Sharp Shooter Seoul

by Charlie Godwyne

  I realized I felt sleepy. Oh no. I slipped my phone back in my pocket and looked around. Then I noticed the smell: chloroform. They were gassing me in here. I bunched up my shirt and crammed it against my nose and mouth. I forced myself to slow down my breathing. Dammit.

  After the incident in Osaka, Kei always carried an extra emergency mask on our missions. I had to get to it. There was no way they'd gas the stairwell. None of the hired help had riot helmets on. They had to be targeting me in here, maybe by finding my heat signature.

  Gas. I texted to Kei, then confirmed Kei's position: still in the stairwell. Kei was putting up a good fight. I had to make a break for it.

  I burst out of the room and sprinted down the hallway. I didn't hear anyone shout, no boots. I only belatedly realized the lack of voices meant they must have riot helmets on.

  I swayed on my feet. Someone had gassed the hallway. Those gangsters in the stairwell didn't have masks, but apparently the ones in the hallway with me didn't care about that. Why did criminals have riot gear? Were these really all Mikabe's men?

  I stumbled, the hallway swimming. "Kei!" I shouted. The sound of gunfire in the stairwell was deafening.

  "Kei!" I shouted with all my strength.

  I hit the wall, let out a scream at my legs to keep moving. My vision doubled. The floor tossed me back and forth like a ship on stormy seas. I leapt down the hall and crashed to the floor. I hit so hard it knocked the wind out of me. I gasped and the gas burned my throat. No. I pointed my gun behind me, back down the hallway, but there was no one. Fuckers must be gassing the place indiscriminately. I scrambled to my feet again and thundered the last of the way down the hall. I made it to the door. The door handle slipped out of my grasp. Who put a handle on an emergency exit? You should be able to kick it open in an emergency! I pounded on the door. "Kei!"

  Hands grabbed me. I whipped around and shot at three men in riot suits. The rubber bullets bounced right off of them. I switched my gun to lead and fired point blank, knocking one back into the other, but in such heavy armor neither of them were knocked out. I slid to the ground and kicked, praying Kei had somehow heard my screams. The monsters pulled at my legs but I held onto the underside of the door with my fingers.

  "KEI!!"

  Black spots danced in front of my eyes. One of the gangsters whacked my hands with a baton, but I was better than that. I held on tight and managed to kick one of them in the face, catching them off guard long enough to let go of me. I scrambled up the door and yanked it open.

  An unconscious man slid back into me. A cloud of pepper spray wafted into my face. The stairwell was filled with unconscious men, but the sound of gunfire one floor below proved Kei wasn't finished.

  "Kei!" I shouted with all my might. I hacked and spit blood onto the door. There was no way Kei had heard me.

  They grabbed my shoulders and pressed a wet handkerchief to my nose and mouth. Soaked in chloroform. I blacked out.

  *~*~*

  I don't know how I got from that building in Seoul to a beachside resort, unless this were a dream, but I didn't really care, so I stretched out on the infinitely comfy bed and smelled the ocean breeze. "This is nice. Are you ever going to stop climbing the walls and join me?"

  "Gotta keep my body sharp," Kei huffed out between pull-ups on the door frame of our beach house.

  "Do you really have to work out buck naked?" I asked.

  After skipping stones across the water for an hour, which I complained was still honing one's skills for work, Kei had stripped down and gone through an entire routine of calisthenics, from pushups to crunches and lunges and finally pullups on the door. Dizzy from the flight, all I had done was doze on the beach while Kei flung a barrage of stones at the ocean. This was supposed to be our honeymoon. Weren't we supposed to cuddle a bit more? I had showered and now I was on the bed being tortured by the beautiful body exercising in front of me.

  "You know you like it." Kei dropped to the floor and without a backward glance strutted into the kitchen. Kei's sweat was a sweet smell that took me immediately back to our archery dojo in college. Each and every time. I had it bad.

  I heard glasses clinking and wondered if it were dinnertime without me.

  Kei reappeared with champagne glasses and a chilled bottle of something nice. Kei poured us the bubbly and we clinked glasses.

