The Rise of Shiroi Nami – Chapter 8

“Which way is west?”

“Are you sure?” Isao asks, turning to walk in the opposite direction we had been going in. “You’re risking your health by going back to Hikari. If you end up hurt, there’s only so much we can do for you.”

“I know.” I increase my pace into a jog, and Saki jogs along with me, sticking close. “But I can’t be useful sitting on a moon base, right? And I want to be useful. There’s so much I can be doing. And you wanted me to make a documentary, right? I can’t make a documentary about the struggles of Hikari citizens sitting a million kilometers away.”

“It’s more like three hundred million kilometers, but I hear your point. Keep moving.”

Isao directs us down hallway after hallway until we’ve passed the cafeteria and conference rooms, and we’ve reached the other side of the compound. I think I’ve only been here four or five times. The laundry and maintenance rooms are in this wing.

He comes to a screeching halt, and I crash into him. Saki pulls me back from falling over.

“Thanks,” I mutter to her. “What?” I ask Isao, but he holds up a hand.

“Fighting. Up ahead.” He blinks a few times. “Androids and swords.”

“I hear them,” Saki says. “On the right.”

I don’t hear shit, but I’m not some superhuman nor an android.

“What do we do?” I ask, following along. “We have to go. Time is ticking.”

“Let’s try to run by without being stopped.” Isao picks up pace, and I gasp at how fast he is before I break into a sprint too. Saki is faster than either of us, though. The mental image of her saving the man in the festival flashes before my eyes. She was so quick. I knew right then she was an android, and I didn’t even know about superhumans yet.

We run about a hundred meters before I finally hear the fight too.

“No!” A high-pitched female voice startles me into looking right as we speed past. My heart jumps into my throat, and I come screeching to a halt.

Her sword sings as it slashes down and cuts an android in half. She whirls around and cuts another across the chest. At her feet, a man bleeds out, his hand covering a bloody, mortal wound. I jerk forward to help him but stop at her anguished cry. He’s dead anyway, not moving, not breathing.

With two more swings of her blade, the last two androids in the room drop, sparks and pseudo-blood ejecting into the air. Her shoulders rise and fall with heavy breaths, and she relaxes her sword down to her side with a sob. A giant hole in the wall leads to the outside, but nothing more is coming through it.

She turns around. Shit. It’s Aimi, Reina’s niece. Her wide eyes radiate sadness and eclipse her heart-shaped, elfin face. A halo of hair surrounds her head, escaped from a hasty ponytail, and her clothes are ripped and bloodied.

“Aimi!” I jolt forward and grab her. “Let’s go. Come with us.”

I try to pull her towards the door, but she can’t tear her eyes from the man on the floor. I don’t know him. Were they related? Friends? I know she hasn’t been dating anyone.

Saki looks at the android carnage littering the floor and cocks her head. “They violated the first law.”

“They don’t have the laws,” I remind her. She’s the only one who’s been programmed with them.

“They need the laws.”

Duh. No shit.

Isao brushes past us and heads to the hole in the wall. He peeks his head out, snaps it back, waits a moment, and looks again.

“There’s an abandoned drop ship, but that’s it. Let’s go this way. We’ll be able to reach the landing field easier outside. Radiation exposure will be minimal. I’ll scout and make sure the coast is clear.”

He slips through the hole, spreads his wings, and takes off in one big puff of air.

That never ceases to amaze me.

“I want wings,” Saki says, a stupid grin taking over her face.

“Not me.” I turn to Aimi. “I’m sorry. But you should come with us.”

She shakes her head and drags the back of her hand across her mouth. I frown at the bloody streak she’s just given herself.

“He was getting ready to go.” She gestures to the man dead on the floor. “Too fucking slow.”

I would say I’m sorry again, but time is short.

I grab her upper arms and search her eyes for her sanity. “We have to go. Hayashi has already left. You have more fighting to do.”

I leave her to sheathe her sword and proceed to the hole in the wall. The surroundings are empty — for now. I wave Saki and Aimi forward to join me, and we all step out.

“Where’s the western landing field?” I ask, turning to Aimi.

She sniffs up, her nose red and eyes wet with tears. “This way.” She takes the lead, bringing us down the long building.

Most of this side is shaded by radiation blocking skysails, but the young, secondary forest provides shade and cover too. We slip in and out of the trees, running as fast as we can through the undergrowth. Dead pine needles crunch under my feet, reminding me of my first brush with death here on Kurai. I suppress a shudder.

