HIGHWAY OF THE DEAD

CHAPTER 5

-

I

-

"What the hell?” the skeletons exclaimed, fearful cries spilling from their mouths along with the flames. The fake D already knew that the skeletal horses and riders were just spooky costumes covered in luminescent paint. There was one off to his right—and the fake leapt at him from the back of his horse. Although the guy went for the stake gun holstered on his hip, he didn’t even manage to draw it before being run through the heart.

In midair, the fake D muttered, “Huh?” That wasn’t the way he’d intended to slay the man. And the reason he was the tiniest bit off balance when he landed was because he hadn’t come down in the pose he expected.

A rider shot a white-hot bolt at him, but it only grazed his left shoulder as he dashed forward and to the right—toward three men who’d been thrown from their horses. Unbelievably powerful to begin with, his legs kept any attacks from landing. The leftmost skeleton had an insect gun leveled.

He was braced to slash his opponent from one shoulder to the opposite armpit—but even though his arms shifted position without any thought on his part, he still pierced his foe with a remarkable thrust through the neck.

What the hell’s going on? This thought flashed through his mind just for an instant while he executed a half turn and delivered a thrust to the middle skeleton that killed him instantly, leaving only the third.

Making a great leap, the fake had his sword in the high position as he came straight down at a guy armed with a double-barreled shotgun who’d grabbed onto a horse to get back on his feet—but for some reason, both his arms and his blade took up different positions. And that slowed him down.

The double-barreled shotgun belched fire.

-

“Hyaaaah!”

-

D heard his own voice, the shout sounding a million miles away. He was aware of the exquisite balance of tension in the muscles of his legs and abdomen, his back and chest. They were supporting his two arms and his sword.

As the blade glided forward, the thrust was perfect. The tip of the blade formed a right angle to the door as it slid in as smoothly as if he were stabbing a mirage. All of the energy in this world was channeled through D’s body and into the blade in a split second.

The gate grew indistinct, losing its shape and allowing the scene beyond it to come into view. A vast wilderness stretching into the twilight. D realized that this was simultaneously the world that he presently occupied and the real world. Fact and fiction were in complete agreement.

D turned and looked.

In the moonlight, the fake D was crouched down, applying a white cloth to Mia’s face. It was a radiation-removing stupe—something he’d found in the skeletons’ saddle bags. It went without saying who all the corpses lying around him belonged to. There were no survivors. They had made an enemy of the young man who called himself D.

“Was she hurt?” D asked. His voice was like iron, utterly devoid of warmth. There stood the Hunter, as always beautiful and cold as ice.

“Got tagged with a little radiation. Her life’s not in any danger, but her face got trashed. There’s nothing that can be done for her out here. The Capital’s the only place they could fix this.”

“I believe I told you not to come with us,” D asserted icily.

Mia hadn’t passed out. She was intently gazing at D—not that she was blaming him for the pain she’d suffered. The look in her eyes was one of joy at D being safe. And this was how he rewarded her?

Not surprisingly, the fake D took exception to that, saying, “Hey, isn’t that a little cold?”

“It’s fine. Because he’s right,” Mia said, stopping him. Brave as her expression was, it was unavoidable that some hint of sadness hadn’t left it.

“But I’m glad you made it back safely,” she said, looking up.

D was in the back seat of the wagon.

“Who are these characters?” D asked, climbing down from the vehicle.

The fake D told him they were highwaymen and explained the situation.

“When did you get here?” D inquired as he looked far out across the desolate plain. From where they stood, a lone road stretched in a straight line through the middle of a boulder-strewn expanse.

“But this—”

“It’s known as the Highway of the Dead,” the Hunter’s left hand said. “Now I remember. Seems my memory was wiped out, too. Till we found this place, that is.”

“Who erased it?”

“Who, indeed.”

“But if there’s a road to the far north, we would’ve gotten there sooner or later. Why’d that woman Menda take such a roundabout way to explain it? All that business with the gate . . .”

“Hey, hold on there. This wasn’t here from the start,” the fake D remarked with amazement after exchanging looks with Mia. “In the beginning, there was a chain of mountains. It’s called the North Lake Mountain Range, and it’s on maps and everything. The highest peak is Mount North Lake at fifteen thousand feet above sea level. There were three more mountains over twelve thousand feet, and another seven in the ten-thousand-foot range. And all of it, just like that—well, I’d say it couldn’t have taken two seconds for them to be laid flat.”

