by A. Omukai
“She’s alive!” Nadya said, and her expressive face managed to look happy and worried at the same time.
“Yes, but not for long anymore. Look at all the blood.”
“I’ll call an ambulance.”
He wasn’t so sure if that was a good idea, but he wouldn’t stop her. Taking a look around, it didn’t seem as if anything here had been stolen. No open drawers, and the chaos in the room obviously resulted from a short fight that had been ended with a blade. The knife still stuck in her chest. It wouldn’t be possible to tell exactly what had happened here, but he had a feeling her identity would give them a hint.
“Let’s get out of here. Can you find out who she is?”
“Yes, give me a moment.”
“Can you do that while walking?”
Nadya showed him a crooked smile.
“Will she survive?”
He shrugged. No idea how long the ambulance would take to get here. If they came in time, the chances were good.
“Can’t tell. Let’s hope so.”
They left the apartment, and he closed the door the same way he had opened it, hand in pocket.
“Naoko Inoue.”
“That’s her name?”
“Yes. Let me see if I can find out more about her. You got that note from the gangster?”
“It was in his pocket. Looks like he had two missions here today.”
They walked around the park this time, on the side walk that formed a big oval. Still nobody in sight, but soon there would. With one wounded and one corpse here, they needed to get away before the ambulance came.
“So it seems she was another employee of Uehara. Which department do you think she belonged to?”
“Tell me.”
“She’s part of the computer development team. Maybe she worked on the AI.”
Having anything to do with this cursed piece of software didn’t work out well it seemed.
“Still got the guy on your map?”
“Yes. He didn’t get far yet, still at the station.”
***
The station wasn’t quite deserted anymore. The first commuters were on their way when they arrived there. According to Nadya, he had taken the train before them, which was fine. They’d be able to see him get off in time and could follow him without him noticing.
“Look at that,” Nadya said, pointing at the news tracker display on the station wall.
A ‘breaking news’ logo, words in Japanese scrolling by. Pictures of a press conference, and the person speaking was an old acquaintance: Bishop Fisher. The scene changed, and now an old man with Asian features appeared on the display. The sound was muted, the subtitles incomprehensible, but it wasn’t hard to guess what this was about.
“Check the news.”
He didn’t want to. Sometimes, there was truth to the phrase ‘ignorance is bliss’, although bliss was the wrong word in this situation. He also didn’t have to check. Nadya was sure to tell him, whether he wanted or not.
Sirens in the distance, was this the ambulance? If so, they might already be too late. Naoko Inoue, he’d remember the name.
“Gilead declared war.”
Yeah, he’d suppose so. It had been inevitable. As long as neither side used their nuclear warheads… but would he bet on that? Probably not.
Their train entered the station.
34
Makoto
Only when the doors shut and the train moved did my pulse slow down, and it did so gradually. It took me four stations to calm down enough to stop my hands from trembling, and three more until my heartbeat was back to its usual rate.
Had Inoue betrayed me? There wouldn’t have been a killer there for no reason. The chances for me appearing there randomly were basically non-existent.
The closer I got to the city centre, the more people entered the wagon. I got off to switch the line and checked the time. Ten past seven, the next train would arrive in twelve minutes. My home platform was only moderately crowded. That would change over the next hour, and then, trains would come more frequently as well. I had been sitting on my way here, but I doubted that I’d find an empty seat now.
“Earthquake alarm,” the generic voice of my system said, just a second before the ground began to shake. It started subtly, but ramped up in a heartbeat. Most quakes happened further north, in Ibaraki or Fukushima. The effects weren’t too bad down here in Chiba. The big one that had destroyed Tokyo some fifty years ago had been a very rare exception. The earthquake lost intensity quickly and calmed down to nothing. How strong had it been? I opened my system menu and called up the news. Earthquakes would be found under—what the heck was going on? All feeds on my list showed the same program, a heated debate between officials from Gilead and China. The subtitles told me all I needed to know: War was upon us, as if the earthquake had been a portent, announcing the end of the world.
I pushed the news feeds away and called up the communications menu instead. Two contacts were pinned as favourites. I selected Daisuke and waited for him to accept the connection.
“Hey man, what’s up?” He had a sleepy female face and a high-pitched voice, but woke up when he looked at my face.
“We need to do it now, Daisuke. There’s no more time.”
He looked down, and it took him a moment to answer. His long, black hair fell into the pretty face he had shifted into.
“Unload?”
I nodded.
“Well, the servers are running. Theoretically, we could—”
“We need to do this now. Uehara’s killers are on my heels, and then there’s war now, too. If anyone, or anything, can stop it, then the AI.”
“Man…” He didn’t seem too happy, but I wouldn’t back down.
“Let’s do this, now.”
