ASSASSIN IN BLUE

CHAPTER 5

-

I

-

Pain shot through her back as though it were being shredded. Desperately fighting back an explosion of agony, Mia sank her fingers into the fake’s shoulders. Her hand reached for the pouch on her waist.

“I’ve got some caustic powder,” she whispered in a low voice. “When I give the word, hit the deck.”

“Sure.”

Mia, though somewhat dissatisfied with the fake D’s amused tone, pulled the capsule of powder from her pouch. Once it spread through the air and the lighter at the top end of the capsule ignited it, it should melt anything, including rock, in a thirty-foot radius. But for Mia to remain safe, it was necessary to give due consideration to the timing of that ignition. Ordinarily, the powder wasn’t really suited to a situation where she was moving so quickly. However, she didn’t have time to be picky.

“Stop,” she called out, but as she turned the emitter upward, the capsule slipped.

“Oh!”

The tiny container struck her wildly grasping fingers once or twice before falling right through them.

“What is it?”

“I dropped the capsule.”

“What’ll you do?”

There was the sound of demonic wings closing in on her from behind. A shriek rang out, and it sounded like a number of the creatures dove downward.

“I’m gonna look for it. Set me down.”

“Is this it?” the fake asked, holding the capsule out under her nose.

“B-but how?”

She needn’t have even asked that. He’d caught it before it hit the ground. Mia was laid low by a feeling of utter defeat.

“Hurry up. The enemy isn’t about to wait around for you.”

Once again she heard a strange flapping sound. It was followed by a slash, and what felt like wings fell onto Mia’s back. She pressed the button as if she were spraying insecticide. It expelled the contents for two seconds—and then the sound faded. Holding her finger over the rough wheel of the lighter, she cried out, “Hit the dirt!”

And as she sank down, her finger rolled across it.

An iridescent sphere of light swelled into existence. A powerful acid tore into the creatures in the air, melting them.

“Good enough,” the fake D said, but how much time had passed was unclear.

As a weight resting on her suddenly vanished, Mia realized that she’d been on the bottom—the fake D had narrowly managed to shield her from the caustic flames. For the longest time Mia couldn’t take her eyes off the back now exposed by his ruined coat.

“What are you looking at?” the fake asked, his back still to the girl.

Somewhat flustered, Mia hurriedly replied, “The monsters’ corpses. They’re all melted. I didn’t get to see what they looked like after all.”

“Let’s go.”

“Okay. I’ll be right—”

In the middle of her reply, the ceiling and floor seemed to switch places.

Swiftly catching Mia as she fell, the fake D could feel the warm wetness on her back with his fingers. Torn open by an attack from the monsters, Mia’s back had lost about as much blood as it could.

“You mentioned my true appearance,” the fake D said, his eyes beginning to gleam fiercely. “Okay, I’ll show you. Now.”

Telling her this in a voice that prickled like frost, he brought his handsome visage closer to Mia’s pale throat.

-

The next thing she knew, she was lying in bed. On remembering everything that had happened up until that point, she looked around in shock at her ravaged surroundings, which bore some resemblance to a sickroom. The ceiling and walls were ruined, and by the barest of illumination she made out what seemed to be melted beds and medical equipment. Here lay death, heavy and dark.

“Are you awake?” Mia heard a voice above her head ask abruptly, and the girl thought the shock would snuff her breath. Was the D looking down at her the real one or the fake? After some consideration, she let out a disappointed sigh.

“If you’re awake, I’ll have you join me,” the fake D told her.

“What is this place?”

“A hospital. Of course, it doesn’t really resemble one much anymore.”

That much Mia could understand. But what sort of being would go to such lengths to destroy one of the Nobility’s facilities? This new puzzle occupied her brain.

Mia got up. Her back hurt terribly.

“I wouldn’t jump around too much if I were you. I couldn’t do any more than a makeshift treatment. You lost a lot of blood.”

Terror drove a pillar of ice through Mia’s spine. Bleeding in front of a man with the blood of the Nobility in him? In all her life, she’d never done anything with the same speed that she now used to bring her hands to either side of her neck.

Once her fingertips told her that the skin remained smooth, the fake said to her, “Feel relieved now?”

He seemed quite pleased with himself.

