The Wolf -Chapter X: So It Goes; Part 2

8.
The first rays of dawn struck her face, and Katy woke up.
Her body was cramped, and she stretched for a full minute before getting up. She wandered into the kitchen and found a coffee pot under the sink, put a filter, some coffee grinds and water in it, and turned it on. She leaned on the counter and waited as the room filled with the smell of coffee, and the sound of boiling water.
She searched in the cabinets for a mug, found one, and set it by the pot.
Katy wandered into the living room, looking around at this place that had been her infrequent hangout like something from another world. Not a whole lot had changed here since her stoner days, even the occupant and ex-lover.
She squirmed at the thought of how desperate she’d been back then.

Had it crossed her mind that she was breaking the law? That what she was doing was illegal enough to get her imprisoned for a very long time? The thought was distant; so many strange things had happened that the normal consequences did not feel applicable.
Of course it begged the question, what would happen if the police came right then? There was nothing keeping Mike from telling the cops except his copious amounts of hidden weed, and even that was a stretch of an excuse. It was a fifty-fifty chance that the cops would find it.
But still, what about the consequences? She’d been an accessory to murder and was now harboring a killer. It had been self defense, right? Except for the whole arm breaking and punching and skull crushing death thing, and not to mention the eventual burning desecration of their corpses…
Jesus Christ, how had he even done that?
Katy poured herself some coffee and decided to take it black. She took a sip, disgusted but comforted, and walked out into the living room.
From behind the curtains, she could see a silhouette standing on the porch.
Oh shit! she thought to herself as she grabbed the gun and made her way to the front door. She counted to three and opened it up, then jumped out and aimed for the head-
-and then she sighed and lowered the gun, grabbing her chest. She said, “What the fuck!”
He looked at her, eyebrows raised. Between his middle and index fingers he clutched a lit cigarette. “Good morning to you, too,” he said.
Katy laughed, putting the gun under her belt.
“I didn’t know you smoked, Adrian,” she said with a smile.
“Old habits die hard,” he said.
“So, okay, how the fuck are you-”
And then there came the sound of a police siren, and Katy pulled out her gun.
“Oh shit!” she yelled, “Mike must’ve ratted us out!”
“Katy, put the gun away,” Adrian said dismissively.
“What are you, kidding? They’re gonna come out guns blazing, Mike will have told them we’re armed!”
“Just, Katy-”
A police car appeared over the hill speeding towards them, and as Katy made to turn the gun in that direction, Adrian grabbed her hand and turned her towards him, then put his other arm around her shoulder and drew her into a deep kiss.
She struggled against it for a moment, and then the car passed them by.
Adrian let her go, and Katy just stared at him.
“What the fuck, what if they had been coming after us?”
Adrian smiled. “That’s not going to happen, trust me. Dade’s a very good friend for us to have right now. Hey, is that coffee?”
He walked back inside, and Katy was still left flabbergasted.
She followed him in, locking the door behind her.
“Okay so, I need you to do me a favor here,” she said. “I need you to explain to me exactly what’s going on right now, because I’ve been playing second man for the past day or so and it’s really starting to fuck with my brain. Yesterday you were bleeding on the floor, stabbed enough times to make a ‘Nam man wince, and now you’re smoking cigs on the porch and drinking coffee like you weren’t just halfway past dead a few hours ago. How the hell is that even possible?!”
Adrian shrugged. “Dade fixed me, I guess.”
“He-” Katy rubbed her head, “Okay, fine, I’ll take that. I don’t see how, but in the history of crazy fucked up nonsensical things to have happened to me in the last twenty-four hours, I’d say you getting healed with a rock and a magnet are pretty low on the list.”
“A rock?” Adrian asked, drinking his coffee. “Wow, that really doesn’t make sense.”
“No, it doesn’t!” Katy shook her head. “And yesterday, what you did to those two guys! What the hell was that all about?”
Adrian took a considerably longer sip of his coffee.
“I don’t know,” he said. “They were trying to hurt you so I made sure that wouldn’t happen. I don’t remember the specifics.”
Katy gave a dry laugh. “Well I sure as shit remember the specifics, Adrian! You crushed one guy’s arm into noodle, punched the other guy’s arm clean off, and then as a finisher you turned both their skulls into a fine red mush! And then you set the whole place on fire by snapping your fingers, just for shits and giggles.”
