Ghost Girl

"The yakuza could be likened to dominoes during the first half of the twenty-first century. They spent a long time building their power bases and extending their tendrils into the political climate at the time, but they could easily be knocked over if you knew the key pieces to hit. All that was needed was the ideal killer to send the dominoes flying, and the resultant waves would crash over the Japanese underworld from Hokkaido to Okinawa..."
(Ghost Girl: Fact versus Fiction, by Sunako Suzuhara, Copyright 2084, Osaka Press, All Rights Reserved)

---

Shinjuku, Tokyo, 2028

The afternoon sun cast its dying light through the multitude of buildings that crowded Shinjuku. The Japanese economy had been in a serious slump for the last six years, but now it was finally stabilizing and showing signs of recovery. One of the first places to show these signs had been the pachinko industry.

Pachinko consisted of a vertical machine made up of a series of pin-guides and holes. The player would purchase a number of silver balls, and then play them in the pachinko machine in the hopes of winning more balls. The balls could be redeemed for prizes, which in turn could be traded in for cash, offsite, of course. While not technically considered to be gambling from a legal standpoint, it was swiftly regaining its multi-trillion yen per year business as more younger people filtered into the pachinko crowd. This meant newer pachinko machines. Newer parlors.

The trend that originated at the beginning of the twenty-first century had landed back on track in full swing. For the yakuza, this was just business. Gone were the days of seedy underground dealings. Most yakuza groups had taken to investing both domestically and internationally, becoming richer and more powerful. One could almost say the change in the economy was due to these yakuza pumping their money back in. Money that came from a myriad of sources, initially, pachinko being one of them.

Yamazaki Group maintained it's offices in the upper east side of Shinjuku, Tokyo. Particularly, Kabukicho, which has been Tokyo's largest red-light district for over forty years. A fitting place for the owners of the largest pachinko parlors in Tokyo. Hardly a fitting place for an eight year old girl. Especially one dressed for school on a Saturday night.

The girl walked along listlessly with the man who held her hand. She had short brown hair pushed back with a white hairband revealing her brown eyes. The man with her was named Shiro Wakazi, and Shiro was excited. The tastes of Keigo Yamazaki, head of the Yamazaki Group, were well known in the Kabukicho area. Considering those tastes, finding people who could satisfy Keigo Yamazaki was a weekly effort for the Yamazaki Group. Keigo liked his women young. Real young. As in 'under ten' young. Recent laws enacted by the current Japanese Diet had severely limited the flesh trade when it came to children. At one time, families could pay off their debts to Yamazaki by paying with the bodies of their children. With the population boom of the late 'teens, children were suddenly in abundance. Now they were harder to find, and Yamazaki rarely wanted the same child twice.

Shiro grinned down at the young girl. She was a special find. Really cute, not very talkative, but compliant. She even carried a stuffed tiger toy clutched to her chest. She was perfect. If this didn't score him some major kudos with the ol' oyabun, Shiro didn't know what would.

Yamazaki Parlor was simply huge. It boasted seven floors and about a thousand machines. The top floor, however, was private. Exclusive to the Yamazaki Group. Soundproofed to block out the ever-present noise of the machines that rattled like an army of pinball machines gone mad. Madness was one of the things that concerned Akira Watanabe the most. He feared going mad if he listened to those accursed machines longer than he had to. These days the day-to-day operations of Yamazaki fell to Akira. In a sense, that made him the second most powerful man in the group. Rarely would he need to be involved with procuring items or persons specifically for the pleasure of his oyabun. But considering the old man's fetishes, it was up to Akira Watanabe to smooth over local law enforcement, or handle other 'things' in a discreet manner.

Akira kept his suits cleaned and pressed, and he always had a backup suit, for those 'just-in-case' situations. Tonight stood a good chance of being one of those 'just-in-case' situations. The oyabun had requested a girl. Not just any girl, but a girl suited to his desires. Whenever Keigo Yamazaki indulged himself in his little pleasures, oftentimes it was left to his kobun to clean up after him. This meant transporting the girl in question to the hospital, usually with a large wad of cash for their trouble.

Akira glanced at what was remaining of his left pinkie. He had only failed the oyabun once. A girl had gone to the police. The situation quickly grew to embarrassing proportions. Akira had assumed full responsibility. Akira had vowed that something like that would never happen again. If it meant a one-way trip to Shanghai for the girl in question, or a one-way trip to the open sea, so be it. People could be made to disappear.

