The second dark ages box.., p.39
The Second Dark Ages Boxed Set, page 39
part #1 of The Second Dark Ages Series
“If you have learned it,” Eve answered, in a half-question, half-statement, “why don’t we think you understand it?”
“You know, Eve,” Yuko put her hand on the shoulder of the AI. “You’re my dearest friend and I love you. But I’ve been programming logic chains and hacking computers since before I was as tall as you are now. It is always easier to make sure that even my best friends underestimate me.”
Eve seemed to be stuck in a logic problem; there were no movements from her body. It was times like this when Eve demonstrated that she was obviously not human.
Yuko shook her head. “You should really use a small percentage of your computing power to keep up some semblance of being alive.”
It was a full twenty more seconds before Eve came back online and looked at her friend in shock.
“You have been out with more boys!”
Yuko stared at her friend in shock. “How did you…”
“It’s logical,” Eve took a step towards Yuko and stuck a finger gently into her chest, poking her each time she made a point. Poke. “You like boys.”
“That’s not abnormal,” Yuko protested.
Poke. “You don’t go out much with boys!” Eve continued.
“Why would I?” Yuko argued. “I always have you two around!”
Poke. “You are a shy person!”
Yuko flipped her hair out of her face, annoyed. “I’m not shy, I just like my privacy!”
Poke. “You don’t like Akio’s comments about your boyfriends!” Eve continued.
“What comments?” Yuko shot back. “They are judgmental assessments coming from a man who can’t remember when he was two hundred years old, much less twenty!”
“And…” Eve didn’t have a follow up.
“And,” Yuko continued, “you were only too happy to help him find dirt!”
“That’s…” Eve started before her voice softened. “That’s because no one is good enough for you,” Eve finally finished.
“And that is why it’s easier to be underestimated, Eve.” Yuko, also speaking softly, told her. “When you guys believe me to be a bit slow, or afraid to kill, or needing more time with swords? It is a defense mechanism for me. I don’t want to have to explain myself.”
Eve walked to a chair five steps away and sat down. Yuko stared at her friend, who was rocking back and forth, seemingly having an existential crisis.
Yuko moved to put a hand on Eve’s back. “Are you okay?” she asked. Then considered where Eve was. “And you are sitting down.”
“You mentioned using a portion of my computing power to seem real.” Eve looked up. “That portion decided a person in shock—like I am—might want to sit down.”
“You never sit down.” Yuko replied, then modified it. “Well, incredibly rarely.”
“I don’t need to sit. My body doesn’t get tired, and the position is inferior if I need to react quickly. Sitting is inefficient,” Eve concluded.
Yuko looked up when she heard the clearing of a throat, to find Jacqueline and Mark at the door to the operations room. She smiled at them. “Come in.”
Chapter Twenty
Jacqueline looked around the operations room and knew she had lost Mark’s attention for a while. Unless she was willing to strip down in front of him. Which was, she concluded, a plausible action on her part, but she didn’t want to try it unless it was absolutely necessary.
It was an unfortunate truth that Mark might choose to explore the technology over playing with her naked body. That would be a large blow to her ego, something she didn’t want to deal with at the moment. Sometimes geeks were a challenge that way.
There were seven different work spaces spread out against the walls in a room about thirty feet by forty feet. It had a desk in the middle and two white boards at one end. It seemed rather large for the three people who lived in the complex.
Mark was already walking over to a desk where four computer monitors were arranged in a large rectangle.
Eve noticed Mark looking at the computer screens and the data on them, but he wasn’t touching and he couldn’t break anything over there without making a concerted effort. She put the chance of Mark purposely damaging something significantly lower than one percent.
Of one percent.
She smiled at that thought. Her own friend had fooled her for a hundred and fifty years. Well, probably less. However, Eve had to consider all ramifications of her logic systems.
“You don’t have to do that.” Yuko looked down at her.
Eve looked up. “What?”
“Work to reset all of your logic systems, and don’t tell me you aren’t. When you do, the systems handling your body cause your right ear to twitch twice a second.”
Eve moved a hand up to her right ear. “Are you making that up?”
“You mean lying?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Good,” Eve said. “Because I registered that as actual truth and I’m not sure I can deal with making that many mistakes in one night.”
Yuko chuckled. “You done with your existential AI crisis?”