Adrian said, “Wow, really?” He took another sip. “Guess I’ve still got it.”
“Still got it? Still got what?!”
Adrian shrugged.
“AGGHHH!” Katy screamed, throwing her arms into the air. She turned on him again, pointing her finger. “That’s the kind of shit that has to stop. This wink-wink-nudge-nudge “I know what I’m talking about” crap that leaves me ENTIRELY clueless as to what the blazing blue fuck is going on in your brain!” She ran her hand through her hair and sighed, saying, “I’m still really pissed at you, by the way. Calling me in the middle of the night to break up with me is one thing, but you could have at least kept the gratuitous foreplay until after you hung up. I have done a lot of shit that I am not proud of, and I have done a lot of men that I am not proud of, but Jesus fucking Christ, that is by far the most whole-heartedly bullshit fucked up thing that any guy has ever done to me.”
Adrian was silent. Katy stared at him expectantly.
“Well?” she said, shaking her head. “You have anything to say?”
He took a breath and said, “It’s been a weird month.”
Katy sighed. “I’m glad you’re alive, Adrian. And despite everything, I still care about you. I’m not saying I forgive you, I’m saying I’m willing to if you give me a reason. And a damned good one at that.”
Adrian nodded. They stood in silence for a few moments.
Katy said, “Can you pass me one of those smokes?”
“I didn’t know you were in the habit,” Adrian said, passing the pack.
She shrugged. “Like you say, they die hard.”
They leaned against the kitchen counter, and Adrian lit her cigarette. She took a deep breath of it, exhaled, and said,
“You’re not Adrian, are you?”
He smiled. “What gave it away?”
“You have people skills. And you actually know what’s going on. By the way, that kissing me on the porch thing? Really hot.”
He laughed, but didn’t say anything.
Eventually he asked, “So when did you start smoking?”
“Fifth grade. My sister’s Lolita side got me into it, among other things.”
He scratched his ear and said, “Wait a second, I thought you said you lied about your sister’s MPD?”
Katy looked at him curiously, then looked out at the wall. “Did I?” She shook her head, and then snapped her fingers. “Oh! Fuck. Yeah, I guess I did.”
“Is…that something you do often?”
“What?”
“Lie, and forget?”
She shrugged. “I have issues with people knowing about my personal life.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“My personal life or my issues?”
“Whichever.”
She shrugged. “I’m too frazzled to get into either right now.” Katy took a long drag on her cigarette, then looked at it and said, “So when did you get into the habit?”
“1973. And I guess 1934, but that was different. Everyone smoked back then.”
Katy did not move for a moment, then turned and said, “You’re fucking with me, right? Because all of this,” she said, waving her hands in front of her, “is already more than enough to blow my mind into bug juice.”
“If only I was,” he said.
Katy shook her head, then walked away. “Holy fuck, Adrian!” Then she turned around and said, “Er, wait, that’s not your name, is it?”
“Akashi.”
Katy dropped her cigarette, then blinked. “Why does that sound familiar?”
He shrugged and watched as she picked it back up.
“Akashi,” she said. “So I take it you haven’t always been in Adrian’s head?”
He smiled. “I was alive in my own body for a very long series of lives before I wound up here.”
“In your own body as in, like, a normal human being?”
“Yup.”
She shook her head. “So how does the whole werewolf thing make sense?”
“That’s a hard one to explain.”
“But you do know the answer, right?”
“At least half of it, yes.”
“Care to fill me in?”
Akashi said, “So far as I understand, I’ve only had two really important lives. My first one, and this one.”
Katy waited for more, but nothing came. “So…?”
“I can only assume there’s a connection between the two. All the previous lives feel like…filler. The details come in brief spurts which have little substance, and they all seem rather pointless. But my first life…the one where I was Akashi, that one comes to me in very vivid detail. I don’t remember all of it, though.”
“Why wouldn’t you remember all of it?”
He shrugged, “I can only guess that’s the other half of the answer.”
