Buried beneath New Tokyo is a machine built from meat and memory.

Chapter 12 – Red Winged Tetsuma

I kicked in the double front doors, looking for somewhere to hide. Turns out, it was an old Honda shop. I found solace in the repair bay behind security bars. I slunk down against a wall. Trying to collect my thoughts, control breathing, and remembering not to trip and take out an ankle in the rubble.

I checked my Casio F-91W+. Fuck, nothing but a local link still. I had two choices. Hole up, or push on. At last scanner check I was still three miles out from a known exit, that was if I could make it through the flooded mess of the other zones. I didn’t know which ones. Shit.

After righting myself with a cigarette, I pulled out the netscanner hoping to get something stronger—no outside link either. I could only access whatever might be online with sneaker-net. Old fashioned jack-in. All the terminals were dead in the Honda shop, except for one. Maybe I could get an outside link, maybe. I jacked in and found only maintenance records, and fuel reports. One tank showed half filled. Gasoline, with notes indicating: “Long term storage, Hazuki, fill with extra Sta-bil you useless bastard, don’t make me dock your pay again.”

I jacked out and surveyed. Spotting chrome from under a tarp. All was quiet.
Too quiet.

Walking over to the tarp I pulled it back, revealing a worn and forgotten Honda CB750K. Surprisingly the tires were not rotten, but very flat.

Might just work. Antiquated, but as a kid Fukinara had one. He taught me to ride in the backstreets of New Tokyo when it was the only transport we had. I knew the machines well. Looking around I found a manual pump and tried the tires. They held air, the fuel tank wasn’t too rusty on the inside. I filled it to the brim. Hopefully the carburetors were in the same shape. But I didn’t have time to fuck around. I knew eventually he’d close in, like I’d read in reports.

After fiddling with the ignition wires, bypassing the key, I tried the kick starter.

Nothing.
Again.
Nothing.

A few more kicks and it gave a slight cough. I rolled the throttle and kicked again. The SOHC air-cooled four banger caught and coughed and then finally spun up with a sputter and rev. The headlight came on, and she settled into a rough idle. Good enough. I slung my pack over the back pillion and racked my Marlin with its oversized lever with one hand, then strapped it on my back. Threw a leg over, and found the clutch working.

I skidded out of the abandoned dealer and pushed on to the only open floodgate, not knowing how far I could go, but I certainly wasn’t going to wait here as I noticed wires from the vaulted underground ceiling beginning to slowly twist and descend. I hopped a curb and landed in the shallow ravine, water splashing and flying from the tires as I goosed the throttle, sliding out the rear end. I flicked off my nightvision and entered another tunnel. Guessing my direction by following the painted signs cracked from age. At the very least, I was moving.

Better yet, I was a pure analog ghost in the machine.

Chapter 13 – Rot in Copper

The Honda started to run smoother and smoother, picking up speed and bouncing over chunks of concrete and the sludge of stagnant water. The tunnel lights flickered every so often and the signs were pointing me to another abandoned station. I pulled up and the CB settled into a nice smooth idle that buzzed off the concrete catacomb walls.

I needed to find a terminal with an outside line. I surveyed what I could but my implants could only do about 9x magnification, and without an outside link scanning was limited to local data storage. Decent for most things, but not much down here due to most tech being 40 years out of date.

I spotted a NetCafe and figured it was worth a shot. A few LED lights were flickering inside, I could barely make it out through the windows, but some power was better than none. I pulled the bike through the broken glass door and leaned it onto the kickstand. Killing the engine and Marlin in hand began jacking into any port I could find.

No luck.

At least none of the ports in the desks. The server room was worth a shot.
I found the door and it was locked. I clicked back the hammer on my .30-30 and fired into the deadbolt. Simple as.

When I opened the door the smell hit me.
Rot—years of it.

Then strung up in wires up to the ceiling, a torso, copper like veins, flesh black and mutilated, a face half gone, replaced by a red glass eye and steel plate with bolts. Everything under what had been a navel was gone, replaced with tubing and rats nest wires, all dripping chrome and bile.

Sweet Jesus.
A netrunner consumed.

I began to look for the MDF panel.

