Zero Sum Game (18 page)

"Yes," Fujiya said.

Shimizu didn't believe him. "Say it."

Fujiya breathed into the phone. "I'll stay away from her."

"I'll worry about the plan. You do as you're told." Fujiya didn't respond but Shimizu was sure he had gotten the point. "I have a meeting with Amano later today. Wait for my call." He didn't wait for Fujiya's response and hit the "end" button.

He had time before he arrived at his stop. He stood up, leaving his briefcase on the seat, and walked over to stand next to the boys. He said nothing, only stared at them. They ignored him for a few moments. Two of the boys sat side by side, the third was in the other seat by the window.

One boy glanced up. "You got a problem, old man?"

Shimizu smiled. "Looking at three assholes," he said.

The boy who had done pull-ups and been the first to call him an old man looked him in the eye. "Die," he said. His friends chuckled.

Shimizu sat in the empty spot. The three boys leaned back, disgust on their faces. He rested his elbows on his knees. "What did you say?"

"Die," he repeated, over-enunciating each syllable.

Shimizu glanced at each boy as he replied. "Something about that. If you want someone to die, you better be willing to kill them."

He rammed the edge of his right hand into the windpipe of the teenager on his right, crushing it to pebble-sized bits of bone while also striking the boy in front of him with the flat of his left palm in the location of the boy's heart. The boy's ribcage shattered, driving slivers of bones into his heart, killing him in an instant. While the boy beside him wheezed and gasped, Shimizu smiled at the boy who told him to die, giving him half a second to register what had happened. He drove the flat of his hand into the boy's nose. The force broke bones and cartilage and speared his brain with hundreds of splinters. His nose gushed blood but he was dead before he rolled forward onto the bag on his lap.

Shimizu covered the nose and mouth of the boy beside him until he stopped breathing. His head lolled to one side and his eyes closed, as if he had fallen asleep against the window. Shimizu rearranged the position of the boy whose nose had been smashed, now his head rested on his forearms, his face hidden by the bag. Shimizu closed the eyes and mouth of the third boy and leaned his head against the seat back.

He straightened and looked at the boys; they appeared to be three exhausted high school students sleeping until they arrived at their destination.

An announcement came over the train's speakers. "Next stop, Kudamatsu Station. The doors will open on the right. Next stop, Kudamatsu Station."

Shimizu picked up his briefcase and exited the car, avoiding the streams of passengers trying to get on. By the time he passed through the station gate, the three dead boys were out of his mind.

CHAPTER 16

Hina approached the front gate of Hiroshima City Junior High School.

"I don't think you should do this," Voice said.

For a battle suit programmed to follow her orders, he second-guessed and questioned her a lot. She tried to hide her annoyance as she said, "I can't do this alone."

"You have me," Voice said.

"You and Ichihara pulled me into this in the first place," she said. She heard the boys soccer club still practicing on the sports field, their yells and cheers carrying across the clear air. She entered the school and removed her shoes.

"May I make a suggestion?" Hina stopped at the staff room door and waited for Voice to continue. "Choose a neutral place. Don't go anywhere that he is familiar with and you aren't."

"I don't get it."

"It will give him a psychological advantage. If he picks the place, it will make you uncomfortable and more willing to tell the truth while he will be in control and may not be completely truthful with you," Voice said.

"I don't understand at all."

Voice sounded exasperated. "Pick a neutral spot, some place that neither of you often go to. Okay?"

She didn't respond. She set her bag down and slid the door open. She announced herself and waited for Ozaki to approach her. He led her to a corner by the front entrance and stood by the slipper case.

He held her gaze. "We need to talk but not here," Ozaki said. "Can you give me an hour?"

Hina remembered what Voice had said. He annoyed her sometimes, but he had never steered her wrong before. "Okay," she said. "Let's meet at Shukkei Park."

Ozaki seemed surprised at her directness; he had probably planned on choosing the meeting place. He nodded and said, "Okay. I'll be there in an hour. Let me finish up here."