“Laid flat?”

“That’s right,” Mia said, finally sitting up. One hand pressed the stupe against her left cheek. Her shirt and slacks were also charred on her left side, but fortunately the flesh beneath was unharmed. “It was just like a dream. That huge mountain range shook just like it was an illusion, its lines blurred, and in an instant it turned flat. Then after that, this plain formed.”

What the power of Mother Nature had raised tens of millions of years earlier had now become this smooth expanse of earth and stones. Where had the other billions, nay, trillions of tons of rock and soil gone? Had the gate D stabbed into been the North Lake Mountain Range? The mystery had been transformed into a desolate plain slumbering in the light of the moon.

“The Highway of the Dead, eh?” D muttered.

“That’s right,” the fake D said.

The trio stood there, feeling the weight of the moonlight. D didn’t ask why it’d been given that name—he knew his left hand wouldn’t answer. And there were other matters to attend to.

“Let’s go.”

He began to walk toward his cyborg horse. That was all he could do. There could be no retreat for this young man, and the road that called him led to slaughter and strife.

The fake D also settled into the saddle, and Mia returned to the wagon. Two horses and a wagon advanced in the moonlight.

“By the way,” the fake D said to the Hunter as he rode alongside him. Not waiting for D to reply, he continued, “How did you get the gate open?”

“I stabbed it,” D replied succinctly.

It was a few seconds before the fake D accepted this, saying, “I see. I guess that figures.” For he hadn’t forgotten how every last attack he’d launched against the skeletons had turned into a thrust.

-

The Highway of the Dead—they didn’t know the reason it carried this disturbing appellation, but the plain and road that an entire mountain range had been used to conceal stretched out in the moonlight with no end in sight, just one craggy rock after another in a scene that would’ve transformed even pioneers aglow with hope and dreams of exploration into prisoners of madness and despair.

A great emptiness assailed Mia. If she’d been out in the sunlight, things might’ve been a little better. However, as dhampirs, the two men chose to travel by night. That couldn’t be helped, and she realized she was only getting in the way, but there was no way for her to fight the mental devastation as they continued down the desolate road. Anyone who lived on the Frontier had surely had a similar experience. A road thick with monsters by night, a highway strewn with bones. Three days and three nights it had continued, over an interminable distance. And yet, she didn’t understand why these feelings of fear and helplessness were creeping into her.

Without even realizing it, Mia had let go of the reins. No longer driven to hurry, the horse slowed to a stop, and the vehicle’s speed dropped at the same rate until it soon halted.

The two Ds, who were riding ahead, quickly raced back to her. It was the fake D that asked her, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Somehow, this seems so—futile. After a little rest, I’m sure I’ll be better.”

“Been rough for you, has it?” the fake D said, scratching at one cheek.

“I’m sure that once the sun is up—” she started to say.

“If we waited for that, then we’d be having it rough.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you tired, or have you lost the urge to go?”

This frosty query came from the true D.

“Well—” Mia began, hemming and hawing. She couldn’t give him an honest answer.

“Do you want to stay here like this? Do you simply not care what happens anymore?” D asked her, his words piercing her breast.

Unable to lie to him, Mia conceded, saying, “Yeah.”

“I see,” the fake D said, looking at D. “So, is this why it’s called the Highway of the Dead? Why don’t you ask your left hand?”

“Right you are,” a hoarse voice replied, acknowledging the truth of his statement in a dejected tone. “Try going a little further. You’ll soon see. Actually, you can do that even from here.”

The trio surveyed their surroundings. A weird miasma blew against the napes of their necks like some unpleasantly warm wind.

“Look at that, would you,” the fake D said, tossing his jaw to the east—the right-hand side of the highway.

Beyond the rocks and dirt stood human forms—an emaciated figure clad in rags, with another beside it, and still another beside that, and behind it . . .

“They’re the folks who’ve followed this road,” said the hoarse voice. “Headed toward Muma. As far as I know, this has gone on for more than five thousand years, and the road has been taken by more than twenty million people.”

“How many people have reached it?”

“To the best of my knowledge—zero.”

“Why would they do this? Is this Muma such a great place?”

“I don’t know. But they didn’t come here of their own free will.”

