“I will protect you,”

  Case File #4

  January 4th, 2044

  09:15 AM

  Central Ward

  Bureau Sub-district

  Senior Inspector Asahi Takeyoshi

  Takeyoshi breathed out a long sigh as the water hit his back. He leaned his right hand against the shower wall as the scalding liquid ran across his skin, breathing life back into his weary body. Concrete dust and blood ran down into the tub, small fragments of bone falling away as they clattered against the linoleum. He reached up to rub his throat with his new left hand, tracing his index finger and thumb against the small thin line that marked his near death only a few hours ago.

  “I was close,” images of the smiling murderer appeared in his mind. Kazuma? Jinta. No. Neither name was the right one.

  “I was close,” those three words held multiple meanings in Takeyoshi’s mind. He’d been close to apprehending the killer, but he’d also been close to dying himself. Those words were also an accusation against the Director and the Chief Inspector. He’d been so close, and right as the culprit was left without anywhere to go, he’d been pulled off the trail. But “I was close” was also an admission, of sorts. A recognition that today wasn’t the first time Takeyoshi had met the killer face to face and failed to stop him.

  “Next time,” came the routine promise. “Next time, he won’t get away. I’m the only one that can do this.”

  He was already making plans in his head and the thought of returning to the case managed to once again squeeze some much-needed energy out of his brain. Where would the killer have gone after the apartment building collapsed? Nothing could kill the host of an Envoy, so the killer losing his face, or even his entire head, didn’t mean much in the long run. Maybe he took the opportunity to steal another man’s face? No, there were too many problems with that.

  He’d grow a new face before he’d have time to find someone else he could convincingly trade with. Even if he did, that person would still have to be around the same height and weight, otherwise the stolen face wouldn’t be enough. Then, there were the problems of disposing of his victim’s body. If it was found, a faceless corpse would immediately give away the stolen identity. There were a thousand more reasons besides that made switching faces impossible.

  “He can’t have switched identities,” the Inspector’s instincts told him as much. “He’d barely taken Kazuma’s place when I ran into him. Now, he’s out on the streets without a valid ID. If he gets so much as a parking ticket, he’ll be flagged for arrest, questioning, and deportation. He’s naked and defenseless, so he’ll be looking for shelter as soon as he can.”

  Takeyoshi turned off the shower before pressing a small button along the side of the wall. Small vents opened and warm air blew into the tight space, evaporating all the remaining water and drying the Inspector in the process. He opened the shower door and stepped outside, retrieving his new change of clothes left on a shelf. He dressed in silence, staring at himself in the fogged-up mirror as he worked through his next course of action.

  “I’ve gotta start making calls again,” he thought, regarding his blurred silhouette in the mirror. “He may have slipped into an old name for the time being while he runs down another victim to swap places with. It’s either that, or he’s gone underground. Hiding out with the homeless in the tunnels, or maybe he’ll try and get lost among the immigrants in the harbor. Have to touch bases with the Office of Citizenship and Deportation, see if I have any friends left there. Maybe dust off Arisaka’s number and tell him to keep an eye out.”

  “You look like shit,” familiar words crossed Takeyoshi’s mind as he wiped away the condensation across the bathroom mirror. The voice in his ears was unmistakable and instantly, a woman’s face was conjured up from the past. Short cut pink hair, boyishly so, with eyes that were a playful red. She smiled at him, her freckled nose scrunching up as she did so.

  “I know, I know,” Takeyoshi agreed with the phantom.

  “Hey!” a muffled voice interrupted Takeyoshi’s reminiscing, and he glanced toward the clothes hamper tucked into a corner of the bathroom. His discarded uniform pants hung halfway out of the bin, a soft green light pulsing through the fabric. On reflex, Takeyoshi padded his pockets, searching for his Omen, before he crossed over to the hamper and dug the glowing device free from his dirty clothes.

  “Plegh, plegh, plegh!” came the girlish voice from the onboard AI, making it sound as though she were coughing up swamp water.

  “What were you thinking, dropping me in with the laundry!?” the AI demanded.

  “Sorry, Ink,” Takeyoshi brushed a smudge of dried blood off the device. “My mind’s starting to go, I guess.”

  “If you got some sleep, that might help,” the AI pouted. “But you’re just going to pretend like you didn’t hear me, aren’t you?”

  “Something like that,” Takeyoshi’s answer earned an exasperated sigh from his AI companion.

  “I don’t even know why I bother talking to you,” the slighted machine audibly harrumphed.

  “Don’t be like that, Ink,” Takeyoshi tried to get through to her, but to no avail.

  “If you aren’t going to listen to me, you can talk to someone else,” the AI informed him. “Your Deputy is calling you.”

  “Put ‘im through,” Takeyoshi slapped the nanometal Omen against the bathroom wall, sticking it there so he could keep his hands free. “Voice only.”

  “Hello?” came a voice over the other end of the line, but Takeyoshi only vaguely recognized it. Is that what the kid had sounded like? “Inspector Asahi?”

  “The one and only,” Takeyoshi answered as he finished buttoning his shirt. “Though it’s just ‘Takeyoshi,’ okay?”

  “Right,” the young man answered. “It’s me, Deputy Inspector Atarashi.”

  “Is the Chief done with you?” Takeyoshi asked.

  “Yes, sir,” the young man answered.

  “Kid?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re making me feel old.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “Look, I’ll be down in the parking garage in a few minutes,” Takeyoshi informed him. “Meet me there and we can get our proper introductions over and done with.”

  “Understood,” the affirmation was followed by a beep signaling the other line hung up. At least he knew when a conversation was over. The kid had that in his favor.

