by Wesley Chu
“Should I help her?”
Forget her. Just leave.
Another enemy appeared and charged. This time, Ella was ready. She drew one of her throwing knives from the harness and brandished it. Big scary yakuza thugs bleed just the same as their baby versions. The man saw that she was armed and pulled out his pistol.
“Your boss says you can’t hurt me,” she yelled.
The guy hesitated and momentarily lowered his weapon. Ella swung the harness at his head as a diversion and then attacked. A poke to his side made him drop his gun. A slash to the front of his knee sent him falling face first into the ground.
Time to go.
“Right.”
Ella made it halfway down the alley when two more yakuza blocked her escape. She skidded and tried to run back. She had returned to the van when another suited tattooed asshole appeared. Ella juked left. The man mirrored to block her path. She pulled her dagger and aimed straight for his gut.
You are leaning too far forward.
The man stuck a leg out and tripped her, sending Ella flying head-first into the wall. She barely had time to throw her arms up to cushion the impact before she bounced off and fell to the ground. Groaning and groggy, she reached for her blade, but he kicked it away.
He pulled out a baton and was about to crack her skull when all of a sudden he flew out of view. There was Instructor Perkins again, breathing heavily and bleeding from the side of her head. The instructor scowled at Ella. “Seriously, what the bloody hell are you still doing here? I told you to run.” She offered her hand.
Ella hesitated, but allowed Perkins to help her to her feet. When she tried to release her hand, Perkins held on tight.
“You stay with me,” her former instructor growled.
“Let me go.” Ella tried to pull away, but Perkins’s vicelike grip held.
Ella threw a punch. That was a mistake. Instructor Perkins brushed it aside and pushed her hard into the wall. “I am not in the mood for one of your tantrums, Victoria,” she spat. “You’re staying right next to me until we get out of this mess.”
Something hit Instructor Perkins from the back, staggering her. She let go of Ella as more yakuza poured out of the World-Famous. They were joined a second later by two men who rushed to Instructor Perkins’s defense. The alleyway had turned into a full-on battlefield. Ella scrambled to her feet and looked at the alley entrance, where another melee had erupted.
“Who are all these people? Why is everyone fighting? Did a war just break out?”
Sort this out later. You need to not be here. It seems the Prophus and Genjix and yakuza are all after you. This city is too dangerous for you to stay even one more day. You need to be on a plane tonight.
That sounded like awfully good advice. Everyone was too busy fighting everyone else to notice her. Ella crawled under the van and moved to the opposite side. When the coast seemed clear, she scrambled to her feet and took off, running away from the fighting. She reached the end of the alley and glanced back one last time. Perkins was still there, alongside those two men. On the opposite end to the alley, more fighting had spilled into the street.
For a second, she thought she caught a glimpse of Nabin. Part of her wanted to stay and help him, but Io was right. It didn’t matter. They were all after her. She had to get away from everything. Ella sprinted as hard as she could away from the World-Famous.
This time, she didn’t look back.
Chapter Twenty-Four
All Hell
Nabin Bhattarai was a Prophus agent on Cameron Tan’s team. Ella had met him when the team conducted the Crate Town operation, and they had struck up a friendship that led to a romantic relationship.
Human relationships, of course, are difficult enough as it is without having to deal with distance and immaturity and the presence of an alien being. Times were turbulent, and the odds were stacked against them.
They were deeply in love, however, and they made it work. At least for a little while.
Roen punched a long-faced yakuza squarely in the jaw, and shook his hand. That nut was a tough one to crack. Roen must have punched him a dozen times before the guy dropped. Once, he could do it in one. Two, tops. Now… He stared at his throbbing hand. He may have broken it on the guy’s face.
Roen looked around him for someone else to fight. Fortunately, he was fighting alongside Nabin and Hekla. In the time it had taken him to knock out this one gangster, the two had managed to take down five between them.
“Where’s Ella?” shouted Nabin.
Roen pointed down the alley. “There’s Josie.”
The colonel was getting the worst of it against a lone assailant, he had size on her, not to mention there were already half a dozen bodies lying in the street. The colonel folded from a punch to the gut and fell to a knee. The yakuza, towering over her, drew a long knife.
Roen took off, sprinting as fast as his tired legs could take him. He knew right away he wasn’t going to make it in time. It was in situations like this that he wished he had a gun, but the team had decided it was too risky to carry one on the streets of Tokyo. Not to mention poor Roen’s eyes made any target over ten meters away and smaller than a hatchback a risky proposition.
Just as the yakuza was going to bring the point of the knife down to the back of her neck, Pedro appeared from behind the van on one side, Tarfur on the other. The two men, built like linebackers, rushed and smashed into him, sending him flying through the air. He was actually limp and unconscious before he even hit the ground. They helped Josie to her feet, then all three were immediately swarmed.
Roen tried to reach them, but he was attacked by another guy who looked young enough to be his grandson, if his damn son would ever get around to meeting a nice girl. Had he even finished puberty yet? He was tall and gangly, but he moved as if he had two left feet.
He made short work of the kid. Roen slid outside an amateurish punch and stuck out his hip to knock the boy off balance. Roen grabbed the poor sap’s wrist, folded his elbow, and threw him onto his back. A stiff elbow to the temple finished him off.
