by Steve Bein
Standing up, she felt the prodding of the Cheetah against the small of her back. It too was clipped to her belt, tucked into its little holster. She’d never actually used the holster in the field—she’d been wearing civvies for as long as she owned the Cheetah, and a big, black stun baton had no place in a civilian wardrobe—and now she hoped to hell it was as easy on the draw as she remembered it. Her jacket was already going to slow her draw, but there was no getting around that if she wanted to keep the weapon concealed. In truth her jacket wasn’t long enough to hide it completely, but her squad would block any view of it from within the building—assuming Fuchida was actually in the building. If he was in the hospital across the street, she might have just revealed her backup weapon.
Damn. Nothing to do about it now. Keep walking. Keep focused.
Mariko popped the trunk, closed the driver’s door, and went to the back of the squad for Glorious Victory Unsought. There was no good way to carry the swords, she realized. Not while keeping the cell to her ear. They deserved more respect than to be clumped together under her armpit. But what choice did she have? “Sorry,” she said to them as she walked toward the door cut into the plywood.
“The padlock is open. Pull on it.”
That was easier said than done, at least for someone who also had to manage two swords, two concealed weapons, a phone, and a rib cage that hurt like hell. But she got the door open and stepped into the cool dark behind it.
“Loop the chain through the door again. Lock it.”
Mariko thought about the building layout. From the street-side windows there was no direct view of this door. Anyone in front of the door could still have been visible, but now that she was under the wooden slats of the scaffolding, she would be hidden from view. No one from the hospital’s side of the street could have seen her either. She pinned the phone between her ear and shoulder, jingled the chain a bit, and clasped the lock through only one end of it. Backup wasn’t likely to get here in time, but she wouldn’t make their job any harder for them.
She wondered whether Shoji would able to figure out how to work her squad’s radio by touch. She wondered, too, whether Fuchida had thought to bring a police scanner with him to listen for the backup call. Was that the sort of thing a seer could foresee? I’d give anything, Mariko thought, to know the future of the next three minutes.
Fuchida had chosen his building well if he wanted a place backup would have a bitch of a time getting to. The roof might have been big enough to drop a tactical team by helicopter, but the high-rises all around would play hell with the wind patterns, and in any case the rotor noise would be a dead giveaway. There had to be another door to the ground floor—fire codes demanded it, even for half-gutted buildings undergoing rehab—but Fuchida wasn’t telling where it was, and Mariko didn’t have time to go looking. There would inevitably be a few cops in the hospital who could act as first responders, but none of them would be Special Assault Team operators, and even if they were, they wouldn’t have any advance intelligence on the building’s layout. Nor would they have the benefit of a psychopath on the phone guiding them in the right direction.
“Fifth floor,” Fuchida said. “Stairs are straight ahead of you, in the back.”
He’d covered everything. She’d be a bit winded when she reached him. If there was an elevator, it was probably stuck open on Fuchida’s floor, and five stories were just enough to make it unlikely that she could beat the elevator in a race to the ground floor. He’d even thought to dust the stairs with gritty concrete mix; even if Mariko had somehow managed to contact SAT or HRT, they’d have a hell of a time getting upstairs without Fuchida hearing their approach.
When she reached the fifth floor, Mariko saw two figures silhouetted against the picture windows that comprised the far wall. One was well muscled, its right hand pointing a curving sword at the unfinished concrete floor. The other silhouette, reed thin, sat in the only chair—indeed, the only piece of furniture—on the whole floor. As she drew closer, Mariko could make out the long, fat zip ties pinning Saori’s wrists and ankles to the square steel legs of the chair. The sight of her made Mariko’s stomach sink.
Apart from the windows, the only source of light was a tall, lonely rectangle far off to the right: the elevator, waiting with its doors propped open. Stacked boxes of linoleum tiles stood guard at various points around the room, tall and wide enough for someone to hide behind. Sheets of drywall leaned against unfinished walls like huge books on a shelf. The gang box near the elevator blocked lines of sight to the whole back quarter of the floor. Even with a partner, this room would have been a nightmare to clear. Mariko could only hope Fuchida was here solo.
