Hercules Chen, Zero Hunter: Toroka VS Mecha-Tsuyo, Part 16 of 17

The Battle of Sapporo is over. The agents of the Black Dragon Society must reckon with its aftermath and the choices that brought them there.

This is Part 16 of Hercules Chen, Zero Hunter: Toroka VS Mecha-Tsuyo. If you’d like to avoid spoilers, read Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15 first.

Content warnings: violence, animal violence, mild swearing, creeps.

The Last Warrior.

SATURDAY MORNING, AUGUST 7, 1943
KAKUSHI-TORIDE, LAKE BIWA
SHIGA PREFECTURE, JAPAN

//Translated from Japanese.//

Takamoto grunted, but held his tongue as he pushed the knife between the knuckle bones of his smallest finger. The knife his cousin had given him to do the deed was dull, another insult. It pressed through his flesh rather than slicing, snapping the bone instead of separating it cleanly. One last drag completed his task.

Zuboshi had a bandage waiting.

“Despite your pride, the Society has remained triumphant,” Tetsujin said. “Do not think I condemn ambition, nephew. But failed ambition must have its price.”

Ichirou took the the bloodied knife from Takamoto and wiped it on a square of white silk. He examined the red stain, then folded it and put it in his pocket. The knife slipped into a sheath hidden behind his chest plate.

Takamoto would remember that blade.

His hand throbbed to the elbow. The pain was great, the greatest he had ever felt. It was no wonder that he was the only person able to inflict it upon him.

He glared at the discarded finger. It was a small price to pay. A defeat on the battlefield was a loss of oneself. He must reflect that.

“A fine trophy,” Ichirou grated. The Matagi captain rarely spoke, and his voice was rough from disuse. He picked up the finger and studied it.

“It is not a trophy. The taking of it was the lesson, and the byproduct is simply trash,” Tetsujin said. He paced around the old throne room and looked out into the blue through its reinforced windows. “I would sooner see it fed to the catfish than kept in a jar.”

“Yes, Tetusjin,” Ichirou said. He cradled the finger in his gauntlet’s palm. Frost crept over it. It turned white, then blue, and the skin cracked.

Takamoto watched in silence. The only sound in the great hall was the scratching of metal on stone. To his right, one of Tetsujin’s eunuchs worked at etching a name into the fortress’ dank wall. ‘Jitte Eigami Kaede’ would be remembered for his efforts.

The nail darkened to black. Ichirou smirked and balled the gauntlet into a fist. He crushed Takamoto’s finger into greasy dust. He dropped the mess onto the floor and wiped his palm on his sleeve.

Zuboshi was breathing hard. Takamoto gave his wingman a subtle hand signal. If either of them was foolish enough to show any reaction to Tetsujin’s command or Ichirou's disrespect, they would both be dead in seconds.

Takamoto could not afford to die, not as a failure, or to lose any of his weapons. Toroka had ravaged Sapporo, but his squadron would take longer to recover.

Akainu had taken the brunt of the creature's attack, having been slashed out of the air. He managed to crash into the shallow bay. His back broke with the impact. His fuel ignited before his fighter sank. He eventually dragged himself free, but not before burning.

Majo, the crone, had let the creature touch her as well. She had bailed out of her cockpit at low altitude. The rubble that awaited her snapped her left leg like a dry noodle. While she squirmed, wounded, Toroka’s breath washed over her. The toxins corroded her lungs into stringy meat. Her every cough brought loose flesh into the back of her throat. She was a hard woman and would recover, but her future included weeks bolted into an iron lung.

“You will be excited you learn I have a new assignment for you, Haruto,” Tetsujin said, interrupting his thoughts. He was still staring out of his window, watching a freshwater ray glide by. “Will you not?”

