Resistance (3 page)

Norio Hisatomi has a celebrity auction to attend.

* * *

At four a.m., a tuxedo-clad Norio lounges poolside at Tokyo’s most glamorous new hotel, the Ginza Mikado, trying not to let his extreme tiredness and irritation bubble to the surface.

An ambitious society matron spots him from across the pool, and tries the time-tested technique of wading into the fluorescent-lit warm water, approaching Norio in a straight line, with the single-minded precision of a hungry shark. In a few seconds, her piercing giggles and admirably toned figure have captured the attention of everyone at the gathering, with the single exception of her quarry. Norio looks away deliberately, desperately wishing she were just another kaiju. And in doing so, he spots something far above him, silhouetted against the neon-hued night sky, something that actually makes his jaw drop. He sits up sharply. He blinks, shakes his head, and looks again.

It’s real. It’s still there.

With his left arm, he gently dislodges a Brazilian supermodel’s death-grip on his right, rises, and excuses himself. Ignoring numerous parting witticisms, he strides out of the pool area, through the lobby, away from lurking paparazzi, and into an elevator.

A few minutes and several bribes later, Norio is on the Ginza Mikado’s roof. He runs, swiftly passing vents, chimneys, and a couple of intertwined off-duty cleaners. He finds the corner where he had seen it, standing on the roof.

Where he had seen
him
.

It doesn’t look like a statue. It looks like… him. Black cape, fluttering in the gentle breeze. That unmistakeable twin-pointed silhouette, perfectly framed in the cityscape around them, so many skyscrapers, so many people, so many stories.

Norio clears his throat nervously, reminds himself he’s a billionaire, an action hero, and nobody’s fanboy. He struggles to say the word, feels ridiculous, but there’s nothing else to say.

“Batman?” asks Norio.

No response.

Norio asks again, louder, and is met with silence once more. Rage wells up within him, and embarrassment, and more rage. Of course it’s not him. It couldn’t be him. He isn’t real. It’s so easy to forget that, in a world where nothing seems real.

“Do you have any idea how much trouble you could get into, standing around in that costume?” he asks. “Not just with the bloody super-copyright lawyers, but with every passing supervillain who decides you’d make the perfect trophy?”

“It’s just a mannequin,” says a voice behind him. Norio spins around just as the dart sticks into his neck. The night blurs, and Norio falls, heavily, staring through the all-enveloping haze at his assailant. She’s short, curvy, mid-forties. Very pretty.

“Hello, Norio,” she says. “Sorry to do it this way, but I need to talk to you, and it’s so difficult to catch you alone. I’m—”

“Tia,” slurs Norio, and passes out.

Before waking up wholly, Norio makes the mistake of leaping up, ready for a fight – and hits his head. He is lying, he finds, on the lower portion of a bunk bed in a small cabin full of wooden furniture and ornate maroon drapes. He climbs out of bed, rubbing his head. There’s a lump on the top of his skull threatening to grow to epic proportions, and a dull pain on his neck, where Tia’s dart hit him. He doesn’t know whether the throbbing sound that fills his head is inside it, or all around him. The cabin is windowless, and in a few moments Norio realises that the slightly queasiness he feels isn’t because of unknown drugs in his body, but because the whole room is moving. He cannot tell from the shape of the cabin whether he is in a private train or jet. Or maybe a caravan? He notices that his clothes have been changed: he is now wearing a terribly loud Hawaiian shirt and a kilt. He wonders if this is a violation of his human rights. The shirt alone…

The door opens, and Norio tenses, ready to attack.

“Oh good, you’re up,” says Tia brightly.

Norio waves a pained hand at his clothes. “Was this really necessary?”

“Oh, you should have seen some of the other outfits we tried. We just didn’t have too many options in your size, sorry.”

“What’s wrong with the clothes I was wearing?”

“Nothing.” Tia smirks.

“Well?”

“Please don’t run berserk or anything – I hate sweeping up after myself.”

Norio has seen news footage of Tias in action, taking on a militant base in Zimbabwe: a platoon of beautiful rifle-toting women in combat fatigues storming a base under heavy fire. He has seen, in shaky handheld footage, clusters of Tias turned to dust by RPG fire, replicating and reforming from survivors without falling out of step. He knows what she is capable of, and spares himself the effort of trying to overpower her. He sits down on his bunk instead.

“Where are you taking me?” he asks.