“How’s that?” said the fake.

“They were summoned. By the one known as ‘the great one.’ ”

“All twenty million of them?”

“Seems he was doing some sort of experiment in Muma. And for it, he needed strong human beings—men and women not just physically but also mentally tougher than millions of others. This highway is, so to speak, a test course to evaluate the humans he selects.”

Humans lacking drive—those without sufficient strength of mind—would lose everything out here, unable to advance or turn back until they shriveled into corpses by the roadside.

“They just keep staring at us. It’s spooky,” the fake D said in a tone that didn’t sound spooked at all.

“They can’t do anything,” the hoarse voice replied. “If they could, they’d go on or turn back.”

“Good point. But what’ll we do about baby here?”

“Take her with you,” D told the fake.

“Yeah, I suppose that’s the only thing we can do. Okay, come here,” the fake D said, slapping the back of his saddle.

Mia sluggishly leaned over and prepared to join him.

“Don’t do that!” the left hand shouted, stopping them.

“What’s the problem?”

“Here’s the scary part about the Highway of the Dead. The strong ones carry those who are worn out. They bring them along. But they quickly see the grave error in their ways. In other words, they find out that apathy is contagious.”

“Sorry,” the fake D said, pulling back. Mia was left in the wagon. “If that’s the case, baby here—”

“She’ll have to be left behind. No matter what, sooner or later the highway’s atmosphere’s gonna gnaw its way into you, but at least this will buy you some added time. Especially since you two are special.”

“Yeah, but—”

“After a little while has passed, she won’t even want to be bothered with lamenting how she’s been left behind. That’s what true apathy is like. So relax.”

“Is that right? In that case, I feel better about it,” the fake D said with a nod. “Sorry about this, baby. Looks like this is as far as you go.”

Mia nodded. She fully understood the import of the three-sided conversation and knew what she had to do. “It’s all right. Please, go on . . . I’ll stay here.”

“When you say that, it only makes this harder. But I guess there’s nothing we can do. So long,” the fake D told her, wheeling his horse around.

Perhaps Mia had lost the will to watch him go, because she kept looking down, but a single tear fell from her eye and rolled down her cheek. A burned, twisted cheek.

But a black-gloved hand was extended even before Mia had shed that tear.

“Wha—” Mia said, looking up in a daze at D on his steed.

“You did great making it this far,” D said in a cold, gentle voice to the girl with the burned face. “You can go the rest of the way, can’t you?”

“Yeah,” Mia replied, taking a firm hold of the well-formed fingers he offered.

-

II

-

The wind snarled across the wilderness. With her face pressed against D’s back, Mia thought dazedly, I wonder where it blows from?

It wasn’t Mia’s hands that had bound her to D. At first she’d wrapped her arms around him, but that strength had left her, and now a thin rope tethered her to him. In all honesty, it was even too bothersome to think.

How’s it going with D? she wondered. They said my apathy is contagious. Even if they’d done nothing they would’ve been affected, but if he catches it from me then dhampir or not, he’s bound to feel the effects. How far have I gone swaying on this horse’s back? Everything seems so melancholy now. I don’t care if I die like this.

She was ready to throw in the towel, but then the last bit of will in her snapped back, A fortuneteller works for everyone’s sake. You haven’t completed your mission yet.

That was the code of the fortuneteller, which her mother had drilled into her since before she could remember.

D didn’t say a word to her.

How many times had she lost consciousness, and how many times had she come around once more?

“What’s that?”

The fake D’s words shined a narrow beam of light into her dimming consciousness.

“Eh?” she grunted, putting her hands around D’s waist and sticking her head out to one side. She wasn’t even cognizant of how she managed to move her body. Her eyelids opened. The image her optic nerves conveyed to her brain was of a prickly form coming into view out in the moonlight. A building without a single soft line dominated the horizon.

“See it?” asked D.

“Uh, yeah,” Mia replied, but at the same time she was speaking, she was surprised by D’s question. Had the young man been keeping a silent watch over her condition?

“Oh, dear,” she said. Tears had welled in her eyes.

As she madly wiped them away, D asked her, “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing at all. What’s that?”

“By the look of it, it’s a factory.”

“It’s got to be Muma, right?”

D fell silent. Mia didn’t know either.

