Crash Land on Kurai – Chapter 35

“Yumi!”

The stars vanish, stardust rushing past to a blinding white light. My eyes fly open, water burbling up from my lungs and air leaking in.

I’m not dead.

“Oh, thank God,” Shintaro says, rolling me to my side. My face rubs into the sandy shore as liters of lake water burst forth from my lungs. “I’ve never had to do CPR before. I can’t believe I just practiced on my own sister.”

I press my eyes closed, willing myself to go back to the black, even though I’ve never had a death wish in my life. But the black was safe. The black was without murderous androids, crashing ships, and wholesale slavery. The black was also pain-free, and coughing with my broken ribs is agony, like being stabbed over and over. Stabbed…

“I lost my knife!” I croak out.

“Get up,” Rin commands, and I’m tempted to tell him to fuck off. But I open my eyes, and sheer terror passes across his face as he runs towards me. His sword is out, and everyone else has made it to shore, but ten androids are emerging from the water, and our shuttle is on fire. “We need to retreat into the trees. Help is on the way.”

I’m still trying to grasp the fact that I’m not dead, much less convince my legs to run away, but out over the length of the lake, two hovering dots grow larger.

“Go! Get moving!” Rin whirls around and disables two androids that run at him. With a horizontal two-handed swipe, he takes off the head of one and stabs the other.

If Narumi is going to design androids just to kill, she had better work harder at making them impervious to water and swords. Also, she hasn’t given them weapons of their own. My journalist brain files away the information for later.

Shintaro lifts me up with his good arm, and we limp-run into the forest, everyone else behind us. Logs stand in our path, and the slope is slippery with dew. The trees bend and sway around me, my oxygen-starved brain unable to keep them straight. I trip over an exposed root and nearly bring Shintaro down with me.

“Pick up your feet. Come on. You’re not five anymore.” Shintaro chuckles, and I’m horrified that I laugh. “Remember that? I was always yelling at you for shuffling your feet.”

We both scramble up a steep part of the path, my bare toes angling into softer spots to hurl us upwards. “I thought it looked dainty and sweet. I saw women in kimono always shuffling their feet.” I take a long, wheezing breath. “They did it to keep the bottoms of their kimonos from opening. I didn’t realize it was going to piss you off so much.”

I scream as something comes flying off the hill from our right straight at us. My instincts scream, “Boar! Mountain lion!” But it’s a female-analogous android, airborne with its arms stretched out. I duck, but it slams into Shintaro, rolling him five meters away. Basic survival instincts fire up, and I lunge for them both, kicking the android in the head and roundhouse kicking it in the chest, sending it down the hill to Rin’s feet.

“Nice one, Yumi,” Shintaro says, wincing as he gets to his feet. “You were always a great kicker.”

“But I can’t do anything when they’re trying to choke me,” I say, gesturing at my neck. I pull him by his wet shirt, and it rips. “We have to keep moving.” I use both my hands and feet to climb up the hill, dirt covering my arms to my elbows. I was dead just five minutes ago and now I’m scrambling for my life.

A scream from behind chills my blood and racks me with shivers. I look backwards, over my shoulder, and the one Kiiroi Yama woman who helped us get out of the ship and the injured Orihimé woman are both killed by androids. The crunch of their necks makes me ill, and I retch into the ground cover.

“Fucking hell.” Shintaro gasps. “Yumi, we can’t beat these people. Androids? Our branch of the tree never went this far.”

“Beat them? We don’t have to beat them. We have to make them our friends.”

“That’s even harder.” He grabs my arm, ushering me upward. I’m struck by the irony of being twins — me helping him, him helping me. It’s a wonder we’re even speaking out loud to each other, but shock does weird things to people.

“Let’s get to the top of the hill. Standing here watching them die is not going to help us.” I swallow against the pain, the tears, the anger and the frustration of being a stranger in a strange land. I sold away the entire farm to free these people and give them a life with Aka Matsuba, and now they’re dying at my feet. Heading back down the hill to fight is the noble thing to do, but I would only get myself killed.

Shintaro looks sideways at me, judging me and my choices with the flick of his eyes. He’s the fighter, not me. I fight with the camera, with words, not with the sword. Though Shintaro is the gentle geneticist at work, and a loving family member with a boyfriend at home, he’s a force to be reckoned with in the dōjō. He got all of our family fighting genes in the womb, and I got nothing but a bad temper.

But I can’t concentrate on Shintaro’s disapproval because my ears are focused on the fight below. I would’ve been devastated if Shintaro died on this trip, but I’m as good as dead if something happens to Rin. I don’t want him to die, and I don’t want to admit that my reasons for wanting him alive go way past my own survival.

That two-bedroom apartment he lives in? I want to see it. His ex-wife? I want to meet her. I want to see what he’s like on a normal day. I want to witness him walk down the street, buy a coffee, or read a book. I’m curious in a way that’s dangerous, but I no longer care. Why did I have to almost die in order for my heart to heal?

Not much farther up the hill, the trees thin out and the landscape flattens. I count the meters in front of me to the top of the hill. This is how I get through anything now, count until I get to zero. Four meters, three meters, two…

I almost laugh with joy as we crest the hill, until a shuttle flies by, gunfire pumping into the grass in front of us. Shintaro and I both lunge back for the trees, rolling and covering our heads. Glancing up through my arms, the red crest of Aka Matsuba is plainly visible on the side of the departing craft.

“What the hell? That’s one of ours!”

“They’re trying to kill us!” Shintaro shouts at me.

No. A lone android sits cross-legged on the grass about five meters away.

“Miss Narumi has sent a message,” it says, its voice low and easy as if speaking to a baby. “By choosing Shiroi Nami over Aoi Uma, Aka Matsuba’s intention is abundantly clear. They cannot be allowed to rule. They want to go where no man should ever be, and we cannot let that happen. We will not rest until our corporation is back in business, and all other corporations have been eradicated. You” — the android points directly at me as I come up to my knees and turn to look at Rin who has joined us — “and your alien invaders are first on the list to go. We cannot trust you. We cannot join you. We will take back our solar system and punish those who rise up against us. You have been warned.”

The android closes its eyes and hums. Its body vibrates, surging in volume so that I have to squash the sound by covering my ears. It dissolves in a crackle of heated plasma, setting fire to its clothing, and spiraling up in a plume of flames. We all shield our eyes and crouch down, preparing for a blast, but the android fizzles out like a wet summertime sparkler, a lump of carbon and silica left where it once sat.

I glance at Rin, blinking around the spots left in my vision. “I’ve never seen them do that.”

Rin shakes his head. “The ones I deactivated back there did this too, and yeah, I’ve never seen them do it either.”

He stands up and approaches the leftover pile, poking it with his sword. He spreads it around and huffs, a hoarse sound from the back of his throat. “Must be a new safety feature, so we can’t take these androids and study why they’re malfunctioning.”

Shintaro laughs, his eyes wide with disbelief. “I hate to say this, because we’re new here and all that, but —”

“They’re not malfunctioning,” I finish off, joining Rin at his side. “They were made to kill.”