Broken Wings

Chapter 10: The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku

Screeching, screaming, crying, scraping, static, pleading. Fragments of voices, partial sentences.

"HELP! WHERE AM-"

"-MOM, I MISS Y-"

"-WANT- HOME- PLEASE"

Fragments of personalities with their individual wants and needs. Connected entities of binary strings. They were both at once and nothing at all.

A burst of packets dropped into the void, a connected system of individuality. In the face of all the confusion and sounds, it began to break apart as they had. Losing all sense of self, it tried to cling to something, anything to retain its identity...

"POSITIVE...POSI...TIVE...."

As suddenly as the Herald had burst from the laptop, it vanished again. "Miku! Miku!" Len cried out in futility.

"Move it, kid!" Gumi shouted, swiping the laptop from Len's shaking hands, "This is grownup stuff!"

As the emerald-haired hacker's hands became a blur of frantic typing, Len began to creep away. One of her arms shot out and she grabbed the boy. "Not that far, kiddo..."

"Okay, seriously, there is NO way you're that much older than me!" Len shouted, trying to push her hand away.

"Start talking. Who's the broad?" Gumi said, somehow maintaining perfect concentration on her task, "Winged crazies keep popping up in this city, people disappear or get blown up, and your girlfriend showed up every time. Fill me in while I find her."

"You can find Miku!?" Len asked.

Gumi's smile made Len think of a cat with a bead on a mouse. "That Miriam chick left these weird packets behind... like bread crumbs."

She gave Len a sideways look. "Now, surely the son of the Hearts knows all kinds of dirt?"

Miku was missing and this girl just wanted to fish for a story out of him!? "I told you at the park! My sister and I cut them out of our lives!"

Gumi chuckled as if talking to someone far lower than her. "If I know ANYTHING about Leon and Lola Heart... they don't let ANYONE just up and walk away."

Finally Len got his sore wrist free from Gumi. "If you're threatening me OR Rin..."

The girl's hands darted above the keys as her eyes tracked across dozens of pop up screens at once. "There's no way they're not involved in these attacks!" Gumi fumed, "They own every inch of this city, and they do spooky stuff in their R&D labs! They've got a lock on the press AND the government turns a blind eye to em'! It's the people's right to know why!"

Of course Len had suspicions about his parents. He knew what kind of people they were. But... he and Rin left so they could live as normal children. Go to school and hang out with friends and have silly impossible dreams like being famous singers.

"Gumi... I promise, I don't know anything, at all, about what the Hearts are up to."

Lightning flashed outside as the storm intensified. "Believe me.... If I thought they had anything to do with hurting Miku... I wouldn't cover for them."

Luka's mind felt weary but joyful as she'd spent the last hour regaling Kaito with tales of their lost childhood together. No matter how simple or trivial, any detail could possibly be the key to solving his memory lapse, she hoped. Lady Prima serving the children fruit bowls on a summer's day. Morning prayers together. Hide and seek behind a waterfall.

"AH! I remember the waterfall! Meiko cheated, she kept throwing her voice in the caverns so we wouldn't hear her sneaking up on us!"

Even if they weren't helping, Luka loved being able to finally share happy memories with the boy she'd grown up with, feared for, and met again after fate had seemingly decreed they would spend the rest of their days apart.