“Hello out there, my good Metroslaves! I do hope you’re enjoying this fine day in the greatest city on this brown earth! First, the weather! You can expect a solid dose of smog, with visibility at five hundred metres at floor seventy, two hundred at fifty, and if you’re below that God save your souls ‘cause you’ll get mugged and not even see the faces of them that robbed ya. As for traffic, gridlock is the name of the game! Yours truly prefers walking, though the MetPo have been keeping my paunch down through their constant efforts to keep me off the air. Now, for the news…”
Mike Lee took off his headset and grinned at the man in the makeshift soundproof box across the room. Of course, his face was concealed, no one referred to him by anything but the pseudonym ‘Rhyme’, and Mike was sure that the protective technologies the man was wearing could stop a missile, so he truly could claim to know very little about the man other than that he and his co-host ‘Reason’ were the most inspiring people he’d ever met. Since he’d met them, his life had gained purpose, a goal, and most importantly had seen him able to laugh again. As the man in the studio continued to wax eloquent into the little portable sound set while simultaneously winking and making wild gesticulations as if he was presenting to an entire audience, Mike once again realized how amazing the man’s eyes were. Surely, they couldn’t be natural, but within the softly glowing electric blue orbs with overly large irises Mike could see no telltale trace of circuitry that usually betrayed eye implants. He chalked it up to another mystery and moved on with his work.
Mike’s job was two-fold. On one hand, he was an editor, monitoring both Rhyme and Reason during their broadcasts to ensure that they did not make any mistakes or reveal sensitive information that would jeopardize their base of operations. He very rarely had to cut broadcasts nowadays, but most of the time listened anyway both for safety purposes and because he genuinely enjoyed the lighthearted sarcasm and satire that made the living hell of Metropolis seem suddenly manageable. His other job, however, was to be a vanisher: essentially, he made sure that when they entered or left a location absolutely no danger of accidental discovery existed and no evidence would be left behind. He was the fourteenth such individual to play the role for Rhyme and Reason, but had by far been there the longest. All of his predecessors had died, at the hand of one faction or another, in increasingly inventive ways. It was the risk Mike took, but he was also the best. His methods were simplistic, and rarely involved the use of much technology at all: instead he managed people, people who never knew what was going on right inside the door they were guarding. And once they left, those people never imagined that anything more exciting than an illicit drug deal was going on. Desperation made for the most loyal servants, far more reliable than machines. That was truly the greatest irony of the modern age.
Still, Mike knew as little about the operation as most people; anything additional that he knew had mostly been picked up from accidentally overheard conversations and sheer exposure from three months of performing this job. He often wondered after each job why he was contacted again and again to set up the next location, but he welcomed each handwritten note like he welcomed a solid meal. It kept him going, and he thanked all the non-existent higher powers for it and prayed to them that it would continue, for all the good it would do. Truly, the only person who knew anything about the operation sat across the room from him, their tiny body completely concealed by a cloak and eyes closed in silence as they meditated. Rhetoric was their given moniker, and Rhetoric managed everything. And in three months, Mike had never been able to find out Rhetoric’s gender. They never spoke, barely moved, and rarely even opened their eyes, the only body part that Mike ever saw of any of the three. Yet every letter and instruction he received was written in gorgeous handwriting in a fiendishly difficult code that shifted every time and signed with Rhetoric’s characteristic flourish. Part of the challenge was simply figuring it out each time he got a message: many times those messages said nothing important at all, and were clearly just decoys.
Mike sighed; he knew Rhetoric was the reason the operation had managed to continue for so long, but their perfect silence made him feel deeply uncomfortable during the long broadcasts and he only wished they would open up to him to make him truly feel like a part of the team. But then again, the trifecta of Rhyme, Reason, and Rhetoric were like deities to him. He could never imagine matching their skill and could only see himself inevitably letting them all down. And thus, he would make do with his small part and take satisfaction in doing it well. With a small groan as he stood from the leg injury he had received a week ago while fleeing the MetPo, Mike carefully put on his clean white gloves and wiped down the table he had been sitting at with chemical spray. Nothing in this small cement room would be left unsanitized, and the components of the both as well as the radio broadcaster would be melted down and dumped into the Graveyard. No risks were taken.
It took Mike around fifteen minutes to clear the room. He timed his sanitation to finish with the end of the broadcast, as he liked to listen to Rhyme sign off (though he liked Reason’s farewells much more), but he never had the chance to put the headphones back on again. Out of nowhere, a soft lilting musical voice reached his ears, and he stopped dead.
