by Jacob Whaler
Eva stands by Jessica, waiting for her to jump. “Do you sense danger?” Eva’s hand goes up onto Jessica’s shoulder. “What do your feelings tell you?”
“That I’m starving for real food.” Jessica pulls on an old backpack she scavenged from the sub, full of odd items that might come in handy. “As long as I have this, I’m OK.” She slips the strap of the pulse rifle over her shoulder and jumps into the water.
Two hours later, after time for a swim and some rest, they are walking single file behind the captain, heading inland across an open green field. The sun is dropping below the watery horizon to their backs. The submarine is safely drifting a few meters below the surface, moored to rocks by an underwater cable.
“Are you sure it’s safe?” Jessica turns and whispers to Eva behind her.
“From what I hear, Mr. Hashimoto has always been friendly to the local freedom camp. He’s not a member, but sympathetic.” She runs her finger along the inside of a small can of peanut butter she brought from the sub. “He’s a businessman. Well-respected in the community. Runs a large farm and dairy. They built the freedom camp here because of his support.”
Jessica turns to the captain walking in front. “Does anyone else know we’re coming?”
“Nope.” The captain shakes his head. “All the rest left when you gave the order. That was two days ago. We just passed through the old freedom camp.” He stops and motions back toward the setting sun with his burly hands. “As you can see there’s not a trace left behind.” He shakes his head and laughs. “Very Japanese.”
If only Matt were here, Jessica thinks.
“Does anyone speak the local language?” Jessica glances from the captain to the others lined up behind her.
Nothing but shrugging shoulders and shaking heads.
Eva nods. “I can get by.”
“Really?” Jessica’s eyebrows rise up. “Where did you learn Japanese?”
“Back in Vancouver. I worked as a tour guide for a while. When I was young.”
As Jessica gazes at the faces of the group, a realization hits her. With their Inuit features and dark hair, all of the crew and Eva can pass for Japanese, at least from a distance. She has brown hair and brown eyes, which helps a little. But her face is all-American, a dead giveaway.
“I’ve heard the anti-foreigner movement is stronger than ever in Japan.” Jessica looks at the captain, hoping for a rebuttal.
“It depends,” he says. “The Japanese love the Chinese, Koreans, Thais, anyone from Asia. All part of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere announced by China and Japan a few weeks ago. But one thing’s for sure. They hate Americans. It wouldn’t take much to start a war.” He smiles broadly, showing the wide gap in his front teeth.
“They aren’t all like that.” Eva shoots a dark look at the captain. “And if we have to, we can make you look Japanese.”
The rest of the group laughs.
Jessica walks for the next hour in silence, but her fingers can’t stop running along the silver barrel of the pulse rifle.
“There it is. The Hashimoto home.” The captain points at a house constructed of separate compartments, all loosely joined by enclosed walkways. “Remember to take your shoes off, everyone. Bow and be polite. No loud voices or spitting.”
Looking like a Buddhist temple with its perfect tile roof and peaked corners, the main entrance to the compound stands fifty meters away, barely visible in the evening moonlight. They approach along a winding path through fine gravel, sculpted shrubs, large boulders with flowing, asymmetrical shapes, and dozens of bonsai trees, large and small.
“Japanese rock garden.” Jessica remembers Matt’s words from a conversation about Zen Buddhism. “Carefully composed to be an aid in meditation about the true meaning of life.”
The captain laughs. “And right now, the true meaning of life is to get some food in my belly before I collapse.” He turns to the rest of the group. “Eva, come with me. We need to use your Japanese skills. The rest of you stay here.” He makes a point of looking squarely at Jessica.
The two of them walk to the outer door and slide it open to the side. Then they move into the entry way.
Jessica hears Eva’s voice, calling into the house.
“Gomen kudasai.”
The sound of approaching feet moves across hardwood floors. An inner door slides open. Warm greetings are exchanged, and it’s clear that Mr. Hashimoto is expecting visitors. Whether he is expecting six visitors is less clear. His voice trails off as he and the captain walk back into the house.
