Demon City Shinjuku: The Complete Edition (13 page)

“But isn't she meant for the altar?” asked Kaki.

The Sorcerer shook his head. “No. I have a more important role for her. Eliminating that boy would be difficult even combining the strengths of all three of us.”

“With all due respect—”

“Listen. Half of the power suffusing that wooden sword belongs to his father. Steal the sword, and he is still an untested youngster. Your powers alone would be sufficient to overcome him. We shall proceed as follows—”

As the two demons held onto Sayaka, with his dying breaths the Sorcerer laid out the details of his plan. When he was done, Suika took Sayaka away.

The Sorcerer lay back down on the bed. Kaki slowly pushed the bed toward the back of the room. The creaking of the wheels echoed hollowly through the dark world, mingling with his final words, muttered in the unconstrained bitterness and malice of his death throes.

“You watch, son of Izayoi, I will soon return.”

With that, his voice and his labored breaths died away. The Sorcerer expired. This should have been victory. In that moment, in America, the marks of the curse should have vanished from President Rama's neck. The machinations of the Demon Realm should have come to a standstill.

And yet, Kaki betrayed not the slightest sign of consternation. In the gloom ahead appeared the black altar, engraved with strange and mysterious shapes. Racks full of electronic equipment were clustered around it.

Kaki parked the bed next to the altar, produced a metal card seemingly out of thin air, and inserted it into the nearby medical computer. The panel lit up and the machines sprang to life. From the surrounding speakers flowed the rhythmic patterns of synthesized speech. The incantations of the Demon Realm, sounding more like rites for the dead than conjuring up demonic spells.

A faint light oozed from the Sorcerer's body, rising upward out of the corpse as if exorcized by the incantations. The soul of the Sorcerer, in human form. Is this what he meant by “return”? But there was no calling this soul back into the vessel.

The human-shaped soul looked at Kaki and grinned. Though it had no eyes, mouth or nose, the expression was unmistakable. It leapt onto the altar and lay down.

At the same time, the incantations ceased. Kaki retreated. Responding to instructions from the computer, several of the electronic devices positioned themselves around the altar. One was equipped with ultrasonic scalpels and suturing lasers, the others consisted of parts cabinets and industrial construction robots repurposed for micro-scale assembly work.

Every inch of them—from the scalpels to the assembly arms, from the frames down to the screws—were etched with spells. A surgical procedure combining the powers of magic and electrical engineering would surely commence next. But to what end? And what was the meaning of the confident smile that rose simultaneously to the faces of both the body and the soul?

“Breakfast,” the maître d' and owner of the hotel announced gruffly. Without knocking, he opened the door and stepped into the room. He was holding a plastic tray in his hands and had a cheap folded map under his arm.

“Breakfast” meant reconstituted black market MREs that would make a dog think twice. “What's with this slop?” Kyoya grumbled, setting the tray on the lumpy, hard mattress. “One night for a hundred credits and this is how you treat your guests?”

He'd crashed at the place the night before, after duking it out with the Sorcerer. It'd been the only hotel open. He'd only woken up a few minutes before. That he didn't feel any of the wear and tear was only thanks to his youth.

“Don't like it, don't eat it, all the same to me. I'm sure somebody else here would like seconds. It still goes on the bill.” He went to pick it up again.

“Got it. Damned Scrooge.” Kyoya snatched the tray back from him. He should have packed his own. This was Shinjuku, after all.

“Yeah, so shut up and eat. Some kid comes flying in here at the crack of dawn, takes the best room I got, and sleeps practically till noon—you can keep the bitching and moaning to yourself. It's past eleven, you know. You should be grateful I even took your money in the first place.”

“Got it, okay? Anyway, what the hell is that?” Munching on some stale synthetic protein wafers, Kyoya nodded his chin at the window.

Six feet outside the window, the thing floated in the air. It had an oval shape and was about five yards wide, and was the color of the sunset. It had depth as well as width, and the red tint grew more intense deeper in. The surrounding edges trembled all over. The combination really did bring to mind the image of a ravenous mouth.

