Chaos in Kadoma Ward – Chapter 31

“Yumi!” I hear her voice before I see her. Ryoko is here, and despite the way her android twin ran from me on the butsu, my heart picks up and soars for her. We round the corner of a corridor and enter a jailing space. Along the left wall, a man guards the prisoners, a wall screen tuned to the now-renamed Aoi Uma News Network.

On the right, the first cell is unoccupied except for a bed. In the second cell, Ryoko reaches out from between the bars for me, tears in her eyes.

“Oh thank god, I thought you were dead,” she says, sighing as I brush my hand against hers.

I look past her to the third cell where a man lies on the floor curled into a ball. My brain fixates on him as Akikazé pushes me through Ryoko’s cell door and locks it behind me.

“He’s okay, I think. Just unconscious.” Ryoko hugs me as I get a better look at the man on the floor.

It’s Shintaro.

Shit. They have us both. Where’s Kazuo? Rin?

Tears flood my eyes as I sink to the floor and try to reach through the bars to touch my brother’s leg, to make some kind of contact with him.

“Don’t bother,” Ryoko says, sighing. “He’s been sedated. It’ll take him a while to come out of it.”

I shouldn’t fall apart. I shouldn’t rest.

But my body and heart need a break.

I let myself cry, cradling my left arm against my chest. Ryoko comes to sit next to me.

“Are you hurt? You should rest.”

I sniff up and drag the back of my hand across my nose and wipe my eyes. “I am going to kill Gen if I ever see him again.”

“Gen?”

“I stabbed him twice. I don’t think it was enough.” I blow out a long breath as Ryoko stares at me with wide eyes. “He’s joined forces with them now, hasn’t he?”

Ryoko nods.

“I swear to all the gods that ever were and ever will be, I’m going to beat the ever-loving shit out of him if he ever comes near me again.”

My fists clench of their own accord, aching to whip out and smash his pretty face to pieces. If only he were here, I’d go out fighting.

Instead, I look over Ryoko from head to toe. Yeah. The hair is different.

“Did you know you have an android twin running around out there?”

Her head drops. “Yeah. I saw her once. I thought I was losing my mind.” She threads her fingers through her long hair. “They’ve been running tests on me, hooking me up to devices, asking me tons of questions. I tried to resist but…” She lifts her shirt, and her chest is so bruised, bile churns in my stomach. “I tried.”

She bursts into a sob, and I throw myself forward to squeeze her in a high hug, avoiding her rib cage. Rage and crushing sadness crowd my aching heart. I remember when I used to not care. I had my family and my job, and the story was everything. Now, it’s life or death, and there’s so little I can do about either.

I hate it.

“Have you been outside at all? Did you see the city before today?”

She shakes her head, and the sadness digs even deeper, a hole in my soul big enough to bury an elephant.

“We’re going to fix that,” I reply, though I have no idea how. “Did they microchip you? Here?” I show her the spot on my wrist where I got mine.

“I’ve been scanned a ton of times, but microchipped? No. Have you?”

“I was.” I rub the spot where my microchip floats in my wrist, dead or deactivated. Either way, no one will use it for a while. I didn’t want it in the first place, and now I regret it being gone. “So do you know anything that could help us?”

Ryoko shakes her head, waving to the wall screen. “I’ve been watching the news here and there, and they have a bathroom with a shower and clothes for me, but that’s about it. They scanned me on another floor here, but I didn’t see much there either. Just from the elevator to a room and back.”

I glance over my shoulder at my brother passed out on the floor.

“Well, today, I saw you outside of the place I’ve been working for a few weeks now.”

“You saw my twin?” She looks so disappointed.

“I called out your name and ran after you… er, her. Then she jumped on the butsu and ran off.” I pause at her furrowed brows. “The butsu is like a wide, magical sidewalk that pulls you along to your destination. You can run or walk or just stand on it.”

“Really? That sounds pretty interesting. How does it work?”

“I have no idea. Doesn’t matter. What matters is that I saw this android twin, I ran after her, and she ran fast on the butsu, like she was born to do it. And then Gen came out of nowhere, tackled me, hit me, knocked me out, and tried to drag me somewhere, to give me over to Aoi Uma. I woke up in time to fight him off and run away, but obviously, I didn’t get very far.”

I lean forward and rest my head in my hands, ignoring Ryoko, Shintaro, and the man and the news outside the bars.

But a bird squawks and catches my attention. Perched on the far side of the first cell is a giant white bird… Tamura’s white bird. I rise from the bed and approach the edge of our cell, remembering all the birds my family has at home. I’ve never been particularly fond of birds (I’m more of a dog person), but the ones at home were always kind to me.

“Hey there,” I say, approaching her. I hold out my hand through the bars and wait to see if it upsets her. She’s way over in the corner which is why I didn’t see her when I first came in. “What are you doing here?”

I ask questions and expect someone to translate. It’s a hard habit to break when you’ve lived with the animal chip technology your whole life. My cousin was great with birds, and so was the empress, but here, they’re unable to speak.

Taking flight, she soars through the small space and lands on my finger. I pull her through the bars, and she leans in to get a scratch and a kiss. My heart breaks, wondering why she was separated from Tamura. Surely, he must miss her and want her with him, even if the world is coming to an end.

I rest her close to my chest as the wall screen flickers and changes to a ceremony in which Tamura and Narumi face each other, sitting seiza on their knees, in front of a Buddhist priest at a temple.

“It is with great honor that I hand over the sword of Hikari to the new Principal Leader, Narumi Ogawa, CEO of Aoi Uma Corporation. May the light of Amaterasu lead the way forward for all our people.”

Short and sweet.

Narumi takes the sword in both hands, bringing it to her forehead and then setting it on the ground in front of her where she bows low before it.

When she rises, a happy glint flashes across her eyes. She finally has what she’s always wanted.

Now what? Will she call for Tamura’s death? If I were in her position, I would. The only way forward for her now is death and destruction. When the camera pans over the crowds, the faces of everyone watching are pale and wan with grief. They all look ready to lie down and die.

“The tradition in these ceremonies is for the usurped corporate head to commit seppuku, but I have called for change,” Narumi says, and I nearly throw up from how sane she sounds.

Don’t be fooled!

She’s a fucking psychopath!

The bird nibbles at my neck, drawing my eyes away from the newscast. She wriggles free and flies away, through the bars back to the empty cell, landing on a cot there. She squawks, ruffling her feathers.

The man watches us, sighs, and stands up. “Listen here, bird. You’re to leave that alone.”

I freeze in place, noticing the cot where the bird is perched isn’t actually empty. They thought they could hide the evidence under a white sheet, but the unmistakable shape of a face, nose, chest, and body show through the sheer fabric. I was just too distraught at first to notice.

With shaking knees, I rise to my feet. “It’s okay. I’ll get her,” I say, stepping forward to beat the guard there.

Who’s under the sheet? Is it Chiéko? Someone else from the Murasaki?

“You can have the damned bird. It doesn’t listen to anyone,” the guard says, returning to his spot.

I reach through the bars, clucking my tongue and calling the bird back to me. She cries, a sad and lonely sound, before jumping back in my direction.

But I don’t grab her. I snatch the corner of the sheet, count to three, and lift.

My mind blanks as I try to put two and two together. I thought she was hasty and crazy, but no. Narumi is borderline evil genius. And it looks like she’s been working on this hostile takeover for some time.

Because even though Tamura is on the screen thanking Narumi and Aoi Uma for her show of mercy, he’s actually lying here dead.