Shadows of Ash (The Nameless Book 2) Read online

  The door to their carriage whooshed open. Goro bowed and his gaze met Ryan’s. “Grandfather wants to see you.”

  “About what?”

  “Please. He will discuss it with you.”

  Ryan shrugged and followed Goro through the Shinkansen.

  Touma Yamada’s private carriage, toward the back of the bullet train, was luxurious. The first section was an office, complete with a large mahogany desk and leather chairs. Hundreds of books lined floor-to-ceiling shelves.

  “Sit, Mr Connors,” Yamada said.

  “What’s this about?” Ryan said. He still couldn’t believe how old this man was. Yamada must be full of these nanites. Ryan raised his arm and looked at it. It was hard to comprehend that, right now, there were thousands of microscopic robots inside his own body. Changing him. Regenerating his cells.

  Yamada cleared his throat.

  “What I told you about the two factions within OPIS is true. Offenheim does want to build a utopia. Myself…” Yamada paused. The train rocked gently as it moved through another station. Tokyo flowed by. “My followers and I don’t want that. I’m sure you know your history, Mr Connors. Under Hirohito we entered the war, allied with Germany and Italy. We swept south at an exceptional pace. Because of my education, I oversaw a project. We were looking for technological advancement. Anything and everything. We found something in the Philippines. A plant with remarkable healing properties. Because of the scorpius plant, because of that one plant, my family regained its honor. It brought me wealth and power. But all along, I wanted something else. Wealth gave me freedom to do what I most desired, but it never brought me true happiness. Everywhere I looked, I saw the disease. The disease of Western influence, and I wanted it gone.”

  Yamada turned to gaze at Ryan. He saw a sadness in the old man’s eyes he had never seen before. If you lived for a long time, like Yamada had, maybe you witnessed too much. Saw too much hate. Too much heartbreak. Watched loved ones wilt and die. Saw a thousand changes. After 1945, technology and the Western world set off into a new era that science fiction writers had only dreamed of. Within seven years, commercial jets made world travel faster. Televisions began to appear in people’s lounges.

  Yamada had been alive for it all. Birth. Death. Destruction. Peace.

  “Thanks for the history lesson, but you still haven’t answered my question,” Ryan said.

  “I need you to rescue my son.”

  “Your son?”

  “Yes. Takeshi. Offenheim’s soldiers have him surrounded. Takeshi managed to seal himself away, but without assistance, he and the others will not survive for more than a week.”

  “Where?”

  “Tomari Nuclear Power Plant.”

  “I thought the nuclear program was suspended after the tsunami?”

  “Not quite. The public was in fear because of Fukushima. Inspections were carried out. Tomari was the first brought back online, but it continued to have problems, so the decision was made to decommission it slowly. One reactor still runs at low capacity. However, our target is a building complex behind the plant. Our research facility. That is where Takeshi and Doctor Ando are trapped. It is vital we extract them and our research. I can’t let Offenheim get his hands on it.”

  Ryan mulled over what Yamada was asking of him. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Touma. Cal and I want to get home to our daughter. Find her.”

  “How do you know she’s even alive?”

  “That’s not the point. There’s been too much delay as it is. We helped you fix your computer breach. Now we’re going home.”

  “And I thank you, but I need your skills.”

  “Again, I ask, why don’t you send your own men in? I’m sure you could overwhelm Offenheim’s soldiers.”

  “Too risky within a nuclear reactor. I need The Nameless. Sneaky and silent, not loud and careless. Offenheim’s men will be expecting us to attack. I’ll provide the diversion while you secure Takeshi and my chief scientist, Ando.”

  “Can’t do it. You’re on your own.”

  “Will you at least consider it?”

  “Look, all we want to do is get back to America.” Ryan took a couple of deep breaths doing his best to keep his temper in check.

  “Mr Connors. Believe me when I say that I want you all gone. For over two hundred years Japan was closed to outsiders. That is all I wish. All I have ever wanted. To become emperor and rule Japan as it should be. Glorious and independent. Closed off from the world.”

  “I want all our names on the safe list, permanently. Or, better yet, switch off these damn bugs.”

