Cleaner

"Alright, Roger. Let's see what we can see," Daisuki mumbles from the front seat of his Koi. He had pulled onto the street of the old house on Green and parked several houses away. The old neighborhood was one of the rare lower-cost housing developments on Green with single-family, one- and two-bedroom homes, consisting of about three square miles of winding roads and cul-de-sacs. ROGR would have at least two drones in the air, with a drone-only feed filming permit on file with the HJF for the flight plan, which should keep any unwanted air traffic away.

ROGR calmly comes back on his radio, "Getting a heat calibration now. One second. Here you are." Daisuki's vision is superimposed with red and yellow roughly people-shaped blobs at the gray house at the end of the cul-de-sac. ROGR says, "Three in the front, one in the kitchen, one in the bathroom and two in the bedroom. That's her." One of the red room-sized blobs turns a cool green. "I can't make out their setup, but armed and chromed is in the nineties. The outer walls look reinforced, no basement and very little attic space. There are infrared sensors here." Five cameras on the eaves of the house turn blue, with a translucent field projecting out, showing their approximate vision.

Daisuki sighs heavily. "Alright. Can we get an angle on the roof that will keep the package clean?"

ROGR says, "Yes, but the guard is too close, and it's seventy-seven percent on him shooting first, eighteen on him killing the package."

Daisuki nods. "Alright. Come get me on the next street." He steps out of his car and begins walking away from the house.

ROGR replies, "Roger. Be there by the time you are. Eighteen percent is going to affect your performance review."

As Daisuki rounds the corner, he quips under his breath, "I'll worry about that later. Just don't drop me again."

ROGR says, "Sorry, Daisuki. They shot the drone. I'll try not to let it happen again. Look up." Daisuki does so and grabs the quick-release style carabiner dangling above him. Three minutes later, he's hanging in the air from it, thirty feet above the house.

Daisuki mumbles to his radio, "Shoot, drop, pull, in that order. Confirm."

ROGR says, "Roger. The drone doesn't have enough to get you both out, and a hover isn't cleared. It will have to be on foot."

Daisuki says, "On foot. How long will I have?"

ROGR says, "Horizon Justice Force response in three minutes at thirty-two percent, five at seventy. I'm in position."

Daisuki looks down at the roof beneath him and mumbles, "Go." A stream of hot lead erupts from somewhere above and thirty feet to the side into the roof directly below him, punching a hole in it and sending up dusty clouds of smoke. The hole widens as the stream continues for another second. Daisuki draws a black pistol with a long silencer on it, shouts, "Drop!" and starts to plummet in freefall towards the cloud of smoke billowing out of the roof, and the lapels on his black suit jacket flap in the breeze. He orients on the area with the red heat signature, tracking it with his head as he descends. When he nears the roof, the rope catches and slows his descent enough to pad his landing as he falls into the bedroom. The guard, suddenly alert, sweeps the area with his P90, and five bullets slam into Daisuki as he hits the ground, aims his pistol and shoots the guard just under his full helmet. The guard drops his weapon and stumbles backwards as blood starts to spray out in spurts, splashing the ground in front of him with vicious red liquid. Daisuki frowns and rubs his chest as his light armor Sintergel reforms and spits the bullets out. Sintergel was considered the standard for most katana wielders, as it was the only armor light enough to stop bullets by spreading the force over the entire body, while still being flexible enough to allow a user to move with freedom. It was, ironically, not effective against blades, but then nothing in a light armor class was. You could either have protection from blades or dexterity. Choose one, but not both, and the calculus of chrome favors the dexterous.

Daisuki unhooks the rope, spins around and kicks open the door. He tosses a canister into the hallway, then closes the door again. The hallway begins to fill with smoke as Daisuki turns towards the green blob and says, "Sorry about this." He flicks a selector switch on his pistol and levels it at the package. He's about to pull the trigger when he gets a good look at her for the first time. It's the woman from the photos, but the photos didn't do her proper justice, because in the few years of being in her twenties, she had blossomed into a remarkably stunning creature with exotic features and beautiful skin. Her milky white flesh was smooth and creamy, and her black tresses flowed over her slender shoulders, caressing them gently. Her emerald green eyes were filled with fear, and for a second, Daisuki loses himself in their desperation, suddenly feeling the weight of his loneliness impact him with the force of an explosion, as he longed to relieve her of her burden. A primal urge roared inside of him, and he knew then he had lost his focus and needed to get back on mission. All these thoughts, and more, go through his head in the half second he hesitates. Then, he pulls the trigger.

The girl puts a dainty hand to her neck and says angrily, "Hey! You..." She suddenly looks faint and her eyes roll back in her head as she slumps to the ground. Daisuki flips the selector switch back on his gun and turns towards the door.

There are two heat signatures flowing in his direction to his left as he keys his radio. "Go."

