CHAPTER 43

忍びの風 Shinobi no Kaze

The Ninja Wind

Jet smelled the smoke creeping into the cell.

“Come on! Quick!” she said from the ceiling vent, helping Soji and Hiro up. The ceiling was over twenty feet high, so they’d stood on each other’s shoulders. They had no idea where the vent would lead, but decided to take the risk. Besides which, they had no other options.

Soon it angled straight up through the building, and Jet climbed to the main floor using counter-pressure and the shuko and ashiko bands. Then she dropped them down, and Hiro and Soji followed. Jet steeled her focus, knowing she’d face Takumi again. She’d have to draw on all her skills. She knew her own weakness. Now all she had to do was guard against it.

If only it were that simple.

The vent opened on a grate in the ceiling of the hall on the main floor.

Speaking in shinobi kotoba, Jet told the others to stay in the vent.

“Where are you going?” Hiro asked.

“I’ve got go straight to the top—to get Harter.”

“You can’t! It’s too dangerous,” Hiro pleaded, “Please!”

“We’ve come this far. Now’s the time,” she said, steadying her voice.

“Are you ready?” Hiro asked.

Jet swallowed. “Yes. I’m ready.”

“No. It’s too dangerous. I’ll go with you,” Hiro said.

“You must stay here with Soji,” Jet insisted. “He’s weak. We can’t leave him alone.”

Jet couldn’t see Hiro’s face in the dark vent, but she felt his strong sense of duty, and his even stronger desire to avenge his mother and Ojiisan.

Jet took a deep breath in. “Hiro. I know you want to come with me, but if something should happen, it’s better that one of us is…” She stopped mid-sentence. “Do you understand?” she asked.

Hiro came closer. “You’re right. I know you’re right. But I….”

“Nothing’s going to change unless I defeat him,” she said calmly. “It’s why I went to Japan. It’s why you came to America. We have to finish what our mothers started. For them.”

Hiro nodded. He understood. “Be careful,” he whispered.

“Hai!” she cried, knocking open the grate and dropping down between two guards in an instant. She moved like lightening, knocked them out by jabbing them behind the ears with her fingers in a shishin ken strike. More guards on either side of them turned toward her and drew their weapons.

Takumi came into the hall just as they took aim.

“Don’t shoot!” he called out, but it was too late.

A hail of bullets rained across the room, guards hitting each other on either side of where Jet had stood.

Standing before them, she’d timed her presence for what seemed a second too long, just enough to confuse them and make them wonder why she wasn’t running. And in that brief confusion, she passed through the wall—kabe nuke no jutsu. Instantly, she found a small breeze through the building and followed it out.

In the stillness within her motion, she heard the sound of the wind outside the walls. A chill ran through her body. Ojiisan had told her that about the ninja wind. It lived in all of her tribe. It propelled them forward. This was it. It lived within her, too.

The sound shook her soul and pushed her into action. The sound was the desire to live, the force of her will, her ki, coming from within her heart. It was her inheritance.

Moving like a gathering storm, she felt her power and strength.

To survive this night, she’d have to master the ninja wind. She’d have to become it, and let it become her.

Her hand instinctively went to the locket, but nothing was there. Her fingers fluttered across her chest, searching but not finding the sacred locus of her power.

Panic rose within her. When had she lost it, and where? In the cell with Rossi? Sliding through the air vent? I have to find it!

Jet’s heart pounded, her pulse raced like never before.

She was doomed.

In the moment she needed her power the most, it was gone.