Ai removed her hat, revealing the smeared makeup and ashen-grey skin, red hair, and near-reptilian nostrils.
“This is Ai. She saved both of our lives multiple times,” Shun said.
Suzume gawked at Ai, stepping toward her.
“Sallis-Faint?” Suzume said, reaching up and taking a piece of Ai’s dark red hair in her hand. Ai didn’t move but smiled at Suzume. “You can sing to the Sachi? Make it heal?”
“Something like that. I’m Ai, what’s your name? I like your hair.”
Suzume blushed but reached up and twirled a blue lock of her own hair. “I’m Suzume. Used to be an engineer for Andalaf, before—”
“Listen, we don’t have time,” I said. “Ai, this is Kaito, Hinote, and you’ve met Suzume. The girl over there at the bar drawing is Toshiko, Hinote’s daughter.”
“Josh Baker is bombing the entire Meek. And Andalaf is going to blame the Sun-Seekers,” Shun said. “They’re trying to use this for one big boost of morale to their employees, asking for more work and more hours without risking despair in their workforce. Andalaf can say that they need to work harder than before to keep protecting against terrorists. They’re trying to wake the Dead God, whatever that means.”
“Nothing like a martyr to nail a point home,” Kaito said.
“Yeah, that ain’t no shit,” Hinote said.
“We have to leave. But I’m going to try and stop the bombs first and get as many people out of the Meek as possible,” Shun said.
“Well, I’m going to help you,” I said.
“And me!” Ai said.
Kaito raised a hand. “Same.”
“Well, you best believe I am!” Hinote said. “Motherfuckers think they can keep killin’ us like we fuckin’ cattle.”
Shun gave a smile to Hinote. Maybe there’s something between them, I thought, maybe not; they do share a passion for this, though.
“But since we got all of us on the job, it should be no problem. I need to get Toshiko out. And we gonna need someone runnin’ around discretely, maybe someone who has experience with gettin’ in and out of places without being seen,” Hinote said, looking to Kaito. “You still got it in you?”
“I almost reflexively steal something from you every day, Hinote. I don’t think it ever leaves a thief,” Kaito said, looking at Shun, who returned the look. It was almost an endearing look. Maybe I was just being paranoid, and this seemed like a very silly time to have a fit of jealousy, but this is where my mind went. You worry so much about hurting a person with your wandering eyes that you forget their eyes, too, can wander, and it caught me by surprise then—regardless of whether these looks between her and Kaito and Hinote actually meant anything—the way I’d been blinded by my own new desires, only to see Shun in a brand new light when I thought she was something I could lose.
“Shun—you, me, and Suzume can get escorted around by these two in their Andalaf outfits. Suz? Can you find the bombs?” Hinote said, raising an eyebrow.
She smiled and nodded, her eyes like two crescents. “Finding the bombs won’t be an issue. I’ve got a sensor in the basement that looks for Sachibomb pulses. The only thing that’ll be hard is getting past the guards. If you two think you can—”
“Um, Hinote?” I said.
The big man turned to me with his furrowed brow, twisting off his Sachi ear attachment, blowing through it, and replacing it.
I went on, “You said you wanted to get Toshiko out of the Meek?”
“Well, yeah. No shit. Why?”
“Just wondering how you planned to do that,” I said.
“Well, I don’t know. Was still figuring that out. Gotta save the Meek, too.”
“Right. Well, I think I may have a solution. Ai, here, moves faster through the trash than anyone I’ve ever seen. As you can see, she is Sallis-Faint; she’s been hiding from Andalaf her entire life. She and her dad have a …” I looked to Ai, thinking maybe I’d said too much. She just smiled at me.
“We have a hidden place. They’ve never found us,” Ai finished for me. “I’d be more than willing to help if that’s something you’d be comfortable with.”
Hinote looked from me to Ai, then back again, and he laughed. “Y’all fuckin’ crazy. You askin’ me to trust my daughter’s life with a stranger? Not just any stranger, but the number one on Andalaf’s list of things they wanna exploit.” He laughed again, looking at Shun. “She’s fuckin’ crazy, right?”
Shun gave Hinote a frank look. “We don’t have a lot of options. She has helped us quite a bit, and she is very fast in the trash sea. Faster than me or Nin. And Nin was—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know—Chudo,” Hinote said, looking at me, an earnest expression on his face. He seemed to chew the inside of his cheek for a moment or maybe suck on it. “You sure ’bout her, Nin? I mean … no offense, but I’m still not even sure ’bout you. You helped us out back there at the Meek Pox drill tower and took the heat,” then, under his breath, “and the credit.”
