#kaiborg

They docked silently. The black pressure of space pushed noiselessly against the windows of the small blue ship while, inside, Yuugi and Jounouchi held their breath. A deep metallic sigh reverberated through the bowels of the Bluebird craft that carried them, and then something large clicked heavily into place. Yuugi exhaled slowly, calming himself, then eased off the black joystick that had guided their landing.

“We're locked on,” Yuugi said.

Jounouchi too breathed out. His eyes flickered over the sight beyond the fish-bowl window that encased them both. The KaibaCorp. vessel drifted like something dead on the surface of a lake, big and grey and mute in the blackness – and now they drifted with it. Soon their air circulation systems would be connected, each feeding the other, pumping life and death between the two mismatched ships. This was a dangerous endeavour. No one else would have taken it. Jounouchi even wasn't sure that he would have, if it hadn't been for Yuugi.

But Yuugi never abandoned a person in need. And especially not if that person was Kaiba.

“Yuugi?” Jounouchi began, but Yuugi held up a hand.

“Just don't,” he said. “I know what you're thinking and I don't want to hear it.”

“Yuugi, you have to at least, like, vaguely consider the possibility that-”

“No.” Yuugi's voice left no room for argument. Long ago, Jounouchi would have mocked him for trying to take that kind of tone. Now it rang soft but firm and cold all at once, no longer the voice of that little fifteen-year-old that Jounouchi had victimised at school. His friend had long ago grown into a man.

“I'll check the oxygen filters one last time,” Jounouchi said, heaving himself from the bunk and slipping easily into the tiny warren of wires and pistons below deck. Yuugi leaned back in his shabby little captain's chair and stared out at the silver beast before them.

It was three months since anyone had heard from Kaiba's ship. It was sheer luck – pure, insanely improbable luck – that had brought him and Jounouchi close enough to pick up the ship's faint electronic imprint in the universe. They had tried to hail them, but there had been no reply. They diverted their course to intersect with the ship, in case it was in trouble, and then its huge mass had emerged before their window and they read the serial number. The ship was Kaiba's. Of all the thousands of ships cruising the darkness that teemed about them, what were the chances?

“Beyond improbable,” Yuugi muttered aloud, but no one heard. His hand drifted unconsciously to his chest and clutched at air. Even after all these years his neck still felt too light. He clenched his fist and shut his eyes briefly, then opened them again and flicked several switches on the console. “We're ready to board,” he called.

---

The stench hit them the moment the door opened. It was beyond foul, rotten and stale, thick with sweat and salt and awful, unclean muskiness. Yuugi dry retched. Jounouchi caught his shoulder to steady him.

“Something is obviously screwed in their oxygen filtration system,” Jounouchi said through the sleeve he had pressed over his mouth. “But it's still breathable. That's a good sign.”

“Breathable,” Yuugi repeated archly. “That's generous.”

“Well, I've smelt guys' locker rooms that were almost this bad,” said Jounouchi. He peered into the gloom beyond. The doors from their tiny, two-roomed ship opened into a narrow, unsettlingly clean corridor, with the rungs of a metal ladder at the end. A faint, pale green glow came from somewhere beyond. “The lights aren't working either.”

“I don't like this.”

“Could be worse,” Jounouchi said, stepping over the threshold and passing from their ship into Kaiba's. He lingered before the ladder that would take them up into the ship proper. “If they were in a really dire situation then they'd shut down everything that wasn't necessary. The fact that the air is still on but the lights aren't means they've still got power.”

“Alright,” Yuugi breathed. “After you.”

Jounouchi obliged.

The room into which they emerged was far larger than their own tiny cockpit, with room enough to walk around freely. A great glass window gaped out into space beyond; on either side big black screens bulged out of the walls, some fat and blank, others slim and alight with vibrant scrolls of nonsensical aqua text. They pressed around a large silver table that dominated the centre of the room. The table was almost bare save for a single cotton sheet, stained with vile smears of red and yellow, crumpled like a little pile of tripe. The only other object was a strange drill-like plug. It had been fed through a round hole drilled through one end of the table and rested on the hole's lip through which it trailed a thick black cable. The plug had a single metal prong, a centimetre in diameter, which serrated at its tip into minute ridges and valleys. The cable that formed its base was covered with thin black rubber, beneath which it seemed countless wires and electronic tendons strained against the surface.

Seeing the abandoned sheet and plug, the former clearly blood stained and the latter so honed and bright and sharp and violent, Jounouchi felt as though they stood where somebody had been killed.

Yuugi had begun to walk around the table, studying the many glimmering screens. Their bright blue light shone in his eyes, but Jounouchi was unable to take his own off that plug. It felt wrong to look at, taboo, a weapon or part of someone's insides. As he stared he saw that the gleaming metal prong was not entirely clean: little trails of some dried, black matter wound around it.

“Yuugi, I don't think we should be here.”

“According to what I'm reading here the ship isn't even that low on power,” Yuugi said. “There are definitely faults – the air, the water, the communications – but it seems half the power is going to something called 'KCUplink'.” He flicked a switch, and above them several dull lights flickered on, not so much brightening the room as dousing it in weak, oily yellow. Then Yuugi's breath caught. “Wait...”

“What? Seriously, Yuugi, something is not right here.” A small rust coloured stain curled around the hole in the table.

“The ship. It can send communications but it can't receive them. Why would they not have sent out a call for help?”

“Because we don't need help,” came a voice behind them.

They both spun on their feet. When their eyes met Kaiba's, Jounouchi let out a tense breath of half-dead oxygen, but Yuugi's lips remained tight and pursed. Kaiba stood in the dim light furthest from the cockpit, his face half in shadow. It was the same Kaiba they had last seen on Earth four long years ago. It was the same tall, slim frame cast in tight black cottons, the same proud pose. The same disdain curled his lip, and the same guarded, battle-hungry warmth bent that disdain into a smirk.

But it was not the same left eye. The right was the same familiar blue that in this dim light recalled the sea floor and tons of black oceanic pressure behind his irises. But the left eye was pale luminescent green, ringed with jagged black concentric circles shrinking to where a pupil ought to be. It swivelled slightly out of sync with its unidentical twin.

“What are you doing on my ship?”

“Kaiba,” said Yuugi. “I'm glad you're alive.”

Kaiba made a small noise in the back of his throat that was supposed to be contempt but which, for a very brief moment, both misinterpreted as pain. “Of course I am.”

As he spoke he shifted into the light, staring Yuugi down, that odd glowing eye never quite settling. The low yellow drone of the lights above caught thin flashes of vibrant green sub-dermal wiring along his neck. Five thin electronic veins embossed the skin and wound around the shell of Kaiba's ear where they disappeared into his hair. But even aside from the wires and the eye he looked different: colder, paler. His skin smoothed the hollows of his cheeks like damp clay and faded into sallow shades beneath his eyes, and the line drawn by his pale lips was thinner. He had changed.

“What happened to your eye?” Jounouchi said.

