Part 3

Schuldig wasn't sure how much time had passed. There was no source of light except the harsh neon lights in the ceiling outside the cells. Normally if he couldn't get hold of a clock and wanted to know what time it was, he just peeked in a couple of minds until he found someone who knew. The minutes seemed to drag, until he was convinced several days had passed since he'd woken up. He knew it hadn't been more than a couple of hours, though... he was only starting to get hungry, and he'd only had to piss once.

He couldn't help probing at his telepathy, like a kid poking at a loose tooth. He couldn't remember anything ever being so quiet; there was nothing in his mind but his own thoughts. He'd wished for just this feeling so many times he'd lost count over the years; now that he had it at last, he found he desperately wanted his powers back. The feeling of being completely alone in the world was overwhelming - it was hard to convince himself that anyone else was actually out there, even when Crawford was speaking to him from the other cell.

"Am I imagining you?" he asked Crawford idly, tired of staring at the walls and picking at the blank spot in his own mind.

"I beg your pardon?" Crawford responded after a moment. He sounded startled, and Schuldig smirked. That wasn't a sound he got to hear in the precognitive's voice very often. Then he remembered WHY he'd been able to startle the other psychic, and his smirk faded.

"I asked if I was imagining you," he repeated. "I can't see you. I can't feel your mind. Maybe I'm really the only person left in the world, and I'm just imagining you to keep myself company."

"Schuldig," Crawford's voice held a warning note. "I know you're just trying to amuse yourself, but I want you to stay away from thoughts like that. You and I are both very powerful, and we're used to having our abilities as a constant presence. It will be far too easy for us to start to lose our grip on reality without them."

"Yeah, yeah," Schuldig brushed it off, but he found that he was actually scared of the thought. "Do you... d'you think we've lost them for good? Gone totally headblind?" The mere idea was terrifying... spend the rest of his life alone like this? Unable to truly touch another human being ever again? How the hell did normal people live like this, anyway?

"I don't know," Crawford replied after a moment. There was something in his voice that Schuldig had never heard before - fear. The precognitive was afraid, and THAT scared Schuldig more than anything else ever had in his life. Crawford was always the unflappable one, the one that could be counted on to remain calm no matter what happened. For the first time Schuldig tore his mind away from his own inability to sense anything beyond himself, and considered what this situation must be like for Crawford. Schuldig felt like he'd gone deaf... Crawford probably felt like he'd gone deaf AND blind all at once.

"We'll get out of this," Schuldig said suddenly, fiercely. He imbued his voice with every bit of conviction that he could muster. "When has Schwartz ever faced something we couldn't overcome? We beat the Elders at their own damn game. Nagi is out there somewhere, and when he finds us, there won't be enough of this building left intact to shelter a flea."

He refused to consider the idea that Nagi might be dead. It just... wasn't possible, and he flatly refused to think about it. The thought of life without his Liebchen was unbearable.

In the next cell, Crawford sighed and shifted. "It's entirely likely that we are only being blocked, not that we've lost our powers completely. The Institute does have people capable of burning out a psychic's powers... but I've never heard of it being done without also destroying the victim's mind, and we seem to be perfectly intact other than the loss of our abilities."

"Who are these guys, anyway?" Schuldig wanted to know. "You sure seem to know a lot about them."

There was a long pause, and he almost thought Crawford wasn't going to answer him. At last the American spoke, obviously choosing his words carefully. "The Institute is an organization not entirely unlike Estet. They have been gathering and training psychics for decades, perhaps centuries. Unlike Estet, they employed ONLY psychics, and so it was necessarily a smaller organization."

"So if they're collecting psychics, why take us and not Nagi or Farfarello?" Schuldig wanted to know. "I'd think Nagi would be MORE appealing to them... he's young enough that they'd have more luck conditioning him."

"They're not recruiting us, Schuldig," Crawford replied quietly. "They're hunting us down. I was trained by the Institute, and I was a field agent for them before Estet approached me to join them. If not for Estet's systematic decimation of the Institute's agents, I never would have been able to escape them. Rogue agents were extremely rare due to the level of brainwashing they employ... and they are always hunted down quickly and destroyed."

