Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Two days after the raid on the ship, I was back on the streets. Between operating on my foot, my shoulder, antibiotic IVs, and running tests on the rest of my system, the doc had worked on me for over twenty-four hours straight.

When I'd come back to myself at the end, she gave me the prognosis. It hadn't been easy to put me back together. She'd had to completely replace the servo in my shoulder, which meant she'd temporarily amputated my arm in order to do it. In my foot, she'd had to remove and weld back together my first, third, and fifth metatarsals, the medial cuneiform, and the navicular. In addition, she'd also replaced countless micro-wires so the bones could get the juice they needed from my internal power core. She'd glossed over everything else she'd done to fix my legs themselves

The new servo, she told me, was almost right from the box, meaning it would hold up a while. I'd eventually need more work on my foot since she'd only been able to patch it. She might as well have kept my limbs since that was what it'd cost to pay her.

She'd recommended bed rest to recover, but I couldn't do that. Everything hurt, but I didn't have time to lay around. I'd killed one cop for sure getting out of there, and maybe two others. If was I going to get myself out of that one, I had to work.

“I have to move fast. I don't have the time to play this subtle or anything. If I can't pull off this job, and do it right, I might as well throw myself off the nearest cliff. I might get killed trying it anyway, but I don't have any choice.”

I was hiding in the shadow of an alley corner in Mitaka, in the western part of Neo Tokyo. My gaze was locked onto a tiny parking lot next to a bar. My usual choice was to take public transportation or walk over anything else. It might have been slower, but it was also harder to track than private cars or bikes in those days. Even so, for that job, I'd need to be able to move fast and at a moment's notice. The answer was wheels.

Mayor Hamada Bashira hung up a call with her deputy mayor at the Neo Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. While she was deep into reelection mode, Maho was handling several of the day-to-day operations of the city. Bashira had called only to confirm everything was running smoothly.

She stepped out of the office into the primary space of her campaign headquarters. Her people had rented a floor in the Shinjuku Nomura Building at 1-chome-26-2 Nishishinjuku to work out of.

Out in the communal office space, looking at everything, Bashira thought it didn't look much different from her first campaign. There were the people fielding calls, some working on the social media aspect of it, half of everyone bustling to and fro to fulfill their jobs.

She approached her campaign manager. Enomoto Goro was on the young side at twenty-nine years old, but he had more than proved himself in Hamada's eyes. He'd started as a low-level member of her staff, but had climbed quickly through his intelligence and tenacity. He'd made several, logical deductions that Hamada had passed on to the police, resulting in major busts. Making him her campaign manager had been an easy decision for her.

“Goro, how are we doing?” She asked.

“Social media responses to the campaign show a fresh, seventeen percent uptick in positive responses to our online campaign, and we've pulled ahead in the polls inKodaira, Higashimurayama, and Matsudo.”

“Excellent.”

In unison, she and Goro started to head for the elevators.

“What's my schedule for the rest of the day?”

“At one, you have a meeting with the leaders of the enterprise unions. At three, you're addressing an assembly of the Young Liberal Democratics Club at the University of Neo Tokyo. And lastly, you have the interview on the Twilight Show at seven.”

On the edge of the common workspace, the Mayor and her aide were joined by two agents of her private security. One of the first things Mayor Hamada had done upon taking office was to award Alpha and Omega Private Security a contract to protect city officials, herself included. The two well-built men walked in sync a step behind them. The group arrived at the elevators, and Bashira pushed the call button.

“There is one thing, ma'am. I got a call from our accountants a while ago, and the campaign has gone over budget. It's being balanced at the moment by donations from the public, but it won't last.” Goro said.

“That's not a problem. I'll make a few calls to some of our top contributors, and we'll discuss it at the luncheon tomorrow.” Bashira said.

The doors for the cab opened, and they all entered the elevator, the two bodyguards waving away a couple of volunteers who had been attempting to board.

I watched a guy pull into the small lot, park his motorcycle, and go into the bar. It was a sports bike, but an older model. Studying the bike, I mentally outlined its stats.

“Yokai ZR-12. 2,800cc engine. Top speed of about 450 kilometers per hour. Looks like the 2110 model. Slower than today's standard cop cruiser, but the maneuverability of the bike should make up for the lack in speed. Besides, I don't have the time to wait and hope something better comes along, and that one was made in the correct time frame.”

