Phantom Bullet 2

  “…!!”

  She turned back, breath stuck in her throat, to see Kyouji’s soulless face. He was down on all fours, clutching her leg with both hands. She didn’t see the syringe.

  She shook her leg wildly, trying to break free, even as she lunged to get the door open. But while she could reach the knob, she couldn’t get a grip on it. Kyouji was pulling her back with astonishing strength.

  He dragged her backward a few feet into the kitchen, but Shino resisted by grabbing the lip of the foyer step and clinging to it.

  She tried to scream, thinking that it might be audible from outside, but her throat was constricted, unable to suck in air. All that emerged was a weak rasp.

  Kyouji’s strength defied understanding. He was the same height as her, so where was he getting so much power? She lost her grip on the step as he continued pulling, and slid quickly through the kitchen.

  His weight was immediately pressed onto her. She clenched her fist and tried to aim for his chin again, but only grazed it before he caught her wrist. The bones creaked as he squeezed like a vice, setting off sparks of pain in her head.

  “Asada-asada-asada,” he rushed, the sounds only recognizable as her name after several seconds. Excited, bubbling white froth spilled from the corners of his mouth, and his eyes were unfocused. His mouth opened wide as he leaned in, teeth exposed as he made to bite her skin. She tried to push him back with her free hand, but he easily caught that one as well.

  Though her hands were immobilized, she could still use her own mouth. Her jaw tensed as she prepared to bite at his throat.

  Suddenly, cold air rushed over her shoulders. Kyouji looked up with a start over Shino’s head. His eyes and mouth went wide.

  Somehow, the door was open, and something—someone—rushed through like a black gale of wind and kneed Kyouji in the face. Shino stared in shock as Kyouji and the mystery intruder tumbled past her, further into the apartment.

  Kyouji was being pressed down to the floor by an unfamiliar young man. Blood was flowing from his mouth and nose.

  The boy had longish black hair and a riding jacket of the same color. At first she thought he might be another resident of the apartment building, but the identity of the man—no, boy—became clear to her when he turned and shouted, “Run, Sinon! Call for help!”

  “Kiri…” she mumbled, then bolted upright. She wanted to get to her feet, but they wouldn’t listen. She was only able to rise at all by pulling herself up against the side of the sink. He really had come from wherever he was diving in Ochanomizu. That meant the police should be coming soon. She lashed her weak legs into motion, hopping the few steps to the door.

  But then she remembered something crucial.

  Kyouji had a lethal weapon. She had to warn Kirito.

  She turned around to shout, and saw Kyouji roar like an animal, all self-control lost. Kirito’s body flew backward, and the two switched positions.

  “It was you…it was youuuuu!!” Kyouji screamed, so deafening that she practically heard speaker feedback in her ears. “Stay away from my Asadaaaaa!!”

  Kyouji’s fist thudded heavily into Kirito’s cheek. His other hand went into the jacket pocket and pulled out the horrible gun-shaped syringe.

  “Kirito!!” Shino screamed, right as Kyouji howled, “Dieeee!!”

  The high-pressure, needleless syringe stuck in the T-shirt between Kirito’s jacket and chest and made a small, sharp, but unmistakable pshht!

  Terrifyingly enough, it was strikingly similar to the sound of a gun with a high-quality silencer attached, though Shino only recognized it by virtue of Gun Gale Online, not from a real-life experience. But no matter the source, the sound represented a threat that needed to be dealt with. The next thing she knew, she was racing forward.

  Shino crossed the kitchen and went into the room, searching for the most effective weapon without consciously realizing what she was doing. She chose the stereo atop the table, picking it up by the handle with her left hand. It had served her quite well, but it was old and much larger than the newer wall-mounted stereos—a block of metal weighing well over five pounds. She hauled it with her waist and swung it around backward.

  The half turn of her body and the momentum of the heavy stereo carried it straight into the left side of Kyouji’s head, the drunken smile plastered across his face once again. She barely even felt or heard the impact. But she did hear the sickening thud of Kyouji’s head slamming backward against the corner frame of her bed.