"But you escaped them... and STAYED away... that must have pissed them off pretty badly," Schuldig agreed slowly. There was something deep in his mind that was telling him he REALLY didn't want to persue this train of thought... but damn it, he had a right to know. "That explains why they took you. Why'd they take me?"

"Did you really think I would ever truly let you go?" a new voice echoed from down the hall. Schuldig whirled, straining to be able to look past the iron bars and see who was speaking. The voice was deep and oddly familiar - it started a sick feeling of dread building in the pit of his stomach.

Footsteps echoed through the hall as the unknown man approached. No, two sets of footsteps, Schuldig realized... one light and quick, and one heavy and slow. An adult and a child?

"Who the fuck are you?" the German demanded, cursing the loss of his powers. Give him FIVE minutes with his powers and this fucker, and he and Crawford would have been out of here in no time.

The man came into sight, smiling nastily at Schuldig through the bars as he paused in front of the cell. Behind him was a slender youth of no more than twelve, who had a vacant expression and unfocused eyes. The man was swarthy and dark - Mediterranean background, Schuldig thought. Italian, or maybe Greek.

"It's so good to see you again," the man rumbled, a lustful light in his eyes as he stared at Schuldig. That look made the telepath shiver, and he had to fight not to rub at his arms in a defensive gesture. "My most prized student. The years have been kind to you... you are even more beautiful now than you were as a teenager." He looked at Schuldig admiringly. "Perhaps we are wrong to insist on such military hair cuts among our students... that style suits you perfectly."

"Who. The FUCK. Are. You?" Schuldig bit out again, standing so that the man wasn't towering over him. Sitting before him made the German feel like a child being punished by a stern authority figure, and he didn't like the sensation at all. The only authority he recognized was Crawford, and that only because the precognitive had EARNED it.

Their captor looked surprised. "Don't tell me you don't remember me," he said. "I refuse to believe you have erased my mark on you so easily. No, I think you are bluffing."

"He's not bluffing - Emmanuel, isn't it?" Crawford said from the next cell. Schuldig could tell by the sound of his voice that he'd stood, as well. "He doesn't remember you. He doesn't remember anything about the Institute. He is not the person you think you know."

A massive headache was building behind Schuldig's eyes, and he struggled to fight it off. There was something... that he'd forgotten, and it was very important, but damn it, he didn't WANT to remember... Crawford's words reminded him of what had happened between them the day they'd met. Crawford had known him, had called him by another name, had been surprised that Schuldig hadn't recognized him. Schuldig had never wanted to know what it was the Crawford knew about him. He'd never asked, and the precognitive had never told, and eventually the telepath had all but forgotten that Crawford had known him from before he'd lost his memory. And now... this man also apparently knew him from his youth.

"You are not serious." Emmanuel made it a statement, rather than a question. He glanced over at Crawford's cell, and frowned. "You are telling the truth... or believe you are." He looked back at Schuldig, and suddenly the German was reeling back from the vice-grip on his brain. The man was a telepath, a strong one... and obviously whatever was blocking Crawford and Schuldig wasn't affecting him. Without his shields, Schuldig was helpless before the invasion, red hot knives raking across his mind and picking out bits of information.

"Amnesia," the other telepath said at last, as the crushing pressure faded and Schuldig fell to his knees, gasping for air. "Amazing. I would not have thought it possible. He truly does not remember anything. Do you know what caused it?"

His tone was nothing but polite inquiry, but there was a veiled threat in his eyes as he looked at Crawford once more. Schuldig wasn't capable of doing anything more than trying to collect his scattered brain cells, so he stayed silent and just listened.

"Some form of trauma... a memory his mind is hiding from," Crawford replied reluctantly. "I could have forced him to remember, but every time I thought about it I got visions of him, me, or both of us dying."

