by Jace Kang
“Sense your Core,” Ryu said. “As you inhale, draw the energy up from it, and through the Nue Core. It will feel cold and sharp. When it reaches your chest, exhale. Push that energy from your heart, through your blood vessels. Good.”
“What can I do?” Aya asked, her voice a little less frantic.
Ryu’s gaze strayed to the Nue’s corpse. With a flick of his hand, he used a Water Whip to split the Nue’s scrotum open. Its testicles spilled out. White with blood vessels running through them, they were fist-sized like the Core.
Aya turned and threw up again.
“Keep Cultivating, Ken. Aya, go get the testicles.”
She shuddered. “Do I have to?”
“Do you know what those are called in the old language?”
“Golden Ball,” Aya said with a hoarse voice.
“They are very strong in Yang and Essence.” Master Ryu gestured to the body again. “The word Gold also means Metal in the old language. In a Nue, a yokai belonging to the Metal Path, the testicles contain the metals used for the Yang aspects of Iron Shirt. Now hurry.”
Swallowing hard, Aya trotted over to the Nue remains. Gingerly, she spread her thumbs and forefingers wide and plucked each of the veined white globes. Turning her head, she came back.
“Good work,” Ryu said. “Now eat one.”
Aya’s eyes went wide as teacups as she shook her head.
“If you want to cure your cystic fibrosis, this will go a long way to improving your lung function.” Ryu extended his hand. “Now give me the other.”
Aya was more than happy to oblige, dropping the one into his palm.
“Can you eat this?” Ryu asked Kentaro.
Without any protest, the boy opened his mouth.
Ryu placed it in. At their side, Aya pinched her nose and popped the testicle into her own mouth. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she started to chew.
“Don’t chew,” Ryu said. “There’s another way.”
With her cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk, she gave him a quizzical look.
Ryu set Kentaro’s head on the ground and stood up. Sinking into a low, square stance, he used the hard lines of Metalshaping to draw the Nue testicles down into both Aya’s and Kentaro’s stomachs.
Her eyes widened, and Kentaro winced.
“Aya,” Ryu said, “Perform the Separating Heaven and Earth form of the Eight Brocades. Ken-kun, just visualize yourself doing the form.”
Ryu reached out through the water vapor to sense Kentaro’s Qi. It was quite feeble because of his devastating injury. Still, it flowed, and the metals of the Nue testicle began integrating into his system. If he was able to maintain focus through the pain, it might very well save his life. Indeed, the boy’s Cultivation of the Fire aspects of the Nue Core was already repairing his blood vessels.
Near them, Aya’s Qi was circulating as well. As always, it fought to make it through all of the circuitry in her brain, but she was getting better at it.
“Now as you break down the energy of the testicle, draw it into your lungs with an inhalation. As you exhale, push it through to your skin. If you can, Ken-kun, do the same.”
Ryu ripped the Nue’s arm off, then used its blood to draw the Yin-Yang circle around the two. He placed the Trigram for Earth behind Kentaro to root him there, and the Trigram for Heaven behind Aya. Whereas before, he’d used Ken’s stronger energy to supplement Aya’s, he reversed it now.
He added the symbol for Fire beneath Heaven near Kentaro to represent companionship; under Earth, he drew Thunder to represent approach—the expectation of greater fortune. Within the circle Qi flowed smoothly, and with it, Kentaro’s breath steadied as well.
Was it enough to save him? For now, there wasn’t much more Ryu could do. He went to check on Siena, who lay unconscious.
He reached out to sense her Qi. Her Core remained vast, but the energy within was nearly depleted. Maybe he’d drawn too much from her during their last intimate encounter.
Up to now, though, she’d replenished her energy quickly. He inserted acupuncture needles into Zusanli on one leg, Fuliu on another; then Hegu on one hand, and Neiguan in the opposite wrist. The combination should speed her revival.
A buzz hummed from up above. Ryu sidestepped just as a bolt of energy rippled into the spot he’d just been kneeling in, dispersing into the pavement.