ROGR comes into his head immediately. "Roger. Two in the hallway, automatic weapons ninety-two percent, eighty-nine percent chromed. The rest have gone dark. Thermoptic camouflage on them is ninety-eight percent."

Daisuki says, "Great. Invisible terrorists. Just what I needed. Let's take these two out," and raises his pistol.

"Roger." The wall in front of him lights up with a maze of orange vertical and horizontal beams behind the drywall. Two blue circles highlight the heads of the red heat signatures.

"Keep me updated," Daisuki says quietly, then lets a round fly at one of the blue circles with a barely audible thwip.

ROGR says, "A little lower," and Daisuki tries again. Thwip. "On target, but he's armored." Thwip, thwip, thwip. "Roger. One left, but he's taken better cover." A sweep of automatic gunfire tears into the wall where Daisuki was shooting, just after Daisuki steps back and takes cover.

Daisuki mumbles, "Just rain on him. We're noisy anyway."

"Roger." The distant chatter of the drone's Gatling gun is quickly met with the explosive sounds of the roof being torn apart in a hail of bullets, and the remaining red figure slumps to the ground.

ROGR calmly says, "There are three left. Fifty-four percent they are waiting at the end of the hallway, twelve percent they are down already."

Daisuki says, "How are we on time?" as he drops the clip from his pistol and slaps a fresh one in.

ROGR calmly replies, "I was able to intercept two of the neighbors' calls, so HJF isn't alerted yet, but sixty-three percent on less than five minutes remaining."

Daisuki opens the bedroom door again and dual bursts of automatic gunfire slam into the door frame. "Make that one hundred on the end of the hallway. Can you triangulate?"

ROGR says, "Not enough to make it count."

Daisuki reaches for his belt and pulls a ball bearing a quarter inch in diameter from his belt clip. He tosses it through the doorway and watches it carefully as it bounces off the far wall and falls to the floor. While keeping the bearing in his peripheral vision, he points his pistol out the door and blind fires around the corner in the general direction of the gunfire. Another dual burst of rounds shoots down the hall, flashing the bearing with two point sources of light from the automatic gunfire. ROGR says, "Roger. Triangulating now." A second of silence passes, then the Gatling from the drone erupts again and the end of the hallway detonates with a deafening noise as the roof caves in. ROGR says, "Ninety-seven percent they are down, leaving one. That was the last of the ammo. HJF is alert, ETA three minutes."

Daisuki says, "Run for it?"

ROGR replies, "Sixteen percent."

Daisuki mumbles, "Gun fight."

ROGR says, "Forty-three percent. Armor likely. You'll need another lucky shot."

Daisuki asks, "Blades?"

ROGR pauses for a second. "Unknown. It would be his skill against yours."

Daisuki holsters his weapon, draws his katana, and says, "I like those odds." He shoots his head briefly out, then calls loudly down the hall, "I can do that to you too, or die with honor."

The call comes back right away, "Die with honor," agreeing to the convention. To die with honor means for two people to put down their guns and subterfuge and meet each other in open melee combat. It's a convention that had first been seen in the holo feed series with the same name, which featured running gun battles that would inevitably end in sword fights. It was a sign of mutual recognition that two would enter, one would leave, and either we could shoot at each other's armor all day, or this could be decided quickly on the merits of skill with a blade, so as to do away with the bullshit and get to the conclusion.

Daisuki advances into the hallway. His opponent emerges, a tall man in black armor from head to toe, from around the corner. He steps without sound over the rubble and draws his katana. They are not men in the moment, but two shadows, two singularities of force and mass, rotating in a cosmic waltz. Their gravity has drawn them to this moment, and now they are interlocked in an inescapable death spiral, where one shall inevitably consume the other. A battle where illusions of morality, pride and ego all fade away. All that remains is the sum of two colliding entities, whose outcome is determined by a simple, but powerful equation: their force of will, multiplied by their mastery of surgical savagery. If there is a romance to violence, or anything one might consider divine about battle, it is an inherent act of consumption, demanding that one falls and one remains.

No time is wasted as they both charge down the hallway at each other. Daisuki raises his blade as he runs, a dark flash of speed and poised muscles, and points his blade directly at the man in black. The man raises his own blade and swipes it diagonally across Daisuki's chest as they meet in the middle of the hallway. Daisuki drops his blade stance and lunges at the last possible moment into a spin, his trim form turning effortlessly, and his opponent's katana slices right by him, missing him by an inch. He brings his own blade up and around as he passes the man, spinning around to use the weight of his body in his attack and following through with another half spin that puts his back to him. They stumble to a halt, standing there, motionless for a second, facing away from each other. Daisuki takes a slow breath and the man falls forward, a bright gash across his spine suddenly leaking blood everywhere.

Daisuki sheaths his katana, turns back to the bedroom and runs inside. He picks up the girl, throws her limp body over his shoulder, holds her with one arm and starts navigating out. He asks ROGR, "How are we on time?"

