Chapter 60

9 Whatever the man at the front desk thought of a businesswoman and a high school boy staying just four hours in a twin room at a business hotel, his face made no indication of it as they checked out late at night. Once they stepped onto the sidewalk outside the hotel, Minoru thanked Liquidizer, who had paid for the room with a credit card. “Sorry you wound up having to pay… Thank you.” “It’s perfectly standard for the adult to pay in a situation like this,” Liquidizer responded coolly, then glanced at her injured shoulder. “Besides, we got the room in order to treat my wounds in the first place.” “How are you feeling?” “Well, the pain’s gotten better, at least somewhat. I should be able to drive just fine.” “Sorry. I hate to ask, but I can’t drive, so…” “Well, of course not.” A brief smile drifted across Liquidizer’s face, to which the color was starting to return. She had used her ability to close up the hole the bullet had made in her crimson down coat, too, so you would never imagine, looking at her, that she’d been shot just a few hours ago. It had certainly seemed difficult when she put her knit sweater back on, though, the dried blood making the left sleeve stiff. In any case, however, she probably wouldn’t be able to use her left hand in battle. Since they had a (wo)man on the inside for this assault, there would theoretically be no fighting involved, but there were some unknown factors too important to ignore. The man in the trench coat who’d attacked them in Yoyogi Park—the Ruby Eye Liquidizer had called “Lubricator”—had evidently shown up to attack Liquidizer, not Minoru and the other SFD members. In other words, he had some way of tracking her. They had to figure out what it was before the mission started. “Um…before we go, could we talk for a minute?” “I suppose so, but…I’d rather not stand around chatting out here. Let’s do it in the car.” “…All right.” Minoru nodded, and Liquidizer led him to an underground parking lot south of the NHK broadcasting center. According to the sign out front, it was an enormous facility that could accommodate up to 650 cars; even at this time of night, it was still considerably full. As they walked, Minoru breathed in deeply through his nose. He was trying to check for the scent of a Ruby Eye ability, but— “If you’re trying to sniff out a Ruby Eye surprise attack, don’t bother. The detection radius for his ability is incredibly small.” “Detection radius” referred to the distance from which a Third Eye holder’s ability was noticeable by smell. The range was based on the size of the matter alteration created by the ability: Powers like Yumiko’s acceleration and Olivier’s division could be detected in a radius of about twenty-five meters, Minoru’s defensive shell had a radius of ten meters, Suu’s refraction was about half a meter, and abilities like the Professor’s speculation and DD’s search were next to zero. That being said, the slippery vinyl the trench coat–clad man created had been at least twenty meters around. So the detection radius for it should be at least that large, maybe even over thirty meters, or so Minoru thought. Guessing at Minoru’s thoughts from his puzzled expression, Liquidizer continued. “I’ll explain all that, too. Here’s my car.” She produced a smart key from her tote bag and pressed a button, and the white hatchback in front of them to their right responded with a sharp beep. Minoru was pretty sure it was a Suzuki Swift—no, a step higher than that, the Swift Sport. Minoru had never been interested in cars, but when he first joined the SFD, he started memorizing models because Yumiko insisted that it was vital knowledge for the job. She claimed it was to help track Ruby Eyes who escaped in cars, but it had yet to come in handy much so far. If Liquidizer ditched Minoru here and fled, then he might actually get to use that knowledge for the first time, but that situation was highly unlikely. “You can put your bag in the back seat.” Minoru obeyed, then opened the passenger-side door. When he slid into one of the seats, which had a sporty design like the ones in the Alfa Romeo Giulietta Yumiko drove, the strangeness of the situation struck him in a way that hadn’t really sunk in at the hotel, and he stared blankly at the dashboard. The reasons Minoru was alone with Liquidizer were twofold: in order to help treat her wound and because the official story was that neither of them had been at Yoyogi Park. The official report to the SFD was that Yumiko, Olivier, and Suu had been walking around the park when they were attacked by an unknown Ruby Eye, and though they repelled the enemy, Olivier was shot—a simple-enough cover story. DD aside, Minoru wasn’t sure if they’d be able to fool Professor Riri Isa and her superhuman mind, but it was too late to stop now. If Olivier hadn’t thrown his sword, Suu would probably be dead, and Olivier had asked him to “handle the rest.” As Minoru tried to bring his agitated thoughts back to reality, Liquidizer spoke