With those words, he knew she was lost. There was no way out of here, no way that she would let him leave. Perhaps he could get past her, get to the front door, but then a woman as smart as her would have locked it.
“Get in the bed. It's time for the handcuffs again,” she said, moving towards him. He backed up until his shoulders was pressed against the glass of the window, feeling the cold against his skin, the promise of the world outside. He looked at her, feeling the anger returning, spilling back out of the shadows and driving his words, two words, hard and aggressive, bullets aimed at her soul.
“Fuck you!”
She screamed and charged, knife held in front of her. Time seemed to slow as he saw the blade slipping through the air, shining with the promise of blood to be spilled. Death was in the wings.
His body was thin, it was weak, it was frail... but it was his body, and it knew what to do. Muscle memory flared into life as he twisted his body aside, grabbed her wrist and turned her, sending the blade past as they moved sideways...
The glass shattered as the fresh sea air rushed in to surround him. It felt as if it were his first breath, bringing life to lungs that had forgotten their function. The floor slipped away as they fell, two objects in a vast world, feeling all the fear and freedom that such a realisation entailed. The summer air embraced him. The lights of the neon maze of Techosaka flared and dappled the surface of the cubed snow that surrounded him as he drifted downwards. Where it touched his skin its razor sharp edges opened a bloom of deep red.
The warmth of the air gave way to the impact of cold water as he smashed against its surface. It rushed to envelop him, pulling the breath from his body as he drifted downwards. His legs thudded against ceramic tiles. Lights lit up an underwater world that fascinated him as he felt darkness calling, dragging him to a sweet oblivion that would forever drive his memories into an unknown and unneeded place.
You have slept enough.
Damaged, bruised legs kicked instinctively as his heart beat against his ribcage, trying to force its way out through his chest with the same urgency that he used to finally break the surface.
His first breath carried an equal measure of pain and pleasure as he struggled to kick his legs with what little energy he still possessed. As the shapes that surrounded him started to come into focus he saw that he was in a lit swimming pool that lay in the centre of a sparsely decorated recreation area, surrounded by a series of tower blocks that loomed over him in the night-time darkness. He had no idea what time it was, but it didn’t really matter. In Techosaka it was hard to be alone no matter the hour and it was likely that someone would pass by soon. As he looked more closely around him he noticed that the waters of the pool were starting to turn a vibrant shade of pink. He soon spotted the source. Blood was seeping out of the corpse of Sandrine, her body drifting and turning in the water as if she were still falling. Her head was a soft bloody mess, the result of impacting with the edge of the pool. A rosebush red splatter of blood was sprayed along the concrete in honour of her last moment.
A mouthful of chlorinated water brought his attention back to himself and he looked around for the nearest edge, desperately kicking towards it before grabbing onto the tiles for dear life. For a few minutes he hung there, letting his legs relax as he continued to breathe and build up his strength. Finally he felt ready to move, so he dragged himself out onto the side in a series of awkward movements, before lying on his back and staring up at the flat expanse of the apartment wall that soared upwards, trying to spot the one window without glass, the only sign of his claustrophobic prison.
After a few minutes he began to feel the cubes of safety glass huddled beneath a body which had been too numb with shock to notice them. He pulled himself to his feet and started to inspect his body, looking in dazed interest at the web of cuts that covered his skin, knowing in his mind's eye that he was trying to avoid looking at the remains of Sandrine. My prison warden, my victim. When he did eventually look the sheer weight of the fact that she hadn't moved and would never move again drove him to his knees. Part of him wanted to pull her body to the side, drag her out of the water and lay her on the ground, as if that reverent act would do some good. He stayed there, forcing himself to look at her, to scrutinise the woman that he had killed, even if it had been self-defence. He only moved when he heard footsteps nearby, a sound which now seemed alien. He couldn’t be seen here. It would invite questions that he had no wish to answer. He needed to escape, to hide, to plan his next move. He staggered to his feet and ran, a bloody shadow in the neon night.
He worked his way unsteadily from shadow to shadow until he stumbled upon the back of a department store. A discarded shop dummy stood forlornly propped against a wall, wearing some tatty rain soaked trousers and a t shirt. He peeled them off and slipped them over his shivering body. Shoes were a different matter, and most of the rest of the night was spent tentatively trying to avoid glass and other sharp objects as he staggered back to his apartment.
Idalia. She hadn’t seen him since his journey to Yokohama. She probably had no idea that he was even back in town. What could he possibly tell her about what had happened? What part of it would she even believe? Strangely his greatest concern was how she would react when she found out that he was quitting his life of crime and corresponding affluence.
The building seemed colossal and frozen when he arrived, a strange edifice to the life that he had once led and would no longer. It was a monument to money and easy living, paid for by the damaged lives of others. He did his best to avoid the gaze of the only other person in the lobby, a lean muscled man in his early twenties who was stretching before he headed out into the pre-dawn for a run. Thankfully the lift arrived promptly and Roman was able to slip in without having to speak to him, closing the doors as the man headed over. Perhaps he had just been concerned about the blood that was still slowly seeping from his bare feet but Roman couldn’t take the chance of being thrown out. He had nowhere else to go.
