May 6, 2440 6:00 PM
Andrea Tanaka waited until the studio door shut behind the last producer before looking over the three of them.
MJ Reyes was already halfway out of television mode, pulling a hairpin loose and making a face at whatever she had just seen on her translator. Kevin Wood had found his phone again. Y’kem T’all stood between them, patient enough to suggest he had accepted that humans required a decompression period after being filmed.
Andrea pointed at them with her stylus.
“You are released.”
MJ looked up. “That sounds ominous.”
“It means you belong to yourselves until curfew.” Andrea tapped the screen. “Translators stay active. Security stays active. You do not disappear. You do not accept spontaneous transportation from anyone I have not cleared.”
Kevin raised a hand.
“No,” Andrea said.
“I didn’t ask anything.”
“You were going to.”
He lowered it.
Two teenagers waited outside the studio doors.
Renji Matsuda was a month younger than Kevin and already better known on Japanese social media than most adults twice his age. Being the grandson of Panasonic’s chief executive helped, but not nearly as much as knowing what to point a camera at and when to shut it off.
Beside him stood Aki Morishima, the vice mayor’s grandniece, almost exactly Y’kem’s age. She wore her family connections much more quietly.
Andrea glanced between them.
“They know where you’re going. Mostly.”
“Mostly?” Kevin asked.
Renji smiled. “That is what makes Tokyo interesting.”
Andrea sighed.
“Go.”
They went.
All five were in fashion kimono, modern cuts rather than formal dress, enough traditional structure to be unmistakably Japanese and enough youth styling that nobody would confuse them with a diplomatic delegation.
MJ’s knife sat openly at her hip.
So did Kevin’s.
So did Y’kem’s.
The blades looked decorative enough with the clothes, short tanto-style pieces Matt had forged himself. They were also perfectly good for opening a letter, cutting steak, digging a stone from a horse’s hoof, or considerably less polite work.
Andrea’s eyes paused on MJ.
MJ smiled sweetly.
Andrea knew better than to ask what else she was carrying.
“Have fun.”
MJ started toward the station.
“That sounds even more ominous.”
The train was crowded without being unbearable.
MJ stood easily despite the motion, one hand resting above her head, body shifting automatically with every curve. Years of cheer, dance, gymnastics, tinikling, eskrima, and badly civilized horses had left her with a center of gravity she rarely needed to think about.
Y’kem stood an inch taller.
Kevin, at five-nine and still growing, was the shortest of the three and somehow did not look it.
Swimming had put breadth through his shoulders. Crew had taught him how to move with other bodies in close space. Track had done the rest. There was a looseness to all three of them now that had not existed before flight training, the restrained swagger of young pilots who had learned that confidence was useful and panic was expensive.
Not cockiness.
Mostly.
Renji looked them over.
“You three always stand like that?”
“Like what?” Kevin asked.
“Like somebody is about to launch you.”
MJ glanced at Y’kem.
“Formation integrity.”
Y’kem nodded solemnly.
Kevin shook his head. “Do not encourage her.”
The doors opened.
The evening swallowed them.
Shinjuku was still bright.
Sunset was nearly an hour away, but the streets had already begun their transition. Lanterns were coming on beneath daylight. Signs glowed against buildings that did not yet need them. Office workers mixed with students, tourists, shoppers, and people already dressed for whatever Tokyo intended to become after dark.
MJ drew a few looks.
Mostly because she was five-ten.
Aki noticed.
“You’re taller than half the men here.”
“Story of my life.”
“You don’t mind?”
MJ shrugged. “Makes finding my people easier.”
Her Japanese was natural enough that Aki never needed to wait for the translator. It was not Tokyo Japanese. The rhythm was rougher, more diaspora than classroom, the kind of language that had survived in households and immigrant communities and then wandered back across the Pacific.
Aki smiled at something MJ said.
“You talk like my grandmother’s cousins in Brazil.”
MJ brightened.
“Now that is a compliment.”
“It was.”
They walked a little closer after that.
Kevin noticed.
MJ noticed Kevin noticing.
She gave him a look.
Kevin became intensely interested in a vending machine.
A few people recognized them.
Not enough to stop the street.
Enough to make it fun.
A pair of university students asked for a picture. Then three girls. Then an older couple who wanted Y’kem in the middle.
