January 4th, 2044
04:20 PM
Central Ward
Sunset District
There was a storm outside. A hurricane swept up by the Sea of Japan that, even now, was pelting seawater down on Yōgai-shima, hurling thunderbolts at buildings, attempting to rip apart the city’s infrastructure with gale force winds. It all sounded suitably dramatic and terrifying, but to Fubuki Kamui, it was a world away.
All morning, she’d been inside, sheltered away behind the finest protections modern science could provide. She’d slept peacefully this morning when the storm hit, and not even the loudest thunderclaps served to rouse her. All the pouring rain and howling wind could do nothing to harm her in the twenty-first century fortress she now lived in. She was nothing less than a single citizen of a private city that sat nestled inside a solitary building, as good as being a world away from the ugliness of Yōgai-shima.
It was only now, well into the afternoon with evening fast approaching, that Kamui actually laid her eyes on the storm that vainly tried to engulf the city outside her precious walls. On her way out from her residential block, she’d been so absorbed in preparation and catching up on the news of the day that she hadn’t bothered to so much as look out a window. She hadn’t even intended to see it, lost in her own world as she was, but the scenic view of the Heights’ skybridges made looking at the typhoon unavoidable. All around her, the silver towers of the Heights rose up, breathtaking in their enormity and their design. Their smooth, mirror-like exteriors had the sense almost of an organic creature, folding and undulating in ways that conventional skyscrapers would not and could not.
Each singular building had a footprint large enough to engulf an entire city block, crowding out any hopes for smaller buildings to find purchase in the district. The Heights was made up of two dozen such spires, each one a condensed metropolis unto itself. Like a metal net suspended in the air, skybridges formed an above ground highway, allowing residents of one tower to quickly visit another.
It was in one such skybridge that Kamui found herself when she witnessed the storm outside. The skybridge itself was a shatter-proof plexiglass tunnel that ran between two towers with a metal rail inside it. Kamui sat in the car of a twenty seated capsule that ran through the tunnel, its translucent roof allowing her to view Yōgai-shima in all its glory from her lofty perch. The capsule was empty, save for Kamui and the bag of groceries placed on the seat beside her. Tower 5, her place of residence, had stores aplenty up and down its hundred odd floors, but Tower 3 had the quaintest little bakery on Floor 18, not to mention its superior produce up on 78. Normally, she wouldn’t go out of her way to buy more food when she already had a pantry full of provided rations but today was special. It needed to be perfect.
In the reflection of the glass, Fubuki Kamui beheld a slender woman of average with neck length dark hair and brown eyes. She’d chosen to wear a thick scarlet turtleneck sweater and a long, white skirt in order to combat the foul weather she was only dimly aware of. Of course, the temperature-controlled interior of the Heights meant that Kamui’s precautions were meaningless. Even so, Kamui decided that she cut an attractive figure nonetheless, and that was still worth something.
There was a flash somewhere in the sky and Kamui looked up just in time to see lightning strike Tower 12. The blinding flash of heaven’s arrow vanished as quickly as it arrived, leaving only a lasting mirage in Kamui’s vision. Kamui’s eyes scoured the surface of Tower 12, confirming to herself that the bolt of lightning had utterly failed to leave the smallest stain on Yōgai-shima’s architecture. Her gaze fell on one of the exterior gardens built on said tower, where even now, residents could enjoy the scenery while being sheltered from the storm by a bubble-like dome. Every tower had one or two exterior spaces that were raised high over the city streets below to give its occupants the chance to breathe fresh air and feel the natural sun when the artificial lighting of the tower wasn’t enough.
Kamui reached down to her left wrist, taking hold of her Augur which disguised itself as a bracelet of pearl-white rectangular pieces of nanometal. At her touch, the shape-shifting material changed itself into a compact device in imitation of a smartphone. With the latest of Yōgai-shima’s communication technology in her hands, Kamui tried to get herself lost in the digital world again as the ride continued, once more tuning out the impotent hurricane outside.
Despite the presence of a valuable distraction, countless little worries nibbled at the back of her mind. She didn’t have much time before her husband came home, but she wanted his dinner to be hot and fresh when they ate together. If he got home early, then they could always spend a few moments talking before the meal was served. But should she give him the news before or after they ate?
The anticipation was becoming nearly overwhelming, and the adrenaline was making Kamui anxious. As soon as the car docked itself at Tower 5’s thirtieth floor, Kamui wasted no time in gathering up her groceries and climbing out. She strode across the landing platform connected to the tower and followed the passages inside. Soft, classical music played from unseen speakers, contrasted by the holographic projections of the walls and ceiling that mimicked an arboreal forest, as though Kamui was outside and currently enjoying better weather.
Floor 30 wasn’t a residential level, instead it was used as both a travel hub and shopping center. It had all the amenities a visitor could ask for: restaurants, bars, salons, tailors. But by now, Kamui was numb to the luxuries of the Heights, having been a resident for years. The glitz and the glamor had lost their charm, not simply because of acclimatization, but because she’d closed her mind off to the outside world. All that was on her mind was the impending dinner date with her husband. It had to be perfect. It just had to.
Reaching the bank of elevators made to ferry the enormous populace up and down the tower’s length, Kamui hit the up button and waited for the lift to arrive. She stood indignantly, tapping her right foot expectantly as she glared at the sealed metal doors, daring the elevator car to be late even a second longer. The slow-moving machine won the contest of wills, and Kamui turned back to her Augur to distract herself from the wait.
