by Wesley Chu
The fighting finally ended with a single gunshot. The gawkers panicked and dispersed immediately. The crowd stampeded in every direction. The driver must have thought along those lines as well, since he began to pull away.
Shura reached over to the front and put a hand on his shoulder. “Not yet.”
“We cannot stay,” he replied. “We cannot risk being discovered. The police–”
Two of her fingers pinched a nerve at the base of his neck. “Stay, or being discovered will be the last concern you ever have.”
A few seconds later, the few remaining yakuza fled out of the alley. A guttural growl crawled up her throat. Good help was so difficult to bribe these days. Shura released her pinch and was about to tell the driver to go when she saw a group of young people run out of the alley and scatter. The bait. They had to be the girl’s friends. She chose one of the smaller ones at random and pointed. “Follow that boy.”
“But…”
The pinch returned, this time with an added twist that should have made the man feel like his neck was getting hacked off. The driver shrank into his chair with a pained hiss, and obliged.
Shura sat back in her seat and sucked in a long breath. It was just one of those irritating missions when nothing was going her way. First, she got framed as a terrorist, then she learned the people she was working with were completely incompetent, and now her driver wouldn’t even drive where he was told.
The car pulled into a slow tail half a block behind the boy. Following him through pedestrian traffic was difficult, but the crowds thinned out the further they moved from the tourist areas.
He is heading to the train station. Cut him off at the next intersection or you will lose him.
Shura waited for a good moment to engage the boy, but realized that she wouldn’t get an opportunity in this dense of an area. She instructed the driver to go around the corner and pull up next to him. The car turned just as the boy stepped into the street. Shura jumped out with a bright smile and her arms opened wide.
“Hachikō! I thought it was you. I miss you so!”
Really? That is the name you choose?
“He was a good dog.”
Shura roughly embraced the confused boy, smothering his mouth before he could utter a cry. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him in, burying his head in her chest. He tried to break and push her away, but she held him close, restricting his squirms.
“Come my dear, I’ll give you a ride home,” she said cheerfully, turning and throwing him into the car. She slid back inside and closed the door. Before he could yell for help, she had the claws of her finger pinching his larynx. “Do something to displease me and I’ll rip your throat out.”
Tears welled in the boy’s eyes.
“Crying displeases me,” she said.
He sniffed hard and held his breath, his shoulder-wracking sobs reduced to pitiful whimpers.
“Good,” said Shura. “I’m going to ask some questions. You will answer truthfully and directly. Deviating from my questions displeases me. Do you understand?”
He nodded, and then recognition filled his eyes. He looked out the window past a giant screen with her face on it, and then stared back at her. “Aren’t you the Blonde Bombshell Bomber?”
Shura kept her face passive, but her entire body clenched in irritation. “Asking questions displeases me.”
“You’re super pretty.”
She let that one slide. “I have a few questions for you, boy. What’s your name?”
“Why would someone as beautiful as you want to bomb the police station?”
“I didn’t,” she said. “I was framed. That was your free question. Where is your friend Ella Patel’s home?”
“Was he like an ex-boyfriend? Why aren’t you blonde any more?”
Shura slapped the boy. She grabbed and dug her thumb into the soft flesh of his collar at the base of his neck. “Tell me where the girl lives.”
It was a trick she had learned during the war. Torture, at its foundation, was little more than catering to a human being’s base instincts: embracing pleasure and avoiding pain. All an interrogator had to do was strip away the nuances, the distractions and other motivations, burn away all thoughts and emotions until all that was left was the pure truth. To do so was simple: associate the truth with pleasure. Everything else with pain.
With the practiced movements of a skilled interrogator, she extracted everything she needed to know in two minutes. She learned that Io’s vessel Ella Patel lived in the Nishi Kasai district on the second left turn off the main street. Her building had a red awning. She also learned that Pek and Ella met when he had tried to pickpocket her, that she was allergic to mushrooms, always smelled like heavy incense, and that the crew had a running bet on whether she was crazy.
Furthermore, Pek volunteered that he and Ella were part of a crew of thieves called the Burglar Alarms and that they used to work out of the World-Famous Bar & Udon, but then Ella got into a fight with some gangsters, and then she got into a fight with the owner Asao, and then she got into a fight with her ex-boyfriend, and that there was a weird underground apartment with weird vault doors in the sewers between the night market and the docks. He continued to volunteer that he had joined the gang to help his mother pay the bills, but then he realized they were good people and he liked having friends.
Shura learned all of this in the span of ninety seconds. The last thirty she spent getting him to shut up. It was an impressive deluge of information.
When she was done with Pek, Shura pulled out his identification card and cellphone, and held it up. “I know everything about you. Displease me again and I’ll do the same to your family, and then I’ll slit their throats. Do you understand?” When he didn’t reply, she cupped his chin gently and raised it. “Repeating myself displeases me.”
He nodded emphatically. His body was shaking uncontrollably as it tried to recover from the waves of pain it had just endured. She was also pretty sure he had soiled himself. It was a good thing this wasn’t her car.
