Loups-Garous

by Natsuhiko Kyogoku

  The smell.

  That was the unrecorded memory of Yuko Yabe.

  Those things were not recorded on this disc. Therefore, this disc would not be able to prove anything. This so-called life preservationist girl probably had a face very similar to Yuko’s. No way to distinguish them from just a grainy monitor image.

  If there were no record of Yuko, there was definitely going to be problems.

  They just had to make a copy of this moving image.

  It all becomes a lie.

  Hazuki noticed something blinking in the corner of her vision.

  A turtle.

  Another message from Mio.

  OPEN.

  JUST ONE HOUR AGO, THE PATROL COMPANY RE-ENTERED THEIR DATA. THE ENEMY IS A STEP AHEAD OF US. THE IMAGES AND THE MOTION RECORDERS APPEAR TO BE A FABRICATION. ALL THE DATA IS BUNK. FABRICATION 800. COULD BE BAD. I WANT TO DRAFT A COUNTERMEASURE PLAN. MEET AT THE DOVE HOUSE. THERE WILL BE A POWER OUTAGE AT EXACTLY 1900 HOURS.

  --MIO

  Seven o’clock.

  Her monitor said it was 6:48:38. She had less than twelve minutes.

  Hazuki closed the image of Yuko smiling and ejected the disc from her drive. Then she changed from her house clothes to a tracksuit.

  The suit was made of a new material that could measure body temperature and regulate moisture absorption and release. It was light and easy to move around in but didn’t feel like anything when worn. Hazuki just liked the way it looked.

  Then she put on the walking shoes she hadn’t yet worn.

  The power had been out for a mere thirty seconds the last time and the time before that. She didn’t want to get stuck in the foyer still putting on her shoes when that time was up.

  She remained still for five minutes.

  Then she left her bedroom, the monitor still on, and locked the door.

  Just as she descended to the living room, a visitor’s call rang.

  Who was it?

  Hazuki ran to the living room’s main terminal to confirm.

  There were two men in area patrol uniforms standing in front of the gate.

  “Miss Makino. We’re local area patrol officers. We’ve come to talk to you about last week’s incident with the unannounced intruder and to check in on you.”

  This was bad.

  There were only five minutes till the planned outage.

  “I’ve already spoken with my father about this. There’s no need for a follow-up.”

  Go away. Go away!

  “Ah yes. But you see, we have a special police matter here. Plus it’s in our private surveillance contract with you to come by…if you could just spare us a moment of real contact.”

  Real?

  “That is, as part of our duties we’d just like to assure you by meeting face-to-face on at least this first occasion.”

  “That’s all right. Really—”

  “It’s a rule. We’ve seen the layout of your home, but if for the record we could just assure your security personally…We just need to see the interior of your home. It will really only take a minute.”

  Only four minutes left.

  What to do.

  “We’re not here to harm you. I’ll run my ID card now so you can see.”

  The two men slid their ID cards through the reader, one after the other.

  On her screen appeared their headshots, names, and ID numbers.

  She couldn’t keep denying them.

  “All right, one minute,” Hazuki said. She switched her security system to visitor mode and unlocked the front gate.

  The door clicked open.

  “Employee ID DV320054, DV321886, now entering the Makino residence, in 122 Section A 5035-62.”

  Hazuki stood in the hallway. Two large men appeared in the hall.

  One of them was skinny for his height, but the other looked enormous, like he was from a foreign country.

  “If we could just check the windows by the doors, then. Oh, and you should confirm our IDs. Protocol.”

  “Your IDs…of course.”

  Hazuki turned on the main monitor in the foyer.

  The last images of the two of them popped up.

  Hazuki assumed they wanted her to compare their ID images to their real faces.

  The skinny one was definitely himself. The helmet made him look a little bigger, but…

  The other one.

  Huh?

  This can’t be.

  “What seems to be the matter?”

  “Oh nothing.”

  The other face on her monitor, the headshot of the other man.

  Peacock tattoo on his head.

  “Is there a problem?”

  “N-no.”

  Her heart was racing. It pumped and squeezed. The blood in her veins raced, and for a split second her vision went completely black.

  What do I do. What do I do. What do I do.

  These were the guys.

  These were the guys that had killed Yuko.

  “Do you mind then if we come in?” the skinnier one said.

  Hazuki shifted over against the wall.

  She couldn’t say a word.

  Her tongue was glued to the back of her mouth and her voice would not work.

  “The back entrance is over there, then? And I’m sure it’s usually kept locked.”

  The skinnier man took off his shoes and came into the house. Hazuki walked around him.

  Then…

  The larger man took off his shoes. Her heart. Her heart.

  He silently walked past Hazuki, slowly. Very slowly.

  They walked past her.

  She stopped right at the door to the living room.

  Her fingers.

  Her fingers were trembling. No.

  No no no no no.

  “What’s the matter?” The bigger man looked back.

  “Why are you shaking?”

  Go. Go to the back.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Uh…” This was bad. She didn’t want to look at his face. She was scared. Scared. Very scared.

  Hazuki turned her face away. She looked at the monitor.

  If only she could go into the monitor. In there, she was never scared.

