Chapter 77

BLACK BULLET 6 CHAPTER 04 THE STARLESS NIGHT 1 He was in a dream. There stood the Happy Building, soaked in the colors of twilight. Up the stairs he went, going through the door with the TENDO CIVIL SECURITY AGENCY plate on it. Enju’s clothes were strewn all over the sofa, the sink on the other side of the curtain filled with dirty dishes. The visitor sofa was always Tina’s favorite. Her nocturnal schedule meant she slept there a lot, balled up like a cat. He peered over at the sofa, but there was no trace of her—just a somewhat worn-down pillow, suggesting it held her weight not long ago. There was a just barely started workbook of math drills on the nearby desk, along with a small pile of eraser shavings. There was the sound of running water. Lifting the curtain to the cooking area, he found the sink was full of water from the neglected tap. It was already dampening Rentaro’s socks. It seemed so lived in, but nobody was there. Like the Mary Celeste of maritime lore. But Rentaro, for some reason, knew that. They were gone. Kisara was gone. Enju and Tina were dead. Killed. Those days would never return. This office was an empty shell, as though someone had shot footage of the Tendo Civil Security Agency in happier days, spliced the beginning and end together, and put it on permanent loop. It was just a video image supported by his memories, and now someone had edited the entire cast of characters out. It was indescribably sad. Besieged by regret, Rentaro fell to his knees on the spot, grasping his head and wailing his laments. A groan like a frog run over by a car emanated from his throat. It’s all my fault. Because I couldn’t save any of them. Suddenly, he heard someone calling his name. A girl. She was pleading for him. He shook his head and searched for the voice. Where did it come from? Where was he hearing it from? It was neither Kisara’s, nor Tina’s, nor Enju’s voice. Right. That voice was— The string of his dream was cut off, his consciousness gradually rising from the mud. His back was resting against something tough and unyielding, his body heavy. Sweat covered his clothing, and he was intensely thirsty. But the voice was still calling him. With great effort, Rentaro blinked a few times and opened his eyes. “What…? Shut up, man…” The blurry world began to form images in his mind. Jolting his body into action, he realized it was Hotaru calling him. Her lips were pulled sharply back, her eyes red. A shock coursed across him. “If you’re alive, at least answer me!” “Where am I…?” Hotaru wiped her eyes with a sleeve. “The sculpture studio. Our hideout.” He finally recognized the familiar sight of the ceiling above him. Turning his head, Rentaro felt a jag of pain. Oh, right. I took a bunch of bullets to the back. Nursing his neck, he looked down at his own body. His coat and shirt were off, and he was bandaged from below his armpits down to his stomach. It made him look like an enforcer from some yakuza flick. He was, at least, alive. Hotaru was back to her usual self to some extent, it seemed. She snorted at him, chin thrust haughtily into the air. “I extracted the bullets. I think I got all of them, but no guarantees,” she said. It was then that multiple blobs of metal, a pair of tweezers, and a pile of bloody cotton strips next to him entered Rentaro’s line of view. “I’m impressed you could do that,” he muttered. “I had to do it on myself once.” That attracted his attention. He turned to her. “You’ve been shot that many times?” “Yeah. Something wrong with that?” “Nothing wrong, but…” He thought a bit about how far to pursue this, but before he could decide, he noticed the puffy bags around Hotaru’s eyes. “Have you been sleeping at all?” Hotaru covered her eyes with her hands, apparently ashamed of the rings on her face. Then she suddenly turned defiant, puffing out her chest. “No, all right? I couldn’t, thanks to a certain idiot I got my ass teamed with. You better make up for this.” Rentaro snickered. It was just such an innocent display. “Look… Um, why do you ask?” Hotaru shifted again. Now her voice was small, almost nonexistent. “You got hurt so bad, trying to cover me…Why do you have to do all these stupid things? I told you, I wanted to keep this strictly business. I use you; you use me. If you die, I don’t take a look back. If the opposite happens, leave me on the sidewalk.” “Yeah, I remember,” Rentaro lightly replied, trying to keep the subject from getting too heavy. Hotaru drooped her head and peevishly turned her back to him. “You are so stupid.” A weird silence commenced. Neither were talking—and yet, the silence wasn’t altogether uncomfortable, either. Rentaro didn’t mind it, at least. But they couldn’t afford to keep this going forever. They still had a mountain of issues to think about. He gestured outside with a hand. “It’s pretty hot in here. Wanna go out for a bit?” The moon was out. A river flowed not far from the abandoned sculpture studio, swollen with the rain that fell from morning to late afternoon. The sound of the dark water bustling by them brought a refreshing coolness to their ears. Rentaro and Hotaru were walking side by side along the embankment. Despite the late hour, they were still passed by the occasional old man walking his dog, or the would-be weekend warrior panting from a jog. They had been walking downstream for a little while by the time Hotaru flashed Rentaro an exasperated look. “Look, aren’t you in pain at all? ’Cause you’re sure impressing me. I guess your New Humanity Creation Project surgery lets you control your pain, huh?” “Yeah, more or less,” Rentaro lied. Pain seemed to ooze out of every pore in his body. To be honest, Hotaru would probably have to serve as his caretaker for a while to come. That wasn’t something he could bargain with her about yet. He could still remember the dream he had, albeit vaguely. He was on his knees, wailing in an empty Tendo Civil Security Agency bereft of Kisara, Tina, or