Grey Ronin (The Awakened Book 3)

by Matthew S. Cox

“I do not know,” he said, and pulled the girls into an alley.

  They splashed through puddles, some as deep as their shins. Ayame mewled in protest at the pace. Nami gasped, too out of breath to complain.

  Two streets down, Ayame pulled back and sniveled. “Saitō-sama, you are hurting my wrist.”

  He continued, slowing to a modest jog out of the alley to a sidewalk in a middle-class shopping district. After taking cover under the awning of a noodle house, he eased them to the wall and released his grip on their arms. Ayame rubbed a bruise where he had held her. Nami did as well, but smiled at him.

  “Come.” He trudged a short distance to a store where a number of older teens loitered.

  The street toughs leered at Ayame and Nami until they saw the katana. Acting as though they would not have done anything, they un-leaned from the wall and rushed away. Carrying such a weapon meant he either had station enough to kill them or was crazy.

  He lingered in the doorway until the thugs went out of sight around the edge of the building, chased by an advert bot looking to sell beer. The door hissed closed behind him as he walked amid the glow of a dozen holographic girls around the ceiling. The two-foot tall figures modeled the latest popular clothes for ‘normal’ people, those not of the upper class. Ayame and Nami stood a few steps in from the door, soaked and shivering. Mamoru put a hand on their shoulders and turned them to face rows of garments.

  “Find clothing. Take whatever you need not to stand out. Put it on right away, be quick.”

  A younger girl behind the counter, not yet eighteen by appearance, smirked at him through a veil of hot pink hair. She jerked and bobbed as if in the throes of a mild seizure, to music fed into her brain. “You gonna rob me?”

  “No,” he said, not looking at her. “I will pay.”

  The women hunted through the racks, both confused and muttering. Ayame seemed not to know her way around big city stores, and Nami had grown up with people to shop for her.

  Mamoru took a grey long-sleeved shirt from a rack and folded it over his arm atop plain black pants. “I would have thought the two of you would welcome the return of your freedom with more enthusiasm.”

  “Do you need any assistance, miss?”

  Nami glanced at the pink-haired teen who had snuck up on her. She shot Mamoru a look brimming with gratitude. The girl speaking to her as if she were a real person again hit home. He offered a slight bow, snagged a pair of dark sneakers from a shelf, and went to the back.

  Mamoru discarded his wet anachronistic clothes, changing in the rear of the store by the door of the lone dressing room, unconcerned with the clerk watching. Ayame and Nami, each with an armload, walked up behind him as he secured a row of click fasteners down the left side of his new shirt.

  “There’s only one room,” said Ayame.

  Mamoru grumbled. “You can both fit. You’ve been bathing together for a year.”

  Ayame blushed, eyes down and whispering, “But, I am no longer a slave.”

  Nami pushed her toward the door and dropped her bundle, peeling her clothes off with only the cover of a freestanding rack of sweaters. “Use the room. He is right. We do not have time for modesty.”

  The clerk’s face flushed to match her hair as Nami stripped, and she hurried to the counter. Mamoru followed, waiting as the girl tallied the items.

  “Thank you, sir. The amount comes to 2466 credits.”

  Mamoru swiped his NetMini over the device, which chirped as he paid. White light surrounded his hand as he concentrated on masking the transaction from anyone who might be searching for his electronic identity. The clerk squeaked at the sight.

  “May I see your ‘mini, girl?”

  She stared at him, no longer bopping to the unheard music. “Um…”

  “Calm yourself, child. I mean you no harm.”

  The girl swallowed and held out a small oval device shaped like a white cat’s head. He chuckled at it and concealed it between his palms. Eyes closed, he sent his consciousness through the Nippon-Shisei communications grid. In the deep dark of the GlobeNet, far out of reach of Matsushita or even the JSDF, he kept a stash of credits. Pointers to accounts left orphaned by careless operators he had collected over the past several years. Both arms crawled with luminous energy wisps. When he slid his hands apart, the little device showed the girl’s balance at a hundred thousand. She backed up against the wall, knocking a few small boxes of jewelry off the shelving. He offered it atop an outstretched palm. She gathered her hands to her chest and gasped, shaking her head as if she could not believe her eyes.

