4: Time Hazard

I’m not dead yet, Sousuke thought after opening his eyes and checking himself over. He was soaked from head to toe, for some reason. He could feel pain here and there, but his AS operator’s uniform had spared him all but a few bruises. His left arm still wasn’t in top shape, but that, too, seemed to be a light sprain at the worst.

For now, he remained silent in order to listen. He could hear flowing water and the faint howl of wind, but it was too dark to see anything. His night vision goggles had fallen off at some point, so he searched for the Maglite stuck in his tactical vest. He thought, Good, it’s still there, and then turned it on at the lowest setting.

The first thing Sousuke saw was an exposed rock wall. The second was all kinds of things that had been piled up: broken-down polystyrene foam; tangled-up wires; tarps; wastebaskets; wooden chairs; shredded fencing; garbage of all kinds.

The space he was in resembled a round-roofed cave. A sewer system? he speculated. Knee-high water flowed along the ground, and the trash it swept up on its journey seemed to have collected here in piles. Given the size of some of the objects, he quickly postulated that the flow must become a torrent at certain times of the day and year. He himself must have fallen into the hole and been carried here while he was unconscious. The flow seemed to be dying down even now, the water level seemingly lower than it had been when he’d first looked.

In other words, he’d been flushed out like waste.

How far have I come? What time is it? Sousuke checked his watch to discover that he’d been out for about fifteen minutes. He didn’t know how far he’d drifted, but judging by the quiet around him, he must have ended up quite far from his fall point. He’d lost his carbine, too. Probably dropped somewhere...

“Colonel...” He looked around for Tessa, but she was nowhere to be seen. “Colonel... Tessa?” He kept his voice down even as he called for her, and began rooting around in the rubbish.

He found a body, bleached to the bones, in a tattered jumpsuit with a nameplate. He couldn’t make out the gender, but whoever this person was and however they had died, it clearly wasn’t Tessa. She’d been left at the accident site, or been carried elsewhere by the current. He didn’t even know if she was still alive, but...

Dammit, he thought. His radio would be of no help. A few impacts and submerging wouldn’t have been enough to break it, but radio waves also wouldn’t penetrate this far underground.

Just head back upstream, he told himself. You have to find her.

Sousuke swiftly headed back up the cave, against the flow of the water. Soon, the exposed rock walls turned to brick. It really is a sewer, then, he realized. Given that no one had lived in these ruins for years, the flow must have come purely from rain and spring water.

He must have walked over three hundred meters before coming upon a large hole in the ceiling. There was a slope there, formed by a pile of collapsed rubble and steel girders, which he managed to crawl up to reach the lowest floor above the sewer. There he found a large vertical shaft, narrower than the one they’d first come down, but still covering about five stories.

Sousuke maxed out his light and pointed it at the area above him. There are cross-passages in the shaft, he realized, made from metal scaffolding and pipes. They all seemed rickety from age, and several passages had come loose. Straining his eyes further, he could see that there was a square hallway with a large hole in the floor at the top.

That must be where I fell from, he speculated, and found himself impressed he’d gotten off so easily in the fall. He must have hit scaffolding, girders, pipes and wires on the way down, mitigating the impact of a five-story fall... although, Tessa wouldn’t have been likely to survive it.

Dimming his Maglite again, Sousuke looked over the floor of the cave, with its rubble and pipes stacked up in conical piles. There was no sign of Tessa, but he did find his lost carbine, which he picked up and examined for damage. It seemed fine at a glance, but after a fall from that height, he wouldn’t know if the carbine worked right until he’d fired it.

Is she still up there? he wondered next. Tessa could still be unconscious in the hallway from which he’d fallen. He couldn’t see from here, but if he called out to her, would she answer?

No, too dangerous. He didn’t want to be heard. Over thirty minutes had passed since he’d first fallen, and enemy reinforcements could be swarming the area. He’d have to climb back up and check the corridor himself.

Of all the rotten luck... he thought, briefly annoyed at his current situation, but then reconsidered. Real bad luck would’ve been getting crushed by that helicopter. Real bad luck would’ve been Tessa, lacking the protection of a shock-resistant AS operator’s uniform, falling down the hole with him.

Holding the light in his mouth, Sousuke began climbing the pipes and girders along the shaft wall. He managed to make it three stories up, but no further—he’d have to leave the shaft here and find another route for the last floor.

Upon entering the closest cross-tunnel, Sousuke emerged into what had once been a corridor. I just have to find a staircase, he told himself, and then I can trace my way to where I left Tessa.

He proceeded down the empty hallway on full alert, with the Maglite in his left hand and his Glock 19 in his right. Since he wasn’t sure if the carbine was still working, Sousuke didn’t intend to use it for his first shot. The tests can wait until the shooting’s started, he thought. After the enemies already know my location.

Sousuke turned at several forks in the passageway, which was lined with doors. He’d looked inside several to discover dormitories and offices, most of which were empty.

But at the end of the corridor was a set of stairs, in front of which stood Leonard Testarossa.

Sousuke couldn’t believe it. The red coat worn over an AS operator’s uniform, the wavy silver hair... He held an ornate Colt Peacemaker in his right hand, and though Sousuke couldn’t see his face beneath his night vision goggles, he was sure it was him.

Sousuke didn’t think twice or hesitate before opening fire, and the red coat leaped into action to stop the bullets. That active bulletproof clothing again... Sousuke fired five more shots regardless, all of them equally ineffective.

“Predictable as ever,” Leonard observed before making his own move, his revolver flashing with fire.

But Sousuke had ducked into a nearby doorframe a split-second earlier, letting the shot pass him by to hit the wall and chip at the concrete. Sousuke stuck his gun out and returned fire immediately, unloading his clip. The shots echoed through the area.

Not good, he thought grimly. Every one either missed or was blocked by the coat.

“Your stubbornness is truly tiresome,” Leonard told him.

And your pretension is maddening. You gave up your chance to make the perfect surprise attack... Sousuke thought, but didn’t say it. Instead, he changed his clip, returned the Glock to its holster, and readied his carbine. How will that fabulous bulletproof coat of yours stand up against a full metal jacket? he wondered, and unleashed a semiautomatic shot.

It missed. Leonard must have known he couldn’t block rifle shots, because he turned tail immediately and disappeared down the corridor. Sousuke fired again, hoping to hit him through the wall, but to no avail; Leonard simply returned fire, which Sousuke managed to duck.

The carbine’s aim seems to be trending towards the upper right, Sousuke observed. This was probably due to the five-story fall, but it seemed to be working fine otherwise. Sturdy work, indeed... At the next opportunity, he resolved to send a thank-you email to the maker.

Sousuke fired; Leonard fired. Sousuke moved; Leonard moved. The back-and-forth continued until they entered a room the size of a gymnasium, filled with tanks full of fluid, compressors, and a forest of intertwined pipes and valves.

Having only a Maglite against Leonard’s night vision goggles had Sousuke at a tactical disadvantage. The light gave away his position, and there was no way to catch Leonard by surprise.

No... That’s not the only reason I can’t finish him off, Sousuke thought. Leonard was good at this: his reflexes; his precision; his purposeful, cool-headed movements; his seemingly indiscriminate yet thoroughly logical positioning... Pulling that off took real skill. Sousuke didn’t know if it was due to natural talent or training, but he realized he shouldn’t be fooled by the other man’s whimsical choices of weapons and words. He’d had a preconception of him as being a spoiled rich boy fully reliant on his high-tech equipment, but it seemed that there was more to Leonard than met the eye.

“Not bad at all, right?” asked Leonard, laughing in the darkness. “You can’t beat me in an AS, so you’d better take your shot here... It’s your last, best chance to kill me.”

There was something off about his provocation, Sousuke felt. They’d only spoken a few times in the past, but there had been a more languid air about Leonard then. Had it all been an act, or had something in him changed?

“You’ve lost some of your class, I see,” Sousuke decided to say. There was nothing wrong with conversing during combat, since his Maglite betrayed his location, anyway.

“Have I?” Leonard mused. “Meeting you on your level seemed the best way to get along.”

Sousuke heard a gunshot, and Leonard’s bullet grazed by. Using a waist-high pipe as a shield, he moved to a position that would put more pressure on his opponent.

“I’ll get along with you when you’re dead,” Sousuke told him.

“Ah,” Leonard said appreciatively, “nice comeback.”

The firefight had been raging for over three minutes now—a bad sign, if Leonard was trying to buy time for the soldiers under his command to arrive. Should I focus on beating him, Sousuke wondered, or withdraw? He didn’t have much time to decide.

And indeed, the reinforcements arrived before he’d made a decision. A group of four men armed with submachine guns arrived from an up-leading staircase, about fifteen meters away from the tank where Sousuke was hiding.

“Mr. Silver?!” one of the men shouted.

“I told you to stay away,” Leonard told them coldly. “Turn back.”

“But you can’t—”

“Leave!”

“There he is!” one of the men shouted, and fired at Sousuke. His shot pierced the tank he was hiding behind, releasing the liquid within.

