Chapter Text
YEAR: 2426
TIME: 23:16
LOCATION: Metropolitan Express Route No.3: Shibuya Line
It was another one of those nights where his head was too full of things he couldn’t care less about. It gave him a migraine regardless. Another night spent cruising the highways on his overly-modified sportsbike, helmet on, of course. He knew better than that. The roads were fairly cramped for the time of night, but Rui had more than enough practice with weaving in and out of each self-driving or hover-car prototype out there. Time was irrelevant, as Tokyo and the other lucky parts of the world were sealed deep underground, not a single living human to see sunlight.
Shibuya always felt a bit humid. Maybe it was the simulated rain that only ever came in a drizzle nowadays, or maybe the giant “pollution release vents” had somehow broken and eventually everyone in Japan would asphyxiate. Rui went with the former. The alternative was a possibility he didn’t really want to entertain.
He had his music on full blast, swerving between each car, one rolling down their window to flip him off when they weren’t even driving the car. The car was driving the car. It was stupid, but Rui would be a hypocrite if he said he didn’t at least use advanced technology. Hell, he didn’t just use it, he made it. He liked making things. Body parts, mods, vehicles… What he didn’t like was the neon billboards that covered practically every square inch of everywhere. Pictures of cosmetics, luxury bags, fancy cars, severely overpriced body-mods, idols, and even some advertisements that were definitely less than savory… those were usually found in the back alleys, but they were there nonetheless. He was unfortunate enough to have one plastered right outside his apartment complex. Sucks to live in an area of town known for bars and night clubs.
It all made his head hurt, which made going out for a drive to clear his mind not nearly as effective. Where was he going? No clue. Somewhere. Anywhere.
He had gotten into a fight. A small one, you couldn’t even call it a fight. More like useless, half-hearted bickering over the same things over and over again. His roommate and honorary sister, Nene, had a lot to say about his career choice since his face began appearing on billboards, a steep bounty alongside it.
Wanted. Dead or alive.
Intruder-R. A criminal and professional hitman, assassin, bodyguard, ripperdoc, you name it. Being so good at his job meant that he would get paid, but also that other people were getting paid to hunt him down. That’s what you get for killing important people, which is what he mostly got hired for.
Today was no different.
Apparently…
“R!! Come in! You’ve got another job offer!” A chipper, robotic voice came from his earpiece. His virtual manager, Rin.
“Rin-kun, I’m a bit busy right now. Just send it to my inbox, I’ll look at it when I get home.”
“C’mon… This one’s cool. It won’t take long, okay?”
“I just finished with another job this morning, I’m exhausted–”
“No- really! It’s an easy one.”
“So you just mean that I won’t have to kill anyone?”
“Yep!”
“Then what? The past twelve jobs I’ve had have been assassinations…”
“This time it’s a kidnapping. The employer didn’t provide any details– said they’d rather discuss it in person. But the pay is super good, and I mean like super duper good.”
“That’s sketchy…”
“Everything you do is sketchy.”
“Fair. So what’s the pay? At least tell me that much.”
“Twenty-million yen.”
“Twenty-million??” It took all of his self control not to start swerving off the road right then and there. That’s a top tier salary for someone like him. All of the tech he could buy… He could have him, Nene, and Emu taken care of for a good while.
“That’s the starting pay. It’ll go up or down depending on how good or bad of a job you do.”
“So, what’s the catch?”
“There isn’t one.”
“I find that hard to believe. How do you know they aren’t just trying to lure me in for the bounty? Have you done a background check?”
“I did. The way things look, these are the type of people who would want to protect you instead of hurt you.”
“Protect me?”
“Yeah. There was something else alongside your payment. They said they would find a way to get rid of the bounty on your head.”
To get rid of those “wanted” signs would mean that he could take a chance to finally breathe. He wouldn’t have to worry about someone breaking into his apartment and arresting him, or even worse, hurting Nene or Emu.
