Chapter 6 - Part 1

Chapter 6

The security center of the Yoshida Accountancy Firm was located inside a windowless cube on the rear side of the joint. The room wasn't exactly the size of a shoe box, but since the place had been put up a full eighty years before, it wasn't too far off the mark. The three yakuza goons inside were sitting in cheap, three thousand yen rolling chairs in their two hundred and fifty thousand yen suits. Having been at the guarding gig for a few years, Kenji, Ichika, and Yuto were all good pals with each other.

Even though the boys in there were on twelve-hour shifts to take care of any high jinks that came up, it was a job a monkey could do. An AI of the same kind the cops used monitored the camera feeds they couldn't watch themselves. If it picked up on anything, the computer would then tell the humans that there was a problem for them to deal with.

One of the boys leaned forward in his chair, taking a closer peek at the happenings on his monitor. He watched some punk kid who looked like he'd come right out of some American crime movie saunter in through the double doors.

“Hey, guys, take a look at this,” Yuto called out.

The other three each gave a grumble before getting up to trudge over.

“Look at this. This is like the fifteenth punk lookin' guy to come in in like, the last hour.”

“Have they done anything?” Kenji queried.

“Nah. Big zilch on that. If they'd done something, big brother over there would have tattled on 'em by now.” Ichika added.

“I guess ya got a point, but it's still kinda hinky. Most of 'em are still in the lobby, but I've seen of 'em going up and waiting at offices.” Yuto said.

“Maybe they're one of those gay, bike clubs. You know, those ones who like to pretend they're tough. What could they be here to do but get their taxes or whatever done, anyway?” Suggested Kenji.

“You know, he's on the money there. Somebody'd have to be effin' deranged to try to knock over this Fort Knox.”

“Still, if one more of these greasers turn up, I'm gonna go run 'em all out. I don't care who they're meeting.” Yuto said.

Just then, the WiFi suddenly crashed like a plane slamming headfirst into the side of a cliff.

“What the?!” Kenji grunted.

“Well, that's a first. I thought the guys upstairs paid for that premium service crap nobody understands.” Yuto mildly complained.

“I say we get that company on the line right now and chew 'em out.” Ichika proposed.

“Disturbance detected. Disturbance detected.” A computerized voice announced.

The primary wall-screen brought up the very same view of the lobby the guys had been peeping at a second before. It zoomed in on the receptionist's desk and kicked the audio in. The last punk to walk in was giving the guy at the desk an earful. With the volume automatically adjusted to match the real thing, it sounded like the kid had a bullhorn.

“Well, that's just great! It would have to happen at the same time.” Grumbled Ichika.

“Come on! Let's go get those little bastards out of here.” Yuto decreed.

“Hold up a tick! With the WiFi down, the AI won't be able to connect to our phones while we're dealing with this. What if something else happens while we're dealing with these little pricks?” Kenji asked.

“Wait, he's got a point. We won't know anything.” Ichika said.

“Alright, let's just the three of us high-tail it out there, we'll gang up on the pissant, he'll soak his shorts, and we'll toss him out. Be back in like, three, tops.” Yuto determined.

Ichika and Kenji agreed quickly enough, and the three of them all dashed out for the lummox up front.

In a side alley on the west side of the building's exterior, Souta, Genkei, and I were all grouped around one of the fire exits.

“Is this stupid thing actually working?” Genkei asked.

He was talking about the jammer I'd made him hold. It had originally been a typical radio jammer, if bought from the trunk of some woman's car. I'd retuned it to be able to block WiFi signals. Didn't use it often, but it had come in handy now and then for my hacking and laundering jobs.

“As long as that's active, their AI won't be able to drop a dime on us. That distraction out front won't last long, so once we get in there, we need to get to the security booth plenty quick.” I told them.

“Alright. How're you gonna pick that lock?” Souta asked.

“I'm not.”

