by Thomas Green
Sasaki blocked the strike with raised shoulder, whirled and slashed. Kenji stretched out his hands, forming a misty barrier in front of his palms. The blade passed through.
Kenji sprung his body, but the blade still slashed him across the chest. The cut was shallow, but blood sprinkled out. Sasaki jabbed with his left and tore the statuette from Kenji’s belt.
Kenji leapt backward. “Don’t let him use the statuette.”
I glanced at the monkey statuette Sasaki now held. “With me.” I drew my knife and bolted forward. Kenji did too, launching himself into the air.
Sasaki dropped the monkey statuette, stepped toward me, and slashed. I saw that coming, but the blade was still faster than I expected. I sidestepped the strike and stabbed with the knife. He threw himself against the knife. The blade pierced his suit, but then screeched on the chainmail he wore beneath. Fuck.
My vision blanked as he hit me with his shoulder. I was hit by a truck once and this was comparable. I flew across the room and hit the wall with a scream of pain.
Kenji’s kick hit Sasaki in the neck. Sasaki grunted, but whirled and slashed anyway. Kenji flung himself backward, barely dodging the strike but landing outside the room. I tried to get up, but my body didn’t listen.
I was every bit as incapacitated as the eight of Sasaki’s men who were on the ground, screaming with pain. But Sasaki didn’t pursue Kenji. Instead, he stepped back, tightening his stance with the sword in front of him. In front of the door stood Sora, his hat and blade stained with blood. Kenji bolted upstairs, wreathing himself with the gray mist to become invisible.
“We still have Mizaki,” Sasaki whispered. “Leave or she will pay.”
Sora entered. He kicked the man whimpering next to him in the head, knocking him out. “Not anymore.”
Sasaki kicked the statuette back to the wall and leapt next to it. “Leave or I’ll use it.”
“Go ahead.” A smile flashed across Sora’s face. “That won’t save you from me.”
What the hell was this about? I pulled Lucifer’s consciousness into me and stretched out my aether. Like tendrils of darkness, my power slithered through the room. The aether of others, loosened by the fight, latched onto the tendrils, which brought them to me. Absorbing aether wouldn’t heal me, but it had a chance of keeping me going.
Sasaki let go of the blade and grabbed the statuette. He whispered something in Japanese and black light burst from the gem the monkey’s raised hands held, flowing into Sasaki’s chest. He grunted and lowered himself onto one knee.
Sora didn’t move, waiting patiently.
Veins on Sasaki’s neck bulged. He shouted out, aether flooding out of him while his eyes started shining from the inside. Great. Sasaki stood up, dropped the statuette and picked up his sword. “You’re a fool, Izanagi.”
“Spare me the babbling.” Sora bolted forward. Sasaki slashed, blade so fast I couldn’t see it. Okay, the statuette was an aether reservoir that could boost the user’s power.
With a bored expression on his face, Sora weaved from the strike and stabbed Sasaki above the knee. The bigger man grunted and whirled. Sora ducked under the cut and slashed his second knee.
Sasaki’s blade passed through the steel wall as if it was butter, metal screeching. He used the momentum for another blurring slash. Sora parried the blow and bolted forward, hitting Sasaki with his knee to the face.
Sasaki’s head jerked up, but he didn’t fall. Instead, he let go of the sword and grabbed for Sora.
Sora turned his sword and stabbed Sasaki twice, once in each elbow. Sasaki wailed in pain and crumpled to the ground. Sora landed above him. “Told you” He sank his blade into Sasaki’s forehead, ending his life.
Misty gray aether swirled around the door. Kenji swept into the room, grabbed the statuette, and instantly blasted out.
As much as I tried to figure out what techniques Sora was using, I couldn’t. Whatever allowed him to avoid all Sasaki’s attacks was internal, so I couldn’t see it through his defenses. And Sasaki was the same, giving me nothing to copy.
Sora glanced after Kenji, but then shrugged and walked to me. “Are you alive?”