  Battered on both sides of his head within the span of half a second, the boy groaned and flopped forward. His grip loosened and the syringe started to slip out.

  She didn’t know if the device was made for administering multiple doses in succession, but she clawed it out of Kyouji’s hand regardless. Its owner’s eyes were rolled back into his head and he kept groaning, but he wasn’t likely to move anytime soon.

  Shino thought about getting a belt or something to tie up his hands, then remembered that there was something more important first. She turned and shrieked Kirito’s name, then crouched over his fallen form.

  There was a softness to the boy’s face that she thought she recognized from his online character. He gazed up at her with barely-parted eyes and grunted, “He got me…I didn’t realize…that was a syringe…”

  “Where? Where did it get you?!”

  She tossed the syringe aside and tore down the zipper of Kirito’s jacket. Her thoughts were a jumble of half-formed impulses: Call ambulance—emergency care before that—but how to remove the poison? Her fingers trembled.

  There was an ominous dark stain right above the heart on his faded blue T-shirt. She didn’t know how strong the piercing power of that syringe was, but it didn’t seem likely that a thin cotton shirt would have stopped it.

  “Don’t die…You can’t die like this!” she shrieked, yanking the bottom of his shirt out of his jeans and pulling it upward. The skin of his chest and stomach was white and scrawny, as if someone had carved it down from its proper size. Just to the right of the center, in the very spot where the stain had been—something was stuck to his chest.

  “…?!”

  She stared at it, confused.

  It was a small circle, about an inch across. There was a thin silver disc, surrounded by what looked like a yellow rubber suction cup. A socket-like protrusion emerged from the metal disc, but it wasn’t connected to anything.

  The whole surface of the metal was wet; a single drop hung from it. The clear liquid had to be the fatal “succinylcholine” Kyouji had spoken of.

  Shino looked around the floor for her tissue box and pulled two out, carefully wiping the liquid away. She leaned in closer to examine the skin around the odd patch to ensure that the high-pressure stream hadn’t broken into his flesh.

  No matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t find any marks on Kirito’s skin. The tip of the syringe must have hit this inch-wide metal disc through his T-shirt and been absorbed by the stiff object. She touched the skin above the patch just to be sure, and felt his pulse racing away healthily.

  Shino blinked a few times and looked up at Kirito. His eyes were closed and he was moaning and groaning.

  “Um…hey.”

  “Ugh…it’s too late…It hurts to breathe…”

  “Hey, can I ask you something?”

  “Dammit…now that the moment’s finally here…I don’t have any good final words…”

  “What’s this thing stuck to your chest?”

  “…Huh?”

  Kirito’s eyes opened again, and he glanced down. His eyebrows furrowed and he brought up a hand to trace the metal disc.

  “Are you saying…the injection went into this?”

  “Um, I think so. What is it?”

  “Uh…I’m pretty sure it’s…an electrode from the heart monitor…”

  “H-huh? Why would you have one of those? Do you have a bad heart?”

  “No, not at all…It was a safety measure against Death Gun…Oh, I get it.
I was in such a rush to get disconnected, I must have pulled the cord out of this one by accident,” he muttered, sighing heavily. “Damn…You really had me going, there.”

  “That’s—” Shino started, grabbing him around the neck with both hands and squeezing violently “—what I was going to say! I…I thought you were dead!!”

  All of the tension and nerves suddenly drained out of her, and her vision darkened. She shook her head to clear the cobwebs and looked back at the collapsed Kyouji.

  “Do you think…he’s okay?” Kirito asked. She reached out and picked up his limp wrist. Fortunately, there was a pulse there, too. She wondered again if they ought to tie him up, but with his eyes closed like that, Kyouji’s face was too innocent looking. She had to turn away. She didn’t want to think about him right now. Her chest was full, not of rage or sadness, but plain emptiness.

  For several seconds, she just stared over at the high-pressure needleless syringe—the true “Death Gun,” in a way. Eventually she opened her mouth and said simply, “Thanks…for coming to help me.”

