by Joe Shine
A new image appeared. It looked like the inside of some office or something. It took me a second to see it. Or, correction, to see her. How I’d missed her I couldn’t say. She looked exactly the same—just tired—and was wearing her favorite green “work sweater,” the one I’d bought for her when I was eleven. The color of her hair, like the sweater, was fading.
“Mom?”
“That is your mother,” Blake confirmed. “Give a little wave to the camera please, Dwight.”
A man sitting off to the right of my mother gave a tiny little wave.
“No,” I started but couldn’t finish. I stayed quiet for a long, long time. The first two murders had dented my armor. This had pierced it. He’d done it. He’d broken me.
“Hunter,” I finally said.
“Excuse me?” Blake asked.
“Hunter. I want to be a Hunter.”
“If you what?” Blake started. “You have to say it.”
“I’ll take you to him. You unlink me when we get there and let me be a Hunter after that and I’ll do it.”
Blake smiled and shook my hand. “Deal.”
I know. I know. I’m a world-class a-hole. I get it and I agree. I’m not proud about it. Worst day of my life? Probably. But seeing my mother like that, in that situation, had somehow flipped the switch.
Before she appeared on the screen, betraying Ryo hadn’t been an option. It hadn’t even been on the radar. But that somehow did it.
I felt torn up about all of it, but, I mean, the man had a point. They’d find Ryo eventually. They would. And when they did, they’d kill him. So all my mom’s death would do was delay the inevitable. I understood that, so when given the chance, yeah, I saved her.
The Hunter part? That was for me. Why not get something I want out of all this, too? I’d come in here and played my hand, but I’d been beaten by a better one. I had the chance to walk away with something, so I took it. You’d do the same in my shoes. It’d be a hard pill to swallow and you’d hate yourself, but you’d do it. You’re not better than me and don’t try to say you are. In the end, we are all selfish creatures.
Chapter 27
International Officially Breaks Up ... For Good
Blake was beyond giddy, while I was broken. I watched, defeated, as the kill team was assembled and they loaded up their gear into the jet that would take us across the ocean.
The few words I did say were to confirm where the cabin was on a map. Four Hunters would be more than enough to see the job through. I felt sick to my stomach, dreading what was coming as we boarded the plane, and the feeling only worsened the closer we got. We landed at the New Chitose Airport outside Hokkaido around nine hours later. The trip had gone way too fast. Betrayal makes time fly, I guess.
The wind was biting, but it was sunny as we got out of the plane. That always weirded me out. Sun meant hot to me, so whenever I happened to be in bright sunlight with sub-zero temperatures, I got thrown off. Made no sense to me. I watched as the kill team moved their gear into a fully decked-out Toyota 4Runner. I could have helped. I probably should have, since the deal was that I’d become a Hunter, one of them, when this was over, but I let them do it all. I’d done enough. Was doing enough. I wasn’t about to help load up the gear that would finish the job. That seemed a step too far.
After a couple hours we turned off the last of the paved roads and hit the snowy back trails. The 4Runner tore through them like they were nothing at first, but eventually the snow deepened and the incline steepened. The SUV was about to be bested. No sooner had I prepared myself for a fun hike in deep snow than the 4Runner, with one last push, climbed over a ledge and came to rest where four snowmobiles sat waiting. Four, huh? There were five of us. Message received loud and clear. They still didn’t trust me. I couldn’t blame them. I wouldn’t have trusted me either.
We drove the snowmobiles, or I guess they drove them and I sat behind a guy named Bale, arms wrapped around him like he was my boy. The trip took about thirty minutes before we parked about a mile away from the cabin. If you’ve never been on a snowmobile, one thing you should know is that they’re loud. Like chain-saw loud. So while they’re great for tearing through the backwoods, they’re terrible for sneaking up on people. It was better to shut down the roar of the screaming engines way out so that if Ryo and Akiko heard them, they would just think we were joyriders off somewhere far away.
