The Rise of Shiroi Nami – Chapter 12

As the train rounds a bend and approaches Amagasaki, I absently rub the spot on my wrist where we implanted a new chip. I thought I was done with these things, but if I’m going to live here for the foreseeable future, then at least it’s on my terms with a chip I can program. And maybe Amagasaki won’t be so bad. I began to like Shin-Osaka after a while, after all.

Leaning forward to get a better look out the window, I shield my eyes from the sun on this cool and clear day. Wow, impressive. The city is about half the size of Shin-Osaka but filled with the same highrise buildings and amenities. Shin-Osaka was so big; I don’t think I ever even saw a tenth of it.

“What do you think?” Rin asks, leaning past me to see what I see. His hand on my knee sends butterflies through my belly. There are moments when I can’t believe he’s interested in me. I’m so fucking average. “It’s a sizable city with an efficient butsu system and UPN, much like Shin-Osaka, but it’s more advanced because the city engineers built it later. They fixed a few things they got wrong on the first attempt.”

“What… Oh my God, no.” I gasp and point at the long loops taking shape on the outskirts of the city. “What is that? Is that a… uh?” I snap my fingers.

“Rollercoaster,” Rin fills in the word. “It’s a theme park. Rollercoasters and other rides, delicious fried foods, sweets, shows, concerts. You know…” He waves his hand in a circle. “A place to have fun.”

His eyes widen as I blink at him.

“You? Have fun? Well, I never.”

He laughs. “Don’t be so surprised. I’ve been once, and yes, it was a lot of fun. Cost me quite a few credits, but it was worth it. I went with Atsumi a long time ago.”

“She had fun?” My tone of voice reveals that I find this suspicious.

He shrugs. “She was young once.”

The theme park grows in size as we get closer, and I lick my lips in anticipation of seeing some of these rollercoasters in action. The grounds of the park are well-manicured and clean. Hundreds of people roam around or wait in lines for the coasters.

“We don’t have theme parks on Orihimé, and there were none left on Earth when my parents left there long ago. The last city on Earth was under domes. Can’t really have a theme park amid that.”

The train slows down as it coasts alongside the park. I can’t tear my eyes from the controlled chaos, the screams of people on the coasters, the music, the bright lights, and tōsha signs everywhere.

“We’re almost there. The main terminal is right on the other side of the park.” Rin stands up and grabs our bags. He waves down the car to Kazuo, Aimi, Saki, and Ryoko. Shintaro and his team have made their way to Shin-Osaka to meet up with Sayaka from Aka Matsuba. They will start the search for our fellow shipmates without us.

“And where is the factory?” I ask, keeping my voice low.

“Not far. Half a kilometer farther in the same direction. We can see it from the station platform.”

The train rises to elevated railways as we enter the city limits. We cross over a butsu and a few walkways cluttered with people and bikes. Then a streetcar passes by. That’s new. I never saw those in Shin-Osaka.

I point to it, and Rin nods, ushering me forward with a hand on my back. “Butsues here snake through the city north to south and back again. Streetcars move east and west. I’m not sure it’s more efficient than loops, but it makes things easier to find on the grid.”

On the station’s platform, we exit at the samurai caste doors and head to the end to reach the stairs. But just before we descend, Rin gestures to the large low building in the distance.

“Our next mission.”

The building is a gray mass of concrete and metal with a giant blue stallion in mid-stride painted along the side. From this distance, I can see front-loader trucks zooming in and out of spaceship-sized cargo doors, loading crates into several ships sitting on a landing field. There’s a constant stream of people coming and going from the front lobby doors, too, though that’s harder to see as it’s on the far corner. I swallow through a closed throat. The place is massive.

“Come. I know a noodle place close to the boulevard that leads to the factory entrance. It’s a suitable spot to watch the area.”

Just before we left Awashikawa, a courier arrived from Kiiroi Yama to give us everything we needed for this mission. They will be on alert if we need extraction from this place, but otherwise, they’re keeping their hands clean as they work on Aoi Uma from other angles. This is one thing that comforts me at night and allows me to sleep. I’m just a cog in this machine. I’m not doing this alone.

