The Dragon [The Wet Room]

 

The Wet Room

Kenji

 

Hiroko was shaking, but still had a steady voice. “I know another way out.”

“Show us.” Rage blazed through me.

Thank God, Hiroko had stopped us. Hiro and I might have died.

And it would have been one of the Butcher’s mines.

It was one thing for Jean-Pierre to set up the call with my father to lead me to a trap. That would be fair game since I was monitoring him against our world’s rules.

But to provide the weapons to kill my brother and me, that was different.

More rage flooded my system—hot and blinding.

Unfortunately, I couldn't do anything about it publicly. Not according to the rules of our world. If one listened in on conversations, the person got what was dealt with.

This wasn't something I could officially declare to anyone, not even the Lion.

But personally?

If there was ever a moment where I could get the Butcher back and make him pay in the future, I would do it.

I tightened my grip on my guns.

Protect you and yours, Jean-Pierre. I'll get you one day. Don't you worry about that.

We started running.

Hiroko led us through the maze of tunnels, and I could hear our boots pounding against the stone floor.

Then I heard it further behind us.

Gunfire.

Fuck. They’re searching for us.

Sharp cracks echoed through the tunnels.

Hiro got in front of me. “A cleanup crew to mow down anybody who survived."

My brother would know. He’d killed for my father long enough to have probably been a part of one.

Hiro's jaw tightened. "He expected us to rush to that door without thinking."

"Exactly," I said. "We need to get out of here. We don't know how many people are in that crew."

"Could be a small amount that we can handle or it could be a small army."

Reo jumped in, "Based on how elaborate those mines were, I'm betting on the army."

The gunfire was getting louder.

"This way." Hiroko led us down another hallway.

Reo pressed into his mic as we hurried. "Kill box. Status."

Static for a second.

Then the Scale's voice came through, slightly breathless. "Executed. All targets down."

"Casualties?"

"None on our side."

I pictured the crowned commander—the one with two women on their knees in front of him. I wondered if he died with his head still thrown back. If his mouth was still open. If the last thing he ever felt was pleasure before the knife found his throat.

Reo pressed the mic. "Get out of there."

"Yes, sir."

One win in the middle of a disaster. I'd take it.

At the end of another hallway, Hiroko stopped us in front of a door. She dug her shaking hands into her pocket and pulled out a red key.

It fell.

“Shit.” She reached down.

I bent over and got it before her. “Breathe.”

She let out a long breath.

“Look at me.” I handed her the key. “We’re going to get out of here. Do you believe me?”

She shivered. “Yes.”

I gave her a sad smile. “You’ve got more things to teach my Tiger and me.”

“Oh no. You two have surely graduated.” A nervous chuckle left her as she pushed a button on the door that I hadn’t seen. A box popped out with a keyhole.

“We’ll have to cut through the wet room.” She pushed the red key in and twisted it.

The door beeped open.

She pulled out the red key and pocketed it.

Blood, rot, and death hit me.

What the fuck is this?

One of the twins spoke on my right, "What's the wet room?"

Hiroko stepped to the side. "You don't want to know. We should run through it."

“Let’s go.” I gestured.

The remaining Scales, Reo, and the Claws rushed through.

Hiro hit it next. “Oh God.”

What?

I hurried in with the twins, Hiroko, and her guards.

Fuck.

The floor was slick. I looked down and saw blood pooled in the low spots of the stone.

Dark and thick.

Some of it old and nearly black. Some of it fresh enough to reflect the dim overhead lights.

The walls were splattered—big and small handprints, drag marks, long smears where something had been pulled across the surface.

Steel tables lined the far wall.

Drains beneath them.

Hoses coiled on hooks.

And there were men in the room.

One was hunched over a body on the nearest table. A woman. Her skin was gray. Her eyes were open and staring at nothing. Her jaw hung slack. And the man's hips were moving, his hands gripping her thighs, spreading them wider while he grunted into her neck like she was still there.

Like she could still feel him.

She couldn't.