“What’s that?” I said.
“Nothin’. My point is … I kinda trust you. How do I trust her?”
“You can trust her, Hinote,” Shun said. “She’s… just … good. I know you can feel it.” It almost looked painful for Shun to say it, making a face, like when people of the Meeks admit to enjoying the effects of Sachi powder even though they know it’s killing their family, friends, and neighbors. Ai wasn’t killing Shun’s neighbors, but she was affecting Shun’s family in a way that I couldn’t have predicted, especially with the warm welcome Shun and I had given to each other after that first tower. Maybe that was just … a kind of honoring? Like, we both loved Asahi, and in that embrace, we were able to tell each other, “Hey, I love you too, even though this thing we loved is dead now.” Who knows. My head was swimming. Regardless of our personal feelings, we both knew the truth about Ai. We just knew it was not something to be earned. I felt it coming off of her, and so did Shun, and I could bet a bag of good Sachi the rest could, too.
Hinote looked at Ai with a long, searching gaze that would make me uncomfortable, but Ai met his gaze with her ruby-red eyes and smiled.
“Aight. Toshiko,” Hinote called. The little blonde girl spun her head away from her drawing. Hinote beckoned her over with a swooping arm, and she hopped down from the stool to bob over.
“Look,” Toshiko said, pulling a piece of paper in front of her face to show the group. It was a very detailed, cartoonish picture of her father standing over a group of people and pointing a gloved hand at them. Hinote laughed loudly, and the rest of the group chortled with him. I allowed myself a chuckle.
“You’ll take good care of her, right? She’s a good girl, and she’ll listen. She’s all I got, and”—he paused, looking away for a moment. Seeing him like this made me a bit uncomfortable.
“I know my way through the trash, along with many good hiding places,” Ai said. “And after you are done here, Nin knows where I live. He can bring you there.”
I said, “Um, I’m not so sure—”
“You know where I live, Nin. You’ll find it,” she said.
“What’s that shit all about? You ain’t sure, Nin? Maybe we shouldn’t be doin’ this then. How are we gonna find you?” Hinote said.
“If you aren’t at my house in two days’ time, I’ll come looking for you. And if”—her eyes flicked to me for a moment—“if Nin doesn’t make it back, my house is in Meek Pox. The walls of trash surrounding it have many mirrors on them, and plants grow there.”
“Plants? What do you mean?”
“Plants, yes,” Ai said.
“It’s true. I’ve seen it,” I said.
“And if you walk through the old pipes long enough, you should find it. But I will most likely find you first,” Ai said.
“So you just gonna come lookin’ for me with Toshiko?” Hinote said.
Ai smiled. “No. My father and I live there together.” Shun visibly relaxed a little. Had she been thinking about that the whole time? “So I’ll leave Toshiko there if I go looking for you,” Ai went on, “I’ll tell my father what you look like, and he knows Nin if Nin is with you. But maybe, just in case, we should come up with a word. A secret word.” Ai said it like a childhood conspirator. I couldn’t help but smile.
“Sure. How about … Andalaf?” Hinote said.
“Andalaf?” I said.
“Yeah. The last thing those arrogant pricks from the plateau are gonna guess is their own name as the password. They think we some big terrorist organization that Nin here is in charge of. If they guess anything, it’ll be ‘fuck Andalaf.’”
“Alright. Andalaf. I’ll tell my dad,” Ai said. Then, she bent down to get on the same level as Toshiko. “Toshiko, I’m Ai. And it looks like you are an artist. I’m trying to be an artist, too, but you might be a bit further along than me. Do you think you could show me some things?”
Toshiko looked at her dad as if to say, “Is this bitch serious?” then looked back to Ai. “You’re Sallis-Faint. Andalaf started hunting you after the Great Northern Sachi War twenty years ago. Do you know why?”
“Toshiko, it ain’t the time, baby. We gotta get goin’,” Hinote said, dropping down to one knee next to his daughter.
“I think they want us to … wake something up. Something that will give them a lot of power,” Ai said.
“What is it?” Toshiko said.
“Something wonderful. Something huge. And terrible.”
“And if they get you … what does that mean for us?”
“I don’t think the people up there care too much about the people down here, Toshiko,” Ai said.