She’d scarcely began thumbing through the luminescent display when it happened: the lights in the atrium flashed. For a brief moment, Kamui stood in the dark. The tinkling of piano keys playing over the Tower’s speakers cut off abruptly, leaving Kamui alone in blackness. A lightning bolt had struck the tower, the booming of thunder echoing through the building informing Kamui of what had happened.
Within three seconds, the lights came back on. The digital band struck up its tune as though they hadn’t missed a beat, while the artificial scenery sprung back to life. The vents exhaled a cool wind in time with the rustling leaves of the holographic forest. Yet, despite that, the brief lapse in Kamui’s environs was enough to prompt a response in her. A feeling that had been foreign to her for the past few years of her sheltered existence made its unwanted return in the dark: fear.
She stood paralyzed in front of the elevator doors as they finally opened, ominously sliding apart to reveal a windowed car that offered her a front seat viewing of the storm swirling overhead as she rode up the tower. A profound sense of vulnerability made her unable to step forward, and she simply waited, as if expecting something else to happen. It was only when the elevator chimed and began to close that Kamui was spurred into action, and she hastily slapped the elevator button again, coercing the doors into opening back up so she could hustle inside with her groceries.
She stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for Floor 35. The doors slid shut smoothly, acting as though nothing in the world could be wrong, though Kamui clutched her groceries in silence. She stood facing the doors, not wanting to even glance out the window behind her. Even so, the storm chased her into the car. Every drop of rain striking the glass, every wail of the wind, every peal of thunder; Kamui heard it all. Whatever barrier kept the sound of the storm out minutes ago had failed. Had some part of the Tower been damaged by the lightning strike? Or was it her own illusory bubble of ignorance that the lightning bolt had pierced?
Every time light flashed through the window behind her, Kamui flinched, holding the bag of groceries tighter to her body. She wasn’t entirely certain whether she was protecting the food, or she somehow believed the produce would protect her, but either way, it felt good to have something to hold onto. Seconds ticked by, achingly slow, as the car made the short ascent up a mere five floors. With every moment that passed by, Kamui was overcome by the fear of another lightning bolt cutting the power, this time leaving her stranded in the elevator, trapped between floors on the edge of the building and fully exposed to the typhoon outside.
As soon as the elevator came to a stop, Kamui wasted no time in getting out, squeezing herself out through the doors before they even fully opened. She scurried down the luxurious halls with their hardwood floors and rich cream wallpaper. The familiarity of her surroundings did nothing to dampen the growing fear she felt at the sound of the looming thunder.
The front door of her apartment clicked open, the electronic lock activating at the proximity of her ID. Almost as soon as the door closed behind her, Kamui allowed herself a deep sigh of relief, as though the storm was trapped outside in the hall and couldn’t reach her in her domicile. After a few moments of steadying herself, Kamui tucked her Augur into an invisible pocket inside her nano-laminate blouse and made her way to the kitchen.
She unpacked and organized the assortment of food items, laying them out on the countertop. Next, she searched the cabinets for each and every pot, pan, and cooking utensil she might need, trying to get everything put just right before she so much as turned the stove on. She gave the entire assortment of tools and ingredients one last look over, checking each one off a mental list, and then, she took hold of the rice cooker’s power cord and plugged it into the wall.
The lights in the apartment flashed. Kamui felt every hair on her body stand on end as static ran up her arm. Electricity buzzed in her ears, drowning out everything. Pain surged through her hand, and Kamui fell backward, dropping the plug before it got into the socket halfway. The lights came back on as she found herself laying on the kitchen floor, cradling her right hand.
She crawled to her feet and stared at the smoking electric outlet and the scorched plug lying near it. It must be a fault in the electrical wiring, she decided. Or maybe it was something to do with the storm. She’d have to use another electrical socket for the rice cooker. Looking down at her hand, she saw that the right sleeve of her sweater was blackened and scorched. Doing her best to stomach her fright, she left the kitchen and went into the spacious bedroom.
She quickly undressed, tossing her clothes into a hamper. Opening her wardrobe, she shifted through the numerous outfits her husband had bought for her. She wanted to wear something serious and direct, but romantic. But maybe something sexy would work, too? She wasn’t entirely certain what kind of image she needed to project for a day like this. How was she supposed to tell Kamiya what she needed to say? Her Augur rang somewhere in the bedroom, and Kamui turned about, still in her underwear. Following the sound to her hamper where she left her phone in the pocket of her blouse, she fetched it out and answered it automatically.
“Hello?” she asked.
“Kamui?” the voice on the other end was one she was intimately familiar with.
“Kamiya,” Kamui felt herself smile. “How’s your day been?”
“It’s been good,” he told her, though he sounded nervous.
“I’ve missed you,” she felt a little needy saying that aloud, but it was true.
“I’ve missed you, too,” Kamiya agreed.
“I’m making dinner tonight,” she told him, shifting her feet as she talked. “It’s your favorite.”
“That sounds great,” something in Kamiya’s voice was strained.
“What is it?” Kamui prompted him, the sweetness fading from her voice.
“My boss wants me to go out drinking tonight,” Kamiya explained, clearly feeling awkward.
“Tonight!?” Kamui lowered the phone, clutching it in both hands as she tried to suppress her frustration. She crossed over to the bedroom window, peering out through the blinds at the rain pelting the entire city.
“Why does it have to be tonight? The city’s halfway underwater.”