I pulled my gun and put three shots into where the latch would be. I'd next snapped a hook magnet onto the door and used it to pull the hunk of metal open.

“No time to do it clean,” I explained.

The three of us sprinted inside. Dashing through the halls, I snatched my tablet out of my satchel. It was already set for the layout of the building. I had it set up so that it was showing a dead fix on itself, overlaid with the blueprint.

“This hall up on the left, take it.”

My cohorts and I rounded the bend. I kept playing traffic cop, directing us through another two turns. Close to the last turn before the booth, a swell of nausea and fatigue to match the previous Tokyo Tower hit me like a wall. My ankle buckled, and my shoulder scraped the wall as I fell onto my knee. I was breathing like an asthmatic dog after a ten-mile run. Souta and Genkei looked back at me like I'd just grown a second head.

“What the hell is this?!” Roared Genkei.

I looked up at them, trying to drive all the steel I could muster into my eyes.

“I'm... fine!” I grunted. “Security booth's... the fifth door... on the left. I'll be there... in a second!”

The two of them must have bought into my resolve because they didn't even hesitate to go on without me. I pushed myself back upright but still needed the wall to keep me that way. I just stood there for a few seconds, panting harder than an astronaut with oxygen tanks running on empty.

“Come on. Come on! You don't have time for this!”

I took a step forward, feeling the rubber my legs had become. Pushing through my body's reluctance to cooperate, I shuffled through another step, and another. Managing to get some real solidity back into my calves and thighs, I let go of my safety net. One half stumble later, I could stand sturdy again. I told myself I'd chuck those pills the doc had given me quick as I could. They hadn't been doing their job.

At the front lobby, Kenji, Yuto, and Ichika stormed in like rocket cars on an unstoppable collision course. Yuto grabbed the punk standing in front of the receptionist's desk and hurled him back.

“You got a problem, kid?! You can take it out to the street or take it with you to the hospital!” Pronounced Yuto.

“Hey, man! I'm just trying to figure out why I was told to come back after an hour, and now's then, and this turd says I still can't go up!” The punk exclaimed.

“Didn't you hear him?! He said either take a hike, or we'll make you take it with your legs around your head like a circus freak!” Ichika added.

He gave the kid a hard shove into his shoulders. From the chairs and benches running along the edges, more of the hoods hopped to their feet.

“Hey!”

“Back off, you bunch of goombahs! We've all been waitin'! What kind of business are you asses runnin' here anyway?!”

“You pricks want some too?” Kenji snarled threateningly.

His hand instinctively went within snatching distance of the heater under his blazer.

Stepping through the door to the security booth, I had my head held high, all traces of my momentary weakness gone. Souta and the little guy were waiting for me, and it wasn't patiently.

“How'd you get the door open?” I'd been surprised to find it not busted.

“It was already spread a hair open. We just pushed.” Souta informed me.

It didn't matter in the long run. Knowing full well that the next step was my time to shine, Souta and Genkei let me brush past them to the nearest console. I gently plopped my tablet down onto the workstation and connected my tubules to both computers.

“Okay, I'm taking the security codes from the deep memory to get in with admin privileges. I'm using it to shut down all of the building's cameras and elevators.” I said.

“What?! What do you think you're doing?!”

I didn't even have to look up to know it was Genkei. He snapped more than a school of piranha munching on a dead cow. It wasn't worth it to break off my work for even an instant to answer him to his face.

“Elevators off, none of the Yakuza will be able to use them to follow us, or to get away,” I said, no-nonsense. “I'm shutting off the AI. It can't tell on us because of the jammer, but with this, it won't be able to activate any countermeasures against us either. Finally, I'm giving my tablet a back door into the system in case I need to change anything on the fly.”

My job past the finish line, I disconnected myself from the computers and secured my tablet back into the satchel bag. With the other two strolling out ahead, I used the opportunity to take out my gun without the bipolar imp threatening to disembowel me.

