My Ninja Girl 4 by Gideon Caldwell (latest novels to read .TXT) 📕

would be bringing three members of the Hermetics on board as well.

“For some time now, our society has been governed by rules of the past that no longer apply to the present, and certainly not to our shared futures. It is my goal to re-examine these rules, to bring about change in a way that will better our relations with Jokamatchi and Heian, as well as bringing representation from the Outer Districts into the fold. In their effort to control Neo-Hokkaido, the Society of Monks has turned onto a path that will only lead to more death, and further repression, not to mention the development of chemical weapons that have been tested on our own people. Those days are over.”

“You will regret this,” one of the older monks at the back said. “You and the foreign kitsune scum.”

What Micah did next was instinctual. He lifted his prosthetic gatling gun and fired upon the monk, clipping him in the shoulder. The shot was for his parents, for what the Society of Monks had done to them. But it also had an effect that Micah would later regret, one that would make this coup more violent than it already was. He didn’t realize who he had just shot, that the man was one of the oldest members of the Society of Monks and that he had some real connections, including his relation to one of the female members of the Council.

Saru, the nun who had originally agreed to join them, lunged for Micah. As she did, she pulled an energy dagger out of her robes. She dove for him, and as the two came to the ground, she was able to stab him before both were whipped off to the side by an invisible force.

Micah had never been wounded like this before; for a moment, a very brief flash as the dust settled, he wondered if he’d even been stabbed at all.

But then it became harder to breathe. He started to taste blood as everything around him dimmed. The last thing he remembered seeing was Liza hunched over him, Micah not able to register the look on her face because of her helmet.

Micah wished that he could actually see her.

Chapter Fifteen

If Micah felt anything at all, it was a sense of numbness, as if he’d lost the entire right side of his body, Micah in some deep reverie, one wrapped in warm, neon green industria. It was as if he were floating by on a cloud, Uyanga, Coralie, and Neojuku tethered to the districts below, Jokamatchi beyond the mountains of Woodsaka, Heian in its place, the land of the Plains Dwellers.

He didn’t know if he was dead or alive, and for a moment it really didn’t matter to him. He was content in his numbness, and it was only when he began to put the pieces together that he remembered being stabbed by the nun named Saru, and how he had been whisked to the side of the room by some unknown force.

Micah had a healing factor; he shouldn’t have been this injured, enough to hallucinate. How badly had he been stabbed? Why wasn’t his healing factor kicking in?

Where was he exactly?

Micah thought he heard sobbing, which had a way of breaking through to him. In the end, it didn’t turn out to be a sob at all, more of a sniffing, but it was certainly a show of emotion.

And it worked.

Micah awoke to find himself lying in a bed in a location he didn’t recognize. There was a fluffy ear pressed against his face, one that he didn’t quite recognize. It certainly wasn’t Bunni’s. It was only when he stirred that the person practically lying on top of him seemed to come alive.

“Micah?”

“… Soraya?”

“You’re… you’re awake,” she said as she came forward to kiss his cheek. She did it again, this time rubbing the side of her face against his, Micah realizing that the reason his arm was numb was because of the kitsune. She’d been lying on top of him, and it had cut off his blood flow.

“They said you would eventually wake up,” she told him.

“Where… are we?”

“Heian, at Youseg’s monastery.”

“Heian?” Micah’s eyes widened. “H-how?”

“Bobi flew us over; Youseg dealt with airspace concerns.”

“The others?” Micah asked, his heart dropping as he assumed the worst. “Are they…?” It dawned on him in that moment that they could be hurt in some way, and any sense of elation he’d felt from finally waking was instantly gone.

“Everyone is fine, safe. They’re resting. You’ve been out for hours.”

“What happened?”

A faint smile came across her face. “Believe it or not, I… I saved you.”

“You did?”

Soraya nodded, the softness in her dark eyes unlike anything Micah had seen from her before. It was clear that it was late, the room dark, the only light being a lantern hanging in the hall shining green, which may have explained the colors he was seeing.

“That nun would have killed you. It worked, even though she still ended up stabbing you. Just a flesh wound,” Soraya said, her weight still pressed against his arm. He shifted and she got the hint; as soon as she changed positions, Micah felt instant relief in his arm. He also noted just how numb it was, the funny feeling making him chuckle for some reason.

“Sorry,” he said.

“What’s funny?”

“You were sleeping on my arm…”

“I was? Right, I was. I just wanted to be next to you. I thought that I had somehow killed you. I thought it was all my fault…”

“You said you saved me, how could you have killed me?”

Soraya let out a short breath. “My power, the one that Youseg taught us. I latched onto it to get you out of the way, but I… I was too strong. The impact actually