97 Rescue and Choice

Sakura

May 11, 3:59 pm, Tokyo, Japan

"So," Jason said. "Any other, last questions?"

Sakura's head was pounding. She needed to focus.

"I'm going to stop you," she spat. "You monster."

Focus, keep focus, keep thinking keep your mind on-

"No, you won't," said Jason, and pulled the trigger.

BANG!

A hole appeared between Sakura's eyes. For a moment, she sat there, watching the smoke waft off the barrel of the gun.

Then, she made the illusion version of herself fall to the floor, dead.

For most of this interrogation, Sakura had been sitting at the desk, right where Jason had left her. The thing was, she wasn't as nearly as bound as she appeared.

When the man in black had tried too cuff her to the desk, Sakura had pulled her hands away and let him cuff an illusion to the desk.

It was easy to keep up the illusion up for the interrogation. What was difficult was trying to create an illusion of Bunta for the people on the other side of the wall. Thanks to the chimera's mind loop, she had a lot more control of the malleability of her illusion bubble; she could change it's shape somewhat now.

That said, it was still difficult trying to use one bubble to hide Bunta, and another to try and communicate with him. The difficulty of maintaining two bubbles as well as a small illusion, all while butting heads with Jason had Sakura breaking out into a sweat during the interrogation.

And then, before Jason shot her, as he was leveling the gun at her head, Sakura slipped under the table while creating an illusion of her looking up at him. She just managed to get up just in time for Jason to shoot her illusion in the head. She reacted as quickly as she could, getting the illusion to move the way she wanted.

She watched as the man in black checked her illusion's pulse and declare her dead. She couldn't take her eyes off the soulless eyes of her dead illusion.

Would that be how she died? Would that be how she looked?

The fear and anger inside her were all welling up in her stomach, threatening to come out as disgust. She forced it down as Jason ordered his men to take the "body" away.

Focus. She had a job to do.

She was here to save Bunta.

Sakura hoped Bunta was able to get her message; which was basically "drop down and stay there, I have an illusion in your place which the men in black will take." If everything went to plan, then she would go to the next room, find a live Bunta left behind there. She was certain that if they were killing her, they would also kill him, so if she messed up and he didn't duck...

No. Happy thoughts. Everything would be fine.

Sakura followed Jason out, then waited for the door next to them to open. Jason left, as did the men in black carrying her "body." Sure enough, a couple of minutes later, the other door opened.

Men in black came out, a couple of them carrying Bunta out. Sakura's heart skipped a beat as she saw this; with her newfound ability to see through her own illusions, she knew that this was the real Bunta being carried, not her illusion.

Had she messed up? Did her message not get through?

Was Bunta dead?

She watched them walk on in horror for a few seconds, before realizing that they were getting away. Quickly, she followed them down the hall silently, disguising herself as a wall as she moved.

The men stopped in front of a door that Sakura had passed a couple of times. One of the men swiped a card, which in turn activated a retina scanner, then a hand print on the middle of the door, which then activated a voice recognition password...

"Whoever invented this door watched way too many spy movies," one of the men carrying Bunta grumbled.

His co-workers all grumbled in agreement, and Sakura almost joined the chorus.

Finally, after the final keypad password, the door finally opened. Sakura was a little disappointed that no one voiced dissatisfaction that the door wasn't even a cool sliding door or something. All of this, and they still had to turn the handle to open the door. What a waste.

(If a certain secretary could have heard these thoughts, she would have flown into a rage at how uncultured everyone else was.)

Sakura complaints soon disappeared however, once she walked in after the men into the room, and they turned the lights on.

The first thing she noticed was the smell. Putrid, like rotting meat and human waste had a baby that vomited all over this place.

The second thing she noticed were the cages. All stacked on top of each others like boxes of merchandise.

However, she quickly noted that one of the men walked off to the side while the rest carried Bunta between the boxes towards the back of the room, towards the bigger boxes. The man that split walked up to a box stuck to the wall, opened it, and took out a key before rejoining his co-workers.

While he rushed back, Sakura took the time to examine the cages in the room.

Each cage was about the height of a small coffee table, and about as wide as a box. There was something inside the cages too, something that seemed weirdly familiar, but also completely foreign. Sakura slowly walked up to one of the cages to see if she could make out what was inside them.

And that's when she heard them.

"Help, please..."

"Food..."

"Nnnggggaaaaaahhhh..."

With a shock, Sakura realized that the weirdly shaped beings inside these cages were humans. Humans that had been twisted and contorted in order to get them into these tiny cages.

And they were all still alive.

