by Joe Shine
“Over here! Over here! Over here! Over here! Over here! Over here!”
I slowly started walking toward her, making sure to not draw attention to myself. I slowly let the baseball bat slide out of my hoodie and held it next to my leg as I softly sang:
“Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out with the crowd.
Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks.
I don’t care if I never get back.
Let me root, root, root for the home team.
If they don’t win, it’s a shame.”
I reached her at the absolute perfect timing.
“For it’s one! . . .”
I tomahawk-chopped the bat down on the mainframe box, crushing it.
“Two! . . .”
I swung for the fences and swept the monitors off the desk.
“Three . . .”
I slammed the bat down on the keyboard, sending tiny little keys flying up into the air.
“Strikes you’re out! At the old . . .”
I went back after the mainframe box for another good hit.
“Ball . . .”
Another good whack.
“Gaaaaame . . .”
One last crack to fully destroy it.
In total shock the woman simply looked up at me. She was terrified.
“Got a little carried away, sorry about that,” I muttered. “Have a great night.”
I was about to leave when an arm wrapped itself around my neck like a python and started dragging me away from the shocked lady. I dropped the bat, but before I could do anything else, I was flipped over and sent flying through the air toward the glass wall of servers. I slammed into the glass, which didn’t break, thank goodness, and barely had time to stop a soccer kick headed straight for my face. I grabbed the foot and twisted it. The attacker spun out of it, but it gave me a chance to get to my feet.
From here the fight got weird. He was older. Thirty, maybe forty, but every time I would throw a punch or kick, he would dodge it like he knew it was coming. But it was the same for me, too. I also sorta knew what he was going to do almost before he did and easily dodged or slipped out of it. It was like fighting an older version of myself. It was going nowhere fast. It wasn’t until he did a spinning-kicking-flipping move called the Charybdis that my mind was blown. That was a move named and invented by one of the FATE hand-to-hand combat teachers. Only Shadows learned it. This dude was a Shadow?!?! I’d never thought I’d see another in the wild, let alone an older version like himself. I mean, I knew your assignment could last years, decades even, but in my mind all Shadows were young like me. Which meant . . . I looked over at the woman whose computer I’d just destroyed and couldn’t help but mutter, “FIP?”
The attacker stopped and gave me a really confused look. Holy hell, I was right! No wonder it had felt like I was fighting myself. I had been. While he was looking at me trying to figure out who I was and what I was here for, I went for it. I sold out on a fake head punch and when he reacted to block it, I dove down, slammed my shoulder into his gut, wrapped up, and drove him toward the far wall, the old linebacker bum rush from my football days. He elbowed and punched me as we went, but I was cool with it. I slammed him into a door, which broke off its hinges as we fell into one of the private labs.
He was stunned, which gave me time to place myself on top of him and slam my forearm over his throat.
“Calm down,” I hissed. I looked through the broken door to see if anyone was coming. No one was. They were all keeping their distance. “I’m not here to hurt her. I came to destroy the computer. That’s it.”
“How can I trust that?” he growled out, and tried to escape with a quick burst of energy.
I jammed my arm down harder into his throat as I added, “I woulda killed her when I was next to her if I’d wanted to hurt her.”
The truth of it made sense to him and calmed him down. In return, I lessened the pressure on his neck and sat up to take some of my weight off his chest.
“What now?” he asked.
“I’m leaving, okay?” I said and then had to add, “And how cool was this? I mean, really weird and mind-blowing, but cool, yeah?”
He smiled and echoed, “It was cool.”
“Right?”
“Was nice to get a good fight in, too,” the guy added, reading my mind.
“Totally was,” I said, rolling off him and standing up.
My disguise sunglasses had come off somewhere in the lab, so I pulled my hoodie down extra low across my face before heading to the door. I paused and looked back at him through the busted doorjamb.
“Good luck, man.”
“You too,” he said, sitting up.
I detoured to pick up the bat and conveniently found my sunglasses near them. Having picked up all the evidence, I bolted before the Japanese fuzz got there.
By the time I got back to the safe house, Akiko was waiting for me in the alley with my exterminator costume.
“All done?” I asked.
She nodded.
“What were you trying to do to their system?” I asked as I started to change back into my costume.
“They wanted me to install a looking glass,” she said, like that would mean anything to me. “They wanted an undetectable way to look at all the ideas and experiments of the students so they can steal anything worth money.”
“That’s not cool.”
“They’re not the good people,” she said like she had to remind me. “They have a sense of honor and duty that can be admired, but they are still criminals.”
“I know. It’s just stealing from kids seems doubly mean,” I said as I heaved the last of my costume on.
“Which is why I normally never would have done it.”
“Well, thanks,” I had to say, knowing she’d only agreed for us.
I was shocked to see that there were still a few people in the office working. Did they ever go home? Who had this type of work ethic? Once safely back in our hiding spot, I was glad to see that Ryo was still asleep.
I took a long-overdue shower.
