by K. T. Tomb
A moment later something else happened that must have been as infuriating for Savannah as it was rewarding for Travis; because as if on cue a small macaque scampered across the gulf between the groups and held his hand out. Travis complied with the silent request, handing a glow stick over. The macaque activated it, and ran away. The largest of the troop were moving away, lit gently in neon as they began their ascent of the mountain.
“Guys, this is the coolest thing I have ever seen.” Ryo was looking at Travis with an expression of wonder.
“Good. Now we just have to find a goddess of death and an amethyst mine, up on a mountain, in the dark. Easy!” Travis laughed as he spoke, and for once it was infectious.
Chapter Twelve
Despite the assistance of their macaque torchbearers the climb up the mountain was unforgiving, and got only ever more so as the light finally faded. Luckily for the adventurers as Travis had not actually made plans for the return trip down the mountain by torch light alone, several of the monkeys evidently got bored of the glow sticks they had and dropped them on the mountain path, where they lay like downed fireflies. There was a subsequent altercation amongst the group as the macaques that had dropped their glow sticks perhaps decided that they did want a glow stick after all, and attempted to purloin their neighbors’ toy. Fortunately Travis had plenty of spares and he was soon in the surreal position of being mobbed by inquisitive primates.
Despite the levity this provided the group of humans, the macaques were far more comfortable moving up the rough terrain than the humans were. The path had led them through beautiful cedar woodlands which were as iridescent in the setting sun as the artificial lights held by the macaques, but as the party climbed ever higher the way became steeper and eventually the trees gave way to bare rock. Winding back along the top of the trees, the macaques led the way for a good hour along a route that humans never trod and Travis, Savannah and Ryo were in constant danger of slipping and falling off the side of the mountain. Despite this perilous journey, the trio kept up with the monkeys at a distance of fifty feet or so. The macaques didn’t seem interested in the humans at all, and Travis thought it was a strange place indeed where these animals had the run of a human town and a mountain both. While the people worked their businesses and fretted over their human concerns, the macaques went where they wished, did what they wished, and stole what they wished. He was pondering as to who was really the dominant species in Nikko, when Ryo attracted his attention.
“Hey look! The lights are going out!”
He was right, Travis saw. The glowing rods of plastic were disappearing, one by one. Ignoring the risks of falling, Travis broke into a run as he saw there were only ten lights left, then five. As the last light went out, he found his progress immediately halted by something taller than he was, and apparently solid stone. As the lights had gone out he was left running at close to top speed up a mountain in the pitch black. Knocked flat on his back after banging his head heavily, he noticed that included with the sharp pain in his forehead was a glaring bright explosion of lights. As he recovered Savannah caught up with him, torch in hand.
“Travis, you fool. Forgot about these, did you?” She waggled the light beam in his eyes.
“Thanks, hey! Stop that. What did I run into?” Ryo helped him to his feet, as Savannah shone the light on the rock that Travis had collided with. The rock turned out to be a worn and faded statue of a woman brandishing a large spear in her left hand. “Huh. Do you reckon this would be Izanami?” Travis rubbed his forehead, and winced at the bump he had given himself.
Savannah ran her fingers over the features of Izanami.
“This statue must be centuries old, look at how worn it is! I wonder why it’s so far up here; no one must have seen this in decades.”
As they examined the statue, falling smoothly back into their scholarly manners of assessment and theorizing, it fell to Ryo to point out the obvious problem that faced them.
“Savannah, look. The statue totally blocks the path up here. And it’s a really long drop. It’s fine to get past if you are a macaque, but we’re much bigger.” The statue did indeed bar the way, Izanami’s spear jutting out over oblivion, her long skirts carved in stone blocked the narrow path almost completely. Travis dared a look over the side of the cliff face, looking down what looked to be a hundred feet or so of mountainside before the tops of the tallest cedar trees lay, hiding the foot of the mountain completely. They weren’t all that far up, but it was still far enough that a fall would not be survivable.
