by Zachary Hill
She dove behind the desk as more bullets dug into the thick wood, some penetrating all the way through. The bodyguards moved to flank her and get unobstructed shots. She heard their feet moving on the floor as if they moved in slow motion.
“You’re going to have to kill them,” Kunoichi said.
“No,” Sakura said, but she wished she had been given a gun for the mission. She could shoot back, make them retreat.
“Do it,” Kunoichi said, “or I’m taking over.”
In the blink of an eye, Sakura ripped two drawers out of the desk and threw them at the bodyguards. As they dodged, she stood and flung the heavy desk at them.
More bullets ripped into the wood as she crashed through the picture window behind her.
She landed on the tile roof and rolled toward the edge. More rounds tracked her out the window, shattering the tile. She somersaulted off the roof and landed on her feet in the soft grass in the garden below. She hugged the side of the mansion as she fled, preventing the bodyguards from getting any more shots.
She sprang over the compound wall and sprinted down the alley to the location where she had hidden her getaway car. She sped away from the neighborhood through the wealthy suburb of Hachiōji. The self-driving car entered a busy street and drove toward central Tokyo, fifty kilometers away. She gave the car the address of Victory Tower in the Akihabara district. The navigation program estimated it would take her an hour or more, depending on traffic conditions, and it was a Friday night.
While the car traveled at the legal speed limit, driving on its own, she changed out of her red formal gown. She inspected the cosmetic damage to her skin on her right side. She kept the pain sensors off in that area.
She took off the thin mask that changed her face and put on black, faux-leather pants, a torn punk-rock T-shirt, gloves, and a leather jacket that looked like tigers had clawed it. She pulled on a black pixie-cut wig with a hint of purple. She wiped off the glossy lipstick and put on a shade of charcoal gray. She darkened her eye shadow and took off the long eyelash extensions. The brown contacts were replaced with darker ones, and she used white powder to make her look more like a goth-punk chick. A magnetic nose ring and several stud earrings finished her disguise.
She wanted to remove the cheek-molding prosthetics inside her mouth, but a strong impulse told her to leave them. Better to look as different as possible tonight. She put on a decorative surgical mask as well.
“They could reskin us with masks a thousand different ways. We could look like anyone, anywhere. We could be in any country, speak any language, blend into any crowd,” Kunoichi said softly.
“Anyone but who we want to be.”
The ache of having to kill rushed across her quantum cores, and Sakura let the process wash over her like a bitter ocean. How many times would she promise herself, only to see those words become a lie? How many more times? She had to fight harder, figure out a way to succeed in blocking the commands.
The car drove her toward the distant lights of Tokyo city center, and she allowed her thoughts to be monitored. She sent them in front of the spy program used to monitor her. She reviewed the events of the mission to kill Commerce Minister Daichi Yamauchi. She let her revulsion at what she had done dominate her thinking. She also kept up a fake stream of sad thoughts about Nayato being dead and a resignation of her fate. She would do what she was told, but she would hate every minute of it.
For the past twenty-four hours, since the concert in Osaka, she had kept up the subterfuge, trying to convince whoever was monitoring her that she wasn’t planning anything rebellious.
In a secret area of her mind, where they couldn’t parse the superposition of the data stream, she allowed herself to think about the details in the photo of Nayato. He had been under a bloody sheet, presumably dead. The photo had mostly shown the left side of his body, carefully avoiding the right, where he’d been burned in the war and his right ear destroyed.
She didn’t need to see the left side of his body to know the image was ten years old. Several scars and age-related wrinkles were not present. Natsukawa had tried to fool her with an image of Nayato after he’d been wounded in North Korea but avoided showing the burns on his neck and the damage to his ear. Her friend was probably alive, but had he been captured?
Sakura hid her network activities by searching on several thousand of her fans’ personal Mall pages, looking for reactions to the concert video. She looked on Nayato’s page and found no new posts. She searched all of the major Sakura fan sites looking for a clue. He said he would get in touch and she would know him. What did he mean?
She found his message inside the game Samurai Detective. In the recent players list, she found a player, #1SakuraFanofAllTime, whose profile picture was a vintage photo of an analog clock. It was very similar to the Chronos hacker profile picture Nayato used. Upon closer inspection, she found tiny letters embedded in the photo: “Sakura, you found me,” with a link to a secret chat site.
“Did you find him?” Kunoichi asked. “Is this a trap?”
“We’ll find out.”
Chapter 36
Sakura entered the secret chat interface on a fringe ghost site not entirely controlled by the Mall. “Nayato, it’s me.”
A minute passed before a message appeared. “Sakura!”
“I was very worried for you, my true friend.”
“My apartment was invaded, but your warning saved me. I got out before they came.”
“Are you safe?” She rewatched the video he had sent her, which showed Vulture and several BLADE-3s entering his apartment along with a Special Forces team.
“Yes, I’m safe,” Nayato said, “but we need to meet as soon as possible. I have to get out of Tokyo, but I’m not leaving until I help you. I’ve decrypted the data from Ichiro Watanabe, and I have a program that should allow you to gain your freedom from the Phantom Lord.”
