YF had many questions to ask but Erika had fallen asleep almost instantly upon getting on the bike, likely due to the pills. Shortly after moving, he could feel her grip slipping from his stomach, prompting him to activate the backrest on the pillion seat and proceed at a slower speed. The navigation had been programmed to include a second address, which YF decided to follow despite his misgivings.

YF’s last memory of the country roads was when their family had taken a trip many years before the tragedy. In that memory the winding path surrounded by trees was a place of idyllic calm, a retreat from the pace and pressure of Akeha and its surrounding towns. But on that evening, the road felt more like a trap-laden highway from those television programs about ancient times. Each glowing insect was like an eye watching their every move; YF could not help but glance to the sides every few seconds, waiting for some sort of ambush. He wondered if this was how sectarians felt every time they left their safe zones, and for once, he felt slightly sorry for them.

YF turned his thoughts to Erika. Beyond the issue of what she was going to do, the idea that her identification could be permanently altered at best or completely gone at worst churned his stomach. He knew that even if she was awake she could not drive, as the scan took her wrist ID into account.

“Who is Ikeda Kanoe?” Unfortunately, that would have to remain a mystery until later. YF attempted to wake her up a few times by slapping her in the leg without any luck, though in her state she somehow maintained a sufficient — but weak — grip. Erika had left the radio on, allowing YF to hear her breathing through the speakers.

When they reached the location that Erika had put into the navigation system, she stirred and made a sound of sucking in saliva. She brushed her hand instinctively on the helmet glass to wipe the rest off, realized the helmet was covering her face, and then retracted the helmet to wipe the side of her mouth. Erika took a moment to assess her surroundings before climbing off slowly. They were now parked next to a building on the ground level of Fifth Ward, though the usual wandering homeless people were nowhere to be seen. Erika approached a door, took one look around the corner of the alley on both sides and then knocked using a distinct rhythm. They heard a thud from the other side followed by multiple expletives and then static on the intercom.

“You rang?” a voice called out from the device.

“It’s me,” said Erika.

The static stopped and the door slid open, revealing a young woman in a comically large one piece pajama suit. She braced herself on both sides of the door with her hands and then poked her head out of the doorway, looking out to the right at the street. “Those newer models aren’t easy to work on,” she said before reaching to shut the door.

Erika planted her hand on the doorframe to prevent it from shutting, her shirt shifting just enough to reveal the patterns near her collar bone and waist.

“Ahh!!” the woman held her hand to her mouth. She then pointed at Erika’s waist. “You...oh...oh no you didn’t.”

“I did,” said Erika.

“May the goddess take a steaming sh—”

“Toa,” said Erika, cutting her off. “Bike. Now.”

Toa folded her arms. “I told you it’s not going to work on the newer models. The most I can do is give you a scramble reflector. It’s probably all you can afford anyway.”

“What are the risks?” asked Erika.

“In the towns? The reflector returns a junk ID that gets flagged, or a blacklisted ID that wasn’t in my clone of the database. It’s bad but no one from the town is likely going to care, particularly now that the Sentinel Station is a pile of scrap metal.”

YF flinched.

Toa grinned at him. “Good riddance to them I say, right bro?”

“Bro…? Wait does she think that I’m a sectarian?”

Toa continued. “In Nishida or somewhere like that? You’ve got maybe a few li of riding before the cops will swarm the highway.”

“And why is that?” asked Erika.

“Anomaly detection. Sort’ve like packet sniffing on the network. They got the real machines to filter through all the scans, and when they realize multiple different IDs have been scanned on a vehicle that technically never entered the highway, they’ll filter out the ones that check out and flag you on the road.”

“Local roads?” asked Erika.

“Better bet, but you know the risks there. Even the ground level has scanners in Nishida.”

“Well as you can imagine, I’m not going to Nishida.”

Toa frowned, then grabbed Erika’s shirt and pulled it halfway up her ribcage. Her eyes widened. “Wait this isn’t just a mark...it’s…you’re fucking crazy.”

“Toa, we don’t have time! Give me the reflector.”

“All right all right, hold on.” Toa turned back into her apartment and picked up her receiver laying next to her futon, waiting until YF and Erika stepped in to shut the door. She then pressed a few buttons to activate the hot water heater.

“Luckily I filled it last night,” said Toa proudly. “Tea’s where it usually is, sis. I’m going to install the thingie.”

Toa pulled a few electronic boards from her closet with wires hanging off of them. She then motioned to YF. “Bro, I’m going to need you to scan in.”

YF followed Toa out the door and into the street while Erika stayed inside. Toa approached the bike and looked it up and down before stepping aside so that YF could press his hand on the display screen. The two watched it whir to life.

“Thanks bro. You can go back in to sis now.”

Before YF could reply, Toa was already halfway through unscrewing a bolt on the MCU plate. He watched a few seconds as she worked with frightening speed, the entire plate popping off in under a minute.

Toa paused. “I won’t ask again,” she said with a seriousness that surprised YF. “Bro,” she added.

