Chapter 5

Kaito Kobayashi was the only son of a poor family. He had lived his entire life in a small town south of Okinawa City before earning a full scholarship to university. Hard work and excellent grades allowed him to continue his education until he graduated from medical school. He had hoped to earn his father's respect after graduating in the top of his class, but that was not that case. Several years working at one of the local hospitals allowed him to further his career and become a successful doctor. When he applied, and was ultimately accepted to be the head of medicine in the new city of Tenkei, he again hoped for his father's respect. Unfortunately, his father turned his back on his only son, calling him a traitor for leaving his people and country.

Kaito devoted his life to his work after this and had never spoken to his father or family again. Hard work, professionalism and loyalty to his employer continued to be his driving forces. When Tetsuo Sakamoto arrived with Alice several weeks ago and the small child became sick, he had felt honored to be allowed to help her. He worked even harder to find the cause of her coma and to return her to Tetsuo. He had never been told of the relationship between the child and his employer, and he never asked, thinking it was a personal and private matter. The long hours with little progress were starting to get to him, but he continued to look for the cause of the poor child's condition. He would do almost anything to please Tetsuo, whom he looked up to and respected more that any other man he knew.

Then the foreigners arrived. Kaito understood the reason for their arrival and what it really meant to him. He had failed! However, this was the decision of Tetsuo, and he was not asked for his opinion, nor did he expect to be. He provided all the information that was requested and continued to monitor the child, but Kaito was never the same after this. He had failed the only man who had shown him kindness and the small child was now in the hands of the American and his animal friend.

Living on Okinawa, Kaito had been in close contact with Americans all his life. He hated them! They were selfish, self centered and arrogant, but worst of all, they were reckless. He had expected nothing less from this one. As the days passed and the foreigners started to work with his people, this was only confirmed. They took all the work that they had done and shared nothing. They proposed experimenting on the child and somehow talked Tetsuo into agreeing to it. Then they almost killed her.

Kaito couldn't take it any more and confronted the American, Callaway. He had barely been able to say more than two or three words before he had been attacked and the American stormed out. Kaito returned to his office and combed through the data they had gathered during their reckless experiment, bound to prove they had caused the child's near death. He would have them thrown off the case and removed from the city in disgrace. He spent the entire night working on the data looking at every minute detail; he knew the answer was there, he just needed to find it.

Then he'd finally found the cause. The shock and humiliation of his mistake was almost too much to bear. They had not caused the problem at all. He had missed a piece of the puzzle, and now that he saw it, it all made sense. He intended to resign immediately, but needed to make sure the child would be cared for. The others needed to understand the problem and how to correct it before it was too late for her.

When he was ready, Kaito gathered the data that he had found and walked the short distance to the American's office. He stood outside the door for a moment, trying to make himself knock on the door. He was finally able to convince his arm to move, but the knock was so light he doubted that anyone heard it.

The American stood in front of him after opening the door. Kaito bowed as he would to a superior and said, "Please forgive my intrusion. May I speak with you for a moment?"

Todd stepped back and held the door for him and said, "I was just coming to look for you, actually."

Todd hesitated before saying in a friendly tone, "I wanted to apologize for yesterday. There was no reason for me to hit you like that."

"Please, I have come to apologize myself," Kaito said quickly without looking him in the eye. "I acted unprofessionally and falsely accused you. I am truly sorry and ashamed of my behavior."

Todd turned his head in confusion and looked at Sarah for a moment. He hadn't expected this reaction to hitting the man and couldn't understand the change in attitude he was seeing.

Kaito looked at the large wall mounted display and notice the three dimensional display of Alice and the new organ that had grown there from MORFS. His heart sank further and he said, "I see you have found my mistake."

"I don't understand. What mistake are you talking about?" Todd asked as Kaito entered the room and walked over to the board. Sarah put her tablet down and walked over to the board as well. She wanted to find out what was going on. She also wanted to make sure these two men didn't try to kill each other if things got heated again.

Kaito got to the board and started to make gestures on its surface. The image rotated and zoomed into the new organ in finer detail than either Sarah or Todd knew was available on the screen. Then he started to explain, "This is an image of the child from a few days ago, perhaps a week. As you can see, the new organ is quite large." Todd had actually thought that is was small, only about the size of a golf ball, but dark, and very dense. He didn't say anything and allow the other man to continue his speech as Kaito pointed to some stringy fibers that ran the entire length of the girl's neck, along the surface of the organ and continued into her chest.

"This is the Vagus Nerve. It is one of the nerves that make up the autonomic system of all people. It starts in the Medulla Oblongata, the lower brain stem. Its main purpose is to give people a certain level of control over the autonomic systems, things like being able to hold your breath or slow your heart rate." He turned to his tablet and added a new image to the screen. It looked identical to the original image they had on the screen earlier. He rotated and zoomed in this image to match the other one.

"As you can see in this image that was taken yesterday while your field generator was active, the new organ is slightly smaller." The difference in size was almost too small to notice. If they were not looking for it, they would not have seen the difference at all. "If you look closely on the second image you will see that there is a tendril from the Vagus Nerve entering the organ." Both Sarah and Todd stepped closer to the image and looked at the point that the doctor indicated. A small fiber, no larger than a hair, could be seen coming off the larger fibers and entering the organ. After that, it couldn't be see anymore as the organ's tissue density was far too high to be scanned. They looked at the first image from a week ago at the same point but couldn't see the smaller fiber at all.

"I had assumed that the nerve simply passed by the organ and did not interact with it at all. I was wrong," Kaito finally finished explaining.

Todd was the first to reply to the new information. "But I don't understand how this has anything to do with her heart?"

Kaito added another image to the screen from his tablet. This one was the reading from her heart monitor, and showed a normal sinus rhythm. The organ was also back to its original size. As he played the image forward the organ shrank and the heart monitor showed several spikes, then it faltered and stopped beating.