by Kotaro Isaka
"Keep the faith. Pops," another kid said, holding up his hand.
Aoyagi wanted to thank them, to leave them with a bit of wisdom maybe, but all he could come up with was "Life's tough." He laughed at his own cliche.
"You're telling us!" they laughed along with him. As he walked toward his car, he turned to look back one more time, but they had already disappeared.
As he climbed behind the wheel, he said a little prayer and turned the key. T he car shook to life; he threw it in reverse, released the clutch, and stepped on the accelerator—and a moment later he was at the exit.
Masaharu Aoyagi
While he drove, he felt as though a haze had descended in front of him—or, more accurately, as though he saw his surroundings through the filter of a nightmare. T he oddness of it was comj)ounded by the relative security he felt inside the car.
At any rate, he knew the way to Sendai Hospital Center. It wasn't t|uite like seeing a maj) in his head, but he could trace the various directions and turns in his mind's eye and lollow them without hesitation. The area around the ( enter was not jiart ol his old route, but he had matk* deliveries there
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any number of times wlien other drivers were out sick. He knew there was a large parking lot, with an automated ticket machine.
His main problem was to avoid being stopped between here and there. The car wasn't that conspicuous, but it was dirtier than almost anything else on the road. It occurred to him that he and the car had much in common: they were both the worse for wear but still running; squeaking through, if only by the skin of their teeth.
There was a fair amount of congestion on the roads but he was impressed that things were generally smooth and orderly only a day after the prime minister had been killed. Cars passed him, sending bits of litter fluttering up—who knows, perhaps blowing evidence of the crime away. But maybe that was exactly what they wanted—for all the evidence to disappear and everything to return to normal? The thought crossed his mind.
The hospital was located in a quiet district to the northeast of town, at the bottom of a long slope on the loop road. The valley seemed tight and he felt a bit trapped in it, maybe because the traffic had thinned but the car ahead of him was slowing down. He realized they were coming to a checkpoint. He knew it would be suspicious to turn off right before being stopped for the inspection, so if possible he wanted a new route well in advance.
He pulled a pair of gaudy designer sunglasses out of his backpack as he sat waiting at a stoplight and put them on—something one of the boys at the mall had given him. They were perfect for a juvenile delinquent, but he wasn't sure if they were the right fashion statement for a suspected assassin. Feeling self-conscious, he took them off.
Next, he pulled out the CD they had shoved in his pack. He had never heard of the band, but from the cover he could tell it was a hip-hop group. He smiled, remembering Rock Iwasaki's injunction to avoid the genre at all costs. Odd that he would get the gift of hip-hop now. He took the disk out of the case and put it in the changer.
The stereo was filthy from years of disuse, and he thought the disk might get stuck and never come out again. But the music started almost immediately—and he found he liked it. He liked driving along, bouncing to the beat, to the jaunty tune and the insistent voices. There was something good about this cheerful response to a bad time, these bright rhymes that seemed to lash out at anyone who tried to put a stop to them. The more he listened, the more he liked it.
THE INCIDENT
When he reached the hospital, he drove around to the parking lot and took a ticket from the machine at the gate. Then he found a sunny space. .As he was turning off the engine, he realized someone was standing right outside the door. Someone in a white hospital jacket. What business could the hospital have with him before he was even out of the car? He rolled down his window.
"Nice duds," said Miura. "But 1 thought this would be better camouflage," he said, pointing at his coat. Aoyagi looked up at him. The small frame and boyish face made him look like a kid playing doctor. He grabbed his backpack and climbed out of the car. As always, the young doctor's manner seemed a strange mi.xture of diffidence and daring.
"Have you lost weight?" The words slipped out before Aoyagi realized what he was saying. Miura looked almost frail.
"You mean since yesterday? If 1 knew how to lose weight overnight, Td write a diet book. You're late," he added.
"I thought 1 was doing well just to get here."
"1 suppose. Anyway, you made it in time."
"In time for what?"
"For me. I can't wait around here all day. A bit later and I'd have gone."
"Gone where?"
"Here and there. Tm afraid Tm in a bit of a hurry," he said, turning on his heel and striding off toward the back of the hospital. Aoyagi fell in step behind him.
"Do you have to march along like that?" he murmured, staring down at his toes as he shuffled to keep uj).
"It's a big place," said Miura, ignoring the question. "But I know my way around. Your double is in the ward at the far end of the fifth floor." They walked in by a rear door and Miura pressed the button at the bank of elevators. "Hardly anycjne uses this except the staff."
T he cTevat(jr doors opened to reveal a young man and woman in white coats like Miura's. Aoyagi felt an urge to bolt. Miura nodded and they nodded back as they j)assed on their way out. But as Aoyagi hunietl into a back corner, they turned to look at him.
"T hey recognized me," he said when the doors had closed.
"Something caught their attention, but they didn't kjiow it was you." Miura jrressed the button lor the filth lloor.
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"How do you know?"
"They saw you with me—the wanted man is on his own, all the news reports say so. How could he be walking around a hospital with a doctor?" Made sense— so if those two had seen him alone, they would have known immediately. The doors opened and Miura turned right as though he'd been doing the rounds here for years. Despite a fresh coat of paint in a cheerful color, the corridor gave off that unmistakable hospital chill. "The last door on the right," he said.