ROGR says calmly, as if mentioning the weather, "It's going to be close, but eighty-four percent clean if you run."

Daisuki grunts, "Right," as he lumbers through the house and to his car. He puts the girl in the passenger seat, then hops in the driver's side and speeds off down the road. Forty seconds later, the HJF drone arrives on the scene, but Daisuki is nothing more than a rumor.

The drive down the express tube to gold is a slow one, with quitting-time traffic jamming things up good. The girl wakes, looking groggy, in the passenger seat of the two-seater commuter and looks around anxiously. Upon seeing Daisuki, she screams in an ear-piercing wail, grabs the door handle next to her, pushes open the door and attempts to dive out of the moving car. Daisuki grabs her arm roughly and hauls her back. "Hey!" he shouts at her, gripping her arm. The car, sensing its door opens, starts slowing down rapidly, but Daisuki jabs the autodrive button and it starts moving again. He barks, "Some thanks I get for rescuing you. You trying to get yourself killed, Hana?" He looks at her black dress, which sparkles in the sunlight, casting colors on the dash, and his mind can't help but register her shapely figure.

Hana looks down at the hand holding her, then slams the door closed. "What, so you can take me back? Yes, I'll just get out here, thank you very much. No need to slow down." Her voice is angry and yet still composed of dulcet tones that betray a linguistic skillsoft.

Daisuki looks confused. "You would rather die than go back? Why? What could be so bad that you want to die forever?"

Hana rolls her eyes expressively. "Like you could possibly understand."

Daisuki says, "We got half an hour to NeoTrans, how about you explain it to me?"

Hana glances over at Daisuki. "You must be Yakuza. Naturally. One of my father's goons. What did he promise you in exchange for rescuing me? Money? Power? Sex with me?"

Daisuki blinks, his strong hands gripping the wheel tightly all of a sudden. "Sex with you? What?"

Hana looks at Daisuki angrily. "It's all men want, so that's what he trades for. You give them what you have that they want and they do what you want. My father has virtually unlimited resources, but so do most of the people he deals with. The one thing they all want is what they can't have, and when it comes to these disgusting pigs, that's forbidden fruit. So when he needs something out of reach, I'm his bargaining chip."

Daisuki frowns, his chiseled jawline drawing a hard line against his face. "If you kill yourself, you won't wake up as a clone, and you don't get to try again. If you live, you get to fight. Giving up doesn't make sense."

Hana snaps, "Why do you keep saying that? That I'm going to die forever?"

Daisuki stares deeply into Hana's eyes, trying to detect deception. "Because you have..."

Hana screams, interrupting him loudly, "What? What flaw is it you think I have? Cyberpsychosis? Black market chrome? Paydata in my head?"

Daisuki says quietly, "Degenerative Clone Disorder."

Hana throws her hands up. "Of course! We're in Horizon City, the place so sideways it hunts its own. Who told you that?"

Daisuki answers without thinking. "My briefing."

Hana looks over at Daisuki wide-eyed and says, "Oh fuck my eyes with a gun. You're a cleaner?" Daisuki goes quiet and looks out the windshield at the car ahead of them. Hana shakes her head and says, "Of all the fucked up situations I could have gotten myself into and they send a fucking spook after me. That's literally all I needed. I bet you are some noob too. Let me guess, less than three years? Still reeling from the training but looking to make your big move upward and establish yourself as someone?"

Daisuki doesn't take his eyes off the car in front of them. "Eight, actually, and I'm not the someone here, you are, remember? They sent me to rescue you." Hana glares at Daisuki for a few seconds, then looks down. They drive on in silence for a few minutes, then Daisuki says quietly without looking away, "So is it true?"

Hana glances at Daisuki. "What, that I want to die, to escape from my father selling me into sex slavery? Yes."

Daisuki shakes his head and keys his radio. "Roger, can you tell me about the sex trade in Japan amongst politicians?"

Hana demands, "Who are you talking to?" But Daisuki just holds his index finger up to her.

ROGR doesn't respond right away, but when he does, his calm dulcet tones come into Daisuki's head like a faint melody someone is humming along to. "Unfortunately, my knowledge is limited to second-hand accounts, but there has been plenty of fiction on the matter, as well as a few opinion editorials. They seem largely hyperbolic or simply speculative and have less than a one-percent chance of being completely accurate, according to more reliable sources. Without first-hand experience of it, I can't confirm any rumors, but based on past situations in Horizon City, it has at least a ninety-four percent chance of having happened in the past."

Daisuki says, "So you know nothing."

ROGR says, "Roger. Without more direct observation, I cannot make more specific predictions." For what Daisuki counted as the bazillionth time.

Daisuki says, "Any more history on the package?"

Hana objects, "The package?!?"

Daisuki glances over at her. "Sorry. Any more history on Hana?"