Enju. That couldn’t be just a dream. It was a very real problem, one that would be reality if he couldn’t rescue any of them. And his brain was presenting that very likely scenario to him in dream form. Which meant, by then, that they couldn’t afford to waste another moment. “Here, Rentaro.” Hotaru took something out of a breast pocket. Rentaro thought it was a fallen leaf or something at first, until he realized that it was in fact a rather oddly shaped key. The handle was made to look like a leaf from a maple tree, right down to special chemicals used to simulate the corrosion of the fall colors. It was an intricate piece of art. “What’s this?” “Something Swordtail had.” Rentaro’s eyebrows arched high. He gave it another close look. “His phone was destroyed in the fight with Dark Stalker. This was about the only clue I could find on him.” Rentaro brought a hand to his chin in thought. “What’s it for, you think…?” “I have no idea.” Hotaru sighed dejectedly, shaking her head. They debated the issue fruitlessly for a few moments before putting the topic to the side for the time being. Next, Hotaru took a piece of paper out of her pocket. “And this, too.” Rentaro took it, opened it up, and was shocked once more. It was Miori’s analysis results from the Gastrea tissue sample. He stared at it, virtually boring a hole in it with his eyes. It was lined with rows and rows of unfamiliar-sounding chemical compound names. Just trying to read it gave him a headache. “How’re you supposed to read this?” “I don’t know any of the details, either. But Miori said this is what we should pay attention to.” She pointed at a corner of the sheet. Rentaro felt yet another jolt. 0.1 milligrams of trifdraphizin detected in Gastrea tissue. A heavy shadow crossed over Rentaro and Hotaru. It was a train, roaring by at high speed across an overpass. It left nothing but silence behind. “Trifdraphizin…?” Hotaru’s eyes fixed upon him. “You know that?” Rentaro nodded, watching the stare of her blue-gray eyes from above her slender neck. “Hotaru, how much do you know about the Gastrea War?” She shrugged, like it was the last question she expected. “Well, I’m part of the Innocent Generation, so the war’s all just a secondhand story to me.” Rentaro closed his eyes and gingerly filed through his memories of the war. It was a time of heady research, conducted at a breakneck pace in order to deal with all the Gastrea getting infected by the virus. Every sense of morals, or ethics, people had was hurled out the window. It was a wink and a nod on a global geopolitical level. People did pretty much anything you could think of—cluster bombing, chemical warfare, minefield laying, genetic engineering, human experimentation, you name it. The New World Creation Project was another spawn from that dark era. “Does trifdraphizin have to do with that?” Rentaro nodded. “Trifdraphizin was first reported on as this miracle drug that could suppress the propagation of the Gastrea Virus. There was this huge fanfare in the news when the announcement came out. It wound up never making it on the market. The effect was only temporary, and once an animal built up enough tolerance to it, it wouldn’t work anymore. Still, there was one industry that still had a lot of expectations for it.” “Another one?” “If you used it on people or Gastrea, they found that one side effect was that it induced a state of virtual hypnosis in them. There was a time for a while when black-market dealers would smuggle it out of the warehouse and sell it on the street as a date-rape drug.” The glories of academic research had a way of winding up like that. Finding uses far beyond anything their creators ever imagined. A bunch of mold eventually led to the discovery of penicillin, the first antibiotic. It saved millions of lives. Meanwhile, despite being created with noble aims, trifdraphizin found its real home in the underworld, dirtying the name of everyone involved with it. The AGV test drug was like that, the “Anti-Gastrea Virus” compound Rentaro used to save himself after his encounter with Kagetane Hiruko caused half his stomach to get blown apart. It started as a failure, Sumire’s doomed attempt to halt the spread of the Gastrea Virus, but later was used for other purposes. “But why was that detected in the Gastrea tissue?” “I don’t know… Ever since it was banned from public distribution following that whole controversy, it’s gotten a lot harder to receive approval to purchase any. I totally forgot about it, too. It hasn’t shown up in the news in a while.” “Right, but you said it could hypnotize people, Rentaro? Does that apply to Gastrea, too?” “Yep. It works on both. Of course, the Gastrea Virus eliminates and neutralizes just about anything that enters its host’s bloodstream, so if you wanted long-term control over one, you’d need to have a hell of a lot of the stuff.” “Like, up to the point where it shows up in tissue analysis?” Rentaro paused. “Hang on. You really think so? What would the Five Wings Syndicate do with a bunch of hypnotized Gastrea? Or is that the Black Swan Project, or what?” Hotaru silently shook her head. The main problem with this theory was the question of how Five Wings could get the huge supply of trifdraphizin this conspiracy would require. They would need connections for even a small amount. Underground connections. There was no way they could hide that kind of operation. “Underground, huh?” he muttered to himself. “You know someone, don’t you?” There was a sharp light in Hotaru’s eyes. 2 Rentaro spent the next morning and afternoon recuperating. It was already nearly dark again by the time he set off. His destination: District 31 of Tokyo Area, part of the Outer Districts. It took several train transfers to get there. By that time, in the year 2031, most of the Outer Districts were either abandoned or already down to rubble with no plans to renovate. However, the area that hosted Old Shinagawa Ward, Old Koto Ward, and Old Minato