2: On a Journey

Michel Dambier was an engineer, in his third year working at Renault. He was recently married, and had decided to pair up his honeymoon with a business trip to an international motor show at the Moskva River Expo Center. Unfortunately, his wife had found herself completely disgusted by Russian customer service. Though he’d tried his best to comfort her, his main priority was getting home, then maybe hitting up Paris for some good food and wine.

This was Lemon’s cover identity, more or less. He was currently sitting in a corner of Sheremetyevo International Airport, stifling a yawn.

“How can you yawn at a time like this?” asked the ‘wife’ of his cover story, Wraith. She was sitting next to him on a bench, and though her words were blunt and cold, her expression and mannerisms were sweet and gentle, stroking the nape of his neck as her lips drew close to his ear. Those in the airport around them would just assume they were whispering sweet nothings to each other.

Wraith currently appeared as a brunette in a staid paisley dress, paired with a simple beige cardigan worn around her shoulders. She had a turned-up nose, a pointed chin, and dark gray eyes; she didn’t look East Asian in the slightest. Wraith managed to apply such disguises in less than half an hour every morning, and she could probably look even less recognizable if she really wanted to.

Lemon whispered back to her, in the manner of a husband trying to cheer up his wife. “What do you expect? I’ve barely slept at all these past five days. My days are spent as a tourist, and my nights are spent sneaking into Moscow libraries.”

“I’m the one who found the documents,” she pointed out.

“And I helped,” he answered. “But Russian’s not exactly my first language.” The investigation that Mithril’s Teletha Testarossa had sent them on required them to sift through Soviet public documents and scientific journals in search of records of an experiment done in Soviet territory eighteen years ago. Since the documents hadn’t been digitized, they’d had to come all the way to Moscow to do it. “It’s my first time in Moscow anyway. It seems like it’s a second home to you, though?”

“I only lived here briefly,” said Wraith.

“Study abroad, maybe?” Lemon suggested. “At the Peoples’ Friendship University?”

“Not telling.”

“Ah, I see.” Lemon had managed to intuit that Wraith was a former North Korean agent, and the Peoples’ Friendship University was known to take in students from third-world Communist countries. Those in the intelligence field, like Lemon, knew well that students who nominally transferred there for schooling typically ended up trained in espionage.

Lemon still didn’t even know Wraith’s real name. Of course, ‘Lemon’ was also a fake name, so he had no real right to complain there... But he’d asked her once during the journey, out of curiosity, and her response had been, “I’m not telling you. You have Japanese friends.” Baffled, he’d pressed her further, but she’d just turned flushed and angry about it for some reason.

Her face behind her various masks was beautiful, and she was also elegant and refined. On top of that, she was far more physically capable than Lemon, who worked primarily on the “intelligence” side of the spy business. She was certainly his type, but unfortunately, even the five days they’d spent playing husband and wife hadn’t done anything to close the gap between them.

On the plus side, their long journey had borne fruit. Wraith had located the documents they were after following two rough nights in the library of a science academy, and then conveyed the name of the place described there to the Tuatha de Danaan via satellite channel. Now, all they had to do was flee the country.

Their boarding time wasn’t for a while yet, so Lemon stood up.

“Where are you going?” Wraith questioned.

“I’m a little hungry,” he said. “I’m going to buy something. Want anything?”

“No. Whatever you— No, actually...” Wraith thought for a minute. “I’d like some chocolate. Hershey’s, if they have it.”

“What, you want to make chocolate explosives or something?”

“No, I want to eat it.”

“Oho. That’s a pretty cute choice for a formidable Mithril spy,” Lemon joked.

“Just shut up and go,” she said, still whispering gently, and then kissed his cheek. He didn’t know how much of it was an act, but— No, it was probably entirely an act. Lemon shrugged it off, then headed for the corner of the airport terminal.

He bought two piroshkis, a Volvic, and a random chocolate bar. Unfortunately, there was no Hershey’s. He tried to pay with his remaining rubles, but the middle-aged woman in the shop asked, in heavy accented English, “Don’t you have any dollars?” He did indeed have dollars, but he lied and said he didn’t, earning a sharp glare from her as he paid with Russian currency.

Lemon received his change and was about to leave the store when he noticed a commotion around the terminal entrance. Several men in suits were speaking with airport staff. Their haughty bearing and keen eyes suggested they were police. They were showing a photo to the staff and asking a lot of questions.

Upon seeing the picture, one of the staff members pointed into the lobby, at the bench where Lemon had just been sitting.

Not good, was Lemon’s first thought. He couldn’t think of any slip-ups they’d made that might have put the Soviets on their trail, and there’d been no sign of their cover being blown. But given the men’s behavior, Wraith and Lemon had to be their objective.

“I think they’re after us,” Wraith whispered, appearing behind him unannounced. Lemon almost yelped in shock, but she grabbed his collar and pulled him behind a decorative plant, taking them out of sight of the new arrivals. She must have noticed the presence of the security men before Lemon did.

“Looks like it,” he agreed. “Not sure how they found us, though.” The only ones who should know they were here were Teletha Testarossa and Gavin Hunter.

“So, what do we do?” Wraith asked next.

“Good question... We’re going to end up in a rough situation no matter what,” Lemon concluded. “So...”

“I guess we’ll escape to the best of our abilities.” She took Lemon’s hand and began leading him towards a corner of the terminal, which had an employee entrance. The door there was locked, but Wraith hid behind Lemon as she picked it. It was just a basic cylinder lock, so it only took her five seconds. Nobody even seemed to notice. “It’s open.”

“Brilliant,” said Lemon.

Wraith slipped through the door and Lemon followed her, careful to make sure nobody was watching.

They jogged a little way down the employee hallway, turned the corner, walked down the stairs, then hid in a broom closet to let some staff members pass by. They hadn’t memorized the map, so any escape from the terminal building would purely come down to luck.

Inside the small closet, Wraith whispered, “Any ideas?”

“About what?” Lemon asked.

“The situation. Someone must have leaked the information. It can’t be Hunter.”

“I wonder. I don’t think Testarossa would make that kind of mistake, either—” Lemon’s speculation was interrupted by Wraith grabbing him by the collar and pressing something sharp against his neck—a shiv, made of reinforced plastic.

“Then the leak must have come from you,” she said coldly.

“Hey, hang on!”

“Who in the DGSE did you report to?” Wraith demanded. “Come to think of it, I don’t even know for sure that you are DGSE... Either way, it would be safer to kill you now and run off on my own.”

“Aha.” Lemon attempted to smile calmly but failed, as the knife digging into his skin forced him to wince. “I have no way to prove my innocence, so I guess that’s it for me,” he replied angrily. “Declared guilty and put to death with no lawyer, no jury of my peers. That’s the way your uncivilized country does it, right?”

A quiet rage appeared in Wraith’s eyes, but Lemon’s rage was greater. Stupid woman, he thought contemptuously. You think now is the time for infighting? You should be working with me to escape, not issuing threats! What was even worse was that in all these days they’d spent together, he could tell she hadn’t acquired even the slightest sense of feeling for him. No interest at all in my gentlemanly, brilliant, sexy self?! Is she a lesbian or something?

“You seem angry,” Wraith observed.

“I’m very angry!” said Lemon. “So, let me make my execution even easier for you: I know your secret.”

“What?”

“Yesterday, to kill time, I searched the internet for a list of North Korean women’s names,” Lemon explained. “Being a brilliant linguist, I figured it out in less than an hour... You know, your real name? I’ll bet your family name is Kim. That’s a reading for the kanji that means ‘gold.’ And your given name is going to be one that means ‘beauty,’ right? Yeah, your expression gave it away. Apparently that’s expressed with the kanji for ‘ball.’ It must be Ok-hui or something, the combination of ‘ball’ and ‘girl.’ We all know what lewd little word the ‘gold ball’ kanji pairing refers to in Japanese, so your full name, when written in kanji, would be the utterly laughable—”

“Stop!” Wraith cried out.

“Now, go ahead and kill me,” Lemon taunted. “I’ll tell everyone about it in Hell.”

