The industrial district of Koza was a graveyard of rust and neon. It was a place where old tech went to die, piled high in scrapyards that smelled of ozone and wet cardboard.
Ren's van wove through the maze of shipping containers, finally skidding to a halt inside a massive, converted warehouse. The heavy steel shutters rolled down behind them with a thunderous crash, plunging the space into the dim, flickering light of hanging halogen bulbs.
The engine cut. Silence returned, but it was brittle, ready to snap.
"We're clear," Ren announced from the driver's seat, checking a tablet mounted on the dashboard. "Jammers are active. Thermal masking is on. If those drones are still scanning, we just look like a pile of scrap metal."
David kicked the passenger door open, limping out. He looked older in this light, his face gray with exhaustion. "Don't get cocky. Chimera has tech that makes the Red Shield look like a high school science club. We have an hour, maybe two, before they switch to ground sweeps."
In the back of the van, the atmosphere was suffocatingly intimate.
Kai slid the door open. He reached out a hand to Saya. "Come on. It's not the Ritz, but it's safe."
Saya took his hand. Her legs were still shaky, her muscles protesting the sudden movement after decades of stillness. She stepped down onto the oil-stained concrete, looking around. The garage was cluttered with drone parts, half-built engines, and servers humming in racks against the wall. It was a world she didn't recognize.
"Where are we?" she asked, her voice still raspy.
"Ren's workshop," Kai said, gesturing to the boy who was currently hopping out of the driver's seat. "My place is compromised. This is... well, this is the backup plan."
Saya looked at Ren. The boy froze, holding a tablet to his chest like a shield. He stared at her with wide, awestruck eyes.
"Hi," Ren squeaked. He cleared his throat, trying to sound deeper. "I mean—hello. Uh. Welcome back?"
Saya tilted her head, squinting at him. "You look like Riku."
The name hung in the air like smoke. Kai winced, a flicker of old pain crossing his face, but he smiled sadly. "He does, doesn't he? But Riku... Riku didn't have that grease stain on his forehead."
"I'm Ren," the boy said, stepping forward cautiously. "I'm... Kai's son."
Saya blinked. She looked at Kai, then back at the teenager. The math of thirty years finally settled in her mind. Kai wasn't just her brother anymore. He was a father. He had lived a whole life—a life she had missed.
"Son," she repeated, testing the word. She reached out, hesitating, then touched Ren's shoulder. He was solid, warm, and alive. "You have his eyes."
Ren turned bright red. "And you... you look exactly like the pictures. It's kinda freaky. Good freaky! Just... wow."
A heavy thud from the van drew their attention.
Hagi had stepped out. He didn't take anyone's hand. He moved with a rigid, terrifying stiffness, like a marionette whose strings were pulled too tight. He took two steps and leaned heavily against the side of the van, clutching his chest.
"Hagi!" Saya moved to him instantly, her fatigue forgotten.
"I am... functional," Hagi wheezed. He tried to stand straight, to assume the posture of the perfect Chevalier, but his knees buckled.
David was there in a second, shoving a crate under Hagi just as he slid down. "Sit down before you fall down, you stubborn idiot."
Hagi sat, his head bowing. His breathing was shallow and rapid.
"Ren, the cooler," David barked. "Now!"
Ren scrambled toward a heavy industrial fridge in the corner of the workshop. He came back running with two thick, red plastic bags. Medical-grade blood packs.
"It's O-Negative," Ren said, breathless. "We kept the stock rotated, just in case."
David snatched one bag, ripped the seal with his teeth, and thrust it toward Saya. "Drink. Your metabolism is eating itself. If you don't refuel, you'll go into shock."
Saya took the bag, but she didn't bring it to her lips. She looked at Hagi.
He was staring at the floor, his hands trembling in his lap. The purple bruising on his fingertips had spread to his knuckles. It wasn't just bruising; the skin looked translucent, crystalline, as if the blood beneath had stopped flowing and started to freeze.
"He needs it more," Saya said. She held the bag out to Hagi. "Take it."
Hagi looked up. His blue eyes were dim, the bioluminescence nearly extinguished. He looked at the blood—the life force he desperately needed. His throat worked convulsively.
"No," Hagi whispered.
"Don't be stupid," Kai snapped, kneeling beside him. "You haven't eaten in thirty years, Hagi. You look like death."
"There are... only two packs," Hagi said, his voice barely audible. He gestured vaguely to the fridge. "This is a workshop, not a hospital. That is all you have."
Ren checked the fridge. "He's right. That's the emergency stash. We have more at the Safehouse in Naha, but that's forty miles away."
Hagi pushed Saya's hand gently back toward her own chest. "You are the Queen. If you do not recover your strength, the link between us will sever. If you fall, we all fall. I can wait."
"You can't wait!" Saya cried, her voice rising. "Look at your hands, Hagi! You're crystallizing!"
"It is... temporary," Hagi lied. He forced a smile, though it looked more like a grimace of pain. "Please, Saya. Drink. If you do not, I cannot protect you. And if I cannot protect you, I have no purpose."
It was the same old argument. The same maddening, selfless devotion that had defined him for a century.
Saya glared at him, tears stinging her eyes, but she knew he wouldn't budge. He was stronger willed than any human when it came to her survival.
"Fine," she hissed. She tore into the bag and drank.
The effect was immediate. Color rushed back into her pale cheeks. Her eyes flashed a vibrant red for a split second before settling into a deep, healthy brown. Her posture straightened. The animalistic edge of her hunger receded, replaced by clarity.