As we amble down the sidewalk, I try to act excited and a little naïve, but not too dumb. It’s our cover when we’re not on our mission to be tourists from Shin-Osaka, here for a conference on information technology. I can take in the surrounding sights without feeling like a country bumpkin.

When we round a corner, though, I startle at the two large men on the far corner talking in low voices. My brain immediately jumps to Haku and his brother, Masato, both dead now but still very alive in the back of my head.

“Something wrong?” Rin asks me, following my line of sight.

“No, nothing.”

I try to keep walking and pretend I didn’t notice the men, but Rin’s eyes are too keen. He’s way too aware of my every move.

“Yumi,” Rin says as he catches my hand with his and slows me down, “that’s behind us now. I promise. We took precautions while you were dealing with your migraine. Checked every last warrant and bounty. The person you were, the Yumi Minamoto in those files… She’s dead. Gone. Buried. Erased. She was once owned by Aka Matsuba, then me, and then finally by the yakuza. But her debt is gone, and now you live instead. You’re a free agent with a sizable income and a job to do at Aoi Uma’s android facility tomorrow. And when the job is done, you’ll be someone else.”

“I didn’t think anything like that was possible.”

His grin returns. “Anything is possible when you use your enemy’s tactics against them. They hacked the contract system? So we figured it out and did it too. That’s the way the world works. If they hadn’t done it first, no one would have bothered.”

Down the street, the rest of our crew waits in a bunch. I take a step forward, hoping this will encourage Rin to move. He falls in at my side.

“You can understand why I’m hesitant to even be back here, right?”

“Well, it was my intention never to bring you back here, wasn’t it?”

“Fair point.” If anything, I’m the one who always screws things up for myself.

We’re quiet for a moment as we catch up to everyone else.

Rin touches my shoulder. “Haku and his brother are dead. Their debts were erased by Kiiroi Yama so their family wouldn’t try to seek revenge. It’s in the past. There are only so many things you can worry about, right? Put this out of your mind.”

I nod as I try to forget it. Push it out of my head. He’s right. There are only so many things I can worry about at once.

“Everything okay?” Kazuo asks. His voice is concerned even as his eyes scan the surrounding area. He’s always on the alert. Always ready to strike. He must feel naked without his sword, just like Rin.

“Everything’s fine,” I assure him, “Except I’m starving. We should eat.”

The noodle place Rin recommended is right across from the boulevard that leads up to the Aoi Uma factory. We’re seated at a large table, and I order a curry noodle soup. I love curry, and I could use something with a little spice to help shrug off these feelings of dread sitting in my gut.

The back of my neck sweats as I watch people come and go down the long boulevard, edged on both sides by trees. Aimi and Ryoko keep things casual with talk of popular culture, the latest scandals in the gossip news, and what’s in the theaters. They’re good at this. I haven’t bothered to look at the Aoi Uma News Network since landing on Hikari. There’s been too much to do.

Saki is quiet, almost unnaturally so, but she’s been this way since we escaped Kurai. I want to hug her and forgive her, but we’re not there yet.

I reach into my bag at my feet and pull out my new tablet and portable camera. The camera is my new favorite toy. It’s brand new, and fits in the palm of my hand. It can join any public access point and stream the data straight to a server Isao set up, and it backs up to my tablet, whenever the two are near each other. I love it. It’s so much better than carrying the tablet with me everywhere when I want to take footage for our documentary. And Shiroi Nami gave me two of them. Just in case.

I heft the camera in my hand and wonder how I’m going to pull this off. I’m already nervous, and my stomach is in knots. I’m not good at undercover work, but maybe with Rin, Kazuo, Ryoko, Saki, and Aimi by my side, this will be different.

The bowls of noodles arrive on the table with a hush and gasp.

“Oh, wow. This looks soooo good,” Aimi coos. “It feels like ages since we last ate.”

“You had all those pastries this morning that Rin bought,” Ryoko reminds her.

“Yeah, but that was hours ago. I have a fast metabolism.”