Sousuke returned fire, downing one of them with a shot to the chest. The remaining three fanned out and kept up the fire. Their stray bullets ricocheted off pipes and cables, causing sparks to fly.

The enemies are well trained, Sousuke observed. They don’t seem fazed by the losses they took, and work skillfully together for support and setting up kill shots. But there was a monotony to the rhythm of their attacks and movements: they must not have been a team for very long.

One of them came into the open just as Sousuke had expected, and he put the man down with a single shot. But his opponent seemed to have been trying to throw a grenade at him, and it rolled from his fallen hand with the pin pulled...

Sousuke gasped, and there was an explosion as the incendiary grenade went off with a flash of white and a burst of fire... It was meant to burn its surroundings at high temperatures, and was especially effective indoors.

Sousuke was far enough away not to be hurt, but something more serious had happened: there had been a fluid tank right next to the space in which the grenade had gone off, the same one that had been damaged before.

Sousuke didn’t know what fluid it could be that hadn’t lost its flammability in over seventeen years... but whatever it was, the grenade had set it off, and now the flames from the ensuing fireball were spreading across the room along the pipes.

In turn, those flames triggered more fires and explosions. The shockwaves of heat and force smashed through the floor, which brought down a rain of rebar and concrete from the ceiling. Sousuke barely managed to dodge the falling debris on his way to the exit. He knew if he stayed in the room, he’d asphyxiate—if he didn’t boil first.

He heard one of the enemies scream as he caught fire and fell through a newly-made hole in the floor. This sound was followed by another explosion behind him. It was hard to run with the floor collapsing beneath him, warping and shifting into a steep slant. Sousuke fell, got up, and fell again.

They were in no condition to keep up the fight. Half running, half crawling, Sousuke scrambled away from the fire and the landslide.

“There it goes again...” There was a series of gunshots followed by a large explosion. The corridor’s ceiling trembled, showering dust down on Kaname and the others from above.

“It must be Sagara-san. He’s encountered the enemy while searching for me,” Tessa said, having more or less caught Kaname up on the situation. She’d been separated from Sousuke after the helicopter crash, and had run into her and Lemon while searching for him.

Sousuke’s nearby. The thought of it caused Kaname’s heart to race. She had to hold back the urge to run off blindly on her own, reminding herself that she’d just get herself lost.

But emotion refused to disentangle itself from good sense. I want to see him, she thought desperately. I can’t wait one second longer. I won’t get lost. He’ll find me if I call for him. The enemy will find me, you say? Nope. He’ll find me first, for sure. That unreasonable train of thought kept on asserting itself inside of her, refusing to be put down.

The explosion had come in the middle of one such agonizing session.

“Let’s find him!” Kaname begged the others. “I think I know which direction it came from.”

“Perhaps, but...” Tessa hesitated.

“But what?”

“There’s clearly a battle in progress,” Tessa pointed out. “Lemon-san’s leg is injured... If we run into the enemy before we find Sagara-san, he won’t be able to escape.”

“But we don’t know that we will!” Kaname argued back. “And Sousuke might be in trouble! We can’t just leave him there!”

“We don’t know that we won’t. And my priority is your and Lemon-san’s safety—”

“Oh, screw your stupid logic! I want to see him! And if you try to stop me, I’ll go by myself!” déjà vu washed over her yet again, and Kaname’s voice trembled as she found her irritation reaching its boiling point.

“Please calm down. I haven’t—”

“Calm down, my ass! He’s finally... finally here, after all this time. Why won’t you let me see him?” she demanded. “Would that be inconvenient for you? Why—”

“Kaname-san, stop,” Lemon interrupted, grabbing her arm. Shocked by his strength, Kaname snapped out of her fugue, realizing how inappropriately she was behaving. “I get how you feel, but you have to calm down. If we get careless now, all we’ve done will be for nothing.”

He’s right, she realized. Now’s a time for caution. Out loud she said, “Sorry, Tessa.”

“It’s all right. It’s partly my fault in the first place,” Tessa whispered weakly.

A powerful feeling of guilt surged through Kaname. Tessa cared for Sousuke too, and here Kaname was, thinking only of herself... And yet, Tessa had borne the abuse admirably. If Kaname had been in Tessa’s place, she would have torn her a new one over behavior like that. “No... I really am sorry,” she said, trying to apologize once more. “I think I might be going crazy...”

“It’s understandable,” Tessa said in a comforting voice. “It’s been so long since you last saw Sagara-san, and now you’re so close...”

“Yeah...”

“If everyone’s feeling better, we should get moving,” Lemon told them gravely. “It’s dangerous to stay in one place for too long. We need to get as far from the enemy as possible, and if we’re lucky, we might find another exit. Getting to the surface and contacting our allies with Testarossa-san’s radio is still our best move.”

“But Sousuke—”

“He’ll be okay. He’ll find it easier to act without us slowing him down, and eventually he’ll get the idea to head for the surface and check in, too. There’s nothing to be gained by meeting up with him now, and trying to force it will just raise the chances of us all dying together.”

It sounded like a coward’s reasoning to her, but Lemon must have been through his share of dangerous situations... It’s probably wisest to listen to his judgment, Kaname decided. “Okay, we’ll do that,” she said with a nod, forcing down the lingering desire to run to where she knew Sousuke to be. “Tessa, do you know your way around?”

“I know the facility’s general layout,” Tessa told them. “If we can make it to the lowest floor, there should be an emergency staircase or exhaust duct on the north side. There’s no guarantee the enemy won’t have the place surrounded by now, but it’s safer than going out the south side, at least...”

“Which way is north?”

“This way. Let’s go.” Tessa pointed to one hallway in a four-way intersection, and they began to walk, with the girls supporting Lemon on both sides.

In the dark, Lemon let out a small laugh.

“What’s wrong?” Kaname asked him.

“Ah... I was just thinking, ‘You’ve got a beautiful woman on each arm, you lucky dog.’ If I wasn’t in screaming pain, I’d be in heaven.”

“Tessa. Are you sure we can’t just leave him here?”

“Hmm... but we should give him one last request before we do,” Tessa agreed innocently.

“Ahh... sorry,” Lemon told them. “I’m sorry. Please don’t leave me here.”

“For Pete’s sake...” Kaname muttered. Then, adjusting her grip on the genuinely penitent Lemon, they resumed their slow movement though the darkness.

I’m trapped. That was the conclusion Sousuke had come to after escaping the fire and wandering around for a while. Everywhere he went, he found collapsed ceilings and sealed iron doors blocking his way. He’d thought about blasting through with C4, but the smell of some kind of gas permeated the area, and he was afraid it could trigger another explosion.

Staying alert towards the room in which they’d initially fought, he tried to go back the way he’d come, only to find the path blocked by more collapsed girders and pipes. The fire was out by now, and while he was glad it hadn’t devoured all the oxygen, he also knew he couldn’t stay here forever.

He was worried about Tessa, too. If the enemy has come this far, he thought, she might already be in their custody. She was the little sister of their commander, so they probably wouldn’t kill her on sight, but that didn’t mean they’d let her go free, either.

Maybe I should escape and meet up with Kurz and the others first, he reasoned. With the powerful Laevatein and the backing of Kurz’s machine, it might be possible to get Tessa back. He still wasn’t sure if he could beat Leonard’s AS, but it was a more realistic plan than standing off against a horde of enemies with a lone carbine with dud aim.

But what if Tessa hadn’t been caught yet? Even then, he told himself, I should still try to meet up with Kurz and the others. If he wanted enough time to find all of his allies in this labyrinth, he’d have to take out all the enemies first. Assuming that was even possible...

Sousuke gasped as he once again turned the corner to find Leonard there. He must have escaped the explosion as well... More annoyingly, his outfit was barely even scuffed.

Leonard and Sousuke each noticed the other at about the same time. They pointed their guns, but didn’t fire.

“Hold on, now,” Leonard laughed. “Surely you’ve realized that shooting might trigger an explosion.”

That rotten onion smell that had been tickling his nose all this time was most likely a flammable LP gas. Using his gun would be dangerous.

“Or it might not,” Sousuke said, keeping his gun pointed at his opponent’s head. He was too close to miss. One shot would end it. But the reverse was true, too...

“Shall we, then?” Leonard offered. “It might be amusing to see what happens.”

“An appealing proposition,” Sousuke agreed.

“So you say, but you’re actually planning on pulling a knife from your belt,” Leonard predicted. “That won’t risk an explosion. You think you can push weak little me to the ground and cut my throat, right?”

Bingo. Sousuke’s hand was inching towards his knife. If he got in close enough, he had a good chance of winning in a physical fight.

“Too bad I have this.” Leonard pulled a knife out from under his coat and pointed it at Sousuke. At first it just looked like a simple shiv, but he noticed a thumb-activated button where the blade met the handle. Sousuke quietly clicked his tongue as he saw it.

