Sayuri could rationalize sneaking out of the Deputy Commissioner’s office as an act of self-preservation and allegiance to her clan in extricating herself from Genji’s clutches. But it was illegal. One could not rationalize one’s way out of the law. She had never done something illegal before. Her father’s words about death by a thousand exceptions rang in her ears.

She eased the door open to a hallway where a few office workers and policemen were in tense conversation. None of them noticed a door gently opening and shutting.

Invisibility neither rendered her invincible, nor flush with time. As she passed a trio of police lieutenants, their faces slackened with apathy, then sparked with recognition after the Shroud passed by. The clock started.

She left a wake of confused workers behind her as she ran through a corridor of cubicles, grabbing a stapler on the way. Once freed from the Shroud, the officers launched into talk of an intruder employing hatsuden. A couple of officers thought to check the Deputy Commissioner’s office.

Sayuri bolted for the stairwell and threw a stapler in the opposite direction where it smacked into a light fixture. While attention was drawn elsewhere, she slid the stairwell door open. Inside, two more sets of footsteps echoed off the concrete walls. She pressed herself as far as she could away from the door on the top landing and waited with shallow breaths for the two to pass so she could continue her quest to find and free Thomas.

However, Thomas found her first.

Her breath hitched. Cresting the stairs was the Genji wetworker who tried to kidnap her at the product demonstration. Around his arm was a band that read “Genkai-Wabu.” Behind him was Thomas with a face that resembled raw horse meat flecked with strange spots of glitter. His eyes were absent and his large body was shuddering violently so that Sayuri thought he might fall backwards down the stairs.

The Genkia-Wabu gorilla stopped and looked around. His eyes scanned the area where she was. Sayuri’s heart slammed in her chest. He could feel the Shroud.

He stepped forward with deadly precision, eyes steely with the compensatory perception of a blind man. The golden kinkawa of an ISF soldier bulged on his face. Sayuri tried to inch towards the stairwell railing, but her shoe scuffed the concrete floor. His hand shot and grabbed her invisible neck.

“Found you.”

She scratched at his hand, trying to tear his hairy knuckles, but his skin was thick as boiled leather.

“Drop your invisibility, Ueichi Sayuri.”

She refused. He tightened his grip around her slim neck.

“Drop it now.”

Even though she knew he had orders to capture her alive, all her brain could think was how easily he could kill her. How easily he could kill anyone. How easily he had. He made the former grenadier behind him look like a kicked puppy. She dropped the invisibility.

The man switched to a rumbling, unaccented Æfrian. “Ueichi Sayuri, you are in the custody of Persimmon of the Genji Heavy Industries Harmony Division. Before anything else, you will verbally promise Mr. Chester you will do nothing to place him in harm's way.”

The order baffled her, but she complied. “I-I promise not to do anything that will— will place you in harm’s way, Mr. Chester.”

Thomas’ weary eyes looked up at her from behind Persimmon. He seemed only dimly aware of her presence.

“If at any point you appear to be attempting to use your hatsuden, I will kill him immediately. Am I understood?”

“Y-Yes…”

