by Steve Bein
The train doors closed. Exactly that much was right in the world. Joko Daishi might still escape, but not on this train.
The problem was, he didn’t seem to mind much. Instead of trying to stop the doors from closing, he pulled Han’s handcuffs from his belt. He snapped one bracelet on Han’s wrist and the other on the steel handle bolted beside the train door. Then the train began to pull away.
Han slid off of Mariko, dragged by the cuffs. Mariko had no keys. Han did, and he dug for them, but to no avail. He and Mariko both looked past him to the end of the platform—or rather, to the heavy steel guardrail that was soon to stave Han’s head in and tear his arm off at the shoulder.
Joko Daishi watched with boyish anticipation. Mariko made him pay for his inattention. She kicked his bad leg with everything she had. Nothing broke, but at least she made him fall. She scrambled on top of him, planted both palms on his face, and put all of her bodyweight there. It pinned him and allowed her to spring to her feet. Then she tried to stomp on his head. He rolled aside easily enough, but that was the reaction she wanted. He exposed his back. She drew Glorious Victory Unsought from its scabbard.
“It’s him or me,” Joko Daishi said, looking at the sword. He even stretched out his neck a bit.
Mariko ignored him and ran after Han.
The train was picking up speed. Mariko dug in hard, running for all she was worth. Her sword swung wildly with her pumping arms. Han still pawed at his right pocket with his left hand, digging for the handcuff key. His eyes wide with panic, he looked at Mariko’s sword, then at the guardrail.
Terrified of losing his arm, he made a last desperate gambit for the key. He ripped the pocket right off. His key ring bounced away. He snatched it out of the air just before it fell. By some miracle his fumbling left hand managed to find the handcuff key among all the others. He reached up with the key, but the keyhole was too far. It bounced and jittered, a couple of millimeters out of reach.
“Do it!” he shouted, and he cringed away from his taut right arm.
Mariko’s hands found their grip. She raised her sword and unleashed her loudest kiai. Then she struck.
The Inazuma blade slashed right through the handcuff chain, never touching flesh.
Han skidded along the platform and smashed into the guardrail. It rang like a tuning fork but he didn’t hit it hard enough to hurt him. Impossibly, he even had the presence of mind to draw his pistol. He pointed it feebly in Joko Daishi’s direction, but it was a long shot, left-handed, and his whole body was trembling. He fired and missed.
But at least he was still alive, and well enough that he wasn’t going to pass out. He gave Mariko a weak nod, and she turned and charged Joko Daishi. He jumped down onto the train tracks and limped into the tunnel.
Thoughts of Shoji-san entered Mariko’s mind. She sometimes spoke of the forces of destiny roaring in her ears. Mariko felt something like that now. Her whole body was tingling—adrenaline, not destiny, her rational mind insisted. She had refused Furukawa’s pistol, rejected his invitation, insisted she’d never kill Joko Daishi, and now here she was, chasing Shoji’s son with a lethal weapon in hand. Furukawa had even said she’d kill him with Glorious Victory Unsought.
But what else was she supposed to do? Just toss her sensei’s sword on the ground? The country’s most dangerous criminal was at large. She knew where he was. She had no other weapon and he’d proven he was the superior fighter. He could kill her at will. Glorious Victory Unsought was her only defense.
But if he could kill her at will, why hadn’t he? Was it faith in destiny? The first thing he’d ever said to her was that he had seen the hour of his death, and that he would die by the sword. But Mariko didn’t buy that. It was just the hallucination of a sick mind. Besides, if he really believed in it, he could have stood his ground instead of running. He could have spread his arms wide and asked her to kill him. So what was his game? Was he just toying with her? Or did he mean to kill the kidnapped children, and only then let Mariko cut his throat?
It didn’t matter. Mariko couldn’t let him go. She jumped down onto the tracks and followed him into the darkness.
52
I see him wearing the mask. You have the sword in hand. He can see it coming. Do you understand, Mariko? He has seen his death coming. He sees it as a bright light, as bright as the sun. You’ll try to ambush him. You’ll fail.