He paused for a moment to admire his handiwork and perfect technique. “Whattaya know,” he grinned. “I still got it.”
He continued a couple steps toward Josie before encountering a mountain of muscle. The guy-who-still-got-it assessed this new beefy threat and wondered how much ‘got’ he actually had left. A hip-check wasn’t going to work on this big boy. He looked as if he stole everyone else’s lunches. The yakuza no-joke pulled out a pair of nunchakus. Roen almost laughed in his face until the guy started whipping it around his body. Big Boy here may have watched too many Samurai Sunday flicks, but he knew how to use them.
“I will never live it down in the afterlife if I get sent to the Eternal Sea by a guy pretending to be Bruce Lee,” he muttered, trying to measure his distance.
Big Boy was surprisingly fast. Roen felt the wind kiss his chin as the end of the nunchaku just missed breaking it. He barely dodged a vertical swing and gave the man a sharp punch to the liver that would have dropped most people. At least in his younger days it would have. Big Boy barely registered the blow as he swung the nunchaku outward. It clipped Roen on the elbow, making his entire arm go numb. He stumbled, and Roen's foe pressed his advantage. Roen fell onto his backside and crab-walked backward as Big Boy barreled toward him. He watched the man’s churning feet and then snapped his foot out, nailing the yakuza in the balls. Roen was never one who worried about fighting dirty, especially as he got older.
Big Boy didn’t take the groin shot well. He stumbled forward and collapsed onto Roen, completely pancaking him. Then he began to flail in pain. Roen was in very real danger of suffocating under the weight. He managed to grab a fistful of Big Boy’s ear and pull. Big Boy shifted just enough for him to scramble out. Roen grabbed the discarded nunchaku and swung it down on Big Boy’s head, ending his night.
All the yakuza were down in various states of consciousness
. Tarfur was treating a pretty beat-up Josie, Pedro was checking the bodies to make sure they weren’t getting back up, and Nabin was frantically searching the alleyway, presumably for Ella.
“Everyone alive?” he asked.
“More or less,” said Hekla. “Colonel Perkins’s ankle is swollen. You look pretty beat up.” She held up a hand in front of his face and moved it left and right. “Can you follow my finger?”
He wouldn’t be able to follow a finger that close on a clear-minded day, let alone after getting his head banged up. He tried his best anyway. He passed, barely. Hekla helped him up.
“Are the premises secure?” he asked. His answer came in the form of eight more yakuza flooding out of the bar. The two groups lined up and glared at each other. Weapons were pulled out. Aggressive eye-rolling feints of intimidation were displayed. It was like a low-budget racist version of West Side Story.
“Where’s Ella?” growled Nabin.
“Where is the girl?” shouted the oldest and best-dressed, who Roen reckoned was their leader, at the same time.
Both sides looked confused, and then testosterone took over, and they began to inch closer to each other. Nabin, fists clenched and veins bulging out of his neck, snarled like an enraged badger about to tear through a hen house. Conflict appeared inevitable.
But for what, if neither had Ella?
“Whoa, whoa, stop,” barked Roen, throwing his hands out and stepping in between the two groups. He pointed at Nabin who was by far the most aggressive right now. “Especially you, peacock. Put your feathers away.”
“Why are you singling me out?” sputtered Nabin.
Roen turned to the one he presumed was the leader. “You don’t have her?”
The bald yakuza looked taken aback and shook his head. “No, I thought she was with you.”
“I thought we were rescuing her from you,” answered Roen, looking at his people, and then back at the yakuza. They were outnumbered, but he was pretty sure the Prophus could take them. There was a brief, awkward silence. “Well, if neither of us have her, do we still have to fight?” he asked.
The yakuza pointed at the bodies on the ground. “You attacked my men.”
“Fair enough but…” Roen held out a finger. “We don’t actually know who attacked whom first. Since we’re both after the girl and she’s not here, let’s just call it a draw and go our separate ways.”
For a moment, Roen thought he had gotten through to them. One of the underlings whispered in the main guy’s ear. He shrugged and nodded and seemed to be telling his men to stand down.
Roen grinned and turned to his people. “See, who says diplomacy is dead–”
One of the yakuza pulled out a pistol. Someone cried out a warning, and then a sharp pain punched him right above his heart. The Kevlar underneath his jacket dispersed most of the impact and probably saved his life, but it still hurt like hell.
Roen gritted his teeth as everything went black, the shock of pain threatening to shut down his brain. Patience, experience and will took over, pushing through the noise from his screaming nerves. He allowed himself two short beats to catch his breath, then he forced his creaky, achy body to move.
A younger Roen would have tried to get up and join the fight immediately, and would have likely fallen over or gotten shot again before he had gathered his wits. Older Roen rolled onto his side and tucked his knees under him, giving himself one more beat for the wave of dizziness to subside. When he was ready, he surveyed the battle that had unfolded after that sneak attack.
