Stumbling toward the reinforced door Pedro used the miss mash of assembled furniture in the gang’s den to keep him upright. Kenda walked behind him following his lead though he couldn’t guess why she was, she could have easily reached it before him. But upon getting to the door, a short but arduous walk for Wilde, he discovered that it was locked. He was somewhat annoyed that he hadn’t realised that the gangers wouldn’t be so stupid to just leave Kay in an unlocked room. He did feel a little better though knowing that if he had run off to try and free her at the start of the fight and abandoned Kenda that it wouldn’t have helped anyone. It felt good to know that he’d made the right call.
‘Move over. I can bust it down’.
‘Yea – Wait, wait no! They might’ve booby trapped it. Let’s, let’s look about for the key. One of them should have it on them’.
‘Uh yeah. How ‘bout I look for it an’ y’ stay by the door an’ keep an eye out for anyone else comin’ by?'.
'Yeah… yeah that sounds good’.
Slumping his back against the wall Wilde kept standing whilst keeping alert for any sign that there were more gangers or anyone else moving in. He kept taking deep breaths of stinking air, collecting himself and trying to claw back some semblance of control over himself.
‘Ugh… Try the big one with the cyber arm first. That much cyberware in him he must’ve been high up in the gang. Fraggin’ grenade launcher in his arm…’.
‘Mm’.
Was the monosyllabic response from his ally. She did go over to inspect the body of the cyberpsycho ganger though, rifling through the pockets in the dead mans torn and stained jeans. Without saying anything she headed back over to Pedro, pausing to pick up the gangers turquoise bladed katana as she went.
‘Y’ were right. Got some keys, his commlink, a credstick, an’ I lifted his sword as well. Y’ want it? Have a matchin’ pair? Figured y’ earned it killin’ the guy’.
‘… I’ve already got one and I barely use it as it is. You want it?’.
‘Na, too small for me’.
She was correct. Looking at Kenda holding the sword it seemed like a toy in her hands.
‘Maybe Kay’ll want it then’. Pedro said with a grin. ‘If not, we can sell it somewhere. We’re in the barrens, somebody’ll want it’.
‘True. Here’s the keys then’.
Tossing them to Pedro’s chest he caught them, and he began the process of checking each one against the lock on the door. Oddly enough the lock seemed to be one that would typically be found on a car, as were all the keys on the ring Kenda had thrown him. It seemed a pointless waste of time to bother putting a car lock on a normal (if reinforced door) but that seemed to have been what the Nitro Mizuchi had done.
‘THE FRAG!?’.
Almost dropping the keys in the process Wilde whipped around, drawing his as yet unused machine pistol as he did so.
‘What is it!? Who’s coming!?’
Looking down at him with budging matte black artificial eyes the woman gestured to the small silver coloured credstick in her hand.
‘The credstick he was carryin’! It’s got ten thousand nuyen on it!’.
A flash of exactment ran through Pedro’s body. It was enough to pay for a decent fake SIN for Kay, or maybe help cover the costs of getting her out of Seattle. But annoyance quickly crept into him at Kenda’s outburst.
‘Focus damn it! Keep an eye out for anyone coming. Check the guys commlink to see if he called anyone to let them know what happened’.
Resuming his task of unlocking the door Wilde grew more irritated over the fact he’d already tried half the keys but none of them had worked. He wondered if any of the keys on the ring were the one to the door. It occurred to him now that having a car door lock might have been smarter than he’d given the Nitro Mizuchi credit for. The place was filled with cars, both complete and in some state of disassembly; there were probably plenty of car keys scattered throughout the decrepit mall, enough for it to be like looking for a needle in a haystack if they didn’t know where to start looking.
‘Uh Wilde? How’s y’r Japanese?’.
Without looking back at her he carried on testing the keys.
‘Not great, not terrible. Why?’.
‘Ah mine too’ she muttered more to herself. ‘Cause most of this thing is in Japanese. I can get a bit out’ve it though. Looks like the ganger messaged somebody ‘bout Kay a few hours ago. Called the guy a “Kumi-in”, y’ know what that is?’.
‘Frag. That’s a Yakuza member. Lowest level one, but still Yakuza. We need to move quick’.