  "To our marriage," I said.

  "To our happiness," Kei replied.

  Then Kei crawled up the bed and stretched alongside me. We drank in blissful silence, the crashing of the waves down the beach and the occasional seagull the only sounds.

  "I feel like I have entirely too many articles of clothing on," I said, buzzed.

  Kei smirked. "I can take care of that for you."

  Kei divested me of my clothes and I lay there fully aroused.

  "I need to go shower," Kei said. "I have airplane and saltwater and sweat all over me."

  "Absolutely not," I fired back, holding Kei to me. "I've been watching you jump around naked for nearly two hours and I'm not going to wait another minute."

  Kei laughed, running slim fingers up my chest. "What do you want to do?"

  I let out a shuddering breath at those flittering touches.

  "We don't have to do it now," I said, "but sometime soon, maybe this week while we're here, could we do some power stuff?"

  Kei stopped tracing the contour lines of my chest and looked at me, instead brushing my bangs out of my face. "You want me to dominate you?"

  That word sent chills down my spine. "Yes."

  "Is there something you're trying to work through?"

  I sighed, wondering what it really was. "Just the stress from work I guess." We normally weren't into power exchange, but after trying it once, I'd found the release so relaxing that it evaporated some of the anxiety associated with the work I do.

  "We didn't bring any gear with us," Kei said, looking around.

  Just the sight of Kei examining the room, envisioning ways that I could surrender in different locations, was enough to make me curl into Kei's side and moan.

  All of a sudden, my wrists and back and head hurt. Kei was still petting my hair, and the pain didn't make sense. When Kei and I power-played, it had never been about the pain anyway, so why was I hurting?

  "Are you okay, love?" Kei asked.

  "Something's wrong," I managed to say, squirming as the pain increased. "I hurt all over. Something bad—"

  Kei grabbed my face with both hands and knocked our foreheads together. I winced, but my pained cries were swallowed by Kei's commanding voice, shouted full-power into my face.

  "You must survive, Taka," Kei said, eyes both furious and terrified. "Fight! SURVIVE!"

  I lurched awake.

  At first the only thing I could register was my head was pounding so, so hard. I was tied up, my wrists in front of me. I was not gagged or blindfolded. I was lying on the floor of a room I didn't recognize. I couldn't tell if I was in the same building as before. The darkness was broken by a shaft of sunlight from a small window above me.

  My hands were bound too tightly to get free. Damn. My gun and phone were gone and I'd apparently pissed myself while unconscious. Gross.

  My left wrist burned like hell and was covered in dirty bandages. They must have found the tracker in my forearm and dug it out. I tried to think through my migraine. They must not have known what to do with me. From how sluggishly I moved and foggy-brained I felt, I knew I was still drugged. Not their best situation if they were planning to cut me up to sell my organs. They'd be surprised if they held me for ransom. Both the chief at Seoul HQ and my boss in Tokyo would claim no connection. Kei and I, before embarking on our first international mission, had signed a dozen non-liability clauses.

  The room didn't appear to have much tech in it, so maybe there was nothing that blocked transmissions. Excellent. I craned my head as if whispering a secret over my shoulder to Kei and spoke to the tracker at the base of my skull. This one couldn't be taken out withou
t severing my brain stem, killing me.

  "Ichiro, Ichiro." My codename, the first son. "Chloroform. Vertigo, small room on the north side, traffic noise is loud." I must not have been very high up.

  I hesitated as my emotions overwhelmed me. These could be the last words I would ever say to anyone, yet in that moment I could not think of words powerful enough to express everything I meant. I needed an inside joke, some hidden message I could say to Kei that Tokyo HQ would not understand, words of comfort for my loved one.

  I craned my head again, "Ichiro, Ichiro…"

  I want to tell you about the ring.

  My eyes stung with tears and I ended up sobbing instead.

  *~*~*

  I must have passed out. I pushed up from the floor. The smell of urine drew my eyes over to a chamber pot of sorts. There was a slew of empty plastic bottles. At least my captors were intelligent enough to know they had to hydrate me to keep me alive and continue drugging me. The fact I had no memory of drinking that water or of anything since my attempted transmission to Kei was very disconcerting. Furthermore, I knew something specific had woken me from such a deep stupor.

