Chapter 10 - Part 2

There were three hours left before our impromptu meeting at the shrine. With the downtime to wait before the rendezvous was scheduled to go down, I'd had the time to double-check everything in my head. Thinking was all I could manage because Yoshida had instructed his thugs not to let me out of their sight.

Not everything had gone exactly according to plan. I'd expected more guys at Yoshida's accounting firm than I'd let on to the Black Mist, but that workers themselves were in on the act had been a twist.

The whole job hadn't been easy to set up. I knew I'd needed to get the Genkei lunatic and Souta separated at some point inside for it to go off. Genkei was a constant dice roll, but Souta had been more predictable, and playable. I had thought Genkei might not buy into the phony radio chatter I'd programmed my tablet to play, but being under fire seemed to help tons towards authenticity, and it'd gotten him out of the building.

I'd kept it under wraps, but hearing that someone had set off the just-in-case I'd set in my apartment had been news to me as well. There wasn't a single scrap of data connecting me to that flophouse, so whatever cop had put it together had to be either really good or used up some of their life's allotment of luck. Meant I'd need to find a new place to sack out once it was all over.

Then, there was Sarah Mackenzie. She'd saved me from both the slammer and the River Styx. I didn't expect to ever meet anyone like her again for the rest of my life. At a different time, under different standings, her enchantments might have been enough to get me to give another way of being a shot.

As it was, if the scheme came off like I was aiming for, I'd be needing to put some distance between myself and everything I'd touched over the previous week. No matter how it panned out, my life was going to be changed with the next sunrise.

Yoshida, Daichi, and Sarah came together into the library where I'd been kept. What the old man was about to say was obvious.

“Time to get going. Need to be there early, have control of everything.”

“Once it's over, and you got Hamada under your thumb, I'd like to go straight from there to anywhere else. If it's all the same to you, that is. I'll set it up for everything to get wired to me.” I said with conviction.

“Assuming it goes our way, I think that might be best for everyone involved.”

“So, then you understand, I'll need to take that motorcycle you brought here with me before. I can't just walk away from the scene since I'm still wanted.”

Yoshida did nothing but stare back at me. We all just stood like that for a few minutes.

“You stay between the two cars at all times, and my boys in the rear one will give you an early grave if you and eighty-six on us.”

“I figured as much.”

As a body, we made our way out. At that point, I couldn't say if I'd garnered any real confidence in my associates, or if they were simply looking to have the easiest shot at me if the whim moved them.

“Hey, Genkei! Somethin's happenin' over here!”

Came the text message.

“What is it?! What's up?!” Genkei sent back instantly.

He could see his eagerness in his words.

“Not sure exactly, but they're comin' out of the house.”

A follow-up sprang in before Genkei could send one asking for more details.

“Wait! I can see them scurrying around the garage. I think they're heading out to go somewhere. You don't even got to say it. I'll follow 'em, and once they get wherever, I'll turn on this thing's GPS so you can get right to us.”

Genkai couldn't help the wicked grin that spread on his maw. He'd have payback for everyone soon, but it was also in appreciation for Benjiro. The guy was right on point, and Genkei couldn't have been happier for it.

Sergeant Takahashi sat at her desk in her office, scanning back and forth over the bits and shreds of evidence she'd collected in her investigation. She had a face rendering that was good enough to produce a half-positive result on several. She had pictures of a man in a helmet on a bike, and ones of someone without a helmet. She had a motorcycle identification beacon that had gone dead. She had another photo linking one person in particular to an apartment, with no way to prove that the apartment belonged to the criminal she wanted.

Mulling things over the preceding hours, Sango had concluded that the kid had to be trying to mastermind something to get himself away from his crimes, but for the life of her, she couldn't figure out how. It was easy to see that he'd put a kibosh on the case against the Black Mist Gang, but that was the only part she could decide was a certainty.

How had getting in with a bunch of bikers helped him? The gang had attacked the not-so-secret Yoshida headquarters, but it wasn't like they'd taken over. Every one of those kids had died, and by all reports, old man Yoshida hadn't.

