If she actually lit a fire, the burns would make it impossible not to breathe, but she knew that already.
What kind of face would emerge when the sack burned away?
Fear of death? Sadness at what was happening to his sisters? Boundless rage? Despair? Or eyes full of purpose, having not lost their hope?
Any one of them would do, thought Earthworm.
“I wonder what people will do. If they’re placed in a desperate situation with a loved one, will they care for themselves in the final moment or for the other? I happen to think human beings are designed to prioritize themselves in the end. Do you know anything about that, info dealer? You’ve got lots of information about human beings, right?” Earthworm asked. It was an impossible question to answer, and because of that, she didn’t expect an answer for it, either.
The real purpose of the question was to fan the flames of his fear and unease. But her total inability to get a rise out of him was impressing her.
What move could she make to put pressure on him now? Go with the classics and pull out his fingernails, or remove his clothes and use a soldering iron to tattoo a message on his skin?
She was just about to lose her battle against restraint and move to actual physical torture when the sound of multiple footsteps came from the entrance of the bar.
“Oh, we’re out of time…”
“…!”
“Looks like your sisters have arrived. ”
Like a housewife signing off on a long-awaited home delivery, Earthworm leaped to her feet. But instead of heading over herself, she delegated the duty to another woman.
“Go and open the door.”
The young woman obeyed and headed to the entrance. As she watched her go, Earthworm told her captive, “It’s a moving family reunion! I do believe I might shed some tears!”
“…”
She giggled in anticipation of the coming scene…
…but the mirth stopped within just a few seconds.
When her subordinate opened the door to let the visitors in, they were not the people Earthworm expected—but a group of about ten unfamiliar young men.
Who?!
Are they the info dealer’s men?! No way!
The Awakusu-kai? No, they’re too young!
How did they know this place? I mean, who are they?!
They can’t be cops. They look younger than me…
Who? Enemies? Friends? Danger?
Owner… Help me, Owner!
The thoughts echoed and burst through her mind, until at last, she settled on the one figure she trusted more than any other to come to her aid.
Though no one answered that silent call of hers, of course.
Her companions were just as shocked as she was, wary of the intruders at the entrance. But the young man at the center of their group simply spread his hands and spoke bracingly to the entire bar.
“Greetings, members of Amphisbaena. We are not yet your allies, but neither are we your enemies.”
“…Who are you?” Earthworm demanded. Unlike the wheedling taunt she used with the man in the burlap sack, her voice was now taut and sharp with instant vigilance.
The young man identified her as the central figure of the group and made an obsequious bow. “Pardon me. My name is Shijima.”
“I am the second-in-command for distribution of the Heaven’s Slave drug.”
Then time rewound to half a day earlier.
Chapter 5: Izaya Orihara
Tokyo, on the street
“Hey… What’s that the courier’s holding?” asked one of Heaven’s Slave’s young dealers to his companion.
The other one sighed and muttered, “Same thing as yesterday, a laptop bag.”
“You think it’s a laptop in there?”
“Probably. Or money or…casino chips, maybe.”
This was the third day they’d been keeping tabs on the Black Rider and Izaya Orihara. They considered just abducting Izaya directly, since he probably knew something they could use, but he had Dragon Zombie goons for protection, so they couldn’t get him while he was on the move. He was also quick enough to give them the slip when they tried following him back to his hideout, so they couldn’t get to him that way, either.
As for the Black Rider, they could trace the urban legend on the job, but once again were unable to follow the trail back to any kind of home base. On the bright side, they were able to put together a good picture of what the rider was doing on the errand.
At each location, the courier made contact with people of various positions and affiliations. One of them just so happened to be a Heaven’s Slave customer, so when they called him later, they learned that he was also a client of Amphisbaena’s underground casino, and he claimed he’d been asked over and over about that.
By using his drug source as leverage, they were able to pry some interesting information out of him: The Black Rider had bought his Amphisbaena chip at a truly preposterous price. He seemed to think he could just claim that he “lost it” the next time the casino opened, but they would likely never contact him again.
More concerning was the fact that the Black Rider was collecting the casino’s electronic chips, riding around in search of several different members to retrieve them from. That occupied the young men’s attention and drew it away from Izaya.
Following in their car, the dealers eventually realized the Black Rider was taking a different action from usual today. She stopped the bike on the side of the road, pulled a laptop out of the bag, and opened it up.
“…What’s going on there?” said the thug in the passenger seat, watching the woman through a pair of binoculars. He was able to make out what looked to be a map on the screen.
The rider closed the laptop and stuffed it back into the bag without turning it off. It was probably in some kind of sleep mode. As they followed the motorcycle, the dealers decided to call Shijima and relay this new information.
“Is there any way you can steal that laptop?”
They wanted to explain that it was impossible, but the mental image of the member with the dart stuck in the bridge of his nose convinced them to at least say, “We’ll try,” before hanging up.
