Rain continued to fall outside. Content with their mugs of frothy ale, nobody in the bar paid any attention to the two men at the counter with grim looks of dismay on their faces. Isaac mulled the situation over while the bartender produced a round of shots for a newlywed couple and their friends. When the ragged group happily stumbled away, the bartender noticed Isaac’s eyes on him and returned.
“When did Zhanghai kill the twins?” Isaac asked quietly.
“Two days ago,” the bartender answered. “Some of their samurai finally found their hiding place. Put their bodies out on display so everyone would know.”
The image made Isaac grimace. The death of the twins didn’t bode well for his mission of extracting them out of Four Eagles alive. Two days also meant Zhanghai had plenty of time to destroy any evidence the Dedericks brought with them. “The samurai torch the place?”
The bartender shook his head. “There’s a decent chance if you torch something here, the entire ghetto would go up in smoke. The samurai are still milling around the twin’s hideout. Word on the street is that they’re still looking for something within it.” The bartender leaned even closer, his voice just barely audible. “The streets are also saying Zhanghai’s bringing in the big guns tonight. Zou Mei.”
Isaac recalled the name from the dossier Stockham gave him while briefing him on the mission. “She runs Four Eagles, right? She gets a cut of every triad toll, every drug sale, every racket here.” Zou Mei hailed from Zhanghai, but apparently only worked for the Zhanghai Industrial Corporation in an unofficial capacity, handling their dirty work. She was the possible go-between for Zhanghai and the Restorationists.
But if the samurai were still there - and were so thoroughly stumped that they needed to bring in Zou Mei - then there was something still in that hideout that Isaac could find and bring back to the base. He would need to move fast, though - Zou Mei was at least Circuit 2B, while Isaac was still 1C. It wouldn’t be impossible to take her, but it would be an uphill battle.
“Where can I find the Dederick twins’ hideout?”
The bartender remained quiet. He had a thoughtful look on his face while washing another mug. “You sure you want to risk your life for that?”
“It’s what I’m here for.”
“In that case…” The bartender’s voice trailed off; his eyes drifted down to Isaac’s wallet once more.
Man, no more dime novels…or anything, for that matter, for the next month.
But it needed to be done, so Isaac emptied his wallet for the bartender.
“You’ll want to move east across the rooftops in the direction of the giant statue of the goddess. You can’t miss that rusting hunk of metal. She’ll be pointing at their hideout.” When Isaac stared at him, the bartender raised his hands. “That’s the best I can do for you. You think the Dederick twins told anyone beyond that? But if you’re looking for more information…all I got is that there’s usually around four samurai at the place. Might be more if Zou Mei’s coming, so if you got that big of a deathwish, you better move fast.”
“Deathwish?”
The bartender gave him a resigned expression and slumped against the back wall. “Nobody beats Zhanghai, kid. Nobody.”
Isaac slid off the stool and gave the bartender his best amused look. “We’ll see about that.”
He departed into the night, the sudden blast of shrill air and rain already making him long for the warmth of the bar. Isaac’s cloak whipped behind him as the downpour intensified, but within the darkness, he still managed to find a path upwards. A sagging staircase coiled around the Crusty Calydon; it disappeared from his view as he ascended above it, using utility poles as handholds during the steep climb. The stars above disappeared again under a sheet metal roof, but Isaac climbed over another set of shacks and arrived in the sky.
It certainly felt like that. He had reached the top level and stopped to survey his surroundings. Four Eagles stretched outwards in all directions, a dark and foreboding concrete jungle with utility poles, gutters, and ventilation shafts serving as foliage. Through the rain and beyond the edge of the ghetto, Isaac could see the distant lights of downtown. Dogs parked, metal clanged, children cried; Isaac felt like he stood atop the world, and a pretty battered one at that.
A barely-audible sound joined in, and then a giant lightshow illuminated Isaac from above. He nearly stumbled, thinking he had been caught, but the series of spotlights instead shifted in a slow pattern over Four Eagles. A blimp plodded along, broadcasting advertisements in a stoic deep voice down to the people of Four Eagles through loudspeakers.
ZHANGHAI, THE BEST FOR YOU AND I.
The blimp’s marketing campaign would provide background light and audio for Isaac during his journey. The statue was indeed easy to spot, its rusted frame towering over a field of metal foliage. The statue stood in one direction; in the other, Isaac could see the break in the urban jungle where the Zhanghai facility was located. As much as he wanted to go there now, it would be heavily armed; it was the nerve center of whatever both Zhanghai and the Restorationists were planning, after all. He’d have to come back with a battalion of marines some day.
ZHANGHAI, THE BEST FOR YOU AND I.
As he moved along, Isaac could better understand how someone could remain trapped in here. Not just physically, but mentally. He had only been in there for a few hours, yet it seemed like the world beyond the twisted maze of metal and concrete was just a fantasy. Grass, trees, blue sky, dirt - none of that existed here. Within the confines of the ghetto, it seemed like it couldn’t exist at all. Imagine being born here. You might never have the chance to see the world beyond here. You might not even have the desire to see it. You might not even accept that an outside world was real. To the children of rural migrants and overseas refugees that crowded within Four Eagles, this was their entire world.
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ZHANGHAI, THE BEST FOR YOU AND I.
Having become a skilled navigator of the maze, Isaac surprised himself with how fast he made it to the statue. He didn’t recognize the goddess it depicted; the Skyfather rode solo, after all. She wore a light dress and wielded a sword in one hand; in the other, she held a shield with a woman’s head carved into it. The woman’s head had snakes for hair. The goddess also had an owl on her shoulder. Isaac didn’t understand the significance of either, but perhaps this was the patron deity of the Atalantans.