Where had he been since? All day, aside from the issues related to the scandal at Raidon, there hadn't been any new incidents. Sango had briefly considered going to ask about that one but didn't think she could get through the angry mob. In any case, her collar was a solo act, and the report for Raidon said specifically it was two perpetrators, and one was certainly a foreign woman.

The more she thought about it, the more Sango kept coming back to the pictures of the guys on the motorcycles. She felt for sure that the one taken in nearby proximity to the Amaya house was the man she wanted. As to the other one, the computer had identified him through a social media picture as the supposed leader of the Black Mist Gang.

Maybe the Ox had the right idea for the wrong reasons. No corpse for the leader of the Black Mist had been recovered. If Sango could get hold of that Black Mist kid, maybe she could finally get the answers she was after.

Nothing to tell her it'd been coming, Funai suddenly burst into Sango's office. Sweat was on his brow, he was breathing hard, and looked completely disheveled.

“Funai?! What the?!”

“Sergeant!” He panted for a second. “...the beacon! The motorcycle beacon! It's back!”

“What?!”

“Just five minutes ago! I tried your phone, but it wouldn't go through.”

Sango looked at her smartwatch. No missed calls had registered, so she looked at her phone. Its battery had died.

“How long?! Five minutes? Where?!” She demanded to know.

“It's in Saitama.”

Sango ripped from her chair, grabbing for the holstered pistol on her coat rack.

“Use my authorization. Get some cruisers following it, but tell them to keep their distance! We don't want this kid to rabbit! Tell them not to make the bust until I get there!”

Sango peeled rubber out of her office. In her gut, she had a sinking feeling that it would be her last chance to catch the killer.

Humming along evenly on the streets, Genkei was trying to keep himself to the speed limit and other stupid laws. On a typical drive, he wouldn't have given a damn and gone as fast as he liked. That night, he didn't want to stand out.

He'd already been waiting over an hour before he saw Benjiro's locator bleep on. It hadn't even stopped moving yet, but if they were going in a mostly straight line, then from their predicted path, they could be headed anywhere from Iruma to Koto.

Wherever they were going, Genkei wanted to be there first, so he had to be on the move. If they were heading real interior then it was over an hour's ride for him from Saitama. From the looks of things, they were probably going to get to wherever first regardless.

Checking his mirrors, Genkei couldn't be sure, but he thought he'd caught a glint of a moving holo-screen behind him.

Our convoy's trip to Meiji Jingu Shrine in Shibuya-ku was so effortless, I might have taken a catnap if I hadn't been driving. We'd gone in through the Yogyoi Park Clock Tower entrance, and driven straight over the walking trails to reach the primary shrine. That in itself was a crime, but it was the smallest fish fried that night.

I'd never been to the Meiji, but I knew it had several tactical sweet spots. For one, it was a heritage site, so it was kept pretty much untouched from the day it'd been finished. That meant there weren't any gates or fences to keep us out. Second, even if we ended up taking a world record shellacking, there were numerous egress points I could use to escape. Lastly, if all else failed, I buy a little time hiding in the trees of the garden until I figured something out.

I'd told the mayor to come through the Chozuya torii gate, so we'd stashed the rides deep enough on the path to the Higashi Tamagaki torii to be out of sight. The only thing left was to wait.

While it would have been easy enough for the mayor to go ahead and bring her rent-a-goons, they wouldn't do her any good. The Yoshida boys had brought the latest in infrared technology with them. The goggles had a combo of AI and CGI tech which would digitally remove everything except the heat of a human body. They'd of course need to be adjusted to add the rest of the world back if you wanted to walk anywhere, but it meant you could spot any newcomers sooner than they saw you. If anybody came, they'd have ten yakuza heavily armed with sonic assault rifles to deal with, not counting Sarah and me.

I was just leaning against my bike, doing not much but keeping my eyes and ears open. That was how I knew it was Sarah coming up to me. She naturally had the lightest tread of everyone present.

