BLACK BULLET 6

CHAPTER 05

PURGATORY STRIDER

1

Rentaro’s life-and-death battle, playing out over dirty mud puddles, was turning into a desperate nightmare.

Having faced off with them once in the past, he was fully aware of the Varanium chainsaw wrapped around the gauntlet worn by Tamaki Katagiri, as well as the “territories” his sister Yuzuki could make with her invisible wires. What threw him off his game the most, however, were the immensely powerful slashes unleashed by the tiny body of Asaka Mibu. Her “twin sword” had a single handle, from which extended two blades, one in each direction. It was a bizarre sight, and one about the length of a typical spear—but the blades, which spun in the air as Asaka twisted her hips in a sort of lethal dance, let her land two blows with a single swipe. He had to be careful around it. The shock waves that fanned out whenever she beat the blades against the ground were akin to a localized tremor as well, enough so to force him to brace himself.

Yuzuki and Tamaki always chose that moment to lunge upon him, too. The chainsaw screamed each time it whizzed past his ear.

He and Hotaru had tried launching a tandem barrage to at least get Asaka out of the picture. It was met with a flurry of sparks and zinging noises as she deflected it, spinning her weapon like a propeller. It floored him to see it in action.

Come to think of it, her IP Rank was 275, wasn’t it? Following Tina and Kohina, she was the third highest-ranked Initiator Rentaro had ever met in his life. There was no way he could treat her lightly.

Meanwhile, he was starting to get a read on her innate ability as well. Whatever her Gastrea factor was, it was geared for power—power further enhanced by her armored exoskeleton. The kick Rentaro uncoiled with all his spinal strength was stopped by the shock-absorbent fibers woven into the armor, barely damaging her at all.

His main means of survival in this battle were the one-shot finishers he could unleash by discharging his leg cartridges. But his foes knew about that. And whenever he set himself up to let one off, they would promptly take their distance from him.

This time, there was no relying on Hotaru’s miraculous regeneration skills. If Hotaru left the battlefield for even a moment, it’d be three-on-one, which meant Rentaro would be dead. She must have known this. She was keeping a safe distance from the enemy at all times, putting herself mainly in a backup-fire role. But if you ignored her regeneration, Hotaru’s basic skills were a far cry from both Asaka’s and Yuzuki’s.

There was no conceivable path of victory. It was a situation where anyone would’ve immediately assumed the end was near. But Rentaro’s confrontational tenacity made Tamaki and his team honestly gaze in wonderment.

“Why?!” screamed Yuzuki, who should have had a decisive advantage but instead found herself brushing away her rain-soaked hair in wonderment. Rentaro had used his cybernetic eye to dodge Asaka’s three-slash twin-sword strike by a hair’s breadth, all while using his artificial leg and arm to deflect Tamaki’s chainsaw knuckle and Yuzuki’s kick. He now planted that leg on the ground. It sank in a little as he gritted his teeth.

“Ohhhhh!”

He thrust it down with all his might as the Katagiris wavered. At the same time, he triggered a cartridge. It kicked downward, allowing him to stomp on the earth with enough force to compress the dirt underneath. His leg gouged a hole in the muddy ground, and the next moment, the earth shuddered.

Asaka realized what he was doing soon enough to step away. Yuzuki and Tamaki did not. They fell to the ground, kicking up mud. Without a second thought, Rentaro dashed forward for a follow-up. If he didn’t beat Asaka, there would never be any victory for him.

By the time she lifted her twin sword high and sent it zooming down, she and Rentaro were a good twenty meters away from each other. He thought she had misjudged his advance by a fairly wide margin, but a chill suddenly ran up his spine. In an instant, he tilted his trajectory to the side.

It was just in time to hear a horrendous shredding sound that made his back feel cold with terror. The earth Rentaro had stood on just a moment ago was cleanly cut in two.

It unnerved him. That slash had some serious distance to it. And unlike Kisara’s, it had made a clean slice through ground like it was made of butter.

The second strike that came at him was parallel to the ground. Rentaro ducked under it; a moment later, another shredding sound erupted behind his back. He turned around without stopping, only to find the second floor of the sculpture studio crumbling behind him, belching soot and smoke as it did.

He ran, gritting down hard on his teeth until he cried out in pain. Asaka was getting closer and closer. Once he was within range of her sword, the blades began to spin like a tornado, forming ever-changing arcs in the air as they carved the earth under his feet.

Rentaro’s eye made calculations at blazing speed. He desperately struggled to read the blades, dodging the second strike, feinting, and making a wide leap to the right. Asaka flashed a look of surprise.

Now!

He tried to unleash an all-or-nothing cartridge from his leg—but then he lost his balance, as if pulled up by some unseen hand.

Rentaro checked behind him. His eyes opened wide.

“Oh, shi—”

There was a spider’s web, a shining rainbow as it stood illuminated by the arched streetlight. It was being pulled by Yuzuki, hatred clouding her face as she remained on the ground. Rentaro had been caught in it when he stopped her kick with his right arm.

But there was no time to gnash his teeth about it. Asaka’s twin blades were on their way, ready to skewer him.

Rentaro closed his eyes. I didn’t make it.

There was a loud, shrill vween as the blades flew.

And continued to fly…away.

No one was more surprised to see this than Asaka herself.

A bullet had flown in from somewhere, making a clean hit on the extended blade. It shot sparks into the air as it knocked the weapon clear from her hands. And that wasn’t all. Another bullet, launched at almost the same time, tore through the spider web as well, its heat loosening the strands.

The accuracy of both shots was incredible.

“Rentaro!”

Before Hotaru’s voice could even reach his ears, he started moving. Rentaro dove toward Asaka’s chest. The light around him swerved and spun—light that came from the explosion set off by his leg cartridge.

Asaka’s expression, which he saw just a glance of, resembled a child lost in an amusement park. She was at a total loss.

Ten minutes later, Rentaro stood amidst the mud and grime, letting the rain plink down upon him.

Two people were strewn around him. There was Asaka Mibu, lying facedown in a mud puddle like a worn-out paper bag detached from her shattered exoskeleton. On the other side was Yuzuki Katagiri, lying on her back.

“Nnhh… Shit… This is crazy.”

Rentaro turned toward the coughing voice. Tamaki was leaning hard against the wall, wiping blood from his mouth.

It was just as he’d hoped. Once Asaka was down, Tamaki’s and Yuzuki’s weaknesses were fully exposed to the world. They were well aware of the instantaneous force his cartridges gave him—but Rentaro was just as aware of their tactics.

Both were geared for close-quarters combat. Tamaki and his pistol could handle mid-range ops as well, but the Magnum he used, while powerful, had serious recoil issues and couldn’t store many bullets at once. It was almost entirely meant for Gastrea engagement. Compared to Rentaro’s Beretta, which relied on strength in numbers ammo-wise, it would be wholly useless in a shoot-out.

If Rentaro and Hotaru went full-fire on Tamaki, Yuzuki would naturally have to fly in to protect him. Then it’d be a matter of wearing her out. It didn’t take a military genius to come up with that plan. And it went without saying that Tamaki going at it solo had no chance at all.

Tamaki lifted his head. Rentaro could see, through the amber frames, that his eyes were full of murderous hatred for the traitor before him. Rentaro eyed him coldly.

“Eat it!”

Then he buried his fist in his stomach.

Tamaki groaned, whispered “God damn it” to himself, set his head down, and fell unconscious. Rentaro looked at him for a few moments, then closed his eyes and stood quietly in the sprinkling rain.

“Rentaro…”

He turned around to find Hotaru looking up at him, hands crossed against her chest in concern. He shook his head and passed by her side.

“Let’s go. It’s too dangerous here.”

He still had work to do. If he could reveal the Black Swan Project to the world, all this effort would be worth it—no matter how much hatred and how many muttered curses he had to take along the way.

2

Using his hand to shade his eyes, Rentaro looked up. The rising sun from the east was half-blocked by the enormous wall in front of him, but already the heat it cast out was beating against his skin.

NO. 0013 was stenciled on the bottom of the wall. It was a Monolith, an edifice of black chrome. Rentaro and Hotaru had spent the night traveling to it, taking the long way to evade detection.

Turning around, he surveyed the ruined buildings and piles of rubble. They extended out as far as his eyes could see. Around them, tilted electric poles provided weak support for wires that snaked out in all directions, like a giant game of cat’s cradle. The only fortunate thing about the sight was that it was still far too early for the Outer Districts’ denizens to be out and about.

“This is it?”

“Yes. I’m sure of it.”

Hotaru’s reply came in her usual suppressed tone, although Rentaro could sense a hint of excitement.

“The courier said there should be a manhole somewhere here. Let’s look for it.”

The ground beneath them was lined with aluminum cans and piles of colorful, dew-covered plastic garbage. Rentaro hardly wanted to touch any of it, so he kicked it away instead. It was oddly warm, as if decomposing. Yet it was a seemingly endless pile of materials, mortar, rusty nails… Finding actual soil proved to be difficult.

Just when they began to wonder if the courier fed them a line after all, Rentaro spotted a brand-new manhole cover amid the junk. He called Hotaru over and showed it to her. “That’s gotta be it,” she immediately replied.

“How do you know?”

She used a foot to point out the area next to the cover. There was a tiny star mark with wings, small enough that it was easily overlooked. He could feel his blood vessels tense in response.

Allowing Hotaru to hoist off the cover and toss it aside, Rentaro felt a cold wind run up his spine, along with the tingling smell of some kind of filth. Pointing his light downward, he saw a rusted-out pipe and corridors leading left and right.

The two threw their weapons-laden traveling bag and aluminum case inside, quieted the voices in their minds telling them to stay back, and took the rusted ladder one step at a time. Rentaro took the lead, although he wasn’t enthusiastic about it. Leaving the sun above them like this made it feel as though they were pacing right into the maw of some enormous monster.

It was, of course, dark inside. The only light they had to work with was the MagLite’s small circle. There was an ever-present whistling groan, like the wailing of the dead. Just the wind crossing some kind of hollow crevice, Rentaro told himself.

Hotaru flashed the light down one side, then the other.

“So we got the Monolith on one side and the way we came from on the other. Which way?”

“Which way would you go?”

“The way we came.”

“Okay. Let’s take the Monolith direction.”

Hotaru gave him a kick in the shin. It actually hurt a fair bit. “You are so stupid!” she said, cheeks puffed up.

Rentaro gave an apologetic chuckle. “Well, let’s just try going toward the Monolith first, okay? If it’s a dead end, we’ll go back the other way.”

She nodded after a moment, not seriously offended after all.

The slushy liquid around their feet gave an odd, swampy shlorp with every step they took. The echoing grew louder the closer they came to the Monolith, making the waves of worry crash loud against their minds.

The path curved gradually at one point, but was otherwise basically a straight shot. After about one hundred meters, Rentaro and Hotaru stopped.

“Dead end…huh?”

A large wall about a meter across stood before them.

They hadn’t been counting every step, but chances were that they were now directly underneath the Monolith. That would explain why the wall was black chrome, shining brightly in the flashlight’s beam. It must have been to block the Gastrea.