abruptly, looking into the rearview mirror. “Lubricator is an executive in the Syndicate. The same rank as me.” “The same rank…,” Minoru blurted out. “But I don’t even know how high-ranking you are.” “Frankly, neither do I. But if you’ll accept a guess, I suppose I can tell you. The heads of the Syndicate are known as Organizers. I’ve only met one, but I believe there are two others. The three of them decide the Syndicate’s objectives and actions in their meetings.” “Organizers…? That sounds very similar to a Third Eye code name,” Minoru commented. Liquidizer smirked a little. “That’s not our fault. We never used code names to begin with, but the SFD started calling us all those strange nicknames, and somewhere along the way, they just stuck on our side, too.” “I don’t know if that’s the SFD’s fault, either…” “Well, it doesn’t matter much now… Anyway, below the Organizers is a single role called the Liaison, who’s in charge of contacting and managing everyone. And I’m one step below that, a Mentor…so you could say I’m the third step down from the top. And there’s another rank on the same level as Mentors, called Observers. Lubricator is one of those.” A mentor usually guided someone under their wing, so it was probably safe to assume that Liquidizer was Trancer’s Mentor. This made sense to Minoru, but he couldn’t help raising a new question in its stead. “Thank you for the explanation, but…should you really be telling me all this? I can’t just give you SFD information in return, you know.” “I wasn’t expecting anything of the sort.” Liquidizer waved her right hand dismissively, then turned serious. “The role of an Observer is to keep watch on the Ruby Eyes who belong to the Syndicate, ensuring that they’re doing their job correctly. Usually, members with surveillance-related abilities are chosen for the role, but Lubricator is an exception…because he serves as both observer and executioner.” “E…executioner?!” “Are you really that surprised? He did shoot at me out of nowhere earlier. I doubt that it was his own judgment call, though… More likely than not, the Organizers decided I should be eliminated.” Minoru stared at Liquidizer’s calm face in profile. “Eliminated? Is that because they found out you contacted us…?” “Hrmm…” Liquidizer pressed her finger to her temple in thought. “That would make sense, but I first contacted you last night, so that seems a little soon to come after my head. Both back then and today, I spent a ridiculous amount of time and energy making sure I wasn’t followed… Besides, I have the authority to take action on my own.” “In other words…?” “In other words, they should have no easy way of knowing for sure whether my contacting you is part of a long con or whether I’ve actually betrayed the Syndicate. At the very least, they would interrogate me before issuing the order for my elimination, one should think.” “What…?” As soon as he heard the phrase long con, Minoru automatically shifted away from her toward the door. Liquidizer sighed, rolled her eyes, and pointed at her left shoulder. “If it really was a long con, I obviously would’ve called it off as soon as I got injured like this.” “I… I wasn’t doubting you or anything. Anyway, erm…the real problem now is, how did Lubricator know where to find you? We managed to drive him away at Yoyogi Park, but judging by how quickly he was running, I don’t think he took much serious damage…so he might try to attack us again.” “Might? Oh, I’d say that’s a definite.” Liquidizer put her hands on the leather steering wheel. She winced a little, probably from pain in her shoulder, but her expression quickly returned to normal. “Lubricator’s power, as the code name implies, is to create a thin film that can reduce the coefficient of friction to almost zero on any given surface. As far as I know, the film can be up to at least eighteen meters in size…and he can move it around at will, too. Since there’s no friction, it can easily be slipped between someone’s feet and the floor. And once you’re caught in the film, you’re rendered functionally immobile.” Having already experienced the unbelievable slipperiness of Lubricator’s film for himself, Minoru understood the explanation with his senses as much as his mind. He remembered all too well the feeling of helplessness no matter how much he struggled, like floating in space. The only way to escape from that film would be to either use a grappling gun like in an action movie—if such a thing even existed—or unleash high-pressure gas from a cylinder on one’s back, or… Then something finally occurred to him. “No…wait a minute. If the friction is zero, couldn’t two people push their feet together and launch each other out of the film that way?” Liquidizer tapped the fingers of her right hand lightly on the steering wheel, as if applauding Minoru’s off-the-cuff idea. “You catch on pretty quickly, boy. Yes, if there are two or more people together on the frictionless film, then that would work… Really, all you would need is for