“Hiro!”
“Yeah?”
A few long moments of silence passed. Then Aunt Cass cried out again.
“Hiro!”
“What?”
Hiro snorted a little. He loved to play this game. He knew that he wasn’t nearly as funny as he liked to think he was, but his brother wasn’t around to smack him one for being an annoying little pest. He could actually hear Aunt Cass grizzle as she was forced to climb the stairs and poke her head through the Hamada brothers’ door.
“Hiro,” she said, hanging on the door knob and sighing exasperated, “Hiro, sweetie, when I call you that means I want to talk to you.”
“Sorry, Aunt Cass,” Hiro said, sounding not very apologetic as he kept his eyes on the screen of his PC.
Aunt Cass sighed again, like she didn’t know why she even bothered, and leaned against the doorframe. “I don’t suppose you know where your brother is.”
Hiro shook his head side to side. “Nope.”
“He knows to call me when he’s going to be late for dinner, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah, probably.”
Aunt Cass stood there for a few more moments, her annoyed hum coming close to a growl, and then she turned to leave, calling over her shoulder, “Well, could you give him a ring? Tell him that it’s the po-lite thing to do, when one is coming home late?”
“Sure,” Hiro chirped, and promptly forgot as soon as the door closed again.
It wasn’t until about half an hour later that Hiro managed to rip his gaze away from the monitor long enough to realise that he was starving. His stomach started to gurgle and grouch like never before, and he stared at the time on his wall clock, confused and irritated, wondering just what the hell his brother was doing that was taking him so long.
He picked up his phone and called, like he should’ve done a while ago (but Aunt Cass didn’t need to know that). As it rang, he shoved a few stale crackers in his mouth, just to stave off the hunger.
He raised an eyebrow at his phone as it started to play Tadashi’s very mature, very boring voice mail greeting. Hiro groaned and left his message after the beep.
“Hey knucklehead. We’re starvingsoooo we’re gonna go ahead and eat dinner without you if you don’t come home in like… ten seconds. The time it takes me to go downstairs and convince Aunt Cass to just serve dinner without you already… I’m sure you’re really busy being chuffed at the way your legendary,” – he couldn’t have said the word more sarcastically – “robotic nurse can put a Band-Aid over a scraped knee now, but – come on man, it’s almost nine o’clock. You should’ve finished up hours ago, so what gives? People work themselves to death, y’know– literally. Consider taking a break every once in a while man, geez.”
Hiro put his phone down again, resting it beside his right hand as it returned to the mouse to scroll relentlessly. But it didn’t take another couple of minutes for the phone to start buzzing.
The caller ID read ‘loser nerd’. “But that could be anybody,” Hiro murmured to himself, laughing.
He answered smoothly, leaning back in his chair and smirking. “It’s chicken wings,” he tormented his brother. “I can smell it from here and it burns in my nose so good. Me and Aunt Cass are gonna split them all between us. You may as well just drop by a Happy Mart or something at this rate – pick up all of the sushi no one wanted today.”
He waited smugly for his brother’s retort, his reprimand, his explanation. But Hiro’s smile faltered as he kept holding the phone to his ear, listening only to an unnerving quiet. He pulled the phone away and checked that he hadn’t accidentally switched off the volume or something stupid, but he could still hear some things on the other end. Like the distant rush of cars. The chime and heavy roll of a passing tram.
“Bro? Are you… on the street? Are you OK?”
Hiro frowned, tried to listen more closely. He could hear breathing. But not like… normal person breathing. It was heavy, ragged, concentrated breathing. Like a lot of effort was being put into it. Strained little groans arose with each inhale, causing shivers to crawl at the back of Hiro’s neck.
“Arrre you just trying to creep me out, or…?”
He didn’t get his answer. Tadashi had hung up on him after that.