“Right, sorry,” said YF as he turned and walked back to the apartment.

After sitting down on a couch that had obviously been used long past its lifetime, YF gazed at the door to make sure Toa was not coming back yet before turning to Erika. “Who is she?”

“She’s not affiliated, but she’s involved.”

“Involved with—”

Erika planted a finger on her lips. She then pulled out her receiver and texted something, which YF then received. “Talk here.”

YF nodded, typing a reply into his receiver. “Is she involved with the people we’re going to visit?” He paused, thinking for a moment. “I don’t recognize the bird. It is not a snake or a cloud.”

Erika paused for a few seconds, then seemed to catch on. “The bird doesn’t live here. We have to go to Nojuku Yonchome, its home.”

“Does the marshmallow outside work with the birds?” asked YF.

Erika chuckled then shook her head. “The marshmallow is only shelved in local stores.”

YF wanted to ask where his brother fit into all this, but was worried that it would devolve into an argument where he would have to reveal Eiji was spying on her. With Erika already weak from the operation and preparing to do what he thought she was going to do, now was not the right time for that conversation.

“So you’re entering the nest alone.” YF typed.

“But with help from a watcher.”

“I suppose we have to go home to get the binoculars.”

“Yes.”

Another twenty minutes passed with Erika drinking tea and massaging her temples while YF grew more irritated the more he thought about what was going to happen. He started preparing what to say to her once they arrived in a safe space. Then, Toa reappeared in the doorway, backfisting a button on the side to shut it after she had stepped in. “Love doing that”. She then held up a metal ring with a partially connected metal piece, jingling it back and forth with her thumb and middle finger. “Hand scan’s been pulled out and reflector in place. You’ll have to use a physical key — ancient, I know — to run the thing.”

“Thanks, how much do I owe you?” asked Erika.

“Four thousand.”

YF jumped out of his seat. “Wha—”

Erika held up her hand and typed into the receiver, swiping up toward Toa’s. “Done.”

“Thanks sis!”

Erika took the keys from Toa’s hands and headed out the door. YF followed closely behind, trying to contain his anger. When Toa’s door shut, YF grabbed Erika’s shoulder. “Four thousand?”

“It needs to be done.”

“Why? Who is Reina to you? Why are you doing this?”

Erika held up one finger to her mouth again. “Not now. We’ll discuss it at home.” She continued to the bike and shoved the key in the module that had been bolted on, turning it to activate the bike. “We’ll talk at home, I promise. Let’s go.”

“You can drive?”

“The tea will hold me up for a bit.”

YF shook his head. “I’m driving.”

Erika hesitated, then stepped off. “Fine, but move fast.”

***

As soon as the door to their apartment slid shut, YF slammed his hands on the dining table. “There is no way I’m letting you do this.”

“Reina was part of a program using purebloods as subjects.”

YF looked into Erika’s eyes incredulously, but he knew she was being serious. “For what?”

“A weapons program. In any case, the program did not produce any results, and Reina’s parents were worried something would happen to her and the other subjects.”

“So they hired Viper Sect to extract her.”

Erika nodded. “This was not stuff they involved me in. I was too low on the ladder. She was saved and placed in my school, though under constant surveillance from her understandably paranoid parents.”

“Then?”

“She knew I was affiliated and would only talk to me for a long time. Had some trust issues. I befriended her and eventually heard about her story.”

“So your time in the sect involved mostly protecting Reina?”

Erika shook her head. “I wasn’t actually part of her security detail...yet. I had to carry out other, unrelated tasks.”

“Like what?”

Erika bit her lip. “I’ll talk to you about those later. But I did eventually get placed on the team that protected Reina.”

“And why did you leave?”

“It...it has something to do with that.” Erika brushed her hair behind her ears. “They were going to make me do something that would have killed me. Reina somehow found out and she and her father pressed on sect leadership to switch me into her security detail. The switch saved my life but everyone in the operation I should’ve been in perished. Even if that didn’t serve as a wakeup call, the fact that some pureblood elite intervened to move me to a cushier job would have made staying very difficult. You know sectarians don’t stand for that.”

“Or they pretend not to,” said YF.

“This isn’t the time, Yasu.”

YF exhaled. “So if you don’t do this, Reina’s family will hunt us down and kill us?”

Erika shook her head. “Her family is unpleasant, but not that unpleasant.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

“Because she’s my friend.”

“I won’t lose my wife over something like this. Even if she is a friend.”

“But without her, I wouldn’t be standing here!”

The conflicting emotions were showing on her face. Erika brushed aside a few tears, then breathed in and out several times to calm her voice. She then rolled up her sleeves, revealing the elaborate feather patterns covering her arms. “It would be a little ridiculous to stop now.” She then pulled her sleeves back over. “But if you aren’t in, I won’t go.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you.”

YF looked away, thinking it over for a few seconds. But he knew that once he made eye contact with Erika, there would only be one answer.