If I hadn't been scanning my peripheries before leaving, the center stage spotlight in front of a cop cruiser would have been all mine. I ducked back into my hiding place, and the cruiser stopped at a hundred and ten degree, obtuse angle across from me.

The passenger side door opened, and one of the cops got out, clutching a long cylinder in her hand. The transparent plastic was unrolled as she stepped up to the exterior of the bar. It went onto the wall, smoothed out, and stayed in place.

It lit up and projected a three-dimensional, holographic representation of a person's head. It was probably supposed to be of me, but if that was the best they had, then I'd apparently cashed in a little luck. Guess none of the cop's body-cams snatched a good shot of me. They got my skin tone right, but the rest of it wasn't a particularly good likeness of me at all. Still, I'd need to be careful and keep my face hidden. It could have still been enough for CCTV facial recognition.

Under the floating head, the poster read, “Wanted for multiple homicides. If spotted, call emergency services. Do not approach. Considered armed and extremely dangerous.”

Job done, the cop backtracked and climbed into the cruiser.

I waited three minutes after the coppers had rolled off before moving from my spot. With my head down, and the hood on my hoodie under my jacket pulled up in case of cameras, I crossed the street.

In the lot, I straddled the bike to make it easier to work, and so I'd look like I owned it to anyone who passed. Sitting there, I got a good look at the owner's helmet. A good size for me to wear, and many years newer than the bike itself, it even had a datalink node on the side to receive wireless commands.

I'd spent the six hours I'd already been up doing some preliminary prep work. I didn't have what you'd call friends, but I'd made sure to do favors for certain people in the past, just in case I ever needed something in return. One of those favors had been called in that morning.

He was a professional car thief named Hiroto. In exchange for a clean slate, he'd turned me onto how to bypass the authentication procedures for bikes made between the years 2109, and 2112. It was just a little glitch in the inner coding you could trigger if you followed the right steps.

I made the passcode entry and blood-reader screen light up, and then close again, light up, and then close again. I tapped the bottom left corner of the screen, making the computer speak the time out loud. I repeated the step three times. Pulling down the command screen from the top, I turned off the Bluetooth. Next was to adjust the screen brightness to zero, then to one hundred, then to sixty-two. Bluetooth back on, I flipped the headlights on and off, sent the brightness back to zero, and hit the icon to go to the WiFi section of the options menu. Back at the keypad screen again, I typed in four zeroes, and it unlocked.

Granted full access to the system, the first thing I did was to go into the settings, change the entry code, and disable the blood-reader. After that, I reached into my pocket and took out a datacube. Placing it on the screen, I connected the cube and the bike computer through my hacking tubules.

The info about the glitch, the cube itself, and a few other tips on how to keep it hidden, I'd gotten them all from Hiroto. The cube held a program to deactivate the GPS while reprogramming the identification signal beacon the bike sent out. Without those, cops wouldn't be able to track the bike, and if I happened to get close to any, they couldn't check their records to know the bike was stolen through its beacon. Hiroto told me the new beacon signal would identify it as being registered to a man from Kyoto who didn't exist.

I disconnected my tubules and pocketed the datacube.

“Program should be easier to use, and plenty useful now that I've got it in my head.” I thought.

The bike came to life with a throaty, baritone growl. I donned the previous owner's helmet and rode the bike out of the lot.

Forty minutes of carefully obeying the traffic laws was what it took to get to my next destination. I'd gone to Dogenzaka, in Shibuya. Parking my motorcycle in a garage complex, I paid the outrageous price for the temporary spot, but it was worth it for the expediency. Spending who knew how long looking for an open slot on the street wasn't in the cards.

My new helmet stayed in place as I walked along the street, to protect my face from prying cameras. Didn't make me stand out, as wearing a bike helmet like that wasn't an unheard-of fashion choice among people my age.

Dogenzaka, a district famous for having the 109 mall, was as busy as ever. The streets were packed as tight as a tuna can. People of all ages flittered constantly in and out of the grand mall, the smaller boutiques, and the restaurants. I spotted the requisite tourists, taking pictures at the memorial statue of Hachiko. Going by just the shopping area, you'd have never known the mega-quake had happened. It had received special attention, along with a few other key tourist spots.

It was with tremendous self-restraint that I kept myself from pushing through the crowd. Anxious as I was to not waste a second unnecessarily, I didn't want to stand out from the seething mass even more. In numbers, I was concealed, and I needed it to stay that way.

