Deliverance (Book 1)

Job Zero: BellaDelta

A rain had been trying hard to get started in the scuffed, teak-tinted skies over Tokyo bay since sundown, occasionally slicking the tarmac with light drizzle, but the usual crowd of car maniacs had nevertheless assembled in Daikoku parking area, filling the damp September air with voices, competing beats and the underlying hum, roar and growl of engines, as they did each Saturday night.

It was approaching eleven thirty, and people milled about from one pool of blitzing cold cathode light or surgical LED backwash to the next, peering at engines and sound systems, scoping out the new body kits and spoilers, exchanging news and greetings, photographing, just hanging out with their kind of weirdos. Squad cars sat prominently at the entrance and exit, their red flashers in constant motion, reminding each and every driver that they were there at police sufferance only; the highway police HQ was right there, but the cops knew full well there was nothing like the sight of a lit-up squad car to make you reconsider whatever mayhem you might be thinking of pulling. Across the parking area were knots of similar cars and knots of similar people around those, tribes within tribes; here the drift types, there the itasha enthusiasts, over here a crowd forming around a recently-arrived Ferrari Daytona, over there the bosozoku, revving their bikes in an almost masturbatory manner. The police were, as normal, keeping that bunch under particularly close watch.

Neil Goodwood was watching it all happen from an out-of-the-way spot on the second floor terrace, a large black boonie hat keeping his face in shadow and out of the drizzle at the same time. He knew where the cameras were, including the ones the cops didn't publicise, and where they pointed. Despite that, to be sure, he also wore a face mask; the one nice thing about the ubiquity of these largely useless paper masks was the constant viability of wearing something capable of defeating facial-recognition software. He wasn't alone, as many others had the same idea of getting an overview of what was going on below, but he was very much by himself.

Getting to Daikoku was hard enough without his own wheels, so Neil had needed to take a taxi out to the small artificial island in the middle of Tokyo Bay where the Bayshore Route met with one of the main arteries of southern and central Tokyo. Most places were reachable without a car, but this was like a little exclusive fortress of car people, with monolithic fences around it formed from the orbiting intersection itself, a place where the petrolheads felt, if not safe, most at home.

Every city had its natural confluence points, nooks where flotsam of a certain type tended to congregate, and this was it for Greater Tokyo petrolheads. Daikoku was a natural midpoint for everyone who heeded the call of the urban expressways. Nobody raced here nowadays, not with the cops watching; but what racing did happen was organised here, that was for sure.

Frankly, Neil was doubtful that he'd find what he needed, or rather who he needed, here tonight. There was something nasty in the air; not the weather but the ambiance, the mood of the crowd. It almost seemed personal, like people were laughing at him. Given the circumstances, he didn't want to believe that. He hadn't been out here for a long time, but everyone seemed more subdued than he remembered, even the racing types.

Most people who came here for that reason were not the sort of person who was fully at home on the road; by definition they were still dazzled by the rush of speed and the sensation of the powerful engine. Those were people who saw themselves as potential winners or losers, who thought this was about beating other drivers across a line. They were not what was needed.

But there was talk; more than a rumour, but as hard to pin down. He'd heard of someone seriously talented, who came out here, did her thing, but didn't race. Instead, at first, she compared times. Times on rainy or snowy days. Easy to say, hard to prove, one might think, but in time there were videos posted up on the net, a channel named BellaDelta, and then people started reporting seeing her; when they were out on the rainy nights, sliding all over the road in their tuned Silvias and RX7s, this white, angular flash would seem to stroll past them with a tenor growl, holding a line like a train. Someone described it as sounding 'like a pissed off cat on a motorcycle'; not the weapon of choice that most of these Wangan warriors preferred, with their bassy big bore exhausts. But she wouldn't race.