Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The dark of night fell upon the city, and I had another job to go do. It was the single most profitable job I ever did, happening once a month. It was located at the Port of Tokyo, in the city of Koto-ku. I made my way to the very last berth along the length of the Aomi Container Terminal.

Fastened tightly to the wharf was a super-freighter cargo ship, the name on the back reading “The Igor.” Parked ten meters from the gangway up to the ship were two SUVs.

Seven guys were standing around between them, smoking, and not doing anything. If a person couldn't tell those guys were yakuza just from a glance, they'd probably be shark food before they knew what happened. They were dressed in nothing but button-ups, t-shirts, undershirts, and tattoos on display. There was nothing a civilian would consider “nice” between any of them.

They saw me getting closer and recognized me thanks to the overhead lighting. The one in charge, a low-ranking lieutenant for the Yoshida Clan walked up to me.

“Hey, Yamato!” He greeted me in a friendly tone.

Unlike some, the Yoshida Clan wasn't going to give me work without a name. That being said, I wasn't looking to join up, so it wasn't like I needed to pass a background check. The first phony name that came to mind was the one I'd given. I didn't know if he believed it, and I didn't care.

The guy in front of me called himself “Yukimura,” like the legendary samurai. Not his real name either. He was alright, as far as yakuza went. He hadn't given me too hard a time when I'd first come around offering my services, and he'd agreed to up my pay a few times since. If I'd had any friends, he'd almost have qualified.

“Come on, let's get this done.” Clapping his hand on my back as he said it.

The eight of us together ascended the ramp in single file. On the deck of the ship, the captain met us. In contrast to the ship's name, its captain was an elderly Frenchman somewhere in his sixties. I had no idea of the story explaining the discrepancy. He and Yukimura shook hands and exchanged a few pleasantries. It always annoyed me to have to wait for them to finish chatting.

“Here you go, boy.”

The captain handed me his personal smartphone, containing a copy of the ship's manifest. My job was as straightforward as it was delicate. I needed to erase the containers bringing in the Yoshida's illegal wares from the manifest, and its corresponding copies on the company's home computer. Once that was done, there would be no record of their entering the country, making them untraceable.

I cradled the phone in my left hand. With my right, I made a fist and held it out in front of the screen. With the mental command, the tubules came out from between my second and third knuckles and connected to the phone. The mod had been installed two years earlier. They'd put a chip at the base of my skull, and the tubules into my hand so that when I attached them to any computer-run device, I could mentally navigate the depths of code. It'd cost me my first year's earnings, but it made the process of bypassing firewalls and altering files almost child's play.

The captain had left a note on the screen of which containers were to be deleted. I found them in the manifest, and then dove deeper, locating their root data clusters within the file. Permanently deleting something wasn't as easy as some people thought. I first deleted the entries themselves, then overwrote their locations with inconspicuous text files with notes on other containers in the shipment. Next was the record of where the entries were stored, and I then manually rearranged the data clusters to great pains so that if it happened to come under scrutiny, it would look unaltered.

The last thing I did was to use the connection my tubules afforded me to trace the communication path of the file not only to its point of origin but to every other IP address to which it was sent. I created a set of instructions for everything I'd just done and sent a virus I'd written myself which would cause the same changes in every other system the manifest inhabited. It was a long job, but I finished it with confidence I'd done it thoroughly.

My tubules reeled back in, and I handed the smartphone back to the captain.

“It's done. Same drill as usual.” I said.

Yukimura smiled and reached for his wallet. “Nice work. You definitely earn your pay.”

He was just handing the money over to me when it started. A strobe lamp blazed on, casting blinding light down on all of us, while total silence continued from its point of origin.

“Stealth copter! Don't look up or the cameras will get your face!” Were my thoughts.

The crack of static announced a loudspeaker's coming to life, and an authoritative voice boomed out of it.

“This is the Special Assault Team. You have no way to escape. Lay down your weapons and surrender peacefully!”

“Yeah, right!” Yukimura shouted.

He pulled his gun, and a second later, I heard the tiny clack, almost like a firecracker, which was the sound of a sonic wave being fired. With the transition of humankind to cybernetic skeletons, bullets became obsolete for killing. Sonic weapons had become the norm the world over. The Japanese model utilized technology that sent out sound waves meant to cause molecules to increase vibrational speed so they would break away, causing their targets to rupture and break where hit.