“Steal it…? How we gonna do that?”
“We can’t just hit the bike to make it stop, not in the middle of the city like this…”
They continued their stealthy pursuit, feeling gloomy.
But just then, they witnessed something unexpected. Just a bit ahead, the Black Rider slowed down and pulled over to the entrance of a rather quiet, secluded park. She checked something on the laptop again, then headed into the green space.
There was a man sitting on a bench there, who watched as the courier approached and showed him a cell phone or some other device.
Is he another member of that casino? they wondered, just as they noticed something else.
Hanging off the handlebar of the motorcycle was the bag that held the laptop, completely unattended. The courier must have assumed that the conversation would only take a second.
“…!”
It was the best opportunity the dealers could have hoped for. They sidled up to the motorcycle, reached out the window of their car, and quietly lifted the bag off the handlebar.
Yes! And the courier hasn’t noticed yet!
They were ready to roll quietly away and vanish before anyone noticed their crime, except…
Hhhhrrreeeeeeeeeee!!
The black motorcycle produced a sound like an enormous horse bellowing and lifted its front half into a wheelie, despite the lack of anyone riding it.
“Wh-wh-what the—?!”
Even more shocking, the bike’s outline was writhing and shifting like smoke, morphing into the form of a giant horse without a head.
“An anti-theft…? No, what the fuck is that?!”
“Muh-mon…mons, monstraaaah! Whaaaaa—?! Aaaaah!”
At the sound of the beast’s whinnying, the courier spun around and came rushing back from the bench.
“F-f-f-fuh-fuh! Floor it!” stammered the man in the passenger seat. It took him so long to get the words out that the driver already had his foot jammed onto the pedal.
They achieved their goal. They had the courier’s laptop. The only thing left to do was get away, they told themselves, teeth chattering. They raced for the thoroughfare ahead.
In the rearview mirror, the courier was bearing down on them.
“Aaaaaaaah! Aaaaaaaah!”
They drove.
Drove, raced, sped.
The car’s engine rotated fit to burst into flame as they peeled away without a thought for potential accidents, obstacles, or anything that wasn’t putting as much distance as possible between them and the Black Rider.
Once on the main road, they sped significantly over the speed limit before darting down one side street, then another, desperate to escape. After turning the third corner, the driver looked into the mirror—and saw nothing behind them. After the fourth, they were back on the main road, part of an endless flow of vehicles, where the passenger had time to scan the area.
The Black Rider was nowhere to be seen. The only disturbance was from the car behind them, which honked at their forceful merge into the lane.
All was normal.
It was exactly what you’d expect to see in the city. No room for monsters here.
In a daze of half disbelief, they set to check on the laptop in the bag. The man in the passenger seat got out his phone to let Shijima know.
“Thanks. Bring me the laptop at once. Kumoi will be slightly pleased with this.”
Despite the clipped nature of his statement, he sounded a bit reassured about it, but that was nothing compared with the relief of the dealers.
Once their pulses returned to normal levels, they shared a look.
They had escaped.
From there, we head forward, to a dark place.
Tokyo, out-of-business bar
“Heaven’s…Slave!”
Somewhere in Tokyo, inside an establishment that had once been a bar, Earthworm’s eyes went wide upon hearing the introduction from the man named Shijima.
She’d just been about to torture the info dealer to get the information she wanted about this group—so why were they here all of a sudden? She’d never heard that they were allies of Izaya Orihara’s, but maybe that was just a sign of her own lack of understanding. If it was true, this was a perilous situation.
Just as Earthworm began to wonder if she could use the man with the burlap sack over his head as a hostage, Shijima proved that to be unnecessary.
“Ah, is that the info broker the Awakusu-kai hired to give them info on you…Izaya Orihara?” he said with a brief glance at the imprisoned man.
Hesitantly, Earthworm replied, “You…don’t know him?”
“Hardly. Although we did utilize him to discover this location.”
He snapped his fingers, and a man came through the door with a laptop, which he placed on the counter so that everyone could see the screen. There was a map on it, with a horde of red dots arrayed all over the diagram.
“This is the program that displays the locations of the transmitters embedded in all your chips. Although I admit I don’t know what sort of system you’re using yet.”
It was the Amphisbaena chip-management program.
“…! How did you…?!” Earthworm gaped.
Shijima shrugged. “How, indeed? And how did we decipher the signals being sent by the chips? You’ll have a better answer from him than me, I suspect.”
“…The info dealer?”
“He gave the Black Rider this laptop to do his snooping around for him,” Shijima said, glancing at the tied-up man with an oddly happy smile on his lips.
For her part, Earthworm stared at the bound man in shock. “I had no idea he knew that much… So does that mean he knew the location of this hideout a long time ago?”