Carefully cutting my way around to the rear of the 109 mall, the streets became more confined but gained more space to walk. The widely known “Love Hotel Hill,” was a maze of streets boasting the city's largest collection of businesses by the same name.

I'd looked up the address of the place I wanted beforehand, making it no more difficult to find than looking at the numbers over the doors. Along the walk, all the different establishments had holo-screens pointing into the foot traffic, advertising their wares. Some of the projectors were concealed and attached to the buildings, while others had simply been taped to open window sills. The place I wanted was on the far low end of the elegance spectrum.

Not every venture in that particular mise en scène was a place for adulterers to meet in private. The place in front of me advertised itself as a hostess club. A place for salarymen after work, and those bored with their wives, but too gutless to cheat, to go and pay to have a pretty girl act interested in them for the price of a car's down payment.

The one I was at was not the same. Before ever going in, I knew there would be no dance floor, no food, no tables, and no girls dressed like French maids. The brothel's name flashed across the screen over the door. “The Neko Parlor.”

Inside, all exterior light was cut off. Bathed in the glow of hot pink neon, there was nothing in there to tell you it was the middle of the day. Since the place never really closed, like Vegas over in the US, they wanted their clientele to not possibly be influenced by the hands of the clock.

Unlike in scenes from old movies, there were no girls in nighties in the lobby, or a Madam to ask you what you wanted and make sure you got the girl to fit that best. The front desk had no person on duty, just a tablet screen built into the surface. Places like that had found out long before that they made more money if the customers felt there wasn't anyone to judge them.

Anime used to be a massive industry and passion in Japan, but except for a few, random movies made now and then, it had mostly died out. Though, the old ones were still pretty popular among people. The prostitution industry had decided to market on that, and along with the ability to modify skeletons, created almost real “animal girls.” Those girls had their skeletons adjusted through surgery so they would move in an identical manner to the creatures they were pretending to be. They could still walk like normal people too, but it'd take a command being sent to their system and a whole day's rest for their skeleton to realign.

I used my right hand to flick through the lineup of hookers on offer. There was the typical fare of girls with fake, but real-looking cat ears, dog ears, and the like. I didn't get the appeal, but there were maybe a hundred like that one all across the country. I'd have never gone to one of those for myself, but I'd talked to a few people who had.

It took a couple of seconds, but I found the one I'd come to see. A badly dyed girl going by the alias of “Chloe” for effect. I hadn't known if she'd be turning tricks that day or not. I selected her, picked to pay for a half hour, and placed the bills I counted out onto the desk. It scanned my cash, and a rectangular section of the top flipped itself over, vanishing and securing my money to be collected later. The screen thanked me for my patronage, and I declined its offer of a receipt.

Walking down the halls, it seemed like the place was close to maximum occupancy. They clearly hadn't sprung for soundproofing, because I could hear the reaching of orgasmic climax, from both male and female sources alike. Interlaced with those were the sounds of imitated dog barking, bird twittering, and even a couple of moos like the extinct cows. At the door marked “Chloe,” I went in.

The room was set up with the theme of “Kitty's Play Room.” The floor was fake hardwood, and the walls were painted with a mural to make it look like the living room of some tranquil, suburban paradise. In the far corner on the right, the bed was a human-sized cat bed in a wicker basket.

On top of the bed, sitting back on her haunches was Chloe. Seeing her in person, she was an utterly tiny thing. She had dyed white hair that badly matched her pure Japanese complexion, and eyes colored gold from contacts. On top of her head were artificial cat ears that twitched now and then and matched her hair color. She had nothing on, revealing her fit body, and large b-cups. She couldn't have been more than a year older than me.

She smiled like she was glad to see me. Behind her, a battery-powered, fake tail, swung back and forth. Three guesses where that thing was attached.

“Hello, meeeooow-ster!” She cooed.

Her voice was purposefully overly cutesy and high-pitched. Chloe jumped off of the bed and walked over to me on all fours with the same delicacy as a real cat. She stopped at my feet, craning her neck up to make eye contact.

“What'll it be?”

Her tone was cheery as an ice cream sundae in the park.

“I'm not here for sex,” I said.

She smiled coyly. “Oh, I see. You want to be encouraged.”

She started circling me, rubbing her sides against me, and purring, just like how an affectionate cat would do. I rolled my eyes thinking of the idiots that must have gotten off on that. When Chloe was at my front again, I took a step back from her. She looked up at me with confusion swimming in her eyes, the first break in her act.