Those were Shoji-san’s words. Mariko remembered them with unusual clarity. She also remembered the question she wanted to ask next, the one she stopped herself from asking because she was afraid of the answer: Am I going to die?
She figured she understood the vision well enough. That mask allowed Joko Daishi to see Glorious Victory, even in total darkness. It glowed for him—glowed like sunlight, she supposed. Mariko was counting on it. She wasn’t likely to find him down here. The farther she got from the platform, the darker it got, and once she rounded the first curve she could see almost nothing. But the mask instilled an obsession for the sword. If Mariko could just get close to him, maybe the mask would draw him out.
It was cold in the tunnel. A distant rumble forewarned her of a coming train. It seemed far away, but even so, the sound terrified her. The reptilian part of her brain instantly demanded that she look for shelter. There was a narrow walkway on one side of the tunnel, a concrete ledge little wider than the length of Mariko’s shoe. It would be of some use in getting passengers out of a stalled train, as they could keep a steadying hand on the train itself. Balancing on it while a train rushed by was a terrifying prospect. Still, Mariko had no choice. She climbed up onto the ledge, then pressed her back to the wall and hoped the wind from the train wouldn’t knock her loose.
The train never came. It was going the opposite direction, on another track. “Do not worry,” an eerie voice called from farther up the tunnel. “It will not be a train that claims my life. I do not think it will take yours either.”
“Come on out,” Mariko shouted. “We know about your church at the airport. Those kids are already safe.” She hoped to hell it was true. “There’s no way out for you. My partner already called for backup.” She hoped that was true too.
“Your partner relies on law and order,” said Joko Daishi. “They will fail him, just as they have failed you. But you, you have abandoned your former keepers. You have fallen into the den of iniquity that is the Wind.”
His voice echoed weirdly in the tunnel; it was impossible to tell if he was near or far. Mariko tightened her grip on Glorious Victory and settled her weight into her feet. It wasn’t easy, balancing on this ledge while holding something as long and heavy as an odachi. She wanted to angle the sword toward the tunnel wall, erring on the side of caution; if a train came, just nicking it with the tip of her sword would knock her off the ledge. But if Joko Daishi was closer than she thought, angling the sword that way would allow him to trap it against the wall, leaving her defenseless.
She didn’t know what to do. She’d never trained for a situation like this. And now a low rumble shivered throughout the tunnel. Another train was coming.
“They are deceivers,” Joko Daishi said. “Purveyors of false truths.”
“So are you. They trained you.”
“Born of the Wind, yet not of the Wind. That is my nature. I am the light. I am the brightest fire.”
For a moment Mariko thought she saw him glow. A faint light brightened the far end of the tunnel. It came from just around the bend. Then Mariko snapped out of it. The truth was simple: crazy people didn’t glow. Train headlights did. But just for a moment, she’d been so scared that she actually started to believe him.
“Where are you?” she shouted. “Get on the ledge! Let me bring you out of here alive.”
“You do not understand life. You do not understand death. I will show you their true nature.”
She couldn’t tell if that was a threat or the prelude to a sermon. She took sliding steps forward, her feet grating through years’ worth of dust and grit. The ledge quak
ed under her feet, not from the train but just from the noise of it.
“You’re sick, Koji-san. Let me help you. Just tell me where you are.”
“I am everywhere. I am the light that disperses all shadows. Come to me, child; I will show you.”
A wall of air hit Mariko in the face. A rumbling came with it, growing louder by the second. Glorious Victory shuddered, cutting the wind just like a rudder. The sword wrestled against her with a will of its own. A trembling glow grew brighter and brighter around the bend. Light consumed the far side of the tunnel, pitching Mariko’s side deeper into shadow.
“Let me help you!” She had to shout at the top of her lungs. “Where are you?”
“I am here.”
He stepped out from the shadow right in front of her, close enough for Glorious Victory to touch him. In the instant he stepped forward, the train rounded the curve. Its lights hurled his shadow at her, so vividly that she actually had to jump back.
