by Jade Kerrion
“And you think we know nothing of how to deal with mutants?” Ryoda snorted. “We are Tengoku Corporation. We are the machinery that unleashed the Genetic Revolution here in Japan fifty years ago. We are still the machine that propels it forward. Does the government doubt our commitment, our loyalty? We have thousands of people trained to run the conference. Thousands more in security. What difference do you think these three people can possibly make?”
“Perhaps nothing,” Zara said quietly. “But if something does happen, if John really does make it past your security, do you want to explain to Mr. Nakamura how you did not do everything you could have?”
Danyael glanced at the time on his cell phone. “Let us look around. We have five hours until 9 a.m.” And a several-day conference thereafter. If John were looking to make a statement though, he would likely target the opening keynote or the closing keynote. Since the CEO was giving the opening speech, that’s where Danyael would have put his money.
“You have two hours,” Ryoda snapped. “The doors will open at 6 a.m. for the employees to finalize the set up. The vendors are also coming in to set up their exhibition booths. I want you—all of you—out in two hours. You will not taint our preparations with your suspicions and meddling.”
Maya scowled as they strode out of Ryoda’s office together. “Fifty floors, not including the basement levels. We won’t have time to secure them in under two hours.”
“I’m taking the two hours as a recommendation, not an order. We can’t secure anything in five hours, let alone two. But we’re not looking for a physical bomb,” Zara said briskly. “How could John enter the building? What would your Sicarii do?”
Maya paused in the foyer outside the security office and stared down at the geometric patterns etched on the tiles. “It’ll be quiet. Unobtrusive. Something that allows them to get anywhere…” She frowned. “The security contractors Ryoda hired—”
“Vetted, presumably,” Zara said. “But worth a closer look. I’ll call Xin.”
“What about the vendors, the exhibitors?” Danyael held up the program Ryoda had given him. “Six thousand booths.”
“Not to mention the employees running the registration tables, information center, the technology behind the scenes…the estimated fifty-thousand people coming in for the conference, and the Tengoku employees who are merely showing up to work.” Maya shook her head. “This is crazy. We’re looking for one person among seventy…maybe eighty thousand or more people. And you’re assuming he’ll come in here. He can do just as much damage from across the street.”
“But it’s not the same thing, is it?” Zara asked. “It’s much less satisfying when you can’t watch your enemies die. Twenty-five years is a long time to wait for revenge. He’s not going to waste his only chance at it. Besides, Danyael’s here. If John wants his double jeopardy, he’ll have to come for Danyael too.”
“And how would John even know where Danyael is?”
“Because Danyael always heads straight for trouble—and it’s right here.” The unexpected quirk of laughter in Zara’s voice took the edge off the mocking twist of her smirk.
“I’ll check out the exhibition area,” Maya said.
“What are you looking for?” Danyael asked.
“I don’t know,” Maya said. “But I’ll know it if I see it.” She laughed at the faint frown that furrowed Danyael’s brow. “After all this time, you still don’t get assassins.”
Zara smiled thinly. “Danyael still holds out hope that he will someday understand me.”
Maya met her eyes. “Will he?”
“I doubt it.” Zara glanced around. “I’ll check the periphery, in case John and his Sicarii come in through less conventional means. At least we can eliminate those options before the flood doors open. Danyael, you’re our best bet of finding a Sicarii in the crowd once people start arriving.”
“John's shields are too strong. I may not be able to sense him.
“I know, but you’ll sense a Sicarii, and that may be good enough.” Her eyes narrowed. “You have two hours before the real work starts. Why don’t you get some rest? You didn’t sleep much on the plane.”
“I’ll be all right—”
Zara turned to Fujio. “Is there a hotel nearby?”
“The Conrad Tokyo is a block away, but there are also guest suites on the 49th floor of this building. I’ll ask Ryoda if there are any available. We can use it as a place to regroup.” He shuffled back into Ryoda’s office and emerged a few minutes later with key cards that he handed out to Maya, Zara, and Danyael. “49-115. Take the elevators from the east lobby. Danyael, I’ll show you the way.”
The guest suite, 49-115, was comfortable—larger than a hotel room, with a kitchenette, living room, and a separate bedroom. The furniture was spare, its style austere, but the materials were of the highest quality, including polished teak and finely spun silk. The glow from recessed lamps compensated for the absence of natural light, and created a soothing ambiance.
They were not enough to counter the wakefulness of jet lag and the crushing anxiety that made it hard for Danyael to draw deep breaths.
Sleep was out of the question.
As Fujio paced the kitchenette, speaking on his cell phone, Danyael settled down on the couch and used his tablet to access the data Xin had dug up on Fredrik Virtanen and John Halla.
The files were encrypted. He did not know what technological magic happened on the back end, but the tablet Xin had given him unlocked the secured documents. He had no doubt that his internet browsing was monitored, too, but unlike Zara, he did not bristle at the big brother hovering of the Mutant Affairs Council. It was just the consequence of being who he was—an alpha empath.
Privacy was out of his reach.
As were relationships.
As was freedom.
His only responsibility—his only priority was to protect Zara.
Just don’t screw up.
Easier said than done.