“I'm not here for sex,” I repeated. “I just want to ask you a question.”

Chloe sat back on her haunches again, her hands balled up and together on her thighs.

“You mean, you're serious? But, what could you possibly want to ask me?”

She'd dropped the “kitty voice,” for which I did not express my gratitude.

“I want to ask you about the Yoshida clan.”

Her face contorted into abject terror as if someone had just walked over her grave. Chloe hopped up into her walking stance, ran back to the huge cat bed, and leaped onto it. She squeezed herself into the corner to put as much physical and mental distance between us as she could. As if it would distance her from any association with me and my plans.

“The Yoshida?! No way! Get out! You need to leave! I don't know anything about the Yoshida!” She wailed in a frenzy.

I took two steps closer to the bed. She wasn't afraid of me, but the dire consequences her imagination was spitting out for talking to me. It made her look ridiculous.

“I paid for half an hour. I'm not leaving until I get my money's worth. And stop panicking! I don't want anything about the Yoshida themselves. Nobody's gonna come looking to whack a two-bit neko call girl over this.”

She stared into my eyes for a long beat. I don't know if she decided I was telling the truth, or if she came to the conclusion that answering me was in her best interest of self-preservation. Either way, it worked out in my favor.

“I, I don't understand.” She said, relaxing her body. “If you don't want information about the Yoshida, then what does this have to do with them?”

“I want to know who their enemies are. I want to know who they hate the most.”

The rest of the nervous tension melted from her muscles. Chloe sat up, looking at me with more uncertain curiosity than anything else.

“Why would you come to ask me something like that?”

“I'm not a part of the Yoshida Clan. Everyone in it I could have talked to is dead now. I overheard them mention this place several times, and how they liked doing you the most. None of them were what you would call 'world-class spooks,' even as a joke. I'm going on the assumption one of them said something they maybe shouldn't have, or that they took a call and you heard something.”

Her fake, golden eyes never left mine. It couldn't have been easier to see she was weighing her options if there had been a cartoon floating over her head of teetering scales.

“I paid forty-two thousand yen for the half hour. You'll get, what? Thirty percent of that?” I asked.

She gently shook her head. “I get twenty.”

Reaching into my inner, jacket pocket, I pulled out the cash I had on hand. Counting out what I wanted, I held it up and fanned it out for Chloe to see.

“This is five times the twenty percent you'll get from the house, making this encounter far more profitable than you were expecting. Consider it a tip. They let you accept tips, right?”

I took another step closer to the bed and held the cash out. She looked hesitantly at it for a few seconds, but I knew she was gonna take it. Her gaze was too intense to suggest she wouldn't. Trotting over on all fours, she scooped all the money into her mouth. I waited quietly while she retreated to the other side and let the wad fall onto the sheet.

“You said you want to know who their enemies are?”

Her eyes shifted up and to her left, accessing the memory section of her brain. I waited patiently for her answer.

“The only thing I can think of is this gang of bikers. I remember a couple of them complaining about some bikers who've been messing up some of their small-time businesses for a few months. I remember it cause I got scared one time when one of them got really mad, complaining about how the higher guys hadn't done anything yet.”

“Did they say anything about who specifically these guys are? Or where to find them?”

She shook her head. “No. There wasn't anything like that. The only other thing I can remember is that they called those guys the 'Black Mist.' I think.”

It was easy to see she was telling me the truth, so I turned and left.

Police Sergeant Takahashi Sango knocked on the door to her Inspector's office. A speaker next to the frame buzzed to life.

“Come in, Sergeant Takahashi.”

Sango turned the handle and entered the room. Okazaki Kana was a fifty-four-year-old, long-time veteran of the department. She'd once been an investigator and had accumulated one of the department's best-ever case success records. She had been responsible for apprehending a serial killer who had stumped law enforcement for seven years and worked with the internal reviews section to expose more than three dozen corrupt officers throughout her career.

“Sit down, Sergeant. Please give me your report on the progress you've made so far.”

“As you know, ma'am, I was assigned the case approximately thirty-six hours ago. In that time, I've read all of the initial reports, been to the scene, and spoken to the surviving officers myself. The first thing I would like to state is my applause for the forensics team on the Igor. They're still working tirelessly, scouring every centimeter of the ship for any clues.”

