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

gave Burrell a quizzical look. ‘How many people have you pissed off in the past few weeks?’

Burrell frowned. ‘Well…’

‘Exactly. Bear, well done keeping Dex alive, but damn, man, this is going to be a mess to clean up. An AK? Seriously? I’m looking around here and I can see so much illegal hardware it’s untrue!’

‘Man’s got a right to defend himself,’ Carter replied.

‘That was recognised in the Self-defence Ordnance Act of twenty-eighty-six. However, that limits such weaponry to ten millimetres or less with a rate of fire less than three hundred rounds per minute, cyclic, or eighteen-point-five millimetres in a shotgun format utilising baton, beanbag, flechette, or shot ammunition. No submachine guns or assault rifles. I can’t ignore this, Bear. Expect a raid in the next few days looking for illegal weapons.’

‘You’re not arresting us now?’

‘How is one woman supposed to arrest…’ She glanced around at Carter’s troops. ‘… seventeen men with assault weapons?’

‘Well… Okay, I guess.’

Disturbing the balance of power among the street gangs was not, in practice, going to change a damn thing in Chiba, except get a few people killed in gang fights. And it was apparent that the Yankees had not started this one. ‘Dex, you need to lay low somewhere. Like Akashi, maybe.’

‘Leaving Chiba won’t stop ViraShield coming after me.’

‘Depends how good you are at hiding. Or I could put you in protective custody…’

‘Hell, no! I’ll hop some transport to Akashi for a few days. You’ve sent that data to your overlords, I assume? If they act on it, things should be good in a couple of days.’

Tatsu turned on her heels and started for her bike. ‘They’ll act. They won’t have any choice.’

Tokyo.

Hideki Fukui marched out of a secure elevator onto the very secure parking level where his personal vehicle was waiting for him. Ahead of him were two men in smart suits. Another two trailed behind. Today was not the best day he had ever had, and he was just a little irritated. Basically, anyone who screwed up anywhere in his organisation today was going to find themselves terminated, in both senses of the word.

It had started at seven that morning when officials from the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare backed by TYMPD officers had marched into the tower. They had basically shut the place down pending an investigation into the allegations made by Dexter Burrell on Scoop. The ketō reporter would likely have been ignored if the mainstream news agencies had not picked up the story and reported it, but Fukui had also been told that the TYMPD had been in receipt of ‘substantial evidence of malfeasance’ which made an investigation impossible to avoid. And the news media were practically besieging the building.

Right now, Fukui was on his way to meet with corporate lawyers. He could have conducted the meeting via telepresence, but he currently did not trust any communications system less immediate than the spoken word transmitted only through the air. The lawyers were busy scrubbing their offices for bugs as Fukui walked to his car. He had some things to say in the meeting which he wanted neither the police nor the media to hear.

‘Fukui!’

Fukui turned at the shout, spotting a man walking toward him who came to a sudden stop as four men drew guns and pointed them at the speaker. Fukui recognised him from the company personnel files, though he had never seen the man in person before. Not tall, neither heavily built nor thin, a moderately attractive face let down by black hair which had not been combed in a while, and clothes which had not been washed in a couple of weeks too.

‘Kawaguchi,’ Fukui said. ‘How did you get in here? This floor is secured and you–’

‘Your security here is as good as the security on ViraShield fourteen.’

‘You! It was you! Grab him!’ The guards did not immediately move to take custody of Kawaguchi, and Fukui considered terminating them on the spot. But he needed them. ‘Take Kawaguchi into custody immediately. He’s responsible for the deaths of company employees. Move!’

Kawaguchi did not resist as the four men encircled him and then dragged him across to the car, pushing him face down on the hood of the massive vehicle to begin a search. ‘I’m not armed,’ Kawaguchi said. ‘I came here to confront a man so enamoured of profit that he chose to risk the lives of millions of Japanese citizens by rushing an untested product to market.’

‘Do you think you can talk your way out of this?’ Fukui asked. ‘You’ve murdered people. You’ve murdered colleagues.’

‘Ex-colleagues who kept their heads down and ignored the reality of what they were doing. They passed as tested code which failed the most basic authentication tests. Anyone could program ViraShield to do anything.’

‘That’s total nonsense. First, they would need to know there was a problem. Then they would need to work out how to use that problem. And then they would need to know how to program the nanomachines. You’re probably one of the few people capable of–’

‘The entire programming team would know. It would just take a few words in the right ear. You knew the system could be exploited. You refused to do anything about it.’

‘Our reputation would be ruined.’

‘Spin is what you do, Fukui.’ Once again, Kawaguchi used a distinctly impolite form of address, using only the CEO’s name without an honorific. It was starting to annoy Fukui, and he was already annoyed enough.

‘I’ll see to it that you’re locked away until your grandchildren die of old age.’

‘That’s not going to happen.’

‘What do you–’ One of the guards took a step back, blinking rapidly and reaching up to stop the blood coming from his nose. Fukui stared at the man for several seconds. ‘What did you do?!’

‘The software runs on any implant,’ Kawaguchi said.