“A spetsnaz knife,” Leonard told him. “You’re familiar, I’m sure.” This was a weapon designed by Soviet special forces: the grip was mounted with a powerful spring, and pressing the switch would send the blade flying. It was a simple setup, like one you might see in a toy, but far more powerful. It could pierce through a phone book at ten meters.

Sousuke was at a disadvantage again. His AS operator’s uniform was blade-resistant, but it wouldn’t stop that kind of piercing power. A hit from that knife would gravely wound him, if not kill him outright. And the simple spring trigger wouldn’t spark an explosion.

But it was one-use-only. If he could dodge the first strike, he could get in close...

“I know your type,” he said, as if reading Sousuke’s mind. “Kill the enemy no matter what it takes—if you don’t have a gun, use a knife. If you don’t have a knife, use your bare hands. If you lose your hands, chew their throat out. If they kill you, sharpen your bones and wait until they step on you. I suppose you wouldn’t be open to parley?”

“What exactly would we have to discuss?” Sousuke asked suspiciously.

“Escape,” Leonard admitted. “As much as I hate it, we’re both trapped in here.”

Sousuke said nothing.

“The place is filling up with propane,” Leonard went on. “We’re fine for now, but if we don’t die from the toxicity first, we’ll asphyxiate in about two hours.”

“You’re saying you don’t want to fight?” Sousuke asked more directly.

“We’re both dead if we do. I’ve looked all around, and the only way out is a stairway blocked by rubble. But if we work together to clear it, we might escape.”

“Are you proposing a truce?”

“Yes, a truce,” Leonard agreed. “If we were to fight now, whoever wins will surely be wounded in the process, and a wounded man can’t do the necessary work on his own. We’ll work together to escape, and only then return to our regularly scheduled attempts to kill each other. That’s my proposition.”

Leonard’s not lying, Sousuke thought, knowing full well that he was right about the gas and the escape route. Without a truce, we’ll both die here for sure. “Very well,” he said out loud. “But only until we escape.” Sousuke wasn’t going to let his guard down for a second, but he had no choice but to accept Leonard’s proposal. They both lowered their weapons at the same time.

“Excellent,” Leonard said dryly. “Do we need a handshake?”

“Don’t be stupid,” said Sousuke, who shouldered his carbine and headed for the stairs.

Under Kalinin’s command, Amalgam’s airborne squad had finished securing the ruins on the surface... though in fact, what he’d really done was simply check for enemies, and found none.

After disembarking and checking for traces of other helicopter landings, Kalinin had found the two sets of footprints leading into the plant, which he identified as belonging to Sagara Sousuke and Teletha Testarossa. They were likely to be in the plant’s underground facility right now.

Leonard was likely aware of this, too. He had entered the plant alone, and they hadn’t heard from him since. The four men Kalinin had sent to scout afterwards had reported gunshots before going incommunicado... Most likely neutralized in a fight with Sousuke, he thought.

A few minutes later, a report from a subordinate supported that theory. He’d said there was a fire in a different area than that in which the helicopter had gone down, and they’d found a survivor near the crash site who confirmed that Chidori Kaname and the Frenchman had survived. Leonard was now missing, and Sousuke and Tessa were still out there, somewhere.

Strange things seem to be happening under that plant, Kalinin thought speculatively. He could send a large number of those still on the surface to search underground... But the déjà vu effect made him reluctant to send any more of his men inside.

“Leave things up here to me,” said Kaspar, on standby in his AS. “If anyone approaches, I’ll finish them off.”

“Very well,” Kalinin said after a pause. “I leave it to you.” With that, he left on his own foray into the plant’s basement, accompanied by a few soldiers down the shaft.

Tessa was an excellent guide, and the three of them quickly reached the bottom floor of the plant. They managed to do it without any hostile encounters—which wasn’t especially surprising, given that they were heading in the direction opposite to that from which their enemies were coming.

Kaname understood the idea of the plan—to cross the bottom floor and come out the other side—but the idea of going deeper into the maze still made her uneasy. “You sure this is the right way?” she asked Tessa. She’d done so multiple times; more often than she could count, thanks to the increasing frequency of her déjà vu.

“Yes, quite certain...” Tessa seemed to have more on her mind than just the directions, but she seemed hesitant to reveal it to the others. “Now, turn here and go straight,” she instructed. “You’ll end up on the opposite side of the plant from the one we came in on. If you can find a staircase or a ladder there, it should bring you topside.”

“But you’ve got something else on your mind, right?” Kaname asked more directly.

“Yes...” Tessa stopped walking. “There’s a place I want to visit nearby. You two should keep going without me.”

Lemon and Kaname were shocked by her words.

“What place?” Kaname demanded to know. “What are you talking about?”

“The enemy will be here soon,” Lemon told her. “You can’t resist them all alone.”

“I’ll be fine,” Tessa said. “And it’s the place I originally came here to see... Having come this far, I can’t pass up the chance.”

“Well, what is it, already? At least let us come with you,” Kaname insisted.

“It’s close by, right? Let’s go,” Lemon offered.

But Tessa just shook her head. “I can’t let you do that. Just know that it’s something very important, and... I can handle it by myself.” Tessa’s ‘explanation’ was extremely elusive, as if she knew something she didn’t want to tell them.

No... to be more specific, it was likely Lemon’s presence that made Tessa reticent. He’d been enthusiastically helping her up until now, but he was still an agent in French intelligence. If there was a major secret here in the plant, there’d be no guarantee he wouldn’t pass it on to his government.

Lemon seemed to realize her motives, as well. “You mean you can’t let me do that, right?”

Tessa fell silent. He must have been right.

“Wraith and I are the ones who staked our lives to find this place, you know,” he pointedly reminded her. “I went to Moscow, totally blind, just on your say-so. I got shot for you, and Wraith might’ve gotten killed. But after all that, I still don’t deserve to know what’s going on?”

“I’m grateful for all you’ve done. But I—”

“It’s because of my affiliations, right?” he asked, cutting her off. “I’m not exactly in good standing with the DGSE, okay? I haven’t contacted my superiors in ages, so I’m probably fired.”

“I’m not just worried about what you might reveal,” Tessa denied. “The secret contained here goes beyond any one country’s national security concerns. In the wrong hands, it could affect people all over the world.”

“Yeah, right,” he scoffed.

“No... in fact, that’s a conservative estimation. Few people who learned the secret of what lies here would be able to resist its allure, its power,” Tessa went on. “I can tell Kaname-san, or Sagara-san, but only because it’s already upended our lives. We’re already in. But Lemon-san—I’ve seen nothing to prove to me that you can resist it.”

“I don’t understand,” Lemon argued back, and Kaname could see how much Tessa’s words confused him. “You think that the minute I learn this secret, I’m going to turn on you two and try to take it for myself?”

“It’s entirely possible. That’s how serious this matter is. Now, would you please leave me here and go on with Kaname-san?”

“There’s no way that’s happening. Okay, how about this?” Lemon whispered as he drew the automatic pistol from his belt.

“Wait—” Kaname said, panicked.

But with the safety still on, he flipped the pistol over and offered it to Tessa. “Take this. If I start acting weird, shoot me.”

“Lemon-san, I—”

“I still don’t know if we’re even getting out of this alive,” he said flatly. “At least let me see what it was all for. Please.”

Tessa seemed deeply troubled by his request. In Kaname’s brief time knowing him, Lemon had come off like a nice enough person... but there was no guarantee that it wasn’t an act. Who was to say he wouldn’t still turn on them?

But in the end, Tessa must have decided it was unavoidable, because she let out a deep breath and carefully took the gun he offered. “Very well,” she agreed. “But if you try anything, I really will fire.”

“S-Seriously?” Kaname asked.

Tessa gave them a firm nod. “Yes. I won’t hesitate to shoot at him. Whether I hit or not is another question entirely...”

“I... I see.”

“Kaname-san,” Tessa went on, “this is something I knew I’d have to tell you about eventually. Even if I didn’t, my brother may have been planning to do so himself—I think that’s why he came here. Or, if not that, to...”

“To what?” Kaname asked.

“Nothing,” Tessa said with a sigh. “Well, if we’re going together, we should hurry. It’s this way.”

Meanwhile, Sousuke and Leonard’s strange collaboration continued in the dark. They’d spent over five minutes wrestling with a girder that stubbornly refused to give way, before deciding to clear out the surrounding concrete and rocks first. After ten minutes of that, they’d finally managed to get to the point where the beam budged when they kicked it...

Sousuke and Leonard shared no conversation other than what was necessary to accomplish the work at hand: “Move this,” and “Pull that,” and nothing more. Of course, Sousuke wasn’t letting his guard down for a second. He had his knife ready to draw at the smallest provocation, and didn’t turn his back on the man for a second longer than he had to. Whatever the situation, he couldn’t forget that Leonard was an enemy.

“Goodness me...” Leonard said with a sigh, drawing back. He didn’t look to be tired, just sick of the work.

“Keep working,” Sousuke demanded. Surprisingly, Leonard didn’t seem to be lacking in either skill or strength, and he did as he was told. It felt strange to see the ever-pretentious, suit-clad man engaged willingly in this kind of labor.