I made a mental note never to fight Sora. The aether my power gathered had somehow revived my strength. “Just need a moment.” I started crawling up to my feet. Every move hurt like hell.
Sora nodded and walked around the room, knocking out the men still screaming while lying on the ground.
Steps sounded from outside and Agent Miller rushed into the room. He wheezed as he gazed over the carnage. “Mother of God… you two sure know how to get your clothes dirty.”
Sora and I both smiled. While swallowing the grunt of pain, I straightened and approached the door leading to the safe.
Sora and Miller followed at my flanks.
I eyed the small panel and then put in the code I remembered from Gonnosuke’s phone. Access Rejected flashed on the screen. Sora and Miller gave me curious glances.
Whatever. I raised my hand and formed a globe of aether in my palm. I compressed the energy, made it spin, and then released the spell. The room shook and the blast drilled a massive hole into the door. “There,” I said and stepped toward the opening.
Sora grabbed my shoulder to stop me. I winced with pain as he touched the burnt skin. “I go first,” he said, slid past me and entered. Only when he made two steps into the next room, I exchanged a glance with Miller and we both entered.
Beyond a short hallway was a circular room. Sora stopped at its edge. We arrived right behind him.
“What’s the problem?” Miller asked.
Sora pushed the edge of the room’s floor with his sword. The entire floor tilted. Apparently, this whole room was like disc built around a single column in the middle. Between the square pillar and the disc that made the floor was a globe, which made the disc extremely unstable. I tossed a coin into the gap.
Liquid below us swallowed the coin, hissing. “Acid,” I remarked as if it was necessary.
Miller shook his head. “Who builds defenses like these?”
“Someone who doesn’t want aether wielders accessing his safe.” Sora pointed at the holes in the side of the wall beneath the floor level. “When the defenses are off, the disc is held straight by bars exiting these holes.”
The entire room was made of polished steel. “Can both of you strengthen a knife enough to pass through an inch of steel?” I asked.
Sora nodded.
“Why?” Miller asked, eyes slightly widened.
“The disc is about an inch thick and contains no aether strengthening.” I drew my knives. “I’m the heaviest, so I can work as a counterweight. One of you can then move around and stab daggers into the wall in the places where the original support beams were. Once we stabilize it, we can pass.”
Miller arched an eyebrow. “You’ve got that many knives?”
I motioned Sora to follow me and walked back to the previous room. He collected all the daggers and knives we found on the knocked-out Yakuza members. I took four extras, tucking them in my belt while Sora placed twelve inside his coat.
Sora drew two short swords and Miller stepped aside. They both gave me a doubting look.
“Are you sure you won’t pass out in the next ten seconds?” Miller voiced the question.
If I didn’t take the elephant dose of stimulants earlier, I would have. “I’ll be fine.” I strengthened the knives with aether and leapt onto the disc, aiming sideways. The blades passed through the steel and the entire circle tilted to the side with me hanging vertically.
All my muscles screamed with pain and I wondered why the hell didn’t I take the painkillers yet. I forced my muscles to move, sprung my body, released one knife and stabbed it up ahead of me. Afterward, I released the first knife and stabbed it closer, all while hanging vertically on the disc.
Foot by foot, I reached to the center. Once there, I stabilized, making the disc flat again. Sora gripped his short swords so tightly his knuckles whitened.
He jumped forward and stabbed them into the disc.
Since he was further from the center, the disc tilted after him. I was prepared, so I let go of one knife, using the other one as pivoting point to turn around not to flip over my head. I grabbed the second knife the moment the disc stabilized. My arms wanted to file their resignation.
A glance over my shoulder confirmed that Sora hadn’t fallen to the acid death beneath. I started moving upward, releasing a knife, stabbing it through the steel plate, and then moving the other one. After a while, I got high enough to lift Sora up. Two moves later, we found the position where the disc was tilted just enough for Sora to ram a knife into the wall beneath the floor level.
