The red lanterns of the neon skull of the Fairmont Hotel jutted three blocks ahead, and bled into the fog like the injuries that would not heal.
Ren leaned his back against the wall of the butcher shop, and counted.
There are four guards at the main entrance. There are 2 Karakuri light mechs that patrol the perimeter and are mounted on tracks. There were six cameras, four of them the blind spots he could exploit in the event that he was moving at a fast pace. The sniper on the roof was sweeping west, or east side was weak.
This math he had learned in another life. The Empire taught him to destroy things. Now he was simply borrowing the lesson.
"Still time to walk away."
The voice was low and weary, behind him. Father Lucero had trailed him three blocks, and this indicated that the old priest had been either anxious or sought an excuse to pass away at a greater rate. Maybe both.
Ren didn't turn around. "You're not my handler."
Somebody must remind you that there is something that occurs when you enter alone. Lucero's respirator hissed. "You get dead. Then we others will have to give the kids some reasons as to why the big hero made himself a martyr on behalf of a woman who would fuck his corpse were she to suspect it would make good television.
Almost that would have given him a laugh. Almost.
Yes, she is on to night, she is on to night, said Ren. The release of The big Tenrai. All the cameras of the city were facing her stage. When she flaunts another broken prisoner before the crowd all those officers who are drinking sake. He examined the artificial arm, saw the blue fire veins running under the plating. "She's not gonna see me coming."
"She's not gonna need to. You believe that hotel is not a trap with your name on it? You escaped four days ago. She knows you're out here. She wants you to come."
Ren finally looked at him.
The visible eye of the old man was fatigued, bloody, the fatiguedness of one who gazed excessively on children dying needlessly. The respirator mask concealed the rest but once Ren had peeped beneath it, beheld the scar tissue, the burns, the mouth which had learned to pray and scream equal measures.
"I know," Ren said. "That's why I'm going."
He averted himself before Lucero would give an answer. Ghost pass through the blind spot and the hydraulics in the prosthetic are silent as he had stuffed the joints with butcher shop tallow. There was no sight of the first guard, only an impression of trench coat, and the damp thwack of a skull on the wrong side of the wall.
Ren grabbed the body before it fell on the ground. Lowered it slow. Grabbed the sidearm belonging to the man and slipped it in his belt.
One.
The second guard was unloading his urges on a dumpster, his rifle leaning against the wall as though he had forgotten his reason of carrying it. Ren reached over and caught the back of his head and plowed his face into the brick once to make sure his mouth remained shut and pulled the blade across his throat before the brain could tell it hurt. In the neon light the blood sprayed fan.
Two.
The third guard was rounding the corner too quickly. Saw Ren was bending over the body. Opened his mouth to shout.
The prosthetic of the main character Ren shot out, hooked on the wind pipe and pulled out. His feet pierced the wall as the guard kicked against it and the eyes swelled and his fingers scratched on the iron hold. Ren stood on him three seconds time enough to see that the panic had changed to comprehension then clapped him until the cartilage was a squashed beer can.
Three.
He pushed the dead body down amongst the others, washed the blood out of his hand on the uniform of the dead man, and continued on his way.
The east service entrance was a rusty metal door having a keypad previously he had seen a drunken policeman tap three nights before on a rooftop across the road. 16121937. The year the Empire proclaimed the Greater Co Prosperity Sphere. They incised it in everything. Made sure nobody forgot.
Ren hit the code and then waited until he heard the click and entered.
The passageway near the service smelled of bleach and decayed meat. Fluorescent lights were flickering above his head, and everything was in that sick green white light that made him think of the hospital. The one he'd woken up in. The one he had ten years spent in screaming in a body that would not move.
He pushed the memory down. Let the rage take its place.
The artificial leg began heating up. Good.
When he arrived at the basement "re education suites" they were silent. Soundproofed, probably. He had heard what had occurred down here the broadcasts, the screaming, like moaning that it was making, how prisoners had emerged with blank eyes and the Hanae Kurogiri lipstick seal seared in their tongues.
He went after the smell and discovered the first cell. Copper, sweat, something sweet, and chemical underneath.
The door was unlocked.