Wraith’s arm tensed, but the crimson in her face didn’t appear to come from anger. She’d seemed genuinely about to rip his throat out, but that impulse seemed to fade as she let out a labored sigh. “This is absurd,” she admitted. “Fine, I’ll stop.”

“You shouldn’t even have started,” Lemon whispered, breathing heavily as he tried to sort out his thoughts.

Wraith just turned away, pulling out an airport map pamphlet as she began to consider escape routes. “If we can make it to the bottom level, there should be a service corridor for fuel and sewer pipelines. It will take us out of the terminal building.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Lemon. “But is that all you’ve got to say?”

“What else would there be?”

“‘I’m sorry,’ maybe?”

“Oh, shut up,” Wraith said with a scowl, then hurried on ahead. They climbed down a barebones service staircase, then passed through the loading dock to go deeper. It was a gloomy place; the signs in the passage and guides were all in Russian and difficult to read from long years of wear.

“Over there,” said Wraith, running up to the hatch at the end of the narrow hall, which was chained and padlocked shut. Above them they could hear distant footsteps—the quick gait unique to well-trained men—and officers shouting, “Davai! Davai!” It was accompanied by some kind of panting...

Police dogs, thought Lemon. It was only a matter of time before they were found. “Not good,” he said to Wraith. “They brought dogs.”

“I know. There, it’s open.” She removed the padlock and the two of them pried the heavy hatch open. There was probably no way she’d be able to open it by herself.

“See, you couldn’t have gotten away without me,” Lemon boasted. “Aren’t you glad you let me live?”

“I could still kill you now, you petty little man.”

“Hey...”

“I’m just kidding. Let’s go,” said Wraith, slipping through the hatch into the basement. Lemon followed after her, then tore some of the silver paper from the chocolate bar he’d bought at the kiosk earlier, subtly slipping it into the hatch as he closed it.

“What are you doing?”

“Buying us time.” When their pursuers found the hatch, they’d see the silver strip, assume it was some kind of trap, and be on their guard.

“If we take too long, they’ll surround us,” Wraith reminded him. “Hurry.”

“I am.”

The underground passage was dimly lit, with half of the space taken up by cables and pipes both large and small. Maintenance there seemed poor; water dripped from the pipes, creating a faint mist, and the smell of jet fuel stung their noses.

They ran for about three minutes. Visibility was poor, and the next thing Lemon knew, Wraith had gotten far ahead of him. From what he could tell by counting his steps, they’d already gone over five hundred meters. Positioning-wise, they should be outside the terminal building by now, but...

“Let’s head out,” Wraith told him, and immediately began climbing the nearby staircase. She didn’t seem out of breath at all. Lemon, however, was completely exhausted. He was a frequent jogger, so he’d assumed he could run this far easily... but now he was heaving for breath. Maybe it was the stress.

They climbed up several landings and unlocked the door at the end of the hall. This led them to a small concrete room full of stacks of aircraft guidance and fire prevention equipment, next to a number of traffic cones.

Leaving the little building took them out onto the taxiway for international flights. A hundred meters away in the dark, amidst blinking blue guide lights, a large passenger jet was passing with a deafening roar. Behind them was the airport’s outer fence.

Wraith grabbed Lemon’s arm as he stood there, hypnotized by the jumbo jet’s passage. “What are you doing?” she yelled. “Hurry!”

They broke into a run and saw the now-distant jumbo jet putting on the emergency brake; the control tower must have ordered them to stop. Beyond it, several cars were approaching from a corner of the terminal building, sirens wailing. They were coming after them.

“Damn,” Lemon cursed. So, they had sniffed them out after all... The effort to buy time had proved fruitless. End of the line, he wanted to say to Wraith, but he knew it wouldn’t help, so he stopped himself. Besides, she probably knew it as well as he did.

The fence that blocked their way was over two meters tall. It wouldn’t be easy to climb. He’d have to let her stand on his shoulders to escape. He didn’t want to do that dressed this way, but...

“What should—” Wraith started to say, then stopped short as he saw a man step out from an embankment just before the fence.

This new man was young; a boy, even, with silver hair and a red coat—the thick, dark red of blood—that billowed in the night wind. He was slender, and the blue-tinted illumination of the guide lights revealed well-proportioned features and dewy, almond-shaped eyes. For a second, Lemon almost mistook him for a woman.

Wraith seemed to know this boy. “Leonard... Testarossa?” she whispered haltingly. She then lowered her voice further, and Lemon heard her say, “What is he doing... here, of all places? How did he find us?”

So, this is Leonard Testarossa, Lemon thought. The Amalgam executive of condition unknown, and Teletha Testarossa’s older brother.

“It’s been some time, agent of Mithril,” Leonard said by way of greeting. He took one step towards her, and then another. There was a malicious smile upon his handsome face. No... a venomous smile. A smile that seemed to see through the truth of the world, and forsake it.

“I came here to Moscow on a little errand,” he said. “And I was keeping an eye on those documents, you see. You seemed to be doing a very interesting investigation, so I wanted to ask you the details while I was here. Fortunately, the local security chief was willing to help me.”

So, it wasn’t a leak, Lemon realized. He wasn’t sure how, but this man had sniffed them out...

There was a large scar on Leonard’s forehead, located beneath his elegantly curled bangs. It was a clear, vertical line, like a third eye tightly shut.

“You’re the one who tipped them off?” Lemon asked.

“Yes,” Leonard agreed easily. “I asked them to bring you in discreetly, but you went and ran... I thought you might come this way, so I decided to head you off.”

“Get out of our way,” Wraith demanded.

Leonard scoffed. “And if I don’t, what then? You’ll stab me with your little shiv?”

Wraith grunted in frustration, but held her position. She’d probably learned from experience that she couldn’t intimidate him. She whispered to Lemon, “I’ll throw myself at him. While I do, you run away.”

“What?”

“You need to get away and let our comrades know,” she insisted.

The cars out on the terminal were almost there. Lemon didn’t know if they were KGB or what, but they seemed raring to arrest them. They didn’t have another second to lose.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “I can’t—”

“Just go,” Wraith told him, then charged.

He didn’t know if her desperate plan would work. He didn’t know if he’d be able to climb a barbed wire fence by himself. He didn’t know if he could allow a woman to sacrifice herself so that he could escape. But he didn’t have time to wonder. Lemon clicked his tongue and took off in a run, charging straight for the fence.

Meanwhile, Wraith lunged at their enemy, the shiv in her hand... and let out a yelp as she found herself being thrown. It wasn’t that her attack was weak, and there was no magic or sleight-of-hand involved... but Leonard had moved just an inch, and the tip of her knife had found empty air; then, in the next instant, she was spinning through the space on her own momentum. Wraith let out a muffled groan, face-down, her wrist in a lock. “Don’t worry about me!” she cried. “Go!”

Lemon kept running. The fence was just ahead. He leaped... And then suddenly, his right leg went limp. He felt a burning pain run through his thigh in the exact same moment a gunshot rang out.

Leonard had fired with his free left hand while holding Wraith on the ground with his right, and the shot had hit Lemon’s leg precisely.

Lemon grunted and pitched forward, slamming his head into the fence. He grabbed desperately for the chain links and tried to climb, but his right leg just dangled there like dead weight.

“Lemon... ngh!” Wraith moaned with pain as Leonard further twisted her wrist.

“You both appear to be under a misapprehension,” Leonard said, whispering into Wraith’s ear. “It’s because you know my sister, I assume? She’s brilliant, but clumsy, weak, and incompetent with a gun.”

“L-Let me go...”

“And so, I assume, you imagine I’m the same way. I’m disappointed, if so. Very disappointed.” Leonard shifted his weight onto her body, and Lemon heard the chilling sound of Wraith’s shoulder popping out of joint.

Wraith’s ensuing scream of agony was the first feminine sound Lemon had ever heard from her. He wanted to run at them and punch Leonard out, but his body wouldn’t listen.

“A surprisingly charming voice. Sexy, almost,” Leonard said. He bit her ear softly, and traced his tongue over her cheek.

The blinding light of headlights washed over them. The police cars had arrived, and the security forces poured out, submachine guns at the ready. “What are you doing here?” A man in a military uniform shouted in strongly accented English. He was speaking to Leonard.