  Mamoru held the NetMini closer to her. “Tell no one of our presence here.”

  The clerk bit her lip and ventured a timid nod, accepting her device.

  Ayame and Nami emerged from the back, now dressed in modern attire. Both had opted for pants rather than skirts or dresses, and loose-fitting tops in subdued colors. Mamoru fussed with the katana, unable to get it to sit right on his new belt.

  The trio moved through the city, drifting among hundreds of people dressed in modern fashion. Cloaked in their new designer anonymity, they reached the western outskirts where the dense city showed signs of fragmenting to suburbs. Mamoru stopped, squinting at the long downhill street crisscrossed by hundreds of ancient, suspended wires running between four and five story residence buildings. None of them were used anymore, except by birds. Everything was wireless, but no one wanted to pay to remove them.

  “You do not need to follow me. You are no longer owned.”

  The women exchanged a glance, a silent rock-paper-scissors carried out in their eyes.

  “We cannot simply return to our lives. Nami has no family left, and Matsushita knows her face. The wretched beasts who made up lies and arrested me are the security men for my village. They will know me if I return.” Ayame paused, overcome by the urge to cry. “I cannot go home.”

  Mamoru stared at crows clinging to a bouncing wire. “I am unable to watch over you now. I must find the one responsible.”

  Nami interlaced her fingers with his. “You have taken a great risk by helping us. I do not wish to think what might have become of us if you had left us there.” Nami shivered. “I am in your debt. I am ashamed to ask for even more help…”

  “Please, don’t leave us here,” whined Ayame, at last succumbing to tears. She balled her hands to fists, trying to hold it back. Moments later, she reined in her emotion and stared at him. “Please forgive me for showing weakness.”

  Mamoru looked away from her. As much contempt as he held for such displays, her childlike face softened his reaction. There is no honor in harming the helpless. He squinted through the crisscrossed power lines at the fading sun. After several minutes of silent contemplation, he loosed a breathy sigh before resuming his walk with a change in direction.

  “This way.”

  Beneath a steady stream of advert bots, they trudged for several blocks. Ground traffic had lightened at this hour, making cross streets dangerous. Mid-level workers wealthy enough to own personal vehicles raced through the narrow passageways in an effort to find a place to park before their neighbors took their favorite spaces. Twice, Ayame came within inches of being hit.

  Mamoru took a left, passing rows of stacked apartments full of people at the upper end of poor. He found Nami’s expression of awkwardness at their surroundings amusing. How soon she remembers the person she was. At the end of the street, he approached the decaying remains of a factory abandoned decades ago when its usefulness migrated to Shōrishima. That decision he had approved of. The real Japan, the natural Earth, was for people―not factories that poisoned her.

  He ducked through the broken front gate and stepped around puddles of rainwater in the courtyard as he led his companions into the dripping darkness of a former automobile plant. Shadows cast by the arms of dead manufacturing robots kept Ayame close to his back. Their footsteps echoed through the cavernous darkness, drawing attention to how quiet it should be there. Mamoru stopped at the door to a for
eman’s office which contained a cot and small lavatory. Both women jumped at a sudden scraping of metal interspersed with menacing electronic growls.

  A small spotlight danced across the floor twenty meters away, accented by the clatter of loose bits of steel striking the ground and rolling. Ayame muffled a scream with her hands before Nami shoved her through the door. The light leveled out as a spider-bot the size of a compact car pulled itself out of a mound of scrap metal and parts and stood on eight articulated legs. It jittered, as if it had been a long time since it needed to find any sense of balance. Yellow paint peeled to shiny plastisteel in spots, black bands ran the length of each leg as if such a thing needed stripes to warn of danger. It shook itself like a wet dog, throwing off bits of debris from the pile in which it had slumbered.

  On the front end, a shroud of armor guarded a single glowing red eye that narrowed with focus at Mamoru. A pair of industrial lasers, once used for welding and cutting, emerged like chelicerae from hatches on either side, trained on him.

