Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent’s fate.
—MASTER SUN TZU
The light flashed green, the machine chimed, the arm swung open, and Nonomi Sato, in flat, comfortable, ugly shoes, walked on toward the elevator bank, invisible in the routine.
The soft dings rang on behind her, right and left, layering over footsteps and hushed conversation. This was the company’s morning music, a melody of dread carried inside every employee, dread that today might be the day the corporate gestapo wanted another review.
Dread, harmonized with fear and suspicion.
Really, it was a beautiful song.
Sato stopped outside the guard station that led to the elevator. The prescreening procedure only allowed for one employee at a time.
Cameras watched, but she didn’t worry about them. They were deterrents for conformists and rule followers, an obvious announcement that the eyes were always, always recording, keeping honorable people from violating their own sense of honor. For deceivers, the threat was in what couldn’t be seen.
And even about those Sato didn’t worry.
She belonged here.
She was five foot two, with shoulder-length hair pulled tight into a bun, and wearing a drab knee-length skirt and dress shirt; clothes indistinguishable from those of every other female in the building. For that matter, she was a woman, indistinguishable from any other woman in the building. But, unlike most of the others, her teeth were straight and white and her chest a full cup size bigger, courtesy of Thailand’s best.
Sato handed the security man her badge and stood patiently, eyes lowered, as he matched the picture to her face, studying her intently.
He returned the badge, and when she reached to take it, he didn’t let go. Her eyes rose to meet his. He licked his lips. Folds of his chin pressed down into his collar and tiny beads of sweat dotted his hairline. Sato blushed, as was appropriate, and averted her gaze. The culture demanded such things.
The culture was suffocating.
Even nights tumbling in Bangkok’s dirty alleys, or working a hustle in Manila’s red-light district, would have been better than the claustrophobia and polite face-saving of Osaka’s corporate halls. But business was business.
She would remain proper and demure for as long as it took. Would keep her thoughts concealed in the same way that conformity concealed her individuality. Mother would be so proud.
Sato pressed her palm to the scanner embedded in the desk.
The machine rolled and whirred and chimed the all-clear.
She bowed several inches while her face maintained a polite mask. The guard’s hand brushed her thigh as she passed, his fingers racing in and up, claiming ownership for that brief second over what did not belong to him.
His boldness had grown, and with his boldness the violations had become more frequent. This, too, was part of the melody of dread and fear and suspicion. This was discordance, born from the ability to retaliate that emboldened those in positions of power to lord over the powerless.
Sato glanced at the guard’s badge and caught the name again, confirmation of what she’d read the day before yesterday. Haruto Itou, his badge said. In spite of her mother’s best attempts, kanji would always be a struggle and concealing this weakness was Sato’s daily atonement.
Itou was in his twenties, perhaps, recently promoted and full of self-importance. His insolence was an annoyance Sato could endure for the sake of the job; his obsession and stalking was another matter.
He’d attempted to follow her home for the third time last night.
This was a problem.
Sato continued from the guard’s post to the locker station around the corner. The door was already open, a workmate stuffing jacket and shoes into one of the many square cubbies that lined the room floor to ceiling.
Half of the lockers still had keys.
Sato chose an empty box and put her purse inside, performing for the hidden cameras and the audio recorders. She’d never searched for evidence of their existence—she wasn’t a fool—she simply assumed they’d be there, of all places, where peasants, mistrusted by the feudal overlords, exchanged one garb for the next.
Sato traded her shoes for company-provided slip-ons, closed the locker, and clipped the key to the lanyard with her security badge. Aside from her clothes, no personal belongings were allowed beyond the elevator doors.
They’d check her more thoroughly coming out.
These were layers of precaution for which she could thank legions of industrial spies throughout the decades: Chinese hackers, American government, Israeli military, corporate spies, in any combination, mixed and matched and more because the world was one big pond in which hypocritical thieving scum controlled an ecosystem where the many, many little fish living near the surface snapped at flies, squabbling over scraps, playing in the sun, blissfully unaware of what went on in the murky depths.
Sato, too, was a bottom feeder, but not like the others.
The security protocols focused on preventing data transmission.
Thick walls without windows and self-circulating ventilation kept the lab free of contaminants and prevented listening devices and lasers from stealing data out of the air. Without cables leading to the lab computers, without wireless connections, there was no pathway for hackers to break in and steal.
If the security protocols worked as the company had designed them to work, the other players, with all of their intelligence, gadgets, and technology, were locked out of the game, but none of the precautions were designed with a woman like her in mind. As long as she worked here, nothing they did could stop her from taking what she wanted.
Sato returned to the elevator, where the line was now backed up with two people waiting for the body scan. At the building’s front entrance, the cowboy walked in.
Sato kept her face toward the floor and observed him to the degree that she wasn’t obvious. He stopped at the front desk and chatted with the guards for a minute, letting them practice their English on him and buying goodwill for cheap. He stayed in the open area longer than any other employee would dare, smiling and nodding like a simpleton while his eyes tracked over each person, taking in more than he let on.
That was easy when most everyone wrote off his behavior as just more of the gaijin being a gaijin, even those who believed the rumors and gossip.
Sato moved forward one space in line.
The cowboy intrigued her. He was a hunter, keen enough to sniff out a trail. He’d proven that already, though he likely didn’t know it yet.
As if he’d read her thoughts, the cowboy’s head ticked up and he walked toward the elevator bank. Sato shifted her back to him slowly, a natural movement that wouldn’t flash evasiveness and challenge the pack leader to chase.
The line moved forward. She stepped between the screening walls beside the elevator so some pervert in the security department could get a good snapshot of her body, and when she stepped out, she glanced up to find the cowboy watching her.
Sato blushed when she made eye contact and covered her mouth when she smiled so slightly, because the culture demanded this, too. She turned to the elevator and pressed her thumb to the biometric reader while the cowboy’s eyes bored into her back. By the time she’d stepped inside and pressed her thumb to the interior reader, he was gone.
The doors closed and her hands and feet tingled.
For three years she’d toyed with her competition and teased the men in the security departments, but they were all like babies, easily taken and confounded by games of inai inai ba. But the cowboy, he was a man and a warrior, and the idea of facing off against a worthy combatant made her toes curl.