If a Yakuza clan was involved then they’d need to get out of Seattle quickly, and more importantly quietly. A group like that would have the influence and connections to be able to swiftly find Kay in the metroplex if they wanted her. They’d probably even have some connections to smugglers who operated in Seattle which made using them to escape the city riskier as well. The ten thousand nuyen Kenda had just found might not get them that far after all.
‘Message says for the yak t’ message the ganger back but there’s been no calls since it got sent. Might be they’ve not read it yet?’.
‘Hopefully yeah. But we need to move fast now, we don’t know if any of the gangers that ran off called for backup’.
CLICK
Finally, at the second to last key on the massive ring Pedro had found the one that unlocked the door. Fighting against every urge in his body to throw the door wide open he instead cautiously pulled it back, looking for any hidden traps. His encounter with the gangers lying in wait for him had retempered his impulsiveness but he still found it arduous to move so slowly. There was no sign of any sort of alarms or traps attached to the door by Pedro’s account, so he opened it all the way.
Inside the room it seemed that at one point it had perhaps been some sort of managers office or a secure room that was intended to store paperwork. The walls were lined with tall beige coloured filing cabinets, most of the drawers of which were opened with the contents spilling onto the old plastic tiled floor. A bare lightbulb on the ceiling was the sole source of light in the room, there were no windows, nor any way in or out of it other than the door he had just opened.
Lying in a corner in a foetal position was a barefoot woman.
Pedro burst into the room without a thought he rushed over to her, half stumbling as he did so but used the filing cabinets to steady himself as he went. His breathing was becoming erratic once again, not out of exhaustion though, but out of a combination of excitement and fear.
She wasn’t moving.
That was the first thing he thought when he saw her there. The door and walls of the small room were so thick it was possible that she hadn’t heard the fighting with her head trapped in the mage hood, or if she had she hadn’t been able to properly gauge how close it was. Even so though Pedro would have thought that Kay would have had some reaction to it and a person entering the room after it.
He could clearly tell the person on the floor was Kay as well, even with the hood over her head. Pedro had been there when Kay had bought the dark synth-leather jacket she was wearing, and he recognised the bright red jeans she was in as being a pair of her favourites. The only thing that was missing were her heavy, knee-high boots that he and Kenda had left lying in the building that Kay had been taken from, broken and ruined much like the building itself.
Falling to his knees next to her in a drop that would have registered as painful to Wilde if he had been paying attention to anything other than the woman before him, he began taking off the mage hood covering Kay’s head. As he did so he noticed that her arms and legs were both bound tightly with wire and cables to the point that her hands and feet were beginning to turn blue.
Undoing the mage hood was difficult as the gangers had tied it around her neck tightly as well. Kay didn’t resist his efforts to take it off, but Pedro did notice a tenseness to her body as he did so. Pulling it off her Kay’s long dark hair, normally tied back in a braid or ponytail cascaded out of the hood in a tangled mess. It clung to her tear-stained face and framed her red raw eyes that blinked and strained to make anything out.
Pedro had thrown the contemptable mage hood to the side, but he could see the incessant flashing from the inside of it and faintly hear the high-pitched whine of it. The hood was designed to not only blind a spellcaster to reduce their ability to cast spells on others, but also to provide a constantly intrusive distraction to prevent a spellcaster from focusing to the point where they could cast spells on themselves or summon a spirit. It was “officially” designed to only be used to transport the magically active to a secure holding facility where they could be held in a safe and humane environment. Plenty of corporate security services were more than willing to ignore such recommendations however and it appeared that the Nitro Mizuchi were as well. Wilde had endured having one on for more than an hour once and it was torture. He had no way of judging how much suffering Kay had been going through in the hours that she’d had to endure the torment of the hood. All he could do was put his hands around her and reassure her, let her know that she was safe again.
‘Kay!? Kay it’s me, its Pedro! K-Kenda’s here too. We’re both here for you, we’re getting you out of here!’.
