Kojo Suzuki - Spiral

Ando had to restrain himself. “What do you want?”

“Look, I had to take a train and a bus to get here. I think I deserve a warmer welcome than this.”

“Bullshit,” Ando spat.

“Ooh, don’t be mean,” the man said, a smirk playing over his lips.

“Mean? Where do you get off calling me that? Who do you think is responsible for your being here?”

“Listen, I’m grateful to you, I really am. You worked out just as I expected.”

Ando was reminded of just how far this man had manipulated him. In medical school, in their days playing at cryptography, this guy could toss out a code that Ando couldn’t possibly break, and then turn around and immediately crack one Ando had wrung his brain to come up with. Ando had felt annoyed and frustrated, but also somehow inspired by the guy’s cleverness. Not anymore. Now, he just felt used, and insulted. He found nothing to praise in the man.

Ando looked over at Ryuji Takayama, whom he had helped bring back to the world. Ryuji was facing forward, and Ando looked at his profile, wishing he could see inside Ryuji’s head. He wished he knew what this man was thinking. Then he remembered that last October he actually had laid his hands on the man’s brain. Not that it helped him understand any of Ryuji’s thoughts. And because he hadn’t, he’d let Ryuji’s codes lead him into a mess. If he hadn’t performed Ryuji’s autopsy, he would never have become involved.

“Isn’t this better for you, too?” Ryuji said in a patronizing tone.

“I don’t know about that.” That was the truth.

Down by the water’s edge, the little figure stood up and waved at Ando. When he saw Ando make a beckoning motion with his head, the boy came closer, kicking sand as he came.

“Daddy, I’m thirsty!”

Ando offered his son the oolong tea Ryuji had given him. The boy took it and brought it quickly to his lips.

Ando watched his son’s pale throat. He could almost see the cool liquid coursing down the little throat. Living, moving flesh and blood.

Compared to the sweat oiling Ryuji’s face, the droplets of perspiration rolling down the three-and-a-half-year-old boy’s neck were like crystal. Ando could hardly believe they were basically the same fluid.

“Hi there, kid. Want another one? We’re two of a kind, you know,” Ryuji said, fishing around in his bag.

Two of a kind. The phrase stuck in Ando’s craw. It was true, though: the boy and Ryuji had been born of the same womb. Ando found it utterly horrifying.

His son looked at Ryuji and shook his head, then raised his half-finished can of tea and said, “Can I have the rest?”

“Sure, drink up,” said Ando, and the boy went back to the water’s edge, swilling the can. Ando figured the boy wanted to play with the can after it was empty, maybe fill it with sand. Ando yelled after him, “Takanori!”

The boy stopped and turned around. “What, Daddy?”

“Don’t go in the water yet, okay?”

The boy grinned, and turned his back to him again.

Ando didn’t have to stress the point. The child was still afraid of the water, as if he remembered drowning. He probably wouldn’t go into the water of his own accord. Even though he knew that, Ando couldn’t help but be a little overprotective.

“Cute kid.”

Ando didn’t need Ryuji to tell him. Of course Takanori was cute. He was a jewel, an irreplaceable treasure that he’d lost once. A treasure that he’d betrayed the human race to recover. Ando still wasn’t sure if he’d done the right thing.

The reward Sadako had offered him in exchange for his help was to resurrect his son.

Half a year ago, when he and Miyashita had read those words in the letter Sadako had left in his apartment, Ando had found the idea too ludicrous to accept. But that feeling had passed in an instant, and he’d become a firm believer in resurrection. After all, he had Sadako herself as living proof. And he had carefully preserved a sample of his son’s DNA in the form of a lock of hair that he kept on the bookshelf. Without some cells from his son, the resurrection would have been impossible. If it weren’t for the fact that Ando’s hand had brushed against the boy’s head in the sea, catching those few strands of hair in his ring, Takanori’s genetic information would have been lost forever.

Scientifically speaking, it wasn’t difficult. As long as they had a maternal body with the special capabilities-as long as they had Sadako, in other words-modern science could easily take care of the rest.

The first thing to do was for Sadako to inseminate one of her own eggs. With both female and male functions, Sadako was the only one capable of implanting a fertilized egg in her uterine wall with no outside assistance. The next step was to remove this egg and replace its DNA with the DNA of the individual they wanted to bring back to life. True, it took delicate skill to extract the nucleus from one of the cells in Takanori’s hair and switch it with the nucleus of Sadako’s inseminated egg. But for a specialist, it wasn’t all that difficult. Theoretically, it was possible even to resurrect long-extinct dinosaurs, as long as their DNA survived.

The egg with its newly-implanted nucleus was then returned to Sadako’s womb. All they had to do now was wait for it to be born. The fetus crawled out of her womb in about a week, and a week after that, it had grown to the age at which the DNA sample had been separated from the rest of the original body. In Takanori’s case, it was the moment when the drowning boy’s head had touched his father’s hand, leaving a lock of hair behind. He even recovered all of his memories up to the point of his death. It appeared that memories were stored in the intron, the “junk” part of the DNA that doesn’t contain genetic code.

The Takanori that Ando was seeing now was in all respects identical to the son he’d lost. From his habits to the way he spoke, he was just like he used to be. He had all of his memories of his time with his parents, too, and speaking with him felt perfectly natural.

As soon as she’d presented Ando with his son, Sadako had demanded that he earn his reward. Her request was just what Ando had expected. She wanted him to use the same techniques to resurrect Ryuji. Bringing back Takanori was as much practice as payment. From the beginning, it had been Ryuji’s will to be reborn that had allowed him to expel the numerical code from his belly sutures, and then to insert a coded message into the ring virus’s DNA. And he’d gotten his wish. He’d gotten a body, and now he was sitting next to Ando in the flesh. It was he who’d been Sadako’s partner all along, and a formidable one at that.

This was the first time Ando had seen the resurrected Ryuji. As soon as he’d made sure that Ryuji’s DNA had been successfully switched with the inseminated egg’s, Ando had taken his son and disappeared. He told no one where they were going, leaving the rest of the operation in the hands of Miyashita and others. He figured that, with Ryuji’s conception, his role was over. With Ryuji around, there was no further need for him. Sadako’s greatest desire had been to have Ryuji around as a reliable ally.

At exactly what point had she and Ryuji decided to collude? Probably they’d communicated somehow at the DNA level, recognized in each other a valuable co-conspirator, and realized that a partnership would be for their mutual benefit.

But the question didn’t really interest Ando. His concern was monopolized now by the problem of how he was going to raise his son. To give himself time to think about it, he’d resigned from the university two months ago, and spent the time since traveling around and seeing the Japanese countryside. He had no particular aim. He just wanted to live at as far a remove from Ryuji and Sadako as possible.