"You have witnesses to this?"
"Take a look around. I can see three or four meatjobs from right where I"m standing."
"Corpses lying in the street are not my concern."
"You got nothing to do with this? Is that what you"re telling me?"
"The corpses of gangers lying in the street is not a matter concerning Nagato Combine. Therefore, I will have nothing to do with it. That is what I am saying."
"You will if you say I you will."
"Do you wish to negotiate or to make threats you may come to regret?"
"You did notice this isn"t Nagato property, right?"
"Indeed. It is part of the whole megaplex, which must be defended from the violent criminal elements that threaten all our people. Our respective organizations share responsibility for meeting that threat, as do all corporate citizens."
The captain spends a moment gazing at Machiko steadily, perhaps considering what she has said. "Lemme explain something. I"m the police. That makes me the legal authority here. And the law says you and your people are civilians. That"s my point."
"Like you," Machiko replies, "I am a corporate officer, and I am engaged in the business of my corporation. That is my point."
The captain chews another of his small treats. "Let"s cut the hype. You"re a yak. Nagato"s a yak operation. Those boys behind you are yakuza muscle."
"I am GSG. You should know what that implies."
"I"m well aware. I"ve seen phys-adepts in action. That"s why we"re standing here having this talk. But what you better know is that I can"t have civilians shoving my cops around. That doesn"t wash. Comprende?"
"You mean that something must be done."
"Dead scoots are a problem. Cops come first."
A wise philosophy. "What do you propose?"
"It"s your move. Make a suggestion."
Machiko considers, then turns her head slightly as if to look back. "Shoeo."
One of the kobun comes striding swiftly toward her. He pauses at her side and bows. Machiko extends a hand.
"Your weapons."
Shoeo hands her a heavy automatic, nunchaku, two knives, and a taser. Machiko pa.s.ses these to the headman of kobun, then looks back to Shoeo.
"You should not have pushed the NYPD officer. This disreputable act has caused embarra.s.sment not only to Nagato Combine, but also to the NYPD corporation. The captain will hear your confession."
Shoeo bows, then turns to the Captain and bows again. "I confess to the dishonorable shoving of the NYPD officer.
Please arrest me at once."
The captain looks briefly to Machiko, then turns and motions two of his officers forward. They approach warily, but with guns in holsters. They put Shoeo in handcuffs, conduct a cursory search, then lead him away. The captain looks to Machiko. He watches her a moment, then says, "I don"t want any more incidents tonight. Whatever you"re doing, keep it discreet. And move it the h.e.l.l outta my precinct."
Machiko bows politely.
Corporate honor is satisfied.
Machiko motions her group to the Infinitis. She moves to the leading sedan and puts Choca into the rear seat ahead of herself. They drive a total of nine blocks in the shadows of the elevated subway line, past shuttered stores and grime-smeared bars, and come to a halt in front of a blackened brick structure, five stories tall, bearing the sign, "Fulton Ave Hostel."
Lieutenant Enotori enters through the battered gray metal door at the front of the hostel. The headman of kobun sends several of his men to watch the decrepit-looking fire escape dangling over one alleyway and to check for a rear exit. Devil rats dart away from their feet, fleeing piles of rubbish in search of safer refuge.
Enotori returns looking a bit disheveled. "I had to get rough with the clerk."
"Jank is registered?"
"Room four-two-three."
Machiko wastes no time. She moves to the entrance, pursued by the headman and some number of kobun. The metal door opens on a lobby that is little more than a corridor, sided on the right by the service counter of the hostel clerk. The clerk meets Machiko"s roving eyes with a look of shocked alarm, but holds himself motionless. This reaction is mimicked by the sundry dozen norms and orks camping on tattered cots and filthy blankets along the left wall of the entrance corridor.
Squatters" quarters. Sleeping s.p.a.ce for the dest.i.tute, the SINless, the dispossessed, the victims of ever-advancing technology and intercorporate war. In them, Machiko sees the cost of defeat, the fate of all persons who lack the resources and determination to face their enemies and fight. The mere thought of the people of Nagato Combine ever suffering such a fate only strengthens her resolve.
She finds stairs just past the service counter, a stairway of steel mesh and rickety, rusting supports. The entire structure rattles and rings with her every step. She has no need for stealth.
On the third-floor landing, a trio of males, two orks, one norm, see her coming and flatten their backs to the walls, hands uplifted, palms open.
One of the orks affects a bow.
Machiko seizes his nape, but gently. "You know a one named Jank?"
She speaks in English. The ork affects another bow, deeper this time, very respectful, and replies in accented j.a.panese, "Yes, honorable one! Yes, I do! Jank is one floor up!"
"Show me."
The ork leads hurriedly up the stairs. The fourth floor corridor is lined with more indigents, sitting, sleeping, sometimes two or more to a blanket or cot. The doors to rooms are barely three meters apart and only a rare few are marked by any numbers, and even these are scrawled like so much graffiti.
