The Rise of Shiroi Nami – Chapter 7

I grasp Rin’s hand as we leave the room behind Hayashi, Reina, and Hidéki. Miho, Daito, and everyone else in the room heads in the opposite direction. I’m not sure where we’re supposed to go in an emergency. When we ended up here after leaving Hikari, I always thought it would be temporary, and we’d be back on the planet before long. I never expected to stay here for months.

Hayashi punches something into his tablet and then raises it to his lips. “Everyone to your rooms and pack your bags quickly. We’re abandoning the station. Check your tablets for ship assignments.” He accesses his tablet while we walk. “We’ve got ten minutes, tops. And this is where you should split up if you want to continue with your plan.”

“What?” My voice squeaks. “Now? Why?”

We reach a new hallway, and Rin and I need to go left. Hayashi and Reina need to head right.

“Go,” Reina tells Hayashi. He runs off.

“Most everyone here will fall back to our moon base around the fifth planet of the system, Kanshō. It’ll take at least a week to get there at this time of year, so we’ll have to evade capture and punch hard to break out of the gravity well. You understand? You either come with us to our base, or you go with everyone else to Hikari.”

She runs off without so much as a goodbye.

I swallow hard, knowing this will be a split-second decision I have to make as soon as possible.

“Come on,” Rin says, pulling me along.

We run to our room, and Shintaro is across the hall in his room, throwing anything and everything into a backpack.

“We’re getting ready to head to Hikari,” he calls out as I fling myself into the sitting room. Finding my most important things first, like the journal Isao gave me, my own journal, my tablet, and anything else I have, I stuff them all in my emergency backpack with the other survival supplies we’ve accumulated. I don’t want to be without food or water, so those go in a separate bag, straight from our room refrigerator.

Rin is quicker than I am, packed before I can blink. With his sword strapped to his back again, he’s the formidable warrior, the man who saved me from death on more than one occasion. He takes my breath away.

“Yumi,” he says, walking straight up to me and taking my face in his hands, “I’m going to take you to your ship, and you’ll go to their moon base.”

“Fuck no, she is not.”

Out of the corner of my eye, Shintaro crosses the room to us, but Rin keeps his eyes locked with mine. “It’s too dangerous for you to return to Hikari. Narumi Ogawa wants you dead. Atsumi wants you dead. The yakuza who bought you?”

My knees weaken, and a small keen escapes my lips.

“There may be a bounty on your head from others in their organization. I won’t know until we make it to Hikari.”

He pulls me in with a fierce tug, and his lips meet mine in a clash of brilliance that lights me up from the inside out. Like it’s the last kiss we’ll ever share, desperate and passionate and possessive.

No. I’m not ready to be separated from him again! Those months in Kitakyushu were the worst I’ve ever had.

But I know what I have to do.

I gasp for air when he pulls away. Wow. That kiss made everything in my body vibrate. I throw my arms around his neck and hold on tight. My instincts are a jumbled mess. There are good arguments for both Hikari and the moon base.

“No.” This time the voice is from Chiéko. She joins Shintaro. “No. I’m still your boss, and you know more about these people than I do. We need you with us. Mari and Jonathan need you too.”

“What about me? Ryoko? And all the other Orihimé people we left back in Shin-Osaka? You can’t just abandon them too,” Shintaro insists, reaching for me.

Rin inserts himself between us.

“Yumi needs recovery time. Her brain needs to heal. If she returns to Hikari before she’s healed, she could suffer even more memory loss from her migraines.”

“Memory loss?” Chiéko’s face falls into a frown. “What’s going on?”

Boom.

The floor jumps up, and we all stagger as pictures fall off the walls, and a glass tumbles over and breaks.

“Everyone needs to get out now!” Isao’s booming voice echoes down the hallway. A high-pitched scream moves overhead from one end of the compound and dies away. “We’re firing back, but we only have a few more minutes.”

Chiéko screams and stumbles backwards as Isao ducks his head into my room. His lip jerks in a cocky smile as he extends his wings, just to scare Chiéko.

“Put those away, cousin,” Shintaro calls out with a laugh. “You’re scaring the ladies.”

“Oh my God,” Chiéko mutters.

“I’ve come for Yumi. There’s no time to delay.”

I turn to Chiéko and grab her upper arms. “It’s a long and complicated story, and I want to stay, but I shouldn’t. Trust me. You have seen the best and the worst of people back home. You’ll do the same here, without me.”

I don’t want to go.

I know I must.

She throws her arms around me and gives me a quick hug. “Do what you have to do.”

I hastily press my lips to Rin’s. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he says, his voice turbulent with emotion.

I nod once, look at each of them, grab my bag, and run for Isao.

“Let’s go.”

—-

“I made the right decision, yeah?” I ask, pounding the pavement next to Isao.

“Your health is important to us. I promise you will see your friends and family again.”

The compound shakes and rocks, and another scream of a missile passes overhead.