“Guess you chose wrong, huh?”

“Um, I think it’s too early to say that.”

“Rentaro?”

Hotaru, already on her way back, turned around. Rentaro ran a hand against the smooth, cold surface of the Varanium wall. His fingers came across a depression.

He instructed Hotaru, standing beside him, to touch it. Surprise ran across her face. There was a hole in the Varanium, not even two centimeters across.

“Remember that loud whistle we heard? I knew the wind had to be coming in through somewhere. But look—”

Rentaro fell silent and pointed the light straight ahead.

“Doesn’t this look like a keyhole to you?”

The quizzical Hotaru brought a shocked hand to her mouth, then hurriedly fumbled in her jacket.

“I got it.”

She took out the key with the maple leaf—the one Swordtail had owned. The one whose home they had no clues about. The mystery.

Rentaro took a step back as Hotaru inserted the key and twisted it. There was an ever-so-slight click, and then it silently opened, beckoning them in.

“Holy…!”

A domed space, about the size of a small home, had been dug into the earth. Stationed inside of it was something that looked like a train. A bit of a small one—and a bit too large to be a microbus—but close enough.

“A light-rail line…? Why’s there one here?”

They walked through the door, only to find the ceiling was higher up than they expected. They could see the tracks the train car was on now, extending deeper into a tunnel. They tried shining the light down the way, only to be greeted with total darkness. It must have been a light-rail station.

“I guessed right…”

“Uh-huh.”

It seemed safe to guess that the Five Wings Syndicate was perched on the other side of the tunnel. Considering they were right under the Monolith, boarding this car would take them into the Unexplored Territory.

These guys had cornered the market on trifdraphizin, the same drug Rentaro and Hotaru had found in that Gastrea. They had killed Kihachi Suibara, Ayame Surumi, Kenji Houbara, Saya Takamura, and Giichi Ebihara. And those were only the names Rentaro knew. He understood full well they were just the tip of the iceberg.

What had those victims known? Why did they have to be murdered? What was the Black Swan Project—this menace that consumed the blood of so many people, this presence that must have been straight ahead?

Carefully, the two approached the rail car, all but expecting a trap as they boarded. It was…a train car. Eerily so, right down to the seating and the leather straps dangling from the ceiling. There wasn’t a spot of dust inside, and it felt like the car had seen use fairly recently.

Rentaro turned to the driver’s seat, wondering how the thing worked. He was rewarded with a set of instructions placed right on the instrument panel. After a quick once-over, he was convinced driving it was within his grasp. The key was already in the ignition; he twisted it, the engine revved to life, and the headlights—far brighter than the MagLite he was working with—cut through the darkness. Then he placed his hands on the cold, metallic master-control handle and gradually pushed it up. With a shudder, the speedometer began to ratchet upward, the handles on the ceiling swaying back and forth.

Bringing the handle up to gear P5, Rentaro watched as the car switched to running on momentum, maintaining a steady fifty kilometers an hour. Turning behind him, he saw Hotaru glued to a window, staring at the tunnel’s inside. “I think the tunnel walls are made of Varanium,” she said.

Rentaro focused on the tunnel to confirm it for himself. “I see. They must’ve used a shield to dig this hole.”

“A shield?”

“A tunneling shield. You know, one of those big borers with a cutter bit on the end of it. These days, you have machines that bore the tunnel while laying down wall segments behind it, reinforcing it so it doesn’t collapse. They probably used Varanium segments on this.”

“That’s pretty amazing,” Hotaru blithely replied. But Rentaro sensed she had something else to say. He had a pretty good idea what it was, too. The Five Wings Syndicate used a tunneling shield to dig this pathway; they clearly maintained it well; they had laid rails across it; and now they had a working train system. Any way you sliced it, this was a huge job.

There was a proposal making the rounds called the Cassiopeia Project that would link all five Areas in Japan via underground trains. But not only was that a huge engineering challenge; it was also being heavily lobbied against by assorted vested-interest groups, balking at the idea of cheaper goods or produce from other Areas flooding the market. To say the least, it would be a long time coming. But an entity like the Five Wings Syndicate taking the initiative and building something like this? How large a group was this, anyway?

As they drove on in silence, Rentaro heard the sound of wheels grating against track as the car shifted slightly. He kept his hand on the control handle, peering into a darkness so black not even the headlights could penetrate it. Then he heard a clank behind him. He twirled around, only to find Hotaru opening up their luggage and preparing for battle.

“Rentaro,” she said as she pulled the cocking handle back on a KRISS vector machine gun and squinted at the chamber, “I was thinking—we probably shouldn’t help each other out in battle after all. If I get taken down, just keep on fighting, okay? I’ll try to do the same thing.”

Her tone was blunt, just like it was when they first met. Rentaro opened his mouth to object, but before he could, he asked himself why she was acting like this now, of all times. Maybe she was thinking that something could happen to her in the not-too-distant future, depending on what was waiting up ahead.

Spotting a stop sign marked in red, Rentaro hurriedly turned the handle toward the brake section. He lurched forward, then rocked back when the car finally stopped.

“We’re here.”

At the exit was a simple concrete floor with a rust-colored door on the other side. Above it was a lit-up green sign, a bit like Japan’s standard emergency-exit signs, except this one read BIOCHEMISTRY LABORATORY #3.

“A laboratory?” Rentaro said. “Here?”

“Where do you think we are on the map right now?”

“Well, we’ve been going fifty kilometers an hour for twenty or so minutes, so simple math says we’ve traveled around sixteen kilometers.”

They were certainly well into Unexplored Territory, beyond the protection of the Monoliths. Was this some kind of underground lab, then? If they had any facilities on the surface, how did they keep them safe from Gastrea attack?

Rentaro wiped his sweaty palms on his pants, put a hand on the doorknob, and took a glance at Hotaru.

“Let’s go in.”

He opened the door and walked through.

It was dim. The ceiling lights that connected to the outside corridor shone a light blue like will-o’-the-wisps, reflecting off the silvery gray walls and floor. It reminded Rentaro of a hospital after lights-out. Nobody was around, although he could hear the hum of some kind of machine operating. It smelled like medicine, too. The floor was immaculate; someone had clearly cleaned it recently.

Going through a set of double doors, Rentaro found himself in a locker room. On one wall, he found what looked like an attendance sheet. On it were plates with names like Firebird, Huckebein, and Squid Octopus—no real names at all. All the movable tags were turned around, indicating that no one was currently on duty.

But he doubted they were all on vacation. In fact, chances were the Five Wings Syndicate had abandoned the lab because they were fearful of Rentaro’s advance.

That hunch was all but confirmed when he entered the adjacent business office. It was littered with piles of cross-shredded paper and ash—presumably they started burning paper when the shredding didn’t go fast enough. Apparently paper was still being used as a trusted data format around there.

Five Wings must have known by then that Rentaro defeated Hummingbird and Swordtail, he reasoned. They must have figured this site was his ultimate destination, so they’d vacated. And if that reasoning was right, there was nothing there for Rentaro to discover.

And yet, opposing his logic was the feeling that something was nearby. Like someone was holding his breath in the darkness, constantly staring at him.

The elevator they came across next seemed to be powered, but for some reason, both Rentaro and Hotaru instinctively resisted boarding the eerily bright car. From the button panel, they learned that the facility had one aboveground floor and two basement stories. They decided to take the stairs down to the bottommost floor.

There, they found a sterilization room apparently meant for disinfecting people. Protective clothing hung from hooks on the wall, but Rentaro wasn’t too interested in following procedure at the moment. Opening up the bulkhead door on the other side, he discovered that it led to another, even thicker door, the surface of which resembled space station materials. It opened on cue after the door they just went through closed.

The room beyond opened up into a fairly wide hallway where, in the darkness, they saw something odd ahead.

“Are these…cages?”

Rectangular cages, built into the corridor walls, lined both sides of the path. They continued down the hallway as far as they could see, but what struck the pair as particularly odd was their size. These were nothing like the tabletop cages to house lab rats or rabbits. They were far bigger, and they could faintly hear the sound of breathing coming from them. Something was there. And not just one or two things.

Rentaro could feel them staring at him with bated breath.

He took a step forward, only to feel something pulling him back by his shirt. He turned to find Hotaru shaking her head at him. He knew painfully well why she was doing that, but he also knew there was no going back now.

“Lemme go see what it is,” Rentaro said as he began to softly walk down the hallway, seized by regret that felt like leaving his planet for another. He tried looking into a cage, but in the darkness he couldn’t make out what was huddled in the far corner.

With shaky hands, he illuminated the nearest cage with his MagLite. A creature with blood-red eyes immediately reacted by shrieking and making a mad dash for the cage wall. It slammed itself against it repeatedly, emitting ear-piercing screams as its razor-sharp teeth chewed at the bars.

A panicked Hotaru responded by spraying fire from her short-barrel machine gun.

“Screeeeee!!”

The creature, emitting a noise like a mouse being strangled to death, fell back to the other side of the cage. This was followed by an eerily loud scream, as if the walls had just exploded. The creatures in the other cages, excited by the gunfire, were now copying their dead companion’s act, screaming and bashing themselves against the cage bars.

“Let’s move!”

Rentaro didn’t bother to wait for Hotaru’s reaction as he grabbed her hand and dashed down the hallway. He hit the door at the end with his shoulder, as if attempting to batter it open. He turned around, breathing heavily.

“Was that…really…?”

“Yeah.”

He waited for his pulse to slow, then gingerly approached a cage and lit it up again. Bodies shone in the light, thanks to the viscous slime covering their skin. They smelled like rotting flesh, spitting something sticky at him as they screamed at the top of their lungs, as if casting a curse upon him.

“Are these Gastrea?”

“Look at that…”

Rentaro pointed his light not at the Gastrea, but at the cage. Hotaru’s body tensed up, as if she had been shot.

“Varanium cages…? You’re kidding me. Why…?”

All Gastrea had a natural fear of Varanium, to the point where locking them in a room lined with the metal on all sides would make them grow weak and die. The laboratory had probably been abandoned for at least a few days, but these creatures would have been in the cages for longer than that. Even a Stage Four Gastrea would have been half-dead by now. So why were they still alive?

All Rentaro could do was file the question away for later as he continued on.

Inside of a small room meant for handling dangerous P4-level biohazards, they found an octopuslike monster, its tentacles twisted and bony. It shrieked at them, too, repeatedly slamming itself against a glass window.

A door with the sign OPERATING ROOM led to what looked like a crime scene. Looking at the state of the thing on the operating table, Rentaro immediately shut the door. This room, at least, was skippable for him.

It seemed clear that this lab was being used for assorted types of Gastrea experimentation. The researchers must have been in such a hurry to evacuate that they didn’t even take the time to euthanize their test subjects. Yet, despite all the dreadful scenery he had seen so far, Rentaro was still nagged by the feeling that he still hadn’t reached the main section. He needed to know about the Black Swan Project, and there had to be something there that’d bring him to the root of it.