Renji took charge without looking as though he had.
“Two pictures. Keep the walkway open.”
MJ leaned into Kevin on one side. Y’kem bent slightly from the other.
Flash.
Another.
A teenage girl stared at MJ afterward.
“Reyes?”
MJ pointed at herself.
“Last I checked.”
The girl laughed.
They moved on.
Kevin looked at Renji.
“You do this all the time?”
Renji shrugged.
“You have three million followers.”
“Three-point-one.”
“Exactly.”
MJ snorted.
Kevin looked at her.
“What?”
“Nothing, influencer boy.”
Her own count was pushing 5.8 million, which would have made the joke ridiculous if the audience had actually wanted MJ.
Half wanted Matt.
Another chunk wanted V’ren.
Far too many wanted MJ and Kevin standing beside each other looking photogenic enough to generate several thousand theories about a relationship neither of them had.
The number irritated her more than she admitted.
Aki caught the expression.
“You don’t like it?”
“I like being famous for things I actually did.”
“That seems unreasonable.”
MJ laughed.
“Exactly.”
Renji took them into a narrow izakaya before the evening crowd completely filled it.
The chef looked at the group once, looked again, and wisely decided to treat them like customers.
They crowded around the table.
Food began arriving almost immediately.
Y’kem picked up his chopsticks as naturally as he breathed.
V’ren cuisine had solved the same utensil problem independently. Most higher-status food arrived prepared for chopsticks, already cut, folded, sliced, or arranged into manageable bites. Soups and keft porridge took spoons. Lower down the social scale, practical knives, forks, stews, and one-bowl meals became more common because preparation time mattered more than presentation.
Kevin watched Y’kem take the first piece.
Then used his own.
Y’kem stopped.
Kevin lifted a second bite.
MJ saw the look pass between them.
“Oh, hell.”
Renji looked up.
“What?”
“She noticed.”
“Noticed what?”
MJ pointed with her chopsticks.
“The blond Boston boy is about to make the alien feel inadequate.”
Y’kem studied Kevin’s hand.
“You have used these extensively.”
Kevin shrugged.
“We ate Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese. Boston.”
MJ picked up a piece of chicken perfectly competently.
Kevin glanced over.
Her grip was correct.
A little tighter than his.
He smiled.
She narrowed her eyes.
“Say it and die.”
“I said nothing.”
“You were thinking with your face.”
Aki laughed.
MJ switched to Japanese and said something considerably earthier.
The chef barked a laugh from behind the counter.
Kevin looked at Renji.
“What did she say?”
Renji considered the diplomatic implications.
“You should probably remain ignorant.”
MJ grinned and ate the chicken.
Y’kem lifted another bite, matching Kevin’s movement almost precisely.
Kevin noticed.
Y’kem noticed Kevin noticing.
Neither said anything.
MJ groaned.
“Now they’re competing.”
“We are not,” Kevin said.
“We are comparing technique,” Y’kem said.
“Pilots.”
Aki leaned toward MJ.
“You are also a pilot.”
“That is how I recognize the disease.”
Renji eventually led them through the rear of the establishment.
A narrow passage opened unexpectedly into a small walking garden.
The noise of the city fell away.
A table had been set beneath the trees.
Adults looked up.
Sael’s father was among them, the epidemiologist recognizable from earlier briefings. Beside him sat a House T’all man in his thirties, a distant cousin Y’kem knew well enough that his posture changed by half an inch.
Three other V’ren men sat with them.
Four humans represented Tokyo.
Two more were from Missouri.
MJ’s eyes went immediately to their lapels.
Not the normal mark.
Security Services.
The tension she had not realized she was carrying eased slightly.
Matt’s people.
Good.
Introductions remained brief.
Respectful.
Y’kem exchanged formal greetings with his older cousin. Sael’s father asked whether they had eaten enough. One of the Tokyo men made the mistake of asking Kevin what he thought of Japanese transit and received a five-minute answer involving scheduling density and emergency logistics.
MJ mostly drank tea and watched.
She wondered how heavily armed the two Logistics men were.
Then wondered whether either of them was carrying as much as she was.
Probably.
Her own arrangement was essentially Matt’s.
The visible knife was only the part people were supposed to see.
Kevin, meanwhile, should never be trusted with a firearm if civilization depended upon it.
