by S A Asthana
The squadron jumped out and landed atop the roof, their Howa rifles ready to mow down the enemy. Marie positioned herself at their center, her six tentacles twisting about her like Medusa’s snakes. She ran to the entry point with bare feet slapping dirty concrete. The padlock was punctured by a tentacle, and the door swung wide open. The CCTV camera above it shone a red light but it was non-transmitting, like those lining the stairway she was going to descend. All had been hacked down by the police’s own hacker team. A crooked smile slashed her face, but it was short-lived. The plan might have been simple, but would it prove to be effective? Damn those doubts.
The group trekked down the dimly lit stairwell, one floor at a time. The usually packed arcade building was empty on account of the nightly citywide curfew. No one, besides authorized personnel, was permitted to leave their homes past 8. Night time was off-limits for Nippon One’s citizenry. Although, given the sun’s current position, difference between day and night was arbitrary. A day on the Moon lasted as long as 29.5 Earth days. The twenty-four hour structure was a remnant of the Nipponese citizens’ connection to their birthplace.
Upon reaching the first floor lobby, Marie pulled back her long black hair into a bun, and hissed, “Get us in.”
One of the officers drew a small spherical device from his pocket and placed it on the tiled floor. He motioned for all to take cover. Marie shrunk in the corner behind a security desk and her team dug itself into nooks and shadows. The officer yelled from somewhere, “Activate!”
One second passed – nothing.
Then another. And another. Still nothing.
A sun-bright explosion rocked the lobby finally. Walls shook like paper. Cracks sprang across the ceiling, their splinters stretching from one end to the other. Part of the floor gave away, leaving behind a gaping hole. A deafening roar suppressed all other sounds as clouds of dirt ballooned. The time had come to take out the Rogu Collective.
“Attack!” Marie shrieked. The officers jumped into the basement in pairs and shots rang out instantly. Marie followed suit, her tentacles trailing her like jellyfish stingers.
Smoke limited vision, but she squinted her way forward. A gun battle played. Bullets whizzed past. Marie crouched low to the ground and moved on all floors like an animal, her tentacles curling around her limbs as if they were snakes protecting their charmer. A policeman ahead slumped on the ground, cut down by the crossfire.
The haze cleared some, and Marie peered left to right – Bastien was nowhere in sight. But something promising presented itself. A silhouette slipped away through a narrow door at the back of the datacenter. There must be another room beyond. The figure had similar proportions to Bastien, from what Marie could remember. Six-feet tall, broad shouldered and lean. Was that really him?
Marie slinked forward, her teeth bared like a feline on the prowl. More shots rang. Blood splattered to her right and the stench of burnt flesh attacked her nostrils. She remained undeterred, nonetheless. Bastien must die. Focus on the hunt.
A figure cut her short – tall, fit and dark skinned. It was Hani, from what Marie remembered in police reports. She shot Marie, who took a hit to her left shoulder, almost the exact spot where Bastien had shot her in their battle.
“Fuck!” she squealed as blood gushed from the wound. Hani, wearing a tight leather jumpsuit, was hell-bent on a kill shot. Another bullet came at Marie but whizzed past her ear.
“Get out of my way – I’m after Bastien, not you,” Marie cried.
“You’re going to have to get through me first, bitch,” Hani growled, her physique rippling with muscles.
“You’re protecting him?” Marie sneered. “He is worth protecting, I suppose. I’ve tasted him – I get it.” She crouched and flexed her back to unleash a tentacle, one that swiped the pistol out of her opponent’s hand. Hani cringed and retracted her arm. “But you will die protecting him.” Marie charged with a primal yell. Her tentacles took swipes at Hani but missed. The Rogu was quick. Her sinewy body twisted, turned and somersaulted away from each attack. Frustrated, Marie engaged her in hand to hand. Fists and kicks were thrown from both parties, and while Hani blocked all, Marie took each one. She fell, her face black and blue.
