|
|
Part One: Blitz
By Saaye Kage no Ansatsusha
Ken stared unseeingly through the glass at the fleeing scenery. He had changed out of his assassin attire, as had the others. His weapon he had discarded, in a plastic bag that would be disposed of once they reached home; for, like the steel claws, the bag would be stained with blood. Blood of the target he had killed, sinking those claws into the man's flesh and slashing through. He was a killer, a cold-blooded killer. Youji had been right. No one who had drawn blood could be worthy of love. He was not worthy of genuine love, anymore than the criminals he killed.
The decision had been made for him, all along.
Farewell, Yuriko.
The car stopped. They exited it. It was still dark; a few hours before dawn tainted the black screen any lighter. He rushed up before the rest, into his apartment, and closed the door behind him. Leaning against the door, he felt tears welling up, misting everything in his room. His heart had been torn apart, for the second time this week. First, the truth about his childhood best friend, Kase. Then, separation from the girl he had fallen in love with at first sight. Tears flowed down freely.
Tomorrow, he would pull himself together to face the world again, to grin and pretend that nothing was wrong, that he had gotten over everything. Eventually, he would be.
For tonight, he would grieve. Wrapping himself in covers woven from weeping that were spun from a well of loneliness and guilt, a hell of self-condemnation and agony.
Ken's knees folded up underneath him, he sank to the ground slowly, and cried.
"This is your new mission, Weiß," Persia spoke from the hazy screen of the TV. "Infiltrate the headquarters of the Eastern Hesperos Company, and obtain the list of treacheries officers to the country. White Hunters of the night, hunt the tomorrow of the dark beasts!"
"All going?" Manx asked.
One by one they nodded. Omi immediately began looking up the information about the Eastern Hesperos Company.
Their final plan was very simple: break into the company's headquarters and take the list. Omi's computer genius was not much use here, since it was obvious after a thorough search in the network that the list was not in any computer linked to it. They did find out the room the list was kept in, and Omi hacked the password in five minutes.
Ken stood guard outside, on the roof. Aya watched the other two's backs from outside the room. Omi typed in the password, and he and Youji entered the room.
"Where's the safe, you think?" Youji asked. Omi could vaguely make out Balinese shoving the dark sunglasses up his nose. "I can't see that well."
"Over there," Omi replied. "To your left."
Youji had scarcely taken one step in the direction Omi indicated before a touch brushed against his sleeve, the feel of somebody rushing past him. Who could that be? He sent his ire out without thinking about it, in the general direction of the door, the only exit. "Block him, Bombay!"
Either the mysterious stranger had miraculous reflexes, or Youji was drunk, but he somehow dodged the clutches of the virtually invisible wire.
Omi came next, letting loose his darts, which sliced through the air with deadly speed. The stranger dived down to the ground, rolled two feet away, got to his feet again, and was out of the door before Omi could ready his next wave of darts.
Outside, Aya's katana hissed as he drew it from its sheath.
The stranger-a masked person in a tight black attire with silver piping at the hems-veered to one side, narrowing missing the kiss of the menacing blade. Omi and Youji rushed out in time to see the stranger fleeing down the corridor, with their leader in pursuit. Youji restrained Omi when the latter reached for his darts. "Are you sure you won't harm Aya?"
Omi took a look at the two rapidly diminishing figures in the maze of corridors, and returned his darts to their place of concealment. They did not try chasing. It would be next to impossible for them to catch up. Besides, there was only one exit from this maze of corridors in a warehouse with no windows and a triple-locked door. It was up to Ken and Aya now. Aya knew he had lost his prey when he turned the next corner, and saw nothing, not even a split second of a flicking shadow. The stranger was simply too fast. What was she doing in the crypt of the Eastern Hesperos Company, anyway? After information, like Weiß themselves? Perhaps. A professional in every sense of the word, though. That speed!
When the stranger emerged onto the roof, Ken was ready. He had heard the gist of what was going on from Omi. He flicked the mechanism on his glove. The claws came out, their sharp steel razor edges glinting an ominous silver in the moonlight. Even the stranger halted when he first saw him silhouetted against the setting moon. One moment of surprise-and hesitation.
That moment was all Ken waited for. He wasn't about to hesitate. He slashed down with his bugnuk. The stranger dodged, but not before the scarf he wore over his head was caught by the claws. There was a split second of tension, then the fabric split into two with a tearing sound that seemed ten times as loud in the silent night.
A full head of straight black hair fell softly from the scarf, reaching past the stranger's mid-back.
Ken stopped, and stared. A woman?
Again, one moment of hesitation was more than enough. The stranger was gone, before Ken came back to himself.
"Siberian?" Youji's voice sounded from his speaker. "Let me guess, you didn't have any better luck than the three of us."
"She got away," Ken admitted.
"She?" Omi's voice exclaimed from his end of the speaker.
"That was a woman," Aya confirmed. He had chased her through four corridors before she managed to evade him. He had good time to study her profile. Men simply couldn't run that delicately and lightly while maintaining any speed.