“Michael Jacob Lee. We must run.” It was genderless, and it took him a second to realize that Rhetoric had spoken. The Vanisher whirled around to see the figure, barely standing five feet tall, pointing at the door and he instinctively reached for the heavy slug rifle that he kept slung on his back at all times. This was a good instinct; the door burst open seconds later and Mike was able to unload a full round into the two thugs that broke in. He swore as he did so, feeling the recoil jolt his entire body with the force of the shots. The damned crime lord had sold him out – he knew picking a location above floor fifty was a risk, but he needed variation and so had taken the chance. The fool he had paid likely had no idea what was going on here, and no idea that he would likely be dead before the next morning. He only wanted to interrupt it and make a profit doing so. He was already moving for the soundproof booth to get Rhyme out and destroy the last evidence of their presence before leaving when the voice reached his ears again.
“No, Michael Jacob Lee. We must run.” Mike stopped in his tracks and turned. The figure had not moved, and remained pointing at the door. He looked back at Rhyme, who continued broadcasting as if nothing had happened. And then he saw the object in the man’s hand: an implosion grenade. It would completely wipe out the entire room. No evidence would remain. But… why? Mike looked in confusion around him.
“We can easily escape! I’ve covered all the bases, don’t worry. Let me get him out of here…” Mike could hear tell-tale gunfire from outside. It must come from the independent defenders he had hired fighting the crime gang… or did it? His found the wide open orbs of Rhetoric and saw that they glow a pale electric purple. He suddenly trusted them implicitly, and turned away from the booth. Rhetoric answered his unasked question before he could even begin to speak.
“You made no mistake, Michael Jacob Lee. We must run. This threat is not of your creation, or a result of your failure. We must run.” The implications of that statement registered quickly in Michael’s brain, but he did not stop to consider them. He grabbed the pouch that contained his personal effects and moved for the door, but not before he heard Rhyme’s characteristic farewell echoing through the headset he had left on the table.
“Fare thee well, Metroslaves, I miss your silence and I welcome your violence!” The broadcast suddenly cut back to the static as Rhyme turned off the equipment which was quickly replaced by a popular music station crowding the same frequency. And then, Mike saw something he never wanted to see again: Rhyme exited the booth, reached up to his eyes, and pulled out what looked like a hellish contact. But what was more horrifying was the bloody mess that was left behind. Blindly Rhyme reached out towards Rhetoric with a growl of pain, and Rhetoric’s small hand took them and tucked them into a pocket. Then, Rhyme said the last words Mike would ever hear him say:
“Bye, Mikey. Fuck ‘em up good for me, it’s been a fun time. You’ll have to carry Rhetoric, ‘cause Rhetty doesn’t walk fast. And never stay in the same place more than once. Ever. Now for fuck’s sake run, boy, run!”
Again, Mike didn’t bother to say a word or process what he had been told. There was simply no way to manage that, simply too many questions to ask. So Mike did what he was good at, and followed orders. He reached down, slung a surprisingly light Rhetoric onto his back, and burst out of the door at full speed, firing down the hallway as he did so. Rhetoric had been right; the heavily armed figures down the hallway were almost certainly no group he had ever seen before. They dived for cover at his shots, however, instead of firing back, which gave Mike enough time to hurl a fragmentation grenade behind him as he ran. The subsequent chaos gave him more than enough time to get into the midst of the milling crowd of floor Fifty-Four, and by some chance he managed to not get shot while doing so. The crowd was already fleeing from the gunshots, so one strange figure entering their midst was not unusual. Or at least, that’s what Mike assumed.
“GET THE SERVANT AND THE PRODIGY.” The booming voice echoed throughout the block, leaving Mike no illusions about which targets they were hunting and his own ability to hide from his pursuers. It sounded distinctly inhuman, leaving him with a deep chill down his spine that only made him hurtle even faster across the rickety platforms, walkways, and ramps that made up this part of the Shinjuku district. After one particularly sharp turn, however, the concrete wall exploded into shards behind him, showering him with shrapnel and throwing him to the floor. Rhetoric cried out in pain and rolled off of his back, their blood already visible on their clothing. And then came the explosion as Rhyme presumably detonated his implosion device, and Mike drifted into unconsciousness.
~~~~~~
Mike awoke to darkness, but in that darkness he could see. And he could hear. And the voice he heard was Rhetoric. Rhetoric spoke.
“Rhyme is dead. Long live Rhyme. The Trifecta survives. You are the 100th Rhyme, Michael Jacob Lee, just as I am the 100th Rhetoric and Reason is the 100th of her line. We are the last of the Trifecta, Rhyme, and we must succeed.”