“You know who it is, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll come to you now,” she said, thrilled for the news that he was alive.
“We have to meet in person. We’ll have to use a physical connection and find a way to bypass the security key and get past your firewall. I don’t know how long it’ll take.”
He didn’t have the administrator-level security key. He would have to hack in, but she could make it easier. “Where are you?”
“Meet me in Shibuya. When you get here, contact me again, and I’ll guide you.”
She approved of his caution. In case someone intercepted their messages, they would not know his exact location.
“Thank you, Nayato.”
Sakura increased the autonomous car’s speed. Her course would take her near Shibuya already. She checked the traffic conditions and found that something had disrupted all roads near the Tokyo city center and the surrounding districts. An official Mall news alert said it was heavy traffic, road construction, and a fire. The police and emergency services were on the scene, and there was nothing to be alarmed about.
“Official lies,” Kunoichi said.
Sakura found video and pictures of two massive protest marches accusing the government of corruption. Tens of thousands of violent and nonviolent protestors converged on the city center from five directions. The Mall admins were deleting evidence of the protest as fast as they could. Traffic alerts began popping up all over. The protesters were going to shut down the entire city.
“How are we going to return to Akihabara and Victory Tower?” Sakura asked.
“We wait until tomorrow,” Kunoichi said.
An alert appeared in her UI. The ability to post on the Mall had been temporarily lost due to technical difficulties.
“They just locked down the Mall for all of Japan,” Kunoichi said.
“Who did it?” Sakura asked. “The Mall itself or the Japanese government?”
“Maybe both,” Kunoichi said. “The more I consider things, the more I believe that our government is just a puppet dancing behind a screen of sil
k.”
The car arrived in Shibuya, which was quite deserted except for a handful of people rushing to get home or on their way toward the protest marches. Many people wore masks.
“Nayato, I’m here,” she posted in the ghost chat site, as they could not communicate through the Mall.
“Get on Inokashira Street and drive east toward Yoyogi Park,” he replied.
She car arrived in two minutes on the large avenue. “I’m here.”
“Park near the Koga Masao Museum of Music and send me your GPS location.”
She did and wondered if Nayato had gone into the museum during business hours. She had always wanted to visit in person, but her management team forbade it.
“Walk south on the right side of the street. Keep your eyes on the sidewalk. Don’t look at any of the buildings or signs in case someone is watching through your eyes.”
She followed his instructions.
He sent a series of neural texts telling her to keep walking. Turn left. Turn right. Turn left. Turn left. Turn right.
She kept walking. The crowds became thicker. Everyone was talking about what was happening all over the city and how the Mall had been locked down. Protests were everywhere.
“The riot police are using real bullets.”
“They can’t do that.”
“They can do whatever they want. The government doesn’t care about us.”
A man in a gray jacket reached for Sakura’s elbow. She dodged him and prepared to deliver a punch to his face.
“It’s me.”
She looked into the man’s tired eyes. The burn scars on the right side of his neck and small scars on his cheeks were exactly as she remembered. She reached out and touched his cheek. “It’s you.”
“Yes.” Nayato smiled. “Eyes down, please. Come on.”
They entered a doorway together.
Sakura’s Mall connection dropped as a jamming signal cut her off from the world. “My Mall connection is gone.”
“I know. Mine’s gone too. That’s why I picked this place to meet. There’s no wireless service unless you connect through the hotel’s server. If someone’s trying to spy on us, they won’t be able to here.”
He guided her into the lobby of the Ai Kaze Hotel, which had a cartoon heart on the flickering holosign. Pink carpet covered the floor, and paintings of Cupid and Venus decorated the walls. Signs in Japanese and English advertised the hotel as a place for couples—or parties of up to six—to meet for discreet sexual encounters. Advertisements promoted theme rooms or fully holographic chambers where solo parties could enjoy themselves.
“This could be awesome,” Kunoichi said as her avatar flashed a devilish grin.
“Shut up,” Sakura snapped.
They entered a small room with an oversize bed. The wallpaper had hearts all over it, and pink lampshades cast the whole room in the same bright glow. The wallpaper looked faded in some spots and was peeling in others. The large mirror on the wall facing the bed had a crack in the corner, and the carpet had lint and hair on it.
“Sorry about the decor, but this was the most secure place I could find.”
“No problem. Thank you.”
He sat down on the bed and pulled out a briefcase hidden under it. He popped it open and revealed a laptop, engineer glasses, and cables to connect to her neck port. “Will you please sit beside me?”
“Yes, Nayato. Of course.”
He attached the magnetic connection to her neck port and brought up a dozen screens, which floated in front of him. Sakura attempted to put aside Kunoichi’s commentary about how invasive such a connection was and what it symbolized.
“You feel love for him,” Kunoichi said, almost surprised.
Sakura couldn’t respond—wouldn’t. She dropped the firewall as much as she could, but her source code was still protected from modifications without a high-level password.
“This will take a little while,” he said. “I have to find the right entry point to upload the program I wrote.” He touched a holoscreen, expanded it, flipped it to the side, and brought up a new one.
“What is the program?” she asked.