“Screw this.” Travis said. He had not come all this way after being chased by gangsters and climbing a mountain in the dark to be stopped by a statue. He tested his weight against the shaft of the spear, which held him. He would still need to swing out in a parabola to try and end up behind the statue, where if anything from what he could see the path was all but non-existent. As Ryo yelled something about letting him go first, presumably as he was lighter, Travis swung out, gripping the spear with his left hand. For a moment time slowed as his feet felt nothing beneath them but open air and the friction of his palm on the stone burned a few layers of skin away, he even had time to consider that perhaps this was his last and most fatal mistake before his hiking boots landed and skidded. As his feet touched ground he heard Savannah swearing loudly. Leaning out again, this time with feet firmly on the ground, he managed to peek through the gap between Izanami’s arm and body.
“Hey! That was awesome! You should try it!”
Savannah had a face of fury and Travis dropped his smile.
“Travis Monahan, if you survive the trip back, I’m probably going to kill you myself. You didn’t know this statue was secure! You could have died.” Her usually set features betrayed more emotion than Travis had ever seen on her. He guessed she did care after all.
“Relax Sav, it’s Ok. Look at the size of this thing, something that’s nine feet tall and survived this long up here has got to be pretty sturdy, right? I guessed it’d hold me, and it did.”
“You GUESSED? Look, we’ll wait here for you. No, Ryo!” Ryo had voiced his wishes to try the leap of faith over the abyss. “I’m not going back to your family with a dead kid, get it?”
Her voice was a little cracked from anger and emotion. Travis turned on his torch, and looked around him.
“Hey, there’s a cave or something here. I guess this is where the macaques went. I’ll check it out, and I’ll be right back, ok?”
Travis peered into the gloom of the cave entrance, but could see neither macaque nor glow stick.
“I’ll be right back?” Ryo said, “You don’t watch many horror movies, do you?” That’s always what—”
“Ryo, shut up. I don’t want to hear it, Goddess of Death or no. Just come back quickly, OK Travis?”
Savannah had clearly been pushed too far. Travis hoped that by the time he got back, she would have calmed down enough so she wouldn’t push him off the mountain herself.
The cave was fairly-high ceilinged, and on the broadest setting his flashlight filled a good portion of the space with light. Thirty feet or so inside, the cave narrowed to a slender passage, which he had to take on sideways. As he moved through, he could hear the chattering of macaques, and soon he could see a few blobs of slowly fading fluorescent light, some of which were still in motion. The narrowness of the passage prevented him from raising his torch to see, so he was all the way through by the time he could properly see. When he finally did shine some light on the subject, Travis was surprised to find that, for once, he was completely at a loss for words. The secondary chamber in the cave system was filled with macaques, dozens of them of all sizes, and every one of them was glowing a deep purple from reflected light from the torch in Travis’ hand. The walls were encrusted with impossibly deep amethyst, which on closer inspection appeared as far as Travis could tell to be of the same hue as the ring Miya Richards had shown him in Atlanta. If Adam’s assessment of the worth of that ring was correct, there was enough amethyst
in this chamber alone to bankroll several countries, and that was not including the crystals that lay buried deeper in the rock. He took a few pictures on his Smartphone, and crept slowly back to the narrow passage. The last thing he wanted now was to disturb the macaques, who seemed unsure of what to make of the human in their midst. He was sure that his gifts of fruit and toys had garnered him some credit with the primates, but they were literally backed into a corner, and there were several nursing mother macaques in the troupe as well. Not that he knew much about these particular animals, but generally wild animals were best left unmolested if they had babies to protect.
“Thanks guys, I’ll leave you in peace. Don’t eat the glow sticks; they’re probably not good for you.”
The macaques just looked at him in a slightly un-nerving silence as he left the cave.
