Cordon

The lights went out and the music stopped.

When they came back on, everything was chaos.

Men clad in black vests and polished silver riot helmets flooded into the room from the far side. The dancers who had been singing along just a few moments ago scattered in every direction towards the walls and boarded up windows.

Kanamaru was already pulling me towards the door I had peeked in just a few minutes ago. I could hear loud popping sounds from behind the little stand the DJ had been using. The stormtroopers were firing shotguns around them into the crowd. One girl got hit and keeled over, writhing in pain. The other party people were climbing all over each other to get out.

We were the first out the door, back into the locker room where Kanamaru’s contact had set up his stand of illicit goods. Everything was still sitting there on the table, but Ootake wasn’t still there counting them. Hosoya wasn’t there either, and neither was Toshi- nor the man who had been guarding the door. Kanamaru didn’t stop. We flew out of the door.

The streets of the industrial district had been deserted when we came here, but now they were packed with activity. Some of the ravers had climbed out of the window and were now scattering towards the darkness. Others had gotten caught in front of a number of large trucks marked as belonging to theTokyo Citizens Police.” The trucks seemed to be hosing them down with high-pressure fire hoses to corral them into a pack. More were on the way, coming down the street we were headed towards. Kanamaru let go of my arm, but kept running at full speed towards the concrete stairwell we had come up earlier.

It was a police raid. The black vested men must have been the CitPols that Kanamaru and Hiroki had both warned about. A few more trucks passed us by and screeched to a halt in front of the door. I heard some shouting from the trucks, and the popping of more shotguns, but we were running too fast for any of it to make sense. Kanamaru practically dived down the concrete stairwell and into the flooded hallway.

This time, there was no careful wading through the disgusting slime. Kanamaru splashed through the corridor as fast as the muck would allow him. I followed behind, getting soaked with the awful mixture. The agitation of the stagnant pool just made the smell even worse. It was too dark to see on the other end, so I felt for the breach in the storm drain pipe. I found it after a little struggling. Kanamaru was already sliding down on his butt to the end of the pipe- It looked faster than trying to crawl up, but I wasn’t able to get enough momentum to overcome the friction and just resorted to crawling after a few seconds trying to start myself.

Kanamaru didn’t check to see whether the coast was clear before dashing out across the little gully in front of the wall. He was already at the opening of the other pipe before I even got to the bottom. I didn’t take the same chance. The guard tower in the distance didn’t seem like it had changed. In the distance I could still hear the sirens and occasional gunshots from the police raid, but the wall guards didn’t seem to notice. Good, it was still safe- get through here, and I’d be out of the North.

I lunged out across towards the other storm drain. Everything went white- I was being illuminated by a searchlight. I had only looked at the guard tower to the North- there was some other guard post to the south that was now on to me. Someone shouted something. I kept going. Something made a *Fwip* sound in the dirt next to me.

Oh god, were they really shooting at me? Was this how I was gonna die?

I didn’t have time to think about any more than that. I slid into the pipe the same way I had done earlier. Kanamaru wasn’t around to rebuke me for showing off this time. For now, I was safe.

I caught up to Kanamaru in the lot of the abandoned factory. He was thrashing around, kicking part of the chain-link fence that hadn’t collapsed. Hosoya was with him, apparently trying to console him, or at least get him to stop flailing around. Ootake was there, too. We had all made it back uninjured. Well, uninjured save for Kanamaru’s pride.

“Hey, the freshman made it.”

Hosoya noticed me climbing up the stairs. That managed to snap Kanamaru out of his fit, too- at least, for a moment. He wheeled around and began directing his invective at me.

“NISHIZAWA! I thought I told you NOT to get lost! You have any clue what-”

He stopped, looking past me.

“Who the HELL is she?”

She?

It was a strange sensation. The last thing I had remembered before Kanamaru had pulled me away was that girl taking my hand and pulling me into the crowd under the mirror ball at the rave. I hadn’t even had any time to think about it while I was running, but now I was aware of the fact that, despite burning the feeling of her grabbing my hand into my brain- I had never actually felt her let go.

Sure enough, Sayu- or rather, the girl I had met on the dance floor, was standing right behind me- equally soaked in decaying kelp and industrial solvent.

“Uh-” was all I could stammer out before Kanamaru came to terms with what he was seeing.

“You brought a NORTHERNER through my rat tunnel? You realize how much you just ruined?”

