Avalon pushed against the tide of writhing bodies, making her way along the edge of the Dotombori Canal toward the old Kirin Plaza. The four main pillars of the building were majestic at a distance, the granite edifice jutting into the night under a dazzling constellation of artificial stars.
That illusion disintegrated as Avalon drew closer, a metamorphosis that more closely resembled the distorted reflection that fell across black water. The entire structure seemed on the verge of collapse, held together by generations of exterior rigging. A shell of its former self, the Kirin embodied all of Osaka after the tokaijishin—a quake so devastating that the Incorporated Territories abandoned the city like an acid memory. Since then, forty-five years of Zone Authority rule had resurrected the debris into this necropolis, a polluted memorial to the walking dead.
Avalon joined the steady flow of traffic that headed toward the Plaza, crossing the iron bridge that stretched across the canal. Hordes of street species obstructed the way, choking the main artery that cut through the district. The Kirin brooded over the whole scene, its cracked and shattered windows dripping blood-red neon. Virtual billboards appeared out of nowhere, pasting over the building’s wounds with lurid Crowley icons and promises of untold pleasures, while echoes of demonic laughter boomed from loudspeakers above the door. It was Dante’s own vision of hell, complete with a flood of volunteers begging to get in.
Avalon stayed back for a while, evaluating the meat that shuffled in and out of the Kirin. They were the usual mix of street species and tourists looking for sin, plus a few Tesla girls working the street trying to lure potential customers. Their porcelain skin glowed under the blacklights, conferring a satire of purity to their hypersexual poses. To the men who strayed near, the temptation was primal. They lolled into the Teslas’ teasing embrace, caressed by long, sharpened fingers and lustful tongues—until the teeth came out. Then blood would flow and the girls would drink, their canines injecting tecs to induce a state of euphoria. A Crowley pimp stood by to make sure things didn’t get out of hand, but the willing victims didn’t seem to care. They only wanted more, which the Teslas promised in sweet whispers as they ushered each man inside.
None of the faces looked familiar. Avalon did a scan for concealed weapons but didn’t find any of those either. The pimp at the door appeared to be the extent of the Kirin’s security, without so much as a surveillance camera to back him up. Avalon wasn’t surprised. The people she was supposed to meet here didn’t want to be photographed—especially with an enemy of the state. They had far more to lose than just their lives.
Satisfied she had seen enough, Avalon stepped off the curb and crossed Soemon-cho. A sweeper lumbered in behind her, stopping briefly to pick up the corpses that had rolled into the gutter, belching incinerator smoke before moving on. Avalon walked out of that sickly-sweet haze toward the entrance of the Kirin. Hisses of outrage arose from the patrons waiting in line, who swore at her in a dozen languages, but she ignored them. Like most species, they were wired up for talk but too stoned for action.
The Teslas, on the other hand, reacted to her presence the instant she arrived. Claws flexed, they contorted their bodies into defensive postures, their feline growls reverberating in unison. With backs against the wall, they inched toward the protection of their pimp. The crowd, itching for a fight just a second ago, fell into an uneasy quiet. Fear spread among them like a contagion, punctuated by the bass pounding against the walls of the Kirin.
Avalon made a straight line for the door. When the Crowley pimp realized the situation, he extracted the girls from his arms and blocked Avalon’s path. He turned to her with every intention of pushing her back, working himself into a froth of manufactured anger—but all that ended when he saw the apparition in front of him. His expression, once flush with testosterone, just as quickly drained to pale, his arms dropping flaccidly at his sides. The pentagram hanging from his neck swung back and forth while the pimp cleared his throat, taking his voice down an octave to reassert his bravado.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
Avalon cocked her head slightly. The pimp had a cosmetic physique, muscles bulging beneath oiled skin. Bone grafts put him half a meter over Avalon’s height, but in a teetering way, offsetting the shock value of the blasphemer tattoos that covered his shaved head. Obviously, the kind of man who knew how to handle his whores but not much else.
