Cheering exploded behind Thomas' turned back. The former limits of the human body to withstand enormous amounts of hatsuden had been broken. No one knew what that meant yet, but they knew it went far beyond generating electricity. Thomas, however, felt terrible. The high of detachment was wearing off and the dæmon in control of his body had left him with the repercussions. He'd gone beyond abandoning his post to intruding on corporate secrets. He was a dead man.

And yet, he didn't feel afraid. Or anxious. Or regretful. What he felt was nothing. A void.

Silence.

Silence from a room full of people who moments ago had been in rapture. Silence from people getting their first taste of the Shroud.

Thomas sat vigil over them like a parent helpless to do anything for their sick child. He knew these were awful people, responsible for immeasurable suffering. But whenever he witnessed the Shroud rob people of the world's richness, of its depth, of the infinite textures of pleasure and pain humanity was heir to, he felt their misery with them. He couldn't hate them.

President Ueichi appeared familiar with the Shroud, but his brows furrowed in confusion. He looked to the young woman covered in gold, hastily re-donning her clothes.

"Hatsuden shiteru?"

She shook her head. "Uun."

The Shroud was an efficient energy source because it affected emotions only, leaving intact the deeply ingrained muscle memory involved with working a lathe or furnace or sewing machine. While Thomas’ soul was drowning in the Shroud, his body was pulling from its deep memories. This hatsuden felt familiar. His mind failed to keep pace with his body's spontaneous information gathering and, without his approval, drew his pistol from his jacket and urged him through the curtain. Only then did he realize: This Shroud reminded him of joint operations with the Imperial Special Forces.

No one was shocked at Thomas' intrusion. In fact, no one registered it amid the chaos as a room full of executives was released from the Shroud at the same moment as a squadron of men in lacquer masks bearing sub-machine guns popped into existence. The first wave of gunfire chewed through the bodies of Ueichi clan security guards.

Free from the Shroud, the reckless dæmon from earlier rushed back in and pointed his gun at one of the masked men, whispering to him how fun it would be, how honorable a death, to take one with him. He wasn't leaving alive, after all. But he didn't fire. Instead, he dove forward and tackled the young woman to the ground.

Above, a trail of bullets caught President Ueichi from his collarbone up through his neck, mouth, and nose, mangling his face as blood from the exit wounds disappeared into the burgundy curtain. His wife was spared the indignity with two clean shots to the forehead. The young woman saw none of this pressed to the ground under Thomas.

Thomas expected to be killed next, but when he found himself still alive, he looked behind him. Two sub-machine gun muzzles followed him as their owners, one in a frog mask, the other a tengu, approached through the carnage. They wanted the girl alive, he realized. Bullets would pass through his soft flesh and into her. If he gave them another second they would peel him off her and kill him.

Whittled down by malnutrition and alcohol, what remained of Thomas’ dormant muscles awoke with a flood of adrenaline. Two unaimed shots from his pistol zipped past the approaching men, distracting them long enough for his aching knees to pull him and the girl up and through the curtain. It was such a surprising rush of aliveness after the Shroud that he almost forgot to keep running. It took the young woman attempting to run back into the demonstration hall to bring him out of his frenzy. Pivoting to grab her with his free arm, he swung her towards the exit as the red curtain danced to the rhythm of bullets slicing through it.

She screamed something in Kaihongo and dug her nails into his arm. Just as she was about to pull away, Thomas whirled to fire off a couple more shots at their pursuers pushing through the curtain.

The first bullet caught Frog Mask in the chest. The man staggered backwards, flailing to grab the curtain as his finger depressed the trigger and sent a burst of whining mosquitos past Thomas' ear, crackling into the wall and sending chips of concrete ricocheting in the dark. Tengu Mask was quicker. Lines of gold in the man’s outstretched palm pulled the second bullet out of its trajectory and buried it in the floor. This gave Thomas time to sprint to the hallway, now with no resistance from the girl.

Knowing only one way in or out, Thomas ran for the utility room, dragging the girl behind him by the wrist.

"Prithee, sir, bid me what hath come to pass?" she shouted over the distant roar of automatic fire.

It took him several moments to realize she was speaking in Æfrian. Or trying to.

"Prithee? Hah...hah...what?" Thomas panted.

"Mayhap an incorrect word doth slip my tongue?"

"Look, if you can understand me, shut-up and do what I say, okay?"

She ground to a halt at the threshold of the utility room. "Sir, thy rudeness betrayest a certain— ack!"