“Well,” Eve answered after a few seconds, “about 87.7% of it, and I should be done with the rest in two minutes and twenty-five seconds if you don’t confuse me anymore.”
“Okay.” Yuko patted her friend on the shoulder. Eve had added all sorts of features over the decades, and she could tell a lot with the sensitive sensors. Yuko walked over to Jacqueline and Mark. “Questions?”
“Yup.” Jacqueline jumped in before Mark could derail her with geeky stuff. “Am I seeing a chance to go bust up a gang meeting?”
Yuko shrugged. “Either that, or an attempt to kill Akio in a trap.”
Mark asked, “How would they do that?”
Eve stood and walked over to join them. “Usually they try to overcome him with violence. Twice they tried to capture Yuko and use her as bait.”
“Only twice?” Jacqueline asked, surprised.
“I’m considered a noncombatant.” Yuko answered. “So most bad guys don’t try to actually hurt me, and no one considers me dangerous.”
“Why not?” Mark asked. “Seems like you can be very dangerous.”
“You heard some of the conversation, didn’t you?” Jacqueline asked him, scratching his back. “Yuko hasn’t been much of a fighter these last hundred and fifty years.”
“That she has told us about,” grumped Eve. “You can’t tell now.”
Yuko looked down at Eve. “Wow, emotional manipulation much, Eve?”
Eve turned to look at her. “I have to try out new methodologies to—hopefully—keep you safe.” Eve looked at Yuko a minute, then a small smile played on her lips. “You didn’t think I’d quit trying to protect you, did you?”
Yuko smiled. “I can wish.”
Eve shook her head. “That won’t happen. I was there when Bethany Anne brought you aboard, and I’ll be here when Bethany Anne comes back,” she said.
“Well, I’m going to be harder to protect now,” Yuko told her. Mark and Jacqueline just watched them as they finished their earlier discussion.
“Because you will be in the middle of the action?” Eve calculated.
“Yes.”
“Wait, you were there when Bethany Anne brought her on board?” Mark asked.
“Well, it wasn’t really Eve at that time,” Yuko answered him. “ADAM was my main friend. As a going-away present, he built Eve and based her powerful AI on his own code. Then, he gave the AI all of the memories he had of himself with me so I could speak about our past and not be lonely.”
“That’s….” Jacqueline started, but didn’t finish the sentence.
“Love,” Eve finished for her.
Catacombs Under Old Paris
“So, the Queen’s Bitch should be busy in Japan for a little while,” the Duke told Gerard as he hung up the phone.
Gerard considered what he’d been told. “Do you believe they will be able to kill him?”
“Of course not,” the Duke sniffed. “It’s only a distraction to help us get out of here.”
“What if he doesn’t take the bait, or what if he isn’t really down here?”
William Renaud considered the question. “I am sending my apostles through the catacombs to look. If they live, or find him dead in a trap, then we are fine. If they die, we need to be out of here quickly.” The Duke reached over to pull his coat off a rack in the small room that he had built under the ground. Over the years, he had stolen humans from Paris and drunk his fill. Unfortunately, that made them cautious and harder to catch. “If we have to continue running, I will conclude that my idea of ‘live and let live’ was unwise and I should have killed him a long time ago.”
He had focused all of his attention on subjugating France and the areas around it, while keeping any evidence of himself from the humans.
No need for more of the sheep to grow fangs.
Germany was one of the most technologically sophisticated areas on the planet now. With the pre-war antigrav technology provided to them, they had rebuilt a remarkable society.
It wasn’t as good as Japan’s, but it was more than enough for his plans.
First he would take over Germany, then the world.
His expression changed to annoyance. It was supposed to be Paris first, then Germany, finally the world.
That damned Akio.
“Let me tell my children what they need to do,” he said to Gerard. “I’ll be back.”
Gerard nodded and bowed until the Duke was out of the room. He shivered just a bit. The Duke was very close to a man while remaining a vampire. His present children were little better than ravenous monsters, but he kept them around for times like this.
Release them, and allow them to suffer should any attacks come. Early warning system, he called it.
Gerard looked around and began to clean up. If they needed to leave quickly, there would be a few things they should take.
He started packing the bag.
“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Michael exclaimed when the sharpened metal rods that shot through the air where he had been a microsecond before caught his coat at the very bottom. He grated his teeth in annoyance, then produced a fine molecular edge on his hand and cut through the metal rod. He pulled his coat hem up and looked at it.