Eva’s head appears outside. “Everyone come in. Remember to take off your shoes.”
Jessica follows Eva, leaving her shoes in the genkan entrance and stepping up onto the main floor. They all walk down a long, dark hallway past sliding doors and into a large tatami room at the back. Two Japanese women dressed in tight kimonos and aprons, one older than the other, are busy adding additional zabuton sitting cushions and place settings to a low table.
From the looks of it, they were expecting only the captain.
“Please accept my apologies,” Hashimoto-san says. “I was unaware we would be honored by so many guests.” His eyes survey the captain and the other three crew members, all of them large men.
His gaze freezes when he sees Jessica, the pulse rifle still slung over her back.
“Hajimemashite. So nice to meet you. My name is Jessica.” Recalling a lesson from Matt, her body bends forward from the waist in the best Japanese bow she can muster.
“Would have been even nicer of you to leave the weapons outside.” The captain mutters, shooting a glare at Jessica. Bowing his head, he looks at Hashimoto-san. “There’s been some trouble lately. Problems with the freedom camps. Please forgive—”
“No apologies necessary.” The younger of the two Japanese women speaks in accent-free English, drawing the gaze of the other crew members. “We’ve had our own share of trouble.”
Hashimoto-san motions to the low table. “Please, sit and make yourself comfortable. And forgive my daughter. She just returned from college in America and has forgotten her manners.”
They all take their seats while Hashimoto-san’s wife and daughter make multiple trips in and out of the room to bring in individual trays of carefully arranged food. Each tray is set out in exactly the same way. A bowl of rice in the lower left corner and miso soup on the right. Between them sits a small plate of yellow pickled radish. Above that is a larger plate of fried pork cutlets with triangle-shaped tomato pieces and finely sliced cucumbers on the side. In the upper right corner is a small plate with chunks of bright red fish cut into perfect rectangles and stacked like leaning dominoes.
It takes several minutes for all the food to be set out on the table.
“Itadakimasu.” Hashimoto-san lets his head drop in a shallow bow then looks up and surveys the table. “Please enjoy your food.”
Everyone goes for the raw bluefin tuna first.
“Where did you get this maguro? I haven’t seen anything like it for years.” The captain places one of the red chunks in his mouth with studied reverence and closes his eyes in deep satisfaction. “It’s divine.”
“I have my own supply.” Hashimoto-san picks up a piece in his chopsticks and eyes it closely. “Mercury-free, and secret.”
“Black market,” whispers Hashimoto-san’s daughter. With her legs folded perfectly under her, she quietly slips onto a zabuton cushion next to Jessica. “By the way, my name is Michiko.”
Jessica sips the miso soup and nods. “Your father said you went to college in the U.S. Where were you?”
“Seattle, at the University of Washington. I just got back yesterday.” She stabs one of the port cutlets with her chopsticks and takes a bite. “I saw the black attack ships fly overhead on their way to the freedom camp at Vancouver.”
“A most regrettable incident.” Hashimoto-san bows his head at the other end of the table.
“In case you haven’t heard, there have been other in
cidents.” The captain shoves chopsticks loaded with steaming white rice into his mouth and chases it down with a pickled radish and miso soup broth. “Five more freedom camps were attacked in the same way along the West Coast of the US. Hundreds have been killed.”
“None of it has been reported on the Mesh,” Michiko says. “If what you say is true, whoever is behind it must have a lot of power.”
“His name is Ryzaard, President and CEO of MX SciFin,” Jessica says. “And he’s got the resources to bribe or threaten whoever it takes to keep the killings off the radar.”
“So that’s why you decided to disband the rest of the freedom camps?” Hashimoto-san looks at the captain.
“Yes.” The captain’s eyes drift to Jessica. “I suppose so.”
The other members of the crew eat without pausing to look up.
“It’s a good thing.” Hashimoto-san exchanged glances with his daughter. “Yesterday they came, asking questions.”
