Szayel lowered his cup, sitting up much straighter.

That was not possible, the man died in a laboratory explosion years ago.

"The Professor Hojo?" He asked, hardly able to believe it. Of course, this was Khamja, and who knew what tricks they'd pulled and favours they'd called in to fake a death. The last word on Hojo was that there was a brewing controversy over some of his work, and then there had been the accident.... Oh, the rumours at the time, that Shinra had decided to get rid of him, that it was a deliberate attack by radicals, or rivals.

Of course, it had been an engineered accident, but not by anyone that anyone had suspected.