Reclaimed – Chapter 18

The thick haze of smoke hovering over Yamato makes it difficult to land the shuttle in a secure area. The weather took a turn for the worse, and the air is thick with moisture, a light drizzle melting down on everything. I burst from the shuttle doors in my night ninja gear, wearing a bright yellow vest embedded with reflective material so I can be seen amongst the chaos. With my sword and my tablet, I’m ready to go.

“I’m going to find my mother,” Kentaro yells over his shoulder as he sprints off with Namika by his side. She insisted on coming to help since she can talk to animals and locate people in buildings who might be trapped.

“Julia, Kazuo, find Maeda. I need a status update from him as soon as possible.” They break from the group and head towards the center of town at top speed. Over the tops of their heads, buildings burn bright, flames licking the sky around columns of smoke. Lucy’s face glows in the light of the fires, and with her hand over her mouth, I expect tears any moment. I have never seen Lucy cry.

Her hand falls to her side, a fist clenched so tight her knuckles turn icy white. “Let’s go.” She stalks off with Sakai.

“Be careful!” I call after them. “Usagi and Oyama, get to the estate. Jiro and I are going to find my aunts and help anyone else we can.”

Himitsu hops from his seat on the shuttle, launching into the air. “Where should I go?”

“Into the area surrounding the town. Find any evacuees who need help.”

My owl departs, circling high into the clouds, until he is just a blip, a mote of dust in my eye. I hope I see him again. I look down at my side, for Kumo, but I left him back in Owari.

My aunts work at the hospital, and I don’t know their schedule so we head in that direction, towards the Central Business District. Jiro leads me through the streets, his eyes sharp for Taira men or desperate people looking for help. A lot of the buildings we pass on this edge of town are vacant, dark, and quiet, but just ahead, a three-story domicile belches out thick black smoke, a gathering of a dozen people lying on the sidewalk across the street.

“Are you all right?” I ask, running up beside them and squatting down. One man clutches his bloodied and broken leg, while others around him cough, their faces black with soot and soaked from sitting in the rain. I push my wet hair back from my face and lean over his injury.

“We’re alive,” an older man says, slumped against the wall of a shop. “We just moved in a week ago.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say, shaking my head, though my apologies will not fix any of this. Jiro pulls the sweater off a young woman sitting next to everyone and uses it to stop the blood flowing from the injured man’s leg.

I reach into my bag, pull out my tablet, and access our emergency network. Ping upon ping load in the lower right corner, but I silence them and swipe them away. I pin our location to the map and call for a triage team to come. Looking over the people sitting here, they are stunned, coughing, but alive and alert, so I tag the call ‘medium priority.’

Jiro leans over and lays his hand on the injured man’s shoulder. “Hopefully someone will be here soon. Stay warm or you may go into shock. No one else was in the building?”

The older woman shakes her head, so we get up to depart. “Miss Itami, be careful,” she whispers, bringing her hands to prayer position. “I’m glad you’re still alive. We feared the worst when the sirens went off.”

I bow to her and bring my hands to prayer position. “Thank you.”

Disgrace suffocates me as we get closer and closer the hospital and have to call in three other triage points. One young woman, her face and neck burned bright red and already blistering, mumbles she’s pregnant over and over. I mark her location as ‘high priority.’ I can’t bear to have her lose her baby too in the midst of all this death.

When we reach the hospital, the lobby is overwhelmed with patients, every available chair taken, people lying in the hallways, doctors and nurses scattered about, calling out ailments and priorities or scanning people with specialty equipment right in the waiting room. I stumble around the patients waiting and look each in the eye, a hand on a shoulder, a word of encouragement wherever I can. But my aunts are nowhere around.

I don’t want to push my way into the main hospital corridors, so I leave before I get in the way. Across the street, the fire department is hosing down the town hall with one of our dozen mini-trucks we built in the first weeks of arrival. The roof, consumed by flames, caves in and people scream and flee the surrounding area. I jump back, straight into Jiro’s arms as a shower of sparks rains down on us.

“Shit! You’re on fire,” I shriek as I bat out smoldering embers from Jiro’s bag. He turns around, his eyes wide, but nothing else is on fire. We’re probably too damp to burn for real.

“That was close.”

We stand and watch the town hall burn to the ground despite the best efforts of the fire department. My eyes smart with tears. I shouldn’t cry. I want to be strong for my town.

“Fuuhhhh…” I start to swear and then stop, wiping away my tears. “The hospital is too busy for me to go in and start questioning them about my aunts.”

Jiro reaches into my bag and pulls out my tablet. He starts tapping away while I approach the fire truck.

“Can we leave just one truck here to make sure the fire doesn’t spread and send the others to other fires?” I ask the chief, his name badge prominently displayed. He invited me to attend the fire brigade ball not but a few weeks ago. “The town hall is obviously not going to survive.”

“Yes, Miss Itami. I’m afraid so.”

“Sanaa!” Jiro calls.

“Move on, Chief!” I wave at him while turning to go. “Save what you can. Let everything else go. We’ll rebuild later.”

A crowd of people across the town square catch my eye. Most of us are turned towards city hall burning to the ground, but they’re turned towards each other. Harsh screaming, the sounds of people arguing with one another peaks over the rush of water and the sound of sirens. What’s going on now? Rioting? Looting?

