“This way, Rama-san.” The first man indicated a limousine stopped along the side of the road.
“But he is—”
“Don’t worry about it!” a shrill voice called out.
Sayaka and the men stopped and looked at the car. The voice seemed to be coming from the vehicle.
“Wait here.”
The agent drew the laser gun back out of the holster and ran over to the car. Confirming that there was nobody inside, he circled around the chassis.
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” he muttered to himself.
“Oh, quite out of the ordinary,” the car answered.
The startled agent reached out and touched the car. A moment later, his body melted into the body of the car.
Sayaka just stood there, dumbfounded. Then almost on autopilot, aimed her laser ring and pressed the trigger. The air hummed. The car turned into a lump of viscous slime affixed to the road.
Sayaka turned to the remaining agents. Kyoya stood there smacking his lips, Asura resting on his shoulder. The agents were gone.
“I helped myself,” Kyoya said, pulling something white and long from between his lips. “Yeah, guys are definitely more to my liking. You just can’t eat one.”
He spit something out of his mouth. It landed next to Sayaka’s feet. She swallowed the scream rising in her throat.
It was a human rib.
Her fear motivated action. The laser ring hummed again. Kyoya turned into another glob of slime spreading out on the sidewalk.
“Splendid!” the shrill voice said. “I really wanted to go on a date. But I guess that’s out of the question. Too bad. We’ll have to come as we are.”
Sayaka whirled around and directed the beam of light against the rock wall on the right, the source of the voice.
“Waste of effort. Waste of effort.”
The ground beneath her feet chuckled. Sayaka shrieked and sprang away, pressing her skirt between her legs as she ran. The loathsome thought of eyes growing out of the sidewalk and peering up at her propelled her on.
When the hospital came into view, she almost broke down and cried. She flew inside, giving the receptionist in the lobby quite a start. But her face nevertheless was like that of an angel.
The lobby was crowded with people. Gasping for breath, Sayaka sank into a nearby sofa.
“Welcome back,” said the sofa.
A moment later, the lobby was vacant. Sayaka stared at the countless number of slimy blobs on the floor. The walls wavered.
“What’s wrong? Run away.”
Urged on by the voice, Sayaka surrendered to pure instinct and ran out of the hospital. Upon reaching the sidewalk, the building collapsed. The debris struck the trees along the road and they dissolved too.
Sayaka fled in a blind panic.
“Surprised?” The wind caressed her ears. “Take a right at the next corner. An even bigger surprise awaits.”
She recognized the street. She tried going straight, but her feet insisted on turning right, according to the command.
The hospital was standing there.
“Understand?” the voice boasted. “This isn’t the neighborhood you know, but one of my duplicates. The same way I did so long ago, making a meal of the people and animals who wandered in unawares. Syria, Palestine—they were all verdant fields once. Until I consumed them.”
Sayaka could think of nothing to say in reply.
“I bring you along nicely, and this city aside, the rest of the country was promised me. It has been so long since I’ve enjoyed a truly filling meal. Let’s go, then.”
“I’m afraid not,” said a familiar voice.
A man dressed in black stood nonchalantly at the gate of the pretend hospital. In the face of his beauty, even the sunlight seemed to dim a little.
“Doctor Mephisto!”
The hems of his black cape fluttered eerily, as if in response to Sayaka’s exclamation.
“What a surprise.” The voice swirled around him. “These surroundings are sealed and yet this human being just shows up. How did you get in?”
“Doctor,” Sayaka cried out. “What are you doing here?”
“I got a phone call from Izayoi-kun, along with his lost shadow, and followed it. As for being able to enter this place, being Doctor Mephisto is reason enough.”
“I do not care for what you say.” The voice brimmed with emotion. “But I’ve taken a liking to your type. Long ago, nothing made for a more delicious repast than priests and sorcerers.”
“Ogdora,” Mephisto said, almost as an afterthought.
“You know me?”
The wind howled and then stopped. Even Sayaka could sense the inescapable chain of murderous intent strung between the two.
“During our phone call, I asked Izayoi-kun about your accomplices. Curing someone like you is outside my field of experience, but I am aware of the treatment.”
Mephisto’s right hand reached out from the folds of his cape. Resting on the white palm was a small brown bottle. The cap was off. “I synthesized it in a hurry, so it might not prove as effective as advertised. The Magician Phlora’s miracle drug.”
A thunderous roar shook the air. The ground beneath Mephisto’s feet caved in. The same fate as the agent who’d touched the car awaited him. But he wasn’t swept in. He stood in the air. He hadn’t been standing on firm ground all along.
For this was Doctor Mephisto — the Demon Physician.
“You shouldn’t be surprised. Sorcerers were adept at levitation in your time. Supposedly it was even used as a salutation. I’ve read your hand well. What is your next move?”
“This!”
The buildings all around them tumbled down and avalanched toward Mephisto. Still in midair, the avalanche turned into a blob of slime. Mephisto drew an arc with his right hand. The spray of purple liquid didn’t rain to the ground. Rather, it clung to an empty space. With a shout, it gave rise to a strange phenomenon.
The peculiar sight emerged inside the dripping air.
