Juliet sat in her cab with a plain view of the elevator bank in the parking garage of Rutger Tanaka’s building. Through her connection to Frida, Angel had learned that Tanaka had leased out half a floor of the BizRes Tower complex in downtown Luna—one of the older plasteel and glass towers that advertised “spaces for living and business.” She hadn’t planned on a parking garage for their meeting, but, sitting there, she felt it was as good a place as any.
The streets in the city weren’t designed for heavy traffic. More than ninety percent of the population relied on public transportation and pedestrian transit, but cabs and the vehicles of the elite still traversed the limited motorways. It wasn’t just the expense that restricted the vehicular traffic in the city; the licenses for personal vehicles were heavily regulated, with only a few new ones being issued each year as others were retired. Knowing that and knowing that Tanaka had only recently arrived from his base of operations on New Atlas, it had surprised Juliet to learn that he’d acquired one.
“So, he really is loaded,” she said when Angel highlighted Tanaka’s sleek, black sedan parked in a marked spot near the elevators.
“Either that, or he’s being imprudent with his savings. Frida has access to some of his accounts, but he keeps others to himself. I’ve only seen her access his primary operating account, but the balance was over seven million Sol-bits.”
“What’s he doing right now?” By way of answer, Angel opened a window on her AUI that contained a feed from, Juliet guessed, Frida’s perspective. She was sitting at a glass-topped desk, tabbing through some spreadsheets on a big crystal-glass display terminal, and beyond that, Juliet could see a closed door.
“Tanaka is behind that door. It’s his office.”
“And his two goons? Applebaum and Hawkins?”
“Applebaum is sleeping. He has a female companion. Hawkins is currently buying groceries to cook dinner for his brother, who’s arriving from Earth this evening.”
“Seems like a good time to me. Any thoughts?”
“Only that you should be careful. Remember what we discussed—don’t let him get close to you.”
“Right.” Juliet stepped out of the cab, one hand clutching the scabbard of the monoblade she’d taken from what she’d thought was Tanaka’s corpse. Grabbing the sword, her mind jumped to the gift she’d found in her room from Honey. When she’d gone for the sword, she’d found a white box adorned with a pastel-yellow ribbon. A card under the ribbon had been handwritten to say, I know you like these things. -H. Of course, Juliet had to open the box immediately. Inside, she’d found a black t-shirt with a sunglass-wearing yellow smiley face. It was ancient, vintage, and wonderfully faded. It was a sweet gesture that left Juliet feeling warm and even more worried about bringing trouble to her friends.
Shaking her head, focusing on her present situation, Juliet closed the door, and Angel sent the cab to a different level to await further instructions. As it hummed away, tires squealing on the plasteel ramp, Juliet looked at the camera cluster near the elevators and the one not far from where she stood. They wouldn’t be a problem; Angel had used her connection to Frida to access the cameras long before they’d set foot on Luna. Still, she stepped behind a plasteel pillar so only a sliver of her mirrored visor would be visible to anyone stepping off the elevators. “Okay, call Frida.”
A window on her AUI opened, and the connection tone sounded three times before Frida’s face appeared. She squinted at first, but then, as Angel sent an image of Juliet’s face through the connection, her eyes widened, and she said, “Lucky!” To her, it should look like Juliet was standing in one of the parks dotting the outskirts of the central Luna City dome.
“Hi, Frida. I’m back on Luna.”
“Wow, okay, um, I thought you might give me some heads up when you were on your way.” Her eyes twitched to the side nervously, and Juliet saw, in her other window, that Tanaka had opened the door to his office and was standing there, watching Frida. Juliet almost froze up when she saw him. It felt like a nightmare had come to life, and suddenly, the memories of her only other encounter with that man came rushing back. Her heart began to race, her breaths quickened, and her mind went blank as she saw, over and over, Lemur’s head sliding off his body to thump onto the floor. She felt those crushing blows as Tanaka used his outlandish speed to overpower her.
“Juliet?” Angel prompted.
“Ahem,” Juliet shook her head and jerked her attention away from the view of Tanaka and back to Frida. “You thought I should give you a heads up? Why?”
“Um, good point. I guess we aren’t exactly pals, are we?” Frida’s eyes kept shifting to the left and then back to focus on Juliet, and Juliet knew she was trying to read Tanaka’s expression, trying to see what he wanted her to say. Juliet, privy to everything Frida saw, could tell Tanaka wasn’t making it easy for her. He stood in the doorway to his office, staring, his tattooed face as expressionless as a stone. She almost felt sorry for Frida.