“Teletha came with you, didn’t she? You aren’t worried about her?” Perhaps unable to stand the drudgery, Leonard began to talk.

Tessa must not be in their custody yet, Sousuke thought. It was entirely possible that Leonard was bluffing, of course, but to Sousuke’s eye, he seemed to be merely speculating. Of course, Sousuke had no obligation to give him any information, so he simply said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” choosing to play dumb.

“Don’t expect me to believe you came here by yourself,” Leonard told him dryly. “She’s the only one who would have business here.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sousuke insisted. “Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“Ah, I see.” Leonard lifted up a piece of reinforced concrete, threw it down the stairs, then started again in a needling tone. “How would you feel if I told you that Chidori Kaname was here?”

Sousuke’s hands stopped on a fragment of metal pipe. “You brought her here?” he demanded incredulously. “Into these ruins?”

“Now, now. Keep working.” Leonard chuckled, seeming to consider this a point scored against Sousuke. It was annoying, but Sousuke silently resumed work. “Do you remember the helicopter that fell down the elevator shaft?” Leonard went on conversationally. “She was on it.”

“What?!”

“Your team brought it down,” Leonard informed him, “and it exploded soon after impact. I didn’t check for bodies, of course.”

Sousuke felt a momentary chill go up his spine, but filed the statement away as being a lie. If Kaname were really dead, he thought, Leonard wouldn’t be this casual about it. It was hard to imagine the man grieving over anyone’s death, but he probably wouldn’t be snickering about it, at the very least.

“I can see you don’t believe me,” Leonard observed. “It is the truth, though... I was in the hangar in my AS, and she was still in the cabin when I escaped on my own.”

“You’re lying,” Sousuke accused him bluntly.

“I am not. Kaname was on that helicopter.”

“Then why are you so calm about it?”

“Ah, a fine question... All right, it should be mobile now,” Leonard announced in an attempt to change the subject of their conversation. “Let’s try it.”

“Right,” Sousuke agreed. Together, they grabbed the obstinate beam and pulled together with all their might. The base, which had been buried in rubble, slowly began to creak as it finally gave way.

“There we are. Now... what were we talking about? Oh, yes. Her,” Leonard continued, as they each returned to their individual labor. “She was indeed on the helicopter that went down. I didn’t save her, and the helicopter exploded soon afterward. Yet she’s still alive, I’m quite sure of it. And that’s what’s so interesting.”

“What are you getting at?” Sousuke asked, completely unable to follow the sequential logic of Leonard’s statements. If Kaname was on the helicopter, how can he be so sure she’s alive? he wondered. And why go out of his way to tell me about it now?

“I tested it once... Just before your little Hong Kong rampage,” Leonard said next. “That rainy night, when she was attacked by Gauron’s assassin in Tokyo? I was hiding nearby, watching, but I didn’t interfere.”

Sousuke listened quietly.

“Think about it,” Leonard insisted. “An assassin—Gauron’s protege—pitted against a slightly above-average teenage athlete... By any estimation, she should have died. But she didn’t.”

“She got lucky,” Sousuke opined.

“Yes, lucky—unusually so.” There was a mysterious implication in Leonard’s tone. “The assassin caught her by surprise and shot her. His first shot missed on a fluke, and then the empty cartridge caught in the chamber. That’s what allowed her to escape.”

Kaname had never spoken in detail about that day, so Sousuke had never heard this part before. She’d just told him about the Alastors—those miniature ASes—and that she’d met and talked briefly with Leonard.

“Automatic pistols jam all the time,” he pointed out.

“They do, yes,” Leonard agreed. “But if you were planning to assassinate someone with a gun, what would you do just beforehand?”

“Well...” Killing your target on the first shot was of utmost importance. An early miss would spur them to desperate resistance and make it difficult to complete the assassination smoothly. Thus, Sousuke knew that he’d check the gun’s internal mechanisms and make sure the cartridges were in order.

That assassin had probably done the same. Yet the bullet had just happened to miss, and the gun had just happened to jam.

“She’s a lucky girl,” Leonard mused again. “Almost unbelievably so.”

“And that’s enough to make you believe she survived the crash?” Sousuke demanded incredulously. “You’re mad.”

“Am I? But I’m sure you’ve seen her escape danger countless times yourself, all by the skin of her teeth,” Leonard pointed out. “By any reasonable estimation, she should be dead.”

“But...” Sousuke wanted to laugh this observation off, but couldn’t, because the man was right. Kaname had survived countless dangerous situations since he’d met her, even ones that had given a veteran like himself pause. Could it really all come down to luck? he wondered. Impossible...“She’s always stayed strong and kept moving,” he said out loud. “She swiftly determines what’s within her ability and sees it through with iron will and conviction. In that sense, she’s just like any soldier.”

Of course, Sousuke had no intention of denying that luck played a role. Having seen better soldiers than him die to a single stray bullet, he knew that much of his own survival had been due to luck. There was a saying: “Do all you can, then leave the rest in God’s hands.” Luck was an ancillary element that only made the difference after you’d done everything in your power.

But, aside from her curious Whispered abilities, Chidori Kaname was an utterly ordinary person. Her stubbornness perhaps gave her an edge... but as impressive as that was, it wasn’t a particularly rare trait.

“I’ll grant that she’s a person of uncommon will and decisiveness,” said Leonard. “But have you considered that her particular combination of abilities is itself a form of luck?”

“Now you’re just quibbling,” Sousuke told him. By that standard, everyone who survived to old age was lucky; they’d lucked into the abilities and circumstances that let them live out a full life. There were billions of such people in the world.

“Ah, perhaps so. I’m engaging in a bit of circular wordplay... And the truth is that her survival is not due to luck, but predetermination.”

“Predetermination?”

“She is the place where cause and effect converge,” Leonard hypothesized. “You could say she is who she is because the world went mad, and that the world went mad because she is who she is. I believe she’s going to—and would have, even without my interference—meet the spirit that dwells in these ruins. Then she’ll fuse with that power to bring about the end of history. She’ll become the keystone—the kaname—to a world with no past, future, or present.”

“What are you talking about?” Sousuke asked suspiciously.

“The omni-sphere and the whispers, of course,” Leonard answered. “This is the place where the world went off the rails.”

The frequency of the déjà vu was increasing. Kaname felt like she had walked through this narrow corridor dozens of times, listening to Lemon’s quiet cursing and Tessa’s soft coughing. There was a sort of trick to getting past it, and by keeping her consciousness clear and focused, she was able to maintain her sanity. Nevertheless, she felt her nerves fraying in a way that she found hard to describe.

“I think I’m going crazy,” Lemon whispered. She felt like she’d heard him say that countless times before, too. “I know we’re moving forward, but it’s like the door keeps getting further away... I’m starting to understand how mountain climbers feel.”

“We will arrive eventually.” Exhaustion tinged Tessa’s voice as well. “Our destination is the core of the facility, where the device that Dr. Valov created long ago still lies intact.”

“And that device is what’s causing all this?” he questioned.

“Yes. Though to be more precise... not the device as it exists right now. There’s no electricity to run it, after all.”

“How can it be causing this if it’s not running?”

“It’s difficult to explain... the device is having the effect eighteen years in the past,” Tessa told them. “But the waves of mental energy it emitted at its full power are still echoing forward into our time.”

“Mental energy? In the past?” Lemon asked again, clearly perplexed.

“Do you remember my explanation about the omni-sphere before? The core here is the epicenter,” Tessa specified. “It’s where everything began.”

After what felt like ages, the three of them reached the core. They passed through several thick doors, which luckily weren’t locked, but were so heavy that Tessa and Kaname working together could just barely open them.

Inside was a vast space several times larger than a school gymnasium. Countless cylindrical units were fastened to the interior walls, each the size of a truck tire. In the center of the room lay a giant dome, like a cross-section of one of the spherical gas holders common in Japan. That dome was also covered in hundreds more of those cylindrical units, identical to those that lined the room’s interior walls.

“What is this place?” Lemon whispered timidly.

Its purpose was inscrutable to a layman’s eye. The atmosphere, at least, reminded Kaname of that neutrino observatory she’d seen pictures of once... An experimental device, built underground on a vast scale, yet for a very simple purpose. I exist to learn important things, no expense spared—the space’s grandeur boasted. And while it was all very well organized, she couldn’t help but to feel a morbid perversion about this place, like it was less a scientific facility and more the long-lost temple of a blood cult.

Perhaps due to the facility’s age, several of the cylindrical units had broken off the walls and fallen to the floor. They were probably amplifiers, containing special electronic circuitry to simulate the functions of a human brain. But wait... they didn’t have circuits on that scale at that time, she realized. Could it be...

“Kaname-san,” said Tessa, breaking into her thoughts. “Are you wondering what’s inside the cylinders?”

“Yeah. Are they...”