Kaiba's gaze drifted to Jounouchi and filled with deliberate, weighted disapproval, as though he had only just noticed him. “What is that lowlife doing here?”

“I'm Yuugi's mechanic.”

Kaiba snorted. “And how could you afford that kind of training?”

“I couldn't. I taught myself.”

Kaiba made a little familiar sound of disdain. So familiar. The same sound he made the last time they met, when they were all eighteen, all high school students. Four years and it hadn't changed at all. “I suppose it suits you, following your better half around. It's not as though you could afford your own ship.”

“At least our ship is running,” Jounouchi snapped back, and he saw Kaiba's lips twitch with satisfaction. Jounouchi took a breath. “If you want me to fix your water system,” he continued more levelly, “I can do that. I know your ships are mostly automated, but hydraulics are pretty much all mechanics. Your air filtration also seems kind of...” He trailed off and let them all become conscious again of the stench they were breathing in, though it was less now the fresher air from the Bluebird was being pumped in.

“As if you have any idea how a craft like mine operates.”

Now it was Jounouchi's turn to laugh in disbelief. “Kaiba, you fly a KC-Fourteen. You use the exact same hydraulics system as the Bluebird that Yuugi pilots.”

“I'm quite aware of what system we use. I designed this ship, idiot.”

“But you didn't design the hydraulics,” Jounouchi concluded. His tone softened. “I can fix them for you.”

For a long moment Kaiba simply held his sneer, but then it slowly fell away. He turned back to Yuugi. “Bluebirds are good ships. Fast. But they're not durable. Hardly the best choice if you're pursuing duels across deep space.”

“I don't have your budget, Kaiba,” Yuugi said gently. “We get by.” He smiled. “After all, I have a great mechanic.”

“Speaking of we,” Jounouchi interrupted, “You said, 'We don't need help.' Is Mokuba here?”

Kaiba watched Jounouchi while he talked, but when Kaiba answered his gaze was back on Yuugi. “He's on Earth. Isono is the only other passenger; he's in his quarters,” he said. He inhaled slowly and thinly, making them wait for him to finish what he was saying. “While you stabilise your connection to my ship I'll have him make you something to drink. Then-” His eyes focused on Yuugi. “-We can discuss the duel you owe me.”

---

Jounouchi, Yuugi, and Kaiba sat around the table in the control room, which had been mercifully cleared of the dirty sheet (though the plug had only had its wire coiled up and been stashed under one of the screens). Isono walked between them and poured each a cup of hot, unpleasantly pungent liquid before coming to stand behind his employer, arms folded neatly behind him.

“Isono, sit down,” Kaiba snapped. “You're not our waiter.”

“Sorry, Master Seto,” Isono muttered, then cast around for a free seat. All were taken. He opted instead to lean awkwardly against the wall.

Jounouchi examined the drink he'd been poured. There were bits floating in it. He wondered if it would be too rude to ask if the bits were supposed to be there. Deliberate bits. Yuugi sipped his cup in polite silence.

“So,” said Jounouchi. “Why didn't you send out a distress call? People have been worried about you, y'know.”

“We've been experiencing communication problems,” Kaiba answered, not touching his own drink. “And we're not in distress.”

“Man, come on.” Jounouchi leaned over the table to see Kaiba better and rested his head against his oil-grubby, half-gloved hand. “Your water isn't working properly, your air would be practically unbreathable if you weren't linked up with our ship, your food supplies are...” He looked down at the murky grey-green liquid and its little floating piece of something. “What even is this?”

Something almost resembling a smile crooked the side of Kaiba's mouth. He tilted his head to Isono. “Well?”

Isono coughed. “It's a liquidised protein beverage diluted with Assam tea,” he answered.

“I like it,” said Yuugi. He exchanged a smile for a grateful nod from Isono. Jounouchi sighed in exasperation.

“Damn, Kaiba, nothing on this ship is working properly. You aren't even moving right now. Do you get how terrifying that is? Just drifting, in deep space, weeks of travel from any kind of station. And months from Earth. It's beyond miraculous that we even found you. What the hell are you doing out here?”

“Why don't you travel back?” Yuugi continued in a quieter, more measured voice. “Why are you diverting half your power?” He took a breath. Kaiba didn't blink as he watched him. “What's KCUplink?”

Kaiba presented them with a dense granite wall of silence. He looked between them both, assessing each, weighing something massive in his mind. Then he spoke to Isono. “Go make sure that our oxygen system hasn't been ruined by their ship's interference. And then you can take the rest of the night off, unless I call you.”

Isono nodded and smartly exited. Kaiba waited until his footsteps died away beneath them. Then he spoke.

“KCUplink is Kaiba Corporation's latest invention,” he said. “It's VR technology.”

“Virtual reality?” Jounouchi said bluntly. Kaiba's eyes flicked up in irritation.

“Yes. It allows one to connect directly with cyberspace. No pods, no screens, no interface. A direct connection.” He paused. He seemed to be considering something. And then a light came into his eyes, the kind of light that burned there when duelling, when winning. Something alive. “Imagine the most vibrant, the most intimate experience of life you have ever had. Multiply it by a thousand. You're standing in a city, but you're not just standing. You know everything there is to know about the cement beneath your feet, about the gravitational pull on your body, about the thousands that have walked this street before you. And you can map the city instantly. All you need do is think about what lies around the corner and you know – you know about the coffee shop, the library, the clothes store. And then you're there, instantaneously; and you can drink the coffee, read the books, try on the clothes. Everything is immediate, atemporal. A series of instances, each drenched in perfect omniscience. It is the removal of all intermediary between human and technology. Cyberspace. Pure, infinite. It is everything and everywhere.” His left eye was raging burning solar white, the pupils flaring, while its electronic twin focused and refocused with mad vivacity. “It is the future,” Kaiba breathed.

Then he sat back. His breath had quickened. He looked between them both in crackling, electric anticipation.

“I don't get it,” said Jounouchi.

“A direct connection?” said Yuugi, ignoring the withering look Kaiba had thrown Jounouchi. “What does that mean, exactly? You have to have some intermediary. A computer, or something.”

Kaiba shook his head. “No. You don't. Not with KCUplink. It plugs directly into the cerebral cortex.”

“What, into your brain?” said Jounouchi.

“Exactly. You don't need a simulator. You don't need a computer – except to act as a server. Your brain creates everything.” A smile played lightly over his lips. “It is flawless.”

“Neat concept. How you going to test something like that? Start drilling into monkey skulls or what?”

“He's already tested it.”

They both turned to Yuugi. His features were dark.

“Yes,” Kaiba said. “It's working admirably. There are a few issues with the organics, but the technology is sound. It's already working on a small scale.”

“'Issues with the organics'?” Jounouchi repeated, mimicking Kaiba's voice. “Is that a fancy way of saying you're struggling to drill a hole through someone's skull?”