“Well, I sure hope it’s Muma,” the fake D said by their side.

“Who cares what you think,” Mia said, turning away indignantly. She harbored a bit of resentment toward him for refusing to take her on his horse.

Hoarse laughter rose from D’s left hand.

“Looks like even pretty boys can fall out of favor. That’s what you get when you make the mistake of treating a woman unkindly.”

“Put a cork in it!”

“But you know, even though you and D are the very same person, you differ in some essential part. I wonder why there’s this difference? Hmm. Maybe we should ask whoever’s in that factory?”

The road ran straight to the black building. It was three hours later that the trio passed through its massive and imposing entrance, which was more like a castle’s gatehouse. The gates were off their hinges, and the impression of devastation they’d garnered from afar continued into the courtyard and to all the buildings and towers beyond.

“If this is Muma, then the sway reactor should be here,” D said, looking around.

“Hold your horses. First we’ve gotta find the medical center. Baby here needs to have her cheek seen to, you know.”

“You take her,” D said curtly.

“Okay, I’ve got you. I’ll do that,” the fake D replied with a grin.

“No!” Mia cried raptly. “Instead of worrying about me, I want both of you to go look for the reactor.”

The second they’d entered the factory’s premises, her apathy had vanished without a trace.

“It’s okay,” the fake replied. “I’m not particularly interested in the reactor anyway. I just thought if I came here, I’d find out why I was born. I suppose we could poke around a bit, though.”

“You think this is any time to be taking it easy?” the left hand snapped at him. “From what I’ve seen, this place isn’t Muma.”

“What?” the fake D exclaimed, and not only he and Mia, but D as well looked at the Hunter’s left hand.

“You seem pretty full of yourself for a freaking hand. Show me your proof this isn’t Muma,” said the fake D.

“My proof is the Highway of the Dead. Look at it. As you can see, it runs straight in through the front gate and cuts right through the middle of this spread. It’s paved and everything. In other words, this is a different factory that was built in the middle of the highway. Most likely the highway keeps going like that and goes out through a back gate. The longer we stay in this pointless place, the more time we’ll be wasting. Once the girl’s been patched up, the best idea would be to move out as soon as possible.”

“Hmm, that’s one theory,” the fake D said, rolling his eyes. “But, you see, this isn’t just some factory. The layout’s the size of a major city. It’s more remarkable than that underground facility. If this isn’t Muma, what the hell is it?”

“I don’t know. But from the look of the devastation, it certainly must’ve fallen out of use a long, long time ago—huh?”

The fake D had wheeled his horse around and stuck one arm out. Mia had been just about to fall from behind D, but he’d caught her firmly by the shoulder.

“I’ll go try to find the medical center. You can play tourist in the ruins for all I care.”

Once the fake D had departed indignantly with Mia, the left hand said to the Hunter, “Is he gonna be okay? He seemed pretty hot under the collar.”

“He’s me. What do you think?”

It was practically a miracle when this young man asked anyone that question.

“At least where that girl is concerned, he’ll probably do whatever he has to do. Even if it puts him in harm’s way. Like you, his own death means nothing to him. But if she becomes an obstacle to his aims, that’s another story.”

He had been willing to abandon Mia back on the highway.

“You remember what I said—that you and he are essentially the same being?”

D nodded faintly.

“Well, I’ve kinda lost my faith in that statement. He and you are—hell, I don’t know.”

D was already walking toward a building that towered especially high behind a front yard as if he didn’t care at all about his own origin, which was probably true. The exquisite young man’s callous eyes weren’t focused on the past or the future.

In the dust-covered lobby of the ground floor there was a computer-generated map of the facility that was still operational. Apparently energy concealed somewhere kept this spot out in the middle of the desolate wastes alive. That power was three thousand stories underground in the central research center, in an area that had no name. Surely that had to be the core of this facility.

D headed to it.

-

The fake D also found the medical center right away. He’d assumed that any facility this vast was bound to have humans working at it. The Nobility had no fundamental need for medical aid, and based on the heartless cruelty of their rule over the human race, it would be expected they wouldn’t provide any kind of health care whatsoever, but on this point the pride of the Nobility might’ve come into play. Without exception, the medical institutions that greeted their human manual laborers were furnished with equipment incorporating the latest treatments and technology.

