Purgatory Strider

by Shiden Kanzaki

“Uh-huh.”

  “Boy, you must be raking it in.”

  He meant to chide her with that, but Miori just brought a kimono sleeve up to her mouth and gave him a graceful titter. “We do,” she said. “Our weapons make us a lot of profit, and—sad to say—they’ll probably continue to do so for a while to come. It’s a dangerous world out there.”

  “It doesn’t bug you at all?” he asked. “Making weapons meant for killing people, and stuff?”

  “Well, we sell bulletproof gear and armored vehicles for dealing with that, too, so…”

  “Making the problem, then selling the solution, huh?” Rentaro muttered. Or he would have, had he not quashed the sentiment right before it tried to escape his lips. He was hardly one to talk. He was armed at nearly all times, theoretically so he could engage Gastrea at a moment’s notice, and he even had explosive charges installed within his body. Whether he resented Shiba Heavy Weapons or not, he was practically the culmination of their labor.

  The car entered the parking lot, rolling up to what looked like a security checkpoint. The guard glared at first, suspicious of these late-night visitors, but when he saw Miori’s smiling face emerge from beneath the tinted glass, things changed quickly. “Oh, pardon me, ma’am!” he said, standing at attention. “You can go on ahead.”

  As they pressed on to Shiba premises, Rentaro realized that his mouth had gone slightly agape. In front of the entrance, there was a team of security guards that—between their Shiba-labeled, full-body combat gear and the assault rifles in their hands—looked like they belonged to some special-forces team. Maybe a paramilitary force, even. And judging by the way they patrolled in tandem, Rentaro observed, they were clearly well-trained.

  “Odd how the security’s a lot tighter here than at your house.”

  Miori gave off a bewitching smile, as if Rentaro had just complimented her. “I told you, it’s a dangerous world out there. If anything ever happens, they’re trained to suppress Gastrea in place of the police or civsecs. It’s all Shiba equipment from head to toe, too, so it makes for good advertising.”

  “Huh,” Rentaro said as he steered the car past them. Now that he was closer, he could see that what he thought were bulletproof vests were actually state-of-the-art Shiba combat exoskeletons, protecting body joints while boosting overall muscular strength about 80 percent. They were among the best of their kind, posting astonishing anti–shock wave and anti-penetration results in testing.

  Rentaro had seen them in a catalog once, then briskly closed it shut when he saw how many zeroes were in the prices. But as he heard it, being part of the Shiba Heavy Weapons family would pretty much grant him the keys to the vault when it came to access. It made him a tad jealous.

  Miori gauged his response, her eyes slitted and curious.

  “Y’know, Satomi dear, do you think you could beat those guys if you really felt like it?”

  Rentaro silently shook his head. Being attacked by a squad of well-trained, heavily armed troopers like these… He wouldn’t last long.

  Now the car approached the entrance to the main building. Miori got out, sporting all the grace of an actress at the Oscars. Rentaro, similarly sporting his gloves and sunglasses, followed suit, as did Hotaru.

  The lobby entrance was completely glass-lined, and the security guards inside quickened Rentaro’s pulse. Miori may have agreed to help him, but that didn’t mean everyone at Shiba from the mailroom on up was his friend now. The guard quizzically sized up Rentaro and his party, which made Rentaro’s heart beat even faster.

  “Good evening, Miori. What brings you here this late?”

  “Oh, you know, this and that. Do y’know if anyone’s left in the analysis lab down on the third basement floor?”

  The man at the front desk took a moment to check his display-mounted glasses. “No,” he replied, “they’re all gone for the night.”

  “Okay, well, we’ll be down there for just a sec. These are my friends. Thanks!”

  With a delicate wave of her hand, she pressed on. Rentaro and Hotaru solemnly followed, feeling eyes on their backs as they boarded the elevator and pushed the B3 button. As the doors closed, Rentaro heaved a stress-relieving sigh and removed his disguise gear.

  “You think they recognized me?”

  “I dunno,” Miori sneered playfully, “but I don’t think sunglasses at night ever give off too friendly a vibe, you know?”

