The Rising Sea

45

Kurt and Joe moved quietly through the tunnel as it bent back and downward into the mountain. A small berm had been built toward the front to keep water out, but the rainwater pooled quickly and soon found its way around the rudimentary defense, traveling in a narrow channel at the center of the tunnel before vanishing over the edge of a vertical shaft that dropped into the depths. An elevator on the near side looked abandoned.

“This thing looks like it hasn’t been used in years,” Joe said.

Kurt took a brief look down the vertical shaft with the infrared scope. “No heat coming up the shaft either. They’re not down there. Must be farther back.”

They moved on and soon found the first signs of recent occupation. The old electrical cables had been replaced and the new wire along the wall was connected to a string of LEDs that glowed dimly.

When they came to a split in the tunnel, Kurt studied the ground using the IR goggles. The residual heat of footprints could be seen. Most of them went left. Kurt followed.

Joe put a hand on his arm. “Are you sure?”

“Yellow Brick Road,” he whispered. “We’re in a high-traffic area.”

His faith was rewarded when they came to pair of plastic-coated, triple-sealed doors. The handle glowed from the heat of the last person to touch it.

Kurt flipped up his goggles. “Han has been doing some remodeling.”

Joe nodded. “Something tells me these aren’t the hospitality suites.”

Kurt tested the door handle. “Unlocked,” he whispered. “Let’s make an entrance.”

Switching off the safeties on the weapons they’d taken from Han’s guards on the hill, they prepared to move into the room.

With slow precision, Kurt pulled the handle down until it clicked and the latch disengaged. He eased the door open and felt a slight wave of air passing over him, as the room inside was kept at positive pressure.

He pushed the door far enough for Joe to aim his weapon inside. But there was no one there to challenge them. “Empty,” Joe said. “Let’s take a look.”

Joe moved in first and Kurt followed, shutting the door as carefully as he’d opened it. The room was unoccupied, but it was filled with equipment. Complex machinery had been bolted to the floor here and there. Shelves were stocked with prefabricated parts: gyros, servos, robotic arms and legs.

“Your friend Han should talk to someone about this robot obsession,” Joe quipped.

“About a lot of things,” Kurt suggested.

While Joe examined the parts on the shelf, Kurt moved deeper into the room, where he discovered a high-tech 3-D printing machine. It had been left on and was warm to the touch.

He tapped the small screen on a control panel. A series of Chinese characters appeared along with a blank line for a password. He didn’t waste his time trying to guess it and moved on.

Beside the 3-D printer was a table, now tilted at a forty-five-degree angle. A sheet covered a figure beneath it. Kurt pulled the sheet back, expecting to find Nagano, tortured and deceased. Instead, he found the half-finished shell of another humanoid robot. No face, no body panels, just a frame with limbs and wires and a power cell. He noticed an air bladder covering the chest and a liquid reservoir.

Joe arrived carrying two robotic arms. “Can I give you a hand?”

“Very funny.”

“Dr. Frankenstein has nothing on this place.”

Kurt nodded, covered the unfinished creation with the sheet and moved to the back of the room. He reached the far wall and realized it was made of smoked glass. He pulled the infrared scope down over his eyes once more but saw only the reflection of his own heat.

Pushing the goggles back up, he pressed his face up against the glass, shielding his eyes from any reflection and trying to discern what was on the other side. He couldn’t see much, but he heard something. Or rather he felt it. A vibration coming through the glass. A murmuring sound as if several people were talking in low tones on the other side.

He waved Joe over. “Do you hear that?”

Joe put his ear up to the glass. “Conversation?”

“Too repetitive,” Kurt said. “It’s the same words over and over again. More like chanting or praying.”

“If I was Nagano, I’d be praying for help right about now,” Joe said.

They looked around for a door, discovered that one of the panels was held in place by a spring-loaded, magnetic latch. Pressing it once released it and Kurt pulled the door open.

The droning sound grew in volume but not clarity. Kurt stepped deeper into the chamber. There were more unfinished machines under sheets on medical tables around him and, down at the far end, a pair of figures standing in front of high-definition screens. They were watching and then repeating what they saw and heard on the screen, both figures speaking the same phrases over and over.

Kurt gripped his pistol and stepped closer. The figures ahead of him didn’t react to him approaching at all. As if they were in a trance.

He found a light switch on the wall, raised the pistol and paused. Strangely, he recognized the phrase they were repeating. They were speaking English. And stranger still, he recognized the voice that was speaking that phrase.

“Japan will never be an ally of China,” the image on the screen said.

“Japan will never be an ally of China,” the standing figures repeated.

Kurt flicked the switch. Neither of the figures reacted. They just kept speaking. Starting and then stopping and then starting over again in an endless loop.

Kurt stepped around in front of them. The two figures were identical, complete with mussed silver hair, deep-blue eyes and three days of stubble. Kurt felt as if he was staring in a mirror — two mirrors, actually. He was looking at robotic versions of himself.

Ushi-Oni paused on the top floor of the dilapidated building. The stairwell to the roof was blocked by debris, but he could see the orange glow from the clouds coming through a gap in the ceiling. He marched toward it, scaled the ramp-like section of the caved-in roof panel and paused at the top. Scanning the entire roof before exposing himself, he saw it was empty.

He climbed out into the rain once again and stood on the rooftop. He saw no soldiers or policemen or any parachutes or equipment, suggesting an assault on the island was beginning, but there was something out of place: a wide, flat object that gleamed in the low light, unlike every other dulled and corroded surface on the roof.

The twelve-foot wing looked like something that had fallen from a plane. But it was obviously in one piece. He found the parasail stuffed hastily beneath it.

“Austin,” he said to himself.

He turned with a start and charged back into the building, racing down the stairwell, as the first echoes from Han’s helicopter reached him. Han had to be warned or Austin would destroy everything.