The door finally opens. The hinge is squeaky. The kami of fear is marching to protect her territory. I rush back to my chair. The agent enters. “Hello, Makoto Fujimoto,” she greets me in a somber tone. “My name is Akiko Tsukino.”
I immediately bow to her, and apologize, “I’m truly sorry, ma’am. I’m truly sorry.”
Agent Tsukino is wearing gloves, has short hair, violet mascara. She looks at me but has no expression. She is dressed in a black suit, and her arms are bulky, not like muscles, but more like something mechanically dreadful. “What are you apologizing for?” she asks, then opens up the curtains.
The light is blinding. It comes from behind her and makes her silhouette appear overwhelming. I fear her shadow will swallow me whole. “For what happened with Hideki.”
“What happened?”
I don’t know how much she knows, but I feel I have to tell her everything I know if I’m going to have any chance at surviving. I do my best to try to recollect more details, scared by the stories I’ve heard about what happens to victims who make the Tokko unhappy. “He—he asked me if I wanted to cheat for the exam.” I look to her, and she is staring intently at me. “H-he told me someone had offered him a way to ace the test.”
“You agreed?”
“No.”
“Did he tell you who it was that was offering to help him?”
I shake my head.
“Were you tempted by the offer?” she asks.
I’m tempted to lie and tell her absolutely not. But a part of me is too scared to lie. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because—because I didn’t want to cheat my way in,” I confess.
“Why didn’t you report him?”
I didn’t even think of reporting him. He was my best friend. How could I? “I don’t know,” I answer. I feel numb, unable to register everything that’s happened. “Do you—do you know who did this?” I finally ask.
“I’m investigating.”
“Is it the people who got him to cheat?”
“I’m investigating,” she repeats, offering nothing. “But for now you need to come with me.”
“Where to?”
She looks at me, and for a moment, there is a glimmer of pity in her eyes. “We’ve found another body, and we need to know if you recognize him.”
* * *
• • •
Agent Tsukino leads me outside and orders the three officers who were questioning me, “Take him to the site unharmed.”
They don’t speak to me until we get in the car. I sit in the backseat with the youngest officer.
“What’d you tell her?” he asks.
“Are you trying to make us lose face?” the middle-aged officer inquires.
“This kid doesn’t know how serious we are!” the older policemen, who is driving, states.
The young bald officer punches me in the face. Even with only a short distance, it wallops my head against the side window. “You don’t tell us, but you tell Tokko?” He places his hand on my neck. “I should save the Empire time and money and kill you.”
“I swear I didn’t tell her anything I didn’t tell you,” I lie to them, not wanting to anger them.
His fingers apply pressure to my neck as he starts to squeeze. “You think we’re playing games?” I struggle to break free, but that only strengthens his grip.
I cough, and yell, “Please, I don’t know anything.”
He elbows me in the eye, and says, “Settle down! If you don’t know anything, what good are you alive?”
Fortunately, it’s not a long drive, and we come to our stop quickly. I’m surprised they let me out. I attribute it more to a general fear of the Tokko agent than the short distance. We pull over at Tani Tateki Park, which is only a fifteen-minute walk from school. It’s known for its woods and pine trees—and as a meeting place for couples who are secretly dating. I wonder if they’ve brought me here to give me a good beating. But that wouldn’t make sense. They could have done that at school.
My fears are allayed when I see multiple officers present. Forensic scientists are canvassing the area. The smell of pines is strong, and we enter a space dense with trees. I notice a squirrel chasing another, oblivious to the scene next to them. I step on a pebble that gets stuck in one of the grooves of my sole. A young couple is talking to officers, both of them distraught. There is a body surrounded by uniformed officers. It appears familiar, but I don’t want it to be. He is also missing an arm. The officers prod me forward until I’m right above him. I look down and see a lifeless face, but I don’t recognize him. Instead, I think about Hideki.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. If the officers say something, anything to me right now, I will fight them till either they die, or I do. Forget my future, forget living. A surge of rage wants to direct itself at anything that provokes it. They’re lucky they keep quiet, or I would have gone kamikaze on them. I’m fuming, unable to release my anger. Hideki Hideki Hideki.
I hear rustling. Behind me, everyone is bowing, including the officers. Agent Akiko Tsukino arrives.
“What happened to his arm?” I ask her.
“We’re still trying to find out,” she answers. “But initial inspections indicate this was the agent working with your friend, Hideki. They both grafted porticals powered by biochemicals onto their arm to help infiltrate the examination,” she says. “Something frequently used by various terrorist groups to avoid detection.”
“Like the NARA?”
“They are one of many groups known to use them.” She peers at my swollen eye. “What happened to you?” she asks me.
“Nothing, ma’am.”
She approaches the three officers, who are looking at their shoes.
“I asked you to look after him. Why is he hurt?”
“He fell,” the young one answers with a smug smile.
