“How so?”
“He wasn’t honorable about who he killed. Guy used to provoke people right off the street for anything. Looking at him funny, scuffing his car, petty shit like that. He’d get them riled up and have his men gun them down for him.”
“Really? I thought he only went after the worst of the worst.”
“Maybe he did that too. But he wasn’t picky about who he killed.”
“It’s almost like we’re hearing totally different versions of the same story.”
“Yeah, funny how that works.”
“By the way, any progress getting an ID on the guy that got shot in the office building?”
“The one you had nothing to do with?”
“Right. That one.”
“We got an ID. Taku Kinashita. Heard of him?”
“Doesn’t ring a bell. Any known affiliation? Accomplices? Favorite sex positions? Stuff like that?”
“Not much of an official record. Which makes me think he’s yakuza in some capacity. No luck turning up his affiliation, though.”
“Okay, I’ll ask around. See if any of my people have heard of him. Anyway, we’re here.”
Kameko guided the SUV into a hospital parking lot and glided to a stop. Mei checked her notepad.
“Let’s see, Tokyo Metropolitan Hiroo Hospital. So this is Dr. Takasu.”
They walked up to the internal medicine department and found the office for the doctor in question. When they entered his waiting room, they found a single receptionist and a bunch of empty chairs.
“May I help you?” he said.
“Yeah, we were wondering if we could take a look at the doctor’s schedule.”
“I’m sorry, but that sort of information is … what are you doing?”
Kameko was already around the desk and poking through the contents on top of it.
“Hey, you can’t be back here!” the receptionist said. He was clearly flustered and looked to Mei for support. She just shrugged.
“Is this the doctor’s scheduling book here?” Kameko said.
Without waiting for a response, she plopped a black leather book on the counter between herself and Mei. She nodded. “Yup. Bingo.”
“Um, excuse me,” the receptionist said. “But you can’t be back here!”
“No, see, I can,” Kameko said. “I shouldn’t be, but I can.”
“Why’s that?” the receptionist huffed indignantly.
“Because you can’t stop me,” Kameko said, flipping through the day planner.
The receptionist looked from Kameko to Mei. Mei nodded. “She’s right, you know.”
“Hey, Tango, come check this out.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Sure thing, Selma. Take a look.”
Kameko held up the schedule book for Mei to see.
“The dates …,” Mei said.
“They all match,” Kameko finished for her. “He took time off around each of the … incidents.”
“This might be our guy.”
“Do you mind telling me just what this is about?” the receptionist said. He was trying to grab the book back from Kameko.
“Murther!” Kameko said in English, with a Shakespearian flourish. “Murther most foul!”
Vasili and Jun walked out into the enormous concrete plaza in front of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. Soseki and a handful of men were already milling about. Soseki was smoking a cigarette, the exposed muscle in his jaw clenching and unclenching with each drag and exhalation.
“Vasili. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Did you do it?”
“Do what?”
Vasili tilted his head and regarded him for a long pause. He chewed his lip, then shook his head.
“No, you didn’t, did you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Someone took a shot at Chobei.”
“Oh, what a shame,” Soseki said flatly. “I hope the dear boy wasn’t hurt.”
His men chuckled at the sarcasm.
Vasili grunted. “Yeah, unfortunately he wasn’t. I just wanted to know if it was you. If we were going to have problem.”
“I’m thinking we will, regardless. We didn’t do it, but he’s going to think we did.”
“Yeah. You should be on your guard. He’s too stupid to be dangerous. But even stupid gets lucky sometimes.”
Soseki regarded him as he took another drag. “We’ll be on guard. We always are. But I’m surprised to get a warning from you.”
“I just want peace between us.”
“Keep him away from us and there won’t be a problem.”
“Understood. If I can’t, and he does do something stupid …”
“We’ll handle it.”
“Just know is not official policy or anything. If he attacks you, I mean.”
“Got it.”
“But if Chobei makes a move … eh, do what you have to do.”
Soseki smirked. “Why do I feel like I’d be doing you a favor if I took him out?”
Chapter Fifteen
“Who is it?” came the tinny voice through the speaker.
“It’s Mei.”
The buzzer sounded. Mei pushed through into the abandoned building that Madoka used as his laboratory. When she got close to the door opening into the actual laboratory, she heard screaming from within. She drew her firearm and steeled herself with a deep breath. She peered inside as far as she could through the porthole window in the door, but most of the room was obscured. Her heart was pounding like a jackhammer now, as the situation had escalated from zero to potentially life-threatening in moments.
The screaming was relentless—a male voice, shouting indistinguishable gibberish for the most part, sometimes forming words like “No!” or “Stop!” Was Madoka torturing someone in there? And if he was, why had he just buzzed her in? With these thoughts still in mind, Mei kicked in the door and entered the room with her gun drawn.
“Police!” she shouted in as deep a voice as she could. “Everyone freeze and … oh, goddamnit!”