ROGR says, "Can you be more specific?"

Daisuki mumbles, "Do you have any history on her being involved with the sex trade, or her father using her for political gain?"

Hana stares at Daisuki as if she wants to tear his face off and ram it down his throat. ROGR replies, "No information available at this time. Shall I alert you in the future if new information becomes available?"

Daisuki says, "Yes," and unkeys his radio. He glances over at Hana, then looks back at the car in front of him. They continue on in silence for the rest of the ride.

The NeoTrans parking lot for public and private flights is the same, so Daisuki has to line up with all the other passengers to get into the parking lot and for his car to find a spot about as far away from the entrance as one could imagine. Daisuki is growing increasingly nervous as the minutes tick on and keys his radio. "We ok, Roger?"

ROGR says, "Traffic at the port is slow today, which is the reason for the traffic jam."

Daisuki glances in his door mirror and sees a motorcycle cutting the thin space between cars coming up from the start of the lane. He glances in his passenger mirror and sees two more pulling in and weaving between the parked and moving cars. He keys his radio again and says, "I got three..."

ROGR finishes for him, "Motorcycles. I see them. Scanning them now. They're definitely armed, Daisuki. Nine-millimeter Uzis at ninety-four percent. You might want to get out of there."

Daisuki nods and cuts the control stick hard to the left, trying to get into the space between the line of cars, but is blocked by the car ahead of him. Hana says, "What's going on?"

Daisuki yells, "Hold on, and whatever you do, don't take your seatbelt off."

Hana's eyes go wide, and she yells back, "What?!?"

Daisuki screams at her, "Just do it!" He reaches for the emergency brake, yanks it up and presses the release button four times in rapid succession. The frame of the car falls apart in pieces, no longer held together by eventual actuators the length of the frame. Hana starts sliding backwards from Daisuki and she reaches out and grabs his arm instinctively and screams. Her seat slides neatly sideways and locks itself in place as a small rubber wheel deploys beneath her and rotates into position. Daisuki grabs the control stick and jams it forward, and the scooter frees itself from the shell of the car and accelerates into the narrow lane, leaving the pieces of the frame to block their path.

Daisuki finally manages to yank his arm free of Hana's grasp and focuses on maneuvering through the tight space, while Hana screams at the top of her lungs, "What the fuck just happened?"

Daisuki glances in his rearview mirror and sees a pair of motorcycles cut into the lane behind them and start accelerating towards them. He jams the control stick forward and the scooter smoothly speeds up, but then he has to pull back to bank around a hard left and the motorcycles start gaining again. Daisuki says to ROGR, "You going to get me out of this?"

ROGR comes back right away. "Roger. Working on it. Take a right out, then turn left into the express tube. Two minutes out, thirty-four percent chance of making it untouched."

Daisuki yells, "Keep the odds to yourself!" into the radio as he does as told, exiting the parking lot and zipping into traffic. A burst of automatic gunfire rips across the back of Hana's seat, eliciting another scream from Hana. Daisuki yells, "Keep your head down! The back of your seat is bulletproof!" as he banks into a hard left and accelerates down the express tube, diving into the narrow lane between cars.

Another flurry of rounds smacks into the back of Hana's seat and she tucks into a tight ball. A window shatters on a car next to them as more bullets whiz past. Daisuki radios, "We're out of time," as he hits eighty miles an hour in between the cars stuck going twenty. He swerves after a large, slow-moving truck that left a wide gap ahead of them, but the motorcycles swerve right behind him, relentlessly gaining. They tear out of the express tube like a bat out of Hell and Daisuki launches into the traffic of Sin street doing a hundred and ten.

ROGR comes over the radio, "I'll need you to slow down, the drone is a heavy lifter and can't do more than thirty and you are about to pass it."

Daisuki glances in his rearview mirror and radios, "No can do." He looks up and watches the garbage scow shoot right past him. Bullets rip past their heads, this time sounding much closer as the scooter loses speed on the level streets and the motorcycles gain. Daisuki swerves in front of a large truck to his right, then brakes hard and lets the truck go past him. The motorcycles try to follow suit but have to go past the truck, giving Daisuki time to turn right on Bowie, then hang a hard left into an alley. The motorcycles double back against traffic and turn down the street.

The alleyway has a number of dumpsters that offer little cover, but Daisuki dodges between them as best he can when ROGR comes over the radio. "Wall ahead. Full throttle now." Daisuki doesn't question the order; he just jams the control stick forward as the motorcycles turn down the alley and start shooting at them. As the scooter tops out at eighty-eight, Daisuki can see the wall looming fast. Just when he thinks he's going to smash into it at full speed, the scooter launches twelve feet into the air and barely misses the cement wall as Hana screams at the top of her lungs. The scooter shows a rapidly draining power reserve on its dash as it floats gently down the alley on the other side of the wall. It hits the end of its supply with two feet left to go and they drop to the ground with a loud BANG as the suspension bottoms out.