The ork indicates a door. Machiko gestures. The ork backs away and kobun move to either side of the door.
Machiko drives her fist against the door lock. The flimsy macroplas surrounding it shatters. The door bursts inward. Machiko reaches for the grip of her katana, moving forward, but then lowers her hand to her side.
The rank stink that meets her nose is almost overpowering. She must settle herself, focus, before moving forward.
The room is a squatdoss, an enlarged coffin: no window, no telecom, no accessories. The walls are brown with stains and the scrawlings of former tenants. The floor is ancient blackened tile that crackles underfoot. A small army of roaches darts across the floor and dives under the mattress lying along the right. Opposite on the left lie a backpack and duffel bag. Machiko signals the kobun to remain at the doorway and steps cautiously, quietly to the "bed."
Lying on the bed is a male norm, nude. Jank. He lies in a putrid pool of his own filth. His features are obviously Chinese. He does not look tall, but his physique is huge, his muscles like braided cables, bulging beneath the skin, his chest like a ma.s.sive dynamo, even in repose. His skull is bare but for a wedge of hair arcing over the top and data-jacks at his temples. A polymer armored sheath, bonded to his flesh, covers everything beneath the level of his jaw. Both lower arms scan like cybernetic replacements, bulging with compartments and accessories: a tactical comp, a gyro-stabilizer for weapons fire.
Beside Jank"s head lies the squat gray plas of a sensedeck, a deck obviously modified or repaired, held together by macroplas tape. The yellow cable descending from the data-jack in Jank"s left temple connects to the deck. Beside the deck lie a number of simsense chip-carriers colored in bright reds and yellows and labeled as BTL, with names like "Bustout," and "Trogbash," and "Dirty Brown Sc.u.m."
The sensedeck is running, a chip is loaded.
Every few moments Jank twitches and murmurs, like an antique CD spinning around and around, outputting the same data endlessly.
The twitching turns convulsive. The murmurs rise into shouts. "Stinking trogs! Weed-eaters! Take it take it take it! GONNA GET YOU ALL! EAT YOU ALIVE! BURY YOU! YOU AND ALL THE DREK-SUCKING Sc.u.m-"
Abruptly, his eyes snap open and gaze straight up at the ceiling like a man gone blind. He is nearly sitting up with the violence of the convulsions wracking his entire body.
"Machiko-sama?"
She finds the headman of kobun standing beside the foot of the bed, looking to her with an expression of startled amazement, amazement turning to revulsion, horror, and suddenly it all clicks.
She feels it in her belly.
"COVERRR!" she roars.
She turns and propels herself forward, away from the bed, into the headman of kobun, into him bodily, driving him back, away from the bed, toward the doorway, toward the corridor and safety. The headman"s look turns to mindless astonishment. The kobun standing in the doorway seem to move as if encased in mud. She has time to see surprise registering on their faces, the sudden tension of alarm spreading through their bodies and limbs. Then the explosion erupts.
She hears the dull rumbling of its beginning, rising into a deafening roar. She feels the shock wave batter her feet, sweeping up the length of her legs, catching her up like a fist, lifting her, hurling her forward.
The headman falls beneath her as if driven down by the breaking crest of a wave. The corridor wall comes at her. She prepares to fall against it, to break the impact, but then the impact is upon her and she feels the filth-smeared surface giving way beneath her chest.
Then nothing.
19.
The rear compartment of the SDF medical van is lit brightly. Equipment beeps and hums. The air smells of disinfectant.
Machiko is a while persuading her eyes to open. The level of pain she felt in the wake of the explosion outside clan headquarters, little more than twenty-four hours ago, was nothing compared to what she feels now, like she has been pummeled by several shots from a rail gun. Her skull feels as fragile as the sh.e.l.l of an egg, her ribs like frail sticks. Sitting up takes an immense act of will. Medtechs speak of bruised bones, micro-fractures, concussion effects, but she ignores them. She pulls sensors from her temples, her chest, her wrist, and adjusts her clothes. Fortunately, the medtechs have made no attempts at treatment other than basic first aid. Any form of invasive treatment would likely do more harm than good.
She struggles to her feet, fighting the weakness and pain that make a haze of her vision and threaten to lay her out flat.
Outside the side door of the medvan she finds a scene of controlled chaos: a line of people laid out on blankets on the sidewalk, coughing, moaning, sobbing, armored SDF troopers and NYPD police, shouting, gesturing, security vans and fire-rescue vehicles, blue lights strobing, a chopper thumping by overhead.
Immediately to her right, she finds the headman of kobun, his head swathed in bandages, his cheek bruised almost black, his left arm in a sling. His black, blue-trimmed jacket lies over the arms of the kobun standing beside him. Machiko"s swords lie over the jacket.
Both men bow deeply. Machiko accepts the swords and returns them to their places, katana behind her shoulder, wakizashi at her waist. "Tell me what has occurred," Machiko says. "Since the explosion."
