The Daily Grind Case File #7, “I’m smarter than I look.”

“I’m smarter than I look.”

The Daily Grind

Case File #7

January 4^th, 2044

07:20 PM

Sin Ward

Temptation District

Nanbu Naoya

“Have you seen this guy?” it was a question Naoya had asked for the last few hours, and, often enough, he would get the same answer. In his hand, he held out his Augur, which projected the clean-cut image of Nishijima.

“Yeah, I’ve seen him,” answered the surly bartender who looked down at the image.

Naoya was standing in a bar on the first floor of a casino called the “Ivory Tower.” True to its name, the building was a white marble spear that pointed up towards the sky. While it would have stood apart in another ward, in Sin Ward, it blended into the numerous gregarious buildings that vied for the attention of passersby. Since spotting Nishijima down in the south, Naoya had broken away from the chase, and headed north, up into the busier parts of Sin Ward. Though he was no longer looking for Nishijima, he hadn’t truly given up the chase.

The way Nishijima suddenly disappeared finally convinced Naoya that there was more to this man and the people chasing him than Ichinose had told him. It was obvious that running down the man in the grey coat was going to be far more difficult than cornering an ordinary mark with an overdue bar tab, and so Naoya changed his tactics. He headed up north, looking to pick up the earliest steps in Nishijima’s path; he needed to anticipate what the other man really wanted if he hoped to catch him, after all. All his work over the past few hours had led him here.

“I’ve got to tell you, though,” the woman behind the bar fixed Naoya with a keen eye. “You’re not the first guy to come in here asking about him. You’re not even the tenth.”

The inside of the building had a very foreign and very expensive vibe, like it was the palace of a European prince. The floors were pristine white marble with gold patterns, and the walls were decorated with white and gold floral patterns, which contrasted with the hard black furniture and countertops. Golden chandeliers hung from the ceilings, although they were only there to provide the illusion of luxury, as the true light sources were sconces on the walls. The rest of the staff were dressed in the same monotone formal attire with black suits with white button up shirts, waistcoats and gloves.

Far from Ichinose’s soapland in the middle of Sin Ward, or the dark town whose debauchery was on full display, the Ivory Tower was a far more formal and refined den of vices, but it was no less a market of sin than anywhere else in the city. The Ivory Tower was a comprehensive business with various services offered up and down its seventy-odd floors. The first floor had check-in services for the hotel rooms above, along with a ground floor restaurant and bar that Naoya was told paled in comparison to the eateries above, but the Ivory Tower was more than a hotel; it was also a multi-story casino, and brothel.

While soaplands like the Virgin Sacrifice still abided by old laws of Japan and tried to pretend that they were anything but brothel, the Ivory Tower remembered that it was in Yōgai-shima, and Japan’s legislature held no sway over it. Still, the high-class establishment advertised the services of its employees with more grace than Ichinose could ever hope to have.

Like Ichinose’s bathhouse, pictures of numerous women were hung at various points around the lobby in positions that commanded the viewers’ attention. Sitting at the bar, Naoya could see the framed portrait of a woman behind the bartender. The portrait had a frame of gold and the picture itself was styled to look like an oil painting, though Naoya imagined that was the result of some filter applied to a digital photo. The woman in the painting was blonde with wavy hair and a pair of blue eyes and pink lips. She was dressed in a white form-fitting dress with fur dangling over her right shoulder and a small fan in her left hand. She was looking to her right, her sharp eyes and dangerously beautiful features looking away from Naoya, as if to tell the viewer that she was simply too far above them for her to even consider making eye contact.

While the portrait had no name assigned to it, Naoya didn’t doubt that the woman worked in the Ivory Tower at one point or another. The other portraits he’d seen since he’d walked in were much the same; all of them showing women in expensive clothes with the most immaculate of makeup, and every photo framed in a way that made them seem untouchable. The women who worked at the Tower were singers, private dancers, and companions of the rich and famous: courtesans of the modern day. They were beyond the reach of ordinary men unless a commensurate price was paid for their attention. All of that made the bartender seem a bit out of place.

The woman behind the bar was roughly Naoya’s age, maybe a few years older, and dressed in the white shirt and vest that the rest of the staff had. She had thin dark eyes and a headful of black hair that was tied into a loose and messy ponytail. Contributing to her rough appearance, the woman had a washcloth dangling over one shoulder and her sleeves were rolled up, exposing a tattoo on her left forearm. Naoya couldn’t say why the woman was allowed to present herself so out of line with the building’s aesthetic, but he didn’t mind, as it made her seem far more real than the women in the portraits ever were.

“I imagine you’ve had a train of guys coming through this door, flashing this picture around,” Naoya tucked the Augur into his pocket.

“That’s quite the understatement,” the lady bartender cracked a small smile. “I’m afraid you’re out of luck, though.”

“How’s that?” Naoya asked, casually leaning against the bar.

“You’re gonna get the same answer I gave to every goon that walked through those doors,” she flashed him a knowing look.

“And what’s that?” Naoya spread his hands and offered a smile.

“He came in, asked a few questions, and then he left,” the woman gave Naoya a soft shrug and a smile of her own. “He spent less time in here than you did, big guy. He didn’t say who he was, where he was going, or how he planned to get there. He walked out those doors behind you hours ago and never came back through.”

“Really?” Naoya looked over his shoulder back towards the entrance.

“Sorry I can’t be more help,” the woman made it sound as though she were dismissing him, but Naoya didn’t leave.

“That wasn’t what I was going to ask about, though,” Naoya corrected the bartender, and she gave him an appraising look.

“Alright, then,” the woman flashed an amused grin. “Shoot.”

“The man that came in here today,” Naoya leaned closer and lowered his voice, not wanting the few customers in the otherwise vacant bar to overhear their conversation. “He was looking for someone; a woman.”

Naoya gestured at the photo of the woman in white for emphasis.

“Sounds to me like you know more about this guy than I do,” the bartender observed, her dark eyes searching Naoya’s face. “I don’t know what you expect me to tell you.”

“The woman he was looking for,” Naoya fixed the bartender with a pleading eye, trying to impress on her the importance of his question. “What do you remember about her? Did he tell you her name?”

“No,” the bartender shook her head. “He said he was looking for a new girl. I mean, really new, like he expected her to be here yesterday.”

“Did he say anything else about her?” Naoya asked, though he tried not to seem too forceful with his questions. “Did he describe her?”

“No, but he had a picture of her,” the bartender answered, and Naoya felt a soft jolt of surprise. None of the other men and women he’d spoken to had mentioned a photo.

“Do you remember what she looked like?” Naoya asked, feeling a jolt of excitement, thinking that he might be onto something.

“She was young. She had red hair,” the bartender answered, her eyes drifting away from Naoya as she tried to recall the details of the photo. “You don’t see that a lot in this city. She was pretty, too. Not drop dead gorgeous, like, you know,” the bartender nodded her head at the picture of the blonde behind her. “But she was cute.”

“Do you remember anything else?” Naoya asked, grasping for anything else to go on.

“She had brown eyes, and a slim nose,” the bartender gave Naoya a weak smile as she grasped for something to appease him. Naoya felt his face falling into a frown, an expression that was often unsettling for other people, and he remembered to keep his features stoic, despite his disappointment. Even though she may have seen a picture of the woman Nishijima was looking for, the bartender’s description wasn’t far off from what Naoya had heard secondhand from the other dives he’d hit up before this one.

“Oh!” the bartender spoke up after another moment of thought and reached up to touch a finger to the top of her left cheek. “She had a tattoo right here under her eye. It was a heart, with a small kanji inside it.”

“A small heart, huh?” Naoya reached up and touched the same spot on his own face. “I didn’t hear that before.”

