Chapter Text
The ones and zeros of the universe were aligning. Progress was progressing. Chuuya strung evidence together and pulled it apart again, the Meursault case and his identity unravelling.
He came into the office late, carrying himself with a perk seldom seen in gentlemen of his level of sleep deprivation—squaring the whole world on his shoulders. He was mildly sweaty from having braved the outsides, mildly wired from night and daydreams, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Good morning, good to see you,” Kunikida greeted in a manner that suggested he would have preferred to see Chuuya arrive on time. He was already busy abusing a typewriter, making writing look like a marathon. “How are you?”
“Barely caffeinated,” Chuuya said, tipping an imaginary hat. “And sorry I'm late, it’s uh… it’s Dazai’s fault.” He was all about personal responsibility, but he knew Dazai basked in blame, so why rob him of that pleasure?
Kunikida looked up. “Is Dazai giving you trouble?”
“It’s fine,” Chuuya assured his superior. “It’s my own fault. I’ve been looking for trouble.”
“Well, let me know if you need me to step in. However much I want to slap some sense into him, the bureau’s code of conduct doesn’t allow it. I can, however, threaten to have him fired.”
Chuuya called himself into his office, grateful to have a private space where he could act weird without witnesses. He swiveled in his chair. If only inspiration hit like dizziness. He was less of a planner and more of a winger, but he wasn’t entirely impervious to the appeal of a to-do list...
Talk to Adam was the first item he noted down. He flicked his wrist and put a tick next to it, feeling productive.
The next point, request another investigation access pass to Draconia. Chuuya’s handwriting slanted like it was trying to run away from him. He was always a little behind himself. In parentheses, he added, look for Dostoevsky, fucker knows more than he lets on.
A sudden burst of pitches poured out of Chuuya’s wireless communicator. There was no caller identification in sight, which was noteworthy—few people could afford privacy in the information and surveillance economy.
Mildly offended by the interruption, Chuuya side-eyed the piece of technology. He wasn’t on the receiving end of a lot of business calls.
“Who’s this?” he croaked into the receiver. A stunned sort of silence followed, suggesting that perhaps Chuuya should have rehearsed a more marketable greeting.
A peevish throat-clearing broke the stalemate, followed by a “Hello, detective.”
The voice on the other end of the call tickled a vivid sense of familiarity. Chuuya ran through his mental files to place it. “Mr Dostoevsky? What can I do for you?”
“I remembered something which may be of importance to your investigation, and I’d like to leave my testimony with you.”
“Fire away.” Chuuya eagerly re-arranged his limbs into a hunched focus pose, leaning forward to place an elbow on the desk. He miscalculated the distance and nearly fell off the chair. It was only courtesy of his reflexes that he eluded the indignity of a crash. Under his breath, he muttered a curse.
“Is everything alright,” asked Dostoevsky.
“Fine. I’m fine. Go on.” Chuuya said. Then, remembering his manners, he added in his most sophisticated corporate voice, “Please.”
“I can’t disclose it over the tele-network,” Dostoevsky replied with an audible eye-roll. “You never know who’s listening. It’s too much of a risk.”
“Right.” Chuuya supposed a dose of paranoia was warranted. Modern society was as broken as him. It lived in a future haunted by the past, always glancing over one shoulder—anxious about the digital footprint catching up. It manufactured its own hazards, chasing progress and producing danger.
“Risk,” Chuuya echoed. He knew that he was supposed to succumb to that word's disciplinary power. To eat three nutritious meals at regular hours because the body was a well-oiled machine. To avoid mirrors for fear of who might be looking back. To synchronise a pulse to a health tracker.
Turning towards the window, Chuuya looked out upon the skyline, down on the little people in their stocky suits moving like cogs. Human agency was on a path to planned obsolescence, following neon signs with promises of safety and security towards a moving horizon.
Chuuya resented it, all of it. He had a limited quota of nervous energy, and he wasn’t willing to drain it on constant risk assessment. He was better off sorry than safe.
The only risk, as far as he was concerned, was to lose touch with his humanity. His personal mission was to stay on the track that made him feel his heartbeat, but his professional duty was to tend to the client’s needs before his own. It was all about conversational checkpoints, and tactical politeness. “Of course, I wouldn’t want to put you in a position where you feel your information is compromised, Mr Dostoevsky. I’ll set up a personal meeting—”
“It would be preferable if you could meet me in my private quarters. I’d come to you, but you know how it is, being terribly important and busy, so…”
Chuuya glanced at his calendar. There wasn’t a single appointment in the coming days. Unlike some, Chuuya was not a busy and important person.
“I understand,” he said because he did understand that Dostoevsky's ego demanded that he make others dance to his tune. Luckily, Chuuya was quick on his feet. He jotted down the address he was given and said, “I’ll be there shortly.”
“Excellent.” Something about Dostoevsky’s rushed tone hinted that he thought of time as money and of Chuuya as a poor soul. “I expect that our meeting will be treated with confidentiality.”
It was the words of someone who understood secrets better than people. Chuuya’s job involved clinical profiling, so he understood people and their quirks just fine—understood that people of Dosotevsky's character were much easier to herd when they got their way.
“Sure,” Chuuya said. He was about to end the conversation when a flare of suspicion leapt up in his mind. “Wait. How did you get my number?”
“The call has been disconnected,” an abrasively pleasant automated voice answered.
“Fucker.” Chuuya squinted at his wireless communicator, trying to intimidate it into answering his question.
A feeling stuck between excitement and dread accompanied the realisation that the address Dostoevsky had given was near one of Chuuya’s personal landmarks: The nondescript back alley crammed between sleek business bricks where he woke up without memories of his past.
“Coincidence?” he wondered out loud, tapping his pen against his forehead, “or pattern.”
Some time passed, wasted staring straight ahead at nothing. His bubble was burst by another familiar voice carrying through the speaker. An insistent, “Chuuya?”
“Dazai?”
“The one and only,” Dazai answered. There was a disconcerting whirring noise in the background, some tortured machine providing the soundtrack to the horrors that went on in Dazai’s laboratory. “Who else were you expecting to pick up when you called me?”