“I don’t think they’re human brains, at least,” Tessa said weakly. “More likely the brains of other higher mammals. Dr. Valov’s team included a neuroscientist who specialized in dolphins, so it was likely those who were slain on this altar.”

“That’s awful...” One or two would have been sickening enough, but there were thousands of those cylinders in this facility. Kaname felt herself dry heave a few times, but managed to keep the bile down. It was clearer now than ever that these ruins were the product of evil and madness. Even if the sacrifices weren’t human, it had been an unspeakably cruel thing to do. “So, this is a TAROS?”

“Yes,” Tessa told her. “The world’s first TAROS, constructed by Dr. Valov, though he apparently called it the ‘mental transceiver.’ The modern TAROSes we use in the Laevatein and the de Danaan use cutting-edge, massive-scale logic elements—Al and Dana—as amplifiers to send to and receive from the omni-sphere.”

“But they didn’t have those when this place was built, so they used living brains as amplifiers?” Kaname clarified.

“Yes. The Yamsk-11 plant complex was designed to create the chemicals needed to keep the brain tissue at work here alive and chemically controlled,” Tessa told her. “The manufacturing was contained to the city in order to better preserve the secret. Once, some of the brightest minds of the Eastern Bloc lived here... though most of them didn’t realize the full scope of the experiment they were involved in. It took me some time to find out this much myself. The danger that Lemon-san and Wraith put themselves in brought the last of the pieces into place.”

“Why was it so hard?” Kaname wondered. “Even if it’s a secret city, someone had to still know about it...”

“They didn’t,” Tessa answered. “Because everyone who lived here either died or went mad eighteen years ago, over the course of one night.”

“How?”

“It appears something went wrong while they were running a full power test. The TAROS lost control and began emitting exceptionally powerful mental waves,” Tessa explained. “All humans within a thirty-kilometer radius received serious mental poisoning... The result is the ruins you saw outside. I believe they lost their minds, killing their neighbors and themselves. Those closest to it likely died immediately from shock.”

Kaname hadn’t gotten a good look at the city, but the scene was easy to picture. It must have been like hell on earth.

“Like a telepathic version of Chernobyl?” Lemon whispered, breaking his long silence.

“Something like that,” Tessa agreed. “The accident sent two kinds of mental waves through the omni-sphere: one was iota waves, which lose strength with distance and time. They affected a relatively narrow area, and are what drove the people of Yamsk-11 mad. The other kind were tau waves, which can travel on and on without weakening, irrespective of distance and time. They do little harm to most people, mainly causing a momentary feeling of déjà vu. But they did affect a very wide area—the entire Earth, most likely.”

“But no one realized it?” Lemon asked incredulously.

“No. Tau waves can’t be perceived through any material means, and they affected only a single small class of people. All over the world, that class of human being was affected during the time in which the TAROS was running out of control—for exactly three minutes, beginning at 11:50 am Greenwich Mean Time, on December 24th, 1981. Eighteen years ago. Can you guess what that class might have been?”

“I... have no idea,” Lemon said, looking baffled.

But Kaname let out a deep sigh, perhaps the deepest of her life. The last piece of the puzzle had snapped into place. Her secret. Their secret. “Newborn children drawing their first breath,” she hypothesized.

“Yes,” Tessa agreed. “Us.”

Kaname recalled a project they were given in elementary school: Explain something that happened on the day that you were born. Her mother had shown Kaname her birth certificate then... December 24th, 8:50 pm Tokyo Time. In Greenwich Mean Time, 11:50 am. Mom... she wondered mournfully. Why couldn’t you have had me just a minute earlier?

“I’m not entirely sure why the tau waves influenced only infants at the moment of their birth,” Tessa confessed. “A biologist named Alice Miller theorized that in the moment babies are born, there’s a brief flurry of activity in the basal ganglia and occipital lobe. But there hasn’t been any medical verification, as it’s difficult to receive parental permission to study it.”

“That’s for sure... I can’t imagine many mothers are raring to have electrodes hooked up to their baby’s head just before it’s born.”

“I think it would be possible to use more advanced technology... For instance, you could have the birth inside a special NMR,” Tessa speculated. “If you have a chance to give birth in the future, I hope you’ll consider it, Kaname-san.”

“Wh-What the heck? Why don’t you do it yourself?”

“I’ll likely be single all my life.”

“Hey, what’s with the glare?” Kaname wanted to know.

“I’m not glaring,” Tessa protested innocently. “But, well... If you would lend me Sagara-san, I would happily try it myself.”

“That’s pretty out of nowhere...”

“You object?”

“You bet I do!” Kaname responded hotly. “I mean, he and I haven’t actually... you know...”

“I was joking. There’s really nothing for you to worry about.”

“You are so...” Kaname trembled angrily.

Lemon hesitantly chimed in, “Hey... Weren’t we having a really serious discussion just now?”

“Ah, right,” Kaname agreed with a blush.

“I’m sorry,” Tessa said. “I was distracted.” By now, they’d made it up to the giant dome at the center of the space. She began tracing its circumference, seemingly searching for a way inside. “Now, then... children imprinted with information carried by the tau waves at the moment of their birth became the Whispered,” she said, confirming Kaname’s theory. “Of course, that alone didn’t give us our knowledge. I believe it simply gave us the ability to receive other mental waves transmitted through the omni-sphere, from some point in the future.”

“Some point in the future?” Kaname echoed.

“Yes. The omni-sphere makes it possible for information to travel back through time,” Tessa told them. “We weren’t born with the knowledge of all this unknown technology; we’re simply receiving mental waves from the future that contain the information. What was imprinted upon us in the moment of our birth was the minimal requirement needed to receive those waves.”

“Like an access code or a protocol...” Kaname mused. “And as the children grew up, their intelligence increased, or something would trigger them to start receiving those strange transmissions.”

“Precisely. We can identify 174 children in the world born within the three minutes in question,” said Tessa. “Given that countries with less advanced healthcare systems often don’t record the precise time of birth, there are probably even more than that. We estimate these extra births to number approximately 135. By the way, the number of currently confirmed Whispered are a mere handful of that—ten or fewer.”

“What accounts for the gap?” Kaname questioned.

“There may be other traits that cause Whispered to awaken at different ages, and other conditions besides birth time that determine who becomes a Whispered and who doesn’t. An ‘aptitude,’ as it were... Humans are born with a variety of traits, and it’s entirely possible that not all newborns were affected equally by the tau waves,” Tessa pointed out. “At the moment, the rate of Whispered ‘onset’ is less than three percent, and I don’t find that surprising. Either way... those of us who were affected became output terminals for information about technology being broadcast by someone in the future.”

“It’s almost unbelievable,” Lemon whispered. His face was pale, and it didn’t seem to be the result of his injury. “‘Information about future technology’...does that mean there’ve been weapons produced based on that information?”

“Yes. This is the so-called ‘black technology’ that led to ASes, among other things.” Tessa’s voice, flat, echoed hollowly in the vast dark space inhabited only by the three of them. “I believe the influence of black technology began in the mid-80s. There are records of a Whispered child beginning to show their abilities at a mere three years old. My father was investigating it before he died.”

“It’s been there since the 80s?” Leonard asked incredulously. “Then the world we live in now...”

“It’s not difficult to imagine what effect black technology would have had on the world these last fifteen years,” Tessa speculated. “Explosive advancements in computer technology. Revolutionary inventions in the energy sector. Drastic changes in radar capabilities...”

Companies that should have developed might never have been conceived. Companies that should have gone under might have survived. Military operations that should have failed might have succeeded. It would definitely have had an effect on the world economy, might have changed the course of elections in superpower nations... administrations that might never have been could have come up with policies that changed world events. A country that should have collapsed might have remained intact. A country that should have been united might have split in two. And, perhaps... the Cold War might have ended.

“If there’s a ‘proper history,’ a history that might have come about if not for black technology—and this is pure speculation, of course—then perhaps there, technology hasn’t changed much since the early 80s,” Tessa went on. “Voice recognition would still be in its infancy, palladium reactors would not exist, and robotics would not have reached the bipedal stage.”

“And this is just technology, right?” Lemon asked.

“The influence it’s had on politics, economies, and militaries... it’s too much to speculate on,” Tessa agreed. “There could have been a full-scale nuclear war, or an end to the Cold War entirely. Regardless, that world would be very different from the world we know today. The small group of people who know the truth about this refer to our situation as a ‘time hazard.’ But nobody really knows if this ‘proper history’ really exists. If the existence of the Whispered and the omni-sphere influence represent a causal loop, then the way the world is now is the only way it could be.”

“It’s all too big to conceive of... That plus all the déjà vu is making me feel a little crazy,” Lemon admitted.

“Try to hold on to your wits, Lemon-san,” Tessa advised him. “We’re at the epicenter of the time hazard right now. It’s impossible to predict what effects it might have on the mind.”

“The epicenter, huh? But isn’t it strange? The world rotates and revolves,” he observed. “The solar system travels through the galaxy. If we’re talking strict coordinates in space, the place we’re ‘at’ is leagues away from where it was eighteen years ago, right?”

