Chapter 54

BLACK BULLET 4 CHAPTER 05 THE PRICE OF BEING A HERO 1 Rentaro vented his frustration by kicking an eighteen-liter drum barrel. The cylinder clunked and blew away, falling from the top of the building, getting swept sideways by the wind and disappearing from his sight. He rubbed his head vigorously and banged a fist over and over on the wall of the pump house. “Why?! Why aren’t the batteries here yet?!” “Rentaro,” Enju said with an uneasy voice. Rentaro put both hands on the wall and tried to calm his ragged breath. Eddies of wind gusted around the building like a flute shrilling in his ears and violently fluttered their clothes. Rentaro checked the time and ground his teeth in despair. It was 10:50 p.m. There were only ten minutes left before Aldebaran was predicted to arrive. Wandering to the edge of the building’s roof, he gazed out into the distant darkness. Because there was no electricity in the Outer Districts, there were no streetlamps. The thick cloud of ash from the Monolith’s collapse that covered the sky blocked the moon, so they could not count on light from that, either. Because his eyes were used to the darkness, it wasn’t like he couldn’t even see an inch in front of him, but it was not incorrect to say that he could see pretty much nothing. The only people who could move freely in this darkness were those few Initiators who had night vision, like Tina. And he could hear from the darkness the countless feet crushing bedrock as the voices of the Gastrea surged forward. Even though he couldn’t see them, they were there. His nails dug into his fist. According to his and Miori’s plan, they would use the searchlights set on the roofs of the seven buildings surrounding the Flame of Return to quickly find Aldebaran’s location and then attack all at once. However, given the current situation, the searchlights were obviously useless. In which case, their plan would fall apart at its first step, with them unable to determine Aldebaran’s position. The civil officer troops were already in position, hiding within the bottom floor of the building. It was too late to order a retreat. It made Rentaro regret not replenishing their supply of flares. Should they charge in desperately like this and try to lessen the enemy numbers even a little bit? But it was a fight they had no chance of winning. Once it became a Pandemic inside Tokyo Area, they would not be able to remove the lesion. Rentaro closed his eyes tightly. Even if he knew that they would definitely lose, he still had to carry out his duty as the leader of the civil officer troops. There was no other way. Rentaro took the radio in his hand and took a deep breath. “All troops, char—” Just then, Enju pulled his sleeve. “Rentaro, look at that.” “What now, at a time like this?” Rentaro asked rhetorically, irritated, but Enju couldn’t answer him. She just pointed dumbfounded at a single spot in the sky. Suddenly, Rentaro felt a soft, unusual light behind him, so he turned around to follow Enju’s gaze. His eyes, which had gotten used to the darkness, were suddenly hit with a scalding beam of light. Rentaro shielded them with his hands and squinted. He was astounded. The sky over all of Tokyo Area was filled with a dazzling light. He soon realized that the source of the light was a large number of soccer ball–size hot-air balloons. At the bottom of the ball-shaped balloons was oiled paper soaked in fuel and burning brightly, the hot air making the balloons rise gently as they floated left and right.