  “If you are successful in rescuing my son, I will, and I’ll give you that plane.”

  “And if we refuse?” Ryan asked.

  Yamada ignored his question and ushered Ryan from his office toward the back of the train. They walked through what was clearly his private cabin and down a long narrow corridor. Exquisite paintings hung at regular intervals, softly lit. Most works were by Japanese artists, and some by well-known European painters. Degas, Gauguin and Picasso.

  Yamada nodded to the two steely eyed guards and pushed through the door.

  The carriage beyond was bare and brightly lit with white halogens. Five naked men were shackled to the ceiling and floor with iron chains.

  “These men conspired with Offenheim to overthrow me,” Yamada said.

  He took a gray wand from one of the guards and pressed a red button on its handle. He held it up to the neck of the first prisoner. Almost immediately the prisoner gasped and went rigid before letting out an agonized shriek through his gag. He arched his back and his eyes bulged. His arms and legs contorted. Seconds later, the man was a pile of ash on the floor. The other prisoners thrashed in their bindings. Even though their mouths were gagged, their muted screams were enough. Yamada passed the wand back to the guard and gestured at the struggling traitors. The guard kicked out viciously, booting the nearest prisoner in the groin. He then held the wand up to the man’s neck. That traitor too contorted and his eyes bulged before his body deconstructed into dust.

  “We can activate anyone’s alpha nanite using this wand. Except the elites, of course; theirs are encrypted. I’m sure you don’t want this fate for yourself and your friends. Like these traitors here.”

  Ryan pushed past Yamada, back into the cleaner air of the next cabin. He glared at him. “It appears that you have left me with no choice but to accept.”

  Yamada smiled. “I knew you would see it from my point of view.” He signaled for the two armed-guards and Goro to take Ryan back to his team. No one spoke as they shuffled through the rocking train.

  Goro bowed in the doorway of the carriage. “Apologies, Mr Connors. Grandfather said to take Keiko and Hogai.”

  “What. Why?”

  “To ensure that you complete the mission.”

  Cal and Sofia bolted up. “What’s he talking about? What mission?”

  Ryan waved them back down, holding his palms flat. He glared at Goro. “That wasn’t part of the deal.”

  The guards pushed their way past The Nameless and yanked Keiko and Hogai to their feet. Guns were raised and everyone began shouting at once.

  Ryan whistled, loud and shrill. “Quiet. We don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  Goro left with the guards, Keiko and Hogai in tow.

  “What the hell is going on, Ryan?” Sofia said. “If that had been Zanzi, you wouldn’t have let her go.”

  “I’m with Sofia. What gives?” Cal said, her lips pulled tight.

  “Yamada wants our help again,” Ryan said.

  “Well, duh. We figured that.” Sofia rolled her eyes and sat on the armrest of the chair, staring, waiting for Ryan to explain.

  “Yamada wants us to rescue his son, Takeshi. Offenheim has him trapped in one of his research labs. Get him and a doctor out, and our original deal stays.”

  “And you agreed. Without consulting us?” Sofia said.

  “He left me no choice.”

  Sofia jumped
up and pushed her face into Ryan’s. “Explain it and make it real clear so I can understand.”

  “These Alpha nanites that we have here.” He touched the base of his skull. “Yamada has one of those scanners, but this one’s different. He demonstrated it on some traitors he caught. It triggered the self-destruct. The men suffered dreadfully as they died. Turned to ash. Like all the victims we saw.”

  Sofia sank back into her seat. “They can trigger a localized pulse?” She shivered. “I thought we were on the safe list.”

  Cal began to pace the aisle, muttering. “Again, we only know fragments. I can see why you agreed. You don’t think he’s bluffing to get us to accept?”

  Ryan shrugged. “Sofia?”

  “It’s possible. The scanner could read the Alpha code, then send a signal causing it to destruct, but I’d have to see the code to know for sure. Ideally, I need one of those scanners.”

  Booth stretched and flexed his arms. “Well, let’s steal one. That’s what we’re good at. Where’s this rescue meant to take place?”

  “Tomari Nuclear Power Plant on Hokkaido,” Ryan said.

