Just then, the call of a loon warbled through the apartment, sending a chill down his spine. Immediately it sounded again just as Mayuko burst into the room.
“Did you invite anyone here, Amon?” her voice was calm, but there was fear in her eyes. “Some weird men in the lobby are asking for you.”
“What?!” he shouted, getting to his feet. “Show them to me.”
Mayuko tossed a ball, which expanded into a portal in the center of the room. Within the circular frame, Amon could see nearly a dozen men in a hallway of lime green marble. Standing erect and motionless like soldiers, they formed two lines of five each stationed one behind the other, plus a lone man standing out front of the rest.
The men in lines looked like tengu, with red faces, golden eyes, huge feathered wings, and horribly long cylindrical noses that got incrementally thicker towards the bulb-like tip. They wore black shawls, baggy black pants, and black boots with a separate segment for the big toe, like mittens for feet. Their clothes were soaked in InfoRain and a panel of interior designers in matching Hawaiian jumpsuits discussing investment in hot futures drip, drip, dripped off their long noses onto the lobby welcome mat.
The lone man in front wore a white robe that billowed to the floor, white gloves, and sandals of braided straw. Although of average height and build, his long, narrow face lacked features almost entirely. His ears were large and round like those of a jolly Buddha and a ladder of deep horizontal wrinkles ran from his bald pate to his hairless brow. But between brow and chin, where his eye sockets, nose, and mouth should have been, an utterly flat sheet of pallid skin stretched.
The man pulled up the drooping sleeve of his robes to expose his analog wristwatch and tipped his face towards it, as though checking the time despite having no eyes. “I said, I’d like to speak to Amon Kenzaki.” A lipless slit suddenly appeared above his chin as though the act of speaking had ripped him a mouth. At the same moment, two perfect circles of pure white light carved themselves below his brow. These radiant eye-sockets seemed to open into the bright, empty lantern of his skull. Incongruously, he still had no nose or nostrils—a flat patch remaining in the center of his countenance—and his mouth didn’t move when he spoke. Instead, his features kept repeating the same sequence of motions over and over. His head turned to the left to draw attention to his right eye-hole, whereupon the flesh above and below squeezed it closed. Once this wink was complete, his head would suddenly be centered and his eye open again. This reversion to his initial expression was instantaneous and lacked any transitional movements. He began the pattern anew each second and performed it exactly the same way every time, like some sort of freakish emoticon.
“My men are wet and I don’t have time to wait around,” he said. “So I’d appreciate if you came to speak with me right away, Amon. I know you’re in there.” His voice was faint and rattling, wavering at an eerie high pitch like the whistle of winter wind through a city of broken windows.
“Fuck!” howled Amon, squeezing his pinky in his right fist and shaking it violently. Flailing about the room, he felt the urge to chop it off with a knife from the kitchen.
“What’s going on?” asked Mayuko, gripping him firmly by the shoulders in his frenzy and forcing him to face her. The look of urgency in her incisive eyes sobered him, and he released his finger, his muscles relaxing into resignation.
“You know that fucking virus I had?”
“Yes. What’s wrong?”
“Code Dr. couldn’t completely eliminate it, and the virus suppressed the warning message, so I only noticed just now.”
“No! What did it do?”
“A few minutes ago, it woke up, took a snapshot out the window from my eyes, and sent it to someone. It must have taken them a bit of time to do the calculations with satellite pictures, but now they’ve managed to home in on this—”
“I’ve waited long enough,” rattled the man, his slit-mouth unmoving. “Please respond immediately.” He began to frown, his forehead wrinkles bending inwards towards the center to make a stack of Vs, his eyeholes narrowing to bright lines like vending machine coin slots. Then his expression snapped back to neutral, looping repeatedly as before. When his eyes were completely open, the full strength of their light was released, bleaching the marble of the hallway to a faintly green-tinged white and, when he squinted, the illumination was reduced so that the original lime color returned, the space around him blinking between two hues. The tengu all stood perfectly still behind him, the drip of InfoRain slowing.
“You’ve got the wrong address,” said Mayuko. “There’s no one by that name here.”
“No nonsense, please. If you’re going to continue being evasive, I’m afraid we’ll be forced to carry out an inspection.”
“Under whose authority? You’re not Liquidators and I’m not bankrupt. There it is on my readout. I’ve just been compensated for a credicrime. You’re threatening to break into my rented property.”
“Let’s not get sidetracked by irrelevancies. I know Amon is there and I insist on speaking with him.”
“What should we do?” asked Mayuko after cutting off her audio transmission to the lobby. Staring into her wide, fearful eyes, Amon froze, the thumping of his heart loud and ominous.
Although the face of the freakish emoticon man continued to cycle between frowning and neutral, he rolled up his right sleeve as though to check his watch again, his shifting luminant holes pointing straight ahead. “I see you’ve made your choice.” He walked towards the elevator at the end of the hallway and immediately the tengu began to march in step behind him. With a wave of his white-gloved hand, the doors opened.
“How can he do that?” Mayuko demanded. “No one invited him here!”
“They must have cracked the security system.”
“But… You mean they can just barge right in here?”
“Does the door have a password?”
“Yes!”
“Change it now!” Mayuko nodded and did some finger flicks. “Make it as long and complicated as you can, and transmit it with heavy encryption by a server you’ve never used before.” Not only would this keep the door closed, it would prevent anyone from sending their perspective inside the room without authorization.
The emoticon man entered the elevator first and stood in the center. Eight of the tengu filed in and lined up in twos on each side of him to form an enclosing box, while two of them remained stationed in the hallway. When the doors closed, the portal shifted its perspective inside the chamber. The man looked at his wristwatch and his features vanished, becoming blank flesh again. He then waved his gloved hand and immediately the elevator began to ascend.
When Amon looked through Mayuko’s perspective and saw that she was done changing the password, he said, “Okay. Now activate the emergency stop button.”
She did as he requested, but by the time the stopping mechanism engaged, the elevator had already reached her floor. The man waved his gloved hand and the inner door opened, but the outer door didn’t budge. The men inside stood in formation before the thick, steel barrier—all that remained between them and the apartment.
“Please open up,” said the man. “We don’t want to damage this property.”
Mayuko backed away from the door and looked at Amon with an expression of bewildered terror.
Amon put his finger to his lips to indicate that she should be quiet in case they might hear through the door.
WHO ARE THEY? texted Mayuko.
I THINK THAT WEIRDO IN THE MIDDLE IS THE HEADHUNTER FROM SHUFFLE BOOM, EITHER ANISHA OR RASHANA. HE PROBABLY PUT UP THE MONEY TO HAVE THE PARASITE THAT SEKIDO GAVE ME DESIGNED. THE VIRUS MUST HAVE SENT THE IMAGE TO HIM. NOW HE’S BROUGHT SOME MERCENARIES TO GET ME.