The drawn sword should have been enough to capture Mariko’s attention. Her helpless sister should have been enough. But Mariko was a detective; her brain collected details whether she wanted it to or not. She took in everything about the room without breaking stride, and walked to the nearest stack of boxed floor tiles. Those things were heavy, maybe even heavy enough to stop a bullet, though Mariko didn’t figure Fuchida for a shooter. Even if he’d wanted to shoot her and have done with it, the sword had a hold on him now; if Yamada was right, Beautiful Singer wouldn’t let him trade weapons.
Fuchida’s sword was as long as his arm, and he stood close enough to Saori that Mariko didn’t dare draw down and pipe him. The Sig was a 9-millimeter, too small to guarantee a kill on the first shot. Besides, Fuchida had chosen his ground well. The only thing behind him was a thin sheet of glass, and then St. Luke’s Hospital. She couldn’t shoot until her backdrop was clear.
“Here we are,” Mariko said, laying the swords down on the stacked boxes. “Alone.”
“Not all alone,” Fuchida said. “We have your sister to keep us company.”
Good, Mariko thought. Maybe he was lying, but she didn’t think so. And assuming he was telling the truth, he’d just cleared the room for her.
“You can let her go now. Your swords are here.”
“I’m not an idiot. Let me see them.”
Mariko withdrew Glorious Victory Unsought from its cotton sleeve, then unsheathed the blade halfway and rammed it home. She did the same with the emperor’s sword.
Fuchida took a step toward the Inazumas, then another. Still within sword’s reach of Saori. Still a thousand patients behind him, with no more than dumb luck to protect them from stray rounds. Mariko tried to gauge his mental state, but she couldn’t yet see his backlit face.
Two more steps toward the swords. He moved as though against a windstorm, as if he wore a fifty-kilo backpack. As he drew closer, laboriously closer, Mariko could see more of him, though still not his face. Until now she’d thought he was wearing a skintight shirt, perhaps a spandex runner’s shirt elaborately decorated. Now she saw the pattern clinging to his right shoulder was a tattoo—an ornate spiderweb—and coiled around the other shoulder was either a serpent or a dragon. His hair was long and straight, pulled into a ponytail and capped by a hachimaki, the traditional bandana of the samurai. That wasn’t a good sign. The kamikaze pilots had tied on hachimaki before they took flight, never to return.
Beautiful Singer gleamed in the sunlight. It was thinner than any sword Mariko had ever seen, calling images to mind of a panther’s wicked, graceful claw, the slashing curve of a shark’s tail.
Another step, and Fuchida stood almost within sword’s reach of Mariko. His silhouette had eclipsed Saori’s now, further frustrating any hope of a clear shot. But he seemed to have forgotten Mariko entirely. For him there seemed to be nothing else in the world except the swords—the swords, and that invisible force he fought against with every movement.
Very slowly, Mariko moved away from the Inazumas, angling her body so he could not see her right hand behind her hip.
Fuchida drew closer. One more step and he’d be in striking range. His body was angled too, right side pulling back toward the windows and his captive, as if Beautiful Singer were pulling him away from the other two swords. He took ano
ther step, close enough now to touch the swords. Mariko tensed. Beautiful Singer pulled him back, just out of Mariko’s reach. But Fuchida’s will proved stronger than the sword’s. He reached out and laid his left hand on Glorious Victory’s scabbard.
The Cheetah crashed down on Fuchida’s forearm, crackling with its 850,000 volts. He roared and pulled away. Mariko darted forward, stabbing Fuchida in the chest with the Cheetah’s head. He grabbed it with his bare left hand. Mariko pulled the trigger. The pain meant nothing to him; he ripped the Cheetah from her grasp.
It clattered across the floor as he rounded on her. She retreated around the boxed linoleum tiles, her only cover. Now his face was fully lit and terrifying. His lips were dark, as were the rims of his wild eyes. His flesh was a quilt of tattoos, rippling as he raised Beautiful Singer overhead. In the center of his chest a buddha wreathed in flame slashed with a sword of its own.
Mariko’s hand dove for the Sig. She drew it, found her two-handed grip, put her front sight on the fiery buddha.
