I almost jumped when I realized we weren’t alone anymore. Three men walked cat-like through a door to the side, and reached to clasp hands and bow to Driscoll and the others. I hung back to watch them.
“Brother, you’ve returned,” the first one said. He was deeply wrinkled, but his frail shoulders refused to hunch and his thin hair was still cut in a military set. “And this is your Matsumoto?”
I kept my face clear of emotion. His Matsumoto? Like a pet?
Don’t let them treat you like you are his apprentice, Zeta reminded me. Don’t let him take credit for you, either. You became who you are all on your own. It had nothing to do with him.
It was the closest thing to moral support I’d ever experienced from her.
Just don’t screw it up now.
There was the Zeta I was beginning to know.
“This is Vera Matsumoto,” Driscoll said formally, gesturing to me.
I looked sharply at him, but his eyes were hooded and gave nothing away. My hackles were rising and I felt myself instinctually letting my grip loosen on the shadows.
Yes. Don’t hold us back! Zeta said, feeding my wariness back to me.
I reined myself in sharply. This was not the time to let the shadows slaughter for me.
How do you know? These ones look like they deserve to be fungi...
I inclined my head very slightly to the military man. His eyes narrowed in response, taking my slight bow as an insult. They say beggars can’t be choosers, but when you have nothing left but your free will you need to cling to it.
“Patrick Driscoll,” I said, being careful to fill my words with authority so there could be no mistake. “I believe introductions can wait until my guardian receives proper medical attention.”
His eyebrows rose a hair, but that flicker of amusement still played across his lips. Shiga and Ebisawa looked aghast. I supposed they hadn’t seen so much disrespect shown to the leader of Driscoll’s Own, but then again, they had never been in the presence of a Matsumoto, either, and I was tiring of these games and intrigues. Real problems plagued me and they needed real solutions.
“Ms. Matsumoto, Dr. Hoffstad is here to attend to Roman Aldrin,” Driscoll said formally, gesturing to a man in a white coat.
I turned in Hoffstad’s direction and he bowed formally to me. Good enough. I reached out a hand to shake his.
“My guardian needs swift attention,” I said glancing around me at the elaborate cave.
“Please don’t be concerned,” Hoffstad said, his fingers flickering over the med-readout on the e-stretcher. “We have full medical facilities below.”
“You can use the regeneration unit we brought?” I asked.
“No,” he said, still focussed entirely on Roman. “Regeneration takes months. Mr. Driscoll said you need him up and about as quickly as possible. That means a smart prosthetic. I can fit one and program it in a few hours and we’ll see to his injury in that time as well.”
I frowned. It had seemed awful when I thought that Roman would still get his leg back. This way he never would. I knew as well as anyone that there was only a short window in which regeneration could begin. Was my mission as important as that? I thought of the thousands of citizens above razed by an enemy that Nigel didn’t stop. One more debt the Matsumotos owed.
I nodded, my mouth twisted into a bitter frown and I gripped the handles of the e-stretcher, preparing to follow him, but Driscoll gripped my arm. I flinched, wanting more than anything to strike him for touching me in that moment of anger and pain.
“He’ll be fine with Hoffstad and he won’t let you in the room while he’s treating Roman anyways,” Driscoll said gently.
I was about to say that I didn’t care what he ‘let’ me do, I would be sticking with Roman, but then Driscoll continued.
“With a war waging, our options have shrunk again, and I strongly recommend - as your liege man - that you meet The Hand as quickly as possible.”
My lips tightened in frustration, but I nodded. Driscoll wouldn’t bother with all the “liege man” business if this wasn’t important, and as much as I knew he had his own reasons for what he did, so far his judgments about people had been accurate.
It was physically painful to watch Dr. Hoffstad pull Roman out of the room, but I overrode my pain and followed Driscoll back to the other two men. I didn’t wait for awkward introductions again. Zeta was right that I needed to take the upperhand as quickly as possible.
“So you are The Hand, then,” I said. “A secret society dedicated to observing and possibly expunging the Mastsumoto Dynasty?”
The military man frowned slightly and his eyes were still narrowed. To his right, a man who had ‘professor’ written all over his rumpled clothing and electronic pad, gaped at me. I was used to having that effect on people. If they wanted a tame Matsumoto they should have found someone else.
“Yes, I suppose that’s correct,” the professor said, glancing at the military man.
“And are you hoping to observe me or expunge me?” I asked, with a voice of etched crystal.
“Both,” the military man said, and without thinking I let loose the shadows.
Chapter Nineteen
“Easy! Easy!” Driscoll said, his voice pitched higher than usual and his words forceful. I was beginning to get used to the feeling of people sounding like they were dealing with a crazy person when they spoke to me.
Zeta whooped in my mind as she and Dalinoro tumbled free with half a dozen other shadows. They fanned out behind me, whirling in the dim light of the vestibule.
“What insanity is this?” the professor said in a high pitch, taking a step back.
At the same time the military man said, “Driscoll?”
“Easy!” Driscoll barked, both hands held up, one with his palm facing me and one with his palm held out to Shiga and Ebisawa who had drawn their guns.