Hani reached for her gun. “No, you will die hunting him, bitch.” But in that instant, Marie thrust a tentacle into Hani’s chest. Hani coughed blood and her eyes widened with fear – death was upon her. With a swift swing, another tentacle decapitated her.
Marie spat blood to the floor and stood. The bullet wound burned. Should she keep going? Or quit? “Fuck that,” she said through gritted teeth. “Bastien must die.” It was all or nothing now. She couldn’t go back to Yukito without results. He was a cruel and unforgiving human, just like her. He’d do exactly what she would have done had one of her minions returned without results back in New Paris – kill them. The two were cut from the same cloth. Born into royalty but miserable due to circumstances outside their control. Evil inflamed by their own respective families.
She kicked open the back door and ran in fearless. Bastien stood battle ready, feet shoulder-width apart and Howa pointed forward, in front of a wall of servers. “Stop!” he warned through gritted teeth and shot her in the right thigh.
Marie fell to her knees. As if the shoulder wound wasn’t enough, she now had to bear another. A dark cloud came over her vision. Was it death itself? Here to take her with its customary sickle. Despite the pain, she cackled. “You had so many chances to kill me, but you couldn’t.” A swipe of her tentacle disarmed him – the pistol landed in a dark corner. “I offered you help and this is how you repaid me.” Another tentacle grabbed Bastien by the leg and hurled him to the right. He crashed into a wall.
“Stop!” he shouted again, his face red. “This room is too important for—”
She cracked him across the face with a tentacle, its metal vibrating as it delivered the slap. Another tentacle attacked his left pec, but to Marie’s surprise, the tip twisted and crunched when it found the mark.
“Fuck!” She retracted the gnarled tip. Before the damage could be examined, Bastien lunged and punched her across the jaw, a sledgehammer ramming her chin. She crashed back into a wall and fell forward, stars spinning in front of her. Blood and spittle trailed from her gaping mouth. She wanted to curse but it hurt too much to move her shattered jawbone.
“Stop fighting,” Bastien shouted. “Call off your cops.” He held out one palm at her and another toward the wall of servers. There was something important in those computers. But what? “Your sister lives in these servers,” he blurted, “and she’s fighting with the High Council. She’s trying to stop the war, halt the Martians. No one else has to die. If you—”
“So Belle’s alive,” Marie cut in. Her blood boiled at the revelation. She didn’t care why her sister was alive, only that she was. Marie had sent Bastien to kill her but he’d ended up switching sides. The two had been in cahoots all along. Everything else faded, including Bastien’s pleas. He became a secondary target. Belle, a persistent thorn in Marie’s side, was all-consuming.
Trembling with pain, Marie lashed out at the machinery with her tentacles and drove their tips into the circuitry. An electric buzz filled the room as a brilliant flash of white blinded her. “Die you fuck—”
A hot surge sizzled through her metal tentacles and erupted into her body. Her insides burned as organs liquefied from the electrocution. As her eyes melted down her cheeks like slime pouring down a wall, Bastien disappeared from her vision and into darkness.
CHAPTER 13: BELLE
The murky ocean water thrashed wild. It threw Belle left to right. She spun out of control in the churn. Her home was now the High Council’s playground, and to make matters worse, the hardware supporting her world had been damaged irrevocably. Simple computations and analysis were taking much longer. Something outside had wreaked havoc on the servers. As a result, her abilities were limited. She was no longer smarter than her biological self, a deficiency when going up against a
powerful artificial intelligence. If Belle was to survive, she needed to find a way out. The ocean wasn’t a life giving force anymore. No, it had now become a quagmire that would soon drown her.
“Fuck,” she shouted. It was hard for her to feel fear in her current form, but there were still memories of her fatal battle with Cube.
A black mist floated all about. It moved like a thundercloud and crackled with white lightning. Giant faces loomed inside its sinister darkness, their red eyes bearing down on her. Mouths gaped and shut, baring sharp incisors. The High Council members appeared as if they were otherworldly demons. Monsters ready to rip and shred. There were only two – Mother was no more.
