When the man with the gun had turned to her, she'd closed her eyes.
Two people had been shot and killed in front of her; first Mr. Komatsu, when he'd stepped out of the car following the impact, and then Mari.
She had seen enough.
As the man advanced, she'd tried to compose herself, to summon a good last thought upon which to end her forty-eight years of life, but all that came was fear.
There was a click, and then her mind went dark.
She hadn't expected to open her eyes again.
The shapes were blurry and indistinct at first, and then gradually resolved into the image of her own hands, pale tan against her navy blue skirt, lying idly in her lap. She was slumped forward, her gaze pointing blearily at the floor, and she was too confused and exhausted to do much about it.
"Are you all right?"
It wasn't a voice she recognized. Slowly, with great effort, Yoko pulled herself upright.
An elderly man sat in front of her on a dingy sofa, rail-thin and draped in a worn cotton jacket and pants. Although his expression was one of gentle concern, his eyes, gazing unfalteringly at her from behind a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, were as hard as steel. She stared at him, waiting for him to speak again.
"Oh, good, you're awake - I was beginning to worry. My name is Wenli Zhang," said the man, bowing his head slightly. "I'm very pleased to finally meet you – your father never allowed me the privilege, and it's taken me a lot of time and trouble to arrange it myself."
"My father…" said Yoko slowly.
Her voice was rough from disuse, and the words grated like glass against concrete.
"I knew him quite well," said Mr. Zhang. "We worked together for many years when we were young; right up until he left China to get married, as a matter of fact. We kept in contact for some time, but the war made that rather difficult after a while."
Although she'd tried not to dwell on such a scenario, Yoko had always imagined that being abducted would be fairly straightforward; her captors would spend some time abusing her – physically or mentally, or perhaps both - and then either murder her or be gunned down by an intervening paramilitary team. While she had hoped never to experience any of this firsthand, she figured it was at least something she'd be able to deal with if the situation ever arose. But this….
Trying to make sense of what was happening now was almost a sort of mental torture in and of itself.
"He was so proud," continued Mr. Zhang; "always so very, very proud of his little Yangzi; if he'd lived to see the lovely woman she'd grown into, why, he'd probably be completely overwhelmed."
His tone was conversational, but there was a certain indulgent note to it, as if he thought he was speaking to a precocious child. It was something that Yoko had heard far too often from her first chief cabinet secretary, and she bristled.
Part of her was relieved; she now had something to detest about this man. That made everything much easier.
"What do you want from me?" she demanded.
"I merely wish to speak with you, madam," said Mr. Zhang. "I was afraid that you wouldn't take me seriously unless we met face to face, but I held little hope of being able to arrange an official meeting – as you must be aware, you're rather difficult to reach, especially for someone in my position. Therefore, I was forced to seek out a reasonable alternative."
There was that patronizing tone again.
"You had me kidnapped. Two members of my support staff were killed, that I know of," said Yoko. "That's hardly reasonable."
"Consider it a mark of how very seriously I wanted to meet you," said Mr. Zhang, without so much as batting an eye.
"I see," said Yoko. A tremor crawled down her spine; appearances aside, there was danger here.
"Well, sir," she said quietly, "what was so important to you that you needed to speak to me about it in person?"
"Ah," said Mr. Zhang, as if he'd been waiting for her to ask. "This is going to require a bit of a lengthy explanation. I hope you don't mind."
"Not at all," said Yoko.
She was afraid now, but she couldn't let it show. A whole lot of people were probably searching for her at this moment; she just needed to keep this man feeling favorably disposed toward her until they figured out where she was.
It suddenly occurred to her that even she didn't know where she was.
Her cyberbrain. In her confusion, she'd forgotten it; hastily, she reached for a connection.
A burst of static seared across her mind, and she doubled forward, wincing from the pain.
"This building is Net-shielded, of course," said Mr. Zhang. "I probably should have told you before; that can't have been pleasant. Now, where was I?"
He cleared his throat.
"I came to this country in 2024, from Baoshan in Yunnan province. I'd made my home there for many years and was determined to stay, but so little of the place was left intact following the war that I was forced to seek shelter elsewhere. I wanted to stay in China, but the government wasn't providing any type of aid for displaced citizens; some of my younger associates decided to relocate to Japan and hire on to help with the reconstruction, and I followed them. We settled in the old capital, and I've remained here ever since."
