Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Contrary to the Telepath’s expectations, his comrades in arms didn’t visit the scene of the slaughter for another hour. Rather than launching a rescue mission on their own, the Clairvoyant waiting beyond the wall chose to call in his colleagues first.

None of the three that rushed there thought him a coward for doing so. Telepaths and clairvoyants were rare and valuable resources. He was wholly justified in waiting for reinforcements more qualified than he in search and rescue operations.

Based on the Telepath’s reading of Setsura’s consciousness and the images and memories he’d received, the Clairvoyant got these members of SDF Special Forces Operational Detachment F plenty fired up.

The boss of the vampires is in the park. Aboard the ship are four Chinese and one Caucasian. One has been reduced to ashes, and one is at large in the city. In any case, they must capture the kid and wring the truth out of him.

That was the memory the Clairvoyant communicated to them. Their knowledge in regard to the legendary vampires had been drilled into them during hypnopedia sessions. They’d learned enough about them from the carnage wreaked in the city as well.

They’d kicked ass and taken names. Based on the results to date, these vampires weren’t that big of a deal. But their battles so far had taken place during the day. Without the protecting rays of the sun above, dispatching those creatures of the night wouldn’t be so easy. However high their confidence in their training or their skills, their pride as professionals wouldn’t allow them to take their enemies for granted.

The guy who knew everything there was to know about the vampire boss was somewhere in the park and headed for their home ground.

Any qualms about the fearsome DMZ vanished from their thoughts. They went into full-fighting mode and soared over the wall.

The Clairvoyant remained outside the wall. The proper decision. Though the more hot-blooded Telepath had gone off to capture Setsura on his own, the two of them had been tasked from the start to track down the vampires and their progeny. Normally their kind worked out of the Supernatural Research Center and were selected after voluntarily going through the harsh gauntlet of basic training along with the combat soldiers.

In any case, they couldn’t afford to lose another one of the valuable “God’s Eyes.”

“Helluva kill zone,” muttered one of the soldiers, observing the carnage covering the green grass.

The lawn spreading out ten yards below them was littered with bloody wildflowers and the bits and pieces of the Telepath’s remains. They were, of course, using their levitation belts. The Caucasian with the medium build was called Kendall, but that wasn’t his real name.

He stated, “Telepaths can read minds. This guy in particular—” And waited for a reaction. But it wouldn’t be forthcoming. He turned to the Asian man hovering next to him. “Killing a man who can even read your subconscious—how exactly would you pull that off, Chan?”

His partner had his eyes closed as if in sleep. Finally he said, “I don’t know. But I’d be more interested in the man than the method. There aren’t many in this city who could pull off something like that. The director of that hospital where the government office buildings used to be. The old woman who lives in Takada no Baba. And the owner of a senbei shop in West Shinjuku, Setsura Aki.”

Kendall gulped and swallowed hard. He was not unfamiliar with the name. It was part and parcel of Demon City lore, and had come up countless times in the intel.

The owner of a senbei shop, an inscrutable man whose real nature was all but impossible to pin down. The manhunter able to cut apart any enemy. The thought of facing him sent a chill down the spine of even the most battle-hardened veteran, who’d already seen a good chunk of hell with his own eyes.

But those fears weren’t what had Kendall on edge. No, he was chomping at the bit and ready to rumble. “Stands to reason,” he said. “Setsura Aki’s weapon of choice is a strand of titanium wire. A good thing we’re maintaining this distance off the ground. We’re talking about a kid dressed in black, handsome enough to die for. The description from the Clairvoyant was precise.”

The Asian man nodded. “Unfortunately, we won’t be going down to check out the body. There’s no guarantee the Telepath didn’t let slip something about us, and I wouldn’t put it past Setsura Aki to have a surprise waiting for us down there.”

“I don’t doubt it for a second,” said Kendall, staring off toward the west.

A third colleague flew toward them, looking from a distance like a big fly. The Arabian named Meguid.

“What’s up?”