Ward was still relatively unscathed in comparison to some, being protected by the Monoliths that surrounded Tokyo Bay. As such, he knew it would make a good meeting point. Especially when the only people there would be local residents. But he couldn’t afford to rest easy. The person he was about to meet was part of the city’s dark underbelly. He knew how easy it was to have a dead body “taken care of” in the Outer Districts, if it came to that. He’d prefer if it didn’t. Based on the address he was given, he anticipated a lengthy walk from the rail station to the meeting point. He wasn’t expecting a march all the way to the edge of the Monoliths. At least the jet-black towers were still clear as day in the blackness. He certainly would not be getting lost. Pushing his way through the crumbling infrastructure, eerie shadows flitting all around him, he finally heard the roar of the sea, accompanied by its telltale scent. Scrambling up a particularly large pile of rubble and surveying the landscape, he looked down at the mirrorlike black surface shining in the moonlight, the ripples in the water refracting the light this way and that. His heart lifted a bit at the rhythmical sound of the waves’ advance and retreat. Then he spotted the far edge of the mammoth-size Monolith, sucking the very darkness into itself. Climbing down and heading toward the oceanside wharf, he could see a line of elongated, semicircular warehouses lining the water. Comparing the signs to the number written on the scrap of paper in his hand, Rentaro eventually stopped in front of a storehouse, one notably larger than the rest. Once upon a time, it was no doubt a seafood processing facility; there was no telling how much fresh fish and shellfish it handled in the past. The numbers painted on the wall were faded, almost succumbing to the constant barrage of salt-water air, but he could still tell he was in the right place. Rentaro checked the time. Midnight. Nobody was there. “So this is the sea…” Wholly ignoring Rentaro’s concern, Hotaru wandered toward the shoreline, a look of awe on her face. “You’ve never seen it before?” Hotaru looked up at him and nodded. “Can I go look?” “Why do you need my permission?” Rentaro chuckled. Under the blessed Monolith magnetic field, she could even go for a swim if she wanted, as long as she didn’t wander too far offshore. However, given the seafaring Gastrea lurking somewhere under the surface in 2031-era Earth, seaside fun in the sun was usually seen as something reserved for the truly eccentric. The fishing industry was basically destroyed, and even missile-bearing ships with Varanium-lined bottoms could never be truly carefree on the high seas. Tokyo Area was now entirely reliant on shoreline spawning farms for their seafood, sending prices through the roof. So it goes, Rentaro supposed. Forgetting about Rentaro for the time being, Hotaru ran to the shore. Then she stepped back a bit, surprised at the cold water and positively shocked at the sensation on the tip of her tongue after tasting it. “Look, Rentaro! It’s all salty!” “Yeah, no shit!” Her look of curious astonishment was as pure as it was childlike. It shared something in common with Enju, and it forced Rentaro to recall how at odds he had been with her, too, when they first met. “Are you okay, though? The Monolith’s right nearby.” Initiator or not, she still had the Gastrea Virus coursing through her veins. Depending on her corrosion rate, that could have assorted effects on her. “I’m fine,” she replied. “My rate’s still in the high teens.” “Oh. Well, there’s one difference between you and Enju.” “What do you mean?” “Nothing,” Rentaro said as he glared at the sea, his thoughts turning elsewhere. I swear I’ll get you back, Enju. Then he turned around, hearing the thump of feet against dirt behind him. A man was there, cool and composed as he walked forward. He was neither very young nor very old; in fact, it was hard to guess his age. He was in a completely white suit, and while his dull, sallow skin suggested he was well on in years, his eyes were quick, young, and penetrating. Rentaro’s civsec instinct told him he was not to be trusted. “You the guy Abe told me about?” Rentaro kept his response to a silent nod. Before they went there, Rentaro and Hotaru had paid a visit to Kofu Finance, the yakuza-linked loansharking outfit located in the Happy Building’s fourth-floor office space. There, they had a little meeting. All of Rentaro’s personal and business contacts were no doubt being marked by the cops at this point, but he doubted even they’d guess he had a yakuza friend or two. As it happened, he was right. Shouki Abe, one of the mobsters he was familiar with, usually joked around with him whenever they met. But this time, he had acted oddly nervous. After some chitchat, he had borrowed a lighter, lit a cigarette, and seemed to noticeably calm down. “I was just surprised, Rentaro,” he had admitted. “Your face has changed a lot.” It probably had. In order to avoid the facial-recognition cameras, Rentaro no longer let himself be caught in daylight without sunglasses. He had no time to shave, except for the bare minimum. Nor did he have time for a proper meal lately. Maybe it was showing in his hollowed-out cheeks. Rentaro, dwelling on this, shook his head. That probably wasn’t what Abe had meant, anyway. This Rentaro—formerly the pursuer, now the pursued, waiting for his chance to turn the tables on his enemy—probably was different. At least, it was to the point that it overwhelmed Abe at first glance, even though he was a man who had no doubt seen a thing or two in his line of work. And to think that just a bit ago, I was being hailed as the hero of Tokyo Area. It all seemed tremendously ironic. But he had pushed the thought away long enough to ask Abe about the recent market for trifdraphizin. The gangster had sourly explained it all to him. To sum up, the retail price for trifdraphizin was rising because of