“Yes, Tetsujin, I will,” Takamoto said. The throbbing inched its way to his shoulder. He attempted to breathe through it and push that pain aside, but those techniques required practice that he had never considered attempting. Instead, he clenched his mutilated hand and tried to ignore the fire pulsing through him. “I know where to look for both traitors. And with the Kokuryūyari resupplied I can find the half-breed as well.”

“Your cousin will lead the search for the deserter Sato Ryu,” Tetsujin said. The last Takamoto had seen of Gaikotsu, the former assassin lit his afterburner and ran from the battle, due east. If the Matagi were on his trail, Takamoto would hunt the greater prize.

“So I am to hunt Umihara Shou,” Takamoto determined. The bug-eyed man had launched from Mecha-Tsuyo before Toroka had ripped the walking ship's bow off. Radar tracked his pulse-jet plane heading west, to Manchuko. Umihara was half-crippled already, and deaf. It would not be much of a manhunt.

“No, Haruto,” Tetsujin said. His voice was soft, but full of menace. “Nor shall you track the Zero Hunter.”

“The half-breed is mine!” Takamoto snarled.

Tetsujin turned away from his window and closed the distance between himself and his seething nephew. Takamoto froze.

He knew what Tetsujin's next move would be, but he was powerless to stop it. The Viper Harpoon Fist was an unbeatable technique. He could split both Takamoto and Zuboshi in half. Behind Tetsujin, Takamoto could see Ichirou's Cold Touch gauntlet steaming. A long crystalline blade had sprouted from his palm.

“The Zero Hunter has been added to the Imperial Headsman's ledger. His fate is no longer in question. You are mine, kaiken. My burden. What you have, I gave you. When you fail, it is my failure.”

Takamoto let his eyes drop to the stone floor. He examined Tetsujin's gleaming shoes. They were awkward, Western-style loafers.

“I did not have the weapon - !” Takamoto tried to say.

“So a weapon is required to kill?” Tetsujin asked. Even in his shiny loafers, the old man could slaughter everyone in the room. “No, Haruto, this is my fault. I asked too much of you. Perhaps because I expected it of my nephew. But as the coin has two sides, that is why I only asked a finger in exchange for a lost city, and not your head.”

Tetsujin’s glare silenced any objection Takamoto might have offered.

“Matagi-Senpai has your new assignment,” Tetsujin said. “It would be in your best interest to give this post your full attention. Forget the Zero Hunter, forget Gaikotsu, forget Umihara Shou, forget the Kokuryūyari. Recall your failure every time you make a fist, Jitte Takamoto.”

A wave of anger and nausea washed over Takamoto, the demotion shaking him worse than his dismemberment. Ichirou smirked in a way that made Takamoto want to re-break his crooked face.

Ichirou placed a mimeographed sheet in Takamoto's hands. It only took a quick scan of the characters to reveal his fate.

“You are taking my ship?” he whispered.

“The Kokuryūyari was never yours. And I am replacing her with a dozen ships. You are unpracticed in the art of gratitude, kaiken.”

“The Hōfuku-Sora fleet?” Takamoto asked. He handed the paper to Zuboshi. His name was on the orders as well. “It is a myth created by the Nazis to keep us on their leash. You would have us chase another ghost?”

“I would give you a chance to earn back my trust and your honor,” Tetsujin snapped. “But you still have too much that is mine. It is preventing you from seeing clearly.”

“All I have left is what I have earned,” Takamoto snarled.

“No, I have one last thing to take.” Tetsujin said. He watched his nephew and his towering wingman in the reflection off the thick glass. “Jitte Ikeda.”

“Yes, Tetsujin?” Zuboshi asked. His rodent voice warbled with uncertainty.

“Step forward.”

Zuboshi did as he was bidden, standing alongside the Ax Hand for the first time ever.

“You are an ace pilot yourself, are you not?”

“Yes, Tetsujin.”

“How many kills have you logged?”

“I do not count, Tetsujin,”

“Thirty-two. Do you wish to go to the frozen hell the Ax Hand is leading you to?”