“We are going outside and getting in a car. You will walk ahead of me. If you turn around, I will kill him. If you run, I will kill him. If you do anything other than walk straight into the car I designate, I will kill him. Now…” He gestured at the staircase.

~~~

The officers went out of their way to put their hands on Mildred. It wasn’t egregious, they weren’t groping her, but she hardly needed a hand on her back to help her find the stairs up to the police station lobby. Her skin crawled, but it did make it easier to sell her desperation plan.

When she saw they were separating men, women, and children, she had a moment of fear. Apart from being heinous, it made the timing of her gambit harder. The room labeled for men was past the one for women. Not that she doubted Æfrian women would want to help her, but they were cautious, less likely to get riled up. What she needed was a Thomas Chester.

The irony wasn’t lost on her.

Her stomach fluttered as she and her escorts approached the conference room the Æfrian women were corralled into. This was the last stop. Any further inside and she wouldn’t be visible to the room full of men. All that was left was to pray to Loothsa for luck.

She screeched and stumbled forward. “N-No! Get away from me!”

The police lurched after her. She sucked up whatever pride she had left and let them tackle her to the floor. Her handcuffed wrists pinched against the ground, crushed under the weight of three fully-grown men.

Hysterical, she turned towards the room of Æfrian men, her tone frantic. “Help me! They said they’re going to take me back a-and—”

The police officers didn’t know Æfrian and had no idea what she was insinuating and so proceeded to berate and taunt her in Kaihongo. It was probably just to call her an idiot, but tensions had built to the point that any word in Kaihongo sounded like an insult to the Æfrians who just had their families split apart, let alone words that could be the taunts of rapists.

Mildred was fiddling with a powder keg without a fuse and felt guilty about the men she was trying to draw into a brawl so that she could find Thomas and Sayuri. She had miscalculated one variable, though, which was precisely how much powder was in the keg.

Only one man, younger than her, perhaps in his early-20s, came to her aid. He was the perfect age for doing something stupid like punching an armed police officer in the head to try and save a strange woman. No one followed him. And if the policemen had kept their tempers and detained him peacefully, her plan would’ve failed. But she gambled on angry policemen doing something stupid and wasn’t disappointed.

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The officer restraining Mildred shoved her would-be helper to the floor and stomped on his face. Over and over. In full view of the room.

A stranger, especially one with mixed ancestry, could be turned away from, but when the officer’s boot collided with the young man’s temples, the collective body of the Burnehithe Æfrians had been assaulted. The rest acted in self-preservation. Not just the men, but the women too roused from their submission and came flooding into the hall to wrest the officers away from both Mildred and the young man clutching his head. More policemen ran to reinforce their fellow officers being showered with punches and kicks.

Out of the fray, Mildred crawled free, inching along the floor with her hands cuffed. Behind her, a gun discharged and shattered a light bulb, leaving a rocking shadow over the reception desk. Two more deafening shots rang in her ears along with screaming so pained and inhuman it could have been Kaihonjin or Æfrian. Children started wailing.

Mildred grimaced. There would be time for guilt later. She had to look after her own interests now. Bracing her shoulder against a wall, she wiggled her way to her feet before plunging further into the police department.

Partway down the hall, a stairwell door opened up ahead and she threw herself behind a wall. She peeked around it to see three figures exiting. Two were the ones she was looking for. The third was a giant, terrifying obstacle.

Back behind the wall, she tried to walk away unnoticed, but she felt the moment the man’s cold eyes found her. She froze. Deep, pre-human instincts held her stock still, telling her that running would be the last choice she ever made. She turned slowly around. His predatory eyes popped out of their surroundings to greet her gaze. Ominous lines of gold ringing his eyes reflected the fluorescent lights. She was a doe staring into the headlights of a train.

“Who is she?” the giant asked calmly in Æfrian.

Sayuri sputtered. “Sh-Sh-She’s n-nobody! W-We—”

“She has been traveling with you since Suigen. Who is she?”

“M-Mil-Mildred D-Drake,” Mildred said.

She glanced at Thomas. His blood-soaked eyes wandered over her for a moment before wandering off again. Through her paralyzing fear poked a flash of anger.

“What did you do to him!?”

The man glanced at Thomas then returned her gaze. “No harm has come to him since I took him from police custody. The Genjūkō Harmony Division has no need to use violence on those who cooperate peacefully. Now, let me ask you, were you aware of Ueichi Sayuri’s circumstances?”

Milly swallowed. “The kinkawa?”

“And her recent interactions with our conglomerate.”

“Yeah.”

“Thank you for cooperating. However, this information must remain confidential.”

Time slowed for Milly as the man drew an oversized revolver from his jacket like it was a pocket watch and aimed it with cold precision as though she were livestock he was killing humanely.

~~~

Why couldn’t he move? Every ounce of his soul wanted to fight this man and give Milly and Sayuri time to run, but it wouldn’t move. No matter his thoughts, his body wouldn’t act. His jaw wouldn’t even form the word, “no!”

“Thomas!”

His name echoed in his mind. That voice was the only sensation that mattered. It was as though everything else in the world was under the Shroud but that one, solitary voice. It came from Sayuri.

“Stop him!”

Sensations came to him in a rush as he was released from his haze by a sharp order: Sayuri cowering and pointing to Milly with her head mounted on the front sight of Persimmon’s magnum and the sound of distant shouting, screaming, and gunshots and the smell of blood in his nose and mouth and excruciating pain in his face and hands came through as euphoric, electric energy. This energy erupted into Persimmon’s back.

