When Ken’s peers were performing calculus in their head, he’d still been learning to add and subtract. Had he lived in the centuries before the Onslaught, teachers would’ve considered his three-year-old self a prodigy.

Now seventeen, he held one of the best jobs a Purebred could attain: cleaning the floors at Kyoto Central Peacekeeping Headquarters.

With the corridor abandoned at this moment, he hefted his mop and twirled it circles like he’d seen in one of those 2D movies the ancients used to watch during the Age of Greed: Once Upon a Time in China, when there'd once been a country known as China. Back then, combat flowed like poetry, so unlike the stuttered fighting drills the Peacekeepers practiced.

Spinning, he avoided an imaginary stab and swept the haft through his equally imaginary opponent. Like the legendary master in the movie, Ken left no shadow with his techniques; not because he moved with blinding speed, but rather because of the ubiquitous, sterile light filling the smooth hall. The upswing up his staff—

The maglift doors at the end of the hall swished open.

He snapped to attention, bringing the mop to his side, then dared a glance.

Oyama Keiko, captain of the elite tactical unit of the Peacekeepers, stood there. Her braided hair clung tight to her head, framing an oval face with a high-bridged nose, large eyes, and full lips. Nobody, save for some of the Purebred, were unpleasant on the eyes, but Keiko was a beauty among beauties.

She stepped out in perfect unison with two male Peacekeepers to either side. Like all Xhumans, they stood about half a head shorter than Ken. Their uniforms clung to them, hers emphasizing the curves of her lithe form. Its grey sheen resembled the underside of a storm cloud, flashing like lightning as they strode toward him. Their clothes ended in toe boots, whose internal suppressors muted the sound of their steps.

Swallowing hard, he bowed his head. “Captain.”

“Ken.” She paused midstride, her aides freezing in synchronicity.

His pulse sped up a notch. She knew his name. And now she was stopping. To talk to him! He kept his head lowered.

“You missed a spot.” Her tone sounded encouraging, like how he paised his shibakita when it performed a trick, as she gestured with an open hand toward the smooth, durastrium floor.

“Thank you, captain.” Ken bowed lower.

At least she noticed him. It was better than the others, who looked through Purebreds like they did the cleaning droid. No doubt, it swept floors better than him, both because its sensors and algorithms, and also since the work bored him to tears. And to think, they reserved these jobs to make Purebreds find fulfillment in life.

With a smile that sent his heart fluttering, she continued down the hall, underlings in tow. A door up ahead to monitoring station six swished open—

Glass shattered in the room beyond. Someone within cursed. The men at Captain Keiko’s side dropped into defensive stances, their hands sweeping sidearms from holsters with fluid grace.

“Ken!” Captain Keiko turned to him, beckoning before she and her men strode in.

If his heart had fluttered before, now it raced. Whatever had happened, he was needed. She needed him. He ran over and looked in.

Several men and women in red, high-collared uniforms bustled about; while others sat watching three-dimensional images. Four officers gathered around one display, pointing.

Ken craned over Captain Keiko’s shoulder to get a better view.

The projected form of a bald, adult Purebred male in his twenties was looking right at them, head leaned forward. His bushy black eyebrows scrunched together and shifted.

“Pan back three meters,” a major said.

The bald man shrunk, revealing him to be wearing curious black robes. They looked to be right out of the old samurai dramas, save for the decorative silver border along the hems. Staff in hand, his eyes followed them. Around him, shorter passersby in fashionably bright-colored clothes gave him a wide berth, and pretended not to stare.

“Could the scanners be wrong?” the major asked.

The lieutenant beside him shook her head. “The scanners do not detect an ID chip.”

Ken patted his body. He and every other human—Purebred and Xhuman alike—had a nanochip that stored everything about them, from their date of birth to the last shirt they bought.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“That can’t be right,” the major said. “He must’ve found a way to deactivate or remove the chip.”

That couldn’t be right, either. Ken’s forehead bunched up. The chip circulated in the blood, making it impossible to find.

The major turned to another station. “Specialist Tani, run facial recognition. Corporal Koda, run spectral DNA analysis.”

“Yes, Sir,” a man and woman said in unison.

The woman’s fingers waved through the air, and in front of her, two-dimensional faces flashed over each other. They looked so similar as the images slowed, it seemed like the stick figures Ken used to draw and flip through in the corner of his books.

“Well?” The major put his hands on his hips. “Is it like the girl who turned up at Honnoji last week? Nothing in the database?”

“Yes, but I’m searching deeper in the older databases.” Specialist Tani’s hand swiped through the display again, and a mix of both the alphabet and the old script danced through the air.

Kanji, they’d once called it. Ken shuddered. Studying the classics from actual paper books had been considered spirit building, to imbue a sense of pride in the Asiatic cultures that once flourished here. That, even though everyone all used the planetary government’s sanctioned alphabet now. He turned back to the image of the stranger who looked to be speaking to a young woman. Words flashed above her, identifying her as Shirai Yuki.

