by A. Omukai
***
He had seen the small motorboat hidden under a rugged plastic cover before he could make out its owner. There was no doubt that whoever called this vehicle their own couldn’t be too far away. No idea how many people lived up here. It couldn’t be many, Chiba City was a coastal town, and even the dry areas turned into flooded chaos every time a storm hit, and that was only the water. The UV radiation added another layer of difficulty to the life out here he didn’t even want to start calculating in. Nobody would get old here.
He laid his finger on his lips. Nadya nodded and moved closer to the wall, into its shadow. She had it way rougher out here than he did. Her shoes hadn’t even lasted five minutes, which had bogged them down considerably. She had shown him her middle finger when he offered to carry her.
The crawler had been out of sight for a while now, and she would be needed to find it. He congratulated himself for the umpteenth time for teaming up with her. His instincts had never failed him, and now, they told him to be extra careful.
He ducked and sneaked forward, careful to cause no sound. As hellish as the noise around here was, it was also regular, had its ups and downs, and a certain predictability. He had been listening to it for over half an hour now, while they had moved carefully from building to building. Apart from debris crashing into walls and falling into the water, there had only been the regular stream. The gargling of the floods and the swooshing of the ‘rain’, with an occasional howl when a gust of wind ran through narrow roads.
He felt the sudden movement behind him more than he could see it and threw himself sideways into the water. Something flew past the spot where he had just stood.
Whirling around, he pulled his knife, but whoever had thrown something at him was now hidden again.
He wouldn’t even try to listen for the enemy. Instead, he moved toward the cover of a stairwell halfway between his position and the boat. Whoever wanted to protect it from him would be forced to come closer.
He scanned his surroundings. The first floor of this house was divided into two rooms. He stood right under the stairs to the second floor, next to the opening of a door frame that led into the other room. That wasn’t where the projectile had come from. The enemy, if they were alone, were between Daniel and Nadya, somewhere in the chaos.
The room lay in the dark. Only the small window he had entered through in the back let in some daylight, and it was dusk outside already. What little light fell into the building was of a dirty grey, and powerless.
Why couldn’t he make out the other? There was nothing left in this room. Even with this miserable lighting, he should have been able to see a person in here, but there was nothing. Four walls, a small window, stairs, door.
Someone jumped him from the side, crashed into his ribcage, drove the air out of his lungs, and both of them dropped into the water.
Daniel felt hands grabbing him by the collar. He thrust his arms toward the attacker and rammed into his shoulders. The other leaned over and choked him, before Daniel could open his eyes.
When he did, he couldn’t see any better, anyway. The water was salty, of course. What flooded this city was seawater. It didn’t burn as much as he had expected, but his eyes were filled with tears.
The man choking him sat on him, only a black silhouette against the dark grey background. Daniel grunted. The water wasn’t deep enough to cover his face in here, but the enemy laid his full bodyweight into his choke.
He grinned, but his opponent wouldn’t see that.
He pulled his hands back from the man’s shoulders, laid them over the arms of his attacker and hugged them tightly. Then he raised his hips and let them drop, while putting strength into his hug.
His opponent lost his grip. Daniel reacted immediately. He stemmed his left foot against the hip of the man and pushed.
They slid away from each other. Adams scissored his arms, grabbed the wrists of the attacker.
Not a fighter, he registered.
Not very strong, he also noticed.
He managed to pull his knees between the arms of the man, then kicked twice. The dry sound of a breaking twig was louder than the raging flood outside, but the scream that followed was muffled and barely audible against the backdrop. The adversary dropped off his body and shrunk.
Daniel went on the counterattack.
His knee rammed into what he assumed to be the face of the other. It was too soft to be the face, but now there was no resistance.
Not a fighter, he noticed again.
His knife though had flown somewhere and was now in the dark, hidden by the black water.
He grabbed the man by the hair and pulled him up, but he still couldn’t make out facial features. The man was light, not heavier than Nadya. He didn’t even attempt to flee. What should he do with him?
“Follow me inside,” he sent to his companion, and a minute later, he saw her shadow come through the window.
Daniel walked to the door, the hair of his opponent still in his grip.
Maybe he should kill him right here. He’d probably do the man a favour.
“Who’s that?” Her message came before she even reached him.
He didn’t answer. If she expected one from him, he’d be surprised.
They walked into the second room, which had a huge hole in its far wall. The boat was tethered directly to a window frame that had somehow survived through the years.
He pulled the face of the man into the grey light from outside and saw blood covering what little skin there was between the wild, long hair and the beard.
“We’ll take the boat. I’ll let you live,” he shouted into his ear.
The pupils of the man were huge, and understanding flickered in his eyes. He stumbled into a sprint as soon as Daniel pushed him away.
