The Glow of Tomorrow’s Sun

Kurama was enjoying his drink and the company of a girl whose name he kept almost catching between the beats of the rhythm that thumped around the club. As he leant in for one final attempt to decipher it, some sort of commotion rose up from the back of the main lounge. By the time he looked up, Rinako was walking straight past his table bolt upright, her unblinking eyes fixed on the exit.

‘Ok-ok-ok-ok-ok-ok-ok-ok-ok-ok—’ she didn’t seem to be speaking to anyone in particular.

Kurama swung round the table, glancing about. ‘Heeey sweetheart! You feeling better now?’ He looked around, making the universal ‘too-much-to-drink’ gesture.

‘Leaving.’

‘Hey…’ the forever-to-be nameless girl called after him. He turned back and shrugged helplessly. A cluster of guards standing in disarray around the booths on the far side of the club caught his eye.

He span back to Rinako. ‘So what err—what’s going on?—Like, I mean, uh, status report—‘

‘Shut up. Leaving now.’ Her eyes were fixed on the door.

‘Yeahhh, I got that part—’ he was looking back again to where the situation with the guards seemed to be developing, a few of them speaking over comms devices.

Rinako carried on walking, her pace unrelenting. Kurama looked down and noticed now that her skirt was torn. And the silenced gun hanging in her hand at her side.

‘Woahhhhhhhh!’ He thrust his arm through hers and pulled alongside her, smiling broadly at anyone they passed.

A crash came from behind them and he whirled around, shocked moans passing through the crowd. A door behind the booths was swinging open and staggering through it, half crouched, was a man in a gaudily stained white coat. He was holding the side of his face.

His eyes widened. ‘Did… you… ’

Before he could finish the injured man had pointed in their direction and the crowd of guards were looking over. They started pulling weapons from their jackets. It was like watching the limbs of a great spidery machine converting to hostile mode.

Kurama started moving backwards after Rinako, his eyes glued to the scene. ‘Ok. Leaving. Leaving now.’

A roar came from one of the booths. A smaller figure in a pink shirt and dark shades was looking directly at them, his arm extended.

The spidery machine broke apart and began to hurtle toward them.

***

Outside, the cool night air sobered him up in an instant. There was still a queue but no one paid any attention as they jumped down the steps and hit the street running. Rinako struggled a couple of times with her boa before tearing it off then slowed to a brief hop to pull off her heels.

Kurama looked at the twinkling pair of shoes in her hand as they ran, then up at her.

‘They’re Bella Loudins.’ She said, her eyes remaining focused ahead.

The car was only a block away but the guards burst out of the club a few seconds after them, expanding from the door like black smoke from an uncorked bottle. They spilled out onto the street, fingers to their ears, looking in every direction before one pointed after them with a hand clutching a large blade. Half the group set off after them, while the other took the side road to cut them off.

‘Shit. How are we going to lose them?!’

‘Find car.’ Rinako was yanking out her earpiece as Kurama shouted. She looked at the road and walls with suspicion. Every now and then they would flicker, becoming that pink mesh of fibres from the display. She could see the rooms within them, sometimes the forms of people slumped on sofas, looking at holo screens.

A loud whine split the air. Kurama had pulled out his breaker. The guards were now only twenty meters away, the clattering of their footsteps echoing around the street as they closed in on them. Just before they reached the nearest turning he stopped and let off a volley of shots back down the street. Several pneumatic thwooms sounded, like pockets of air exploding around them.

Blurred lines dovetailed and bent as they soared through the air, their whining arcs giving a sickening thud as they impacted in the center of the guards. A couple dropped like ragdolls while those closest to the blasts dived either side, the rest fanning out to take cover behind parked vehicles at the side of the road. Still more piled in from behind to replace those that had fallen.

‘Drak!’ Kurama let out a yelp and shook his hand free of the breaker which went clattering across the street, hissing and giving off some kind of gas. It was only supposed to be discharged once a lock had been acquired and frequency set. Just shooting blindly ran a high risk of blowing the chamber, as he had now demonstrated. The liquid inside the glass vessel on the side of the weapon had already faded. The guards began to creep out of their hiding places and he turned back to the corner. Just in time to see a familiar shape fly into his path.