Glass exploded, making me shield my head. Shards of strobe light tinkled down onto me, shots rang out, and a full-blown gun battle erupted. Four meters to my left, one of the yakuza goons got hit right in the head. His eyes filled with blood, the cerebral hemorrhage killing him instantly.

As a second stealth copter sidled up, everyone scattered, looking for cover. Intermingling with the cracks of sonic blasts were the wails of sirens, distant, but drawing closer. Abandoning the yakuza, I ran down the ramp. I wasn't going to die for them. Back on the wharf, the cop's cars were gaining ground fast. I'd never have gotten past them, and the yakuza SUVs would be equipped with blood-readers, to stop someone like me from taking one.

The end of the wharf became my goal. My only chance was to jump off and swim for it. I was close enough to feel the waft of the water's cold when two police boats came rolling up like attack dogs on the charge. A blind man could have seen what was coming next. The cops had been making a lot of progress lately, but not many arrests.

I jumped to my right with everything I had a split second before multiple waves came for where I'd been. While still in the air, I pulled my gun from my pants and got it around into position. I landed hard on my shoulder and rolled over myself once, back up to one knee, and fired. My shots found their marks, taking out the boat's spotlights. I retrained my line and shot again for the lamps over my head.

A second after I was protected by a short veil of darkness, I turned and ran again. The police cars coming to a stop left me no choice but to go back up the ramp to the ship. On deck again, I could see that officers in full tactical gear had repelled down from the stealth copters. The scene in front of me was one seen a million times, in real life and fiction.

I'd come back up on the side where the yakuza had cover. Two more of them died in front of me. They were hit, and one of them had his clavicle bone burst from his chest. Both of their mouths spewed fountains of blood. I didn't waste a second even thinking of helping them.

I sped back to the accommodation section of the ship, where the crew lived during voyages. I needed to get to the interior. The first door I found was locked, but that wasn't about to stop me. My gun wasn't standard. I'd customized it with the barrel from a junker European Union pistol I'd found in a pawn shop one day. Over there, instead of sonic waves, their guns used a narrowing, funnel design so that the sonic emission came out needle-thin, power compressed, and able to punch right through most things.

I lifted my arm to protect my face and fired. The shot went straight through the door's latch. I ripped it open and ran in. The corridor was so tight that I could have reached to touch both walls. Not too far in, only about ten running strides, I found the stairs that I wanted.

Halfway through my turn for the lower decks, I fell onto my back, yelling out as the agony detonated within me. The pain was like nothing I'd ever experienced before. Searing, blistering, tumultuous, it racked through me. I knew something had to have been broken within my right foot, and maybe the tibia too. My only consolation was that I couldn't feel my socks soaking, so I knew nothing had busted out.

One of the SATs had reached the doorway I'd forced open, seen me, and taken his shot. I don't know if he'd been trying to only disable me, or if the luck of turning at just the right moment had caused his wave to only graze me, but that didn't matter. I'd only given half a second's thought to my foot, and then I aimed my gun and double-tapped. My aim had been to eat a hole through his heart, but the pain must have thrown my eye off. My shots nailed him in the throat, where his armor was weaker.

Through pulsating grief, I pushed myself upright. The pain in my foot and ankle was so bad, that I could put almost no weight on them at all. My gun went into the front of my pants so I could grab onto the stair railings with both hands. I tottered down the stairs, my foot dragging almost totally slack behind me.

Down to the “P” deck, the hallways weren't any different from the ones on the higher floor. The target I'd keyed on was to use one of the emergency exits on the side of the ship facing the water to get away. I didn't know everything about cargo ships, but I'd familiarized myself with all the best ways to escape, just in case.

I found the door for the under-deck passage and pried it open. It was nothing but a long hall with continuous, metal supports extending inward on either side. It connected the accommodation section to the engine room. I ambled through it as quickly as I could.

About a third of the way through, my ears caught the unmistakable clunks of metal hitting metal. My mind spiraled through deductive reasoning, telling me that the other SATs had found their slain comrade, and used the tech in their goggles to track the path of my footsteps. They'd followed me to the under-deck passage, and thrown in gas grenades. I could already see it coming towards me, filling the hall.

“Cop procedure means tranq gas. My mask!”

Reaching for my satchel, I fumbled with the tie holding it closed, gaining maybe half a second's grace between my getting the mask in place, and the gas smothering me. It clouded over everything, creating an impermeable fog I had no hope of seeing through.

There was no way I could have outrun the cops in there, in my state, so I needed to take care of them. My advantages were that they'd wait a couple of minutes for the gas to take effect, and they'd be expecting to find me out cold. My disadvantages were their goggles would allow them to see through that mist perfectly, and there was no place in the corridor I could hide for long.