“You can get out of my way,” Avalon replied. “Or you can have me do it for you.”
The pimp’s eyes darted between Avalon and the crowd. He didn’t want to lose face in front of his customers, but he didn’t want to lose his life either.
“This is a holy place, sister,” he said, a latent pleading in his tone. “We’re not looking for any trouble.”
“You don’t know what trouble is.”
The Teslas slipped in behind him again, entwining themselves around his hulking torso. Their hands slithered down the ropy lengths of his arms and legs, fondling him out of sheer habit, but the pimp barely noticed them. He was too busy contemplating his chances.
“Your choice,” Avalon prodded.
For a moment, the pimp’s vitals spiked into high gear. His heartbeat and respiration raced under the influence of adrenaline and synthetic steroids, broadcasting his intent to Avalon’s sensors. She mapped out his every possible move, calculating seven different ways she could kill him before he drew his next breath; but then he blinked, breaking whatever courage he had gathered, and he backed down.
“Guns?” he asked.
“Don’t need one.”
The pimp nodded as he and the girls stepped aside.
“Whatever it is,” he said, “don’t make it personal.”
Avalon reached for the door, pulling it open to a flood of sound and vision.
“I never do,” she said, and disappeared inside.
The bacchanal was in full swing, though Avalon doubted it ever stopped. With fresh bodies constantly rolling in off the street, the Kirin was a perpetual motion machine—an obscenity, even by Zone standards. She took in the entire scope at once, her sensuit collecting data faster than her relays could process it. The scene unfolded in a series of decaying flashes, each frame peeling away a new layer of horror. As she walked through the Kirin, she saw everything: the faceless throngs, the parade of flesh, the men in masks, the women in chains—all trading roles of master and servant, perpetrator and victim, beating and penetrating one another with vengeful ferocity. Deeper inside, the activities took a more ritualistic turn as hooded figures chanted verses in ancient Latin, offering the lust of their followers as a gift of worship. A few of them stopped dead when Avalon approached, perhaps imagining that she was a manifestation of the Dark Father they summoned. She dismissed them with a flat glance. Avalon had no use for their devil. Her own atrocities made his pale by comparison.
She made her way to the periphery of the Kirin, where she could more easily sift through members of the crowd. Most of them gravitated toward the center of the club, where a cabal of Crowley acolytes prepared an altar for a lavish ceremony. Above their heads, a large inverted crucifix hung from the ceiling on a rusted chain—one of the many religious icons stolen from Incorporated churches, each desecrated in some appalling way.
Only a few in attendance were true worshippers. The faithful made themselves known, trembling and swaying as if possessed by the spirit, spouting gutter talk and speaking in tongues. Everyone else just viewed the Black Mass as entertainment, sipping cocktails and laughing nervously while they waited to see what happened next. In that regard at least, the Crowleys did not disappoint. Candles flared around the sanctuary, flanking a processional of elders that slowly marched toward the altar. A young girl, no more than thirteen years old, accompanied them, her face dirty and haunted—a Tesla, born into this life but not yet consecrated. Avalon watched impassively as the elders peeled away her clothes and lashed her to the altar. With the audience cheering them on, they went to work with meticulous abandon. The girl shrieke
d, but soon enough her struggles ceased.
The depravities became unspeakable.
“Sweet, ah?” a voice next to Avalon said, punctuated by the smacking of dry lips. “The fragrance of youth. There’s nothing quite like baptism, is there?”
She looked down to find a man in a wheelchair nudging against her. His face was a map of wrinkles and scars, plotting a course that went back at least a century—making him as much of a relic as the motorized contraption that tooled him around. He was Japanese, or at least he had been at one time. Years of scrubbing treatments had leached his complexion, flaps of skin clinging to the contours of his skull.
“If you’re into that sort of thing,” Avalon replied.
The old man’s mouth cracked open in a smile, revealing dental posts instead of teeth, his breath fetid with garlic and decomposition.