“Well,” the bartender spread her hands. “That’s really all I can remember.”

“You’ve been a big help,” Naoya assured her and he flashed another smile.

“I’d say good luck finding the guy, but. . .,” the bartender trailed off, sizing up Naoya as the man stood upright.

“Don’t worry,” he tried to reassure her. “At this point, I’m more interested in just talking to this guy.”

“For his sake, I hope you’re not lying,” the bartender cracked a smile and turned away, signaling the end of the conversation. Naoya was about to turn and leave when he saw the small kiosk mounted on the end of the bar that customers could use to order drinks. He pulled out his Augur and swiped it over the kiosk, triggering the device to pay out a small tip to the bartender. It was probably insultingly small considering the building’s usual clientele, but Naoya figured leaving without a gesture of thanks would be inappropriate considering the Ivory Tower’s hospitality.

The man at the door gave Naoya a dirty look as he left, though he said nothing. Ordinarily, Naoya imagined a man dressed the way he was, in a leather jacket and boots, wouldn’t be allowed into a place like the Tower, but his reputation as a deliveryman in Sin Ward preceded him. Some doors that remained closed to others were open to Naoya, if only because complacent doormen thought he was there on business.

Returning to the world outside, Naoya was greeted by Izumi with a roaring peal of thunder chasing a lightning bolt that had long since vanished. Night had fallen in the hours since he’d had his first “encounter” with Nishijima, but the rain and the wind had continued without ceasing. Naoya strode down the steps in front of the Ivory Tower towards his bike, looking down at his Augur.

He picked his helmet up off the back of his bike and slid it on before his Augur transformed back into a pair of goggles. Pressing the lenses to his face, Naoya mounted his bike and started it up. The engine whined to life, and the Bridge-Runner pulled away into traffic.

When the sun went down, Sin Ward truly came to life. Heading west from the Ivory Tower, Naoya was afforded the familiar view of some of the district’s most scenic structures. The Elysium Fields, a soft tan multistory building that was some sixty floors tall and nearly as wide, which featured a towering relief of two women embracing in the center of the building, and then the Perdition, one of the tallest buildings in the ward with a nanite superstructure which had reshaped itself into a spiral around the building. The tip of a building shaped like a wine bottle peered over the skyline, struggling to be seen by the busy traffic, and another building flashed bright red, imitating a volcano, but none of them could compare to the mysterious tower of Tsukuyomi looming in the background, its false pale moon hanging forever in the sky.

Traffic moved too slowly for Naoya’s liking; with the sunset, the human tide flowed into Sin Ward, filling the streets with flashing lights, roaring engines, tires sloshing through the wet street, and people crowding the sidewalks. There were thousands of people around Naoya in all directions, be they in a car, or a bus, or in one of the rail cars that ran along the tracks suspended over the city streets. Ordinarily, Naoya enjoyed the sights and sounds of Yōgai-shima when the island came alive, but being stuck in the traffic jam, barely able to move forward while a hundred other vehicles flanked him made him feel trapped.

“Just breathe, Naoya,” he tried to imagine those words being spoken in Suzume’s voice. “Breathe.”

When he was finally able to fight through the traffic clogging the east-to-west streets, Naoya turned south, heading back towards Decadence District. The traffic thinned, but it didn’t disappear, though Naoya was able to gain enough space and speed that he could shove his anxiety somewhere into the back of his mind for the moment. When the opportunity came, Naoya turned down a side street and pulled into a dark alley between two apartment buildings.

He pried his Augur away from his face, and the device shifted back into the silhouette of a phone. Holding it in his gloved hands, Naoya paused for a moment, considering what he was going to say to the man he was about to call. He needed to be discreet, he knew, but he felt the press of time. He’d chosen to try and approach the problem of Nishijima from a lateral angle, trusting that the man would prove too elusive for his other hunters to find, but Naoya knew he was daring a little too far at this point. Nishijima might have been caught already, and if he wasn’t, Suzume was soon to be off work, meaning that Naoya would have to suspend the chase. With those thoughts in his mind, Naoya swiftly placed the call, choosing to improvise.

The call rang four times, and an automated voice tried to prompt Naoya into leaving a message, he hung up. He stared at the phone, wondering if he’d made some kind of mistake and waited too long, but his thoughts were interrupted as he was called back, and Naoya promptly answered.

“Tell me it’s good news,” came Ichinose’s voice from the other end of the phone. The man sounded tired and irritated.

“Not exactly,” Naoya folded his arms, frowning as he considered the other man’s mood. “That guy, uh, Nishino; has anyone caught him yet?”

“What do you think?” Ichinose growled, his frustration palpable. “I don’t suppose you’ve gotten shit done, have you?”

“I’ve got a lead or two,” Naoya answered, though he only said it to try and keep the soapland manager agreeable. “But, about this guy; would you know if he got picked up by a debt collector working for another pimp?”

“I’d know, Accident-kun. I’d know,” Ichinose assured him, and Naoya could hear the other man shuffling around, leaning over the phone. “Now, what leads have you got for me?”

“They’re my leads,” Naoya told him, shutting the other man out. The more he heard, the more it sounded like Ichinose was just a middleman for someone else. He didn’t seem to have any personal investment in the chase; he didn’t even remember Nishijima’s name. “I don’t need anyone else cutting in and taking this out from under me.”

“Taking it out from under you?” Ichinose scoffed; his voice filled with mockery. “Have you forgotten who’s paying you to do this?”

“Somehow, I get the feeling that you’re not the one in charge of all this,” instead of saying that out loud, though, Naoya chose a different tact.

“I’m being paid by a man who is very well connected, to hear him talk,” Naoya agreed, adding a little mockery to his own voice. “Which is a good thing, seeing as I need to find someone.”

“You and me both,” Ichinose scoffed, his patience wearing audibly thin.

“I’m looking for a woman,” Naoya could hear Ichinose laugh over the phone line at that.

“Hitting up all the flesh bars in town helped you work up an appetite, eh, Nanbu-kun?” the other man chuckled. “Swing on by if you have an itch that needs scratching.”

“I’m not looking for one of your girls,” Naoya ignored Ichinose’s provocations.

“Who, then?” the manager asked with interest and Naoya paused, knowing he needed to choose his next few words carefully. Every bartender, janitor, or working girl that Nishijima had spoken to all told Naoya the same thing: he was looking for a specific woman. Young, red hair, brown eyes, a tattoo under her left eye, and very new to the industry. Though it was clear that Nishijima was looking for a specific person, he hadn’t mentioned any names. The secondhand description was all Naoya had to go on.

“Someone young; late teens, to early twenties,” Naoya felt a little unclean saying the words aloud. He knew how he meant them, but he also knew how the other man would perceive them. “Red hair.”

“Red hair?” Ichinose repeated the words, thinking aloud. “That’s not so common. Black hair, brown hair, bleach blonde. Blues and pinks, but red? You don’t see that a lot.”

“The woman; she’s new in this line of business.”

“You’re a real freak, Nanbu-kun,” Ichinose sounded truly amused. “I always knew it. You’ve got an appetite for the nasty stuff, but you’re just too ashamed to admit it, aren’t you? Or maybe it’s that girlfriend of yours keeping you hungry?”

“Do you know of a girl like that or not?” Naoya demanded, sincerely regretting that he ever called Ichinose, or that he’d ever met the man to begin with.

“Chill, Nanbu-kun,” Ichinose tried to sound soothing, but there was a toxic mirth in his tone. “I know it’s hard to stay calm when you’re about to have your cherry popped but relax. Take it easy for a moment. You don’t want to be too excited when you find this girl you’re looking for.”