We jogged along the hall until we hit the rear bank of elevator cars and the stairwell door beside it. We ducked in and started to climb. I could tell that Souta was making a conscious effort not to get ahead of his schizo friend.

“How long til the boys out front get the message to butcher those bastards?” Genkei asked when we landed on the second floor.

“If I've got the timing in my head right, they should be getting it about ten seconds from now.”

Yuto, Ichika, and Kenji all three felt like something was about to go down. They all had their blood up, and they could all smell the tell-tale markers of a brawl about to kick off.

What had them thrown off their game was that the little scuzz balls crowding them weren't making a move. The three friends were long-time yakuza muscle. They'd been in more than their fair share of tussles, and all their experience told them that those snot-nosed kids should have already thrown a sloppy punch or something. Something wasn't meshing there.

Half a tick before the three would have started it themselves, they got chiming notices from their smartwatches. The oddity broke them out of their building adrenaline haze, and the accompanying curiosity held too much sway to keep the guys from looking at their watches.

It was a single text message, identical for all of them.

“They're gonna pull guns in six seconds.”

Ichika, Kenji, and Yuto took a collective blink at seeing the words on their screens. They couldn't help but look back at the younger punks around them in wonder. Exactly three seconds after the Yakuza had received their foretelling of impending peril, more message ringtones sounded off.

The gangbangers all grabbed for their hidden iron without so much as a peek at their phones. Yuto, Ichika, and Kenji were a hair faster, bringing their pistols to bear quick enough to fire the opening salvo. They each sent one of the punks down to hell with grunts of pain and blood seeping from their mouths and ears. One of them, half his chest cavity caved in on itself from his ribs on that side shattering.

Kenji and the other two all turned and uncouthly flung themselves over the receptionist's desk. There were a further six punks there in the lobby, and they'd all started slinging sonic slugs of their own.

Yuto had collided right into the front desk guy in his jump, and Yuto thought it'd probably saved the pansy's life.

The desk had been refit a couple of years before to have some resistance to sonic waves. It couldn't be entirely wave proofed, because it wouldn't have looked kosher with all those layers required. Still, it would hold out for a while, and that was all the three of them would need.

Ichika raised his smartwatch to his face and switched to its phone function. He used it to send out a broadcast call to all the other boys on guard duty.

“We got some little shits upfront tryin' to use us for target practice! Everyone in here, be on the lookout for obvious lookin' street punks!”

Somewhere between the fourth and fifth floors, we could hear the echoing clacks that couldn't be anything but sonic gunfire. It was coming from above and below us at the same time.

“It's started,” Genkei spoke like we couldn't figure it out ourselves.

Steps beyond the entrance door for the fifth floor, I had to whip my head back around when I heard a soft squeak of protesting hinges. Genkei was pulling the door open.

“What are you doing?!” I yelled at him in a whisper.

“I gotta see my guys turning these schnooks into mincemeat. Just for a second.” He said back without lowering his voice.

Since the plan I'd laid out required all three of us to be there to take the top floor, I trudged back down a step to rejoin them. I went around as he stopped the door at just a crack to give them a view into the hall like a couple of voyeuristic perverts.

What we saw was one of the Black Mist's small number of foot sloggers coming into view. I had no idea who the guy was, but the confidence was coming off of him the same as perfume swirls from a cartoon. He was swaggering. A door on his left eased open the tiniest degree, and he dropped dead.

It was only a moment after the corpse met the carpet that the door spread the rest of the way clear. The guy's executioner looked like an ordinary salaryman in every way. His suit was medium price at best, his tie was cheap, and his hair was cut unimaginatively. The only part of him that stood out was the sleek, and expensive, heater in his hand. His gun was so new that it had the gleam of having not yet required a cleaning.

At the same time, doors on either side of the salaryman's opened. Two more men and a woman all came out to join him. They were dressed almost identically, looking like regular office workers. They were also bearing almost carbon copy pistols out and ready. They all grouped together, taking up position to cover each other, and moved en mass in the direction of the front elevators.