The sword flashed down.
The gun didn’t fire.
All at once the blood in Mariko’s arm turned to gasoline. Even with her eyes locked on his red-splashed sword, her mind found time to note the burning pain. He’d rushed her too hard and now he stumbled past her. She tried to shoot him again, and again pain flooded her arm.
Fuchida had chopped off her trigger finger.
The sight of her maimed hand terrified her. Even in a rage, he struck deftly enough to take her finger and only her finger. Yamada had been right from the beginning: Fuchida was a master.
Fuchida turned on her and Mariko retreated. Something hit her in the butt: the stack of tiles. Mariko groped blindly for a sword, found one with her left hand, and tried to circle around the stack. Fuchida was faster, circling with her.
Only blind luck allowed Mariko to duck Fuchida’s next attack. She instinctively raised her arms to fend off the third, and again blind luck saw her parry his blade with her Sig Sauer. The clash knocked her pistol across the room. She would have been dead a second later if only Fuchida had been in position to strike. But his slashes were wild, overpowered. He lost his footing, giving Mariko time enough to draw her sword.
She nearly dropped it, blood-slick as it was. Only when her left hand found the hilt did she establish a firm grip. Fuchida was on her again, and this time Yamada’s training paid off. She sidestepped and counterstruck.
But Fuchida was the better swordsman. He shrank back a hand’s breadth out of reach, then squared off against her.
Her attack should have cut him. But, then, her sword should have weighed double what it did. Mariko looked down to see the Tiger on the Mountain in her hands.
She was lost. She’d never trained with a sword this size. It was light, tiny, fast as hell, but everything she’d learned about staying at range was useless now. Glorious Victory’s greater reach had been her sole advantage. The Tiger seemed even shorter than Beautiful Singer, and certainly Mariko’s arms were shorter than Fuchida’s. He was the stronger fighter too, and the more experienced, and she was already bleeding and scared.
Fuchida inched closer. Mariko stepped back. He lashed out with a stab to the throat. Mariko batted down at his hands. She missed, but she made him miss too.
“Yamada wasn’t idle in his last days, was he?” Fuchida sneered at her. “You fancy yourself a swordswoman?”
Mariko didn’t fancy herself anything. The only part of herself she could think of was her butchered hand. Her heart beat against her ribs the way a boxer beat a punching bag. “Just take your sword and go,” she said.
“You’re a meek little thing, aren’t you? You talked tough on the phone. And I’ll give you this: it took balls to come in here on your own. But now we get to see the real you. When the cards are down, you’re just a whimpering little schoolgirl.”
He feinted a stab at her. She tried to parry it and missed. He stabbed for real, capitalizing on her overreaction, and this time her blade was just able to knock his aside. His mouth curled into a snarl. He was angry now. Was it just that she’d stood too long against him? Did he want the quick kill, and had she—miraculously—denied it?
Still snarling, he pounced at her, his sword flashing. She sidestepped. Fuchida tripped over her foot. It was the same sweep Yamada had done to her, she realized. Fuchida hit the floor in a heap, and too late Mariko saw she could have closed and finished him. By the time she’d noticed, Fuchida was up into a crouch, sword in hand.
Mariko glanced at Glorious Victory Unsought. It was right next to him, resting in its scabbard atop the stack of boxes. “Take the sword and go,” she repeated, trying this time to keep the desperation out of her voice.
“Oh, I’ll take it,” Fuchida said. He rose to his feet, switched Beautiful Singer to his left hand, and wrapped the fingers of his right hand around Glorious Victory’s long grip. “I’ll kill you with it. Then I’ll kill your sister with it.”
Lines of ink rippled across the muscles of his arms. Then, suddenly, he lunged at her, chopping with Beautiful Singer. His swing was well short of her, and for half a second Mariko thought he was feinting, setting up a second attack. Then she realized the truth: it wasn’t Fuchida who attacked her.
It was Beautiful Singer.
It was drawing him away from the other weapon. But even in his demented state, Fuchida had incredible strength of will. With stomping steps he returned to Glorious Victory Unsought, and in one smooth motion he drew the massive blade.
