“Mr. Sakai!”

The skinny well dressed man from Uwada’s office earlier jogged to YF’s side and tried to help YF stand by holding his arm.

YF waved him off. “I’ll be alright. Just a bit of a scrap.”

When the man backed up, YF went to take a seat next to his computer. “What was your name again?” YF asked.

The skinny man bowed. “I am called Mizuno. Please take care of me.”

YF nodded. “Sakai, as you’ve already heard. Please take care of me.” He bowed his head slightly.

“Could I get you something to drink?” asked Mizuno.

“Sure, Mr. Mizuno, some water please.”

Mizuno smiled politely and went to the water dispenser, plucked a metal cup from the stack, and started to fill it. As his back was turned, YF slipped Toa’s chip into Mizuno’s terminal. YF was slightly worried about what Toa meant by “self-destruct”. He hoped it was some sort of disintegration of the chip into fine particles or at the very least, just an inactive chip. YF was much more uncomfortable with the idea of blowing up Mizuno’s terminal, but he figured Toa was not the type to design something like that anyway.

Mizuno came back with the water and placed it in front of the terminal near YF, almost exactly where YF had inserted the chip. “Here you go Mr. Sakai. Now unfortunately I do have some work to attend to…” he sat down in front of the terminal and activated the projector keyboard.

YF raised a finger. “If…if I could interrupt Mr. Mizuno.”

Mizuno had a curious look on his face. “Mr. Sakai?”

“Running into Nakajima’s men made me realize I don’t have a good overlay of Gochome.”

YF could see Mizuno debate in his head whether YF was talking about an actual receiver map overlay or the other overlay. It took only one second. “Perhaps we should take a walk, Mr. Sakai,” said Mizuno with a typical receptionist’s smile.

“If you don’t mind me stumbling along, sure.”

“That won’t be a problem Mr. Sakai.”

Mizuno helped YF up and led him out of the Uwada Family office, heading toward a mandate-green-zone in the distance.

“You knew I would run into Nakajima’s men,” said YF after they had covered some distance.

“Uwada-aniki did not make any mention of that,” said Mizuno. “But it is harder to chase ruffians off our turf the further away from the office it is, unfortunately.”

“As you can see, though, if Uwada wanted me lying face down in a puddle, it didn’t work,” said YF barely suppressing his anger.

Mizuno stopped walking. “Mr. Sakai, we respect your position as an enforcer of the law.” He turned to YF. “But we will not accept baseless accusations. You are well protected on our territory. Our word is bond.”

“Of course,” said YF. He started walking forward. “The boys I roughed up a little looked uninitiated.”

“That would make more sense,” said Mizuno as he started walking again behind YF. “Initiated members don’t arbitrarily pick fights, even if they are from rival families. Bad for business.”

“I might need to visit that area again. Any way to tell Nakajima to keep his affiliates in line?”

“That should not be a problem,” said Mizuno.

“And I have one more request.”

Mizuno stopped and turned, looking at YF without replying.

“But before I ask it,” said YF. “I need to know something. Was Viper Sect involved at all with the bombing on Kamakura Road twenty two years ago?”

“No we were not.” Mizuno shivered. “But I assure you the perpetrators suffered at least one hundred fold for what they did.”

“What happened? Who did it?” YF demanded.

“Who bombed the road is not something I can say, though I assure you it was not Viper Sect,” said Mizuno. “But the entire family of the sect responsible for the bombing was slaughtered like swine, all of their bodies drained of blood. At first they thought the attack was done by some sort of animal but no known animal causes injuries like that. The denture analysis suggested it was a person. A person with the claws of a tiger.” Mizuno shook his head. “It makes absolutely no sense. No theories about the incident seem to explain it.”

YF thought about what Hiroyuki had said when sitting on his couch, that the perpetrators of the bombing that ruined their family were “taken care of”. He remembered Hiroyuki’s smile, then thought about his discovery on Takahashi’s terminal in her apartment. All of it grew more unsettling by the minute.

YF tried to push the thoughts from his head. “If Viper Sect was not the perpetrator of the Kamakura Road bombing then I have a proposal. You’ve been to Nishida West Scrapyard?”

Mizuno smirked. “That’s like asking a pureblood whether they’ve been to a wastefully lavish socialite ball.”

“Your family know anything about disassembly and towing?”

“What are you offering Mr. Sakai?”

“I might be able to get you some mods.”

Mizuno raised an eyebrow. “What sort of mods?”

YF took out his receiver and pulled out a list that Kigali had sent him of Ardan parts, pointing the receiver toward Mizuno. He hoped that Kigali had not already contacted Viper Sect, though from Mizuno’s expression it seemed that he hadn’t.

“We are interested in a few of these,” Mizuno admitted. “Though the price is far greater than what you’re asking us to do. What’s the catch?”