“I’ve kidnapped you, darling. I’m new at this, but I do know I’m not supposed to tell you where I’m going to hold you.” Tia giggles. “That said, I don’t plan on holding you anywhere, but there are other Tias nearby who are much more liberal than I am. And you’re wearing a kilt, too.”

Norio suppresses a smile. “I’m hungry,” he says.

“You poor thing.” Another Tia emerges from the first, and walks out of the cabin.

Norio blinks in astonishment. Watching Tia replicate on a screen was easy, like watching any other piece of technical wizardry, but in real life there is something disturbing about the ease with which she steps out of her own body without a break in conversation. He wants her to do it again, to see her new body flow out of the old. He can’t take his eyes off her.

She sits next to him on the bunk, uncomfortably close, and looks keenly at him.

“First of all, apologies. Tried to get through to you in less, you know, dramatic ways, but your secretary… Bodyguard? Butler?”

“Associate.”

“Very cute, by the way.”

“And an excellent detective.” Norio yawns and stretches. “She will be with us soon. I’ve been kidnapped before. It only ever ends one way.”

“She has no idea where you are, love,” chuckles Tia.

“Wait and see,” says Norio.

“You don’t have any tracers on you either. I checked while you were asleep.” Tia grins lecherously. “I checked very thoroughly.”

Norio shrugs.

Tia rises. “I’m not a kidnapper, Norio,” she says. “I just have a few questions for you.”

“First, I have a request,” says Norio. “If we are flying at this moment, I want you to promise me we’re not going through any known charged zones. I have a lot invested in not turning superhuman.”

Tia looks surprised, then amused. “This is a submarine,” she says.

Another Tia enters and sets a tray of food on a table near Norio.

“Indian,” she says.

Norio grimaces.

“I feel like I should give you a feedback form,” says Tia-on-the-bed. “How has the experience of this kidnapping been so far, compared with your other kidnappings?”

Tia-by-the-table grins, and walks over to the bunk bed.

“Above average? Good? Excellent?”

The Tias merge. It’s the strangest thing Norio has ever seen, all sea monsters included, but he looks on as if two gorgeous women blending together is something he sees every day. He crosses over to the table and starts wolfing down the food. Rice, lentils and fish curry, very simply prepared. He would die before admitting it, but it’s very tasty.

“To business, then,” says Tia.

“Are you planning to kill me?”

“No.”

“What do you want to know?”

Tia wrinkles her nose in distaste at the question she is about to ask, but goes for it.

“Are you a supervillain, Norio Hisatomi?”

Norio laughs out loud. “No,” he says. “Anything else?”

Tia gets up, and paces about the cabin.

“Now I think you’re a good guy, Norio,” she says. “And I’m a big fan of team ARMOR.”

“I have nothing to do with team ARMOR,” says Norio on autopilot.

Tia smirks. “You’ve certainly done a lot of good work, both as Goryo and as Norio.”

“See previous answer.”

“Sure. Anyway, this isn’t about ARMOR. This is about your other life, the celebrity billionaire playboy Norio bit. Even there, as far as I can see, you look good. Saved people from supervillain attacks, lots of charity work, lots of funding to superhuman research. No involvement with Utopic’s dirty bits. But I get the feeling that there’s a lot that’s missing.”

“This is our first meeting,” says Norio. “You really can’t accuse me of hiding things from you.”

Tia laughs. “Fair enough,” she says. “And here we are, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean on a nuclear class submarine. The perfect place for a boy and girl to get to know each other.”

“Why do you have a submarine?”

“It’s an American Navy sub. They lost it to zombies during the Trinidad infestation, 2016. I found it. Cleaned it. And then, well, I forgot to return it.”

“Never been in one before.”

“Finish your meal, and then we’ll go for a walk. You’ll find me in the control room. Ask for the captain.”

* * *

The submarine is full of Tias. Norio meets several on his way to the control room, which turns out to be quite far from his cabin – engineer Tias in stained overalls, soldier Tias watching over missile chambers, and surplus-to-requirements Tias running around the submarine in various stages of undress for no apparent reason. The control room, when he finds it, isn’t what Norio expected either – not that he knows anything about submarines, or that the rest of the sub had led him to expect something out of a World War II film, but he’d expected at least one periscope in the middle of the room. Instead, the brain of the submarine is cool and spacious, full of computer screens, a haphazard grid of monitors of different sizes, each showing a complex pattern of falling green symbols. Norio is reminded of those old
Matrix
films his brothers had been so fond of – he’d enjoyed them too, despite the clunky special effects.