"Good figure," Youji added.
The four assassins went back to the crypt. This time, there was no more stranger escaping while Youji worked the lock of the safe with his wire. The insides of the safe did not appear to have been disturbed; but then, who would really know?
"Here's the list," Youji whispered. He took it out with gloved hands. Omi took a series of shots rapidly. Then he replaced the document in the safe.
"Aha! What's this?"
Ken leaned over Youji's shoulders to take a closer look. He pulled his goggles on to improve his night vision. The safe had three compartments. The list Weiß had been after was in the top part. The bottom part held mostly checks and information of various rival companies. The middle compartment was empty. Stark empty. Nothing at all.
"The other two compartments completely filled, the middle one empty?" Omi asked. "So that's what she was after, before we came."
"And then, seeing that I was also after the contents of the safe, decided to make her getaway immediately," Youji finished.
"A fellow resident of the underworld," Aya said. "And a worthy opponent."
"You look harried," a cool voice commented, as warm hands helped her unzip the back of her skintight leotard from behind.
She nodded wearily. "I was sighted."
She half-expected her partner to exclaim in surprise, but then, she ought to have known better. Her longtime friend and partner had never been one for unnecessary questions. "By who?"
"A group, four young men. I think they are also part of the underworld, so there's no point hacking into files looking for their information." She picked up her comb and began brushing through her long black hair. Running with it loose definitely got it all tangled up.
"Where's your scarf?"
"One of them pulled it off. With his bugnuk."
Blue-gray eyes looked up, instantly alert. "There aren't that many groups of professional assassins in the underworld here, and bugnuk is one rare weapon. We might find out who they are, after all." A slight pause. "That might be important. When did they see you?"
"After I got the records," she replied, taking the documents out and placing them on the table. "I had just locked the safe when they came. I was going to wait them out, but they were after the safe as well. I wasn't about to find out if they were after the same records too. It wasn't easy getting away from them."
"They sound like professionals," her partner nodded, twirling a strand of her midnight black hair. "And that means you had a close call."
"A few times," she admitted. The wires almost caught her, and she barely missed the darts in time. The red-haired man with the katana would have sliced her up into two if she had not heard the hiss of steel. And the brown-haired youth wielding the bugnuk-even now, she could see the glint of the cold sharp blades. "They are good. Very good."
"And it was one against four," her partner observed.
She sighed. "I wouldn't be here if it were one versus four; I'd be dead. Two of them were stationed along the way out. And I didn't stay for confrontations with individuals."
"Smart choice." A silence, then her partner sighed. "Akiko, I don't like the idea of you going out alone so often. It's too dangerous."
She set her jaws stubbornly. "I ought to, Akira. You handle many missions alone, after all. Fair is fair. I should make up for the ones I stay out of, shouldn't I?"
"Alright, alright," her partner smiled, the rare, genuine smile that seldom lit up her face. "Don't rub it in. I'm not patronizing you. Just take care of yourself."
"Because you'd not always be there to pick me up and put me together again," she finished for her. "And you'll probably jumble everything up, anyway." Blue-gray eyes gazed at her own hazel brown ones with amusement, not bothering to deny the fact that Akiko was the one who found out all the information every time they worked a mission. "Why don't you employ some of that technology prowess, and see what you can turn up about these interesting professionals?"
She grinned, and switched on her computer, their single item of luxury. They could afford plain clothes, simple meals, and austere furnishings, but have a slow modem, and the difference in data could mean life and death. A few minutes were all it took for her to reach the archives she sought. It was not the first time she had been there.
She began searching for brown-haired males of approximately seventeen to twenty-five years of age.
Who was she?
That was the question uppermost on Ken's mind as they returned to their apartment, and it remained so for the next three days. He couldn't forget the graceful swiftness with which the mysterious young woman moved, anymore than he could forget the silky black hair cascading down her shoulders like a waterfall. And then she was gone, like a flash of lightning against the black velvet curtains of the night sky.
"Thinking about her still, Ken?" Youji asked, very close to his ear. Ken nearly dropped the bag of soil he had been carrying to the back of the shop. "How did you know?" he asked before he could stop himself.
"I can tell if anyone is thinking about a woman from two miles away," Youji grinned. "And who else can it be? You've been looking this way since we came back from Eastern Hesperos."
Ken contemplated lying, then realized that Youji could see through all his lies, especially where females were concerned. "Am I that obvious?"
"More than you can imagine," Balinese chuckled. "And oh by the way, why don't you put that soil bag down? It's twenty kilos, if I know how to read." Ken dumped the bag among the others were it belonged. "What should I do?"
"What can you do might be a more appropriate question," Youji pointed out. "Meeting her at all was pure chance, and when has chance ever been a friend to assassins?"
Ken glared at him.
"Gentlemen, are you busy?" Manx inquired from the door. As usual, she was groomed down to every minute detail, from the shade of her eye shadow to the matching glossy level of her hair, her lips, and her fingernails. "Where's Bombay?"
