by Aja James
Unless he had a sexier twin brother… but no, she couldn’t imagine there being more than one of him in the world. She’d bet all her brain cells he was a one and only. She was glad she caught a glimpse of the edgier side of him, which she totally preferred over the immaculate professional version.
He looked dangerous. Wild. Edible.
She was looking forward to having some vivid dreams tonight.
But back to reality.
She bent down to pick up the rumpled and torn city map, folded it as best she could and tucked it into her hobo bag. While waiting in the taxi line, she mentally planned her activities for the day.
It was still early morning; her hotel didn’t allow check-in until 3pm. She’d just leave her roller bag at the concierge and go exploring after a quick shower in their reserved guests lounge. She had a whole day ahead of her and most of the night too. Her meeting with the team at Tokyo Biotech wasn’t until 10am the next day.
She couldn’t wait to start this new adventure.
*** *** *** ***
The University of Tokyo, or Todai for short, was a research university with five campuses located in the Bunkyō ward of Tokyo, home to some of Japan’s most famous scholars and politicians since the Meiji era of the late 1800s. The university housed ten faculties and various graduate schools and research institutes with over thirty thousand students annually.
While Ava was washing away the sluggishness from her long flight, two members of her project team were concentrating on an operation in a secure laboratory on Hongo campus.
“Clamp,” one of the two main operators requested of his assistant, and was immediately handed the instrument.
“Number 10.” A scalpel with the right blade was provided.
“Vitals stable,” the other operator murmured with a quick look at the monitors.
“Looking good,” the main surgeon assessed after making a 10-inch cut in the subject’s chest. “Let’s switch it out and cross our fingers.”
Hours of relative silence descended upon the small, sterile room, dark save for the bright operating lights above the table where the subject lay, as the surgeons worked methodically to complete the operation. Every once in a while, the shadows around the walls that almost completely blended with the darkness would shift slightly, though the objects that cast the shadows did not.
When the final stitch was sewn to close up the chest once more, one surgeon looked into the eyes of the other and both unconsciously held their breath…and waited.
The monitors continued to show stable vital signs, and the subject continued to breathe slowly in and out. A couple of minutes later, the two surgeons looked at each other again, triumph in their eyes—
And then pandemonium struck.
The machines started beeping erratically. The subject began shaking uncontrollably and foaming at the mouth.
The surgeons barked instructions in rapid-fire Japanese and the assistants ran to do their bidding. The subject was now jerking so violently, he would have come off the table if not for the restraints that held him down. They gave him pure oxygen, injected him with drugs at close intervals to produce the right combination of reactions, mimicking what his body should naturally be doing on its own but was failing to do.
Suddenly the subject fell back and stilled. The electrocardiogram flat-lined.
The surgeons immediately attempted resuscitation. When that didn’t work, they combined it with an injection of vasopressin. Still no use. Finally they tried defibrillation, but the subject simply flopped lifelessly on the operating table, a stream of dark, almost black blood leaking out of the corner of his mouth.
A few minutes later, the operators threw in the towel, literally pulling off their surgical gloves and masks in frustration and tossing them on the body of the deceased as if they all belonged in the same trash pile.
“Another failure,” the secondary surgeon muttered in disgust.
“She will not like this setback,” the main surgeon added ominously, eyeing the shadows along the walls that shifted like an undulating wave.
Both paused to consider the consequences for a weighty moment, neither liking the possibilities.
“We must find another subject within the fortnight and try again.”
“That shouldn’t be too difficult with thirty-thousand or so live samples to choose from. The more difficult task is to cultivate another organ. There’s not enough time.”
The assistant-surgeon looked up abruptly. “What if we’re going about it all wrong? What if we’re focusing on the wrong organ?”
“We’ve tried everything,” came the frustrated reply that cut off further speculation.
“We still have the DNA splicing research and—”
“Those projects take time,” barked the main surgeon impatiently. “We promised her, and ourselves, a short-term solution as well.”
Their eyes met again in silent communication. Yes, their own future rested on the success of this experiment.
They had a lot to lose, perhaps their very lives, but they also had eternity to gain.
*** *** *** ***
After securing the perimeter of his safe house, including installing infrared cameras in a few strategic locations, Ryu set up his tech equipment in a secluded back room of the traditional Japanese home.
The six-hundred square-foot abode was built in the fourteen hundreds, restored four hundred years later and modernized with twenty-first century conveniences a couple of years ago. All around it crowded modern condos, neat and boxy with much less space and an average of three people per unit. One would never guess that such a pristine architectural gem was nestled amongst all the concrete and glass like a fabled phoenix amongst plebian pigeons.
But Tokyo was full of these hidden treasures, and Ryu knew all of its secrets.
He opened up his laptop and with a few rapid taps of his fingers brought up footage of the areas that surrounded the house within a thirty-yard radius. He then pulled up a map of the city with a live geo-location feed. But he wasn’t looking at himself; he was watching the red flashing dot of Ava Monroe as she went about exploring Tokyo for the first time.