“Well, that’s no shit,” Toshiko said. Ai laughed musically, and I could, for a moment, see the unhardened little kid that hid inside of Toshiko as she laughed with Ai; the kid that was there probably when Toshiko had a mother and before her Sachi poisoning, which likely motivated Hinote to start the Sun-Seekers. If it were Asahi, I’d have felt the same as him; I do, actually, but my hate is aimed elsewhere. “Well, if you are important enough for Andalaf to look for your kind for twenty years nonstop, then we can’t let them have you. I’ll take good care of her, Dad, until you come back,” Toshiko finished. Her eyes were hard, and I wondered how often she’d had to go through something similar to this.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“I know you will, Toshiko,” Hinote said, smiling at her. “Can she … defend herself?” he asked me, pointing a thumb at Ai as if she weren’t there.
Ai pulled out the swirling black orb. “Do you know what this is?” she asked him. His eyes went wide.
“Summon Sachi? But … how?” Hinote said.
“I’ve had him as long as I can remember. Name is Caelziax,” Ai said. .
“And he packs more of a punch than any of us could,” I said. “With Ai and Caelziax, Toshiko is in the best hands.” Ai beamed at me as I said it. I gave her a frank look and continued talking to Hinote. “But she is going to need some Sachi powder. She won’t say it outright and won’t ask for it, but if she has to use Caelziax …”
“Understood,” Hinote said, pulling something from his back pocket. A brown leather sack, pocket-sized.
My mouth watered at the sight. I felt the strong urge to snatch that sack like some starving waif on the streets of Onfidlack. My Chudo training was the only thing holding me back. “Sorry to say it, but she’s going to need more than that, Hinote,” I said.
“You serious?” Hinote said.
I nodded. “I’m going to need it too. We all will, but Ai will need a lot. I hope that’s not all you have. I know you guys have Sachi juice, so you have to keep some in stock.”
“Shit,” Hinote said. “Yeah, we got it. Hold on.”
Ai started, “It’s really not—”
“It is. And you have to. For the girl,” I said, nodding down to Toshiko, who stared daggers at me as if I’d insulted her pride a bit by calling her a girl and insinuating she needed protecting. I returned the stare. She almost reminded me of my boy. I smiled. It was a bit of my Asahi smile, the one I’d give to him when he said “Mommy” and ran up to me. Hot mist threatened to obscure my vision, so I looked away. Good thing I did, too, because Toshiko was not having the same type of experience looking at me as I was at her.
Hinote came out of the back kitchen area behind the bar, holding several bags, some bigger than others.
“How’s this?” he said, dropping the many bags onto a tall round table that could sit three, maybe four patrons.
“That will work just fine,” I said, grabbing one and opening it up. I pulled out a Sachiknife, letting it slide down the red sleeve and out into my hand. I dipped it in and took out a large bump on the tip. My mouth filled with thick saliva, and my pulse quickened. I shook in anticipation, studying it with hungry, vacant eyes. One doesn’t like to admit that they are physically dependent on the same substance that keeps the lights on, but in moments such as these, where I had somehow run out, I was adequately reminded of my place in the world. I am a junkie, along with anyone else who uses the shit. I’ve seen those living in the mountains or in forests who refuse to use Sachi or its supposed replacement of endorphin-based energy that just became another funnel for Andalaf and Sachi money; they gather their own food, make their own clothes, find their own way through the wilderness. It’s almost as if there is a certain freedom they pay for: give up your mortal flesh, and you can live without drowning in Sachi. Those who are willing to die, in a fashion, can be free.
The last thing I wanted at that moment, as I raised the blade up to my nostrils, was freedom, in all senses of the word. I was happily tied to the rack. I took a loud snort, and the tranquil energy filled my head, waking me up, washing away my exhaustion, my sadness, my philosophy, my self.
Everyone followed my lead except Ai, Toshiko, and Shun. We would all need it; the enemy would be on Sachi, so we had to be. Toshiko suffered from the poisoning, though; Shun refused to use it, and I didn’t blame her—maybe she’d end up on a mountain somewhere after she destroyed the Andalaf Tower with her sheer will; and Ai didn’t seem to care for it or need it. She said she got the same effect from “getting quiet,” like she made me do back there in the trash when Asahi’s face filled me when I knew I needed to help Ai.
“You’re going to have to use it, Ai. Maybe not now. But you have to promise me that if you’re going to pull Caelziax into our world, you have to take a nice big snort of this stuff first,” I said, trying not to sound condescending. “I know you don’t need it all the time, but when you’re dealing with the people we are, especially after so many summons in such a short period of time, you have to use it. At a certain point, though, you just need to pull him back. Let them get you if that’s what it takes. If you start shaking uncontrollably, that’s when you know.” I thought of Morfran getting the summon shakes and looking at me, smiling. God, that smile, that insane smile; I should have known then; I should have run; I should have killed him.