"Fascinating," Emmanuel said. Schuldig had finally gotten his breath back, and he raised his head to snarl at the older telepath. "So he didn't knowingly betray us... perhaps I will be able to convince the council to reinstate him."

"If you think I'm gonna do anything for you other than slit your throat, you've got another think coming," Schuldig growled, eyes narrowed. He staggered up to his feet again. "I don't care who you are, or who *I* was... I'm not going to just roll over and beg like a puppy dog. You can bite my ass, frankly."

The other man seemed unfazed by his acid comments. "I must say I do not prefer this personality to your old one. I shall simply have to see about fixing that."

"Weren't you listening?" Crawford snapped, and Schuldig heard him move to the front of the cell. "If you force his mind to remember whatever it is that he's running from, he will lose control and kill everything in the vicinity."

A sharp stabbing pain spiked into Schuldig's mind, and for a moment he thought it was Emmanuel again. Then he realized it was just the same headache he always got on the rare occasions when he tried to remember anything from his past. But he hadn't been trying to remember anything... was it this man's presence that was causing memories to try to surface? Or Crawford's words?

He took a deep breath and held it for a moment, willing the pain to subside. When he released it, he looked up to see Emmanual looking back at him once more.

"If I cannot force his mind to remember, then I shall simply have to work around it," the older telepath said, shrugging. His eyes narrowed in concentration, and suddenly the only thing Schuldig was aware of was the agonizing fire in his brain. It was like a wash of acid against raw nerve ends, eating away at his mind, at his memories.

He screamed, falling to the floor and clutching his head, and he didn't stop screaming for a very long time.

In the end, Omi reflected, it was just another mission. The people who had taken Crawford and Schuldig were much better at hiding their tracks than most of the targets Weiss took on, but they weren't perfect.

The attackers had disable the building's security systems, including the cameras, before showing up at Schuldig's apartment. However, they apparently hadn't been aware of the secondary, MUCH more sophisticated security system that Nagi had set up around the apartment. Youji had retrieved the computer hard drive the security system was hooked up to, and brought it back for Omi and Nagi to sift through.

When Nagi had - with much stuttering and hesitation - asked to help in the efforts to find his Master, Omi hadn't been about to turn him down, despite his conviction that the telekinetic wasn't up to much. The fact that the telekinetic had asked for anything at all, no matter how desperately he wanted it, was a good sign. He'd wound up compromising by letting Nagi sit propped up on pillows in the bed with a laptop, while Omi worked at the desk computer. It had ended up working better than he'd feared... thanks to his powers, Nagi could type without having to move his injured shoulder or strain his ribs.

With a sigh, Omi leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms out behind him. "I've found a couple of shots of your attackers, but nothing clear," he told the telekinetic. "Almost always from behind, too, as if they knew where the cameras were."

Nagi shook his head, not looking up from his own work. "If they'd known about the cameras, they'd have disabled them, too. They knew where cameras WOULD logically be, if there was another security system, and they acted accordingly."

Silently, Omi cheered his friend for disagreeing with him. Alone with Omi, with a computer-oriented task to occupy him, Nagi was able to display some measure of his usual behaviour. But the moment anybody else entered the picture, even Youji, the boy clammed up again and refused to do anything at all without a direct order. If Omi hadn't known how badly Nagi really was broken, he'd have said the former pet was being stubborn about it, but he knew that wasn't the case.

He thought about what Nagi had said, and then turned to run the shots of the attack again. This time he paid more attention to the way the attackers worked, rather than straining to get a good look at their faces. Once more he saw the door burst open, saw Nagi picked up and flung backwards by an invisible force, knocking over half the furniture in the room on his way to the far wall. Farfarello had leapt up from his chair and thrown one of his knives, which ended up buried in the shoulder of one attacker. From the angle of the camera it was impossible to tell whether it had been a heart shot or not, but knowing what Farfarello was capable of, Omi was willing to bet that his target was now very dead.