  Kirito gave her a familiar one-cheeked smirk and shook his head. “Nah… I didn’t end up doing anything for you in the end…Plus, I’m sorry I was late. Kiku—my employer wasn’t getting the picture fast enough. You aren’t hurt, are you?”

  Shino shook her head. Suddenly, she noticed something was flooding out of her eyes. “Ah…what the…”

  Her head was as fuzzy and useless as if it were stuffed with cotton, but the tears streaming out of her eyes only picked up momentum, dripping off her face.

  Shino closed her mouth, stayed still, and let the tears flow. She knew that if she tried to say anything, she would only start bawling at the top of her lungs. Kirito didn’t move, either.

  Eventually, she sensed the howl of distant sirens approaching, but her tears were not going to dry up anytime soon. Secretly, as the big drops fell one after the other, Shino understood that the source of the void that filled her heart was deep, deep loss.

  16

  The sky above was so vast and distant that she could feel the space beyond it.

  No VR world could re-create that feeling of empty sky. Within the deep, pure blue that was a forgotten remnant of the past autumn, little tufts and streaks of clouds formed a hanging blanket. Two sparrows perched on a thin electric line, and a military plane far above glinted with reflected sun.

  Shino gazed endlessly into the tremendous depth of this combination of layers without tiring, feeling her mind being sucked into it.

  The breeze was warm for mid-December, and the bustle of the students after school did not reach this spot behind the building. The sky at the center of Tokyo, usually a dull gray, looked like the sky over her hometown to the north on this rare occasion. Shino had been staring up into the endless sky for nearly ten minutes with her schoolbag clutched on her lap, sitting on the edge of the dreary planter with its bare, black soil.

  Eventually, giggling voices and numerous footsteps intruded on her peace and quiet, and Shino was returned to the Earth at last. She craned her stiff neck and pulled up her white muffler, waiting for the offenders.

  When they emerged from the path between the northwest corner of the campus and the large incinerator, Endou and her two cohorts noticed Shino and smirked sadistically.

  Shino picked up her bag and stood. “Don’t call me out and then keep me waiting.”

  One of the two followers blinked her heavy eyelids at high speed. The smile was gone from her lips. “Is it me, or are you gettin’ a little too full of yourself these days, Asada?”

  In nearly identical form, the other one followed up, “Yeah, who talks to her own friends like that?”

  They had all stopped about six feet from Shino, and were throwing her menacing stares from what they believed to be intimidating angles. Shino decided to stare back at Endou in the center, looking directly into her predatory insect’s eyes.

  The silence lasted only a few seconds. Endou smiled and jutted her chin out. “Aw, whatever. Friends can handle anything you say. ’Cuz you’d still help us if we needed it, right? And we, like, really need it right now.”

  The two followers snorted.

  “Let me see 20,000 yen, for starters,” Endou said, in the casual tone of one asking to borrow an eraser.

  Shino took off the noncorrective NXT polymer-lens glasses she wore and put them in her skirt pocket. She glared with every fiber of her being, enunciating every word carefully:

  “As I said before, I have no intention of lending you anything.”

  Endou’s eyes narrowed until they were as thin as wires. There was a persistent, hungry glare exuding from them. She growled, “Don’t think you can keep getting away with this bullshit. Just so you know, I actually borrowed it from my brother today. I can break you, Asada.”

  “…Do your worst.”

  Shino didn’t think she would actually do it, but to her surprise, one end of Endou’s mouth perked up into a smile. She put her hand into the bag.

  In a way, a large black pistol emerging from a schoolgirl bag laden with clattering little mascot trinkets had some measure of black humor. Endou clumsily pulled the large pellet gun out and pointed it at Shino. “This thing can pop a hole in cardboard. He said I should never point it at anyone, but I bet you don’t mind. You’re used to it.”

  Shino’s eyes were automatically drawn to the black muzzle. Her pulse suddenly jumped. The ringing in her ears started to drown out the other noise. Her breathing got fast and short, and a chill crept into her fingertips.