This “neighborhood” created by Ogdora must be an illusion projected on his incorporeal body. Phlora’s drug scalded and dissolved it.
The earth warped. The sky crumbled. In a flash, that liquefied other world began to corrode. Sayaka was suddenly standing on a completely different—and yet quite familiar—street.
The huge magical manor soared above her head. Adjacent to the Park Hyatt Hotel was the DMZ and Shinjuku’s Chuo Park. To the left was Twelfth Street and the old capital city center.
A dozen feet ahead, a wry smile rose to Mephisto’s face.
“Doctor!”
Sayaka ran up to him. The placid mask of his almost wax-like face softened a bit. He asked, “Are you all right?”
She nodded.
“Then let’s go.”
“Yes, let’s.”
The two set off together.
“Wait!”
A woman’s voice stopped them in their tracks.
III
Two o’clock in the afternoon.
Kyoya walked up to Shinjuku’s Koma Theater. Thanks to a strange miracle or the magical whimsies of the Devil Quake, the entire structure was riven with cracks and fissures but stood as it always had, still in possession of its original grandeur.
In an effort to memorialize the scars of the Devil Quake, along with the other standing buildings in the safety zone, the theater was named a historical site and placed under the protection of the Shinjuku Ward government. Two guards were usually posted there.
School wasn’t quite out, but concerned about Sayaka, Kyoya couldn’t stand around doing nothing. He straightaway asked Mephisto for help and lent him the use of his “lost shadow.” He hadn’t heard anything since.
He raced over to Mephisto Hospital, but they couldn’t tell him anything either. His only recourse was to grab Ishmael and get him to cough up the details.
The guards weren’t there.
He had to think they’d met a bad end, else that monster wouldn’t have
picked this place to start with. “He’s a dead man,” Kyoya growled to himself. He pushed through the center door and strode into the lobby.
The theater had a capacity of twenty-three hundred. Now it was filled with the stench of decay that no bureaucrat could expunge. Only the smell filled the space. Nobody was there.
“Hey, anybody home?” Kyoya shut the door and called out.
If he was off somewhere else goofing around waiting for school to let out, all the more reason to knock his block off. But then a figure emerged from behind the curtains, erasing that particular concern.
“Thanks for coming,” Ishmael said with an innocent smile.
“What did you do with Sayaka Rama-san?”
“Ah, those two are at my master’s abode.” He raised his head at a point in space.
“You mean she’s with Mephisto?”
“That’s right. The doctor killed my accomplice and took her there.”
“What?” Kyoya exclaimed.
He’d always had his suspicions about the doctor, but visiting the enemy in his lair? He should’ve known better than to trust that pretty boy.
“Do you know who she really is? Yes, the queen. The same who imprisoned me and mine inside that maze. The mask intends to turn her into his perfect queen. In other words, seeing her, the secrets of reincarnation come to light. The doctor appears taken by the possibilities as well. Draw out Semiramis within while leaving the girl unscathed—he would count such a result a success.”
“The bastard.” Kyoya strengthened his grip on Asura. “Resurrecting his old wife? No objections to that, I suppose. But is that all? Why build that freaking big mansion? Why come all the way to Japan and scare the crap out of everybody?”
“It is a mystery to me too. All I want to do is eat you.” Ishmael was already drooling.
“Weirdo. If you turn me into a rock, how are you gonna eat me?”
“Nothing tastier than a rock.”
Kyoya didn’t answer. He walked down the aisle and jumped onto the stage. He raised Asura from the en garde position to the height of Ishmael’s eyes.
“You’re taking this awful easy,” he challenged him. “Just to get this straight. You’re facing me. Look the other way and I’ll wait until you turn back.”
“Understood. No problem.”
Ishmael grinned. He slowly turned his head in the other direction and backed up to Kyoya. He reached up and parted the hair on the back of his head, revealing a set of closed eyes, a nose and a mouth. The kid had another face on the back of his head.
“This is the real one. I’ve already turned around. When I open my eyes, it’s curtains. Or are you faster on the draw? Let’s see.”
He opened his eyes. Wide with surprise. The tip of the sword almost filled his vision, obscuring Kyoya at the other end of it.
“Son of a bitch!” Ishmael cried out.
He jumped backwards as the black comet streaked at his brow, dodging it at the last second. Blood burst from his face, from his broken nose.
“Shit!” Kyoya rejoined. He’d missed the target. There were no second chances in this game.
Ishmael’s eyes flared with rage. Kyoya assumed a martial arts stance, ready to finish the job with his hands. In a flash, he turned to stone.
“You’re not without skill.” Ishmael wiped the blood from his nose and stared back at him. “Besides Semiramis, only the young traveler named Semulia ever drew blood from me. Come to think of it, that swordsmanship does look familiar. Whatever. All the sooner to chow down.”
The kid opened his mouth. His lower jaw dropped, opening his mouth all the way to his ears. Baring his yellow teeth, he started at the top and began chewing through the stone statue of Kyoya.
With an awful crunching that should have never otherwise been associated with “food,” he tore off Kyoya’s head down to its neck. Gnawing away like a rock drill, he suddenly spit out the contents onto the floor. Kyoya’s head had turned to round stones and dust.
