Chapter 23
It was 3 AM, and Kato had gone thirty-six hours without sleep. He felt sick with fear. He had only eaten one slice of pizza earlier, since that was all he could manage. The rest of the pizza lay in its box on the dark marble counter at the back wall of his room. Kato's mind whirled with thoughts of Zara. Was she even still alive? Or just another statistic, a victim of a rapist and murderer? No, he mustn't think those things. There had to be an explanation. What the hell were the police doing, besides monitoring things? Any actual investigating?
Nausea made Kato want to stay still, but agitation made him want to move. Agitation won. He pulled on a red fleece sweatshirt and took the elevator to the first floor. The doorman greeted him as he left the building. He saw the look of surprised recognition on the man's face. “Buzz: activate disguise.” Kato turned right out of the hotel and marched south at a furious pace. He didn't care where he was going. Kato broke into a run at times. Building lobbies, intersections, vehicles, and elevators to the train network passed by. He looked at each face on the nearly deserted streets. Not one of them was Zara.
Eventually, Kato arrived at one of the city's many nightlife districts. There, amid the lights, pounding music, and crowds, he scanned the young faces. Occasionally, he saw a girl that somewhat resembled Zara. Why couldn’t one of them actually be her? Please, please come back to me. I'm so sorry for everything... Having walked and run an unknown distance, Kato was eventually exhausted. The first light of dawn began to show in the eastern sky. He took a cab back to the hotel, laid down again, and fell into a fitful sleep.
Kato’s room came quickly into focus. The first thing he noticed was the daylight streaming in through the windows. Then came the impossibly awful, stomach-churning realization that Zara’s disappearance wasn’t a dream. He closed his eyes again and sighed. She was out there, somewhere. There was nothing he could do to help her. Well, almost nothing…
“Buzz: call Martin.”
“Hey, Kato! You slept in…”
“Why, what time is it?”
“10:45 AM.”
“Wha… oh no! We’ve… got to get going…”
“Going where?” Martin asked.
“I’m going to find an advertising agency, and see if I can’t get Zara’s face plastered all over those buildings.”
“Oh…”
Martin paused for a minute and then asked: “Have you got the money for that?”
Kato shrugged, even though Martin couldn’t see him. “I don’t know, but whatever it takes is what I’ll do.”
The stream of suits passing by Kato and Martin was steady. It would be for the next two hours, as Tokyo’s famously late-working salarymen headed home. Other people, dressed casually, headed to shops, restaurants, theaters, and bars. Kato and Martin looked up from the downtown street corner on which they stood. The vast urban canyon all around them showed its usual stream of advertising.
“It’s six fifty-nine and fifty seconds,” Kato said. The sky was giving way to dusk. Both men counted down. “Ten, nine, eight...” They kept looking up. “Three… two… one…”
At once, all the models, cars, and other toys disappeared. Zara’s giant face smiled at them from all around. The picture had been taken in the dining room on the Gansevoort. The Japanese words for “Have you seen this woman? If so, contact police immediately,” scrolled across the bottom. There were collective gasps from the shoppers and commuters around them. “Isn’t that Zara? One of the Sleepers?” Kato overheard in English. Many more astonished exchanges were heard in Japanese. Nobody had any idea they were in the presence of the other Sleeper. The photo switched to a different picture of Zara, this time with the New York pyramids in the background. It had been taken when they played miniature golf on Long Island. Kato looked down all the four boulevards that intersected at their location. Every building façade showed Zara. Faces looked up from passing cars.
“Screw the police,” Kato said resentfully. “If they aren’t going to do their jobs, I’ll do it for them.”
“Thirty seconds,” Martin said. “Twenty nine… twenty eight…”
“Cut it out!” Kato snapped.
“Sorry.”
“I only had the money to pay for one minute,” Kato said. “Don’t take this away from me.” Kato silently prayed that somewhere, the right person was looking.
