Grey Ronin (The Awakened Book 3)

by Matthew S. Cox

  His upswing passed through the four fingers of the thug’s waving left hand; the downstroke took the fingers off his right. The katana slid into the scabbard before the first finger separated from the hand. He bent at the knees, catching the handle of the briefcase an inch before it hit the ground. Patches of white energy rolled over his arms as he stood, wrapping about his torso and fading away. Mamoru’s perception of time returned to normal. The punk stared in horror as his fingers scattered on the porch. Blood rushed over what remained of his hands. He screamed, shaking his limbs.

  “Defy me again, and it shall be your heads,” said Mamoru, his face and voice devoid of emotion. “I have killed commoners such as yourselves for no reason other than to test the sharpness of my blade. Consider yourselves fortunate that I do not wish to attract undue attention to my presence here. It is only by my distaste for paperwork that you still live.”

  The two on either side of the wounded punk gawked at each other, having showed no reaction until after the blade was already put away. They shoved their stunned friend out of the way and let Mamoru pass without another word. Such disrespect. I should have killed them all. He left them to gather the severed fingers and entered the lobby. A living girl, maybe twenty, looked up from the front desk. Her broad smile faded a notch or two at the sight of blood droplets on his cheek.

  “I humbly apologize for those criminals outside. My parents do not have enough wealth to gain the favor of the security patrol.” She dabbed his cheek with a tissue.

  He felt more at home. “Mmm.”

  “We are honored to have a prestigious guest in our humble hotel, sir.” She bowed after tossing the tissue in a basket under the counter. “For how many days do you require a room?”

  “One week, though I may not spend much time here. Please, keep the reservation in my name even if I seem to have left.”

  She nodded, pushing a small device on the counter around to face him. “The rate is eighty three credits per night.”

  “That is acceptable.” He held his NetMini over the reader, touching his little finger to the scanner. The program was easy to influence, generating credits from thin air even simpler. The InterTrust Commerce Facilitation Corporation could detect such monetary manipulation easily, having spent years perfecting the virtual currency system. Though such an insignificant sum would cost the ICFC more to investigate than he had generated.

  The clerk glanced at her terminal. “Thank you, Haruko-san.” She bowed again. “Your NetMini is coded to room 8 on the second floor. If anything is not to your liking, please let me know.”

  Mamoru acknowledged her with a slight bow and ducked through a dull green door at the rear of the lobby. The stairway was clean, much to his surprise. Thin carpeting the color of jade lined the upstairs hallway. Hand-drawn images attempting to recreate old-style Japanese art hung every few paces along cracked white walls. Several patch marks covered sword gouges and the occasional bullet hole.

  Room 8 was modest, as he expected. A small bed, holo-bar, attached bathroom with autoshower, and a tiny balcony were unimpressive even for the paltry price, but at least clean. He swiped his finger at the wall panel to lock the door, removed his coat and shoes, and set the case on the nightstand. He climbed onto a twin-sized Comforgel pad and sat cross-legged, placing his sword in front of him. Mamoru inhaled until he could hold no more air, and let it leak through his nostrils. He would meditate and wait for the sun to go down.

  The rattle filtered through the stillness within his mind. Most would not have discerned the subtle metallic noise as anything more than the wind worrying the balcony railing. Mamoru sensed the disharmony of the effect―the rhythm was out of step. He sat with his back to the glass, watching light move in reflection on a framed painting of Mount Fuji. A figure, all in black, rose up over the edge of the patio. The person hovered still in the air, balancing all their weight on their arms for over a minute as they brought their knees to their chest to get their feet over the railing. Gradual movements drew less attention. With excruciating slowness, the indistinct figure lowered slender legs to the floor and waved the strain out of its arms.

  A professional. A woman.

  Supple black material covered her face, concealing her nose and mouth, with individual opaque lenses over the eyes. Mamoru opened his eyelids a millimeter more, letting a small bit of chi sharpen his sight. The figure crept to the patio door, unaware he had noticed her. Soft boots, sneak suit, small sword on her back. NSK ninja. Mamoru remained still as the woman made short work of the dive hotel’s crude security system. She slid the patio door open only far enough to slip through and pulled it closed.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company,” he asked. The sound of creaking knuckles made him smile. “A request of Imura’s family?”