  “Attention: You are trespassing on the property of Mits―”

  The room became a smear of blurry color as Mamoru accelerated himself to a sprint that brought his hand in contact with the enormous spider. It wobbled, its voice processor stalled by confusion at such rapid motion. Before it could select another course of action, Mamoru plunged his mind into the machine’s computer core.

  He gazed through its eye at his face, an image tinted in green and banded with narrow lines. The bot contained a sub-sentient artificial intelligence capable of reacting to situations and making decisions, but lacking self-awareness. Psionic fingers spread through its digital essence, moving it like dough. Mamoru massaged and twisted, rewriting its control modules at the speed of thought.

  Moments later, his consciousness returned to his body and he stepped away. Ayame and Nami, two heads peering through the doorway, oohed at the incandescent fog peeling from his arms and shoulders.

  “What is that?” asked Ayame.

  “What did you do?” asked Nami.

  Mamoru stilled his mind, letting the glow recede. The patrol bot settled on its legs in a nonthreatening stance, the laser arms folded back against the body. It followed him like a dog to the office.

  “I cannot stay here. The security forces are looking for me. You will be at risk if you remain in my presence. Stay here for two days. This machine will protect you. I will send you food as soon as I am able to, as well as take care of your record, Ayame-chan.”

  She hugged him, though he remained stoic. Embarrassed, she backpedaled and sat on the small bed, still grinning.

  “Nami…” He studied her face. “Your father was well known here. I cannot alter the memories of men.”

  “Take me with you?” Nami pressed herself against him, hands on his chest. “I would stay with you if you will have me.”

  Mamoru stood still. “You flatter me with your devotion. For the time we have been together, you have sought my favor to escape the disgrace of your fallen station.” His hand moved to her cheek, thumb brushing below her eye. “You are strong, Nami. You do not need to offer yourself in exchange for freedom any longer.”

  She looked down.

  “I will create a life for you in another prefecture. Once my affairs have been settled and your fate is no longer at my whim, you will know if these are your true feelings.”

  “You think I am manipulating you?”

  “I do not know what to think. My world is broken, Nami-chan. Oni walk the Earth and plague my affairs. My shogun has disavowed me, and those I once considered allies seek my death based on lies. The two of you do not deserve to be caught up in the storm that approaches.”

  “Mamoru, I want to know your body while I am in control of my own.” She kissed the side of his neck. “It is not only men who have desire.”

  “There is no time, and it would be rude to Ayame.” He guided her to sit on the cot next to the other woman. “I must leave before we are discovered here. Perhaps you will still feel this way when our circumstances are different. Stay here. Remain inside and out of sight until I send word.”

  Nami rested the side of her head against his chest. “Please proceed with caution, Mamoru.”

  He felt no insult at her use of his given name, and almost allowed himself to believe her words genuine.

  Ayame slid from the cot to her knees. “Thank you, Saitō-san. You have given me back my life.”

  Mamoru returned her bow and squinted through rows of assembly machines. Outside, Tokyo’s lights glimmered as smears of color on grimy windows.

  Now, I must take back my own.

  White Oni

  n the darkness of an alley a few blocks from Hachiko Square, Mamoru paused to catch his breath and think. A hundred and sixty meters away, the giant holographic visage of Akio Minamoto dominated most of a silver-windowed tower. Eerie shadows elongated through the crowd as the thirty-foot tall Shogun gazed down at his subjects with eyes the size of train tubes. What once had seemed grandfatherly, now struck Mamoru as condescending. The grand figure he once admired now seemed like a clueless old fool. He clutched his fist to his chest, shaking with anger. How could he be cast aside so easily after such loyal service?

  Certainly, even Minamoto understands there are none other like me.

  A feeling of being watched had nagged at him since he left the old factory. He flattened his hand over the spot Nami had last touched on his chest. Unfamiliar emotions swam through his mind. What did she want? For as long as he could remember, life possessed a certain order. He had superiors and he had subordinates. Nowhere within any of it did emotion dwell. Even Kutaragi-sensei had never shown much of anything resembling love for a son, merely pride in an exemplary student.

