There were many endorphinbikes sitting outside, the keys left in the ignition. Maybe someone spotted Morfran and called in Chudo from outside the building.

The air outside of Andalaf Tower was cold, and it was dark outside. I bounced up and down as Hinote ran down the front steps.

“Hold on, Hinote,” Shun said as we reached the street. He paused, and I smelled her before I saw her and felt her hand lifting my chin. “I told you I would, so here.” She lifted one of my Sachiknives up to my nose. Everything was blurry and still faintly red, though the ringing in my ears had ceased. I smelled the Sachi and reflexively took in a sharp breath through my nose.

“Let me off,” I said to Hinote. I twisted in his grip, and he set me down.

“Goddamn, Nin, you sure you alright?” Hinote said.

“I’m fine,” I said, looking around. My vision was crisp and clear. I looked at the endorphinbikes. “They must have called patrols to the building. Let’s get out of here. I don’t know how, but … my son is alive. And that fuck has him under his spell.”

I turned to Shun.

“You … don’t you remember?” she said.

“Remember what? The illusion Sachi? Shun, he’s fucking with our heads. This is what he does. He gets off on it.” I reached a hand out to her, and she recoiled. In Chudo, we were trained to recover as fast as possible from illusion Sachi. ‘No matter how real it feels, ignore it.’ Those were Morfran’s words. Shun did not receive that training. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just need my bag. I’ll need it to get out of Man’naka, at least, until I can sleep.”

“Everything he said was true about me and him. And the contract.”

“If you want, we can talk about all of that later, Shun, but if you’re coming, let’s go,” I said, losing my patience. This happened, often with those unaccustomed. Some went insane under the effects of the illusion Sachi. I turned to go.

“How do you explain the wires? Answer that, and then we’ll go. Why are there … wires inside of you?”

“It was my suit. It’s connected to my body,” I said. “Ai, you can sense him, right?”

“It’s already far away, but it’s heading east,” Ai said. “I’m going to follow it.”

I got on an endorphinbike, and Ai climbed on behind me. I turned the key, and it hummed to life. “Rin, do you have a port?”

The cat-like man nodded to me, stepping onto a bike beside me and plugging the receptor into his back.

“Shun, you get on behind Hinote,” I said. I knew she didn’t have an endorphin port.

They stared at me. “Come on!” I felt rough around the edges of the intense Sachi high. The illusion Morfran put on my mind was trying to seep in, take hold again, and get me to believe it. It’s not true, I told myself. It’s not.

Hinote plugged a bike’s receptor into his ear, looking at Shun.

“Shun!” I said.

Her eyes darted away from the ground to look at me with shining eyes.

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“Yeah, I’m—I’m coming,” she said, getting on behind Hinote as he turned it on. We rode off through the streets of the Upper-Plateau. We passed some street cars, and the Sachitrain was running on its loop, but I kept us from the busy sections of the city. We did see several convoys with infantrymen heading in the direction of Andalaf Tower, but they gave us no trouble. The tower was where their boss was, the man who gave them their spot on the Upper-Plateau, the man who was now dead.

We descended the long ramp leading from the top of the plateau down to the barren, cracked landscape outside the city. The sun started its red rise. I looked behind me, and saw the yellow smog shrouding the top of Man’naka’s skyscrapers.

When we had put about thirty miles between us and the city, riding over the flat plains, avoiding the roads, stopping only to snort, I brought our party to a halt.

“While I’d rather travel together than apart, I just want to make sure everyone else wants that,” I said. “As it stands, I don’t believe any of us can set foot in Man’naka without being taken back into those cells below the Andalaf Tower and probably executed.”

“I have to follow the Dead God,” Ai said, looking east. “I don’t completely know why yet, but I just … I know it. I think it’s more important than anything, including stopping anything Andalaf is doing.”

Hinote kicked some dirt. I could see he was pissed, and I didn’t blame him. This had all expanded much further than any of us could have imagined. After a full minute of Hinote staring into the sun, he said, “Will Toshiko be safe with Akio?”

“My father has successfully kept me hidden for twenty-three years,” Ai said. “He’ll know that he needs to go somewhere else to keep her safe. He also has a terminal that we can call when we are a safe distance away from the city.”

“Is this more important than takin’ down Andalaf?” Hinote said.

I looked to Ai. “When I got close to it … I don’t know. It’s powerful. And if Andalaf wants it bad enough to let us bomb their towers, just to get the public back on their side, cranking out Sachi … yeah, it seems like the Dead God is the whole point.”

“I’d just make shit worse for Toshiko anyway. They think I’m a terrorist and all,” Hinote says.

“They think Nin is the terrorist, Hinote. You are a henchman,” Ai said, smiling.

“Man, fuck that, I’m the terrorist,” Hinote said.

“That’s fine, Hinote, you can have it,” I said. “I have to kill Morfran.”

I turned to Shun, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. She said, “I will follow Ai.”

We all turned to Rin.

“You’re welcome to go your own way, Rin,” I said. “Do you have anyone who you can go to? After … Nejirita’s attentions have settled on you? Somewhere to hide?”

Rin shook his head. “I have a home, far away. Perhaps I will make it back there,” he said in his deep voice. “I, too, am a wanted individual. Audur, we were called. And I am the last of them. The only path I can see is one of fighting, not running. I will join you.”

I nodded my head and took a long snort of the summon Sachi, hopefully one that would prevent me from needing to pull over for maybe ten minutes. Ai wrapped her arms around my waist on the endorphinbike, and we rode east, in pursuit of a Dead God.

Who are you?

I laughed at the voice, more sure than ever before.

Morfran must have somehow faked my son’s death. I remembered it clearly then. Everything was so clear in the sweet embrace of the dead demon Sachi powder, with the roaring wind whipping my hair. Morfran threw me into the Sachi. The Jonny that was with us took Shun to safety. A kind man from a nearby village came and helped put me back together. Morfran had infiltrated our minds to such a degree that Shun thought she had birthed Asahi, and Morfran, of all people, was the father, not my dead husband, Yami.

I went to bed killing for money, killing to find Morfran, cutting through the weeds to see better, unable to face reality, unwilling to see clearly. When I awoke in the kind man's hut, I felt as if Mofran had dealt me a fate worse than death.

Morfran had done it again, convincing everyone around him, including Shun and my son, of exactly what he wanted them to believe.

I bared my teeth to the wind.

I was under no illusion there, screaming across the dead plain, Ai’s presence behind me like a hot coal to my soul.

I was awake. I was alive.

I tilted my chin back and let the sun cut right to the center of me.

“I am Ningyo,” I said, “and the sky has yet to fall.”

THE END OF NINGYO

BOOK ONE:

BEFORE THE SKY FALLS