“Untie his legs and stand back,” said the man. After the boy had done so, he untied Ishihara’s hands himself and retied them in a practiced instant.
He needn’t have bothered with the caution. Ishihara’s legs felt as weak as overboiled noodles, and his entire body creaked with stiffness.
“Walk.” The man in blue prodded Ishihara from behind and he wobbled forward. He wished they had covered his eyes. It seemed ominous that they didn’t care what he saw.
Blue prodded him right as they left the room. They were in a narrow corridor. He glanced back and saw the corridor disappear around a corner.
Doors opened off the corridor on his right, where the wall was concrete. On his left, it was old wood panels between concrete pillars. No windows. It was very quiet, too, no noise from above or beyond the walls. They were probably underground—perhaps the factory had a basement. Or he might have been carried somewhere else entirely.
They stopped at the third and last door, about twenty-five paces along. Blue reached past him and opened it.
A man wearing green clothes looked down from his perch on top of a bottle crate. He was adjusting something on the ceiling. Ishihara craned his neck stiffly and saw several heavy metal rings set into long strips of metal that were bolted to the concrete. A set of what looked like handcuffs dangled from one of the rings, attached to a pulley system on the metal strips. Chains drooped down to a metal box on the floor.
Ishihara thought of all the people who’d been kidnapped and killed by religious freaks in the past thirty years—the Matsuyama family by Soum, the Susuki high school class by the Truthseekers, and many more suspected but unproved cases. Policemen included. And now he was going to become one of them.
“We’re ready here.” The man on the crate measured Ishihara with his eyes. “This one’s a bit tall,” he said reproachfully. “We’ll have to keep his arms tied.” His slim figure, delicate features, and precise enunciation didn’t fit what he was saying.
Blue shrugged. “You’re the expert. We need to get him ready for Samael-sama. As soon as the meeting’s over he’ll come down.”
“I’m supposed to be purified and on duty at midnight. Do you think it’ll take that long?”
“I don’t know. That depends how cooperative he is.”
Their dismissal of Ishihara was absolute. They weren’t playing with him, as gang members might, to increase his fear. They took no more notice of him than of the equipment. In fact, the dapper young man in green fussed more over the chains.
He pressed a control on the metal box. It whirred, and the chain lengthened with a smooth rattle. The handcuffs thudded to the floor.
Ishihara considered resistance. He might conceivably take these two alert young men by surprise and run. He might also find an escape route, which they would probably be guarding. But it was unlikely, and a botched escape attempt would mean they’d watch him so closely he’d never get another chance, either to leave or to find McGuire.
So he stood and let Blue and Green strap the cuffs to his ankles above the joint. The cuffs were thickly padded and didn’t cause any discomfort. He kept his face calm, but his heart stuttered against his breastbone. They left his hands tied behind his back and roped them tight against his body.
“Sit down.” Blue poked him in the chest.
Ishihara sat on the floor. Cold seeped immediately from the concrete into his backside.
Green pressed some more buttons on his box. The chain’s slack disappeared until Ishihara could feel a tug at his feet. Then his feet were pulled upward with irresistible force. His hips followed quickly. He remembered in time to tuck in his chin before his shoulders and head left the floor and he dangled from his ankles. The room spun nauseatingly and he shut his eyes, but this made it worse so he opened them again.
The cuffs cut into his ankles, not as painfully as he’d expected. He tried to wriggle his toes inside his shoes but they were numb already. The skin of his face felt as if it would slide onto the gritty surface of the floor about twenty centimeters from his head. His eyes began to pop. He squeezed them shut and opened them but it didn’t help. His sinuses filled, his teeth hurt, his head pounded.
“What’s the point of this?” he made himself say. The words sounded as if he had flu.
Green’s voice. “Training, Detective-san. Our novices learn to conquer their fear and weaknesses of the flesh through meditation even in extreme situations. In your case,” he added, “it offers you a chance to consider your situation and meditate on your shortcomings.”
“Before we ask you some questions,” said Blue.