It had a quarter-inch hole punched through it. “Those cretins,” he hissed as his eyes flared red. He looked back down the hallway. When the trap had been sprung, Michael had jumped ahead and Akio had jumped back.
“I got lazy,” Michael admitted as he turned to Akio. He reached out and used the Etheric molecular edge to cut all the rods except the topmost.
Akio wasn’t that tall.
Akio shrugged as he walked through. “I’ll tell you about the time a little girl shot me in the ass with a crossbow.”
Michael looked at Akio’s deadpan face. “Truth?”
Akio smiled a little and nodded. “I try not to dwell on it much.”
“Was this recent, or hundreds of years ago?” Michael asked.
“I would like to say when I was young, dumb and foolish,” Akio said. “But the truth is it happened twenty-eight years ago over in the area that was Taiwan before the war. There was a Wechselbalg group that was pretty militaristic, and one of their people who was bent on subjugating humans rose to the top. As I took care of the leader, I didn’t pay attention to the children, one of whom picked up a guard’s crossbow and shot me as more of his people came running in.”
Michael laughed. “Well, I appreciate the sharing and it did help.” He picked up his hem to look at the hole again. “But this pisses me off. I like this coat.”
“Easily fixed, Michael,” Akio replied, but then he noticed Michael wasn’t paying any attention to him. Akio reached out with his own senses and felt faint energy in the direction they had been heading. Only a few seconds later they heard noises as something moved quickly through the catacombs.
Coming directly for them.
“What I’m saying,” Jacqueline stated as she pointed to the monitor displaying a map of the location, “is that there’s a park across from the buildings.”
“And?” Yuko asked.
“Well,” Jacqueline leaned into Mark who reached up and put an arm around her shoulders, “they’re looking for Akio, not a pair of lovers.”
“You want us,” Yuko pointed to Eve and herself, “to allow you two to get involved in a police takedown between two criminal gangs, possibly including Wechselbalg, that is most likely a trap for Akio?”
Jacqueline snorted. “Yes, and your point?”
“What would Michael say?” Eve asked.
“Did you see him,” Mark asked, “have any problem with us standing in front of a few thousand hungry Wechselbalg?”
Yuko opened her mouth and then shut it. She turned to Eve. “What do you think?”
Eve shrugged. “The difference in risk between the fight they were in this morning and a fight with the criminal gangs is so large as to be laughable.” Eve said. “We can always ask Akio to ask Michael.”
Yuko nodded. “Do that, please.”
Catacombs Under Old Paris
Sean Gwelvin had been a very poor policeman when he was alive. When he was serving, he had learned all the diverse ways a house could be broken into, and many places and methods to hide valuables.
It was an education in theft, so he applied his education.
To steal, that is.
For a year and a half, he policed during the day, went home and took a nap, then went out to either case a location or break into it. The last three months he was alive, his captain had actually assigned him to solve his own crimes.
Amazingly enough, he failed to find the perpetrator.
Then, he made the fateful mistake of trying to break into the Duke’s house looking for treasure. Instead of treasure, he found trouble.
The deadly kind.
Sean didn’t remember much about the time before he was turned, but he sure knew about his life since. The Duke was a hard master, but remarkably fair with both his praise and his punishments.
The senses honed during his thieving days were still useful. He couldn’t see anything down the hallway, but he could feel that something wasn’t right.
So he stopped. He smelled the air and turned in every direction, then reached into his pocket to grab his warning device and froze. Looking down, he pulled his pocket inside out before shoving it back in and checking the other three pockets.
“Looking for this?” a man’s voice asked him.
Sean twisted around, eyes flashing red, and hissed.
What he saw scared his lizard brain so much he couldn’t speak.
“Akio?” a tiny voice called in his ear. Akio turned away from the distraction of Michael ripping apart the Forsaken down the hallway.
“Yes, Eve?”
“Yuko would like you to pass on a question to Michael as to whether it’s okay to get Jacqueline and Mark involved in an operation.”
“There?” he asked as he glanced down the hallway in time to see Michael decapitate the body and turn to look back at him. Down here, there were tiny flames every forty feet, enough that you could see decently if you were advanced.
“Yes.”
Akio considered it a moment. “Tell me about it.” He stayed quiet as Michael joined him. “So, a trap.” he said as she finished.