  I crawled to the door. I saw claw marks on the door around the doorknob. Someone had been trying to escape. I placed my hand on the marks, my fingers fitting perfectly in the spaces. My breath stilled. These were mine.

  I heard a strange thunk and then the floor beneath my feet vibrated. Then another, this time closer. After the third thunk I registered the soft noise.

  A silencer, then bodies falling.

  I struggled to my feet and swayed, my empty stomach retching. On shaky legs, I pounded on the door. Please be Kei. Please be a cop.

  I craned my neck. "Ichiro, Ichi—"

  The door blew open, knocking me back. Smoke billowed over me and I covered my nose and mouth. A completely black figure stood in the doorway, assault rifle in hand. The riot gear was so complete I could not see anything about this person.

  "Are you police?" I said in Japanese, then realized that was useless. My fogged brain struggled for English. "Are you—"

  "Put this on," a gravelly voice said in Japanese.

  A small mask was crammed over my nose and mouth. I tried to stand, but the person had to haul me up.

  "Kei?"

  "Don't speak. Close your eyes."

  I took one step and the world lurched. My rescuer kept dragging me even when I couldn't find my feet.

  The hallway was filled with red tear gas. I slammed my eyes shut but still they burned. Was this person my next captor?

  "Get your feet under you, we gotta go," the voice ordered.

  I felt myself losing consciousness. "I'm dizzy." Then all went black.

  *~*~*

  I could feel the earbuds being stuffed into my ears. Surely that meant I must be alive. I then reasoned that unconsciousness was probably better than whatever was happening to my body in the real world. Selling my organs or just cutting me up for the dumpster. I thought of my body, the body I'd trained and worked to rehabilitate even after all that had happened to it, all the radioactive water and air that had swept through it like a deadly wind those days in Kozuichi. Whatever organs they harvested would be irradiated. I almost pitied the person who would receive them. I wanted to be conscious only if I could fight, but from the way those injections affected me, fuck it. If they killed me, let it fall on their honor that they tortured and murdered an unconscious man.

  Music. Our music: the playlists Kei and I had on our online subscription. I eventually realized it wasn't my brain playing me something to bide time in my dreams, but actual music playing in my ears. Why was I hearing my playlist? If it were my dreams, I could think about a song I wanted to hear and then it would play for me. I thought about the first song Kei and I danced to at Shinjuku Ni-chōme, the gay district in Tokyo, so young and drunk. Just having fun. I knew it was in there, but it did not play. This had to be real music, real earbuds, real warmth against my left side that was not mine. Was I safe? Had that fiery show been a dream? Just give me a sign, any kind of confirmation, that I should wake up. And if I do wake up, that I won't find myself cut apart.

  I slept on, fitfully, begging the world to get me out of the old-school bluegrass that only Kei loved. Later, it looped around into some albums Kei and I shared, and I slept peacefully again. Then the music was taken away, but something much more precious took its place.

  Gentle hands held my head still, cold lips at my temple, fingers carding through my hair, and a raspy, tired voice, singing, "I will always love you. I will always keep you safe."

  It was a song Kei really connected to. As a bodyguard, this song was nearly an entire job description inside of a confession. I had never cared either way about the song, but hearing it from that voice, I understood the loyalty written into the lines, and I loved it now. Kei's voice. Kei's hands. Time to wake up.

  I lurched into a dark room and gasped when I realized I was still captured, tied down in pitch black, pained all over, in a drugged fogginess. With a growl, I yanked out of my restraints and fell onto the floor in a tangled heap. Lights flooded the room and scorched my dilated pupils. Arms grabbed me. I hissed and thrashed.

  "We need a sedative!" an unknown voice ordered in English.

  Other responses came in Korean. I was still in Seoul.

  "No!" I shouted with all my strength.

  "He doesn't need more drugs," a voice said in English that I knew I recognized. "He needs to know he's safe."