“Well, I’m ready to meet Tanaka. I want to get this business over with.”
“Really? Right now?” Juliet saw Frida glance at Tanaka again and saw him nod—a quick, slight movement that anyone but Frida might have missed. “We can do that.”
“I’m at Tranquility Gardens. Come here, and I’ll ping you with my exact location.” Juliet paused, then added, “No surprises, Frida.”
“Understood.”
Juliet cut the connection and then watched and listened through Frida’s feed as she turned her full attention to Tanaka.
“You heard that?” Frida asked, looking directly at her boss.
“Yes.” He turned back to his office as Frida stood up and pushed her desk chair in. When he returned, he wore a sleek overcoat, custom-tailored to accommodate the sword hanging from his left hip.
“Does he wear that everywhere, or does this mean the guy thinks I’m going to swordfight him?”
Angel’s voice was reassuring as she answered, “He wears it anytime he leaves his offices, which, from what I’ve observed through Frida, isn’t very often.”
Juliet watched Frida walk around her desk toward the glass doors leading out of their offices and into the hallway. “Do you want me to ready the team?”
“She said no surprises.” Tanaka’s voice was flat, matter-of-fact.
“What if . . .”
“She won’t assassinate me in the middle of the city park, Frida.”
“And you?” Frida pressed as she followed her boss down the hallway to the elevators. If Juliet had hoped to learn his intentions at that moment, she was disappointed; Tanaka ignored the question. She watched as Frida touched the menu selection for the garage, and then, as the elevator started down, she closed her eyes and tried to steel her nerves. She wouldn’t let herself freeze up when face to face with that man.
Maybe Angel was trying to help her relax. “He doesn’t seem to be planning anything nefarious.”
“A guy like that? If he sliced me in half in the park, a relative nobody SOA operative with no other ID? He could explain it a million different ways.”
“I see.” Angel didn’t have to say anything more; it wouldn’t be hard for a man with funds and connections to make up a story that explained his sudden violence. Juliet steadied her nerves and watched the elevator doors and beside them in her vision, the window showing Frida’s perspective. The elevator was moving quickly. “Ten seconds,” Angel said, helpful as always.
Juliet’s breathing had steadied, her heart rate had calmed, and she almost didn’t realize she was “channeling” White, or more accurately, her Lacy Blake, the cold-blooded killer, persona, which had been based, in part, on Juliet’s memories of White. When the elevator dinged and slid open, she didn’t even flinch. With Frida on his heels, Tanaka stepped out and began to stride toward his sedan. His polished dress boots clacked on the plasteel floor with his firm, forceful stride.
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Juliet was twenty-three meters away from his sedan, still mostly obscured by the concrete pillar, and she hadn’t moved so much as a fraction of a centimeter, but something must have alerted Tanaka. He froze just as he reached the rear quarter panel of his car. Frida was caught off guard and almost walked into his back, but she stumbled to a halt, sputtering, “What . . .”
“Quiet.” Tanaka held out his left hand, one finger up, and Frida instantly froze.
Juliet had seen enough. She sidestepped, moving out from behind the plasteel pillar, and stared at Tanaka's back through the mirrored visor of her helmet. Her boots' rubber soles were silent as she moved, but Tanaka must have felt her or something. He turned and looked over Frida’s shoulder, staring right at Juliet. To his credit, his face didn’t betray an ounce of surprise. He reached out with his left hand and gently pushed Frida to the side so she wasn’t between him and Juliet.
Frida moved where Tanaka nudged her, and when she turned to follow his gaze, her eyes widened. “Lucky? Is that . . .”
“Quiet,” Tanaka grunted.
Frida clamped her mouth shut and stepped back, further clearing the line of sight between Juliet and Tanaka. Juliet hadn’t moved. Her right hand hung down beside her Texan, her left hand clutched Tanaka’s sword, but she held perfectly still, waiting. After several tense seconds of silence, Tanaka surprised her by bowing. Not a short, quick bow, like one might see in some business meetings within certain East Asian-based corporations, but a deep, deliberate one, full of respect and formality.