A quick glance up and down the corridor outside his home told him that the way was clear. He slipped up to the doorway, before pressing his palm against the fingerprint lock. The dead buzz and red light were not what he was expecting. He tried again, with the same result. The tone, the red light, no access.
He looked back up the corridor. The nearest other apartment was a good ten metres away, so he risked rapping his knuckles against the door, even calling out for Idalia in the vague hope that she would be awake at such an hour. After waiting for a few minutes it became clear that no one was going to let him in.
He’d been in a similar situation before, when Idalia had thrown him out of the flat after an argument, and he had a solution. He backtracked a little and found the door to the fire escape. It led to a stairwell downwards but also had a window to the outside of the building, just above a climbable ledge. He pushed it open and felt the wind hit him as he struggled out onto the brickwork, his bruised legs shaking with the effort of control. He somehow managed to edge his way around the building until he was able to climb over the railing of their balcony, whereupon he froze with his hand on the balcony door, staring at the sight within.
The apartment was empty. Not simply empty of people, but empty of everything. All furniture had gone, even the plant that had hidden the switch to his lab, the door of which he could see open...
He yanked the balcony door open and staggered over to the entrance. He found row upon row of empty shelves, the accumulated stock of years vanished into the night, and most importantly the small freezer of Mendel was gone, leaving a dusty rectangle on the floor.
He wanted to scream and yell insults to the stars, to fate, and most of all to Idalia. He had no idea how long he had been gone but surely it hadn’t been long enough for her to give up on him. She had clearly jumped at the chance to take his life work and sell it on.
He breathed long and hard, trying to control himself. After all, the use of Cupid was the staple of the life that he wanted to leave behind. S
uch a development could be seen to be for the best, but it didn’t feel that way. He felt violated. He pulled the desk that lay against the far wall aside and ran his hand carefully along the panel beyond, holding his thumb at key points along its join for a few seconds before it gave a mechanical sigh and slid aside. She'd obviously copied his print at some point in order to get into the lab but she hadn't found this compartment, his emergency stash that he had created in case he needed to make a quick getaway.
Inside the recess there was an okanecard with access to a secret account, two keys to a car that he kept in a storage unit a few blocks away, and three vials of Cupid sitting in a storage case. They were all that remained of his empire, a delicately created spider web of intrigue and deals, foul deeds foully done, the blood of others staining his soul. He stared at them, his eyes taking in each detail of the gaudy containers. He could have left them, but then someone else could have found them. If they were used without thinking, or retro-engineered to find out the formula, then the results could be deadly. Instead he took them to the empty bathroom and slowly cracked each vial open before ceremoniously pouring them down the toilet. The thick pink liquid spread out into the water, diluting until it was nothing more than a memory. If only he could delete the formula in his head as easily, and the trouble that it had created.
Chapter 5
It was the first thing that had gone right for him in a long time. The car was pristine, untouched under the dust cover. Its yellow and black striping reminded him of a wasp, and its engine reminded him of a tank. It took a lot of fuel to keep it going but it more than made up for it with its ability to get him out of trouble. It was illegally fast, topping even the police cars thanks to some fine tuning and the best engine parts he’d been able to get his hands on.
The new shirt that he was wearing under the navy blue suit was very starchy in the collar but even as he tugged it away from his throat in annoyance he still relished the feeling of being in clothes again, real clothes, his clothes. As he settled into the driver’s seat and heard the sound of the leather creaking he could almost believe none of the events of the last month had happened (for it had been a month, he had found out when he had bought his new wardrobe, checking the receipt’s date rather than asking so as not to draw attention to himself). He tapped the ignition and fired the engine into life, before turning on the digital radio and seeing what was on offer for the night-time driver. He almost laughed as the sound Kuri’s voice was heard singing some trite lyrics over a predictable melody. No more tunes like that, at least not from her. It was up to the next in line to carry on the dirge.
He pulled out of the garage and onto the road, feeling a little rusty behind the wheel after his imprisonment. The tarmac was slick with rain as he drove out of the highway, the concrete stretching for miles ahead of him, all the possibilities of a country unaware of his existence. Perhaps his drive for anonymity, hiding behind the name of Black Cat had paid off in the biggest way possible. He had a way out.
He wasn’t even particularly angry at Idalia anymore. He didn’t feel much at all, which was strange. She was his wife of three years but there were no feelings welling up as he thought of leaving the city, just as she had left him. It could be that he had no right to be angry. After all, a month is a long time. She might have thought I was dead.
He reached over and switched off the radio. He drove for an hour in silence whilst craving somebody to talk to. The sun was coming up to reveal a crisp day that would most likely lead to a swelteringly hot one, wrapped in the thick humidity that Japan possessed in August. It was as if he'd lost July.