The old capital…Tokyo, thought Yoko. I'm in Tokyo.
She was paying close attention to Mr. Zhang's words – if she couldn't contact anyone for help, she'd have to find a way out of this situation on her own. Somehow.
"As you well know, there are others like us; people who were forced from their homes, forced to adapt to a new culture that resented our presence. We lived this way for years, doing our best to survive while being effectively swept under the rug by a government that no longer had any need for us. Finally, almost four years ago now, something happened that gave us hope – Shen Mao's daughter became the prime minister.
"You can't imagine the excitement this instilled in my community. We had all known your father; he was one of us, someone who had gone through what we had. We were certain that he would have told his child of his experiences, and that she would honor his memory and act for his people as the voice for which we had so desperately waited. Things were finally going to change for us. And then, only a few months later, do you know what I found out?"
Yoko assumed that the question was rhetorical, and said nothing.
"You lied, madam," said Mr. Zhang. "You erased your entire history. You intentionally avoided your responsibilities to your people and your homeland, treating our plight as if it was an abstract concept that didn't concern you."
He paused, as if to let the weight of his words sink in. Yoko thought of taking the opportunity to answer him, but there were so many things to which she wanted to object that she was shaking trying to decide where to begin.
"As you might imagine," continued her host, "I was very upset. I knew the truth, and it was incredibly difficult for me not to release it on your behalf. But before I did, I wanted to meet with you; I wanted to try to make you understand what we went through because of your inaction. And so, here we are."
He leaned back against the sofa, gazing imperiously at his guest. Yoko took a deep breath, and then fixed him with the most polite, ingratiating smile she could muster.
"I'm afraid there's something I don't understand, sir," she said. "I've done more than any of my predecessors since the war to help resolve the issues faced by Asian refugees residing in Japan; are you upset with me because I haven't done enough, or because you expected me to wield my heretofore unknown dictatorial powers and elevate the refugees to a higher social class, simply because you allegedly knew my father?"
She knew she'd taken a risk by meeting this man's obsession with sarcasm, but it was a manageable one. Her political career, plus the years she'd spent in the legal field before it, had helped her to hone her already considerable talent for reading people, and she was fairly certain that Mr. Zhang had no intention of killing her at this point. The expression on his face was stern, but gently so; he still saw her as an insolent child who needed to be re-educated.
She hoped that he'd maintain this attitude toward her until she'd had some time to plan her way out of this.
If such a thing was even possible.
Her comment seemed to have touched something of a nerve; the lines around Mr. Zhang's face tightened, and for a moment she saw what might have been a flash of anger. Then he sighed, shook his head, and got to his feet, motioning for her to stand also.
"Please, come with me, madam. You'll see soon enough."
He reached for a walking stick that had been tucked in between the sofa and the end table and, leaning gently upon it, ushered her through the door.
Two men had been standing guard out in the hallway, both dressed in the camouflage jumpsuits worn by local laborers. When Mr. Zhang emerged with his guest, one draped a worn, patched kimono jacket over his shoulders, and then held it steady as he fit his arms into the sleeves. Yoko found her own wool overcoat being thrust roughly in her direction by the other man; quietly, she thanked him and put it on.
The building they were in appeared to be a school, or at least what was left of one; the short hallway from what Yoko assumed had once been an administrative office fed into a larger entryway, with a vaulted ceiling and raised concrete blocks on the tile floor where lockers had once stood. Most of the windows were shattered, and very few of the signs still remained on the walls; they'd probably been carted away years ago to be recycled as scrap material.
The party continued through the entrance hall, down another narrow corridor, and then through a doorway that led outside. The door itself was long gone, replaced by a weathered blue tarpaulin; one of the men held it aside so that the rest of the group could pass through.
"This, my dear prime minister," said Mr. Zhang, sweeping one arm demonstratively in front of his body, "is how your people are living."
They were at the far end of a large, open field, enclosed by the collapsed remnants of the building on two sides and a tall chain-link fence on other two. The space was edged with ramshackle shelters built up against the wreckage, ranging from sheets of canvas draped over old bits of furniture to three-sided houses made of scrap metal and plastic. Most of their occupants were still sleeping, wrapped up in old blankets and plastic sheeting and huddled near the smoldering remnants of fires to ward off the bitter cold.
