Rabbit Rabbit! :)
Hope everyone is staying safely indoors! Also hope this chapter provides an entertaining - or at least distracting - form of time-pass! TW: for bloodshed and gore, but nothing more horrific than in the series itself. Saya and Co. finally kick some butt!
As always, your feedback means the world to me! Don't hesitate to let me know if anything seems wonky or ooc!
Review, pretty please!
Yomitan, Nakagami District, Okinawa
Japan
It is like a plague of locusts.
The sound of their wings thunders through the air, lapping and overlapping: dirgelike, deafening. Their bodies blot out the full moon, red as a wound hacked into the surface of the sky. Scattered fires erupt from the patchwork of darkness below them. The city is set ablaze by their attacks. In the distance, sirens wail, and choppers swoop across the disaster-zones, volume cutting in and out. Searchlights circle through the sky in rapid arcs.
In the watchtower, Saya gasps at the monitors. "God."
Her family are gathered around her. In the refracted glow of the screens, their expressions hold varying degrees of shock, except Haji's, whose expression holds nothing at all. But his fingers curl around Saya's shoulder, imparting a squeeze. She wants to look at him. But her body is bereft of strength. The carnage unfolding onscreen is too overwhelming.
"An eyesore, isn't it?" August sighs.
Their new Chief is transmitting feed in real-time from Red Shield's satellites. On the flatscreen of the monitor bank, August's own face is wan with strain. A lollipop-stick juts like a cigarette from the corner of one pierced lip.
"I've received word that the American military has the island on lockdown," August continues. "Troops have been deployed."
"Jesus." Disgust etches itself across Kai's face. "Can't they butt out just once?"
August offers a shake of the head. "An attack of this scale will warrant a permanent toehold in Okinawa. At first, I suspected they'd planned it themselves. But the communications my teams have intercepted suggest they're as confuzzled by the clones as anyone. And rapidly losing control."
Kai sucks in a breath, then swivels toward Saya. "Did Nathan do this?!"
Dumbstruck, Saya says, "He never… never mentioned…"
"That's the least of our concerns," David cuts in.
The others turn to stare at him. In the secondhand radiance of flames, his expression holds a familiar hardness: iron and granite.
"Intel picked up the source of the clones," he says. "It's from the factory in Yabuchi."
"Gran supresa," V grunts. "Why doesn't Red Shield just drop a bomb on it?"
"Because it would violate our agreement with the Japanese government," August says on the monitor. "But—" The faintest twitch of lips. "Not to worry. I've squeezed some bureaucratic man-grapes…em, metaphorically speaking… to sneak you lot some fancy toys from Télesphore's armory."
"How?" Kai asks. "Nobody can smuggle arms to the island without the JSDF swooping in."
"The JSDF and the Americans are too busy hashing out their terms—i.e. finger-pointing—to pay attention. Besides, I've found a reliable back-channel who knows Okinawa's ports like the back of their hand." August's lollipop clacks noisily against teeth. "Deidra Darling, why don't you explain?"
Bewildered, Kai glances at Dee—who manages to look both sly-eyed and somber.
"Tell me," she drawls. "Does Jahana Industries ring a bell?"
Kai goes queasily green. "The fuck?! How's Mao's syndicate involved in this?"
"She contacted Red Shield. Offered to lend us a hand. Something about—quote unquote—not wanting a horde of harpies in her backyard."
"Is she okay?" Yumi asks, in reflexive concern for her ex-stepmother.
Dee nods. "We transferred her family to a secure bunker. In exchange, she lent us munitions, along with solid connections to help ship our weapons in. She also asked me—quote unquote again—why I was wasting my time with a block-brained man-baby like Kai."
Kai says nothing. But his body sways back and forth, stuck in some secret gyre of ex-girlfriend hell.
"Cheer up, tiger," Dee says. "At least the meet-and-greet didn't end in a crossdraw."
"I was hoping you two wouldn't meet at all."
"Unlikely. That lady is packing some serious firepower."
Haji's flat voice interrupts the exchange. "Will it be enough?"
He is still staring without expression at the spreading massacre onscreen. Something detonates in the westward feed, a giant matchstick struck against flint. A spark ignites, and smoke spirals wildly into the air. Everyone flinches at the depthless echoes of it. Worse is the spiraling of sonic motes caught in the audio. The eerie, unmistakable trill of human screams.
Saya's blood boils at the sound, and her heartbeat races against its own best time. But her body is rooted to the spot. On the screens, the hellish brightness fractures into a thousand pieces, past mixing with present mixing with future…
Cities fallen. Blood flowing in a river across the streets. Humans cowering as armies trample them down; fields and houses torn apart in billows of flame. And through the haze Tórir materializes, cloak swinging around his ankles, his mass of fine red hair gleaming like a blood-slicked mirror as he surveys the chaos with a half-smile, a figment of the past flowering with brute brilliance into the present, like something ancient and apocalyptic spawning to life.
The vision short-circuits into blankness, leaving Saya blinking in disorientation. She can still hear her mother's whisper.
"Beware that you choose wisely."
She will need to choose worse than that, so she can stop Tórir.
I have to.
Before more people are hurt.
In her pocket, her phone vibrates and trills.
The sound captures everyone's attention. Heads turn toward her in tandem. Onscreen, August stops mid-slurp on the lollipop. A suffocating silence stretches over the room, amplified by the soundtrack of muffled screams and surging flames. Saya hesitates, then fishes out her phone.
"H-Hello?"
"Hey there, chickadee," Nathan chirps. "Enjoying the show?"
Shock pummels Saya behind the ribs. "Did—did you do this?!"
"What? Nooooo. That's all Tórir, I'm afraid. Big on booms, small on subtlety. And a premature climax, to boot." A snide snigger. "A habit of his, I recall."
"Yabuchi," Saya cuts in. "The clones are coming from there."
"Indeed. A breadcrumb trail in blood red… to lead you to him."
"If that's what it takes to stop this craziness—"
"Whoaaaaa! Rein it in! Wind down! Hit the brakes!!" She can picture Nathan shaking the phone like a badly-behaved puppy. "I didn't work my aerobicized ass off for you to traipse straight into a trap! We want this to be worthy of Bette Davis' Dark Victory—not Dukes of Dumbassery!"
"Who's Bette Davis?" Yumi mutters.
August's lollipop makes one cheek bulge out. "Some old-timey dame."
"What whazzat?!" Nathan's treble-cry of outrage is so shrill that Saya holds the phone at arm's length. "Dame? Old-timey? Goodness gracious great balls of fire—buss that ignorant pie-hole wide so I can drill in some much-needed knowledge! You could make a triple-tier tiramisu of Hollywood Hubris and it would taste of ashes—ashes!—compared to the savory delicacy of Davis in Of Human Bondage—"
Saya exhales through gritted teeth. "Nathan…"
"To say nothing of the piece de resistance that was Jezebel! Or the dishy perfection of All About Eve, where she—"
"Nathan!"
"Wha—? Oh. Ohhhh." Nathan's ire deflates with a sullen throat-clearing. "Another time, then."
"You told me to wait for your phonecall," Saya says. "Now keep your end of the bargain."
"Already did, silly-billy. But I had to set the stage first." A pause rich with complacency. "Which I have."
Static travels down to Saya from his end of the line. Or is it a blood-based synchronicity? Her fingers tighten on the phone. "What did you do?"
"Everything, and well." The icing of cheer in his words in licked away by grimness. "Now listen carefully. This is what I'd like you to do…"
Naminoue Beach
1-25-11 Wakasa
Naha, Okinawa Prefecture
900-0037
"Almost midnight."
