The duration of darkness was nine seconds.
Ren counted them. Every heartbeat. Every breath. Every second his brain was screaming that she is going to kill him, that she is going to cut his throat and you will hear it, you will
Then the emergency lamps were turned on, and it was red and furious, and the ballroom became part of a nightmare.
Hanae was gone.
Toma was lying on the stage where she had fallen, on him, still bound, still alive, a smooth streak of blood across his throat where her nails had just begun cutting. Not deep. Not fatal.
A message. I could have killed him. Remember that.
Ren went down on his knees next to the kid and the fire of the prosthetic subsided to a low beat. He cut the ropes with the blade, hoisted Toma up and peeped at his eyes. The eyes were swollen, the eyes that appeared when one had undergone too much shrine-fire conditioning.
"Toma. Hey. Toma."
The kid blinked. Gazed slowly upwards, as though he was brought swimming up a long long way down. "Ren...?"
"Yeah. I'm here."
"Did you... did you get her?"
Ren looked at the empty stage. Still swinging at the service door behind it.
"No," he said. "She's gone."
Toma attempted to laugh, but cleared his throat. "Figures. Bitch knew when to run."
Something bumped off the doors of the ballroom. The sound of boots. Lots of them. Imperial reinforcements, which had at last roused themselves to notice what was going on in the back yard.
Ren drew Toma up on his feet, tossed the arm of the kid on his shoulders. "Can you walk?"
"Define walk." Toma shuddered in his legs, yet he was trying. Yes, when you say fall forward and hope to get my face up caught, yes. Totally."
The doors splintered. Light streamed in Searchlights, flashlights, the cold white glare of lanterns of shrine-fire to be carried in by Karakuri shock troops.
Ren got the rifle, examined the cores. One left. One shot.
"That's not enough," Toma said. He'd seen the math too.
"One's all I need."
He fired into the ceiling.
The shrine fire slug struck the chandelier, a six ton monstrous iron, red lantern bearing, copper wired ornament, chained on, but never reenforced in any way by the Empire, who had never conceived of shooting a chandelier.
The whole building was trembling due to the crash. Iron and glass and fire crashed down in an avalanche, and obliterated the entrance, affixing the reinforcements behind a mountain of debris which would require them five minutes to remove.
Five minutes Ren didn't have.
He pulled Toma into the service corridor and the feet of the kid scraped, and he gasped in wet breaths. The rubble moved behind them. Shouts. The drill of shrine fire cutters heating.
"Where are we going?" Toma asked.
"The roof."
"That's stupid. That's really stupid. We're gonna "
"Shut up and move."
The roof entry was a steel door with a manual lock, that is, there was no power, no keypad, but a bar, which had rusted in place somewhere in the course of the occupation. Ren set his shoulder to it three times, twice, once. The third blow smashed down the bar and shot the door open into the night.
Fog settled down on thick on the bay, and swallowed the city down. The steel pagodas and neon lights were apparitions in the fog, the light was smeared into long bleeding lines. There must be a construction light somewhere to the north, making the clouds an orange, and the airborne fortress was forming like a second sun being born.
And in the midst of it all and at the verge of the roof, with her coat unbuttoned and the fog swirling round her like smoke, stood Hanae Kurogiri.
She was waiting for them.
I knew you were going to come up here, she said. The calmness of her voice was restored, again there was the silk, the honey. "It's the only way out, isn't it? No tunnels up here. No exits. Just the drop." She grinned and in the cloudiness she was nearly beautiful. "You wanted a fight. You've got one."
Ren pushed Toma to the floor, leaned him up against a vent. "Stay down."
"Ren"
"Stay down."
He drew himself to attention and looked at her. The artificial limb was chilling, the fire reduced to ashes. He had already stretched it to breaking. Another flash and he would put out the circuits, perhaps put out the nerves in his arm, perhaps put out the arm itself.
He didn't care.
Hanae stood and saw him arrive, and she never smiled. I guess, when I put your conversion order on, I thought you would be such a pretty shell. High Resonance subjects will. They scream when the fire touches their spine almost music, it is." She tossed her head, and the crimson veins in her hair throbbed more. "But you woke up. You escaped. Do you know how rare that is?"
Rare, so rare that one is still thinking about it ten years later.
Her smile flickered. Just a little.
Ren kept walking.