Having discovered a computer-generated map in another building, the fake D had brought Mia up to a hospital five hundred stories above the ground. Though it consisted of but a single floor, it was a hundred times better stocked than any of the great hospitals in the Capital. But for all that, it was incredible the way the equipment suggested it could hold only about a hundred patients—which had probably been the number of human laborers.

“With a place like this, you could bring the dead back to life,” the fake D muttered with a wry smile.

The superscientific medical gear was indeed impressive. The problem was, there wasn’t any power to operate the machinery. Since the elevator had worked, the place wasn’t completely without power, and perhaps the relay system had malfunctioned, but even the fake D couldn’t find and repair the problem. He thought about getting her medicine, but all the drugs were dispensed by a computer that wasn’t operating. One of the pitfalls of a completely automated system.

“What a joke,” he said. “I’ll go find you some medicine, so wait here, okay?”

The fake D gained entry to the pharmaceutical storage vault. Since the access computer was dead, he pried the door open with brute force, somehow managed to find drugs for treating radiation, and then returned. Three hours had passed.

“What’s all this?” he said.

There was no sign of Mia.

Maybe D came for her, he thought.

“It’d be just like him to be hiding somewhere, getting his kicks making a fool out of me. Come to think of it, my presence—isn’t here!” he cried, twisting his upper body around.

As he struck right from the draw, streaks of blue wrapped around the blade of his sword only to be reduced to cut hairs that spread across the floor.

“Son of a bitch—is that you, Yuma?”

The man who stood in front of the door didn’t seem to react to what the fake D said. But that build, those features, and the hair that’d just been cut down—he was definitely Yuma.

No—on further examination, the fake D corrected himself. This man was too short and seemed too heavy to be Yuma. His movements were slower, too.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked the man he now considered a completely different person.

Running low to the ground as another deadly wave of hair blew at him, the fake D came up on one side of Yuma and slammed the back of his blade against the nape of the man’s neck. As he fell, he certainly had Yuma’s face. However, there were subtle differences.

Bringing him around, the fake looked into dazed eyes as they opened and asked, “Where the hell did you take the girl?”

“Want to know?” sneered the fake Yuma—or rather, Yuma #2. He clearly had to be the culprit.

Pressing the tip of his blade right up against the base of the man’s throat to wipe the smile off his face, the fake D asked him, “You’re some sort of reject Yuma, aren’t you?”

Yuma #2 turned away in a snit. Humiliation and anger darkened his face.

“If you’re hanging around this spread, could it be you were born here?”

Suddenly, the fake D forgot he was the one in a position to make threats and froze. A certain thought had left him astonished.

“Hey!” he said, grabbing Yuma #2 by the chin and shaking him. “Don’t tell me this whole layout was to make you guys . . .”

“Precisely,” he heard a voice say behind him—or rather, from all sides. Yuma’s voice. “He was just a decoy to put you at our center. No matter where you go or how fast you move, you won’t be able to guard against our attacks.”

“I’ll be damned,” the fake D said, pulling his blade away from the throat of Yuma #2.

A thin smirk grew on #2’s face as he got back up, and the man suddenly pursed his lips. But he ended up swallowing the spit he had been about to launch at his foe. For the fake D had brought his blade up, and he cut the man open from the top of his head to his breastbone.

With murderous intent and a bloody wind howling at him, the fake D raised one cheek with a daunting grin and said, “Don’t fuck with me, reject!”

-

III

-

“As we might’ve expected, the man named D is quite skilled.”

There was one voice, but it came from more than a score of people in unison. For a second, the fake thought it might’ve been some kind of ventriloquism, but he could sense a great number of people there.

“So, is that what you guys are, a chorus?”

“Not exactly, but not far from the mark either,” they laughed as one. “We’ve all been implanted with the same memories and the same mission, in order that we might dispose of those who learn of Muma’s existence. Ultimately, only one of us was chosen, but it looks as if those of us who were discarded have also been given a purpose in life.”

“Yeah, if you call dying a purpose,” the fake D said.

A second later his whole body was tinged with the color of twilight. Indigo hair had flown at him from all directions and wrapped around him. At the same time, several of the Yumas that surrounded him had fallen backward silently. Wooden needles jutted from their chests.