When she landed she lost her balance. The ledge wasn’t wide enough for a decent kenjutsu stance. She teetered on the edge, millimeters from the train cars that would smash her bones to pulp.
Joko Daishi stepped forward. With one hand he brushed Glorious Victory aside, pressing it toward the wall. He was inside her reach now; she was defenseless. But his push moved the sword like a counterweight, allowing Mariko to regain her balance.
She twisted the sword, trying to drive the edge into him. He stepped in, grabbed her hand, and twisted back. Now she was locked into his range. She should have been two meters away, taking him apart piece by piece. Instead she was close enough to punch him—close enough for him to reach out and grab her by the hair.
It wasn’t a great hold. It didn’t even hurt that much. Mariko knew three different escapes from it, including one that would break his wrist and end the fight right there. But for that she needed mobility and she needed to be able to reach him. Her right hand was stuck, clamped on to Glorious Victory by Joko Daishi’s iron-hard grip. With her left she could reach the hand that was grabbing her, but she couldn’t hit any vital targets. She tried kicking him, but that was when he started pulling her head toward the train.
The train cars lit his face stroboscopically, so she got a good look at the childlike curiosity in his eyes. Every moment was frozen like a film cell. He was like a little boy with a bug under his thumb, pushing slowly just to see what would happen.
If she kicked him, she’d compromise her balance, and then she’d go headfirst into the train. She couldn’t punch, couldn’t elbow, couldn’t bite him or gouge his eyes. She had no weapons left, except for Glorious Victory Unsought. The train was close enough that she could feel it hit her hair.
Yamada-sensei always taught her to keep her sword between herself and her opponent. He also told her the only response to failure was to try again. So she did. She couldn’t get her sword free, so instead she wormed her way behind it. In effect she treated it like a guardrail, putting it between herself and the train. Because of the way he’d trapped it, Joko Daishi was on the train’s side. He had her skull and her right hand totally locked down, but she was free to move everything else, so she put everything else behind Glorious Victory Unsought.
Now it wasn’t trapped. Now it was a lever.
She pushed.
The train hit his shoulder blade first. Everything after that happened much too fast for Mariko to see. He hit the train, the wall, the ceiling, bouncing like a rubber ball in a blender. Sparks flew whenever the mask struck something solid.
When the train was gone, its stroboscopic effect left with it, so Mariko was left in the dark. Soon after that, she was left in silence.
53
Mariko collapsed on the ledge and took the biggest, deepest breath of her life. She sat that way for a while, just breathing, her head lolled back against the concrete wall, legs dangling off the lip of the ledge. Let another train come, she figured. It can’t be worse than the last one.
In time she was ready to stand again, and she started walking back toward the platform where she’d left Han. She couldn’t see a damn thing, so she held Glorious Victory one-handed, letting it rest on her collarbone, while the other hand lightly brushed the wall. It dawned on her that her scalp hurt. When she prodded it her fingertips burned what they touched, then came away sticky. Joko Daishi had taken a big chunk of hair with him when he got hit.
“Ow,” she said.
“My child,” said Joko Daishi.
Mariko practically jumped out of her skin. Glorious Victory sprang to the ready, almost of its own accord. Tightening her bloody fingers around the grip, she realized he could see her and she was still blind. She probed the darkness with the tip of her sword, her back pressed flat against the wall.
“My child, please,” Joko Daishi murmured.
He sounded half dead. His words burbled in his throat. Wheezing breaths came slowly, as if passing through a slice in a piece of paper.
Mariko realized she had a light with her. After all her years with an old-school cheapo clamshell phone, it was easy to forget her new smartphone could double as a flashlight. She got it out, pointed Glorious Victory in the direction of Joko Daishi’s voice, and turned the light on.
The man in front of her was a mangled, broken, jagged, bleeding heap. He lay between the rails, crumpled like paper, his body knotted into impossible shapes. But his eyes were bright and white, blazing behind that evil mask. The mask had finally drunk its fill; every crease and furrow ran red with blood.