“No idea.” The owner shook his bald head. “It's been there since the Devil Quake. According to the professors, it's twisting space caused by the energy of the Devil Quake. A pan-dimensional void, whatever that is. It'll swallow up whatever you throw at it. Everybody calls it the coin purse. Leave it alone and it don't do nothing. Nothing to worry about.”

“Well, it's weirding me out,” said Kyoya, glaring at the dusky red lips. “Glad it didn't eat me while I was sleeping. Whatever. You bring me what I asked for?”

“Here you go.” The owner tossed the map of Shinjuku onto the bed. “There's a needle and thread on the tray. Comes to two hundred credits.”

“Put it on my tab,” Kyoya said, untangling the needle and the strong polymer thread. “I'll pay when I check out.”

That morning when he woke up, he'd discovered that the cuffs of his trainer jacket were shredded. The Sorcerer must have done the damage the night before with his Devil Sword. Luckily, he'd missed his arms.

“Fine with me,” the owner nodded courteously. Then he smiled more cunningly. “That map is from before the Devil Quake. A lot's the same, but buildings have collapsed and streets are blocked. There are bound to be plenty of errors in the fine details. And there's no way to grasp the
feel
of the streets just from the map alone. I got no other guests for now and nothing on my plate, so how about a guided tour? Thirty credits an hour.”

“Greedy bastard,” Kyoya steamed as he got to his feet. “Trying to turn a profit every chance you get. Weren't you just threatening to give away my breakfast?” But he bridled his temper. He didn't have any time to spare ferreting out the Sorcerer's hideout, not to mention wandering around asking strangers for directions. Stirring the pot in the wrong part of town could prove deadly.

Time may be money, but money wouldn't buy back the lost time.

The owner read the look on his face and said with a mean little laugh, “Heh. I appreciate it. So where do you want to go?”

He dragged a rickety old stool from a corner of the room and sat down across from Kyoya. The room was a good fifteen by twenty feet, but contained almost no furniture.

“First of all, where is this hotel located?”

The owner pointed at a spot on the big map.

“What? Waseda University College of Engineering? So this used to be a school, eh? I thought it was a little odd, big rooms with nothing in 'em. And you got two entrances and exits, no shower or sink. A classroom, then.” Kyoya shrugged. “Next, where exactly is the most dangerous part of town?”

He didn't come right out and ask about where the monsters and zombies liked to hang out. On the other hand, beating around the bush was a pain.

“That'd be Kabuki-cho.” The owner added with a funny grin, “Naw, that'd probably be here.”

He planted his finger on one block in the heart of Shinjuku, labeled “New City Center.” Kyoya was familiar with it. Several hundred yards from the west entrance to Shinjuku station was, first and foremost, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Complex, followed by the Keio Plaza Hotel, the Mitsui Building, the Sumitomo Building, a forest of skyscrapers all over forty stories and three hundred feet high.

And behind them, the expansive two hundred acres of Shinjuku's Chuo Park.

The buildings had survived the Devil Quake, which had the contradictory effect of accentuating all the fears associated with the “big one.”

“Why here? The monsters come out at night?” Kyoya asked in as leading a manner as he could muster.

The owner shook his head. “Dunno. Only that anybody who goes in here don't come out again. Five years ago, twenty damned-strong esper yakuzas and an android bodyguard armed to the teeth went in there on an expedition. Since then, nobody's set foot anywhere near the place. It's surrounded by a fence to keep interlopers away, but now and then some idiot sightseer ignores it and is never seen or heard from again.”

“Dead, or something else?” Kyoya drew his forefinger across his neck.

“Hard to tell. There are those who say that on foggy nights you can hear the weeping and wailing of dozens, and see bunches of white shadows wandering around in rags. Yeah, and now and then, a loud sound like from one of those big Harleys.”

“A motorcycle? Anything sporting such an old-fashioned engine should have been carted off to the scrap heap a decade ago.”

“Don't make any sense to me, neither. Stories and rumors, you know.”

Kyoya cocked his head to the side. It sounded like the perfect place for the Sorcerer and his ilk to hide, but this bike business had him stumped. Well, he'd figure it out when he saw it for himself.

“What about around Kabuki-cho?”