“He fell?” Akiko asks. She punches the officer in the nose, causing blood to gush out. She socks the older man in the gut and roundhouse kicks the middle-aged lion’s face. “I’m sorry. That was an ‘accidental’ collision,” she says. “Do you think my orders are to be trifled with? I said unharmed.”
“But he’s friends with the traitor!”
“Hideki Kikuchi had many friends, teachers, and acquaintances. Should I hold all of them responsible and waste public resources in the process? There are actual traitors sympathetic to the terrorists, and that’s who I’m tracking down, not bystanders who are as taken aback by these events as you,” she barks. All three officers have their heads bowed. “If Makoto Fujimoto even has a sprain in the near future, I will hold each of you personally responsible. Pray he doesn’t accidentally ‘fall’ again.”
“Yes, ma’am,” they say.
“I don’t want to see your faces,” she snaps, and they flee quickly.
I would be pleased if the circumstances were different. But her words calm me and make me feel like I can trust her to be fair.
“Look at him,” she suddenly orders me, pointing at the body.
I do but am disturbed by the sight. I look back at her.
“Don’t turn your head away. In a short time, he’ll be swarmed by insects. Someone made bug food out of him, the same way they did your best friend. Do you want them to get away with this?”
“Of course not.”
“Then do your best to remember if he gave you any clue who did this.”
I scour my memories, but I don’t have anything, until I remember the sample simulation he gave me. I turn on my portical and show it to her. “He gave it to me a few nights ago.”
She examines it, scrolls through the options. “I’m going to confiscate this.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ve had my assistants go through your communications and messages. There’s nothing indicating culpabil
ity yet. But if I find out you hid any details or information from me, you’ll wish it was those three officers you were dealing with, not me.”
“I want to help you catch them,” I state.
“Do you?”
“I do.”
“Have you heard of the Cymothoa exigua?” she asks me.
“No.”
“It’s a parasite that enters the mouths of fish and attaches to their tongues, eventually supplanting them. Victims have the parasite in their mouth, acting like a tongue, eating their mucus and blood. When the fish dies, the parasite moves on. The only cure are Pederson shrimp who specialize in hunting parasites. They can reach inside the mouth and rip the Cymothoa exigua off, even if it is painful. When the shrimp works together with the fish, the fish can be healthy.”
I know she has a deeper meaning, but it escapes me at the moment, and all I can offer is, “I’m sorry.”
“If you really were sorry, you would have reported him.”
She’s right. “I—I had no idea this would happen. I couldn’t betray my friend. But if I’d reported him . . .”
“You would have lost a friend, and he would have been in a lot of trouble,” Akiko states. “But he’d be alive.”
“Whatever punishment I deserve, I accept.”
She shakes her head. “Your punishment is the knowledge you’ll carry with you for the rest of your life that you failed to help him.”
Flies are already starting to harvest the stranger. “Have you caught the people who did this?”
“Most likely they’re already gone,” she answers.
“What was their objective?”
“Social disruption. Inspire rebellion in a few.”
“Inspire rebellion in a few at the cost of my friend?” The whole idea of it is repulsive to me, and I wish there were something I could do to get back at them.
“Lives have no meaning to them as long as they achieve their purpose.”
“To show us fake footage of the Empire?”
“That wasn’t fake,” she replies. “That’s all real.”
“But they were hurting civilians.”
“Does that bother you?”
“Yes,” I confess, though I wonder if I should have lied in case she is testing my loyalties.
“It is the sin of all empires that many are killed in their construction. But that does not absolve the terrorists of exploitation and murder.”
“So it was the NARA?”
“Possibly. But there are a dozen other terrorist groups it could have been.”
A coterie of officers arrive with advanced porticals.
“Go home,” she commands me. “But know, I have my eye on you, Makoto Fujimoto. If you step even a little out of line, I’ll know.” Her eyes feel likes needles piercing my chest.
I bow in shame, wishing she’d lock me away.
03
The subway ride back home feels too short. I don’t want to go back to my dorm. But I don’t know where else to go. I return and pick up my spare portical from my desk, then sync it with the latest backup files to get everything I had on my last one.
I lie in bed. My portical rings. There’s a general message from school telling us the examinations will recommence tomorrow morning. Hideki is dead, but it’s back to life as usual. The travesty of normalcy is revolting.
I can’t think about the test. I can’t think about academics at all. Every time I close my eyes, I see Hideki holding his arm, shaking in place. If only I’d stopped him before he agreed to work with the terrorists, shook some sense into him . . .
The next three days are a whirlwind of moments that vanish into one another. Examinations, questions from schoolmates, questions about physics, history, logic, and Kanji swirl together. I feel at times as though I’m reading a foreign language. I reread some of the trick problems and remain more puzzled by the syntax than the subject. I’m convinced I’ve answered every question wrong. But I’m indifferent to the results. The only reason I bother taking it is as much as I hate this test, I hate being by myself even more. And we’re forbidden calls to other students this week. I wonder how Griselda is doing and if she’s heard the news.
The final day of the examination, I hurry through the last few sections, lay the portical down, and dismiss myself. I’m done with the written part.