Chapter 24
Wu Chen sat opposite his second in command, Jiang Huen, at the table near the window of his hotel room. They ate a supper of noodles. “When do you think we’ll be recalled to Entara?” Huen asked.
Chen shrugged. “Not sure. I expect they’ll integrate us into the MX9 workforce at some point. Then, we’ll just be sleeper agents until needed. That would mean we get an extended stay on Earth or Mars.”
“Well, having no actual duties would be nice for a while,” Huen said. “We can explore the city in between training.” Chen nodded, as he carefully picked up a bite size piece of food with his chopsticks. He glanced out of the window, across Honmonji Park, towards downtown. What he saw next made him stop dead. Zara’s face was projected onto every single building. He turned back to Huen. He opened his mouth to say something, and then… didn’t. Huen was completely focused on his food and didn’t notice the display outside. Chen then forced himself to keep eating, just as before. He made a mental note of the Japanese words displayed, so that he could translate them later, although he could pretty much guess what they said. Soon, Zara’s picture disappeared, and the enormous vertical screens resumed their display of advertising. Huen hadn’t even looked up the entire time.
Huen eventually retired to his room. As soon as he was gone, Chen looked up the translation of the words he had seen. “Have you seen this woman? If so, contact police immediately.” Chen sighed. He thought as much. He pictured Zara’s beautiful face as shown on the buildings, her cheeks curving from her smile, her perfect teeth. He cracked open a TsingTao beer and laid on his bed. The room around Chen dissolved, and he was twelve again. His harassed mother, her careworn face belying her youth, cried and pleaded with the official of the High Council. He stood, tall and imposing, in their small living room, which was hewn directly out of the rock. “We have chosen Wu Chen to become an honored Servant of the Dynasty,” he said. “He is to come with us now, to be trained. He is permitted to bring only one personal article. We leave now.”
“No! No! No! He’s my baby! You can’t take him!” Panic as Wu Chen searched the room he shared with four of his siblings for any treasures he could take. Something, anything, which would give him a link to his family. A small stone statue of a horse, given to him by Mother when he turned ten. And, something highly illicit: a booklet describing another world. No time. The man was at the door. He shoved the book down his pants and the statue in his pocket. Something told him he was not coming back. The official’s firm hand on his shoulder. Mother’s wailing, pleading voice, as she threw herself at the man’s feet. Being led out into the hallway with the apartment door closing behind him. Then, a very long train ride through the center of Entara to the other side, and to life in a brutal military camp.
His days were spent in grueling training and conditioning, to fight an enemy that none of the trainees had any clue about. Nights spent in longing memory of Mother and home, clutching the statue. When the young Chen was sure the other eleven boys in the dormitory were asleep, he would take the booklet from its hiding place in his bedframe and read it by the dim nightlight. It described a huge planet, which teemed with all kinds of life. Crammed into its few pages were small illustrations, full of color. And many of the people lived there in societies that were free. Was it even real? Or just someone’s idea of a cruel joke?
Some nights, he and some other boys would be awakened and taken to cells, normally used to confine the weak or disobedient. The sharp blow on his back if he moved
too slowly. Echoes in the cold stone corridors. Then… nothing for a while. A gap in his memory, as things too terrible to bear happened. Afterwards, back to the dorm, long before everyone else awoke. Staring at the ceiling until it dissolved into the blue planet. Dolphins leaping, glaciers, jungles… the sinking feeling as the (waking) nightmare returned.
Fast forward. Mother lay in a box in front of him. His seven siblings were crowded around him, looking strangely at the grizzled, angry, imposingly-uniformed man who bore no resemblance to the brother they had not seen in six years. After a service less than five minutes long, Mother disappeared into a hole in the wall. Chen only found out much later that she was ejected into space, so that the box could be reused. After that, he saw fresh-faced recruits. Their innocence and the spark in their eyes would be slowly extinguished, and he, Chen, now got to break them. And how. He was praised and promoted, even he chipped away more of his own soul every day. They, too, would look like haunted savages by the end.