Bare feet slapped on the floor. The door closed.
Ishihara twisted his shoulders to see if they’d both gone, but it didn’t give him a better view. He just revolved.
“I’m still here,” said Green. His voice came from the corner of the room. “If you decide you’d like to tell us anything, just say so.”
Who’d have thought hanging upside down would be so uncomfortable? Ishihara’s shoulders ached unbearably, his head worse. His thoughts forced their way through a stiff soup of flooded sensation. Saliva collected in the top of his mouth. His nose ran, but he couldn’t sniff.
Bear it, he told himself. You survived years of freezing stakeouts, soaking patrols, four- and five-night investigations without sleep. You can survive this.
He forced his mind to count, squeezed the numbers out somehow. One, two, three, four … twenty … fifty … two hundred. He started again, lost count, started again … the numbers lost sequence.
Something hit his back and the pressure on his ankles eased. Cold seeped into his side. Through the roaring in his ears he could hear voices a long way off. His head spun with the lessened pressure. He couldn’t move his legs or sense which direction was up or down.
After a minute or two he managed to open his eyes. Jabs of pain all along his legs and feet helped to anchor his senses.
Green yanked him upright with a grip on his collar. Ishihara’s ears rang, and the room whirled as the blood drained from his face.
“Stand.” Green put his mouth next to Ishihara’s head so he’d hear.
Ishihara wobbled his way around the room as sensation returned to his legs, leaning helplessly on the other man. His arms were still bound, and he couldn’t keep his balance properly.
“What’s your name?” he mumbled.
“Maliel. The Master named me twenty cycles ago.”
“Were you all living here then?”
Maliel held a glass of water for Ishihara to slurp from. “You don’t need to know that.” He motioned for Ishihara to circle the room by himself, then pushed him to the floor beside the pulley.
Not again. Before Ishihara could think of a protest, the chain pulled him relentlessly upward.
They repeated this cycle twice. The second time Ishihara struggled when Maliel pushed him back to the ground. He kicked out and sent Maliel flying, but Maliel simply grabbed a metal bar from beside the desk and swept Ishihara off his feet with a painful crack, then continued as though nothing had happened. He was as free of malice as an executioner.
The third time Ishihara couldn’t walk around the room at all. He sat and stared at the concrete, willing his brain to work like it should, but nothing happened. He couldn’t think. He didn’t resist when the chain tightened.
As the world slid downward, the door opened. One, two, three sets of feet stopped where he could see them. Two male, one female, judging by size and hairiness of ankles. He grasped at these simple facts as his head began pounding in the familiar rhythm of his stressed heart.
One of the men wore a gold kimono or robe, the other wore silver. The woman wore trousers like Maliel but they were white. Her feet were narrow and blue with cold. The feet under the gold robe were large, long-toed and flat-arched.
Maliel prostrated himself beside Ishihara’s head in a full-body bow, and said something in a foreign language.
“Assistant Inspector Ishihara, isn’t it?” one of
the men said. His voice was deep, a bit hoarse, and compelling in its mellow strength.
The woman gasped.
“West Station?” the same man continued. “You’re a bit out of your territory, aren’t you?”
Ishihara’s police notebook dropped to the floor in front of the feet.
The other man barked an order at Maliel, who scrambled upright. After the sound of a wooden door sliding open and shut, he placed a kneeling cushion reverently in front of the gold feet and backed out of Ishihara’s range of vision.
The man in gold dropped his backside on the cushion with an “oomph.”
Ishihara squinted through the swelling of the flesh around his eyes. The man looked ordinary enough, and familiar from somewhere. Heavy, but not well muscled. Bumps on his naked skull, some of them implants. Eyes bloodshot and full of some stimulant.
“Jinnosuke,” said the gold man in the deep voice. “Such a wonderfully old-fashioned name. ‘Jin’ is an important concept in my revolution also. Feeling toward others. Service. Love.” He tilted his head to see Ishihara’s features better and the feeling of familiarity increased.
“Do you feel you have been able to serve others as a policeman, Jinnosuke?”
