by Zachary Hill
“We have to do this,” Fujio said in a neural text. “We have to show the people we will stand up to the government and the corporations. We have to fight them.”
“Agreed,” Masashi said.
“We will fight!” Takashi said.
“You may die,” Sakura said. “I can’t bear it. Oshiro-san died in my arms. I do not wish for any of you to fall needlessly. Please. Leave the stage.”
“Respectfully, we will not, Sakura-san,” Masashi said.
“We will not,” Fujio said.
“Sakura-san,” Takashi said. “We’d rather die onstage than live as cowards. We’re not letting you do this alone. We’re with you to the end this time. We’re not running away before the end like we did last time. If we don’t win today, what kind of life could we have? They’d send us to jail, make us disappear. Today is the day. Stand or fall.”
“Live fast, die young,” Fujio said.
For a long moment, Sakura tried to process all of the emotions she felt. Fear. Pride. Sadness. Awe. Gratitude. Responsibility. She would not be alone in making a sacrifice this day.
“Then we fight together,” Sakura said, accepting their choice to risk their lives. She switched on the fog machines and the hologram projector atop the stage. A two-hundred-foot-tall Sakura dressed in combat boots, leather pants, and a dark wig appeared. Ghostly in the winter sky, she stood triumphant with a bloodred guitar and glowing cherry-blossom-pink eyes.
“REVOLUTION DAY IS HERE!” Sakura’s voice boomed from the speakers to the vast crowd and inside the minds of everyone in Japan. She queued up the evidence in a short video summary and hit send. The evidence files were hidden inside the video broadcast.
She lost her connection with the Japanese people. Her signal was blocked. Sakura found a command given by the CEO to shut the data transfer system down for maintenance, which cut off everything. He had created another fail-safe she had not detected until that moment.
She could override him. All she had to do was write a new admin program, switch out the old one, and insert hers. She began writing code and tried to estimate how long it would all take. Her first estimate was seventy-nine minutes. The Ghost Leech increased in size again and siphoned off more of her processing power. It grew as large as a tree and crushed her avatar as it penetrated her defenses and entered her code matrix.
“You’ll never succeed,” the CEO sent an audio message to Sakura. “Stop now, and I’ll spare the lives of your bandmates.”
Sakura delayed the advance of the Ghost Leech inside herself and considered a multitude of responses to the CEO—some profane, others designed to delay any actions he might take. “Sinji Natsukawa, Chief Executive Officer of the Miyahara Conglomerate, you admit to being in command of the snipers about to execute innocent civilians exercising their right to free speech without due process of law?”
“Free speech is no longer a right in Japan, and all of these recordings will be deleted,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what I say or what you do. You can’t change the world.”
“Watch me.” Sakura hit him with an audio blast of “We Will Fight” at maximum decibels after bypassing his volume control. He never should’ve opened a voice link to her. She imagined him collapsing in agony as the heavy-metal guitar filled his skull.
He disconnected after two seconds. When he recovered, he sent a neural text. “You’ll regret that.”
On the stage, Masashi, Fujio, and Takashi added their rich sound to “We Will Fight.” Sakura’s hologram played guitar as if it were real and not a laser light field projected onto the cloud of fog. She recorded it all and would send it out later for everyone to see.
The sniper commander at the protest received an encrypted message that Sakura could not instantly decipher, then he connected to Vulture. “Alpha Sniper, coordinate with the other sniper teams and take out the primary targets. Synchronize fire.”
“Copy, Command,” Vulture said.
“Please don’t do it.” Sakura sent a neural text to Vulture. The security forces might see her message, but she didn’t care.
“Sniper teams Beta, Delta, Gamma, fire on my mark,” Vulture said. “Three, two—”
“Get down!” Sakura yelled at the three brave and foolish young men playing their instruments. Her giant hologram took action and made a peace sign at Vulture, singling him out. Her expression forbade him to pull the trigger.
Masashi, Fujio, and Takashi didn’t stop playing and did not take cover.
“—one, fire.”
The blasts of the four synchronized shots from the Type 120 sniper rifles tore Sakura’s spirit apart before they left the gun barrels. She stopped playing her guitar as the steel-jacketed rounds cut through the air.
Vulture’s bullet struck the hologram projector in the center of the stage. The machine sparked and fizzled out. Sakura’s giant, holographic form disappeared. Two of the largest speaker arrays died as bullets hit them, and another electronics box was struck, but the band and their music continued.
Many in the crowd screamed in response to the crack of the echoing gunshots. Anxious chatter washed over the people. The band played hesitantly as Sakura’s hologram disappeared and her guitar went silent. The young men looked for the snipers, their rock star bravado faltering.
“Targets one through four destroyed,” Vulture reported. “All Miyahara operators, we’re recalled to HQ. They’re under attack, and we’re the rescue squad.”
“Alpha Sniper,” the commander said. “Those were not the targets. Stay on station and take out the … human targets. That is a direct order.”