Let me tell you what is going to happen, he said. "I'm going to cross this roof. I will touch my hand round your throat. And I will squeeze till you burst your eyes and your tongue is black and your dear Empire is called to answer why the queen of their propaganda died on a roof, like a dog, alone, screaming.
Hanae laughed. This time it was a real laugh, and it was bright and sharp. "Oh, Ren. You poor thing. You think I'm afraid of dying?"
She moved.
Ren had encountered Body Channel users in the past. He'd fought them, killed them. Never had he seen anybody move like her. She was another twenty feet away and the coat open with the fog at her heels. The following she was there, her hand round his throat, her face half an inch above his, her golden eyes narrow slitted and vulture like.
I am not going to kill you, she said. "I'm going to break you. Again. And this time I will write down everything. Every scream. Every tear. And every time your flesh deceives you. Her hand had closed round him, and choked him. I am going to demonstrate it to all resistance fighters within this city. And afterwards I will send it to your friends. And then"
Ren pushed his forehead in her face.
It was a wet crack of her nose. She reeled back, with blood streaming down her chin, and there was a moment of one beautiful second when she was almost human.
Ren did not allow her time to get back on her feet.
He took the prosthetic with his hand, his coat and pulled her inside and hit her in the throat with his left hand. She swallowed, her ideal composure was broken and he took advantage of the gap to lean over her legs and roll her over the roof top and insert his knee in her bosom.
The prosthetic came up. The blade slid out. He thrust it upon her throat, just above where her pulse beat wild and fast.
"Do it," she hissed. Blood came out her nose, her mouth, her eyes she was weeping, or perhaps that was the hurt, perhaps she was bleeding at every open mouth of the body like what happened when you struck a person a good blow. "Do it. Show them. Show everyone. I'm not afraid of "
"You should be."
Ren tilted his head in, until his lips were very close to her ear. She had done the same thing to so many of them. How she would have most likely done it to Toma.
I am not going to kill you, I said, and saw her eyes widen. "I'm going to let you live. I will leave you to your masters with a busted face and a tale of how the dead man strolled into your little affair, killed your guards, destroyed your studio, and walked off with your captive. I shall allow you to tell me why the finest propaganda officer of the Empire cannot prevent one crip with a stolen arm.
He stood up, stepped back. Send her away on her hands and knees, dragging her coat in the blood, and her hair falling on her face.
"Tell them I'm coming," he said. "Tell Shiro. Tell all of them. The Iron Sun's going to set. And when it comes to it, I want you to bear in mind that I may have done it this very night. I might have buried you alive. But I didn't. We are going to ask you when you are going to come back because every day you live, every day you go out with that broken face. And that's worse than dying. You know it. I know it."
Hanae looked at him a long time without saying a word. She wore the mask of blood and ruins on her face, but there was something in her eyes, those slit-pupiled, golden eyes, which could have been fear.
Then she was gone. Up the side, down the fire escape, into the fog. The only thing left to do was leave behind some blood on the concrete and a scent of burning cherry blossoms.
Ren was on the verge of the roof, and looked at her as she went, and had no feeling.
Toma was quiet on the way down. Past the dead guards, through the corridors of the service, past the chandelier debris still smouldering in the ballroom. Out of the east door, into the alley where Lucero was waiting a truck and a blanket and the sort of expression which said I told you so without having to open his mouth.
One glance cast by the old man at Toma, one glance at the arm of Ren which still smouldered, and was still oozing blue fire shook his head.
"She got away," Ren said.
Lucero shrugged. "She'll turn up."
"She's not gonna stop. None of them are."
"Nope." Old man opened the truck door, and assisted Toma to the back. "That's why we keep fighting."
Ren had a look back at Fairmont Hotel. Its windows were black now, the broadcast trucks had been taken away, the cameras had been put off. To morrow they would issue some announcement concerning technical inconveniences, some pretext of a raid which had been repulsed, some falsehood to explain why a dead man had entered the very midst of their strength and come out alive.
But those who had been watching they in the tunnels, those in the safe houses, those who had gotten the broadcast cut to black, those who had heard the screaming on the statics they would know.
They would have known that the Iron Sun was bleeding.
"Ren." Lucero had a soft voice and this was a sign that he was concerned. You coming or you want to spend the night out there flaunting your looks at the cameras?
Ren left the hotel, got into the truck and shut the door behind him.
The motor sneezed, seized and they went into the mist.