Ryu tracked it to its source.
Fast as a cat, a dark shadow ducked behind the eaves of the temple. Ryu twirled in a circle, avoiding another blast of crackling blue energy from the right. He leaped over a third, originating to the left.
He landed in a crouch, hand on the ground to evaluate the vibrations with Earth Path senses. Through the water vapor, he detected four attackers. He dove into a forward roll to avoid two more blasts, then vaulted to his feet.
There they were, six human shapes. Even with superior sight from Wood Path training, they moved so fast they were hard to make out.
A stray shot might hit his friends, or damage the Yin-Yang Circle he’d drawn. He had to draw them away.
Chapter 30:
The Hacker
I f someone had told Aya that her evening would include having a dread monster’s testicle pulled into her stomach, she would’ve laughed. Despite how disgusting it was, the energy felt even more intense than the Tofu-Kozo Core she’d absorbed. Coolness percolated through her, and her inhalations and exhalations came smoothly and steadily.
Was this how normal humans breathed?
Across from her, Kentaro’s blood loss had slowed to a stop. Before this week, she would’ve assumed that meant his heart had stopped beating, but his chest rose and fell in resolute breaths. Would he survive?
Her stomach twisted. Whether it was from the thought of losing him, or the monster’s sex organ floating around down there, she wasn’t sure. The more her body processed the testicle, the more her head felt like it was being squeezed in the grip of a shocktrooper in power armor.
The blasts from particle guns broke her concentration on breathing and visualizing. They were zipping in so fast, from so many directions, it was impossible to tell what was going on.
The camera she was wearing would’ve picked it up.
Jacking into the EtherCloud, she entered her EtherSpace.
“Ai, play back the camera feed, half speed.”
The image revealed the origin of the particle gun shots: blurry shapes, moving fast.
“Ai, repeat, at one-tenth speed.”
The scene repeated. This time the shapes came into focus, and her real body would’ve shivered.
Ministry of Defense assassins.
While her own internal electronics were limited to her EtherCloud jack and the interface into her brain, MoD assassins were wired through and through. The integrated circuitry included cybernetic eyes and allowed teams to work in coordination with each other. AI-controlled nanobots assisted every movement, giving them superhuman reflexes, and prosthetic glands released hormones that blocked out pain.
They were barely human, and research suggested they’d lost all emotional sense of humanity. The technologies were made for starfighter pilots from three centuries before, and had later been banned—except in covert MoD programs. Thankfully, the expense of creating just one of these supersoldiers compared to shocktroopers in power armor ensured their numbers remained small.
In the playback, their wiry forms bounced from building to building, flipping midair while shooting. She’d mistaken Ryusuke for one of them when she’d first watched footage of him fighting the Peacekeepers and shocktroopers. She had to warn him.
She jacked out and looked.
Ryusuke had already leaped to the temple’s rooftop, then sprang to another building as stun beams crackled through the air, striking the old wooden structures in the neighborhood. The dark shapes leaped after him.
“Ministry of Defense assassins!” Aya yelled. Whether he heard her or not, it was impossible to tell. “They’re enhanced with speed!”
The
master disappeared from her line of sight, and Aya looked to Kentaro.
Blood had stopped leaking from the gash, and she could’ve sworn the wound looked a fraction smaller. She jacked back into her EtherSpace.
“Ai, compare Kentaro’s wound from two minutes ago with now.”
Computing angle. Showing.
The two images of the injury appeared side-by-side, then came together so that the more recent one overlaid the earlier one. Indeed, the wound had already started to close by half a millimeter. Thin, barely visible fibers threaded through the skin.
“Ai, zoom in on the fibers and identify.”
The image enlarged, and a rainbow graph was displayed beside it.
Spectral analysis indicates several different iron alloys.
Several different iron alloys…just like… “Ai, compare this to the data on Ryusuke’s skin.”
The fox spirit displayed two rainbow graphs side by side, then overlaid them. There were slight variations in some of the metal content, but they were about ninety percent the same.
Could it be? Kentaro was already gaining iron deposits in his skin?
