“Yumi?”

  “I’m not your sister, boy.”

  Yrabbed onto her body, nearly shaking her for answers. “Who are you?! Where’s my sister?!” A wild look of desperation filled his eyes as he demanded answers.

  Stepping in behind Yori, Saki pced her hand on Yori’s shoulder trying to get his attention. Unfortunately, he wasn’t paying attention to her. She dug her fingers a little into his flesh without drawing up blood. “Shaking your sister won’t get you any answers, Yori.”

  He wound up his arm batting away Saki and gring at everyone. “What do you know?! None of you uand!” Fire seemed to glow in his eyes as something else took him over. A strange manic look painted his face.

  While the others back away Saki didn’t care o for his attempt to have a bite. She just wound up her fist and decked him into the floor. Not enough forpletely destroy the building, but it did give it a good shake and jiggle out the dust. And more than enough to put him out cold. Saki looked up at everyone, a little shocked at her solution. “You want to listen to him scream at us for an hour before we get some answers from Yumi?”

  Yumi looked up at Saki with a slight ge in her expression. “You’ve got an iihod. And you seem a little more level headed than her brother.”

  “So you going to tell us what’s going on then?”

  “You don’t seem that surprised by this.”

  “I got filled in a little on some of the things that happened ba Atntis, though we still have no more clear ao what’s going on than before.”

  “It would seem that we have reached a critical threshold.”

  Chapter 373 – Broken Mind

  Putting the unscious Yori to bed in Yumi’s bed and moving the versation bato the main room, the person inside Yumi gathered up everyone. She carried herself very differently than Yumi. The presehat bled off her gave her a anding and dominant aura that dematention. She had fidend power without even needing to say a word. It all merely came from her stature and eyes. No one could see Yumi in her despite appearao the trary.

  “So anyone going to expin what’s going on?” Hiroshi asked, being the odd man out along with Tatsuya. He had no clue to what Yumi’s power was or what happeo her. Yet everyone else seemed to be clued into the situation on some level.

  Saki took point on the expnation. “Aside from the power that Yumi possesses, she has aent ability or whatever this might be called. We’re still trying to uand what it is, but there seems to be other minds, people, personalities, whatever inside Yumi besides herself.”

  “Other people? Why would Yuki do that to her?”

  “He didn’t do it,” corrected Nerine, “Even with his Majesty’s power untrolled he never would be able to selectively give people power. Whatever happeo Miss Mizuno was the same thing as how she got her power. Based off who she is, this is the result of how his Majesty’s Law was answered by her.”

  Nodding, Yumi agreed with the assessment. “That is correbsp; We exist as part of Yumi Mizuno.”

  Putting the versation ba the important question, Saki focused on whomever currently trolled Yumi’s body. “In the past, you helped her in fighting, but this isn’t a fight. Why are you still here? Why haven’t you returned Yumi back to her body?”

  “This is a result of damage wrought by Takako Yamazaki.”

  “Takako?”

  “The hell she got to do with this?”

  “It was a defensive means of proteg her mind. Unlike Yumi, I hahe effects that Takako left on us.”

  “But that still doesn’t ahe question of why you’re still here. Takako’s dead.”

  “Yes, but the damage is still done. Yumi is uo return.”

  “What the hell do you mean uo return?” Seiji started to take on the physical role that Yori carried while awake. Though Saki lifted her arm up to keep him behind her. He looked down at her at the table ahat she didn’t seem more troubled by the words.

  “Getting violent isn’t going to do anything to get answers.” Saki focused ba the eaking to them. “So we o get Yumi back then?”

  “If that is your desire.”

  “Of course it is!”

  “Seiji.”

  “Then you must find a way to do it.”

  Hiroshi still had a little trouble believing the whole situation even with it expio him. But he caught up as well as he could to everything happening. “The way you’re talking sounds like you’re not going to help us.”

  “That’s correct.”

  Seiji jumped over the table, managing not to hit his head on the ceiling and nd behind Yumi. He grabbed her up by the colr of her uniform that she still wore. “What do you mean that you won’t help us?! This involves you as well. Yoing to help or so help me—“

  “You’ll what? Punch this body until I do?”

  Gring at her, he couldn’t take any a against her. Even with a different person or whatever in Yumi’s body, it was still her body. There was no way that he could do that to her. She had him pletely powerless.

  Releasing herself from his grip with her telekinesis, she walked over to the door. “You started this problem. So you will find a solution to it.”

  “Damn you, do you feel nothing!?”

  “It’s not my . Show me your worth.”

  Hiroshi stood up from the table to get her before she left. “Where are you going? You ’t be wandering around the city!”

