Clashing Obsessions

Chapter 20 - Dr. Blayne

After years of frustratingly slow progress, Project Ascensus — I named it after the Latin word for ascension, or growth — has advanced more in the past week than it has since 2105.

Perhaps the most apparent difference is this: less than a month ago, I couldn't get approval to experiment on rats. Now, I'm getting the opportunity to begin working with human subjects.

Not just any humans, either.

Kalixieta Elizabeth Raven.

This morning, I, along with Mr. Ashcombe and a team of operatives working for my corporate sponsors, flew to Tokyo, where Kalix lives. Apparently they've been planning this for a while, working out all sorts of details I've been told not to concern myself with, but the point is... Well, what is the point, actually? I suppose the point is, it's happening. Now. After years of research, planning, hard work, refusal... My project is actually going to come to fruition.

Well, maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. This is only the first trial, after all. As for the logistics, I've only just been informed of how this will go down — Ashcombe explained it on the way here.

So, the plan.

First of all, the capture has to be executed efficiently — it's imperative that we get out of Japan with Kalix as quickly as possible. Quite obviously, local laws do not allow, well, for lack of a better word... kidnapping. If the Tokyo police catch us, they are fully within their rights to arrest me and the entire team. Once we get back to headquarters, though, we're "home free", so to speak. The lab is legally both international waters, so no country can claim jurisdiction, and outside the UNBI's authority, because they have a policy against interfering in corporate matters.

Right, the plan.

First of all, no, I didn't come up with it, that was the corporation's doing. They told me to focus on the science, that the "preparations", as they called it, would be taken care of by their operatives. If it had been any other test subject, I probably would've left it at that, but... Well, I'll spare the whole "Kalixieta is the key to this whole project" thing, the point has very much been made. Anyway, I convinced Mr. Ashcombe to allow me to accompany the team sent to collect Kalix.

Oh, shoot, slipped my mind again. The plan.

The team will intercept her on her way home from school, at around 16:25. They have to ensure she's alone — they mustn't raise suspicion, so they can't just pick her up on a busy street — so they'll capture her only once she's entered a specified zone. First, they'll redirect her route home on A-Maps with some computer trick I have no real desire to understand, sending her toward an entrance to a podcar station. Once she's there, the tracks will be redirected, sending her through a little known side track to an empty, lower section of Kodemmacho station. It was originally built when the Tokyo city plan included the construction of another podcar line — it would serve as a transfer station — but that plan was abandoned and with it, the station.

Anyway, once the podcar docks, the team will capture her when she exits.

"Are you ready?" Mr. Ashcombe takes a seat next to me on the bench from where I've been watching everyone bustling around, preparing.

"Oh, ah— yes. I mean, I'm not really doing much."

"OK. Well, I've never been much of a 'people' expert, but something seems... off about you. Is something the matter?"

I'm not entirely sure how to answer that, so I respond with an attempted reassurance.

"No, no, don't worry."

He nods, and looks around, watching everyone as I had been. It's odd — I feel like I'm alone right now. There is a human being sitting right beside me, yet his presence seems so... incomplete. It must just be that I don't know him well. Maybe it's simply that I only know him as a corporate liaison, and not a person. But, that's not all. Something about him, he just seems like he's not entirely real. Like a shell.