“Enjoy your meal,” the waitress says, backing away with a smile. “Call me if you need anything.”

Once she’s gone, Aimi lowers her voice and lifts her chin at Saki.

“You eat?” she whispers.

“Yep. They wanted us to be as lifelike as possible, so they gave us internal processors for organic substances. We can even gain energy from it. Don’t ask about how it comes back out.”

Aimi narrows her eyes. “Now, I want to know.”

Saki laughs but doesn’t respond. Thank you, ladies. I’m eating.

Aimi grunts and returns to her meal. I get the feeling she doesn’t like Saki, but she’s trying to find some common ground. I wonder what’s going on there.

I set the camera on the table and point it at the boulevard. Hitting record, I make sure it’s framing up the people coming and going from the factory, so I can eat and not pay attention.

“Yumi,” Aimi starts, wiping her mouth with a napkin and setting her chopsticks along the side of her bowl, “I was wondering about this documentary you’ll be making about… Um, my family and yours.”

I nod that I understand. She means Shiroi Nami and the people from my Orihimé mission.

“My aunt is a little worried about it, you know. Not me.” She puts her hand to her chest. “I couldn’t care less about the system of government we live under. I don’t have a political bone in my body. But I was wondering…”

I wait for her to keep going, to make a case for me to stop the documentary angle, to give it up. They all watched the film I made about the empress. I’m sure they’re waiting for me to turn around and stab them in the back somehow.

I’m ashamed I did that to the empress… and to my parents. My own flesh and blood. It was one of the worst decisions of my teenage years. I wish I could erase it from my past, but I can’t.

“Yes?” I prompt her. I pick around in my bowl, trying to find another carrot. They’re delicious, and carrots always remind me of Ninjin. I miss him already.

“I was wondering if I could help? You know, be like a B-camera person, take footage of you when you’re working or other places?”

I perk up in surprise. “Wait. Anyone who uses the phrase ‘B-camera’ knows a little something about video editing.” I smile at her, and she nods eagerly.

“Oh yeah, I used to do this stuff in secondary school. I wanted to work for one of the creative corporations, but then, well, I got ostracized when our connection to, uh, you know, became known.”

She doesn’t even want to say ‘Shiroi Nami’ in public. That’s how bad it is.

I glance at Rin, but he’s watching the boulevard outside. Kazuo is nodding his approval.

“Sure. I have two cameras. After the mission is over, I’ll give you the other one and show you how to use it. I’d love to hear your perspective on the story.”

She lights up with a smile, turning her oval face into a heart with her striking cheekbones.

“Really? Thanks. Awesome. I can’t wait to help out.”

I smile at Rin, pleased that I’ve made a coworker and a potential friend out of Aimi, but Rin’s eyes are far off. I elbow him in the side, and he blinks.

“Sorry. Let’s finish up and get to our lodgings. I want to examine the footage.” He nods to the camera on the table. “I think I saw something we need to be careful of.”

—-

“Stop. Right there.” Rin points at the screen. “Can you zoom in?”

I scoff. “Can I zoom in? Please.”

Everyone crowds around the wallscreen at our inn for the night. I scrub the video back, freeze the frame, and widen the scene so I can see the person Rin is pointing at.

Well, fuck me.

“It’s Gen,” Kazuo confirms. “The fucker is here in Amagasaki.”

I sigh. “Why is he always right where I don’t want him to be?”

“You know this guy?” Aimi asks.

Saki nods. “This was the same guy who came after us in Susami, right? Both at the Nomura Estate and then again before the…” She blinks a few times. “I remember little about the big fight when Shiroi Nami showed up.”

She was under Narumi Ogawa’s control until Isao picked her up and smashed her into a building.

“I have a lot of vague memories from that time.” She sits back on the bed. “But I remember him. I remember Narumi favoring him. She loves him, though I’m not sure why.”

“I wonder what he’s doing here. Do you think Narumi is here too?” Kazuo asks, crossing his arms and leaning back against the wall.