"School," Aya replied, looking up from where he had been filling in accounts. "We'll fill him in after he returns."
The four of them went down to the basement. Manx inserted the videotape into the player, and switched off the lights for better clarity.
"Good morning, Weiß," Persia began speaking. "Kuroka Michio, the former secretary to the current Board of Governors for Defense, is selling our military secrets for lining of his own pocket. White hunters of the night, hunt the tomorrow of the dark beasts!"
"Where does the target live?" Aya asked as the lights came on again. Manx passed the address to him. "It's a country estate. Around twenty kilometers from the city. In the mountains. Very secluded, and the security is quite tight."
Youji and Ken browsed through the personal information together. Kuroka Michio; age, fifty-three; sex, male; height, one-sixty; weight, ninety-one kilograms; hair, dull brown; eyes, black; blood type, O. "Not exactly slim, is he?" Youji remarked, looking over Ken's shoulders. Siberian gave the lanky young man a look half of exasperation and half of amusement.
"Any specific time requirements?" Aya was asking Manx.
"Tonight."
The drive to the target's residence took quite some time. Ken spent it thinking about the mysterious young woman. The scenery fleeing by struck him as strangely familiar, somehow. It took him a few moments before he realized that this was the bend where he had first met Yuriko. How many days had it been since they parted? Six days, or was it seven? Scarcely one week, and it didn't even hurt anymore. Not that he hadn't genuinely loved Yuriko, but he had managed to put it behind him. Much faster than he thought he would. The actual healing probably began the night he saw the mysterious female assassin. A distraction from his heartache, at first. His subconscious held on to the interest with desperation, shifting his heart away from Yuriko without him even realizing it. This time, Omi stood guard outside, and Aya just inside the estate grounds. Ken and Youji went in. Balinese pulled himself up to the roof with his wires, then pulled Ken up as well. "You take left side, I take right."
"Got it."
Just then, a shrill siren sounded off within the household.
Ken and Youji stared at each other. "Did you-" "Did you-"
"Hey guys, what happened?" Omi asked.
"Who did it?" Aya's voice came next, voicing the question on all their minds.
Ken exchanged another look with Youji. Both nodded. It might not necessarily be a bad thing for the entire place to be in an uproar. General confusion was another type of camouflage. Ken switched on his speaker. "Abyssinian, Bombay, we are going in."
"Be careful."
They discarded caution in favor of efficiency. The main direction the security guards took ought to be the location of their target, probably bedroom. Still, who or what had set off the siren?
He sprinted down an emptying corridor, then another, looking for people to follow.
"Intruder!" a security guard shouted.
Ken turned around, mentally cursing himself for being so careless. But-the guns weren't aimed at him. Following the direction of one of the five guns, he saw a dark figure being backed into a corner. Black attire. Silver piping.
It's her!
The mysterious fellow resident of the underworld. Surrounded and cornered. Five triggers clicked slightly as five owners began squeezing them.
She was regretting coming here, alone. Akira had offered to come along, but she had turned her down, not wanting to appear dependent or privileged. Theirs was a fair partnership, after all, and Akira had had to handle many missions single-handedly lately. Now here she was, cornered in a dead end, with five guns ready to fire before she even moved. It would indeed be a miracle if she got out of this alive. Miracles seldom happen where they were needed.
Crash.
Two security guards fell face down flat on the ground, their guns flying from rapidly numbing fingers. The other three guards stared for a moment, as a dark-haired young man brought his claws down on another unprotected head. She felt her knees shake. She had always hated the sight of blood. Killing during missions was out of question for her; even going along on those missions was pure hell. Which was why Akira had ended up handling all the killing jobs alone, and why she was alone here now. So much blood- The bugnuk-wielding young man leapt in front of her as the bullets from the remaining security guards reached them. "Get out of here!" he yelled. Still her legs wouldn't budge. Somehow her eyes must have conveyed it, because he put one arm around her waist, and took off, with guns still firing behind them.
The young man entered a small empty room and closed the door behind them before putting her down. "Are you all right?" he asked.
"I should ask that," she could support herself, now that there was no more blood around to affect her. "The shots-"
"I have a bullet-proof jacket on," the young man grinned. The speaker device eh carried on his belt woke up then. "Siberian, this is Balinese speaking. I've finished off the target. Meet at the car." He picked up something that looked like a miniature microphone. "Got it, Balinese."
"Your name is Siberian?" she asked, still trying to adjust to the idea that a guy, somebody whom she had met only once before, under distracting conditions, had risked his own life to save hers. How would Akira have dealt with it? A lot cooler and more assured of herself, probably. But then, her partner would never get stuck in such a situation, anyway.
"No," the young man took off his gloves and offered her his hand. "Hidaka Ken."
She pulled off her own gloves, and clasped his larger, more callused hand with her own delicate fingers. "Shirokami Akiko," she smiled, even though he wouldn't have seen it behind the mask.