“They?” Jessica says.
Hashimoto-san nods. “Japan Defense Force troops. They were searching for someone at the freedom camp, an American man with a Japanese mother. They said it was urgent, that he was on the loose and dangerous, a criminal and threat to society. When they found out the camp had been disbanded, they were surprised, caught off guard.”
Jessica loses her appetite. Nausea threatens what she’s already eaten. She lays down her chopsticks. “Who were they searching for?”
All eyes go to Hashimoto-san.
He reaches into the pocket of his yukata robe and takes out a jax. With a few brushes of his fingers, a holo image of a young man, taken from the shoulders up, floats in the air above his hand. His dark hair, eyes and facial features suggest Asian ancestry.
Jessica’s feet and hands go cold as she stares at Matt.
CHAPTER 90
Time to begin.
Jhata stands in front of the sphere, refreshed after a full night of rest. Enveloped in a cloud of clear energy, her body tingles and her feet float above the floor. Lightness permeates her body.
This is going to be fun.
The fluid inside the tank is no longer white with the texture of honey. It now has a pinkish hue and the consistency of water. Circulating in a loop that takes it into the tank, past Ryzaard’s floating body, and back out to be filtered and refreshed, the liquid bathes him in a rich mixture of chemical nutrients.
It’s all a necessary measure to keep Ryzaard alive while he’s stripped down, layer by layer, system by system, unmade and remade as Jhata sees fit.
Better. Stronger. Faster.
Some of the basic architecture of his body will remain intact, and his brain will be mostly original equipment. Mostly.
But the rest is a blank slate.
For a fleeting moment, she considers waking him to share her plan to unmake and remake him, but then immediately dismisses the idea. There would be unending questions, concerns, fears. Her explanations would be inadequate.
Time will be wasted.
In a way, Ryzaard has already given consent. He came asking for help. She intends to give it to him in her own way.
And so much more.
Holding a Stone loosely in each hand, Jhata closes her eyes.
Using the increased clarity given her by the Stones, a multi-dimensional facsimile of Ryzaard’s body opens up in her mind. Each system and organ stands out in nearly infinite detail, as if it were a series of templates stacked one on top of the other. She moves through the templates with ease, noting the function of each element, its original condition and the damage it has sustained. Much of what she sees is beyond repair.
The skin is the first to go.
An array of thin mechanical arms attached to vertical columns outside the tank pierce through the soft membrane of the sphere. Agile fingers on the ends of the arms go to work, hooked up to a direct feed from Jhata’s mind. The mechanical fingers become her fingers.
Starting on the outside, she strips all remaining layers of skin from Ryzaard’s face, chest, back, arms and legs. It comes off in great sheets, like a second copy of him, floating away in the clear solution and dissolving into a thin gray mist.
Jhata drops to the next level.
Raw muscle lies exposed, some bright red, some black, all of it bathed in warm liquid. She inspects the damage. Whole sections of tissue are missing. Both calves are mostly gone, burnt to the bone by molten rock. Little remains on his left arm, hamstrings and back where the damage was severe. The left thigh is riddled with holes. Wherever she looks, the surviving tissue is dead and stiff, useless and beyond salvage.
Instead of having a patchwork of old and new muscle, Jhata decides that all of it has to go.
Starting at what is left of his feet and working up, she strips the remaining muscle away in long ribbons, taking with it tendons, but leaving behind the delicate latticework of embedded nerves and blood vessels. Fragments of calf muscles are cleaned to the bone and discarded. The quadriceps pull away in one piece, dissolving into a pink cloud and floating away in the solution. Pectorals and deltoids, biceps and trapezius, all of them slip off and fall away.
The last area to be picked clean of red tissue is the skull. What remains of the facial muscles is scooped out, taking with them the last vestiges of Ryzaard’s identity.