Tearing his eyes away from Kay for a moment, though keeping his arms wrapped around her, Wilde glanced back at Kenda. It felt somewhat awkward having a moment with Kay while he knew she was behind him. For her part Kenda looked down at Kay in an expression of shock and compassion; she took no notice of Pedro but didn’t make any attempt to reach out to Kay either. He appreciated her letting them have their moment, though a part of him suspected that it had more to do with her not knowing quite what to do or say and less to do with her respecting his and Kay relationship.
‘P-Pedro?... I-Is it really y-you?...’.
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Holding her tighter in reassurance he was about to confirm it once again to her, but before he could she begun bawling uncontrollably, hardly able to so much as control her breathing through her sobs. Tears ran down her beautiful face as she struggled to speak through her sobbing, but Pedro just stroked her head and held her close to him.
‘It’s alright, it’s alright. You’re safe now, we’re going to get you out’ve here, you don’t need to be afraid anymore’.
Saying those words felt like a lie. Wilde fully understood how dangerous they’re situation remained; more of the Nitro Mizuchi, Yakuza, MCT strike teams, all of them could be making their way towards their location. From a logical standpoint they shouldn’t have been wasting time, they should have been rushing out of the building and making for Kenda’s truck, driving away from the place as fast as possible.
But after all the fear, the panic, the guilt, the self-hate that Wilde had been wallowing in, the intense pressure he had been under for the past few hours. It just felt good to hold the woman he loved in his arms and tell her everything was going to be alright, to feel all that pressure and fear simply melt away as he felt Kay in his arms. In that one beautiful moment he truly believed that everything was going to be alright.
‘Right Kay, lets get y’ untied an’ outta here’.
It seemed that he’d gotten as much of a pass from Kenda as he was going to get but the woman was right. Regardless of whether they were in a rush or not the bindings on Kay’s legs and arms were far too tight to leave on any longer. Pedro could even see on Kay’s neck where the mage hood had dug in leaving a vicious red welt around it.
Kenda approached the kneeling pair with the katana of the cybered-up ganger in her hands. A couple of days ago such a sight would have been worrying for Wilde, but now? He was glad for her assistance.
SLAM!
Kay flinched in Pedro’s arms as Kenda stomped on the discarded mage hood with her left boot as she walked past it. She ground it into the floor with her heel before continuing until she was kneeling at Kays side with Wilde.
Unsheathing his katana Pedro carefully cut through the bindings around Kay’s wrists while Kenda did the same with the ones around her legs with the late ganger’s blade. They both made swift work of the assorted cables and zip ties, with her extremities beginning to return to a normal colour as soon as they were free of them.
Rubbing the deeply dug in marks on her wrists and ankles almost subconsciously, Kay slowly regained her a modicum of her composure. The woman was very clearly traumatised by what she had been through, but she appeared to be more aware of her surroundings and situation.
‘T-the gangers! Where are they!? W-we need t-to go! We need to get out of here! N-need to go now!’.
‘It’s alright Kay. We took care of ‘em. We’re gonna get y’ outta here now’.
‘We dealt with the gangers outside. You don’t need to worry about them anymore. We’ll get you away from this place now Kay, far away’.
He gave her another tight hug and his heart swelled as he felt her squeeze back just as tightly. Taking a breath and preparing himself for the exertion Pedro forced himself to his feet, the room only spinning slightly as he did so which he saw as a marked improvement in his condition. He put that down to Kay’s presence and confirmed safety.
Bending his knees a touch and leaning down as far as he was able to without falling over (which was not very far at all), Wilde offered Kay his hand to help her up. She took up this offer, but as soon as she pulled on his hand he felt himself beginning to fall over. The draining effect of having cast so much powerful magic in such a short space of time had taken a significant toll on Pedro and although he felt better with Kay at his side it didn’t change the fact that he was struggling to keep going.
‘Easy Wilde. I’ll get Kay, you try an’ keep an eye out, ok?’.
It felt slightly emasculating to watch Kenda lift Kay to her feet with contemptuous ease while he had to fight to stay upright. He wanted to be the one holding Kays hands, serving as her rock in the sea of uncertainty they were now in. The cybered troll was probably loving this he mused.