  He shrugged on his black Bureau uniform jacket and slipped a brown leather glove over his still unsightly left hand. Before leaving, Takeyoshi ran his fingers over his five-o-clock shadow and considered shaving. Maybe comb his hair, at least? But no. He decided against that idea. There was too much that needed to be done and every moment not spent with his hands on the wheel and eyes on the road was a moment wasted.

  He stepped out of the shower and into his spacious room, courtesy of the Bureau. It was more space than he knew what to do with half the time. The kitchen hadn’t been touched even once in the last few years. The living room had boxes stacked and shoved into various corners, leftovers from when he was promoted to his current position. The living room is where he spent the lion’s share of his time, on the rare occasions he allowed himself to relax. The coffee table was covered in papers and notes which had fallen from their precarious stacks and onto the floor, exposing an unused laptop that had been hidden beneath them.

  Bookshelves cluttered the walls, half of them filled with well-worn books, others stacked with binders of hand-written research. The television that had been provided with the apartment had been taken down from its wall mount and shoved off to the side, partially hidden behind the unopened boxes. In its place was a corkboard with a map of Yo?gai-shima, several years out of date by now, with notes and photos pinned to it. As time had passed, Takeyoshi found himself less and less reliant on tangible means to keep track of things. All the cases he tracked and the stories he wanted to write lived on in his head, now.

  He retrieved his nanolaminate jacket from off the back of an armchair and swept it over his shoulders and slipped his shoes on next to the front door before heading back out into the storm. He stepped into the luxurious hallways of the dormitory with a rich red and gold carpeted floor and the ubiquitous dark walls of the Bureau’s design aesthetic. The electronic lock of his dormitory door activated as he stepped away, the Bureau ID in his pocket moving out of the range of its detection.

  There was next to no sound, save for the faint tinkling of classical music being played on the speakers and the light quashing of his loafers on the carpet. If there was a murder going on behind any of the doors Takeyoshi passed, he wouldn’t know it. Each domicile was perfectly sound-proofed, protecting those inside from the constant traffic just outside the building, or the clamor caused by inconsiderate neighbors and the occasional crying child from the families that live here. Not for the first time, the Inspector wondered just how much all the luxuries found in Yo?gai-shima cost, but he knew for a fact that the Bureau paid for none of it. Nothing was too expensive when Director Gozen could leverage his position to extort the Cabinet for an endless supply of tax money.

  “Who really owns this city?” Takeyoshi didn’t like the obvious answer and so he pushed it to the back of his mind as he took the elevator down to the lobby and headed out for the street.

  Yo?gai-shima couldn’t afford to shut down for a moment, not even in the face of a typhoon. The Bureau District, even less so. A city within a city, the Human Calamity Response Bureau sat at the southern edge of the Central Ward, separated from the rest of the metropolis by encompassing walls and multiple checkpoints. Each ward of the city had buildings and offices devoted to the sub-division of Inspectors working there, but the Headquarters was the true nerve center of the entire organization.

  The HQ was a seventy-floor skyscraper that soared up into the clouds. The building was shaped like a tear, the rounded rear facing south while the front came together in a point that aimed north. Emblazoned on the west and eastern sides of the building was the emblem of the Bureau, a white crescent cradling a black moon. The building itself stood on a plaza with multiple steps leading down to street level and entrances into the underground parking lot.

  East of the HQ were the dormitories, a cluster of four squarish, fifteen story buildings where the bulk of the Bureau’s personnel were quartered. The HQ and the dormitories were separated by a four-lane street running south to north which was constantly busy as it provided quick access to the nearest checkpoint out into the rest of Yo?gai-shima. Around the Headquarters were a variety of supplemental buildings. Garages for emergency vehicles, a private hospital, and more. The further one traveled from the center of the sub-district, the more diverse the buildings became.

  In order to provide for the Bureau’s black clad agents, countless civilian businesses had moved into the space. Restaurants, tailors, cobblers, bars, tattoo shops, apartments and even a movie theater or two became commonplace the closer you got to the wall. If you managed to get past the security at the checkpoints, an average man could live within the confines of the Bureau District and never have the need to go back to the rest of the island.

  Danger.

  The warning flashed in Takeyoshi’s mind as he stepped out onto the street facing toward the towering HQ. Moments later, thunder rumbled impotently somewhere in the clouds above. The sidewalk was still wet and the drains between it and the street still gulped down the excess water, but the rain fall overhead had significantly lightened. Looking upward, Takeyoshi saw the sea of white and black particles that swirled in the sky, between the hostile clouds and the city below. The protection afforded by Hazard Energy was less substantial than a physical barrier, yet far more effective. More than just stopping the water, the barrier of fortune redirected the rain entirely.

  Danger.

  Lightning flashed in the clouds, no more effective than the rain and thunder. Even so, the warning bloomed in Takeyoshi’s mind. He rubbed his sore temples as he stood at the edge of the street, waiting for the crosswalk to allow him to cross over to the Headquarters. The four-lane street was constantly busy, as other black-coated emergency vehicles pulled out to continue on their patrols while automated shipping trucks came in through the checkpoint to bring new goods to the countless businesses within the walls. With each passing vehicle, Takeyoshi felt a little throb in his head.

  He reached down and checked his pockets, looking for that little flask of whiskey to take the edge off, only to find he was without it. It was probably in his hamper, he realized, still tucked into the pocket of his other jacket. He rubbed his temples again, looking up toward the angry sky as he breathed out a tired sigh.

  “It’s gonna be a long day.”