  Hotaru looked up. “Your family doesn’t say anything about you visiting the office late-night, Miori?”

  “Ooh, you called me by my first name and everything,” Miori sarcastically replied before putting her fist against her chest. “Nothing to worry about there, though. I get into all kinds of naughty stuff. One time, I came here at like two in the morning and took out blueprints for guns and stuff.”

  With a beep, the elevator opened. Ahead was total darkness. It was a bit humid, suggesting the central air was off. The echoing of their footsteps told Rentaro that the ceiling was pretty high.

  “Anyway,” Miori said as she ran a pass through a nearby magnetic reader, “welcome, my dear Satomi.”

  Suddenly, the room was flooded with bright light, forcing Rentaro to shield his eyes and squint. Lights activated one by one across the floor, and only when they were all on did Rentaro realize the sheer enormity of the place. It looked every bit like an experimental laboratory, complete with rooms walled by reinforced see-through glass. Beakers, flasks, and a motley array of other lab tools lined the visible desks. Rentaro recognized what the centrifuges looked like, at least, but there was no telling what the giant plastic box one row down was. A DNA sequencer, maybe?

  Miori had shown Rentaro around her company’s gun manufacturing facility once—a very factorylike atmosphere. This, on the other hand, looked clean, refined, and—for lack of a better term—like the future.

  “Can I have the sample you need analyzed, please?”

  “You’re gonna do it? Can you do that?”

  She responded by taking another fan out from her kimono, this one iron-ribbed. Spreading it wide, she batted it at herself proudly.

  “Well, ask a silly question! There’s no machine in this entire building I can’t use.”

  Rentaro, honestly astonished, took the film case with the Gastrea tissue sample out of his pocket and tossed it to Miori.

  “Thanks.”

  “You got it,” Miori replied with an endearing wink before turning her back to them and padding away in her sandals. Watching her go, Rentaro whispered another Thanks to her in his mind.

  6

  “What?!”

  The blanket flew off his body as he rose, causing some of the other detectives to give him questioning stares. Inspector Shigetoku Tadashima paid them no mind as he pressed his phone against his ear. On the other end of the line, he could hear Yoshikawa, one of his detectives, blabber into the phone, his obvious excitement causing his tongue to trip over itself.

  “I said Miori Shiba, daughter of the president of Shiba Heavy Weapons, has gone missing. I was staking out the front gate, and the limousine she always uses came out the exit. I tailed it. It stopped in front of Magata High School, where she goes for class. So I waited for a while, but no Miori came out. I took a peek into the limo’s interior, and that’s when I realized someone pulled the wool over my eyes. Then I—”

  Tadashima ended the call before his coworker could finish, grabbed his jacket from the desk corner it was slumped over, and leapt out of the station’s nap room, putting his jacket on as he stormed down the hall.

  It had to be Rentaro Satomi. But what was he doing, taking the president’s daughter with him? Unless they knew why, searching the city would be fruitless…

  “Hey, wait a minute, please!”

  Turning toward the strained voice behind him, he found a square-shouldered female officer approaching him, standing tall as she inserted herself between Tadashima and the exit ahead.

  “How long have you gone without any sleep, sir? You should really take a l
onger break first.”

  “The suspect’s not gonna wait until I’m done napping!”

  “You’re going to wreck your health! You aren’t that young anymore.”

  “If this is all it takes to wreck my health, I’m not cut out to be a detective, anyway!”

  He tried to push off the officer, already taken aback by his threatening tone, when something occurred to him. He took a closer look at her face.

  “Hey, Shiba Heavy Weapons helps the force out a lot, too, right?”

  The inspector’s sudden question further surprised the newcomer. “Y-yes,” she managed to reply, rubbing her chin as she thought it over. “They supply us with weaponry; they take on some of the criminal-science work for us…ballistics analysis, blood testing, DNA… That’s all part of their work—”

  “That’s it!”

  “Huh?”

  “Great. Good job, Officer! The Shiba Heavy Weapons HQ building. Get me as much backup as we got available. I’m going on ahead.”

