Sign of the Dragon (Tatsu Yamada Book 1) by Niall Teasdale (e reader TXT) 📕

as the bullet went through it was almost lost in the echoes of the shot. At two metres, he had missed. Tatsu stepped forward again and he pulled frantically at the trigger. Three rounds left the barrel: one of them put another hole in the safety glass while two hit Tatsu in the chest. She ignored the impacts and reached out, grabbing the pistol in her left hand. He tried to pull free, achieving nothing, and then Tatsu twisted her hand counterclockwise and he let out a shriek of pain as the ligaments in his wrist tore. He lurched sideways, moving with the twist, and Tatsu slammed her right fist into his face. And that was all it took.

Tatsu turned slightly, just in time to catch the hostage, a slight girl of maybe sixteen with straight, jet-black hair down to her shoulders. ‘Are you okay?’ Tatsu asked.

‘D-don’t touch me,’ the girl replied, though she was in no state to do anything about being held up by Tatsu’s arm. ‘You would have let him k-kill me.’

‘No. I wouldn’t have allowed that. I needed to get closer to him and have him focus on me. I made him remember that he was using a fellow refugee as a shield while a Japanese woman insulted him. You stopped being a hostage and I became his target. He can shoot me with this pop gun all he likes. And you can hate me all you like but do it because I’m a cyborg or a cop, not because you think I was trying to get you killed.’

The girl pushed her legs straight and Tatsu allowed her to stand on her own. Dark eyes looked up into Tatsu’s silver-grey ones for a second or two. ‘I guess I can do that. You really don’t dislike us, do you?’

‘Not every Japanese does. Which is it, cyborg or cop?’

The girl grinned a little. It was a wary sort of grin, as though she expected circumstances to change at any moment. And they probably would when the rest of the police outside stormed in. ‘Who says I have to pick either?’

Tatsu looked away, using the excuse of checking the other hostages to avoid the girl’s eyes. ‘Well, it’s not like I’m forcing you to or anything.’

~~~

The view from Tatsu’s window was not exactly picturesque. Someone being generous might have described it as Gothic Industrial. The Chiba Refugee Zone was heavily industrialised, even when it came to the housing. Everything looked like a factory or an oil refinery or some combination. Neon signs and video billboards decorated the upper storeys. Down at street level, the advertising was generally virtual, but you did still get neon in the shop signs. Metal gantries bridged the gap between buildings at various levels because going all the way down to cross a street was a pain. She could see people walking the bridges, even this close to midnight; Chiba did not so much sleep as pretend to snooze while watching its drink.

If the people on the bridges had bothered to look her way, they might have spotted Tatsu watching the world go by. She was sitting on the only seat, a padded stool, in her apartment, looking out through a window which took up a lot of the outer wall. She was about to go to bed, so she was naked, but she cared not what anyone might see through the window. Soon, she would turn off the lights, lie down on her narrow bed, and get some sleep. But not just yet. She wanted to watch the city a little longer.

‘You should go out more.’

The voice had come from behind her, but there was no one reflected in the window. Tatsu could see her own dim reflection there, but no one else. That meant… ‘I know you’re seen as something of a mother figure, Izanami, but you’re not mine.’

‘It’s polite to look at someone when you’re talking to them.’

‘It’s also polite to request admittance before entering someone’s bedroom.’

‘Ah. I suppose you have me there.’

Tatsu twisted in her seat to look at Izanami. What she saw was a tall, very slim, very attractive Japanese woman in a kimono. Izanami’s most memorable feature was her straight, black, very long hair. You got the impression when looking at her that she had just stepped out of some piece of old Japanese art. It was a virtual image, of course. ‘Did you drop in just to check on my social life?’

‘Yes. I worry about you, Tatsu.’

‘You have a hundred million other people to worry about. I don’t need personal service.’

‘How many times have we had this argument?’ Izanami sounded a little exasperated.

‘However many it was before plus one.’ Tatsu turned back to the view from her window. ‘I’m watching the city for a few minutes before I turn in.’

‘At least you’re planning to get some sleep. But you should go out more. All work makes Tatsu a dull girl, you know.’

‘I’ll get laid at the weekend. Happy now?’

‘I suppose I’ll have to be.’

Tatsu did not look back to check that Izanami was no longer there, but she was sure the image was gone. Izanami was like that: appear from nowhere and vanish just as quickly. It was sort of endearing, in a creepy way.

Sending instructions to her apartment’s management system darkened the window to opacity, shut off the lights, and lowered the bed into its sleeping position. Lying down on the fold-out, lightly padded platform, she pulled the sheet over her body and closed her eyes. She was asleep in a matter of seconds.

Tokyo, 8th July.

You could not really ask for much more of a contrast than there was between Shibuya and Chiba. Well, both were fairly high-rise. Both had plenty of tall buildings, many of them housing some of the nearly sixty million people who