"In a regular ward like this?" Aoyagi had imagined his double hidden away in a closely watched room, somewhere difficult to find and even more difficult to access.
"Check that out," said Miura, nodding down the passage at a familiar object.
"Security Pod," Aoyagi hissed. Even in disguise, he felt exposed before these wide-angle data hogs.
"Relax," Miura told him, tugging on his elbow with unexpected strength. "1 made a few 'repairs' when 1 was up here earlier. It can't see or hear for the moment."
"How did you manage that?"
"Don't forget, these things were originally designed to catch me—or at least that's what the politicians said when they started scattering them around. In fact, they just wanted to keep tabs on people in general."
"Spying on us?" Aoyagi said.
"What else? Knowledge is power, it's what keeps the elite elite. If they don't know what we're up to, how will they keep us down? At any rate, 1 made it my business to find out about these pods—my pods, so to speak— and 1 know enough to fool them now, at least for a while."
"The batterv?" he asked.
j
"No, that doesn't work. If the power goes off the police get notified automatically. No, you have to cross the wiring, switch the input and output terminals. The pods record visuals and sound on an internal hard disk. If you reverse the terminals, it just runs in a loop, recycling the old data."
"As simple as that?"
"You have to know what you're doing, but it's not too hard."
"But you had to get up here beforehand." Aoyagi stole a glance at him. There had been a hint of impatience or irritation in Miura's voice—nothing too threatening, but he somehow felt uneasy walking next to him.
THE INCIDENT
"1 had to be sure your double was really here before 1 got you to come all the way to
the hospital/' Miura said. 'That's the room, at the end of the hall."
"Odd that there's no one around," said Aoyagi. Even for a normal ward, there should be a nurses' station nearby. They had passed a counter on their way from the elevator, but there was no one in sight.
"That's quite sharp of you," said Miura. "Seems they haven't opened this floor yet—it doesn't go into service until next year."
"This isn't a real floor?"
"No."
"Then it's a . . ." Aoyagi finally said the word that had been welling up inside him since the moment they had stepped off the elevator. "Trap?"
"Hey!" said Miura. "You're good."
Aoyagi turned to look at him again. If it was a trap, why were they still walking into it? Or was it a trap Miura had set? He stopped, suddenly frightened, but Miura grabbed his arm arid pulled him along. The corridor, which had felt endless, seemed to contract and they were soon standing in front of Room 502. Miura opened the door. With the room there before him, Aoyagi had to fight the urge to turn and run. A draft from somewhere seemed to flow over him and he flinched. The room was large and bright—apparently destined to be an expensive private facility—and in the foreground was a bed, which was occupied, to judge from the lumps under the quilt.
Miura spoke up behind him. "What were the odds you'd make it here? 1 just happened to show up and provide you with the information."
"1 owe you one," said Aoyagi.
"1 doubt you'd have found this place if 1 hadn't come along."
"You're right," Aoyagi said, trying to sound as sincere. "It's all thanks to you."
T hey took a step into the room. "Hut even if there was almost no chance of your coming, they still must've taken some precautions." Aoyagi wasn't sure what he was getting at. "T he guys who are after you must've made some provisions for the unlikely event that you'd show up here. They might ha'e put out the story alxnit the double themselves."
Aoyagi could teel the floor under his teet turn to sponge. "The story about the double?"
"The story that your double was in this h()si)itiil, here in this room. T hey may have made sure that inlormation got out to the right sort ol pe()|)le.
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Then, if by some accident you did make your way to the hospital, they could grab you. Not a had backup plan."
"But there's no one here to do that," Aoyagi said. Unless you're planning to, he thought to himself.
"There's a Security Pod outside. Maybe they assumed it'd see you when you showed up and they could send in the troops. Since it was so unlikely you'd come, they might have thought that was enough." Miura went to the window and looked out. "But they never counted on someone tampering with the pod before you arrived."
"Where's this heading?"
"Unfortunately," he went on, "my information seems to have been doctored."
"Doctored?"
"My friend the surgeon did tell me your double was here, but it seems he'd got hold of the story your boys had planted." They must have known that information about a double would spread through the world of plastic surgery like a new type of Botox. They seemed to have time and money for just about anything. "These guys are good," said Miura, as if reading his thoughts.
Aoyagi moved to the bed. "Then this is a doll, or pillows?" he said, taking hold of the cover and pulling it back. There was a burst of laughter from behind him. And in front of him—a body. Prone on the bed, knees bent. At first he hoped it was a very realistic doll, but then he noticed the bloodstain spreading out into the sheet.
"He must have been the clincher." Miura had come to stand beside him. "When the Security Pod saw you outside, he'd be waiting in the bed to nab you. Probably seemed like a good training assignment—never see any real action otherwise." The man on the bed was tall and, from the look of the arms and feet protruding from the pajamas, well built.
"Did you do this?" Aoyagi asked, nodding at the blood.
"As a reflex," he said, staring down at the man. "When I pulled back the cover like you did just now, he jumped me."