‘Skit!’

The little disc wobbled in the air, beeping repeatedly, then pulled back into the street from which it had come. Rinako’s barefooted figure followed closely behind it. A moment later she reappeared and pointed to the sky.

‘This bird seems to know the way!’

He stood watching for just a moment as she disappeared back around the corner. Several metallic notes sang out from the chassis of a vehicle parked beside him. One of the guards was standing with a smoking gun. It was all the encouragement he needed to follow after them.

***

They had sprinted through several streets, always taking the side alleys, with Skit’s jittery shadow high up in the air ahead of them. He seemed to wait until the very last moment before deciding on a turning. Kurama was patrolling the road looking down another side street. ‘I think we left it—‘

He felt a hand grab his forearm and yank him into a tiny space between two of the rundown residential buildings.

‘What are you—‘

Rinako pressed a finger against his lips. His eyes widened.

Suddenly, a slew of voices rose up from just beyond where he had been standing. The voices grew louder until through the narrow opening of the passage they could see a group of the suited guards walking down the street, weapons held up or slung over their shoulders.

Once they had passed, and their voices faded he looked back at her. ‘How did you—-I mean, they came from behind the building.’

Rinako simply shook her head.

Over the next few minutes several other patrols passed the passage heading in different directions. They waited in silence, their bodies pressed up against each other, their chests rising and falling as the men came and went. Eventually, only the sound of their breath filled the passage. Aside from the empty scuttling of leaves blowing across the concrete, and the occasional hoot of a distant waste-tug, silence had reclaimed the night.

Kurama looked at Rinako. ‘By the way, is there any reason that there’s a rectangle drawn on your forehead?’

Rinako was staring intensely at a photoelectric conduit line beside him.

‘... snakes.’ She continued to watch the conduit.

His eyes remained on her. ‘Yeah. Can never be too careful of... snakes.’

He extricated himself from her body, stuck his head out of the passage, and looked both ways. On both sides the street was empty, but opposite, in the near distance where the road sloped downward he could make out the top halves of a group of guards. Their weapons hung under their arms, and the tiny glowing points of light-sticks moved around their faces. He pulled his head back inside the passage.

‘Ok—‘

Rinako was nowhere too be seen.

He looked up and on the far side of the passage, saw a silhouetted figure climbing over a low wire fence. Moonlight caught one half of her as she disentangled her skirt from it.

He hissed at her. ‘Where are you—-?’

But she was already halfway across the street on the other side.

He looked back at the guards’ figures talking in the distance.

‘Drak.’

Then followed her quickly back across the passage.

***

They sat behind a low wall, watching the rectangular block of the car.

‘You think they’ve all gone now?’ She asked.

‘I don’t know. You’re the one who seems to have the inside track on everything at the moment.’

They’d been waiting for what seemed like an age. It was no safer behind the wall, with the groups of guards out in the streets. One might run by them any minute.

Kurama looked down, sighed, then stepped out of the shadows into the street. He held his arms out tentatively as if testing for rain, then let out his breath.

‘Well, seems like I haven’t been shot.’ His arms dropped.

As he held up the car key, a figure stepped out from the shadows behind the block.

‘Hello officer.‘ Shining beneath the brim of a dark hat, the green eyes were almost luminous in the dark. An ugly scar stood out on his cheek.

‘You gave us quite a chase. Isn’t that right?’ Either side of him, several suited guards started to emerge from behind the block.

Kurama raised his hands again and took a couple of steps backwards. ‘Heyyy… we were just looking for you.’

‘Really?’ They were advancing toward him now, a single row blocking the street.

Kurama continued to step back. ‘Yeah, I think your barman only gave me a twenty change. I definitely gave him fifty.’

Tanto stopped. He was now close enough that Kurama could see his smile. ‘You’re a funny man.’

Kurama turned his head slightly and whispered. ‘Ok. Go round the side. I have an idea—‘

‘Now here’s what’s going to happen.’ Said Tanto. ‘Firstly, you are going—’ as he spoke, a strange expression replaced the smile on his face. The green eyes looked up to where a line of smoke was rising from a hole in the brim of his hat.

For a few moments everyone in the street fell still.