They cut and tore off branches from nearby pine trees and tossed them over the vehicles for a quick bit of camouflage. Once we were loaded and ready, it was time to head out. But before we started, Bale took out a pair of handcuffs and quickly latched himself to me.
“Really?” I asked, annoyed.
“Can’t risk you running off to warn them.”
“Nobody’s running off in this,” I said, pointing down at the snow that was up to our knees.
He just shrugged. “Orders. You’re really not gonna like this, then,” he said, taking out a Muter—a strap of synthetic material you wrap around someone’s throat that disables their voice box.
“Seriously? I’m here. I’m doing this,” I said angrily.
“Could get cold feet. Just a precaution.”
“If I’d wanted to sabotage this whole thing, I’d have crashed the plane or found some way to warn them earlier. I wouldn’t be here and, especially, I wouldn’t be letting you cuff me.”
“You done?” he asked flatly as he stared at me.
“Yeah,” I admitted, defeated. This was happening one way or another.
I ducked my head so that he could reach around my neck and strap on the Muter. I’d never worn one before, so I immediately tried to talk. It was weird. My mouth moved and air hissed out of it, but there were no words. Very strange sensation. My mind was saying, “Talk,” and my body was responding, but there was no sound.
All of us were in good shape, but even that didn’t stop us from getting winded hiking through knee-deep snow in ten thousand feet of elevation. No one wanted to be the one to cave and ask for a break, not that I could have with the Muter on, so we all trekked on. After forty-five minutes of hard going we were there.
After cresting one last hill, we dropped down behind a large snowdrift that gave us both a clear view of the cabin and some cover. The cabin sat in the middle of a wide clearing with nothing but open, snow-covered fields for a hundred yards in all directions. The isolation and the open space all around it was what made it such a great hiding spot. There was no sneaking up on it. This would be a full-charge assault.
Weapons were drawn and checked to make sure they were loaded. I pointed at my throat, asking for them to let me speak.
“You yell, you do anything other than whisper, you die,” Sheila, the squad leader, said as she pointed her silenced pistol at me. I nodded.
Bale clicked the remote for the Muter so I could talk.
“Okay, I got you here,” I said. “Unlink me. That’s the deal.”
“Change of plans,” Bale said, and before I could react, he muted me again.
“You see,” Sheila began, “You’re the fail-safe. Let’s say we shoot him, but he falls down a slope and we can’t reach him? How do we know he’s alive? Or the cabin collapses and we can’t find the body. How do we know he’s dead inside and not running away down some secret passage?” The way she was staring at me, like I was fresh steak, pissed me off.
Unable to talk, I shook my head angrily as I figured it out. It was cruel. It was not part of the deal. They’d screwed me.
“Yes,” she admitted. “When he dies, your link, and your reaction will be all the confirmation of his death we need.”
I shook my head again.
“Deals change,” she said, reading my thoughts.
So I was getting nothing. I was being royally screwed. Ryo was dying and I wasn’t going to be a Hunter either? Instead, they would kill him and when he died, my li
nk to him would fry my brain and scramble it up like an egg, or so the rumors went. I’d be a crazy, kill-everything-I-see, wild terror. It was a fate worse than death. I can see you smirking right now. What? You deserve it, I can hear you thinking. And maybe you’re right. I’d sold out Ryo to save my mom after letting Sam and Leggo die, so why should I get any sort of happy ending out of this? I’d double-crossed Ryo, so it’s only fair FATE double-crosses me. There’s an irony in that I can get behind and respect. I don’t have to like it, though.
An instant later the group burst up from behind the crest and charged at the cabin. Bale jerked me along with him. This dude was strong, but I didn’t fight him too hard. My legs were heavy, and my heart was broken, so what was the point of fighting now? This was the bed I’d chosen. I was going to force myself to watch and witness my own treachery. I was sorta looking forward to the impending insanity that was coming for me. It would be nice to finally be done with all this.
