Chapter Three

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That was Monday. Tuesday was…pretty much more of the same. The only information I had about this impending catastrophe was about a deal that probably didn’t actually matter. And really, I wouldn’t even be able to get much information about that part. New York City had arguably the most international business dealings of any city in the world. I didn’t have relevant connections or experience, and ultimately, I just didn’t care enough about this to actually spend much time researching it. And so Tuesday passed more or less as I would pass any other day.

My life being what it had become, this was admittedly still pretty surreal. In the morning I spent a couple hours listening to Capinera sing and attempting to maintain a steady emotional state. This wasn’t easy, because while her song was absolutely laced with magic, a lot of the effect on mood was just that she was an amazing vocalist who could put a ton of feeling into her voice.

Trying to simultaneously parse out how much of my emotional reaction was natural and how much was the product of her magic, block out the latter, and maintain a level head through the former was…challenging for me. I did fine for a while, but then she switched abruptly from a dirge into a love ballad. Just as abruptly, the efforts I’d been making to keep from breaking into tears at the tragedy became an accelerant on the passionate attraction, and I was tackling her to the floor within a few seconds.

Which was admittedly an outcome we were both fine with, but it did suggest that I needed more practice.

After that, Raincloud and I went for a walk around the forest near home. I was mostly checking to make sure that the vegetation was all healthy, which it was, and how. As with a number of other things, I had discovered that while I’d been doing magic to support plant growth for years without any conscious action, this didn’t mean that volition couldn’t be exercised. I’d spent almost six months now actively cultivating that forest, and it was verdant even by the standards of temperate rainforests, flourishing beyond natural expectation. And the whole forest knew me, not as well as my houseplants, but well enough that I could feel distinct emotions from it.

They were always very basic, very simple things. Feelings stripped down to the bare minimum, lacking any nuance; it was nothing like my bond with Raincloud. But they were there, and if I’d still harbored doubt, it had faded now. Once I started accurately identifying which bushes were being eaten by pests, which trees had lost limbs in a recent storm, it had become impossible to deny that I was perceiving something real.

I didn’t know whether I felt those emotional echoes more keenly here because I knew these trees, or they only had this much mind because of my sustained attention. I didn’t like any answer I seemed likely to get to that question, and I didn’t know who to ask, so for now the whole topic of my relationship to plants had gone on the back burner. But I could use the tool even if I didn’t know how it worked, and at this point the forest was nearly as much of a fortification as my actual defenses. It wasn’t an issue for me, but the underbrush was so dense that for anyone else it was hard to even walk around without losing blood to the thorns.

It did not stop someone from setting up a tripwire, low enough to the ground to be hidden by the grass. I fell for it, which was getting to be less common, and heard a soft clicking sound. The instant I did, I turned the stumble into a dive to the side, and narrowly dodged a scythe blade that hit the ground where I’d been standing.

It was being held by a scarecrow that had popped out of the ground like a jack-in-the-box. I tensed, more than a little worried that it would turn out to be animate and come at me with the scythe.

It didn’t. I walked over and cut its head off anyway, and then jumped back from the ornately carved steel crow that flew out of it when decapitation triggered the secondary trap.

That was a pretty good one. And you should have seen your face when the second trigger went off. Raincloud felt distinctly amused, and not anxious in the slightest. She was as casual about these things at this point as I was, which troubled me, but was probably inevitable. She’d been present for literally hundreds of insane assassination attempts now, just by dint of being near me.

I couldn’t keep her safe, not really. Not without sending her away, and even if either of us were emotionally willing to do that, it just…wasn’t really viable. Raincloud couldn’t communicate easily with anyone else. It would be miserable for her to be isolated, stuck with someone who thought she was just a dog to care for her. She had evaluated it and decided risking death was better than that, and I couldn’t really blame her.

Still. It troubled me.

Yeah, they got creative with that one. Three hundred and fifty now. I shrugged, stretched my neck, and kept walking.

Tuesday evening I took off, spending most of the evening and night reading and drawing. I made a point of taking time off from this regimen; I was aware that if I didn’t, burnout would set in rapidly. You can only spend so much time doing live fire training for literal psychological warfare before it starts wearing on you, to say nothing of getting beaten up by werewolves.

Wednesday morning I was back at it, though. It was morning, too, which I didn’t love, but with the nightmare I’d woken up from I wasn’t getting back to sleep. So I left Raincloud in bed, and spent a few hours working out. I had an actual gym in the basement now, next to the armory. It felt appropriate. I spent a while just channeling lightning through my body, because I was pretty sure that was another thing I could learn to do better, and I’d hacked together a system for doing so. There were a collection of resistors in the gym, a modular frame in which to place them to get different degrees of resistance, and some measuring devices to see how much current I was getting through that resistance.