“Not at all.” Kaiba smiled at them both with lips of barbed wire. Then he shifted in his chair, turning to face the other way. He pulled aside his hair and bared his neck. There, just above his collar, was a small metal disc, about an inch in diameter, set into his skin.

“Shit,” muttered Jounouchi.

“Show me,” said Yuugi.

Kaiba inclined his head slightly in a kind of embryonic nod, and then he reached behind his neck, fingers closing on the ridge that bisected the metal disk. He twisted it three times. Then he moved his hand away.

A little more than a finger width of pure void disappeared into his neck. Around the hole Kaiba's unhealthy pale skin faded into pink, then into red inflammation, and then bleached foetid yellow at the ragged edge of the open wound where the flesh grew helplessly against the metal, trying to heal the hole. The black metallic O glistened with vile liquids. It was impossible to determine how deep it bored.

“Shit,” Jounouchi repeated. “It looks infected."

"It's not,” said Kaiba. His voice was oddly quiet. “It takes time to heal.”

"How long you had it?"

Kaiba inhaled audibly and Yuugi got up. He came to stand next to his rival with his eyes alight.

“Two years, eight months,” Kaiba replied, remaining stationary as Yuugi stood before him. Yuugi hesitated, then very gently placed the tips of his fingers on Kaiba's chin, the palm of his other hand on the back of his head. He delicately tilted Kaiba's head forwards, throwing the first few centimetres of the hole into sharp relief. Kaiba allowed it. The topmost notch of his spine rose clean and sharp above his collar, pointing sharply towards the hole. In the light they could both see silver circles of grooves and teeth spiralling inwards, into him, and the deeper parts glistened with something wet.

Yuugi released his whisper-soft grip. “What does it feel like?” he asked in a low, soft voice. Kaiba's head remained down.

“Nothing.”

“Would you feel it if we touched it?”

“I can't feel anything. It's metal."

“What if you stuck a finger in there?” said Jounouchi.

“That could kill me.”

Yuugi's hand drifted to the metal threshold, his middle finger infinitesimally extended. He ran the fingertip around the silver edge, very lightly, then withdrew. He rubbed his fingertips together, forcing his face to stay flat. Something wet was sticking to his fingers.

“It doesn't look very hygienic,” he said, standing back. He took a tissue from his pocket and kept his eyes politely averted as he wiped his fingers clean.

“That's why I keep it covered,” Kaiba said. He leaned away from them and turned around again, then screwed the protective cap back in place. “It requires frequent cleaning. The technology is still very much in its early stages. I certainly can't market it to the public like this.”

“Well, yeah, it's super gross,” Jounouchi said bluntly. Yuugi stifled a laugh for Kaiba's sake, but Kaiba was smiling wryly.

“I know. It's a prototype.”

“What do you mean by 'it'?” Yuugi asked. “The metal? Can it be removed?”

Kaiba shrugged a single shoulder. “Perhaps. But I wouldn't attempt such a thing unless there was serious risk to my life. There have been some... unanticipated complications.” That same dry smile twisted his lips again. “I expect it will be a permanent addition.”

“So when you say it's a prototype,” said Jounouchi, “what you mean is you're a prototype.”

Kaiba straightened his neck and turned to face them again. His one blue eye was fixed cold and unreadable upon Jounouchi. There was no emotion, not even hostility, in its green twin. “Someone needs to be.”

He took in Jounouchi and Yuugi's horrified gazes silently. He rolled his eyes. “Neither of you have any conception of what work like mine entails. Don't be so pathetic.”

“There's no amount of money in the world you could pay me to go through with something like that,” Yuugi said quietly.

“I won't offer you a job then,” Kaiba said drily. “Not that you'd need it. I hear you're doing very well for yourself. Three international tournaments won this year alone, and all with cash prices. Congratulations.”

“Well, I like to duel,” said Yuugi, politely side-stepping Kaiba's sarcastic congratulations. “And it pays to keep us in the air.”

“Duelling for money. Not something I would have expected from you.” He awaited an answer, but Yuugi gave him none. “Well. Now that you're here, perhaps you can set aside your financial motivations and duel me.” He smirked. “Assuming you haven't gone soft.”

Jounouchi watched them talk, biting his tongue on every comeback for Yuugi's sake. The thought of being stuck out in deep space with Kaiba and Yuugi locked in a duel made his head hurt, but he wouldn't argue. He had quietly resigned himself to being trapped on a ship with Kaiba for the next few days when Yuugi, completely to Jounouchi's surprise, quietly said: “No.”

“I'm sorry?” said Kaiba. “Did you just refuse me?”

“No, Kaiba,” Yuugi repeated. “I don't think it would be appropriate.”

“What are you talking about? I'm challenging you to a duel. How could accepting be anything but appropriate?”

Yuugi sat silently and stared at Kaiba for a very long time. If Jounouchi didn't know better he would have thought Yuugi was conversing with his other self—but of course that was impossible.

“I'll think about it,” said Yuugi finally. “But don't expect a yes.”

Kaiba shook his head in disgust. “Sleep on it,” he said harshly, and put his hand to the neck of his black shirt. He twitched it, and something electronic blinked on beneath the fabric. “Isono? Get up here and ensure their ship is safely docked.”

“You don't trust us to stabilise our own ship?” said Jounouchi.

“Yuugi's ship. You're just a passenger.”

Jounouchi opened his mouth to protest, but Isono's reappearance forced him to swallow the unformed insult.

“Master Seto?”

Kaiba stood. “Escort them back to their ship. Ensure it's safe to sleep on. I don't want to babysit a broken vessel.”

“You don't want them accommodated in our own quarters?” said Isono. “It'll be far more spacious.”

“They can sleep on their own ship.”

“Master Seto, we could accommodate them quite easily in Mokuba's room.” A glacial silence swallowed up the wake of Isono's words. He coughed awkwardly and lowered his voice, though there was no way Yuugi and Jounouchi wouldn't hear. “He's not going to be using it any time soon.”

Kaiba stared through them and the tension, a muscle twitching under the skin of his jaw. “He might,” he finally said. “They can sleep on their own ship.” The firmness of the repeated words left no room for argument.

---

The Bluebird in which they were travelling was built for speed; compact, a tiny silver bullet hurtling through space. Jounouchi had hoped, though not expected, something a bit more luxurious from Kaiba's craft. Every ship is a suffocating little fish bowl out here, but a small part of him had thought that Seto Kaiba's private ship might have a little more to it, if only to show off. But it was like any other craft: tiny and tight and everywhere metal, stinking of recycled air and close-quarter sweat, but even worse than their own.

“I think this is messed up,” Jounouchi said. He was lying in his bunk, while Yuugi sat barely a foot from his head at the controls. “It's been, what, five years since you guys last duelled? And he's still obsessing over beating you? Shouldn't he be concentrating on running his company?”