  “You don’t seem well. Perhaps you’ve come down with something?”

  They were moving.

  The time. 6:59:05 pm.

  Fifty-five more seconds.

  Hazuki closed her eyes and started running.

  She caught the larger man, who stood there mouth agape, off guard as she whisked past him and made it to the living room. She closed the door.

  “What’s going on?” The large man opened the door. The other one ran toward the hallway. The larger man entered the living room. The thin one followed him. Hazuki rounded halfway around the room along the wall.

  “What’s the matter, Miss Makino? Miss Hazuki Makino!” the men said loudly. They followed her. One more corner till the door. She was in front of the door.

  “What’s the matter? Hey, you don’t think—”

  “She knows about us!”

  Her hand was on the doorknob. The skinnier man…

  Pulled out a knife.

  Its reflection splintered through the air for a flash and then.

  Lights out.

  Hazuki lowered her head and ran with all her might down the hall, opened the door to the foyer, and shut it hard.

  She ran till she made it outside the gate.

  If they were still putting on their shoes in the foyer when the power went back on they would be locked in the house. They needed a code to get out of the house. And if the number of people inside the house before and after the power outage was different, the system would read an error. The security system would initiate a check. Then…

  Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Thirty seconds.

  Hazuki ran.

  Slam.

  They’d run after her without putting on their shoes.

  They were coming. They were coming at her fast.

  Whoosh.
The sound cut through the wind.

  Something incredibly hot sped through the space under her earlobe.

  She heard the sound of something thudding on the ground. She turned back. A fan of blackness spread across the ground.

  The thin man’s arm was aimed forward like a spear. His weapon flew from the tip of his hand and gleamed in the air once.

  Then the black night behind them lit up through her windows. The electricity went back on.

  Something quivered. It spread like it was riding the wind.

  Ggg, the man’s voice.

  “Get up. Hurry.”

  That voice.

  Rey Mao.

  Rey Mao’s straight hair whipped about again.

  Those long arms were wrapped around the skinny man’s throat.

  “Run away, now. When the other guy gets out we’re both in trouble.”

  Another blow. The man collapsed on the grass.

  “It’s no use. I can’t kill him with gongfu. Hurry now. Run.”

  Hazuki couldn’t respond.

  But.

  Her arms and legs started moving. She couldn’t tell if it was her or the world moving.

  She couldn’t see anything before her. Her head was empty. There was no inside or outside.

  Hazuki had not normally thought about the fact that she was alive. Every day she felt half dead. So why was she so scared of death now? If Hazuki alive was the same as Hazuki dead so far as the world was concerned, why did she fear death so much now?

  She turned down an alley and ran up a hill.

  Ayumi!

  Her body moved involuntarily.

  Behind Ayumi’s house, at the foot of the metal spiral staircase, Hazuki had a fit of dizziness and collapsed. Her equilibrium failed her, and the world started to turn. Hazuki turned over on the ground once. Then somehow she got herself up, braced herself against the wall of the house, and wrapped her arms around herself. Her teeth wouldn’t stay still.

  Rey Mao silently appeared before her.

  “It’s all right. We got out of there before the other guy got out.”

  “Haaa…”

  “Calm down. Mio called me out here. She said our enemies were onto our movements. The data we were trying to send was being rewritten, and she worried you would be attacked. What a pain in the ass.”

  “Pain in…”

  “You know what I mean,” Rey Mao said. “She means well but she causes trouble. That’s all. Now get up. Can you stand?”

  Long arms. Hazuki fell into those arms. They were colder than her father’s.

  The girls wound up the spiral staircase to the roof.

  “I doubt if they know about this place,” Rey Mao said. “No one would suspect an unmarked room like this to be in Section A. It’s a great hideout.”

  The sky was black and large.

  There was no light on in the dove cage.

  “Ayumi must be out. I wonder where she’s gone at this hour.”

  Rey Mao scoped the area out before opening the door. It was unlocked.

  “Mio’s not here either. We got here at a good time. Well, let’s just go in.”

  Hazuki floated in.

  It was dark inside. The window to the dove room looked like a floating cutout.

  “This is weird,” Rey Mao said. She told Hazuki, who just stood by the door, to sit down.

  “Th-thanks.” That was all she said for a while.

  Rey Mao let out a deep sigh.

  “I thought you might get attacked on your way here, but to think they actually went into your house. Those were area patrol. Or did they disguise themselves as area patrol to get in?”

  Hazuki shook her head.

  “What does that mean?”

  “They were real.”

  “Real? What do you mean real?”

  “I checked their IDs. They were both real area patrol guys.”

  “But that was definitely the guy the other day who apprehended Yuko in the car. The other one…”

  “Yeah. The guy with the peacock head art.”

  “Then it was definitely them. They’re real…patrol? Then our enemy is the area patrol…” Rey Mao said. “This is no good. Maybe Mio’s also…”

  No.

  Hazuki didn’t want to hear the rest of that sentence.

  “Uh…”

  “Hazuki. My name’s Hazuki Makino.”

  “Ha-zuke-ee…” Rey Mao sat down in a chair. “What kind of girl is Ayumi?”