There were only two people in the room, and they were watching a video on a computer. Madoka and the other person, a young man who looked to be naked except for the blanket draped over him, looked up at her placidly, then back to the monitor.
“Fuck!” Mei said, hunched over the nearest tables. She holstered her weapon. “I thought someone was being murdered in here.”
“Nope.”
“What the fuck are you watching? A snuff film?”
Madoka smiled. “Oh, just some human experimentation. No big deal.”
Mei walked over behind them to peer at the monitor. On it she saw footage of the man who was now calmly sitting next to Madoka. He was tied to a bed, writhing in agony, and screaming for it to stop.
“That you?”
“Nishio,” the man said as he nodded.
“Kimura.”
“Detective Kimura here is a cop.”
“Oh yeah, what rank?” Nishio asked.
“I’m a dete … oh, clever,” Mei said.
Nishio seemed to be in his early twenties. He looked limp, like he had just been through the ringer. But it wasn’t enough to extinguish the sharp look in his eyes. His voice was hoarse and he had lines of salt from dried sweat on his brow. This led Mei to believe that the performance on the video was a recent one.
“What’s going on in the video?”
“Some asshole, and by that I mean this asshole right here,” Nishio said, nodding to Madoka, “wanted to run some tests on trancespore. This is the end result.”
“What did you do?” Mei asked. “Give him a quadruple dose or something?” As she spoke, she kept her eyes on the screen, where Nishio was thrashing around.
“Hardly. Just a tiny amount,” Madoka said. “But here’s the kicker—there are two different types of trancespore. Watch.”
With that, he closed the video they were watching and opened another one. This one also showed Nis
hio strapped to a bed, but much calmer now. From somewhere off-camera, Madoka was peppering him with questions.
“And how do you feel now?” came the voice from off-camera.
“Anxious, I guess. Like … I feel uneasy.”
“Are you still hallucinating?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?”
“I don’t know. I’m seeing some things. Like my vision is swimming on me.”
“But the visuals have stopped?”
“Yeah.”
Madoka stopped the video and looked at Mei. “That was last week. That time I dosed him with some trancespore collected from an abandoned rail line in Tokyo. Some hallucinations, some anxiety and unease. But nothing like the earth-shattering fear and dread you saw with this other version.”
Madoka walked over to a lab table and picked up a plastic baggie, which he handed to Mei. She saw a fine, black powdery substance, interspersed with purplish-black stalks that looked like crooked fingers.
“And this is a version I got from a disciple in the Invited. She told me this is what they take. As you can see, it’s a lot more potent than the shit that grows on the surface.”
“I felt like I was going to die,” Nishio said, looking at Mei. “It felt like this pit was opening up all around me and was going to swallow me. And there was nothing I could do. It was just this … hopeless, endless, overwhelming sense of dread.”
“Well, I may have dosed you with too much,” Madoka said. “I didn’t realize it was this powerful. Lesson learned.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Nishio said. He turned to Mei. “I mean, sure, I spent eight hours thrashing about, wishing for death to put me out of my misery. But at least he learned a valuable lesson.”
“Do you think they’re—I don’t know—cultivating this? Or enhancing it somehow?”
Madoka scratched his chin. “There’s definitely something going on here. But I need to look into this more to figure it out. Now that I know it’s safe, I think I’ll test it on myself next.”
“Safe? You fucking call that safe?” Nishio said. “I would have torn my own throat out if you had let me. How the fuck do you figure it’s safe?”
“Safe as in nontoxic,” Madoka said. “As in you’re not dead.”
“Was that a possibility?” Nishio asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about this stuff,” Madoka said nonchalantly. “But I’m curious to see the effects for myself. In the name of science, of course.”
“Jesus Christ, you’re not going to give my dad any of that shit, are you?” Mei asked.
“Not unless you want me to. Though I don’t recommend it.”
“Pass. But why the sudden interest in trancespore?” Mei asked. “You think of bottling and selling it?”
Madoka shook his head. “Nope. Just interested to see what it can do. The stuff has a cult following devoted to its use. I want to know why.” He stared off into space. “But you didn’t come here to talk hallucinogens. You came here for your father’s Thyrogen regimen. Just a moment.”
He walked into a back hallway, leaving her alone with Nishio.
“So … are you like his assistant or something?”
Nishio considered his response. “Something like that. Though I’d say somewhere between an assistant, an errand boy, and a lab rat.”
“Well … it’s nice to be needed, I guess.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
Madoka returned with two syringes of the medication and handed them to Mei.
“Think you and your dad can handle this yourself? Be honest if you can’t. No use wasting medicine and opening your dad up to an infection if you can't give an injection properly.”
“I think he can handle it. Mom was diabetic and he used to help give her her insulin injections.”
Madoka nodded. “Alright. I’ll see him in a few days, then.”
Mei pocketed the medicine. “Thanks again. For everything.”
Madoka waved her off. “Just doing my job.”
Mei was walking through the backstreets towards her police vehicle when she heard gunfire. At first she thought it was probably just more of Madoka’s bullshit experiments. But when it occurred to her that she was several blocks away and it was coming from the other direction, she began running towards the sound.