The private elevator rang up and disgorged two of the security personnel, followed by Shiro Wakazi with tonight's dish in tow. Akira immediately felt his stomach churn and his ulcer acted up. He hated sending these girls in to see the old man. He glanced up at Shiro as the kobun led the girl to one of the plush couches. She sat down, clutching her stuffed tiger to her chest and buried her face in its head. Akira mentally sighed. The girl couldn't be more than eight.

I'm going to hell for this.

"Where did you find her?" Akira asked.

Shiro smirked. "Through the usual contacts. They said she was special. An orphan, actually."

Akira breathed a little sigh. "So nobody will likely miss her, in case..." he trailed off from the implied meaning. Shiro gave him a nod.

Akira actually liked Shiro Wakazi. He had recruited Shiro himself. While the other man gave off the impression of being big and slow, he actually had a fairly quick mind. Shiro was probably smart enough to take over operations when Akira decided to retire. He glanced back at the little girl. It was time to bring her in.

Taking the girl by the hand, Akira led her to the inner sanctum of the Yamazaki Group. Yamazaki's inner office was decorated in a traditional Japanese manner, with tatami mats lining the floor, and hanging scrolls lining the walls. The only thing different aside from Yamazaki's large walnut desk in the center, was the floor to ceiling windows that looked out over the last remaining bits of green park lands left in Shinjuku. Even that particular park was slated for construction.

"Show him the utmost respect and address him as 'grandfather'." Akira whispered to the girl as he slipped off his shoes. He motioned her to do the same, leaving her with just her plain socks. He handed her a pair of school slipons. "Put these on." He waited patiently as she pulled on the slippers. The girl's facial expression stayed the same. Not even blushing. He put his hands on the sliding door when she was ready. "Do everything he says, and you'll be alright. Understand?"

The girl nodded. Her eyes seemed a little strange. Empty. Akira mentally shrugged as he slid open the door.

Yamazaki sat at his big desk, garbed in a simple brown kimono. Running up his exposed thin arms were green and red dragon tattoos that joined in a complex pattern on his back, underneath the kimono. His face could easily be mistaken for that of a kindly, grandfather-like figure. But it was his eyes that gave away his true nature. They were a smouldering black, with no room for simple things like compassion or mercy. This was the man who built the Yamazaki Group into what it was today. He cut an imposing figure to those who swore their allegiance to him.

Akira bent low at the waist and pushed the girl into a bow at the same time. She still clutched the stuffed lion.

"Yamazaki-sama," Akira said, still bowing, "I've brought your 'grand-daughter' for a visit today."

Yamazaki looked at the girl, a deceptively gentle smile on his face.

"Thank you, Akira-kobun. You may leave us now."

Akira kept his bow as he backed out of the office and slid the door shut.

Yamazaki gazed at the girl for a moment longer.

"Come here," he commanded.

The girl meekly approached Yamazaki. He gave her a stern look, feeling himself getting hard under his kimono.

"Your teachers told me that you misbehaved today," he said.

The girl said nothing, her head still bowed as she circled the desk to stand before him in his chair.

Yamazaki made a big show of looking disappointed.

"I'm afraid that I must punish you, child." He lifted her up by the armpits and stood her on his desk. "But before I do that, I need to examine you for bad spirits."

Yamazaki leaned forward in his chair and started to slowly run his hands up her legs, starting from the base of her calves and moving up her thighs. He briefly noticed the stuffed lion toy fall to his desk as he did this.

"So young," Yamazaki murmured, "too young to be possessed by evil spirits." His hands continued up her legs and under her skirt. Then he encountered something strange. Something was strapped to her upper thighs. They felt metal, and rectangular. Two or three of them on each leg.

"Child, what are these...?" Yamazaki froze as he looked up and found himself staring into the muzzles of two handguns, one for each of his eyes.

"They are extra ammunition clips," the girl said calmly, her cold, empty brown eyes focused down at him, "for these."

The two gunshots merged into one loud bang.

---

Akira sat in the plush reception hall outside the bank of security elevators with four other important men and at least six bodyguard stationed around the room and at the elevator doors. While he hated listening to the infernal clamoring of the machines below, he disliked it even more waiting there at Yamazaki's beck and call. He needed to be downstairs overseeing the operations of the pachinko parlor. The noise repulsed him, but the making and management of money kept him working and somewhat sane in the face of the overpowering din. But his first responsibility above all else was to his oyabun.