She'd been dead long enough that the bruising on her body had turned yellow at the edges.

Further in, another man sat in a chair with a body draped across his lap. He was stroking her hair. Talking to her. Whispering things I couldn't hear and didn't want to. His other hand moved between her legs with a slow, casual rhythm, like they had all the time in the world.

They did.

She wasn't going anywhere.

The smell was overwhelming—copper, decay, and acrid chemical scents that burned my nostrils.

Formaldehyde.

They were preserving them just enough to keep them usable.

I heard groans, moans, and the wet slap of flesh against something that should have been in the ground a long time ago.

My stomach turned.

I'd seen evil. I'd done evil. But this was something else. This was a depth of depravity that made me understand why they called this place the Depths.

It wasn't just underground. It was the bottom of what human beings were capable of.

I kept my eyes forward and kept moving.

If I had the fucking time. . .

Clearly thinking the same thing, Hiro raised his gun to shoot one man.

I touched his arm. “No, Hiro.”

Hiro frowned and glanced at me. "We should kill these sickos."

"Can't waste bullets. We'll get them next time."

“Promise?”

“Yes. We’ll figure it out.”

If this is what the Council is allowing, it might be time to bomb the Depths and end the Council.

A minute later, we burst through the other side and into another hallway.

This one was cleaner.

Quieter.

Hiroko led us to an elevator at the end of the corridor. "This is a service elevator that will take us up out of the depths.”

“Good.” Reo looked at it. “Where will we end up at?”

“Backstage at the Kabuki-za theater. There’s a hidden panel backstage. We’ll arrive there."

Reo pressed into the microphone. “Team C get to Kabuki-za theater. Team D ready the helicopters.”

Two men responded over the mic, “Yes, sir.”

She pressed the button, and we waited.

I could still hear gunfire in the distance as adrenaline pumped hot through my veins.

Reo sighed. “Kabuki-za has a secret entrance and exit too?”

She nodded.

“Where is it?”

“The entrance is in a theater box. The exit is on the other side of the backstage space.”

Reo frowned. “Close to this service entrance, like on the roof?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

I glanced at Reo. "What's on your mind?"

"If the Fox planned this, would he have known that we would have to go up this way?"

Hiroko nodded slowly. "Possibly. They've got the mines over there to blow us up. They've got the cleanup crew to make sure we don't go back the way we came. The theater could be one spot."

Hiro quirked his brows. "Do we go up or not?"

Everyone looked at me.

I thought about it, weighed the options, and calculated the risks. "To stay in Yoshiwara now would be suicidal. If the Fox is smart, which he has proven to be, he's probably got cleanup crews on every level. That's what I would do. We have to get the fuck out of here which means. . .we have to risk the theater."

Hiroko looked at her watch. "There could be a theater performance right now. So if they do have people there backstage, it should be a small amount."

"Okay. Let's risk the theater." Reo bobbed his head. “Plus, we have back up on the way.”

Reo turned to Hiroko’s men. “You now are first line with the remaining Scales.”

“No.” I shook my head. “They stay next to her.”

“We need the coverage for you.” Reo gestured for them to go.

They headed over to stand by the Scales.

Hiro eyed me as if waiting for me to disagree with Reo’s judgement. With the bomb and close call of our deaths, I knew he would be on edge and not willing to be light with my protection.

The elevator doors opened, and we piled in.

The doors closed, and the elevator started moving up.

No one spoke.

I could hear breathing. The hum of the elevator cables. My own heartbeat pounding in my ears.

I looked down at my guns.

I hadn't fired a single bullet.

Not one.

My Claws had killed with their hands. My Scales had died from a mine. I'd given orders, made calls, triggered a kill box. But these two silver guns—the ones my Tiger had bled for—hadn't spoken once.

I turned them over in my hands. Her blood was still there, dried along the tops of each barrel in that thin, reddish dark line. Dust from the explosion had settled over them, dulling the color, but the line held.

Unbroken.