  She recovered her nerve and widened her stance, arms folded over her chest. “We are concerned at your presence here, Saitō-san. There has not been an assassination request filed with us.”

  “I am no assassin, Sadako.”

  For the second time, her knuckles made noise.

  “You forget me so soon, Kuroyama Sadako? Was it not you the NSK sent at our request to test the security at the Matsushita tower? I remember your voice.”

  Her arms fell slack. She slouched ever so slightly as if trying to conceal it. The head covering melted like liquid, receding into the metallic neck of her suit. The woman’s face was round and as cute as her emerald eyes were deadly. Thin lines traced across her temples and down the left side of her head, millimeters in front of her ear, as if drawn on by a pen two shades darker than her skin. Sadako scowled at the balcony railing, her head whirled at a speed that flared her short bob.

  “I would suggest you should feel no dishonor at failure, but your kind knows little of such things.”

  “My kind?” Her arms folded again. “You really believe in that whole samurai/ninja rivalry, don’t you? Both of us work for corporations that like to play dress up. It’s ancient history.”

  “Is it?” He opened his eyes all the way, wearing a subdued grin. “Tell me, if that is the case, why are none of your kind in the direct employ of any corporation other than the NSK?” She opened her mouth, but he kept on. “It is a nod to the old clans.”

  “That is irrelevant. It is the way of the establishment.” She advanced a half step.

  “So, you have come here to inquire as to who I intend to kill?”

  “You did appear to take great care in your infiltration of a competing company’s section of Shōrishima. I am to ascertain your intentions.”

  “I am an instrument of the will of Minamoto-heika. If you wish to know the nature of my presence here, seek an audience with him.”

  Sadako advanced another step. “You are not above the protocols, Saitō-san.”

  “You should return to your clan. It would be unfortunate for me to perceive you as an impediment to my duties.”

  “Oh, is that so?” She narrowed her eyes. “You don’t have a scrap of augmentation. It wouldn’t even be a contest.”

  “It is the purview of lesser beings to construct ladders on which to stand in order to reach the height of their betters.” Mamoru focused his power, moving from the bed to her side in the span of a blink. She twisted away, but was too slow to avoid the gentle touch of a sheathed katana at her neck. “Impressive. Few manage to move before I strike. However, the metal poison in your body weakens your chi.”

  Sadako stared at him. Her gaze tracked the tickle of a bead of sweat descending his cheek. She sprang away, her back to the wall and one hand on the blade at her shoulder. A curious mixture of fear and anger dueled in her eyes for a moment before simmering down to annoyance. Her fingers slipped off the rubberized grip of her ninjato, letting her arm hang at her side. Sadako’s posture seemed at ease, but her expression did not. Indignation, anger, and sadness swirled.

  Mamoru crossed the room to the reassembler, moving his katana to his left hand. He set an empty cup inside the machine, closed the door, a
nd typed at the console. The reassembler whirred to life, generating a drink from OmniSoy slime.

  Sadako flattened her palms against the wall. “Only a fool turns their back… or makes tea in a ‘sem.”

  “You are not here to kill me, nor are you capable of defeating me if you were.” He removed a sad attempt at green tea from the device and sipped it, grimacing. “I am not in this part of the city to put an end to any liabilities. Your association’s business interests are safe. Matsushita does not intend to infringe on your livelihood. If we require a problem eliminated from the real world, the NSK will get our money.”

  He sipped the tea again, wincing as if he’d forgotten how bad it was. She stared at him as if searching for some other path of debate, or waiting for him to say something else. After several minutes in silence, she crept to the patio door and let herself out. Sadako hesitated on the balcony, glancing over her shoulder at him with a hint of sadness in her emerald eyes. The liquid material devoured her strange longing stare as it engulfed her head. Mamoru turned the teacup in his hand, mesmerized by tiny floating fragments. Her stare, covered by onyx lenses, bored into his chest for a moment before she turned away.