  Nami’s eyes lingered in the shadows, earnest and pleading. Had she expected him to change his mind? He stared at the phantasm of memory, unable to understand why his heart pulled him from logic. Mamoru scowled at himself. He had allowed Moriyama to walk away. The man had done no wrong. He was as honor bound as any of them to follow Minamoto’s decrees. His presentation of a ceremonial blade was a gesture of respect. Mamoru could not kill him for it. Believing some external force poisoned Minamoto against him offered a small amount of comfort from the disgrace of rejecting honorable seppuku.

  Mamoru closed his eyes and pictured a fist-sized rock splashing into a pond, startling koi.

  Nonetheless, Moriyama witnessed the women leave with him. Ayame would be overlooked. No one would care about an unimportant peasant girl from the suburbs. However, Nami’s disgrace came at the direct command of Minamoto. Freeing her was tantamount to defying the shogun. That issue he would address in due time. Perhaps gratitude at ridding his master’s mind of whatever oni touched it would forgive such a transgression. If Minamoto demanded Nami’s return, he could lure her back―she trusted him. Mamoru thumbed the handle of his katana, unable to avoid imagining her betrayed expression as a new bomb was placed around her throat.

  Why do I feel such shame at the thought of obeying my warlord?

  A hollow rattle of metal echoed off the walls, startling him. A vagrant half a block down sifted through dumpsters, singing. He staggered by in a drunken lope, intoxicated to the point his sake-laden breath overpowered the reek of trash. Mamoru studied the darkness. The sense that someone watched him continued, yet nothing had shown itself. Once the fatigue of walking across the better part of Tokyo faded, he slipped into the crowd, still thick even close to midnight.

  A few blocks from the factory, he had appropriated a long coat to hide his sword. The shame of having to conceal his katana twisted at the practicality of it. In his current attire, it would attract too much attention. He walked among the commoners, by appearance, no different from one of them. Anonymity had not been something he often enjoyed. At the same time it felt as alien as it did reassuring. Citizens paid him no more attention than they did the hundreds of advert-bots floating over their heads.

  Mamoru crossed the square beneath Minamoto
’s imperious frown and exited on a street heading northeast. A crowd massed at the corner, waiting for the signal to change. Four security officers at the center of the intersection scanned the crowd, not an uncommon sight. Their full-face helmets eased his nerves, and he concentrated. The wisp of white light dancing across his arms drowned in the neon glow of commercialism.

  The closest officer tapped the side of his helmet twice, paused, and slapped it. Mamoru’s mirth fell to ice as the man took the helmet off. He looked away and down, moving with the crowd when the light changed. One of them shouted as the group reached the far side, making him glance back. Four figures, beige armor over dark blue jumpsuits, shoved their way through the trailing mass of people. A man flew to the ground, two women followed. A little girl sailed off her feet, screaming for her daddy. The shriek of a woman shoved to her knees came a second before the crack of a rifle on face, and an angry father landed unconscious next to his wailing daughter.

  Out of instinct, civilians dropped where they were, shielding their heads with their arms in hopes of avoiding unwanted attention. The helmetless man pointed at Mamoru, the only person aside from the security forces still standing.

  Mamoru ran, ignoring their commands to halt.

  Low-born fools. They will derive pleasure from this. He snarled as he took a corner. The security force often bristled at the samurai’s authority. When a rare opportunity such as this presented itself, they adored every minute of it. The officers rounded the building in pursuit as white radiance burst around Mamoru’s entire body. Boosted by his chi, he leapt six lanes of traffic, causing a few cars to collide as their drivers gazed in awe at the fireball sailing overhead. His pursuers hesitated only a few seconds before they shot the tires out of enough vehicles to dam the flow. Screams rose in the night as citizens dove to the ground, begging for their lives.

  They usually warn first. These fools are chasing promotions. He maintained his focus, pushing his run up past forty miles an hour as he zoomed through a series of cross streets. After stumbling to another alley, he collapsed against the wall, out of breath.