“It’s a work thing, sweetie,” Kamiya tried to explain but his young wife would have none of it. Work could wait, at least for today. Today was too important. Today had to be perfect.
“I need you here,” Kamui pleaded. “I’ve been planning this for a week!”
“Is there something special about tonight?” Kamiya asked and Kamui paused, having nearly let the surprise out before her husband had even gotten home.
“I just really need you home, tonight,” Kamui evaded the question. When she felt that wasn’t enough, she decided to lay it on thicker.
“Please,” she said. “The lights are flickering, and the sockets are smoking. I don’t know what to do.”
“If I refuse to go along, I may not get invited out next time,” Kamiya protested. “It’s not just about going out and getting hammered, sweetie, it’s about social networking. If I dip out on this, it’s going to look bad on my part.”
Clearly, Kamiya was caught between a rock and a hard place, but whichever she was in her husband’s dilemma, Kamui was determined to win.
“If you don’t come home tonight, what I’m going to do to you will make you look even worse,” Kamui warned.
“I’ll be the first one out the door,” Kamiya assured her. “I’ll be out just long enough to be seen with the rest of the guys and then I’ll go, I promise. I’ll be home by eight.”
“Seven,” Kamui insisted.
“Sweetheart,” Kamiya tried to argue, but he was quickly shut down.
“Seven!” she accentuated her demand with a stomp of her foot, and her reward was a weary sigh on the other end.
“Seven,” Kamiya agreed.
“Don’t drink while you’re out,” she added. “And don’t eat anything, either.”
“Kamui!” her husband tried to object but she hung up.
That could have gone better, she chided herself. It needed to go better. Throwing her Augur down on the bed, she felt a tremor of pain flash through her right hand. Cradling it with her left hand, she refused to give up. Tonight could still be perfect. She went to the bathroom, digging through the cabinets as she looked for something to put on her hand. Welts were all over her fingers and her skin throbbed. She must have burned herself when she tried to plug in the rice cooker.
Life was happening fast for twenty-two-year-old Fubuki Kamui. She never dreamed she’d be married already. She never dreamed she would find a husband that could afford all this luxury and still be young and romantic enough to treat her the way she wanted to be treated. Life was moving at a mile a minute in her eyes. It was all she could do to hang on, but hang on, she would.
She found some burn ointment in one of the drawers and smeared it over her fingers before quickly setting about styling her hair. After that, she put on some makeup to hide the stress she was under. She couldn’t show Kamiya an unhappy face. Just before she stepped out, Kamui caught sight of a pregnancy test kit sitting on the edge of the counter and she quickly grabbed it and dropped it into the bathroom’s trash bin. Kamiya couldn’t see that. After that, she went back to her wardrobe and quickly threw on a white shirt and a long blue skirt. It was hardly what she wanted to wear at dinner, but she could always get changed before her husband got home.
Soon, she told herself. Tonight. Everything was going to change. What was once a married couple would blossom into a family and what was simply a house would become a home. The future was so bright, Kamui could hardly bear to look at it. She wiped tears from the corners of her eyes, setting about laying the foundation for tonight’s dinner.
Without wasting a moment, she strode back to the kitchen, looking over the ingredients as she checked her pots and pans. She pulled out knives from the block and laid the carrots on the cutting board. She put the beef in a skillet, ready to get cooking. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the rice cooker sitting on the counter, not plugged in, and automaticity took over. Without thinking, she picked up the power cord and pressed it toward the socket.
Lightning danced up Kamui’s arm as the plug entered the smoking socket. She screamed, her voice sounding out as an inarticulate staccato shriek, and the electricity made her dance on the spot. The lights flashed and strobed, eventually bursting and casting the room into darkness. The power socket exploded, raining sparks and melted plastic onto Kamui’s face as she fell backward.
She collapsed to the floor, pain flooding through every nerve, heat filling her body. Stars danced before her eyes in the pitch black. Her ears buzzed and popped. Her body writhed and seized on the kitchen’s linoleum floor, refusing to heed her brain’s commands. She was in the darkness again, helpless, as the rain pounded against the walls and the wind howled. Thunder rumbled somewhere outside, and Kamui whimpered helplessly where she lay.
Fear consumed her every thought; fear and pain such as she had never felt. As agony tore through the terrified woman, the seizures became more intense. She rolled onto her stomach, her spine twisting and contorting with bone breaking pressure. A fire was kindled inside her brain, as though it was pressing against her skull. Her teeth clenched involuntarily, and a long, slow groan escaped her throat, the cry warping and twisting.
How did this happen? Today was supposed to be perfect.
January 4th, 2044
04:30 PM
Central Ward
Sunset District
Senior Inspector Asahi Takeyoshi
The Survivalist was parked in the shadow of a massive silver tower that gently undulated from side to side like a piece of seaweed. The garish structure ran upward over a thousand feet, with metal rails and tubes sticking out of its sides, connecting the argent building to the forest of its siblings that stood in the pouring rain. Red and white lights flashed against the mirror-like surface of the building, and the sound of powerful engines and sloshing water heralded the appearance of white and red fire trucks as they swarmed around the base of the Tower. Among the vehicles was a lone man in a black suit, who waved his arms in the air as he tried to get their attention.