Halfway across the snow-covered field, an engine roared to life behind the cabin. We ran sideways to get a better angle. Ryo was streaking away from us on a snowmobile. Well played, buddy. Sheila and the other three Hunters opened fire, but by then Ryo had already ducked down the other side of the mountain and was safely out of their line of sight. Their bullets puffed into the snowbank right where he’d been.
We sprinted across the open space (the snow was hard and thin here) and past the cabin. I was sprinting along with them. Heck, I was pulling Bale along. I had to see. I had to know. Was he going to do it? Had Ryo escaped? I allowed my heart to hope. Go, baby, go!
By the time we reached the snowbank and got our visibility back, it had been a good fifteen or so seconds. We’d barely covered a hundred yards in that time, but Ryo, running that puppy full throttle and driving it like a boss, was no more than a speck zooming down the face of the mountain toward a deep bowl far below us. The Hunters popped off a few hopeful shots, but they knew it, too, we all did. He was out of range. I smiled. I couldn’t help it.
I felt a tug on my wrist and looked down to see that Bale had uncuffed himself from me. Determined and focused, he flung off his backpack, unzipped it, and flipped it open. Inside were four pieces that when put together made a rocket launcher. Like he’d done it a thousand times, which he probably had, Bale slid all the pieces together in seconds, took a knee, and fired off a rocket. The smoke from the tail of the rocket trailed it as it flew toward Ryo. It slammed into the snow behind him with a massive explosion of fire and ice. The boom! echoed all around. For a few seconds we all stood still, waiting for the smoke and ice dust to clear. Was Ryo hit? Sheila was watching me, waiting for my reaction to tell if he was dead. But when the smoke cleared, Ryo was now fifty yards farther still, zipping across the snow.
One of the other Hunters, Griesman, I think was his name, whispered something to Bale. Bale nodded, loaded up another rocket round, and fired. Once again we all watched in silence as the rocket soared toward the speck that was Ryo. He was too far away now. Hitting him would be luck, like winning the lottery three times in a row. The rocket missed him, as it should have. It went over Ryo and detonated about five hundred feet above and in front of him. Yeah, hitting him would have been pretty impossible, but to miss that bad? Embarrassing. It was a terrible shot, really awful. Or was it?
The snow where the rocket had hit cracked and then slid. They’d made an avalanche and it was heading right at Ryo. There was no hoping he could outrun it. No chance it’d miss him. I watched in horror as the wave of white ice slammed into him like a freight train.
Brain, prepare to melt down in five, four, three, two, one . . .
RAGE.
Chapter 28
Allow Me to Retort
I was tackled to the ground and pumped full of some super-strong tranquilizer. I have no clue what happened after that, for real. No clue how long I was out. No clue about, well, anything.
All I know is that here I am, locked in a small cell, rocking the latest trend in straitjackets. They’re still white, if you’re curious. Where was I? No clue, really. How’d I get here? Somehow. How long had I been here? Days, weeks, years—I didn’t know. How was I gonna get out of this one? I wasn’t, but I’d known that going in. I had one purpose and one purpose only: to protect my FIP at all costs, my life included. So here I am.
Whoa, whoa, you’re probably saying. How are you still you? Didn’t you, like, lose your mind or something when Ryo died? Did I? Didn’t I?
Oops, better let out a good scream or two for the camera up in the corner watching me. Gotta play my part. Confused yet? Allow me to explain.
Okay, so I really hope that by now you’ve figured out that I’m not a total idiot. I’m not smart, I’ll give you that, but I’m not a total idiot either. When I was younger, I realized that when people think you’re an idiot, they won’t expect much out of you. The moment I realized that, I’d gone with it. Played my part, honed it to perfection—a big, dumb oaf from the wrong side of town who surprised you sometimes. So, I’m not stupid. That’s really all I was going for here. Now that you believe that, hopefully, we can move on.