  Holographic barriers sprung up across the road, signaling a brief stop to the traffic which finally allowed Takeyoshi to cross. In the shadow of the HQ, Takeyoshi ignored the steps that led upward to the building proper, and instead followed the descent into the bowels beneath it. Once inside the underground parking garage, motion sensing lights flicked on overhead, illuminating the countless parked cars, most of them the same, polished black color.

  “This way!” Ink sang and a small holographic image appeared from out of Takeyoshi’s pocket. Ink took the form of a green fairy with butterfly wings, holding in her hands a brush taller than she was. No larger than Takeyoshi’s fist, the digital fey flew into the dark confines of the concrete structure, leaving behind a luminescent trail of holographic paint. Disappearing from view, the digital construct vanished even as Takeyoshi followed the trail she left behind. In the distance, headlights flashed, and an engine roared to life as the Omen found and took control of the Inspector’s vehicle.

  “I went through the trouble of getting the car washed while it was in the garage,” the AI reported from the Omen in the Inspector’s pocket as Takeyoshi approached.

  “It’s appreciated,” Takeyoshi thanked the machine as he took in the restored glistening finish of the Survivalist.

  “The inside, though. . .” the AI made a noise, clicking an imaginary tongue in disapproval.

  “It’s gonna have to wait,” Takeyoshi interjected. “We’ve wasted enough time today.”

  “Ugh,” the reply contained no words, but it was profound, nonetheless.

  The sound of a moving elevator rumbled through the walls and reverberated through the dark parking garage. Somewhere off to Takeyoshi’s right, the elevator doors slid open, and lights automatically clicked on. The sound of distant voices reached Takeyoshi’s ears as the automated greeter spoke to the new arrival and, moments later, a pathway of lights appeared on the floor, highlighting the path to Takeyoshi’s car.

  The sound of approaching footsteps brought the Inspector out of a seconds-long dose of microsleep. Rubbing his eyes, he spied his approaching trainee. Shin was a good-looking kid somewhere in his twenties, if Takeyoshi had to guess, dressed in the standard Bureau uniform. He had small black studs in his ears, and he styled his straw-blonde hair chaotically, keeping the left half of his head neatly combed while the right half was messy, with his bangs styled up into a quartet of spikes. At first blush, Takeyoshi would have assumed Shin had a more delicate disposition, but he knew better than to judge a book by its cover. Whoever he was, the younger man hadn’t flinched from chasing a Casualty across town on his first day, when countless other Deputies would have hesitated.

  “Well,” the young man brushed the back of his head, nervously. “Should I introduce myself?”

  “We didn’t exactly go through proper orientation, did we?” Takeyoshi answered with a tight, brief smile. “But for the sake of courtesy, go ahead.”

  “Right!” the young man stood up straight, placed his hands at his sides, and bowed. “My name is Atarashi Shin, Deputy Inspector for the Human Calamity Response Bureau. I look forward to working with you, sir!”

  “I’m Asahi Takeyoshi,” the older man gave a slighter bow than his new subordinate. “My expectations are simple: work hard and pay attention. The most important lessons I have to give aren’t going to come from speeches or handholding. I lead by example. Understood?”

  “Yes, Asahi-san,” Shin nodded.

  “Takeyoshi,” the Senior Inspector insisted. “I’m not big on etiquette.”

  “Right,” the young man shifted, awkwardly.

  “Good,” Takeyoshi nodded. “Now then, you’ve gotten as much down time as you can expect for your first day. For the next ten hours, we’re working nonstop. Do you understand?”

  “I do,” Shin nodded, his jaw set, and brow furrowed, as though he expected it was going to be a battle just to get out of the garage.

  “Then let’s get going,” Takeyoshi gestured toward the patrol car, stifling a yawn with one hand. “You’re driving.”

  The Inspector stepped around to the passenger side and opened the door, staring down at the numerous receipts and fast-food wrappers stuffed into the seats, the door, and lining the footwell. Shin opened the driver’s side door and looked in, his eyes venturing over the mess on his side of the car.

  “I basically live out of my car,” Takeyoshi told him, though the excuse felt familiar on his lips. Had he already told Shin that on their drive back to HQ? He couldn’t remember. Either way, Takeyoshi didn’t dwell on it and focused on snatching up the receipts, tucking them into his pocket to throw away later.

  “Did you want these?” Shin held his hand out, holding up a handful of bills found on the driver’s side of the car.

  “Just drive,” Takeyoshi snatched the receipts from the younger man’s hand and climbed in, Shin following suite.

  Whatever mess Takeyoshi made of the cabin, the Survivalist’s engine remained in top condition, and it roared to life when Shin touched the ignition. Shin carefully backed the car out of the parking space, ignoring the Survivalist’s desire to run free. Takeyoshi settled back in his seat, folding his arms over his chest and closing his eyes. An orange light shined from the dashboard console, indicating that Shin’s Omen had taken up residence inside the car.

  “This is HQ, calling the Survivalist assigned to Central Patrol 05; what’s your location, Inspector?” Forecaster Kodera’s bespectacled image appeared, crafted from orange rays.

  “I’m currently heading west from HQ toward the Sunset District,” Shin ignored the projection as he focused on driving.

  “Roger. I’ll have the rest of the patrol rendezvous with you on the border of Arcade Ward.”

  “We’re on our way,” Shin confirmed, and the call ended.

  As Shin guided the car out of the garage and onto the busy four lane road that led to the northern checkpoint, Takeyoshi decided to close his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, the car was on the streets of Yo?gai-shima already, driving in the shadows of the city’s towers. Shin calmly guided the vehicle with only one hand on the wheel, though Takeyoshi could tell there was a nervous energy in the newly minted Inspector.