Farfarello stopped and stood dead still in the centre of the room for a moment, then clutched at his head and collapsed. He wound up sprawled exactly where Youji and Aya had found him, halfway behind the overturned couch. By this time Crawford and Schuldig had stood and drawn their guns, but as one they dropped the guns and reeled, as if they'd suddenly become extremely dizzy. Although there was no sound recorded, Omi knew Schuldig was screaming by the look on the telepath's face. Crawford collapsed, then Schuldig, dropping where they stood.

All that time Nagi had been fighting the telekinetic force holding him, struggling to get loose or use his own powers. He had been slammed against the wall repeatedly, until finally he slumped over and stopped moving. The invisible force let him hover for a moment, then dropped him to the floor where he lay limp and twisted.

Then the assailants moved into the room, picked up Schuldig, Crawford, and their own injured companion, and they left without giving Nagi or Farfarello so much as a second glance. There had been three of them - the two remaining carried the bodies out using telekinesis.

Omi checked the clock on the playback. "Less than five minutes from start to finish," he noted. "They moved like clockwork. And you're right, they're acting like they're assuming there are elements they don't know about, and adjusting accordingly." He frowned. "These are professionals. Very highly trained professionals. I'd think somebody had taken out a contract on you, except that they're also obviously psychics."

"Estet didn't go in for that kind of training," Nagi said thoughtfully. "Not that I know of - they never trained us. And except for Schwartz and the Elders, I don't think there were a lot of powerful psychics in Estet."

Omi nodded, running the video file back again to the moment the door opened, and slowing it down. "Crawford recognizes them... but Schuldig doesn't," he said after a moment. "So... maybe they were from a part of Estet that most members didn't know about, but Crawford knew them for some reason? Maybe he'd seen them in a vision?" He paused. "Which reminds me, why didn't he see this coming? I'd say this qualifies as a significant event!"

"He was having trouble with his powers," the telekinetic replied. "That's why we were meeting... he wanted to tell us about it, and find out if any of us were having trouble as well. He'd only just started to explain when... when the door buzzed."

Leaning back, the Weiss hacker started ticking points off on his fingers. "Crawford starts having trouble with his powers, and shortly thereafter a group of psychics who can block you and Schuldig shows up. I don't think that's any kind of coincidence... the trouble Crawford was having must have been a result of whatever was blocking you." Nagi nodded silently, and Omi continued. "They were well trained and used to working together. They were powerful, on a level with Schwartz. You don't know of anyone else in Estet who was that powerful, but that may not mean anything - I doubt you would have been told everything about the organization. And besides," he smiled wryly. "How many psychic paramilitary organizations can there BE out there? They must have been from Estet."

"Unfortunately, that won't help us find them," Nagi said, shoulders slumping. "Estet had safehouses and bolt holes all over the world. They could be anywhere." Omi heard the tears trembling just beneath his friend's voice.

He stood and crossed to the bed, sitting beside Nagi and wrapping a comforting arm around the smaller boy's shoulders. "Everybody screws up eventually," he said softly. "Sooner or later they'll leave something for us to find, and we'll track them down."

"But what if it's already too late?" Nagi whispered back, anguished. "What if they've already k-killed Crawford and... a-and..."

Omi hushed him by kissing him gently. "Don't think about it, Liebe. If they'd wanted them dead, they wouldn't have bothered to kidnap them. So they'll probably keep them alive for a good long time yet."

Nagi nodded, and turned back to his laptop. Omi stood, debating whether he wanted to return to his own work, or make them both some dinner. They'd already been at this all day - for once Youji had covered Omi's shift in the shop without complaint.

"I found something!" Nagi exclaimed abruptly from behind him. "Omi, I found something!"

Startled, the white hunter turned and knelt on the bed again, so he could see the laptop screen. "What? Where?" he demanded.

"The parking lot... I've got a camera down there, just in case," Nagi said. He started the video file moving again, and they both watched as several shadowy forms appeared on the left side of the frame. Two men, three limp bodies trailing along behind them like an eerie parade, and one new addition - a child, perhaps ten or twelve. Omi frowned. The shots of the attackers here were even worse than the ones in the apartment. He was just about to ask what Nagi had meant when he saw it.