Besides Akira and Shiro, there were three other men in the group that together with them comprised the nucleus of the Yamazaki Group. These were the men that oversaw the various aspects of Yamazaki's interests. Yamazaki Group was powerful not just for its pachinko parlors. There was Yamazaki Ventures, a venture capital firm that shrewdley invested in a number of profitable startup companies, the number of which had grown in the last few years. This was managed by a German man named Otto Heinreich. The yakuza had no such hangups over having gaijin in their ranks, and Otto was a full graduate of the Oxford School of Business in England, and a former head of several successful venture capital firms back in Germany. Yamazaki Automotive, easily the third largest used auto dealer in Japan. That was managed by Toshio Nakahara, a former vice-president of sales for Nissan. And finally Yamazaki International, which was their international stock trading firm. This was manned by Daisuke Ishikawa, formerly the head of the Investment Banking department for the Bank of Tokyo. Because of him, Yamazaki Group held several seats in the powerful Tokyo Stock Exchange. Akira himself was technically the head of Yamazaki Entertainment, Inc. Managing the pachinko branch of that business was just one of his responsibilities. Yamazaki Parlor was just one of several large pachinko parlors that they owned.

Shiro managed their private security, but eventually Akira planned to groom him to take over all pachinko management as well.

Tonight, all five of them were gathered on that private seventh floor, leaving Akira to wonder why they were all there. He looked at the other three men.

"Why have you come here?"

Heinreich, Nakahara, and Ishikawa looked at each other for a moment. Then Heinreich turned to face Akira.

"I got a call from Mr. Yamazaki this morning telling me he wanted to meet to discuss something."

Ishikawa nodded. "I also received a call from Yamazaki-sama saying the same thing."

Nakahara took a sip of his gin and tonic before answering.

"He called me as well."

Akira puzzled over this for a moment. He had not been told of any such meeting by Yamazaki.

What's going on here?

Akira would have questioned the wisdom of having these important men of the Yamazaki Group gathered together like this, but Yamazaki Group's private security force of cyberized men was more than sufficient to protect this floor. Akira figured that it would take a rather large bomb to seriously make any impact on their operations. The private hover-pad on the roof pretty much guaranteed an escape in any sort of event. But it still left that question unanswered. Why did the oyabun personally schedule a meeting for this time? Especially since he was currently occupied?

The loud gunshot that sounded from Yamazaki's office answered everything.

---

080 activated the small commlink in her ear. It had a built-in camera that was recording her actions, so even reporting anything back was somewhat redundant. The camera verified the now lifeless and eyeless corpse of Keigo Yamazaki that lay slumped back in his chair. His brains and skull fragments lay splattered across the tatami mat floor behind him.

"Primary target eliminated. Moving onto secondary targets."

The doors to the office slid open behind her as armed men in black suits rushed in, their guns drawn. 080 pointed the two Walther P99 Compacts behind her and sent a single bullet from each gun pounding into the security guards foreheads. They crumbled down on top of each other.

080 leapt from the desk and skidded sideways out in the hall, firing her weapons as she did and killing two more security guards that were running down the hall. She had approximately one minute and thirty four seconds before any of the security elevators reached the floor. None of the targets could be allowed to escape.

---

"What the fuck was that??" Otto demanded. He rounded on Shiro who stood near the doorway with his oversized .50 caliber Desert Eagle drawn and gripped tightly. "What the fuck was that, Wazaki??!!"

"Get the fuck down!!" Shiro yelled. He thumbed his commlink. "Security to the seventh floor!" All five elevator lights immediately blinked on. Shiro turned to the other security men in the room and pointed at two of them. "You and you, come with me. The rest of you, defend this room at all costs."

"What about the oyabun??" Akira shouted.

Shiro shook his head as he and the two security guards moved down the hallway. As they approached Yamazaki's office, Shiro saw two bodies sprawled in the hallway. Two gunshots rang out and Shiro watched in disbelief as the two cyber-augmented men with him both dropped, a perfect bloody hole through an eye socket on each of them.

Shiro yelled and fired his heavy pistol down the hallway in the direction the shots came from. The roar of his .50 caliber was deafening as he emptied his clip. Dropping the spent clip, he fumbled for a fresh one when he heard the sound of small feet running at him, fast. He looked up. Shock set in and made his brain start to short-circuit.

"You..." he whispered.

The girl descended on him like an angel of death, her two bullets punching through Shiro's eyesockets like nails through butter.

Forty seconds.

The men standing in the hall entrance watched as their boss went down. They quickly pulled the two wooden sliding doors to the hall shut and backed away from the entrance, their pistols ready.

