delighting in the sensation, watching the tiny hairs stir and rise. The finger trailed up her shoulder, over the empty output jack at her collarbone, down her breast. And there she found it. Smooth metal and cold transistors. Chittering weight hanging on the cord around her neck. She touched a length of corrugated rubber cable spilling from the mechabacus’s side, held it up to the light, staring at the bayonet studs at its head.
She closed her eyes and felt night air on her skin. Inhaling smoke and ash, listening to the swelling orchestra of the chaos outside. Holding her breath, as if she were about to dive into deep water. And then she plunged the cable into the output port at her collarbone, twisting it home with a sharp snap, exhalation drifting into a sigh.
Her fingers moved across the device’s face, shifting counting beads back and forth in a tiny, intricate dance. She felt the chatter swell, shift focus to the new transmission, the signal that had been missing from the choir these past weeks. Their voices in her head, the nattering, clattering tumbling voices, sounds of the real world drifting away. And as the sensation of her flesh became nothing at all, tears slipped over fluttering lashes and down her cheeks, falling away from flesh almost too insensate to mark their passing.
Almost.
They crawled through the sewer, no louder than the rats around them, sleek, flea-bitten shapes baring crooked yellow fangs at their approach. Kaori in front, sweat soaking through her kerchief, a hand-cranked tungsten torch burning in her hand. The rest of the Kage behind, single file, breathing heavy in the dank confines of the tunnel’s gut.
They were half a dozen turns into the labyrinth when Kaori paused at a four-way junction, looked back the way they’d come. The Spider peered at her in the dark, eyes narrowed against the stink.
“Do you know where you’re going?” The lieutenant’s whisper was feather-light, almost inaudible behind the grubby cotton covering his mouth.
Kaori scowled, turned around, kept crawling.
They reached a four-way junction and Kaori paused again, looking left and right, chewing her lip. Her eyes were wide, pupils dilated.
“This makes no sense,” she whispered.
The Spider cursed beneath his breath, spat into the filth they crawled through.
“Raijin’s drums, what’s the problem?”
“We’re looking for an emergency access shaft, up into the maintenance subbasement. But we should have hit a T-junction, not a crossroads.”
The Spider took Kin’s map from Kaori’s hand, smeared with filth but still legible. The Kage lieutenant frowned in the stuttering light, looking back the way they’d come, even turning the paper upside down.
“This is wrong,” he said. “We passed a five-way fork after the crossroads. But we shouldn’t have hit that until
“That’s what I just said,” Kaori hissed.
“Your Guildsman can’t even draw a godsdamned map.” The paper crumpled in one sodden fist. “Anyone would think the little bastard
Kaori looked at the Spider, he at her, watching her eyes grow wide.
“Oh gods…”
“What are you doing?”
The voice pulled Ayane from her trance, mechabacus fading to a whisper as she opened bloodshot eyes and saw Isao in the doorway. The boy’s face was flushed, fist curled around the haft of a wickedly sharp kusarigama, muscles taut along his forearm. He advanced toward her.
“You’re only supposed to be receiving, not transmitting. What are you doing?”
Ayane was on her feet, razored arms at her back unfolding with a bright, silver sound. The boy paused, one hand creeping up to his cheek; the thin red scar she’d given him on the bridge. Eyes on her fingers, still dancing on her mechabacus. He drew breath to shout for help.
A hand snaked over his mouth from behind and his eyes grew wide, a muffled, choking cry spilling through the fingers covering his lips. A knife gleamed red in the gloom.
“What’s my name, Isao?” Kin whispered.
Isao bucked, clawing blindly at Kin’s face. Kin stabbed again, red floods pouring down Isao’s back as he crumpled to his knees and toppled forward onto dusty concrete. Kin fell upon him, plunging the knife down again and again, scarlet spraying across the walls. Chest heaving, sucking breath through clenched teeth, finally pushing himself away from the corpse and spraying it with a mouthful of spittle, hands painted red, face white as snow.
Ayane watched him as if hypnotized. The silver at her back gleamed, long, razored needles rippling like branches in a gentle breeze. She walked up beside him and peered at Isao’s body, the blood pooling around him.
“You stabbed him in the back,” she said.
“So?”
Ayane reached out with one spider limb to poke the meat cooling on the basement floor. Kin grabbed her arm, glaring.
“I’m just touching…” she said.
“Well, don’t.”
“What was it like?” Head tilted, eyes a little too wide. “To kill him? How did it
“This isn’t the godsdamned time, Ayane.”
“Where are the others? Takeshi and Atsushi?”
“Already gone.” He gestured to the mechabacus on her chest. “Is it done?”
“Hai.” Ayane reached out ever so slowly, touched the blood on Kin’s cheek. “It is done.”
Kin sheathed his knife, walked up the stairs. “Then let’s get this over with.”
Ayane lingered, watching the punctured carrion cooling on the ground in front of her. She looked at the droplets of blood, winding in random paths down the walls, smeared on her fingertips. Her tongue emerged from between bee-stung lips and she touched it to her fingers, just once, shivering as she tasted copper and salt.
Licking her lips, she turned and followed Kin up the stairs.
He hadn’t moved from the window.
A silhouette against rising flames, sky-ships roaring overhead, the calls for calm, obedience, dispersal, hanging in the air with the smoke. He didn’t even look at them as they entered the room; Kin standing in the doorway, smeared in blood, Ayane leaning into a corner, a halo of silver needles fanned out along the walls.
“I wonder how history will remember us, Kin-san,” Daichi said, voice frail with pain. “I wonder what they will say.”
Kin’s reply was flat. Dead.
“They’ll probably call me traitor.”
Daichi nodded at the flames. “Probably.”
“They won’t call you anything at all.”
Daichi raised an eyebrow, turned toward the boy, and froze. He took in the unblinking eyes, the blood smeared across fingers and face, the dead-man expression.
“Nobody will remember your name, Daichi,” Kin said.
“What…” Daichi licked his lips, eyes fixed on those bloody hands, “… what have you done, Kin-san?”
“I told you,” Kin said. “I found a way for all of it to end.”
The window exploded at Daichi’s back, a rain of shattered glass and roar of blue-white flame. A Lotusman collided with the old man, knocked him off his feet, the pair crashing to the floor and tumbling across the boards. Another half-dozen suited shapes blasted in through the broken window, the roar of their burners almost deafening, filling the room with choking smoke.
Daichi kicked at the Guildsman tackling him, rolling away and drawing the old katana at his back from its battered scabbard, teeth gritted in agony. A second Lotusman advanced, brass fingers outstretched, and the old
