Maohden Vol. 2 (15 page)

He stepped into the dim slash of light slanting in from some unknown quarter.

The squawk of surprise squeezed out of Azusa’s throat was due to the small and wildly disproportional head perched on the giant’s shoulders.

He and Gento had gone their separate ways the first time they met. But not the second. This was Siegfried from the Coliseum, bearing Yamada’s head.

As he walked toward them, as if wading out of a black surf, that alone was not enough to provoke a reaction from Azusa.

The head was facing backwards. And what she could not have known—that the wound left by Setsura’s devil wires was knit together with an exceedingly fine thread.

“Human beings have made no headway when it comes to resurrecting the dead. That ability has changed not at all from ancient times. For the human to become more than human, those suitable and necessary measures first have to be taken.”

As if that included putting the head on backwards.

“To be honest, I have a hard time believing it myself,” Gento said, shaking his head. “Hardly thirty minutes have passed since I asked you to do a diagnosis, and you have already unraveled the art of necrodancing. Surgical tools could hardly be sufficient to pull off an operation like this.”

“Neither time nor fine materials are required,” Mephisto answered coolly. “Only the doctor and the patient.” Not a speck of pride or humility colored his voice. It was the same whether reporting news of a patient saved or a patient lost. Nothing less would be expected from the Demon Physician.

“And this test of yours?” Gento asked.

That was the signal. The giant jumped. Bounded, in fact. Propelling all five hundred pounds of his weight with a dexterity that approached that of a tumbling gymnast, he launched himself at Gento. The soles of his feet parting the air, the naked body soared over him.

Tucking into a crouch in the moment before he landed, Gento vaulted over his head, the head pointing oddly in the wrong direction. The invisible devil wires spilled out from his right hand. Gento saw them reflected in Yamada’s upturned eyes.

A surge of air buffeted him from both sides. The giant clapped his hands at an unimaginable speed around his flying frame. With unsparing herculean strength, those hands squeezed around the lithe body.

Gento’s countenance contorted, air
whooshed
out of his mouth. The speed of action here far exceeded that at the Coliseum.

But—then a red line circumscribed the right wrist. As the hand fell to the earth with a soft thud, Gento flew free. Kicking against the stump as it again reached up to grab him, pitching backwards and angling away.

He shook his head from side to side. At that moment, the titanium threads streaked down at the giant’s neck, too fine and fast for anyone to see. Gento spit them out of his mouth, bit down on the ends, and jerked on the wire lasso.

The giant sank down. The devil wires flashed fruitlessly over his head. For the first time, Gento’s expression took on an unsteady look.

The giant ran towards where Gento was going to land. With a split second to go, he didn’t have time to shake loose a new devil wire, and the giant’s speed put him a half-second away.

Throwing his shoulder forward with a force that could bust through a concrete wall, the giant’s inertia carried him a dozen feet beyond his intended target. His bare feet skidded to a ferocious halt, like sandpaper against stone. Blue smoke rose up from the flesh.

Yamada’s head looking back at where he’d been.

By the time he realized that Gento was floating there in midair, his stitched-together sections opened wide and came apart. Parting in two, his upper half slid off his lower half and fell to the ground like an installation of abstract sculpture.

“Splendid!” Mephisto said, though there was no telling from his tone of voice how heartfelt the praise really was.

Releasing the wire from a shard in the shattered ceiling, Gento set down on the ground. He pressed his right hand against his side.

“Hollow praise, to be sure. I cracked two ribs in the process.”

Mephisto had nothing to say about that. “If Hyota’s opinion of your condition is correct, then Setsura would have fared no better.”

“Installing radar detection in Yamada’s head, increasing the muscular reflexes and speed of nerve impulses fivefold—all this with a simple twist of the head. I have underestimated you, Doctor.”

“Most everybody does.”

“I expect you to outdo yourself next time,” Gento said emphatically.

Mephisto responded with a playful smile, the smile of a mischievous child, of a warlock who could turn the dead into supermen.

Gento’s voice grew brighter. “But I have a different end in mind.”