one person to push the other. But remember that Lubricator can manipulate the film at will. You might think you’ve escaped, but you’ll just end up falling again as soon as you try to stand up.” “I see…” Imagining the situation in his mind’s eye, he had to admit it would probably go that way. But he couldn’t just give up immediately, so he continued to rack his brain. “Erm…well, the film is slippery on the surface, right? So he couldn’t stick it to something?” “Probably not. It can probably slide onto the surface of something or wrap around it, but I don’t think it could be stuck there.” “Then what about sucking it up with a handheld vacuum cleaner? Of course, it’d probably come down to whether the vacuum cleaner’s suction is stronger than Lubricator’s manipulation, but…” On hearing this second idea, Liquidizer blinked for a moment, then burst out laughing. She quickly covered her mouth with her hand, but the laughter continued to spill through for a while. “Ha-ha-ha… Whew… A vacuum cleaner, eh? I certainly never thought of that. But a vacuum’s suction relies on the friction in the air, doesn’t it? If the coefficient of friction on the target is zero, would it still be able to suck it up?” “Um, well…the friction in the air is basically collisions between gas molecules, right…?” Why are we having a physics lesson right now? Minoru thought, but he forced himself to continue. “At a macroscopic level, friction is produced when two uneven surfaces catch on each other, but at a microscopic level—that is, a molecular level—it’s caused by intermolecular forces, which I’m sure you know quite well. Since those are generally electrostatic interactions, they have nothing to do with the shape of the physical surfaces. As long as Lubricator’s film is made of some kind of physical substance, it should be affected by air molecule collisions. And my intuition tells me that an ultrathin film shouldn’t be able to ignore the pull of a vacuum cleaner’s suction.” It was nothing short of miraculous that Minoru managed to get through the whole explanation without stumbling on his words, but Liquidizer didn’t seem that impressed. Instead, she spoke a single word: “Carbon.” “Erm…what about it?” “That’s what Lubricator’s frictionless film is made of. I took a risk and looked into it once a while ago. The film is composed of pure carbon. That’s probably why its detection range is so remarkably small, too.” “Carbon…?” Minoru tilted his head at the unexpected revelation. “Um…carbon is just C, right? I definitely don’t think of it as being slippery. If anything, isn’t it supposed to be coarse…?” That was when it hit him: After Lubricator fled and the film disappeared, there was a grainy powder left behind. He looked at his left hand automatically, but he’d cleaned it extremely thoroughly before and after treating Liquidizer, so of course there was no residue left. “I thought so, too, but there’s no doubt about it. I don’t know how a carbon film can be so damn slippery, but I doubt we could figure out any more without Lubricator’s own help.” As Liquidizer sighed, Minoru couldn’t help thinking, If only we could ask Professor Riri… With the Speculator’s ability to instantly solve any problem based on only the most basic information, she could almost certainly reveal the secrets of the frictionless film. But they couldn’t drag the Professor into this Trancer recovery mission. Until they got Olivier’s sister back—or until they knew the exact location of the Syndicate base, at the very least—Minoru and company had no choice but to fight without their commander. “…You will tell us where Stargazer is once we get Trancer back, right?” Despite the sudden change of subject, Liquidizer’s face didn’t twitch. She nodded, as if she’d been expecting the question. “Of course. That was the deal, no?” “Then…I’ll handle Lubricator somehow. If he attacks us again, please just focus on recovering Trancer.” “Somehow? And how might that be, boy?” “Lubricator’s film just stops you from moving. It’s not an attack. So if his only weapon is a gun, I can block his bullets with my protective shell. I should be able to slow him down, at the very least.” “……” This time, the silence continued for a while. Finally, Liquidizer moved her hand from the steering wheel to the shift knob. She switched the gear from reverse to neutral, pushed down on the pedal, and pressed the start button. The engine started with an impressive sound for a Japanese car, and the meters lit up. The time on the navigation screen read 11:00 p.m. Two hours remained until the car left NCAM with Trancer. “…Isn’t it a little early?” Minoru asked. Liquidizer eased off the side brake and gave an unexpected response. “We ought to refuel first.” “What…the car?” “No, you and I. The food I bought before our meetup is somewhere in the trash in the park now.” She shifted into first gear, and the Swift smoothly took off into the night. Liquidizer first stopped at a large clothing store, where she waffled for a while before