“No. The omni-sphere exists only in the presence of human minds, so coordinates in the physical world are irrelevant. This isn’t the luminiferous aether postulated centuries ago...” Tessa trailed off for a moment. “I can only explain it by referring to the realm in which humans exist—in other words, the Earth—as ‘where it is.’ The omni-sphere sticks to the Earth and moves with it, and in Earth coordinates, the epicenter remains here, at Yamsk-11—That’s not an entirely accurate description, but it should cover what you need to know.”

“This is tricky,” Lemon agreed. “But these ruins were abandoned. How could the omni-sphere still exist if there were no people here?”

“It’s not that it can’t exist without people. It would be more proper to say ‘it would serve no purpose.’ And this place is different... The effects echo—they linger, you could say—eighteen years after the incident.”

They located the entrance into the dome, a narrow hatch about Tessa’s height.

“Yeah... I’m totally lost now,” Lemon admitted. “How are you doing, Kaname-san?”

“I...” She’d been silent for a while, since her head was beginning to pound. It wasn’t just the déjà vu now, and every step she took made it worse. She felt like she was walking through slime, and the discomfort and resistance was getting stronger as they went on. “I... I understand.”

She did indeed. These weren’t just uninhabited ruins. Something was waiting for them here.

“Yeah... I’m totally lost now. How are you doing, Kaname-san?” Lemon said.

“Lemon-san. You’re repeating.”

“Yeah... I’m totally lost now. How are you doing, Kaname-san?”

“Lemon-san?” she tried again.

“How are you doing, Kaname-san?”

“Lemon-san!”

“How are you doing? ...you doing? Doing? Ing? Ng... uuuuwah... wahhhh!” Lemon launched into a bloodcurdling scream, writhing as he clutched at his head, trembling and arching his back. It was like electricity was coursing through him. “Stop stop stop stop stop stop no no no no no no!!”

“Lemon-san!” While Kaname just stood there and trembled, Tessa shoved him with all of her might. Lemon lost his balance and fell onto his back several meters away from the dome, but his struggles continued. “I’m dragging him out! Help me!”

“Huh? Um, sure...” Kaname and Tessa dragged Lemon, still kicking and screaming, out of the chamber. Before long, his fit stopped, and he just lay there, coughing and weeping. “What... What just happened?” Kaname asked.

“I’m not sure. But I suspect...” Tessa whispered, shoulders heaving with effort. “The iota waves emitted from the core of this facility were stronger than anticipated. Powerful feedback from the omni-sphere might have triggered a mental breakdown. He’s an ordinary person, after all.”

“Could be. I hear I reacted a little like that the first time I heard the voices in North Korea,” Kaname agreed. “It’s pretty rough here, even for people like us, who are used to it, so I can see how it’d be enough to send someone into shock...”

“It’s unfortunate, but we can’t take him any further,” said Tessa. There was no reason to drag Lemon along if he couldn’t handle it.

It might, in fact, Kaname thought, be more convenient for Tessa if she could leave him behind... but she doesn’t seem happy about it at all. Out loud she said, “But the presence of iota waves means there really is something in there, right?”

“Yes, and it may be far more powerful than we imagined...” Tessa turned her eyes down, and coughed again as if holding back bile.

“Tessa, you okay?”

“Yes,” she said shortly. “Let’s leave Lemon-san here. You can remain here as well, if you wish. Remain here with—” she began to say, but Kaname seized her hand and gave it a squeeze.

“I’m okay,” Kaname told her. “Let’s go.”

“All right,” Tessa said after a pause. She squeezed Kaname’s hand back, and they proceeded once more into the abandoned dome—into the TAROS.

“The end of history,” said Sousuke. “What does that mean?”

Leonard whispered into the deep darkness, something about “Machenschaft” and “Herrschaft...” It sounded like German, but Sousuke couldn’t catch the meaning. He made a questioning noise.

“Oh, words from Heidegger... ‘Machinations towards creation and control of the created.’ The causa sui of a god, one might say... It just came to mind,” Leonard said absently. “The end of history means an end to known relationships of cause and effect. But, that’s all philosophy—the point is that we liberate ourselves from causality, it opens up to us a completely different world. If a human could be entirely unshackled from fate and destiny, what would they want then? That’s what I’ve been making the preparations to find out.”

Causality? Destiny? Sousuke didn’t understand it at all.

“My sister told you about the omni-sphere, correct?”

“A little,” Sousuke admitted carefully.

“And the TAROS?”

“A bit. It’s a machine that can access the omni-sphere, and it’s what makes the lambda driver work.”

“The lambda driver is entirely a side benefit... though a useful one, to be sure,” Leonard commented.

“That’s what she said, yes.”

“These ruins are where the world’s first TAROS was built. This is where it first lost control, and what caused the Whispered phenomenon to appear in children born at that time. The true importance of the omni-sphere is that a certain kind of wave permeates its field of influence, without restriction in time or distance. This lets the Whispered exchange information about the past and the future, and it’s why this world is different from ‘the original world,’ a place with an entirely different history and timeline. ASes shouldn’t really exist, you see, and neither should Mithril. Amalgam should most likely look different than it does.”

“What in the world are you—” Sousuke started to ask.

“You don’t have to believe me,” said Leonard, cutting him off. “But assuming I am telling the truth... how do you think we should rid ourselves of the world we’re currently in?”

“We don’t have to. We can just leave it be,” said Sousuke, who had no interest in the state of the world. History changed at some point? Who cared? Even if that were the case, it didn’t change the fact that what he existed in now was reality. He had enemies and allies, tactical and strategic objectives. The only things he needed to do, the only things he needed to know, were those things which he could see and hear for himself.

“You think things are fine the way they are?” Leonard laughed. “That’s absurd. Things that shouldn’t exist do, and things that should exist don’t. Humans that should have lived have died, and humans that should have died lived. The world is off the rails. Those with the power to restore it, should.”

“You’re the one who’s off the rails,” Sousuke retorted. “I don’t know what kind of reforms you’re proposing, but—”

“Not reforms,” said Leonard, in a mocking, annoyed tone from out of the darkness. “I’m not talking about some ridiculous political movement. Think of it in terms of the cataclysm that would result if the axis of the world shifted. You’d want to find a way to set it right, wouldn’t you? To return the world to the state it should be in?”

“Keep in mind that I’m not a genius like you are, so you can tell me the world is off the rails, but I just don’t feel it,” Sousuke reminded him flatly. “When you talk about ‘restoring the world,’ are you talking about rejecting everything around us? Enemy and ally alike? I don’t entirely understand, but I don’t think it sits right with me.”

“A new question, then,” said Leonard, switching tactics. “You’ve lost people in battle, haven’t you? Friends and family, various allies?”

“Of course,” Sousuke answered. Comrades in Afghanistan, mercenaries he’d met after... too many to count. The allies he’d gone on operations with for Mithril. Matt Shade, in the intelligence division. The original Uruz-1, Gale McAllen. Liang Xiaoping of the PRT. Eva Santos, the pilot of Gebo-9, and her crew. Those whom he heard were lost in the attack on Merida Island... Castello, Speck, the dozens of West Pacific Battle Group officers. And... Nami.

Some of them he didn’t care about, but some had only died because he wasn’t strong enough to save them. In particular, the thought of Nami back in Namsac stung at his heart. Nami, he thought regretfully. I’m sorry. If I’d acted one second sooner...

“No doubt there are. Countless people have died on your watch,” Leonard noted. “You don’t regret it?”

“I don’t need to answer that.”

“But you do regret it, I’m sure. In the original world, you see, most of them would still be alive,” Leonard pointed out. “The black technology that the Whispered brought about changed the nature of war, and had remarkable effects on the destinies of those in its orbit. You’re denying them the lives they should have lived, coldly telling us to ‘leave them dead.’ Which one of us is ‘off the rails,’ then?”

“I’m not leaving them!” Sousuke said, his voice becoming labored. He knew he was playing right into his opponent’s hands, but was unable to stop himself.

“Could you say that to their faces?” Leonard countered. “‘Sorry you all died, but that’s just your bad luck. I know a way to save you, but I’m not going to try it’?”

“You’re talking nonsense. There’s no way to raise the dead. Babbling on about the past and future and timelines won’t bring them back to life.”

“Hmm, that sounds like mere stubbornness to me. Why don’t you elaborate?”

“I’ve killed people myself,” Sousuke said, staring at Leonard. “Over a hundred, like you told Chidori before... I don’t know the exact number, but how could I? I never knew how many people were on those Soviet military trucks I blew up in the valleys of Afghanistan. What matters is, I’ve taken more lives than I can count. So I know. I’ve felt it.”

“Hmm. Felt what?”

“That human death is final. It can’t be undone. Even if you find some way to bring a person back to life, they won’t be the same person.”

“Why not? If their body and memories and environment are the same, aren’t they the same person?” Leonard questioned.