The rattling of her body jolted her out of the EtherSpace.
She blinked her eyes several times to find a Peacekeeper next to her.
“Are you all right, miss?”
She looked around. Thirty-two Peacekeepers swarmed the area, with some examining the Yin-Yang symbol. Another checked on Siena, while two medics knelt down beside Kentaro. They’d brought a levitating biobed with motion dampeners. Others were scouring the area, and two were examining the Kappa’s broken walking stick.
“What are these needles in the Elestrae woman?” one asked.
“Check out this wood and the gemstones inside,” said another.
Their expressions showed just how baffled they were.
“Miss Johnson?” the Peacekeeper asked.
Johnson? She shook her head and met his gaze. Of course, the Trojan horse she’d planted in the Peacekeeper EtherSpace identity database would recognize her as someone else. In this case, the woman Ryusuke had saved from the Nue.
She jacked in for a split second to command Ai to keep her identity as Hiromi Johnson.
“Yes?” she asked when she jacked back out.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. I think so.” She looked around. There was no sign of Teppin.
“I’m Officer Perez.” The Peacekeeper waved his hand around, then paused on the Nue’s remains. “What happened here? And what is that?”
What to say? Certainly they knew about Ryusuke, if the MoD Assassins were after him. She burst into tears as she ran over and knelt by Kentaro. “My boyfriend!”
Ken’s breathing remained stable, even if the wound still looked horrific.
“A Purebred?” the medic asked.
“He doesn’t have a chip,” said another Peacekeeper with a chip scanner. “I thought he was another one of those mysterious visitors.”
Through her manufactured sobs, she pointed at the Nue. “We were strolling to the temple, when that…that thing…attacked us.”
“It’s amazing he’s still alive,” the medic said. “I can’t figure out why he’s not bleeding anymore, even though he has a pulse. Or what this needle is doing under his nose.”
“What about the Elestrae?” Officer Perez pointed at Siena.
“I don’t know,” Aya said. “She must’ve heard our screams and come to help. The cameras must’ve caught what happened.” Of course they wouldn’t have, since these creatures from the World of Rivers and Lakes always interfered with the surveillance devices. Though after it died, maybe they caught something.
Officer Perez then gestured to the diagram of blood on the ground. “And what’s this?”
Feigning shock, she stared at the circle. She shook her head. “I…I don’t know.”
“We’re going to have to take you to headquarters to take a statement.” The lead Peacekeeper said. He gestured to a hover transport levitating close by.
This wasn’t good, especially if her sister Keiko happened to be on duty. On the bright side, she would now be on the inside of Peacekeeper Headquarters, where she might be able to jack into their EtherSpace without having to slip past Sentinels. If only there was some way to let Ryusuke know.
With a nod, she climbed into the second-row seating of a hover transport, behind the shielded cockpit. The Peacekeepers lifted Kentaro and Siena onto biobeds and loaded them into the back of the vehicle.
The trip to Peacekeeper Headquarters on a priority route would take a minute. Aya gave herself a second to hack into her home’s EtherSpace. There, she stole her father’s ID and sent a message for Keiko to come home.
For the rest of the ride, she looked out the windows, searching for flashes from the MoD assassins’ stun guns. Buildings familiar from images she’d seen zipped by.
“We’re almost there,” said Officer Perez. “I—”
He placed his hand on his ear, then jerked his head to look out the window. “I don’t see any bogies.”
Bogey? Was it Ryusuke? Aya grabbed his arm. “What’s wrong?”
“Negative,” the Peacekeeper said, ignoring her. “Tell them we have the Elestrae, and a couple…. What?”
“What’s wrong?” Aya asked.
Officer Perez turned and stared at her, but spoke into his communicator implant. “They’re wrong. The woman’s name is Hiromi Johnson, not Aya Oyama.”
Shit. Whoever he was talking to knew her real name, but for now, didn’t realize it was her.
An explosion rocked the hovercraft, sending Aya and Officer Perez lurching forward. In the back, Kentaro cried out, a sign that the biobed’s inertial dampeners weren’t helping to keep him stable.
