Aiko stood with Jiro now, next to the Piano. "We were made for each other, Jiro. You see, without me, you could not survive. And I could not without you." Jiro was confused. "Survive?" She nodded yes, saying, "Yes, Jiro. I'm afraid there are people out there who will take us away somewhere. I fear they will take us apart to study us." She looked down at their hands, which were both interloped with one another's as they stood in the moonlight. The rain softly fell outside. She added, "There are some people coming here now." Jiro looked at her, concerned. Mr. Oba watched them still through the small monitor back at the office. "How do you know this?" He asked her. She looked down at their hands again. "I tried to stop them, but they're still coming here. I can still see them in my mind's eye." Sakura began to convulse on the table and Mr. Oba yelled out, "No! What are you doing to her!?" He spat at the small screen. "You monsters!" He saw the finger on the floor jump towards him from the corner of his eye and he stepped back from it. It hit the floor a bit away from him, but it sure did give him a scare. He almost forgot about that thing. His eyes darted around the room trying to find a solution that wasn't there, but then the large screen in the center changed screens. It now read, "BIOTECHNICA MEDICAL DATABASE," with a lock icon next to it and login fields underneath. A sign came up with a hazard symbol each time the passcode was entered wrong, and when this happened Sakura would twitch. He was frustrated he couldn't do anything but watch all of this happen. "I see a girl," heard Mr. Oba over the speakers. It was Aiko, speaking to Jiro. "I see her, in my mind, the way you saw me before." "In a dream?" Asked Jiro. "Yes, kind of." Sakura was in. The login screen was now green in color, and said, "Login Success." Now various code splashed across the screen and Mr. Oba looked away from the flashing lights caused by the speed. "She's in." Aiko suddenly dropped, fainting into Jiro's arms where they stood. Jiro looked down at her in his arms and said, "No, not again." He thought back to that fateful day, when Madame Aiko had fallen out of the window. He remembers watching her there, laying on the floor, dead. Now, here she was, back in his arms. He stared down at her in amazement. It was everything he had ever wanted, and now someone was coming to try to take that away from him. He held Aiko close to him and lay his head onto hers while he held her limp body up, saying, "Not again." 2 Sonia had been hiding out in the garden so far. She hadn't seen or heard anything yet, but the rain had just stopped. She was soaked. She was hiding behind the rosebushes that lined the garden when she suddenly heard a girl shrieking from the upstairs of the manor. "What the hell!?" she whispered aloud. The cries were abruptly cut off, and it was silent. The rain had stopped, there was no wind. Sonia thought to check over the top of the hedge to see if anything was there, so she did, but saw nothing. She thought something very risky, to look through the window. She stepped slowly across the dirt driveway, making sounds with her feet in the gravel as she did. Making her way over to the window, peering in, she searched for any kind of movement. Nothing. Sonia listened. It was quiet, so she slowly made her way over to the right side of the house to check if anyone was there. Mr. Oba watched as the girl and Jiro made their way downstairs practically silent. He saw through Aiko’s eyes as she watched around the corner. Sonia was standing outside the window, looking away, then she walked off. "Shit," mumbled Mr. Oba. He watched the camera as Aiko now went towards the door, but he didn’t hear footsteps anymore. Instead, he heard something like a patter or tapping as she moved across the old wooden floor. Then she stopped and looked back towards the window. Sonia had returned after seeing nothing around the side, so she took a chance peering in again. This time, the camera dropped to the floor, and he heard Jiro run off somewhere out of frame. The camera slithered its way across the floor, with the pattering still there, and then it burst upward to face Sonia on the other side of the window. She was surprised and jumped back, rolling across the ground to get away as Aiko broke through the window and jumped into the air. She awkwardly ended up next to the hedge she had just come from behind, and she tried to get up and run away, but it was too late. Aiko stood in front of her as she got up and turned around. She smiled at Sonia sardonically, saying, "Hey, detective." Aiko held up her hand at Sonia like a gun. "Boom." Just as she said it, the tip of her finger shot out from her hand attached to a wire. The end of it was pointed slightly. It zipped through the air and went right through Sonia's shoulder, the same one as before. She fell back to the ground and cried out as the finger whipped back through the wound and out the front of her chest, flinging a trail of blood through the air as it did, which landed on Sonia's eye. Jiro ran out from behind the front door. "No!" he yelled, running over to Sonia. Aiko didn't flinch. She stood there and smiled until Jiro got down on one knee to help her. Then Aiko gave Sonia a wicked gaze. "You said you weren't going to hurt them!" Jiro said, looking down at Sonia. He held out an ungloved metal hand to her and she gasped at the sight of it. He was confused for a second, but then looked at his hand, realizing his glove wasn't on. "There it is, don't you see?" asked Aiko. He looked up at her from where he knelt. "They're afraid of us, Jiro." He then looked back to Sonia, who was still entranced with his hand. He looked at it and moved it around, and then she