Ronin Born

by Percival Constantine

  “Agent Kuroki, my name is Adachi,” he said and then bowed. “Agent Yoshida told me to expect you. Please, follow me.”

  He turned and stepped back through the door. Erika followed him and they entered a hallway. There were doors off to the sides, but each one was closed off and they saw no one else as he led her through the maze of short corridors. There were no names on the doors, either. Adachi stopped at one of the doors and it opened for him immediately without any sort of prompt.

  “Our implants are connected to our offices,” said Adachi, answering her unspoken question. He gestured for Erika to enter first and she did. Once Adachi followed, the door closed behind him.

  The back wall appeared to be a giant window, but when Erika examined the view, she tilted her head. It was historic Kyoto, she recognized it from a school trip when she was in junior high. But they were in the basement of the Defense HQ in Tokyo.

  “I enjoy working with a view of Kyoto,” said Adachi. “Due to the sensitive nature of our division, you can understand why any actual windows would be a bad idea. It’s simply a video screen.”

  Adachi’s desk had three sides and faced the screen. He took the seat behind and the holographic keyboard appeared on the surface. Once entering a command, panels on the floor shifted and rose, forming into a chair for Erika in front of the desk.

  “Sit, please,” he said as he went to work typing on the keyboard. Information was presented on the plastic monitor screens that lined each portion of his desk.

  Erika sat at the desk and waited as he flipped and scrolled through information on the screens almost impossibly fast. She assumed he had implants designed to speed up his consumption of data. That was the only explanation for how he sifted through it so quickly.

  “I trust Agent Yoshida told you why I’m here?” she finally asked after waiting several minutes in silence for him to say something.

  “Yes, he did.” Adachi gave no further information, just picked up the cup of coffee on his desk and sipped it while flipping through more information.

  “So…do you have anything for me?”

  He set the coffee back on the desk and with a wave of his hand, all the holographic data vanished from the plastic screens. Adachi now stared at her through those screens and offered a sigh.

  “I am trying to do just that, Agent Kuroki. Unfortunately, it seems Dr. Miyata is rather difficult to find.”

  “But I thought all Yoshida employees have their information registered with the Ministry of Defense? Can’t you simply track him through the neural network?”

  “Normally yes, I would be able to do just that. And that is precisely what I’ve been trying to do so ever since Agent Yoshida contacted me first thing this morning,” said Adachi. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be that simple. Miyata seems to have gone off the grid.”

  As information technology started to explode in the early years of the twenty-first century, it became increasingly difficult, but not impossible for people to break away. But as that technology became increasingly one with the human body, now it seemed impossible.

  “How?” she asked.

  “The average person certainly couldn’t do it. For someone as brilliant as Miyata, it would be incredibly difficult—and he would need money and help—but not impossible.”

  “How would he do it?” asked Erika.

  “He’d need to remove any implants with a network connection and have them replaced with ones that have been scrubbed. And those aren’t the kind of things that are easy to come by.”

  “He’d have to go to the black market for them, wouldn’t he?” asked Erika.

  Adachi nodded. “But that’s just the start. Even after replacing the implants, there’s still the matter of his genetic information. He would have to have it overwritten in order to truly begin a new life. Otherwise, he would run the risk of discovery.”

  “I’ve heard stories about overwriting, but I’ve never heard of an actual case. It is even possible?” asked Erika.

  “The official position of the Japanese government is that genetic overwriting is a matter of pure science fiction.”

  “What about unofficially?”

  Adachi grew silent and his lips tightened. He steepled his fingers as if deep in thought and leaned back in his black leather chair. After a few moments of consideration, he answered Erika’s question.

  “Yes, it’s possible. Though incredibly risky and incredibly expensive. There is a high mortality rate attached to the procedure,” he said. “If Miyata truly intended to disappear, he would need to take that step in order to guarantee no possibility of discovery.”

  “How long would all this take?” asked Erika. “Replacing the network implants, genetic overwriting, the whole process.”

  “The recovery time for such invasive procedures—should he survive—could take upwards of two months,” said Adachi. “The priority would be the implants. He’d have to wait until after his body and mind recovered before he could attempt overwriting.”

  Hiro said Miyata had only been missing for two weeks. That meant there was still an opportunity for her to find him. She would need to dig deeper into his background, find out who might know something about him. He might even have been selling his tech on the black market in order to fund these procedures in the first place.

  “Miyata was an important figure in Yoshida Tech, which meant he’d be a person of interest to the Defense Ministry. I need you to give me every bit of information the Ministry has on him. I have to dig into his life if I’m going to get some sense of where he might have gone to.”

  “Of course. Agent Yoshida already informed me that you would need such information, so I took the liberty of preparing it for you.” Adachi went into one of his desk drawers and drew forth a small diskette, which he offered to Erika. “Everything we know about Kenjiro Miyata is written on that diskette. Download it right here to secure memory.”

  Erika took it in her hand. Her implants read the information on the diskette and downloaded it into her memory banks. She told her implants to perform encryption on it and they did as they were told, ensuring the data could not be siphoned by any pirates on the network.