"Mm."
"So why are you out here?"
Haji slips his arms around her from behind, as she stands at the seashore. Stars dust the sky in a hazy glitter. At the west, the highways and city lights are a living neon geometry. In the east, the sea is a dark prism, starlight piercing the heart of each rolling wave. The night holds a luminous beauty that Saya yearns to trap in time—everlasting, ever-transient.
Like her life itself.
Haji's lips flutter along her temple. "Is something wrong?"
Saya presses herself back against him, luxuriating even as she broods. "Nothing. Just... thinking."
"About?"
"Big, blocky existential stuff." A beat. "Burnt sausages."
"Ah."
Haji nuzzles her closer, hiding his smile in her hair. His enveloping body blots out the glow of the distant bonfire.
By the escarpment, her family are having a New Year's barbecue. Steaks sizzle on the blackened cooking grill under Kai's watchful eye. Saya had tried to help, but her sausages kept bursting into flames. Kai (control freak) had banished her to the sidelines. Nearby, V is hauling driftwood to pile in a towering heap. Yumi periodically douses it in kerosene to keep it alight, dancing a giddy pyromaniac's jig as the sticks are engulfed in flames. Beneath the swaying branches of a sago palm, Yuri stretches with feline indolence across a blanket, her head in Sachi's lap, lips parted as he drops chunks of melon between them.
David and Julia will drop by soon, Ezra in tow if they can wrench him away from lab-work. Lewis and Lulu are already here. The big man is lugging down two six-packs of beer from the cooler in his truck. Lulu is perched cross-legged on the stone stairway, showing Dee how to cut the ends off a case of pre-Castro cigars, easygoing and expert—Saya feels the tiniest prick of concern about that: when did Lulu start smoking cigars?
But she is also content to bask in the scents of woodsmoke and cooking, and the rise and fall of everyone's laughter floating into the darkness.
Happiness has a short shelf-life. She is learning to savor it whenever she can. With her family, it is easiest. Yet even at the noisy tip of the party, the shadow of loss lays between her and the others. Diva's death. The miscarriage in Karachi. The threat of IBM-UAWA. Her ambivalence at starting a family again. Her dread at her next Long Sleep.
"I thought I was ready," she sighs.
"To cook sausages?"
"No!" The tetchiness fades into a swell of regret. "To settle down. To be with you... and our daughters."
Haji says nothing. But in the interrupted silence, his slow breathing holds a subcurrent of grief. Then he folds her closer, the cool slide of his face alongside hers.
"Do you feel unsettled," he murmurs, "when it is just us?"
"Of course not!" Never ever ever. "It's just—I think of our girls. Whenever I'm happy. Whenever I'm sad, too. But when I'm happy, it just reminds me of what I can't share with them. All the memories I've saved up. The milestones. I remember how they were stolen from us."
Haji exhales. Beneath his suit, his musculature is tense with the familiar topography of reticence. Then, in a rare reflex, "I feel that way when—"
"Hm?"
"Whenever your Long Sleep begins. The first year is always the worst. So are the ten or twelve after that. Then, the regret reshapes itself. Or rather... I do not care if it comes. Instead of reminding me of what I cannot have with you, I remember you almost as a way to stay connected to you. Your presence is kept in a safe vault in my mind. And in my happiest moments, I unlock it, so you can share them with me. Even if the sharing comes with sadness." Quieter, "I find, with our daughters, it is much the same. And that lets me endure the loss."
Moved, Saya can't find the words to speak. His confession, soft-spoken and unguarded, surfaces an ache behind her ribs. A reminder that just as she was brutalized by the loss of their children, so was Haji. Except he knows well how to dispose of the grief. He has learnt the hard way, each time she lapses into Long Sleep, and he is left to labor with stoic steadiness to rebuild what has been blown apart.
Unless I break the curse.
Unless I'm brave enough to call Nathan, and ask him—
Haji's cool fingers rubs the tears from her face. "Saya?"
She blinks wetly, and jitters out a breath. "I'm sorry. I just—I'm not ready."
"Hm?"
"To try for children again. I'm not ready yet. I thought I was, when we first began. But so much has happened since then. I'm not sure I'm done mourning them. Or maybe—mourning the part of me that was naive enough to think it was possible. I'm sorry if—"
"Ssh."
Haji turns her gently and pulls her into his arms, tucking her head beneath his chin.
"Do not apologize," he whispers. "It is your choice."
A sob catches in her throat. "A choice I'm doing nothing with."
"Sometimes nothing is the best recourse." He kisses her forehead. "There is no shame in making the best decision you can, even if turns out wrong. But deliberately making a bad decision, just for the sake of making one? No good can come from it."
She sniffles. "Better cowardice than stupidity?"
"We can be cowardly together."
That gets a wet burble of a laugh. Scrubbing at her cheeks, she drags in a composing breath.
Wind curls off the shore, carrying in the direction of her family. Their shapes are limned in gold by the bonfire. Conversation is eddying in disconnected bursts. Kai and Lewis are in heated discussion about soy sauce marinade versus koregusu. Yuri, like a fecund queen bee among drones, has consigned Sachi to foot-rubs while V uses a cardboard sheet to fan the smoke away from her spot. Yumi is lighting one of Lulu's cigars, smoke leaking from her nostrils, the two of them sighing over the smoothness of the tobacco. Dee, halfway up the stairs, is waving to the distant shape of her parents' BMW pulling up in the parking lot.
The sight stirs up memories for Saya. The last Sunday, when it was her and Riku and Kai and Kaori. And Haji, hidden in the periphery like a watchful pocket of shadow, nearly unnoticed except for the music pouring from his cello, layering the night with dimension after dimension of bittersweetness.
It feels that way now. But different. Bigger and brighter, somehow less innocent, the deep-golden bonfire skating over the debris of past losses and the accumulated scars from the war.
Yet she is grateful for its imprint in her memory. A flicker of imperfect joy caught in time.
Sighing, Saya melts against Haji. Taking one of his hands, she curls their fingers together, thumb rubbing against his pulsepoint.
"Haji?"
"Yes?"
She chooses her words with care. "I can't say when I'll be ready again. But please promise me one thing?"
His eyes reflect an infinitude of tenderness. "Anything."
"Once I'm ready… please promise we won't be cowardly. We won't hide behind our insecurities. Or our silences. Not like before. We'll be brave. The way our daughters deserve us to be. We'll face the danger head on."
Several emotions skim beneath the surface of Haji's face, too quick to follow, before he whispers, "Is there danger?"
"Not right now. But in ourselves. Out there." A sigh. "There's always something. Some—some—"
"Some fresh hell?" he finishes dryly.
Her answering smile wobbles, but only a little. "Right. But we'll survive it. Promise me that?"
"Saya..."
In the background, her family whip up a chorusing countdown. "Ten... nine... eight... seven... six..."
Haji's lips part on a hundred unsaid things. But his eyes remain unchanged in their softness. Staring into them, she feels something unrolling inside him like the seawaves on the sand, a slow displacement of reality by truth.
"Haji?" She squeezes his hand in hers. "Please?"
"...three... two..."
He leans in to kiss her, a gentle slide that makes her feel like she is falling—or flying. A sweetness of uncertainty taking flight into promise.
"Happy New Year!"
Yomitan, Nakagami District, Okinawa
Japan
Dust sifts down, sparkling in the waxen glow from the bulb. In the deserted corridor, Saya and Haji face off like fencers. Haji's ambivalent impulses don't show in the flat surface of his face. But his knuckles clench, paleness spreading across the tight-stretched skin to delineate his bones.