The big Middle Eastern man shook his head. He had full lips and short, black curly hair. “Hard to tell at this altitude. The canopy of the trees hides the ground. Maybe it’s all the supernatural shit going on here, but the ground radar won’t work either.”

“So do we wait up here or go down there? Or smoke him out? I think option three would get the fastest results.”

“With you on that,” agreed Meguid.

They looked at Chan. He’d had little to say so far, but his seemed to be the deciding vote. The soft voice hummed against their eardrums. “Even if we smoke him out, there’s no guarantee that he’ll be the only one we’ll have on our hands. What do we do if we end up with something a lot more dangerous? Besides, if we can’t track him in the first place, we’d have to burn down the whole park in the process. Are we prepared to inflict that kind of damage here in the DMZ?”

“Then what?” Meguid’s eyes were practically shooting sparks. Once a course of action had been articulated, it was not in his nature to sit around twirling his thumbs.

“I’ll go down and start searching. You two wait here on standby. As soon as I draw a bead on him, all three of us will go in together.”

The Caucasian and the Arab looked at each other. Meguid wiped the sweat from his brow and said, “Hold on. You’re not taking a risk like that all by yourself. I’m going too.”

“Based on how the Telepath died and the material he relayed to us, Setsura Aki is not a man to be trifled with. Taking into consideration the worst possible scenarios, we should do everything possible to limit the collateral damage. You wait here for my word. If I haven’t returned after thirty minutes, head back.”

“If you insist,” Kendall said. “As an old proverb from my country goes, you never get to where you’re going when you’re in too much of a hurry. It’s up to you. In any case, it’s your idea, so it’s only right that you should take point.”

Meguid gave him a long, hard look. Chan didn’t react in the slightest. Chan said, “Well, good luck, you two.”

“May Allah be with you,” Meguid said under his breath.

Kendall simply raised his hand. And Chan disappeared.

His “disappearance” was only an illusion created of his rapid descent, the trademark move of a man like him.

In the air above him, two opponents willing to scorch the park clean. Behind him, an Asian pursuer possessed of unknown powers. Setsura Aki, devoid of human consciousness and proceeding toward an unknown destination.

Chan alit in the canopy of the big tree not far from the Telepath’s body. He closed his eyes as he landed and concentrated his thoughts on one particular person.

The man in combat fatigues standing outside the high wall surrounding the park suddenly opened his eyes wide. Words formed inside his head. Not so much words, though, but rather flashes of thought that appeared in his mind: This is Chan. Don’t reply. It wouldn’t reach me anyway. I am an active telepath. Communication devices don’t work in the forest. Telepathy apparently does. The Telepath is dead. We are told never to reveal our abilities. However—I’ll spare you the details for now—I need your powers. You can’t transmit your thoughts, but I can see what you see. Cast your senses across the forest. If we can link up like this, the Telepath will not have died in vain.

After the mental message was finished—or rather, as soon as Chan severed the connection—he turned his consciousness in the other direction.

There were many types of telepaths. Some drew in signals from all directions, while the senses of others like Chan were directional. Directional telepaths were usually stronger, but Chan’s powers were still unfolding and couldn’t be compared to a mature practitioner’s. In fact, after a mere ten seconds of “communication,” his skull felt like it was about to split open.

He was getting nowhere. He was latching onto things right and left, but all of them were consciousnesses other than human. A cold chill radiated from his head down to his groin. Chan went stiff, shifting his mental state before the psychic wound proved fatal. Because the transmission was unidirectional, he could withstand it. But a passive telepath would have been crippled or killed by the shock.

He wiped away the sweat drenching his brow. And yet he focused his attention once more in that same direction.

Without warning, another scene swallowed up his field of vision. It was inside the park. The Clairvoyant’s second sight. In another split second, he’d aligned the vision with the maps of the park planted in his brain during the hypnopedia sessions.

The thick undergrowth, faded and rusted benches, terraced plazas, and then the fences and Juniso Avenue—an easy objective to achieve, Chan told himself.

But he wasn’t there. Chan turned next toward the library. The scene changed. The poisonous vegetation stirred. That’s it!

