by Andrea Speed
“Thunder can’t be bright. It’s a noise.”
“Correct. Which is why it’s a perfect name. It’s so confusing and nonspecific it sounds exactly like a corporate project.”
Ash had him there. “Is Nagoya one of my dad’s shell corporations?”
Ash dipped his head. “Indeed.”
“If someone asks me about the project, what do I say?”
“Say you can’t talk about it unless they’ve got a 1-A clearance level.”
“Does anyone have that?”
“Yes. Jason Tanaka.”
Kaede undid his seat belt with a sigh. There was an actual sleeping area on this plane. Okay, essentially they were bunk beds, but super-comfortable bunk beds with down pillows and soft cotton sheets. “Cute. So what’s your cover story?”
“I’m your personal assistant.”
Kaede snorted a small laugh. “You need a better title than that. I don’t suppose Jason Tanaka would travel with a bodyguard, would he?”
Ash didn’t even have to think about it. “He’s a corporate drone. It wouldn’t make sense.”
Kaede stood up and stretched, feeling the weariness sink into his bones. “You’re no one’s Smithers. There’s no way we can sell that. Gotta think of something else.”
“Smithers?” Ash asked, his brow creasing in confusion.
“It’s a Simpsons reference. Oh my God. Have you never watched The Simpsons?”
Ash shook his head. “I haven’t watched a lot of television. They weren’t allowed at Tabaah Karna.”
“Holy shit, that would have driven me crazy. Check out the entertainment menu. I bet there’s a shit ton of ’em. Although try and only view ones between season three and season eight—otherwise you might get disappointed.”
Ash blinked at him in a way that suggested he found something baffling. “How many seasons have The Simpsons had?”
“Not completely sure. A shit ton. It may be as old as me.”
“Christ. Most shows don’t last that long, do they?”
“Nah. Most are blink and you’ll miss ’em. So maybe watch an episode or two before you go to bed. Oh, if they have ‘King Size Homer,’ watch that one. I loved that one.”
Kaede walked to the back, leaving Ash to peruse the media files, and he realized he really didn’t know that much about Ash. Oh sure, he was a gengineered orphan(?) with super strength, raised by a death cult, but that was pretty much all he knew. He didn’t know if Ash was short for something, or if Han was his actual last name. Yes, it was the name of his adoptive parents, but did he legally change it? What was it before? Kaede had a billion other questions for him too, most remarkably trivial, but he’d never met a survivor of Devishna, or at least he hadn’t to his knowledge. And while Ash had told him not to feel guilty about what his father had done, he still did. He felt a vague sense of responsibility for Ash, like maybe he should be trying to take care of him, even though as a superstrong superassassin, Ash didn’t need it. He probably knew a thousand different ways to kill someone with his own arms tied behind his back. Still, there was a strange quality to him that made Kaede want to cuddle him like a puppy. A deadly alien puppy who could snap his neck as easily as swatting a fly. But as long as Ash was on Kaede’s dad’s payroll and didn’t hold a grudge, Kaede’d be safe, right?
Weirdly enough, he thought he would be. If Ash wanted him dead, he’d be back rotting in the safe house with all the other corpses.
A RARE bit of turbulence woke Kaede up from a deep sleep, and he sort of hated to abandon his warm, soft bunk. It was weird how well he slept on these planes, better than in any safe house on the ground. How strange was that? Weirder still, how did people on commercial flights not get this? Seemed like a waste.
After having a piss and changing his clothes, Kaede went into the main cabin. He had to wait for the bulkhead to unseal, though, which was always a pain. But that’s how all these planes were built. They could be instantly separated into individual airtight compartments in the event of fire, attack, or crash. Kaede figured his dad was paranoid, but no one could say he didn’t have a good reason for it. After all, being a notorious mad scientist meant people actually did try to kill you on a semiregular basis. Or kidnap you or rescue you, as the case may be.
As soon as the bulkhead was open, he heard laughter, which was a little startling. But just because Ash was stoic didn’t mean he couldn’t laugh.
