Chapter 131

“Are you…gonna…kill me?” “Yeah.” Sahara heard a weak wheezing noise, Genom’s labored breathing. She hadn’t noticed it before. He had nothing left to protect him. No fear of death shone in his eyes as he stared down the barrel of Sahara’s gun, however. “Why…would you…kill me…?” “Here’s the thing, Genom.” When Sahara thought about it, this entire day had been horribly unlucky. “This morning, I didn’t get to eat breakfast.” “Oh…yeah?” “This humidity has messed up my hair so bad, it’s not even funny, and come to think of it, I didn’t eat lunch, either. I’m getting really hungry. And on top of all that, what the hell just happened to me? What was that about?” Sahara listed arbitrary grievances, slowly growing genuinely annoyed. There was no reason for her to be burdened with the weight of the world. She wasn’t going to let other people’s deaths weigh on her and drag her down like Menou did. In this moment, Sahara could confidently state that being an Executioner seemed stupid beyond belief. Thus, she didn’t need a better reason to kill this man. “So anyway, I’d like to kill you to vent all of my pent-up frustration.” Genom broke into a broad grin. He met Sahara’s eyes with an expression of acceptance. “Well… Guess I can’t blame ya.” Those were Genom’s last words. Sahara pulled the trigger without hesitation. The Guiding bullet fired, and the recoil from the high-powered handgun knocked Sahara’s arm upward. For all the names and infamy Genom had acquired, for all his wicked deeds, death claimed him, as it did everyone. The end didn’t care how tumultuous a life had been. Sometimes, the curtain fell quite abruptly indeed. So did it close on the life of Genom Cthulha. A powerful Guiding bullet blew his head clean off. “See ya, source of my trauma.” Now it was truly over. The Guiding gun slipped out of Sahara’s hand. As the extreme exhaustion from using up her Guiding Force became too much to bear, Sahara let herself fall unconscious. They’d won, if nothing else. Maya knew that much. They’d eked out a victory, thanks to Sahara’s efforts. But the victory hadn’t come without a cost. “Nono…” She took Nono’s hand to comfort what remained of her, while still supporting Sahara’s weight. There was no blood. The cross-section of her severed torso resembled a doll’s. But even a conjured soldier’s body couldn’t function for long in this condition. As harsh as Maya had been with her, Nono was still an ally she hadn’t seen for a thousand years. She naturally still felt an attachment to her. “I’m sorry, Nono… The truth is, I was happy to see you again. I wish… I should have—” “Oh, don’t worry about it. I’m really just a recording anyway.” “…Huh?” Just like that, the emotional mood shattered. As Maya sat there dumbfounded, Nono used what little time she had left to reveal her secrets. “From your point of view, I’m actually here in the environment control tower a thousand years ago, connected to the Astrologer. Kaa’s helping me do my prediction calculations, you see. I’m running a simulation of what will happen in a thousand years, recording my voice in the Astrologer and installing it with my behavioral patterns to make it move. Basically, I’m predicting the critical situations that might arise in the future and programming the Astrologer with countermeasures to deal with them.” Nono seemed strangely proud as she explained the workings behind her future sight, and she seemed utterly content to ignore her audience’s confusion. “So you see, this is the true nature of my ‘prophecies.’ ” “Umm…and what does all that mean, exactly?” “Basically, since I’m living a thousand years in the past, from my point of view, you’re just one of many simulations of the future! Frankly, I’m ninety percent sure that this behavioral pattern recording will never be useful anyway! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!” “Bye.” “GYAAAAAAH?!” Since they happened to be sitting near the edge of a huge hole the battle had blown in the wall, Maya kicked Nono right out of the environment control tower. This would probably be their final farewell, which was perfectly fine with Maya. She smiled and waved cheerfully to the falling Nono. “Great! We’ve solved everything once and for all! Now we just need Menou to get here and figure out how to use this control room, and it’ll all be over! Uh… Wait a minute.” No sooner had she declared the end of their troubles than she realized something was amiss. Pandæmonium was missing. Maya and the others had assumed that Pandæmonium was inside the control tower. She’d sensed Pandæmonium’s unmistakable presence. Yet the Human Error was nowhere to be seen in the environment control tower. A portion of the wall and floor had been turned into a monster, but there was no indication Pandæmonium herself was present. What if Pandæmonium had been enacting her own schemes somewhere completely separate from Genom? Had the situation progressed without Maya, Sahara, or Menou noticing, and was it too late to stop now?” “…Ah!” When Maya looked out through the hole in the wall at the ceiling district, her suspicion turned to certainty. Genom Cthulha was dead. As she traveled through the ceiling district in the opposite direction from Sahara and the others, Momo realized this when she saw that Genom’s terminals, which were demolishing buildings to drop from the ceiling district, had stopped moving. “Genom. You did an excellent job.” When Maya first realized that there was a part of Pandæmonium here in the City of Ruins, no one doubted for a second that she was colluding with Genom. Between the red flags flying throughout the city and Pandæmonium’s presence emanating from the environment control tower, it was only natural to draw that conclusion. Momo had deliberately set things up to suggest as much. She’d offered Genom a fingernail from just a tiny part of Pandæmonium to gain permission to temporarily enter the City of Ruins and to deceive Maya. Abbie, who knew the situation, had been separated from Menou and the others, and Momo made certain she couldn’t share any more information than necessary before rejoining the group. There was still something Abbie wanted to do in the Mechanical Society. Abbie would undoubtedly side with humanity, but that didn’t mean she’d remain Menou’s ally. In the midst of all this chaos, Momo continued quietly making preparations, neither working with Genom nor assisting Menou and company. She opened the white suitcase. Inside was an arm that had been wrapped tightly in a white cloth bandage. Since it was thoroughly sealed with bandages knit using an Ivory conjuring and sealed inside a case that isolated Guiding Force, even Maya couldn’t sense its presence. The slender little arm belonged to Evil itself. A mouth appeared in a gap between the bandages around the palm. “Hey, lady! If you set me free, I’ll grant you one wish as a thank-you!” This too-good-to-be-true offer wasn’t given out of goodwill. It wasn’t even sincere. The words were merely an act performed on a whim to suit the situation. Were Momo to give a wish that bored the arm, its mood would sour and it would attack instantly. So Momo said nothing. She knew the only right answer was to not say anything. She simply unraveled the bandages to set Pandæmonium free, then turned and ran away.