“I think Mokuba takes care of most of it these days,” Yuugi replied, making final checks of their link with the KC vessel. “He handles most of the publicity, anyway. I suppose that leaves Kaiba to focus on inventions and the like. But I get your point. I thought...” His fingers hovered above the keys and he turned to look at Jounouchi. “I thought he would have grown out of this by now.”

“He thinks you guys are death-till-us-part rivals, man. I don't think he's ever going to get over it.”

“Perhaps. But you'd have thought he'd have at least picked up a hobby or something. It's like he hasn't changed at all since high school.”

“He has picked up a hobby. He's into Frankenstein body mod shit, apparently." Jounouchi kicked off his boots, glossy black with engine grease, and examined his equally greasy grey socked feet. "What is up with that?”

“Maybe he needed a challenge. If I'm not around, and no one else is, then... What's he going to do, duel Isono?” Yuugi's eyes drifted to the silver mass floating beyond the window. “Kaiba needs an enemy. With no one else around he's just making an enemy of himself.”

“Floating out around in space to prove he can beat the galaxy,” Jounouchi muttered. His feet, whole and organic, wiggled their unscarred toes. “Yuugi? Is that why you won't duel him?”

“I don't know. I just... I don't want to make him worse. What if he loses? Then what? What's he going to try to beat instead?” Yuugi ran a tired hand through his hair. “What are we going to do about him?”

“I don't know.” Jounouchi watched his friend and saw the empathy and the selfless worry begin to cloud his eyes. He lightly thumped him. “But we'll think of something, don't worry. Come on. Let's get some sleep.”

---

Yuugi slept deeply, dreaming of sands and glittering silver lakes beneath a perfect azure sky. He dreamt of heat and the bustle of everyday humanity in a beautiful city buried long ago that he had never seen. Half-remembered faces flashed before him, glancing off fragments of memories that drifted against the beautiful cloudless blue like silent weightless rain. A man he once knew stood before him, his face turned away. His skin glowed in the sun and shafts of hot white light shone from the gold that hung about his shoulders. When he turned his face was a soft, smiling mirror of Yuugi's own, and his mouth formed a word that was carried away on the breezeless air...

Yuugi opened his eyes. The dull metal ceiling of his ship rose a few feet above him. He shut his eyes again but the blue sky did not return.

“Hey, Yuugi? Are you awake?”

Yuugi sighed and swallowed. He rolled over and saw Jounouchi standing beside his bunk.

“Yes, I'm awake. What is it?” He blinked away the sleep and Jounouchi's expression came into sharper focus. Something between fear and sickness haunted his features. Yuugi sat up. “Is something wrong?”

“You have to see this,” Jounouchi said. A crack ran through his voice.

“Can it wait until morning?”

“It really can't. You have to come now.”

Yuugi didn't hesitate. He slipped out of bed and quickly pulled his jeans on, shaking off the heavy remnants of sleep. Then he followed Jounouchi through the back of the ship, where the door was open. The mouth of Kaiba's craft gaped before them, cold and sickly and hostile. Yuugi paused at the doorway.

“Jounouchi? What happened here?” Just before their own ship merged into Kaiba's a panel had been slid back, exposing the primary coloured wire guts of their Bluebird. Some had been crudely cut open. “Did you do this?”

“Yeah. Kaiba locked us in. I tried to unlock it through the computer but I couldn't get anything to work. He hacked our system. I got curious, so I cut the controls to the door. It wasn't difficult. I guess Kaiba thinks pretty lowly of my abilities, huh?”

“Don't let him get to you.”

Jounouchi snorted. “Trust me, I won't. Now follow me and keep your voice down, okay?”

Yuugi nodded and obeyed. He waited while Jounouchi's wiry body ascended the ladder into Kaiba's main control room, his filthy, heavy boots resting almost silently on each rung. Yuugi waited until Jounouchi had eased himself into the control room and then followed suit. His bare feet made no sound at all upon the cold metal rungs. He felt like a ghost sliding around Kaiba's ship. When he reached the top of the ladder he easily lifted himself out of the hatch. Then he picked himself up and looked around.

And then he saw Seto Kaiba's corpse.

He shut his eyes immediately. It was beyond instinct; it was visceral. His body refused to let him look at that, refused to let him take any of that into his brain. But it was already branded against his lids. The damp paper texture of Kaiba's yellowed skin. The cracked lilac of his parted lips. The blood in his ear. Yuugi felt nausea rise croaking through his stomach.

“Yuugi?”

Yuugi forced himself to open his eyes. He looked again at Kaiba's body, and then with wild relief saw the shallow undulations of his chest. No, that wasn't a corpse. He was alive. Several of the screens that pulsed out of the walls of the control room were emblazoned with heart-rate readings, blood pressure, and a series of rapidly shifting charts that Yuugi couldn't understand. He noticed now the wires that snaked from the various machines under Kaiba's skin, nuzzling themselves under little brown scabs and deep into Kaiba's insides. A white sheet covered him from the waist to the ankles but he was otherwise naked, each bone grossly close to the skin and shaded in dark blushes of purple and soft blues.

“What's wrong with him?” Yuugi whispered.

“I don't think anything is. Look.”

He pointed towards one end of the table, where Kaiba's skull rested against the hard metal. Something thick and black wound from beneath his neck. Yuugi drew closer, squinting through the poor yellow light, but he couldn't make it out. He ducked underneath the table and looked up through the hole that had been carved into the metal. And then he could see the port in Kaiba's neck. Its metallic lips, wet with blood and limpid pus, were clenched around that vicious plug whose interior wires swelled against its rubber skin. The flesh that formed the helpless wound around the port was more inflamed, more desperately agitated, uselessly trying to close the abyss in Kaiba's neck.

“So this is why he locked us out,” Yuugi murmured.

“I guess this is KCUplink, huh? “

Yuugi watched Kaiba's face. His eyelids trembled as the eyes behind them rolled madly across a virtual datascape of... whatever he chose to see. His chest trembled, sharing an erratic rhythm with the violent heart-rate readings. His expression was incomprehensible, yet somehow horribly familiar. Yuugi couldn't even tell if he was in pain.

“We need to leave,” Yuugi said. “He didn't want us here. This is private. You shouldn't have shown me this.”

“You're just going to leave him like that? Are you serious?”

“We don't even know how KCUplink works. What do you suggest, that we just yank it out of his neck? You don't know what damage that could cause.” Yuugi massaged his temples and squeezed his eyes shut. “I'll talk to him tomorrow. Don't tell him that you saw this. Alright?”

“If you say so,” Jounouchi said stiffly. “You're the captain.”

Yuugi held Jounouchi's odd gaze for a moment. Then he gave Kaiba's body one last glance before turning back to the ladder and slipping out of sight.

Jounouchi lingered. There was something familiar in Kaiba's features that echoed the expression he wore when duelling, when flanked by his Blue Eyes, when something mad and joyous overtook him completely. He wondered what having that plug sunk into your neck would feel like. “Cyberspace. Pure, infinite,” echoed Kaiba's voice in his skull. Did it hurt? Could Kaiba feel the slim metal drill scraping against his spine? Was he aware that they were watching?