Katy put out her cigarette. “I really hope this is a bad dream. I mean, shit like this doesn’t happen to people. It’s fiction. Movie stuff, you know? I mean if you were, like, Lon Chaney, Jr. over here, telling me about werewolves and past lives and whatever, I’d be at least a little more inclined to say, yeah, okay, I guess that makes sense. But you’re just some guy. And I mean, you look like Adrian. That’s just fucked up. He’s the guy I know, he’s the one I fell in love with. I thought when my sister died that I wouldn’t have to deal with crap like this anymore. I mean, fuck, she had a good six established personalities. You know how hard it is to tell them apart? Same voice, same face…” Katy looked at Akashi and said, “Different eyes, though. That was the main thing. Not different colors necessarily, just… a different look. Looking at you, I’d swear you have red eyes. But they’re brown, just like Adrian’s. And I can look at you and tell myself, yes, those are brown eyes. But I look away, and it just seems like… a glint. A red glint. And I have to do a double take and check and make sure.”
Akashi watched her for a few moments, wanting to reach out and touch her face. But he blinked, and he looked away.
He asked, “How did your sister die?”
Katy stammered. “Uh, well… I guess, the short story would be she killed herself.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It was like three years ago. Cut her wrists with a…thing, a piece of metal. Fuck, something she found on the street. When we were girls, she used to tell me that living in her world was like having six sets of eyes, each skewed from a different angle. She knew that it was her mind, that she was the dominant personality and that the others were fragments that, I guess, broke off from her. But then one of the other ones would take over, and it was like putting on a mask and looking through one of the other sets of eyes. She knew she was her… she knew everything that she did before. But it was like…bits and pieces were selectively blocked out. She could recollect them if she wanted to, but she never did. That was the whole point, see? Each personality only remembered what it needed to. Each one took her life and fabricated from it the reality that it wanted to believe in. And whenever one of the other ones was in control, I could see her. Trapped behind the mask. Stuck inside this carousel in her mind. She’d wake up screaming some nights because of nightmares she described like a…broken mirror coming back together. She could see all the fragments and then, slowly, they focused together, and when it was all done she saw who she really was. That terrified her, you know? She was so scared of her identity that she tore herself apart to hide from it. When we were girls it was almost funny, you know? We just played around and she called herself crazy and we would laugh about it. It was like a game. It was like being a part of something… It was a secret between us, right? But as we got older she got worse… the personalities started getting angry, and… once she had a seizure. At the hospital I asked her what happened, and she told me that a few of the personalities got into a fight. And that one of them was killed. Can you imagine that? I mean, fuck. This was all in her head. No doctor could find a difference in the physical makeup of her brain, no drug prescribed could truly get rid of the personalities. They got into a fight, and one of them died. A piece of her was destroyed because the other pieces got angry. I can’t imagine what that must have been like. And I guess that got the better of her. Too much fighting on both sides… I mean, we couldn’t keep her condition a secret forever, you know? Eventually it became a problem and our parents didn’t really understand it. They never really tried to. They just made the doctors throw drugs at her and lock her up and try…things. When your family throws you out, and your own brain is fighting itself for dominance, I mean… I understand why she did it, I guess. I probably would have too.”
She wiped a tear from her cheek and looked at the cold cup of coffee on the counter, then laughed. “I’m sorry, you didn’t ask me to babble on like this. There’s more important things to worry about than my stupid-”
Akashi reached out and held her chin, turning her face towards him. He set his forehead against hers and kissed her lips, and she closed her eyes and began to cry. When he pulled back, she buried her face into his shoulder, sobbing. He held her in his arms, and felt like crying himself.
He may have done just that.

9.
“We know where they are,” Billy said into his phone.
“Don’t make contact,” Abraham said.
“But I can get him, Abe!”
“No, William, you can’t! He has shown us that he means business. We need to keep our distance. Watch him, keep tabs on everything they do. If the girl goes off on her own, by all means, pick her up and bring her here. But don’t put any more of our people in danger.”
“We don’t even know what he did to ‘em, Abe! Feckin’, the guy coulda had the jump on ‘em!”
“How many encounters had those men been in, William? How many people had they killed for us before? No one gets the jump on them. Whatever he did was through brute force and brute force alone. We have to assume that he is capable of a great deal.”
“Dammit, Abe, you’re jumpin’ at shadows here! This guy lost so much blood, he should be dead. Prolly is! He didn’ do nothin’ to those guys, it was that girl, and maybe somebody else.”