In the next moment, indescribably brilliant and colored ivy flew apart in every direction. The severed ends of the plants, so smooth as to appear like glass, made Chan’s heart race all the more.

The haunted greenery suddenly vanished, as if it had decided on its own that it didn’t belong in the presence of this man dressed in black.

The images streaming from the Clairvoyant ceased. Not because the goal had been accomplished, but because he’d been overwhelmed by the beauty that assaulted his senses.

Setsura Aki was at last in his grasp. Fix that image in your mind. Don’t look away.

Chan sent the instructions and again closed his eyes. He concentrated on the comely youth wandering through the forest. The soldier swayed and then righted himself, as if in a trance. He clung to the trunk of the tree. His fatigues were soaked with sweat. Waves of nausea welled up inside him and he trembled and vomited it out.

His consciousness was swallowed up in Setsura’s. Even the pitch black darkness was a veritable paradise in comparison. There was no joy, no anger, no sadness here. It was a void, a nothingness stripped of all emotions.

That a human could transfigure his own mind in such a fashion—could such a being even be captured?

Chan’s thoughts concentrated on this one point. Setsura’s body right now was nothing more than a beautiful bag of bones, a purely autonomic, reactive vessel. Firing from a sufficient distance with a tranquilizer gun or miniature “pencil missile” should bring him down easily.

As Chan worked toward a decision, dull, grey clouds of indecision swirled through his mind. Based on the evidence, he knew better than the rest of them exactly what kind of person this young man called Setsura Aki was. He was something other than human, a terrifying genie.

He had fallen into a non-human state, into a state of nothingness that perhaps no other person had experienced. What would external stimuli do to him? Simultaneously drawn toward him and pushed away, the debate raged hot and cold, dark and light inside Chan’s soul.

He wanted to see it—how the genie called Setsura Aki reacted. But what would happen next?

A fit of coughing made Chan raise his eyes skyward. His two colleagues had remained where they were in the air. Setsura’s image overlapped theirs. There was nothing wrong with his sight.

“Let’s give it a shot then,” Chan said to himself.

Kendall noticed the look of discomfort on Meguid’s face. “What’s up?” he asked, rechecking his ACR rifle and scanning their environment with his naked eyes. The 3D ground radar was useless over the grounds covered by the park. No sign of an enemy.

Meguid didn’t answer. Finally his expression returned to normal. “I’m going too,” he said.

“Where?”

“To look for Setsura Aki.”

“Chan said to wait.”

“He doesn’t actually outrank us, and he didn’t actually order us.”

“That may be so, but we can’t go wandering off on a whim. Remember where we are.”

“He’s got nobody watching his back. Besides, what happens if he can’t contact us? No need for two of us to be waiting here on standby.”

“But—”

“No matter what happens, you stay put. You stay alive and get back to the staging area. As soon as the time limit Chan set is up, you leave the park.”

The Arabian’s words cut to the quick. Kendall didn’t have a good retort handy. “Well, I’m not stopping you. Do whatever you need to do. But if you live through this, you and me are going to have words.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“May Allah be with you.”

“Good luck to you too.”

Kendall watched with barely concealed contempt as Meguid made adjustments to his levitation belt and flew down to the ground. First the Asian, then the Arab. Sometimes he got the feeling he really could judge a man’s character by the color of his skin.

There was nothing that “off” about Meguid. Maybe he was in a hypnotic state. All the same to him. He was a comrade in arms for the time being. If the SOS came, he’d ride to the rescue. Until then, he’d do as he saw fit.

Meguid descended until he was brushing the treetops. He pulled back the bolt of the ACR, ejecting the bullet, and loaded a tranquilizer round from his belt. It did more than put the subject to sleep. It took over the will, turning the victim into a virtual zombie. Its use was, of course, strictly against the Geneva Conventions.

He proceeded toward the library. A familiar voice barked orders in his head. He had defied it for but a moment. When Kendall had pressed him, his mind was already no longer his own.

He tweaked the magnetic field of his levitation belt and silently glided above the branches. The next instruction had him set down on the branch of a nearby tree. He shouldered his rifle and trained the sights down, the rifle and branch forming an inverted cross.