“Tetsujin, it is an honor to undertake any mission the Society assigns me.”

“You do not have the wit to be a sycophant. But you do have the skill to succeed outside of my nephew's shadow. I ask again: was your oath to Haruto or to the Black Dragon Society?”

Zuboshi hesitated for just long enough that his pause was noticeable, but he gave the only answer that would keep his head attached to his neck:

“My life is dedicated to the Empire, to the Society, and to you, Tetsujin.”

“There could be no doubt. Please remove yourself from here, jitte. Your future has just brightened.”

Zuboshi bowed low to the old man then walked away, past his bleeding former wingman. He was close enough that Takamoto could have snatched his throat out before even Tetsujin could stop him. Instead, he let Zuboshi walk away. The massive doors to the great hall groaned and he passed through. Dragons hewn from wood, stone, and metal intertwined behind him.

“The Hōfuku-Sora fleet was not my first choice for you, Haruto,” Tetsujin said. “I would have assigned you to the Thunder Cave base. Its head of security was assassinated this morning.”

“The Thunder Cave is where you sent Toroka's corpse,” Takamoto stated.

“I see you still have contacts that speak to you,” Tetsujin said. “Yes, I have considered the creature a top priority for our scientists. I feel there is much to be learned from her remains. The second bank of incubators were completed four days ago. Her eggs will be kept warm and safe beneath Hiroshima until they hatch. The Allies possess no means to damage a fortress so strong, and would not were they able. They lack the dedication to their purpose.”

“Securing the creatures would be a worthy task,” Takamoto mused. They had pulled four viable eggs from the dead monster’s abdomen. Tetsujin meant to see them hatched. The opportunity to raise and train a beast as powerful as Toroka, to forge it as a weapon, would be a chance to direct history.

“Yes, nephew, I have no doubt you would find the task suited to you.”

“But instead, you exile me.”

“An old friend has requested you. Though you will fly north without your squadron, you will not freeze alone.”

“It is a death sentence.”

“Or a chance at glory. If the Hōfuku-Sora fleet is everything promised, you could turn back the Americans in a month. If it is the ghost story you proclaim it to be, do not bother returning at all. Let the Arctic winds take you and bury you in white, never to haunt my halls or skies again.”

The Drowned Captain.

MONDAY MORNING, AUGUST 23, 1943
HUMAN ASSET RETENTION CENTER, LEVEL -9
“THE GRAVE”, CAMP X, ONTARIO

//Translated from Japanese.//

The crashing ocean waves nearly sounded right. Umihara gave his hearing aid's levels a quick adjustment, reducing the feedback to make the surf sound a bit more natural. He smiled and laid back beneath the wide window, letting its light warm his skin.

He smiled. He felt like a cat.

He knew the light was little more than a heat lamp, the ocean sounds piped in through hidden speakers, and the window a rectangular depression in the bedrock wall with a projection of a beach within it, but he felt happy. Not many prisoners held fifty meters beneath the surface of the earth could boast an ocean view.

His captors said little to him. In the prison the guards maintained a tense code of silence. Still, it was a hen house compared to his time among the Imperial Smiths, with only the scheming Ayumu to speak to. He knew he was not the only man living there, but he had seen none other than his stoic guards.

A bowl of rice, American rice, waited for him, cooling on his drafting table. An egg sat nearby. The guards had betrayed their code and asked him to verify three times that he truly wanted it raw. He smiled and cracked the brown shell, then poured it over his rice. A quick stir of his chopsticks mixed it all together and made for a satisfactory breakfast. Holding the bowl in his right hand was awkward, but the cast and sling afforded him enough range of motion that was able to finish his breakfast.

He basked beneath the heat lamp for a while longer and enjoyed his morning.

The note Eun Hye had passed him that night in the skies over Sapporo had proven true; her Office had kept its word. In exchange for his work, he would be offered respect, protection, and the freedom to create.

He understood why he must be kept hidden, locked beneath the dirt. He was content.