Wait. Wait. Hold on a second. We almost got beaten up and arrested a few moments ago- we almost got shot- and Kanamaru’s big complaint was that someone else used his little secret tunnel?

“We had to! We were about to get-”

“Arrested? Freshman, I told you- the cops can be bribed. That’s not hard to do. What you just did screwed up our entire operation!”

What? Why? Because I had dragged a girl through it?

“How? The tunnel’s still there!”

Hosoya answered my question before Kanamaru could.

“It’s compromised now. If a Northerner knows about it, it’s gonna get patched up.”

It was a little late for that now. The sentry who had shot at us must have seen us come out of the tunnel. Even if the girl was of a mind to snitch, she’d be at least second in line.

“I just told you- we didn’t have a choice. They were gonna shoot us!”

Kanamaru had composed himself again. He grabbed me by the collar.

“Look, Freshman. This little ‘policing action’? It happens all the time. So long as you’re smart enough, you can get away every time. What you can’t get away with is the fact that ALL of our working capital is sitting on a table, unpaid for- and you just leaked the ONE way we had of getting it back to someone who’s gonna get it closed.”

“She’s not gonna leak your tunnel! You know, she almost got shot too-”

Kanamaru wasn’t having it.

“It doesn’t matter if SHE is the one to leak it. Any Northerner is a risk. You think THAT thing-”

He pointed at a lit-up section of the wall behind some buildings.

“-is meant to keep us out? They don’t give a damn if some Southerners sneak in to peddle low-risk crap. That wall’s there for one reason.”

He pointed his finger directly at the girl.

“To keep HER in.”

If you believed the signs, the purpose of the wall was as a “bulwark against Southern aggression.” We all knew that wasn’t the real reason it was there. It was there because Uncle Yoshi and his friends in high places didn’t want anyone to run away to the South, where his power over them was meaningless.

“Wait, what about the money? You didn’t get paid?”

Ootake redirected things towards the question nobody had bothered to ask yet.

“NO, WE DIDN’T GET PAID! You saw how he was trying to screw us! He never had the cash he promised! He was just trying to get us to bring them over so he could give us the bare minimum!”

Kanamaru’s wrath felt a little self-directed. The master con-artist had finally gotten himself conned. It might have been poetic if he hadn’t caught me in it too. What, really, had I lost, though? I hadn’t put down any cash into this. A few hours, and maybe a few calories in all that “sprinting away from gunshots” business. I had come out remarkably unscathed.

“So he led you in the back for no reason?”

I had to ask. He had disappeared with Hosoya to haggle his way into something instead of just packing up and leaving.

Kanamaru pulled something from his pocket and slapped it - hard - across my chest. It was a translucent plastic cassette with some kind of DVD sitting inside. It looked like someone had updated a classic floppy disk with more modern technology. The inscription “K-1104” had been drawn on a paper label on one side of the disk.

“What’s this?”

“Your payment, Freshie. He said it was ‘extremely valuable.’ If you ask me, it’s a piece of junk he had lying around. That’s all I was able to wring him for before he got spooked and bolted. He left all our stuff sitting there.”

Wait, Kanamaru had advance warning about the raid?

“-And if SOMEONE had listened to me and not wandered off to flirt with some Northern floozy, we might have had time to carry some of the merchandise back with us!”

I had to defend myself somehow.

“Hey, this went to shit because you trusted that Toshi guy. What would we even have done with them if we brought them back? They’re worthless junk here. You think you’re getting a refund on them?”

Kanamaru stumbled at this logic, grasping for some way of refuting me. We weren’t getting paid because of mistakes he had made, not me. He finally came to a tu quoque- a time-honored classic rebuttal when you know you’re in the wrong.

“Well, I guess I’ll never know! I mean, I have no way of getting any of them back now that YOU made sure we can’t ever use this route again. You think I have dozens of secret tunnels just lying around? It took a long time to chisel out that pipe!”

He wasn’t wrong about the tunnel being useless now. They’d surely keep a guard posted there again- maybe even one with better aim.

Kanamaru let go of my collar. He straightened himself out.

“You owe me big time for saving your ass.”

I couldn’t deny that. I would have been trapped if he had arrived even a few seconds after he did.

“So what now?”

“Now? Figure it out yourself, dumbass. I’m going home. I’ve lost enough money on you for one day.”

Kanamaru kicked the gravel as he walked off. Hosoya followed after him. They were talking about something- maybe ideas for how to get their massive investment back. Ootake went after them.

It was just me now.

“Ichiro.”