“I can’t believe Hideki was collaborating with the terrorists,” I overhear someone saying in the hallway.
“Did you see how they tried to make those people our soldiers were attacking seem so innocent? They were aiding our enemies. They all deserved death.”
The general response to the incident is scorn. But I feel more conflicted and am not sure exactly how to feel about any of it. I wonder about my parents. Did they see any of those incidents? Were they ordered to take part in the killing of civilians?
I’d like to believe they would have disobeyed if given such orders. I hate even thinking about it, and just as I’m feeling more confused, I get called to the gymnasium. They’ve set up special boxed compartments containing the simulation pods for the military testing. It’s the last thing on my mind, and I don’t know why I bother showing up, especially as I don’t even have a wingmate anymore.
There are several officers administering the test. Eight students are in front of me, nervously waiting. None of us speak to one another, trying to stay focused. The test compartments shake to mimic actual motion and make it feel as real as possible. We see smoke, vigorous quavers. Each examinee takes approximately thirty minutes. The students exit through the back, so I can never see their expression.
When it’s my turn, an officer with a bulbous nose scans my fingerprints, and asks, “Fujimoto. Where’s your wingmate?”
Doing it alone almost guarantees my failure. But it’d be impossible to find a replacement now. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t have one.”
“You want to take the test alone?”
“No, sir. But I don’t have anyone to accompany me.”
“Why not?”
“My wingmate is dead,” I say.
The officer looks at me, checking my expression. “He was the one who was killed earlier this week?”
“Yes, sir.”
He starts typing quickly into his portical. “Come back in one hour.”
“Is there a problem, sir?”
“I sent out a message to all those who’ve taken the test, asking if any of them will help as your wingmate. Obviously, there are no guarantees, but we’ll see if anyone replies.”
I’m not hopeful. There is nothing more ill-fated or cursed than to take the seat of a dead man. Why am I even bothering? I go for a stroll outside. Students are running past, thrilled their exams are over. Some are fretting over this answer or that, comparing notes with friends.
I’ve failed my examination. Aside from the basics of mecha control and a couple of test runs I’ve done in arcade sims, I know almost nothing. Was life really all that bad, Hideki? Just a few more weeks, and we would have graduated. No more beatings by any of our teachers. We could have found jobs, even if they were miserable. Maybe try hard at taking the exams again next year. We’d still have new games to look forward to. Even if we might not achieve our dreams, isn’t it better to be alive? Or are my priorities all wrong? I find myself at my homeroom class again. It’s empty, all the students having left. I sit on Hideki’s seat. It’s cold.
* * *
• • •
I walk back toward the gymnasium, where the officer is waiting for me alone. “Thank you for trying,” I tell him, already having anticipated the outcome.
“This year’s tests are different from last year. We’ve always had a programmed simulation to combat against, but for the current exam, we’re matching random examinees with real-life opponents. They don’t let me know which is which, but I’m obligated to inform you of that aspec
t. Are you ready?”
I’m about to answer when someone rushes to the console. It’s Noriko in uniform, with special insignia marking all her commendations. She bows to our training instructor, and says to me, “If you don’t already have someone, it’d be an honor to be your wingmate for the test.”
I’m stunned. Why would the top student in our class do this for me? I bow back lower than her own stance and say in formal Japanese to emphasize the gratitude I feel, “Domo arigatou gozaimasu.”
“Thank me by doing well on your test,” she says.
The officer leads me to my own section in the compartment. It’s blocked off from the other areas and is very dark. There’s a module in the center designed to mimic the cockpit of a quad mecha.
He gives me a latex bodysuit that has nerve attach points for physical feedback. Getting into the cockpit is almost like getting into the seat of a motorcycle, leaning with my stomach down, gripping the main controls to my sides. Safety belts strap my legs, chest, and arms to the test seat. I put on the goggles, which toggle the peripheral interface. My legs control the rear legs of the mecha, and my arms control its front legs. I’m surprised at how heavy the articulation is. Taking a step forward is a strenuous effort as I lift up the control, then bring it down. I swear they’ve loaded the control with bricks. It looked much lighter when I saw other pilots using it on my portical screen. With just an initial trot, I am sweating. Breathing is difficult, and when I try to use my legs, I feel pain in my knees and calves. I take a few more steps forward, reminding myself that they’ve simplified the mecha interface for the test. This should be much easier than in real life. But that idea scares me as I struggle to move. I’m already feeling exhausted, and my bodysuit is drenched with sweat. I start smelling my morning lunch in my throat, and it is nauseating.
The test is executed in a slightly different way for each student, as it adapts to their profile and psychological proclivities. An important part of the test is that the scenario varies each time, so it’s not like you can fully prepare for it. It’s nerve-wracking that I might actually be up against another pilot. The person on the other side of the simulation wouldn’t just be testing me but actively seeking to destroy me.
Mecha Samurai Empire (A United States of Japan Novel) Page 6