“Once we're done here, I'm wondering, where do ye think ye'll be going?” She asked me.

“I haven't decided yet,” I replied collectedly.

“Aye. I understand. Ye don't want to be telling me. I can't say I blame ye. We've barely known each other for a day. Enough to build some rapport, but certainly not trust. Not yet, anyway.”

“Uh, look, Sarah, I'm not lookin' to make myself seem the same as one of these other louts we got here, but what do you want? Trying to keep my mind focused.” I tried not to sound snippy about it.

Sarah removed from her pocket an actual, retro business card like they'd used in the last century. I'd only ever seen one of those in pictures and old movies.

“That is my personal contact info. When this is over and you're settled, give me a call. Could use someone of your caliber in my network, and I promise, the pay is better than you can believe.”

It was the most generous offer anyone had ever made me. The kind of gesture I wouldn't have thought possible.

“Uh, thanks. Maybe I'll do that.”

Sarah nodded and went back to her previous position. Of course, I'd been lying. I hadn't wanted her to try pressing the issue, and it was a moot one anyway. If the night went off right, she and I would never see each other again.

Takahashi Sango had taken point from following the cruisers in Itabashi. The marked police vehicles hadn't taken a powder, just fallen back so she could be in the lead. They were all hidden from view by the night-camo technology, taking the image behind them from a camera and spitting it out the front on a holo-screen.

Sango could have tried taking the kid at any time, but she wanted to wait until he was boxed in. She didn't want to run the slightest risk of the kid getting away. She'd made the call, and given her orders. They were going to wait until the kid got where he was going, was off his bike, and that was when they would take him. She expected it might happen soon because the kid looked to be getting antsy astride his hog.

If only she'd known how much she would come to regret that decision.

A black, luxury model SUV crunched over the last of the gravel before silently gliding through the Chozuya torii gate, into the courtyard of the main shrine. It smoothly came to a controlled stop and cut its engine. The driver's door alone had a tone of stiff vexation as it tilted open, and Mayor Hamada Bashira hauled herself out.

I'd recognized her instantly, of course. Her face had been plastered practically everywhere except inside cereal boxes for weeks. She put some distance between herself and the car. Her gait looked stressed, but determined, like someone who saw the necessity of a chore, but was still loathe to do it.

Since the whole venture was an enterprise of my making, I'd been given the dubious honor of going out first. I eased my bike still at a distance of six meters. The shrine had no nighttime lighting apparatus, so it was by the soft glow of the moon that the mayor and I laid eyes on each other.

“Are you the one who called me?”

I had to hand it to the lady. She didn't sound the least bit afraid. If nothing else, she had a true spine. The yakuza and I had set up comms between us, to give the signal at the right time.

“I can't see she's got any backup or anything. If you call it clear, bring 'em out.” I quietly muttered to my earpiece.

The still surroundings were shattered by the roar of engines, and the squeal of tires as the three SUVs came to join us. They spun through small arcs to smack the beams of the headlights on us, and ten armed men piled out with weapons raised and high spirits stinking up the air. Sarah wasn't among them, which made sense. I guessed she was hanging back somewhere, watching from safety.

Yoshida Ichiro had a relaxed stride as he swaggered through the center of his men to stand before the mayor. He must have felt very much like the master of the universe he thought himself to be. Hamada Bashira had been a problem, but thanks to my efforts, she never would be again.

“Hello, Madam Mayor. It's my honor to meet you once again.”

His voice dripped lustful delight like it was drooling from his mouth.

Miyake Genkei could hardly contain himself by the time he'd reached the stupid shrine. He wasn't even done yet, because Benjiro's blip still had him going inside. Every kilometer of the drive had brought him closer to his enemy. With each passing one, he'd felt his appetite for vengeance grow more and more, and his anger right along with it.