Juliet knew almost nothing about bowing. She’d learned to do a quick bow before stepping onto the mat at the dojo in Phoenix, but this was different. She had no idea what it meant—was he saying he respected her? Was he apologizing because he was about to kill her? Was . . .
Tanaka interrupted her thoughts, “I see you’ve bested me again. I won’t insult you by asking how you knew to find me here.” Behind her mirrored visor, Juliet could see Frida’s pale, freckled face had blanched to the point that the poor woman looked almost transparent. She opened her mouth, but it was clear she was struggling with what to say or, more likely, if she should speak at all. Juliet could only imagine her thoughts—was she worried Tanaka thought she’d betrayed him?
Juliet didn’t speak—Lacy Blake would let her adversary sweat for a minute or two, let them wonder what she would do. Tanaka swung the left side of his coat back, exposing his sword, and stood still, his chrome, red-irised eyes unblinking. Juliet studied that face, the frown line between his heavy dark eyebrows, the weird, colorful tattoos, and his thin, stiff, unsmiling lips. He looked like a man who didn’t tolerate setbacks or surprises, a man who’d been through much and felt like he could handle just about anything. That face made the show of respect he’d given her feel almost scary, like a threat.
While they stared at each other, Juliet opened her mind, and almost immediately, quicker than she was ready to resist, she felt herself drawn into his chrome orbs.
Rutger crouched low, slinking through the manicured shrubs outside the big, gray, concrete building where the corporate children went to school. He wasn’t interested in the school but rather what went on outside it. He’d seen them before but had stupidly stood in the open and been chased away by the old lady who brought the children out in their neat lines, in their neat uniforms. This time, he was smarter. This time, he crept through the bushes and followed the sounds of the instructor, followed the sounds of the clacking wooden swords and the children’s shouts of, “Kiai!”
He crawled through the rough, sharp branches, his fingers digging into the moist soil of the garden bed, his eyes watering as he fought to keep from flinching or crying out as the thorns scraped his arms and cheeks and shoulders. When he poked his nose out between the last row of shrubs and had a clear view of the schoolyard garden, all of his efforts were made worthwhile. He could easily see and observe the children in their gray and white uniforms arranged in rows. He stayed there, watching as they, in turn, watched the ancient instructor, mimicking his movements as he walked up and down the rows, praising or scolding them.
Juliet blinked her eyes rapidly, caught off guard by the sudden deep dive into Tanaka’s memories. She’d only wanted to hear his thoughts, to see if he was intending to kill her. She was steeling herself for another attempt when he surprised her again by moving first, reaching down, and loosening his obi—the belt that held his sword in place. Juliet only knew the term because of her time watching Honey at the dojo, and she also knew it wasn’t something one did before a fight. Tanaka loosened it and slipped his sword from the folds, then he bowed again, gently placing the sword on the plasteel at his feet. When he straightened, he said, in that gravelly, rough voice, “Might I look in your eyes before you kill me?”
“Boss!” Frida’s eyes darted from Juliet to Tanaka and back again.
“Frida. Thank you for your service. Please execute my will to the . . .”
Juliet had seen and heard enough. Her mind was reeling from the sudden course change. Grunting with annoyance, she touched the button on the side of her helmet, sending her visor up and back. “I’m not here to kill you.” She frowned, then added, “I mean, not unless you start something first.” Only after she’d spoken did she realize she’d completely dropped her Lacy persona. Her glimpse into his memories, his sudden fatalistic action—they’d thrown her off.
“Boss, let me . . .”
“Quiet, Frida,” Tanaka spoke almost gently as he looked at Juliet, staring at her, locking eyes with her, and then, after a long moment, he nodded. “Thank you for meeting with me.”
“I don’t like threats hanging over me.” Juliet held up his sword. “I brought you your sword.”
“It’s yours. You won it in combat.”
“So, you’re just fine with that?” Juliet wasn’t letting the conversation lull her; she was ready, primed to act, to draw her gun and put two heavy polymer slugs in that man if he so much as flinched her way.
“Frida tells me you’re fast but prefer a gun to a blade.”
“What is this, Tanaka?” Juliet felt her awe of the man fading, replaced by something she’d kept buried for a long, long time—anger. “You wanna talk nice now? Do you remember slicing my partner’s head off? Do you remember using your augmented speed to beat me until my kidneys bled? Remember telling me we’d have some fun? That I’d spill my life story before begging to die?”
