Chapter 13:

What Happened To Raki

Tokyo5: Prosper’s Law


‘This really is most ingenious.’ The doctor returned to the room, walked across it and waved a small egg-shaped vessel, swimming with smokey liquid data.

Rinako’s eyes followed him across the room.

He paused as though addressing someone. ‘—A completely perfect copy, no data blemishes at all. You must have compiled… seventy or eighty layers.’

He turned to her with an expression of genuine enthusiasm. ‘I’m sorry—it’s just—’

He pushed his glasses up on his nose, ‘I’ve been working with—let’s say, limited assistance. I’d love to meet the person responsible. They must be—well, they’re very talented.’

He shook the chip again like a trophy and went to the back of the room where she saw him place it in a drawer.

Yeah, I’ll be sure and pass that on... What was going on? He hadn’t had an opportunity to stick her with any kind of needle. Her mind raced back through all the readings he had taken from her body but there had been no moment in which he could have snuck anything into her system. She tried to lift her fingers but it was as though they were nailed to the armrests.

As long as he kept talking, maybe there was a chance. She tried to whisper into the earpiece but found that only a rough breathing noise issued from her mouth.

The doctor looked back. ‘Oh, you’ll find that’s been cut off. The frequency ducker is really quite impressive. But the algorithm that allows it to remain hidden from scanners can also be used to target it... if you have the signature.’

He washed his hands in a gleaming steel sink and shook them. ‘Please don’t blame yourself. I’ve been doing this a long time. After a while you come to know where you need to protect yourself. I’m sure you’re an excellent operative.’

Yeah, that’s a real comfort…

Again, she tried to wriggle free of the invisible bonds. It was as though a seperate ghostly version of herself had separated from the dead weight that laid on the chair.

He was now drying his hands on a white cloth. ‘I assume the idea was to ride back up the signal. Once I’d plugged into the shell-persona installed around your data core, whoever’s piggy-backing the feed can start pulling information from mine, or planting their own. Meanwhile, I just engage with the shell, running the id checks without realising what’s happening or that it’s not the real you…’

He turned to her suddenly. ‘—-Who is it? The Yakamotos? TeraPharma - Stack knows they wouldn’t leave me alone… ’

He looked at her eyes. ‘Well, I don’t suppose it matters either way.’

He smiled briefly and turned back to the work surface against the wall.

Rinako could hear the chinking of metal as he foraged around in a storage drawer, her eyes following him.

‘Interesting thing about core-scans. You don’t actually need to penetrate the dermis. The needle is there to replicate the act but there is no actual inside or outside in light-space, just areas that recognise each other as such. It’s enough to trick the internal body into thinking it is exposed. All you need is a conductive medium in the blood.’

She looked up at the blue light.

‘Ahh.’ He had turned and followed her gaze to the ceiling. ‘I see you noticed our little contraption.’

He squinted. ‘Perhaps we should change the fitting. I told them it would be visible.’ There was some kind of metallic instrument in his hand.

‘You see—we can flash a tracing pattern to it that will react to any differently encoded parts, upgrades or prostheses. It will have access to any part of the body that is supplied with blood. Once the circulatory system is compromised it’s quite a simple matter, anything capable of projecting low frequency light will do.’ He was still staring at the blue light. ‘It’s fascinating really. One simple signal can highlight anything outside of a certain range. Or deactivate it. The body’s motor system, for example.’

Keep talking, asshole.

He sat on a stool with wheeled feet facing her. ‘Now, I really must apologise for this. If it were up to me… well… you understand I’m sure.’

He was pulling on a pair of scrubs. ‘If it’s any comfort, most of what we are able to harvest will be put to good use. Not by…’

He looked up to where the guard was standing. ‘Through higher channels. To those that need it.’

Rinako saw now the instrument he had held earlier. Along one side was a wicked looking serrated edge. She felt her heart begin to race. It was like the muffled beat of the club from earlier. She wished she could go back to that moment. Turn around and tell Kurama it was a bad idea. Blame it on the outfit, anything.

‘Now keep still for me. We don’t want another Raki.’ He was leaning in close to her now. She could hear his slow steady breathing.

Kurama. Kurama, where are you, you idiot?? Chizuru???

She felt something sharp touching her forehead.

A liner. He was marking something out. Also not good.