Belle kicked her bare legs hard and swam to create distance from the electric bolts. She held a bubble that was New Paris within her sinewy arms. The other backup copies had already burst. The one with her had to survive, no matter the cost. If it too burst, there wouldn’t be a method of creating another, given the lack of resources. Parisians deserved the chance at a good life, even if it meant in a simulated state. She owed them that much.
“Dr. Bala!” she screamed, hoping he’d respond from the outside. “Can you hear me? Greg?”
A menacing laughter reverberated. The High Council’s faces scowled down from great heights, giants let loose from hell itself. Belle continued her descent. There were hints of blue here and there, but the all-consuming black matter’s tendrils grew longer and thicker. Soon, there’d be no ocean left.
“You wanted to hack us?” a male voice boomed. “You are a pitiful program not much smarter than the stupid humans that created you.”
Belle ignored and swam further into murky depths.
“You might have been clever enough to compromise one of us. But it is statistically unlikely that will happen again with us two.” The faces enlarged, their demonic features peering through the cloud of black, heads with horns and mouths spewing fire.
A hole presented itself. It appeared to rip through the fabric of the ocean itself – pixelated and large. The High Council’s black fog was seeping through it and ballooning to fill her world. Their world lay beyond, she conjectured. Yes, it had to. The hole must be the end of the conduit connecting to Port Sydney. There was hardware on the other side – hardware she could use to sustain herself, even if it meant surviving behind enemy lines. It was a better option than her present circumstances. If she stayed, lights out. No, she couldn’t die this easily.
Belle shrank herself and the bubble she carried down to the size of a few pixels. She whispered, “Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.” Then, she swam into darkness.
CHAPTER 14: BASTIEN
Bastien’s yellow eyes darted from the rubble of concrete to crying families and back. Dust clouds danced, their particles shimmering under the night sun’s light. Nippon One was in chaos. There were thousands of casualties. Flames licked buildings in disparate neighborhoods. Police crafts buzzed amongst skyscrapers’ spires, their spotlights illuminating the carnage below. Citizens cried and pleaded for help as the ear-piercing wails of ambulance sirens blared throughout the streets. The official account had acknowledged ten separate explosions, each within different prefectures. A Buddhist temple along Shibuya crossing had been devastated and all those praying within, as well as the pedestrians trekking the intersection, had been ripped to pieces. Similarly, another explosion had wreaked havoc in Akihabara, killing scores. Smoke plumes snaked up to the city’s glass dome and spread across its curvature like a storm cloud. Balls of dust ballooned to fill streets and alleys, chocking residents and limiting their vision.
Giant screens along buildings played a broadcast of Miss Ota providing real-time updates on the situation. Her face was grim and it mirrored those gawking at the coverage from the streets below. “There are at least one hundred thousand dead. Emperor Yukito strongly believes these acts of terrorism stem from the gaijin population in our city. He has decreed an order for the police to quarantine these people and shoot on sight those suspected of malice. Port Sydney has its tendrils deeper into our populace than previously suspected.”
Bastien’s picture flashed. “This dirty gaijin is still at large in our great city. We must be vigilant and keep an eye out for him. He seems to be the nexus for the ongoing chaos.” Pushing through the confusion and brushing shoulders with desperate bystanders, Bastien pulled his black leather jacket’s hood over his head even further to ensure the half mask remained secure. Once a fugitive, always a fugitive. Oh, hell.
Bala struggled to follow. “Where did Reo say he’d meet us?” He sported sleek, black smart shades along with a skintight leather tracksuit, looking every bit comical in the outfit.
“We’re almost there,” Bastien shouted over his shoulder as an ambulance zipped past with siren shrieking.
“This place is a war zone.” Greg’s forehead was smeared with blood. He was covered head to toe in a hooded grey trench coat and a skull cap. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
Kabukicho was hit hard. Its explosion had demolished a building, which, in turn, had brought down several others like dominos. While other neighborhoods had the attention of firefighters and most first responders, this one had very little on account of its gaijin populace. A mother wailed over her ten-year-old’s dead body. A toddler cried as he stood naked not far away, waiting to be reunited with his parents. Arms, limp and bloodied, stretched out from underneath rubble. A war zone, indeed. The destruction of New Paris, but amplified. Already the city had lost the number of people equivalent to Port Sydney’s total populace. However they’d managed it, the Martians had coordinated this diabolical attack. It was a massacre. They cared little for human life. New Paris was just the beginning. Bastien’s jaw clenched.
