Demon City Shinjuku: The Complete Edition

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  “That’s what the rumors say. I haven’t seen it for myself.”

  “Because nobody’s made it back alive, I suspect.” Kyoya fell silent for a minute, then said, “Let’s give Kabuki-cho a pass for the time being. Take us to this DMZ. I’ll get out there.”

  The cabbie jerked the steering wheel and hastily corrected. Even Sayaka looked at him with wide eyes.

  “Don’t be a fool, kid. I don’t care how much you pay me, I ain’t locking up the little lady in a place like that. And let’s get this straight too—stiff me and I’ll haul your ass straight back to your ma and pa.”

  “Sorry, but we’re putting the kidnapping on hold for now. The treasure hunt takes priority.”

  “Just a second!” the cabbie exclaimed.

  “Take it easy. I’m not that stupid.” Kyoya pointed at Sayaka and said, “Take her outside Shinjuku, any police station will do. You can expect a more than generous tip from the Federation government.”

  “You don’t say?” the cabbie said, clearly impressed. “So out there, I can return the kidnapped lady and collect a reward. I like that idea a lot better.”

  But Sayaka said, rather like a whiny child, “Don’t go deciding things for me. I don’t want to.”

  “I got no time to argue. Those monsters shouldn’t follow you outside Shinjuku. I will definitely get your shadow back. So sit back, have some tea, relax and wait for me.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t like it. In the first place, why are you going to a dangerous place like that? What do you mean, treasure hunting?”

  Now she was getting irritating. Kyoya hissed, “Don’t you get it? That business in the plaza, to start with. All you did was tie my hands. If those espers hadn’t stepped in, it would have been lights out for both of us!”

  Sayaka hung her head and closed her mouth.

  I’m sorry, Kyoya said in his heart. But you know that those espers lent their power on your behalf. After this, he was heading to a place no lady should go. When it came to the difficult, the dangerous and the dirty, a man had to step up by himself.

  “I understand,” said Sayaka, in a voice almost too soft to be heard.

  The taxi raced down Yasukuni Avenue and turned onto the Oume Highway and stopped in front of endless rows of razor wire. There was a gap in the fencing wide enough for a single person to sneak through. On the other side of the fifteen-foot fence was the old heart of Shinjuku, now the infamous no-man’s-land known as the “DMZ.”

  The forest of skyscrapers, smugly disregarding the architectural carnage all around them, challenged the sky as they had in times gone by.

  Kyoya got out of the taxi. He didn’t look back at Sayaka and instead said to the cabbie, “She’s in your hands. Keep the doors locked so she doesn’t bolt. Oh, and enough with the kidnapping business, okay?”

  “Don’t worry,” the cabbie reassured him with a friendly smile. “Not to boast of my own moral fortitude, but that wasn’t nothing I could pull off on my own.” He stuck out his hand. “I don’t rightly understand it myself, but seems to me you’re risking your life for a good cause. It might not mean much coming from a loser like me, but I’m praying for you, kid. You leave her to me.”

  Kyoya shook the man’s hand, a clasp rough and warm. Sayaka pressed her face against the window glass as the taxi sped off.

  He turned his eyes toward the heavens. Twilight was falling. The shadows of the tall buildings drew dark lines against the rusty red sun, like tombstones rising to meet the young warrior. He briefly cast his mind back to the life he’d left behind in Tokyo, the buoyant faces of Shiratori and Kayama, his high school life where hope sprang eternal.

  As if channeling their thoughts, Kyoya Izayoi said to himself: This is one hell of a mess you’ve gotten yourself into. But then he shrugged and walked towards the fence.

  Part Seven

  New York City. Two o’clock in the morning. Only the walls of the hospital adjacent to the World Federation building were clearly visible, brightly lit up by the exterior flood lamps. A flashing dot of red pinpointed an ambulance approaching the main entrance.

  The same time Kyoya stepped into the DMZ.

  The job of this ambulance was to bear the wounded or the dead from the scene of an accident to the Center for Regenerative Medicine, sealed in a resuscitation unit that kept only the brain alive. The World Federal hospital could rightly boast of the most advanced facilities in the world.

