‘He’s on our side??’

A noise to her right drew Rinako’s attention away from gold-head (—yes, gold-head—). It was Kurama. He was strolling casually out of cover, his breaker holstered. He pulled off his helmet and rubbed the back of his head, looking for all the Stack as though he’d just wandered into an off-duty cops’ lounge bar.

What are youuudooooing…. ?!!?

‘Hey.’ he called out. ‘You’re not gonna leave any for your friends?’

The part of her brain that had recently retired had now gone off-grid. It wasn’t answering calls, receiving mails and had switched off the machine.

The two fiery globes of light in the creature’s eyes were starting to dim like hot coals submerged in water. They shrank to dots, flecks of gold in a carbon sediment. It was at least a more civilised look, though she wasn’t sure exactly what civilisation she was thinking of. A measure of intelligence seemed to grow in the cooling climate of its gaze. It looked over to Kurama, who was examining the remains on the ground.

A long dark tongue, agile enough that it could have been a creature all of its own, slid from its mouth and swiped at something around its jaw.

‘Oh, that’s nice. I bet you get invited to all the fancy dinner parties.’ He stepped over part of the fallen geist to stand in front of it. Rinako could see now that it stood about the same height as Kurama, though the lithe body carried an air of vast strength. Possibly because she’d just seen it murdering a giant geist.

‘Hshhhhh, late as ever, Saaatttooo.’ It hissed. The black eyes looked down to the breaker at his side. ‘Brought your toy, I seee.’ It made a noise like a brush sweeping concrete, which she realised was something approximating a laugh. Its tongue danced out seemingly at random as it spoke, like a ribbon blowing in wind.

It can speak…

Kurama waved a hand behind him, and it took her a few moments to realise it was directed at her. She had been crouching by the wire fence, out of sight and almost forgotton she was there, so absorbed had she been in observing them. It was like two characters in a movie looking up out of the screen. She climbed to her feet and walked over cautiously. On the way, she passed the geist, now little more than a pile of ashen and indistinct parts.

The wind was stronger in the larger street, agitating a fire burning in a metal, brick-filled barrel at its corner. The light danced on gold-head’s face. Up close, its skin was reptilian-looking, covered in hexagonal scales, though they were strangely uniform in apperance. There were two small punctures also which she took to be nostrils.

‘This one likess to loook.’ The tiny dots of its eyes fixed on her.

‘Leave her alone, Salamon.’ Said Kurama. ‘It’s her first week.’

It continued to look at her for a few moments, a growling noise coming from somewhere deep within its throat.

‘Salamon…?’ She tried to speak quietly, hoping the wind would cover her words. ‘He’s on our side??’

‘Well… I wouldn’t go that far.’ Kurama pulled another light-stick from his pocket and sheltered it from the wind with a hand as he put it to his mouth. He tapped the side of it and the end started to glow.

Again, the growling.

Rinako was swiftly reevaluating whether she still liked their side.

Salamon raised his head and sniffed the air, the little holes of his nostrils puckering repeatedly.

‘… but he was… I mean, the feeding…’ She whispered.

‘Yeahhh, they do that.’ Said Kurama.

‘They?’

‘Later.’

She was about to ask another question but he frowned and shook his head, the green dot of the light-stick glowing brightly between his fingertips. Something caught her eye beside him. Little plumes of dust were rising from ground, like miniature whirlwinds. The next moment, she felt a gust of wind hit her like a block of sandstone. Kurama’s hair whipped up in the air, and a barrage of noise and light erupted from the sky above buildings opposite. The little plumes had become great clouds of dirt and debris swirling about them, the whole street now flooded in brilliant white light.

Salamon was smiling, his head raised. As much as she’d accepted him being a him rather than an it, the tiny spots of gold in his eyes were a reminder of that emptiness she’d seen in him just moments ago, the pulsating of his throat...

She shielded her eyes with a hand. The lights above separated into distinct cones roving the street, casting tortured black shadows of everything that tilted and twisted with their motion. She spun away for a second as a front of dust blew against her then turned back. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, after which she saw dark shapes in the air behind the lights, the rotation of huge vertical blades. Extraction boats. Within moments the entire street was transformed into a military operation. Ropes dropped from the boats into the dust clouds that now filled the street, the noise of voices and ziplines audible behind the constant wup-wup-wup of the blades.

Amid this chaos, there grew a singular sound, a slow steady clipping, like the ticking of a clock interjecting into a dream. The unmistakeable sound of military boots on concrete. A shadow grew and darkened within the clouds of dust, the detailing of long leather gloves, a cloak and utility belt, all in black, emerging as the footsteps increased in volume. The footsteps stopped suddenly, the clock stopped ticking, and in front of them stood the figure of a woman in a shining black jumpsuit, her thick dark hair hanging about a face obscured for the most part by deep shadows, except for the eyes, from within which blazed metallic violet irises. Shadows passed left and right in the distance behind her, the hunched figures of soldiers of some sort scurrying over the scene like ants.

As the dust began to disperse Rinako saw that two other figures were standing not far behind the woman. One, a huge barrel chested male, whose grey skin gave him the appearance of having been carved from a block of granite, and the other wild haired, with a body so hunched, long hanging arms and club like hands, that it was hard to tell if this was his natural form or some kind of crippling ruination of it. The first was scanning the rooves of the buildings, a huge rifle held up resting over his shoulder, while the second twitched and scratched at its neck impatiently. Both wore the black uniforms.