I urge my leaden feet to move, ready to draw Kazenoho should someone threaten violence.

“Out of the way,” Jiro yells, pushing people aside in front of me. The crowd parts and lying on the ground is the body of a young woman. She is laid out as if in the middle of a funeral ceremony, legs together, hands folded on her chest.

“You!” Someone launches towards me, and my self-defense instincts kick in. I jab upward with my right hand and catch the man under his chin. As he reels back, I draw my sword and the rest of the crowd expands, putting room between my blade and them.

I blink my eyes through the mist and focus on the man who came at me.

“Yukio Yamamoto?” I ask, my breath coming up short. Risa’s father. What the hell is he doing here?

I look down at the young woman on the ground again.

“Oh no.” Jiro, his sword out too, leans over her and sighs. “It’s Risa.”

I edge closer to Jiro, surveying the people who surround us. They’re frightened, their eyes wide and skin pale, not riotous. I put Kazenoho away and kneel down next to Risa, her perfect skin waxy and blotched, her short hair, hair I cut off, a mess around her head. I inch my fingers along the collar of her shirt and touch her skin. Cold. She’s been dead for some time, not killed tonight.

A woman sobs, her cries muffled. Risa’s mother, Nobu, is crying into Yukio’s shoulder. They both look like they’ve been trekking through the woods for days. The boots on their feet are caked with mud, splattered up their pants. They wear torn sweaters, and their hair is plastered to their faces, rain dripping down off their chins.

I bring my attention back to Risa and catch sight of something folded against her chest. I pick up her cold and lifeless hand and remove a piece of paper from the clutch of her fingers.

“Fujiwara does not tolerate spies,” the note reads.

What?

“She hated you and Jiro for everything you did to her, and now Fujiwara killed her because of you too.” Nobu spits on the ground. “You will pay for this, Sanaa.”

I jump to my feet. “I had nothing to do with this! She went to Fujiwara of her own free will.”

“She went because she had no choice!” Nobu lurches forward, and I jerk back out of her reach.

“That’s bullshit!” I yell at her over the body of her dead daughter. “She joined forces with Fujiwara so she could see me suffer in the castle. Because all she ever wanted was to hurt me.”

“She only ever wanted to serve! Risa didn’t have a mean bone in her entire body!”

I break out in a laugh. This can’t be happening. It’s her mother’s word against mine. Risa did her best to never insult me in public. Hell, she never even did it in front of Jiro until the very end, she was so worried about losing him. I know my family and friends will believe me, but the crowd in the streets look between me, alive and breathing, and Risa, dead and lying on the street, and I can tell where their thoughts are going. They see a distraught mother, and I’m heaving with anger.

But I can’t resolve this situation right now. My city is burning to the ground, and I have no idea where my aunts are.

As much as I want to stay and argue with Nobu, I turn around and stalk off.

“You won’t get away with this! Sanaa! Come back here and own up for your sins!” Nobu’s voice echoes off the buildings around us and everyone steps aside to let me pass.

I’ve got too much work to do. I’ll have to handle this later.

“I… I just don’t believe it.” Jiro turns and glances over his shoulder towards the square as we make our way to my aunts’ neighborhood.

“It’s a setup, a wedge to drive between me and the people. Why else would Nobu and Yukio show up here out of nowhere? Last I saw them, they were happily watching Miura torture me.”

“But?”

“But what?” I ask, turning towards him. “You don’t believe her, do you?” My steps grind to a halt as I grab Jiro’s arm.

“No. No,” he says, shaking off a distant and disconnected look in his eyes. “I just… I never saw that coming. Not in a million years.” He grabs my arm and keeps me moving. “I spend days thinking about how our enemies are going to trip us up. I figured Miura would attack Yamato eventually, but Risa dead? Her parents here? No.” He shakes his head again and swears under his breath.

Jiro is a man who likes to be one step ahead of his enemies at all times. Tonight’s events have set us back an entire kilometer or more.

“I accessed the hospital employment database while you were talking to people in the waiting room. Your aunts never checked in for their shifts today, and they’re not listed as injured.”

“Let’s go,” I urge, breaking into a sprint in the direction of their apartment building.

We run through the streets not stopping for any of the clumps of people on the sidewalks. This close to the hospital most people already have triage help, and we would only get in the way. We round the corner to my aunts’ block and their building is on fire.

“No!” I sprint up to the front door, pull it open, and a wall of smoke rolls over me. A hacking cough seizes my chest, so I bring the inside of my elbow to my face and breathe through my sleeve. Jiro jerks me away from the door.

“What are you doing?” he screams in my face.

“My aunts!” I struggle against him but his arms are too strong for me to get anywhere. “Let me go! I need them! I can’t live without them.”

He glances at the area around us, runs to the restaurant two doors down, pulls the noren curtains off the front, dunks them in a rainwater barrel, and hands one to me. “Put it over your mouth and nose.” We both drop our bags outside. He charges into the building ahead of me, and my heart constricts in my chest. I reach out to grab him, stop him, because panic halts my legs, believing this is the last moment I will ever see Jiro alive.

His shirt is just a centimeter out of my grasp.