“Have the closest team intercept,” the major said. “Computer, transfer sound to main speakers.”

In the display, the woman waved a hand back and forth and shook her head as the man’s speech came out in a lilting mix of sounds.

It was the old language, just like the strange girl from last week who’d turned up out of nowhere, stolen a glowing blue crystal from an old well, and then vanished into random wormhole aperture. Analysis of her skin particle DNA didn’t match anyone in the history of Earth, but she was human. Not like the vast majority of XHumans today, but Purebred, like Ken.

“It must be another like that girl,” a sergeant said.

“Maybe.” The major snorted. “The Elestrae know something about it, but they won’t tell us. Computer, translate.”

The stranger approached another man and bowed in the old way. Just like in the really old movies from a great empire known as Shaw, the words coming out of his mouth didn’t match the movement of his lips.

“Excuse me, I am looking for Honnoji.”

Ken’s heart raced. He, and nobody else would have remembered Honnoji if the strange girl hadn’t turned up last week. Since then, it had been all over the news. Investigative reporters dug up old records showing that Honnoji Academy had once been an elementary school. It, in turn, had been built over the ruins of an old temple where the famous warlord, Oda Nobunaga was betrayed by one of his retainers one thousand-three hundred years before.

“DNA analysis shows he is Purebred,” the sergeant said.

Just like the strange girl. And Ken.

Specialist Tani gasped. “I found a record that matches the DNA… From 2015. Ishihara Ryusuke.”

The buzz of Peacekeepers went silent. No doubt they’d done the math faster than Ken. The man was eight hundred years old. XHumans only lived to three hundred, and the theoretical maximum was four hundred. Chatter erupted again.

“That’s not possible,” someone said. “Life expectancy back then was eighty years.”

Just like Ken’s kind now. If the man weren’t genetically modified, his appearance would suggest he was in his late twenties.

“Cryostasis?” the major asked.

A female lieutenant shook her head. “Cryotech wasn’t so advanced back then.”

“The Pointy-Ears have supposedly dabbled in time travel,” Specialist Tani said.

The lieutenant shook her head. “Takes a vast amount of energy, and it’s just as reliable now as cryostasis was in his time. Look.”

In the display, three Peacekeepers in light armor approached the man.

“Excuse me kind sirs.” Ishihara Ryusuke. “I am looking for Honnoji.”

The Peacekeepers exchanged looks.

Of course, they didn’t have the benefit of translation, unless they’d thought to activate it in their helmets. One held up an open hand. “Stand where you are, drop the staff, hands on your head.”

The man cocked his head. “So sorry. My English not good.”

In the monitoring station, murmurs erupted again. He was speaking in the Common Tongue, with a heavy accent. The ancients called it English.

Snarling, the lead peacekeeper shot a hand out. The motion blurred in Ken’s eye, the effect of centuries of genetic modification combined with the reflex enhancements imbued by the armor. His fingers closed around the staff.

In an even faster movement, the stranger seized the Peacekeeper’s hand and twisted the staff. The Peacekeeper dropped to his knees with a yell. It had happened so fast, Ken would’ve missed it had he blinked.

It shouldn’t have been possible for a Purebred to do that to a XHuman in Peacekeeper armor.

But there it was. The end of the staff dug into the Peacekeeper’s wrist, which bent at a sharp angle.

The other Peacekeepers drew their particle guns, but their target released the first and swept the second’s feet out from under him. He let go of the staff—which balanced on the street— seized the third’s gun, and twisted it out of his hands. A simultaneous whip of an open palm sent him flying back three meters.

The man’s motions were so smooth, they could’ve been the master’s from that old movie. Ken gawked.

In that, he was just like everyone else in the room.

While the second peacekeeper rolled onto his side and the first staggered to his feet, the stranger went over to the third’s prone form and seized his wrist. The monitoring room went utterly quiet. In the display, the onlookers covered their mouths in a collective gasp. Many turned their heads away.

Ken winced at what was about to happen. The heroes of old weren’t supposed to really hurt anyone, let alone a helpless—

The man withdrew a pouch from the fold of his cloak, removed something from it, and flicked his fingers in several places over the unconscious Peacekeeper’s body.

“Computer, pan in on Peacekeeper 90210,” the major said, breaking the silence.

The pair grew in size. Something straight and shiny protruded from the peacekeeper’s hand, shin, and forehead.

Needles?

With a light groan, the Peacekeeper stirred.

Ken joined in in the collective gasp. Though only he, because of his love of old media, knew of this medicine, ancient even to Age of Greed. The stranger was an acupuncturist.

Just like the master in the movie.

“Captain Oyama,” the major barked. “Send a team to extract the Peacekeeper on the ground, and apprehend the suspect.”

Captain Keiko saluted, turned on her heel, and gestured her men along.

She paused and met Ken’s eyes, then gestured to where shattered glass lay in a puddle of water. “Please clean that up.”