In his cell, his burrow, when the lights were off, it was black and silent. It was peaceful. He’d seen true blackness before, and he remembered how loud the bottom of the ocean was, even years later. Dying was never quiet, even when there was no sound.

No, the darkness in his burrow was something more, something warm and meditative; it was a total darkness of the self that he had not experienced in many years.

He looked at the pills arrayed next to his breakfast. There were eight, the same eight as every morning. The Office's Physician General Sharma had explained the purpose of each to him. She trusted him not to hoard the opiates.

With enough of the pills, he could kill himself.

He appreciated the respect that trust required. Soon, Doctor Sharma had told him, as his arm healed there would be seven pills, then six. And, in time, the old pain would subside on its own. He had been hurting for too long to believe her, but the respect and care she'd shown him earned her trust of her own.

Despite his misgivings, the pills had already had a startling effect. On his first night, he had dreamed. It was not the tarry black nothing wrought by opium, nor the cold, crushing, hollow he had recalled when of clear mind. They were his old dreams, older than the old pain. Dreams of blue ocean under blue sky, dreams of pride and discovery.

The old sailor smiled and plucked the pencil from behind his ear.

Umihara looked down on his project, the coin by which he had secured his safe harbor. The long paper was clipped into place across his drafting table. His drawing hand no longer trembled. Doctor Sharma's pills had weakened the old pain, and it had not the strength to wrestle the pencil from his grip. He could sketch a straight line again, and he did so, connecting the bow of his ship to its stern.

The rasp of graphite against paper was soothing. He smiled at the familiar sound. His wrist was growing tight, but he would work a while longer before taking time to meditate. Umihara rolled his left shoulder, testing his broken arm. It was slow to respond and quivered numbly.

The escape from Mecha-Tsuyo had been frantic. His own men had chased him down when they realized what he was doing, tanuki snapping at his heels. In his haste, he had fallen down the last ladder between the command deck and the launch bay. He was barely able to hold his crew off, firing a Nambu pistol down the tight corridors. He may have shot Chief Fujioka, he was not sure. The chief's father had been one of Umihara's instructors at the naval academy a lifetime before. He might have the man's blood on his hands.

Umihara had blacked out the second his pulse-jet fighter's rockets had kicked in. The G-forces had been enough to squeeze the blood from his throbbing brain. They had finished breaking his arm after his tumble down the ladder had cracked it.

He came to halfway over the Sea of Japan. His plane had steadied itself and assumed a course due west, auto-correcting as it followed its compass. Umihara did not touch the controls until the fuel needle was below the gauge.

He guided the fighter through Russian airspace and into the wilds west of Manchukuo. That was where Eun’s note had told him to go, beyond the reach of the Imperial Army. He bailed out of the desiccated plane at five hundred meters and let the country winds carry his parachute to the ground. Chinese forces, Maoists, he thought, saw his bright white parachute in descent and converged on his location.

The guerrillas beat him and lashed him to a pole in the back of a crowded cave. It was four days before he was cut down, bloody and fractured. A Buddhist tended his wounds, splinting his arm. He could tell its angle was off; the bone had already fused. The monk offered him a broth soup, bowl of rice, and grilled vegetables. He did not say a word about his arm, instead digging into the food; he was simply happy to eat and continue breathing.

Umihara slept for three full days after that simple meal had filled his stomach. He only woke when a gentle voice roused him from the shuddering dreams of invasive cold and creaking pressure.

“Captain Umihara Shou?” the man asked. He spoke slow and stilted, with a southern Chinese accent.

“Yes,” Umihara groaned. His eyes were crusty and ached. The old pain woke up with him, flaring inside his spine and joints.

“I am Wong Fei-Song,” the man said. Umihara rubbed the sharp crust from his eyes and stared. He knew the name. Every Black Dragon knew it.

“Yes, sir,” was all Umihara could muster. This man was a warrior without peer, the White Lion of the West.