“I like to wear sunglasses and a trench coat when I sit here sometimes,” says Captain Tia, swinging around in her chair in front of the monitors. “I pretend it’s just me, saving the world from evil machines. It could happen.”

“You look remarkably young for your age,” says Norio.

Tia laughs, and presses a button. All around her screens flicker and change, and Norio finds himself facing hundreds of pictures and news videos of himself. Tia rolls a sleek black chair towards him, and he sits, turning, taking in the room. Tia faces the screens again, and operates a complicated system of dials and touchpads laid out in front of her. Norio has seen displays far more complicated than this, of course, but those were never about him.

“Let’s see now. Norio Hisatomi, age twenty-five, born 1995, third son of Ryuga, head and sole architect of the resurgence of the Hisatomi Zaibatsu, and only child of Ryuga’s mistress Megumi, pop singer and occasional actress,” says Captain Tia, as dozens of screens throw up family photos Norio hasn’t seen in years. “Born in Tokyo, raised in London and Los Angeles, officially adopted by Ryuga after his mother’s death in a car accident in 2003. Poor baby.”

“I know what my story is,” says Norio.

“I’m not telling
you
, love,” says Captain Tia. “I’m telling her.” Norio sees, in the shadows to the far right of the monitor, a Tia in glasses and a severe black dress. She nods sharply in his direction, and gestures to Captain Tia to continue.

“Who are you?” asks Norio.

“Tia Prime,” she says.

“What is that, the oldest Tia?”

“Yes.”

“Aren’t you all the same person?”

“Yes.”

“So how can you be older than the others?”

“Every split is a new birth.”

“How do you all keep track of who and where you are?”

“Private social network. Pretend you’ve been kidnapped and feel less free to ask personal questions. Captain?”

“Yes. Ryuga keeps Norio in the UK because his other two sons are scared of him.”

“They were not scared of me,” says Norio.

“Scared because the father was fond, and the mother was hot. Norio does exceptionally well in school but gets a bit of a rep for a violent temper. Very good at drama and photography. Visits Tokyo about once a year.”

“Twice,” says Norio. He seems perfectly relaxed, except for his left foot, which is tapping on the metal floor with increasing frequency.

“In 2009, when the First Wave of superheroes goes public, Norio is thrilled. He writes his father a long letter about embracing the future, loving change, humans and superhumans working together.”

“Like a letter? On paper?” asks Tia Prime. “Who does that?”

“Him. Pay attention. His father doesn’t reply, but he has the letter scanned and saved, and sends a copy to his friends in America. Business moguls who will later form part of the board of what’s now known as Utopic Industries. So it’s possible that Utopic Industries’ earliest aims and goals were built around a lot of very hopeful, sentimental, things our teenaged Norio wrote in his letter.”

Norio whistles. “Are you serious?” he exclaims, swinging his legs up on a table. “I had no idea.”

“It can’t have been a good letter, given what Utopic became. Anyway. In 2012, the Kaiju King—”

“Who?” asks Tia Prime.

“That lobster we saw? His daddy. Tries to destroy Tokyo at least once a year. Doesn’t seem to want anything else, or any kind of limelight. Arrives as part of the Second Wave in 2012. His first attempt at monster building, a chunky dragon, takes out the Statue of Liberty replica in Odaiba. The Unit destroys the monster, but in the process the Hisatomi skyscraper is damaged. Ryuga Hisatomi and his two older sons are killed. Norio, seventeen years old at the time, finds he has become the head of a small but powerful zaibatsu. He disappears.”

“Drugs,” says Norio, smiling. “These idle rich, you know. Irresponsible.”

“Norio spends the next six years in the darkest, most dangerous corners of the world,” Tia continues. “He is involved with crime syndicates, supervillains, secret martial arts trainers and weapons experts. Norio is an early example of the urban phenomenon known as ‘Brucing’.”

“I don’t know Brucing,” says Tia Prime.

“You’ve been away. Brucing is where well-off human teenagers decide, after personal setbacks like missing trust funds or, you know, dead parents, to go off to dangerous parts of the world and get the training they need to become martial arts champions and detectives. To stay in the game even if the world is full of superhumans. It’s the new ‘going to India to find yourself’, but with a lot less marijuana.”