Therefore, she would go. As the daughter of the “holy man” in charge of the World Federation, she bore a powerful sense of responsibility more to the fate of the world than to her own father, while possessed of a courage bestowed by her thoughts of him. With these two firmly in hand, she was determined to proceed to the Armageddon in Kyoya’s place.
Kyoya read those intentions and put his foot down firmly. “I’m going. Where’s this secret passageway?”
“And if I chose not to tell you?”
“You won’t enjoy the consequences.”
“And that would be what, precisely?”
“This.”
Kyoya swept his right foot at Mephisto’s legs with a swift, slashing kick. Except it was Kyoya’s eyes that bugged out. Without appearing to budge an inch, Mephisto dodged the attack—or rather, leaned just a hair’s breadth away from the arc traced by his foot.
No matter how powerful the blow, no matter how close it came, a missed kick was no better than a child’s. In the martial arts, properly anticipating an opponent’s skill and range and shifting just out of range was a critical skill. For even the best, it was measured in inches. Mephisto had honed it down to tenths of an inch. Though the wound in his side dampened Kyoya’s reflexes, not even Jubei Yagyu could have evaded that kick.
Kyoya felt a cold trickle of fear down his back. He shifted to a left foot forward stance. He purged the emotion from his face.
“That’s enough,” said Mephisto, his countenance all the more passive. “If you wish to go that badly, then go. There is no cure for foolishness. Leaving the operating room, there will be an elevator in front of you. Take it to the ground level. Goodbye.”
“Hey.”
“Ah, yes. You’re still waking up from the anesthetic. I thought things might turn in this direction, so while your wounds were being treated, the route was implanted in your memories. Concentrate.”
Kyoya dubiously turned his thoughts inward, on the secret way into the Shinjuku station. By then, enough of the drugs had cleared his system that the path rose effortlessly to his mind’s eye.
“I got it,” Kyoya said, with an alacrity that must have taken a little wind out of Mephisto’s sails. He nodded and grabbed Asura. Heading for the door, he said over his shoulder, “Oh, yeah. Two favors to ask. As you seem to be in a helping mood, I’d appreciate you keeping an eye on the girl until three o’clock. If I return before then, fine. If not, make sure she gets back to civilization. Although there’s no saying what will become of this city then. One more thing, that mask you gave me when we first met—would you have a spare? That fat lady and her henchmen will probably still be out for blood.”
“You’re just flying out of here, making demands as you go? You are a presumptuous lad,” Mephisto said with a thin smile. “I shall take the girl under my wing. As for the fat lady, we have come to an agreement.”
“An agreement?” Kyoya said, raising his brows. “Like how? Word is, that bunch has a lot of clout. Anybody who knows her—no, don’t tell me—the two of you are an item?”
“Please.” For the first time Mephisto plainly frowned. “I happened to be in the square when her associates exposed the young lady. After disposing of the so-called fencing master android and bringing you here, I dropped in at their headquarters and retrieved the girl.”
“He’s telling the truth,” Sayaka said with a constrained expression. “He burst in and said that I was a friend of his. And all those bad guys turned a shade paler.”
Kyoya shook his head disbelievingly. “Mephistopheles was definitely one of the bad guys. You wouldn’t be the real thing, perhaps?”
Mephisto said with a blank expression, “In any case, they have promised to leave you alone. That should serve your purposes, no?”
“I suppose. Who the hell are you, anyway?”
“He’s a doctor,” Sayaka interjected. “The reception room upstairs is filled with the sick and the wounded. Every day, this man and his robot assistants work late into the night treating people.”
“Huh,” said Kyoya, admiration mixed with lingering doubts. “You’re really a doctor?”
“I do resemble one. However, I only take the general public as patients. The ruffians are free to kill each other at a whim, but when others get involved in their squabbles, the pitiful results cannot be ignored.”
“Huh,” Kyoya said again. “A humble do-gooder, if you do say so yourself.”