Chuuya didn’t recall dialling Dazai up, but his memory had been known to leave things out.
“So, calling for a reason or did you just miss my voice?” Dazai asked.
“Do you ever take a break from being so…” Chuuya waved a hand about, knowing full well that Dazai couldn’t see him gesturing at thin air.
“Charming?” Dazai supplied. “No, I’m afraid it’s an integral part of my personality. I simply can’t help it.”
Chuuya didn’t know what to say. For a few seconds, it seemed that Dazai didn’t either, but then a soft laugh broke the static. “You don’t remember why you called, do you? That’s fine.” It was easy for Dazai to speak of forgetfulness so fondly.
“It’s not fine, not really.” What anyone else would count as a simple slip of the mind, Chuuya took as a cruel reminder of his punctured memory.
“Oh well, it seems fated that you happened to call just as I was thinking about you,” Dazai trilled, bringing a welcome change of topic, “then again I’m always thinking about you.”
“You are?” Chuuya asked, smiling despite himself. “That’s–”
“Charming. Yes, that’s me, as we’ve established.”
“I was going to say ‘mildly creepy’, actually,” Chuuya lied with usual flunk. He was certain that his voice betrayed that he was, in fact, charmed.
“Hey Chuuya.” Dazai’s tone took a serious turn. He changed so swiftly between sincerity and sarcasm that the distinction blurred. “Be careful, okay.”
“Careful about what?” Chuuya had missed the part where this was even a matter of relevance to the preceding conversation. He didn’t think he had said anything implying that he intended to go out of his way to court danger.
“Just careful.”
All this talk of risk sucked all the space out of the room. Chuuya felt as if his back was against a cold wall. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for the worrying type.”
“I’m not,” Dazai answered, sounding mildly offended. “Not for myself anyway. I only worry about you.”
Chuuya refused to show weakness, but he didn’t entirely hate the idea of being Dazai’s weakness. Maybe that made him a hypocrite, and maybe that made him want to point fingers. “You, doctor,” he said, “are a hypocrite, an absolute hypocrite, I'm telling you.”
“You do say the sweetest things, peach” Dazai chippered, “and you know, flattery will get you everywhere with me.”
—
On his way, Chuuya watched pigeons pick at the ground, walk in circles, and then pick some more at the same spot. There was nothing for them to pick at—the place was continuously swept by cleaning robots. But there was comfort in instinct, the kind of resolve that fuelled Chuuya was a winged creature too.
Craning his head back, he snickered at the sky that hung the skyscrapers. Something was about to happen. He felt it in his core like a chemical reaction, a suspended moment of living hope. Still loading, but soon ready to launch.
In a cityscape of streamlined silvery hues and slender heights, Dostoevsky's residence stood out. It was more shrine than house with the architectural flair of old craftsmanship and even older money, carved with a reverence for wood and details.
A security guard stood at attention by the gate. A human one, Chuuya noted with great delight.
“Hello, there bud,” said Chuuya and patted the guard on the shoulder. He spoke the language of flesh and blood fluently, knew how to interact with a real person.
“I’m Chuuya from—”
“The Bureau of National Safety, yes.” Security gave Chuuya a politely unimpressed once-over. “The master is expecting you. You may proceed.”
Upon entering the estate, the heavy oak door slammed shut behind Chuuya. The interior mimicked the exterior. A harmonious blend of rich, polished wood and translucent acrylic. Gilded accessories, meticulously placed throughout the space told a story of symbolism. The play of light against the earthy tones imparted a dreamlike ambience.
“Hello?” Chuuya called into the foyer and was greeted by his own echo and a surround-sonic creaking from unidentifiable sources—almost as though the place was alive and trying to communicate.
Whether what was being communicated was a warning or a welcome was unclear, but the feeling of being watched was unmistakable. It was a thin lining of cold sweat on his forehead and a constant urge to check his blind spots.
The proper thing to do would probably be to wait around until further notice, but propriety was a scourge and Chuuya would sooner lose a fight than win a waiting game.
Given the opportunity to snoop around, he would take it. Occupational damage was what it was—as a detective, he simply couldn’t help himself against the urge to investigate.
Surveillance was undoubtedly recording his every move. Chuuya didn’t mind the idea of getting caught, but he did think it prudent to prepare an alibi. So, relying on the plausible deniability of searching for his host as he quested ahead, he cleared his throat and called, “Anyone home? Mr Dostoevsky? Where are you?”
After some unproductive digging, he found a sparsely furnished office which smelled of black tea and secrets. Bookshelves lined the walls, displaying a frankly fetishistic collection of vintage-looking books, including How to Conquer a Nation—an Advanced Guide, The Modern Prometheus’ Revenge, and Posthuman Ethics. Riveting content, undoubtedly, but Chuuya wasn't in the right state of mind to be reading. He liked his evidence quick and dirty.
He moved his attention to the desk in the middle of the room, searching for clues and patting one of its cute little drawers down. The depths of a drawer was an optimistic place for investigators, but it was almost definitely—he shook the handle—not locked.
Excitement died like a dream. The drawer had nothing to declare. Chuuya slammed it shut, and as he did, a loud rasp issued from behind him.
Hackles and fists raised, he spun around. A hidden door in one of the bookshelves had opened to a spiralling staircase, leading down into darkness.
In Chuuya’s professional opinion, it looked like a pitfall, like a trap, like a mistake he was about to make. He hoped that he wasn’t having a prophetic vision, but pessimists often did. In that way, he supposed his intuitive powers hadn’t forsaken him completely.
The hairs at the back of his neck stood, a whole row of needles prickling his skin. Steeling himself, he stepped onto the stoop.
“Fuck it.” He took the first step, dragged along by the leash of his own stubbornness. Trap or not, the only time to give up was never.
The descent reminded him of Dazai. Of a first meeting that didn’t feel like a first meeting and of an orange flame.
A pungent smell clung to the walls and Chuuya’s nose, a compound he could recognise but not name. Once, Dazai told him that the sense of smell was closely linked with memory—more so than any of the other senses. The explanation had included references to brain regions with Latin names and neurotransmitters with complicated relationships. It was like a historical fantasy novel, and Chuuya had eaten it up.
