Emergent: An Aes Sidhe Prequel

by A. Omukai

  The park was straight ahead, down the road. When they finally reached the place, they were the only ones in the vicinity. Ten to six, way too early for most people.

  “We need to find a place to hide,” Collins said.

  She nodded. They would look more than just suspect. They hadn’t encountered another foreigner since they had arrived in Niigata. Japan might have been part of the greater Australasian Federation, but it was still very much an island nation. They stood out everywhere without even trying. They’d look like hired guns here, early in the morning, in an out-of-the-way park in this random residence area, far away from anything that would have given them a valid reason to be there.

  The park was more reminiscent of a playground than of an actual park. Seesaws, jungle gyms, sandboxes, benches, swings, and wide, open space. There was nothing in the way of cover, nowhere to hide. Sitting on a bench, pretending to be unsuspicious would be worse than just walking up to the man and shaking his hands. They had to gain some distance. The park was surrounded by hedges, trees and a road, lined by houses. There was no way to get any closer than this, they would have to live with it.

  She checked the time, almost six o’clock. Collins pointed in the direction of the surrounding houses. Nadya’s eyes followed his finger into the distance. What was that, a person? She looked again. Indeed, an adult man squatting next to a bush, watching the park. If he hadn’t pointed her attention towards it, she wouldn’t have noticed. It seemed like Uehara had sent his own personnel after all. He hadn’t noticed them yet, much to her surprise. He wore a black suit, like virtually every male person she had encountered here.

  Collins looked at her, laid his index finger on his lips, and she nodded. She wandered towards one of the four entrances to the park. Yes, she would stand out, but her intuition told her to go anyway. The American sneaked away, and after only a few steps, she was already unable to see where he had gone. How he did this, she didn’t know, but the thought made her shiver. Thankfully, he was on her side at least for now. Until he would try to get access to the hidden backup?

  Collins was a mysterious man. His motives remained secret, even now.

  She walked over small pebbles and listened to the sound of her footsteps. There was a bird’s caw somewhere in the distance, but no other sounds. The air was cool and clear. She sat down on one of the benches and folded her hands in her lap. She would wait.

  A text message arrived, and she checked it with moderate interest. She could guess sender and content, but opened it anyway.

  “Got him.”

  There had been no sound, no gunshots or other indication of a fight in progress. Nadya had no idea what Collins meant exactly, but she didn’t really want to know, anyway.

  She closed the message and looked around.

  The paint on the jungle gym used to be sky blue, but half of it had fallen off. The metal below was a rusty orange.

  The seesaws were made of metal, with wooden seats. Wood on a playground! Maybe this had been a rich area once. It was blacked now though, obviously very old. Looking around again, nothing here looked new, but there was no garbage, no empty bottle. Everything here was in good condition. It was obvious that someone was in charge of keeping the place tidy.

  She sat up straight, as a man entered from the opposite side, hands in his pockets, looking around. She couldn’t see him well from here, he was too far away to make out details. Nadya sat in silence and didn’t move, but she didn’t hide the fact that her gaze was directed at the newcomer, who had now taken notice of her, too, but didn’t make a move. He kept standing there, hands in his pocket, looking around, unmoving.

  Good thing Collins had neutralized the killer. The man would probably already be dead. From the way he moved, he looked hurt. His steps had been slow and deliberate, careful to not trigger pain. After going through all this with Collins, she’d recognize the gait anywhere.

  She watched him, but he seemed to pretend she wasn’t there. What was he thinking? Would he be afraid of her? She tried to put herself in his situation and decided he must be increasingly nervous, as time went by.

  What he had come here for, Uehara hadn’t told them. It would have made it easier for them, but it couldn’t be helped now.

  Nadya wondered what she should do next. It seemed less and less likely that he came to her, the longer she waited. How would he react if she got up and walked over?

  The distance was still too far to attempt to hack him. She could see that he had an active system running in the distance, but it was out of reach, just so. She needed to talk to him, but there was no way, except direct confrontation.

  No use, she had to give it a try, and in case he ran, she’d have to find him again.

  She nodded to herself, then stood up, trying to smile reassuringly. She had no idea how that looked from someone else’s point of view. Hopefully not scary, or hungry. She snickered.

  The man looked in her direction now, but still didn’t move. He watched her walking towards him in slow, calculated steps. She couldn’t see his face well yet, so she assumed her smile was in vain, but she didn’t let it fade, anyway. It wasn’t Dmitriy’s friendly grin, or Tanya’s sunny smile, but it was the best she had.

  She had passed maybe one third of the distance, when he turned around and took off. She checked her system. Good. She couldn’t have hacked the man in the short time she had had him in range, but she had sent him a data package she would be able to track now. He wouldn’t be aware of it, unless he suspected something and ran a scan. Unlikely. Even if he did one, her little tool was sophisticated. If there was anything on earth she was proud of, it was her virtual little box full of handcrafted little helpers. The virus used the navigation system to update it’s position to the server she emulated on her system in regular intervals.