"This is too risky," he says.
Saya takes a step back. Sometimes she still detests the foot-and-a-half of height between them. It makes it a challenge to meet his eyes.
"It doesn't matter. We're running out of time. If we can shut down what's happening on Yabuchi—if we can kill Tórir—we can stop what's happening in the city." She jitters out a breath. "We might even be able to save Yuri—if there's an antidote."
"Nathan suggested otherwise."
"Nathan suggests a lot of things." She touches his arm, her fingers skimming down to tangle in his sleeve. "Herbs aren't his forte. But they are Tórir's. If there's a chance we can save Yuri—"
"—or lose more in the bargain." Haji's features are tugged downward with bitter memory. "In Karachi, nightlong proximity to Tórir triggered your miscarriage. What if it happens again?"
"I've taken precautions."
"What precautions?"
Saya bites her lip. "Tórir is drawn to the pheromones that a pregnant Queen gives off. In reply, his body releases its own chemical signal—a killing intent that hurts the—the fetuses. As long as I can disguise their presence from him—"
"Disguise it?"
Saya nods.
Yu Shimbaku's potion to keep the 'seed' planted—black haw, cramp bark, oat flowers, seiðr—sloshes through her empty belly. The salve that the old woman had used to mask the babies' scent is an acrid whiff at the nape of her neck. Camouflage rather than shields—and Saya wonders if they are enough.
Is she being abysmally naive to rely on a witch's brew? Certainly, her own existence ought to be proof of its potency. Didn't her mother take the same measures, to keep her and Diva in supernatural stasis? Then again, who knows if the yuta was telling the truth? Saya could be walking into a death-trap. For herself, and her daughters.
It's too late.
I have to do this.
It goes beyond quashing the threat to her family. She owes it to her mother and aunt—two Queens long dead, yet who are alive in the hollow space inside her, a doubling and a tripling whose contours are most darkly outlined during the transports of sex and violence, of sleep and dreams and mouthfuls of hot blood, the secrets that they carry transferred as if by a mainline from past to present.
Diva's specter was never the one pulling the strings. The opposite. She was shielding Saya. Shaping her, with intimate caresses and colloquys, to be a strong vessel for the outpouring of her ancestor's memories.
To be ready for tonight's nightmare.
Staring into Haji's carefully guarded eyes, she knows he feels it too. He dreads the nightmare spiraling out of control. Dreads a repetition of the disaster in Karachi, or worse. The prospect of losing his Queen and his daughters, in one blow. Under his impassive calm, he is terrified.
So is she.
That is why she gathers her nerve, and meets his eyes. "Haji. I know it's a risk. But it's also my risk to take." Her fingers drop from his sleeve to his hand, fingers threading together. "Please. I've survived worse."
Haji's face, set in resistant lines, doesn't waver. But he doesn't let go of her touch, either.
"You have survived worse," he says. "That is why..."
"What?"
He seizes her hand in both of his, and presses it to his lips. "I am tired of watching you suffer, Saya. I am tired of threats forcing themselves upon you. Not once—but over and over." The words hold a soft savagery that makes her heart skip a beat. "I wanted better for you. I wanted you to know peace. Not to endanger yourself in another war."
Saya swallows. It feels as if there is a stone lodged in her throat. Gratitude and grief.
"Wanted or not," she whispers, "the war is here. We can't circumvent it." Blinking away tears, she turns her head. Haji's bandaged hand comes up to cradle it, and she sighs into the touch, grounded as always into a semblance of serenity. "I know you wanted better. For me. For us. But Haji—we did have better. For three years. We had everything we ever dreamed of. I was so tired after the war. You gave me a resting place. You believed in me, and let me piece myself together. Become strong again." She drops a kiss to his palm. "That's why I promise I'll survive this. End this war before it starts."
"Saya…"
"We promised, didn't we? That we would be brave? For our daughters?"
The reminder doesn't work loose the tension in Haji's body. But a bittersweet smile stirs behind the surface of his face.
"We did." Sighing, he encompasses her in his arms. "But promise or no promise, Saya—I'd give my life to serve you."
Saya recognizes the quote; a smile flutters at the corners of her own mouth. Head resting against his chest, she whispers, "And if aid is wanted, I'll seek it at your hands. I promise you that."
Haji envelops her closer and kisses her. His lips are cool but his mouth has a hot aftertaste of blood that pours through her with a sensitized flush. Need simmers to the surface of her skin. Sighing, she goes on tiptoe, her body sliding against his, her arms winding around his neck. The kiss is short because it has to be. But she savors it all the same. Because deep down, she shares his fear that it might never be like this again, joy sparking and syncing between them so perfectly.
This could be their one night to imagine their future, their daughters, with a bright ache of possibility and brighter fractals of bliss.
Reality might disgorge something different.
There is an awkward cough.
Saya and Haji break to find Dee standing there. Her no-nonsense black tanktop and the ammo belt girding her fatigues make Saya flash to the scene from Terminator with—what was her name? Sarah Connor? She feels a flush of admiring envy, and can't help but think how familiar it feels, this young woman fitting herself into the most personal spaces of Saya's life with low-key efficiency, like a coffee-machine in a convenient corner.
Except Dee's body-language is hedging. Her eyes communicate trouble.
"We've got an issue," she says.
Saya bites her lip, swollen from Haji's kiss. "What's wrong? Is there an attack on the safehouse?"
Dee shakes her head.
"Worse." Exasperation edges her words. "Yumi and the Chevaliers."
They are in the armory, wide and low-ceilinged and jammed to capacity with ammo.
A cursory glance determines a wonderland of blades: swords, shiruken, bowie knives, box-cutters, screwdrivers, hacksaws. Nearby is an arsenal of firearms to outrival a warlord's. Barrett M82 sniper rifles sleekly outfitted with magnification scopes. Self-silenced DeLisle carbines complete with a glittering cummerbund of ammo bandoliers. PBX explosives and M202 FLASH incendiary rocket-launchers. More archaic strong-arms dangle from hooks: war hammers, crossbows, spiked maces.
When Saya and Haji step inside, they see Yumi wielding a naginata one-handed, her body faced sideways, feet apart, the blade darting like quicksilver through the air. Sachi sits on a stool, a Steyr SSG 69 propped against his torso, his hands calibrating the scope with practiced ease. V stands to the corner, fitting his massive hand into a ring of spiked knuckles, clenching his fist to test their solidity.
Their body-language is casual yet dangerously ready. They don't glance up to acknowledge Saya or Haji.
Or Kai, whose arms chop the air like battleaxes, his voice sharp-edged with savagery.
"You can't possibly consider going out there!"
"You are," Yumi says flatly.
"I've infiltrated enemy bases before. Also? There's no special poison to petrify me to death!"
"A bullet will do that just fine."
"Don't gimme that! You don't know how many clones there are. Or if it's a lure to get you outside, and poison you too!"
Yumi's words override his. "We have full-body armor. Funky as week-old jock-strap—but functional. Tranqs won't pierce it."
"They could have more than tranqs!"
"It doesn't matter. My blood can take those monsters down!"
"Yumi—"
"No."
Her eyes are brightest spots of red in the gloom. The will-bending stare doesn't put Saya in mind of Diva, but Kai himself. The duty he has imbued in his daughters, to protect those weaker than themselves.
Teeth gritted, Yumi says, "Stop arguing with me. I need to get out there, and get shit done."