“I need this street closed off!” Takeyoshi faintly listened to his Deputy trying to make himself heard over the wind and the rain. Shin was standing out on the street, speaking with the white clad members of the Civil Service, trying to control the emergency response to the situation inside the building. The young man in his black suit was flashing his silver badge to anyone that would listen, trying to project authority and confidence, though Takeyoshi found it hard to imagine he was accomplishing anything other than irritating the city’s emergency personnel.
The Inspectors and the Civil Services were always at odds with one another; the Bureau and the Cabinet fought a constant, invisible war for power, and their appendages did likewise. The Bureau used to have its own police officers, firefighters, and medics, who would ride along with Inspectors in a parade of black vehicles that had become known as “funeral processions” among the populace. The Bureau’s own emergency services created confusion when they responded to a situation alongside the Civil Services, and clashes over authority were commonplace. Eventually, the Bureau agreed to pull back the Peace Officers, and other emergency personnel, restricting them to policing just the Bureau’s own territory.
It was a rare win that the Cabinet could claim in the game of power taking place between it and the Bureau, but with that victory came concessions; in particular, that the Civil Services bow to the authority of the Inspectors where Human Calamities were concerned. That was how things were supposed to work on paper, but Takeyoshi imagined that Shin was getting a firsthand taste of how much respect the Cabinet’s lackeys afforded them.
While Shin wasted his energy trying to herd the cats outside, Takeyoshi remained comfortably inside the Survivalist. He didn’t have time for cockfighting with the firefighters about the emergency, and he wasn’t keen to throw himself headlong into danger until the situation had properly crystalized. Instead, he waited where he was safe and comfortable, and turned his mind to more important things.
After leaving the Lunar District this morning, Takeyoshi had fallen asleep for an hour or two. He’d been woken up by Shin when they made a routine stop somewhere in Horizon as directed by Kodera. Hazard Energy flowed up and down the entire world, provoking the miraculous and the tragic, and where Negative Energy gathered, disasters often broke out.
Nowhere in the world was more awash in Hazard Energy than Yōgai-shima; the island fed on the abundant energy of natural disasters, but that esoteric diet made the city a magnet for outbreaks of misfortune. Fires, electrical shortages, and car accidents weren’t uncommon, despite all of the protections that Yōgai-shima offered. It was among those disasters that human beings could become something more, something worse, when bathed in the energy of raw misfortune. When a human being was reborn as a Human Calamity, it was the Bureau’s responsibility to deal with them, either by eliminating them, or recruiting them.
In the wake of Hurricane Izumi, the city had become showered with more than just water, and hotspots of Negative Energy appeared up and down the city, threatening to break out into disasters. Less than one out of every ten potential emergencies predicted by the Forecasters actually broke out, and of those that did, they rarely produced a Human Calamity, but the Bureau needed to be present, just in case. Takeyoshi and Shin had spent the day travelling up and down the city on “Emergency Patrol,” going wherever the Forecasters directed them.
It was boring work that required only time and little energy. Every so often, Takeyoshi and Shin would receive a call from Kodera, and he’d direct them to a hotspot where the amount of Negative Energy had exceeded a vague threshold. A dozen times at a dozen different places, the pair had been directed to a potential drowning, or a small housefire, or an assault, and they’d sit and wait nearby to see if something actually happened, but nothing ever did. The potential emergencies had not only failed to manifest, but neither Inspector was even called upon to take any preventative measures to prevent the incident from occurring.
It was thoroughly monotonous, but it was the kind of boring Takeyoshi preferred; at least he was able to stay warm and dry inside the car, and Ink gave him access to everything he needed to do some private work that the Bureau wasn’t paying him for. His Deputy, however, couldn’t sit still. It didn’t matter whether it was a lightning strike or a robbery: wherever the Forecasters sent them, Shin was the first person to climb out of the vehicle and take charge of the situation, even though nothing was really happening. Takeyoshi imagined that the young man’s zeal would fade with the passing of hours and mindless repetition, but Shin was still standing out in the pouring rain, trying to do his job to the best of his ability even when almost everything was out of his hands. Takeyoshi hadn’t decided whether the young man’s enthusiasm was endearing or irritating, yet.
Whenever the pair weren’t being forced to stake out a random building at Kodera’s direction, they were free to do as they pleased. Not being assigned to a case, the Bureau expected them to drive around the city as a show of force and a deterrent for potential calamities, but otherwise, they had no obligations until the Forecasters called them again. After the first stop on their Emergency Patrol came to an end, Takeyoshi had taken the wheel.
He’d been to the Yōgai-shima Municipal Bank, to the Civil Police Headquarters, and up to the Office of Civil Records. With each stop, Shin had innocently asked where they were going and why, but Takeyoshi had refused to answer, and he left his Deputy in the vehicle while he attended to personal business. When he came back to the Survivalist, Shin asked once or twice what Takeyoshi had done, but eventually stopped, either because he realized he wouldn’t get an answer, or because he saw the mounting frustration on his mentor’s face.
“Tanaka Jinta hasn’t been seen since last year,” Takeyoshi fixated on the words as he sat in the passenger seat of the Survivalist, writing luminescent letters in the darkness of his mind. “None of his close associates have received any contact with him. None of his male colleagues or friends show any sign of subversion. The police search has completely halted, and the Office of Public Records hasn’t recorded a single blip from his ID on the city network. He’s vanished.”
The two words hung in Takeyoshi’s mind, taunting him.
“A man can’t just disappear,” it was a pedestrian rule of thumb that Takeyoshi tried to argue with, but it was fact that wasn’t entirely true for a Human Calamity. “He wouldn’t just hide himself away and never stick his head out again. He couldn’t even if he wanted to. So where did he go?