  “So we have plenty of time. I say we steal one of those scanners. Sofia can reprogram it, or whatever, and then I vote for rescuing Keiko and Hogai, ditching this train and getting the hell out of Dodge.”

  Booth was answered with murmurs of agreement. Ryan grasped his shoulder in appreciation. A couple of moments ago he’d been at a loss. Like he was cornered into an impossible situation. Yamada held all the cards, but Booth had given him the pep talk he needed. The Nameless were not ones to lie down and roll over. Ryan should have known that. Normally it was his job to keep everyone’s spirits up.

  “If everyone’s on board, let’s start probing. Test how far we can go before Yamada’s men push back. Use the bathrooms, look for the usual crawlspaces. Sofia, see what you can do with the computer system.”

  “What can I do?” Allie said.

  Ryan handed her a pen and paper. “List all the airports and airfields that you know in this country. Any of them. Private or commercial bases, anything we can fly out of.”

  “On it,” Allie said.

  Ryan clasped his hands behind his back and watched The Nameless break apart and go about their tasks. His mind turned to Zanzi once more, and he whispered a quick prayer for her safety.

  Two

  The Eyrie

  Sierra Nevada Mountains, California

  Zanzi’s mind was in turmoil. Could she kill someone? Not because she had to, like the Black Skulls, but more like a murder. Get up in the morning after planning it. Eat her breakfast and drink her coffee. Perhaps watch some TV. Then set off, kill the target, dispose of the body, just like she’d planned, and afterwards, carry on as if nothing happened.

  What is murder? Is it only when you go out with the intention of killing someone? Was it murder when she had killed the Black Skulls? She hadn’t woken up that morning and thought, “Today is a good day to kill some commandos.” No, that was self-defense.

  Zanzi ran these thoughts over and over in her head. Milo had been clear: kill Alba and I’ll get you out. She could even take Tilly and Harriet with her.

  Alba. The sadist. Her constant questions. She’d use her taser on Zanzi, electricity coursing through her body, over and over. The surging agony through every fiber. Every cell. Motivation to murder wasn’t the problem. Alba was insane. The only time Zanzi had seen any semblance of fear in Alba was in Devil’s Falls when the Rabids attacked. The millions of nanites in her system may have made her nearly immortal, but the nanites didn’t take away her emotions.

  Zanzi sighed, sat up and kicked off her blankets.

  “Is it time?” Tilly whispered.

  “Yes. Are you ready?”

  “I was born that way. That’s a song. I don’t know by who. I heard Imogen say it was a baby lady. But that’s strange. How can you be a baby lady? Maybe she meant she was a lady who looked like a baby. But then why would she sing. I mean, why would you be a singer and call yourself lady baby? Imogen used to say the most peculiar things.”

  Zanzi kissed Tilly on her forehead and hugged her. “The singer’s name is Lady Gaga.”

  “Gaga. That was it. Must have been what I was thinking.”

  “She named herself after the Queen song ‘Radio Gaga.’”

  “The Queen sings?” Tilly said wide eyed.

  “Not the Queen. A band called Queen.”

  “Oh. I wish everyone explained things to me like you do.”

  “I’m happy to because you have an inquisitive mind,” Zanzi said as she guided Tilly out of their sleeping quarters.

  “That’s all I ever wanted. Someone to explain things to me. Not tell me to shut up. Stop talking. They called me a retard or stupid.” Tilly wiped a tear away. “One of the nice nurses said my brain is just wired differently. I just need to learn how to slow down and separate my thoughts.”

  Zanzi stopped in front of a window that looked down over the satellite dishes and radio telescopes. Dozens of them. In various sizes.

  “You stay the way you are, Tilly. You’re unique, that’s all. You’re kind and smart. Funny and full of love. I’ll take that any day over someone who is cold and vile. Being a chatterbox is part of your personality. Don’t let people with their callous words influence you. Embrace what you have and live with it. Wear it proudly.”

  Zanzi stared at the helicopter on the landing zone then glanced at the clock in the guard room. She had forty-five minutes to kill Alba and sneak herself and Tilly on board.