One day, he was moved into a training center inside a large constantly-rotating wheel, which pinned him to the floor. Slowly, he was able to stand, then move, and finally fight in artificial gravity. Then… induction into the Gods! In the briefing, he learned that Master Seung Yi was in fact sleeping, not dead, and would be revived very soon. Even more overwhelming, however, were the twin facts that the blue planet was real and that we was going there.
As evening turned into night, Chen thought again about Zara. She would have long since awoken from the tranquilizer, and would now be frightened out of her mind in whatever place she found herself, aboard one of the Dynasty’s ships. Both she and Kato would be terrified; he had just seen the evidence of that.
What of the Master, Chen wondered? Who was he, anyway? Chen didn’t ask to be born into the Dynasty. He may be descended from the Master, but that was where it ended. The Dynasty had denied him love and replaced Mother with savage, crippling emotional pain. Chen’s childhood could not be replaced. He could never sleep well because of the terrible things that filled his dreams. And then they’d made him kidnap somebody so beautiful and free. She was so very un-Entaran. Chen was secretly glad Zara had stolen from the Master centuries before. He had it coming. But, the Master had left it to Chen to repay the debt.
Was it too late to right a wrong…?
The agents had all been issued Buzz units on arriving on Earth. Chen stepped into the street outside the hotel. “Buzz: get me Kato Sasake-Robbins. Hide my ID.” The dots progressed across his vision.
“Kato here. Who is this?”
“Kato, you don’t know me,” Chen said. “I have information for you. Meet me in the center of Honmonji Park at midnight. Buzz, end call.”
Chapter 25
Kato was startled and nonplussed. “Martin?” he said breathlessly
“Whassup?” came the response from the other side of the hotel room. Martin was slouched in a chair, reading.
“Some guy says he has information for me! I have to meet him at midnight!”
Martin now sat bolt upright. “Whoa! Who is it?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Right…” Martin ran his fingers through his thinning hair, apparently trying to process the news. “Are you going?”
Kato looked startled at the question. “Of course I am!” he said loudly. “I’ll do anything to find her. Even if it means putting myself in danger.”
“Are you gonna tell the police?” Martin asked.
Kato squished his mouth to one side as he thought. Eventually, he concluded: “No. I’m going to go alone. I don’t want to take a chance on ruining it. I’ll pass the info I receive along to the police, of course…” he trailed off.
At five minutes to midnight, Kato stood at what, as far as he could tell, was the center of Honmonji Park. It wasn’t very big, and it was still close to downtown Tokyo. The perimeter was lined with trees, but the center was open grass. A small lake was behind Kato, while tall buildings blazed colorfully all around. This meant that the park was never truly dark. Kato was thankful that what looked like rainclouds in the afternoon had not lead to a downpour. His heart was in his mouth as he silently prayed for a good outcome of the cloak-and-dagger meeting. He looked carefully around for any signs of movement, for the mysterious man. Nothing. Kato looked down at the ground for a few seconds and saw that he had several faint, undulating shadows. They radiated in different directions from him, due to the light coming from several directions. He kept watching the time in his Buzz contact. 11:59 PM clicked over to 12 AM. Kato looked up again, surveying the park carefully. One minute past midnight. “Kato.”
The name whispered behind his right ear startled him. Kato’s head whipped around. He saw only the silhouette of a short, wiry man, standing out of arm’s reach. “Who are you?” Kato urgently half-whispered.
“Never mind who I am,” the man in black snapped. Kato thought he could detect a Chinese accent. “All you need to know,” he continued, “is that Zara has been captured by the Yi Dynasty. Seung Yi is alive. She is being transported to Ent… Ceres.”
Kato was stunned. “But… Seung Yi… died centuries ago!”
“He hibernated in the same way you did. He wants revenge,” the man said. Kato heard a scuffling noise behind him. He looked around to see what it was. When he turned back again, the man was already running quickly into the distance.