He’s coming. Shoot on my command. Until then, don’t stir an inch.

Several seconds later, Setsura Aki appeared on the path running beneath the tree where Meguid was hiding.

Normally, sensing the presence of the sniper—even a complete stranger—Setsura would have lashed out with his invisible devil wire. But that intuition was, along with his consciousness, in a suspended state.

The man in black strode into his line of sight and the tranquilizer round went flying—at over 4,400 feet a second. Four times the speed of sound. It grazed the base of Setsura’s neck. He twitched and pitched forward, like a beautiful piece of obsidian art toppling over.

The anesthetics worked almost instantaneously, and yet had no side effects. Most likely created with someone or something in Demon City in mind. Someone like Setsura Aki. Someone with something other than blood flowing in his veins.

Perhaps his one literally saving grace was his beauty, after all. The man in black sprawled lifelessly on the ground, his arms and pale fingers outstretched, the profile of his face—it was possible to harbor the delusion that the assassin had stalked him just to get a better view.

The vision of a sleeping beauty sleepwalking his way through a waking dream had been so weirdly appropriate to the magical forest surrounding him.

A long moment later, Chan settled soundlessly on the limb next to the unmoving Meguid, who was still aiming the rifle at the fallen target. He was being careful to make sure the tranquilizer was working, and was only beginning to realize he’d already become transfixed by the sight.

“Good job. The problem now is getting him back.” Chan said in a low voice, “Get up.”

Setsura didn’t move in the slightest. A natural reaction, what with his consciousness in a null state. Chan turned to Meguid with cold, grim eyes. “Go down and check it out. Be on your guard.”

The Arab vanished from the tree tops and landed on the ground as softly as a cotton ball. He scanned his surroundings and advanced, his ACR rifle leveled.

He had taken three steps when his body separated into horizontal slices just above the waist. Blood spouted out as if from a sprinkler head and he continued forward. His Chinese partner watched dispassionately from the tree tops.

Blood gushed from Meguid’s neck. The right hand fell from the wrist. Then his torso split vertically in half, falling in a pile of butchered meat at Setsura’s feet.

“Your efforts will not go unnoticed,” Chan said in grateful tones. “I’ll see to it that you receive a posthumous promotion, for guiding me safely to Setsura Aki.”

Chan soared into the sky and settled back down again just in front of Setsura, like a feather coming to rest. Meguid’s body quivered slightly as his feet tread upon it.

“I beg your pardon for invading your inner thoughts yet again. I suppose being carried on the back of a stranger would wound such beautiful pride. But I ask you to persevere.”

Chan leaned over and flung an arm around Setsura’s shoulders. His hand unexpectedly sank into the black fabric without any resistance.

He jerked his arm back. Something of unknown origins had swallowed it down to the wrist. Like the mouth of a fish. The fangs sprouting from its hinged jaws looked like inverted pyramids. Chan’s hand from the wrist forward had suddenly disappeared. Beyond the head, Setsura’s body and the grass were still clearly visible. Only his hand wasn’t there anymore.

What the hell—?

The horrified Chinese soldier jerked uncharacteristically and jumped backwards. Feeling a cold, thin spasm of horror shoot laterally through his neck, he knew this was the precise place where Meguid had lost his head.

Blood poured from his neck. Not red, but blue as the deep blue sea. At some point, Chan’s body had filled to the brim with water from the depths of the ocean.

Setsura’s back bulged up like the upwelling surface of a black pool of water and split apart. Some species of shellfish jutted out and buried its crustaceous head into Chan’s torso.

He cried out from the shock and pain. The sound bubbled from the severed neck in a spout of icy water.

The creature’s hard scales pushed halfway into Chan’s body and shook his lower half vigorously, tearing him in two. Chan’s upper half changed into an enormous clam shell. His lower half remained human.

A sudden thought invaded his brain. In a flash he understood—

This was a dream.

Long ago his parents had told him a fairy tale about a giant clam that rested at the bottom of the world, living in its dreams. Inside that dream, Chan was turning into a clam himself.