“Oh, I am,” he assured her. “I most certainly am.”
“Nothing ever changes around here.”
The old man cackled. The labored heaving of his respirator swallowed most of his effort, which ended in a coughing fit that probably should have killed him. He wasn’t much more than a living torso, with prosthetics where his arms and legs used to be, the rest of his body cocooned in a plastic sheath to keep him from collapsing under his own frail weight.
“Don’t get many like you in here,” he observed. “Most of them are fun girls who want a peek at the dark side—but not you.”
“Is there a purpose to the conversation,” Avalon asked, “or do you just want someone to put the hurt on you?”
The old man grunted affirmatively, nodding.
Avalon could have swatted the old man away, and nobody in the Kirin would have cared or even noticed—but something in his voice made Avalon look closer. As his eyes widened, she saw his pupils expand until there was only black. He then turned his head, as if to acknowledge a secret, exposing the telltale bundle of electrodes behind his left ear. The fiber had long since been cauterized, his nervous system no longer able to handle a Deathplay link—but there was little doubt as to what the old man really was.
Avalon straightened back up. “You’re a Goth.”
“I try not to let that get in the way of business.”
“Business? In a Crowley establishment?”
If the old Goth could have shrugged, he would have.
“You go where the money takes you,” he admitted. “Yet another thing we have in common. That is the reason you’re here, isn’t it?”
Up at the altar, the Black Mass was ending. The young Tesla, released from her shackles, rose on bare feet smeared with blood. She hissed at the crowd and attacked one of the elders, before a couple of handlers jumped in with a few well-placed blows.
“I didn’t come for the scenery,” Avalon said.
“Yes,” the old Goth agreed. “It is rather uncivilized.”
“You have a place where the view is better?”
“That depends. Are you looking for something special?”
Avalon took one last measure of him before answering.
“Someone,” she said. “Yoshii Tagura.”
The old Goth laughed again, his breath reeking of tombs. He stopped when he saw that Avalon was completely serious.
“He’s expecting me,” she continued, implying her threat. “And from what I understand, Mr. Tagura doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
His eyes narrowed at her request, as he gauged her intentions—not to mention his fate if he refused her. It didn’t take him long to make his decision.
“Follow me,” the old Goth said, and rolled away.
Her guide navigated the Kirin with intimate knowledge, steering the congested paths between the old shops and cursing anyone who got in his way. For such an aged man, the Goth was remarkably fast, with the reflexes and wit to match his speed. Avalon guessed he had neural implants grafted to his nervous system, not unlike the web of her own sensuit, a terminal measure that kept his mind out of the slide that had already consumed his body. It was a temporary fix, buying him a few extra months at best—and if it was anything like Avalon’s experience, it had to be painful in the extreme. Why the old Goth would even bother was an existential mystery. After all those years of simulated death, jerking off to the nightmares of others, he still feared the real thing—or, perhaps, what waited for him on the other side.
The crowd thinned out deeper inside the building, the oppressive music fading to a sound like distant artillery. Avalon briefly lost sight of the Goth when he rounded a nearby corner, catching up to find him parked outside an unmarked door. He wasn’t alone. Some local muscle in a silk suit stood next to him, leaning in to hear the old man’s whispered instructions. He could have passed himself off as Yakuza out in the Territories, but working the Zone meant he could only be a disgraced kobun. Freelance gangsters often used them as trick boys—strictly mercenary, but very effective. He sized Avalon up in an instant.
“She is the one,” the old Goth told him.
The kobun reached into his jacket. Avalon tensed, preparing to shove whatever weapon he drew down his throat—but it was only a scanner wand, which he carefully held up for her inspection.
“You can never be too careful,” the Goth explained.
He motioned for her to step forward. Avalon complied, allowing the kobun to wave her for weapons. The Goth licked his lips throughout, giddy with anticipation. When the kobun finished, Avalon saw the reason for it. The beefy man reached for her with his own two hands, meaning to pat her down manually—a move she blocked by clamping down on his wrist, squeezing hard with her own prosthetic. Avalon stopped short of breaking bones but gave the kobun pain enough to discourage further contact.