Leonard answered in fluent Russian. “As you can see, I’m bringing them in alive.”

“I thought you were leaving this to me,” the man replied sternly. “Now hand them over. And drop your weapon, too.”

“Hmm. And why would I do that?”

“You’re wanted for assault and criminal trespass. Come with me.” Lemon didn’t know the two men’s relationship, but it didn’t seem to be especially friendly.

“I see. A change of heart, eh?” Leonard observed. “I can imagine who put that idea into your head...”

“Arrest him! If he resists, kill him!” the officer ordered in Russian. Close to ten men rushed forward, their weapons at the ready. No matter how good Leonard’s aim, there was no way he could take out that many gunmen. Two armored cars were also approaching from beyond the runway.

But Leonard showed no signs of panic; he just shrugged and sighed. “Goodness me...” The distance between him and the officers was about ten meters. The space between them warped, and a large object wreathed in blue and white light appeared. It was an AS, rendered invisible with ECS technology, forming a barricade between them as it appeared.

Black armor, sharp angles, slender yet strong, with an inverted triangle silhouette... Lemon had never seen this machine before. It was similar to the Codarl, yet seemed fundamentally different. It wasn’t a military weapon, but a demon.

“Y-You!” The officer spluttered. “Where did you get that—”

Releasing Wraith’s arm and standing up, Leonard thrust his right hand forward. The black AS mirrored his movement. “Enough,” he said dismissively. “Begone.” Like an orchestra conductor, he elegantly lowered his proffered right hand. The black AS pointed its right arm at the men below. Its upper arm slid open to reveal a machine cannon...

It fired.

What happened next was less like a gunshot and more like an explosion. Machine cannon rounds large enough to shred a car blasted through the ground around the gunmen... a dozen of them each second. The officers were literally splattered against the pavement before they even had time to scream. Lemon watched silently as the cars they’d come in also burst into flames and went flying. Fragments of concrete flew into the air, some traveling far enough to shower down on him. The reverberations were deafening.

Soon, the sound died down enough that Lemon could hear laughter... It was coming from Leonard, he realized. The flames illuminated his silhouette: shoulders shaking, one hand over his face... He looked like someone fighting hard to restrain himself, but watching something so hilarious that he just couldn’t stop. It wasn’t a mad cackle; he’d just killed a dozen men, yet he was laughing like he was watching a sports blooper reel.

The black AS knelt down and placed its palms on the ground. Without a single glance back at the trembling Lemon, Leonard took a practiced leap onto the machine’s chest, then slid into the hatch behind the head into the cockpit.

The two armored cars opened fire, but the machine guns protruding from their turrets were like pea-shooters against the AS. When the AS returned fire, it tore one armored car in half, sending it skidding down the runway in flames. The other promptly streaked through the air like a fireball.

“It’s insane...” Lemon managed to whisper at last. To see a battle like this unfold in Moscow, much less at an international airport... it really did feel like madness itself.

“Lemon!” Wraith screamed. Cradling her paralyzed right arm, she managed to stand up. A part of the fence just a short distance away from him had collapsed, knocked down by some flying scrap from one of the cars. She used her free left arm to beckon to him. She seemed to be saying, “Let’s escape through the fence while we can.”

Lemon looked down at his right leg, where his pants were pasted to his thigh with blood. His toes were numb, and his ankle ached. He was glad the nerve was intact, but there was no way he could get to safety like this. The bleeding had made him lightheaded, too.

He shook his head slightly, and pleaded with his eyes, I can’t. Go without me. Wraith showed a second or two of hesitation, but quickly seemed to change her mind. She nodded at him shortly, then ran through the hole in the fence. Every breath must have been a jolt of pain through her body, yet Wraith still ran quickly. She leaped over the embankment, passed through the hole in the fence, and disappeared into the darkness.

Leonard’s black AS was currently engaged with two police ASes that had come running—Rk-92 Savages, which had been painted blue. Invisible force fields turned the Savage’s shells back against them. It was that lambda driver again... Lemon had seen Sousuke’s Laevatein use it in Mexico, but it was his first time witnessing it up close. Its counterattack blew the two opposing machines instantly to bits.

The airport had become an inferno. Buildings and passenger planes had taken stray fire; burning remains of vehicles and ASes littered the area, and a siren droned all around them.

The black AS turned back, walked up to the fallen Lemon, and picked him up roughly.

“Ngh...!” Lemon groaned.

“Missing one... Where’s the woman?” Leonard’s voice asked over the AS’s external speakers, while its head’s sensors scanned the airport. If Wraith was just hiding in the brush, Leonard’s infrared sensors should pick her up... But he didn’t seem to detect anything. “Ah, well. Let’s go.” Holding Lemon in one hand, the machine began to rise.

It was flying without a helicopter, without jet engines, without lift fans... Without any propulsion method Lemon knew of whatsoever, the machine ascended quietly to an altitude of a hundred meters and took off, heading west.

The wind was cold. His wound was burning. He didn’t know how Wraith had escaped Leonard’s detection. He wondered if she could possibly get away while nursing a dislocated shoulder. She probably still knew the area well enough, but...

I think I’m going to die, Lemon realized, as the face of a girl he’d never meet again flashed into his waning consciousness.

●

Sousuke was taking part in Tessa’s so-called “investigation,” en route to some ruins in the Soviet Far East. They’d had to stop several times to refuel, but the two Pave Mare transport helicopters had basically flown them the whole way for forty hours.

It was an unavoidably long journey, as they had to take off from the de Danaan in the Atlantic, cut across the American continent, then cross the Pacific Ocean via Alaska on their way to Magadan Oblast in the Far East... They were effectively traveling halfway around the globe. A fixed-wing transport could have gotten them there in a third of the time, but they needed helicopters to transport her two escort ASes, the Laevatein and the M9.

Right now, Mithril had no transport plane network and no convenient stopover bases. When transporting ASes such a long way, they’d normally take them and the helicopters apart, load the parts onto a transport plane, then reassemble them at a secret base closer to the site. But they couldn’t do that now; a few resupply routes were the best they could muster at the moment.

It seemed to Sousuke that this long journey would be a perfect chance for Tessa to rest and recuperate. But even in the helicopter, she didn’t stop working. She was constantly hunched over her laptop screen, reading something, typing something, giving orders to the de Danaan’s AI, and having serious conversations with someone over satellite transceiver.

She didn’t seem to be sleeping much, either. The worried helicopter crew encouraged her to rest, and Tessa did as she was told and curled up in a blanket in her seat. But they could see her open eyes in the window’s reflection, gazing out into the expansive darkness outside the craft.

Sousuke didn’t know what to do. He tried talking to her several times, but when he asked how she was, she simply smiled and said, “I’m fine.” He tried asking her about her work, but she’d answer the question and no more. She didn’t initiate conversation on her own. She’d just look at him gently and ask, in a roundabout way, “Is there anything else?”

Sousuke couldn’t do anything but say, “No,” and fall silent. After that, he didn’t try to say anything else to her.

The last refuel point on their flight path was a cargo ship named the Bernie Worrell, out on the Bering Sea near the Kamchatka Peninsula. On the surface it looked like a container ship flying the flag of Liberia, but it was actually a disguised resupply ship that the former Merida Island base personnel had managed to acquire. With cargo containers out of the way, it could probably host about five large helicopters at the same time.

The two Pave Mares that had come all the way from the Atlantic landed, and the pilots suggested they do machine inspections before refueling. It was understandable that the pilots would want to be cautious; they still had a 2000-kilometer round trip ahead of them, and they’d have to have their ECS on the entire time while in Soviet territory.

It would take over an hour to perform the helicopter inspections, so Sousuke decided to do some light stretches and exercise. He wanted to jog three laps around the deck of the 300-meter-long container ship, but he kept passing members of the crew whom he knew from the Merida Island days, and ended up stopping to talk to each one... So he cut off his jogging at two laps, then walked up to the railing near the bridge to gaze out over the sea.

It was dawn. The typically rough stretch of sea was unusually calm, and the light from the sunrise reflected blindingly off of the water. The cold but gentle sea breeze was very pleasant.