  “What did Kaiji want to talk to you about?” Takeyoshi asked as he came out of another momentary sleep cycle.

  “The Chief?” Shin glanced at his mentor, clearly expecting him to still be asleep.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, he. . .” Shin looked back out the windshield, letting his eyes wander as he tried to gather his thoughts. “I don’t know.”

  “Probably something he didn’t need to say,” Takeyoshi shifted in his seat, forcing himself to wake up.

  “He said I was a prisoner of the Bureau,” Shin admitted. “That I’m just here to kill for the organization and nothing else matters. Not what I want. Or the people who get hurt because of me.”

  “He’s right,” Takeyoshi gave a light shrug. “From a certain point of view.”

  “Is he?” Shin challenged, looking over at him. “So, which are you? A killer or a prisoner?”

  “Neither,” Takeyoshi scoffed. “I’m a journalist.”

  “What?”

  Stolen story; please report.

  “A journalist,” Takeyoshi repeated. “Didn’t you ever read the Yo?gai-shima Shinbun?”

  “No,” Shin answered with a light chuckle. “Who reads newspapers anymore?”

  Takeyoshi resisted the affront that rose up in his chest at the young man’s utterly careless words. No, he told himself. Don’t get angry. Someone had to guide the ignorant back onto the proper path.

  “Well, I still freelance for the Sanrin Daily,” Takeyoshi told him. “Pick up a copy next time you get a chance. Reading’s good for your brain.”

  “Okay, so if you’re a newspaper reporter then what are you doing here?” Shin gestured out the window. “Why do all this?”

  “The truth is, once you become a Human Calamity, you don’t really get a choice,” Takeyoshi explained. “Sure, you might think that you made the decision to join the Bureau, but the truth is that the powers that be would use every dirty tactic they could to draft you into service. Can’t have a living, breathing, catastrophe mingling with the rest of the population unsupervised.”

  “So, you were forced to join the Bureau, then?”

  “In a sense,” Takeyoshi agreed. “We all are on some level and that’s where the Chief had it right. In the eyes of Japan, or Yo?gai-shima, or the Cabinet, we’re killers. They need us to fight the battles they can’t. That’s the reason they need us here, but at the same time, each Inspector has to decide for themselves why they’re here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look at me,” Takeyoshi told him, and the young man shifted in his seat.

  Danger.

  “No, not literally. Watch the road.”

  “Oh.”

  “I joined the Bureau around a decade ago, give or take a few years,” Takeyoshi thought back to the past. “To be honest, I wasn’t too keen on becoming an Inspector, myself. I had a thousand questions about what the Bureau really was, what they were really doing, and who was backing them. So, at first? I dug my heels in. I said, ‘no.’ That was when I met Natsume. She was already all in on the Bureau. I guess you could say she was a mentor to me. She tried to convince me that the Bureau was something necessary for Japan’s survival and when I shared all my doubts and grievances with her, she listened. Then, she said something to me. Something I haven’t forgotten.”

  “Yeah?” Shin prompted him when Takeyoshi fell silent. “What’d she say?”

  “‘It’s easier to find the answers you’re looking for from within than from without,’” Takeyoshi recited the words from memory. “Those words stuck with me.”

  “So, she told you to join the Bureau in order to get the answers you wanted?” Shin summarized.

  “Joining the Bureau meant being the killer they wanted me to be,” Takeyoshi held up a finger, giving his student a meaningful look. “But it also means that I’m closer to the truth here than anywhere else. The Bureau wants you here for their own reasons, Shin, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have your own reasons for being here. Why are you here, Shin? What does being an Inspector get you?”

  “I’m here because I want to help people,” Shin made it sound as if it were the most obvious answer in the world.

  “That sounds nice,” Takeyoshi clicked his teeth. “I’ve heard a lot of Inspector’s say the same thing. Some of them even meant it. You seem like a nice kid, Shin, so maybe you mean it, too. But virtue isn’t enough to get you through the hard times. You need something real powerful to hold onto when the work gets dark. Do you have something like that, Shin? Something that makes being an Inspector worth killing for? Something worth dying for?”

  The young man stared straight out the window, his gaze strong and steady. He put both hands on the wheel, tightening them into fists. There was something he was thinking about, Takeyoshi could tell. Something that was important to him.

  “I need to be here,” Shin’s voice was unsteady, emotion seeping into it.

  “You don’t need to tell me why,” Takeyoshi assured him, holding up a hand as if to physically stop Shin from speaking. “I just need to be sure you have an anchor. Whatever that reason is, hold onto it, Shin. That’s you’re first lesson.”

  “I thought my first lesson was that I shouldn’t look at Human Calamities as people,” Shin’s mouth twisted into a wry smile.

  “I said you shouldn’t look at Casualties as people,” Takeyoshi corrected him. “Don’t forget that we’re also Human Calamities.”

  “Right.”

  “Also, don’t correct me. That’s your third first lesson.”

  “So, what’s my fourth first lesson?”

  “Today, they have us on training wheels,” Takeyoshi leaned back in his seat again and closed his eyes. “We’ll patrol up and down Central for the next ten hours or so. Check the GPS on the console; the Forecasters at HQ will mark areas that feature sudden spikes in Negative Energy, and we’ll ride around and make sure the area is all clear before moving on. With the storm rolling overhead, they’ll probably be a dozen or more hotspots at any given time.”

  “Okay,” Shin shrugged his shoulders, a nervous energy clearly surging through him.

  “Don’t rush it,” the older man advised. “Even an Emergency Level Casualty can still kill a lot of people. If we’re lucky, the rest of the day will go by slowly and quietly. If push comes to shove and we run into another active Human Calamity, I’ll take point. You just focus on polishing your Karma and controlling your Crisis Ability. Stick to the basics, for now.”