  But she clenched her teeth, and using all her willpower, tore her eyes away from the darkness of the gun’s interior. She followed Endou’s hand on the grip up her arm, to her shoulder, her bleached hair, and then her face.

  Endou’s agitation caused the capillaries in her eyes to float to the surface, making the irises dark and cloudy. They were ugly eyes. The eyes of one drunk on violence and power.

  It wasn’t the gun that was truly frightful. It was the person holding it.

  Endou frowned, unhappy that Shino wasn’t giving her the reaction she expected. “Cry, Asada. Get down on your hands and knees and apologize. Or I really will shoot you.”

  She pointed the model gun at Shino’s left leg and smirked. Shino noticed her shoulder twitching, the movement necessary to twist her finger and pull the trigger. But no bullet emerged.

  “What the hell?”

  Again, then again, Endou pulled the trigger, but the only sound was the squeak of plastic. Shino took a deep breath, summoning strength to her stomach, then dropped the bag and reached out. Her thumb pressed hard on Endou’s wrist, weakening the grip, and she snatched the gun away with her other hand. Shino slipped her index finger into the trigger guard and squeezed the handle with her palm. For a plastic model, it was quite heavy.

  “A 1911 Government, huh? Your brother’s got classic taste. Not my style, though,” she said, pointing the left side of the gun toward Endou. “The Government’s got a grip safety in addition to the thumb safety. You can’t shoot it unless you unlock both spots.”

  Click, click. She removed the safety devices. “Plus, it’s a single action, so you have to cock it yourself to start with.”

  She used her thumb to raise the hammer, and the trigger rose slightly within her grasp.

  Shino ignored the dumbstruck girls and looked around. About six yards away was a line of blue plastic buckets next to the incinerator. Her eyes stopped on an empty juice can sitting atop one of the upturned buckets.

  She propped the gun up with her free hand and took a basic isosceles stance. The can lined up along the axis of her right eye and the sight of the gun. After a moment’s thought, she raised the weapon a hair, held her breath, and squeezed the trigger.

  It made a weak shump sound, and she felt a very slight recoil. The gun’s blowback system did work perfectly, however, and a little orange bullet popped out.

  She figured that without knowing the finer control of the model, she would miss,
but to her surprise, the shot landed luckily right near the top of the can. It twanged and spun like a top before eventually tumbling over and rolling off the bucket.

  Shino breathed out and lowered the gun, turning to look at Endou.

  Her sardonic smile was gone. She was completely stunned, at a loss for words. As Shino maintained her direct stare, Endou eventually quavered and took a half step backward.

  “N-no…don’t,” she squeaked.

  Shino let her gaze soften at last. “…You’re right. This isn’t meant to be pointed at people,” she said, decocking the hammer and reactivating the safeties. She offered Endou the gun handle-first, and the other girl tensed in fear before eventually reaching out to take it.

  Shino turned, picked up her bag, and tugged her muffler up again. She cast a brief good-bye over her shoulder and started walking. Endou’s group did not move. The three stood in paralyzed silence all the while it took Shino to round the corner of the building and put them out of her sight.

  The moment she was safe, the strength drained out of her legs, and Shino nearly slumped to the ground. She put a hand to the wall to stay upright.

  There was a howling in her ears, and she felt the pulsing of blood in her temples. Sour bile burned at the back of her throat. She was in no condition to repeat what she’d just done.

  Still, this was the first step.

  She willed strength into her wilted legs, forcing them to resume walking. The cold weight of the model gun was still stuck to her palm and refused to disappear, but as the cold, dry wind blew on her hand, the effect slowly faded. When her fingers were ready to move again, she took out her glasses and placed them on her face.

  Shino crossed the walkway linking the west entrance of the school to the gymnasium, and a short while later, cut across the corner of the athletic field. She walked past the members of the sports clubs running around the track, then passed through the small copse of trees to the south, putting her at the front entrance of the school.

  She weaved her way quickly through the milling groups of students departing for the day, then stopped when something caught her eye. Several groups of female students within the high walls of the school had stopped nearby, speaking softly among themselves and glancing at the gate.