"The families with young children or elderly relatives stay inside the parts of the building that are still sound," said Mr. Zhang. "I've tried to make this a safe place for them, at least compared to what goes on in the rest of the zone. They'll start showing themselves soon enough; it's still early now, but things always get much livelier here when the volunteer groups come around with food."
The group continued to walk across the field. The ground was churned and muddy, frozen into irregular shapes that were extremely difficult for Yoko to navigate in her heels, and she could feel the eyes of Mr. Zhang's men on her back, waiting for her to trip. When she finally did stumble, they made no pretense of hiding their laughter; silently, she picked herself up, dusted off her skirt, and kept walking, determined not to dignify their reaction with a response.
A final few minutes of walking brought them to the end of the field, and to the foot of the destroyed section of the building. While the two end walls were still more or less intact, the middle had sagged long ago, crumbling into a towering pile of concrete slabs and rebar fringed with bits of rubble. Mr. Zhang led the way along the edge of the wreck to a low door with two high, narrow windows on either side of it. One of his men moved forward to open it, and he stepped through, motioning for Yoko to follow. She remained still –the amount of rubble resting on top of the structure made her extremely nervous—until the man behind her prodded her roughly between the shoulders, at which point she moved away from him as quickly as she could.
She found herself in a small room with bare concrete walls and evidence of past linoleum tiling still remaining on the floor. The space was unfurnished, save for two broken crates in a corner and a low bench against the far wall; Mr. Zhang's eyes performed a quick sweep of the place, and then returned to his guest.
"Here is where I leave you, madam," he said, offering a polite bow. "Please consider everything I've told you. I'll speak with you again later"
Dully, Yoko watched as he left the room, and then as the door was closed and locked behind him, leaving her alone in the cold, dim light that filtered through the grimy windows. She shivered; at least they'd been kind enough to leave her with her coat.
Carefully, she felt her way across the room to the bench and sat down on it. Two worn, thin blankets lay folded at one end; she wrapped both around her shoulders and huddled there, desperately trying to get her head around the situation.
Yangzi - that was a name she hadn't heard in a very long time. She'd never expected anyone other than her father to say it, and to hear it spoken without his soft, lilting accent made her ache for his voice like she hadn't in many, many years.
She shook her head; this was what her captor wanted, for her to become distracted by a combination of guilt and nostalgia, so that she'd give in to…whatever it was he wanted from her. It still wasn't entirely clear.
Yoko took a deep breath and gathered her thoughts.
She was somewhere in Tokyo; the fact that she'd been transported there from Fukuoka meant that she had to have been missing for at least twelve hours, probably longer. She was currently in the custody of a Chinese nationalist who felt that she owed some sort of duty to his community of refugees because her father had been one of their countrymen, and who seemed to have some extent of command over the place. Her cybercomm functions were jammed, which probably extended to her GPS signals as well, and she was locked in a small room beneath a collapsed school building.
At this very moment, hundreds of people were devoting every bit of their energy to tracking her down. She just had to be patient until they succeeded.
She tried to ignore the fear burning in the back of her mind.
Nobody is going to hurt me at this point; they still want to negotiate. I'm not sure what the goal of this is, but if it was for me to die, it would have happened already.
Slowly, steadily, she repeated this to herself with every breath she took.
Her security team would find a way to her, even without being able to rely on the Net. It was what they were there for. It might take a while longer, but she could survive until then.
And if they can't, there's always the Major…
A shiver ran through Yoko's body that had nothing to do with the cold.
The Major…did she even know what had happened? She'd been off somewhere just the other night – what if she was still away on her own business, working within her own little world, completely oblivious?
What if she knew, but didn't care?
Yoko shook the thought away fiercely.
Of course she knew; she was probably fully aware of the situation and working as hard as she could to fix it.
Because it's her job, though; not because of me.
It was hardly appropriate to expect anything more under these circumstances.
Still, if there was any one person she wanted to be able to contact right now…
With a heavy sigh, Yoko curled up on the bench, leaning her back against the wall. It seemed as though the only thing she could do for the time being was wait.
I disengaged from the terminal and leaned back in my chair, rubbing my temples with my thumb and forefinger. I'd been diving for nearly eight hours total, with nothing to show for it. I needed a break. After a brief stretch, I got up from my chair and walked out into the hallway.
