by Chris Ward
He stood up. ‘Hey, you people! Who … was … he?’
One of the old women wore a grin that shone with a youthful beauty. ‘He is Naotoshi Waribe,’ she said, her voice bursting with pride. ‘He is the monster hunter.’
As they dragged her through the corridors of the castle, Karin tried to focus her thoughts on Nozomi, praying for her daughter’s escape. Her body ached from her assault, and when she looked into the eyes of the other birdmen as they took her down flights of stairs and past rows of heavy locked doors, she could see the one who had brought her here in each of them. She could only hope that what had been done to her had taken long enough to allow her daughter to escape.
‘Here,’ one of them grunted, and another opened a door onto a chamber filled with dull metal cabinets, pulleys and stretchers. They dragged her around a corner, past a row of tall cupboards, and in front of her appeared a metal stretcher with a man lying on top of it, his hands held up over his head. Another man was leaning over him.
‘Ken! No!’
The standing figure turned and Karin gasped.
‘You.’
‘Ah, Ms Kobayashi, how delightful you look,’ Professor Crow said, his voice a reedy whine that made her shiver. ‘Like a bastion of purity. I trust my servant reminded you of the common whore you really are?’
‘Kill yourself, you sick, twisted monster!’
‘Oh, shush now.’
‘Fuck you!’
Crow lifted a finger to his lips. ‘Come forward, my dear. Behold your beloved husband.’
Ken didn’t move. Karin was dragged forward by the two birdmen and dropped beside the stretcher. She grabbed the side and pulled herself up to her knees, gasping as she looked down at Ken’s face.
The man lying there with his arms outstretched was without doubt her husband, but everything about him looked wrong. His face was gaunt and pale, his skin tight, and in places she could see his muscles twitching as if teased with electrical currents.
Crow had stepped away from the stretcher, his arms folded as he watched her. ‘Beautiful, isn’t he?’
‘My husband….’
Crow began to cackle. ‘Oh, you silly, silly girl. Your husband is no longer here. What you see before you is something entirely different.’
Karin ignored him. She reached up to touch Ken’s hand, stretched out over his head, his fingers hooked over, but Crow gave a howling laugh. Behind him, the assembled birdmen chattered like roosting sparrows.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that. Trying to spoil the surprise?’
‘What are you talking about?’
Karin reached for Ken’s fingers, then stopped. The way they were hooked over like claws yet seemingly tensed … it was as if … as if … they were being pulled down towards his wrists. She squinted and saw them: tiny fibres attached to each of Ken’s fingers, yet not in any way she could see; it was as if they were growing out of his fingertips like extensions of his nails.
They disappeared into the skin of his forearms, the entry points tiny red dots no bigger than a syringe would make, barely visible.
‘What have you done to him?’ Her eyes lifted to bore into Crow’s. ‘What have you done to him?’
Crow’s twisted smile vanished. ‘Your husband likes to play a song, doesn’t he?’ He took a step forward. ‘I didn’t like the last one he played, but since he was kind enough to pay me a visit, I thought that this time I’d let him play one of mine.’
His spindly fingers reached out and gave the top of Ken’s hand a light tap.
A grinding drone burst out of a speaker cabinet Karin had mistaken for a cupboard pushed back against the wall, loud enough to make her cover her ears and shut her eyes.
When she opened them, Ken’s mouth was wide in a contortion of agony, the sound of his scream lost beneath the din. His brow was pimpled with beads of sweat, and his arms and legs were stretched tight, the lines of wires pressing out of his skin as they went taut.
‘Stop!’
As the noise died down, Crow began to laugh again. Karin was sobbing as the residue of Ken’s scream hung in the air. His face was soaked with sweat now, his eyes wild as they flicked around the room, resting on hers, flicking away, returning to hers, before flicking away again. She began to wonder whether he even recognised her, whether Crow had tested his despicable new toy to the point where it had driven Ken to madness.