Within it there was a woman suspended to the ceiling using her wrists with barely the feet touching the floor. She was not clothed below the waist, and her back was a canvas of old scars and new burns in designs which were nearly ritual. Here was a shrine fire brand in a cold metal table by her side, the blue white radiance dwindled.
She was still alive. Just barely.
One stab of the anti armor blade sliced her in half, and Ren held her before she fell on the concrete, and pressed her at the wall. Her eyes opened azel, unfocused, the pupils being as large as possible.
"Can you walk?" he asked.
She tried to speak. There was a wet rasp, nothing else.
Ren drew the canteen of the dead guard out of his belt and poured it in her lips. She was taking gulps that were short and shaking, and the water was trickling down her chin and chest, and was mixed with the sweat and blood.
The broadcast," she lastly mumbled. Her voice was shredded. "She's... they're doing it tonight. In the ballroom. A boy. He is only a boy, you see, they say he is a runner with the Ghost Lantern, she is going to
"I know."
Ren got to his feet, examined the rifle. Three cores left. The artificial was kicking now, the veins on his neck blue, into his jaw.
This floor has a tunnel underneath, said he. "Follow it east. You'll hit the old Muni line. There is a chapel two blocks away from the exit run by Father Lucero. Tell him Ren sent you."
She grabbed his wrist. Her restraint had been more than it ought to have been. "You're going up there alone."
"Not alone." He threw himself up, began to move toward the door. "I'm taking her with me."
The ballroom in the Fairmont Hotel to day was a propaganda studio six years ago, and the Empire had determined that fear was more effective when you could see it being done.
It resembled now a theater in hell. The lanterns were suspended on the ceiling like swollen fruit, and made the marble floors look like the old blood as they lit. There were tripod mounted cameras surrounding a stage that was elevated, and cables were running back to broadcast trucks parked in front of it. Fifty Imperial officers were seated in the audience, drinking sake and laughing and have their polished boots on chairs that belonged earlier to American millionaires.
A young man in resistance colors, on the stage, was in a knelt position with his hands bound behind his back.
Toma Reyes.
Ren's jaw tightened.
The boy was nineteen, perhaps twenty, with unruly hair and a jungle grin to make him look as though he had just come out of a sewer and he had. Toma was the quickest man of the Ghost Lantern, the one who had dragged Ren out of the hospital on the runaway, the one who laughed during the fight, and apologized to corpses afterwards. He was noisy, irresponsible, was likely to burn himself out before he was twenty-five.
But he was theirs. Hanae Kurogiri had him at her knees.
She towered over him now six foot seven of her, heels raised, between her and making her look like a shrine goddess chiseled out of what despised the world. Her gown was unbuttoned, the crimson corset beneath smoldering slightly with seals of the shrine-fire which beat in time with her heart beat. Her hair would seem to have a life of its own, as she had black curls and uncurls in the hot lights of the studio.
Ladies and gentlemen, said she, purring, and her voice made the silk dipped in honey roll out of the loudspeakers, our little runner has been so helpful this evening. He's told us everything. The tunnels, the secure apartments, the armories. Everything."
She was kneeling behind Toma, thrown over his shoulders like a love-maker. His ear was kissed by her lips, yet the cameras recorded all the words.
It just required some coercion.
The officers laughed. Toma was expressionless with her eyes on a subject somewhere in the middle distance. Whatever she had done to him, it had placed him in another world. Somewhere safe.
Ren hoped he stayed there.
He made his way along the service passage in the back of the stage, the heat of the prosthetic having the air shimmering in his palm. Every camera was directed towards Hanae and this implied that no one was watching the back door. The officers were so drunk and too lazy and fat on occupation and sake.
Ten guards in between me and the stage. Maybe twelve.
He drew the first out of the rifle, and replaced it with a new one. The gun whined, the barrel was bleeding blue white, through the joints.
Doesn't matter.
He stepped through the door.
The first officer who came to him opened his mouth to shout. The prosthetic strangled around his throat and thus Ren could not even make a sound, raised him out of his chair, and hurled him through the table. Sake bottles shattered. Wood splintered. The neck of the officer was broken by the shock, and his body was like a paper doll.
Then the shooting started.
Ren threw his head in the confusion as though it were the last lingo he knew.
One of the lieutenants reached to his side arm. Ren took the possibility of his wrist, broke the bones in the artificial grip and shoved the gun the man was using into his mouth and used the dead finger to pull the trigger. The wall behind him was painted behind by the back of his head.