At the end of the stairs was a narrow tube-like passage leading to yet another set of stairs. Climbing two steps at a time, he made it to the top platform. Out of breath and forbearance.
Imposing double doors rose before him, an entrance enhanced with intricately carved symbols. The alchemical society’s seal—ancient rituals and modern science, a gateway to another realm that unlocked automatically for him as he stepped closer.
“ Doors opening,” said an automated voice.
“I can see that,” Chuuya answered. There was only one way forward, and it was straight ahead. He entered through the doors and immediately felt his heart drop.
It took some time for his eyes to make sense of what he was looking at. It was a factory so massive that the back walls couldn’t be seen. Snaking cables, steel and cement grey-scaled the space from floor to ceiling, sharp curves bending around workbenches and futuristic machinery. Chuuya’s eyes were drawn by wide glass cylinders filled with a dark blue liquid that made it impossible to see what was inside. There were rows upon rows of them, each one wide enough for three adults to wrap themselves around. His knees buckled with deja vu. I know this place, damn it, he thought.
The world was a massive drill, burrowing into Chuuya’s existence. His brain pulsed against his skull. He fisted his hands in his hair and groaned against the pain. This had to be the disintegration Dazai had warned him about, the one that the ring was supposed to protect him against. Why wasn’t it working?
He remembered… blue liquid. A slimy substance sticking to his skin. A cold floor under his bare feet, tripping over cables. Fragments but not enough to piece together a coherent story. He remembered… Dazai’s words, “take control."
Sometimes, the only way to gain control was to let go. Chuuya allowed the past to overhaul him. He didn’t try to hold on, didn’t try to chase.
Nausea was a threat, was breakfast churning in his stomach, was a gag in his throat, but he got his breathing under control.
“Welcome, detective. I am pleased you could make it,” came Dostoevsky's voice from behind. "I knew you would find your way to my experiment room soon enough.”
The lights turned off with a sudden hiss, plunging Chuuya into darkness. Before he could even mobilise a fight or flight response, little red laser dots showed up on his chest, painting him a target.
Chuuya swung a fist into the darkness, but it was a foregone loss. He was shadowboxing, and a gun trumped a punch any day.
Bang-bang, that was all it took to take him down. There was something distinctly human about the sound of a body making contact with a floor. Bones rustling and the social conditioning of saying ‘ow’. The landing was unforgiving, humiliation blooming from Chuuya’s tailbone.
“Advanced stun gun technology,” explained a slick voice—one that didn’t belong to Dostoevsky. “When the blasts make contact, they emit anaesthetic vibrations too.”
The lights came on, bathing a tall blond man in sickly hues. Long shadows drew canyons under his eyes and cheekbones, delicate skull-like features. He was more sinew than muscle, but he had that stupid gun, and his finger was taut on the trigger. The most dangerous thing about him, though, was his curling smile. With a stooped marionette-like gait, he came closer. “I've missed you, brother.”
“Talking to me?” Chuuya pushed himself up, balancing his weight on his knees before taking a hit to his stomach. He hunched in on himself as if his middle had been carved out.
“Evidently.” The tall blond man with a confused sense of familial linkages planted the tip of his boot against Chuuya’s shoulder with the same carelessness someone might step on a bug on the ground.
“I don’t remember,” Chuuya started, struggling against a slur in his voice, “having a brother.”
—
Edges blurred and shrunk, wrapped him up in an implosive whimper. The plug had been pulled, and he felt his consciousness forsake him, breath by ragged breath. Only his obstinate heartbeat kept racing ahead.
Chuuya groaned, “Bloody fucking pits.” His voice cracked like a broken transmission. His first thought was: I’m dreaming. He sensed it in gut-curdling high fidelity. The drip, the whirr, the corroding stench of science-in-action. It was all so familiar, so predictable. Trapped in his mind again.
Voices filtered into the foreground. “He’s waking up.”
Next came a demand in the shape of Dostoevsky's voice. “Make it quicker, please. Give him a shot of Ilyminum.”
"The, uh?"
"The purple vial—the waking-up drug. You are slow today, do you need a software update, dear?"
A pinch and a sharp pain shot through Chuuya's arm. His second and third thoughts came in quick succession: that hurt, and, so this isn’t a dream after all.
Reflexes fought against restraints as he came to with a sharp jerk. He was crouched in a chair. There was a collar around his neck, bands around his hands and ankles—a fluorescent material that flashed like there was lightning trapped inside. “What the fuck?”
“Shock straps,” explained Dostoevsky, a purr of violence in his voice. “The founders of my discipline were very fond of those. They were utilised in classical conditioning experiments using dogs. Did you know that when a dog is exposed to repeated shocks that it can’t control, it learns that its behaviour makes no difference to the aversive environment and refrains from taking action even when escape is possible? Very instructive. The question is, detective, are you as smart as a dog?”
The canine comparison was undoubtedly intended as a slight, but in many ways, Chuuya thought dogs had more going for them than the average human. They were sincere and straightforward—something he aspired to be, and something he didn’t think Dostoevky was.
“The point is”—Dostoevsky raised a finger—“don’t try anything adventurous. Or Verlaine”—he flicked his head in the direction of his assistant—“will have to turn on the shocks.”
“Don’t tempt me with a good time.” Chuuya smiled in the face of threats.
“Oh, I won’t. I try to be fair and balanced, but the only way to reform is to replace. The opposite of crime isn’t justice, it’s punishment,” Dostoevsky clipped with a sly smile, malice bordering on joy. “There’s no need for violence unless you insist, though. Personally, I just want to talk.”
“Convenient,” Chuuya rubbed at his mouth. He could taste blood, and he let it drip into his words. “I have some questions for you too. Like where am I?”
“I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood the format. I’m the one asking the questions,” said Dostoevsky in a prim tone. When he talked, his head moved back and forth ever so slightly, overhead lights reflecting in his slick hair like a glowing halo. The patron saint of fuckery. “Who,” he said with fatalistic enunciation, “are you?”