It had been climbing. Not fast, but climbing. It was hard for me to estimate exactly how much electricity I was generating, but it was enough at this point that if I hit a human with it at full force they were probably going to be injured just from that. It was weirdly satisfying knowing that. For so long, that part of my heritage had mostly been an annoyance, a consistent source of damage to electronics without much actual use. It was oddly nice to actually be able to do something with it.

And then it was afternoon, and it was time to get going.

---

“The crow was a nice touch, gotta say. Much more interesting than wasps.” Saori was grinning. She didn’t take these incidents any more seriously than I did, though in her case it was less conditioned exposure and more just being herself.

“Yeah, I liked that detail. You coming along?” This was directed at Capinera, who was presently in the passenger seat of the neon green abomination Saori called a car.

“Yes. I’ve heard stories about the city, but never been there. It should be interesting.” She smiled at me in the mirror. “Also, you’re my friend and I care what happens to you. If you think this trip will be dangerous, I’d like to be present to help.”

“I know, I know,” I said, sliding into the back seat. I typically did when there were other passengers. I figured that I was going to have my eyes closed anyway, and this drive was long enough I’d probably even have a blindfold for most of it. Might as well let someone else use the seat with a better view. Capinera didn’t care, but she got less motion sick up front, so the difference was negligible. Plus, it meant Raincloud could sprawl across my lap more easily.

Admittedly, she still had to work to fit. Saori had only backed off very slightly on the assortment of random shit she kept in her car now that it was routinely holding more people than just her, me, and Raincloud. I had to move a basket of ceramic dolls to sit down. Raincloud ended up sprawled in part on me, in part on a plastic tub full of mismatched pieces of cheap Halloween costumes, and in part on a large slab of some exotic hardwood I didn’t recognize, which was carved with surreal and obscene images featuring a lot of porcupines.

We made it exactly that far before Saori took off. The abandoned highway that provided street access, such as it was, to my home had absolutely no traffic on it, and she took full advantage of that. I honestly had no idea how she’d managed this degree of aftermarket tweaks; I was terrible at guessing velocity, but I thought she was going well over a hundred miles per hour, and I wasn’t sure how someone had even gotten a basic sedan to be capable of that velocity and acceleration.

“This is going to be a long ride, isn’t it,” Capinera said. She sounded a little nervous, which didn’t surprise me. Saori’s driving was a very…life-affirming experience. Specifically, it made you remember how easy it would be to lose yours. The way she took corners tended to leave people feeling ill even if they didn’t have issues processing visual information, which was oddly satisfying to me. And Capinera specifically was…well, she hadn’t grown up around cars, and it showed.

“Not as long as if you were driving,” Saori pointed out. I could hear the grin in her voice. “And longer than if we let Kyoko drive, because she’d already have crashed somehow.”

“I want to be offended by that,” I said. “But I think I’m going to have to leave driving out of my skills-building. The last wreck was nasty.”

“Please do leave that skill out,” Capinera said. She was smiling too, and even Raincloud was laughing at me in the back of my head. “As noted, you are my friend and I would prefer you not drive into a brick wall. Again.”

“That happened one time,” I objected.

“What about the incident in April?”

“I am not taking the blame for that. It is not my fault that the uber driver turned out to be a construct and tried to strangle me.”

“No, but you could have stabbed it like a normal person rather than drive into a wall and bite its head off.” Saori was laughing now.

“It is also not my fault that the brake lines were cut.”

“Brakes are for cowards.” Saori put on what appeared to be a power metal song about working thankless retail jobs before I could think of a comeback.

It was going to be a long drive. Which I was okay with, but still.

---

“You’re kidding.”

I looked at the paper in my hand. I looked up at the building across the street. “Nope,” I said. “Still the right address.”

“Not sure how you think you’re even getting in the door.” Saori sounded vaguely curious as she looked up at the skyscraper. It probably had a name, but I couldn’t be bothered to remember it, so from my perspective it was just a skyscraper full of offices, which appeared to mostly play host to major investment firms and a handful of tech companies.

It was expensive in there. Very expensive. That was obvious even at a glance, even from across the street. Saori was definitely justified. I didn’t look like I belonged in the same zip code as this meeting.

“Watch and learn,” I said, voice a little smug, walking back around the corner to Saori’s car. “If I get past security, think you two can get from the front door to the elevator without the security guard noticing you?”

“Obviously,” Saori said. Capinera just nodded.

You’re leaving me out here?

Are you okay with that? I scritched Raincloud’s ears. I don’t know if I can get you in, and I’d like to have someone keep an eye on the car anyway. But I can try if you want.