“You think she killed those men? You think a human took out two werewolves that were each twice her size? You’re angry and you’re not thinking straight-”
“You’re god-damned feckin’ right I’m angry! Those guys have been with me for years, and I had to find their feckin’ burned up bodies in the wreck a’ that shed! They was mangled before they was burned, Abe! She feckin’ tortured ‘em! Put their heads under a god damned car!”
“William, you have your orders! Do not take this into your hands. We need to control the situation, and I can’t do that if you go in there and cause a riot!”
“It ain’t gonna be no riot,” Billy said, sneering, “it’s gonna be fuckin’ murder!”
He threw the phone onto the ground and stomped it, then spat on its sizzling remains. He looked at his three friends and felt a pang of anger that two were missing from the lineup. More fuel for the fire.
“Alright!” he said, biting his lip. “I’m feckin’ pissed! Abe don’t got no feckin’ idea what he’s doin, and tha’s just fine! We’re gonna go in there and fucking kill those sonsabitches in there, for killin the boss’s sister, and for killin our friends! This shit ain’t gonna stand!”
The others yelled their agreement, and Billy pulled out his gun, leading the group away from the warehouse. Behind them, strapped to a chair, was Mike, his skin flayed off, his neck torn open.
Billy cracked his neck as he got into his car, and waited for the others to get in. The stoner’s house was fifteen minutes away.
Time to blow some heads off.

10.
There was a knock at the door, and Katy and Akashi exchanged a worried glance. She pulled out the gun, and he rolled his eyes.
He walked towards the door and checked the peephole, then smiled.
“It’s Dade.”
Akashi unlocked it and opened it up, and Dade almost screamed when he saw him standing there.
“Oh my gods!” he said, a smile dawning on his face. “It worked!”
“You’re damn right it did!” Akashi said, bringing Dade into a hug, patting his back. “You saved my ass. I knew you would.”
He pulled Dade into the house and closed the door, locking it up once more.
“So what’s going on?” he asked.
Dade shook his head. “A lot. Too much. You have stirred the bloody ant pile, my friend.”
Akashi shrugged, “I’m good at that. You seem together.”
“I am when I need to be,” Dade said. “I don’t think I’ve been this cognizant in months. It’s going to be a bitch when all this is over.”
He walked over to the couch, and Akashi cleared his throat.
“Do you think it ever will be over?”
Dade looked up at him, a confused look on his face. “Everything ends eventually.”
He then looked back down at the table, nodding. “I have a plan. Abraham’s resources are stretched really thin right now, and for the moment he’s too proud to call on the Circle’s help.”
Katy interrupted. “The Circle?”
Dade said, “Big scary social group, likes to kill people and experiment on them and do nasty things.”
“Ah.”
“Anyway, for the time being he’s not going in for help from them. Which is good. Now he has people watching all the main roads, making sure you don’t go anywhere he doesn’t know. When Billy found those guys you killed last night, oh man, he was pissed. But at least Abraham is keeping a cool head. He’s trying to make sure no one else gets hurt. Well, no one he likes.”
“So what needs to happen?” Akashi asked.
“Well, we need to get you two out of the city. As far away as possible. Whatever they want you for, it isn’t good.”
Akashi shook his head. “No.”
“No?”
“I can’t run away from this.”
Dade rubbed his forehead, “No, you don’t understand. They’ll kill Katy. They will hurt you. They will do whatever they have to do get what you know, or what you’re capable of, or… whatever it is that makes you so damned important. You have to get away from here.”
Akashi said, “I’m all for getting Katy out of here, somehow. But you don’t understand. This is the way things were always going to happen. I’m here, now, and I can’t just run away from this. It’s… destiny.”
“Destiny?” Dade said, throwing up his hands. “Destiny is a joke! You don’t even know what destiny is!”
“And you do?”
Dade almost said something, but went silent.
“It doesn’t matter,” Dade said. “You’re being an idiot. This isn’t about anything other than surviving.”
“And if I run, what then? I hide? This will catch up to me eventually, Dade.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
Akashi leaned forward, “Because I should be dead. I’m here, now, and there’s a reason. I’m not alive so I can hide, I wasn’t put in this body so I could cower. I am here to do something, Dade. Just like you said.”
Dade looked at him for a moment, then sat back. “Holy fuck. Oh my gods. You’re not Adrian, are you? You’re… Oh my gods!” He smiled widely and shook his head. “You took control of his body when Adrian…”
His smile dimmed, and he said, “How is he?”