A shiver ran through Jounouchi's body. He dragged himself away from the sight of Kaiba's sleeping body and lowered himself onto the ladder, and then he too descended into the darkness once more.

---

Yuugi and Kaiba had been arguing for two hours. Jounouchi sat at the table and rested his head on his folded arms, listening to Yuugi's firm, gentle tones intercut with Kaiba's harsher, colder ones. He contemplated cutting into their tiny supply of pain-killers to soothe his headache.

“Exactly what are you suggesting? I boot up my computer and access cyberspace from there, and you plug yourself in and we duel like that?”

“Precisely.”

“Given that you've admitted yourself that the technology is, at best, unstable I can't understand how you can in good conscience ask me to do something like that.”

“It's my decision.”

“It's not that simple, Kaiba. You don't know what could happen. You could die. I could kill you. You know I'm not going to undertake a risk like that.” Jounouchi heard Yuugi sigh in exasperation. “Let's just play old school style, alright? Just cards on a table. It's the same game.”

“Oh, please-”

“Or you can load up your computer and we'll play through an on-screen simulation. Safely, with neither of us having metal plugs jammed in our necks.”

“Are you afraid, Yuugi?”

The table reverberated as Yuugi slapped his hands upon the table and Jounouchi sat up. He was starting to feel as if he wasn't wanted here. He gently pushed himself away from the table and stood.

“Yes, Kaiba, I'm afraid. I'm afraid for you. I don't even know what you're asking me to do here.”

“I'm asking you to duel me. I'm challenging you. Doesn't that mean anything to you? What are you doing now, competing in the Elite Tournament? Duelling idiots for a nice cash prize?”

“Kaiba, this isn't-”

“Kaiba,” Jounouchi interrupted. He had wandered around to stand behind Kaiba.

“Shut up, idiot. Go back to your ship and play with your primitive mechanical toys.

“Kaiba,” Jounouchi said again. Kaiba almost spat in exasperation.

“What?”

“Your neck is, uh.” Jounouchi gestured inarticulately. “It needs...”

Kaiba's fingers searched through his hair for the hole in the back and returned wet, gilded with translucent red-tinged discharge. He made a noise of irritation and barked out a call for Isono.

“It's still healing,” he explained again, distaste for his guests dripping from his words.

“Maybe we'll go back to our ship for a while,” Yuugi said, stepping towards the ladder. But Kaiba raised a hand.

“No. It's fine. Stay.” Yuugi hovered uncertainly. Kaiba rolled his eyes. “Don't act as though it's...” He clenched and unclenched his jaw. “It's-”

“It's disgusting, man,” said Jounouchi, staring at the suppurating wound on the back of Kaiba's neck. “Do you go out in public like that?”

“I haven't-” Kaiba started, then cut himself off as Isono, dressed in loose pants and a vest, face and hair wet, appeared at the door.

“I'm sorry, Master Seto. I was showering.” He smiled sheepishly. “This is the first time we've had hot water in a long while.”

“What do I pay you for?” Kaiba muttered. “The port needs cleaning.”

Isono's eyes, bright and nervous without his black glasses, bounced rabbit-like between the three young men in the room. He hesitated and Kaiba glared at him. “Of course, Master Seto.”

Isono moved to stand behind Kaiba and gently pushed back his employer's hair. Kaiba inclined his head forwards to give him access, and then the quiet sound of shifting metal slid around the craft as Isono unscrewed the cap, which he placed, bloody and wet, on the table around which they were stood. He extracted from a shelf a zip-lock bag containing a white cloth and a small bottle of what first appeared to be antiseptic, but when Isono unscrewed the bottle its odourlessness confirmed it to be water. Another thing they had long run out of.

“Are you sure you don't want us to leave?” Yuugi murmured, eyes averted.

“Ah, come on, Yuugi,” Jounouchi drawled. His arms were folded and feet planted firmly on the floor. “Kaiba says he's comfortable. Who are we to argue?”

“You're pathetic,” Kaiba hissed. “You, Yuugi. Pursuing duels you don't care about with opponents you don't care about, wasting time, wasting your talent. What's wrong, too afraid to face me?”

Yuugi met the barbs of his gaze coolly, saying nothing. He quietly drank in the venom that dripped from Kaiba's words as Isono delicately dabbed at the seeping hole below Kaiba's skull.

Kaiba's eyes flicked to Jounouchi. “And you? Given up on duelling entirely, have you? I don't know what's more pathetic: that you've given up on the only thing you ever cared about, or that it took you this long to realise just how much you were wasting your time.”

“If you're trying to bait me, Kaiba, it isn't going to work. I'm not sixteen any more. I'm not getting into some dumb shouting match with you.”

“You have made nothing of your life,” Kaiba spat, saliva specks wetting his lips, blood smudges wetting Isono's gloveless hand. They had run out of latex gloves months ago. “You're even more pathetic than he is.”

Jounouchi stood tall and still, unaffected, letting the waves of Kaiba's bile break upon him. But his jaw was tight and his knuckles white as his fingers dug into his own arms. “I'm a mechanic, Kaiba. A good one. I'm making a life for myself. I didn't have a fortune handed to me on a platter. I have made something of myself that I am proud of.” He paused. “And what have you ever done to be proud of?”

Kaiba watched him. His electronic eye was focusing and unfocusing, its black circles twisting back and forth, screwing in and out of that bright, empty pupil. Kaiba took a breath. “Get back to your ship. You're both leaving tonight.”

---

It was strange to watch Kaiba when he didn't know you were there. Jounouchi thought he might slouch or cough or yawn, might betray some sign of humanity, but he merely sat there, typing one-handedly. Jounouchi had eased up quietly through the shaft that connected the docking bay to the control room and he now hung there, suspended between them on the ladder, his head above the hole, watching Kaiba type an endless, uninterrupted stream of information into the central computer.

“Yuugi thinks it's fate.” Kaiba spun instantly, his eyes bright, but they soon dimmed upon alighting on Jounouchi. Jounouchi had hoped for a response, but Kaiba only went back to his typing. Jounouchi climbed out of the hole and continued. “Us finding you, I mean. He thinks it's fate. Destiny. I mean, how else could we run into you like this, in deep space? Just luck? The chances of that happening has to be one in a million.”

“Why haven't you left yet?” said Kaiba, not breaking in his typing.

“We're almost ready. Yuugi is just making final checks. I thought I'd say goodbye.”

“Save your breath,” said Kaiba, his eyes never drifting from the screen before him.

“I know Yuugi wants to say goodbye as well. Actually, he doesn't want to leave at all. He just doesn't know what to do.”

“I told him what to do: leave. And tell him not to bother showing his face around me again unless he's worked up the courage to duel me.”

“He'll see you again, don't worry about that. I told you, he thinks this is fate. The three of us share a destiny.”

“Destiny doesn't exist.”