I could hear the Genkei gritting his teeth together as he started to push the door open. Knowing the only thing the idiot had on his mind right then, I snatched him by the back of his collar and hauled him back into the stairwell.

With the door closed again, the little guy screamed at me with no thought to our being in enemy territory.

“WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?! You told us this place had light security!”

I'd been about to respond, but before even opening my mouth, I'd heard the sound of a shoe readjusting its stance above my head. My feet going on instinct, I launched myself into the door. It gave way instantly, and the other two must have had the sense to get what was going on because they were less than a second behind me. A sonic wave went off right where we'd been standing.

Smacking my heel into the edge of the door, it slammed and sealed shut. At the same time, I snatched my tablet back out again, and using my hook into the building's system, I locked it. The door bucking towards us signified our would-be killers were trying to reach us. Both Genkei and Souta sent shots at the barrier separating all of us. It didn't do anything more than cause the metal to warp a little and small chunks of plaster to explode out.

“Everybody in one piece?” Souta asked.

The little guy shouted out in pain. He was staring at his left hand with astonished anger.

“I think my hand got hit by that blast! I can't move it at all!”

He used his remaining good hand to shove his gun in my face.

“What the hell is all this?!” He wanted to know.

He intended to kill me if he didn't like the answer. I could see it in his eyes. Even with the threat, I kept my composure.

“The only thing I can think of is that some of the accountants working here are yakuza. I didn't know that. None of my prep work brought that up.”

The little guy's jaw clenched so hard I thought he might break his teeth.

“You mean you led us into a shooting range?! I should kill you right now!”

“We can still pull this off. Not every person in this building is going to be armed. If we stick together and cover each other, we can still swipe Yoshida's money and his throne. So, do you want to kill me and then likely get outnumbered and bumped off yourself, or would you like to just crack on?” I said to spell out his options.

Genkei didn't budge his gun away from my brain box. I knew he had the scales of balance in his head teetering between his greedy lust for Yoshida's empire, and his desire to see me as a murdered mass sprawled at his feet. Turned out that I'd made the right call because he lowered his heater.

“So, what do we do now?” Came from Souta, trying to get things on track.

Standing up, I gave it a quick once over in my head.

“All the Yakuza are likely gonna try the elevators, and then they'll head to the stairs once they find them out of order. If we can get to one of the cars, I can reactivate it and take us right to the top.” I said.

“Fine, but if this doesn't work, you're not gonna live long enough to regret it!”

The scoff I felt didn't get past my lips as we moved off.

Ichiro Yoshida had been itching to get some kind of status update on his computer for the last five minutes. The internet had gone down, and from the texts he'd gotten, something big was going down. The door to his office swept open in a flash, causing Ichiro to go for the derringer-sized iron hidden under the desk. He eased back when he saw it was Daichi.

“What's going on?!” Ichiro insisted to know.

“We're under attack!” Daichi exclaimed. His tone was as stunned as it was angry.

“There are goons with guns on practically every floor. From the calls and texts I've been getting, there doesn't seem to be a lot of them, though. I've called for more boys, and told 'em to get here double quick.”

“What? We're under attack?”

Ichiro had to take a beat to process that information. It didn't compute. They were the Yoshida Clan. They hadn't been attacked since before Ichiro had taken the reigns from his old man. There wasn't a single lowlife or junkie hopped up on Tiff in the city who didn't know the kind of power the Yoshida commanded. Sure, Ichiro had needed to discipline now and then, and occasionally set a head to rolling, but a real attack in his tenure was as rare as shaking hands with a Sasquatch.

Coming out of his shock-induced stupor a couple of seconds longer than he should have, Ichiro jackrabbited out of his chair. He pulled the mini pistol from its hidden holster and laid it on top of the desk wood.

“I don't think we'll need that. The boys on this floor already rallied, and nobody ought to be makin' it up here anyway.” Daichi said.