The job sounded odd. The lack of detail, the desire to meet in person… If Rin hadn’t done a background check, he would have known next to nothing aside from the fact that he was supposed to kidnap someone. But the idea of not seeing his unmasked face on billboards anymore, the idea of some semblance of safety while he was off the job…
It was a risk worth taking
“Fine. Send me the details. Make sure it’s encrypted. Oh and– do you know when they want to meet?”
“Tomorrow night.”
“Oh my god… So Emu-kun won’t have enough time to scout around the address– whatever, when did you hear about the offer?”
“Right before I called you.”
“No details, no notice… Find out more about these people if you can.”
“Will do, but no promises.”
“Go ahead and let them know that I’ll take the job. Tell Emu-kun and Nene that I’ll be back soon.”
As Rui made for the exit nearest where he lived, the call ended as his music came back on. His bike skidded to a stop and collapsed it into an oversized briefcase as he reached the alleyway that led to the entrance of his apartment. As per usual, some drunk couple were making out like no one else existed. It wouldn’t have bothered him all that much if they weren’t positioned right beside the door. By some miracle, Rui managed to get through while only barely brushing shoulders with one of them. Disgusting.
The lobby was small. A set of mailboxes for each room, a plastic potted plant, and a steep, narrow staircase just barely illuminated by a flickering neon purple light. He never bothered checking his mail. There was no one aside from his roommates who knew where he lived, and no one who would even consider sending him mail. Besides, physical mail was already phasing out.
After hiking up the stairs two at a time, Rui finally reached the top floor, typing in the passcode on the hologram pin pad above the handle. Nene was on the couch playing on one of her many handheld videogame consoles, Rin’s hologram sitting criss-cross on her phone’s screen. Nene only briefly glanced up from her game to let Rui know that she knew he was home, Rin quickly disappearing to give them the privacy they needed.
“Did you wear your helmet?”
“I did. Always do. Is Emu-kun asleep?”
“Yeah. Did you at least bring any food back?”
“Didn’t have enough time. Just got a new job notice, so I need to prepare.”
Nene paused her game as Rui sat on the couch, letting his head fall back.
“Seriously? Were you listening to anything I was saying an hour ago?”
“Listen, you don’t have to get involved if you don’t want to. I can manage any hacking perfectly fine by myself–”
“This isn’t–!” She quickly cut herself off and sighed, remembering that Emu was still asleep.
“This isn’t about me. You’re going to get yourself killed doing this, you know that, right? And don’t start with saying that Emu and I would find a way to manage without you, because that’s not the point and you know it isn’t. I can’t keep having this conversation with you, Rui.”
Rui sat up, folding his hands in his lap. He knew that everything she was saying was from a place of concern. She wasn’t one to micro-manage him or control his life, she just wanted him safe. Alive. Through every mission, no matter how late they ran, she always waited for him to walk through the door. If that meant sleeping on the couch until the sun came up, then so be it. What bothered her the most was seeing how he would look upon returning. Exhausted, in pain, bruised, bleeding, slivers of exposed metal or circuitry peeking out on occasion… Even now, his modifications were acting up. One of his optical sensors was screwed up after a recent mission, leaving half of his vision nearly fucked and a raging migraine shooting through the left side of his skull.
He looked over to Nene, who had powered off her game (a rare occurrence under any circumstances). It was weird, pretending like he could see her well when his left eye was all blurry and glitching out every half second. He didn’t tell her about that injury, but she could probably tell based on his occasional squinting.
“Nene, this is my job. These clients… As long as I do a good job, they have their ways of making sure the two of you stay safe. If I didn’t work for those people, there would have been people barging in here looking for me as soon as that bounty was set out.”
“But why not leave that life behind? We can find a way to get rid of that bounty and then you can quit killing people–”
“I’m too far in. There would be a bounty on my head just for leaving. It’s a business that not even I understand to be completely honest… But trust me, leaving would be ten times more dangerous than taking these jobs.”
“Is that so…”
“...Yeah.”
“How dangerous?”
“I’m not sure, it depends. Either way, it’s not worth the risk.”
