Visual Kei

“Was this really necessary?” I asked as Shinji wound my hair back into a bun so tight I could feel my skin being drawn back across my features. It felt ready to tear apart.

“No,” Rei said smugly, “but it is fun for us.”

“Great,” I said, rolling my eyes. I flexed my calves to test the stability I’d have on these particular heels. They weren’t stilettos, so that was a plus. I peeked around the corner to see if I could catch another glimpse at the group of prostitutes being ushered inside the building. I could almost smell their shitty perfume from here. And could those fake eyelashes get any longer? I could see them from where we hid, which wasn’t quite a block away. Although they disappeared into the courtyard, two sentinels remained to man the outer gate. I could hear the girls’ giggling and the men’s voices rising from the court. I turned back to Rei. “You know, there were other ways of getting into the place.”

“Of course. There are always other ways,” Rei agreed. That haughty smile was becoming too common an occurrence for his face. “But this one is the easiest.”

“Easy for you to say,” I grumbled, looking down as Shinji laced up the heels.

“Go get ‘em, tiger,” Rei said, giving me a teasing half-roar, half-purr and pushing me gently out into the lane. Luckily, all the training I’d had with The Oni’s elite helped me walk semi-normally, although the shoes limited my stride somewhat. I was still clinging to the shadows, sure to stay on my toes as much as possible as I neared the guards. They were talking about when they could switch shifts to have their turns. I took a breath, held it, and expelled it. Inwardly squaring my shoulders, I stepped out into the dim light, purposefully copying the hookers’ gait. As I approached, the guards’ eyes flashed and they held up their guns to aim at me.

“Your friends are already inside,” one of them said suspiciously. He had a thick gold chain draping over his neck with a dollar sign pendant that was at least the size of my fist. I decided I’d call him Chump Change. “What are you doing lagging so far behind?”

I smiled, digging through the leather purse at my arm to producing a bottle of KY intense and tap it with a finger. “They were in such a rush to work tonight that they forgot the fun stuff, but that’s what I’m here for.”

“Should we let her in, Chuck?” the guard asked Chump Change. He shook his head, lowering his gun.

“We should have some fun with her, first. The next shift isn’t for another ten minutes. I can’t wait that long,” Chump Change said, dropping his gun on the ground as he stepped toward me. The other one dropped his gun, too, following his friend. Any human woman would probably be afraid of these brainless roid-heads, but I wasn’t too worried. Especially now that their guns were gone.

I let them come within arms’ reach, watching as Shinji and Rei’s shadows stealing across the courtyard easily. I smiled at the two guards, now unarmed. “I like to play hard to get.” Without waiting for a witless response, I roundhouse kicked Chump Change, tossing him a few feet away. I knew it wouldn’t stun him for long, so I turned on his friend, putting all my power behind a blow to the chest. I heard a satisfying crack as his sternum fractured and he crumpled a foot or two away. Then I returned to Chump Change, seeing blood trickling down his temple, where a vein throbbed angrily under his skin. He looked up at me almost blearily, his eyes tearing up in fear.

“Please don’t kill me!” he whispered, his voice choking up. I shook my head, clicking my tongue.

“It’s nothing personal, Chump Change.”

I left him tied to a fence with his shirt as a gag and his pants as his bonds. But hey, at least he was alive. And he still had his blingage.

“You are so getting it when we get back,” I snarled to Rei when I’d finally caught up to them in the passage. He chuckled into his hand and led me forward in the darkness. My eyes hadn’t adjusted, but I knew that Rei’s didn’t need to. Maybe Shinji’s didn’t, either. I clasped his hand for moral support. Soon, there was a dim yellow light up ahead. I focused on it. When we reached it, Rei stopped us both and we waited for a moment before the passage burst into dim grays and silvers. He had opened a door to a warehouse stacked high with some kind of crates. I stepped inside behind them, grateful that there was some light for me to see by.

But I hated wide-open spaces, so it wasn’t much better. I shivered a little, sticking close by the guys. I could see my breath here, and the stupid hooker disguise wasn’t much help in staying warm. Rei handed me his sweatshirt and I zipped it up all the way, my hands withdrawing up the sleeves like turtles. Rei and Shinji kept their eyes forward, always looking ahead, but I stared at the metal storage containers in wonder.

“What do you think they’re keeping here?” I asked, my teeth chattering despite the fading warmth of the sweatshirt.

“It’s hard to say,” Rei responded idly, unfazed by the cold. “At this temperature, it could be people.”

“People? You mean that this is like a… refrigerator for humans?”

He shook his head. “I doubt they would store humans in here. It would be pointless. But I could think of a few nonhumans they might keep lying around.”

“Why would they do that? How could anything live in here?”

“I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of science fiction movies, right Alice?” Shinji got a curious look on his face, almost puzzled. “I guess it’s kind of like stasis. They’re lying dormant right now, sleeping for lack of a better term. Their heartbeat is so slow that they need far fewer nutrients to live than if they were conscious. The hibernation keeps them mostly preserved and intact for whenever someone would want to wake them.”

“But who would they keep in stasis?”

“Dangerous people,” Shinji answered solemnly. “Criminals and killers. And heroes.”

I looked up at the huge, steel crates. They looked more like trailers that were used to transport goods from city to city, rather than chambers for stasis. Some had a thin layer of frost collecting on the outside. I didn’t want to envision people’s bodies lying in them. I rubbed my arms, trying to ignore the gooseflesh as I followed Rei.

When we reached the next door, Rei opened it much more quickly, and I was grateful to be out of the freezer. Still, I shivered a little in the sweatshirt before my body became regular temperature again. Rei purposefully followed a few winding hallways, turning quickly and fluidly as if he’d grown up in this base. I grew nervous as we passed thick wooden doors, although I couldn’t hear any voices. I hoped there weren’t people inside.

When we reached the end of an empty hallway, Rei turned the corner stopping in front of the first door. My heart thumped loudly as I watched him work on the lock. Was this Kiiro’s room?

The lock clicked softly and he stood, pulling open the door. It led to another hallway. I glanced around Rei. It looked to go on for miles without change. Doors lined the corridor, what looked like thousands of doors. And there was one that was detached from the others, at the very end of the hallway. Of course, that had to be Kiiro’s.

Rei began to lead me down the hallway. I glanced in the windows of the doors as we passed, at all the strange prisoners being kept here. What had they done? We passed a vampire whose skin was marble white and harsh, black-purple veins crossed her face and hands. Her hungry, all-white eyes rolled freely across the room as she clutched a bloated, strangely colored lump in her arms. Upon closer inspection, it was a decomposing corpse. A baby. She rocked back and forth with it, her lips moving quickly as she talked to herself, or sung. I looked away, wanting to gag and cry at once. I wanted to rush to rescue Kiiro and leave at once. Shinji’s hand brushed mine and he looked at me with pity. I felt his mind saying softly, let’s go.

I didn’t look into the cells anymore. I stared straight ahead, my eyes on my goal. We finally reached it, and I felt a tingling wave crash through my body as I realized that all that stood between me and him was this metal door.

Rei said softly, “That’s Kiiro’s room.”