After taking a full tour of the facility, they concluded their journey in front of a door a fair bit larger than the others. According to the map on a wall they happened upon, it opened to a large space, about the size of a concert hall. A plate on the side read CULTIVATION ROOM.

“Let’s go in,” Rentaro said as he fiddled with the control panel to the side of the door. Inside was another bulkhead door; it whirred open with a hydraulic psshh, and with it, Rentaro felt a blast of cold air hit him from below.

Once the air cleared, it came into view: a room full of large, jellylike masses. Akin to yellow bags that someone had inflated into a ball, they squirmed around like a baby in the womb. A mesh of blood vessels ran across their surfaces, densely crisscrossing over one another, as they hung ponderously from the domed ceiling.

Each one was just large enough to house a grown human. The bags were thin and transparent, and inside were what appeared to be a large number of half-man, half-fish creatures, as well as a large beetle with a thick, warty carapace, a ropelike creature that looked like something in between a snake and a roundworm, and assorted other living things.

As crowded as the room was with them, the yellow bags looked a bit like gigantic muscat grapes, hanging in bunches from the ceiling—each one with a Gastrea inside. Like purple wisteria trees laden with grapes.

“She had to burn the vineyard.”

Even though they had never met, the voice of Dr. Surumi rang softly in Rentaro’s mind.

“This…,” Hotaru whispered. “This is crazy. It can’t be real.”

“Well…believe it.”

Hotaru must have known it by then; she was just pretending not to. For some reason, her professed disbelief made Rentaro furious.

“They’re raising them! They’re raising Gastrea in here! And not just any Gastrea, either…”

He knew letting his anger out on Hotaru wasn’t constructive at all. But the pure, unadorned horror seizing him made it impossible to control.

“The Gastrea they care for in here get put into those cages we saw once they reach maturity. These aren’t normal Gastrea… They’re making them so they’re immune to Varanium. That’s why being in a Varanium cage doesn’t kill them. God… So this was it the whole time?”

Sumire had said it herself: “Swans, you know, are supposed to be all white in color, but then they found a population of black swans in Australia. It turned the world of ornithology upside down back in the day. The entire world ran on this assumption that swans were supposed to be white, so nobody was ever able to predict that black swans would ever be a thing, too.

“So the ‘black swan theory’ is where you build long-term predictions while bound by your current state of comprehension, but thereby fail to account for unpredictable events even after they happen…

“If you’ve had ten years straight of bountiful harvests, you’d never imagine that a flood would ravage your farmland tomorrow, right?”

No, you wouldn’t. A strain of Varanium-immune Gastrea? Who would ever guess? And if the virus ever got out and their numbers started multiplying, the human race would immediately lose all their safe zones. Every nation, every human being would meet their maker. The Gastrea conquest of planet Earth would be complete.

This was the Black Swan Project. What an ugly, horrible, disgusting thing. And most of all, Rentaro couldn’t believe this was all the work of mankind.

“But what’s the Five Wings Syndicate going to do with these…?”

Rentaro shook his head. “If they had enough of these Varanium-resistant Gastrea, they could deliberately set off a pandemic anytime they liked…”

“They can’t! There’s no way you can domesticate Gastrea like that. They’re never going to listen to them. They’ve already tried implanting electrodes in their minds, and it didn’t work. Even if all the Gastrea in there were released right now, they’d just scatter off in a million different directions.”

“The trifdraphizin.”

Hotaru’s eyebrows arched.

“That’s the one puzzle we still haven’t solved. Why is the Five Wings Syndicate so desperate for trifdraphizin that they’re willing to risk blowing their cover to buy up the black-market supply? That drug puts its victims in a deep hypnotic state. Maybe they’re putting the Gastrea they’re raising here in a catatonic state and—I don’t know how—but maybe conditioning them into attacking or going toward Tokyo Area? You know, like how they condition soldiers to immediately pull the trigger when a target appears.”

Conditioning was the way people trained animals to perform certain tasks—instilling a conditioned reflex that made them perform the action on command. If you stuck a mouse in a maze and conditioned it with cheese to memorize the correct path, it would eventually run through the entire thing without hesitation—without cheese—simply because it was conditioned to run the maze. And after a soldier was conditioned in boot camp to open fire the moment he saw a target, he’d be able to pull the trigger independent of his own will, improving the chances of killing his enemy. Army commanders loved it, but it had a side effect: post-traumatic stress disorder. Making soldiers kill people they didn’t want to kill. Committing these murders permanently altered their mental state, and there was no limit to the mental fallout and subsequent health bills.

All of it showed that conditioning worked, even on high-level animals like humans. Gastrea couldn’t be any different.

“But… But even if it’s theoretically possible, what are the chances of it working without a hitch?”

“That’s why they’re conducting this whole experiment. To see.”

Rentaro looked up at the dome. The muscat grapes on the vines distracted him too much to notice that the dome, about two hundred meters in diameter, had a tangled mesh of pipes and wires snaking down from the center, like a tall, straight tree trunk. The dome was, in a way, a vast, computerized tree, the pipes keeping the grapevines alive.

“I’m sure Five Wings releases the Gastrea grown here all the time as an experiment. To see whether they can get into Tokyo Area or not, you know? And they put that star-and-wing mark on them so they can tell them apart from other Gastrea. Then they have crews pick them up. I’m sure the Gastrea you and Suibara killed was Varanium-resistant, too. Normally, it would’ve been whisked away before it ever made it to Dr. Surumi’s operating table—but she found out. She knew too much. So they eliminated her.”

This is what you wanted to tell me. Isn’t it, Suibara?

Rentaro heard a sob behind him. He found Hotaru down on her knees, face buried in her hands.

“Why…?” she wailed, shaking her head back and forth. “Why did Kihachi have to die for this…? Just being with Kihachi made me so happy, and then…this happened…!”

It was true; Hotaru was just as much a victim of the Black Swan Project as the others. And she might have more company soon. If Black Swan ever got out, Tokyo Area would be crushed. Suibara tried to blow the whistle on them. He knew how dangerous it’d be for him, but he tried anyway.

If we crack under pressure now, the thing Suibara lost his life trying to reveal will be lost in the darkness again. The Five Wings Syndicate will just continue their experiments somewhere else.

Rentaro couldn’t bear to let that happen. He shook his head lightly and looked up at the giant tree in front of him.

“You know what, Hotaru? I was wrong. I thought that if I came back with some evidence, that’d be enough to clear my name. But this is on a whole other level now. We can’t let a single Gastrea get out of this facility. We have to kill them all right here.”

“How?”

Rentaro turned his head toward the center of the cultivation room. Hallways fanned out from the large pipe in the center. They were fairly basic in structure, the floors made out of steel mesh that looked like it was recycled from the construction phase. Rentaro picked the nearest one and walked toward the trunk, his soles clanking against the metal, and Hotaru following. Looking down, he saw that the catwalk spanned above a mass of wires—the “roots” of the tree, so to speak.

White fog steamed around, dissipating into a thick, milky mist. The chill they felt must have come from the evaporating liquid nitrogen, or whatever this was. Something told him that falling on those cords could be hazardous to their health.

Upon reaching the center of the dome, he and Hotaru checked out the assorted machinery accessible to them. It seemed to control operations around the vineyard. Destroying it might kill off the Gastrea gestating inside.

It made Rentaro marvel at his enemy all over again. The Five Wings Syndicate had the resources to build this massive facility. What kind of scale were they built on? And how far had they sunk their talons into Tokyo Area by now?

It was lucky they had stayed constantly on guard this time, expecting the enemy at any moment. It paid off when, all of a sudden, they felt a menacing presence behind their backs.

On went the cybernetic arm. The extractor installed inside grabbed a cartridge. The ejector kicked it away from his body.

Tendo Martial Arts First Style, Number 13—

“—Rokuro Kabuto!”

The swirling motion he added to his fist as it whizzed through the air collided against something advancing upon him from Hotaru’s side. For a moment, a shock wave crossed the room, like the air itself had been deconstructed. With a loud boom, the object—a rifle round—was deflected into oblivion.

Rentaro turned in the bullet’s direction. Hotaru, taking another moment or two to realize she had been targeted, swiveled her head around, searching fruitlessly.

“Welcome, Satomi. I figured you’d be coming.”

A shadowy figure trudged its way across the corridor. He had a broad nose and an ice-cold stare, but above the boy’s popped uniform collar, a twisted smile was painted on his face. He brought the sniper rifle lingering over the mist back to his side, stuck both hands in his pockets, and walked toward Rentaro.

“Yuga Mitsugi,” muttered Rentaro, voice filled to the brim with disgust. There was no sense of surprise. Sooner or later, he knew the guy would show up. And he knew that, so long as he failed to take him down in battle, there would be no victory against the Five Wings Syndicate.

“Hotaru,” Rentaro said, eyes still fixed upon Yuga, “I need you to do me a favor. Take all the plastic explosives in the bag and plant them around the main parts of the lab. I’ll join you once I beat this guy.”

“But I wanna—”

“Please. I need to settle things with him personally.”

Hotaru frowned at the interruption.

“…Good luck, Rentaro. Please don’t die.”

With that, she mentally shook off her concerns, picked up her traveling bag, and headed for the main door. Rentaro followed her from the corner of his eye until she disappeared, then turned back to the presence in front of him.

Silence reigned for a few moments, accompanied by the mist billowing around them. Except for all the machines humming, it almost looked like they were standing on a rope bridge deep in some uncharted mountain valley.

“I’ve got you, Yuga Mitsugi,” Rentaro rumbled in a low voice. “I know what you’re doing. I’m gonna blow the whistle.”

“I’m gonna have to give you a ‘no’ on that.”

“What is Five Wings after? Are you gonna sell the Varanium-resistant Gastrea to some third-world terrorist or something?”

“Sell them? Why would we do something like that? We’re gonna use them.”

Rentaro had trouble understanding this for a moment. The logical part of his brain refused to accept it.

“Use…them?”

“Exactly.” Yuga broadly extended his arms and began to breezily pace in a circle around his adversary. “The mission of the Five Wings Syndicate is world hegemony. World dominance. I don’t know how it was before the war, but the Five Areas of Japan comprise one of the richest countries in the world. We’re a major Varanium exporter, and we’re a world leader when it comes to technology. By themselves, the rest of the world’s nations are helpless. Like badgers hunkered down in their badger holes. We need to step up in their place, maintain world order, and exterminate the Gastrea on a worldwide level. But in order to achieve that, we need to bring the world under our administration. To make sure everyone’s marching to the beat of the same drum. Our drum.”

Rentaro narrowed his eyes.

“But it’s tragic, though, isn’t it?” Yuga continued. “All the different races, religions; all the conflicting ideologies in the world. Too many nations that would never listen to our call to action. If we want to keep everyone on the same wavelength, first we have to clear out the countries that aren’t reasonable. That’s what the Varanium-resistant Gastrea are for.”

“Clear out…? How is that different from taking over the world?”