Naoya’s fingers hovered over the screen of the Augur, and he fought not to just hang up and write the day off. At this point, it was curiosity that kept Naoya’s attention, not the money: who was Nishijima and why was everyone looking for him? He wanted to know.

“So, Nanbu-kun wants a redhead who is still young, and not too loose,” Ichinose listed off the details of the girl’s description, thinking aloud. He went silent for a moment, and Naoya waited with baited breath. “Can’t say that rings a bell.”

“You’re sure?” Naoya demanded, desperate for a lead.

“I know what’s on offer in this town,” Ichinose insisted, sounding defensive. “Managers like myself; we’re like coaches and owners for baseball teams. We watch each other, we talk, we study different team compositions, and the women? Well, they float around and trade hands from time to time. Sometimes the girl wants a chain of scenery, other times the manager owes someone else a debt, and he trades an employee to square things. It’s real political, you understand?”

“Political, right,” Naoya scoffed and rolled his eyes.

“What I’m trying to say is that in this industry, it behooves a man like me to know the roster of the other teams in the league,” Ichinose went on. “And to know who the freelancers are, and the new draft picks. But let me tell you, when a new girl shows up in the circuit, that gets attention. More so if she’s young. Lots of repeat customers will pay extra for, uh, freshness, let’s say. Red hair; that makes a splash, too. If a girl like that was in circulation, I’d have heard about it.”

The soap-land manager paused for a moment, choosing to be dramatic.

“If she were on this side of the river, that is,” he finished and Naoya knew instantly what he meant.

The White-Mountain Sanzu; a “river” that ran through the east side of Sin Ward. In reality, it was a crack in the city’s foundations from the quake of 2042, and the rupture had filled in with seawater. The homes and businesses near the Sanzu were badly damaged, and many of the buildings on the east side of the Sanzu had been left to fester, and they’d since become occupied by many of the transients from Foundation, which in turn transformed the White Mountain Sanzu into the de facto borderline between Sin Ward and its eastern neighbor.

“You don’t keep up with the business in Foundation?” Naoya tried to pump the other man for more information, but part of him knew that he may very well have hit a wall he couldn’t climb.

“It’s not that I don’t,” Ichinose corrected him. “It’s that I can’t. The Kabuki Towers run all the sex trade in that part of town, and they don’t talk to people outside their circles.”

“Shit,” Naoya clicked his teeth in frustration.

“If the lady you’re looking for is working in this town, my bets are she’s on the other side of the Sanzu,” Ichinose affected an amused nonchalance. “Of course, if you’re still looking to hit it while she’s fresh, I’d cross the river sooner rather than later.”

Naoya hung up and sat staring at the phone for several long seconds, torn by indecision. Several times today, Naoya had been close to hanging up the chase and washing his hands of everything, but he was never closer to giving in than he was at that moment. Crossing the Sanzu wasn’t something he’d ever done before, and it wasn’t something he wanted to do.

He’d been close to the river before on a delivery or two, and he’d seen the damage that still lingered from the quake. Even on Sin Ward’s side, he’d felt hostile eyes on him as he crept through the town in his bike. He’d had enough thugs in Sin Ward that targeted him because he was tall and intimidating to ordinary people, but Naoya had no desire to go looking for trouble, and crossing the Sanzu was always a recipe for just that.

It was getting late, the sun had fallen, and the storm howled overhead; all of them convincing reasons not to go. On the off chance that he did find Nishijima, there was no guarantee that he could actually catch him this time. He still didn’t know how the stranger had even performed his little disappearing act, and he couldn’t stop him from doing it again. Maybe it was the challenge that Nishijima represented that spurred Naoya into motion.

“I’ll just take a look,” Naoya told himself as he pressed the Augur towards his face, shifting them back into the shape of goggles. “I’ll make a quick pass through and then go home.”

He spurred the Bridge-Runner into motion, exiting out through the other side of the alley. He headed east, traveling down along the southern coast while the storm rolled on overhead. He felt a sense of foreboding, but he pushed it to the back of his mind, reasoning that it was nothing more than a feeling of lingering anxiety.

The first thing that Naoya noticed as he headed towards the island’s eastern edge was the gradual diminishing of traffic. Cars quickly made themselves scarce where the roads connecting Sin and Foundation were concerned. Regulars visited the Temptation District in the north, and some tourists went down to the Ambition or Decadence Districts, but no one was keen to visit Foundation Ward. Pedestrians vanished even faster; driven indoors by the rain. Only a single commuter rail actually ran across the Sanzu, furthering Foundation’s sense of isolation.

The businesses with their flashy neon signs and provocative imagery thinned out, becoming sparser with each block that Naoya passed. Naoya felt the slight shift in his tires that told him he was riding over fissures in the wet street beneath him, though he couldn’t see them in the dark. The headlight from his bike was reflected in the broken, dark windows of the buildings on either side of the road, many of them having the grey, standard shape of the island’s early mass-printed buildings. They weren’t unoccupied, but they were abandoned in nearly every other sense. The concrete buildings were bare, lacking a laminate to protect them from the rain, or to hide the graffiti painted onto their sides, or the spider-webbing cracks that traveled up their walla. Ahead of Naoya, a light shined, and he slowed as he reached the edge of the Sanzu.

The Sanzu stretched from north to south, forming a fracture in the foundation of Yōgai-shima as it passed from the banks of Getto-san out to the sea. The rift in the city’s concrete and steel foundation stretched some one hundred feet across, and every year, the tear grew wider and deeper from the erosion of the saltwater. The river had overflowed from the constant downpour released by Izumi, and the Sanzu had flowed up its concrete banks, however, it wasn’t enough to overcome the protections the city had put in place.

A pair of identical bridges had been erected to span the Sanzu, which were a bright and polished silver in color, serving to contrast the worn roadway. The floor of the bridges was a dark, coarse material made to provide friction for car tires in inclement weather, and two smaller pedestrian walkways were sequestered at either side of the bridge. Matching silver barriers had been placed on the banks of the river to hold back the overflow, and Naoya heard the hum of machinery and sloshing of water, suggesting some mechanism was redirecting the current to prevent it from breaching the barricades. A pair of signs were fixed over the bridges, flashing the same message: “FLOOD WARNING! CROSS WITH CAUTION!”

Naoya gently nudged his bike forward, guiding the vehicle onto the bridge across the Sanzu. He drove slowly and carefully, crossing the bridge while keeping his eyes peeled for any obstructions ahead of him, however, a glinting light to his right slowly drew Naoya’s attention. Turning his head, he could see shapes within the water of the Sanzu. Piles of concrete could be seen stacked below the water’s surface, along with broken pipes, and the silhouettes of more of those grey concrete buildings that had collapsed into the river. Flickering lights flashed in the dark currents, illuminating the sunken buildings, but Naoya couldn’t tell whether they had somehow survived the water for the past few years, or if the lights had been placed in water for some reason he couldn’t fathom. The ghostly sight stayed with Naoya even after he looked away.

Leaving the bridge behind, Naoya crossed into Foundation. The city wasn’t what he’d expected; half the stories he’d heard about Foundation had prepared him for some kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland with burning buildings, broken roads, and the clap of gunfire echoing from some indiscernible location. Instead, the wear and tear from the fringes of Sin Ward continued unabated.

Naoya rolled by block after block of grey buildings, not seeing anyone. The rain seemed to start pouring harder the moment his bike crossed the bridge, and the wind hit Naoya in the chest with more force, as if whatever ephemeral protections the rest of Yōgai-shima had simply didn’t exist here. The streets were empty save for the pooling water and cars parked against the side of the road. Not a person was in sight, which made Foundation feel all the more vacant. The only evidence of habitation were lights in the windows of the apartment Naoya passed, and old lit-up signs over bars and stores still open amid the hurricane.