“The inspection’s gonna take a while,” Kurz said upon arrival. He had been in the other Pave Mare, which was also carrying his M9 on board. Theirs were the only two ASes on this mission; Mao and Clouseau had each been assigned separately.

“That’s not very specific,” Sousuke complained. “How many minutes?”

“I dunno. Just a while. Ah, now there’s a view...” Kurz sighed as he observed the scenery from the deck. Sousuke side-eyed him, finding something off about his demeanor. There was something kind of sparkling... almost joyous about his expression.

“What’s going on?” Sousuke demanded suspiciously. “What are you staring at?”

“Well...”

Sousuke remembered now that Kurz had been acting strangely before they shipped out, too... Sousuke had had to talk to Mao and Clouseau about various AS-related things then, and Mao and Kurz had barely spoken to each other at that time. It was as if a rift had developed between them.

“Did you have a fight?” he asked.

“With who?” Kurz wanted to know.

“With Mao.”

“Urk...” Another curious reaction. Kurz froze up for some reason, eyes focused on the distance. Then he looked down at his feet and back up at the bridge behind him. “What makes you think that?” he asked innocently.

“You were acting differently together,” Sousuke pointed out. Clouseau didn’t seem to have noticed, and neither had the others. But Sousuke’s finely honed senses had picked up on the change in atmosphere between them.

“Okay, yeah,” Kurz grumbled. “Makes sense that you’d notice...”

“So, what happened?”

“W-Well... It wasn’t a fight or anything, so no worries there... Seriously, it’s fine! Quit looking at me like that!”

“If you insist.” He still didn’t really buy it, but if Kurz didn’t want to talk about it, then Sousuke wouldn’t pry.

But Kurz seemed to have changed his mind nevertheless, as he spent a few seconds muttering to himself before clapping his hands together as if arriving at a conclusion. “Hmm. Yeah, okay, that’s no good. I think it’s okay if I tell you.”

Sousuke looked at him curiously.

Kurz leaned in and spoke in hushed tones. “You know, Sousuke. You’re the densest person I know.”

“Am I?”

“Yeah. So there’s a chance that in a fit of stupidity—not maliciously, mind you—you could end up revealing a secret. I’m telling you this despite that risk, because I know we’re the ultimate trio. Okay, so ‘ultimate’ might be going a little too far... but we really do make a great team. I don’t think it’s right for us to keep secrets from each other. That’s why I’m telling you. I need you to understand that.”

“I don’t really follow, but all right.”

“You can just say, ‘All right.’”

“All right,” Sousuke parroted dutifully.

“Okay. The point is, don’t tell anyone,” Kurz emphasized again. “No matter what.”

“Understood.” Sousuke nodded solemnly. It sounded like something very important, so he wanted to be attentive. Was Mao seriously ill? Had a relative gone on a killing spree? Had she spotted a rare cryptid on a mission?

“Anyway, the truth is...” Kurz cleared his throat awkwardly and twiddled his thumbs nervously. “Um, so... The truth is...”

It must be a serious secret indeed, Sousuke thought, and tensed up in anticipation. “The truth is...?”

“The truth is... recently... Mao and I slept together,” Kurz finished.

“I see. What then?” Sousuke asked seriously, and leaned forward.

Kurz scowled. “What when? That’s it.”

Sousuke looked confused.

“You’re not surprised?” Kurz demanded.

“By what?”

“By the fact that we slept together! That’s the secret!”

It was Sousuke’s turn to look confused. “I don’t understand. Why does it matter if you slept together?”

“Because it’s pretty serious!” Kurz exploded.

“Did you have to cohabit while on a mission?” Sousuke asked.

“That’s not the kind of ‘sleep with’ I meant. Um, let’s see... what, you’re really not getting this? Sheesh, man...” Kurz mussed up his blond hair with both hands and muttered to himself, mixing German, Japanese, and English together.

Sousuke felt himself to be completely in the dark. “Please, just put it in terms I can understand.”

Perhaps annoyed by Sousuke’s wording, Kurz shouted out in desperation, “I’m talking about us having sex!” His voice rang out at almost the same second that Tessa appeared from the door that led to the nearby bridge.

Tessa stopped immediately, freezing up, her eyes wide. Kurz and Sousuke froze up, too. She must have been using the showers on board, because she was dressed in damp fatigues and wore a bath towel around her neck.

“Um... er...” Kurz’s eyes darted around as he tried to pick his words.

Sousuke, though finally catching on, was further thrown off by Tessa’s appearance. He began shedding sweat, unable to say anything.

“I... I seem to have interrupted something,” Tessa said, and backed away in confusion.

“Uh, you didn’t, Tessa...” Kurz trailed off.

“He’s right, Colonel, ma’am. We were just discussing how many pounds of explosives would be required to sink a ship like this.”

“Shut up.”

“That is to say, we were talking about semtex,” Sousuke insisted. “As in, plastic explosives.”

“Yeah, that’s right, semtex! ...Ah, she’s not listening!” While Sousuke and Kurz argued, Tessa had whipped around and returned to the bridge... hurt, or disappointed, or both. Either way, it was a supremely awkward moment. “Ahh...” Kurz sighed, sagging in disappointment.

“It’s all right, Kurz,” Sousuke reassured him. “She didn’t hear the part about Mao.”

“That’s not the problem,” said Kurz. “I think we put an awful image into her mind.”

“What’s done is done. Let’s get back to the subject.”

But Kurz just waved at him, exhausted. “You get it now, right? The point is, we’re hooking up.”

“I see.”

“You don’t seem too surprised.”

“But I am,” Sousuke insisted.

Kurz peered closely into Sousuke’s face, which just looked as sullen as ever. “Doesn’t look like it to me.”

“How am I supposed to look?”

“You really never change...”

“Indeed.”

“And here I thought you’d made some progress after everything with Kaname...” Kurz lamented.

This gave Sousuke pause, as the mention of Kaname’s name caused a twinge in his heart. He still hadn’t found much in the way of clues as to her location... He’d thought about breaking away from his allies on the de Danaan to search for her himself, but he didn’t think that would get him any closer. Right now, he thought, I should focus on fighting with my friends against Amalgam. There was no need to complicate matters. Kalinin was with them, and when he found Kalinin, he’d find her.

“What, did I just trash your mood?” Kurz asked.

“Not an issue,” Sousuke told him. “So, when’s the ceremony?”

“Huh?”

“The wedding ceremony. If you deflower a woman, you should take responsibility,” Sousuke reminded him. “Mao is quite wealthy, so you’ll need at least a hundred sheep to pay her family off.”

“Talking to you is so exhausting...” Kurz said.

“You’re not getting married?”

“No way!” He paused. “Actually, I dunno. It doesn’t really feel like it’s just fun and games... Before we set out two days ago, she called me out right after the briefing...”

“Hmm.” Sousuke remembered that. The briefing had ended, they were getting ready to head back, and Mao had called abruptly to Kurz. She immediately began laying into him about sloppy paperwork and ammunition expenditure reports... so Sousuke and the others just assumed it was another lecture, and left the room indifferently.

“Once you guys were all gone, she told me to take care on my trip, then put her arms around my neck and kissed me,” Kurz reminisced. “It got me kinda hot, so we had a little tête-à-tête in the storage room next door... We knew it was a risky place to do it, but that also made it hot as hell.”

Sousuke didn’t respond to this. Something was happening to him that he couldn’t quite understand. Why is it that, for the last few minutes, I’ve been thinking so strongly about strangling my comrade? It doesn’t feel quite like jealousy, he mused. It’s more like watching someone smacking their lips at a feast while I’m standing by, starving.

Ahh. So this was “irritation.”

“But she still won’t say ‘I love you’ or anything,” Kurz went on. “What do you think it means?”

“It means she doesn’t love you, most likely.”

“Hey!”

“You shouldn’t be asking me anyway,” Sousuke said with a shrug.

“Yeah, okay, maybe... But there’s no one else I can talk to,” Kurz lamented. “Mao told me not to tell anyone.”

“You told me.”

“You’re different. Mao will understand that.”

“Why am I the only one you can tell?” Sousuke wanted to know.

“I told you before. We’re partners. And when you’re a team—”

“—You shouldn’t have secrets?”