Chapter Thirteen
Savannah and Ryo had barely believed him when Travis told of what he had found inside the cave. In fact, if he had not had the picture he had taken on his Smartphone it might have been easier for even Travis to think that he had merely hallucinated it. The fact remained that the amethyst mine was very real indeed. At the entrance to the cave he had found gem cutting tools and hooks for climbing harnesses, which told him all he needed to know. He couldn’t yet prove that Kinagawa was lying and he was indeed in possession of the deed to the mine, but he was going to find out, he was sure of it.
The journey back to Nikko was filled with animated conversation, Ryo asking unending questions about the mine, and Savannah on the phone to Thyri trying to figure out their next move. Naturally, Kinagawa was unlikely to volunteer the deed and having once encountered the hired thugs in his employ, a direct confrontation would be ill advised at best and at worst, fatal. Thyri sounded like she was speaking from another planet as her voice came through the mobile phone, which she might as well have been, seeing as it was late afternoon in Sweden at the time, and she was not ramped up on adrenaline like the occupants of the van were.
“I said, be careful. That van is really loud guys; it must be a hundred years old. If what you tell me is totally correct, then breaking in to the Himiko Corporation building is going to be at least a little tricky, what with the magnetic locks you’ve described and all. Even if you get past that without setting off the security system, there’s probably going to be cameras and such, so you won’t have long to find what you need. Not easy if you don’t know where the deed is being kept, don’t you think?”
“Thyri, how do we get past the doors? Everything else is irrelevant if we can’t do that.”
Savannah was much calmer now that Travis had succeeded in not getting himself killed, but there was still some terseness to her voice that kept Travis on edge.
“Ah, we really need Fiona for this one; she’s broken into loads of places. Not much chance of getting hold of her while she’s in jail though. My best guess is to disable the magnetic lock somehow. I don’t know if an even stronger magnet would do the trick without setting off the alarms though,” Thyri said.
Fiona, being the team’s resident environmentalist and petty criminal had managed to get herself incarcerated for one of her stunts protesting animal rights. Travis admired her spirit, which off-set a lot of the annoyance factor of her personality.
“If you want something turned off that’s electronic, you need an EMP,” Ryo said.
At the confused look from the two Americans, he rolled his eyes.
“Come on, don’t you guys watch movies? An electromagnetic pulse. Destroys electronic equipment, boom and they’re done. Gone.”
Travis laughed at the thought of getting schooled in basic science by a thirteen year old.
“And you know how to make one, do you?” he asked the boy.
“Of course not, but I have Google on my phone. No one needs to learn how to do anything anymore, until you need to do it. You guys are real fossils, you know that, right?”
“Hey! I’m thirty- nine.”
Travis was only partly offended. He knew that twenty was a lifetime away when you were a teenager. Thyri said her goodbyes and asked the team to get in touch if there was anything she could do. Ryo quickly got online and looked up the schematics for a rudimentary EMP device; to Travis’ surprise they really weren’t that hard to make. Copper wiring, an iron tube and a flash capacitor from a camera should be enough to create a strong enough pulse to disable the magnetic locks, or so was the theory. The items could be found easily enough in the morning, which left the only problem being how to find the deed in time to escape once they were inside the building. Travis estimated that they would only have five minutes at the most before security arrived, and that was if there was no on-site security, or wannabe yakuza thugs patrolling the premises. It was Ryo who again had the answer. Despite their best efforts to come up with an alternative which took the entire remaining journey to Tochigi, Travis and Savannah had to admit Ryo’s was the best plan, despite the massive risk he would be taking. That night, they slept on the futons in the Iwate house, waking early to begin the preparations for the raid on the Himiko Corporation.
First thing in the morning, Ryo went out to buy the items for the EMP and to procure some fresh clothes for Savannah and Travis. They were sure that the hotel rooms were being watched by thugs, so it was decided not to expose themselves unless absolutely necessary. Savannah got right to work building the EMP, which left Travis with nothing to do but help Mr. and Mrs. Iwate clean the house, which was cause for lots of interpretation from Savannah who quickly began to show her annoyance at being forced into multitasking.