Akashi shook his head. “Asleep. Or comatose. Not dead, but not much better than.”
Katy uncrossed her arms and said, “What? Adrian’s not… what?”
“He almost died. So close he may have been fooled into believing he is dead. And that along with the physical pain, I mean… have you ever had an acid burn?”
Katy shook her head.
“Well, it doesn’t feel nice. And silver to a werewolf is worse.”
Dade nodded in agreement.
“No one should be able to survive being stabbed that many times in general, let alone with your own personal kryptonite.”
“Listen,” Dade said. “We can discuss this at length some other time, but… what’s your name?”
“Akashi.”
Dade’s eyes narrowed. “Oh wow. That is a very heavy name. Yeah okay, I definitely see why they want you.”
“What is he talking about?” Katy asked.
“He can see the future,” Akashi said.
“No, I can’t,” said Dade.
“That’s what you told Adrian the other day.”
“No, I said, I can see the future in a nutshell. It’s more complicated than that. I can see… strands of it. Pieces of it. Based on the lines of people’s lives. And Katy, names carry weight. They don’t necessary change who you are going to be, but they affect it just the same. Akashi is the kind of name you only hear whispered in hushed tones. Did it sound familiar to you when you first heard it?”
“Yeah, but-”
“Adrian had the same reaction when I told him,” Akashi said.
“Right,” Dade said. “Holy shit, Akashi. Akashi.” He couldn’t help but smile. “People know your name, but they don’t realize it. You know what that means? You’re going to change the world. You’re going to change everything.”
“Well, I don’t think-” Akashi began.
The lights went out. They sat in silence for a moment, looking up at the ceiling.
“Why did we just lose power?” Katy asked.
Dade said, “Maybe it’s just a brown out or something, I don’t-”
Akashi stood up and walked towards the door.
“Both of you need to hide.”
“What?” Katy said. “But-”
“Now.”
The finality in his tone was palpable. They rushed out of the room and hid.

Akashi cracked his knuckles and waited.
There was a knock at the door, and Akashi did not move.
“Hello, Michael? Did you lose power too?”
An old woman’s voice.
“I think the whole block is down. Are you home?”
Akashi didn’t budge. Eventually whoever was at the door walked away.
And then he winced, and said, “Fuck.”
Billy came out of the hallway with a gun against Katy’s head. The other two were holding Dade. He threw Katy onto the floor and turned the gun on Dade.
“You feckin’ piece of shit! You traitorin’ little son of a-”
“Don’t play games with me, Billy,” Akashi said. “I know what you’re doing.”
“Yeah? Then why did you send yer friends into the room we broke into?”
“Ask them why they went that direction. I didn’t point them there.”
Billy spat. “You and this piece a shit were made for each other. Goin’ on about free choice and all that. Bullshit!”
“You’re not going to hurt her,” Akashi said.”
“Yeah?” Billy smiled, then kicked her in the side. “Look at that! I’m hurtin’ her, doc!”
Akashi’s hands balled up into fists.
He grabbed Katy by the shoulder and she yelped, and he said, “Ohh, wha’s this?” He threw her against the couch and pulled the shoulder off her shirt, finding the bandaged shot wound from the night before.
“Look at that!” He looked around at the others, “Looks like one of our fellas left her a scar!” He turned back to Katy, “Yeah, well, get feckin used to it ya whore, there’s plenty more where that came from.” Billy pushed his fingers into the wound, and she yelled through her teeth.
Akashi took a step towards them, and Billy put the gun against Katy’s leg and pulled the trigger. There was a deafening crash, and Katy screamed.
“Stop this right now, Billy!” Akashi screamed.
“You want it to stop? You want me to let her go? Shoulda fuckin thought a that before you two killed my guys! Shoulda fuckin thought a that before you let this bitch fuckin torture em and crus their heads in!” He screamed this last part, and a tear ran down his cheek. “Fuck you and your stupid life, ah! How about that?”
He turned towards Dade and kicked him in the crotch, and he heaved forward.
Akashi’s fists were trembling.
“I’m going to destroy you,” he said.