a lack of supply going around the market. Apparently some mystery group was buying it all up. Abe had closed by promising to connect him to a courier better versed in the market than he. “Rentaro,” he had said, “let me just tell you one more thing. I know we don’t act like it sometimes, but there’s a code of justice we all live by in here. Me, personally? I’m one hundred percent against the drug trade, period. Most of our people are just messing around with numbers on computers these days—insider trading, that sort of thing—but I think that beats drug dealing any day. That’s the whole reason I’m here—I didn’t wanna deal, so they demoted me to loansharking duty. So I’ll help you, okay? But don’t think that this makes you buddy-buddy with the Kofukai Group or anything. If you start messing around with our sources of income, I think you know how some of us are gonna react to that, you know what I mean?” Rentaro ruminated over this previous conversation with Abe as he stared down the courier in front of him. The man, for his part, was focusing on the inky deep-black waters beyond the tetrapods scattered in the wharf, taking an occasional sideways glance in Rentaro’s direction. “So, what’s the savior of Tokyo Area want to know?” Rentaro ignored the verbal jab, giving the courier a cold gaze. “Who’s going around buying up all the trifdraphizin on the market?” “I can’t really go around divulging information about my clients, now can I? Trust means everything in this business.” Rentaro was already fed up with this. Even someone like him—who preferred to let his guns do the talking instead of negotiate—could tell: This was Abe’s way of sticking out his palm and asking for it to be greased. “All right. Let’s cut the crap. How much do you want?” The man let out a raspy, vulgar laugh. “Well, if it’s information you’re looking for, this is about the going rate.” He had three fingers lifted up. What a rip-off. You goddamned hyena. “I’ll give you twice that. But it’s gotta wait.” “You gotta be joking with me.” “I don’t have it on me right now. Once I solve this case, I’ll pay you double.” “Why do I have to believe an empty promise like that?” “Hey, you can’t collect from a dead man, right? So that way, I don’t have to worry about you feeding me a line of BS intel. Besides, apparently I’m famous enough that even you know what I look like, so it’s not like I can run from you for long.” “What if I say no?” “Then only one of us is getting out of here in one piece. And lemme just say, I’m not exactly planning to die in a place like this.” The sea breeze beat against Rentaro’s uniform and the courier’s suit. “I want triple.” Rentaro nodded. They had a deal. “Okay. Talk to me.” The man removed a pack of cigarettes from his suit pocket and lit one of the sticks. The breeze blew the smoke toward the warehouse building. “So actually, I don’t really know much about the client, either. They send a negotiator over to work with me, but I don’t go nosin’ around in his business much. That’s how it works, you know? It pays good enough, too.” “Come on,” Rentaro interrupted, the irritation clear in his voice. The man raised a hand to stop him. “Hang on. Lemme finish. Every time he makes a deposit, I deliver the trifdraphizin to a set location. It’s kind of a weird one.” “A weird location?” “Here in the Outer Districts, near one of the Monoliths, there’s a path down under a manhole that looks pretty much like a coal mine. I open the manhole, climb down the ladder, drop off the stuff, and beat it. But I’m guessing that’s their hideout.” Rentaro could feel a lightning-flash of inspiration erupt in his mind. “Hotaru.” The chestnut-haired girl next to him nodded deeply, holding in the excitement just as much as he was. “We’re finally on to something. That’s gotta be a Five Wings Syndicate hideout, probably.” When Rentaro asked where it was, the man pointed out a spot in the Outer Districts that was almost exactly opposite theirs, the entirety of the city in between. It would take a while to get there. But they were ready. Rentaro turned and began to walk off. “Whoa,” a voice said. “What’re you gonna do over there?” “I thought you didn’t go nosing around in client business.” “Well, judging by how much stuff they’re ordering, the group you’re pursuing probably has a lot of people working for it. I don’t see anything besides handguns on you guys, but you sure you’re ready to take on a group that big with just that?” “What’re you trying to tell us?” The courier, diverging from his previous macho demeanor, shrugged. “Oh, I’m just saying—if you die, I can’t collect, you know? So I figure I could stand to up the ante a little bit. Follow me.” The man ventured into the truck loading dock of the nearby seafood plant, ducked into the management office, and went up into the building. Rentaro and Hotaru exchanged glances. “What do you think?” Rentaro asked. “It’s dicey, but I have to admit: We’re short on resources. Let’s try him.” So they followed along, about ten paces behind the courier as he navigated the hallways with a flashlight, not bothering to acknowledge them. For an Outer Districts ruin, the processing plant was deteriorating in a remarkably orderly manner. Rentaro had seen dozens of abandoned buildings like this. He could sniff out the difference between a ruin that hadn’t seen human activity in years, and a ruin simply made to look that way. His instincts told him this was the latter kind. Most useful buildings would have been long scavenged by the Outer District’s denizens by then. This wasn’t. Going upstairs, the man stopped in front of a door, then held the flashlight with his teeth as he turned a crank. An airtight door for what was probably a freezer room opened up with a clang. The familiar scent of metal and machine oil flew out. Taking a look inside made Rentaro sigh. It was, in a word, an arsenal. The walls were lined with countless numbers of handguns, hand grenades, assault rifles, and rocket