Beautiful Shining People, page 40
Her voice fades as if her thoughts are exhausted, and her swollen eyes soften.
And for a moment, the way she’s considering me, that look on her face, it’s as if she’s considering a memory. Then – the pistol drops from her temple, and the relief, it cuts rights through me.
But in one deft movement, she fires it into her chest.
There’s a loud static pop, and green electricity dances across the wetness of her body before evaporating like steam. I cry out as she tips forward, yet she catches herself before smacking the surface, and she keeps the pistol just above the waterline as well.
‘Can you … see me on your screen?’ Her voice is shallow, her body bent forward, the thick flakes merging with her wetness. As she straightens some, I see the discharged projectile embedded into her sternum through the white undershirt pasting her chest. Except for the dry hand gripping the pistol, every inch below her neck is once again ashen black.
‘Can you see me?’ she shouts.
I glance at my screen no longer than a blink before the water’s sloshing against my thighs, but instantly Neotnia cries for me to halt. My body shudders to a stop, my knees totally submerged now. The pistol trembles under her jaw, its tip green with another snapping projectile.
She orders me to access her systems, but all I can do is look around, as if I’ll find someone who can help me – as if some hero is just beyond the bank, or the trees, or the legs of the giant torii.
But no. It’s only us.
‘Access my systems.’
‘Neotnia—’
‘Access me.’ She exhales a frosty cloud into the snowfall. ‘Show me my code…’
‘Please…’ My voice breaks.
‘Do it!’ she screams, shaking the pistol under her jaw.
My thoughts tumble. I’m so worried she’s going to shoot herself again, intentionally or not. On my screen, I find her jumbled codebase, the three layers smashed on top of each other, the code looking like it’s randomly teleporting around.
‘OK,’ I say.
‘Show me the third layer.’ Her breathing is laboured, her body shivering. ‘Show me it.’
I compile her father’s pattern-recognition keys and separate her three layers. I pull up the third, its indecipherable quantum language moving and growing on its own. I turn my screen towards her, the artificial light from it as invasive as the green glow from the pistol to the nature all around.
Neotnia squints through the snowfall; the ends of her hair hang wet and heavy.
‘How much time is left?’
I shake my head, confused.
‘How long until my firewall goes back up and the code’s cut off?’
‘I … don’t know—’
She takes a single step and stretches her blackened arm towards me through the snow, her body now swaying in the powerful current.
‘Stay where you are, and hand me your phone. Quickly. Reach out and hand it to me.’
And looking at her outstretched hand, we could probably just barely reach, our fingertips each grasping one end of my phone. But I don’t move. Because now I fully understand what she wants.
‘Give it to me before my firewall goes back up,’ she shouts, spreading her fingers apart.
‘Just come to me…’ I try, looking at her backend body trembling against the weight of the torrents thrashing it; the sadness of her shivering face; the fear as that green glow dances where her throat meets her jaw. ‘Come to me? OK? Please…’
My sudden tears feel unnaturally warm in the snow all around us.
‘John—’
‘Just come to me … just do that, OK?’ I hold my gaze on her as if it might turn into a lasso at any moment and pull her close and I’ll once again feel her softness in my arms. I give her a little smile. I know she wants to come to me. I know she doesn’t want to do this. I know I can get her to come to me.
But Neotnia’s eyes, they shift from mine to my phone’s screen.
Her head shakes. She turns the pistol and fires into her abdomen before I can utter a sound. Her cry’s so loud this time, it strips all noise from the roaring torrents. As she tips into its dark water, I lunge for her but am immediately forced sideways. My soles blindly skim the muddy riverbed, desperately trying to regain a foothold as my body twists towards the moon over the torii. My heels jam against something hard, halting my slide.
I’ve been carried feet from where I was. I twist back in a panic as Neotnia rises from the water, her hair plastered against her face.
For a moment, it’s as if she doesn’t know where she is. Her jaw hangs open as she hungrily devours frigid air.