She had personally confirmed that before departure.
Her written assessment to Matt had been concise:
Not proficient in things that go bang.
Kevin could put a starfighter somewhere physics had not intended.
Give him a shotgun and a barn and the barn remained surprisingly safe.
MJ smiled into her tea.
“What?” Kevin whispered.
“Nothing.”
That worried him more.
They left through another gate.
The alley beyond twisted twice and opened into a party.
Not a nightclub.
Not exactly.
Somebody had found an unused pocket of Tokyo and decided it needed music.
Crates served as tables. Small sake sellers occupied one wall. A DJ worked beneath a temporary canopy. A karaoke stage had been assembled at the far end. Young artists, students, fashion kids, bohemians, gyaru, Lolitas, and people who had simply followed the sound filled the space.
Their television program had begun airing.
That changed things.
Several people looked from a screen to MJ.
Then from the screen to Kevin.
Then to Y’kem.
Recognition spread through the party in a ripple.
Renji grinned.
“Now it gets interesting.”
MJ looked around.
“Now?”
Aki caught her hand.
“Come on.”
She pulled MJ toward the dance floor.
MJ went willingly.
The security detail disappeared into the crowd.
MJ found two of them anyway.
Black lace.
Dark aristocratic tailoring.
A goth Lolita and her androgynous partner looked completely at home because they were completely at home.
MJ recognized them from the private briefing.
Ira Tan and Kade Mori.
Twenty-one at most.
Tokyo personnel, trained at the Singapore facility specifically to come back and work in Japan. Marmaduke security did not casually move operatives across borders. Too many governments became nervous when somebody else’s intelligence-trained personnel started wandering around.
Matt and Gary had recruited these two years before.
MJ had never met them.
She knew their faces anyway.
Matt’s bodyguard had made sure of that during the security briefing.
As if Matt Marmaduke really needed a bodyguard.
Kade caught MJ looking.
A tiny nod.
MJ returned it.
She looked at Ira’s dress, then Kade’s coat.
Real couple.
Real cosplay.
Real day job.
She wondered again how much hardware they had hidden under all that fabric.
Probably enough.
Aki tugged her back toward the music.
“You are working.”
“I am not.”
“You are scanning.”
“That’s different.”
“It looks exactly the same.”
MJ gave up and danced.
Y’kem lasted perhaps four minutes before the schoolgirls found him.
There were five of them, uniforms technically intact but modified enough for the skirts to suggest their school administrators had lost the war hours ago.
They surrounded him.
Y’kem looked at Kevin.
Kevin raised both hands.
“You’re on your own.”
One girl took Y’kem’s hand.
Another pointed toward the floor.
Y’kem understood.
The girls did not understand him at all.
They saw tall, handsome, alien pilot.
They had no idea how comprehensively uninterested he was in what they were imagining.
He danced anyway.
Politely.
Well.
They loved him.
Kevin took pictures.
MJ looked over from Aki’s shoulder and laughed.
Y’kem caught her eye.
She gave him a cheerful thumbs-up.
He gave her a look that promised retaliation.
Kevin stayed near the edge with his phone.
A woman with heavily bleached hair and the deliberate anti-perfection of an older gyaru stopped beside him.
She looked about twenty-four.
Kevin looked fourteen because he was fourteen.
She treated him accordingly.
“You’re Wood.”
“Kevin.”
“Aya.”
She watched him take another picture of Y’kem and his delighted entourage.
“You don’t seem jealous.”
“Of that?”
She laughed.
“Of the attention.”
Kevin looked across the party.
MJ was dancing with Aki.
Y’kem was being mobbed by girls.
Kevin checked the picture he had just taken.
“I’m good.”
“Girlfriend?”
“Mall.”
The answer came immediately.
Aya noticed that.
“She isn’t here?”
“Missouri.”
“And you’re here.”
“Yes.”
She looked toward the dance floor again.
“Plenty of people would use that as an excuse.”
Kevin shrugged.
“They aren’t Mall.”
That apparently satisfied her.
The music shifted.
Aya held out a hand.
“Dance?”
Kevin sighed theatrically.
“You have no idea what childhood trauma you are about to uncover.”
She laughed.
He took her hand.
His posture changed almost immediately.
Not flashy.
Just correct.