“If it has to do with that girl, then I decline.”

“This is completely separate.”

“Then I will perform the procedure at once.”

“I am deeply grateful.”

“In any case, what about her?”

“Apparently an acquaintance of Setsura. Slipped out of our net and back into it again. If it would prove useful, please help yourself to her heart, her brains, any other part that might come in handy.”

To this ghastly proposition, Mephisto answered, “All in good time.”

With this eerie reply hanging in the air, he walked over to the giant. After three steps he turned around, as if recalling something to mind.

“I would like to see this
educational
machine of yours.”

“Unfortunately, it has gone missing since dawn,” said Hyota.

“Has it fallen into Setsura’s hands?” Gento asked.

“That is yet to be determined. The concern right now is that the hearse did not take the appointed route. The road took it near Kawadacho.”

“Fuji TV, you mean.”

“That is correct. I took a quick look, but depending on the point of view, it might be considered the safest place for it.”

“Because of the watchman guarding it,” said Mephisto.

Except that no one there knew that was where Setsura was headed. What kind of reaction it would arouse if they did was another question entirely, but not one Mephisto was interested in raising right then.

“A hallowed principle of medicine is to avoid abusing the doctor-patient confidentialities and extracting information from third parties irrelevant to the diagnosis, but if you would permit me one question—”

“Go ahead,” Gento said breezily.

“Of the two dreams you mentioned earlier, what was the substance of the other?”

“Does it concern you?”

“Well, it is a dream dreamed by Gento Roran.”

“I dreamed of Setsura.”

“Hoh.”

“At some future date, I am sure we can find the time to fill you in on all the details. But not now. Let’s first straighten up all the loose ends before us.”

“Fine,” Mephisto quickly agreed.

Gento directed his attention to the two others standing there. “Hyota, have you enjoyed yourself with that woman?”

“Yes,” Hyota said, nodding. Azusa felt herself blushing a bit despite herself.

“I suppose you should be on your way. See to the retrieval of my abode.”

“As you wish.”

His arm locked around Azusa, Hyota disappeared into the gloomy darkness.

“Well, then. The fee for your medical expertise.”

Gento stood and climbed up the mountain. However he made his way, he did not leave a single dent of divot behind in the smooth surface. The summit of this small mountain was shaped like the top of a cone sliced off. Mephisto watched with curious eyes as the young man lay face down.

“Whatever strikes your fancy,” Gento said with a coquettish lilt.

Without another word, Mephisto knelt down next to him.

Two variables in the local environment of the television studio changed as Setsura made his way further in.

He wiped the sweat off his brow. The humidity was definitely climbing.

Though the heat of early summer often climbed north of ninety degrees, the rain hadn’t stopped falling since morning and the temperature outside was a good ten degrees cooler.

Regardless of how locked and off-limits these back rooms once were, the studio had gotten a direct hit from the Devil Quake. The floors and ceilings were lined with cracks. Not a single pane of glass was left intact.

Add to that the strange smell. One whiff awakened the primordial mind to its nature.
Oh, that
. Go to the zoo, and this was the odor always wafting up from the pen of one creature in particular. The odor of the “watchman,” as Mephisto had put it only a few minutes before (and several miles away).

Setsura came to a sudden halt in front of the elevators.

There were two doors on his right, both closed. Setsura froze like an ice sculpture. Slowly, inexorably, the aura around him changed—from
me
to
I
. From human to genie.

Without sitting down and doing a face-to-face, a close friend couldn’t have detected the transfiguration.

Perhaps the enemy was close. Perhaps an enemy he could perceive. In front of him and to his left were dreary, dusty hallways. Nothing more. But somebody saw something. Someone was watching. Some
thing
was watching. From some
where
—

Watching Setsura.

The narrow corridor branched off in a T. A demonic vibe from an unidentifiable corner began to collect around him. Suffused with poisons, the radiating thoughts and evil intents turned the very molecules in the air toxic.

Secret religious sects in the city were known to be capable of the same, but the source of these vapors was not human.