“Right.” Kurz slapped him on the back, then grabbed the top of his head and shook it back and forth. For some reason, Sousuke didn’t find the gesture unpleasant.

Just then, they heard a sound of distant rotors. A helicopter was approaching from the southeast; it was an old UH-46. The tandem-rotor transport descended slowly, dropped its discharge cable onto the deck, and then landed next to the Pave Mares. After the cargo was unloaded, a familiar, plump man wearing glasses disembarked. It was Gavin Hunter, of the intelligence division.

When Hunter noticed Sousuke, he shouted to him over the roaring turboshaft engine, “Looks like I made it in time! I have a present for you, from a beautiful girl!”

“A present?”

“The fairy wing! It’s finally finished.”

The crew of the helicopter came out, attached the “fairy wing” to the shoulder of the Laevatein, and quickly double-checked the status of the attachment. Hunter, who was in charge of the work, kept walking back and forth between the deck and the bridge, coordinating between the ship and helicopter crews. Sousuke managed to chat with him during this time, though the main subject of their conversation was Kalinin.

“Yeah, he shot me,” Hunter admitted when Sousuke asked about their encounter. “I almost died. But I can’t say for sure he was trying to kill me.”

“He could have shot you in the head, you mean?”

“Yeah. But maybe he just didn’t care one way or another.”

Sousuke fell silent.

Hunter must have known about Sousuke’s relationship to Kalinin, because he quickly changed the subject. “Anyway, how’s the Laevatein treating you?”

“Well enough,” Sousuke said. Then, remembering the reason for Hunter’s near-death experience, he quickly added, “Thank you.”

Hunter laughed. “Seems you’ve picked up a few manners, kid. But she’s the one you should thank.” He pointed to a girl standing next to the power unit on the other side of the heliport. Sousuke had never seen her before. She wore an olive-colored flight jacket over an orange jumpsuit, and her hair, black tinged with red, streamed in the salt wind. “That’s the ‘surgeon’ who saved Al. You remember Matt Shade?”

“Yes,” Sousuke answered. Matt Shade was an intelligence division agent Sousuke had failed to save in Siberia, over a year ago in April, before he’d even met Chidori Kaname. Shade had saved a girl from a KGB lab, but he’d died before Sousuke and the others could come to the rescue in their M9s.

“That’s her. She’s all recovered.” Hunter patted Sousuke’s arm lightly and returned to the work.

Her...? It took Sousuke a minute to recognize her because, the last time he’d seen her, she’d been gaunt to the point of catatonia. The drugs had left her barely even able to walk.

She was currently chatting with Tessa. It looked like small talk, but there was something curious about the atmosphere between them... Their body language displayed the sort of awkwardness you’d expect from two total strangers, yet the conversation flowed easily, as if they were old friends. Sousuke felt like he’d seen something similar somewhere before. Then it came to him: this was the way Kaname and Tessa talked to each other, as well.

Tessa noticed him first, and the girl also turned to face him. Tessa beckoned to Sousuke, and he jogged up to join them. “What can I do?” he asked, standing at attention.

Tessa just smiled wryly and told him, “at ease,” so he took an at-ease posture as she made the introductions. “This is Kudan Mira-san. Mira-san, this is—”

“I know.” The girl, introduced as Mira, smiled at him. “Sagara Sousuke-san. You told me your name a long time ago. A long, long time ago...”

“Right,” he agreed uncertainly. Sousuke remembered her, but their exchange that day felt like something from a past life. It had only been a year and a half ago, but it made him realize how much had changed in that time. Not in Mira... In himself.

As Sousuke and Mira started up their awkward conversation, Tessa headed for the bridge to check a few final things with Hunter, who was waiting to speak with her. “I’m sure Mira told you,” he said, “we won’t know if the fairy wing will work until we activate it. We’ve done all we can, but there’s no guarantee.”

“That’s typical,” Tessa told him. “I don’t expect to get to use it this time, anyway.”

“We’ll see. And I have some bad news for you.”

Just from his words and his tone, Tessa knew what Hunter was about to say. “The explosion at the airport in Moscow?”

“Yes,” he said, confirming her suspicions. “Lemon and Wraith were there at the time. It’s been over thirty hours with no contact.”

“I see...”

“There’s a very good chance they know where you’re going,” he added pointedly.

Tessa knew what Hunter was implying: he wanted her to call it off. But she wasn’t going to turn back now.

●

Sousuke and the others took off from the Bernie Worrell in their transport helicopters, and headed further east across the Bering Sea. It was midday, but the ECS gave the outside scenery a purple-tinged sepia tone.

It had gotten even harder for Sousuke to talk to Tessa. He knew that trying to relitigate the foolish incident that had happened on the ship was pointless, though he doubted it had anything to do with what was really bothering her.

“Could I talk to you?” Tessa suddenly addressed him, much to his shock. She’d gotten up behind him some point, peering at him through the space between the seats.

“Yes, Colonel, ma’am.” He still felt hesitant to call her “Tessa,” even though he’d more than earned the privilege. It just felt wrong to him; he was used to addressing her by her rank, and trying to change it now would just throw everything off.

“When will you board your AS?” she asked.

“Thirty minutes before landing.”

“Not for a while, then. May I join you?”

“Certainly.” Sousuke threw the documents piled up in the seat next to him haphazardly into his bag on the floor. Tessa thanked him and sat down. She’d always had a diminutive frame, but somehow, she seemed smaller than usual today.

Sousuke waited for her to speak. Tessa remained silent for over a minute, just gazing at the seat before her. He tried to imagine what might be going through that mind of hers, which could move a mile a minute if needed... but nothing came to him.

“How are your injuries?” she finally asked.

“What?”

“Your injuries. I heard you were badly injured in a city called Namsac.”

“Ah... right,” Sousuke replied. “Not an issue.”

“I see. I’m glad.” Then Tessa fell silent. It was possible she didn’t quite know what to say.

Unable to bear the awkwardness of the silence, though, Sousuke decided to change the subject. “Colonel,” he said. “I’m extremely sorry about what happened before.”

“What do you mean?” asked Tessa.

“With Kurz, on the freighter...”

She shook her head slightly. “Oh, that. Please don’t worry about it. It just caught me by surprise.”

“Oh, well...”

“I’m quite used to it, really,” she went on. “When I first took command of the Tuatha de Danaan, there were people who would speak of such things as loudly as they could, even knowing I was nearby. It was their way of spiting me, I think. But I don’t mind it anymore.”

“Ahh...”

“I suppose such things are on your mind now, too?”

“No,” Sousuke said quickly. “Kurz just—”

“I know. It’s about Melissa, right?” she said. Sousuke was even more surprised, and Tessa gave him a shy smile. It was the smile of someone who wanted to smile even more, but perhaps thought she didn’t have the right to do so. “She told me. She said not to tell anyone else. I suppose I am to Melissa what Weber-san is to you.”

“I see.”

“Still, I’m surprised. Those two together...”

“Yes,” Sousuke agreed. “It surprised me, too.”

“I don’t know if they really plan to go steady,” Tessa mused. “Melissa seems very self-conscious about it. Particularly the age difference, and the possibility of him cheating.”

“I see...” Sousuke mustered all the imagination he had to try to draw up an image of them ‘going steady.’ None of the results seemed especially positive. “But we’re on the same team, so it might not be possible,” Sousuke said.

Tessa nodded, as if she expected that. “May I ask why you think that?”

“It’s all right to care for your teammates,” Sousuke explained, “but it can’t go too far. Mao’s job requires her to make split-second decisions about whether to sacrifice Kurz or me. A romantic relationship could cloud her judgment.”

“I see,” Tessa observed. “I doubt Melissa would be happy to hear that.”

“I’m not calling her ability or impartiality into question. But if it were me...” Sousuke got that far before something occurred to him. In that moment, he’d realized something that a normal man would have figured out ages ago.

This was the dilemma that Tessa had once struggled with in regards to him. Tessa cared for him, but the reason she had never crossed a line wasn’t just out of fear that he wouldn’t return her feelings: she was also bound by her position. It was so obvious, he couldn’t believe he had never realized it sooner...