In his goggles, the map Ichinose gave him appeared in the corner of his vision. The flesh-peddler had the foresight to mark businesses on the far side of the Sanzu, but there were only three. Of the businesses that were in Sin Ward, Naoya reasoned that whatever men were looking Nishijima, they’d certainly canvassed the entire north side of the city and were likely pressing towards the southern shore. He could only hope that Nishijima had remained a step ahead of the hunters chasing him, even as Naoya hoped he was another step ahead, still.

Taking a turn, Naoya laid eyes on the first building marked by Ichinose, which appeared to be a squat grey building with only three floors, a veritable dwarf among the towers of Yōgai-shima. The sign out front showed a fisherman with a large net, who leered lustily at a mermaid caught inside it. Although he couldn’t see the name of the building, there was a lit red sign that flashed in one of the windows, declaring that the establishment was open.

Pulling over at the side of the street, Naoya tried to decide whether or not he should go inside. If the girl was there, then he could find her and confirm his suspicions, but there was also the chance that Nishijima could spot him coming in or out of the establishment. Naoya looked at the map again, which still flashed in the corner of his eye.

The soapland in front of Naoya was the nearest to the bridge into Foundation, so if Nishijima had already beaten him here, then he was wasting his time. Looking at the map, the two other establishments were further into Foundation, and it wasn’t lost on him that Ichinose’s admitted ignorance about this part of the city meant that there could be more brothels or dives operated by the Kabuki Towers that the manager didn’t know about, and spending his time searching them one by one risked missing Nishijima somewhere else.

“What if I don’t have to chase Nishijima?” Naoya felt a different tactic forming in his mind. “What if I can draw him to me?”

Twisting his wrist, Naoya spurred the bike into motion again. Using the map for guidance, Naoya circled the block, heading a little further into Foundation. He eventually guided the bike through several tight alleyways, parking it behind a building beneath an awning roughly the same distance away from the three spots marked by Ichinose. When the bike came to a stop, Naoya climbed off and pried off his Augur.

He stood to the left of an alleyway exit door, using the small canopy perched above it to shelter himself from the rain. A small, flickering fluorescent light illuminated the tight corridors in brief bursts of yellow luminescence, revealing that the alleyway formed a T-junction. Naoya stood in the gap between two smaller buildings, with the passage to the street continuing out to his right. To his left was a much larger apartment building with another longer alley that ran parallel to Naoya, from north to south, though the corridor was tight and hardly large enough for Naoya himself to walk down.

He shifted the Augur back into the form of a phone, and the device displayed Ichinose’s map. Looking at the different red pips that flashed on the map around him, Naoya raised a finger and dragged it across the screen, marking a path that ran between all three. A moment later, and the Bridge-Runner charged off at his direction, racing back into the streets of Foundation.

With sheets of rain pouring into the streets, visibility was limited, and Foundation’s sidewalks were marked with few streetlights, and maybe half of them were still working. The Bridge-Runner, even as large as it was, blended in with the heavy shadows on the streets, making it nearly impossible to discern save for the piercing beam of its single headlight and the characteristic whine of its engine. After the first lap around the streets, Naoya switched off the Bridge-Runner’s light and began guiding it around the illuminating gleam of the occasional streetlight, trying to hide the passage of the machine in the darkness of the night.

Guided by Naoya, the Bridge-Runner accelerated through the storm, moving faster than he’d ridden it all day. Buzzing through the streets, Naoya was able to see the occasional person through his Augur which he hadn’t seen before. Vagrants, who had no homes to shelter in, moved about in the alleys, wrapping themselves tightly in raincoats, tarps, and blankets to shield themselves from the endless downpour. Guiding the bike, Naoya gave the misfortunate a wide berth, having no desire to add to their troubles.

The Bridge-Runner circled the streets of Foundation, following the path that Naoya had marked. Whenever he neared one of the businesses that Ichinose put on the map, Naoya would slow the bike, allowing it to hover at a distance from the entrance so he could peer at the doorway through his Augur, watching and waiting to see who was entering and exiting before moving on. The bike spurred into motion again, moving away from the northmost brothel and towards the one furthest east. The machine was halfway between the two when lightning flashed and Naoya noticed a pair walking down the sidewalk on his right.

He was so myopic about getting to and from each bar and soapland Ichinose had marked that he’d momentarily lost sight of the pedestrians he was passing on the road. His eyes locked onto the two figures, but the Bridge-Runner was already moving parallel to them and stopping the black bike in the middle of the road risked attracting attention, so he let the bike race forward down the dark, rainy street and immediately took a sharp right turn. He wheeled the bike around, spinning the block as quickly as he could to get behind the pair again.

At the top of the street, Naoya slowed the bike, moving at half the speed he had before, careful to keep his distance to avoid alerting the pair of pedestrians that he was following them. The bike crept down the road and Naoya kept his eyes fixed on the sidewalk to his right, straining his sight for any motion. He caught up with them not much farther down the street than they were before and Naoya slowed the bike even more, keeping a good twenty feet behind them.

It was a man and a woman walking down the street, with the woman standing on the right, sheltered in the shadows of the buildings while the man stood on her left, with his arm draped around the woman’s shoulders, protectively. The woman Naoya could barely see, hidden by the darkness, the shape of the man’s body, and a dark grey trenchcoat that was draped over her frame. The man, however, was different.

As they passed beneath a streetlight, Naoya saw the man more clearly, and beheld a familiar figure. The man was dressed in a dark suit, unheard of in this part of town, and his black and grey hair was pomaded back with care. The man cut a slim figure, and it was one that Naoya was certain he’d seen before.

The pair were heading east, back towards Sin Ward and away from the last of the three buildings Ichinose had marked. Naoya realized the bike must have already passed them once or twice while driving around the city, and it was only happenstance that a lightning strike revealed them to him. Now that he had them, though, his instincts told him he needed to act quickly.

The bike crept forward, angling the front of the vehicle towards the pair and Naoya flicked the headlight of the bike back on, bathing the pair in the white-blue radiance of the beam. The man, Nishijima, turned to look back, raising his left hand to try and shield his eyes from the light. Then, at Nishijima’s urging, the two of them began to run.

Nishijima didn’t move with the speed Naoya had seen before, instead busying himself with ushering the young woman wearing his trenchcoat. While the Bridge-Runner was built for endurance and not speed, the bike could easily have overtaken the pair, but he kept the bike moving slowly, having it dart forward and honk at the two of them like a dog herding sheep. Halfway down the street as they were, Nishijima chose to step off the street and push the young woman into the alley to escape to the other side of the block, heading east.

The pair scrambled to keep ahead of the bike as it pursued them down the alley, its horn blaring. When they escaped into the street beyond, Naoya had the bike circle north to their right, herding them further south. The pair scrambled down the street, the young woman panicking and clinging to Nishijima, who himself was silent and stoic, alternating between watching the oncoming bike and turning his head about, looking for some safe shelter the pair could find to escape.

The bike continued to chase them south and east, where the pair rounded a corner where a tall, wide grey apartment building stood. They fled down the street, moving eastward, and Naoya pushed the bike to move faster to convince the pair that they wouldn’t reach the end of the next street before they were overtaken. Naoya could see the moment that Nishijima spotted the tight alleyway on his right that ran between a wide apartment building and two smaller structures on its east side. Once again, Nishijima ushered the young woman into the passageway and then forced himself in behind while the bike pulled itself up to a stop, shining its headlight into the alley that was too small for it to follow them into.

Light flashed into the corridor on Naoya’s left, and the sound of panting voices and footsteps echoed up the alley. A moment later, a young woman wrapped in a wet grey trenchcoat burst into the small intersection in the alleyway, followed by a man with dark black and grey hair. The pair were too busy looking over their shoulders at the light being shined at their backs to notice Naoya standing in the alley with them.