“It’s completely different. We’re trying to provide proper guidance to the world. That’s what it takes to create a Gastrea-free planet. And as part of that effort, we need to step up. The US used to be called the ‘world police’ a long time ago—well, now it’s our turn. We have to take their place and make the troublemaker nations of the world submit to us. After all, it’s truly a pity, but mankind—the supposed ruler of all things in the world, that most social of animals—is simply unable to create a form of government without an elite ruling class. As supposedly intelligent as we all are, we’re still so blindly obedient to authority. It’s just like a colony of ants. That’s why we need to teach people who the queen ant is around here. The Five Wings Syndicate, you know… It transcends borders. It transcends political affiliations. It’s a group of people distressed by the destruction of their native lands, working under the same flag to make the world a better place.”

“Are you being serious at all?”

“I’ll tell you that, at the very least, the people above me truly think this. That’s why the vanguard force of this group is the New World Creation Project. Not New Humanity.”

With a blaze of speed, Rentaro drew his gun and fired at Yuga’s feet. The bullet ripped through the sole. The barrel, as hot as his own anger, pounded against the side of his arm.

“Don’t give me that shit. Is that what Suibara had to die for? That? You made Hotaru break down in tears for that bullshit?”

Yuga shrugged his shoulders in a not-my-problem gesture.

“I’m sick of all this talking. We’re never not going to be in conflict with each other… Now I know that all too well!”

Rentaro’s left eye, and both of Yuga’s, activated simultaneously. The preliminary calculations were underway.

“Today’s going to be a great day,” Yuga hissed. “Let’s get started. The New Humanity Creation Project, or the New World Creation Project—which is the truly legitimate evolution of mankind?”

The final battle between Rentaro and Yuga was underway.

It was heralded by a particularly large burst of billowing mist, hiding both figures within. It cut off Rentaro’s ability to harness his cybernetic eye—but his foe was in the same boat. He pushed off the ground and, at astonishing speed, covered ten meters in a single instant. Next came Tendo Martial Arts First Style, Number 5—Kohaku Tensei—and despite not using a cartridge, his fist zoomed across the air at subsonic speed, blowing away the white mist. But it was Rentaro whose eyes burst open in surprise afterward. The enemy he sought was not there.

The next moment, an intense pain raced across his temple. He blacked out for half a moment.

“Ngh!”

Looking back, he saw that Yuga was somehow by his side now, about to unleash a kick. In his right hand, he gripped a large knife—really more of a short sword. The path it took for his follow-up attack seemed to leave white-hot afterimages, like a flash of lightning. The CPU in Rentaro’s eye raced to gauge this threat. It found an escape route just in time. He turned his head back to dodge, wound his elbow up, tensed his arm, and aimed a knee kick to Yuga’s face. It was blocked just before it made impact.

His enemy’s face was right in front of him now, twisted with hate. It seemed to Rentaro like that face was sunken into his head. Then stars went off in his mind. By the time he realized he had been the victim of a head butt, he was spewing blood from his nose and taking several unbalanced steps backward. His vision lurched. The blood plinked against the metal catwalk, like crimson flowers on a meadow.

When he looked back up, Rentaro had lost Yuga in the heavy mist again. He almost fell into a panic, just barely retaining his wits.

I can’t track him with my eyes.

I am my gun, and my gun is me: The unity of man and machine, so expertly honed in the VR training Rentaro undertook to defeat Tina, was attuned not only to his own gun, but to the sound of the trigger bar scraping against his enemy’s frame, the firing hammer going down through the sear.

Just as he dove to the right, a flash erupted from the fog. The scream of gunpowder deafened his ears.

“Wha…?!”

Somehow, despite both sides being robbed of their artificial-eye skills, Rentaro dodged the bullet. The surprise was obvious in Yuga’s yelp. Rentaro was instantly there. By the time Yuga adjusted his aim, Rentaro’s fist was already speeding within range. Both hands were free; both feet were planted on the ground.

“Tendo Martial Arts First Style, Number 15—”

A cartridge made an ominous ka-chack as it tumbled out. Rentaro’s Super-Varanium fist propelled itself at unthinkable energy levels as it tore at Yuga from below. It broke the sound barrier and, like a wrecking ball, blew the mist away. In a panic, Yuga crossed both arms in self-defense. It was pointless.

“Unebiko Ryu—! You’re outta here!”

The uppercut, curving from below toward Yuga’s chin, smashed through his left arm. It sent his body a good ten meters away.

But he wasn’t done. Launching a leg cartridge to thrust him forward, Rentaro closed in for a second attack. Drawing a semicircle in the air with his body, he rose up to Yuga’s midair position and launched another leg cartridge. The casing arced in the air, tracing a gold-tinged path behind him.

Tendo Martial Arts Second Style, Number 16: Inzen Kokutenfu.

“Raaaaah!”

The flying roundhouse kick buried itself into the still-midair Yuga’s stomach, this time sending his body downward. He crashed against the bare steel of the catwalk with a loud clanging sound, bouncing several times from the force of the impact before putting a dent in the anti-fall railing.

How’s that?!

To a normal human, the first uppercut would have been enough to crush every bone in their body. No matter how mechanized his body was—

“Huh?!”

Rentaro found his eyes opening wide in shock once more. Yuga stirred, hoisting himself up via the dented railing. He had nothing to say, his tousled hair covering one eye. The other one, its iris spinning rapidly, glared at him.

“I’ll kill you.”

“…You got me at the hotel,” Rentaro replied. “Now we’re even.”

“I can’t lose to the Tendo style a second time!”

…A second time?

As he shouted, Yuga took two survival knives from his belt, gripping one in each hand as he screamed at the heavens.

Rentaro’s instinct told him not to approach, so he unholstered his gun, aimed, and fired a barrage of shots. The recoil from the nine-millimeter rocked his arm.

He realized the mistake he had made when he saw Yuga twist and turn his body to dodge them. Of course. He was fighting a foe with eye enhancements just like his. If he kept relying only on what he could see with his eyes, the predictive AI was going to read his bullets’ trajectory every time.

The sheer speed at which Yuga then rushed toward him, body kept low to the ground, was clear from the mist he kicked up around him. Rentaro aimed his Beretta again.

But Yuga interrupted him with the throw of a knife. It stuck into the Beretta, confusing his eyeball’s measurements and making him accidentally pull the trigger. The muzzle flash erupted toward nothing in particular.

The remaining knife was at Yuga’s hip, shining dully in the mist as it rocketed toward Rentaro. Realizing it was too late to dodge it, he lowered his body, preparing to deflect the blade with his Super-Varanium right arm.

His entire body seemed to creak at the moment of impact, his soles sliding against the steel floor. The heat generated by the friction left the smell of something burning in the air, and the sound of metal screeching against metal greeted his ears. The blade danced by in the air, mere centimeters from his nose.

By a hair’s breadth, he had stopped his opponent’s bull charge. Yuga’s hate-twisted face was directly in front of his. He could feel his breathing.

But once again, Rentaro misjudged Yuga Mitsugi’s threat. Yuga only had a knife in his right hand. In his left he held a small, round object that he brought toward Rentaro, as if offering it to him.

Rentaro groaned, like an icy hand had a grip on his heart. He recognized that object.

An HG-86 mini-grenade.

The detonation pin and lever were already off. At this range, both were squarely in the kill zone.

A suicide strike?!

Rentaro’s body reacted to the fear seizing his body. With a free elbow, he knocked the grenade away. It flew off the catwalk and fell down below, then exploded with a body-wrenching shock wave.

Yuga’s left hand was now free. It struck hard against Rentaro’s stomach, left wide open by his uplifted elbow. Belatedly, Rentaro realized what Yuga was doing.

Oh damn. His palm strike can—

One look at Yuga’s upturned lips was enough to freeze his spine.

“Vairo-orchestration! Prepare to be shattered!”

The next instant, a withering pain beyond all imagination tore through his body.

“Gyaaaaahhhh!”

His vision was jarred. The pain made it feel like his body was being blown apart.

Without even realizing what he was doing, he flailed his feet and managed to wrest himself free. His vision was still lurching back and forth, and the pain made him fall to his knees. Rentaro looked at his wound. His guts felt loose in his body, and the amount of bleeding damage was unlike anything he had seen before. He felt a blob of something distasteful well up in his esophagus, and then blood bubbled out of his mouth, along with bits of lung that had been vibrated off. It was jet-black in color, and now it stained the floor an even more ominous shade.

His eye blurred, his body screaming out in pain. It urged him not to move—but, gritting his teeth in desperation, he looked up at Yuga. He, too, was gravely wounded. It was a wonder he could still stand. And why wouldn’t it be? He had taken the full brunt of not one, but two cartridge strikes. That he was alive at all was a miracle.

“We were created ten years ago to defend the world during the Gastrea War! Don’t you see how pointless fighting each other is?!” Rentaro shrieked.

Yuga swept an arm horizontally in front of him. “I believe in Professor Grünewald! That’s the path I’ve chosen!”

“I never got used to this machine body. I had to get my limbs replaced every time I grew a bit more. It was a constant barrage of pain.”

“Me too.”

“I thought it was gonna kill me, once or twice.”

“Me too.”

“It’s not too late, all right?! I don’t want to kill you!”

“You’re making no sense!” came Yuga’s reply. “Why aren’t you trying to join the ruling side? We’re the chosen ones! If there’s any problem with us, it’s only that we can’t transcend entropy—we can’t make a machine that doesn’t break down! Sumire Muroto made you into just as devastating a killing machine as I am! We were built to create destruction and chaos. We’re practically brothers! You…and I!”

“Shut up! I’m not like you at all! Dr. Muroto gave me this arm so I could connect with people!”

“That’s a pack of lies!”

“You asshole…!” Rentaro shouted as he stood up, shedding droplets of blood. His lungs shuddered in pain with every breath. White mist continued to billow out from the cords and devices around him—but all he could hear now was the beating of his own heart.

Yuga lowered his stance, preparing for action as he took his unique crossed-arms defensive tactic again. Rentaro joined him, but he chose to take the Tendo Martial Arts Water and Sky Stance instead. There was nothing defensive about it. No escape for his foe.

The cybernetic parts of each young man were operating faster than they ever had before—perhaps for the last time. Sparks of light entered their vision.

The staredown made both sides hold their breath. It was a picture of concentration in its ultimate form. Once it was released, it was over. The fists of both opponents were clenched, ready to take the life of their respective foe.

What wound up breaking the tranquility was the voice of a girl from behind the door: Hotaru.

“Rentaro!”

That was the signal. Without even a second of hesitation, Rentaro stomped his foot on the floor and set off three cartridges at the same time. He closed in on Yuga at supersonic speed, faster than a jet engine. Then he burned through one on his arm, the smell of burnt gunpowder penetrating his nostrils.

His fist unleashed itself. Yuga’s own was approaching his eyes.

Tendo Martial Arts First Style, Number 8: Homura Kasen.

Cartridge thrust clashed with ultravibration—two of the world’s most advanced technologies colliding, immediately clearing all the mist out of the room with the shock waves. Their footholds collapsed under them, the main computer emitting sparks in the background.

“Haaaaaaaaaaah!”

“Grrrrrraaaaahhhh!”