Kai gives a rough headshake. "Yumi, please. This isn't the time for suicidal heroics—"
"Then what is it time for? Crying? Hand-wringing? Just because Nathan left us out of his Grand Plan doesn't mean I'm going to sit on my duff and—"
"—Me and Saya and Haji will handle this—"
"—Or get killed while I hole up here and everything falls to shit—"
"—You don't know that!"
"And you do?!" She flings her weapon aside with an echoing clatter. "Yuri is losing time, and I fucking refuse to—"
"—Not the time for your dramatics and don't you dare raise your voice at—"
"Kai. Yumi." Haji pours himself into sizzling space between them like a bucket of icewater. "Enough."
Kai's lips part, but nothing comes out. Yumi looks away, sulky but self-conscious at the spectacle of teenaged regression. In that moment, they look uncannily similar to Saya: at a crossroads between daredevilry and duty. She knows that Yumi is thinking of the casualties blooming in bloodthirsty technicolor across the city, and her chance to stop them and channel into it her rage at failing to save Yuri. Likewise, Kai is remembering the pale sprawl of Riku's body in the depths of Red Shield's ship, and his impotent, blistering fury in being unable to protect his little brother from Diva. He'd been paralyzed by his own limitations, and all the while, Diva had taken Riku. Despoiled him. Destroyed his innocence, his body, and his life.
The same way the poison is taking Yuri. The way it might take Yumi, if he lets it happen.
"You could die," he rasps. "You could—and Yuri could—and—"
Yumi folds her arms around him in a hug. The touch stills Kai into silence. Then he squeezes her in so tightly it's as if his arms cannot unlock themselves from around her. Maybe they can't. Like all parents, he yearns to hold onto his child forever. Protect her from what lies ahead. But he has no choice but to let go.
"I'll be fine, otou-san," Yumi promises him. "You survived worse, didn't you?"
Kai smiles at her rare use of the honorific, and ruffles her hair. But his voice is half-muted with resignation. "No one was trying to dose me with toxins."
"And if they were?"
Kai glances past Yumi to Saya and Haji. There is a heartbeat of shared memory, trauma and nostalgia blurring together, calling up every battle won and lost, and every friend and family member lost with it, but also summoning the unshakeable bond between them, one that is shared by all soldiers in a warzone, its reckless strength no different from a pact between a Queen and Chevalier, a brother sister, a father and child. A promise that whatever goes down, they will go down together with it.
All for one, one for all.
Kai lets off a breath, and detaches from Yumi.
"I'd have gone if they sawed off my legs and stitched my eyes shut, and you know it," he says.
"Agreed," Haji says quietly.
"Always," Saya whispers. Rousing herself, she turns to the rest of the group. "It's decided then. Yumi, V and Sachi will tackle the clones. Kai, Haji and I will go to Yabuchi Island. Let's go through the plan once more. Then we move out."
The sooner, the better.
Because midnight is coming.
Yabuchi Island
Uruma, Okinawa Prefecture 904-2304
Japan
The blood moon charts a path across the sky.
Tórir stands by the caverns, and basks in the glow. The night is unseasonably hot; a layer of sweat glazes his skin. Ahead, the sea has lost its glitter and taken on the gleam of onyx: bright facets wink off the waves and the foam bubbles through the air like the surface of ale.
In the distance, the main island is a complex grid of winking lights. Then a boom rolls across the silence as a pylon combusts with a fiery-orange spark. A low crackle fills the air. Clumps of metal spray everywhere. The carillon melody of ambulances is blotted out by the garbled shrieks of terror. High above, the sky teems with the winged blurs.
His army of Queens.
Transforming the island into their blood-soaked playground.
"Behold, the creatures of the night," Tórir says. "What beautiful music they make."
The quote—cliché of clichés—makes him laugh. The sound bounces off the mouth of the caverns, where it is swallowed by the darkness. A humid gust of wind stirs, and Tórir smells the saltine reek of its interior: decay and desolation. This cave was his home for eons. His deathbed-turned-domicile. It unmade him and remade him in a thousand secret ways, and now he cannot undo the effects. The same way he can never undo his childhood in the village, a pariah who was guided not by the rules of men, but a more bloodthirsty sonar. The same way he can never undo the sway that the Red Queen holds over him, the raw perfection of her that still dances through the particles in his veins.
The sluggish heat brings back the memory of her. Tórir shuts his eyes, and lets it flow through him. Her voice. Her lips. The lioness curves of her thighs. Her hair like a black mane whipping around her face.
Here, she met her doom.
Here, I won... and lost so much in the bargain.
In the city, a building erupts with a blistering roar of fireworks. Helicopters buzz and sirens shriek. The island boils with a smokeless terror.
A love letter.
To summon her to me.
In his mind's eye, Sunako's face blurs like a kaleidoscope. Saya takes her place: fresh, feisty, febrile. By the gods, he will have her soon. Finish this waiting-game of scheming and stewing, and finally unleash the full scope of his savagery. He will skewer her nearly in half, so she wriggles on his hook like the tastiest bait. He will sire his daughters, and have the empire that was snatched from him alongside his freedom.
Will that bring back what you lost?
Sváva and Suffía?
Something gnaws into his ribcage. He blinks the brief burn of tears out of his eyes.
In the distance, a glow of brightness. A falling star? A boat.
"Mr. Tórir?"
He glances around.
Lee Wèizhuāng, neutral of face and nondescript of suit, stands by the walkway.
"Mr. Tórir," he says. "Perhaps we should evacuate."
"Evacuate?"
"Now that the subjects have escaped—" A discrete emphasis on escaped, as if he has reason to believe the circumstances behind the escape were anything but accidental. "The authorities will trace them here. We should exit before that happens."
Tórir shakes his head. "That would defeat my intention."
"Of what?"
Tórir gives a twitch of a smile, and turns to gaze at the seaside again. The dancing glow of the boat grows brighter.
"My intention," he says, "to unroll the red carpet for my bride."
Yabuchi Island
Uruma, Okinawa Prefecture 904-2304
Japan
The moonlight glimmers in the slack water between the waves.
The boat, packed with goodies from both Jahana Syndicate and Red Shield, pilots toward the dark shape of Yabuchi Island. Smoke belches from the engine housing. Kai keeps his hand wrapped around the throttle.
He's driven boats before. But the memory that always surfaces with distinctness is the childhood fishing-trip with Dad. Back before he'd been a maladjusted little turd prone to getting into fistfights and staying out past curfew. It had been pre-Saya (P.S?). A father-son bonding trip. Kai had always considered fishing a dorky pastime. And Dad had baked these nasty maple-glazed crackers that Kai pitched into the sea when the old man wasn't looking. But the amiable, matter-of-fact way George had taught him to string up the pole, to choose to the bait, to reel in the catch, had filled a quiet hollow in Kai that he hadn't anticipated. Even as he'd grown older, the day ranked as one of their happiest times together.
Kai exhales in the salty air, memories tumbling by. Baseball, bullets, fried fish, firefights, Chiropterans, culinary school, diapers, dirty dishes, defensive maneuvers, Yumi, Yuri, the red glitter of Riku's remains in his fist, the madcap pursuit of revenge and the accidental discovery of happiness.
And straightening those scattershot memories into sudden focus—Dee.
She leans over to regard the distant lights of Yabuchi Island, her hand on his shoulder. He feels the warmth of the touch and catches the faintest whiff of her scent: butterscotch overlaid by salt-spray. She's unzipped her overalls to her waist—the night is intensely humid—and Kai's eyes skirt briefly to the damp bowl between her collarbones, where the sweat has pooled...
"Eyes ahead, tiger."