“Viper Sect has some deep connections to Ikusayama correct?” asked YF.

“Some of us do come from the homeland,” said Mizuno.

“Just keep my wife safe when she goes. On the way and afterward,” said YF.

“I can assure you we would have watched over Ueno whether you requested as much or not,” said Mizuno.

“Watch a bit harder then. I have good reason to suspect people are out to harm her.”

“Well you have single handedly stopped Nakajima from collecting on our territory for at least a week, Mr. Sakai.”

“That must be worth something, right?”

Mizuno smiled. “Tell me what you need. I’ll see what I can do.”

***

YF roamed through the streets of Gochome’s ground level near core Viper Sect territory. During that time, he tried to look up the key words “Advanced Research Center” and “Project Force of Nature” but could find nothing on either topic. He continued to switch up the wording as he roamed at least an hour before he finally gave up the network search and went to the shotengai gate. At first he was hesitant to leave the area; after what he saw in Takahashi’s – or Shiraishi, whatever her real name was – apartment he was not sure what would happen to him once he left. He chuckled bitterly at the idea that sectarian territory could possibly be more reliable and safer for him than the upper levels.

He then got a text from Toa. “Your files are ready and will be deleted in exactly three hours. Please proceed to the marked coordinates. The timer starts now.” A timer widget popped up on his screen and started counting down.

“Shit.” YF pocketed his receiver and jogged over to his vehicle.

***

The timer had not run out by the time YF reached the remote server. What surprised him was that the server was located on the border of Itsugo and Nishida Ward and not in the outskirts near the countryside where Toa actually lived. It probably had something to do with areas of ambiguous jurisdiction being poorly watched.

The server room was guarded by one skinny, middle aged looking man. He didn’t introduce himself to YF and made it quite clear YF should skip the introduction as well. The old guard seemed unsurprised that YF was there.

“The lady doesn’t like her hard drives cluttered with crap,” said the man.

YF could see the red betel nut juice between his teeth as he spoke.

“Move a bit faster.”

“Yes sir,” YF replied.

YF walked up to the server rack and shoved his own memory disk into a slot on the closest node. He then turned to the man who was already typing something on his terminal. When YF glanced back to the chip the LEDs on the end were already glowing, indicating some activity was happening there.

“You get yours at Santoku?” asked YF, pointing to his own mouth.

“Don’t talk to me,” the man warned.

“I know the old lady and her grandson there. I’ll buy a bag and drop it off here later.”

The man scoffed. “Aren’t you a lawman?”

YF held his hands in the air. “If you canned every Sentinel for chewing, the whole force over forty-five would be gone.”

The man laughed out loud this time. He stopped typing and spat a wad of betel nut juice into the trash bin. He wiped his mouth.

“I’m just going to drop off the bag here,” YF repeated. “You do what you want with it. Throw it out, chew the whole lot at once if it’ll fit. Whatever.”

The man shrugged as he continued typing. “You can do whatever you want, lawman. But I’m not doing you any more nor less favors for it. I do what the lady says. No one and nothing has been as reliable as abiding by that principle.”

“Sure,” said YF.

The man stopped typing and pressed a button, ejecting YF’s chip. “You have a good day now.”

“I will,” YF replied. He shoved the disk in his receiver and walked out of the server building.

***

Fujii did not show up at The Antelope that evening at the start of the work day. YF texted her to see where she was but she didn’t reply. Neither did Erika, who was probably at work, nor Reina, who was probably sleeping in.

“We’re just going to have to do without. You pilot the drone and I’ll see what I can do,” said Honda.

It did not take YF long to guess at Fujii’s password: it was her younger brother’s name followed by his year of birth. She spent a good amount of time that evening in The Black Hat talking about him before she had become more inebriated. YF wondered if her desire to take care of her brother translated to her desire to take care of YF.

The entire rest of the evening YF piloted the drone for Honda, his mind was fixated on where Fujii was and what had happened to her. He found himself checking his receiver multiple times in a minute to get any sort of update. Reina finally replied to him about halfway through the work night with a “I don’t know where she is either”, further increasing his anxiety.

When they finished the audit, YF stayed behind to analyze the results of Fujii’s check on the camera firmware updates. Though it took him some time to locate the files, he eventually found them. He hovered his finger over the folder, hesitant to open them for fear of what he would find. It took him several minutes to muster the courage to press down. What he saw made his stomach turn into knots. All of the updates to Itsugo’s Sentinel cameras were done by the same company: a place called AT Solutions. It was obvious AT stood for Aritomo and that AT Solutions was probably a subsidiary of the megaconglomerate that Hiroyuki worked for.

YF pulled out his receiver and swiped his finger to text Reina. “We need to talk,” he sent.

The analysis of Viper Sect’s financial information which had been running all day in the background, finished the moment YF got the text he was waiting for: “Meet me at the Yaura Kaigan Pier,” said the message from Reina. YF did not need to look at the financial record results to know what they would say.