“Outlaw territory. It's where the scrapped space cyborgs, black market espers, gangbangers and other ne'er-do-wells hang out. With all the ruins and mountains of rubbish, there are plenty of places to hide. When it comes to the shops and money exchanges, it's share and share alike, even among rivals. You can have the blackest heart, but if you got money, you can live easy.”

“And if you don't?”

“Then say your goodbyes and boogie on back to the safety zones.” The owner traced the red borders of Shinjuku Ward with his finger. “From the Ochiai region to West Waseda, Yamabukicho—here is where the law-abiding types congregate. Road kill for the criminal vultures. Those cyborgs and androids have to keep their nuclear batteries charged. Don't matter much if you got possessed by one of those Martian parasites, you still got to put food in your mouth. Though lately those in the safety zones have been arming themselves but good, so it's not the easy pickings it used to be.”

He thought about it for a moment and added, “If you're looking for a big score, take a trip to the outside world. You got types here that could trash a commando police armored vehicle with one hand, that could pass through the vault walls of the Bank of Tokyo using osmosis, could turn themselves into the character in a painting and steal into any art museum—tricks like that are a piece of cake to them. Could start a small war if they all freaked out together. Is it true there are pols out there thinking of arming the opposing sides with tactical nukes, that whole mutually-assured destruction thing?”

Kyoya shrugged in a way that said he didn't know. He had expected as much. A city where folks like them prowled the streets was a good excuse to be somewhere else. But he had to venture forth.

“The Yotsuya neighborhood—Samoncho, Sugacho, Daikyocho—what about them?”

“There's a bioengineering laboratory near the Ministry of Defense in Ichigaya. Word is they had a whole ton of computers there running big experiments using recombinant DNA. The building was flattened during the quake. Nobody knows exactly what happened after that, but in three months, huge two-headed dogs were showing up, along with snakes six-hundred feet long. The data from sequencing storage units must have mixed slap-dash with samples from the gene-splicing machines, giving birth to all kinds of weird monsters. You got pythons that could swallow a compact car. Anybody with half a brain keeps his distance. What I've heard is, the mutant freaks got the ruins of the Ministry of Defense building and Shinjuku Gardens to themselves.”

“Condos for monsters, eh. That's Shinjuku for you.”

Kyoya scratched his head. The options at this juncture were entirely unclear. As strange as New City Center and Kabuki-cho sounded, it seemed like pretty much anywhere else in this city could boast the same. He hardly knew where to begin.

“Might as well head toward Kabuki-cho. What's the best route?”

The owner again planted his finger on the map and grinned. “If you follow this map, you'll end up at the Shin-Okubo market in twenty minutes. You can catch a taxi there. But watch your step. It's not as bad as Kabuki-cho, but shady types congregate there. A couple of street gangs are fighting for control of the market turf. There's no telling when it will break out into all-out war.”

“Lunar Colony earthlight cultured mushrooms. Good for whatever ails you. First come, first served.”

“All-natural beef, straight off the boat from Australia. The real thing. Look, you can see the blood. Put some pep in an old man's step.”

“A thousand cases of macromolecule mineral drinks, FDA approved. Thirty percent off. A bargain!”

The energetic voices of the pitch men spilled across the market occupying the grounds of the old JR Shin-Okubo station plaza. There were dozens of markets in Shinjuku, large and small. The ones in Wakamatsu in the middle of the ward and in the northwest on the high street in Nakaochiai were particularly big and varied in their offerings. But they paled in comparison to here.

The rubble left behind by the buildings brought down by the Devil Quake had been cleared away. Garishly painted prefab shops were packed into a three-hundred yard arc around the original station plaza. Along the narrow streets radiating outwards, “normal” folk mingled and jostled alongside criminals, “fallen” men and women, cyborgs and espers, making for an impressive spectacle.

In a single day, the market cleared up to two thousand tons of merchandise. A good half of the hundred thousand some-odd residents of Shinjuku Ward—Demon City—owed their existence to this market.

“Dardick M7 heater, fresh off a Federation Space Forces surplus sale. Five round magazine. Two thousand credits.”