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One week!
His last words rang in my ears as his stern assistant marched me back through the maze-like dwelling to the front door.
One week—was he insane? Without a compass or a map, getting to Lake Motosu would take almost three days on foot in good weather! Earthquakes and mudslides had destroyed all of the major highways a long time ago; what remained of them, largely unmarked, never went completely from one place to another.
Not that it would matter. Even if by some stroke of outrageous fortune, Yomichi was real and I brought Mazawa his precious-fucking-Idoron, I still had no guarantee that he wouldn't kill Satoshi—or me.
Instinct told me to run, but where? Home wasn't an option, I had no friends in New Edo, my gear wouldn't barter passage to an island outpost, let alone out of the country, and no matter what I tried to do—
Every step of your journey will be monitored, echoed in my head.
To make matters worse, while I was off stumbling around an enormous, purportedly-haunted forest in search of a mythical weapon-making madman, what was there to stop Mazawa from attacking my clan?
I had to get word to Satoshi.
Kei, who'd been waiting in the zephyr-chaser, now intruded on my thoughts, "You're awfully quiet, Renata. Already planning how to spend your reward?"
Some reward. I shot him a glance. "I know you'll probably say it's classified, but exactly how many Cleansers has the Doctor sent to Lake Motosu?"
Kei's smile faded. "Lake Motosu? None that I'm aware of. The region's off-limits, a dead zone. Why's he sending you there?"
"Death."
"Business as usual for you, then," he laughed.
We rose over Mazawa's house and sped off, not that I was sorry to see its scowling façade and pitched roof recede into the distance. Soon, orchards appeared below us, their plums glistening like rare jewels in the spray of irrigation jets. The sight of them made my stomach howl. I hadn't eaten since the night before and had been planning to replenish my provisions before leaving New Edo. Fat chance of that now.
"Hey, this isn't the way we came."
"I have orders to drop you at the Northwestern Paralaunch. It's a maintenance hub for Solar Field techs—off limits to civilians—but the closest exit to where you need to go," Kei hollered over the engines.
We rode in silence over orchards and open hatcheries, until a cluster of grey cinderblock buildings came into view. I'd never seen this section of the holodome before. The lattice supports here seemed slimmer, older than the ones that greeted visitors. Many of them, heavily corroded, lacked rivets; and the panes within them were no better, with numerous cracks spidering crazily across their smudged surfaces.
After we landed on the tallest of the cinderblock structures, Kei ushered me down a flight of metal stairs. A slim, dark-haired boy in a mustard-colored tunic waited at the landing.
"You never said you had a son. How old's the little guy—six, seven?"
"Always joking, aren't you?" Kei shook his head. "Hiro is a Squaddie, one of our Junior Corpsmen. He'll help you get your gear sorted out."
Behind the boy, damaged solar panels and piles of scrap metal lay scattered about a wide, high-ceilinged workroom. Along one wall, an assortment of hand tools sat in neat brackets next to a rack of blowtorches. A miniature one of those would've come in handy, but now, thanks to my big mouth, Mazawa's earlier offer was probably off the table.
After wishing me luck (I was going to need the luck of all seven Lucky Gods to get through this), Kei left me with the boy.
Squaddie Hiro proved to be a taciturn, sour-faced little thing. After marching me across the room, he pointed to a curtained anteroom by the loading dock doors. Inside, my things— everything but my bloodstained rucksack and nothing in the way of new gear—lay in a heap.
I threw off the robe, stepped quickly into my field suit and boots, and pulled a lightweight aramid vest over my torso, topping it off with goggles, a thick scarf, and anorak. Their newly-acquired chemical smells made my eyes water. When I opened my field pack, I discovered someone in Decon Central had awfully light fingers. While my water-filtering canteen, pistol, and some of my knives had survived the pass, the wristlet I'd been planning to use the minute I was out of the holodome's frequency range, hadn't. Of the three, I dreaded the loss of the wristlet the most; it contained apps for a compass and maps! Furious, I fastened my leg sheath, grabbed my naginata, and stormed into the foyer, straight into Squaddie Sour Face.
The force of our crash threw him against a wall. Red-faced, the unarmed boy fought off tears as he pointed to the gate's high windowless doors. "Go!"
My pack thudded on the floor. "No. Mazawa promised to outfit me for this crazy mission. I have no provisions and someone's stolen my wristlet. I'm not leaving here until those issues are resolved."
A sudden rumble set the doors rattling. Thunder or a tremor? Both were common in summer and neither presaged well for the journey I was about to take. Paling at the sound, Squaddie Sour Face backed away.
"Now, see what you've done? You've made Raijin very angry! If you don't get your supervisor down here right now, the thunder god will swoop down and eat you alive!"
Scowling, he stabbed at the air with his finger. "Out."
"Not without what's mine, you snot-nosed punk!" The thunder clapped heartily in approval.
"Get out, get out, get out!"
The doors whooshed open on a landscape shrouded in grey mist, a foul vapor released by drizzle's assault upon dry grass and parched earth. I stood at the threshold, eyeing the immense solar panels. Fitted on mechanized plinths, their steel housings were programmed to tilt or rotate to gather optimal sunlight. Many were already assuming an upright position in the face of the gathering storm, which meant there'd be no shelter once I left. No prospect of food, either: the utility tracts that ran between them, as well as the ground beneath their housings, had been stripped bare—sprayed with poison to discourage all unauthorized foraging, no doubt. But, as Kei said, this was the fastest way to get where I needed to go, and with only a week to do it, I had no time to lose.
I launched myself into the mist.