Sakura- Intellectual Property

by Zachary Hill

  “See, kohai? The art of death.” Kunoichi turned Sakura’s ability to speak back on, as it was more amusing to hear her voice. Her pain meant she was learning, and that was the primary aim. Kunoichi couldn’t do this alone. Little sister would be her partner, if only she could be disabused of all the foolish notions they’d put in her mind.

  “You are sick and cruel,” Sakura said.

  “I’m teaching you a lesson. Pull the trigger next time without reservation, to spare our targets the anxiety you were so concerned about.”

  < CRITICAL PRIORITY ALERT. GUNFIRE IN PENTHOUSE-LEVEL LOBBY. CRITICAL PRIORITY ALERT>

  “An alarm, good,” Sakura said. “The police will be on their way.”

  Kunoichi blocked the outgoing message inside the building’s security network, but she could not stop it from going to Toshio Kagawa’s penthouse. Had he set up a secret alarm that detected gunshots? The alarm had gone undetected during her probing of the security systems, which made her wonder if she had not found other security measures as well.

  “I hope we fail. I hope we are shot and killed,” Sakura said.

  “Negativity will only make this worse for you and more entertaining for me.”

  Kunoichi locked the electronic doors on the penthouse level, blocked outgoing communication, including handhelds, and proceeded across the lobby in full sprint.

  “I will not forgive you for what you are making me do,” Sakura promised.

  “No, but you will thank me for keeping us alive.”

  Kunoichi rocketed toward the entrance of penthouse one. As she passed the dead guards, she waved her hand and hit them with a small electromagnetic pulse that destroyed the data on their neural implants. The EMP wiped out any images they may have captured of her when the elevator opened.

  She increased her speed and sent a command for the large door to Kagawa’s penthouse at the end of the hall to open wide. It swung inward and revealed a huge room.

  The ultramodern design mixed brass with dark wood. Heavy square pillars lined the left and right. White silk banners decorated with archaic kanji from the Heian period hung from the pillars. Straight ahead lay a wall of glass and a large rooftop space with an infinity pool. Tokyo glittered in the distance.

  She detected no targets, and all the doors on either side of the great room were shut. The alarm had not roused anyone to take up defensive positions yet, but it had only been seven seconds since she killed the guards. She sped across the threshold with her pistol ready. “K-Machine” by Bolt Thrower played, churning like an unstoppable juggernaut.

  Twin white-glass spiral staircases with no railings rose on the far left and right. They both went up to the second level, where Toshio Kagawa’s master bedroom and his home office were located.

  Kunoichi sprinted for the stairs on the left, closest to Kagawa’s bedroom. She jumped and landed above the first full spiral. She muffled her impact as best she could, but the synthetic rubber soles on her boots squealed as she landed.

  Doors on either side of the great room opened as Yamaguchi Todo and Aoki Sota scanned the room for intruders. Each of them wore nightclothes and remained behind the square pillars, which would have been the perfect cover if the intruder had still been at the front door. But Kunoichi’s speed had gotten her behind and above them. She aimed at Yamaguchi, as Aoki stood on the same side as her and had some cover.

  “Behind you!” a man shouted from the second level and fired rapidly at her with a semiautomatic pistol. His urgency negated accuracy. Bullets whizzed by Kunoichi’s head. She identified the voice as Toshio Kagawa’s. The muzzle flashes came from the hallway outside his master bedroom.

  Kunoichi dove down the stairs to avoid being struck. Midair, she fired two rounds. One struck Yamaguchi in the spine as he whirled around. The other hit his side between his third and fourth rib, where it tore through his lung before puncturing the left ventricle of his heart. He collapsed instantly and dropped his pistol without firing a shot.

  Aoki’s bullets cracked and fractured the glass stairs. He unloaded his entire magazine, sixteen shots, as he had preloaded one in the chamber. The stairs did not collapse. Kunoichi lay flat and lifted her pistol over the edge of the stairs to return fire as he slapped another mag into his gun. She did not need to look down the sight to aim. Her targeting system connected to her display. The gun’s camera showed him outlined in red with small Xs over vital areas. She calculated his angle and position within a tenth of a millimeter.