launchers. They were all brand-new. Rentaro shot a dumbfounded look at the courier. He shrugged again. “Take whatever you like.” “Are you sure?” The courier snickered nervously. “Lemme set something straight, though. I don’t care about you. I care about you surviving long enough to pay me. Try not to confuse the two, all right?” Rentaro nodded his thanks, then focused back on the arsenal. He brushed his hand against a nearby wooden crate. It felt moist. Using a nearby crowbar on the floor, he pried open the top of the box. There, encased in dried straw packaging and oiled paper, was a large cache of KRISS vector short-barrel machine guns. “Ooh, here’s a sniper rifle.” He turned around to find Hotaru grasping the large gun, arms trembling. “An M24…” It was the US Army’s preferred choice of sniper rifle, a customized version of the Remington M700 they purchased in mass quantities. It was equipped with a Leupold 10x fixed-power scope. That made it the so-called A3 model, a heavily reworked version of the original. Must have been sold off by the military. Amazing to see it here of all places, Rentaro thought. But hang on a minute— “You’re gonna have to zero that. Otherwise you’re not gonna hit the broad side of a barn.” “Oh? You know about these?” “Ah,” Rentaro replied, “we had a specialist over at the office. Can you handle that?” “I’m still a student,” Hotaru said, “but yeah. I’ll zero this at one hundred meters. You want this?” “Nah. I don’t carry anything heavier than a handgun. Otherwise I’ll just be a drag in hand-to-hand combat.” “Oh,” Hotaru said, not particularly put off as she crossed her arms. “Well, if we can get some explosives over there, at least, that’ll be perfect.” “Explosives?” Hotaru stuck her hand into another crate and spread a set of rectangular hunks of clay—plastic explosives—on the floor. There were enough to practically start a war. Certainly more than enough to engage any enemy Rentaro could imagine. By the time they were done casing the place, discussing their strategy, making their choices, and stepping outside of the building, the night sky was already starting to lighten. Day was breaking over the placid Pacific. Rentaro took a deep breath, then exhaled. The duel was fast approaching. 3 “Oh. Swordtail was defeated as well…?” “Yes. It was absolutely deplorable.” In a break room inside the Central Control Development Organization—the so-called “black building”—Hitsuma looked out the window toward the city, back turned to his conversational partner. Yuga Mitsugi, watching his still-turned back, found himself confused. “I thought you’d be angrier than that,” he said. “I am,” came the reply. “But before I gnash my teeth about it like a spoiled child, I wanted to think about how we’re going to get Rentaro Satomi’s head.” Yuga was impressed, although he decided not to mention this. Hitsuma was not the most satisfying boss he had ever worked with, but even he had matured a bit throughout this ordeal. “I suppose one reason is that we looked down on Hotaru Kouro’s powers. I couldn’t pinpoint what kind of Gastrea factor she had, but the way Swordtail described it, she literally came back from the dead. That, or her ability allows her to fake death, somehow, to throw her enemy off guard.” “How do we deal with that?” It’s about time you saw things my way, thought Yuga as he removed a rifle round from his pocket and rolled it across the table with a finger. The tip was black, the rest of the body a shiny brass. To Hitsuma, it looked like just another Varanium-tipped bullet. He turned around and scowled. “That’s your big strategy? Hummingbird had a Varanium knife; Swordtail had Varanium-tipped ammo. Look what that got them—” “Hang on a moment, Mr. Hitsuma,” Yuga said, raising a hand to interrupt. “The tip of this bullet contains enriched Varanium—metal that was melted down and concentrated. Upon impact, the Varanium inside bursts and spreads across the target’s body. It’s enough to kill any Gastrea up to Stage Three, as well as Initiators. It was a pain in the ass procuring these, lemme tell you.” “Stage Three?” “You’re familiar with that system, right? Targets you can kill with a normal Varanium weapon are classified as Stage One, and that covers most Gastrea and Initiators. If the target doesn’t fall into that field, then we go up to Stage Two and beyond. With Stage Two, the Varanium keeps them from regenerating their bodies. You can still kill them if you decapitate or dismember them, or if you set them on fire. Stage Three, though, those guys can grow back arms and stuff. It’s like being wounded causes their bodies’ cells to call out to one another.” “Call out…?” Hitsuma said, eyebrows pressed farther down. Yuga grinned internally. It was exactly the response he’d expected. “And Stage Four’s even crazier. It can regenerate itself even if most of its organs are toasted. To kill them, you have to blow them to dust. That’s the only way. That’s the stage Aldebaran was at. Then, with Stage Five, you can put them in deep freeze, in a vacuum, toss ’em into molten lava running at two thousand degrees…but as long as the environment’s right, they’ll regenerate. Like, from the molecular level on up. Right now, in the year 2031, there’s no physical way to kill them.” Hitsuma brushed a hand aside, fed up with the subject. “All right, all right,” he said, eyes swiveled askance at Yuga from his handsome face. “I’m not here to listen to a bunch of gossip. So you’re saying that bullet’s good enough to kill Hotaru Kouro?” “It’s already in the bag, sir. At most, Hotaru would be Stage Two. No matter how good she is at regeneration, Stage Three’s got to be the max.” “Hmm. Well. I would like to leave them to you…but I think we won’t need those bullets you’ve gathered after all.” “What do you mean?” “We might find Rentaro Satomi and Hotaru Kouro’s hideout before long. We triangulated their general region based on their escape routes from the expressway shoot-out and the Shiba Heavy Weapons