The headman bows. "Please excuse my ignorance, Machiko-sama. I was knocked unconscious by the blast. When I awoke, I found that the Nagato lieutenant had summoned help."
"Where is Lieutenant Enotori?"
"Here, Machiko-san."
Machiko turns to find the man approaching from behind her. His voice, so near, comes as enough of a surprise that she momentarily forgets herself and turns without regard for injury or pain. A new wave of feebleness sends her swaying backward, off-balance, b.u.mping into the side of the medvan. Abruptly, she discovers herself sitting down, sitting on the metal step beneath the side door of the medvan.
Enotori catches her shoulders. "Machiko-san," he says, "you should be in the hospital."
This is out of the question. "Status."
Enotori rubs briefly at his brow. His face is smudged with grime. "I notified the SDF teams on standby to respond to our location. Fire and police services also responded. The total damage done by the explosion was not so great, but there was some smoke and the tenants on the fourth floor panicked. Many were injured in the rush down the stairway. The Yoshida-kai executive for this district has just arrived with additional kobun to a.s.sist with the situation."
This is good. That uninvolved persons should have been injured is very disturbing, but not the most pressing issue on Machiko"s mind. "What of the room? What of Jank?"
Enotori briefly explains that the precinct commander for this area, a Winter Systems officer, has interceded on behalf of Nagato Combine to forestall any unwanted interference. "A Nagato forensics team has just begun examining the room. It appears that Jank was fitted with a cranial bomb. He is dead."
Machiko exerts herself to think. "What evidence has been found?"
"Perhaps among the most significant comes from my headware memory. I downloaded my recorded images of Jank to the Nagato network. I ran a graphic comparison with the partial images of the a.s.sa.s.sin who killed Mitsuharu-san of the GSG."
Machiko puzzles over this. "We have images of this a.s.sa.s.sin?"
"Yes, Machiko-san. A few partial images only. One of the security cams at Mitsuharu-san"s residence complex is a dunce, a closed-circuit manually operated cam. It cannot be accessed through the Matrix. The Security Service discovered this only this morning, and there was some difficulty processing the images."
"What of your comparison?"
"According to the a.n.a.lyzer I ran, the chance is sixty-seven percent that Jank was the same killer captured on the cam at Mitsuharu-san"s residence complex."
The implications are difficult to grasp. "You saw Jank?"
"Yes, I looked into the room just prior to the explosion." Machiko struggles to clear her mind, subdue the pain. "Then we have a tentative connection. A connection between a.s.sa.s.sins and a mage. Perhaps the mage responsible for sending the bomb to the Open House is the same mage Jank spoke about. Have we found any clues about this mage in Jank"s room?"
"We found these." Enotori shows her what appear to be three standard credsticks. "They are registered to a corporate account. The Red Pavilion, Inc. Located in the Bronx."
The name is well known. Its significance is such that Machiko feels a sudden surging of strength. For the first time since she woke, her mind seems to come clear. The Red Pavilion has for many years served as the gathering place for the most influential Triad bosses in the plex. It is the headquarters of the Large Circle League. "Then we are indeed at war, if not with the League, then with one of its affiliates." Enotori"s expression turns uncertain. "It is perhaps unlikely that Jank could have stolen Red Pavilion credsticks. However, his use of BTL disturbs me."
"Please explain."
"We have already found some dozens of BTL chips among the debris in Jank"s room. The seals on these chips were all broken, indicating that they had been used. Jank"s sensedeck appears to have been modified. We have the report on Jank"s aberrant behavior, the boasts he made concerning the mage, destroying all corps, and we have the fact of the surroundings in which he lived."
"You suggest that Jank has abused BTL for some time."
"Particularly in light of the way he died. It would appear that Jank suffered some form of convulsive episode, a seizure, brought on by extreme sensory overload, similar in effect to the lethal feedback induced in deckers by killer IC.
This episode was sufficiently disruptive to the centers of the brain to trigger the bomb in Jank"s head."
"Are you suggesting that this was deliberate? That Jank was situated here, jacked into a sensedeck, as a sort of b.o.o.by trap?"
"I am aware of cases where this has been done, but I do not suspect that such could be the case here. The trail that led us to Jank was too tenuous, too reliant on coincidence, on the informants we happened to interview. A mage on the astral could have monitored our progress, but no one could have antic.i.p.ated that we would be led to Jank."
"Enotori-sart, what is your point?"
The lieutenant bows slightly, perhaps to apologize for being so verbose. "Merely this, Machiko-san. When BTL abuse leads to death, it is almost always a result of long-term abuse. I do not believe that the bosses of the Large Circle League would tolerate one of their soldiers abusing BTL." Indeed.
Machiko considers this for some moments. Enotori"s speculation leads her to a single conclusion. "Perhaps Jank was on the run from his own people."
"Yes, and the Security Service is already checking on this possibility. We have initiated a search of all relevant databases."