  Delicate fingers cupped my jaw and my face was pulled into a familiar chest. I knew that scent. The same gentle hands from before traced soothing circles on the back of my neck, through my hair, my cheeks.

  "Shh, Taka. You're in a hospital, shhhh, there you go."

  Kei. My heart pounding, I felt Kei pick me up and lay me on the bed. My resistance deflated in an instant. I let a doctor and nurse check my vitals and bandage my hand, bloodied after I'd ripped out the IV. They put in a new IV and made me drink a huge glass of water with something else in it, then dimmed the lights and left after promising a thorough check in the morning.

  Kei settled in next to me on the bed.

  Tears pooled in my eyes. "I don't know which of the things I remember are true. I was hallucinating like crazy."

  Kei nodded. "They won't tell me what you were on, but the doctor implied it was really hard stuff. It combined with your radiation meds and completely trashed your liver and kidneys."

  I looked around my small hospital room. No dialysis machine on standby. I didn't have a catheter in either. Couldn't have been that bad. Images of my rescue washed over me like a lake of fire. The painful flashing of lights from the muzzle of an assault rifle, Kei's emergency mask…

  "How did you get me out?" I asked. I still could barely believe I was out.

  When Kei did not say anything, I tried again. "Babe?"

  "Hm?"

  "How did you get me out?"

  Curled up against my side, Kei pulled up a wrist bound by a large black band with a digital screen shining a green light. My drug-addled mind flew into cop mode.

  "That's an escape shackle," I said.

  Kei nodded, carefully not touching the thick bracelet.

  I shifted closer to get a good look. "Is there an artery piece?"

  "No, thank goodness," Kei said, referring to the highest security escape shackles put on some prisoners that would sever the artery in the wrist if triggered. "Our chief said it is a Taser class. The Seoul police allowed me to stay with you until you stabilized, on the condition that Chief put this on me."

  "So you get tased into senselessness if you try to escape or take it off," I supplied, trying to ignore the rest of what Kei had said, but my heart was already pounding. This answered all of my unspoken questions: Kei had killed Korean citizens in order to save me. Now Kei was paying for it.

  Kei nodded, then squirmed a little. "I don't know how many of the people I shot to get to you actually died. I'm wearing this while they're still investigati
ng. Once you stabilize, I'll go into custody."

  "But you're law enforcement," I argued. "Responding to a hostage situation. Lethal force was necessary."

  Kei nodded. "Our chief is here. Chief Iwanami is trying to coordinate my release, but the killing of citizens by foreign officers cannot be overlooked without an investigation."

  We probably had only tonight together, then, at least for a while. I heard what Kei wasn't saying: because the escape shackle was on, Kei was probably a murder suspect. At least one person had already died.

  "I'm glad the chief came to Seoul," I said. This situation had blown so out of control, having our boss here made me feel a tiny bit safer. "What happens, worst case scenario?"

  Kei did not meet my eyes. "If I need to pay money, I'll pay it, and if I need to serve time, I'll serve it. You were always the one who made sure I never used lead bullets, but it was completely my decision to throw that out the window when I came to get you."

  "How did you locate me?" I asked.

  "Your neck chip was still intact," was Kei's answer.

  I lay there in a fog, and only realized the answer my heart needed when I heard Kei sniffle. I cried too.

  We held each other as we wept. It had all happened too fast. When I disappeared, Kei knew there had been a rapidly diminishing window in which to find me before I would be taken further underground to places where I couldn't be tracked.

  Through my tears, I saw a flicker from the dim lamp by the bed, like the glittering confetti bouncing around inside a kaleidoscope. I blinked to let the tears fall and focus on what I was trying to see.

  From the switch on the lamp dangled a thin chain, and on the end of that chain was the ring.

  Kei followed my eyes. "I found it in your pocket. An omamori?"

  "Not exactly," I said, smiling that Kei would think the ring a protective charm from a Shinto shrine.

  On that note, however, I hadn't bothered to get it blessed. Maybe it didn't need it, after everything I'd been through and yet I still lived. Maybe I would take it to a Buddhist temple to at least get it cleansed of any lingering darkness from the past few days.