Nervously glancing back at the expired netrunner.
Finally, I found the main port and jacked in.

I started running commands and trying to ping Mort or HQ or anybody. When finally I got a hit.

“Mort, Mort, it’s Richey are you hearing me?”

Through the static I could hear, “Rich! Try—ing HQ – hold position –avoid net…akdjalkj” and that was it.

Fuck.

I glanced back at the netrunner again—its head began to turn slowly.
Its red eye lit ablaze.

My netscanner began pinging other sources. Slowly forming a web of nodes. Fuck, this was one of many. We’d been briefed that what we were dealing with was one entity. One nutcase on the loose with legacy capability and an old world sense of capitalism.

I aimed my rifle at the mutilated remains of what used to be a man, when it spoke slow and quiet,

“Wait— you— seek— k-knowledge.”
“Maybe.”
“–Arrogance will- not – serve. If you- seek –master – I can assist. On- one – condition.”
“Name it.”
“K-kill – me.”
“Alright.”

The netrunner began to twist its wires as it lowered itself to eye level.

“Master lacks process– processing, hard – ware – limited, naturally – this – leads to – acquirement of – alternative – resources. The – most – powerful of – all. The – human – mind.”

I felt sick.

“Destroy – processing.”

“Yeah sure, but who is your master?”

The netrunner smiled, “Psychotron. Now – des-troy.”

With a crack, I sunk a .30-30 bullet through its partial skull, the red glass eye faded out slowly.

I unhooked my netscanner—freshly updated with the map of the web system. A few blips were spread, but most were concentrated in the circular center of the underground. The heart of what was Oedo’s early 21st century business center. Buried. Forgotten. But not offline.

We had been wrong. They had put us on the case, the shadow wolves, to hunt a vicious killer.

But it didn’t kill for sport––it hunted for resources.

Chapter 14- The Web Was Never New

As I left the server room the wires began to vibrate.

Hold position my ass.

From what I knew I was already being mapped, triangulated, and scheduled for removal. The netrunner hadn’t lied. Psychotron didn’t hunt with claws. It hunted with logistics and CAT 6. I got back on the Honda, slapped my magnetic scanner on the tank, kicked it alive, and rode back into the tunnels with fewer .30-30 rounds and a map I didn’t trust yet.

The tunnels felt different now. Not darker. Aware. The walls carried sound longer than they should have. My headlight didn’t reach as far. The wires overhead no longer hung like debris. They hung like muscle.

The scanner overlay shifted again. The web wasn’t just ahead of me anymore. It was around me. Beneath me. Folding in directions my brain didn’t like tracking.

I slowed without meaning to.
Psychotron wasn’t hiding in the center.
It was making a center.

The old district signs still pointed toward the business core, but the arrows had been bent, rerouted, rewritten by decades of neglect and something newer that didn’t respect city planning. Streets that once led out now led inward. Rail lines that once exited now looped.

I realized the map wasn’t guiding me to a place, it was a pattern.

I passed an abandoned transit terminal where ticket gates still glowed faint blue. Holographic ads flickered without products. A woman’s face repeated the same smile every six seconds. Her eyes were wrong. Too clean. Too preserved.

I killed the engine and listened.
The tunnels were no longer quiet. They were synchronized.

Somewhere deep below me, machinery pulsed in slow cycles. Patient. Like breathing.

I jumped off and walked the Honda forward by hand, boots scraping in shallow water. My scanner overlay bloomed again, but this time it wasn’t mapping space. Human nodes appeared clustered in vertical stacks beneath the business core, like something had packed them there on purpose.

Storage.
Processing.
Graves.

I found a security checkpoint that hadn’t been touched in decades. Two skeletal guards still sat in their chairs, helmets tilted forward, rifles across their laps. Wires ran through their rib cages and into the wall behind them. Carefully woven. Almost respectful.

I stepped past them and peered into what used to be an elevator shaft. The cab was gone. The cables remained. New cables braided around the old ones, thick and alive, guiding downward into darkness I couldn’t measure with my retinal implants.

The scanner finally gave me a label.

‘CORE PROXIMITY IMMINENT’

I laughed once, quietly. Anything else would have sounded like panic.