Chapter 76

“Yuga…Mitsugi…” came the resentful, whispered words from Rentaro’s mouth. Ever since they’d first met—ever since Mitsugi had shot him out of the skies above the hotel—he could never forget that name. Nor could he forget the fact that both were doomed to fight each other again someday. “We finally meet,” came the joyful reply as Yuga put his arms out wide in a gesture of welcome. “Not quite when I was expecting it, though. I didn’t think Swordtail would do that bad of a number on you.” “This doesn’t hurt at all.” Rentaro was wobbly, his vision bleary at best. But at least the blood coming out of his mouth was close enough to the color of his uniform that it didn’t stand out too much. Yuga’s lips loosened into a piteous smile. “Well, if you’ve gotten to see Swordtail in battle for yourself, I guess you realize who you’re dealing with in New World now, don’t you?” “The New World Creation Project is a second-generation team of mechanized soldiers, in the style of the New Humanity Creation Project program,” Rentaro stated. “The eyes you use to fight with were copied from plans developed by Dr. Sumire Muroto, one of the Four Sages. Hummingbird’s thought-activation interface was borrowed from research conducted by Ain Rand. Swordtail’s skills were copied from Arthur Zanuck. Dr. Muroto told me that developing artificial eyes or limbs required knowledge across so many different fields that most researchers can’t even understand the basic concepts that drive them. And if you think about it, it must take one hell of a genius to not only copy that stuff, but to upgrade it, too. In fact, I can think of only one person.” Yuga arched his eyebrows in curiosity. “Let’s hear it.” Rentaro looked down at Yuga, jaw still jutted forward. “The person beating the war drum for your dirty project is the last of the Four Sages—Albrecht Grünewald.” Yuga, in apparent agreement, lifted his hands high into the air. “Well done! And the name of our group is the Five Wings Syndicate! Happy to make your acquaintance!” “The Five Wings…?” “Take a look at this.” Yuga rolled up the right sleeve of his school uniform, showing off his triceps. What Rentaro saw tattooed there made him gasp. “The pentagram…and the wings…” He had seen it several times by then, but Yuga’s star mark had four ornately designed wings drawn around it. Two wings, however, appeared to have been erased in some fashion. Apparently doing so wasn’t easy, since they had been crudely scratched out, like a kindergartener’s scribble-scrabble with a crayon over a coloring-book page. Yuga smiled as Rentaro looked on. “Yeah, I kinda had two wings plucked off me. Now I can’t fly anymore. I fell back to earth.” “…I’ve seen that in a few places now. All on things associated with the Five Wings Syndicate, I guess. Is the number of wings some kind of ranking system?” “Well, if you know that much, I can cut right to the chase, I guess. You’re right. Five wings indicate one of the group’s core leaders. It goes down to four, three, and two wings after that. One wing marks you as either a follower or a slave—or maybe house pet, I guess. If you feel like frisking Swordtail’s body over there, there’s probably a two-wing mark on him somewhere.” Rentaro could feel the fog lift from his mind little by little. He decided to prod their discussion just a bit further along. “When I visited Dr. Ayame Surumi’s apartment, I got a call from someone disguising his voice and warning me about Hummingbird. That was you, right?” A gust of wind flew around them, lifting Rentaro’s, Yuga’s, and a watching Hotaru’s hair up. There was a rustle as the surrounding trees swayed gently. “That wasn’t me, no.” “The hell it wasn’t. Why? Why did you take action to help me?” Yuga responded with silence for a few moments before sighing, apparently opting to give up the charade. “Satomi, has the beauty of the world around you ever made you want to cry?” “What?” “I was born blind in both eyes.” Rentaro was thrown by this. He was starting to lose track of the subject. “My mother fell ill while she was pregnant with me, and that’s kind of what happened. One hundred percent blind. It never particularly bothered me at the time. You can’t miss what you never had in the first place, and stuff. But you know how cruel other kids can be. By the time I made it to elementary school, they picked on me all the time. It really made me angry. But it was Professor Grünewald who saved me, along with his second-generation mechanized-soldier plan. That was already under development in secret by the time I showed up. And as you’ve probably noticed, my ‘21-Form’ allows me to see even when I don’t have it