  “The basics,” Shin repeated the words as he drove. “What are those, again?”

  “What do you mean ‘what are those’?” Takeyoshi cracked open an irate eye he wasn’t aware he’d closed. “Didn’t you go through basic training already?”

  “Yeah,” Shin protested, defensively. “I had a year-long course in the academy.”

  “And what did they teach you?”

  “How to handle firearms, CQC, defensive driving, CPR, city evacuation routes, hostage negotiation, crime scene investigation,” Shin listed half a dozen random examples and shrugged his shoulders.

  “So, nothing important,” Takeyoshi sighed.

  “Don’t say that,” Shin groaned with audible frustration. “I busted my ass for a whole year learning that stuff!”

  “Did the Casualty that tore through the city this morning know CPR, do you think?” Takeyoshi asked, pointedly. “Do you think I needed to know how to handle a hostage negotiation to stop him?”

  He reached down and pulled a pen from the cup holder, transforming it into a blade within a second, holding it up to illustrate his point.

  “No,” Shin answered through gritted teeth, his voice rueful.

  “That’s right,” Takeyoshi let the pen shift back into its regular form before tucking it into his pocket. “We’re here because we’re Human Calamities, and the enemies the world needs us to fight are our own kind. That means it’s more important to understand the powers that set us apart rather than being some kind of one-man SWAT team.”

  “Don’t blame me,” Shin shook his head in frustration. “I didn’t choose the Bureau’s curriculum, alright?”

  “I guess starting from scratch’s better than having to correct some other idiot’s shoddy work,” Takeyoshi tried to find an upside to the situation, but he found his glass of optimism thoroughly empty. “Did they at least teach you basic Exigency?”

  “Yeah,” Shin answered, though he sounded uncertain. “I know that. I just have to, sort of, remind myself of how I got my powers and I enter a kind of ‘zone,’ I guess.”

  “Well, that’s something,” Takeyoshi tried to take that as some kind of good news. “Though, you’ll want to learn to do it at a moment’s notice. I mean that literally; within less than a second. You need to get a real handle on that switch inside your head. Once you’ve done that, then you’ve really mastered Exigency.”

  “Alright,” Shin nodded. “How do I do that?”

  “Practice,” Takeyoshi gave the obvious answer. “Some Inspectors use a little ritual or a trigger to get the adrenaline flowing. Other’s use a Transaction to stop and start their Exigency; it’s clever, but I just don’t see it as reliable compared to having full control yourself.”

  “A Transaction?” Shin asked, the meaning of the word going over his head.

  “Look, it’s. . .” Takeyoshi felt exhaustion turning every possible explanation for the phenomenon into a wordless buzz. “Advanced, alright? It’s advanced stuff. We’re sticking to the basics, remember?”

  “Right.”

  “So,” Takeyoshi tried to start from the top. “You can use Exigency. Has anything ever happened while you’re in Exigency? Like the way that Casualty could manipulate water?”

  “Or the way you can make things into knives?” Shin asked.

  “You noticed,” Takeyoshi lauded him. “You have a good eye. That’s called a Crisis Ability. Whatever traumatic event made you into a Human Calamity, well, it’s become a part of you.”

  “The old man this morning was drowning, so he got the ability to control water,” Shin reasoned. “And you can make things into blades, so—”

  Before Shin could finish, Takeyoshi cut him off with a raised hand.

  “Don’t ask people how they got their powers,” Takeyoshi admonished him. “I don’t particularly mind, myself, but for some people, their Crisis is wound up in something awful. You can ask what another Inspector’s Crisis is, but never how they got it. We’re all on the same team, after all. But asking for anything past that is poor etiquette.”

  “I understand,” Shin nodded, looking forward through the windshield.

  “Your Crisis: do you know what it is?”

  “Yeah,” the young man glanced at his mentor. “I know how to use it.”

  “Show me,” Takeyoshi gestured at him. “Real quick.”

  “Right now?” Shin gave Takeyoshi a worried side glance.

  “Just be quick,” Takeyoshi insisted, retrieving the pen from his pocket, twirling it across his fingers as it became a blade, before putting it away again all in one smooth motion.

  “Well, it takes some concentration,” Shin held up his left hand, holding onto the wheel of the car with his right as he divided his focus. “But if I do it right. . ."

  Danger.

  Takeyoshi ignored the premonition. It always went off in the presence of other Crises.

  “I can make a kind of explosive pow—”

  “Okay, never mind,” Takeyoshi gently placed his hand over Shin’s and prompted him to lower his fist.

  “Are you sure?” Shin asked, crestfallen.

  “Let’s not fly too far too fast,” Takeyoshi assured him with a hasty smile, inwardly breathing a sigh of relief.

  “Okay,” the young man sounded disappointed.

  “Well, after that its Karma,” Takeyoshi settled back into his seat and folded his arms. “At least that gives us an idea of what to work on.”

  “What’s Karma, though?” Shin couldn’t help but ask.

  “It’s all about using your internal Hazard Energy to manipulate probability fields and alter causality and it’s. . . it’s, it’s just advanced, alright?” Takeyoshi offered the excuse for the second time. “Let’s just focus on the basics for now.”

  “Whatever you say,” it sounded as though Shin wasn’t sure what to think.

  The conversation petered into silence and Takeyoshi found his eyelids drooping as the rhythmic rumbling of the Survivalist lulled him like a child in a cradle.

  “So, who trained you?”