Thomas wrenched her into the utility room and slammed the door with enough force to send her hair flying. A few muted pops from the hall made little steel craters on the other side of the door.

Praying he didn't get lost in the maze of electrical equipment, Thomas took whatever turns felt right. Echoes of grinding metal told him Tengu Mask was in the room with them. No footsteps gave away the direction he was coming from. Where he and the girl stood, there were two ends to the row of gray electrical panels. The right side was closer to the exit, so if their pursuer wanted to get the jump on a primitive lard-eater, he would take the longer route to the left.

Letting go of the girl's wrist, Thomas crept toward the left end of the row and pressed himself against a transformer box. A second later he heard a shallow breath. A hint of congestion. Thomas flung around the corner and swung his pistol in a wide arc. The steel slide cracked against the lacquer mask, splintering it and crunching nose underneath. The man gave a startled gurgle and tried to swing his sub-machine gun on Thomas, but the blow knocked the fight out of him and the hands clutching the gun had no strength. Tearing the man’s gun from its strap, Thomas landed a blow to his jaw and sent him to the ground.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

With half the mask broken off, Thomas could now see lines of kinkawa running up the man's neck to his shattered nose. Former Imperial Special Forces. Thomas was sure of it now. This did nothing to identify the man’s employer, however. The Imperial Special Forces had long ago sold its human capital to clan-conglomerate security forces in a public-private partnership.

The moment of relief at surviving the encounter was interrupted by another Shroud-induced mood drop.

"Didst thou fell him?"

The young woman's words came before she popped back into existence. It was too late to stop his instincts from whipping the gun at her, but a centimeter from her face, his elbow bounced. The sensation felt like colliding with a thin layer of rubber over an invisible concrete wall. His wrist stung, but the girl was unharmed, albeit agape in shock.

"Don't do that," he said.

“Beg thy pardon, thou—"

"Miss, this isn't about etiquette. Don't sneak up on someone when their blood is boiling!"

"Blood is boiling?” Pray tell the meaning."

"I mean— fuck. If someone is in survival mode—" Thomas grit his teeth, realizing he’d used another idiom.

The girl blinked. "Fuck?"

"Forget it."

Thomas jogged to the door he was supposed to have been guarding while pinching a cramp in his stomach. He thought he’d doubled back when he found it full of bullet holes, but on closer inspection the holes were lower, and there were more.

"Stand over there," Thomas said pointing to the side of the door.

"Thither, dost thou mean’st?"

He wondered if it would be easier if she didn't know any Æfrian whatsoever. Pointing and grunting was easier than communicating with someone centuries out of date. He switched to the bit of operational Kaihongo he knew.

"Soko, ikè."

"Oh, ah— shouchi itashimashita."

Thomas listened at the door before gingerly turning the knob. Below, Kato’s corpse rested like an island in an ocean of blood. Thomas counted a couple dozen new holes. The eye which hadn't caught a bullet was frozen in lethargic surprise.

Thomas turned around. "I want you to cover your eyes when we go through the door, alright?"

"Sir, mine eyes bore witness to atrocities mere moments hence, I—" The girl froze and turned white. "M-My mother and father, canst thee swear to their safety?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't see much after I tackled you. But whoever attacked the demonstration wanted you alive, so I'd wager it was the same for your parents," Thomas lied.

She let out a sharp exhale and covered her mouth. "Thou speakest sense. ‘Tis so."

"Surely," he said, "now cover your eyes."

"T’a corpse I will be not perturbèd."

"What's your name?"

"Ueichi Sayuri. By Lady Ueichi thou mayst refer to me."

"Okay, Lady Ueichi, do you want to see a man floating in his own blood? Or would you go the rest of your life without seeing that?"

"I-I— eto... mayhap thou speakest sense."

She closed her eyes, but there was no way to avoid stepping in the blood. Thomas tried to sweep some away with his foot, but a gallon or more filled the corridor. He could tell the moment Sayuri stepped in it because her whole body shuddered. The fluid clung to the bottom of their shoes and made their steps stick. Behind him he heard her hyperventilating.

"You're doing fine, just keep walking."

"W-What shall I call thee?"

"Thomas. Tom is fine. Not Tommy."

"Thy family name?"

"Chester."

He guided her around the part of Kato's leg that had been freed from its knee.

"I would call thee Mr. Chester, if’t please thee."

"Mr. Chester was my dad."

"To matrilineality doth thy clan cleaveth?”