She rounded the corner to see several military vehicles arrayed around the entrance to an abandoned building. Several Dark Army recruits were standing guard by the vehicular blockade, which she tried to blow past on her way to the entrance. But a guard in tactical gear standing in the opening between two vehicles blocked her with his body as she tried to get past.
“Police! Let me through!” she said, pulling the badge on a chain around her neck out and presenting it to him.
“Can’t do that, ma’am!”
“Get the fuck out of the way!” she yelled, trying to get around him. The vehicles hemmed her in.
“Sorry, ma’am, Major Ozaki’s orders! No one in or out!”
“The Dark Army doesn’t have the authority to order metropolitan police around!”
The man said nothing but still wouldn’t budge. By now, the sounds of gunfire inside had ceased.
“Where is Ozaki?” Mei demanded.
“Right here,” Ozaki said as he strolled over. He was wearing the same tactical gear as the other men standing around. Mei noticed that it was emblazoned with the Dark Army kanji and insignia stitched in crimson thread.
“What’s going on here?”
“We had a tipoff that there was a sleeper cell based out of this building. So we engaged.”
“Excuse me? You engaged? The Dark Army doesn’t have that authority!”
“We didn’t. Until the so-called Private Civil Order Defense Forces Act that was enacted by the cabinet three days ago. It explicitly authorizes the use of force by ‘authorized paramilitary forces and other civil defense forces.’ Of which the Dark Army is now one.”
Mei shook her head, unable to believe it. The government had given its approval for this?
“So you’re authorized to use deadly force?”
“If need be. Unfortunately, the situation inside escalated quickly. Our men had no choice but to return fire and …”
He trailed off and motioned towards the entrance. Mei looked over to see several men wearing the same uniform as Ozaki exiting the building. Six of them emerged in pairs, each pair dragging a body between them.
“Who were these men?”
“Like I said, a sleeper cell. Chinese nationals who we believe to be members of the triad gang. They were suspected of involvement in the recent explosions affecting shipments of cargo to Japanese ports.”
“Suspected? Do you have any proof?”
Ozaki paused. “Nothing tangible. Yet. But we will search their headquarters and see what we find.”
“Too bad you killed them all. I’ve found talking to suspects to be a particularly good way of gathering information.”
“Yes. Well, things don’t always turn out the way you plan.”
“And sometimes they turn out exactly the way you plan.”
“Are you implying something?”
Mei shook her head. She looked over at the bleeding bodies on the ground again, then turned away in disgust.
“If you think something improper happened here, by all means, please report it to your superiors.”
“Let me take down their information. I don’t like this. And I intend to follow up on this.”
“Very well.”
Mei reached into a pocket of her overcoat to remove her notebook. When she reached into the deep pocket, she felt a large cylindrical plastic object she didn’t recognize. In a moment of forgetfulness, she pulled it out along with her notebook to see that it was the syringe of Thyrogen Madoka had given her. She moved to put it back, when Ozaki grabbed her by the wrist to stop her. He yanked the syringe out of her grasp and looked at it.
“Thyrogen,” he said, reading the lab
el. He glanced back up at her. “Now, Detective Kimura, perhaps you can tell me what you’re doing with a controlled substance like this?”
“I … I picked it up off a suspect. I was taking it back to the station for processing.”
“Of course. And who was this suspect?”
“It was … I don’t see how this is any of your concern.”
“Given how corrupt your department is, I feel that I should make it my concern. Let’s go.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Dinner is served!” Satoshi said, placing two steaming bowls on the table with a flourish.
Hisoka took a look at the food in front of her, then cast him a dubious sidelong glance. “Really?”
“What?”
“Oyakodon?”
“Yeah, why not? You like my oyakodon. I made sure the chicken is cooked all the way through, and the egg isn’t runny or anything. Totally safe to eat while you’re expecting.”
“I dunno, it just seems kind of … sick.”
It took Satoshi a moment to catch her meaning. “Oh, it’s fine. I’ve never known you to be the superstitious type.”
“I’m not, it’s just …” She shook her head. “You’re right. Thanks for cooking.”
Satoshi sat across from her, relieved.
“Well, while we’re sort of on the subject, have you given any thought to names?” Hisoka asked, taking out a list.
“Not yet, but I can see you have.”
“So my top names if it’s a boy are Norio, Masao, or Michio. And if it’s a girl I was thinking Yumiko, or maybe—”
“Let’s hold off until we know if it’s a boy or a girl. At least then we only have to fight over one set of names.”
“Okay. But you know we’ve got the ultrasound appointment tomorrow. So you might want to start … oh no, what?” Her good humor faded as she noticed the look on his face.
“I can’t tomorrow. I have to finish this job.”
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to for Satoshi to know what she was thinking. He winced.
“I’ve just got to do this last job, then I’m out. We’ll go somewhere else, get away from this city before it drowns for good. Cut what ties we have.”
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