Otto was muttering something in German as he cowered near the elevator doors.

Two bullets ripped through the flimsy wooden door hitting the last two guards dead center in their foreheads. Their guns dropped from lifeless fingers as they collapsed. Heinreich screamed and began to hammer on the elevator call button. Ishikawa and Nakahara had both gotten the same idea about hiding behind the small bar. Akira fumbled for one of the guards guns as the wooden doors slid open. He held it up, shaking.

"Hold it right there!" Akira shouted.

The little girl stood there, a pair of P99 Compacts in her hands. It wasn't the guns that terrified Akira the most. It was her eyes. They were the cold eyes of death.

Fifteen seconds.

Akira shouted incoherently and began firing at the girl. She seemed to disregard his shooting and almost casually move sideways, firing as she went. Her first shot took Heinreich through the side of his head. The German slumped sideways in front of the elevators, blood pooling on the plush rug floor. Her second shot split Nakahara's head as he peeked above the bar, showering Ishikawa with blood and brains. She leapt to the top of the bar, glass and bottles shattering in her wake from Akira's wild shots. Without looking, she pounded a slug into Ishikawa's head from where he cowered behind the bar, before cartwheeling sideways in mid-air, firing a round through Akira's chest.

Akira dropped the empty pistol in disbelief. Blood was staining his once-clean suit. He fell backwards, having difficulty breathing. The girl stood over him as blood bubbled up in his mouth. Akira stared up into the muzzle of one of her P99s. She said nothing. Just looked down at him with those cold, empty brown eyes. Akira had time for one last coherent thought.

Who the fuck was this girl???

She nailed his head into the floor with her last shot.

Seven seconds.

080 tossed her guns to either side of the room along with her spare ammo clips, and knelt down on the floor. She counted off the last five seconds, then cowered forward and began crying. The elevator doors opened simultaneously, disgorging almost twenty-five security guards.

Hakoto Tamake had been second-in-command of the Yamazaki security force for over a year. Previously, she had been a regular beat cop for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, until she had been recruited by Shiro Wakazi. The allure of better pay and lower stress had totally appealed to her. Now she stood over a hysterical eight year old girl in a school uniform, while her men fanned out in what could be called a 'total bloodbath', and searched the rest of the seventh floor. The worse thing, at least to Tamake, was that she knew why the young girl was there. She hated herself for it.

"Tamake-san," one of the other guards came up to Tamake, "everybody is dead."

She stared at him in disbelief.

"Everyone?? The oyabun too??"

The guard nodded. Tamake shook her head and knelt down in front of the crying girl.

"Little sister," Tamake said softly, "what happened up here?"

The girl suddenly moved forward and buried her face in Tamake's chest, sobbing.

"It was terrible!" the girl cried, "They just started shooting! I was so scared!"

Tamake stroked the girl's head, whispering soothing sounds. She nodded towards one of the other guards.

"Get her out of here, then call the cops."

The guard nodded then helped the still whimpering girl to her feet. He took her to one of the elevators. Tamake watched and for a brief second, she looked into the girl's eyes as the elevator doors closed. They sent a cold shiver up the former cop's back.

---

Lieutenant Kazuma Ishimaru shook his head in disbelief as he and his men walked through the carnage. The bodies had already been taken downtown, leaving just their white chalk outlines to indicate where they had fallen.

Bloodbath. Massacre. These words danced through Kazuma's head. In all his years on the force, he had encountered the results of many violent altercations, but never anything quite as deliberate as this. He glanced at the plush couch and something darker than the shadow caught his eye. He knelt down and carefully reached his pencil over into the shadow.

A gun. Kazuma held it up before his eyes. It hung from the pencil by its matte black trigger guard. It was a P99 Compact 9mm. Not any of the guard's guns, those had all been accounted for. This particular model was smaller than what these yakuza thugs normally carried. He slipped the gun into a plastic evidence bag and stood up.

"Lieutenant."

Kazuma turned around to look at one of his other men.

The cop held up another evidence bag containing a similar gun.

"Found this by the bar, sir."

Two P99s. Kazuma turned back to Hakoto Tamake, who stood near the elevators looking uncomfortable.

You should have stayed on the force, Tamake-san.

"You sure there was nobody else on this floor besides Yamazaki and these guys?" Kazuma asked.

"I'm sure."