“Evening,” Naoya stepped away from the wall he’d been leaning against, raising his voice to be heard. The woman yelped and Nishijima’s head whipped around, his dark eyes flashing with surprise for only a split second before he placed himself in front of the woman, urging her to stay behind him by holding out his left hand while keeping himself between her and Naoya.

“How did you—?” Nishijima began, his eyes flicking towards the bike at the edge of the alley, then towards Naoya. Nishijima looked almost exactly like the picture Ichinose had been provided, but his drawn features spoke of exhaustion, and his once slicked back hair was now messy from the rain and his hurried flight. His clothes were black on black, with only a small white tie pin bringing any color to the jet-black suit.

“I’m smarter than I look,” Naoya raised his Augur, lightly waving it in his hand. On its screen was the bike’s camera, through which he controlled the vehicle from a distance. “You’re Nishijima, yeah?”

The man said nothing but continued to back himself and the young woman up against the wall as Naoya stepped forward. The young woman peaked out over Nishijima’s shoulder, allowing Naoya to get a look at her face. Her features were as had been described to him before, having red hair matted down against her face by the rain. She peered at Naoya with only one good eye; the left half of her face was bruised and swollen, forcing her left eye shut. She was dressed in a slender, semi-transparent dress that was partially torn, which would leave her unprotected against the rain if not for Nishijima’s coat.

“Did you do that to her?” Naoya asked, but he never got an answer. The moment Naoya’s eyes shifted to the battered woman, Nishijima reached into his coat with his right hand and withdrew something. Naoya scarcely had time to react before the man in black whipped something out of his jacket and swung it towards Naoya’s face.

There was a loud crack as something collided with the right side of his helmet and Naoya was sent reeling backwards, stumbling to his hands and knees. His helmet was thrown from his head, sending it clattering across the alley before it hit the wall of a building and came to a stop. Whispers of smoke rose up from the side of the helmet where it appeared to have partially melted from whatever struck it. The impact, although blunted by his helmet, still sent a painful wave through Naoya’s head, and it took him a moment to regain his bearing.

“Do you think you’re the first of the Towers’ goons to catch up with me today?” Nishijima asked, his voice was soft, but it had a rasp that suggested a hard-lived existence. He held a slender black collapsible rod in his right hand, which had a rounded handle and a rectangular shaft which was split in half down the center, and the gap shined with an ethereal blue light. The rod crackled with energy, and every raindrop disappeared into a stream of vapor the moment they collided with the baton.

“Walk away,” Nishijima ordered Naoya in his soft, rasping voice, his eyes shining in the blue light. “This is the only chance I’m giving you.”

Naoya’s head swam with pain and confusion. He didn’t know who this man really was, or the girl who was with him for that matter. And the Towers? How did they play into all of this? The rational part of Naoya told him he should accept the invitation Nishijima had given him and just leave, but something in Naoya, something he couldn’t explain, denied that possibility.

Naoya grit his teeth and slowly stood, raising his fists and bending his knees to drop into a boxing stance. Nishijima continued to hold the baton out in front of him, his gaunt features becoming more severe as he realized that Naoya wasn’t backing down. Without taking his eyes away from Naoya, Nishijima stepped to his left, leaving the young woman behind to cower against the wall. He circled to Naoya’s right in the cramped intersection between the two alleys, and Naoya allowed Nishijima to create space between himself and the woman, not wanting her to get caught up in the fight. The two men stared each other down, neither making a move forward. Though they both waited, neither man was looking for an alternative: that opportunity had already passed.

Nishijima moved first, taking a step forward and swinging his baton low towards Naoya’s left knee. Naoya took a half-step backward before Nishijima revealed his attack was a feint, bringing the baton upward towards the side of Naoya’s unprotected head. Immediately, Naoya reversed his course, trying to start forward again while reaching out with his left hand to try and catch Nishijima’s arm by the wrist. Before he could wrap his fingers around the other man’s arm, Nishijima rolled his wrist, bringing the baton down on his hand. Pain exploded through Naoya’s fingers, along with a surge of electricity, and Naoya struggled to hold his arm up. Nishijima immediately leapt on Naoya’s weakness, swinging his weapon.

Naoya was forced into full retreat, circling around in the small space as Nishijima pressed his advantage, making precise swings of his baton to force Naoya to give ground or risk another hit from the stun rod. In the span of a few seconds, feeling returned to Naoya’s arm, but he was hard pressed to find an opening to engage Nishijima and turn the tide back in his favor. The other man seemed to be very experienced in the use of his weapon, never overextending himself or leaving an opening. Whenever Naoya managed to move a single step closer, Nishijima jabbed with his baton like it was a fencing foil, forcing Naoya to retreat again.

Having been in a few scrapes himself, Naoya was hardly inexperienced when it came to fighting. Against an opponent with a weapon, the best solution was to grapple, denying them the leverage they needed to bring it to bear with full force. Of course, that strategy relied on Nishijima giving him the opportunity to close ranks, which the veteran fighter wasn’t going to allow. Without that, the next best solution was to run away, but again, Naoya denied that possibility.

Perhaps it was the effect of the stun baton, but Naoya began to feel an electric charge in the air around him. Every hair seemed to stand on end, and he could feel an invisible current dance across his skin. While the rippling electricity coursed outside his body, another energy surged inside him.

A perverse exhilaration crept over Naoya as his heart beat faster and the sense of danger multiplied, bringing a smile to Naoya’s face. Even as Nishijima tried to press Naoya into a corner with the crackling rod, the feeling only grew. The world seemed more vivid, and somehow, surreal, as he danced around Nishijima’s blows.

Naoya sidestepped another rapier-like thrust of the baton, moving back to his left and denying Nishijima the option of pinning him against the wall of the alley. Nishijima matched Naoya’s motion, preventing the younger man from circling him. The two men strafed slowly across the alley, keeping pace with one another, an Naoya noticed that Nishijima wasn’t pushing as aggressively as he had at the first.

“Feeling tired?” Naoya asked, his grin growing broader as Nishijima glared back. He didn’t wait for an answer as he continued to strafe along the wall, his left foot colliding with his discarded helmet. At that moment, Nishijima looked down at the fallen object and seemed to realize what Naoya was planning, but it was too late.

Naoya stuck the toe of his left boot beneath the helmet and flicked it into the air with one swift motion. Emulating the shot of football players he’d seen on TV, Naoya kicked the helmet like he was kicking a goal, sending it hurtling towards Nishijima’s face. The other man instinctively stepped backwards, sweeping the baton through the air to knock the helmet back to the ground, and Naoya was on him a moment later.

Naoya’s fists flew in a furious flurry as he pressed into Nishijima’s space. The black-suited man sidestepped the initial rush, but Naoya was quick to chase him, never letting the other man get out of his arm’s reach. Despite being the bigger of the two, Naoya danced around Nishijima on his toes, darting from one side to the other, pressuring him with feinting jabs designed to force him to open his guard. Nishijima held the baton horizontally, being hard pressed to defend himself, shifting side to side as he tried to find an opportunity to counterattack. Naoya slipped a left jab through Nishijima’s guard and the knuckle of Naoya’s left index finger brushed his jaw. The speed of the jab and the unexpected feeling of being touched caused a microsecond of confusion to play itself out in Nishijima’s mind and his eyes darted to his right, seeking the fist that had already pulled back, and in that moment, Naoya launched his real attack.

A right hook caught Nishijima across the jaw the moment his eyes looked straight again. Naoya’s heavy fist crossed Nishijima’s chin with such force that he imagined that the alley was filled with the sound of thunder. Nishijima’s head whipped to his right and blood spurted from his mouth, painting the alley way. To his credit, Nishijima didn’t collapse from the blow, and he remained on his feet.