Aya noticed within seconds.
“You know ballroom.”
Kevin groaned.
“My sister wanted lessons when she was six. Classes required partners. I was eight.”
“Your idea?”
“My mother volunteered me.”
Aya laughed.
“You rebelled?”
“I was eight. My mother owned the car.”
That made her laugh harder.
“Polly loved it?”
“Every minute.”
“And you?”
“I learned posture.”
They finished the dance.
Aya released him with a small bow.
“Tell Mall Tokyo behaved.”
Kevin grinned.
“I will.”
Across the floor, MJ had watched enough of that exchange to feel something sharp and irrational move through her.
Not because she wanted Aya.
Not because she wanted Kevin the way people insisted she did.
Kevin was a boy.
That was still a fairly substantial obstacle.
But he was hers.
Not romantically.
Not exactly.
The possessiveness arrived anyway.
Aki leaned closer.
“You stopped dancing.”
MJ looked at her.
Then at Kevin.
Then back at Aki.
A decision happened.
“Let’s make us famous.”
Aki barely had time to ask what that meant before MJ kissed her.
It was brief enough to disappear into the noise, bold enough that Aki stared at her afterward.
MJ smiled.
Aki smiled back.
The music changed.
MJ froze.
Even under the EDM mix, the voice was unmistakable.
Matt.
His recent barefoot livestream performance of Tom Jones’s version of Kiss, now apparently converted into club music.
MJ closed her eyes.
Aki leaned closer.
“What’s wrong?”
“That man.”
“Matt Marmaduke?”
“Two weeks ago he does one stupid barefoot concert, gets over a billion plays, and now I can’t even hide in a back-alley party in Tokyo.”
“Not stupid,” Kevin called.
MJ turned.
Kevin was already pulling out his phone.
“I was there too.”
“You livestreamed it.”
“Of course I livestreamed it.”
Renji glanced at Kevin’s account.
Then stopped.
“Three-point-one million?”
Kevin shrugged.
A couple of nearby kids nodded with newfound respect.
MJ folded her arms.
“Cute.”
Kevin looked at her.
“What?”
“Five-point-eight.”
Renji turned.
Aki whistled.
MJ looked less pleased than she should have.
“They don’t want me. They want Matt, V’ren, or me standing next to him.”
She pointed at Kevin.
“Or him.”
Kevin smiled.
“I’m delightful.”
“You’re marketable.”
“Even better.”
The DJ leaned over.
“Do you have more Marmaduke?”
MJ slowly smiled.
Kevin saw the expression.
“Oh no.”
She opened a folder.
The collection had been circulating locally for years, badly labeled clips from Duke’s Bar, family cookouts, farm repairs, porch nights, barn parties, and people pointing cameras at Matt when he did not realize anybody cared.
MJ sent twelve files.
“For the pleasure of chaos.”
The DJ stared at the titles.
Marvin Gaye.
The Black Crowes.
Maroon 5.
They Might Be Giants.
Weird Al.
Eminem.
Garth Brooks.
Backstreet Boys.
Norah Jones.
OneRepublic.
Bob Marley.
Chuck Berry.
His eyes widened.
MJ pointed at him.
“Save Chuck Berry for last.”
“Why?”
“You’ll understand.”
The crowd loved Sexual Healing.
They loved Hard to Handle more.
Particle Man made half the art students lose their minds.
When the old recording of The Real Slim Shady started, Kevin turned slowly toward MJ.
“He knows the whole thing?”
“Unfortunately.”
Matt oil-streaked and rolling out from beneath farm machinery during Friends in Low Places nearly destroyed the party.
Then came one of the wrong files.
MJ heard the river before she recognized it.
She went still.
The video appeared on the wall.
Arrow Rock Park.
Tom’s Bait and Tackle sat off to one side. Smoke drifted from the barbecue pits. The river moved behind everything.
Matt sat with a guitar.
MJ was little enough to sit on his lap.
His hand covered hers around the pick, guiding her through the strum while he sang Redemption Song.
MJ stared.
“That isn’t the one I meant to send.”
Aki looked at her.
Nobody laughed.
The party quieted almost by accident.
On the wall, Matt adjusted MJ’s hand.
She tried again.
The chord rang.
The little girl on the screen grinned.
Current MJ covered her face.