“Let’s hurry up. He’ll be back, and I don’t want to be here when he comes.”
Nadya answered his message with a nod.
Now they had a boat. Things were looking better.
37
Makoto
When we reached the server building and rolled up the slope to the entrance, I wondered what we had rented a vehicle for. The cabin hadn’t been waterproof, and the water had reached my chin. I was completely drenched. That wouldn’t have been too bad, but the water smelled foul and was ice cold. By the time we reached the goal, my body felt numb.
“Let’s go inside and dry while I prepare the machines.”
“I thought it’s all up and running?”
“Up and running is just a figure of speech. I got the hardware connected and ready to run, but starting it all up and configuring the net will take me an hour or so.”
‘Or so’ was not very reassuring, but maybe we’d be fine.
The two bloodhounds on our heels worried me. I didn’t know who they were, for whom they worked and how they had found me again after a full day of train hopping and evasive manoeuvres via taxi and on foot. If they had utilized the city network, they’d be out of luck here. The network was inconsistent on the surface. No connection to the underground net, and the atmosphere was so chaotic that satellite connections were unreliable.
The AI, if I could make it work on Daisuke’s machines, would have to spread out over a lot of hosts to guarantee permanent connections everywhere. Its re-routing functions were efficient, but getting the ball rolling would take a bit, like an avalanche started by a pebble.
We left the crawler on the road and marched toward the entrance. Next to the building, a second crawler was parked next to the wall.
“Where’s that one from?”
Daisuke shrugged. “The construction team? I have no idea.”
Why would the construction team come with a rental crawler? Didn’t they have their own? My nose tingled, and a second later I let loose a sneeze, then another, then a third one. My eyes filled with tears. At least the number of sneezes satisfied my tic. A grim smile formed on my lips, as I sped up my step and caught up to Daisuke, who stood in front of the closed door, fi
ddling with the electronic lock.
“What’s up?”
A grunt was his only answer. He repeated his code input, and the interface spit out another error message. He muttered something under his breath that I couldn’t quite understand. The environment wasn’t as noisy here as it was further down the road, by the water, but the wind roared loud enough to make any communication an exercise in shouting.
I closed in on him and shouted “Need help?” in his ear. He recoiled, looked at me and shook his head.
“I’m good. Relax.” I read the words off his lips more than I heard them. He was already busy with the lock again, and finally, after a short silence, a rumbling sound came from inside, then three metallic sounds from the lock snapping open. He grabbed the handle and pulled the door open once. The storm smashed it shut again, and this time I heard his “Fuck” loud and clear, before he managed to open it again.
I answered his exaggerated gesture for me to go in first with an equally exaggerated bow, then stepped inside the dark corridor in front of me.
The closing door’s sound drowned out my “No light?”, but now the lamps switched on automatically. Thanks to my words, our movement, or the closing door? Whatever it was, the inside of Daisuke’s bunker turned from a black cove into the sterile, white environment I expected in a lab or a hospital.
“Welcome to my castle,” he said and smiled.
Something about this place was wrong.
I turned around again to look ahead, and now I knew what it was.
Right before me, not two metres away, a small figure hung in the air, the wings moving rapidly, glittering faerie dust falling toward the ground, but never reaching it.
“I knew you’re strange the moment I first saw you,” the unpleasant voice of the Winter Court agent said.
“Daisuke, careful, a—” I couldn’t finish my sentence. Something hit me from behind, and the lights went out.
***
I heard the “He’s awake” before I had even opened my eyes. Things were looking unsharp, and a dazzling light was so bright, it caused me a headache. The back of my head still hurt, and a moment later, my memories came back.
“Daisuke,” I said.
I looked around and saw the Faerie floating over me. Three more people were in the room. Daisuke was one of them, he was busy fiddling with his servers’ control system. Another one was an old ‘friend’. Kaneko, one of the two security people Uehara had assigned as guards for the dev labs. There was no familiarity in his look, no sign he recognized me. He obviously didn’t want to be connected with me in any way.
The last one was something I hadn’t expected here on the surface. A huge Fir Bolg, and dressed in a black suit. The fact that none of them had made it here without getting wet was just a side note.
“Don’t even waste energy. You’ll be dead soon.” The voice of the Faerie was too dark to originate from the tiny figure, but there was no doubt who had spoken. Now he flew through the room, leaving a glittering trail.
“How long till we can start?”
Daisuke shrugged. “I told you, this is going to take a while.”
Had he betrayed me, or was he captured like me?
“You told me it’s all up and running.”
“That’s a figure of speech.”
This told me everything I needed to know.
My head was throbbing, and things looked bad, if I couldn’t get out of this situation soon, but I couldn’t see how. The Fir Bolg kept me in his gaze, while the yakuza moved around like a series of function calls across the code.