Aunt Cass came through the door again a bit later. She sighed, resigned, carrying a plate of her infamously spicy chicken wings, which she placed in front of Hiro. “I couldn’t wait,” she announced guiltily. Yeah, Hiro could see that. From the way her eyes were still watery, and the way the skin around her lips had reddened and swollen just a little. She handed over some cutlery, and a napkin that she was convinced Hiro was going to need to finish his meal. She must’ve made them extra good.
“Heard from your brother yet?” she asked.
“Yeah, actually.” Hiro grabbed his phone and stared at it. No new messages, no missed calls. “He called me around nine, but he didn’t say anything. He just sorta… breathed at me.”
Aunt Cass’ face scrunched up with confusion. “Breathed at you?”
“Yeah. Breathed at me.”
“That doesn’t sound like him.”
Hiro burst out laughing then, despite his nerves, because it was just the most ridiculous response she could’ve given. “Well, he sounded like he was on the street, so.” Hiro shrugged. “Maybe he’s walking back? Getting some fresh air?”
Aunt Cass stared ahead of herself, not looking at anything in particular. There was a distant and worried look about her. Finally, she uttered, “Could you call him again, sweetie?”
“Uh, yeah, sure,” Hiro murmured, calling his brother right then and there. She waited, but no one picked up, and Hiro left a very perfunctory message to call him back. “It’s OK,” he assured her, “he did this last time. He missed the call and then he called me right back.”
Aunt Cass hung around for a few minutes while Hiro dug into his dinner, occasionally stopping to wipe his hands and his leaking eyes and nose. But Tadashi didn’t call back.
He finished his dinner and Tadashi still hadn’t called back.
Aunt Cass picked up Hiro’s empty plate to take back downstairs, and Hiro could see in her distracted gaze that she was thinking. That she was anxious. “Aunt Cass, I’ll keep calling,” he promised her, and she tentatively smiled her thanks and excused herself from the room.
“Come on, you asshole,” Hiro growled as he took his phone to his ear and called his brother yet again. “Whereare you?”
God, it was eleven o’clock now. Hiro had already called all of Tadashi’s nerd friends – the ones with the weird names who seemed oddly at ease with the fact that they were all total nerds. He called all four of them and asked if they knew where his brother was, hoping that Tadashi would be somewhere in the background, but they all seemed just as alarmed as Hiro. The best information he got out of anyone was Wasabi; he’d last seen Tadashi around seven o’clock, still at the Institute, when he packed up and went home and warned Tadashi not to overdo it.
Hiro groaned. Of course his brother was still at SFIT, always tinkering with that stupid robot, like he was going to prevent global annihilation. He really was going to work himself to death.
He passed on the news to Aunt Cass that Tadashi was probably (almost definitely) still at SFIT, and had probably gotten himself locked in the robotics lab or something embarrassing like that. She looked tired, but she still grabbed her keys and grabbed a coat and told Hiro that she’d be back soon as she headed out to her old pick-up truck. The things she did for her nephews.
Hiro kept calling Tadashi, leaving messages that became more and more frantic. It was so late that, on any other night, Tadashi would’ve been in bed already. But he wasn’t even home yet.
It got so late that Hiro would’ve been in bed already.
“You stupid, stupid, stupid,” Hiro muttered, calling again for the umpteenth time, and he froze as he heard something. Not on the phone, but… downstairs.
He lowered the phone, away from his ear. He leaned around his bedroom door. He could faintly hear a… ringing. A cell phone ringing. It stopped ringing the second Hiro’s call cut and went to voice mail.
Tadashi was home.
Hiro ran down the stairs, rounding corners as smoothly as a race car, and he barrelled into the darkened café area at full speed. He almost slammed right into the glass door that Tadashi had left wide open, strangely. He closed it for him.
“Bro,” Hiro gasped, and he was half-laughing, half-choking with relief. “Oh my God, bro. Where were you? I’ve called you like a billion times – why didn’t you pick up? Huh?” He shoved playfully at Tadashi’s arm, just so happy to see him again, and his brother swayed like he’d been pushed harder than he had been. “And what was with that weird breathing you did?”
Tadashi opened his mouth and a strangled, hissing moan escaped his throat. It sounded… just so over-the-top stupid that it made Hiro laugh.