“Oh, definitely.” Eve agreed.
“Problems?” Michael asked.
Akio summarized Eve’s communication.
“So,” Michael replied, “we have two gangs, some Wechselbalg and perhaps cops involved in an attempt to capture or kill you?”
Akio gave a minute shrug. “Probably kill.”
“And the two young ones wish to be a part of this to do what?”
Eve answered loud enough for Michael to hear, slightly hurting Akio’s ears. “They don’t like that there will be innocent cops involved.”
“There’s no way of knowing they’re innocent,” Michael said, “without Akio or me to confirm.”
“In Japan,” Akio offered, “look for cops firing their guns at the bad guys. That is a good enough determination because any bad cops won’t be shooting.” Michael raised an eyebrow, so Akio continued, “The old days where only the cops and the Yakuza had guns is gone. Too many times a Wechselbalg has rampaged as a wolf and killed indiscriminately. Now the cops have guns with silver bullets as well. While some are paid by the criminals, most are not.” He shrugged. “Japan is still mostly civilized, but it is a harsh life now when someone can change into a creature that is almost impossible to kill. So, civilians have guns.”
Michael nodded his understanding. “Yuko wants my permission for two adults to go into harm’s way?”
There was a very faint, “That’s what I told them!” coming from Akio’s implant.
Michael smiled. “They’re old enough to decide what to do on their own. I didn’t promise them they wouldn’t die in Europe, and I can’t say they’re safe in Japan either.” He could almost see the cold water splash on Jacqueline’s face when she heard those words and the narrowing of her eyes as she took on the responsibility anyway.
“However,” Michael continued, “make sure they know I will be very upset with both of them if they get killed. And if I figure out a way to resurrect them, I will make them train every day for ten years so it doesn’t happen again.”
“Oh shit.” This time it was Mark’s voice.
“Yeah,” Jacqueline chimed in, “that training bullshit is for the birds. So try not to die.”
“Got it.”
Akio smiled at the two talking in his ear. “That is all?”
“We are good,” Eve agreed, and they closed the connection.
Michael rolled his eyes before turning back to Akio. “Children!” He pulled a device out of his pocket. “What do you suppose this does?”
Akio looked at Michael, who was smiling. “You already know.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Nagoya, Japan
“You know, Eve,” Yuko put her hand on the shoulder of the AI. “You’re my dearest friend and I love you. But I’ve been programming logic chains and hacking computers since before I was as tall as you are now. It is always easier to make sure that even my best friends underestimate me.”
Eve seemed to be stuck in a logic problem; there were no movements from her body. It was times like this when Eve demonstrated that she was obviously not human.
Yuko shook her head. “You should really use a small percentage of your computing power to keep up some semblance of being alive.”
It was a full twenty more seconds before Eve came back online and looked at her friend in shock.
“You have been out with more boys!”
Yuko stared at her friend in shock. “How did you…”
“It’s logical,” Eve took a step towards Yuko and stuck a finger gently into her chest, poking her each time she made a point. Poke. “You like boys.”
“That’s not abnormal,” Yuko protested.
Poke. “You don’t go out much with boys!” Eve continued.
“Why would I?” Yuko argued. “I always have you two around!”
Poke. “You are a shy person!”
Yuko flipped her hair out of her face, annoyed. “I’m not shy, I just like my privacy!”
Poke. “You don’t like Akio’s comments about your boyfriends!” Eve continued.
“What comments?” Yuko shot back. “They are judgmental assessments coming from a man who can’t remember when he was two hundred years old, much less twenty!”
“And…” Eve didn’t have a follow up.
“And,” Yuko continued, “you were only too happy to help him find dirt!”
“That’s…” Eve started before her voice softened. “That’s because no one is good enough for you,” Eve finally finished.
“And that is why it’s easier to be underestimated, Eve.” Yuko, also speaking softly, told her. “When you guys believe me to be a bit slow, or afraid to kill, or needing more time with swords? It is a defense mechanism for me. I don’t want to have to explain myself.”
Eve walked to a chair five steps away and sat down. Yuko stared at her friend, who was rocking back and forth, seemingly having an existential crisis.
Yuko moved to put a hand on Eve’s back. “Are you okay?” she asked. Then considered where Eve was. “And you are sitting down.”