  He set down an empty cup as she vaulted the railing and dropped out of sight.

  An hour past dusk, Mamoru left the hotel and followed the route he had memorized in the hours spent waiting. He traveled on foot, blending with the shadows as best he could. Stealth was not his forte, though even a novice could vanish in the narrow alleyways of north Shōrishima. The occasional vagrant took notice of him, but any that would beg or steal could not react to him in time to catch his eye. A mazelike series of streets and passages shifted from the cool fragrance of the ocean to the stifling presence of sewer and back again. He emerged from the last alley onto a perimeter beltway, which ran around the entire island. No vehicles or people were in sight, as he expected. This road was limited to official use due to its proximity to the water as well as the ease with which one could traverse multiple separate corporate territories.

  A quick jog across traction-coated plastisteel brought him to a chain link fence twenty feet from the edge. The sea wind came in gusts, ripping through the air with a shrill whistle that chased away the reek of the city. After a glance to each side, he stilled his mind and focused on his body. A tingle of chi ran down his legs. Once certain of his amplified strength, he vaulted the fence. With nothing but open metal around him, he sprinted to the edge and crouched low.

  He gazed down past sixteen stories of metal panels, protruding pipes, and catwalk to the ocean below. It reminded him of an old video game he’d played as a boy, before Matsushita. For a moment, he stared at the dangerous path, hearing long-forgotten electronic music play in his head. A lifetime ago, all he’d wanted to do was play games.

  The air was alive with electronic sensors, tingling through senses no normal human had. Mamoru stilled his thoughts and chose not to exist to them as he crept along the edge to the where a catwalk offered a landing point ten feet below. The rumble of a six-wheeled armored vehicle echoed from the west, from where headlights announced the passage of a JSDF patrol. He slid over the side, dropping to the catwalk with a clank drowned out by the wind and sea.

  A series of grated walkways and ladders took him along the path he had traveled two dozen times in cyberspace that afternoon. The simulation was true to life save for a few patches where weather eroded holes in the metal. Two hundred meters over and forty-six feet down, he reached the conduit he had selected hours earlier and touched one finger to the laser security grid. Every circuit, every logic gate, and every line of program code unfurled through his consciousness. Spiraling threads of words and numbers unraveled and wound together again. For ten minutes, the security system would ignore all faults in this shaft.

  Mamoru moved through the laser grid and the alarm paid him no heed. The ventilation duct forced him to crawl, but provided a direct route to the hangar. Noro-Shimura kept their project hidden below the surface. He crawled into the metal beast, pausing where a patch of light shone on a grime-coated ceiling. A slatted hole at his knees opened to an enormous chamber below.

  A rush of juvenile excitement came over him at the sight of the sleek matte-black warbird. Not since he was a boy had the anticipation of new technology gotten under his skin. There, amid a small group of workers in bright fluorescent green jumpsuits, the Fūjin slept.

  His trip home would not take him below the sea.

  Fox in the Henhouse

  amoru emerged from the ventilation shaft, lowering himself into a maintenance closet. The first opportunity to exit the duct without a dangerous fall had taken him farther into the facility than he had expected. He fixed the lay of his blade under his coat, and stepped out at the midpoint of a polished steel hallway. After a quick left-right glance, he doubled back in the direction of the hangar. Employees of the Noro-Shimura test facility seemed to disregard him, taking his imperious gait as a sign of belonging as well as being important enough not to antagonize. One advantage he had was no one expected an infiltrator to be so brazen. NSK ninjas always tried to stay out of sight at all costs.

  Before he could play with the shiny toy, he needed access to the file system. Mamoru leaned forward as he walked, searching for a direction that appeared to be offices. The company had been smart enough to make the interior version of the facility different in cyberspace. All he had to go on was a sense of which way led towards the aircraft bay. An educated guess brought him to a corridor lined with doors labeled with names and job titles, each by a floor-to-ceiling window blocked by vertical blinds. He ducked inside the second office on the left, easing the door closed behind him. A lingering presence of unagi hung in the darkened space, reminding him he had not eaten since morning. Discarded trays from delivery food sat in the waste bin at the edge of the desk. Mamoru frowned. The cleaning staff had not yet made it this far.