“I will,” Ai said. “I will only use Caelziax if I have to, and I will take a nice big snort of drugs beforehand. You want me to take drugs, right? That’s the idea?”
Shun snorted a laugh, and Ai shot that knowing grin back at her. They shared a look, then both turned on me. I rolled my eyes. “Look, I don’t want you getting hooked or anything. In Chudo, we have to become dependent on it, I just want—”
Ai held a hand up to stop me. “While I don’t love using the Sachi because it makes it harder to get quiet and makes that other voice louder, I will if I am running low on energy, as I am now.”
Makes it harder to get quiet? She helped me get quiet while I was on the Sachi, and it was intense. It goes deeper than that when you’re off of it. And what other voice?
No time. There were bombs in the Meek.
“Thank you,” I said. She nodded her head.
“Kaito, take one of these bags and get the hell outta here,” Hinote said. Kaito put one in his pocket, then left through a back door that I hadn’t noticed before. “Ai, I … thank you. I’ll come as soon as I can.” He bent down to his daughter and gave her a kiss. “Love you, Shiko.”
“Bye, Daddy,” Toshiko said. I looked away, and I noticed Shun looking at me, her gaze intense but not angry. I wondered if she was thinking of him too.
“You two leave out the back while we go out the front,” Hinote said. “It’s gonna be tricky doin’ it with only one Andalaf infantryman as our escort. I hope you’re good at talkin’ when you need to be, Nin.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but Ai cut me off with an, “Oh!” She turned to Suzume. “Suzume, right?”
“Yep!” Suzume said, smiling, her eyes crescents.
“Can we … trade clothes?”
“Ai, I know that I dress well and all, but it’s awful forward of you to ask for the clothes right off of my back. Do you know how long it took me to get the right balance of yellows and blues to make this pop the way it does?”
“Go switch with her. Good thinkin’, Ai. Y’all can change in the kitchen. Nobody back there,” Hinote said, rolling his eyes at Suzume.
After the two switched clothes—Ai looking great in Suzume’s blue and yellow jacket and boots, though I could tell she was uncomfortable—Hinote said, “Two infantrymen in, two out. Now, why are you two escorting me and Shun away from the café?”
“We need two more suits,” I said. “Before we leave, Ai. How discreet can Caelziax be? I know they’re all pretty unwieldy, but some are better than others. Can he take a command?”
“He’s good with me for the most part,” Ai said.
“Can you tell him to go grab three of the infantrymen—preferably a large man and two women—drop them at the back door, then go about twenty feet away before you send him back to his realm, being discreet as he can all the while?”
“He will understand. Whether he will decide to do it is up to chance.”
I held my hands out submissively and turned to the others. They all nodded. “Best shot we have, I think.”
Ai went to the back door and, with an apprehensive look at me, snorted Sachi from her bag, coughing and wrinkling her nose, her eyes tearing up as she summoned the demon. Caelziax shrieked but was quickly quieted by Ai’s soft voice. Ai actually touched the demon on its thigh, which was as high as her head. Ai turned away, and I heard the demon stomping down the dirt behind the Clafendlin Café. Ten minutes passed, and then there were two thumps behind the back door and then more stomping as Caelziax ran away. We all looked out the back door, first through a small crack, then opening it all the way to reveal two infantrymen, a man and a woman, the man big and muscular. I laughed, amazed. Ai looked like she was on the verge of tears, then she called back the demon.
We dragged the bodies inside. They were a bit bloody, and there wasn’t an extra one for Ai to use while she escaped the Meek with Toshiko, but I couldn’t expect Caelziax to be firing perfectly on every front. The red suits made the blood hard to see anyway. After undressing the dead infantrymen, who Hinote took down to the basement—the way we saw it, these soldiers were here to make sure we died in an explosion, so all was fair—Shun and Hinote took their clothes and went to change.
Ai stood at the back door with Toshiko. I walked up to them. “Will you be ok? Getting out, I mean? You need my suit?”
“When it’s just me, I can get around pretty well without being seen. I’ve spent my whole life doing that. And Toshiko here is small,” Ai said, looking down at the girl.
“I resent that,” Toshiko said.
“Shiko? You mind Miss Ai, you hear me?” Hinote said, walking over in his Andalaf reds. “She the one who’s bringin’ you to safety.”
“I’m keeping her safe,” Toshiko said.