  The man disappeared from her field of view and another message popped up.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Come out,” she replied. “I can trace him down. Let’s follow him and see.”

  No further answer arrived, but the tall silhouette of the American appeared from among the trees on the far side of the park. He strode directly towards her and reached her in just a few heartbeats.

  “Who was that, one of Uehara’s men?” she asked.

  “Yeah, a yakuza. They’ll find him soon though, there’s nowhere to hide his corpse. So, you said you can track that employee down?”

  “I can.” She beamed.

  The American looked in the direction the man had fled. He had run where they had come from, the station. He nodded.

  “Alright, let’s move and keep a distance. I’d love to know where he’ll lead us.”

  “That was the plan.”

  What was up with Collins though? He seemed less driven, less intent to enforce a solution to his mission. Was he still motivated to pull through, or had his intentions changed?

  32

  Makoto

  I was walking down the road to the Nishihirai park without paying attention to my surroundings. There wasn’t much to be especially aware of anyway, this district looked very similar to the housing area where I lived. The same sort of streets, houses, shops could be found in either area, nothing here felt unusual. My attention was focused on the main menu of my system, with all the open applications I was juggling. I had set the map to project arrows into my normal view, to guide me along, had a news ticker running on top of my field of view and called up the messenger. I wrote a short and simple message to Inoue. “About to arrive at the park. Ready when you are.” I hit Send before I could finish counting the words.

  There I was. The road ended right in front of the park and led around it, forming an oval. The houses framing the road closed the little area to traffic from outside. There was only this one street leading up to where Inoue was living. I didn’t enter the park immediately. First I scanned the surroundings carefully, but there was nothing suspicious going on. Not something I could notice, anyway. It was still very early in the morning, most
people here were probably just about to get up now and wouldn’t leave their homes for quite a while. I didn’t intend to stay here for that long. I felt groggy, my body hurt in several places. I still couldn’t fully open my right eye, and this alone tired me. But there was no use lamenting my condition. I had to move on and not stop until - yeah, until when? I didn’t have any plans for what came ‘after’, and only a vague idea of what would come next. Too many variables I couldn’t evaluate properly yet made concrete plans difficult. I hadn’t heard anything from the Summer Court yet, or even just Daisuke. I didn’t even know if he had already gotten in touch with them. Probably not, and who knew how long that could take. I’d have to survive on my own for the time being.

  The air was cool. I felt the wind on my skin, but was too preoccupied to really notice. I checked my messages, but so far, Inoue hadn’t replied. Maybe she wasn’t up yet. Nah, I guessed she was, but probably busy right now.

  I stepped forward and through the entrance of the park. It was spacious. Comparatively little in the form of playground equipment, but a large, open square with benches on the fringes. If this was anything like the park near my apartment building, a group of old people would start their morning gymnastics at six thirty. I hoped I wouldn’t be here for that anymore.

  I looked around a second time and wondered why I hadn’t noticed the woman sitting on a bench on the opposite side of the park right away. She wasn’t Japanese. I couldn’t make out details over this distance, but her hair was brunette, and she looked athletic. She was sitting, so I couldn’t tell how tall she was, but I was willing to bet she’d tower over me.

  What business a foreign woman had here, in the small park of a residence area way off the beaten path, and at this time of the day, I couldn’t even begin to imagine. It could be a coincidence, and everything could have a logical explanation, but if the last days had taught me anything, it was that the simplest explanation was most likely the correct one.

  I pulled up the application once more and wrote a second message, “Hey, you there?” and sent it without delay. This didn’t feel right. The woman was still far enough enough away to allow me to make a run for it, but she was stirring now. She brushed a strand of hair out of her face and stood up slowly. My heart rate went up, and I felt the urge to run, but if I did that, I’d not have a chance to meet with Inoue now. What to do?

  The woman made it a point to walk slowly, deliberately, as if she tried to send me a signal. Now that she wasn’t sitting anymore, I could confirm that she was indeed taller than I. Irrelevant details again. Whenever I had noticed such things in the past, I had been about to panic, and the signs were there again.

  The woman kept strolling towards me. She was still pretty far away. I looked at her shoes, heels, not great for running. That bought me the seconds I needed right now. Without further hesitation I called Inoue directly.

  The connection got rejected as soon as I had selected her from my contact list.

  I tried again, same result.

  How could that be?

  Any attempt to call her would at least give me the option to leave her a message. Outright rejection though? Unless the user just didn’t exist… What was going on here? Sending any more messages would lead to nothing, calling her was impossible, I didn’t exactly know her address, so walking up to her door and knocking was not an option, and to top it off, the foreign woman was beelining for me and now coming too close for comfort. My time to assess the situation was slowly running out, and I felt the familiar wave that would crush my self control coming closer with every step she took.