attack. I’m having my people sweep the streets.” Oh. Was that all? “Even if you find them, sir,” Yuga said as he shrugged and put his hands in the air, “no regular officer’s gonna have a chance against them.” “Yes,” Hitsuma agreed. “So I’m sending in civsecs.” Yuga found himself unconsciously narrowing his eyes. “…Civsecs?” Hitsuma poured a paper cup of coffee from a nearby pot and offered it to Yuga. The assassin waved it away. “I thought you weren’t using them?” He already had to cover up the total failure of the police to capture Rentaro at the Magata Plaza Hotel, despite the swarms of uniformed personnel on-site. That cover-up should have prevented him from enlisting civsecs or any other public service for this case. “We can’t be that picky any longer…in so many words.” “Who did you send over?” Hitsuma paused to take a dramatic sip of coffee. “A group perfect for the job, is who. They’ve already been briefed and are en route to the site. Sadly, you haven’t been activated.” Yuga deliberated in silence for a moment. Then he quietly shook his head. “I will be on standby for Rentaro Satomi at the time and place we discussed.” “Why would you do that?” a perplexed Hitsuma asked. “…You’ve never traded blows with an opponent before, Mr. Hitsuma. I think this might be working on a dimension beyond your understanding. He’s going to be there. I know he will.” At this, Hitsuma crossed his arms. Then he emptied the rest of the cup down his throat, apparently abandoning the effort, and tossed it in the bin. There was a plip as the cup joined the mountain of its kin down below. “…You can do what you like.” Yuga nodded lightly. Hitsuma nodded back. “Well, then…” “Yeah.” That was all the good-byes they needed. With a salute, Yuga left the break room and, by himself, took the first step to his final battle. 4 The jet-black sky rumbled its displeasure in semiregular intervals as it unfurled heavy, sharp rain upon the world. The sound of water slowly running along the gutter on its way down sounded like the steady current of a swampy river, uniting with the drip-drip-drip of rain wriggling its way through a roof leak and onto the floor, forming a watery ensemble. Rentaro took in the sound as he lay down in the sculpture studio. It was humid, but the temperature had gone down a fair chunk. In Rentaro’s mind, it certainly was more comfortable than the unrelenting heat he had to deal with over the past few days. Adjusting his position at all would send another billow of stone powder into the air, landing on him like dust, so he tried to remain as still as possible. Lying there, unmoving, on the studio’s bare floor, in total darkness with the windows shut, made him feel like a dead man. If he lay flat on his back and rested his hands on his stomach—it was like practicing for his stint in a coffin. He had promised Hotaru that he would spend all day recuperating. Part of him wanted to get up and rip the lid off the Black Swan Project right this second. The spirit was all too willing, incredibly willing, but the flesh could no longer keep up. Consuming the calories he needed had made the thoughts he knew all too well rev back into motion, but not his body yet. Still, he couldn’t stop them. It was proving hard to forcibly shut down his thought process. He marveled at it. Part of the path to satori, the stage of enlightenment that was the ultimate goal of any Buddhist practitioner, involved training oneself to cast off all worthless thoughts from the mind. He thought about that. But he also thought about Enju, who was bound to be paired with another Promoter sooner or later. As a civsec himself, he knew how difficult it would be to dissolve a pairing once it was set in stone. And once a Promoter was fully aware of the power within Enju, he’d never even think about letting her go. It was hard to believe he hadn’t seen her once since that last awkward conversation in the city jail. He wanted to see her with all his heart. She had to feel constricted by now; she must have taken the media at face value, including the news that Rentaro was dead. The entire rest of the story had been shut away, for all he knew. How is Tina doing, though? Even if she was made to go up on the stand and get convicted of something, it wouldn’t happen that quickly. But between the judge, the prosecutor, her attorney, and even the jurors, it was hard to be optimistic. Being among the Cursed Children was hard to make up for. If any semblance of human rights had been granted to Tina, then she was likely sitting in a corner of some jail cell, hands around her knees. A lifetime of being used and abused by corrupt adults… Rentaro couldn’t stand having his friends put to public shame any longer. He wanted to protect her from all the hardships life had handed her. Then Rentaro realized he was deliberately trying not to think about Kisara. No. I haven’t thought about anything. She was due to marry Hitsuma, and I’ve completely frozen all thought about her, postponing any conclusion for some unknown time in the future. Things had gotten so bad for him because he had foolishly believed Hitsuma was a decent person. Because he left Kisara in his hands. Then he felt the inner edges of his eyes grow warm. The tears accumulating on the outer edges crossed his cheeks. I was wrong about everything. How was he going to bow his head and say to her, Cancel the marriage and go back home? How, after he sent her away from the visitation room with all that vitriol? After he trampled all over her dignity? There was a noise downstairs. Flustered, Rentaro wiped the tears from his eyes and pretended to be asleep. After a moment, the nearby hinges creaked. Without turning his head, he could tell from the breathing that it was Hotaru. “Rentaro, are you asleep?” “…No, I’m up.” He carefully sat up as Hotaru shook the rain from her chestnut-colored hair and wringed out the hem of her tank top. He could see Hotaru’s thin, bare, taut stomach. Her chest, drawn