“Although it was a very alluring aroma, I have no intention of making you my servant at present. You see, without a body that can live in the odious light of day, I can’t accomplish my aims.”

Mia didn’t hear these words. Her relief at not having fallen to the pernicious fangs of the Nobility had blotted out all other thoughts. And it was due to that that she failed to notice the fearsome meaning of his last remark.

A short time later, Mia brought up a different matter. “You took care of my back, didn’t you?”

“Well, I couldn’t have you dying on me.”

“I’m fine now. So, what’s next?”

The fake D’s eyes gleamed.

“Down here—” he began to say, but just then, the darkness grew deeper.

Though Mia didn’t notice it, the walls of this room also retained the same light-emitting properties. When she looked up at the fake D’s face, Mia found the first traces of tension in his expression.

“He made it through the defense systems faster than I expected. He truly is . . .”

The words that went unsaid made Mia’s heart race.

“What happened? D?”

“Stay here,” the fake ordered her, and then he turned around. “There are strange things prowling around outside. Don’t go out there.”

The voice was swallowed by the depths of the darkness.

If this impostor called D “me,” what manner of being could get him so agitated? Mia became more intrigued. Her curiosity had made her call on this dark abode, and it was safe to say it was now once more inviting her into pitch black danger.

Somehow keeping the pain in her back in check, Mia got out of bed and began to walk off toward where the fake D had disappeared. She was still dressed. Her pouch remained safe and sound, too. Searching for anything else that might serve as a weapon, she picked up a foot-and-a-half-long piece of steel pipe off the floor. When she swung it with both hands, it seemed like it would suffice. But in return, a sharp pain shot through her back.

She could see only darkness ahead of her, but upon entering it, she found the door. Once she stood before it, it opened by itself.

Great, she thought, but as soon as she stepped out through it, it closed right behind her. Flustered, she tried stepping on the floor in front of it a few times, but now the door wouldn’t budge at all. Which was why the fake D had told her not to go outside.

“This is bad,” she told herself, but she quickly gave up on stewing over it. In studying divination, Mia had learned that if one method didn’t give you the answer, you should switch to another right away. If astrology didn’t work, try a reading from the winds—and that was exactly the philosophy that guided her now.

Mia was standing in a broad corridor. Although everything, including the doors set into the walls, was made of the same luminescent metal, the surfaces were melted, twisted, and smudged with oily smoke, speaking volumes about how a savage destroyer had torn through here mercilessly. Nevertheless, Mia couldn’t do anything to stop the admiration and the fathomless fear spreading through her heart. Here was a facility beyond the imaginings of the humans up above—what on earth could’ve laid such waste to it?

I have to know—Mia’s new curiosity flashed so brightly that even when she shut her eyes, it burned into her eyelids.

Where had the fake D gone? That was the first thing she should consider.

“It’s been a while, but I suppose I should give it a try,” Mia said, moving to the center of the corridor and standing the steel pipe on end. Chanting the spell for directional divination, she took a step backward. The pipe floated about four inches straight up in the air. This was the most important part of any divination—an impartial view.

“Now!”

With that, the pipe dropped, pointing off to the left when it landed. Picking it up, Mia started off to the right side without a moment’s hesitation.

The air was terribly hot, but at least it didn’t have an odd smell to it. As she walked for the next ten minutes, she came to a number of corners and stairways, and each time Mia used the same method to decide her path. She didn’t run into any of the “strange things” the fake D had mentioned.

Though the degree of destruction in the underground facility grew greater the farther she went, Mia grew inured to it. She only realized that’d been shortsighted of her when she came to an area that reminded her of a factory. Ruined machines of staggeringly huge proportions towered to either side of her, all of them half melted and misshapen. Some had their inner workings exposed, and those had also melted away. While many of the massive machines were recognizable as cranes or furnaces, there were also amalgamations of spheres and cubes that seemed to suck her in as she looked at them, and the mere thought of the purpose they might serve formed ice on the nape of Mia’s neck.

“Incredible—but they’re all out of commission,” she murmured.

The faint light never failed, throwing Mia’s shadow across the floor.