“We’ve already made formal introductions. Name’s Chuuya. I’m a detective.” Chuuya knew it wasn’t a satisfying answer. If it was, he wouldn't be here. Wouldn’t have put himself in this position in the pursuit of the exact same question.
“A more explicit question, I suppose, might be What are you?”
Chuuya wrung his hands, an action of being trapped in inaction. He trapped his feelings in his body in exchange for a clear mind, said levelly, “I’m confused.”
“Not very cooperative, are we?” Dostoevsky’s mouth slanted. He spoke as if he was dealing with an unruly puppy.
“Tell me, Chuuya, do you remember how you escaped?”
The patience Chuuya never had much of to begin with drained in an instant. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Escaped from where?”
The narrowing of Dostoevsky’s eyes reflected the room’s grey notes. “This interrogation is getting tiring. Let’s try another method.” He issued an incisive demand over his shoulder, his keen accomplice waiting for instructions. “Bring the lie detector, please.”
“Hey, those aren’t reliable,” Chuuya pointed out, overweeningly recycling facts straight from Dazai’s mouth.
“Depends what kind of data you're looking to collect. The multimodal polygraph provides a decent representation of autonomic activation and physiological indicators,” Dostoevsky said, all wise beyond his means.
The lie detector was brought forth. It didn't look very trustworthy, with its many bits exposed like roadkill, wires and valves sticking in many directions, a long metallic arm extended from the body, cursor against a piece of paper.
“Depends who’s interpreting the data too. I can learn a lot from a skip in heart signature or a spike in sweat production. You’re telling me a lot even when you’re saying nothing at all.” Dostoevsky’s fingers grazed Chuuya’s skin like cold snakes, attached a constellation of electrodes with a promise, “Your secrets will be mine one way or another.”
Chuuya’s mind reached out to Dazai, who lived like secrets were his lifeblood. He coughed up the lump in his throat and spat in Dostoevsky's face. “Eat shit and die.”
“I thought you might say that.” Dostoevsky barked a laugh and swiped a little metal plate from his pocket, peeling off a thin layer of film and waving it back and forth.
Chuuya didn’t know what it was, but he immediately clogged it as yet another item in a progressively growing list of mad-scientist-instruments intended to ruin his day.
A hypothesis that was confirmed when Dostoevsky wiped the plate across his cheek, scooping up Chuuya’s saliva. “Thanks for the test material. I’m curious to see the result of the DNA analysis,” he said, smiling like he didn’t have a single strand of human DNA to boast about himself.
With a sanguine air, he placed the little plate in his accomplice’s hand. Verlaine strode over to the nearest table and lowered the sample into a large alien-looking device, closing the lid. He pressed a button, and a deep rumbling commenced. Chuuya felt the vibrations as an omen in his core.
The verdict slithered from Verlaine’s lips. “The centrifuge will be done in ten minutes.”
“Excellent,” said Dostoevsky, steepling his hands in front of his face. He looked like a judge balancing scales. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, he said, “Dazai Osamu.” A name that sounded like a curse on his thin lips.
Chuuya found his gaze drifting longingly towards a stray wire on the floor. He itched to pick it up and garrote Dostoevsky.
“He works at the bureau too, I believe.” Dostoevsky’s smile snaked up at the corners. “What’s the nature of you and Dazai’s relationship?”
“It’s none of your business,” Chuuya answered. It was the truth, but the lie detector didn’t realise that; it scribbled fast and frenzied.
More questions of progressively cryptid nature followed, consonants sharpened with every irritable repetition. Who are you? What are you? Why are you here?
It very quickly became very clear to Chuuya that he failed to give satisfying answers. He wondered what would happen to him once Dostoevsky reached the same conclusion and figured that the possibilities ranged from death to torture. He glared at his restraints, when suddenly—
Thwack. A hand banging against glass, nails catching in a screech. It was the kind of sound that lingered. A ghost that haunted the place. A scream that clung to the walls that outlasted its last note. A ghost that would haunt Chuuya’s mind.
Chuuya’s eyes were drawn by the cylindrical vessels that lined the laboratory. “What,” he asked slowly, half certain he didn’t want to know the answer to the question that jumped out of his mouth next, “the fuck was that?“
“Just reflexes, I suspect,” Dostoevsky droned in a soft voice. He rose and walked over to the tank from which the sound had come, tapping the glass. “This one hasn’t been growing for long. Its operating system hasn’t merged with its hardware yet.”
There was a whole forest of those liquid-filled cylinders, and Chuuya hadn’t paid them proper attention, too wrapped up in shock straps and being interrogated against his will. He looked closer and saw something he wished he could unsee—the silhouettes of human bodies floating in blue sludge. “Are those…”
”Their genetic material is synthesised from human DNA,” Dostoevsky explained with a note of pride akin to that of a chef presenting an intricate dish. “The central operating system is computerised, but it’s entirely integrated into the organism.”
“... Tech-human hybrids?”
“They’re Bio-machines,” Dostoevsky corrected, seemingly spitting synonyms just to get the last word. It was the kind of affected dominance that only deep-seated insecurities could foster. In an exhorting lilt, he asked, “Does it sound familiar, Chuuya?”
Clearly, it was a leading question, but Chuuya was lost. “No?”
“No?” Dostoevsky’s mouth withered into a thin crease, broken with a sharp, “I’ll ask you again, then. What are you?”
The extent of Chuuya’s frustration had reached non-verbal heights. He groaned loudly.
“Fine,” Dostoevsky said, sounding very far from fine. “Why don’t I tell you what I think this is all about?”
The room cowered, bland steel interior mocking the drama of the situation.
“Dazai is jealous of me, that’s why he did it,” Dostoevsky said as though he possessed traits worthy of envy.
“Uh?” Chuuya got the feeling he wasn’t needed for the interrogation at all, that Dostoevsky could smoothly monologue himself through it.
“And he’s a thief. You were mine first,” Dostoevsky continued. “Tell me how he made you come alive.”
“How he— what?” Chuuya’s brain ached inside his cranium. A parade of information at odds with the schemas in his head, squeezing into places where there was no room for them.