  Once the procedure was complete, she passed the diskette back to Adachi. He took it from her and crushed it in his hand into dust, then brushed the remains into a wastebasket under his desk.

  “Thank you for coming down here, Agent Kuroki. Should I learn anything more, you will of course be the first person I contact. But for now, you may take your leave.”

  The door to Adachi’s office opened, inviting Erika out to the hallway. She stood from the chair and it immediately collapsed, returning to the floor. Adachi was focused on his screens again and Erika had no other choice but to leave his office, following the corridor back to the waiting room in front.

  She now knew every bit of information that the Defense Ministry possessed on Miyata. But if Adachi was right and he had gone through those procedures, Erika feared it might not be enough to locate him.

  14

  The first thing on Erika’s list was to investigate Miyata’s home. He had a condo in Aoyama, one of the more upscale neighborhoods in Tokyo. For the investigation, Hiro had cleared her for use of a hovercycle, which would make it easier for her to get around quickly. She was glad for the time it spared more than anything else—public transportation would take her at least thirty minutes, but the hovercycle cut that time almost in half.

  Her AR-HUD projected directions over her physical reality, signaling with large arrows when and where she had to turn. The cycle had AI control, but she seldom got the opportunity to drive one of these on her own, so she took advantage of the chance. Even though the helmet she wore kept the wind off her face, it was still an exhilirating experience to weave through the streets of Tokyo.

  Just up ahead, the AR-HUD highlighted Miyata’s building. She pulled up in front of the tower and looked up. The AR-HUD projected an arrow on the tenth floor and pulled out a separate layout of just that l
evel, highlighting Miyata’s unit. She climbed off the cycle and removed the helmet, setting it in a stand that emerged from the front console.

  The front door had biometric security, so just as she had done when she paid Takahashi a visit, Erika activated her armor’s nanites. They flowed over her hand and she placed it on the scanner to override the settings. She then did the same for the elevator and took it up to Miyata’s floor.

  Once inside his condo—or what used to be his condo, at least—Erika began moving through. It was a large place with a kitchen and dining area that greeted her just past the main hallway. The condo looked like it was a newer construction. Units like this went for quite a bit of money, and as one of the best engineers at the top tech company in the nation, Miyata would have had the means to afford it.

  Past the kitchen was a living room with a large flat-panel TV screen mounted on the wall. There were shelves that held framed photographs. Erika took one of them and looked at it. The photo was of Miyata, but he looked at least ten years younger. There was a woman the same age and he had his arm around her, smiles on both their faces. Another framed photograph featured two children—both girls. But one had white skin and green eyes with red hair. The other was black, with dark curls and large brown eyes.

  She set the photo back down and looked through more. The same woman and children appeared in many of the framed pictures Miyata had on display. As she continued to look through them, she ran a search on the files Adachi had provided her with.

  The search took no time at all, and there was no record of Miyata ever being married. Nor did his name appear on any adoption records. So who were these people? A lost love? A friend’s children?

  She opened a call back to HQ. After a few moments, she heard Adachi’s voice in her ear, sounding annoyed at having been disturbed. She didn’t care, Tokkei cases always took priority, so he would have no choice but to do what she wanted.

  “It’s Agent Kuroki,” she said.

  “Yes, I see that from the caller ID. What may I do for you, Agent Kuroki?”

  “I need a facial recognition search.”

  He sighed. “Fine, awaiting upload.”

  She focused on the photograph of the woman. Her AR-HUD opened a separate window that zoomed in close on the woman’s face and Erika snapped the photo. She then did the same thing with the two girls.

  “The photos seem about ten years old or so.”

  “That’s no problem for us. I’ll call you back when I have some results.”

  The line went dead and Erika continued her search. He was a prickly sort and it was clear he didn’t like having to run errands for the Tokkei. But he also knew he had no choice, so Erika didn’t bother worrying too much over his misgivings.

  From the living room she checked the bedroom next. There were some other photographs here. She opened his closet and saw several empty hangers. That led her to backtrack to the bathroom. The clothes hamper and washing machine were both empty. At the bathroom sink, she opened the medicine cabinet, where she saw a toothbruth rack without a single toothbrush. Erika returned to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Inside were just a few random items—a couple cans of beer, a bottle of mayonnaise, a jar of mustard, and half a head of garlic. No vegetables of any kind. The freezer was completely empty.

  Two possibilities started to form in Erika’s mind. The first was that Miyata had been taken by some very generous kidnappers who gave him time to pack up his things and clean out his refrigerator. That seemed unlikely, so it left the second option—not only did he run off, but he’d bee planning to. Which leant more credence to Hiro’s theory that he was behind the stolen technology.

  Her AR-HUD signaled an incoming call from Adachi and she activated it. “Kuroki here.”

  “Hello, Agent. I ran the trace. Nothing on the two gaijin.”

  “And the woman?”

  “One possible match—Keiko Izumi.”

  “Okay, and where can I find her?”

  “You can’t,” said Adachi. “It seems Keiko Izumi died five years ago.”

