“Breakfast” meant reconstituted black market MREs that would make a dog think twice. “What’s with this slop?” Kyoya grumbled, setting the tray on the lumpy, hard mattress. “One night for a hundred credits and this is how you treat your guests?”
He’d crashed at the place the night before, after duking it out with the Sorcerer. It’d been the only hotel open. He’d only woken up a few minutes before. That he didn’t feel any of the wear and tear was only thanks to his youth.
“Don’t like it, don’t eat it, all the same to me. I’m sure somebody else here would like seconds. It still goes on the bill.” He went to pick it up again.
“Got it. Damned Scrooge.” Kyoya snatched the tray back from him. He should have packed his own. This was Shinjuku, after all.
“Yeah, so shut up and eat. Some kid comes flying in here at the crack of dawn, takes the best room I got, and sleeps practically till noon—you can keep the bitching and moaning to yourself. It’s past eleven, you know. You should be grateful I even took your money in the first place.”
“Got it, okay? Anyway, what the hell is that?” Munching on some stale synthetic protein wafers, Kyoya nodded his chin at the window.
Six feet outside the window, the thing floated in the air. It had an oval shape and was about five yards wide, and was the color of the sunset. It had depth as well as width, and the red tint grew more intense deeper in. The surrounding edges trembled all over. The combination really did bring to mind the image of a ravenous mouth.
“No idea.” The owner shook his bald head. “It’s been there since the Devil Quake. According to the professors, it’s twisting space caused by the energy of the Devil Quake. A pan-dimensional void, whatever that is. It’ll swallow up whatever you throw at it. Everybody calls it the coin purse. Leave it alone and it don’t do nothing. Nothing to worry about.”
“Well, it’s weirding me out,” said Kyoya, glaring at the dusky red lips. “Glad it didn’t eat me while I was sleeping. Whatever. You bring me what I asked for?”
“Here you go.” The owner tossed the map of Shinjuku onto the bed. “There’s a needle and thread on the tray. Comes to two hundred credits.”
“Put it on my tab,” Kyoya said, untangling the needle and the strong polymer thread. “I’ll pay when I check out.”
That morning when he woke up, he’d discovered that the cuffs of his trainer jacket were shredded. The Sorcerer must have done the damage the night before with his Devil Sword. Luckily, he’d missed his arms.
“Fine with me,” the owner nodded courteously. Then he smiled more cunningly. “That map is from before the Devil Quake. A lot’s the same, but buildings have collapsed and streets are blocked. There are bound to be plenty of errors in the fine details. And there’s no way to grasp the feel of the streets just from the map alone. I got no other guests for now and nothing on my plate, so how about a guided tour? Thirty credits an hour.”
“Greedy bastard,” Kyoya steamed as he got to his feet. “Trying to turn a profit every chance you get. Weren’t you just threatening to give away my breakfast?” But he bridled his temper. He didn’t have any time to spare ferreting out the Sorcerer’s hideout, not to mention wandering around asking strangers for directions. Stirring the pot in the wrong part of town could prove deadly.
Time may be money, but money wouldn’t buy back the lost time.
The owner read the look on his face and said with a mean little laugh, “Heh. I appreciate it. So where do you want to go?”
He dragged a rickety old stool from a corner of the room and sat down across from Kyoya. The room was a good fifteen by twenty feet, but contained almost no furniture.
“First of all, where is this hotel located?”
The owner pointed at a spot on the big map.
“What? Waseda University College of Engineering? So this used to be a school, eh? I thought it was a little odd, big rooms with nothing in ’em. And you got two entrances and exits, no shower or sink. A classroom, then.” Kyoya shrugged. “Next, where exactly is the most dangerous part of town?”
He didn’t come right out and ask about where the monsters and zombies liked to hang out. On the other hand, beating around the bush was a pain.
“That’d be Kabuki-cho.” The owner added with a funny grin, “Naw, that’d probably be here.”