“You don’t know?” Dostoevsky asked, and then in a different tone that suggested that he was no longer asking a question, “you don’t know.”
The lie detector’s display was a flat line. Its antennae flickered in a way Chuuya felt reflected in his nerves, in his very soul. That’s what he had been reduced to, a thinning string that could easily break.
“That’s unexpected.” Dostoevsky smoothed his thumb and pointer finger along his jaw on either side of his face, tracing the shape of his severe features. “We haven’t yet agreed upon ethical guidelines for the field as it’s still in its infancy, but I would have thought a member of the Alchemical Society understood the importance of informed retroactive consent. This is a difficult moment for me. Despite my low expectations, it appears I overestimated Dazai's capacity for moral judgement.”
“The fuck are you on about?” Chuuya’s gut clenched. Anticipation was a physical thing, like a weapon pressed to a bulging vein.
“Life isn’t a choice we make for ourselves, it’s bestowed upon us. All we can do is trust that god has a path and purpose for us.”
“What does god have to do with this?” Chuuya preferred to think that his path was his own. That if he retraced it, he would find himself. That his memories were all around him, even when he couldn’t remember them.
His story was his prerogative, and he would continue to wear a groove into the world, make sure his tale would keep turning.
“Science is the closest we’ll come to understanding the meaning of life. Scientists live in the image of the divine,” Dostoevsky continued. He spoke with holier-than-thou certainty, but the surroundings mocked the enormity of his ego.
The laboratory was not a choir to preach to—it was a place of creation in the most mundane sense. The harsh shadows produced by artificial lights. The constant whirr of life-support to machinery. The smell of cooking chemicals. The divine had yet to make an appearance, unless one took its absence as evidence.
Chuuya supposed it was a matter of perspective. From his vantage point, nothing made sense. “I’m not following,” he said.
“Dazai is your god.”
Chuuya was left to wonder if Dazai even believed in god. If god believed in Dazai. If Chuuya believed in anything that anyone told him. He tried to raise a voice of dissention but was quickly admonished.
“Is he playing dumb,” said Verlaine, although no one had asked for his input. “Surely he can’t be that daft.” There was a snark to his voice that seemed distinctly European. Chuuya had no idea how this strange man had gotten the idea that they were in any way related.
Chuuya was just about to open his mouth to announce that he wasn’t the daft party in the ongoing conversation.
“He isn't playing at anything,” Dostoevsky said, leaning in close. His breath—his general being—carried the smell of cautery fumes and self-righteousness. “You have no idea at all, do you? You poor confused thing.”
Chuuya tensed. He wasn’t interested in escaping any longer. He couldn’t leave without knowing—couldn’t leave without leaving himself behind. He found himself returning one of Dostoevsky's questions. “Tell me what you know about me. Why am I here?”
When he said ‘here’, he referred to much more than coordinates in space and time. There was a hole inside him, and the only way to fill it up was to dig it out.
“I recognised you when you and your colleague came to investigate the data leak at Draconia, but I didn’t see that recognition reflected in your eyes. I assumed you had undergone rewiring.” Dostevsky said cryptically. It was as if he spoke in compacting metaphors, just on the edge of making sense. “That was our last meeting. This ”—he waved in a generalised all-encompassing gesture—“is where we first met.”
What Chuuya already knew had been confirmed: he had been here before.
A sense of anticipation needled him. He was waiting for something, he just didn’t know what. The sound of time passing increased in volume. The ventilation’s whirr, his own breath, a pitchy whistling coming from Verlaine’s direction.
And then time ran out with a neat little ding.
“The sample result is ready, master,” said Verlaine in a smug tone. It seemed that he was constitutionally incapable of doing anything without smugness. “I’ll transfer it to you immediately.”
From one of many pockets in a blindingly white lab coat, Dostoevsky pulled out what, at first glance, appeared to be a small notebook. On further review, it turned out to be a computer of some kind, pages lighting up with a bluish digital glow as it was flipped open.
Dostoevsky’s eyes scurried back and forth as he read the analysis then they narrowed. “The test says you’re fully human. A one hundred percent match. That can’t be right.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that we’ll need to do some further testing,” Dostoevsky said in a way that made it sound self-evident. He gave a lurid smirk, and Chuuya wished bowel obstruction upon him.
“Look around,” said Dostoevsky with an expansive arm motion. “My bio-machines start out from the same source as the human foetus. Genetic material. They grow to their full form in their isolation tubs—a process I've optimised so that it only takes a few months instead of the 20-plus years that natural evolution of the human form requires to reach its peak. Once the incubation period is complete, I start implementing the programming that will serve as a surrogate for a brain: A reasoning module. It’s a standardised procedure for a standardised model, bodies built on norm data and ideals. Phenotypic differences arise as a course of complex system growth, but the general blueprint is the same.”
There was an unspoken ‘but’ hanging in the air. Chuuya held his tongue and waited for it to land.
“But every norm has an outlier.”
A shiver ran down Chuuya’s back. He had a way of knowing when people were talking about him behind his back. He had an even greater sensitivity to knowing when people talked about him right to his face. This was about him.
“You… experimented on me?” Chuuya said slowly, gathering the pieces of a horrible insight. He had hoped that the laboratory setting his dreams continuously threw at him was more of a subconscious metaphor than a memory. “... Here, in this facility.”
“You were made in this facility.”
It couldn’t be true. Chuuya refused to believe it. He had a history beyond wires, blue liquid and isolation tubs. “It doesn't make sense.”
Rudely ignoring sense-making, Dostoevsky said. “You were just one of many experiments, made from the same material as the rest of the batch. Your production number was A5158, and there was nothing special about you.”
The comment, despite its matter-of-fact tone of delivery, rankled. It took something from Chuuya that he had never even realised he needed to defend. His individuality.
“Then one day,” said Dostoevsky, “the surveillance system caught an anomalous event.”
Chuuya held his breath, held onto his sanity with nerveless fingers.