“Then what about the bounty? Your job is the whole reason that’s there in the first place.”
The bounty. It never should have happened, but that’s what happens when you piss off people from a long time ago. They toy with you. They get a hold of your old employee ID card and send a photo of it to the authorities. Just a photo. All other identification censored. No legal name, no address or social security number even though they had that too, just a photo. A photo sent over to the police saying, “this is Intruder:R.”
It was bullshit.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen. It’ll fizzle out eventually, it’s already been a week and a half since those billboards went up–”
“That stuff doesn’t just ‘fizzle out,’ Rui. The billboards are just replaced with the newest idol debut. People will still be looking for you. A bounty hunt doesn’t end until it’s officially called off. You’ve hunted people before too, so you know that these things don’t just go away.”
“But they can.”
“What..?”
He wasn’t planning on telling her about his new job. For starters, the lack of detail alone would have her stapling Rui to the couch if it meant him not taking a job that sketchy. Having that bounty cleared, alongside the massive stack of cash that would come with it, was enough to make him say yes, albeit reluctantly. With this one job, he could ease just a bit of her worries.
“They said they can clear the bounty. The pay is twenty-million yen and those wanted posters gone from every billboard in covered Japan. Like it never even happened.”
“How? Is that even possible?”
“I can’t say.” A lie.
“Bullshit! Yes you can. We literally work together–”
“It’s different this time.” Well… That wasn’t necessarily a lie. This job was definitely different.
“I’m sorry but that’s all I can tell you. I’ll give you updates tomorrow as I’m able, okay?”
The concern in her eyes was evident, her gaze gently focused on the buttons of her game console, fidgeting with the arrow keys. It was an extremely souped-up Nintendo 3DS that Rui had custom modified himself. Whenever he wasn’t working he was making something, and making things for her and Emu gave him the most joy.
She trusted Rui, of course she did, but the chance of something going wrong was always there no matter how much his skills improved. He was as sharp as a blade, smart, ingenious, agile… He was perfectly cut out for his line of work. But he could be reckless, especially when provoked.
But at the end of the day, he was still alive, wasn’t he?
“Do you have to kill anyone this time?”
“No. Not this time. If all goes according to plan, that is…”
“Yeah…”
Nene sat up from the couch, grabbing her phone and a pack of gum, which she usually kept on hand.
“If I can’t convince you not to take the job, then at least get some sleep so you can stay alert. And text me when you leave.”
“Will do.”
She walked towards her room, stopping just short of entering, her hand resting on the metal frame.
“Seriously, don’t stay up too late. Kay?”
“Of course. I promise. Sleep well, Nene.”
Maybe it was his imagination, but she seemed to smile a bit before the door slid shut behind her. The two of them were close growing up. Childhood friends, siblings almost. Their families took care of each other as they lived in the same run-down neighborhood. If Rui wasn’t a certified genius, he wouldn’t have gotten a career that gave him his ticket out of that place, taking Nene with him after her parents passed.
They were mistakenly shot by an AI sentinel in their so-called “soft launch.”
Now they’re everywhere.
Drones, sentries, flocking cameras… Not like they really did anything anyway. Everything is handled by private corporations nowadays. Even music.
Rui returned to his room, hanging up his jacket and letting everything else sit on his desk chair until further notice.
The area was a mess of mechanical parts and unfinished projects. Most were different attachments for his arm after it got blown off just below his elbow. An accident. A bad one. But at least no lives were lost, only half of an arm. The good news was that said incident told him exactly where his first body modification would be. A bionic arm that could switch between being a gun, a scimitar, and a robotic hand. As for his eyes, which were now screwed up, those were completely optional– equipped with sensors and other gimmicks that let him detect danger from every direction.
Fixing modifications weren’t nearly as bad as getting them in the first place, but they still hurt. As Rui grabbed a screwdriver and positioned himself in front of his workstation, a hologram mirror appearing in front of him, he grit his teeth hard.
This was going to hurt.
It always did.