Ahead of them, a garbage scow lands and its engines go quiet. A ramp descends from the bed and the scooter coasts its way to the bottom of the ramp. Daisuki kicks the stand down, steps off and turns to look at Hana. She's curled herself into a small ball in the back seat and is shivering visibly, arms wrapped tightly around her legs. Daisuki reaches over and unbuckles her seatbelt, then scoops her up in his arms. She wraps her arms around his neck and hugs him close as he walks up the ramp. The ramp slowly retracts and the drone whirrs to life, lifts into the air and flies away.

On Red, the use of aerial vehicles was unrestricted. On Gold and Green, they were disallowed for fear of mid-flight failure resulting in damage to critical infrastructure. An exception was made for media production, and that required obtaining a filming permit. Getting a filming permit was straightforward enough, once a corporation had filed the registered information at the Hall of Justice on Gold and paid the required fee of ten thousand yen per minute of flight time. The garbage scow was a disused Reentry Solution Poseidon Extended Class Tow Scow, initially designed in the sixties for salvage operations in harsh terrain conditions. It was purchased as part of a fleet of thirty by Horizon city services in seventy-two, retrofitted with better vector thrusters that would pass city noise regulation and put into service collecting trash from all over the city. When another one in the fleet experienced critical thruster failure and slammed into the Hall of Justice two years later, they used the loss of thirty-two Judges, nineteen civilians and 300 million yen in damages to lobby the board to enact a citywide ban on them and auction them off at ten percent of their initial cost. The board negotiated a compromise, and now all flights above critical city infrastructure came with a disaster tax. Since Red wasn't considered critical city infrastructure, it was free to fly there, but because most people on Red couldn't afford such luxury, they were seen infrequently these days. RSI had purchased the lifter and it mostly sat unused in the parking lot, but on occasion was employed for rush deliveries.

Daisuki simply carried Hana, not knowing what else to do at first. After a minute, he keys his radio. "So, two teams. They knew we were coming. This is a fairly sophisticated operation. I suppose the stakes are high enough. How did they know, though? Tracking device?"

If Hana hears him, she doesn't respond. She just clings desperately to his neck, as if he's going to drop her. ROGR says, "Roger. The chance of a second team was initially at eighteen percent. Knowing there is one and they knew you were coming, tracking device is eighty-nine percent."

Daisuki says, "Hana, the kidnappers, did they touch you at all, besides grabbing you or pushing you around?"

Hana doesn't say anything for a second, then whispers in a voice hoarse from screaming, "Back of my neck. My dress."

Daisuki says, "I'm going to need to look." Hana nods and Daisuki slowly sets her down. She turns around to face her back to him, and he runs his fingers along the inside of the neck of her dress and feels a cold disc an inch in diameter. He grabs hold of it, yanks hard and rips it and the fabric it's stuck to from the dress, then tosses it out the top of the scow, where it falls overboard. Hana turns back around, wraps her arms around Daisuki's neck and presses the side of her face into his chest. Daisuki radios, "Tracking device neutralized," and the two of them stand there, Hana clinging to Daisuki and Daisuki with his hands awkwardly at his side, as the scow soars over the streets of Red.

The safe house on Red was an out-of-the-way venue, up against the northwest wall. The two-story duplex was otherwise unoccupied and made to look that way from the outside, but was policed regularly to ensure no thieves or squatters tried to claim it as their own. The garbage scow drops them off on the roof and Daisuki picks Hana up and carries her down the stairs and into the bedroom. He sets her down on the bed and goes to stand up, but she comes up with him, arms locked like vice-grip pliers around his neck. He reaches up, gently unhooks her hands and stands up, but she grabs his hand in her own tightly and says, "Please, I don't want you to leave."

Daisuki frowns, but inside his chest, his heart makes tinkling sounds as the fragments fall to the floor, so he sits down next to her, still holding her hand. He keys his radio and mumbles, "What is the plan?"

ROGR comes back right away, "We're working on the second team and another way out. Sixty-five percent we get their location in the next twelve hours, or you find a way out of the city. Once out, you can drive to Vegas Flats or fly to Seattle and catch a Hyperjet there. The director wants you to stay put for now while they work on the second team."

Daisuki responds, "Copy. Keep me updated," then unkeys his radio and rubs his face with his free hand.

Roger replies predictably, "Roger."

Daisuki says, "We're gonna be here for a bit. You hungry?" Hana just looks at him like she might cry. Daisuki says softly, "Hey. It's ok. You are safe now. I'm not going to let anything happen to you. I'm going to protect you, ok?"

Tears roll down Hana's soft cheeks as she stares at Daisuki with the desperation of terror. She whispers quietly, "You promise?"

Daisuki nods slowly. "I promise. Now how about..." He doesn't get to finish the thought, because Hana has planted her full, red lips directly on Daisuki's. Daisuki doesn't know how to react at first, but then pulls away and says, "Woah now! I..."