“Duly noted.”

“The progress in my homicide investigation is as follows. Twelve hours ago, the CGI artists finished the rendering of the suspect's face based on officer descriptions. As of six hours ago, the image was uploaded to all holo-posters, and the widespread distribution of the posters as well as media saturation has gotten underway.”

“Sergeant, I would like to know how it is that in two days, we've yet to even identify the suspect responsible for the deaths of three SAT officers.”

Sango lifted her left arm, tapping the screen of her watch with her right index finger to make it alight. She used her finger to flick across the screen, causing files to fly from her watch to the Inspector's office. The images of the files materialized largely onto the wall-screen.

“As you can see Inspector, this man is very smart. When the stealth copter reveals itself, he keeps his face down and hidden from the camera. He either somehow knew they were coming, or he suppressed his surprise.”

“We must have gotten a clear look at this punk. We had cops, boats, and cars at the ready, all with cameras attached to them.”

Sergeant Takahashi worked her watch to change the display on the wall. A video file began to play.

“These are images from the patrol boats we had in the harbor for the raid. As soon as the boats came into range, the officers onboard fired incapacitating waves. The suspect evades the waves with a diving roll and pulls a weapon of his own. He holds the weapon in such a way that his face is obscured from view. We can't determine whether or not this was intentional. He uses his weapon to take out both the boat's lights and those on the dock over his head. The cameras lost him, and the combination of distance and the suspect's fast movement meant the cruiser cameras couldn't pick him up. As to the officers' body-cams, I could show you, but it's more of the same. None of our cameras were able to gain more than small glimpses of this suspect.”

“So, what do we know about this suspect?”

“From officer's descriptions, we have him listed as one-point-eighty-five meters tall, and approximately ninety kilograms.”

“One-point-eighty-five? Not quite the height of the wealthy. So, we're looking for someone middle class.”

“Maybe, but we're not sure. The witnessing officers describe him as being very young, possibly less than twenty years old. From the skin tone we can see, he's certainly either a foreign national or of mixed lineage. We may have his fingerprints from the ship, but due to the proliferation of prints present where took the samples, we can't be sure. So far, we've had no hits off the criminal convictions database. We're extending the parameters, but it's unlikely we'll be able to match him outside of our systems. Most corporations don't require someone to submit to fingerprinting, and if he's what I think he is, he won't have worked for one anyway.”

“What do you think he is, Sergeant?”

“I think he's an independent. There to do a job for the Yoshida, but with no allegiance to them. We can see in the surveillance that when the shooting starts, he leaves them to their fate, working to save himself. We do have one lead.”

She swiped through to the next picture. It was a photo of a small, black dot, taken next to a one yen coin for scale.

“This microdot phone was found at the scene of the second two murders. We believe it belonged to the suspect. The tech department is currently trying to crack the encryption around it. Since it seems the suspect was there to commit some kind of computer crime for the Yoshida, it's likely to contain valuable information.”

“I see. What are you doing to find this perpetrator?”

“We have an all-points bulletin out, facial recognition running for all functional CCTV cameras throughout the city, and real-time drone coverage. Since we don't have a clear picture of the killer, if anyone generates a sixty-percent or higher facial match to the rendering, they'll be pulled in for questioning. There should be more avenues to look into once the tech department gets back to me, but I feel it's just a matter of time.”

“And the one Yoshida goon who wasn't killed in the raid?”

“I spoke to the doctor in charge at Neo Tokyo General an hour ago. The man is out of surgery, but they're keeping him in a coma for the time being to try to give him a better chance in his next procedure. If he's going to live, he'll have to have a section of his skull replaced. The doctor told me there's no guarantee he'll regain consciousness or what he might remember if he does.”

“I see. Thank you, Sergeant. Your report is clear, and I see you're covering all your bases. I'll let you get back to it. But remember, this kid, whoever he is, killed three of our own. We're not letting him get away with that, are we?”

“No, ma'am. We aren't.”

“Good.”

Takahashi Sango rose from her chair, saluted her Inspector, and left the office. She'd painted a good picture, but the fact was, she thought it was going to take a lucky break to catch that kid. They didn't have a single, concrete inclination of who he was. For the suspect to have escaped the SATs in the way described, gotten away from the scene in an injured state, leave almost no evidence of himself behind and avoid detection for two days, he had to be unusually cunning. She had a bad feeling about that case.