  I whirled around and started to run without looking back. No idea what was going on with Inoue, no idea who that woman was and what she wanted, all I did know was that I’d been in constant danger these last days.

  What now?

  I was preoccupied with my thoughts and barely saw where I was running. There was only one road though, which led out of this area and towards the station district.

  Daisuke. If anyone was able to help me now, it was the Ellyll. I needed to upload that damn AI and present Uehara with a fait accompli. Killing me wouldn’t do him any good anymore, no matter how much I would enrage him. I had no idea if I could expect anything in return from the AI. Even if it was sentient, the concept of being thankful might have been alien to it, but who knew. Not many ways to find out.

  I finally looked back, but she was gone. Had I overreacted? Maybe, but better to err on the side of caution. I couldn’t keep this tempo up, the ribs on my right side hurt. I didn’t think they were broken, but they had definitely taken a blow. There were so many sources of pain in my body, I really didn’t know anymore. I slowed down, then stood still for a minute to catch my breath, while staying vigilant, ready to sprint again at any moment.

  I opened my system and checked my contact list. The entry named “Inoue” was now greyed out. My system had updated her status and made her unavailable, sending a shiver through my bones.

  I selected Daisuke’s entry and sent him a message instead.

  “I’m running out of time. Call me as soon as possible.”

  Fixed ‘I’m’ to ‘I am’ and hit Send.

  Now to find a place where I could stay for a few hours, until I could sort this chaos out.

  33

  Daniel

  Daniel watched the young man run off. Nadya looked in his direction and gestured for him to hold back. He couldn’t see the reason, but she would have one for this, and he wanted to know. He looked at the piece of paper in his hand absentmindedly, then put it in his pocket. One thing at a time.

  The slim figure of the man disappeared behind the hedge when he left the park. His body language had betrayed several wounds. He had put most of his body weight on his right leg, and there had been a slight limp. One side of his face looked injured, his eye closed and severely swollen. It was no big stretch to assume he had escaped Uehara’s hounds only with luck. The fact that he ran from Nadya wasn’t surprising.

  Limp or no limp, he’d still outrun Daniel handily, and he knew it. He still wore the brace. The wound was healing well, but sprinting was more than likely to undo all progress it had made in the last days.

  His right hand was functional, but he still couldn’t put much strength in his grip. That being said, the young man would hardly be able to put up a fight if it came to it. Good on him to not take any risk with people he didn’t know.

  “Let him run, I sent him a packet. We can track him,” Nadya said.

  Daniel nodded. They hadn’t decided on this tactic beforehand, but he had expected her to do it this way. More and more, they had turned out to be a good team. He almost regretted having killed one of her friends, but it had been necessary. The end justified the means.

  He shoved his hand in his pocket and grabbed the little note he had taken from the corpse of the yakuza.

  “Can you read this?” he asked, handing her the small piece of paper.

  She took it, studied it, and shook her head.

  “Not like this, but let me try something.”

  He looked at her. Her face showed concentration, while her eyes stared into the distance. It didn’t take very long. She turned towards him and looked at him with her big, dark eyes.

  “It’s an address. Actually, it should be one of these houses here… Let me see.”

  He looked around. Nobody but them here yet. Still some time before the first residents would leave their homes.

  Nadya pointed at a house at the opposite side of the park.

  “Somewhere over there. I can tell you when we get closer. Wanna check?”

  “How far can you track the guy?” he asked.

  “Distance doesn’t matter. The tool I sent him sends his location no matter where he is. Unless he enters an area where there’s no network connection possible. Don’t worry.”

  Sounded good enough to him.

  “Fine, let’s check this house first. It might give us some additional information.”

  ***
>
  The building looked unsuspicious.

  “Room 203 is on the second floor,” Nadya said and pointed at a staircase leading up.

  Collins climbed up in a few steps and looked at the corridor. Two doors to his left, four to his right. 203 was just right of him, no name written on the small sign under the doorbell. Whoever lived here valued their privacy. Collins didn’t bother with the bell. He put his hand in the pocket of his jacket and grabbed the knob through the cloth. The door was closed, but not locked, so he could pull it open easily. It gave way into an entrance area meant for one, narrow and now in the dark, except for the light that made it in through the crack.

  There was a shoe rack on the right side with three pairs of shoes, and a wardrobe above it, only one jacket hung there.

  “Don’t touch anything,” he said and entered the apartment. A fourth pair of shoes was on the ground, ready to be put on at any time. He pointed at them, and Nadya nodded. Only two steps to reach the door to the living room. The door stood wide open and allowed a look inside. A chair lay on the ground, knocked over. The table had been moved, too. He walked into the room and saw the figure at once. A young girl, on the ground, leaned against the wall. There was blood everywhere, but amazingly, she still breathed.