Her voice was starting to calm, which calmed him as well.

"No. Thomas is fine."

He waited until they turned the corner before telling her she could open her eyes. Sayuri grimaced at the bloody footprints they left. Around the corner from the elevators, Thomas stopped.

"Stay here. If you hear gunshots, run to the utility room and hide,” he said.

Sayuri nodded.

Bringing the foyer into his pistol's sights, Thomas swept the room. Leaning on a wooden console, left hand holding a cigar, right resting on the wiry stock of a machine pistol, was an ape of a man—Kaihonjin, with wild, neck-length black hair, bushy beard and stalking eyes which Thomas pegged as those of a veteran. He wore a black suit, blue dress shirt, and silver vest which strained against hidden muscles. Streaks of kinkawa formed two flower-shaped loops around his eyes. He dropped the cigar into a flowerpot.

"So that's where you got off to. You were supposed to be up here," the man said, pointing to the face-down body of Okawa with a hooked knife in his brain stem. "Although, you weren't supposed to join our friend here. We need the Æfrian double agent who let the terrorists in to be alive at the end of all this. But I would prefer you knocked out right now."

Thomas double tapped the trigger. The bullets dug themselves into the concrete floor, guided there by branches of kinkawa on the man’s thick mitts.

“I thought you grenadier men had better trigger discipline," the man said, paying no attention to his own gun hanging from a strap.

Two more shots met the same fate, and the man looked ready for Thomas to empty his magazine. Thomas had no idea what to do when he couldn't kill his opponent and his opponent didn't want to kill him. He hoped Sayuri had run. They were not making it to the elevators.

"Believe it or not, I sympathize with you, Thomas. We both fought in Ryūkoku. We both saw the same things. There’s nothing personal about this, I just have business with the girl you’re escorting,” he said. “I’ll even sweeten the pot. If you make my job of finding her easier, I’ll let someone else take the fall for this tragic act of Æfrian terrorism, and you can walk away. What do you have to gain helping your exploiters, hmm?”

It was enticing. Walk away and live. But what would he be walking away to? What was left in that desolate life? The flaw in the man’s offer was that Thomas didn’t really want to live anymore. But would his life really be sacrificed for Sayuri Ueichi? The daughter of the people responsible for the Shroud? A girl he’d known for only a few minutes and who might, if she lived, perpetuate the horrors her family had brought into this world? Faced with two terrible options, he took a leap into the dark and let his body decide.

Thomas charged, aiming for the man’s center mass, hoping to tackle him and crush his larynx. He didn’t make it. Blinding electric pain flashed across Thomas’ body and then he was on the floor. The man knelt to look Thomas in his eyes.

"Loyal, even to your abusers. I find it both admirable and pitiful. For that, I’ll give you my name. I go by Persimmon. Now, let’s put you to sleep.”

Persimmon reached out with both hands, gold glittering in his palms and giving off a sauna-like warmth. The closer they came to Thomas' temples, the more he felt himself slipping into oblivion.

Until he wasn't.

Moist dirt and clay shards rained down on his face followed by droplets of blood spattering the mat floor. Feeling was returning to his muscles, enough to roll his neck and look up. Persimmon’s head was bleeding from where a flowerpot had been smashed over it. In a savage arc, his arm swung backwards, bouncing away from Sayuri's face as it came within a centimeter.

"S-Sir! Rise! Thy protection is needed!"

Persimmon towered over Sayuri by almost a foot. She slowly backed away as he matched her pace, saying something in her native language that made the color drain from her face.

Only half the muscles in Thomas's body had come back to life. His left leg refused to budge and his right hand couldn't stretch for his gun. Raw will failed him, unable to overcome the electrical spasms frolicking through his body. Thomas cursed his body for being in such terrible shape. If it wasn't so ruined by corn liquor, he might have dodged the payload of hatsuden energy Persimmon had discharged into him. A wave of meaninglessness swept through his mind and made his muscles go slack. It wasn't even worth trying to move anymore.

Suddenly, he felt Sayuri tugging on his wrist. "Please!"

Thomas wasn't sure how she made it past Persimmon, and the look on Persimmon’s face suggested he didn't know either. But the astonishment was wearing off. Thomas grabbed Sayuri’s outstretched arm and almost pulled her over picking himself up. But with trembling knees, Sayuri stood long enough to pull him onto his numb legs. At any moment, he expected to be knocked over by a hail of bullets. Instead, he appeared on the ground, 51 stories below.