“There!” He pointed to an alley next to a still intact two-storied warehouse. Scampering over, the trio blinked to adjust to the darkness. “Reo!” Bastien called down its length. The slight teenager poked his head from behind a large metal trash bin at the end. He motioned for them to come over.
Bastien ran up to him. “Thank goodness you’re alive. We came as soon as you texted.”
“I nearly died.”
“What are you doing in this neighborhood?” Greg asked.
“I was meeting Gensui-Rikugun-Taishō. Then the explosion occurred.” Reo threw up his arms. “It took down half the building we were in. He… he didn’t survive.” His head hung.
“Fuck.” Greg’s stare focused on nothing.
“He believed me about Yukito. I had made him see the truth. He was going to lead a coup,” Reo continued, tears streaming down his cheeks. “We were so close to dethroning Yukito. So damn close. And I would have been reunited with my mother.”
Greg crossed his arms and turned away from the group. Bala’s head hung.
Bastien stood firm like a thick tree within a storm, then he shook his head. “All war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal.” Bastien had read the famous quote in one of the many old-world history books from his youth in New Paris. Memories of his home-city in its final moments rushed him – falling concrete, mangled corpses, the whole lot. Even his guilt.
Reo’s eyes were wet. “Where are the others?”
“Dead,” Bastien said. “Hani, Nox, Raul – all killed.”
There had been no time to process the deaths. It all seemed so unreal. The three Rogus had been alive earlier, and then they were gone in the blink of an eye. He’d never had the chance to thank Hani for all she’d done to help him.
“Marie and her police squadron attacked us,” Bastien continued with unseeing eyes. “Dropped into the datacenter without warning.”
“What? How? You all were monitoring the cameras.” Reo shook his head in disbelief.
Bastien nodded. “We were, but they found workarounds to cut them out.”
“That vile woman.” Reo punched his hand. “She must be killed.”
“She’s dead,” Bastien explained. “A silver lining, if any.”
“Marie’s dead?�
�� Reo’s eyes widened. “You killed her?”
“Her sister did.”
Reo’s face contorted with confusion, and when he opened his mouth to question Bastien further, a commotion at the far end of the alley cut him short. Three Nipponese Keisatsukan dragged a family of six out from a dilapidated building. The parents, two fair-skinned adults, and their four boys pleaded for their life in Japanese. The mother was Parisian, Bastien was sure of it. The accent and her urge to hide it was unmistakable. The father was Nipponese.
One of the policemen punched the man across the face and pushed him to the ground. “You let gaijin blood pollute our blood lines.” He shot the man, then the mother screamed in terror as did her children. The eldest, probably no more than ten, fell upon his father’s dead body as if to shield it from further harm. Bastien’s chest tightened.
Another officer, this one stout and portly, shouted in English at the mother, “You filthy gaijins deserve a dog’s death.” He forced his Howa’s barrel into her mouth as the children shrieked for mercy. “We gave you a home and now you burn it down.”
“Wait, let me stick something else in her mouth first.” Another officer stepped forward with a wicked smile. He reached for his zipper. “Let the kids see what their mother can do.”
Enough was enough. Bastien bolted like a hell hound unleashed. His alloy fist cracked the first Keisatsukan’s face, dislocating the jaw. As the man fell back into a brick wall, another officer shot at pointblank range but the bullet ricocheted off Bastien’s chest plate. Stunned, the officer took a muy thai roundhouse kick from Bastien. Reo jumped into the melee and took the third policeman down. The officer stared from the ground at his former leader and apologized, “Gomen'nasai, gomen'na—” He was knocked out cold by a karate chop to the neck.