Now colored a nice, rusted red, the goddess pointed her sword downward into the ghetto. There was a gap between a row of buildings Isaac currently stood on and the row the goddess pointed at. He crouched down and squinted his eyes; there was several lights on in the set of buildings across the gap, but nothing in particular stood out to him. To make it over there, he’d have to retrace his steps or keep moving down the path until he found a way to cross over, most likely through a shantytown.
But right before he departed, something called out to him. He paused, trying to listen for it, but nothing interesting happened. Isaac wrote it off as just another general noise of the ghetto mistaken for something important, but then his right eye flickered.
He gazed back down at where the goddess pointed.
There’s Kynzosis writing in there.
Isaac sat down, closed his eyes, calmed his breathing, and cultivated. Rain pattered against metal; the wind carried Zhanghai voices. Between the writing and the language, Isaac pinpointed the exact shack he needed to enter. A balcony, nearly hidden, jutted out into the gap, right where he needed to go. Mattresses had been stacked on the balcony; Isaac slowly did the math in his head.
The Dederick brothers were insane.
It wasn’t that far of a leap. While Isaac debated simply just taking the long way, others decided for him. Down below, through a patchwork of shacks and power lines, Isaac just barely made out the distinctive engine rumblings of Zhanghai motorcycles arriving on ground level near the hideout. The only people who could afford motorcycles here would be Zhanghai officials.
That must be Zou Mei.
Isaac gritted his teeth and took a few steps backwards. The metal was slick with rainwater; his heart jumped in anticipation. He rolled up the sleeve of his cloak, revealing the silencing charm. Any noise created by him within the next ten seconds would be covered up completely.
With a nod of his head, with a one and a two and a three, Isaac sprinted off the roof, leaping at the last moment. He sailed through the night sky and ran his left hand across the charm. Rddhi briefly flared and the only thing Isaac could now hear was his own heartbeat. The silence had never been that deafening, nor had the ground been so far away.
This was the type of leap anybody confident in themselves could make. The Dederick brothers must’ve been. The mattresses rushed up to meet Isaac; he hoped they were soft. Time seemed to slow down as he descended. Right before he landed, he caught a glimpse into the room through cracks in the wooden planks covering the windows. Four Zhanghai samurai hammered away uselessly at a spot on a wall within the room.
Nothing cracked or broke or even hurt when Isaac landed. He bent his knees and immediately rolled when he touched mattress, moving across concrete slick with rainwater until coming back to his feet in one fluid motion. With everything still silenced, he kicked open the metal door into the room.
So engrossed in their current project, the samurai didn’t even react. Isaac reared a fist back and activated his cultivation right as he punched; red lights flooded the room right as the first samurai crumpled from a blow to the back of the head. The samurai couldn’t hear, but could certainly see. The sight of their fallen comrade sent them into attack mode.
The next corporate samurai attacked with his hammer. Isaac dodged the blow and punched him into a couch, knocking it over entirely. The third samurai lunged with his sword; Isaac grimaced with it just barely sliced through his cloak, giving his arm a sharp cut. In the cramped room, however, the swordsman couldn’t maneuver that well, so Isaac got around him and punched his head through a wooden wall.
Red lights now greeted Isaac. The last samurai threw a superpowered punch; Isaac dodged it, letting it sail over his shoulder, but then the hand exploded. The sudden force sent Isaac stumbling into a concrete wall. The samurai continued his attack, forcing Isaac to dive out of the way when the explosion tore out another section of concrete.
Every time he punches, he can unleash an explosion.
Isaac got right into the samurai’s face and then stepped away just as the samurai threw his next punch. The fist was close to the samurai’s torso when it exploded; as expected, the explosions wouldn’t hurt backfire and hurt the samurai himself. But what the explosions did do was give off light. As Isaac kept the distance close, dodging and weaving, the samurai threw a flurry of punches, but the lightshow made the samurai lose Isaac in the process. Now to his back, Isaac kicked him towards the balcony. When the samurai fell to the ground, his head in the doorway, Isaac slammed the door into the samurai’s temple, metal smashing against flesh, until the red lights disappeared from his opponent’s fists.
The silencer had helped with his entry and first attack, but the samurai's strikes would’ve made a lot of noise. Isaac would only have a short amount of time before Zou Mei arrived. As to how she would make it her, he wasn’t quite sure. The mattress leap seemed like the only entrance into the room. Through the wooden wall, Isaac spotted a solid wall of concrete. The whole hideout was made of concrete; the only oddity was the locked metal safe in the wall.
Isaac peered closer at it. A long equation had been written in shaky handwriting along the adjacent wall. It included symbols Isaac had never seen (why was there a little 2 to the upper right of some of the other numbers?) and Atalantan writing. When Isaac looked at the equation and back at the safe, he understood. The combination to the locked metal safe must’ve been the answer to the equation.
Except yellow symbols, invisible to the ordinary eye, drifted out from the equation on the wall. Before he activated the Knyzosis Perception Art, Isaac took a brief pause and thought of something that didn't quite phase him until now, when he had a moment to think about it.
Wait…why the hell is this in Knyzosis?
He would have to ruminate on that later. For right now, he activated the Art and then couldn’t help but chuckle at what he read.
ZHANGHAI FOOLS. WE’LL KEEP THEM OCCUPIED WITH THIS EQUATION WHILE HIDING THE ANSWER IN PLAIN SIGHT FOR OUR RESTORATIONIST COMRADES.
2 + 2 =
Isaac knew the answer to that like the back of his hand (though he did count on his fingers to confirm). He approached the safe and twisted the knob three times - once to two, once to two, once to four.
The safe clicked open. Isaac peered inside.