The retractable flat-screen was down in the main cabin, and a Simpsons episode was currently playing. Just from the dialogue alone, Kaede knew which one it was, and Ash was lucky—he’d found a good one.
“You have thirty minutes to move your cube,” Kaede said, right along with Homer.
Ash looked at him, still laughing. “This is fucking great,” he said, his amber eyes bright with mirth. “And this… moving art! How do they do that?”
“Moving art?” It took a moment for Kaede to figure out what he was referring to. “Oh, you mean the animation? Holy shit, have you never seen a cartoon before?”
“Is that what this is? A cartoon? No, I don’t believe I’ve seen its like before.”
“Wow. I’m going to hafta educate you, man. And if you think these are great, wait ’til you see Hayao Miyazaki movies. Your head will explode.” Kaede walked to the galley, which was actually more like a small, modern kitchen than anything in a commercial airliner. It was stocked with foods he liked, so there were tamagoyaki and steamed rice he could nuke, as well as boxes of Life cereal and rice milk. Canned sweet coffee was in the back of the refrigerator, along with green tea, beer, and a variety of sodas. “You hungry?” he asked.
“No, I’m okay,” Ash replied politely. Kaede bet politeness was strictly enforced in a death cult.
“Want a drink?”
“If you have some tea, I wouldn’t mind it.”
On reflex alone, he felt bad for Ash. Kaede’d had some tutors he thought were strict, yet he was sure it was nothing compared to what Ash had been through. He returned to the main cabin with his rice and omelet and tossed Ash a can of green tea, while he had his own can of coffee wedged under his arm.
He sat at one of the tables in the main cabin—no dining trays for them—and after cracking open his coffee and having a sip, he said, “I’ve been thinking. What if you were my minder?”
“What?” Ash replied.
“I mean, Jason Tanaka’s minder. We can make up something, like maybe I’ve inherited a fortune or something, and a stipulation of that was a minder so I didn’t go nuts or run the business into the ground or whatever. I’m willing to leave it up to you. Just let me know what you’ve decided on so we can be on the same page.”
“Oh, I see,” Ash said, cracking open his can of tea. “Yes, I guess I would not be an adequate or convincing Smithers. I think that would be acceptable.” Ash glanced at him and smiled. It was uncertain and slightly lopsided, like he wasn’t used to smiling, but Kaede felt it in his chest like an ember. He smiled back and realized that, while not his usual type, Ash was cute, in an alien sort of way. He seemed too ethereally lovely to be real. “By the way, that smells good. What is it?”
“Just rice and tamagoyaki. There’s some still in the fridge if you want to help yourself.”
Ash’s smile faded, but only because it had to. Despite his obvious and continual strangeness, Kaede did feel comfortable with him, which put Ash leaps and bounds ahead of any bodyguards his dad had sent him in the past.
“I might, thank you,” Ash said.
“You can use a microwave, right?”
Ash levered himself out of his comfy chair and stretched. Kaede liked watching him stretch. “I can. It is one of the few appliances I’m quite adept with.”
Once he returned with some breakfast of his own, they ate and watched some more Simpsons episodes, and then discussed Corwyn, California, where they were headed. Corwyn was notable for the superfreaks who ran its streets, would-be superheroes who thought they were big shots. The worst of these was a guy who called hims
elf Dark Justice. He dressed head to toe in molded black body armor, with only his jaw and eyes exposed.
From Kaede’s limited experience, the difference between superhero and supervillain was mainly one of perception and PR. Anybody who put on a costume and punched people had issues, and even though superheroes claimed to be doing this to help people and “save the world,” they were really doing it for their own selfish reasons. Supervillains did what they did out of pure selfishness, or for revenge, or both, but at least they were upfront about it. Still, that’s why they were hated. Oh, that and killing people. No one was a real fan of that. And Kaede couldn’t blame them. He personally hated the killing of civilians. If you knew what you were doing, there was no need for collateral damage, ever. Of course, his dad had killed a lot of people, but his dad was insane. He’d created a virus that specifically killed people with a rare blue colorblindness. There were no words for that kind of craziness.
