Rin, heir of the fallen house of Mushashi, sauntered down the raised streets of Tokyo near the Bay. Wearing platinum bob-cut hair and a short, sleek dress with metallic trim, she fit right in among the trendy citizens of the restored Bay district. Her cybernetic second pair of arms was folded tight to her jacket, making them look like a backpack, and she kept a smirk on her lips, eyes lively. No one who saw her would be able to guess what she was up to.
As dusk gave way to full night the city came alive with neon and holograms. Holo-tisements floated lazily above, filling the gaps between every skyscraper, distorted slightly by the falling rain. If there were still stars in the sky, not a soul in Tokyo would know. Rin had seen pictures of the old city, before the sea rose and claimed its due from the low-lying areas around the Bay. Before the ravaging of tropical storm Shinigami and all the rebuilding that had to be done afterwards.
It had looked much the same in spirit. The new Tokyo was just brighter, faster, and supposedly stronger. Beneath the now-raised streets and all across the Bay were thousands of state-of-the-art tidal generators. Over the Bay itself was an ever-growing island of districts raised on monolithic stilts. Every inch of real estate had to be used, it seemed, and Rin thought the city’s upward and outward expansion might never stop.
Rin’s destination came into view, just a few blocks shy of the Bay. The Kiraru Group’s global office was a stylish, angular construction, clad in a high tech polymer coating meant to counteract its own contribution to the district’s heat island effect. This left it blacker than night behind the signs and holograms lining the streets around it, so only the decorative highlights of green and gold at certain vertices and edges betrayed its actual shape.
But Rin wasn’t here to admire the architecture. She needed to get inside, undetected. These people had something that belonged to her.
“I’m closing in,” Rin said subvocally.
A sensor mounted on the synthetic plating over her throat picked up her speech and transmitted it to her support team back home.
“Been looking quiet, Rin,” Hachi sent back. “No traffic in or out, no unscheduled meetings like last time we tried.”
He sounded alert, but calm. No drugs tonight. That was good - Rin needed him in top condition to watch her back during the infiltration.
“Thanks, Hachi,” Rin said. “I’ll let you know if I can’t get in on my own.”
“Always here, Pinky,” he said.
Rin rolled her eyes. Hachi thought the nickname was cute and wouldn’t stop using it no matter how much she told him to knock it off.
She turned at the corner across from Kiraru and pretended to be on a voice call, speaking aloud with dramatic gestures.
“And did you hear what Sayuri did? No? Ohmygod she left him and moved in with Emi. Yes, his sister!”
She tried not to crack a smile as she went on in this vein. Making up stupid stories always amused her.
Once she was done scanning Kiraru’s ground level out of the corner of her eye, she quit the dramatics. There were cameras, but they were focused on the immediate grounds. Nothing apparent pointed across the street.
Rin was about to inform Hachi of this when an old man carrying grocery bags rounded the next corner. He was stooped over slightly, wearing a hood to shield him from the rain. Rin gave him a sweet but nonchalant smile while her upgraded eyes scanned him for hidden weapons. Suspicion never failed to pay off. But this guy was clean. He smiled back, obviously pleased at being greeted by a pretty young woman. When the old man had rounded the next corner Rin addressed Hachi again.
“Gonna need you to do something about the cameras, looks like. I can’t camo in the rain.”
“One sec,” he said, and she heard him tapping away at his controls.
He was as much a cyber-junkie as she was, but where she preferred to keep things as wireless and slim as possible, Hachi loved big, chunky pieces, loud motors, unnecessary lighting features, and of course tactile keys and controls.
“Ok I’m in. Can’t blind them,” Hachi said. “Their system will notice. But I can point one away from you, give you a vector of approach.”
“Do it,” said Rin.
“On it. And be careful when you break in, Pinky. I won’t know all of what’s in there till you put my tap on the lines.”
Rin nodded, though he couldn’t hear that. She triple checked the street for witnesses, then crossed at a jog. By the time she reached the opposite sidewalk, Hachi had adjusted one camera to cover a redundant angle. He sent an overlay straight to Rin’s internal HUD, and the safe vector of approach was highlighted in a soft yellow.