  “She’s dead?” asked Erika.

  “Yes, I’m fairly certain that’s what I said,” said Adachi, the condescension clear in his voice.

  “What was the cause of death?” asked Erika, trying to ignore his tone.

  “Suicide,” said Adachi. “Pills.”

  So much for that lead, she thought.

  “Where did she die?” asked Erika.

  “At a hotel in Shinjuku.”

  “Did she have any family?”

  “The file shows nothing.”

  “Okay, thank you.”

  Now it was her turn to cut the line abruptly. She wondered what it was about Adachi that set her so on edge. Was it just his condescension, or was it the way he had said the word gaijin? She’d heard it used as an insult so often when she was a child. Even though she was hafu or mixed, that didn’t matter to the other kids. And since then, she’d heard it so often in the Jietai that she’d become used to it. Yet somehow, when Adachi had used it just then about those two girls, it gnawed at her.

  There was one room left. The apartment was a two-bedroom and Miyata had used the second bedroom as a home office. She sat at the glass desk and activated the computer. The plastic screen displayed a login window. Erika activated her nanites and they spread over her face, partially forming the goggles of her mask. Just enough to fool the retinal scanner.

  “Access denied,” said the computer as the words flashed on the screen. “Would you like to try again?”

  She did so, but the result was the same. Normally it would seem unreal for Tokkei tech to be incapable of overriding a simple computer login. But this computer had belonged to one of Yoshida’s best and brightest, so perhaps it wasn’t so far-fetched after all.

  Erika examined the computer unit itself. It was a small, white box, no larger than her hand. She unplugged the power cord and the login screen vanished from the flat glass monitor. Erika would take it back to Adachi and have him examine it for some idea of what it meant. Until then, she had one more place to visit—Yoshida Technologies, where Miyata had worked.

  The main office for Yoshida Technologies was located in the Shibuya ward, just a few minutes by hovercycle from Miyata’s building in Aoyama. Erika had hoped she might get another call from Adachi informing her of some new information discovered about Keiko Izumi or the two foreign girls, but her comms were silent.

  Yoshida Tech was the owner and sole occupant of the tallest skyscraper in Shibuya. She had never been inside, but she knew from the Tokkei’s files that there were several floors devoted not only to corporate activities, but also research and development.

  She drove the bike into the underground parking garage and found a space for other cycles. Erika powered it down and the bike gently rested itself on bumpers that ran around the bottom rim of the antigravity unit.

  There were no buttons in the elevator, just a touchpad. A message was written on a sign above the pad, instructing all guests to go through the lobby first. Erika placed her hand on the pad and when asked for the floor, she said, “Lobby.”

  The doors opened to the lobby, revealing a bustle of activity with people in suits moving back and forth from the elevator bay and the front entrance. Near the entrance was a reception counter, and she went up to it to see a dark-skinned man in a security uniform.

  “Can I help you?” he asked. His Japanese was heavily accented, though Erika couldn’t quite determine where he was from.

  She reached into her pocket and took out a badge, then showed it to the security guard. “My name is Erika Kuroki, I’m a Tokkei agent and I need to speak with someone regarding Kenjiro Miyata.”

  The guard studied the badge for a few seconds and then nodded his understanding as he picked up a phone. “Just one moment please.”

  Erika looked away from the guard as he made the call. She studied the faces of the Yoshida employees as they moved about. There were a mix of nationalities here, and Yoshida had prided
itself on its ability to attract top talent from all over the world. It seemed all the more ironic that their pirated technology was now being tested on refugees. Even more ironic that one of their best engineers was apparently behind it.

  “Agent,” said the guard, drawing her attention back to him. “An escort will be down here shortly to take you where you need to go.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Fortunately for Erika, a Tokkei badge meant the wait was short. Soon, she heard someone call her name and she turned around. A white man with short, brown hair and glasses stood before her dressed in a suit. He took out a business card and held it with both hands, then bowed and offered it to her.

  “My name is Gardner Takasu, I’ve been asked to answer any questions you have about Dr. Miyata.”

  Erika bowed and accepted the card. She then did the same with her own business card.

  Gardner instructed her to follow him and he led her into the elevator bay. He placed his hand on the pad and when asked what floor, his response was, “Conference center.”

  Erika wasn’t sure why he was taking her there instead of the research and development section, but she supposed he had his reasons. For now, she would simply follow his lead. She studied his card and noticed that his title was “VICE-PRESIDENT OF GOVERNMENT RELATIONS.”

  “Takasu is an interesting family name, given your face,” she said.

  “My biological parents were killed in the Second American Civil War when I was five,” said Gardner. “I was adopted.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Erika, immediately regretting having brought up his name at all.

  Gardner offered her a smile. “Don’t be. It was so long ago, I don’t even remember them. Or even living anywhere other than Tokyo. The Takasus have been very generous to me throughout my life. As far as I’m concerned, they are my real parents.”

  The elevator stopped and the AI announced they had arrived at the conference center. Gardner led Erika out the elevator and into a conference room with translucent walls. Once they were inside, he said, “Enable privacy mode.”