Nishijima looked back at Naoya with a fury in his eyes, blood dribbling down his bottom lip and across his chin. Sweeping his baton back and forth like he was conducting an orchestra of mad musicians, Nishijima retreated further back, trying to hold off Naoya. Despite the fury of his defense, Naoya recognized that Nishijima’s wild swings were the product of desperation, as the other man was still partially stunned from Naoya’s attack. Pressing forward, Naoya continued to throw jabs, forcing Nishijima to back up against the wall, looking for the moment he could make his final rush and tackle Nishijima to the floor. That was when something truly unexpected happened.

Realizing his poor position, Nishijima raised his baton overhead and swept it downward, and the entire rod broke apart. The weapon shifted into a chain of black rectangular pieces connected by a hot electric blue wire. Nishijima swept the electric-whip through the space between Naoya and himself, causing the weapon to violently crackle as hairs of electricity surged outward to evaporate nearby puddles of water. Instinctively, Naoya retreated, confronted by the strange weapon and the blinding flash of blue light released from it.

Nishijima raised the whip handle and lashed it towards Naoya’s head, and the thong of black metal and electrified wire extended through the air. Immediately, Naoya ducked, and the whip surged through the air above him, striking the concrete wall of the alley with the sound of metal digging into cement. Naoya looked up just in time to see the whip in Nishijima’s hand pull itself taut, and the man in the black suit was pulled into the air, disappearing over Naoya’s head.

Before Naoya had time to turn around, he felt the heel of Nishijima’s foot collide with the back of his head. Lights flashed in Naoya’s vision, and he stumbled forward, off-balance, and he struck the wall of the alley in front of him, stopping himself from cracking his skull against the surface by bracing himself with his hands. Clutching the back of his head, Naoya turned around to see Nishijima standing behind him, his whip once more collapsed into a baton.

Nishijima pressed the baton into the center of Naoya’s chest and electricity immediately flowed through Naoya’s body. He screamed as the pain coursed through him and he dropped to his knees, but Nishijima continued to press the rod into his breast, never breaking contact. Naoya violently seized and he felt his heart begin to palpitate, all while Nishijima callously watched on, only pausing to brush the blood from his bottom lip with the back of his gloved left hand.

“Am I going to die?” Naoya asked himself. The question was hesitant in his mind, and fearful in its tone, but it provoked a response in him. Anger flowed through Naoya: anger at being afraid, anger at Nishijima, anger at feeling pain.

Naoya pressed his teeth together, turning his cries of pain into a growl of rage. He reached up with his right hand and wrapped it around the baton pressed against his chest, trying to pull the weapon away. Nishijima took the baton handle in both hands, trying to resist, but Naoya placed his left hand on the baton and struggled back to his feet. He could see the alarm in Nishijima’s eyes as he struggled to keep the stun baton jabbed into Naoya’s chest, clearly surprised that any man could withstand its current. In truth, Naoya could barely even feel the pain anymore. Gritting his teeth, Nishijima pressed the weapon deeper into Naoya’s chest, trying to elicit some response, and then, there was a flash of golden lines that spread from Naoya’s hands through the stun baton.

The weapon crackled with blue light two or three more times in a stuttering display before the light vanished altogether. Nishijima stared down at his weapon in confusion, trying to understand what happened, when a piece of the baton broke free and clattered to the floor of the alley. Then, the entire baton broke apart like shards of broken glass and spilled onto the pavement. Nishijima looked down at the black fragments that gathered around his feet, opening his hands in disbelief to let the last few pieces fall from between his fingers onto the ground. He looked back up at Naoya and seemed to realize something as he peered at the figure that now towered over him.

Naoya loomed over the smaller man, incapable of words or reason. Like an animal, he panted and grunted, his hoarse and beastly vocalizations growing louder with each second. Violence was imminent, but Nishijima seemed to think that running for his life was beneath him.

“I see,” was all he said, his rasping voice filled with finality.

A moment later, the alley was filled with the sound of crunching bone. Nishijima was held up by Naoya’s left hand on his lapel, while the big man pummeled Nishijima with his right fist, smashing it into the other man’s face over and over again. Nishijima had long since ceased to put up a fight, but Naoya didn’t stop hitting him, filling the alley with the sound of each brutal punch and Naoya’s own animalistic growls. A small voice at the back of Naoya’s mind wondered how long he’d been hitting Nishijima, and when he was going to stop, but he ultimately decided he didn’t care.

“Hey, shithead!” a voice called out from somewhere behind Naoya, but he didn’t listen, deafened by the sound of his constant, demonic panting. Nishijima’s face was swollen and nearly unrecognizable, but Naoya didn’t stop. Blood sprayed from Nishijima’s face, painting Naoya’s knuckles red.

“Hey, asswipe!” the voice called out, louder this time, and full of rage. “I’m talking to you!”

Naoya paused his assault, continuing to hold up Nishijima with his left hand. Nishijima wheezed and gurgled, coughing up blood through his broken mouth, drooling out a handful of teeth. With almost robotic detachment, Naoya let the man fall to the ground, turning his attention to the voice behind him.

“You see?” a familiar voice asked, mocking and smug, as Naoya turned around to face three men that stood tightly packed in the alley. “I fucking told you guys that it was his bike!”

Juzo stood in his raincoat, the small man’s face twisted into an awful smile as he addressed the two taller men standing behind him. Juzo puffed on a cigarette, its tip glowing bright red before he plucked it from his mouth and gestured at Naoya with it. Naoya stared at them in response, the small man’s words pounding in his ears like noise heard underwater.

“You get yourself a little fucked up, dickshit?” Juzo asked, gesturing at his face with one hand, a sneer written on his features.

“I don’t think that’s his blood,” Kubo, the widest of the three men, observed, his voice full of trepidation and his eyes fearful.

“Like I give a shit,” Juzo dropped his cigarette to the floor of the alley and stomped it out in the rain before ambling forward with disinterest. He stepped around Naoya and paused, then exploded into motion.

“Shit! Shit!” Juzo exclaimed in surprise as he beheld the fallen Nishijima. He laughed and danced back and forth, giving the fallen man a middle finger while he cackled. “Holeee shit! It’s him!”

At the sound of Juzo’s crazed exclamations, the other two men moved forward to see what was happening. Kubo hugged the side of the alleyway, being careful to put as much distance between himself and Naoya, but the third man, Hibiki, the tallest of the three, paused to look over Naoya’s shoulder rather than pass him.

“Who is he?” Kubo asked, as the young woman in Nishijima’s jacket made for the dark-clad man’s side, crouching near him.

“It’s the guy from Tsukuyomi!” Juzo cackled, dancing on the spot. “This big son of a bitch actually caught him! Can you believe it!”

“No way!” Kubo took a few steps forward, peering closer at the fallen man.

“Really?” asked Hibiki, and he stepped closer, brushing into Naoya’s shoulder. Naoya reacted immediately, taking hold of the other man by his left bicep. The skinny gangbanger tried to pull away from him, but Naoya’s fingers dug into the man’s arm like a vice-grip, and the other man hissed in pain.

“Hey, relax bro,” the other man’s voice trembled with clear anxiety, the scarce lighting in the alley revealed frightful eyes and a quivering lip. “We just mess with you sometimes. That’s all. It’s just messing around.”

Naoya didn’t respond. He couldn’t.

The man’s voice sounded distant and far away, and his words were incomprehensible. Out of the corner of his eye, Naoya could see Juzo laughing and cackling like a maniac, grabbing hold of the kneeling young woman’s arm to try and drag her to her feet while Kubo watched, impotently. The lanky man tried to pull away again, and he said something that Naoya couldn’t understand.