According to my blueprint, Souta, Genkei, and I were coming to the last corner at the T junction before the front elevator bank.

“Elevators are up ahead. We should hang back until we know it's clear.”

The bipolar imp didn't make a front of even thinking about listening to me and shoved right on ahead. Souta, who by then I'd decided was only slightly smarter than a well-trained mutt, followed his master. Having a gut feeling about the efficacy the act would yield, I stuck my head around the corner without leaving cover.

Just as I'd expected to happen, Souta and what's his name were about three meters away from the same four Yakuza we'd seen before. It was the woman who spotted them and was the first to get her gun whipped around at them. Souta and the little guy would have been dead meat if I hadn't sent out some suppressing fire so they could backtrack. I'd had to aim for the walls, floor, and ceiling so that I wouldn't hit my accomplices.

The two sides of the engagement each dove for protection. My two allies came to rest behind the corner across from me. The Yakuza fired back at us.

One of the benefits of sonic weaponry was how the need to reload had been effectively eliminated. Since the shot was created by a hammer striking the interior wall, and the sound bounced back against the resonance chamber until it attained the correct frequency strength and amplitude for release, nobody ever ran out of ammo unless something broke in the gun.

The guns the Yakuza had must have been modified for increased shooting speed. They'd looked like regular, if expensive heaters to me, but the sheer amount of shots had me and the others pinned. I fired blindly around the corner, not expecting to hit anything, and the lack of grunts or loud thuds told me I'd judged right.

I watched Genkei get down on his stomach, and peer around the corner. He took a bead, and shot, but didn't do the damage he wanted to. His one-handed aim threw him off, and he only got the woman in her gam. One of the others on her side dragged her out of play before she bit the dust. Meanwhile, Genkei was forced to retreat to safety.

“Keep me covered for a sec while I do something!” I yelled at the others.

Taking my tablet out, I worked as fast as I could to set up the plan I'd just thought up. Preparations complete, I held it screen out for Souta and him to see. It had a note spelled out for them.

“We're not gonna get them without us dying too! Come hit this button at the right moment!”

I put the tablet on the floor in front of me. I then pointed visibly at my gun and dragged my finger over my throat in the classic slitting motion to say I wanted them to stop shooting. The message must have gotten across because the little guy gave me the angry eyes yelling “NO!” that I'd expected.

I mouthed the words “do it” at him, and then gestured pointedly at the lights above us. To finish up the mime routine, I cocked my arm out like I was holding someone across the chest and put the barrel of my gun to my head. My meaning must have somehow gotten through that cro-magnon skull, cause the little guy's eyes widened a bit, and he smirked. He and Souta stopped shooting.

All we had to do then was wait. Wait for the overwhelming, undeniable human compulsion of curiosity to take effect. Thirty seconds went by, and then a minute with no action. It was quieter in that hall than the Titanic after it sank. Not until five full minutes had gone by did we hear the sound of feet cautiously shuffling their way closer.

When I thought they sounded close enough, I gave Souta and the little guy the signal. They pointed their guns up at the ceiling and sent their volley. Sparks and glass exploded down onto the Yakuza. I took my chance to run out and knock the pistol away from the guy in the lead. Using his daze to corkscrew him around to the position I wanted, I crouched down so I was mostly hidden behind him, and jammed the tip of my gun barrel into his ear, and one human shield was successfully created. My one eye exposed allowed me to see his two able friends fixing their sights on us.

“You know what this is. If you don't want your pal to need a quart of fix-a-brain, you'll holster the heaters and back up into the stairs.” I said.

I gave my hostage a shove forward.

“I promise you guys, I will do it, drop the two of you before you can move, and sleep sounder than if I'd overdosed on pills.”

That garnered the movement I wanted from my shield's friends. They slowly ambled backwards. They didn't put their pieces away, but I'd never expected they would. Even in obeyance, the ego demanded that appearances be kept.

“Her on the floor. Take her with you.”