“Maybe he left Yōgai-shima?” Takeyoshi tried to reason his way forward from the dead-end fate had seemed to put in his path. “If he felt he could no longer hide on the island, it makes sense that he would flee, but where? The mainland is in chaos and Honshu’s little better. Where then? Hokkaido? Kyushu? Would he be happy in a place like that? Would he be allowed to leave Yōgai-shima?”
“No,” Takeyoshi decided, perhaps because he refused to accept the idea that his quarry was beyond his reach. “He’s still in Yōgai-shima. He has to be.”
But Takeyoshi’s resolute determination didn’t manifest a new path forward for him simply out of desire. The simple fact was that he’d run out of leads, and the trail he’d been chasing had gone cold. He sat in the Survivalist, listening to the sound of the pouring rain while he stared through the front windshield at nothing. In his mind, he grasped at straws, clutching for some kind of path forward.
“Inspector Asahi, please respond,” a voice suddenly spoke from Takeyoshi’s Omen and he jumped in alarm, having slipped into another bout of microsleep in the silence. He pulled his Omen from his chest pocket and looked at the green display. “Forecaster Ibuka” was written over the symbol of a ringing phone while the time was displayed beneath it: “04:43.”
“Go ahead, Kodera,” Takeyoshi asked, expecting the Forecaster to announce an all-clear.
“Inspector, we have the confirmation of a Casualty in Tower 5,” Ibuka’s pronouncement dashed Takeyoshi’s hopes for an uneventful day. “You are hereby cleared to assume control of the scene and enter the building to perform elimination procedures.”
Outside the car, Takeyoshi heard the sound of feet splashing through puddled rainwater, and then the sound of a hand pressing against the driver’s side door. The door pulled open, and Shin stuck his head into the cabin, his eyes alight with determination.
“Takeyoshi, we’ve got—!” the young man began to explain but Takeyoshi raised a hand to stop him.
“I’m aware,” Takeyoshi insisted and he pushed open the car door to step into the rain. Reflexively, Takeyoshi reached for his Karma, and swiftly found the two pages floating in his mind. He tore half of the righthand page off and imagined taking that shift of black paper and wrapping himself in it, blunting the power of the storm. Climbing out of the car, Takeyoshi stood in the shadow of the tower, looking up at it without the barrier of the Survivalist’s windows, and he marveled at the true enormity of the structure. That wasn’t to say that the building was in any way aesthetically pleasing, but more that Takeyoshi found it impressive that even with the near collapse of human civilization, the rich and powerful still found ways to flaunt their excess over the rest of the populace.
DANGER.
The premonition bloomed in Takeyoshi’s mind as he looked up at the tower, and lightning surged across the heavens, momentarily transforming the spire into a shadowy silhouette, accentuating the foreboding feeling. The ephemeral lightning passed within a second, but the sense of danger lingered in Takeyoshi’s senses as he stared up at the super tower. Through the rain, Shin stepped up beside him and Takeyoshi glanced at the younger man, trying to silently communicate that he needed to be ready for whatever happened next.
The Deputy gave Takeyoshi a firm nod, his eyes clear and brow furrowed with intensity, but his body language told the Inspector that the young man was brimming with uncontrolled energy. In the midst of Exigency, Takeyoshi’s brain was flooded with adrenaline and Hazard Energy, but he was practiced in harnessing it, remaining outwardly tranquil. Shin, on the other hand, was cracking his knuckles and shifting back and forth on his feet as he tried to contain the anxious power flowing through him. The younger man’s nervousness was to be expected, but at the same time, Takeyoshi found it hard to ignore.
The power of Exigency went hand in hand with the fight-or-flight instinct that all humans shared, and Takeyoshi wondered if Shin even realized that he’d already fallen into that mindset. An ordinary human in that headspace was easily startled and prone to sudden, reflexive actions that could make them dangerous: a Human Calamity in the throes of Exigency was exponentially more dangerous. If Shin couldn’t harness that power properly, he could be just as dangerous as any Casualty, and that thought nearly made Takeyoshi order the young man to stay behind.
“As long as I keep an eye on him, it should be fine,” he ultimately reasoned. “The kid can’t learn anything if I keep him on the sidelines.”
“Alright, Ibuka,” Takeyoshi raised Ink to his mouth as he spoke into the Omen and looked back up at the massive silver obstacle in front of him. “Give us the facts.”
“Our catch of the day is one Fubuki Kamui; a twenty-two-year-old woman living on floor thirty-five,” Ibuka spoke through Takeyoshi’s Omen, and the device produced the image of an attractive young woman with dark neck length hair and brown eyes. “Her Civil ID reported heightened stress and brain activity shortly after 04:30 PM before it went dark. Hazard Energy activity spiked shortly after a lightning bolt struck Tower 35, and when Fubuki’s ID began signaling a medical emergency, the Negative Energy readings sharply spiked, and have remained elevated since then.”
“Do we know for a fact that Fubuki-san is the Casualty?” Shin questioned, looking at the image of the woman still floating in the air. “I mean, what’s to say she even became a Casualty? She could be a Survivor, like us.”
“Not a chance,” Ibuka dismissed Shin’s question out of hand. “All the signs say Casualty, and that’s what I’m sticking with.”
“What signs are those?” Shin seemed compelled to ask the question.