She made her quick way down a biocrete pavilion and across a wedge-shaped lawn carpeted in Grass-02. There was a maintenance entrance here at the corner of the skyscraper, with a biometric reader mounted on the wall. All of these readers had physical emergency ports for law-enforcement use, and Rin was prepared to exploit this. A black market SkeletonKey was one of the first upgrades she’d given herself.
A tiny panel opened on one of her arms, synth skin parting smoothly. Rin pulled the Key’s jack out and plugged herself into the bio-reader. She’d updated the police department’s access codes before leaving base that afternoon, but it was possible they’d changed since then. Standard security would give her three attempts to get the code right before triggering an alarm.
She tried the updated code for Kiraru Group. It was rejected. The bio-reader’s display informed her she had used one of two attempts.
“Crap,” she muttered. “Hachi, I need a fresh code.”
“Was afraid of that,” he sent back. “Cops are always throwing us curveballs. Sure you don’t just wanna slice your way in?”
Rin could, if she wanted to. But she thought it was too soon to resort to force. If she made too much noise or triggered an alarm this early in the mission, she might not have time to get what she’d come for.
“I will if I have to,” she sub-vocalized. “But let’s try the code first.”
Hachi had been tapping while she spoke. “Okay got it. I don’t see any reason it shouldn’t work but…”
“Thanks,” Rin said, and sent the code to the reader.
The screen lit up blue and she heard the door’s magnetic lock snap open.
“Nice,” Hachi said, “I saw that. Alright, I’ll see if I can purge that entry from their system’s logs. You set the tap.”
Before the door had opened fully, Rin was in. The hall inside was dim with nighttime lighting. Shut doors with holographic labels lined one side of the hall. Maintenance, HVAC, Supplies, and so on. The opposite wall had a built-in aquarium, swimming with exotic fish in every color of the rainbow. Ahead there was a narrow hall leading right, and a holosign hanging from the ceiling indicated a maintenance elevator in that direction.
Rin looked up. As expected, there was a camera mounted above the door, angled downward. But now that she was in from the rain, she could pull another trick out of her sleeve. Rin activated her optical camouflage and shook off the clinging water, then crept forward.
“Vision check,” she sub-vocalized.
“No indications the system sees you,” Hachi confirmed.
Rin turned down the next hall, which held a few unlabeled doors. At the end of the hall waited the elevator. Rin ducked beneath the camera above it and examined the obstacle. Her research told her she needed to reach the fifty-second floor to reclaim the family heirloom that was stored there. While Hachi could theoretically clean up all the logs as she went, the more actions she allowed the systems of the building to take, the harder his job would be. Thankfully, she had another way to make use of the elevator shaft.
Rin wedged fingers between the shut doors and strained just a little to pull them apart. This robotic strength, the reinforced bones and muscles, was just another gift from old Dr. Ishiguro, may he rest in peace.
Thanks Doc, she thought. She slipped through the slim gap and let hydraulics close the doors behind her.
The elevator car was several stories up, unmoving. Just a fifty-two floor vertical climb lay between her and her family’s legacy. More than worth it, by Rin’s estimation.
“Signal getting a …. choppy,” came Hachi’s voice. “Any leads …. tap?”
There were lots of lines and conduits running up and down the shaft, but it was easy enough to pick out the data line. Rin found a junction box and installed Hachi’s tap, hoping Kiraru’s systems wouldn’t notice the intrusion.
“Ah, yes,” Hachi sent. “Thanks. Feels like a breath of fresh air.”
“Have you ever even been outside?” Rin asked.
“Ha. Ha. Yes, Pinky. Once or twice,” Hachi sent back.
Rin deployed her extra arms. The two cybernetic appendages unfolded smoothly from their mounts on her back, and she mentally flexed them to check for latency. She’d removed the razor sharp blades that were her standard equipment and replaced them with robotic grippers. Strong as her own hands were, the robot hands offered more precision, and more options for climbing.
Rin started up the wall, grasping at any pipe or groove that looked strong enough to hold her. She was halfway up to the elevator car when Hachi chimed in again.
“Little problem, Rin,” he said. She could hear him holding back the nerves. “Kiraru AI must have noticed the anomalies. No alarms yet, but looks like it’s running checks.”