Brushing those thoughts and feelings to the side for the time being he decided to do as Kenda said and stay alert for any possible threats in the area. Kenda was presumably low on ammunition now, Pedro couldn’t cast any spells safely at this point and Kay wasn’t fit for combat at the best of times let alone in her present condition. If anyone moved in for the attack now their only option would be to flee, and even then, they would be hard pressed to get away quickly. Would Kenda willing leave him behind if it came down to it? Under normal circumstances Kay would never allow her to, but in her present condition Kay wouldn’t be able to do any more than meekly protest, and that was if she even noticed in the first place.
Still, he doubted that the troll would do such a thing unless there was no other way to protect Kay. He wouldn’t say that he truly knew Kenda or had a strong connection to the woman, but he believed he had gained a better understanding of her over their past few hours together. She wouldn’t willingly let him be left behind if only to make sure that Kay wasn’t upset at his death. He felt similarly towards her in that regard.
Mentally signalling the spirit of man that had remained in silent and unseen vigil the entire time since he had left it stationed there, Pedro used his final command to order it to follow the three of them and protect them all from any further harm.
He much preferred directly casting spells rather than leaving things to spirits personally; he liked knowing that he was in control of a situation rather than leaving things up to an entity that had no investment or possibly even no understanding of what it was being asked to do. That said, in situations like the one he now found himself in he didn’t hate the additional help a spirit could provide him.
The three moved their way through the gang den littered with dead bodies with the spirit of man following along unseen in the astral. Pedro heard a shuttered gasp from Kay followed by Kenda comforting her as they made their way through the charnel house he and Kenda had made of the place. Wilde strived to avoid walking a path that involved stepping over a corpse to in some small way help Kay which led to them walking a winding path through the room. He should have just cut through the quickest path he thought to himself, it was the smarter move to make when they had to leave as quickly as they could, but he just wanted to make Kay’s life that tiny bit more tolerable after all she had gone through.
Once they were out of the room with all the dead bodies, they were able to pick up the pace more and Pedro could feel that he was slowly recovering from his own exhaustion. He still needed to balance himself against a wall on occasion to keep from falling over, but it was gradually becoming less and less necessary. By the time they reached the damaged escalators he felt well enough to try and talk with Kay while walking. He wanted to distract her, keep her mind occupied on something, anything else other than her present condition; he didn’t want her to dwell on what she had just been through even though she had only just now escaped it. It dawned on Wilde that she still hadn’t escaped yet, she wouldn’t be free until the husk of a building they were in was far in the distance of them.
‘Just a little bit further Kay. Kenda’s pickup is just a street away. You’ll be far away from this place soon. You’ll be safe. Just a little further now’.
‘P-Pedro?... I-I… I’m sorry! I’m s-so sorry! This is a-all m-my fault. T-this wouldn’t have h-happened if i-it wasn’t for me. You w-wouldn’t have had to g-go through all this if it wasn’t for me! Neither of you w-would have!’.
She glanced up at Kenda with shame in her eyes as she began to softly weep once again, gently rocking back and forth on her feet.
Confusion flooded his mind. Why was she apologising? He was the one that was too late to rescue her before, the one who she had called in her moment of utmost terror looking for help only to fail. He had been dreading recriminations, but fully expecting them all the same; in his mind he deserved them. Kenda looked equally confused by Kay’s outburst.
‘What? No! Kay look at me’ Pedro glazed deeply into her tear rimmed soft brown eyes as he attempted to bare his soul to reassure her. ‘Nothing that happened today was your fault. These gangers kidnapped you because they wanted to sell your off to either MCT or the Yakuza. They made a choice, you didn’t. Kenda and I wanted to come here, to rescue you. We didn’t feel forced or obligated. You, you have nothing to apologise for’.
‘He’s right. These fraggers were the ones that shoulda said sorry, not you Kay’.
‘N-no! T-they cut the signal t’ my commlink and – If, if I had been able to call, to signal… You… I, I’m…’.
Again, Kay broke down into quiet sobbing and Pedro lost all thought of escaping the Redmond base of the Nitro Mizuchi. All he wanted to do was make Kay feel better, but he didn’t know how. Kenda loomed behind him and he caught a look of uncertainty on her face that he was sure his own mirrored. They were both used to Kay being so vibrant, so full of life; the woman before them seemed a broken person. A spark of utmost hatred grew in his heart towards the gangers that had hurt his beloved so profoundly, Wilde’s guilt and misgivings about having to kill them a thing of the past now.