Why hadn't I just gone to see her when she'd asked?
It would have been easy enough to change my existing plans. My girlfriends were more than used to it.
As if my having been there the night before could have somehow stopped this from happening.
We still hadn't seen any indication that the prime minister's cyberbrain was functioning at all, and as the hours went by with no word from her assailants, it became increasingly likely that she'd already been killed.
She had called me, lonely and wanting company, and I'd disappointed her.
Angrily, I turned and stormed off toward the main office. This was getting ridiculous; I needed something to do that would actually keep me occupied.
The room was empty except for Batou, reclining in his seat with his boots resting on the surface of his desk. He turned around as I entered.
"Did you catch something?"
I shook my head.
"Not a thing. Where is everyone?"
"Paz took Borma and Azuma to go intimidate some of the black market dealers and weapons traders operating in this area and see if any of them heard anything about a large group mustering supplies. Togusa and the Chief are working on getting our international neighbors to drop us some intel regarding the physical evidence we found at the scene, and I have no idea where Saito went off to." He yawned. "I'm holding down the fort in the meantime."
"I see. Have you had any luck so far gaining access to alternate DNA records?"
Batou shrugged. "The Russian foreign affairs office was pretty helpful, not that it really got us anywhere….the Chinese are proving to be a lot more difficult, though."
"Figures."
I sat down on the desk in front of Batou's. It had once been mine, not that I'd ever really used it for anything; I wondered whose space it was now.
"Hey, Major…"
"Hmm?"
I hadn't looked up; I was running my fingers absently over the surface of the desk.
"Well…it might be nothing, but…you're acting like you've got some kind of personal investment in this case."
Leave it to Batou to pick up on my every emotional fluctuation from the moment I set foot in the building.
"The prime minister up and disappeared…that's kind of a big deal, don't you think?" I said noncommittally, tracing an endless figure-eight over the glossy surface of the wood.
"Yeah, but…I dunno, when this kind of thing's happened in the past, you've generally been a bit more gung-ho about it. Right now…"
He trailed off into an uncomfortable silence, and when I looked up at him, his eyes met mine with an expression of concern. I sighed heavily.
"The prime minister's been a personal client of mine for the last year and some, if you really want to know. She hires me for protection; I guess I just feel a little responsible for this is all."
"Mmm."
He knew that that wasn't anything close to the entire story, but he also knew me well enough to know that I wasn't going to give him anything else.
"So," I said, "I came up here to ask if there was anything this side of the investigation needed my help with, but it doesn't look like you're up to much either."
"Nope," said Batou, leaning back in his chair again. "Just waiting until we get some more information to work with. You're probably better off going back into the Net for the time being."
"I think I will, then," I said, getting to my feet.
So much for keeping occupied.
I was about to go back into the hallway when I heard a door close in the lounge area below, and then the uneven pad of someone maneuvering their way up the stairs. I turned around at once.
"Ah; there you are, Major."
It was the Chief, and he looked more frustrated than usual.
"Any luck negotiating with China?" said Batou.
The Chief shook his head. "Apparently the rights of their citizens take priority over the resolution of a serious international crisis."
He let out a deep breath, and then turned to me.
"Major, I wouldn't ask this unless I had no other options available, but-"
"You want me to dive their records." I finished.
"Exactly. More importantly, I want you to dive their records without being seen, and I want you to find something that we can use to get this case moving forward. I don't like how long we've been sitting here treading water."
Me either.
"Well, it's not the first time I've done something illegal for you. Give me four hours," I said. "I'm going back to my place, too – it'll be easier to cover my tracks if I'm not using Section 9's equipment to make the dive."
"That's fine. I'll have the crime lab transfer the DNA information they recovered into your shared memory."
"Great. Four hours; I'll call you and let you know what turns up."
"I'll be waiting."
I pushed through the doors into the hallway, and then fairly sprinted down to the parking deck.
Somehow, even though I hadn't even done anything yet, it felt as though I was finally moving in the right direction. Something was waiting for me to uncover it; I could feel it. I just needed the time to find out what it was.
I'm sorry, Yoko. I'll have to keep you waiting just a little while longer.
(A/N: Sorry for the delay with this chapter, guys! I had a few huge dialogue snarls to untangle, and then I had the flu for about a week. Anyway, it's up now! Enjoy!)