when she heard stealthy footfalls in the corridor. She looked at Red, paused with his teeth upon the leather, one ear pointing to the sky as his tail started wagging.
The dog blinked.
Yukiko strained against the weakened strap, finally tearing it loose, tugging at the bindings on her ankles as the footsteps arrived in the hallway outside. She was up and coiled in the shadows as the handle turned and the door opened wide.
A figure limped into the gloom, and she struck, wrapping the bedsheet over its head and kicking the back of its knee. The figure dropped to the ground with the whine of pistons and a muffled cry of pain. She grabbed the contraption on his belt and tore it from its holster. The figure pulled the tangled sheet away from his face and turned to face her, and she recognized Piotr, pale as the sheet she’d wrapped him in, hands reaching for the ceiling.
“Stop!” His one good eye locked upon the device in her hand. “Don’t!”
Yukiko realized the man was drunk; the reek of liquor on his breath and skin so strong he might have bathed in it. She pointed the contraption at his head, finger poised over what she hoped was the trigger.
“What are you doing here?” she growled.
“Please.” He motioned to the hallway. “Please. I am wanting for you.”
“Why? What do you want with me?”
“Using you.” He licked his lips, gaze roaming from head to toe. “The body. Using for the body.”
“My body?”
He reached up, put his hands on her shoulders, ran them down over her breasts. Yukiko took a step back, lip curling in disgust.
“Please.” Piotr looked her up and down, put his finger to his lips. “Wanting you. Come for me. We must come.”
“You sick bastard,” she growled.
“Sick?” The man frowned. “No get sick, is—”
Her knee collided with his crotch midsentence, her elbow with his jaw. His head twisted across his shoulders, spittle and blood spraying between split lips, eyes rolling up in their sockets as he hit the concrete with a wet thud. Red hopped off the bed and snuffled at the man’s face, licking his nose with a hopeful wag of his tail.
She massaged the pain in her knuckles, stared at the gaijin with utter contempt.
A quick search of the man’s clothing revealed his carved fish pipe, a satchel of the strange leaf that gaijin all seemed to smoke, and a ring of iron keys. She was eyeing off the strange weapon in her hand when Red heard Ilyitch’s footprints in the corridor. She stood and pointed the device at the doorway, not knowing how her benefactor might react upon seeing his unconscious comrade.
Ilyitch stopped at the threshold, frowning. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw Yukiko and the contraption coiled in her hands. He raised one eyebrow, letting the three satchels he was carrying fall to the ground. Catching sight of Piotr collapsed beside her, he shuffled forward with hands raised, crouching and searching for the man’s pulse. A stream of nonsensical words followed, hissed through clenched teeth, accompanied by furious hand gestures.
Yukiko pushed the picture of Piotr’s attempted assault into his mind, the image of his hands pawing her chest. The boy fell silent, looked at his fallen comrade with an uneasy expression. He put a comforting hand on her shoulder but she shied away, and Ilyitch let his arm drop. Turning to the satchels he’d brought with him, he knelt and rummaged inside the largest. He tossed Yukiko a dirty red coverall, heavy boots, and a yellow rubber rainskin. Not needing to be told, Yukiko slipped into the coverall and rainskin (too big), sat on the bed and buckled up the boots (also too big). She pulled the hood over her head, tugged the hem-ties as tight as she could.
Ilyitch had two coils of thick rope looped over his shoulders. He peeled one off and hung it around her neck, hefted one of the satchels, handed her another. The bag was heavy, stinking of raw fish. She guessed it was Buruu’s dinner, and she was momentarily overcome with gratitude for this strange boy with tarnished silver eyes.
She stepped up and kissed his cheek, careful of the swollen, purple bruise. His skin was salty smooth against her lips.
“Thank you, Ilyitch,” she said.
The gaijin shot her a pretty smile, scratching at the base of his skull and blushing. She stooped to pat Red, let him lick her nose.
“Yukiko.”
Hearing Ilyitch say her name pulled her from the dog’s mind. The boy nodded toward the door, motioned for her to follow.
She gave him an affectionate scratch behind his ears.
A faint, grim smile.
Hood pulled low over her eyes, she followed the gaijin from her cell.
“You can’t be serious!”
Shrieking gales snatched the words from her mouth, dragging them off to drown in the sideways rain. Cautious feet had brought them up an auxiliary stairwell near the catchment room and from there onto the roof. The storm was so heavy it seemed night had fallen, and the glow of grubby tungsten was all that stood between them and almost pitch blackness.
Black clouds rolled overhead, thunderous, flashes of lightning catching the world in freeze-frame. All around them, copper spires stretched into the sky, twin cables as thick as her wrist leading off into the dark. She could hear the ocean below, waves crashing against the structure and shivering it in its moorings. The cables hummed in the wind; a lonely, metallic dirge over the percussion of Raijin’s drums.
Ilyitch laughed and handed her the contraption, took another from the storage locker at the base of the lightning spire. Yukiko stared at the device he’d given her, stomach sinking toward her toes.
It was solid iron, slippery with rain and grease. Four grooved rubber wheels lined up along a cross-shaped bar, fixed at either side with what looked like crank handles. A leather harness was affixed to a clip at the bottom of the crossbar, and Ilyitch was already strapping himself in. Yukiko had a dreadful feeling she knew where this was going, buckling herself into her own harness as the storm raged about them. She leaned against the railing as the wind buffeted her like a plaything. Lightning struck a spire out on the ocean to the south, raced along the cables up to the building’s roof. Yukiko flinched, shielding her eyes against the blue-white burn seething through the vast machine behind them. Goosebumps trawled her skin.
Ilyitch looked to the sky, then scampered up the lightning spire, using the copper coils like a ladder. He slung the contraption onto the double lengths of cable, grooved rubber wheels fitting snugly around the