“Don’t bother with the guns, boys,” I said quietly. “They don’t do too much to the shadows. They just end up replaced by their fellows, and I seem to have an almost limitless supply.”
There are two million, six hundred and fifty-three thousand, eight hundred and twenty-two souls in your care, Zeta informed me acidly. Our souls mean a great deal to us, even if you would prefer to pour them out like water at every whim.
You told me to stand up and lead. This is me leading.
Her silence suggested she was mollified.
“You didn’t say anything about...that!” Shiga grunted.
“Everyone just stop for a moment!” Driscoll yelled and then spun to face me. “Vera, listen. No one plans to kill you or Roman, okay? If things go badly here then there’s no plan to get help, but that’s all. No one is going to try to kill you. Do you understand?”
I compressed my lips, my mind whirring to plot out the possibilities.
“Please. Trust me. No one is going to kill you here today.”
There was a firm steadiness behind his eyes that I’d only ever seen in Roman’s.
He believes he is telling the truth, Zeta agreed, grudgingly.
She was still a good judge of him. Not for the first time, I wondered what had come between them.
I lowered the katana in my hands - I hadn’t even realized I was holding it up – and nodded, temporarily willing to believe him. I was certain that he didn’t plan to kill me, but most of what had happened to me so far hadn’t been planned.
“Ebisawa, Shiga, there are quarters below. Why don’t you take a load off and get something to eat?” Driscoll said.
The two men of Driscoll’s Own looked back and forth between them, confused, but eventually lowered their guns. Speaking together in a worried undertone, they left for the door Driscoll pointed to.
“And maybe as a show of good faith you could retract your warriors, Vera?” Driscoll suggested quietly.
Frowning, I tugged the shadows back inside but not before I caught a glare coming from Zeta. She hated being out of direct action. I knew the feeling. I was sick of dancing t
o everyone else’s tune as well.
“Impressive,” the man with the military cut said softly. “You are sure she’s a Matsumoto?”
“Don’t I look like one?” I asked. This blasted face of mine was always there to get me blame and never there when I needed credentials.
“People can be altered,” he replied, studying me openly. Perhaps it was my face and hair that were throwing him off. “I’m Colonel Alan Genda.”
“I’m Vera Matsumoto.”
“Vera? I thought they killed her,” the professor said.
I raised an eyebrow. “Do I look dead to you?”
He swallowed and I remembered that I didn’t look all that great, even if I was still alive. I turned to Driscoll.
“You didn’t tell The Hand that you’d come for me?”
“I told them I was hunting a Matsumoto. We were careful not to say which one.”
I frowned pointedly at him. Did he do that because these people knew that he was my father? Maybe he was worried that they’d think this was nepotism.
“You don’t look like your picture,” the professor pressed on, referring to a ring phone hologram.
“Ever heard of evolution?” I asked. “Professor...?”
“Professor Choshi, Eskil Choshi.”
I nodded.
“Do you plan to keep me waiting out my days on your doorstep, Eskil Choshi?”
He colored, and said, “Of course not. Driscoll? Genda? Care to come below? And of course you, Ms. Mastsumoto?”
I nodded as graciously as I could, remembering my manners at the last possible moment. I was getting a bit too edgy these days. I needed to remember courtesy.
Courtesy is the first thing to melt away when the fires of suffering come, Zeta said.
Genda spun and led the way through the last door in the entryway. Choshi was quick on his heels and Driscoll and I moved to follow. Our skinsuits still weren’t fully dry and we were leaving a trail of water droplets behind us.
“Watch yourself,” Driscoll whispered.
“I thought you brought us here to find allies.”
“I did. And we’ll find them if you pass their tests,” he said and had the good grace to avoid my eyes.
“A little warning might have been nice,” I said, stress making it come out more sharply than I would have liked.
“Tell me about it,” he said, running his fingers through his hair.
What could he have meant by that? Surely he couldn’t mean that something about me was surprising? I was only acting the same way that anyone would in my situation.
He gestured for me to go ahead of him through the door. It led to a spiral staircase dimly lit by inset lights. I followed it down through the dark. Genda and Choshi were already out of sight on the winding, rivet-studded stairs. A glow of light was below us and it became brighter as we descended until all at once the solid stairs became studded treads only, with the risers missing and the sides suspended by cables. As soon as my eye-level dipped below the solid walls I was hit with brightness and had to stop to regain my sight.
The room below was wide, but shaped oddly, protruding into large bubble-like projections in various directions. All the walls were made of thick glass and beyond the glass the eerie play of light in water tricked the eye with its ever-shifting shadows. The ceiling, glass also, broke the surface in a hemisphere and bright light filled the rooms below. I had the strangest feeling of being a fish descending into a bowl. The sun sat just above the water, climbing swiftly into morning and pinking the clouds. We’d travelled all night.
“It’s one-way glass. No one from the outside can see us. It is camouflaged to the world,” Driscoll said from behind me.
My feet continued downwards on automatic as I gazed around the massive room. Someone had taken the nautical theme very seriously; the struts between the glass were made to look like riveted brass, while levers and engraved dials dotted the areas between the glass bubbles. Or maybe this installation was really so old that they had used actual brass and the levers operated flood doors.