He planted his finger on one block in the heart of Shinjuku, labeled “New City Center.” Kyoya was familiar with it. Several hundred yards from the west entrance to Shinjuku station was, first and foremost, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Complex, followed by the Keio Plaza Hotel, the Mitsui Building, the Sumitomo Building, a forest of skyscrapers all over forty stories and three hundred feet high.
And behind them, the expansive two hundred acres of Shinjuku’s Chuo Park.
The buildings had survived the Devil Quake, which had the contradictory effect of accentuating all the fears associated with the “big one.”
“Why here? The monsters come out at night?” Kyoya asked in as leading a manner as he could muster.
The owner shook his head. “Dunno. Only that anybody who goes in here don’t come out again. Five years ago, twenty damned-strong esper yakuzas and an android bodyguard armed to the teeth went in there on an expedition. Since then, nobody’s set foot anywhere near the place. It’s surrounded by a fence to keep interlopers away, but now and then some idiot sightseer ignores it and is never seen or heard from again.”
“Dead, or something else?” Kyoya drew his forefinger across his neck.
“Hard to tell. There are those who say that on foggy nights you can hear the weeping and wailing of dozens, and see bunches of white shadows wandering around in rags. Yeah, and now and then, a loud sound like from one of those big Harleys.”
“A motorcycle? Anything sporting such an old-fashioned engine should have been carted off to the scrap heap a decade ago.”
“Don’t make any sense to me, neither. Stories and rumors, you know.”
Kyoya cocked his head to the side. It sounded like the perfect place for the Sorcerer and his ilk to hide, but this bike business had him stumped. Well, he’d figure it out when he saw it for himself.
“What about around Kabuki-cho?”
“Outlaw territory. It’s where the scrapped space cyborgs, black market espers, gangbangers and other ne’er-do-wells hang out. With all the ruins and mountains of rubbish, there are plenty of places to hide. When it comes to the shops and money exchanges, it’s share and share alike, even among rivals. You can have the blackest heart, but if you got money, you can live easy.”
“And if you don’t?”
“Then say your goodbyes and boogie on back to the safety zones.” The owner traced the red borders of Shinjuku Ward with his finger. “From the Ochiai region to West Waseda, Yamabukicho—here is where the law-abiding types congregate. Road kill for the criminal vultures. Those cyborgs and androids have to keep their nuclear batteries charged. Don’t matter much if you got possessed by one of those Martian parasites, you still got to put food in your mouth. Though lately those in the safety zones have been arming themselves but good, so it’s not the easy pickings it used to be.”
He thought about it for a moment and added, “If you’re looking for a big score, take a trip to the outside world. You got types here that could trash a commando police armored vehicle with one hand, that could pass through the vault walls of the Bank of Tokyo using osmosis, could turn themselves into the character in a painting and steal into any art museum—tricks like that are a piece of cake to them. Could start a small war if they all freaked out together. Is it true there are pols out there thinking of arming the opposing sides with tactical nukes, that whole mutually-assured destruction thing?”
Kyoya shrugged in a way that said he didn’t know. He had expected as much. A city where folks like them prowled the streets was a good excuse to be somewhere else. But he had to venture forth.
“The Yotsuya neighborhood—Samoncho, Sugacho, Daikyocho—what about them?”
“Condos for monsters, eh. That’s Shinjuku for you.”
Kyoya scratched his head. The options at this juncture were entirely unclear. As strange as New City Center and Kabuki-cho sounded, it seemed like pretty much anywhere else in this city could boast the same. He hardly knew where to begin.
“Might as well head toward Kabuki-cho. What’s the best route?”
The owner again planted his finger on the map and grinned. “If you follow this map, you’ll end up at the Shin-Okubo market in twenty minutes. You can catch a taxi there. But watch your step. It’s not as bad as Kabuki-cho, but shady types congregate there. A couple of street gangs are fighting for control of the market turf. There’s no telling when it will break out into all-out war.”