“Worry about your own job before asking about how I do mine, pretty boy,” the young woman sniffed.
“But there’s still a chance she could be—!” Shin tried to argue with the Forecaster, but Takeyoshi raised a hand to cut him off.
“Whether she’s a Survivor, or a Casualty, it doesn’t change what we have to do,” Takeyoshi interrupted. “We’re going inside, one way or another.”
“Right,” Shin took a step back and looked away, clearly upset with himself.
“Do have any confirmation on the nature of its Crisis?” Takeyoshi asked, raising the Omen to his mouth.
“Nothing solid,” Ibuka reported with a click of her teeth. “The entire tower suffered an electrical outage after the initial lightning strike, and it’s been suffering cascading outages for the last few minutes. Based on the readings, it’s almost certainly an ‘Electrical’ type, but there’s no way to tell if it’s a manufactured or natural Crisis at work.”
“Do we know if the target’s on the move or not?” Takeyoshi looked up at the silver monolith, imagining that chasing a Human Calamity through its innards could last years.
“The disruptions to the building’s electrical systems are making it impossible for me to pull up any cameras, but the surplus of Hazard Energy still seems to be concentrated on the thirty-fifth floor,” Ibuka switched out the image of Kamui, replacing it with a digital reconstruction of the tower, which zoomed in on the floor in question. “Casualty or not, it doesn’t seem like she’s gone far.”
“What about civilians?” Shin asked, once more butting in.
“All of the swanky apartments in the tower can convert to Type-2 Disaster Shelters when the situation calls for it,” Ibuka informed the young man with a tinge of jealousy in her voice. “There are several Type-3 shelters spread out through the building in case of serious emergency, so I wouldn’t really worry about any of the one-percenters, myself.”
“What about the people inside who couldn’t get back to their apartments before the emergency was sounded?” Shin asked, looking up at the building with a frown.
“If we find anyone in trouble along the way, we’ll nudge them in the right direction,” Takeyoshi assured him, if only to appease the young man’s hero complex. “But we’re not going to do that just standing around out here.”
“Before you go inside, I should advise you that the relay in Tower 5 is having all kinds of trouble thanks to the electrical surges,” Ibuka warned. “All the interference is going to make contact with you once you’re inside the building very difficult.”
“We’ll keep that in mind,” Takeyoshi pressed Ink to the left lapel of his coat, and the smart-metal device hooked itself to the article of clothing. Once he felt the device was secure, he started walking, with Shin following at his heels. Firetrucks and ambulances formed a ramshackle barricade around the entrance of the tower, but the Civil Firefighters and EMT’s stood listlessly in their white and red uniforms, being forced to wait until the scene was cleared. They stared silently at the pair of Inspectors as they passed through their midst and headed for the foyer, and Takeyoshi felt a distinct animosity from the men and women surrounding them, but he ignored it. Shin, however, didn’t seem to read the situation the same way.
“Be ready to go at a moment’s notice,” he advised the emergency personnel standing on either side of them, making eye contact where he could as he addressed them with a firm voice. “Once we’ve resolved the situation, we’ll radio down to let you know that the scene is clear. If we encounter any wounded, we’ll direct them down to you if possible.”
Takeyoshi tried to imagine the annoyance and frustration the Civil employees must have felt at Shin trying to assume control of the situation, but that only brought a smile to his face. He considered making a mental note to discourage Shin from interacting with Civil more than necessary, but he decided better of it; unlike some other Inspectors, Shin’s actions didn’t seem to come from a desire to throw his weight around, or to irritate, but from something a little more earnest and genuine.
With Takeyoshi in the lead, the two Inspectors stepped through the pair of automatic sliding doors into the atrium of Tower 35. The interior was a spacious circular room with white tile floors and a light brown wood textured laminate across the walls. The ceiling was a kind of holographic display that cycled through footage of the silver tower and its siblings, advertising the scenic views and luxuries found high above to those visitors on the ground. At the far end of the lobby were six elevators in glass tubes, which allowed Takeyoshi to see the cars sitting patiently in the shafts on the ground floor.
As the two stepped into the interior, some automatic system appeared to trigger, and the center of the open floor began to shift. Beneath his feet, Takeyoshi felt the vibrations of moving machinery, and the sound of tiles clicking together soon followed, along with the groan of metal sliding against metal. Out from the center of the room rose a large desk, coated in the same faux-wood laminate that the walls were. On the front of the desk was the logo of the private wealthy retreat; a forest of silver trees in front of a white mountain.
For a brief moment, a luminescent figure appeared behind the desk, flanked by two ten foot tall digital skeletons of the tower. Before the digital construct could even fully be seen, it shimmered, distorted, and fragmented, becoming a blur of white light smeared across the lobby. The distortion buzzed and shifted like static as whatever program operating the lobby’s front desk tried to fix itself.
“Welcome to the Heights!” a synthetic voice greeted the pair from some hidden speaker. “The world’s last-an-on-lee-refu—.”
The digital assistant barely got a few words out before whatever disruption affected the hologram slurred its speech, and the rest of its greeting fell into a string of staccato syllables. The lights in lobby began to flicker, and the illusory ceiling dissipated to reveal numerous mechanical arms and projectors which made the mirage possible. Takeyoshi stepped around the malfunctioning display, but Shin lingered to stare at it for a moment.