“Hai. Right before you killed me.” Again, Tanaka slowly, deliberately bowed.
“Stop doing that!” Juliet growled. “Obviously, I didn’t kill you.”
“Frida, tell this woman how I am standing here today.”
“How . . .” Frida licked her lips, then nervously glanced from Tanaka to Juliet. When neither spoke, she said, “His nanites kept his brain alive. We had to replace a lung, his heart, his liver, a kidney, his spleen, most of his small intestine, and . . .”
“What’s the point of this?” Juliet barked, interrupting the litany of Tanaka’s internal trauma.
“The point? I was dead. You won. I tasted my mortality. My mind hasn’t been the same since I awoke. I’m a shadow of the man I used to be. Shadows! Hah! I jump at them. I wake in the night, cold and drenched in sweat. I dream of . . . things, things a man shouldn’t see, shouldn’t know, but when I awake, I can’t remember what they were. Rutger Tanaka, as you knew him, is dead. This hollow creature before you might as well join him.”
“Boss.” This time, Frida’s voice wasn’t pleading or outraged. She had tears in her eyes and spoke softly, reaching a hand toward Tanaka’s shoulder. “Why didn’t you say . . .”
“Frida. Please. Be quiet.” Tanaka’s voice broke, and he shuddered, and Juliet stood there, dumbfounded. What the hell was going on here?
“Angel,” she started to subvocalize but found herself lost for words. Angel began to speak, too, perhaps to prompt her to see what she’d meant to say, but Frida, eyes red and watery, turned to Juliet when Tanaka dismissed her.
“Lucky, please!”
“Dammit! I’m not here to execute him.” Juliet turned on Tanaka. “I’m not here to kill you! Sorry if you’re depressed or whatever, but it’s not my fault. I was just trying to live!”
“Hai.” Again, that infuriating man began to bow, and perhaps because she was staring daggers at him, she felt herself slipping into another of his memories.
Rutger flinched and pulled back, but the old man’s fingers were swift and strong, and he snatched him out of the bush by his wrist. “Ah! Here’s the little stray cat who’s been watching my mice, hmm?”
“Please!” He squirmed and kicked, but the man was surprisingly strong. He held him out, dangling him in the air, and a broad smile lifted his wizened cheeks toward the crinkling, always smiling eyes.
“Cats have their uses, though, don’t they? My garden could use one. My mice could stand to know a little fear. Come, cat, let’s put some mackerel in your belly.” He gently lowered Rutger to the paving stones at the garden's center but kept a firm grip on his wrist as though he knew he’d bolt the second he was loose. “If you flee, I’ll just have to catch you again. I know you won’t leave my mice alone. You’ve got a taste for them now, don’t you?”
“Mice?” Rutger wasn’t sure what the old man was going on about; he’d only seen birds in the garden, never a rodent. The old instructor didn’t answer; he only chuckled and pulled him toward the garden pavilion where he lived.
“What a mangy tomcat you are! Hmm, Noraneko. A fitting name for one such as you. You’ll be allowed outside the pavilion where I take my tea, but don’t go inside. You’re an outdoors cat. If you eat what I give you and do your chores, maybe I’ll let you play with the mice. Would you like that, Noraneko?”
“ . . . just go back to the office.” When Juliet stumbled, figuratively, out of Rutger’s memory, she found he was talking to Frida and that the ginger-haired woman was openly weeping as she clutched at Rutger’s sleeve.
Angel spoke, interrupting Frida’s latest ple, “Juliet, few people use this level of the garage, but this scene is playing out very oddly. I’m worried that a pedestrian might interrupt things and give Tanaka the opportunity to do something rash. Are you all right? You’ve been quiet.”
Juliet took two steps forward, closing the distance between them a little and fully exposing herself, no longer in the shadow of the plasteel pillar. “Noraneko,” she said, and Tanaka snapped his gaze away from Frida, once again locking eyes with Juliet. He stepped forward, but his entire body trembled with the movement. He fell to his knees, visibly convulsing in tremors. He stared at the black-streaked plasteel floor of the garage and began to shake with shuddering silent sobs. Frida darted toward him, grabbed him around the neck, and tried to soothe him, but Rutger Tanaka collapsed into her, unconscious.
“What did you say to him?” She cried, looking at Juliet with wide, bloodshot eyes.
“Nothing. I . . . I reminded him of who he used to be, I guess.”