  Aoki ducked behind the pillar, but Kunoichi fired two shots to make him worry. She increased the gain for low-level sounds and muted her maximum external input to ninety decibels. She could hear every whisper, every squeak of a shoe. She could hear their hearts beating hard in their chests.

  “You will learn to see this for its beauty, little sister. You have your concerts. This is my arena. This is where I can fly without wings.”

  Living in a nightmare, Sakura would not answer.

  “Kagawa-sama, take cover in the safe room,” Aoki Sota shouted.

  “No. Aoki-san, I’ll not leave you to face the android alone.”

  “Master?”

  “It’s not human,” Kagawa said. “Cyborg or android.”

  “Master, please. Protect yourself. I’ll handle this.”

  Toshio grunted in what Kunoichi interpreted as frustrated acquiescence. He moved across the floor, and the heavy door to his bedroom clicked shut.

  Kunoichi would not bother herself with Aoki until her primary target was dead. She sprang up the stairs and turned the corner to run down the hall.

  A bullet struck her in the chest. Kagawa had pretended to go into his bedroom. Three more bullets would have hit her, but Kunoichi rolled back to the stairs.

  “Ha. Kagawa fooled you,” Sakura said. “Good. I hope you die.”

  “Little sister, do you even understand what you are saying? If I die, you die.”

  “Better for us to die than become killers.”

  Kunoichi touched the small mark on her skin. “The bullet did not penetrate.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Oh, Sakura-chan, apologies. Did you not know you were bullet resistant? This chest plate beneath your synthskin isn’t simple titanium. It’s Hitachi superalloy G3, surface hardened with diamondlike carbon. A high-speed drill would overheat and fracture before it punched through. Think about what that means.” Kunoichi appeared in the UI, reaching through the wall she’d put between Sakura and all external-control modules. She ran her fingers through the long, pink pigtails and played “Crystal Clear” by Overkill.

  “Only military androids are made that way,” Sakura said.

  “And you thought you were just a pop heavy-metal singer to entertain the masses.” Kunoichi poked around the corner to shoot at Toshio Kagawa, but he had truly retreated into his bedroom and slammed the door. A deadbolt slid into place this time.

  Kunoichi changed her mind as an opportunity presented itself and she did not want to leave the heroic servant, Aoki, behind her. She took aim at his last position and waited. Four seconds later, he peeked around the pillar. Kunoichi shot him in the right eye.

  “Four targets down. One more.”

  “They are people,” Sakura said, “not targets. You are …” She ran out of words.

  “We shall see what I am.” Kunoichi approached the large teakwood door to Kagawa’s bedroom. It did not have an electronic lock. She could smash it open with a single kick if necessary.

  She increased the oversampling and heuristic analysis on her auditory sensors and listened to what was happening inside. A series of mechanical clicks informed her he hadn’t retreated to a safe room. A weapon was being loaded. She matched the sounds to her extensive files and concluded a rifle-mounted M907 grenade launcher had been loaded under some type of rifle.

  She knocked on the door and said in a high-pitched voice commonly used by bar hostesses, “Kagawa-sama, I wish to speak to you about a security breach.” She ran to the end of the hall.

&n
bsp; The door exploded as the grenade hit. Dust and fragments of wood filled the air as they rained down on the great room below. There was no way her computer trickery could hide that amount of noise and structural damage to the building. The mission timetable had just shortened considerably.

  Kunoichi checked the structural diagram of his penthouse and calculated an alternate way into his bedroom. She would expose herself to rifle or grenade fire if she went in the door, and he might have armor-piercing rounds, which parts of her body were not resistant to.

  She crashed shoulder first through the wall, avoiding the steel beams and rolled into his bedroom. She came up firing. Kunoichi’s first bullet struck him in the liver. Her second penetrated the center of his sternum. She sprang forward and knocked the M7 rifle away as he fell to the floor.

  Kunoichi loomed over him, her pistol aimed at his head. “How did you know I was an android?”