—
There was nothing Rui hated more than being in disguise. Mask on and everything. The wine-colored hair chalk was stubborn to wash out, and the black contacts irritated his eyes, but that was nothing compared to his previously dysfunctional mods. But alas, it was all necessary towards becoming another person. Wearing a suit was never usually an issue, as his were specially tailored for movement. That being said, he did lose a lot of white dress shirts to blood stains, his blood or not.
Pulling up his phone to double check the address, he had to blink a few times, making sure he wasn’t seeing stuff. He was at the right place, but… They couldn’t be serious, right?
The meeting spot was a convenience store?
First, they ask him to come fully prepared for the mission, and next, they pick the one of the sketchiest places to meet up for a job like this? Most of his high-paying clients had met with him in their large office buildings or something of the like. Certainly not this…
Rui opened his messages, texting (what was probably an AI chat-bot) the name of the place he was loitering in front of.
“You have the right place. Look to your left.”
Just peeking out of the next alley was the front of a pitch black car with tinted windows, a man in a suit standing just outside of it with a phone in his hand, black sunglasses and basic black hair, his features slightly obscured by the mirage of neon lights that bathed the city.
“Good.”
The man hung up the phone and got in the car, a signal for Rui to follow. All he could do was stand there for a second, utterly dumbfounded. Did they seriously expect him to get in the car? If they were meeting in an office or a public space, it would be one thing, but a car was another. A car meant less ways to escape, and if he shot his way out, he would be ten times more likely to cause harm to civilians. This could have very well been an elaborate scheme made by someone who wants the money over his head, but against all rationale, he found his feet following the man. He wasn’t one to back down from a job, and with actual stakes on the line, it was practically impossible for him to quit.
He stood right outside the door to the backseat of the car. He could see only his own reflection. From the other side of the door came a faint click. Rui gripped the handle and stepped inside. It was a nice car. Beyond nice. It would take an absolutely insane amount of money to own something like this, and it smelled new.
The car started moving without waiting for him to buckle his seat. Not like he was going to anyway, he wouldn’t in a situation like this. Besides, cars nowadays had enough safety features to where it was hardly necessary.
The car kept moving. Moving still… Moving for what seemed like forever. They could have very well made it to the countryside by now, or at least what little of it was protected. All of the potential city noise was blocked out, and the windows were tinted from the inside too. He could only hear his own breathing—his own heartbeat. It was fast, too fast. Whoever was in the car with him, they could probably hear it too. From what he could tell, there were two other people in the car. The driver, and someone in the front passenger seat. None of them talked, and Rui wasn’t about to be the first to break the silence.
The car stopped. Finally, it stopped. In reality, they probably hadn’t been moving for all that long, but still the seconds ticked ever so slowly, each one lasting several millenia.
“You’re awfully quiet back there, you know. You can talk, or… Do anything besides just sitting there. It’s strange.”
What? Who… Who was this? Why did their voice sound so familiar? Smooth, relaxed, almost sleazy… Like the texture of crude oil.
“I’m aware.” His own voice came crisp, a bit robotic through the mask. A stark contrast to whoever he was talking to.
“Oh yeah? Then why didn’t you say anything? You’ve never been one to shy away from conversation…” As the man rested his elbow on the back of his seat, turning around to face him, Rui could swear that he felt a mix of disgust and despair crawl down his back. That all so carefully put together composure seemed to crumble around him.
“…Kamishiro-kun.”
Rui lunged forward, grabbing the man by his collar with one hand, pointing a dagger at his neck with the other. From the sensors on his right eye came a blaring red signal, detecting the barrel of a gun sitting a centimeter away from his temple. Everything went still aside from the stupid trembling in his hands.
“Now, now, no need to be so hostile. You didn’t take any damage to your frontal lobe, did you? You're acting awfully different from the last time we saw each other. You weren’t so violent back then, but I see you’ve maintained your paranoia.”