“Please,” he mumbled.
He should have been dead. Hell, he should have been dead ten or twelve times over. And since he wasn’t dead yet, he’d probably be a long time in dying. A long time suffering, too. It was clear from his face, from the twitches and shudders, from the sick sucking noises his body made when he breathed. Every moment was torture. If he were an animal, only a sadist would wonder whether or not to put him down.
Mariko realized she wasn’t the only one who could see that. Shoji could see it. Somehow she shared a profound connection with her son, something far stronger than blood. She knew his future. At this moment, did she see hours of agony or did she see an end? Mariko could decide that for her. She could decide right now.
I shall die by the sword. That was what Joko Daishi told her the first time they met. Shoji knew it. Furukawa knew it. If Furukawa could be believed, even Yamada-sensei knew it. He knew it well enough to keep Glorious Victory Unsought for himself, so no one else in the Wind could use it to kill Shoji’s son. And now here it was, the fateful blade in its fateful place, with Mariko’s hand on its grip.
She thought of the kaishakunin of old. When a samurai committed seppuku, he had a second to behead him if his suffering became too great. But Mariko was no samurai, and Joko Daishi didn’t deserve a samurai’s death.
Then she remembered what Furukawa had said about Streaming Dawn. Maybe she wouldn’t have to play the kaishakunin after all. Maybe she could just pull out the shard that was keeping Joko Daishi alive. But Furukawa never told her what to look for or where to look. That was probably deliberate; no doubt the Wind planned to steal it from the body once Joko Daishi was in the morgue. Not that it mattered. She wasn’t about to start prodding a pulped, mangled man in hopes of finding the shard. No, there was only one way to end this painlessly.
Pity and resentment came to blows in her mind. She hated destiny, and she hated the fact that it wouldn’t be destiny that killed Joko Daishi. It would be Mariko. She wouldn’t even be able to assuage her guilt by saying fate guided her hand. This was a deliberate, willful, fully conscious choice, and the worst part was that Mariko already knew what it was going to be. Apparently fate did too.
“Goddamn you,” she said. “I don’t want to do this.”
She said it in English, not intending to. Now she couldn’t tell if she meant to say it to herself or to Joko Daishi.
Maybe he deserved his pain. Maybe he deserved hours and hours of it. He’d certainly caused enough pain. But f
or Mariko that was irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was that an old woman had suffered enough. Shoji would spend the rest of her life grieving over what her son had done and what she might have done to prevent it. If Mariko could ease her burden even a little, then that was what she ought to do.
She set down the phone. Even that sickened her, deliberately positioning it so she could see what she was doing. Her sensei’s sword had never been so heavy in her hands. She lined up the cut. Joko Daishi closed his eyes.
Mariko raised the sword and let it fall. She wasn’t sure she could ever pick it up again.
54
Han came for her just before she reached the platform. Paramedics hadn’t arrived yet, or else his right arm would have been in a sling. There was no way his rotator cuff could have survived being dragged by the train. Not having a sling, he just carried his right arm in his left. He had a nasty limp too. In fact, the whole right side of his body must have been bruised to hell. He didn’t need a sling; he needed a stretcher, a neck brace, a backboard, and a quick route to the nearest emergency room. But he came for Mariko instead.
She watched him grit his teeth and groan as he lowered himself down to the tracks. He was backlit by the red taillights of the train, which stood parked and empty at the platform. Behind him, all the passengers were being directed up the stairs. The whole station was a crime scene now. None of them could see Mariko—the red light didn’t penetrate that far into the dark tunnel—and she waited until they were gone.
“Mariko!” Han doubled his pace as soon as he saw her, though it obviously hurt like hell to do it. “I called for them to stop all the trains. I called them as soon as you went in the tunnel. I swear—”
“It’s okay.”
“I called them. I swear I did. I said stop every train, there’s an officer on the tracks. Then I heard that damn thing coming, then I saw it—”