As her breathing slows, her eyes regain focus. She sees me. Sees my phone in my hand.
‘Is it still up?’ The words come out in a coarse breath.
I glance at the screen but don’t say anything. Yet she can tell from my eyes that her second electrocution has given her the additional time she wanted.
‘Give it to me now.’ She stretches her hand towards me. Her slim fingers, like everything below the neck, are now as black as ink.
‘Your father wouldn’t want this.’
‘Father isn’t around anymore.’ She shakes her head. ‘I have to think of the people who are.’ Her fingers stretch for my phone. The white flakes cascading before her blackened skin look like stars falling in the night sky. But even they don’t drown out the desperation on her face.
‘John…’ Her mouth tightens.
But I slip my phone into my hoodie’s front pocket.
‘No,’ I say.
A frown so heavy appears across her face, it’s as if her lips will snap in half.
And this time when she raises the pistol, it’s pointed at me.
‘John,’ she trembles.
‘No,’ I shake my head. ‘I’m not letting you do this.’
Her jaw clenches and she taps a button, loading another projectile. Its spikes spark electric green. The way her blackened arm quivers, it’s as if the weapon has suddenly taken on more weight.
‘Give it to me … now.’ Her voice shudders.
But I shrug and shake my head. I put my hands in my hoodie’s pocket to keep the phone securely in place. I take a careful step back in the direction the current carried me from, always making sure to stay out of her reach. The current’s force, it’s like walking through wet cement, but I take one step, then another. And with each step, the realisation grows across Neotnia’s face that I’m not going to give her my phone so she can do what she thinks she must to keep us safe.
‘John…’ She weakly jostles the pistol at me, its green glow snapping.
Yet I turn away and head for the riverbank.
‘I need to do this for you.’ Her voice trembles behind me.
I take another step towards shore and another, the water getting shallower. There are fifty seconds left, maybe a minute tops, before her quantum firewall restores. She can shoot me – I don’t care. I’ll never unlock her codebase again.
‘Please…’
I hear it as my ankles slosh above the water. My head snaps over my shoulder, waiting for the rest of my body to catch up. My chest goes hollow as that staticky pop echoes into oblivion.
Neotnia’s bent at the waist. Her hair dangles into the current, her face an inch above its surging surface.
For a moment, I can’t breathe.
Then, slowly, she rises, as if propelled by the wincing breaths that frost from her mouth.
And now I see the pistol’s barrel buried into her palm. As she pulls it away, its projectile remains embedded in her inky-black flesh. But unlike the ones embedded in her sternum and abdomen, this one continues sparking green, like it’s a fork rammed into a socket. Only now, her palm oscillates between her flesh’s soft form and her shelled skin. And as she pries the projectile from her palm, her deafening cry shatters the night as her shelled flesh peels with it, revealing her bright, synthetic musculature underneath.
Yet she doesn’t more than glance at her de-fleshed palm. Her third electrocution got her what she wanted: it’s keeping her firewall down for longer. And turning her face up, she looks at me with such a terrible sadness and raises the pistol in her still-good hand, another projectile sparking green.
And she fires it into my chest.
I don’t know if I scream. I don’t know if my vocal cords are even capable of movement anymore. No part of my body seems to be. All I know is I twist and am now tipping into the river. And as soon as my back smacks its surface it hits me that I’m going to drown because I can’t move a muscle. My hands are still in my hoodie’s front pocket, my fingers frozen around my phone.
But though I can’t budge, unfortunately, I can still feel. I can feel the icy water enveloping me. It’s as if I’ve fallen into a cocoon of needles. I can feel my heels bumping along the rocky bank as the current grabs hold of the upper half of me. I can feel my body swivel and drift. And, right before my eyes submerge, I can see the orange torii spanning the falls as the thick flakes fall all around, the clouds behind only partially obscuring the unfinished stations suspended like jagged silver crescents around the moon.
Yet as quickly as my nostrils dip below the current, I’m pulled from it.