Jounouchi walked around the room to behind where Kaiba sat and pulled himself up onto the table. He clasped his hands and swung his legs and stared over Kaiba's head, out into the black. It was like sitting on a pier and dipping your toes into a lake. A deep, empty lake, nothing but wetness and pressure all the way down.

“Yuugi disagrees with you.”

“And what do you think?” Kaiba paused very briefly in his typing. “Assuming you're capable of intelligent thought, which might be assuming too much.”

“I think how or why we got here doesn't really matter so much. I think what matters is that you need help and Yuugi might be the only person that can help you.”

Kaiba dropped his fingers from the keyboard. “I do not need help. Not from Yuugi, not from anybody. If Yuugi is too much of a coward to duel me then you both better be gone by tomorrow.”

“Yeah, we'll see.” Jounouchi continued to stare over Kaiba's head. It was awfully dark out there. “You ever think what that means? 'Tomorrow'? We're billions of miles from the sun, so what does tomorrow mean?”

“Sleep cycles.”

Jounouchi flicked the back of Kaiba's head and he recoiled. “But you don't sleep anyway, Mister Roboto. Actually – do you? If you're plugged into that thing is it like sleeping?”

“It's better than sleeping.”

“I bet you'll make a killing when you release it to the public, huh?”

“Naturally. It's going to revolutionise our whole technological world.” A dark smile touched his mouth. “Once I work out the flaws.”

“Flaws such as how the back of your neck won't stop leaking?”

The smile on Kaiba's mouth lingered. “Such as.”

They both sat there and shared the silence for a while, gazing out at space. The stars blinked impassively back at the two and the black seethed about them, stretching onwards, every direction a descent into silence and easy, crushing death. On Earth, space was beautiful. Just you and your world and the sky. But out here there was no world, and therefore no sky. It was just the quiet and the infinite and you, alone, drifting weightlessly through the nullity.

Jounouchi leaned forwards to Kaiba's neck. “Hey. I'll duel you.”

Kaiba laughed very quietly. “Don't patronise me.”

“Come on, it'll be fun. I bet I can kick your ass this time.”

“No.” Kaiba drew in a long breath of half-recycled air. “Go back to your ship, Jounouchi. Prepare to leave. And tell Yuugi...” His face clouded. “Tell him that, when he wants to face me, I'll be waiting.”

Jounouchi stood and stretched. “If you insist, man. But I think it's going to be a no.” He made for the door, but Kaiba stopped him.

“Wait. Let me see your neck.”

“My what?”

“Your neck. Show me.”

“Why?”

“I'm not going to drill into you while you sleep, idiot. Just show me.”

Jounouchi stared, then shrugged and offered Kaiba his back. He felt his hair being shifted and then three soft points of cold flesh touched against his neck. They massaged a small circle in the centre, tiny little circles, tracing the area of clean, unbroken skin.

“Is that where the port would be?”

“Yes.” Something different was in Kaiba's voice.

“What are you doing?”

“Shut up.”

The fingers left his neck and pushed higher, into his hair, burrowing into his roots. Jounouchi felt his heart against his ribcage. He thought about pulling away. Five cold fingertips pushed against his skull. Breath fell across his neck.

Then he smelt the wound.

Jounouchi had jerked away before he properly registered the scent. Just the image of that hole, the blood, the metal slick with clouded yellow discharge – it couldn't be allowed. He felt sick.

He turned. “Kaiba. I'm sorry, I-”

“Get out.” Kaiba's face was dark. His left eye finally matched its twin. Both were empty. “Get back to your ship and get away from here. I never want to see either of you again.”

---

The Bluebird craft shrank rapidly as it jettisoned away. First it was a little blue fish in the glass of the cockpit, and then a tiny blue smudge, and then it was just a speck of dust floating through the black ocean before them. It hurtled towards another tiny speck, its colours indiscernible, billions of miles away. The speck where Kaiba was born. He watched the ship far longer than, Isono thought, was strictly necessary.

“They don't know anything about me.”

“No, Master Seto.”

“It's pathetic. He flew all the way out here and yet he's too scared to go through with duelling me.” He laughed: a short, ugly, off-key note of laughter. “I can't imagine anything more tragic.”

“...No, Master Seto.”

Kaiba leaned back in his chair and cracked his neck, once. His muscles were wound into tight, internal knots, burning for kinesis. But it could wait. Everything could wait.

“I have work to do,” he said. A grey mist, the kind that rises from the ground after the rains that Kaiba hadn't seen in years, steadily filled his eyes. “I've been far too lax with work on the Mantis implants. If they are to accomplish meaningful progress then they are going to require some test runs. Once I finish the latest design we can begin implementation immediately.”

“Master Seto?” said Isono suddenly, and Kaiba half turned.

“What?”

“It's...” Even with those dark glasses, the expression on Isono's face was perfectly clear. “...Nothing.”

Kaiba turned back to the console. “I need to focus, Isono. Go clean up any mess those two might have left.”

Through the Black

Isono's dawn came in darkness, brought by a digital alarm clock in the otherwise silent expanse of space. He opened his eyes to the same grey plane of ceiling that he awoke to every morning, He did not consider going back to sleep. He did not consider shutting his eyes against that grey that would otherwise surround him for the rest of his waking hours. He only leaned over, shut off the alarm which heralded six AM, and slid sideways out of his bunk to avoid slamming his head into the low metal ceiling.

Unwashed and undressed, Isono walked through the arch that marked the entrance to his room and into what passed for a hallway, connecting three identical minuscule chambers. He spared them a glance, though both were empty. The first was a long neglected mess, laundry and unwanted Duel Monsters cards littering the floor and the bunk, while the second was impeccable and all but empty. Only a bookmarked volume in a language Isono didn't recognise and the latest model of the KC Duel Disk indicated that anybody lived there at all. Strange that a room so devoid of life could be so often frequented, and that a room that overflowed with a teenage boy's possessions hadn't been visited in months.

A metal ladder took Isono up to the deck where he momentarily paused to check the water filtration system was on (it was, obviously) and from there it was only a few short steps to the bridge, to the main control system, and to Seto.

He remained where Isono had left him: prostrate and silent, his naked body stretched out beneath a thin sheet upon the table like something on a mortuary slab. A wide window lay beyond him, revealing the infinite empty night of space beyond, and controls and computers nestled around as though watching over his unconscious form. The tube of an IV wound its way out of the fold of his elbow and another ran from his nose, while several wires affixed to his bare chest fed information on his health to the computer equipment crowding the bed. As Isono drew closer he could discern the rapid, birdlike trembling of Seto's chest and the shivering pulse in his neck, both breathing and heartbeat spurred manically onwards by the unnatural sleep cycle. His skin was tight and an ill, bilelike yellow, worsened in appearance by the thin sheen of sweat that Isono could feel metallic in the back of his throat even from a few feet away. Behind their lids Seto's eyes rolled and twitched as though a vivid, feverish sickness rocked him uneasily through sleep.