  “It’s been more than a few turies since I’ve seen Japan. I’d like to see how things turned out.”

  “You ’t just leave. We o solve this!”

  “I don’t o be here for you to find the answer. When you figure it out, the brother will know how to find me.” She opehe door a just as abruptly as she arrived. The storm that she left behind only furthered stirring the pot that they all stewed in now.

  First to yell, Seiji pounded oable. “So what the hell are we going to do about this?!” No one jumped to an answer or even an uain remark. They held their silenot sure what to do. Things went from back to worse and there didn’t seem to be any slowing in the avanche. “Silence?! Yumi’s our friend and you’ve got nothing?!”

  “Seiji, we still don’t even uand the situation. And how do you expect us to get Yumi back when she’s lost somewhere in her own mind?!”

  He had no answer for Saki. No one did. That was why they were all silent. This was beyond their ability to problem solve. They all wao save her, but it wasn’t that simple as Seiji said.

  They were out of options. Saki had no idea. She might have been her friend and cssmate, but she didn’t know her very well. Not as well as she should have to be called her friend. “What about Kaede or Katsumi? Maybe they’ll know something that we don’t.” Unfortunately, the moment that Saki brought them up everyo silent. She hadn’t seen them in the room since she returned. They came back with the others that much she knew. Yet, it felt like she just stepped into a funeral with how dark the atmosphere suddenly went. “What happened? What’s going on?”

  Hiroshi put a hand to rest against the wall for support. He fought with the grimace that tried to carve through his fabsp; There was no avoiding it. “We haven’t had the ce to tell you. It’s best if you just see.”

  Jumping out of her seat at the table, Saki felt the depression surrounding her pour through every pore in her body. It froze her down to her bones. “What happeo Yumi’s friends?”

  “Follow me. I’ll take you to them.” He opehe dain, inviting Saki to e with him. It wasn’t meant to be a secret, just not something easily brought up. In light of the situation with Yumi, it almost seemed fitting that it would be now.

  Saki quickly followed Hiroshi leaving the others behind, who seemed unwilling to go with her. She gnced back before she closed the door to see them one more time. It was unnervingly chilly just watg them. The way they looked seemed like they were dead, but she khat wouldn’t be possible. But she still didn’t know what was going on and Hiroshi left it iionally mysterious.

  Guided dowairs to the first floor and into the ba, they passed through the rge chamber that settled the residents of the neighborhood that still survived. It seemed far fewer people still lived than she remembered from the other base. The thought made her heart ache a little knowing how it happened. It wasn’t even by her hand, but she didn’t stop it either.

  Fog ahead on Hiroshi, she tried to keep her mind a off the matter for now. She had different and bigger problems than her guilt to weigh on a scale. Friends had to be saved.

  Across the chamber was a different door that didn’t match with the rest. It almost seemed like an afterthought or at least ninally pnned. Though knowing Phoibe created it all, Saki didn’t uand why it wouldn’t matbsp; But it was a minor point. Beyond the door as she saw was a long hallway with rows of doors.

  Then she heard something very familiar that she thought that she had finally fotten. Screams and cries, the voices of people lost. Immediately her heart jumped, going three times faster than before. Memories of the hospital where she visited Takako flooded her mind. She struggled to keep her bahout missing a step as she walked behind Hiroshi. ‘Why is he taking me here? What’s happeo them?’

  Hiroshi then came to a stop at a seemingly random door. Pg his hand on a panel of metal on the door, strange meisms shifted and ked about as metal in the door receded and moved as if it was solving a puzzle on its own. Twenty seds through the rearra of the door it suddenly opened and Hiroshi relutly invited Saki into the room.

  She hesitated in moving to see inside. Her mind seemed to have already e to clusions about what she would find. It didn’t want to see. It didn’t want to know. But she had to go. There was no way around it. She couldn’t be frozen at this point.

  It took a moment to get her legs moving again, but she made it over to the threshold. She still didn’t see anything, but she wasn’t fully looking around. The room cked the impersonal nature of what she found in the hospital. Likely sihis was created by Phoibe, the woman gave it much more specialized attention. The floor was carpeted with a very soft material that bounced under each step and pictures hung on the walls. Furniture lihe room that would fit naturally as a girl’s bedroom. It almost didn’t seem to be what Saki expected.

  Except that this wasn’t an ordinary girl’s room. On the opposite side of the room behind a strange field of casg water-like surface was Katsumi. She sat balled up in the er with a bde in her hand digging into her arm yet unable for it to pierce her skin. She mumbled under her breath repeating the same words over and ain.

  “Kill me. Please kill me.”