Ryo left them at ten in the morning, back in his favorite baseball cap and wearing an apron he had swiped from the local flower shop. A large plant took up both of his arms as he took the short walk from the market district to where the offices of the Himiko Corporation were. On entry, despite his knees feeling like they were going to fall out from under him and completely give the game away, the pretty receptionist welcomed him with a warm smile.
“Delivery for Mr. Kinagawa, I’m supposed to put it on the first floor.”
He nodded to the plant in his arms.
“Oh, you strong boy!” said the receptionist. “Go on up, it’s ok.”
Ryo felt there were few advantages to being thirteen, but not being suspected as being up to no good, when you were clearly just working for your parents, was definitely one of them, especially when being up to no good was your main order of business for the day. Ryo made his way upstairs, and due to the relatively compact nature of the building he found a room marked “records” on a brass plaque in fine engraved kanji. He put the plant down, and tried the door, which was locked, as he had expected. The information was the important thing, he could now tell Savannah and Travis. He was about to dump the plant in the corridor and make his escape, when a firm hand took hold of his shoulder. Turning, Ryo came face to face with the man who had destroyed his family. Kinagawa looked down on the boy, and saw the fire of anger in his eyes, but fortunately for Ryo he did not recognize his features as being of the Namarisawa’s genetic pool. Kanagawa took off Ryo’s hat, and ruffled his hair in a very rude and patronizing manner.
“Hello, young man. I don’t recall ordering any plants for these offices. Why are you here?” Kanagawa’s voice was perfectly level, but Ryo felt menace in the words nonetheless.
“It’s a… a gift, from my parents. Yoshimoto Flowers? It’s the anniversary of the shop opening, so I’m taking plants to all the businesses in the area. It is our honor to be in the patronage of such fine businesses such as yours.”
Ryo did not feel confident that Kanagawa bought his lie at all, but he let him go without another word, and with a wave of his hand directed him to place the plant in the office which unbeknownst to Ryo, Savannah and Travis had had their own encounter with the head of the Himiko Corporation. Deciding that he had pushed his luck far enough, Ryo dumped the plant on the table and fled the offices as fast as he could carry himself without breaking into a flat out run.
Chapter Fourteen
Travis heard Ryo’s report of the reconnaissance mission with great interest. The more news he heard about this Kinagawa, the less he liked the man and the more he was sure that Kinagawa was in possession of the deed to the amethyst mine in Nikko. Savannah had completed her basic construction of the device according to the instructions obtained online, and as darkness fell it was time to put phase two into action. Feeling as if he were one part James Bond and one part school truant, Travis zipped up the heavy combat jacket Ryo had purchased for him that morning.
“You sure this will work, Ryo?” He said, adjusting his collar. Ryo was typing rapidly into his laptop.
“Sure, just don’t get fried by the EMP, or killed by the yakuza, or arrested. At least not until we have what we need, right?”
Travis appreciated the black humor from one so young. This kid was alright in his book, precocious though he may be.
“Or intercepted before we get to the building,” Travis shot back, with a grin.
Ryo cottoned on to the game.
“Or, run over by a monster truck. Or eaten by Godzilla! Or shot by—”
Savannah silenced him with a sour look, and his face fell back to the bright glare of his laptop screen. Savannah was dressed similarly to Travis, dark blue combat jacket, tough boots and thick trousers. Ryo had perhaps gone a little overboard on the special ops theme of the wardrobe, but Travis had to admit that they looked the part, even if they didn’t quite feel the part. In silence, having run over the plans for most of the day, the two adventurers left the Iwate household. The streets were misty and almost deserted, which was ideal for the felonies Travis and Savannah had in mind to commit. Once outside the Himiko office, Savannah broke the silence, but only with whispered instructions.
“Okay Travis, you had better stand back, you don’t want to get burnt with this thing.” She held up the crude EMP device, and then held the iron rod over the glass doors which were held by the magnetic lock. She turned on the flash capacitor, and there was a barely audible popping noise.
