Anime Wars

Not rumors. Not the frightened voices flooding the emergency channels. Proof of who had attacked Kisaragi Ward and why.

If she could reach the impact site before the streets were sealed, she could record the insignia, the weapons, anything the attackers had left behind. The resistance would believe her then. So would the people who had dismissed the explosions as a border skirmish.

She reached beneath the counter and pulled out her short jacket. A compact camera was clipped inside its lining. She checked the battery, then slid a thin pry tool into her sleeve.

The back door rattled.

Mina froze.

Another impact struck somewhere beyond the shop, close enough to make the glass display cases tremble. A row of miniature combat figures toppled from the shelf. Their painted faces stared up at her through the dimness.

The back door rattled again.

“Mina!” someone hissed.

She crossed the room and lifted the latch. Jun Arata stumbled inside, soaked through, his black hair plastered across his forehead. He slammed the door behind him and leaned against it.

“They’re sweeping the ward,” he whispered.

“Who?”

“Not police. Not ours.”

Mina caught his sleeve. “Where did you come from?”

“East market. Patrols came down from the transit line.” He looked toward the shutter. “They’re wearing blank armor.”

“Blank?”

“No insignia. No unit marks. Their visors are red.” Jun’s gaze dropped to the camera beneath her jacket. “You’re going out.”

“I’m going to the blast site.”

“That’s not the same as going out. That’s walking into a military operation.”

“Then tell me what I’m supposed to do. Sit here while they erase it?”

Jun’s expression tightened. A small cut beneath his eye had begun to bleed again. “You heard the command. Everyone stays inside.”

“The command came from the same people who fired into our district.”

“You don’t know that.”

“That’s why I’m going.”

A burst of gunfire cracked outside.

Jun flinched. Mina did not. She had already heard the difference between warning shots and execution fire in the border broadcasts. These shots were controlled, three rounds at a time, moving closer along the avenue.

He caught her wrist. “Mina, listen to me. The resistance lost contact with the south cell twenty minutes ago. If you go outside, no one can pull you back.”

“Then don’t let them catch me.”

She twisted free and moved toward the narrow service corridor behind the storage racks. The shop had been built into an old transit maintenance block, and its rear stairwell connected to the elevated walkways above the ward. Most residents had forgotten the stairwell existed. Mina had not.

Jun swore under his breath and followed.

They slipped through the storage room as another announcement blared from the street.

“Curfew violation detected. Remain visible and raise your hands.”

The stairwell door groaned when Mina pushed it open. Cold concrete pressed against her shoulder. Emergency strips glowed along the steps, flickering whenever distant blasts shook the building.

Jun pulled the door shut behind them.

For several seconds, they stood in darkness, listening.

Boots passed the shop outside. A scanner chirped. Someone shouted an order. The voice was calm, almost bored.

Mina climbed.

The stairwell smelled of rust, wet stone, and old electrical wiring. Her fingers brushed the rail as she moved upward, feeling each vibration through the metal. At the third landing, a red beam slid across the narrow window.

She and Jun flattened against the wall.

A patrol craft drifted past the building, its underside packed with rotating lenses. Light spilled through the window and painted Jun’s face in strips.

“Wait,” Mina mouthed.

The craft moved on.

They reached the roof access, but the door was chained from the other side.

Jun stared at the lock. “That wasn’t here before.”

Mina pulled out the pry tool.

A heavy thud sounded below.

The patrol had entered the building.

“Faster,” Jun whispered.

“I know.”

She wedged the tool into the latch and leaned her weight against it. The metal shrieked. Below them, boots struck the stairs.

“Movement on level three,” a patrol voice called.

The latch snapped.

Mina shoved the door open. Wind tore across the roof, carrying ash from the burning market. She grabbed Jun’s jacket and dragged him outside just as red beams swept over the stairwell entrance.

They ran beneath the rooftop antennae.

Kisaragi Ward spread around them in broken layers of neon and smoke. Holographic advertisements flickered over the apartment blocks, their cheerful characters stuttering through static. One giant idol smiled down from a tower screen, her face split by a black scorch mark.

The impact site lay six blocks west, where the old freight avenue cut beneath the elevated rail.

Mina headed for the nearest walkway.

A drone rose from behind a water tank.

Its lens locked onto her.

“Curfew violation,” it announced.

Jun threw a loose metal bracket. The drone pivoted toward the movement. Mina sprinted, vaulted the low barrier, and dropped onto the maintenance walkway below. Her boots struck wet grating. Jun landed beside her hard enough to grunt.

The drone fired.

A blue pulse tore through the railing where Mina’s head had been.

“Move!” she shouted.

They raced along the walkway as more lights ignited behind them. Below, the streets had become a maze of barricades and overturned vehicles. Civilians pressed against shuttered storefronts while patrols forced them into doorways. A woman in a yellow coat screamed when a soldier shoved her to the pavement.

Mina slowed.

Jun seized her shoulder. “Not now.”

“She’s hurt.”

“And if you stop, she won’t be the only one.”

The words cut deeper than they should have. Mina kept running.

At the walkway’s end, a ladder descended into an alley. The sign above it burned in fragments, the letters NEO MART blinking on and off through smoke. Mina climbed down first. Heat rolled over her as she landed beside a collapsed vending machine.