Dark portals to hallways and other spiral staircases going both up and down appeared at intervals in the maze of bubbles, as Driscoll led me deftly from one to another. So far the place felt like an underwater museum. One bubble we passed held stuffed predators posed in various attack stances, and another had an ornate display of weapons that we carefully threaded our way through. Another met us with a living smell and hydroponic flowers grew from streams and carefully wrought brass fountains.
A spiralled library with ladders on rails to reach books as high as the domed glass ceiling filled another portal, and yet another contained nothing but benches and a plinth inlaid with ivory and engraved with names - hundreds of them trailing upwards on the column. Out of the corner of my eye I caught the name “Genda.” Could this be a list of members of The Hand?
“Every one of us through the ages,” Driscoll confirmed, watching my eye tracing the list.
“Us? You are one of them?”
The last room before we caught up with the others caught my eye more than any of the rest. At first I thought it was an art gallery, as holo-art dotted the perimeter of the massive bubble, but in the center was a case made of spun glass, in a double helix spiral climbing to the top of the dome far above. At the end of each bar of the helix was a small bubble-like container and a glowing letter in the ancient language of our people from before we left Earth and agreed to adopt Standard as our language. If that was not odd enough, in each bubble there was a tiny object nestled that looked almost like a human tooth. On either side of the glass helix climbed another pair of shelves and on them were arranged bones.
I was still examining the double helix when Driscoll strode past me to the next room. I glanced through the door to see a fire encased in a small cylinder that climbed to the ceiling. Genda and Choshi were in a small cluster of high-back leather chairs laid out in a circle around the glowing fire on thick skin rugs. Mounted fish of massive proportions soared upward and curved sinuously from where they were mounted in heavy bases on the floor. Choshi was pouring drinks and Genda’s eyes followed us. Driscoll crossed briskly to join them, but I remained motionless, intent on the case.
I heard them greet Driscoll again, keeping their voices low as if they didn’t want me to hear. The sun was rising higher, and it caught the case just right, eliciting a rainbow prism effect. I studied the strange contraption carefully. Sure enough, the teeth inside were human. Molars, mostly.
“She’s a fascinating specimen, like a Matsumoto gone wild!” Choshi said in a low whisper.
“She said she was ‘evolved,’” Genda added.
“You should have sent us word, Driscoll. She could be exactly what we’ve been waiting for!” Choshi said.
“If she passes the tests,” Genda hissed, trying to temper his enthusiasm. “What were those shadowy warriors?”
“She has an army of the dead in her mind that she can unleash at will,” Driscoll said in a neutral tone.
“An army of the dead?” Choshi struggled to keep his tone at a whisper. “A formidable girl, indeed!”
He should try walking around with one. ‘Exhausted’ was more on point than ‘formidable.’
Now that I was so close I could see that there was one bubble in the very center of the spun glass double-helix. I craned to make out the engraving on the tooth. It wasn’t a design I was familiar with.
“Indeed,” said Driscoll.
“But will we just be replacing one self-centered egomaniac with another?” Genda asked, “We need to be sure we can control her, Driscoll. The Hand has prepared for too long to let our opportunity flash away. Especially now that war threatens. The Emperor has been turning his population into an army to fight for him. We are on both the verge of war and of losing huge swaths of our population to his tinkering.”
I zoomed in with my implant. It was a QR Code.
“Tinkering?” Driscoll asked.
QR Code scanned.
“Yes.
It’s a version of your own army-producing strategy, but instead of injecting people with chips that navigate through their bloodstream and hijack their minds, he’s putting it right in their food supply. It’s called...”
“VX-7,” I said, spinning around and striding into the neighboring bubble to join the group and looking Genda straight in his startled eyes. “We have some familiarity with that. So Driscoll is right? Nigel has been feeding it to the population?”
“Yes. You should see some of the people right here in our capitol. They are...fading.”
Genda and Choshi shared a look freighted with fear. I wondered if that was because of the VX-7 or because they realized I’d been listening all along.
I exchanged glances with Driscoll, dodging around a massive near-hammerhead frozen for all time in a pose of deadly wrath.
“We need to stop it, Vera,” Driscoll said.
“Yes. And we also need to talk about why you have been injecting people with computer chips to hack their brains against their will,” I said. He blanched. “I seem to remember that you told me Driscoll’s Own was not a group of terrorists.”
Program initialized. Do you wish to overthrow the Emperor? Y/N
Chapter Twenty
Driscoll studied his drink and the others took a moment to study the horizon, which was a bit of a godsend for me as I was rooted in place by the question from my implant. Exactly what program had just booted up in my head and what had it done? The QR code! That’s what it had to be. I’d looked at the code and somehow it had triggered something, but the men in the room must not know about it or they would never have let me look at the tooth.
Y, I responded, trembling all over with the weight of this moment. There had been a lot of points of no return along my journey, but I of all people knew that you can’t mess with things in your head without consequences and this definitely counted.
The Matsumoto (The Matsumoto Trilogy Book 3) Page 12