settling on a high-neck sweater, replacing her bloodstained clothes. Next, she brought Minoru to an okonomiyaki restaurant on a back street of the Jingu-mae district of Shibuya. The narrow, trendy street was lined with galleries, apparel shops, cafés, and more, so Minoru was nervous that the okonomiyaki place would be similarly upscale, but it turned out to be old-fashioned and relaxing inside. The extensive menu ranged from classic okonomiyaki flavors, like pork and mixed veggie, to interesting variations, like avocado tomato and shrimp with cheese. Although the prices, of course, were a reminder that they were still in the neighborhood of Harajuku. As soon as he smelled the rich scent of sauce that filled the restaurant, Minoru realized that he was out of fuel, too; he wound up eating two kinds of okonomiyaki, a seafood teppanyaki, and even a Caesar salad. Liquidizer turned out to have strong opinions about how to cook okonomiyaki, and Minoru found that following her instructions did make the batter cook into an extra-fluffy, delicious pancake. Liquidizer paid for the food as well. As they walked back to the coin-parking area, there was some small part of Minoru that couldn’t help thinking that if his older sister Wakaba were alive, perhaps they would’ve gone out to eat together like this, too… But just ten minutes later, that sentimental mood would be completely erased. “Wait…the police?” As soon as they got back to the car, Minoru received a call from Yumiko. “Wasn’t the driver supposed to be Searcher?!” “I thought so, too, but they told us to focus on guarding the car. This is becoming quite the headache.” “I see… Yeah.” Minoru tried to come up with a countermeasure, but nothing came to mind. According to Yumiko, they had suddenly been informed that the driver and navigator for the car leaving NCAM would be police officers working for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Public Security Bureau, under the jurisdiction of the 3E Incident Countermeasure Committee. Normally, the police were unsung heroes to the SFD who put up blockades around Ruby Eye battle scenes, but today they were an unwelcome complication for Minoru and the group. If they explained things to DD later, he would probably understand, but not so much with the police. “We’re still leaving at one a.m. We have forty-five minutes, so I’ll try to figure out if we can do anything about it on our end. I’ll call again.” “All right…” Even after the call ended, Minoru kept staring at the screen of his smartphone. But he couldn’t just sit in silence forever. He turned toward the gaze he felt boring into his right cheek. “…There are going to be two public-safety officers in the car with Trancer.” “I see.” Liquidizer’s response was brief, but Minoru thought he saw a faint red glow in her eyes for just a moment. Instinctively, he shook his head. “No.” “No what?” “You can’t kill them. There has to be a better way…” A creaking sound interrupted his words. Liquidizer was gripping the steering wheel so hard that her knuckles were turning white. “If there is, you had better think of it fast. Otherwise, we’ll do things my way.” Her voice was colder than the January night air. Minoru bit his lip, focusing on how they could deal with the two police officers without hurting them or revealing that SFD members had been involved. But before he could think of any ideas, Liquidizer went on in a cool monotone. “Let me remind you of something, boy. Trancer has killed at least ten people indiscriminately. You’re the ones who agreed to help me free such a vicious criminal. What difference does it make if two more victims are killed in the process?” “………” Minoru had been intentionally putting that truth out of his mind all this time. As he clenched his teeth, he remembered a sharp voice in his ears. Trancer here has killed more than ten innocent people. If I don’t eliminate him while I have the chance, I might as well give up being a Jet Eye. Yumiko had said that to Liquidizer when they faced off at the cold-storage unit in Ooi Futo just four days ago. At the time, Yumiko had her gun pointed at Trancer and was on the verge of pulling the trigger. If Stinger hadn’t interrupted, she almost certainly would have killed him. Liquidizer had responded with a plea: If you kill that child now, you’ll just become another chess piece manipulated by your whims. At the time, Liquidizer seemed desperate to save Trancer. And she was just as desperate now. She was willing to betray the Syndicate to save him, even if it meant putting her own life in danger. From her perspective, the lives of two officers might mean little by comparison. But even so. “Even so, I’m sure you’re not saying that because you want to kill them. With your brains, I’m sure you could succeed without having to kill anyone.” Liquidizer turned her gaze forward. “You’re telling me to come up with a way, then?” Her voice was cold, but Minoru couldn’t back down now. “…I’ll do whatever I can, too. In the worst-case