Bloom and Scatter [Free! Zombie AU]

The Payoff - Part 1

They sat shoulder to shoulder in silence.

The wall behind Rin's back had grown warm with their shared body heat and his head was tilted back so he could count the number of cracks in the ceiling. He listened quietly as Makoto's laboured breathing eventually drew out into long inhales that puffed quietly through the mouthpiece of his gas mask. His hands had stopped shaking and he had put the note down some time ago. His hand was in Rin's, grip loose now where it had been tight before.

"Hey," Makoto said softly after the longest time, "What do you think is inside?"

Rin looked at him, and then at the items in his lap.

"The USB?"

"No, the CD. People don't really use CDs anymore, do they?"

"Huh," Rin thought about it, "You're right."

Makoto fell quiet again, and Rin watched him pull away to run his long fingers across the plastic of the soft CD case. The top of the CD was shiny and bronze – one of those blank ones you could burn music into – and some illegible numbers and uppercase letters had been scribbled on in black permanent marker, labelling it. It looked like an entry in some sort of catalogue.

"Let's use one of the computers," Makoto said, disrupting Rin's train of thought.

Rin scowled thoughtfully, about to give him an earful about wasting time, but he could sense the determination in Makoto after all that had happened, and who knew if they would be able to get electricity in the future? Besides which, how long could checking it out take? The CD probably just contained photos or music or something ("audio files" and "zombie dissection activity" was something Rin tried very hard not to think about). Maybe if Makoto's curiosity was sated once and for all, he could finally put this behind him and they could finally move on, preferably towards Iwatobi.

"Fine," Rin said reluctantly, "But we can't spend too much time here, got it?"

"Sure," Makoto replied distractedly, which made Rin's scowl deepen but he held his temper in check.

They got to their feet and Rin made sure to close the door to the ward firmly behind him, sparing one last glance at the body on the table before he wrapped the broken chain loosely around the handle and appropriated the crowbar for himself. The walked back through the corridor with the ransacked offices and tested out each machine they found. After about six computers and an hour, they had taken a monitor from the reception area, a CPU that actually had a disk drive from the corner office, and they'd plugged it into the only room with more than one working electrical outlet.

"I swear to god, if it blue screens on me," Rin growled as it finally began to start up. He felt Makoto squeeze his shoulder encouragingly and his ire subsided for the moment.

The display finally paused on the login screen.

"User name and password?" Rin echoed, a cold chill of rage freezing his blood. He was going to destroy this computer, "Are you fucking kidding me."

"Calm down," Makoto said – and when had he recovered? – grabbing Rin's raised fist with both hands and forcing it down, "There's a post-it on the wall. See? Doctor Iwamoto's login details. We're okay."

"This had better be worth it," Rin warned, and Makoto wasted no time in keying in the information. A tense moment passed during which the computer was parsing through the data and Makoto breathed an audible sigh of relief when it finally switched to the desktop. Wordlessly, Makoto inserted the CD and waited for it to load.

"Movie files," Rin noted as Makoto clicked through the files in the CD. He eyed the file names, "You're lucky this wasn't full of cat videos or 'Holiday in Hawaii 2005' or anything like that."