  Tadashima provided as much appreciation as he could for the glassy-eyed officer, then spun in place and flew out of Magata Station.

  Rentaro Satomi and his gang, for whatever reason, had their sights on a truck loaded with Gastrea. Whatever they picked up from that, they had to be analyzing it somewhere. Which made the theory that they were running around with some kind of concrete goal in mind seem even more plausible for him now.

  Tadashima turned the key in his vehicle, then pushed down as hard as he could on the accelerator.

  Test fluid flowed through a lab-room flask as Miori expertly operated the analysis machine. Watching off to the side, Rentaro realized his amateur knowledge gave him no clue how far along in the process she was. He didn’t have much else to do, so he headed for the stairway, figuring he might as well gain an understanding of the building’s setup while he was there.

  Checking the position of the emergency exits, he opened the metal door and started climbing the dimly lit stairwell. The rhythmic tapping of his soles against the flat stone helped energize his thought process.

  He had already been targeted once by Hummingbird. The hideout they took such great pains to keep safe was now discovered. The enemy, whoever it was, was damn talented at sniffing him out. For all he knew, their gnarled hands were circling themselves around his neck at this very minute—

  This is stupid.

  Shaking off his paranoid delusions, he examined the plate on the wall and realized he was on the first floor. He decided to turn around, not wanting to run into those security guards again—and just as he did, he stopped at what sounded like an explosion.

  A gunshot. A sound familiar enough to understand immediately.

  Cold metal hit his ear as he placed it against the emergency-exit door. Another gunshot from the other side. This time, he could tell it was a small-caliber, high-speed round. That pretty much IDed the culprit. An assault rifle.

  The gunshots continued off and on, followed by the sound of glass shattering. Then the sounds of scuffling, interspersed with screaming. Then, complete silence.

  His palms coated with sweat, Rentaro slowly, soundlessly, cracked open the door. The thick stench of blood through it made his body shiver. Summoning up his resolve, he opened it all the way—only to groan at what he saw.

  “What the hell…?”

  The first thing Rentaro could see was a security soldier slumped on the ground, as if taking a quick siesta. But some manner of bladed weapon had cut a deep gash in his neck, the initial spray from which was now exhibited in all its horrific glory on a nearby modern-art canvas.

  The lobby’s chairs and desks were upturned. There was evidence of corpses being dragged around, as well as spent casings and the like. That, and a wide selection of dead security, the number of which would’ve taken a conscious effort to count. Some had their necks snapped by force, their legs bent in unnatural directions. Others had one or more limbs amputated.

  The lights had been knocked out on this floor, except for a night-light on a lone counter, creating a sort of spotlight effect on the front-desk attendant.

  His back was turned to Rentaro. Looking closer, there was a puddle of dark liquid at his feet, as if he had just had an accident.

  Rentaro sidled around, Beretta in hand, toward the chair. The man was staring straight up, his neck slashed from ear to ear. His wide-open eyes were frozen for all time in a gaze of terror.

  He checked for a pulse. No dice.

  “Good God…”

  Something like twenty security guards, and they were annihilated?

  Rentaro’s throat was dry. He tried to swallow his nerves, trying to keep his head on straight. Then he heard another scream from afar, mixed in with rifle fire. Looking toward the front lawn spread out across the Shiba Heavy Weapons entrance, he saw a lone surviving guard swinging his rifle around, firing blindly. Shell shock, no doubt.

  “Hey!”

  The guard took notice, unfortunately.

  “Eeeyaaahh!!” he shouted as he turned the gun on him. Rentaro ducked under the front desk and covered his ears.

  He didn’t have to wait long. The glass covering the entrance shattered, as did the lone light fixture still illuminating the lobby. The darkness grew thicker.

  “Hold your fire! I’m friendly!”

  He risked waving his hand above the desk. Nothing. Then he looked up. The shooter, finally coming to his senses, ran up to him.

  “H-help! Help me!”

  “What happened?”

  The guard had both hands latched on to his headgear, clearly in pain.

