Wearing the Cape 5: Ronin Games (23 page)

It hardly mattered now, but my spinning thoughts kept me busy and I lost all track of time in the silent dark. When the wall in front of me dropped into the floor I jumped, tightening my neck cables painfully as the floor of my box slid out into a new room.

It was a cell, and the shackles at my wrists and ankles unclamped as I blinked against the dim light. A moment’s exploration showed me that the primary neck cable had unclamped from the floor as well, and with hands free it took me less than a minute to free myself completely. It took me another minute to stop shaking and uncramp enough to climb to my feet.

The frame I’d been attached to slid back into the wall when I stood. Closed up, it left me in a completely featureless cube. I didn’t get much time to get used to it before a soft female voice made me nearly jump to the ceiling. “When you have cleaned and changed, food will be provided. Place your clothing in the box.” The
box
slid out of the bare room’s wall, open at the top like a cabinet drawer. Looking in, I found underwear and a red jumpsuit.

The voice repeated. “When you have cleaned and changed, food will be provided. Place your clothing in the box.”

Looking around I couldn’t see any place to
clean
.

“Place your clothing in the box.”

Right. Was humiliation part of their technique? I pulled out the clothes they’d provided for me and set them on the floor, and then stripped. Everything went in the box: black coat, pants, sash and sword-harness, boots, underwear; everything but Ozma’s “invisible” magical-girl transforming ring. Finishing, I stepped back and held my breath. Would they “see” the ring? Demand it too?

The box pulled back into the wall, and two more niches opened up, one revealing a showerhead and the other containing soap, bath brushes, and towels. A drain opened in the floor.
Okay
.

I covered the underwear and jumpsuit with the towels, and showered. Finishing as fast as I could, I dried myself and dressed, then dried the floor. The now-empty box slid back out and I fed it the wet towel. Everything closed up again, and a niche in the opposite wall opened to reveal a tray of food and a bottle of water.

“Eat, and return the bottle and tray.”

Since the room didn’t provide a table or chair, I took the tray and bottle and sat on the floor. Rice, spicy beef balls, sliced cucumbers and an apple. Disposable wood chopsticks. I ate slowly, drank all the water, and put the bottle and tray back. They disappeared.

“Do you need to use the toilet?”

“Yes, please.” I hoped they couldn’t see my blush. They probably could. The niche I’d expected opened to present a prison-style metal toilet and sink combination. At least they provided paper, soap, and a hand towel. I finished fast, washed thoroughly, and stepped away to let it close up.

“Prepare your bed. The light will turn out in five minutes.”

A low niche next to the meal niche popped open, and I found a futon and pillow inside. No blanket. Well, the temperature in the cube was comfortable enough even for someone who wasn’t me. I laid out the futon and pillow, lay down to look at the ceiling, and let my mind drift until the lights went out. I took their word that it had been five minutes.

To sleep, perchance to dream…

But I didn’t dream.

Superhuman containment is almost always a major effort, especially for the higher classes. Some superhumans can be contained with merely reinforced rooms; others require non-physical measures. Ironically, superhuman security—both containment measures and intrusion countermeasures—is one of the major fields of both Verne-Type science and invention and Merlin-Type enchantments.

DSA Security Brief: Superhuman Capture and Containment.

The spike of pain woke me, a flare of agony from my shoulder when I rolled onto my side. Pushing myself up, I yelped and pulled my left arm away from the floor to hold it against my stomach. Hunching around it, I clamped my jaws to hiss out a long breath instead of a scream.

Ki-Guy had hurt me more than I thought; it felt like
serious
soft-tissue damage, and hurt worse than it had last night. Something was wrong—this wasn’t the way my body healed.

And though I couldn’t see a thing in the pitch black, the futon under me and the closed air around me made it obvious that I was I was still in my cube. Painful breaths turned into panicked ones. Why was I still here? I’d been
ready.

You’re in a cage for superhumans, duh
.

I tried to bury that thought, but it wouldn’t die; I was being held by
Defensenet
—they dealt with monsters of strength, transformers, teleporters, ki-users, telepaths, and
spirits
. I was so obviously in a super-security cell that I was willing to bet that, behind the reinforced walls, my cube sat inside a Verne-Type’s version of a Faraday Cage. Of
course
it was proof against any kind of external influences or intrusion—material, spiritual, psychic, or metaphysical. Impenetrability worked
both
ways and the tree hadn’t been able to find me here. Probably even
Ozma
couldn’t find me here.

