By the time the second winch—this one pulling from the stern of the only super-yacht on the water—stops, the black fabric shipping container has turned brown from mud as if caked with icing chosen by a person without taste. Taga unzips the bag, pulling the limp woman out…Emi was one of the lucky ones; she got to sleep the entire journey the unsophisticated conveyer belt of winches sent her on.
“Where would you like her, Mr. Jashi?” Taga asks his customer.
Jashi uses the monocular eye of his puppet to scan the state of the purchase before signing off on the delivery. Taga holds his breath—customers who pay for premium delivery tend to not be worth the hassle with how picky they are about the damage sustained by their product in transit. Apparently satisfied there is no irreparable damage, Jashi waves a hand for Taga to follow.
Taga lets go of a short exhale, inhaling it at once as he hurries to wrap Emi’s arms around his neck and start up the ladder.
On the deck, he whistles despite the burden on his back, “This is quite the boat…ship you have here. What do you do for a living, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Jashi doesn’t care to answer, but he doesn’t seem to mind either, “Investments.”
“Active or passive?”
“Depends on how closely the asset needs managed.”
“Any insider tips on what markets to be getting into these days? Not that we have the time to do anything but manage our business anyhow.”
Jashi opens the door to the dining area, points to the premium bench-seating beside a glass table that reflects the overhead lights so bright it might be crystal. “Profitable ones.”
Taga grunts as he drops Emi onto the white leather, taking his time now that he is enjoying the warmth offered by the well-insulated sky-lounge. He stretches his back, grimacing to make a show of just how laborious the delivery was. Jashi transfers a ￥100 tip to the man. “Get yourself something nice.”
Taga bows, acting insulted by the tip but not offering to transfer the money back. “Please, no tips, sir…even one so small as ten times the market value of a cucumber. You already paid for the service. May we offer anything further at this time?”
Jashi waves the short man off, “That’ll be all.”
“Are you sure? We do offer full-service detailing—”
For the first time, the member’s tone fluctuates. “I said, that’ll be all.”
As Taga rushes back into the cold wind as if fearing the member is about to ask to speak with his manager, Jashi crouches beside Emi, reaching for the retractable cord fed from the underside of the long glass dining table and lifting the shirt of her well-washed Hachijo Prison uniform to plug her in.
Emi’s eyes light up, the blue bouncing off the polished tabletop. Where am I?
No response.
She looks around, taking in the vast boat and doing her best to pretend like she isn’t used to waking up in unfamiliar places. When her eyes lock onto the man sitting at the head of the long table, her display hardly clocks him: Inmate Number Unavailable (Unavailable). Unavailable. Unavailable. Specialization: Unavailable. Balance: Unavailable. Personality: Unavailable.
She asks Bee: Why is his information unavailable?
No one answers. Emi and Jashi continue to stare at each other, each waiting for the other to make the first move. Hello? You home, Bee?
Bee pretends she is away by freezing in a place where Emi can’t see her.
Emi shivers, the cold air from Taga’s exit just now reaching her. The movement makes her stomach growl. She looks down at it, spotting for the first time the cast wrapped around the entirety of her right leg. Command: Health Status.
[HEALTH STATUS: 75%]
Command: Detailed Report.
[Ocular Implant x2 [T10]: 100%]
[RibPort [T3]:100%]
[Respiratory Module [T1]: 100%]
[Voice Module [T10]: 100%]
[Synthetic Skin [T25]:100%]
[Wiring [T3]: 100%]
[GPS Implant [T100]: 100%]
She cuts off the list mid-scroll. Command: Broken Bones Report.
[VERTEBRAE: T12, L4]
[TIBIA]
[FIBULA]
[TALUS]
Emi scans the well-oiled teak flooring at her swollen foot, looking for a snake that might double as a spare spine. She rubs her head, feeling her short hair between her fingers. What does he want?
“You can speak,” Jashi says through his mouthpiece—the inmate whose name and number have become Unavailable.