"Well, we'd better get out of here." He was having enough trouble understanding any of this, but it was obviously just a matter of time before the hospital staff—or the police—showed up.
"What's the hurry?" said Miura. "It'll be a while before they figure out
THE INCIDENT
what's happened." His eyes moved from the body to the far end of the room, and it was then that Aoyagi noticed a second Security Pod. "They put too much faith in those things." Presumably he had fixed that one, too. "If we lie low, I think it's safe here for a while yet. After all, no one bothered me when I went out to meet you."
Aoyagi looked at the face of the man on the bed—who looked nothing like him at all. "The double's double."
"I'm afraid my little plan backfired. When I phoned you, I still thought this was the real deal."
"Well, it sucks," Aoyagi muttered. The man probably had a family—but now was just a pawn toppled over on the board. "Who did this?"
"That would be me," Miura said, raising his hand. "I stabbed him, but don't bother explaining why it's wrong—it'd be wasted on me."
"No, I mean who did all of this? Who's after me? Who's hurting my friends? Who made you kill him? Everything."
"I can only speak for myself," he said. "But it's just the way I am. I'm a murderer . . . with a touch of psychopath thrown in. And nobody made me stab him."
Aoyagi looked at Miura, and for the first time in a while he faced the fact that he was dealing with a serial killer. But somehow the thought no longer bothered him much.
"No, that's not right. You're responsible for the things you've done up to this point, but this time is different. T his time someone else made you do it, for reasons that have nothing to do with you."
"Someone with very long arms and big plans."
"Who stays well out of sight."
.Miura sighed—or tried to laugh, perhaj)S—then walked over to the window and sank back against the wall. "I'm pooj)ed," he murmured.
"You okay?"
"Yeah, but this enemy of yours—1 can't get a grij) on him. You might as well be fighting 'the government' or 'authority' itselt."
"That's what I've been telling you all along."
"While we stand around in a da/e, they make laws and reiinange taxes a/id health care, start a war somewhere and all we can do is go with IIk‘ flow, follow their lead. T hat's the way the game's rigged. lA'c*iything happc'iis
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while guys like us are half asleep. I read somewhere that the state's main interest is to protect itself, not the people—now 1 see what that meant."
Aoyagi wasn't sure what to say when Miura got going like this. "Which means there's no way for someone like me to win against them, right?"
"I'm not sure what it would look like to 'win' this kind of fight. If you asked me . . ." As Miura spoke, Aoyagi suddenly remembered a conversation long ago, under a clear sky, with friends. Someone—Morita—was talking seriously about something, but since it was Morita, the actual content was probably less than serious. Someone else—Aoyagi himself—was listening. "What would you do if you were floating around in the sea and a whale attacked you?" Morita's solution had been the same as the one Miura was suggesting now.
"... I'd say you should run."
"Run." Everyone had been telling him that since yesterday.
"Until no one's following you anymore. I guess that's about all you can do. When you've got the authorities after you, you run."
"Okay, but how?"
"There, Tm sorry to say, I can't help you. I gave it some thought, but Tm afraid I won't have time to help you work it out." Aoyagi remembered that he had said he was in a hurry. As they stood facing one another, Miura's white surgical coat fell open, and Aoyagi noticed a stain on his shirt under his breastbone—a big one. "You see, the guy in the bed had a gun. Small caliber, with a silencer—the kind they'd give an officer in training. He wasn't bad, that guy. Shot me at the same m
oment I stabbed him." Miura frowned, but he seemed cheerful enough. "At first I didn't think he'd hit anything vital, but now I'm not so sure. That's a lot of blood—I should know."
"We've got to get you to a hospital!" Aoyagi blurted out.
"I thought this was one."
Sunlight flooded the room through the crack in the curtains, bleaching and drying everything damp and dark.
"It's all your fault," Miura laughed. "I thought it'd be interesting to help you get away, but I guess I was pushing my luck."
"Td say you've been pushing it all along."
"Point taken."
"But why didn't you tell me as soon as I got here?" He couldn't bring him-
THE INCIDENT
self to cross the room to him. Instead, suddenly dizzy, he leaned against the bed. "1 didn't realize," he said.
There had been no sign that Miura was wounded as they made their way here from the parking lot, no hint as they had discussed Aoyagi's problem. He had thought he looked somehow thinner. Now he realized it wasn't weight he'd been losing.
"Surprise . . . ," Miura murmured.
Masaharu Aoyagi
He felt as though he had been staring at Miura's still body for a long time. At last he looked up and checked the clock. Then he turned toward the young policeman.
What seemed like a vibration made him feel in his pocket for his cell phone. When he realized it wasn't the phone, he thought it might he a small earthquake or nearby construction that was shaking the building. But there was no sign that the room was actually moving. He had just decided he was imagining things when he figured out what it was. Pulling open Miura's white coat, he could see something vibrating in his pocket, as though a small animal was hiding there.
The display gave the number of the incoming call—from another cell phone—but there was no name. He considered the risk in talking on the phone, but then pressed the button anyway and said hello.
"Who is this?" said a man's voice. 'Hie tone was neutral. "You're not Miura."