Sakaki Koryuu, one of the few people Rui truly despised. An old co-worker at an advanced science and tech company a few years back. All things considered, Sakaki should’ve been his superior. He was older, and had been working at the company for longer, but Rui’s genius-level intellect put him far above anyone else.
“So you made the job offer? Why? So you can collect that bounty?” Rui pointed the knife closer to his neck, and the barrel of the gun pressed firmly against his head in turn.
“That gun won’t kill you. It’ll leave you only able to speak until you choose to cooperate. Like being paralyzed from the neck down. But worse. A new piece of tech we developed for the sentinels.”
“Why not kill me? Isn’t that all this is?”
“Oh, no, not at all–”
“Then what? Why do all of this?”
“Well, if you put the knife down, I can explain. It’ll make things easier for the both of us.”
At first, he didn’t move, examining every type of signal his sensors were giving. Little to no signs of malice, the expression of someone who was most likely telling the truth for once. In the situation he was placed in, he didn’t have many other options left aside from listening. He could try to attack the driver, but with how close the gun was to his head, he wouldn’t have enough time to evade the bullet. That is if it even needed a bullet at all…
Rui’s dagger sheathed itself back into his wrist guard as he sat back in his seat, letting Sakaki go. The guy, in all of his idiocy and arrogance, straightened his collar, dusting off invisible dirt.
“Good choice. Now that that’s all settled, I figured you might want this back. It doesn’t have any use to me anymore.”
He tossed something on the seat next to Rui, making him flinch. It was a small card, roughly the same size as the palm of his hand.
His employee ID.
The photo on the ID was the same one printed on the billboards all across Tokyo.
“That’s a neat little party trick. Make it yourself?” Sakaki asked, pointing to where the knife had retracted.”
“How did you get this? I took it with me when I left.”
“No… you didn’t. You left it on your desk–. Whatever, it can’t be helped. But before you begin asking more questions, I suppose I should just get straight to the point, as I’m sure you’ve put all of the dots together by now. Yes, Ignesco put out the bounty. Let’s just say that it was a bit of an incentive for you to take this job. If there were no stakes, you wouldn’t have taken a job with such little detail. While I would have preferred to avoid getting your family involved, I’m willing to do whatever the company deems necessary.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t worry, we haven’t done anything to them. Yet. That's what will happen if you don’t cooperate.”
“So you just decided to put people’s lives in jeopardy just to get me to say yes to your job? What type of sick joke is that?”
“A necessary one. Again, you wouldn’t have said yes without the incentive. You know I’m right. Now let me get back to the details. Your case is an easy one. We need you to kidnap an idol.”
Sakaki tossed a thin manila folder right onto Rui’s lap.
“That’s just the details about the guy. Visual profile, interests, hobbies, the works… Stuff that doesn't really matter to you right now.”
Upon opening the folder, an ID card for a bodyguard company he was vaguely familiar with. Looking through the numerous sheets of paper made available for him, he found the guy’s profile.
Tenma Tsukasa
Blonde, 173 centimeters tall, physically capable, potential to fight back if provoked.
He recognized the name and face almost instantly, anyone would if they opened their phone these days. He was an idol that had made his debut in a new hit boy’s group a little over two months ago. Most people liked him for his hyper and agreeable personality. In the idol world, he was what you would call an “all-rounder,” capable in voice, dance, looks, etc… He wouldn’t have known this much about him without Emu— she kept up with all of the newest trends and j-pop groups. When it came to music, Rui never usually found himself drawn towards idol groups. He didn’t like the idea of a company being in charge of making his music, and he had a bone to pick with the whole idol industry and “fast-fashion” style music.
“Why would you want me to kidnap an idol?”
“Well, it’s all a part of this small little project that Ignesco has been working on since you left. We’ve come to call it AIdol. I’m sure you remember the synthetic human project and how we didn’t really know what to do with it, well here we are! What we’ve been doing is essentially building replicas of celebrities, uploading parts of their consciousness into the replicas, and sending the synthetic idols to do whatever work they do. And before you ask, yes the idol companies we’re working with know about it, and they’re fully on board. It’s just being kept on the down-low and away from the public. These new idols don’t have limits as we humans do. So… Your job is to kidnap the guy and take him over to Ignesco to complete the transfer. Then your bounty will be cleared, and you’ll find twenty-million yen in your bank account.”