Ishihara tried to think through the weight gathering in his head and chest. The words formed slowly between his swollen tongue and lips.
“It also means simply ‘person,’” he said.
The man in gold looked up at one of the others, who mumbled something Ishihara’s ringing ears couldn’t catch.
“This is an undignified way to converse,” said the man. “I shall give you a chance to do it with less inconvenience.”
He beckoned, and the silver-clad man kneeled on the concrete floor. A young, spare man with the same shaven head. He looked like his photo. Samael, also known as Inoue. I’ll get you, Ishihara promised inwardly, but it was only habit. Any strength in the thought was crushed under the weight of his own blood.
Samael leaned forward and spoke loudly and clearly in Ishihara’s ear.
“We need to know how much information the police have about us. We need to know what they plan to do. We need to know how you found out about this place.”
He stood up. The man in gold started talking again.
“I am Adam,” he said. “I am connected to the Macrocosm. I know God, in the ancient sense of the verb. I am God.” He was sweating great drops all over his face, and a muscle twitched his toe.
He’s the one with the ordinary face, thought Ishihara vaguely. McGuire’s old classmate. Akita, that’s right. Hah, and we thought he just helped them get into the Betta.
“All you must do,” said Adam/Akita, “is to state the truth. Tell me, ‘You are God.’ Then we will put you right side up and continue like civilized beings.”
“If I don’t?” mumbled Ishihara.
“We keep you here and ask you again later,” said Samael above his head. “If you’re still alive.”
Ishihara believed him.
“Where are you from, Jinnosuke?” asked Adam kindly.
“Kita-Kyushu. Moji port.” Ishihara hadn’t intended to reply. While his will was being squashed by remorseless gravity, his brain had processed question-answer automatically.
“Ah, the Kanmon Straits.” Adam recrossed his legs. “Has your family always lived there?”
Ishihara pulled his thoughts together. “’s … ironic,” he managed. “My family … were Christians … in old days.”
“Did they recant?” Adam leaned forward, interested.
“Yes … or I wouldn’t … be here.”
Samael laughed.
“Then you can, too.” Adam tilted his head and regarded Ishihara expectantly. “Just say ‘You are God.’”
The words barely penetrated the white noise that filled Ishihara’s head. He remembered the wharf at Moji, the way the sky opened up as he walked out onto the jetty beside the old brick factory building; the way the tiny boats bobbed next to Sunday fishermen lining the stained concrete; the taste of salt-bitter wind, like blood.
Blood dripped from his nose. He was going to die and never smell the sea again.
“No,” said the woman. She knelt in front of Adam. A red stain from his blood spread across the knee of her trousers.
Something bumped in Ishihara’s chest. For a second he thought he’d had a heart attack. Then he wished he had. Without hair, the woman’s face looked like a boy’s, but the long bones and deep eye sockets were unmistakable. It was McGuire.
Ishihara shut his eyes. Had she played him the whole way? He heard himself assuring Inspector Funo that McGuire knew nothing about the Silver Angels.
Someone wiped his face.
“Let him down,” said McGuire. Her voice was closer.
He opened his eyes and met her gray ones. Her skin was stretched like dry paper over her bones. Her eyes pleaded with him … for what? His thoughts began to blur again.
“But he hasn’t said it,” Adam pointed out.
“Say it,” said McGuire, her lips close to his ear. “I can’t help you unless you say it,” she added in a whisper so faint he might have imagined it.
He could accept the evidence that she was part of the cult and die in self-disgust and anger. Or he could trust her.
“You are God,” said Ishihara.
Tell me when he is ready.” Akita swept out the door, Samael close behind him.
The pulley’s engine whirred. Eleanor leaned forward to steady Ishihara’s head, but the novice moved before her. He made sure Ishihara was flat on the ground before removing the ankle cuffs, then massaged Ishihara’s ankles and raised his head gradually, in what was obviously a ritual of revival. Eleanor tried to ignore a vision of Man strung up there.