“Lunar Colony earthlight cultured mushrooms. Good for whatever ails you. First come, first served.”
“All-natural beef, straight off the boat from Australia. The real thing. Look, you can see the blood. Put some pep in an old man’s step.”
“A thousand cases of macromolecule mineral drinks, FDA approved. Thirty percent off. A bargain!”
The energetic voices of the pitch men spilled across the market occupying the grounds of the old JR Shin-Okubo station plaza. There were dozens of markets in Shinjuku, large and small. The ones in Wakamatsu in the middle of the ward and in the northwest on the high street in Nakaochiai were particularly big and varied in their offerings. But they paled in comparison to here.
The rubble left behind by the buildings brought down by the Devil Quake had been cleared away. Garishly painted prefab shops were packed into a three-hundred yard arc around the original station plaza. Along the narrow streets radiating outwards, “normal” folk mingled and jostled alongside criminals, “fallen” men and women, cyborgs and espers, making for an impressive spectacle.
In a single day, the market cleared up to two thousand tons of merchandise. A good half of the hundred thousand some-odd residents of Shinjuku Ward—Demon City—owed their existence to this market.
“Dardick M7 heater, fresh off a Federation Space Forces surplus sale. Five round magazine. Two thousand credits.”
“Corrosive type-13 guns. Can reduce a mobile police search-and-destroy robot to scrap. Ten thousand credits.”
Damned dangerous items advertised by barkers with no inclination to adopt a more subtle sales spiel. That was hardly the end of it. Rusty old laser weapons, high pressure “whirlwind” scythes that could slice through steel as well as flesh and bone. Tornado “weather bombs” as big as a man’s thumb that sucked up everything within a quarter mile.
If security officials from the outside world could observe what was going on, they’d be lining up shoulder to shoulder and crowding into the tiny shops like dogs after fresh meat.
And not just the established shops. In the shadows, dealers with grim expressions waited for moneyed prospects to walk by. They’d softly sidle up to a client and whisper, “The latest Jekyll and Hyde morphing drugs, bargain-basement prices, ninety-nine percent pure. Take the wimpiest coward who wouldn’t hurt a fly, and he’ll kill every one out of ten—out of five—people he met without raising an eyebrow. A shot from a magnum rifle wouldn’t scratch ’em when they’re fully dosed.”
Such activities were little different than dealings in the narcotics trade. And, legally speaking, no different than the business of mercenaries and contract killers that was conducted away from the station, over towards Meiji Avenue in the direction of the former Zenryuji Temple, where an impressive exhibition could be found.
A “murmuring mosquito” could be programmed to steal into the ear of a victim and transmit an autosuggestion loop into the brain on high frequency waves, leading to an apparently impulsive suicide. Depending on how deeply embedded the thought was, murders could be carried out in almost undetectable ways.
Convince a man walking down the sidewalk—for example—that he was on the roof of a tall building. Told to throw himself off, the victim would fall a few feet onto the ground, and yet would die instantly. A subsequent autopsy would reveal the kind of internal damage that only came after falling from a great height.
Other devices and specialized drugs were for sale there, including those that triggered mutations at the cellular level and caused the imbiber to exhibit the characteristics of a tiger or wolf or eagle.
Coat the walls of a room or home with “inorganic appetite accelerator” paint, and the building would literally consume its inhabitants. Stab a victim with a “time delay” knife, and the effects would not manifest themselves until several hours later.
While buyers and sellers conversed conspiratorially together, the loud hustle and bustle on the street went on uninterrupted. A few stalls over, someone shouted, “Thief!” Guns were grabbed, laser light flashed, and a snatch and grab cyborg burst into flames. A hearse showed up a few minutes later, seized the still-smoldering corpse with a remote control arm and hauled it off to a special-purpose crematorium.