Once the latest Simpsons episode was over, Kaede pulled up some of Dark Justice’s “greatest hits” from YouTube. The guy seemed like a preening narcissist, and he undoubtedly had daddy issues. He also seemed to use a lot of fancy, maybe experimental, tech. Kaede did a quick web search, and it turned out tech billionaire Anthony Moreau lived in Corwyn. His father also owned most of the media outlets and was heavily invested in QuarCorps, a military contractor.
“Oh shit, Anthony Moreau is Dark Justice,” he said. “Well, that figures. Wannabe macho nerd with daddy issues.”
Ash turned to look at him. “How do you know that?”
“Justice needs a lot of money and access to experimental hardware. None of that is easy to come by. In Corwyn, only one guy fits the bill.”
“So how come it isn’t out yet?”
“His dad owns the media in that town, and by extension, he does too. It’s not news because he doesn’t want it to be news.”
“You may have missed your calling as a detective. We haven’t even hit Corwyn yet, and you’ve solved the biggest mystery there.”
“I have mad Google-fu,” Kaede said and mimed cracking his knuckles. He then realized that might not mean anything to Ash. “Google’s a search engine.”
“I know. I’m not completely stupid. Just mostly stupid.” Ash then gave him a small, sweet smile, and Kaede returned it, feeling a pleasant warmth in the pit of his stomach.
For a killing machine, Ash was goddamn cute.
WHEN THEY arrived at the private airstrip on the outskirts of Corwyn, it was sundown, the sky a bloody orange striated with wisps of gray clouds. The skyscrapers on the near horizon looked like shadowy towers. A dragon wouldn’t have been out of place.
They were met by a company car, an unmarked sedan that was most likely bulletproof. The driver was a pro, saying nothing while taking Kaede’s bag and putting it in the trunk. Once inside the car, Kaede saw the tinted shield was up between the driver’s seat and the passenger seat so they could talk in private. His dad did prize efficiency in his employees.
“It’s too bad the privacy screen is up,” Kaede noted, relaxing in the plush seat.
Ash, still sitting with perfect posture—did the guy ever relax?—looked at him before giving a sidelong glance to the tinted window. “Why? Do you think he’s up to something?”
Kaede almost laughed. “What? No. He’s kind of cute.”
Ash looked honestly baffled. “Cute? I don’t understand.”
Well, it was best to get this out of the way early. “I’m gay. Do you know what that means?”
“Attracted to the same sex?”
“Yep. Do you have a problem with that?”
Ash’s puzzled look remained, a tiny crease that bridged the gap between his eyes. “No. Why would I have a problem with it?”
“Some people do.”
“Unless you’re hitting on them, why would they care?”
Kaede pointed at him. “Exactly. And yet some people totally lose their shit about it.”
“I don’t get that.”
“Me neither.” After a moment Kaede considered Ash’s reaction and decided he just had to ask. “What about you?”
Ash stared at him levelly. “What about me what? I don’t understand the question.”
“Are you gay, straight, other?”
Ash scratched the side of his head, the first uncertain gesture Kaede had ever seen Ash make. “I don’t know. How do you tell?”
Kaede almost laughed but stopped himself. Ash was serious. “Wow. It… never occurred to you? Don’t you think about sex?”
“No. We were taught at Karna that sex was a pointless, animalistic urge that wasted energy best put to other uses.”
“Wow. They didn’t have any fun at all there, did they?”
“Fun was a pointless, transitory emotion that wasted energy best put to other uses.” Ash did smile faintly after saying that.
“You don’t believe in any of that stuff, do you? I mean, Tabaah Karna isn’t your religious belief system, is it?”
“No. I’m not sure I have one.”
Belatedly Kaede thought to ask, “What is it that Karna believes, exactly?”
Ash sat back finally, although his posture was still somehow perfect. “That humanity is a scourge, a parasite that is highest on the food chain only because our greatest predators were killed off by accident, and we will destroy ourselves and the entire planet with us if we are not stopped and helped along to our ultimate fate.”