She finished the bag and wiped her mouth. She handed the second bag to Hagi. "Now. Half. We share it."
Hagi hesitated.
"That's an order, Chevalier," Saya said, her voice dropping to the command tone of a Queen.
Hagi bowed his head. "As you wish."
He took the bag. He didn't drink deeply. He took small, measured sips—just enough to stop the trembling, just enough to push the purple crystallization back from his knuckles to his fingernails. He left half the bag, as she had commanded, but then he handed it back to Kai.
"Save it," Hagi whispered to Kai. "She will need it later."
Kai looked at the half-empty bag, then at Hagi's pale, sweat-slicked face. He understood what Hagi was doing. He was rationing himself to death to keep a reserve for Saya.
Kai took the bag without a word, his heart breaking.
An hour later, the tension had settled into a strange, quiet domesticity.
Ren had pulled a portable electric burner onto a workbench and boiled a pot of water. He made instant ramen—spicy miso flavor. It was a far cry from the lavish Okinawan feasts George used to cook, but the smell of the broth filled the cold garage with something resembling home.
They sat on crates and toolboxes in a circle.
Saya held the Styrofoam cup, letting the steam warm her face. She took a bite of the noodles.
"It's good," she said softly.
Kai smiled, watching her eat. "It's junk food. Don't tell David I let you eat sodium after a thirty-year fast."
David was in the corner, monitoring the police scanners. He wasn't eating.
"So," Saya said, looking at Kai. "Tell me. What did I miss?"
"Everything," Kai said, leaning back against a tool chest. "The sea levels rose a bit. Cars drive themselves now. We put a colony on Mars—it failed, but we tried. Oh, and the Red Shield... well, we got bought out."
"Bought out?"
"Private military contractors," David grunted from the corner. "Governments got tired of funding a secret war. They outsourced it. Companies like Chimera stepped in. They claimed they could 'cure' the Chiropteran threat with science. Instead, they just weaponized it."
"They hunt us," Hagi said quietly. He was sitting slightly apart from the group, his cello case (which Ren had retrieved from the van) resting against his knee. He wasn't eating noodles; he just watched the shadows. "They do not want to kill us. They want to harvest us."
"That's why we hid the tomb," Kai explained. "For twenty years, it was quiet. We thought the Chiropterans were extinct. But five years ago, Chimera started sniffing around Okinawa. They found traces of Delta-67 in the water table near the cliffs."
"Delta-67," Saya murmured. "Diva's blood."
"Yeah," Ren chimed in. He was sitting on the floor, tinkering with a broken drone. "They use it to make those soldiers. 'Synthetic Chevaliers.' But the blood degrades. It turns them into monsters eventually. They need a fresh source. A Queen."
Saya looked down at her noodles. The warmth of the cup felt distant now. "So I'm just a battery to them."
"You're family to us," Kai said fiercely. He reached out and covered her hand again. "And we're not going to let them take you. We have a boat waiting at the Naha harbor. David called in a favor. We can get you to a sanctuary in Taiwan."
"Taiwan?" Saya looked at Hagi. "Can we make it?"
Hagi looked at his hands. They were still pale, but steadier than before. "If we leave tonight. The blockade will tighten by dawn."
"Then we leave in ten minutes," David announced, standing up and checking his pistol. "Finish your soup."
Saya finished the broth in silence. She stood up and walked over to where Hagi was sitting.
"Hagi," she said softly.
He looked up. For a moment, the grim reality of 2065 faded. He looked at her with the same adoring, tragic gaze he had held in 1918, in 1972, in 2005.
"Play for me?" she asked. "Just for a minute? I missed it."
Hagi looked at the cello case. Then he looked at his hands.
If he played, the vibration might damage his brittle fingers. It would cost him energy he didn't have.
But he smiled. "For you... anything."
He unlatched the case. The familiar black cello lay inside, nestled in velvet. He lifted it out. It felt heavier than he remembered. He tightened the bow.
The garage fell silent. Even David stopped pacing.
Hagi placed the bow against the strings.
He played Prelude from Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major.
The first note was shaky, a little raspy, like a voice clearing its throat. But the second note was pure. The music swelled, filling the cold, metallic space with a haunting, wooden warmth. It was a song of memory. A song of waiting.
Saya closed her eyes, leaning her head back. For a few seconds, she wasn't a weapon, and she wasn't a target. She was just a girl listening to her Chevalier.
Ren stopped working on the drone. He stared, mouth slightly open. He had heard recordings, but this was different. You could hear the pain in the wood.
Hagi played the crescendo, his arm moving with a ghost of his old strength. But as he reached the high note, his hand spasmed.
SNAP.
The A-string broke. The sound was like a gunshot in the quiet garage.
The music stopped abruptly.
Hagi's hand froze in mid-air. A single drop of dark blood welled up on his finger where the string had whipped him.
He didn't bleed red. He bled a slow, viscous purple fluid that crystallized as soon as it touched the air.
Saya's eyes snapped open. She saw the crystal drop on the floor.
"Hagi..."
Before she could move, the lights in the garage went out.
Total darkness.
"Ren?" Kai called out, his voice tense. "Did you trip the breaker?"
"No," Ren's voice came from the dark, trembling. "The power was cut. Externally."
A red laser dot appeared on Kai's chest.
Then another on Saya's forehead.
Then a dozen more, piercing through the gaps in the corrugated steel walls, filling the dusty air with a web of lethal red lines.
"DOWN!" David screamed.
The walls of the garage didn't open. They exploded.