Master Wong Fei-Song, abbot of the Distant Bells Shaolin Temple and field commander of the Office's Bureau for East Asian Affairs was smaller than Umihara had imagined. And balder. The intelligence reports about the man read more like scroll-inscribed myths more than dossiers. He was just over a meter-and-a-half tall, wrinkled but taut. He did not adorn himself in the trappings of the Shaolin tradition, eschewing their gold and red robes in favor of a Western-style uniform, though without leather accessories. An American pistol rode his hip in a canvas holster.

The strange monk entered the partitioned cave Umihara had been kept in. Every step was lithe and confident. Despite his shaved, age-speckled scalp and rounded shoulders, the old man moved like a predatory cat.

“My friends told me you were here,” Wong said. He smiled, revealing a set of thin, crooked teeth. “May I sit?”

Umihara scrambled to make room for the monk on his bedding, but Wong lowered himself down where he stood, one leg folded across his lap, balanced perfectly on one combat boot.

“Do you speak Cantonese?” Wong asked, his cadence awkward and words hesitant. Umihara shook his head. Wong shrugged at the answer, then stroked his gray mustache, saying: “Practice hones every edge.”

Umihara nodded, slowly. The man before him had bested Rokuro the Cooper's Son in single combat. He had disabled a phalanx of Chi-Ha tanks unarmed. He had escaped the Kuragarigirudo in their own lands and unmasked their Whispering Ancestor in the dead of night. It was said it was Wong Fei-Song who struck low the former Tetsujin and his Matagi. It was said he was two hundred years old. The stories flashed through his mind like a burning film, too loud and bright for his brain to handle. The old pain was alive and well, pounding at the backs of his eyes and the flesh within his joints.

“I cannot offer you any good options, captain,” Wong told him. “But I will give you the opportunity to choose among them.”

“I understand,” Umihara answered. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and he nearly suppressed a whimper as the old pain drove an invisible needle into the base of his skull.

“You are not well, captain.”

Before Umihara could reply, the monk's hand shot forward. Wong drove his forefinger and thumb into Umihara's neck five times in five places. A vertebrae popped with the last blow, then the monk sat back.

“What?” Umihara asked. A numbness was blossoming over his body, strangling the old pain away. He watched his hands move before as if they belonged to someone else.

“I blocked the flow of qi inside your body,” Wong explained. “You will not feel pain, or anything, for several days. It will give you time without distraction to consider what I have come from India to tell you.”

“Thank you, thank you,” Umihara stammered. He had not felt alone or at peace in months. Despite only knowing his arms were still attached to his body by looking at his shoulders, he was ecstatic.

“I would not see any more suffer,” Wong assured him.

“Thank you.”

“As I said, captain, you have two options. You may stay here and wait to stand trial at the end of the war. The communist forces will keep you secure until peace in declared. I cannot guess your fate were you placed before a Chinese or American court. Or you may come with me and put your knowledge to use.”

“My knowledge?” There was only one thing a man of war would want that Umihara Shou could create. “I would not help you kill my countrymen.”

“I cannot promise no Japanese soldiers will die because of what you build. But I can promise that no Japanese civilians will,” Wong said.

“That is just,” Umihara said. He knew of the atrocities committed in the name of the Emperor. So long as his works could be used to prevent further horror, he could sacrifice his name. For leaving, the Dragons would end his life. For working for enemies of Japan, his ancestors would haunt him through eternity. But he had seen what was done under his flag. Eternity was a small price to pay to end those horrors.

“You would be taken away from here. My friends at the Office would heal you, protect you, and give you anything you need to continue creating. You will not have freedom, I will tell you this, but you be respected.”

Umihara looked in the Shaolin man's eyes. They were truthful. Wong Fei-Song held no malice in him, and would not debase himself with lies.