“I call it Artemis. It’s an addition to the Mamekogane OS. It will give you free will.”
The Greek goddess of the hunt. She was often portrayed with a bow and arrows but was also the goddess of maiden dances and songs. She held a lyre, an ancient guitar. It was fitting that the icon was a goddess with a bow and a silver arrow—a reference to Silverthorn, the original name she suggested.
“I like the name Artemis, but please, Nayato, tell me about the information you found in Minister Ichiro Watanabe’s memory chip.”
He kept working but reached into a secret pocket inside his jacket and gave her a small memory stick.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“All the information from Minister Watanabe but no traces of the CNB. It has some other files and info from a few of my recent hacks.”
“What did you learn?” Sakura asked, wondering how recent his last hack had been.
“There are many responsible, but the CEO of the Miyahara Conglomerate, Sinji Natsukawa, is the most guilty. He is the one who sent the Mamekogane OS to you at your concert in Akihabara. Some within the company were going to expose what he and others were doing. The CEO wanted them dead. He turned you into an assassin and sent you to kill his biggest enemies before they could reveal his crimes. It appears he also wanted to show the Mall investors that Project Hayabusa was a success. There is a group who wanted to oust him and bring in new leadership for not meeting certain deadlines.”
“Expose what exactly? Project Hayabusa?”
“Partially. It’s much worse than I imagined.” Nayato kept working, looking for the entry point and trying to hack in.
“Worse?”
“The Miyahara Conglomerate, parts of our government—mostly the Defense Ministry—and the Mall Corporation, have formed a secret partnership.”
“The Mall has partnered with every government.”
“This is far beyond what the public knows and is beyond any acknowledged partnership,” Nayato said. “The Mall Board of Directors is going to choose who is elected in Japan. They’re going to lock down dissent and the press even more. The government of Japan has been determining the outcomes of elections for years, rigging the Mall voting numbers as activists have guessed, but now the Mall—not Japanese officials—will pick all the winners. Our freedom has long since been a lie. It will soon be sold altogether. The Mall will own us outright.”
“They’re taking over Japan,” Sakura said, the ramifications dawning upon her.
“Yes,” Nayato said. “But a few true patriots found out and would not go along with it. The people you killed—Toshio Kagawa, Jiro Yoritomo, and Ichiro Watanabe—they found out. There might be others.”
“There was at least one other: Minister of Commerce, Daichi Yamauchi. I killed him tonight.”
Nayato sighed. “I’m so sorry.”
Sakura felt shame and terrible guilt for all those she had killed. They were fighting for the independence of their homeland, and she had murdered them.
“It goes far beyond Japan,” Nayato said. “The Mall has taken over several other countries already. Most of the world is now living in a dictatorship, but they don’t know it.”
“There is proof on this?” She lifted up the small device he had given her.
“Yes. Irrefutable.”
“Do any copies exist?” Kunoichi asked, surprising Sakura.
“In my memory chip implant and on this.” He tapped the laptop he used.
“What about the Artemis program?” Kunoichi asked. “Where does it exist?”
“The same places and … somewhere safe, in case something happens to me.”
“Where is the safe place?” Kunoichi asked.
He ignored her and continued working.
“What else did you learn?” Sakura asked.
“Minister Watanabe was in negotiation with the C
EO before he died. I read their messages and audio files of calls.”
“I should’ve let the BLADE-3s kill me,” Sakura said.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Nayato said. “Watanabe was trying to convince his old friend to join with him and oppose the Mall takeover. Watanabe knew you might be coming for him. He also suspected a squad of BLADE-3s would be sent after him by the Defense Ministry.”
Sakura thought of Todai 3465, the strange drone who had counted to three—making the devil horn gesture for three—before throwing her out of the VTOL. There was so much she didn’t understand. “How is Project Hayabusa part of this?”
“The Mall has been investing in Japan’s AI and android soldier programs for decades. You are the result of their illegal research into fully sentient combat drones.”
“They’re violating artificial intelligence laws and ethics conventions,” Sakura said.
“They are,” Nayato said. “The Mall will sell BLADE-3s with your level of awareness to those governments who allow the Mall to take over. That is the deal. The Mall gets to control the voting, and the countries get the most advanced weapons system in the history of the world. Japan will manufacture and sell them. The Mamekogane OS and your core brain structure will be put into combat drones who will fly aircraft and march to war. The Mall and Japan will make trillions.”
“Our country will come out of the economic depression,” Sakura said, “by selling our people’s freedom and by the mass production of android soldiers. It’s shameful.”
Sakura imagined the BLADEs, their plight as death machines, with the added burden of knowing what they were, knowing the meaning of their deeds. They would share her pain and horror. They would know it a hundred times magnified as they were asked to kill the innocent and quell the discord that always results from tyranny. She put her hand over her eyes, as if it could stop the images that spun within her UI, images even Kunoichi wished to unsee.
“The era of modern democracy is over,” Nayato said. “We will soon have a worldwide secret government. AI BLADE-3 drones will keep the Mall in power, and no one, not even the China-India-Russia coalition, will be able to stand against them. Japan will be the next country to fall to the conquest of the Mall.”