When she came to a sixty-foot-high cylinder that called to mind a rectifier, Mia sensed the presence of someone behind her. She turned and looked. A shadowy figure swiftly hid itself behind an iron pillar. Although it was a human shape, it wasn’t that of the fake D. For starters, he wouldn’t be one to hide.

“Who’s there?” Mia called out in a firm tone.

Stillness returned to the world.

“C’mon out. We’re just spooking each other this way.”

As Mia glared at the spot where the shape had vanished, her right hand slipped into her pouch. Groping blindly, she found the capsule of phosphorous powder and pulled it out. After spraying it at her feet for a second or so, she opened the lid, spilling its contents out as she backed away.

When she’d gone about fifteen feet, the human figure reappeared in its original position. Leaning forward somewhat with both arms crossed in a disagreeable manner, it was headed toward her at a good clip. Apparently it wasn’t about to let her get away. But when it came close enough that she could clearly discern its features even in the faint light, a cry of horror rang from Mia’s lips.

“But you’re—Zoah!”

Partly it was the gloom and partly it was her own reaction that left her aghast, but the youth with a complexion as pale as paraffin was indeed the same young man who’d been decapitated two days earlier. The proof was on his neck—black stitches ran all around the base of it.

“Zoah . . . Who in the world could’ve . . .” Mia said, tears spilling from her eyes. While they were tears of mourning at the pitiful sight of the young man who’d loved her, they were also tears of rage toward whoever would subject the dead to such a ghastly procedure.

However, the way the young man approached her devoid of expression was truly unsettling.

“Zoah, say something.”

A pale face. And at its center, eyes as cloudy as those of a dead fish.

“Don’t come near me, Zoah,” Mia finally cried out.

But he was coming.

Fear dictated Mia’s course of action. Crouched down, she struck the capsule’s lighter. Defying the gloom, a blinding flash of light zipped over to Zoah’s feet. At that instant, Zoah stepped onto the phosphorus powder she’d scattered seconds earlier. Though Mia’s eyes were shut tight, she was assailed by images of the white seeping through her lids and used both hands to hide her face.

“I’m sorry!”

Opening her eyes a crack, she turned and ran for all she was worth. The sound of burning followed her for a brief period. The living corpse hadn’t even let out a scream.

“Zoah . . . Zoah . . .” Mia cried, sobs spilling from her lips.

At that point, heaven and earth traded places. A tremendous jolt twisted the world, throwing Mia’s body in a direction even she couldn’t determine, where she was swallowed up.

-

II

-

She had the sensation of sliding downward. At the very least, she wasn’t flying. Beneath her body she could feel an incline.

What’s gonna happen? she wondered—and just then, a shock tossed her body up. Mia was just in the midst of a scream when she landed on her ass against hard ground.

“Oh, that hurt . . .”

And she wasn’t just talking about her derrière. She could tell that the wound on her back had opened again. Warm dampness was sliding down toward her waist.

The quaking subsided. Though she knew it must’ve been caused by some tremendous force run amok, she couldn’t begin to form a definite picture of what that might’ve been.

Getting the feeling she’d done something that couldn’t be undone, Mia surveyed her surroundings with trepidation. And her breath caught in her throat. Not surprisingly, the glowing walls were behaving strangely, their dim illumination now alternating intervals of darkness and light that created a kind of strobe effect. And in these flashes of light, Mia was able to make out a vast expanse of dark soil and rows of gravestones. Originally, this place must’ve been located far below the floor Mia was on, but apparently it too had been struck directly by that massive quake, as the gravestones had all fallen and parts of coffins or even whole ones protruded from crevices in the earth.

“Who’d have thought there was a graveyard way down here . . .”

Who’d made it, and whom had they buried there?

Crawling over to the closest tombstone on all fours, Mia read the writing on it. It was inscribed solely with numbers. They’d been burned into a metal plate with a laser or something similar.

“These numbers . . . This date is from more than five thousand years ago . . . This one’s three thousand . . . And seven thousand . . . And this one . . .”

The numbers inscribed on five or six of the grave markers related the fact that all of them had been erected more than three millennia earlier. At the same time, they also spoke volumes about how long this subterranean facility had been in operation.

“Leave it to the Nobility. But so many of them wouldn’t have died so easily. In which case . . .”