The tracking device he planted in her laptop case was doing its job beautifully.
A silent vibration tickled his wrist. He pressed his watch and spoke quietly, as if whoever was calling him was right there in the small room with him.
“Takamura.”
“How was the trip, Senpai?” A nonchalant male voice filled the space, clear despite its sleepy softness.
It was after midnight back in NYC, so the Chosen should have been wide awake rather than sounding as if he’d just rolled out of bed.
Ryu’s lips tilted. “Made contact with the good Doctor.”
He should have grabbed some Zs himself, given it was the middle of the day in Tokyo. Despite the steel shutters and blackout drapes that blocked all sunlight from this secret chamber, he could still feel the sun’s effects as if he had drunk a powerful sleeping potion. But the jet lag and the mission had him too wired to rest.
And then there was the unwanted attraction to a certain human female that still had his body buzzing with electricity.
A languorous sigh. “Ah. The delectable Dr. Monroe. Truly you have all the best missions.”
Ryu knew that Devlin Sinclair appreciated females of all shapes and sizes and took advantage of their attraction to him on a regular basis, both for sex and for blood. He could never be taken seriously when he talked about his flirtations, and Ryu often found amusement in his flippant words. But for some reason, in the case of Ava Monroe, Ryu’s usual careless half-smile abruptly disappeared.
Perceptive as ever, his comrade accurately read the weighty silence and said, “Did I hear dibs?”
Ryu mentally shook himself. He was behaving strangely.
He ignored the question and quickly switched topics to the mission at hand. “What have you uncovered about Genomics Technology?”
But even as he listened intently to what t
he Hunter had to say, he kept an eye on Dr. Monroe’s movements on the map. She must be taking the subway, heading northeast toward Akihabara.
Undeterred by the sudden change in the conversational course, but wise enough to stop prodding on a topic his “senior” obviously didn’t want to touch, Devlin dutifully reported, “The biotech company was formed about five years ago after a consortium of Venture Capital funds grew a startup in biogenetics from a few million dollars in sales to over fifty million. Since its incorporation, it’s received several more rounds of capital infusion from angel investors, private equity firms and larger technology-oriented funds. In these five years it’s grown 10X in topline revenues and is now making a pretty healthy profit margin.”
“I’m sure this fascinating history has a point somewhere,” Ryu interjected smoothly. It wasn’t that he was impatient for Devlin to get to the punch line, though he was just a smidgeon, but sometimes his comrade liked to wind people up too much in the interest of building anticipation.
He could almost hear Devlin grin. “Of course. Would I share random facts that had no relevance?”
Yes, Ryu silently replied. He simply waited.
“While the money is tricky to follow, given dispersed and confidential information,” Devlin continued when Ryu wouldn’t take the bait, “it was, naturally, no challenge for me.”
“Naturally.”
The grin grew. “On paper, no investor seems to hold more than 1% share, but when I traced every penny to its ultimate origination, one investor in particular holds controlling share of the company.”
Devlin paused for effect.
“Anu Medusa. Who, I assume is a female. She’s most often referred to as simply Medusa. It took me no small amount of digging just to discover the full first name.”
The name rang no bells for Ryu.
When the Assassin remained taciturn, Devlin informed him, “It’s sure to be a front. What parent in their right mind names their child Medusa? Although, I suppose it’s not their fault if that’s indeed their last name. But hey, you can always petition for a name change…”
“Devlin.”
“Anyway, I can find nothing on this woman digitally, and that’s all but inconceivable these days. No credit history, no bank account, no bills, no physical address.”
“So of course she is a critical lead,” Ryu surmised.
“Which I will follow until I unwrap all her secrets,” the Hunter confirmed.
Ah yes, a metaphor for one of Devlin’s favorite pleasures. Ryu’s lips tilted as his humor restored itself.
“I’m sure you will lay her bare by week’s end.”
“Sooner, my friend,” Devlin boasted, “you underestimate my dexterity and persuasion.”
Ryu huffed shortly in an abbreviated chuckle. “Thanks for digging into this for me.”
“Send more my way,” Devlin invited, “not much going on over here aside from the usual hunt. Things have been quiet since the Russian went into stealth mode. Only a couple piles of ashes a night.”
Devlin’s duty among Jade Cicada’s Chosen was to bring down rogue vampires who were breaking their most sacred laws, which contained the rule “thou shalt not harm humans” or something along those lines.
Except when humans were the ones killing innocents. And when collateral damage was unavoidable—Ryu’s gaze fixed on the blinking red dot on the electronic map before him—as in the case of his mission:
His orders were to seek and destroy anything and anyone related to Ava Monroe’s genetic engineering project.
*** *** *** ***
“Crap,” Ava muttered when her smart phone blinked out into a black screen, having run out of battery.