activated, unlike your eye.” Yuga shook his head a little, then turned directly toward Rentaro. The color of his eyes was gone, replaced with a dangerous-looking glare that felt sharp enough to cut with. “Once I joined their ranks, the beauty of a springtime day honestly made me cry. So did the summer sun, beating down on my eyes. The colors of autumn did it to me all over again, and so did the whiteness of winter. I felt like I couldn’t possibly ask for anything else, and that I needed to give the Professor everything that I possibly could in return. That’s why I built myself up. I mean, I was absorbed heart and soul in the training they gave me. That’s what earned me four wings in the end. I was the Professor’s prodigal son. He gave me VIP treatment. And then…” All the tension Yuga had built up fell off a self-chiding cliff with the and then. “I messed it up just once, and that cost me two wings. The Professor branded me a failure, and now I’m up to my neck in this dirty assassin business. You wanted to know why I’d do anything to help you, yeah? Don’t make me laugh. I didn’t do that for your sake or anything. I just couldn’t stand the concept of some tin soldier like Hummingbird or Swordtail doing you in. That’s all.” He steeled his resentful eyes at Rentaro, denying him the chance to offer any semblance of compassion. “The Professor promised me that if I beat you, he’d give me my wings back. Once I do, I can go back to serving him again.” Rentaro had never met Grünewald. But if he was the type of academic to personally brand Yuga a failure, and then dangle the chance of rehabilitation in front of him if he killed Rentaro…then he hadn’t seen much to respect about the man yet. Ain Rand, Tina’s mentor, was the same way. Something told him the three other Sages didn’t care much about virtue or common decency, unlike Sumire. “And you think Grünewald’s justified in this? In forcing you to commit first-degree murder?” “It’s not a matter of whether the Professor’s justified or not. All that matters is whether I believe in him or not.” Yuga turned his back then, only to shoot him a sidelong glance. “I will await you at the site of the final battle. We can conclude it there.” With that, without taking another look back, Yuga left the scene. Soon, he was gone from Shiba Heavy Weapons property. Rentaro stared intently at him the whole time, convinced he’d turn around at any moment. But after a while, when he’d disappeared and hadn’t returned, Rentaro let out a deep sigh. In the process, he realized his vision was lurching sideways a little. Hotaru stopped him before it went fully vertical, but the damage was done. Yuga must have realized, Rentaro thought ruefully, the state of total exhaustion I’m in. “We better head back to the hideout, Rentaro.” From some indistinct corner of the city, the familiar sound of sirens blared. It sounded like it was headed straight for them. Hotaru scowled. “That’s a lot of ’em, judging by the sound.” “Ah, the Knights of the Round Table. Just a little too late, once again.” Hotaru flashed him a look. “If you got enough energy to spout stupid crap like that, you’ll be okay if I’m a little rough getting us out, right?” “A little rough?” Hotaru turned her head almost straight up. Rentaro followed her eyes. They were pointed at the roof of the main building. “They’ll track us down if we keep running. I wanna jump away from there.” The door opened with a crisp electronic beep. Rentaro braced a shaky arm against the elevator wall as he exited, Hotaru propping him up. They were greeted by a howl and a gust of surging wind. Turning his head, he could see the red, yellow, and blue neon flash down below, just past the helipad. The lights from the swarm of police cars at the bottom. Another familiar sight. The hand around Rentaro’s shoulder was warm. Worth his trust. Far more than usual, at least. “Let’s go. Grab on to me.” He tried to thank her. He couldn’t quite manage it, his pallid, zombielike lips and semifrozen skin no longer listening to his instructions. But— “Freeze! Do anything funny, and I’ll shoot!” Rentaro and Hotaru stopped at the sound of a handgun’s cylinder rotating behind them. “Lemme see your hands. Walk slowly back toward my voice. Slowly!” Rentaro raised his hands, not wanting to rile the gunman, and turned around. There he saw a police detective, a stern look on his face as he readied his pistol in both hands. “Inspector Tadashima…” Hotaru lowered her stance, readying for battle. Rentaro raised a hand to stop her, then took a step forward. The humid night wind blew fiercely across the space between Rentaro and Shigetoku Tadashima, making their clothes