  “Huh?”

  “She’s weird, eh?”

  “Well…”

  “Aren’t you friends?”

  “We’re not…friends.”

  What are we? We’re definitely not friends, but…

  “I’m not sure,” Hazuki answered. She really didn’t know. She didn’t know much about Ayumi. Just what everyone else could find out about her on the public data server. The only undocumented fact Hazuki had on her was this illegal room on her roof.

  “Hmph,” Rey Mao said. “You guys are so complicated.”

  “Complicated?”

  “Never mind. Hazuki. Just hide here for now.”

  “Here?”

  “You can’t go back home, you know that.” Rey Mao stood up.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to follow those two guys.”

  “That’s dangerous.”

  “Of course it is,” Rey Mao said matter-of-factly. “For us, living is dangerous.” She stood in the middle of the room and looked all around her. “There’s nothing here.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing of use,” Rey Mao said looking up at the ceiling. “Oh by the way, Hazuki. You should turn off your monitor. We don’t know exactly what it can do, but it does indicate that you are at the terminus.”

  Hazuki had not once ever thought of it that way, but Rey Mao was correct.

  “You all are connected one way or another. That might make you feel safe, but it’s restrictive. You can’t run with a thread tied around your waist.”

  But.

  Without it…

  “If the area patrol is your enemy they will find out where you are.”

  Certainly so if Hazuki’s monitor was in GPS mode.

  Even if it weren’t, the police could force a search.

  She stuck her hand in her pocket. The disc with Yuko Yabe’s record.

  That was all she had on her.

  Hazuki frantically patted her body. It wasn’t there. Hazuki didn’t have her monitor on her. This meant that her location, her coordinates…

  She had no idea where she was.

  A harsh flapping sound caught Hazuki by surprise. Rey Mao grabbed one of the doves. The small creepy-looking animal with eyes that looked almost as though it understood its captor shook violently in Rey Mao’s long arms.

  The dove was just like Hazuki.

  “If anything happens, I’ll let this dove fly back.”

  “Let it fly?”

  “They know exactly where they need to go, so it’ll come back here.

  So don’t go anywhere till it comes back.”

  The dove was nothing like Hazuki.

  “Don’t get yourself killed,” Rey Mao said, then she disappeared into the night.

  CHAPTER 020

  “IT’S LIKE A shitty action flick,” Kunugi said. “I used to watch those things as a kid. Vulgar stuff.”

  Ayumi silently looked down the road. Shizue was trying to digest everything that was happening.

  Without so much as sorting or organizing, abstracting or finding symbolic meaning in it, Shizue was trying to swallow what had just happened, whole.

  This indescribable, complex, dirty, potent odor. It was the smell of earth, water, grass, and trees. Those things alone were already too much for Shizue. But she had learned that children needed those things.

  Shizue herself was raised in an environment where such odors had been completely extracted. Shizue knew full well the negative effects that an environment without nature held for people. Sh
e had a vast amount of information on the subject. Still, there was nothing she could do about the way she’d been raised.

  There was no turning back time. She’d thought seriously about what was called a “resocialization,” but Shizue was already completely developed. So she had given up on the idea.

  She couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Maybe you should have stayed back after all,” Kunugi told Shizue. “There was nothing they would have held you for. You shouldn’t be hiding in the bushes like this. You could say you escaped an abduction, no?”

  “I became plenty suspicious before you were brought in.”

  “Even so,” Kunugi rubbed his nose. He got dirt on himself. “Now you’ve made one hell of a criminal of yourself. Not a prosecutable criminal, but one that’s clearly guilty. You just ran into the woods with this stupid middle-aged loser who just kidnapped a minor. Even if they didn’t press charges, you’d be hard-pressed to get your job back, I’m sure.”

  “Thanks for reminding me.”

  That was enough.

  Shizue stared at Ayumi’s profile.

  “I trust you,” said Ayumi. That admission made Shizue feel like her job as a counselor was done.

  If she dilly-dallied any further no one would trust her.

  “This is all just hearsay anyway, and there’s no evidence to speak of. You’re still a good counselor.”

  Kunugi, tired from squatting, collapsed into a seated position on the ground. “If you were my counselor, I’d be set.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Hmph,” Kunugi let out through his nose. “It’s getting darker and I’m starving. But we can’t move. If I keep quiet I’ll lose my nerve. They didn’t see me in their surveillance cameras, right?”

  “I don’t think so. By the time I fled the gates, several area patrol officers had gotten to the entrance hall and possibly a few police officers. I ran as fast as I could and didn’t look back, so I can’t say for certain, but they’re sure to have at least seen your back.”

  “I saw,” Ayumi said.

  “Saw? Who?” Kunugi asked.

  “They were probably police. They weren’t wearing uniforms and they weren’t area patrols.”

  “You saw all that while running in the other direction? That’s something else.”

  “I was pulling Ms. Fuwa’s arm, so I was already facing the building.”

  “Oh, right. Then why aren’t they chasing us?” Kunugi asked stupidly. “Don’t they think they should chase us? Or is that how futile it is for us to hide?”