The blast site was close.

She could hear the fire.

They moved through the alley, keeping beneath the broken cameras. Halfway down, a patrol blocked the exit. Three soldiers stood beneath a red streetlamp, rifles raised toward the avenue. Their armor was smooth and pale, without a single mark. The visors glowed crimson.

Jun pulled Mina behind the vending machine.

One soldier lifted a small device. A pulse swept across the alley.

Mina’s camera vibrated against her ribs.

The device paused.

“Signal interference,” the soldier said.

“Check the structure.”

Mina looked at Jun. His face had gone gray.

A second patrol entered from behind them.

They were trapped.

Mina’s hand closed around the pry tool. Across the alley, a maintenance panel hung loose beneath the burning sign. A bundle of cables spilled from it, sparking against the wall.

She pointed.

Jun shook his head.

Mina was already moving.

She kicked the vending machine. It toppled into the rear patrol with a crash of glass and metal. At the same instant, Jun grabbed the loose cable and slammed it against the puddled pavement.

White light exploded through the alley.

The soldiers staggered. Their visors flashed, then went dark.

Mina ran toward the avenue.

“Stop!” someone shouted behind her.

She burst through the alley mouth and saw the impact site.

The freight avenue had been torn open. A transport truck lay on its side, its armored shell split from nose to rear axle. Fires burned along the rail supports. Bodies in gray civilian uniforms lay scattered near the crater, but the attackers were already withdrawing.

A black aircraft climbed between the towers.

No markings. No lights.

Mina raised the camera and snapped three images.

The aircraft’s underside opened.

A cluster of small silver capsules dropped toward the street.

“Down!” Jun yelled.

Mina threw herself behind the wrecked truck. The capsules struck the pavement and released a shrill electronic pulse. Every screen in the district went black. The patrol drones dropped from the sky like dead insects.

Then the attackers vanished into the smoke.

Mina crawled toward the crater. The concrete was hot beneath her palms. A fractured communications case lay half-buried near the edge, its metal shell stamped with a symbol she had never seen: a narrow black circle crossed by three white lines.

She reached for it.

A hand closed around her ankle.

Mina spun and found a fallen soldier staring up through a cracked red visor. His armor was damaged across the chest, exposing a dark undersuit. He raised a sidearm.

Jun fired first.

The shot struck the soldier’s wrist. The weapon skittered away.

“Don’t,” Mina said.

The soldier’s breathing rasped through the broken visor. “You… don’t understand.”

“Then explain.”

His gloved hand twitched toward the communications case.

Mina grabbed it before he could. The case was warm, almost hot, and something inside clicked with a steady electronic rhythm.

“Who sent you?” she demanded.

The soldier laughed once. It sounded like a cough. “Not sent.”

“Then what?”

“Activated.”

His visor went black.

Mina opened the case. Inside, nestled in shattered foam, was a thumb-sized comm-chip wrapped in silver shielding. Tiny green symbols pulsed across its surface.

Jun crouched beside her. “Take it and go.”

She stared at the chip. The symbols rearranged themselves into a string of coordinates, then vanished beneath a wall of encrypted code.

“Can you read it?”

“Not here.”

A searchlight swept across the crater.

The patrols were recovering.

Mina slipped the chip into the inner pocket of her jacket. The metal pressed cold against her ribs despite the heat around them.

A loudspeaker crackled above the avenue.

“Unidentified civilians at the impact zone. Surrender immediately.”

Jun grabbed her arm. “Mina.”

She looked once more at the black aircraft disappearing beyond the towers. The attack had not been random. The explosives, the blank armor, the signal pulse, the capsules - every move had been coordinated. Someone had planned the raid down to the second.

And someone had wanted the ward blind before they left.

“They’re not raiding us,” Mina said.

Jun’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

“They’re testing something.”

The searchlight found them.

Mina shoved the comm-chip deeper into her jacket and ran.

They cut through the freight avenue as patrol fire chewed sparks from the pavement behind them. Jun limped but kept pace. Mina led him beneath the rail supports, through a drainage tunnel, and back into the forgotten stairwell behind the repair shop.

By the time they reached the third landing, the district speakers had fallen silent.

No sirens. No orders. No warning.

Only the distant crackle of burning signs.

Mina pushed open the shop door. The room was dark except for the emergency lamp above the counter. Her brother’s field watch still lay beside the clock, its second hand frozen at 21:04.

Jun leaned against the wall, breathing hard. “Give me the chip.”

“No.”

“Mina, it could be tagged.”

“It could be the only proof we have.”

“It could lead them straight here.”

She pulled it from her pocket. Green symbols crawled across its surface, reflected in the glass of the display case.

For one brief second, the encryption failed.

A single line appeared.

COMMAND NODE: UNLISTED.

Then the code sealed itself again.

Jun stared at the chip. “That’s impossible.”

“What is?”

“Every military node is registered.”

Mina closed her fingers around it.

Outside, engines began to move through the ward again. Slow. Patient. Searching.

The raid had missed her.

But the comm-chip had not.

End of chapter one. 10 more chapters and about 20,978 words in the full book.