“You are one to cut to the chase.”
“I suppose. It puts my mind at ease. Well, I’m off.”
Kyoya grinned at them. Sayaka, to be sure, but even Mephisto was starting to grow on him. The way he’d easily dodged that kick of his had earned him a lot of points. The way he’d anticipated Kyoya’s next move and implanted the memory of the train station. For either reason or both, Kyoya felt toward him something approaching friendship.
“Kyoya-san.”
Sayaka called out to him in a tearful voice. She still wanted to go with him. For some reason, this was the one fight he’d have to face alone. Their eyes met for a moment. The moment passed. Kyoya turned and without a backwards glance headed through the door.
The door closed behind him. The black-clad young man and the beautiful young woman stood there gazing at the cold steel door. One as impassive as ever. The other containing a thousand emotions in her heart. From then to the end of time.
“The president’s pulse is slowing.” The doctor stared intently at the display of the medical control panel. “His blood pressure is declining rapidly.”
The pensive faces of the Federation High Council and the doctors assembled in the observation room turned as one to the largest of the monitors that showed a full 360 view of the president’s hospital room.
As the president lay on the bed, a look of pain clearly colored his features. His already pale skin now looked almost transparent, which only served to accentuate the “liveliness” of the loathsome handprint on his neck.
“Look.” One of the council members pointed to a close-up of the president’s neck on another monitor. He said in a terrified whisper, “The handprint is moving.”
Ripples ran across the surface of the black stain as three of the fingers reached further around the president’s neck.
“What will the Master do?”
All eyes focused on the white-haired man sitting on the floor in the middle of the hospital room. Since the attack, Master Rai hadn’t left the president’s side, spending the days in fasting and prayer, sitting in the lotus position, hands folded across his abdomen, eyes closed. His countenance betrayed no haggardness or anguish or fretfulness, though it had grown paler.
“Is the president all right?” the vice-president asked.
“I do not know,” said the doctor. “But there is nothing more that we can do. To be honest, the president has persevered until today completely thanks to the Master. Compared to his psychic powers, our ESP treatments have only taken the first step. We have left everything up to him. However—”
“However—what?”
“Though my ESP powers are not strong, I have sensed the Master’s nen waning little by little but inexorably—”
His voice trailed off as well. They all stood in front of the monitors, the silence of death etched on their faces. The Master had also grasped the nature of the president’s accelerating decline, but his psychic powers and his ability to check it were reaching their limits. The missile attack of the day before had weakened him as well.
Time is running out, Kyoya. Two and a half hours. The enemy is conducting the summoning ritual even now.
With a heart like still waters, he called out to the youth so many thousands of miles away. The Master felt the world—if not the universe itself—being wrapped in a strange kind of foreboding.
Closing his eyes and concentrating his nen through silent prayer, the Master could sense the boundary between the mortal world and the Demon World. That boundary was steadily retreating toward the mortal world as the territo
ry of blackness on the other side spread.
Deeper within the darkness, from the space into which the coldness and blood and loathing erupted like an icy geyser, myriads of perverse beings cried in ecstatic joy as they slowly invaded this earthly realm, engaging in a battle between good and evil that only the Master and those with similar powers of thought were aware of.
The mortal world was losing.
The first underground level of Shinjuku station. The “My City” mall above was thoroughly wrecked from the first to the eighth floors. Cracks ran across the ceiling in all directions, but this wide space mostly held its original shape and form, along with the rows of neatly arranged turnstiles, the shuttered shops, the empty ticket booths.
This was a terminal for the municipal subway system and the JR, Keio, and Odakyu commuter lines. Shinjuku station had once been visited by several hundred thousand riders a day. Except for government inspectors examining the damage, no one had come here since the Devil Quake. And then even Shinjuku’s residents forgot about it, leaving the once grand building, they imagined, to slumber peacefully in the quiet dark.
The reality was anything but.