  The question jolted Takeyoshi awake, and his internal clock made him realize that he’d fallen asleep for a few seconds. Even so, the hum of the vehicle and the heated seat made it too comfortable for him to open his eyes.

  “Well, my training was a lot more informal than yours,” Takeyoshi told him. “There was a lot of chaos when I took up the badge and the Inspectors were all spread thin between the mainland and Yo?gai-shima. There was a lot of learning by doing. A trial by fire, if you will.”

  “Did Natsume teach you anything?”

  “Some,” Takeyoshi folded his arms over his chest, his chin dipping down. His breathing became long and deep. “I still remember the first time we ran into a Disaster Level Casualty. That was one hell of a day.”

  “Tell me about it,” but Shin’s words never reached Takeyoshi’s ears, nor did he see his new trainee glance over at him as he finally fell truly and deeply asleep.

  “Takeyoshi?”

  January 4th, 2044

  09:25 AM

  Central Ward

  Human Calamity Response Headquarters

  Bureau Sub-district

  Senior Inspector Sumitomo Suzume

  Suzume brushed a strand of hair away from her face, pushing it back over her right ear. Her crystal blue eyes ran across a series of six photos, split into three pairs. Each pair showed the face of a different man, one while they were alive and healthy, the other showcasing their remains.

  Higashi Etsu, aged fifty-six, smiled at Suzume from one picture, while the other showed him slack jawed and grey of skin, his eyes bulging and reddened. Yuno Saito, aged forty-two, looked bashfully away from the camera, while the other photo showed his nearly unrecognizable corpse, bones broken and out of joint, bloodless skin torn. Finally, there was Kazuma Iori, a cheerful looking young man in his mid-twenties with dark brown hair and an angular face. The photo of his remains was easily the worst: according to Inspector Asahi, he’d been violently strangled and strung up, and that was before an apartment building fell on him. Now, there was little left besides pulped flesh and bone fragments.

  Looking over the images of men living their lives sitting side by side with the grisly stills of their corpses, Suzume began putting the chain that connected them all together. All of them were employees at the Yo?gai-shima Trust, a bank that dominated the city’s financials. Every one of them had died suddenly in roughly the same three month stretch. Etsu’s death had been ruled a suicide and Saito’s an accident, but their names appeared in Asahi’s notes. And, what’s more, Suzume had reason to believe they’d all been killed by the same person. But then, there was another link in the chain.

  She slid another photo across the desk, placing it off to the side from the six. A young man stared out from the picture, a stoic look in his dark eyes. His hair was jet black and neatly combed, and he might’ve been somewhat handsome, if not for the uncannily blank expression on his face. Tanaka Jinta. The final piece. The man Asahi had been looking for. The man that had killed an Inspector and nearly added Inspector Asahi to the body count. Yet, just thinking it, something didn’t feel right.

  Tanaka Jinta had no history of violence or mental illness, much less a reason to believe he’d become a Human Calamity. No record of suicidal ideation. No sudden illnesses that could be linked to the activity of an Envoy choosing him as a potential host. But, if Tanaka was the culprit, what had changed in the last few months. Why attack his own coworkers? Why kill Kazuma Iori?

  She slid Kazuma’s photo away from the others, placing it side by side with Tanaka’s. She glanced back and forth between the two men, trying to reconcile the differences between them. They were of similar height and weight, though Kazuma’s build was clearly wider. They had an extremely loose resemblance that one could see at a distance, but not so much that anyone would mistake one for another. Yet, somehow, Tanaka Jinta had been able to convince Inspector Asahi he was Kazuma Iori.

  Was it recklessness? Had the Inspector simply been too exhausted and burnt out to tell the difference between the two men? Maybe. Everyone knew that Asahi hadn’t been quite the same since his partner died, but even so, something just didn’t feel right. Even if Inspector Asahi’s senses had been dulled, how would Jinta have known that and what would have possessed Jinta to even attempt such a strategy in the first place? Even stranger, it nearly worked.

  Boiling down each image into a series of data points was a practiced form of detachment that had served Suzume well for years. Still, the seasoned Inspector felt a sense of unease beneath her fa?ade of calm. Looking at the pictures of the two men, the sense of resemblance between them grew. It was uncanny.

  “Naoya,” the name popped into her head as she looked down at the photos. From a certain perspective, the men held a resemblance to her lover. They didn’t have his unruly hair, his fiery eyebrows, or his build so far as she could tell, but there was a certain familiarity she couldn’t deny. For a moment, she felt as though the faces of the dead men were staring up at her, both having taken on the likeness of her paramour. The disquieting thought led her to swiftly and smoothly slide the crime scene photos into a stack and place them off to the side of her desk.

  She picked up the Incident Report filed by Inspector Asahi, which was a scarce smattering of words. Before seven-o-clock this morning, Inspector Asahi encountered the suspect in the home of one Kazuma Iori, a coworker and close personal friend of Tanaka Jinta. Upon entering Kazuma’s domicile, the Inspector found the body of Kazuma and was attacked immediately by the murderer, leading to a confrontation that destroyed the apartment building. The murderer fled the scene after mutilating his own face. The killer left behind a substantial amount of skin, muscle, and blood, far beyond the amount that even an ordinary Human Calamity could survive, confirming Envoy involvement.

  “Confirming Envoy involvement.”

  Suzume reread the words several times. An Envoy could survive anything, it was true, but there was a certain questionability about Asahi’s thought process. From an outside looking in perspective, his encounter with his attacker wasn’t nearly enough to say definitively that the killer was anything more than he let on. Still, Suzume didn’t doubt Asahi’s conclusion, simply the reasoning he had provided in his report. Whatever made Inspector Asahi certain of his enemy’s nature, he hadn’t truly shared it. Another card the veteran journalist was keeping close to his chest.