Something was gnawing at him too, though. Some kind of itch at the back of his throat that wouldn't go away, and when he'd finally stopped trying to ignore it, it struck him as a presence. He'd never been one for a lot of abstract thought, but it felt to Genkei as if somebody had been tugging at the back of his clothes. Not trying to get his attention, but just sort of along for the ride. When he thought he'd caught a look at a holo-screen in his rearview flashed through his mind. It prompted Genkei to take a pause and skim over his surroundings.

To his mind, it didn't need much more than a once over. On all sides, everything looked quiet, ordinary, and boring. He'd been about to chalk it up to paranoia when he set eyes on something that zinged his alertness into overdrive. Ten meters back at his direct rear, an alley cat had jumped down from a street light and landed in thin air. The only answer to that phenomenon was a cop car with its camouflage up. He didn't know how, but he'd been followed!

He wasn't about to get pinched when he'd come so close. That son of a bitch in the helmet had to pay for what he'd done, and Genkei was going to give it to him! Sounding as some vile demon escaped from the blackest pit, his motorcycle crowed out a full-throttle rev, and he ripped into a wheelie launch. It didn't matter if he bit the big one so long as he took that bastard to hell with him!

A half an hour's careful tailing had been ruined by a damned cat using her car for a platform. Sango couldn't believe the bad luck. Whatever the Black Mist kid was up to, he either had to be attempting to take care of it right then or was trying to get away first. Either way, he'd torn into the garden of the Meiji Shrine with Sango hot on his tail.

The kid must have made some major modifications to that old motorcycle, because even Sango's one-year-old model, police-issue sedan couldn't make up the difference before the kid was in the park. The kid breezed through the curve with the ticket booth and Sango followed through a curve which almost set her vehicle to scraping its side against the ground. She lost even more ground when she'd involuntarily slowed down while passing under the torii gate onto the walking path. Her car lost both side mirrors, but the gate remained standing.

The only lamp Sango had to guide her pursuit was the red glow of the kid's distant taillight. Charging head first like a bull in heat into a sacred Shinto shrine wasn't something she ever would have normally done, but that Black Mist kid was the last link she had to the real heart of the matter. She had to nab him!

“Now, now, Hamada-san, don't look so glum.” Yoshida teased, enjoying his power.

“It was all you. You exposed Ikehara and Raidon and then blackmailed my backers into pulling out. Did you have anything on them, or just tell them they'd get the same treatment if they didn't do what they were told?”

The mayor was more angry than scared. Another point in her favor.

“You'd have to ask my shy associate here. This whole endeavor was of his design. However, I can't argue with his results.”

“What happens now?” Hamada asked.

“Oh, don't worry, we won't expose you. A little heard of trust fund, which nonetheless has an exemplary reputation is going to fund the rest of your campaign. The money will be mine of course. And we won't make it obvious. I don't want wholesale mayhem in the streets any more than you do. Just a favor here, a tweaking of records there, a few people I deem more worthy than others obtaining certain offices. All to be handled with the utmost subtlety and grace. You'll barely know it's even happening.” Crooned Yoshida, loving the sound of his voice.

“And if I refuse?”

“Then I'll offer my condolences to your wife and daughters when they return for your funeral, and discuss terms with your successor. The choice is of course entirely up to you.”

We never got to hear what the mayor's answer might have been. She'd been thinking it over when the exchange was intruded upon by the sound of a motorcycle engine viciously thundering through all its gears. The beam of a lone headlight broke in, foretelling the arrival of a bike bouncing on its springs a moment later. It turned to face us head-on.

“THERE YOU ARE!!!”

I recognized that demoniacal yowl as only possibly belonging to one Miyake Genkei. Another protest from his bike's engine, and he was gobbling up the distance between us, firing one sonic wave after another from his heater. It was a clear kamikaze run. If there were any thoughts other than my immediate demise in his cranium, his life and limb weren't among them. He pressed right on as all ten of the yakuza goons opened fire.