Were those interred there human? Or were they—

At that point, Mia should’ve left. To the rational mind, there was no way remains from more than three millennia earlier could have retained their original forms. However, curiosity burned once more in her bosom, and in a spot less than three feet from her, she saw a coffin that’d been completely exposed. A pain shot through her back and waist as if a knife had gone into them, but she didn’t let that bother her. Inching over on her knees, Mia reached for the coffin’s lid.

I wonder if it’ll even open, she thought, but it slid off easily enough. It came as little surprise that even Mia didn’t have enough nerve to peek in right away, but rather she lowered her eyes and regained control of her breathing.

“One, two . . .” she counted, “three!”

She raised her head. There was a face right in front of her. The shriveled, desiccated face of a mummy, its eyes alone glowing.

Not saying a thing, she pulled back. Something cold came to rest on her shoulder. Her hand reached up to touch it. Icy fingers. Mia’s eyes stared straight ahead—at the figure about to leave its coffin. And it wasn’t the only one.

Rapid shifts came between darkness and light.

Light—the figure in the coffin stood up in the box.

Darkness.

Light—the figure got out.

Darkness.

Light—the figure was coming closer.

Mia watched a coffin in the distance . . . another coffin, still buried . . . Lids were sliding off or pried open, hands stretching out, figures rising . . . figures, figures, and more shadowy figures.

“Noooo!” Mia exclaimed, twisting her body.

There was an impact on her shoulder, but she quickly pulled free. Taking five or six steps on her knees, she rose and turned. Trembling engulfed her whole body.

Zoah was standing there. Due to the dizzying switches between darkness and light, for a little while Mia didn’t notice that there was something wrong with him. The shape of his face was strange. The right half of it remained shrouded in darkness.

“It’s gone . . .”

Half of his face was missing. And Zoah, too, was closing in on her. There was nothing she could do but retreat. She wondered how, terrified beyond belief, she must appear to him and the others. Were the hands he extended seeking some expression of affection, or flesh and blood?

Her back bumped against something. A metal pole. There was no place to run anymore.

She called out his name. “Zoah . . .”

The forest of arms moved forward. Out of all those limbs like hard, dead branches, Zoah’s hands alone still retained the semblance of a living person’s.

Her breasts were seized roughly. By Zoah’s hands. Mia let out an agonized scream. He was going to tear them off.

Suddenly, her pain subsided. Zoah’s hands slowly pulled away, following the arc his falling body described. It wasn’t clear whether or not Mia noticed the glittering needle that pierced his temple. The other walking dead also fell to the ground, one after another. Glistening needles were jabbed through their temples, their chests, their abdomens.

“It’s my hair,” said a voice off to the left. Just as before, the figure in blue astride the black steed had long hair that covered him to the waist.

“You’re—”

That was the only word Mia got out.

How many times am I gonna have to ask that? she wondered, suddenly feeling stupid. Blood loss and the pain in her back were rapidly sapping her strength.

“My name is Yuma. Remember that.”

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” Mia asked, staring intently at his black mount.

“Because he should be here.”

“By he, which D do you mean?”

“Either one.”

To this man, they were both probably one and the same.

“You’re an assassin, aren’t you?”

The man said nothing.

“Why are you out to get D?”

“He learned too much.”

“Like what?”

“If you knew that, you’d have to die as well.”

“Why did you spare me alone?”

“Because if I take you away with me, he’ll soon appear.”

“You keep saying he, but there are two Ds, you know. The real one and a fake.”

Behind the blue hair, something glimmered. Perhaps it was an eye.

“You don’t know anything, do you?”

It took her a few seconds to respond to those words. “Know anything about what?”

“I can’t say. When I slay him, have him tell you with his dying breath.”

“Don’t be so sure of yourself.”

“Get on my horse.”

The black steed came closer, and the pale figure in blue reached down from its back.

“Not a chance,” Mia said, backing away.

“Oh, my. Why not?”

“I don’t fancy being bait for you to lure D out.”

“Nevertheless, you’re coming with me.”

“The hell I will!”

“In that case, I have no use for you. I’ll have to do the same thing to you that I did to the others,” he said, turning his head—or actually, his hair—to indicate the legions of dead.

“Why?” Mia asked, cold sweat beginning to run down her face.