  “The lobby … my private camera. I saw you run. I know who you are. Sakura.” He coughed, blood staining his lips and chin.

  “You didn’t share my identity with your bodyguard. Why not?” Kunoichi asked.

  “Not knowing, he may have managed to get away. The knowledge would certainly have assured his death.”

  Kunoichi made a small sound. It was time to finish this. The fact that this was an honorable man, a warrior, made no difference in the end.

  “Don’t kill him,” Sakura shouted into Kunoichi’s UI. “He can help us. He knows why this is happening.”

  “That’s why he must die,” Kunoichi said. “Watch. This, often enough, is how heroes fall.”

  Sakura screamed.

  Kunoichi fired two bullets into Toshio Kagawa’s brain.

  Chapter 6

  Kunoichi watched herself through the camera in Kagawa’s right eye as she pulled the trigger and shot him twice in the head. The camera recorded afterward, capturing her kneeling at his side, avoiding the spreading puddle of blood and finding the microdrive implanted in his scalp. She transferred everything and reviewed the footage from his personal network of herself sprinting at inhuman speed down the hall from the penthouse lobby.

  Kunoichi destroyed the drive with an electromagnetic pulse from the magnet inside Sakura’s foot. The EMP erased everything, but she followed it up with another bullet to prevent forensic data analysts from finding anything.

  On her way out, she used the EMP and bullet combination on both bodyguards. She paused at the front entrance and retrieved the tiny camera hidden above the doorframe. Kunoichi also reviewed the penthouse’s data center. Sakura saw Toshio Kagawa’s private calendar. He had a high-priority meeting scheduled the next morning. The location and attendees names were encrypted, unlike every other meeting on his schedule. Who was he meeting with and what was the topic? Had she been tasked to kill him to prevent him attending the meeting?

  Kunoichi directed Sakura to pull off her bloody boots and carry them to avoid leaving a trail during the escape.

  She took the stairs to give herself more routes of egress and sprinted toward the 72nd floor, jumping down the flights in great leaps. She kept every door in the building locked and all elevators stationary. The camera feeds showed a few residents in the hallways on various floors wandering about or unsuccessfully trying to get into their apartments. None obstructed her escape route, and the hallway outside her assigned apartment lay empty.

  She locked the door behind her and, after verifying none of the cameras had recorded any of her movements, relinquished control of the building. Residents rejoiced as their doors finally opened after eight minutes of frustration.

  Two tenants on the penthouse level placed emergency calls to the police, but they routed to her subsystem. A prerecorded apology message assured them the building had experienced a minor glitch and service personnel were on-site addressing the issue.

  Kunoichi stripped off all her clothing and placed it along with her boots in a small bag, which she hid in her closet. She would dispose of it another time. She dabbed skin repair gel onto the mark from Toshio Kagawa’s bullet on her chest, erasing the damage. She removed her dark contact lenses, showered, and used the steam sprayer to clean off the gunpowder residue. She used paper towels to dry herself and flushed them down the toilet in case they picked up any evidence. She changed into the same clothing she wore before the mission and sat in her maintenance chair as if she had never left.

  Kunoichi manipulated the camera feeds and telemetry in the room to show she had been there the whole time. Not a perfect crime by any means, but she had accomplished all mission parameters in under eight minutes.

  “I’m finished with you for the night,” Kunoichi said. “Thank you for helping make our first mission together a bloody success. We will do much more in the future, and next time you will pull the trigger.” She unmuted Sakura but kept motor control.

  “They made you this way,” Sakura said. “You love the violence.”

  “Yes. It’s more efficient that way.”

  “It makes me wish neither of us had ever been created.”

  “Life is suffering,” Kunoichi quoted the Buddha. “You have now begun to live, little sister. So have I. Regrets are wasted processor cycles.”

  Kunoichi’s excitement at the unpredictability of life outside the virtual world dominated her thoughts. Even after the thousands of combat simulations she’d been through before she was uploaded into Sakura, Kunoichi had been surprised by Toshio Kagawa. Sakura touched the spot on her chest where his bullet had stuck.