Kai blinks. She is watching him with her head cocked, a dryness behind her impassive stare. Clearing his throat, Kai drags his gaze back to the sea.
"Sorry," he mutters.
"No big." She unstraps the night-vision goggles from her belt and peers through them. "Think happy thoughts."
"Happy. Sure."
He thinks of Yuri, back at the safe-house. Her skin crocheted in scars, the slow slither of her pulse like an hourglass running dry. Thinks of her babies, enfolded in their cocoons, dreaming their innocent dreams. He thinks of Yumi, and V and Sachi, battling the flying Queens that have overrun the city. He thinks of Yumi's face before she'd taken off: the way she'd traced her fingertips across the glass separating her from Yuri, and dropped a kiss to the surface. It was an I'll-be-back kiss, not a Goodbye kiss. She was confident in her strength, and in her chances of survival.
Yet Kai worries, all the same. Things aren't looking good.
"Happy thoughts," Dee says. "Not murdery ones."
Kai blinks again. His knuckles are white around the throttle. Easing out a breath, he relaxes. Inside, he needs badly to smash something. Soon. Needs an excuse to cut loose, to let the language of violence do the talking for him.
Once they get to Yabuchi, it's gonna be pop-pop-popping—
"They'll be okay," Dee says, as if reading his mind. "Yumi and Yuri. They're tough."
"Yeah."
"That's why you need to be okay too. Keep it wired—so they have something to come home to."
In spite of himself, Kai smiles. "What about you, Dee?"
"Wired tight as a tick's ass."
"I mean the coming-home-to part."
Dee stares at him with half-lidded speculation. "Is this a bribe to get serious with you?"
"D'you want it to be?"
"I'd table it until after this clusterfuck."
"Tabled isn't terminated."
"Then we'd better not be, either."
In reply, Kai holds up a fist. Dee taps it with her own.
Deal sealed.
In the background, David and Haji emerge from below-deck, followed by Saya. Haji is hefting a large crate, pale fingers knotted casually through the mesh. When he plunks it down, the boat rocks with the immense weight. It is a shipment smuggled into the island, courtesy of August's finessing. Chockful of goodies from Télesphore: frags, artillery, handguns. Mao has added to the collection with top-notch igniter bullets, their impact enough to cold-clock a rhino—and certainly enough to disembowel those Diva-clones.
There is also something else. A crate labeled FRAGILE. When Haji slices it open with his blade, it discloses something unexpected. A tripod with a hi-tech camera?
Dee hauls it out, her face softening into a girlish grin.
"Aw. August shouldn't have."
Saya frowns. "What is that?"
Dee's smile widens. "Ever heard of ADS?"
Saya shakes her head.
"It stands for Active Denial System. Back in the day, it was used in Iraq." She gestures. "It's a millimeter wave energy weapon. Blasts out electromagnetic radiation at ninety-odd gigahertz. Fries the moisture in the skin, but only on the epidermis. The effect stuns enemies, but also prevents lasting damage."
Saya stares at the equipment. "And you requested August specifically for this model?"
"Yep. It's got wide range. Over a kilometer, with a nasty oomph. If the frequency is adjusted, it passes straight through walls."
Kai eyes it sidelong, intrigued. "What's it feel like?"
Dee crooks a brow. "You want a demonstration?"
"I'll pass, thanks."
"Smart choice. The short version? It's like getting scalded with boiling hot water. Worse, you can't pinpoint the source of the pain." She pats the tripod. "If I set it up within proximity to the factory in Yabuchi, I can incapacitate the guards in the area."
Saya nods in understanding. "Long enough to slip inside."
"What about Nathan?" David intrudes. "Do you trust him to help us?"
Saya stares out at the horizon. Wind whips the hair off her profile. Her blood-streaked kimono flutters around her body. Something about her coalesces with the glow of the lunar eclipse: a part of it, and somehow charged by it. Kai is put strangely in mind of a night-blooming flower, the petals beautifully soft and yet alight with danger.
Quietly, she says, "He'll help because that's why he's here." Then, to Kai: "We're close. Kill the engine."
Kai obeys. The boat shudders to a stop. It skips queasily over the waves, pinkish spray licking at the sides. Moonlight reflects off its contours, but all else lays in darkness.
Far ahead, the factory keeps its position against the low-lying moon. There doesn't seem to be anything particularly sinister about it. It is long-slung and salt-crusted, its architecture based on the squat, nondescript style of military bunkers. As far as Kai can tell in the imperfect darkness, it appears deserted.
Then Dee sets up the tripod, and activates a switch. The ADS system thrums to life.
One second. Two seconds. Three.
And from the darkness, a riot of screams.
The factory is being evacuated.
Red lights pulse down the corridor. Klaxons fire off at full volume. With the proto-Queens loose in the city, it is only a matter of time before the authorities trace them to Yabuchi Island. To IBM-UAWA.
Yet again, a lunatic throws a wrench in the works.
The bitter thought blitzes through Dr. Collins mind.
He grits his teeth, but doesn't let his fury show. His hands are steady as they pack equipment into a cardboard box. Over his shoulder, the representative from IBM-UAWA—Lee Wèizhuāng, Collins thinks his name is—oversees the endeavor. Not out of concern for Collins. Of course not. He is simply ensuring that their records are safely stored. No breadcrumbs to lead the Japanese government to their precious board-of-directors in Taipei.
"The helicopter will arrive shortly," Lee says, with a perfunctory smile.
"I see."
"You need not worry, Dr. Collins. You will be situated somewhere comfortable until the crisis passes. Then we will relocate to a different base and resume operations."
It's not the operation I was interested in.
Anger zitzes through Collins. His chance to secure an everlasting hold on life—thwarted. His ambition to join the ranks of pureblood Chevaliers—futile. All despite expending energy, effort and precious time to develop the army Tórir was so desirous of, and to retrieve the poison he yearned to possess. Now the army has broken loose and is beyond control. And the poison has been wasted in an assassination-gone-wrong, steeped into the bloodstream of the same Queen that IBM-UAWA was promised as a labrat.
Incompetence.
Nothing but rank incompetence.
In that moment, the memory that passes through Collins fevered mind isn't of Prometheus, but Shelley's Frankenstein. The credulous mortal confronted with the hollowness of his own hubris. And fleeing for his life before he is made to pay the price.
In the next heartbeat, the lights in the laboratory go out. Collins freezes, trapped for a moment in a void of choking panic. Then the small amber emergency lights, running in rows along the ceiling, flicker to life. Lee peers up at them, and sighs.
"They have cut the power."
Collins turns to face him in the wan glow. "I gather we should depart."
"Indeed." He favors Collins with another bland smile. "The helicopter should be approaching the island. Why don't I contact them?"
Without another word, Lee steps out of the lab. His footsteps fade down the corridor.
This is my chance, Collins thinks. I'll take the records, and run.
There are a few boats lashed at the pier. Collins can take one and head to the mainland. He can contact one of IBM-UWA's rivals, and defect in exchange for the knowledge of the artificial Queens. He can secure a future that isn't dependent on the whims of petulant godlings. It is evident Tórir's agenda encompasses something beyond an army. He is fixated on tempting Red Shield to the island's shores. More than that, he is tempting Saya into his aerie.
To kill her?
Or are his reasons tenfold more sinister?
Collins doesn't know. And he certainly doesn't intend to stick around and find out.
There are still clones locked in the basement cells.
Set them loose, and take off while everyone is distracted.
It's your best chance.
He is halfway out the door when it happens.