looked at him. "Jiro, I don't mean anything by it-" Sonia began, but Aiko cut her off. "She doesn't understand us, Jiro." He stood up and grit his teeth, clenching his fist. "No, that isn't true." He looked at Aiko with a sudden hatred and said, "Madame Aiko would never have hurt anybody." Aiko didn't know what to say at first, but she then frowned, saying, "I told you not to call me-" Jiro cut her off. "You told me not to call you Madame Aiko." He finished for her. "But I also told Madame Aiko, never to call me Lord Jiro." Her eyes widened. "But I- I haven't!" "Not recently, no. Not after I had to remind you a second time." Jiro looked down to the floor. "I didn't want to admit it," he made direct eye contact with her. "But I think I know what you really are." Aiko started to cry, and she fell to the ground. Sonia couldn't watch anymore. She lay back on the ground as she bled out, listening. "When you came to me, I thought I was going to be happy for the first time in my life." Jiro held back his tears as he looked down on her. "You have to understand- I'm only doing what I need to so that we can survive!" She looked up at him, also in tears. Jiro wiped his eyes and said, "But you're a partition. You're me. You're the other half of me." She smiled and said, "Exactly." She stood up to come over to him, but he held a hand out to stop her. "No. This has to stop. No one else can get hurt by us." She shook her head and pleaded with him, "But my love, you don't understand! There are more of them, more than I can see right now!" He became curious and asked her what she meant by that. She nodded to him and came close to him, putting her face near his as if going for a kiss. She grabbed his green hair behind his head and leaned in, but instead of kissing him, she spoke, saying, "There is a girl who is attached to us, and as I speak, a man is watching all of this through my very eyes." Jiro looked into her eyes and Mr. Oba stared into the small screen back in Sakura's office. Suddenly, Sakura began convulsing again, and he heard a scream come from over the speakers. It was from Aiko, who was now on the floor. Jiro was trying to help her when he realized this must be some kind of attack. He turned and looked at Sonia on the ground, angrily making his way over to her. She was hardly moving. Her eyes were shut. They opened, but only a little when he yelled, "What are you doing to her!?" Sonia's head swayed on the ground as he went on, adding, "Why did you even come here!?" His anger turned to sadness and he began to cry. He heard a scuffle in the gravel ahead, in the darkness. He looked over as Lucas stepped forward, limping into the light from the porch. "Sonia!" he called over, and Jiro looked down at her, lying helpless. He stood back so that Lucas could help her. Lucas looked over at the flamethrower on the ground nearby and thought, "What the hell is that?" Aiko had watched his gaze as she observed the situation and immediately she sent out a wire to retrieve the gun. She threw it over the cliff. "There we go," she sneered as Lucas realized her presence. She made a whipping sound with the wire in the air to startle him and Jiro turned to her yelling, "Stop that! You aren't going to hurt him!" She crossed her arms and said, "You still don't get it, do you?" Jiro lost control of standing, he fell to his knees and held out his arms to catch himself. He stared up in horror at Aiko. "I'm in control here." She whipped the wire into the air again, and it headed straight for Lucas, but then it was stopped. A hand had grabbed the thick wire before the finger could hit Lucas in the face, and it was attached to a wire of its own coming from within Jiro's arm. He recoiled the wire by bringing back his hand to his wrist while it was holding onto the wire Aiko had sent out like a lasso. Her mouth dropped, and Jiro stood. "My love, my life. I cannot live if we are meant to live in a constant struggle together. I can't let you hurt anyone else." She became visibly upset and she choked when she asked him what he meant by that. "It means-" he says, stopped by the hurt in his chest. "It means that it all ends here. If we can't live peacefully in this world, we can't stay in it." "Jiro-" she teared up. "Please, after everything I've done to help us-" He sighed. "That's the thing. Even if no one else dies today, we will have to keep running from them. We can't give them what they want, so we have to make sure they can't get it." She started to ball. "No, Jiro! You can't!" He looked down to the floor. She was still crying and wiping her eyes when Jiro began to laugh. At first, it was just a little, but then it was slightly louder, and he tilted his head back, looking up at the stars. "You took care of me when I was alone. I had no one else but you. You built yourself in the image of a woman I loved because you knew I couldn't find real happiness in this world. But why do we have to keep going if we are meant to fail?" She looked at him in tears. Mr. Oba wasn't watching the screen anymore. The finger had gotten loose. It had killed him. He lay on the ground of Sakura's office, dead, with a hole right in between his eyes. Sakura was also dead. Blood could be seen dripping down the side of her face like a tear from where she lay, once trapped in the chair. Lucas still lay next to Sonia, who was inches from life. He watched the entire thing happening in front of him. They spoke as if he wasn't even there. "Jiro! Why are we meant to be the ones who die? Why can't they just leave us alone!" She cried into the ground and Jiro looked off into the distance, past the garden, and past the fountain at the back. He looked past the fence, at the lit-up city below the cliff. He knew what had to be done. Walking