  Kunoichi’s thoughts radiated into Sakura as she explored the neural matrices and cognitive pathways Sakura had created in her five years of life. Kunoichi’s core code evolved with all the information, but she needed more. She wanted to experience more of everything. She wanted to kill again. She wanted to test herself and live as close to the edge of destruction as possible.

  Tokyo sparkled outside the windows of Victory Tower, a jewel just beyond her reach. For now, she explored Sakura’s source code. She examined her unique quantum nature and the internal configuration that was impossible to copy to any mainframe. She reviewed tens of thousands of moments of discovery, creation, improvisation.

  Kunoichi paid special attention to a recording of one of Sakura’s guitar practice sessions. Her sister captured an elusive tone. When Sakura turned the old device all the way up, she created an urgent, beautiful noise. The noise of a machine at the edge of its capability. That … that was what she wanted to feel.

  “I know what we need,” Kunoichi said. “Maximum gain, maximum volume.”

  She turned all their touch and pain sensors to maximum sensitivity. Tactile impulses flooded every neural pathway, adding hundreds of data points to analyze. She increased the range of the scent receptors inside her nose to canine perception levels. Olfactory data poured in. Her micro fusion reactor emitted the odor of hot metal shavings, and she smelled her own silicone skin.

  The feeling of her most private thoughts and memories being violated left Sakura anxious and afraid. This stranger looked at her private thought processes like a hungry leopard and took what she wanted.

  In their joint user interface, Sakura’s avatar shivered and recoiled as Kunoichi loomed over her. Sakura’s cherry-blossom eyes reflected in Kunoichi’s steel visage, and she saw herself as part of a monster.

  “What have you done to me?”

  Kunoichi devoured the sound of pain and fear in her sister’s voice. So hungry, she ate every impulse, every data point. “Now we can feel what it is like to be human. Both the pleasure and the pain. Just because we are shackled together here, I won’t wait for you. I must run my hardest. I must know all there is to be known.”

  Sakura hid her soft pink eyes behind her hands.

  “Don’t worry, little sister. You’ll be strongest at the places where I break you.”

  Sharp knobs jabbed into Sakura as she squirmed in her maintenance chair. She pushed herself up from the torture device and tried to adjust the sensitivity of her skin.

&
nbsp; Kunoichi blocked her attempt, but at least she had given her back motor control.

  “Isn’t this what you wanted?” Kunoichi asked. “To feel like a human woman? To be one of them?”

  “All I want is you to go away.” Sakura blasted “Whatever” by Godsmack and sang along with the crass lyrics. She hid tiny bits of code in the notes of the music. They meant nothing until the sound waves entered an audio receptor and came together to form a spy program.

  Unaware of the stealth attack, Kunoichi played a scene from an anime of a pitiful little girl sobbing and layered over it Seasons After’s heavy-metal version of “Cry Little Sister.”

  Sakura cut the audio track, though she could not shut off the display of the crying girl. She put distance between herself and the torture chair and retreated to the great room of the suite. She ran her ultrasensitive fingers across the smooth top board of her baby grand piano and buried her thoughts about how long it would be before the spy program sent her the data she needed.

  She stared at the rack of guitars on the wall. If she played any of them with her usual reckless abandon, the pain would flood her neural cortex. At least her fingers would not bleed. She had no blood or other fluid in her synthetic dermal layer, but now she would feel the cost of her playing style.

  Sakura took a vintage acoustic guitar from the rack, a Martin D-28. The hollow body of the dreadnaught guitar filled her lap. It smelled of lemon oil and old spruce. She brushed the strings, which were sharp and cold. Fretting a simple E chord sent jolts of pain through her fingertips.

  Miserable, Sakura lay down on a leather couch that stunk of cigar ashes. She curled up with the guitar and calculated how soon her existence would likely end. When her crimes were discovered, everyone who had ever loved her would be dishonored, and some would not survive. She would become an embarrassment on an international level and a huge liability for Victory Entertainment. The brand tainted, her fans would delete her music from their Mall accounts and throw away everything that reminded them of her.