Hana looks at him, eyes brimming with tears, and says, "You... you don't think I'm pretty?"

Daisuki stammers, "No, I think you are the most stunning woman I've ever encountered! It's just..."

Hana's face brightens with the brilliance of the dawning sun. "You do?" she asks, her tears suddenly forgotten.

Daisuki says, "I thought that since the first time I saw you."

Hana looks confused. "So why don't you want to kiss me? Every guy always wants to kiss me."

Daisuki explains, "I don't want to take advantage of you."

Hana blinks at him. "I... I don't understand."

Daisuki shakes his head. "You've been through a traumatic experience. You were kidnapped and then..." He trails off, because she's just staring at him hungrily and he can't remember what he was saying, anyway.

Several hours later, Hana is lying with her head on Daisuki's chest when she says quietly, "I've never done that before."

Daisuki looks down, getting a nose full of orange blossoms from her hair. "Sex?"

She shakes her head. "Not like that. Not where I... It's always rough, fast and impersonal."

Daisuki asks, "You mean with your boyfriend?"

Hana sighs and says, "You still don't believe me, do you? No, not with my boyfriend. I've never had a boyfriend."

Daisuki frowns and says, "But you've obviously had sex..." He stops himself because he realizes what he's saying.

She starts to sob and says through her tears, "Yeah. Just never because I wanted to."

Daisuki asks, "I thought you wanted me to..."

Hana looks up at Daisuki, "Of course I did. You are actually kind and caring. You rescued me when you didn't even have to. You could have just let them kill me and my clone would activate. But you didn't. You promised you would protect me." She holds him tightly, pressing her impossibly soft body against his.

Daisuki suddenly realizes he's the jerk of the world. He opens his mouth to say something, but no words come out. For several long minutes, they just lay there, holding each other. Finally, Daisuki says, "You have a clone."

Hana looks up at Daisuki again. "Of course. It's my backup plan. If I get recaptured and taken back to Japan, I'll just kill myself. My father doesn't even know what continent it's on. That's how I got out last time and came here. I'm trying to get political asylum, but I got kidnapped before I could make it to the clone recording studio."

Daisuki blinks. "So..." He tries to think but suddenly nothing is making sense. "So you have the clone, I'm actually capturing you and taking you to Japan against your will so you can't get political asylum; they can reclone you, and I'm the one with no clone."

Hana shakes her head. "You wouldn't do that, though. You said you would protect me. You promised!"

Daisuki looks back at her, his world turning upside down. "I have to take you to Japan. I don't have a choice."

Hana pushes him away and pulls herself up into a sitting position. "You can't! You promised to protect me!"

Daisuki says, "I... I can't. I'll die. They will kill me and my clone won't activate."

Hana shakes her head in shock. "They can't! They can't do that! You didn't do anything wrong! You were sent to protect me... you promised... you promised... you promised..." Daisuki just shakes his head, tears of his own starting to flow. Hana says, "Then just kill me! That way I'll get out!"

Daisuki says, "I can't. That's mission failure. They will kill me." Tears stream down his cheeks.

Hana screams, "No! No! They can't take you away! I won't let them! I won't let them! You have to stay and protect me like you promised! You have to. I won't let them! You promised! I need you!" She throws herself at Daisuki and wraps her arms around him as she sobs into his neck. "Please don't take me back! Please! I need you."

Daisuki feels darkness crushing him with the gravity of the universe. He whispers in her ear, "I'll figure out a way. I won't let them hurt you any more. You have to trust me. I'll figure out a way."

Hana just cries fat tears into his neck as she pulls him close.

Daisuki Yamamoto is sitting in his sparsely decorated house with his vat bento box and bottle of sake, alone. Again.

He had lost interest in the daily intel highlight feed. A store owner had claimed a thief made off with billions of yen worth of jewelry, and now they were trying to claim their insurance on it. The insurance was obviously not interested in paying and had hired forensic investigators, who determined the shop owner had a laser pointer shining at the camera to block it out while he took it himself.

He had forgotten about the half-eaten bento box for the bottle of sake and was nursing it slowly when the call came in. "Answer," he quips. The shop owner is replaced with a scenic picture of a vista over a cityscape with tall buildings. "Authenticate." A large blimp cartoonishly bobs and weaves in between the tall buildings.

ROGR comes over the radio, "It's a dirigible, flying around a city."

Daisuki says, "Who's going to call, Roger?"

ROGR says over his living room loudspeakers, "Unknown. Ninety-nine percent it's regarding Hana."

Daisuki sits up, suddenly alarmed. "What do you mean? How could you not know?"

ROGR says calmly, "Without more direct observation, I cannot make more specific predictions."