Emi shuffles at the coldness of his voice, more chills slinking up her damaged bones despite them still being numbed. She tries to speak, without first turning on her upgraded voice module…
Jashi almost smiles, like he is just realizing how silly of an investment he made in the woman with a comic-like look twisting over her face. “Turn it on first.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Command: Voice Module—On.
[VOICE MODULE: ON]
Her throat vibrates with power, the cheap parts humming with noise; she feels the small speaker nested in her skin when she tries to stop the unnerving sensation with her inverted palm.
Who are you? When the voice module processes the thought, its output uses the default setting of an artificially deep voice imitating a male voice actor, who in the end, didn’t go out in a manner suiting such a manly voice: “Who are you?”
He points to his lens, “I am Jashi.” Then to Unavailable’s eye, “This is my proxy. His name, along with how he came to work for me, are unimportant.”
The boat sways gently, the vessel passing outside the window much smaller than Jashi’s. Emi thinks: Why did you bring me here? Her sexist voice module speaks for her…like a man, “Why did you bring me here?”
“I water all my investments.” He glares at her elbows, restraining himself from insulting her manners.
Her thoughts and voice intersect, talking over one another. Investment? “Investment?” You mean you bought “You mean you” me “bought me.”
Command: Voice Module. “Command: Voice Module.” Ugh. “Ugh.”
[INVALID COMMAND]
Power off.
[SHUTTING DOWN…3..2…]
Force stop! “Force stop.” Command: Voice Module; Power Off.
[VOICE MODULE: OFF]
Jashi sits with his hands folded, waiting patiently for her to solve her problem as if recording how long the task takes her for his records.
Command: Voice Module; Increase lag.
[VOICE MODULE: SETTINGS UPDATED]
Command: Voice Module, Power On.
[VOICE MODULE: ON]
You mean you bought me. “You mean you bought me.”
“No, I invested in you.”
What’s the difference? “What’s the difference?”
“An investment comes with certain…more complicated expectations.”
Emi’s skin crawls, her female sixth sense deciding there is nothing complicated about his desires before he has a chance to explain himself further. She crosses her arms; her nerves calm ever so slightly when she notes that she remains in her unflattering Hachijo Prison outfit. What do you want me to do? “What do you want me to do?”
Mr. Unavailable leans in, bringing Jashi’s lens closer. “Who are you?”
Emi points to his monocular. “Can’t you see my information—”
“Information is used to mislead more often than to inform. Who are you really, Ms. Emi?”
Emi shrugs, “My real name is Emi.”
“And your family name?”
Emi keeps her poker face unreadable, her calculated voice not her own: “I have no family.”
He lets it go. “Who trained you?”
Trained me? “Trained me?”
“If you really are named Emi, I assume you also really are an Assassin. Who trained you, Emi the Assassin?”
Emi, Assassin Class, chews the air in the space her stolen fangs should be, thinking to herself: Do you already know the answer? Her voice repeats her private thoughts out loud. “Do you already know—” Fuck. “—the answer? Fuck.” Her hand goes to her neck, just above the place an old scar remains visible like a brand, covering the voice module just fast enough to muffle the final cursed word, “Fuck.”
He offers a thin, knowing smile, inadvertently feeling at his own throat like he knows who’s brand she wears. After a long swallow he offers, “The nice thing about someone investing in you, is if they win, that means you must have won first. According to my records, with three additional days of interest—those amateurs at AkuTaga’s unfortunately took seventy-one days longer to complete the enhancements I paid for on your behalf than promised—your debt stands at ￥101,063,147.44. I offer a solution; a way out.”
Emi stares at him, this time waiting for further explanation.
The man continues his pitch. “AkuTaga’s will receive 55% of all profits, for now, and I had to give the slaughterhouse 5% to keep them off your back about the energy loss caused by the window your shattered in your escape from their property. That leaves a 40% take for us. As you may have deduced, I am a generous man with my business partners…builds loyalty. We will split this 35 and 5: 35% for me, 5% for you.”