“That’s real creepy, bro. Make that your voice mail greeting. Hey listen.” He slapped Tadashi on the arm, just in passing, and he walked around him, pulling out his phone again. “You go on ahead OK – I’ve gotta call Aunt Cass and tell her to come back. She went looking for you at your nerd school. Not that she would’ve been able to get in, probably, but she doesn’t have to worry about that any–”
Hiro started at a sudden, sharp grating noise behind him. He turned to see that his brother had… walked into a table. Just… walked straight into it. Hiro supposed the room was dark and it was hard to make out where things were, but… really?
“Have you been drinking or something?” Hiro muttered, more to himself than to his brother as he watched him change his direction slightly and keep shuffling forward. That was a good word for the way he was moving at the moment… shuffling. One little step at a time. He pitched forward every now and again, stumbling uncoordinated.
His reflexes looked… slow.
Hiro called Aunt Cass. As the phone rang, he watched, concerned, while his brother tried to navigate through a room of tables and chairs with about as much grace and agility as a toddler. A drunk toddler. He bumped into tables like he couldn’t plan ahead of time to walk around them.
“…Yeah, Aunt Cass?” he said quietly into the phone. “He’s back… He’s… acting really weird…”
It was only then that Hiro realised his brother hadn’t actually said anything yet. He hadn’t said a single word all night.
“Just come home,” he said quickly, and ended the call. He put his phone back in his pocket and stared after his brother, uncomprehending. Scared.
“Tadashi?” he called. “You’ve been real quiet all night, bro… Is… everything OK?”
Tadashi didn’t respond. He didn’t even give any indication that Hiro had been heard at all.
“Tadash…?”
Hiro followed after him, slow and hesitant. The way his brother moved… Hiro was reminded of all those monster films he’d watched when he was younger. Of those creatures who lumbered and crawled and twitched and lunged and staggered about the place. It was such an unnatural gait to see on his brother. It was so eerie. Just watching him move like that made the air feel stale and cold.
And there was a smell. A smell like… burning hair.
Tadashi got to the bottom of the stairs. He lifted his leg, couldn’t place it on the first step, and he fell forward. A muted crack broke his fall, and Hiro felt every nerve in his body singe with panic.
“Tadashi!”
Tadashi grunted, and it was like a delayed reaction.
Hiro rushed up behind his brother, forcing himself to wrap numb arms around his waist, but he wasn’t strong enough to lift him up.
He jerked away when his brother suddenly raised his head on his own. He looked as though he were about to pick himself back up, but then he flung out one arm and gripped a higher step. He dug his nails in – really dug them in – and dragged his full weight up a few steps. He flung out his other arm and did it again, without the use of his legs.
He was… He was crawling up the stairs.
He crawled up so far that Hiro could now see the small, smeared patch of red on the third step. From where Tadashi had smacked his head.
Hiro trembled. He put a hand over his mouth because he couldn’t be sure he wasn’t going to be sick.
Something was wrong with Tadashi. Something was so wrong.
That’s not my brother.
Hiro wondered if he was going into shock. He honed in on the minute details. Horrific details. Whispered, wheezy groans. The hard knock of slow footsteps on the floorboards upstairs. The shadows on the wall as his brother… that thing crossed the light source. The noises of plates breaking and cupboards opening and food slopping to the floor.
Hiro followed it. The impulse went against every fibre of his being, which was trying to abandon all reason and logic and lock into survival mode, but he wouldn’t run, not yet. He had to… check. He needed a closer look at it.