“No. Their death itself is a part of them. Their final moments are a part of them,” Sousuke said. “That’s why we’re all so earnest, fighting for life with every inch of our being. That’s the one unchangeable rule in life. That was one thing even Gauron respected. He was an awful person, but he understood life’s fleeting nature. The difference is that he reveled in it, and I don’t.”

“A very interesting opinion,” Leonard said, straining to lift up a large chunk of concrete. “Gauron, eh? I told him about this once myself... about time and destiny going off the rails. He didn’t doubt it, but like you, he showed no interest. His words were quite similar to yours. Two mortal enemies with such similar opinions... would that qualify as irony?”

“No, it stands to reason. It’s a soldiers’ unwritten rule.”

“And Gauron was a soldier?”

“He was. And I don’t think you are.” He didn’t mean it disparagingly; Sousuke was simply stating the truth as he saw it.

Yet the words seemed to trigger something inside of Leonard. “I see,” he said coldly. “Then... I feel like I should make sure to ask this, but would you say the same thing if Chidori Kaname died?”

Sousuke stood there, and didn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure himself.

“You don’t know, I see.” There was no particular insinuation in Leonard’s tone. “If I were in your position, I probably couldn’t accept it. Pleasantries like laws and unwritten rules can do little to override sheer emotion. Are you sure you haven’t oversimplified things? Good and evil, love and hate, enemy and ally... you can’t possibly subscribe to such two-dimensional thinking.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I’m not sure,” said Leonard. “There may be no need for us to fight after all.”

Sousuke was surprised to hear those words. No need to fight... Why would you say that? You’ve been nothing but my enemy from the start. You’ve interfered in our missions, killed my comrades, and kidnapped Kaname. How could there ever be peace between us?

“I know, I know. I’m not trying to craft a treaty,” Leonard assured him. “And no matter how I explain myself, I’m sure you’d refuse regardless. I’m not trying to win you over.”

“Of course.”

“Your group is as stubborn as a band of fundamentalist terrorists. But Kalinin was different... Though he was also hesitant at first.”

“The major?”

“The first time I contacted him was around Christmas of last year,” Leonard explained. “I told him about the off-the-rails world we lived in, and though he didn’t believe me right away, he eventually came around. That was during the January attack.”

“He would never believe your nonsense,” Sousuke scoffed.

“I showed him the proof, you see. I told him I’d use an unpredictable natural event to enable Amalgam to strike a blow against Mithril.”

“A natural event?”

“The solar winds,” Leonard explained. “I used the TAROS to predict that massive solar activity would take down all communications. Predicting terrestrial weather and societal movements are still beyond me, but solar activity isn’t especially hard to predict, thanks to a general lack of interaction between the sun and the lives of the tiny people here on Earth. I knew the timing down to the second, and I exploited it. It’s the only way Amalgam would have been able to strike so hard against Mithril in such a short period of time.”

Sousuke had heard that Kalinin acted strangely during the attack. Was it because of Leonard’s ‘prophecy,’ then? he wondered. Amalgam had mounted their attack using what should’ve been an unpredictable solar flare. What better proof was there that the notion of time-traveling communications through the TAROS and the omni-sphere, and the resultant changes to history, were real?

“He consequently accepted that the mistake could be fixed, and that I had the power to make it happen,” Leonard continued. “It’s not Amalgam that he’s joined, precisely. It’s me.”

“Impossible...” Sousuke muttered. Isn’t Andrey Kalinin the living embodiment of the soldiers’ unwritten rule? he thought. Even if ‘putting the world back on the rails’ were possible, he surely wouldn’t join in on a plan to do it. He was a man who accepted his losses and failures so that he could incorporate them into his next plan.

He has to be that way, Sousuke thought again. If he isn’t, then what was our loyalty for?

“Andrey Kalinin is a realist,” Leonard insisted. “He accepts things that you people never would. I’m sure that’s why he didn’t try and explain it to you.”

“Does the colonel... does Tessa know?” Sousuke asked next.

“I suspect so. And yet, she’s been working to stop my plans without telling the rest of you what they are,” Leonard pointed out. “Can you imagine why that might be?”

“Are you suggesting that anyone in Mithril would agree with you?”

“Of course. That’s why Teletha keeps you in the dark. She thinks we should accept the past and let history continue to play out. She’s forward-looking, noble, and utterly narcissistic,” Leonard said bitterly. “She also wants revenge against Amalgam, and finds the idea of anyone controlling the world abhorrent. But her main motivation is to lash out against me. She thinks that denying me is the only way for her to assert her own power.”

“She’s not that self-serving,” Sousuke denied.

“She probably doesn’t even realize it herself,” Leonard continued. “If I told her this, she’d just insist that I was wrong. She’s still a child, you know, and her above-average intelligence only makes it worse. She’ll say whatever it takes to justify what she’s doing to herself.”

They pulled out a steel pipe buried in the rubble, and the surrounding concrete tumbled down noisily. From there they created a hole large enough for an arm to pass through, and felt a cold wind blowing in through it. They were almost there. If they could clear the surrounding rubble now, they could escape.

“Amalgam is currently heading for a rapid weakening,” Leonard revealed as they stripped the rubble away. “Though I don’t think anyone realizes it. My plan, to put an end to the history of a world gone off the rails, requires considerable funding and resources. The previous democratic system was inconvenient to that end, so I’m giving it a shot in the arm.”

“A shot in the arm?” Sousuke asked suspiciously.

“The instatement of a dictator,” Leonard stated calmly. “Undermine the delicate power balance between the higher-ups, spread suspicion and uncertainty... then watch a firebrand appear and pick up allies through the tacit use of carrot and stick. It took six months of boring drudge work, but things are finally getting there. Thanks to the activities of Kalinin, as well, of course.”

“So, you’re the dictator?”

“Not quite yet. I know the identities of most of the major executives, and I’ve finished implanting a sort of a virus into their communications network,” Leonard clarified. “I call it a ‘communications network,’ but it’s not the Internet, if you’re wondering. It’s a far more primitive system of encoding. Amalgam has been using it for decades to grow themselves in secret.”

Even if Leonard doesn’t tell me what their network is, this is still important information, Sousuke thought. Why is he revealing things about his own organization so flippantly? Out loud, he asked, “Why are you telling me this?”

“Well, what’s the harm?” Leonard asked in return. “Amalgam will die out soon enough, whether or not you noble knights do the honors. No... it would be more accurate to say that the world will be remade before you ever could.”

Sousuke’s confidence in the emptiness of Leonard’s boasts was shaken. If Leonard were simply mad, he could write it off easily, but he clearly wasn’t. Kalinin’s betrayal, Amalgam’s recently strange behavior, the unnatural state of the world... it all matched with Tessa’s explanation. But if he wasn’t lying, and he wasn’t mad, then how exactly did he intend to carry out this plan of his?

“Is this the reason you need Chidori?” Sousuke asked now.

“Yes. We’re building a new TAROS right now, at a scale far grander than any before it,” Leonard confirmed. “Its power will let me affect the past, but the catalyst can’t just be any ordinary Whispered. It requires the person uniquely suited for it, the one who was imprinted with the greatest power of all.

“After a long search, I found that person,” he continued. “The one who received the longest exposure to mental waves emitted during the Yamsk-11 disaster—the whole of the tau wave information—from start to finish. The one who’s been sending technological know-how to the Whispered from the future hasn’t been some unknown entity; it’s been her. She’s about to do it very soon.”

“Chidori will...?”

“That ‘unusual luck’ of hers is the result of her being a living singularity. She was made that way. It’s destiny. She isn’t really a Whispered, you see... If I were to give Chidori Kaname a name, it would be ‘the Whispering,’” Leonard mused. “She is the one who sent the black technology into the past and threw the world off the rails.”

“She’s an ordinary person,” Sousuke insisted irritably. “She’d never willingly disseminate technology that would be used to kill people. I don’t understand all this talk of ‘has been doing’ and ‘is about to do’... but she wouldn’t do it, now or ever.”

“And that’s what’s so strange,” Leonard said, with a laugh. “Why would someone so strong and self-righteous interfere in the past? What’s happened that she can’t accept? Is it something that from long ago, or something yet to happen? And why did she—or will she—send black technology, of all things? Who was it that came up with the information she has? Is there another Whispering even further in the future? I’ve been ‘hands-off’ in the past because I wanted to know the answers... But what do you think?”

His words were full of self-recrimination, and had a sort of cold ring to them. Leonard had the air of a devil around him now, laughing ironically about an act of God that exceeded his own prodigious knowledge.

“How would I know?” Sousuke asked, feeling as though he was going crazy. The things Leonard was saying scrambled his understanding of past and future tense, of cause and effect. The one thing that was clear to him was that Chidori Kaname, that innocent girl, was about to be sacrificed on the altar of some kind of arrogant plan based on nonsense logic, whether she wanted to be part of it or not.

“So, let me ask this: what are you, yourself, after?” Leonard tried again. “What are you fighting us for? And don’t give me some grand motivation like revenge against Amalgam, or resistance against our control of the world. I want to hear as simple and honest a reason as you can give me.”

