At 3:17 AM, the Asakusa warehouse district was a graveyard. The only sound was the distant hum of the city and the whisper of wind through empty alleyways. Two blocks from the target, Kenji slid a heavy, groaning manhole cover aside, revealing a dark, circular void. A blast of cold, damp air, smelling of rust and river water, rose to meet them.
Kaito and Aiko were shadows, clad in sleek, black, insulated dive suits. Their rebreather masks hung around their necks, and small, high-powered plasma cutters and other tools were secured to Kaito's harness. This was not a Yakuza operation; it was a surgical, supernatural infiltration.
Kaito checked his comms, a small, waterproof device secured against his throat. "Kenji. Seal the street. No one gets within a block of this entrance. We go dark. Aiko will be my only comms. We surface in thirty minutes, with or without the target. If we are not back in forty-five, assume the worst. Scorch the earth."
"Understood, sama. Godspeed," Kenji's voice crackled, before Kaito terminated the signal.
Kaito turned to Aiko. Her face was pale in the moonlight, her eyes wide but filled with a steel, determined light. He secured her rebreather mask over her face, his gloved fingers surprisingly gentle. He tapped his own mask. "Our comms are on a closed, internal frequency. You will be the only thing I hear. Stay focused. Stay with me."
She nodded. He descended into the darkness first, then reached up for her. Aiko took his hand and let him guide her down the iron rungs, into the black.
The tunnel was a vast, echoing concrete cavern. The water, a fast-moving black river, rushed past their feet, knee-deep at the edge. The cold was immediate and shocking, but it was the other cold that made Aiko gasp. The moment her foot touched the water, the blight's energy, a thousand times stronger than in the asylum, swarmed her.
It was a psychic scream of despair, a feeling of drowning, of being unmade. It was a thousand voices whispering failure, lonely, die.
"Aiko!" Kaito's voice snapped in her ear, sharp with alarm, as he felt her tremble. "The shield! Now!"
Aiko squeezed her eyes shut. She ignored the voices, the fear. She reached into her heart, to the golden ember the Kirin had given her. She fanned it, willed it, and unleashed it.
A soft, golden, warm light erupted from her, cutting through the oppressive, physical darkness. It wasn't a beam; it was an aura. It pulsed outwards, creating a bubble of pure, divine light around them, about six feet wide. The black, poisoned water hissed and recoiled where it touched the edge of her light, as if repelled by a holy fire. The psychic screaming in her head dulled, pushed back by the force of her will.
Kaito stared, awestruck for a single second. In the pitch-black tunnel, his partner was shining like a small sun.
"I'm okay," Aiko's voice came over the comms, shaky but strong. "I can hold it."
"Good," he said, his voice rough with emotion. He grabbed a heavy-duty carabiner from his belt and clipped a high-tensile line from his harness to hers. A physical anchor. "Don't let go of me."
They stepped off the ledge together, plunging into the center of the chest-deep, rushing current. The force was immense, but Kaito was a rock. He led the way, one hand on the rough, slimy tunnel wall, the other gripping Aiko's arm. Her light illuminated the dark, rushing water, revealing nothing but blackness and the occasional piece of city debris.
But the blight fought back. It couldn't penetrate her shield, so it attacked their minds from the outside.
A flash. Aiko saw the Kageyama thugs, their faces twisted, lunging at her. Another. She saw herself back in the convenience store, old and grey, stocking shelves in an endless, lonely loop.
"Illusions, Aiko," Kaito's voice commanded, steady in her ear. He, too, was seeing things. His mother, her face pale, walking away from him. Jiro, laughing, holding a bloody knife. "They're not real. Focus on the cold. Where is the heart?"
Aiko shut out the phantoms. She pushed her senses past her own shield, using her light like a sonar, feeling for the source of the sickness. The water was a torrent of generalized cold, but to her right... there. A single spot of absolute zero. A place where the blight was so concentrated it felt like a hole in the world.
"There!" she said, pointing. "On the right wall. Twenty meters ahead."
Kaito moved, his powerful legs pushing against the relentless current, towing her behind him. They reached the spot. Just as the blueprints had shown, the curved, iron wall of the tunnel gave way to a flat, featureless, dark concrete surface. The sub-basement. The heart of the fortress. The source of the plague.
The blight was so strong here, the water itself seemed to be boiling with cold, dark energy, slamming against Aiko's golden shield, trying to find a crack.
Kaito placed his hand on the concrete. It was supernaturally cold, covered in a thin layer of black, spiritual frost. "This is it," he said. He unhooked the plasma cutter from his harness, its high-tech form looking alien in the magical, golden light.
"Keep the shield steady," he ordered, his voice tight with concentration. "And tell me instantly if you feel anything new. I'm cutting us a door."