‘O-one of the gangers… h-he came to me… told me that, t-that they were going to sell me. Sell me to the Y-Yakuza. I-I was so scared, I thought I w-was going to end up in a-a Bunraku Parlour!’.
Kenda wrapped her arms around Kay and as he was already holding her Pedro was caught in her embrace. It was an awkward position to be in, but he made no attempt to free himself of it. In that moment he understood that all either of them wanted was to banish the fear that was consuming Kay and let her know that she was not alone. After learning what her deepest dread for where she could have been dragged to was, he fully understood why Kay was so terrified.
Of the myriad of ways to die in the Seattle metroplex being sent to a Bunraku parlour may have been the vilest of fates there was. If he had a choice Pedro would rather have been eaten alive by devil rats, at least in that situation he could fight back, try and struggle for his life. To be sent to a Bunraku parlour was to suffer a long, cruel death and be utterly powerless all the while.
Bunraku was an old form of Japanese puppet theatre, a form of art. A Bunraku parlour on the other hand was a type of brothel, of which there were many in Seattle with the seediest of them in or nearby Redmond. What defined a Bunraku parlour though was the wretched souls enslaved within it, and what was done to them. If they were lucky, they were the most desperate of people who had sold themselves to the owners for a paltry sum that they had passed on to their loved ones before they were taken away. Most of the time they were just grabbed off the street and had some minor cosmetic surgery performed on them to change their appearance somewhat. It was the additional surgeries that were performed on the people that what made Bunraku parlours the dens of iniquity that they were. People had cyberware forcibly installed in them that overrode their control over their bodies. In essence they became living machines, only able to obey their owners, all the while still aware of what was happening but having no way of controlling themselves. New personalities could be downloaded into them depending on what the person hiring them desired, and they would have no way of controlling their own actions or words. From what Wilde had heard Bunraku “puppets” tended to not last long, six months on average, and when they inevitably died then the owners would have the cyberware removed from them to be installed into the next “puppet”. Their bodies would be thrown into the sewers for devil rats and ghouls to gorge on, if they weren’t sold to the darkest of black-market dealers.
To be sent to a Bunraku Parlour was to be sent into a waking nightmare that could only end in your death. For Kay to have been grabbed off the street, a mage hood thrown over her head, constantly bombarded with bright lights and loud noises, being told that she was going to be sold to the Yakuza. It was reasonable to think that this was what the gangers had intended for her. Most Bunraku parlours were run by organised crime syndicates and the Yakuza were the creators of the original concept of it. Tied up like a lamb being sent to the slaughterhouse with no way to escape or fight think that that was what was going to happen to her. Pedro could understand why Kay had been driven into such a pit of despair.
‘Let’s get you out of here Kay. We’re going to get you far away from here and never look back’.
‘Yeah, let’s blow this joint Kay’.
At that Kenda released her tight embrace of Kay that had also covered him. He also let go of Kay and turned to the escalators that they would be descending. He had appreciated the short break in walking they had just taken, but he knew they’d need to pick up speed because of it. He couldn’t see any signs of Nitro Mizuchi trying to storm the building, no sounds of car engines nearby nor corporate security force VTOL in the air. For the time being they were still on their own. The only gunshots he could make out sounded far from their present location which was as close to safe as it got in the Redmond barrens. All the gangers that he and Kenda had killed were still lying in pools of their blood. One of the bodies appeared to be still smouldering from his ball lightning spell. Wilde wouldn’t have minded if the whole building caught alight and burnt down to its foundations, it would only be an improvement for the areas in his eyes. It also would’ve been a good way of hiding their trail from others who might try to follow them he figured. Time was too much of a factor for him to seriously consider it though; he didn’t know anything about demolitions anyway.
Shaking his mind free of the thought of watching the place burn down Pedro refocused on getting out of the building. With a deep breath he braced himself for another burst of exertion and began the trek down the broken escalators, glad to be able to hold onto the banisters as he went down but wishing that they were working again to save him from walking at all.