happened?” the lead medic, her badge reading ‘Harper,’ asks us.

“She was expecting us over for dinner, but she opened the door and something was very wrong with her. Her pupils were tiny, and her footsteps were uneven, like she was drunk.” I’m surprised I can even speak and report this. I feel detached from my own body.

“Check her for head trauma,” one medic says to the other.

“No. She’s been poisoned.” Sakai hands the cup over to Harper, and she zips it into a bag while the other medics attend to Helena.

“Are you sure?” Harper asks, her eyebrows drawing together, skeptical of Sakai, but then turns and spots Lucy in the room with us.

Lucy nods her head. “If he thinks it’s poison, it most likely is. So get moving.”

Two more medics arrive with a stretcher, and they quickly lift Helena onto it.

Harper directs them out the door. “You will all need to follow us to Ku 2. Can you hail a taxi?”

Lucy and Sakai nod, but I push shocked and pale Usagi out the door behind them. “Usagi will go with you.”

The medics carrying Helena in the stretcher are so fast on the stairs I worry they’ll dump her out, but they get down and out of the lobby in no time flat.

Usagi jumps into the ambulance behind the stretcher.

“Call Oyama,” he says as the doors close on him. The sirens start, and the driver takes off down the street heading straight for one of the tunnels that leads directly to Ku 2.

We hail a taxi that pulls up right after the ambulance departs, and Sakai gets in the front with the driver who speeds away from the curb towards Sakai building.

“We’ll run by home, and I’ll jump out to get everybody we need. Sanaa, you and Lucy go on to Ku 2, and I’ll follow.” The car stops, Sakai jumps out, and runs into our building and up the stairs.

“Don’t worry, Sanaa.” Lucy takes my hand as we speed away. “Hopefully, we got to her fast.”

Fucking Risa. She came in, rubbed my face in her power over my family and friends, and left, giving me the smallest clue Helena was in trouble. And she blamed everything on me. Helena is in this situation because of me.

“No, no no no no…” All of the blood leaves my head, and I bend over in the backseat of the taxi, putting my head between my knees. “My fault. They went after her because of me.”

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Lucy says.

Our car speeds towards Ku 2, the Medical Services Ward, at the center of the city. The dark tunnel providing easy access to the emergency wards blinks with lights every hundred meters hypnotizing me into a panicked trance. Traffic is light, and the tunnel bends to the right as we approach our destination. Ku 2 is round in shape and divided up into pie pieces for each ward it’s closest to. Around the outside crust of the pie, a series of emergency rooms accommodate urgent care, then the specialities, surgery wards, and hospital rooms are closer to the center.

Lucy and I enter into the hospital via Emergency Room 6C. My tablet pings with a message from Jiro. They are on their way, so I message him back with our location and sit next to Usagi after wiping away my tears with a tissue from the admitting desk. Lucy is helped immediately, of course. Everyone in this city knows who she is.

The waiting room is quiet. Only two other people are in here with Usagi and one of them, a graying man in his early thirties, is looking at Usagi and his sword and wondering whether or not to call the police. I stare him down, and he goes back to reading his tablet. Medical advances have eliminated the majority of diseases from the human race — no more chronic illnesses, auto-immune disorders, or sexually transmitted diseases — but people still get into accidents. People still get sick and die from things like poorly handled or stored food, and everyone’s body deteriorates in middle age from the ambient radiation that seeps through the domes. This man glancing back up at Usagi and me doesn’t appear to be injured. He must be waiting for someone.

After five minutes of sitting, anxiety overcomes me, and I get up from the seat and start to pace. I’m pretty sure Helena said she didn’t come straight home from work today. She’s been working at this one onsen for two or three weeks now and already has a regular routine, a regular place she goes to for snacks or coffee or food. Someone could have easily watched her for a few days and then made their move.

But why? My only answer is because she’s connected to me. She’s connected to Sakai Clan through both me and Usagi. She’s not protected. She’s easy to get to. If they want to hurt Usagi, me, Miko, or anyone in Sakai Clan, then they would go for her. She is the sweetest thing ever, and hurting Helena is the easiest way to hurt us all. Even Sakai loves her.

The door opens, and Jiro, Sakai, Mariko, and Beni enter in a stream of concerned and angry faces. Oyama is right behind them, but he heads directly to the front desk, his hand is scanned, and he’s sent back into the hospital. Mariko and Beni sit with Usagi. Jiro walks over but stops about half a meter from me because he can tell I’m angry. I’m fuming mad.

“Someone is messing with my family, Jiro. And I do not like it.”

My head is going to explode. My temper is way off the charts, and my face is so hot I’m starting to sweat.

“Uh oh,” Jiro says, holding my face and looking me in the eyes. His fingers are icy against my heated cheeks. “Concentrate. You look close to having an aneurysm. What do you want to do? Because I know what I want to do but it involves swords and violence.” He is so intense. Everyone loves Helena.

“We need Mark.”

Sakai is talking to the admitting personnel at the front desk, so Jiro walks over to him, and after a few words, they both return to me.

“What do you need?” Sakai asks.

“I need you to work your magic and release the holds on the surveillance video so I can make calls to the GDB for real-time feeds. No more twenty-four-hour delay. I need answers, and I need them now. Not tomorrow.”

Sakai folds his arms, not answering.

“Don’t deny you have access to real-time feeds, Mark. Remember how you followed Minamoto and Matsuda to Izakaya Tanaka, and you spied on Jiro and me? You had those videos real-time. You showed me the images the next morning.”

Sakai sighs. “I was always hoping you’d overlook that.”

“No, I knew. I’ve known forever. I’ve just never needed the video that badly.”

“Fine. I’ll give you my access, but you have to be smart about using it. Understood?”

I nod.

“You’ll have to log in at Ku 1 the first time. It’s a security protocol for new tablets assigned to my level of access. After that, you can request files remotely if you like. Bring me your tablet.”

I walk over to my bag sitting next to Usagi with Jiro right behind me.

He leans over and whispers in my ear. “Mark spied on us?”

“Yes, our first kiss and other making out we did that night.”

Jiro and I look at each other, and we both blush and laugh. Oh gods, I needed that laugh. It broke my murderous temper. Now I can think logically.

While Sakai taps his credentials into my tablet, the doors open again, and Miko and Yoichi enter with Helena’s parents right behind them. I haven’t seen Helena’s parents in ages. They’ve always been workaholics, and they love Helena, but she learned to do things on her own from a young age. I’m glad they’ve come, but I don’t want to explain to them why.

Sakai hears my sigh when I see them. “It’s okay. I’ll go talk to Helena’s parents. I’ve talked to them a few times over the past couple of months. They know everything.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” he says, resting his hand on my shoulder. “Helena’s one of your best friends. She wanted to come with you on the first wave to Yūsei. She wanted to live in Ku 6. I even tried to set her up with a permanent job at one of the onsens, but she’s so independent, she was only willing to take so much help.”

This news makes me smile even though our current situation is devastatingly sad. If only she had taken the offer…

“Your friends’ welfare is just as important as your own. So don’t worry. I’ll take care of this.”

Sakai walks off to talk to Helena’s parents, and they’re relieved to see him.

Mark Sakai, you never cease to amaze me.