Takahashi Sango had thought she knew what stress was. At thirty-three years old, she'd been a part of the police force for more than a decade, and a homicide gumshoe for five of those. She'd already seen things so gory, that she sometimes wondered how she slept at night. She'd seen acts done by one human to another so depraved in their deliberateness, that she didn't think she'd be able to tell them to any shrink or partner she would ever have.

None of those previous stresses of the job compared to the anxiety that seized her when the orange pyre of an explosion illuminated the outer veneers of the shrine. Sango got the sense that not only was her case over, but that something of even greater importance had gone right up along with the flames.

“It's confirmed now, autopsies complete. On the ones in few enough parts, anyway. Fourteen DOA at the scene. Deaths ranging from heart penetration to cerebral hemorrhage, to severe blood loss, all resulting from shrapnel introduced to the body from the explosion.” Reported the corner.

He was a sallow-faced man who always sounded like a hundred-year-old recording, but he knew his job well. Sergeant Takahashi Sango and Inspector Okazaki Kan were both in attendance for the facts.

It had been four hours since the explosion at the Meiji Shrine. Sango had naturally been the first on the scene and made the call in. Her apprehension at first had only been due to feeling she likely wouldn't be able to satisfactorily close the case. That feeling had tripled down when the digital registration she'd found in one of the cars on the scene said it belonged to the mayor of Neo Tokyo. Sango had called Inspector Okazaki directly to relay that information.

All the usual steps had been taken. The area at the shrine had been cordoned off, and all the appropriate parties were summoned to dance their numbers. The bodies of the victims, or, it would have been more appropriate to say the pieces that made up the bodies of the victims, had been taken to Tokyo Metropolitan General. The two women were down the chilly morgue to get the details.

“And the mayor?” Sango asked.

“I've confirmed her DNA. There's no doubt.”

Sango felt woozy. She started to tip over, and maybe capsize. Inspector Okazaki braced her.

“Here, Sango, sit down.”

The inspector guided her over to a metal chair.

“I'm okay. Just the shock.” Sango tried to say convincingly. “Um, was there anything else?”

The coroner went on. “Also got it confirmed for one Yoshida Ichiro and Terada Daichi. So, maybe yay? I don't know. The one on the bike too confirmed his DNA, but he was in the most pieces of the bunch. It's gonna take a lot of work to sort which are his and which aren't. Got a couple more ids almost complete, but the rest will take a bit.”

“Thank you for your work, doctor. Could we please have the room for a minute?” Okazaki asked politely.

“Yeah, sure.”

The coroner left like it didn't matter one way or the other. Okazaki walked across the room to fetch herself a chair and brought it back to sit with the younger woman.

“It's going to be okay, Sango.”

“Inspector, the mayor is dead. As a result of my investigation. If, if I'd been able to close it sooner, find the killer-”

“Hey!” Okazaki barked. “Listen to me. You're going to run that gambit through your mind thousands of times. We've all been there. It's a part of the job, unfortunately. I know you're not going to believe me for some time yet, but this is not on you. It's terrible, but sometimes these things do just happen.”

“I know you're trying to help ma'am, and I truly appreciate it. But, I still can't help thinking I should have solved the case sooner.”

“Those are my sentiments, exactly!”

Sango and Okazaki turned their heads to get a gander at where the harsh tones came from. Standing in the doorway of the morgue was a woman in full dress uniform police regalia, and looking like she'd been born with her scowl already carved into the deepest etches of her face. It was Senior Commissioner Jibiki Shion. The Ox.

“If you'd managed to catch that kid just one day earlier, then Hamada Bashira would still be alive. She was the best mayor this town's had for twenty years. Despite her youth, I respected the woman and what she stood for.”

“Ma'am, with all due respect, I don't believe it's a fair assessment to blame this incident on Sergeant Takahashi's performance.”

“She had everything she needed, didn't she? She got pictures of the perp, identified him, tracked his apartment, and even managed to get the identification beacon for that scooter he was tooling around on. I know the cameras around the city are always in a loo-loo state, but she still had all she should have needed to bring him in.” The Ox said.