  “I’ll have to talk to Asahi-san, directly,” Suzume decided as her eyes scanned the document.

  “Why did the killer mutilate his own face?” was a question that refused to leave her mind. If the killer truly was an Envoy, then his face would have regrown itself in minutes. Faster, even. So, what was the significance? Suzume reached out with her left hand, picking up her silver Omen from the desk.

  “Forecaster,” Suzume spoke the word aloud and the Omen immediately made a call.

  “Go ahead, Suzu,” spoke a familiar voice after the call went through. It was a young woman’s voice and one that Suzume had known since she was a teenager and before.

  “Chi-chan, can you send me up a list of hospitals in the southern Central area?” Suzume asked as she idly flipped through the dossier on the desk. “Specifically, within ten minutes or so of the Summer Groves’ apartment building.”

  “I can do that,” the young woman answered. “Wasn’t there an accident at that block this morning?”

  “There was,” Suzume answered automatically, still considering her next course of action. “Can you get access to the list of patients admitted to those hospitals between 0700 to 0800?”

  “I can,” the other woman sounded hesitant. “It’s gonna be a pain dealing with the Civil Database outside the Bureau. It might take some time.”

  “That’s fine,” Suzume accepted. “Also—”

  “Yes?”

  “I need a list of rhinoplasty practices working in Central,”

  “That’s your final wish, you know,” the girl agreed, sarcastically.

  “That’s a shame,” Suzume allowed herself a small smile. “My fourth wish was taking you out to lunch today.”

  “Oh, that’s unfair!”

  “Send the information to my phone, directly,” Suzume told her. “I’ll likely be out on the road all day.”

  “Does this have something to do with being called to the Director’s office this morning?”

  Suzume sat up straight in her seat as she fell silent. Her eyes scanned the office around her as she tried to put her thoughts into words. Suzume’s office was situated on the western side of the building, and it conformed to the teardrop shape of the building around it, giving it a quarter circle shape. The wall behind the desk was made of glass from floor to ceiling as it wrapped around the south side of the skyscraper. Suzume’s desk, made of a polished light reddish-brown wood, was sat in front of the majestic view, facing away from it. Set against the smaller window on the right-hand side of the office door was a bonsai tree on a small table with its own sunlamp.

  There were more plants of various kinds decorating the edges of the office, along with framed paintings behind protective glass. Suzume kept an eclectic display of art, some depicting scenic venues like forests and stormy seas, but others were traditional Japanese artworks hundreds of years old. The largest painting, placed directly across the office from Suzume, showed a samurai in red armor holding a flaming sword as trees burned around him. Facing the armored warrior was a man with green skin, holding his arms outstretched like claws. Clinging to the back of the green-skinned figure was another man; what appeared to be a monk had his arms hooked around the green man’s neck, as if he was being carried. Most curiously, the monk appeared to have no face.

  “I’ve been assigned a new case,” Suzume explained, slowly. “It’s an Envoy.”

  “Oh,” Chia was barely audible on the other end of the line, her normally bubbly voice becoming small and quiet. “It isn’t. . . the Gold one, right?”

  “No,” Suzume answered and found herself smiling as Chia gave an exaggerated, relieved sigh.

  “Thank goodness! You really had me worried for a moment there!”

  “It’s still an Envoy, Chi-chan,” Suzume reminded her.

  “And one that doesn’t seem to hold any fear of the Bureau,” she continued, silently, thinking of the attack on Inspector Asahi.

  “Which one is it?”

  “The Black Envoy,” Suzume answered, staring at the painting across from her. “Kurobo?zu.”

  “How do you know it’s him?” the Forecaster asked.

  “I don’t,” Suzume admitted. “But Inspector Asahi believed it was him.”

  “Is he working the case with you?”

  “No. Inspector Asahi and his suspect had a run-in this morning,” Suzume explained. “That’s what happened in that apartment building. Apparently, the Director wasn’t happy about Asahi letting the Black Envoy slip through his fingers.”

  “I suppose we should all be grateful the damage was so minimal,” Chia sounded worried.

  “It’ll get worse before we catch him,” Suzume had no illusions about the danger of her quarry. “The Envoys never make it easy. Still, the current host doesn’t seem to have completely slipped his tether, yet. Hopefully we can capture him before he goes completely insane. Still, the Black Envoy chose a real piece of work for his newest vessel.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A serial killer, from the way I see it.”

  “In this day and age?” Chia wondered.

  “From the looks of it, he killed two of his coworkers within the span of a few months,” Suzume thought of the photographs of the first two victims again.

  “How?” Chia inquired.

  “Strangulation seems to be his go-to,” Suzume answered. “Judging from what Takeyoshi reported and the photos of the crime scene, he seems to have a Crisis that lets him manipulate threads or ropes.”

  “Why does that sound familiar?” Chia wondered absent-mindedly.

  “Natsu-chan,” Suzume answered, stoically, letting Chia connect the remaining dots.

  “That was his work, then,” Chia concluded, her voice small.

  “Almost certainly,” Suzume agreed.

  “I can’t imagine Inspector Asahi was happy about losing the case, then,” Chia observed.

  “Nor can I,” Suzume agreed. She knew it was going to become an issue at some point, and she wasn’t quite sure how she was going to approach it.

  “What does this have to do with the hospital records?”

  “The Envoy tore off his face before fleeing the scene—”

  “Eww.”

  “—and I’m trying to understand why.”

  “You think he’s looking to go under the knife?” Chia offered. “Trying to get a new look?”

