The Complete Karma Trilogy (46 page)

“I do what needs to be done,” Karma said.

“In that respect, as leaders, we’re really not that different,” Charles said. “It’s just that I’d rather it was me. This Evaporation Pen, this death I give you, it’s a tribute to what you’ve done.” And he pulled the trigger of his Evaporation Pen, sweeping it across the room.

He never let go of the trigger, as hot as it became from the energy it was releasing, even when it began to burn his hand. The green light died in a shower of sparks, and dust, and the back wall opened up to expose the afternoon sky, two kilometers above the earth. He held the trigger until the Pen stopped working, and he stood alone in the silence, with natural sunlight entering the room for the first time since it was built, although the Solar Kite blocked most of it from them.

He looked down at his hand, which had a severe, rectangular burn mark where he had been holding the Pen. “Carried away,” he said quietly, to himself. He opened the door to leave the room.

Ronin 14

Storming the Castle

Reiko had spent
the morning away from the Kenko building. She went to a pet store in the busier portion of Shinjuku, where she bought eight rats that she selected herself. She told the person that was helping her, “The last time I had rats, I had sixteen of them, and they were all boys, every single one of them. It’s because where I work, no one cares about that kind of thing. But that’s no way to live life, don’t you agree? Sixteen boys, no girls. I’m insisting that half of these rats be girls.”

The employee that was helping her was himself a young boy, perhaps sixteen years old, still in high school. He had yet to take the entrance examination that every junior was to take, he had yet to think about where he would go to college, and then what he would do with his life, beyond being an employee at a small pet store in Shinjuku. He said, after inspecting all of the rats that they had in stock, “I think only three of them are girls.”

“You think? What, is it not obvious? Well, give me all the girls you have, and I’ll try and make do.”

She also bought a large cage, with what was nearly the last of the money she owned. Her apartment in Tokyo was prohibitively expensive, even though it was one of the cheapest she could find, and after buying rats and a cage she was reduced to almost nothing. But she didn’t care, since she was part of a larger organism that had resigned itself to death. It was around noon when she was done making the purchase, and with her large cage full of rats she decided to go to a nearby restaurant and spend the rest of the money that she had. She was carrying the hunger of seven people—Noboru had died while she was riding the subway, which had been both very traumatic and very awkward for her, dying on a subway. Since none of the others seemed inclined to eat, engaged in their warfare at the Kenko building, she decided to eat for them.

She ordered the largest thing she could find on the menu. She had crammed the cage underneath her seat, and the waiter kept looking down at it suspiciously as her order was taken.

The waiter finally had to ask, “What is it that you have down there?”

Since Reiko, and everyone with her, didn’t think it would be a good idea to say that she had brought eight rats into a restaurant, she said that it was three small puppies that she had just bought. “Hardly larger than an orange,” she said.

The chirping noises that were coming from the cage were not the sounds typical of three small puppies, but the waiter was trusting. He asked, “Can I see them? They sound adorable.”

“This is not meant as an insult to you, but they’re still young enough that their immune systems can’t tolerate much stress,” Reiko replied. “I would love to show them to everyone that asks, but in a city this big a lot of people ask, and that’s a lot of opportunities for them to become sick. To be fair, I must decline everyone. You do understand, don’t you?”

The waiter looked down at his hands, which appeared very well scrubbed. “Yes, of course,” he said, and left to deliver her order.

It had been Reiko’s intention to wait out the whole day in the city, but since Mr. Laurel had been tied up earlier than planned, she slowly made her way to Kenko, walking through the afternoon streets of Tokyo.

The city seemed much more depressed than she remembered it being, when she had first moved there only a month before. But a large part of her had lived there much longer—the memories of everyone connected to her reaffirmed her impression. All big cities were prone to a certain emptiness, she thought, but the American conquest had made it unbearable. The people she passed all had their heads low, dejected. The foreigners she occasionally saw all had a look of nervousness, as if they were in a place they knew they shouldn’t be, afraid to be caught.