  The vehicle stopped short of the ambulance bay. The roof over the resuscitation unit opened up like a pair of hinged doors, revealing a four-tube rocket launcher. Just as hospital personnel raced out to remove the resuscitation unit, they fired simultaneously.

  And disappeared into a corner of the secure wing of the hospital — hidden from outside view — Kozumi Rama’s room. The air shook. The entire wing was consumed by a hellish dance of fire.

  Before the security cyborgs and esper guards arrived, the ambulance had sped off. It was discovered the next day in an alley in the South Bronx, though the perpetrators were nowhere to be found.

  It appeared that a commando squad from a certain country opposed to the president’s policies had staged an accident, called an ambulance and then commandeered it in order to pull off a terrorist act.

  Upon being informed, the terrified Federation High Council immediately commenced rescue operations, though the best they could hope for was recovery of the bodies.

  Except that, while frustrated by the hundreds of tons of concrete rubble, the hard-working search and rescue teams and medical personnel experienced a miracle.

  “We got a body here! No, wait! He’s alive.”

  “Here too. One—two—three—at least five! I don’t believe it. An explosion like that, not a mark on them!”

  The startled cries filled the courtyard. And then under a big block of concrete they discovered Master Rai, legs crossed in the lotus position, and the president, lying unscathed on the bed. Employing extrasensory abilities imparted by years of yoga training, he had anticipated the missile attack, and in the last moment before impact wrapped his psychic energies around the center of the room, creating the miracle.

  The president was transferred to a gurney and moved to another room. Accompanying him, Master Rai muttered to himself, “This is taking its toll on an old man like me, Kyoya. Two more days. The fate of the world rests on your shoulders.” A minute later he added in ragged tones, “These old bones are feeling the effects of the fireworks. It’s hard to say how much longer I can hold out on this end.”

  The dull sound of a four-cycle gasoline engine shook the stagnant air. Exiting the Sumitomo Building and walking along the empty street, Kyoya stopped and cast his senses out around him.

  These were the mysterious noises the hotel owner told him about. Anybody driving a motorcycle around these parts was unlikely to be an upright and law-abiding type. This was the kind of place where the more heavily armed the better. But Kyoya didn’t have so much as a letter opener on him.

  He was standing on what had once been known as Tenth Street. It ran between the Sumitomo and Mitsui buildings before eventually intersecting with the old Koshu Highway. A hundred feet further on and to his left towered the majestic Keio Plaza Hotel. A dozen yards behind him was a flight of stairs leading to the lower road level. That road crossed beneath Tenth Street at right angles, linking the west entrance of Shinjuku station to Chuo Park.

  He was ten yards from the Sumitomo Building. Before him, the broken facades and shattered glass from the Devil Quake were scattered across the ground. Just for his peace of mind, something here might make a handy weapon; but he was already bummed out a bit and didn’t feel inclined to look for anything.

  He’d climbed to the top of the building for a look around the DMZ to see if he could spot the point where the “coin purse” disgorged its contents. It had proved an utter goose chase. The park was wrapped in haze. He couldn’t see a thing. And nowhere else lingered any evidence of pan-dimensional spaces.

  The soun
d of the engine came closer. A strange noise, going up and down, left and right. It seemed to be coming from everywhere. He was starting to think the thing was alive.

  He concentrated his senses, but couldn’t pin down its location. “Whoa!” he shouted, falling to his knees on the road. A freezing breath—devoid of any physical presence—sank down to the center of his brain. Though his fatigue had something to do with it, it was in any case an extraordinary strong spear of pure malice.

  The lingering resentments of all the people who died here. There was nothing to be gained fighting them.

  As soon as the thought crossed his mind, the source of the roar and the malice contracted. Above! He looked up, toward the roof of the Sumitomo Building, fifty-two stories and seven hundred thirty feet above him. Perched there was the silhouette of a rider astride what looked for all the world like a 750cc motorcycle.

  Kyoya hadn’t been in the DMZ two hours, and the battle was about to begin.

  The rider must have spotted him from the start. He looked a mean son of a bitch. Kyoya didn’t know how he got up there, but he had the feeling he’d be coming back down, and Kyoya didn’t plan on sticking around.

