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

‘One transmission and anyone with ViraShield fourteen is affected. I just need to be in range. Once downloaded, the new code makes every cell in your body look like a cancer cell. There’s no way to reverse it. You have thirty minutes. That’s the upper estimate.’ Another guard dropped his weapon and then, eyes rolling back, he crumpled onto the ground. Kawaguchi straightened up and turned to face Fukui. None of the guards were stopping him. ‘How does it feel to know you’re going to die because you tried to fuck over your customers?’

Fukui turned on the spot and ran back toward the elevator. Oddly, he looked angry rather than scared.

Kawaguchi watched him until the doors were about to close. ‘You can’t run from it, Fukui.’

Fukui smiled. ‘I don’t need to.’

Chiba.

‘… escaped with his life after a terrorist identified as ex-ViraShield employee Kurou Kawaguchi attacked him and his four bodyguards in ViraShield Tower this afternoon. None of the bodyguards survived the attack.’

Tatsu watched the report on her screen rather than in-vision. Sometimes she just preferred it that way. TNM had been reporting the same story all afternoon, along with the other part which they had been reporting all day.

‘Mr Fukui had no comment on the attack, or on the investigation of ViraShield currently being undertaken by the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare and the Tokyo–Yokohama Metropolitan Police. TNM understands that this investigation is related to the reports first surfacing last night that ViraShield knowingly issued faulty software for their version fourteen PIN system. At this time, both the ministry and the police were unavailable for comment. A spokesperson for Izanami indicated that the inventor of PIN was appalled by the allegations, if proven.’

‘And I am too.’

‘Mute,’ Tatsu said before turning to look at the avatar Izanami was presenting. ‘I’d imagine you would be. Probably your greatest creation in the realm of health, and ViraShield treat it with the care of a video game producer. Terrible.’

‘Your sarcasm is not wanted. I was ordered to distribute PIN as a commercial product, you know that. I would have preferred to distribute it freely through the government.’

‘Yeah,’ Tatsu admitted. ‘You can’t go against an order from the prime minister, and the PM can’t really go against an order from the corporations he’s backed by.’

Izanami nodded. ‘My core programming makes me subservient to the emperor and the prime minister.’

‘And the emperor never uses his power.’

‘To date, no. The dual command structure was put in as a safeguard against an out-of-control politician and has never been needed. However, discussing my command protocols is not why I’m here. Kurou Kawaguchi is in Chiba. I have identified him moving toward the zone and I have two sightings of him inside it.’

‘Where?’

‘My sightings were in the Narashino area. I suspect he’s headed into the port.’

‘Ex-port.’

‘The ex-port then. There are plenty of disused buildings in the area.’

‘And the Russian mafia and Mihama Yankees. That’s not an especially safe place for outsiders. Are there TYMPD officers searching?’

‘There are, but not there.’

Tatsu grinned. ‘Yeah, well, it’s not a safe area.’

‘But you will go look, won’t you?’

‘Yeah… Yeah, I’ll go look.’

~~~

Back before the Cyberwar, the port in Chiba had done well for itself. Now that there was basically nowhere to ship anything to or from, it was not doing so well. There was business in and out of the port in Tokyo, largely submersibles, but even that had shrunk.

The first stage had been the construction of factories and warehouses. Then those had become obsolete. No one had bothered to demolish them or replace them with housing, and the entire area had become an industrial wasteland. There were, of course, still port facilities there, so criminal groups had moved in, mostly to give them a relatively easy method of smuggling drugs to and from Osaka and Okayama. Eventually, Anastas Zima’s mafia had taken control of transport through the docks, and they used a group of Yankees for labour, handling ‘port security’ themselves.

There were people in the port other than the gangs. It was not a safe place to live, but some people had little choice in the matter. The ones who fell through the cracks. The ones with nowhere else to go. Maybe Sachiko had started out her life in Chiba here with her UBI hijacked by her parents and no money for rent. She would hardly be the only one the system had lost. Others ended up here because they spent their rent money on drugs or some other habit. Many of them had no money for food once they had finished buying their recreational intoxicant of choice. They lived in the factories and warehouses, scrounging what they could. Urban survival skills were an absolute must, if only to be sure you were drinking clean water. Still, the area was a hotbed of ill-health. Not disease, because even here PIN was pretty ubiquitous thanks to a programme Izanami had pushed through the government to have it installed on refugees when they entered the country. PIN could only do so much, however, and most of the port’s residents were unhealthy.

Tatsu walked between the buildings, showing a picture of Kawaguchi to anyone she found and there were plenty of those. The rain was actually assisting her for once. A downpour had started around sunset and was continuing into the night. It was keeping the vagrants indoors where they were easier to find. Kawaguchi was not being easy to find; if anyone had seen him, they were staying silent on the matter. That was kind of to be expected: people here were tight-lipped because the police might be looking for them one day. Still, Tatsu found no indications that anyone was lying. Maybe Izanami had been wrong about Kawaguchi’s destination.

It was as she was walking between her fourth building, a factory, and her