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No sooner had we broken through that door—feeling rather proud of our own brute strength after Sanitoro's laser made butter of its hinges—than we were met with another obstacle designed to freeze us in our tracks: sentry bots. Not just one or two. A dozen of them standing in the hallway on the other side of that door. Waiting for us.
No anthropomorphic arms or legs or creepy robotic faces, no glowing red eyes; nothing like mandroids. Each one was little more than a boxy arsenal on treads, rolling about eagerly as they targeted their prey.
The first barrage launched without pause, miniature rockets whizzing through the air. The darts missed us by a centimeter or two as we lunged out of the way, diving headlong in opposite directions and hitting the unforgiving gravel outside. The bots whirred and bleeped as the front line advanced for a second try.
"Robots." Sanitoro leaned back against the building as he reactivated the laser cutter. "How annoying."
"Not so much." I set the EMP gun to burst mode. That's what I called it, anyway. I'm sure Agent Adams' gadget geeks had a more scientific name for it.
Diving in through the open doorway, I fired without bothering to aim. A blast of blue light engulfed the corridor, bleaching the concrete floor, metallic steel walls, and white ceiling tiles, sweeping through the bots and bowling them over like inanimate ten-pins. The electromagnetic burst continued onward unimpeded, gliding toward the end of the hallway and beyond. I had no idea how long it would take to fizzle out, nor what havoc it would wreak along the way—deactivating everything in its path, more than likely.
"Impressive," Sanitoro said as we passed the motionless sentries. He had his Magnum in both hands, elbows locked. For now, the laser was off. "I would very much like to reverse-engineer that weapon of yours."
"I'm sure you would." There were no other doors lining the hallway. The camera mounted over the mangled door behind us was dead, by all appearances. A vacant mechanical eye left staring. "But it's classified."
"The best tech often is. What can it do to flesh and bone?"
"Haven't tried." But seeing how most of a human's neural impulses involve a whole lot of electricity, I had a feeling the results would be similar to the effect on those bots. Would the next level of defense in this place be sentries of the human variety?
Ready or not, we reached the end of the hallway. It turned to the left and only to the left. Silent. Vacant. Unlike the entryway, windowless security doors lined this stretch. The keypad beside each one glowed with a green pinpoint of light. Unlocked.
"Anybody home?" I reached for the first door and glanced over my shoulder at Sanitoro. He covered me from a couple meters back, his shades glinting in the stark fluorescent light.
I turned the handle and gave the door a nudge. It swung open, heavy on well-oiled hinges. The room inside was dark. A cot made up in military fashion, a sink, an exposed toilet. Had every earmark of a brand-new holding cell, only nobody had checked in.
We inspected the other rooms on the first floor, turning with the hallway as it wound around to the left like an uninspired maze. No surprises. Every room looked the same: empty, awaiting residents who'd never arrived. We met no further resistance along the way, and it didn't sound like anybody else was on that floor: no footsteps thumping, no sentry bots rolling around. But we still had the two upper levels to check out.
Taking the stairwell, we reached the second floor and found it as lifeless as the one below. The third was no different. Each level filled to capacity with holding cells, none of which were currently in use. The lights were on, the beds were made, but nobody was home.
"This isn't right." I tucked the EMP gun into the back of my pants. "Takahashi has to be here someplace." Assuming those two Blackshirts hadn't tossed him from the chopper while en route. I had a feeling Sanitoro's radar wouldn't have caught such a despicable act. Tracking the vehicle, not its passengers.
"If they knew we were following them," Sanitoro said, "they may have moved the detainees off-site before we arrived."
They who? Those bots? "No sign of life."
Sanitoro nodded. "We have scoured every meter of this place."
"Maybe not."
I headed back to the stairwell, unable to shake the nagging feeling that this facility had been built in two directions—up as well as down. But as we reached the bottom of the stairs, we found ourselves right back where we'd started, on the ground floor. There was no stairwell leading into a basement level.
"What if...?" I drew the EMP gun as I stared at the concrete wall before me. Call me crazy, but I had a hunch.
Sanitoro watched impassively as I fired a burst of electromagnetic energy at the wall. The round should have blasted the composite material ineffectually and then fizzled to black. Instead, it caused a sparking eruption in one corner. With a little help, the entire wall slid aside, rumbling low and revealing another flight of stairs leading down.
"A secret entry point," Sanitoro mused, peering inside.
"Not too shabby. Keep your eyes open."
Fluorescent bulbs flickered on, sensing my movement as I descended the steps. Sanitoro followed without a sound. Everything was as quiet as it had been upstairs—too quiet, too still—but I had a feeling we were about to see some action real soon.
We didn't have long to wait.
At the bottom of the stairs lay another corridor identical to the entryway above. The only difference: no armed sentry bots waited for us—not until we came to the first left turn at the end of the hallway. That's where another dozen had been stationed to welcome us properly.
Dodging their barrage, I repeated my earlier performance with the EMP burst that had worked out so well. I half expected these bots to be more resistant to an electromagnetic pulse—like in an old videogame where enemies were stronger with every level, learning to adapt to whatever you threw at them. Thankfully nobody had told these dumb bots anything about that.
As they toppled over like defenseless dominoes, the reinforced security doors along this stretch of hallway immediately flew open, the pinpoints of light on the panels beside each door switching from red to green in an instant. Unlike the exterior door, they didn't go into lockdown mode when faced with an EMP.