The Goth wheeled around them, studying her with a bizarre fascination.
“You do not like to be touched.”
The kobun trembled in her grip. Avalon’s instinct was to snap the man’s arm, then do the same to his neck, twisting his head off to dump it in the Goth’s lap. But that would get her no closer to Yoshii Tagura—and would only serve to entertain the demon in the wheelchair.
“You didn’t ask,” she said, and released the kobun. Suddenly free, he dropped back into a combat stance, his hands coiled and ready to strike.
“Shuush!” the Goth shouted.
Conditioned to obey orders, the kobun froze—but his eyes broadcast humiliation on an open frequency. Avalon goaded him with her nonchalance. The Goth, however, would have none of it.
“Tachisaru,” he growled. “Sassoku!”
The kobun snapped to attention at that last word. Then he stepped away from the door quietly, avoiding the Goth’s heated stare—but keeping a close watch on Avalon. She deliberately turned her back on him. His footsteps left a heavy wake as he departed.
“You realize he will be obligated to kill you,” the Goth said when they were alone, “should the two of you meet again.”
Avalon didn’t care. “He’s kobun. He deserves no better.”
“Indeed,” the Goth affirmed. “Still, it would be a pity. We’ve barely even had the chance to know each other.” With that, he pulled a large brass key from a compartment in his wheelchair and slipped it into the lock. The tumblers opened with a loud click, followed by a thin creak as the door opened—and an atmospheric change that made the Black Mass seem tame by comparison.
The Goth twisted his face into a smile.
“This is the audience you seek,” he said, and showed her inside.
He locked the door behind them and remained at the entrance as Avalon wandered through the chamber. Most of the visible light cascaded down from virtual displays, which hovered near the ceiling like windows into some hallucinogenic dimension. Events and images rolled out of that void with no underlying logic—only fear, distilled into a gallery of grotesque faces and misshapen bodies, which exploded into graphic scenes of murder and sadism.
Deathplay rip, Avalon thought. So that’s what the Goths are doing here.
A common neural interface uploaded the d
ata, recording it for later use. Avalon traced glowing fiber trails to the source, finding a few of the johns she had seen outside the Kirin. They were strapped in restraining chairs, plugged into the hard link and staring off into nowhere, tended by the same Teslas who had lured them into the club. Their mouths opened and closed wordlessly, sounding off in distant echo, their minds in a pliant, agitated state that supplied the gory images on the displays—manifestations of death, complete with emotions and identity. The Goths called it religion, but that was just another excuse for trafficking. Downloaded to implants, those experiences were worth a fortune in the subculture.
The audience in the rip chamber was a microcosm of higher society—a smattering of mid-echelon gangsters and their molls, peppered with a few corporate types taking a walk on the wild side. A couple of them plugged into the feed for kicks, but most contented themselves with expensive champagne and the voluptuous company supplied for the occasion. Avalon broke the surface tension with her presence, stifling their laughter as they wondered what to make of her—a flurry of whispered conversations leading their eyes toward the real power in the room. Avalon followed those stares to a large table near the back. Four armed kobun stood watch there—the most visible security in the chamber. Evidently, the host merited some serious protection.
They reached for hidden weapons as Avalon approached. Spreading out, they allowed her to pass without incident—but always stayed close, hovering no more than a meter away at any time. Their boss, seated at the table and flocked by surgically beautified women, smiled broadly when he caught sight of her.
“You’re not what I expected,” he said, looking her up and down. “I had no idea you would be so…compelling.”
Yoshii Tagura was, undoubtedly, accustomed to dealing with people as chattel, and he treated Avalon no differently. Just being this close to him made her feel indentured—which wasn’t far from the truth, considering Tagura’s financial arrangements with the Inru.
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