“You ever see something and think to yourself, ‘that’s the weirdest thing I’m going to see today?’” Shin asked, gesturing at the display, where the hologram was trying to remake itself, leading to a face, a torso, and arms and legs sporadically forming from the blur before disappearing,
“That’s nothing,” Takeyoshi brushed off the young man’s naive statement. “Besides, the day isn’t over yet.”
“I don’t suppose we can take the elevators up?” Shin asked, joining Takeyoshi at the far end of the room.
“In an emergency situation, most buildings recall their elevator cars down to the first level and keep them on lockdown,” Takeyoshi gestured at the sextuplet of identical cars waiting behind their glass sheathes.
“Yeah, but we can override that, right?” Shin reached into his pocket and withdrew his Omen, which took the form of a black glossy cellphone. Before Takeyoshi could say anything, the Omen projected a fiery orange eye which fixated itself on Shin.
“Who looks at all the flickering lights and malfunctioning electronics in this building and thinks it’s a good idea to climb into an elevator?” the device demanded in an irate tone.
“These things are built with redundancies these days,” Shin countered, giving the Omen a stern look.
“I’d rather avoid climbing into one, present circumstances considered,” Takeyoshi cast the deciding vote, looking up at the glass shaft where it disappeared above the ceiling and continued to ascend higher and higher. “We’re taking the stairs.”
The stairs up the side of the building were inconspicuous next to the ostentatious bottom floor lobby; they were hardly meant to be seen, or even thought of, but beneath Ink’s careful eye, all was revealed. Takeyoshi walked closed to the wall, following the curve of the room to the right of the banked elevators, while Ink shined a light against the laminated surface. After a moment, Ink’s glowing eye fixated on a spot on the wall, and the emerald rays traced a rectangular doorway that was invisible to the naked eye.
“Stop,” Ink gave Takeyoshi an audible command, but it was pointless, as he’d already come to a halt. There was a brief chirping sound from Ink, and the door shifted, releasing a rush of air as it slid into the wall. Beyond was a small passage into a tight, vertical concrete tunnel that led up into the building above. The stairwell lacked any of the accoutrements of the lobby, being only a perfectly smooth cement cylinder that had likely been molded by nanite. Dominating the space was a steel stairwell made of little more than scaffolding and steps that spiraled up into the confines of the building.
“Why do I get the feeling we’re the first people to ever use this thing?” Shin murmured from over Takeyoshi’s shoulder.
“I doubt anyone’s ever needed it since the building was finished,” Takeyoshi ventured, placing his foot on the bottom step. The sound of his shoe scraping against the metal stair echoed through the small space, but the metal structure seemed stable enough. Takeyoshi reached out and took hold of the metal railing on the staircase, and gave it an experimental shake, being careful to drop out of Exigency before doing so. Satisfied that it didn’t come apart on him, Takeyoshi continued to climb.
“We aren’t seriously taking the stairs up thirty-five floors, are we?” Shin asked, looking cautiously at the scaffolding.
“What?” Takeyoshi asked, turning to look over his shoulder at the younger man. “You aren’t afraid of a little exercise, are you?”
Without waiting for an answer, Takeyoshi turned back around and slipped into Exigency. He raced up the steps, moving with speed that would make an Olympian track runner stop and stare with envy, pounding up the staircase. He circled the steps in moments, his every footstep echoing off the cramped grey walls of the stairwell as he ascended five floors between two heartbeats. However, the staircase began to shake more violently beneath his feet with increasing ferocity, and he worried that he may have trusted the scaffolding too much, and he turned to look over his shoulder to warn Shin not to follow him up. Instead, he saw a black blur racing towards him.
It was only when Shin vaulted over him that Takeyoshi realized that it was the younger man who was shaking the metal structure. Without even turning to look at Takeyoshi, Shin raced ahead of him, and Takeyoshi was scarcely able to follow the Deputy with his eyes. As fast as Takeyoshi was moving, Shin was moving twice as fast, perhaps even three times, and Takeyoshi quickly found himself struggling to keep up. Once Shin had gone a five or so floors ahead of Takeyoshi, the young man would pause on the landing of the stairwell and wait for Takeyoshi to catch up, then race off again as soon as Takeyoshi closed the distance. He continued to follow his elusive deputy until a warning loomed in his mind.
DANGER.
“Shin!” Takeyoshi reflexively called out to his subordinate.
“Yeah!” Shin called out from somewhere above him. “I see it!”
“See what?” Takeyoshi called back, but there was no answer. Whatever it was, Shin had stopped moving, and Takeyoshi hastened to follow. The lights in the shaft above flickered, and Ink automatically shined her own light from the Omen attached to Takeyoshi’s jacket. Takeyoshi slowed his pace as he ventured further up into the passage, the earlier warning still weighing on his mind.
He found Shin standing on the next landing, his back to the metal doorway that exited into floor thirty-four, his own Omen held out in his hand to shine a light upward. The orange beam of light revealed something akin to a spiderweb that dominated the stairwell above them: countless wires ran back and forth across the passage, so tightly woven that neither man could hope to find their way through without touching them. Takeyoshi stepped closer to Shin, plucking Ink from his chest to shine the light on the cord nearest him.
The wires, or cables, Takeyoshi decided, were red and raw, having the appearance of flesh. Each cable was in fact made up of multiple smaller cords that were pressed together and coated in a thin layer of skin. Takeyoshi leaned as closed to the nearest one as he dared, which had fastened itself to the concrete wall, and the warning in his mind grew louder with every inch closer he came. With the strange tendril six inches from his face, Takeyoshi softly exhaled onto it, and the reaction was immediate.