Fist collided with open palm, vying for superiority. Rentaro’s opponent was in such a bad mess that Rentaro had no idea how his ultravibration device still worked. But work it did. Thunder coursed across his artificial arm, cracking his Super-Varanium fist.

Releasing a guttural, beastlike roar, Rentaro activated all his remaining cartridges at the same time.

“Unnnnn-liiiiiimited…burrrrrrrsssst!!”

There was an unprecedented clash of energy, to a level that not even experiments with a particle accelerator could hope to achieve. Then, like nothing ever heard before, there was the sound of machinery cracking to pieces.

Rentaro felt something tugging at him, as if trying to wrench his head from his neck. He was shot backward by the destructive blast, like two magnets repelling each other. The force sent his body against the floor a few times before he finally crashed into the tree trunk of pipes in the center of the dome. He gritted his teeth hard enough to lose one or two—but Rentaro still leapt back to his feet.

Yet he couldn’t find the enemy he was pursuing. He picked up his Beretta handgun, plucking the knife out from where it was stuck.

Risking a peek down into the guts of the catwalk, he realized why there was no answer to his attack. Amidst the fog produced by the evaporating hyper-chilled liquid nitrogen, he saw Yuga plastered against a pipe, his clothes frozen to it. He was motionless. Rentaro wordlessly pointed the Beretta at him. Yuga glared back, the hatred congealing over his eyesight. His eyes rejected all sympathy.

Convincing him with words would never work now.

So Rentaro instead nudged his handgun to the side and shot a bullet through the tank next to him.

Immediately, a clear, all-freezing liquid, chilled down to negative 196 degrees Celsius, descended upon Yuga’s body, emitting dense, thick clouds of evaporation.

“Gaaahhh!”

Rentaro averted his eyes. If he had any mercy to give, it lay in how the massive clouds of mist kept the decisive moment from being viewed.

There was the crackling of rapidly freezing matter. Then silence.

A strong, cool breeze rustled across his hair. The world was a bloom of grayish white once more.

“Rentaro…”

Hotaru clearly had something to ask. But instead of letting her continue, Rentaro walked past her.

“It’s over,” he said. “Let’s go.”

The moment they climbed the stairs from the second-floor basement to the single aboveground story, they were each forced to put a hand over their own forehead, to protect their eyes from the burning sunlight.

They hadn’t realized it, since they had spent the past several hours belowground, but it was already well into daylight outdoors. Going out the facility’s back door, they found themselves on top of a small hill, in the middle of a basin dug into a conical valley.

“I guess that’s how they keep the Gastrea from getting in here,” Rentaro said as he shaded his eyes. In front of them was a line of tall, deep-black stone Monoliths. There was hardly any room between them to go through.

“Portable Monoliths…? Is that how they claimed the land?”

Each one was about two meters in width and 3.25 meters in height. A set of mini-Monoliths, through and through, as if manufactured for a Tokyo Area–themed mini golf course. Size made all the difference in effectiveness, so these Monoliths would likely repel Stage One creatures and not much else. Against a Stage Two, they’d act as a mild deterrent; anything tougher, and the best you could hope for was a good running start.

They were familiar enough to Rentaro. Varanium mining operations in the Unexplored Territory always deployed sets of these, usually accompanied by civsec bodyguards. Maybe that was Swordtail’s and Hummingbird’s day job around there.

“What’d you do with the explosives?”

“I placed them on the load-bearing columns across the building. We can set all of them off at the same time. I took a bunch of pictures of the facility, too, so we’re good to go evidence-wise.”

“Okay. Let’s move back a bit and set it off. We’ll have to watch to make sure the whole thing collapses.”

“Hang on. If we blow it up now, we won’t be able to take the train back.”

Rentaro gently shook his head. “Their plan was probably to have Yuga ambush and kill me in the lab. We just turned the tables on them. I guess New World can monitor their assassins’ vital signs somehow, so the enemy already knows he’s dead by now. There’s no guarantee they won’t blow the tunnel while we’re running that train down it. We can’t afford to let up for a single moment until we hand over the evidence and bring Five Wings to public light.”

Hotaru eyed the Monoliths nervously—the real ones, off in the far distance.

“Can we make it back okay?”

“The Monoliths’ magnetic field reaches out five kilometers past the border. We’re around sixteen kilos from there now, so once we walk eleven, we’re in the clear. Even if we run into any Gastrea on the way, they’re gonna be Stage One, Two at most. Strength-wise, we’ve got nothing to worry about. The sun’s gonna set on the way, but I think we can manage.”

He couldn’t tell how much of the bravado in his voice made it across to Hotaru. But she seemed to accept it well enough. She looked up to him, an optimistic smile on her face.

“All right. But let’s bury those Gastrea alive first.”

Rentaro nodded lightly.

They marched past the line of mini-Monoliths, standing proudly as they sucked up the intense daylight sun, and climbed up the valley. Once they reached a position where they had a full view of the lab, Hotaru took out the wireless switch to activate the explosives and removed the plastic cover on the button. Rentaro tensed himself up with anticipation as he looked down at the lab.

“Rentaro.”

Hotaru’s voice had an odd sort of wistfulness to it. It seemed rather out of place. Turning to her, Rentaro found her slightly flush around the cheeks, an affable smile on her face.

“Thanks.”

“Thanks for what?”

“For everything up to now.”

Rentaro’s eyes darted away. He scratched his head, unable to reply to this unfamiliar appreciation on Hotaru’s part.

“Kind of too early to thank me, isn’t it? It’s gonna be hilarious if those explosives turn out to be a dud.”

Hotaru brought a hand to her eyes, chuckling as she shook her head a bit. “Rentaro, I…I know maybe you don’t want to hear this from me, but…”

Maybe it was an Initiator’s sixth sense sounding a warning to her.

Looking at the lab, Hotaru’s eyes shot wide open. She ran back up to Rentaro. Unable to comprehend this, Rentaro found himself thrown into the air. He couldn’t recover in time, hitting his head against a stone on the ground as stars filled his eyes.

“…Ow!” Rentaro shouted. “What’re you—?”

Rentaro managed to make it this far before he ran out of words.

“I’m glad you’re…okay, Rentaro.”

Hotaru dimly smiled as she stood there. She waddled forward with unsteady steps, trying her best to stay on her feet. A trail of blood ran from the edge of her lips.

Looking down, Rentaro saw that her abdominal area—the light pink in her tank top—was now stained a deep red.

This was the point at which the second sniper bullet probably came along.

It ripped Hotaru’s chest area open. Warm blood spattered on Rentaro’s face. She immediately lost her balance, falling to her knees, head down, before collapsing on top of Rentaro.

His eyes remained open in disbelief as he broke the shattered girl’s fall.

“Hotaru?”

3

He had just shot down his target, but there was no particularly deep sense of victory.

Yuga’s hand pulled back the bolt handle. It ejected the empty cartridge and sent the next round into the chamber. It was a procedure he could conduct as naturally as his own breathing.

“…Checkmate.”

The low, hushed voice was bereft of warmth, enough to make any onlooker’s blood run cold. It sounded more like a groan wafting in from the underworld.

As it should be, for he would be visiting there soon.

Yuga took his attention away from the window for just a moment, staring at his own legs. Everything below the thighs was gone.

But, for two reasons, there was only a slight trickle of blood. One, Yuga’s legs were already half-machine, bolstered by carbon nanotubes and enhanced artificial musculature, and there was a litany of fail-safes installed that would constrict blood vessels and shut off the flow of blood for him. Two—and this was the simpler one—by the time Yuga managed to amputate his own legs, everything from the thighs down was already frozen solid.

The shower of liquid nitrogen over his body felt so hot as it flowed across his nervous system. It nearly drove him insane before killing him. Just before it could, he managed to shut down his pain receptors and perform the amputation in more or less cruise-control mode. He had to hand it to himself. He was one hell of a war machine.

Now that the worst was behind him, Yuga had crawled out of the Gastrea cultivation room, lifted himself up step-by-step across the ramp, recovered his sniper rifle, and made his way to a first-floor window. It was sheer, unrelenting force of will that drove him, and nothing else.

Hotaru Kouro was no longer on his mind. She didn’t register with the solidified ball of obsessive hatred within him. No part of his body wanted anything more than to dispatch his enemy. He was a physical manifestation of murderous intent.

The gunshots were like the cheering of well-wishers in his ears. The recoil was like a hand rocking his cradle. The smell of spent gunpowder was the sweet scent of a gourmet meal.

Still half-dead, he’d used his silencer to break the glass of the lab window, rested the barrel on the sill, and shot the enemy on top of the hill with his rifle—all in a single, fluid motion.

The bullets were filled with concentrated Varanium, modified to stay embedded within the victim’s body.

His next shot had missed. By then Rentaro had dragged Hotaru’s body behind the hill, but he had dropped the activation switch she was carrying on the slope. If he wanted it back, he would have to run back into range.

But Yuga had no reason to be optimistic. His frozen bottom half would unfreeze soon enough. The blood oozing from his legs’ capillary tubes would render his mechanical blood flow–restriction abilities moot. He might die from blood loss.

No. He couldn’t have that happen. Right now, Yuga was a sniper. Even if all the blood spurted out of his body, the moment Rentaro entered his line of vision, he would pull the trigger back like the perfect sniper he was. And once he saw his opponent fall dead, he would probably expire right then.

A sniper never sleeps until their target is completely dead.

Both of his cybernetic eyes rotated at high speed, making their preliminary calculations.

“It’s not over! It’s not over yet. Come on! Get over here, Rentaro Satomi…!”

What little warmth Hotaru had left in her arms began to ebb. Her perforated, blood-filled lungs breathed in shallow mouthfuls of the final air they’d taste, like a broken pair of bellows. It was something wholly different from the period of cataleptic regeneration she normally fell into.

Part of him asked himself why. Another grew to accept it.

There were all the omens. Why did Yuga go and fire the first shot inside the lab’s vineyard at Hotaru? Swordtail must have told him all about Hotaru’s regenerative abilities before he died. He knew that, but he still wasted his time on a seemingly pointless shot.

The most probable reason was that Yuga was taking an anti-Hotaru approach to the fight, and that was what the shot had been. Yuga was so intent on facing off against Rentaro that he used that first shot to get rid of any outside elements as soon as possible. That was the only valid explanation.

In other words, he had a way all along to kill her for good—

Rentaro closed his eyes and let out a heavy sigh. He knew what he had to do.

“Rentaro, am I…?”

Hotaru’s eyes were open but groggy. Her lips were purple and shaky, but apart from that, it was like she had just woken up from a dream. He gripped her hand and looked straight into her eyes.

“It’s nothing serious. You’re gonna recover from it. You’ll be fine.”

Hotaru let out a relieved sigh. Apparently she was already beyond the point where she felt pain. Her expression was calm.

Slowly, she raised a shaking hand. Following her fingertip, he saw it was pointed at her M24 sniper rifle, scope mounted. He realized what she meant.

“I… No.” He retreated. “I can’t.”