Two left guards rushed forward. Ren fell, kicked the legs out at the first, and with a single thrust, pushing the anti armor up through his groin and out through his throat. The second guard drew up his rifle. Too slow. Ren seized the barrel, levered it to one side, and struck the man on the face with the margin of his artificial arm and the sound of it was a wet, splintering crunch as cheekbone, eye socket and skull were crashed inward.
More guards. More guns.
Ren shot the rifle off the hip, and the shrine fire slugs passed through the armor and flesh as though they were non existent. A single blast hit one of the guards in the chest and continued on its way, the blue white energy slopping out of his back like a hose of spurting blood. The next slug cut off at the shoulder the arm of a man, the arm spinning round in an indolent circle even as the man stared at the stump, too much shocked to scream.
The non soldiers in the officers began to flee. Those who were soldiers began to be killed.
Ren fired the entire end of the rifle, threw it away, and continued wielding the blade.
A Karakuri light mech went around the corner six feet of diesel armor, with the brain of its pilot hardwired into the control system, the shrine fire core in its chest throbbing like a second heart. It held up a gun arm, with reticules that smeared red dots across the breasts of Ren.
He was already moving.
Body Channel surge. The world slowed to a crawl. The veins of Ren flushed, and blue white fire scaled the side of his neck, his jaw, bleeding at the corners of his eyes. He made two strides and pushed the blade beneath the chest plate of the mech, and turned.
The core ruptured. Shrine-fire burst out, boiling the pilot to his harnes, fusing the armor. The mech fell, with smoke and super-heated steam hissing out of all the joints.
Ren drew out the blade, wheeled on the stage.
The ballroom was a butcher house. Bodies, everywhere, still twitching, the blood lying on the marble, and streaming down in rivulets toward the drains. The officers who had got through to the exits had disappeared, leaving their hats, and their sake cups, their dignity.
And standing on the stage Hanae Kurogiri was with her hand in the hair of Toma, and drawing his head back, her other hand in his throat. Her nails were already cutting blood.
You came, she said, and with her smile was the prettiest thing Ren had ever desired to cut off her face. You were beginning to make me think you had forgotten me.
"Let him go."
"Why would I do that?" She threw back her head and the crimson veins in her hair throbbed more. We had hardly gotten to the good part. And the cameras are still rolling, you know. The whole of San Francisco is eagerly anticipating the arrival of their hero who will come to their rescue. Her nails dug deeper. Toma uttered something that was more of a whimper. "Tell me, Ren. Do you want them to see you win? Or would you have them see you break?
He took a step forward. The false leg was now screaming, and the blue fire ran out of every seam, and the heat was so strong that he could feel it burning the flesh at the shoulder-joint.
"I already broke," he said. "Ten years ago. You just didn't finish the job."
Her smile flickered. Just for a second. But he saw it.
Good.
I do not come to save him, said Ren, and continued to walk. And I am here to make sure you understand, that when tomorrow they play this tape in the Empire, and they screen it before all occupied cities as evidence that order is still a thing, that they will be called to account why their propaganda queen was powerless to save one dead man with a stolen arm and a rusty sword.
He was now ten feet off the stage. The artificial limb was trembling and the overload alarm screaming in his head. But he didn't stop.
"Seven seconds," he said. "That's how long I need. Seven seconds, and your head is on the floor. The cameras will catch it all. Your eyes open. Your mouth moving. The blood still warm."
Hanae laughed. But it was tighter now. "You think"
"One."
She has drawn Toma to her, shielding herself with him. Now her nails were at his throat, and were poised to cut.
"Two."
"Stop. I'll kill him. I'll"
"Three."
Ren's foot hit the stage. The artificial leg burnt white hot.
And the lights went out.
Someone had cut the power. The ballroom sank into such darkness that it was as solid as soapstone, and it was pushing against his eyes and his skin and his lungs. The cameras turned on vainly in the dark. Officers who remained alive had ceased to scream. Not even the blood appeared to breathe.
Ren was frozen on the stage, with blind eyes and the fire that was the prosthetic the only light in the room one blue white star in the black.
And then he caught sight of the face of Hanae in that light.
She wasn't smiling anymore.