The rope convulsed in response to the gentle provocation, and sparks of electricity glowed from within. The current of electricity ran up the tendril and into the nest above them, creating a chain reaction as the maze of fleshy strings flashed with equal intensity. The stairwell was brightly illuminated by the powerful current and Takeyoshi raised a hand up over his face as the crackling wires grew too intense to look at. After several seconds of activity, the web of feelers began to slowly calm down again, and the light faded, leaving the pair of onlookers alone in the returning darkness, accompanied by the faint smell of burning meat.
“What are they?” Shin asked, naked revulsion in his voice.
“Nerves,” Takeyoshi answered. “I’m guessing Fubuki-san has already transformed.”
“What do we do now?” Shin asked, disappointment written on his face.
“We do what we were always here to do,” Takeyoshi insisted. “We eliminate her.”
He pushed past Shin and stepped to the door behind him. Ink released a series of mechanical clicks as she communicated with the tower’s network again and the doorway released another whisper of flowing air as the door’s seals were broken. The entrance back into the building tried to move once, and then the lights flashed in the stairwell, burning so bright they became blinding. The unseen mechanisms of the sliding door ground together, creating an awful squeal of metal grinding against metal. Then, the lights in the stairwell burst, filling the passage with the sound of intermittent pops from shattered bulbs followed by the sound of glass shards cascading to the floor. The network of nerves above their heads flashed again like lightning, but when their light died, the two Inspectors were left alone on the scaffold with only the lights of their Omens.
“Looks like the Casualty’s the one responsible for the electrical failures in the building,” Takeyoshi surmised, casting his light over the web above them.
“Well, there’s no getting up to thirty-five from here,” Shin leaned against the metal rails to look over the side. “Do we go back down?”
“No. Our highest priority is getting into the building as quickly as possible. The longer that Fubuki Kamui is transformed, the more dangerous she’ll become and the faster the electrical outages will spread,” Takeyoshi turned away from Shin, pulling Ink from his chest. “Ink, where if Fubuki Kamui’s apartment in relation to us?”
“It’s just one floor up, but it’s on the other side of the building from you, which isn’t as nearly as close as it sounds,” the Omen reported, bringing up a map of the building. “There’s another stairwell on the other side of the Tower. You might try going back down a few floors and see if you can cross over—”
DANGER.
Before Ink could finish suggesting her alternative route, the premonition flashed in Takeyoshi’s mind. A second later, there was a thunderous crash and light spilled into the dark passage from behind Takeyoshi. The door into the building had been kicked inward, and it lay shattered upon the carpeted floors outside the stairwell while the culprit, Shin, stepped over it through the opening.
“I got the door,” Shin commented, seeming as proud of himself as he was ignorant of the danger.
Before Takeyoshi could say anything, the nerves above them flashed. A sound echoed through the building, a high-pitched warbling that rose into a shrill scream. The nerves glowed in response to the anguished cry, and they began to unhook themselves from the wall, writhing like a nest of angry serpents.
“Son of a—,” Takeyoshi shoved Shin the rest of the way through the open doorway, and the young man stumbled to safety onto floor thirty-four as the nest of nerves came alive. Like a swarm of electric eels, the nerves electrified the steel walkway, sending an intense current through it. An ordinary man would have been crippled by the pain, alone, and likely would have died in less than a second of exposure to such powerful voltage, but Takeyoshi was already in Exigency. The engorged nerves began tearing the walkway apart, lifting the stairs into the air, while more pressed around Takeyoshi.
He reached into his coat pocket to withdraw a pen, but the small writing utensil exploded and melted between his fingers before he could channel his Crisis into it. Casting the burning tool away, Takeyoshi clawed at Ink, pulling the Omen free from his chest. Without any assistance from him, the Omen shape-shifted into the form of a long, dark grey metal spear half a foot taller than Takeyoshi was. At the same time, Takeyoshi saw Shin standing on the threshold of the door, looking like he was a hair’s breadth from rushing back through, heedless of the tendrils already creeping towards him.
Takeyoshi fixed the young man with his most disapproving look. Flourishing his weapon, Takeyoshi twisted the smart-metal weapon around, carving through the grasping nerves with ease. Even so, the stair broke apart beneath his feet, and Takeyoshi had to brace himself to avoid being thrown over the side to the bottom of the passage. As the stairwell twisted to the left, Takeyoshi used his left hand to brace himself against the rail.
Seeing Shin still standing in the doorway, Takeyoshi flicked his wrist, using the impossibly sharp edge of Ink’s spear tip to cut through the steel walkway beneath his feet, carving out a length of metal nearly as long as the door Shin had broken down. With a flick of his wrist, Takeyoshi struck the chunk of metal with his spear and sent it flying towards open entry where Shin was standing. The crude length of metal slammed across the wall, blocking the doorway and preventing the nerves from following Takeyoshi’s Deputy into the building. Then, the stairwell truly fell apart and Takeyoshi felt himself begin to tumble downward.
He reached into his pocket, withdrawing two pencils, and he threw them upward when they transformed into blades between his fingers. The twin knives sank effortlessly into either side of the metal slab, crudely bolting it to the wall. After that, with no handhold in arm’s reach, Takeyoshi fell back down towards the ground floor as the network of metal stairs fell to pieces all around him..
“Don’t do anything stupid, kid.”
Soon, the World Will End 