Hotaru smiled. “Please. Just do it. If you don’t, the Gastrea are gonna…be sent all over Tokyo Area. If they do that…”

Hotaru, you have no idea how poorly trained I am at sniping. I really could just…never. I had my enemy one hundred meters in front of me on Tokyo Tower, and I missed twice. Meanwhile, my enemy can headshot a man riding a Shinkansen train from 1,200 meters away. We could hold this face-off a thousand times, and the outcome would be obvious. Every single time.

But the girl’s earnest eyes were still filled with the light of trust.

Rentaro closed his eyes, then opened them.

“All right.”

Rentaro picked up the sniper rifle again, taking it by the handle and removing the safety.

“I promise I’ll kill him and blow up the lab. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“But…”

Rentaro gently cut her off.

“This is the ‘savior of Tokyo Area’ you’re talking to. Don’t you believe me?”

Hotaru’s face grew more serene. She haltingly shook her head.

“The, the next time I wake up… I think I can be nicer to you next time, Rentaro.”

“Yeah.”

“I think…I’ll have more courage than I used to. And when I do, there’s something I want to tell you.”

“Uh-huh.”

The tears at the far edges of Hotaru’s eyes fell out in a thin line.

“I finally managed to protect my partner. Now I don’t have to have that dream bother me anymore. I’m not afraid of dying any longer. It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

Rentaro hung his head down, shaking his head silently.

“Thank you, Rentaro,” she continued. “You helped bury the loneliness for me. You taught me the meaning to my life.”

She turned her eyes toward the wide-open blue sky and squinted.

Her outstretched hand soon lost its strength and fell.

She never moved again.

“Thanks, Hotaru.”

There were no tears. He knew full well what had to be done.

“Thanks for believing in me. Thanks for fighting with me.”

If he had the time to let his eyes get clouded with tears, he had the time to defeat his enemy. He had the dreams and hopes of far too many people on his back to do anything else.

He opened the flip-up cover as Tina’s advice from a bygone day echoed in his mind:

“You can’t kill another person unless your own soul dies, too.”

No. You’re wrong, Tina. That’s how a monster does it.

The path to justice is fraught with danger. It’s too easy, too sweet and tempting, to let it turn you into a monster. But I can’t beat him that way.

Rentaro stood up, revealing himself on the top of the hill—easily within enemy range.

Bringing his right hand up to the front stand, he stabilized the position of his gun and placed the glass-fiber stock on his left shoulder. His eye peered into the scope.

“I’m saying you need to find a reason for yourself. One that’ll make it seem worth taking another person’s life.”

Because I want to protect. Protect Tina, protect Kisara, protect Enju. I want to save as many people as I can. With my own two hands.

And if this is what it takes—

His heart calmed itself. All was clear and serene now.

He took a breath and gradually let it out.

His eye activated.

Rentaro’s line of sight expanded as his formerly closed left eye began to function. A richly colored, almost spicy taste ran across his mouth. The nano-core processor began to operate at superspeed, the iris spinning in a dazzling array of geometric patterns.

“Time to end this for good…Yuga Mitsugi.”

Rentaro’s presence in his line of sight, of course, registered as an image in Yuga’s electronic retinas. Yet, at first, Yuga thought it was some kind of mistake.

“Standing up…and shooting with his left eye?”

Unlike firing from a kneeling or prone position, remaining on your feet made it extremely difficult to keep the gun steady, boosting the difficulty of landing a hit from far away to astronomical levels. If hand shake resulted in even a millimeter’s worth of difference, there would be no way to recover from as little as two hundred meters out. And since he was using his artificial eye to aim, that meant he had to be using his left hand to pull the trigger—his nondominant hand.

It looked like suicide to Yuga—from a common-sense standpoint, that was. But then, the war pyre in his mind burned brighter than ever. Rentaro was there, on the same stage as he was. It made his chest burn.

All right, then. What I have to do doesn’t change. One shot is all it takes.

His eyes revved up even faster, throwing off an intense heat. It was Yuga’s first experience with “overclocking” his own hardware. Time passed slowly as both of his eye sockets burned. The eyes completed their ballistics and landform calculations. He rested his finger on the trigger of his DSR rifle.

Not lagging behind a single moment, his opponent fired simultaneously.

There was a crack. The recoil kicked against his shoulder.

Then came the shrill sound of glass breaking. The figure in the scope fell to his knees and disappeared behind the hill.

Yuga didn’t remove his eye from the scope. But he could tell that Rentaro’s bullet had gone through the window next to his. He had gauged it wrong. He operated the handle and loaded the next round.

It was a hit. But he still twisted his body a moment before. It wasn’t lethal.

“Nhh…graaahh!”

Rentaro dropped his rifle. It kicked up some dust as he fell to his knees.

The sniper bullet had dug into the side of his stomach, delivering a second blow to the Vairo-orchestration wound. Blood seeped between the fingers of both hands as he tried to block the wound, now dripping into the grass. The greasy sweat running down his face disappeared into the dry earth.

Half-crazed from the pain, he pulled his jaw back and thrust his forehead against the ground. Then another time, then another. The skin on his forehead broke open, spitting blood.

His breathing was raw and animal-like in the gaps between his gritted teeth. Spittle flew out of his mouth.

Just stay down. Next time you bring your face up, it’s gonna be gone.

Shut up. I have to do this. For Hotaru. For Suibara. For everyone who’s had to die so far.

Rentaro’s sixth sense told him Yuga’s eyes were heating up. He could feel his own speed toward oblivion as well. It was like coevolution—two animals affected by each other as they evolved over time.

100x, 200x, 300x—it kept ratcheting up. He felt like his eye was catching on fire.

He raised his head and gently shook it. The world was bending around him, like a video dropping frames. Time seemed to go faster and faster.

The air grew viscous, the sun losing its shine and going ever further toward darkness. It felt like being dragged alive to the bottom of the sea; the sound around him grew low, heavy, and monotone, losing all meaning.

Rentaro crawled forward to keep from falling into range, scrambling to pick up his sniper rifle again. He operated the handle, ejected the cartridge, and loaded in the next one.

Still on his knees, he steadied the gun barrel on the hill and looked into the scope. He aimed.

The enemy was quicker this time, too. He had a hunch, and nothing but a hunch. But that was why he pulled the trigger and rolled.

A sniper shot ripped through Rentaro’s former location. The dirt it kicked up hit him in the face. He readied himself again, face covered in dirt and mud, and gritted his teeth while he peered into the scope.

This time, he could not fall back. He could not get scared. The speed of his thoughts now extended past 1500x. Still faster, faster. His body felt so much slower in comparison, desperately trying to respond to his thoughts. It frustrated him.

Now past 1900x. His eyeball felt like it would scream, or evaporate into thin air at any moment. Sparks ran across it as it wore itself out.

—Then Rentaro’s world went into whiteout. Sound, life; all the pressures upon him vanished.

For a moment, before he realized what had happened, he thought he’d been hit and died. But that wasn’t it. He was definitely conscious. The effects of the adrenaline made it so that he was temporarily numb, but the gunshot wound in his stomach was definitely still there.

He brought his left hand up to his face, opening and closing his fist a few times. He looked around. It was a bright, pure shade of white. The battle simulator in the Shiba Heavy Weapons basement was like this—an otherworldly shade of white.

But this wasn’t the VR room. Wait. This is—

“…The terminal horizon?”

“There’s a limiter circuit in your eye that ensures its processing speed doesn’t go above a certain level.”

Sumire’s cynical voice echoed in his memory.

“…you’d see too much. It probably feels like time’s slowing down for you as your eye calculates the enemy’s range and future position, but it can still go a lot further than that. We transplanted a version of your eye without a limiter into several patients, but none of them ever came back.

“…a second of real time slows down to what feels like two thousand to you. That’s the terminal horizon. All the patients who crossed that never came back. Their brains were completely fried.”

So this was the “horizon” all those patients saw, then? Or am I looking through the eyes of God at the moment?

Those trivialities didn’t matter. His enemy was seeking him.

A figure bathed in light appeared about ten meters in front of him. It gradually formed itself into Yuga. He was in sniper position at a hill in the middle of a conical valley, so he should have had his gun pointed downward—but there he was, staring right at him. They were over two hundred meters away from each other, but now he was so close, he could see the expression on his face.

Yuga was glaring at him, dour and concentrated. But Rentaro had the impression that his focus wasn’t quite on where he was kneeling.

But that didn’t matter. He planted the M24 against his shoulder. Yuga, a beat later, took his own stance.

He squeezed the trigger.

I won.

Just as he thought that, he heard the roar of a collision like never before. Sparks flew into his line of sight.

It was a scene no regular person could have ever comprehended. But Yuga, with his overclocked eyes feeding information to his overclocked brain, could.

“No…”

With a sonic boom, two faster-than-sound shots surged through the air. Their positions were millimeter-perfect. They collided in front of his face, sending the shot he knew was destined to kill Rentaro away from its target.

“Bullet to bullet…?”

This was nothing anyone could do on purpose. The entire philosophy Yuga brought to his sniper duties screamed it to him: No one could trigger this on purpose.

His eyes remained wide open in shock. But his hands kept going, moving like they were a different creature. Release the empty cartridge. Load in a new round. Take aim. Apply ballistics correction with his eyes, and fire.

Another sharp sound. His opponent didn’t fall, and neither did he. All that remained was the echoing sound of the gunshots.

Yuga’s entire body shook. It…it wasn’t a coincidence. He was pulling off the superhuman feat of stopping his bullets in midair with his own gunshots. How could that possibly ever work? I have two cybernetic eyes. The Professor told me himself—I am the most gifted user of these eyes the world has ever known.

“…That’s bullshit. That’s bullshit!!”

Compared to the enraged Yuga, Rentaro was in a state of transcendent bliss.

If both sides’ abilities granted them perfect accuracy with each shot, the common-sense rules of sniper combat—shoot, then run away—no longer applied. There was no longer any reason to use them.

The moment Rentaro pulled the trigger, his breathing didn’t even stop. He was firing without bothering to adjust for the difference in height and zeroing range between them. But he was hitting.

His eye, directly connected to his mind, took over full control of his muscular system, including the motor area of his brain. Rentaro’s entire body was transformed into a self-sufficient sniper system.

Yuga had aimed at him several times. His opponent hadn’t even pulled the trigger yet, but Rentaro could already see the bullet’s arc in the air.

Rentaro tilted his head slightly to dodge the projected trajectory, then fired. A rough, curt blast erupted from his muzzle, the bullet crashing through the rifling and into the air at supersonic speed. Yuga’s bullet whizzed near his ear, scraping him.

The sonic boom cut by Rentaro’s cheek. Blood flew.

He twisted the handle back to eject the cartridge. The empty shell flew through the air as he loaded another Lapua Magnum round.

Yuga, through Rentaro’s scope, held his mouth open, eyes like saucers. He could see his tongue fly up to the roof of his mouth to form the Nnn sound, then his lips rounding themselves into an O.

It’s over, Yuga Mitsugi.

He pulled the trigger. The firing pin struck the bottom of the cartridge through the sear and bolt. The sound of a gunshot. The kick of the rifle against his shoulder.