“Holy shit.” After a brief pause, Kaede asked, “Have I been a member of Karna all this time without realizing it?”
“They had good points. It’s the ‘helping the apocalypse along’ part that is a bit worrisome. And the suppression of all emotions in the service of destruction and violence.”
“And no sex! Jesus Christ, it would have killed me. How did you manage to sublimate your sex drive?”
That confused crease reappeared. “I don’t understand. I don’t think I sublimated it. But I don’t know.” He thought about it for a moment, glancing out at the landscape rushing by their windows. “How do you know? What does it feel like?”
Kaede’s words, which he’d always thought he was particularly gifted with, dried up. “I don’t even know how to explain it. Could you be asexual?”
“What’s that?”
“More or less without a sex drive. Not attracted to anyone.”
“But what’s attraction, exactly?”
“It’s looking at someone and being turned on. Wanting to get close to them. Is this really not ringing any bells?”
Ash looked out the tinted windows and frowned. “I’m not sure. I’m still not good with feelings or anything of that stripe. It’s not a subject I’m well versed in, and while I know the Hans tried to help me become more normal, I wasn’t a good student.”
Kaede struggled to understand. Emotions and feelings could be kind of abstract and hard to explain, especially to someone with no frame of reference. “Are you telling me you’re so accustomed to repressing emotions and feelings that you’re not sure when you’re having them?”
Ash nodded. “I think so.”
“Huh.” Kaede didn’t want to say weird for fear of offending him, but he was thinking it. That must have been an awful way to grow up, all other parts of being in a death cult put to the side. Emotional death could be as bad as physical death. Since Ash seemed uncomfortable with the topic too, Kaede decided to change the subject. “What’s your name? I mean, your real name.”
“Ash.”
“I mean, what’s your surname?”
Ash must have been more comfortable with this topic as he turned back to him. “I don’t have a surname. At Karna, your trainer gives you a name, and that is your name for life. Mine gave me the name Ash. There are no surnames, as that implies ownership.”
“Why did he call you Ash?”
He shrugged. “I do not know. They never told us why we were given our names. I was lucky, though, as there were members named Plow, Yak, and Pond.”
“Plow?
” Kaede repeated. “No fucking way. You’re shitting me.”
“I’m not. I wouldn’t even know how to do such a thing.”
“It’s a figure of speech,” Kaede replied, then wondered how he would explain it. Come to think of it, it was a weird expression, wasn’t it? How did it start? He was still pondering this when their car jolted to a violent stop.
Their seat belts kept them from being catapulted through the privacy partition but yanked them back violently enough to be really annoying. Kaede stabbed the comm button and asked, “Driver, what’s wrong?”
There was no response, and Ash said, “We’re under attack,” before throwing his door violently open. It smacked into someone with a solid thud, and Kaede heard someone let out a pained “Oof!” Ash was out the door by then, and with one well-placed punch, he introduced a body to the asphalt.
Kaede’s door opened from the outside, and he quickly pulled out the kukri, which he had tucked inside his jacket before disembarking the plane. As soon as he saw a hand, he stabbed it. The man who owned the hand reeled back, screaming, but two other muscled men reached for Kaede. He managed to stab one of them in the arm and rip the blade up to his elbow, causing blood to spurt out in an arterial pulse. But someone punched him hard enough in the face to send his consciousness reeling, and he was torn out of the car. Someone took his kukri—he didn’t know who.
His vision cycled through shades of gray, growing lighter and lighter as his attacker dragged him along, and then suddenly he was dropped, hitting the pavement hard. It hurt him and jerked him back to full consciousness just as a loud burst of gunfire broke out. It wasn’t quite loud enough to completely drown out the dull sound of bodies hitting the ground. Kaede felt something warm splash on him as he finally opened his eyes and found himself face-to-face with a fresh corpse, the color still draining from its face and its bulging eyes just clouding over.
Kaede shoved himself up to his knees, and only then did he look around to see what had happened.