“Right, I forgot. Well, take good care of her, and try to be nice. And I’ll see you soon.”
Toshiko nodded her head like a military woman.
We walked to the front door, four of us in red. “Ready?” I called to Ai, who stood by the back with Toshiko.
“Yep!” she called back, giving me that smile and another flash of her ruby-red eyes.
“On three. One—two—three!” I yelled out, and we opened our doors. I did not see Ai as we passed the side of the building, and I was glad that I didn’t. Though the guards posted on the hilltop of trash across the way were sparse right then, any one of them could have called for backup. They didn’t seem to be alarmed at us walking along, though, and we saw other groups of four or eight or larger patrolling the dirt roads of the Meek. After we passed one larger group on our right, we stopped to lean against a leaning building that almost looked like an old rocket covered in soot and old Sachi. Outside was a sign with a cup of steaming coffee drawn on it.
“They’re pretty big,” Suzume said, pulling a gadget out of her coat pocket. It was a dark grey color, with two handles and a green screen with a grid. I saw six pulsing yellow orbs scattered across the grid, pulsing slowly, like the Sachibombs had before I activated them at the Meek Pox tower. Before I fell and met Ai.
“I assume this means they are currently inactive?” I said.
Suzume nodded. “Mhm.”
“Can you disarm ’em?” Hinote said.
“I think so. But judging by the size, It won’t make a difference if we don’t get all of them. One of them could destroy most of the Meek,” Suzume said.
“Won’t that affect the other Meeks?” I asked.
Suzume smiled. “They are expertly placed. The other Meeks will be untouched by the explosions, but we can expect to see some trash scatter, and that might cause some collateral damage.”
Shun said, “Could we split up, maybe? Could you show us how to disarm one, and then—”
“No. It’ll be faster to stay together. I don’t know Andalaf’s timeline, but knowing them as a corporation, they don’t let things like this sit for long.”
Shun looked at me and I confirmed Suzume’s words with a nod. “They may be waiting for something, I don’t know. But if they have them all ready, it won’t be long,” I said. “Let’s head. Suzume, you take front?”
Hinote gave me a look, but stayed silent. Suzume started walking, and we followed in a line behind her. “We need to walk in formation,” I said. “Two on left, two on right. Just give us vocal commands when we need to turn, Suzume.” We formed a square and went on, with Suzume checking her little gadget against the grid every few minutes.
The Meek was a chittering buzz of disquiet, people muttering from cracked windows and peeking out of drawn curtains. The shadow of the Upper-Plateau felt more oppressive, and the pale, yellow glow of Sachilight did little to remedy its crushing darkness. We kicked up clouds from the dirt road, which combined with the dust kicked up by passing patrols, making my inhalations grainy and dry.
“Turn right,” Suzume said. We veered right down a narrow, trash-bordered street and walked about half a mile without seeing any other infantrymen. I saw the Sachigenerator’s barbed-wire-topped metal fencing and knew that’s where we were headed.
“Are they all generators?” Shun asked.
“I’m not sure,” Suzume said, “but I’d guess they put the fucking things in important places like this. I bet you can just scale that fence, Nin, can’t you?”
I shrugged. As we approached the gate, though, I saw that climbing would be unnecessary. The gate was open, the lock hanging loose.
The Sachigenerator was a black building with several glowing, yellow coils running around it from top to bottom, maybe twenty feet high. I saw the bomb from the gate, sticking to the side of the black wall in between two coils. It was as big as me, nearly six feet in diameter, and it was the shape of a plateau, just like the small Sachibombs we used at Meek Pox.
We walked up to the large bomb—it blinked a slow, calm pulse of yellow light from its flat, circular top. Hinote, Shun, and I made a semicircle around Suzume as she worked. She opened a small compartment on the side of the bomb that I would not have known was there otherwise. No one came inside the gate, and after three minutes, Suzume pulled out a red metal piece with wires sprouting from its edges. The bomb made one low, descending veeeooom. Then, the yellow light stopped blinking.
“Got it! Five more to go!” Suzume said, smiling at us and showing the red piece to us like a kid with some creation they were proud of.
“Sometimes, Suz, I think you forget the fuckin’ tone of a situation,” Hinote said.
“Well, when you’re the one disarming the bomb,” Suzume said, cocking her head to one side, still smiling, “I feel you can take whatever fucking tone you like. Should we go?”
I couldn’t help but chuckle a bit.
“The fuck you laughin’ ’bout?” Hinote said. I saw the hint of a smile in the midst of his black goatee.