“You mentioned using a portion of my computing power to seem real.” Eve looked up. “That portion decided a person in shock—like I am—might want to sit down.”
“You never sit down.” Yuko replied, then modified it. “Well, incredibly rarely.”
“I don’t need to sit. My body doesn’t get tired, and the position is inferior if I need to react quickly. Sitting is inefficient,” Eve concluded.
Yuko looked up when she heard the clearing of a throat, to find Jacqueline and Mark at the door to the operations room. She smiled at them. “Come in.”
Chapter Twenty
Jacqueline looked around the operations room and knew she had lost Mark’s attention for a while. Unless she was willing to strip down in front of him. Which was, she concluded, a plausible action on her part, but she didn’t want to try it unless it was absolutely necessary.
It was an unfortunate truth that Mark might choose to explore the technology over playing with her naked body. That would be a large blow to her ego, something she didn’t want to deal with at the moment. Sometimes geeks were a challenge that way.
There were seven different work spaces spread out against the walls in a room about thirty feet by forty feet. It had a desk in the middle and two white boards at one end. It seemed rather large for the three people who lived in the complex.
Mark was already walking over to a desk where four computer monitors were arranged in a large rectangle.
Eve noticed Mark looking at the computer screens and the data on them, but he wasn’t touching and he couldn’t break anything over there without making a concerted effort. She put the chance of Mark purposely damaging something significantly lower than one percent.
Of one percent.
She smiled at that thought. Her own friend had fooled her for a hundred and fifty years. Well, probably less. However, Eve had to consider all ramifications of her logic systems.
“You don’t have to do that.” Yuko looked down at her.
Eve looked up. “What?”
“Work to reset all of your logic systems, and don’t tell me you aren’t. When you do, the systems handling your body cause your right ear to twitch twice a second.”
Eve moved a hand up to her right ear. “Are you making that up?”
“You mean lying?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Good,” Eve said. “Because I registered that as actual truth and I’m not sure I can deal with making that many mistakes in one night.”
Yuko chuckled. “You done with your existential AI crisis?”
“Well,” Eve answered after a few seconds, “about 87.7% of it, and I should be done with the rest in two minutes and twenty-five seconds if you don’t confuse me anymore.”
“Okay.” Yuko patted her friend on the shoulder. Eve had added all sorts of features over the decades, and she could tell a lot with the sensitive sensors. Yuko walked over to Jacqueline and Mark. “Questions?”
“Yup.” Jacqueline jumped in before Mark could derail her with geeky stuff. “Am I seeing a chance to go bust up a gang meeting?”
Yuko shrugged. “Either that, or an attempt to kill Akio in a trap.”
Mark asked, “How would they do that?”
Eve stood and walked over to join them. “Usually they try to overcome him with violence. Twice they tried to capture Yuko and use her as bait.”
“Only twice?” Jacqueline asked, surprised.
“I’m considered a noncombatant.” Yuko answered. “So most bad guys don’t try to actually hurt me, and no one considers me dangerous.”
“Why not?” Mark asked. “Seems like you can be very dangerous.”
“You heard some of the conversation, didn’t you?” Jacqueline asked him, scratching his back. “Yuko hasn’t been much of a fighter these last hundred and fifty years.”
“That she has told us about,” grumped Eve. “You can’t tell now.”
Yuko looked down at Eve. “Wow, emotional manipulation much, Eve?”
Eve turned to look at her. “I have to try out new methodologies to—hopefully—keep you safe.” Eve looked at Yuko a minute, then a small smile played on her lips. “You didn’t think I’d quit trying to protect you, did you?”
Yuko smiled. “I can wish.”
Eve shook her head. “That won’t happen. I was there when Bethany Anne brought you aboard, and I’ll be here when Bethany Anne comes back,” she said.
“Well, I’m going to be harder to protect now,” Yuko told her. Mark and Jacqueline just watched them as they finished their earlier discussion.
“Because you will be in the middle of the action?” Eve calculated.
“Yes.”
“Wait, you were there when Bethany Anne brought her on board?” Mark asked.
“Well, it wasn’t really Eve at that time,” Yuko answered him. “ADAM was my main friend. As a going-away present, he built Eve and based her powerful AI on his own code. Then, he gave the AI all of the memories he had of himself with me so I could speak about our past and not be lonely.”
“That’s….” Jacqueline started, but didn’t finish the sentence.