Kazuma shook his head. There were fourteen people dead here, all of them perfect headshots. Seven handguns accounted for, of which only two had been fired empty. One of them was a .50 caliber Desert Eagle, and nothing but the wall at the far end of the hallway had been hit with any of those. The other was a Sig 9mm, and the bullet holes around the room suggested a chase pattern. He looked back at Tamake.

"Who was carrying the Walther P99s?"

Tamake looked at him confusedly.

"What P99s?"

Kazuma started to answer when another one of his men approached carrying what looked like a pair of shoes, and what appeared to be a stuffed toy in an evidence bag.

Young girls shoes.

Kazama looked at the other cop.

"Where did you find those?"

"Found the shoes in the small foyer outside Yamazaki's office." the cop held up the evidence bag. It looked like some sort of stuffed lion, but most of the stuffing was missing. "This was on Yamazaki's desk."

Kazuma rounded on Tamake again.

"How do you explain this?"

Tamake merely glanced at the offending items before turning her narrowed eyes back to Kazuma.

"I cannot explain them Lieutenant, since I was not present on this floor when this all happened."

Kazuma glared at the woman before turning back to his man.

"Lieutenant," Tamake said.

Kazuma turned back to her.

"What?"

Tamake narrowed her eyes further.

"I trust that no elements of this case will be released to the media without prior consent of my employer's family. Otherwise, Yamazaki Group's legal representative will not hesitate to make any disclosure of information into a legal matter with MPD."

Kazuma glared at her for a moment.

"I know my job, Tamake-san."

She glared back at him.

"And I know mine."

Kazuma shook his head.

You should never have left the force, Tamake-san.

---

Rourke deactivated the holographic display and the emitter automatically descended into the depths of his desk. He smiled at the haggard looking man on the other side of his desk.

"Perfect." Rourke grinned, "Her performance was perfect. You should be proud, Yukio."

Yukio shook his head. Rourke felt a minor twinge of annoyance. It seemed that lately, the geneticist was getting sicker and sicker. Now he rarely even had the strength to sit in that chair and take Rourke's gloating. It was disappointing, not getting a rise out of the Japanese scientist. Rourke decided to switch tactics.

"How goes your progress on Project M?"

Yukio looked up, his brown eyes were red-rimmed and had heavy bags under them.

"Eve seems to be showing signs of her ability. It will be difficult to properly control her until she gets older."

Rourke sighed and stared off into space.

"What is with you and those fools at the Foundation with using only girls for this stuff, anyways?"

"I've already told you, Mr. Rourke. Women are physically built to be much sturdier then men are. Men are stronger, but their bodies couldn't possibly take the strain. Eve will outlive any male version we could produce. As for Yumi... uh, 080, only Toshinden knows how long she will live."

Rourke removed a cigar from the humidor at the end of his desk.

"Speaking of 080, as we just were, she is beginning the next phase of her training. Toshinden tells me that she absorbs this shit like a sponge." Rourke winked at Yukio, "Just thought you wanted to know, daddy. You are gonna be the proud father of the deadliest little girl on the planet. Bet you wish you could stick that shit on the fridge with a magnet."

Yukio stood up to leave. "One question, Mr. Rourke."

"I may even answer that."

Yukio ignored the sarcasm.

"Why did you have her wipe out that yakuza group?"

Rourke's grin widened as he leaned back in his chair.

"Traditionally, Yukio, and you should know this, the yakuza has always clung to the underbelly of Japanese society. They are not a government approved organization, and they certainly are not popular with the public at large. Whether or not they have contributed financially to the economic recovery of Japan is irrelevant to those old farts in the Diet.

"Yamazaki Group got too uppity. They were getting too powerful. They already had seats on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, it was only a matter of time before they got a Diet member elected. Or two. Then the yakuza would have serious influence on government policy. Promoting change and all that."

Rourke leaned forward and rested his chin on his hands.

"Would you really want local and foreign policy being decided by some old, tattooed pedophile? The Diet already has too many of those as it is." Rourke laughed. "Now the yakuza are right back to where we want them. Eyeing each other with suspicion, wondering who did in Yamazaki. It's all perfect."

Yukio's shoulders sagged and he stared at the floor.

"It's all so disgusting."

Rourke's smile vanished.

"It's a disgusting world we live in, Dr. Takajima. You should know that by now."

---

The training room at the Facility was rectangular and long. Its floors and walls were made of solid steel. It was a room designed for the training of killers.