It took impossible strength to wield Glorious Victory in one hand, but Fuchida was impossibly strong. His eyes were wide, crazed, his head shifting side to side as if looking for the best angle of attack. At last he came at her, both blades whirling, a manic scream bursting from his spit-flecked mouth. Mariko threw herself sideways, lashing out with the Tiger on the Mountain.
Glorious Victory clattered to the floor, half an arm still attached to it.
Fuchida didn’t even register the blow. He whirled on her, and before Mariko could regain her footing, she felt Beautiful Singer plunge through her belly. Fuchida drove the sword all the way to the hilt. The pain made the whole world disappear.
No. Not the whole world. She still had a sword and a target. With her last breath Mariko ran the Tiger on the Mountain sidelong into Fuchida’s rib cage. She caught him through both lungs, her bloody blade lancing out from the opposite side of his body.
They fell together. Mariko did not register her head hitting the concrete floor. Her shrewd detective’s mind did not notice when she puked, nor when she pissed herself, nor when her body entered a violent fit of agonal spasms. She couldn’t even feel the pain from the stump of her severed finger anymore. The world disappeared into a haze of white, and the only thing left to her was Saori.
Saori screamed and cried and begged Mariko not to die. But Mariko died anyway.
76
Two bolts of lightning hit her in the chest.
Smells came to her: blood, ozone, urine, vomit, dust, sweat. Sounds came next. Saori was still crying. Someone said, “We’ve got her back. Keep pressure on that.” A wet gurgling sound came now and again, weak underneath all the other noises but close enough that Mariko could make it out. It took several repetitions before she recognized it as her own breathing.
Mercifully, her tactile sense was dead to her, muted by hypovolemic shock. Nor was there much for her to see; just vague shapes drifting in the white haze. She could taste blood and vomit. Gusts forced cold air down her throat at regular intervals, each breath tasting like the inside of a plastic water bottle.
She had no sense of time, no sense of continuity. Saori would be wailing, and then all consciousness would lapse, and when it returned none of the old background noises were there anymore. There was a beeping, and the ingress and egress of air pushed mechanically through some narrow hose nearby. Then those things would vanish and she would regain consciousness drowning in a sea of pain. Then haziness and light. Then nothing at all.
&nbs
p; And then, after a thousand such episodes—or was it only a dozen?—Mariko opened her eyes. Blurs of various shades resolved themselves into ceiling tiles, a sliding aluminum rail for a curtain, the top edge of a wooden door. “She’s awake,” Mariko heard Saori say, and then a new set of blurs resolved themselves into the crying, smiling faces of her sister and mother.
“I thought I’d lost you,” Saori said, at the same instant their mother said, “I knew you’d make it.” But Saori went on, the words tumbling from her mouth like snowflakes in a blizzard. “I was stuck there. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t move. All I could do was watch you die. I’m so, so sorry, Miko-chan.”
Mariko tried to speak but found something had been taped into her mouth. She could not move her jaw, and even if she could, there was the thing in her mouth to gag her. She grunted, and then Saori and Mom disappeared for a while, pushed out by a sudden influx of nurses.
It was another twenty-odd hours before Mariko could keep a hold on consciousness for more than a few seconds, and in those hours each waking moment seemed to blend into the next. One moment she would be talking to her sister; then she would blink, and opening her eyes she’d find it was her doctor she was talking to, and it was not sunlight but streetlights streaming through the window.
“I’m so, so sorry,” her sister said.
Her doctor said, “You’re a very lucky woman, Oshiro.”
“Not your fault you got kidnapped,” Mariko told Saori.
“We couldn’t save your finger,” said her doctor. “By the time we had you stabilized, it had been on ice too long. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” said Saori.
“What happened to the emperor’s sword?” asked Mariko.
“In the ER,” the doctor said. Mariko couldn’t sort out which question he was answering.
“I’ll never do it again,” Saori said, and hugged her tight.
Mariko fell asleep in her arms, and when she woke, she was lucid.
77
It was light in the room, probably early morning, and someone was standing at the foot of Mariko’s bed. “Hi,” Mariko said.