He was not, however, sleeping.

Having ascertained that all the readings of Seto's vitals were as they should be, Isono dropped to a crouch to check beneath the table. A hole just big enough to accommodate a man's fist had been bored through the metal beneath Seto's neck and through that hole was fed a thick rubber cable, the wires beneath its thin cover bulging through the surface as though it were some piece of living muscle. It trailed off into a particularly bulky and elaborate mass of whirring, whining screens and buttons, but above the hole it hung suspended, attached to no computer. It reached up to where Seto's neck should be and, as only the briefest touch of fingertips could confirm, Seto's neck still was. The cable ate deep into Seto's skin, burrowing freely into the flesh and feeding the brain within an endless stream of digital information. Isono would have liked to pull it out, but that was not what he was paid for.

Assured of his employer's safety, Isono retraced his steps to the filtration system. Beneath the communal tap lay a shallow bucket and a flannel, both bone dry. Isono gripped the tap with both hands and strained to turn it. After several yanks he managed to coax out a thin stream of water which he watched carefully, studying its steady rise to the black line he had drawn on the side of the tub to mark when a third of the ship's tanks had emptied into it. The line nearly reached, Isono forced the tap off again, leaving himself with a few litres of filtered water. It smelled a little odd, but it would suffice.

Isono then descended the ladder and retreated to his room to properly ready himself for the day. He peered into the small mirror above his sink and found a strange, unfamiliar man staring back at him. Six days' worth of stubble distorted his face and his hair was filthy with grease. This was not a natural state. Disgusted, he plugged the sink and ran the taps until half of the remaining water filled the bowl, and then he set to shave, wash his hair, and scrub a week's worth of dirt from his skin.

We do not need to survive on such a small amount of water, Master Seto, Isono silently told a man who wasn't there. If Seto had brought the ship in for servicing last month then their water tanks wouldn't be functioning at thirty percent capacity like this. Of course, it all got filtered, so the water supply was theoretically endless, but filtration took hours and the energy it ate up made it only reasonable to run once every twenty-four hours. Since Seto spent six out of seven days unconscious it would not have been unreasonable for Isono to ration the water a little less stringently, in which case he would be able to shower and shave on a daily basis, but...

Isono shook his head as he rinsed the hair from his razor and set to the task again, smiling at his reflection. Seto did like to be clean.

Having scrubbed his body to a reasonable standard of hygiene, Isono extracted from its plastic cover his best suit and warily smelt each item of clothing. They each stank of chemical perfume, but they were clean. There had not been enough water for laundry for a long time now.

When Isono left his bedroom he looked almost identically like the man who had set out on this pointless trip with his employer seven months ago. A little darker under the eyes, a little thinner, but overall the same Isono. Seto would not, at least, be shocked by the sight of his right hand man when he awoke. Just to be sure, Isono extracted the dark glasses from his jacket pocket and put them on. Seto did not appreciate slovenliness.

Back on the bridge, Seto slept still, just as he was when Isono left him. Isono brought to Seto's bedside the tub of water and the flannel along with a very nearly empty bottle of soap. He set it up on the floor beside the table and then pulled up a chair, slipping off his jacket and hanging it over the back before taking a seat. He rolled up his sleeves and then emptied the soap into the tub. He swilled it around, content that the water not dangerously cold, and then dipped the flannel and wrung it out. The flannel in one hand, Isono carefully drew the sheet from Seto's naked body with the other, then settled himself into the chair and began to work.

He knew that this routine wasn't necessary. He knew that most bodyguards would consider it inappropriately intimate to physically wash your charge, even if you had been doing it since the boy was ten. He knew that Seto had not said a single word to encourage the activity, but Isono also knew when silence from Seto was really a muted assent, and he knew how much Seto loathed being dirty.

And so he sponged Seto clean with the same perfect, careful tenderness that he had used eleven years ago to cleanse the wounds of a trembling ten year old. He began with Seto's clammy, quivering forehead, then his shoulders, and then by delicate degrees the rest of his malnourished body. He wiped the sweat from the valleys marked by his ribs and took especial care with the shards of bone that made up his hips. He washed with indifferent, clinical care his thighs, his genitalia, and then his legs and feet, the left of which twitched at the attention with involuntary, reflexive spasms.

The body clean, Isono bent beneath the table and turned his attention to the hole that gaped in the back of his neck. It was long healed, but he wiped gingerly around the lip of the wound to clean off any trace amounts of blood and pus that might have collected. It was not a natural orifice. Isono tried not to think about removing the jack and the sight of the deep red abyss that bored through Seto's neck...

The work done, Isono replaced the sheet over Seto's body and emptied the tub into the sink to be eaten slowly up by the filtration system. He paused at the drain, watching the dirty water flow downwards, and wondered absently exactly how efficient the filters were and just how much of his employer's sweat and blood he might have inadvertently consumed over the past seven months on this ship. He was amused to discover the idea didn't bother him. And there was more bleeding to be done yet...

Only years of hard practised obedience and punctuality prevented Isono from procrastinating on his next task. He returned to Seto's side and gave the readings of his vitals one final examination, ascertaining that everything was as it should be, and then he set to work.

He was used to removing the IV and the wires attached to his chest. The feeding tube similarly presented no real challenge, neither in ability nor strength of stomach. Whatever gross intimacy the task required, Isono rose to it unthinkingly. It was his job, after all, to protect his charge, his patient, the boy who was emphatically not his son.

But tubes and blood and sweat were natural in ways that the plug of wires buried within Seto's neck was not, and removing that was not a responsibility Isono would have ever asked for.

Isono pressed a small, well-worn blue button and consequently sent his employer's little digital realm into hibernation. Seto's expression didn't change, as it never did. The line between the virtual and the dream was a thin one. The difficult part was the extraction, even though it would take all of three seconds. Isono sat again in the chair and ensured that his hand was gripping the jack correctly. He held it fast, then looked one last time at Seto's sleeping face.

He looked as restless and troubled as he always did. It was difficult to believe that the experience didn't hurt. Seto had assured him that being connected was painless, that even the surgery for drilling the port only elicited a strange, unpleasant discomfort, but every time Isono studied him he looked for all the world as though someone was cutting his skull open from the inside. But he had to take Seto's word and according to Seto, who would only be frank on the subject in the woozy aftermath of being unplugged before the anaesthetic wore off, the connection was bliss. Isono supposed that it was not something you could understand if you hadn't experienced it for yourself, and he had no intention of doing so. Isono could not easily imagine that sensation, for a mind to skim over a thousand fields of data, to graze the universe, to be connected in an instant to the world entire with all its knowledge distilled into a pure, electric oneness with everything through the thrumming twist of wires driven into your skull. Isono liked the quiet life.

He sighed, braced himself, then pulled out the jack.