Yuga made no response to the death-dealing bolt coming his way. Right up to the bitter end, his face belied his attempt to deny everything in his mind.

4

Crushing pebbles under the soles of his shoes, Rentaro came in from behind the pile of chalk construction material. The facility was silent.

Opening the door, Rentaro cut across the C-shaped corridor and walked straight ahead. After a while, he stopped. “Yo.”

“Hey.”

Yuga lay flat against the floor, arms and leg stubs splayed across it. His DSR sniper rifle had slid across the room, abandoning its master for the last time.

“How did the battle turn out? Why…? Why did I…?”

He used his barely functioning head to look at the blasted-open mess that was his torso. “Ahh…,” he groaned, a mix of astonishment and resignation apparent in his breath.

Rentaro had trouble figuring out what to say. This was the man who killed Hotaru. He should have been cursing him. All the hate in the world wasn’t enough for him.

But at the same time, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was that man. Lying down there was a cybernetic-eye user, someone who had to undergo torturous limb upgrades at regular intervals. Someone shunned by his peers.

“If we didn’t have to meet like this, maybe we coulda been friends, huh?”

Yuga closed his eyes, in a comfortable state of repose. “That’s a pretty pointless what-if… But I wouldn’t have minded it.”

“Were you in that white space, too?”

“White space…? No. What are you talking about?”

“…Never mind.”

“Both of my eyes,” Yuga continued, guessing at the portent of Rentaro’s question, “made it up to 1800x. I heard that my eyes could use all my emotions as fuel. They’d rev up and go down, depending. Anger, sadness, hatred, cursing, hope, happiness… But I guess my hatred and feelings of inferiority weren’t enough to outclass your emotions. What did you use to go faster than me?”

“I cared about other people.”

“Well…that’s out of my ballpark,” Yuga chuckled derisively to himself, whispering the words into the air. “No wonder I couldn’t beat you. That last shot… I couldn’t even see your hands between ejection and reloading. That’s how fast it was.”

“…So that’s how your eyes saw it.”

Rentaro decided to change the subject.

“Yuga, what’s the Five Wings Syndicate?”

“It’s an international, cross-political movement. We’re everywhere. There’s no guarantee the people you trust aren’t part of it, either…heh-heh.”

“…You mentioned how the wings around the pentagram on your arm indicated your rank. You had four of those wings, and they took two away from you. What’d you do?”

Yuga emptily chuckled again. “Nothing,” he wheezed. “Like I told you, I was Professor Grünewald’s favorite son up to that point. I got to work by his side. But there was a single confrontation—a single one—and I lost it. They took the wings away, and I was no longer the Professor’s favorite.”

“You lost it? You?”

“Yes. To another Tendo user.”

“Wha…?”

“Remember? ‘I can’t lose to the Tendo style…again’? I wanted to beat you because…well, okay, there was probably some personal emotion there.”

“…What kind of Tendo skill? Sword drawing? Aikido? Divinity? There’re a lot of different types.”

“The same as yours.”

“Martial Arts? You’re kidding me…”

Had anyone else taken on the successor role? He couldn’t think of anyone.

“It took just twelve seconds,” Yuga said with an ironic smile. “I don’t even know how he got close to me. I looked up, and there he was, in point-blank range. Within the first three seconds, he knocked my artificial right arm off and broke my leg. It was all him from that point forward. His martial arts were a lot like yours, too…or not. His were a lot more…sinister.”

“What’s his name?” Rentaro confronted Yuga on the floor. “I need to know his name! Who was the guy that defeated you?”

Then he noticed the sweat glistening on his forehead. His body must have been near its limit. And Yuga had more pressing business than to answer his question.

“Satomi,” he began, “have you ever seen a line of the dead?”

“Huh?”

“Before, before the Professor performed the, mechanization work on me… I told you, I was blind, right? But even though I couldn’t see, I could, this one time…I saw…it. Right after, the war, the people…who were turned into, into Gastrea… They were listed as, as missing, remember? I saw it. Even through my eyelids. They weren’t alive, or…or dead. A line of people, wandering through purgatory. Satomi… Heaven is so, so far away, but hell… I think, I think if I threw a stone right now, I’d hit…it.”

His lips curled upward in a final self-chiding smile.

“This… This is war. Ours, and yours. The Gastrea War is… It’s not, not over at…”

That was all. Yuga spat out a mouthful of blood, and softly opened his eyes, as if it was his duty to do so. He stopped moving. It was the moment Five Wings Syndicate assassin Dark Stalker left the world of the living—and with him came Yuga Mitsugi, the man who may just have been Rentaro’s friend.

5

“Fuck! Fuck!”

Hitsuma slammed the pedal to the metal, cursing to himself every kilometer of the way. It was all over. Everything. He—Rentaro Satomi—had ruined it all.

Not long ago, Dark Stalker’s vital signs had flatlined. It was clear now. Not even he could have taken on Rentaro. Dark Stalker—the man who swaggered his way into every fight he ever had, then sauntered his way back out without so much as breaking a sweat. The idea of him being shot seemed like some kind of tasteless joke.

He couldn’t help but look back at all the oversights, all the possible fail-safes he ignored. Throwing him in a cell and turning his fate over to the judge seemed like the best option at the time. Now, though, it was clear that wasn’t enough. If only he had poisoned the boy’s meals inside jail—even if his comrades thought that was overstepping his bounds—this entire disaster could’ve been avoided.

Now Hitsuma had just received word from Nest to stand by and await further instructions from Five Wings. If he was stripped of his wings and expelled from the syndicate—that was the best fate he could hope for, really. But inside, he felt he had to brace himself for the idea that someone could put a bullet in his head at any moment without warning.

But even now, there was one sort of revenge Hitsuma could still exact against Rentaro. He was in a tuxedo, pushing his convertible as fast as it could go down the expressway. Eventually settling down at an intersection in a quiet suburban district, he could see the roof of the ceremonial hall, a citywide hotspot for marriages and receptions.

Despite the breakneck pace of the arrangements, he still managed to get the date he asked for. It was going to be a Western-style ceremony, and yet his fiancée’s family insisted upon holding it on the most auspicious day possible in the old-style Japanese lunar calendar. He was highly dubious at first, but it was a Tendo tradition—and he still had the clarity of mind to keep at least one ear open to their requests.

In just a bit more time, Hitsuma would be married. Married to a girl Rentaro had feelings for. The wild beast that lurked in Hitsuma’s psyche sneered in abject derision.

I’m going to defile her. Trample over her. Just imagining the rage with which he planned to go at her seemed to charge something up in his heart of hearts.

Checking his watch, he cursed himself once more. He needed to hurry. He was already a few minutes late. His foot was heavy on the accelerator again.

Leaving his convertible to the valet, he strode into the pompously magnificent church edifice, looking up at the cross at its very apex as he opened both front doors with both hands. The air felt secluded, a little stuffy, the only light from burning candles. They lined the walls atop metal stands; but after racing around in broad daylight, it seemed intensely dark to Hitsuma.

The space was lined with stone columns, two side aisles intersecting the main one in the middle to form another cross. Down the middle was a red carpet, and beyond it, above the altar, deep azure light streamed in through a stained-glass window. And at the altar itself—

“Oooh…!”

Hitsuma stared in astonishment. The tens of millions of yen he spent flattering her was now completely forgotten. There she was, the veil covering her black silken hair, the white gloves on her hands. The soft chiffon skirt draped over her sides. She was a maiden of pure white, one more beautiful than anyone thought possible, and she was standing with her back turned to him.

The priest had yet to arrive, it seemed, so instead of awaiting further instructions, he forgot himself and walked forward, past the long wooden pews. Once he was close enough, he reached out with a hand, aiming for her slender shoulder.

“I’m so glad you’re here, Kisara. Are you ready? Once the priest shows up, we can hold the ceremony all by ourselves.”

His hand touched her shoulder.

—Only to be slapped back. A long, metallic black tube zeroed in on the bridge of Hitsuma’s nose. The black-haired bride narrowed her gaze at him.

“Sorry, but I’m not marrying you, Mr. Hitsuma… Or maybe it’s better to call you Atsuro Hitsuma, top manager at the Five Wings Syndicate?”

“Wha…?! Kisara, what are you talking about? The Five Wings…what? I have no idea what that is—”

“—Maybe you’ve kept the game going for this long, Superintendent,” said another voice in the distance, “but it’s just about time to pay the piper.”

Hitsuma whirled around. Near one of the side aisles, the door to the priest’s office opened. Out of it stepped a barrel-chested inspector. Even the old-fashioned revolver he was carrying seemed like some kind of joke.

“Inspector Tadashima…”

“Sorry, sir, but you’re not gonna see any priest here today. I’m taking over for him. And instead of some Western-style wedding vows, I’m gonna be advising you, USA-style, of your Miranda rights. Hope you know a good lawyer.”

“Wh-what are you two people talking about? I mean, what kind of evidence could you possibly—?”

“We’ve got plenty of evidence.”

Kisara lifted up her left arm, the long silken glove still on it. She took a chip out from inside.

“The memory card… Where did you…?!”

The stammered reaction amounted to a de facto confession. Hitsuma didn’t even care anymore. All he could do was stand there, hyperventilating.

“It was in here,” Kisara said as she took out a pocket watch. The light reflected off it in a dazzling array of colors. It was the very one Hitsuma had given her during their marriage negotiations.

“You, you’re kidding me! There’s no way it could be in there. I took the whole thing apart!”

“Yeah,” Kisara replied as she rapped a knuckle on the watch face, “it was pretty tough to spot. This watch has a pretty unique mechanism inside of it. I tried messing with it, too, but even I couldn’t figure it out until the appointed hour came along.”

“The appointed hour…?”

“Kihachi Suibara was supposed to give this watch to Hotaru Kouro for her birthday. That’s today, by the way—August 22. And when the clock struck midnight, the mechanism played a music-box melody and sprang into action. And guess what we found inside?”

“Superintendent Hitsuma, sir,” Tadashima continued, police notebook in hand, “I decided to go over everything we know about Rentaro Satomi from the ground up. The suspect testified in interrogation several times that Suibara claimed someone stole his evidence, so he wanted to be referred to Lady Seitenshi to inform her of his story directly. I checked on that, and I found three 1-1-0 emergency calls from Kihachi, summoning the police to his home. The place had been ransacked every time, to the point that the answering officers couldn’t determine if it was robbery or simple vandalism.

“Looking back, it was probably meant more as a warning, wasn’t it? A warning not to wade further in if you want to keep breathing. So, not to persecute our own force about this, but all they did was take down a statement and leave each time. I know we’re all busy on the force, but it’s a bad habit we all have—as long as nobody’s bleeding, we’re not exactly proactive with property crimes. It must’ve been during one of those break-ins that Hotaru’s birthday present was stolen.”

The salvos of evidence fired at Hitsuma made it hard for him to breathe at all.

“So… The card…?”

“Yep,” Kisara said. “We looked at it all. I’m pretty sure the police are checking in on the Five Wings officers under you right now. Sure weren’t expecting the police commissioner himself to be in on it, though.”