The lanky man’s face soured, his frightened expression giving way to irritation and anger to mask his fear. He said something again, louder, more forcefully, his expression twisting in a bare-tooth snarl. He tugged his arm back again, shouting in his warped voice Naoya couldn’t understand. When posturing and anger didn’t persuade Naoya to release him, the lanky man raised his right hand and slammed the heel of his palm into Naoya’s chest, trying to push Naoya away.

The push was barely enough to budge Naoya; the lanky ganger wasn’t a brave man, or a strong man, but rather, he was a coward that hid behind his friends and only threw jabs and slaps when someone’s back was turned. Still, the harmless gesture was enough to antagonize Naoya. The world cracked, and fissures of golden light spread through everything in Naoya’s field of vision.

At the end of Naoya’s arm, he gripped a shapeless pile of human glass, its shards a kaleidoscope of different colors and textures without rhyme or reason. Though the mound of glass bore the rough silhouette of a human being, shards with the texture of a wet pink rain parka mixed with pieces of a fractured human face. One slim shard at the top of the pile bore a single human eye, while a larger chunk in the middle held its twin. The disconnected eyes stared angrily at Naoya, and a human mouth, broken into three separate pieces, mouthed words at him, but only distorted noises came out.

Naoya wasted no time in laying into the bizarre mound, slamming his left fist into the mass. The pile of human glass rippled as Naoya struck it, and it cried out, warbling in a strange tongue. The sounds echoed out into the broken alley as Naoya continued to pummel the esoteric assortment of broken pieces, and the conglomerate of shards collapsed to the broken ground.

“Stop!” “Please!” “Don’t!”

The tangled pile of shards made noises that almost sounded like words, but Naoya paid them no heed. The heap of broken glass pulled itself together, tightening itself into a ball to endure Naoya’s fists as they fell onto it, pummeling the accumulation of shapes without consideration. He continued his assault, thinking nothing, his mind filled only with a pure animal desire to destroy the distorted world that threatened him on all sides. With each strike, he grew stronger, feeling bones break and fracture beneath his knuckles, but he still didn’t stop. The collection of broken shapes on the ground tried to crawl away, and Naoya’s hand went wide, missing its target and burying his fist up to the wrist in the concrete.

Naoya felt a hand on his shoulder, and he turned around to see another misshapen collage of broken glass latching onto him. It was a bulbous mass, but it screamed at Naoya in a high-pitched voice, demanding something that Naoya couldn’t understand. Instinctively, Naoya grappled his new attacker with his left hand, expecting that his fingers would be lacerated by the sharp edges of the broken silhouette, but his digits brushed against wet smooth material, and Naoya balled it in his fist. He lifted the shifting pile of shards into the air and cocked back his right fist.

Power surged through Naoya, filling him with greater strength than he ever had before. He poured every bit of strength into his right arm, preparing to shatter the collection of shards into a thousand smaller pieces. However, as soon as Naoya did so, a buzzing sounded in his ears. The noise was deafening, followed by an intense heat and the feeling of needles punching into his skin.

He felt as though he was being electrocuted again, but the energy wasn’t flowing through him so much as it was flowing against him. The energy hit Naoya like a river, pushing against him, pulling him down, draining his strength. Immersed in the crackling energy, Naoya struggled to hold up the second pile of human glass, and he was reluctantly forced to throw his captive to the ground.

No sooner than the second pile of broken shards hit the ground than it fled backward, racing across a sea of broken concrete to escape from Naoya’s grasp. Naoya struggled to give chase, barely able to raise a foot as the mysterious pressure sought to hold him in place. He tried to push forward, to fight through the invisible bonds holding him down, but he stopped and turned when something moved in the corner of his eye.

A third human effigy moved in the chaos of the alley, standing out from the chaotic tumult of the endlessly fracturing concrete buildings by virtue of its pink color. Among the tumble of its broken form, Naoya could perceive a human face, though the features were broken into five pieces and spread up and down the roughly humanoid body. Though it was hard to discern anything within the shifting fragments of what was supposed to appear human, Naoya thought that the features were madly grinning at him, and, more importantly, it seemed like it was holding something.

The small, pink glass figure charged at Naoya, its distorted voice making some kind of whooping laughter as it lunged. Naoya raised his right hand as the living kaleidoscope closed the distance, trying to fend off the oncoming attacker, and he was rewarded with a sharp sensation in his palm. A blade had stabbed through his hand, sliding between the bones of his middle two fingers.

Intense pain shot through Naoya’s hand, and the living kaleidoscope cackled again as it twisted the knife and pressed it deeper, causing blood to run down the back of Naoya’s hand. Surprise followed the pain, which gave way to anger. Against logic, Naoya closed the fingers of his bleeding hand around the blade impaling it, tightening his hand into a fist. Something surged through Naoya, and luminous cracks appeared on his arm, spreading from his shoulder down to his forearm, and then into his hand. The light faded from Naoya’s body in less than a second, but the effect it had on the knife was immediate.

The knife fell apart, and the metal shards of the blade fell out of Naoya’s hand to clatter against the shifting concrete pavement at his feet. There was a strange sound from the little glass heap, and although it was a wordless burble of sharp, clashing noises, Naoya faintly comprehended a sense of surprise.

He pulled his hand back, closing the fingers of his right hand around the broken weapon’s handle, crushing it to powder between his fingertips. The little assortment of human glass backed away, its crackling voice raising higher and higher as Naoya began to advance again. The pressure on Naoya’s shoulders began to increase, but the power inside his body swelled, enabling him to keep moving forward.

The little glass heap moved away from Naoya, a series of rising, terrified exclamations as the big man moved closer and closer. The power surging through Naoya increased with every step, and the energy built in his chest, pressing against his ribs. The power surged up through his body and Naoya was forced to release it, throwing back his head to scream. The power tore through his mouth, releasing a terrible wave of pressure that seemed poised to blast apart the broken world around him.

With his cry, the three shifting shapes of glass fled, each one escaping down a different alley. Still held down by the lightning wrapped around his body, Naoya could not give chase, and he was forced to watch the human silhouettes run away into the night between buildings of concrete that seemed poised to fall on them. When they disappeared into the night, Naoya was left alone, feeling as though all the power of the storm above him was holding him down.

He stood staring at nothing, listening only to the sound of his own breathing thundering in his ears. As the moments passed, Naoya’s heartbeat began to slow, and the cracks in the world began to slowly fill themselves in, and a sense of normalcy returned. Naoya stared down the northern alley where the smallest of the three figures had fled, slowly returning to himself.

He wasn’t sure where he was right away. All he knew was that he was standing in the middle of an alleyway, listening to the constant whisper of the rain falling down on his shoulders, while thunder boomed somewhere in the night. He blinked, trying to remember what he was doing, when he faintly heard the sound of someone sobbing.

Naoya turned his head, casting his eyes on the form of a young woman crouching on the ground, leaning over a fallen man in a dark suit. Nishijima coughed through his broken jaw, sending trails of blood down his chin, and Naoya looked down at his hands, observing the wet blood that lingered there, while being slowly diluted by the falling rain.

“Did I do this?” Naoya asked himself, feeling somehow revolted.

“Don’t make me go back,” a voice intruded on Naoya’s thoughts, and he made eye contact with the woman leaning over Nishijima. She stared up at Naoya, her own face bruised and her left eye swollen shut, traces of makeup running down her face.

“What?” Naoya asked, not entirely certain what she was asking.

“I just want to go home,” the woman implored, her one eye full of terror.

Naoya looked down at her, and then at his hands again, not for the first time feeling as though he’d stepped into something deeper and darker than he knew. He didn’t know what Ichinose really wanted with Nishijima, and he had no idea how the girl fit into everything. He didn’t even know what he’d done in the last ten minutes, but he did know what he was going to do next.