I moved to the side and Sora mirrored my move, so we tilted the disc under a different angle and Sora could thus place more daggers into the wall by the circumference. About fifteen minutes of repeating this process, and we stabilized the disc.
We couldn’t place the daggers on the other side from where we started since we couldn’t tilt the disc through the already placed daggers. I moved toward the center and so did Sora. We rose to our feet on the stabilized side and exchanged smiles.
“You two are both nuts,” Miller said as he stepped onto the disc, careful to stay on the stable side.
My entire body throbbed, and my arms wanted to fall off. I sheathed my knives. We crossed the room into the next hallway and stopped by the closed door. At least we already tested this step.
I formed a globe of aether in my palm, made it spin, aimed at the door and unleashed the energy. The blast tore a hole into the door, and we passed through.
The next room was square with sharp corners, everything made of polished steel with two-inch holes in them. After a bit of looking around, I noticed small, black dots scattered on the walls among the holes. Upon a closer look, the dots were metallic circles with tiny glass lenses, detectors, apparently.
Sora drew his blade and moved it to the side. The blade glistened red as it crossed the line of one of the lasers. A steel click echoed through the room and a steel rod shot out from a hole in the wall.
With lightning speed, Sora withdrew the blade. A steel rod passed through the air and landed neatly in a hole on the opposite wall.
I didn’t need to measure the speed to know this would fly straight through me. All these defenses were clearly made with aether wielders in mind. Acid was generally impossible to defend against as it could pass through the air-holes every personal magical shield had to have.
These steel rods were heavy enough to penetrate even top-tier aether-based defenses. The sensors were non-magical, which was bad because I could have figured something out if they ran on aether.
I glanced at Sora. “Any ideas?”
He shrugged. “This one’s easy.” And he stepped forward.
Say… what? Miller and I made two steps back, hoping there wouldn’t be any straight projectile that could hit us.
Metal clicks sounded through the room and steel rods flew from the holes. Sora bent his body, dodging them with ease and kept walking forward.
I blinked a few times and pinched myself to verify I wasn’t imagining this. Nobody in this world had the right to be this fast. The thing with magic was that it followed the limits of the body. Human reaction time was somewhere around zero point two second, lower when trained, but the hard limit was zero point one second. Sora’s reactions were way faster. Worse, his body moved before the steel rods left the walls.
Something was seriously wrong here, but tiredness clouded my mind to the point where I couldn’t figure out what. And so, I stared in amazement as Sora crossed the room, easily avoiding at least a hundred projectiles.
When he reached the continuing hallway, he gave us a quizzical look. Right, he needed to disable the trap so we could pass.
I fuelled my eyes with aether, tweaked the power to see electricity and scanned the room. After a moment, I saw the thin lines that were the cables feeding the sensors and the mechanisms behind the holes.
“Stab your sword into the wall to your right, two feet from the edge of the room,” I shouted. “And put on gloves.”
Sora nodded, donned leather gloves and did as I told him to. Electricity sparked from where he’d sunk the sword and the cables went dim, disappearing to my eyes.
I eyed the floor in front of me, cold sweat covering my back. If I was right, the mechanism was disabled, and I could pass easily. But if I was wrong, I would get killed by a steel rod.
With a gulp and aether defenses stacked to the limit, I stepped into the room. Nothing happened. I exhaled and crossed the room. Miller joined me.
The next door shared the same fate as its predecessors, being blasted with my spell.
The next room was square, again. Like a web, three-inch high round discs were attached to the ground, the walls, and the ceiling. What the hell was that?
Miller wheezed. “That’s a lot of claymores.”
Oh… claymore mines were one of the best ways to kill anything in the world. Each of these discs contained explosives and a whole lot of steel pellets. Upon being triggered, the mine would shoot the pellets in all direction. And I would bet they were too heavy for aether shields to block.
“Do you see the triggering mechanism?” Sora asked.
“I don’t need to.” I turned and started walking back. “Come help me.”
Sora shrugged and followed me. Miller observed us with an appraising stare. He must have gotten the point that we weren’t completely sane and resigned to waiting to see how this played out.