“What do you plan to do with me?”
The Faerie turned around, looked at me, then back to Daisuke.
The movies had lied, villains didn’t hold long speeches.
I tried to sit up. The Fir Bolg reached inside his jacket, but stopped when he saw I was just leaning my back against the wall. He wouldn’t need a weapon to deal with me, but these guys didn’t leave anything to chance.
“You want the AI, so you could just kill me and be done with it. What do you need the servers for?”
“Shut up already,” the Faerie growled. How was I supposed to win time if nobody reacted to any questions?
This room was empty, except for the control consoles mounted on the wall and a seat in front of them. Daisuke sat on them and looked moderately busy—it was clear that he didn’t just start up his systems, that’d have taken mere seconds. He had to set it all up from scratch. He hadn’t lied to me in that regard at least, but this piece of information wasn’t worth much right now.
“What did you do to Inoue?”
The Faerie turned to the Fir Bolg, gestured toward me, and the giant moved through the room in just two steps. The next thing I saw was an explosion of light and stars.
So you did see stars. I had thought that to just be an image placeholder in cartoons.
I grunted and spit out blood. I had bitten the tip of my tongue. The Fir Bolg returned to his old place and looked at me without an expression.
No way to make any of them speak.
Then, the sound of gunshots. Two, three, four. Everyone in the room froze, then the Fir Bolg shot into the corridor with a speed I wouldn’t have thought possible for someone his size.
“You, too.”
The yakuza nodded and followed his oversized colleague. The Faerie looked at me and sneered, as if to say ‘Abandon your hope’, but he didn’t even do me the favour of such a short line.
“Hurry up.”
Daisuke held up his palms.
“I’m not a wizard. This will take as long as it takes.”
The small figure hissed.
38
Daniel
The first thing he noticed, when they reached the building, was the crawler left behind in the middle of the small road leading upward. They got out of the boat and bound it to the vehicle, which stood there like a rock. He looked at Nadya. She nodded. Their man was near, they had caught up to him. They didn’t have a reason to hurry now. Daniel looked around, and sure enough, a second crawler was parked right next to the low building with only one floor, that looked more like a bunker, due to its complete lack of windows, and robust-looking steel door.
As if that wasn’t already enough, he found the third one parked in the shadow of the bunker more by coincidence. If they assumed two people per crawler, things didn’t look good at all. Even just that second vehicle was one too many. It meant trouble.
He gestured at both. Nadya didn’t say a word, but her eyes darted between the vehicles and the door, and she pressed her lips together.
He slowed down. Something didn’t feel right. Then a shadow separated itself from the dark wall. Daniel stopped and squinted his eyes. His hand wandered inside his jacket, and he felt the cold metal of his gun.
The figure raised one hand in a gesture he had seen a million times. It was the typical greeting used between members of the church—thumb, index finger and middle finger raised, the ‘hand of Benediction’. Three fingers pointing towards heaven, the holy trinity. Daniel knew instantly who this was, and what he was here for. He aimed his gun and sent two bullets on their way. The loud sound echoed from the walls of the surrounding buildings.
The inquisitor was gone. The place where he had just appeared was empty. Daniel didn’t waste time. He grabbed Nadya’s arm and pulled her to the side, into the cover of the bushes. She was way too surprised to resist. Daniel was already on his way through the undershrub forward, and away from the woman. If she caught a stray bullet… no time to think. Where was the enemy? Inquisitors were both genetically and technologically enhanced. They were faster, stronger, and their senses were better. All this was frowned upon normally in Gilead, but for inquisitors, and to some degree, agents, the rules differed.
He saw a shadow on his left, then took a hit to his head before he could react. He tumbled and fell against a nearby tree, then slid down to the ground, with the trunk stabilizing his torso. A kick landed in his ribs. Hard enough to drive the
air out and make his eyes tear up.
“You lived by the sword, now you will die by the sword,” a thin voice said close to his ear. Daniel understood the words, but not the meaning. Everything whirled.
“You are to be executed,” the voice continued, and cold metal pressed against his forehead. He rolled his eyes, trying to look up to his opponent, but his neck wouldn’t follow his orders.
The loud crackling of a gunshot, then another, were echoing from all directions.
“Get up! Fuck, you’re heavy.”
He still didn’t understand what was going on, but he knew he had to stand up now. He moaned and shook his head. Water and blood splashed away, and a small fist boxed him in the ribs.
Seemed like he was still alive.
There was blood all over his jacket, but the already dark brown colour didn’t change all that much. Before his feet, the inquisitor.
“I didn’t know you had a gun.”
“It’s Tanya’s.” Her eyes turned cold for a heartbeat, then the moment was gone, and with it the hatred on her face.
“They’ll have heard the gunfire inside. We should look for better cover.”