Studio 13 was located at the back of the building, in the very center of the grounds of Fuji TV.
The further in Setsura proceeded, the hotter and more humid it became. An odd odor permeated the surroundings as the air grew increasingly poisonous.
Setsura slipped past many of his foes on the way to the studio. Like the ones he’d encountered in the courtyard they included men wearing military fatigues, and men and women of all ages patrolling the halls, weapons in hand.
All were those who’d been enthralled. The survivors, at least.
Although their movements were easy to read, for whatever reason Setsura took himself to the midst of their living quarters. Strangely enough, as he drew closer to the studio, the place took on a more orderly appearance.
Serving trays were lined up on the tables in the company cafeteria. In the kitchen, brimming pots and pans simmered over a low heat, fifteen of them. The number of people under the Master’s thrall. The Master must have a vested interest in keeping them alive.
There were beds in the sleeping quarters, and evidence of women’s makeup being used. Even without seeing Kotomi for himself, it was clear they still maintained some sense of themselves as individuals. Far more than that, they were maintaining their sense of mission to protect the Master, and the forthright and exacting mental state the mission required, excluding the unethical and immoral behavior which inevitably resulted.
The influence of the Master invited a kind of emotional corruption that manifested itself in their ragged clothing and unkempt appearance. And yet the women still fussed with their looks, revealing a latitude in their mental processes that persisted beyond this “principal occupation” of theirs.
Two hours after leaving Kotomi, in a corner of the dimly-lit building where time seemed to lose track of itself, Setsura stopped in front of a soaring gray steel door. Stenciled on the door was the number 13.
A sign above the door glowed red. The illuminated white letters flashed, “On Air.” The meaning was clear: the Master was in and the Master was watching.
Setsura shot a strand of devil wire inside. He didn’t detect the Master there either. He’d cast thousands of threads around the building, recording the presence of every living thing, except the Master. There were places apparently where even his devil wires couldn’t steal in.
Setsura put his hand on the door. Some of the Master’s enraptured followers were within. Knowing that, he turned the knob. The door was locked, but there was a keyhole into which he could send his devil wires. His fingers moved with the dexterity of a brain surgeon.
His fingers could sense and command the movements of the threads up to a mile away, or as far into the distance as they could stretch without breaking.
Bathed in special electromagnetic waves and manipulated at the microcellular level, the titanium devil wires transmitted the movements of Setsura’s fingers at nearly the speed of light. It was said that once entwined, as long as the unbroken filaments of the threads continued to unspool, there was no place an enemy could run, no place he could hide, to escape their grasp.
In Shinjuku, when Setsura’s fingers moved, the head of a foe living in a castle in the stratosphere would drop off without a sound.
Right now those wires honed in on the deadbolt inside the lock. Setsura flexed his fingers. Like a tenacious snake with an indomitable will the wires slithered in, tightened around and severed it, as easily as a hot knife through warm butter.
With his back against the wall, Setsura reached out and gave the knob a firm push. The heavy door swung open with no more resistance than a rice paper screen.
Followed by a burst of flame, sticky and oily like napalm. The ball of fire spilled through the door into the hallway, struck the wall opposite, and spread out in both directions. The inferno continued for another three seconds before dying away.
Setsura darted in like a gust of black wind. Two SDF rangers with flame throwers were after him. The last line of defense guarding the Master’s bedroom.
The two incandescent streams focused on a single point, lighting up Setsura’s slicker. The orange lump splashed off the fabric and charred the floor and walls. The smell of jellied gasoline filled the air.
A follow-up attack never came. The tops of their heads split in half. They slumped to the floor.
Setsura’s slicker flapped as he spun around, not an ember sticking to him. Five men stood there cradling Model 89 assault rifles, but doing nothing with them. Because their trigger fingers couldn’t move.
Setsura looked elsewhere. Before the Devil Quake, the immense, twenty-five-thousand square foot studio was home to Asia’s most popular music show. A gaping crack ran down the middle of the floor. On the other side of the crack was a mountain of odds and ends and debris.
The stage lights and battens, television cameras aside, here was the mind of a fanatical collector at work—
Monitors, televisions, sound mixers, refrigerators, audio equipment, cupboards, coffee tables and sofas, automatic weapons, quiz show prizes like motor boats, bikes and computers. Even a taxicab.
Setsura focused his gaze on the midst of all this junk. Sitting at the foot of the mountain was a long, rectangular wooden box. The box was nine feet long, four and a half feet wide, and three feet high. In the center of the intricately carved lid was the golden head of a goat, entwined with a magical mandrake root.
This particular coat of arms was an unmistakable mark of evil. But Setsura wasn’t as interested in the crest as the creepy object enshrined in the very center.
Eye sockets that looked like portals to hell, the pale translucent skin—sublimely beautiful in its own way—that lent it the appearance of wax sculpture. The lips pressed together in a straight line were rotting away, revealing teeth clenched in enmity and hatred.