“Love,” Eve finished for her.
Catacombs Under Old Paris
“So, the Queen’s Bitch should be busy in Japan for a little while,” the Duke told Gerard as he hung up the phone.
Gerard considered what he’d been told. “Do you believe they will be able to kill him?”
“Of course not,” the Duke sniffed. “It’s only a distraction to help us get out of here.”
“What if he doesn’t take the bait, or what if he isn’t really down here?”
William Renaud considered the question. “I am sending my apostles through the catacombs to look. If they live, or find him dead in a trap, then we are fine. If they die, we need to be out of here quickly.” The Duke reached over to pull his coat off a rack in the small room that he had built under the ground. Over the years, he had stolen humans from Paris and drunk his fill. Unfortunately, that made them cautious and harder to catch. “If we have to continue running, I will conclude that my idea of ‘live and let live’ was unwise and I should have killed him a long time ago.”
He had focused all of his attention on subjugating France and the areas around it, while keeping any evidence of himself from the humans.
No need for more of the sheep to grow fangs.
Germany was one of the most technologically sophisticated areas on the planet now. With the pre-war antigrav technology provided to them, they had rebuilt a remarkable society.
It wasn’t as good as Japan’s, but it was more than enough for his plans.
First he would take over Germany, then the world.
His expression changed to annoyance. It was supposed to be Paris first, then Germany, finally the world.
That damned Akio.
“Let me tell my children what they need to do,” he said to Gerard. “I’ll be back.”
Gerard nodded and bowed until the Duke was out of the room. He shivered just a bit. The Duke was very close to a man while remaining a vampire. His present children were little better than ravenous monsters, but he kept them around for times like this.
Release them, and allow them to suffer should any attacks come. Early warning system, he called it.
Gerard looked around and began to clean up. If they needed to leave quickly, there would be a few things they should take.
He started packing the bag.
“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Michael exclaimed when the sharpened metal rods that shot through the air where he had been a microsecond before caught his coat at the very bottom. He grated his teeth in annoyance, then produced a fine molecular edge on his hand and cut through the metal rod. He pulled his coat hem up and looked at it.
It had a quarter-inch hole punched through it. “Those cretins,” he hissed as his eyes flared red. He looked back down the hallway. When the trap had been sprung, Michael had jumped ahead and Akio had jumped back.
“I got lazy,” Michael admitted as he turned to Akio. He reached out and used the Etheric molecular edge to cut all the rods except the topmost.
Akio wasn’t that tall.
Akio shrugged as he walked through. “I’ll tell you about the time a little girl shot me in the ass with a crossbow.”
Michael looked at Akio’s deadpan face. “Truth?”
Akio smiled a little and nodded. “I try not to dwell on it much.”
“Was this recent, or hundreds of years ago?” Michael asked.
“I would like to say when I was young, dumb and foolish,” Akio said. “But the truth is it happened twenty-eight years ago over in the area that was Taiwan before the war. There was a Wechselbalg group that was pretty militaristic, and one of their people who was bent on subjugating humans rose to the top. As I took care of the leader, I didn’t pay attention to the children, one of whom picked up a guard’s crossbow and shot me as more of his people came running in.”
Michael laughed. “Well, I appreciate the sharing and it did help.” He picked up his hem to look at the hole again. “But this pisses me off. I like this coat.”
“Easily fixed, Michael,” Akio replied, but then he noticed Michael wasn’t paying any attention to him. Akio reached out with his own senses and felt faint energy in the direction they had been heading. Only a few seconds later they heard noises as something moved quickly through the catacombs.
Coming directly for them.
“What I’m saying,” Jacqueline stated as she pointed to the monitor displaying a map of the location, “is that there’s a park across from the buildings.”
“And?” Yuko asked.
“Well,” Jacqueline leaned into Mark who reached up and put an arm around her shoulders, “they’re looking for Akio, not a pair of lovers.”
“You want us,” Yuko pointed to Eve and herself, “to allow you two to get involved in a police takedown between two criminal gangs, possibly including Wechselbalg, that is most likely a trap for Akio?”
Jacqueline snorted. “Yes, and your point?”
“What would Michael say?” Eve asked.
“Did you see him,” Mark asked, “have any problem with us standing in front of a few thousand hungry Wechselbalg?”
Yuko opened her mouth and then shut it. She turned to Eve. “What do you think?”