  “I don’t know! I looked at my buddy and he was hanging in midair. His, his head was stabbed. There was blood spraying everywhere. And then I just… I have no idea.”

  “What the hell’s that mean…?!” Rentaro shouted.

  “Don’t ask me, man! That’s what I wanna know!”

  Sensing that panic was about to set in again, Rentaro put both hands on the guard’s shoulders to calm him. In his clutches, the guard explained that he found one of his coworkers run through with a knife and with a broken neck in a spot where nobody else was in sight—as if killed by an invisible man.

  It was extremely hard for anyone sane to believe. If it weren’t for the grisly scene laid out before them—the sheer scope of it—Rentaro would have doubted the guard’s current mental state.

  This was that group again. The one pursuing him. They had released their grim reaper yet another time.

  Rentaro had already taken care of Hummingbird, the killer of Kenji Houbara. Which meant there were two left…

  He already knew the sniper Dark Stalker, aka Yuga Mitsugi, had murdered Giichi Ebihara. This assassin still had something up his sleeve, he sensed—but was he the type who could break people’s necks with his bare hands?

  Meanwhile, the killer of Saya Takamura was still at large. Was that person the one behind this?

  “I’m gonna get Miori out of this building. That’s the rear entrance back there, right?”

  The guard made a face like he just realized the existence of the rear gate for the first time. He made a break for it.

  “Whoa! Wait a sec!”

  “Get outta here!” the guard shouted behind his back as he ran. “I can’t spend another minute in this hellhole!”

  Then something Rentaro found hard to believe happened.

  As he ran, from out of thin air, a large knife stabbed through the guard’s exoskeleton and right out the other side. There was a sort of shhkk sound, and then his body was lifted off the ground.

  “Ga…aaa…!”

  Rentaro stood bolt upright as he witnessed the otherworldly spectacle. What on…?

  There was nothing but utterly empty space where the knife had come from. It was like the weapon had leapt up and plunged itself into his chest on its own volition. Did a ghost stab him or something?

  “You…monster…!”

  The guard writhed violently in midair, kicking at his adversary. Then Rentaro spotted it: a
sort of waving of the air, a bit like the noise seen in a poor digital TV signal. The air flickered, and he could see human-shaped visual garbage flicker in and out of sight.

  He was there. Someone had stabbed him after all. A pretty large someone, at that.

  Could this be—?

  Rentaro could think of only one property of physics that could explain this unexplainable sight—and one type of equipment that could make it possible.

  “Optical camo…?”

  Whispering it to himself didn’t make it any easier to believe.

  The ability to bend the light around an object, making it melt into the background. The classic “invisible person,” but something that still went beyond the framework of modern science.

  And did this invisible giant lie in ambush there, waiting for his poor victim to run blindly for the rear exit? This was the man who destroyed all this military tech, the pride of Shiba Heavy Weapons?

  The guard, still aloft, vomited a round of dark blood, then stopped moving. Tossing the body aside, the invisible man—Rentaro sensed—turned his eyes toward him. Murderous intent radiated from the space.

  Rentaro’s breathing grew short and shallow. It was too dangerous to stay there. Using the toe of his shoe, he kicked a rifle on the floor up into his hands, flipping the switch to full-auto mode and firing. It spat out an impressive amount of flash as it sprayed bullets across the wall of a nearby hallway with an ear-piercing roar.

  But it was out of ammo in two seconds. Time to run.

  Rentaro threw down the weapon and went back down the way he came, half running, half lunging for the stairwell. At the bottom, he tackled the B3 door open.

  Hotaru and Miori, looking at a piece of paper, turned to him.

  “Satomi, we’ve got the analysis results.”

  “The enemy’s here,” he panted. “It’s bad.”

  Hotaru narrowed her eyes. “Where?”

  “I don’t know. But we can’t stay here.” Rentaro turned. “Miori, that VR training space is still two floors down from here, right? I need to use it.”

  “A VR training space?”

  “Yeah,” he replied to Hotaru’s doubtful query. “This, ah, enormous cube-shaped space that we use as a battle simulator. We’ll take the guy on in there.”