Indefinite detention
. I wasn’t escaping this, even into another world.

When I could breathe again I realized I’d flown myself into a corner, curled up tight in the dark. Forcing myself to straighten my legs, I focused on my shoulder and Chakra’s breathing exercises.

Okay, how bad was this? They couldn’t just keep me in this room forever; they had to
process
me. Open a file. Classify me. Level criminal charges if it came to that. Or did they? They could just be holding me while they tried to catch up with Jacky and Ozma. They wouldn’t—Ozma had her magic box full of toys and if they hadn’t found us before they wouldn’t find them now. But—

Oh. Oh, God
. Sometime today the Comprehension Drops were going to wear off and they were going to learn at least one thing about me; I couldn’t really speak Japanese.

And they weren’t
stupid
; knowing that I’d been “enhanced” by magic in one way, they’d look for other ways. How long would it take for their sorcerers, onmiyoji, whatever, to test me and figure out Ozma’s little race-bending bibbity-bobbity-boo? Reverse it?

I wouldn’t be able to keep any secrets at all.

I had no idea how long I sat there, the chain of horrible sequences in my head crushing any coherent thought. The lights coming on broke my mental paralysis.

“Food will be provided when you put away your bed.”

“I am injured.” I had to force the words out. The voice didn’t repeat and I counted breaths.

“Turn around and place your hands and feet in the indicated spaces.” Another low section of wall slid up to show four slots ringed in yellow-and-black banded paint. They were spaced so that I could kneel and move back to push my hands and feet into them behind me and be clamped to the wall.

“Turn around and place your hands and feet in the indicated spaces.”

I stared at brightly marked holes, realized I was breathing too fast again. I
couldn’t
. I’d let them shackle me last night, but I couldn’t— I
couldn’t
do it for them. I’d be helpless again, locked into metal and concrete and now I didn’t know when it would end.

My arms and legs felt numb, like I’d shatter into a million pieces if I tried to move.

“Turn around and place your hands and feet in the indicated spaces.”

“I can’t.”

“You will not receive treatment until you have secured yourself.”

“I can’t.”

…

“Turn around and place your hands and feet in the—”

“No!”

“Turn around—”

“No! No! No!”

If I stopped talking, if I stopped responding, they wouldn’t know when I stopped being able to understand commands. But I couldn’t focus forever, couldn’t keep their mindreader away from my secrets indefinitely. They didn’t have to play games—they just had to be patient and there was no move I could make that would turn this into a win. I’d lost.

Slapping the tears from my cheeks, I pulled myself further into the corner, ignoring my screaming shoulder to scrub my face again when the waterworks wouldn’t stop, and locked my jaw like I was biting air. They weren’t going to hear a thing—no more words, no protests, no whining or crying. Whatever they took, I wasn’t going to just
give
it to them.

I half-expected them to turn the lights off again, but they didn’t. They didn’t do anything, and after silent minutes I rubbed my eyes and studied the walls, looking for anything that might indicate weak points. They’d let me loose in here knowing pretty much what I could do, so the cube had to be strong enough to hold me. They’d certainly have some way of stopping me before I could get more than a few hits in anywhere—but if I didn’t
try
, they’d win.

They’d win anyway, but not until I let them.
So let’s see what countermeasures you’ve got
. It sounded weak even in my head, the defiant hiss and spit of a kitten, but I came out of the corner and hit my picked spot.

Pain flashed through my fist and through my opposite injured shoulder just from the jarring, but the reinforced concrete cracked and caved. My second hit pushed in as something in the wall broke. My third hit— I screamed against the fire that poured through my bones, sucked air, screamed again, and got in one more hit before the world went away.

This time I woke up with the lights on. My fist hurt, my shoulder throbbed, and every nerve ached with the residual memory of pain.
Some kind of neural attack
. A hit right to my central nervous system? It had to be built into the room; I’d seen no visions of the tree in the darkness in my head, there’d been no slipping away into another awareness like when the bratva supervillain had kicked me in the head. That meant they hadn’t had to turn off the Faraday Cage for it; I had to think that if the room had been “unsealed” when I’d lost consciousness—

I giggled painfully; if the room
hadn’t
been sealed then I might have vanished like a popped soap-bubble, become a totally freakish escape from their super-security cube the instant I passed out. Vomited and passed out; I was covered with it.

At least it wasn’t breakfast
.

Forcing myself to sit up, I clapped a hand over my mouth as nausea spun my head, dropped back to the floor.