  Milo had planned it all down to the last detail. Which doors to use, how to avoid the cameras, when Alba was in her lab. If that was what that crazy woman called a lab, then she was more deluded than anyone else here. It was more like a torture chamber.

  Zanzi pushed herself into the corner of the hallway and counted to ten. Right on schedule, the guards left their desk and came through the doors. So far so good. Milo had told her that this part of the building was empty. The guards didn’t bother to patrol it.

  “This is where we used to come to read and paint,” Tilly whispered, pointing.

  Through the large panels of glass on the doors it was evident that the room was designed like a relaxation room in a public library. Chairs and desks with lamps. Bean bags on the floor. Paint easels in one corner. Shelf after shelf lined with books. It had been abandoned for some time.

  “When did you last come here?” Zanzi said.

  “A while ago. Maybe a year. I remember there being a lot of snow on the mountains. There weren’t many of us left by then.”

  They went past more abandoned rooms. A few sleeping cells. A kitchen, and even a small gymnasium with a basketball court.

  One room had a strange looking chair, like a dentist chair. It was rigged up to a hydraulic lift. The opposite wall was filled with monitors, now dead, gathering dust. It was like the floor they’d explored the other day. At one stage, this place must have been filled with children.

  Tilly whimpered as she walked past but said nothing. Zanzi could only imagine the thoughts and images running through the young girl’s head. What horrors she had been subjected to. She had meant what she’d said earlier. Tilly was kind and smart. Funny and full of love. She didn’t deserve what had happened to her and neither did any of the other children who’d been housed here. It amazed her that Tilly had survived it all and still come out of it with her head held high and full of questions.

  Zanzi pulled free the taser baton that Milo had given her and gripped it tight. She peeked through the next set of doors, looking for the camera. Milo, true to his word, had shifted it so it was pointing away from the stairwell.

  “This is the tricky part. We must be fast, okay?” Zanzi said.

  “Three flights?”

  “Yes. Three.”

  “Why do they call them flights of stairs? They don’t fly.”

  “You know what? I’m not sure. Once we get out of here, we’ll find out.”

  Zanzi too
k a moment to steady her building nerves. The question that had raged in her mind all night still nagged her. Could she kill Alba in cold blood?

  She pushed the thought aside, dashed down the stairs two at a time, burst through the doors on the third floor and into the guard room. A man with oily slicked-back hair, the same man who had smiled at her with glee as Alba tortured her, swung around.

  “What the fuck! What are you doing here?”

  Zanzi lashed out, jamming the taser baton into his chest. Oily went rigid, slid off his chair and landed on the floor with a thump. Like they had practiced, Tilly rolled him up against the wall so that if Alba happened to look, it would appear that Oily had left. Zanzi shocked him again on the neck for good measure and glanced up at the screens. She wasn’t prepared for what she saw.

  In a thousand scenarios, she never would have guessed this. Alba was dressed from head to toe in white PVC. A long apron covered her pants and jacket. Crisp white boots went up to her knees. She had a face mask on – like a welder’s helmet, but this one was clear – and it was covered in blood splatter and fragments of bone.

  Alba was bent over Harriet, who was laying on a stainless-steel table, a bone saw in her hand. She had just finished sawing around the top of Harriet’s skull and, as Zanzi watched, pried it off with a pop to expose the grayish brain underneath.

  Zanzi couldn’t look away. The scientist in her was morbidly fascinated by the procedure. Was Alba studying Harriet’s brain? Was Harriet alive?

  A glance lower down Harriet’s body answered that question. Her chest was cracked open, ribs splayed. Her organs had been removed and lay, dripping blood, on trays. This was an autopsy.

  Tilly gasped next to her and buried her head in her hands.

  “Don’t watch,” Zanzi said. She grabbed the guard’s HK VP9 pistol and clicked off the safety. She didn’t need to check if it was loaded; she could tell by its weight. It was heavier than she was used to, being more familiar with Glocks and Sig Sauers. She took the guard’s spare magazine and hustled to the door leading to Butcher Alba. If Zanzi had lacked motivation to kill her before, she didn’t anymore. Now she had the image of Harriet’s desecrated body lying on a metal table.