I dove into my satchel again, feeling for my ball of foil. Taking it out, I brought it close to my face so I could see to unwrap it and extract the microdot phone.

“Activate anti-theft mode.” Was my order.

Three taps on its surface cemented the order, so I placed it down on the floor in front of me. Concealing myself behind one of the hall's metal supports several meters further down, I pulled my gun. The next step was to wait.

I don't know how to express the anxiety I felt during those two minutes. At the time, it almost seemed to me like my heartbeat was echoing off the metal walls, giving my position away. Nerve-wracking as it was, I was too determined to get out of there alive and free to let it hinder me.

I heard footsteps approaching. It was three pairs of feet, moving at a steady pace, with heavy treads. The sound of their progress told me they believed the gas had gotten me. When they came within arm's reach of it, my phone's security feature kicked in.

“Unauthorized proximity detected! Unauthorized proximity detected!”

That was my moment. Trusting in my distraction, I turned out from my hiding place to face them. I still couldn't see them through the gas, but by taking into account the then-current average height for a fighting age male born between lower-middle, to middle-lower classes, and assuming they'd deployed in standard, triangle covering formation, I took an educated guess to where all their center masses would be. I double-tapped my trigger, adjusted my line, and did it again twice over less than a second after I'd stepped from cover. The sound of three bodies collapsing rang out.

A sigh had almost left me when a sonic wave traveling in an upward trajectory went through my left shoulder. For the second time that night, monstrous pain sped its way through me. My whole arm fell limp, and I couldn't move it at all. I'd barely been able to keep hold of my gun with my right hand. All nimbleness lost, I turned toward the far-off exit of the passage, making my body move as quickly as it could.

“Officers down. Repeat, officers down. Immediate backup and medical assistance required on 'P' deck!” Echoed from behind.

There was no time to look back. I had to keep going. I reached the end of the passage, pushed the handle for the door down, and myself almost off my one good foot from opening it.

Just outside the engine control room, I saw the first sign directing me towards the emergency escape hatch. Thirty years before, a defect in the new line of freighters had caused many to sink with all hands lost. Ever since, emergency escapes with quick-action releases for the hatch of the exterior hull had been standard.

I wasn't far off, and I was out of the gas, but the time it'd taken me to cover the passageway meant the remaining cops were catching up. Hobbling along the hall, my eyes found the turn to head starboard. The signs were all easy to see, giving me clear instructions, but it didn't help me much.

The remaining SATs were coming up on me fast. They were hoofing it so hard, that I knew they'd be on me in seconds. I took a ninety-degree turn, as a sign directed me and nearly broke my neck falling down a short flight of stairs. Landing on my butt, my injured shoulder slammed into the wall.

The air forced from my lungs, a fresh shock wave plunged me to greater depths of anguish. I might have passed out from exhaustion right there, but the thunderous footsteps were like Death's chariot bearing down upon me, reminding me what I was fighting for. My gun had to go under my chin so I could use my good arm to haul myself up.

“I'm not dying here! I'm not dying here!” The mantra repeated in my brain.

As I pushed off with my left foot, the SATs reached my position. I don't know how I did it in time, but I managed to get my right hand back around the grip of my heater to shoot covering fire, sending them scrambling back.

Nothing but a continuous barrage of sonic needles over my shoulder kept them from taking me. Going around the next corner, I could see the hatch. The final problem facing me was to hit the button on the side of the wall to open the outer hull.

Even though it would let the cops gain on me, I pushed the barrel of my gun into my pants pocket as far as it would go. Groping into my back pocket, I took out the flick knife kept there for last resorts and stuck it between my teeth.

The cops were closing in behind me. Redrawing my gun, I pointed it toward the inner hatch door. There was no way I'd have the time to turn the wheel for the waterproof seal, so I just shot for the hinges. My aim was wild from my pain, exhaustion, and motion. One blast would take a part of a hinge, while the next would miss outright, so I kept firing until I somehow got them both.

A quick peek at my six told me that at the same time I was closing to the last few steps, four SATs were coming around the corner, all squaring up to send me to my maker.

I slung my head back around, releasing the knife from my teeth, believing and hoping with all I had that I'd timed it right to hit the button. My arm adjusted its trajectory and shot twice at near point-blank for the latch mechanism. With all the strength I had, I launched myself into a jump, my good shoulder colliding with the hatch door. It shook free from its frame.