She could hear Samael and Akita out in the corridor. She shut her eyes and concentrated, blanking out the rustles and thuds from within the room.
“… begin in thirty minutes. We must finish the job.” Akita said.
“She doesn’t need to come tomorrow,” said Samael. “We only need her to carry out the plan. She is an unbeliever still.”
“Perhaps you are right. But I need her tonight. Her presence in the Macrocosm supports me. My memories grow weaker, and I cannot sustain the flow.”
So that was why he needed her. Whatever “sustain the flow” meant. She shuddered. If that was the price of the interface, surely nobody would want to pay it.
“And the police?” Samael’s voice was fainter.
“If they knew where we are, they would have attacked by now. Kill that one before we leave, he knows nothing.”
She strained to hear Akita’s last words, a cold pit in her stomach. No doubt Samael would kill her as well as Ishihara once she and Akita had finished sabotaging the NDN. She had to get Ishihara out of there to warn the police. He’d have more luck in the real world than she did in the Macrocosm.
Ishihara groaned, and she returned to the present with a start.
He was sitting up, his hands free. He accepted a glass of water from the novice. His eyes met Eleanor’s, but he gave no sign that he knew her. She hoped he was merely being cautious and didn’t suspect her of being part of the group.
“What happens now?” he asked the novice. His voice was barely recognizable and his face still puffy.
“They’ll send for you soon,” said the novice primly. He took the glass. “Let’s walk a bit, shall we?”
At first Ishihara could hardly stand. With the novice supporting him on one side and Eleanor on the other, he finally managed a couple of circuits of the room. She could feel him trying not to put weight on her side, but his legs weren’t strong enough to let him balance properly.
“Are you hungry?” said the novice to Ishihara, now seated in a chair.
Ishihara shook his head.
“Are you?” the novice asked Eleanor.
“No.” The river of flavors in the Macrocosm still lingered on her tongue. “But why don’t you go and eat? I’ll watch him.”
The novice l
ooked shocked. “Can’t do that.”
“Why not? There’s a guard on the door, anyway.” And, she glanced up, a camera on the wall. “He’s not going to resist.” Eleanor made herself add scornfully, “He’s just a tired old unbeliever.”
Ishihara’s mouth twitched at her Osaka slang.
The novice hesitated, then shrugged. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”
Ishihara leaned forward in the chair as the door closed behind the novice. The lines on his face had started to return to their weary downward furrows. Eleanor felt so glad to see his familiar features that tears stung her eyes.
“What’s going on?” he said.
“Keep your voice down.” She sat on the other side of the table, on the stool the novice had used, and folded her arms as though she was merely watching him. “They’re forcing me to cooperate with them because they know M … Mari is my niece.”
“Cooperate, how?” His eyes took in her shaved head, the implants, then found her left hand. He drew breath in shock.
“Direct neural interface. Akita is sabotaging the NDN and related networks. You have to get word to the police.”
“How many of them are here?”
Four Angels—Samael, Fujinaka/Gagiel, of the narrow eyes, gangly Iroel, and his partner in deceit, Melan. Iroel said at least twenty novices were training to use the interface, but they might not all be there. In the vid Mari had watched there were about thirty people praying with Akita, and the floor plan of the basement showed only ten rooms.
“Between twenty and forty, probably.”
He grunted acknowledgment. “How are you going to get me out?”
Eleanor swallowed disappointment. Some part of her had been hoping to hand over the whole thing to him.
“Do they trust you?” he said.
“Not really. W … where are we? I wasn’t awake when they brought me here.”
Ishihara felt the back of his head with a grimace. “I was following a lead in Hirano Ward when they hit me. A warehouse full of weapons in an abandoned milk factory …” He stopped at her expression. “What’s wrong?”
Surely not the old factory near the Tanaka house? It made sense, Kazu had livelined it years ago on his failed venture. Perhaps Mari told Taka, who told one of the Angels, and they bought the place. Or were simply using it. She groaned inwardly. Kazu’s investment had paid off, although not in the way he envisioned.
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