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“I’ll hurry,” Rin sub-vocalized. “Keep me updated.”
“This treasure you’re after better be worth it,” Hachi said.
It was worth everything, at least to Rin.
There was just enough of a gap for Rin to crawl, spider-like, past the elevator car. She startled when the car lurched into motion at her back, moving down. Frozen, she waited for it to pull below her.
“Elevator’s moving,” she said.
“Saw it,” said Hachi. “You good?”
“For now.”
Rin doubled her pace and continued the climb.
Father had loved climbing. One of his only pursuits apart from AI research and cybernetics. From the time Rin was old enough to pull her own weight up the handholds on a rock, Father had taken her with him on hikes and bouldering jaunts. She could hear his voice still, coaching her on one of their last hikes. Before everything went wrong. Before she got sick.
Take it slow, Rin. Use your feet whenever you can. Try to avoid full extension. Yeah, that’s it. No need to rush.
“There is today, Dad,” she muttered.
“What?” asked Hachi.
“Sorry, nothing,” she said.
Rin passed floor thirty, forty, had just reached fifty when the elevator car started up toward her again.
“Dunno where it’s going,” Hachi said. “Can’t find its routines. Look out.”
Rin reached the fifty-second floor and pressed herself tight against the conduit-littered wall beneath the shut doors. Shortly the elevator car caught up to her and started to slow. She thought it might stop at fifty-two and her heart skipped a beat. But the car cruised up to fifty-four and she heard the machinery of its doors opening.
She waited, tense and still. The car stayed put.
Rin pulled herself up a little further, feet resting on a short length of pipe. The car started back down. Rin bent her robot arms to the task of prying the door open, and it slid apart with little resistance. Rin leapt smoothly up to the floor and rolled out of the shaft just as the maintenance car moved past. She didn’t wait to see where it was going to stop, and let the outer doors shut.
“On fifty-two,” Rin reported.
The walls on this floor were a smooth, glossy black, with the telltale imperfections of being 3D-printed metal. Most human eyes couldn’t see the minor flaws in modern printed materials, but Rin’s could.
The back hall she’d emerged into led to a vast open floor beyond, just as her hacked blueprints of the place had indicated. This floor was filled with rows of storage units. Thousands of stacks of drawers standing cold and black beneath pale blue night lighting. Floor to ceiling windows offered a stunning view of Tokyo’s streets outside. Rin wasn’t nearly at the city’s upper reaches, but everything out there still looked small enough to be mere toys.
“Something’s moving,” Hachi said. “I see doors sequencing open on thirty-four, but the sensors won’t tell me what it is.”
“Tell me if it heads up here,” Rin sub-vocalized.
She moved into the stacks. A library not of books, but hardware units storing AI models of the Kiraru Group’s many wealthy clients.
These weren’t Uploaded Minds of the type that science fiction had posited for a hundred years or more. They were merely personality models based on clients’ data - preservations of their external personalities. In one of these thousands of drawers rested the only real heirloom her parents had left for Rin after their deaths.
Rin found the ‘M’ row, then a drawer labeled Mushashi, K, L.
“Dad, Mom,” she whispered.
She’d been planning this job for so long, it was hard to believe she was actually here.
“Car’s coming back up, Rin,” Hachi said. She always knew he was getting serious when he stopped calling her Pinky.
There was no apparent method of accessing the storage unit her parents’ model was trapped in.
“Brute force it is,” she hissed.
She tried to wedge robotic fingers between the electronically locked drawer and the steel around it, but the gap was too thin. Rin’s jaw tensed. She drew her katana, the name of her family inscribed on the blade, and placed it in her robot hands. They wedged the razor-thin tip of the sword into the gap and pried at the drawer.
“Car’s slowing down,” Hachi said, “almost to fifty-two.”
The pressure might have broken a lesser blade, but Musashi was of the highest quality. Strength and steel prevailed over the black, printed material and the drawer’s lip bent outward.
“Pretty sure you got company, Rin,” Hachi said. “Still getting nothing from the sensors. Might be camo like yours.”
Or something the building is programmed to ignore, Rin thought. She didn’t have time to talk.