He was shaking, but he was quiet as he ascended the stairs. He came into the kitchen and it was a mess. The fridge was left wide open and so much food and shards and things littered the floor. Hiro found himself staring at a packet of partially thawed mince that had been bitten into… Hiro couldn’t tell if it was blood on the frozen edges, or if it was just the red of the meat, but…
Hiro jumped as more things broke upstairs. He went up another flight, tense, and it suddenly occurred to him that he might want to grab something and hold it up for his defence. He armed himself with a vase and he slowly stepped into his bedroom, where the thing was now roaming aimlessly…
Only… It wasn’t quite aimlessly. It stumbled around in the middle of the room and, under the light like that, Hiro didn’t know how he could’ve mistaken it for his brother before. It looked like him, but… at the same time, it looked nothing like him. It was so… pale. The skin looked sickly and grey and shiny. There were small branches of blue and purple veins blossoming out from underneath his shirt and onto his neck and down his arms. Even beneath his brother’s cap, Hiro could see that the eyes were all wrong. They were round and blank and clouded over with a misty white. It’s jaw shuddered and rolled around, grazing at the air like… like…
A zombie?
Hiro hid behind the door, out of it’s sight, as it wandered over to Tadashi’s desk. So hesitantly, so clumsily, it collapsed onto Tadashi’s chair. It turned slowly to Tadashi’s computer. It… lifted it’s hands and banged them expectantly on the keyboard. It stopped and stared at the screen, and made shrill noises when the screen didn’t flicker to life, because it was off.
It was like… It was trying to imitate Tadashi’s routine. It was trying to be him.
He’d forgotten to stay hidden. The thing noticed Hiro and made a run for him, and Hiro shrieked to discover he was cornered. The thing impersonating Tadashi had it’s arms out, as if to hug him or strangle him, but Hiro lashed out before he could know which one it was. He felt a definite break in one of the arms that he struck out at, with the vase, but he didn’t stop – even he felt hot sick trickle up his throat, he just ran, down the stairs and out the door.
He was running to the Institute.
By the time he arrived at the green, well-lit lawn of the robotics labs, Hiro was sweating and shaking and out of breath.
Well, he thought to himself, feeling a little less hysterical now and a little more like he was dying, that’s one way to calm down.
He was lucky enough to catch a student as they were just leaving the building. Hiro did his best impression of a nerd and made up some sob story on the spot about having left his unfinished project that was due tomorrow inside, and it was enough for the student to take pity on him and let him into the building. Hiro had only set foot in there once or twice, but he could still remember where his brother’s private work area was.
Not that he’d needed to. Out of a long corridor of private workrooms, Tadashi’s was the one whose door was still open. Wide open.
He shivered, approaching slow and cautious, and he peered in through the glass, tapping it softly to un-frost it. Hiro felt his stomach drop.
The room was a bit of wreck towards the back. There were… signs of struggle, forensic people would probably say. Tools and boards and stationery were scattered across the floor, and some tables looked like they’d been kicked, or at least nudged until a substantial amount of stuff had fallen off them. Everything was so cluttered. And Tadashi liked to keep his space clean.
What happened here…?
He wandered inside the room, flicking the light on and taking a better look around. Two black dots blinked at him, and Hiro just about jumped out of his goddamn skin when he realised the robotic nurse was right there and had been there the entire time.
“Christ,” Hiro yelped, clutching at his poor heart. “Jesus…”
The robot blinked again. It was just standing there, perfectly visible now, but it had blended into the white walls so well moments before. “I appear to have, frightened you,” the robot remarked.
Hiro closed the door, because the robot’s voice was loud, even though he was confident no one else was on the floor anymore. “Yeah, you sure did,” Hiro grumbled. He stood before the robot and stared up at him. “What… What did my brother say your name was?”
“Hello. I am Baymax, your personal–“
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Hiro waved him off irritably. “Baymax, why are you just…” He made big, frantic gestures at him. “Standing there, like that, in the dark?”
“I am waiting, for repairs.”
“Repairs?”
“Tadashi is, repairing me.”
“Wait, Tadashi?” Hiro’s heart sputtered in his chest. He tried to keep calm. “Baymax, where’s Tadashi?”
“I do not know.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“He did not say, after he was revived.”
“He… Wait, what?” Hiro gazed up into Baymax’s cameras, transfixed. “What do you mean revived?”
“I, revived him.”