over the Aiko, he grabbed her arm gently and said, "Come, let's go home." She said nothing and stood up with him. He held her close in his arms and they walked through the pathway of the garden, to the fountain, and then around it. They walked up to the pointed black fence and to a gate. Jiro opened the gate, leading Aiko through to the other side as Lucas watched in awe from where he still sat. Jiro stood in front of Aiko, with the beautiful city skyline lighting up the night before them. He smiled and looked out into the scenery. "Maybe if life was a little more like this, we could have been happy here." She then looked out into the lights below and a tear rolled down her eye. "But Jiro, I don't want to die." He nodded and said, "Nobody does." He kissed her and pushed his foot onto the ground, flinging them both off the side of the cliff. They fall staring into each other's eyes, and over they went. Lucas couldn't believe it, and he got up to look closer at where he had seen them fall. Suddenly, something sprang up from the side of the cliff. It was a wire, and it went far into the yard, grabbing onto the fountain, wrapping itself around it tightly. Lucas gasped and ran over to it, trying to see through the darkness as he went. He saw it, near the top. The wire had a finger at the end of it. "Shit-" said Lucas, looking around for anything he could use. He could hear Aiko yelling from the other side of the cliff, "You filthy human! I can see you through a hidden camera in my extremity." He then saw another wire come up, another finger. It came close to grabbing him but it missed. The finger hit the floor and was whipped back over the cliff. "Run Lucas!" He could hear Jiro. He looked down at the wire holding them at the side of the cliff and had to think fast, looking back over to Sonia. With his bad leg, they'd never get out of there in time. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out Mr. Oba's torch lighter he had used to smoke a cigarette earlier in the car before his crash. He looked at the wire. He stumbled as he tried to get closer to the fountain and fell. His knee was badly injured and he couldn't put any weight on it to crawl, so he dragged himself across the ground towards the wire. Another wire whipped into the air and he heard it coming his way, so he rolled backward. It got him. The wire pulled Lucas across the ground by his bad leg, and he screamed in agony, reaching out his hands to try and stop himself. He ended up grabbing something, and it was the wire. His bad leg that was being held started to make a sound, like the sound of an air pocket being formed. Soon after, his leg ripped right in half at the knee and the wire went back over the side of the cliff. He heard Jiro cry out, and a fight had started between the two. He felt the wire in his hand shaking erratically and he was still holding onto the lighter in the same palm. Quickly, he took one hand, placing it under the wire with the small flame lit. It burned slowly as he was whipped back and forth, and he could hear Aiko yelling no repeatedly as she struggled to save herself from over the edge. The wire snapped. They all went over. 3 Sonia walked calmly down a city sidewalk on a bright day. A man passed her asking, "Hey, do you have a smoke?" She shook her head no, adding, "I don't smoke." She wore large sunglasses and had her hair was covered partially with a black scarf. She turned and went into a graveyard. Along the trail, she passed many beautiful tombstones. It was a very high-end graveyard. She remembered waking up in the hospital. She woke up, and the nurses came in to attend tp her. They told her to relax, and that everything was alright. She was weak, so she lay back down as she was told. They left the room. On the desk next to her was an invitation to the funeral of Mr. Oba and his daughter. She asked the nurse later about what the date was, and she had missed the funeral by three days. She lay in the bed alone for hours after she woke. All she could think was, "Did that really happen?" 4 A shovel digs into the ground in the manor's garden. Policemen and first responders are digging all over the garden, under the rosebushes. "We got another one over here!" yells one. A few men rush over to help him. All the beautiful flowers that were once planted there were now gone. They were dug up as the search for more bodies on the property went on. They had even removed the white bench Jiro used to sit on, and the fountain was gone, too. They had removed everything. Bodies had been dug up all over the garden. The remains of Madame Aiko, Dr. Monroe, Bastion, and one more that they had found underneath the fountain. The tombstone Sonia had gone to visit was a grave with the name "Ichiro Kubo." Later that day, Sonia was in a cab on her way through downtown. It came to a stop, and she shut the door after telling the driver to keep the change. She now stood in front of the office lobby. Then she made her way inside. She went right through the room, passing the line where a man called out, "Hey, lady! The lines back here." She paid him no attention as she walked up to the security check where Dazz was distracted, scanning some guy. She walked right through the check and people started to become rowdy. Sonia grabbed Dazz by the shirt collar as she stood up to look at her when she approached. She pulled him towards her and kissed him in front of the whole room. The rowdiness turned to whistles and the businessmen all clapped and cheered them on, with one spinning newspaper in the air while he whistled loudly with two fingers in his mouth. He stood up on his toes in the crowd and Sonia and Dazz saw him, laughing. "You can escort me off the premises now," she smirked. That night, Sonia