John Halla was proof of it.
The documents painted a stark picture of a shattered life. The government had been so busy picking up the pieces of Kivisuo and trying to conceal the truth from the world that it ignored the child who survived the mass suicide. John had been shunted from one foster home to another. His record was troubled, but not so much so that he was flagged as a mutant. Finally, he aged out of the system and inherited the money his parents had left for him. Then, like Virtanen, he had vanished.
No one knew him for a mutant.
No one bothered to track him.
He had been spotted at new age, holistic-wellness camps in Asia and Africa. He avoided highly populated areas where other mutants were often present. He had kept a low profile.
John’s parents had died in an empathic backlash, but he had not snapped in twenty-five years.
Why now?
All wounds healed over time. Even Danyael knew that.
Twenty-five years was a long time to spend healing.
Or a long time to spend nursing an open wound.
More likely, something snapped in John.
Sakti.
Danyael’s mass slaughter of Sakti on Theodore Roosevelt Island on July 4th had turned an attack-class alpha empath, determined to live life quietly, into a homicidal, suicidal psychopath.
Danyael’s hands clenched into fists. My fault. Not just what I did to Sakti, but whatever happens here. Whatever John does, it’s on me.
But if there was anything Danyael could do to stop it, he still had no idea what it could be.
15
There was simply no way to monitor all entrances into the Tengoku Corporation headquarters, but at 6 a.m., most of the people came in through the entrance closest to the exhibition hall. Danyael leaned against the wall, his crutch beside him. His empathic powers swept over the growing crowd.
“Anything?” Fujio asked quietly.
“Lots of anxiety, but at an event of this size…”
Fujio nodded. “Not improbable. Do you really thin
k John Halla will strike at the keynote speech?”
“I don’t know enough about him, but if it’s revenge he’s after, then wouldn’t that be the best time?”
“I don’t know. You see, Mr. Nakamura, the CEO of Tengoku Corporation, also lost someone that night, twenty-five years ago.” Fujio sighed. “His brother led the task force to recover Virtanen.”
“How much of this is public knowledge?”
“None. The hundreds of people who died when Virtanen chose death over capture was—and still is—the worst recorded mutant-related disaster. The Genetic Revolution was in its infancy then. Widespread knowledge of what happened at Kivisuo would have turned all mutants into pariahs, crushed all funding for genetic experiments and pilots. Silencing the Virtanen disaster kept the Genetic Revolution alive.”
And changed all our lives—including mine.
Danyael frowned, shook his head. Galahad may never have been created if the Genetic Revolution had crashed and burned, but Danyael would still have been born a mutant—wildly out of control, and worse, without a Mutant Affairs Council to guide and train him.
But if I had died young, my empathic backlash would not have been as devastating.
Too many paths would have sprung from an altered past, and there was no way to see where they would have led.
And it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change today.
It doesn’t change what I have to do.
Find John and convince him to give life—his life and all the lives around him—another chance.
Danyael’s phone buzzed with an incoming message from Zara. Anything?
He sent a one-word response. No.
Maya’s response was longer. Nothing unusual in the exhibition hall. Does Xin have a reply on the security companies yet?
She’s still running a search. It’s long—thousands of people long—and all of them have to be vetted. It’s going to be close to nine, or even after, before she has a reply for us.
Which meant that they were running out of time.
The minutes ticked into hours. Occasionally, he caught a glimpse of Zara and Maya, passing through the crowd, both looking as harmless as attractive women tended to appear. Fujio was on the phone most of the time, coordinating, perhaps with Ryoda or the government. Within moments though, Fujio hung up the phone and beckoned to Danyael. “Mr. Nakamura would like to speak to you, and the two women.”
A private elevator took all of them to the 50th floor, made distinctive by its triangular shaped walls on all four sides of the penthouse office suite. Mr. Nakamura, whom Danyael knew to be in his sixties, nevertheless possessed the seemingly ageless appearance of many Japanese, his tanned skin unlined. He did not smile nor did he extend his hand to them.
“You have found no problems,” he stated, his tone flat and unfriendly.
“No, we haven’t,” Danyael said.
Zara smirked. “We will.”
“How do you know?” Nakamura asked.
“A professional’s gut feelings. Works better than psychic powers.”
“You’ve already received more time to search the building than my security team granted you. My speech begins in an hour. I want the three of you out of my building when it starts.”
Danyael shook his head. “If there’s a problem, that’s when it’s going to start.”
“The conference is the most important annual event for Tengoku Corporation. I will not have it disrupted by three people with an ax to grind against my company.”
“This isn’t—”
“Of course it is.” Nakamura fixed Danyael with a narrow-eyed glare. “There is no evidence—none—that Tengoku Corporation had anything to do Virtanen’s suicide, but you are trying to focus on it to remove the spotlight aimed at your massacre of Sakti.”
“I stand by what I did to Sakti.” Danyael surprised himself by the firmness of his quiet reply. The certainty anchored him. “Your company’s involvement in what’s happening here is tangential, the date and location chosen because of something that happened many years ago. John is here because what I did to Sakti set him off. I’m here to ensure he isn’t a threat to others. I’m here to finish what I started.”