Then two of the guards dropped to the ground.

Kurama became aware of something and looked to his side where, in the cold glow of the flickering streetlight, Rinako’s wide eyed figure was calmly walking forward. Both of her arms were outstretched, and her finger pulled repeatedly on the trigger of the gun he had seen at her side in the club.

Another of the guards fell. Tanto clutched at his hat and started to back away. ‘If you think—’

Another hole appeared, in the shoulder of his jacket this time, interrupting his shouts. At that moment a tiny disc came swooping down at them from the sky, making every variety of beep, whistle, and wail that its faculties allowed. Tanto covered his head. ‘What the fuck! Run!’

There were several zings from the rectangular block behind them as Tanto and his remaining men scrambled back and into the alleyways on either side of the street.

Rinako stood in the middle of the road, pulling the trigger until the gun was whirring on empty. Her eyes were blazing and her body rising and falling with each heavy breath.

She felt the weight of a hand on her own and frowned.

‘Ok?’

Kurama. It was Kurama.

‘The… crows.’

He looked back down the street. ‘Yeah. The crows are all gone now. Can I have the gun.’

She looked at the weapon in her hand as though only now realising she had been holding it. Her grip loosened and Kurama took it from her gently.

He quickly disengaged the clip, checked inside and exhaled.

‘Let’s get out of here.’

***

‘Yeah, I saw their faces.’ He said. ‘Yes. You chased them all away.’

Kurama pulled the light-stick from his lips, the wind chasing the light-smoke away almost as soon as it appeared. Skit had been chattering continuously for the last ten minutes.

They’d parked up at a spot several levels up that overlooked the river. He’d not planned it, just seemed that a certain distance from the club, or after a certain amount of time had passed, he’d needed to stop the car, and that distance had happened to be several levels up, overlooking the river. There, he had taken the gun that Rinako had fired, wrapped it in a cloth and slid it off the edge of the bridge. He’d watched it drop, shrinking into nothingness somewhere above the vast blurs of recycled data that passed beneath them.

Rinako had sat in the passenger seat of the car the whole time, the door open. It was still night, or at least they were in a ward where it was.

‘Well. Won’t be going back there for a while.’ He said.

She was still silent.

He looked up. ‘You ok? You’ve not said much since we got out of there. As in nothing.’

She gazed over the river. The glow of tomorrow’s sun was already starting to catch the horizon. ‘Thank you.’

He shrugged. ‘What did I do?’

Rinako didn’t answer. A frown crept onto her face. ‘What about—’

He pulled at the light-stick a final time. ‘There was no gun.’

She looked up. ‘But—‘

‘There was no gun. There was no shooting. There’s no back room to the club.’ He flicked the light-stick to the floor, crushed it under his foot watchfully, then drew a heavy breath. He looked in Rinako’s eyes. ‘And yes, you’ll just have to live with it. It’ll get easier in time.’ His expression softened a little and he looked down. ‘There are a lot of bad people in this city. You’re not one of them.’

After they had remained silent for a while, letting the wind and the slow passage of overnight freighters untangle their thoughts, Kurama pushed himself off the breakwater bollard against which he’d been leaning.

‘Well. I guess we’ll have to find some other lead on that woman.’

Rinako looked up. ‘Woman?’

‘The Chinatown victim.’

Recognition flashed across her eyes. ‘Oh—!’

Kurama looked puzzled as she fished around in the little handbag that had somehow remained hanging around her shoulders. After a few moments she pulled a transparent lipstick-case sized cylinder from it, swirls of colour twirling inside.

He squinted in the half light around them. After a few moments, his eyes widened. ‘You got it?’

Rinako continued to hold it out. ‘I took a scan from his core.’

‘But how? I mean, one of them had a gun on you… and he was still conscious.’ He turned to her.

‘It was the mission.’ She said.

He paused. ‘So while the alarms were going off, you were fighting an armed guard, and this Kingfisher guy was trying to call the rest of Tanto’s guys on you, you thought you’d go and take a holo-copy of his records?’

She sat blankly for a moment. ‘It… was the mission.’

Kurama looked into her eyes, trying to see what was behind the clouds of the early morning sky that reflected in them.