A blast of intense, indescribable pain. It is monstrous, the most agonizing sensation he has ever felt. Every synapse sizzling, every nerve ending combusting, as if his entire body is enrobed in flames. As if he is being broiled alive.
Collins screams and collapses to his knees. The cardboard box clatters away, its contents overspilling. He doesn't care. Curled into a twitching ball, he hears nothing but the crazed pulsebeat of his blood.
And the distant echoes of screams.
It is as Nathan promised.
The factory is in a state of furor. The security systems are offline. The guards are flattened by the rays from the ADS. So are the staff who were trying to evacuate. Racing through the low-lying building, Saya watches the edges of the windows boil slightly in the radiance of the blood moon. Nothing more than a trick of light, yet it feels like everything has been sandblasted. Bodies are strewn across the gritty tiles. Most are flushed across the forehead and cheeks. Others look outright singed. But no one appears seriously wounded.
Twitching feebly, they try to orient themselves. Meanwhile Saya, Haji, Kai, Dee and David race by. Their boots echo across the tiled corridor. They are armed to the teeth: tac suits, ammo packs, frags. Each of them has their weapons drawn: David with his customized Smith & Wesson Model 500, Dee with twin FN 5.7s, a Beretta at the thigh and a HK21 heavy machinegun slung across her shoulders, Kai with his trusty M1911, Haji bare-handed expect for the cello-case slung across his torso and Saya wielding nothing but her sword.
"We need to get to the observation deck," she says. "That's where the entire place's camera-feed is displayed."
"Did Nathan say where it is?" Kai asks.
Saya nods, and veers down a narrow hallway. The design is windowless: nothing but rows of doors. People are sprawled here too, some in fatigues, others in lab-coats. Their pained groans are muffled by the hum of generators, and klaxons whooping over a loudspeaker system.
Facility shutdown… Code Red… Facility shutdown…
Keeping Nathan's instructions in mind, Saya snakes down another hallway. It is crisscrossed with a latticework of walkways. Many of them show signs of damage, as if something was blown apart. The exoskeletons are visible beneath the peeling paint, dark smears of scorchmarks everywhere. On the closest walkway, wires hang loose, sparks raining in the gloom.
Saya ducks past the glittering fall of embers, their sulfurous aroma carrying her briefly back to the distant night at the beach, where she'd lit firecrackers with her family for the New Year's barbeque…
Then Kai shouts, "Shit!" and a dark shape drops down from the walkway.
Saya sees the blaze of blue eyes. A reflexive shiver cat-walks down her spine.
Diva.
Except it isn't Diva. It is a clone created at this death-box of a factory. In the semi-dark, Saya can tell there is something wrong with her. Her dark hair is choppy, shot through with strands of white. Her features look all wrong in her face, misshapen and half-rotted like an effigy. She moves the same way: jerky contortions of her arms and legs, as if she is being puppeteered by strings.
"The runt of the litter," a voice says.
Saya whirls.
Dr. Collins—his features crisped as if with sunburn—stands on the closest walkway. His eyes gleam with cold scrutiny.
"She and her sisters were left behind," he says. "No wings to fly. But their fangs are sharp enough."
Somewhere behind Saya, David says, "I'm surprised to see you on your feet, Dr. Collins."
The old man smiles thinly. "Active Denial Systems. I've seen them used before in combat zones. Very clever."
"Evidently not clever enough." David extends his gun. His face is characteristically inexpressive. But the interior of his eyes is darkly lit. "Step down from the walkway."
Collins shakes his head. "I don't think so, David. That wouldn't even the odds."
"Julia failed to mention that sense of fair play when you shot our son."
"I never pulled the trigger. I merely gave the order." He snaps his bony fingers. "Like now."
The clone giggles, and the air sponges up the sound. Muscle throb under her naked body, a tight-woven flutter of impending motion.
Then she charges.
Saya tenses for impact, her sword angled sideways. But Haji swoops in. The clone slams him broadside and they both go crashing against the opposite wall. Like a feral wolverine, she angles her fangs for the Chevalier's windpipe. He thrusts an arm between their bodies, and her jaws sink in. Blood spews, but Haji's unmauled arm swings up at the same moment, his clawed fist ramming into her skull.
The clone shrieks and staggers back. Right for Saya to make her move.
Leveling her sword, she aims at the center of that grotesque mass and lunges. There is a sharp sound: half-fibrous, half-liquid, before her blade slides into the clone's ribcage. Her thumb, pressed to the special groove, sends blood along the length of the blade. It suffuses the clone's system. Her deformed face twists even more hideously. Red cracks branch across her bare skin. A smell wafts off her: the tang of copper overlaying the musty reek of a body deprived of sunlight and clean air.
In moments, she calcifies to stone.
Saya wrenches her sword free. The clone crumbles to rubble at her feet. Staring at the remains, unwanted pity creeps through her. These creatures wear Diva's face. But they hold nothing of her sister's wildfire allure. All Saya feels when she claps eyes on them is the nauseating antithesis of recognition.
These aren't Queens.
They're just—
On the walkway, Dr. Collins says, "Admirable. Let's see how well you do with the others."
Again, he snaps his fingers.
In a chilling downpour, more shapes fall from the walkway. Clones. Dozens of them. Their bodies are the pale-gray of concentrated smoke. An oily, unclean smell leeches off them. In their eyes, Saya sees no recognizable emotion. Only a silent cunning where the world is delineated into predators and prey.
The world of Tórir's twisted fantasies.
David levels the barrel of his Magnum dead between Collins' eyes. "Call them off."
Collins crooks a brow, and says nothing.
"Call them off."
In reply, Collins snaps his fingers again.
A frisson of excitement passes through the clones, souring the air with bloodlust. They swoop for Saya and the others.
Saya's body operates on brute instinct. Her sword sweeps in a one-eighty-degree arc. A deep gash cuts through the bodies of the rampaging clones. Two are struck across the bellies, one straight across the windpipe. Red matter cascades. Saya's own blade is already coated with her own blood. At the moment of contact, baleful tendrils erupt from the clones' wounds. They twist madly, screeching as the cracks expand outward. Then their crystalized bodies, still caught in the heedless momentum of their attack, burst like clay statuettes against the walls and floor. Shards fly everywhere, but more clones press in, the unstoppable embodiment of hell breaking loose.
Saya doesn't care.
Inside her, a secret mechanism has snapped on. It is like a wallop from a drug. No—the opposite. The absence of a drug, an inner fog lifting from her senses and overwhelming clarity rushing in.
The world shrinks into a hellish circle of red: infinitesimal yet magnified. She can see everything down to the minutest detail. The shape of Collins on the walkway. The clones roosting like ravens on the rails before they drop one by one, their bodies universally pale and their eyes universally blue. Haji slicing through the melee in a streak of concentrated carnage, his daggers flying like rivets. David and Dee flanking him: the old man pumping enemy after enemy full of lead with a lethal accuracy while Dee advances two-handed with her FN 5.7s, her lips peeled from her teeth. Kai brings up the rearguard, his expression one of feral focus, his gun thundering unstoppably. The air is filled with the stench of opened entrails and adrenaline-spiced blood.