“You were with them. Perhaps you learned the same thing.”

“I don’t know anything. But if you’re going to kill me anyway, why don’t you tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“Everything. Like what you are, for starters.”

The rider said nothing.

“What a jerk you are!” Mia spat. “I give you whatever you want, but you won’t tell me anything about yourself in return—that’s despicable.”

“Are you crying?”

When he asked her this, Mia finally realized that she was. Zoah lay at her feet. First his head had been cut off, and now he had a hairlike needle through him.

“Yeah, so I cry. Is that a crime? A fortuneteller’s daughter is still a human being. When something sad happens, I cry. If something rubs me the wrong way, I get angry. What’s the matter with that?” Glaring at the man in blue, who was surely an assassin, she continued, “If you’re going to kill me, kill me already. But I’ll be damned if I’ll let a liar like you use me.”

“That’s interesting,” the assassin said, smiling.

“What is?” Mia asked, wiping her tears away with the back of her hand.

“Are you so loath to serve as my bait? Are you that smitten with the man they call D?”

Mia jumped up.

“D-don’t be absurd!” she stammered.

“Is it so absurd?”

“It—it sure is.”

“Fair enough, I suppose. What else do you wish to know?”

What is the other D? The question started to rise in her throat, but Mia hesitated. Looking around at their surroundings, she asked, “What is this place?”

“A facility constructed by the Nobility in ancient times. Certain experiments were conducted here over the course of nearly ten millennia.”

“What for?”

“The fusion of human and Noble blood.”

He said it so casually; she couldn’t comprehend it at first. Parsing the words one by one with her brain, she strung them back together to form some meaning. She still had to ask, “What did you just say?”

The figure in blue didn’t answer her.

“Mixing human and Noble blood? Is that what you mean? They did those sorts of experiments here?”

“Correct.”

Dizziness swept over Mia. She barely managed to keep herself upright by clinging to the pole, but the impact of that knowledge wasn’t about to leave her.

Mia searched madly for her next question. “Well, then—who was it that destroyed this place? There’s no way humans could’ve done it. Was it some falling-out between Nobles?”

“Not even a Noble could’ve done it.”

“Why not?”

“This place was designed by the Sacred Ancestor. Nobility or not, no one save him could so much as put a scratch on its walls.”

“Then who did it? I’ve heard there were extradimensional life forms and creatures from outer space who opposed the Nobility.”

“Not them.”

“Quit being coy and just tell me. You’re going to kill me anyway, right? Who did it?”

“It was—”

Just as Mia strained her ears to catch the indigo assassin’s reply, the ground quaked once more. It continued for several seconds.

Showing no signs of getting down off his horse, the assassin looked up at the ceiling and said, “That’s the sort of fight I would expect. But for all that destruction, not a single chunk of debris falls—truly the work of the Sacred Ancestor.”

Though the face he then turned toward Mia might’ve been devoid of emotion, his eyes gleamed with terror.

“All this quaking and destruction is because he’s fighting. What’s more, it’s getting closer. You truly have become unnecessary.”

His left hand, which had gripped the reins, slowly rose before his face, and then made a sudden jerk. Obviously he’d pulled out a hair. And like a lengthy needle, it would surely pierce Mia’s body. In this world where even now darkness and light continued to flash, death closed in on Mia with certainty.

“A pity we didn’t have more time together,” the assassin in blue said.

And then he swung his left hand. Off to the left. Only empty space lay there.

Turning in that direction, Mia peered into the blackness. A shadowy figure stood there. Shut in darkness, struck by light. But solitary and imposing.

Mia heard her own voice like some distant call savagely ablaze with hope.

“D . . .”

-

III

-

The mounted figure twisted around without any sign of agitation.

Something shot out, scorching the air as it went. A flying needle of unfinished wood came to a halt about four inches shy of the blue assassin’s face. Mia gasped, for what should be wound about the missile but a few dozen strands of blue hair. The assassin’s hair was able to act autonomously.

The first strike for each had proven ineffective. And the thought of what the second strike might bring left Mia immobilized. This wasn’t a confrontation between two men—it was one between a pair of demons. As the two squared off with fifteen feet between them, the light shone on them, and then darkness swallowed them.