The man called Master Jun found the room's stark emptiness appealing. Enlightening. Life was just like a big, empty room. It's what you filled it with that really mattered. He looked down at the young girl before him. She stood wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt. Her short, brown hair was pushed back out of her face with a simple white hairband. To Jun, it was her eyes that mattered. Her eyes were emptiness, like the room.

"My name, child," Jun said, "is Master Jun. This is how you will address me. Do you understand?"

The girl nodded.

"It is my understanding that you have been training extensively with guns and other weapons, correct?"

The girl nodded again.

"What you have learned in regards to those other things are irrelevant. You may continue to learn them, master them, it does not matter." Jun clasped his hands behind his back and began to circle the young girl. "What I will teach you is far more potent, far more deadly." He stopped behind her. "How old are you, child?"

"I am eight, sensei."

"Your age is another thing that is irrelevant. You are different from other people. Your size has become irrelevant to your strength and speed."

Jun stood before her.

"I want you to attack me. Show me how strong and fast you are. This will be your first lesson."

Without another word, the young girl lunged at Jun. He casually sidestepped her lightning like attack and brought his knee into her stomach. With a twist of his upper body Jun smacked his elbow against the back of 080's head and flipped her over his leg and onto her back. He drove his foot into her throat with a single quick strike leaving her gagging and clutching at her throat.

"You call that an attack?" Jun asked. He shook his head.

Coughing, 080 got warily to her feet. She eyed Jun's face.

Excellent. There was no emotion, no tears. Perhaps this wasn't a waste of time after all.

She came at him again, her leg swinging at Jun's kneecap. He lifted his leg and hammered it down on her ankle and driving it to the floor. Before she fell, Jun hooked his arm under her armpit and behind her neck, pulling her arm up above her head in a painful position. At the same time he locked her legs with a simple leg weave rendering her immobile.

Perfect, she wasn't panicking, wasn't struggling. She was analyzing her situation. Good.

With a simple flex of his arm Jun popped the small girl's shoulder from it's socket.

There was no reaction. Jun was pleased. She was internalizing her pain. With a quick undulation, Jun threw her forwards so that she landed on the injured shoulder. Still no cries of pain. She got shakily to her feet and eyed him. He motioned for her to attack again. Time to end the lesson for today.

080 came at him. Jun's open palm connected with the bridge of her nose. It didn't break, to his mild surprise, but she started bleeding. And she was dizzy. His extended hand came back around and his fingertips connected with her stomach and penetrated. The girl's mouth dropped open in surprise and she automatically tilted her head down to gape at the hand that she was suddenly impaled upon. Jun's hand came out of her midsection with an arc of blood, and his closed fist connected with her forehead, sending the little girl sprawling like a limp ragdoll.

It took a moment, then the girl pulled herself to her feet. Her face was a mass of blood, and her dislocated arm hung uselessly at her side. Blood had flowerd the front of her torn t-shirt and turned the white material to crimson. But her eyes. Her eyes were still clear, and aware. Without reaction.

Perfect.

"That penetrating blow is called the 'Open-handed Knife'. It is the ability to pierce flesh with just your 'ki' alone. You will learn this. Flesh is not the only thing that you can penetrate." Jun folded his hands into his sleeves. "The lesson for today is now over. I will see you next week."

To his surprise, 080 bowed forward painfully.

"Thank you for your lesson, Master. I will try to be a good pupil."

Jun stood regarding her. He admired the girl's perseverance. She was young, very young, but she fought with an ability beyond her years. And her speed was extraordinary. She would indeed make a fine pupil.

* * *

080 cowered on her cot in her small spartan room at the facility. Her bandaged stomach, nose, and relocated shoulder hurt. They hurt a lot. She gritted her teeth and hugged herself, burying her face in her knees. The food tray on her small table sat untouched. The pain from her stomach made trying to eat anything an impossible feat.

No pain.

There was no pain.

But it hurts. It hurts so much.

080 fought back the tears.

I have no feelings, because I'm not a real person. Not anymore.

I am real! My name is Yumiko! Yumiko Takajima!

No, Yumiko is dead. There is no Yumiko.

She pushed her emotions down into the deepest recesses of her mind and locked them up behind a heavy steel door.

I didn't kill anyone, because they weren't real either. They were just targets.

Images of Keigo Yamazaki's surprised face surfaced in her mind. The faces of the black dressed men. Of Shiro Wazaki, of Akira Watanabe. 080 squeezed her eyes shut at the images and forced them under the secure steel door as well.

No pain. Everything is just numbness. As long as there was numbness, there was no pain.

080 curled on her side and fell into a fitful sleep.