Naoya pulled out his Augur and the woman trembled. He stared down at her as he tapped the screen and raised the Augur to his ear. It rang twice, and then Ichinose picked up, sounded annoyed.

“Are you still—?” Ichinose demanded, but Naoya cut him off.

“Nishijima’s gone,” Naoya told him, sharply.

“What?” Ichinose sputtered, clearly caught off guard. “What do you mean he’s gone?”

“Someone grabbed him,” Naoya hadn’t even thought out his lie before he started talking. “I don’t know who, but someone has him.”

“Fuck!” Ichinose snapped, punctuating his curse by slapping something, and Naoya heard something shatter in the manager’s office. “How? Who grabbed him?”

“I already said that I don’t know!” Naoya protested. “Some guys just up and grabbed him! It was dark and I didn’t see their faces.”

“And what the hell were you doing while that happened?” the manager screamed through the phone. “What the hell are you good for, you big son of a bitch? You’re telling me you just sat there with your thumb up your ass and let someone else take our payday?”

“I’m done with your bullshit!” Naoya was tempted to squeeze the Augur in his hand and break it to pieces. “You lost Nishijima! You lost the girl! It’s over! Go crawl into a hole and cry about it, you fucking parasite! Maybe learn to solve your own damn problems!”

“What gi—?” Ichinose tried to ask but Naoya ended the call with a forceful press of his finger. He looked down at the young woman, knowing nothing about her or even her name. The two stared at one another in awkward silence for several seconds before Naoya spoke.

“I’m sorry,” he told her, speaking softly. “This is all I can do.”

“I don’t know where to go,” the young woman shook her head, but Nishijima shifted. The man turned his head to the side and spat out a mouthful of blood from his broken face. Slowly and painfully, Nishijima began trying to climb to his feet, and the young woman hooked his right arm around her shoulder and began to lift him up. Watching her struggle, Naoya stepped forward and took hold of Nishijima’s other arm, helping pull the man to his feet. Nishijima stood, swaying on the spot, but the red-headed young woman supported him, helping him to remain on his feet.

“I’m not certain how many people are still after you,” Naoya looked into Nishijima’s dark eyes as he spoke, and he could see beyond the obvious pain a sharp clarity. “I don’t even know if Ichinose believed me. I’m not so good at lying.”

A thought occurred to Naoya, and he held out his Augur, bringing up the map Ichinose had given him.

“The guys looking for you wanted me to scope out the local brothels and soaplands,” Naoya explained, looking from Nishijima to the young woman. “I guess Ichinose must have known you were looking for someone. Or whoever the hell it was that gave the map to him. Either way, it seems like whoever’s looking for you is combing their way down from the north of Sin Ward. They’ll be here in Foundation before too long, so I guess you might find a place to lay low for a while. I have no idea who you are or where the hell you’re going, and I figure that’s probably for the best.”

Nishijima looked down at the woman holding him up, and then back to Naoya. Like her, Ichinose’s left eye was swollen shut, and his gaunt face was swollen and red, while broken bones pushed beneath his skin. The dark eyed man stared at Naoya for a long moment and then managed to say something through his broken mandible.

“I’ll remember this.”

With that, Nishijima nodded towards the eastern alley exit and he began to stagger forward, assisted by the girl he’d been looking for. Naoya watched the pair struggle together, uncertain whether Nishijima’s last words were expressing gratitude or a threat.

“Are you the good guy in all of this?” Naoya asked as he watched Nishijima stumble out of the alley and back into the city. “Or are you the villain? Where do I stand?”

Naoya didn’t know.

He scooped up his helmet, and looked down at it, turning it over in his hands. There were two dings in the helmet on the left and right sides, and both breaks were half-melted, destroying the helmet’s surface. Reluctantly, Naoya tugged the helmet on over his sopping wet hair and struggled for a few seconds to get it to sit right before sighing and reluctantly heading south, heading back towards his bike.

He mounted the Bridge-Runner and turned it about, preparing to head east and go home. As he reached out to take the handle, Naoya noticed a small glint from the back of his right hand and he paused. Holding his gloved hand up to his face, he saw a small metal fragment jutting out of it. With his left hand, he plucked the piece of metal free and inspected it.

“The knife,” Naoya realized what it was and tossed it down to the street, where it was washed away in the rain streaming across the black pavement. He tugged the glove off and turned his hand over, searching for any sign of injury, but found nothing.

“I was stabbed, wasn’t I?” he asked himself as he cradled his right hand with his left, rubbing the spot where he felt the pain with his thumb. He tried to recall the events in the alley, but it had already faded into a tumult of adrenaline and hallucinations. He sat for a moment on his bike, trying to rationalize the reality of his uninjured hand with the sharp pain that still lingered in his recollection. When he couldn’t, he forced his glove back on and revved his bike, seeking to put as much distance between himself and the alley as he could.

“What do you have to show for all this?” a voice in Naoya’s head reprimanded him as he drove, and he fed the Bridge-Runner more speed, as if hoping he could outrun his own self-doubt and regret. “You wasted an entire day, turning down a dozen smaller jobs to try and be a debt collector; a job you’ve avoided doing for years, and then, you let the guy go. You busted your helmet, you got into another fight, and you’re down another day’s income.”

He drove east, heading back towards the bridge that forded the White-River Sanzu, moving with speed. With each moment, he felt a longing to be home; he’d had enough of the city for one day. He fed the Bridge-Runner with more and more gas, feeling the wind and the rain whipping against him as he went. The sensation kept him in the moment, holding his own misgivings and doubts at bay.

He drove through the streets of Sin Ward, passing by the plain southern shore, taking in the smell of the salt. Cars and pedestrians were out on the streets in force, defying the natural disaster that loomed over the island in their corporate quest for escapism. Naoya weaved around slow-moving cars and drove his bike through alleys large enough to fit the Bridge-Runner, eschewing his usual caution at this time of night in his haste to keep moving and to get away from the part of the city he felt was increasingly vile. He thought of what route he was going to take to get back to Central, and he immediately thought of the Golden Mile, the largest crossing between the two wards, but he eschewed that idea.

The Golden Mile was going to be congested at this time of night, and Naoya had no patience for the blaring horns, flashing lights, and the endless chatter of pedestrians. Naoya continued driving along the southern shore of Sin Ward, heading for a smaller bridge that crossed over into Horizon, hoping to break away from the current of commuters. The small two-lane crossing was vacant at this time of night, save for the distant lights of an oncoming truck looking to cross into Sin Ward. Naoya stepped on the gas as he crossed the bridge, and, immediately, the weather took a turn for the worse.

The wind picked up, pushing against the bike as it neared the other side of the crossing. Naoya reflexively slowed, struggling to regain control of the bike. The front tire slid across the asphalt, losing traction with the road, and the entire bike threatened to slide out from under Naoya. In desperation, Naoya fully hit the brakes, and he leaned to his right, placing his right boot on the street to further brace it and prevent it from flying out of control. He brought the bike to a complete stop and paused a moment to regain his bearings. There was a sudden flash to Naoya’s right, so intense it was blinding, and sparks filled the air.

He blinked, trying to understand what just happened, and he looked up to see the green box truck heading in his direction, smoke pouring from its front grill which had been melted by a lightning strike. The five-ton vehicle went out of control, its headlights flickering as its engine failed, and the machine crossed the lane markings and careened in Naoya’s direction. The flashing headlights blinded him, and the truck’s horn blasted in his ears as the driver desperately warned Naoya of the wild automobile, but it was far too late for Naoya to get out of the way.

“What are the odds?” he asked himself.