The briefly-interrupted flow of human traffic went back to normal as if nothing had happened. Perhaps this one street symbolized the nature of Demon City better than any other.
Sayaka Rama headed down a street like that one, away from the station and towards Meiji Avenue, about the time that Kyoya woke up.
As the demon sprites were not accompanying her, it might seem at first that she had escaped. But no. Her pretty face was as devoid of human emotion as a doll. She walked in a similarly stiff manner. A passerby who glanced down at her feet would surely look twice and run away.
For the slender shadow falling on the ground was not actually connected to her. It was walking along by itself a good foot behind her.
When Sayaka stumbled, so did the shadow. But it quickly found its footing and kept on going. And Sayaka herself straightened in a peculiar manner, as if yanked to her feet by invisible strings, walking along in fits and starts like a toy soldier.
The shadow controlled the body that cast it. “Shadowmancy,” it was called.
“Hold on a second, little lady.”
In another twenty yards, the street intersected with Meiji Avenue. A number of silhouettes stood in her way blocking the path. One of them was considerably more massive than the rest, wearing silvery Space Forces combat fatigues, and filling every spare inch of it. A woman.
Yoshiko Kokonoe, boss of the “Hippopotamus Group,” one the gangs aiming for control of the street markets.
She had a puffy face like a muffin, slathered with rouge—though it looked more like paint splashed across the side of a barn—narrow eyes, a mouth bent into a frown, and a bent disposition to match. Her heft and girth notwithstanding, it was said she preferred a good fight and a side helping of torture over any meal.
She was the kind of creature mothers warned their children about when they disobeyed. Certainly no child would venture within screaming distance of her. This woman might well symbolize Demon City’s criminal element better than any other.
Sensing that Sayaka was the polar opposite of everything she represented, she went out of her way to pick a fight with her. Sayaka was the personification of the festering itch that every yakuza was born to scratch.
“Well, miss, you’re certainly not from around here. What are you doing here? Spying on us? And let me remind you, if I don’t get a straight answer, it won
’t be pretty.”
A frame the size of a small mountain backed up her threats, but Sayaka just stood there with blank eyes. The separation of her body and shadow had left her true self in a trance-like state, making her nothing more than a marionette manipulated by the commands of the shadow itself.
Thinking she was being ignored, Yoshiko filled with a terrifying light. “Hoh. A plain Jane like me isn’t worth talking to, eh? God gives a girl a nice-looking face and suddenly she’s too good for the rest of us? Maybe I’d like a piece of that face too.”
They whisked Sayaka away to a large room in the ruins. Shipping containers and heaps of cardboard boxes were piled up on the concrete floor. Ten yards further on, water pipes and faucets poked haphazardly out of the floor. It had once been part of a distribution warehouse.
“Bitch!” Yoshiko barked, and went to smack Sayaka across the face. With two hundred pounds of weight behind it, the blow would have sent a normal man flying and broken his jaw to boot.
Sayaka pivoted her lithe body out of the way and the big mass of fat crashed off balance to the ground. The difference in speed and agility between them was like a hippo charging a doe.
“Ow, dammit!” Yoshiko got to her feet, a look of mad fury on her face. It had to hurt doubly bad being shown up by an amateur in front of her lackeys. From the yakuza godfather down to the lowliest street punk, they feared nothing more than ridicule.
She roared, “Teach that girl some manners!”
“No need to say so, Boss!” On her command, the hoodlums rushed her, shouting, “Get the bitch!”
They took two steps and sank down into the ground. With a collective scream and a water-like splash, they were swallowed up by the floor. Except the “water” that struck Yoshiko in the face was the color of concrete.
Mingling with the ear-piercing screams was the sound of tearing flesh and crunching bone. Yoshiko’s gaze was drawn toward the faucets. Though no one had turned the spigots, water started pouring out of the pipes, turning from pale pink to blood itself.
Demon City Shinjuku: The Complete Edition Page 10
