A curtain of trees surrounded the circular Coliseum.
Without disturbing a leaf, a dark form slipped through the branches and set down on the stone paving in front of the Coliseum. The young man in black stood there in the oppressive heat of the night. The countenance rising from the slicker was as pretty as the pale moon above, enough to send a shiver down the spine.
Though when his leather boots set foot on the ground without a sound, it became clear that this was not simply another pretty boy.
Setsura Aki.
Eyes filled with no more emotion than the lens of a camera turned toward the Coliseum. “Hope I’m not late,” he said.
A pair of iron rails at his feet emerged from the darkness and disappeared into the gloom.
With the southern terminus at Shinjuku and the northern end at Takada no Baba, this line was well-known to the old-timers as the JNR Yamate. In better times, it once carried four million commuters during the morning and evening rush hours. The Coliseum sat on the grounds of the former Shin-Okubo Station.
This area, more than most, had fallen victim to the Devil Quake. Peering into the darkness past the glow of the hastily rebuilt street lights, the remains of the wrecked houses and buildings could still be seen in abundance.
The flourishing marketplace in the nearby Okubo Station ruins was comparable to the Hanazono Shrine discount bazaar, though even in the full light of day, the aura of destruction hovered over it like a dark cloud. There was said to be no lack of thugs and wise guys among the residents as well.
✦ ✦ ✦
Setsura approached the front gate. The shutters were lowered across the broad entranceway. Nobody came out, nobody went in—that was the law of the Death Match.
On the other side of the louvered steel shutters, three security officers approached Setsura holding Benelli automatic shotguns against their hips. Their eyes glowed blue in the dim light. Artificial eyes. The upper halves of their bodies were cybernetic.
“What do you want?” said the one in the middle.
“Police,” Setsura said, speaking as the young owner of a senbei shop.
“Yeah, right.”
Fingers tightened on triggers. The muzzles of the guns pointed at Setsura’s chest. The magazine of each weapon contained five ten-gauge shells loaded with number four buckshot. If all three of them let loose, there was no imagining what a rain of 250 pellets in total could do to a human body at point-blank range.
“No kidding,” Setsura drawled. “And I happen to know something you might find interesting. Turns out we’ve got one of our men in there. Think you could find him for me?”
“What?” shouted the man on the right, his face red with anger.
One of the unspoken rules of the Coliseum was no formal involvement by the cops. There were plenty of former officers among the contestants, and a few on active duty as well. But start investigating that and a city-wide war was bound to break out with every gang that made its home here.
Which was not to say that the police wouldn’t be happy to round up and eradicate all the killers in one fell swoop. They’d been known to send in undercover cops—who were never heard from again.
Even so, Setsura’s pronouncement was enough to arouse in the organizers all those old fears.
“Who the hell are you?” The middle man said, “Call it in.”
The man took a few steps back to an intercom attached to the wall. The speaker buzzed first. He picked up the handset. “What? An intruder?”
The other two took their eyes off Setsura. “Shit, he wasn’t kidding. You, stay right where you are.”
The older of the two motioned with his hand. Setsura watched amazed as the steel shutters quietly began to lift up.
A voice squawked from the intercom. “Two corpsmen just went missing. It’s on us if we don’t get ’em back.”
“So can I come in?” Setsura asked.
“Yeah, and hurry it up!”
He put down the handset, circled around behind Setsura, and jabbed the gun in his back. The muzzle wavered in empty air.
Setsura should have been there, but at the last second his body seemed to shift of its own accord. The guard stumbled into the space next to him. He glared at Setsura. Perhaps unwilling to believe that this absentminded pretty boy had busted a move like that, he did nothing more.
“Come on,” he said, jerking the muzzle of the gun.
“If you don’t mind, there’s something I’d like to ask you,” Setsura said, raising his hands like he was being held up. “You the only ones guarding the front entrance?”
“That’s right.”
“I see.” Setsura nodded. He said in a strangely loud voice, “I’m not here. Go on with your business as usual.”
The intercom buzzed. One of the security guards answered it. The man behind Setsura heard him say, “Everything here is fine. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Hey, hold on a sec—” He started to turn around, but thought better of the inclination and continued toward the stairs, the Benelli pressed against the small of Setsura’s back.
The two other guards lowered the shutters. They turned their watchful gaze to the world outside the Coliseum, as if nothing had changed before or after Setsura had arrived. Just like he said, any knowledge of Setsura’s existence had been erased from their thoughts.
✦ ✦ ✦
On the field of combat, the competition continued without a hitch. But the corridors beneath the stands were seething with an altogether different fervor. Two of the corpsmen responsible for carrying the defeated to the infirmary were nowhere to be found, vanished without a trace.
When asked, the doctor only scratched his head in bewilderment. Having no cause to doubt his word, they didn’t question him further. Instead, they directed their attention to the supposed intruder responsible and launched a search.
A patrol in the first basement level observed somebody sauntering down the hallway. They aimed their shotguns and ordered him to halt.
“Hey, it’s me.” Holding up his hands was the clearly-annoyed guard who’d been escorting Setsura.
“What are you up to down here?” said the patrol leader, while scanning the guard’s body with his aura detection electronic eye. Disguises using 3D holograms and artificial skin were becoming all the more complex and refined by the day, now impossible to discern with the naked eye.
However, unnatural electronic and chemical alterations still showed up as disturbances in a person’s natural aura. As of yet, nobody could escape these detection devices.
“I’m not up to anything,” the guard said. “Nothing’s going on upstairs. Thought I’d come down and lend a hand.”
“We got our hands full already. Damned lucky you didn’t get shot. I take it you didn’t see anything funny on your way here?”
“Ah, no.”
“Then go back upstairs and don’t abandon your post.”
Urged along by the muzzles of four guns and flame throwers, the guard disappeared up the stairs.
“How does he check out?” asked one of the patrol members.
“Nothing off with his aura. But something still seems off about the guy. Tail him. If things start getting weird, shoot him in the legs.”
One of the patrol members nodded and hurried off with stealthy steps.
“Move out,” the patrol leader said to the rest.
A blue-red blob appeared in his peripheral vision, the aura of a rat. No matter how well a creature might conceal itself, as long as the space was not perfectly sealed, the flare from its aura would leak out.
Nevertheless, a thorough search yielded nothing out of the ordinary, neither hide nor hair of an intruder or interloper.