The Eye of the Beast

My fingers started to slip on the gritty concrete edge of the pit. I scrabbled frantically, trying desperately to keep from losing my handhold and being pulled under the quicksand.

I started to panic. “Please, just get me out of here!”

Erika looked past me, beyond the pit, taking in the sight of the incredible wealth filling the bunker’s hidden room. Once again, something seemed to flicker in her eyes.

Hayami knew she’d won. Her mouth split into a predator’s grin, all teeth and venom. “We should deliver him to his fate, Erika. The blood of my dead father demands it. And we still hear the cries of our murdered friends.”

Slowly, Erika nodded, then looked down at me. Her beautiful face, the face I’d dreamed about at night, hardened into something both frightening and merciless.

“Erika, no! You’re being manipulated! Don’t let her lie to you, don’t --”

“I --” Her voice caught. “ I can… hardly believe… I once thought of you as a… friend --” She blinked rapidly several times. “No, that’s not true! You are --”

I could see that some kind of struggle was going on inside of her. Holding her head in both hands, she squeezed her eyes shut.

But when she opened them again, they shone red in the dim light of the corridor.

“Erika, no!”

She took a step forward and ground my fingers under her heel. With a strangled cry, I released my hold and sank further into the quicksand. Now only my head was above the surface.

Hayami punched a large red button on the hidden corridor’s wall. A winch whirred. Like a drawbridge coming down over a moat, a steel loading ramp pivoted down from the wall. “Oh, how convenient. Let’s use this to get across, Erika.”

She gave me one last, spiteful smile. “A pity you won’t get to share any of the gold with us, Keisuke. But like you thieves always say, that just leaves more loot for the rest of us.”

The ramp settled into place with a thump, sealing off the opening to the pit.

Before I sank completely under the surface, I heard a sound. It was someone sobbing.

Erika.

“I..can’t --”

Hayami stared at her. “What’s gotten into you? He deserved to die.”

“NO!” Erika screamed. “I won’t let another innocent person die!”

Her staff whipped out and around in an arc. Hayami was taken by surprise. The staff smashed into the side of her head and she crumpled, falling senseless to the floor.

Erika ran to the wall and pressed her palm against the ramp control button. With a groan, the winch started to reverse.

She ran back to the edge of the pit and kneeled down. “Keisuke! Where are you?” Heedless of her long hair falling into the sludge below, she plunged her hand in and felt around in the quicksand.

“No. No, no, no!” She snatched up her staff and used it to probe the quicksand. Her movements became more and more frantic as she encountered no resistance.

She sank to her knees in defeat. Tears spilled down her cheeks, flowing past her fingers as she held her face in her hands and wept.

On the other side of the pit lay an immense fortune in gold, worth more than the national treasuries of some nations. But it meant nothing to her now, and she didn’t spare it a second look.

A sudden crash from the storage area, followed by a thud, startled her. She snatched up her flashlight, shining it over and around the crates.

A cloud of smoke was filling the opening. Looking closer, she saw a cylinder rolling on the floor. Thick white fumes poured out of it.

“Well, that seemed to do the job,” I said with an air of satisfaction. “Uncle laughed at me, saying I’d never need a smoke grenade. But you can’t see the jewel anymore, can you?”

I unfastened the grappling hook I’d used to attach myself to the bottom of the ramp where I’d been hiding, then jumped onto the floor.

I smiled at a stunned Erika, trying my best to act cool. “Hey. You’re back to normal now, right?”

“Wha -- what?” She drew a deep breath, her eyes growing wider. “AHHH!” she shrieked. “Keisuke! You’re alive!” She jumped to her feet.

It was the second best moment of my life when she threw herself into my arms, tears of happiness streaming down her face.

The best was when she kissed me fully on the lips.

I pushed the fake wall back into place, concealing the bunker’s storage room. Now it just looked like an ordinary section of corridor, although a few wisps of smoke trickled out through gaps in the wall’s seams.

And though we had found the biggest pile of gold outside of Fort Knox, we still had business to attend to:

We had to find Takeda and Endo, make sure they were okay.

We had to find a location where we could get a decent cell phone signal. I had a feeling the police might have a few questions for us.

And, there was that other thing.

I held out a handful of zip ties. “Here,” I said to Erika. “You’ll need to secure Hayami. I don’t want her chasing me through the bunker with that sword of hers.” Honestly, that girl could give Jack the Ripper nightmares.

She took the ties but gave me a puzzled look. “I’ll do my best, but doesn’t your line of work give you more experience with tying people up?”

I could feel my face turning red. “That question is wrong on so many levels. Let’s just say that I don’t want to get a reputation for tying up helpless girls, okay?”

So, it was Erika who zip tied Hayami’s wrists and ankles. Just in time, too, as she was stirring around and starting to regain consciousness.

“Keisuke,” Erika said. “I have a question. Why did you use a smoke grenade?”

I was busy wiping sludge off my clothes and equipment. “I wanted to keep you from seeing that jewel. For some reason, it seemed to be affecting your reasoning. And I think it made Hayami’s thought processes even more violent. I don’t think even she would be that homicidal, no matter how dire her circumstances.”

I touched the cut across my chest, remembering who had given it to me. Thankfully, it had been shallow and easily bandaged.

Standing up, I stuffed my handkerchief back in my pocket. “So I used a smoke grenade. I wonder, though, who set the jewel there and why?”

“I think I know why.” She pointed at the wall hiding the gold storage area. “All of that gold needs some kind of security, right? The Antediluvian Shard brings out the worst in anyone, amplifying their negative thoughts and eventually driving them insane.”

She gave me a curious look. “Why didn’t it affect you, Keisuke?”

