“Too bad I have this.” Leonard pulled a knife out from under his coat and pointed it at Sousuke. At first it just looked like a simple shiv, but he noticed a thumb-activated button where the blade met the handle. Sousuke quietly clicked his tongue as he saw it.
“A spetsnaz knife,” Leonard told him. “You’re familiar, I’m sure.” This was a weapon designed by Soviet special forces: the grip was mounted with a powerful spring, and pressing the switch would send the blade flying. It was a simple setup, like one you might see in a toy, but far more powerful. It could pierce through a phone book at ten meters.
Sousuke was at a disadvantage again. His AS operator’s uniform was blade-resistant, but it wouldn’t stop that kind of piercing power. A hit from that knife would gravely wound him, if not kill him outright. And the simple spring trigger wouldn’t spark an explosion.
But it was one-use-only. If he could dodge the first strike, he could get in close...
“I know your type,” he said, as if reading Sousuke’s mind. “Kill the enemy no matter what it takes—if you don’t have a gun, use a knife. If you don’t have a knife, use your bare hands. If you lose your hands, chew their throat out. If they kill you, sharpen your bones and wait until they step on you. I suppose you wouldn’t be open to parley?”
“What exactly would we have to discuss?” Sousuke asked suspiciously.
“Escape,” Leonard admitted. “As much as I hate it, we’re both trapped in here.”
Sousuke said nothing.
“The place is filling up with propane,” Leonard went on. “We’re fine for now, but if we don’t die from the toxicity first, we’ll asphyxiate in about two hours.”
“You’re saying you don’t want to fight?” Sousuke asked more directly.
“We’re both dead if we do. I’ve looked all around, and the only way out is a stairway blocked by rubble. But if we work together to clear it, we might escape.”
“Are you proposing a truce?”
“Yes, a truce,” Leonard agreed. “If we were to fight now, whoever wins will surely be wounded in the process, and a wounded man can’t do the necessary work on his own. We’ll work together to escape, and only then return to our regularly scheduled attempts to kill each other. That’s my proposition.”
Leonard’s not lying, Sousuke thought, knowing full well that he was right about the gas and the escape route. Without a truce, we’ll both die here for sure. “Very well,” he said out loud. “But only until we escape.” Sousuke wasn’t going to let his guard down for a second, but he had no choice but to accept Leonard’s proposal. They both lowered their weapons at the same time.
“Excellent,” Leonard said dryly. “Do we need a handshake?”
“Don’t be stupid,” said Sousuke, who shouldered his carbine and headed for the stairs.
Under Kalinin’s command, Amalgam’s airborne squad had finished securing the ruins on the surface... though in fact, what he’d really done was simply check for enemies, and found none.
After disembarking and checking for traces of other helicopter landings, Kalinin had found the two sets of footprints leading into the plant, which he identified as belonging to Sagara Sousuke and Teletha Testarossa. They were likely to be in the plant’s underground facility right now.
Leonard was likely aware of this, too. He had entered the plant alone, and they hadn’t heard from him since. The four men Kalinin had sent to scout afterwards had reported gunshots before going incommunicado... Most likely neutralized in a fight with Sousuke, he thought.
A few minutes later, a report from a subordinate supported that theory. He’d said there was a fire in a different area than that in which the helicopter had gone down, and they’d found a survivor near the crash site who confirmed that Chidori Kaname and the Frenchman had survived. Leonard was now missing, and Sousuke and Tessa were still out there, somewhere.
Strange things seem to be happening under that plant, Kalinin thought speculatively. He could send a large number of those still on the surface to search underground... But the déjà vu effect made him reluctant to send any more of his men inside.
“Leave things up here to me,” said Kaspar, on standby in his AS. “If anyone approaches, I’ll finish them off.”
“Very well,” Kalinin said after a pause. “I leave it to you.” With that, he left on his own foray into the plant’s basement, accompanied by a few soldiers down the shaft.
Tessa was an excellent guide, and the three of them quickly reached the bottom floor of the plant. They managed to do it without any hostile encounters—which wasn’t especially surprising, given that they were heading in the direction opposite to that from which their enemies were coming.
Kaname understood the idea of the plan—to cross the bottom floor and come out the other side—but the idea of going deeper into the maze still made her uneasy. “You sure this is the right way?” she asked Tessa. She’d done so multiple times; more often than she could count, thanks to the increasing frequency of her déjà vu.
“Yes, quite certain...” Tessa seemed to have more on her mind than just the directions, but she seemed hesitant to reveal it to the others. “Now, turn here and go straight,” she instructed. “You’ll end up on the opposite side of the plant from the one we came in on. If you can find a staircase or a ladder there, it should bring you topside.”