Has it been eight minutes yet? It already feels like a lifetime since Rin gave us that deadline.

“Where’s Isao?” I ask, hoping either Saki or Aimi can tell me.

“He’s above and to the left,” Saki whispers.

I jump over a downed log and glance up just in time to see a red light hit Isao in the wing. The high-pitched shriek and pop of a laser weapon report startles me backwards, and I stumble into a tree trunk.

The flurry of wings is loud enough to hear through the trees, and Isao falls from the sky in a mess of black leather and human arms and legs.

Shit.

“Break left,” I call out. “Isao is down.”

I follow his fall through the air. He snaps out one wing, and it causes his descent to soften but bank in a circle. Down down down. He thumps onto the ground with a grunt and a moan of pain.

I skid to a stop, fall to my knees, and roll him over.

“Isao, are you okay?” I touch his head, neck, shoulders, and arms. His legs are tucked underneath him, but I think they’re uninjured.

He blinks a few times, his eyes wide. This is an expression I’ve seen before, blinding pain. His pupils shrink to tiny pinpricks in his brilliant, clear irises.

“It’s only…” He gasps for air. “My wing. Go.”

“No. No way. Saki,” I say, waving to Isao. “Help me lift him up. Aimi, you run point.”

“Leave me. I’m too heavy.”

“Not for an android,” Saki says, pulling his arm up, wrapping her other arm under him, and hoisting him to his feet. “I mustn’t let you come to harm through inaction, right?”

My heart warms hearing her recite one of her new laws. Maybe this will work after all.

Isao nods, gritting his teeth through the pain.

“Then let’s go. Only a minute and a half to our deadline.”

Oh, right. I should have asked Saki how much time we have left. She’s the one with the internal clock.

We limp to the edge of the building, the turn to the landing field, when Aimi stops us with her hand out. She snaps back against the building. We do the same.

“Two androids with guns, about ten meters away. They can’t see the shuttle. It’s still in the stealth blind,” she whispers.

“The blind will only be functional for another thirty seconds,” Saki reports, her voice at its lowest level. “I will disable the androids.”

“Can you do that?”

“The new laws you gave me insist I should.” She shrugs with a smile. “I can’t deny them, so good job on the programming, Isao.” She lets him go and props him against the wall.

Saki and Aimi switch spots. It’s her turn to peek around the corner.

“Two Model Eights. I know what to do.”

With a blink, she’s gone.

Do I want to look?

No.

Well, yes.

I inch forward so I can use one eye, the newly healed one, to watch around the corner. Saki runs to the androids with blinding speed. With a leap, she rolls into the first one, turns it over, and thrusts her hand into its side. I hold back my stomach contents as I witness her rip its shirt, pierce its skin, and pull out an internal organ from its lower right side. If this was a human being, the kidney would be in the same place.

The other android kicks her, but she’s too strong for him. He thinks she’s another weak human being, despite what he just saw. She grabs his leg, twists, and the android is on the ground. This time it’s not as shocking to see her pull the organ from the other android. Violence gets easier and easier until remorse sets in.

Aimi and I prop up Isao and usher him forward before he can object. Aimi gasps as she approaches Saki covered in android blood. Saki shakes off the excess, bends down, and wipes her hands on the pants of the nearest android.

“We’re safe to the shuttle,” Saki says, pointing towards the forest in the distance.

With a shimmer and whine, the shuttle fades into existence in front of us, and I marvel at the technology here again. They think we’re advanced? Just in different ways.

The shuttle door opens, and Kazuo and Chiéko wave us inside.

“That was…” Chiéko is at a loss for words, and her eyes scan Saki from head to toe.

“Awesome?” Saki asks. “Thanks. Knowing my own anatomy is helpful sometimes.”

Chiéko’s eyebrows pull together as the shuttle door closes and the engines whine for lift-off. Rin runs forward to hug me, and I’m so grateful to see him that I don’t stop his rushed kiss. This is where I belong.

“We need to go,” he insists, breaking away to help Isao.

“I’m an android,” Saki tells Chiéko. “You’ll get used to it. We should strap in.”

Chiéko watches her go, and I can see the wheels turning in her head.

I chuckle as I steer her to the jump seats.

“Primetime news, Chiéko. We just have to live long enough to report it.”