***

The train ride from Itsugo to Yaura Kaigan was much longer than YF remembered. He had gone once with Hiroyuki and his friends when they were in middle school. The idyllic countryside between the two areas was largely unchanged from back then. It made YF wonder why more people didn’t just leave the megapolis of Akeha and all the surrounding areas like Nishida and Itsugo and just go somewhere nice and peaceful. It was only then that he realized why Erika had wanted to move back to Ikusayama with him so badly.

When he arrived at Yaura Kaigan Pier, Reina was waiting in front of a limousine surrounded by dozens of men and women in body armor carrying machine guns. Erika was standing by her side, now wearing her own trench coat and donning body armor as well.

YF shook with rage. “You aren’t being protected by Viper Sect.” He pointed at Reina. “You are Viper Sect.”

“Sakai-san don’t be so dramatic,” said Reina. “And moreover we don’t have time if you want to save our mutual friend.” She waved for her retinue to back down and head for the ship, which was docked further down the pier. Seconds later, only Reina and Erika were left standing at the entrance.

“Why didn’t you protect her better?” asked YF. “Are you just going to run and leave her to the wolves?”

“You have no idea what I’ve done to protect her. And you, for that matter,” said Reina, unintimidated.

“What is Force of Nature?” asked YF.

Reina’s expression softened. “It’s a curse. A horrible curse none of us asked for, but nonetheless one that most of the old families’ daughters have.”

“Not the sons?” asked YF.

“Anyone who tried died a painful death,” said Reina. “I’m not sure why we’re more compatible with the experiments, though I have some theories.”

“So what is this curse exactly?” asked YF.

“Reina folded her arms. Our country could never meet the industrial output or technology of Ard or Xian. We just don’t have the manpower, money, resources, whatever you want to call it to do it. What we do have is our blood. What our ancestors called The Gift.”

YF didn’t respond. Reina continued. “Of course draining other life forms of their blood was taboo even thousands of years ago. The practice never really stopped, however, and there were always those who believed continuing it would have some awakening effect on our ability to use kai.”

“So…” said YF, chuckling mockingly. “You’re saying that a bunch of looneys in the government thought that if they fed pure blood women daywalker blood that they would turn into some sort of magicians or something? What does this have to do with anything?”

“It’s no laughing matter Sakai-san. The project worked as well as anyone realistically expected. We might not be magicians but consuming large quantities of blood from our own people and shooting us full of Reoa knows what to mess with our hormones certainly did something. I’m not sure if any living being can stop an ARC Subject.”

“Our own...people?” asked YF.

“Yes, the biggest side effect of the project is that blood substitutes don’t work on us anymore. We need the blood of actual living people to survive, and we can’t just import shiploads of daywalkers to eat them. Government agents generally hunted down people living in the lower levels and fed them to us.”

YF lost his balance and crouched down to stabilize, wanting to puke.

“You have to remember we entered the program as children. None of us wanted this,” said Reina. “And some of us are trying to stop it. Which is why I am where I am.”

“What is Hiroyuki’s involvement in all this?” asked YF.

Reina started to speak but paused. She then wiped a tear from her eyes. “The government contracted Force of Nature out to Aritomo. Hiro-kun was the lead researcher. I was out of the program much earlier but the program terminated four years ago. That’s all I know.”

“Kai-cho,” said a man with a machine gun strapped to his back as he slowly approached them. “It’s time to leave.”

Reina turned to him. “I’ll be there soon, Maeda.”

“I need your men,” said YF, forcing Reina to look back toward him. “I’m positive Hiroyuki took Fujii.”

“I will not do that,” said Reina, whose voice was still shaking. “Raiding the Aritomo building means hundreds of my people will be dead. I can bear full responsibility for what happens to Fujii. Whatever you, the law, or whomever wants to take out on me they can. But I will not send hundreds of people to their deaths to retrieve a body.”

YF felt such disgust for Reina and Erika at that moment that he instinctively spat in their direction. He turned around and headed toward the train station, but felt his wrist being pulled after going less than ten steps.

“Yasu…” said Erika.

YF pulled his hand forcefully from her. “What?”

Erika removed her body armor and started strapping it to YF, tears streaming down her cheeks as she did. “Maeda!” she called out with a shaking voice when she finished. Maeda walked past Reina toward Erika. Erika made a motion with two fingers as if beckoning him to come closer. Maeda removed the machine gun from his back and handed it to her.

Erika grabbed it and pushed the gun into YF’s arms. “When you’re done, come see me in Ikusayama,” she whispered. When YF took the gun, Erika held onto his shoulders and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Numata says thanks, by the way.”

YF held the gun with one arm and then wrapped his free arm around her, pushing his nose into her hair. “Wait for me then.”