Rui froze. Replacing humans with AI. It was enough to make him sick, and if the driver didn’t have a gun, he would have choked Sakaki to death right then and there. It was sick. The whole thing was sick. Even if the idol industry was problematic, nothing could replace what humans could make. To hell with the trends and viral nonsense, this was unacceptable— it went against his very core beliefs.
“You seem conflicted.”
“...”
“This is what happens when you leave behind all of your work like that. You get petty projects that no one could be bothered to spend enough time on. It really only benefits capitalism in the end, but hey, money keeps this world spinning.”
“We were doing actual work before.”
“Huh?”
“Ignesco was actually trying to do something before. This is what you’ve sunk to? Replacing people instead of trying to fix real problems?”
“Don’t act like you didn’t make the choice to leave. While you were there, we were actually doing stuff—”
“Then why not continue that?!”
“You left behind research that only you knew how to understand. You practically wrote your shit in code. And after you nearly blew up the entire facility, we didn’t exactly have that much left.”
“You’re acting like I left out of spite.”
“Didn’t you, though? Are you sure you even remember what happened?”
Rui didn’t know the answer to either of those questions. Sometimes it would come back to him, and sometimes he couldn’t recall what happened no matter how hard he tried. Like it never happened at all. Sometimes it was blurry, and sometimes it was a flash of so many lights and sounds and colors that would be enough to give someone a seizure. He clutched his old employee ID in his hand. He had worked for that position. He was good at his job. They were working on a project— a big one. His life’s work, his magnum opus.
“We do have another offer for you.”
“What?”
“Come back to work at Ignesco. You’d be in the same position doing the same work… we’d be able to scrap the whole AIdol project entirely if you picked up where you left off. Those are your choices. Kidnap Tenma-san or come back to work at Ignesco.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I’m sure you and I both know the answer to that. Your right arm alone has enough material to kickstart a new project for the sentinels. Not to mention, your address is still logged with your employee info… Again, I’m willing to do whatever the company deems necessary.”
“I’ll do it. I’ll kidnap him.”
He had to. He had to kidnap the guy. He couldn’t put Emu and Nene in danger like that. He could see now why Sakaki was chosen to be the messenger. He knew the most about Rui out of any of their colleagues, for better and worse. He seemed to take a strange liking to Rui when he joined the company, and for someone like Rui, that was rather rare for him. It always made him uneasy, though he never knew why. He seemed nice, always pushing him to do even better… but part of him just put him on edge. He wasn’t necessarily on bad terms with the guy, it more so had to do with the entire company. They had sabotaged him, after all.
“There we go. I had a feeling you’d say yes in the end. You still know how to make the right choice in the end, Kamishiro-kun. Trust me, you’re making this much easier for everyone. Now then, we’ll drop you straight off at the venue. We’ve provided you a car for whenever the guy wants to leave the event. You’d usually be taking him to his house, but obviously that’s not the case here. You’ll be driving a car that’s the same model as this one. See this button here?”
Sakaki pointed to a small silver button sitting next to a few other buttons on the steering wheel.
“Once the two of you are a good distance away from the venue, press this button. It’ll release sleeping gas into the back of the car, knocking the guy out. Bring the car over to Ignesco, and we’ll take it from there. If you don’t remember how to get there, the directions are logged in the GPS. Got it?”
“Yeah… Got it.”
“And Rui? I would seriously consider coming back to work with us. We could seriously use that genius intellect. And besides, wouldn’t want to waste such potential, now would we?”
The car began to move once more. Rui clipped the fake ID to his front suit pocket, and tucked his Ignesco ID in his back pocket. Feigning composure the best he could, he fixed his previously defensive posture, and readied himself.
Ignesco was going to regret ever sending out that job listing.