Rin opened the drawer and her deep blue eyes filled with tears. She suppressed a sob. In the padded interior lay the hardware that encased the final memory of her parents’ personalities. Rin put a hand to her mouth, felt how warm her cheeks had grown. This was all she had left of them, not even a necklace from her mother, or her father’s scratched-up belaying device.
The unit was octagonal, its case made of expensive white PorcelainPlus. The brand-name cutting edge composite wasn’t even the most costly component. Father had ordered it engraved with the family name in gold filigree - a copy of mother’s own beautiful script. On the bottom side of the unit were a contactless charging node and a variety of ports for data retrieval. Within waited the voices of her parents…
“Rin, it’s —”
Hachi’s voice was lost in the crash of Rin’s hunter careening around the corner. The sentry looked full synthetic, not cyborg but robot. Bulging rounded plates of armor on its limbs and torso suggested the frame of a human bodybuilder. It’s head was little more than a helmet with thin, wicked red strips of light for eyes. These were of course just for show - the sentry’s sensors would be its sight - but the show was effective.
Rin clutched the Octagon to her chest and backed away slowly. The sentry hulked in the space between rows of storage, not looking at the damaged drawer but right at Rin.
“Hachi, it sees me,” she sub-vocalized. “I think it sees me.”
“That’s not possible.”
But it was. Rin’s camo was technically more than just optical, but it couldn’t possibly cover the whole spectrum. This bot had been built for criminals like her.
“Relinquish the asset,” the sentry ordered, taking heavy steps forward. “Deadly force is authorized.”
Rin broke and ran, and the sentry pounded after her. Weaving her way back toward the maintenance hall, she traded items with her robot hands - Octagon for sword. She was much faster than the sentry and reached the maintenance exit first. But it was shut, locked tight. Rin kicked the door with reinforced leg, but it didn’t even shake on its hinges. There was a plasma cutter mounted on her right robot arm, but she had no time to use it.
The sentry was on her, and she pivoted away a moment too late. Its iron fist slammed into the side of her head and she tumbled across the floor. If her skull hadn’t been armored, she would have been dead. As it was the blow left her dizzy. But all her upgrades and training weren’t for nothing. She rolled onto her feet out of the fall, one smooth motion, trusting the robot arms to keep her parents safe.
She made as if to flee, then spun when the sentry came close and slashed across its chest with Musashi. The microscopic edge scored the bot’s armor deeply but didn’t penetrate. Rin cursed. She’d hoped to nick its power core.
Rin dodged swinging fists, praying the Octagon would remain undamaged. She was grateful this sentry hadn’t been equipped with ballistics or lasers. But she supposed its armament was meant to reduce collateral damage in the event it had to fight an intruder like herself.
Rin dashed under a huge, crushing arm, and planting feet solidly against the wall, ran up four steps, pushed off, and flipped over the sentry’s largely immobile head. She drew Musashi after her, cutting a deep slice in its helm. Again, she did not hit anything vital, but she did land on her feet. The sentry was slow to turn and Rin weighed her options. She could slice at it enough times to break through the armor, or cut and run. But where to?
Her eyes caught the rainbow refractions of light through the fifty-second floor’s large windows. It was as much a gamble as trying to fight the bot, but it was the only other option she could see.
Rin spun away from the sentry, rounded the next aisle of storage units, and made a break for the windows. She took the Octagon from her cyber arms and held it in a football carry, leapt and turned in the air. Her armored back slammed into the glass and she bounced off painfully, nearly losing her grip on the Octagon and her sword.
“I coulda’ told you that wasn’t regular glass,” Hachi quipped.
Stomping feet raced closer. Rin slashed at the window with Musashi, piercing, cutting. She traced an X, planted feet firmly on the floor, and kicked the glass. It cracked but did not shatter. The sentry was right behind her and she barely dodged aside to avoid one grasping armored hand.
The bot was in mid-swing and one huge fist hammered the reinforced glass. Now it did shatter, a rain of twinkling razors falling toward the ground far below.
Rin hung back as if she was still committed to the fight, and when the sentry came for her, she juked and spun around it, fell into a slide and let herself cross the broken window’s threshold.
“You’re freakin’ crazy,” Hachi sent.