  “Maybe,” Suzume’s brow furrowed as she considered. “But it’s more like I’m trying to cross that notion off the list. Something doesn’t feel right about the idea. It feels like the killer wants me to think he’s cornered.”

  “Inspector’s intuition?” Chia asked.

  “You tell me,” Suzume turned the question around. “You’ve worked enough cases; what do you think? You’re hunting a murderer, his face has been seen by another Inspector, and he has no valid ID, so even getting a parking ticket will have him getting arrested by the Civil Police. He’s running. Where would he run to?”

  “The harbor?” Chia offered the most immediate answer. “Get lost among the immigrants until the heat dies down and then buy a false ID and go back into hiding. That’s what I’d think he’d do.”

  “That would work for the run of the mill criminal, but all evidence points to this guy being nothing more than a middle managing salaryman,” Suzume revealed. “He’s not going to know the first thing about getting fake IDs.”

  “Really?”

  “Three dead men in the last few months,” Suzume looked toward the stack of pictures. “Maybe more. No idea what triggered him.”

  “That’s a pretty low body count. Are we sure he’s an Envoy?” Chia asked, skeptically. “I mean, like, sure-sure? This guy doesn’t really fit the bill.”

  “It’s not that I think he’s an Envoy,” Suzume answered, idly flipping through the dossier. “It’s that Inspector Asahi believes he is.”

  “And you trust Asahi-san’s judgement?” Chia wondered.

  “To a point,” Suzume admitted. “There’s a lot of unanswered questions and missing information. Things I think Inspector Asahi wanted to keep to himself. But, whatever justification Takeyoshi had for suspecting our man was an Envoy, I think it’s substantial.”

  “But what if you’re wrong?” Chia pressed and Suzume cracked a smile.

  “Then I hunt him down, cut his head off, and we all breathe a long, collective sigh of relief,” Suzume leaned back in her chair, staring at the ceiling. “Something tells me things won’t be that simple.”

  “Well, I don’t think the Spider knows who he’s dealing with,” Chia assured her. “You’ll get him, one way or another.”

  “The Spider?” Suzume asked, quizzically.

  “Every killer has to have a nickname,” Chia offered.

  “Spiders don’t strangle people, Chi-chan,” Suzume allowed herself to smile, even so.

  “Yeah, but what else would we call him?” the Forecaster challenged.

  “The Snake?” Suzume floated the idea.

  “But spiders are creepy, and they hide and spin webs,” Chia argued. “Plus, my idea sounds better.”

  “Whether he’s a snake, a spider, or an Envoy, I’ll catch him,” Suzume decided not to let Chia get anymore carried away. “I just have to figure out how.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got a hard road ahead of you,” Chia commiserated. “I’m glad I joined the Forecasting Division to get away from that kind of stuff.”

  “I know what you mean,” Suzume sighed. “I’d be with you, if I could afford it, but the stars just never seem to align.”

  “Having trouble in paradise?” Chia cooed, eager for gossip.

  “I—,” Suzume didn’t know where to start. More than that, there was a sense of awkwardness considering who she was talking to.

  “Go on,” Chia pressured her, nonetheless.

  “It’s Naoya. He called me ‘mom’ this morning,” Suzume answered, feeling a little ridiculous.

  “What were you doing at the time?” Chia immediately sounded as though she got more than she asked for.

  “We weren’t having sex,” Suzume assured her. “We got into an argument. He tried to drop it on me like an insult.”

  “Sounds like a self-own, to me.”

  “Right? He’s so ignorant,” Suzume couldn’t deny it felt good to have someone to talk to. “Sometimes, it feels like he looks at everything I do for him, and he just takes it for granted. Worse, it feels like he resents me for it.”

  “He’s an animal, Suzu,” Chia advised her. “He instinctively pushes and pulls against everything he thinks is holding him back. You have to let him off the leash once in a while. Let him tire himself out. Mitsuru was the same way.”

  “If we were still in Tokyo, that might’ve worked,” Suzume agreed. “But not on Yo?gai-shima. Not where there are cameras on every street corner.”

  “He’s well taken care of on that end,” Chia tried to placate her fears. “Nothing short of a deep-dive into the Civil Database would turn up anything on Nao-kun.”

  “Cameras are one thing,” Suzume insisted. “But if he turns down the wrong street? Meets the wrong person?”

  “There are millions of people in this city, Suzu,” Chia sounded exasperated, now. “What are the chances he runs into someone who recognizes him?”

  “You know Yosuke always shows up whenever he pleases.”

  “He wouldn’t say anything.”

  “Not intentionally,” Suzume remarked bitterly. “Get a few drinks in him, though?”

  “So, what then?” Chia challenged her. “You have to do something. If things remain as they are, they’ll just get worse.”

  “I know,” Suzume admitted, rubbing her head as a tension headache began to form. “Listen, I need to get to work. I’ll swing back around at noon, and we can head over to that little sandwich shop near the shopping mall.”

  “Oh, you know I love their croissants!” Chia clapped her hands together, the sound carrying over the call. “Maybe I should bring some donuts back to the office?”

  “Planning on spreading the love to your coworkers?”

  “Mmmm, not exactly,” Chia admitted. She always did have a sweet tooth.

  “I’ll see you, then.”

  “Jya-ne.”

  Suzume tucked her Omen back into the holster on her thigh and efficiently swept the pile of paperwork back into the folder from which they came. She picked up the stack of photos again, once more shuffling through them. She looked at the faces of the victims once more, pictures of smiling faces juxtaposed with crime scene photos that showed their dead bodies. Again, the faces blurred into something resembling Naoya and she quietly tucked the photos into the folder as well.

  “I will protect you,” she promised.