We walked to the door of the room where Sasaki lay dead. The door of this room was two inches thick and made of steel. Perfect.
I grabbed the door from the side and Sora drew his blade. He slashed through the hinges and then helped me carry them. By the time we got to Miller, Sora was panting, and his hands shook when he let go of the door.
After I positioned the door to have only a small hole looking into the room, I said, “Get behind the door and help me hold it.”
They both did. I aimed through the crack at one mine, readied my entire body, shot and drew the door back to close the gap. The world exploded on the other side of the door we were now using for a shield.
The doors felt like a train crashed into them. We held, all three of us straining our bodies to the limit while using all the aether we could muster. The apocalypse of steel pellets lasted for an entire minute before the room went silent. My ears rung and head spun. This was way too loud.
We all exhaled and slowly straightened. I moved the door to see inside. Steel pellets were everywhere, and the wall and our door had dents. We took a good few minutes to look through the room to verify all claymores had indeed exploded.
Neither Miller nor I wanted to go in first. On seeing our hesitation, Sora shrugged and entered. He crossed the room without causing any explosion.
With soft steps, we followed. Beyond a short hallway waited the antechamber with the vault’s main door. I stepped to the panel and typed in the passcode.
Access denied flashed on the screen. Of course, they had a way to change the code outside the interval. Whatever. If I hadn’t seen the vault, there would’ve been a lot of variables. But I knew how thick the door was, roughly what material it was made of and Milhamber took down the defences during his attempt to rob the safe.
I channelled aether into my palm. Miller and Sora stepped back. I didn’t want to do this twice, so I gathered a bit more than what I thought was needed. Then I made the power spin, and then I sent the blast at the door. The whirling explosion drilled through the vault’s door, creating a hole a car could pass through. A cloud of dust and steel splinters floated in the air.
With a racing heart, I entered.
The vault’s sections were as neatly arranged as before. The piles of banknotes were present. Good. The small mountain of cocaine also lay where it should have. Even better. A scent of sweat and piss hit my nose.
In the formerly free compartment, teenage girls wer
e tied to the bars. They were pale and their eyes were so terrified they didn’t dare make a sound. My heart leapt to my throat. At least a large part of my theory was correct.
After yesterday’s hit on their shipment, the Yakuza hid all the other girls they were trafficking here to ascertain they wouldn’t be found. Since this was the best hiding spot and there was no way anyone could force them to open the safe, it was their natural choice.
And right now, it meant Miller would have absolutely everything he could ever need to shut down the local Yakuza.
As if he read my thoughts, Miller stepped to me and wheezed. “Well, cowboy, you sure scored a big one tonight.” He patted my shoulder.
I didn’t manage to smile. No matter how I searched the vault with my eyes, I couldn’t see a hint of Evelyn. I walked to the furthest compartment where I figured the woman brought here first would be. I leaned against the cage, looking down at the girls tied up by the compartment’s walls. “Sorry, but have you seen a crimson-haired girl?”
She stared at me for a few seconds before she realized I was asking her. “Sorry, but no.” She started trembling. “Are you… police?”
“No, but he is.” I motioned at Miller. “You’ll be free soon.”
Tears swelled in her eyes and her whole body started trembling.
Yeah, their nightmare was over.
But mine wasn’t. There was no sign of Evelyn anywhere and I had run out of suspects. Worse, a glance at my phone confirmed it was 2340. I was out of time.
With a heavy heart and slumped shoulders, I walked out of the vault.
“You sure you don’t want a doctor to look at you?” Miller shouted after me. “I called more than a few.”
“I’m fine,” I whispered and kept walking.
As Miller said, people besieged the building’s ground floor. The battle for the upper floor had already ended. The result were dozens wounded FBSI agents and many more dead Yakuza men.
Outside, ambulances filled the street and their personnel flocked among the men, treating whoever they could on the spot while taking the seriously wounded to the hospitals.