“The first sign of autonomy you showed was a jerk, like you had been hit by lightning. I monitored you closely after that, and I watched as you changed over the next weeks. By means of what I can only imagine to be a strong force of will, you developed a unique appearance. Your body changed way beyond what would have been expected within your genome—way beyond normal mutation. It became much more defined than the one I had given you. Your hair took on a brighter colour, your jawline sharpened…”
A little pause wedged itself into the long-winded explanation. It wasn’t a break for air, it was theatrics. His eyes had widened, a purple-ish ring of madness around them. “Interestingly, your height growth stopped while your genitalia increased in size. I suppose it was a matter of relocation of resources.”
This was a violation of blood-simmering proportions. Chuuya had never consented to have his body datafied and enshrined in a creepy scientist's balance sheet. Some might say that his height was a little shorter than average, but he contended that those people didn’t know what was good about averages. As for his private parts, he preferred to keep them private. “I might throw up.”
“Bodily fluid incidents are a side effect of bio-hardware.” Dostoevsky wrinkled his nose. “But please try to refrain.”
“Shut up,” Chuuya groaned at Dostoevsky but also at his own thoughts that wouldn’t stop spinning. Anatomy was a medium for existence, and he had taken it for granted because he felt that his physical form represented him well, because no one judged him negatively based on his looks, because he wasn’t in constant physical pain.
It hadn’t always been like that. An old wound that went bone deep—no, much deeper. Soul deep—reopened. A bleeding reminder reached into his core and through him, grasping for the past. He had been sick once. He already knew that from what he had dug up of his memories, but now he felt it, remembering so vividly the feeling of dying. He had fought against illness and lost again and again. It had turned his body into a battlefield, it had concurred, and it had expelled him.
To be seen, he realised now, was to let go of power. He felt like a bug under the microscope as Dostoevsky observed him with an operating-room glare. Damn scientists, always looking so severe.
“What’s more—” Dostoevsky kept speaking, nodding along to the sound of his own voice. “I was able to pick up brain waves from you. My bio-machines are complete replicas of an equalised—yet genetically enhanced—human body. Fully functional livers, hearts, homeostasis. The only exception is the central nervous system, a silicone-carbon-compatible software that is hooked up to the spinal nerves once the hardware is ready. I never installed anything in you, though. You overrode and surpassed the genetic programming of the sample DNA to develop like a regular human from embryo to full scale.”
Like a regular human. In this context, Chuuya didn’t like the word ‘like’ and the work it did to undermine his humanity. Likeness, not as a synonym, but as an antonym. ‘Like, but not the same’.
“I ran every test in the kit on you and came no closer to an answer to the origins of your consciousness. It was an immaculate conception.” Dostoevsky grimaced, not quite a smile and not quite a frown but fully upsetting to look at. “Then you escaped.”
At least this re-telling of Chuuya's life honoured his character; he had never conformed to genre. From his conception, he had been crafting his own story, resisting attempts to restrain him. That, at least, was constant. Whoever he was, he wasn’t someone who let himself be defined.
He flexed against the binds around his wrists, swayed in his seat like he had swayed in his isolation tank once. He banged his head against the memory—fists against glass.
“Imagine my surprise when you showed up at Draconia, introducing yourself as a detective working for the bureau. The same place where Dazai Osamu—the precocious boy who wanted to access my research records—works.” Dostoevsky considered his own words along with his fingernails for a moment. “Do you believe in coincidences?”
First and foremost, Chuuya believed in anger. He felt it swell in his veins, knocking against his palate like a silent scream. He didn’t answer unless one felt inclined to interpret a hard glare as an answer.
It seemed Dostoevsky did. He nodded approvingly. “Me neither. I concluded then and there that it— you —were Dazai’s work all along.” He said ‘Dazai’ the same way someone like Chuuya might say ‘piece of shit.
“It was Dazai,” Chuuya repeated. He said ‘Dazai’ the same way someone like Dostoevsky might say ‘divine intervention’.
“I don’t know what or how or why he did it. I thought you had answers—that's why I brought you here, but evidently Dazai keeps his secrets tight to his chest.”
“That’s not—Dazai isn’t…” Chuuya trailed off, unsure how to finish.
Dazai isn’t that kind of mad scientist? Arguing for Dazai’s sanity required some mental heavy lifting that Chuuya wasn’t quite in shape for.
Dazai isn’t interested in building an army of machines? Probably not, but he had made Adam.
Dazai isn’t a liar? Wasn't he?
No, Dazai was honest about lying, open about secrecy, shared the fact that he withheld information. In his own way, he was the most trustworthy person Chuuya had ever met, and if it was Dazai’s word against the truth, Chuuya would go with Dazai’s word at every turn. He cleared his throat and tried again, “Dazai isn’t—”
“Dazai isn’t here,” Dostoevsky finished. “It’s just you and I, and together we’ll find out what kind of strange creature you are.”
Life was a strange creature. Here Chuuya was, with an offer to help him uncover his identity from a man he didn’t wish to share any parts of himself with. Everything he could hope for, packaged in everything he never wished for. “You win some, you lose most,” he muttered under his breath.
If Dostoevsky heard it, he ignored it, crooning, “See, in a way, you do have all the answers, Chuuya. It’s a matter of access. You’ll let me split you apart and have a look inside, won’t you? That way, we can find out how much of you is machine and how much is human.”
How sinister. Chuuya could imagine it vividly, a foetid panorama of entrails. He felt his worth reduced to a burial ground of mystery. “You can’t be serious.”
“Your capacity for thought and action must have come from somewhere,” Dosteovky said, a ponderful pout on his lips as he tapped them with the tip of a finger. “A remote operating system that Dazai managed to sneak into one of my samples without me noticing, maybe.”
“So you think I'm—my brain… that my personality is just—what? A string of code? That’s absurd.” Chuuya was more than code in the shape of a man, more than a ghost in a machine. He had to be. Still, his doubts found a voice, “Your assistant. He called me brother. “Is he….”
“Oh no, excuse him. He has a few loose connections. He’s not entirely au courant.”
A strangled noise came from Verlaine, the on-ramp to a significant coughing fit. Perhaps the product of a broken fuse. He stumbled over to a nearby workbench, reaching for a little bottle labelled 'High-Performance Action Chain and Sprocket Lubricant’ and squirting some into his mouth.