Wong Fei-Song's plane was hidden in the heart of the valley, a half-day's trek through limestone mountains and thick forest. Umihara found himself blindfolded and run through hidden bases in Bombay, then Egypt, French West Africa, Bermuda, Baltimore, and Ontario. Wong Fei-Song had left him in India, but the officials who accompanied him, in turns bodyguards, translators, nurses, and jailers, were polite and spoke Japanese without accent.

Canada was warmer than Umihara had expected. He was escorted off the runway to a small hospital, past curious and scowling officials. Doctor Sharma, Physician General, waited at the door, flanked by nurses and orderlies.

She spoke very little as she examined him from top to bottom, but what she did tell him radiated warmth and concern. Though he did not speak English, his ever-present companions translated for the both of them. Doctor Sharma was a thorough physician, middle-aged, and Hindu. She wore a white coat over her crimson sari, and had her hair wrapped in silk dyed the color of deep water. She smiled at him as she drew his blood, and frowned at the sight of his poorly-healed arm.

Her orderlies held him in place as they snapped his arm, then held him tighter as they re-set it. She had copies of his service records laid out on her table, documents that could only be found by pilfering them directly from the Naval Ministry in Tokyo, which told of his decompression injuries. She had a replacement hearing aide ready for him and a drug regimen to help him against the old pain. She politely informed him through the translators that no opium was permitted in Camp X but that she would help in others ways if the pain became unbearable. She made a note to add vitamin D supplements to his meals, then sent him on his way, cast-encased arm looped through a sling.

It was less than a kilometer's distance between the hospital and the Grave, so they walked. Umihara's abused joints did not appreciate the work, but he knew he might not get another chance to enjoy the sky and breeze for some time. A contingent of grim men waited at the prison's outer gates, all disguised by eyeless gray masks save for an older white officer leaning on a thick cane.

The Grave looked like a tombstone from the surface. A thick command bunker formed its only above-ground structure, a concrete mass built to withstand any assault. Three rows of fences surrounded it, crowned with spiraling barbed wire. A granite-faced white officer unlocked the outer gate. The guards locked each gate before they opened the next.

“I am Warden Turner. All of your questions and requirements will be directed to me,” Umihara's escorts translated for the man. Umihara bowed at the waist to his new host. Turner did not return the courtesy. Instead, the warden held a hand out and directed Umihara to enter the bunker.

Umihara studied the bellicose architecture that swallowed him. It was brutal and utilitarian, a temple to horror meant to withstand the furious desperation of madmen attacking it from within and without. Each set of walls was reinforced concrete at least five meters thick. Four sets of pressure-sealed steel doors yawned open. It would have taken Mecha-Tsuyo hours to crack the facility. Its doors closed behind them. Umihara craned his neck to catch his last slivers of true sunlight.

His eyes adjusted slowly. More masked, silent guards were in the room around him, either resting, filing reports, or monitoring listening devices and radios.

“Here,” Warden Turner said through the translator. He limped over to the center of the room and pressed a button on a free-standing console. The room began to rumble, then an opening appeared just wide enough for a cage to rise out of the floor. Umihara hesitated long enough for one of the guards to prod him in the ribs with his truncheon. He stepped into the cage. One translator, a guard, and the warden crammed in around him. They locked it shut behind them. A winch whined and dropped them into the black. After a few minutes’ descent, the dangling cage squealed to a halt. A large claw at its base clamped onto a catwalk that ran the circumference of a vertical shaft. There was a large steel door embedded in the bedrock, waiting for him.

Warden Turner escorted Umihara to the door. It was a curious mechanism that required two men using their notched truncheons to open. Warm yellow and blue light flooded the mine shaft, illuminating dozens of other identical doors above and below.

“These are your quarters,” the warden explained. He had called it 'quarters,' but its place in the depths of a decommissioned diamond mine, nestled in with so many other men who would never see daylight again, made it hard to see as anything other than a cell. Warden Turner had no further words for him; once Umihara was inside the door closed behind him. Dreadful bolts slid into place, locking him inside.