Which D are you? That was the question that filled Mia’s head.

“You know who I am, don’t you?” asked the assassin in blue.

“He told me about you.”

At D’s soft reply, Mia’s heart swelled. Standing there was the real thing—the D she knew so well.

“How does it feel to battle yourself? And to knock this research center back to square one just when it was on the road to reconstruction? A battle between chosen ones must be something incredible.”

“Did you kill Origa?”

“That’s my job. Anyone who gains any knowledge of these experiments, regardless of how little that may be, is to be exterminated—that’s the order I was given.”

“By whom?”

“That goes without saying. If you don’t know that, you’ll never amount to anything more than a simple Hunter.”

The figure in blue rustled as if he’d been caught in a breeze. Or rather, he stirred like a snake. Each of them was primed for battle.

The assassin’s left hand reached for his hair. Taking hold of a fistful, he brought it to his lips. Fwooo! Mia’s ears caught the sound of him blowing. Hundreds of needles flew at D without a sound. D’s sword slashed through them, but the hairs weren’t cut.

Look. D’s blade was growing bluer and bluer by the instant. The hairs from the blue assassin were wrapping themselves around it.

“Your sword is useless now,” the assassin said, laughter tingeing his words. “Think you’ll be able to stop my hair next time?”

As he spoke, his blue arsenal rustled up like vipers rising to strike. D had been denied the use of the weapon that might ward off any fresh attacks.

“What?” rang a cry of surprise. The assassin twisted around in the saddle. From behind him, Mia had wrapped both hands around his neck.

“Hurry up, D! Make a run for it!”

Her sad cry became an agonized shriek a heartbeat later. A brightly gleaming needle pierced her through the chest and out the back.

However, the assassin in blue donned a puzzled expression. Mia had suddenly disappeared. Once again she’d called upon the same decoy spell she’d used on the brink of the great subsidence. Her true form was crouched next to the pole, where she had a hand pressed to her chest.

Would D flee, or was the assassin in blue going to make his move?

The result was unexpected. The assassin in blue suddenly wheeled his mount around and galloped toward Mia.

D bounded. In the intermittent light, his blade glittered. It no longer wore its sheath of hair. The sword he swung came down hard on the assassin’s shoulder, shaking the rider badly in the saddle, but Yuma narrowly managed to stay up.

Listing heavily to the right, the assassin galloped off into the depths of the darkness.

Sensing someone approaching, Mia raised her head. The pain of being skewered by a needle was rapidly ebbing.

Her duplicate was formed by her will, particulates in the air, and proteins expelled through her own pores, and the more detailed it became, the more its reactions mirrored her own. And that was why, to a certain degree, Mia experienced the pain that her duplicate endured.

“Are you okay?” D asked. His sword still rested in his right hand.

“Do I look okay? I’m beat to hell!”

“We’ll see to your wounds later.”

Mia was caught off balance. That was all D had to say after she’d disobeyed his orders and entered the dark abode? She’d been braced for a vicious tongue-lashing.

“Are you sure you’re feeling all right?” Mia asked him jokingly, but then she noticed that his stare was focused not on herself but on the darkness to her rear. It couldn’t be a new foe, could it? Was that the reason for the unexpected retreat by the assassin in blue?

As expected, the figure that approached from the depths of the darkness was also D. Needless to say, it was the impostor. The assassin had noticed him and fled. No matter how powerful Yuma might be, it would clearly be too dangerous to take on two Ds.

“No matter where you go, it’s just one endless battle with you, isn’t it?” the fake D said in a sarcastic tone.

While the voice was D’s, Mia got the feeling she was seeing another side of him, and it put her in a foul mood.

Perhaps sensing something, the fake D raised one hand and said, “Hold on. There’s no point in fighting any longer while we’re so evenly matched. Let’s take a rest. We’ve got this lovely spectator, too.”

Turning to D, Mia said, “Let’s do that.” But she didn’t even know why she did so.

The sword D lowered had blue hair wrapped around its blade. That was probably the reason he’d allowed the assassin to escape.

When it had appeared he’d be unable to defend himself from his opponent’s attacks, Mia had used her decoy spell. However, D now gave a twist to his wrist, and the strands promptly snapped, fluttering down to the ground.