“No!” Ishmael screamed, showing his teeth. “No! You don’t taste like this!”
“I don’t suppose I do. And I don’t miss either.”
The voice came from behind Ishmael. The real thing now faced him. But Ishmael saw nothing.
“Bring it on.”
This time, the voice came from above him. He glanced up, but too late. Asura swung down from the ceiling and smashed against the side of his head. Simultaneously a great burst of psychic energy poured down on the monster’s head.
This rare creature sank silently to his knees. Kyoya had been hiding in the chandelier.
“Hey, no hard feelings, eh. Not my true strength. Seems that Doctor Mephisto knows your name. He clued me into your special skills, and lent me a copy for my own use.” He spoke almost in a sad aside. “In any case, I’ve got to get hold of that fickle bastard.”
Kyoya left at once for Azabu and told Chief Yamashina that he needed to get in touch with Mephisto inside the Babylon Palace. The answer Yamashina got back from Babylon Palace was that Mephisto wasn’t there. “But you’re welcome to come see for yourself.”
“Playing dumb, I see. Him and his pissant mask.”
“What do you plan on doing?”
“That’s what I plan on asking him. What the hell kind of game is he up to, waking up here after his two-thousand-year-old dream?”
“That is a question we would like an answer to as well.”
“Where did he build that palace in the first place?”
“That we have figured out. Last night, a gigantic construction facility was discovered in an ancient Babylonian archaeological site. Drawings inscribed there accurately describe the floating city. In other words, it was constructed twenty-five hundred years ago and sealed away in another dimension. They figured out how to warp space too. Obviously the level of prehistoric technology often exceeded ours. The physicists are showing as much interest in those ruins as the archaeologists.”
“Good work.”
“I agree.”
“Has the president been contacted?”
“No, but I’m sure he’s being kept in the loop.”
“You guys are really pulling out all the stops.”
“What are you doing to do?”
“About our guest?”
“We’d dearly like to arrest him, but he’s duly registered as a citizen. We can’t haul him in without a good reason.”
“You’ll have to do what you have to do. Me, I’m on my way to the Himalayas.”
“Where?” exclaimed the chief, his eyes bugging out.
“My powers right now aren’t nearly enough to take out the likes of him. I gotta take it up another notch. And there’s no better place to practice than the holy mountain where, back in the day, my father learned nenpo. A bit Spartan, I know, but I’ll give it a month and see how it goes. Mephisto should be able to keep an eye on Sayaka for that long. Well, see you around.”
Part Five: Prisoner in Babylon
I
Sayaka couldn’t shake her sense of unease.
She was in what might be called a huge living room inside Babylon Palace. Sweet scents caressed her nose. The currents of air carried with them the hint of jasmine.
Three days had passed since she’d entered this castle in the sky. According to the old legends, these were the Floating Gardens of Babylon. Except that the gardens were inside the palace, and did not comprise the structure itself.
The ziggurat-shaped structure formed from the many terraces was said to sit on a square foundation twelve-hundred feet to a side and fifty feet high.
The basic building material was stone. First, reeds were laid over the stones, and with not a crack showing, covered with natural asphalt. Then came two courses of bricks, the spaces filled with plaster and carefully overlaid with sheets of lead. This became the foundation.
Each terrace was piled with generous amounts of earth and every species of plant and flower known to sixth century B.C. The glittering array of colors created the illusion of a t
ruly floating world.
The meticulous work revealed in the construction of the foundation could be rightly praised for its ruggedness, but its primary task was making it watertight so that the plants and flowers could be bathed with water.
Enormous amounts of water were scooped up from the Euphrates and stored in huge tanks at the top of the terraces. The lower levels were supplied through pipes. Automatic sprinklers kept the gardens continually and uniformly watered.
Some archaeologists theorized that hundreds of slaves turned a water wheel that deposited water from the river in the tanks using leather buckets. Others held that screw-driven pumps did the job. In any case, no evidence remained to support either claim.
The gardens rose to a height of three hundred and fifty feet. Taking into account the technology of the time, it was hard to imagine how they managed to pump water that high.
According to calculations by one architect, the garden must have weighed in the vicinity of seven million tons, besting the six-point-eight million of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Surely the kind of project that could only have been undertaken by an ancient despot. Not to mention it was built for the enjoyment of a single woman—
Sayaka interrupted the stream of information implanted by the auto-suggestion machines in the Japan section of the World Federation Government Information Bureau, sat back on the sofa, and looked at Doctor Mephisto.
She felt a burning sensation in her chest. That was how comely the man was.
The silky long hair, the black garb, the golden embroidery and pendant glittering against his chest—accessories that would look gaudy and pretentious and downright strange on any other man—only served in this case to magnify the young doctor’s beauty.
Sayaka had made it a rule to never judge a man by his outward appearance, and yet she couldn’t help herself here. Ten out of ten women would have the same reaction.
Then there was the case of the famous Hollywood actress who betrayed her lover and was in turn infected by a demon that manifested itself in the form of spreading tumors with sentient, speaking faces. When Mephisto operated on her, even those cancerous countenances gaped at him in wonder.
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