The yakuza were paying dearly for their actions as the Prophus agents ripped through their ranks. Tarfur had tackled the jerk who shot him and was slamming his head into the ground. Hekla had somehow found a broomstick and speared a chubby man with the dull end, which was actually quite an impressive feat. Nabin was going berserk and had barreled straight into the bulk of the yakuza and was making silly putty of everyone within arm’s reach.
For the first time, Roen got a front row seat of Nabin in action; he moved a bit like Cameron, albeit a shadow of his son. Slightly slower, less powerful and not quite as fluid. Roen’s chest puffed a little. That was expected, since Cameron had personally trained his elite team. And everyone knew who had trained Cameron. Actually, everyone assumed Tao had trained Cameron, but Roen knew better.
He was about to join the fray when firm hands held him down. Josie hovered over him, shaking her head. “Stay down, Makita… I mean, Roen.” She almost spat the last word. She still had not totally gotten over who he actually was.
It wasn’t long before the professionally trained soldiers sent the gangster rabble fleeing. Both Tarfur and Pedro had a yakuza in each hand, but Roen ordered them to let them go. What were they going to do with prisoners, lock them up in the bathroom?
“Are you injured, sir?” asked Hekla, once the last of the yakuza were gone. “There’s a hospital four blocks away. We can–”
Roen waved her off and hid his grin. He tried to appear nonchalant. “I’ve gotten worse hoeing my garden.”
That was a big fat lie, but he would be damned if he showed weakness or age in front of his subordinates. Besides, there was something weird about getting shot that made him feel alive. It had been almost ten years since it had last happened, and he sort of stupidly relished the pain. At the very least, he could brag about it to Jill when he got home. She was going to be so mad. He couldn’t wait. If he ever got home that was.
Nabin was rummaging through the van and searching the ground, repeatedly calling Ella’s name. There was a heartbreaking desperation to his voice. Hekla appeared a moment later with a scared group of young people. Roen instantly recognized the girl who had clubbed him a few days ago with the hammer. Then he also recognized the little one who had so rudely pushed him aside.
“What are you kids doing here?” he demanded.
“Where’s Ella?” asked one of the young men.
“That’s the question on everyone’s mind,” he replied. There was an awkward pause. “So, where is she?”
The group crossed their arms in unison, each staring back defiantly at him. They must have practiced that. In the distance, the sound of a screaming siren began to grow.
“We can’t stay, sir,” said Hekla. “Remember, neutral jurisdiction, gunshots reported. There’s also the matter of a dozen yakuza bodies lying around, and I can’t attest to whether they are all still breathing.”
“We’re about to get more company,” said Tarfur, eyeing the red flashing lights at the end of the block.
Nabin, who was still searching for Ella, stomped toward the group. “If anything happens–”
Roen grabbed his arm and held him back. “Don’t go off all half-cocked, peacock. These aren’t the ones you should be focusing your rage on.” He passed Nabin off to Josie, and then turned to the kids. They looked like cornered animals. Roen held his hands up as if surrendering. “You’re all free to go. I assume you’re Ella’s friends. Look, we’re on the same side. If you really want to help Ella, help us. There are some really bad people after her.”
The kids began to retreat. One of them, an older boy – young man really – turned back and asked, “How do we find you?”
Roen grinned. At least one of them was considering it. “You can find us where we first met.”
Then they were gone, scampering back into the bar and out of sight.
“Why did you let them go?” Nabin was still frantic. “They’re our only lead to Ella.”
“What do you want to do?” Roen shot back. “Haul them into a cell? Interrogate them? They’re kids. They’ll help us when they’re ready.” He paused. “Besides, we know where they all live.”
“Guys,” said Tarfur more urgently.
“Where to now, sir?” asked Hekla.
Roen stared at the flashing lights, then at the other end of the alley. “Ella’s last known whereabouts.”
“Where’s that?”
“Home,”
he replied, “although I doubt she’s stupid enough to go there.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Escape from Tokyo
Nabin and Ella’s relationship was equal parts bright burning love and hurricane destruction. After India, Nabin was taken off the front line. For a while, he was able to visit Ella often at the Academy.
Nabin helped her study for her tests. He trained her how to shoot. He did whatever was necessary to help her succeed. Most importantly, he had a calming influence on Ella, and was a steady familiar face in a new world where nothing was familiar.
Upon Io’s forceful recommendation, Ella had run straight home. Literally ran, as in deciding not to take the train or bus or even hail a cab. She kept to the back streets. The main streets of Tokyo were speckled with cameras, and she couldn’t be too careful. Not after what had happened. It seemed the whole world was after her. Her paranoia confirmed. She saw eyes staring at her from everywhere.
Ella took those back streets home as fast as her short legs could carry her, which meant it took over an hour. It was well into the evening by the time she reached the Nishi Kasai district. Her legs burned and her feet ached, but the adrenaline and fear had kept her running the entire time.
She turned onto her street only to find a police car parked at the end of the block. For once, she was happy for police presence. Cops usually set her senses tingling in all the wrong ways, but this time she was grateful for a little law and order close by. They would hopefully deter all the people coming after her.
Why couldn’t everyone just leave her alone?
Ella bounded up the front stairwell two at a time, her footsteps clanging on the metal stairs. She only paused to catch her breath once she reached the fifth floor.