Well, whatever, he decided. Just get through this and then you’ll never have to see her again. “At least let me help you off the floor.”

This is it, Kusa thought. Nowhere else to go. Either I fight and someone gets hurt or they get me. She pressed her head against the boy’s shoulder, wracking her brain and coming up empty. Her eyes drifted downward along the length of his arm; even through the light jacket he wore, it was obvious he was in good shape. The muscles of his arm were toned and felt solid beneath her grip. The boy shifted and his sleeve slid back a few centimeters. It was an instant before she realized what she was looking at.

He’s got thirdtech?!

Her eyes went wide and something flashed behind them. She leaned up and whispered to the boy, “You wanna help? Toss a glamour on me!”

“Wh-what?” Einosuke stammered, caught off guard.

“You know how, don’t you?”

Their gaze met and Einosuke saw both panic and a plea in her eyes. Her entire manner was changed. He didn’t know what it meant or whether it was a good thing. Despite the situation, though, a tiny part of him liked having her look to him for help. He felt so useless for so long. If he could help, he wanted to and a glamour was simple enough even he should be able to handle it.

“Sure.”

Kusa looked past Einosuke, peering over his shoulder. The Boss stayed in the doorway, blocking the only avenue of escape, while Slick walked slowly and purposefully down the aisle.

“Then do it! Now!” she hissed. “Give me anything!”

“All right! Okay,” Einosuke said, thinking She’s gotta be crazy or something, but here goes… He began to mumble under his breath. A faint golden glow seeped out from beneath his sleeve.

“Hey. You two.”

Slick glared down at the kid—a boy of about twenty or so—wearing work-out pants and the jacket from a tracksuit, down on his knees trying to help a pudgy, middle-aged man in a sweater-vest and khaki slacks from where he sat, flat on his ass, on the floor. The train shuddered violently a minute or two ago, but wasn’t that time enough for the fat slob to get back up?

He clicked his tongue. “Tch. Get up out of the way. You’re blocking the aisle.”

“Yeah, sorry,” the kid said as he stood, then pulled the fat man to his feet. Strangely, he didn’t seem to be struggling with the older man’s obvious weight.

Slick glanced back towards where his boss stood in the doorway, a finger pressed to the tracking device nestled in his ear. “Hey, kid,” Slick said, turning back to Einosuke as he and the fat man settled down onto the bench-seat.

“Yes, sir?”

“You guys seen a pretty girl in a gray hoodie and blue skirt come in here?”

Both the kid and the fat man mutely shook their heads back and forth.

“Freakin’ a,” Slick said to himself, then turned on his heel and stalked back down the length of the car. To the Boss, he said, “This is the last car. If she ain’t here, we missed her somehow.”

Boss’s eyes narrowed. He took a long look at each of the faces in the car. The device in his ear kept up a steady beep-beep-beep. The girl was somewhere in the area, but…

“Shuiro’s gonna have our heads if we come back without her.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Boss snarled. “Let’s go.” He pushed open the connecting door to the car they came from and disappeared. Slick gave the other passengers one last look and then followed.

Both Einosuke and the “man” at his side let out a simultaneous sigh of relief, as if on cue. The corner of Einosuke’s lip curled up into a little smile. “It worked,” he whispered. Kusa jabbed an elbow into his side. He took the hint and clamped his mouth shut.

“Mom! Mom! Did you see that?” The little boy, sitting across from where Einosuke was seated before Kusa’s arrival, tugged on his mother’s sleeve excitedly. The woman was engrossed in the display of her cellphone screen and shrugged him off while murmuring something about settling down. Pouty, but still excited, boy shrilled, “But mom! That girl turned into a man!”

“Eh?” Slick paused. Another step through the doorway, another meter of distance, would have seen him out of the car. The boy’s mother might not have been listening, but Slick heard every word. He whipped around just as the fat guy sitting next to the kid in the tracksuit began to shimmer. “Hey!”

Einosuke’s concentration broken, the glamor faded. In place of the “man” now sat Kusa, wearing a look of panic that matched Einosuke’s.

Slick slapped at the button on his Bluetooth ear-piece and shouted, “Boss! She’s back here!”

In a moment, Boss reappeared in the doorway. It took only an instant for the man to assess the situation, to take in Kusa and the boy about her age sitting next to her. “Dragged a friend into your little mess now, have you, Kusa-chan?” His expression turned savage as he stepped towards them.

At that moment, the train lurched again. The overhead speaker crackled into life, announcing the name of the next stop, first in Japanese and then again in English, but Kusa paid no attention to the actual words. The announcement meant that the train was stopping and that was good enough for her.

Kusa jumped to her feet and took three running steps towards the door marked EMERGENCY EXIT at the rear of the car. The boy who helped her sat stock still, eyes wide in panicked fear as the thugs approached them. He showed a little of promise a minute ago. Didn’t he recognize trouble when he saw it?

She doubled back, wasting a precious second to grab the boy’s collar and haul him out of his seat. “C’mon!”

The boy stumbled a bit, but pulled forward by the momentum of Kusa’s grab and the motion of the slowing train, began to run on his own. Other passengers gaped and gasped, muttering and whispering among themselves, but nobody tried to block their way. For once, Kusa was thankful for people’s apathy. She ran, pulling the half-stumbling Einosuke behind her.

Without missing a step, the girl’s foot collided with the release bar of the emergency exit and it flew open with a metallic bang! She hopped down to the gravel between the tracks just as the train came to a screeching halt. Other trains moved on nearby tracks, and platforms on both sides teemed with people. To the north and west, buildings towered over the station. Wherever they were, it seemed they moved from the outskirts of the city into one of Tokyo’s densely-populated inner wards. She needed to figure out exactly where they were before deciding where to head, but at that very moment, the only thing that mattered was putting distance between herself and that train.

Her feet began to move and it was a second or two before she realized she lost the boy again.

Einosuke stood in the doorway of the emergency exit, hesitating. He looked back over his shoulder.

Kusa turned, cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, “Come on, I told you! Let’s go!”

Einosuke’s head swiveled in her direction. Confusion crawled across his features. “But I don’t even know what’s going on! Who are these guys? Why are we running?”

“Because they’ll beat your ass if we don’t. How’s that?” She wanted to leave him. The kid getting slapped around when Shuiro’s men caught him wouldn’t be her problem. But she wasn’t his problem, either, and he still helped her. When it came right down to it, not much bothered her conscience, but she knew this would if she didn’t at least try. “If you’re into that, hang around all you want. Otherwise, move it!”

“Uh…” Indecision was plain on Einosuke’s face. The day seemed so promising when he got up that morning. An hour ago, the day’s events were disappointing, but familiar. This was all new and he didn’t know what the right choice was.

“Don’t move a muscle, if you know what’s good for you!”

He looked back into the train and saw the two men—one with slicked back hair and one with the sleek, if bland, features of a minor politician—charging towards him full speed. They’d be on him in a second.

There didn’t seem to be any real choice.

Einosuke Sakurai leapt from the train, hit the ground running and tore off after Kusa, already racing across the tracks a good thirty meters away.