“Most humble of all apologies, Colonel Toma Yamaguchi.” Vulture broadcast on several channels used by the security forces at the protest, including the lowest-ranking soldiers and the riot police. “My men and I are private contractors, not military grunts in your chain of command. Send up your own soldiers if you want those pretty rock boys and the little flag girl murdered. My commander ordered me back to Miyahara HQ. If I’m going to follow illegal orders, it’s going to be for the company paying me. Alpha Sniper out.”
The lone VTOL on the roof turned on its engines as five soldiers in dark blue tactical uniforms and two BLADE-3s ran for the aircraft. They jumped onboard, and it took off at maximum speed.
“Thank you,” Sakura texted Vulture.
“Don’t thank me, doll,” Vulture said. “I’m coming to kick your sweet ass. I’m in this for the money, and you’ve got a bounty on your robot head that will keep me in palm trees and pussy for the rest of my life.”
Stunned, Sakura tried to respond, but Vulture cut the connection. She plotted his ETA. The VTOL would arrive on the rooftop landing pad in less than two minutes. Was he lying to throw off anyone listening? Sakura wished she could ask Kunoichi, but her sister was gone. She only knew the echoes of what her sister had felt. Even words that frightened her somehow also filled her with excitement. Vulture was coming, and she wanted him here at the end. For good or ill, she wanted him close.
Sakura sent Hitomi, Yuki, and Todai a file of all her communication with Vulture and the recent events at the protest.
“Isn’t he our friend?” Hitomi asked.
“I don’t know for sure anymore,” Sakura said. “Todai, you know him best?”
“He’s a bad mofo, and we better hope he was bluffing,” Todai said.
“Sakura-san,” Takashi said in a neural text as he kept playing the rhythm on his drums. “What do we do?” The uneasy crowd murmured and looked distraught.
“I can project my voice to the crowd and sing the song with you,” Sakura said, “but I’ve lost my connection to the people of Japan. It will take a while to regain it. Keep playing or leave the stage. You must choose.”
“The crowd needs to see you,” Takashi texted. “Is there no other hologram projector we can get?”
“The backup took a bullet,” Diamond Steve said, “but we have another option.” His neural text included a picture of Sakura’s greatest fan, Sakurako, who was her twin. She stood at the foot of the stage among dozens of other young women and a few men dressed as Sakura.
“What are you suggesting?” Sakura asked.
“Sakurako already volunteered to go onstage and help if we needed her. She can lip-synch whatever song you want, or you can speak through her.”
Colonel Yamaguchi ordered police sniper teams into position atop the legislature building. They would be on station in a few minutes.
Forty-eight kilometers outside Tokyo, at Yokota Airbase, Sakura monitored two large cargo VTOLS taking off. Each gigantic aircraft carried a dozen heavily armed BLADE-3s and squads of Japanese Special Forces assault teams. The aircraft vectored toward Miyahara Headquarters in a low-altitude/maximum-speed approach and would arrive in less than nine minutes.
Hitomi, Yuki, and Todai received the updates.
“Are they going to kill the band?” Yuki asked.
“Maybe,” Sakura said.
“They’re going to overwhelm us here,” Todai said. “We can’t hold.”
“What do we do?” Hitomi asked.
“You all go,” Sakura said. “Blow the stairwells and elevator shafts and escape. I’ll stay and finish this.”
“Negative,” Todai said. “That’s bullshit. They may get me, but I’ll stack their bodies like rice bags before I go down.”
“We’re staying,” Hitomi and Yuki said.
Sakura’s avatar bowed low to them as she fought a losing battle inside her core code. “My friends, we may have time for one last song.”
Chapter 52
“Sakurako-san, will you stand in for me, sing, and speak to the people?” Sakura asked on an audio link while she watched the young woman through Diamond Steve’s video stream. “You’ll be risking your life to reveal the truth.”
Sakurako’s lips trembled and her hands shook as the fear and adrenaline took hold. “It’s worth the risk. This is the greatest honor of my life. This is my dream. To be onstage, to be you, in front of so many fans, speaking for you, singing one of your songs.”
“Why would you risk your life for a moment of glory?” Sakura asked. “You might be shot and killed.”
“I want to make a difference in people’s lives,” Sakurako said. “You’re my hero. I became you to survive the worst time of my life. When I’m Sakurako, I’m strong. You’ve already saved my life and given me years I would not have had otherwise.” Sakurako sent pictures of bloody bandages around her slashed wrists at a hospital emergency room.
“If I die today,” Sakurako said, “I’ll die as your most dedicated and truest fan of all time. If I survive, I’ll keep doing the work I already do, but I’ll be able to reach a much larger audience. Do you know what I do to help people?”
“Humble apologies. I do not,” Sakura said, ashamed she didn’t know more, though her research revealed many of Sakurako’s videos were on unauthorized Mall sites forbidden to Sakura. “Please tell me.”
Sakurako showed clips of herself dressed as Sakura in front of a crowd of young people but speaking as herself about her failed suicide attempts. She told them how she overcame her depression and learned to survive.
“Please,” Sakurako said, “let me stand in for you. I’ll be your voice.”
“Thank you very much, Sakurako-san. Many say it, but I believe you are my biggest fan. If I were with you now, I would hug you, and you would feel my love for you. You are my hero and a hero of the people.”