“At least it has yet to become a proud conquest,” she thought to themselves. “It has nothing of the glory of a military conquest, the bloody glory. I doubt the Romans looked this anxious, when they took Carthage. I hope the shame lasts for generations.”

When she got to Kenko, the riots were in full swing. Without hesitation she took the elevator, which she occupied with several Japanese employees that wore the signs of a previous struggle. One had a torn suit, and the other had blood stains all the way up his right arm. She smiled at both, and got off at the Kenko floor.

Once there, she performed the surgery on all eight of the rats by herself. It didn’t take her long, although she had to wait after the seventh for Saori to use the machine on three new guards that they had kidnapped from the twenty-third floor.

She took her eight rats, along with a laptop, to her old room, which she had to share with an incapacitated Mr. Laurel.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Laurel,” she said to the prostrate form. “Sorry to be so late. Buying rats in the city, since you wouldn’t get me any here.”

She used Haru’s expertise to operate the program, forming four pairs of two. At the same time she had to mentally combat the first new guard that was added to their network, which took a considerable effort. Shortly afterward, the process was repeated with another guard, who was even more difficult to subdue. They decided as a whole to take a break before adding the third, during which time the two controlled guards were sent back out into the fray of the Kenko building. One was sent to Haru, who was occupying a computer on the floor that had contained the Karma terminal, and the other was sent to the floor below the Ranch, to watch over the maze.

They were looking for Mr. Perry, the location of whom neither of the controlled guards had known. Haru was looking through the live video feeds, which he had taken complete control of, but there were thousands of cameras, all of which showed either nothing or a mob of struggling people that were hard to identify.

They knew that obtaining one of Mr. Perry’s two remaining personal bodyguards would be the end of it. They would have at their disposal the use of an Evaporation Pen, the ultimately destructive American weapon. When Mr. Perry didn’t appear after fifteen minutes, they decided to add the third guard to their network, which turned out to be a horrible mistake.

They never completely subdued the mind of the third American. The other two guards resumed a mental struggle, although only weakly—their bodies were still entirely under the control of the Kaishin team.

Mr. Perry found Haru, entirely by coincidence. He was accompanied by his two guards. Haru didn’t have to turn around to know they were there—he could see them through the eyes of the controlled guard that was sent from Kaishin, who was close behind the group, still on his way towards Haru. “Toru, help me,” Haru mentally yelled.

Toru took the guard over, and ran the rest of the distance that separated him and Mr. Perry. Mr. Perry was speaking to Haru. He said, “The famous programmer. I find you at last. And in such a strange place. You wouldn’t happen to know what happened to Karma, would you?”

One of the guards turned around, when they heard Toru approaching. The guard didn’t have time to react before Toru buried a fist deep into his face, crumpling his nose flat and killing him instantly. The other guard reacted remarkably fast, though, and Evaporated the body Toru occupied before he could do anything else.

Haru attempted to run, but was outpaced by the guard that pursued him.

“Don’t kill him!” they heard Mr. Perry yell, from behind Haru.

The guard smashed him in the side of the head with his fist, sending Haru careening into a wall. He immediately lost consciousness, and their view of the hallway vanished away.

The newly added mind of the third guard used the confusion to break away, and he wildly attacked Nami’s consciousness, killing her mind. Hideo tried to mentally retaliate, but his mind also was killed. Reiko couldn’t understand his mental fortitude—she remembered herself how disorienting it had been, being drowned in countless thoughts. The pain of two deaths seared through her brain, making her collapse to the ground. In the other room, Ichiro physically strangled the man that had just killed Nami and Hideo, to stop his mental rampage. Once he died, they reconquered the only remaining man, whose body was in the maze below the Ranch.

“How did they die so easily?” Reiko asked, referring to Nami and Hideo. “I was right there next to them, and he didn’t seem so lethal.”

Ichiro answered. He said, “It’s the difference between our models. You have more connections, more places that you can retreat to and attack from, in your mind. We engineers have the old one, and you have the new. I can barely suppress these minds.”