“Who can say except for him? All I know is that we were following him around, he went into a building, and a group of your people came back out. They were carrying a very large suitcase, big enough to hold a grown man. And the funny thing is, one of the red dots on this map was moving along with them.”
Shijima approached the seated man and began to feel around in his pockets. On the third try, he found and removed a single casino chip.
“See? Here it is. He had one, too.”
“…I guess we can chalk that one up to our people for not properly searching him first,” Earthworm said, glaring at her companions. They turned to one another and began the process of deflecting responsibility.
Shijima watched the distress among the group and asked, “So, are you the leader of Amphisbaena?”
“…No. The real owner hardly ever shows up among us. I don’t know where he is.”
“That’s a clever way of doing it. Our leader is rather similar. But we’ll have plenty of time to talk about that later, once we’ve gotten rid of this info dealer,” Shijima said, resting a hand on the head of the man under the burlap sack. “We figured that we were going to abduct him and do it ourselves, but now you’ve saved us the trouble. I guess there was no need to send anyone after his sisters after all.”
“…? You were after his sisters, too?”
“What? You too?” Shijima looked a bit surprised.
The caution never left Earthworm’s gaze. “I just gave the order about an hour ago to take them both, one at a time.”
“…Well, that’s a shame. We understand that the girls are dangerous on their own, so we sent some of our best after them. I’m not afraid of the two sides getting into a squabble…but I’d prefer if we didn’t draw the attention of the police. I suppose I’ll call my people off. We don’t need the hostages anyway.”
He pulled out his cell phone. “I hope you believe me when I say we’re not interested in being hostile with you. I came to discuss business…and I’d prefer to avoid the Awakusu-kai finding out about it. That’s all.”
As he spoke, he looked through the list to find the text addresses of his dealers who went to abduct Kururi and Mairu Orihara, but a ringtone filled the room before he could finish. It came not from Shijima’s phone but from one on the counter of the bar.
“…Is that me?” Earthworm wondered. It said the number was unlisted.
Who is it? Maybe…the owner?
She answered the phone, equal parts worry and excitement. “Hello…?”
“…”
The other end of the call was silent. Shijima was curious about this sudden call, too, his fingers still as he listened in.
But just then, he got a call, too, the vibration clear in the quiet room.
“…?”
His call was also from an unlisted number. With trepidation, he answered it.
What he heard was a woman saying, “Hello? Hello?” into her phone, right in front of him.
“…Huh?”
A shiver of cold air slid down his back. Earthworm looked abruptly toward him as she heard his grunt through the phone.
Neither of them understood what was happening. Then, after a few seconds, a third voice entered the call.
“Hey.”
“Who?” “…Who’s there?” they asked, Shijima and Earthworm hearing each other through the phone and the air.
The other person on the call announced in a clear, crisp voice, “I’m glad the three-way call seems to be working. I’ve never tried it before.”
“Who are you…?”
“Oh, sorry, sorry. We haven’t spoken yet, have we? But you both know me pretty well, I’d say.”
“…No way.”
Both underbosses got the same nasty premonition.
And then, as though measuring the perfect amount of time for his payoff, the man on the phone introduced himself.
“Would you recognize the name…Izaya Orihara?”
Both of the listeners heard a rolling sound then, right near their eardrums. It was the sound of muscles tensing due to their jaws clenching.
&nb
sp; Why now?
Why did he have their numbers?
But the situation was so bizarre, so unexpected, that they were both late to arrive on the most important question of all.
In unison, they turned their heads, ever so slowly, toward a single spot in the room.
To the man with the burlap sack over his head, who had been silent all day.
Again in unison, they wondered the exact same crucial question.
Then…
…who is he?
At that moment, Ikebukuro, office
“Huh? That’s weird…”
“What is it, Tanaka?” asked his coworker.
Tom Tanaka looked around and answered, “I’m supposed to be on the night shift with Shizuo and Vorona…but I don’t see Shizuo anywhere…”
Vorona was scanning the area right there with him, but there was no sign of the man in the distinctive bartender outfit anywhere in the office.
“He’d better not have gotten involved in more funny business.”
In a dark place
“You’ve both got rather extreme methods, wouldn’t you say? Abduction! Are we going to find out that you’ve been responsible for a number of missing detectives, too?” said the voice on the phone.
Earthworm hardly registered it.
Who…? If the man on the phone is Izaya Orihara, then…who’s under this sack?
She knew Izaya Orihara’s face from photos. It was this source that she’d been using to envision the face of the man under her care, enjoying his potential expressions. And now the entire basis for her actions had been overturned.
Numerous possibilities came and went inside her head, but they were all groundless fantasies that melded into the swirl of chaos, which, combined with the unexpected arrival of Heaven’s Slave, took her brain into a deep, dark place.
“…”
Durarara!!, Vol. 9 Page 13