She looked up towards Crow and a sudden fury gave her the strength to push past her own pain, and she sprang towards him, only for the birdmen to grab her and pull her back.
‘I’ll kill you!’ she screamed. ‘I’ll cut your throat!’
Crow executed an extravagant bow. ‘Thank you for your kind words, my dear. It appears my little experiment has impressed you. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll leave you to get reacquainted. I have business to attend to.’ He sighed and cocked his head, his black eyes boring into her. ‘Honestly, at times I feel like the busiest man on earth.’
Crow and the birdmen went out, locking the door behind them and leaving Karin alone with Ken. Her husband had gone quiet again and his eyes had closed. Afraid to touch him, she just crouched there, listening to his breathing, wanting to speak, but unsure what she could possibly say that would help.
Her own pain now seemed insignificant. Her daughter was lost and her husband wired up to a torture device of a complexity she could barely comprehend. Suddenly she felt wearier than she had ever felt before. Maybe her body was shutting down, maybe her mind had been so overloaded it couldn’t take any more. She closed her eyes and felt an exhaustive sleep raking through her, when a face appeared in her mind, startling her back awake.
Jun.
Karin found her lips curling back, and a rising anger filling her.
You caused this. We would never have come here if it wasn’t for you.
This is all your fault.
35
Kurou makes a public announcement
The door had barely closed on the two caged lovebirds before Kurou’s computer was out of his pocket, his fingers blurring over the touchpad. He glanced up at one of the birdmen walking alongside him, and noticed how the creature was holding its head low as if it had just received some very bad news.
So overcome by the speed at which everything was happening, Kurou was letting his control of them slip. He quickly accessed a screen displaying the current assessed emotional state of his army of birdmen. There, at the bottom, was the flashing red bar which represented Burr, the one nearest on his left.
The birdman had slipped out of a level of general moroseness into one that had hit dangerous depths of despair. While the birdman’s emotions were represented merely in pulses and colours—much to his disappointment, he had no ability to read minds—from the statistics he had a pretty good idea of what the birdman was thinking.
(I hate myself. I’m a monster. It would be so easy to step out into the air and fly….)
Kurou accessed an assessment screen and with a few swift taps of his pointed fingers he flooded Burr’s system with endorphins and other upper chemicals. Then he typed a brief message which would be transferred into an approximation of his voice and relayed into a radio receiver implanted so deep into Burr’s ear that it would give the impression of a transfer of pure thought.
You need to hunt, I can feel it. Be strong, brave warrior. Tonight it will be your turn to hunt in the forests.
Within seconds of pressing the activate command, Burr’s head had lifted and his eyes brightened. Returning to the emotional processes screen, Kurou saw Burr had bounced back up into the midranges. He nodded, then began to adjust the systems of some of those others who were dropping out of a happy medium into an unsafe zone.
It was perhaps time, he thought, to find a suitable assistant. Maintaining the birdmen was akin to trying to keep several dozen balloons off the ground at once. For every one that was flying high, others were drifting close to the ground. It was a frustrating, ongoing process. Not only was he required to constantly program them
with orders, but he had to ensure none of them became too disillusioned. When that happened, they tended to turn up dead quick.
Still, he had his reasons. Admittedly, creating them in his own image had been his ego at work, but he didn’t trust fully thinking people. After all, he had once been an assistant himself. Someone else might have killed his boss, but he would have got around to it eventually. The multi-billion dollar fortune he had inherited for himself was certainly useful when it came to building insanely complex—and expensive—toys.
Twilight had fallen over Heigel, and the few remaining lights sparkled in the evening light. The hotel had finally burnt itself out. According to radio broadcasts he had intercepted and translated, a fire brigade from a neighbouring town had arrived in mid-afternoon, long after the building had been reduced to a charred wreck.
Soon people would begin to talk, and the focus of their collective attention would turn towards Heigel Castle. Kurou was looking forward to it; it would save some time.