And upon realizing again the impossibility of Tessa’s position, he also found himself thinking, She really shouldn’t have had to torture herself like that. In that issue, as in many others, she was just too hidebound by the rules.

The realization brought a new thought to Sousuke’s mind: Maybe I’m being too inflexible about Kurz and Mao, too. He wasn’t wrong about the issues it might cause with their functionality as a team, of course. A half-second’s delay in decision-making was how tragedies were born. But so what? Even the helicopter they were in right now had a hundredth of a percent chance of crashing and killing them all at any moment. It was pointless to get too hung up on what might happen.

“What’s wrong?” Tessa asked curiously, unaware of the sluggish progress his mind was making.

“Well,” Sousuke said slowly, “I was just thinking... ‘que sera, sera.’”

“What?”

He shrugged in an exaggerated fashion. “It’s not healthy to run yourself ragged over every little possibility. Let them go on on the way they’re going, and if it causes issues, we can worry about it then.”

“That contradicts what you said before,” Tessa pointed out.

“Yeah, it does. I changed my mind.”

“That’s very strange...”

“You think so?”

“I’ve never heard you say something so easygoing before,” she admitted.

“I see.” Maybe she’s right, he thought. “Is being easygoing an issue?”

“If it results in people getting killed, yes. I wish you’d take this a bit more seriously.”

“Hmm...” Sousuke stared boldly into Tessa’s eyes. Aside from a slight perplexity, all he could see there was deep exhaustion and irritation. It stung at his heart. “I’m always serious,” he told her. “I always was, and I remain so.”

“Do you?” she asked.

“The real problem is you,” said Sousuke. “You think that you can change the world. You think that, with enough thought and effort, by just ‘taking things seriously’ enough, you can make the impossible possible.”

A slight furrow appeared on Tessa’s brow. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t take this as a diminishment of what you do,” he told her. “I think you’re utterly incredible. You do things effortlessly that an ordinary person like me couldn’t conceive of in a million years, and with the most ironclad determination I’ve ever seen. You manage to seize victory in the most difficult situations.”

“I certainly intend to,” Tessa retorted. “That’s why I’ve—”

“You’ve fought, you’ve worked hard, you’ve planned scrupulously, and you’ve altered those plans as needed. I know.” He cut her off and continued, determinedly. “It’s all right to challenge fate. But you can’t control fate. Can you change the weather? Cause earthquakes?”

“I could try, if it were necessary,” she said firmly. “It’s possible to cause similar effects with enough data and careful planning.”

“This is just the issue.”

“What is, exactly?”

“You aren’t God,” Sousuke said bluntly. “You’re a human being, weak and flawed. It’s natural to feel responsible for the lives of your subordinates, but you can’t completely control their fates. I’ve survived multiple life-or-death situations, but tomorrow I could trip and crack my skull open on a rock. That’s what you need to stop worrying about.”

“I don’t understand,” said Tessa, her hands gripping tighter at her sleeves.

“No, I think you do. Every time someone dies, you blame yourself,” Sousuke reminded her. “You decide you should be punished. Then you swear vengeance against the enemy, and burn yourself out even harder trying to see that vengeance through.”

“I can’t deny that that’s true,” she admitted. “But what else can I do?”

It was a difficult question, and one Sousuke had a hard time answering. He was the same way, after all. He blamed himself for most of the things that went wrong in his life. And so, he decided to lie.

He didn’t know if it was the right thing to say, but he decided to go with the most extreme response possible. “Quit,” he said shortly.

“What?”

“Disband Mithril. Sell the de Danaan off and spend the money giving everyone on it a comfortable retirement,” he told her. “It’s not as if Amalgam’s trying to destroy the world, after all. Let them have their little intrigues.”

Tessa stared at him, baffled. “And what about Kaname-san?”

“Forget her. I feel bad for her, but I will forget her. Then I’ll invite you on a date,” he promised. “We can go back to Guam and hang out with Colonel Courtney.”

“Sagara-san!” Tessa shouted, her face turning red.

But Sousuke was unfazed. “I’m just kidding.”

“You had better be!”

“It wasn’t funny?” he questioned.

“No, it was not!”

“I see. I have a hard time with jokes.” Sousuke’s first-ever true attempt to be funny had apparently exploded on the launchpad.

“You’re a very strange person,” Tessa grumbled.

“I hear that quite often. But... that’s what you should do when it’s over,” he advised her.

She looked at him questioningly.

“Once you’ve done all you can, sell off the submarine and the ASes, enjoy your life, and enable the others to do the same. As for me, I intend to go back to school with Chidori,” Sousuke speculated. “I’ll keep studying, and eventually, I’ll become an ordinary man; a man who doesn’t need weapons.” Tessa was surprised by this, and even Sousuke was surprised by the words that came out of his mouth.

“An ordinary...” she repeated.

“You should try to do the same,” Sousuke specified. “Become a woman who doesn’t need weapons.”

Tessa fell silent.

“I’m sure that’s what the dead would want for you,” he tried again.

Tessa tried to argue, but couldn’t. She gazed at the hands on her lap and whispered, weakly, “Perhaps.”

“It’s true.”

She let out a long sigh, then sat back deeply in her seat. “Sagara-san, you’ve changed.”

“We all have,” he agreed. “You need to change, too.”

Tessa didn’t respond, but pulled the brim of her military cap down deep over her eyes. “I’m tired now. It’s your fault, Sagara-san.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Underneath the flight jacket she’d placed over her knees, Tessa quietly reached out and took Sousuke’s hand. The others shouldn’t be able to see, but Sousuke still felt his heart race. Her slender fingers. Her smooth, cool skin... “I know,” she said in a whisper, preempting an objection. “But just leave me this, please. This is enough. Just this...” And then she fell silent.

He waited three minutes, but she made no further move. When he tried to speak to her, the only response he received was the peaceful sound of sleep.

A man who doesn’t need weapons... Recalling his own words, Sousuke felt a sense of gloom overtake him. He hoped he could achieve that... but it probably wasn’t possible. He’d killed so many people. Maybe what he’d said to Tessa was just a fleeting hope. Maybe he was just trying to convince himself it was true.

●

Well, I guess I survived, somehow... Lemon sighed in relief as he gazed up at the fluorescent lights of the low ceiling above him. It was cold, and he was lying on top of a stretcher. He saw a swaying IV bag, felt the bandages wrapped tight around his leg. On the dingy white walls were racks, loaded up with medical supplies.

It was a small room... no, an ambulance, he realized. It was rattling and swaying around him, but very lightly so. They must be driving along a paved road.

Lemon could see someone moving in the corner of his eye; it was a man he didn’t recognize. The man realized Lemon was awake, and leaned over him with a mask-covered face.

“Any pain?” the man asked. The voice was indifferent; apparently, this was someone who saw looking after patients as a job rather than a passion. Lemon was reminded of a dentist from his student days.

“I’m going to start scraping, Jean. It might hurt, but just hang in there.”

“No, doctor! I’m not Jean, I’m Paul!”

“I hate dentists... ahh!” Lemon’s scream came as the man pressed down on his wound. He remembered it was a gunshot inflicted by Leonard Testarossa, and that reminded him of what job he’d been on. The man checked his blood pressure and heart rate, pulled down the lower lid of his right eye with his thumb, and flashed a bright light in his face.

“Can you say your name?” the doctor asked.

“Where am I?”

“Say your name.”

“I could, but I won’t,” Lemon snarled. “Where am I?”

“Hm.” The man patted Lemon’s cheek and then disappeared from sight. Lemon could hear the rear doors slide open, and soon, he was alone in the car. Strange... Wasn’t the ambulance in motion?

Nothing happened for a while after the man left. Several minutes—no, several hours passed. As Lemon’s muddled consciousness cleared, the background sound of a turboprop engine caused him to realize what was going on. The ambulance was inside the cargo hold of a transport plane.

About thirty minutes later, he felt a jolt that confirmed his suspicions: the plane had landed. The ambulance inside rattled back and forth, and then the vibrations calmed. It didn’t seem like a very well-maintained runway.

After the plane slowed to a stop, Lemon heard the sound of the hydraulic hatch opening. Then the ambulance’s engine revved up and drove them outside. After a short while, it stopped, and the sliding doors opened again. A beam of white light assailed his face, along with a stinging cold wind.