in the drape of the fabric over it, was visible through her undergarments. Then, realizing she was being watched, Hotaru squatted down on the floor, hugging herself as she gave Rentaro a razor-sharp glare. “Did you see me?” Rentaro scratched the hair on the back of his head. “Don’t be stupid. Why would seeing a naked kid make me happy?” Hotaru let out a long, deep groan. It was followed by a short sigh as she shook her head. “Take off your clothes. I need to change your bandages and wipe your body down.” She didn’t bother to listen for a response before nimbly reaching behind him and removing his button-down shirt, stepping up to the noble task of wiping down his back. Rentaro let her, feeling the cold, wet cloth against his skin. Tomorrow was probably going to be the final battle, but he couldn’t get the words to come out. Somewhere along the line, Hotaru’s attitude toward him had brightened considerably. The disdainful hostility of their first encounter was far gone now. “You’re wounded from head to toe.” “Ah, that’s gotta be from the Third Kanto Battle. This is from the Seitenshi sniper, and I think Kagetane Hiruko put this one on me.” He pointed each one out like a general marking armies on a map. None were easy victories for him. The memories of each one were etched into his mind. Then, unexpectedly, he felt something soft and slightly warm pressed against his back. It made him arch his spine. It took him a while to realize it was Hotaru’s cheek. “I’m sorry, Rentaro. I had the wrong idea about you.” Silence arrived out of nowhere. Being together with her, even for this short time, taught him that behind all that curt bluntness was a little girl, one just as delicate as any other. This can’t go on… Stealing a look at her from the side of his eyes, Rentaro made a decision in his heart. “It’s fine. Let’s go to sleep.” He flicked the switch on the flashlight before she could respond. Then he lay back and used his crossed arms as a pillow. He could feel Hotaru looking at him for a moment, as if trying to say something, but then he heard the rustling of her clothes as she laid herself against the floor beside him. Squinting into the darkness, Rentaro could just barely make out the white of the ceiling above them. His body was dead tired, but there was no way he could sleep now. There was no telling how long he gazed upward. By the time the arms under his head went numb, he heard Hotaru turning over in her sleep. It was just about time. He quietly got up. Reaching into his back pocket, he took out a pen and notepad he had surreptitiously bought at the convenience store along with the flashlight. He ripped out a page, then—as well as he could in the darkness—wrote a note. He doubted his penmanship was much to brag about in this state, but he left it by Hotaru’s side, quietly got to his feet, and tried to be as silent as possible with his footsteps. Then he found himself illuminated. He raised a hand to cover his eyes. “…Where are you going?” Hotaru’s voice was frigid. “……” There was nothing Rentaro could say. He silently returned Hotaru’s gaze. Noticing the paper next to her, she picked it up and scanned it. “…What’s this about?” she said, sharpening her eyes and lowering the temperature of her voice even further. She usually spoke in an emotionless monotone, but now Rentaro could physically feel the anger. That was how in tune he was with her by this point. “It’s just like I wrote it. We’re done, Hotaru. I wrote the whole procedure down. You go to the police and tell them I coerced you into cooperating with me. I don’t know how far our enemy’s infected the police, but you see Inspector Tadashima’s name on there? He’s at Magata Station. You can trust him.” “Stop screwing with me!” “I’m not screwing with you.” “Are you running away from me?” “I’m telling you to run away from me!” He paused for a beat, breathing hard. “…Hotaru, we’re just barely still at the point where you can turn back. Honestly, one step away from it… Listen, I’m glad you believed me when I said I didn’t kill him. I really am. Our enemy’s so huge, it’s got the police wrapped around its finger. Tomorrow’s fight is gonna be so, so much worse than today’s. And if you’re with me for it, you’re really gonna lose your life this time.” He tried to drum up some intimidation, some coercion in his voice. But Hotaru’s response was beyond anything he could have anticipated. “So you’re just going to go away? Like Kihachi did?” “What?” Hotaru’s face was despondent, her eyes blurred with tears. “Kihachi did the same thing. He got all cold and distant with me one day. He started hiding lots of things. We kept working solo… I’d ask him, and he wouldn’t say anything. My birthday was coming up, and I begged him to at least spend that with me, and it turned into this huge argument… When I woke up the next morning, there was a note by my bedside. He said he was gonna get everything squared away before my birthday. And it was right after that. When the police called and told me Kihachi was dead.” “That…” It was an unimaginable thing to experience. Rentaro hesitated to give her some kind of halfhearted consolation. “I still dream about what I should have done back then: That I was just pretending to sleep all along. That I followed Kihachi and shielded him from getting shot. That he kills the guy, and I apologize to him because I never had the chance the night before. That he holds me, and then he says in my ear, ‘We’re always gonna be together.’” Hotaru shook her fists weakly. “And then I wake up right there, every time. I’m in this bed that’s too big for me, and it makes me grit my teeth every time. I swore that I’d protect my partner this time. Please, Rentaro! I want to come with you! I need to know! What happened to Kihachi? Why did he have to come back home like that? If I can’t get revenge by being with you, I have to at least take a step toward my own future! Please, Rentaro!” Their eyes locked and time seemed to stand still. Rentaro closed his own, then took a deep breath through his nostrils. “All right, Hotaru. The hole that opened up in your heart after Suibara died… Let’s fill it in together.” Hotaru’s face grew brighter as she understood. She opened her mouth to speak but only ended up biting her lip. She hung her head low and muttered a simple “Thanks” instead. It was almost as if she were crying tears of joy as she extended her right hand. “I’m glad I got paired with you, Rentaro.” This must be the girl that exists deep down within her. Kinda cute when she smiles. Rentaro clasped his hand to hers. Her hand was unbelievably strong and steady for such a little girl, pulsating with warmth. “So when’s your birthday, anyway? Is it that close?” “Oh yeah…” Hotaru took out her cell phone. “We’re right on time,” she said as she showed the backlit screen to Rentaro. The time was twelve a.m.