Upstairs, he found Grigore sitting by the window, watching Crina’s gradual departure. Less than a quarter of her hair still suspended her now, the local eagles padding out their nests with glee, while blood dribbled down her face and trickled down towards the town far below.
Two of his birdmen were standing guard, one by the door and another ready with the decree of land ownership should Grigore finally decide to sign. The resolve of the man was quite something; all afternoon he had sat and watched the love of his life slowly fade away, yet not a single tear had fallen from his eyes.
‘Have you come to your senses yet, sire?’ Kurou asked as he entered the room. ‘She will be gone by morning, although I can have a spotlight arranged so that you do not miss her exit.’
Grigore looked up. Kurou had instructed the birdmen to remove the mesh of wires that had previously encased him, but without them Grigore looked as soft and weak as a cloth doll, like a human with his bones removed. His eyes were defiant, but his body had given up.
‘You disgust me,’ he muttered.
‘Your entire species disgusts me,’ Kurou replied. ‘You talk to me as if I should care about her death. My only regret is that it won’t take longer.’
‘You’re not human.’
‘I wish that were true, sire. Alas, one can’t always get what one wants.’
‘Let us both go free and I’ll help you escape. I have more money than you can imagine.’
Kurou cocked his head. ‘You make it sound as if I’m trapped, sire.’
‘It’s only a matter of time before the police come to the castle. There’s no escape for you.’
Kurou smiled. ‘Our acquaintance has been a passing one, sire. On the contrary, when you have the advantage of flight, only a cage becomes a trap. I have yet to encounter a cage that could hold me.’
Grigore looked about to reply, but Crina screamed. Another braid had been severed and the sudden jerk had pushed her into a spin. Like a ballerina she spun one way for a few turns, slowed, then spun back the other way.
‘You monster….’
‘Sign the decree. Do something worthwhile in your useless life and ensure the protection of an entire species for at least the next hundred years. With luck by then humanity will have discovered the error of its ways.’
‘You really want me to sign it?’
Kurou rolled his eyes. ‘Yes, you fool, of course. Write your fucking name on that piece of paper and both you and your girlfriend can go free.’
‘Give it to me.’
Kurou motioned one of the birdmen forward. The creature held out a piece of paper and a pen to Grigore, who hesitated a moment before reaching out to take it.
‘I’m glad you have seen sense at last, sire.’
Grigore’s eyes never left Kurou’s as he scribbled something on the paper and handed it back.
Kurou smiled as the birdman passed him the paper, but the instant he looked down at it, his smile dropped.
Să te fut.
Kurou had taken it upon himself to learn near-native level Romanian prior to entering the country, a process which had taken his magnificent brain roughly a month. Even then, it took a moment to translate Grigore’s scrawl into a language he understood.
Fuck you.
Kurou scowled. He screwed up the sheet of paper and tossed it behind him.
‘Print another one,’ he told the birdman.
‘My answer won’t change,’ Grigore said. ‘You and your ugly henchmen will not bully me. Kill her. Go on. I’m a billionaire. It won’t be hard to replace her.’
Kurou stared at Grigore, wishing he could see into the man’s brain the way he could the birdmen’s. Grigore, despite his wealth, was small fry as far as Kurou was concerned; a man with a fat wallet but little else. However, it was rare to get to his level of financial success without a few tricks, a solid poker face, and the ability to shrug off any emotions that got in the way of the accumulation of cold, hard coin.
‘You have enjoyed your position of power, sire, I do believe,’ Kurou said. ‘Even as my toy you have stood your ground and attempted to make me bend to your will. However, what you must have forgotten is that I don’t think like you. I don’t care if you live or die. I don’t care if either of you live or die.’
Grigore started to open his mouth, but Kurou lifted a hand.
‘By defying me your limited use has expired. I no longer need you.’ A hand disappeared inside his cloak and reappeared with a serrated switchblade. ‘It would take me a few seconds to kill you, sire, but you deserve more than that. You deserve a more dramatic death. And I think it would be nice to give you an opportunity to explain to your girlfriend how she ended up how she did.’