— — —

Ozaki found Hina sitting on a bench deep inside Shukkei Park. It sat on the edge of a gravel path across from a small pond filled with dark water and large rocks. Several turtles occupied the rocks, their necks stretched out as they stared skyward. If Ozaki hadn't known they were real animals, he would have mistaken them for decorative statues. The bench was private enough that no one would hear his conversation with Hina, but the gravel path would alert them to any one coming their way. The park was nestled in between the river and a school.

Hina stood and gave a slight bow when she heard Ozaki approach, then moved to one side of the bench as he sat to her left.

Ozaki glanced at the sky. "Great weather we're having, isn't it?"

Hina nodded. "Yeah."

Ozaki looked at the turtles then at their surroundings. "I love this place. I often came here to do my homework when I was in high school."

"I like the Peace Park better," she said.

"There are too many tourists there. And it's kind of depressing."

"It's beautiful and wide open," she replied.

Ozaki nodded at her answer and turned his head away. She did too, and they sat in silence for several moments. He waited for her to broach the subject. When she didn't, he said, "We didn't come here to talk about the park."

Hina blushed in embarrassment and hunched her shoulders in an effort to make herself smaller. She bit her lower lip and said nothing for a moment. Ozaki wouldn't push her; if she wanted to talk to him, then she would. Sometimes trying to force someone made them less willing.

She clenched her fists in her lap. "I…I have super powers that an alien suit gave me. That's how I was able to do that stuff last night."

He didn't laugh, only pushed his glasses farther up onto his nose. He waited for her to continue. She began with being at a convenience store and the power going out, meeting a dying man at a shrine, and a voice talking via her school uniform. She gave a quick overview of what had happened and the alien suit's story of how the Noigel had lost their home and wanted to transform Earth into a new homeworld. "New Noigel", she called it. She ended with her explanation of why she had been on the submarine, searching for clues to what the Noigel had planned.

She finished and leaned back against the bench. He gazed at the turtles that sat on the rocks across from them. He let out a heavy breath. "I thought you would tell the truth." He faced her. "I'm disappointed in you."

He hadn't known what to expect, but such a far-fetched story wasn't it. While it covered the points about what he had seen, it was too fanciful to be true. But her delivery hadn't seemed rehearsed. She believed what she had told him. He wondered if she had a mental disorder no one at school had told him about. Maybe she had an overactive imagination, the result of being an only child and getting attention. He regretted giving her a day to talk to him. He should have made her tell him the truth right away during that night at the port.

On the other hand, she had hurled a car into a streetcar platform. Along with outrunning a car on a bicycle and the fight against the larger man, it seemed too big a prank to pull.

"I'm telling the truth," Hina said. "You saw what I did to Fujiya."

"Something that could have been staged or otherwise faked." He looked her up and down, focusing on her uniform. He reached out and grabbed a bit of her sleeve between his forefinger and thumb. "Prove it," he said. Hina looked confused. "Do something I know you couldn't fake and let me talk to this…voice thing." He waited for her response.

Hina turned away from him. "Voice, what should I do?" he heard her whisper. She paused a moment. "But…can you talk to other people?"

After a few moments of silence Hina nodded her head and said, "Okay." He raised his eyebrows in a questioning gesture. "I have a way you can talk with Voice. But what do you want me to prove? My physical powers?"

"Yes," said Ozaki. He glanced at the turtle pond and remembered the way the car's bumper had crumpled in her grip. "Just a moment."

He walked to the pond's edge and picked up a stone. It was about the size of a softball. He bounced it in his hand several times, it felt solid and hefty. He returned to his place beside Hina. He searched the stone for cracks and other defects. There were none. He squeezed it with both hands as hard as he could, his arms and back trembled with the effort. The stone stayed solid.

Satisfied nothing was wrong with it, he said, "Crush this."

"What?" she asked.

Ozaki's certainty that Hina was lying grew. He had given her an impossible task and she knew it. She had seen him try to break the rock with both hands and fail. She couldn't do it with one hand. He continued to hold the rock out to her.

"Okay," she said. She put both hands around it.

"No," he interrupted. "With one hand. You saw that I couldn't do it. You can't either."