—midnight. She flashed a mischievous smile. “My birthday’s today now. I’m ten years old.” This was going too fast. Rentaro searched his mind for some sort of congratulatory message he could give her; he had never quite gotten used to that kind of thing. So he scratched his head instead. But then, a malicious intent made itself known behind them. Rentaro turned around, hand already at the grip of his Beretta. Hotaru noticed a moment later, eyes turning crimson as she released her own powers. “Rentaro, are you there?” she whispered. “…Yeah,” he muttered back. The sensation came from behind the door to the studio. Several sensations, in fact. But they didn’t come through the door. They stood there, perhaps struggling with something themselves. Maybe they lost interest; maybe they decided to call for reinforcements. He didn’t like it, but either way, holing up in the studio was no longer a good idea. “Let’s go. Follow me.” Signaling to his temporary partner, Rentaro readied his Beretta and tiptoed away. The space they were squatting in was two stories high. It was far enough into the suburbs that the sound of battle wouldn’t be an immediate cause for someone to phone the authorities. The rainstorm that rankled Rentaro’s mind a few moments ago would help mute whatever happened as well. Rentaro tiptoed behind a support column and went down the bare-concrete stairway. Taking a position adjacent to the front door, he dared a quick glance. There were three figures, all standing there getting soaked by the rain. He strained to make them out through the beam of his MagLite, but when he finally did, his mind went blank. Before he knew it, he had forgotten about hiding, and exposed his body to the air. “You guys… Why…?” The three figures illuminated by the MagLite included a single tall man and two girls. The man wore a field jacket and a pair of amber sunglasses. The girl next to him was dressed fully in black, with a choker collar. The third, by comparison, was standing quietly, a girl in an armorlike exoskeleton. Instinctively, Rentaro took a step beyond the building. The heavy rain immediately weighed down his clothes. He didn’t even notice. Because he knew each one of them. They had walked the line between life and death together; battle comrades who constantly covered for one another. They were each worth an entire battle squadron by themselves. “I was certainly not expecting to run into you again so soon.” The dignified voice belonged to Asaka Mibu, the girl in old-style armor. She took a step forward, her eternally closed eyes opened just a slit as she judged him with scorn. She was a warrior, one he had fought side by side with in the battle against Aldebaran. What was she doing here? She was unpaired… The IISO should have been taking care of her. Asaka gave Rentaro another cold look, perhaps sensing his doubt. “Thanks to the police pressuring the IISO, I am free from their control for the time being. I am ordered to dispatch a fiendish former civsec fleeing from the law after he committed cold-hearted murder.” The tachi sword she used to wield had now been replaced with a unique type of twin-bladed sword. A relic of her former Promoter, no doubt. She had it unsheathed and readied. “I was looking forward to the day we would meet each other,” she said. “But apparently the stars were not on our side after all. Prepare to die!” Tamaki Katagiri, as if taking over for Asaka, similarly spat on the ground in Rentaro’s direction: “The cops sent us a job. Not only did you kill a guy and run away, you bastard, but you were involved in the Shiba massacre, and that highway shoot-out, too! I saw the evidence!” Rentaro was speechless. If the police were involved, Hitsuma was very likely pulling the strings. There was no telling what kind of contrived evidence he showed them, but something about the atmosphere indicated he wasn’t talking his way out of this. At the critical moment of the Third Kanto Battle, they had been laughing and crying with one another in turns. They had a friendship. And now Hitsuma had wrecked even that. Rentaro’s murderous rage at the thought of that man thickened. But another part of his mind was quickly analyzing the difference in battle position between the two sides, and it was driving him to despair. He had been their adjuvant leader. He knew full well what they were capable of. “Rentaro, are these guys your…?” Hotaru appeared next to him, a look of anxiety on her face. Rentaro gave her a firm nod. There’s nothing to worry about. Just fight with me for now. Asaka and Tamaki were livid; the trust they had built with Rentaro in the struggle against Aldebaran lay ruined. But there was one in the group that was not among their ranks. One with a conflicted look on her face. “Why aren’t you saying anything?” he asked. It was Yuzuki Katagiri, her twin braids holding strong as she whisked her head back and forth. “Look at you. You’re a filthy mess…! There’s no way you can beat us! Please, just turn yourself in! I don’t want to fight!” “Don’t taunt the prey. Catch it,” Rentaro threw back. “Huh?” Yuzuki asked.