Neotnia grasps the front of my hoodie and carries me as if lugging a heavy duffle bag with one hand. I hover inches over the shallows as she hauls me to safety, then feel the uneven riverbank against my back as she sets me down.
I try to sit up but can’t. I can’t even blink. It feels like some new form of gravity is pulling on every cell in my body, locking me in place. I see Neotnia kneel at my side. The pale skin of her face stands out against the blackness of her body below.
The way she’s looking at me, I couldn’t move even if my body would allow it. I could gaze into those clear blue-grey eyes forever.
She leans closer, placing a hand on my chest. Her breath warms my mouth as those eyes look into mine. ‘When you kissed me on the temple steps last night, you made me feel I was no different from anyone – and it was wonderful,’ she says, those eyes shining. ‘You made me feel like I belonged for the first time in my life, no matter how different I thought I was.’
And she kisses me.
My cheeks feel wet. I’m not sure if it’s her tears or my own.
Her lips leave mine, and she looks at me once more. Then, her hand reaches into my hoodie’s pocket and touches mine. It slips my phone from my fingers. And still looking into my eyes, she tilts her head and gives me a little smile. It’s a smile that makes her look content; that makes her look almost happy, as if that’s how she wants me to remember her.
She leaves my field of view. All I see now is the snow falling from above.
I hear the stones shift below her feet as she moves.
I want to scream for her to stop but my mouth won’t work.
The stones on the riverbank clatter as she takes another step, and another.
But as I hear her foot hit the water … my eyes – they shift.
I blink.
And my fingers … they move.
Suddenly, it’s as if there’s not as much gravity holding me in place. My lips press together, and I turn my head. My shoulders twitch – and then my arms, they jerk.
I hear her wading into the water. Moving through it.
I squeeze my stomach muscles as tightly as I can, trying to bend myself upright. Yet nothing below my waist wants to contract.
I get an elbow behind me and push my upper body from the bank.
My tongue learns how to work again. ‘Neotnia…’
She’s reached the middle of the river. She’s more than waist-deep in it again, holding my phone, the screen glowing blue against her face.
‘Stop—’ I shout. My legs still won’t budge.
She looks from my phone’s screen to me, and regret breaks across her face.
‘Don’t do this,’ I cry and curse my legs for not working. I need to reach her. That’s all I need to do. I bend my upper body and latch onto a large stone, pulling with all my might until I’m on my stomach. I clutch for the next large stone and pull harder, inching over small, sharp rocks towards the river, the dead weight of my legs towing behind me.
‘Please, Neotnia. Please don’t do this. Don’t leave me—’ My breath billows in the snow. I pull again. My biceps burn. My fingers bleed. Just a little more. I’m almost there.
In the dark torrents, her frown arches and her slender throat tightens, stifling a whimper, watching me drag myself towards her like a broken animal.
‘Whatever they try we’ll fight it together,’ I cry, the tears streaming down my face. I dig my fingers around another stone. ‘Just don’t leave me … please…’
Her frown draws tight. ‘I don’t want to, but I have people I love now, and I need to think of them.’ She turns toward the blue light of my phone, her miraculous code dancing around its screen, and raises a finger.
‘No.’ I scream her name. My hands reach the icy water. I pull myself further. ‘Don’t do this to me!’
My fingers sink into the muddy riverbed. The frigid water splashes into my mouth. I propel my body, my chest hitting the current.
But my fingers barely skim the muddy floor now.
I cry over the surging torrent, ‘Please, Neotnia – please don’t do this to me…’
She gives me that sad little smile as her face glistens wet in the snow falling between us.
‘I’m doing this for you.’
And her finger taps the screen.
My heart stops as her body jerks. Her head tilts.
Her hands drop into the waters where, for a moment, she wavers.
But then … then there’s no more force in her. Her body tips into the icy current.