“After we discovered the bullion, I didn’t look at the jewel or even the gold for very long.” I glanced away, feeling very self-conscious. “I was, uh, looking at you. I wanted to see the look on your face, maybe share in some of your joy.”

I quickly changed the subject. “Erika, you seem to know something about that jewel. The ‘Antediluvian Shard,’ I think you called it. What is it?”

She avoided my eyes, putting a rolled-up sweater under Hayami’s head and making her as comfortable as possible. “Later, Keisuke. I promise I’ll tell you everything.”

“Okay. We’ll talk later.” I rose to my feet and extended a hand to help her up. “Now, let’s find out what’s in the next room.”

As I’d predicted, it was easy to pick the lock on the heavy-duty doors leading to the Eye. But I couldn’t have imagined what we’d find there.

The ceiling of the Eye was domed and enclosed an enormous round chamber the size of a basketball court. Moonlight shone through a jagged circular hole in the roof.

If I had to guess, I’d say it was the main planning and operations room. Old maps of Japan and charts of the area covered the walls. Ugly chunks of concrete with rusty steel rebar jutting out lay scattered along the floor, the result of bombardment during the war.

But in the center of the room, lying on its side like a beached whale, was the transport vehicle used to carry the gold.

It was the biggest armored truck I’d ever seen. Built on a semi-trailer chassis, the truck had apparently fallen through the thin limestone of the room’s ceiling, to crash onto a hill of debris that had plummeted down with the truck.

The vehicle’s rear cargo doors were flung wide. Tire tracks left by the forklift led from the cargo doors down to the short hallway Erika and I were standing in.

Suddenly, a hollow metallic echo came from the wreck. The sound of footsteps.

The steps were slow but heavy, and growing louder as if whoever was making the sounds was getting steadily angrier.

Erika and I looked at each other. “Maybe it’s Takeda or Endo,” she said. Her voice held more hope than conviction.

“Not unless they gained a hundred kilos since we last saw them.” For the first time, I wished Hayami was with us.

Someone, or something, came out of the truck. A huge, misshapen hand clamped onto one of the doors. An unearthly bellow echoed off the walls as the being stepped into the circle of moonlight coming through the shattered roof.

He was easily two meters tall and built as solidly as a stone wall. I couldn’t make out any features, since his face was wrapped in bandages.

“I -- I guess we’ve found our monster,” I gulped.

The giant heard my voice. Roaring incoherently, he stumbled down the rubble then ran toward us, his arms outstretched.

“Erika!” I shouted. “You and Hayami need to get out of here!” I fumbled for my OC launcher. The adrenaline spike I was riding made my movements clumsy.

“No! I’ve abandoned you before, I won’t do it again!” She held her staff like a samurai of old, defiantly holding her ground. Her ancestors would have been proud.

The giant drew closer, his feet pounding so hard I thought I could feel it through the concrete floor.

He ran toward Erika with his mouth open, displaying broken teeth and making that horrible howling noise.

I fired off a series of OC tear gas balls that exploded in puffs of gray powder on and around the giant’s head. Hello, two million units of pain on the Scoville Heat Scale.

Then I grabbed Erika’s hand and ran toward the exit.

The bellowing was replaced with a scream of pain. But the OC didn’t stop the colossus. If anything, the tear gas made him even angrier.

And faster. He reached the doorway first, blocking our exit.

“Hey!” I said. “I’m sorry if we woke you up! We’ll leave now, okay?”

I could see dark eyes behind the dirty bandages wound around his head. There was little of humanity or even intelligence reflected there. Only something that looked like a bright red spark.

Erika attacked, thrusting her staff forward in a strike aimed at the giant’s eyes. He grabbed the staff and picked Erika off the ground, tossing her over his shoulder and high in the air.

She crashed into the ground behind him and I heard an ugly crack. Erika screamed. She tried to sit up, cradling her leg.

The giant howled again, but this time there was an edge of savage satisfaction in the sound.

Any fear I’d felt before vanished, replaced by a murderous rage. I growled and reached for my sword before remembering I’d lost it in the quicksand.

Without another word he charged me, closing the distance between us in an instant. There was no time to pull out another weapon.

But there was a desperation tactic I’d learned from Uncle, taught to the police of a particularly tough district in pre-war China.

As the giant reached out for me, I grabbed his collars, dropped my center of gravity, and smashed my foot into the pit of his stomach. His speed and mass kept him moving, over me instead of into me. I fell on my back and used my hips as a pivot point, then kicked up and away, launching the enormous thug through the air.

My friends who knew judo would have criticized my style and technique. But it worked.

Breathing heavily I jumped to my feet, just in time to see him crash onto the ground. I’d hoped to see a length of concrete rebar sticking out from his torso, but no such luck.

Instead, he came to his feet, unharmed. He shook his head as if trying to clear it then moved toward me again, although a bit more cautiously than before.

“I’ll bet that hurt, didn’t it, you piece of crap!” I shouted. He froze in surprise as I closed the distance between us, holding up clenched fists. “Want some more?”

I don’t know what would have happened if we’d continued fighting. It would have ended badly for me, I’m sure.

A pop followed by a boom came from the area around the armored truck. Something small and black shot across the room and smashed into the giant, causing him to stagger backwards. Two more pop-booms sounded, and I watched as he was knocked onto his back. The third projectile had impacted his forehead, apparently knocking him unconscious.

Good. I hope it shattered his skull. One of the projectiles, its force spent, rolled nearby. I scooped it off the ground.

It was a rubber bullet, one of the big ones used by riot police. I threw it to the ground and continued toward the downed colossus.

I heard a fourth pop. Something struck me between the shoulder blades, knocking me to the ground. My head bounced off of the concrete and everything went black…