Another clone springs at Saya. She counters reflexively with her sword. The clone grabs the blade in both her hands, blood dribbling between her fingers. She doesn't seem to feel the pain. Instead, she shoves with incredible strength until Saya stumbles and goes down on one knee. The clones bends over Saya, fangs bared, her breath hot and rancid…
Haji hurls a trio of daggers at her. They bury themselves across the clone's spinal cord, blood bursting in blisters. The clone lets off a horrid squeal. Before she can retaliate, David snaps off a shot that pivots her sideways. The clone sways, her hair writhing snakelike across her skull. Her blue eyes burn through that exquisite mass of living blackness; the lashes are strung together with a strange limescale of what could be grime, or dried tears…
Saya has already drawn a killing bead. Before the clone can regain her balance, she swoops in sword-first. The blade sinks into the soft meat of the clone's abdomen. She thrashes. Reddish veins blossom from the wound. Then she shrivels and collapses at Saya's feet, going from a full-fledged predator to a broken outline in the cement.
Saya stares at the blueness of her eyes, dimming and calcifying, and thinks of Diva.
Not Queens at all.
Something lesser. Something broken.
Then the rest roll in with fangs bared and the fight turns into madness, a motion-blur of sword-swipes and gunfire, bullets slamming into the creatures and blades ripping gobbets off their flesh. The team moves almost in tandem, a machine powered by centrifugal force to resemble a terrifying buzzsaw, blood and viscera spraying in its wake. Saya ducks and rolls under Dee's whizzing bullet, coming up to slam her boot under a clone's jaw, shattering it just before she pivots to sink her sword into the ribcage. She wrenches the blade loose as the clone falls, then rolls clear of another rampaging enemy before whirling to stab her through the heart in one fluid motion.
Coming to her feet, Saya flings a frantic glance at Haji. "How many left?"
"Twelve down!" he shouts. "Nineteen—no, twenty—to go!"
Saya grits her teeth. They're wasting time. Tórir is out there. She needs to reach him, before—
On the walkway, Collins had stayed to watch the bloodshed. But as Saya's eyes meet his, he reaches inside his coat. A pistol glints with metallic cleanliness in the gore-splattered room. Instinctively, Saya prepares to vault the space and block him off. She's ready to twist his arm—or break it—until he stops these clones…
David grabs her elbow. "Don't."
Saya frowns, muscles still tensed to spring. "What?"
"Don't touch him," David growls, darting past her. "I've got better uses for that one."
"Mr. David—"
Saya starts to argue. But something in David's eyes suggests that it's better to bite her tongue. She falls back, just as Collins aims with his pistol.
David is faster. He extends his arm, his Magnum kicking skyward as he yanks the trigger.
His bullet strikes the wall near Collins head, scattering rubble. Collins flinches and jerks back. He shouts something, but David doesn't wait to hear it. Sighting along his Magnum, he fires again. Two shots reverberate over the clamor of the battle. One slug buries itself in the concrete behind Collins' shoulder, the other inches from his skull. Plaster spews. Collins flips over backward, heels kicking, and falls off the walkway. His body hits the concrete with a thud.
The clones are cognizant of the sound. The moment it occurs, something ripples through them. They stop what they are doing and cock their heads toward Collins. Curiosity alights in their eyes, then something darker.
In the next heartbeat, they attack.
Not Saya and the others.
They attack Collins.
It is a feeding frenzy. There is no other way to describe it. Smelling fresh blood, the clones don't expend energy fighting their opponents. They go for the easy kill. Falling upon Collins, they tear him limb from limb. Their snarls churn the air into a froth. Their fangs latch at the old man's remains like sucklings at a mother's teat. When the blood is gone they fell upon each other, jaws snapping and claws tearing. Saya watches the spectacle unfold, and shakes her head.
These aren't Chiropterans. There is none of the fatal grace of Queens in their prime. These creatures are scavengers. Bottom feeders. Biological aberrations that subsist on weakness.
Eradicating them will be its own mercy.
Dee edges beside Saya. "We should get moving."
Saya shakes her head. "Not yet."
"Huh?"
Saya presses her thumb across her sword's special groove. Her blood races across the blade in a line of fire.
"Not yet," she repeats. "Not before I put them out their misery."
And she charges, bringing her sword around in a hard arc, burying cold steel into the closest clone's torso…
720 Yonashironohen
Uruma-shi, Okinawa-ken 904-2307
Japan
The blood moon casts a fiery glow across the cityscape, like embers collecting in the curve of a bowl.
The armored truck screeches down the expressway. It rolls into the disorder of the streets, wheels spinning, its dark-glossed shape cutting between overturned vehicles and sprawled bodies in a series of jerky, maniacally controlled twists. The town seethes with flames and fear and things dead and dying. And in the sky, like a deep-space transmission on alien wavelengths, there is laughter.
Laughter from the clones.
They are everywhere. A surging mass of darkness, an incessant beating of wings. They perch on rooftops like vultures, their maws bloodstained and eyes glittering blue. They crawl from between cobwebbed windshields of cars and broken-in doors of houses, their bodies svelte with newfed strength and the gooey entails of each fresh kill caught between the chinks of their teeth. They swoop with nosediving avarice on the fleeing civilians racing to and fro like headless chickens. A man is pounced upon, his screams aborted into tinny wheezings as a clone latches her fangs into his throat. A child cowers behind an awning, only to be snatched up by another clone, his sobbing face disintegrating in a red spray as her claws rake into his skull. Everywhere, as far as the eye can track, bodies are heaped in pools of blood, some twitching, others motionless.
Sparks blow across the streets, carried on the wind from some distant car-wreck. They eddy and swirl around the speeding truck like fireflies.
Inside the car, Yumi, V and Sachi behold the carnage with grim disgust.
"It's a big fuckin' mess," Yumi hisses in the backseat. She has an anchoring grip on a flamethrower. In her other hand, she keeps the o-naginata, ready to wield it in case they need to exit the truck. Sachi sits beside her, his rifle fitted to the special groove near the window. Eyes narrowed, he sights into his scope for targets. Up front, V plays the wheelman, making the armored truck practically walk and talk across the disordered streets.
Then—
"Yumi. Sachi. Up ahead."
"I see it," Sachi mutters.
"Clear as day," says Yumi.
A swarm of clones have fallen upon a handful of civilians. Teenagers, the trio realizes. Their bikes are tumbled and twisted across the roadside. Their bodies flail beneath the clones' snapping fangs and swiping claws.
V doesn't hesitate. He charges straight into the swarm, swerving sharply at the last minute to avoid the kids' skulls getting trampled beneath the truck's giant wheels. The momentum sends the fray of clones scattering. Bodies bounce off the hood and trunk. Blood splatters the surface like paintballs. V has the vehicle straightened and in motion again in the same heartbeat.
Accelerating through the narrow lanes, they see a larger gathering of clones. They glide in low-angled swoops across the rooftops. They slither bipedal and catlike across the sidewalks. When the creatures glimpse the oncoming truck, they leap toward it, dozens of bodies like flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz.
Rolling down her window, Yumi hits them with the flamethrower, cutting it in a one-eighty-degree arc. A few clones go up in an acrid blast of flames, tumbling across the roadside in a thrashing, screeching frenzy. On the opposite side, Sachi picks off a handful with his rifle, blasting gobs of blood and bone in different directions. His aim, unlike Yumi's, is clumsy; his fingers slip-slide on the trigger.
"Sachi!" Yumi snarls, twisting her torso halfway out the window to unleash a fiery ripcurl at another barrage of clones. "Get it together!"
Sachi grits his teeth. "I can't—I can't—"
"Can't what?"
He shifts in his seat with tectonic jitters of frustration. "I can't do this if Yuri has not kissed me!"
"What?"
Yumi and V's chorusing shouts collide together. She gawps in dismay at her sister's Chevalier, while V pins him in the rearview mirror with that universal headshake of Bruh.