As Sakura watched the men walk past these literal boxes of humans, she realized that the worst part was that they were all stacked like property. Behind the cages were more cages, and under the topmost cages were more cages.

That meant that under all that were more humans, under massive pressure and heat, suffocating. With dawning horror, she realized that the rotten smell was probably from the mass of dead bodies under all these cages, slowly wasting away.

"Put him in the big one, he needs to slim down before we can use him," said one of the men in black, snapping Sakura out of her horrified reverie.

"Maybe if you didn't knock him out, we wouldn't have had so much trouble getting him in," grumbled another one of the men in black. The same one who had grumbled at the door. He must be a grumbler, Sakura thought.

Anything to get her mind off the horror around her.

But the fact that these men could talk so casually while shoving a man into a cage barely big enough for him to lie down in just horrified Sakura even more.

Didn't these people have consciences? Were they all just okay with the people in cages like this?

Weren't they people? Didn't they have any sort of empathy?

Why didn't they seem bothered?

"Lets get out of here before they all start moaning again," said one of the men once they finished stuffing the unconscious Bunta in a cage. "Make me feel like we're housing zombies or something."

The men all murmured in agreement, then left, turning off the light as they did so.

Luckily, Sakura noticed the man had returned the key to the box before leaving. She had paid special attention to it as they left, noting which hook the man hung it off before walking off. Once they were all gone, Sakura opened the box and took the key she needed.

She rushed over to Bunta's cage, and slowly opened his cage.

"Bunta," she whispered. "Bunta, come on, wake up."

She tried pulling him out, but he was too heavy.

"Bunta, come on buddy," Sakura pleaded. "I need you to help me here."

Nothing. Bunta was out cold.

Sakura wished she had some water, or anything to wake him up. She couldn't even slap him across the face; his top half was still stuck in the cage.

Instead, she started tapping on Bunta's cage, trying to get him to wake up.

Big mistake.

"Is...someone...there?"

Sakura froze as she heard the voice whisper right in her ear. She turned slowly, to find a pair of pale, blue eyes looking at her from a cage.

"Please...help...me..."

Her voice was soft and ragged; dryer than a desert. After a moment, Sakura was able to make out her lips, which looked dryer than the desert.

"Help...me..."

The voice begged, blue eyes staring at her, getting louder.

"I...I don't know which key..." said Sakura truthfully.

There were thousands of keys in that box, and thousands of cages. Sakura had no time to go through all of them. Pretty soon, the illusion of her dead body would disappear, and they would all be looking for her again. She needed to get Bunta and get out.

"Please...help..."

The voice got louder, and the person rattled their cage.

"Help...?"

Another voice joined in, noticing what the first person was asking for.

"Help...me...?"

"I can't," Sakura whispered back. "Otherwise I'll get trapped too."

But they didn't seem to understand.

"Help...us..." they rasped, waking even more cages.

"Help...us..."

The voices grew louder as more and more cages began to join in. Each voice was soft and raspy, but as more voices joined in, the louder and creepier it got.

Soon, the entire room was filled with wails and raspy calls.

"Help...us..."

"Save...us..."

"Help...us..."

"Save...us..."

Sakura watched as all the cages began rattling as the people inside tried to move, unable to do anything but wave some small extremities. She looked on, a sick feeling in her stomach rising up in her stomach, up her throat as the contorted humans all wailed for their freedom.

"I can't...I can't help you..." she whispered. She looked over at Bunta, who was finally rousing from his unconsciousness.

"What...going..." he muttered, blinking blearily.

Sakura told him how to get out of his cage, helping him out. This seemed to make all the other people in cages even more furious.

"Help us..."

"Save us..."

"Help us...!"

Bunta stumbled as he got out of his cage. Sakura immediately bent down to help him.

"Can't...move...much..." he muttered. "Head...fuzzy..."

"We gotta get out of here," Sakura grunted, pulling Bunta's arm over her shoulder to help him walk.

"Save us!"

The wailing was louder now. So loud that if Sakura opened the door, there was no way they wouldn't be heard. As they walked towards the door, Sakura grit her teeth, and made a decision.

She closed her eyes, and expanded her bubble outwards to the entire room, making sure not to include Bunta.

Immediately, the wailing stopped. Everything went quiet.

Sakura hobbled over to the door, opening it slowly. Bunta slowly raised his head.

"What...happened to...the voices...?"

"Don't worry about them," said Sakura soothingly. "They're all dreaming now."

"We can't...help?"

A needle of ice stabbed through Sakura's heart.

"We can't," said Sakura, closing the door, heart heavy. "We can't help them right now."

The entire time she ran, Sakura could not get those blue eyes, or sound of the wails out of her head.

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