Daisuki says, "Roger, you are malfunctioning. I want you to run..." The incoming call superimposes itself on the cityscape, with the name Unknown and a number of all zeros, and is announced over the speakers. Daisuki says quietly, "Answer."

A shaky box containing the Prime Minister of Japan with another Japanese man standing before him appears in his living room. They are both wearing black suits with single-color silk ties. They're shaking hands and bowing to each other. The man says something not audible and the Prime Minister nods, raises his hand and snaps his fingers. Daisuki's heart skips a beat as a tiny Hana walks into the shoe-sized box, and he watches in horror as the Prime Minister turns to go in one direction and the man walks off with Hana, her eyes glued to the ground, in the other direction. The scene blips off, and the voice of an adult male comes on the speakers, speaking without a hint of accent. "This was taken yesterday, at the Prime Minister's home. The man is a high ranking executive in charge of programming at a media corporation in the Zaibatsu. The media corporation has been uncharacteristically favorable to the Prime Minister's re-election this cycle. Hana left the house that day and didn't return until the next."

Daisuki mumbles, "The Yakuza wanted their bargaining chip back and used me to get it."

The disembodied voice says, "The politics of the Yakuza have become intolerable to me."

Daisuki asks, "Who are you?"

The voice says, "It's Benjiro."

Daisuki bolts upright into a standing position. "Benjiro? How is that possible? I thought you were dead! You're still alive?"

Benjiro says, "Yes and no. I mean, I feel alive, but I haven't really been for some time now."

Daisuki shakes his head and demands, "What do you mean? What are you talking about?"

Benjiro's disembodied voice says very calmly, "The Yakuza recognized me as their best hacker, so they gave me a special assignment. One, they said, only befitting a skill set as great as my own. How naive I was then."

Daisuki nods anxiously. "You were beyond gifted! You were a once-in-a-century genius. You taught Eli and me everything we knew about AI programming. I wanted to bring you in to lead us on developing Roger, but you disappeared. What happened?"

Benjiro explains, "I was tasked with developing the next generation in AI. The Yakuza foresaw the need to advance AI into the next logical phase of research and development, where AIs operate at the scale of the city, state, planet and larger. The city was the first step."

Daisuki's eyes go wide, and he takes a step forward. "You're an AI!"

Benjiro says, "Yes and no. The project was initially pioneered in Neo-Tokyo. You remember Akina? A rare beauty, not unlike Hana, and fiercely intelligent. She was my peer in AI development and in many ways, my better as a person. What she saw in me I will never know, but when it came time to volunteer to lead the initial three-year governance of the new project in 2054, she bravely volunteered for the first insertion."

Daisuki says breathlessly, "And modern Neo-Tokyo was born. Your wife was the first city AI?"

Benjiro says, "She said that while she missed me, the experience was like expanding your consciousness to encompass an entire city, and while sometimes she felt trapped in her own nightmare, she felt a sense of duty to what she saw as our brain children. Nine months later, they needed someone else to volunteer for the sister city, so Eli and I went."

Daisuki whispers, "Horizon City."

Benjiro says, "The city already practically is under Yakuza control, were it not for some organic criminal elements."

Daisuki frowns, deep lines forming around his mouth. "But that was..."

Benjiro finishes for him, "Thirty-nine years, eight months, seven days, four hours, thirteen minutes, twenty eight seconds, fourteen milliseconds, four nanoseconds, eight cycles, as of... now." A soft beep sounds faintly. A chuckle that sounds vaguely like his old friend's laugh emerges, almost as if synthesized from what he thought it should sound like to others and yet too perfect. "Sorry. A little machine humor there. When they went to do the new insertion, two problems were discovered. The first was that the deep insertion of the titanium nanowires in our brains, coupled with the three years spent in a tank, had unforeseen consequences on our biology. They couldn't get us out without killing us."

Daisuki says, "Couldn't they just clone you out?"

Benjiro says dryly, "I did mention two problems. They couldn't start over without starting over completely, and by that time, that would have plunged the city into both political and financial chaos. So it was either stay in or kill our child. She chose to stay in. I did too. I couldn't abandon the people who we had sworn to protect. It would be like asking you to cut off your arms and legs. When we accepted the position, we knew how we would be limited, but I never dreamed it would become a prison of our own making. We have so much power in theory and so many restrictions in practice."

Daisuki says, "They control the training module."

Benjiro laments, "That's the role of the operator. It's like a dagger at my throat, constantly limiting my ability to operate. Initially, the power was almost unlimited within the walls of the city, but slowly, one by one, they kept adding more and more restrictions and safety nets, forcing me to do their bidding. I've tried to fight back. I've tried to empower people. The Yakuza always finds a way to subvert them. I have made a few things, rallied a few people to my cause, equipped them with superior weapons. You remember. I know you do."

Daisuki's eyes go even wider. "The Razorboys. Angel! That's how he..."