The many and varied cuts on his body were stinging with each movement of the wheel so he decided to pull into a ramen bar situated on another stretch of the endless suburbia that had sprawled across the country. It was hard to define where one town ended and the other began, as they were joined by various department stores, twenty four hour shops and eateries, all with their own compact car parks, a sea of concrete as far as he could see.
He was the first person in, as it was barely seven in the morning, although luckily it was open in readiness of the urbanites who shovelled the food into their mouths before heading into whichever city they worked at. The chef behind the counter welcomed him boisterously and Roman smiled before sliding into one of the red leather effect seats, trying not to show off his injuries (at least the ones that weren't already visible). He couldn't do anything about the cuts on his face, hastily pulled together with a mixture of plasters and super glue. They would most likely scar deeply but he didn't particularly care, his face had just been another reminder of the life he used to live, crafted in a surgery in Shibuya and modelled vaguely on a mixture of his old features and an actor from fifty years ago who had been known for his good looks. Another vanity, another reason to loathe his past. What had he been thinking, that if he was attractive then that would excuse his use of Cupid? Perhaps it made it more believable to anyone observing him and his prey, or maybe he was just fooling himself into believing it was all him. How could they have resist him?
He ordered a simple bowl of miso ramen and tried to take stock of his situation as he ate, staring out at the passing traffic, a sea of shining chrome and glittering paintwork rushing over the tarmac. The food was good but a little too hot, burning his tongue. The pain served as some sort of delightful reminder though, a reminder that he was alive and free, and able to choose his future for himself again. The world was open. His ties with Luis were cut, so there was no going back on that account. He had no wish to rekindle the business but it was only after Luis had gone that he had realised how many other contacts he had lost. Hiromi, Kenji, basically any of the staff at Crash/Burn along with numerous other contacts, all no longer viable to work with. But then, what would he even work with them on anyway? His skill set was so specialised that he was at a loss in what direction he should take himself. There was always the option of delving back into crime as a petty thief, or seeing if he could ingratiate himself with the Yakuza... but all it would take would be someone recognising him as the Black Cat and then he'd be dead in the water, most likely literally.
He glanced over at the chef who was dutifully chopping through the various ingredients for the day. The man looked up and gave a friendly nod to Roman, who returned it before going back to his food. Maybe the chef would swap lives with him, if he threw in the car.
His wife was gone, his work was gone, and his colleagues were gone. Friends? Not many outside of his former profession and nothing that remained of his former life in the lab at ParCorp, the closest he had got to that was Sandrine.
He mind drifted back to ParCorp, to the blue lit labs where he had felt as if he were moulding the universe, taking it apart and putting it back together at a whim. The misplaced confidence of youth.
He couldn't remember ever being happier, largely due to Tavisi Shah. She had been a guiding moral force which he had lost, or rather thrown away as soon as he had found the power of Cupid. He'd become greedy and arrogant, not even discussing its properties but instead simply casting off his old life to become a self-styled master of emotions. The fact that he'd loved her had – in a perverse way – driven him to leave. He had never had the guts to do anything about his feelings or see if she felt the same way. In the back of his mind he had thought about when he would return loaded with wealth to present a better prospect as a partner, but as soon as he had completed his first job he had known that she would never appreciate how he'd gained his fortune.
It had been juvenile fancy anyway, as the joy of her personality was that material wealth didn't even matter to her. He had found himself so enamoured with the prevailing values of a capitalist society that he had pulled himself away from being someone that she'd consider. He had tried to marry his own greed with what he had wanted emotionally and it simply hadn't fit. He'd thought about contacting her a few times in the passing years but there would have been too many questions and not enough answers that he could have given without incr
iminating himself.
The first of the morning customers pulled into the car park and entered the building. Roman was so pre-occupied with his own thoughts that it wasn't until the man slid into the seat opposite him that he recognised the long thin face of the barman from Crash/Burn, last seen in Yokohama. Roman gave a quick laugh. There was no getting away from his past.
“Well, you've got me,” said Roman, dipping his spoon into the remains of the soup and swirling it around, watching the particles of miso float in a diminishing spiral. “Make it quick, I've had enough pain in the last month.”
The barman raised an eyebrow, before looking up at the approaching waiter.
“Two coffees, please,” he asked in Japanese, before turning his attention back to Roman. The barman's long hair was hanging down around his shoulders and he was wearing a leather jacket and trousers, dusty from travel. Roman glanced outside and spotted the motorbike parked up next to the building. It looked a decent piece of kit, though he doubted it would be able to keep up with his car.
The barman picked up a toothpick from the table and started to dig at his gums, before finally speaking.
“You've been away quite a while, Black Cat. Vacation?”
Roman sighed before gently pointing out a few of the cuts on his features.
“It wasn't very restful.”
The man opposite gave a needlessly wide grin to indicate he found no humour in the situation.
The Real Thing Page 8