“Okay, okay. Let’s meet at the northern surface exit. We’ll have to walk to the server farm, the capsule hasn’t been delivered yet.”
“Whatever, let’s hurry. I’ll be there in,” I checked the timetable for the train network, “about fifty minutes. Can you make it in that time?”
His answer took a moment.
“A bit over an hour. You’ll have to wait for me.”
“No problem.”
He ended the connection and I reopened the news menu. No matter who waged war, we all would pay the price for it.
***
“There’s no direct connection to the underground network,” Daisuke said and lifted his shoulders in a half shrug. He was back to his old body shape, if a bit dishevelled.
“You can’t be serious.”
“It’s the reason I got it for that cheap. Real estate below is too expensive. Five people own basically the whole city.”
“So we have to walk?”
He beamed. “No worries, I’m prepared. I ordered a crawler, but it’s gonna take a while till it comes.”
I had just shaken off that foreigner and been moving around like a paranoiac since that. There was no telling if she was still after me, or if she had lost my tracks. I had changed trains twice and skipped a few stations by using a taxi capsule. I was a secret agent of the Summer Court, but I was a coder, not an action hero. Nobody had taught me how to shake off a pursuer. Fleeing all through the city had not been in my contract.
“How long?”
Daisuke put his hands on his hips. “Listen, you called me out of the blue. I had no chance to set anything up. I’m improvising right now, you’ll have to be patient.”
I shifted weight from one leg to the other. He was right, there had been no forewarning. Before I could answer, I saw two silhouettes appear in the distance, down the corridor we had passed to reach the northern surface exit. A woman and a tall guy. They were still veiled in shadows, but the way she moved gave her away before I could make out her face. That same moment, the crawler rolled down the road from the opposite side.
“That’s them,” I said. A muscle in my jaw twitched.
“Them…?” Understanding dawned on his face. “Let’s move.�
�
We turned toward the crawler and rushed over. It moved slowly. If anyone were to chase us here underground, we’d have no chance to get away. The question was, had she identified me?
Daisuke pulled open the door and jumped in, I followed, and the door closed automatically.
“The window film should give us some privacy,” he laughed.
I wondered about that. How had she been able to find me again, anyway? She couldn’t have kept me in her sight these last few hours. No way she had even kept up with me on foot, with her high heels. Her walk looked still the same, I was reasonably sure she hadn’t changed shoes.
“What are you waiting for? Let’s get away!”
“Relax.”
The crawler jerked forward one step, then turned on the spot, slowly, and began its ascent to the exit gate. It was automated and would open as soon as we got in range of its scanners. I looked through the back window, and now there was no doubt. The woman behind us was indeed the foreigner who had surprised me at the park, and she wasn’t alone. The man walking next to her moved like a predatory animal, tension in his step.
The crawler accelerated, but even now, an average person could catch up with it, and that man was definitely not average. It seemed, though, as if the two weren’t in a hurry.
The name ‘crawler’ was perfect. We crawled toward the exit gate, and even the leisurely walking pair behind us slowly reduced their distance. At this rate, they’d reach us soon.
“Don’t worry, man. As soon as we’re outside, we’re good.”
That had been my hope, too.
A series of loud, metallic sounds when the gate released its clamps and unlocked, then the pained scream of the steel door scratching over the floor, as it opened in slow motion.
It was dark outside, and a strong gust hit the crawler and made the cabin shake. Daisuke switched on the fog lamp and drove the vehicle forward.
With the violent storm roaring just a few steps ahead, the small crawler suddenly appeared weak and awfully inadequate, but we were moving at least.
Another look through the back window. The two had stopped. Both looked in our direction, and even though they couldn’t see us through the smoked window, I felt their gaze.
35
Nadya
Following the Japanese hadn’t been too difficult. Her signal had led her all the way through the city, without fail. He had been moving all day long, and while they couldn’t catch him, he also never shook them off. And now they witnessed him leaving the underground through the gigantic steel gate in what looked like a tracked vehicle. It disappeared in the storm that raged right outside the gate.
“We need to find a way to follow them.” Collins’ voice was irritated, but his face didn’t show any emotion.
“Let me see.”
She opened her system and connected to the city’s official services. It took forever to sift through it all, mainly because most of the content needed a translation, and even translated, much of it just didn’t make any sense. The official language of Australasia was English, but in reality, not much was at least bilingual here.
The American turned around to her, hands in the pockets of his pants. His eyes lay in the shadows, but she could feel his gaze.
“Give me a moment.”
The translation software didn’t get any better, but she slowly got the hang of it. As long as no grammar was involved, she could follow the strange strings it spit out. One word menus were her friend.
There she had it, a subsystem of the transportation network was where she found all available vehicles. Chiba City had three surface exits. It took her only a few seconds to find out that they were at the northern gate, and there was a service for visitors to the world outside. There were three crawlers in the garage. The one she had seen her target take had been the last. All three of them were out there. Coincidence?