“Turn around and place your hands and feet in the indicated spaces.”

“No.”

Lying with my good arm over my face I cycled through my catalogue of memorized songs. Not for the mindreader but to stop thinking. I also tried not to smell myself; I reeked.

And my shoulder was getting more sensitive to the least movement. Was it still morning? I supposed the voice would let me know; if I didn’t understand the next command, it would be sometime in the afternoon.

“Good morning, Hikari-san.” It was a new voice, a male voice. “I will be visiting with you shortly. Before I do, would you like to clean yourself up and eat?”

I uncovered my eyes. “Yes. Thank you.”

“Splendid. Please do not linger.”

The niche for the futon opened and I folded it quickly as I could one-handed. The clothing drawer and shower niches appeared, and I pulled the fresh clothes before painfully stripping and shoving the filthy jumpsuit in to be taken away. I didn’t linger with the shower, but got all of my dinner off my skin and washed away the panic-sweat. Painfully climbing into the fresh red jumpsuit boosted my morale one hundred percent—a boost that wouldn’t last but made me smile anyway.

Breakfast was
exactly
the same ramen bowl I’d had for breakfast that first morning in Shibushi—ramen noodles in broth, pork, bamboo, seaweed, and the soft-boiled egg. I was able to hold the bowl on my knee with my left hand (my left shoulder had
no
strength in it at all) while I used the chopsticks on the bigger bits and slurped the noodles.

Finishing the bowl and putting it away, I didn’t have to wait long; a section of wall opposite the side I’d come in through last night slid aside to expose a shallow niche filled with a door sized flat-screen. The man on the screen, a nondescript Japanese man in a black business suit you might see in any office, sat
seiza
-style, kneeling behind a low table. A single file sat on the table in front of him.

I blinked. Was he being polite? He wouldn’t want to stand for a long conversation, and if he’d sat at a regular table either he’d loom or the view screen angle would make our face-to-face rather odd. Sitting as he did put us at eye level when I folded my legs under me and rested my throbbing shoulder back against the wall.

“Good morning, Hikari-san,” he said again. “Do your injuries require immediate treatment?”

“I—I think they might.”

“Then when our business is finished here I shall see that you get it, regardless of what is said. Will you object to donning a somnolence cap if necessary so that they can safely examine and treat you?”

They
. Distancing himself from my keepers? Or was he being correct and not part of this installation? He waited for me to say something.

“No. A cap will be fine. I could use more sleep.” It was stupid—there was no difference between immobilizing myself with their wall-shackles and putting myself out with a cap, but looking at him I could actually breathe and agree to the option.

He nodded. “That is good to hear, and I will try not to take too long. I am Agent Inoue, and I have had the task of understanding and capturing you from the moment we learned of your fight with Heavenly Dragon. We have followed your steps back to your first arrival in Japan.”

I managed not to wince; I’d really known that looking at my breakfast—it had been an easy message to read. Since he seemed to expect something I tried a polite question of my own. “I hope nobody is in trouble? And may I ask what your power is?”

“A certain Heroes Without Borders base supervisor has been warned that his operations will be watched more closely. And I am a clever little monkey.”

I smiled. I couldn’t help it, he reminded me of Veritas. “So you’re not the telepath who intruded earlier?”

“No. He went to bed last night with a severe headache.”

“Well, better luck next time.” I was lying my ass off; I’d won last night, but I wasn’t confident and focused anymore and one slip would blow it.

“I do not think so.” If Agent Inoue saw how much I didn’t want that, he ignored it, opening the file in front of him. “There was not complete agreement concerning his employment in your case, and I do not think he will be used again. Shall I call you anything other than Hikari?”

“No.” I shook my head, carefully, trying to remember the sessions I’d had on interrogation techniques.
And now he suggests he knows more than he does
.

“Very well, then. Hikari-san, you remain a complete mystery and one I do not have the time to solve.”

“I—I’m sorry?” That so wasn’t the program.

“I know that you, and your partners, are tactically powerful superhumans. Your companion, Mamori, is superhumanly strong and able to transform herself into a gaseous form. These are two powers that do not normally appear in the same configuration, leading me to suspect that she is something much more than that, but that is idle speculation. Your other companion, Kimiko, appears to be a sorceress and yet she does not apparently match any Japanese magic tradition. You yourself appear to fit the American superhero paradigm, specifically the Atlas-Type, but that tells me nothing since pop-culture penetration means that such types have also appeared in Japan.”