“Well, I’ll be,” Mia said, but her words quickly streaked away from her as she fell toward the ground.

Just before she hit, D’s hands caught her and swiftly turned her over. And although she wasn’t sure exactly how he did it, she felt like her back had just been laid bare.

“What are you—”

“Just some treatment,” D said, and the pleasant coolness spreading across her back vouched for his words.

“She sure pushed her luck,” a hoarse voice grumbled, and at that, Mia found tears welling in her eyes.

The pain flowed out like a tide.

Once she was completely lucid, a hoarse voice declared, “Good enough.”

D stood up again. How it had happened was once again a mystery, but the girl’s clothes were back in place.

“Even I can’t do that,” the fake D remarked with admiration after standing there speechless for so long. “That old dog gave you an edge. I guess it can’t be helped. Apparently you were the first in your class.”

Tossing his jaw at the two of them, the fake D said, “Come with me. I’ll show you what this place is really all about.”

And then he turned around and walked back into the darkness from which he’d come.

-

The trio was in a space reminiscent of a laboratory. Though the ceiling, walls, and floor were all melted as if they’d been assailed by the same high heat as everything else, the arrangement of what appeared to be deformed equipment and the atmosphere that still hung in the deathly gloom made the room’s former purpose known. Some thirty feet away, a machine that retained a cylindrical shape gave off periodic flashes of pale blue light.

“This is the core of the facility. Though it was thoroughly devastated, it comes as little surprise that it survived.”

Mia pressed her hands against her chest. It wasn’t the cold. An atmosphere close to a chill had stolen into her. Experiments had been conducted here that no human should’ve ever known about.

“Do you remember this, D? It’s the place where we were born.”

There was no reply. What’s more, it appeared the fake hadn’t expected one from him.

Gazing at the melted lump of material just before him, the fake made a haphazard slice at it. Melted or not, it was still apparently metal, but the material offered no more resistance than water as he bisected it with a diagonal slash.

“This is where the birthing device was. Do you understand, D? We were born not in our mother’s home or a delivery room, but in a room for experimentation.”

D stood there like a black shadow.

It was quiet. The stillness was such that it seemed to have been ordained in ancient times and respected by all of creation.

And then it was broken by an insolent voice, echoing in a hair-raising manner, “‘We were born.’ D, that means the two of you . . .”

“That’s right,” the fake said, nodding. “Here, we were plucked from our mother’s womb and cut apart. Apparently our backs were joined in a special fashion. It would seem that’s why we’re so similar, both in appearance and in ability. Which of us is the older brother and which the younger, D?”

Nothing from the Hunter.

“I’m not surprised. You can’t answer that, can you? But I know. I, who was sealed away in the cold and weighty darkness for so, so long. Unlike you, who were given life right away. I know, you see.”

Here, he caught his breath.

“It would seem he wanted to have everything exactly the same. But for what purpose? We grew in the same woman’s womb under the exact same conditions and were delivered without even a millisecond’s difference. From anyone’s perspective, there would be no older brother or younger brother. In other words, you are me, and I am you.”

Vertigo assailed Mia. Her body was terribly cold. These two couldn’t possibly be brothers. Or, as the impostor put it, one and the same person.

“You called me a fake, didn’t you?” the fake D said, and the girl now noticed that he was wearing a grin. “In a sense, you’re not mistaken. After all, I was sealed away here while D was given the world. I suppose that after being delayed for so long, it’s only natural I’d be considered a fake.”

“Why come back now?”

“As if you didn’t know! To keep control of the world in the hands of the Nobility. That’s what I’m programmed to do.”

“Then you’re the one who caused that huge depression?”

“That’s right. It was part of the preparations for putting this facility back in operation.”

“Back in operation?” Mia said, her eyes wide as she looked all around them. “It’s completely destroyed—and you’re saying it’ll operate?”

“Don’t forget that it was built by the Sacred Ancestor.”

“But still,” Mia started to protest, but at that point the lighting began to flicker.

“What is it?”

“Ask your sweetheart.”

Smartass, Mia thought, but she did want to get D’s opinion. “D—what’s going on?”

Despite its content, his soft reply set Mia at ease.

“It’s trying to come back to life. The facility, that is.”