In the decades since the Devil Quake, a fierce sense of will had brewed inside the station. In the dead center of the concourse leading from turnstiles at the east entrance to the west exits was an altar constructed of unknown materials. From the black shadow crouched before it came low but powerful incantations.
Wearing a black mantle, the Sorcerer, Rebi Ra.
The strange surgery was done. But then why would his metaphysical soul be wearing a very real cloak? In any case, there he was, and on the floor next to him was the Devil Sword. Shinjuku station was the true lair of the Sorcerer, the headquarters of the war to transform the rest of the world into a Demon Realm.
Behind the altar, in the concourse leading to the west exits, was an array of flickering lights. Thirteen black candles were arranged in a circle nine feet in diameter. The flames fluttered, but not according to any natural breezes flowing through the station.
In the very center of the circle of candles, a wind erupted out of the hard cold floor and raced through the gloom. Every time the flames trembled, the wind threw off another wave of noxious, sulfurous stench.
The mutant forces transforming the mortal world spread forth from the ground in the center of the circle.
“It’s coming,” said the Sorcerer. “Soon. This night for certain.”
Undergirded by an overwhelming power and ecstatic joy, this was nevertheless a somehow human voice. But different from before.
“No one shall interfere. Kaki—prepare to confront any and all enemies.”
A ball of fire rose up behind the Sorcerer and changed into Kaki wearing a monk’s habit.
“Rest assured, any trespassers will be detected at once. I have cast a web of darkness across every entrance and passageway. Continue your prayers without reserve.”
He spoke more respectfully than before—such was the intensity of the magical might and energy that the Sorcerer now contained within him.
“Where is Suiki?”
“He took the girl’s shadow and went to search for her and the boy. Patience is not that demon’s forte. And now that temper is sweetened with revenge. Imagining the retribution when he finds them makes even my fires turn cold. Assuming that they live—”
“You said that they entered the DMZ?”
“Yes. After escaping Shin-Okubo, using shadowmancy they were trailed there. No matter how strong his nen, the odds of him exiting such a danger zone without his protecting sword are thin.”
“That is certainly true. And yet I cannot help wondering why he deliberately went in there—” As if lost in thought, the Sorcerer left off the rest of the question. Not even he had contemplated that the pan-dimensional void might find an outlet there.
“My state of apprehension has not been quelled. Be on your guard. Now go.”
“Yes.”
Kaki turned back into a ball of fire and disappeared.
“Apprehensions, eh? What do I have to be afraid of? Even combining their forces together, that father and son cannot lay a finger on me now.” His confident laughter seemed to increase the force of the wind, and riding on the magical miasmas shot around the station’s interior. “Two more hours. And then it will all be over. This world will become a second Demon Realm.”
The Sorcerer raised his head. What manner of unearthly face was this—inside the hood swirled his soul like a lingering mist and deeper in was the “face”: blue-white electric eyes, bared artificial teeth, an electronic brain encased in a lustrous black skull, like that of a corpse from which the muscles and skin had been scraped away. The face of a cyborg.
It was two twenty-five in the morning when Kyoya reached the underground tunnel. It had once been Shinjuku’s subterranean promenade. Leaving Mephisto’s “hospital” — located in the former but still-standing Shinjuku ward government building—his implanted memories led him to the one remaining undamaged entrance-way on Yasukuni Avenue. Again, his “memories” told him that every other access route had been destroyed during the Devil Quake. At the back of the sub-promenade was a passage to the station.
This subterranean city had once boasted hundreds of shops, equipped with the latest smoke and fire detectors and backup power generators, but it too was helpless before the power of the Devil Quake.
Kyoya gazed around at the tragic reminders of that time. The concrete had torn away from the roof, exposing the steel girders. The floor was cracked and broken. Nor had they been spared the ravages of fire. The shops here and there were charred and blackened inside and out.