When I emerged, Akiko was sitting on the couch, scrolling through something on her phone. She’d taken off the jacket of her pantsuit, rolled up her sleeves, and freed a few buttons from her collar so that a peek of her upper chest skin could be seen. Her hair was up in a classic Japanese, locked-in-place-by-chopsticks ponytail.
“Feeling better?” she asked, tossing her phone onto the coffee table.
“Much. Nice to be good and clean,” I admitted.
“You were quite filthy before. So?” she asked, taking off her glasses but giving me no clear clue what the “so” was about.
“So . . . what?” I asked, confused.
She smirked and then seductively bit the arm of the glasses. Then it hit me and I flushed red as I figured out what the “so” meant. “Oh.”
So . . . we totally made out.
Chapter 24
No Good Deed ...
With the mission completed, true to their word, the Yakuza picked us up the next morning and took us to a proper safe house.
It was everything I could have ever wanted: a grimy campus of old buildings on the outskirts of town that looked like it had once been the business headquarters for some shady company. The best part, though, was that it was crawling with heavily armed and loyal foot soldiers. Now, this was more like it. We were driven to the east side of the complex and told to never leave it. There was everything we could want over here: plenty of space, our own rooms, food, heck, we even had our own onsen—Japanese hot baths that put hot tubs to shame—but when someone tells you that you can’t go somewhere and doesn’t give a good reason, well, we all know how that works out. You gotta check it out.
The compound seemed safe enough, and I knew Akiko would do anything for Ryo, but I h
ad to check every square inch of the complex before I could convince myself that Ryo would be okay here without me while I took off to figure out why FATE was trying to kill us. Like all good recon operations I was going to have to wait until night, since “blending in” wasn’t about to happen for a long list of reasons.
Until it got dark I spent as much time as possible going over everything on “our” side of the compound. The area was surrounded by a tall, solid metal wall topped with coils of razor wire, and at any given time there were ten armed men randomly patrolling the area in twos and threes. Not too shabby, if I had to say. I’d have felt a lot more comfortable with, say, a thousand, but who am I to be that picky? Ten would do. And that was on this side, which I sensed was the “legit” side. Who knew what or how many men were on the other side. Night couldn’t come quick enough, but when it finally did, we got some unexpected visitors.
A group of management-level gangsters swung by to celebrate the success of Akiko’s mission. I tried to keep my distance as I had a job to do, but they were so personable the feel-good vibe was infectious. We drank sake, joked around, and enjoyed some fresh Wagyu beef, which if you’ve never had any, try it immediately. They stayed late into the night until red-faced and tipsy, and then they finally left. I admit, I was a little sad to see them go. These guys weren’t so bad. Heck, they were a lot of fun actually. I hoped they’d come back the next night, too. But right now I had to worry about putting Ryo to bed and making sure he fell asleep.
“Where are you going?” Akiko asked.
I flashed her a dumb grin. She’d waited for me in the common area, watching muted TV and tooling around on her laptop. I’d thought she’d gone to bed, too. Oops.
I shrugged. “Fresh air?”
“Don’t get caught,” she said with a smirk. She went back to her laptop, adding, “I have no more favors to call in.”
I crept along the shadows, dodging a few guards here and there until I reached the forbidden side. It was actually pretty easygoing and I probably made it harder than it needed to be. Was it necessary to do a backflip off a balcony to get over a chain-link fence? No, but it was fun, so I did it anyway.
Once I was on the other side, I didn’t know what I expected to find. I mean, I knew it wouldn’t be a My Little Pony factory, but I hadn’t expected to find everything. Drugs. Check. Guns. You bet. Counterfeit bills? Stacks of them. Other normal illegal stuff you can think of? Yeah, I saw it all. But when I heard a child’s cry for help and took a look through a small window in a door, I was glad I did and wished I hadn’t at the same time.
Cages.
Looking through the window I could see around thirty or so metal boxes, and there was a person locked in each one. There were old grandparents, young adults, and even kids. What I saw made me queasy and instantly made me ashamed for having anything to do with these people. Yeah, I was jumping the gun. Maybe, just maybe there was an explanation to explain it all away, but come on, there wasn’t. Not for this. I was disgusted at myself for being all buddy-buddy with these people only a few hours ago and calling them “friends.” They were criminals and I’d let myself forget what this really meant. And I admit, as a Shadow, I’m not necessarily the “good guy” since I’ll pretty much destroy anyone I think is a threat to Ryo, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still be a good guy.
I heard men’s voices somewhere behind me. They were down the hall and around the corner, but they were coming this way for sure. I had three options: go back the way I came, go into the room with the cages, or sneak through the door a few feet to my left and take a chance that whatever was in there wouldn’t give me up. Since there was a possibility that the people in the cages would cry out for help if they saw me, or worse, recognized me, and going back the way I came would just be a waste of time, I chose the door to my left.