“Come back!” Kato shouted desperately. He was heading west, away from downtown. Kato ran after him as fast as he could. He was losing his only link to his daughter. “Where is Zara? How can I find her?”
Kato sprinted determinedly, but the man was gone. He had somehow melted into the shadows. Kato kept running anyway. The light from the buildings undulated. He scanned desperately all around as he ran. The next thing Kato knew, he was picking himself up off the ground. He had a nasty blow to the side of his head, and the wind knocked out of him. At first, Kato thought the man had hit him, perhaps to stop his chase. Then, he realized he had tripped over a tree stump in the dark and come crashing to the ground. At least he had hit grass. Nonplussed and desperate, Kato picked himself up and walked around the outside of the park. He held the sore left side of his head as he searched for the stranger. The search was to no avail. Eventually, Kato gave up and took a cab back to the hotel, trying to keep his dinner down as the reality of Zara’s fate hit him.
Martin met Kato in the lobby of the hotel. Kato was as white as a sheet. “Seung Yi’s got her,” Kato said.
“What? You mean his descendants?”
“No, I mean him. He’s still alive. He’s been in hibernation all this time, not dead.”
Martin blinked a few times. “Oh God…”
Kato looked Martin in the face. “Martin, he’ll torture her! I’m never going to see her again!” At that, Kato almost fainted. Martin whose arm was luckily still around Kato’s shoulder, caught him just before he hit the floor.
“Oh, crap,” Martin said. He slapped Kato’s right cheek repeatedly. An ambulance, called by the hotel desk staff, pulled up outside with its lights flashing. As the paramedics rushed in, Kato came around again.
“It’s okay!” Martin said, motioning for them to back off. “We’ve got urgent business.”
Kato and Martin stood at the front desk of the police station. Kato breathlessly told the desk sergeant about his encounter with the stranger. Two detectives appeared from a side door almost immediately. One was tall, and the other short. They escorted the men back to an interview room.
“Did you get any kind of a look at the man?” the taller officer asked, in an almost menacing tone.
“N-no,” Kato stuttered. “Except for him being short and having a Chinese accent.”
“Why on earth didn’t you tell us ahead of time?” the shorter man asked with a note of anger in his voice. “You could have worn a wire. We co
uld have surrounded the park and used drones to track him. We would have caught him, for sure.”
“I… didn’t want to risk him seeing you first,” Kato protested. “He would have backed off.”
Both officers glared at Kato. Kato suddenly remembered something. “He misspoke when he said they were taking her to Ceres. He was going to say Entara.”
Tall Cop looked at his colleague with raised eyebrows. “That pretty much nails him as being from the Yi Dynasty, then. He knows the place as Entara.”
The shorter cop nodded. “Let’s get unmarked patrols going around the area. It’s very unlikely we’ll see him, but you never know.”
“You can trace her, if they took her off Earth, right?” Kato asked hopefully.
Tall Cop sighed. “No. They have their own private fleet. It would be very easy to smuggle somebody onto one of their freighters.”
“But, there are police in space, right?” Kato asked. “At the ETI, or wherever they’d dock?”
Short Cop shook his head. “There are customs and immigration officials, sure, but not everything gets inspected. Millions of tons of cargo pass through there each year. They could easily smuggle her through there in a container. They don’t inspect all of them.” He deflected his eyes, sighed, and then looked back at Kato. “Realistically, she’s probably already on the way to Ceres.”
Kato shut his eyes. “Oh no…”
Martin took over their end of the conversation. “Can you catch the ship?”
Tall Cop spoke. “Um… well, nothing like it has even been attempted before. A hostage rescue in space. There has of course been a heist involving a spaceship; Miss Sasake-Robbins herself was behind that one. Never a rescue, though. I’m not sure where we’d even begin. There isn’t a space police force. We will, of course, meet with our superiors, and the American FBI since she is a US Citizen.”
Kato's War Page 12