“Fuck this shit.”
“I guess we’ll walk,” Collins said. He turned toward the gate again, hesitated for just a second, then started to move.
“Through the storm in high heels,” she growled.
“Break off the heels.”
For a moment, she could only stare at him. Break off the heels… her feet already hurt after a long day of walking all through the town. Now she had to sacrifice her shoes. Collins didn’t wait for her, he had almost reached the gate, which didn’t open automatically, as it had done when the crawler had come close. Made sense, thinking about it. The gate was there for a reason. Setting it to reacting to movement was a bad idea. How would they get out under these circumstances?
She sighed and opened her system again. She’d have to use one of her tools to do the job.
The gate had a simple lock, and convincing it to open didn’t even take a minute. This triggered an alarm, but she didn’t care anymore. For now, the way was open. She took off her shoes and hurried after her companion, who had already stepped outside.
The wind grabbed his jacket and tried to rip it off his body, but his stance was solid. Something flew through the air at some distance, and the roar of the storm was deafening.
“Break em off for me,” she said, but Collins didn’t react. He stared at something she couldn’t see, and when she caught up with him, she poked him, then held her shoes in front of his face.
***
Not the storm, the water had been the worst. It didn’t rain, in theory, but the storm made it seem like it did, a steady shower from the side. The water wasn’t just cold, it hurt. The speed at which it rained on her made it feel like small projectiles. A slope led downward from the exit gate, and at first glance, the area didn’t even look too bad, but that had changed as soon as they had turned around the corner. A large building had hidden the truth from them. Thankfully the old surface part of Chiba City had been a concrete jungle, so there was no mud to walk through, but the streets looked like rivers now, with scary currents. Nadya tread carefully, anxious to always be in Collins’ slipstream. Not even a minute, and she was already drenched, and the cold had crept through her flesh and reached the bone.
The surface was no place to live in this part of the world. The air was so humid, she had trouble breathing, and had the water not soaked her already, she’d be covered with sweat now.
Collins said something, but she couldn’t understand his words, despite walking right next to him. The howling of the wind alone made communication difficult, but now, the gargling floods of the streets destroyed the last bit of hope they had left.
A message popped up in her system, and she opened it. Collins had noticed.
“Careful here, let me scout ahead.”
“If I move out of your shadow, it’ll blow me away,” she replied.
His answer came immediately. “Hug that wall over there and stay down until I’m back.”
He looked at her, and she nodded. The building he meant was just a few metres away, the ruins of what looked like a mall. She’d stay outside, right next to the wall, where wind and water couldn’t reach her and she could wail in self-pity, as her shoes had already started to disintegrate.
36
Daniel
The storm came from the seaside. As long as its direction didn’t change, Nadya should have been fine. Nobody would run around outside under these circumstances, not even the most desperate surface dwellers. Knowing her safe, Daniel accelerated his step and climbed through a hole in the wall that had once been a window. The inside was dark. Even though walls separated him from the inferno outside, the whole structure was falling apart, and not one window was intact, just like his plan to destroy the AI, and save the world from damnation. The soundscape followed him inside. This was an advantage. Whoever might have looked for shelter in here wouldn’t hear him coming, if such a someone even existed.
He didn’t ready his gun. It would become useless the moment he dropped it, and if he was to fight, he’d do better hand-to-hand in such an environment.
He called up the regional map. The data was old. So old, it sti
ll displayed the city before the great move under the surface. He couldn’t see his location. GPS had stopped being reliable decades ago, and the countless network towers downstairs didn’t work here.
He had seen the name of the mall, Aeon. He checked, fourteen Aeon malls had existed here in the past. He waded through the water that only reached to his ankles inside this building, and took a look out the former main entrance, of which only a huge opening remained. He came just in time to see the crawler disappear in the distance. The vehicle wasn’t what he was worried about now. From the looks of it, there was no safe path in the direction it had taken. They would have to cross roads, there was no way to stay inside buildings, and not only was the current dangerous, he had seen debris fly through the air at a speed that turned it into deadly hazards.
Nobody inside this building’s floor, and nothing of any use. He didn’t know what he had expected, anyway. Whatever useful things there might have been, it had been stolen long ago.
He returned to Nadya and signalled her with a gesture to follow him.
They had to get over the road in front of them first, the buildings on the other side stood closer to each other. Still not optimal, but better than here, where every street led to the former harbour.
“Found a route?” He couldn’t answer her question yet, so he dismissed the message, shook his head as answer, then pointed over to the other side of the road.
Her eyes widened, then she frowned. She nodded hesitantly when he reached for her hand. A minute later, they sat foot in the newly found river. They couldn’t possibly get any wetter now, anyway.