“Ohhhh!” Billy said, laughing. He jauntered up to Akashi and said, “Yeah, big man, ah? Fuckin badass, right? Well let me tell you somethin’, badass. While you was out in the wild givin’ Bambi a stainless steel enema, I was on the streets gettin’ shot at and fightin’ for my life. While you was out there pissin’ on trees and shit, I was takin’ down fellas twice your size, and I wasn’t even sixteen. You ain’t no fuckin badass, you’re just some asshole the boss got a hardon for cause his money tells him you important. Well let me tell you a few things, mick! You ain’t important. You ain’t important! You’re gonna be as dead as the crazy fuck that got you into this mess, and ain’t no one gonna remember your name. Adrian. What the fuck kinda name is that, anyway?”
“Not mine,” Akashi said.
Billy shook his head. “What? What the fuck does-”
And then the realization dawned on him, and as Akashi made to grab him, Billy kicked him in the stomach and sent him to the ground, then put his gun against Katy’s head. He nodded towards the other two, and they aimed for Dade’s head too.
“So you’re him, then. So you’re the fuckwit them Circle bastards want to talk to. Well they ain’t gonna talk to you. I don’t give a good god damn who you are, you killed two of my friends! You ain’t living through that, ya understand?”
Akashi pulled himself up, winded and feeling at least one of his wounds bleeding again.
“So here’s what I’m gonna do,” Billy said, waving his gun. “I’ma shoot this bitch, then I’ma go over and put a few bullets in that fuckhole, and you know what? I’m not gonna kill you. I’m gonna cut your damned legs and arms off, oh yeah, sure thing. But I’ma make damn sure you don’t die. I’ll let the boss talk to you, and get whatever the fuck he wants outta ya. All the better for me, right? Whatever hurts you most, you piece a shit, that’s what I want.”
“You know what I want?” Akashi said.
Billy rolled his eyes. “Okay, what’s this? Some kinda dramatic time waster or something? You ain’t got shit on me pal.”
Akashi smiled and nodded towards Katy.
Billy looked at her in time to see the gun she was cradling out of sight, and she pulled the trigger. The bullet went into his gut, and time seemed to go to a crawl.
The two men aimed their guns at Akashi and fired.
Billy pointed his gun at Katy’s head and fired.
And then there was silence.
Billy was on the floor, inching away from the couch, pointing his gun at Akashi.
“What the feck are you doing?!”
Akashi’s arms were thrown out. Hovering front of him were three spinning bullets. Not an inch from Katy’s head, there was another.
She had winced, and she opened her eyes and screamed, “Holy god!” and moved out of its trajectory. And then she stared at it.
“What the fuck?” she said absentmindedly.
Akashi closed his left hand, and the bullet aimed at Katy suddenly vanished, and there was a hole through the couch. He took a few steps to the right and closed his other hand, and the bullets finished their paths without harm.
Billy was wide eyed, pulling the trigger on his gun endlessly with no result. The others were looking at theirs, checking them for a jam or something else out of place, but finding nothing.
Akashi kneeled down next Billy, and he said, “Your eyes… your eyes are red! What the fuck?! What is-”
“Shut up.”
Billy closed his mouth.
Akashi leaned close to Billy’s head and whispered, “I have watched the lives of mortals rise and fall over hundreds of thousands of years. I have seen cosmic events so immense they could not be witnessed in a single lifetime. I have been into the hearts of gods and drank from the very waters of life. You are a mosquito. You are nothing. And you’ve threatened the only person alive I still care about.”
He grabbed Billy by the throat and lifted him up. His head touched the ceiling.
“What do they want from me?!” he screamed.
“I don’t know!”
“You know something,” Akashi said. “I can feel it.”
“I know what it is,” Dade said, quivering. “I found it.”
Akashi smiled and nodded. “Alright then. Dade, please do me a favor and take Katy out of the room. She’s already seen too much.”
Dade scrambled to his feet and grabbed Katy. Both of them looked at Akashi fearfully, and as Dade pulled her behind out of the room, she couldn’t look away from him.
Akashi dropped Billy. He hit the carpet and rolled onto his back, then shuffled over to where the other two men stood, slack jawed and very confused.
Akashi said, “I am going to-”
And then there was a shattering of glass, and Akashi looked away.
Sitting on the floor was a small black cylinder. He stared at it for a moment, confused.
And then it exploded, and he went blind. He thrashed backwards and felt himself being thrown to the ground. Someone was putting handcuffs on him, and then something was drawn over his head. He heard shouts, and then there was a blow to his head, and Akashi lost consciousness.