The fake D became a black cyclone, flying through a rent in the descending net formed by the hair of his attackers. Though he moved with such speed that they didn’t even have time to launch another attack, the fake hadn’t gone fifteen feet before he thudded loudly to the floor. Bright blood went flying. The thousands or tens of thousands of hairs that’d wrapped all around the fake D’s body had pressed deep into his skin, splitting his flesh.

“Though you might call us rejects, we have power enough to slay you. There are twenty-five of us here. More than a sufficient number, we’d say.”

Their voices in perfect harmony, they cried, “Kill him!”

A different hue danced out into the gloom. Day was about to break. The color was white—the hue of rough wooden stakes. Twenty-five hands gripped them, raising them high.

“We shall accomplish one of our missions!” they cried, all of them like blue moths swarming a black beetle as they surrounded the fake D. Now a stab from any one of them would prove a fatal blow.

“Meet your destruction, D. The Sacred Ancestor’s own—”

The chorus lost its harmony there. The truncated sentence became a pained groan, and all of them turned their gaze in one direction. Their eyes filled with turbulence and rapture.

“D,” someone whispered.

“Back off,” D said.

Like flowing blue water, the figures moved around this new D. They were trying to surround him. A silvery flash cut down a storm of hair, the blue wind falling limply to cover the floor until D alone stood there dejectedly. Every last one of the twenty-five Yumas was laid out around him.

D walked over to the fake D and sliced off the hair sinking into the fake’s flesh with a single light stroke from his right hand. He didn’t even leave a mark on the other man’s skin.

Suddenly, a bloody fog erupted. And while it did, the fake D stood there as impassive as a temple guardian. The wounds left by the hair closed instantly. Not only his body, but also his wardrobe returned to its original state, which suggested that it made use of different materials than the real D’s clothing.

“What you just did was totally unnecessary, you know,” the fake griped as he rotated one shoulder. “Well, I’m sure you think you saved me, so I’ll thank you anyway. This facility—”

“Was for making Yuma.”

Pulling a sullen face, the fake D spat, “What, you already knew that?”

“We traveled down into the heart of the facility,” D said in a hoarse voice.

“In that case, how about this piece of information: Mia is missing.”

“What?” said the hoarse voice.

D himself didn’t even arch an eyebrow.

“We’ll put some life into one. Make ’im talk,” the hoarse voice suggested, chortling until it was choked off in a cry of pain.

Left hand still clenched in a tight fist, D went over to one of the corpses piled around him, grabbed it by the collar, and hoisted it off the ground. Though the two Ds quickly breathed life back into him, the body said he knew nothing where Mia was concerned and turned away indignantly. Even after a merciless slash from the fake D lopped off both his ears, his reply remained the same. The two Ds decided he was telling the truth.

“If it wasn’t these clowns, then who took her?” the fake D said with a faraway look in his eyes. “And where?”

Death and silence held dominion over the room.

“There’s something funny on the floor,” the hoarse voice said.

D turned toward it first, with the fake D following suit.

“It’s the girl’s location,” the fake D said, snapping his fingers.

“It’s a divining stick,” the hoarse voice declared.

Engraved with colorful patterns, the long, thin object was made of metal and measured about eight inches. It was no thicker than a conductor’s baton. D was just about to pick it up when he halted for a moment.

“What is it?” the fake D asked, for even he seemed to sense something.

Without really looking at the stick he held, D threw it down on the floor again.

Falling with a clang, the stick didn’t roll the way it should’ve, but rather swept around in a clean arc and stopped itself again. It pointed in the very same direction as before it’d been picked up.

Two sets of eyes were focused on the end of the stick.

“I suppose it’s telling us she’s that way, eh? To be sure and go after her. When you picked it up a minute ago, it didn’t move, did it?”

“That way’s the highway,” said the hoarse voice. “Muma is there.”

Watery light struck D’s face. Day was about to break.

“Let’s go.”

“Sure.”

Shoulder to shoulder, the two figures headed toward the door. When they reached the road, they felt heavy shocks traveling up through the soles of their boots.

“You did something, didn’t you?” the fake D said, looking askance at D.

“I unleashed the power of the proton reactor.”

“Excuse me?”

D reached up and grasped his saddle, saying, “Only it seems that I slightly miscalculated. It’s about ten minutes early.”

“You’re awfully calm about it,” the fake D said as he urged his cyborg horse into a gallop.

