The Last Ronin returns as a gritty crime thriller — here’s a preview

There’s a familiar clank that comes from everywhere and nowhere. An eerie tingle crawls up his spine.

It’s a sound he hasn’t heard in years. Not since he lost his family. The sound of an approaching mouser. Of many approaching mousers. Dread rises. When he moves, it’s through molasses. The rhythmic clank-clank-clank gets louder. The floor vibrates. He feels the swarm before he sees it and flashes to metallic jaws mindlessly chomping. He has seen them inflict carnage in his past life: the two-legged automatons tearing limbs from bodies, leaving tendons dangling like wet ropes. Each one a mechanized shark attack.

Ronin draws his tonfa and drops into a fighting stance. His knees pop.

Scores of chihuahua-sized robots burst through the shelves, jaws clanking, metal teeth shining. Books fly from their perches like stunned birds. For a split second he is rooted to the floor. Something’s wrong. The robots are coming at him from above. An attack formation that should not be possible.

“These mousers can fly, you gotta move!”

Radiant light flashes. A blast of concentrated heat singes his elbow. He dives for the floor, rolls out of the way as little pockets of energy burst around him. His left shoulder explodes with pain as it’s grazed by the energy pulse. His mind races, lands on upgraded weapons systems, laser beams. Stockman has been busy. The atrium’s behind him, with its free fall into open space. Bad move to let the mousers herd him over the edge. All he can do is head for the stacks, into the swarm, staying low, knees screaming. Beams carom off the metal shelves, punch smoking holes in books. Steel jaws catch the hem of his cloak and shred the fabric. He scrambles behind a row of dusty encyclopedias. With his back to the leather-bound tomes, he draws his tonfa. On both batons he thumbs a pair of hidden switches. A mouser tears into volumes A through J. He can smell oil in its jaws. He flips the switches. A silent wave of energy ripples out from the pulse generators inside the tonfa. He feels an itch behind his teeth. A moment later, the clang of metal cascades throughout the library. Mousers hit the floor like a hundred dropped bowling balls.

Ronin lets out a breath. One of the dead mousers rolls to a stop at his feet. He scans the dual spikes jutting up from its bottom lip, the four squat piggish limbs, the antenna for a tail. His eyes go to the ceiling. How many more stories are there in this infernal tower? Blood leaks from torn skin where the laser grazed his shoulder. He pushes himself to his feet with a groan and works his way down the stacks. At the end of the row is a large reading nook crammed with beanbag chairs and stuffed animals. He tries to imagine the children of the tower, offspring of Foot City’s one-percenters. In a corner of the ceiling, a security camera looks on impassively. Ronin stares into the lens and flips it off. Next to the poster is a long bank of floor-to-ceiling windows. He tries to figure out how high he’s climbed, how many more floors left to go. He finds himself staring at a beanbag chair. A quick rest won’t hurt. He could just sit for a minute or two—

Heavy steps sound from behind him. Ronin takes a breath, lets it out. A hulking shadow is reflected in the glass.

Not good.

He turns to behold a no-necked cyclopean monster emerging from between the stacks. Bipedal, with a gorilla-sized body made from that pseudo plastic polymer and a single red eyeball for a head. Some kind of lens with a dark pupil at its center dilates, taking the measure of Ronin. He scans it in turn for vulnerabilities and finds none. Its joints are armored, its weak spots protected. His brothers are quiet.

Ronin stows the tonfa and draws the katana. The blade is crusted with blood. How many dead soldiers did he leave in his wake? How many are still ahead? He does not feel like himself. He does not feel like anyone at all.

The robot charges. Its legs move like pistons, driving its big body straight toward Ronin. He sidesteps, using the giant’s momentum against it. Becoming part of the flow of its attack, driving his sword into an armored clump of wire where arm meets torso. The sword glances off hard polymer. Ronin spins as the machine moves past. The machine is faster. Ronin leans back as a forearm as big as his head misses him by an inch. With two hands on the hilt he drives the sword toward the same armpit. This time he strikes from underneath, thrusting upward. This time the sword cuts deep.

Sparks fly. The robot staggers, mimicking dizziness.

“You tweaked its balance,” a ghost says. “It’s going down!”

The behemoth reels like a punch-drunk boxer. Its whirling arms sweep board games and action figures and stuffed animals off a shelf, metal claws tearing a divot out of the drywall and shredding a poster of a squirrel sleeping on a stack of books. The black pupil in the red orb dilates madly.

Ronin steps back and lowers the blade. The sight of the hulking mouser destroying itself gives him a rush of adrenaline.

He looks into the security camera. “This the best you got?”

In the space of a single second, the gorilla android regains motor control and springs forward with astonishing quickness. Ronin’s instincts take hold. He ducks, whirls, dodges—but he’s not fast enough. The robot’s heavy arm is wrapped around his neck. The metal torso spins, wrenching Ronin off his feet. He twirls through the air fast enough to feel g-forces pressing against his body. His legs swing like deadweight. His fist hits polymer and pain rockets up his forearm. The robot barrels toward the windows with Ronin held fast in the crook of its elbow. He can’t breathe. The robot has his windpipe clamped.

He reaches for the sai. But the robot accelerates like a speeding car. He knows what’s about to happen. He just can’t believe it. Not when he had gotten so close.

Glass shatters. The library vanishes. Ronin screams into the void as they fall through the cool, clean night air inside Foot City’s protective bubble. Disbelief and regret clog his mind. Blood rushes in his temples.

The curved edge of the canopy looms closer and closer, distorting light in all directions. Ronin catches a glimpse of the top of Hiroto’s tower. He had been so close to the penthouse. So close to avenging his family.

The robot extends an arm and with a hydraulic blow puts a fist extension through the thick tempered glass of the canopy. The impact barely slows their momentum as it delivers them to the mercy of gravity. Ronin flails wildly. The robot’s grip tightens as they plummet into the West Village. Wind shrieks in his ears as the street rises up to meet them. The buildings seem to sway, to bend in toward them, urging them down faster and faster. Lights flare behind his eyes. His breath is trapped in his throat.

Operating on instinct, his hand finds the grip of the sai. He pulls it from his belt and blindly stabs the robot’s armpit once, twice, three times, twisting the blade on the way out, ripping into the guts of its circuitry. The behemoth spasms. Its hold loosens. Ronin kicks free. At least he won’t die in the clutches of one of Stockman’s abominations.

His brothers scream inside his head. He tells them he is sorry. He tried. The wind is a thermal updraft.

“I’ll see you soon,” he says.

Then he crashes into the concrete, into darkness.