“Good.” She pulled out a hundred thousand yen and offered it to him. “For your troubles. I’m keeping your phone. Keep your mouth shut, and I’ll mail a hundred thousand more to your house.”
Pek stared at the pile of money. He touched it gingerly with the tips of his fingers, as if fearful that it would light on fire, or she would smack him again. When neither happened, he snatched the wad out of her hand and disappeared it into his jacket.
Shura dumped the boy in a nearby alley and watched as he fled to the end of the block and turned the corner. She didn’t actually think he was going to keep quiet, but it was a possibility. The money was a nice motivation, but what she really wanted him to know was that she knew exactly where he lived without spelling it out. Too big a threat could send him scurrying off to the authorities. Too little, and he’d warn Io’s vessel of her arrival. Just enough, with just the right amount of greed mixed in, would keep him in line. All he had to do was nothing.
Shura gave the driver the new address, then called Kloos to meet her in Nishi Kasai. No yakuza this time.
It took an hour for Shura’s driver to get through the congestion on the highway. The entire time she daydreamed about razing the city so it could be reborn a Genjix metropolis. How could humanity not embrace what the Holy Ones had to offer after seeing the grandeur of the reborn Hong Kong, Shanghai and Moscow? Couldn’t they see that only the Holy Ones could elevate them to greater and more wondrous things? Yes, they had to give up their freedom, but that was more than a fair exchange for exorcising the hell of rush hour traffic.
This heaven on Earth would of course come at the price of the Holy Ones eventually consuming the planet, but no one alive now would be around to pay that price. Humans weren’t doing a great job on their own anyway. Humanity might as well seize the moment and burn brightly while it was able.
Shura was the first to reach Nishi Kasai. The rest of her team was stuck
in the same traffic, but over an hour behind. She decided not to wait, and ordered the driver to pull into a parking lot and wait for her return.
She adjusted her clothing and headed out. It had been years since she last worked a solo assignment, and she relished the freedom. She had chafed at the restrictions of the security detail that had been imposed on her ever since she took control of India. Kloos was sometimes more a mother hen than a second in command, and while she appreciated his loyalty and paranoia, she often felt like it was a gilded cage. Free once more, this bird was ready to make her own kill.
Shura entered the main street of Nishi Kasai and played the tourist. She wasn’t dressed for the role, nor did she particularly look like one, so she had to improvise.
When a street vendor offered her a taste of a masala dish, Shura became honestly curious about the flavor and texture of the food, and took her time sampling the pieces. When a particularly gorgeous lavender shawl caught her eye, she gushed and eyed it with enthusiasm, and spent several minutes haggling on the price.
When are you ever going to wear that?
“The point of pretty things is to admire and own them.”
That is never the point.
“It is not a coincidence that every Adonis vessel is tall and beautiful.”
That is only because humans react more favorably to beautiful people and are more likely to listen and cater to their demands. If your species preferred small and rotund, every one of us would be clamoring for the shortest, fattest human we can find.
Shura wrapped her new purchase over her hair and let it fall over part of her face. There weren’t as many large screens blasting her image to the world or cameras running facial identification, but one couldn’t be too careful. She stayed near the wall, moving from cover to cover, using the awnings and light crowds to hide her movements.
To your right.
A police car was parked at the far end of the street. The car was facing Ella Patel’s building. Two officers were inside. Whether this was a coincidence or not, Shura wasn’t taking any chances. She ducked into the nearest shop and looked out the window. The officers had no reaction.
A shopkeeper, a greasy young man with slicked-back hair and an arrogant air, appeared from the back room. “My establishment is closed for the evening.” He gave Shura a second look and squinted. Uncertain recognition filled his face.
She acted first. She put on a French accent and gave the man a smoldering gaze with just a hint of a smile. Playful yet curious. “I’m sorry, but I heard from so many that your business has the best–” she looked over his shoulders “–bidet selection and customer service in all of Tokyo.”
The man’s focus changed from trying to figure out why she looked familiar to preening. “Well of course, Raji – that’s me Raji Alloo – values all his customers, and they return the love.”
Your acting has improved. Finally. It only took most of your adult life.
“It’s always been fine. You were always too harsh a critic, Tabs.”
Shura met Raji at the counter and leaned in, just slightly, enough to seem interested but without appearing forward or obvious. She pointed past his shoulder, her hand coming very close to this face. “Tell me about that one. The pretty one with all those buttons.”
She had intentionally chosen the most expensive unit on the floor. Raji immediately went into full salesman mode. He told her about the seat-warming features and how the auto-clean was best-in-class.
Shura acted as if she was paying rapt attention, which to be honest wasn’t that difficult, since she never realized how complicated and advanced bidets had become since the plain porcelain variety she had grown up with. It had never occurred to her that she would want a vibrating toilet seat, but now she really did.
More importantly, Raji the bidet salesman had completely forgotten that he may have seen her on television, that she may be a wanted terrorist and that there may be a huge bounty on her head. She was just a beautiful woman who wanted to buy a bidet that cost two hundred thousand yen and was flirting with him.