“To get Chidori back and return to a normal life,” Sousuke told him. “That’s all.”

“Impossible,” Leonard told him bluntly.

“It’s not.”

“Yes, it is. Even if you get rid of me, someone else will come for her eventually. There’s no way society will accept her into their ranks,” Leonard predicted. “And Mithril isn’t made up of angels, either... Sooner or later, they’ll begin to hunger for her power to change the world. They’re an organization, after all, no different from any other.”

Sousuke said nothing.

“But if I correct the warped history, she’ll be able to live life as a normal human,” Leonard hypothesized. “No one will go after her. She’ll live in peace, fall in love, have children, and grow old... Just as you wanted for her. It’s the only way to resolve this.”

Given his earlier explanations, Sousuke thought, it might be true. A corner of his jumbled mind was telling him that Leonard was right, but that he was missing something important. Why was it that he found himself rejecting that resolution?

No, he knew why. Because if it happens that way, I won’t be in her life, he realized. Every word Leonard said—fall in love, have children, grow old—stung at his heart. I won’t be there. I won’t even be able to watch her from afar.

“But then there’d be no point,” he finally said.

“A challenging dilemma,” Leonard agreed. “I struggled with it, as well. I’d like you to struggle the same way.” Then, he lifted up a piece of concrete and threw it down the stairs.

Sousuke threw a piece of his own, and they remained lost in their work for several minutes in silence. At last, they worked together to pull out a steel girder, which caused much of the rubble blocking the stairs to come crumbling down all at once. When the dust and smoke cleared, there was a hole just big enough for a person to pass through.

“Well, now we’re safe,” Leonard whispered, climbing through the hole. He was completely defenseless now, but Sousuke couldn’t bring himself to attack. He followed after, and they made it safely to the next floor up, a narrow corridor that formed a T-intersection with the stairs.

The ceasefire was over. The enemies stood a few meters away from each other, facing each other in the darkness.

“All right,” said Leonard. “Shall we resume our attempts to kill each other?”

There’s no risk of starting a fire now, Sousuke thought silently. We can both use guns and explosives. Furthermore, this was his best chance to kill Leonard. Even in the Laevatein, he had little chance of victory against the man’s Belial. But here on the ground, things were better. It was his last chance to eliminate a possibly massive future threat.

“It’s fine. Don’t hold back.” Through the dust and the darkness, Leonard Testarossa smiled. It wasn’t his earlier smug smile. He seemed almost burning now, staring right at him, hoping for a fight. This was the smile of a madman, who had no further attachment to this world.

Sousuke was suddenly seized with the thought that he couldn’t possibly kill this man. It wasn’t that he’d lost his nerve; he’d just lost all of his earlier hostility. Listening to Leonard’s words had produced a hesitance inside of him.

If... If Leonard’s goals are achievable, wouldn’t that be the best way to return Kaname to a peaceful world? he wondered. Will killing him now prevent that? I don’t care what happens to me. Chidori... Why aren’t you here? After a moment’s hesitation, he finally said, “Not now.”

“All right,” Leonard agreed. “We’ll vent our frustrations on each other another day.” Then he walked away from Sousuke.

He’s vulnerable, with his back turned, Sousuke thought. I can still catch him by surprise. It will probably be my last chance. But nevertheless, he didn’t make a move. Leonard disappeared into the darkness, and the chance to shoot him was gone.

“One last thing... I’m going to see my goal through, even if the whole world turns against me.” Leonard’s voice resounded through the corridor. “You can sit back and watch if you wish. But the next time we meet, I won’t show a shred of mercy. I’ll do whatever it takes to kill you.”

Sousuke couldn’t find it in him to respond. He stood there dejectedly, until he heard the enemy’s footsteps recede into nothingness.

Change the world? he wondered. Now that he was alone with his thoughts, it seemed absurd again. These rejuvenated doubts proved to him that he was still in his right mind. But he had a more important task remaining...

“Chidori...” he said to himself. If she were somewhere inside the ruins, he had to find her before the enemy did.

Kaname and Tessa passed through the dome’s hatch and proceeded down a narrow tunnel. They’d left Lemon outside of the dome; it was hard to imagine he’d still want to come in with them.

déjà vu, déjà vu, déjà vu... Kaname’s thoughts repeated themselves again and again. The closer they got to the core, the worse the indescribable pressure and exhaustion that assailed her became.

It was only five meters or so. Why did their finish line, that tiny room in the dome, still feel so far away? It was that feeling of despair at the ninth station of Mt. Fuji, when the peak was in sight, but no matter how you climbed, you never seemed to reach it.

And both of them felt it. Hand in hand, they communicated without words.

I’m scared. Hang in there. Almost there.

It’s hard. Can’t breathe. Don’t give up.

It was even hard to tell which of them was doing the complaining, and which was doing the encouraging. Stepping through those several hundred meters that felt like eternity, the two girls arrived at the center of the dome.

“This is...”

At the core of the first TAROS lay a corpse, covered in electrodes. It was secured, mannequin-like, at the center of a receptacle the size of a large bathtub, hooked up to countless cables and tubes.

It was a woman—and apparently a young woman, at that. She wasn’t rotted or bleached to her bones or mummified. It was as if she’d turned into wax, or to ice that had gone cloudy. Her body still had its luster; her copious bosom and slender legs remained perfectly preserved. If you poured varnish on a freshly-dead person, they’d probably look like this—that was the thought her smooth lines inspired in Kaname. Less a corpse and more a sculpture...

She couldn’t make out her face. The countless electrodes that crowned the so-called sculpture’s head obscured it like a helmet, and the head was at the exact center of the dome, probably to increase the experiment’s precision.

“Who is she?” Tessa and Kaname asked together at the exact same time.

“The trial subject from 18 years ago. I don’t know who it is, though.”

“Then why is the corpse in this state?”

“No... The actual corpse rotted away a long time ago,” they explained. “What we’re seeing now is the residue of her existence. Her mind and form have manifested physically all these years later, building up through the omni-sphere.”

It was like an icicle forming in a limestone cave, crafted molecule by molecule by the power that lingered here. A rift in time. This crystal—the woman’s residue itself—was the Whispering. My power is limited now, but some day... yes, some day in the future that nobody knows is coming, I’ll be reborn. A greater power is controlling me now. It won’t be eternal. Ten years? A hundred years? There’s no telling. An unknown amount of time...

“Get ready,” said the fused consciousness of Tessa and Kaname. She took a plastic explosive out of the bag in her hand. She attached an electric fuse and lay it at the sculpture’s feet. She rolled out a cord from a reel and attached it to a detonator plunger.

“We’re blowing her up?” they asked.

“Yes,” they answered. “We’re blowing her up.”

That was her objective. This sculpture—this crystallized catalyst—was receiving tau waves sent from another time and relaying them into higher-energy iota waves, which were causing things like Michel Lemon’s madness. By destroying it, they could free Yamsk-11 of its curse. But they couldn’t stop the same crystal from growing again someday. They’d have to destroy it again another time.

No... Wouldn’t that be the greatest contradiction, the most wasted effort? They couldn’t stop the appearance of the Whispering. It was eternal. In that case...

She heard a voice.

How intelligent of you, my daughter. Thank you for coming.

A voice she’d known for a long, long time.

Yes, it’s me. I’ve been waiting for you to come. I’ve called to you many times in the past. Every time, you resisted me and shut me out. But you’re here now, as you were always meant to be. You can’t shut me out any longer. Accept my power. Take in my soul.

If there is a god, then we are the closest thing there is to it. We are the three Fates in one: Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos. There’s no longer any need to fear. Hold out your hand. Open your heart. Let out a cry and embrace infinite joy.

That’s right. This is how it’s always been for us. Your hesitation is just... killing time...

“Kaname-san?!” Tessa screamed desperately. Her voice went beyond simple fear and despair.

The next thing she knew, Kaname was standing in front of the “sculpture” formed in the middle of the TAROS, stroking her exposed cheek.

“We’re here to destroy it! Get back!” Tessa warned her, gripping the detonator.

“Destroy...?” Kaname whispered, as if possessed with a fever. Whatever had been pounding in her skull all this time was gone now. The déjà vu had stopped, as well. Her vision was clear. It was like breathing her first unimpeded breath after a bad case of nasal congestion. “There’s no need to destroy it now.”

“What?” Tessa asked.

Kaname left the sculpture and walked up to Tessa, knowing exactly what to do next. She took the arm of the bewildered girl and quietly took the detonator from her. Tessa reached for it in surprise, but she batted the hand away and tossed the detonator aside.

“What are you—” Tessa began to ask, but Kaname quickly stole the gun away from Tessa’s belt and slapped her across the cheek. As the other girl lost balance, she grabbed her by the collar and pulled her up close with all the strength she had. Tessa gasped.

“Let’s go, Tessa. There’s nothing left for us here,” Kaname whispered. Behind her, the statue audibly shattered.