“But you’ve got something else on your mind, right?” Kaname asked more directly.
“Yes...” Tessa stopped walking. “There’s a place I want to visit nearby. You two should keep going without me.”
Lemon and Kaname were shocked by her words.
“What place?” Kaname demanded to know. “What are you talking about?”
“The enemy will be here soon,” Lemon told her. “You can’t resist them all alone.”
“I’ll be fine,” Tessa said. “And it’s the place I originally came here to see... Having come this far, I can’t pass up the chance.”
“Well, what is it, already? At least let us come with you,” Kaname insisted.
“It’s close by, right? Let’s go,” Lemon offered.
But Tessa just shook her head. “I can’t let you do that. Just know that it’s something very important, and... I can handle it by myself.” Tessa’s ‘explanation’ was extremely elusive, as if she knew something she didn’t want to tell them.
No... to be more specific, it was likely Lemon’s presence that made Tessa reticent. He’d been enthusiastically helping her up until now, but he was still an agent in French intelligence. If there was a major secret here in the plant, there’d be no guarantee he wouldn’t pass it on to his government.
Lemon seemed to realize her motives, as well. “You mean you can’t let me do that, right?”
Tessa fell silent. He must have been right.
“Wraith and I are the ones who staked our lives to find this place, you know,” he pointedly reminded her. “I went to Moscow, totally blind, just on your say-so. I got shot for you, and Wraith might’ve gotten killed. But after all that, I still don’t deserve to know what’s going on?”
“I’m grateful for all you’ve done. But I—”
“It’s because of my affiliations, right?” he asked, cutting her off. “I’m not exactly in good standing with the DGSE, okay? I haven’t contacted my superiors in ages, so I’m probably fired.”
“I’m not just worried about what you might reveal,” Tessa denied. “The secret contained here goes beyond any one country’s national security concerns. In the wrong hands, it could affect people all over the world.”
“Yeah, right,” he scoffed.
“No... in fact, that’s a conservative estimation. Few people who learned the secret of what lies here would be able to resist its allure, its power,” Tessa went on. “I can tell Kaname-san, or Sagara-san, but only because it’s already upended our lives. We’re already in. But Lemon-san—I’ve seen nothing to prove to me that you can resist it.”
“I don’t understand,” Lemon argued back, and Kaname could see how much Tessa’s words confused him. “You think that the minute I learn this secret, I’m going to turn on you two and try to take it for myself?”
“It’s entirely possible. That’s how serious this matter is. Now, would you please leave me here and go on with Kaname-san?”
“There’s no way that’s happening. Okay, how about this?” Lemon whispered as he drew the automatic pistol from his belt.
“Wait—” Kaname said, panicked.
But with the safety still on, he flipped the pistol over and offered it to Tessa. “Take this. If I start acting weird, shoot me.”
“Lemon-san, I—”
“I still don’t know if we’re even getting out of this alive,” he said flatly. “At least let me see what it was all for. Please.”
Tessa seemed deeply troubled by his request. In Kaname’s brief time knowing him, Lemon had come off like a nice enough person... but there was no guarantee that it wasn’t an act. Who was to say he wouldn’t still turn on them?
But in the end, Tessa must have decided it was unavoidable, because she let out a deep breath and carefully took the gun he offered. “Very well,” she agreed. “But if you try anything, I really will fire.”
“S-Seriously?” Kaname asked.
Tessa gave them a firm nod. “Yes. I won’t hesitate to shoot at him. Whether I hit or not is another question entirely...”
“I... I see.”
“Kaname-san,” Tessa went on, “this is something I knew I’d have to tell you about eventually. Even if I didn’t, my brother may have been planning to do so himself—I think that’s why he came here. Or, if not that, to...”
“To what?” Kaname asked.
“Nothing,” Tessa said with a sigh. “Well, if we’re going together, we should hurry. It’s this way.”
Meanwhile, Sousuke and Leonard’s strange collaboration continued in the dark. They’d spent over five minutes wrestling with a girder that stubbornly refused to give way, before deciding to clear out the surrounding concrete and rocks first. After ten minutes of that, they’d finally managed to get to the point where the beam budged when they kicked it...
Sousuke and Leonard shared no conversation other than what was necessary to accomplish the work at hand: “Move this,” and “Pull that,” and nothing more. Of course, Sousuke wasn’t letting his guard down for a second. He had his knife ready to draw at the smallest provocation, and didn’t turn his back on the man for a second longer than he had to. Whatever the situation, he couldn’t forget that Leonard was an enemy.