Shura was in a bit of a hurry, so she quickly finalized the transaction, with a promise to come back for two more. The address she left for delivery was the Aizukotetsu-kai headquarters, just in case he did recognize her and tried to turn on her. She really did hope to retrieve it from them when she got the chance.
The purchase was also meant to leave Raji with a fond impression of her. Once their transaction was complete, he didn’t think anything of it when she asked for a quick tour of his store and then asked to leave through the back door closer to where she had supposedly parked her car.
Shura continued down the alley behind several buildings until she turned onto the side street to Ella Patel’s. She looked back once more at the police car still parked at the entrance to the street. The two policemen had not moved. Satisfied, Shura surveyed the street for the building with the red awning.
She scowled; they were all red. “I’m going to go to Pek’s home tonight and strangle him while he sleeps.”
Look over there on the left side.
It took Shura a moment to realize what Tabs was talking about. There was a storefront called Beds, Baths and Buddhas roughly halfway down the street on the left side. Right next to it was a five-story apartment. As she neared the store, her nostrils were inundated with a strong overpowering scent of sandalwood and agarwood. Inside, she found a random collection of Buddha statues, home altars and porcelain tubs. There was also a small section for bidets.
“It must be a thing in this country.”
I have been in half a dozen Japanese vessels in my years. They are some of my favorites: hygienic, follow orders exactly and are always willing to die for a high power.
Shura passed the store and proceeded to the five-story apartment building. She walked up to the mailbox and scanned the names. There it was: Victoria Khan on the fifth floor. Shura checked the police car and the streets once more, then walked around to the back of the building. Even the back alleys of Tokyo were clean.
She tried the door, scanned to either side, then smashed the handle with a sharp downward thrust of her elbow. Shura listened for a few beats, and then stepped inside. She pulled out a handheld Penetra scanner and began her search. It immediately blinked on Shura, then found another target somewhere above her location. Shura began to follow the signal, watching as the scanner bounced back and forth between Tabs and Io.
She stayed near the far wall, pausing every few minutes, listening for activity. There was a family on the second floor, a television blaring on the third, and what sounded like video game gunshots on the fourth. Somewhere on the other side of the building, a dog was letting out a stream of high-pitched barks and an old woman was shrieking something Shura couldn’t quite make out. There also had to be several cats in the area. The place reeked of their piss.
She reached the fifth floor and checked the scanner again. Io was close. When the Penetra scanner was first invented, it was as large as a van and even less accurate. As the technology advanced, they became small enough to fit in a backpack and more accurate, able to pinpoint the exact location of a host to within centimeters. But her own vessel interfered with its accuracy.
Shura stood at the top of the stairwell, pivoting left and right as the Penetra scanner blipped. There was no mistaking it. There were two vessels somewhere on this floor within the range of a grenade’s blast radius. That was the best it could do. That would have to be good enough.
She walked up to Ella’s apartment and put her ear to the door. Nothing. She felt the gap underneath the door. No breeze. In a small apartment like these likely were, if the girl had caught wind of Shura coming and had escaped through the window there would be a draft pushing through. She felt the doorknob.
One of the doors further down the way opened, and an old woman stuck her face out. Shura’s hands clasped together and she shot the woman a bright smile, immediately taking a more deferential stance. Ol
d people loved her.
The old woman scowled. “What are you doing here?”
Maybe you are losing your touch.
“I’m here to see a friend,” said Shura sweetly, raising her voice just a pitch. “Do you by chance know if your neighbor is in? We have a dinner date and she didn’t make it. I’m worried.”
The woman studied her for a brief moment. Finally, she spoke, “What am I, the doorman? Get out of here.” She slammed the door shut.
That was a strange exchange. She is hiding something. You may need to investigate.
“Let me check the apartment first.” Shura checked the Penetra scanner once more. Still two signatures, including herself. As long as Ella Patel was still near, she could take her time.
She picked the lock and went inside. The lights were already on. The window on the far end was indeed shut. She closed the door behind her and began to search, checking the bathroom and closets, running her fingers along the bed and even opening the garbage can. The drawers were partially open. There were no electronics lying about. More importantly, there were no cables either.
Shura spun around the room slowly. “She was here very recently.”
She looks like she is about to run.
“The scanner still sees two signatures.”
The girl is either hiding from you or has stepped away. Wait, footsteps approaching.
Shura hurried to the door and listened. Someone was coming up the front stairwell. The walls of the building were paper-thin. Each step shook the walls. The echoes made it sound like a stampede. There had to be several coming. Their footsteps rumbled in the hallway just outside, growing louder. A female voice with an Australian accent. Could this be Ella? She was soon joined by another with an Icelandic accent.
Shura positioned herself beside the door. It could be a coincidence. They could be just passing through. Someone tried the door knob. Maybe not. It began to swing open.
A third voice, a man’s, was speaking. “It’s unlocked? We’re not alo–”
“Oh crap,” was all the old man managed to utter before Shura punched him in the face.