Lucky for the occupants, but unclear whether it was lucky for us.
Wide-eyed Japanese youth poured out into the hallway, one from each single-occupancy cell, all of them garbed in the same formless gray jumpsuits. They caught sight of us as soon as they were free and charged headlong in our direction, shouting hoarsely in words and phrases I couldn't understand.
Unsure whether they planned to strangle us or tear us limb from limb, I drew my revolver and fired a round into the ceiling. That did the trick. All twenty or so staggered to an uncertain halt. They swayed on their feet among the dead sentry bots and darted their eyes from me to Sanitoro. They continued to repeat the same words and phrases, but I had no idea what they meant.
It was creepy. I knew that much.
"What are they saying?" Keeping my revolver and the EMP gun aimed at the young people at the front of the pack, I surveyed the crowd for any sign of Junior. He should have been easy to spot with that vidLink eye implant. But everybody present was sporting pairs of the God-given variety, wild and unblinking. Takahashi wasn't among them either.
Sanitoro held up one hand, and the voices shrank to an incessant murmur. He aimed his Magnum at the concrete floor.
"Monster," he said quietly, tilting his head as he listened to them. "Dragon."
"Right." Whatever the hell that meant. "Do they know where Daichi is? Have they seen Yoshiro?"
Sanitoro relayed the question. A few of the girls choked back sharp sobs at the mention of Junior's name. The boys hung their heads. In shame? Remorse? A boy in the front line, the young fellow staring down the soulless eye of my .38 Smith & Wesson, cleared his throat.
"Are you...here to kill us?" he asked in clear Common.
I shook my head but didn't lower my revolver. Probably a mixed message. "We're looking for Yoshiro Okada. His uncle is worried about him."
"Can we see our families?" asked one of the girls in the middle of the bunch.
"Who's in charge?" I said. They glanced at each other in confusion. I rephrased the question: "Who's keeping you here?"
"Where are we?" one asked.
"Bakemono..." the others murmured, looking like haunted children. I'd seen that expression plenty during the war. No way to avoid it when you found yourself staring the Grim Reaper in the face. "Bakemono..."
I glanced at Sanitoro.
"Monster," he said, intrigued.
"Please, can we leave this place?" One of the girls stepped forward. She was taller than the other young ladies, and her short hair was gathered in pig tails that looked like bean sprouts.
"Nobody's stopping you, from what I can tell. But I need your help first." Most of them stared back at me. A few nodded. The rest stared at the unresponsive bots on the floor. "I need to know what this bakemono is, and I need to find Okada. Daichi Takahashi too, while we're at it."
"Ryuu..." They whispered, casting fearful glances over their shoulders. "Ryuu..."
"Dragon," Sanitoro translated.
"How many of you are there...in this place?" I asked.
They looked at each other as if for the first time.
"I had no idea there were so many," said the boy closest to my revolver.
"You were kept in isolation," I observed. "How long?"
"What day is it?" asked Bean Sprouts.
"Thursday."
Startled gasps swept through the group, a quiet cacophony of confusion.
"I was taken on a Monday," said one.
"Then I have been here for a week," said another.
They didn't look happy about it. Lost time can make anybody feel a little queasy.
"It seems like only yesterday I came to this place," said Bean Sprouts, "but it has been...days?"
I nodded with no clear idea what to tell them. Sure, I wanted to help them find their way home, but I couldn't leave yet. Not without Junior and Daichi. Why weren't they with this group? Nothing about the situation felt right. Where were their captors? And what was this dragon-monster they kept going on about?
"Okada. Takahashi." I pointed to the boy in front. "You. Take me to them."
"Ryuu..." the others murmured. "Ryuu..."
I holstered my gun and grabbed the boy by the front of his jumpsuit. "What are they talking about? A dragon?"
"We do not know," he managed, staring up at me. "I have no idea where they are."
But he was going to help me find them, whether he liked it or not.
"Get them out of here," I said to Sanitoro. "Get them home."
"They will not fit in my car," he said, stone-faced.
"Cram in as many as you can. The rest can jog alongside, if you don't go too fast. I'll call Sergeant Douglass, see if he can meet you halfway." Would the police presence make any difference to that border gang we'd met earlier?
Archibald Douglass was one of the last honest cops in the city, and even though he hated every member of the yakuza as much as he despised Ivan the Terrible's Russian brotherhood, I could trust him not to empty a clip into Sanitoro on sight. Or so I hoped. Expecting the two of them to work together might have been asking too much. But I knew Douglass would do right by these kids, getting them back to their homes in Little Tokyo.
"Call him—with what?" Sanitoro said.
"Your phone." I didn't carry one. Never had, never would. As far as I was concerned, a machine didn't belong anywhere on my person.
"I am not leaving you alone here, Madison."
"Touching. But I'm not alone. I've got—" I gave my helper a little shake. "This guy. What's your name?"
"Ichiru Yamato," he said sullenly, gaze fixed on the floor.
"I've got Ichiru Yamato." Not to mention the classified weapon in my other hand. "We'll be fine. If we run into anything we can't handle, I'll radio you." I nodded toward my wristwatch. "After you get these kids to safety, feel free to return to my rescue. But not a moment before."
I could tell he didn't like the idea, but he reached for his Link anyway. Unfortunately, he didn't have a chance to place that call to Douglass.
Because all hell decided to break loose.