Eve shrugged. “The difference in risk between the fight they were in this morning and a fight with the criminal gangs is so large as to be laughable.” Eve said. “We can always ask Akio to ask Michael.”
Yuko nodded. “Do that, please.”
Catacombs Under Old Paris
Sean Gwelvin had been a very poor policeman when he was alive. When he was serving, he had learned all the diverse ways a house could be broken into, and many places and methods to hide valuables.
It was an education in theft, so he applied his education.
To steal, that is.
For a year and a half, he policed during the day, went home and took a nap, then went out to either case a location or break into it. The last three months he was alive, his captain had actually assigned him to solve his own crimes.
Amazingly enough, he failed to find the perpetrator.
Then, he made the fateful mistake of trying to break into the Duke’s house looking for treasure. Instead of treasure, he found trouble.
The deadly kind.
Sean didn’t remember much about the time before he was turned, but he sure knew about his life since. The Duke was a hard master, but remarkably fair with both his praise and his punishments.
The senses honed during his thieving days were still useful. He couldn’t see anything down the hallway, but he could feel that something wasn’t right.
So he stopped. He smelled the air and turned in every direction, then reached into his pocket to grab his warning device and froze. Looking down, he pulled his pocket inside out before shoving it back in and checking the other three pockets.
“Looking for this?” a man’s voice asked him.
Sean twisted around, eyes flashing red, and hissed.
What he saw scared his lizard brain so much he couldn’t speak.
“Akio?” a tiny voice called in his ear. Akio turned away from the distraction of Michael ripping apart the Forsaken down the hallway.
“Yes, Eve?”
“Yuko would like you to pass on a question to Michael as to whether it’s okay to get Jacqueline and Mark involved in an operation.”
“There?” he asked as he glanced down the hallway in time to see Michael decapitate the body and turn to look back at him. Down here, there were tiny flames every forty feet, enough that you could see decently if you were advanced.
“Yes.”
Akio considered it a moment. “Tell me about it.” He stayed quiet as Michael joined him. “So, a trap.” he said as she finished.
“Oh, definitely.” Eve agreed.
“Problems?” Michael asked.
Akio summarized Eve’s communication.
“So,” Michael replied, “we have two gangs, some Wechselbalg and perhaps cops involved in an attempt to capture or kill you?”
Akio gave a minute shrug. “Probably kill.”
“And the two young ones wish to be a part of this to do what?”
Eve answered loud enough for Michael to hear, slightly hurting Akio’s ears. “They don’t like that there will be innocent cops involved.”
“There’s no way of knowing they’re innocent,” Michael said, “without Akio or me to confirm.”
“In Japan,” Akio offered, “look for cops firing their guns at the bad guys. That is a good enough determination because any bad cops won’t be shooting.” Michael raised an eyebrow, so Akio continued, “The old days where only the cops and the Yakuza had guns is gone. Too many times a Wechselbalg has rampaged as a wolf and killed indiscriminately. Now the cops have guns with silver bullets as well. While some are paid by the criminals, most are not.” He shrugged. “Japan is still mostly civilized, but it is a harsh life now when someone can change into a creature that is almost impossible to kill. So, civilians have guns.”
Michael nodded his understanding. “Yuko wants my permission for two adults to go into harm’s way?”
There was a very faint, “That’s what I told them!” coming from Akio’s implant.
Michael smiled. “They’re old enough to decide what to do on their own. I didn’t promise them they wouldn’t die in Europe, and I can’t say they’re safe in Japan either.” He could almost see the cold water splash on Jacqueline’s face when she heard those words and the narrowing of her eyes as she took on the responsibility anyway.
“However,” Michael continued, “make sure they know I will be very upset with both of them if they get killed. And if I figure out a way to resurrect them, I will make them train every day for ten years so it doesn’t happen again.”
“Oh shit.” This time it was Mark’s voice.
“Yeah,” Jacqueline chimed in, “that training bullshit is for the birds. So try not to die.”
“Got it.”
Akio smiled at the two talking in his ear. “That is all?”
“We are good,” Eve agreed, and they closed the connection.
Michael rolled his eyes before turning back to Akio. “Children!” He pulled a device out of his pocket. “What do you suppose this does?”
Akio looked at Michael, who was smiling. “You already know.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Nagoya, Japan