“Hardly seems generous…not to mention fair.”
“Expiring things are a high-risk investment.”
Emi almost asks why he took on the risk but remembers the answer fast enough to recycle an unanswered question from early: “What do you expect me to do?”
He sits back, contemplating recycling his own questions. Instead, he nods at her skull, “In full transparency, it wasn’t you I was interested in investing in. You were, however, a necessary part of the acquisition.”
“That explains why she isn’t answering me…Command: Voice Module—”
He holds up a hand, stopping her faster than she can power off the verbalization of her thoughts. “What do you mean she isn’t responding?”
“I mean, she’s not responding. Which is strange, because she previously seemed to be programmed to never shut up unless I needed her to say something useful.” Emi leans over the table, her elbows smearing the glass. “You had them take her out of me so you can use her yourself, right?”
Rather than shaking his head, he focuses his monocular on her brain. “If it was gone, you’d be dead.”
“What do you mean I’d be—”
He relaxes, seeing the outline of the BCI, along with evidence of it pulling on certain strings in the selectively firing neurons. “Whoever gave that to you…it came with a failsafe. Without you, it dies.”
“And without it, I die?”
He nods without emotion, as if unconcerned with her added bit of information.
“Command: BCI STATUS.”
[ERROR: NO BCI DETECTED]
She slams her hand on the table, “You’re lying!”
He shrugs, “Lies are bad for long term returns.”
“And in the short term?” When he gives no more than another shrug, Emi tries an older question for a third time, rephrasing in hopes of an answer. “What do you need the BCI for?”
He answers in all earnestness, “I’m a farmer. So, for starters: Precision Agriculture and Resource Optimization; Predictive Analytics and Decision Support; Supply Chain Optimization and Sustainability.”
Emi shrugs, “I don’t know what any of that means.”
“Neither do I. At least, not as intuitively as that BCI will…hence my investment.”
Emi tries to stand, the cast making her remaining leg function as if it’s no more than a wooden peg that sends her tipping sideways onto the table.
He rolls his more natural looking eye as she slides herself over the glass until she lands back on the white leather bench. “I don’t think you have performed the cost-benefit analysis for your situation. You should be thanking me; you’re lucky I’m the one who bought you—”
“I thought you said—”
He holds up a hand, controlling the conversation. “Never in the history of this prison has another man given an ownership stake to his property. Five percent sounds low, but the profit margins on our products will be such that your 5% will add up quicker than any other job a woman is going to find on Okago…in fact, it would be a competitive salary even for the most lucrative positions in Kashitate.”
Emi remembers the gist of what Queen Bee told her before she went under, though she is careful not to think the words aloud…something about Aku and Taga selling her being a kindness. “Make it fifty-fifty and I’ll make sure you don’t regret your investment.”
He raises an eyebrow, amused but unphased by a negotiation. “I’ll give you 10%...that would make you the first woman in Okago to ever receive a double-digit ownership stake.”
“In what? Herself? You can’t be serious.”
He nods. “I am always serious.”
Queen Bee comes to life: “So, he’s always serious and never lies…I bet he’s an absolute ball to live with. Oh dear, where did this speaker come from; I didn’t mean to say that out loud, I swear.”
He leans in, “That must be her.”
Bee answers for herself, “Been here the whole time, love. Fifty-fifty or we walk…well, metaphorically speaking of course—might need your help with the literal walking bit.”
[FILE RECEIVED]
Bee opens the contract, Emi noting the ownership percentages that just appeared in her eyes: AkuTaga: 55%; Jashi: 21%; Emi: 19%; Nygil: 5%.
[CONTRACT ENTERED]
“Now, what is your plan to get this 55% back?” Bee asks.
Emi looks at Unavailable’s more natural eye, thinking she understands completely how he feels about being used like a puppet.
Jashi puts a finger to his mouth and licks it, using the spit to loudly wipe a small spot on the glass table until it’s squeaky clean. “I thought you said you’d been listening…I need you and the Assassin.”
