The safest course of action, Sousuke knew, would be to keep out of sight until the reinforcements arrived. Then, he could rescue Kaname from the trailer.
But Sousuke couldn't shake nagging questions he had about the nature of the torture Kaname could be experiencing. He thought about the girl he had saved in Siberia two weeks earlier.
Doctors had said the girl was under the influence of alkaloids, indicating exposure to truth serums. Sousuke knew very well what kind of mental scars those kinds of drugs could leave behind.
He thought about Kaname's angry scowl, her complaining face, her pensive look, her beaming smile. Each was great in its own way.
And all would be thoroughly lost to the inhumane experiments!
Her eyes would sink, her mouth would droop open, and liquids of various colors and consistencies would leak from her orifices as hallucinations tormented her. She would claw at her own skin until it was gone.
Kaname would live, but what kind of life would it be?
Following this line of thought, impatience surged through Sousuke.
His first impulse was to spring into action to save Kaname. This surprised and disturbed him.
A gunshot broke his train of thought.
It seemed to have come from inside the trailer.
The source was most likely a medium-caliber pistol. Sousuke's well-honed survival instincts told him that rushing into the fray was not the best idea.
Sousuke had the potential to make a bad situation a whole lot worse. If he were to act foolishly now, it could endanger his allies' rescue operation—that is, if there was a rescue operation at all.
Fluttering up from the dustiest depths of his stomach, an odd feeling gripped Sousuke. It was such an old and nostalgic sensation, he didn't even remember what it was
While Sousuke's war of reason raged, a second gunshot rang out.
Disregarding his mission priorities for the first time in his life, Sousuke sprang out from behind the dumpster.
Two minutes before the first gunshot, Kaname freaked out inside the cramped cylinder.
"Calm down! Open your eyes and look at the image!" barked the doctor.
Ignoring the doctor, Kaname continued to flail wildly. She was a mess—sweating profusely, breathing heavily, and not hearing much over the constant buzzing in her ears.
"Shut up! Let me out of here!" Kaname was not crazy, just mad. She didn't know what was going on, but a girl could play lab rat only for so long before it made her really nuts.
"Let me go back, or I'll break this stupid machine!" yelled Kaname, thrashing so wildly that the goggle display slipped off her head.
"Dammit! Cut it out!"
The little bed Kaname was on slid out of the tube. Visibly irritated, the doctor came over to Kaname and held the girl's head down.
"I tried to do this the nice way, you brat!"
"Nice? You bitchy old hag!"
"Excuse me?"
"You heard me! You remind me of my middle school science teacher, who did too many experiments and forgot she was married. And she was a taskmaster, too!"
While she ranted, Kaname thrashed so violently that she loosened her restraints. The doctor reached to tighten them.
But the woman's grip slipped. In the struggle, somehow Kaname's right arm shot up off the table. The upward momentum brought her elbow right into the doctor's face. Staggering backward, the woman smacked her head on a shelf and collapsed.
Kaname spent a moment wondering whether the woman was dead before she realized her right hand's new freedom. She managed to free her other arm, which made unbinding her legs much easier.