Hiro turned and threw a foot into a nearby trashcan, shooting it into the wall, shouting out his frustrations and overwhelming terror. “Yeah I heard you! You revived him – tell me what you revived him FROM!”
“He went into, cardiac arrest. I, resuscitated him, using my in-built defibrillators.”
Hiro shook his head, his mouth falling open. He could feel himself start to cry. This was all too much and nothing was making any sense.
“What,” he breathed shakily, one hand curling into his hair and pulling. “What…?”
“I can, show you,” Baymax said, and the robot looked down at his belly. Hiro could only helplessly watch as some recorded footage started playing of his brother. Hiro could see behind him, through the window, that the sky was only just starting to darken.
He was wearing the exact same clothes as that monster.
Hiro couldn’t quite focus, but he forced himself to try. It was hard to hear exactly what his brother was saying, but he sounded really pissed off as he rummaged through his tools. He was muttering something about “stupid first-years” and “soldering iron” and “safety hazard” and Hiro got it. That instant and painful realisation.
He understood what had happened just as suddenly and violently as his brother had been electrocuted.
It was the most horrible thing Hiro had ever watched, and he’d watched a lot of fucked up films in his time. But this was his brother. This was real life. Tadashi wasn’t an actor; he didn’t just do a twitchy jig and maybe hurt his neck a little and get up again off-screen. Tadashi reacted in the exact way one would expect someone with a few hundred or so volts of electricity coursing through their body to react, and he dropped to the floor with a heavy thud, splaying tools everywhere.
Hiro’s nerves screamed urgently as he had to watch, from Baymax’s perspective, as the robot slowly peered down and took in the scene. He had to stand there and watch and wait as Baymax announced that he was scanning now, and then he announced – in the most ridiculous, calm, unhurried voice – that Tadashi had gone into cardiac arrest and needed resuscitation.
The robot bent over Tadashi, rubbed his glowing palms together, and said, “Clear.”
Baymax shocked him. And then he did it again.
“Clear.”
And then again.
“Clear.”
And again.
And again.
And again.
For over ten minutes, Hiro watched the robot shock his brother well over a hundred times. He’d never witnessed anything so horrific in his entire life. His eyes were wide and streaming with tears, his hands were clasped over his mouth to stop himself from screaming out. He cried, deep in the back of his throat, distress mixed with wretchedness mixed with revulsion, as he watched his brother die and stay dead.
And Baymax just… kept trying to resuscitate him.
There was something wrong with his coding. Baymax didn’t call a time of death. He didn’t know that time was precious; that after four minutes of failed attempts, the organs were already shutting down. That the body had been starved of oxygenated blood for too long. That the patient was as good as dead.
But Baymax… kept going.
And then – almost twelve minutes later – Baymax impossibly started up Tadashi’s heart again. But it was clear, even as Baymax stood back and insisted that his creator was better now and that he was ready for his own repairs, that the damage had been done. Tadashi moved again. But he moved like he was still dead.
He should’ve stayed dead.
The footage cut out then, and Hiro fearfully raised his head to stare into Baymax’s ever-neutral, guiltless bell-face. Hiro stared at him like he was dangerous.
“You killed him,” Hiro said, barely a whisper. “You killed…”
“I saved Tadashi,” Baymax reported back, correcting him. And with such unfaltering confidence. “I saved Tadashi.”
Hiro backed away from the robot slowly, shaking his head. Everything about this was so harrowing. “It was a mistake,” he cried softly, wiping the back of his sleeve across his dripping wet face. “You’re a mistake… He never should’ve built… What have you done?”
“Once Tadashi makes repairs, I will help a lot of people.”
“No,” Hiro sobbed. “Fuck – no.” He sat on the floor, taking pressure off his wobbly legs, and he curled in on himself and sobbed some more. “This isn’t happening,” he told himself, holding his head. “This isn’t real. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening…”
“I saved Tadashi. I saved Tadashi.”
That footage… It was going to haunt him for the rest of his life.
“Clear… Clear… Clear… Clear… Clear…”