Persimmon’s revolver exploded with a boom that rattled the walls. Next to a trembling Milly was a 14mm hole. Her calves bled where debris from the wall grazed them.

Persimmon whirled and grabbed the side of Thomas’ head, slamming it into the corner of the wall and sending dark stars twinkling into his vision. He expected it to stun him, but he caught Persimmon’s hand bringing the revolver up with a burst of energy borrowed from beyond the limits of his damaged body and held it at Persimmon’s waist. Both men were locked in a single, trembling sculpture which threatened to shatter at any moment.

“Sayuri, do something!” Milly said.

The girl tried to approach, but before she could, Thomas brought a leg up between him and the wall and kicked backwards. With his free hand, Persimmon swung a hook at Thomas who brought his shoulder up to deflect the blow. Cold needles splintered along his arm. But the man’s face was now open. Thomas cocked his head and slammed it into Persimmon’s nose.

Still the gorilla-like man wouldn’t stagger. His eyes were bloodshot and full of silent rage.

“I was not warned you were a kinketsu. This is irksome,” Persimmon said, his words a strained growl. “I will have a word with our intelligence department.”

He dropped his revolver and used both arms to grapple Thomas. Senses overflowing, Thomas could see lines of gold threading from Persimmon’s finger up through his wrists and arms. His grip was like a hydraulic press. Pushing. Pounding. But some dæmonic force in him pushed back, and it was winning.

Teeth bared at him as Thomas felt his heartbeat pounding in waves like a piston pushing the other way. His body had never felt this good. Nothing had ever felt this good.

And then it was gone.

Persimmon slumped forward into him, the victory neither sweet, nor bitter, but utterly tasteless. Behind him Sayuri came down from her tiptoes where her fingertips touched the back of Persimmon’s neck.

“I know not how long he will slumber. We should leave,” she said.

After the Shroud from Sayuri’s brief use of hatsuden, the electric dæmon fled Thomas’ veins and plunged him back into throbbing, stabbing pain. The world felt like it was tumbling backwards. He planted his hands against the wall to steady himself.

“Come on big guy, just a short walk to the boat. You can lean on my shoulder,” Milly said.

He put an arm around Milly’s left shoulder and her whole body tilted.

“Don’t lean quite that much! Sayuri…”

Milly stretched her handcuffed hands out behind her and wiggled her fingers. Sayuri laid her gold-clad hands on the handcuffs and the steel sloughed off from around Milly’s wrists like it was gelatin.

“There’s a back entrance,” Sayuri said, “down the hall to the right. I’ll turn us invisible now.”

Milly looked down at Persimmon in a heap on the floor. “Thomas, I think you should—”

“No,” Sayuri said. “Absolutely not. We have committed some crimes, but we will not commit any more murder than is necessary. When everything has been resolved, he will be tried in a court of law.”

Milly tried to protest but Thomas waved her off. He didn’t have the strength to pick up the gun and fire it anyway.

The three of them became three points of view floating down the hallways of the police department and out into the street. When his weight became too much, Milly would tap on his forearm. He tried not to be a burden. Somehow, he kept putting more weight on again.

Persimmon scared Thomas more than anything else Genji could throw at them. They had offered the man something he must have become addicted to in Ryūkoku: Purpose. Direction. Thomas knew, because he suffered from withdrawal from that life saving drug. Persimmon would hunt them to the end of the world because he didn’t know what else to do with himself.

The walk seemed never to end. At some point in Thomas’ delirium he was back in the plasticky recreations of late-Æfrian buildings like some infernal playset. He felt nauseous. Only his palm on Milly’s sleight shoulder grounded him. Then the Shroud disappeared as they came to the town hall garden.

At his feet, phantom dandelions waved, and his father’s comforting voice explained to him the importance of the monthly Yeoman’s meetings and how Thomas would someday need to participate and carry on the old traditions, talking about being a member of the Yeoman’s Council and needing to know Burnehithe’s history, its politics, its traditions, and its people, and the land it was built on, which his face was rapidly approaching.

“Thomas? Oh gods… Sayuri go get Shuu! Thomas!”

Sparkling gold blood seeped into the phantom dandelions.