I think I can live with not sitting in on a boring business meeting. I’ll let you know if I see anything. Raincloud made happy sounds, and then trotted away into a nearby alley.

I didn’t try to track her further than that. Raincloud had gotten remarkably good at sneaking around. She’d be fine out here. I was going to be far enough up to push the limits of our telepathic bond, but she’d probably still be able to reach me. That, too, was a capacity that had been expanding. I wasn’t sure why, but I also wasn’t sure why we had this bond at all, since neither I nor the tree spirit whose presence had made Raincloud so much more than a dog thought we were actively doing anything to maintain it.

I turned my attention to my own part in this little game instead. I was leaving a lot of my gear in the car; bringing an eight-gauge sawed-off shotgun into a meeting, for example, would probably not send the best message. But I actually had thought ahead at least this far, and I knew how to play this particular role just fine.

I hadn’t worn a suit in a long time. A really long time, now that I thought about it, probably not since I was twenty or so. I felt awkward in this one as a result, but at the moment that was a feature, not a bug. I checked that the fit was mostly right, checked the pistol in its shoulder holster and the two plastic-composite knives. One of the knives was adequately concealed by the coat, a mistake which I corrected now, nudging the hilt slightly into view. A pair of cheap leather gloves, a simple tie that didn’t quite fit, and a pair of slightly beat-up old boots completed the costume.

Thus readied, I went around the corner and walked directly up to the building. Glass revolving door, with brass fixtures. The floor inside was real hardwood. The decor was sufficiently expensive that it was hard to recognize it as decor. It was, in short, exactly the space I was expecting.

This included a security guard sitting against the wall behind the receptionist’s desk. And as soon as I hit the door, he wanted to stop me. I could tell. The tension in his spine was enough to make it obvious, even if I hadn’t already known he would.

I didn’t hesitate a moment. I smiled at him, in a way that looked pretty tired. It wasn’t a hard smile to produce after hours on the road with Saori; I liked her, but even I had to admit that the kitsune could be…tiring at times.

And after that momentary smile, I just walked in without any hesitation, totally confident. You can get away with a lot, with that kind of walk. If you look enough like you know what you’re doing, people hesitate to disagree. It wasn’t anything like immunity, but between that and the kinship I could feel in the security guard as he looked me over again, he didn’t immediately stop me.

I walked straight up to the receptionist and gave him the exact same smile as the security guard, tired and a little apologetic. “Hi,” I said. “Here for a meeting on the thirty-fourth. Suite, uh, thirty-four ten? Yeah.”

“You sure about that?” he asked me, in a tone that said he absolutely did not believe I was here for a meeting.

“Sadly,” I sighed. “But yes. Neurocycle wants security inside the meeting room for some reason.” This was, I had learned, the name of the local biotech startup, one which struck me as slightly ridiculous. I’d learned the other two as well, and the Japanese one sounded vaguely familiar. I hadn’t really looked into them, though, since they weren’t as immediately relevant.

Neurocycle was hosting the meeting on-site, which was interesting. It gave them a significant social advantage, though I supposed that they were also far smaller than the other two corporations, so maybe this was for parity.

“Out of uniform?” This question came from the security guard, who was close enough to overhear.

“Street clothes,” I confirmed. “Boss said they wanted someone who looked ‛nonthreatening’, hence why I got the short straw.” I gestured vaguely at myself, mostly to draw attention to the fact that I was a woman, scrawny, and looked like I probably wasn’t old enough to drink. It also made the shoulder holster slightly more visible, but as with the suit not quite fitting, in this case that was less bug than feature.

“Sucks to be you,” the security guard agreed with a laugh, and went back to his usual daily routine of being bored out of his skull.

“Some days more than others,” I sighed. “Hell if I know what the point is of having security in the room if they’re not supposed to look like security. But here we are, I guess.”

“Some days are like that,” the receptionist agreed. At this point, all three of us had roughly the same attitude of exasperated understanding. There was a deep sort of camaraderie in that feeling. “You said thirty-fourth?”

“Yeah, thirty-four ten. Neurocycle offices.” I made a point of sounding disinterested, and slightly disdainful about the company. With how ridiculous their name was, it wasn’t hard.

“Alright. Luck.”

I smiled at him some more, and then went over to the elevator. The door stayed open just long enough for two half-visible figures to slip over and join me, and then slid closed. As expected in a building like this, the receptionist was the one who put in the floor number, and the elevator started moving, smoothly enough that it was hard to tell it was moving at all. As soon as the doors were closed, they dropped their respective veils, which was nice because I was still pretty terrible at seeing through them and didn’t want to walk into them by accident.

