Eli William - Cash Crash Jubilee

Amon pulled up a cut away view of the tunnel from above, the minister’s frantically running form highlighted.

“This is getting out of hand,” said Rick, his voice funnelled out of his rod of a mouth. “We’d better call for backup.”

“Forget that,” Amon replied. “This guy’s a bureaucrat, not an athlete. Take a look already.”

The minister had gone below street level, and Amon turned the ground transparent and zoomed in. In the middle of a long stairwell shaft leading to an underground mall, he was bent over with his hands on his thighs, panting.

“Let’s move in quickly while he’s catching his breath,” said Amon.

“No good. If he hunkers down in that stairwell, and we barge in, he’s got a good shot at one of us. We don’t know for sure what kind of duster he’s packing, and we can’t take the chance that someone gets hit. I’m gonna call the ministry.”

“No! He’s wasted enough money already. We need to get him now,” Amon insisted, starting off from the streetcar.

“Wait,” said Rick, holding Amon back with a firm hand on his shoulder. “We—”

“Don’t worry. We can take care of it.”

“But—”

“We’re going in. Got it?!” Amon gave Rick a piercing look. Rick met his stare, wearing an expression of surprised indignation on his see-through bug-shroud.

In their seven years liquidating together, the two of them had always made decisions cooperatively. Rick was the details man, trawling databases for info relevant to the mission, while Amon was the strategizer, fitting plans to the situation. But their roles were fluid: Rick sometimes proposed his own strategies, and Amon uncovered useful facts. One of them seemed to always pick up on what the other missed, complementing each other perfectly. Even after his promotion to Identity Executioner, Amon had let Rick provide input as an equal, just as always. But today, something fragile had finally cracked.

After they locked eyes for a few moments, Rick’s indignant look suddenly vanished. It was replaced for a flash by the brooding sadness he often wore, before he covered it up with a businesslike deadpan, turned his eyes down in submission, and released Amon’s shoulder.

Kitao still stood on the stairs. His panting had subsided somewhat, his right hand close to the duster, his head tilted up to keep watch on the top of the stairs.

“I’ve found a route to the other side,” said Rick without a hint of resentment. “How about I go around behind him and you approach from the front?”

“Okay. But first, we’d better change our privacy settings so he can’t spot us,” to which Rick nodded.

Amon blocked Kitao from his professional profile so that his overlay could not differentiate them from anyone else, and Rick transformed instantaneously from the translucent green insect into a Fair Lady Under the Moon, indicating that he had done the same. They set off at a brisk pace into the orchid cactus crowd and split up half-way across the plaza, Rick heading for the main gates of Shibuya station, and Amon entering the tunnel beneath the train overpass where Kitao had fled.

The walkway in the tunnel was wide enough for three or four people to walk side by side. To the right was a wall flickering with crayon ad-murals. To the left, iron railing punctuated with occasional concrete pillars cordoned off traffic whipping over a road five meters below. Across this lowered road was an identical sidewalk on the opposite wall of the tunnel. Keeping an eye on Kitao through a patch of transparency that tracked him through changes of relative angle, Amon dodged sporadic pedestrians in his path. Still jogging, he wiped the sweat gathering on his brow with his suit sleeve as he came out the other side of the tunnel.

He saw the stairwell entrance; a portal in the ground surrounded on three sides by low concrete walls. Beyond the entrance, a group of Fair Ladies stood in a circle playing some sort of ImmaGame that Amon had witnessed before but didn’t know. Each player pursed their lips to blow up at a huge bubble with the words South Sea Company written on it that hovered iridescent in the moon’s warm sunlight and strobing billboard promoglow.

He selected a sign reading Do not enter! from his hard-drive, set it to stand by the stairwell entrance, and tagged on the GATA insignia—in its jagged lavender font—to ward off any passersby.

Looking through the ground, Amon saw someone at the bottom of the stairwell in the connecting corridor, which ran perpendicular to the shaft. They stood stock still on their stems, facing Kitao with a featureless bud-face. Amon guessed they had caught sight of Kitao’s duster, which was no longer covered by his shirt, apparently afraid to ascend but reluctant to take another route. The minister was facing down towards this person, and Amon could only imagine the tantalized expression his prey saw when he took a step towards them. Startled, the plant bolted frantically along the corridor out of Amon’s transparency circle and out of sight. With the target alone and looking the other way, now was the time to strike.

Amon opened up Rick’s perspective as a small window in the bottom left corner of his visual field. He was jogging through a basement passage lined with gift shops.

“When you arrive at the bottom of the stairs, set up a sign like mine. We’ve got to minimize bystanders,” voiced Amon.

“Got it.”

“I’m going in. Get in position to cover me,” said Amon, before entering the stairwell.

Seeming to sense his approach, the minister turned around.

The ceiling was conspicuously plain concrete; the steps pasted with a churning rug of hot-spring jacuzzis; red tile walls stencilled in mother-of-pearl brand names; a metal banister recommending local decogoods boutiques in radio announcer baritone. Amon descended the stairs nonchalantly, confident of his plant disguise. Kitao stared straight at him, his blood-shot eyes open impossibly wide, slack-jawed as before. Beaming a broad, twisted smile, pooling saliva almost overflowed the corners of his lower lip.

Amon’s arms hung casually at his sides, but his right-hand hovered close to his holster. Amon hated dusting bankrupts. He much preferred to cash crash them by touch, a trick only Identity Executioners could perform, but he was prepared to shoot if necessary.

With about ten stairs between them, Kitao’s eyes shifted from Amon to something behind him. Amon flicked on half rear-view, his left eye looking from the back of his head. A teenager wearing Four Elements gear was in push-up position on the sidewalk at the top of the stairs. With his head arched up, he blew up at the bubble, which had sunk dangerously close to the ground, in a desperate effort to stop it from popping. He was so low to the ground that the wriggling air pockets of his shirt brushed concrete, the flaming hat almost falling off. Amon could hear the encouraging cheers of his friends.

“I’m gonna bust in and dust him,” voiced Rick.

NO!texted Amon. NOT YET.

“What?”

THERE’S A KID BEHIND ME.Amon could avoid any dust fired by watching Rick’s screen and sidestepping his digital aimer, but the innocent youth could get hit. I’M GONNA TRY TO TOUCH-CRASH HIM. STAY PUT!

Amon ignored Rick’s grumbling and moved towards the sickly smirking bureaucrat. Only a few steps away, Amon noticed a change in Kitao’s expression, his eyes revealing a cold intensity tinged with fear. Then Amon realized something strange. He was supposed to be seeing the world through the overlay Kitao was using. Yet the kid behind him had been garbed in Four Elements. This made no sense. Unless… Amon opened Kitao’s perspective and saw himself through his target’s eyes. Amon was wearing a Liquidator uniform. Kitao had second-guessed that they would adjust their privacy settings and turned off his personalized overlay. On the public overlay, there was nowhere for Amon to hide.