Seto immediately exhaled, his body convulsing, his every finger undergoing violent spasms and his heels kicking uselessly against the table. Isono prepared to hold him down, but the paroxysms soon passed, as they always did. Seto's body gave one final shudder and his brow fell into a deep frown, reluctance creasing his young face into an expression somehow even younger, more immature. The skin of his throat shuddered and contracted as he swallowed and swallowed again, then a small, pale tongue flicked out to lick his dry lips. His mouth opened and an odd little suffocated moan escaped from it, like a kitten protesting at its milk being taken away. His back arched as his chest forced another low, plaintive groan through his body, and then his eyes finally opened, which blinked rapidly before immediately falling shut again.

He lay still. The jack hung limp.

Isono leaned forwards. “Master Seto?”

Another very soft sound of protest vibrated through Seto's lips and he shook his head, one hand working uselessly against the sheet in a vain attempt to pull it over his shoulders, clawing for a kind of sleep that even the softest bed couldn't provide.

“Master Seto, you need to wake up now.”

Seto's eyes opened once again, though narrowly, and gazed up at his companion through a heavy haze of lingering sleep. His voice came in a rasp. “Dad?”

Isono suppressed a grim smile. “No, sir,” he said with infinite patience.

Seto's eyes finally focused, albeit resentfully, and he pushed himself onto his elbows.

“It's Sunday?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Right. Another week.” He sounded tired, which Isono would have liked to blame on the six days of self-induced unconsciousness, but he knew that wasn't true. There wasn't much Seto wouldn't give to have Isono plug him back in once more. Except his pride, that is, and that was the only thing he would have to sacrifice.

Seto sat up, wincing as his stiff muscles complained, and let the sheet fall to his waist. Isono silently handed him a small bowl, the size of his palm and full of antiseptic. Seto slipped his fingers into the bowl and extracted from it a small metal disk, a couple of inches across, which he inserted easily into the back of his neck with a strange, inhuman click, covering the port and the wet red tunnel beyond. He rubbed his eyes and face, swallowing yawns, then pulled the sheet from his body and stood. Isono politely turned his attention to the console and began shutting the system down while his employer extracted his clothing from their plastic sheath, hanging above the opposite console. It wasn't strictly procedure to store one's clothes above the navigation controls, but these things hardly mattered when the ship's owner spent most of his time lying naked among the consoles and, besides, nobody but the two of them had been aboard the ship in months.

“Where is Yuugi?” Seto asked, the question his way of indicating that he was dressed. Isono turned back around and slid over to the main console, bringing up on the screen a map of the location of their own ship in relation to Yuugi's small transit craft.

“He's still very far ahead, sir.”

Seto came to sat beside him in the captain's seat, dressed in the same familiar modest black clothing he had been in the habit of wearing these past few years. It was a comforting constant. He stared hard at the map, his gaze drilling into the little red circle that marked Yuugi's position as if he could make the man materialise beside him by sheer force of will.

“Can we go faster?”

“I'm afraid not, sir. In fact, we're in quite dire need of a fuel refill.”

Seto rubbed his eyes again, his voice coming out in an exhausted, irritated sigh. “In which case he'll get another week ahead of us.”

“Even if we didn't stop for fuel, sir, if we keep following him like this we'll be dead in the air long before we reach him.”

“Then cut the power on something else.”

“There is nothing left we can afford to spare, sir.” Isono hesitated for the briefest of moments. “Except the virtual server, that is.”

Seto immediately shook his head. “Forget it. We'll refuel and wait for him to turn back.”

Although he had made the argument fruitlessly a dozen times before, Isono took a breath and tried once again. “Sir, if you sent him a message and told him you were following then I'm sure he'd be content to meet with you.”

“I'm not going to beg for a meeting, Isono,” Seto said with bile overflowing his voice. “If we can't catch up to him then I'll duel him when he comes back to this quadrant. It isn't worth our dignity.”

Isono did not question Seto's definition of 'dignity', not even mentally. Seto's rules were his own, esoteric and private, and Isono had learned to simply accept and not understand them. Four months chasing his rival across the skies for a duel he couldn't win was not a normal person's idea of dignified behaviour. But then, Seto Kaiba, CEO, inventor, genius, prodigy, and a thousand other appellations, was not normal.

“And Mokuba?” Seto said abruptly.

Isono's profession dictated that he remain in control of his emotions at all times, but he couldn't prevent a small sigh.

“Nothing new, sir.” Isono watched Seto for any kind of reaction, but none came. “I could play last week's message, sir?” Similarly, Seto did not seem to act as if he had even heard the message, which was the best cue Isono was likely to get to play the week-old video. And so he did.

“Hey, nii-sama!” Mokuba's face appeared upon the screen in crisp, perfect definition, almost as real as if he had been sitting in the room with them. He looked well, a healthy sixteen year old boy out alone for the first time and enjoying their little corner of space. “I'm sorry this is rushed but I've got to go straight to the New London offices after this and then I've got a party press conference thing... I don't know, it's a thing, there'll be press, you know what they're like. But I just wanted to say hello, and that I'm missing you, and hopefully I can meet you on one of the inner planets if you'll be around there soon? Let me know, okay? Love you. Bye!”

The message ended. Seto stared at the black screen that marked its absence, his face a perfect void. He had sent a reply the moment he received it, but no new response had arrived. The elder Kaiba was not coping well with the knowledge that there were some things in Mokuba's life more important than his brother.

“Shall I play it again?”

“No.” Seto pushed himself away from the desk and stood, stretching his stiff arms and rolling his neck in a series of uncomfortably audible cracks. “Set a course for New London. We might as well, since we're giving up on this wild goose chase.”

“That's at least another month's journey, sir.”

“I know that,” Seto snapped, and Isono didn't argue further. Not because he was paid to be obedient, but because he knew the rare sound of Seto in pain. There wasn't much in the world he wouldn't do to make that note disappear from his employer's voice. He busied himself instead with inputting the preliminary commands to alter their course, letting Seto breathe and stretch out whatever emotions he was dealing with, and when Seto spoke again his voice was clear and even. “Isono. Plug me back in.”

Isono's head turned sharply, not even trying to keep the shock from his face. “But sir-”

“Wake me when Mokuba sends a message. Or when we reach a port. Whichever comes first.”

“Seto... Sir...” Isono swallowed, eyes drifting to the abandoned jack. A tiny, almost unnoticeable amount of blood ringed the ugly lump of metal and wires. “At least have something to eat first. It's not good for you to go so long without eating.”

“We'll be back on land before you know it,” Seto said wearily, not bothering to reassure him, and began to undo the belt he had only a few moments ago put on.

“Sir... That could take months.”

Seto laughed quietly, distantly, as though Isono was not really there. “It will take moments.” He stripped off once again as though the very concept of clothes disgusted him, as if there was nothing he wished for in the whole world except the metal beneath his back and the sheet against his against his skin. As if nothing mattered except the passing of time and the buzzing, thrilling high of technology drilling into his brain. And as Mokuba drifted farther away, and Yuugi disappeared quietly into the edges of space, Isono knew that idea grew closer and closer to reality.