“His work specialty has always been animal and human DNA,” I remind Kazuo. “I mean, he’s pretty stupid with life decisions like this, but he’s a genius in the lab. Maybe he’s helping with android manufacturing, or…” I stop because I honestly have no idea what else they could be doing in there. This is all new scientific territory for me. I’ve seen things in the last few months I never thought I’d witness in my lifetime.

“Yeah, it’s the ‘or’ part of that statement that is making me rethink this plan,” Rin says, rubbing his face.

Ryoko shakes her head. “We can’t back out now. Tomorrow is it. If we don’t show up for the new job training, they’ll wonder what happened, and security will tighten. You have no idea what Kiiroi Yama had to go through to get us this opportunity.”

I don’t have any idea because I was out with a migraine for two days while she arranged things. I have to trust her that this is our only opportunity to get this done.

“I agree. We have to do this now because who knows what’ll be next for Aoi Uma. I’m sure this is not the end of their R&D. I mean, they could be engineering ghosts in there, living souls, who the fuck knows.”

Kazuo laughs, and Saki chuckles. She raises her hand.

“All I ever saw in there were more of my kind, Fukusha Model Sevens and Eights. I know they were planning to skip right to the Ten Series, but I think those were a year or two off. The place is enormous, though, and I never explored farther than the lab’s hallway.” She shakes her head. “They could be doing anything in there.”

“Let’s go forward with the plan and get some sleep tonight,” Rin says, standing up and convincing everyone to follow suit. It’s not even that late, but we’re all exhausted. We’ve been on the move for days now since leaving Kurai. We need a solid night’s sleep.

But a solid night’s sleep won’t come for me.

As I sit in the bed with Rin snoozing away on his side, I flip through Isao’s journal and wonder where to begin with it. I skim through the first twenty pages and look at what he was working on at the time. Mostly the spiders, kumojin. He had written notes about how to change their behaviors and what kinds of personalities would suit them best. I’m intrigued because he used the consciousness transfer protocol, the one he has obviously used on himself and his brothers, to transfer dog consciousness into the kumojin.

How does that even work? But I suppose it makes some sense. Dogs are great companion animals. I miss Ninjin so much, but I have to hope he’s with people who will take care of him on this moon base. And the kumojin often seemed to have the personality of dogs, now that I think about it. They could definitely fetch.

I quietly laugh at my joke and try to not wake Rin.

The following few pages are all mumbo-jumbo, math equations, and medical terms I would need a dictionary and a doctorate degree to understand. But then my eyes zero in on a passage that stands out from all the others.

Written in bold, dashing letters with red borders calling attention to several warnings, my heart skips a beat as I read the passage.

“Aoi Uma raided the lab today in a desperate attempt to steal everything we’ve been working on. They caught us off guard, and now we’ll always be looking over our shoulders as to what they’ll come up with next. They stole the consciousness transfer technology and all of our databases on animal consciousness. We think they got DNA samples too, though I still need to do more digging to find out whether or not that actually happened.”

I turn the diary on its side and read a note in the margin. “They did steal the entire DNA database, but not the plans for our cloning facilities.”

Dismay halts my breath and leaves me empty. Fuck. This is not good.

“When it was just us with this technology, we could control where we took it and how we would use it. In the hands of Aoi Uma, the technology will diverge. This is disastrous for our corporation. We can never compete or catch up once they run away with it. We must work harder to shore up our defenses. Our own infiltration teams are out and trying to retrieve the data before it can be copied and altered.”

I reach for my glass of water by the bed and swallow two mouthfuls, hoping it’ll calm my racing heart. Skipping ahead in the diary, I try to figure out what happened next, but there’s nothing, only plans to evacuate whatever base they had been in.

I check the date on the diary, and Isao wrote these entries six years ago.

Six years.

Aoi Uma has had this technology for six years. Fuck me.

I close the diary, set it on my bedside table, shut off the light, and curl into Rin. He sighs as he wraps his arms around me and pulls me close in his sleep. I want to wake him and tell him everything I just learned, but I can’t. He needs his sleep, and I need some too.

I’ll tell him in the morning.