“Dammit!” Officer Perez said. “They fired on us!”
“Who?” Aya demanded, though she had a good idea it was…
“A Ministry of Defense gunship.”
Probably only a warning shot. The next one would likely end their trip, which in turn meant Kentaro wouldn’t get the help he needed. She put her hand on her head, pretending to have hit it. “I think I hit my head. I…”
She slumped forward in her seat, then jacked into the EtherCloud. Unlike the gunship that had attacked Teppin, this one’s connection was crawling with Level Seven Sentinels. Even with her best cloaks and Shells, she could never get past them…
Except with Slash’s code. If it could delay a Level Nine Sentinel for two seconds, it would give her two hundred seconds against a Level Seven—a virtual eternity in real time. It would also mean never being able to hack MoD EtherSpaces ever again.
Still, that would be the same outcome if she fell into their hands now. Not to mention, Kentaro might die if he were jostled any more.
Thank goodness for the lack of physiological reaction, because as much as her brain warned her this was a bad idea, especially after the earlier incident, she didn’t feel it in her nerves. She activated the code, then jumped to the datalink.
The Level Sevens paid her no mind. With her virtual picks, she used codes to unlock the encryption. The door to the gunship opened. Malicious code meant to attack her Avatar specifically lurked just beyond the port, resembling a Tengu.
Cloaked as she was by Slash’s code, it paid her no mind, and she slipped past it. The EtherSpace looked exactly like the one that had joined in the attack on Teppin, so she zipped over to the control partition. Along the way she passed more Tengu, their red horns shining as she’d programmed their appearance in her SI. To think, Ryusuke had probably seen real Tengu in the World of Rivers and Lakes.
They ignored her, and like before, only lightly-armed footmen—Level One Sentinels—monitored for irregular activity. No doubt the MoD believed the Level Seven Sentinels outside prevented someone from hacking the craft.
Avatars moved in slow motion, one representing the human controlling the steering, and the others operating the weapons. They all appeared as gears to her SI. She inserted code into the st
eering systems that would make the gunship move opposite the direction the pilot intended. Then, she ripped out the weapons’ targeting code. Finally, using some of her new combat code, she obliterated the autopilot AI, which had no defenses.
She caught sight of video from the MoD assassins as they pursued Ryusuke. To linger too long would make the Peacekeeper beside her real body wonder, so she only took note of their location. He was leading them east toward Pontocho Park.
A static-marred still shot from another feed showed the three Tivari from the night before, one pointing a device at the camera. Were they sabotaging the drone monitoring them? A glance at the timestamp revealed it was not current, but from an hour ago. The MoD was reviewing the footage.
As much as she wanted to steal more of the gunship’s archives, the last time had led to disaster. She returned to the exit to the datalink. She jacked back out, with only a split second of real time elapsed. As always, her limbs felt sluggish as her body acclimated to the slower speed.
“Are you all right?” Officer Perez asked.
She straightened, holding her head. “I think so. It just hurts a little. I—”
A crash rang out from behind them, and Aya joined the Peacekeeper in looking out the window.
The gunship’s wing had crashed into the side of a building, and it now careened out of control.
“That was lucky,” Officer Perez said. “I wonder why the autopilot didn’t engage.”
Maybe because she’d decompiled it.
Though the entire trip took only a minute, more Peacekeepers had joined in to escort the hovercraft. It alighted on an upper-level landing pad. When she climbed out, the vantage point provided a stunning view: thousands of skyscrapers, dotted with lights in the night, spread out all the way to the mountains that encircled the city.
“This way, please,” the Peacekeeper said, interrupting her reverie. He took her arm and guided her across the landing pad to an entrance.
Had Keiko gotten the fake message from home? If they ran into each other…
Behind them, more Peacekeeper medics were guiding the biobeds with Ken and Siena. When the sliding doors opened and Aya went through, Officer Perez guided her left into the sterile halls. Ken and Siena, however, were taken to the right.