  He changed directions and ran toward the staircase. He wasn’t trying to hide. His instincts told him that there was a time to stand and fight and a time to turn tail and run, and this was clearly the latter. That guy had bad luck written all over him.

  Kyoya hadn’t gone more than a yard when the rider and the bike landed on the ground with a thudding explosive impact, and stood there motionless between him and the stairwell. He’d fallen fifty-two stories and didn’t bounce once. The glistening black machine unleashed an ominous rumble. There was death in its echoes.

  The rider was wearing black leather and his face was hidden behind a racing helmet. It was the pure malevolence radiating from his body that froze Kyoya in his tracks.

  Kyoya raised a hand. “Just a sec. I’m guessing you’re a dead guy with a really big chip on his shoulder. But you just can’t go around attacking people at random. Though from the vibe you’re giving off, I don’t imagine you’re the type to listen to advice.”

  The 750cc engine roared. Kyoya leapt sideways and out of the way. Before the rider could turn the bike around, he vaulted over the wall around the stairwell and landed on the road below. He felt a sharp stab of pain as his knees absorbed the shock, but didn’t hesitate, jumping to his feet and heading toward the Mitsui Building.

  The shocking scene before him brought him to a halt before he could get going. The roadway and sidewalks were strewn with white bones. They’d been run over, crushed, the clothing torn asunder, the remains robbed of any lingering humanity. The fate of people unlucky enough to wander in here unawares. The skeletons of children were there as well.

  Kyoya shook with anger. Damned vengeful ghosts and their grudges. How did anyone with a human heart end up like that?

  A memory from his training on Mt. Daisetsu sparked to life. Coughing up blood, under his father’s verbal lash, day by day he’d experienced the feeling of moving toward a higher mental plane. And behind him, buried in the depths of the human heart, was a black clod of resentment pushing him along.

  You and me both, bud. So who’s the real human here?

  Kyoya sprinted to the left, into the road. A black bolt of lightning skimmed past him. He rolled and came to his feet. His legs hurt like hell. Jumping down from Tenth Street was bad enough. He slumped to his knees. At full strength, he could handle a fall of three hundred feet without a problem, but his nen was slow coming back to full strength.

  The 750cc bike whirled around without losing speed, caromed off the retaining wall alongside the roadway, and came at him straight on. Kyoya didn’t have time to correct his posture. Instead, he tucked himself into a ball, arms over his head, and concentrated all his psychic energy. In the moment that the tires were about to roll over him, he sprang vertically with all his might.

  Kyoya’s loud shout rang down the street. The ghost rider should have sailed over him, done a one-eighty, and landed on his head. Except the rider and bike did another half-turn the moment before contact, kicking his foot against the ground. The same as when he’d fallen from the roof of the building, landing with an eerie kind of gracefulness.

  Even so, perhaps equally startled by Kyoya’s moves, he didn’t continue the attack right away. They faced off less than six feet apart.

  Kyoya felt for the first time in his life that this was a confrontation more than a metaphorical matter of life and death. This was one bad dude. And Kyoya didn’t have the psychic strength left to go another ten rounds with him. He’d have to end it with a single, clinching shot. But use that, and things could get even worse from here on out.

  Such a clinching shot required tapping the spare reserve of nen in Kyoya’s subconscious. He couldn’t control it. All he could do was deliver it all in one blast. After that, he’d be spent for the next twenty-four hours minimum. A literal last shot.

  A weapon sure would come in handy. Kyoya glanced to the side. The machine charged him. He jumped, throwing a kick at the rider’s head. The sideways glance was a bluff.

  But the soles of his feet met only empty air. The rider flipped over his head and with perfect timing landed back on the speeding bike.

  At the same time, Kyoya splayed backwards onto the ground, grunting in pain. During his leap, the rider had flung a hidden chain around Kyoya’s throat, and dragged him along the pavement.

  The back of his trainer ripped open, rubbing the flesh raw. He wrapped his hand around the chain, but couldn’t budge it. Without using his nenpo, there was nothing he could do. Right now, Kyoya possessed the fighting strength of a normal human being.