flap violently in the air. “Are you people half-bird or something? Every damn time I see you, you’re on the roof of some high-rise. You gotta be nuts.” Rentaro tried moving his jaw. It seemed to work well enough to speak. “Let us go, Inspector.” “No! I’m here in the name of the law. And it’s my duty to uphold it. The law is the only beacon of order this world has. We’d be in total darkness without it. What would we call a world without order? It wouldn’t be a civilization. It’d be chaos.” “So you’re gonna just neglect justice?” “Oh, you think you’re in the right here? Look, what’s going on behind the scenes with you? What do you know?” “I told you a hundred times in the interrogation room.” “Oh, so all the delusional bullshit you gave me in extreme detail in your testimony is true? Don’t give me that crap!” “The group I’m fighting is spreading chaos. They’re destroying that order you were talking about. And now you’re helping it grow. Saying ‘I didn’t know’ isn’t gonna help you. It’s your fault you’re so clueless. I’m outta here.” “You think I’m gonna say you can go?” “Atsuro Hitsuma’s an enemy spy. He’s infiltrated the police department.” “He is not!” Tadashima shook his head in obvious mental distress and turned away. “That’s…not true…!” “Okay. Shoot me, then.” Hotaru shot Rentaro a surprised look. “Rentaro, wait a…!” “Don’t move, Hotaru. I want to handle things properly with this guy.” Tadashima turned back, and Rentaro addressed him: “If you think you’re right, then shoot me. If you arrest me, you know they’ll find me guilty. I might die in prison, for all I know. That’s how far the enemy’s sunk its teeth in you.” “Don’t be stupid. We’re the police. We’re duty-bound to protect the accused.” “That won’t help,” Rentaro insisted. “That’s how this enemy works.” Tadashima’s lips pursed. “So I’m guessing by your reaction that you know Atsuro Hitsuma, huh? If you’ve been with him before, did you notice anything weird about him?” The detective froze. The proverbial cat had gotten his tongue. He tried to conceal his expression, but the effort shamed him. “Right. So you have noticed something, but he’s your boss, so you have to suck up to him instead?” Tadashima was silent. Rentaro closed his eyes and shook his head. “So shoot me. You’ll get a certificate of honor out of it, won’t you?” “I—I…” Tadashima’s body began to shake, his index finger wrapped around the gun apparently frozen in place. His face was covered in greasy sweat. “If you ain’t shooting, we’re leaving.” Rentaro motioned an order at Hotaru, hung on to her shoulder, then fell forward. “Whoa! Hey!” Tadashima hurriedly peered down the side of the roof. But the boy in black had already melted into the night, gone without a trace. “Argh!!” Driven by anger bubbling over, Tadashima pointed his gun to the sky and fired three times. The three shots echoed through the air, catching rides on the gusting wind. They did nothing to quell the anger aimed at himself. He tossed the gun to the side, then fell to his knees, not caring about the pain as he batted a fist against the roof several times. “Why?! Why couldn’t I shoot him?!” He had to shoot him. He had to prove that the law, such as it was, supported him. He had to prove he was Shigetoku Tadashima, and that the brunt of his will could only be expressed by killing the hated criminal that reared its ugly head before him. But he failed. Something in him doubted whether Rentaro was a criminal. The odd obsession with secrecy Hitsuma brought into the investigation had made him arch his eyebrows one too many times. That meant defeat. The law, the concept he worshiped to the point of believing there was never any way to cheat one’s way out of it, had lost. Shigetoku Tadashima’s “law” had been brought to its knees by the immature, childish “justice” that civsec just had to bring into the picture. “Inspector! What are you doing up here?!” He turned around to find Yoshikawa, white as a sheet, running up to him. He must have heard the gunshots. Tadashima quickly felt his thoughts start to cool down. Wiping the dust from his pants, he stood up and walked past his underling. “I’m leaving this investigation for a little bit. I found something that I have to look into. Superintendent Hitsuma’s probably gonna be here in a bit. Take your orders from him.” “I-Inspector? Inspector, what’s going on? Inspector!” He could feel the voice pulling at him from behind. But Tadashima ducked his head down low, never turning around, and left the scene. He had to do it. He had to resolve these doubts in his mind. He had finally realized that he was no longer able to perform the basic duties of a police officer.