With just one open eye, the other pressed against the door, I saw the outer hull roll away, and the evening dark present itself. I was going to hit the water below, but from there, I could swim to shore. It would require a stint underwater so the cops didn't catch my direction, but I'd do it.

Halfway out of the ship, a grunt squeaked out of me as a sonic wave passed over my back. The SATs behind me had fired. Due to the wave's straight trajectory, and my falling, it only grazed through my back and lower body. What it might damage was unpredictable, but the torment it sent to my system made everything I'd felt previously seem like pinpricks.

The hatch door and I sank into the cold, night water. I had nothing left.

I pushed open the car door. Why were we there? Dad didn't say anything to me on the entire drive over. Looking up at the sign on the big building in front of me, I got even more confused. It said, “Tokyo Metropolitan General.”

“Dad, why are we at the hospital?” I asked him.

He said nothing while he walked around the car to me, and took my hand in his without a word. Dad's face hadn't changed since we'd left home, and it was scaring me. He kinda looked like some of those robot bad guys I saw in a cartoon at school once.

“Come on, son.” Even Dad's voice sounded like a robot.

We walked together, through the rows of cars. Passing between the vehicles, I saw my dad have to stop several times to keep himself from bumping into them.

We passed through the automatic doors, and Dad pulled me along to a high desk where a nurse lady was sitting.

“I-I got a call from Dr. Enomoto.”

The nurse lady nodded, but her face had become a monster's; ugly and horrible, with fish scales for skin and tusks coming out of her mouth.

“Just follow the signs.” She growled out.

My Dad pulled me further on.

“Dad, what's going on? Why are we here?!” I was getting more and more frightened.

He didn't answer me. Why wouldn't he answer me? We followed the signs like the monster lady said, and walked down some stairs to a lower floor. It was so cold down there, that I could see my breath. Icicles dripped blood onto the floor from the ceiling.

After a walk that seemed like a whole kilometer, we came to a door marked “mor-goo.”

Through the doors, there was nobody there. Across the room from us was a wall that had a bunch of metal cabinet doors in it. I went to ask something to my dad, but instead of holding my hand anymore, he was standing in a corner of the room, crying.

I didn't know why, but for some reason, I felt my gaze being drawn back to the metal cabinet doors. There was suddenly a table with wheels in front of the cabinets. There was a form under a sheet on it that looked how Mommy did when she was in bed.

“Mommy?”

Mommy was dead. I don't know how I knew, but I knew. My mommy was gone.

Amano Keiko awakened in the middle of the night from a slow, and weak, but steady knocking coming from her door. It hadn't woken her up at first, the noise coming through her dreams in the form of a jackrabbit thumping its feet at super-speed upon her head.

She'd eventually succumbed to the knock's beckoning and reluctantly pulled herself out of bed. Even though she knew intellectually that the dubious nature of her work always demanded odd hours, at forty-eight years old, she wished she could sleep through the night more often than she got to.

Keiko navigated a path around the surgical equipment taking up the living room space of her studio apartment. Once, she had been a respected and well-known cardiovascular surgeon. Money, status, a penthouse, her life had everything she had ever wanted. It had all been going her way until that one patient had died on her.

It had been the twelve-year-old daughter of a fortune five-hundred CEO. She'd been born with a bad heart, and so her father had secured, ergo, purchased, a healthy one for her to have. The operation went textbook smooth, but a year later, the girl died as a result of graft failure. There was nothing to be done about that. Even with all the knowledge medicine had gained, they still couldn't make an organ work for every person every time.

Unfortunately, the girl's father hadn't seen it that way. In his grief, he'd sued the then Dr. Amano Keiko, and had proved his daughter's death had been her fault. All of his evidence had been falsified, but it'd been faked too well, with too many experts backing him up for her to win.

The result had been Dr. Amano Keiko had lost her license. Possessing no other skills, and still wanting to heal sick people in some fashion, she'd spent the previous nine years as a Shadow-Doc, as they so eloquently referred to her.

At her door, Keiko drew her finger on the wall next to the frame in a figure-eight. The surveillance screen dropped its facade of plaster and paint and displayed the person on the other side of her door.

“What the?”

She tapped a code into the screen keypad and unbolted four physical locks to open the door. Leaning against the frame of her door was the kid, her most infrequent customer. He looked in bad shape. His left arm was hanging limply at his side, and he was barely standing. The grip of a gun was sticking out of the front of his pants, and he was soaked to the bone.

“Need... help...” He wheezed through ragged breaths.