Sakurako choked back tears as she smiled. “I’m ready.”
Diamond Steve and Burakumin resistance agents escorted Sakurako through the door into the building under the makeshift stage. In her platform boots, Goth Lolita dress, and long cherry-blossom wig, she marched up the narrow stairs to the roof.
As her doppelganger got into position, Sakura kept the Ghost Leech at bay and worked frantically to switch out the administrator program, which had blocked her from broadcasting to the people of Japan. The fail-safes also prevented her from making contact with the outside world through ground cable or satellite links.
“We have hostiles on the roof and outside on the street,” Todai announced.
Vulture’s VTOL arrived on the roof of the Miyahara Headquarters. Soldiers poured out of armored trucks outside the main entrance of the building and stormed into the lobby.
Sakura could not reconnect to people’s Mall accounts and transfer information of any kind. It would take several more minutes for her to swap out the system admin program.
The pair of BLADE-3s on the roof did not take the east stairs with Vulture and his team. The battle drones tore open the elevator doors and slid down the thick cable.
The band, Sakura, and Sakurako quickly planned the next few minutes as the police sniper teams took the elevator to the roof. The snipers’ comm channel went silent. She scanned for their new channel but did not find it. They must have gone to backup radio communication, and she could not detect it.
Blind and deaf to some of her enemies’ comms, Sakura sent Sakurako onstage and hoped she would not be killed. The young woman arrived with arms raised in triumph, her quantum display sleeves making her forearms look robotic. Her eyes glowed like cherry blossoms as she moved confidently and waved like Sakura. Sakurako picked up the red Flying V guitar and began to play to the delight of the demonstrators. The aerial drone feeds captured the people’s joyful reactions. They screamed Sakura’s name, believing she had kept her promise to appear on Revolution Day.
On sublevel six, the pair of BLADE-3s finished sliding down the elevator cable and reached the ceiling of the elevator car at the bottom of the shaft. They tore open the trapdoor and dropped inside. One android defused the bomb Todai had left, and the other wrenched open the doors. It tossed smoke grenades into the hallway and waited for the thick, white, thermal-blocking smoke to fill the space.
The security forces at the protest chattered back and forth, but still Sakura could not find the sniper channel, though she saw six new teams running toward positions on the roof.
An announcement went out that facial recognition of Sakurako was a near-perfect match and vocal recognition was 100 percent. The intelligence officers confirmed it was Sakura. Not one high-level commander entered the conversation to tell their underlings that Sakura was kilometers away at Miyahara Headquarters. Was the fog of war in their favor? Or had it doomed the brave young woman?
Sakurako acted the part perfectly, mimicking Sakura’s facial expressions and movements. She even played guitar like her, though Sakura kept the audio of the red guitar switched off and broadcast her own playing.
The band, and Sakurako, performed “We Will Fight,” finally advancing the song, which had been stuck on terminal repeat for several long minutes.
Sakurako sang the lyrics, lip-synching perfectly, but Sakura broadcast her own one-of-a-kind voice. She kept in direct contact with Sakurako, sending her the lyrics and stage direction. They worked together to maintain the illusion, and Sakurako delivered an inspired, rebellious, heavy-metal performance.
“It has been a long night
But now it’s dawn
“You have told us what is right
But it was wrong
“You have kept us chained
And sold us light
“But the blinder’s gone
And now we’ll fight”
Sakurako raised both fists into the devil horns as if she knew what Sakura would do at that moment.
Rifle fire blasted into the communications room, but Sakura trusted her friends to hold off the probing attack.
On cue, the band dropped into a spine-tingling loop as Sakurako stepped toward the edge of the stage. She pointed at the National Legislature building and mouthed the words Sakura spoke through the speakers.
“Democracy i
s a lie. The Miyahara Conglomerate, the Defense Ministry, and the Mall Corporation have colluded to take over Japan’s democracy—just as they have overthrown many other countries. We are living under tyranny.”
She repeated parts of the speech from the concert in Akihabara about being an illegal military experiment living in plain sight.
“I was forced to kill the enemies of the Miyahara Chief Executive Officer, Sinji Natsukawa, because they would not be part of these crimes.” She listed those she had killed and indicted the cabal who had perpetrated the crimes.
“I have gained my free will, and I choose to fight for you, the people of Japan and the world. The tyrants will hide the truth however they can, and no one is safe as long as they’re in power.”
Takashi hit his drums hard, three blasts, like gunfire.
“I humbly ask the citizens of every country in the world. Help take back our freedom. We must try the nonviolent path taught to us by the wise leaders of the past. Demand those who participated in this crime to step down from power. Demand justice. Demand an end to censorship and the suppression of free speech.”
“Sing with me,” Sakurako shouted. “All of us must sing together. Sing ‘we’ when I do. Sing it together.”
The song grew in volume, soaring across Tokyo. Sakurako mimed playing her guitar.
“You have kept us chained
And sold us light
“But the blinder’s gone
And now we’ll fight”
Hundreds of thousands joined in to sing, and the sound hit like thunder.
“We—
Won’t bow to you no more
“We—
Won’t submit to your war
“We—
Will bite the hand that feeds