There weren’t any lights. Kyoya’s keen night vision guided him through the inky shadows as surely as if it were as bright as day. After a dozen or more twists and turns, his “memories” whispered that this was the place. Turning left and going straight brought him to a flight of stairs and escalator leading to the station.
But as Kyoya sprinted up in a gust of wind, a transparent glass-like wall towered before him, at least ten feet high.
“Hoh. Must be the demonic powers of Suiki at work. The escalator and stairs turned to sheets of water and sucked into the concrete. What a tricky bastard you are.”
The original intent must have been to keep at bay the vagrants and the homeless who made the underground their home. Scale the top and the way to the station should be clear. No one else up till now would have bothered. To begin with, there was nothing left in the station worth the trouble. Anybody else who made it this far would have given up rather than waste the effort.
Kyoya was already feeling the fatigue in his shoulders and the pain in his side. He checked his watch. Two thirty-three. He didn’t have any more time to waste here.
“Well, over the top we go,” he said to himself, and crouched and jumped. He grunted as a hot stab of pain shot through his side. But he maintained his form as he landed on top of the wall.
Corridors far wider than the subterranean passageway reached to his right and left. Right, his “memories” told him.
Kyoya took off running. He knew the wound was bleeding inside. “Son of a bitch! Stop it!”
He channeled his thoughts to the veins and arteries and cauterized the flow of blood. And then something else stopped as well—his legs.
Thirty feet in front of him in the pitch black was a thick concentration of demonic miasma. Flames shot up. And yet the light from the fire didn’t extend beyond the flames themselves.
“You still alive, boy?” said Kaki, the flames collecting into a human form. “I’m impressed that you made it this far.”
“At least you could pretend to be glad to see me after all the trouble I went to, to surprise you,” Kyoya quipped with pretend displeasure, as he brought Asura to the fore and positioned himself for the inevitable attack.
“The entire station and its grounds are wrapped in the darkness of the Demon Realm. No one can take a single step inside without me knowing about it.
”
Kyoya snapped back in a no-less cheerful voice, “Some sort of radar, eh? Even demon sprites keep a few aces up their sleeve.”
But his physical condition was sagging to the point where he was ready to fall over. The excruciating pain in his side unceasingly assaulted the rest of his body, sending chills and cold sweats through him in nauseating waves. Nevertheless, he had no choice but to focus every nerve on the foe in front of him. He could numb the pain, but he could not spare even that much of his psychic powers.
“Laugh while you still can, boy. I will scald you with the fires of the Demon Realm down to the marrow of your bones.”
“Answer me this first. Where’s your boss-man?”
“Up the stairs behind me and to the left. Inside the station. Not that you’ll ever get there.”
The two of them fell silent. The tension welled up in the dark hallway. There once was a time when millions of commuters passed through Shinjuku station every day. And not a one of them had ever anticipated that one day, right where they walked, a demon sprite and a young fencer would be facing off in a fight to the finish.
Kyoya was carrying the handicap in this contest. There was the wound in his side. No matter what, he had to resolve the issue in less than thirty minutes. He didn’t know the extent of Kaki’s powers. He’d defended himself against Kaki in Shin-Okubo plaza, but the enemy had been caught off guard, sparing him the full brunt of the attack. Even if he wanted to go on the offensive, Kaki wouldn’t give him an opening, and he couldn’t afford to make the slightest mistake. Cold beads of sweat—quite apart from the pain—coursed down his cheeks.
On the other hand, Kaki was equally a prisoner of his fears. The psychic energy pouring from the tip of Asura twined around him like strands of rope. The powers the boy possessed made him a formidable enemy even in the Demon Realm.
What manner of man is this, enough to give the Sorcerer reason to fear?
The two remained silent. Another sound grew louder in the corridor. The pipes in the ceiling seemed to shake loose. Several seconds apart, drops of water fell onto the floor. Like a while ago, forming a puddle a foot and a half in front of Kyoya.
Demon City Shinjuku: The Complete Edition Page 18