It had really only been the elevator that might have caused problems; the day Capinera and Saori couldn’t sneak past a mortal security guard, I’d be wondering whether I should start planning their funerals. Getting an elevator to work without direct controls and without anyone noticing was…trickier.

“Holy shit,” Saori said, once we were moving. The kitsune was looking at me with an unusual kind of respect in her eyes.

I grinned at her, nothing like the tired smile I’d put on for the two guys downstairs. “Told you,” I said smugly. “Watch and learn.”

“Okay, but how?” she asked. “You’re trash at lying. And no, I’m not going to believe you’re so good you’ve fooled me into thinking so.”

I’d already had my mouth open to say as much, and opted for a disappointed sigh instead. “It doesn’t feel like lying,” I said after a few moments’ thought. “I wasn’t really trying to deceive anyone, you know? Just creating a persona. More like acting than lying.” I shrugged. “Dunno how to explain it. Always been like that, though. Can’t lie worth shit, but pretending to be someone different doesn’t register in the same way.”

“Social engineering, rather than deception?” Capinera suggested.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It’s just…acting, perspective taking, and applied social psychology. Not sure why that’s so different for me than lying, but it doesn’t feel the same.” I glanced at the elevator indicator light and grinned. “On which note, we’re here,” I said, and then stepped out into a perfectly ordinary hallway. I’d been wondering whether I’d get shot as soon as the door opened, but it appeared not. Just an ordinary, albeit well-appointed, office building. I looked for a sign pointing the way to suite ten, found it, and walked that direction.

I pulled off the leather gloves as I walked, tucking them into a pocket. They were useful for covering the ink, and downstairs that had mattered. Having extensive tattoos was perfectly reasonable for a security guard, but one working here would have to at least pretend to cover them up, and so while I hadn’t worried about the gap at my wrist where they could be seen, gloves were a useful prop. Here, less so.

I honestly had no idea how to get past the Neurocycle receptionist. They definitely wouldn’t believe that I was here because their company wanted security. And odds were good that they had a guest list of the people who were supposed to be here, one we weren’t on. I was sure that they would be suspicious, and I was mostly relying on Saori’s signature trick of being so fascinatingly insane that she sort of swept people along in her wake to get us in.

At first, when I opened the door to suite 3410, I got exactly the reaction I’d been expecting. The receptionist, a black girl who looked almost as young as I did, looked at Capinera and immediately looked suspicious. She looked at Saori and that suspicion just deepened.

But then she looked at me, and because I was paying attention and I was good at tracking rapid changes, I could actually watch the progression of emotions on the receptionist’s face. At first there was suspicion. But then came, in rapid succession, uncertainty, confusion, realization, and finally a sort of recognition with overtones I couldn’t quite place.

“The conference room is down the hall,” she said, not even asking what we were there for. “Third door on the left.”

“Thanks,” I said, though I was deeply confused by her reaction. I couldn’t readily ask without giving away that I didn’t actually know what was going on here, though. So I just went down the hall.

It felt very wrong to me, somehow. Like there was something I should know, and didn’t. But I was already too deep to back out now.

Can you hear me? I asked, putting a little more focus into the thought to compensate for the distance.

Raincloud’s response was immediate, and crystal clear. Yes. No activity down here. No one followed you into the building either.

Great. It wasn’t much reassurance, but it was some. Having Saori on one side and Capinera on the other was more. They’d both had to leave their larger weapons behind, but I was confident they both still had plenty available. This still felt wrong, but it was nice to have my girlfriends flanking me in case things started blowing up.

We were running early, but I’d still been expecting other people to have already shown up. I wasn’t disappointed in this, though as I opened the door I saw that there was only one. I was ready for that.

I was less ready to walk in and see an older Japanese guy, one who looked eerily familiar. It was like I didn’t recognize him, but I was aware that I should. I stared at him, trying to figure out why. He stared at me, presumably doing something roughly similar.

He figured it out in just a couple seconds. I could tell, because an expression of utter shock crossed his face, while I still felt baffled. In my defense, though, I’d also changed much less than he had, visually. He was, after all, only mortal, and a man ages fast moving between forty and…god, he had to be pushing sixty now.

I, on the other hand, still looked pretty much the same as when he last saw me, a lifetime ago and a world away.

Human lives were such a brief flame. Just one quick, bright flare, and then they were gone.

“Kyoko?” he said, with the shock palpable in his voice. He had the very specific tone of a man who is certain he is correct, and also certain he cannot possibly be correct. “Is that you?”

My smile felt a lot more tense than it had a few seconds ago, and the tension showed in my voice. I sounded like I’d just bitten into a lemon, and then discovered that it was rotten on the inside.

“Hello, father.”

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