Lemon grunted as two men stepped in and began to pull his stretcher out. But then they stopped, as someone outside the car shouted, “Wait!” It was a woman’s voice, young.

“What do you mean, just throw him out?!” the woman continued.

Is that a Japanese accent? Lemon wondered. It sounds a little bit like Wraith’s or Sousuke’s...

“On this freezing mountain?” asked the voice. “You’ll kill him! Don’t be ridiculous!”

“We were ordered to look after you in the ambulance,” the man who’d been looking after Lemon before answered haughtily.

“I don’t need medical treatment,” the voice insisted. “I was just laid up with a fever for a while.”

“Look, we didn’t ask for this either,” said the man. “Now do what we say, or else—”

“Is there some kind of trouble?” a new voice asked, accompanied by the crunch of boots on snow. Lemon recognized this one as belonging to Leonard Testarossa.

“Ah...” The woman’s voice suddenly lost its fire and became hushed.

“It’s been a while,” said Leonard. “You seem surprisingly well.”

“You... You’re looking pretty healthy for someone who almost died,” the woman told him.

“Your concern is appreciated, but I’m feeling much better than before. I’m sorry to call you here so soon after your recovery... but!” A slap rang out, followed by a moan. The woman must have fallen to her knees in the snow.

“Wh...What are you...” She sounded openly shocked, less over the treatment itself and more that it was coming from Leonard.

“That’s to inform you about my change in my policy,” he told her coldly. “I’ve become more determined than before, and I’m tired of playing nice. And... most importantly, we’re running out of time.”

“S-So this is the real you, huh?” she asked shakily. “You’re twisted.”

“Say whatever you like. From now on, we... Oh, close that,” Leonard said, and one of the men closed the doors of the ambulance. Lemon was glad to no longer be exposed to the freezing wind, but now he couldn’t hear much of what they were saying. The thick doors and idling engine meant all he could hear was muffled voices.

He could hear Leonard saying something... The girl fervently arguing... Leonard’s voice growing angrier... The woman screwing up her courage to assert herself again...

The argument continued between them for a while, and Lemon vaguely got the idea that they were arguing about his fate. Just who is that woman? he wondered, noting that he still hadn’t seen her face. And, where am I? Where are we going? Questions churned in his mind without answers, until suddenly, the ambulance doors opened again. A group of men stepped in and grabbed the stretcher he was lying on. Were they going to throw him out now? Almost naked?

“Wait...” Lemon started to say, but in fact, it was the opposite. The men pushed the stretcher further back into the ambulance, affixed it to the floor, then left the car again. From behind him, several people entered: the medic from earlier, a large man who seemed like a bodyguard, and a girl. She was probably the one who’d been arguing with Leonard and his men.

She was beautiful and East Asian, dressed in tight jeans and a red down jacket, with long, sleek black hair that came down to her waist. Her most notable features were her delicate eyebrows, which seemed to have been drawn on with an Impressionist’s brush. And those curves, well... whoever calculated those should be nominated for a Fields Medal, Lemon thought appreciatively.

Unfortunately, she didn’t look well. He’d picked up from their earlier conversation that she’d recently recovered from an illness, and on top of that, her right cheek looked red and swollen from the slap. Eyes that should have been clear and beautiful were bloodshot and tear-stained.

The girl sat down next to the bedridden Lemon, scrubbing at her mouth with the sleeve of her jacket. She was doing it so hard he worried she would cut her lips open.

“Let me at least take your temperature—”

“I don’t need your help.” She slapped away the medic’s hand, then slumped down in her seat. As the ambulance drove off again, the car sank into an awkward silence.

“Um...” Lemon started, hesitantly. The girl didn’t respond. “Excuse me, miss?”

“Are you talking to me?” the girl asked, seeming to have only just noticed Lemon’s existence.

“Well, yes...”

“What is it?”

“Well... I don’t know much of what’s going on, but can I assume you saved my life?” Lemon reasoned, hazarding a guess.

“No. They were going to throw you into the snow before they changed planes, and I just asked them not to,” she told him. “I don’t know who you are, but apparently, they’re done with you now that you’ve been interrogated.”

Lemon realized that was probably true: the administration of a truth serum would explain why he still felt groggy after waking up. Modern truth serums made it impossible to resist questioning, no matter how strong your will. He’d probably given up everything they needed without even realizing it.

Lemon prayed that Hunter and the others swiftly disposed of all the codes, hideouts, and escape routes that he knew about. Actually, those were probably all right... The real issue was the ruins in Moscow he’d been investigating. He didn’t remember doing it, but he was certain he’d confessed about those, too. They might be heading to those ruins now, even... and if so, then Tessa and the others were the ones really in danger.

Hiding these concerns, Lemon said to the woman, “So you did save my life. Thanks.”

“I just did it to suit myself. It’s not like I even know you,” she said curtly, turning away.

“Then let’s get to know each other,” he suggested. “I’m Michel Lemon. A pleasure.” He reached out from under his blanket, hoping to shake her hand.

Seeing Lemon introducing himself, the medic let out a snort.

The girl sighed, and took his hand with her own. It was stained with dried blood. “Yeah, sure, pleasure to meet you. Satisfied, now?”

“I have to wonder... You’re Chidori Kaname, aren’t you?” Lemon speculated.

“Huh?” Her eyes widened, and she stared at him in disbelief.

“You don’t have to hide it. I’m a friend of Sousuke’s.” Lemon knew about Chidori Kaname from Sousuke. He’d never seen a picture, but he knew her age and defining features, and he knew that she’d been kidnapped by Leonard. In a field dominated by dangerous spies and mercenaries, there weren’t a lot of other candidates for who this unremarkable Japanese girl might be.

Kaname looked even more surprised by the mention of Sousuke. “You know Sousuke? Where is—” she started, then stopped, realizing the men sitting next to her were watching.

“It doesn’t matter. We’re in their hands, anyway,” he told her with a sarcastic smile, but the men showed no reaction.

“Is he okay?”

“Oh, he’s just fine. He’s tearing into everything, with Al at his side. He says he’ll bring you back for sure.”

Apparently, this hit some kind of button for her, as she immediately covered her face with her hands. She whispered something he couldn’t really make out, something in Japanese. It sounded like ‘yokatta.’ Lemon didn’t know what it meant, but he could imagine.

Okay, so this was her... This sobbing and trembling girl. Lemon felt an indescribable melancholy wash over him as he looked up at her. She seems like a nice girl, he reflected. Pretty, too. I bet she’s normally energetic, cheerful, and courageous, driving everyone around her to be their best selves. And she also loves Sousuke... Just like Nami did.

Isn’t this too cruel, Sousuke?

No, no, stop that... Lemon felt ashamed of his moment’s dark impulse—the feeling that this girl deserved to feel some fraction of Nami’s pain. She’s done nothing wrong, he told himself. She didn’t cause any of it. He couldn’t tell her the circumstances of how he and Sousuke met. After reminding himself of that, he forced a cheerful tone into his voice. “I’m jealous. I can tell how in love you are.”

“Yeah.” Kaname wiped away her tears and gave him a slight smile.

Leonard had asked one of his subordinates to leave a radio channel open, so he could hear their entire conversation. But they must have realized that was a possibility, and kept their conversation trivial.

His head hurt.

Listening to the laid-back drama unfolding in the ambulance wasn’t helping to relieve his boredom, so he tossed aside his earphones and began a bit of off-key humming. His song of choice was The Real Me, by The Who.

Can you see the real me, preacher? Can you see the real me, doctor? Can you see the real me, mother?

His head hurt.

They were in the Tuva Republic, in the south part of Siberia, four thousand kilometers from Moscow. They’d changed transport planes, rendezvoused with Chidori Kaname (who’d been brought in from Sri Lanka), then proceeded further east. The shredded wrapping paper of the pesky Christmas present given out eighteen years ago... Oh, she would definitely be there.

His head was killing him.

He’d heard everything he needed to know from that man, Michel Lemon. Needed? Leonard reflected. No, maybe he didn’t need it... What he’d gained was a mere confirmation of something he’d already known, and knowing what they were investigating in Moscow—or rather, what his sister had learned—would make things go much smoother, overall.