Setsura just stood there.

A normal human being would have gone mad and dropped dead on the spot. The swirl of noxious fumes suddenly wavered. The vibe Setsura was projecting had pushed aside the film of poison or rather, thinned it out. The genie’s
qi
had denatured and devoured its essence.

In a flash, the air returned to normal.

At the same time, the tension eased out of Setsura’s body. The enemy was no longer there. Those nowhere eyes on the back of his neck vanished into the distance.

Setsura glanced at the elevator doors and uncurled the fingers of his right hand. “No time to use that,” he murmured, lightly shaking his wrist.

There was nothing there, nothing that the eyes could see.

Setsura still didn’t move. As when
he
became
him
, not a drop of sweat marred his brow. His eyes half-closed, like a young philosopher ruminating about the mysteries of the universe on a listless rainy afternoon.

His lips moved. “Soundstage 13, is it?” Each word like pearls strung on a string. “There is no telling who made it was it is, but that is the direction of doom, the demon gate. There is where the Master of this place chose.”

He started off at a casual stroll, the silent death struggle unfolding around him vanquished from his mind. The expression on his comely face as unruffled as ever, he strolled into this den of thieves, into the depths of Fuji TV.

The menace to Shinjuku that Fuji TV had become, this citadel of terror—to call it a haunted house sounded rather antiquated, but there in Kawadacho the word fit. Numerous strange phenomena had been observed on the grounds of Fuji TV and in the surrounding areas.

People going missing was an everyday occurrence in this city, but when a family of five vanished, and all of them in a single week, the commando police swung into action. Witnesses reported seeing a family passing through the front gate of the television studio. Five elite members of the mobile police were sent in after them, armed to the teeth.

Nobody ever came back out again.

The disappearances began five years after the Devil Quake, reaching their peak at the seven-year mark, and continuing today. The outbreaks typically came to a head in July or August and then sharply declined, reaching zero between December and February. And then the pattern repeated all over again.

This vanishing phenomenon didn’t only affect the people living there, but even passing taxi drivers. Confirmation came after the first documented disappearance in the 1990s, in what came to be known as the “Absconding Taxi Incident.”

The cabbies had last called into the dispatcher while taking East Gaien Street from Yotsuya to Waseda Tsurumaki. A total of ten taxis were discovered neatly parked in front of the television studio lobby. Further complicating things, all the routes to Fuji TV had been cordoned off by the police. There was no damage to any of the barricades.

The obvious questions were why the taxis had headed to Fuji TV, and how they had gotten past the perimeter fences. And why none of the cabbies were ever seen again. There wasn’t a drop of blood on the abandoned cars or signs of a struggle.

Two weeks later, an investigation team was sent inside. Not local law enforcement, they were relieved to know, but a platoon of SDF rangers.

Only one came out again.

The lone surviving ranger burst into a bakery on the Kawadacho shopping street in a half-crazed state. The SDF was summoned and sent in a rescue team. For the next month, the residents of Kawadacho twice heard screams and gunshots echoing from the Fuji TV studios.

After that, the rumors flew fast and thick—about the SDF stringing high-tension electric fences around the place, about teams armed with flame throwers mounting repeated assaults, and even about plans to hire demolition experts to blow up the building. But whatever they did amounted to nothing. The status quo continued unchanged till now.

Even in the light of a midday sun, the dark castle cast ominous shadows across the ground, standing there as one more symbol of the Demon in Demon City.

Setsura came to the central courtyard. The rain continued to fall, though now more a drizzle. A number of
things
were moving around inside the ruined remains of the building. The dragging of feet, the drawing of ragged breaths, and all ruled by one overriding will—

That was sending them at Setsura. They came down the hallways, descended the stairs, bearing those vile vibes with them.

He sensed everything through the fingers on his right hand.

Setsura looked around. The rainy haze cloaked the heaps of bricks and debris, but couldn’t mask the stench. Puddles formed here and there, smoldering like sulfurous hot springs, throwing off an acrid miasma.