“How noble.” The sneering curl of Nakamura’s lips suggested otherwise. “But there will be no problems. Tengoku Corporation has this situation completely under control. I want all three of you to leave. You’ve done enough to upset the momentum of the conference. My employees are running around answering your questions instead of attending to their responsibilities. I will not have it. You are endangering the very conference you claim to protect.”
Danyael shook his head. “Sir, if John is here—”
Nakamura pounced. “You hear yourself? If. There is no proof, no evidence.”
“John is in Tokyo,” Danyael insisted.
“But not here.”
“He’s an attack-class alpha empath. His location doesn’t have to be exact to unleash unacceptable losses.”
“Then go find him. Somewhere else.” Nakamura’s gaze flicked to Fujio. “We are disappointed by the government’s support of this uninformed paranoia. It has caused unacceptable distraction and delays.”
Zara scarcely waited until they were escorted from the CEO’s office. “I think we have enough time to catch a high-speed train out of Tokyo. We can watch the pyrotechnics from a distance.” She scowled. “Did you sense anything at all?”
Danyael shook his head. “Could we be wrong about the location? John doesn’t need a precise location from which to do lots of damage.”
“But he’s trying to make a point,” Maya said. “Death cannot appear to be random or accidental. It’s not a statement otherwise.”
Danyael nodded. “If Nakamura wants us out before his speech starts, we still have under an hour to look around. Most people should be in place by now. If we’re going to find anything, it’ll be now.”
“One more round, then,” Zara said.
Danyael gritted his teeth against the dull ache in his leg and lower back. As many rounds as it takes.
Zara’s brisk walk around the building revealed nothing untoward. The building’s glass doors might as well have been permanently opened to the endless stream of people entering Tengoku. Outside, the warmth of the sun took just enough of the bite out of the wind tunnels formed by the corridors of buildings.
The security teams hired by Tengoku were obvious but not obtrusive. There were no metal detectors, no bag searches. Zara rolled her eyes. Not that a search would have helped against John, but a bit more suspicion and precaution would not have hurt. How much of it was cultural, she wondered, as she watched the Japanese people march through their lives with purposeful efficiency. Like ants emerging from an anthill, they swarmed out of the subway stops in vast numbers made manageable only by their extreme orderliness. They entered buildings in polite, neat lines, somehow managing to form queues without any of the jostling rudeness prevalent in other countries that Zara had visited.
There was no room in the Japanese mindset for chaos.
No wonder the concept of an alpha empath, determined to kill, was so problematic for them. The entire concept was messy, with no clear idea of how it could be executed.
Zara sighed. If sniper rifles were involved, she and Maya could have found and ferreted out every possible spot.
An alpha empath who could kill from anywhere was beyond problematic.
And Danyael’s solution is to offer John psychiatric counseling?
Was she the only one who found the solution utterly ludicrous?
It didn’t even make sense.
John wasn’t a vigilante in any true sense of the word. Not when they discovered that he, too, was an alpha empath. Ridding the world of alpha empaths was only a cover for what he truly wanted—revenge against Tengoku Corporation for his parents’ death.
Killing Danyael in Anacostia or even in Kivisuo would not have gotten John any closer to his goal. Killing Cortez and Fajari in Barcelona and Harare even less so.
If not for revenge—and there was no need to avenge himself against them—then for what?
Truth whispered in a tiny voice. Because Danyael can stop him.
Zara paused by the back corner of the building and leaned against the wall, thinking hard.
Danyael can stop him.
Her mind and her heart seized on that fact. Instinct and intuition told her she was onto the truth, but there was still logic and reason to wrestle with.
How could a defense-class alpha empath possibly stop an attack-class alpha empath from committing suicide and devastating Tokyo with an empathic nuclear backlash?
Danyael could heal John, of course, but that answer was too simplistic. Danyael, who healed through absorption of injuries, could not handle heart or brain injuries. No…Zara frowned. John is trying to kill Danyael—not for Danyael’s empathic backlash, although it would be a benefit—but because Danyael can stop John…even if John kills himself.
But how?
That part still eluded her, and she knew everything about Danyael’s empathic powers.
If there was something Danyael could do to contain the suicidal death throes of an attack-class alpha empath, she did not know what it was, and likely, he didn’t either.
But it meant that Danyael was at risk—completely at risk—since he was the key to stopping John. The only key.
She had to get back to him. Zara snatched up her phone, and glanced at the time—8:45 a.m.—before placing a call. “Danyael? Where are you?
“At the suite on the 49th floor. Getting our bags.”
“Anyone with you?”
“Fujio’s here with me.”
Good. An alpha empath and an alpha telekinetic would likely be able to handle anything. “Stay alert. I get the feeling we’re nowhere near done.” Her phone buzzed. She pulled it away from her ear and glanced at it. “Xin’s calling. I’ll talk to you later.” She disconnected the call with Danyael to accept Xin’s.
“I ran background checks on the Japanese people who died in Kivisuo,” Xin said. “It’s not good. Goro Matsuda was one of the men sent by Tengoku to retrieve Virtanen. He died, of course. He was an only child, and his mother committed suicide shortly thereafter.”