The man called Lemon had no more value to them, which was why he’d ordered his men to abandon him. But the man’s life could still be a bargaining chip for bringing Chidori Kaname into line. How much longer will she cooperate, he wondered, to protect the life of a complete stranger? It would be worth seeing.

Leonard smiled blissfully, meditating on the taste of her lips he’d gotten to savor for the first time in so long. He couldn’t believe how long he’d spent engaging her in good faith, hoping that it would earn her affections. Utterly gentlemanly, never forceful... If he kept it up long enough, then someday, someday— Ah, but he’d been a fool. He should have done things this way from the start.

Yes, that was right. It was his first time ever striking a woman. He’d killed or arrested women who opposed him, but this would be the first time he’d ever hit one.

Long ago, he’d spent time in a poor region of Austin, watching the prostitutes on the street with their pimps. He’d been like one of those pimps just now: the men who skimmed money off the top and slapped their whores around when they cursed and fought back. Then, after these displays of violence, the men would always show remorse, cooing, “I’m sorry I hit you. I love you, baby.”

He’d always found it a disgusting cycle, but he couldn’t pretend that that world didn’t run smoothly. That garbage dump of a world, driven by the basest of feelings and urges. A world where intelligence had no place. It was one of the things that reminded Leonard that humans were no more than animals. He’d been a fool for believing Chidori Kaname was different.

No, she was exactly the same way: an animal. That realization had come to him one night after recovering from his injury, and rather than leaving him despondent, it had caused many things to snap into place. Why not simply act the way those men did? he’d wondered. This world isn’t going to last much longer anyway. What harm would it do to throw off my restraints now?

The pain in his head wasn’t going away.

It was strange, though... Leonard felt like he was forgetting something, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t remember what it was. Something he’d known in the past that he was eluding him now...

Nothing to worry about, said a voice in his head. What you’re trying to remember doesn’t matter; it will only burden you. What does a plane that never lands need with landing gear? You’ve already taken flight...

●

Wraith had managed to escape the carnage at the airport with her life, but she wasn’t able to restore her dislocated arm on her own. She wanted to contact Hunter, but had no way to do it, and she was on the verge of passing out from pain and fever.

She’d ended up hiding in an apartment complex garage five kilometers from the airport, where she finally passed out. Wraith didn’t know how many hours she’d spent unconscious, but she’d probably been found and reported by some civilians in that time. She’d woken up surrounded by police. They had their guns pointed at her, and she didn’t have it in her to try to resist.

They took her to the local precinct and, after realizing the extent of her injuries, sent her to a hospital under surveillance. They popped her shoulder back into its socket and injected her with some cheap tranquilizer and antipyretic. After that, she lay motionless in the hospital room until a uniformed officer arrived. He wasn’t from the KGB who had chased them at the airport, but the army’s intelligence branch—the GRU.

Will they hand me over to Leonard, Wraith wondered, or execute me straight away? Either way, she was prepared for it all to be over.

But when the GRU officer’s words came, they defied her expectations. “I always thought you were an excellent student,” he told her. “This is very disappointing.”

She knew him. In his forties, eyes a deep gray, with a smooth, hairless head, and a distinctive aquiline nose. He had been one of her teachers during her ‘study abroad’ in Moscow, back when she was a bright-eyed little girl who believed fully in the righteousness of her homeland.

“Captain Kiriyenko...” Wraith whispered.

He smiled, tapping the rank badge on his uniform. “That’s ‘Lieutenant Colonel’ now, Ok-hui. If I’d arrived three minutes later, you’d be in a Chekist car right now.”

●

They let Kurz’s M9 off first, two kilometers from their drop site, near an 800-meter-tall mountain peak. With ECS activated, he took a sniper position, then checked the area for threats. The Gebo-4 Pave Mare, lighter now without the burden of his machine, flew over the drop point, scanning for threats with its sensors. While it did, Kurz remained on guard for any possible enemy attack.

Five minutes later, Gebo-4 and Kurz both reported that no enemies had been sighted.

“Good. Take us to our destination,” Tessa instructed over their internal channel to the captain, and Sousuke heard it, too. The other Pave Mare, Gebo-6, was carrying Sousuke’s Laevatein and Tessa as they flew over the low mountainous region.

The images picked up by the helicopter’s optical sensors were relayed to the Laevatein’s cockpit, as well, and the sight they depicted was a chilling one: it was like they’d reached the end of the world. The ground beneath them was orange, covered in tall grass with barely any trees. Autumn was just beginning, yet Sousuke imagined the whole area would soon be encased in deep snow. It must be terribly cold here for most of the year.

The local time was 1632 hours, the red sun sinking over the horizon in the west. They couldn’t see any man-made structures other than those at their destination, just the remains of a road and power lines.

Through the mountains they could see a residential area, built in a mountain valley of about three kilometers’ radius. Rows of single-story houses seemed to wreath the city, and beyond them lay a smattering of tall buildings. There was a plaza at the center of the city, and they could see a large bronze statue within it. As the helicopter got closer, it became clear it was a statue of Lenin.

Yamsk-11 was the name of this city, one of several “secret towns” within the Soviet Union. Researchers with their families in tow would have moved to these towns—which wouldn’t be found on any maps—to conduct research on top secret projects like nuclear and ballistic missiles. The name “Yamsk-11” even seemed to be there for convenience as well, as it was just the name of the nearest major city with an administrative postal number attached. Security was strict, and nobody was allowed to leave or enter without permission.

But no security was present in the city below them now. It was a total ruin, abandoned long ago.

There were no people in sight. The remains of cars, broken down and covered in rust, littered the roads here and there. Grass grew through gaps in the asphalt, and road signs lay toppled and covered in moss. The buildings were in a bad state, as well: a closer look revealed that most of them were falling apart. The walls had collapsed, and the roofs had large holes in them. Some were even flattened, as if they’d gone into a press. Probably crushed by heavy winter snowfalls, Sousuke reflected, and then never repaired.

A city built in secret, abandoned in secret, and simply forgotten... It wasn’t even in Mithril’s databases. Tessa had only learned about it the other day, with the help of Lemon and Wraith.

It wasn’t just the enemy that was absent, either. Nobody seemed to have come here in over ten years. It was such a wasteland that searching for threats seemed almost pointless.

“Damn, what a creepy place,” whispered the pilot of the Gebo-6. “There was a ruin like this near the town I lived in, in Nevada, as a kid. They said all five thousand residents disappeared overnight. Rumors say they were all killed... Like some soldiers went mad in an experiment and attacked them. The adults all laughed it off, but even though the town was right next to ours, nobody knew anyone who’d moved from there.”

“Wow, scary,” Kurz laughed over the radio.

“Well, the actual truth is that the only auto plant in the town closed,” the pilot admitted sheepishly, “so everyone moved away.”

“Oh, that’s boring.”

Listening to their discussion, Sousuke found a strange sense overtaking him: déjà vu. He felt like he’d seen this sight somewhere before. In fact... he’d heard that conversation somewhere before, too. What a strange feeling, he thought. Then after this, Tessa will say—

《A curious sensation.》

He was wrong. It wasn’t Tessa who spoke, but Al.

《I feel as though I’ve been here before.》

“What?” Sousuke asked, surprised that Al seemed to be feeling the same thing he was.

《The coordinates and terrain don’t match up to any previous operations data, but I feel as though I’ve seen this all before.》

“Yeah, it’s definitely weird. I feel like I’ve been here before too,” Kurz agreed.

“Same here. Maybe I saw it on the news somewhere,” said the pilot of the Gebo-4.

One after another, the rest of the crew chimed in to agree.

“I know you’re all tired from the journey, but please try to get it together. And keep your distance from the city’s main plant,” Tessa said, as she heard a note of fear come into the voices of all present.

“Can’t you fill us in already, Tessa? What’re we looking for in these ruins? I mean—”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t say yet,” She cut off Kurz’s complaint, then gave another order: “I’m going down into the ruins now. Sagara-san will be my bodyguard. Leave the Laevatein on the helicopter.”