"The liscence plate!" he shouted as the figures piled into a van and drove away. "We can run it through the database and see what comes up."

He scrambled back to his own computer and logged into the Kritiker network, accessing the police databases. He started the search going on the plate numbers. "Don't get too excited," he said as the search crawled along. He wasn't sure whether he was cautioning himself, or Nagi, or both. "It's entirely likely they stole the car, or switched the plates."

"We've got the make and model of the van, too," Nagi pointed out. "Though it's too dark to see the colour."

"Mm, right," Omi nodded, pulling up a different database and entering the information on the van. "If it was stolen, or if they dumped it somewhere and it's been found, it'll show up here."

"It has to tell us something... it HAS to," Nagi said quietly, fervently. Omi knew how he felt... if this turned out to be a useless lead, then they really had nowhere else to look. These people were very good at covering their tracks, and as Nagi had pointed out, they had world-wide resources, whereas Weiss only had resources within Japan. Silently he willed the computer search to find something.

When his computer beeped a few minutes later, he was almost afraid to look at the results. If he didn't look, then he could just keep believing that it would give them the answer...

"Well?" Nagi demanded after a moment, impatience overcoming his usual reticence entirely. "What does it SAY?"

Omi finally looked up, and nearly whooped with relief when he saw information on the screen. It still might not lead them anywhere useful, but at least it was a place to START. "The liscence plates are for a sedan, not a van," he said, scanning the information quickly. "They must have switched the plates." Hastily he scribbled down the address of the registered owner of the plates. "We'll talk to the owner, see what he knows. A van with a description that matches the one on the video was reported stolen this morning... after the attack, but I'll bet the owner just didn't realize it was gone until he went outside to go to work today." He wrote that address down, too.

"If it's stolen, they'll probably ditch it quickly and change vehicles," Nagi pointed out, eyes shining with excitement. "When the van is found, that will tell us which direction they were heading in."

"Right!" Omi agreed. He tore off the notepaper he'd written the address on and jumped up. "You stay here, and keep an eye on the police databases. I'm going to go out and talk to these people, see if they can give us any more clues." He stopped at Nagi's side and dropped a spontaneous kiss on the younger boy's cheek. "Good work, Liebe. If you need anything, just go down to the flowershop and ask Youji, okay? I won't be gone too long."

Nagi flushed at the praise, and nodded. "I'll be okay," he replied quietly. "You go find them."

Omi grabbed his helmet and the keys to his bike, and left the room. Trotting down the stairs, he entered the flowershop and looked around. Aya was working on an ikebana arrangement at the table, and Ken was watering some of the flowers. Youji was nowhere to be seen.

"Did Youji skip out?" Omi asked, surprised. Not that Youji didn't worm his way out of his shifts more often than not, but his lover had promised him that he would cover for Omi for as long as it took for the hacker to track down Schwartz's assailants.

"No, he's doing deliveries," Ken replied. "Man, I swear, I've never seen him this diligent. He volunteered to do the deliveries, and he hates doing them. It's kind of a nice change."

"No kidding," Omi replied drily. "We've found a possible lead... I'm going to go check it out. Nagi's upstairs watching for any more information, but I told him to come down if he needed anything. Be nice," he added sternly, glaring in Aya's direction. "He's fragile right now."

"I'll make sure he's okay," Ken offered. "I'll go up and check on him every so often, just in case."

Omi smiled at his best friend. "Thank you, Ken-kun. I shouldn't be gone too long. If Nagi does find something, call me on my cell." With a last wave he headed out the back door, into the alley where they kept their vehicles. Pulling on his helmet, he started his bike and headed out, determined to squeeze every possible bit of information he could out of these leads. He had to find Schuldig, and soon... Nagi simply wouldn't be able to survive for long without the telepath.

|Part 1| |Part 2| |Part 3| |Part 4| |Part 5| |Part 6| |Part 7| |Part 8| |Part 9| |Part 10| |Part 11| |Part 12| |Part 13| |Part 14|

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