Soon after those two women passed down the street, headed for parts unknown, a visitor arrived in a hurry at Mephisto Hospital. She asked to see the Director. The head nurse refused politely. The woman pressed, “Please tell him that Takako Kanan is my daughter.”
This was indeed Takako’s mother, Tomoko Kanan.
“He left strict orders to turn away everyone, even the prime minister, should he show up here.”
Excepting one, she was wise enough not to add. She couldn’t help feeling a tinge of jealousy toward the one person with a free pass to the director’s office, no matter what. At the same time, the face of the handsome young man clad in black flitted through her mind, assuring her that, no, it simply wasn’t possible.
“Then tell him this—I may know the location of the person who drank my daughter’s blood.”
“I’m sorry, but the director’s instructions were unequivocal.”
Tomoko backed away from the receptionist’s desk and smacked the handbag hanging from her right shoulder with the palm of her hand. “Then I’ll go tell him myself!”
“Don’t be unreasonable!” the head nurse pleaded.
Tomoko had already headed past her down the hallway. But then her body seemed to freeze in mid-stride, as if her movements were being recorded with a high speed camera. She’d been caught in a force field projected from the receptionist’s desk.
At that point, she could be manipulated at will. The head nurse was reaching toward the control panel when the director’s voice emerged from the intercom speaker.
“Let her pass.”
The intercom mic was off. He must have been observing the whole thing, but the head nurse knew that wasn’t the case either. Without another word, she cut the power.
“I’m sorry for the inconvenience,” she said politely. “Please proceed to the elevator at the back. It will take you to the director’s office.”
It was only afterwards that she was struck by how ominous the director’s voice sounded.
✦ ✦ ✦
The thick bands of shadow and firelight flickered across the two faces. The sound of burning crackled in their ears.
Not six feet away, a huge silo a hundred feet wide and three hundred feet high reached skyward. The light from the candles on the surrounding walls couldn’t reach that high. The top faded into the pitch black. Even so, the stone ceiling above seemed to weigh down on them in a great dark mass.
The silo contained the heat source that fueled this world.
Between the two and the oval-shaped chute to the silo, that also apparently served as an incinerator, lay the body of Setsura Aki.
“And?” said Doctor Mephisto—Kikiou’s carbon copy—the glow from the flames playing like moonlight across his striking features. This carbon copy had at least preserved all of the aesthetic qualities of the original.
“Do it,” said his creator. “Only a bird witnessed what happened, but changes have occurred in his body. Before anybody can botch the next move, we should consign him to the flames. It is in all our best interests.”
“But to destroy such a living work of art and scatter the ashes, it seems such a sad waste.”
“You are giving this task too much thought,” Kikiou said, with a scathing glance at Mephisto. “I made you in haste, so perhaps your true self is awakening. That furnace burns at three-hundred-thousand degrees. So not even the ashes will remain. Toss him in. I have got to get back to repairing this world properly.”
“Yes.”
Mephisto bent over, hoisted up Setsura, walked to the chute and unceremoniously threw him in. His right foot caught on the edge of the chute. Mephisto grabbed it and stuffed it in and shut the door.
“Good. The rest is in your hands. Please continue with your research as you see fit.”
The great warlock strode out of the room. Mephisto watched him leave. He stood there for a little while longer like a beautiful statue, then nodded to himself and turned around and headed back to the incinerator chute.
He opened the door. The flames lit up his pallid face. The white doctor didn’t hesitate but thrust both hands into the fire.
And pulled them out a second later grasping a black ankle. Mephisto gazed curiously upon the body of the senbei shop owner, that not even three-hundred-thousand degrees could singe.
“Any way I look at it, ashes to ashes is a waste. I shan’t disobey Kikiou-sama’s orders. But I shall at least bury him in a manner befitting me.”
A minute later, carrying Setsura on his shoulders, he walked down the dark corridor. As handsome as Mephisto, as skilled as a pharmacist, and acting the same around Setsura, two peas in a pod. This was nothing more than a duplicate, who first and foremost deferred to Kikiou.
However, just as Kikiou feared, this quickly thrown-together doppelganger was exhibiting not only Mephisto’s tics and mannerisms, but in a kind of living irony, whatever construed the wellspring of his true self.
And that faithfulness to his creator welded deep within his personality?
After silently treading down the corridor, the white figure came to an iron door. He opened it.
An enormous abyss waited for them there.
A stone staircase attached to the wall on the right descended into a hellish darkness. A thousand steps later, Mephisto’s shoes again touched solid ground. At that moment, from some indistinguishable direction, a wan light welled up.
The faint illumination revealed a world filled with rows of coffins. The gray stone boxes reached out over a hundred wide and deep, and must amount to ten or twenty times that many out of eyesight.
Though none bore a seal or engraving indicating a name or place or date of birth or death, the stone sarcophagi carried about them a sense of dignity and gravitas, proof of the power and knowledge that suffused the dynasties of the ancient world.
“The mausoleums of the Hsia Dynasty were disinterred in place.” Mephisto’s voice rang out inside the startling silence. The heavy lids of the coffins were closed. “I do not understand why, but this should suffice as a resting place for a man of such incomparable beauty.”
He scanned the lines of stone. Several seconds later, he approached a row closer to the staircase and laid his hand on one. The lid of the sarcophagus, that must weigh several hundred pounds, slid off without the slightest resistance and dropped to the ground with an earth-shaking thud.
Mephisto cradled Setsura in his arms and lowered him into the casket. “Rest easy, my fond friend.”
He spoke without sentiment. He gripped the edge of the lid and lifted it easily into the air and placed it back on top of the sarcophagus. The heavy reverberations echoed through the graveyard. His cape fluttering behind him, the white figure climbed back up the long staircase.