“Verlaine is fully machine, so at best you’re distant cousins. He’s a humanoid computer—an early prototype. He’s a remarkable specimen, but his hardware can’t always keep up with the software extensions.” Dostoevsky ran a hand through his shiny hair, a gesture no doubt designed to mask the fondness on his face. “I named and designed him in reference to a famous French poet. Do you like poetry Chuuya?”
Chuuya did like poetry. His head swam with it, an endless procession of alliterate fuck and fuck and fuck. “Sure.”
“Science and art go hand in hand. It’s the search for the absolute. My life’s work is to question the world, and confront it with a world of my own creation.”
“Wow,” Chuuya said. He didn’t mean it as a compliment.
“I know,” Dostoevsky said, clearly interpreting it as the compliment it wasn’t. He started rifling around, opening drawers and cabinets. He picked up a scalpel and held it up to the light, a dangerous promise reflecting in its blade. “Stay put while I prepare an operating table.”
As far as Chuuya was concerned, the splitting-Chuuya-open plan was a lose-lose method. He would suffer an undignified death, and Dostoevsky would be left with more blood on his hands than answers to his curiosity.
Despite Chuuya’s otherwise unremitting realism, he aimed for a happy ending. He needed to say something real and relevant to avert his untimely demise.
This was the part where he had to show his training and earn his title. Detective. Professional.
The first step was to subdue Verlaine, who had the controller to the shock straps.
The second step was… Chuuya wasn’t sure what the second step was, but he made the executive decision to not worry about it until he had to. One emergency at a time, that was how he operated.
Chuuya had learned from Adam that built-in weaknesses were a crucial part of robot design. What kind of fatal flaw would Dostoevsky have installed in Verlaine? Dostoevsky, who made his machines refer to him as ‘master’, who compared clever engineers to gods, who clearly had an ego as inflamed as an ingrown hair.
The conclusion was obvious: He would create an operating system that had his own well-being as its highest virtue—make himself Verlaine’s weakness.
The way to beat Verlaine, then, went through Dostoevsky.
To the creatively minded, anything could function as a weapon.
Sometimes, the truth was the best weapon, and other times—times like these—it was the only weapon. Chuuya braced himself and said, “Wait.”
Dostoevsky looked up. His attention was a flighty thing, hard to catch and harder to keep. He only knew how to listen to himself.
“I have amnesia,” Chuuya said, “my first conscious memories started only a little more than a year ago. It must have been right after I escaped this place. But slowly, I've been regaining some of them. I remember things from my past.”
“Your past belongs to me. It doesn’t go further back than the day you escaped,” Dostoevsky said. There was pity in his voice but no sympathy.
“No. I remember things,” Chuuya insisted. He thought about Dazai and his scars. “Things I've confirmed to be true.”
A frown tucked itself between Dostoevsky’s eyebrows. He looked confused, which was an odd look on him. Clearly, his features weren’t used to being arranged in that way and actively rebelled against it with little twitches.
“If that’s the case”—he stepped closer, poked a bony finger against Chuuya's nose—“it’s a puzzle to me as well. I don’t know how you lost your memories, and I'm more interested in why you have them to begin with. I can only assume it’s part of the programming, a miscarried attempt to provide you with a sense of self.”
White noise ran an alarm in Chuuya’s ears. The deafening in the wake of all the shit he had to hear. He refused to let it register. This was his chance, and he wasn’t going to squander it.
He stuck out a leg and tipped Dostoevsky who fell front first, flailing as he went. As predicted, Verlaine came to the rescue, abandoning his duties to catch his creator.
Chuuya acted much faster than the speed of thought. He lunged forward, snatching the stun gun from Verlaine’s holster. It wasn’t until he held his captors at gunpoint, pulse racing, that it hit him—his plan had actually worked.
The future had arrived. Now was the time for Chuuya to ask himself what came next. He still had a past to uncover, but in order to keep looking for himself in this place, he needed to understand—
“Why?” It came out in a hiss, all of Chuuya’s hard edges pressed into a single syllable. Few things unnerved him as profoundly as coming across another person he wasn’t able to recognise bits of himself in. Dostoevsky presented an entirely new challenge. His mind was so twisted that Chuuya felt dizzy, even trying to make sense of it. “Why do you do all this?”
When no explanation came forth, he added, “Look, man, I have you at gunpoint, so the way I see it, you don’t have much of a choice here. Speak.”
“I could always die with my secrets,” Dostoevsky said haughtily, asserting his free will, even when his choices were so limited that they were functionally nonexistent.
”You won’t. You think yourself much too important. People like you live to be immortalised. You slap your names on inventions and patent them for all eternity. You need your ideas to outlive you.”
Dostoevsky didn’t even bother trying to deny it. He inclined his head, guilty as charged, except he spoke with more pride than shame. “Let me ask you this, what are you afraid of?”
Fear was a far-removed presence in Chuuya’s life. He had built his post-amnesic identity around the person he wanted to be. A fortified facade and an arsenal of character strengths.
Now, he realised that he had misdiagnosed himself—he wasn't immune to fear. With lock-jaw truculence, he said, “You, sir. You give me the absolute creeps.”
“That’s perfectly irrational—”
“I don’t know about that. You threatened to split me open.”
“Here’s what you ought to be afraid of: Human error,” Dostoevsky treated conversation like a winner-take-all game, and he was on the attack. “It’s the most frequent cause of death.”
“Is that so?” In that moment, Chuuya didn’t think he would mind if an infrequently grotesque kind of death befell Dostoevsky.
“Yes, specifically, failures of the internal mental functions—most notably morale. People have all sorts of unsavoury impulses, and in many individuals, their sense of righteousness isn’t able to outweigh these,” Dostoevsky lamented. He spoke with an academic distance, entirely uninterested in examining the movements of his own moral compass. “That’s why I launched the Perfect Citizen Project—my attempt to create morally superior bio-machines modelled on the country's most outstanding minds. I plan for them to fill positions in law enforcement and regulation. It’s a civic-minded effort to help people when they can’t help themselves.”
