The trio eat slowly, biding their time and watching their surroundings. Patrons come and go from the dining hall. A private charter boat arrives at the dock, dropping off a group of elderly women. The pilots wonder how long it will take for Reo to rejoin them.
Sometime later, a sputtering motor is heard approaching the riverbank close behind the dining hall. Hanami perks up ever so slightly.
That is not the same motor as the boat we arrived in, she notices.
“Excuse me, I am going to check on something,” Hanami says in a quiet voice.
“If you’re looking for the dunny, I have to warn you—they’re all squatty potties. I poked my head in earlier,” Kora says, chewing and gesturing to a genderless restroom at the rear of the building.
Hanami ignores her, gets up and casually walks to a trash receptacle near the river-facing window. As she drops some items into the garbage, she looks out.
A long, low boat has tied off on a private dock behind the dining hall. Four delivery workers climb out and start unloading crates of supplies, moving them into an adjacent storage building. Lastly, they remove a tarp and, struggling, begin to move a large, heavy object over a ramp from the boat onto the dock.
It looks like a smaller version of a hyperbaric chamber, but on wheels like a gurney. It is dark, olive green and there is a small viewing window on top. The delivery workers roll this strange object into the storage building, glancing about vigilantly as they do so.
Hanami returns to the table and says quietly, “I think it is time for us to go.”
Kora, chicken skewer in mouth, looks longingly at all the uneaten food but gets up. Chase and Kora follow Hanami out the side door and, warily, walk around the building to the loading and storage area.
The door to the building is wide open, but the workers are nowhere to be seen. Hanami motions for the others to follow her as they move in closer. With her left hand she draws the taser.
Peering into the storage building, the pilots see many crates and boxes stacked on top of each other, pallets of canned goods. Wildly out of place is the horizontal cylinder on wheels. They creep forward to examine it.
Chase reaches out and lays his hand on the smooth metal exterior. He feels a vibration, hears a faint humming.
“This thing has power. Must be on a battery of some sort? What is it?”
Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.
The square viewing window is cloudy from condensation. Chase wipes the window with his sleeve. It feels almost cold to the touch. Chase flinches and backs away. Staring straight up through the window is the immobile face of Reginald Cook, frosty and pale.
“Oh geez, we found him,” Chase mutters.
“He… he’s frozen?” Kora gasps.
Hanami runs her slender fingers of her free hand across the side of the device and pops open a panel. A small screen seems to be tracking Reginald’s vital signs.
“Is he alive? How is that possible?” Kora asks.
“Hanami, you’d better call Winter,” Chase says.
Hanami reaches into her pocket with her right hand and pulls out the lipstick-sized portable Comms device, prepares to switch on channel six.
“Don’t even think about it,” hisses a voice in heavily accented English.
The three pilots whirl around to see a slender man with long, jet black hair with a gun drawn on them. The gun is a small submachine gun, held in one hand, equipped with a suppressor. Chase thinks it might be a MAC-10.
The pilots instinctively raise their hands.
There is rustling behind them and they turn their heads to see three other men emerge from behind the stacks of crates in the back of the room.
“Drop those,” the first man orders Hanami. “NOW.”
She hesitates, but then gently sets both the taser and Comms unit on the ground. The man is dressed in the working outfit of a delivery man, in this case stained coveralls, but Hanami notices a colorful hanafuda tattoo peeking out from beneath his collar.
Yakuza, she realizes.
The other men circle around until all four are standing in front of the pilots, blocking the only exit. One of them confiscates the taser. They look the pilots up and down. Then, speaking to each other in a language that only Hanami understands—
One man leaves. The ‘leader’ with the gun checks an expensive looking watch worn incongruously under the sleeve of his boilersuit.
The other two cover the cryochamber with a ceremonial cloth and wheel it out of the storage building. The remaining man gives a sinister grin, revealing a mouth full of crooked teeth and brushing a loose strand of hair from his face.
Chase draws his handgun and points it the slender man. But—
“Ya!”
The man shouts and does a quick roundhouse kick, sending the gun flying from Chase’s grasp and clanging off the wall. It lands on the floor near Kora’s feet. Chase puts his hands back up. His right hand is throbbing.
Gah! I think he broke one of my fingers.
“That was stupid!” the man says, taking a step back and waving the barrel of his gun at the pilots in a sweeping motion.
Chase steps forward, hands still raised, trying to shield Hanami and Kora.
“Kora,” Chase hisses through gritted teeth, turning his head slightly to the side. “Do it. Do it!”
Kora glances at the man, glances down at the gun lying at her feet.
“Do it!” he says again. “Pick it up and shoot him!”
A knot appears in Kora’s throat. She hesitates.
“I… I… I can’t…” she stutters.
I can’t shoot him. I can’t take the life of a human being. No way, I can’t do it. I can’t, I can’t.
“Now, Kora! Shoot him!”
Chase tries to make his arms and body stretch as wide as he can, trying any way to block the girls from the hail of gunfire he knows is coming.
The slender man just shakes his head, starts to squeeze the trigger.