Hina shrugged. She held the rock in her right hand and squeezed. The stone cracked and fell apart into chunks as puffs of dust shot into the air. She closed her hand into a fist and Ozaki heard stone grinding against stone. She opened her hand, sand and pebbles sat in her palm.

The sense of unreality he had experienced last night returned. He had checked that rock himself. It was real, there had been nothing wrong with it. He had even tried to crush it with both hands and all of his strength. The task should have been impossible. Was it possible she really was superhuman?

Hina dumped the remains on the ground and wiped her hands clean. "Like I said earlier. I fell two stories and nothing happened. I lifted a block of wood that weighed twenty-three tons."

He looked at her in amazement. Were such things possible? He waited for a pair of comedians to jump out and say it was all part of the surprise variety show Dokkiri. No one appeared.

"Now, you wanted to talk to Voice."

The sudden change in topic threw him off. "How do I do that?"

"Actually, I'm not sure. I…" She stopped and looked away from him, her eyes getting that detached expression he had come to notice. "Okay," said Hina after a moment. "Will I be able to hear what you're saying to him?" She turned back to Ozaki. "Hold on to part of my uniform and don't let go, no matter what happens."

She looked around to make sure no one was watching them. She turned her head away from him as he rested his right hand on her left shoulder. Ozaki felt a slight tingle in his hand that soon faded.

"Hello, Ozaki-san." The voice was flat but not quite artificial sounding. Ozaki let out a grunt of surprise but didn't let go of Hina's shoulder. "I'm Voice," it continued. Ozaki said nothing for a moment. Behind the small glasses, his eyes widened in astonishment. "It's all right," Voice said. "You can talk to me. But you must speak out loud to do so."

Ozaki stammered out. "Hello." He hated himself; he seldom lost self-control. Girls with super powers and taking clothes; how else would his world change today? He didn't know what to say. "I guess everything Takamachi-san said was true. Wasn't it?"

"I assure you it is. I didn't agree to her sharing this information but I can't control her. Now that you are a part of our situation, you must be made aware of the dangers your new knowledge entails."

He tightened his grip on Hina's shoulder. "What do you mean by that?"

"The man you met last night is a Noigel. He is aware of Hina and her plans to stop him and his boss. If he learns that you also know of him, he will try to eliminate you as well. You are now a liability. One that I had hoped Hina would not have chosen to make."

"Eliminate? You mean that big guy will try to kill me?"

"Yes."

"Will he try to kill Takamachi-san as well?"

"Yes," answered Voice.

Ozaki's eyes found Hina's. His heartbeat sped up, partly because of the news someone would try to kill him, part of it came from the matter-of-fact delivery of the warning. "I'm done here," Ozaki said.

A few seconds later, Hina told Ozaki could let go of her. He took a deep breath and slumped against the bench. It was difficult to process the strange information that had been dumped on him.

"It makes a weird kind of sense," he said. "All the things I saw you do. What happened last night. It's…unbelievable. But it is the truth."

Hina nodded at this.

He glanced at the broken pieces of rock. "Can you defeat these Noigel?"

"I don't know," she said. "I can try. If I don't, my father, mother, Ami, you, and everyone else will die. I can only do my best."

Ozaki smiled a little bit. "When you beat me in arm wrestling, it was because of this suit? This…what's his name?" He pointed to her outfit.

"Voice. And no, that was before I got the suit. That was all me." She seemed embarrassed saying that, as if she was gloating. To cover it up she said, "Voice can't change into anything else. He used to have that ability, but he was damaged in a fight with Fujiya, that guy who chased us. Voice can only be a school uniform."

Ozaki nodded his head as he took this in. Hina grabbed his forearm and looked him in the eyes.

"Don't tell anyone. You can't. The more people know, the more people will get hurt. I haven't even told my father and Ami, and she's my best friend. Please. Not any one."

Ozaki nodded. "I promise. I won't. I feel bad about this. I'm sorry I put you into this situation."

Perhaps it would have been better for her if she had run away at the port. But she had rescued him, using her powers to save him and exposing her secret. "Is there anything I can do?"