  The rider spun around, clearly intending to crack the end of this whip against the retaining wall.

  Time to call on his reserves!

  Kyoya’s thoughts were interrupted by an arrow of light. The chain broke apart, sending him tumbling across the ground. He absorbed the blows and turned his attention toward the source of the light beam.

  Standing at the foot of the stairs was Sayaka, her right hand pushed out in front of her. The laser ring on full power melted the chain in two. Considering who was doing the shooting, he wasn’t surprised that she hadn’t aimed at the rider. Though her aim was remarkable.

  The rider turned his attention from Kyoya and accelerated his machine at the new opponent. Sayaka couldn’t press the button on the laser, assaulted by the onrushing tide of malice. Drunk with the joy in slaughter, the monster bore down on her.

  He was practically on top of her when his back bowed, his head flew back, and the bike zipped out from under him, banking to the left for several yards before spinning around uselessly as its innate ferocity drained away.

  “Kyoya-san!”

  Sayaka came back to herself and ran toward him. Observing Kyoya getting to his feet, apparently unharmed, she instead approached the rider. He’d been thrown from his bike. A bone was buried deeply through the black leather covering his back. With her life in the balance, Kyoya had imbued the bone of a nearby victim with his spare nen and flung it at him.

  For the first time, the rider’s voice escaped the confines of the helmet. “Hit the ground and it’s curtains for me. But I cannot die. They won’t let me sleep. I will surely return.”

  Sayaka felt a shiver down her spine, knowing the Sorcerer in his hideout had said the same thing. Nevertheless, she knelt down on the road and laid his head in her lap.

  Kyoya came up to them.

  “Kyoya-san, this man—”

  “Yeah, he’s dead. He died a long time ago.”

  Sayaka nodded. The previous dousing of malice from him told her that much.

  “How did you get away from the taxi?” Kyoya asked under his breath. He wasn’t angry. He’d escaped a certain death thanks to her. If anything, he was too tired to be angry. He could barely manage a hoarse whisper.

  “I had no intent of fleeing to safety by myself. So I melted the
door lock with my laser.”

  Kyoya shrugged. “I feel sorry for the cabbie. Well, water under the bridge. Let’s go.”

  “Wait. We just can’t leave him here.”

  “Hey, show a little discretion when it comes to spreading the love around. Take a look at those bones over there. That guy ran over anybody who came in here. The beast should die the death he dealt to others.” The skeletal remains of the children still lingered in his mind’s eye. “Heaven’s judgment.”

  “And if it was you?” Sayaka quietly fixed her eyes on him.

  Kyoya reconsidered his first retort and smiled wryly. “All right then. Go ahead.” He sat down on the sidewalk.

  With a small smile, Sayaka touched the helmet. It was coated with dark red from the crown of the helmet to the bottom edge.

  “It’s useless,” the rider moaned. “This helmet is stained with the blood of those I ran over and crushed to death. It won’t come off until they release the curse. Their anger burns. Kill him, they say. Drag him down, trample him underfoot—”

  “You are an unlucky man,” Sayaka softly said. “Begrudging others, stealing away their lives, and now cursed by them in turn.”

  Human emotion filled the rider’s voice. “How strange. When they hear your voice, they do not draw near. Stay by my side. Don’t leave me alone—”

  “I’m here. Tell me about it, what is so painful and so sad.”

  The rider explained. The day of the Devil Quake, he’d turned eighteen and could finally have the Kawasaki he dreamed of. He’d worked his fingers to the bone, barely eating even, to save up the money.

  And on that fated night, racing along Tenth Street, the Devil Quake threw him to the street below, crushing his body and snuffing out his life. Astride his beloved bike, the happiest man alive, he could not accept the hand that fate had dealt him and cursed his death.

  Then the haunted miasmas invaded Shinjuku, turning the skyscrapers into an ancient stone circle that in turn triggered more ghostly and occult phenomena. All those with lingering regrets and attachments to the mortal world—vengeful ghosts, the souls of suicides—gathered there in the heart of Shinjuku and began to curse and possess any who ventured there.