I thought about the ritual. Nyomi cutting her palm without flinching. The blood dripping onto the metal. The way she looked at me when she said come back.

I'd walked into a maze built to kill me. Stepped through a pleasure district crawling with my father's men. Stood twenty feet from a mine that erased three men from existence.

And I was still here.

Untouched.

My brother was still breathing beside me. Reo was still standing too.

I ran my thumb along the dried blood on the barrel.

Did you protect us, Tora? Maybe. Either way. . .I’m leaving and coming home.

I pressed the guns to my lips the way I had before we'd descended, closed my eyes, and breathed her blood in.

I can’t wait to see you.

The elevator slowed and then stopped.

I opened my eyes.

The doors slid open.

The two Scales and guards stepped out first with their weapons sweeping the space.

Nothing.

We followed them out into a backstage area.

I could hear music. A full orchestra playing something classical. And beyond that, the sound of an audience. People clapping. Laughter.

There was a heavy curtain on our right separating us from the stage. I could see the glow of stage lights bleeding through the edges.

A couple of stagehands were moving equipment in the background. One of them looked up and saw us.

"Hey," he stared. "Who the hell are you?"

Then he saw the guns.

“Oh. Umm.” His hands went up immediately and he backed away, eyes wide. “Sorry.”

Another stagehand appeared and dropped the white flowers he'd been holding. They scattered across the floor. Some rolled to my feet.

My stomach clenched.

White flowers.

The dream flashed behind my eyes.

Just a fraction of a second.

They grey sky.

The white chrysanthemums.

The black water.

I shook it off.

Not now.

The stagehands rushed away.

The music continued. The performance was still happening on the other side of that curtain.

The audience had no idea we were here.

Reo touched the mic. “How close are you to the theater?”

A crackle of static came, and then the first responded, “Ten minutes, sir.”

Another said, “Fifteen.”

“Get here faster, even if you have to run people over.”

They both answered, “Yes, sir.”

We moved forward slowly.

Guns out. Eyes scanning every stagehand, corner, and shadow.

"Okay." Hiroko looked around and then turned back to face me. And for the first time since we’d begun, tension drained from her face.

The tightness around her eyes softened. Her shoulders dropped from where they'd been living near her ears for the past hour. Even her hands had stopped trembling.

She looked like a woman who had just set down something impossibly heavy.

Relief covered her.

Real relief.

The kind that reaches the eyes.

She smiled at me. "I think we're safe. All we have to do now is—"

A bullet slammed into her forehead.

A hole opened right at the center.

And for a fraction of a second—a sliver of time so thin it shouldn't have existed—her smile was still there.

Still warm.

Still relieved.

Like her face hadn't gotten the message yet.

Then the back of her head exploded.

Her blood hit me before her body moved.

Hot.

Wet.

Across my face, my neck, my chest. It landed on my lips and I tasted copper and salt.

Her eyes stayed open.

But the light behind them—that steady, stubborn, surviving light that had guided us through a labyrinth, stopped us from walking into a mine, handed us keys with shaking fingers and then steadied herself because that's who she was—that light went out.

Her legs gave out and she began to crumple, folding sideways.

I caught her.

The orchestra swelled on the other side of the curtain. Some song with strings. One that was so beautiful that it had no right to exist in the same moment as this.

People fired at the threat while I stayed stiff with grief. Claws raced off. Hiro yelled something in my ear and began yanking at my arm.

But I was frozen and staring at her.

I didn't know why I caught Hiroko.

She was already gone.

My hands had moved before my mind could stop them. . .and. . .

She was in my arms. . .

And. . .

Her head fell back. . .

And her blood ran down my wrists and soaked into my sleeves. . .

And I could feel the warmth leaving her. . .

And my chest, my heart, my soul drowned in so much guilt.

Horrifying, suffocating guilt.

She'd saved our lives today, but I hadn't saved hers.

My brother shoved at me. "Kenji! Put her down! We have to go!!"

I looked at her face one last time. Her lips were still parted. Still shaped around the word she never finished.

Hiroko. . .