The barrel of the revolver in Tadashima’s hand was quivering with rage. He was practically crushing the handle with his death grip.

“That, and we know all about the so-called ‘Black Swan Project,’ too. At first, sir, I was just shocked—but now… Now, I have nothing but anger for you. I can’t believe you even considered transforming Gastrea into biological weapons…!”

Kisara whisked her head back and forth. “Why…? Why, Mr. Hitsuma? When we met five years ago, you were the most honest, ethical person I had ever met. When did this happen to you?”

Everything had fallen to pieces. When it finally dawned on him, he found it extremely odd that his instinctive reaction was neither anger nor resignation to his fate.

“Well, this saves me the trouble of inviting you.”

“Inviting me?”

Hitsuma, cool and collected, spread his arms out wide and took a step forward. Tadashima’s gun shook again. A look of trepidation crossed Kisara’s face.

“Did you think I joined the Five Wings Syndicate because my father made me? Well, sadly, I didn’t. I joined out of my own free will. I don’t know if it’s in the memory card Suibara took or not, but the aim of the Syndicate is to rid the world of Gastrea for good.”

“But the way you’re trying to do that is absolutely evil!”

“Why is that? We are talking about a group with a united will. A will, and a drive to press that will forward. It’s the simplest thing in the world.”

“And can’t you hear the screams of the weak you’re trampling over with your ‘united will’?”

Hitsuma shrugged it off, opening his arms to Kisara again. “Oh, so you’re treating me like a subhuman now?” he proclaimed. “That’s a little mean, isn’t it? The Five Wings Syndicate investigated the whole affair with Kazumitsu Tendo. And you, too—maybe you’re denying it, but deep down in your heart, doesn’t our ideology resonate with you? Or is the monster you’re keeping inside your heart see an even more sinister path for the future of mankind?”

Kisara shuddered, the color draining from her face.

“That’s enough, Superintendent!”

“Maybe it seems like the Varanium supply’s gonna last forever to you,” Hitsuma continued, ignoring Tadashima’s intimidation. “But it’s not. Someday, it’s all gonna dry out. You’ve probably seen pundits go on about it in the news a hundred times by now. And Varanium is used for more than just the Monoliths. Civsecs use it for their weapons and ammo, too. Whoever controls the Varanium controls the planet—and that’s not an exaggeration, either.

“Even if we collected together all the estimated Varanium ore deposits in the world, there’s nowhere near enough to protect every nation. And who do you think’s going to be trampled over first? It’s the weak! The weak you think you’re defending against us! But the sooner we can take action now, the more human lives we can save. In fact, if the human race keeps going the way it is now—an endless quagmire of war, consumption, wasted resources—it’s entirely possible that the Gastrea will wipe us out.

“You’re an intelligent woman—I know you’ve got it in you to understand. What we need right now is to take the first step, secure victory, and keep the war as short as humanly possible. It’ll all contribute to the public good, in the end. Kisara… You have what it takes to join us.”

Kisara’s eyes opened wide with surprise.

“President Tendo! Don’t listen to him!”

Hitsuma took out the automatic handgun he had on his person and fired.

A spurt of blood flew out from Tadashima’s shirt, and horrified surprise crossed his face.

Quickly turning around, Hitsuma switched to flight mode, running down the aisle. Gunfire erupted behind him, bullets digging into the floor near his feet. He used a shoulder to bash the front door open and flew out. The bright blue sky made him wince for a moment, but soon he was inside a back alley, kicking up rain puddles as he ran with all his soul.

The whole plan was a failure. He needed to come up with a new one. For now, the first priority was lying low and reformulating his strategy. Once things settled down a bit, he could contact Kisara again and try enticing her a little more. There was no need to panic. In fact, he was cooking up a few ingenious ideas already.

Then a car burst into the alley in front of him, brakes screeching. It stopped right in the middle of the street—it was after him.

The smoked-glass window whirred down, revealing the face of a young man wearing a hunting cap.

“Hello there, Mr. Hitsuma.”

Hitsuma watched him, again overcome by surprise.

“Are you…Nest?”

It was the first time they had met in person. He was, after all, just a contact agent. The man who referred Hummingbird, Swordtail, and Dark Stalker to Hitsuma, as well as handled material transport for him.

Regaining his bearings, Hitsuma started waving his arms side to side.

“The op’s a failure! I need to at least get my father and myself to Osaka Area, all right? We’re both gonna need fake passports, like, now!”

The urgency was clear in Hitsuma’s voice. Nest kept on smiling.

“That’s a nice bow tie you got on.”

“Uh?” Hitsuma’s jaw dropped as he looked down at his chest. It was a plain black one, like on every other tux in this city.

This wasn’t funny. “What are you…?!”

There was a muffled gunshot, and Hitsuma’s body shook.

He fell to his knees. His chest was warm. The burst of color running through his shirt was a dark red.

Nest had a pistol with a silencer attached.

“We decided to dismantle the Black Swan Project. As a result, we’re being asked to eliminate all evidence linking it to Five Wings.”

“No… If I’m not around, the administration’s going to fall apart—”

An orange flash burst from the silencer. It was the last thing Hitsuma ever saw.

Once he fired all the bullets in his gun, Nest tossed it in the backseat and grabbed the steering wheel with both hands.

“You make a mistake, you pay for it. Farewell, my good Superintendent.”

The engine revved to life as the car reversed at full speed. Another second, and Nest was gone.

All that remained was the corpse sprawled out in the wet, dingy alley.

6

Half-dead, half-alive, Rentaro wasn’t able to gaze at the Monoliths in their full, up-close size until fairly well into the following night. His gait was halting, unsteady, every step met with searing pain.

It had been a long while since his battle with Yuga met its end, the blessed adrenaline his body produced in response to it a thing of the past. All that remained was an intense, all-encompassing ache.

Along the way, he encountered three Stage One Gastrea. He discovered all three first, using his few remaining leg cartridges to end the battles in half a second. And that was that.

The summer wind blew pleasantly against his skin, pallid with blood loss. He closed his eyes and sucked as much of its scent into his nostrils as possible.

He had seen it for himself—the Gastrea cultivation facility collapsing in a heap of rubble. He had tried his best to hurry back to the Monoliths, but was stymied by the urge to carry Hotaru’s body back. It made him turn back at least once. But it just wasn’t possible. Not in his state.

So he buried her next to the portable Monoliths instead. If possible, he wanted to get her body out of that grave as soon as possible. To someplace more suitable for her—next to Suibara.

For now, at least, the Monoliths loomed large before him.

Just beyond the border between “here” and “there,” he spotted a herd of red flashing lights. He squinted. He had no idea how they had sniffed him out, but it looked like Rentaro had a police welcoming party waiting for him.

He let out a sigh. The photos from inside the facility were saved on Hotaru’s mobile phone, yes. But explaining it all would take so much more time.

But Rentaro’s outlook was completely mistaken.

“Rentaro!”

“Big Brother!”

A blonde girl and another one with a pair of pigtails were running toward him. He gazed at them in wonderment, his limbs quaking. It had been a dream of his for so long, he seriously thought it was all a hallucination for a moment. But when he realized it wasn’t, Rentaro started running, forgetting all about his injuries.

They half hugged, half collided into one another, spinning around as they fell on the grass. They were warm; they were soft; they were dreamlike—they were Enju and Tina.

“Enju! Tina!”

He tried to stop them, but he couldn’t. His face twisted, and before he knew it, the tears were surging out.

They joined shoulders, beholding one another. Tina and Enju were just as moved by this reunion, both sniffling a little and Tina wiping her eyes at regular intervals. They repeated one another’s names over and over again like crazed parrots. One more time, they held one another close. Strongly. Just to make sure they never separated again.

Then, all at once, Rentaro asked a barrage of questions. Were they free? The answer, excitedly given between the two: Yes. Enju was suddenly released from the Promoter matching process, Tina just as suddenly released from jail, and the police even gave them a ride there.

Another question sprang to his mind. “Speaking of which, guys, we’re pretty much right by the Monoliths. Are you guys okay being here, with the Gastrea Virus and all?”

“Oh,” Enju replied quizzically. Then her eyebrows shot up, both hands to her mouth as her ponytails seemed to visibly droop.

“Ngh, I—I don’t feel too good… I think I’m gonna throw up.”

“I’m not too hot myself.”

“Stupid.”

Rentaro grinned wryly to himself as he tousled their hair. They had even forgotten about that for his sake.

“Come on,” he said, giving both a shove on the back. “Let’s get home. ’Cause, seriously, if you hang out here much longer, you’ll—”

He lost his train of thought when he saw what was ahead of him. It was an August bride in white. The veil was gone, revealing a head of long, straight, black hair that waved in the wind.

“Kisara…”

She didn’t try to meet his gaze. Instead she just stood there, eyes focused on a point somewhere to his right.

“Open up.”

“Huh?”

“Open up your arms.”

“Oh.”

Rentaro did so. Kisara, still focused on the ground, fell into them, embracing his chest. Her gloved hands wrapped themselves behind his back. It unnerved him slightly.

“Wh-whoa, Kisara—”

“You’re so stupid.”

He couldn’t gauge her expression, given that her face was buried in his torso. She rubbed her nose against it as she shook her head. A slight, ever-so-slight, shudder crossed over from her body to his.

“So, um…?” he asked.

“Yes?”

“Is it all over now?”

Rentaro felt the girl nodding in his arms. He looked up at the starless night sky and sighed.

“Oh.”

Kisara was there. Enju and Tina were released. The crimes he stood accused of had all been dismissed by Kisara, apparently.

But what about her and Hitsuma? Why was she in a wedding dress? Rentaro thought for a moment, then wisely decided those questions could wait.

They stayed in that position for a while—it was hard to say how long—until Rentaro grabbed her hands and suggested they return home.

The Monoliths were right in front of them as they held each other’s hands. He had been gone for so long that they were both eager to make up for lost time.

Thus the four crossed the imaginary finish line together, walking back to Tokyo Area as a group of free people.

The police officers watched blankly from their cars. After the wild goose chase Rentaro sent them on, there he was—a successful escapee, a civsec who just restored his good name right in front of them. Nobody would be getting police commendations for this case.

Rentaro found Tadashima’s face among the watchers. He had a sling on—reportedly he had suffered a gunshot wound to the shoulder. Something about his face was even more formal and solemn than usual. He gave Rentaro a silent salute.

“Clear the way, people! The savior of Tokyo Area’s coming through!”

A quiet frenzy erupted among the officers, infecting them one by one until all saluted the civsec team. Every face held a sincere look of reverence.

Suddenly, Rentaro heard the sound of a music box playing—it was from the pocket watch in Kisara’s hand. There was something oddly familiar about it, but he couldn’t remember the tune’s name.

Despite the lack of ticker tape and cheering, it was the best welcome-home parade he could have asked for.

Thus, with the smell of summer still in the chilly wind, the police-escorted official ceremony for the reopening of the Tendo Civil Security Agency came to a close.