A long time ago the room had probably been a storage closet for whatever business had been here, but now it was a junk room full of busted boxes and moldy crap. I ducked inside with only seconds to spare before three men, who I watched through the crack in the door, walked by and directly into the room of cages.
There was screaming before the men reappeared, dragging a fifty-something-year-old woman down the hallway. She was begging them to stop, for mercy, but all she got in response was a, “Shut up, dog,” and a whack to the face by one of the men.
This has nothing to do with you. It has nothing to do with Ryo. Let it go, I tried to tell myself, but I wasn’t listening. There was no way I could let this go. Not now. Not ever.
I crept out of my hiding spot and followed the men along the hallway, around a corner, down some stairs, and into a large boiler room. I didn’t follow them down but stayed by the door at the top step to spy. At the bottom of a rickety flight of metal stairs sat an old industrial boiler that had a large trap door on the side that you could toss trash into. The flames inside were roaring. Even from up here I could feel the heat. I had a bad feeling about this as I watched them drag the woman down the stairs and next to the trap door. One of the men, a young man with shoulder-length black hair, took out his phone, and pointed it at her.
“Any last words for your husband, who was too cheap to pay your ransom?” he sneered.
The tears were still flowing from her eyes as she stood up straight and strong, and said, “I love you.”
“Did you know your life isn’t worth a million yen to him?” the other young man jeered. He was wearing sunglasses and looked as stupid as he sounded.
“Barely a car. You’re not worth a car to him,” the one holding the phone mocked, trying to get a response from her.
“You have my final words,” she told them as strongly as she could, but her voice was quivering.
My blood was boiling. Having seen or heard enough, the eldest of the group, a man with short, business-cut hair that had gone gray at the temples, lit a cigarette and ordered, “Throw her in, then.” He took a long pull on the cigarette before adding, “Let’s be done with her.”
She screamed as the other two men grabbed her and began to force her toward the open door of the roaring boiler. She fought, but she was weak from captivity and the two men were younger and stronger. In a few seconds it would be over. I knew I should let it be over, let it happen, but knowing and doing are not the same.
“I think I’m lost,” I said loudly and in English as I stood up in the doorway so they could see me.
It worked. The men stopped as their leader held up his hand for them to pause. They let go of the lady and silently warned her to stay quiet.
“You should not be here,” the eldest said to me. He spoke in pretty good English, I had to admit.
“I am aware. I’m sorry. I was walking, took a left, another left, and got totally turned around.” I was lying and trying to sound as stupid as I could—always an easy combination. “Crazy bad with directions,” I added and then winked and side-mouthed to him, “and I’m a little drunk too. That stuff Takashi brought was strong.” The reaction I got from name-dropping the higher-up who’d hung out with us earlier worked. The man knew he had to show a bit of restraint.
I started walking down the metal stairs toward them, making sure I swayed a bit.
“Stay up there,” the leader said, trying to stop me from coming down, but I ignored him. I’d use his fear of his boss against him as long as I could. He’d say, “The hell with it!” soon enough. I just needed to be in position when he did.
“So what’s going on here?” I asked, acting as curious as I could. “Is she okay?”
“She is none of your concern,” he threatened.
He met me where the stairs hit the concrete floor of the room and blocked me from stepping down.
“You must leave now,” he said, and pulled back his coat to show me his gun. He’d reached “the hell with it” status right where I wanted him to. Attaboy.
“Is that real? Can I touch it?” I said excited
ly, reaching out for the gun.
My excited, not-scared-for-a-second reaction wasn’t what he’d hoped for, but his reaction to me was exactly what I’d hoped for. People can be way too predictable sometimes.
“No,” he said as he pulled the weapon out and pointed it at me. “Go! Now!”
It was a move I’d practiced fifty gabillion times in training, but one I doubt anyone had ever tried on him. We’d had it busted into our minds through so much countless repetition that it was as instinctive and reflexive as breathing. Slick as you like, I twisted the gun out of his hands and popped off three lightning-quick rounds. The three men all fell to the ground dead practically at once. Smoke still streamed out of the cigarette that was gripped tightly in the eldest man’s lips.
The gunshots had been so deafening that I had to yell at the woman for her to hear me over the ringing in our ears. She was wide-eyed and still in shock from it all.
“Are you okay?” I asked three times until finally she nodded.
The way she was looking at me told me she wasn’t sure if she could trust me or not. I couldn’t blame her. I could only imagine what she’d been through in here.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I promised, tucking the gun into my belt and holding up my hands. “You’re safe now, okay?”
She nodded and seemed to relax a bit more. I had no clue if anyone had heard the gunshots or not, as we were pretty deep in the bowels of this place, but I couldn’t risk it and had to move fast. Quickly as I could, I dragged each man over to the boiler and shoved them into the flames. The blood on the floor was an issue I didn’t have time to deal with. I had to hope if anyone saw it, they’d assume it was from the victims. And it’s not like there was a mop to clean it up with anyway, so what choice did I have but to leave it?