I know I’m screaming, but I can’t hear a thing. I can’t hear my own voice as the waters flood my mouth, nor the sound of the wind, nor the rush of the river. I can’t hear the splashing as my arms stroke, pulling myself further into the torrents, their glacial coldness enveloping me as my feet come unmoored from the shore.
I swing my arms against the deluge, yet it now feels like my foot’s caught between some submerged stones. Still, I stroke, urging my body forward as the current takes hold. I scan its icy darkness, looking for her. I don’t care if I drown, I need to find her.
I need to save her.
I reach and reach, knowing she’s somewhere within my grasp. Yet the water only darkens, and in an instant, it feels as if I’m tumbling through a shadow.
Then my sense of touch disappears.
And maybe the water isn’t getting darker at all. Maybe I’m about to black out.
But she’s within my reach. I know it.
She’s just there in the shadow.
I know it.
I know—
Pressure … Something has me in its jaws. No. No jaws. No mouth. It’s two arms. They’re wrapped around my abdomen, squeezing my loose flesh. They haul me with a strength an ordinary person doesn’t possess.
And as she pulls me from the waters once again and carries me to shore, I’m so euphoric I’m crying. I’m sobbing a whole new river. We’ve found each other.
We’ve found each other.
When she sets me on the bank, I need to wipe away my tears just to see straight.
No!
I thrust my finger towards the dark, icy torrents.
‘Not me … her!’ I cry, ‘Not me. Save her!’
But Goeido, he looks at me with such pity in his eyes. All I’m pointing at are the raging currents, surging between the legs of a giant torii on a snowy moonlit evening. The raging currents that sweep over the falls into the river below, and out into the Sea of Japan.
19 – 神
It’s a beautiful dusk in Tokyo, and its streets are as crowded as ever. The fiery-pink sky is giving way to a deep purple. The wheels of my luggage squeak, and my backpack is slung over my shoulder, my hoodie under my coat zipped up tight. I have thirty minutes before I need to call a car to Narita, and I’m almost at the café.
It’s been ten days since the falls. Goeido carried me down the path, through the gardens, past the three unconscious soldiers in the snow and got me into the car. He told it to take us straight to Tokyo. I was burning up and don’t remember much of the ride except the few times my eyes limped open and I saw him staring from the window. He gazed at something only he could see, the highway’s lamps illuminating his face in waves every so often. When we reached the café, Goeido stripped me naked and put me in the tub, running cold water to get my rising fever down. My electrocution and decent into the icy torrents were too much for my body.
I dreamed of swirling shadows until two nights later, when my fever finally broke, and I had the strength to get out of bed. My loose skin was still red and scratched from where it cut on the rocks as I dragged my limp body across the riverbank, tearing my self-inflicted incision wider. Upon dressing, I went to Shibuya and bought a new phone from one of the street-level vendors. I hesitated for a moment before returning to the café. In the back of my mind, I think I was hoping to run into that odd info bot somewhere around the scramble one last time – as if it still had something it could tell me. Yet, if it was there, among the crowds, I never spotted it again.
Back at the café, I installed a translation app on the new phone. Goeido told me everything that happened after Neotnia and I separated from him. He launched his toy drone to keep an eye on us and saw Haruto invite us inside. But his relief evaporated when the light from the passenger drone appeared. Leaving the car, he peeked through the pried-open gate to see two soldiers rappel the exterior of the facility. He saw its interior lights go red, and the soldiers emerge from their hiding positions in the gardens to meet us. That’s when Goeido squeezed through the opening and crept through the snowstorm.
He told me how after we came out, after Neotnia hugged him in the snow, she told him to stay and keep us safe from any more soldiers. She needed to take me to the torii above the falls and needed to make sure no one followed. She didn’t tell him why she was going up there, but he was her protector, so it was his duty to make sure no others came for her.
He disabled the soldier that emerged from the facility, but it wasn’t until after the two soldiers he initially knocked unconscious rose, requiring him to take them out again, that Goeido had time to worry about how long we’d been gone – worry about that look on Neotnia’s face – and he ascended the path, searching for us.