I gasp, and my heart leaps into my throat. “What about Ninjin?”

I come to a screeching halt, digging my heels into the floor. Isao grabs my arm to stop me from falling over.

“He was with all the other animals this morning. They will all be on an evacuation ship together.”

“No. I need to get him.” I try to tear myself away, but Isao is insistent.

“I’ll confirm as we make our way out.” He lifts his tablet as we continue back the way we were going. “Wataru, what’s the status on the animals and Yumi’s dog, Ninjin?”

“Already taken off. Ninjin is aboard with the others.”

My eyes fill with relieved tears. “Thank you!” I call towards his tablet before he turns it off. “Where are we going?” I raise my voice over the rumble of approaching ships.

“To the East Landing Field. Our long-range ships are there.”

Anxiety tightens my chest and not just for my dog. I already regret leaving behind Rin, Shintaro, basically anyone I care about. Isao will take care of me, but I never know where I stand with Shiroi Nami, with any of the corporations. I need to make this work, though. I need to rest and recuperate and start my own corporation.

Isao pauses in the hall, and I run into him, accidentally touching his wings. Ugh. I wish I hadn’t done that. He shakes them out.

“What’s the matter?” I ask as he tilts his head and then sighs, closing his eyes.

“This all happened so fast. I left Saki in the lab.”

“No,” I gasp and cover my mouth with my hand.

“All of our research is there.” He leans over and looks me in the eye. His clear irises almost disappear. “We can’t let Aoi Uma have it.”

I jerk my head in the lab’s direction, the opposite direction of where we were heading. “Let’s go.”

I don’t care what happens now. He’s right. Narumi Ogawa can’t know what we’ve been doing. This is the crux of our plan to topple her corporation. If this fails, there are no backup plans. We will lose.

“Aoi Uma will not destroy the station. We have too much of value here for them to bury us.” Isao’s strides are so long that I have to sprint to keep up with him.

“Why didn’t they attack us before today, then? If they could just come in and bomb us, they could have done that a month ago.”

We round a corner and find a wall collapsed in on an office. Isao pushes debris aside so we can climb over.

“They’re concerned with image, always have been. They couldn’t just attack us outright. They needed an excuse.”

I nod. The refugees from our ship were the catalyst.

Isao’s office door clicks open before we even reach it, the lights flicker on, and Saki sits in her chair, quiet and slumped forward.

He wordlessly points at the shelves of journals along the wall. I need a bag for them.

“In the cabinet,” he says as he sits at his workbench.

I tear open the cabinet and find a large duffel bag that looks like it’s seen better days. It’s probably as old as Isao. I sweep my arm into the shelf of journals and clutch them to my chest before dropping them in the bag.

“Hello, Yumi, Isao.”

I jump, my heart rate spiking at an alarming pace. “Shit.” I stumble backwards from Saki, still not able to reconcile the fact that she’s been reprogrammed. What if Narumi is in there?

The compound rocks and shakes again, and the lights flicker on and off.

“Looks like someone is trying to restore power. We’ve gotta go.” Isao grabs his tablet and accesses the comms. “Alpha One, how much time do we have to reach you?”

“Is this a secure channel?” I whisper to him, and he nods.

“No time left. We’re lifting off.” Hayashi’s voice is calm but cold. He’s pissed. “We took out two of their ships with missiles, but three are landing right now. North wing. That leaves the south and west for you. Godspeed.”

Isao closes his eyes and sighs. I’ve never seen him despondent, so this is not a good sign.

“What’s south and west?” I ask Isao while approaching Saki.

“Off the south, we have one long-range shuttle hidden in a blind and a path to the wilderness. West is the other landing field where your friends and family are.” He grabs the bag I packed and throws it over his back, between his wings, like it’s an old habit. This is his bag he’s carried everywhere. “But they will be leaving too. Soon.”

“Call them now,” I say, pointing to his tablet. “Tell them to wait.”

I turn to Saki and try to calm my nerves. “Hey, we’ve gotta go. We’re in danger here.”

“You’re in danger?” She hops off her chair, sinks to her knees in a sumo squat, and bounces a few times before standing and rolling out her shoulders and neck. I’ve seen this routine before when she would prep for a fight.

“Yeah. Do you think you can help us get out of here?”

Over my shoulder, I hear Isao contact Rin. “We need you to wait. They’ve cut us off from our escape.”

“I can give you ten minutes,” Rin replies. “Aoi Uma has bypassed us for now, but it won’t last. Emergency power to the blinds will only last another… Eight minutes.”

Isao lowers his voice, “Eight minutes is not enough time, Yumi. We should head for the long-range shuttle.”

What do I do?

Do we chance making it to the shuttle with only the three of us? Or do we join the rest of our team?

I should get out to the moon base, but I know, deep in my gut, I should be with my people. My people. And I told myself that I would start listening to my gut more.

This is what needs to be done.

“We go to Rin. And we go as fast as we can.”