Rin’s robot hands clawed at the skyscraper’s exterior and she dug Musashi into glass, then steel, then glass again, tracing odd angles to add friction and reduce downward momentum. It was barely enough, and the fall went on forever. Thankfully, the rain had stopped. Wind and the warmth of the building’s special layer of cladding had dried it somewhat. At last Rin hit the ground. Even her reinforced ankles groaned at the impact with the walkway of biocrete, but they held.
Rin dashed back toward the yellow zone Hachi had made for her, keeping close to the building despite her invisibility. Once in the zone, she sprinted away from the Kiraru tower and across the street, without looking back.
Rin sheathed Musashi, dying to check the Octagon for cracks. It had to wait. She made for the street corner where she’d seen the old grocery man, turned down it, and ran for the nearest alleyway. Only then could she believe the armored sentry’s red eyes were off her back. It would no doubt be gauging where she might go, and add that to its security report. But now that she was clear of the building, she was confident she could obscure her retreat.
“You left my tap unit,” Hachi complained. “You know how much those cost, Pinky?”
“Thanks for your help, Hachi,” Rin sent back. “Hopefully they don’t find it.”
“I already wiped the memory, so doesn’t really matter,” Hachi said. “It’s not like we can really hide the fact someone got in and stole something. But won’t they know it was you?”
“No one knows I’m alive,” Rin said. “I got a gravestone right between Mom and Dad’s.”
“Oh,” said Hachi, at a loss for once.
Rin spotted a grate that led down to what people called the city’s undercroft. It was an endless labyrinth of catwalks and maintenance nodes that stretched beneath all raised sections of the permanently flooded city, and it was a place her kind of people knew well.
Rin lifted the grate, slipped down the grimy ladder, and dropped to the catwalk hanging a dozen feet over the intruding waters of the Bay. She wound her way in the general direction of home, taking a few winding detours just in case eyes from Kiraru managed to track her passage. Every moment she fought the urge to stop and test the Octagon.
It was everything she’d cared about since she’d learned of its existence, but she had to keep moving, just in case. It was a long jog home, but eventually she made it.
Rin and her ragtag bunch of misfit friends had made a nest for themselves in a long abandoned three-story warehouse. It was a part of town still untouched by any reclamation, restoration, or upcycling efforts, which meant only those of ill repute were expected to be in residence. Perfect for Rin’s needs.
But she wasn’t ready to go in.
Instead she climbed one of the fire escapes and took up her favorite perch on the warehouse roof, which overlooked a small pond out back. Finally she held the porcelain Octagon in her hands, examining it from every angle. No cracks, and not a scratch. Most importantly, the ports were clean and undamaged. Rin breathed a sigh of relief. She pressed her mouth in a line, steeling herself against tears, extended her most standard dataline from its compartment in her arm, and plugged in.
Detecting attempted access, the Octagon chimed calmly in her head as it quickly booted up. A notification appeared in Rin’s HUD.
Initiate first access? Y/N
Without a second thought, Rin picked yes. A moment later, a familiar, if slightly synthetic voice filled her mental ears.
Hello, friend. To whom do I owe the pleasure?
“Rin. Rin Musashi,” came the trembling answer. She knew it wasn’t really them, but…
Rin? It was her mother. It’s been so long, little love. How have you been? Honey, come on, say hi to your daughter.
Rin! Long time no see, said her father.
The addition of his voice was too much. Rin broke into sobs, hunched tightly over the priceless unit with its simulacra of their precious personalities. Her tears dotted the dusty concrete roof between her feet, and she held the unit so tight she feared to break it.
Rin? Rin? asked mother. We’re both so glad to hear from you. Is everything okay?
It was, and it wasn’t. This was but one step on Rin’s journey from here to a future she could hardly even comprehend. She needed to understand why her parents had died, who or what was really responsible, and then, to get revenge. She had their voices now, and some of their thoughts. It was the closest anyone could get to raising the dead. So yes, this was more than okay. But there was so much left to do.
“Mom,” Rin said. It wasn’t really her. She had to remember that. But what else was she going to call them? Mom-bot? Daddyborg? “Mom, yes. I’m okay. More than okay. It’s so good to hear your voice.”