Ten minutes later, the pair was racing down the highway when they were struck from behind by a terrific shock wave that bowled them over, mounts and all.

-

Mia was in the midst of chaos, but she hadn’t noticed that this was the same chaos D had been in and which she herself had slipped into once before. As she walked through the mysteriously pervasive clouds, she sensed someone or something incredibly huge up ahead. An eerie feeling knifed through her. It was fear—the kind of terror so thick and intense that one misstep might mean she’d never recover from it. However, oddly enough, she wasn’t afraid of that happening, and this frame of mind saved Mia. It was unimaginably deep and cold and, strangest of all, warm. Due to this, Mia didn’t halt.

There’s quite a resemblance, she thought. Although the scale differed so greatly, in some basic respects they were like two peas in a pod. This one and D.

You’re right, echoed a voice from somewhere, but Mia was neither surprised nor frightened. To the contrary, she let a question slip right out.

You’re a close relative of D’s, aren’t you?

The power of the imagination is a thing to be feared, the voice replied, seeming to laugh. However, that’s one of the most beautiful things about humans. Because of that power, the human race hasn’t died out, and you have come here.

Where exactly is “here”?

Wherever you’d like it to be. That is actually what this is.

Sounds just like one of those Zen riddles.

Mia’s grumbling brought a chuckle from the other party.

It’s been a long time since I’ve heard anyone mention those. I should’ve expected as much from the daughter of Noa Simon.

You know about my mother?

Yes, I do. And about the mole on your right buttock.

“Stop that!” Mia said aloud, speaking in spite of herself. And with that, she finally realized that up until now she’d merely been thinking the words.

What are you going to do with me?

Even I don’t know that, said the voice in her head. Can you understand what it’s like to wonder if the things you want to do are really what you want to do?

Now that really is Zen, Mia thought. If you don’t know, then let me go back.

I can’t do that. It would seem you don’t yet grasp what it is you’ve done.

What I’ve done?

Anxiety spread through her like a black stain. Her heart began to pound madly. She’d have to use a spell to bring it back under control.

You came into this place for just an instant and brought him back out.

When you say “him,” you mean D?

Who else?

The pressure of the air surrounding her increased sharply, causing Mia to flinch. At the very least, it could be said for certain that there was an intense mental link between D and the source of this voice. The possibilities boggled the mind.

If I pulled D back, what’s the problem? she asked after gathering her courage.

The being up ahead had begun to bombard her with fierce and unearthly air. She thought she was going to black out—however, it wasn’t an awful feeling.

Such a dignified spirit, Mia declared, surprised in the strangest way. It looked like she wasn’t going to be tortured to death.

It may sound trite, but will you aid me?

Huh?

He came to Muma. A place he shouldn’t have gone; nay, a place he had to go. Sooner or later, he’ll probably learn a great many things. However, that is a mistake.

“A mistake?” she said, once more speaking by accident. She got the feeling that one phrase from this being was packed with tremendous import. It was almost as if a god were perfectly content to give someone on earth the order, “Die.”

His arrival in Muma was supposed to come in the far-distant future. But due to unavoidable circumstances, it has happened much earlier. Though this isn’t the problem, a small error has set off a chain reaction, spreading out to such an extent that now it can no longer be undone.

A certain thought popped quietly into Mia’s head. Like a small, cold speck of light, it instantly ignored Mia’s self-restraint, armed as it was with an overwhelming conviction.

Was this “error” the other D?

By the time she thought, Oh, dear, her question had been finished.

Precisely.

Mia closed her eyes. She didn’t really know if she wanted to hear that answer. She’d been right; it had been an error. There was no way there were supposed to be two men that beautiful. It flew in the face of the natural order of the world.

Just then, the voice said, Taking one’s own hole-riddled opinion as the truth based on the scantest of information is a human characteristic, but that doesn’t serve a fortuneteller.

Opinion?

Which do you think is the real one?

It was like someone had landed a punch to the side of Mia’s head. The drunken sensation of floating in midair even made her feel dizzy. The one she’d met first was the real one, the one that she liked.

The two aren’t the same?

Yes. The voice was entirely correct.

Then . . . Then it’s . . .

There were indications coming from the being that he had nodded.

Which is the real one? Or let me put it to you this way: What exactly is the real one?

It was the last question that made Mia clutch at her heart.