Inside and just below the white arches of the ribcage, the lungs lie exposed like sponges. Normally bright pink, these are gray and shriveled, seared from the inside, damaged beyond repair by the hot gases that Ryzaard inhaled. Jhata notes their structure, and then rips them out and throws them away. The liver hangs above the stomach. Intestines curl and loop below. Blackened and hard, kidneys sprout behind them. She investigates the remaining organs one by one. Most are non-functional. All but the spleen are removed and dissolve away in the liquid bath.
To her surprise, the heart is beautifully intact and unspoiled. Ryzaard must have worked on it regularly after finding his first Stone. He owes his life to the fact that his six Stones were able to keep it going.
The major blood vessels from the heart are functional, but the farther she travels down the body, the less optimal the circulatory system becomes. Any veins or arteries within a few inches of the surface have suffered damage. Cutting and removing, she clears away vast sections of net-like capillaries, all of which will have to be replaced.
For her final pass, she goes deep into Ryzaard’s brain. It’s mostly undamaged, encased inside the skull. From its structure and size, Jhata concludes he is high-functioning, near genius level. Traveling the spinal cord, she follows the nervous system out into the arms and legs where it’s been ravaged by the burning and destruction of muscle tissue. She had hoped to preserve it, but most of it is discarded without further thought.
System by system, she analyzes and discards, cuts and clears away, like a gardener pulling weeds and pruning plants, until all that is damaged, useless, or less than optimal is stripped away.
Now that the body has been torn down, Jhata takes a moment to gaze upon what is left.
Ryzaard is little more than a specter of white bones, a beating heart, a spinal cord and a brain. One bare eyeball peeks out through a hole in his skull. In the deeper recesses of his body, clouds of microscopic nerve tissue and blood vessels float and move with the current.
Now it’s time to rebuild.
Jhata toys with the idea of waking him up. The more she thinks about it, the more it pleases her. But Ryzaard will need to be able to see to appreciate what she is doing.
Referring internally to the templates of his body stored away in her memory, she starts up the biolab that stands close to the sphere. Composed of transparent towers, it is filled with machinery for synthesizing new tissue from a vast library of chemical raw materials, shaping and molding it to exact specifications. With the mechanical arms, she attaches elegant and delicate strings of tissue to Ryzaard’s facial and neck bones. A new eyeball goes into place with the necessary muscle structure to control it.
Each of the St
ones on her belt and in her hands glows brilliant yellow, providing the vast computing power to synthesize compounds and manipulate molecules.
New chemicals pour into the fluid circulating in the tank. As Jhata watches, the dilated pupils of the eyeballs slowly close into two tight black dots. When Ryzaard is fully awake, a thin energy field appears above the surface of the tank, necessary to keep him from attempting to use his Stones to jump away.
She goes directly into his mind. “How do you feel, Dr. Ryzaard? I’ve cleared away most of your nervous system, so pain should not be an issue.”
A wave of questions and panic rise up as he struggles to understand what is going on.
Who are you? Where am I?
“You are hanging in a solution of nutrient rich bio-fluid. I am the one you see standing before you.” She takes a step closer to the tank. “Why don’t you have a look?”
The eyeballs inside the white skull begin to scan from side to side. As the neck bends forward, they look down at his body.
Surges of fear explode out from Ryzaard’s mind. He stares up at her again, his bare eyeballs a fitting symbol of raw terror.
What have you done to me?
“You came here nearly dead and asking for help. I’ve done exactly what needed to be done.” Jhata rests her hands on her hips. “You were a mess. There wasn’t much left that was worth saving.”
The panic in Ryzaard’s mind fades. After a long moment of silence, he finally understands the gravity and helplessness of his situation. Anger floods his thoughts. His neck straightens, raising a bare skull so his eyes focus on Jhata.
You want my Stones, don’t you?
Jhata can’t suppress a laugh. “I’ve never been one to turn down the offer of more Stones.” She reaches out her hands and rests them on the side of the tank. Its soft surface moves inward, flowing past and between her fingers. “But I agree with you. You’re more valuable to me alive than dead. For now. That’s why I didn’t kill you the moment I saw you.”
