Chaos in Kadoma Ward – Chapter 28

When I was a kid, Kohi-chan, our dark coffee-colored dog, used to love to wake me up in the morning. He would slink into my room, nose his way under my covers and pull at my socked feet with his teeth. Yes, I like to sleep with socks on. I hate when my feet are cold. Don’t judge.

“Kohi-chan, get off,” I mumble, clawing up through the black. I open my eyes and find my slack and pained body being dragged through an alleyway. The walls around me are concrete gray and without tell-tale signs. Non-descript and vacant. Smoke clouds the sky and far off sirens climb and fall between booms. Explosions?

What the hell happened while I was out?

Gen grunts as he pulls me along, so I continue to play dead. I relax all my muscles and close my eyes. As soon as Gen knows I’m awake, he’ll try to put me under again, anyway.

At least, I still have my bag. Why? Because Gen may be smart at his job, but he’s a piss poor kidnapper. Not really surprising.

After a few more meters, he sighs and drops me, throwing me against a wall. I groan but keep my eyes closed.

“I’m here!” Gen calls out, but to whom? With my eyes closed, I can’t tell if anyone is there. I strain my ears, but it’s hard to hear anything past the noise in my head from another fucking concussion.

Footsteps fade away from me. Gen’s heavy breathing gets quieter, and I don’t hear him anymore. This is my chance to get the hell out of this mess. No one accosts me and drags me to my death. I’ll go out fighting.

I inch my hand to my bag, cracking my eyes long enough to see Gen a few meters away, looking up at the building we’re next to. The hard part is getting the zipper open enough to slip my hand in, but I hold my breath and unzip it by a few centimeters.

Gen turns back to me, and I freeze.

“Wake up.” He snarls, whipping his foot out and kicking me in the chest.

This is it.

I jump and grab his foot before he can withdraw it, twisting and sending him crashing to the ground. Pushing my hand into my bag, I make contact with my knife and pull it swiftly, not stopping to think.

My head spins as I thrust forward at Gen, but my aim is off. He blocks me, his hands practiced in martial arts much like mine. I swipe from the side, and he blocks me again. He laughs because he has the advantage and he knows it. I’m injured, and he is far from.

‘Yumi, you were always a great kicker,’ Shintaro said.

I whirl around, pulling in air through my nose to keep me steady and land a blow on his left shoulder with my sturdy clogs. Gen flies sideways and bounces off the building. Yes! Great kicking! He recovers, and his right fist leads for my face. I duck and dodge to the left, nearly falling over. My brain squeezes, and my eyes cross. Damned concussions always make the world swim.

“The right corporation will win, Yumi, and you can’t stop them.”

“Have they promised you the world, Gen?” My speech is slurred.

“I promised them you. I’ve been following you for weeks. It’s time to put your family to rest. Shintaro is next.”

Blackness crawls along the outside of my vision. No one comes after a Minamoto without a fight.

“Funny that I worried so much about falling victim to the natives here.” I feint a lunge at him, but he jumps and laughs. “But really it was my own shipmates that were going to come after me.”

He whips out with his left hand and just glances across my chin. I swipe up and then kick him in the chest.

“You’re the traitor, Yumi. You and your pitiful family.” He laughs, and all of my instincts tell me to kill him as soon as possible. “I can’t believe you slept with that guy, someone who owns you. You’re pathetic. And I know all about your mission here, to unite these people under the empress.”

Wait, how?

“This is the stronger society. People here earn their status. They don’t get it just by being born to the right family. They should be in charge. You’ll see. This is better for us.”

Gen lunges for my mid-section, but I know this move all too well. I drop down and thrust up, determined to end this.

One, two. I stab him twice in the chest, my knife glancing off his ribs.

He gasps for air, stumbling away from me. His eyes widen as he sees my knife covered in his blood.

“Didn’t think I would actually stab you?” It’s not the first time this knife has seen blood. It won’t be the last.

“Bitch.” His hand clutches his side, blood running between his fingers. Damn. I don’t think I landed a killing blow. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a device, one of those mini-tablets like Five had. He may not have had a chip in his wrist, but he had other ways for them to track him.

And by ‘them,’ I mean Aoi Uma.

I need to get out of here.

Staggering away from him, I try to run to the end of the alleyway. The world laughs at me and tips to the right, an assertive buzzing climbing higher in my head.

No, not in my head. For a brief moment, Rin appears in my thoughts, his finger pointed upward.

I follow his finger up, and high above me, drones fill the sky.

Boom!

I stumble around the corner and come face to face with chaos in Kadoma Ward. Creeping across the shut-down butsu from Kita Ward, a line of people press forward carrying makeshift weapons and hurling firebombs. People zip past me, their faces terrified and flushed from running. Many carry animals, dogs, cats, even lizards, or drag other people with them. I cross the street, putting as much distance as possible between Gen and me, but I’m knocked to the side over and over.

“What’s happening?” I ask, trying to convince one person to slow down and tell me, but no one stops, and the assailants march closer.

“Run!” A Kiiroi Yama policeman is bringing up the rear. “Androids have gone mad!”

Shit. And I can’t tell them apart from real people.

A patrol car, its lights flashing and siren deafening, swoops in overhead. I crouch down and cover my head as people scream around me. Glass cracks and fire hits the ground a meter to my right.

Fire. Androids love fire. How could I forget?

Run from the fire, Yumi.

“She’s over there!”

Akikazé, Narumi Ogawa’s main henchman, and three men run from the end of the alley I just came from, straight at me.

Go, I urge my legs.

The concussion will have to wait.