Reiko didn’t know that the engineers had been struggling so much, even though she had access to their thoughts. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We shouldn’t be doing this, then.”

“It’s too late now,” Ichiro responded. “Haru’s the only one who knows how to turn the program off, since he was never considerate enough to share that information with us. We’ll have to get him back somehow.”

They could think of nothing else to do, but to wait until Mr. Perry and his guard passed their last sentinel, standing in the maze. Silently they waited, listening to the barely audible yelling and crashing around them, traveling from floors above and below where they were.

A terrible static entered their minds. It was like an infinitely loud volume, experienced from underneath a massive waterfall, which pounded their psyche incessantly. A horrible smell entered their consciousness, like the burning of plastic mixed with hair, and bright, blinding lights. All of the impulses were erratic—coming, going, being replaced by some other sound or sight that was just as disorienting. The commotion seemed to reawaken Haru, whose consciousness rejoined their own, although his body did not open its eyes. He was being dragged somewhere, most likely towards the Ranch.

“It’s Karma,” Haru said. “He found us.”

“How do you know?” they asked.

“I can hear him speaking.”

They were losing control of their last guard again. The sound prevented any of them from focusing well enough to hold him down. They still had his body, but he was thrashing nearly as violently as the last guard had done, the one which had killed Nami and Hideo.

“You have to kill him,” Haru said.

“He’s the only thing between you and the Ranch,” they replied. “And besides, we can’t get near him.”

Haru took the body of the last guard. In his hands there was a handgun, which all of the American guards carried one of. He knew that he had eight shots. As quickly as he could, although it was not his expertise, he unloaded the contents of the gun on his nearby American comrades.

At the same time, Haru insisted to Toru that he find a computer. “I will show you what to do,” Haru said. “We have to change the numbers, and even then he could find us again, if he searches hard enough. I don’t think I’ll be able to get to a computer again—it will have to be you.”

“Haru, what are you doing?” In the maze, the body of the guard was shot down, and the violent consciousness died.

“Do it,” Haru insisted. “A computer.”

Toru went to a nearby computer, while Haru disclosed a small portion of his brain that contained the things Toru would need to enter.

“How do you control your information this well?” they asked.

“Because I’m the programmer. I’ve also given you the instructions on how to turn the Kaishin off, and to destroy my program. Do not neglect to destroy my program.”

The static was becoming louder, and all of them could barely think. Toru rapidly entered keystrokes, trying to put distance between them and Karma. Before he could complete the change, a thunderous crack emitted from somewhere in their mind, destroying Saori instantly.

“It’s just raw, meaningless data that he’s throwing at us,” Haru said. “It’s brutal.”

And then Haru was gone. The static went with him, the raw data that Karma was trying to drown them in. Their minds became eerily silent, what was left of them.

“What did you do?” Reiko asked. “Where’s Haru?”

“I did what he told me to... I think he tricked me into leaving him behind.”

All three of the remaining members of Kaishin were standing in their usual offices, reeling from the intensity of the last few moments.

Eventually, Toru spoke, with his actual voice. He yelled across the office, to Reiko and Ichiro, “I’m going after Haru. I’m going up to that damn maze, and I’m going to kill Mr. Perry myself. Forget the plan. The plan isn’t working, and we’re going to fail if we don’t adapt.”

“I’m going with you,” Ichiro said.

Reiko yelled, “There’s hundreds of Americans up there still, with guns! You won’t stand a chance!”

They didn’t answer. They mentally shoved her away, and she was alone to her own thoughts for the first time in almost an entire day. Frustrated, she fed her rats, and held one of them. Down the hallway the elevator left, carrying Toru and Ichiro to their deaths.

“You can still leave,” Toru said, from somewhere in her mind. “Just walk away. Even Mr. Perry doesn’t know your real name. There’s a file, in a filing cabinet in Mr. Okada’s old office, that contains the only piece of paper that says who you really are. Destroy Kaishin, take that paper, and leave. Maybe you could still live a normal life, doing something else. You deserve that.”

“We’re in this together, aren’t we? I don’t run away.”