‘Looks like we bailed you out again.’ Said the woman against the busy backdrop behind her.

‘Yeah, yeah, Sal’s already started with that one.’

‘When are you going to give it up, Kurama? Put your talents to some use again.’

He half-snorted at the last part.

She looked now at Rinako for a few moments before turning to Salaman.

‘Report.’

Salamon began speaking to her in hushed tones while she stood and listened quietly.

Granite-man was still busy looking over the facades of the buildings but his companion, who resembled some kind of hyena-human hybrid had stalked up to them. Its forearms were greatly elongated and bent horribly with ragged brown fur hanging between the elbow and wrist. The wupp-wupp of the extraction boat blades started to slow down, making events seem somehow as if they were unfolding in slow motion.

‘Hey, who’s this?’ Hyena-man’s voice was gruff and edgy, its… his breathing hard and uneven. The boat lights illuminated his face intermittently between the spinning of the vertical blades. The contrast was so extreme that his features became stark and disjointed, just angles and shapes rather than anything that housed any character.

‘Behave yourself.’ The woman had turned from Salamon for a moment to address him. He made a grumbling noise but fell silent, save for the rasping of his breath.

The extraction-boats now hovered only a couple of meters above ground and Rinako could make out white Special-Ops markings on the side of one, just beside the up and down arrows that were the logo of VisAge. She strained to hear the conversation that was going on between Salamon and the mysterious woman just in front of the craft, but his voice was obscured by the sound of the blades, and she could pick out only flashes. The woman turned away from him and she caught the words ‘… there wass… ’ and ‘…something elsse to discussss…’ as Salamon looked over to them.

The woman looked back at him with a puzzled expression for a moment then glanced in the same direction as him and added. ‘Ok. Back in decon.‘

He hissed at this. Then in one movement his body seemed to liquify, leaving only traces of black smoke where he had been standing, and a few seconds later reappeared at the hatch of the nearest boat. She saw small patches of the black smoke at various points between, bent at right angles like the zig zag pattern she had observed earlier. The two other figures filed back to the ships, granite-man still looking silently around the rooftops as he went, while the hyena… bat… werewolf… type-thing, loped alongside him, his oversized knuckles almost scraping the ground.

The woman returned to them. ‘We’ll return to base to file a report.’ There was a strange awkwardness to the officious tone.

Kurama squinted against the lights. ‘Yeah. I guess so.’

She looked at him then back at Rinako a moment. ‘Well. Good to see you Kurama.’

He smiled. ‘Sure.’

She paused as though something remained unsaid then turned and walked back toward the boats. 

Kurama kicked absently at the ground.

The extraction boats lifted off, the wup-wup-wup of the vertical blades rising before starting to fade. Clouds of dust stirred then sank again as the air began to settle. Rinako caught a final glimpse of Salamon’s gold headed figure shrinking in the night sky as he stood clutching the edges of the open hatchway of one of the vehicles, before the boat turned and that image too had gone. Soon the street was left as though nothing happened. She saw that the body of the geist had gone too. They were left alone. Kurama was stamping and rubbing his hands against the cold. She had a strange feeling, as though they had intruded on someone else’s workplace.

For the first time she felt what it was to be a Prospr.

***

Neither of them spoke for most of the drive back, lost in their respective thoughts or the absence of them. The city slid by the windows like reflections in an untroubled river.

‘What—-‘ Rinako eventually broke the long silence.

‘Altrs.’ Kurama had his eyes fixed on the road.

She frowned.

‘They haven’t made it available for general disclosure.’

She no longer felt annoyed at his seeming ability to read her thoughts. ‘They?’

‘VisAge.’ He said. ‘It’s always VisAge.’

She let this settle in her mind. ‘But why keep it secret?’

The lights of the road ahead reflected in Kurama’s eyes like a stream of accelerated particles. ‘You saw him. You think people would be happy to see where their taxes are going?’

She had to admit it was a good argument. She looked out the window as they passed the Cassini. The digital river was really just a channel of waste information, pouring out through the city’s cheapest districts.

Kurama opened the window on his side. ‘You had air in Ikeda?”

She looked at him.

‘You know,’ he said. ‘Real air. Not canned or from the pumps.’ There was agitation in his voice, and his fingers tapped against the door. Normally he just waited until she answered rather than repeating himself.

She turned back to her window. ‘Yes.’

The window at her aunt’s house had looked over the mountains. She smiled. The air there was so fresh, clothes would dry on the washing line in a matter of hours. She remembered pale cardigans hanging, jumping trying to catch the sleeves as her mother stood with a basket, a peg held between her teeth. It barely seemed real here. The fading rays of another world.

‘Tell me something.’ He said. ‘Why did you leave? You got real air, grass, trees, water, flowers even.. not this.. ‘ he gestured with a hand toward the great channel of recycled light that ran beside them as if words would not suffice. An optical forest had been planted beside it in an attempt to beautify the area. Most of the leaves flickered with videos, the kind that would play on repeat. Advertisements got everywhere here, like rainwater after a storm. Her eyebrows furrowed as she noticed two figures in the forest, a small boy walking hand in hand with an elderly looking man in a cap.

‘There are things they don’t have there.‘

‘Not much.’ He said.

She looked away from the river. ‘Maybe.’

He glanced at her before giving a quiet grunt of assertion. The rest of the journey there was only the steady thrum of the engines and the passage of the road beneath them.