She kept her posture as ramrod rigid as the lines of her face and the bun of her hair. If she hadn't taken a few steps further in at one point, Sango might have thought she was incapable of movement.

The Ox went on, strolling about as she talked. “Yes, this case became quite messy, but it's also very obvious once your piece it together. I've spent the last several hours going over the reports and evidence for myself. Those Black Mist hooligans wanted to take what the Yoshida controlled. They weren't satisfied with doing it the tried and true way, so their leader hatched a scheme.

He went to the docks that night, posing as someone they'd hired to do a job for them. Maybe the newest grunt in a long line of them. The punk had been planning to off all of the yakuza there himself, but then the raid happened. He fought to get out, and did, killing three fine special assault officers in the process. We can know this for sure thanks to the Amayas. They said their attacker mentioned the incident on the boat.

Dissatisfied with how things turned out, he decided to try a change in tactic, and go right for the king instead of through his army. They went to the Yoshida Accountancy Firm, trying to pull off a kind of pincer movement to take it all in one fell swoop. It failed because they'd underestimated the amount of resistance they would encounter. All of them, except their leader, died there.

While this was going on, old man Yoshida could see that if Hamada Bashira were reelected, her policies that had just started to chip away at his empire would only become more aggressive and effective. He couldn't have that, so he tried a scheme to force her into needing his money, so he would finally have leverage over her. He lured poor Hamada to a rendezvous but hadn't counted on the psychosis of the Black Mist leader.

The kid, wanting revenge for the death of his gang more than anything else, tracked them down at the meeting, intending to kill Yoshida. Unluckily for him, some of those mods he'd made to his bike were a bit too powerful. I spoke to Maeda-san myself to get the information. He'd swapped out its regular fuel delivery system for one of those fancy blastoff things, I think they're called. It made a part of the design for the electricity from the hybrid engine and the fuel to mix, causing a miniature explosion to give it some extra kick in acceleration.

But what he didn't know was that the fuel he was using was too rich. Ate away at the tubing in just the wrong place so it got a jolt of power too early, and the spark traveled back to the waiting tank to become a bomb. It was the city's misfortune that it happened when it did. That's how it all went.”

Sango was too aghast at what she'd heard to be speechless.

“Senior Commissioner, I'm sorry, but with respect ma'am, that leaves several holes unaccounted for. How do you explain the sonic readings the ballistics department found in the slain officers, found to be from two guns? Or the modified microdot phone? Why was that apartment rigged to go up like that? I believe there's still someone out there who has not been brought to justice!” Sango asserted herself.

“Sergeant, you are free to add those details to your report, but is it not also true that you have evidence linking the attacker of the Amayas to a specific motorcycle? And that motorcycle to a specific person? And did the identification beacon of that motorcycle not lead you to both subjects this every night?”

“Yes ma'am, but-”

“Sango, stop,” Okazaki said. “The Senior Commissioner and you are both correct on different parts. Your final report on this case will contain all of the facts, as well as all possible narratives to contextualize them.”

“Very well said, Inspector. I've always appreciated how intelligent a woman you are. Sergeant, you should take a page from your superior. You can learn a thing or two from her. I will be looking forward to seeing that report of yours.”

“Uh...” Sango thought better than to argue any further. Not after her inspector had just gone to the trouble of trying to save her career. “Yes, ma'am. I'll have it prepared as soon as possible.”

“I want you both to know that I am not unsympathetic to what has happened here. If clear evidence citing the involvement of another is brought to my attention, I'll personally authorize the reopening of this case. But, as it stands, we must show the public that we are a united front. We can't let them believe that we're not a step ahead of any lawbreakers at all times.”

“Of course, ma'am.”

It was all Sango could say.

The split for the automatic doors to the primary reception area cracked open and slid apart. A pair of figures listlessly shambled in. With the early hour of the morning, the room had no one present except a single nurse to admit patients, a couple from a car crash waiting to be seen, and the unformed cops who'd driven the couple in. The pair scuffled their way to the admittance desk.