She stopped walking and pulled out the torn city map from her bag, unfolded it carefully and tried to ascertain where she was and the shortest route back to her hotel.
She was in trouble. Portions of her map was too tattered to read and even if she could read it, she wasn’t sure she could correctly pinpoint where she was in relation to the hotel.
For all her impressive intellect, Ava possessed not even a particle in terms of sense of direction. That internal GPS was simply missing, rather like her social filter. She could follow instructions to go left or right, but that was about it. She relied entirely on her phone for survival—it had Google maps and her Japanese translator so she could stop and ask for directions.
Not that there were any people around to ask if she could.
Ava looked up and scanned the area. Rows of tightly packed houses and compact, fenced yards lined the steep hills that she’d been trudging up and down on for the past hour.
What she loved about Japan was that everywhere was spotless clean. The Japanese really took pride in keeping their neighborhoods and streets well-ordered and immaculate. A tradition of politeness was deeply ingrained in the culture; people were friendly but reserved in public places.
The friendliness had distance though. It was a bit like Southern hospitality for the upper classes in the U.S.—expected as part of etiquette, a politeness that should be reciprocated but in no way invited familiarity.
In their private domain, in the areas where the citizens of Tokyo lived, away from the bustle and concrete, Ava felt rather like an intruder. There were no children playing in the streets as she was used to back in the Bronx, no mamasitas chatting it up by the corner store, no used car salesman shouting into his phone at a belligerent client or lazy employee on the way home from work. Very few vehicles were parked on the street, and none had driven by while she walked.
It was eerily quiet in the neighborhood she’d wandered into. The couple of people she’d seen and smiled at in greeting simply stared silently back at her, then went about their business and disappeared from sight.
For this reason, Ava crossed out the idea of knocking on a random door to see if she could get some help from a resident, especially with her nonexistent Japanese.
Night had fully descended. It was already after ten.
She had lost track of time in her walkabout around the city, which was not at all an unusual occurrence. She’d taken the subway to a few tourist hotspots—Omotesando Hills, Yoyogi Park, Roppongi—zigzagging to and fro around greater Tokyo such that she was no longer sure she could walk back even if she wanted to. She’d either have to take a Taxi or Uber (couldn’t call without her phone) or ride the subway back (hadn’t seen any sign of a station for the last two miles or so that she’d already walked).
“Wonderful,” she said with a groan when a streak of lightning bisected the skies, followed by the deafening boom of thunder.
When the first fat raindrop bombarded her head, Ava started running for shelter, hefting her hobo with both hands over her head to provide some shield, however ineffectual, against what quickly became a torrential downpour.
After a couple of minutes, Ava paused and looked around, one, because her legs were sore and her feet were blistered from miles of walking and climbing, two, because she didn’t even know where she was running to.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw a closed tea shop with a small awning, the only public establishment she’d seen thus far, and made a beeline for it.
The awning was just large enough to shield one person from the elements, though barely. The rain was coming down at an angle and a ferocious wind was picking up, throwing icy drops every which way.
Ava hugged her arms around her torso and hunched her shoulders in an effort to make herself a smaller target. She was already drenched to the skin from head to toe, the frigid wetness permeating her clothes to make her teeth chatter and her limbs quiver.
Hypothermia wasn’t out of the question if she didn’t find shelter and get dry and warm soon.
Just as Ava debated whether it was impolite in Japanese culture to sit down in public on the concrete ground, and why she even cared at this point, a black motorcycle and rider approached the tea house in a blur of headlights and abruptly stopped right in front of her.
Up went the vi
sor and there he was: her wet dream come true. And maybe her Knight in Shining Armor too?
Ryu Takamura opened his mouth and said something to her, but Ava couldn’t hear for the noise from the downpour and rumbling thunder. He swung a long leg off the bike and came to her in a few efficient strides.
Oh, the man could move! Do that again! Ava’s libido cheered on while her brain tried to slap the slut down, bristling with outrage that she could even think about sex when her body was going numb with cold.
Wordlessly, he took her bare hand in his gloved one and pulled her forward toward his bike. She scrambled on without his instruction to do so and he took his helmet off, secured it on her, seated himself in front of her, clasped her hands around his middle and gunned the engine to life.
Within a few seconds they were shooting down a steep hill and swerving around the streets, out of the residential hood and into the city.
Ava didn’t ask where they were going and really didn’t care.
In any case, she wasn’t about to shout questions at the back of his head that he couldn’t hear while they were flying at the speed of light through winding streets and alleys. Intuitively, she knew that she would be safe with him. And if her gut was mistaken about his intentions toward her and he turned out to be a serial killer wrapped in a movie-star package? She’d cross that bridge when she came to it.
All she could focus on was the heat of the man in front of her, his broad back pressed to her front, radiating warmth even through the cold wet leather of his jacket. She hugged him to her more tightly as he navigated a particularly sharp turn, more to indulge herself with the feel of him rather than out of fear.