They looked like they were about to balk at that, so I shoved my gun harder into their pal's ear. A small droplet of blood came from my gun-sight digging into his flesh. The goon in front of me on the right then stuffed his gun into his waistline and bent to pick up the woman. He half carried, half dragged with his arms under her elbows.

“Souta, pick up the tablet, hit the button, and then both of you come around here,” I called behind me.

The doors to the fourth elevator from the left opened up, and I knew Souta had done as I'd said. I had to idle in park there for a few seconds before my cohorts came back into my eye line.

“Okay, you three, in the stairwell. Genkei and Souta, the elevator.” I told everyone.

The two men, and the woman by proxy, all backed through the door. Timing it for when they still had the door braced open by their bodies, I pulled back my gun, and gave their pal the strongest push I had in me. I shot him in the back three to guarantee he'd fall into them and leaped for the elevator.

The little guy hit the button to close them right as I'd cleared the doors. While we ascended to the top floor a second later, Genkei burst out laughing. It was the first time I'd heard it from him. Sounded like the manic chuckling of a demon from some cheesy horror movie.

“You shot that guy in the back. Three times! Oh! You really are one ruthless, cold effer, aren't you?” He asked me.

He seemed to be enjoying himself.

Takahashi Sango entered the CCTV control center for the second time in as many days. Already waiting for her on the primary wall-screen was a still image of a young man riding a motorcycle.

“Where is this from?” She asked Funai.

“We got this from the Minamitokiwadai, in Itabishi-ku. It's fifteen minutes old at this point.” He responded.

Sango looked closely at the picture on the screen and called up a mental image of her suspect from the raid footage to compare. It could be the same person. The motorcycle looked largely the same, although, she admitted to herself, she didn't know bikes. The height looked about right too, but just from a visual inspection, she could bullseye on a few discrepancies.

For one thing, his skin tone didn't look the same as it had in the raid footage. The kid in the picture in front of her was Japanese, but in the other, there had been a question. The problem for her was that she knew that video capture technology could still bug as easily as any other. The discoloration could have been a mechanical or software malfunction, or it might not be.

The kid in front of her didn't look younger than twenty, either. She'd have called him around twenty-five if she'd had to put a number to him.

The biggest elephant in the picture was the fact that this kid wasn't wearing a helmet. That didn't make any sense to her. Her suspect had been making painstaking efforts to cover up his identity for days, and suddenly, he goes out lacking the one thing keeping his kisser from being scanned and locked down in records. The profile angle didn't give her a complete picture, but it was still more than she'd had before. It didn't sit right with Sango.

“Can I see the measurements for that bike and rider?” She asked.

One of the technicians made the info pop onto the wall-screen. According to the computers, the bike Sango was looking at then matched the other perfectly in height, width, and length.

When it came to the rider though, he physically didn't measure up. According to the computer, the bike rider in front of her was a full ten centimeters shorter than it had said for her suspect in the raid footage. Sango had once seen the computer give an inaccurate measurement of up to twenty centimeters, so that didn't necessarily matter. Still, something felt as off to her as a two yen coin.

“Anything out of the usual going on?” Sango asked.

It was the technician to Funai's right who piped up.

“One of our buzzers has picked up on sonic shots in a building in Nerima-ku, not too far from where this shot was taken.”

“What's the address on that?”

“6 Chome-13-10 Toyotamakita.”

That was a note which struck a chord with Sango. It was the not-so-secret front for the Yoshida clan that nobody could prove wasn't legit. There wasn't a gumshoe or beat slogger in Neo Tokyo who didn't know the score on that bit of real estate.

“You said there have been reported shots coming from there?”

“It's confirmed. We've already got black and whites en route.”

Sergeant Takahashi turned on her heels and quick-footed it out of the room. Shots fired, the Yoshida front, her unidentified suspect, she had no idea how, but it was all connected. If she was going to unravel the knots of this intricate web, she knew she needed to be on site.