“Hello. What are your symptoms or do you require urgent care?” The bored nurse never looked up as she spoke.

A stark silence, absent the sounds of a single grunt, weight shifting to another foot, or even a single breath followed her question. That visage that smacked the nurse in the face when she finally looked up was like something from her nightmares.

Two bio-droids, dead bodies that had once been people, but were sold by their relatives into perpetual servitude had their expressionless faces staring back at her. Bio-droids were treated so their flesh would stay as long as possible, in an attempt to keep people more at ease with their presence, but it was far from a perfect science.

The one on the left, half his face had sloughed off in various patches sometime previously, showing dull, dirtied metal bone beneath the surface. The other one had once been a woman. All of her hair had fallen away except for a few scant, scraggly strands. She had no top on, allowing the nurse to see right through her one decayed breast to the wall on the other side of the room.

Looking at the horrid perversions of the human condition, the nurse had scarcely breathed. She couldn't fathom what those abominations were doing in front of her. When they lifted their arms, reaching out to grab onto her, she released what would be the most blood-curdling scream of abject terror her life would ever know.

The shriek aroused the attention of the police officers and the waiting couple. The cops both dashed over with shaky breaths of their own upon seeing the once human pieces of equipment. Trying to pull those things off ended up being like wrestling a mannequin that was able to fight back. Their wooden, but strong movements making subjugation no easy feat. The officers got the two things subdued eventually by cuffing them to the hospital chairs screwed into the floor.

Only just they had achieved that, the doors parted again, and more bio-droids took their lifeless steps inside. It wasn't another two bio-droids, or four, or six, but an entire horde, crowding each other to fit through the too narrow portal. In her panic, the admittance nurse jumped up and entered the computer command which would call in a terrorist attack on the hospital.

Takashi Sango's, Okazaki Kana's, and the Ox's phones all sounded off simultaneously.

“Terrorist attack on Metropolitan General? That's here.” Inspector Okazaki said with clear confusion.

“We're getting a video feed,” Sango said.

The footage that streamed to them could have come from any of a thousand zombie movies made in the last century. Dozens of bio-droids were invading the hospital through the front entrance.

“What in the name of Buddha?” The Ox gasped, her implacable exterior falling by the wayside.

“Come on! We've got to get up there!” Urged Okazaki.

The three women together ran from the room to go find who they could help in a bizarre, and unprecedented event.

It wasn't ten seconds after the cops had gotten onto the elevator that I came out from my spot in the stairs. The final part of my plan was always going to need a distraction so that I could work, so I'd decided that staging the start of a zombie apocalypse would be the most attention-grabbing.

My strategy had come off without a hitch. The program I'd written for “Benjiro” to talk to Genkei, and feed him the location of where to go had been a bit slow at first in responding to him but had found its legs with only minor tweaking. It had brought Genkei right to Yoshida, Daichi, and the mayor, and then I'd done the rest.

When they'd caught me tinkering with their bikes, I had been shutting off the beacons, but I'd also been wearing away the correct fuel line. A small, remote-activated charge to cause nothing but the tiniest pings of an explosion had completed the accidental detonation.

I'd also been sure to reactivate a beacon in Genkei's wheels while he was on his way to us, but it was the signal I'd let the cops capture from me two days before. Nothing a bit of code transposition couldn't do. The cops had been needed in play there at the end, cause Hamada's body had to be recovered quickly.

As soon as I'd seen the location of Genkei on my map screen, I'd used the computer of my motorcycle, synced with my tablet, to start the charge's activation sequence. It'd blown once he was in close enough proximity to me. There had been some risk I might have gotten caught in the blast, but no plan could ever be foolproof. Soon as Genkei crossed the ten-meter barrier, I'd revved my engine and hauled ass away.

Quickly glancing over the readouts digitally stenciling the names on the body drawers, I found the corpse I was after without difficulty. Opening it up, I saw that the former mayor had been torched, but good. Her front side had taken the brunt of the explosion, looking not dissimilar to overcooked beef.