“Oh, shit.”
Kevin stood beside her.
He did not tease.
Y’kem had escaped his admirers long enough to watch too.
For a minute the three of them simply stood together beneath the projection.
Then the clip ended.
The party erupted.
Not loudly at first.
Then completely.
MJ looked at the DJ.
“You are never getting another file from me.”
He nodded enthusiastically while clearly not believing her.
The karaoke console saved them.
The schoolgirls seized it.
Kevin found a microphone pushed into his hand.
“I got this one,” he called.
The opening of Turning Japanese started.
Kevin stared at the girls.
They screamed with laughter.
“You picked this?”
More laughter.
He gave in.
The performance was energetic rather than great, which made it better. By the chorus half the party had joined him.
MJ leaned against Aki.
“This is going to haunt him.”
“I hope so.”
Kevin finished to applause and handed the microphone back.
The schoolgirls immediately pointed at Y’kem.
He shook his head.
They ignored him.
The opening riff of Deep Purple’s Woman from Tokyo hit the alley.
Kevin doubled over laughing.
MJ slapped the table.
Y’kem stared at his new entourage.
One of the girls offered him the microphone with both hands.
He accepted.
Then he sang.
The joke disappeared.
His voice sat lower than Kevin’s, controlled and unexpectedly rich. The girls stopped laughing long enough to actually listen.
Phones rose.
Streams opened.
The chorus hit.
The crowd exploded.
Renji looked at his screen.
Then at Aki.
Then toward the security perimeter.
“We should go.”
Aki checked her own feed.
“We should definitely go.”
MJ was laughing.
“He’s going viral.”
Y’kem handed back the microphone.
“I gathered that.”
The schoolgirls attached themselves to him again.
Kevin held up his phone.
“You are already clipping.”
Y’kem looked pained.
“Humans are extremely efficient at the wrong things.”
“Welcome to Earth.”
The party had acquired people while they were inside it.
The five schoolgirls came with Y’kem.
Kade had moved from invisible security to visible escort.
Two more local teenagers simply joined the procession because nobody had told them not to.
MJ and Aki stayed together.
Renji walked backward while checking three feeds.
Behind them, the DJ started another Bootleg Matt recording.
Kevin glanced at MJ.
“How many are left?”
She checked.
Then her expression changed.
“Move faster.”
“What?”
“The Chuck Berry one.”
Kevin understood.
“Oh.”
Y’kem looked between them.
“What is wrong with Chuck Berry?”
“Nothing,” MJ said.
“Nothing at all,” Kevin agreed.
They walked faster.
Kade looked at both of them.
“What did you give him?”
MJ took Aki by the hand.
“Nothing we need to be present for.”
They were well down the next street before My Ding-a-Ling reached the speakers behind them.
The roar from the party followed them around the corner.
Kevin nearly walked into a sign because he was laughing too hard.
Y’kem listened for several seconds.
“I do not understand.”
MJ kept walking.
“You are happier that way.”
Hotel Hiro received them with professional blindness.
The desk staff recognized MJ.
They recognized Kevin.
They certainly recognized Y’kem.
They recognized Aki immediately.
Nobody officially noticed anything.
MJ respected that.
Y’kem’s schoolgirl entourage followed him toward the elevators.
Kevin counted.
Five.
He looked at Y’kem.
Y’kem looked back.
For the first time all evening, the V’ren pilot appeared genuinely uncertain.
Kevin leaned closer.
“If you ask me to wingman this, I’m defecting.”
“I was not going to.”
“You thought about it.”
“I considered available resources.”
“No.”
The elevator opened.
The girls piled in around Y’kem.
Kevin stepped backward.
“Good luck.”
Y’kem gave him a look of betrayal as the doors closed.
Aki laughed.
MJ caught her hand.
“You coming?”
Aki glanced toward the desk.
The staff became even more interested in their paperwork.
“Yes.”
Kevin watched the two of them disappear toward another elevator.
Then looked at the number over Y’kem’s.
Five girls.
His roommate.
No chance of sleep.
Worse, Y’kem might actually ask him for help.
Kevin turned around.
The ground-floor 7-Eleven was still open.
Of course it was.
He headed toward it with his phone in one hand, already sorting pictures for Mall.
Behind him, Tokyo kept pretending it had seen nothing.