‘What? I don’t—’
‘Understand? Let me clarify. Emotion doesn’t lead me, sire. My decisions are based on simple calculations, and the likelihood of your cooperation was always fifty-fifty. That meant I decided long ago to ensure I had another plan in the event that this one failed.’
‘Give yourself up! It’s the only way you’ll ever get out of this!’
Kurou turned and barked some orders at the birdmen assembled behind him. Two of them disappeared out of the room and returned a couple of minutes later with a large computer monitor which they set up on a table in the corner.
‘Activate the live stream,’ Kurou said, tapping on his computer so fast his fingers blurred into each other. ‘It’s time we invited some friends to our little party.’
An image of a newsroom appeared on the screen, a sharply dressed newscaster talking silently at them while a thumbnail image of some current world disaster played in one corner.
The screen began to crackle and the newscaster suddenly jerked, looking nervously from side to side. Someone rushed past the back of the desk, and the camera shook back and forth.
Kurou pulled the hood over his face and went to stand in front of the monitor, in the view of the web camera embedded into the monitor’s casing.
‘Show me,’ he said, and the people on the screen spun around as if looking for the source of his voice. ‘Show me, or I will take everything. I will answer your questions or I will ask them. You choose.’
A few seconds of frantic activity later, the screen split, and half of the monitor became a view back into the room, of Kurou standing in the shadows, his face mostly hidden from view. Two newscasters filled the other half, the same man as before and an older woman, also smartly dressed, with a hard look to her face as if she spent her free time negotiating with terrorists. Kurou hoped so; he loved a challenge.
‘Who are you?’ the woman asked. ‘Is this some jihad operation? Be aware that we will not be dictated to.’
Kurou laughed. ‘Listen up, you silly old crone. I just intercepted the satellite link for your entire television network. Encrypted, was it? Security protected? You never saw me coming, did you? I think it’s me in the position to dictate terms.’
Someone came up behind the man and pushed a headset over his ears. Kurou glanced down at h
is tablet, his fingers flowing, requesting information on who the newscaster was receiving his instructions from. He hoped it was the president. When he discovered it was merely the commissioner of police in Bucharest, he was a little disappointed.
‘Don’t do anything foolhardy,’ the male newscaster said. ‘We’re here to talk. Say what you want to say.’
Kurou smiled. ‘I’ve come to request your attendance at a little party I’m holding up here in Transylvania, at Heigel Castle. I do hope you can come.’
‘What are you talking about? Who are you?’
‘Who I am is not important.’
The man held up a hand to his ear. ‘Look, whatever it is you want, I’m sure negotiations can be made.’
‘I want the district of Heigel designated a National Park,’ Kurou said. ‘That’s all. One hundred and eighty square miles. I want a minimum of a one-hundred-year guarantee, and I want all human habitation or involvement, barring that of a specific group of park rangers—which I will be responsible for hiring—to be strictly prohibited. This means all current dwellings are to be abandoned, and no tourism is to be allowed.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s all. A small request, don’t you agree?’
The female newscaster frowned. ‘So what you’re saying is—’
‘Exactly as I just said. You can repeat my request ad nauseum at a later date. I do not feel the need to repeat myself now.’
‘You will be tracked down,’ the female newscaster said. ‘You can’t just take over our TV station and make demands like this.’
‘It’s not a demand, it’s a request. And I’m not trying to hide. Check Google Maps for my signal’s location. I’m in the King’s Tower of Heigel Castle. If you wait five minutes I can reactivate the live cam on the castle’s website, but I think that’s just being petty, don’t you?’
‘Who are you?’ the man said. ‘Who do you work for?’
Kurou spread his hands. ‘I’m just a concerned citizen,’ he said. ‘A no one really. I just thought I’d stop by and give you an opportunity to do the right thing.’