Without ceremony, I flipped her over so her far less blackened rear end was facing up. Using a scalpel I'd taken from the tray, I cut into her back along the spine, between the fourth and fifth vertebrae. My incision went down the length of the vertebrae, and I pulled it back. Right there, attached directly to her spine was my target; the internal power core.

The power core was to the cybernetics what the heart was to everything organic. I plucked it out of her the same as pulling a datacube or an ancient flash drive.

Next was the hard part. Removing everything from my upper torso, I had no choice but to use the reflective metal of the body cabinet to see as best I could. Feeling along for the spot first, I found my own vertebrae.

After a full minute of calming breaths and mental preparation, I cut. It hurt as bad as anything else I'd ever felt, but it had to be done. I peeled away the flesh, reached in, and removed my original core.

What had before only been tiny drops surged upon me with the same frailness as a nuke going off on my head. I got the full force of the heavy metal poisoning that had been slowly killing me for five days. Fatigue, pain, incoherence, everything I'd been doing my best to push down for days came at me with their full force.

Those damned cops back on the boat hadn't only messed up my foot and arm, but they'd damaged my core, making it so it could only produce half power. At that level, the scrubbing system that leeched the poisoning from the metal bones out through the pores along with sweat didn't have what it needed to work for me indefinitely.

I'd needed a new one, but they were the most expensive cybernetic component of them all. Every last yen I had couldn't have bought a cheapo base model. Worse yet, the doc had told me that with the levels of poisoning I'd soon have in me, I'd need a specialty model that would reprogram my scrubbers to go into overdrive.

Cores weren't like bones, either. They worked more like marrow, or blood, where you had to have what was compatible for you and nothing else. The doc had run a search for me, using a passcode into the Japanese medical database she still had. In all of Neo Tokyo, the only core which could reprogram my system, and was compatible with me belonged to Mayor Hamada Bashira. Hearing that, I knew what I'd have to do if I wanted to live, and gotten to work.

The pain and instant fatigue without the core was beyond description, but I had just enough steam still swimming in there to push the new one in place.

I think I might have blacked for a few minutes, but I honestly couldn't say. All I knew was that the rush, that jubilant, rapturous feeling of instant power I got as it went in was better than any artificial drug I could have ever tried. I'd still be shaky for a while, I was sure, but I'd done it.

Some appropriation of some of the coroner's surgical staples was needed to close my back up, but it felt like nothing in the joy of knowing I'd be alive tomorrow. My clothes back on, I left, using the marked signs to find a fire exit. Nobody was going to be paying attention to those for a while anyway.

Outside, it was still dark, sunrise not being for a few hours more. The air was damp, cool, and refreshing to the touch.

I didn't know what had become of Sarah Mackenzie, but with my insights into how capable she was, I had no doubts as to her ability to finagle her escape. As to the people dealing with my little horror movie upstairs, they'd be fine. The bio-droids would try grabbing at their faces for another twenty minutes and then go into standby mode. How they were moved or recovered by the construction company after wasn't my problem.

Given everything I'd done in my quest to survive, I knew I'd have to get out of dodge for a long time, but I didn't care. A new location wouldn't be so bad. Who knew what I could fix, or whom I could fleece when I got there?

I was back to where I started. I'd told Sarah that I only had me, and my life. What I'd left out was how that was enough for me. I don't know if it'd always been somewhere in me, or if seeing both my parents dead and looking so pathetic had done it, but I just didn't have the chops for the conventional. All I wanted was to keep going as long as possible, and to do it under my own power. Maybe somebody could have fingered me in a line-up, but there wasn't anyone who could really say who I was. To anyone I happened to pass on the street, I'd never be anything more than “some guy.” Nobody alive on Earth knew who Dante Kajiwara was, and I was happy enough to keep it that way. I turned up the collar of my jacket, and let the night swallow me whole.