The Whistle Sound
The laboratory is like an abandoned puppet house, with unmoving but vaguely humanoid machines strewn everywhere and piled on shelves. He watches every step to keep from tripping over the now-useless cables.
Huuummmmmmm…
Tip, tip…tip.
In the direction of the sound, he finds a hole in the wall: a hole stretching from the floor to the ceiling, one of the windows partially smashed. Fragments of glass, shining like stars on one edge and lightless on the other, are glittering on the floor tiles.
The streetlights shine through the gap, playing through the shattered glass, tinging the room yellow. One long, dark shadow is cast on the floor before the hole. There stands a girl with her labcoat sleeves rolled up. She stares into the midnight Shànghǎi rain as if she has never seen it before.
Following the girl’s gaze, there is a broad, dark shape, a space where the neon town is not visible. The shape is taller than some of the buildings it passes. It’s gradually growing smaller along with the sound. Instead there are voices raising in panic and heavy things colliding.
I told you, you’ve lost,
the girl says, with a faint smile. In the sodium light, there is a thin trail that looks pitch-black running down her lip. It might be blood.
What was it?
You really aren’t very bright, you lot…well, here’s a hint…it’s the same as me. What do you think I am?
She is still smiling despite the blackness spreading across her coat. An emergency vehicle’s siren begins playing, somewhere near.
You have…hmmm…three guesses.
~
Hell Flower Parade
He sat with them in the hazy red light of the bar, half-listening to their small talk. The wireless was mostly playing static, but occasionally it slipped through a bar or two of an Aida Khann song that had been popular some decades ago, or something that sounded oddly like the Aynu Mosir national anthem.
Hey, that girl…
one of them said, at length.
Yeah? What girl?
said another.
That woman, the one they suspect in Komyoji’s case. You know what they call her?
What?
Enyeh? Woman? What?
asked the red-haired girl. She probably couldn’t have understood in the best of times, much less while on her third shochū.
An important scientist just got murdered in Sur–la–mer*. Someone saw a strange woman covered in blood wandering around near the scene, but they can’t find her. They’re starting to say she was a demon. Calling her Hóng-Guǐ . The Red Ghost.
Whaaat, really? Scary!
The girl was slight of frame but strong as an ox. She smiled easily, laughed often, and could hold her own when drinking after work. That she could barely stumble through the language was a problem, but in many ways she was one of them.
To drag such a kind girl into their life. He was surely going to Hell.
His own wife and daughter were spoilt and poured every cent into host bars, one of his sons in prison, the other in some far-off city and unwilling to so much as look him in the eye, and his grandchildren wouldn’t recognise him were they to pass him on the street. The only ones he could rely on, he had thought for so many years, were his underlings.
It had never bothered him before, but now it troubled him to think that they, like she, had probably been good once.
Now…
Oya-sama, are you OK?
When he looked up, she was smiling again. The girl he had ordered to kill a man.
Even the ‘second chance’ Heaven had sent him had become a devil. A red ghost.
I’m fine, Renkeko. Why don’t we eat some skewered chicken…
Hooray! Meat, meeeeeeeat!
~
Two Transmissions from the Appointed Day
A: Found it. Shiiiiiit, ain’t that a way to go.
B: Tell me about it. The boss picked up some street punk from God-knows-where. She talks some funny language—I don’t think she even knows Japanese, much less Wu. She’s basically a human-shaped attack dog. Might as well have been raised by bears.
A: Damn, and I thought kids like that were only in the movies. How d’you do something like this and sleep at night?
B: She seems happy. We couldn’t get much out of her, but there was something about baozi.
A: Damn.
B: At first we thought no one even managed to touch her, but there’s one scratch.
A: In other words, there’s someone out there made of even tougher stuff than our devil girl. That’s a scary thought.
C: Hailing. This is C
.
B C! What’s the status?
C: ½. We cut the power and secured U234, thanks to E
, but…we haven’t found the girl or Unit 238.
A: Hey, relax. Two outta four ain’t bad.
C: A. And what about you, then?
A: Ohhhh, we got all the keys now, bitch.
C: How nice. Those will certainly come in handy, I am sure. It’s especially impressive that you accomplished that single task with help from a little girl. Good job, A.
A: …Are you kidding or serious?
C: Ah, B, we’ve just loaded up U220–33. Be ready for them.
B: Righto.
C: A, get over here with the keys. We can’t access U234 without three of them.
A: Seriously?
C: And we need to open the safe to see if any passwords were written down in it, so bring his wallet etc. too.
A: What a paranoid old bastard. Oh well, on my way.
[click, static reduces]
C: B, with our current tools, the only way to remove U234 from the premises is to drag it through a magnetic field. The doctor left us a trap, it seems.
B: You’ll have to restore power and copy all the data, then.
C: Odd…it seems it still has power. I just noticed an indicator light. It must have a battery backup.
B: Great. What else coul…? The U30xs— you should probably check them.
[A brief , hushed argument is heard, likely originating from C’s end.]
C: They’re already loaded in the van. Crap…
[At this point there is a loud crack; C’s audio cuts out abruptly]
B: C? C?
[After approximately 60 seconds, the amount of ambient noise returns to previous levels.]
C: We’ve got a breach.
B: A breach— was it the guards after all?
C: (calmly) No, it was on the other side of the complex. And big. It broke up the supports, so the whole ceiling’ll collapse if we don’t get some backup in the next 30 minutes…
B: Komyōji, you sick bastard…
[There is a pause. The siren of an emergency vehicle is briefly audible outside.]
B: C? You’re still there?
C: Affirmative. Still awaiting A.
B: C, you know what’s about to happen if you stay there, don’t you?
C: Yes. But I know how Komyōji thinks. The explosion was a ruse to drive us outside. There must be something else here he doesn’t want us to find.
B: Like what?
C: His daughter.
---
E: E
hailing. We’re trying to shut off the–
D: D
hailing!
E: What are you…You’re literally right next to me! Why are you transmitting?
D: Shut up! What was that noise?
E: A cat or something. Cut it out, we’re all busy. So far, A hasn’t showed.
D: No, I heard–
E: You heard us getting electrocuted by a live wire because you distracted me. Jesus.
[a machine-like hum is barely audible in the background during the ensuing silence.]
D: I can hear something. Come on, what if it’s a 30x?
E: What? Do you want to cut the power to the whole block or something? There’s probably just a maid or something running off another backup. Not much we can do till the collectors come.
D: Why the hell would he have auxiliary power for a vacuum mouse but not the guard dogs? Think, dummy! It’s gotta be something at least as important as the mainframe!
E: Well, I can’t do anything about it! You go check.
D: Oh, right, and when it turns out to be a superweapon, I get killed. Nice.
E: I am extracting. If you want to go, it’ll have to be alone.
D: Geez! I hope I come back alive! D, departing!
[click, static reduces]
~
This text by garrick is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
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