  A minor annoyance.

  Creaking leather and springs of an expensive chair protested his weight in the otherwise silent room. Mamoru placed his katana across his lap and grasped the terminal by the edges. A holographic panel began to roll like a window shade through the air, but stopped halfway and broke apart to snowy pixels. The essence of the machine flooded his thoughts and drew his consciousness from his body. Gravity lost meaning. Darkness became light, and silence became a rushing cascade of sound fading from deafening to imperceptible. For a fleeting instant, the perception of being an immobile object on a desk paralyzed him. The blinding glow dimmed, leaving him floating in the middle of the cyberspace version of the same office. Gloss white samurai armor reflected in the window, empty save for a dark amber glow where eyes should be.

  Mamoru moved out of the small room and flew down the corridor, several inches off the ground. A local connection to the network made him feel as though he ran at a hundred miles per hour in bursts, at least triple what he could do remotely. At the end of the hallway of offices, he stopped at a T intersection, with a door on the facing wall. Mamoru thought about the network map and his brain absorbed the information as rapidly as the terminal assembled it. He went right, heading for the control nodes that governed Noro-Shimura’s defense systems. The installation had a pair of high-output amplified laser batteries, larger cousins to the weapons on board his target.

  The Fūjin was fast, but it could not outrun light.

  Thin lines of brilliant blue glow surrounded a series of plain, brown doors, as if they held back a torrent of unstable plasma. He raised his arms to the sides, able to discern the relative security of each one by how hot it was. The strange ways his brain interpreted information from cyberspace never ceased to amuse him.

  Mamoru halted at the lone silver door in the passage, about forty yards from where he had turned. He extended a hand and pressed the fingertips of the samurai glove into the metal. Ripples spread out from the points of contact, reflecting from the doorframe as if he had broken the tranquility of a pool of mercury. Luminous cyan grid lines shimmered through
the waves, flickering wherever the surface moved. Streams of program code unwound in his mind, reshaping at the speed of his thoughts. A standing wall of liquid silver sank straight down to the floor. He stepped over the last few inches, entering an expansive chamber with four six-foot tall amethyst crystals.

  No one had wasted any effort to make this digital space resemble anything in the real world. Black walls glimmered with edges outlined in bright cobalt blue. Waist-high barriers encircled the base of each crystal, with a small gap facing the center of the room that allowed a strip of yellow light to connect from the floor beneath the hovering shards to a whirlwind of energy at the center of the room. A slab of onyx stretched from the floor, the upper portion bent backwards to form a console interface out of ethereal holograms.

  A swarm of tiny black fragments emerged from the left side of the room, spiraling over themselves like a cloud of locusts. The mass coalesced, taking the form of a man in a suit with sunglasses, a rifle, and a frown. A defense construct circled him. The look of confusion on its face a representation of its logic routines attempting to reconcile Mamoru’s identity. The disorientation lasted only long enough for Mamoru to unsheathe his sword. The program’s default response to unhandled exceptions was to attack.

  In cyberspace, the security man aimed and fired globs of green plasma. Somewhere, deep inside a computer core in reality, the system attempted to disrupt Mamoru’s connection. The initial barrage, the bolts flying over Mamoru’s head as he somersaulted behind one of the podium terminals, an animation translated from a simple attempt at a forcible logout.

  As Mamoru had not logged in in the sense a computer could understand, the attack missed. He leapt from cover, sailing in an arc that brought him close to a ceiling that now seemed to be thirty feet high. A streamer of energy trailed the katana as he raised it overhead. The construct raised its weapon to aim, but moved too slow. Mamoru crashed down on it, one strike splitting the virtual man from head to gut. Shimmering radiance erupted from within the body rather than gore, interspersed with black circuitry lines.