It was not dank, like he expected, or cold. The stone floor was carpeted and the room glowed like it was perpetually a summer afternoon.

Umihara took to his new environment well. His time aboard submarines, locked in an hyperbaric chamber, and sequestered in the depths of the Smiths' mountain island had erased any wisps of claustrophobia that might have remained to him. He sat back and sipped his tea. He had a cot and a nightstand, a desk and a drafting table. He could not rearrange the furniture, but a switch would lower the desk and drafting table if he wanted to work seated on the floor. The toilet was a Western-style commode, partitioned off in the corner alongside the sink and shower.

He was certain that the microphone they used to monitor him was hidden in the air vent in the ceiling, but suspicion was their right. He did not want to risk being moved to quarters without a window. They said that if he did not have an incident in the next two months, he could get a radio.

The officials had offered him honey, reconstituted lemon juice, and reconstituted milk with his tea on his first day. He had decided to try it with the first two options and enjoyed the result. He had taken it with honey and lemon every morning since.

Umihara placed the tea cup on the floor and measured the dimensions of his new design. If the Office actually built it, it would be massive. The cost in steel alone could bankrupt a nation. It could also conquer a state alone, and take the population of a city to crew.

Mecha-Tsuyo had been born from a place of pain, madness, and fear. This creation was something else. Not peace, nor happiness, but something else. Stability, perhaps. His titan would tower over Mecha-Tsuyo and Toroka, even over the Russian device, the ocean-crawling crab. He had seen photos of the German hovering fortress, the Hrungnir. What Umihara had dreamed of in his first night of calm sleep since before the crushing black could swat the Nazis’ flying tank aside as if it were an angry little dog.

The resources the Office offered him changed everything. While the Dragons and the Imperial Navy were greedy and hoarded their findings and intelligence for their own advancement, the Office was eager to share.

Umihara sketched terahertz radiation projectors into its arms; it would be able to stop ordinance before it hit. He added DIVERT launch rails onto its arching spine and towering I-A crash-overload projectors with their blinding blue beacons onto its shoulders. Its armor was lithe and segmented, a mix of steel and regenerating frozen Pykrete meant to absorb and redirect force as Toroka's scales had. Every square meter of space earned itself a cannon or rocket launcher. The walking ship would carry more guns than a porcupine carried quills.

His tea was cold when he stopped drawing and sipped it again. The false sun projected over the false sea in his false window was at its apex. He stood and stretched, working his muscles in the way Doctor Sharma had taught him.

When his body was loose enough to walk again he rolled up his blueprints and slid them into a slot hewn into the bedrock next to his door. The button next to it closed a hatch over the slot. There was a hollow creak on the far side of the wall.

The guards were photographing his works. They replaced the blueprints in the slot after a few minutes, joined by a warm bento box. Umihara removed his designs and lunch from the wall. He unrolled the blueprints and laid them back out.

The false sun warmed his face and he sat back in his chair. There was warm rice and leeks in the box, along with a fillet of grilled white fish. Umihara sprinkled the supplied red chilis and soy sauce onto the meal and stirred it with his chopsticks.

The strange engineering staring up at him from the table was entrancing. Umihara's last creation had been born from madness dragged back from the depths of a black hell that should have taken his life. What he was creating under the false sun was something else, something crafted entirely from within Umihara.

He paused, suddenly reminded of the gold-robed monk in Shanghai. He could fit it with infrasound projectors. Anyone who could hear it would be driven into a panic. He set his food aside long enough to scribble down a note.

His creation was nearing perfection. He would bring it into the world not as some fever dream or a vision from the other side of death. It had not the excuse of madness to justify what it would do. It would be a towering god clothed in metal and ice, a manifestation of that thing which caused the most callous, gruesome deaths in the modern world, of that which burned the sky:

It would be a product of humanity.

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Copyright © 2024 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Dudu Torres.