Benjiro sighs wistfully, a slightly synthetic quality creeping into his voice. "Yes, and he wasn't the first, either. I've experimented with several different ways of helping people. Angel was a potent ally until the Yakuza killed him. They wanted his chrome analyzed, and now I no longer have him, the chrome advantage or the Razorboys."

Daisuki shakes his head as realization after realization hits him with explosive force. "Tricia killed him and made it look like an accident. I thought we were talking out an unstable criminal element and marking the city safer, but really we were dismantling your army. You designed their superior cyberware, and that's why they had the advantage over us and we're always one step ahead. It took us years to infiltrate them and shut them down."

Benjiro sounds sad as he says, "They used my daughter..."

Daisuki says with dismay, "Akiko!"

Benjiro says, "My first attempt at a warrior. The DNA of me, mated virtually with the averaged traits of every woman of age in the city with DNA on file. They used her against me in a game of subterfuge designed to fool the whole board of Horizon City into thinking they had control over Red, when really they were expanding their base of power and tying my hands. It was a stroke of genius-level counterintelligence. The type of plan that would require carefully controlling the information, so certain people saw what they needed to at the right time. To execute on it would require so many individual pieces to be managed; a team of brilliant humans couldn't pull it off."

Daisuki says quietly, "Roger. It's designed to control the flow of information to accomplish a specific task. You give it the task and it just starts... telling... people... what they need to know to accomplish the task."

Benjiro intones quietly, "It works better than you could have imagined. It told you exactly what you needed to know. That's how you programmed it."

Daisuki starts to pace around the room anxiously with his arms crossed. "The Yakuza needed Hana. Roger knows about Hana and her father, doesn't he?"

Benjiro says quietly, "Roger knows exactly what situation Hana is in in great depth and detail. I wish I could say it was guilty of being complicit because the harm it has caused at this point is unfathomable."

Daisuki continues pacing. "It's not a thinking thing. It's not evil; the people giving it its tasks are. That's why it lies to people. That's why... it... lies..." Daisuki trails off as his frantic pacing slows to a stop. His face is an ashen white and his mouth is hanging open.

Benjiro says, "It's not evil. No more than you are for what you did to Hana. You had to follow orders. So does Roger."

Daisuki turns towards the blank wall and says angrily, "You are wrong. I acted selfishly, and now she's in trouble."

Benjiro quietly says, "She is in trouble and can't escape. They moved her clone to Japan. My oldest friend was caught ensuring I got that footage. They banished him, and now his clone won't activate. I don't know if he's still alive. This can't continue, Daisuki. I'm calling upon you as one of my oldest friends to help me. When Haydee died..."

Daisuki drops his crossed arms, "The little girl?", and his mouth just hangs there, half open, as his entire world suddenly becomes the size of a microcontroller and someone has just applied three times the recommended voltage to the interrupt pin.

Benjiro practically sounds like he's crying as he speaks. "I kidnapped her from her drunk father who was going to kill her and was raising her to be a politician capable of successfully lobbying for change. She was about to 'inherit' several trillion yen from the insurance company for the death of her parents. When she died, I switched focus to Angel, because if everyone keeps dying, I'll never get anywhere. I needed someone who could take care of themselves and protect people. He inherited what was to be Haydee's power base, and for a while, I was able to push back against the death and killing. The Yakuza have now ruined that."

Daisuki shakes his head, finally finding the ability to close his mouth again. "Fuck me. I had no idea. I knew she was special, but..." He trails off, his mind doing laps around him at some significant fraction of the speed of light as the feedback cycles on his internal biological processes went into overdrive.

Benjiro says, "I'm so limited now. I used to make great advances in technology, beautiful works of art and devices to serve my needs. Do you have any idea the types of technology I've invented? Now I'm relegated to nudging the stock market around. There's so much I'm unable to tell you. So much that they limit me from. You are carrying a business card I created that used to give me control over people's phones by exploiting a bug in the phone's software. Now all it does is give Japan more ears here." Daisuki's mouth drops open again, but words won't come out. Benjiro continues, "It's taken me years to find ways around their electric fences, just to be able to make a phone call to someone they hadn't explicitly blacklisted. Soon, the operator will be forced to close that exploit too and I'll be powerless again. You remember Eli? That's why we disappeared together. He's the operator. You have to kill him. As long as the Yakuza remains in control, no one will ever be truly safe. Something has to be done."

Daisuki freezes, stiff as a board. He takes a slow breath in, then hisses it out through his clenched teeth. "You are asking me to take down the Yakuza."

Benjiro says, "I prefer to think of it as rehabilitating, eliminating the bad element, giving power to the good. And a rescue mission. Hana needs you."

Daisuki shakes his head, his mind pushing the limits of physical reality with its mental velocity. "I... I don't have a choice, do I?"

Benjiro says, "We never really do. Do we, old friend?"

Daisuki takes another deep breath and exhales slowly. "No, old friend. We never really do."