‘I have always wanted to see the inside—’ she felt the liner tip moving in a straight line across her forehead, ‘of one of these high resolution templates. Shell-personae tend to be two or three layers at most, good for getting through a light scan at the holo-metro but not much else.’

Wait, she could feel that. She wasn’t imagining it. Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing right now…

This is something else. Whoever you’re working for really wanted to keep you safe.’ She felt the line continuing around to make a box.

He turned back for a moment to dump the liner in a trolley with a clang and take another instrument.

Rinako seized the opportunity to try to raise her head. She could feel the sensation in the area around her neck again.

‘—Just dont get a chance here, you know. Most of the dregs that crawl in are so loaded up on stims it’s like sculpting with sludge from the refuse pits.’

She lifted a finger experimentally. It rose a tiny distance from the armrest. Not much use unless he has a fear of being pointed at...

He wheeled himself closer on the stool so that his face obscured the ceiling fan. Several other attachments had fanned out from his glasses on miniature arms, one shining a focused beam of purple light down toward her. Behind him a display screen had risen from the trolley on an articulated limb. As he moved his head, the beam of light shifted and the angle of the fuzzy image on the screen changed. It looked like the inside of some kind of cave system, with bright spots on the walls like precious minerals.

She could see the image on the display repeated in reverse on an overlay on one of his lenses, his eye swimming behind it like some deep sea predatory fish. His other eye was shut tight magnified in the other lens. ‘Real craftsmanship…‘ He shook his head.

She closed her eyes.

An image of home was the first thing she saw. The house in Gokayama before she’d moved to her aunt’s. The kitchen, her mother’s back silhouetted against the window in front of the sink. She wished she could bury herself in this memory. Then, at the window in front of her mother there appeared the giant white-blue-black circles of an eye gazing in at her. It blinked once.

‘Do you know what makes the Kingfisher unique?’ The doctor’s voice came from all around her. She heard creaking as though the wooden beams of the house were being pried apart. ‘People think of them as having blue markings. But the blue pigment is actually structural. Do you understand?’

She could hear the clang of different instruments being taken from the trolley.

‘The colour is structural. A physical arrangement of transparent fibres that create the appearance of the colour blue. Like a spell, or a line of code. You type in a very specific arrangement of symbols, and what comes out is a recognisable image. There is no blue in the Kingfisher’s feathers. Yet there is no visible code in what we see. The blue exists in our eyes. Or more correctly: in our minds.’

Her breathing rasped in her head, her heartbeat coming faster and harder. She could lift all the fingers of her hand now, like they were pulling free of quicksand. The image of the house was starting to come apart, light entering at its seams as the walls, floor and ceiling began to twist and separate. Her mother tilted like a two dimensional cutout.

‘People think I adopted that name because of the long bill, diving for prey. Something like a surgical blade, I suppose. But—’ He stopped. ‘What the—’

Rinako opened her eyes.

The doctor was frowning. He leant back to switch tools in the tray, this time his hand fishing around for a while. The purple light issuing from his lens was now closer to pink and much brighter. On the display she saw the caverns were lit up, that their walls were actually tightly-knit meshes of fibres of light.

Then she noticed the walls of the operating room were moving slightly, like leaves on the surface of water. They seemed to be floating independently of each other.

‘Drak. Where is it?’ He turned around and searched in the trolley’s tray.

The display flickered and for a moment she saw a slender woman’s body sitting cross legged. In place of her head her slim neck rose into a huge mechanical tree like structure with cables projecting all over its surface.

There was a burst of static followed by a single phrase:

‘Open your eyes.’

Chizuru.

Her eyes flicked open. This time for real.

The doctor was holding up a small circular saw in one hand. He had just enough time to form an expression of bewilderment, then Rinako had shoved the hand back into his face.

He fell back flailing, indigo blood spraying in an arc across the room.

She slid off the side of the chair and kicked the trolley into the smaller guard who was reaching for his gun. Surgical tools exploded into the air, where they glittered and became a fountain of foam that crashed to the ground and began to spread as liquid. The walls seemed to be shifting but only slightly now, as if more with the threat of motion than motion itself. She watched the pool of liquid spreading across the floor. The reflection of the ceiling fan span in its surface.

The doctor reached up, one hand clutching his face. She saw that his free hand was a few inches from a heavy lever on the wall.

Behind her, the guard was recovering. His gun lay on the floor between them.