scenario, it’s even okay if they find out I’m betraying them, as long as it’s only me. I’m sure they would just fire me from the SFD.” “I wouldn’t be so sure. As I told Divider, I wouldn’t be surprised if they suspected you of being brainwashed and removed your Third Eye.” “I don’t mind. As long as it saves Stargazer…Divider’s sister.” At that, Liquidizer loosened her grip on the steering wheel ever so slightly and let out a long sigh. When she finally spoke again, a little bit of the ice had left her voice. “The real problem is Searcher.” Minoru blinked, surprised by her sudden mention of DD’s code name. “…What do you mean?” “That baseball-loving boy has ridiculously good enemy-detection abilities. If he’s in the car, a surprise ambush will be impossible.” “…Baseball? I don’t think he’s ever mentioned that to me.” “He has a shaved head and a baseball cap. I’d bet money on it… At any rate, as long as Searcher’s in play, we have no choice but to use aggressive tactics. We’ll have to assume we’ll be detected and attack them head-on, stop the car, prevent it from moving, and seize Trancer. If their only defense was Accelerator, we could just pretend to fight and flee, but that won’t work as long as the police are in the car, too. I’m sure they’re fairly well equipped. It won’t be easy for me to fend off their bullets, rescue Trancer, and get back to the car all on my own.” The baseball theory aside, Minoru couldn’t deny the rest. DD would likely be armed, as would the two officers, and even Liquidizer probably couldn’t melt bullets coming at her from three directions at once. On the other hand, the officers wouldn’t be allowed to fire with other cars or pedestrians around. Maybe it would be best to take advantage of that, even if it essentially meant using ordinary citizens as a shield. “…Um, what if you gave up on fleeing in a car and just melted the pavement and escaped underground like you did in Minami-Aoyama? If you could get into a subway line or something like that, I doubt even Searcher could chase you down easily.” Minoru finally had an idea, but Liquidizer immediately shook her head. “That won’t work on the road. If I hit an electric utility conduit and melted the high-voltage wire, I’d be electrocuted on the spot, and gas and water pipes are dangerous in their own right, too.” “Ah…right.” Power lines were being moved underground at a fever pitch in preparation for the Olympics later that year. And even if there were no electricity lines nearby, as Liquidizer said, she could easily hit a gas pipe or water pipe. That meant she couldn’t use that escape method unless she researched in advance whether there was anything underground in that area. “By the way…if we were able to do an ambush, what sort of method were you thinking?” “It’s simple. I’d set up a delayed liquefaction area somewhere on the car’s route. Once the car hit that and was rendered immobile, I’d approach from the back, melt the lock on the trunk, and get Trancer out.” “I see…” It was a simple plan, but all the more likely to succeed because of it. But DD’s nose would probably sniff out Liquidizer’s trap and change their route. He hadn’t thought much about it before, but now that DD was an enemy—or temporarily against them, at least—Minoru realized just how useful and frightening his wide-range radar really was. Nonetheless, they couldn’t just attack head-on. In that situation, Liquidizer would surely aim to neutralize the officers in the driver and passenger seats first. This wasn’t the kind of situation in which she could easily hold back and only melt their guns, and she probably had no intention of doing so anyway. Olivier had said something before he got shot by Lubricator and collapsed: I don’t want anyone getting hurt over this. And since he had entrusted the rest of the operation to Yumiko and company, they couldn’t just give up. There had to be another way. Minoru wished he had something to grab on to, to help fend off the anxiety, but all that was in front of him was the cover of the glove box, so instead he twined his hands together as if in prayer. When he pressed down, he could feel his bones creak. Was there some way to stop the car without using Liquidizer’s ability, so that DD wouldn’t detect it? Like putting a wire across the road or scattering some spikes… No, those weren’t guaranteed, and they could cause a huge accident. So was the only way for Minoru to put himself in its path and stop it? If he crashed into the car head-on with his protective shell and slowed the car down gradually, they could at least avoid causing any harm to the passengers or people around them… He was just about to voice this last-ditch measure when Liquidizer suddenly murmured, “There is one way we could set up an ambush without Searcher noticing…perhaps anyway.” “Huh?” Minoru turned to look at her. “Wh-what is it…?” The Ruby Eye swiveled her head slowly, meeting Minoru’s gaze directly. “Well, whether it would work or not isn’t up to me… It’s up to you, Isolator.”