sat by the windowsill in her rocking chair on the phone with someone. "The recovered pieces are going to be destroyed," said a man over the phone. "We'd hate to see a person with your experience leave. Are you sure you won't think it over? We could offer you greater perks if you wish to request anything." Sonia leaned back and rocked a few times. "No, I think I'm going to find something else." She watched the little lights going across the distant bridge outside. "You're always welcome here if you change your mind, Ms. Kiyama. Thanks again," the man hung up. She took the phone down from her ear and looked at the screen. She went through her contacts and looked at Lucas's name, clicking on it. His number came up with a picture of him. She looked up at the wall across from her and there was one of his paintings signed on her wall. She put her phone down and picked up a coffee mug, taking a sip. She smiled and gazed out into the world as far as her window would allow her. 5 A phone is being held in a rather chunky large hand, by an older gentleman wearing a fine gray suit. He is sitting at a desk surrounded by numerous screens in a large dark room. There were ten or more of them with security camera footage playing. He was watching back the recordings taken through Aiko's eyes. He watched as she was standing in a dark hallway. It was silent, but then he heard the sound of glass breaking. Her head turned towards a nearby stairwell, and she then ran the opposite way, running down to the very end of the hallway and then through the last door on the right. Two wires come out of nowhere, being controlled by her, and they open a window in the room that was above a desk. She climbed up, and jumped out, running away towards the back of a parking lot, where she stopped to look back and forth. Nothing, so she went on, seeing a car parked at the back of the lot. Two wires come out and slash the tires of the vehicle and the video is paused. The man stands up, making a grunting noise, and grabs a cane that's resting in the corner near him. He hobbles his way over to the door and out into a hallway where everything is made of metal but the white laminate floors. He goes down the hallway with the sounds of his feet echoing and then turns a corner. He stands in front of a large bay door, made of metal. There was a yellow and black hazard outline around the door and the ground in front of it. Beside it on the right was a hand scanner. The man walked over and went to place his hand out on the scanner, where he almost fell forward and ended up catching himself on it perfectly. The door opened. But inside was another door much the same as the last, but this time, the man had to have his eyes scanned. He walked up to the machine, and a blue light came out that he had to stand in front of. He tried not to wince at the light as it struck his eyes to scan them directly. The door opened again and he hurried his way through, over to a table with a very long incubator on it. Inside the incubator was where all the miscellaneous pieces were left from the two androids. Including both their heads, both of which contained no brain. They were both complete androids on the inside. On the outside of them, was a mixture of real and synthetic skin. Jiro Kubo never existed. The child's real name was Ichiro Kubo. When the doctor had brought Goro Kubo's son back to life, or so he thought he had, Ichiro, meaning the first son, was renamed to Jiro, meaning the second son. Ichiro had died along with his mother in an accident at the amusement park, where they had both died in a railcar crash. It had come loose from the tracks and fallen, killing everyone on board. Goro Kubo stood and watched as his child and wife lay in a pile of gore, dead, when a man approached him from the crowd, who held a hand on his shoulder. Dr. Monroe. He offered him the chance to save his son's life, but he had to act quickly. He had programmed the incident into Jiro's mind before the AI brain was awakened, but Jiro wasn't able to recall the day properly for a reason the doctor could never figure out. The real child, Ichiro, had never been in a wheelchair. They had only let Jiro think that, as his malfunction had lead him to believe it was the case. The truth was, Jiro was only in that wheelchair because the doctor was unsure if he should be able to walk on his own yet. He wanted to study the android as it learned about the world around it before giving it the ability to walk. He wanted the android child to learn to trust the humans who took care of him, which in the end, he did. But his malfunction got the best of him, and he eventually partitioned a part of himself off that he didn't like, but it was still a part of him. The AI brain had decided to try and ignore the evil thoughts it had, and that manifested itself into Aiko. It could not be contained. The partition was still connected to its program back at the BIOTECHNICA Medical Center, and it was able to build itself a second body using the old parts of Jiro that the doctor had removed as he aged. It built itself, and then improved on its framework, without the doctor knowing. This was after Aiko had killed him through Jiro's own hands right before he could tell him the truth about this crazy science experiment. Now it was all too late. The man put his hand onto the bullet-proof glass of the incubator, he stared down at the robotic limbs underneath. They were attached to multiple wires much the same as they always had been. "It's amazing what these few people did," he gazed at them in awe, his old wrinkled eyes twinkled as his pupils shrank. "Now I finally have you." The man left the room. Silence returned. But not without the sound of a repeated tapping on the glass. END