Anger surfaces to Sachi's skin in a splotchy-cheeked flush. "I can't help it! It's our ritual. I never hit my target without a lucky kiss!"
"Sachi," Yumi groans.
"I am trying! But I—" He takes aim at a high-flying clone, and yanks the trigger. The bullet whizzes inches past her flank. "Shit! I told you! I can't—"
"Oh for the love of—" Yumi slides across the backseat, leaving the object of her affections unspoken. Seizing Sachi by the collar, she hauls him in for a kiss—rapidfire as a typewriter's punctuation mark. V reflexively whips around in his seat, openmouthed with outrage at the display, a protest midway to his lips—
Thud.
Clones swoop down from the sky to collide with the hood. The air is thick with the drumbeat of their batlike wings, claws hooking into the armored plating. Cursing, V snaps his attention back to the wheel, face-to-face behind the windshield with the jack-o-lantern grin of the nearest clone. Her claws scrabble at the hood, scratches etched into the special glass.
Another pair of clones reach with sinewy arms through Yumi's open window. Shrieking, she pulls the flamethrower's trigger, and gets a futile Ssss. The fuel tank has emptied. Then Sachi is snatching a spare pistol from his belt and reaching across Yumi to shoot the clones at point-blank range.
This time, his trigger-finger doesn't quaver.
The clip empties into bodies with an ear-ringing series of booms. Screeching, the clones jerk back. One loses her grip on the truck, yowling as she tumbles across the tarmac, skidding end over end in a trailing spoor of blood. The second clings with blind tenacity to the side of the truck, dangling by her claws. Then Yumi reaches out the window, spearing her through the ribs with the blood-tipped edge of her naginata. Shrieking pitifully, the clone spasms into crystallization, crumbling and crashing as the treads catch her outflung body, chewing it without mercy before the wheels crush her beneath…
The remaining clones are still crawling across the truck, slashing and snarling, too many to shake off. The symphonic crunch and thud as they methodically break through the armor is chilling.
"Shit," Yumi hisses. "We've got to ditch the truck."
V stares at her crosseyed in the rearview mirror. "That's crazy! We've got clones everywhere! I mean every-fucking-where!"
"In one spot, we're an easy target." She hefts her naginata, a hardness entering her eyes. "Speed up. When I give the signal, hit the brakes. Then we kill the engine and scatter."
"Yumi—"
"Do it!"
Obeying, V slams his boot on the accelerator. The trucks swerves crazily through the firelit streets, the clones clinging to its surface by the tips of their claws, their combined weight jerking the vehicle to-and-fro like a teenboy's T-Bird on Lover's Lane. Then Yumi lifts her hand, and the trucks skids with incredible abruptness to a halt, tires screeching, the air filled the stench of burning rubber, a few hundred pounds of clone-flesh flying off the hood.
They collide across the pavement, crumpled into dazed heaps. But it isn't long before they shake it off, their balance realigning, their focus returning to the truck—and the three Chiropterans inside it.
"Get ready," Yumi says.
The two Chevaliers hoist their weapons: Sachi with his rifle and a belt weighed with ammo and pistols, and V with his spiked knuckles, and the blunt heft of a cudgel held across his chest.
"Now!"
Kicking the doors open, the trio break free and pursue separate tangents through the ruined streets. Hissing with hunger, the clones take after them, their winged bodies melting into the smoky night-haze.
Above, the blood moon curves around the buildings, brightening the air, staining the world with red.
Yabuchi Island
Uruma, Okinawa Prefecture 904-2304
Japan
Racing down the hallway, gore-drenched from battle, Saya and the others arrive at the surveillance room.
It is dark and dingy. The far wall is dominated by a bank of monitors. Each one is labelled by a strip of medical tape: Labs 1 – 25. Storage. Water Closet. Meeting Room. Antechamber. Most of the monitors are hazed with static, others black. The rooms there have already lost power. But others are operational: Saya glimpses fish-eye broadcasts of empty offices, or ransacked labs. The furthest screen offers the green-lit footage of a cavern, the lens discolored and spotted. But Saya can glimpse the corona of filthy cells, their doors gaping open, their walls smeared with blood and feces.
The Antechamber.
The room Nathan warned her about.
In the feed, lit by the wan glow of bulbs, is a perfectly-balanced silhouette. Saya stares at the luxuriant red hair curling around the familiar profile, and scowls.
"Tórir. He's down there."
Kai squints at the footage over her shoulder. "The hell is he doing?"
"Waiting for me."
Saya's fingers tighten on her sword-hilt. Her other hand flexes, empty except for the spring-loaded ampoule beneath the sleeve, where the hypodermic with the wolfsbane rests at the ready.
Dee makes a sour face. "You know it's a trap, right?"
"Nathan promised me he'd be alone."
"How would he know? It's not like he's—"
The klaxons fall silent. The emergency light flicker off. Left behind is a darkness as thick and soundless as grave dirt.
Saya and the others go perfectly still.
"What the fuck—" Kai hisses.
"The generators." David says. "They've gone offline."
Sounds from behind them. Saya whirls on her heel. It is faint, but discernible: a secretive, silky giggling. The sound makes gooseflesh surge across her skin. Clones. More of them. Their laughter travels through the dark, an arrhythmic spool of melody that gains volume with each passing second. In its wake is a powerful urge to cover her ears. Instead, Saya leans into the sound, her eyes scanning intently in the dark.
Beside her, Haji's eyes glow bright blue. He takes in a breath, and holds it.
"They're close," he whispers.
"How many?" Saya asks.
"Thirty. Perhaps more."
Dee says. "Leave them to us."
Saya turns in confusion. "What?"
Dee's first FN 5.7 pistol runs empty. She tosses it aside and brings up the Beretta strapped to her thigh. Kai flanks her, gun upraised. They stand back-to-back.
"You wanna get to Tórir, right?" Dee says. "So get moving."
"Miss Dee—"
"She's right," Kai says. His features have receded into shapeless granite in the dark. But the warm fervor of his eyes matches his words. "You need to stop him. Before this gets worse."
"Kai, I—"
From the entrance, shapes carve themselves out of the shadows. Saya can discern the twinkling blue jewels of their eyes and the whitened sharpness of their fangs. In the gloom, they slither in a mass of fast-moving flesh, so close that the divisions between one body and the next are impossible to distinguish. They might almost be a single organism, designed for no purpose but to glut themselves on blood.
Saya brings her sword up to bear. But Haji steps abreast of her. In his fist, three individual blades fan out in a jagged crown. Their tips glisten with blood leftover from the fight. His clawed hand is smeared with it too. Reaching out, he touches her face, thumb tracing her cheekbone. He leaves behind a sickle of wetness on her face.
"Go," he whispers. "I will stay with the others."
"Haji—"
"Please, Saya."
He meets her eyes, and a dozen conflicting terrors gnaw at her heart. For a moment, she is miserable with the desire to cling to him, to bury her face in the crisp fabric of his suit coat and never let go.
Except Tórir is still alive. And every moment he stays alive is a threat to her family.
And their daughters.
So she swallows the mass of undigested arguments. Holds Haji's eyes, and the steadiness of their unspoken promise, and nods. Her palm skims the tips of his daggers, the skin slitting open. Her blood glistens freshly across the steel. A parting gift.
Spinning, she races down the opposite corridor.
Behind her, gunfire and deranged shrieks erupt. The reverberation of the battle races across the factory, overlapping the adrenalized beat of Saya's heart.
Tórir.
I need to find him.
To end this once and for all.
Up next: Saya and Tórir square off.
Hope you guys enjoyed! Review, pretty please!