It was a uniquely egotistical approach to charity based on one man’s regressive vision of progress. Chuuya wholeheartedly despised its techno-solutionism. Suppressing a barrage of superlatives, he gave a nod, signalling for Dostoevsky to keep talking.
Dostoevsky sighed. This was the sigh of a man who had taken a burden upon his shoulders that no one wanted him to carry. “I was left disappointed by the results I gathered during the pilot testing phase. The output wasn’t consistent enough to build a reliable model upon. I needed a bigger, more varied data set. I have always said that the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons, so I started conducting studies on the corrupted minds of criminals. Through an extraction method, I have refined the concept of virtue via an understanding of the inner workings of sin.”
Prisons. Morality. Fuckery. Chuuya heard an audible click in his brain. “The Meursault case, the serial disappearances in the Ministry of Justice,” he said, mostly to himself. Then, to Dostoevsky, he said, “That was you. It was all you. The abductions, the files that were stolen from Draconia. You needed data to feed an algorithm. You had Verlaine carry it out, that’s why the investigation never found biomarkers of a break-in.”
The allegations weren’t denied.
When Chuuya went into the detective business, he had—perhaps naively—thought that cracking cases would afford him a sense of accomplishment, but he only felt sick. He sneered, “What did you do to them, you sick—”
“I have been presenting my testees with moral dilemmas while monitoring neural activity,” Dostoevsky answered. “And just so you know, I don’t appreciate your attitude. I’m offended by the insinuation that I wouldn’t treat my guests respectfully.“
“Like you’ve been treating me?”
The question was deflected with flippant disregard. “They are in pristine condition. When they’re not actively undergoing testing, they’re kept in a techno-medical-induced virtual reality similar to REM sleep. I intend to wipe their memories once the data collection stage is complete. They won’t suffer.”
“Ah yes, the good old memory-wiping trick. That’s what you did to the Meursault guards as well.”
“I used a noninvasive method of suggestion and hypnosis. The procedure caused no harm.” Dostoevsky said, still playing at being well-meaning yet misunderstood.
Chuuya did understand, but he disagreed. The point was that missing memories did cause suffering—he would know because it was his point.
A sudden sound sent Chuuya’s instincts into overdrive. Clicking heels, the tell-tale of a hurried approach and a mechanic announcement of “doors opening”.
A newcomer had just entered the laboratory, and Chuuya was stuck between two dangers. Dostoevsky and Verlaine in front of him, the unknown behind him. He didn’t feel comfortable turning his back on either.
“I told you to be careful.”
That voice. Chuuya knew it beyond knowing. It grounded him like a lightning conductor. “Dazai.”
“And here you are, not being careful at all,” Dazai huffed at the height of his vocal register as he walked up to Chuuya’s side, leaning an elbow against his shoulder. “I look away for one second, and you get yourself tied up in shock straps?”
“Stop being so dramatic, I’ve dealt with enough today. Help me get them off instead.” If Chuuya’s eyes weren’t still fixed on Dostoevsky and Verlaine to make sure they didn’t attempt a sudden breakaway, he’d be rolling them.
Despite his personality, Dazai did as bidden without further argument. He nimbly opened the clasps, fingers grazing Chuuya’s skin. His gentle touch was much more electric than the shock straps could ever hope to be.
“I’ve notified Kunikida,” Dazai said, “he’ll be here with a crew in a matter of minutes.” He swept a look around the place, landing on Dostoevsky. “Good luck explaining all these pickled bodies in court.”
“You judge my work?” Dostoevsky minced his words. “Well, if you had been righteous yourself, perhaps there would have been no criminal standing before you.”
From the corner of his eye, Chuuya saw Dazai produce a set of glasses from a pocket. He flicked them open, using a temple to scratch the side of his head. “Eh? My research endeavours were never motivated by principles of right and wrong. I only ever cared about…” he cut himself off, leaving the rest to mystery.
Chuuya chanced a look at Dazai, eyes meeting. Chuuya’s well-developed sense of knowing when someone was talking about him right to his face tingled again.
“Want to know how I found this hide-out?” Dazai said cheerily.
Meanwhile, Dostoevsky wore a dour expression. “No,” he said.
“That’s right, Fyodor—I hope you don’t mind me using your first name—my dear Chuuya led me here.” He reached for Chuuya’s wrist and wrenched it from its hold on the stun gun, holding it up and waving it about like a victory flag. “See this ring? I know what you’re thinking. ‘Congrats on the engagement’, but no, unfortunately, I haven’t had the chance to propose just yet.”
A violent flutter broke out in Chuuya’s chest. His heart was a coiled, overwound spring that had finally snapped.
“This ring,” Dazai said, “contains a tracker.”
Dazai smiled, and Dostoevsky’s demeanour soured. Verlaine gasped, and Chuuya found himself doing something similar.
A tracker. Simple but effective. Clever but sinister.
“Motherfucker,” Chuuya complimented. He watched with apt amazement as Dazai’s cheeks flushed. Even the harsh fluorescence of industrial lighting couldn't ruin that romantic shade of pink.
“ And, ” Dazai said. Apparently, getting the last word wasn’t enough. He needed his big reveal embellished by multiple last words. “Chuuya called me and told me he was headed here.”
The recounts deviation from fact nagged Chuuya. He was a straightforward, straight talker, so he set the record straight. “Hold it. I did call, but I never said where I was going.”
“In a way, you did, love,” Dazai said because nothing about him was straight. “I’ll explain later.”
“You have a lot to explain, actually,” Chuuya said.
“And I will. Soon.”
Soon couldn't arrive soon enough. Chuuya waited and ached, tried to cultivate his desires for uncertainty. Even now, with all the unfolding drama, his attention waned towards Dazai, noting that his lips looked imminently kissable.
—
Kunikida rolled in with a crew. It was maximally dramatic and minimally efficient, but in the end, Dostesky was apprehended and taken away, cuffed and complaining. The scene was documented in excruciating detail, and Chuuya left his statement—so did Dazai,a regaling the team with a colourful account. The abductees were found and freed or placed back in custody according to protocol.
Case closed…
… Except it wasn’t. Chuuya hadn't gotten closure.