Ninja Girl
Chapter Twenty Three

For a long time, Nick remained standing in the same position. All will to do anything else had been drained from him, so he just stood there, silent and still like a statue. Finally, with exaggerated movements as though even the tiniest motion was a struggle, Nick made his way to the nearby boxes and sat down.

He tried to eat, but despite the hunger that should have been there the very thought of food just seemed completely unappealing. He poked at the sushi for a bit with his chopsticks, and then with a sigh of defeat laid his chopsticks down and leaned back against another box.

A lethargy settled over Nick, and he found himself indifferent to the idea of anything. So he simply sat there for a long time, unmoving, staring off into a single spot. After what seemed like hours he finally stirred and decided to take Anya’s advice and look through more of the files.

For a short while he clicked through various screens apathetically, not really motivated to pay much attention to what he was looking at. After about an hour he realized he had not really read any of it, and decided to take another crack at eating.

Returning to the food, he found attempting to eat with the chopsticks too difficult, so he dug around in the bag until he found a fork. Normal utensil in hand, he finally began eating. Despite expecting to want to devour the food, he found himself forced to eat slowly. He was so hungry now that the food was actually making him a little sick. About half way through his meal he set the food down, bent over, and put his head in his hands.

In this past ninety-six hours, this was the longest he had been by himself without having a mission to complete. Now it was just him, cold Chinese food and sushi, and his thoughts.

He would have to get back to his life. That was what Anya had told him. What was his life? Why had he joined Anya on this fruitless crusade? What really had been his goal? Was all he wanted just to have the beautiful ninja girl fall for him? Did he really believe that was even possible?

Nick got up and started pacing.

With Anya around, everything had happened so quickly that he had never really stopped to think about what he was doing or why he was doing it. When they burned down his home, shouldn’t he have just gone to the police? What was he going to do now? How was he going to show up anywhere and explain how, and why, he had been gone for four or five days?

And even once he did, how was he going to go back to living a normal life after this?

Inevitably, Nick’s thoughts turned back to Anya and the danger she was currently facing. How could they have left things like this? Now he would never know if she made it out alive. He would never know if she achieved her goal of bringing vengeance down upon Ryerson and Kokatsu or if she ended up another trapped lab rat for their sick experiments. He would never know if she made it home, and even if she did he would never know if her village chose to punish her or not for leaving.

“Why does it matter?” Nick wondered aloud. The empty warehouse did not answer.

But why did it matter? Why was her well-being so important to him? Why was he just as concerned, maybe even more concerned, about what happened to her than what happened to him? He had known her for approximately four entire days, and in that time she had barely been anything more than tolerant towards him. She had even threatened to kill him at a rate of about once per day. Why did he care so much if she was okay?

Nick sat down in front of his laptop and let his head fall onto the box that served as its current makeshift desk. He let out a groan of frustration and closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, the ache in his head, neck, back, and legs told him he had fallen asleep. He moaned and sat up. Squinting, he checked the time on his laptop and saw that only a few hours had passed. He rested his elbow on the box and leaned his head into his hand while he considered if he should just go ahead and lay down to sleep through what little remained of the night. He continued staring at the time, as if expecting it to give him an answer.

His eyes narrowed. Next to the time was the date, and something about it looked off to him. He squinted at it for a long time, uncertain of what the problem could be. It was definitely the correct date. So why did something seem wrong?

Nick’s eyes wandered across the screen, coming to rest on the open file folder it displayed. Earlier he had set the files to display from newest to oldest, probably in the hopes that newer files would be more relevant. The files were listed in columns divided by name, file type, file size, and date modified. The two files Anya had obtained the addresses from were listed at the top. That’s when he saw it, there, in the date modified column.

The dates were from the day before.

But… that was impossible. All the files had been obtained three days ago, almost forty-eight hours before the timestamp on them. Unless…

Nick’s gaze dropped to his flash drive. Only, it wasn’t his flash drive. It looked like his flash drive, and without looking closely at it he would have gone on assuming that it was his flash drive. But it wasn’t. It was longer, bulkier.

A thought burned through his brain like a bolt of lightning, and suddenly Nick understood what had happened. He jumped to his feet, his face locked in an expression half way between horror and understanding.

It was a trap.

Anya and Ryoichi both were walking straight into traps that Ryerson had set. Ryerson had known the whole time about the computer and the flash drive. Hell, the phony flash drive had been plugged into the computer ever since he had woken up in that room with Holly. She had been the one to put it into the computer. She must have hoped he would never bother to double check it. It wasn’t a flash drive at all, it was some sort of remote networking device that probably worked over a cellular network. Which meant they probably had its exact location as well.

Nick nervously grabbed at his hair. “Oh, shit!” Turning, he ran from the room as fast as he could move.

A moment later, he returned to copy down the addresses from the computer, and then once again ran from the room.

As he ran, he repeatedly checked the addresses. If his memory served him correctly, then the building that Anya had gone to, the one on eighty-third street, was going to be the first one he could reach. That was just fine with him.

He reached the building in just under a half hour. Day was breaking and the streets were beginning to fill up with people. Nick tried to remember everything he and Anya had done at the Teller building before breaking into it. He stopped across the street, leaning up against a wall nonchalant, and stared across to the lobby. This one was a much smaller lobby, just a small room with a security guard at a desk that opened to a hallway lined with elevators. If he was going to get inside, he needed a way past the security guard.

Next Nick circled the building. Just like at the Teller building, there was no fire escape on this building. Nick wondered how that was even legal. Jumping across from another building also was out of the question. All of the buildings around it were shorter by a fairly large margin. Even the one across the street was a floor or two shorter, and the street between them was significantly wider than the one that had been in front of Teller Communications. If he had jumped, his best hope would have been to reach some flag poles that were a little over half way up the building. Even if he did somehow magically manage to reach those from jumping across the street, and somehow managed to grab onto one, and somehow managed to keep the force of his momentum from tearing him apart, he still would have to replace some way to get inside.

Around the back of the building, some employees were using key cards to let themselves into a rear entrance. This gave Nick an idea. He started to head over to the building, but then thought better of it. He realized he looked a mess, and if he was caught inside the building and forced to identify himself, he would have no answer. At least, not one that wouldn’t get him immediately evicted or detained.

Nick headed back the way he had come. He had seen a clothing store on his way in and so he headed back to it as quickly as he could.

Inside, he found a nice pair of black slacks and a button down shirt that would serve his purposes. Then, for good measure, he grabbed a pair of designer jeans and a t-shirt and headed into the dressing room. Nick quickly donned the slacks and the button down shirt, making sure to remove all stickers and tags from it as he went. This was a nice shop in the nicer part of town, so they had not really bothered with any of the usual anti-theft tags.

Once dressed, Nick carefully hung his old clothes on the now empty hangers that were originally for the clothes he was now wearing. He then threw the jeans and t-shirt that he selected over his arm, holding them like he was planning to bring them into the changing room. Carrying his old clothes out at arm’s length, he marched up to the first desk he found.

The woman behind the counter looked up at him and smiled, but her face quickly dropped to a frown when she saw what he was holding.

“Uh,” Nick said, waving his old clothes, “I just found these in the dressing room. I think somebody left them there?”

The woman’s frown deepened. “We don’t sell clothes like that,” she said.

“I know. That’s… kinda why I thought you’d wanna know.”

The woman gave him a quizzical look, but that quickly turned into realization and then concern. “Oh no,” she said, and took the clothes from him by the hanger and hurried away.

Nick immediately set aside the clothes he had been carrying. Then he casually reached over the counter and unhooked the phone. Tucking it under his arm, he turned and walked out of the store.