Look, I knew from the moment the squad hit us in Wyoming that FATE wouldn’t stop until both Ryo and I were dead. There was no way around it. They always had their reasons and those reasons never changed. The moment we were marked for death, that was it. We had to die. That was the only way it ended. Period. End of story. But knowing your opponent’s hand can come in real handy, so I came up with a plan and it’s what I told Akiko back at the Yakuza compound. I also spilled the beans on FATE, Shadows, everything to her. She deserved to know, but more importantly she needed to be able to tell Ryo when the time was right so that he would know who he was up against and why he had to stick to the plan, forever. I wanted to tell him myself, but there was no way he’d have gone along with it. Once they were safely in the cabin in the mountains, she’d let him know what was really going on and get the plan moving.
So yeah, from the moment I found the kidnapped lady and called in the hounds, so to speak, everything that happened after that was planned out. While I was back home dealing with Blake and learning why all of this was happening, Akiko was filling Ryo in and explaining his part in the plan. My part wasn’t as simple as his, and it shouldn’t have been.
The best lie is the one you believe. It’s not a lie then. You’d call someone stupid for saying the world is flat, but if they believe it, actually believe it, you can’t call them a liar. They’re wrong, but not lying. That’s what I had to do with Blake. Actors call it method acting. It’s where you become the character you’re playing. You live them. You breathe them. Daniel Day-Lewis is famous for it. He takes it so seriously that I heard in one of his movies, he actually built the hut his character lived in using only the super old-school tools his character would have had access to. It’s a true commitment to the role down to your soul. That’s what I had to do. I had to believe I was really betraying Ryo. That I was selling him out. Blake would have seen right through my lie had it been one. I had to believe for him. To convince Blake I was really doing this. I had to commit to the role. I was the betrayer. The destroyer of trust. And I knew I’d have to fall painfully deep into the lie to make Blake believe, but even I hadn’t been ready for what he had in store for me. I will forever have the blood of Sam and Leggo on my hands. I’d allowed them to be sacrificed like pawns in a game of chess. I’ll forever be haunted by that decision. But I would do it all over again if I had to. Ryo is what matters; everything else is inconsequential, even them.
When I showed up with Bale and the others at the cabin, Ryo knew what he had to do and took off across the snowy mountain on the snowmobile exactly like we’d planned. You have to remember that I’ve been through the same training as the Hunters, and we’re taught to immediately recognize how to use the land to our advantage in all situations. Causing an avalanche to wipe out an enemy was year-one-type stuff. And since I also knew that t
he standard gear for a snow operation like this would include a rocket launcher, well, it was almost too easy to set them up.
That part was a piece of cake. The harder part was figuring out how to make sure Ryo actually survived the avalanche, which was where having been trapped in hotel rooms for hours on end finally paid off. You see, I’d read about these avalanche survival kits in a random magazine at a hotel once. The moment an avalanche hits someone, if they have one of these kits, a protective bubble forms around them and saves their life. They were still prototypes—really expensive and not available to the general public—but I figured if there was anyone who could get her hands on one, it was Akiko. While I’d been captured by FATE, her job had been to track a kit down. So the moment the avalanche hit Ryo, the backpack he was wearing popped open and saved him. Twenty-four hours later, well past when anyone could have survived under an avalanche in case someone from FATE had stuck around to check, Akiko would use the beacon we’d placed on Ryo to find him and dig him out. Where they went after that is a mystery to even me, truly. But since Ryo now knows the truth, I trust he’ll understand that keeping his head down isn’t such a hard pill to swallow when the alternative is “or death.”
Ryo is safe for now, so all I have to do is pretend to be crazy until I figure out a way to escape. Easy peas and string cheese.
My dear friend Blake won’t be so happy to see me when we meet again—that much I promise.
I should probably let out another good holler. Maybe some mouth drool, too? On it!
Epilogue
The next phase in my life was not pleasant. Every day was filled with daily beatings, drownings, starvation, psychological torture, and tons more stuff like that. Lots of fun. A summer camp for crazy people. It was all done by the same man, who introduced himself as “The Professor.” He had gray, shoulder-length hair and a beard to match. He could be vicious one meeting, friendly the next. You never knew which was coming. He had a real Jekyll and Hyde thing going.